The three of you pile into the helicopter again. You are hopeful that the break in the weather holds. But as your instructor always said: “Hope is not a strategy.”
Your luck does not hold. Soon after lifting off, you hit another patch of bad weather. This time it is worse than before. The clouds have turned day into night. You cannot tell up from down by looking out the window. The world outside is a solid black mass, occasionally broken by a blinding flash of lightning. Turbulence throws you against your harness, digging the restraints painfully into your shoulders. You have difficulty reading the instruments from the constant vibration.
The helicopter lurches downwards. “That’s not turbulence!” you think. In horror you realise that the heavy rain is flooding the air inlets of the engine, decreasing the airflow available to drive the turbine, causing a sudden loss of power.
“Brace yourselves!” you shout into your headset, ”we are going down!” You say a silent prayer. Ditching at sea is almost always fatal.
At about a hundred feet you break below the cloud cover. Miraculously, a small island lies ahead of you. This is your only chance of survival. You have to ditch the helicopter there.
You steer the helicopter as well as you can, the storm and momentum more in control of the aircraft than you. With a giant “crunch!” the helicopter hit the ground. You use all your skill as a pilot to reduce the impact. The helicopter skids on the rocky ground, shards of glass hitting your face. Sparks light up the inside of the cockpit as metal rock rips the aircraft apart. After what feels like an eternity the helicopter finally grinds to a halt. Compared to the noise a second ago, things are eerily quiet, only the sound of the wind and rain intruding on your senses. Dancing orange light casts flicking shadow on the remains of your cockpit instrument.
“The helicopter is on fire!” you realise. The whole area is flooded with fuel and the tanks were still half full, enough for an explosion!
“Are you all right?” You frantically undo your harness and scramble into the back.
“Yes, yes!” says Emily, her voice shaky.
“Um, yes, so am I young man!”
You cannot believe that everyone escaped the crash without any injury.
“Let’s get out before the whole thing explodes!” you shout at the Emily and the professor. Emily helps the professor undo his harness while you grab the survival pack from the cabin. You all stumble out of the side of the cabin into the darkness, running as fast as you can. You run for about thirty paces when the shockwave of the helicopter exploding throws you off your feet. You land face first in the dirt, very undignified.
Emily starts to erect the small shelter from the survival kit. You take a flashlight, keen to see what exactly is on this island since your only ride is now a smouldering wreck. “I’ll be back in a while,” you let Emily and the professor know as you make off into the darkness.
The island is quite big and it takes you twenty minutes to reach the sea. By this time the storm has lifted again and you can even see some stars through the cloud cover. As you approach an inlet forming a protected natural harbour, you see several flashes of light. This can only be from other flashlights. You switch off your own and start to sneak up to the source of the lights, using large boulders as cover. You are now close enough to hear voices. Peeking over one of the rocks you see three people, a young woman and two men, loading some supplied onto a sturdy boat, anchored in the harbour. Rifles are slung over their shoulders.
If You:
No comments:
Post a Comment