Crossing the Rubicon

A Story by Anonymous

Catastrophe strikes mid air, tearing apart a state of the art jetliner and wreaking havoc amongst the passengers and crew.

“Thirty-four! There are thirty-four people here!” It was the first thing someone had said since we reached the tarmac. I fell face first to the ground and the man who had dragged me - for what seemed to be hours - collapsed in front of me. His head turned towards me before hitting the ground with a soft thud. It was probably to make sure I was still alive. It took every ounce of strength that I had left in me to push myself onto my back, but it might have been the best decision that I had made all day. Sighing at the calm, blue sky was much preferred over heaving into the grass and ground, remembering the sequence of events that lead us to this point. The people around me were frail, distraught and covered in blood. There was an eerie silence before the sound of sirens, like those of an ambulance or a fire truck, began to overpower and drown the roar of the blaze that we barely escaped. As a paramedic held me up, I overheard two others contemplating rescuing other survivors at the wreckage. However, they didn’t have to put much thought into it because a one final explosion at the crash site confirmed their fears. The thirty-four bruised and battered humans before them were the only ones that survived.

The airlines I was boarding was commonly travelled on. It wasn't my first time flying and I was fairly relaxed. I knew that the plane would be delayed like it always is, the crew would brief us through the same safety procedures, the same soggy meals would be served and my journey would end with the same slightly bumpy, landing.

The first twenty minutes of the flight were spent in trying - and failing - to keep myself entertained. There's just not much one can do while stuck in a congested seat. Most of the flight was spent in a similar fashion, occasionally stirring a light conversation with the kind lady that sat beside me, and her friend who sat two rows behind us who had temporarily relocated to an empty seat near us. The flight had been filled up to half of its maximum capacity, which was expected during this time of the year. When the pilot made an announcement asking us to prepare for landing, it signaled the end of our journey. Everyone returned to their original seats and began to stow away the items they removed from the overhead bins.

My seat was located just behind the one next to the emergency exit, so this gave me a pretty good view of the right wing and it’s Rolls Royce engines. As we got closer to the runway, I looked out my window to see the city below us. Beginning the descent, our flight caught some turbulence that made the plane shake and rattle, but the cabin crew assured us that everything was fine and we would be landing as scheduled. Convinced, I looked out my window once again, content at seeing the city below me. The aircraft stopped rattling and we assumed that we had escaped the turbulent weather. I want to say something like, “Had we known it was just the calm before the storm…” but knowing that would have made absolutely no difference. We had already crossed the Rubicon the moment we boarded the flight.

As I continued to watch the city below me, the vibrations started again, but this time I could see one of the engines on the right wing shift up a bit and then it shifted back into place. Before I could fully comprehend what I had witnessed, the engine moved again but instead on moving back into place as it previously did, it snapped loose from the back and flipped over the wing before flying off. The airplane made a sudden bank to the right before adjusting back into place. After spending sufficient time willing the engine to magically reappear on the wing, I told the flight attendant about the missing engine. Although she said that the aircraft was designed to be able to fly with three engines, we both looked at the wing horrified at the white trails of jet fuel that emerged from where the engine hit the top of the wing. I saw her rush to the nose of the aircraft, probably to inform the captain about what had happened.

The attendant barely made it past four rows before the aircraft began to bank again throwing her off to the side. Luckily the passengers caught hold of her and prevented her from falling on others. She gripped the overhead bins and seats in an attempt to stabilize herself while the aircraft continued its bank into a steep right turn which had us all pushed over to that side. The bank lasted for a few more seconds before the plane began to fall from the sky like a wounded bird. The sudden increase in airspeed pushed us all forward and we gripped the seats in front of us, trying to push ourselves back. That wasn’t much help as the plane flipped over and we got pushed back into our seats before the nose began to pull back up. At that point we thought that the pilots were beginning to regain control. I looked out my window one last time to see the aircraft flying just above the trees and the airport in front of us. The last thing I saw was the trunk of a tree outside the window before the belly of the aircraft slammed the ground.

I woke up to the smell of burning jet fuel and human flesh. The seat in front of me had torn apart from the fuselage and fallen back on me. I was trapped and numb from waist down. Up ahead, the seats and business class section was replaced with with a view of the ceiling of the jet. The courteous lady who sat beside to me wasn’t there anymore, but then again, neither was her seat. In that moment, I remember looking at the ignited engine to my right and imagining the fire make it’s way to the cabin, taking me as its first victim.

The desperation to find a survivor had set in by then. The seat was too heavy for me to move alone and even if I did, my legs wouldn’t have taken me anywhere. I had turned to see if anyone could have been alive, instead I found my neighboring passenger’s seat. It had smashed into a seat towards the left. There was no way she could have survived. The seat that trapped me had probably saved me from flying across too. The numbness I felt began to replace itself with pain. I was beginning to drift back into unconsciousness. As my eyes drooped, I remember seeing a blur was moving towards me and thinking that was death. Moments later the heaviness of the chair was gone and I was being dragged. The words “I got you” were repeated several times before I looked up to see a familiar face. It was the man who had been sitting a couple of rows behind me. Blood dripped of his forehead and hit my eye. I squinted to clear my vision as he dragged me out of the ruins and up the pit that the impact had created. For a moment I was a life sized rag doll, dragged through the wreckage until a dull path was found for our escape. I saw a few others crawling out from the wreckage. A little girl, who was bawling her eyes out in search of her mother was swooped by a man who seemed to be limping towards the tarmac too. We crossed a few dead bodies too. My savior was growing tired. I could feel his grip loosening and I was dragged from my elbows from that point. Luckily, we had just passed the nose and cockpit and reached the tarmac within a few minutes.

“Thirty-four! There are thirty-four people here!” There were a hundred a fifty-six passengers and crew aboard that aircraft and only thirty-four of us had been rescued. The good-natured lady who accompanied me for my journey had not survived. The flight attendant who masked her fear to reassure us had not survived. The mother of wailing child at the wreckage had not survived.

One hundred and twenty-two people had not survived.