Emmy Laybourne - Sky on Fire

‘No!’ she protested. ‘We don’t even know where this plane is going!’

‘We’ll find you,’ I told her. ‘I swear it! I swear to you we’ll find you!’

She crushed me to her in a hug. Then she hugged Niko, too.

‘Don’t let this be the last time I see you,’ she said to me.

‘I won’t,’ I answered.

Sahalia turned to Niko and hugged him tight.

‘Thank you,’ she said to him. ‘I’m sorry for what a jerk I was sometimes. You saved my life. You saved it a dozen times. That’s the truth.’

Then she turned to Max and Ulysses. They were still messing around with the wheelchair.

‘Come on, boys, it’s time for us to get on the plane.’

She pushed Max’s chair forward, edging through the people in front of her.

Ulysses looked back at us, confused at why we weren’t coming, and I heard Max holler, ‘Wait! What?’

‘Come on,’ Niko told me, and we started running.

PAYTON LOOKED UP AT Astrid. Hi mouth fell open and he was shocked. I used that moment to get my hand on his hand, on the gun. I pushed the gun and his hand away from me. And then Payton looked back down at me and snarled.

Our hands were both on the gun and I was flat on my back on the table. I got my leg up and kicked him, as hard as I could, and I held on tight to the gun.

And I shot, as he stumbled back, and it hit him.

I didn’t mean to and I did mean to and I shot him right in the chest.

Payton fell to the floor. His mouth was open and he was looking at me with a horrible expression on his face.

An expression of confusion.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Jimmy screamed. ‘You killed him!’

Jimmy backed away from me.

Astrid turned the chainsaw off.

I sat up. My hands shaking. I had just shot Payton.

Caroline and Henry started shrieking. I didn’t want them to see Payton. I didn’t want them to have seen me shoot him but I couldn’t take it back. His blood was pooling out around him.

I couldn’t stop looking at him.

‘Hey!’ Astrid said. I jerked my head away to look at her.

‘You saved us. Remember that.’

‘Oh, Dean!’ Caroline cried. I stumbled toward them. She and Henry came forward and hugged me.

The twins talked at the same time, asking me if I was okay and telling me how scared they had been and asking if Payton was really dead.

Jake groaned from where he lay on the floor.

Astrid took a step forward towards him, but Jimmy thought she was coming for him.

‘Please, p-p-please,’ he begged. ‘Don’t kill me.’

‘I have a better idea,’ said Chloe, stepping out from behind Astrid.

She stomped over to the juice and held up the bottle.

‘Drink!’

‘I don’t want to die!’ Jimmy sobbed.

‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ Chloe snapped, ‘it’s not poison in there. Just sleeping pills.’

Jimmy Doll Hands brought the bottle to his lips and drank it.

‘All of it,’ Astrid said.

And so he chugged it.

‘What should I do with this one?’ Astrid said with contempt.

She still had Anna by the hair.

‘Make her drink!’ Chloe snarled.

‘No,’ I said. ‘We’ll just tie her up.’

‘She should drink, the little rat!’

‘For Christ’s sake, I don’t know the dosage!’ I shouted.

‘We’ll just tie her up!’

Chloe looked chastened.

‘This isn’t a game,’ I yelled. ‘These are people’s lives.’

And a stupid sob came up in my chest, just as Jimmy Doll Hands sank to the floor.

Anna said nothing as we tied her hands. Not even ‘Thank you for not drugging me.’ It was almost like we were boring her. She just wandered over to Payton and stood staring down at him.

I felt bad for her. The girl was clearly psychotic.

After Anna’s hands were bound, Astrid and I tried to wake up Jake.

He obviously had retained some of the sleeping pill ‘juice’ before he puked.

‘I know! I know!’ Henry volunteered. ‘When our mom needs to stay awake when she’s driving she has an energy drink!’

‘Sure, find one,’ I said.

It was okay. We had time to try it, even if it was a dumb, little kid kind of a solution.

The cadets would sleep for at least eight hours. We were out of danger. But we did have to figure out what to do with them.

Astrid sat, looking at Jake’s face.

She was studying it. She must have felt me looking at her, because she looked up.

‘That was very brave, Dean,’ she said to me.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I was scared.’

‘That doesn’t mean it wasn’t brave,’ she said.

The thought of Payton’s face after I’d shot him didn’t make me feel brave at all. It made me want to throw up. It made me feel low and dirty and ashamed.

‘What do we do now? What do we do with them?’ I asked her.

Henry and Caroline came back with the drink.

I opened Jake’s mouth and tried to pour the contents of the little vial in.

Jake choked and sputtered. I think it was more the sensation of drowning that woke him than the ingredients of the drink, but who cared.

‘I say we drag them up onto the roof and lock them out,’ Astrid said. ‘But we keep their guns.’

‘RESTRICTED AREA, BOYS!’ A soldier said, barring us from getting on the military shuttle.

‘Our mom’s in the Air Force,’ Niko lied. ‘She told us to come and find her if Operation Phoenix was a go!’

‘Oh, uh, okay,’ the soldier grumbled, letting us past.

We slipped onto the shuttle and the doors closed right behind us.

The soldiers around us paid no attention to us. Some of them were Air Force, some were Army. Some were Marines, I guess. It was chaotic.

The shuttle opened up into the C terminal. They had it dedicated to military flights.

Through the big glass bays, where you’d usually see a Jet Blue 757, ready to take people to NY or Atlanta or wherever, there were military jets, helicopters in all different models, and giant Airbuses painted combat colours. At several of the gates, they had small decontamination tents. I guess if anyone needed to come back in, they got sprayed down here. There were also bins with clothing and gear near the entrances from the decontamination tents.

Pilots and soldiers were swarming purposefully every which way. Many were wearing flight suits with air masks. Niko and I were the only two people who didn’t seem to know exactly where we were supposed to go.

‘Hey!’ said a voice, headed for us.

‘Come on,’ Niko said, and we walked as fast as we could away from whoever it was who had noticed us.

‘You kids!’

We searched frantically for any sign of Mrs Wooly.

‘You’re Wooly’s kids!’

We turned then.

It was Goldsmith, the medic.

‘What are you guys doing here? I thought Wooly was putting you on a plane!’

‘We need to find her,’ I told him.

‘Now is not the time!’ he said. ‘They moved the whole operation up.’

‘It’s life or death,’ Niko pleaded, grabbing his arm. ‘Please, help us! Do you know where she is?’

‘Last I saw she was near gate 33.’ Goldsmith pointed. ‘You better hurry!’

We had a direction now and we ran, darting into the stream of pilots and soldiers.

‘There!’ Niko said, pointing.

We came close and heard her scolding, ‘Christopher Caldwell, I’ve known you since you were a kid! You’re gonna get in that chopper and you’re gonna run me over there!’

‘No, Wooly. I said no, for God’s sake. I got orders. Orders!’

‘They’re a bunch of kids, Caldwell, and they’re gonna be burned to a crisp. A bunch of kids you could save. Think about it. They’ll give you a medal!’