Free Run by Michaelbrent Collings Page B

and a napkin with the plane line’s logo marching across the front.  She put the napkin down, and sipped the drink contentedly.  Everything was as it should be.
    And then the world turned upside down.
    There was a clang, and the plane lurched violently, a shudder rippling through its frame.  Fran thought for a moment it might be another air pocket, but since when did air clang ? 
    The flight attendants all tumbled to the deck like so many straw dolls, and frightened cries echoed through the plane.  They created a weirdly cacophonous chorus, a thin wailing of inquiries as people shouted for parents and lovers and God to protect them.
    Another clang sounded, louder and more insistent than before, and this time the plane dropped into a sudden nose dive.  Fran braced herself against the sides of her chair, struggling to stay in the seat that suddenly was above and behind her.  People all around her fell forward, slapping hands and arms and sometimes faces into the seats in front of them as forward became down in a single shattering motion.
    A flight attendant hurtled past Fran, following the drink cart, which had already rolled to the front bulkhead and spilled its payload of soda all over the walls.  The flight attendant shrieked as she landed on her arm.  Even over the cries and the sounds of terror, Fran could clearly hear the woman's bone as it snapped against the metal bulkhead.  But then the sounds in the cabin could scarcely be heard above the tumult of strained metal, firing jets, and panicking passengers.
    Fran kept pushing against the seat in front of her, struggling to keep from following the flight attendant.  There was no time for anything more than pure survival, but somehow she managed to turn her head and it was then that she saw the second-most terrifying sight of her life.  Not as bad as what happened to Nathan, but close.
    George struggled to stay in his seat, like her.  His thin child's arms quivered as he strained to remain in place, to resist the forces that pulled at him with a million strong hands.  It was a miracle he had remained in the oversized chair as long as he had.  But miracles sometimes come with time limits, and George’s had run out.
    The plane jolted yet again, and George lost his fight with gravity.  He flipped head first over the seat in front of him, careening like a pinball into the aisle.  His tiny body seemed to hang for an eternity, life and time slowing and the air thickening around him as though the very forces of nature were exerting themselves to keep the little boy out of harm’s way.
    Then even the forces of nature gave in, and George plummeted down to the front of the plane.  Fran cried out, grabbing wildly out for him, knowing even as she did so that she’d never reach him in time.
    George pinwheeled out of her range, smashed into a seat, careened back into the aisle, and then smashed headfirst into the drink cart.  Time seemed to slow again as Fran saw her young friend’s head smash into the metal cart, and almost gently fold under.  His body drove down on his neck, pressing it to a twenty degree angle, then thirty, then forty, and somewhere along the way it snapped.
    Fran screamed again, not with pain or fear, but with the searing vision of George’s body in a heap against the cart full of his favorite root beer and lemon-lime and fruit drinks, his neck twisted at an impossible angle, his eyes sightlessly staring, and his little feet twitching a death-dance against the airplane floor. 
    Fran screamed until she couldn’t scream any more, then she mouthed silent screams.
    And still the plane fell.
    A final metallic clang rose above the chaos, this time more of a crunch, and the plane abruptly righted.  The movement seemed to come not under the plane's own power, but rather the jet was jerked into proper position by some outside force, as if God had a crane and had grabbed it out of free fall. 
    Fran glanced out the window, and saw something that sent