Page 18 of Craving Chaos

CHAPTER 9

RENZO

Fluid grace and exceptional tactical awareness—Shae’s fighting prowess is spectacular to witness.

And that’s exactly what I get stuck doing. Watching. Sitting with my thumb up my ass while Shae takes on the entire crew. And she’s owning these motherfuckers until one has the genius idea to pull out a gun. We’re not flying at commercial airline altitude, but it’s still a supremely idiotic thing to do.

It’s enough to break through my trance and finally give me something I can do to help.

I’m on the ground between them with my legs extended in front of me. I sweep one leg up and around directly at the gunman’s knee as hard as I can, a shot ringing out while I’m in mid-motion.

I don’t stop to see if he’s hit his mark. I’m too blinded by rage.

When he cries out and falls forward, I lift my booted heel and bring it down on his face.

I kick him in the head … over … and over … and over … until his body no longer twitches when I connect with his bloodied flesh. Only then does the red mist part from my vision enough for me to realize the plane is flying erratically.

Shae is tugging a lifeless pilot from his seat in the cockpit.

She’s alive. Thank fucking Christ.

The tightness in my chest relaxes. “Come get these goddamn ties off my wrists,” I call to her, eyeing our motionless captors—all either dead or unconscious.

She hurries over and scoops up the pocketknife from the ground, then frantically saws the plastic apart. I think I understand her urgency—we’re now short a pilot—but the situation doesn’t fully hit home until I follow her to the cockpit and see the lifeless instrument panel.

“Shit, shit, shit. I don’t suppose you know how to land a plane without any instruments?” she asks while flipping switches and pressing buttons seemingly at random.

“Fuck no. I don’t know how to land a plane, period. What happened to the pilot?”

“I think the bullet ricocheted off the control panel and into the pilot, taking out both of them.”

We’re steadily losing altitude, and there’s nothing but forest as far as the eye can see. I’m not one to panic, but this is bad. This is real fucking bad.

I reach across Shae and start fumbling with the seat harness behind her, forcing her arms into the straps like I would a fidgeting toddler.

“What are you doing?” she demands, trying to see around me.

“Buckling you in. If we’re going down, we’ll at least be strapped in. Now, sit still for a second.”

She starts pulling on the steering control stick with all her might. I feel so helpless. I don’t even know what the fucking thing is called.

“You know about planes?” I ask while strapping myself in.

“I have a cousin with the Playstation flight simulator game and played a few rounds. Does that count?”

“It’ll have to because I have nothing better to offer.”

“I’m turning off the engines to slow us down. That means we’ll also work our way to the ground that much faster.”

“You don’t think we should keep going until we find somewhere open?”

“We’re losing daylight. I don’t want to make this any worse by having to land in the dark.” She’s right. A blind landing sounds terrifying.

Her determined stare meets mine before she turns the key and shuts down the plane. Eerie doesn’t begin to cover it. No beeping or warnings. No one screaming or yelling orders. Just wind and clanking and a few moans from the metal frame that has now become a glorified glider.

We shift into a controlled fall, and my heart seems to practice our crash landing by slamming itself against the inside of my ribs. Within seconds, we near the tops of snow-covered trees. Everything after that happens in a stop-motion blur.

The scraping of wood on the belly of the plane.

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