On tiptoe.
Then a man, a Jackson newspaper editor called Roger de Griffe, was launched into the air.
A few more bits of debris tumbled after him and although freezing, he was shocked to see a woman in her seat accompanying him a couple of metres away. Her eyes were shut. Probably dead, he judged, by her blue pallor. He started to feel if he was sitting in his seat, but the pressure of the cold air wouldn’t let him move his arms from being folded. He remembered that he’d been walking back from the toilet.
A Barbie doll drifted close—its fixed smile helloed while a hand reached out.
Synapses roughly calculated he had three minutes falling ten kilometres, more if he flapped. Pushing panic away on the grounds it had no survival features, he wondered whether to hold his jacket open like a sail. But he must already have reached the 200 kilometres per hour terminal velocity so it would have ripped apart. Fighting wind resistance and numbed fingers, he reached into his pocket and switched on his phone. Were three minutes sufficient to say sorry and how much he loved her—or would it be too cruel? He texted: LUV U. But there was no service.
The debris drifted apart. Roger involuntary revolved and saw that he was about to overtake thousands of glass slivers. They brushed his face, a soft caress. It must have been cargo.
The sea looked no closer. The hurricane in his ears blocked out screaming and any explosions. Frozen numbness disallowed the pain of sucking in air. Surreal. He let his phone have its own trajectory; maybe it’d find a signal en route. Damn that Tabitha.
Looks like she was onto something after all...