On Board a Plane 3 - WfW 15/1 - 2nd Part

Still using the new Words for Wednesday:
    Constipation          and / or         Snot
     Rivalry                                      Beluga
     Occupation                                Emergency
     Sneeze                                       Qualify  
     Wishy-washy                             Coffee
     Diatribe                                     Butt
For this installment I used: Sneeze, Butt and coffee. 
We're still in the plane with Allan. 

The plane sloped gently towards right and front. It was miraculously not broken, the doors and windows still closed and airtight. The captain came out from the cockpit, followed by the co-pilot and were received by sitting ovations. The Captain took the megaphone from the stewardess and spoke: "You are free to un-fasten your seat belts and take off the masks, but please stay in your seats. There's a thing or two I'd like to test. I'll tell all you all I know. And, dear Henny, could we please have some coffee, the thermos are still full and there's no reason to let it turn cold."
  Laughter were heard from several places. The stewardess rose and with the aid of her co-stewardess, a youngish timid girl, and some of the passengers in the front rows, coffee was soon distributed to all aboard. They all gathered in the front rows. It was a small pane to start with, Allan remembered his surprise when he saw the size of the plane, Cross Atlantic flights was connected to jumbo jets in his mind. Many of the seats had even been empty. Maybe it was one of the less traveled days a year.
  The captain spoke again: "I do not quite know where to start."
  "At the beginning" someone suggested.
  After a bit more laughter, the captain said. "Not a very bad place to start. First of all, I'm not a hero, it was chance, luck or whatever that made us survive. First item: We flew towards that wall of fire not away from it. I had a warning from the airport. I do not know whether they said 'go up' or it's no use to go up'  before they fell silent. I decided to climb ... as far and as fast as possible. We had a saying, 'you can get over it' when I trained. It was in my mind. I used up almost all the remaining fuel. But a plane does not fall like a stone, like everybody likes to think. Even without any fuel, a plane will drift downwards for a long, long time. As I saw that wall of fire coming towards us, I jettisoned the rest of the fuel. I imagined it would then be a matter of  just gliding, trying to estimate how far we had come, and how high we really had gone. And how far til somewhere to land of course. But then the problems began. All the instruments stopped working. I landed with my butt-sense really." Again people laughed. "The altimeter tells me we're at or even below sea level. I do not believe this to be true. The plane fell, not like a stone, but at least like a log during some of the descend. We had gone very high, but we did not spend very much time descending. I suspect that the wall of fire has consumed the air outside. I am grateful for this brown, level ground. The plane did not break. Now I'm going to test my theory. Normally, if we open the doors on the ground, air rushes in, because even if the cabin is pressurized, it's not at ground pressure. I suspect the air to rush or at least seep out of the plane when I open the small emergency hatch. And I'll close it immediately if I'm right." He let action follow words. They did not hear any sound, but the pilot pulled the hatch shut. "Yes, the pressure is lower outside. Not by much, but it is. I have no idea of the pressure inside here either, all that going up and down, the systems doing some weirdo things, the masks pumping oxygen into the cabin, and all that. As the systems have all closed down, there's only the oxygen still in the tanks available to us."
  "I suggest shutting off most of the masks, then," the granny said.
  "They can't be shut off, the controls are all gone," the pilot said.
  The granny rose, bend over the tube to one of the masks, and secured it with a piece of string. "Like this," she smiled.
  "Shut down three out of four masks," the co-pilot said. "That should be sufficient."
  "Let's have something to eat," Henny the stewardess said. "everything, even the end of the world, looks better when you're not hungry." She rose, and again helped by eager hands the plane fare was distributed among passengers and crew alike.
  "This is the lunch normally reserved for first class passengers and crew members," she said smiling, "but I have an inkling that such distinctions are not worth a sneeze anymore." They all munched at the surprisingly tasty sandwiches and drank more coffee.
  "What do we do now?" the co-pilot asked.
  "Sleep, I'd suggest," the pilot answered. "The sun is about to set, we're going to try to make our bodies fit the time zone here fast, Plus sleeping is going to save energy and oxygen. And we're exhausted. Well at least I am."
  They all found a place to sleep in the plane, as creature of habit still, they chose mostly to sleep in the seats they had occupied during the flight. The priest offered to say an evening prayer and most listened and many joined in the final Amen. Allan slept fitfully during the dark hours. He kept dreaming about Mary and their children. Kept seeing them, but not being able to get to them. As he lay awake in the dark he wondered whether this meant that they had all died, or that he was never going to find them. Or maybe it meant nothing at all.
  As the Sun rose Alan had come to a decision. He wanted to try to travel to the place, he was sure Mary and the family had gone to. If the world was really totally barren and dead, he would do as a man in a science fiction he once read. The spacer returned from the Moon after someone pushed the red buttons, the Earth was barren, sterile, no air, no nothing left. He was all alone. That space pilot had opened the hatch and walked as far as he could, hoping to be the seed to new life for Earth. Alan was determined to do the same.

to be continued ...