Altitude (Power Reads Book 1)

by Dean Crawford

  ‘Get back in your seats!’ Becca yelled. ‘It’s too dangerous!’

  The plane rolled hard to port and Grant slipped free from the two men trying to hold him captive as they struggled for balance inside the pitching, rolling airplane. Grant turned and grabbed hold of the first thing he could find to brace himself, and within moments he tore the fire extinguisher from the first aid area behind the cockpit.

  Becca jumped back as Chloe leaped into view, rushed past her and drove one knee deep into Grant’s thigh in an attempt to incapacitate him. He groaned in pain as he swung one hand out at Chloe. Becca winced as she heard Grant’s knuckles slap across Chloe’s face with a loud crack, saw her hurled to her knees as Grant grabbed hold of the extinguisher with both hands and shot Becca a crazed, manical glare.

  The nearest passenger made a grab for Grant as the plane levelled out and he swung the fire extinguisher through the air. The heavy metallic cylinder smacked into the man’s head with a sickening crack and he spun around and slammed unconscious onto the floor.

  ‘Put that down!’ Becca screamed.

  Grant ignored her and turned again, and this time he swung the heavy cylinder at the cockpit. The fire extinguisher slammed into the door with a deep thud and Becca launched herself at Grant and threw her arms about his head as she drove her fingers into his eyes.

  Grant screeched and staggered back from the cockpit door, just as the two burly men from earlier rushed up the aisle behind Becca. Grant turned and propelled himself backward, and Becca slammed into the fuselage wall with a deep thud that reverberated through her spine as pain bolted up her back. Her grip on Grant loosened with the shock of the impact and her arms were torn free as Grant whirled and raised one hand to strike her.

  A fist flew past her face and cracked across Grant’s as the two heavy set passengers slammed into him and hurled him clear of her. Grant staggered to one side and collapsed onto the carpet next to the fire extinguisher, his two assailants looming over him with clenched fists and murder in their eyes.

  ‘That’s enough!’ Becca shouted as she staggered forward and grabbed them by the arms.

  The two men turned to look at her, the bigger guy’s features filled with concern.

  ‘Are you oka…’

  His words were drowned out by a burst of noise and he vanished in a cloud of vapour as Grant turned the extinguisher on them from where he lay on the floor. The two men threw their arms up to protect their faces and staggered back from the onslaught as Grant leaped to his feet and swung the extinguisher once more. The blow slammed into one of the men’s arms and he cried out in pain as he tumbled backwards into the aisle as the airplane gyrated wildly through a pocket of turbulence.

  The front of the airplane filled with a smog of water vapour as Grant swung the extinguisher about with the fury of a madman, the cabin’s interior lights glowing in the mist as Becca tried to scramble away from the men fighting within inches of where she crouched.

  Grant turned and fired the extinguisher again at the second man as he drove him back, and then he turned the extinguisher in his hands and like a battering ram he slammed it into the man’s chest. Caught off balance, the big man tumbled backwards into the aisle and slammed onto the carpet, both hands clasping his chest as he fought for breath.

  Several other passengers leaped from their seats and thundered down the aisle toward Grant, too many bodies for him to possibly defeat.

  Grant whirled back to Becca and aimed the hose at her. Becca scrambled backwards until her back pressed against the emergency exit and she crouched down to avoid the blast, and immediately Grant shoved his boot against her and pushed her up against the wall as he lifted the cylinder above his head.

  ‘Get back or I’ll crush her skull like an eggshell!’

  ***

  XXVI

  Becca heard a rush of expletives from the passenger cabin and then the passengers backed off, glaring at Grant.

  ‘You’re insane,’ one of them uttered in disgust.

  The Airbus seemed to level out for a moment in the turbulent air as several more passengers tore off their seatbelts and staggered across the aisle to help Chloe as she got to her feet, blood trickling from the corner of her lip. Becca saw Grant still glaring down at her, taking in his glazed eyes and his haggard appearance. Sudenly she found herself questioning his mental health and she felt certain that he was probably abusing medication of some kind, and that if provoked he would send them all plunging to their deaths.

  Grant maintained his grip on the extinguisher, shivering as though from cold and his eyes darting from one watching passenger to the next as though seeking some escape from the horrifying mess he had put them all in.

  ‘I’m not going to get out of this alive!’ he shrieked and then laughed, a bitter little laugh that sent little insects of loathing scuttling beneath Becca’s skin.

  ‘I’d say our chances are better than that,’ she said in reply.

  Grant shot her a disgusted look. ‘You’ve lied to us since this whole charade began! We can’t trust you with anything, let alone our lives! You know as well as we all do that there’s no way out of this for us! We’ll probably crash land in this weather and we’ll suffocate down there even if we do touch down safely. What’s the point in denying it?’

  None of the passengers moved, nobody wanting Grant to plunge the extinguisher into her head. She suspected that they were also unable to confront the reality of their situation and now were waiting to see what she would say in reply to the man threatening her life. Becca found herself uncertain of how or even if she should respond to the wreckage of a man towering over her, but she was certain that his fatalistic approach to their dilemma was now as big a threat as the volcanic eruption consuming the landscape far below them.

  ‘You don’t want to survive,’ she said, her voice a whisper now but somehow audible above everything else. ‘You don’t want any of us to survive.’

  ‘They’re dead already! So am I!’

  ‘You don’t know that!’

  ‘Then why haven’t we landed yet? Why has the plane levelled out? How come the captain is still cowering in the cockpit?’

  There was a moment of silence and then Captain Reed suddenly emerged from the cockpit, slamming the door behind him and marching angrily to where Grant stood. His furious gaze took in the misty atmosphere in the forward cabin, the injured passengers being helped to their feet, and Grant standing over Becca with the fire extinguisher brandished over his head. The Airbus heaved this way and that but Reed seemed to barely notice, balancing easily against the movements as he pointed at Grant.

  ‘We hit a hailstorm,’ he said. ‘We’re having to go around one more time, but I’ll be damned if I’ll see my crew wasting more of their time on an idiot like you! If you want off the bloody plane, have the decency to let everyone else strap in safely and then I’ll push you out myself!’

  The silence deepened. Grant stared at the captain as though unable to figure out how to respond. Reed didn’t give him the chance to conjure up a reply.

  ‘You’re the only person who is causing injuries up here! You’re the greatest danger to this flight, not the damned volcano!’

  ‘I don’t want to die of suffocation, or plummet out of the sky in an airplane that’s ripping itself to pieces or to drown in the ocean!’ Grant turned to the other passengers and shouted down the length of the cabin. ‘There is another option, and that’s to point the nose at the water and go in at maximum speed! It’s our decision! Why prolong the agony?!’

  Becca winced and she heard mutterings of disgust and disdain from the other passengers as the captain moved closer to Grant, the Airbus shaking and twisting as it plunged headlong through the turbulent clouds.

  ‘We’re running out of time!’ Reed shouted loud enough for everyone to hear. ‘You want a damned vote about it, Grant? Let’s have one then! All those for saying to hell with life and crashing the airplane purposefully into the ocean?’

  Grant, Becca and th
e captain glanced at the watching passengers. Nobody moved.

  ‘All those for trying a landing at sea in these storms and swimming for it?’

  Nobody moved again.

  ‘All those for trying a secondary, smaller airfield and taking our chances that the plane doesn’t disintegrate into a fireball when it overshoots the runway?’

  Becca felt a tingle of hope as perhaps four or five people put their hands up. Captain Reed looked at them all, and then he closed one fist beside his head as he shouted at them.

  ‘All those for landing at Keflavik, refuelling the airplane with the help of the firefighters who are on their way to the airport right this moment to help us, and then getting the hell out of here and back to safety?!’

  There was a sudden, shocked silence as the passengers considered this new and unexpected development, and then a full hundred–plus hands shot up in the air. Becca slumped in relief against the emergency exit as the captain looked down at Grant.

  ‘That’s it, they’ve voted and the only person who wants to die today is you, so get away from Rebecca right now or I’ll let these passengers pull you clear of her.’

  Grant cast a frightful glance at the passengers again closing fearlessly in on him and Becca saw a flash of defiance in his eyes that warred with a sort of regret, as though he was torn between two choices. For a moment, she thought that it was indecision again over whether to do the right thing, but then she saw the desolation in his eyes.

  Suddenly Becca’s blood ran cold through her veins as she looked at Grant and realised that she had misjudged him. The lank hair, the dishevelled clothes, the pale skin. She had taken him for a down and out, maybe even a substance abuser, but now she saw him in a completely new light. Grant wasn’t a substance abuser. He was ill, terminally ill.

  Grant had come to Iceland to die.

  ‘I have to die,’ he uttered bleakly.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ Becca urged. ‘This isn’t the way!’

  ‘Put him in the restraints!’ Captain Reed shouted.

  In an instant the captain, Chloe and the nearest passengers rushed toward Grant as he lifted the extinguisher higher to bring it plunging down on her skull.

  ‘No!’

  The Airbus suddenly lurched and plummeted from the sky as severe turbulence and wind shear slammed her downward. Becca felt her body leave the floor as she saw Grant wrenched away from her by the force of the descent and hurled across the cabin.

  In a moment of horror, she saw every member of the crew and passengers who were not strapped into their seats hurled upward toward the cabin ceiling.

  ***

  XXVII

  Becca smashed into the ceiling of the Airbus cabin with a thud that sent stars and whorls of light flashing before her eyes. She heard screams of terror soar from the passengers and the engines screaming as the autopilot strained to maintain control of the airplane and arrest its sudden descent. Flashes of lightning flickered through the human carnage as though the bolts were trying to fight their way into the cabin from the tumultuous darkness outside.

  Captain Reed hit the ceiling head first and then Grant crashed into him. Becca glimpsed blood fly in droplets through the cabin as the top of Grant’s skull slammed into Reed’s face, and then the stunned captain was hurled downward as the airplane’s wings slammed into an updraft and its plunging descent was abruptly halted.

  Becca crashed down onto her hands and knees in the aisle, pain jolting through her joints. She heard bodies thumping down all around her as the airplane heaved to one side, her wings tilting steeply before they levelled off again.

  Becca looked up as she saw two bodies crash down into the aisle in front of her, and she winced as the back of Captain Reed’s neck smacked down across the arm of a seat with a crack that sounded like someone walking on an eggshell. His limbs slapped down onto the carpeted aisle at awkward angles, limp and twisted. Becca fought down a bolt of nausea that swilled in her guts as she saw the captain’s neck twisted at an impossible angle, his body sprawled across the aisle and his eyes staring wide and lifeless at the ceiling.

  ‘No!’

  The cry wrenched itself free of her throat as though of its own accord. Becca crawled to Reed’s side, pain piercing her limbs with each movement, and saw that his nose had been broken by the impact with Grant’s head, blood splattering his face and shirt and staining his teeth. But she also knew in an instant that he was dead, his neck broken and his head almost perpendicular to his throat.

  Cries of pain and distress reached her ears and she turned to see passengers sprawled in awkward postions, cradling injuries to their limbs and faces, the sound of weeping misery filling the cabin. Beside her, Grant stirred and crawled to his hands and knees and then he looked at her and the captain. A look of absolute desolation twisted his features as he saw the captain’s face staring lifelessly up at the ceiling.

  ‘Is he… Is he dead?’

  The reply came not from Becca but from her left as a burly figure loomed up.

  ‘If he is, so are you!’

  The heavy–set passenger Grant had hit in the chest with the extinguisher swung a boot that landed with a deep thump into Grant’s belly. Grant’s horror mutated into pain and shock, his eyes wide and his mouth gaping as a rush of air was expelled from his lungs. He folded over the blow, but he was hauled to his feet by the big guy and his friend who rushed past Becca and slammed Grant against the wall of the cabin. Lightning flickered again in the half darkness of the cabin as though something evil had taken over the passengers and she heard the dull thumps of fists into flesh and the groans of pain that accompanied them.

  Becca struggled to her feet, swaying this way and that as the two furious passengers laid into Grant with a frenzy of blows. She saw the man’s face battered to one side and his nose smashed into pulp with just two punches, and his eyes rolled up into their sockets as he slid down the wall.

  ‘That’s enough! He’s terminally ill!’

  Becca struggled across to them as the plane gyrated through more turbulence and she forced herself in front of the two men, pushing them away from the battered body now sprawled at her feet. Grant appeared unconscious, his bloodied face matted with his lank hair.

  ‘Back off!’

  The two men did as she told them, their fists still cocked and rage twisting their features as they glared down at their victim. Becca searched the passengers further down the cabin and spotted Chloe trying to make her way forward through them.

  ‘Everyone, get back in your seats and let us get through!’ Chloe yelled.

  The passengers were about to protest, but one by one they were beginning to notice the body of the captain lying at a strange angle before them. Like a silent wave, the awareness of death spread like a dark shadow through the passenger cabin and one by one they took their seats, their eyes locked on the corpse of the pilot. Captain Reed’s head lolled back and forth with the movements of the airplane, as though even after death he was showing his disapproval of the violence.

  The turbulence assaulting them suddenly ceased and the airplane levelled off as through the windows golden sunshine burst through in brilliant rays as the Airbus once again laboured up out of the cloud layer. Becca could see that the sun had almost set even at this altitude, the blinding orb too bright to look at.

  Chloe made it to Becca’s side. ‘Are you okay?’

  Becca nodded and looked at her colleague. Chloe had a bruise over her right eye and her lips were smeared with blood but she seemed otherwise unharmed despite the tremendous turbulence that had assaulted the airplane. Clear air turbulence, as it was sometimes known, was capable without warning of causing an airliner to drop a thousand feet in a matter of moments even in what seemed like perfect flying conditions. Caused by what were effectively “holes” of still air amid jetstreams and other flowing winds, they momentarily removed the lift from the airplane’s wings, could not be predicted and were responsible for the vast majority of injuries aboard commercial airliners. Anybody
not strapped in their seats became effectively weightless before plunging back down at the moment the airplane passed through the hole in the air and the wings regained their lift.

  ‘Get the first aid kit out and help anyone you can.’

  Chloe was about to move when she became aware of the captain nearby. Becca saw her friend’s sudden concern and then the realisation, the certainty that she was looking not at an injured man but at a corpse. Chloe’s hand flew to her mouth in horror and Becca grabbed her by the shoulders.

  ‘The first aid kit, Chloe, right now!’

  Chloe nodded and turned to make her way back down the cabin as Becca stumbled across to the cockpit intercom. She hit the switch and called out breathlessly.

  ‘Jason, you’d better get out here.’

  ‘A bit busy, y’know, not crashing the plane and all.’

  ‘Jason, right now!’

  There was a moment’s pause and then the cockpit door opened. Jason’s eyes met hers and he hesitated as he registered whatever it was he saw there, struck by the tone in her voice over the intercom. Then he looked past her into the passenger cabin and a moment later he dashed past.

  She turned as Jason stopped short of the captain and realised that it was already too late. Then Jason looked up and saw a hundred or so weary, injured faces looking back at him, victims of the surge of turbulence that had assaulted the Airbus. There would be concussions, broken limbs, heavy bruising and other injuries and she could see that the blameless pilot was taking it all on his shoulders. He could not have seen the turbulence soaring from the tops of the cumulonimbus clouds, but he had been at the controls when the Airbus had rocketed through it. Jason stared blankly at the captain’s body once again, apparently unable to move.