Endgame: The Calling

by James Frey

The plane lurches again, and Kala knows they just lost an engine. The attendant in the jump seat screams.

  “Shut up!” Kala yells as she extracts herself from the dead officer.

  But the attendant doesn’t listen. She keeps screaming.

  “Pull yourself together and shut up!” Kala yells again.

  She doesn’t listen.

  Kala trains the gun on her. The attendant raises her hands and Kala fires three quick rounds. The screaming stops.

  Kala steps into the middle of the galley as the plane starts to fall. She puts both hands on the lavatory doors, the flat slide of the Glock in her right hand pressing against the plastic panel, and looks into the cabin. No one has noticed what has happened. Everyone is too frightened, too concentrated on the imminent end of their own lives. Even the familiar boy is not looking in her direction. All she can see is the top of his head, his face slightly raised as if he is talking to God, pleading, praying. Everyone is praying.

  The captain comes on the PA.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, do not worry. We have lost one engine, but the A340 is designed to fly on as few as two. We are two hundred forty-eight nautical miles from the coast of Oman and have been cleared for an emergency landing at the nearest military base. I repeat, do not—”

  He is cut off by a very loud grinding noise followed by a slow whomp whomp whomp that reverberates through the fuselage and everyone’s chest. The PA is still on, and the sounds of multiple warning alarms from the flight deck spill from the speakers.

  “Oh God, please help us,” the pilot says, and he’s cut off.

  The plane’s nose points down, and the aircraft starts to fall hard and fast. Kala struggles to open a lavatory door, goes in and shuts it, locks it. She sits on the closed toilet and gets ready, breathes, thinks, tries to stay calm. She will not lose Endgame this way. She is in the rear of the plane. She can hear the airflow change as the flaps are lowered. They’ll ditch. They’ll be in the water. The rear of the plane is the best place to be in a crash. It takes every ounce of her training to calm her nerves, but she manages to do it.

  She looks at herself in the mirror. She will live. She will win. She prays for luck and thanks her mentors for all that they have given her, especially the ability to calm herself in the face of disaster.

  The plane is going down.

  They will hit the water in less than 60 seconds.

  Blessings.

  Blessings to the stars and to life and to death.

  Blessings.

  ALICE ULAPALA

  Grub Street Bar, Darwin, Australia

  Alice sits in a bar in Darwin. She was at her auntie’s, visiting down in Coffin Bay, when the meteors rained down, but now she’s home. The place is mostly empty, like it usually is, just the bartender and a guy bellied up to the bar who must be a tourist. He doesn’t know what kind of place he’s wandered into, the sort of clientele it serves. Alice doesn’t mind the company, and her people don’t discriminate against visitors. As she sips a beer from a frosted glass, she scrawls on a napkin.

  The same words, letters, numbers, over and over again:

  How he likes other almonds scarcely serves Caesar’s actions.

  HHLOASSCA.

  8 8 12 15 1 19 19 3 1.

  She draws lines and pictographs, but nothing adds up. Eventually she sketches a rabbit. She makes a little gunshot noise with her mouth. Alice is imagining hunting rabbits in the Great Sandy Desert, which is where she would rather be, walking, sleeping under stars, skinning snakes. Not doing maths problems.

  “What a jackass. Yabber and more yabber. If the stakes weren’t so high, I’d toss the lot.”

  “Beer cold enough for you?” the barman asks her. His name is Tim, and Alice knows him from around, meaning Tim’s one of her privileged line members who knows all about Endgame. She showed him the nonsense sentence when she first showed up at the bar, but like her, Tim isn’t much for puzzles.

  She looks at him. “Beer’s great.”

  Tim nods, smiles. “Cold beer helps me think, usually.”

  “Me too,” says Alice, taking a swig from her mug. “This one’s a right quiddler, though.”

  “What is?” asks the tourist, taking his eyes off the match playing on the bar’s single television. He has an American accent. He cranes his neck at Alice’s napkin.

  “Puzzle I gotta solve,” Alice answers.

  “Puzzle? What, like a crossword?” He slides off his stool and steps closer. He is white as rice, his hair is red, his eyes are green, and he wears glasses.

  “Nah, but it is a word problem.” Alice exchanges a look with Tim, who shrugs. “Here. Have a look.”

  She pushes the napkin across the bar top. The tourist studies her scribbling.

  He picks it up. “Which is it?”

  “The sentence at the top there.”

  “‘How he likes other almonds scarcely serves Caesar’s actions’?”

  “Yeah. Driving me bonkers. I tell ya, mate, I can kick every arse on a whole team of footballers, but I can’t beat that one.”

  The tourist chuckles and looks at her. “You certainly look the part.”

  “I am the part.” She downs the beer. “Killed two guys in China a couple days ago, saved a little Indian girl.”

  “That right?”

  She smiles, makes it sound like a joke. “Damn right that’s right.”

  “She’s a big talker, mate,” Tim explains to the tourist, though he knows Alice is telling the truth.

  “Well, you won’t get no trouble from me.”

  Tim refills their glasses. The tourist reaches for his wallet, but Tim shakes his head.

  “On the house.”

  “Thanks,” says the tourist. He rests the napkin on the bar. Afternoon sunlight filters through tinted windows. A neon Foster’s sign buzzes, but only Alice is attuned enough to hear it.

  “What’s the prize?” the tourist asks.

  “What?”

  “The prize. What do you win if you solve it?”

  “Ah. Fate of the world. Save the human race. Make sure my people and everyone I know and love survives and goes to heaven. That lot.”

  “Big prize then, huh?”

  “Yeah, big, big prize.”

  She takes a swig.

  The tourist lifts the napkin. “Well, I may be able to help, if, you know, you can cut me in on the action.”

  Alice lets loose a surprised guffaw. Even Tim laughs. The tourist looks between then, smiling uncertainly.

  “You got any Koori blood, yank?” Tim asks him.

  “Koori? What’s that?”

  Alice snorts again. “Never mind him, mate. I’ll cut ya in.”

  Alice fishes in a pocket and pulls out a large wad of cash, all big bills. She slams it on the bar top. “How’s that?”

  The tourist’s eyes widen at the sight of the money. “You’re serious?”

  “Ain’t quite eternal salvation, mate, but it’ll have to do. You can take it or leave it. I’ll be the judge if you earn it, though.”

  “And don’t be messing about,” Tim adds, eyeballing the tourist with no small amount of menace.

  “Yeah,” says the tourist. “I thought we were just joking around.”

  “We’re not,” Alice replies, motioning impatiently. “Let’s have it. I meant what I said about scrapping a team of footballers.”

  “And the two in China?” the tourist asks, swallowing hard.

  Alice winks. “Yeah. That too.”

  The tourist relaxes a bit. The wink put him at ease, though he still eyes the money. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Alice the Hundred and Twelfth.”

  “Tim the Eighty-Sixth,” adds the bartender.

  “Dave, uh, the First, I guess,” says the tourist.

  “I doubt that,” Tim says, knowing that this tourist Dave couldn’t be the first of whatever line it is he belongs to. Alice isn’t interested in all that. She wants to get on with it.

  “Let’s go, Dave,” sh
e says.

  Dave takes the napkin up and points at the sentence. “Well, clearly it’s a code for something. And the first letters don’t seem to mean anything. But the first two letters—here and here, and then the rest of the way down—do mean something.”

  Alice takes the napkin from him. He watches her. The TV flashes a special report.

  “So—h, yeah, but then h-e, and l-i, then o, and then a-l, s-c, s-e, c-a, a-c.”

  Tim stares at them both, surprised by Alice’s widening smile. “I don’t get it.”

  She looks at Dave. “Christ, mate! Those’re elements!”

  “Yep.”

  Alice slaps the bar top so hard everything on and under it jumps. Dave jumps too. Tim shakes his head, chuckling quietly.

  Alice stands. “Money’s yours, mate. If it comes to it, you can count on any Koori to get your back.”

  A shiny animated graphic on the news tells of a plane crash in the Indian Ocean.

  Dave stares at the money. Before he can say thanks, Alice is gone. He turns back to Tim.

  “You never told me what a Koori was.”

  “New rulers of the world,” answers Tim, cleaning a glass with a worn towel. “New rulers of the world.”

  KALA MOZAMI

  Indian Ocean, ~120 km off the Coast of Oman

  The plane plows into the water at 175 mph. Kala fights to hold on to her sense of calm, but a plane crash is quite an event. A rather terrible event. The worst part is not the violence of the impact. It’s not the doors of the bathroom flying open and dumping supplies everywhere. It’s not the edge of the sink pushing into her rib cage, bruising her, feeling like the pressure might chop her in half. It’s not the smell of jet fuel, seawater, smoke, burning hair, or scorched rubber. It’s not the uncertainty of what will happen next.

  The worst part is the sounds.

  First the groans of the plane as it descends. The instructions from the pilot, completely irrelevant now, a barely audible panicked droning. Then the loud repeated smack of the fuselage skimming across the water. The metallic shriek of the flaps as they are torn from the wings and bounce off the outside of the plane. The whirring of the engines as they take on water and fall apart. The first explosion, when it comes, is almost a relief. The screams, everyone screaming. Wailing, moaning, a baby crying. Another explosion, closer to the nose. The electrical system snapping as the lights fail.

  And for a moment, a brief moment, silence.

  The deepest, darkest, most profound silence she has ever heard.

  A red emergency light comes on. Kala checks herself. Her right wrist is still cuffed. She still holds the gun. She’s bruised and battered, and blood coats the right side of her head. She may have a broken rib but can deal with that. Overall she’s fine. Her heart is working; her breath is even. The adrenaline is pumping and her energy is high.

  She tries the door but it is jammed. She kicks it hard, and it flies halfway open, blocked by the body of Officer Singh. She steps out of the bathroom and over the dead cop. She removes the clip of ammo from his holster, finds the key to the cuffs in his jacket pocket. She undoes the remaining cuff and drops them to the floor, slides the clip into her back pocket, looks around. Most people are still in their seats, moaning and trying to recover. There’s a large hole in the starboard side of the plane. There is sunlight filtering through it, and through the windows, and through the smoke. Halfway down the center aisle there’s a woman on fire; two men are trying to put her out with blankets. A little closer, Kala sees the bulk of a cargo container, forced up through the floor and into the seats, which in turn were forced into the overhead compartments. Sparks fly from exposed electrical wiring. A leg dangles; its owner is crushed.

  A person screams a few rows away. It’s hard to tell if the voice is male or female. Kala pushes into the aisle and sees a sheet of metal embedded in a seat back; it has decapitated the passenger next to the screamer. The person across the aisle begs frantically, “Where’s the head? Where’s the head?” but no one answers, and no one seems to know. After a moment someone tells this person to shut up, but he doesn’t.

  There’s commotion at the front of the plane and a loud creaking sound. It’s at this moment that Kala realizes that the nose is taking on water—fast—and the fuselage is tilting to the fore. The wings, so long as they are intact, will help keep the plane afloat, but given enough time it will tilt more, sink; she knows she has to get out, now, now, now.

  Someone is walking urgently toward her. It’s the Western boy. He’s frightened and rattled, but his body is whole and he knows that he has to get out too. Kala looks in the rear overhead next to her and finds the emergency kit and the transponder. Before she turns to the exit door the Western boy says, “You need your bag?”

  Plane crashes are strange things, she thinks.

  He is looking right at her, stopped at the row where she was sitting.

  “Yes!” she yells over the confusion.

  He reaches into the compartment and grabs her bag, and only her bag.

  This is not a coincidence. He’s been watching me. She’ll have to figure out why later.

  She turns to the galley. Two of the food carts have escaped their bays and are blocking the emergency exit. Trays, cups, and carafes are everywhere. Burst cans of Sprite and Coke hiss on the floor. A tray of small bottles of alcohol lies at her feet. She goes to the starboard door and pulls the big handles covered in warnings, pushes the door open; the raft inflates. Outside it’s bright and calm. The water is limitless.

  We should call it Ocean, not Earth, Kala thinks.

  Water begins to wash over the threshold of the doorway, and she knows it won’t be long until the plane goes down.

  “You ready?” the boy asks, his voice shaking.

  She had already forgotten about him.

  She turns to say that she is, but no words come out. The boy is strong, tall, athletic. His left arm is bleeding. A bruise is rising over his right eye.

  “Yes,” Kala says.

  She puts a leg in the raft and Kala hears another sound. A young girl begging her mother in Arabic not to let her die. The mother, sounding strong and sure, telling her it will be all right. As if he can understand, the Western boy holds up a finger and turns. The mother and daughter are standing in the back row. The boy wades through dark water that is steadily rising, now at his ankles. He goes to the mother and the daughter, and they appear untouched, as if graced by God. It is like the crash didn’t happen for them at all. The boy grabs the mother by the arm.

  “Come!” he shouts in English. Kala knows that the only men to have ever touched the young mother are her husband and her father. Perhaps an older brother. It would be an abomination if this were happening anywhere else in the Middle East, under any other circumstances.

  The boy says, “Now!” and pulls the woman and her child. Water is flowing in white swirls around their knees. The mother nods, and they wade to the door. Kala is already in the raft. The boy ushers the mother and child in, follows them.

  “What about the others?” the girl asks in Arabic.

  The boy cannot understand.

  “There is no time,” Kala answers. She notices the mother looking at Kala in fear. Her hijab is perfect. Her eyes are like new copper coins.

  Kala detaches the raft but cannot push off. The water is being sucked into the doorway so quickly now that it holds the thick yellow rubber against the metal of the plane. Just as the doorway is about to disappear underwater, a hand materializes, a voice screaming for help. But the person it belongs to cannot escape the pull of the water.

  The door goes under. Kala pushes off. The raft drifts away from the plane, and the four of them watch in horror and shock as the plane sinks. The nose depresses and the tail rises. Some things escape the wreckage and pop to the surface. Seat cushions. Chunks of foam. Parts of a body. But no one living. For a minute or so, as the passengers drown, the plane floats just below the surface, the rudder and the rear stabilizers up in the air. A stream of b
ubbles appears as the last air pocket is breached, and the plane pitches underwater and disappears.

  Just like that it is gone.

  And everyone in it.

  Never to be seen again.

  “I have a transponder,” Kala says.

  “And there’s a sat phone in here,” Christopher says, patting Kala’s bag.

  How does he know that? she wonders. She’ll have to ask when the time is right.

  The girl starts crying, and her mother tries to soothe her. The sea is calm and there’s no breeze. The sun is setting. They are the only survivors.

  Blessings for life, Kala thinks. And for death.

  After a while the girl stops crying and they’re all quiet.

  Alone on a raft in the middle of the ocean.

  SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC

  Renzo’s Garage, An Nabi Yunus, Mosul, Iraq

  Sarah and Jago are greeted at the airport by a squat, jovial, 47-year-old man named Renzo, who arranged for them to bypass security. Unlike the new arrivals, who have already started sweating in Iraq’s profound heat, Renzo doesn’t seem bothered. He’s used to the weather here. Even though he’s a touch overweight, Sarah can still see—in the way he moves, how he sizes her up—that Renzo used to be a Player.

  “Everything, all the time, everywhere . . .” Renzo says in English, staring at Jago.

  “. . . So says, and so has been said, and so will be said again,” Jago finishes.

  Renzo grins, satisfied, and claps Jago hard on the arm. “It’s been too long, Jago. Last time I saw you, you were still hiding behind your mother’s skirts.”

  Jago shifts, uncomfortable, glancing at Sarah. “Yeah, Renzo. Long time.”

  “Now you’re all grown up. Big man, big Player.” Renzo whistles, turning from Jago to Sarah. “And who is this?”

  “My name is Sarah Alopay, the Cahokian of the 233rd. Jago and I are working together.”

  “You are, eh?” Renzo asks with an air of disapproval.

  “This is my Endgame, Renzo,” Jago says forcefully, his expression darkening.