by A. G. Taylor
Behind them the night lit up a brilliant yellow. A split second later the sound of an explosion assaulted their ears. Through the swirling storm Sarah could see flames rising hundreds of feet into the air.
The plane had blown up.
Burning pieces of metal and debris fell through the air and landed all around. Suddenly, with the fire blazing high into the night, their present shelter didn’t seem so safe. Daniel grabbed their arms and led them on into the darkness once more.
For what seemed like an age, they fought their way through the storm.
Finally, more from exhaustion than anything else, they collapsed against another ridge. The dusty vortex of the storm howled all around.
There was nothing to do but huddle close to wait for the dawn.
4
At some time during the night, Sarah must have fallen asleep, because she woke to find the darkness had passed. Above them the sky was obscured by a layer of dull, reddish-looking cloud through which the sun shone faintly, creating a strange kind of twilight at dawn.
She got stiffly to her feet and looked down at her clothes, which were covered in a thick layer of sand and dust. She brushed it away as best she could, in the process creating a cloud that made her cough.
Over to her left, Sarah saw Robert sitting on a rock with the portable DVD player cradled protectively in his lap. His face and hair were covered in dust, giving him the appearance of a desert ghost.
“It doesn’t work any more,” he said, holding up the DVD player as she approached.
“The batteries must be flat,” Sarah replied. She stood on the rock next to him and looked around.
In every direction there was sandy flatness, the only vegetation being shrubs and low-lying trees. Perhaps a kilometre or so away, a column of thick, black smoke was rising into the air. The plane.
“They’re not flat,” Robert said, matter-of-factly. “The battery warning light would be flashing. And it isn’t flashing.”
Sarah looked round at him, amazed that he could fuss about one of his precious gadgets after everything that had happened. Just a few hours before he’d been unable to stop crying. She guessed she should be relieved. He was acting normal…for him.
“It’s probably been knocked out by an electro-magnetic pulse,” Daniel said, walking out of the desert behind them.
“Yeah, EMP,” agreed Robert. “Of course.”
“What?” asked Sarah, looking round.
“Some kind of residual effect of the meteorite strike,” Daniel explained as he fished a couple of water bottles from his shoulder bag and tossed them over. “An EMP can knock out all electronic equipment for miles. My phone isn’t working either and it’s probably what brought the plane down.”
EMP? Residual effect? Sarah thought Daniel was starting to sound more like Robert every minute.
She opened her bottle and drank half of it quickly, realizing just how dry her throat was. Already the cool of the night was being replaced with a warmth that would only get stronger as the day went on. Sarah had read in the guidebook that desert temperatures could easily reach fifty degrees.
“Where have you been?” she asked Daniel as he sat down on the rock and swigged from a bottle of his own.
“Just looking around,” he replied.
“At the plane?”
He shook his head. “No, I was just going to head back there. It should be okay.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Sarah.
“Me too!” added Robert.
Daniel stood and shook his head. “Uh-uh. Too dangerous. You two stay here and wait for me.”
He hitched his bag on his shoulder and began to move off in the direction of the rising smoke. Sarah jumped round to block his path.
“Hold it,” she said. “We’re going too.”
“No, you’re not,” he answered and stepped around her. “Wait here. I’ll be one hour.”
“You can’t stop us from coming with you,” Sarah said sharply, moving to block him again.
They faced each other in silence for a moment, at a stand-off. From his rock, Robert watched them both, clearly interested to see who would win the dispute.
Finally, Daniel shrugged and stood to one side.
“Fine. Come then.”
He readjusted his shoulder bag and set off again. Sarah and Robert exchanged a surprised look. Getting Mum to give up on an issue had never been so easy.
“Well, get a move on!” Daniel called over his shoulder and they ran to catch up.
Finding the crash site again wasn’t difficult. The smoke could probably be seen for hundreds of kilometres in this flat landscape. Earlier Sarah had regretted leaving her coat on the plane in the panic to escape, but now she found herself sweating with the rising heat and the effort required to walk through the red, shifting sand.
The landscape looked exactly like the pictures of the outback she’d seen in books and films about Australia. Except those images hadn’t done justice to the openness and the emptiness of everything. It gave her the feeling of being a tiny speck in a vast expanse. She wondered how far they were from Melbourne. Or even the nearest town.
“Where’s the sun?” Robert asked, walking along with his face to the sky, almost tripping over in the process. Above them there was no gap in the rust-coloured clouds.
“The dust thrown up by the meteorite has settled in the atmosphere,” Daniel explained, not looking round or breaking his stride. He was setting a fast pace and hadn’t stopped to check if they were managing to keep up. Obviously he just expected they would because they’d asked to come.
“We might not see the sun for days,” he added. “Perhaps if there’s rain it might help settle some of the debris.”
“What are you, a geography teacher?” Sarah said with an edge in her voice, trying to disguise the fact that she was a little out of breath.
Daniel looked round, but he had a smile on his face. “Engineer, actually. I think I mentioned it a couple of times before.”
Sarah replied sarcastically, “Sorry, I forgot you have a really cool job. Wow.”
Robert brushed past her and ran up beside Daniel. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you…”
Sarah sighed as Robert proceeded to bombard Daniel with a thousand questions about his work, just like he always did when something caught his interest. She hung back and drank the rest of her water, slowing her pace a little to save energy. She watched her younger brother looking up to the man they were supposed to call their father as he spoke, enthralled by what Daniel had to say. Something inside her turned over as she realized that it probably wouldn’t be too difficult for Robert to accept Daniel back as his dad. He was younger. And a boy. They could always find boy stuff to do together. But where did that leave her?
“Hey, don’t fall behind,” Daniel called to her, looking back and slowing so she could catch up. “You’re the one who wanted to go back to the plane so badly.”
“I don’t care about going back to the plane,” she said, aware that her voice had taken on a nasty edge. “I just didn’t want you leaving us alone in the desert and not coming back.”
Daniel frowned as she walked up beside him. “I was worried there might be another explosion and there could be some things at the crash… Let’s just say, it might not be pretty and I didn’t want you two seeing something bad.” He paused for a moment. “Do you really think I’d desert you?”
“Why not?” replied Sarah. “You’ve left us before! Perhaps you were thinking that you didn’t need two kids to look after. What better place to lose us than the outback?”
They walked on, watching Robert, who had run on ahead and was struggling up a little hill of sand.
“I haven’t been there, you’re right,” Daniel admitted. “And I haven’t earned the right to call myself a dad yet. But I’m not about to abandon you, Sarah. And as for looking after you and Robert, I think you’re doing a good enough job of that yourself.”
Sarah didn’t say anything for a moment.
<
br /> “Robert likes you,” she told him finally.
“Yeah?” Daniel said. “How do you feel?”
Sarah thought about it. “You did pretty well getting us off that plane.”
Daniel looked like he was going to say something else, but stopped short when Robert let out a cry from the top of the ridge of sand. Despite the heat, they ran to catch up with him. At the top of the little hill, they saw what he was looking at.
A groove, hundreds of metres long, had been scraped into the desert floor, stretching away into the distance. It had clearly been made by the plane as it hit the ground for the first time. Directly ahead, one of the plane’s landing wheels and its torn metal strut were half-buried in the sand.
Suitcases, backpacks and boxes littered the ground, some of them ripped open, spilling their contents. There were dozens.
Daniel clapped a hand on Robert’s shoulder and started down the ridge towards the nearest case.
“Jackpot!” he cried, his voice suddenly full of excitement. “Looks like it’s our lucky day. The cargo hold must’ve split open when we first hit.”
For a moment Robert and Sarah didn’t move.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” she said, staring at the belongings scattered randomly across the dunes. They looked like alien artefacts strewn about the sand. Where are their owners now? she wondered. The thought wasn’t a pleasant one.
“Come on,” she said and they started down the dune after Daniel.
5
“Hey, what are you doing?” Sarah cried, running down the last few metres of the ridge. “That’s not your stuff!”
Daniel kneeled over one of the open suitcases, rummaging through the contents. Clothes and books flew out onto the sand. Finally, he extracted a little first-aid kit and stuffed it into his bag.
“I said, what are you doing?” Sarah demanded, standing over him.
Daniel stood and moved to the next case, a few metres away on the sand.
“What does it look like? I’m collecting things that could be useful.”
“It looks like you’re stealing from people’s cases,” Sarah replied, following him.
“Well if I see the people these things belong to, I’ll be sure to give them right back,” Daniel said as he ripped open the straps on the next case and started tossing out clothes. He looked round at Robert, who was standing over to one side. “Hey, Bobbie! Empty out that bag next to you and see if there’s anything we can use.”
“Okay!”
Nobody other than Mum called her brother Bobbie, but from Daniel he didn’t seem to mind. Sarah looked in amazement as her brother unquestioningly started working through someone else’s suitcase, throwing things out on the sand in the same manner as Daniel. She ran and stood over him.
“Stop it, Robert,” she ordered.
He ignored her, digging deeper into the suitcase.
“Stop it!”
More clothes went flying.
“I said, stop it!”
She grabbed the case and tried to pull it away from him. Robert pulled back with all his strength, his face suddenly angry as he looked up at her.
“Cut it out, Sarah!”
She let go and Robert fell back onto the ground heavily, the suitcase on top of him.
“Mum wouldn’t like this,” Sarah said angrily. “She said she’d watch over us after she died, you know. She can see everything you’re doing.”
She regretted saying it immediately. Tears welled in her brother’s eyes, but he rubbed them away with his dusty hands and struggled to his feet.
“Mum would want us to be safe,” he said defiantly. Reaching into the suitcase, he produced a baseball cap and handed it to her. “You’ll need it for when the sun comes back.”
Sarah stepped away, the fight draining from her. She sat down on a red suitcase as Robert went to work on a large rucksack. She watched her brother in silence for a while, turning the cap over in her hands.
“How about these?” Robert called out, holding up a box of aspirin and a blanket.
“Great!” Daniel shouted back. “And bring over an empty backpack too. We can use it to carry stuff.”
Sarah watched them working for another moment before coming to a decision. She got up, flipped open the case she’d been sitting on and ran a hand over the neatly folded clothes within – everything packed for a holiday in the sun. She didn’t find too much of interest apart from a bottle of sunscreen. If the clouds ever cleared, they would need it. She took the bottle and closed the case.
Moving on, Sarah opened the next case and the next, taking only what she thought would be useful. Pretty soon, however, she forgot that they belonged to other people and was ripping them open with as much eagerness as Daniel and her brother.
After fifteen minutes they had a little pile of blankets, first-aid equipment and toiletries. Daniel started putting what they had found into the new backpack and gave Robert his own bag to carry, pulling out a couple of objects before he did so. They had also found several chocolate bars, cans of drink and other food. These things Daniel put into the shoulder bag. One item he kept for himself: a bottle of whisky that he placed in his jacket pocket. He caught them watching him critically.
“Hey!” he protested. “For medicinal purposes, okay?”
“Right,” Sarah replied, folding her arms. Daniel shrugged and hoisted the pack onto his back.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said. “We’ll see what we can find at the crash site and then carry on.”
“Carry on?” asked Sarah, half running to keep up with him.
“To the nearest town,” Daniel explained. “Then hopefully on to Melbourne. If we can find a car that works, that is.”
“I bet you’ll be able to fix it if it doesn’t,” Robert said eagerly and Daniel ruffled his hair.
“Don’t you think we should stay by the plane?” Sarah asked uncertainly. “I mean, won’t they be looking for us? Rescuers, I mean.”
Daniel shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe not. Who knows how many planes went down? Or even if they can get here? It might take days or weeks.”
“But the nearest town might be hundreds of kilometres away.”
“Then we’ll have a long walk, won’t we?”
Sarah fell silent at the thought.
With another five minutes’ walk, the rising smoke started to fill the horizon. Crossing another incline, they saw the wreck of the plane spread out before them. The central section of the fuselage had split open and was still burning in places. The nearest wing had fallen off and the two jet engines were no more than smoking shells. The tail of the plane was ripped away and nowhere to be seen.
“Wow,” Robert said quietly at the sight before them.
“You said it,” agreed Daniel as they started forward.
“We could’ve been trapped in there,” Sarah said to herself as she looked at the scene below. Around the edge of the wreck she could see the burned remains of seats and luggage from the plane. Looking more closely, she made out blackened shapes: the bodies of those passengers who hadn’t made it out before the explosion. Sarah turned her head away from the horrible image and concentrated on the scene closer to them.
All around on the sand in front of the plane, survivors were lying in groups, huddled together, dust- and soot-covered. Robert moved closer to Sarah. He put his hand in hers as they passed a family lying on the ground, sleeping soundly. There was something odd about seeing them stretched out in the open, having made no attempt even to cover or protect themselves.
Looking around, Sarah noticed that most of the survivors were doing the same. It was as if they’d walked out of the plane and slept where they had fallen. A hundred people at least. Here and there people wandered amongst the sleeping survivors, but there weren’t many on their feet – twenty at most. These passengers looked dazed, as if unsure about what had happened or where they were. In fact, they seemed on the verge of collapse themselves.
“Stay close to me,” Daniel said as they made the
ir way carefully through the crowds of sleeping people.
“Are they dead, Sarah?” Robert asked at her side.
Sarah shook her head. “No, they’re breathing – asleep. I guess everyone’s resting after the crash.” She had to admit, it didn’t sound very convincing.
Looking around, she could have cried at what she saw. Injured people stripped of their belongings lay on the bare earth, some of them holding on to each other, some snoring quietly. In the distance she made out the familiar face of Nicole, the flight attendant, bandaging a sleeping man’s arm and suddenly wished she hadn’t been so horrible to her earlier. She’d only been doing her job, after all.
A man in a white shirt approached them through the people. Sarah recognized him as Captain Klein. He’d walked through the cabin during the flight, saying hello to several of the passengers as he did. Now his hair was a mess and his perfectly ironed uniform was dirt-smeared and torn in places. A blue pilot’s jacket hung loosely from his shoulders like a cape and he staggered a little when he walked. Klein’s eyes were bloodshot and looked heavy, as if he hadn’t slept for a week.
When he saw them he held up a hand, waving them back.
“Don’t come any closer!” he ordered, his voice cracking a little with stress.
Daniel put out an arm to stop them moving forward.
“What’s going on, Captain?” he called out.
“People are getting sick,” Klein replied, rubbing his eyes, as if it were a massive effort just keeping them open. “Must be something in the dust…making us sleep…”
Without warning, the captain fell to one knee, as if it were suddenly too much effort to stand upright.
“If you’re not feeling it yet, get as far away from here as possible,” he said, staring at them desperately. “Don’t come near us. It seems to be contagious.”
Sarah felt Robert gripping her arm so tightly she thought his nails might tear into her skin. Daniel ushered them both back.
