Deadly Sky (ePub), The (13 page)

The next voice sounded so strange, so different, that Darryl didn't recognise it at first. He stared as he realised it was Alicia speaking, heavy and sad.

Her eyes were on the two pilots, and she was asking them something. They both burst into words again, nodding, waving hands at her.

They stopped as Raoul shouted from the cockpit. He wrenched his head around, glaring at Alicia. She stood without moving until he was finished, then spoke to the pilots once more. Again they both replied, stabbing fingers down towards the sea, then back the way the plane had come.

The girl did nothing for a second. She looked calm,
determined. Then she nodded, let out her breath in a long sigh, half-lowered her gun, and stepped into the cockpit.

While Darryl watched and his heart thudded, she stood beside her cousin and spoke. Raoul jerked as if she'd stabbed him. His whole body convulsed. ‘
Non!
' he yelled. ‘
Non!
' Alicia spoke louder, more urgently, clutched his shoulder. He twisted away.

Darryl's heart lurched as he understood: Alicia was demanding that Raoul turn back. He flicked a look at his watch. 11.46. Hurry! he pleaded inside his head. Please hurry!

Françoise began calling out also, begging with Raoul. Other voices joined in from the cabin: people had seen or guessed what was happening. Darryl's mother stayed silent.

His eyes were fixed on Alicia. The grief and determination on her face. Her cousin had deceived her. Things had gone so wrong. Now she was giving up her own dreams to try to save others. Whatever happened now, whatever she'd done before, she was amazing.

She spoke once more to Raoul, her voice harder still. He flung an arm out at her, slamming her across the cockpit and into the wall. Screams from some of
the passengers. The plane dipped sideways as Raoul snatched at the controls. Darryl clutched at his seat.

Alicia had half-fallen to her knees. While Darryl watched, his stomach knotted, she stood. Her hand came up, and the ugly grey gun pointed at Raoul's head. Three … four words in French, tight and harsh.

Gasps from all around. A stifled cry from Françoise. Raoul turned his head, very slowly, and gazed at his young cousin.

Then he faced the front again. His hands stayed steady on the control column. He's not going to turn us around, Darryl knew. She's threatening to kill him, but he's not going to change his mind.

Alicia seemed to know it, too. She stared at the young man for another few seconds. Then she turned the gun, and placed the muzzle against her own head.

Instantly, Darryl was out of his seat, struggling towards the cockpit. ‘No!' he blurted. ‘Stop! Please, no!'

Alicia turned to face him. Darryl saw the dark eyes, the slim brown curve of neck with its new scratch, the smooth cheeks and forehead, the little scar over one eye. The gun muzzle stayed pressed against her head, half-hidden in the fall of thick black hair.

‘No!' Darryl kept gabbling. ‘Please, no.
Non!
'

The girl lifted her hand and his voice choked. Raoul had swung around again, and was staring up at them both. Alicia raised the pistol a fraction so its barrel was level, drew in a breath, and closed her eyes. Oh, no, Darryl's mind begged. Please, no!

‘You've done enough!' The words spilled from him. ‘People
will
hear about this. They
will
take notice. You'll make everyone think about the bomb. The military are going to have to listen. So you must be there, to – to keep telling people things.'

Had he said all that? He had. The older pilot nodded. ‘He is true. Listen to him.'

The girl's eyes were open again, fixed on Darryl. He swallowed, struggled to think what to say next.

‘Alicia.' He jerked as Raoul spoke. The young man's voice sounded flat and dull. On his face was an expression that Darryl knew he'd never be able to describe. ‘
Assez
. Enough.'

Then Raoul lifted his hands from the control column. He took one last look at the great expanse of blue sky ahead, then he rose from his seat and stepped out of the cockpit into the cabin.

Both pilots shot to their feet, shouting and exclaiming. Raoul gazed at them as though he had forgotten who
they were. He held the long-barrelled gun in one hand, down by his side. He looked at Alicia for a second, then turned his back on her. The girl's hand holding the gun dropped away from her head, and she swayed where she stood.

The pilots barged past them into the cockpit, flinging themselves into their seats, yelling instructions at each other. One seized the control column and wrenched it sideways. The aircraft swung left, so hard that Darryl tumbled backwards into the seat he'd just left. Behind him, voices cried out in fresh alarm. Raoul and Alicia staggered and almost fell. He seized her, half-threw her into the seat beside Darryl. He stared expressionlessly at her for a moment, then clawed his way into the row in front, next to Françoise. The air hostess shrank away from him.

The violent turn ended. The plane rocked, then steadied. They were heading back the way they'd come. 11.52. They had eight minutes to escape.

The girl was slumped against the side of her seat. She'd begun weeping again, almost silently, face half-turned away from Darryl. He stared at her. What should he do? Tie her up, or talk to her? He hesitated, began to reach out a hand.

Ting! Ting!
The seatbelt sign. He grabbed his seatbelt and clipped it into its socket. He bent towards Alicia, reaching for hers. ‘Your belt,' he mumbled. ‘Put your seatbelt on!' She didn't seem to hear him. Her eyes stayed closed; tears making fresh trails down her cheeks. ‘
Menteur!
' Darryl heard her sobbing quietly.

The engines roared, and the plane's nose dipped down. Darryl clutched at the arm-rests as the aircraft went into a shallow dive. They must be trying to get every inch of speed they could. He grabbed at the girl as she was nearly flung from her seat. ‘Belt!' he yelled again. ‘Put your belt on – quick!' She started to struggle upright, fumbling for her buckle. Darryl snatched it from her; rammed it into its socket.

He pressed himself against the back of his own seat, dragging in breath, peering at his watch. 11.54. The aircraft hurtled forward and down. Please don't crash into the sea, his mind bleated. Please don't let the wings fall off.

In front of him, Raoul sat perfectly still. Every bit of energy and anger seemed to have left him. Darryl realised someone was shouting his name. ‘Darryl! Darryl, love!' His mother. ‘Darryl! Are you all right?'

He forced himself to speak. ‘Y-yeah. I'm OK. I'm OK.'

Even above the racing engines, he could hear the relief in his mother's voice. ‘Hold on, son! Just hold on!'

Alicia's hands were pressed to her cheeks. She still wept silently. She's done something terrible, Darryl told himself. This is her fault. She believed in it, but she was wrong – wasn't she?

11.55. The engines screamed. Then he was thrust back in his seat as they levelled out. In the cockpit, the younger pilot had the headphones on, talking fast into the microphone. He stopped, listened, tore off the headphones, and hurled them away.

That nightmare he'd had on the island, Darryl thought: the shrieking, flaming pigs. This was a nightmare, too. One where all of them might be burned to cinders.

11.56. The fuselage vibrated as they raced on. They must be doing a couple of kilometres every
five
seconds, just about. Please don't let the plane fly apart.

11.57. He heard himself mouthing more words at Alicia. He didn't know what he was saying. His body jerked and shuddered; he couldn't breathe properly. Terror flooded him.

She turned her head towards him. For a moment, she hardly seemed to realise who he was. Then she murmured, ‘
Je regrette
, Dah-reel.' Her voice was low, but he heard her even above the howl of the engines. She stretched out a hand, and slipped it into his.

11.58. A girl was holding his hand. Two minutes before they might be blown to bits, and a girl was holding
his hand. In the cockpit, the pilots hunched. Behind him, passengers wailed and moaned. All around, the fuselage groaned and the engines bellowed. But Darryl sat, staring at the smooth brown fingers in his.

Something from
Deadly Cloud
flicked into his mind. A hand – what? Then he remembered. He stammered at Alicia. ‘Put— put their hands over their eyes! Tell them! Hands over their eyes – now!'

She stared at him for a second, then she shouted: ‘
Les mains! Cachez les yeux! Vite!
'

In front of him, Darryl glimpsed Françoise and Raoul jerking upright, pushing both palms against their eyes. In the cockpit, the pilots had snatched one hand from the controls, and were doing the same, Alicia's own hand flew out of his. He whipped his own hands up, glimpsing his watch as he did so. 11.59.

The engines shrieked. The plane hurtled on. They must have covered sixty-five kilometres or so since they turned. Every second was another chance.

His eyes were squeezed shut, his palms clamped against them. He could feel the blood beating in his head. He was counting: Twenty … nineteen … eighteen … On they tore. Thirteen … twelve … eleven … Nothing. Five … four … three …

He jerked his eyes open, saw his watch, clamped his hands over his eyes again. 12.01. They'd passed the explosion time. Nothing had changed. The military
radar must have seen them after all. The test had been stopped; they were going to live. Alicia and Raoul had won after all.

Behind him, someone began to speak. A second voice joined in, trembling, uncertain. Slowly, Darryl's fingers relaxed. He began to lift his hands from his face.

The sky turned white.

For a second, he glimpsed the bones of his fingers, lit up and clear against the shadowy flesh of his hands. He'd read about this: the British sailors on warships, eighty kilometres away from one of their nuclear explosions, seeing their fingers like this. It was terrifying. Beautiful.

Alicia shrieked and convulsed beside him. Cries and screams from other passengers. The glow faded.

Heat. He felt it through the plane's fuselage. It bathed his whole body, as though he had stepped into the midsummer sun. Then it faded, also. They were alive. Alive and unhurt.

In the cockpit, both pilots were talking urgently. Darryl lowered his hands, opened his eyes, blinked at the
blue sky outside his window. The light on the other side of the plane seemed to be growing darker. What was—

‘
Ne bougez pas!
' The voice of the younger pilot rang from the overhead speakers. ‘
Ne bougez pas!
'

Alicia's hand was clenched on his arm. ‘Don't move!' she gasped. ‘They say don't move!'

The blast waves, Darryl realised. Spreading out from the explosion slower than the glare and heat, but still racing through the sky at the speed of sound. They could tear buildings apart, root up trees. Here, inside their small plane … He gripped the arms of his seat, braced his feet against the one in front, and clenched his teeth so he didn't howl with fear. I don't want to die. Please, I don't want to die!

Something rammed into the aircraft. It hit them with a
WHOOOMPF!
; a solid, savage blow that hurled them sideways across the sky. We've collided with another plane, Darryl's terrified mind gabbled – one sent to stop us. Or we've been hit by a missile.

No, even as he cried out, as Françoise and Alicia wailed also, he knew. It was the first blast wave. A great wall of air, hurled out and compressed by the explosion, an invisible tsunami. He remembered the warships bucking and toppling.

Another impact. The plane tipped on one side, dropped as if all the air had been sucked out from under them. Alicia clung to his arm, eyes squeezed shut. His own eyes bulged, his mouth gaped open. He felt the cabin's air pressure thicken, like a tyre with a pump ramming it full. Miles from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions, blast waves had burst open windows, ripped out everything inside. If it happened to their aircraft, they were doomed.

Another sideways jolt, even fiercer. The fuselage groaned and creaked. Overhead lockers burst open. Bags, books, jackets fell or sprayed around the cabin. In the middle of a nuclear test, he might get injured by a book on … on nuclear tests.

A fourth impact. It flung them forwards, and Darryl's face almost smashed into the seatback in front. The plane slewed onto one side again. And out through the opposite windows, Darryl saw …

A titanic, rolling black pillar, shot through with glares of orange, pouring upwards and spreading out into the awful boiling mushroom at the top. Already it was higher than their plane, charging skywards, colossal storms of fire churning through its sides.

The explosion must have been low down, Darryl
managed to think. On a barge or something like that. Low enough and distant enough to save their lives.

Except— except for the radiation. The first flash carried deadly gamma rays. More radiation was on its way in the huge cloud, streaming upwards and outwards. But they'd been far enough away, hadn't they? Surely.

He kept staring as the plane buffeted onwards, jolting and groaning, but more stable now. The column of blackness still charged upwards. It filled half the sky on that side. If he lived through all this, he'd never, never forget.

Alicia still grasped his arm. Hell, she'd cut off the circulation if she wasn't careful. Her eyes stayed closed; she panted for breath.

‘Darryl! Darryl!' His mum again. ‘Are you all right?'

He nodded his head, then gave a mad giggle as he realised there was no way she could see it, and called back, ‘I'm OK! I'm OK!' He gaped as, in the row in front, he glimpsed Raoul fighting with Françoise. Wrong: he was holding her in her seat, stopping her from being flung around. This was all
his
fault.

The two pilots wrestled with the controls, teeth bared, grunting orders to each other. Through the near window, the sea looked much closer. They must have dropped hundreds – thousands – of metres in their dive to escape the blast waves.

Darryl twisted his head to stare through the window
opposite. The mushroom cloud still billowed upwards, a vast black tower of churning smoke and fire, the top swelling out, so high he could just see it. It was like a great black scar in the sky, slowly sliding behind them. Alicia and Raoul shouldn't have done this; it was crazy and wrong. But what she thought about the bomb was right. Oh man, why did things have to be so complicated!

The aircraft still juddered and swayed occasionally, but the blast waves seemed to have ended. The air around them was settling down. The plane sped on. They were safe.

Safe except for that radiation, he told himself again. The fuselage would have stopped a few of the gamma rays, but most would have pierced straight through it into their bodies, attacking cells, damaging blood and tissue. They'd been too far away to receive much – hadn't they? They must have been. Only people within about twenty-five kilometres of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts suffered radiation sickness. But those bombs were so much smaller.

For now, though, he was alive and unhurt. Just this morning, he'd been wishing he could see something like this. Now he never wanted to face anything like it again.

Back towards their original route, mile after mile unreeling behind it, Flight 766 droned.

The cabin was a shambles. Just about every overhead locker hung open. Bags, jackets, magazines, books lay strewn across seats or in the aisles. Françoise was standing, starting to pick up some. Her hands shook as she reached for them. Tears still streaked her face; her mouth trembled, but she was trying to do her job. Raoul sat motionless, his mouth tight and bitter.

Darryl levered himself up, to join the air hostess. His back and legs throbbed from bracing them against the bucking aircraft. Alicia and Raoul sat silently in their seats. The girl's dark head was lowered. Other passengers embraced, wept or laughed, or wept
and
laughed at the same time.

Someone seized him by the arm. His mother, holding him, talking and smiling, saying ‘Son! Oh Darryl, dear! Son!', and making hiccupping noises that he realised were sobs. Darryl was glad his friends couldn't see him, especially since he'd started crying as well.