Saturday Sample and Weekend Writing Warriors

Today I'd like to share an excerpt from my new WIP. I started writing this a few years ago, but I put it aside in favor of other manuscripts. It's time now to pick it back up. I'm struggling to find a title for it, and I don't have a blurb yet, but here's the beginning of the book. If you see anything I need to fix please say so. I've given you ten sentences and a few more to spare.

Last Week

She knocked on the cockpit door and Frank Healy, the copilot, opened the door. He looked worried. “Holloway, thank God you’re here.  Maybe you can help.”

“What’s wrong?” 

Captain Mike Anders shrugged as he answered from the pilot’s seat.  “Damned if I know. Take a seat and look at this.”

Brent did so and stared at the electronic display in front of him.  “This…This can’t be right,” he sputtered. Every single gage on the control panel spun wildly and indicated that nothing worked, not even the engines.  But they had to be.  If the engines had failed, they’d be falling from the sky.  “How long has this been going on?” he demanded.  “Have you notified Miami?”

Anders shook his head.  “The gages went wild right after we entered the cloud.  I tried to contact Miami, but I couldn’t get anything besides static on the radio.”

“Better try again.  I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

Frank Healy tried the radio, but no one answered even though they all heard garbled, fragmented voices.  

Brent’s eyes left the gages, and he stared out of the window as they briefly exited the cloud.  Horror washed through him. “Sweet Heaven!” he cried.  “Look!  The horizon just disappeared!”

The entire world had turned a strange, milky white color.  The sky and the ocean blended into each other so seamlessly you really couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended.  

“Without instrumentation or visual we can’t fly this thing,” Healy quavered.  “We might be flying straight into the ocean.”

Excerpt: We've picked up at the place where I left off.

Anders grabbed the radio and tried to raise a reply.  They still caught fragments of voices, but they didn’t think anyone had answered them.  

  Brent took a deep breath and blew out hard.  “We’re inside the cloud again.” 

The cloud had assumed gigantic proportions and changed color.  They seemed to be flying through a tunnel in a yellowish, gray mist, a tunnel illuminated by bright flashes of light from within the monstrous cloud.  All of them saw the patch of blue sky at the end of the tunnel. 

“Increase air speed,” Healy yelled.  “The damn tunnel’s closing up ahead!”

“Go, Mike!” Brent urged. “We have to get out of the cloud!”

Anders gave it his best shot.  The engines whined in Brent’s ears, but it almost seemed as if they didn’t move at all while up ahead the tunnel continued to narrow.  

They almost made it, but at the last second the tunnel closed with a rumble of thunder.  The plane fell into a spiraling vortex that opened in front of them.  It shook as if a giant hand had reached down from the sky to rock it. 

The plane nose-dived.  Healy screamed as Anders’ eyes rolled back into his head, and his hands dropped into his lap.