Page 178 of The Ampersand Effect
She choked. The air was thin, and even when she could inhale, it was full of soot, searing hot against her throat. She staggered, swinging first to her left, then to her right. She had to choose a direction—right or wrong; she couldn’t stay where she was. She looked left, then right, and noticed a change in the smoke around her. It was clearing, and she felt a gust of wind she immediately recognized as the telltale sensation of helicopter rotors engaging, sending the ground smoke swirling around her and cowering back into the flames from which it came.
There, in the clearance provided by the sudden change in the air, was the Bell 206. From the cockpit, Tobin could see Eddie spinning the searchlight frantically, a beacon cutting through the haze. If she focused through the din of the blaze, she could even hear the mechanical horn, drawing her toward the helicopter—and toward their freedom.
She hefted their joined bodies and was running before her gravity was fully centered. She stumbled, but corrected, propelled forward by the immediacy of survival.
Suddenly, she was at the helicopter, and Eddie was helping her haul Grier’s body into the box office. Then Eddie’s firm grip was on her forearms, pulling her into her co-pilot’s seat. In seconds, Eddie had the chopper hovering, struggling to gain enough lift in the thin, superheated air.
Tobin sputtered, gasping for the cooler, cleaner air inside the box office. Tears streamed down her face as she reached around Grier’s limp form toward the controls. She couldn’t reach them while keeping Grier draped across her lap, and transferring her to the cabin would take too much time. Instead, she carefully shifted Grier slightly to one side, hugging her close while freeing some space to reach the pedals.
There was no way they could make it this far only to succumb to the merciless inferno inside the helicopter. With Grier safely repositioned, Tobin shifted her legs to find the pedals, using them to help steer the nose of the chopper and allow Eddie to focus on the lift.
She continued to cough, her chest burning, and a new worry
gnawed at her—because Grier wasn’t coughing. She was lying limp across her lap, looking every inch peacefully asleep.
Tobin twisted as much as she could in her captain’s chair, trying to orient herself. She knew the clearing was framed to the north by the cliffs dropping into Lake Aether. She scanned their surroundings, horrified by the alarming rate at which the fire devoured everything— the wall of flames was insatiable.
The chopper crashed back to the earth with a teeth-clattering thud and a sharp curse from Eddie. But the force of the drop pushed smoke centrifugally outward from their position, giving Tobin a brief, critical glimpse through the flames. Thirty degrees counterclockwise, she saw the carnage of the coastal forest—trees gone, smoldering black twigs in their place—and beyond that, the cliffs and the lake.
It was a kamikaze dream, but if they could somehow maneuver the helicopter over the cliff, they could use the rotor wash to increase spin. If they could get the lift they desperately needed, Eddie could take it from there.
“Get us in the air!” Tobin yelled over the roar of the rotors and the fire. Her mic hadn’t reconnected to the system despite being back inside the helicopter.
“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Eddie screamed in response. Fear was etched across her face. Panic wouldn’t serve them now, and Tobin knew she had to stay calm—or they’d feed off each other’s terror, rendering them both incapacitated.
“Get us in the air, and then I’m going to swing us toward the cliffs,” Tobin said, with a conviction she didn’t feel.
“Tobin, we’ve had enough crazy for a lifetime. You want me to fly over the cliffs?” Eddie’s voice edged on hysteria.
“From the fire comes the phoenix, Eddie. Just get us off the ground… then start praying.”
“If we survive this, remind me to never underestimate your crazy ever again,” Eddie said as she shifted them into a hover.
When they were ten feet off the ground, Tobin deftly used the pedals beneath her feet to begin rotating them. In the span of a breath, they were pointed directly toward the cliffs, with the lake behind it reflecting the flames from the fire. The inferno danced and waved, beckoning—or taunting—them.
She clenched her teeth, wishing desperately she could be the one in control of the chopper, but refusing to relinquish her hold on Grier. She was never letting go again.
“Edge toward the cliffs. Gain altitude if you can, but don’t push it. If we’re still floundering by the time we get to the cliff face… we’re executing a cliff launch maneuver.”
Tobin felt rather than saw Eddie’s double take in her direction, “You say that like we aren’t about to die.”
Tobin shrugged. “We are absolutely about to die if we sit here any longer. I’d rather take my chances with the cliff. Now move!”
Eddie muttered something unintelligible beneath the roar of the fire and guided the helicopter into the air for their final, reckless escape attempt. The fuselage ducked and rolled with them inside, at the mercy of the shifting pockets of hot air as they bobbed over the cinders of the coastal forest. Every time Eddie lifted them, they jump-skipped a few yards before crashing back to the earth.
The heat from the scorched ground rose into the helicopter; Tobin felt it through her feet and along her ass. She tried to pull Grier’s body away from the bulk of the captain’s seat as best she could, but it wasn’t designed for two. Fear gripped her as the increasing scent of burning hair suggested Grier’s head might bein danger, lolled against the doorframe. Tobin repositioned her, cradling her head higher into the crook of her arm, but it elicited a painful moan from Grier’s unconscious throat. She gave up trying, hugging her close, and prayed to a god she didn’t believe in that her crazy plan was just crazy enough to work.
They were getting closer. Tobin could hear grunts and frustrated gasps from Eddie as she fought to keep them airborne longer with each leapfrogging jump toward the cliff.
“The starboard skid is melting! We’re imbalanced,” Eddie shouted as they slammed back to the blackened earth at an angle, throwing their bodies forcefully to the right.
“Keep going!” Tobin encouraged. “Two more jumps and we’re over the cliff.”
With great, silent effort, Eddie complied, skipping them twenty yards closer to the cliff. Driven forward by sheer desperation, she lifted them off the ground, propelling them forward. With a violent jolt and the jeering scream of scraping metal, they slammed to a stop, suspended in a shallow hover—mere yards from freedom.
Eddie’s throat loosed a feral, frustrated cry, “We’re caught on something! The skids are stuck!”
“Keep us level,” Tobin ordered. “I’ll try to spin the nose,” Tobin ordered while engaging the pedals at her feet to help rotate their position and dislodge whatever was restraining them. She gently shifted them left, then right, and then left again. With the sound of scraping fuselage, they felt the helicopter give way beneath them, free from the debris of the forest fire.