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Chapter 11
He awoke to find that the controllers were serving food. He had no idea of what time it really was, or where in the world he was. He started to take off his sunglasses, wondering why he had them on in the first place, only to quickly replace them back over his eyes. The sleep had made him forget just how bright it was on the plane. His mouth had that dry, stale taste that always seemed to follow sleep, and he would be glad of any drink that came with the food.
When a controller brought his food to him, he looked at it in a state of amazement. This was no ordinary airline meal, but he remembered, this was no ordinary flight. The first thing no noticed was the tray. No miniscule plastic effort, it was a full sized metal tray, with large handles, like the kind of tray you saw in movies when kids struggled to bring breakfast in bed to their mothers on mother’s day. Not only that, but it was the perfect fit across the arms of his seat, and when he put it down he felt a slight pull on it, as some magnetic force held it firmly in place.
What was on the tray was even more amazing. To the left sat a large plate, with what looked to be a large well done T-bone steak, thick fries, and onion rings, and fresh from whatever they had been cooked in, as he could see the steam rising from the food. Alongside were a number of sachets of various condiments, all of which would compliment the meal. On the right side of the tray sat a plate with a large piece of apple pie, and again, steam was rising from it, and next to it sat a jug of custard, with a lid on it. Then in the corner sat a twenty ounce bottle of Pepsi. He doubted whether he could have come up with a better selection if he had taken the time to choose what he wanted before hand.
A brief look around told him that people had different meals, and therefore told him that each passenger had been catered for separately. It was probably based on information that had been extracted from them some five years before, or even from being observed over time by unseen watchers. The strange thing was that he wasn’t surprised by that. It was just another part of the awesome planning that had gone into this exercise.
His mind came back to the present and he started on the food and drink, which was just as good as it looked. In what seemed like just a couple of minutes he finished off the meal and sat back sipping from his bottle of Pepsi. He noticed a couple of controllers, sat on fold down chairs, eating what seemed to be regulation airplane food, off grey plastic trays, and he managed to suppress a laugh. It made him feel strangely good, that even though they were in charge, they weren’t being treated as well as the passengers.
He sat there not really doing anything, just letting himself relax. Time slipped by, and what seemed quite soon, the controllers were coming round and collecting up the mainly empty trays. He kept the bottle of Pepsi, as there was still some in it, and there was no telling when there would be anything else to drink.
He sat there absent mindedly sipping his Pepsi, not really focusing on anything around him, or actually thinking about anything. He just sat in a semi fugue state on the edge of the void of nothingness, an odd sense of calm surrounding him, as if he was cocooned away from the rest of the world. But it seemed that nothing was going to let him be at rest, as he was jolted from his safe calm little world by a scream.
As he came back to reality it took a couple of seconds to figure out where the scream had come from. He had just about got his bearings when another scream arose, this time from behind him, somewhere to his right. He stood and quickly scanned the plane. It was not immediately obvious what had caused the screams, but the one thing he was expecting was to see the controllers rushing to deal with it. The only thing was, there were no controllers to be seen anywhere. In fact the only one he had seen was sat slumped in a fold down seat.
He moved over to where the second scream had come from, passing as he did so, a number of the other hostages, who looked to see who it was moving among them, and then looking away when they realised that it was him. He felt a slight rush of anger that the other hostages felt uncomfortable about him, and that they were reluctant to make eye contact with him. Did they feel that he was a trouble maker, and that by being associated with him, he might cause them additional problems? He reached the location of the scream, and felt his blood turn to ice. He could plainly see why there were such screams. On the floor in front of him lay two of the controllers, both obviously dead, with pools of blood and tissue emanating from their mouths. It looked as if some of their major organs had exploded and expelled themselves out of their mouths. The bloody tissue sat in a dark red pool, starkly contrasting with the brilliant white carpet in the kind of grisly scene that would often be portrayed on TV, in films and in books..
Even in the short time spent walking over to, and taking in the scene, more screams had been raised, and he quickly moved around the plane taking in the devastation in a surprisingly calm manner. It seemed that everywhere he looked, there was a controller, dead, and in the majority of cases with the same pool of blood and tissue coming from their mouths. The screams had turned hysterical, and those that weren’t screaming were sat motionless, stunned, as if unable to take in the scenes around them. He noticed that no one else had even left their seats, and felt a strange sense of detachment from the rest of the hostages, as if he was the only sane person in a world gone mad. In the few seconds he stood there in the midst of the mayhem, he came to the conclusion that the controllers musts have been drugged or poisoned, and he thought back to their uniform plastic trays of food that had amused him at the time.
If they had been poisoned, it was a scary proposition. They had all been working for the man behind this whole enterprise, and they had obviously reached the end of their usefulness, and therefore had been terminated. If this is what happened to the staff, what on earth was going to happen to him, and the rest of the hostages.
His musings were disturbed by a sudden jolt by the plane. With the peace and quiet, the blindingly bright light, and the smoothness of the journey so far, it was almost possible to forget that they were even on a plane. He wondered what caused the jolt, and a small degree of panic kicked in when he jumped to his conclusion, the pilots had been poisoned as well. He stood for a moment taking in the dimensions of the insides of the plane, working out the direction of the front of the plane, and therefore the cockpit. He headed off in that direction and when he got to the front of the passenger section he started the search for the door to the cockpit. With everything being white on white, it took a couple of minutes before he found the carefully disguised handle.
He turned the handle and pushed the door, it opened a little way and then stopped. He pushed it again and it gave a little bit before stopping. He then shoulder barged the door and it opened a little bit more, another two charges at the door and there was a gap large enough for him to get through. Once he had squeezed through the door he found the reason for his difficulties. Just inside the door was the dead body of the co pilot. The pilot himself was dead at the controls, and a number of the controls and dials had the same blood and tissue on them. The plane itself seemed to be on some kind of automatic pilot, though he couldn’t be certain of that.
He looked around the cockpit for the radio and after a brief search found it. It was turned on, and he grabbed the microphone and spoke into it, well shouting would have been a more accurate description, “Mayday, Mayday, is there anybody out there listening?” He certainly wasn’t expecting the reply he received.