(1989) Dreamer Read Online Free PDF Page A

calm.
    ‘Climb, Derek,’ the first officer shouted. ‘The mountains, for Chrissake. Fucking climb!’
    ‘We’re clear. The mountains are five thousand ceiling.’
    There was a sharp click and the toilet door in front of her opened. A man stood there, in a black hood with slits for his eyes and mouth.
    She reeled back, and he clamped a black leather-gloved hand over her mouth, cracking her head back hard against the bulkhead. She smelled the leather of the glove, new fresh leather, flung her head violently away, tried to scream, tried to back away, felt a lever behind her jamming into her back; then the black leather glove came over her face again and she ducked, heard a tremendous bang and the hissing of air, then suddenly she was out of the aircraft, spinning wildly in the turbulence, and the deafening howling of the freezing wind and the engines, spinning through a crazed icy vortex, falling, falling, falling through a blackness that seemed to go on for ever.
    Then she was free of it, floating in the cold grey cloud as if it was water. She could push her arms and move through it. She went further away, swimming effortlessly, until she could see the silver Boeing in the distance, cloud swirling around it like tendrils of weed as it flew into the dark grey shape that loomed upwards in front of it, a shape that was barely discernible from the cloud.
    At first there was silence. The aircraft seemed to go on for a long time into the solid wall of the mountain, and she wondered for a moment whether it was her imagination, or just a strangely shaped cloud. Then the tail section flew away and began to cartwheel downwards. It bounced up for an instant off a ridge, and something began to spray out of it, like champagne, and float down behind it. Luggage, she realised with a sickening feeling.
    It bounced again, rose up, and did a half-turn in slowmotion. The stream of suitcases that followed bounced in the same place, deflecting in the same way, except some of them burst open leaving a wake of fluttering clothes.
    A solitary passenger, strapped in his seat, flew up through the clothes, followed by another, then a third, their limbs shaking about like toys emptying from a child’s cupboard as they plummeted back down.
    There was a boom, and a ball of flame rose high up above. A fiercely blazing object joined the dance down the mountainside, showering sparks into the greyness all around it. An engine. It ploughed into the snow below her, hissing. Near it she could see the tail section, a stubby dark silhouette resting on the white snow, the top of the tail fin bent over at a right angle, the word ‘Chartair’ clearly visible, and part of the emblem of a prancing tiger and letters next to it G.Z.T.A.E.
    And then there was a silence that frightened her. The cloud swirled around her, until she could no longer see the ground, until she could no longer tell whether she was lying face down or up. Panic began to grip her. She wanted to see Nicky, to hold him, squeeze him. She wanted to hug Richard, tell him she was sorry, tell him she forgave him, tell him she was sorry she had worked so damned hard. ‘Where are you?’ She turned her body over, then over again, trying to break away from the cold grey tendrils that were entwined around her. ‘Let me go. Please let me go and see them. Just five minutes. Please. That’s all. Five minutes.’
    They tightened around her.
    ‘Let me go!’
    The air was getting warmer now, stifling; it was getting harder to breathe. ‘Let me go!’ she screamed, punching out with her fists, swirling, twisting.
    She felt a cool breeze on her face.
    ‘Bugs?’
    Richard’s voice, she thought, puzzled.
    ‘Bugs?’
    She saw a flat pool of light, and Richard standing near her in a striped shirt and paisley boxer shorts.
    Different. The light was different. A dial blinked at her, orange like the dial of the aircraft, 0500. 0500. 0501.
    ‘OK, Bugs?’
    Richard was standing over her.
    ‘OK Bugs?’ he said