The Grey Read online

  I dig and push to get one hand pushed against my chest up under my chin and wriggle and shove my fingers up around my mouth to make a space so I’m not drowning, a little space around my mouth to breathe, an inch, two, and try to dig snow out of my mouth, blow it out of my nose. I’m still buried but I have these two inches, and I keep clawing it but I can’t move much of my arm. I shove and push like crazy, then hunch and wriggle back, after more air, and I get more of my arm free and I dig out and pull my hand back and shove and suddenly I can twist and get my other arm out and I start pulling and clambering, in total dark. I’m trying to see and there’s nothing.

  I push up and I hit a seat perched over me like a roof and I’m afraid I might be trapped under that and I shove with my legs as hard as I can until the seat and all the junk on top flips aside, and then air hits me, freezing cold, and I am breathing, buckets, sucking it in. It hurts at the top of every breath, something’s cracked, or thumped, in my chest or ribs or back or somewhere, all of it. There’s a patch of light below, though debris piled around me, looks like snow, and I flop and fall towards it, then there’s more light, or sort of light, pale, and more cold air, and I tumble down a slope of something and hit some hard stuff but none of it badly and come to a stop again, sitting in the snow, but I barely know what’s down and what’s sideways, I’m still spinning, blood’s washing through my ears, booming. I breathe, hold on to the snow.

  2

  I can’t see where I am at first, but I know I’m outside the plane. Everything’s outside the plane. The plane is pieces of shell, scattered. I slowly understand cold, dark, moon, snow, pieces of plane, loose seats, bags, bodies, snow falling, dark lines of trees, far away, maybe mountains in the dark past those, maybe, maybe we hit them and bounced this far. Everything’s buzzing, spinning in my ears still, loud, buzzing silence. I think I stand up a second, hard to tell, but I fall back down, not meaning to, the ground smacks up at me, buzzing. The wind isn’t blowing, which spooks me, because it’s always blowing, in my head, anyway. If it isn’t blowing now, I’m dead, and this is the aftermath.

  I hold on, sit another minute to stop drunk-spinning, looking at pieces, stretching back, a black dotted trail of pieces of metal and I guess oil or somehow burn marks on the snow, if that’s possible, it’s hard to see, and more little dark clumps of bags or bodies or pieces of bodies or seats or people’s clothes, all across this white clearing, a ring of trees around us like the shore of a sea we’re on, with dead in the middle. I shake my head, work my jaw, thinking the buzzing changing to whining changing to ringing might pop out and stop if I do, but it doesn’t, it just clunks like a car-door off its hinge. It’s done that after fights, I got it popped out once, sometimes it pops out again. Behind the trail of stuff, far back I can see trees, flattened and ripped, I think, where I guess we came through.

  I look the other way. I see a guy ahead now, pretty far. He stands up and flops right over again, like I did. Further off, past him, I see somebody else moving, but he’s just crawling along, and he stops, goes flat against the snow, but then I see him trying to get up again. I see more pieces of broken shell, what’s left of the plane, spread over what looks like a mile. It can’t be a mile.

  I consider standing up again. Blood’s still washing through my ears, over the buzzing, in what sounds like a more and more determined way. My chest hurts more the more I breathe, but I still want to get more air in. I try to get up and I wobble but I take a step, ass-high in snow, I have to pull my leg up high, but I move. I think I’d know if anything was broken, and I don’t think anything is, much, and I think if I’m breathing at all I didn’t break ribs. I just got a talking-to.

  I half-slide the rest of the way down the drift I’m in, land face-first, get up again, and I’m on my feet, and suddenly feeling the cold twice as much. I head for the guy who can’t stay up. The other guy moves, again, lying on the snow, feeling around looking lost, dizzy, like me. But he’s further away.

  I walk and walk and start to see they’re further away than they looked. I keep on, across the snow. I pass more seats, more dead, each in their own craters, pocked into the snow, some half-sitting, some freezing, stiffening already, or looking like it, others flattened across the harder snow, worse on ice, some just pieces. And bags, clothes, toothbrushes, razors, loose shoes, pieces of metal everywhere, more dead, as far as I can see, the better my eyes work the further out I see them.

  As I’m making my way the wind picks up. It’s not a blast but it’s more than it was, and it feels like there could be more behind it, before long. It starts picking up snow, getting a little louder. I stop a couple of times and check the bodies I can get to, but nobody I check is alive, the guys ahead of me are the only things moving. I keep making for them. I can’t check them all.

  I get up near the first guy, finally. He’s up again and trying to walk, in his boxers, and socks, half-bloody from something. He looks all broken, but it might just be the way he’s standing, or trying to stand. He’s hopping, or bobbing, one arm and one leg sticking out crooked, trying to hoist his boxers up better, then he slips and flops back, lands on his hand, screams in pain, or pissed off, or both. When I get up close to him he’s crying.

  “I lost my fucking pants,” he says. It’s Ojeira. He’s a tool-pusher. I look around, no blankets, nothing, some bent seats a way off. I pull my sweater off, lay it on him.

  “Can you move?” I ask him.

  “Not this fucking leg, much. I think I could hop or something, in a minute. I’m going to sit a minute,” he says. “It hurts like a fucker. Fucking shit.” He’s mad at the plane for crashing, or the fucked condition of his bones. It has to hurt him, what I see of it.

  “Fucking fuck—“ he’s groaning, and wincing, and getting too pissed off. He’s barely remembering to breathe. The wind's starting up on us, more. He’s freezing. So am I.

  “It’s good it hurts,” I say. “That’s good.” I look at him to see if he understands.

  “Oh yeah? Good,” he says. “I’m fucking terrific, then.”

  “What’s bleeding?” I ask.

  He looks down, lifts his shirt, his side and stomach are scratched and cut, some a little deep, but it doesn’t look bad, just cuts. It’s too cold to worry about infection. If there’s a fucking bacteria alive in this it deserves whatever it can get. There’s some big bulge sticking out under his skin, some kind of hernia, guts bulging, or something. He doesn’t notice it, and I don’t say anything. I don’t think it’ll kill him, just make it harder for him. I don’t know.

  “Anything else?” I ask him. “Anything else bleeding?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t fucking know yet. Fuck.” He looks at me. “Ottway, yeah? What— John?”

  I nod. “You’re Ojeira, right?”

  He nods. “Yeah. Fuck.”

  We look at each other. ‘Why am I alive, and yet so fucked?’ he looks like he’s thinking. He tries getting up again.

  “Stay there for now, OK?” I say. Ojeira nods again. He looks at his hand. Two fingers are bent sideways, the whole hand is blowing up, I see now, it looks dark, purple, I’m guessing.

  “Fuck me,” he says. He tries to clench a fist, and almost gags.

  “That hurts more than the rest of it,” he says. He looks down at himself, his legs at different angles from the way he flopped down. He starts trying to set them right, and gives up, stops. He huffs in air, his eyes fill up. I think he’s going to start crying again, but he just sits there.

  “I’m going to sit. A minute,” he says.

  “I’ll come back for you. Stay here, OK?” I say. He doesn’t have much choice. I look across the snow to the other guy. He’s still crawling, trying to get on top of the snow, I see now he’s been moving, he’s just stuck in a drift so deep he’s barely made a yard. I go over to him, past bloody clothes and more parts of bodies and bodies. It’s Luttinger, another tool-pusher. They’re all tool-pushers.

  “What the fuck,” he says. “Fuck.” He finally gets
up on harder snow and stays up, this time, nothing seems wrong with him except he’s still unsteady, but no bones sticking out or limbs going the wrong way.

  “Something rolled, broke open, I don’t know. Slid a fucking mile.” He touches his face, up by his eye and his forehead.

  “I have any face left?” I can’t tell much in the light, but it looks like he’s just torn up. He still has a face.

  “I think so. Yeah,” I say. He’s touching it.

  “Feels like I scraped it all the hell off,” he says. His clothes are half-ripped away, or burned away, from sliding across snow, or something, but he’s got more on him than Ojeira.

  He looks at me.

  “You OK?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  He looks across to Ojeira.

  “That guy looks half-fucked,” he says. Ojeira’s gotten up, again, he’s trying to walk. He looks pretty bad doing it. “Who is it?”

  “Ojeira.” Luttinger nods.

  “Yeah. Shit.” Luttinger says. “I’m Luttinger.”

  “I know,” I say. He looks at me, doesn’t know me.

  “I’m Ottway.” He looks at me again, sort of guarded, nods, not so glad to see me, suddenly.

  ”We should get him inside a piece of plane or something. Try to get him warm,” I say. We both look around. There are more dark clumps in the snow, bodies or seats or wreckage, chunks of shell. Luttinger nods.

  “Anybody else moving over here?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. “Nobody.” Of the ones we can see close to us, it’s plain enough they’re dead. I should start assuming everybody’s dead.

  We start back for Ojeira. It’s hard going. I’m finding things hurting I didn’t know were hurting before. The cold is numbing everything but sharpening everything at the same time. I stop at the first body we pass. The guy has boots on. I pull them off, his jacket too, his sweater. The guy’s got insulated pants, I get those off him too. He looks familiar, but I don’t think I know him. Luttinger doesn’t say anything. I give the jacket to him. He looks surprised, but takes it. The other bodies we pass on the way to Ojeira are in t-shirts, or half-naked. I’m not understanding how clothes ripped off in the crash, but they did.

  Luttinger and I reach Ojeira, finally. He’s glad to see us and pissed at the same time.

  “I thought you weren’t coming back,” he says.

  “We did, though,” I say.

  We get the pants and the boots on him which seems to hurt him but he manages. Luttinger looks at him shivering, and gives him the jacket I gave him before I ask him too. I get my sweater back on.

  We get on either side of him and help him walk toward the nearest piece of shell we can get to. It’s sticking up out the snow like a smoke-stack. I look for whatever piece I must have come out of and I can make out my tracks, where I think I came from, but whatever I fell out of looks tiny now, a little hunk of metal, couple of seats. I thought it was a more respectable piece of plane. We haul for the smoke-stack piece and don’t seem that much closer to it, and we pass more bodies, then more again. We set Ojeira down to check them, they’re gone. But I see blankets, get one tied around me, give the other to Luttinger, then a little further I see some bags half-ripped open, clothes spilled out, more sweaters and jackets, we get those on, too.

  We move again, haul a long time, we come up on something else. Some blood, dark in the snow, something else I can’t identify, a piece of uniform wrapped in among it. It’s half a pilot, or co-pilot, or navigator, one of those guys. I can’t see anything that looks like a cockpit, he must have fallen out, or been thrown.

  We keep going and get to the smoke-stack, and set Ojeira down. I see now there’s no way into it, that I can see, unless we want to tunnel under it to get in. Looking at it leaning, I think it’s going to blow down anyway, if the wind gets much bigger, and kill us that way. I look back along the trail of wreckage, more bodies, more pieces of crap, and I can just make out a bigger piece of plane, as far away again as this one was. Nothing else looks much use to us. The cold is drawing the life out of me, and I think Ojeira will die if we don’t keep trying get him into some kind of inside, and this is only a half-stiff wind, so far. We’ll die too, I think. I look at Luttinger and Ojeira.

  “We should try to get to that piece.” Ojeira looks at the distance, looks like he’d rather die right here.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Ojeira says. I just look at them, Luttinger nods, starts hoisting Ojeira.

  “Come on,” Luttinger says.

  We get Ojeira up and start dogging through the snow for the next piece. We get up closer and I see it’s another big piece of broken tube, but this one’s lying flat in the snow, more or less. Beyond that, pretty far, there’s another bump in the snow, looks like a piece of smashed cockpit, black holes for windshields, half-buried. We make for the closer piece. It’s a long slog, with Ojeira hobbling and bumping us, but he’s trying so hard to walk right I don’t say anything. We don’t talk much, we’re out of breath. We’re head-smacked anyway, all we know to do is slog on, in our lesser-mammal way. Invertebrate, maybe.

  We come around the blind side of the piece of tube. There’s a big hole, and junk, pieces and parts, more bodies all around. I see Tlingit, sitting in the snow, Reznikoff with him. They look wide-eyed, like they’d seen things they wished they hadn’t, and then been beaten half-to-death. We must look the same, I think. Tlinglit looks at me. I’m happy to see him.

  “You OK?” Tlingit asks. I nod. I can hear yelling from inside the tube. Tlingit nods to the hole in the fuselage. “More in there,” he says.

  We step closer and see inside. It’s chaos, field-hospital, everybody groaning, gasping, swearing, yelling all at once, upside down, tilted, seats on the ceiling, wires, seatbelts, pieces of carpet, life-vests, torn stuff hanging down, broken seat bins, oxygen masks and tubes tangled underfoot, another boot with a leg sticking out of it, and blood, I think, everywhere, looks like. Near the opening I see Feeny, missing a hand, blanket around the stump, he’s holding it up like if he had a hand he’d be giving you the finger, Cismoski, next to him, leg gone, below the knee, somebody's tied it off for him but he’s gasping, grunting, holding his thigh.

  We get Ojeira propped against a piece of seat. I see Bengt further inside, staring up the aisle at Lewenden, who has his guts ripped open, he and Knox are holding little flashlights on him, yelling. Lewenden’s head is tilted too, it looks wrong on his neck somehow, as if the hole in his middle wasn’t enough to worry about. I think about Tlingit saying he needed a neck-snapping.

  As Knox’s flashlight moves I see Henrick’s there, kneeling over Lewenden, stuffing a blanket into his insides, but blood’s still welling out. Henrick can’t stop it, and Knox is yelling for somebody to do something, and they’re yelling at each other and Bengt’s yelling at both of them to stop Lewenden bleeding or he’s dead. I go up, look at Lewenden. Lewenden sees me, doesn’t look happy. He lays his head back, closes his eyes, groaning, somewhere low. He’s out, I think.

  Bengt suddenly realizes something, starts patting his pockets. He takes his light off Knox, starts looking around the junk thrown everywhere. He finally finds somebody’s cell phone, starts trying to get a signal. Ojeira looks over at Bengt.

  “What the fuck is that for? Out here?” Bengt looks at Ojeira, keeps trying to dial. The thing is dead, too far from anything, too cold, smacked too hard, but Bengt keeps pressing buttons and looking at it, like he’s going to get an ambulance to come, and they might want directions.

  I’m still looking at Lewenden. He’s around again, but shaking. He’s going to die in a few minutes, I think. Nobody knows what to do. It’s cold like you wouldn’t believe, and we’re among dead, and dying. Nobody’s thinking well.

  Henrick keeps trying to pad the hole, in trying to stuff the wound he moves something and something gives, somewhere, uncovers something and now there’s blood flooding up like crazy, faster than before, I don’t know if it’s artery or what it is but it’s ro
lling up out of the cavity and as I step in closer Henrick moves the blanket and it starts gushing and we try to block that but it’s still spraying over everybody, everybody jumps back except Henrick and I, with our hands in Lewenden’s insides, Henrick moves the blanket again and it stops, but it’s still flowing out around and through the blanket.

  “Fuck,” Lewenden says. “Fuck— Henrick—“

  “Is there something we can use to tie off whatever the fuck that is?” Henrick yells. But you can’t see anything to tie off, it’s just shooting out of some hole in something somewhere, so we stuff best we can but we know it’s still leaking, out, from somewhere, just as fast. He’s fucked in a way that’s smarter than us.

  Henrick looks at me, blinking blood out of his eyes, and Lewenden rolls around again, looks at Henrick and me, sees the blood all over us.

  “Fucking do something, Henrick!” Lewenden says, halfway to crying, and I don’t blame him, I’d cry for him myself if I wasn’t distracted. Henrick looks at Lewenden and doesn’t come up with anything to say and Lewenden lays his head back and closes his eyes and it looks like he’s passed out again, or he’s just died, but blood’s still coming and then I hear him groaning and grunting and mumbling something, praying, could be.

  We hear him breathing, but it’s hollow sounding, he’s going, I think. It’s so much blood, and we can’t imagine how we would put him back together, or hold him together, if he lived past this minute anyway. A minute goes by like this, it seems longer, we’re just waiting, not knowing anything. Henrick lets go of the blankets, steps back, staring, with everybody else, we watch him, don’t know what else to do.