Page 125 of Just Come Over
They were nearly at the runway—he could see the black tarmac, the whirling red lights of emergency vehicles reflected in the wet surface—when the plane exploded.
Zora only remembered a few things, afterwards, about that wait.
The hush amongst the group of people huddled in the bare room, punctuated by the wail of a baby, the soft sobbing of an older Asian lady, a scarf over her hair, and her husband’s arm around her. A child on the plane, Zora guessed. Her grandchildren, maybe.
The pattern of the floor tiles, a curving gray shape like the neck of a dragon, and how she’d pointed it out to the kids. “Look,” she told Casey, tracing the shape. “It’s a dragon. It’s an omen.”
“There’s no such thing as omens,” Isaiah said.
“Yes, there are,” Casey said.
“You don’t even know what omens are,” Isaiah said.
“They’re good things,” Casey said. “Like my pendant. My dad says it’s him holding me, and the part at the inside is me being strong. That’s like an omen. It says he’s very strong. And yours is not being scared.”
“No,” Zora said, “it’s not about not being scared. It’s about being scared, and holding strong anyway. We’re going to sit here, and we can feel scared, but we can hold hands anyway. We can believe.”
“I believe,” Casey said.
“Close your eyes,” Zora said. There was too much crying around them, too many clasped hands at mouths. “Say it.I believe. I believe.”
“I believe,” Casey said, scrunching her eyes shut. She was crying again, her skinny chest heaving, but she was saying it. Isaiah still had hold of her hand, and his mouth was moving silently.
Zora held both of them and thought the words.
Rhys. Come on. You can do it. Come on.
When the speaker crackled into life again, everybody jumped, and there were some screams.
“The plane is on the ground,” the disembodied voice said. “Passengers have been evacuated.”
A cheer went up all around them, and Zora looked at her hands, shaking like leaves where they clasped the kids, and said, “I told you so. I told you. He’s coming home.”
The blast threw Rhys forward, and he hit the runway hard, tucking and rolling like he knew how, because he did. Scrape of palm and face on tarmac, a pain you wouldn’t feel until later, and a bloom of heat on his back. Leaping to his feet and looking around. Nico, staggering up in front of him, and other shapes. Marko and Kors and Iain, Finn, and the final two flight attendants. All of them moving ahead without a word to join the crocodile of wet passengers, shivering with shock and cold, stumbling in bare feet, jandals lost in the scramble from the plane, into puddles and out of them again, directed by workers in fluorescent vests holding signal beacons. Heading toward the bright twin lights that pierced the gloom.
Buses. They’d sent buses, a whole fleet of them. Airport shuttles, their drivers standing outside, anoraks streaming with water, yellow vests on top, waving their arms, directing the final group onward. To the last bus.
Hand over hand again, clutching seat backs, nodding to familiar faces. All rugby players here, his forwards, his nines and tens, who’d got everybody away from the plane and onto the runway, doing their roles. Them, and the flight attendants. A commotion behind Rhys, and he turned to see the pilot and co-pilot, their hats gone, their faces muddy, a red graze on the older man’s cheek oozing blood, mixing with the rainwater.
They’d made it, too, and nobody could have been left behind. Surely, nobody would have got past his team.
He found his seat beside Finn, shook his hand, lifted his jacket to wipe blood from his face, and tried not to let any of it out.
Nearly there. A few minutes more.
“Mate.” Finn had a hand on his shoulder. “We made it.” He was standing to shake hands with the pilots, and Rhys did the same, feeling the sting on his grazed palm and fingertips only vaguely, like they belonged to somebody else. At the front of the bus, the driver leaped up the stairs, put the vehicle in gear, and rumbled forward. Driving up the runway, then, following the other buses to the terminal.
Rhys looked behind him. A glow out the rear window that was a 777 burning to the metal, the fuselage filled with toxic smoke. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and tried not to shake. Adrenaline, bleeding off. Absolutely normal.
Out of the bus, ten minutes later, into a sea of flashing red lights. Back into the rain, then through a door, down a corridor, into a room. Official faces, official voices. A woman checking names against a manifest. A man assessing people for injury, elderly people being deposited in wheelchairs, putting an older bloke onto a gurney and wheeling him off fast. Heart, maybe. Kids crying, everybody shaking. Two women handing out blankets, and the damp chill trying to get through to your bones as shock set in.
Five more minutes. You could always do five more minutes. Rhys gave his name, collected his blanket, suffered the cut on his face to be cleaned and closed with butterfly bandages, and brushed off anything else with, “I’m all good. No worries.” Then raised his voice, waved his arm, and called out, “Blues! Over here! Let’s go!”
Time to get them together. Time to count heads, and make sure everybody was accounted for. Time to check everybody’s mental and physical state and settle the nerves. Time to be the coach.
When the first person jumped up and shouted the news out, holding the phone up in his hand, saying, “They’re here! They made it! Being held while they do counts and process them, but they’re here!” Zora closed her eyes and held the kids tighter. When the tenth and the twentieth and the fiftieth texts came, half the room was standing up. And still, she hadn’t heard anything.
The first thing she got was buzz. Not the buzz of her cell phone. Buzz around her. “They’re coming. They’ve let the team go. They’re coming.” Heads turning toward the door, bodies shifting. Everybody watching.
