knew he would have had the ghastly face of a rotting corpse and a rictus
for a smile.
The noise was intolerable, though the passengers’ screaming was not the
worst of it. For the most part their voices were drowned out by the
scream of the aircraft itself as its belly dissolved against the
pavement and other pieces of it were torn loose. Maybe dinosaurs,
sinking into Mesozoic pits of tar, had equaled the volume of that dying
cry, but nothing on the face of the earth since that era had protested
its demise at such a piercing pitch and thunderous volume. It wasn’t
purely a machine sound; it was metallic but somehow alive, and it was so
eerie and chilling that it might have been the combined, tortured cries
of all the denizens of hell, hundreds of millions of despairing souls
wailing at once. She was sure her eardrums would burst.
Disregarding the instructions she had been given, she raised her head
and looked quickly around. Cascades of white, yellow, and turquoise
sparks foamed past the portholes, as if the airplane was passing through
an extravagant fireworks display. Six or seven rows ahead, the fuselage
cracked open like an eggshell rapped against the edge of a ceramic bowl.
She had seen enough, too much. She tucked her head between her knees
again.
She heard herself chanting at the deck in front of her, but she was
caught in such a whirlpool of horror that the only way she could
discover what she was saying was to strain to hear herself above the
cacophony of the crash: “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t. ”
Maybe she passed out for a few seconds, or maybe her senses shut down
briefly due to extreme overload, but in a wink everything was still. The
air was filled with acrid odors that her recovering senses could not
identify.
The ordeal was over, but she could not recall the plane coming to rest.
She was alive.
Intense joy swept through her. She raised her head, sat up, ready to
whoop with the uncontainable thrill of survival-and saw the fire.
The DC-10 had not cartwheeled. The warning to Captain Delbaugh had paid
off But as Jim had feared, the chaotic aftermath of the crash held as
many dangers as the impact itself Along the entire starboard side of the
plane, where jet fuel had spilled, orange flames churned at the windows.
It appeared as if he was voyaging aboard a submarine in a sea of fire on
an alien world. Some of the windows had shattered on impact, and flames
were spouting through those apertures, as well as through the ragged
tear in the fuselage that now separated economy class from the forward
section of the airliner.
Even as Jim uncoupled his seatbelt and got shakily to his feet, he saw
seats catching afire on the starboard side. Passengers over there were
crouching or dropping down on their hands and knees to scramble under
the spreading flames.
He stepped into the aisle, grabbed Holly, and hugged her as she
struggled to her feet. He looked past her at the Dubroveks. Mother and
child were uninjured, though Casey was crying.
Holding Holly by the hand, searching for the quickest way out, Jim
turned toward the back of the aircraft and for a moment could not
understand what he was seeing. Like a voracious blob out of an old
horror movie, an amorphous mass churned toward them from the hideously
gouged and crumpled rear of the DC-10, black and billowy, devouring
everything over which it rolled. Smoke. He hadn’t instantly realized
it was smoke because it was so thick that it appeared to have the
substance of a wall of oil or mud.
Death by suffocation, or worse, lay behind them. They would have to go
forward in spite of the fire ahead. Flames licked around the torn edge
of fuselage on the starboard side, reaching well into the cabin, fanning
across more than half the diameter of the sliced-open aircraft.
But they should be able to exit toward the port side, where no fire was
yet visible.
“Quick,” he said, turning to Christine and Casey as they came out of row