Rogue Element

Central Sulawesi, 0130 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

Joe was caught in a tunnel. He knew there was an end to it but he couldn’t see it. He was falling and the tunnel was swirling. It felt like he was in the centre of a tornado. The forces in its centre were powerful, pulling the skin on his face and pushing it into rolls, as if he was an astronaut in a centrifuge.

He found it hard to breathe. The pressure was sucking the air from his lungs. And then something changed. He found himself in the very centre of the tunnel. It was calm here and he began to float. The tugging stopped, remnants of it dragging lightly at his legs then at his toes and then, gone. Above, there was light.

Joe’s eyes flickered. He was reluctant to open them. His head hurt. Every muscle in his body felt like it had been pummelled, beaten black and blue by an opponent a couple of weight divisions heavier than him. Something was pinning him down and he sensed that he should move with caution. He wondered why he should be feeling so sore, and then he remembered. Surely the crash had been a dream too? He reluctantly opened his eyes. The ground was fifteen to twenty metres below him. It hadn’t been a dream. The blood pounded behind his eyeballs. He moved his head to better take in his surroundings and he discovered that he was in a tree, still strapped into his seat, only upside down. The whole thing must have been ripped out of the plane. His mind was working, but only just. I’m alive. Jesus, I’m alive.

Joe remained still for a time, pulse thumping in his head, and he marvelled at his astonishing good luck. He was suspended, secured by his lap restraint. If he unclipped it, he would fall to the ground and it was a long way down. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Survive the plane crash and get killed by my own stupidity. He did a mental check of his body. He didn’t think anything was broken, but the bruises were painful.

Joe hooked an arm around the back of the seat and carefully unclipped the restraint. He slid forward. The shift in weight destroyed the balance of the seat. It fell several metres before being caught in another fork. The fall was fortunate, though, because it brought Joe’s feet into contact with a branch. His legs took his weight, but they were rubbery. He collapsed and fell the last five metres, landing on a canvas duffel bag full of air and clothes.

There was a large, torn sheet of aluminium lying not far from the tree. The tail of the letter Q filled one corner. Joe recognised it as a section of the plane’s fuselage. He went over to the sheet and lifted it up. It was warm to the touch. A man, a woman and two young children were huddled beneath it. The man looked familiar. They had shared the first-class section with him. The children had been noisy, bugging him, pushing the back of his seat continually as they got up and down, came in and out. Now it looked like they were all asleep, peaceful. Joe bent down and nudged the man. ‘Hey, mate,’ he said quietly. The man didn’t move. Neither did his wife or kids. It took a few more prods before Joe realised that they were dead.

He was briefly afraid of the bodies, wary that their death might somehow infect him with their lifelessness. A whole family. Gone.

Joe turned around slowly on the spot, and found it impossible to comprehend the world around him. It reminded him of a rubbish tip, but no tip he’d ever seen was as gruesome as this, for bits of human bodies were strewn around together with clothes and luggage and scrap metal. The clearing carved in the jungle by the 747 was an open wound. Leaf litter and splintered tree trunks were churned with the contents of hundreds of suitcases flung from the aircraft as it tumbled through its landing. Few bodies were intact. Arms and legs were ripped from hips and shoulders, and hands lay here and there like stiff blue spiders. Already, ants, flies and beetles had found paths to the gore. They probed through earth that looked like melted dark chocolate because of all the blood.

Everywhere, bits of metal and rubber burned and smoked. An enormous section of wing was engulfed in flame and billowed black clouds. Little of the 747’s superstructure was recognisable. Joe couldn’t see the tail section anywhere. The nose of the aircraft was flattened, punched inwards. Broken seats were scattered all over, some with passengers still strapped in. A few seats had been tossed high into the trees where they hung like ghoulish ornaments. Joe stumbled through the ragged piles of clothing, broken bodies and twisted metal as if in a dream. The obscene smell of hot kerosene and barbecuing flesh filled his nostrils.

Things like this did not happen to Joe. His mind rebelled and shut down, wrapping itself in cotton wool. A woman’s arm, wrenched clean off a shoulder, complete with gold watch and painted red fingernails, lay on the dirt. The reality of it pierced Joe’s defences. He fell to his knees and heaved yellow bile from his empty stomach.

Something moved under him. He felt it, then heard a groan. He scrabbled back and saw a foot shift in the debris. Joe ran forward and lifted back a row of seats. Underneath, an elderly man and woman untangled themselves from the debris. The old woman let out a sharp cry. The man, sobbing, held his wife’s dirty face in his hands and kissed it over and over. Her leg was bent back on itself, badly broken. She shrieked as Joe lifted away a suitcase.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Joe in a dry, cracked voice that sounded alien to him. ‘Your leg…’

The old man and woman ignored him. Joe searched the immediate area for something to use as a splint. He returned with a length of aluminium tubing and panty-hose taken from one of the hundreds of suitcases ripped open, the contents scattered across the ground. He didn’t really know what he was doing, but he’d seen broken legs fixed on television often enough to know that he had to straighten and secure it somehow.

Joe knelt beside the couple and carefully pulled away the bits of suitcases, clothing, and a bloody foot in a boot. He wondered what had saved this couple. Maybe they were just lucky like him, plucked from certain death by a quirk of fate. The old man, he saw, was practically untouched. He wore an expensive suit and it was remarkably clean. The woman, also, was immaculately dressed. He vaguely recognised them. More fellow first-class passengers.

‘Hey,’ said Joe, giving the man’s arm a gentle nudge. The old man looked up with moist, rheumy eyes. ‘Your wife. We have to fix her leg.’ It was obvious from the man’s blank look that he hadn’t heard him, or that shock had prevented him from understanding.

‘Your wife’s leg is broken,’ Joe repeated, directing the man’s gaze to the bizarre angle of the limb, poking up under her skirt. The old man nodded finally. He wrapped his arms around his wife’s shoulders in a bear hug as they lay there on the ground. Joe held her lower leg, wrapping his arm firmly around her foot and slowly, firmly, pulled back.

The woman’s scream launched a flock of birds come to watch the grim spectacle from the safety of a nearby tree. They flew off, squawking, into the humid, grey morning sky.