Read Beyond the Sea for Free Online

took another swig of water, his arm brushing Troy’s as he swallowed. “We’ll make sure, but no. I don’t think anyone lives here.”
    Acid bubbled in Troy’s belly. “How do you know?”
    “ We changed course for Kiritimati. Christmas Island is another name for it. There’s an airport there. We’re west of it. At least a thousand miles.”
    “ A thousand miles ?” He couldn’t even visualize how far that was. Blood rushing in his ears, Troy willed himself to wake up safe in his bed. This couldn’t be real. It couldn’t. “But…but there are other islands, right?”
    “ Phoenix islands to the west are closest. Six, seven hundred miles. Atolls and coral reefs. Uninhabited, I think. This whole area is.”
    Troy dug his fingernails into his palms to keep from screaming or crying or both. “We’re just out here all alone?”
    “ Dumb luck to find this island. We’d be dead otherwise.” He shuddered, his shoulder trembling. “Not just her.”
    Troy didn’t know what to say to that. He hadn’t even seen Paula after the crash. She’d just been…gone.
    Maybe she was the lucky one. We’re going to fucking die out here.
    Panic squeezed his lungs like a python, and Troy saw little bursts of light in the blackness. After concentrating on his breathing for a good minute, he got up the nerve to ask the only question that really mattered. “They’ll find us soon, right?”
    Brian was quiet for too long. Finally, he said, “I don’t know.”
    “ But there was a black box thingy, right? Those have a beacon or whatever?”
    “ Yes.”
    Exhaling, Troy smoothed his palms over his knees. “That’s good.”
    “ Sorry, I meant yes, they have a beacon. Activated by immersion in water and sends out pings. But we didn’t have a CVR or FDR. They’re only required on commercial aircraft. Most private planes don’t have them. Too expensive.” Brian spoke flatly, as if he was reading from a manual.
    Fuck . Fuck, fuck, fuck.
    Troy had to take a few breaths to ease the pounding of his heart. Brian was quiet, and Troy barely resisted the urge to poke him and yell to stay awake. Stay with me. “What’s…FDR? CV…what?” Not that it mattered, but he needed to focus on something other than the barbed-wire panic.
    After a few moments, Brian answered, “Flight data recorder. Cockpit voice recorder. We don’t really call them black boxes. The media does. They’re actually orange. Easier for searchers to find.”
    “ Oh. So there’s more than one?”
    “ Yes. FDR records things like airspeed and altitude, vertical acceleration. Technical specs. CVR records all noises in the cockpit on a two-hour loop. Pilots talking, radio transmissions, any other sounds that might occur.”
    “ Why on a loop?”
    “ Don’t need the whole flight. In a crash…” He went quiet.
    “ What?” Troy prompted after a few moments.
    Brian barely whispered, “It usually happens fast.”
    Out of useless questions for the moment, Troy closed his eyes and concentrated on getting his breathing back to normal. Hugging his knees, he counted his inhalations and exhalations. They’d be rescued. Of course they would. It didn’t matter that there was no black box or whatever those things were called.
    The plane isn’t even here anymore. Must have sunk. Could be miles and miles away. How will they find us?
    His lungs constricted. “They’ll look hard for us, won’t they?” He seized Brian’s arm blindly. “Won’t they?”
    Brian was still and calm in his grasp. “They’ll look, but here in the Pacific…it’s a vast area.”
    Troy shivered, nausea rolling through him. “Like when that Malaysian Airlines plane went missing.”
    “ Yes. Over the Indian Ocean.”
    “ But with us, they know the general spot we went down.” He dug his fingers into Brian’s warm skin. He was holding on too hard but couldn’t stop.
    “ They know we changed course for Kiritimati due to extreme weather.”
    “ That’s good. So we were on their