The Pouakai Read online

  “Dual engine failure. Run the checklist,” I said.

  Brett stared at the instruments, as if he couldn’t understand what they were telling him.

  “Brett! Checklist! Now!”

  He grabbed the card and worked the items. I sucked in a deep breath, and tried to think, but the blue of the ocean below us seized my attention. We were going swimming.

  7.30pm

  The Chief came back to the shelter thirty minutes later. I sat in the same spot, trying to ignore the pain in my shoulder. Orange light from the sunset filtered through the blanket covering the opening to the shelter, casting a ruddy glow over the people inside. From outside came the sounds of wind in the coconut palms, and distant waves breaking over the reef.

  “Why are they here? What do they want?” the Chief asked, squatting next to me.

  I shook my head. “We really don’t know why. We don’t know what they eat, how they live, or where they really come from. All we know is that they are here, and they attack anything that moves; ships, planes, people. Whatever it is, they find a way to destroy it. They run through individual people with the long spear on the front of their bodies. Bigger things they can’t stab, like ships, they mass onto until it capsizes. Airplanes, they just fly into.”

  “They’re smart enough to know what to do?”

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it too smart when they usually die in their attacks, but we just don’t know for sure. It’s difficult to study them up close. Most scientists that have tried are dead. They’ve dissected the carcasses of a few dead Rocs, but don’t understand what they found. Maybe they’re intelligent, maybe not. Either way though, the Rocs have cut off the world’s oceans around the equator. We can’t ship oil, goods, people, or anything else across the Roc’s zone. We don’t know how to get around them.”

  “But you were flying through them, weren’t you?”

  “We were, but it’s dangerous, and not many people do it anymore. We are not an independent company now, but a division of the U.S. government. We get an armed escort. We’re more military than civilian now.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “Sydney, Australia. They’re hurting even more down there than we are in the northern hemisphere. Famine, drought, power and communications blackouts; Australia’s fighting to stay alive. Our flights are among the few contacts the South Pacific has with the rest of the world. That’s why we keep doing them.”

  “Is it enough?”

  I shook my head. “Probably not. Within a couple of years, things everywhere will simply fall apart. Some people say it will be the end of civilization. We just can’t live with the Rocs here on Earth. Nobody can.”

  The Chief looked around at the crowd in the shelter. Nearby, one of my passengers moaned quietly, blood seeping from bandages around her arm and legs.

  “We do,” he said

  “Excuse me?”

  “We live with them,” the Chief reiterated as he stood up. “Stay here. I will be back.”

  2.50pm

  The howl from our damaged engines sounded like a dying animal. We’d left the Rocs behind, but with both engines blown apart, we were gliding toward the ocean below.

  “Prepare for ditching,” I said. A panicked look crossed Brett’s eyes, but he flipped to the appropriate checklist, and started configuring the plane. My heart raced, and I gripped the control wheel with sweaty hands. Damn, damn, damn. Why did this have to happen now? Why didn’t I listen to Jennifer?

  I reached for the intercom to tell the steward to prep the passengers when something caught my eye. I looked over the glareshield, and my heart skipped a beat. Of course! I’d seen it a hundred times on this route, but hadn’t given it any thought until now. Nestled below the scattered cotton ball clouds appeared the verdant green and tan of a small island. Ditching in the open ocean with all these Rocs around meant certain death. If we could get onto that island though…

  I made up my mind instantly. “Brett, we’re going down there,” I said, pointing out the forward window. He looked out and his eyes widened.

  “Okay, okay.” He nodded rapidly.

  I called the back, and told them what to expect.

  “Hoku two,” I said, calling the remaining fighter. “You still with us?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “We’re going down on the island just a few miles ahead. See it?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You going to join us there?”

  “I guess so. I’m low on fuel, and there’s nowhere else for me to go. I’ll give you cover until you’re down, then pop out myself.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Good luck.”

  We were still at fifteen thousand feet as we crossed over the island. I started a turn to the left to remain over it, and get a good look at where I planned to touch down. It was an atoll, about seven miles long, two miles wide, shaped somewhat like a banana. A narrow lagoon took up the center of the island, with a heavily forested rim around it. When the weather was clear on previous trips, I remembered seeing a small village on the south side of the island. There wouldn’t be anyone alive there now.

  “I’ll come in from the west,” I told Brett and Jeff. “If we touch down on the land, the palm trees will rip the shit out of the airplane. I want to touch down on the lagoon, but I’ll try to slide up onto the beach so we don’t have to swim out of this thing.”

  They both nodded.

  “Are we ready?” I asked.

  “I think so,” Brett said. “We’re configured except for flaps. They’ll be slow to extend, so start early. I called oceanic control and told them what happened. They said they’d inform the military, but…”

  He didn’t have to say more. The Navy wouldn’t risk its ships to rescue a handful of survivors. The same went for the Air Force. We were on our own.

  7.40pm

  I struggled to my feet, leaning on the makeshift crutch they’d given me. The superficial cut on my right foot had been bandaged and when I put a little weight on it, and it seemed okay, so I left the crutch leaning against the corrugated metal wall of the shelter and limped across the room. The sandy floor made the going difficult, but not impossible. I went to our steward, Ken Cochran, who sat tending to one of our passengers.

  “How are you doing, Ken?” He looked up, a bandage across his left ear.

  “Not bad, I guess.” Kenny Sunshine, we sometimes called him; always the optimist. His spiky blonde hair still looked perfect too. That must have been some super-strength hair gel. “Guess I won’t be listening to my iPod any time soon,” he said with a grin, touching his bandaged ear. “Thanks for the good landing though.”

  I tried to smile, but it wasn’t much. “Sorry it wasn’t Sydney.”

  “Hey, no problem. It’s always been a fantasy of mine to be stranded on a tropical island. It really was a good landing too. We’re still alive, after all.”

  I wanted to say ‘Most of us are’, but couldn’t bring myself dampen his spirits. I gave him a pat on the back and straightened up again. Most of the injuries to our passengers were superficial. At least, those inflicted by the crash were.

  Next to Ken were two of our passengers, a man and wife, holding each other’s hands. I thought about Jennifer, and wondered what she was going through at this moment. She must have been told about our crash by now. Would she have been given any words of encouragement by the airline? Or would they have told her not to hold on to any hope? My heart cried out to her, but she couldn’t hear me now. In this day of effortless communication, we were cut off as completely as the ancient Polynesians had been on their long-distance canoe voyages. I felt trapped in the shelter. I needed to get outside and breathe. The confines of this rusty hut had become unbearable.

  The blanket over the doorway drifted inwards with the breeze. Outside, the sky had darkened, with a streak of orange resting on the western horizon. I walked toward the door, but was stopped a few feet short by local. Small but muscular, and not much more than a teenager, he wouldn’t let
me past.

  “No go outside,” he said.

  “I just need some fresh air,” I said, trying to keep my voice low.

  “No go. Pouakai out there. Wait for Chief.”

  “Pouakai?”

  “The new birds,” he explained. “The visitors.”

  The Rocs.

  I couldn’t fight my way past this athletic young man, and decided if he was worried about the Rocs, I should be too. What was the Chief doing out there, though? I turned to go back to my spot by the wall just as the Chief came through the doorway, moving as silent as a whisper.

  “Captain Boonie,” he said quietly. “It is time. Come with me.”

  3.00pm

  I stared ahead at the island and thought, it’s too damn small. I was used to seeing two miles of concrete runway on final approach, not a sparkling blue-green lagoon.

  “Five thousand feet, flaps full, ditching checklist complete,” said Brett.

  “Thanks,” I replied. “If you guys see anything you don’t like, let me know.”

  “I think that runway ahead looks a little too wet,” Jeff said wryly.

  Everything was as set as we could make it. It felt strange though; it had only been a few minutes since the impacts with the Rocs, yet it felt like an eternity. Whether it was cliché or not, I did see images of Jennifer, Josh and Kelly in my mind.

  “I love you Jennifer,” I said out loud for the sake of the cockpit voice recorder, in case the worst happened and the plane was someday recovered. Brett and Jeff both mumbled similar comments into their microphones.

  “Two thousand feet,” said Brett.

  The west end of the island flashed below us, a blur of palm trees, sand, and emerald coral reefs. Then we were over the lagoon. I aimed for the water along the south lagoon shore, next to the abandoned village. We were almost parallel to the southern shore of the lagoon, angled slightly toward the village ahead and to our right. If it all worked correctly, we’d slow down on the water and slide to a stop on the sandy shore. It’s not like they teach this kind of maneuver in flight school though. We might be as likely to end up a giant ball of twisted metal and fire in a few seconds.

  “Are we going short?” Jeff asked abruptly.

  “I don’t think so.” I wrestled with the plane. The gusty tradewinds made it difficult to keep the wings level. I didn’t want to hit the water with one wing down, as we might cartwheel. We had to hit flat, and slow.

  The electronic voice of the airplane took over. “Five hundred,” it said, relaying our altitude over the water. Small windblown wavelets stood out in my field of view, but the lagoon looked relatively flat. “Two hundred.” I started leveling our descent, trying to bleed off as much speed as possible before touching the water. “One hundred.” The shoreline near the village loomed directly ahead. We were coming in at a shallow angle to the beach. I didn’t want to hit the sand with too much speed, but didn’t want to land short and have to swim for it either. How fast would this thing decelerate? I had no idea.

  “Fifty, thirty, twenty, ten.”

  I leveled us over the lagoon, trying to slow some more.

  “Damn.” Without the landing gear out, the plane bled off speed slower than I’d expected. The beach raced toward us at a frightening clip.

  “Get it down, get it down!” Brett yelled.

  “Hang on.” I relaxed the control wheel just a bit. We were still doing 140 knots.

  Bang. I felt a jerk to the right as the engine on that side slapped the water. Instinctively, I stomped on the left rudder pedal, trying to straighten us out. Bang again, and we jerked to the left. The nose dropped with a sickening slam, and slapped the water. I yanked back on the control wheel to try to keep the nose up. With a brutal jolt, both engines dug into the water. I got jerked around violently in my harness, and it sounded like a bomb went off inside the plane, as everything not bolted down broke loose. I tried to hang on to the control wheel, but it was impossible. I flailed about like a rag doll, and felt an intense deceleration pulling on me as water grabbed at the plane. An explosion of blue gushed over the windscreens, and then with a grinding scrape, we slid onto the beach. We were still moving though, and I caught a glimpse of palm trees on either side. Then with a sickening crunch and a flash of pain, we jerked to a stop.

  My seat had partially detached from its base, my left shoulder pinned against the glareshield. A stabbing pain tore through that shoulder as I tried to move. Jeff unstrapped from the jumpseat and pulled my chair back. Fire flashed through my shoulder and I saw stars, but tried to concentrate on what I had to do. I grabbed the PA handset with my good hand and shouted “Evacuate, evacuate,” but I didn’t hear anything over the speakers. Jeff saw the problem, yanked the cockpit door open and screamed into the cabin, “Evacuate!”

  “You okay?” Jeff asked as he turned back.

  I nodded weakly. “Get the hell out of here.” Jeff took off, and Brett clambered over the center console, close behind him.

  “You going to be able to get out of that?” Brett asked from the doorway.

  “Yep, just give me a second,” I grunted. Brett took off, and I twisted the latch on my harness. I stood up unsteadily, grabbing the edge of the cockpit door. My first glance into the cabin didn’t make sense, until I realized what I saw: Daylight. The far end of the plane had partially detached, and sunlight streamed in through a foot-wide gap in the ceiling near the last row of seats. Many of the passengers had already made it out the exits. I had to ensure everyone else got out before I left. I grabbed the crash axe from the cockpit, and hobbled down the aisle, climbing over mounds of debris. With only seventy people on a plane designed for two hundred and fifty, it was easy to get out in a hurry. By the time I reached the coach section, everyone had evacuated. An eerie quiet filled the cabin, with just a whisper of wind blowing through the cracked fuselage, and a muted hum from the emergency batteries powering the remaining lights. At the aft end of the cabin I found one passenger, still in his seat, just underneath the gap where sunlight poured in. I went to help him, and then saw why he hadn’t moved. A metal beam protruded from his chest. He sat there, eyes glazed, unmoving. The beam came up from the floor behind him, through his seat, and through him. His blood drained down the beam, and pooled against the aft bulkhead. I left him there, and moved to the aft exits.

  I reached out to open the door, but when I looked out the small window it was partially underwater. Instead, I went forward to the next set of doors, which were already open. Several passengers and crew members were climbing up the sandy lagoon shore toward the palm trees. I jumped onto the inflatable slide, and bounced down to the sand, right at the water’s edge.

  7.45pm

  Chief Kalahamotu led me out of the shelter, into a rapidly darkening tropical evening. A last band of orange clung to the western horizon, visible through the thin grove of palm trees. Overhead, massive buildups of cumulus clouds glowed a glorious pink and orange, the salty ocean strong in the air.

  “You must be quiet,” he whispered. “No talking. Breathe quiet. Walk quiet.”

  For some reason, his words triggered a memory of Elmer Fudd whispering ‘Be vewy vewy qwiet’. I stifled a giggle, then bit my lip, and tried to regain control, something which had slipped away hours ago. We were vulnerable, walking down the crushed coral road. If the Rocs found us here, we’d be dead meat. Somehow though, the Chief engendered trust.

  We passed several metal and concrete block buildings. Some appeared to have been abandoned, but most looked lived in. A few houses had open windows with oil lamps flickering inside. I wanted to ask the Chief about them, but kept quiet in deference to his orders. The church stood tall and proud, its garden well tended.

  Just past the central square the Chief led me down a path to the steep sandy beach on the ocean side of the atoll. The edge of the reef was visible in the fading light, a couple of hundred yards offshore, waves curling over the coral. It made a calming, soothing noise, and brought back memories of more tranquil times. Between th
e beach and the breakers a shallow floor of rock and coral led out to the waves, covered with just a few feet of water.

  The Chief motioned downward with his hands, and sat in the sand. I did the same, wanting to ask why we were there. I took a deep breath and tried to slow my pounding heart. We were way too exposed, especially sitting down like this; easy pickings for the Rocs. I dug my fingers into the cool, damp sand.

  A splash of white light caught my eye. Just above the tops of the palms, a full moon rose. If the situation were different, I’d have called this a truly beautiful, romantic spot.

  The Chief pointed to the water, and my heart jumped into my throat. Several Rocs flew just above the surface of the shallow water in front of us. Their wide triangular bodies were about ten feet long, and the wings maybe twenty-five feet wide when fully extended. Glossy black skin reflected the moonlight in a myriad of sparkles. They flapped gently at their wingtips as they descended. The apex of their bodies formed a long, wicked spike that extended another six feet or so out in front of them, flattened top and bottom with a razor sharp edge on both sides. A quick swipe from one of those spikes could cut through almost anything. They looked like armed, flying manta rays.

  A tide of fear and anger rose inside me again. Fear at being so close to these things without protection, and anger at them for destroying my life, my career, and possibly my world. My breath quickened. The Chief turned toward me and made the palms-down wave again. Keep quiet. I struggled, but managed to slow my breathing. The closest Rocs touched down in the water mere feet in front of us, mimicking my own landing in the lagoon that afternoon, albeit carrying it off much more successfully. More Rocs followed, filling the shallows with rippling black triangles.

  Then I heard them. Quiet, extremely high-pitched, almost beyond the threshold of hearing. A hypersonic cooing, each with a slightly different tone. What amazed me most of all though, was that I was still alive.