Run for Your Life - James Patterson [87]
“Our Father who art?—” I started mumbling through my teeth, as the expansive emptiness of the last sight I would ever see raced up to meet me.
Then I heard a high-pitched sort of whining sound.
Sweet Jesus, this is it, I thought.
An instant later came one long, continuous, eardrum-rupturing string of explosions that tore the roof and entire back of the plane away like wet tissue paper.
But I was still there, still alive. I could see streaking fire behind us, but it was a trail of burning fuel, not the entire plane exploding.
My mind was scrambling to rectify that when I realized that our gliding dive was turning into a plummeting headlong fall. The bolts of my seat groaned as we shook and rattled, and my shoulder harness bullwhipped my chest.
Strangely, it brought me a window of peace. Not the kind of light at the end of the tunnel that people who thought they were dying sometimes describe, but just calm.
An instant later, we hit with a tremendous splash, like a returning NASA shuttle.
Chapter 96
THE IMPACT WAS CRUSHING, slamming me around the cockpit, but we still had enough forward momentum to skid across the water’s surface for a few more seconds. Otherwise, it would have been like smashing into concrete. That, and the fact that I’d been wedged in tight with Meyer’s harnessed body when we hit, was probably what saved me.
As I tried to believe that I was still alive, I felt something wrong with my neck. I wiggled my fingers to see if I was paralyzed. They would barely move, but I realized that was because my wrist was broken. Half the dashboard gauges were now sitting in my bleeding lap. But apparently, my neck was only wrenched, and the rest of me was more or less intact. I was able to get my arms going, then my legs.
Burning debris was scattered all around on the dark surface of the bay, and water was pouring inside, already covering my ankles, as what was left of the plane sank fast.
Then came a massive flash of orange and a blast of intense heat from the pilot-side wing. Pitch-black smoke that smelled horribly of burning plastic seared my face. Another fuel compartment must have gone up. The flames surged ferociously, eating into the plane’s interior. Within half a minute, they would engulf it—and me.
Meyer was still strapped into his seat, unmoving— knocked out by the impact, or dead.
I wasn’t about to find out which.
With my unbroken hand and my last bit of strength, I pulled myself out of the now doorless passenger-side threshold and dropped into the frigid water. Gasping, I eggbeater-kicked backward as fast as I could.
Then, through the smoke, I saw movement inside the plane—something struggling in the flames. No! It was Meyer.
Clothes on fire, he rolled out the same doorway I’d just departed. Both he and the flames disappeared as he hit the water with a sizzling splash.
He surfaced right next to me! I lurched away, kicking at him, as he clawed at my eyes with a burnt hand, making a sound that was like an animal screech.
That was when the weirdest thing of all happened. A euphoric, druglike rush swept over me, and my face split into a huge smile. I swung my arms around his neck in a headlock, threw my weight on top of him, and took us both under.
The sound of the world ceased as I dragged him down through the cold, dark water. With newfound strength, I turned up the pressure, throttling him to crush his throat against his spine.
It was glorious.
In my entire life, I had never been as confident or as single-minded as I was at that moment. If there was one outcome that I was sure of in all of my existence, it was that this evil thing I held in an unbreakable headlock, this murderous bastard who had threatened my family and very nearly murdered me, wasn’t ever going to make it up into the land of the living again. I was going with him, but it was the best possible way I could go.
Time disappeared from my mind. I had no idea how much of it passed before he stopped struggling. But finally, as the air in my lungs gave out, so did my strength. I held onto him until the last possible