Crash Landing

• Manling Sun, Grade 9, Kenmore State High School
• Short Story
• 2022

Excellence Award in the 'Summertime Fun ONLINE' competition

The blazing ball of fire soared above the bleak, colourless sky, scorching the arid desert landscape. A blanket of humidity was draped across the stifling atmosphere. Occasional scaly reptiles scuttled across the sand, seeking shade.
The man was lost. The brutal sun beat down on his back. Rivulets of sweat, sour and salty, poured down his bare, sunburned skin. In a fruitless attempt to quench his undying thirst, he searched for the umpteenth time for just a mere drop of water in his bottle. Nothing. A lone cactus gazed at him sorrowfully.
His energy had completely seeped away, lost to the humidity. His body felt like a sack of flour, heavy and unmoveable, and he suffocated in silence, choking down the sticky air. He closed his eyes.
In his foggy, dehydrated subconscious, his memory played indistinct clips that ran together with no beginning or end. His wife. Kids. Family.
How he was flying in on a helicopter from his business trip to meet his third-born child.
Incessant, urgent, screeching red light engulfing the helicopter.
Screams of panic and terror, and...
The sheer intensity of the plummet.
The helicopter crashed in the middle of a desert and the pilot perished.
The man took shallow, rasping breaths. Every second his lethargic, suffering body lay like a lump on the desert sand, his body shut down bit by bit, depleting slowly, letting his life trickle away. His head ached with an unbearable, indescribable pain that engulfed his body until it was all that he was remotely capable of feeling, and his thoughts becoming one big blur. Soon, he realised, his ability to even have a thought would be gone forever. Despite the situation, the man found this almost hilarious.
Darkness seeped into the edges of his vision, taunting him, nearly swallowing him completely, snatching pieces of his life away, when...
He was woken from his trance by the familiar chopping of a helicopter.
He gulped, his throat like sandpaper. Pain overwhelmed his body.
His head pounded with blood, and despite all his efforts to stay conscious, everything darkened around him, obscuring his vision entirely, his body blazing with pain. Sound ran in and out of his ears, barely able to be processed.
“Number 454, located,” spoke a voice. “Pilot dead, passenger unconscious. Paramedics required. Over.”
He heard murmuring voices, asking questions, pouring water all over his body, temporarily relieving the cruel burning of the sun.
Another helicopter landed. There were crunching footsteps and streams of questions. And somehow, the man knew that he would be okay.
“Quick, he’s got serious heatstroke,” said a voice. “We need a stretcher. Now.”
And soon, he felt a million arms lift him up and carry him away to safety.