WHEN THE SHOE DROPPED INTO HER LAP THE FOOT WAS STILL IN IT.

She flung it into the air with a shriek. The bloodied mass hung in weightless suspension before being sucked out of the massive hole in the side of the aircraft. On the floor next to her seat, a flight attendant crawled up the aisle screaming for the passengers to put their oxygen masks on.

From the back of the airplane, Bill observed it all.

The passenger with the shoe clearly couldn’t hear what the young flight attendant was yelling. She probably hadn’t heard a thing since the explosion. Thin lines of blood trickled out of both ears.

The blast had thrown the flight attendant’s body into the air and then back down, her head of curly brown hair hitting the floor with a thwack. She lay motionless for a second before the plane went into a steep nosedive. Sliding down the aisle, the flight attendant grabbed at the metal rungs beneath the passenger seats. Clutching on to one, her arms shook as she tried to pull herself up against the plane’s downward pitch. As she flipped onto her side, her feet floated and dangled in the air. Debris flew all around the plane; paper and clothing, a laptop, a soda can. A baby’s blanket. It was like the inside of a tornado.

Bill followed her gaze down the plane—and saw sky.

Sunlight shone in on them from a wide opening that had been the over-wing emergency exit not thirty seconds ago. The other flight attendant had just stopped there to collect trash.

Bill had watched the older, redheaded flight attendant smile, take the empty cup in her gloved hand, drop it in the plastic bag—and then in one explosive moment she was gone. The whole row was gone. The side of the aircraft was gone. Bill widened his stance as the plane yawed left to right, seemingly unable to keep a straight path. Of course, the rudder, he thought. The whole tail was probably damaged.

A crack came from above the brunette flight attendant’s head as several overhead bins burst open. Luggage tumbled out, tossed violently about the cabin. A large pink suitcase with wheels shot forward, sucked toward the opening. It hit the side of the fuselage as it went out, a chunk of the aircraft’s skin ripped off with it. Exposed frames and stringers created a lattice of human engineering against the heavens. Beyond the whipping wires hissing orange and yellow sparks, clouds dotted the view. Bill squinted against the sun.

The plane leveled off enough that the flight attendant on the floor could get to her knees. Bill watched her struggle against a body that wouldn’t cooperate. She managed to pull her leg forward only to find her femur sticking out of her thigh. She blinked at the bloody wound a few times and then kept crawling.

“Masks!” she screamed, dragging herself up the aisle toward the back of the plane, her voice barely audible above the deafening roar of wind. She looked over to a man grabbing at the oxygen masks. He caught one and went to put it over his face but a gust ripped it out of his fingers, plastic and elastic straps flailing.

Gray fog choked the cabin in a swirling haze of debris and chaos. A metal water bottle went flying through the air, smacking into the crawling flight attendant’s face. Blood began to pour from her nose.

“He’s been shot! My husband! Help!”

Bill looked to the woman pounding her fists against her husband’s lifeless torso. Two small circles in his forehead streamed red over his eyes and down his cheeks. The flight attendant brushed the curls out of her face as she pulled herself up on the armrests for a closer look.

They weren’t bullets. They were rivets from the plane.

The plane vibrated violently and the floor began to buckle. Bill could feel everything shifting beneath him. He wondered if the airframe would hold. He wondered how much time they had.

The flight attendant continued on, placing her hand in a dark spot on the carpet at the same moment Bill smelled the urine. The flight attendant looked up at the man in the aisle seat. He stared off in a state of shock, the puddle spreading at his feet.

“Ice,” someone moaned.

The flight attendant turned. Bill watched the passenger on the other side of the aisle extend her hands to the young woman, holding out a fleshy chunk of something. The flight attendant recoiled. Looking up, the passenger’s chin and neck were painted crimson.

“Ice,” she repeated, a wave of blood gushing out of her mouth.

It was her tongue.

Bill glanced over his shoulder to the back wall, watching the cord of the interphone thrash in the wind as the flight attendant crawled toward it. He looked to the other side of the galley. The third flight attendant lay crumpled on the floor, a toppled carton of juice next to her. Bill turned his head to the side, watching the glugs of orange mix with the pool of red around her body.

The brunette dragged herself at last to the end of the aisle, packets of sugar and mini creamers crunching against her uniform. She reached a hand forward but yanked it back.

A pair of black dress shoes blocked her path.

The flight attendant looked up. Lying at Bill’s feet, broken and bloodied, her jaw hung open but no words came. Bill’s tie flapped in the wind. The sound of the engines screamed at them both, willing something, anything, to happen.

“But . . . if you’re . . .” the flight attendant stammered, looking up at Bill, betrayal written across her face. “Who has control of the plane, Captain Hoffman?”

Bill inhaled sharply as though to speak, but couldn’t.

He looked down the plane to the closed cockpit door.

He was supposed to be on the other side.

Bill leapt over the flight attendant, sprinting down the aisle toward the front of the aircraft. He ran as fast as he could, but the door seemed to move farther away the faster he ran. All around him, people cried out, begging him to stop and help them. He kept running. The door kept moving farther and farther away. He closed his eyes.

His body slammed into the door without warning, his skull bashing against the impenetrable surface. His hands cradled his head as he stumbled backward. Woozy, he tried to think of how he could breach the sealed cockpit, but not a single idea came to mind. He pounded on the door until his fists went numb.

Hyperventilating, he stepped back to kick at it when he heard a click.

The door unlocked and cracked open. Bill rushed inside.

Buttons flashed red and amber warnings on nearly every surface in the cockpit. A loud, incessant alarm screeched, the shrill noise intensifying in the tiny space. He sat down in his seat on the left, the captain’s seat.

He struggled to focus on the display in front of him as the plane’s thrashing tossed the numbers about. Red followed him everywhere he looked. Every button, every knob, every display was screaming at him.

Through the window, the approaching ground loomed closer and closer.

Get to work, Bill ordered himself.

His hands stretched out in front of him.

Frozen.

Dammit, you’re the captain. You need to make a decision. You’re running out of time.

The alarms got louder. A robotic voice repeatedly commanded him to pull up.

“What about asymmetrical thrust?”

Bill turned his head. From the copilot’s seat his ten-year-old son, Scott, shrugged. He was wearing his solar system pajamas. His feet didn’t touch the ground.

“You could give that a try,” the boy added.

Bill looked back to his hands. His fingers refused to move. They just hung in the air.

“Fine, then. Do it the hard way. Dive and use speed to keep a straight line.”

He turned again to see his wife now reclined in the chair. Arms crossed, she gave him that smirk. The one she used when they both knew she was right. God, she was gorgeous.

Sweat dripped down his neck as he struggled to move and take action. But he remained paralyzed in fear. Terrified he would make the wrong call.

Carrie tucked her hair behind one ear as she leaned over, placing a hand on her husband’s knee. “Bill. It’s time.”

He gasped for air as his body shot upright. Moonlight poured through the crack in the curtains to streak across the king-size bed. He scanned the room for the flashing warnings. He listened for the alarms, but heard only a neighbor’s dog barking outside.

Bill dropped his head in his hands with an exhale.

“Same one?” Carrie asked from the other side of the bed.

He nodded in the dark.