Panic Button - A Psychological Thriller

by Frazer Lee

  Jo looked down at her hands and arms, slicked red with blood up to the elbows. Strands of someone else’s hairs snapped sickly between her sticky fingers. The fear of finding Sophie, coupled with the deep trauma of seeing Dawn dead, shook Jo to the core. Her entire body shuddered, and she cradled herself in her arms. Rocking like a madwoman, she began to scream and wail through her tears.

  Dead eyes looked back at her, an audience forever silenced.

  “Got it!”

  Max was to the rear of the bathroom, struggling to extract his bag from beneath two heavy suitcases. He heaved, and the cases spilled their body parts as he wrenched his bag free. He crossed to the sink and unfastened the bag, pausing for a moment to prepare himself for the worst. Reaching inside, he pulled out his sticker-encrusted laptop. Elated, he saw it was still in one piece. Thumbing the little catch at the front of the machine, he opened up the screen. Unlike the mobile phones in the pouch, it was undamaged; save for the familiar little dent he’d made a few months back when he’d snapped it shut with an errant ballpoint pen inside. Max pressed the power switch at the top of the keyboard. The little green power-up LED lit up and the laptop clicked and whirred into life. Kissing the machine in thanks, Max stepped over Jo and headed back into the main cabin.

  Kneeling down, he placed the laptop on the floor in front of him, cracked his knuckles and got to work.

  Exhausted, Jo crawled over the mound of luggage and bodies and slumped down next to Dawn’s corpse. Her mum’s plastic bag shroud crinkled as Jo leaned against it. She stared at Dawn’s face, those eyes frozen in shock and terror. Hope it was quick; hope you didn’t feel too much pain, thought Jo. She reached out her trembling hand and stroked her mother’s cold cheek.

  “Is Sophie with you Mum? If there’s still hope, please tell me... please.”

  But there was no hope in Jo’s voice. The image of her daughter, so small on the bed in that grubby room, flashed into her head again. And with it came all the nightmare visions of the face that hid behind the camera lens, the eyes that watched her little girl’s frail form, cold as glass. She imagined spiralling with the lens as it turned and focussed. She felt herself falling into the dark oubliette of the killer’s eyes and tumbling, bereft.

  Jo broke down, sobbing, next to her dead mother.

  Max was poised over the laptop keyboard like a hawk.

  His fingers were still covered in blood from the luggage. Tapping away furiously, he left bloody fingerprints on the shiny keys. He jabbed at the trackpad, also slicked with blood, and opened another window. His mind was code now; married to the machine he was interfacing with. He ran the hacking software’s subroutine and watched as a stream of data unspooled across his screen. The bright green digits flickered past his eyes as the program tried to unlock the security protocols that were keeping him and his machine from the jet’s onboard network.

  “Come on... come on!”

  Machine code scrolled up across all his open windows, hard drive whirring as though the laptop were huffing and puffing with the effort. Max wiped cold sweat from his forehead and coughed. He wasn’t feeling too good. Probably psychosomatic - who wouldn’t feel sick after inhaling the awful stench in the luggage hold?

  Another sound penetrated the periphery of his senses, over his coughing.

  Jo, in the bathroom a short distance away. It sounded like she was talking to somebody.

  Or some body.

  Max shuddered, focussed his attention on the laptop screen again. One of the data streams had narrowed and locked, while the other window ran through the remaining decryption work. The jet’s air conditioning breathed down the back of Max’s neck as he crouched over the screen. He shivered and coughed again. His throat was so dry, the hacking cough made him gag a little. He watched anxiously as the scrolling in the other window stopped. An administration message popped up on his screen, followed by a new window with the Deppart Airlines logo.

  “Okay, I’m in!”

  Jo appeared in the bathroom doorway. She swayed, as if on the verge of collapse. All the trauma and shock at what she’d witnessed was still etched into her expression.

  “The onboard network,” Max said, interpreting the data, “It’s a closed network, hosted by someone on the ground. The webcams are all feeding off to another location.”

  He double-clicked on an entry in the list of data and brought up a video window.

  Webcam footage of their struggle with Dave played out in front of their eyes, filmed from a high angle. Max glanced upwards - cameras were hidden in the cabin’s overhead lights. The footage paused, then started up again in a loop. Max watched, silent for a moment, as he saw himself plunge the crash axe into Dave’s head all over again.

  “If I can get a fix on the I.P. address of the network administrator, maybe we can contact the authorities, at least set off some alarms signposting them our way...”

  “We should make it our priority to contact All2gethr - warn those poor people there’s a plane headed their way,” said Jo.

  Max continued hacking, pallid and sweating as he went about his work. Jo watched from over his shoulder, clutching one of the seat backs for support. Had he even heard what she’d said?

  Neither of them noticed that in the distance, at the front of the plane, the light by the cockpit door turned from red to green.

  And neither of them noticed as the cockpit door opened, slowly...

  Sixteen

  Jo watched as Max worked furiously at the laptop keyboard.

  He was rambling, only snatches of what he was saying breaking through. And those brief sentences were unintelligible to her, something about source code and closed networks - techno-speak, gobbledegook. Her mind was a fug, numbed by the shock of finding Dawn among the bodies in the luggage compartment. Only the vague hope that they might contact the outside world was keeping her brain from shutting down completely.

  “Give me the laptop.”

  The man’s voice cut through the fog of Jo’s thoughts, startling her back into the here and now. He was standing just a few feet away, dressed in the signature smart white shirt and black tie of an airline pilot. He was pointing a bright yellow plastic taser gun at them. His eyes darted from Max to Jo, as though ascertaining which was the biggest threat to him. Brow slicked with sweat, he looked to be full of nerves, but determined to conquer them.

  Seeing the taser gun, Max retracted his hands from the laptop keyboard and looked up at Jo. She looked back at him, gobsmacked by the intruder’s sudden appearance in the cabin.

  “Hand it over, slowly.”

  Max relented - there was clearly no other choice but to comply. He slid the laptop across the floor. It came to a halt a few inches away from the man’s feet.

  Not lowering his guard for a second, the man lifted his foot and brought it down on the laptop, hard. Stamping again and again, he smashed the screen until it snapped away from the keyboard. Grinding his heel into the keys, the machine made a pained whining sound then died.

  Max winced, looking as crushed as his beloved machine.

  Jo watched as the man took a single, bold step closer to them.

  Broken glass crunched beneath his shiny black leather shoes. His eyes widened as he took in the carnage. Blood stains everywhere, from the gory mausoleum in the luggage hold and from Dave’s shattered skull. Seeing Dave and Gwen’s partially covered bodies, the man took a sharp intake of breath, tightening his grip on the taser. His gaze rested on Jo’s hands, her skin still slicked with gore.

  She placed them behind her back.

  “What the... hell has been going on in here?”

  Bile rose in Jo’s throat. How the hell could he stand there and ask her that?

  “Alligator,” she spat. Every ounce of bitterness she possessed was in her voice.

  “Stay back.” The man turned the taser gun toward Jo, retreating slowly.

  Jo glanced at Max. Their eyes met and she knew he had reached the same conclusion she had. Together, they launched themselves at
the man with all their might, giving him no chance to trigger the taser. The man struggled against their assault, but they were too much for him and he toppled. Jo scratched and bit at him like a feral woman. Max grappled him to the floor and began raining blows.

  Max wrestled the taser gun from his hands and scrambled to his feet. The taser was now trained on its previous owner.

  Jo backed away from the man, catching her breath amidst the adrenaline rush.

  The man scurried backwards until his back was resting against the bar area. He shook his head, dizzy from their blows. Dabbing at his bleeding lip, he looked up at Max, afraid.

  Max staggered forward, coughing. His skin was now deathly pale and slicked with perspiration. For a moment he looked as though he might collapse. Then he coughed again and cleared his throat, regaining his composure - and his grip on the taser weapon.

  “Don’t move you sick fuck. Stay exactly where you are,” Max growled.

  Jo felt the man’s eyes on her, still. She felt naked - felt the blood drying on her hands and arms. Anger and guilt and fear combined into a need to be armed so she could protect herself. Her eyes searched the cabin and she saw the crash axe’s blade glinting under the overhead lights. She grabbed it and brandished it at the stranger, who shifted uncomfortably on the floor.

  “You heard what he said! Don’t move! Who are you?”

  The man brushed a shard of broken glass from the Deppart Airlines epaulet affixed to the shoulder of his shirt, and then peered up at her. The look on his face was disarming. He looked just as freaked out as Jo felt. She couldn’t risk letting her guard down, for fear that this was yet another of Alligator’s mind games.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Her speech was clearer and calmer this time. The weapon in her hand was giving her power, and purpose.

  “Callahan... George Callahan. I own this plane. I’m just a pilot...”

  Jo lunged forward with the axe, Max training the taser gun right between Callahan’s eyes. The man recoiled, holding his palms up in surrender. Sweat had stained the armpits of his shirt.

  “I swear to God.”

  Max grimaced, cold sweat gathering around his bloodshot eyes.

  “Yeah? Then why did you smash up my bloody laptop?”

  “I’m... just doing what I’m told.”

  “By who?”

  Jo and Max both guessed the answer before Callahan opened his mouth to speak.

  “Alligator.”

  “Who is the Alligator?” Jo snapped.

  Callahan just shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t even seen his face - his real face.”

  Jo glanced at Max. Could Callahan be telling the truth?

  “He’s lying,” Max said.

  “So, why shouldn’t we kill you right now?”

  Callahan snorted. A pained laugh. “Fly this plane can you?”

  “Jesus.” Max looked away, coughing.

  “So why are you here? Why are we on your plane?”

  The man sighed. He looked deflated, glancing around at the dead bodies and smashed monitors. He looked distant, like he was thinking of someone, somewhere else.

  Jo watched him, curious, seeing something of her own predicament in his eyes. Her thoughts returned to Sophie. She had to get to the bottom of this, had to find a way out. Jo turned to Max, but he was leaning on his seat back looking worse for wear. Just hang on in there Max, she thought, we’re almost there...

  She looked back at Callahan and caught him watching them cautiously. Clutching the axe, she moved closer to him.

  “Alligator - what do you know about him?”

  “He’s got my family. My wife and...” Callahan’s eyes welled up with tears. “My son. When I came home day before yesterday, they were gone. The house... Jesus what a mess. They ransacked the place, tore it apart. Then I got the message...”

  “Message? What message?”

  Jo pictured herself reading the All2gethr winner’s email. Sophie’s excitement when she’d told her she was going to New York. Then she smelled the bodies in the luggage hold, recalled the blank fear in Dawn’s eyes. She blinked away the terrible images invading her thoughts. Tried to focus on Callahan’s voice.

  “The bastard left a recording.” Tears were trickling down his face now. “He killed my son, Jacob... he... To show me he meant business. He said he’d kill them all if I didn’t do what he said.”

  Jo had no words left in her dry mouth. She could easily imagine Alligator saying those words, and knew how Callahan must have felt. Had Alligator shown this poor wretch the footage of his son being murdered? She felt a pang of guilt at the memory of the execution viral she had forwarded to her friends.

  It’s not the same, she told herself, that’s what Alligator wants you to think, that you’re as bad as him. That’s how he keeps you on your toes, fighting for your loved ones.

  She stared down at Callahan bitterly. Wasn’t that what he was trying to do? Fight for his loved ones? She glanced at the suitcases, spilling their human cargo out through the bathroom door. Poor fool.

  “I can’t let that happen,” Callahan continued, echoing Jo’s thoughts, “I won’t let that happen. I’m only doing what I have to do, to save them.”

  His self-pity was beginning to have a negative effect on Jo. Didn’t he care about what they’d been through while he was locked away in that cockpit?

  “We’ve all lost people,” Jo said. “My Mother is dead. Everybody he showed us is dead!”

  Callahan’s eyes hardened. He glanced around the cabin as if he was reminding himself of some dreaded purpose.

  He cleared his throat. “You going to tell me what you did out here?”

  Jo felt the look of guilt flash across her face before she could quell it. She glanced at Max, who lurched back toward Callahan.

  “We did what we had to, mate.”

  The plane dropped suddenly, losing altitude.

  Jo cried out and Max fell backwards onto his seat. They steadied themselves as the plane levelled out. Jo thought of the map, the little red line showing their flight path into the All2gethr.com headquarters.

  “You have to land this plane. If you crash into All2gethr, you’ll kill hundreds of innocent people.”

  “Innocent people I don’t know,” Callahan said. “People die every day... but not my family, not today. He already took my youngest, my Jacob, from me. You don’t have any idea what that’s like.”

  “Oh, believe me, I do know. He killed my mother. He has my daughter.”

  Jo knelt down next to Callahan. Behind her, Max was doubled over his seat, coughing hard.

  “Please,” Jo’s voice was as calm as she could make it. “God knows what he’s going to do with her. She’s only eight years old...”

  Her words looked to be hitting home.

  Callahan’s eyes softened. But Max’s coughing grew louder still, distracting him. Jo looked over her shoulder at Max, who looked to be on the verge of collapse.