Flight 3108 Page 9

  Mason, feeling his exhaustion, moved back and dropped down into a chair behind him. This wasn’t their world. Could they learn to live here? Would they be able to live here? “It would help if we knew what happened.”

  Juan’s head whipped around. “Why? We can’t stay here.”

  “We may not have a choice. What else can we do?”

  Rocky, now standing by a window staring out at the pouring rain, slowly turned to face them. “We might have a choice.”

  They waited expectantly for him to explain, and finally he did.

  “We could go back,” he said. “The pilot knows where we came out. We can fly back through. We can find this section of ocean… this triangle.”

  “Wormhole tunnel,” Dustin clarified.

  “And we can return through it.”

  Mason thought about it. Get back on that plane and go through what had nearly killed them before? “I don’t know. What if he can’t find it?”

  Dustin answered for Rocky. “Then we’ll know we at least tried.”

  9

  EXCEPT FOR TYLER and Kimi, the seating area was empty when they got there. “They’re waiting on the plane,” Tyler explained, straightening up from where he had been lying beside Kimi.

  “What happened?” Mason asked him. “What’s going on?”

  “The captain picked up something on the radio.”

  “What, what was it?”

  “You should probably hear it for yourself.”

  “Okay, fine. Well let’s go, then.”

  Tyler helped Kimi up, and they hustled out to the plane, climbed the ladder, and entered, first Kimi and Tyler, then Mason, Rocky, Juan, and finally Dustin.

  Mason had been expecting a group of impatient passengers anxiously waiting to find out what they had discovered, but other than Deb, no one seemed to take much interest in their return.

  “Here, take these,” she said, handing them sodas and packs of ginger cookies.

  Mason immediately popped the top of his can and took a long drink of the blessedly cool liquid, then tore open his cookies and crammed one into his mouth.

  “You haven’t had anything to eat or drink from the airport, have you?” she asked, and he nearly choked.

  He took a swig of soda to wash down the cookie. “We had some water and dried fruit. Why?”

  She shook her head, eyes wide. “You better go see the captain.”

  “Wait,” she said as he turned. “Where’s Peter?”

  Mason slowly shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”

  Her face filled with surprise then creased in sorrow.

  “Let me see the captain,” he said before she could ask. “And then I’ll fill you in on everything.”

  On the way up, Mason shoved another cookie into his mouth. He hadn’t realized how hungry he still was. He chewed that one and then one more, washing them down with the Coke. No one tried to stop him or ask him questions, not even Tyler or Kimi who had settled down in a row near the middle. He received a few glances, but nothing more. All, including Kayla and Noah, seemed to be lost in thought, pensive, and unnerved by whatever was going on.

  Dustin was waiting near the flight deck with Juan and Rocky.

  “Did you tell him about Peter?” Mason asked as he approached.

  “Yeah, we told him,” Dustin replied, looking solemn. None of them had really liked Peter, but no one had wanted him dead, either.

  “Okay, let me talk to him and then we’ll regroup.”

  He tapped on the cockpit door, opened it, and stepped through.

  “You’re back,” Mitch said. He motioned at the vacant seat. “Sit down.”

  Mason stepped over and slid down into it. “Tyler said you picked up something?”

  “I was checking different frequencies when I ran across it. It doesn’t seem to be transmitted on any particular schedule, except so far it’s been on the hour if it is broadcasting. It’s mostly music, but sometimes there’s talking. I managed to catch the tail end of someone speaking with the first one.” Mitch fiddled with something, and static filled the flight deck. “It’s been a while since it went off the air and it’s coming up on the top of the hour. Hopefully it’ll be any minute now.”

  As if Mitch had conjured it, the static cleared and became musical notes. “This is it,” he said, raising the volume. “It starts this way every time.”

  The notes continued and soon resolved themselves into a slow succession of tones Mason thought he recognized. “What is that? Some kind of funeral dirge?”

  “Yeah, it’s the Funeral March. By Chopin. You should know it. It’s been in everything. Movies, actual funerals, cartoons.”

  “Looney Tunes,” Mason said, remembering. DUM… DUM… Da DUM… DUM… Da DUM… Da DUM… Da DUM…

  “This goes on for a bit,” Mitch said, and then fell quiet.

  The creeping, somber tune continued a little longer and then faded to a man’s voice. “One three six two zero two zero. Radio Exclusion. One three six two zero two zero. Radio Exclusion.” More static followed along with sounds of interference and then the funeral dirge began to play again.

  “This sounds like something Rocky might have heard.”

  “Get him in here.”

  Mason climbed out of the seat, opened the door, and motioned for Rocky, who was talking softly with Juan and Dustin.

  Rocky entered behind Mason as the music ended and the voice came on again. “One three six two zero two zero. Radio Exclusion. One three six two zero two zero. Radio Exclusion.”

  Rocky cocked an ear. “That sounds like a numbers station. Or someone’s version of it.”

  “I’ve heard of those,” Mason said. “But you’ll have to refresh my memory.”

  Mitch spoke up from his seat. “They’re clandestine radio stations, mainly shortwave, used to send information, sometimes encrypted data, to agents out in the field.”

  Rocky nodded in agreement. “They’ve been the subject of speculation since listeners first started picking them up. Some of them can be pretty eerie. Strange music-box tunes or old-fashioned music followed by a ghostly voice, sometimes a child’s, reading off names or numbers.”

  “But you don’t think that’s what we have here?”

  Rocky tilted his head. “I’m not sure.”

  “How many times does this repeat?” Mason asked as the piano notes began again.

  Mitch reached to make an adjustment. “This should be the last time.”

  Static replaced the faint music and then a different melody swelled up out of the noise.

  “What’s that?” Rocky asked.

  Both Mitch and Mason spoke at the same time. “Something old.” “Before my time.”

  “How long will this part go on?” Mason asked.

  Mitch shrugged. “Other than the prelude, it doesn’t seem to follow an exact format.”

  “But you said you heard someone talking?”

  “Just a few words because of the reception.”

  Those few words must have been significant. “What did you hear?”

  “They were signing off basically.” He hesitated before continuing. “And they were doing it from what they called… the exclusion zone.”

  “Radio Exclusion,” Rocky murmured.

  Mason looked from Rocky to Mitch. “I don’t get it.”

  “The exclusion zone,” Mitch said, “is a phrase commonly used to describe the contaminated area around a nuclear incident.”

  Mason shifted around to look out the rain-smeared window. “If all the grids are down in this area, and they obviously are, then how are they transmitting?”

  Rocky spoke when Mitch didn’t. “My guess is they’re farther out at the edge of the zone, possibly still receiving power. Or they’re on solar. Even on a day like today they would have what was stored in the batteries. I think T-Mobile is using solar banks—you know, in our world—for some of their cell towers now.”

  The faintly melancholy music cut out and was replaced by the hiss of dead air, th
en a man’s voice so loud and clear they all jumped.

  “The hubris of man and the increasing greed, the ever-increasing need and selfishness of an overcrowded world has created this landscape that I, Brother Reach, am transmitting to you from today, the one hundred thirty-sixth day of the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty.”

  Ah, thought Mason. That’s what the numbers meant.

  They listened intently as the older, slightly gravelly voice continued.

  “In Genesis two fifteen it says, ‘The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.’ But instead we have blackened and sullied our beautiful garden. We have managed to bring death and contamination and sickness and mutation to land that has existed and thrived for millions, possibly billions of years.”

  “Could be an accident or a strike,” murmured Rocky.

  Which would have definitely affected the components and circuits of the androids left behind. “Either one involves radiation,” Mason said.

  “Quiet!” hissed Mitch.

  “… the passage by Herman Melville, ‘And here shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.’” A gust of wind outside blew a splatter of rain across the front of the plane, and for a few seconds the voice was lost to interference.

  Then it came to the forefront again. “To atone we must make amends. And to make amends we must surrender ourselves and confess what we’ve done. But the powers that be are hiding the truth of the matter, downplaying it and making light of the catastrophic harm that has been caused. I have here one of the original emergency broadcasts sent out on January eighteenth twenty sixteen when Hurricane Patty hit the Palm Island facility.”

  There was crackly silence for a moment, and then came the first unmistakable harsh beep of the Emergency Broadcast System. Two more followed, then a long continuous tone, and finally the familiar computer-generated voice. “The following message is being broadcast at the request of civil authorities. A site area emergency has been declared at the Palm Island Nuclear Station. A general emergency has been declared due to the possibility of radiological release caused by meltdowns of reactors number one, two, and three. A nuclear incident poses serious hazards for the public. Anyone who has not vacated the emergency zone, should do so immediately. Persons should evacuate in a calm and orderly manner, and remain evacuated until an all clear is given by civil authorities. Please stay tuned to…”

  The synthesized voice faded away to be replaced by Brother Reach’s. “What was in the beginning a radius of supposedly around three thousand square miles or so has now grown to an exclusion zone of quite a bit more than that, if some of my sources are to be believed. The water itself has been contaminated, and for those of us who stayed or came back as I did, the incidences and chances of thyroid and other cancers have drastically increased, not to mention the birth defects and animal mutations. The government and the people have been blinded…”

  Mitch lowered the volume. “I think I’ve heard enough.”

  All three reactors, thought Mason. “I’m not from Florida. How far away is that nuclear plant?”

  “I’ve never heard of a nuclear plant on Palm Island,” Mitch replied. “The only one I know of is in St. Lucie.”

  Something else that’s different here. “Well, is there an actual island called that?”

  “Yeah, down by Miami.”

  Rocky leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “That explains a lot. Why everyone was evacuated so quickly and the area abandoned.”

  “It also confirms that this isn’t our world,” Mason said.

  After a small silence, Mitch murmured, “If this is another Earth that’s slightly different from ours… that clears up why we couldn’t lock on to any satellites.” At Rocky and Mason’s blank look he added, “Each satellite has a code—they call them pseudo random codes—for identification that have to match up. So, basically, in layman’s terms, this aircraft’s systems aren’t completely compatible with some of this world’s technology.”

  “And the navigational beacons and other communications?”

  Mitch shrugged. “No satellites mean no sat’ phones, no GPS. And no electrical grid for four years means unmanned and unmaintained control towers and ground stations. And even if on their end we were picked up by someone’s radar, which I doubt considering the distance and how low we came in, it would have merely been a blip with no transponder information.”

  “And now we’ve been exposed to radiation.” Mason thought about the water and snack mix they had consumed. “How much of a dose have we gotten?”

  Rocky looked over at Mitch but received no help there. “It’s hard to say. It’s been four years. A lot of the fallout would have settled and been scattered. The nearby rivers and city water would be contaminated, but food and liquids in sealed containers should be okay. I would say being exposed is only dangerous if it’s for a long period.”

  “How long is too long?”

  “Put it this way, the less time we stay here, the less chance there is of us getting cancer or some other horrible disease.”

  “Where would you gentlemen suggest we go?” Mitch inserted calmly.

  Mason realized he’d yet to tell him about their encounters with the airport androids. “Uh… we actually have some ideas about that.”

  “Good, because we can’t stay here.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “Tell me. What did you find out?”

  Mason glanced over at Rocky. “You won’t believe it.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” Mitch responded.

  10

  EVERYONE WAS ALREADY settled in for the most part, cliques mostly intact, though Becka, Mason was glad to see, had joined Gwen, Tyler, and Kimi.

  Don and Gina (now that Peter was gone) had grouped themselves with the other middle-aged man, Bert, and his beginning to tarnish wife, Joyce, which Gina, easily thirty years younger, didn’t seem entirely enthusiastic about.

  As usual Noah and Kayla were in their own little bubble, two rows up from Brenda and Ed, the elderly gentleman she had been keeping company with. Which left only one odd “man” out: Reba, by herself across the aisle in the otherwise vacant row between them.

  They’d all been grateful to have Reba and what she’d offered after the deceased passengers had been laid out before them. But now that her services were no longer needed, the others had begun to shy away from her. It would have been different if she kept her beliefs to herself unless they were needed or wanted, but like so many spiritual people, she had a habit of inserting something religious into every conversation and situation. Just now, coming out of the galley, where he had been speaking with Marcia, he had watched her lean up and inquire loudly if Noah and his family had made the habit of regularly attending church, to which Noah had recoiled as if slapped. Didn’t she understand that was why she now found herself alone? If you build it, they will come. But you can’t drag them there.

  Juan, Dustin, and Rocky had buckled up in their usual row in the empty section before first class.

  Mason took the seat next to Juan and relaxed into it gratefully.

  “How long till we take off?” Juan asked him, looking out the window. “The weather seems plenty bad enough to me.” Going on the theory that the storm they’d gone through before had been instrumental in opening the way for their little sojourn to this alternate Earth, they’d all agreed their best chance of somehow making it back was to try and recreate the exact conditions as closely as they could.

  Dustin and Rocky perked up as well, eager to hear what Mason had to say. They had all been cooped up on the plane, listening to the worsening storm outside for several hours as they waited anxiously for it to be bad enough to take off, knowing the whole time that they were soaking up more and more radiation.

  “I don’t think it’s going to be much longer.”

  There were so many things that could go wro
ng. The thunderstorm could be severe enough to make them crash. They could stay unconscious so long the plane ran out of fuel and plummeted into the ocean. They could inadvertently be sucked out and vented into the blackness of space in some other version of their solar system where the Earth had been knocked out of orbit or never been formed at all.

  Mason held back a shiver, wondering again how any of this could be happening, how they could be going through something so unbelievable. Maybe they were like the Lost passengers of Oceanic Flight 815. Maybe they were—

  Mason’s internal ramblings broke off as Deb appeared at his side.

  “He’s ready for you,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  He covered hers with his own, then stood up. “You get buckled in, now,” he told her. “You and Marcia.”

  She nodded. “We will.” She stood there for another moment as if she wanted to say more, and then turned and started away from him.

  Giving a quick nod at Dustin, he moved up the aisle to the cockpit door, opened it, and slipped inside.

  Mitch had requested that Mason join him since he was down a first officer. There wasn’t much Mason could do if something happened, but the captain had given him a crash course in how to engage the autopilot in case Mitch passed out before he was able to do it.

  Mason didn’t want to think about what would happen if neither one of them could stay awake long enough.

  He carefully climbed over and sat down. A hard wind was steadily buffeting the plane, the force of the gusts sending the driving rain sideways. The storm had definitely increased; whether that was good or bad remained to be seen.

  “If we’re going to do this,” Mitch said over the noise of the engines and the crash of thunder, “it needs to be now.”

  Mason nodded at him and tugged on his shoulder strap. Mitch had already reassured him that they’d dropped low enough when they hit the wormhole to not need the oxygen masks, which were probably depleted anyhow.

  The prospect of flying straight into the heart of the surging storm was certainly terrifying—but even more terrifying was the idea of staying there in that radiation-soaked, android-infested world.