Final Destination 2 Read online

  PROLOGUE

  There is a theory that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, it will cause a tornado in Texas.

  Of course, this is impossible.

  Or is it?

  The scientists amongst you could argue over the reasons for the evolution of the butterfly, the biological and geographical pressures that led to its colonization of Brazil, and the wind-speed vectors that would make a change in air pressure in one continent snowball enough to change weather patterns in another. It might be possible, you may doubtfully concede, but only under remarkable, one-in-a-million circumstances.

  Trouble is, in an infinite universe, every second of every day there are a billion million-to-one coincidences.

  The Butterfly Effect is a major component of Chaos Theory, and came out of an attempt to to predict weather patterns, but is more commonly used by students, and anyone left in the bar after closing time, to drop at random into their conversation and try to make it sound as though they aren't talking complete and utter garbage. Chaos Theory is essentially a rather feeble attempt by many people to predict how tomorrow will turn out, by looking at all the tiny variables and events and coincidences of today, and projecting them into the future.

  The less scientific among us might call those coincidences Fate. Fate affects everyone among us, from the youngest to the oldest, from the emperor sitting on his golden throne to the whacked-out hobos sniffing meth and raging blindly at the sky down on skid row. Fate is the ultimate leveler, and the butterfly theory and the science surrounding it is simply a tidy way of summing up an age-old question that has plagued man since the dawn of time.

  The question is simply this: do I control my own fate?

  Look a little deeper, and you'll find your answer. Not in the shadowy foothills of ancient texts and bygone civilizations, but in the everyday world around you. There is no religion devoted to studying Fate, no devout sect that calls for its believers to throw themselves upon the mercy of Fate and beg for its forgiveness. No one ever sacrificed themselves for their belief in Fate, for its effect is as mechanical and as certain as the next sunrise, if somewhat less predictable. It is mankind's nature to need something to believe in when faced with uncertainty, and you can't get much more uncertain than Fate.

  So, if we want real control over our lives, perhaps the real question we should ask is this: why did the butterfly flap its wings in the first place?

  To arrive at your final answer, you'll have to look a little deeper. Now turn your attention to our universe, a collection of billions of suns and worlds, all rotating together in a complex dance started trillions of years ago by forces beyond our imagining. Look closer, down through the glare caused by the deadly radiance of countless suns, until you see our galaxy, and in it our solar system, a collection of tiny worlds made of gas and ice and rock. Focus in on that one lucky planet, Earth, a world that, through its unique balance of chemicals and gasses and temperatures, made life possible.

  Look closer. See the clouds part and the far-off landscape of cities and towns and fields spread out before you, their lights twinkling cozily in the darkness. Now focus in on the right-hand corner of the country we know as America, zoom in on New York, and take a look around its outskirts for a small town containing a street called Western Avenue. Don't ask a local cab driver how to get there; he won't have a clue and will drop you off in Western Central some thirty miles away, then overcharge you for the privilege. Aren't you glad you bought that Thomas Guide map now?

  On that street is a house, and in that house is a girl. Her name is Kimberly, and she is about to find out that sometimes, Fate doesn't need to cause a tornado to kill you.

  ONE

  Thunder grumbled outside the window as Kimberly drew her curtains and hurried around her brightly lit bedroom, pulling handfuls of clothes out of her closet and dresser drawers as she did so. Picking her way around the teetering piles of belongings strewn in colorful drifts all over the floor, she placed the clothes in neat piles at the foot of her bed, next to her brand new, open suitcase.

  Tomorrow-or rather later that day, since it was already past midnight-she and her best friend, Shaina, were going to drive down to Florida, along with a couple of old buddies from high school. Kimberly was so excited that she knew she would have trouble sleeping. She had stayed up late packing to stave off the inevitable tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling, and now she was kind of wishing she hadn't.

  This was to be her first Spring Break as a college student, and her first non-family road trip. When she was younger, she and her parents had always gone somewhere over the summer, but that was back when her mother was alive. As it was, it had taken a great deal of fast-talking to get her father to agree to let her go on this trip. He had always been overprotective of his only child, and the events of the last year had made him even more so.

  However, when she reminded him that she was nineteen, had been working her ass off at college in order to make the Dean's List and really, really needed a vacation, he had finally relented and given the trip his blessing. Kimberly had been counting the days 'til the trip for what seemed like forever, but now that the day was finally upon her, she realized that she was hopelessly unprepared.

  She adjusted the volume on the retro Nineties silver stereo perched precariously on her dresser, currently pumping out the Ramones at full volume, and stepped back to regard the mess on her bedroom with good-humored bewilderment. Her usually tidy room was awash with a flood of multi-colored clothes, jewelry and cosmetics that spilled off the bed onto the floor, sorted into piles of various sizes that overlapped one another and blended together to create a tangle of possessions, as though there had been an explosion at Macy's department store. In fact, her father had put it best when he'd come into her room earlier and had told her it looked like her closet had thrown up.

  Looking at the mess that now filled her room, Kimberly couldn't help but agree with him.

  Yawning, she poked at a pile of leaky sunscreen lotion bottles with the toe of her scuffed sneakers and tried to remember whether her dad had a second suitcase he could lend her. There was no way all this would fit into just one case, but she'd sorted through it five times and there was nothing else she could weed out. It was all essential stuff. She really should've started packing days ago-what if she arrived at her destination and found out that she had forgotten something vital, like her lip gloss?

  It was clearly time to get organized. Kimberly picked up her spiral-bound Hello Kitty notepad and studied the list she'd written to help her pack, checking the items off one by one as she placed them in the suitcase.

  Toothbrush and toothpaste: check. Clean underwear: check. Bikini set: check. SPF 50 sun block: check. Sunglasses: check. Condoms: check. Flip-flops: check.

  As she stood there, pen poised thoughtfully over her pad, there was a sudden gust of cold wind from the half-open window behind her desk, making the curtains billow into the room. A roll of distant thunder followed.

  Kimberly looked up, distracted. Then reality kicked back in and she set down her paper and pad, and moved quickly to close the window before the rain started. Last thing she needed was an inch of rain soaking her carpet and drenching her carefully chosen lingerie.

  Yanking down the sash, she secured the old-fashioned clip latches and stood back, gazing thoughtfully at the darkness outside her window. The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped by several degrees. She shivered and gave her chilly upper arms a brisk rub. There was a great deal of difference between spring weather along the Hudson River Valley and Central Florida. It was hard to believe that in less than twenty-four hours she would be sitting on a sunny beach, soaking up the rays and ogl
ing cute guys in board shorts. As it was, she'd definitely be dressing in layers tomorrow morning, or she would, in all likelihood, die of hyperthermia before she hit the city limits.

  Of all the ways there were to die, that was not how she wanted to go.

  Kimberly threw a couple of pairs of fashionably ripped Lucky jeans into the suitcase, decisively closed the top and hauled it off the bed with an effort. Enough with the packing; it was time for some relaxing. She was far too keyed-up for her own good. After turning down the volume on her stereo, she clicked on the television on top of her dresser and channel-surfed until she found CNN. Hey, there was an idea. Maybe if she watched the news channel for a bit she'd get bored and be able to fall asleep.

  Stripping down to her T-shirt and panties, Kimberly stretched out luxuriously on her bed, hugging her pillow to her. It was still a little cold in the room, so she wriggled further over onto the bed and hooked her cold feet underneath the soft cotton of her scrunched up comforter to warm them.

  Perfect.

  Snuggling down, Kimberly watched the talking heads droning on about Capitol Hill insiders and Wall Street closings, and soon she began to yawn. The soporific sounds of the air conditioning humming overhead lulled her into a trance, and she could feel her limbs relaxing as her eyelids grew increasingly heavy. Her body felt as though it was made of lead, sinking down into the black tides of unconsciousness.

  After drifting in and out of a light doze for a while, Kimberly rolled over and fell into a deep sleep.

  Unaware they were speaking to an oblivious audience, the talking heads continued to drone on and on, the images on the screen flickering and rolling, disrupting into bursts of static as lightning from the approaching storm arced across the midnight sky. When the signal finally straightened itself out, it revealed the opening credits of a late night live talk show. Garish neon titles rolled as the talk show host, an older man with a shaved head, glasses and a graying goatee, smiled slightly and nodded his head in polite acknowledgement of his applauding audience.

  “Good morning, America, and welcome to Midnight Report. I'm your host, Carter Randolph."

  In the studio, several hundred miles away from where Kimberly lay slumbering, Randolph turned and directed seventy-five percent of his best smile at the camera, his eyes narrowing slightly as he squinted myopically at the autocue. Thirty years in the TV industry had destroyed his eyesight to a point where he needed to wear glasses just to put his contacts in every morning. Every relentlessly glaring studio spotlight, every crappy low wattage autocue just made things worse.

  Although less than fifty years of age, Randolph had the anxious, "please don't fire me" look of an industry professional who knows his useful days will soon be up. Being relegated to the graveyard slot on the news channel was just the final kick in the teeth, but for now, he was willing to take anything that paid enough to keep up the payments on his wife's new cherry-red BMW. He hadn't the heart to tell her that he was no longer getting the generous monthly wage from the news network that he used to command, and only prayed that she never came across his glassily grinning face adorning every month's issue of 'The Randolph Report, the news magazine for the under twelves that was currently paying for three-quarters of their monthly mortgage.

  Life, as Randolph saw it right now, basically sucked.

  Randolph cleared his throat and straightened his tie, hoping that his mother wasn't watching this. "Tomorrow-or should I say today, since it is already past the witching hour-marks the one year anniversary since Volare Flight 180 exploded and crashed shortly after take-off at JFK Airport. It's a disaster that's affected many; none more so than Mount Abraham High School, which lost forty students and four faculty members in the crash. But it was the events after the crash that turned this tragic story into something even stranger. The survivors, who managed to get off the plane before it crashed, died soon after in a series of mysterious and bizarre accidents."

  The autocue rolled on, but Randolph paused, directing a seething glare at the studio's Floor Manager, who was busy hustling an academic-looking man in an unwashed white shirt and ill-fitting charcoal pants into the chair opposite him. The cheap pine floor vibrated as the operators rolled their cameras in toward him, ready for an introductory close-up.

  Randolph shook his head, resigning himself to his fate. He still couldn't believe some of the losers the Head Honchos at the studio hauled in for him to interview. Last week there had been that guy who believed that aliens were responsible for the wave of missing pets down in Colorado, citing a cat's collar found in a tree by his house as conclusive evidence that his little Fluffy had been spirited off into the sky by ETS from another dimension. A couple of weeks before that he'd interviewed a woman who, although normal in every other respect, firmly believed that she could communicate with birds, thus sharing the secrets of the animal universe with mankind. She had even brought a bird into the studio to demonstrate. That one had kept the guys in the newsroom sniggering for almost a month, and Randolph had briefly become an inadvertent star when the video clip of the pigeon pooping on his jacket had become the most requested download for two weeks running on the newsroom's internet site.

  Randolph straightened his glasses and gave his new interviewee a tight smile. Dreading the backlash on this one, he turned his gaze back to the flashing autocue.

  “Now, to some, those deaths were just tragic coincidences, but to others they were an indication of more sinister events taking place. That's the contention of tonight's guest, Mr Chris Welles.”

  As Randolph turned to his guest, the camera pulled out to show the thin, weedy-looking man with the pallor of a computer nerd seated in the chair opposite him. “Thanks for joining us."

  "Thank you for having me," Welles replied, with every indication of sincerity. He was in his early thirties, and the way he squirmed in his seat and glanced fitfully at the camera every few seconds suggested that he was unused to being on television.

  Randolph disliked him instantly.

  "And I appreciate your using the word 'sinister,” Welles went on. “Most people say 'supernatural,' because they think I'm talking about ghosts and witches, and stuff like that."

  "Well, here's your chance to set the record straight." Randolph was having difficulty keeping his own face straight, let alone the record. He poured himself a cooling glass of water, and surreptitiously popped two Valium pills into the corner of his mouth while pretending to gnaw an already bitten thumbnail. In his book, the sooner this freak show was over, the better.

  Welles twisted uncomfortably around in his chair as he glanced anxiously at the winking red light of the camera beside him. Under the harsh studio lights, his pale, pinched face looked almost like a skull, his eyes hiding in two pools of ugly shadow that, even now, the lighting guy was scrambling to fix. “I believe that there's a sort of force, an unseen malevolent presence that's all around us, every day. I believe it determines when we live and die. Some people call this force the Devil. I believe that the whole religious thing is bogus. I prefer to call it 'Death Itself.’”

  Randolph's brow furrowed as he tried to understand what his guest was saying, even as he felt the Valium start to kick in, soothing the worst of his irritation. “So, I'm surrounded by Death?" He snorted, amused and yet slightly disconcerted by the thought.

  "Absolutely. Absolutely.” Welles nodded, becoming more excited as he spoke. “Every day, everywhere, all the time, and that's what I want people to understand. Death has this grand design that we all fit into. So when Alex Browning got off that plane and took the other survivors with him, he basically screwed up Death's plan, and that's what I'm trying to warn people about.”

  The furrows across Randolph's forehead grew deeper. "And the fact that all the survivors have died is your evidence of this?”

  "Well, it's not so much that the survivors died, but it's the way they died." Welles leaned forward in his chair, his eyes burning with the fervor of a zealot. “I mean, there were so many
weird, seemingly random things about the way they died, it just didn't seem to make sense, and that's the proof that there's something out there."

  As the voices on the TV set droned on, Kimberly's fingers twitched in her sleep. She was dreaming: half-formed, foggy images of sunkissed boys with laughing eyes and bronzed muscles cavorting through her young, slumbering mind. She lay sprawled on the bed half-under the sheets, her full lips parted slightly as she breathed shallowly, the soft light from the lamp on the landing draped in pretty curves over her perfect porcelain complexion. In sleep, Kimberly's face looked much younger than her nineteen years, still smooth with youth, yet bearing the hallmarks of adulthood in its high cheekbones, curving eyebrows and wide, generous mouth. She was a pretty girl, and she was going to grow up to be a beautiful woman. Those who knew her would be surprised at how peaceful she looked right now, cocooned amid the folds of her comforter like a fairytale princess. The only sign of life was the light, regular rising and falling of her chest, and the occasional twitch of her lips as the muscular hunks in her dreams whispered sweet nothings to her.

  As she lay there slumbering, a sudden breeze blew across Kimberly's sleeping face, fluffing up her dark hair and slipping icy fingers down the front of her thin cotton T-shirt. She frowned in her sleep, and a moment later she twitched and her eyes suddenly snapped open.

  Startled, Kimberly sat up with a jolt, uncertain as to what had caused her to wake, but knowing that it was something important. She had a strange, nagging feeling that she had just heard someone call her name.

  She looked around the room, her vision still blurry from sleep. Her bedroom was illuminated by the yellow light from the hallway, spilling into the room through the half-open bedroom door. The dozens of snapshots plastered over every inch of wall space beamed down at her: happy pictures of herself, Shaina and a giggling gaggle of other teenage girls, posed sprawling crazily over the bonnets of fast cars, on the beach, at the mall. The sight of them reassured Kimberly. Her attention moved on, caught by a flickering blue light, and her gaze finally came to rest on the television. She licked her dry lips and tried to focus in on the screen, still slightly dazed from her nap. The volume on the TV seemed to be turned up too loud, but she was too warm and comfortable to get up and turn the set down.