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Chapter 2: Alive
A blinding whiteness was the source of pain. Taylor heard a moan and tried to open his eyes to the pain, but he couldn’t and he sank deeper into a quiet and peaceful void. But, then he felt a thumping pain at the back of his head and he turned slightly to get away from it. Again, he heard a moan and struggled for a moment to try to regain whatever thought that had just fluttered through his mind. Slowly, he fought his way to the surface of consciousness and tried again to open his eyes against the white pain. This time he realized that the moan was from him, but he forced his eyes open anyway. He was lying face down against the floor, something was pinning him down and as he struggled to pull himself awake he tried to sit up and gave a shove to the weight that was pinning him down. He shuttered as a man’s arm brushed his face and realized that it was covered with blood.
Awake with a start, Taylor dragged himself upright. People and airplane seats and luggage were all lumped together on one side of the plane. The boy desperately started pawing, and pushing the debris aside, looking for something familiar. Finally, he saw a jacket sleeve and a length of light blond hair. He cleared a suitcase off the boy and pulled him upright against his chest. Zac’s head flopped backward helplessly, he was unconscious, there was a gash in his head dripping blood down his face. Taylor ripped his jacket open and felt his chest. He was breathing!
A child was sobbing. Taylor leaned his brother against a broken seat and pushed his way back into the pile of human debris. A hand grabbed him and startled he let out a frightened yell and turned around to find Ike trying to untangle himself from a plane seat.
"Oh, god, you’re alive," Taylor sobbed. "But, you’re hurt."
Ike wiped blood from his mouth and nose. "Where’s Zac?" he demanded.
"Over here, he’s unconscious," Taylor whispered.
Ike crawled over to his younger brother and took his pulse. He yelled Zac’s name a couple of times, but there was no response.
"Are you okay?" he questioned Taylor.
Taylor pushed his hair out of his face, "Except for a major lump on the back of my head, I think I’m okay. Nothing hurts but my head." he answered while taking a survey of his own body parts. "What about you?"
"Bloody nose, a lump on my head, and something wrong with my foot, but otherwise okay." Ike explained taking his own survey. "God, I can’t believe this! Look, stay here with Zac I’ve got to see who else is alive."
Ike forced himself up, putting as little weight as possible on his foot, and started climbing through the seats. He picked up a little girl about four or five that was sobbing hysterically and took her back to Taylor and then started his search again. Many of the seats had been wrenched loose from the bolted frames, he was checking for pulse, sometimes leaning forward and trying to listen for heartbeats. At the door of galley he jerked it open an inch and then shouldered it open enough to slip through. The galley was empty, the contents from all the compartments scattered over the floor and small counter spaces. He pushed and shoved at the door to the cockpit and it finally opened enough that he could see that the cockpit had been destroyed. All he could see was compacted snow, wires and insulation were hanging loosely from where metal frame and instruments should have been. He shut the door and went back into the main part of the plane. Windows were broken out of one side of the fuselage, snow pressed up against the walls of the plane. On the other side, the windows were clear and he could see that the wing was missing. He picked his way back through the plane, found a dark-headed boy of seven or eight buried under a pile of blankets that had fallen out of the overhead compartments. He seemed to be in shock, staring ahead and not responsive to Ike speaking to him.
Ike climbed his way back to his brothers.
"Has Zac come to yet?" he ask.
"He just moans, if he moves." Taylor exclaimed. "Ike, how bad is it?’
The older boy hesitated for a momemt and then took a deep breath and responded,"Real bad. It looks like you and me are the only ones awake enough to do anything. So we’re going to move everyone alive into the galley."
It took Taylor several tries to finally get to his feet. Everytime he stood up, his ears would start roaring and he would be blinded as his vision blacked out. He wasn’t losing unconsciousness, he could hear and respond to Ike, but he was weak and nauseous. Finally, when he was able to force himself up with Ike’s help, they lifted Zac and carried him into the galley, literally stepping on bodies to weave their way through. Then, as Taylor was picking stuff up off the floor to make room for them, Ike guided the dark-headed boy into the room and sat him down and made another trip and returned with the little girl who was still sobbing. Then the two of them dragged two men and a woman, all unconscious, but breathing into the galley and Ike shut the door. The galley area only measured about five feet across, so it was a tight fit to lay every out side-by-side.
Taylor was looking at his brother with a look of disbelief. "Is that it?"
Ike nodded. "I counted six dead and the pilot and co-pilot are missing."
"Someone will be coming to rescue us, right?" Taylor ask.
Ike looked down at his watch and grimaced. "Is yours working?"
Taylor looked down a his wrist but his watch was missing altogether. He lifted Zac’s arm, checked his watch and then pulled it free and handed it over.
"Ike, someone will be looking for the plane right?" he ask again panicked and wondering why Ike was so preoccupied with the time.
Ike took the time to put the watch on his wrist and finally answered. "If the pilot put out a emergency distress call, yes."
"Why wouldn’t he put out a radio call. Obviously the plane was going down." Taylor exclaimed his voice shaking.
"He didn’t announce to us that the plane was going down." Ike responded pragmatically . "And, he should have. He should have warned us. Either way, about now, someone is figuring out that a plane is missing. We are due into LA International in about twelve minutes."
"Planes have like hidden distress signals on them somewhere." Taylor guessed. "So someone will be able to pinpoint where we are and find us."
"Big planes do so I think so, but most of the cockpit has been ripped away from the plane. What we have to do is assess the situation and take whatever steps necessary to help with the rescue, and keep from freezing." Ike suggested and he went back into the fuselage and returned with an armload of blankets and pillows. He made three trips, returning with severa; winter coats, and two full length fur coats and then shut the door firmly. With Taylor’s help they used the fur coats to made up pallets. For themselves, they made one pallet, with Zac in the middle. Then they made another for the two children.
Then Ike decided that he needed to go outside to access the damage and see what was left. As he pushed the door open a blast of frigid air entered the room taking their breath away. Wading through knee deep snow, Ike saw that what the plane was wedged against a sheer cliff of snow and rock. Ragged rocks jutted out from snow but that was all that broke up the monotone of the white expanse. What was left of the plane was half buried in the snow. The cockpit was missing, and both wings had been sheared off and part of the tail section was missing. But the planes identification numbers were still visible in red lettering a foot and a half high. Satisfied that rescue planes or helicopters would be able to see them he returned to the galley.
"God, its cold out there," Ike exclaimed and wrapped himself up in blanket. He picked up a bottle of water off the floor and poured it over a handful of paper towels and began to try to clean the wound on Zac’s head. He cleaned the blood off his face and felt of his own nose to see if it was broken. Then he felt the lump on the back of Taylor’s head. When he tried to pick up the little girl she screamed.
"I think her arm is broken," Taylor suggested. She’s holding it kind of funny."
Ever so gentle Ike stroked the little girls hair and tried to calm her down. She had sobbed until she was exhausted but was still occasionally letting out a deep breath of a sob and hiccuping As he touched her arm, she whimpered.
Ike left the galley again and this time returned with a shirt in his hands and what looked like some kind of leather strips ripped from a suitcase. He sat down and ripped long strings off the shirt and then very carefully braced her little arm in the leather strips and wrapped it the shirt strips. Then he wrapped her in a blanket and laid her down on the fur coat pallet. The dark-headed little boy didn’t respond when Ike checked him over. Or at least he didn’t scream as Ike checked him over for blood and moved his arms and legs checking for breakage. So he wrapped him up tightly and laid him down. He next went over to the unconscious adult passengers and checked their pulses and covered them in blankets and poured a little water into their mouths. He checked and rechecked one of the men and then finally, pulled him up into a sitting position, grabbed him by the arms and dragged him out of the galley.
Taylor squeezed shut his eyes and wanted to cry. Another one dead.
When Ike came back he wrapped the remaining blankets over Zac and Taylor and then pulled one around himself. He had his knees pulled up to his chest, his head dropped down on his knees and his arms wrapped around them.
Taylor put his arm over his brother and felt him shaking and knew Ike was crying silently. The boy felt his own heart tighten because he knew his older brother’s inner strength had been pushed to its limits. Ike’s loving nature had allowed him to care for the wounded, now he would cry in compassion for the ones he couldn’t help.
* * * *
In a more normal moment, a thousand miles away, Diana had just given her daughter Avery a scolding about pestering her sister and brother in the back seats of the van. They were finally reaching the outskirts of Tulsa. Diana looked over at her husband and smiled as he smiled back. Almost home again. It would feel so good to return to some sense of a normal life. The boys loved to tour, loved to perform and as their parents they supported their career decisions as much as they could, but after months on the road they had finally called for a temporary time-out. The group Hanson would never complain of being tired, but as the parents of the group, they often saw the raccoon eyes, and tiredness the boys tried to hide. So, now for the next month they were on vacation. And in the following month they would restrain their activities to simple interviews and a little promotional work before they headed back into the studio to record another album. Not that their boys ever stopped working. They wrote continuously, always coming up with new ideas, lyrics and compositions. They wrote songs when they were supposed be sleeping, composed melodies when they were supposed to be studying, and practiced their harmonies when they were supposed to be performing chores. It was as natural to them as breathing was to most people. It was something, that as young parents they had encouraged, not realizing what it would lead to after several years of development and a couple lucky breaks.
Walker had to stop the van and get out to remove a "No Trespassers" barrier they had erected to prevent fans from storming their home. When he pulled the van into the driveway a car pulled up behind them. Walker was used to persistent fans so he walked back to the car expecting to see a teenager behind the wheel but instead a man stepped out and greeted him by name.
"Mr. Hanson?" the man questioned.
Walker tensed, "Yes, I’m Mr. Hanson."
"Could, we talk sir," the man suggested. "I’m from the National Airlines Services."
"Oh, God, its not my boys. Tell me. It’s not my boys" Walker exclaimed.
"Walk, what’s going on?" Diana ask getting out of the van and looking to the men for and explanation.
"Sir, Ma’am, we need to sit down to talk." the man in the suit suggested.
Diana’s knees buckled. "Oh God, the plane has crashed!" she exclaimed.
"No," the man interjected as Walker caught his wife in his arms. "We don’t know yet what has happened."
"What do you mean, you don’t know?" Diana screamed.
"Sir, please, could we take this inside," the man implored.
"Yes, of course. Don’t say a word to the little ones yet. Let us get them into the house first. Diana, we need to get the babies to bed for a nap," Walker implored of his wife and suddenly she stiffened and nodded.
They quickly opened the house, listened to the little ones protest at the idea of a nap, and then firmly made hem obey. Jessica, at nine, was too old for a nap but they ask her to go to her room and give them some quiet time so she complied.
As soon as Walker open the front door the man stepped out of the shadows, introduced himself as Mr. Barnes and entered their house.
Walker and Diana sat together, hands grasped together waiting for the man to speak.
"Exactly what do you know," Walker ask.
"What we know," Mr. Barnes said. "Is that the plane scheduled to land at LA International at 1:30 p.m. today did not land. At this point nothing is confirmed. We are checking with all possible airports that might have been used for an emergency landing. We are checking the flight plan to retrace the routing. Your sons could be perfectly safe. At this time we have no confirmed information about a crash. Just a lot of speculation. But, we have to contact family members."
"And, you will know something when?" Diana demanded with tears running her face.
"We will contact you, as soon as we confirm something," Mr. Barnes
reported with the objective dispassion of someone who is accustomed to
delivering life altering news.