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Part XI (A Time to Die) Fiction ripped from the headlines...
©Mark H. Pillsbury (2011)
A yellow JetRanger emergency helicopter pulled away from the smoky scene nose down, trying to attain the necessary lift in order to clear the tree line, rotating slightly during ascent.
The whirring high-pitch ring of the reliable jet engines combined with rhythmic slapping of each blade against the air. It deafened their ears momentarily, and along with the swirling wind and jet wash coming in the open rescue door, disorientation reigned over the the stormchasers because of the skirmish they were having with gravity.
Either the heat blast from the fires or lack of acceleration seemingly blanketed the aircraft in opposing thrust as if it were escaping from under a cap of pressure.
Because the passengers quickly jumped into the vehicle not properly secured, Jessica fell into the back of the pilot’s seat grabbing for a strap, looking straight down out of the wide canopy windshield back into the fiery pit of burning trees below.
Gripped with fear again, the exhilaration of rescue and survival dissolved into airborne dread. Even as light as the helicopter was, less than a ton after the drop, rising at over 20 feet per second; the ascent illustrated the simple concept of
hubris.
Helicopters were aircraft that defied the concept that a bulky, wingless shell of metal should not be able to break the bonds of nature and imitate a bird. It was more human than avian, however if it flew without any impediments was perfectly safe; it was the crashing of a helicopter that was dangerous.
Jessica thought as they rose over the forest they were finally clear of trouble, but in her peripheral vision she saw a super-structure, an electrical transformer, gigantic above the pines like the Eiffel Tower. The long gray power cables were hard to see against the smoky horizon but immediately she sensed they were too low, about to be consumed by a whole universe of hurt.
“Rick! Hold on.” Jessica screamed above the hum. He was barely aware of the words but saw the fear splashed on her features. “What?!” He yelled. Jessica pointed over to the tower but Rick was slouched too low to see the danger.
The next few seconds were light, slow, and almost dawdling like an old Vietnam war movie where the thwap-thwap-thwap became part of the theater of the absurd: there was that dark middle region of time travel in her mind, when allegedly one’s life "flashes before your eyes." For Jessica it was different, like many moments in her surprising life. She strangely thought about what their child would look like, and even whether they would find out the gender before the birth. That was the true measure of compatibility, not political or religious or regional, but what a couple agrees to do with information from a sonographer.
“We’re too low!” Jessica shouted to Rick. The pilot heard and turned around to question the pronouncement, but deadly accurate in her assessment, they plowed underneath the electricity cables spanning the distance between two high-rise transformers. The angle of the ship caused the contact to be direct, the span of the blades extending at least 15 feet outside the turboshaft.
When a rotor-blade strikes something other than the air, it makes a perverted thud: metallic, crashing, tearing, and echoing as the rest of the blades whip around from behind, like a multi-car pile-up. One thing also stops on the dime and that is lift; which is like taking the oxygenated blood out of the left ventricle right before it pushes red goo into the circulatory system.
“Gawd-amighty!” was all Rick could muster, the toxin of fear suddenly released into his system, a combination of snake-bite and lethal injection. They lurched forward and then fell. He reflexively looked out the open door and could see the water rushing up toward them.
“Jessssssssiccccccaaaa!” he yelled back toward the pilot as he tried to grab onto a strap or something to brace the fall. He fell through space with the whole motley confusion of regrets, hopes, omissions, and chance rattling around in his head.
Without lift provided by the rotating blades helicopters stay airborne for only a couple of seconds, in a wondrous moment where gravity and acceleration are in total equipoise. Next it took a methodical, disastrous roller-coaster down to the earth; however, once again luckily, the golden machine mercifully collapsed into a shallow tank that used to be an acre-lake mostly devoid due to the drought. It could have been worse.
Jessica dreamed of her homeland: Oklahoma, where she saw so much natural beauty; although it was a gauzy, ephemeral, cloudy dream, jarred loose by the massive head trauma she received during the crash at the sharp corner of the pilot console.
From the vistas of Black Mesa to the crests of the Ouachitas that led into Arkansas, she had a birds-eye view north to the Great Plains with Indian lands in between. In the distance there was a massive tempest, a super-cell wide and gray-black with intermittent lightning, the outer bands aqua-marine, layered, extending upward to the boundaries of the horizon. Jessica knew these storms, seen many, but this one was gathering, twirling, rumbling, blasting, somehow calling her ominously as nothing had before in her memory.
She could not tell if it was drifting toward her or vice-versa, Jessica was too tired to decide. She just wanted to dissolve into nothingness as her attention faded, her very life leaking away. It was time.
“Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor th’ all-dreaded thunder-stone,
Fear not slander, censure rash,
Thou hast finish’d joy and moan.
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to Thee, and come to dust.”
--Shakespeare (from Cymbeline)
©Mark H. Pillsbury (this is a work of fiction, any similarities with factual accounts or other creative pieces is purely coincidence. Composed 5 August 2011)
