300 Minutes of Danger

  For Clare Forster,

  without whom I couldn’t be a writer

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Boarding School

  Sub-Human

  Nuclear Family

  Reboot

  Chilling

  Inferno

  Flyrus

  Runaway Train

  Poison

  Space Race

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  About the Author

  Copyright

  BOARDING SCHOOL

  30:00 ‘We’re flying really low,’ George said. ‘Are we going to make it over those mountains?’

  The pilot laughed. ‘Of course! Don’t worry.’

  His confidence made George worry more rather than less. The Russian wilderness stretched out to the horizon in every direction, kilometres of ice and skeletal black trees. He couldn’t see any towns through the dirty perspex. There weren’t even any roads. Russia was the biggest country in the world, which meant a lot of empty space. He and the pilot might be the only two people within fifty kilometres or more.

  29.30The pilot was a Finnish man who spoke impeccable English and was as pale as a vampire. He had only one hand on the steering yoke while the other fiddled with his silver earring. His legs were crossed and a half-empty can of soft drink was balanced next to the throttle. He didn’t seem to be taking his job very seriously.

  28:50On commercial flights, pilots usually made boring speeches about weather patterns and arrival times. Now George understood why. Blasting along 5,000 metres above the ground at 300 kilometres per hour, it was hard to feel safe with a pilot who had a personality. Passengers wanted to believe the person in charge was essentially a robot. No sense of humour, no new ideas, no mistakes.

  27:30But today the illusion wasn’t there. The plane had no barrier between the cabin and the cockpit. There were only two people on board: George and the pilot.

  The Ural mountain range was still a long way off but it looked lethal. The sun was rising behind the jagged peaks, capped with spikes of ice. It was as though the horizon was lined with shark teeth.

  George told himself not to worry. After all, the mountains were the point of the trip. No use taking a snowboard to a completely flat landscape. And as for the pilot, well, he probably knew what he was doing.

  27:20Technically the snowboarding camp—‘boarding school’, George called it—didn’t start until next week. George’s parents had come to Russia early so they could do some kind of work for the department of agriculture. George had begged them to let him spend a few days practising in the alps. Had they met the pilot they would never have agreed.

  27:00We won’t crash, George told himself. That hardly ever happens in real life.

  The inside of the plane was tiny, with only six furry seats and a ceiling too low for George to stand up properly. It felt like travelling in a minibus on a dirt road. According to George’s sister, whose grades in maths and science were spectacular, some pockets of air were denser than others. This made the plane bounce around like a dinghy on high seas.

  George didn’t understand the physics—shouldn’t air just be air? He was better with languages, like German and French.

  ‘My cousin,’ the pilot said, yelling to be heard over the engine. ‘He owns the finest hotel in Novosibirsk. You should stay with him.’

  25:00‘Thank you,’ George said, ‘but my accommodation is already booked.’

  ‘Believe me,’ the pilot said, conversely making George believe him less, ‘it will be worth the cancellation fee.’ He picked at something in his teeth, neither hand on the steering yoke now.

  ‘My parents made the booking,’ George said. ‘They’re waiting for me there.’

  24:30He looked out the window just in time to see something fall from the sky. It was round and shiny, like a bowling ball or a motorcycle helmet. But before George could get a good look at it—

  It was sucked into the engine.

  Boom!

  The plane lurched sideways.

  The seatbelt bit into George’s hips and the softdrink can flew off its perch. Panic lit up the pilot’s face as he swore in Finnish and grabbed the yoke. Warning lights blinked all over the cockpit.

  23:30Oxygen masks fell from hidden compartments above about half of the seats. The compartment above George’s head sprang open but nothing fell out. The mask must have been lost or damaged.

  After pushing the left throttle all the way forward and pulling the right all the way back, the pilot got the plane under control. The horizon levelled out and George’s heart rate slowed back down to somewhere near normal.

  22:15‘What was that?’ he demanded.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ the pilot said. ‘Something hit us. A bird, perhaps.’

  ‘No, it was round. It fell from somewhere above us.’

  ‘Space debris, maybe.’ He tapped a dial which looked like the speedometer in George’s mum’s car. The needle was easing downwards. ‘I had to divert the power away from the damaged engine to prevent fire. We’re losing altitude.’

  21:50The spikes of the Ural mountain range didn’t look so distant anymore. ‘Will we still clear the mountains?’ George asked.

  21:00‘One minute.’ The pilot grabbed a notepad and pencil and scratched out some sums. George held his breath. Weren’t they supposed to use computers for this sort of thing?

  ‘Yes,’ the pilot said finally. ‘We’ll pass over them with twenty-one metres to spare. See? I told you not to worry.’

  George stared at him. Twenty-one metres didn’t sound like much room for error.

  ‘Is there a landing strip somewhere?’ George asked.

  ‘Yes. To the north.’

  19:30The pilot turned the steering yoke and did something with the pedals beneath his feet. The plane banked sideways. A sick rumbling echoed from the remaining engine. The wings rattled like an unbalanced washing machine and the plane swooped downward. The pilot twisted the yoke back hurriedly and the plane righted itself.

  19:00‘The rudder has been damaged,’ he said. ‘We can’t turn or we’ll lose too much altitude. Now we only have …’ He scribbled out another calculation. ‘… nine metres of clearance. If we try to steer towards the landing strip, we’ll crash into the mountains.’

  George’s stomach hurt. Even for an extreme-sport enthusiast, this was too much.

  ‘If we can’t turn,’ he said, ‘then what are we going to land on?’

  17:55The pilot was already grabbing a tattered map and a ruler. George could make out a few names of cities, or maybe provinces—Kyshtym, Kasli, Argayash. The pilot marked their current coordinates. A few seconds later he did it again. Then he used the two points to extrapolate, drawing a line along the ruler to—

  ‘Oh no,’ he muttered. His face had gone even paler than before. ‘No, no!’

  ‘What is it?’ George demanded.

  The pilot flicked a few switches, got out of his chair and started moving to the back of the plane.

  ‘What are we going to hit?’ George demanded again. ‘Another mountain?’

  17:00‘Much worse,’ the pilot said. ‘We’re going to have to evacuate.’

  ‘Evacuate? As in—’

  The pilot was already pulling on a backpack marked PARACHUTE. George’s physics may not have been good, but he was top of his class in French. Paracete chute meant protect from falling.

  16:30‘We’re going to jump out of the plane?’ George felt dizzy.

  ‘Trust me,’ the pilot said. ‘It’s better than the alternative.’

  He approached the emergency exit door, grabbed the handle and wrenched it downwards. The door exploded out into the void so fast that it was like a magic tri
ck. George’s ears popped and he stumbled sideways as the plane rocked. The roaring of the wind was deafening. The cold blowing off the peaks of the Ural mountains turned his veins to ice.

  This was all wrong. ‘I don’t know how to use a parachute!’ George cried.

  16:00‘It’s easy. Just pull the ripcord ten seconds after you jump.’ The pilot didn’t even look at George as he turned to the open doorway and threw himself out. He was sucked away instantly, leaving George alone in a crippled plane en route to who-knew-what.

  15:30George rummaged in the closet the pilot’s parachute had come from. There was only one more. When he picked it up it felt too light to save his life. But he guessed that was the point. The chute would be made of fibres strong enough to hold him up but not heavy enough to drag him down.

  15:00He pulled the chute onto his back.

  One of the shoulder straps snapped.

  George stared at the torn fabric, alarmed. Perhaps he could tie a knot in it, but he wouldn’t know if it would take his weight until he pulled the ripcord. And were those tooth marks?

  He turned the parachute pack over and found a hole tunnelled through the canvas. Surrounded by a cocoon of ripped nylon was a dead rat, its flaky skin stretched across its bones. It had made a nest in here before it starved to death.

  14:30George dropped the parachute with a yelp. It was useless. Had the pilot known only one of the chutes was viable? Was that why he had jumped out so quickly, instead of sticking around long enough to show George how it worked?

  George ran to the open door. Just being so close to the sickening drop gave him vertigo. The drifts and valleys in the snow below looked like the divots in a misshapen golf ball. He gripped the safety rails with both hands. The ground was still at least a kilometre away. If the parachute didn’t work properly, there was no way he’d survive the fall.

  14:00His other option was to stay on board and attempt an emergency landing. But the pilot—a man with training and experience—had been so terrified of the terrain ahead that he’d thrown himself out of the plane rather than try to land it. What hope did George have?

  13:40He ran back to the cockpit. A radio dangled from the ceiling. He grabbed it and pressed the trigger in the side. ‘Hello?’ he yelled. ‘My plane is going down and I don’t know how to fly it! Mayday, mayday, mayday!’

  Another French word.M’aider. Help me.

  13:10There was only the hiss of static. George switched channels and tried again. Nothing. After trying five different channels with no response, he guessed the radio must be broken. No rudder, no radio, no parachute—did anything in this stupid plane work?

  The Ural mountains loomed in the windscreen, rocky peaks glistening. George didn’t have much confidence in the pilot’s calculations. The plane might not even make it over the mountains. If he was going to jump out, he had to do it soon.

  He knotted the broken strap, pulled the chute on and ran back to the emergency exit. The snow below looked no closer. The heat from the remaining engine cut a shimmering trail through the air. As an extreme sportsman he knew that skydivers often broke their legs on landing. Even a fully-functioning parachute could only slow a falling body so much. How much damage had the rat done?

  But he had no choice.

  11:30George settled into a crouch, ready to hurl himself out the door—

  Then he stood up. It was too scary.

  He crouched again, telling himself that if he didn’t jump, he would die—

  And hesitated. Perhaps there was another way.

  He looked out the front windows again. He had perhaps sixty seconds before the plane passed over the mountains, or crashed into them.

  11:00He yanked the overhead compartment open and tossed a bag aside, revealing his snowboard—a freeride board made from high-performance polyethylene with a strip of steel around the edge. It was too long for half-pipe riding or trick jumps, but maybe the size would save George’s life.

  10:30He ripped off his shoes, pulled on his boarding boots and strapped them into the bindings atop the board.

  He pulled on his padded goggles, wishing he had a helmet too. If he hit his head on landing and blacked out, he could freeze to death before anyone found him.

  09:55He hopped over to the emergency exit, board scraping the floor. No time to take off the parachute—the mountain was right below him. The pilot’s arithmetic had been correct after all. The snowy peak was only seven or eight metres below the speeding plane.

  Close enough. George took a deep breath and hurled himself out of the plane.

  The stream of hot air blasting through the remaining engine blew him off course immediately. He spun like a toy on a string, the horizon whooshing past him over and over as he tumbled towards the mountain. He felt like he was going to throw up.

  09:20He stretched his arms and legs out, fighting for balance. The air pounded his clothes, as if he was wrapped in a blanket while a group of boxing champions hit him with gloved fists, but soon he was right-side up.

  Just in time. George slammed into the snow with an incredible amount of force, not so much from the plane’s height as its speed. Twin shocks spiralled up his legs and suddenly he was rocketing down the slope, his board carving a trail in the snow.

  08:00‘Woooohooooo!’ he screamed as he zoomed across the white powder, faster than he had ever gone before. The plane shot past above him, rumbling away into the distance. Soon it disappeared over the next peak. Perhaps he would never know where it would end up. But he was alive.

  For now. George turned back to the slope and saw for the first time where he was headed.

  07:20His jaw dropped. A crevasse lay between the two mountains—a wide, deep chasm with smooth, ice-blue walls stretching down into darkness. Soon he would plunge in.

  He twisted his board sideways, trying to stop, but the slope was steep and he was sliding too fast. The snow had turned to ice beneath his board. He had to spin back the right way to avoid losing his balance. He couldn’t stop, and he couldn’t steer around it.

  Perhaps he could jump over it.

  06:30George crouched, reducing the wind resistance and getting closer to the board. It skittered faster and faster across the ice. The crevasse yawned up ahead. This was a mistake. The closer he got, the wider it looked—and deeper. He was almost at the edge and he still couldn’t see the bottom. If he didn’t make the jump, he would fall to his death.

  But he had to try. There was nothing else he could do. He was a prisoner of his earlier choices.

  He swept closer and closer to the edge—

  And jumped.

  06:00Gravity disappeared. The snow vanished out from under the board, leaving George to stare down into a pit so dark it looked endless. The walls were a brutally sharp patchwork of ice and stone.

  He hurtled towards the far side, the sun glinting off the steel rim of his board, snow trailing behind it like a jet stream.

  But he was too heavy. His velocity was slipping away. Halfway across the crevasse he could already tell he wasn’t going to make it. He was falling too fast.

  05:50If he was lucky, he would crash into the stone wall on the other side of the chasm and be killed on impact. If he was unlucky, he would fall deeper and deeper, accelerating into the frozen shadows below before he was eventually crushed against the bottom of the chasm. No-one would ever find his body. His parents and his sister would never know what had happened to him. And all because of a ruined parachute.

  His parachute!

  05:40George grabbed the ripcord and yanked it. The nylon parachute exploded out of his pack with a sound like a cardboard box being crushed by a speeding semitrailer. George plummeted as the chute burst into shape above him, shredded by the rat’s teeth. The knotted straps of the backpack dug into his shoulders and across his chest.

  The parachute actually seemed to scream as the wind whistled through all the gaping holes in the fabric above him. It was hopeless. There was no way it would slow him down enough to survive the impact. All he had d
one was give himself a burial shroud.

  04:30Snap! George’s head jerked forward and his arms nearly popped out of their sockets as the ropes went taut. His legs kicked wildly in the void, fixed a set distance apart by the snowboard. His breaths reverberated around the cavern. He still couldn’t see the bottom of the crevasse, but somehow he had stopped falling. What had happened?

  He looked up. One of the holes in the chute was snagged on the jagged edge of the cliff. Now he was hanging from the ropes which connected his pack to the chute.

  He laughed, his voice bouncing crazily between the walls of the crevasse as the adrenaline thinned out in his system and his heart slowed down from a sprint to a jog. By chewing that hole in the chute, the dead rat had saved his life.

  03:00Rrrrrrip.

  It almost sounded like a growling dog—a little Chihuahua or a Pomeranian. George looked up in horror. He hadn’t imagined it.

  The chute was tearing.

  Rrrip.

  02:41As he watched, the hole in the nylon got a little wider. It was too damaged to support his weight.

  No time to waste. The cliff face was out of reach and there were no handholds anyway. Instead, George grabbed the ropes and started dragging himself up, hand over hand.

  02:20This increased the strain on the chute. The tear spread faster across the nylon. Soon the last few fibres would snap, sending George tumbling down into the crevasse.

  He hauled himself up as fast as he dared. He kept his eyes on the grey sky as though that would make him weightless.

  02:00Every handhold took him closer to the top of the cliff, but it also widened the tear. For each metre he climbed he lost thirty or forty centimetres. His lungs ached from sucking in the freezing air. The muscles in his arms burned. His snowboard felt terrifyingly heavy beneath him, but he couldn’t spare a hand to remove it.

  When he was almost at the top, the last threads of the chute snapped. The cliff edge sheared through them like a guillotine through tissue paper.

  George felt himself begin to fall. He flung out a desperate hand—

  01:40And caught the edge of the cliff.

  The chute fell down on top of him like a drop-sheet over a priceless statue. He swiped it off with his free hand and then grabbed the cold stone, mashing the pads of his fingertips against his bones. Knowing his luck, the cliff would begin to crumble any second now. He clawed at the ice, hauling himself up onto it, elbow, elbow, knee, knee. Then he crawled a safe distance from the edge and collapsed.