Flying Home by Mary Anne Wilson

back!”
    He ignored her hysteria, speaking into the radio again, giving what she thought were coordinates.
    The plane dropped again, jarring everything in Merry, and she wanted to shake Gage and force him to turn around. But before she could do anything, he was speaking to her, not into the radio. “We can’t,” he said. “We’re past that point.”
    “Are we going to die?”
    He gave her one long look and said, “Listen to me. You are not going to die. I promise.”
    As strange as it seemed, she believed him. She really believed him. “Okay,” she found herself saying. “Okay.”
    He reached over and covered her hand that was holding on to the seat for dear life. “Now check your belts, then hold on. If I tell you to get down, put your head on your knees and clasp your hands behind your neck.”
    “We really are going down now, aren’t we?”
    “Yes.” Their eyes met for a moment, neither said a word, yet they seemed to be communicating just the same.
    There was another sharp drop of altitude, deeper into the driving snow that blinded them to everything. Gage barked out, “Look for any level place, anywhere that’s flat!”
    Before she could do more than blink, Gage was speaking into the radio again, “Mayday! Mayday!” he said urgently, followed by coordinates, over and over again
    She scanned as much of the area as she could make out in the storm. Gage continued to shout into the radio, over the piercing roar of the laboring engine. “Merry! Find us a spot!”
    She tried to speak, but her voice was lost to her. The engines faltered, then shut off. Only the rushing wind could be heard. “Glide, glide!” she screamed.
    “Exactly,” he said as the plane glided lower and lower. He hit some switches and reported, “Fuel, shut.”
    Merry stared out the window, her worst nightmare a reality. In this plane, with this man. This was all that was left of her life.
    There was snow and more snow, backed by darkness. Merry strained to find anything of the ground below them, but just when she was ready to tell Gage there was nothing visible, he yelled, “Get down, head on knees, hands clasped behind your neck.”
    She did so without argument, bending at her waist to press her forehead to her legs. Her last glimpse out the window was of blurred shapes through the snow, a towering one directly ahead, as if rising up to meet them.
    “Stay down no matter what happens,” Gage ordered.
    She heard Gage clicking something, as a numbing fear gripped her. She didn’t want to die with this man, someone she barely knew, and the children...she couldn’t even say goodbye to them or her mother and her stepfather. An aching part of her wished she had someone, truly that one person she’d always thought would come along sooner or later, a man who loved her, really loved her.
    She heard the howl of the storm, felt the shuddering, a jerk, a violent upheaval and the plane dropping. With her eyes closed tight, she shuddered, whispering for her and Gage to be all right.
    Her world condensed in one explosive moment when the plane hit something, and there was a cracking, ripping of metal, then the belly scraping violently against the ground before it sat upward, then crashed down again. It jarred every bone in her body. The impact willed her to go in the wrong direction, but the restraints wouldn’t let her go, digging into her, stopping her. The pain was intense.
    She couldn’t scream, no words were there as the plane twisted to her left, spinning, snapping her head so violently that she felt a cracking blow by her ear. Then another snap produced more pain and disorientation. Before she could even try to assuage how she really felt, there was a gut wrenching jerk.
    Then nothing.
    No movement. No sound apart from the raging wind outside. Was this death? No, as pain seemed to be enveloping Merry, in her head and her ribs and arms. She tried to figure it out, the true agony came from the unbearable tightness of the restraints. No,