sixteen. “Forward, fast as you can, go, go!”
However, other passengers from the first six rows of the economy section
were in the aisle ahead of them. Everyone was trying to get out fast. A
valiant young flight attendant was doing what she could to help, but
progress was not easy. The aisle was littered with carry-on luggage,
purses, paperback books, and other items that had fallen out of the
overhead storage compartments, and within a few shuffling steps, Jim’s
feet had become entangled in debris.
The churning smoke reached them from behind, enfolded them, so pungent
that his eyes teared at once. He not only choked on the first whiff of
fumes but gagged with revulsion, and he did not want to think about what
might be burning behind him in addition to upholstery, foam seat
cushions, carpet, and other elements of the aircraft’s interior decor.
As the thick oily cloud poured past him and engulfed the forward
section, the passengers ahead began to vanish. They appeared to be
stepping through the folds of a black velvet curtain.
Before visibility dropped to a couple of inches, Jim let go of Holly and
clutched Christine’s shoulder. “Let me take her,” he said, and scooped
Casey into his arms.
A paper bag from an LAX giftshop was in the aisle at his feet. It had
burst open as people tramped across it. He saw a white T-shirt-I LovE
L.A: with pink and peach and pale-green palm trees.
He snatched up the shirt and pushed it into Casey’s small hands.
Coughing, as was everyone around him, he said, “Hold it over your face,
honey, breathe through it!”
Then he was blind. The foul cloud around him was so dark that he could
not even see the child he was carrying. Indeed, he could not actually
perceive the churning currents of the cloud itself The blackness was
deeper than what he saw when he closed his eyes, for behind his lids
pinpoint bursts of color formed ghostly patterns that lit his inner
world.
They were maybe twenty feet from the open end of the crash-severed
fuselage. He was not in danger of getting lost, for the aisle was the
only route he could follow.
He tried not to breathe. He could hold his breath for a minute, anyway,
which ought to be long enough. The only problem was that he had already
inhaled some of the bitter smoke, and it was caustic, burning his throat
as if he had swallowed acid. His lungs heaved and his esophagus
spasmed, forcing him to cough, and every cough ended in an involuntary
though thankfully shallow inhalation.
Probably less than fifteen feet to go.
He wanted to scream at the people in front of him: move, damn you, move!
He knew they were stumbling forward as fast as they could, every bit as
eager to get out as he was, but he wanted to shout at them anyway, felt
a shriek of rage building in him, and he realized he was teetering on
the brink of hysteria.
He stepped on several small, cylindrical objects, floundering like a man
walking on marbles. But he kept his balance.
Casey was wracked by violent coughs. He could not hear her, but holding
her against his chest, he could feel each twitch and flex and
contraction of her small body as she struggled desperately to draw half
filtered breaths through the I LovE L.A. shirt.
Less than a minute had passed since he had started forward, maybe only
thirty seconds since he had scooped up the girl. But it seemed like a
long journey down an endless tunnel.
Although fear and fury had thrown his mind into a turmoil, he was
thinking clearly enough to remember reading somewhere that smoke rose in
a burning room and hung near the ceiling. If they didn’t reach safety
within a few seconds, he would have to drop to the deck and crawl in the
hope that he would escape the toxic gases and find at least marginally
cleaner air down there.
Sudden heat coalesced around him.
He imagined himself stepping into a furnace, his skin peeling off in an
instant, flesh blistering and smoking. His heart already thudded like a