Read Annihilate Me 2: Vol. 1 Online
Authors: Christina Ross
Annihilate Me 2: Vol. 1 (28 page)
“Daniella, get in your fucking
seat,” she said.
“Now!”
“I can’t move,” she said.
“If I let go now, I don’t know what will
happen.”
“Do something, Alex,” I said.
He turned to speak to Tank, but
then the plane nosedived so sharply, our attention was instead directed toward
Daniella, who suddenly flew off the floor as if she were a rag doll.
She smashed headfirst against the
ceiling, where her lifeless body quickly flattened out as blood spooled from
her mouth, moved up her face, and collected on the ceiling next to her
head.
We were losing altitude so
quickly that she didn’t drop from the ceiling.
Instead, she just remained there, pinned
to it as the plane plummeted toward Earth.
“Somebody help her!” Blackwell
cried.
But with all of us shaking due to
the turbulence, none of us could move.
I tried to get out of my seat, but I couldn’t even lift my arms as we
barreled toward whatever hell was coming our way.
I looked around the cabin as chaos
started to grab hold of all of us.
Lisa started to scream.
Blackwell started to unfasten her safety belt to help her daughter when
Amy and Tank—almost in unison—told her to sit still, or she would
cause only more problems.
“We’re talking about my child,” she
said, and then, some sort of stainless steel canister whizzed through the air
and struck the side of her head with such force, it caused her head to slump
forward, and I knew that she was unconscious.
“Oh my God!” I said.
“Mom!” Alexa screamed.
“There’s an island ahead of us,”
the captain said over the speakers.
“It’s small and it’s mountainous, but it has a large beach.
Hold on—we’re going to try to land
the plane there.
The landing will
be far from smooth, so remain in the brace position, and hold on.”
When the bottom of the plane struck
something—likely the top of one of the mountains—everything that
followed seemed to happen in slow motion.
Alex told me that he loved me, I told him that I loved him, and then we
shared what likely would be our last kiss as the plane thrummed and rattled all
around us.
He placed his hand
firmly against my stomach, and I held it there with my own just as the plane
inexplicably leveled—and Daniella fell to the floor.
I looked on in a daze as Cutter
leaned forward, grabbed the back of her T-shirt in one hand, and yanked her
body into his lap.
With a swiftness
that surprised me, he quickly released his belt, and strapped each of them into
his own seat.
I looked out the
window.
The plane seemed to pick up
speed as we approached an island that either would steal away our lives or save
them, depending on how successful the pilot was at getting us on the beach.
But the next few seconds I never
saw coming.
“Brace yourselves!” the captain
shouted.
Before I could dip my head into my
lap, the plane struck something solid, and what I witnessed was
unthinkable.
The front of the cabin
cracked open and separated as if it were made of tin.
And then, before I blacked out, I witnessed
three things.
The front of the plane yawned open,
broke off, and then tore away into the air, taking Amy, Max, and the pilots
with it—and away from us.
Above the sudden roar, I heard
Amy’s screams as she and the others were tossed away from us and into the
unknown.
Then, a searing blast of warm, wet
air slashed across my face, and I saw the island rushing toward us through the
gaping hole ahead of me.
“I’m so sorry,” Alex said. “I’m
so—”
Before he could finish, we slammed
onto the beach with such a crushing force, we started to slide across it
straight toward the rainforest I saw ahead of us.
Sand sprayed through the hole and
peppered my face with a fierceness that was agonizing.
I was aware of trees coming toward us,
smashing into the cabin and breaking down the panels that protected this part
of the plane.
In a flash, I watched
a heavy limb fly toward me, and then it connected with my forehead and everything
went dark.
*
*
*
I don’t know how long I was
unconscious before I woke, but even when my eyes did open, I wasn’t sure
whether I was dead or alive.
When I
became aware that I was bleeding and that my head was pounding, I knew that
somehow I had made it.
But what I
saw in those fleeting moments before consciousness left me again was nothing
short of a holocaust.
Daniella was out of her seat and
kneeling at her mother’s feet.
I
heard her crying for Blackwell to wake up.
I heard her shouting for someone—anyone—to help her stop the
bleeding.
I saw her trying to shake
her mother awake.
And then I saw
something far worse—fire blooming at the broken front end of the aircraft.
“She’s going to die!” Daniella
yelled.
“Please!
Somebody help me!”
I numbly turned my head toward
Alex, and saw that his chin was resting on his chest.
He had a deep gash at his throat and he
was bleeding from it.
I reached out
my hand and tried to shake his leg to wake him up, but my hand was oddly
heavy.
I couldn’t lift it.
I had no strength.
“Alex,” I said in a voice that was
barely there.
“Wake up.
Please, wake up.”
But he didn’t.
“Don’t leave me,” I said.
“Please don’t leave me.”
But he didn’t respond.
All I could see was the blood running
onto his shirt, his tie, and finally onto his pants.
Whatever had struck him had been
substantial.
With a rising sense of dread, I
looked around at what was left of the plane and saw that even more parts of it
were on fire.
Smoking was billowing
just outside the broken front end of the cabin.
If the plane itself didn’t blow up, with
one mere shift of the wind, the smoke would fill the interior of the plane and
those of us who weren’t already dead would be.
Cutter was in a heap on the floor,
his lifeless body crumpled in a position that made no sense to me.
Alexa looked as if she’d been impaled by
a tree limb, though I couldn’t be sure—her back was to me, and there was
a tree limb that had punctured straight through the side of her seat.
I turned my head to the side, and
saw that Lisa and Tank were either dead or unconscious.
Tank was slumped facedown in Lisa’s lap,
unmoving in ways that didn’t make sense to me.
Tank was among the strongest and most
vital men I knew.
Seeing him so
vulnerable was jarring.
Wasn’t it
Tank who should have been on his feet right now?
Wasn’t it Tank who should have been
giving us orders to wake the hell up and get the hell out of here while we
still could?
When I looked over at Lisa, my best
friend since youth, I saw that her hand was on top of Tank’s head, but that her
own head was somehow off.
It was at
an odd angle that seemed weirdly twisted to me.
Broken to me.
I noticed that her eyes were open
and staring at the ceiling, and that’s when my stomach began to cramp.
I felt a sharp stab in my gut, and
knew.
Knew.
The impact had been too strong.
I was about to lose my child.
“My baby,” I said aloud.
“Please not my baby.”
But when another cramp came, this one
was so painful, it all became too much.
When the darkness overcame me again, this time there was a light at the
other end of it that was pure, serene, and shimmering.
Despite Daniella’s cries for someone to
help her mother, the light welcomed me into it.
“Why won’t you help us?” I asked
it.
“Why won’t you help my
friends?
My child?”
In what seemed like a response to
my questions, the light shone brighter.
It became more inviting to me, and when a second explosion rocked the
left-side of the aircraft so hard that it caused me to double over in pain,
without thinking, I chose the light—and moved into it.
#
#
#
Annihilate Me, 2: Vol. 2
is coming soon!
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Thank you for
reading the continuation of Alex and Jennifer’s story!
I hope you enjoyed it!
XO,
Christina
IN FRANCE, THE SERIES IS CALLED “CAPTIVE-MOI”.
IN GERMANY, THE SERIES IS CALLED “UNTER FEUER”.
ANNIHILATE ME, HOLIDAY EDITION
Also by
Christina Ross:
Stand-alone
novel
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