The Three

by Sarah Lotz

Genres: Suspense; Ghost; Horror

Synopsis

Four simultaneous plane crashes. Three child survivors. A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse. What if he's right?

The world is stunned when four commuter planes crash within hours of each other on different continents. Facing global panic, officials are under pressure to find the causes. With terrorist attacks and environmental factors ruled out, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between the crashes, except that in three of the four air disasters a child survivor is found in the wreckage.

Dubbed 'The Three' by the international press, the children all exhibit disturbing behavioural problems, presumably caused by the horror they lived through and the unrelenting press attention. This attention becomes more than just intrusive when a rapture cult led by a charismatic evangelical minister insists that the survivors are three of the four harbingers of the apocalypse. The Three are forced to go into hiding, but as the children's behaviour becomes increasingly disturbing, even their guardians begin to question their miraculous survival...

Release date: May 20, 2014

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 480

Sample

From chapter one of Guarding JESS: My Life With One of The Three by Paul Craddock (co-written with Mandi Solomon).

I’ve always liked airports. Call me an old romantic, but I used to get a kick out of watching families and lovers reuniting–that split second when the weary and sunburned emerge through the sliding glass doors and recognition lights up their eyes. So when Stephen asked me to collect him and the girls from Gatwick, I was more than happy to do it.

I left with a good hour to spare. I wanted to get there early, grab myself a coffee and people-watch for a bit. Odd to think of it now, but I was in a wonderful mood that afternoon. I’d had a call-back for the part of the gay butler in the third series of Cavendish Hall (type-casting, of course, but Gerry, my agent, thought it could finally be my big break), and I’d managed to find a parking spot that wasn’t a day’s hike from the entrance. As it was one of my treat days, I bought myself a latte with extra cream, and wandered over to join the throng waiting for passengers to emerge from baggage reclaim. Next to a Cup ’n’ Chow outlet, a team of bickering work-experience kids were doing an execrable job of dismantling a tacky Christmas display that was well-overdue for removal, and I watched their mini drama unfold for a while, oblivious that my own was about to begin.

I hadn’t thought to check the flight information board to make sure the plane was on time, so I was taken unawares when a nasal voice droned over the intercom: ‘Could all those awaiting the arrival of Go!Go! Airlines Flight 277 from Tenerife please make their way to the information counter, thank you.’ Isn’t that Stephen’s flight? I thought, double-checking the details on my BlackBerry. I wasn’t too concerned. I suppose I assumed the flight had been delayed. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why Stephen hadn’t called to let me know he’d be late.

You never think it’s going to happen to you, do you?

There was only a small group of us at first–others, like me, who’d arrived early. A pretty girl with dyed red hair holding a heart-shaped balloon on a stick, a dreadlocked fellow with a wrestler’s build and a middle-aged couple with smokers’ skin who were dressed in identical cerise shell suits. Not the sort of people with whom I’d usually choose to associate. Odd how one’s first impressions can be so wrong. I now count them all among my closest friends. Well, this type of thing brings you together, doesn’t it?

I should have known from the shell-shocked expressions on the faces of the spotty teenager manning the counter and the whey-faced security woman hovering next to him that something horrific was afoot, but all I was feeling at that stage was irritation.

‘What’s going on?’ I snapped in my best Cavendish Hall accent.

The teenager managed to stutter that we were to follow him to where ‘more info would be relayed to us’.

We all did as we were told, although I confess I was surprised the shell-suited couple didn’t kick up more of a stink, they didn’t look the type to take orders. But as they told me weeks later at one of our ‘277 Together’ meetings, at that stage they were in denial. They didn’t want to know, and if anything untoward had happened to the plane, they didn’t want to hear it from a boy who was barely out of puberty. The teenager scurried ahead, presumably so that none of us would have the chance to interrogate him further, and ushered us through an innocuous door next to the customs offices. We were led down a long corridor, which, judging by its peeling paint and scuffed floor, wasn’t in a section of the airport typically encountered by the public gaze. I remember smelling a rogue whiff of cigarette smoke wafting in from somewhere in a flagrant disregard of the smoking ban.

We ended up in a grim windowless lounge, furnished with tired burgundy waiting-room seats. My eye was caught by one of those seventies tubular ashtrays, which was half-hidden behind a plastic hydrangea. Funny what you remember, isn’t it?

A guy in a polyester suit clutching a clipboard waddled towards us, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a Tourette’s sufferer’s. Although as pale as a cadaver, his cheeks were alive with a severe shaving rash. His eyes darted all over the place, briefly met mine, then his gaze settled into the far distance.

It hit me then, I think. The sickening knowledge that I was about to hear something that would change my life forever.

‘Go on then, mate,’ Kelvin–the fellow with the dreads–finally said.

The suit swallowed convulsively. ‘I am extremely sorry to relay this to you, but Flight 277 disappeared off the radar approximately an hour ago.’

The world swayed, and I could feel the first wisps of a panic attack. My fingers were tingling and my chest was starting to tighten. Then Kelvin asked the question the rest of us were too afraid to ask: ‘Has it crashed?’

‘We cannot be certain at this time, but please be assured we will relay the information to you as soon as it comes in. Counsellors will be available for any of you who—’

‘What about survivors?’

The suit’s hands were trembling and the winking cartoon plane on his plastic Go!Go! badge seemed to mock us with its cheeky insouciance. ‘Should have called it Gay!Gay! Air,’ Stephen used to quip whenever one of Go!Go!’s dire adverts came on the television. He was always joking that that cartoon plane was camper than a bus-load of drag queens. I didn’t take offence; that was the sort of relationship we had. ‘Like I say,’ the suit flustered, ‘we have counsellors at your disposal—’

Mel–the female half of the track-suited couple–spoke up. ‘Sod your counsellors, just tell us what’s happened!’

The girl holding the balloon started sobbing with the gusto of an EastEnders character, and Kelvin put his arm around her. She dropped the balloon and I watched as it bounced sadly across the floor, eventually ending up lodged next to the retro ashtray. Other people were starting to drift into the room, ushered by more Go!Go! staff–most of whom looked as bewildered and unprepared as the spotty teenager.

Mel’s face was as pink as her shell-suit top and she was jabbing a finger in the official’s face. Everyone seemed to be screaming or crying, but I felt a curious distance from what was going on, as if I was on set, waiting for my cue. And this is a ghastly thing to admit, but I thought, remember what you’re feeling, Paul, you can use it in your acting. I’m not proud of that. I’m just being honest.

I kept staring at that balloon, and suddenly I could hear Jessica and Polly’s voices, clear as a bell: ‘But Uncle Paaaaauuuuul, what keeps the plane in the air?’ Stephen had asked me round to Sunday lunch the week before they left, and the twins hadn’t stopped badgering me about the flight, for some reason assuming I was the font of all knowledge about air travel. It was the kids’ first time on a plane, and they were more excited about that than they were about the holiday. I found myself trying to remember the last thing Stephen had said to me, something along the lines of, ‘See you when you’re older, mate.’ We’re non-identical, but how could I not have sensed something awful had happened? I dragged my phone out of my pocket, recalling that Stephen had sent me a text the day before: ‘Girls say hi. Resort full of twats. We get in at 3.30. Don’t be late ;).’ I thumbed through my messages, trying to find it. It was suddenly absolutely vital that I save it. It wasn’t there–I must have accidentally deleted it.

Even weeks afterwards, I wished I’d kept that text message.

Somehow, I found myself back in the Arrivals area. I don’t remember how I even got there, or if anyone tried to stop me leaving that ghastly lounge. I drifted along, sensing that people were staring at me, but right then, they were as insignificant as extras. There was something in the air, like that heavy feeling you get just before a storm hits. I thought, sod it, I need a drink, which, since I’d been on the wagon for a good ten years, wasn’t like me. I sleepwalked towards the Irish theme pub on the far side of the area. A group of suited yobs were gathered around the bar staring up at the TV. One of them, a florid-faced prat with a Mockney accent, was talking too loudly, going on about 9/11, and telling everyone that he had to get to Zurich by 5.50 or ‘heads would roll’. He stopped, mid-sentence, as I approached, and the others made room for me, drawing back as if I were contagious. Of course, I’ve learned since then that grief and horror are contagious.

The TV’s sound was up to full volume and an anchor–one of those botoxed American horrors with Tom Cruise teeth and too much make-up–was yabbering into shot. Behind her was a screen capture of what looked to be some sort of swamp, a helicopter hovering over it. And then I read the strap-line: Maiden Airlines Everglades crash.

They’ve got it wrong, I thought. Stephen and the girls were on Go!Go!, not that plane.

And then it hit me. Another plane had gone down.

At 14.35 (CAT time), an Antonov cargo and passenger plane leased by Nigerian carrier Dalu Air crashed into the heart of Khayelitsha–Cape Town’s most populous township. Liam de Villiers was one of the first paramedics on the scene. An Advanced Life Support Paramedic for Cape Medical Response at the time of the incident, Liam now works as a trauma counsellor. This interview was conducted via Skype and email and collated into a single account.

We were dealing with an incident on Baden Powell Drive when it happened. A taxi had clipped a Merc and overturned, but it wasn’t too hectic. The taxi was empty at the time, and although the driver had only minor injuries, we’d need to ferry him to Casualty to get stitched up. It was one of those rare still days, the southeaster that had been raging for weeks had blown itself out, and there was only a wisp of cloud trickling over the lip of Table Mountain. A perfect day, I guess you could say, although we were parked a bit too close to the Macassar sewage works for comfort. After smelling that for twenty minutes, I was grateful I hadn’t had a chance to scarf down the KFC I’d bought for lunch.

I was on with Cornelius that day, one of our newer guys. He was a cool oke, good sense of humour. While I dealt with the driver, he was gossiping with a couple of traffic cops who were on the scene. The taxi-driver was shouting into his cellphone, lying to his boss while I dressed the wound on his upper arm. You wouldn’t have known anything had happened to him; he didn’t flinch once. I was just about to ask Cornelius if he’d let False Bay Casualty know we were en route with a patient, when a roaring sound ripped out of the sky, making all of us jump. The taxi-driver’s hand went limp and his phone clattered to the ground.

And then we saw it. I know everyone says this, but it was exactly like watching a scene from a movie; you couldn’t believe it was actually happening. It was flying so low I could see the chipped paint in its logo–you know, that green swirl curving round a ‘D’. Its landing gear was down and the wings were dipping crazily from side to side like a rope-walker trying to get his balance. I remember thinking, airport’s the other way, what the fuck is the pilot doing?

Cornelius was shouting something, pointing at it. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I got the gist. Mitchell’s Plain, where his family lived, wasn’t that far away from where the plane looked to be headed. It was obvious it was going to crash; it wasn’t on fire or anything like that, but it was clear it was in severe trouble.

The plane disappeared out of sight, there was a ‘crump’, and I swear, the ground shook. Later, Darren, our base controller, said that we were probably too far away to feel any kind of aftershock, but that’s how I remember it. Seconds later a black cloud blossomed into the sky. Huge it was, made me think of those pictures of Hiroshima. And I thought, yissus, no way did anyone survive that.

We didn’t stop to think. Cornelius jumped in the driver’s seat, started radioing the base station, telling them we had a major incident on our hands and to notify the centre for disaster management. I told the taxi-driver he’d have to wait for another ambulance to take him to Casualty and shouted, ‘Tell them it’s a Phase Three, tell them it’s a Phase Three!’ The cops were already on the road, heading straight for the Khayelitsha Harare turn-off. I jumped in the back of the ambulance, the adrenaline shooting through me, washing away all the tiredness I was feeling after being on duty for twelve hours.

While Cornelius drove, following in the wake of the police car, I pulled out the bergen, started rummaging in the lockers for the burn shields, the intravenous bottles, anything I thought we might need, and placed them on the stretcher at the back. We’re trained for this of course–for a plane going down, I mean. There’s a designated ditch site in Fish Hoek in False Bay, and I wondered if that was where the pilot was heading when he realised he wasn’t going to make the airport. But I won’t lie, training is one thing, I never thought we’d have to deal with a situation like this.

That drive is etched on my memory like you won’t believe. The crackle and pop of the radio as voices conferred, Cornelius’s white-knuckled hands on the steering-wheel, the reek of the Streetwise two-piece meal I’d never get to eat. And look, this is going to sound bad, but there are parts of Khayelitsha we usually wouldn’t dream of entering, we’ve had incidents when staff have been held up–all the ambulance services will tell you that–but this was different. It didn’t even occur to me to worry about going into Little Brazzaville. Darren was back on the radio, talking Cornelius through the procedure, telling him that we were to wait for the scene to be secured first. In situations like these, there’s no place for heroes. You don’t want to get yourself injured, end up another casualty for the guys to deal with.

As we got closer to the site, I could hear screams mingling with the sirens that were coming from all directions. Smoke rolled towards us, coating the windscreen in a greasy residue, and Cornelius had to slow down and put on his wipers. The acrid smell of burning fuel filled the ambulance. I couldn’t get that stench out of my skin for days. Cornelius slammed on the brakes as a crowd of people flooded towards us. Most were carrying TVs, crying children, furniture–dogs even. They weren’t looting, these guys, they knew how quickly a fire could spread in this area. Most of the houses are slapped together, shacks made of wood and corrugated iron, a lot of them little more than kindling, not to mention the amount of paraffin that had to be lying around.

We slowed to a crawl, and I could hear the thunk of hands slapping the side of the ambulance. I actually ducked when I heard the crump of another explosion, and I thought, shit, this is it. Helicopters swarmed overhead and I yelled at Cornelius to stop–it was obvious we couldn’t go much further without endangering our safety. I climbed out of the back, tried to steel myself for what we were about to face.

It was chaos. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have known it was a plane gone down–I would’ve assumed a bloody great bomb had gone off. And the heat that was coming from there… I saw the footage afterwards, the helicopter footage, that black gouge in the ground, the shacks that were flattened, that school those Americans built, crushed as if it was made of matchsticks; the church split in half as if it was as insubstantial as a garden shed.

‘There’s more! There’s more! Help us!’ people were shouting. ‘Over here! Over here!’

It seemed like hundreds of people surged towards us yelling for help, but fortunately the cops who were on the scene of the minor collision pushed most of them back, and we could assess what we were dealing with. Cornelius started organising them into triage groups–sorting out who was most in need of urgent attention. I knew immediately that the first child I saw wasn’t going to make it. His distraught mother said they were both sleeping when she heard a deafening roar and chunks of debris rained into their bedroom. We know now that the plane broke up on impact, scattering burning parts like Agent Orange.

A doctor from the Khayelitsha hospital was first on the scene, doing a fantastic job. That oke was on the ball. Even before the disaster management team showed up, he’d already allocated areas for the triage tents, morgue and the ambulance station. There’s a system with these things, you can’t go in half-cocked. They set up the outer circle in record time, and the airport’s fire and rescue service were there minutes after we arrived to secure the area. It was vital they made sure that we weren’t going to have any more follow-up explosions on our hands. We were all aware of how much oxygen planes carry, never mind fuel.

We dealt mostly with the peripheral casualties. The majority were burns, limbs hacked by flying metal, quite a few amputations, lot of people with ocular issues–specially the children. Cornelius and I just went into overdrive. The cops kept the people back, but you couldn’t blame them for crowding around us. Screaming for lost relatives, parents looking for children who were at that school and crèche, others demanding to know the status of injured loved ones. Quite a few were filming it on their cellphones–I didn’t blame them–it provides a distance, doesn’t it? And the press were everywhere, swarming around us. I had to stop Cornelius from punching an oke with a camera slung on his shoulder who kept trying to get right up into his face.

And as the smoke died down, you could see the extent of the devastation, bit by bit. Crumpled metal, scraps of clothing, broken furniture and appliances, discarded shoes, a trampled cellphone. And bodies of course. Most were burned up, but there were others, pieces, you know… There were yells going up all around as more and more were discovered, the tent they were using as a makeshift morgue just wasn’t going to cut it.

We worked through the day and well into the night. As it got darker, they lit up the site with floodlights, and somehow, that was worse. Even with their protective breathing gear, some of the younger disaster management volunteers couldn’t deal with it; you could see them running off to vomit.

Those body bags kept piling up.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. I still can’t eat fried chicken.

You know what happened to Cornelius, right? His wife says she’ll never be able to forgive him, but I do. I know what it feels like when you’re anxious all the time, you can’t sleep, you start crying for no reason. That’s why I got into trauma counselling.

Look, unless you were there, there’s no way to adequately describe it, but let me try to put it in context for you. I’ve been doing this for over twenty years, and I’ve seen some hectic stuff. I’ve been at the aftermath of a necklacing, the body still smoking, the face fixed in an expression you don’t want to see in your worst nightmares. I was on duty when the municipal workers’ strike turned bad and the cops opened fire–thirty dead and not all from bullet wounds. You don’t want to see the damage a panga can do. I’ve been at car pile-ups where the bodies of children, babies still in their car seats, have been flung across three lanes of traffic. I’ve seen what happens when a Buffel truck loses its brakes and rolls over a Ford Ka. And when I was working in the Botswana bush, I came across the remains of a ranger who’d been bitten in half by a hippo. Nothing can compare with what we saw that day. We all understood what Cornelius went through–the whole crew understood.

He did it in his car, out on the West Coast, where he used to go fishing. Asphyxiation, hose from the exhaust. No mess, no fuss.

I miss him.

Afterwards, we got a lot of flak for taking photos of the scene and putting them up on Facebook. But I’m not going to apologise for that. That’s one of the ways we deal with it–we need to talk it through–and if you’re not on the job, you won’t understand. There’s some talk of taking them down now, seeing as those freaks keep using them in their propaganda. Growing up in a country like this, with our history, I’m not a fan of censorship, but I can see why they’re clamping down. Just adds fuel to the fire.

But I tell you something, I was there, right at ground fucking zero, and no ways did anyone on that plane survive. No ways. I stand by that, whatever those conspiracy fuckers say (excuse my French).

I still stand by that.

Yomijuri Miyajima, a geologist and volunteer suicide monitor at Japan’s notorious Aokigahara forest, a popular spot for the depressed to end their lives, was on duty the night a Boeing 747-400D, operated by the Japanese domestic carrier Sun Air, plummeted into the foot of Mount Fuji.

(Translation by Eric Kushan.)

I was expecting to find one body that night. Not hundreds.

Volunteers do not usually patrol at night, but just as it was getting dark, our station received a call from a father deeply concerned about his teenage son. The boy’s father had intercepted worrying emails and found a copy of Wataru Tsurumi’s suicide manual under his son’s mattress. Along with the notorious Matsumoto novel, it’s a popular text for those who seek to end their lives in the forest; I have come across more discarded copies than I can count in my years working here.

There are a few cameras set up to monitor suspicious activity at the most popular entrance, but I had received no confirmation that he had been seen, and while I had a description of the teenager’s car, I couldn’t see any sign of it at the side of the road or in any of the small parking lots close to the forest. This meant nothing. Often people will drive to remote or hidden spots on the edge of the forest to end their lives. Some attempt to kill themselves with exhaust fumes; others by inhaling the toxic smoke from portable charcoal barbecues. But by far the most common method is hanging. Many of the suicidal bring tents and supplies with them, as if they need to spend a night or two contemplating what it is they are about to do before going through with it.

Every year, the local police and many volunteers sweep the forest to find the bodies of those who have chosen to die here. The last time we did this–in late November–we discovered the remains of thirty souls. Most of them were never identified. If I come across someone in the forest who I think may be planning on killing himself, I ask him to consider the pain of the family he will be leaving behind and remind him that there is always hope. I point to the volcanic rock that forms the base of the forest floor, and say that if the trees can grow on such a hard, unforgiving surface, then a new life can be built on the foundation of any hardship.

It is now common practice for the desperate to bring tape to use as a marker to find their way back if they change their minds, or, in most cases, to indicate where their bodies may be found. Others use the tape for more nefarious reasons; ghoulish sightseers hoping to come across one of the deceased, but not willing to become lost.

I volunteered to venture into the forest on foot, and with this in mind, I first checked to see if there was any indication that fresh tape had been tied around the trees. It was dark, so it was impossible for me to be sure, but I thought I discerned signs that someone had recently made his way past the ‘do not pass this point’ signs.

I was not concerned about getting lost. I know the forest; I have never once lost my way. Apologies for sounding fanciful, but after doing this for twenty-five years, it has become part of me. And I had a powerful flashlight and my GPS–it is not true that the volcanic rock under the forest floor muddies the signals. But the forest is a magnet for myths and legends, and people will believe what they want to.

Once you are in the forest, it cocoons you. The tops of the trees form a softly undulating roof that shuts out the world beyond. Some may find the forest’s stillness and silence forbidding, I do not. The y rei do not frighten me. I have nothing to fear from the spirits of the dead. Perhaps you have heard the stories, that this place was a common site for ubasute, the practice of abandoning the aged or infirm to die of exposure in times of famine? This is unsubstantiated. Just another of the many stories the forest attracts. There are many who believe that spirits are lonely, and they try to draw people to them. They believe this is why so many come to the forest.

I did not see the plane going down–as I said, the forest’s canopy conceals the sky–but I heard it. A series of muffled booms, like giant doors slamming shut. What did I think it was? I suppose I assumed that it might have been thunder, although it wasn’t the season for storms or typhoons. I was too absorbed in searching the shadows, dips and ruts in the forest floor for evidence of the teenager’s presence to speculate.

I was about to give up when my radio crackled, and Sato-san, one of my fellow monitors, alerted me to the fact that a troubled plane had veered off its flight path and crashed somewhere in the vicinity of the forest–more than likely in the Narusawa area. Of course I realised then that this was the source of the booming sound I heard earlier.

Sato indicated that the authorities were on their way, and said that he was organising a search party. He sounded out of breath, deeply shocked. He knew as well as I did how difficult it was going to be for rescuers to reach the site. The terrain in some parts of the forest is almost impossible to navigate–there are deep hidden crevices in many areas that make traversing through it dangerous.

I decided to head north, in the direction of the sound I had heard.

Within an hour, I could hear the roar of the rescue helicopters sweeping the forest. I knew it would be impossible for them to land, and so I ventured forward with added urgency. If there were survivors, then I knew they had to be reached quickly. Within two hours, I started to smell smoke; the trees had caught alight in several areas, but thankfully the fires hadn’t spread and their limbs glowed as the flames refused to catch and began to die. Something made me sweep the beam of my flashlight up into the trees, catching on a small shape hanging in the branches. At first, I assumed it was the charred body of a monkey.

It was not.

There were others, of course. The night was alive with the sound of rescue and press helicopters, and as they swooped above me, their lights illuminated countless forms caught in the branches. Some I could see in great detail; they looked barely injured, almost as if they were sleeping. Others… Others were not so fortunate. All were partially clothed or naked.

I struggled to reach what is now known as the main crash site, where the tail and the sheared wing were found. Rescuers were being winched to the site, but it was not possible for the helicopters to land on such uneven and treacherous terrain.

It felt strange nearing the tail of the aircraft. It towered over me, its proud red logo eerily intact. I ran to where a couple of air paramedics were tending to a woman who was moaning on the ground; I couldn’t tell how badly injured she was, but I have never heard such a sound coming from a human being. It was then that I caught a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision. Some of the trees were still aflame in this area, and I saw a small hunched shape partially hidden behind an outcropping of twisted volcanic rock. I hurried towards it, and I caught the glint of a pair of eyes in the beam of my flashlight. I dropped my backpack, and ran, moving faster than I have ever done before or since.

As I approached I realised I was looking at a child. A. . .