All consuming white light. An oppressive silence slowly gave way to a low rumble. The rumble of one of Hank’s razzmatazz sports cars, Dot thought. But no, that was long ago. The low rumble churned, evolved. A higher pitch was introduced, like the strings holding in tremolo before the attacker pounces in a cheesy horror film.
Or a scream.
Dorothea came to. She turned her head. The world was sideways. A sea of asphalt spread out before her, fading into a blur. She shook her head. The scream repeated in the foggy distance. The world came into focus. Beyond the sea of black, a massive blaze engulfed the horizon: an inferno of biblical proportions. Hellish. The entire scene was drenched in a thick grey fog. Visibility extended to the plane and no more - perhaps 100 yards at most.
Miraculously, Dot felt no pain. She raised to a sitting position, feeling dazed, weightless, intuiting a thin haze between her and the world around her. The sights around her were fragmented. Shock.
The inferno blazed on. Its massive size initially blinded her to the smaller details of the scene before her. It dawned on her that the sea of black is littered with metal, and with bodies. Horrified, she tried to snap into focus - to feel and to absorb her surroundings. She succeeded only in an aural capacity. The muffled roar and screams gave way to a terrifying wall of white noise.
The scene in front of her became more violent, more real. She was now fully awake, alert, and, miraculously, unhurt.
Vicky. Bill. She had to find them.
How am I here? How did I get here? She was confused, panicked. There’s no way I could have survived flying through the air this far. Not without some broken bones, and I feel fine. She looked to her left and to her right. She sees other bodies around her. Some were immobile. Some were as dazed as she is, coming to.
Someone must have dragged me over here, she realized. She remembered where she was. The 747. Canary Islands. Sitting with Vicky and Bill. The young man in seat C. The gin and tonic. She realized that the inferno before her was the airplane in which she sat seemingly just seconds ago. But she was no longer inside of it. The 747 sat broken and destroyed upon the same sea of black - the tarmac - which Dot is now sitting upright. A massive amount of billowing smoke rose up from the once blue and white, now black and blue 747. Dot could not comprehend that anything in that plane could create so much smoke. It was beyond any proportion to the flames. There was no sky. Nothing but black on the ground, a Dantean inferno on the horizon, and black in the sky.
Dorothea again looked at the massive aircraft. Straggling survivors were coming off the wings. People staggered around the plane delirious. Several bodies laid on the tarmac, splayed out from the plane, each about 20, 30 yards from the plane as she was. She wondered if some sort of explosion threw them all away from the wreckage. But that made no sense, she told herself, since every body, to a one, was laying flat on its back. A man dressed in a pilot’s uniform dragged the body of an elderly woman in green towards her and lays it supine, perhaps 5 yards from her on the tarmac. She called out to him “Hey mister!” The uniformed man didn’t hear her. He was, heroically, running back towards the blaze, hoping to find other survivors.
Standing perhaps 40 yards from the plane, and 20 from Dottie, she saw another man. It was the man from her row. He was alone. He was holding a small camera to his face, taking pictures of the wreckage.
Through the sea of charred and blurred bodies around her, she saw a third man in sharper focus. He was crawling along the ground, trying to put distance between him and the superheated wreckage and billowing smoke.
It was Bill.
“Oh god oh god! Bill! Bill!” She stumbled to her feet, and ran towards him. She was others doing the same. A stocky man in blue polo shirt, gray slacks and white shoes beat her to Bill. He reached down to Bill, rolls him over onto his back, and locks his arms between Bill’s. He slowly pulls Bill to a safe distance from the wreckage. Satisfied with his efforts, the man rises, and heads towards the wing of the plane to assist others.
She rushed to Bill, arrived at his side, and kneeled. “Bill! Bill! Oh my god, oh my god. Honey! Baby! Are you all right?” She put her hands to his cheek - his face seems unblemished, miraculously.
Bill moaned, his eyes remained closed. “Dorothea, where are you? Honey? Vicky? Where’s Vicky? Dottie are you here?” Bill tried to rise. He rolled onto his left side. He winced and screams in pain.
“Bill! Don’t move don’t move! You’re hurt! But you’re alive. I will try and find Vicky. Stay here! I’m so glad you’re alive. We’re going to make it, honey.”
Dorothea hated herself for leaving Bill. She didn’t want want to, but the desire to find her daughter is stronger. And Bill is all right. She will see him again. She needs to find vicky. She got up, and ran towards the plane.
“Vicky!” Dottie couldn’t help it. She knew that her baby was too young to answer. She listened for Vicky’s cries, but the roar of the blaze, the screams, the very smoke itself seemed to blot out Dot’s own voice, let alone everything else.
She again saw the stocky man in the blue polo shirt. He stands below the wing, assisting a dazed elderly woman in a cornflower blue caftan.
She runs to him. “Mister! Mister! Can you help me find my baby? My baby Vicky?” The man doesn’t hear her. The noise is too much. He is focused on his task at hand, helping the caftan’d old lady down from the wing.
“Mister! My baby!”
Nothing.
She was panicking, screaming. No one saw her, and no one helped. She turned to find someone - anyone - who could assist her. She screamed, “Someone! Help me find my baby!”
Another man stood perhaps twenty yards away. He turned to her. He appeared to be hispanic, and wore a brown sweater, white shirt underneath, khaki pants and a plaid English driving hat. He stood in the middle of the disaster staring at her. He had clearly heard her cries over the din of the wreckage.
In her daze, the man seemed to float over to her.
Dot plead to the man “Help! Help! I need to find my baby!”
He looked at her. He began to respond. Relief washed over her for the first time since she fell asleep on the plane with dreams of Madeira dancing in her head.
“¿Qué ha sucedido aquí?”
Dottie didn’t understand.
He tried again. “Debo realizar los votos.”
Spanish, she realized. She answered: “I don’t speak Spanish.”
The man appeared to understand. “English?” he asked in a heavy accent.
She nods. “My baby! Help me find my baby?”
“Baby.” The word seems foreign to him, but Dot is reassured as he appears to comprehend. “Si, si.”
“Yes. Si. Baby. Vicky.”
“Vicky. Si. Baby.”
He put his fingers to his mouth and began a strange, long whistle. It didn’t sound like any tune Dottie knew - it didn’t sound like a tune at all. It sounded almost mechanical, moving up and down the scale at strange patterns. The whistle seemed to reverberate through the air. It seemed audible beyond the noise of the plane, though Dottie realized this isn’t possible.
He motioned at her with both hands flat, gesturing up and down, paused and then pointed to the ground.
“Stay, stay. You want me to stay here.”
“Si, yes. Stay.” He taps his wrist where a watch would be and then up five figures. He repeated the first gesture, motioning one again for Dottie to stay, and then flies off.
Modern synthpop. I’m somewhat stunned that I am only on volume 16 of this series after all of these years. All new stuff. New Nation of Language! So excited to see them this fall. Not too thrilled with the new “Allison Goldfrapp” so far. Reserving judgement.
Thank you for this fiction interlude. I am realizing I can sleep about a half hour later on fiction days. Makes me want to finish the novel.
Until tomorrow!
Whoops forgot the playlist link: https://rickwebb.substack.com/p/good-morning-hello-how-are-you-883?sd=pf