‘You sure you want to go in there?’ James had arrived at her side, his clear blue eyes scanning her face.
‘Give me a boost, will you.’
Sebastian and the girl arrived at last, both of them eying the oily darkness.
‘I think I can speak for both me and the girl when I say we don’t want to go in there,’ Sebastian declared.
‘You don’t have to,’ said Abbey. ‘Stay out here, James and I will take a look.’
‘We will?’
‘Yeah, we will. Come on, give me a boost.’
As Sebastian took the girl back along the beach, Abbey tensed as James moved closer to her, brushed a few strands of hair from her face. ‘You don’t have to be the hero,’ he muttered.
‘There might be people inside who need our help,’ she replied quietly.
‘There’s also going to be a lot that don’t.’
‘It’s not about being a hero,’ she uttered. ‘It’s about doing what’s right. You had your moment at the beach.’
He looked at her with gentle eyes, something behind them she couldn’t quite read. It took everything she had to break the connection and turn away.
Today’s word: Guilty.
*
Most of the shutters were down inside the cabin, and the open end where the plane had split in two was crushed inwards, only a trace amount of light breaking through. Water lapped gently against the open deck.
Moving slowly along the first aisle, Abbey probed the darkness.
‘Hold on,’ said James at her back. ‘You hear that?’
Abbey paused and cocked her head. ‘I don’t hear anything.’
Stepping further into the blackness, she could smell blood. Or thought she could.
‘There it is again,’ he insisted.
‘There’s what again?’
‘Voices. I swear I keep hearing people talking.’
‘These people are dead, James. Are you going nuts already?'
Abbey leaned across the nearest seat-row and grabbed a shutter, light pouring in through the panel. She yelped and jumped back as a man’s agonized face appeared in front of her own, neck at an impossible angle.
‘What is it?’
In better light the rest of the carriage appeared to them. She heard James exhale behind her, a long drawn out sigh.
There must have been thirty or more bodies strewn throughout the scattered light, most of them still buckled firmly into their seats. It was a collage of destruction, a meat carnival. Here: a teenage girl, earphones still plugged into her ears, her eye socket caved in, grey matter visible. There: an elderly man with a ceiling panel wedged through his shoulder, separating his arm from his body. Here: a young boy no older than five or six, draped into the aisle, the whole left side of his small body dappled in blood from some unidentified wound. There: a young couple holding each other tightly, the impact unable to tear them apart as they took their final breaths, both bodies lurching intestines from where their belts had torn into their stomachs.
‘Holy shit,’ James murmured.
‘Yeah.’
‘Poor bastards.’
This time there was no mistaking the voices coming from business-class, loud enough to be heard, quiet enough to be incoherent. Moving hurriedly back through the carriage, Abbey pushed her way through to the front, an obstacle course of curtains, trolleys, bodies. The voices grew louder as she neared; several different voices, male and female.
She bustled into business-class to be met by three males and one woman standing agape. She knew two of them.
‘Elaine?’ she whispered. ‘Eric?’
‘Abigail!’ beamed Eric. 'We was in a crash!’
Abbey felt her body go numb as James arrived behind her.
‘Well now,’ Elaine De Boor smiled, looking James up and down, ‘if it’s God’s will that I’m to be stranded on a desert island, He’s seen fit to provide the eye candy. Not to mention your good timing! We have a bit of a situation here.’
There didn’t seem to be any bodies in business-class. Aside from Eric and his mother, there were only two others. Standing to the rear of the compartment was a man in his late forties, early fifties, mildly disfigured with a birthmark covering a big chunk of his face. It stretched from his left eye socket right down to below his collar.
The other was lying flat on his back beneath a dislodged row of seats. He was a geeky looking black kid, early twenties and sporting a thick afro. He looked oily skinned and frustrated.
‘This is Anthony,’ Elaine introduced, pointing out the branded man. ‘And this charming young buried fella is Oliver. Oliver who prefers to be called Oli.’
‘My parents still call me Oliver,’ he grumbled. ‘It’s only a short step from Oliver to Rupert or Tarquin or something. There’s no way to cool up those names no matter what you do.’
‘He’s nothing if not sunny,’ Elaine explained.
‘Are you here to help Oliver?’ Eric asked.
‘Oli!’ the kid insisted.
‘What exactly is the problem?’ Abbey asked.
Finally Anthony spoke, his bass-tone voice rich with Deep South America, Georgia or Alabama maybe. ‘We can’t move this row of seats. Where the carriage has caved in, it’s wedged the row in tight.’
James stepped in. ‘What about you, Oli, are you hurt?’
‘Yeah, my afro’s messed up, man!’
‘I’ll take that as a no,’ he said. ‘Okay, here’s what we do. Big guy, what’s your name again?’
‘Eric.’
‘Eric, you come around here, we’re going to need your strength. Anthony, if you brace yourself beneath the seat row and I’ll try using some good old leverage to prize her up.’
Abbey watched as James rallied everybody into position as he snapped a steel pole from the overhang and plunged it into the darkness beneath the seat row.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Everybody set?’
A rumble of grunts.
‘On three, everybody push. One, two, three!’
