by Toby Neal
Getting down from this end of the plane was going to be a little hazardous. It would involve a slide down the side and landing in the sand-bottomed pool. Nick could hardly wait to splash into the water and leave this floating coffin behind—but he couldn’t leave Janice alone to help others out of the wreck.
One of the wings floated like a raft on the side of the plane still in the water, gentle waves pushing the forlorn wreckage onto the reef. Up near the nose of the plane, Nick could see the flight crew helping others down out of the plane into waist-deep water, where they formed a straggling line heading for the shore. Already a cluster of people had gathered in the shade of shrubby trees growing at the top of the beach.
Noticeably absent were any emergency or rescue vehicles or the sound of sirens. In fact, there wasn’t any man-made noise at all but the voices of the plane survivors, and those were muffled by the sound of breaking waves.
Nick dug his phone out of his pocket. It wouldn’t even boot up, the screen stubbornly blank. From his elevated perch on the tail, he could see a dirt road running along the top of the beach. Scanning his surroundings, Nick spotted movement—a chestnut horse with two dark-haired kids on its bare back, cantering up the dirt road leading away from the site of the crash.
“Get help,” Nick whispered, surprised to hear his own small voice in the ringing of his ears. “Please get help.”
Then he turned and plunged back into the plane to help Janice bring out anyone who could navigate the exit.
Bea gave the horse a bucket of water and a restorative scoop of grain back at the house. The mare was too tired to ride straight to town even though the emergency with the plane beat at her brain with its urgency. Sam called from the front door, and this time she could hear his voice, though her hearing was still fuzzy.
“Bea, nothing works.”
“What do you mean?”
“The lights. Clock, radio—nothing works.”
Bea walked into the dim of the house, flicked the switch. “Maybe the batteries went out. I’ll turn the generator on.”
She went back outside to the little shed on the side of the house and worked the combination lock. Dad had always said the generator was the only thing they had that was worth stealing. She finally opened the door. The generator, a black Briggs & Stratton monstrosity, had a battery-powered ignition, and as she pushed the big red on button, she wondered what the blast had been. A nuclear explosion? A devastating volcanic eruption was the most likely event for them to encounter here in Hawaii. But what kind of phenomena caused planes to fall out of the sky?
She stabbed the red button repeatedly, but nothing happened.
Sam looked over her shoulder. “Maybe new batteries for the ignition switch?”
“Just what I was thinking.” She hurried into the kitchen and fetched a couple of AA batteries, returned and installed them in the switch box. She hit the red button again, and this time a spark flew out of the button area with a fizzing sound.
Still no ignition.
Sam had brought a screwdriver, and when she stood back, he inserted the small Phillips-head into the switch box and unscrewed the metal surround. Running from the contact points of the batteries were red ignition wires—and they were frayed, the plastic melted.
She and Sam put their heads farther into the shed and checked all around the generator—every bit of wire that could have carried a charge was damaged. Bea stepped back, putting her hands on her hips and watching her brother. Sam had always had a mechanical knack, and now, when he turned to her, his face was pinched with anxiety.
“All this wiring is shot. It’s lucky the whole thing didn’t catch on fire.” Sam pointed to a scrim of black charcoal on the wall behind the generator. “I wonder what’s happening in the town.”
“Oh my God.” Bea’s heart bumped against her ribs, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Jaden. I wonder if he’s okay. And Dad.” She turned and ran back into the house, tearing off her bathing suit in the bedroom to haul on some jeans and a T-shirt. She braided her hair as she went back into the kitchen, rubber-banding the damp, salty strands.
She threw all the food she could find into a box and carried it outside.
“Sam, we need to get ready for a lot of things to happen. People could come here looking for shelter and food—and we don’t know if they’ll be friendly. I’m going back to town to see what’s happening, see what I can find out and look for Dad. You take all the food you can out to the cave and then keep an eye out. If anyone comes, hide.”
“Why don’t we help them?”
“Maybe we will. But this could be bad if the explosion or whatever fried all the electricity.”
“You’re not leaving me here.” Sam’s brown eyes narrowed and he set his jaw. She didn’t remember seeing that expression on him before, but it looked remarkably like her own face when she made up her mind about something. “Let’s go together.”
It might be time to quit babying Sam. “Okay. Let’s hurry, then. I just hate to leave the house unguarded.”
“We’ll lock it.”
Bea snorted. “Like that will matter.”
Even as they spoke, the two had gone into the kitchen, and Bea took a plastic garbage bag and threw bedding and clothes into it while Sam filled plastic gallon jugs they used for filtering water. In half an hour they’d taken everything that seemed like it might be useful out to the cave. She arranged some old lumber their dad had been using for firewood over the cave opening.
Bea felt her heart pounding with urgency as she belted the riding blanket onto the mare. She hopped up, her .22 rifle in one hand. Rainbow tossed her head and snorted as Bea gave Sam a hand up behind her—she could tell the mare was tired, but the rest and food had restored her somewhat.
“Let’s go, girl.” She clucked and dug her heels in. Sam wrapped his arms around her waist, and they trotted up the road toward Lanai City.
They smelled the smoke of burning long before they came to the town.
Chapter Eight
Bea and Sam tied Rainbow and climbed up onto the flat stone platform with its bird’s-eye view down into Lanai City. On their bellies, instinctively keeping out of sight, Bea and Sam crawled forward and looked off the edge of the rock.
The town, set in a cuplike hollow surrounded by tall Cook pines and raised ground, was obscured by billowing smoke, intermittently clearing to reveal flames blanketing it. Bea’s hearing was still off, but she could make out a crazy crackle. The smell wasn’t the clean of wood smoke; it was plastic, paint, and metal salted by gas.
The terrible scene was strangely silent. Bea realized she was listening for sirens—fire and police—but there were none. Just the crackling roar of the town, eerily burning.
“I have to go down there,” Bea said. “But I’d feel better if you stayed. You can keep an eye on me from here.”
Sam was silent for a long moment. Unspoken between them was how hard it was for Sam to move fast on foot, and packing double was a burden to the mare.
“Okay. Find help for the plane people first, and look for Dad.” Sam reached into his back pocket and took out the wicked metal Y of his slingshot with its built-in wrist support, industrial-grade rubber thong, and pouch of small round lead fishing weights. Their father had offered him a pellet gun, but Sam preferred hunting with the slingshot. Bea had seen one of those little lead weights tear the head right off of a grouse.
“I’m going to take the rifle,” Bea said to Sam. “Lie low if you see anyone you don’t know. People are going to be scared and maybe they won’t be thinking straight. We don’t know yet, so stay out of sight.”
“I will.” Sam gave her a fierce hug. “Get help. Come back as soon as you can.”
“Of course.” She hugged him back. On her way back down to Rainbow, she put her hand into the secret crack in the stones where Jaden left her notes.
Sure enough, there was a folded paper. She unfolded it to read Jaden’s scrawl.
The news says the lights are a solar st
orm, he wrote. Hopefully, it will just be a pretty light show, but people are scared. I will bring gas next time. Everyone is buying it all, and I couldn’t get any. He’d folded twenty dollars into the middle of the note. Your cut of the money. See you soon.
Bea slid the note and cash into her hip pocket, wondering when it would be useful. This disaster seemed all encompassing, and what was twenty dollars going to do? Yesterday it would have meant so much.
Bea untied the mare, pulled herself up, and swung the horse in an arc, kicking her into a canter down the road toward the burning town, the rifle balanced on her thigh.
Sam watched his sister ride away like she was part of the horse, the rifle upright as a spear. Bea reminded him of pictures he’d seen of warriors riding into battle. The mare seemed to have found some new reservoir of energy, unleashing a full gallop toward the town. Gouts of smoke rolled across the road, and then horse and rider were engulfed, disappearing from sight.
Sam scooted back from the edge and rolled onto his back. The sky was clear again, a mocking blue bowl. Like nothing bad had happened. Like no airplanes had fallen out of the sky right in front of him. Even the sparkles in the sky were gone.
He put his arms over his eyes, stinging from the smoke—and let himself cry. What if Bea never came back? And his dad was gone? He’d be left here, alone. Just getting back to the house would take hours with his bad leg, and then what?
He sobbed harder, a storm of weeping that cried out all that was wrong with the world. Finally, winding down, he rolled over and leaned his hot, throbbing face on the stone. His head hurt and his stomach churned.
He missed his mom with a fierce ache—she’d known how to fold him into a hug that made everything feel better.
You’re not alone. Bea will come back.
A voice, deep and ringing, sounded in his inner ear. Sam gulped down his tears, scrubbed them off his face, and wiped his nose on his T-shirt sleeve. He pushed himself up to look around.
Someone had just spoken to him; he was sure of it.
The smoke had gusted away from the road for a moment. The town was still burning, and Bea was still gone.
Have a little faith, the voice in his mind said. You’re not alone.
Sam rubbed his stinging eyes. Even at a distance he recognized Bea’s friend Jaden Acupan emerging out of the smoke, coming down the road toward the stone outcrop. Jaden was wearing a backpack, moving at a jog, and carrying a spear gun. Sam pushed away from the edge. Surely Bea didn’t mean for him to hide from her best friend. He scrubbed his face again and climbed down the rock to meet Jaden.
“Thank God you’re here.” Jaden’s dark eyes scanned around and behind Sam as he came to a halt. Sweat, dirt, and smoke wreathed his shirt and swim trunks. Whipcord lean but filled out in the shoulders, Jaden radiated an adult competency that brought prickling tears of relief to Sam’s eyes. “My dad sent me to look for you guys. Where’s Bea? And what happened to your face?”
“She rode into town to try to find help and to look for Dad. And I fell.”
“Fell. Right.” Jaden’s voice conveyed both kindness and disbelief as he squeezed Sam’s shoulder. He swiveled on his heel, looking back down the road. “Dammit—I mean darn, she shouldn’t have done that. It’s not safe.”
“What do you mean?” Sam gulped.
Jaden looked back at him. “Did she say where she was going?”
“We saw a plane fall out of the sky. She was going to try to find some help for the survivors. They’re down at the beach.” Jaden must have seen the distress in his face, because he slung an arm around Sam’s shoulders, turned him, and headed toward the rock.
“Does she have the .22?”
“Yes. And she’s on Rainbow.”
“She’ll be fine, then, but I don’t know how she’s going to find anyone who can help. Everyone’s swamped trying to put out the fires. Let’s keep a lookout. So, tell me about the plane.” They both lay on their bellies and watched the road as Sam told his halting tale from the top of the rock.
“It looked like people might have died, and there were a lot of injuries,” Sam finished. “What got the fire going in town?”
“The fire started when the transformers blew, which happened right after the explosion,” Jaden said. “Every house must have just sprouted sparks from the outlets, and a lot of them went up right away.” He cleared his throat. “It’s not good. My family sent me to find you guys, see if we can scrounge for food and hide it in your cave. Things are going to get bad pretty fast, and not everyone’s helping one another like they should.”
“We wanted to get help for the people from the plane.”
“Well, I don’t think that’s going to be possible. None of the emergency vehicles are running. I did bring some first aid supplies in my backpack, but I don’t know how much good it will do. Our house hasn’t burned so far because our friends and family are helping keep the neighbors’ houses from going up, hoping it doesn’t spread to our block.”
“I hope Bea comes back soon,” Sam said. He couldn’t put his fears for his sister into words.
“Me too,” Jaden said. They stared down the road into the flames.
Nick helped the last person through the water to the beach, lowering the elderly lady to the sand in the shade of one of the beach trees. She collapsed, weeping. Her husband was one of the six dead passengers lined up in a battered, bloody row on the beach, their faces covered with blankets from the plane. He patted her shoulder, looking around for help—where was Janice? Comforting old ladies was definitely not his thing. He stood and turned away, but she clutched his sleeve. “Don’t leave me!”
Nick spotted Janice up under the trees, working on one of the injured passengers. He counted ten hurt people lying on towels and airline blankets in a row. His back ached from carrying the bodies out of the plane to the beach and helping with the injured, and smears of blood already stiffened his clothes. He shut his eyes hard for a moment to block the memories of what he’d had to see, and touch, and do.
It didn’t work.
For something to do, the habit powerful, Nick took his cell phone out and tried to power it on with his thumb.
No cell phones were working. They’d been unable to contact help because nothing worked, not even the radio on the plane. Listening to the adults speculating, Nick had a feeling they were on their own, that the explosion that had thrown them out of the sky had affected a lot more than just their plane. As he looked around at his bewildered, traumatized fellow passengers, he realized he was doing better than most in spite of his persistent headache.
He sat down beside the grief-stricken woman and unzipped his backpack. He took out a bottle he’d purchased in the airport. “Here, have some water.” He looped an arm around her trembling shoulders, realizing it had been a long time since he’d helped anyone.
Bea reined in the mare as a rolling boil of smoke engulfed them. Rainbow’s ears flattened, and she snorted, tossing her head in discomfort. Bea leaned forward to lay her cheek alongside the horse’s neck.
“Easy does it, girl.” Bea looked at the ground below them. Visibility was terrible, until another gust of wind lifted the smoke, swirling it away in the opposite direction. The crackling she’d heard increased to a roar, and Bea could feel the heat.
Rainbow slowed to a walk, bobbing her head anxiously, as they approached the first of the burning houses. Bea could hear shouts, and through the smoke she glimpsed a chain of shadowy people passing buckets and tossing water on a house—not one of the burning ones, one of those beside it. It appeared that without real firefighting equipment available, folks were focusing on keeping the fire from spreading.
A dog darted out in front of them, appearing suddenly out of the murk and barking. Rainbow shied, a sideways leap that nearly unseated Bea. The horse wheeled and galloped back the way they’d come.
Just as well—at the moment, it didn’t look like she’d be able to find anyone able to leave firefighting to help the plane-wreck victims. The
hotel was up a slight incline, just outside of town, and that’s where Bea needed to look for Dad. She let the horse run, knowing how tired the mare was. She reminded the mare she wasn’t alone with soothing words in her flattened ear.
The exhausted horse finally slowed. Shudders ran over Rainbow’s hide as though it were crawling with ants. Bea slid down to the ground, patting the mare’s neck as she walked her up the long, uphill-sloping hotel driveway lined with majestic pines. The drive ended at a circle turnaround and a gracious edifice styled after a plantation mansion.
The Lanai Lodge was everything gracious and high-toned, backed by a rolling golf course, putting green, walking trails, multiple pools, and an orchid-filled greenhouse.
And it was on fire, too.
Bea sped up beside the mare, heading past the extension of the Lodge under giant banyan trees. The building burned merrily, with no suppression efforts in sight. As they hit the springy, manicured grass of the grounds, she finally saw someone—a coworker of her father’s. The man’s eyes were wide, and he was streaked with soot and dirt, his stare glazed as he hurried past them.
“Mr. Inciong! You seen my dad? Will Whitely?”
“Got to get home to my family,” Inciong tossed over his shoulder. “He took his truck down to the docks to pick up some supplies before the explosion.”
The docks were a long, winding way down the hump of the island. Her father could be stranded anywhere outside of town along the precipitous two-lane road that switchbacked to the harbor.
One harbor was where the passenger ferry docked, along with tour boats and sightseeing catamarans. A few miles around the coast, on the “backside” of the island, was a working harbor accommodating the more plebeian transport boats that supplied Lanai. He’d probably gone to the supply harbor, a long and strenuous trek for Rainbow. The mare was in no shape to attempt it at the moment. Bea turned to call after Mr. Inciong, but the man had broken into a run, no doubt glimpsing the fire in town and terrified for his family.
