Hatchet Chapter 3
Going to die, Brian thought. Going to die, gonna die, gonna die—his whole brain screamed it in the sudden silence. Gonna die. He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm and held the nose of the plane down. The plane gained speed and suddenly there weren’t any lakes. There were many far away, but he needed one in front of him. All he saw were green death trees.
He breath was short. His stomach tightened. There! A little to the right there was a lake. It was L-shaped, and the plane was nearly at the long part of the L. He just needed to move it a little to the right. He turned, but the turn cost him speed, and the lake was right in front of him. He pulled the wheel and the plane’s nose went up.
The plane slowed a lot which scared him. He pushed it back in, and the plane gained some speed. He pulled back again and saw the blue of the lake. Everything seemed to stop for four seconds. He saw an animal—he thought a moose—next to the lake. All so still looking, so stopped, the pond and the moose and the trees, as he slid over them now only three or four hundred feet off the ground—all like a picture. Then everything happened at once. Trees suddenly took on detail, filled his whole field of vision with green, and he knew he would hit and die, would die, but then he saw a way to the lake.
Then the plane hit the trees. The noise was loud, as the wings of the plane scraped the trees. Dust and dirt flew into his face. It blinded him for a bit. He thought there was an explosion. He slammed forward hitting his head on the wheel.
Someone screamed, screamed animal screams of fear and pain. He did not know they were his screams. He slammed down on the lake. The water was as hard as concrete. Then the plane went down in the water. He took off his seatbelt, and the plane went deeper and deeper into the water. He couldn’t see, but he felt cold blue, and tried to escape. The water was trying to kill him, to end him. He swam out the shattered front window. He had far to swim. He couldn’t hold his breath, so he breathed in water, water he thought would win, take him, kill him.
Then finally his head broke into light, and he vomited and swam without knowing anything. He pulled and screamed until his hands caught weeds and he pulled himself onto land. Everything stopped. And he saw a color, a new color, a color that he had never seen before. It exploded into his mind with pain, and he was gone, spiraling out into nothing. Nothing.
