Chapter 22: Jess
"No! No, Drew! Please, somebody, help him!"
Everything was happening very quickly now. I felt like I had been thrown into a movie, like I was watching what was supposed to be my real life with horror. Because there was nothing I could do about it. It had been terrible to be Fred Stevens's hostage, but it was much, much worse to watch him struggling with Drew. If I hadn't been one hundred percent sure of my love for him before, I was now. Now that I was watching him struggling to keep himself safe, I knew that I would not survive if something happened to him. That was something I couldn't go through again. It was something I refused to go through again.
I was still struggling to get up from the heap Fred had tossed me into, but even wedged between seats, I had a good view of the passenger rushing down the aisle to help Drew.
Stevens had taken a seriously hard punch, one I had actually heard, but it didn't appear to be slowing him down any. Stevens was probably so drunk, he couldn’t feel anything. He lunged at Drew, again and again, snarling and spitting and throwing his arm wildly. The pencil slashed through the air, and although there was little precision to his drunken movements, it would only take one hit to do some serious damage.
Drew ducked and swayed, keeping out of the way, but he showed no signs of getting away from his attacker. Of course, he didn't. He wasn't the kind of man who ran away from a fight, especially not when it was a fight he felt responsible for creating. Even when the other passenger reached Drew's side, Stevens fought like an angry bear. The two men showed no signs of subduing their target. Stevens continued to rant and rave, terrorizing all of the people around him.
“Even now!” Stevens shrieked. “Even now you can’t do what you’re supposed to! You made a deal, pretty boy! You made a fucking deal!”
“You’ll have to forgive me for not thinking that’s a good idea, Stevens. Not when you’re acting like this.”
"I don't have to forgive shit! You've robbed me, Larson. You've robbed me again and again, and now I see that you're still doing it!"
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” the stranger interjected. “But I know you need to stop. You’re drunk, man.”
“You don’t know a goddamned thing,” Stevens snarled, turning on the good samaritan and brandishing his pencil. “You don’t have a clue what you’re getting involved in.”
"You're right,” the man said. “I don't. But it doesn't take a genius to see that you're wasted. Just put the pencil down, okay? Put the pencil down before you actually hurt somebody and get yourself into some real trouble."
“Trouble? You think I care about trouble?”
“Sure, man, everyone does.”
“No! Wrong! Not everyone. People who have already lost everything don’t give a shit about getting into trouble. I don’t have anything left to live for, not since this son of a bitch turned me in for drinking on the job. The only thing that’s kept me going these past months has been the idea of hurting him. I suggest you get the fuck out of my way!”
I screamed again as Stevens lunged forward, stabbing the air with his makeshift weapon. At the same time, both Drew and the helpful passenger moved forward, each of them taking hold of one of Stevens's arms. I thought for a moment that it would be over then, but Fred's rage seemed to have given him extra strength. Even as Drew and his accomplice tried to drag him forward, he broke loose again and began to run for the door that led to the outside of the plane. Seeing as we were thousands of miles up in the air, this caused a whole new wave of alarm amongst the passengers, and they began to babble and scream themselves.
“He’ll open the door!” One particularly loud woman wailed. “He’s going to kill us all! Everyone duck your heads, it’s the end!”
"No!" I said loudly, trying very hard to sound even a little bit calm. "No, please, calm down! He can't do that. Everything is pressurized. The door won't even open. Please, everyone, try to remain calm. I know that's hard to do, but it's the best thing we can do to help them."
The general upset didn't die down completely, but it was enough that I was relatively sure there wasn't going to be a stampede. Under the circumstances, I was happy just to have that. I started toward the front of the plane, where Tony had attempted to join the fray with a set of zip ties meant to restrain Stevens. Unfortunately for Tony, Stevens knew that was exactly what would happen, and he threw out a hard punch before Tony could even lay a hand on him, sending my friend flying and knocking him to the floor in a heap.
“Enough, Stevens!” Drew bellowed, the extent of his anger becoming clear to me, despite his impressively maintained calm. “That’s enough! You’re hurting innocent people now. You’re scaring people! Is that what you wanted? What you were aiming to get out of this whole plan? To turn yourself into some kind of comic book villain?”
“You know what I want, pretty boy. You’re just too much of a coward to give it to me. Only big and strong when you’re doing it behind somebody’s back, right? You’re no fucking better than I am!”
"Please," a little old woman cowering in one of the seats beside me moaned as she tugged on my sleeve frantically. "Please, you've got to make this stop. Somebody is going to get really hurt. I think that young man he knocked out probably needs to see a doctor. He's probably got a concussion, and nobody can do anything about it as long as that man is still terrorizing everyone!"
The mention of poor Tony, along with the clear danger Drew was still in, is what finally got me moving. Without thinking about what I was doing, I reached up into one of the overhead bins and grabbed the first thing convenient to me. It happened to be a rather heavy wooden cane, and I took off running towards Fred, going on blind faith that he would not turn and see me coming. I swung the cane as hard as I could.
All it took was one large crack over the head, using all the strength I had in my body, and Fred crumpled to the ground, every bit as unconscious as Tony was. Drew quickly grabbed the zip ties out of Tony's limp hands and bound Fred's wrists so that when he finally woke up again, he would find it a good deal more difficult to come after any of us.
“Jess,” he called out as he worked, a voice that seemed to be coming to me through a haze. “Jess, are you okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “Just fine.”
He took a second to grin at me. “Nice hit, slugger. I’m pretty sure that was a home run.”
“I broke the cane, though,” I said, turning back to the passengers around me. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who this belongs to, but I broke it.”
The old woman who’d tugged at my sleeve smiled at me. “That’s okay, dear. I don’t mind. If he moves, you whack him again!”
I laughed, even though I could feel the tears beginning to run down my cheeks. I almost didn’t notice the loud sound of raucous applause from the passengers.