Taker (6 page)

Are You Freaking Kidding Me?

A
s Amy and
Nicole tumbled to the front of the cabin, the off-duty pilot grabbed both girls and helped them to their feet.

“Before you try to stop us, you need to know that we can help,” Nicole pleaded, locking eye contact with the man.

Raymond moved his hands in a calming, up-and-down motion. “Girls, please. We got this,” he declared.

“So what’s your brilliant plan? Storm the cockpit like a bunch of meatheads?” Amy asked.

Raymond, getting frustrated, pointed at the cockpit door. “You got a better plan? Can you make a miracle happen here and now to fix all this?”

Nicole nodded without hesitation. “If you can get me in that cockpit, damn right I can deliver a miracle.”

Raymond looked at Amy as if to confirm he’d heard what he thought he’d heard. Amy pointed to Nicole enthusiastically in agreement. “She can do it.”

Confused by Nicole’s proposition and flustered because of the lack of time, Raymond just mustered an awkward smile in return. “Fine. Whatever. That’s Plan B. But we’re doing Plan A first. Plan A is my original plan, OK? Because I don’t really feel like dying today while waiting for this miracle thing to occur. So, let us go in first. But if Plan A falls apart, I guess you can do whatever it is you need to do.”

“Thanks,” Nicole offered, out of breath. She cast her eyes around. “Where’s Ben?”

“Here! It’s ready!” Ben shouted, popping up from behind a seat and brandishing the printed knife.

Amy squared herself in front of Ben, put her hand on his shoulders and spoke to him like a first-grade teacher speaking to a student. “OK. Can you use the knife? To try to unlock the door?”

But before Ben could answer, Raymond interrupted. “Oh, I can do better than that.” He stepped forward, pushed through the group, and flicked aside a concealed panel, revealing the security-code keypad on the door.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Drake screamed. He grabbed Raymond and pushed him against the locked airplane serving carts. The severity of the impact caused the wall behind the carts to rattle. Everyone stepped back, shocked to hear Drake get so angry — everyone except for Amy, who let a small grin slip out. She enjoyed this primitive display of aggression, though she would never admit that to anybody. “You mean you could’ve opened the door with a code this whole time we’ve been trying to break it down?” Drake demanded.

“Sorry. I know we’re all on the same team here,” Raymond retorted. “Look, it’s pretty clear the pilot is no longer in control. We have to act now. Also, there’s another thing you may not have noticed.” He pointed toward the window of the cabin door. “We’re not alone.”

Outside, two fighter jets armed with several missiles visible beneath each of their wings were escorting Flight 91.

“Raymond, enough talking. Just open the damn door before we get shot down!” Nicole urged.

Everyone nodded and seemed to instinctively assume their roles.

“One, two, three — go!” Nicole shouted.

In a split second, Raymond punched in the code to the door, and Drake flung it open.

What they encountered rushing into the cabin was one of the worst sights either of them had ever beheld. The pilot was slumped in his seat, having put up one hell of a fight before he died. Allen reeled around, his bulbous eyes glaring back at them, a crazed expression on his face. What lurked beneath wasn’t — couldn’t — be human. It was like Allen was half-man, half-zombie. Though he looked severely wounded, he wasn’t bleeding.

Raymond reached out and grabbed for Allen, who looked half his size in this small space.

“Idiots,” Allen spat, which seemed an odd statement from a man looking at the business end of Raymond’s fist.

But as Raymond advanced, Allen kicked a green syringe that lay discarded at his feet. With a surprising flourish of energy, Allen easily grasped Raymond by his neck, and the off-duty pilot sank to his knees. Drake tried to help Raymond out of Allen’s vise-like grip, but the pair struggled in vain.

Then Nicole arrived, putting Allen in a quandary. Keep his two assailants occupied, or deal with the teenage girl who had a serious expression on her face?

This was what Nicole had been hoping for — to confuse the hijacker enough to let Raymond get control and to allow her to get in close.

Sure enough, Drake noticed Allen’s momentary confusion and released his hand to punch him. Raymond then leapt for the control stick, but Allen was back on him in an instant. Drake made another desperate attempt to pull Raymond away, but Allen struck out with his backhand, swatting Drake down like a fly.

Gradually, and with mammoth effort, Raymond was still able to heave back the control stick. From the cockpit window, the all-too-close ground below veered away again.

But it was to be only a momentary comfort.

“Nooooooooo!” Allen screamed. He clamped his hands around Raymond’s neck.

Raymond choked his instructions to Drake, who leapt into action. Drake seized the controls, struggling to keep the plane’s course on target.

“Keep … it … steady!” Raymond cried through desperate chokes. How was it possible for this one guy to hold back two men?

“Step away from the flight controls, or I’ll kill him!” Allen screamed, spitting as he did.

“Don’t let go!” Raymond shouted. His lungs were seizing up as the pressure of the hijacker’s fingers crushed his neck. It was as though Raymond knew he had to be willing to sacrifice himself.

With the plane back on a more even keel, Nicole found she didn’t have to steady herself anymore. She simply had to focus.

She observed Allen in his crazy, drug-induced state as he was watching the last strands of life drain out of Raymond. She thought of all the people on the plane who had put their trust in the crew to get them to Florida safely. This man, this hijacker, had no right to be there.

She felt the hate in her heart. She would use this to Balance.

From her pocket, she produced the black-and-white image of the newlywed Janet Hofmeier, the happy young bride so full of life, and then her groom, Ed, so proud in his best suit. She imagined this photo of Ed with a burn hole in his chest area, like an X-ray of a cancerous bulge — something that needed extracting. She could do this — she could give this part to Allen and swap it out for the health left in him. Then she could Balance that to Ed.

The hijacker didn’t notice the freckled teenager reach out her hand and clasp it toward him. He was too busy enjoying the pain and the reddening face of the pilot who had been stupid enough to take him on, while also attempting to stab the hulking teen. He didn’t see how tightly she had shut her eyelids, nor how she was concentrating so hard that she felt like her head would burst.

Nicole conjured the horrible cancerous mass in Ed and imagined it appearing in her palm. She felt its weight, and its disease. The astonishing pain arrived. This, then, was how it felt to experience lung cancer. It was terrible, agonizing — even held like this, away from her body. How could Ed stand it? She could barely breathe. After taking a moment, Nicole opened her hands and released it all into Allen Kreschkensky.

Raymond felt the hijacker’s fingers loosen from around his neck, and with a gasp of air, he saw his assailant buckle over and begin to wheeze.

“Raymond, now!” Drake cried. He dragged Allen off the pilot’s seat and out of the cockpit. Raymond took control.

The plane emitted a wheeze of its own as it pulled up and out of harm’s way.

There was no time to lose, and Raymond knew his first priority.

“Orlando, this is Flight 91. We have resumed control of the aircraft. Repeat. Friendlies have control of the aircraft!” Raymond shouted.

After a few tense seconds, one of the fighter jets pulled along the side of the cockpit so Raymond could see the fighter pilot. He then gave Raymond a quick salute, and a visible thumbs-up.

Nicole had done it.

With her adrenaline now ebbing, Nicole felt her knees shaking a little beneath her. She took a few unsteady steps as she supported herself out of the cockpit and into the cabin. She and Ben shared a moment of relieved eye contact.

The ding of the PA system sounded across the cabin, and the pilot’s grin was audible as he spoke.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls — this is your
new
captain speaking. My name is Captain Raymond, and I’m one of the good guys. This plane is back under control. We got him!” Raymond declared jubilantly.

Massive applause and cheers erupted from the passengers. All those who moments before had been facing the prospect of certain death had now had their lives restored.

All apart from Allen, who was struggling to breathe. Eyes still bulging, veins pumped with the malevolent chemicals that had fueled his desperate hijack attempt, he was coughing in agony as Drake manhandled him out of the cabin and onto the front row of seats.

But it was Nicole he glared up at. He had seen the look on her face as he’d felt the rot curl into his body.

“What have you done?” he moaned. “All I wanted was to help my family, so they wouldn’t have to worry about money again.”

“For all these people’s lives?”

“You’ll know when you have kids.” He gave a sickened cough then, some fluid lifting from his ailing lungs. “Now I’m gonna rot in jail.”

“Maybe, but not for long,” Amy replied.

Allen fixed his bulbous, almost hopeful gaze on the girls.

“No,” Amy continued, “you’ll be dying from lung cancer. Prognosis: two to four months, tops.”

Shock clouded Allen’s gaze. “How … ?”

The ding from the cockpit interrupted him.

“This is your new captain speaking again …”

The cabin erupted once more, like a crowd at a rock concert. Nicole, Amy, Ben and Drake exchanged exhilarated but exhausted smiles.

“Now, I do have a little good news and a little bad news. The bad news is that we’re not allowed to land at Orlando International as planned. We are being diverted to a nearby military base.” Raymond paused, letting the cabin quiet down as the passengers digested the bad news.

“But the good news is, we
are
landing. So fasten your seatbelts and prepare for the best damn landing you’ve ever had in your life!” Raymond seemed to be relishing this moment and playing up to the crowd.

The cabin gushed into enthusiastic cheers and whistles again.
“Ray-mond! Ray-mond! Ray-mond! …”

At the very back of Flight 91, Ed Hofmeier, coughing from too much oxygen in his suddenly healthy lungs, ripped off his mask and gave his wife a huge kiss.

One of the Good Guys

N
icole returned to
her row, grabbed a blanket and pillow from the overhead compartment, and sank back into her seat. Now she was like any of the other passengers again and could allow herself some time to relax. She felt the landing gear detach beneath her and listened to the customary dings from the cockpit that let the flight attendants know to buckle up. They weren’t looking too worse for the wear at first glance, though, upon closer inspection, the strain was evident on their faces.

Nicole was just about to close her eyes when she heard a young girl singing several rows behind her. She looked in the direction of the voice and saw it was the girl who had brought her the sword earlier. She was still dressed in the same plain clothes.

“Wondered when you were going to show up again,” Nicole whispered, more fondly than in her previous conversation with the girl. “No gifts of medieval weapons this time?”

“You took it,” was her simple reply.

“You’re right. I did,” Nicole said.

The little girl smiled back and bowed before Nicole, and then she disappeared into a grassy meadow stretched out before a farmhouse in the distance.

Comforted that she had pleased the vision, Nicole turned to watch Jason dozing softly next to her. She decided he was one of the good guys. While others around them had cowered in their seats and resigned simply to wait for whatever fate was to befall them, Jason had tried to save Jeanine. She remembered how he’d said he’d like to be a paramedic someday. How he’d visited his mom on the job and watched those fearless workers bring in people with terrible injuries. Nicole could definitely like a guy like that. He had exhibited a calm air with Jeanine that she hadn’t seen before. And for a moment, she had been a little jealous seeing Jason soothing Jeanine. She smiled and laughed to herself for a moment. Jealous?

Just then, with the slow descent of the plane, the blanket slid off Nicole’s lap and fell softly to the floor, disturbing her stream of thought. She leaned forward to gather it up and nonchalantly peered into the gap between the seats in front of her. A boy was reading a glossy magazine that contained pages and pages about the theme park Adventure World — the architecture, the landscaping, the rides and the food. The boy kept turning the pages, looking only at the pictures and ignoring the text.

Then Nicole’s heart froze as she saw a picture of a room with large stone walls lit only by torches.

Stunned, a familiar feeling passed through her, and the noise of the plane dulled to a silence. She fell back almost limp in her seat. Her mind began to drift away as it had done before, and, almost immediately, a moldy stench hit her senses.

As she opened her eyes, she was now in almost total darkness, surrounded by cold and damp stone walls. She couldn’t place the time she was in, but these were stone walls she had seen before back in the forest. Here she was, encased by them again in the dungeon.

Then the sobbing began. Nicole knew that there was a presence behind her; she could feel her skin prickling at the closeness.

She was standing in front of another girl.

She turned and — to her surprise — found that the girl was laughing, not sobbing. She reached out her hand. Nicole caught a better look at her this time. Blond, petite, pretty. She was a little older than Nicole and looked a little like Jason’s friend, but she was wearing old, tattered rags.

She couldn’t be here — could she? Not here in this room.

“Hi,” Nicole murmured.

“Hello.”

As Nicole reached out to touch the girl’s hand, the girl stopped laughing, and then pulled back her hand before Nicole could clasp it.

The girl laughed again, and Nicole suddenly realized that this was not happy laughter. It seemed hysterical, and it sent chills down Nicole’s spine.

The fit of laughter stopped once more, and the girl moaned in an eerie, monotone voice, as if in a trance, “What you bring to others will be visited twofold on you.”

“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

In the blink of an eye, the girl appeared to Nicole’s left side and whispered, “Bring hope to others.” Then, no more than a second later, she had disappeared and reappeared at Nicole’s right side. The girl’s face had morphed into that of an angry woman, looming over Nicole and screaming in her ear, “Take hope away!”

Nicole stumbled, attempting to take another step closer to the wall to steady herself. But her legs were shaking with fear, like that time in the forest, and the pain returned to her wounded thigh. It was immense, searing, overwhelming.

Suddenly, she collapsed, and everything went black.

“Nicole?”

Nicole roused and rubbed her tear-filled eyes. Her bright surroundings brought relief. She was back on the plane again. It was Jason, nudging her shoulder.

“Wow, that was creepy. I liked the little French girl better.”

“French girl? Are you all right?”

A little shaken, Nicole paused for a moment to allow the confusion to subside, and to get acclimated to her real surroundings — the familiar gray and red stripes, the passengers.

“I’m OK. I think I was having a bad dream or something.”

Ding.

“This is your captain speaking. It has truly been an honor and a privilege to be your pilot. And please don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope we never have to do this together again. As you may have noticed, we have landed safely, and as soon as we can get some stairs up to the plane, I’ll release the cabin doors and we can all get off. Welcome to Patrick Air Force Base!”

They had survived. The applause was thunderous, and Nicole lifted her hands to join in the elation.

Jason, applauding as well, smiled at Nicole. The warm glow of his face was back. Once more they locked glances, united for a moment with their hands and their eyes. They started to kiss, but the moment didn’t last long, as a hand soon zoomed into view. It was followed by Amy’s grinning face.

A little embarrassed, Jason excused himself. Nicole half-heartedly tried to include him, but he encouraged her to enjoy the moment with her friends.

“Go team Balancer!” Amy yelled.

Together, Nicole, Amy, Drake and, with prompting, Ben (who had run up from Jason’s old seat) shared triumphant high-fives. They had made it, against all the odds.

As they waited for the cabin doors to open, Nicole leaned forward and nudged the boy in the seat in front of her. He turned around.

“Hey!”

“Hey, yourself,” Nicole tried, with a perky tone she had seen work with Amy’s little brother, Troy.

“I’ll swap you that magazine for a bag of candy.”

The boy seemed to consider this. His mom had other ideas.

She lifted the magazine from her son’s hands.

“Given what you just did, you and your friends can have anything you want. You’re all brave.” The boy’s mom handed the Adventure World magazine to Nicole, and she kept eye contact for a few moments before releasing it. Her kindness — and perhaps even admiration — was a welcome relief after the dungeon girl’s admonishing.

“Think I went to Adventure World a few years back,” Jason said, interrupting Nicole’s wandering thoughts. “It’s a pretty fun place. Maybe we could go sometime?”

The lights of the cabin flickered, and Nicole heard the sound of the cabin door opening. But instead of the bustling of passengers rushing toward the front of the plane, a sudden, solemn silence fell over everyone. The people around Nicole stood in unison, and a few passengers bowed their heads while a girl a few rows up ahead appeared to be saying a prayer.

Several Air Force officers and medical personnel had boarded the plane and were respectfully tending to the bodies of the pilot and second officer.

Why did some have to die in order for others to live?

Although the front and rear doors of the aircraft had now been opened, not a single person moved toward the exits until the soldiers had removed the fallen from the front of the cabin. After the soldiers had loaded the bodies into the waiting medical vans and the doors to the vans were closed, everyone seemed to exhale collectively.

Slowly, the volume of life turned up, as people resumed the process of gathering their things and preparing to deplane.

Nicole’s mind was full — overwhelmed with the hijacking events and with what had felt like some kind of flashback just then. She was having trouble speaking, and she could read confusion over that on Jason’s face. The only thing she was sure about was that she wanted to see him again.

But before she could say this, Amy cut in.

“I would say,” Amy started, “that we all deserve a little fun right about now.”

“Sure,” Nicole smiled. She was wondering how things would work out now that they’d landed. She knew her dad was probably back at Orlando International Airport given that it had been their original destination, so he wouldn’t be waiting on the outside.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh!” Amy screamed in false agony as she punched Ben in the arm.

It was a pretty hard hit, and it made Ben wince a little. “Ow. What was that for?”

“That’s for making us get rid of our phones. How long has it been? Four hours? I think that’s the longest I’ve ever been away from my phone. I think my mind is starting to melt a little.”

“It’s not for me. It’s for her.” Ben pointed at Nicole matter-of-factly. “The government can trace us with those phones. There’s no privacy. We can’t carry them.”

“Ever?”

“Well, just for a while, until we figure out the long-term plan for keeping Nicole safe,” Ben explained as he braced himself to get hit again.

“I’m just messing with you, Ben. You’re right. You usually are.”

Amy caught Ben off guard with her sudden praise. That wasn’t a feeling he was used to experiencing. “I am?”

“Yeah.”

Maybe the life-changing events on the plane had caused Amy’s attitude to do a 180? Amy gave Ben a quick kiss on the cheek before turning back to Drake.

Nicole spun around to look for Jason, to say more to him, but with the airplane doors opened, her fellow passengers were now more eager than usual to deplane, and she had been separated from him. Every now and then, she caught a glimpse of his checkered shirt or a flash of his fair hair, but before she could call out to him, the crowd had pushed him out the door. Frustrated and now weary, Nicole found herself being carried along by the sea of passengers, all desperate to touch the ground they had thought they would never see again. Then, finally, the reassuring beams of daylight streamed in through the open door.

Nicole took a deep breath and touched the plastic of the plane’s interior once more, then lifted her foot onto the ladder to walk down. She could hear sounds of joy coming from the outside. There at the top of the stairs, Nicole hesitated a bit when she saw the scene below, and a bolt of fear stabbed through her.

Military trucks, soldiers armed with automatic weapons slung to their sides, ambulances, doctors and nurses. As she proceeded down the stairs, she caught the unmistakable sight of two blacked-out SUVs racing along a road on the outside perimeter of the base.

The feds. They were here.