Panic Button - A Psychological Thriller

by Frazer Lee

  He was in the throes of an unstoppable torrent of agonised hacking coughs. As the coughing grew more intense, he started to gag and splutter. Horribly, specks of blood and bile sprayed from his mouth as he fell to his knees. He dropped the taser gun and clutched at his throat. His eyes looked like bursting plums as he slumped back onto the floor, rasping.

  “What’s the hell’s wrong with him?” Callahan asked, afraid.

  Still clutching the axe, Jo dashed over to Max. She kneeled over him and placed her hand on his forehead.

  “Oh no. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

  She looked mortified, tears leaking from her eyes as Max tugged desperately at her clothing.

  “What-did-you-do-to-me?” he rasped.

  “It was... I thought it was the only way...”

  Bloody spittle coated Max’s lips in a noxious foam as he tried to draw painful breaths, each intake of oxygen like a knife blade to his chest.

  Jo was desperately trying to cradle him, but he used the last of his strength to fight her off, shoving at her like she was attacking him.

  She heard Callahan’s outraged voice from over her shoulder.

  “What did you do to him?”

  Max uttered two sharp, final, breaths. He fell silent, eyes fixed in silent horror at Jo’s guilty face.

  Only what I had to do, to save her, thought Jo, to save my baby girl.

  Callahan snatched the taser from the floor. He was standing over Jo now.

  She looked down at Max, the boy she’d felt so drawn to when they’d first met at the airport. The boy who was now dead from the poison she had poured into the champagne under Alligator’s instruction. Max had downed all the glasses. She’d meant for the others to partake too. Jo gripped the crash axe. Alligator had made a murderess of her. That’s how far she’d go to save her little Sophie.

  “Oh Bravo, Jo.” Alligator’s voice, razor sharp, cut through the tension in the cabin. “Beautiful work. You’re the only one who has actually managed to complete their assignment.”

  Jo stood up and locked eyes with Callahan. He was pointing the taser gun right at her.

  She was ready for the fight.

  “Time for the final round,” Alligator sneered.

  The claustrophobic emergency lighting clicked on, painting the jet interior a carnal red. Jo’s monitor screen flickered with digital noise, which cleared to reveal a camera-eye view of a shadowy room. On-screen, a terrified middle-aged woman and teenage boy were tied up, back-to-back, on chairs in the centre of the room, their mouths gagged with thick black duct tape.

  “Ten minutes to impact, Mr. Callahan. So, the question is, are you going to listen to Jo the poisoner here, or are you going to get back on schedule and save your wife and firstborn?”

  Callahan looked at the screen, distraught. The cameraman held a gleaming hunter’s knife blade up to his captives’ eyes. His wife and son’s fear was palpable through their muffled cries for help - help that wasn’t going to come unless he acted.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Jo pleaded, “they’re already dead... they’re all here, all of them!”

  She gestured at the piles of body parts.

  Callahan glanced at her, then back at the screen.

  “Which one goes first? Wifey? Or the boy?” Alligator said.

  Jo fixed Callahan with imploring eyes. “Don’t listen to him!”

  Callahan hesitated, hearing Jo’s urgency but unable to tear his eyes away from the sight of his wife and child on the monitor screen.

  They twitched and struggled against their bonds as the camera-killer drew closer to them, knife blade gleaming.

  “It’s all pre-recorded. Those suitcases back there... all the people he told us were still alive on the ground. They’re all fucking dead! All of them!”

  She grabbed Callahan’s shoulder, forcing him to look toward the suitcases, at the blood and severed limbs.

  He looked at her, numb at the sight of so much death and the muffled cries of his family.

  “You said he has your daughter.”

  “What? I...”

  “If your daughter is alive then there’s a chance my family is too.”

  “I looked through the suitcases, my Mum’s body was there but not my daughter’s. But all the other people were killed before we even took off - that video he’s showing you...”

  Callahan’s face was resolute. “No. If there’s even the slightest chance they’re alive... I can’t take the risk of letting them die.”

  “No. No! Please! They’re dead already!” Jo tried desperately to grab a hold of him, but he fended her off.

  “Get in that cockpit right now Callahan, or your pretty wife loses her head.”

  Alligator’s voice betrayed an anger Jo had not heard in him before. She watched, dismayed, as the pilot began to retreat towards the cockpit.

  “No! Don’t do this! All those innocent lives, for nothing!”

  “Too slow,” Alligator said.

  Callahan’s eyes widened in pure terror as the on-screen killer pushed the tip of the blade into his wife’s neck. Blood trickled over the blade, a little flower of death blooming.

  “Now get back in that cockpit or I’ll take her fucking head clean off.”

  “No,” Jo said, “Please...”

  She searched Callahan’s eyes, looking for that glimmer of hope that he might see reason in what she’d told him. Only pain and regret looked back at her. Callahan turned on his heels and walked back toward the cockpit door. She swallowed an angry breath, forcing it back down into her solar plexus. Jo felt it burning inside her, and drew energy from her rage.

  “Stop!”

  He turned, and she charged at him, lifting the axe in readiness to strike.

  He flinched, trying to lift the taser gun in time, but she’d caught him by surprise. She closed in on him, almost within striking distance. The plane’s engines whined in protest as the jet buckled in the gathering storm, dropping suddenly and knocking Jo off her course. She stumbled and fell against the hull, smacking her head with a heavy thud. The edge of the seat stopped her from hitting the deck, and she pushed herself up into a standing position using the crash axe for support. The plane righted itself once more and she turned to face Callahan again, clutching the axe with both hands now.

  Callahan raised his arm, taking aim, and fired the taser at her. She looked down in shock at her chest, seeing the little electrodes that had pierced her blouse and were embedded in her flesh.

  Convulsing from the sudden surge of electricity through her nervous system, she staggered back into the hull again and dropped to the floor.

  Callahan advanced, finger on the trigger, still pumping volts into her prone body.

  Jo lay on the floor watching, sideways, as he crouched down and disconnected the taser wires from her paralysed form. Her vision blurred as she watched his shiny black shoes disappear over the threshold and into the cockpit.

  Moments before she passed out, she saw the little LED light at the cockpit door flicker from green to red.

  Seventeen

  Jo regained consciousness with a start and clutched at her chest, imagining the electrodes were still there discharging their hot white pain into her.

  She lurched forward into a clumsy seated position. The plane felt like it was tilting slightly, but she could not be sure if it was an after-effect of the taser. She blinked, trying to clear the mental fog that was clouding her eyes, but not wanting to see.

  Carnage was all around her - a mess of body parts and luggage. Spilled blood was daubed across the surfaces of the once-plush private jet. Dave’s corpse was just visible in the crew prep area. Close by lay Gwen, who had helped drag Dave to his resting place beneath the curtain. Gwen, whose neck she had snapped during the struggle. Max’s body lay slumped in the spot where he had taken his last agonized breath. Max, whom she had poisoned at the behest of their unseen host.

  I’m a murderer, she thought bitterly, and this must be Hell.

  She clambere
d to her feet, clutching at her pounding head with the flat of her hand.

  Swooning from the effects of standing up too soon, she stumbled back into her seat. Her computer touch screen flickered madly along with the rhythm of the atmospheric conditions outside the plane. Jo could see herself reflected in the monitor, a silhouette fading in and out between the tides of digital noise. She felt like a ghost, trapped in the aftermath of an air crash, dead passengers all around her. Maybe she would drift like this for all eternity when the plane came down, a ghost in a broken machine.

  The monitor flickered again and a vague image appeared, blanking out her reflection.

  Coming and going through the digital interference, the image looked like it was trying to break through. Jo sat forward, peering closer at the screen - there.

  The phantom image broke through again, clearer this time. It showed a bedroom, walls covered in posters of teenage pin-ups and Emo bands. She had seen this before - but where?

  The heavy cloud in her brain began to lift as she tried hard to remember. As she searched her thoughts, Jo saw the image sharpen suddenly, freeze, then begin to rewind at speed. The image froze again and Jo realised she was looking at webcam footage. A pretty teenaged girl was sitting in front of the glow of a computer screen, the poster-filled bedroom wall behind her - that girl, where on earth had she seen her before?

  Alligator’s solemn voice boomed above the hum of the jet engines - a funereal concert.

  “I want you to watch this video again - before you die.”

  The footage started playing, and Jo watched the girl typing at her keyboard.

  Her despondent face was stained black with eye makeup as tears rolled down her cheeks. Occasionally, the girl stopped typing and glanced up at her screen, reading something there.

  “I thought one of you might have remembered. Some guilt addressed, but that is clearly too much to ask of your kind.”

  A little window popped up over the footage of the girl, words appearing as if they were being typed out in real time. Jo recognised it as an All2gethr chat window, the same kind she’d used herself countless times - she knew this. She’d seen this.

  The footage fast-forwarded, froze then played again. The young girl looked more withdrawn, slumped back in her computer chair with an open bottle of vodka in front of her. She had a plastic medicine container in her hand. Prescription pills. She started to down the pills, singly at first, and then in little handfuls, swigging them back with gulps of neat vodka - Jo remembered.

  “She... committed suicide. Online, on her webcam.”

  “Lucy Turner, aged fifteen.” There was a waver in Alligator’s voice, a hint of emotion. “You were there, all of you. Online. Watching as it happened. You all saw fit to pass comment. Gwen, with her sermonising, only made it worse...”

  Jo watched as more text appeared in the All2gethr chat window next to a thumbnail image of Gwen’s face - her avatar:

  ‘Not even God can forgive you if you do this. Where will you spend eternity? You’ll burn in Hell.’

  “...Holier than thou, a hypocrite hiding behind her religion.”

  Jo recalled the awful image of Gwen’s sister being burned alive. Alligator’s vengeance upon her had been absolute and without mercy. The main cabin shook and rattled. Jo grabbed hold of the seat’s armrests as Alligator’s voice continued over the increasing sound of the engines.

  “Dave embittered the pill, goaded her onwards.”

  Next to Dave’s avatar, more text appeared in the chat window:

  ‘Another sad attention-seeking trip to casualty and a stomach pump. Do it right or not at all. Hang yerself and be sure love!’

  “And, when Dave saw fit to post it on, his friend Rory just had to comment. That boy had a big mouth. He’s much quieter now...”

  Jo remembered the look in Rory’s eyes, just seconds before the camera-killer had pulled the shotgun trigger. On-screen, she saw Rory’s cruel taunts being typed into the chat window:

  ‘Dumb bitch! If I were as ugly as you I’d probably do the same. LOL!’

  The plane bucked like a bronco and Jo glanced out the window. Storm clouds swirled around the flashing lights of the plane, looking like smoke and hellfire.

  “And then there was Max, posting it across dozens of sites. Tap, tap, tap. Such busy hands.”

  Next to Mike’s avatar, the words, his death warrant:

  ‘OMG! Emo girl tops herself. Goodbye cruel world!’

  Jo shook her head. Whatever anyone had done on this plane, or on the ground, Max was an exception.

  “You didn’t kill ‘Max’ though did you? You killed the wrong guy you fucking freak!”

  Silence crackled over the speakers. She was right and he knew it.

  Then, Alligator spoke again, softly and clearly. “No Jo. You killed the wrong guy.”

  Unable to help herself, she glanced over at Max’s body. His last tortured gasp echoed in her ears. What did you do to me? She could see his dying face mouthing the word. Murderer. She bowed her head under the weight of her anger, guilt - and her fear of what may come.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll catch up with the real Max soon enough. He’ll suffer too.”

  Alligator’s tone was becoming casual again, like he was merely making polite chitchat with her.

  “Now, where were we? Oh yes, Alan thought it was all very funny...”

  ‘Cheer up retard! ROFL!’ appeared in the chat box next to Alan’s avatar.

  Jo remembered the gloved assailant, beating Alan and pushing him to his death below the office-building stairwell. She remembered the gloved hand, spraying the letters ‘ROFL’ across Alan’s chest, as he lay there broken and bleeding. Murderer. Max’s death rattle voice echoed in her aching brain. Let the punishment fit the crime.

  Jo watched, distressed, as young Lucy gulped back more handfuls of pills. That poor girl - what she’d had to endure. Tears flooded from the girl’s eyes. She was blinded by despair.

  “They were all implicit. But you, Jo - do you remember what you did?”

  Jo fell silent, recalling that night. She could almost smell the memory of the booze, the wine bottles standing open next to her computer monitor in her darkened bedroom. Sophie had been at Dawn’s, sleeping over so that Jo Scott - ‘World’s Best Mum’ according to the mug on her dressing table - could get shit-faced and chat with people on All2gethr until she passed out.

  “You just watched. You like watching, don’t you Jo?”

  She felt sick.

  She’d watched little Lucy Turner committing suicide live via webcam with the same eyes that were shedding tears for her now. Unsympathetic, drunken eyes. The eyes of a murderer.

  “I was drunk... I...”

  “Your excuse for everything!” Alligator’s fury made the speakers tremble. “Your excuse for getting pregnant! Your sad pathetic excuse for a life! You’re a mother yourself but you still sat and watched my little girl die! You don’t deserve to have a daughter!”

  His words cut deep. Tears streamed down Jo’s face as she remembered the dark months before rehab. She had been a lousy, inconstant excuse for a mother.