Zone

by Jack Lance

He stopped moving. He didn’t try to lunge out of the way. He stood there frozen, staring at her like a startled deer caught in the glare of a car’s headlights.

  No! she screamed silently.

  Then the axe hit home and he cried out.

  But not because she had buried the axe in his head. Her aim was thrown off at the last split second and the razor-sharp blade had grazed his right shoulder and narrowly missed his leg. Blood spilled from a wide gash in his uniform jacket.

  Grimacing in pain, he pressed his wounded arm to his side and bit down on his lower lip.

  How could I have missed? she wondered, stunned beyond measure.

  He was injured, but he was alive.

  It was incomprehensible to them both. The blade of the axe should have hit him right between the eyes. He hadn’t moved, and following that brief flash of recognition she had been unable to stop what she was doing or change the direction of her swing.

  Aaron should have been lying at her feet, dead or dying. The fact that the blade had simply glanced off him had nothing to do with quick reflexes.

  Something else must have happened.

  Horrified, Sharlene tossed the axe away. Her body was trembling, and her throat felt dry and vacant, as if her vocal chords had been severed.

  Aaron felt the world spinning around him. Had it not been for their catastrophic circumstances, he would have gladly succumbed to blissful unconsciousness.

  ‘We need to get out!’ he croaked. ‘The plane’s breaking up.’

  Sharlene opened her mouth, but was still too shocked to speak.

  ‘Does that side window still open?’ Aaron yelled frantically.

  Sharlene turned toward the small window beside the pilot’s seat.

  It should open, she thought in a daze. It was the only way to leave the aircraft from the flight deck, other than going out the door. Until now she hadn’t given it a thought.

  The nose of the plane heaved upward, like a bow of a ship minutes before taking its last fatal plunge. Sharlene staggered backward and fell into Aaron’s arms. When she did so, the filter of evil returned in a flash of terror. For that brief moment she again became convinced he was a demon sent out from the underworld to do her in.

  You should have killed me when you had the chance, you stupid bitch. Now I’m going to kill you.

  But he did nothing of the kind. He wrapped his injured arm around Sharlene’s waist and used his other hand to support himself on Jim’s seat. Then he dragged them forward a step, toward the side window. There was a lever beside it that he needed to pull.

  ‘Let me,’ she mumbled.

  She had finally found her voice.

  Would this work? Would they be able to leave the aircraft through the window, the only egress available to them? Or were the satanic powers inside the Princess determined to keep them locked inside this tomb forever?

  She pulled the lever – and to her relief the window slid open. She breathed in the salt air.

  The nose cone of the plane made a sudden dip downward. Water splashed against the cockpit windows. Sharlene could clearly see white-crested waves swirling around the outside of the aircraft. The Princess was on her way into the abyss.

  They had seconds before the ocean waters would come raging in through the open window and devour them.

  Aaron pushed her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she moaned.

  ‘Go!’ he screamed hoarsely.

  She felt his hand on her neck as he forced her to lean her head out the window. As he did so, water surged up against what little remained of the aircraft above the ocean’s surface.

  Suddenly her abdomen was resting on the window frame, and her feet were dangling inside the cockpit. Aaron had his hands on her buttocks and was pushing her out. How he had managed to do that with his injured shoulder, she could not imagine. Then she fell out, and hit the water and went under.

  When she bobbed back up, spluttering, she opened her eyes and saw the window right beside her, just above the surface. The rest of the 747’s formidable nose cone, like the great underwater mass of an iceberg, was out of sight in the depths below.

  ‘Aaron! Where are you?’ she screamed.

  He was still inside the cockpit, but he had stuck his head out the side window. She could see the terror and pain in his face. Their eyes met, for the last time.

  A black shadow loomed up behind him.

  Sharlene tried to warn him. Her lips parted, but she swallowed a wad of salt water. She gagged, and tears came to her eyes.

  Then suddenly it felt as if the same demonic power that had groped her in the main and upper galleys was pulling at her ankles. She went down, together with the Princess. The immense aircraft was dragging her down with it.

  Sharlene felt a crushing pain from the pressure on her ears, worse by far than what she had experienced when the trolley crushed her leg.

  She no longer had the strength to resist.

  She was drowning.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Zone

  Just like everyone else in the life raft, Jim Nichols witnessed the demise of his beloved Princess. He had a front-row seat, because his boat was closest to the aircraft. As she made her final plunge, he stood up straight as if saluting the plane.

  He was close enough to see someone falling from the side window of the cockpit.

  Jim caught a glimpse of the body in the light of his flashlight. It was almost as if the Boeing shed one last tear before it yielded to the inevitable. The dome of the aircraft disappeared beneath the surface, and the ocean waters lapped over where it once had been.

  A large, dark wave curled toward his little boat, lifting it up and almost capsizing it. That wave was followed by a number of smaller ones, sloshing against its rubber sides. Salt-water spray stung Jim’s eyes and wet his clothing.

  Using the flashlight, Jim searched for the body, but he found none in the choppy water. He turned back toward the passengers in his life raft and counted fifteen heads, the last of those who had escaped from the doomed aircraft. Most of them were injured. One passenger had a broken arm bone; a boy who could not have been more than ten years old had a broken nose; and a red-haired man had what looked to be a fairly serious head wound. But among them were four men who seemed unharmed.

  ‘I need your help,’ Jim called to them. ‘We need to start rowing, that way.’

  He gestured toward the place where, a moment earlier, he had seen the nose of the Princess disappear beneath the surface. Who had tumbled from the window? Had it been Aaron?

  The purser was the only one who had stayed behind, as far as he knew. He didn’t believe Sharlene was still on board, as Aaron had claimed, although he couldn’t discount it completely. In the chaos of the evacuation he hadn’t noticed her leaving the Boeing.

  Or did I see Jody leave the plane?

  The four men grabbed the four oars in the boat and started pulling toward the area indicated.

  Silence settled over the little craft; even the injured passengers seemed to be holding their breath. Jim was not surprised by their reaction. They had all come face to face with death, and that was a life-defining experience for anyone.

  How many passengers had he lost? During the evacuation, Jim had noticed a handful of fatalities, but there must have been more he hadn’t seen. No matter how bad it was, it could have been a lot worse.

  Maybe it still will be. Where have I taken us?

  He would worry about that later. Now he needed to find whoever had fallen into the water.

  Jim shone his flashlight this way and that, wishing dawn would finally break – assuming there was such a thing as dawn here. His light found a gray piece of debris. Behind it, a floating suitcase. But no body. Aaron must have been dragged under by the suction of the sinking aircraft and drowned.

  But then the flashlight picked out a body lying face-down in the water. He pointed at it.

  ‘There!’ he shouted urgently. ‘There!’

  The four passengers pulled on the oars.
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  Jim kept his light trained on the body. The little boat approached, and then he suddenly saw a mass of long blonde hair and realized it was Sharlene.

  When the life raft came alongside, Jim and another man leaned across the bulbous rim of the inflatable boat and each grabbed an arm. Carefully, they hoisted Sharlene up and over the coaming until she slid backwards across the rubber floor of the boat. Jim crouched beside her. Her eyes were closed and she was not breathing. He felt her pulse. No sign of life there, either.

  Jim leaned over her and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Then he folded his hands over her heart and pushed downward in short, hard bursts of pressure. He breathed into her mouth again, and then repeated the pressure on her chest.

  She suddenly turned her face to the side and coughed up water, spluttering and coughing. Then she opened her eyes and Jim cried out in relief. Sharlene looked up at him as if he were a complete stranger. She blinked her eyes and then closed them again – this time, he feared, for good. His body went ice-cold.

  ‘What’s that?’ he heard the man ask who had helped haul her aboard.

  Sharlene coughed, spitting out salt water and mucus. Her throat opened and she was able to breathe again, drawing air deep into her tortured lungs. She was on her back, exhausted, lying in what felt like a water bed. It was rocking, not unpleasantly.

  She opened her eyes and saw people peering down at her. Across from her was a middle-aged woman hugging two girls, neither more than eight or nine years old. A lanky boy about the same age with a bloody nose and mouth was sitting beside her, leaning his head on her shoulder. He was staring at Sharlene as well, as if she were some kind of celebrity.

  Around the edges of the giant water bed was a woman, white as a sheet, sitting hunched over with her chin on her chest. Next to her Sharlene noticed a man grimacing in pain, his arm pressed stiffly against his body. A red-haired gentleman in a rumpled business suit sat staring into space, with a makeshift bandage wrapped around his head.

  Only then did she realize that her left leg had been swaddled. At the same time she felt a sharp sting of pain beneath the bandages, and she hissed between her teeth. Salt water had seeped into her wounds and the pain was intense.

  And she realized there was light. Overhead was blue sky and a yellow sun. Then she made another discovery. Jim Nichols was on his knees beside her, with his back turned, tending to the woman with the two girls. He gestured and said something to someone at the back of the water bed, although she realized by now that it was actually a rubber life boat.

  She became aware of someone else sitting beside her, and he had his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Are you OK?’ a familiar voice asked, although it sounded somewhat hollow and raspy. She turned her head toward him.

  It was Aaron.

  His shoulder, the one she had grazed with her axe, had been wrapped in white bandages. ‘How …? How …?’ she stammered.

  In her mind’s eye she saw a brief flash, as if from a camera. She saw a mental image of him with that black shadow behind him, inside the cockpit.

  He couldn’t have gotten out.

  Her heart leapt with joy, but this could not possibly be him.

  Jim Nichols turned around, saw that she was awake, and shuffled toward her on his hands and knees. He had removed his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. His sweaty face, now bright red and with more lines than she had ever noticed before, split in a wide grin. His tired eyes lit up.

  ‘Glad to have you back among us, Sharlene!’ he exclaimed.

  Before she could respond, Aaron brought a plastic bottle of purified water to her lips. ‘Here, drink this,’ he said. ‘It will do you good.’

  Her throat was parched and she drank greedily.

  ‘Easy, easy,’ Aaron warned. ‘Don’t overdo it.’

  He slowly removed the bottle and twisted the cap back on. The fresh water did wonders to revive her. Already she felt better.

  ‘Help me up,’ she said.

  ‘No, you need to lie there for a little while longer,’ Aaron cautioned. ‘Take your time. There’s no rush. We’re not going anywhere anytime soon.’

  ‘No,’ she said decidedly. ‘Help me up.’

  Shaking his head, he assisted her to a sitting position. Dizziness washed over her and her head ached. But she was alive and sitting up, and with the man she loved. And now she could look out above the rim of the little boat.

  There were ten other lifeboats floating on the water, close together, most of them crammed full of people. The Boeing 747 was gone. Sharlene couldn’t see land anywhere. The sea stretched to eternity in all directions. The sun was bright in a blue sky with nothing but a few dots of fluffy white clouds. There was no wind at all. She looked back toward the other people in her boat, toward Aaron and Jim.

  ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

  Jim shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘That’s comforting,’ Sharlene said with a slight smile.

  Aaron wrapped his good arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. ‘You’re still here,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Wherever we are, we’re here together.’

  Sharlene had so many questions, she didn’t know where to start.

  She started with the most obvious one. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I’d like to hear your version of that,’ Jim countered.

  ‘You first,’ she said adamantly. ‘I blacked out while we were still airborne.’

  Jim arched his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know that.’ He paused, then said, ‘I had to ditch the plane. Because the Princess had such a capable crew, we were able to evacuate all survivors within minutes of hitting the water. The aircraft sank shortly after six o’clock this morning. A few minutes later we pulled you from the water.’

  She vaguely remembered segments of that account as if from a dream she’d had a long time ago.

  ‘Fortunately we also spotted Aaron floating not far from you and were able to drag him on board as well.’

  ‘It was a close call,’ Aaron agreed, adding, ‘When the cockpit filled with water, it felt like I was swimming against a waterfall. I held on to the window sill and somehow managed to pull myself out. I’m still not entirely sure how I managed to do that.’

  Sharlene was tempted to ask him about the figure she had seen behind him, but for the time being kept that unsettling image to herself.

  ‘We’ve counted nineteen fatalities, all passengers, and a few dozen injured,’ Jim continued. ‘It’s 10:15 now. We have to see it through until someone picks us up. Fortunately, our beacons are working, transmitting on all available frequencies – 121.5, 243, and 406 megahertz.’

  ‘Do you think someone will come for us?’ Sharlene asked tentatively.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Jim said firmly. ‘It might take a while, though. This is a big ocean. But we have everything we need right here. Emergency rations, tarps, thermal blankets. We also have fishing rods, and tablets for turning salt water potable. And we can take care of the injured. We have first aid kits with bandages, medication, splints. If necessary, we can survive out here for days. That is, unless a bad storm hits.’

  He must have told the passengers the same thing, probably in the same words. But did she believe him? He wouldn’t look her in the eye. In both her professional and personal life she had had dealings with people who said one thing and thought another; they gave themselves away when they refused to look you in the eye. That was her litmus test and Jim had just failed it.

  Should she blame Jim for not being honest with her? No, this was hardly the time, she decided. She had to consider the other passengers on the lifeboat who desperately needed to believe what Jim had told her – and them.

  She nodded pensively and looked at Aaron.

  ‘Your turn. How did you find out I was inside the cockpit?’

  ‘I’d lost you,’ he said. ‘After the evacuation was complete, I didn’t want to leave without you. I knew you had to be somewhere inside. I don’t know ho
w I knew it. I just knew.’

  He gently squeezed her arm. ‘What’s your story, Sharlene?’ he asked. ‘What were you doing up there in the cockpit?’

  Sharlene took another sip of water and decided not to keep anything from him. She resolved to tell him everything she had gone through, every detail, no matter how insane it sounded.

  She started with what she heard from Cassie, the woman in black, and the Latino. She even told him about her conviction that the turbulence had launched the Princess of the Pacific into another reality, and intruders from that world had taken over the plane. She explained that she had been on her way to see Jim but got only as far as the galley on the upper deck. The last thing she’d noticed was that dark shape. Then she blacked out, and only regained consciousness when the plane had already crash-landed in the water. She described how she dragged herself into the cockpit. She had thought some horrific apparition was pounding on the door, and raised the axe in terror when the door buckled.

  Her voice broke. She needed to drink more water before she could continue. ‘That’s about it,’ she concluded as she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. ‘Go ahead, tell me I’m nuts. I’ve heard it before, I can take it. Hell, maybe I am nuts!’

  Tears welled up when she touched Aaron’s wounded arm. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, choking on her words. ‘I thought … I thought you weren’t … you. I would never, ever do anything to deliberately hurt you.’

  ‘I know,’ Aaron half whispered, and held her hand, caressing it.

  ‘I saw Pamela,’ he said – sounding so casual she thought at first he was talking about one of the passengers.

  He shrugged. ‘So either we’re both nuts or …’

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  As the meaning of his words started to sink in, her jaw dropped. It took a moment for her to gather her wits.

  ‘Was she the one I saw behind you inside the cockpit?’ she finally asked in a hoarse voice. ‘I saw something … There was something or someone … in there with you.’

  ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘I was thinking only of my survival, and praying I’d be able to make it. She could have been there with me. Or whatever she was. It wasn’t Pamela herself, that’s for certain. Pamela is dead.’