Still Falling (A Hunter Hayes FanFic)

Chapter 18

Toni's POV

"Toni, hello?! Toni!" Hunter shakes my side hard. "What?!" I say rudely. A sigh of relief flushes over his face. "You weren't waking up, I thought you, like, passed out or, something." Oh. "Oh, sorry." I say, embarrassed. He smiles and kisses my forehead.

"The pilot told us we needed to put our seatbelts on because we're hitting some turbulence."

I panic a little. 'Turbulence' is not the word you want to hear while being 37,000 feet in the air.

I feel the plane jerk around and I grasp the arm rests tightly. Hunter rests a hand on my thigh. "It's okay." he chuckles. I scoff at him and rest my head against the seat. It's just some mild turbulence. Nothing to worry about.

20 minutes pass, and we're still going through turbulence. The plane shakes harder and more often. Even Hunter looks apprehensive. "It's going to be alright." he says, running his thumb over my knuckles. But I can tell in his eyes he's not sure. He's not sure if everything is going to be alright.

No one is.

Suddenly, I hear a loud clap of thunder. My ears start ringing because it's so loud and close. That's when I look out the window and see bright red flames on the wing. The plane was struck by lightning.

The plane is on fire.

Everyone on the burning wing side of the plane begins to panic. They all try to climb over seats and go to the other side of the plane, farther from the fire, but the flight attendants tell them to remain seated. One man begins yelling all kinds of obscenities, saying we're all going to die. I don't move. How can you move when you look directly at the very thing that has the ability to kill you?

Hunter starts shaking me again, trying to pull me from my state of shock. "Nettie, baby, look at me. We're gonna be okay, I promise you." Hunter's forehead is sparkling from sweat. What are we going to do?

Just then, the pilot comes on the intercom.

"This is your captain speaking. Ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm, for I am doing my very best to keep you all out of harm's way." I can hear the instability in his voice.

"We will need to make an emergency landing. Please put on your oxygen masks that will be lowered down to you from the ceiling of the cabin."

Suddenly, the masks come down to us and everyone frantically puts them on. I don't move. Hunter notices I'm still shocked and puts my mask on for me. I look at him, and frown.

His eyes are dead. There is no sparkle, no shine, no glimmer. They aren't the beautiful light blue I had fallen in love with a million times over. They're dark grey, almost the color of a dead human's skin. I look out the window again to the fiery wing. The fire starts to creep closer to my window like a silent killer. Just then, the flames erupt, blowing off the wing, causing the nose of the plane to quickly plung down.

The lights in the cabin flicker and I hear screaming in all directions. The flight attendants that aren't seated are thrown back as the plane falls faster. I hear one of them scream and then: nothing. I never hear her scream again.

I look to Hunter, whose eyes are glossy with tears. I stroke his cheek, and I can see him mouth 'I love you', even with his mask on. I have no idea how I'm being so calm. The last thing I remember is Hunter squeezing my hand, signifying he was saying he loves me, then everything went black.

~~~~~~

My eyes slowly flutter open. What happened? I look around, searching for anything that could remind me of what occurred. I look down at myself. I'm sprawled out on the ground, lying in dirt. I guess when we crashed, I was somehow ejected from my seat. My head is throbbing like never before as I guide my hand up to my forehead. I feel a large cut and wince in pain when my fingers grace the surface of the wound. I look behind me to see the plane. It's nearly unrecognizable. It's broken in so many pieces, some of them still on fire. I hear faint voices calling for help and I race to the closest one.

The voice belongs to a young boy, about 17. He's got dirty brown hair, but that could be from the smoke in the air. His eyes are a deep green and his arm is caught under a big piece of rubble. "Hey, it's okay, don't worry, I'm here to help" I say, trying to keep him calm.

He gives me a weak smile and glares at his arm, crushed under the debris. I quickly push the extremely heavy piece of rubble off of his arm, which luckily isn't broken, just badly cut. He gets up and thanks me.

"Thank you so much. I'm Ryan, by the way." He says. "Hey, Ryan. I'm Toni. Look, it seems we are the only two stable people right now, so we need to help the rest of the passengers. Do you think you can help me do that?" He nods and we split up to different cabins of the plane.

It's almost like a puzzle. If you stand in the middle of the crash, every way you face, you see a piece broken off of the plane.

There are 5 pieces. One is the nose of the plane, where houses the cockpit, the second is the front portion of coach, then the back. The fourth is the first part of economy, and the final is the second part of economy. It's like a circle. Ryan sprints to the pilot while I go to the back of coach.

"Someone... Please.." A hear a small voice call for me. It's an old woman. She's not hurt too bad, some cuts and bruises are all she's sustained, but she can't breathe. I quickly run to her and pull an oxygen mask over her head that must've slipped off in all the chaos.

"Listen, ma'am", I begin. "When your breathing gets steady again, I'm gonna need you to get up and help anyone that needs assistance, okay?" She slowly nods and I leave to find the next person in need.

Ryan and I find about twenty people and help all of them out of their situations. The more people we find, the more I recruit to find others who need help. I stumble upon a young woman, a little older than me. She has two children with her, a little boy who looks about three, and a young girl who can't be any older than four and a half.

The woman has shards of glass all in her skin, she can't move. I slowly remove the large pieces, her screaming with every single one that leaves her skin.

When she can finally bear the smaller pieces embedded in her skin, she turns to the girl seated next to her. She's not breathing. The woman shakes her and screams her name, but there's no use. I put my hand on her shoulder in comfort as she cries over the girl's lifeless body. "I'm sorry." I whisper, my voice cracking at the end.

I know how she's feeling. Losing my sister was the worst experience of my life.

"Mommy?" The little boy on her other side whimpers. The woman gently sets the boy's sister down, kissing her head and saying goodbye. She faces the boy, who is coughing from the smoke. "Hi, baby", she says, sniveling. The boy isn't harmed and I breathe a sigh of relief as I leave the mother to be alone with the only child she has left.

A few hours pass since the crash and Ryan and I have found 34 people alive. You'd think that's something to be proud of, but there were 149 people on the flight, and we've discovered 47- dead. We still have 68 people to find and I plan on finding them all.