Mayday (15 page)

Berry and Stein stood at the railing of the staircase and watched and listened. Some of the passengers were shaken out of
their lethargy by the voice and were making odd noises—squeals, grunts, groans, and growls. A high piercing laugh came from
the far recesses of the cabin and penetrated into the lounge. Stein shuddered and shook his head spasmodically. “Good God.”

They waited, but no one came.

Berry turned to Stein and put his hand on his shoulder. “I’m afraid that’s not conclusive. Someone may be trapped or frightened
out of his wits. You’ll have to go down.”

“I don’t want to go downstairs,” Stein said in a small voice.

Berry bit into his lower lip. He realized that if he allowed it, Harold Stein would soak up time and attention like a sponge.
It was an understandable need. But John Berry could not spare the time, or allow himself a normal man’s compassion. “Stein,
I don’t give a damn what you want. I don’t want to die. Neither does the girl. What we
want
isn’t enough anymore. All that matters is what we
need
. I need to know if anyone else on this goddamned airplane can help us. We’ve got to find a doctor, or someone from the crew.
Maybe another pilot.”

Berry glanced toward the cockpit. The sight of the empty flight deck sent a chill down his spine. He shrugged it off and turned
back to Stein. “Take this belt. Find other weapons. We may need them. Linda, you stay here in the lounge and look after these
people. Especially look after the copilot over there. All right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If anyone acts . . . funny, let me know. I’ll be in the cockpit. Okay? Linda? Harold?”

Stein nodded reluctantly. He half believed that his family would recover and almost believed that Berry could fly the aircraft.
“I’ll bring my family up here. I’d rather they be up here. They’ll be okay in a little while.”

Berry shook his head. “They’re fine where they are. Later, when they are more aware, we’ll bring them up.”

“But—”

“I have to insist. Please go. I have other things to attend to in the cockpit.”

Stein glanced back at the empty cockpit. “The radio? Are you going to try to contact . . .?”

“Yes. Go on down below. Let me worry about the cockpit.”

Harold Stein rose slowly and took the belt and wrapped it around his right hand. “Do you think they’re very . . . dangerous?”

Berry glanced around the lounge. “No more than these people.” He paused. He owed Stein more than that. Some lies were necessary.
Other were self-serving. “Be careful. I was attacked down there. Different people react differently to oxygen loss. The brain
is a complicated . . . Just be careful. Each flight-attendant station should have a call phone. You may be able to use the
phones if you want to speak to me.”

“All right.”

Berry turned abruptly and walked quickly back into the cockpit.

Stein watched as Berry slid into the pilot’s seat. He glanced at the girl, forced a smile, and began descending the staircase.

Berry had an urge to shut down the autopilot and take the wheel. Just for a second to get the feel of the machine. To take
his fate into his own hands. He stared at the switch on his control wheel and reached out his hand. Steering the giant aircraft
could possibly be within his skills. But if the craft somehow got away from him, he knew that he would never be able to get
it back under control. Yet eventually he knew he’d take the wheel when the fuel ran out. At that point, he would have absolutely
nothing to lose in trying to belly-land in the ocean. So why not try a practice run now? His hand touched the autopilot disengage
switch. No. Later. He took his hand away.

He thought about going down in the ocean. If nothing else, he should probably make a 180-degree turn and head south before
they left the mid-Pacific’s warmer water. He looked up at the autopilot controls mounted on the glare shield that ran between
the pilots. One knob was labeled
HEADING
. Berry put his hand on it, took a deep breath, and turned it to the right.

The Straton slowly dropped its right wing as its left wing rose and the aircraft went into a bank. The tilting motion made
him experience that familiar sensation in the seat of his pants. It would take a very long time to turn 180 degrees at this
rate of turn, but he didn’t actually want to turn around yet. Not until he had a firm plan of action in mind. It was an old
pilot’s creed not to make course changes aimlessly. He glanced at the fuel gauges. He had time. The water beneath them was
probably still warm enough for ditching, and would be for a while. Berry was satisfied that the autopilot would respond to
its turn control knob. That was all he had the nerve for right now. He turned the knob back slightly and the Straton leveled
out. He looked at the magnetic compass and saw that he was on a slightly different heading of 330 degrees. He turned the knob
again to put the proper reading under the cursor, and the airplane rolled back to its original heading of 325 degrees.

He sat back. His hands were trembling and his heart was beating faster. He took a few seconds to calm himself. He considered
trying the radios again but decided that they were definitely malfunctioning. Psychologically, it wasn’t good to have another
failure with them, and he didn’t want to cultivate a dependence on them.
The hell with the radios.
If he was going to fly the Straton, he was going to have to do it himself, unless Stein came back with a licensed airline
pilot. Berry wasn’t counting too heavily on that.

Stein stood at the base of the stairs, peering into the dim, cavernous cabin. He’d felt the aircraft tilt and thought it would
crash. Then it leveled off. Berry was flying it. He relaxed a bit and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darker shadows
around him.

In the center of the first-class cabin, a few feet from the stairs, was the enclosed area that held the two lavatories. He
stepped to the side of the wall and looked back into the tourist section. With the section dividers gone, he could see how
huge the Straton was. Row upon row of seats, like a movie theater. Shafts of sunlight cut though the windows, and he could
see dust motes in them. A larger shaft of sunlight lay across the wide body from hole to hole, and the air rushing past the
holes created an odd noise. He noticed a mild and pleasant breeze in the cabin that helped to dissipate the smell of sick
people and sewage. The pressure and airflow had leveled out into a state of near equilibrium.

As if they had also reached an internal equilibrium, most of the passengers sat motionless. Their initial bursts of energy
had been spent, and they sat with their eyes shut and their faces slack and pasty white, many of them smeared with blood and
vomit. A dozen or so people were still making noises, and from the back of the aircraft somewhere came a terrible laugh. A
few men and women continued to move aimlessly up and down the aisles, in a sort of trance. It was a cross between an insane
asylum and a slaughterhouse.
How,
thought Stein, who was a religious man,
could God permit this to happen?
Why did God give man the ability to reach this high into the heavens and then desert them all like this? And why was he spared?
Was
he spared?

He searched the faces of the people closest to him. None of them offered even the slightest promise of normality. He took
a breath and stepped a few feet up the aisle. He forced himself to look at the four center-row seats where his family sat.
The two girls, Debbie and Susan, were smiling at him with blood-covered mouths. His wife seemed not to notice him at all.
He called her name. “Miriam. Miriam!” She didn’t look up, but a lot of other people did.

Stein realized that the noise had made them active. He remained motionless, then glanced back at his wife and daughters. Tears
came to his eyes. He stepped back and leaned against the bulkhead of the lavatory. He thought he was going to pass out, and
he took several deep breaths. His mind cleared and he stood up straight. He knew there was no way he would walk the length
of the aircraft. He’d just wait five minutes and go back. He’d lead his family up the stairs, too.

A peculiar sensation, a mild vibration, began to inch into his awareness. He turned and laid a hand against the bulkhead.
The vibration was coming from inside the enclosure, and it was getting stronger. It was the rhythmic hum of a slow-turning
electric motor. He remembered that there was a galley elevator adjacent to the lavatories. He quickly went around to the galley
opening on the other side of the enclosure. He looked in at a small metal door. The motor stopped. He took a step back as
the handle rotated. The door opened.

Stein stood face-to-face with two women. Flight attendants. One tall brunette, the other Oriental. They were huddled close
together in the small elevator. He could see pure terror on their faces. Their eyes were red and watery, and traces of smeared
vomit clung to their blue jackets? “Are you all right?” Stein asked. “Can you . . . understand me?”

“Who are you?” asked the brunette flight attendant. “What happened? Is everything okay?”

Stein took a deep breath to get his voice under control and replied, “There’s been an accident. Holes in the airplane. We
lost pressure. A few of us were trapped in the lavatories. The lavatory doors held the air pressure,” Stein said, remembering
Berry’s words. “I guess where you were held its air pressure, too.”

The brunette flight attendant said, “We were in the lower galley.”

The Oriental girl asked, “Did a door open?”

“No. A bomb.”

“Oh, God!”

Sharon Crandall stepped out of the elevator and brushed by Stein. She turned and looked down the length of the cabins. “Oh
my God, oh no! Barbara! Barbara!”

Barbara Yoshiro came quickly out of the elevator and stood behind Crandall. She screamed, a long primal scream that died in
her throat as she blacked out and collapsed into Stein’s arms.

Sharon Crandall put her hands over her face and took a series of short breaths. She turned quickly toward Stein. “The pilots.
The pilots!”

“Dead. Well . . . unconscious. But there’s a passenger who’s a pilot. Come on. We have to get out of here.”

“What’s happened to these
people?’

“Brain damage. . . . Oxygen loss. They might get violent. Come on!”

A dozen passengers began walking up the aisles toward them. A few more passengers near them tried to stand, but their seat
belts held them down. But through trial and error, or because of some vague recollection, some people were beginning to unfasten
their belts and stand up. A few of them moved into the aisles. A tall man stood up right next to Stein.

Stein was becoming frightened. “Go ahead! Go first!”

Sharon Crandall nodded and moved quickly up the stairway. Stein dragged Barbara Yoshiro toward the stairway. A male passenger
suddenly stood in his seat and stepped into the open area in front of the staircase. With his free hand, Stein straight-armed
him and the man spun away, wobbling like a malfunctioning gyroscope.

Stein, dragging the unconscious flight attendant, took the stairs slowly. Someone was behind him. A hand grabbed his ankle.
He kicked loose and moved faster up the spiral stairs, almost knocking Crandall over as he reached the top. He laid Barbara
Yoshiro on the carpet and slumped over the rail. A half-dozen grotesque faces stared up at him. He thought he saw the top
of his wife’s head, but he couldn’t be sure. His breathing was heavy and his heart raced wildly in his chest. “Get away. Go
away!”

Sharon Crandall looked around the lounge. “Oh my God!”

Stein stood by the staircase and wrapped the belt around his hand. “I’ll stay here. Go into the cockpit.”

Berry looked over his shoulder into the lounge. “Come in here!”

But Sharon Crandall’s attention was focused on the flight attendant sitting on the carpet with her legs spread out. “Terri!”
She ran over to the girl and knelt beside her. “Are you okay? Terri?”

Terri O’Neil opened her eyes wide and looked toward where the sound had come from. It was an involuntary response to the auditory
stimulus. Her rational mind had been erased by the thin air at 62,000 feet. The sight of Sharon Crandall’s face meant nothing
to her. The memory of the hundreds of hours they had flown together had evaporated from her brain like water from a boiling
kettle.