A Grey Moon Over China by A. Thomas Day Read Free Book Online Page B

closer and closer to the runway, the glowing maw of its wound approaching as though to swallow us all. Molten fragments floated across the island and flared into pillars of flame where they hit the jungle, making no sound at all.
    Then suddenly the trance was broken as the plane plunged through the wall of smoke and smashed into the runway, spinning furiously toward us along the right side, crushing the remaining crews watching from behind their machines.
    Polaski jumped. I strained to see through the smoke, and then I saw it too.
    Barely outlined against the glow of the flames, a black figure was walking toward Elliot where he stood by Tanaka’s big heater. I started to run, pulling off my headset as I went. “Elliot! Elliot, look out!”
    Elliot spun just as Cole raised his arm and pulled the trigger.
    He hit Ellen Tanaka squarely in the face from just inches away.
     
    W
e lifted off in a helicopter two hours later. The island was in flames, a pyre whose smoke churned into the night like oil, blotting out the moon.
    Chan sat hunched in a corner of the deck as the turbines swept us through the night, her face in her hands and her shoulders shaking as she wept. Elliot slumped against the after bulkhead, head turned with his cheek against the cold metal. Paulson sat to one side, frowning at her hands and counting something on her fingers. Polaski looked out a window with pursed lips. I stood across from him, holding onto a strap. I was staring out throughthe door, not wanting anyone to know how frightened I’d been when I’d thought the gun was aimed at Elliot.
    The five of us were the only ones left, the only ones who’d been at that end of the runway. The rescue crews hadn’t found Cole, or any trace of his body.

THREE

Passover
     
     
     
    A
t dawn the next morning a pillar of black smoke still blotted out the sky over the island. I sat on the stoop of our bungalow and watched, far to the east.
    During the night I’d gone to find Chan, and she’d taken me into her bed. But the picture of oily flames and charred bodies hadn’t left me, and finally she’d put a hand on my chest and sent me away. Elliot had come later, and now sat tossing pebbles into the dirt. They made faint little thumps in the darkness where they hit.
    “Cheer up,” he said.
    “You should talk.”
    “Hell, it ain’t so bad. We still got stuff to look forward to. We could have breakfast, you know, with that real good egg shit, then—well, come on, Torres, think of all the stuff we could do. Your head gets to hurting, thinking about it . . . You don’t believe me, do you? That’s the trouble with you, Torres, you take everything so serious. It’s depressing being around you, sometimes.”
    “They’re dead, Tyrone. A hundred forty-two of them. How the hell can you let them go so quick?”
    “No, sir, you don’t ever let them go. You hang onto them real tight. But you don’t let them drag you back, neither. Don’t forget that, you hear?”
    What had the old man done when the fires came? Had he tried to hobble away on his cane? Call out for help?
     
    M
usic from a flute brought me out of my sleep. It came from the trees, the same tune I’d heard the other night. Again, as I listened, it seemed to bring back some other place, some other time, hard to remember.
    A chair scraped in the room behind me. Elliot was gone. The air was still, with a light mist hiding in the trees.
    The chair squeaked again.
    “Torres.” It was Polaski’s voice.
    “What.”
    “How rich is it possible to get?”
    “As rich as you want, Polaski.”
    Silence.
    “I mean, can you have a trillion dollars?”
    “Christ.” I went inside. Boots hung off the end of my bunk where Elliot slept. I sat down across from Polaski and took a drink from his canteen.
    “Okay. No, you can’t get trillions. At a certain point money doesn’t mean anything anymore. In the end it’s something the other guy only honors if he feels like it, and if you’ve got almost