Stein wondered why Barbara Yoshiro had not come back. Perhaps she’d been hurt, or maybe she was still searching for something. He looked into the cockpit. John Berry was talking to Sharon Crandall, but he couldn’t hear them. They sat, silhouetted against the bright Pacific sunlight, working, he supposed, on bringing them home. “They’re quieting down,” Stein called out.
Berry turned and called back, “Nice work, Harold. If you need any help, holler.”
“Right.” Stein looked around the lounge. Berry had his hands full just keeping these people out of the cockpit and trying to fly the aircraft. Stein forced himself not to look at his own trembling hands. He took a deep, measured breath to calm himself, but it was becoming an increasingly difficult task. The more he thought about their situation, the more frightened he had become. Stein knew that he had hardly any emotional or physical resources left inside of him.
His mind drifted back across an ocean and a continent to his home in Bronxville. In his mind’s eye he could see its red bricks, white shutters, and rich green lawns. He could see the red azalea bushes in bloom the way he’d last seen them. Every spring people would go out of their way to pass his house and admire Miriam’s flowers. Who would tend them now?
He longed for the comfort of the high-backed couch in front of the fireplace where he sat with Miriam most evenings. He pictured the wide stairway that led to the second floor and the bedrooms. His and Miriam’s on the left. On the right, Susan’s, wallpapered in pink gingham, the aquarium crammed with tropical fish. Beyond that room was Debbie’s, all navy and white, filled with miniature toys and the dollhouse he had made for her last birthday.
He began to cry.
He had to act, he decided. He had to do something for them. If he couldn’t bring back their minds, he could, at least, comfort their bodies, keep them from being savaged by the others.
Without realizing it, he was standing on the circular staircase. He thought briefly of Berry’s admonitions to wait. He thought of his duty to stand there and guard the gates of hell. Hell. To hell with Berry. To hell with them all. He could not wait. Not for Berry, not for Barbara Yoshiro, not for anyone.
He glanced back into the cockpit. Berry and Crandall were busy. He looked toward the piano. Linda Farley was sitting on the floor, half asleep. He glanced down. The stairs were clear. They might not be clear again. He descended quickly into the lower region of the Straton.
At the base of the stairs, he looked around cautiously. People were lying everywhere. Some were slouched against the walls of the lavatories and galley. They seemed to be in a resting state, like wild things after a period of frenzy. It wouldn’t last long, he suspected.
The people around him were whimpering softly or chattering to themselves. Now and then he thought he heard a clear word or phrase, but he knew he had not. He wanted so desperately to have someone to help him that he was beginning to create human dialogue out of the animal noises that came from those blood-smeared mouths.
Stein moved cautiously around the lavatories and back toward the area of debris.
Among the sunlit rubble, a golden-colored dog lay sleeping with a meaty bone under its paws. It seemed so incongruous even beyond the incongruity of the sunlight on the twisted deck. Then he remembered the Seeing-Eye dog. But who would let a dog have a fresh bone onboard an… Then it struck him. “Oh, dear God.”
He turned quickly away from the dog and saw, a few feet from him, Barbara Yoshiro. She was sitting on the floor with her head buried between her knees, her long black hair obscuring her face. He moved quickly toward her. She could help him bring his family up to the lounge. He reached down and shook her shoulder. He spoke softly. “Barbara. Barbara, are you all right?”
The flight attendant picked her head up.
Stein recoiled. The face that stared at him was horribly contorted and smeared with blood. “Barbara…” But it was not Barbara Yoshiro. It was another flight attendant, whom he vaguely recognized. In the sunlight he could see purple blotches on her cheeks and forehead where blood vessels had burst. The eyes stared at him, red and burning. He stepped back and collided with someone behind him. “Oh! Oh, no, please no!” He stumbled out of the rubble, knocking into people as he moved.
He looked around wildly for Barbara Yoshiro. He called back in to the dimly lit tourist cabin. “Barbara! Flight attendant!”
Someone yelled back at him. “Burbura! Fitatenant!”
Stein put his hands over his face and slumped back against a seat. God in Heaven.
Slowly, he took his hands from his face and looked up. His eyes moved reluctantly toward the center row, thirty feet from where he stood. Only Debbie and Susan were still sitting in their seats. Miriam was gone.
Debbie was trying to stand, but each time she rose, the seat belt pulled her back.
Susan was lying slumped over the seat that had been his, her hands clasped together, thrust out in front of her.
Harold Stein moved toward his daughter, slowly, hesitantly. He stood over their seats and looked down. “Debbie. Debbie, it’s Papa. Debbie!”
The girl looked up uninterestedly, then resumed her up-and-down movements, patiently, persistently trying to stand. Odd liquid vowel sounds came from her lips.
Susan was breathing, but was otherwise motionless.
Harold Stein knew in that instant that there was neither hope nor salvation for his family or for anyone on this ship. And now he knew what he had to do.
He turned and ran down the aisle, pushing aside the staggering people in his way.
He found Miriam wandering aimlessly near the rear galley. “Miriam! Miriam!”
She did not respond.
He was done with calling their names, done with pretending that anyone was who they had been a few hours before. This wandering wraith standing before him was not his wife.
He took her arm and led her back to the four adjoining seats that had held him and his family.
Stein unbuckled the two girls’ belts. He put Susan over his shoulder and pulled Debbie to her feet and led her into the aisle. Alternating with his free hand between his wife and daughter, he maneuvered them both into the area of the rubble.
The two holes that had caused this immense grief were hardly more than a dozen feet away. The wind howled through those open wounds and the noise filled his ears and made it difficult to think clearly. He hesitated, then headed for the larger hole.
Sweating and out of breath, he laid down the burden that was his daughter, then forced Debbie and Miriam to sit. Several cables whipped over their heads, and occasionally one would lash Miriam or the girls, causing them to cry out. A cable whipped across Stein’s face and opened a gash on his forehead.
He bent over Susan, and despite his resolve not to speak to any of them, he whispered in her ear. “Sue, honey, Papa’s here with you. It’s going to be all right now.” He turned and looked down at Debbie. She looked at him, and for a moment he thought he saw a spark of life in those dead eyes, but then it was gone. Debbie was their firstborn, and her birth after so many childless years had been the single most joyous event in their lives. He bent forward and kissed her on the forehead.
There was no doubt in his mind that he had been spared the fate of the others for the specific purpose of allowing him to do his duty toward his family. He felt sorry for those who had to go on suffering. He felt sorry for Berry and Sharon Crandall and Linda Farley and Barbara Yoshiro. They had to suffer more than the others and would go on suffering until the aircraft crashed, or worse, landed. He honestly pitied them all, but felt no more responsibility toward any of them. The gates of hell were unguarded, and it was just as well. It might hasten the end for everyone. He, Harold Stein, had been given an unheard-of opportunity to escape from hell and escort his family to a place of eternal rest, and he was not going to shrink from that responsibility.
He wrapped his arms around his daughters’ waists, and with no further thought lifted them toward the hole. He watched as they left his hands, one at a time, and sailed away in the slipstream, end over end, through the sunlit blue sky. Each of his daughters disappeared from his view for a moment behind the tail of the craft, then he saw them again, briefly carried by the Pacific wind down toward the sea before he could see them no more.
Without a moment’s pause, Stein turned and lifted his wife to a standing position. He walked her toward the hole. She seemed to come along willingly. Perhaps she understood. He doubted it, but perhaps their love-that silent communication that had developed between them-was stronger… Stein forced himself to stop thinking. He looked at
