‘Don’t do it, James,’ she urged. ‘She’s gone. You’ll never make it back!’
‘I made it to shore.’
‘Barely. And it’s different this time. That section is almost totally under, it’s a bloody tomb!’
He stripped off his shirt. ‘I can’t leave her. I can’t just stand by and do nothing. Don’t tell me you can turn your back on it.’
For a handful of seconds he stood silently and held Abbey’s gaze. Then he said: ‘I'll come back,' and crashed into the waves, rag-dolled and dragged under. He kicked against the currents and thrust himself up, plunged through the surface and began crawling out to the vanishing wreckage. Despite the raging wind the water remained tepid. He reached the looming shape in one piece and gripped a torn section of metal shredded away from the carriage.
He kicked at the water and tried to pull himself up, but he couldn’t move. His leg was snagged. He kicked harder and realisation crashed home. The currents surging in towards the shore were clashing with those diverted by the carriage, creating something else entirely: a riptide.
His legs rolled like pistons but he wasn’t strong enough, not by a long shot. He was whipped under, dragged into the uncaring stream. This close to shore the water was shallow, no more than six feet deep, but it was enough. He couldn’t breathe. The current gripped him, took him, dragged him along, his hands finding only insubstantial sand.
No longer was he battling the ebb, no longer would his body allow it. The last of his air supply was being ravaged from his lungs, the reserves of his strength stripped away. For the second time in minutes he was a dead man, and this time a dead man with no one to pull him from the clutches.
With nothing left to cling on to, he relaxed, rode the current carrying him away from the shore, the wreckage. He didn’t know how fast he was travelling as his body struck the solid shape at his back. He didn't feel the collision. But from somewhere buried deep, he reached out and gripped something solid.
The current held his feet fast, but couldn’t take hold. He flipped his body and lunged upwards gripping something else solid, and something else again.
As he broke the surface, his lungs flooding with sweet oxygen, he realised he’d struck a huge chunk of a wing and grasped a smashed flap.
He rubbed his eyes, clearing them of salt. He could see the beach, he could see Abbey scanning the waves for him, he could see the section he’d been torn away from; not as far away as he thought.
A scream.
The stewardess?
Without hesitation, he dived from the wing and began crawling back the way he’d come.
*
A girl.
A tattoo on her neck.
A piercing...
Several piercings!
She was screaming, thrashing in the water, a jammed overhead panel wedging her tightly down. The rising water was lapping around her shoulders, pouring in from every crevice. She was not the stewardess he’d been expecting. She was someone else. She was someone new.
A gap.
He was next to the tattooed girl, as deep in the water as she. He could feel it pulsating around him. The girl was crying, cursing. She called him a cunt. A useless cunt. She was terrified.
He asked her to feign to one side as he levered himself under the panel attempting to move it. It shifted slightly but did not loosen.
The girl called him a faggot.
He ignored her, considered abandoning her.
A gap.
He saw the tattooed girl with her face pressed to the ceiling. She was trying to gather the remaining oxygen before the water consumed her. He was doing the same. The panel had shifted considerably, but the girl was still not free.
She disappeared under in a splutter of bubbles and curses. He reckoned he had about thirty seconds until he went under with her.
With one final brace against the port shutter, he lunged against the panel, the sturdy rack refusing to budge. The water rose over his face and filled his nostrils. He began to sink.
A gap.
The rain struck his face as he lay afloat on the water. He was free of the wreckage and was being dragged. He could hear grunting as the waves thrashed around him. It was a man’s voice.---
Where was he being taken?
How was he alive?
What had become of the tattooed girl?
A wave crashed over them, filled his mouth with saltwater and a curious taste of metal. He decided his mouth is bleeding.
A gap…
13
James rolled onto his side to a scramble of voices, male and female: Is he alright? He’s breathing. What happened? Found them this way. What about you, Teri?
Teri?
He lifted his stinging eyelids. The rain had gone, taken by the night which had also vanished, replaced by bright morning calm. From somewhere nearby, birds were singing as they dried their feathers. And the smell, the raw aroma of a tropical beach surrounded him, tainted with death.
‘He’s awake!’ someone yelled.
At the tiny patter of sandy footsteps, the girl leaning over him shaped into focus. Both ears heavily laden with studs, one through her eyebrow and one through her left nostril, she wore a tribal tattoo which snaked up over the collar of her black t-shirt and spread up the side of her neck. There were more on her arms and hands.
‘What happened?’ James muttered.
‘Welcome to hell,’ the girl deadpanned.
‘Move, Teri!’ Abbey arrived at his side, shouldering the tattooed girl away. ‘Oh, thank god you’re okay, you bloody moron!’
He sat up and rubbed the confusion from his eyes. Aside from Abbey and the tattooed girl, two others lingered. The first was the teenage girl in the shabby dress. Her blank expression
