Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115997 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 580(@200wpm)___ 464(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
“Evacuate! Evacuate!”
I fumbled under my seat, then his, grabbing the inflatable life jackets and shoving them inside my vest before yanking the zipper up. There’d be time for those later.
The baby cried as a man across the aisle cursed, grappling with his door.
“Izzy!” Nate reached back and took my hand, pulling me to my feet as the water rushed up over my ankles, my lower shins.
Someone shoved into my shoulder as the cabin-wide panic pitched higher in tone.
Nate climbed out of the emergency door, never letting go of my hand, tugging me behind him and up through the doorway, onto the icy wing.
We were in the middle of the Missouri River.
“Take that side!” I shouted at him as the water licked over the front of the wing.
His jaw clenched and he started to shake his head, but he let my hand slip from his as we each flanked a side of the doorway.
“Give me your hand!” I thrust mine toward the woman struggling at the exit, and she lifted up her hands. Nate and I each took one, lifting her onto the wing.
“Leave the damned suitcase!” Nate yelled into the cabin before helping the next guy out.
“They just got the other door open,” one woman cried as she emerged, her feet slipping on the iced-over metal.
“Careful!” I shouted, steadying her.
Again and again, we lifted passenger after passenger.
“Give me the baby!” I reached for an infant cradled in another woman’s arms and held the pink bundle of screaming, insulted baby girl to my chest as Nate pulled the mom out.
“Thank you!” She took the little girl and cleared the path.
The water crested over the wing, and I moved sideways to see the front of the aircraft as Nate helped another passenger out. The front exit doors were open, rafts deployed, as attendants helped passengers into the water . . . water that surged inside the doors, up to their knees as one man trudged into the rapidly filling raft.
“We’re sinking.”
Nate nodded.
How many passengers were there? How long did we have until the water filled the fuselage?
A man. A woman. Another man. A scared child. We pulled them all out of the cabin until the wing was full and no one else called out for help from inside.
“Is that all?” Nate yelled into the cabin.
No one answered back as the water soaked the seat cushions.
A splash turned my head, and I saw a few of the passengers jumping into the river. We were fifty yards from shore.
Nate moved across the doorway and took my hand.
“We have to swim,” I said as calmly as I could manage. There would be no pretty little rescue-on-the-Hudson for us.
“Yeah.”
“I can’t swim!” a kid next to me cried out, burying his face in his father’s jacket.
The life jackets.
“Here.” I reached into my vest and pulled out a plastic packet, ripping it open with my teeth before handing it to the father.
His startled eyes met mine. “I didn’t grab ours.”
“Take mine. I’m fine.” I gave him a reassuring smile and nod before grabbing the other packet from my vest. “I grabbed yours too,” I told Nate, pushing the packet at his chest.
He blinked down at the vest and shook his head. “Put it on.”
“I don’t need it,” I assured him. “Six years on the swim team.”
He looked from me to the vest a couple of times and then looked over the passengers. “Where is the mom with the baby?” he called out.
Her hand flew up from somewhere midway down the wing.
“Give this to her,” Nate instructed the dad next to us, and he passed it down the line until the woman received it.
Splotches of bright yellow filled my peripherals as a few other passengers slipped the vests on and started blowing them up.
Water covered the edges of the wing, and we all shuffled back, not that our weight was going to balance the aircraft or keep it from sinking to the riverbed.
The plane dipped, and a simultaneous cry of panic ripped through the crowded wing as two passengers slipped into the water.
“Look at me,” Nate demanded, tipping my chin up with his thumb and forefingers.
Had he always been this blurry?
“Shit, your pupils are huge,” he muttered, his fingers ghosting over my forehead with a wince. “And that’s one hell of a goose egg. Ringing in your ears? Blurry vision?”
“Both.”
“You’re concussed.” He looked over my head, then swung around to look at the dipping nose of the plane as the water ate up the cockpit glass and surged toward the door. “Everyone’s out, there’s nothing else we can do, and we’re going to be underwater in minutes. We have to swim for shore. Can you do that?”
My side twinged, a subtle, cutting ache. “I can make it.”
He nodded, his grip tightening on my hand. “We’re going together. The water is about ten degrees above freezing this time of year.”