Panic Button

by Frazer Lee

  “Not one of you called the authorities. Not one of you reached out to push the panic button. All of you are guilty and your punishments both just and fitting.”

  But he was wrong. Jo had gotten herself some help. Cleaned up her act. Dawn had been so proud of her. And Sophie loved her. She flinched at the memory of the video showing Sophie in that filthy cell. Her stomach flipped as she remembered tearing away the black plastic bag from Dawn’s dead face. Fresh anger ignited like a flame in Jo - whatever she had done, or not done, she had paid her dues.

  “We’re all guilty? Screw you. You killed my mother! The pilot’s family! Pitched us all against each other for your own sick amusement! And what about all the innocent people at All2gethr?”

  “Some people were an unfortunate necessity... But All2gethr?” Alligator spat, “They are as guilty as the rest of you. They swept my Lucy’s case under the carpet. We will destroy their servers, their archives and their people. They will become nothing. And the World will watch their bitter end. They’ll wish they had paid attention then.”

  Jo cried out as the plane plummeted again, a pure fear reflex. Buffeted by the storm, the jet tilted, correcting its course. This was it; the end was coming for her. It had all been building up to this, the winner’s email, the champagne reception, the lies and the bloodshed - all because of one man’s insane desire for revenge.

  “The world will watch?” she said, “No one will give a shit about your reasons, your ‘master plan’... Nobody is even going to know!”

  “Wrong again Jo. I’m generating the ultimate viral video, of which you are the star.”

  Suddenly, Jo was looking at herself on the touch screen monitor. She looked bedraggled and bloodstained as she peered at the screen. The beady little webcam eye, embedded into the monitor’s housing like a dark jewel, had been watching her all along.

  “Of course, anything that implies my part in all this will be removed before the World enjoys watching you die over and over and over again.”

  Alligator’s face reappeared on her screen, black slit eyes regarding her like she was a piece of meat on the end of a hook.

  “An eye for an eye my dear.”

  Eighteen

  Jo fought back her tears. The jet engines droned on outside amidst the howling storm. She replayed everything that had led her up to this moment, fast-forwarded it in her mind’s eye like one of Alligator’s sick video recordings. She saw herself kissing Sophie through the window of the big black car, saw herself toasting the others with champagne, then poisoning poor Max, or whatever his real name was, she’d probably never know now, the man she’d killed. It had all led here, to this point in time. Her, alone in this cabin.

  And only one thing mattered to her, only one thing in the whole wide world.

  “Sophie... is she alive?”

  The words felt like an open wound to her. She waited for Alligator’s reply, unable to breathe. He didn’t make her wait long.

  “I’m afraid not. I took out her pretty eyes. That is your punishment. She cried out for you Jo, I never thought she’d stop...”

  Jo screamed through her tears. “I don’t fucking believe you!”

  But Jo did believe him, and that was the most terrible thing for her to admit. For the duration of the nightmare flight, Jo had felt she couldn’t believe a word of what Alligator said. He’d taken lives when he could have spared them. He’d taunted and turned each passenger against the other. And he’d manipulated Callahan into destroying everything for the lie that his family would be spared. Until now, everything that had come out of Alligator’s mouth had seemed to be a lie, or a threat hidden in a promise. She believed only one thing now; that all hope was lost - Alligator’s corrupt gospel of despair. Jo felt it consuming her like a black void.

  “I have a family too Jo, just like you did. We’ve been ever so busy. Busy little bees.”

  “You,” Jo snarled, “are a fucking monster.”

  She looked at the death and destruction all around her, at Alligator’s empire of smashed technology, broken bodies and ruined lives.

  “This is how you honour your daughter’s memory? Did you ever stop to wonder why your daughter killed herself you sick bastard? With a father like you - who wouldn’t?”

  The touch screen crackled with digital noise. Jo could almost feel Alligator’s rage at the other end of the webcam. A tangible, spiteful presence trying desperately to break through.

  “Six minutes to impact,” Alligator said.

  Jo’s eyes burned with defiant anger. Her hatred for Alligator had become pathological - and her rage at what he had done was all consuming. She looked up the aisle toward the cockpit door and knew now what she had to do.

  For Sophie, for her Mother, and for all those poor people on the ground.

  It took seconds for Jo to reach the main door of the plane.

  It was her only option, she knew that now, clear as day. She looked down at the curved door panel and saw the transparent Perspex covering, emblazoned with the words ‘EMERGENCY DOOR RELEASE’.

  Alligator’s voice quaked through the cabin. “What are you doing, little woman?”

  “This ends now, you bastard.”

  She lifted the plastic cover, grabbed the door release lever.

  “You hear me? It’s OVER!”

  Jo wrenched the lever with all her might.

  It did not budge. She tried again, with both hands this time, but it was stuck fast. Jo slammed her fist against the door in frustration.

  “Five minutes. Goodbye Jo.”

  Nineteen

  The plane tilted and rocked. Rain lashed the windows. The jet was through the clouds now, bearing the full brunt of the storm below them.

  Jo placed her hands on the curved hull, steadying herself. She could feel the plane making ready its descent. The engines roared in concert with her rage and despair as she battled her way, uphill, along the aisle into the main cabin of the jet. Her foot snagged on something heavy and she almost tripped over. Looking down, she saw Max’s dead body, his wide terror-struck eyes fixed open, staring at her. Jo looked away. Disentangling her foot, she glanced around the cabin, frantic.

  Then she found what she had been looking for - her last chance.

  She lifted the crash axe and stumbled back toward the crew prep area, and the main door. The jet was lurching and rocking now, battered by turbulence.

  Jo prayed to the memory of her Mother that she was not too late. Dawn had died for what Alligator perceived as Jo’s sins. If she could make a difference - any difference at all - then that would be enough for her. To know, in her final moments, that she had done the right thing and had not just stood idly by while Alligator destroyed yet more lives. In a way, she had become his protégé. He had shown her the error of her ways by punishing her for her inaction when his daughter, Lucy, had chosen to take her own life. Hefting the axe with both hands at the door seal, she could no longer be accused of inaction.

  Slam.

  A small crack formed between the door and the hull. Jo lifted the axe and struck at the door seal again.

  Slam.

  The seal had partially broken away.

  “Jo,” Alligator’s voice was terse. It sounded like all the oxygen had been sucked from his body. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Taking strength from his fear, she took a moment to wipe the sweat from her brow - then hacked the axe blade into the widening crack with all her might.

  Slam.

  “Jo!” Alligator sounded frenzied now.

  Slam. Slam!

  A couple more hits, and Jo stepped back to assess her handiwork. Her heart was racing but she felt cold and calm as she watched the crack in the door seal bend outwards. The sudden loss of pressure was bending the door from its hinges.

  For a moment, Alligator’s vile words came back to haunt her - I took out her pretty eyes... she cried out for you Jo, I thought she’d never stop...

  Jo choked back an onslaught of tears. Her little girl real
ly was dead. She’d meet her in a better place; Jo felt sure of that now. All of the pain and struggle of her life was rolling back like a tidal wave. Jo felt only love, for her daughter. Love, for her sister Maddie, wherever she may be. Love, for the strangers on the ground at work in their building, blissfully unaware of her presence. Unaware of what she was about to do for them. When they were reunited, Sophie would know for certain that her Mum had not died in vain. Sophie would know that she had never given up on her. And she would know that despite her flaws, Mummy had done the right thing, finally.

  Jo Scott felt peaceful, serene.

  She closed her eyes and pictured Sophie’s smiling face. We’ll be together soon, little Pumpkin, she thought.

  Slam.

  One final axe strike and the door exploded away from the aircraft. Debris began to smash and swirl madly through the cabin as it depressurised. There was an explosion of noise as grinding metal buckled and the jet engines screamed. Jo saw the black void beyond the door, and welcomed it. Freezing cold air sucked her from the doorway, and out into the raging storm, like a final breath.

  It felt like freedom.

  Twenty

  The room was deathly quiet, save for the gentle click and whir of computer hard drives. They lined the space, stacked up on metal shelves, connected by an insane spaghetti of cables. Green router lights flashed, casting an ethereal glow across the dimly lit basement room like stars in a subterranean sky.

  The only occupant of the room sat with his back to the little staircase that led to the outside world above. This basement was his world, built with his sweat and toil. He sat facing a bank of computer screens and clicked off the microphone that stood on the desk before him. Staring at the computer monitors, he was mesmerised by the same fuzzy digital noise each one of them displayed. The signal was gone, all communications cut - game over.

  The man turned on his swivel chair and surveyed his painstakingly constructed empire. All around him, pinned and adhered to every available inch of shelf and wall, were printouts and photographs alongside lists of surveillance data and jet plane schematics. The entire room was a web of information, a pernicious cocoon from which to exact his revenge.

  He glanced, coldly, at the photographs of his victims.

  There was Dave, his idiot soldier, gurning into the camera with his arm around the girl he had so easily betrayed. How effortlessly he had been groomed to kill. And Gwen, the religious hypocrite, peering up at the camera she had obviously been holding in her own hand to take the picture. Her look was that of the coquettish tease, her eyes barely concealing the deep conflict within her body and soul. There was the impostor who had pretended to be Max, the grainy photo of him as blurred as the identity he’d projected to his fellow passengers. No matter, he had served his purpose just as well. And Jo. The single mother. The alcoholic. The sad pathetic excuse for a life who had done nothing to save his dear little Lucy, and yet who professed to love her own daughter beyond measure. Even to the point of poisoning another human being to death. He almost admired her for that, he had to admit, but for the fact that she had brought his plane down ahead of schedule... into the sea.

  The man stood, weary after too many long hours in the chair, and turned his back on their faces. He felt nothing for them, not even pity. It was over. He glanced at the wall chart fixed to a section of wall between racks of hard drives. Names, locations, dates and times - stretching back almost forty-eight hours. Each name was crossed out in red marker pen. A grim schedule of executions. Dawn, Rory, Emily and the others - all taken care of. His son had done him proud, getting the luggage ready in time for the flight.

  He walked through the tunnel of hardware and intelligence, toward the stairs. Ascending, he paused to turn off the power. His secret world, the Alligator’s lair, was plunged into darkness. Computer cooling fans slowed to a whisper and died, as though mourning their master’s departure.

  It was over now. He locked the door behind him.

  Just one last job to do.

  One name left on the wall chart, not yet crossed out like the others.

  Sophie lay on the bed, staring at the grubby old teddy bear.

  More than once, she’d thought about reaching out and holding the toy, about cuddling it for comfort. But the bear wasn’t hers, and never would be. If she took it now and held it, and the nasty man came back, he would think she liked it. He would think she’d given up somehow, by cuddling the bear. Its face was dirty and she didn’t like it. Sophie sighed and, still lying down, turned over to face the wall. She heard the bedsprings creak and pop beneath her. The rickety workings of the bed reminded her of the old trampoline in Nanny’s garden. How happy she was the day she’d first played on it, jumping higher and higher, then falling down, laughing and bouncing. But now her Nanny was dead.

  Sophie winced as she replayed the muffled gunfire in her head, clenching her eyelids shut in a desperate attempt to blink away the image of the old woman falling to the kitchen floor. Run, her Nanny’s eyes had said. But then the masked man had taken her away, hurting her as he’d bundled her into the back of his van. She could still remember the rank metallic smell inside the vehicle, still feel the sharp sting of the needle he’d injected into her arm before her world had darkened and she’d drifted away.

  It seemed like days since she’d woken up on this bed. Maybe it had been days? She couldn’t tell because there were no windows and the nasty man had taken her phone away. She’d hunted for her phone inside the room, just in case he’d dropped it. Then she could have called her mum, or sent a text, or called the police, and someone would come and rescue her. But the phone was nowhere to be found and she’d cried herself to sleep again. Sometimes she woke up crying too, wrenched from pleasant dreams in which she was back with Mum and Nanny baking cakes in the little kitchen. To wake up in the gloomy room, each time with that filthy teddy bear smiling at her, was like a little death.

  Sophie felt tears welling up in her eyes again at the thought of her Mum and her Nan. Was her Mum dead now? Had the nasty man shot her too? Sophie didn’t think he wanted to kill her; he kept bringing her horrid lukewarm food to eat and tepid water to drink after all.

  She propped herself up on her elbows and glanced over at the door. The red light next to the lock was always looking at her, like an angry little eye. Soon the red light would turn green, the door would open and the nasty man would be there with more yucky food for her to eat. If he wanted her dead, why would he keep feeding her? Maybe it was just a cruel game of his. Maybe next time he opened that door he would kill her.

  But she wasn’t afraid of him. She wasn’t afraid of death - at least that was what she kept telling herself, over and over. Sophie just wanted to be with her Mum again. She lay back and closed her eyes. Saying a silent prayer that it could be so, she drifted off into a troubled sleep under the watchful glare of the little red light.

  Later, while Sophie still slumbered, the light turned green.

  Twenty One

  “Wakey, wakey, rise and shine.”

  The man stood over Sophie’s fragile little body, smiling quietly.

  Little girls were so delicate when they slept. He noted the fingers of her right hand were just touching the teddy bear they’d left for her. It was grubby from its exile in the attic, but it felt correct for it to be one of Lucy’s. This little girl had probably never had toys, her slut mother had drunk all their money after all, and the father was nowhere to be seen.

  He knew where the father was though. It hadn’t been exactly difficult to track him down via his data trail on All2gethr. Thought he could hide, just like the others. How wrong he was, how naive they all were.

  The man recalled the first time he had seen young Sophie, the day that had truly set his plans into motion. Keeping tabs on her mother’s movements, he hadn’t given much thought to the fact that she had a daughter. But when he had seen her holding the child’s hand as they’d walked home, he had been reminded of all that he had lost - more tangibly than ever. Th
e thought that this woman, the same drunken harridan who had sat idly by while his sweet Lucy poisoned herself to death, could profess to enjoy her daughter’s company had simply become too much to bear. He had obsessed over it, night and day, and could draw no other conclusion than that of fate placing this child at his feet as recompense for his great loss. The mother didn’t deserve a child; her actions were testament to that. She couldn’t be trusted to raise a child; her lack of moral values made that much a certainty too.