Flight 3108 Page 2

  “As far as I know.” He raised the pillow. “This is for an older lady. I believe she’s feeling a little faint.”

  Deb nodded, intent on filling the cart. “I’ll be out in a minute to start the snack and drink service. I’m sure everyone could use something right about now.”

  “Um… can I grab a water? And then I’ll get out of your hair.”

  “You can get in my hair anytime,” Marcia immediately cracked, and both Deb and Mason laughed. He appreciated the compliment, but he hoped she was just making banter. She wasn’t his type at all. But now Deb…

  Trevor was coming back in as he was heading out with a bottle of Dasani.

  “Everyone’s fine,” Trevor announced. “Shaken up, and one threw up in their barf bag, but that’s about it.”

  “That’s good,” he heard Deb say behind him and then Mason was moving out of earshot.

  He thought he might still have trouble with Tyler, but to his surprise, he had already switched places with the older woman.

  Tyler shot up as Mason appeared at his side and moved out of the way so Mason could get to her. “What’s your name?” he asked as he gently situated the pillow between her head and the window.

  “Gwen. Gwen Alverson.”

  Mason told her his name, helped her to take a few sips of water, and then retreated, leaving her in the care of Tyler, who, weirdly, seemed to be taking his responsibility of her seriously. Maybe there was hope for their generation after all.

  Ten minutes later, they all had their beverages and snack boxes and Gwen was sitting up happily munching on Oreo cookies. Tyler, hair down now and tucked behind his ears, wasn’t eating anything, though, he saw.

  “Hey,” he called up in a half whisper. He raised his chin when Tyler looked over his shoulder at him. “What’s wrong?”

  Tyler screwed up his nose and shook his head.

  Mason, who had just finished his crackers and cheese spread, closed up his box and held it and his drink out to Kimi. “Would you hold on to these?”

  He lifted his tray table to the upright position, slipped out of his seat, and moved up to Tyler so he could talk to him properly. “What’s up, buddy?”

  “I can’t eat any of this. I shouldn’t even be drinking this soda.” He gestured at the cup of ginger ale he had. “But I feel a little sick to my stomach.”

  “What’s wrong with the food?”

  “It’s all processed. And none of it’s fresh.”

  Mason thought about it. “What about nuts? Can you eat those?”

  “Are they raw?”

  Mason held back a sigh. “I don’t know. Let me check.”

  He retrieved the nuts he’d taken but not eaten right after they’d gotten under way and brought them back over. “They’re roasted. But they’re natural. And you probably need something. Here.”

  After only a second’s consideration, Tyler reached out and took them.

  “You’re welcome,” Mason said when no gratitude seemed forthcoming.

  “Oh… sorry. Thanks.”

  2

  THE TURBULENCE WAS back and even rougher than before. Trevor and the other flight attendants were nowhere to be seen and presumably strapped into their jumpseats. Kimi, who, after a bit of coaxing, had been opening up to him about her life as a college student away from home for the first time, had gone silent beside him.

  Not that he would have been able to hear her. The force of the storm along with the roar of the engines and rattling of the aircraft had brought the noise up to a new level. Where were they right that very moment? Had they been blown off course? Were they being pushed around like a kite in the wind above a surging sea?

  A woman was reciting the Lord’s Prayer ahead of him. It sounded like the dowdy sixtyish lady in front of Tyler.

  “…us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom”—her voice rose as one with the plane as it tilted steeply upward, engines screaming—“and the power, and the glory, forever and ever…”

  The pilot may have been trying to gain some altitude, possibly to get above the storm, because they continued to climb this way for a while—and then the laboring roar of first one engine and then the other suddenly cut out and the cabin lights flickered and then dimmed, leaving behind an ominous silence broken only by the sounds of the storm and the vibration of the plane.

  “We’ve stalled out!” someone shrieked.

  Nose dropping, the plane sank down as outside the window there was a bright flash of light followed by a tremendous CRACK.

  Jesus, they’d been struck by lightning. Clenching the armrests, Mason held tight to the tenuous hold they provided as he and the other passengers were lifted off their seats and sent into freefall.

  He yelled along with the rest, belt cutting into him, as they arrowed downward in darkness lit only by the faint lighting and intermittent thunderbolts.

  We’re going to crash! he thought in disbelief, and felt his ears pop.

  As if in acceptance of their own inevitable mortality, the noise of the people around him slowly began to die down.

  He felt an insane urge to giggle as another, closer bolt of lightning lit up the interior and he caught sight of the yellow oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling. All at once it hit him what was happening.

  He reached up and snatched the mask above him and yanked it down over his face, making sure it covered his mouth and nose, then grabbed the one above Kimi, who was paralyzed by terror or already out, and pulled it over her head.

  He had just gotten it on right when he heard the sputtering of one or both of the engines and with a sickening surge, the nose of the plane abruptly rose and the lights began to grow brighter. He thought it was going to tip over, but then it settled back down almost level, though they were still being bounced and jarred from side to side by the churning currents around them. Thank God, they’d managed to restart the engines.

  His relief was short lived. Less than a minute later, the engines quit again, and Mason felt his ears pop once more as the nose dipped and they began another dark dive toward whatever waited beneath them, the ground or the sea.

  He had just resigned himself to dying, when miraculously he heard the engines come to life once more. In seconds they were leveling out.

  Mason had barely begun to rejoice when the plane was struck by a violent crosswind, nearly rolling them—and suddenly they were shooting forward. The turbulence that had plagued nearly the entire flight fell away except for a continuous shuddering throughout the plane that was somehow even more frightening as they were sucked across the night sky as if by some unknown force.

  The aircraft hurtled through the clouds, the pressure of their acceleration holding him to his seat, pressing against his chest, tighter and tighter until he could barely breathe.

  His ears began to ring loudly and he could feel his consciousness ebbing.

  His last thoughts were of Jess, and of Tyler—and then he was out.

  The first thing Mason registered was the almost absence of discernable motion, and the second was the soft drone of the engines. He opened his eyes. The cabin’s normal nighttime lighting was back on.

  Kimi was slumped over in her seat but the mask he’d slipped over her face had stayed in place.

  Other than the hum of the engines, the cabin was eerily quiet around him.

  Almost afraid to look, he sat up and peered around him. And what he saw chilled him to the bone. Many of the oxygen masks, too many, hung unused or had been put on incorrectly. And those people weren’t moving at all. Many of them had bled from the nose and ears, too. Merely unconscious, or worse? My God, what had happened?

  Thank goodness Tyler had his mask on, as did Gwen, who was beginning to stir.

  He heard the patter of approaching footsteps and looked around, wincing. From the feel of it, his neck had been wrenched. Not too badly, though, he didn’t think, experimentally turning his head left and then right.

  Deb appeared out of the dimness into the aisle besid
e him. “You can take that off now,” she said. She crouched down to help him. “How do you feel?”

  “I feel… all right.”

  She nodded. “Good.”

  Mason waited for her to say something more, but she remained strangely silent. He stared at her blank profile and realized his worst fears upon awakening might be confirmed.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  She slowly moved her head back and forth.

  “What? Are people…?” He had been going to say “hurt” but her stunned demeanor sent another chill through him that had nothing to do with the slightly chilly temperature of the cabin. “Are they…?” It couldn’t be true. But her silence said it was. “My God, how many?”

  “Most of them, it looks like.”

  He gasped. “What?”

  “There was such chaos, and the lights were barely working… A few didn’t put their masks on at all. I don’t think they fully understood…” She straightened back up. “And the others—they put them on wrong. No matter how many times we tell them, they always put them on wrong! It’s supposed to go over the nose, too.” She swayed, and Mason realized she wasn’t in much better shape than the rest of them. That galvanized him into action. He unbuckled his belt and rose. When his head had stopped spinning, he gently pushed her into his vacated seat.

  “No,” she protested weakly. “I have to—”

  “I got it.”

  “No,” she said again. “Marcia, she won’t wake up, and Trevor… Trevor, he…” Her face contorted and she began to cry.

  “I’m going to check on everyone right now. Help Kimi, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  She immediately turned to do as he requested, her sniffles already tapering off, and he left her to move up to Tyler and Gwen.

  “He won’t wake up,” the older woman wailed as he reached them. “I can’t get him to wake up!”

  Mason’s heart sank as he took in Tyler’s inert form. Oh, no. He reached to feel for a pulse.

  “He put my mask on first,” she said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “He wasn’t supposed to do that. But I put his on right after! I did, I put it on him.” She began to weep harder, and Mason’s eyes filled at how unselfishly Tyler had acted, and how unfairly he’d judged him.

  And then his fingers felt a pulse. It was faint, but there. “I’ve got a heartbeat.” He pulled off the mask still on Tyler, and began patting his cheek.

  “Tyler!” Mason gave him another couple of light smacks, and finally felt him stir.

  Tyler’s arm flailed out, knocking Mason’s hand away. “Dude, what the fuck are you doing?”

  Mason laughed softly and looked over at Gwen. “I think he’s going to be fine.”

  She had stopped crying and was now gazing wide-eyed at Tyler. “Thank heavens,” she said. “I don’t think I could have lived with that.”

  Leaving them, Mason turned back around to head for the rear of the plane. Deb, he noticed, was no longer in the seat he’d put her in.

  “Are you all right?” he asked Kimi, who had regained consciousness. He waited until she nodded, then resumed making his way along the aisle.

  It was as bad as Deb had said. All the way through the main section and on into the rear, there was nothing but silent, motionless people slumped in various poses around only a sprinkling of passengers showing signs of awakening.

  He found Deb kneeling by Marcia, whom she’d managed to get out of her harness and onto the floor. “How is she?”

  “I don’t know. She still hasn’t woken up. But she’s breathing okay.”

  “That’s a good sign.”

  “I can’t leave her like this. We need to move her.” She looked up at him. “I need three seats together. We can lay her across them until she wakes up. Do you understand what I’m saying? I need three seats together.”

  Mason stared stupidly at her and then realized what she was asking. Shit. Okay. “Okay, I can do that.”

  Swiveling around before he could change his mind, he went for the first row of three seats, where there were only two passengers. He quickly unbuckled the slender woman hanging with her auburn hair covering her face, placed his arms around her, and heaved her out of the seat.

  Trying to push the sorrow and pity he was feeling for the woman and the grimness of what he was having to do to the back of his mind, he quickly carried her over and carefully laid her down on the floor by the rear service door.

  The man next to her had attempted to pull his mask down but failed to get it on all the way, and blood had dripped out of one ear. He was harder to move, and pain flared again in Mason’s neck as he pulled him out and half dragged him over to gently lay him beside the woman.

  What was going on with the pilots? The plane was now flying smoothly; they were obviously out of the storm. Yet neither of them had come out. Were the captain and the first officer both dead and the plane flying on autopilot? He walked back over to fold up the armrests and then hurried back to where Deb waited.

  “Deb, have you talked to the captain?”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t get a response. I… I have the code… but then I got distracted by Trevor and—”

  “It’s okay. I understand. But we need to get into that cockpit. Grab her feet.”

  Together they toted Marcia over and positioned her across the seats. Then Mason headed on up to the front while Deb went to fetch a blanket to tuck around her.

  There were a few more people beginning to stir here and there, but not many. He was glad the interior lights were still dimmed. The horror of their current predicament was going to be bad enough without having to view it in all its gruesome detail.

  What exactly had happened? He remembered the turbulence not long into the flight, the lightning… then the plane stalling and sending them into a dive, followed by the engines coming back on and a feeling of being sucked sideways and rushing through something. He shuddered as he recalled the sickening feeling of his ears popping, getting dizzy, and then passing out.

  Even in the muted lighting, he was able to tell exactly what had happened to Trevor. Strapping in and putting on his oxygen mask hadn’t done him any good. A piece of paneling had fallen and hit him on the head, leaving a gap in the ceiling above him and a deep gash in his scalp. The broken panel lay beside him in a dark red puddle where the wound had bled before he died.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he told a still woman in first class as he pulled the blanket out from around her feet. “But Deb doesn’t need to see that again.”

  He took the blanket over to Trevor and draped it across him, more to cover his glazed, unblinking eyes, staring at nothing, than anything else.

  He could hear Deb answering questions on her way up, and by the time she reached him, she had a retinue of frightened passengers following in her wake.

  “I can’t open the door like this,” she said, halting before him.

  Mason nodded and stepped around her, coming face to face with the husky guy with buzzed blond hair. He wasn’t fat; he was just big. Not incredibly tall, only an inch or so above his own five feet eleven inches, but heavily muscled.

  “Are you going to be trouble?” Mason asked him bluntly.

  “What? No. I just want to know what’s going on.” The guy leaned in. “People are dead.”

  A teenage girl behind him, the overweight one, began to cry. “What happened?”

  Mason held his hands out in a placating gesture as the people behind her began to exclaim and call out questions. “I don’t know much more than you. The cabin must have started to lose pressure when the engines stalled. Other than that, I don’t know. But those of us who saw the masks and were able to get them on properly seem to be okay.”

  “Marcia’s not,” Deb murmured.

  “Still no change?”

  She shook her head.

  “But if that’s the case,” the girl asked, “then why are we able to breathe now?”

  Deb answered before Mason had to. “Because we’re at a lower altitude.
We’re now down to where we have pressure and oxygen. I believe the captain must have managed to set our altitude and engage the autopilot. He wouldn’t have had it on before that with such extreme turbulence.”

  They had just begun that curious acceleration, Mason remembered. “Yeah, everything smoothed out when…”

  “When whatever happened, happened,” a youngish man with short spiky hair finished.

  “All I know,” Mason said, “is we have to get onto that flight deck and see what’s going on, and I’m going to need you to give her some space so she can put the code in.”

  He expected reluctance, but all of them shuffled back without argument.

  Mason waited tensely with the others as she punched in the digits. He was afraid it wouldn’t work—but then it did and she was pushing the door open.

  “Captain?” she said, stepping through the opening. Mason followed her as she moved on in. He felt someone behind him, looked around, and saw it was Buzzcut. But it was only him and they might need his assistance from the state of the pilots, who were both slumped over in their seats and obviously unconscious or worse, and he let it go.

  Deb leaned over the captain to touch his shoulder, and he jumped like he’d been shot.

  “Easy,” cried Mason as the man ripped his mask off and looked around wildly with bloodshot eyes. Snapping back with impressive speed, he immediately began feverishly checking and adjusting the staggering array of instruments, indicators, knobs, dials, switches, and displays.

  “All of you, out!” he cried after a moment, jerking a look around at them. “Except for you, Deb. You stay.”

  “Out,” he barked at them again, sounding stronger this time, as Deb bent toward the first officer.

  Mason didn’t have to be told twice. The man obviously needed to concentrate. Urging Buzzcut ahead of him, Mason exited the cockpit and pulled the door shut.

  The others, the ones he’d already seen and a few he hadn’t noticed yet, surged forward. “The captain’s okay,” he told them. “He’s awake and he’s got things under control.” Mason wasn’t sure that was exactly true, but he needed to keep them calm.