by A. G. Riddle
“Brooklyn.”
“I wouldn’t mind living in Brooklyn.”
“Kidding, right?”
“Nope. Brooklyn’s a good place for writers.”
“You a writer?”
“Yep.”
“Like a journalist?”
“I was. I write books now.”
“What kind?”
“Biographies.”
“You like it?”
“I liked it at first.”
He’s racked by coughs again. Finally the fit passes, and he closes his eyes. Just when I think he’s slipping off to sleep, he asks, “You famous?”
“Nah. But I interview famous people. I just write the book, and it gets published under their names.”
“Like they wrote it?”
“Yep.”
“That sucks.”
Leave it to a kid to sum up the state of my career so accurately in two words. And leave it to an adult to rationalize it in three: “It’s a living.”
“Ever think about doing something else?”
“I have. A lot, lately.”
“My mom reads a lot of books. Biographies especially. Says it helps with her work.”
“Yeah? What sort of work does your mum do?”
“Lawyer. She’s with me on the trip. Can’t find her, though. Lot of people are still missing from the crash.”
I nod, though I know he can’t see me. I can’t find the words. I remember the seconds before I first saw this kid, remember touching the cold flesh of the woman’s neck beside him before reaching for his neck, feeling the warmth, and ripping his seat belt free. God bless the person with the presence of mind to tell him people are still missing. “Well, she’s no doubt very, very proud of you for being so brave.”
A silence follows. I’m about to get up when he speaks again. “I’m Nate.”
“Harper. You should get your rest, Nate.” He’s asleep before I finish the sentence. All of a sudden I feel exhausted myself, too tired to even get up.
I AWAKE TO THE CLATTER of rain pelting the plane, so loud it sounds like hail.
The fever’s back, stronger than ever.
Nate is sleeping right through the storm, his head hanging awkwardly to one side in a way that scares me.
Struggling to my feet, I reach across the aisle. My hand almost recoils when it meets his burning flesh. He’s in trouble.
I look around, searching for Sabrina, with no luck. I shuffle forward to first class, but she’s not there either. I collapse into my seat, a wave of pain shooting through my body. Where is she? I’ll rest just a minute, then go find her.
Only the faintest light filters through the tiny oval windows. I can’t tell if it’s after sunset or just dark because of the storm. The dense forest canopy blots out most of the daylight even in good weather.
As I sit, the rain’s cadence increases by the second, like a sound track slowly being turned up. A long howl of wind joins the tapping, its hollow sucking sound growing louder, overtaking the rain. It feels like I’m sitting in a wind tunnel with a hailstorm outside.
At the rear of the plane, the gust finally bowls the stacked luggage over, sending sick passengers scrambling.
I close my eyes. The relentless tapping on the metal roof is disorienting, a kind of white noise. Time jumps forward again.
When I open my eyes, Sabrina is hovering over me.
I clear my throat, but my voice comes out scratchy and faint. “Nate. The kid in business—”
“I’m doing what I can for him.” She motions to my leg. “I need to have a look.”
She’s tired. Gone is the poker face she’s worn for days. I can read the gravity of the situation on her face, even before the words spill mechanically out of her mouth.
“We need to move to the next phase of treatment. We have two options: be conservative and remove less flesh, or be aggressive, which has a higher chance of stopping the infection. Being conservative now may mean taking more of the leg later if the procedure is unsuccessful. However, taking more flesh than necessary now will have lasting consequences after rescue. There are risks and benefits to both courses of action. You need to decide. You have fifteen minutes to think about it, while I make the rounds and prepare.”
She leaves, and I slump back into the chair. Decisions.
My nemesis.
Minutes pass like hours. Vanity or survival? Is there even a chance of survival now?
Through my fever haze, I’m barely able to follow what happens next. The outer door flies open, and people pour in, survivors from the lakeside. The first is hurt, covered in blood. What happened? A lightning strike? A fallen tree?
One by one, more people limp in, some bleeding, some coughing, others hobbling along for no apparent reason. Unharmed survivors guide them, shouting for help.
They’re looking for Sabrina frantically, but they can’t find her. She has to be here—I just saw her, and the exit’s been closed the entire time. Did I pass out again? I don’t think so.
There’s only one place she can be: the cockpit. I try to tell them, but my voice is so weak that I can’t even hear it myself over the storm and the commotion. I reach for a man rushing by, but he brushes past, ignoring me.
Finally I rise and limp toward the cockpit, steadying myself on the galley wall. I’m about to knock on the closed steel door when I hear voices—faint but combative—inside.
“I want to know everything you know.” Sabrina.
“I’ve told you everything.” It’s a man’s voice, but I can’t place it.
“You knew.”
“That the plane would crash? Sabrina, you think I would board a plane that I knew was going to crash?”
“You knew something would happen.”
“I didn’t!”
“Why were you going to London?”
“I don’t know. They said I’d get instructions when I arrived, same as you.”
“Where are we?”
“I swear, I don’t know!”
“Can you contact them?”
“Maybe . . .”
“Try, Yul. You have to.”
“Are you crazy?”
“We’re out of food and medications.”
“What if they caused the crash?”
“Then we’re already at their mercy—it makes no difference. Contact them. It’s our only option.”
The cockpit door opens suddenly, and I’m staring directly at Sabrina and the young Asian guy.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Harper
SABRINA MARCHES PAST ME LIKE NOTHING’S AMISS, HEADING down the aisle to the right, where she begins to work feverishly, treating the injured passengers coming in.
I stand there, frozen to the spot. Yul—that must be the trim Asian guy’s name—moves out cautiously and faces me, as if he’s waiting for me to comment.
My first instinct is to say, “I didn’t hear anything,” but I bite off the words in time, thank God. Nothing says “I heard every word” more loudly and clearly—I might as well say, “Hey, so I hear you might be connected to whatever caused the crash, and part of an ongoing conspiracy. Care to comment?”
I settle for looking guilty and a barely audible “Hiya.”
Yul walks down the left-hand aisle without a word. When he gets to his row in business, he glances back at me for just a little too long before sliding into his seat.
I slump against the cockpit wall, taking the weight off my right leg, and press my burning forehead against the cool surface. It feels good. So does the cold wind blowing in through the door. Since they moved me to the plane I’ve swung between chills and fever, but now it’s only fever, burning relentlessly inside me. I know what my decision has to be, if I want to live. And I do want to live.
When I glance up, the shock of what I see consumes me. Am I hallucinating? Sabrina’s gotten the first few incoming patients cleaned off. They’re . . . old. I recognize some of these people, from the lakeside, but they seem to have aged decades in a single day.
Their faces are wrinkled and hollow, but it’s more than that. These people are really old, all over, not just starved and exhausted.
I’m not the only one unnerved by this. Sabrina’s losing control. Her eyes are wild, her motions quick and sloppy. Something very, very strange is happening here. Does she know what it is? Or is she finally losing it? Either way, it’s not good news for any of us.
Pushing away from the wall, I step forward into the first-class galley, ready to lunge into my seat in the first row. There’s a brief flash in my peripheral vision to the right—a man running through the door, carrying a woman. They collide with me before I can turn, the woman landing on my right leg.
AWARENESS. PAIN. I’M IN MY seat again, my legs outstretched. It’s pitch-black outside now, night for sure. Still raining.
A woman I don’t know sits on the floor in front of me, her back flat against the wall. She rises and holds out her open hand, on which rests a large white pill. “Sabrina said to take this.”
I take the pill and toss it back. My throat’s so dry it takes half a bottle of water to get it down.
I let my drenched head fall back to the headrest and watch as passengers drag three limp bodies past me toward the exit. All dead.
I focus on the faces. Nate isn’t among them. Neither is the Indian girl in the Disney World shirt. It’s the new arrivals, the people that just came in from the lake. Two more go by. How many have died? Another body passes. The faces are even older than when they arrived. What’s happening here?
Behind me I hear Sabrina’s voice. Her droning monotone has turned to a sharp bark, harsh and urgent. She’s interrogating passengers, barely waiting for their responses: “Where do you reside? Have you visited any of these clinics: King Street Medical in New York City, Bayside Primary Care in San Francisco, or Victoria Station Clinic in London? Did you get a flu shot at any of these locations? Do you take a multivitamin? What brand? Do you use an air freshener at home? Do you have any chronic medical conditions?”
Then she’s at my side, no preamble, hammering me with the same list of questions, barely waiting for answers. The only doctor I’ve seen in years is my gynecologist, I tell her. I didn’t get a flu shot this year, and I take a women’s multivitamin. When I fumble for the brand name, she leans in and grills me like a murder suspect at Scotland Yard. I finally come up with the brand, and she scribbles it down, nodding, like it’s the clue that will nab Jack the Ripper. Then she’s gone.
I sit up, glance out of the pod. They’re hauling two more people out.
The pain moves down a notch, mellows. I know this feeling, know what she gave me: a pain pill.
Sleep comes in seconds.
I AWAKE TO DARKNESS AND silence. The pain is back. I turn, looking back down the aisle, but I can’t make anything out. There’s almost no moonlight filtering through the small windows. It’s still raining, but not as hard, just a steady pitter-patter now.
I lie there, letting my eyes adjust.
On my right, a slim figure slips by. Yul.
Faint footsteps behind me. A woman, black hair, about my height. Mechanical walk. Sabrina.
Three seconds later I hear the click of a thick metal door closing.
I stretch my good leg out into the aisle, test the other. Not good. I limp, hop, and drag myself through the galley, keeping as quiet as I can.
They’re being more careful this time, and I have to stand close to the door to hear anything.
“We did this,” Sabrina insists.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“Correlation is not causation, Sabrina. You ask every passenger the right questions, and eventually you’ll discover that they all know somebody who knows Kevin Bacon.”
“Who’s Kevin Bacon?” Sabrina asks urgently. “Another agent? A passenger?”
“No—”
“How does Bacon figure into this?”
“Christ, Sabrina. Forget Kevin Bacon.”
“I want to know everything they had you do, every move you made before we boarded the flight.”
“All right.” Yul sounds exasperated. “What are they dying of?”
“Old age.”
“What?”
“They’re dying from different diseases, conditions that I assume would have developed in time as they aged,” Sabrina says. “But it’s happening to them all at once.”
“Why aren’t we affected?”
“I don’t know. Only half the passengers seem to have the condition.”
The voices begin to fade, and I lean closer, trying to hear them. A sound, a low rumble, is blotting them out. It’s not coming from the cockpit. It’s outside.
As I step back from the door, a bright spotlight breaks through the small oval windows, running quickly along the length of the plane. Through the rain, the roar grows louder. Then the light blinks off, and the sound recedes.
The cockpit door flies open, and Yul and Sabrina rush out. They don’t stop to interrogate me with their eyes this time. Yul jerks the exit door open and peers into the dark, dense forest, where rain drips unevenly down through the trees.
He glances back at me.
I nod. “I saw it, too: a beam of light ran over the plane.”
Yul looks at Sabrina, opening his mouth to say something, but a crunching sound outside the plane stops him. Boots, grinding the fallen underbrush into the forest floor. Someone is running straight toward us, though I can’t make out who.
Someone from the lake? A rescue team? Or . . .
Yul jerks a phone from his pocket, activates the flashlight app, and holds it out. The light is weak, but it’s just enough to reveal shapes moving out there. At first it looks like rain catching on invisible, maybe human forms—three of them, barreling toward the plane.
Before we can react, the first form charges up the rickety stairs and stops on the landing. It stands over six feet, glittering in the cold glow of Yul’s phone, like a glass figurine.
It raises its right arm toward Yul, then Sabrina, then me, firing three rapid shots, almost silent pops of air with no flash of light. My chest explodes in pain.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nick
FOR SEVERAL SECONDS MIKE, BOB, AND I STAND there, staring at the tall stone columns of Stonehenge, perfectly formed and aligned. How? No, how isn’t the right word. When? There are only two possibilities: we’re in the past (a past we don’t understand at all), or we’re in the future—a future in which this huge monolithic monument has been rebuilt.
I scan the octagonal glass and metal structure for clues but find none—no writing, no symbols, no hints of what the year might be.
The glass panel reseals behind us with a soft click, breaking the silence. Bob opens his mouth to speak, but a neutral, computerized voice drowns him out.
“Welcome to the interactive Stonehenge exhibit. To begin your tour, follow the path to your right. For your safety and the preservation of this historic monument, please do not leave the path.”
Tour. I look down, realizing for the first time that there’s a glass-tile pathway around the perimeter. It lights up, flashing green arrows that end at a pulsing red target, a bull’s-eye where it wants us to stop. Without a word, the three of us follow the path, stopping at the red circle.
“What you see now is how scientists believe Stonehenge would have appeared approximately four to five thousand years ago, when it was completed. Follow the path to continue your journey into the past, exploring the stages of Stonehenge’s construction.”
The glass tiles once again glow green, guiding us to another red bull’s-eye twenty feet away.
“Structure’s probably solar-powered,” Bob whispers as we shuffle toward the red beacon waiting in the path. I glance over at him, noticing that he looks even older now. The hike must have really taken a lot out of him.
The computer’s voice changes slightly. “Would you like to hear about Stonehenge’s connection to the solar calendar?”
We glance around a
t each other, confused, for a moment. “Maybe it can help us figure out what’s happened here,” Bob says. “What year we’re in.”
So he’s made the leap, too.
“Let’s try it.”
For the next fifteen minutes we pepper the computerized voice with questions. But it doesn’t know anything, save for every possible thing there is to know about Stonehenge. Off-topic questions like “What year is it, by the way?” receive a curt, stock response: “Unfortunately, I cannot answer questions unrelated to Stonehenge. We need to keep your tour moving so that other visitors will have ample time to enjoy the exhibit.”
Clearly its programming doesn’t include checking the line outside.
Mike, Bob, and I pace to the next red bull’s-eye, lost in thought, wondering what to do next. Before us, the tall stone columns dissolve, leaving a vast green field that seems to extend beyond the far glass walls. Oxen pull giant stones through the field. Looking closer, I notice wooden tracks shaped like a trough below the stones. The tracks hold carved wooden roller balls that move the giant pillars along. Ingenious. For the time, anyway. Groups of people wearing animal furs direct the oxen through the field to the monument area, moving the tracks and balls to stay ahead.
“What you see now is the early construction of Stonehenge. Scientists believe Stonehenge was built over the course of a thousand years . . .”
It’s a simulation. The whole structure is a hologram. Projectors of some kind must be recessed into the frame.
“End tour,” I say.
“Would you like to switch to the self-guided tour?”
“Yes.”
“Enjoy your tour of Stonehenge, brought to you through the generous support of the Titan Foundation.”
The field, oxen, and prehistoric workers dissolve, leaving only the crumbling stone ruin I saw twenty-eight years ago—or however long ago it was now. The glass enclosure must have been built to protect Stonehenge from the elements and vandals, to preserve this little piece of history for future generations.
Above us rain begins to pelt the glass ceiling, providing a sound track for this bizarre moment.
Mike points to the center of the green field. “Nick, look.”