Darkness

by Karen Robards

  Gina shuddered. The memories that trailing plume brought back made her dizzy.

  Get over it, she ordered herself fiercely, shaking her head to clear it. You’re not in that plane. What happened is in the past. You’re a different person now.

  Now she was twenty-eight years old, a respected ornithologist whose specialty was the environmental impact of pollution on birds, and at that moment she was out alone in the frigid Bering Sea, doing her job. This plane had nothing to do with her. Whatever happened, she was present merely as a bystander, a witness. There was no reason for her heart to pound, or her stomach to twist.

  Her heart pounded and her stomach twisted anyway.

  Lifting her binoculars to her eyes, she tracked the plane until it plunged into the outermost edge of the deep gray blanket of clouds that formed an ominously low ceiling above her head. The clouds swallowed it completely. Only the snarl of its engines told her that it was still racing toward her through the sky.

  Her concentration was so complete that when the radio clipped to her pocket crackled, it made her jump.

  “Gina. Are you there?”

  The voice belonged to Arvid Kleir, a fellow scientist. The faint Swedish accent he retained even after years in the States was unmistakable. Along with the rest of the twelve-strong party culled from various top universities, he had chosen to forgo his Thanksgiving break to join the expedition. They had all arrived on Attu two days prior, eight of them, including Gina, dropped off by a chartered boat that would return for them in a week and the rest delivered by the aforementioned Reever. Their purpose was to observe and record the hazards posed by the island’s unique pollution to resident and migratory bird species. Arvid came from Yale. Gina herself was an assistant professor of environmental studies at Stanford.

  Yesterday afternoon, having been alerted that something was amiss by the abnormal signals emitted by the female eagle’s microchip, she and Arvid had set out from camp in the Zodiac, located the bird, and rescued it from the pool of degrading oil in which it had become trapped. Attu was littered with a ton of debris from World War II, and the intermittent leakage of decades-old oil, the source of the pool, was a serious problem. Partly full oil and fuel drums, forgotten weapons, unexploded artillery, heavy equipment left to rust on hillsides and in the ocean, overturned shipping containers, and crumbling small structures abandoned by the military were everywhere. As the site of the only World War II battle on American soil, the place once had been home to more than fifteen thousand American troops as well as, on the opposite end of the island, two thousand enemy Japanese. When the war had ended, everything had been left right where it stood. Now the place was both a birder’s paradise and an ecological nightmare. She and Arvid had set up a temporary camp, then spent last night and this morning painstakingly cleaning up the bedraggled eagle and making sure it was fit enough to be returned to the wild. At about one in the afternoon they’d released the bird. Arvid had then headed back to the party’s main camp at the erstwhile Coast Guard station on foot while she’d followed the bird in the Zodiac.

  Snatching up the radio, Gina pressed the reply button even as she craned her neck in a useless effort to locate the plane through her binoculars.

  “I’m here,” she said urgently into the radio. “Arvid, listen. There’s a plane out here that looks like it’s about to crash into the sea. You need to call the Coast Guard right now.”

  Gina and her eleven compatriots were the only people on the island. With cell signals nonexistent, their only means of communication with the outside world was the satellite phone they’d brought with them, which was back at the main camp.

  Letting go of the button, she listened in growing dismay as Arvid responded. “. . . understand me? Gina? Are you there?”

  It was clear from his tone that he hadn’t heard her transmission. Interference from the oncoming storm, probably. Gina let the binoculars drop to concentrate on the radio.

  “Arvid? Call the Coast Guard.” Gina only realized that she was shouting into the radio when her voice echoed back at her.

  Static crackled through Arvid’s next words. “. . . back to camp. This storm’s a doozy. You—”

  Gina stared down at the radio as his voice was swallowed up by more static. Clearly, her message was not getting through. A rattling roar almost directly overhead had her thrusting the radio between her knees for safekeeping, then snatching up the binoculars and searching the churning gray ceiling for some sign of the plane.

  The clouds were too thick. She couldn’t see it.

  Tilting her head back to the point where her neck hurt, bracing her feet against the rocking deck for balance, she was gazing almost directly up when she saw a bright flash that looked like a horizontal lightning bolt light up the sky through the obscuring clouds. Then a deafening boom hit her, along with an invisible tsunami of a force field fronted by heat. A strange, high-pitched whistling sound split the air.

  Oh, my God, the plane’s blown up.

  Her heart lurched. She was still staring up desperately as chunks of metal and other debris started pouring out of the sky like deadly rain.

  Practically immobilized by shock, all she could do was lower the binoculars and watch wide-eyed as objects started splashing into the water around her with the fast rat-a-tat of machine-gun fire: splat splat splat splat splat.

  A large chunk of metal slammed into the water inches from the starboard prow. The breeze of its passage fanned her cheeks. A shower of droplets splattered across her waterproof pants and boots. That’s what it took to make her suddenly, acutely aware of the danger she was in.

  Gina’s throat tightened in horror as she watched the geyserlike column of water shoot skyward from where the object had hit. She was struck by an instant, appalled thought: Looks like I just might be going to die in a plane crash after all.

  Chapter Three

  It was the stuff of the nightmares that still plagued her. An explosion, a flash of fire, the screams of trapped victims—the horror of being in a small plane crash stalked her, but now it only occasionally surfaced in terrifying detail while she slept. She’d lived through one as a passenger. How ironic would it be if she was killed as the result of another one when she was supposedly safe on the ground? Dropping the binoculars, heart galloping with fear, Gina ducked as closely as she could against the hard plastic console that housed the wheel as the Zodiac bucked on the resultant wave. Wrapping an arm over her head, she grabbed hold of one of the webbing straps fastened to the boat’s interior sides. She cringed as more chunks of wreckage peppered the agitated gray water, sending cascades of white foam shooting skyward so that it looked like she was surrounded by a vast pod of whales surfacing to blow. Spray hit her, icy cold as it splattered across her face, pelted her coat. Waves created by the force of multiple impacts made the previously choppy surface of the bay as turbulent as the inside of a washing machine.

  Gina hung on to the strap for dear life as the boat rocked and dipped precariously, praying with every breath that something wouldn’t land on her directly, or that the whole boat wouldn’t capsize with the force of the waves. She wore a flat orange life jacket zipped over her parka, but given the temperature of the water it was more of an empty gesture than a lifesaving device: she’d be unconscious within a few minutes of going in, and dead not long after that.

  Thunk. Splash. Something large slammed into the stern on its way into the water, a glancing blow but still enough to send Gina catapulting with a cry into the air. Only her grip on the strap saved her from going overboard. She landed with a groan on her stomach across the hard, flat bench she’d been sitting on, and gasped for breath as the wind was knocked out of her. Lungs aching as she fought to fill them, listening to her pulse thundering in her ears, she stared wide-eyed at the objects now littering the water around her.

  It took her a moment, but then she realized that the danger had passed. Or, at least, nothing else was falling from the sky.

  Part of a wing surfed the whitecaps nearb
y, its jagged edge mute evidence of having been violently torn from the plane. A passenger seat, fortunately empty, was swallowed by the waves as her gaze touched it. An exterior door, easily identifiable by its handle, floated a few yards away, gleaming dull silver against the angry gray of the water. From its size and proximity, she guessed that it was what had struck the boat, fortunately not head-on.

  With that one semidazed look around, she also spotted a partly submerged wheel and a seat back with a cracked tray table attached.

  MORE OBJECTS—an iPhone, sunglasses, a coffee cup—bobbed around the boat. Sick at heart, she watched a man’s large black wing-tip dress shoe tumble past on a wave. Everywhere she looked, she could see the dark blobs of more debris. Farther out, the plane’s tail, still upright, was visible. There was no sign of the fuselage.

  Bile rose in her throat at this irrefutable evidence of the utter destruction of the plane. Swallowing hard, she forced it back. Grabbing her binoculars again, she focused on the triangular blade of the tail as it rose and fell with the waves, wincing at the scorch marks on it at the same time as she once again registered the insignia: a circle above two wavy lines. The logo meant nothing to her, but the fact that the tail was able to remain upright despite the turbulence did. The tail might be still attached to the fuselage, or at least some portion of the fuselage, which was acting as a kind of anchor to keep it erect.

  Lowering the binoculars, Gina took a deep, meant-to-be-steadying breath. Her nostrils wrinkled with distaste. The frigid air reeked with the acrid smell of burning combined with the strong scent of airplane fuel. She could taste the metallic tang of the fuel on her tongue, feel the burn of it in her nose. It brought the reality of the crash home to her as nothing else had done.

  It brought the memory of the crash she had barely survived home to her as nothing else had done. For a moment she thought she could once again actually feel the searing heat of flames licking at her skin, hear the screams of the others as they died.

  Making a small distressed sound, she shuddered.

  Stop it, she ordered herself fiercely. That’s gone, over with. In the past. You weren’t on board this time.

  The people who had been on board this time—what about them?

  The thought that there might be survivors was electrifying. It was what she needed to bring her sharply back to the present. Gina got a grip and scrambled back onto the seat. From there she could see parts of the plane scattered in a wide circle around her.

  The boat’s sudden steep rise as it was borne aloft on a particularly tall wave gave her an excellent, if brief, view of her surroundings: parts of the plane were everywhere. The debris field was large and rapidly changing as some objects sank and others were carried away.

  Could anyone have lived through something like that?

  You did, she reminded herself, then pushed the unsettling memories aside in favor of using the binoculars to visually search the water. The tail was the largest visible piece of debris. If there were survivors, logic dictated that they would be near the tail.

  She was looking in that direction again when her attention was caught by a small object sliding across the black rubber deck toward her foot: the radio. Dismayed by how close she had come to losing the thing—the ability to communicate was all-important out here—she dropped the binoculars, snatched up the radio, and spoke urgently into it even as she slammed the throttle forward and steered toward the tail.

  “Arvid? Anybody? Can you hear me?”

  Nothing. Static was the only reply. Frowning as the heavy swell bounced her up and down, she watched a small black suitcase float past and winced at the thought of the probable fate of its owner.

  Scrunching her face up against the bite of the wind, she desperately searched the sea for any sign of life.

  Again, nothing.

  The boat was small and lightweight enough, and the swells were growing big and powerful enough, that the stability of the craft was becoming a real concern: what she didn’t want to do was let a wave catch her sideways. Nosing into the waves, she tried the radio once more. Still just static. Giving up for the moment, she clipped the radio to her pocket, where it would be safe and she would be able to hear any transmission sent her way.

  The force of the wind made her eyes water as she scanned the area. Using the binoculars at least protected her eyes and gave her a better view of what was out there. What she saw was disheartening: debris, debris, and more debris. Blinking to refocus as she lowered the binoculars, she cast an anxious glance at the approaching storm that confirmed her worst fear: it’s coming in fast.

  When her small group of scientists had left Juneau, the week’s forecast had been ideal for their purposes, calling for the weather to be moderately cold and clear with occasional light flurries, she recalled, aggrieved. The expedition members had confirmed it before boarding the ship that had carried them to Attu. Looked like things had changed.

  The ominous appearance of the tumbling clouds rushing inexorably toward her made her hands clench around the wheel. The temperature was steadily dropping. The wind was cold enough now to bite at her exposed skin. Waves rose up around her in frothy, white-tipped peaks, reminding her momentarily of a bowl of fresh-whipped meringue. The boat was starting to plunge up and down like a roller-coaster car. Attu was famous for blizzards with cyclonic winds that blew up out of nowhere, and she was afraid she was staring one right in the face.

  She turned her back on it. A harried search of the waves as far as she could see turned up no signs of life. Probably she was a fool to keep looking. The wheeling birds that had filled the sky earlier were gone now, although whether from the explosion or the oncoming weather she couldn’t be sure. But the absence of birds was generally a bad sign.

  Gina knew she needed to get to shore, but she couldn’t just turn tail and run. If there were survivors, she was the only hope they had.

  Firmly closing her mind to the memories that threatened to overwhelm her, she narrowed her eyes against the wind, picked up the binoculars, and set herself to searching the waves again.

  The snowfall was increasing in intensity. Fat white flakes swirled around her as she guided the boat toward the tail. Scanning the water for anything that resembled a person was nearly useless: there was so much debris that it was difficult to know where to even begin to look. Plus, the water was growing so choppy that it was impossible to see more than a narrow slice of the total picture at a time.

  “Can anybody hear me?” she screamed, and pushed her hood back to listen for a reply. Her hair was honey brown, midback length, straight and thick as a horse’s tail. The wind caught long tendrils of it, whipping them free of her bun to send them flying around her face. It was blowing harder now, making the snowflakes feel like tiny bits of grit when they hit her skin. Keeping a wary eye on the advancing storm front, she knew that she didn’t have much longer before she absolutely had to head for shore.

  The thought of abandoning anyone who might be in the water made her chest tighten.

  “Hell-o-o-o,” she tried again at the top of her lungs. “Is anyone out here?”

  The rushing sound of the wind and waves made her shout seem impossibly small. She couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think it had carried very far. Certainly there was no response.

  Some kind of search-and-rescue operation was needed on the scene now. But given the remote location, and the storm, and the time frame before it hit, she knew it wasn’t going to happen. Jittery with alarm at the idea that she was the only help there might be for days, she picked up the radio again.

  “There’s been a plane crash,” she said into it. “Arvid, can you hear me? Call the Coast Guard and get help out here. I repeat, there’s been a plane crash. Can anyone hear me?” She gave her location and coordinates in hopes that Arvid or someone could hear her even if they couldn’t respond. If a couple of her fellow scientists could join her with the other boat that was docked at the main camp, that would be way better than having just herself out here alon
e. But even as she had the thought, she realized that there wasn’t time. She was probably a good half hour away by sea from the former Coast Guard station, and the storm would hit way before any of them could reach her.

  Reluctantly accepting that she was on her own, Gina was grimly listening to more static in reply to her latest transmission when she spotted something floating past that was definitely human.

  Her stomach dropped as she stared at it.

  A man’s leg, severed below the knee. Bare and white as a fish’s belly except for the dark sock that still covered the foot.

  Gina was watching its progress in mute horror when a movement a few hundred yards out caught her eye.

  Looking up—and thankful to the core to have her attention diverted—she carefully clipped the radio to her pocket again, lifted the binoculars, and peered through the wind and blowing snow as she sought to verify what she thought she’d seen.

  Yes, there it was again.

  Adrenaline raced through her. Somebody was bobbing in the water. Somebody with open eyes and a gasping mouth and flailing limbs. Impossible to be certain, but from the size of him she thought it must be a man.

  A survivor.

  Gina’s heart beat faster.

  Chapter Four

  He should be dead. In fact, Cal had been pretty sure that he was dead until he’d caught a glimpse of an orange boat glimmering above the icy blue world in which he’d found himself. The explosion, the hurtling into utter blackness, the sudden immersion in freezing cold water, the lack of air, the sense of being separate from his body, all made a kind of twisted sense in the context of having just lost his life.

  An orange boat did not. An orange boat had no place in the Hereafter. An orange boat meant that he’d fallen into the sea instead of some icy, watery version of hell, which was where he’d always assumed he would end up when he died. Now he was freezing, and drowning, and maybe even bleeding to death, but he was not dead.