Getting Air Read Online Free PDF Page A

to do what he said! Arcadia chucked the boiling water and nailed him good, right in the kisser. He screamed and dropped the axe while he covered his eyes with his hands.
    “Get him!” David shouted.
    All four of us charged the guy and beat him with fists, cans, anything we had. He went down fast. His legs were in the cockpit doorway now, so it couldn’t have been closed no matter what. We should have grabbed the axe off the floor before we hit him, because the other hijacker who was inside the cockpit picked it up and held it up menacingly.
    Behind that guy, I could see that the pilot and copilot were both slumped over at the controls. I couldn’t tell if they were alive or not.
    “Sit down,” the guy ordered us. “Now!”
    “I don’t think so,” David said. He grabbed my skateboard out of my hands and swung it at the guy. The guy blocked it with the axe handle. But that gave us an opening. Me and Henry and Julia went after him with everything we had. It was a blur. Confusion. Arms and legs flying. Screaming. Somebody was cut. I saw blood, but I didn’t know who it belonged to. I was out of my mind. We all were. We were fighting for our lives.
    “The gardens of paradise await!” the guy was screaming as he fought. “The hour of reality approaches! We welcome death and we will all meet in heaven! Eternal bliss will be ours!”
    He was nuts. I think it was Henry who hit him with a fire extinguisher, which had been attached to the cockpit wall. He dropped the axe. Then we grabbed him and slammed his head against the wall. He went down, just like his friends.
    I was crazy with rage. I couldn’t believe what we had done. It was like professional wrestling, but for real. Something instinctive had taken over our minds and compelled us to go crazy for our own survival. I wanted to hit somebody else, but there was nobody else left to hit. We had beaten all four of them.
    “Get them out of here!” David yelled. Julia and I dragged the two hijackers out of the cockpit area and onto the floor in first class. The old ladies saw what was going on, and they were cheering.
    Were they dead? I wasn’t sure. Ordinarily, I would be creeped out touching a dead person. But under the circumstances, I just did what needed to be done and didn’t think about it. They were limp and heavy. I had never even seen a dead body before. I guess I was experiencing a lot of firsts on this flight. I didn’t look at their faces as we dragged them out of the cockpit.
    Arcadia said she’d keep an eye on the hijackers and slam them over the head with the coffeepot if any of them woke up. Julia and I rushed back to the cockpit, where Henry and David were.
    “He’s dead,” Henry said, his finger touching the neck of one of the pilots. “No pulse.”
    Alarms were beeping and nobody was working the controls, but the plane was still flying level. It must have been on autopilot, I guessed. On the floor of the cockpit I noticed an airplane flight manual and a diagram of the cockpit instruments. I wasn’t sure if the pilots kept that in the plane or if the hijackers brought it with them to help them fly it.
    “What about the other one?” I asked, unsure of which man was the pilot and which was the copilot.
    The one who was still slumped over the controls groaned and moved his head a little to look toward us. He was alive! He would be able to land the plane! We were going to live!
    “Any of you fellas…know how to fly?” the pilot grunted. He was laboring to speak.
    “I took a lesson once,” Henry said.
    “That’s gonna have to do,” the pilot said softly.
    And then his eyes rolled back. He went limp and fell off the seat.

CHAPTER 6:
Final Approach
    For a moment, David, Henry, Julia, and I just looked at each other. The pilot was dead. The copilot was dead. All four hijackers were either dead or close to it, laid out on the floor in the cabin behind us. The only people who knew how to fly an airplane were out of commission.
    “Do you know