Zone

by Jack Lance

  Aaron had proven himself immune to Alexandra’s temptations. For months he had bombarded Sharlene with phone calls and text messages, and he had done everything in his power to make their shifts coincide whenever possible.

  His attentions had flattered her, of course, but she had not let him sweep her off her feet. Every time she felt her heart succumbing to his charms, her brain reminded her of Todd Bower and the misery he had brought to her life. And there were other obstacles in the way of a serious relationship. On the outside there seemed to be nothing wrong with her. But beneath the surface swam dark memories, including the day when, like a bolt from the blue, she had lost her mother.

  But two months ago, after she and Aaron had celebrated his thirtieth birthday in a bar in Tokyo, she had gone with him to his hotel room. That night her conviction that she was not yet ready for a new relationship vanished like dust in the wind. Suddenly it had seemed silly to put her life on hold. He was so handsome and kind, and he smelled so wonderful. His intoxicating Armani scent had sabotaged the last bolts on her internal brake system.

  Standing before him, she had unabashedly unbuttoned her shirt and removed her bra. Smiling at his stupefaction and obvious appreciation, she had continued her striptease, opening the buttons on her jeans one by one and letting her fingers slide beneath her white panties.

  ‘Do something, Aaron,’ she had murmured. ‘For God’s sake, do something.’

  He did, with a frenzy and need and passion that had surprised them both.

  Since then, their love affair had been stormy and wonderful. She prayed it would never lose its allure. If only it could always stay the way it was now, she sighed, as she glanced around her cramped quarters on the 747.

  On the other side of the canvas, beyond the glow of her flashlight, it was dark. Darkness was bad. Darkness could hurt people.

  Sharlene felt for the crucifix on her necklace, and once she found it clasped it firmly.

  Quiet imbued the cockpit after Jim signed off from the LAX air-traffic control tower twenty minutes after takeoff and had made initial contact with Oakland Center. They had reached their cruising altitude and speed, and Princess was flying on autopilot.

  What Jim had told Ben Wright, and only him, was that he was about to quit his job. No more long flights for him, he said. Instead, he would find a different kind of job closer to home – in order to save his marriage. Jim had also told Ben that he had made his decision a year ago. But he hadn’t acted on it yet because that decision would signal a drastic change in his life. Jim, Ben was aware, did not handle change very well. In that respect he was like Greg. Especially when it involved change that would turn his life upside down.

  He needed time to sort out the implications for himself, he had told Ben. If he gave up his career, Jody and the children would not leave him. But the downside was equally clear in his mind. He loved his job – it was as simple as that.

  These two sides of him had continuously crossed swords with each other, and it was damned exhausting. It ate at him constantly.

  In his mind, quitting this job was the moral equivalent of giving up. Not only did he enjoy flying more than anything else he did, he would also be forsaking everything he had worked so hard for. At one time he had been Oceans Airways’ youngest 747 captain. His father had beamed with pride. In his golden years, Larry Nichols had been the epitome of competition. He had set up a supermarket chain of forty stores in California and Arizona. He had called his livelihood ‘Nice’, and his motto was ‘Nice Prices, Nice to Shop’. When Larry opened his first small grocery store in Los Angeles in 1974, he had given the name and slogan three seconds of deliberation. The only thing I needed to do was add one letter behind the first three letters of my last name, Jim had heard his father telling people countless times. His first store expanded, soon to be followed by a second outlet, then two more, and then four. His was a classic success story. ‘Nice Prices, Nice to Shop’ became a household slogan in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix.

  Larry had accepted early on that his son Jim needed to find his own way – Jim’s brothers Steve and Jack had succeeded their father in his business – but he would never accept Jim telling him, in effect, that he was about to cut his own throat. Jim loved his father, and he never doubted he was the source of his own competitive spirit.

  So why cut his own throat? Why quit? He didn’t want to. It was only because Jody insisted.

  Did he love her enough to give up his career? At first he could not ask himself that question without a keen sense of shame. Shouldn’t it be self-evident for his family to take precedence over his job?

  But as time went on, he had felt less ashamed.

  Would his fights with Jody truly end when he had an office job and came home for dinner every evening? Was the source of their problems his being away from home so often for his job?

  No. If he were honest with himself, he would admit that this was no longer about Jody.

  Of greater importance were his daughters, Cara and Natalie. He did not want to lose his children. That, to him, was his top priority no matter what everyone said, including his father.

  Jim had told Ben Wright about these worries during a recent flight to Asia. Should he continue down the road he was on, or change direction? He needed to make a decision. But his doubts kept nagging at him. In recent months he had been sleeping poorly, his mind plagued by stress.

  Yesterday, the situation had taken a turn for the worse. That was something he hadn’t told Ben yet.

  The situation had taken a turn for the worse. That was one way of putting it, Jim thought to himself. Another way to put it was to say he had lost everything.

  Two days ago he had thought the situation could not possibly get worse. Yesterday had proven him wrong. Things could get worse. A lot worse.

  SIX

  Behind the Door

  She was inside the Tupperware room. Shelving along the walls held multiple rows of brightly colored bowls, pots, and pans. The only furnishings in the dimly lit room were a table and a few chairs. In front of the only window, a curtain was drawn.

  Suddenly the floor and walls started shaking as though the building had been beset by an earthquake. Tupperware bowls and containers started tumbling down from the shelves around her. Feeling herself fall, she searched frantically for a pathway to salvation.

  What was happening? Her brain demanded answers, but her body had frozen. Panic surged within her. Then she saw the door and heard a hollow pounding against it from the outside.

  It seemed as if a bull on the other side was repeatedly charging the door and butting it with his massive head.

  The room shook and trembled, Tupperware was strewn everywhere, bouncing around in all directions. But worse was that the door was being thrashed with inhuman violence. She shuffled backwards, wanting nothing more than to curl up in a fetal position.

  After one last horrific bash, the lock gave way and the door flew open.

  Behind it, she saw black darkness.

  Nothing else. No person, no beast, no physical force of any kind. Nothing that she could see.

  But she immediately sensed that she was not alone anymore.

  They’re here, she realized. And the thought paralyzed her. She started shivering violently.

  A scream tore from her throat before it dawned on her she was not in that room. She was somewhere else.

  She was lying supine in bed on board the Princess of the Pacific. A sweaty sheen prickled her brow as she blinked up at her surroundings. Did I actually scream? she asked herself. She thought she had. Her throat felt sore.

  She was still shaking, but so was the airplane. They had apparently reached the area of heavy turbulence. She heard other people crying out and then noises that resembled minor explosions. What the hell is going on? she wondered.

  Sharlene gripped the bedrail with one hand and unzipped the canvas with the other. She found her small black flashlight. Cautiously she poked her head out into the companionway and saw her fell
ow crew members, who had also been rudely awakened by the turbulence and were wondering the same thing. Nicky and Alexandra gave her a worried look.

  Sharlene glanced down and saw the top of Ray Jacobstein’s head. Had he heard her scream? Apparently not, since he was not looking up at her.

  ‘Good God, it’s so bumpy!’ Nicky said, the concern in her voice evident. ‘I’ve never seen it this bad.’

  Sharlene nodded. Her main concern was simply to hang on tight to avoid being hurled out of her bunk.

  Jim Nichols’ voice came on the public-address system.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have entered an area of strong turbulence. We should be out of it shortly. I apologize for the inconvenience. For your safety and for the safety of those around you, please remain in your seats until further notice and keep your seat belts securely fastened.’

  With that, he signed off.

  ‘Let’s hope he’s right,’ Nicky said. ‘The part about being out of this soon.’

  Sharlene thought of Aaron. She didn’t see him in his bunk. Was he still at work?

  She glanced around the area. ‘I’m going to check on the passengers,’ she said to her colleagues.

  ‘I’d wait until it smooths out a bit, if I were you,’ Nicky cautioned. She was a sweet girl, still happy with her childhood sweetheart, Raoul, whose name brought to mind a dark-haired stud with bronzed skin. Nicky was modest and, unlike Alexandra, she didn’t talk much about anything, including Raoul. So Sharlene could only imagine what he looked like. She admired Nicky simply because the young woman was discreet, considerate, graceful, and never caused any problems. Sharlene had often thought what she would give to claim those traits for herself.

  She had to admit that Nicky’s suggestion made sense. But this severe turbulence, coupled with that wretched nightmare, made her bunk feel every bit as constricting as her small attic space at home. She felt hemmed in by the dark, trapped by it. She needed to get out.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But I’m going to go check anyway.’

  Sharlene switched off her flashlight, wriggled into her uniform jacket, and slid from the bunk on to the floor. Carefully balancing herself, she fought her way down the steps between the bunks and the cabin, and then paused at the rear of the Tourist Class section.

  She heard the murmur of voices and wondered which passengers needed reassurance. Surely some did. Few veteran fliers would have experienced this degree of turbulence; she couldn’t imagine what novice fliers must be thinking. She heard a baby crying, but to her amazement the passengers seemed quite calm. Maybe they were on autopilot, she mused, too frightened to call out.

  Sharlene decided to look for Aaron despite the incessant bumping and shaking impeding her progress. Stoically, she pulled herself forward by grasping the headrests of passenger seats.

  The aircraft groaned from the pounding it was taking. She kept hearing rolling noises, like the echoes of distant gunfire.

  It was dark inside the cabin, too dark. The passengers were shadows. Most of the entertainment-system screens were blank.

  Her fear of the dark – what her therapist, Dr Noel Richardson, had referred to as nyctophobia – threatened to overwhelm her. Her fears were irrational, she realized, but that mattered naught. As Dr Richardson had explained, hers was a mental condition that affected both children and adults, and it wasn’t so much the darkness she feared as what the darkness might conceal.

  His diagnosis was spot on, Sharlene realized. After all these years, she still couldn’t sleep in an unlit room. And she couldn’t sleep at all without her flashlight. It had taken Aaron some getting used to. But what he could never imagine, even after nine weeks of sleeping together, was the depth of her fear of the dark and the mental images it conjured up.

  What was it about the dark that threatened her? he must be wondering. What upset her so much? The only answer that would make sense to Aaron was the horror of what Todd Bower had done to her. Dr Richardson had drawn the same conclusion. But that relationship had ended years ago.

  Aaron had tried his best to be sympathetic. Their love was new – they were in a kind of honeymoon period when a partner’s shortcomings are easily overlooked. But how much longer could he continue to act so benignly toward a fear that deep down he considered to be childish? When would the reproaches begin?

  He didn’t yet know about the other horrors she had had to endure, beyond those from her father and former boyfriend. If she came clean about that, it might mean the end of their budding relationship. For her part, she knew Aaron well enough to guess how he would react if she told him the whole truth, and she didn’t want to destroy the joy they had found together.

  So she had been quiet about her fears to the extent possible. She had never told him what she feared was the source of her nyctophobia.

  Fierce turbulence kept torturing the plane, causing it to lurch and tremble as if it were fighting for its life. That Sharlene was not cowering in a corner, terrified that they were going to crash, was another character trait she owed to Noel Richardson. ‘Dare to live again’ had been his motto for her and the basis of his treatment plan. In the end, this was what had made her apply for a job as a flight attendant, following in her mother’s footsteps, something she had at one time believed she did not have the courage to do.

  Sharlene took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. Breathing exercises. One of the fruits of her therapy sessions.

  Don’t overthink things, nothing is real, it’s all groundless anxiety.

  It may be another of the doctor’s old wives’ sayings, but it did help ease her mind at times such as these.

  She walked deliberately forward until she reached the seat of the girl who had touched her during boarding and mumbled something to her. The child’s eyes were riveted on her. She was staring.

  Sharlene hesitated, expecting the girl to say something.

  But her pale lips remained pressed together in determined silence.

  Sharlene nodded at her and continued on, stumbling forward through the bucking and lurching aircraft.

  SEVEN

  Anxieties

  Until 2:15 the Boeing had been like a fish swimming through calm water, but their smooth ride had suddenly unraveled when the aircraft flew into an area of extreme turbulence. A passenger who happened to be in the lavatory was shoved forward against the bulkhead then backward against the door, causing him to temporarily black out. Passengers who were asleep were rudely awakened. Some passengers, dazed, stared around with a blank look. Others gripped the arms of their chair so hard their knuckles turned white. Not a few fought to stave off abject terror.

  Emilio Cabrera, sitting in seat number 59H, was one of those flirting with panic. Sharlene shuffled past him, unaware that he could lay claim to his own unique brand of anxiety.

  Emilio hated flying. He felt extreme trepidation before any flight, but he had never experienced such dread as before this flight. That dread was worse, to him, than what awaited him in Sydney.

  His problem with planes was simple: the damn things could go down. It was an undeniable fact, since he had experienced it first-hand.

  Three years ago he had been on board a Learjet 45 leased by his employer. Something had gone terribly awry during the landing. Suddenly Emilio had felt a jarring impact. Flames had raged through the cabin. He had tried crawling toward an exit, but the blinding, suffocating smoke from the fire had overwhelmed him.

  He had come to in hospital, where a doctor informed him that he had survived – unlike two other passengers, customers of his employer – because a rescue worker had dragged him from the burning wreckage seconds before the Learjet exploded. Emilio realized how incredibly lucky he had been. That day, for the first time in years, he prayed to God, to thank Him for his survival.

  Ever since then he had suffered from recurring nightmares, in which he was surrounded by a thick, oppressive darkness unlike anything he had experienced. Emilio could not shake the conviction that the dreams we
re a memory from the crash and that the darkness represented the Hereafter, which he had actually visited for a brief period.

  After his miraculous rescue Emilio had developed not only a fear of flying, but also a keen interest in plane crashes. His research confirmed that although there were many reasons why a plane might crash, human error was by far the biggest contributing factor. The technology was fairly reliable; bad things often happened because people handled the technology incorrectly. A botched repair job by a mechanic or an error in pilot judgment – the cause of the worst plane crash in history, on the island of Tenerife in the 1970s – or some other type of momentary inattention to a critical detail could sow the seeds of tragedy and cause untold human suffering.

  Emilio had survived takeoff, the first of two critical phases during every flight, by nervously chewing on his fingernails. The second critical phase, landing, was still some six hours away.

  But there was another reason for his crushing sense of dread: the tribunal awaiting him once he arrived in Sydney. If his enemies convicted him, he would be carrion for the vultures.

  That image, he realized, was slightly exaggerated, but it was how he felt. In Australia he would stand trial. And when the trial was over, he would, at best, be wiped out financially. His entire existence would be shattered. But he was convinced he was innocent and by God he would prove it. He deserved none of this.

  He was headed to the Almar Corporation’s main office in Sydney, his first time traveling in Tourist Class, a step down from his normal Business Class ticket. But that’s how it was for him these days. The only thing he had done wrong – the crime of which he was accused – was to siphon some money from a corporate account into his own bank account. Just because he was a bit short on cash. All he had wanted to do was solve a problem, nothing more, nothing less. A temporary problem, a passing predicament of a financial nature. It had always been his intention to repay the money as soon as he had put some meat back on his bones, so to speak.