‘Big enough for you?’ Jane asked. Aidan nodded.
Jane raised the stairs to the hole; they rattled in the spanks of wind gusting in from across the wide, open airfield.
‘See if you can open that rear exit for me once you’re in,’ Jane said. ‘Don’t fanny about.’
Aidan skipped up the stairs and hoisted himself into the Jumbo. A few moments later his face appeared at one of the windows. He gave Jane a thumbs-up. He ducked clear of the window and a few seconds later the door folded outwards. Jane withdrew the stairs and repositioned them at the doorway. Inside he drew the door to, not closing it completely. A sudden snapshot in his head: Rae and Carver exploding through the crack in a door. He couldn’t get on with doors any more. Closed, open, they would never stay still in his thoughts.
‘All right?’ Aidan asked.
‘Yes,’ Jane said, a little too stiffly, and looked beyond Aidan’s shoulder to the ranks of dead sitting strapped into their seats. They had died primly, hands clasped in front of them, watching a stewardess at the front of this section of the cabin who had collapsed in the middle of performing her safety procedures. There were children with colouring books and iPods and hand-held game consoles. Everyone was thin in their clothes, dwindled into seats. Oxygen masks hung from the cabin ceiling, octopoid creatures reaching for prey. Punkah louvres in the overhead units had melted and hardened before they could drip to the floor. They resembled waxy stalactites. One of the bulkheads had been split by the telegraph pole that now blocked the portside aisle leading to the front of the plane; part of the vacuum-moulded wall panel had sheared free; insulation was a frozen cloud seeping from behind it. Rainwater had poured in through the fissure, warping fixtures, swelling the bodies it touched.
Jane said, ‘Let’s check the galleys.’
They ransacked the six galleys and found meal-tray trolleys loaded with spoiled food that had rotted away to a crisp film on the plates, like dried algae, over the years. But there were plenty of packets of nuts that, although past their use-by date, seemed fine. The two of them sat on the cabin floor gobbling snacks so quickly that there wasn’t much tasting going on. Minutes later, the floor strewn with empty wrappers, they were too full to speak. Jane picked crumbs from his sweatshirt and fed them to himself. Aidan pressed his hand to his belly and slowly lost his expression of satisfaction as it became one of harrowed concern.
‘We should have taken it easy, shouldn’t we?’ Jane asked, patting his own stomach. ‘We’ll probably cramp up something chronic.’
Aidan nodded. ‘We should get some stuff for Becky,’ he said. His voice wavered for a second, as if he was going to start crying. Nothing strange about that, thought Jane. A young lad who finds something tasty for the first time in many months, maybe a year or two. Even I’m filling up. And all the while, beneath that, Something is wrong, something is very wrong.
He followed Aidan to the next galley, stepping over withered limbs sticking out into the aisle; his feet turning tacky in whatever had washed and set upon the floor. They unloaded the bagged snacks from the trolleys and stashed them in Jane’s backpack. They found miniatures of gin, rum, vodka and whisky; tins of mixer. There was Coca-Cola and 7-Up and Carlsberg lager.
‘Let’s get sloshed,’ Jane said, and mixed himself a gin and tonic. ‘No ice, no lemon. Hardly a civilised drink.’ But it sluiced through the desert of his mouth like a monsoon. ‘Bubbles,’ he sneezed. ‘Jesus, that’s good.’
Aidan refused the alcohol, sipped instead at a can of lemonade. Jane felt bright, alert, refreshed, but Aidan did not look as though he was returning from his enervated state. His eyes retained their dull lustre; they resembled glass eyes. They almost fooled you, but they lacked that essential something.
‘Are you OK?’ Jane asked, hating the wheedling in his voice; he’d asked the question already a dozen times since they’d met.
‘I’m fine,’ Aidan said.
‘Becky was worried about you,’ Jane said. ‘She misses you when you’re not around.’
Now the gloss came to his eyes. He was crying and trying to hide it, his small chest barely able to keep from jerking. Jane was conscious of the small boy still within Aidan, and when he dropped his head he could almost believe that this was how Stanley might look. It was gloomy in the passenger cabin. He might be standing here with his own son; his boy needed him.
Jane put out a hand, whispered, the words barely denting the air as they slipped from his lips: Stan.
‘Don’t you!’ Aidan screamed, whipping his head up and fixing Jane with a hot stare. He shook his head, nodded, shook his head again. A knowing smile deepened the shadows in his face.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jane said. ‘I meant nothing by it.’
‘Ever since I saw you. That first day in the hospital. You’ve been looking at me like you love me and you hate me at the same time.’
‘That’s not—’
‘It is true. You want me to be Stanley. And you hate me for not being him. You hate me for surviving and you wish he had lived and I was dead.’
Jane reached for him again, but Aidan flinched, stepped back. His foot landed on a shin which crumbled like chalk. ‘Stanley’s alive, Aidan,’ he said.
‘See?’ Aidan yelled, gesturing wildly, as if he were beseeching the passengers around him. ‘See? You can’t leave him alone. When it’s the two of us alone in a room? It’s actually three.’
‘You can’t condemn me for that, Aidan. It’s not my fault. You—’
‘HE’S DEAD! HE’S FUCKING DEAD!’
Jane only realised he had hit the boy when he felt the raw sting in the knuckles of his right hand. Aidan was on the floor, one hand covering his mouth, the other scrabbling against an armrest as he tried to pull himself upright.
Jane held up his hands. ‘Aidan. God, I’m sorry. I’m… I was bang out of line. I should not have done that.’
The spark was gone from Aidan. The matte eyes blinked at Jane. He wiped blood from the corner of his lip, regarded it for a long time with some fascination, as if he were looking at a rare jewel. He stared back at Jane and his voice was no longer edged. ‘He is dead.’
21. SOMA
They spent the next few hours at separate ends of the aircraft. Aidan would not leave, despite Jane’s pleas. It was getting dark. Figures were moving around the edges of the airstrip, stopping, and turning their way. Even if they could not see Jane and Aidan maybe they were nonetheless baffled by the new scents. It was early enough, and there were sufficiently few Skinners around, for Jane and the adolescent boy to make a getaway, but they had to go now.
‘Why did you bring me out here, Aidan?’
Aidan wouldn’t answer.
The dark came on, creeping through the fuselage like black ink drawn into the reservoir of a fountain pen. The emptied windows provided soft charcoal shapes against the jetblack. Jane heard the shuffle of feet on the runway apron. After a while he could hear the phlegmy breath of them beneath the aircraft. Something barged against the stairs, causing them to rattle massively. Jane remembered he had left the door open. He ran to it now and shut it, locked it. Hissing and howling from outside; they knew there was something to be had in here.
Jane glanced at the ragged hole in the tail. If they moved the stairs and came up there they would not fit through, but they would shred the thing wider within minutes. He had to hope that their being unable to see the hole was enough. You couldn’t smell what wasn’t there, surely. But then they did move the stairs. Jane heard them being wheeled away from the door. He cast around for a weapon, expecting them to attack, but they were returning the stairs to the main building.