Читать книгу Departure - A. Riddle G., A. G. Riddle - Страница 16

I EXPECTED TO WAKE UP TO HELICOPTERS, FLASHING lights, and waves of English first responders saying things like “Are you all right there?” and “Let’s have a look at you now.”

No such luck. The muddy beach by the blue-green lake looks exactly as it did last night: rings of people around a dying fire, wrapped up in navy blankets. Only a few are stirring, mumbling groggily to each other.

I get to my knees and lean over Harper, who’s curled toward the fire, sound asleep. I wouldn’t wake her for all the tea in China.

As I survey the camp, watching the survivors of Flight 305 wake to another day, two simple facts strike me: It’s been over thirty-six hours since we crashed. And someone should have been here by now.

AT THE NOSE SECTION, IT feels like déjà vu. Again there’s an angry mob, the second to mass here in as many days. Grayson Shaw is here, too, but at least he’s not center stage this time. He’s sitting at the back, looking hungover and haggard. He must have finally run out of alcohol. But that could actually make him more dangerous.

The food in the nose section ran out last night, when I was too tired to notice. The crowd’s muttering about people hoarding food, calling for searches of the camp and redistribution. “I’d kill a man for a Diet Coke right now,” I hear a skinny man in a rumpled suit say. I’ll look up Coke stock if I live through this.

Jillian’s taking the brunt of the crowd’s ire. They’re chewing her out like this is simply a disruption to normal in-flight service. The truth is, she’s just another survivor now, but the uniform she’s wearing pegs her as the person who hands out food. She looks relieved to see me.

“Help,” she says, lunging for me and clamping both hands around my arm, pulling me up to stand beside her at the bottom of the makeshift stairway as she faces the crowd.

Bob Ward and Sabrina are here, too. Their faces are solemn, but they nod, encouraging me.

The crowd quiets, people nudging each other and whispering.

That’s him.

Yeah, the guy from the lake.

“All right,” I say. “We’re going to get some food, but it’ll take some time.”

“We need something now!” a woman in a mud-stained sweater shouts.

“There isn’t anything right now, okay? Look, we have to work together here. If we work together, we’ll all eat—otherwise, we could all starve.”

The word starve is a mistake. The crowd picks it up, and it echoes from person to person in panicky counterpoint until it sounds like the Starve Chorus. It takes me a few minutes to unsay it and get their focus again.

“So how we gonna get food?” asks an overweight man with a thick New York accent.

How indeed? I hadn’t gotten that far. I can see where this is going. If I let groupthink take over and devil’s advocates call the shots, we’ll still be standing here at sundown, hungry and undecided. I need a plan, right now.

There are only two logical sources of food: the meals in the other half of the plane and fish from the lake. We might manage to kill something here on land, but with a hundred mouths to feed, it likely won’t go far. Unless … there’s a farm nearby. It’s a long shot, but I tuck the idea away for future use.

“Okay, first step,” I say as authoritatively as I can. “We’re going to take an inventory.”

“Inventory?”

“Yes.” I point to Jillian—poor Jillian—and Bob Ward, who straightens up and puts on his ultraserious camp counselor face for the crowd. He, at least, is still loving this. “Jillian and Bob are going to come around and ask you what was in your carry-on and checked baggage and what your seat was—or, more importantly, what overhead bin your bag was in. Describe anything that might be of use out here, especially food. Come see me right now if you had any fishing or diving gear in your luggage—a wet suit, even snorkeling gear.”

A bloated guy in his forties laughs, turning to the crowd. “Hey, Jack, folks don’t do much snorkeling in New York in November.” That gets a few laughs, and he grins at me, waiting.

I know this guy’s type, and I’d love to stick it to him, but I can’t afford to make another enemy. I opt for the high road.

“That’s true. I’m thinking about people making a connection, passengers departing from the Caribbean, somebody diving on vacation, making their way home. JFK is a major hub for international destinations. Nassau to JFK to Heathrow isn’t out of the question. Or maybe someone on their way to the Mediterranean via Heathrow. I thought maybe we could get lucky.”

Jillian starts the survey, but Bob hangs back. “You want to start diving for the food and any supplies in the lake.”

“Yeah, it seems like our only move.”

“I agree, but there’s a problem.” Bob pauses dramatically. I get the impression he likes saying “There’s a problem” and pausing.

“What’s that?”

“All the checked baggage will be in LD3s.”

Oh, right. LD3s.

“What’s an LD3?”

“It’s a unit load device.”

A unit load device. Why didn’t he just say so?

“I don’t know what that is, Bob.”

“They’re metal cases that hold the luggage. On smaller aircraft, they simply load the bags in. On larger ones, like our fateful Boeing 777, they place the bags in the LD3s, then move them onto the plane. They can get more bags on that way and keep them straight. The 777 can carry up to thirty-two LD3s, and maybe a dozen pallets. I can’t remember.”

“Pallets?”

“Yeah, with food, supplies, etcetera.”

“What does all this mean?” I ask.

“The LD3s will be stacked two wide all the way to the tail. Even if we can dive down to them, they’ll be hard to get to. We might be able to get into the first two, but there’s no way we can haul them out and get to the rows behind them. Bottom line: we can’t count on getting to anything in the checked baggage.”

So much for that plan. “That’s good to know.”

“I’ll check with Jillian and the pilot, try to figure out where the pallets might be positioned. If they’re near where the plane broke apart, or here in the nose, we could get lucky.”

“All right. Thanks, Bob.”

Bob Ward. Annoying? Yes. Helpful? Also yes.

The doctor is queued up next, that “Something is seriously wrong, Mr. Stone” look on her face. Then again, Sabrina has had that look on her face since we met, so maybe that’s just how she always looks.

“Hi, Sabrina,” I say, bracing myself.

“We need to build a shelter.”

At least somebody around here gets right to it.

“Why?”

“Most of the passengers suffered mild hypothermia on the first night. Some, such as yourself and Ms. Lane, moderate cases. This morning, I’ve observed a trend: about half the passengers have a cold. If they remain out in the elements, that could progress. If it rains, they’ll fare even worse. We could have cases of bacterial infection or pneumonia soon. At a minimum, I would like to move anyone with a compromised immune system, older passengers, and anyone on an immunosuppressant therapy—which are common for autoimmune diseases—to the nose section and enclose it.”

“Okay. Let me have someone check the trees supporting it. It moved some last night. If it collapses under the added weight, we’ll be worse off. I’ll be back this evening, and we’ll reassess then.”

“Where are you going?”

“Someone has to scout the area around us, look for food, maybe even help—or a better shelter.”

Her eyes grow wide. “Fine. Anyone but you.”

“What?”

“You can’t leave.”

“Why?”

“Because it would be chaos here without you.”

I just stare at her, unsure what to say. She’s probably right. That worries me, but it also brings a sense of something I haven’t felt in a long time: fulfillment. Right now I feel like I’m doing exactly what I need to be doing, that I’m making a difference in people’s lives. I haven’t felt that way in a very long time.

A BREAK. BOB FOUND A pallet with some food in the nose section. It was tossed around, torn to pieces, but it’s yielded enough for two meals. That’s brought morale up and quelled most of the complaints for now.

Sabrina has added a request for medications, especially antibiotics, to the luggage survey, but so far the poll hasn’t revealed much. There’ve been reports of fishing gear, and two passengers claimed snorkeling sets—but it’s all in checked baggage at the bottom of the lake, locked inside those steel crates. I’ve felt out a few of the guys who swam out to the rear section with me, and none of them are keen to go diving into the wreckage. I can’t say I blame them. Instead, I’ve sent them out with some of the other passengers who’re still in decent shape to scout the surrounding areas. They left a few hours ago in four teams of three, one for each cardinal direction. They’ll hike until they find something or someone, or until midday, whichever comes first, then head back, hopefully arriving before sunset. We’ll know a lot more then.

I hope.

HARPER’S SICK.

She awoke with a ragged cough, a headache, and a low-grade fever. She swears she’s okay, but Sabrina is concerned enough to move her, against her protests, to the nose section.

I’ve checked the trees supporting the back of this section. They still make me nervous, but I don’t see a better option at the moment.

We’ve hung blue blankets over the open end, but every few minutes an icy draft makes it past them. During the day, it’s colder than by the fire at the lake, but I figure it will be much better at night, especially after Sabrina packs it full of patients.

The mysterious Asian, Yul Tan, has come up with a better solution: build a wall. He and Sabrina have stacked the first- and business-class carry-on luggage from floor to ceiling, plugging any holes with deflated life vests. It looks kind of weird, but it works.

Harper takes her old seat in first class, 1D, and stretches out.

“I feel useless,” she says, and coughs.

“We all are, right now. Nothing to do but wait. We’ll be out of here soon.”

“You really believe that?”

“Sure,” I say automatically. It’s the only response I can make right now. I try my best to keep any doubt out of my voice.

A minute passes, both of us crammed in her pod, watching other passengers file by, coughing as they search for a place to bed down.

“So tell me, what does the mysterious, multitalented Nick Stone do for a living? When he’s not rescuing helpless passengers.”

“Me?” I hesitate for a moment, debating what to tell her. “Nothing … as interesting as rescuing airline passengers. How about you?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Really? Anything I might have read?”

She looks down and half laughs, half coughs. “Possibly. I’ve written six books. None of which had my name on them, though, and none of which I’m legally permitted to discuss.”

I wonder what that means. It seems to be a sore spot. But before I can ask, out of the corner of my eye I see someone waving: Mike, standing at the bottom of the stairway. The other two guys who went east with him are at his side. They look tired. They’re panting, hunched over, their hands on their knees. Whatever happened to them out there sent them back in a hurry.

I’m up and out four seconds later. “You found something?”

“Yeah,” Mike swallows. He’s excited, but there’s something else: nervousness. “We found … something.”