her too far but hoping it’s not too late. The front door slams, feet running down the path. I hear the swing of the gate and the metallic clatter as it swings back into place, then the sound of trainers on tarmac growing fainter and fainter until they disappear altogether.
I listen for sounds within the house and hear only the house itself. The water pipes creaking; the gutters dripping as the snow melts; the low hum of the fridge.
Sophia stirs. She opens her eyes, still narrow from the swelling, and runs a tongue over her chapped lips. “Where’s Becca?”
“She’s gone.”
I pull at my handcuffs. Becca’s gone.
And nobody knows we’re here.
FORTY
PASSENGER 1G
I would be lying if I said I wanted to die. It would be more accurate to say that I was prepared to. I hoped the politicians would see that they had no alternative but to agree to our demands, the ticking clock of the fuel gauge sufficient to concentrate their minds. But it seems that for our government, a few hundred lives are disposable. An embarrassment, perhaps, but soon surpassed by more pressing matters. Bad news buried.
As for the others, you must see that I couldn’t have told them? They might have backed out or buckled midway through our preparations; they might have raised the alarm—unwittingly or otherwise—with tearful goodbyes to their loved ones. They might even have let something slip to a passenger, prompting the sort of knee-jerk reaction that might have caused us to crash-land in the ocean. Better for the passengers to believe there was a chance they could be saved.
—No one is going to die, I told the others when I outlined our plans. The government has to believe we’ll allow the plane to run out of fuel so they take our demands seriously. The passengers have to believe they will die in order for us to maintain control. But of course, that isn’t the plan!
It wasn’t a lie, technically speaking. That wasn’t the plan.
But nor was the one I gave them.
—Amazon will divert to a location deep in the Gibson Desert in Western Australia, I told them, where climate action comrades will be waiting with jeeps. We will evacuate the plane and disappear, leaving the passengers to be rescued. We will shed our assumed identities and escape undetected.
Had it been the real plan, it would have been torn to shreds. Escape detection? With half the Australian army deployed to surround us? But it wasn’t the real plan. It was pure fantasy, mine to embellish with whatever I needed to allay the concerns of my ever-faithful followers. Every problem they threw my way, I caught deftly, knocking back an answer that shut down their line of questioning.
—We’ll be climate heroes! Ganges posted. Much virtual cheering followed.
I doubt many of my disciples would have accompanied me in this mission had they known my true intentions. One or two, perhaps—the less mentally stable, the more fanatical environmentalists, but not the others. The others—Zambezi, certainly; Congo, for sure—were here for the new life they’d been promised.
I was fond of Congo. I found him during an open mic night at a comedy club organized in support of Greenpeace. The bar was busy and heckling was fierce, and by the time Congo had hauled his bulk onto the stage and got his breath back, he had already used two of his allotted five minutes. Laughter began to build. There was the inevitable chorus of, Who ate all the pies? as our comedian of the moment finally took the mic from the stand.
“Get a move on!” someone shouted.
His material was weak and his timing off, every joke punctuated by a wheezing cough. But he didn’t give up. And when the slow clapping started, he didn’t flush or stutter. Instead, he took a long, sweeping look around the room, dismissing them all with a loud, “Fuck you, you cunts. I could eat the lot of you and still have room for a kebab.” It got the loudest laugh of the evening.
I followed him to the taxi rank, marveling at his ability to put one foot in front of the other—albeit painfully slowly—when each thigh wrestled for space and his ankles bulged above his trainers. He bought a burger from a kiosk and took it into an alleyway, where he demolished it in three bites, all the time wiping away the tears that glistened in the streetlamp’s glow. I had never seen a man so miserable yet so brave.