***
Chase was stuck. Caught. Trapped in the middle of something … of somewhere.
The darkness started to fade. He saw light. He saw … he saw his family.
“Are you okay?” he yelled out, not understanding why he felt this raw sensation that something was wrong. Not that they looked wrong.
Unlike him, they were in a tunnel. A tunnel of light. He didn’t understand. Why were they there, when he was … here? Wherever here was.
Worry. Panic. Terror. Emotions continued to swell inside him, and somehow he knew if he could get to his family, it would be okay. He would be okay. That he wouldn’t be stuck anymore. He tried to move closer to them, but something held him back. No, it didn’t just hold him back. It pulled him back.
“No,” he said, trying to free himself to go to them.
His mom looked up. Her mouth moved as if talking, but he couldn’t hear her. Then she waved him back, as if telling him to go. Not that he had a choice.
Whoever, whatever had him, kept moving him. His family was getting smaller and smaller. Why wouldn’t his mom want him to come with them? He didn’t want to be alone.
In the distance, he heard barking. Baxter. Thinking of Baxter brought on another wave of unexplainable panic. Why was he worried about Baxter? He squinted to see his dog was with his family. It didn’t seem like it. But they were so small now, maybe he just couldn’t see.
But the barking seemed to be closer than his parents and Mindy. He shifted his gaze looking for the dog. When he glanced back up at his family they were nothing but tiny specks in the surrounding light.
He could still hear the barking. “Baxter?” he called. “Where are you?”
Then he remembered Baxter was lost. Lost. And the storm was coming. His heart suddenly swelled with another memory. The plane. The … crash.
His heart pounded against his chest.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The light disappeared. Or that light did. Another light turned the inside of his eyelids red. He tried to open them, but they felt so heavy. Crusty, as if something had glued them shut.
Before he tried again, the pain hit. Pain in his arm. In his neck. His head. But amazingly, nothing else hurt. That’s when it hit him. It didn’t hurt because he couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t feel anything below his chest. Not his legs, or his feet.
Forcing his eyes open, bits of white fell toward him. Snow. A flake fell into his eye and he blinked it away. More raw panic gripped his chest.
His parents? Mindy? Tami? He swallowed. His throat barely worked. He tried to raise his head. It hurt, but he did it anyway. “Mom? Dad?” he called, but the sound barely came out.
He blinked several times and tried to focus. All he could see was a mangled piece of metal that had once been a plane. The plane his dad loved. He called it Amy, named after his mom.
“Mom?” he called again and turned his head to see if he could spot anyone. He couldn’t. But then he saw the snow around the mass of mangled metal. It was red. Blood red.
He remembered the light. Seeing them in the bright tunnel. “No,” he screamed and tried to get up, but he couldn’t move his legs.
He dropped his head back in the pillow of snow. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks.
A wave of dizziness hit, bringing the blackness back. He embraced it.
***
Noise. Chase’s mind registered it. Metal scraping against metal.
He saw the red again on the back of his eyelids and forced his eyes open. Snow caught on his eyelashes, or was it ice? His face felt almost frozen, sort of half-numb.
“Damn it, Tallman. This wasn’t supposed to happen,” the voice boomed out of nowhere.