Slowly she glanced up from the sales-bin and met eyes with the giant from the café, his NYC baseball cap sitting primly atop his head. Like before he was staring fervently, his expression carrying an anxious twist.
‘Your mother never teach you it’s not polite to stare?’ Abbey said calmly.
Like in the café the giant turned away awkwardly, pretended to be perusing the magazines – Pregnant Mothers, Monthly?
It was strange, despite the man’s size she didn’t feel threatened by him. The way he turned away abashed, he resembled a twelve year old who’d been caught scanning the underwear section in one of his mum’s catalogues.
‘Were you following me?’ she asked moving closer.
Instead of answering, the giant picked up Housewife & Home and began flicking through the pages, eyes glancing up every few pages.
Another step. ‘What’s your name?’
Replacing the magazine, the man turned his huge body towards her. He continued to look down, his eyes locked onto the nasty green tiles beneath their feet. ‘I learned the alphabet,’ he muttered. His accent carried the faint trace of Australia.
Hand to her mouth, Abbey took a step back, embarrassed. ‘You…you did?’ she mouthed. ‘Well that’s no easy thing, is it?’
The giant shook his head. ‘No, but I can do it first time,’ he said proudly. ‘Want me to show you?’
‘You don’t need to do that. What’s your na –’
‘A…B…C…D…G…F…’
She placed a hand on the big man’s arm. ‘What’s your name?’
He thought about that for a moment. ‘Eric De Boor,’ he said confidently. ‘You can call me Eric.’
‘And who are you travelling with, Eric De Boor?’
‘You’re very pretty.’
‘Eric, I think you might be lost. Who’re you trav –’
‘I saw what the man had under his jacket!’ Eric cut in.
She looked around hoping to spot someone looking for their son, brother, father, but the airport was too busy.
Eric shuffled from foot to foot. ‘He was trying to hide it but I saw.’
‘Who are you travelling with, Eric?’ she persisted.
‘I’m with my mother, Elaine De Boor. But I don’t know where she is. She went to find something-hot-to-drink.’
Abbey couldn’t help but smile as Eric repeated his mother’s words. ‘So she’s at the café?’
‘I don’t know. She went to find something-hot-to-drink.’
She sighed, frustrated.
‘Are you mad at me?’ he said glumly. ‘Sometimes people get mad at me.’
‘Of course not,’ she assured him. ‘I’m just trying to help you get back to your mother.’
‘My mother’s name is Elaine De Boor. She went to buy something-hot-to-drink.’
Rubbing her eyes, she said, ‘I’ll tell you what, Eric, go ahead and tell me the alphabet.’
*
It wasn’t easy but Abbey finally managed to extract a gate number from Eric, and thankfully it was the same as hers. Like she and Milo, he and his mother were travelling to Auckland through the night.
At the gate she found Elaine De Boor nursing a cardboard takeaway cup, head buried in a Bible. Since Eric was forty-ish, she guessed Elaine to be somewhere in her late sixties, early seventies, but she carried no air of frailty. Abbey guessed a lifetime of raising a challenged son had carved her out of wood, and as she approached with Eric, Elaine De Boor climbed to her feet with the ease of a teenager.
‘Where was he this time?’ Elaine asked. And then to Eric, ‘I swear to god, they’ll be prizing you off the runway one of these days!’
‘Found him in the bookstore at the top end of the terminal,’ Abbey said. ‘Is he alright wandering off on his own like that?’
‘Look at the size of him, darl! You’d have to be an idiot to antagonise him.’
Growing immediately impatient Eric was off again, heading back towards the café.
‘He remembers short term things fairly well. So long as he knows the gate number and what time to be back, I let him go explore. Means I can read in peace.’
Abbey smiled. ‘Well, I’m glad I took the time to bring him back then.’
‘God bless you, darl,’ Elaine replied and went back to the Bible.
Mixing back into the throng of travellers, Abbey made her way back to the café wondering if Milo had waited, but the booth was empty.
As she turned to leave, that’s when she met him.
Bumping into the person behind her, she watched as the coffee flew from his hand in slow motion and crashed down onto the table to their left, lid popping off the cardboard cup and erupting over the nuclear family and their lack of conversation.
How.
Embarrassing.
Through a blizzard of apologies and the angry ramblings of the father, she finally took a proper look at her collision partner.
‘Hi,’ he smirked and held up a hand in greeting.
For a second she stood transfixed. The man was about her age, with sandy blonde hair, clear blue eyes and a cheeky grin. To call him handsome would have been an insult to his face.
‘I…I…’ she stammered.
‘Coffee was lousy anyway,’ said Blue Eyes, his smoky American accent delivering the words to her on a bed of silk. ‘I was about to hurl it at that old guy over there, but I guess the family deserved it more.’
He waited for a reply. When none came, he said, ‘I’m James,’ and held out his hand.
‘Erm, Abbey,’ she stuttered and shook the man’s hand. There was more to say, she was certain.
‘Well, Abbey, it was lovely to meet you,’ he said at last.
For heart-stoppingly long seconds he held her stare, and then without another word, he moved past her and disappeared into the crowd.
Carnage.
*
Wasn't it true that once a downed aeroplane began burning, you had ninety seconds max to get out, or you burned with it?
Abbey was sure she'd read that somewhere.
‘You’re looking a little pale there, Abs,’ said Milo Stanton as he dropped into the next seat and fiddled with the table in front. ‘This that whole technology thing again? Let me tell you, planes do not drop out of the sky anymore. It’s like one in a bah-zillion flights or something goes down.’
Abbey wedged the picture of her husband into the corner of the locked table, wishing she'd brought some miniatures on board. ‘Jesus, don’t start with the statistics before we're even off the ground!'
‘Just trying to make you feel better. For me, all I have to do is picture that lovely, gleaming, shiny, sparkly new BMW and guess what…’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘It puts a grin right on my face!’
‘Well instead of daydreaming about flash cars why don’t you get your laptop out and go through the proposals? You can kiss the BMW goodbye if we don’t nail this one.’
‘I can’t 'til we’re in the air, that burly homosexual steward will kick off at me.’
‘How do you know he’s gay?’
‘Like I know my cousin is gay,’ he revealed. ‘I just know.’
‘And there was me challenging your sexual integrity.’
‘Nothing wrong with me, girl!’ Milo said defensively. ‘I'm all man.’
She smirked. ‘Relax, Milo, I was being facetious.’
‘Face-what-ious!’ he grumbled. ‘You know I don’t like it when you do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘Use big words. Why do you think I’m trying to extend my vocab?’
‘I know you can’t backchat when you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.’
‘Touché,’ he ceded. ‘Nevertheless, I do have the uncanny ability to talk my way around long words.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yeah, that is so, Miss Fetus.’
‘Facetious.’
‘Whatever.’
As Milo began to get settled in, she spotted blue-e
yed James stowing his bag several rows in front. He caught her looking and waved. Never had she clammed up so badly in front of a man before, not even Edward, her husband. But then she didn’t think she’d ever met a man quite so good looking. Edward was handsome in a rugged, Gerard Butler kind of way.
She went for rugged. Rugged did it for her.
James, though, he was beautiful. It turned out beautiful did it for her too. Was she horny, she wondered? It had turned into a kind of ritual between her and Edward to wash away the weeks of frustration within minutes of her being home. Sadly, home was six thousand miles away.
Slowly the plane began to move along the tarmac as the final few passengers took their seats. For several minutes they taxied, waiting for their turn to take off. Milo had his eyes closed now, headphones plugged into his ears. He looked downright calm.
The plane lurched to a stop. She gripped the armrests tightly. Milo was looking at her now, and she couldn’t tell if he was amused by her fear or concerned. The stewardess who gave the safety demo did a final check on seatbelts. Abbey’s was fastened; she’d checked it religiously since snapping it closed.
Reaching the end of the aisle, the stewardess took a seat and buckled herself in.
Milo leaned over. ‘You ready?’
The Rolls Royce twin engines kicked in and the plane rocketed forwards, tearing down the runway. Teeth grinding, Abbey locked her eyes onto the picture of Edward and his reassuring smile. His confidence that always made her feel safe.
Shaking and vibrating, the plane left the tarmac and soared up into the sky as though it was light as a feather, rather than the thousands of tons of steel and moving parts it actually was. The rumbling grew more dramatic for intolerably long seconds before finally,
Finally…
the plane leveled out. Minutes later, the seatbelt sign vanished.
‘You can loosen up on those armrests now, Abs,’ suggested Milo. ‘Wasn’t so bad, was it?’
She exhaled loudly. ‘Speak for yourself.’
Unsnapping the belt, Milo went back to his iPhone. ‘Good thing I brought this.’
‘Your third arm?’
‘This flight is going to put it to the test. Can Apple entertain me for sixteen hours?’
She closed her eyes. ‘What about the in-flight movies?’
‘What about them?’
‘See if there’s something good showing,’ she suggested.
He began prodding the screen in front. ‘It’s usually a bunch of chick-flicks on these things. I’ve seen Moulin Rouge six times since we left Heathrow.’
‘Well, you could always do what I’m going to do.’
‘Yeah, what’s that?’
‘Sleep.’
‘Since when have I been able to sleep on public transport, woman?’
‘Well then, the proposals it is!’
‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘We’ve already got it sealed tight. Nothing can go wrong.’
‘I can think of one thing.’
She knew Milo was looking at her. ‘Is this where you tell me to shut up so you can sleep?’
Abbey closed her eyes.
‘Point taken.’
‘Good,’ she smirked. ‘Shut your trap and watch Moulin Rouge.’
‘Fine, if it’s like that, I’ll just put my earphones back in and watch…’ he fiddled with the panel again. ‘…Casper, the Friendly Ghost.’
Abbey’s smirk evolved into a giggle. That was funny.
‘No no,’ he said, ‘don’t feel guilty. Me and Casper are going to be just fine.’
‘I don’t feel guilty.’
‘I don’t want you to.’
‘I don’t.’
Finally, Milo quieted down and went back to his headphones.
She suddenly realised how tired she was. So far they’d spent three days in Riviera Maya in Mexico, three in Brasilia, and almost a week in Durban. After Auckland they were home dry. No more proposals, no more hotel rooms with broken air-conditioning. No more flying.
She sat back and attempted to close out the white noise around her, the soothing rumbling of the engines quietly wooing her. Seconds later, she drifted off.
11
He couldn’t move, his entire system paralysed. And unless that changed in the next sixty seconds, he was going to drown. Synapses somewhere were not transmitting signals as they should, and messages leaving the brain were not reaching their destination. Everything below the neckline was a numb wasteland, leaving him at the mercy of the disinterested waves.
Beneath him was sand. He knew that much because grains had crept into his ears, his mouth. Moreover, he could see just fine. Waves crashed over him, covering him totally, and then rolled back allowing him a few seconds of oxygen. Inch by inch he was being dragged further away from the beach with the tide.
Move, you dumb bastard, he willed himself. You want to die out here?
He recalled the plane hitting the water, the devastating impact. For literally seconds he must have been out, because when he came around, chaos was still churning around him, the plane tossing violently.
But the quiet. The quiet didn’t match the devastation, as if he’d been the sole passenger aboard the plane. Somebody nearby was crying. He could hear it, like he could suddenly hear the torrential riptides tearing at the carriage.
Snapping off the belt he’d hauled himself up and stepped into two feet of tepid water. Bodies were strewn, smashed, torn apart from the impact. In the aisle floated the corpse of an eight or nine year old boy, half his head missing, oxygen mask still strapped around his frail neck, trying to escape in the rushing water.
At the top end of the aisle he found the crier, the blonde stewardess who’d served him a Heineken no more than an hour before. She was trapped beneath a stanchion, the water rising around her.
She’d pleaded, begged him to help her. He’d told her everything was going to be alright. He’d told her he was going to get her out. The next thing he remembered, he was swimming alone for the huge dark mound two or three hundred yards away.
It was an island or a peninsula, he knew this for sure. Parts of the aircraft had crashed to the beach, flames dancing in the gales. Hitting the shore gasping, he had tumbled to the sand. But that had been the start of it. The second he fell, his body had shut down. It was not exhaustion. Something else was wrong.
That was then. This was now.
Move, god damn it!
He held his breath as the next wave tumbled over him. This time he was under for longer. And longer still.
He willed his fingers to move, to claw at the wet sand.
He was pulled under again and dragged away from the beach, his head filled with images of the blonde stewardess, petrified, placing all her faith in him.
And whether it had anything to do with divine intervention or just a stroke of blind luck, he felt his collar snag on something, preventing the currents from whipping him away. Then he was being hooked under the arms and dragged backwards onto the sand.
The rain struck his face. Saltwater erupted from his lungs as he was pitched forwards, his skeletal form a tin can of pins and needles. His entire body was wracked with fire.
And then he heard her. She was asking if he was alright. She was asking if he knew of any more survivors. The Blonde stewardess?
‘I can’t move,’ he spluttered.
‘You made it to the beach, didn't you?’ the voice yelled above the wind. ‘Did someone drag you here?’
‘I…I swam.’
‘Then you can move!’
‘I could,’ he replied. ‘I mean…I woke up in the wreckage, managed to get out and swim to shore.’
‘Then it’s in your head, James,’ said the voice. ‘Get your arse up.’
James?
‘How do you know my name?’
‘This isn’t the time for a meet-and-greet, soldier,’ the voice said. ‘You need to get it into your head, there’s nothing wrong with you. There may be other survivors, I need your help.’
�
�You saved my life,’ he stammered. ‘Tell me your name.’
Behind them the wind tore at the palm trees lining the beach. Rain pummelled them, lightning cracked all around, and the only thing offering illumination were the multiple fires aglow along the beach, refusing to blow out.
‘Tell me your name,’ he insisted.
Blocking his view of the bruised sky a face appeared over him, dark hair tangling in the wind.
‘Abigail,’ she said. ‘Abigail Chambers. Now are you going to get up, or am I throwing you back to the fish!’
*
The sensation in James Bailey’s legs slowly returned. The pins and needles had transformed into feeling and he was able to stand shakily.
What had caused the paralysis he didn't know, but he was standing now. With one arm over Abigail's shoulder she helped him along the beach. They battled the gale together, trudging slowly along the sand. Of all the people to have found him, he couldn’t believe it was this girl. Dark locks, tangled and wet. Perfect green eyes. He tried not to stare.
A couple of hundred yards offshore, dark leviathans disappeared beneath the surface of the water, huge sections of the aircraft swallowed whole.
‘Where the bloody hell is everybody?’ Abigail yelled above the wind.
He’d been wondering the same thing. There didn’t seem to be any bodies, alive or dead, anywhere.
‘Gone down with the plane, probably,’ he shouted back.
‘I don’t think so. There were a handful of bodies in my section when I left the plane, but most of the seats had been ripped out, gone, passengers along with them. I expected the beach to be littered.’
Navigating their way gingerly through the fires and debris, they paused to catch their breath.
‘I think I can manage now,’ he gasped.
Abbey unhooked her arm, her eyes casting upon the bigger fire dancing around the huge chunk of aircraft that had beached and wedged itself against the trees, propped up as if the rest of the plane was buried beneath the sand.
‘Do you see that?’ she called.
A figure was moving around near the tailfin, a silhouette against the backdrop of the fire. It was a man. Straggly blonde shoulder-length hair plastered to his head, thick stubble. He looked like a surfer, board-shorts and flip-flops. He appeared frantic, flipping luggage, one suitcase after another tossed aside, hurled into a pile already discarded.
Hunting Abigail: Fight or Flight? For Abigail, it's both! Page 7
