Lone Star Renegades Read online

  Both Collin and DiMaggio nodded.

  “Stay back.” He swung again, and then again a dozen or two more times. Slowly, but measurably, progress was made and the aluminum skin of the jetliner opened into a two-foot by three-foot-wide opening. When Bubba finally stopped, he was sopping with sweat. His dark, nearly black skin glistened in the dim light. “That should do it. Even I can squeeze through that.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty good,” Collin answered.

  Bubba glanced behind him and saw a crowd watching. He tossed the pipe out of the way and stood back.

  Darren moved up and stood over the ragged, gaping hole. “Can’t see a thing down there. Smells just as bad, though.”

  Collin suddenly remembered the cell phone. He dug through his rucksack and came out with the new iPhone 6 he’d found. The previous user had evidently disabled the auto-lock feature that would require a pass code, and the cell phone came alive in his hand. He thumbed through several screens of apps. “Here we go.” He tapped the screen and the flashlight feature came alive with a beam of bright white light.

  “That’ll work; here, hand it over,” Darren said, holding out his hand expectantly.

  Collin ignored him and positioned himself over the opening. He reached his arm and the iPhone down into the blackness. Darren, Bubba, and DiMaggio brought their faces down close to Collin’s as they peered together into the jetliner.

  “I think that’s the kitchen area,” DiMaggio said.

  “What was your first clue … the banks of coffee pots or the food cart?” Bubba asked.

  Collin pulled his arm back and handed the phone to DiMaggio. “Hold this for a sec.”

  Before anyone could say anything, Collin was already lowering himself, legs first, into the hole.

  Chapter 5

  What Collin noticed first was the airliner was lying upright. The second thing he noticed was that it was empty—at least empty of passengers. He’d assumed the spaceship had plucked the jet right out of the air, but it was just as conceivable it had been parked on a Dallas/Fort Worth Airport runway.

  The ceiling, the outer hull of the plane, was crushed inward several feet from the weight of the passenger railcar that lay perpendicular across this section of the jet. Leaving the kitchen zone, which was in the rear of the plane, he moved into the main cabin—coach. He discovered the plane was a wide-body Boeing 777-328 from a laminated information card protruding up from a seat pocket. The light from his iPhone app cast long shadows across the expansive compartment.

  Others were now dropping into the plane’s kitchen compartment. Tina McBride and Humphrey entered the main cabin behind Collin, but entered it down a different aisle.

  “Tight!” Tina said. “Like this is the biggest jet in the world … right?” She stopped and counted the seats with a bobbing index finger. “Three seats on each side and four in the middle. And look at the little built-in TVs.” The waif-sized cheerleader had the high-pitched voice of a cartoon character, which had garnered her the nickname Tink, for Tinkerbell, by all her friends. Collin appraised the chipper teen with amazement … was she totally oblivious to the fact they were all perilously close to living the last few hours, maybe only minutes, of their young lives?

  As more and more students filed in, more cellphone flashlights illuminated the cabin. Apparently, a number of them had been found back in the railcars. Kids started to plop down onto the plush leather seats.

  Darren appeared from the kitchen, with Lydia trailing behind holding on to his hand. “Okay, Frost …” he said, “I have to give it to you … this’ll be a much better crib than the bus.”

  Collin didn’t say anything as he continued up the aisle. He passed by a center grouping of lavatories and then into a similar-sized seating compartment he guessed was business class. He held out his hands and let them bounce off opposite headrests as he moved down the aisle. Up ahead was a bulkhead, with a closed curtain. He passed through it and whistled. Nice! He’d entered first class. Here, the thirty or forty seats were significantly larger and were capable of extending into bed-like configurations. He continued on, passing another bulkhead. What’s this? Apparently he’d been wrong; here was another, smaller, more intimate compartment, with eight extra-large, even plushier seats. Upper first class?

  He was finally getting to the front of the plane. The forward section was a double-decker affair: The first class compartment and the cockpit were located on the upper level. Collin found the stairway and made his way to the upper section. Up here, the twenty or thirty first class seats were more luxurious than those on the rest of the plane. The second galley, at the farthest back section of the compartment, was big and well appointed.

  He continued forward. Seeing that the cockpit door was closed was initially discouraging. Collin surmised breaking it down wouldn’t be a small feat—not since 9/11 and the FAA’s requirement for installing more strictly reinforced security measures.

  Trying the latch anyway, he was surprised when the door opened right up. Standing inside the doorway into the ultra-advanced-looking cockpit, he moved his cellphone light and saw four cockpit crew seats, two up front, two behind, and the myriad of dials and controls. So the 777 was significantly different from the 747! It had been a while since he’d played Flight Academy on his Xbox. He’d gotten fairly proficient at takeoffs and landings on the Boeing 747. He knew well, at least on the 747-jetliner, the instrumentation—where everything was located. He wasn’t so sure he’d be able to make heads or tails, though, out of what he was seeing here.

  One thing he was sure of—there had to be a manual—a binder with locations of things and basic instructions. It was a requirement on all passenger and probably other commercial jets as well. There you are. He found the two-inch-thick binder in a shelf next to the rear seat to his right.

  Binder in hand, he took a seat in the left-hand pilot’s chair and moved the light over the dashboard controls. There were so many more switches and dials here that he had no idea what some of them were used for. Collin opened the binder and started reading.

  “What are you doing?”

  Startled, Collin spun to see Lydia standing at the doorway.

  “Um … trying to find auxiliary power unit switches. Maybe we can get some lights on. We’ll also need power for the oxygen … at least, I think we will.”

  Lydia took a seat to his right, in the co-pilot’s seat, and leaned forward. She had her own cellphone flashlight on and was moving it across her side of the control panel.

  Collin realized he’d let his eyes linger on her face a bit too long and resumed his own search.

  “Wait … is this it? It says battery right here.”

  Collin leaned to his right, bringing his face within several inches of hers. Sure enough, there was a small panel—about eight inches wide by eleven inches long. There was a small button labeled Battery, and next to that a three-position APU dial with the words: OFF / ON / START. Beneath that were a half-dozen other switches: SECONDARY EXT POWER … PRIMARY EXT POWER … L MAIN … L XFER … R XFER … R MAIN.

  Collin inspected the panel. When he looked back at Lydia he saw she was staring at him. This was the closest he’d ever been to her. He noticed she had a dusting of faint freckles across the bridge of her small, upturned nose … and she had the most perfect lips—lips that continually expressed her thoughts and emotions. He saw the corners of them turn slightly upward.

  “Hello? Collin … is that what you’re looking for?”

  “Oh, yeah … I think so.” He brought his attention back to the panel. He turned the spring-loaded switch from OFF all the way over to START. It was faint, but there was a slight vibration—one he knew was caused by a small turbine engine firing up in the tail section. “With this up you can provide all electrical power to the plane and pneumatic air for pressurization and air-conditioning. As long as there’s enough fuel, the batteries will charge and we’ll have power … probably for a few days.” He ensured the BATTERY switch was flipped up.

  �
��You really are smart. I mean … we’re the same age and I don’t know anything about stuff like this.”

  Collin felt his face flush. “Okay, now we need to find the switch where the cabin lights are controlled.”

  They both pointed to the panel at the same time. “Here it is,” they said in unison.

  Under the panel heading PASS SIGNS, a grouping of switches and dials, including those marked NO SMOKING … SEAT BELTS, Collin found the dial for OVHD/CB. He turned the dial and the cockpit lights came on.

  “You did it!” Lydia said excitedly.

  Collin found another tiny switch labeled OXYGEN and ensured that was flipped on as well. “I think that will do it … for now, anyway,” Collin said self-consciously. “The rear cabin lights are controlled from the various flight attendant stations.”

  “I can do that,” Lydia said. She got up from her seat and patted Collin on the shoulder. “You rock, Collin.” With that, she left the cockpit. Collin took one more look at the controls and stood to leave. He left the cockpit and entered the now-illuminated upstairs first class section. The group had all moved forward; some kids were stretched out on the lounge-like seats. Collin arrived in time to see Darren pull Lydia down onto his lap and envelop her in his arms. Collin averted his eyes.

  “And the Frost man comes through again,” Darren said with a broad smile. “Hey, any way to get the heat cookin’ in here?” he added. “Is it only me or has the temperature dropped like twenty degrees since we arrived?”

  First class was feeling claustrophobic with the twenty-four of them all huddled into the smallest one of the four passenger cabins. Collin chewed the inside of his lip. “I think the plane will start warming up now that the auxiliary power unit is going.”

  “Dude, I have no idea what you just said. But if it means we’ll be toasty soon … I’m down with that,” Darren said optimistically.

  DiMaggio entered the cabin with his arms piled high with folded blankets. He dropped them onto an open seat. “Help yourselves.”

  “Hop off, sweet cheeks,” Darren said, pushing Lydia off his lap. “I need to drop a major deuce. Hey Frost, what’s the story with the bathrooms? You got all the shitters operational in here? Or maybe you gotta go flip some more switches for that?” Darren sat forward on his seat with his eyebrows raised.

  All eyes turned to Collin. “I don’t know. I’m no expert on how the toilets work. They’ll probably work, though.”

  The girls looked first at Darren and then at each other, disgust registering on each face.

  All of a sudden the jetliner abruptly and violently shook. Anyone standing was thrown to the floor. Like being immersed suddenly into ice-cold water, the temperature plummeted to well below freezing in a matter of seconds.

  Collin tried to stand only to find himself suddenly struggling for breath. Shit. The very thing he’d been worried about was happening. The spaceship’s vast aperture must have opened—perhaps their oxygenated air was now venting out to open space. Collin saw everyone’s eyes go wide as hands grabbed for throats—mouths opened and closed, like fish out of water—all gasping, struggling to inhale.

  Bubba, who’d made it briefly to his knees, toppled over sideways, unconscious.

  The cold was absolute. Collin felt his life slipping away. As oxygen left the big Boeing 777-328, wide-body jetliner, everything went quiet. As the effects of suffocation reduced Collin’s eyesight into an ever-narrowing tunnel-effect, he looked about and found Lydia’s still form sprawled on the aisle carpeting, on the other side of the cabin.

  Chapter 6

  The jetliner jerked violently and all at once oxygen masks dropped from overhead panels around the cabin. Too little too late, Collin thought. He knew he was dying. Feeling detached from his own body he was already resigned that he was falling away … slipping deeper and deeper into the void.

  * * *

  He awoke, lying back in a seat. A mask was strapped securely over his nose and mouth. A blanket was spread across his body. As awareness of his surroundings returned, Collin noticed the temperature in the cabin wasn’t nearly as frigid. It was bearable. He tried to sit forward but his head throbbed to the point he had to lean back again.

  Turning his head, he saw he was still in the upper first class section. Someone had gotten him onto a seat. Collin pulled the mask away from his face and tested the air. He could breathe normally.

  DiMaggio and Tink, standing and talking to each other, were near the forward bulkhead.

  “What happened?” Collin asked them, his throat dry and raspy-sounding.

  DiMaggio crossed in front of two center aisle seats and knelt down next to Collin. “The oxygen masks are what happened. Thanks to you. A few of us got to them just in time.”

  Collin noticed others lying prone throughout the cabin; most still had oxygen masks over their mouths and looked unconscious. “How did you move them? Most of these guys are huge,” Collin asked, eyeing little Tink, who’d joined DiMaggio’s side.

  “Believe it or not, it was Humph. The guy did almost all the heavy lifting … although moving Bubba took both of us to get him up into a seat.”

  “And there’s air again?” Collin asked, slowly getting to his feet.

  “We were just talking about that. Just guessing, but we think the spaceship moved into space for a while … where it opened like it did when it sucked in half of Texas. After that, the ship must have come back down to Earth … maybe to suck up more metal.”

  “The air we’re breathing isn’t … right,” Tink said, scrunching up her nose.

  Collin noticed there was something funky about the air too. “Maybe the ship didn’t return to Earth. Maybe we’ve moved on to some other planet.”

  “That’s the other thing we were talking about. The constant screeching,” DiMaggio said, his eyes looking upward as if searching for something beyond the confines of the cabin.

  Before he could respond, Collin heard something. It was muffled and far-off sounding, but he definitely heard it too: a series of sounds that were a cross between a lion’s roar and the screech of a hawk.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Collin said. Maybe they really had stopped at another world. One thing was for sure … there were other survivors out there.

  “And I’m going to cap its ass if it comes anywhere near me.” Humphrey had entered the cabin and was brandishing a handgun Collin recognized as a Glock 19. His father owned the same model; Collin had fired it hundreds of times at the firing range—something he and his dad had done together on Saturday mornings.

  “Don’t point that thing at me,” Tink spat.

  “Where’d you get the gun, Humph?” Collin asked, eyeing the weapon warily.

  “Found it in some dead dude’s satchel in one of the railcars. And don’t call me that, Sticks.”

  “You know how to use it? It’s not a toy—”

  “You just don’t know when to shut up, Sticks. Any douchebag knows how to shoot a gun … you just point and pull the trigger.” Collin nearly jumped out of his skin when Humph suddenly fired off two rounds toward the back of the plane.

  Kids shot up in their seats while others rushed in from the other cabin.

  Bubba filled the bulkhead opening, looking ready to kill. “What’s all the mo-fo shootin’ about?!”

  Humph smiled and blew onto the end of the pistol. “There’s a new sheriff in town, folks. I’ve got us covered.”

  “And that’s two rounds lost that we might need. You’re truly an idiot, Humph,” Collin said, leaning forward—his right fist clenched so tight his knuckles looked white.

  Humph turned the gun toward Collin and everyone went quiet. Collin kept his eyes on Humphrey’s face—his arrogant, condescending smile; his brooding hate-filled eyes.

  “Bro … you need to put that piece away. Sticks is right. There’s something out there and you takin’ pot-shots in the plane is dumb-ass.” Bubba took a step forward, his towering hulk looking far more threatening than the gun held in Humphrey’s hand
.

  Humph continued to smile as he slid the Glock into the waistband at the back of his pants.

  “You might want to think about putting the safety on that weapon, Humph … unless you want to have two ass holes,” Collin said.

  Humphrey laughed it off while pulling the Glock free and setting the safety. He replaced it back into his waistband and smiled over at Bubba. He held a fist out in front of himself. “It’s put away. We cool, man?”

  Bubba hesitated and then reluctantly bumped the outstretched fist with his own. “Yeah … sure … we cool.”

  “Um … we need to eat,” Collin said, getting up out of the seat. “With auxiliary power going, we can start warming up some of the ready-made meals they offer folks in first class.”

  Collin entered the galley kitchen where three teen boys were leaning against the counter tops, blankets draped over their shoulders, and drinking from an assortment of little liquor bottles. Apparently someone’d said something funny because all three were laughing hysterically.

  “Hey, Frost, you come to party?” Clifford Bosh, the Lone Stars’ high-scoring wide receiver, asked, holding up a small, unopened Smirnoff bottle. The other two, Owen Platt and Garry Hurst—both running backs—let their laughter subside as they brought their attention to Collin.

  “Maybe later. Hey, Hurst, let me get by you. I think there’s some ready-made meals in that cart behind you.”

  Hurst used a forearm to slide his collection of still-unopened bottles down the countertop and took a possessive position there. Collin found the top handle on the recessed cart and gave it a pull. It shook but didn’t come free.

  “Wait, you gotta unlatch it, man,” Owen said, leaning over to the red latch mechanism at the top of the cart. Unsteady on his feet, he needed several tries before the lever finally turned sideways, out of the way.