Horizon

by Scott Westerfeld

  “Sure, right. But where we are isn’t the big question, is it?” Javi looked up at the silent plane. All those empty windows in a row. “Where are they?”

  It felt like a sliver of ice was lodged in Molly’s throat. “We can’t tell Oliver what we’re thinking.”

  “What are we thinking?” Javi asked.

  Molly hesitated as Anna called up to the second girl. She seemed scared to come down the slide. The taller boy pushed past her and slid first.

  Molly cleared her throat. “That lightning that Anna mentioned? I also—”

  “Shhh!” Javi cut in. “Did you hear that?”

  Molly listened. All she heard was the strange birds and the soft buzz of insects, and a distant rumbling, like a waterfall. But then a sound came from the direction of the plane—a scrabbling.

  She turned. In the belly of the aircraft, below the wing, was a long, jagged hole.

  “The cargo hold?” Molly whispered.

  “It could be a dog or something,” Javi said quietly. “Would anyone fly a dog to Japan?”

  “Well, we packed soccer-playing robots.” Molly headed toward the rent in the airplane’s hull, happy to leave the subject of missing passengers behind. “Come on.”

  The metal was jagged, and the hole was a tight fit. Once they were inside, the cargo hold was pitch-dark. The two of them crept slowly across strewn luggage, moving in silence.

  What if something from the jungle had crawled in after the wreck?

  Jungles were full of predators. Pythons. Jaguars. Tigers.

  Molly reminded herself that none of those things lived in Canada. Grizzly bears, sure, but what would bears be doing in a jungle?

  None of this made sense, really. And when logic was a waste of time, fear was probably still useful.

  More scrabbling echoed through the darkness.

  “Wish we had a flashlight,” Javi whispered.

  Molly paused. Just in front of her, a shaft of sun shot through a hole in the plane’s skin. But the bright spot only made it harder for her eyes to adjust.

  Then she saw a piece of metal glittering on the floor.

  “Hang on.” Molly picked up the metal, then held it in the shaft of sunlight, reflecting a shaky beam into the darkness. She probed the scattered luggage and cargo crates, till she found a figure in the shadows.

  “Great,” called a voice. “Hold that light steady!”

  Molly looked at Javi. Another passenger.

  “What are you doing down here?” she called.

  The figure stood, holding up a hand to shield his eyes in the beam. “Trying to find my luggage! Do you mind not pointing that in my eyes? I’m looking for a sword.”

  A sword?” the voice asked.

  Yoshi sighed. “Just look for a long leather case. It’s very valuable!”

  “Um, okay?” The light wavered, and Yoshi realized that it wasn’t a flashlight after all, just something reflecting a shaft of sunlight. And the girl holding it was a kid, maybe a year younger than him.

  Where was the crew? And all the other passengers?

  Most important, where was his family’s seventeenth-century katana?

  The light flashed in his eyes again, and Yoshi fought a wave of dizziness …

  A plane crash. An actual plane crash.

  Out of everything that could have happened—lost luggage, snooping customs agents, hijackers—why did it have to be something so random?

  He could see his father shaking his head. Your airplane crashed? Well, you should have thought of that before stealing from your homeland.

  The words didn’t even make sense, and yet Yoshi could hear them perfectly.

  He wondered again if this was all just a nightmare. The plane being torn apart, the weird lights, the impossible jungle outside. And after the crash, crawling down through that smoking rip in the cabin floor, into this jumble of luggage, all of it cheap and ugly and not his katana.

  “You said a long case, right?” a boy’s voice called. “Like, black leather?”

  “Yes!” Yoshi pushed his way through the strewn luggage toward where the two figures stood. He saw in silhouette that one of them held something a meter long, about as wide as a paperback book. As Yoshi stumbled nearer, he saw the dangling priority and insurance tags.

  “That’s it!” He snatched the case from the boy, hefted it, and felt the familiar weight in his hands. Yes, the katana was still inside.

  The boy and girl were staring at him, and Yoshi managed to gather himself.

  “Thank you,” he said, bowing. “I owe you a debt.”

  “Uh, sure,” the boy said. “Glad I could help.”

  Relief swept through Yoshi. It was all he could do to keep from opening the case and drawing the sword before their startled eyes, just to make sure it was okay.

  “Our friends are outside,” the girl said, nodding at a jagged hole in the airplane’s skin. “And we found some other people, too.”

  “Of course,” Yoshi said. “Take me to them.”

  Maybe someone out there knew what was going on.

  The sunlight was blinding, the scent of the jungle overwhelming.

  It wasn’t like anywhere Yoshi had ever seen before—not in textbooks, magazines, or movies. Certainly not in real life. It was more like something from Jura Tripper. He half expected to see dinosaurs crashing through the dense undergrowth.

  There were five more people outside. The tall white guy with a crew cut was probably the oldest. A white girl, blond and willowy, was about Yoshi’s age, and the blond boy and two Japanese girls were younger. The boy and girl who’d found him in the cargo hold both had dark skin and curly hair, but they didn’t look like brother and sister. She was wiry and athletic, while he was short and a little out of shape.

  A pretty random bunch, except for one thing—nobody was an adult. An odd coincidence, Yoshi thought, but not as weird as everything else that had happened.

  They all stared at one another, until the guy with the crew cut began, “I think this is everyone. I’ve been up and down the plane, and there’s nothing but torn-out seats. The ceiling is ripped open the whole way down. It’s like the whole plane fell apart in midair!”

  The guy was breathing hard, just standing there. He was still amped up from the crash.

  Yoshi felt strangely calm inside, like part of him still thought this was all a dream. Or maybe the reassuring weight of the katana was keeping him grounded.

  The older boy pointed at a plastic case on the ground at his feet. “I found a survival kit, and I’m sure help is on the way. We just need to get organized. Maybe build a signal fire.”

  “We can’t do that,” said the girl who’d been in the cargo hold.

  “Sure we can!” The guy knelt and tore open the survival kit. “There’s probably a lighter in here somewhere.”

  “No, I mean …” She let out an exasperated sigh. “See that wing with all the dents in it? It’s full of jet fuel. If any fumes are leaking, you’ll get more than a signal fire. You’ll get an explosion they can see on Mars!”

  The tall boy looked up at her, still breathing hard, and a tremor passed through the group—a struggle was about to start. But then the boy who’d found Yoshi’s katana stepped forward.

  “Maybe we should all introduce ourselves,” he said. “I’m Javi.”

  The tension ebbed as the others gave their names. The girl who’d been in the cargo hold was Molly, and their two blond friends were Oliver and Anna. The boy who thought he was in charge was Caleb.

  Caleb pointed at the Japanese girls. “They don’t speak English.” He looked at Yoshi. “Do you?”

  Yoshi nodded, then turned to the girls. “Onamae-wa, nan desu ka?”

  “Kira,” said one, bowing.

  “Akiko,” said the other.

  Yoshi raised an eyebrow. Both the names meant shiny, and they wore identical skirts. Clearly sisters with easily amused parents, but Kira had dyed a white streak into her hair. Maybe she was the rebel.

  “I�
�m Yoshi Kimura,” he finished the introductions.

  “Okay.” Caleb clapped his hands, as if calling a meeting back to order. “I guess a signal fire isn’t necessary. That plane is pretty easy to spot. And it probably has all kinds of black boxes inside, transmitting our location.”

  Yoshi saw Javi and Molly sharing a look, but Caleb didn’t notice.

  “Of course, we don’t know how long it will take them to get here,” he went on. “So we should probably build a shelter.”

  “A shelter from what?” Molly asked.

  Caleb gave her that look again. He wasn’t used to being argued with.

  Molly kept her eyes straight on his. “It isn’t cold enough to need insulation. If it rains, we can camp out under a wing, or one of those inflatable slides. And if a predator comes along, I’d rather be back inside the plane than hiding in some tree fort.”

  “A predator?” Oliver turned to stare into the jungle.

  Anna followed his gaze. “Good point, Molly. That’s a pretty big food web out there. There must be something at the top, eating everything else.”

  Oliver blanched, and Molly glared at Anna.

  “There’s insects,” Javi jumped in again. “I’ve only been camping one time, but around sundown we got eaten alive.”

  “Sure,” Molly said. “But we can’t make insect screens out of palm fronds. This whole idea of building a shelter is silly.”

  Javi spread his hands. “So maybe we look for bug spray.”

  Yoshi watched Caleb, whose expression grew more and more astonished. Maybe he was always surprised when people didn’t let him run the show.

  But no one was asking the real questions.

  Why had a plane flying over the Arctic landed in a jungle? And where were all the other passengers? Was everyone else dead?

  Yoshi shook off the thought. It was pointless guessing at something so awful before taking a look around.

  “Bug spray?” A note of anger rose in Caleb’s voice, or maybe it was panic. “Don’t you realize how serious this is?”

  “Why are you all arguing?” Oliver cried. “None of this makes sense, and everyone’s gone! And where’s Mr. Keating?”

  His words descended into sobs, and silence fell on the group. Molly looked stricken, like she was about to cry, too—or punch someone. Kira and Akiko stood closer together, their hands finding each other’s.

  Yoshi closed his eyes for a moment. His father had always said that manga and anime were distractions, that he should focus on reality instead. But now that reality was right here, staring him in the face, Yoshi knew exactly what to do.

  He knelt by the open survival kit. It took a few seconds to find a canteen, a compass, and a two-way radio. Then he clicked open the hasps on his case, checked the oil and powder, the cleaning cloth—all there—and pulled out the katana. Lifting the strap over his head, he felt the elegant curve of the scabbard settle between his shoulder blades. As the others watched in silence, Yoshi pocketed the oil and cleaning cloth and snapped the case closed.

  “I’ll be back before dark,” he said.

  Caleb stood tall. “Uh, Yoshi, right? Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To find water. I’ll leave the tree fort and bug spray to you guys.”

  There was a moment of silence as the others registered his words. Water wasn’t about comfort—it was about survival.

  “There were water bottles on the plane,” Javi said.

  Yoshi nodded. “We’ll need all of them. But we won’t last very long unless we can refill them. You all realize that, right?”

  When no one answered, Yoshi sighed and held out his arms, indicating the trees, the jungle, the white sky.

  “Something very strange happened. We’re in the wrong place. Not Canada or Alaska. Not Japan. We have no idea when rescue is coming. Water is the first step to surviving this.”

  Oliver made a small, frightened noise, and Molly moved to take his hand. The others just stared at Yoshi, and for the first time Caleb seemed to have nothing to say.

  Yoshi held up the radio. “I have this, so once you find another survival kit, we’ll be able to communicate.” He turned to the two girls and switched to Japanese. “I’ll be back soon. It’ll be okay.”

  Akiko nodded nervously. “Be careful, Yoshi. There might be something bad out there.”

  He smiled and lifted his right hand behind his head to take the hilt of the katana. He drew it just a little, exposing a few inches of bright, razor-sharp metal.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Flashlight, batteries, food bars, knife, radio, matches, and fire starters. Whistle, flares, signal mirror, water purification pills, canteen, compass, and first-aid kit. It’s all here.”

  Anna put the list back inside the survival kit and sat back. Putting everything they had scavenged from the plane into piles made her feel better, somehow. As if every problem had a solution.

  As if the world still made sense, and Mr. Keating and five hundred other people hadn’t just disappeared.

  The two sisters sat before her. Kira—the one with the bleached white streak in her hair—was sketching everything. Her pencil made little skittering sounds above the buzz of insects. Akiko still seemed stunned from the crash, and when Kira murmured to her in Japanese—or sometimes what sounded like French—she didn’t answer.

  Anna picked up the survival knife. One side of its blade was serrated, like a saw. Or was that for cleaning fish?

  “Knife,” she said.

  Kira didn’t look up. She was busy drawing the Aero Horizon logo from the survival kit’s cover. But Akiko looked up timidly.

  “Naifu,” she repeated.

  “Mirror,” Anna said, pointing at the signal mirror.

  “Mira,” Akiko said.

  Anna nodded, remembering to smile. But the mirror was probably worthless. A passing plane would never spot the flash of a three-inch reflector through the dense white cloud overhead. The sky seemed endless and formless, impenetrable.

  On top of which, she hadn’t heard any engine noises since the crash. Even stranger, the compasses didn’t work—their needles just spun in lazy circles. Anna found herself wondering if they’d landed on an entirely different planet.

  She’d heard of alien abductions of people, but never of a whole airplane.

  Of course, there were those airplanes that just vanished …

  She shook off the thought, which made the numbness descend on her again.

  Which tools were the most important for the two Japanese girls to learn the names of? There were so many, all representing different ways to die—dehydration, disease, injury, starvation.

  She pointed. “Food bar.”

  “Fudoba,” Akiko said.

  “Close enough,” Anna said with a shrug. If they were stuck here long enough for the girls to learn fluent English, they were all in deep trouble.

  Akiko picked up the radio.

  “Radio,” Anna said carefully.

  Akiko repeated the word, then turned on the radio and said Yoshi’s name into it. For a moment, they all listened for a response.

  Nothing but the hiss of static.

  “He’s probably not dead,” Anna said to herself. “Just too far away.”

  “Nineteen more!” Javi called from the wing, his arms full of water bottles. He jumped onto the escape slide and zipped down.

  As he added the bottles to the water pile, Anna did the math aloud.

  “That’s eighty-one. Ten bottles per person, plus one. Enough for two days, maybe three.”

  “That’s not very long,” Javi said.

  “It isn’t,” Anna said. “There’s a rule about how people die. Two minutes without oxygen. Two days without water. Two weeks without food.”

  “Um, you’re doing that thing,” Javi said.

  Anna frowned. Molly and Javi always said she was too blunt, especially when talking to people who weren’t engineers.

  “But it’s just you,” she said. “The girls don’t speak English
.”

  “Yeah, but I’m freaking out, too!” A shudder went through Javi. “We just were in a plane crash.”

  “I know that,” Anna said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s on the list of things that make me not an engineer. Right now I’m just a freaked-out regular person!”

  “Okay. But it seems like having only five days before we die of dehydration is important information.”

  “True.” Javi sighed. “But we’re not going to die. We’ll get rescued, or it’ll rain, or Yoshi will find water out there. Something has to go right eventually.”

  His voice cracked a little at the end, so Anna nodded reassuringly.

  Yoshi had the right idea, looking for a source of water. Maybe he’d been a little too dramatic with his exit, not taking a flashlight, food, or any water—just an empty canteen.

  But at least Yoshi wasn’t afraid to do something.

  And he’d certainly looked impressive with that sword on his back.

  She hoped he was okay.

  “Can I see the knife?” Javi asked.

  Anna handed it over. “Don’t lose it. There’s only one per kit.”

  They’d found three survival packs in the plane. According to the crew manual that Oliver had discovered, a fourth kit had been in the missing tail section. Which had to be somewhere nearby …

  Or did this jungle simply swallow things?

  Anna remembered the passengers being lifted out of the crashing plane. Mr. Keating sitting right next to her, then gone.

  She squashed the thought down. Focus on what’s in front of you.

  “That’s one for each of us in Team Killbot.” Javi made a swiping motion. “I don’t trust Caleb with a knife, and Yoshi’s got that baller ninja sword.”

  Anna looked out into the jungle. It was growing darker, the insects louder. Yoshi’s sword wouldn’t protect him from getting lost.

  “Find any more food?” she asked.

  “Just nuts and fruit, and some cheese. The meals were still frozen, and this heat is turning them into airplane food slush.”

  “Gross,” Anna said. “Also, food poisoning.”