‘Ladies and gentlemen, if you could all remain seated with your belts on.’ Aki’s voice was authoritative. ‘We’re experiencing some extreme turbulence but it is nothing to be concerned about, I assure you nothing to be...’ but she was suddenly drowned out by a diabolical high pitched whining sound followed in quick succession by a loud explosion similar to that of a car backfiring. The plane began to shake and roll...the sound of glass smashing causing Billie-Jo to scream in terror.
‘It’s OK, Bee.’ Nate instinctively put a hand on her leg as they veered violently to the right once more. The plane was rolling now, careening from side to side. He was aware of objects falling, but couldn’t locate where they were coming from. An acrid smell of burning machinery quickly contaminated the cabin.
‘Shitting hell on earth …’ Mia attempted to pull herself upright but the g-force prevented her from moving. She was pinned to her right, her forehead impacting with JJ’s knee.
‘What the fuck’s happening, man?’ JJ’s voice crackled with fear. ‘This gotta be some fucking turbulence …’
‘One of the goddamn engines must’ve blown.’ Rupert scrambled to reach for the safety card he’d spied in the front-seat pocket earlier. ‘Where are the fucking exits on this plane?’ he shouted, panic evident in his voice. ‘Where are the goddamn exits?’
Angelika struggled to breathe; it was getting unbearably hot inside the cabin and the acrid stench felt as if it was going straight to her lungs.
‘I can’t breathe, Ru,’ she spluttered. Everything was happening so quickly.
‘If one of the engines has blown it’s OK … we’ll make it with just one.’ Rupert was struggling, his shaking fingers finally making contact with the safety card, snatching it into his grasp.
‘Are we gonna crash?’ Billie-Jo started to cry, fat black tears escaping from her heavily made up face. ‘I don’t wanna die … I’m too fucking young! I don’t wanna die!’
‘Bee, Bee, it’s OK, just stay still … hold my hand.’ Nate attempted to calm her but as usual Billie-Jo was following her own agenda.
Angelika turned round to her with an outstretched hand.
‘It’s OK, honey,’ she said, taking Billie-Jo’s fingers in her own. ‘It’s going to be fine. OK, just relax, yes?’
‘What in God’s name is going on?’ Rupert unbuckled his belt and attempted to stand as the plane once again appeared to steady itself. ‘Where’s that bloody Jap gone … excuse me! Aki … hello … can someone tell us what the hell is happening here? Is there a problem with the engine … the Hydraulics?’
Rupert glanced over in Mia’s direction. She appeared to be praying.
‘Dear God,’ she said as she frantically rubbed the small Graff diamond cross necklace she was wearing between her fingers, ‘don’t let me die like this...not like this...’
She felt tears stinging the backs of her eyes. She supposed in a way it would somehow be befitting: ‘former superstar dies in luxury jet crash’. Admittedly it had certain cache. Besides, many of the greats had gone the same way, like poor old John Denver. She’d sung with him once upon a time when she’d been a slip of a girl and the memory caused a small cry to catch in the back of her throat. She glanced over at Joshua. He looked pale and scared and so terribly young that she suddenly felt ashamed of herself. What a stupid, selfish woman she was inviting him to accompany her on this godforsaken, ridiculous trip. He would die too now, long before his time without even having made his mark on the world.
The plane suddenly dropped violently like a rollercoaster and Angelika felt her stomach lurch and rise up into her diaphragm.
‘Is this it, Ru?’ her voice was low and shaky, her mind desperately struggling to come to terms with the gravity of the situation. ‘Are we going to crash?’
Rupert didn’t answer her, he was scan-reading the safety card, forced to squint without his glasses.
‘I know we don’t always see eye to eye,’ she said, ‘but I do lo –’
Ladies and gentlemen.’ Aki’s voice sounded different, lower, as it rang out through the intercom system. ‘The captain has informed me that he has lost control of the aircraft. Please remain seated and adopt the brace position. I said remain seated and adopt the brace position!’
‘Oh, fucking shit. …oh, Jesus fucking holy fucking Christ!’ Billie-Jo’s piercing screams filled the cabin as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. ‘We’re gonna fucking die,’ she wailed, ‘we’re all gonna fucking die!’
‘Where are the oxygen masks?’ Rupert frantically ran his hands on the ceiling above him. He looked at Angelika as he gave up and buckled himself in his seat, engulfed by a terrible sense of fait accompli. ‘God, Ange,’ he said, his voice despairing, ‘there aren’t any oxygen masks.’ He hadn’t called her Ange in years.
Helpless, he looked out of the window but saw only darkness.
‘Are we above the sea?’ Angelika enquired. ‘Should we look for life jackets?’
‘Somebody help us!’ Billie-Jo wailed in despair. ‘We’ll be eaten alive by sharks … no … no … God make it stop … get me off this plane … Nate … please … get me off … I don’t wanna die.’
‘For goodness sakes, shut her up, will you? I’m trying to concentrate here,’ Rupert shouted as Nate attempted to console his wife’s burgeoning hysterics.
‘Can’t you see she’s terrified?’ Angelika said just as the lights in the aircraft failed, plunging them all into total darkness.
The plane lunged with such brute force that it violently threw them all forward. Billie-Jo’s face impacted with the seat in front of her, silencing her immediately. Instinctively she brought her hand up to her face, it felt wet but she was still alive. Oh thank god, thank God.
Suspended from her seat, practically upside down, Mia groaned. This was it. Her time was up. Her number called. She thought about Richard, her darling Dickie. How she’d loved that man, how she still did. At least she would have her revenge this way; dying a brutal death befitting of a world-famous singer. He would mourn her, she felt sure of it, weep over her grave while begging her forgiveness for ever having deserted her, for trading in all those precious years in exchange for a young bit of strange. In that moment Mia fleetingly forgave her husband’s betrayal, wanting only to feel his arms around her one last time. An eerie calm had descended upon the cabin now, a dark silence of the condemned. She hoped she would be forgiven for her sins when she met her maker; more than anything she hoped Richard would forgive her for her futile attempts at making him jealous, for being too self-absorbed to realise her marriage was disintegrating around her, but above all, she wanted to be forgiven by him.
‘Forgive me, baby,’ Mia said as she felt the tears, or perhaps it was blood, drip from her face. ‘Wherever you are, please forgive me.’
The final explosion, when it came, was louder and sounded more alien than anything any of the cabin’s occupants had ever heard before. The diabolical crunch of metal ripping, the smell of burning, of fire, and the shrieks and cries of human pain and terror, felt as if they had gone on for eternity.
After that … silence.
8
‘Angelika! Angelika!’
Rupert Deyton had come to with such a start that he’d audibly gasped, a sound he so rarely emanated that he couldn’t be sure it had come from him. Once he’d established that he was both alive and relatively unscathed, he quickly took stock, his sharp, logical mind beginning to assess. He was on a beach, at least of sorts, the sun dappled sea stretched out in front of him, calm and almost perfectly still. He was filthy, covered in sand and debris, his hands black with a soot-like substance. Remarkably, aside from a small gash on his left shin, he was unhurt. He saw the wreckage.
The plane, what was left of it, was situated on what looked like sand dunes … where in God’s name were they? The front nose was completely missing, torn off like the top of a tin can displaying the inside of the once magnificent Lear jet. The outsides were black; smoke-stained from the explosion he
assumed must’ve taken place on impact. The jagged edges where the nose had ripped off looked like teeth, the wing of the plane reminiscent of a fin, a beached shark come to rest by the water, thin delicate waves gently creeping underneath in a stealth-like bid to drag it into its deep; ugly chunks of metal and plastic debris, incongruous somehow with the flora and fauna that surrounded it, wires and metal exposed to the elements, an alien exploded. He spotted one of the expensive-looking white leather plane seats to his left, discordant on its side where it had been jettisoned from the aircraft and other unidentifiable objects: red plastic – a drinks tray, perhaps; torn fabric that clung to tufts of dry grass on the sand dunes, bright like flags fluttering in the gentle but steady sea breeze.
Rupert involuntarily shuddered; the sight he was witnessing was as sickening and disturbing as it was alien, the eye unable to fully comprehend it, the brain struggling to process. Where in God’s name were they? Blinking, bewildered he forcibly pulled Angelika up into a seated position. She would regain full consciousness.
‘Angelika, wake up!’ he commanded in a voice similar to the one he used whenever she overslept. ‘I need you to wake up!’
He glanced at the boy next to her. The bone of his forearm was sticking clean out of his skin, just below the elbow, the repugnant smell of flesh filling his nostrils as he drew closer to inspect it.
‘The boy’s going to lose his arm.’ He announced the fact without emotion as he removed his shirt and began ripping strips of fabric from it in a bid to make a tourniquet, and stem the bleeding. ‘He needs our help fast … Angelika! Angelika, wake up!’
Angelika was groggy but awake, slipping and sliding in and out of consciousness, struggling to keep her eyes open, seconds lost as her body fluctuated between the two.
‘I’m here, Ru,’ she whispered. ‘Darling, I’m here.’ She was sitting upright without assistance now, which was enough for Rupert to begin focussing his attention elsewhere.
Mia Manhattan’s dress had been torn from her body as she lay half naked and exposed on the sand. Her face was bloody and messy but instinctively Rupert knew her injuries were superficial. She was spreadeagled, legs and arms wide in an undignified star shape, her expensive underwear, what remained of it, barely covering what little modesty she had left.
Rupert crouched over her, his mouth almost touching hers as he listened for breath. He was too scared to touch her initially but soon overcame his apprehension and put his hand on her naked chest. A heartbeat. She was alive, for now at least.
‘Is she...?’Angelika croaked through the foggy haze inside her head.
‘Alive …’ . Secretly he was relieved and they both knew it. He may not have liked the blasted woman but he didn’t want her dead. Not like this.
A figure approached.
‘Nate …’ Angelika said, her voice cracking like the embers of a bonfire, hoarse and dry.
He stumbled towards them, a dishevelled human mess, shirt ripped and black with debris and smoke, his smart jeans torn and gaping open at the knee, a diabolical fashion statement that seemed somehow almost contrived. And there was blood – a deep burgundy stain – on his once-pristine white shirt, though the source of its origin was not yet obvious.
‘Oh, thank God.’ He sunk to his knees before he reached them, tears making visible white tracks down his ashen face. ‘Thank God,’ he repeated, sobbing and struggling to contain raw emotion and relief.
‘Are you OK? Are you hurt? … Your wife?’ Angelika stood, a bruising pain sweeping through her hip like fire. She forced herself to make her way to him, her feet disappearing into the sand beneath her with every painful step. It was only then she realised her dress had been torn off from the waist down, exposing her underwear, a thought that registered with her mind but bore little significance. Now was not the time for modesty. ‘Billie-Jo …? Is she OK?’ She fell into Nate’s arms on the sand. His body felt strong as she held him, a moment of comfort with a virtual stranger, survival instinct usurping any form of social convention, embarrassment or etiquette.
Nate nodded.
‘Yes,’ was all he could manage; it was enough.
Nate looked down at Joshua; he was unconscious. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ …’
Angelika was crying now though she wasn’t aware of it.
‘We need help,’ she said desperately, turning to look up at Rupert. ‘We have to find help …’
Rupert ignored her. He was trying to think, to focus. Did they have water? They needed water, the boy especially. He would check the wreckage...
‘Get your act together,’ he addressed Nate calmly but with an efficiency that made him look up. ‘This man here will die unless we get water and find help fast. Looking at the wound it seems like a pretty clean cut...he hasn’t severed a femoral artery, thank God. I’ve applied a tourniquet but he needs emergency medical attention. He’ll bleed out in an hour tops, if the hypovolemic shock doesn’t kill him first, that is. And frankly I don’t fancy burying his body. Do you?’
Nate composed himself. He nodded. He was strong and fit; they could make it.
‘The phones,’ he said, suddenly remembering, ‘the woman took the phones …’
Rupert’s spirits instantly lifted. Of course.
‘We need to find them. Search the plane.’
‘The pilot?’ Angelika suddenly thought, ‘and the girl … the Japanese girl. Ari … Annie …Aki? What happened to them?’
‘Don’t touch him, Angelika!’ Rupert screamed at her as she gasped, covering her mouth to stifle the horror that swept through her like a backdraught. The pilot was slumped onto the control panel of the cockpit, his small body mounting the desk, eyes wide open in horror, a line of blood trickled from his mouth.
‘But he might still be …’ She didn’t finish the sentence; it was pointless and she knew it.
‘And the girl?’ Nate asked. He tried to avert his eyes away from the horror that confronted him but they remained fixed upon it. He would remember this sight until his last breath. In that moment it was the only thing he was sure of.
‘No sign of her,’ Rupert said, his attentions had already shifted. There was nothing to be done here. The man was clearly dead. Right now it was survival plain and simple. Fight or flight. As cold as it seemed, there was no choice. There was nowhere to run.
9
The American’s disposition generally hovered somewhere between mildly sociopathic and borderline narcissistic. Sometimes, even during his professional life as a highly respected psychotherapist, he liked to consciously make a morally dubious decision just to see what the outcome would be, for nothing more than his own personal amusement. Now, however, he was having an unusual attack of conscience.
The line on the conference call crackled loudly causing him to grimace and move the receiver away from his ear.
‘So far so good?’ McKenzie enquired.
‘No complaints from me,’ the woman responded, ‘The arm was a sublime surprise. And the pyrotechnics … wow …’
‘I knew you would approve,’ he responded, ‘although I have to say, I can’t take full credit for the arm because it wasn’t entirely intentional –’
‘The arm,’ the American interjected, ‘was unexpected and … frankly … well … we agreed no one would be physically hurt. This was supposed to be a purely psychological experiment after all.’ They both knew how ridiculous this statement sounded, that he was using supposed professional interests as a smokescreen for his own personal perversions.
‘I realise it had to be authentic, but I agree, it was perhaps a little too much.’
Another of the gentleman spoke, though McKenzie wasn’t sure which one: ‘What were you thinking, McKenzie? We weren’t consulted on this; I don’t see it anywhere in the script.’
McKenzie cleared his throat. What these schmucks failed to understand was that he was calling the shots in this game; they were merely enablers and voyeurs, paying guests at his party. This was history in the making and frankly they should consid
er themselves lucky enough to be part of such a pioneering moment.
‘You disapprove?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes, I do; breaking his arm was gruesome and unnecessary, but what I object to the most is the fact that we weren’t consulted on it.’
McKenzie stifled an incredulous laugh; the words horse, door and bolted springing to mind.
‘Well, I loved it,’ the woman cut in, ‘such beautiful … suffering. And the reaction … the horror, the fear on their faces, especially the young Barbie doll, though I wouldn’t be too fooled by the bimbo act; something tells me there’s more to her than she’s letting on.’
‘I agree,’ a male voice interjected, ‘she’s intriguing, and so is her husband, or at least the dynamic between them is; I would like to see what their marriage is really made of.’
‘And you will,’ McKenzie cut in. ‘I assure you I have chosen these delegates carefully, and soon you will understand why.’
‘Well, I’m guessing we know why you chose the journo,’ one of the men said, ‘after that expose she wrote on you I’m surprised you didn’t have her bumped off. She was hardly complimentary after all.’ The caller chuckled.
Martin McKenzie loosened the collar of his pristine, white, Tom Ford shirt, one of the identical hundreds that he owned with a growing sense of irritation.
The gentleman was indeed correct in his assumption as to why he had selected Angelika Deyton as one of his guests. Six or so months ago she had come to interview him, ostensibly to discuss the global domination of his most-recent reality TV creation, ‘Sing When you’re Winning’, a hybrid mix of part-talent, part-game show. He had been rather taken with her, in all honesty. She was attractive and wore her intellect like a badge; he’d been impressed by her sharp wit and direct, fearless style of questioning– a breath of fresh air from all the other sycophantic idiots with their predictable, inane questions. As such he had rather enjoyed sparring with her. In retrospect, however, he realised she had duped him; she had come with the intention of doing a hatchet job, her friendly-yet-challenging approach merely a cunning ruse to lull him into a false sense of security, thereby dropping his guard a fraction more than he would normally allow. Martin McKenzie considered himself to be infinitely smarter than anyone he knew, not least some household hack with a pretty face and nice ass, and because of this he chose to conduct all interviews sans representatives. He didn’t need some simpering PA to veto any questions put to him, and certainly the answers he chose to give in response. He didn’t play the game; he’d invented the game. And yet this little tart with a degree had somehow managed to get the better of him. The subsequent first-person feature she had written for that filthy rag she worked for had been detrimental both professionally and personally, both of which McKenzie could handle without question; one didn’t rise to such stratospheric heights without expecting some criticism along the way, even he understood this. But he’d felt tricked into such candour by Angelika Deyton, like she’d outsmarted him, something he simply could not allow to pass.
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