The Survivors

by Dinah McCall

  “Good evening,” she answered, then returned her attention to the magazine she was reading.

  Patrick winked at the little boy sitting across the aisle, then dug in his pocket for one of the silver dollars for which he was famous for giving out during his campaigns. He pretended to pull it out of the little boy’s ear, then handed it to him as a treat.

  “Wow! Granddad, did you see that? He pulled that money out of my ear.”

  “I sure did, Johnny boy. Better put that in your pocket before you lose it.”

  The little boy was so thrilled, he reached into his other ear, checking to see if there might be one in there, as well, before dropping the oversize coin into the pocket of his pants.

  The older couple who were with the boy laughed along with the senator, and the moment passed.

  Finn sat down, straightening his clothes, and was reaching for his seat belt when he heard a familiar voice. He looked up, stunned by the coincidence and silently cursing the hands of fate that had done this to him.

  “Wow. What are the odds of this happening?” Darren Wilson said. “I’m in the seat next to you.” He waved his boarding pass to prove his point.

  Patrick stood up without comment to let Darren be seated, then sat back down.

  “This was meant to be,” Darren said.

  Patrick refused to be baited. “Going home for the holidays?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  In fact Darren Wilson was on his way out of the country, hopscotching on whatever flights were available on such short notice, but he wasn’t going to tell Patrick Finn that.

  “Have a good flight,” Patrick said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m joining the family in Santa Fe, so I’m planning on catching up on my sleep on the way.”

  Darren just smiled as he thought about what this could mean. Maybe this was one of those meant-to-be moments that would let him get out of trouble after all. He locked and unlocked his seat belt three times and then took a deep breath, before the urge to repeat finally ceased.

  Patrick could pretend to sleep all he wanted, because whether Finn liked it or not, he was going to be Darren’s captive audience for the next three hours. He went from a feeling of hopelessness to an adrenaline high. God was with him after all.

  Thorn!

  John Thornton O’Ryan huddled under his covers as a cold wind rattled his bedroom windows. It was one of those rare December cold spells that had Florida fruit farmers in a panic. Subconsciously, he shifted restlessly in his sleep as he tried to ignore whoever was calling his name.

  Thorn!

  The muscles in the calves of his legs began to twitch. Nothing he hadn’t endured before due to the arthritis in his eighty-five-year-old knees, but enough to rouse him from sleep.

  Wake up!

  Thorn flinched as his subconscious responded immediately to the demand in his wife Marcella’s voice. He opened his eyes abruptly and was halfway out of bed when he stilled and remembered that Marcella had been dead for more than fifteen years.

  Wearily, he rubbed his hands over his face and glanced at the clock. It was just past three in the morning and only days until Christmas.

  “I must have been dreaming,” he muttered, and combed his fingers through the thatch of his thick gray hair.

  The boy! Help the boy!

  He stilled, this time in shock. His eyes were open. He was wide awake, and yet he still heard her.

  “Marcella?”

  When she didn’t answer, he stood abruptly and reached for the lamp. Light flooded the room, revealing a thin film of frost on the outsides of the windows. He shuddered as his gaze raked the shadows.

  “Marcy?”

  Help the boy!

  “The boy?”

  Yes. Help the boy!

  The only child in the O’Ryan family was five-year-old John Paul O’Ryan, Thorn’s great-great-grandson, Johnny to the family. He glanced at the clock again. It was past 3:00 a.m. here in Miami, which meant it was after 2:00 a.m., Dallas time. But it wasn’t the time that was causing Thorn’s hesitation. It was the fact that Johnny’s father, Evan, had only recently been released from an army hospital after serious injuries incurred during a tour of duty in Iraq. Thorn’s great-grandson had yet to deal with the fact that his military career was over. He’d lost an eye, suffered serious head injuries, and had left with some very noticeable scars on one side of his face and neck.

  Thorn had to consider Evan’s emotional and physical condition if he called this time of night, yet he couldn’t bring himself to ignore what had just happened. He might be getting old, but he wasn’t senile. Marcella’s entire world had revolved around the men in her life. From her husband, Thorn, to their son, James, and his son, Michael, to their great-grandson, Evan. Even though Johnny had been born ten years after Marcella’s passing, it didn’t mean she was unaware of his existence. Not to Thorn’s mind.

  His shoulders slumped as he reached for the phone. He didn’t know how Evan was faring, but he was about to find out.

  Dallas, Texas, 2:30 a.m.

  After three years as a widower and then being called back to active duty over eighteen months ago, Evan O’Ryan had almost forgotten what it was like to share a bed. And since the day an Iraqi land mine had taken out his truck, leaving him in pieces, he’d just about forgotten what a good night’s sleep was all about.

  He’d been back in Dallas less than two weeks, trying to come to terms with what the war had done to him. The physical scars were obvious. From time to time he still startled himself by catching a glimpse of his own reflection, but that was getting easier to accept. The real difficulties he faced were mental.

  He hadn’t seen his son in almost a year. He’d missed Johnny’s fifth birthday, and a year and a half of his life. It was a high price to pay for a war he wasn’t sure he believed in. And thanks to that war, he could no longer work the job he’d had before he’d been deployed.

  He’d come home only to lose his pilot’s license because of the handicaps he now bore, and was looking at at least a half dozen more surgeries to minimize the scarring on his face and neck. If that wasn’t enough, he didn’t know what the hell he was going to say to his son to explain why Daddy looked like a bad dream.

  Still, he’d managed to stay alive, refusing to orphan his only child, the fear that had been uppermost in his mind from the day he’d received his orders. The baggage that had come with making that happen would have to work itself out. He didn’t have time to feel sorry for himself. He wanted his life back. He wanted his son home. And, after the sacrifices he’d made, he didn’t think that was too much to ask.

  So he’d gone to bed, knowing that in two days his wife’s parents, Frank and Shirley Pollard, who’d been taking care of Johnny since he’d been deployed, would be on his doorstep with his son. That didn’t leave him much time to buy a Christmas tree, get out the decorations and do what he could to put his house in order. A year and a half to a five-year-old was a lifetime. He needed to be sure that the house looked as it always did during the holidays, because he damn sure didn’t look the same.

  It was with these troublesome thoughts that he’d gone to bed, but as always, his sleep was restless. He’d been in bed for almost four hours and was trapped in the web of another round of bad dreams when the phone began to ring.

  The sound was loud and startling, and he caught himself reaching for his rifle before he realized the rifle wasn’t on the cot in his tent and neither was he.

  “Christ,” he muttered as he grabbed at the phone with a shaking hand. Misjudging the distance, he managed to knock it off the table before he could answer it, and cursed the loss of his eye and the mess it had made of his depth perception.

  Finally he had the receiver in hand and stifled another curse as he managed to answer.

  “Hello?”

  Thorn sighed. Judging from the sounds he’d just heard, maybe he should have waited until morning, although it was too late now for second thoughts. He gripped the receiver a little tighter a
nd cleared his throat.

  “Evan…it’s me, Grandpop. Sorry I woke you.”

  Evan struggled through the chaos in his mind to a corner of sanity. Grandpop? At this time of night?

  “What’s wrong? Are you sick? Has something happened to Granddad? Or to Dad?”

  Thorn cleared his throat again.

  “I’m fine, and as far as I know, so are they.”

  Pain shot from the place where Evan’s eye had been to the back of his jaw. He groaned softly, then gritted his teeth until the spasm had passed. A couple of seconds came and went before he could form words, and when he did, he regretted that they sounded so sharp.

  “Glad everyone’s okay, but this is a hell of a time for a chat.”

  “You’re right,” Thorn said. “So I’ll get right to the point. I had a visit tonight from your grandmother, and I need to know if Johnny is all right.”

  Evan shook his head, like a dog shedding water.

  “Grandpop, are you sure you’re all right? I mean…Grandmother is—”

  “Hell, boy, I know she’s gone. There hasn’t been an hour of my life for the past fifteen years that I haven’t been reminded of that in some way or another. So quit worrying about my sanity and answer the question. Is Johnny all right?”

  “Yes, sure,” Evan said.

  Thorn frowned. “You’re sure?”

  Now Evan was frowning. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  “Monday,” Evan said.

  “Well, boy, today is Wednesday. Anything could have happened in the past two days.”

  A muscle twitched near the corner of Evan’s mouth.

  “I know that, but don’t you think Frank and Shirley would have called to let me know if it had?”

  Thorn thought about the couple who’d given their daughter to this man and then lost her for good when she died. The only connection to her they had left was Johnny, and they doted on him. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to ignore Marcella’s warning.

  “Look, Evan, you’re not going to like this. Hell, most likely you won’t even believe it, but trust me when I say I do. Your grandmother woke me up out of a real good sleep and told me to ‘help the boy.’ Your son is the only boy in the family, so I figured she was talking about Johnny. Now, do your grandpop a big favor and call the Pollards. Insist that one of them go into Johnny’s room and make sure he’s okay.”

  Evan sighed.

  “Grandpop! It’s a quarter to three. I can’t call them at this time of night…uh, I mean, morning, and ask something like that.”

  “Yes, you can. You have to!”

  Evan shoved a hand through his hair in frustration, wincing when his fingers hit a tender spot beneath the new growth coming in.

  “Okay…I can, but I’m not going to. There’s no need scaring the—”

  “Then give me their number,” Thorn said. “I’ll call them.”

  “Come on, Grandpop, they’ll think you’re—”

  “I don’t give a flying you-know-what about anyone’s opinion of me. I’m telling you that something is wrong.”

  Evan glanced at the clock, debating with himself as to what he should do to calm his great-grandfather down. He didn’t believe for a minute that his great grandmother’s ghost had delivered some ominous message, but obviously Thorn did.

  “Okay, Grandpop. I’ll make a call, but it’s on your head when they start having a fit over me waking everyone up.”

  “Call me back,” Thorn demanded.

  “Yes, sir,” Evan said.

  “I won’t go back to bed until you call,” Thorn added.

  Evan smiled to himself.

  “I know, Grandpop, and I’ll call, I promise.”

  With that, Evan hung up and then sat on the side of the bed with his hands on his knees, debating the wisdom of waiting a few minutes and then calling Thorn back and pretending he’d called. But the moment he thought it, he discarded the notion. O’Ryans didn’t lie, especially to one another.

  With a muffled curse and then a reluctant sigh, he picked up the phone and punched in the number of his father-in-law’s house, well aware that Frank Pollard was going to give him hell for the call.

  He didn’t think anything of the first four rings that went unanswered, but when the fifth, then the sixth, came and went and an answering machine picked up, he frowned.

  “Okay, so maybe the ringer is off,” he muttered, and waited for the answering machine to beep. “Frank, it’s Evan…are you there?”

  The fact that still no one answered was somewhat upsetting. Granted, it was now four in the morning, Michigan time, and Frank was a little hard of hearing. Yet the moment he thought it, he knew that excuse didn’t wash. Shirley’s hearing was just fine.

  “Frank? Shirley? It’s me. Evan. Are you there? If you are, I need you to pick up.”

  The machine beeped, ending the timed sequence for messages, and the line went dead.

  Evan inhaled on a shaky breath. He was overreacting, and it was all Grandpop’s fault. He needed to think rationally. Frank and Shirley knew that when they brought Johnny home for Christmas, he would be staying. As of yesterday, Johnny’s school was out for Christmas vacation. They’d probably taken Johnny somewhere special to commemorate his time with them. Yeah, that had to be it. But even now that he had it figured out, he still needed confirmation. He would call Frank’s cell phone. No matter where they were, Frank always had his cell.

  He got up, turning on lights through the house as he went. He grabbed his address book out of the desk, flipped through the pages until he found the number to Frank’s cell phone, then grabbed the phone and made the call. Satisfied that his concerns would soon be put to rest, he leaned against the wall, waiting for Frank to pick up.

  It rang.

  And then it rang again and again until it rolled over into voice mail. He left a message, but when he finally disconnected, his hands were shaking. This was crazy. Nothing was wrong. He was making a big deal out of nothing. So Frank wasn’t answering his cell. Maybe he was out of range. Maybe the battery had run down. Maybe…

  Harold! He would call Frank’s brother, Harold. Frank and Shirley always asked Harold to feed their cat when they traveled. Harold would know if they were on a trip.

  He flipped through the address book again, found Harold Pollard’s number and dialed. By now he couldn’t have cared less what time it was. He had to know all was well.

  Harold answered on the third ring. Evan heard the sleep and confusion in his voice, and apologized only as an afterthought.

  “Harold…it’s me, Evan O’Ryan, Johnny’s dad. I’m sorry for calling so late, but I’ve been trying to reach Frank and Shirley and having no luck.”

  Evan could hear Harold clearing his throat and fumbling, probably for the lamp.

  “Evan?”

  “Yes, Harold, it’s me.”

  “Frank and Shirley aren’t home,” Harold said.

  Evan breathed a quick sigh of relief. He knew it! He had jumped to a dire conclusion, and all because of Grandpop’s crazy dream. But his relief soon faded when Harold continued.

  “They wanted to surprise you and show up a couple days early, so they took a 6:00 p.m. flight out of Lansing. They should have been in Dallas by now.”

  Evan gripped the receiver a little tighter, as if holding on to it would help him hold on to his senses.

  “But they’re not,” Evan said. “Do you know the flight plan or what airline they took?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. I have it written down in the kitchen. Hold on and I’ll get you the info.”

  He could hear Harold fumbling some more, then nothing, as Harold left the room. A few moments later, Evan heard him pick up an extension.

  “Here we are,” Harold said. “Um…let’s see. Okay, it was Majestic Airlines, Flight 522. They left Lansing at 6:00 p.m. They were switching flights in Atlanta, going to Albuquerque, and then straight into DFW just before midnight. The flights are all out
of the way, but it was all they could get this near Christmas. I can’t imagine why—”

  “Probably a delay in Atlanta,” Evan said as he wrote down the information. “Thanks, Harold. I’ll call the airline and check it out.”

  “Yes, well, all right,” Harold said. “But if there’s a problem, be sure and let me know.”

  Evan hung up the phone, then grabbed the phonebook. Although he was still a little disconcerted, he figured that Johnny and the Pollards must have arrived in Dallas so late that they’d taken a hotel for the night and were planning on surprising him in the morning. He hated to ruin their surprise, but he needed to know they were all right.

  He found the number and dialed. It rang a couple of times, and then a recording came on. By the time Evan got through the automated menu to a living, breathing person, he was frustrated all over again.

  “Majestic Airlines, how can I help you?”

  “My name is Evan O’Ryan. I’m trying to get some information on Flight 522. My son and his grandparents are on that flight. Could you tell me what time it landed in Dallas?”

  “I’m sorry, could you repeat that flight number for me?” the woman asked.

  “Flight 522.”

  The woman’s voice shook slightly when she spoke again, but Even didn’t notice.

  “Sir, if you could hold for a moment while I check the status…”

  “Sure,” Evan said.

  He heard one full chorus of “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles before someone picked up the line, only this time it was a man.

  “This is Robert Farmer. I understand you want information on Flight 522?”

  “Yes,” Evan said. “I want to know what time it landed in Dallas.”

  “And you’re inquiring about whom?”

  Evan frowned. “My son and my in-laws.”

  “What are their names?” the man asked.

  “Johnny O’Ryan is my son. Frank and Shirley Pollard are my in-laws.”

  There was a brief moment of silence, and then the man cleared his throat. “Yes, yes, they’re on the passenger list.”

  Evan sighed.

  “Look. I know they’re on the list. What I need to know is what time their flight landed.”