Tipping to the side, the rotors slapped into the ground one after another, sending shudders and shrieking metal sounds through the cab as they bent and tore away, sailing through the air with wicked sounds.
The striking blades turned the copter in a circle until the last one broke away, then the craft slowed to a metal grinding stop. Hunter smelled gas, and her neck hairs prickled. She yelled at the others, “Get out! Get out!”
Hunter unsnapped her seatbelt and reached across to Pasqual, helping him get his off his waist. She saw Art helping the pilot open the door that now pointed to the sky.
A spark blinked near a panel and Hunter’s heart almost stopped. The gas smell strengthened as she jerked Osorio from his seat and pushed him toward the others.
Art muscled open the door and pushed it back, then he helped the pilot out of the opening. Hunter reached him and said, “Pasqual next.”
Art nodded as he looked at the open door above their heads. She and Art lifted the man up, where the pilot helped him out.
The gas smell was so strong, and Art’s eyes showed fear as he said, “Go on.”
Hunter glanced at his leg, where the broken walking cast clung to his foot by a few shreds of plaster as a trickle of blood ran from a cut and dripped to the floor. His pant’s leg had torn, and it flapped behind his knee as he balanced on his good leg. She said, “You have to go. You can climb on my back and reach up.”
The pilot yelled down to them, “Hurry, there’s gas everywhere!” He extended his arm down to help.
Hunter bent at the waist, letting Art get on her back, then she did what she could to help him reach higher. She felt the weight go off of her when the pilot pulled Art through the opening. Art turned immediately and he and the pilot put their hands down as smoke began to fill the copter.
Hunter jumped and caught their hands, then used her feet to scramble up the wall and pass through the opening. She said, “Don’t wait on me!”
They scurried off the downed aircraft, with Hunter jumping to the ground. The pilot and Pasqual had Art between them and all hurried as Hunter caught up to them as the copter exploded in flames.
Hunter felt the heat on her back as she ran.
They stopped fifty yards away while emergency crews arrived, but the copter was nothing but a shapeless fireball on the tarmac. If we’d been a hundred feet higher when the drone hit…, Hunter thought. Her stomach felt like ice as she relived the strike and the fall from the sky.
Art said, “I need to sit down. I’m feeling woozy.”
Hunter looked at his leg and saw the blood streaming down beyond his ankle, creating a fast-expanding red pool on the tarmac. Hunter and the pilot caught him as he collapsed, and they eased him down as Hunter said to Pasqual, “Get one of the paramedics.” He trotted toward one of the fire trucks.
Hunter ripped Art’s pants leg higher, using the existing tear to speed her effort through the cloth. Blood smeared the leg, but she didn’t see the puncture. Lifting his leg, she turned him to the side.
There it was. A piece of metal the size of a knife blade protruding from the rear of his leg above the back of his knee. She put pressure with her palms above the wound and the flow lessened. Two paramedics and Pasqual trotted toward them, so she held the pressure, only releasing it when they knelt beside her and took over.
“How bad is it?” She asked.
The male paramedic, maybe twenty or so, said, “He’s got damage to the large vein. That’s why the blood wasn’t pulsing like with an artery. We can triage him here and have the doctors fix him up at the hospital.”
The Pilot asked, “How serious is it?”
“He would have bled to death without help.” He looked at Hunter, “Good job.”
“Thanks.” Some small movement in the air caught Hunter’s eye, and she turned. A drone the size of a sparrow hovered a hundred feet away and thirty feet above the ground. The front of it turned as Pasqual walked, following him every step.
Hunter touched the paramedic’s arm, “You need me for anything?”
“No, you’re good. We’ll take him here in a few minutes and you can visit at the hospital.”
She nodded and went to Pasqual, “We need to get you into a building.”
“What?”
She pointed, “You see that?”
Pasqual squinted, “I don’t see anything.”
“There’s a small drone watching you.”