After One
Flight Officer Albert Shook opened a door in the rear of economy and called for passengers to leave the plane single file,
leaving their possessions and removing their shoes before they slid down the yellow rubber ramp. Allie led the way, Robin
right behind her, half carrying Van, who couldn’t seem to attach his dazed stare to anything. The Pinets followed, the son
holding his father up, both arms around him. Raymond Pinet’s eyes were blurry, and he had a gory streak of blood running from
one eyebrow down the left side of his face. He was never clear on what had hit him in the face, and no one told him it was
Robin with the bottle.
Allie took off her cork heels and sat on the top of the inflatable ramp and slid down it like a child at the county fair.
The night was a slap of wet, briny cold. Greenland smelled like a mix of diesel and fresh herring. Allie wobbled away from
the inflatable ramp and turned for a look back at the 747.
Three ragged slashes ran along the starboard side for perhaps eighteen feet, shearing deep into the stainless steel. They
crossed from the upper part of the fuselage to the bottom, angling across the smashed window.
The porthole itself was filled with what looked like a burnt black mass of wadding. A spray of what might’ve been motor oil
had been splattered back from Horation Matthews’s decapitated corpse.
Van and Robin stood behind her, staring at the side of the plane.
“What in God’s name—” Robin began.
“Don’t bring him into it,” said Raymond Pinet. “He didn’t have anything to do with what happened up there.” He and Gregg waited a few feet away.
Van blinked, looked at Allie . . . and then smiled crookedly. His lower lip was fat and gleaming with blood. He leaned in
close to her ear.
“You know what this means?” Van asked.
“What?”
“You’re going to have to marry me,” he said, and planted a red kiss on her lips.