Fearless by Rafael Yglesias Read Free Book Online Page A

at the middle rows of the plane and across to the far rows on the right side. Most people were bent all the way over. Very few were sitting up like her—
    Beneath her there was a bump.
    The wheels had touched the ground!
    “Yay!” she called to all those huddled people. She wanted to lead the cheers. They were safe!
    She released her fingers from their entanglement in front of Bubble’s stomach just enough to free the tips. She clapped them together delicately.
    A woman screamed.
    A shudder went through her right side and her row of seats rose up above the others. She hung there for a weird second, twisting. The middle rows moved by her as if they were a car passing hers on a freeway, passengers’ profiles zooming out of sight until a man’s head and shoulders flopped like a doll and were squashed by something and she knew that what she was seeing was horrible and her brain went numb.
    Her eyes shut. She heard and sensed the rest of the crash—
    The tigers roared. She was spinning up and around and over, like a sock in a washer, and she prayed hard—
    Please God, please God, please God , at last filling her mind with Him and longing for life and wishing herself away from this…
    Something hit her legs. Then her back. A hand was burned.
    It was over. The tigers had gone and she smelled their rage: everything stung her nostrils and only then did she remember Bubble. She clasped her arms tight. She touched nothing but herself. Her baby was gone.
    Carla screamed, opened her eyes and couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. Her face fell free. She had been inside the ceiling. Only it wasn’t the ceiling anymore. It was foam rubber. Also the floor wasn’t beneath her—the blue carpet was to her right. Where was the aisle? The windows?
    A cloud of smoke washed over her face. She reached around for Bubble and called to him.
    Somebody passed her, breathing hard, and she remembered her seat belt. That’s why she couldn’t move. And the smoke meant fine…coming at her.
    Panicked, she released the buckle and tumbled sideways onto a lump. It was the middle of someone’s body. She felt liquid on her bare wrist that she realized was blood. “Help me!” a voice cried. There were lots of sounds she didn’t recognize. She smelled things burning; she feared to know what. Terror was alive in her bones and she screamed, rolling off the corpse. She crawled away and got up as best she could with the space so squashed. Behind her, the other way, were light and voices. People called and pleaded.
    Flames appeared ahead in the dark. She turned to the sunlight behind her and ran for it. She passed a lifeless face staring upward. She ignored a man digging for something in the foam. He yelled at her for running but she couldn’t stop, she had to get out from the horror, the torn-apart world, and the fire.
    Max was alive. He knew that first. And so was Byron. He knew that when he opened his eyes. He did not understand much else, especially what he was seeing: Byron’s hair floated in a burst of yellow light.
    That was the sun.
    The hair wasn’t floating—the boy was upside down.
    Facts gathered speed, catching up to each other in his head, and soon he could make sense again.
    The plane is on fire. He smelled the acrid fumes of plastic and synthetic fabric burning. It’s poisonous. We’re both upside down and strapped into our seats. He released his belt and dropped right onto his knees. He knew that the fall must have hurt them, but he felt nothing. He wasn’t numb, yet he felt no pain. You’re in shock, he told himself. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a woman compressed between what must have been two or three rows jumbled together. She was dead, of course, but what sickened him was the irrational look of her body, squashed into a shape that he couldn’t comprehend.
    He reached up and unbuckled Byron, catching the boy’s legs as he dropped. Lowering himself to cushion the fall he saw another incredible sight—
    A newborn