Nelson DeMille - Mayday

A coldness permeated the cabin and deepened the effects of shock and increased the effects of oxygen deprivation. Layers of condensed moisture formed along the ceiling, caused by the natural onboard water vapor that had suddenly been squeezed out by the reduced cabin pressure. The passengers stared up at these forming clouds, unsure of what they were or what they meant.

Someone yelled, “Fire!” and some people screamed, but most remained silent, accepting this new aberration, too numbed and disoriented to react. The cloud moved through the cabin like a sea fog rolling into a coastal city, casting an amorphous gray haze over the silent people. The cabin lights shone with an unearthly luminescence through the cloud. Eerie white ice particles began forming on the walls and windows. Near the starboard hole there was a brief snow flurry.

The moisture dissipated and the cabin atmosphere became dry except for the breath fog still exhaled by the living and the blood pouring from the open wounds of the dying. Blood and breath crystallized and formed frosts of red and white wherever they touched a freezing surface.

The outside sounds of the four Straton engines and the airflow past the gaping holes grew louder as the sound of the outward-rushing air lessened. These new noises filled the tourist cabin and drowned out the weak moans of the injured.

An uncounted number of people were dead or dying, and most of the rest were in shock. But it appeared that the worst of the ordeal was over. The aircraft was still flying and showed no visible signs of crashing. A strange calm, a pleasant languor simulating the effects of alcohol or tranquilizers, took hold of the passengers of Flight 52 as the first effects of oxygen deprivation began to register. There was still the pain behind the eyes, in the ears, but it did not seem so acute now.

Captain Stuart pressed his face against his console. Everything appeared dark in the cockpit, but he could see that the instrument lights were working. They shone like dying suns in a faraway galaxy, yet they seemed to emit no light beyond their surface. He read the two altimeters. Aircraft altitude was 51,000 feet, and descending. Cabin altitude was also 51,000 feet and descending now with the aircraft. The cabin differential pressure was zero. Inside was outside. Outside was inside.

The autopilot was taking the aircraft down, as fast as it could safely go, into the thicker atmosphere at 30,000 feet where they would find enough ambient pressure to make the oxygen masks workable. The rate of descent was racing against the physiological effects of anoxia-suffocation-and suffocation was winning. Stuart could see no way out of it. All the numbers-airspeed, altitude, rate of descent, rate of pressure loss-had been predictable. He knew the numbers before he had ever stepped into the cockpit of his first Straton. If only the damned hole had been smaller…

In the first-class lounge, an elderly man, John Thorndike, released his seat belt and quickly stood. A familiar sensation gripped his chest and he reached for a pillbox in his jacket. He paled, then turned blue as his heart gave out. He tottered for a moment, then fell forward across the cocktail table, landing on his wife, who tried to scream but couldn’t.

In the tourist and first-class cabins, older people began dying. Some slipped away noiselessly, others moaned their protests as hearts and lungs failed.

Throughout the aircraft, the old, then those with preexisting medical conditions began to die. Lungs collapsed, hearts gave up, thin blood vessels burst, and hemorrhaging blood poured from all the body orifices. Internally hemorrhaging blood collected in skulls and body cavities causing a more painful death. Pockets of pressurized air developed in body cavities, and people began clawing at their faces and torsos, irrationally trying to get at the source of the pain.

Everyone, young and old, weak and healthy, experienced hyperventilation, dizziness, blurred vision, and nausea. People choked on their vomit when oxygen-deprived brains and muscles failed to respond to the vomiting reflex. Skin colors went from white to blue. Bowels and bladders released, and if normal breathing and its adjunct, the sense of smell, had been possible, the cabin would have reeked.

More and more people had given up on the masks, but many people still tried desperately to suck from them, silently cursing what they thought was a failure of the system to provide oxygen. But the oxygen was there. The molecules poured out of the masks and swirled around their faces like a cruel joke, then dissipated into the low-pressure atmosphere.

In the freezing tourist cabin, where anyone who cared to look could see the holes, sunlight poured in through the south-facing port-side hold and starkly illuminated the rubble and carnage left in the wake of the missile.

By this time, everyone who was capable of forming thought knew they were suffocating. Yet outside, through the holes, they could see the unlimited sky, a cloudless deep blue, bright with sunlight. It looked balmy, enchanting, but it was as lethal as the bottom of the sea.

Captain Stuart was barely conscious. He moved his head to his right. McVary was still sitting upright, staring straight ahead. He turned his head and looked back at Stuart with an odd expression. Stuart turned his head away and looked over his shoulder. Fessler was still lying across his desk in a pool of blood. The bleeding seemed to have stopped.

Stuart’s fingers were numb and his limbs were heavy. His brain seemed detached from his body and he felt as though he were free-floating.

The cells in his brain were dying, but one shining thought, like a faraway landing beacon, was becoming increasingly clear in the darkening cockpit. Ever since he had begun to fly the Straton, the thought of high-altitude decompression had played on his mind and he had formulated a response to this possibility that was so ingrained that it had not yet died or become jumbled like everything else. He knew he must shut off the autopilot and push the aircraft into a sudden dive. It was all coming to him now. He had it. If they did not all die quickly and someone in the cockpit was still functioning when the aircraft descended into the breathable air, then that person might have enough intellect left to put the aircraft down somewhere. He looked at McVary again. Young. Good health. Sucking hard on his mask. Half his brain might survive. The idiot would save them from death and condemn them to that shadowy place, that place of perpetual eclipse, that state of being which is called half-life-speechless, blind, paralyzed, dim-witted. He thought of his wife and family. Oh, God. No.

Stuart reached his hand out toward the autopilot release button on the control wheel. No good. McVary might turn it on again. He pushed his hand toward his console and found what he wanted-the autopilot master switch, which was not duplicated on the copilot’s side. He pushed his hand over the guarded cover of the switch and rolled it back. His fingers found the small toggle.

He hesitated. The instinct for survival-any kind of survival-began overtaking his fading intellect. He had to act quickly. Quickly! Act what? He tried to remember what he was supposed to act on, then remembered for a flash of a second and tugged on the switch. It held fast. He recalled clearly that the solenoid was designed to require a good deal of force to shut down the auto… auto what? What?

Captain Alan Stuart sat back in his seat and stared out the windshield. He frowned. He had a headache. Something was bothering him. Coffee. Brazil. He had to go to Brazil for coffee. He smiled. A small trickle of saliva ran down his chin.

The automatic pilot continued to steer the Straton 797 through its programmed emergency descent. Its electronic memory bank and preset responses were in no way affected by the oxygen deprivation. Never once did it consider the effects of anoxia on its human charges. It was true that one young creator of this autopilot had suggested once that a sudden and complete decompression at altitudes of over 50,000 feet should induce a shutdown of the autopilot. But that young man no longer designed autopilots and his “self-destruct response,” as the Straton executives had labeled it, was not part of the autopilot’s repertoire. The autopilot could and would descend to 11,000 feet where the air was breathable and warmer, and would continue piloting the Straton on its flight path to Tokyo. It could do that and more. The thing it could not do was land the plane, not without additional inputs from the crew.