Page 105 of Flight of Dreams

It’s a moment, nothing more, that they stand there frozen. But it’s enough.

There is a dull report behind them, no louder than the sound of a beer bottle being opened or a paper bag behind popped. The noise comes from behind, somewhere in the bowels of the ship.

And then chaos.

THE STEWARDESS

Emilie lays the borrowed clothes on Matilde Doehner’s bed. She cannot wear them. She cannot go with the family to Mexico. She cannot leave Max. Emilie has known this all along, somewhere deep down. But she is afraid of what it means to love again. This surrendering of her heart and the vulnerability it requires of her is so much harder the second time around. It was easy when she was young and innocent, when she had never been broken. Now she knows what it is to suffer loss. Now she knows what it means to have her heart ripped from her soul. To be dislocated.

And this time she chooses, knowing that it could happen again. Emilie chooses Max. What is faith if not this? Matilde will be disappointed, of course. But she is a woman. And she will understand.

Having made her decision, Emilie is at peace. She reaches for the door and something shifts. She sees her own trembling but she isn’t afraid. She isn’t shaking. This quiver comes not from within but from without. Everything trembles. The walls. The floor. Her own body. She feels it in the air and in the balls of her feet. It rises up and through her.

She feels herself lifted. Thrown. Catapulted backward into the hard edge of the berth. Emilie hears her head hit with a crack so loud her teeth throb. She feels the flair of pain at her scalp, along her hairline. She feels it acutely, and then she’s slipping into darkness. Then there is silence. There is nothing.

THE CABIN BOY

Werner sets the last plate in the cabinet above the banquette and steps back with a triumphant grin. But this feeling is gone before he has taken a step toward the door. Werner Franz is rendered a child quickly and completely when he hears the explosion. He is frightened by what he hopes—in the single moment he has left for hope—is a crack of thunder.

And then the air surrounding Werner splinters. It isn’t just the floor or the walls or some shudder within the structure like yesterday morning on the catwalk. It sounds as though the Hindenburg is tearing itself apart at the seams. The cupboard doors fly open and all the dishes that Werner so carefully washed and dried and put away only moments ago come sliding out and crash to the floor, where they shatter into wicked little pieces. He stands there, mute and dumb and bewildered, even as the floor tilts away behind him. To Werner, the explosion sounds like breaking glass. It will sound like that for as long as he has the capacity to remember it.

He is broken out of this stupor when the Hindenburg drops again sharply aft and he falls onto his haunches. Werner is aware of the broken china sliding across the floor toward him. He is aware of the raging, popping, explosive sounds that come from all directions now. And the screams—some distant and some in the next room—but the only thing the cabin boy can focus on is the door. It never occurs to him that he could go out the window. His only thought is of getting through the door. So he crawls and scrambles across the linoleum, grabbing onto table legs for balance and support. Once he has regained his balance, Werner throws himself toward the door, then down the corridor until he’s through the security threshold and into the ship’s cavity. The walkway is empty and, in the time it takes him to blink once, he understands why. A colossal, roiling fireball is rushing toward him, consuming everything in its wake.

THE JOURNALIST

The floor drops out from underneath them. First Leonhard and then Gertrud is hurled against the far wall. She can hear a woman scream in a cabin on the other side, a hard thump, and then nothing. The air rushes from Leonhard’s lungs, and his rib cage heaves with a thin whistling sound. Gertrud is pinned to the wall by one of his arms as chairs, dishes, and fellow passengers tumble toward them. She can feel her husband thrashing beside her, trying to cover her body with his own. To protect her.

“Leonhard,” she breathes his name and nods toward the window where blooming clouds of flame have filled the sky. “It’s on fire.”

THE NAVIGATOR

Max does not see the fire at first. He notices the glow of it lighting the ground and the clouds and the eyes of the men who stare out the window beside him. But he takes no more than one breath before he sees it in the air around him as well. Everywhere. The sky is lit with it. And then all is chaos. Max knows that the other officers are screaming, cursing, and shouting orders, but he can do nothing but stand beside the window in awe.

The sky is liquid gold.

The sky is death.

He might have stayed there, gazing into his own doom, but the stern drops suddenly, pulling him backward. Max throws out his hands to catch himself on the rear wall of the navigation room as the ship tilts upward, until he is pressed flat against the wall, supported by his hands, as though lying on the floor.

Bedlam.

A man rolls past him shrieking and smashes against the rear wall of the control car. Bauer? He isn’t sure. The contents previously on his chart table slide off and fly toward his face. He whips his head to the side just in time to avoid his nose being broken by the heavy leather-bound logbook. Pencils, pens, and instruments rain down around him and still the airship tilts ever upward.

So far the only thing he has heard are the panicked screams of his fellow crew members. But now the fire roars to life and becomes a ravenous beast consuming all other sound. It is hard to breathe. The air around him is ripped away, sucked toward the hungry flames.

Something snaps. Metallic and brittle. And then the bow drops and the ship is level for one protracted moment. The Hindenburg’s spine has broken in half.

Max hears Commander Pruss bellow over the cacophony. A single word, “Jump!” and Max scrambles to obey.

THE JOURNALIST

There is a man beside Gertrud, but she cannot see his face. He is praying madly, frantically in German as the ship convulses around them. People scream. Colonel Erdmann loses his grip on the windowsill and slides away. Something flies through the air. A coffee cup? There’s the smell of smoke and a strange ripping sound. A child bawls—the two Doehner boys hold on to the leg of a table, their little legs dangling in the air as their sister reaches for them. Gertrud’s mind registers each of these things in turn, but it isn’t until she sees the look of abject horror on Matilde Doehner’s face that she has a cognizant thought of her own. This maternal fear strikes something deep and instinctual inside of her, and it rips through her soul like a prayer. Oh God, Gertrud thinks, please let it end quickly.

THE CABIN BOY

Werner windmills madly away from the fire as it thunders through the hydrogen cells above him. Roaring. Consuming. Eviscerating. It is not so much heat that he feels but an incineration of the air itself. His mouth is dry from the wild gulps of air he swallows in his attempt to flee.

Something snaps. There’s a deafening metallic crunch and the ship’s hull crashes to the ground. Werner is knocked off his feet. Thrown to his hands and knees. He tips forward, onto his chest, and slides toward the flames. He can do nothing but grab one of the ropes that line each side of the keel corridor to slow his descent into hell.