“We can’t go that way,” Jason said. “That’s a long quiet drop, that way.”

Lars spoke up, “Here, Blake, grab this.” Lars was pointing to a dismembered torso.

“Ugh,” grunted Blake, the wizened adventurer. “You’re right, though. Help me out.”

The two of them lifted the corpse and tossed it onto the nearest dancing fire, extinguishing it. “Follow us,” Lars said to the teens. “Close behind, now. We’ll get toward the front of this mess somehow.” Lars and Blake continued to put fires out with the torso. When it disintegrated from abuse, they grabbed another one. Sano looked away. Abe followed close behind them, fascinated by the process.

I can’t believe this is really happening. They’re using a corpse to put out fires. That one still has an arm attached to it. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. I feel like throwing up. Don’t throw up.

He looked away and saw that Sano was unable to follow. She was standing near their starting point, pigeon-toed with fear, knees crossed onto each other. She was frozen in place. So beautiful, Abe thought. He caught Jason’s eyes and made a gesture with his head toward Sano. Jason turned away from the horror that was the firefighting.

A deafening creak alerted them that the plane was thinking to slide off the cliff, a definite plan of gravity and physics as they twisted the fuselage against the mountain. Little jets of cold air blasted through the various slits and openings of the wrecked tube. Abe looked down and saw that he was standing on bare ground, but there was no way to escape the canopy that the fuselage had become, not unless Blake and Lars could find enough torsos to put out enough fires.

Meanwhile Jason ran back to Sano. At his touch, she animated again. Shouting over the creaking metal, he impressed upon her that fear was certain death, and that she must overcome. Abe was impressed by the speech, those parts which he could make out. He waved his arm at the two of them, as though he could pull them by sheer force of will and the motion of one of his limbs. “Come on!”

With a shudder that had become a terrible familiarity, the airplane began to give up the last shreds of integrity. Jason and Sano found that they were running on a treadmill as that section of the plane slid away down the cliff. With a grunt and a cry, holding hands, they jumped—they leaped with all the fire of life—tumbling onto the ground near Abe and Umezawa, looking back as their temporary home in the sky simply fell away without a sound. Sano burst into tears, but Jason cajoled her, saying, “No, not yet.”

“Forward!” shouted Lars. “Come forward!” The plane was trembling and squealing, a thing of noises, sights, and smells which belonged to everywhere but the real world, but there they were, the six of them, struggling to survive the real world. “We’re almost there!”

The teens rallied together, running, as the plane would allow, toward Lars. Six or seven strides seemed like a thousand. They were still captured in that eternity where seconds of effort are cosmic in necessity, where weariness cannot set in because time cannot pass. Yet six steps, six running steps, was like traversing the distance between Jupiter and Mars. They knew they would never make it, but they knew they had all the time in the universe.

“There we go,” said Lars. “Upsy-daisy!” And with a long, thin arm, entirely constructed of sinew, he grabbed Abe by the wrist, pulling him up a broken chunk of fuselage.

Umezawa said, “The floor lights really do lead to the emergency exits.”

The lights were hardly illuminating, considering the fires and the many holes in the superstructure of the cabin.

“Yes, you are right,” said Blake. “Now come along. Let’s hope the door opens, and if it opens, that it opens near some stable ground.”

“I’m going to kiss the ground,” said Umezawa.

I’m going to kiss Sano, Abe thought. No, no I’m not. I’m going to throw up. Don’t throw up. This whole plane stinks. It stinks like rot and fire and sterile air at the same time. I think I’m going to be sick.

The door flew open, as though loosened from a thick spring.

“Lots of stress on the frame,” said Blake. “Wants to come apart.”

The force of the door caused a new shudder to enervate the lot of them.

Lars broke the paralysis. “This is not how we survive, now is it? Deep breath, everyone. Take a deep breath, and let’s look.”

Blake ventured upward to the hatch, bracing himself with one leg and holding on to the door frame with one muscular arm. The plane was listing away from the doorway. He stuck his head out for a second, then looked back at the group. “We have a chance,” he said. “We can get out. It’s cold. We’ll deal with that next. But we have to get out of this metal fire trap.” As on command, new little flames began dancing their way toward the party, hissing and crackling their invitation to stay a while longer.

Abe reached and Blake hoisted him. “It’s a narrow strip of ground. That’s all we have. Keep your center of gravity low. Your friend is right: it might do you well to kiss the ground.” Abe looked and saw great distances and a wide, far-flung sky with wisps of clouds frozen motionless high above. Then he looked down through smoke and thought he saw a bit of ground that gave way into the abyss.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Plenty of room!” he said. Ah, the stoic is at hand. I shall die with Sano believing I’m a courageous, stalwart man. But he shivered against the thought of balancing on mere substance. What is earth? It is nothing. Some large metal piece of the plane brought him back to the inevitability of the thing with a large pop and ping, like a submarine testing the depths. “Like a gun,” he said aloud.

“Worry about the guns later,” Blake said. “Get safe and get out of the way.”

Sano appeared above him, in the doorway, feet first. Abe watched with longing, averting his eyes when her skirt caught the threshold. Not this way. No, not like this. Instead, he groped for her, and, from his knees, helped her find her footing. Her bare thighs on his face made him swoon, but the moment was lost to all the other visions and sensations of the hole stretched out in his consciousness.

Umezawa was next. “Lars,” said Blake, “help me out with this one.”

“I’m not that fat,” Umezawa protested.

“No, you’re not, but I’m wearing out,” Blake replied.

After Umezawa came Jason, and then came Lars. Blake hauled himself out of the airplane, and, indeed, found himself weary. His grasp on the doorway betrayed him, and he slipped, tumbling down the side of the plane with his backside aiming toward the ground. If he landed thus, he would surely tumble over the edge.

In a flash, Lars leaped from a prone position, snapping up like a rattlesnake, while shouting, “Hold me down, boys! Hold me down!”

Abe and Umezawa grabbed Lars’s legs at the same moment Lars grabbed the falling body of Blake, and they came straight down onto the little strip of terra firma. Less and less of the plane remained atop this narrow shelf, as another chunk was separated by the little dancing fires, and, after a screech and a metallic cry, it fell away into utter silence. As for Blake, he was anchored by five pairs of hands and a half-dozen beating hearts.

“Nope,” Lars said. “We’ve gotcha. Not gonna let go until you give the word.”

“Cold,” said Jason. “I’m cold.”

Sano shivered.

“Next problem,” said Blake, gathering himself, and he pointed. Their little shelf of life was separated by a narrow gulley from a little outcropping that made a natural path to a more reasonably-graded section of the mountain. “We can’t stay here.” Gray and brown loose stone laughed a challenge to them silently. “Tricky business ahead, getting over that.”

“Grab layers,” said Lars. “Thin layers first, then thick.”

Clothing and singed cloth were strewn along and about the remains of the airplane.

Lars watched smoke pour off the wreckage as it wended its way upwards. “I think it’s stabilizing,” he declared. “In a manner of speaking. But I think she’s finished coming apart.”

At that, as though he had just teased the gods of those mountains, the plane rolled toward them, taking away what little margin of earth they had. Umezawa glared at him, but said nothing.

Jason said, “Ume, grab that poncho for me. I like its colors.” Umezawa reached and did so. Lars and Blake glanced at each other.

“All right,” said Lars. “Time to make for a place less urgent than this one. We’re going to have to leap.”

They studied the gap. On their shelf lay a few loose stones and gravel. On the other side of the gulley, a little sapling was reaching from the mountainside, presenting itself to the cosmos for life, but also presenting an obstacle to their landing place.

“At least there’s no snow,” Abe said. Blake pointed. A snow squall was approaching from another peak a short distance off, with a menacing eye toward their position.

“Everything is against us!” moaned Umezawa.

“That’s not peaches and cream, that’s for sure,” Lars said with a grin.

With Sano it would be strawberries and cream, Abe thought. Would you shut up? We’re going to die here on this mountaintop, and you can’t get your mind out of your oily, pre-pubescent mental hole. Rise, man! Rise above it!

They were still carefully reaching and crawling, finding bits of clothing here and there, staying low and prone, for fear of a wayward turn of the ankle or a forceful gust of icy wind. Everyone thought it, but no one said it aloud: “One false step, and it’s the long quiet.” They compared findings and distributed and redistributed so that everyone had at least a decent base layer and covering from the spiked wind gusts. Two puffy jackets were found and given to the skinniest of the party, Sano and Lars. Lars protested, but admitted that he was acclimated to warmer, more humid airs, and, being older, was less able to adjust.

“I’ll jump first this time,” said Blake. “With my weight, I’ll be able to push that sapling. If I fail that, then you’ll know to try something else.”

“Now,” Lars interrupted, “is that there a running leap or a standing broad jump?”

Blake contemplated the problem. “Two steps and a flying leap. Press yourselves against the plane—no, don’t do that. Huddle up without touching the plane, so to give me room to get momentum. Strong first step, see? No wasted movement.”

Jason watched closely, nodding. “Like track and field; you explode off the blocks.”

Abe blurted, “This is just like the third arc of the second season of The Morose Alpaca, where Abigail had to jump across a brook stream, but Nami hesitated and they both fell into the water.”

Everyone turned their heads to look at him. He blushed. “Oh, right…” But it is! He thought, silently.

With a powerful first step, Blake bound into his second step and a leap, embracing the sapling, which yielded easily to his weight. He grabbed it and said, “No problem. It’s wider over here than it looks from over there. Perfectly safe. I’ll hold the sapling back while you make the jump. See how I did it? Just focus on your breathing, two strong steps, and you’ll be fine.”

“That’s right,” Lars said. “Deep breaths. Take a deep breath and focus on the movement, not on the leap. Or on the chasm. Let’s go!” With his long sinewy legs he hardly needed to leap at all, covering the gap easily. He smiled at the teens and beckoned.

Umezawa breathed deeply and made the leap without incident. Likewise Jason, and then Sano. Jason caught Sano in his arms, and she twittered into her scarf.

Abe took a deep breath, eyed the party as they stood waiting, and focused on his steps: one strong, two strong, but then a slip! A weak spot at the edge of the shelf gave way beneath his left foot, and he floundered, banging his right knee on the shelf as his momentum forced him downward, where he saw the bottomless tomb open up to him. Snow was already swirling below him, ready to receive him into its silence.

Blake, still holding the sapling back, saw what was happening and reacted with lightning speed, but even lightning was too slow and too short-armed to arrest Abe’s fall. It was all but over, the beginning of the long quiet.

A stoic, he thought. I shall indeed die a stoic, accepting my fate. His eye caught Sano’s, as hers grew wide at his impending demise. Is that compassion in her expression? Is that sympathy in her wonderful blue eyes? Does she want me to not die? Love? Does she love me? Won’t someone help me to live? Can’t one of you reach me?

The sapling, however, as Blake released it in order to try to save Abe, snapped forward with surprising force, as a wild animal might snap forward when unleashed from a pen. Perhaps it was driven by the wind, a peculiar wind gust that blew over and down toward Abe. Perhaps it was mere Newtonian forces, the equal and opposite reaction to Blake’s forceful binding back. Perhaps it was God. In any case, the tip of the sapling wrapped itself around Abe’s wrist, and Abe gripped the sapling with all his might. He began to cry.

“Hold on!” Lars commanded.

“You need to lose weight!” Umezawa shouted.

“Don’t let me die!” Abe screamed, kicking. Stop kicking, stoic. Stop kicking. Abe stopped kicking. “My shoulder hurts.”

“Still!” Blake said. “This sapling is doing its very best. Prone! Everybody prone. Lay out in a line grasping each other’s ankles. See? Understand?” The five of them lay down in a line, with Blake reaching down to Abe. “Hold my ankles, Lars. There you go. I’m going to scootch forward until I reach him. Don’t let go.”

“I’ve got a sweater knotted around your ankles and my wrist.”

“Good man.”

Abe closed his eyes and welcomed the vertigo that came with swinging over the maw of silence. He did not hope to feel Blake’s meaty hands upon his gamer’s wrist, but he relaxed nonetheless, swaying in a buffeting wind.

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“Hold still!”

Abe did not answer. He contemplated the emptiness of stoicism. Look, it is actually nothing, if you can get your mind around it. I can’t, because the wind keeps making me swing. I think I’m going to throw up. Don’t throw up. Not with Sano looking. Even if she can’t see me, she would be disgusted by hearing me throw up. A stoic never throws up.

He did not hear Blake say, “Got you!” He did not feel the ascension into the real. He did not feel anything at all until his feet were in the midst of his friends, and then he felt like crying, which he did. Sano hugged him.