“But what happened?” the teenage girl asked again, sparking a flurry of questions from the small crowd around her.
“Is he even alive?” the guy with the spiky hair asked calmly enough. “Or are you trying to keep us from panicking?”
“No,” Mason replied. “He’s awake, and—”
“What about the co-pilot?” broke in the Hispanic man who’d sat beside Buzzcut, pushing his way forward. “You haven’t mentioned him.”
“Deb is attempting to wake him now.”
“Does the captain even know the situation?” cried a man in a suit—the male half of the yuppie couple that had been sitting near Mason. “My wife is dead. Someone needs to address this.” Without warning, he lunged for the door.
Buzzcut caught him before he’d made it three feet, lifted him off the floor, and tossed him backward. The man landed upright and wasn’t hurt, but Buzzcut had made his point and he stayed put.
The beefy guy Mason was suddenly glad was at his side, pointed his finger at the crowd. “No one gets past this door besides this man”—he pointed at Mason—“myself, the flight attendants, or the pilots.”
“As soon as we know something, we will tell you,” Mason assured them. “We’re not trying to hide anything. We just want to give the captain the time he needs to ascertain the situation, and then he will be informed of the details, if he hasn’t been already. At that point, I’m sure he will have worked out a plan of action.” By plan of action, he meant what to do with the bodies of the deceased until they could land. Probably the best course would be to move everyone left up to first class and keep all the bodies toward the back. But that was where the lavatories were—
The cockpit door opened behind him, interrupting his thoughts. He turned and saw it was Deb.
“I need to get a coffee, strong with plenty of cream and sugar, and a water.”
“Two drinks?” Mason asked her. “Does that mean the other pilot’s awake?”
She nodded tiredly. “Finally. He’s pretty groggy, though.”
“Has the captain said anything?”
“Not much. Nothing I could understand, anyway.”
“Nothing you could understand?”
“Something’s wrong, but I’m not sure what. And I don’t think he’s receiving any radio communication.”
That was odd. “Is the radio system out?”
“I don’t know. It seemed to be working but he’s getting no response.”
He raised his voice for the benefit of the others who were listening intently. “Probably we’ve been blown off course, is all. We could be in a dead spot.” He realized his bad choice of words as soon as they left his mouth.
“I hope you’re right,” Deb said, starting toward the galley.
Mason turned to the big man at his side. “What’s your name?”
“Dustin,” he said. “Dustin Rogers. And yours?”
“Mason Tucker.”
“Nice to meet you, circumstances notwithstanding.”
“You too. Do you mind helping me keep an eye on things?”
“You don’t even have to ask.”
3
MASON WAITED FOR Deb beside the prostrate form of the first officer, now reclined back in the empty row directly behind the bulkhead, which had luckily been unoccupied. Perhaps someone had reserved it then hadn’t shown. If so, they would soon find out, once the world discovered what had happened, just how lucky they were to have missed Flight 3108.
“How is he?” she asked
“He’s getting there.” I think.
She handed him the paper cup of coffee and leaned over the dark-haired man to help lift his head for a sip of the water.
“He wanted to see you,” she said when the man relaxed back down.
“Who, the captain?”
She nodded. “It’s open. Just go right in.”
He glanced over at Dustin, who gave him a reassuring look, then moved up to the cockpit door. He pushed it open, stepped through, and closed it behind him.
“How’s Barry?” asked the captain, a man of indeterminate age with salt-and-pepper hair, as Mason moved over to hand him the cup.
Mason assumed he meant the co-pilot. “He’s hanging in there. Drinking some water.”
“Good.” He pointed behind him. “Unfold that and sit down.”
Mason did as he was told. A moment later the pilot pulled off his headset, reached down to pull a lever, slid his seat back, and shifted around to face him.
“Your name’s Mason?”
Mason nodded.
“I’m Mitch Adams, your captain, obviously, but we won’t stand on ceremony.” He paused to take a gulp of his coffee, and then reached around to carefully set it down. “You can call me Mitch.”
“Yes, sir.”
The pilot shook his head. “None of that sir shit, now. We’re way beyond that.”
Mason nodded again. “Has Deb told you…?”
The captain—Mitch—scrubbed his hands over his face. “Yeah, I’ve been appraised of the situation. The oxygen masks deploy automatically when the cabin begins to depressurize, but with everything else… Listen, we’ve got a bigger problem.”
A bigger problem than a plane full of dead people? “What, what is it?”
Mitch turned to check something, then twisted back around.
The silence lengthened as Mason waited for him to speak. The man didn’t seem to know where to begin, or how to tell him whatever it was.
Finally Mitch spoke. “We’re off course,” he said—and then guffawed.
Mason’s eyes widened. Was the man unhinged?
“I’m sorry. This is all just so…”
Mason expected him to say something like overwhelming, but what he said was, “…impossible.”
Mason blinked at him.
“We’re more than just a little off course. According to our inertial sensors, which I have verified the best I can with our last known ground position, the compass reading, our speed, and this beautiful aviator’s watch my wife gave me”—his features creased with emotion for a second before smoothing out—“we’re not heading for New Hampshire.”
“Where are we heading?”
Mitch regarded him steadily. “Out to sea.”
Mason shifted his gaze to stare out the window, the base of his spine tightening. “How much fuel do we have?”
“Enough. The tanks were full,” Mitch replied, easing some of Mason’s anxiety, only to increase it when he added, “if we can find the coastline.”
“Why wouldn’t we be able to find it?”
“Because I’m not picking up anything. No VHF or UHF, no satellite, no long-range beacons.”
“But surely if we’re out over water, that’s to be expected.”
“There should at least be a GPS signal. But there’s not.”
“So what are you going to use?”
“The only thing we have left.”
“Which is?”
“Dead reckoning.”
“Oh, I hate this!” screeched the platinum blonde, who had woken up with a vengeance.
“I know, baby, but right now you need to stay in your seat and rest. You’ve had a—”
“I want off this plane. Why aren’t we preparing to land? What’s going on?” She whipped her head around then fastened her gaze on her frazzled husband, who looked like he’d aged ten years since takeoff. “I want to talk to one of the pilots.” For the third time, she tried to get up out of her seat, and for the third time her husband—and it was her husband; Mason had heard him refer to the spoiled prima donna as his wife—pushed her back down.
Mason was taking a breather not far from them, across from Tyler, who had been able to secure three seats to himself. Mason, Dustin, Juan the Hispanic man, and “Rocky” the guy with spiky hair had moved each of the heartbreakingly silent, motionless passengers that hadn’t survived to the front of the plane. It had taken all four of them to get the obese man out of his seat. Brenda, the lady beside him, had managed
to survive but now had a splitting headache and was currently laid over with her eyes closed a few rows back. Peter, the yuppie guy, had helped move and cover his wife (who'd supposedly been wearing her mask but died anyway) with a sweater he pulled out of her carry-on bag, and then had retired to the back of the plane. Considering the main galley, not to mention the lavatories, were located in the rear of the aircraft, moving the bodies to the front had seemed like the wise thing to do. He could just picture them having to walk repeatedly through the shadows past the unmoving forms canted this way and that.
“Trust me, baby, you do not want to go up there.”
The blonde stared wide-eyed at her husband, who had given his name as Don (probably a recent shortening of Donald) and her name as Gina. “Why not?” she whispered.
Don gazed helplessly down at her, then looked over at Mason imploringly. Gina followed his gaze and zeroed in on Mason as well.
He got up and moved to the seat across from her. “Gina… Can I call you Gina?”
She nodded. He could tell by the sheen of tears in her wide doe eyes that she was beginning to realize something out of the ordinary was going on.
“When we ran through the storm and we lost the engines, we also began to lose the cabin pressure. As to why we passed out afterwards even though we were wearing our oxygen masks, I can’t say.” He didn’t know for sure, but he suspected the weird wind tunnel or vortex or whatever they’d gone through had been responsible for a lot of them losing consciousness and might have contributed to the death of the other passengers, as well. But he figured it was best for now that he kept the finer details of their situation to himself.
Don moved over and, still keeping an eye on Gina, dropped down into an empty seat.
“But some of the other people,” Mason continued, “were hurt… killed. And we had to move them up front until we can land.”
Her eyes went even wider and her mouth fell open. “Killed?”
Mason nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
Her expression crumpled and she sagged back, tears spilling onto her cheeks. Mason shot Don a look, and he vaulted up out of his seat.
Mason waited until he had joined her and then stood up. “Everybody. Hey, everybody. Listen up. The captain has decided to take us back so don’t be alarmed when we start to turn. He wants to head back to Fort Lauderdale.” If he can find it, he thought but didn’t say.
“It’s about time,” Peter snapped. The man didn’t seem all that heartbroken by the loss of his wife. But maybe that was just shock delaying a normal emotional response.
Deb came through a minute later and told them to get belted in, and shortly after, the wing was dipping as they banked to the right in a gradual turn.
Mason slipped out of his seat. The survivors of Flight 3108 were quiet around him. Their earlier chatter, brought on by stress and fear, had subsided into somber, exhausted silence.
Deb had claimed the two seats across from Marcia, who still hadn’t woken up. He was beginning to suspect the bump to the head the blond attendant had suffered during their bout of turbulence had been exacerbated by the trauma of whatever they’d gone through.
He noted with bemusement as he started toward the front that Tyler had moved closer to Gwen and lent her a hoodie she’d draped across herself like a blanket.
Dustin, sitting in the last row of the rear area they were in, cracked his eyes open as Mason came abreast, then closed them again when he saw who it was.
Mason was thankful again for the dim nighttime lighting. There was no way they could fit all the deceased into first class, so they’d been forced to overflow into many of the adjacent rows, and he could see the bodies ahead of him on the other side of the unoccupied section. They’d tried to place them facing away and had covered them the best they could with whatever they could scrounge up, since they didn’t have enough blankets and very little space, but their unnatural poses made it clear they weren’t merely sleeping. And their disquieting presence was only one of the problems. Pretty soon they would begin to smell.
Keeping his gaze directly ahead of him, he picked up his pace until he made it past, then slowed down as he got to the first officer, who still remained in the last row before the bulkhead. Mason watched for a moment until he could discern the slight rise and fall of his chest, then continued on to the cockpit door, pushed it open, and stepped inside.
“How’s Barry doing?” Mitch immediately asked.
Mason had to think for a second how to answer. Something was obviously wrong with the younger man. Although responsive when prompted, he clearly wasn’t bouncing back like the others. “He seems to be resting comfortably,” he finally said.
“And Marcia?”
“No change.”
“Dammit.”
“Was Barry injured during the rough patch?”
“No, I don’t think so.” He reached out to adjust something. “Maybe it had to do with his blood pressure.”
“Pardon?”
“Barry has a slight case of hypertension. Not bad enough to ground him, but he has to take medication for it.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Come up here. I could use another set of eyes.”
“You mean—”
“Yeah, climb over. Just don’t touch anything.”
Mason carefully stepped over the center console and slid down into the other seat.
“At least we’re leaving the weather behind. I took us down earlier to get beneath the cloud cover, but with us basically flying blind…”
“Still no radio contact?”
“None whatsoever. And not even the ghost of a beacon.”
Mason swallowed. “Are you sure we’re heading in the right direction?”
“I’m not sure about anything after what happened earlier.” He ran a hand over his face. “But yeah,” he added, catching Mason’s expression, “we should be coming up on the coast any time now.”
Mason didn’t know how they’d be able to tell if they did. All he could see through the windows was darkness. “How will you know?”
“We’ll see the lights.”
Only they didn’t. Nowhere beneath them could Mason detect the illumination of the mainland lights. He could barely make out the horizon, and that only because the last straggling clump of clouds covering the moon had passed, brightening the sky just enough to distinguish it from the earth. Or the sea. We’re going to keep flying on and on until we run out of fuel, plunge into the ocean, and disappear exactly like all those other sad individuals who’d lost their way across the vastness. How had this happened? What exactly had happened? You went through a storm, encountered some turbulence, and were thrown off course. And that’s all. You only imagined the strange feeling of being sucked through a tunnel. Or maybe it had been some kind of weather phenomenon.
“I’m taking us down lower,” Mitch said, startling Mason out of his thoughts.
Lower? What if his instruments were wrong? We could hit the water. He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. They had to do something.
Mason strained to see, if only to reassure himself they weren’t skimming the surface about to be overtaken by a rogue wave, but whatever was beneath them remained a featureless black expanse.
But then after what felt like a long time, something began to take shape out of the darkness. “I think I see something.”
Mitch sat up straighter, then flipped a switch, and two bright floodlights came on, one on each wing, like twin spotlights. “What the hell?” he murmured, pushing down on the controls.
Mason could feel them dropping through the air as they descended toward whatever it was. He finally made it out, and then Mitch was banking them to the left. He goggled down at the glowing white structure rising up from the ground below. It was a lighthouse, rising up from a beach.
“I swear that’s the Hillsboro lighthouse,” Mitch murmured as they moved past it.
Then they were gliding low, almost too low it seemed, over the waves and sand below. But that was the only way t
o see anything.
Because there were no lights. Anywhere.
“Mitch, what’s going on? Where are we?”
Not answering, Mitch continued following the coastline, grim and silent. Then after a bit, he began to guide them inland.
They were now passing above a congested region full of houses and other structures, all of them dark. “Where are we?” Mason repeated, raising his voice.
He thought Mitch was going to ignore him again, but he finally looked over and focused in on him. “I’ll know in a minute,” he said.
Mason kept quiet after that and just prayed he knew what he was doing and wasn’t going to crash them into a skyscraper.
“There it is,” Mitch said, correcting their course slightly.
Mason squinted and saw what he was referring to: paler areas running through the darker grass and trees where three runways crisscrossed the terrain below them.
“What airport is this?”
“Pompano Beach.”
“Are we going to land here?”
“No, it’s not long enough for us. I just wanted to make sure we were where I thought we were.”
“And that is?”
“About sixteen miles from Fort Lauderdale International.”
“What is it, a blackout?”
“I don’t know.”
“What else could it be?”
Mitch looked away and made no reply.
4
MITCH TOOK THEM out over the Everglades—an oddly shifting, broad stretch that merged with the horizon in every direction—in a slow turn, and then began his descent for approach. Both he and Mason were feverishly scanning the moonlit landscape beneath them for the airport.
“Okay, there’s Pond Apple,” Mitch said.
Pond Apple was a wetland tract in the middle of all the houses and other structures they were gliding over.
“Where is it, where is it?” Mitch muttered, and then suddenly they were coming up on the crisscrossing lines of the runways.
He skillfully aligned the plane with them, and then they were dropping through the air.
They had not been able to reach the control tower. Not over the radio and not over their phones. Mitch had a small pad of telephone numbers in his flight bag, but it had been no use; they hadn’t been able to get a signal on either one of them.
Flight 3108 Page 3
