“Brace for impact! Brace for impact!” blared the pilot’s voice coming through the speakers. I hunched forward in my seat; awaiting what I hoped wasn’t certain death. Screams echoed across the cabin. The woman in the seat next to me was murmuring quietly in Spanish. I think she was praying. Further away I heard the cries of babies and small children. In the seat next to the aisle, a man in fatigues and a blonde buzzcut was hunched over, dead silent. His hands were clenched so hard they had turned white. In front of me was the black screen of the inflight entertainment console surrounded by the drab grey plastic of the seat it was attached to.

I didn’t have a good view out the window. All I knew was the plane1 suddenly banked leftwards after flying level for hours. The pilots started screaming for everyone to return to their seats just before the plane went into a dive. And thirty seconds later we touched the earth.

The actual crash was almost an anti-climax. Almost. There was a jolt as the plane hit the ground. The airframe shuddered as it tried to brake. And then, just as I started to believe we had made it, a second impact rammed me against my seatbelt. I sat still for what felt like hours; still hunched over. Eventually it became clear the plane had stopped moving. We had not died on impact. The plane seemed level with the ground and I couldn’t smell any smoke. It could have been worse, I thought woozily. I looked up around the cabin, feeling dizzy. Other passengers were doing the same.

The plane1 itself was an intercontinental beast. It was crossing the Atlantic from London to New York. I think it originally departed from Cape Town before refuelling and taking on new passengers. In economy class there were three seats at each window; with another four in the centre surrounded by two aisles. I was in a middle seat far from a view outside. The sound of hundreds of voices filled the cabin; each checking on the wellbeing of their companions and loved ones. No one looked too injured. From my limited medical knowledge I thought whiplash would be the biggest concern. I dawned on me I was the punchline of one of my professor’s favourite jokes. Jerk is the change in acceleration over time. And a crash is a large change in acceleration over a very short period of time. In other words, a plane crash is a huge jerk. I started giggling uncontrollably. I swear it was the relief at not dying that was causing the laughter. Not a joke that obscenely bad.

The soldier, as I presumed he was, started talking. He had a light southern accent. “What the fuck happened?”

“We crashed.” I replied, acerbically.

He rubbed his forehead above his eyes. “I know we crashed. But I was asleep until the pilots started screaming. Why the fuck did we crash?”

“No idea. There was a bright flash of light coming from the windows and what sounded like an explosion. Two minutes later the pilots started screaming we were going to crash.”

“What the hell? Do you think it was a nuke2?”

“I hope not.” I grabbed my phone3 out of my pocket and quickly turned it on. “My phone is working. So I don’t think there was an EMP. But the plane could be shielded against that sort of thing. And I did feel a shockwave that knocked the plane off course.”

It took a few seconds for the soldier to reply. “Considering we hit land we have to be close to New York. And I don’t know what else it could be.”

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. “The estimated landing time was supposed to be in three hours. Last I checked we were still over water nowhere close to land.”

He clenched his fist again. “This is not the time to be fucking with me.”

“I’m telling the truth,” I replied in a small voice.

I craned my head to try peer out the closest window. I could just barely see what looked like trees. Smudges of brown and green mostly hidden behind the heads of other passengers. They were so close I had to assume that either the trees in the path of the wing were knocked down or the entire wing itself was sheared straight off. Hitting them must have been the cause of the second impact.

Suddenly a girl’s voice bellowed across the cabin. “She’s not breathing! She’s not breathing! Please help. Is there a doctor4 on board?” It looked like a school group. A dozen teenagers of roughly the same age crowding around an elderly woman slumped in her seat. The soldier next to me was halfway out of his seat when a beleaguered looking flight attendant proclaimed, “Please remain seated unless you have formal medical training as a registered nurse or a physician.” He sat down. Three people ended up going to help; including a middle aged man in a turban, tan slacks and a button up shirt who said he was a trauma surgeon at a London hospital.

I couldn’t hear much more than that as noise from the rest of the cabin started growing louder. There were few other injuries. But the story of the nuke was spreading. I checked my phone again. The inflight wifi was offline. And the phone couldn’t connect to any cell networks. None of my neighbours had any better luck. I shouted over the soldier to a seat closer to the window, “Are those trees outside? I didn’t think we were close to land.”

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It took another attempt before the man responded in a Brooklyn accent. “Yeah. It looks like we just dodged the mountain. We hit a forest instead.”

“A mountain? This plane is supposed to be going to New York. Isn’t it?”

“Not anymore, it’s not. Fuck. Maybe we were hijacked.”

The cabin grew even louder. I’m not great at reading people; but it seems like panic was starting to overpower the relief. The soldier started unbuckling his seatbelt. “I’m going to try see what’s going on.”

Another flight attendant fast walked out of first class. She must have told five people to sit down before she arrived at the school group. When she reached the flight attendant by the school group she grabbed his arm and pulled him away to have a whispered conversation. I’m not sure what she said; but the first flight attendant gasped audibly.

At that point a slightly overweight man in an ill-fitting suit left his seat a few rows down and walked up to the flight attendants. The cabin was still too loud for me to overhear. After a short argument he pushed one of the flight attendants into the other. They collapsed onto the floor in a heap. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even think of helping. But I’m no fighter. There’s not much my scrawny frame could have done. Nevertheless; five other passengers, including the soldier, managed to wrestle him back to his seat. I don’t know how they restrained him. But he didn’t get up after that.

Once the flight attendants had recovered they started going down the aisles giving everyone instructions. I guessed the plane’s in flight speakers were still down. At this point I realised most of the lights in the cabin were off. The emergency lights were working. But everything else was offline. The flight attendants each took an aisle and asked us to remain calm. They said that there was no fire so evacuation was not urgent; but slides were being lowered from each emergency exit. They told us it was snowing outside so if we had any warm clothes we must put it on. But all other luggage was to remain onboard. It was a reasonable request, although I hate leaving my stuff unattended I could understand the logic. And then it hit me. Snow on the ground in July? Even if we were hijacked, it would take some detour to crash land somewhere with mountains tall enough to find snow. What the fuck?

Luckily I still had my winter gear from my semester in Bonn. While none of it would stand up to a Canadian winter it would probably be enough for our current circumstance. The problem was that it was in the cargo hold with the rest of my luggage. My carry on was mostly snacks, electronics and ADHD medication. I grabbed the meds and the flimsy blanket the airline provided. It would do almost nothing against real cold. But every little bit helps.

Ten minutes later I was at the door ready to go down the ramp. The plane seemed to have landed in a clearing. One side of the aircraft barely missed the trees. The side I was evacuating from had maybe a hundred meter gap before the forest started up. Presumably the ramps were only deployed on this side to avoid hitting any trees of the way down. We were in a large valley with mountains surrounding us on three sides. And the mountains weren’t the well weathered rounded peaks of the Appalachians. They were tall, sharp and craggy; with snow covering them from base to peak. I gained a new appreciation for the skill of the pilots in managing to pull off such a precarious landing. The trees surrounding us looked like conifers. And they were huge. I’m not the best judge of scale. But they looked at least a hundred meters tall and maybe fifteen meters in diameter. I didn’t think redwoods grew in this climate; but I had no idea what else they could be.

I’m not the best with heights so I was avoiding looking at the ground as much as possible. I heard a scream just as I was about to go down the slide. Looking towards the ground I noticed a series of grey blurs in the corner of my vision. A pack of wolves was charging out of the treeline and was making a beeline for the evacuees at the bottom of the slide. There were maybe a dozen of them. From that distance it was hard to be sure; but it looked like they were covered in frost. They had whitish fur along their backs, light grey fur along their flanks and legs and they were the size of well sized ponies. Something felt off. Wolves almost never attacked people. Certainly not groups of people this size.

I froze. I had no idea what I could do to help. The evacuees started scrambling up the slide. The wolves reached them before they made it half way. Suddenly, a voice beside me shouted out, “Wolves. Move back from the exit. We need to keep the ramp clear. And tell the other exits to stop letting people go out.” It was the soldier from the seat next to me.

About five people managed to make it to the door of the plane. They scrambled through the threshold just as a wolf reached the top of the ramp. The soldier leapt forwards and hit the wolf on the back of its head with what looked like a sock stuffed with loose change. It barely seemed to notice. The wolf grabbed one of the passengers and tried to drag him down the ramp. I grabbed hold of him and tried to pull him free. The wolf was about to pull both of us down the ramp when I let go. I tripped backwards into the plane. After I scrambled to my feet I could see two more wolves nearing the door. I grabbed it and tried to force it closed.

It wouldn’t budge. The inflatable ramp was in the way. Suddenly I felt my leg go numb. Looking down it was covered in frost all the up to my thigh with a giant muzzle gripping it hard. I hadn’t felt a thing. The last thing I saw before passing out was a heavy boot slamming into the wolf’s head

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1 A plane or aeroplane is a powerful form of transport that carries up to several hundred people through the sky. They are not armed as Earth does not have any large monsters or aerial pirates to threaten such a device.

2 A nuke is a large weapon powerful enough to destroy cities and can damage many of Earth’s artifice.

3 A phone is a device similar to a small scrying mirror that can communicate with similar devices and can divine information through a ritual known as the internet.

4 a doctor is a healer who helps the sick or injured without divine magic, hedge magic or alchemy.