by Sarah Lotz
Where are their feet? They don’t have feet. That’s not right.
Uh-uh. They aren’t real. They can’t be real. She can’t see their eyes, their faces are inky black blobs that remain flat and unmoving as the light behind them blooms and dies.
They’re coming for her–she knows this.
The fear ebbs away, replaced with a certainty that she doesn’t have long. It’s as if a cold, confident Pam–a new Pam, the Pam she’s always wanted to be–enters and takes over her battered, dying body. Ignoring the mess where her stomach once was, she gropes for her fanny pack. It’s still here, although it’s shifted around to her side. She closes her eyes and concentrates on opening the zip. Her fingers are wet, slippery, but she’s not going to give up now.
The whup-whup sound fills her ears, louder this time, a light floats down from above and dances over and around her and she can make out a row of disembodied seats, the metal struts catching the light; a high-heeled shoe that looks brand new. She waits to see if the light will halt the crowd’s approach. They continue to creep forward, and still she can’t make out any facial features. And where is the boy? If only she could tell him not to go near them, because she knows what they want, oh yes, she knows exactly what they want. But she can’t think about that now, not when she’s so close. She digs inside her bag, yips with relief when her fingers graze the smooth back of her phone. Careful not to drop it, she ekes it out of the bag–has time to marvel at the panic she felt earlier when she couldn’t remember where she’d put it–and instructs her arm to bring it up to her face. What if it doesn’t work? What if it’s broken?
It won’t be broken, she won’t let it be broken, and she caws in triumph when she hears the chiming do-do-do-dah welcome message. Nearly there… A tut of exasperation–she’s such a messy bunny, there’s blood all over the screen. Using the last of her strength to concentrate, she finds her way to the applications box, scrolls to ‘voice recorder’. The whup-whupping is deafening now, but Pam shuts it out, just as she ignores the fact that she can no longer see.
She holds the phone to her mouth and starts speaking.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
There can be few readers who do not feel a frisson of dread when the words Black Thursday are mentioned. That day–January 12, 2012–when four commuter planes went down within hours of each other, resulting in the deaths of over a thousand people, has joined the annals of the devastating disasters that have changed the way we look at the world.
Predictably, within weeks of the incidents, the market was flooded with non-fiction accounts, blogs, biographies and opinion pieces, all cashing in on the public’s morbid fascination with the accidents themselves, and the child plane crash survivors known as The Three. But no one could have predicted the macabre chain of events that would follow or how fast they would unfold.
As I did in Snapped, my investigation into gun crime perpetrated by US children under the age of sixteen, I decided that if I was going to add my voice to the mix, the only way forward was to collate an objective account, letting those involved speak in their own words. To this end, I have drawn from a wide variety of sources, including Paul Craddock’s unfinished biography, Chiyoko Kamamoto’s collected messages, and interviews personally conducted by me during and immediately after the events in question.
I make no apologies for the inclusion of subject matter that some may find upsetting, such as the accounts of those who were first on the scenes of the tragedies; the statements from former and current Pamelists; the isho found at the crash site of Sun Air Flight 678; and the never-before-published interview with the exorcist hired by Paul Craddock.
While I freely admit to having included excerpts from newspaper reports and magazine articles as context (and, to some extent, as a narrative device), my main motivation, as it was in Snapped, is to provide an unbiased platform for the perspectives of those closest to the main players in the events that occurred from January to July, 2012. With this in mind, I urge readers to remember that these accounts are subjective and to draw their own conclusions.
Elspeth Martins
New York
August 30, 2012
They’re here. I’m… don’t let Snookie eat chocolate, it’s poison for dogs, she’ll beg you, the boy. The boy watch the boy watch the dead people oh Lordy there’s so many… They’re coming for me now. We’re all going soon. All of us. Bye Joanie I love the bag bye Joanie, Pastor Len warn them that the boy he’s not to—
The last words of Pamela May Donald (1961–2012)
PART ONE
CRASH
From chapter one of Guarding JESS: My Life With One of The Three by Paul Craddock (co-written with Mandi Solomon).
I’ve always liked airports. Call me an old romantic, but I used to get a kick out of watching families and lovers reuniting–that split second when the weary and sunburned emerge through the sliding glass doors and recognition lights up their eyes. So when Stephen asked me to collect him and the girls from Gatwick, I was more than happy to do it.
I left with a good hour to spare. I wanted to get there early, grab myself a coffee and people-watch for a bit. Odd to think of it now, but I was in a wonderful mood that afternoon. I’d had a call-back for the part of the gay butler in the third series of Cavendish Hall (type-casting, of course, but Gerry, my agent, thought it could finally be my big break), and I’d managed to find a parking spot that wasn’t a day’s hike from the entrance. As it was one of my treat days, I bought myself a latte with extra cream, and wandered over to join the throng waiting for passengers to emerge from baggage reclaim. Next to a Cup ’n’ Chow outlet, a team of bickering work-experience kids were doing an execrable job of dismantling a tacky Christmas display that was well-overdue for removal, and I watched their mini drama unfold for a while, oblivious that my own was about to begin.
I hadn’t thought to check the flight information board to make sure the plane was on time, so I was taken unawares when a nasal voice droned over the intercom: ‘Could all those awaiting the arrival of Go!Go! Airlines Flight 277 from Tenerife please make their way to the information counter, thank you.’ Isn’t that Stephen’s flight? I thought, double-checking the details on my BlackBerry. I wasn’t too concerned. I suppose I assumed the flight had been delayed. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why Stephen hadn’t called to let me know he’d be late.
You never think it’s going to happen to you, do you?
There was only a small group of us at first–others, like me, who’d arrived early. A pretty girl with dyed red hair holding a heart-shaped balloon on a stick, a dreadlocked fellow with a wrestler’s build and a middle-aged couple with smokers’ skin who were dressed in identical cerise shell suits. Not the sort of people with whom I’d usually choose to associate. Odd how one’s first impressions can be so wrong. I now count them all among my closest friends. Well, this type of thing brings you together, doesn’t it?
I should have known from the shell-shocked expressions on the faces of the spotty teenager manning the counter and the whey-faced security woman hovering next to him that something horrific was afoot, but all I was feeling at that stage was irritation.
‘What’s going on?’ I snapped in my best Cavendish Hall accent.
The teenager managed to stutter that we were to follow him to where ‘more info would be relayed to us’.
We all did as we were told, although I confess I was surprised the shell-suited couple didn’t kick up more of a stink, they didn’t look the type to take orders. But as they told me weeks later at one of our ‘277 Together’ meetings, at that stage they were in denial. They didn’t want to know, and if anything untoward had happened to the plane, they didn’t want to hear it from a boy who was barely out of puberty. The teenager scurried ahead, presumably so that none of us would have the chance to interrogate him further, and ushered us through an innocuous door next to the customs’ offices. We were led down a long corridor, which, judging by its peeling paint and scuffed floor, wasn’t in a secti
on of the airport typically encountered by the public gaze. I remember smelling a rogue whiff of cigarette smoke wafting in from somewhere in a flagrant disregard of the smoking ban.
We ended up in a grim windowless lounge, furnished with tired burgundy waiting-room seats. My eye was caught by one of those seventies tubular ashtrays, which was half-hidden behind a plastic hydrangea. Funny what you remember, isn’t it?
A guy in a polyester suit clutching a clipboard waddled towards us, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a Tourette’s sufferer’s. Although as pale as a cadaver, his cheeks were alive with a severe shaving rash. His eyes darted all over the place, briefly met mine, then his gaze settled into the far distance.
It hit me then, I think. The sickening knowledge that I was about to hear something that would change my life forever.
‘Go on then, mate,’ Kelvin–the fellow with the dreads–finally said.
The suit swallowed convulsively. ‘I am extremely sorry to relay this to you, but Flight 277 disappeared off the radar approximately an hour ago.’
The world swayed, and I could feel the first wisps of a panic attack. My fingers were tingling and my chest was starting to tighten. Then Kelvin asked the question the rest of us were too afraid to ask: ‘Has it crashed?’
‘We cannot be certain at this time, but please be assured we will relay the information to you as soon as it comes in. Counsellors will be available for any of you who—’
‘What about survivors?’
The suit’s hands were trembling and the winking cartoon plane on his plastic Go!Go! badge seemed to mock us with its cheeky insouciance. ‘Should have called it Gay!Gay! Air,’ Stephen used to quip whenever one of Go!Go!’s dire adverts came on the television. He was always joking that that cartoon plane was camper than a bus-load of drag queens. I didn’t take offence; that was the sort of relationship we had. ‘Like I say,’ the suit flustered, ‘we have counsellors at your disposal—’
Mel–the female half of the track-suited couple–spoke up. ‘Sod your counsellors, just tell us what’s happened!’
The girl holding the balloon started sobbing with the gusto of an EastEnders character, and Kelvin put his arm around her. She dropped the balloon and I watched as it bounced sadly across the floor, eventually ending up lodged next to the retro ashtray. Other people were starting to drift into the room, ushered by more Go!Go! staff–most of whom looked as bewildered and unprepared as the spotty teenager.
Mel’s face was as pink as her shell-suit top and she was jabbing a finger in the official’s face. Everyone seemed to be screaming or crying, but I felt a curious distance from what was going on, as if I was on set, waiting for my cue. And this is a ghastly thing to admit, but I thought, remember what you’re feeling, Paul, you can use it in your acting. I’m not proud of that. I’m just being honest.
I kept staring at that balloon, and suddenly I could hear Jessica and Polly’s voices, clear as a bell: ‘But Uncle Paaaaauuuuul, what keeps the plane in the air?’ Stephen had asked me round to Sunday lunch the week before they left, and the twins hadn’t stopped badgering me about the flight, for some reason assuming I was the font of all knowledge about air travel. It was the kids’ first time on a plane, and they were more excited about that than they were about the holiday. I found myself trying to remember the last thing Stephen had said to me, something along the lines of, ‘See you when you’re older, mate.’ We’re non-identical, but how could I not have sensed something awful had happened? I dragged my phone out of my pocket, recalling that Stephen had sent me a text the day before: ‘Girls say hi. Resort full of twats. We get in at 3.30. Don’t be late ;).’ I thumbed through my messages, trying to find it. It was suddenly absolutely vital that I save it. It wasn’t there–I must have accidentally deleted it.
Even weeks afterwards, I wished I’d kept that text message.
Somehow, I found myself back in the Arrivals area. I don’t remember how I even got there, or if anyone tried to stop me leaving that ghastly lounge. I drifted along, sensing that people were staring at me, but right then, they were as insignificant as extras. There was something in the air, like that heavy feeling you get just before a storm hits. I thought, sod it, I need a drink, which, since I’d been on the wagon for a good ten years, wasn’t like me. I sleepwalked towards the Irish theme pub on the far side of the area. A group of suited yobs were gathered around the bar staring up at the TV. One of them, a florid-faced prat with a Mockney accent, was talking too loudly, going on about 9/11, and telling everyone that he had to get to Zurich by 5.50 or ‘heads would roll’. He stopped, mid-sentence, as I approached, and the others made room for me, drawing back as if I were contagious. Of course, I’ve learned since then that grief and horror are contagious.
The TV’s sound was up to full volume and an anchor–one of those botoxed American horrors with Tom Cruise teeth and too much make-up–was yabbering into shot. Behind her was a screen capture of what looked to be some sort of swamp, a helicopter hovering over it. And then I read the strap-line: Maiden Airlines Everglades crash.
They’ve got it wrong, I thought. Stephen and the girls were on Go!Go!, not that plane.
And then it hit me. Another plane had gone down.
At 14.35 (CAT time), an Antonov cargo and passenger plane leased by Nigerian carrier Dalu Air crashed into the heart of Khayelitsha–Cape Town’s most populous township. Liam de Villiers was one of the first paramedics on the scene. An Advanced Life Support Paramedic for Cape Medical Response at the time of the incident, Liam now works as a trauma counsellor. This interview was conducted via Skype and email and collated into a single account.
We were dealing with an incident on Baden Powell Drive when it happened. A taxi had clipped a Merc and overturned, but it wasn’t too hectic. The taxi was empty at the time, and although the driver had only minor injuries, we’d need to ferry him to Casualty to get stitched up. It was one of those rare still days, the southeaster that had been raging for weeks had blown itself out, and there was only a wisp of cloud trickling over the lip of Table Mountain. A perfect day, I guess you could say, although we were parked a bit too close to the Macassar sewage works for comfort. After smelling that for twenty minutes, I was grateful I hadn’t had a chance to scarf down the KFC I’d bought for lunch.
I was on with Cornelius that day, one of our newer guys. He was a cool oke, good sense of humour. While I dealt with the driver, he was gossiping with a couple of traffic cops who were on the scene. The taxi-driver was shouting into his cellphone, lying to his boss while I dressed the wound on his upper arm. You wouldn’t have known anything had happened to him; he didn’t flinch once. I was just about to ask Cornelius if he’d let False Bay Casualty know we were en route with a patient, when a roaring sound ripped out of the sky, making all of us jump. The taxi-driver’s hand went limp and his phone clattered to the ground.
And then we saw it. I know everyone says this, but it was exactly like watching a scene from a movie; you couldn’t believe it was actually happening. It was flying so low I could see the chipped paint in its logo–you know, that green swirl curving round a ‘D’. Its landing gear was down and the wings were dipping crazily from side to side like a rope-walker trying to get his balance. I remember thinking, airport’s the other way, what the fuck is the pilot doing?
Cornelius was shouting something, pointing at it. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I got the gist. Mitchell’s Plain, where his family lived, wasn’t that far away from where the plane looked to be headed. It was obvious it was going to crash; it wasn’t on fire or anything like that, but it was clear it was in severe trouble.
The plane disappeared out of sight, there was a ‘crump’, and I swear, the ground shook. Later, Darren, our base controller, said that we were probably too far away to feel any kind of aftershock, but that’s how I remember it. Seconds later a black cloud blossomed into the sky. Huge it was, made me think of those pictures of Hiroshima. And I thought, yissus, no way did anyone survive that.
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We didn’t stop to think. Cornelius jumped in the driver’s seat, started radioing the base station, telling them we had a major incident on our hands and to notify the centre for disaster management. I told the taxi-driver he’d have to wait for another ambulance to take him to casualty and shouted, ‘Tell them it’s a Phase Three, tell them it’s a Phase Three!’ The cops were already on the road, heading straight for the Khayelitsha Harare turn-off. I jumped in the back of the ambulance, the adrenaline shooting through me, washing away all the tiredness I was feeling after being on duty for twelve hours.
While Cornelius drove, following in the wake of the police car, I pulled out the bergen, started rummaging in the lockers for the burn shields, the intravenous bottles, anything I thought we might need, and placed them on the stretcher at the back. We’re trained for this of course–for a plane going down, I mean. There’s a designated ditch site in Fish Hoek in False Bay, and I wondered if that was where the pilot was heading when he realised he wasn’t going to make the airport. But I won’t lie, training is one thing, I never thought we’d have to deal with a situation like this.
That drive is etched on my memory like you won’t believe. The crackle and pop of the radio as voices conferred, Cornelius’s white-knuckled hands on the steering-wheel, the reek of the Streetwise two-piece meal I’d never get to eat. And look, this is going to sound bad, but there are parts of Khayelitsha we usually wouldn’t dream of entering, we’ve had incidents when staff have been held up–all the ambulance services will tell you that–but this was different. It didn’t even occur to me to worry about going into Little Brazzaville. Darren was back on the radio, talking Cornelius through the procedure, telling him that we were to wait for the scene to be secured first. In situations like these, there’s no place for heroes. You don’t want to get yourself injured, end up another casualty for the guys to deal with.
