CHAPTER FOUR
IN THE CLOUDS. WELCOME TO BANGOR. A ROUND OF
APPLAUSE. THE SLIDE AND THE CONVEYOR BELT. THE SOUND OF NO PHONES
RINGING. CRAIG TOOMY MAKES A SIDE-TRIP. THE LITTLE BLIND GIRL’S
WARNING.
1
The main cabin went from bright sunlight to the
gloom of late twilight and the plane began to buck harder. After
one particularly hard washboard bump, Albert felt a pressure
against his right shoulder. He looked around and saw Bethany’s head
lying there, as heavy as a ripe October pumpkin. The girl had
fainted.
The plane leaped again and there was a heavy thud
in first class. This time it was Dinah who shrieked, and Gaffney
let out a yell: “What was that? For God’s sake what was
that?”
“The drinks trolley,” Bob Jenkins said in a low,
dry voice. He tried to speak louder so they would all hear him and
found himself unable. “The drinks trolley was left out, remember? I
think it must have rolled across—”
The plane took a dizzying rollercoaster leap, came
down with a jarring smack, and the drinks trolley fell over with a
bang. Glass shattered. Dinah screamed again.
“It’s all right,” Laurel said frantically. “Don’t
hold me so tight, Dinah, honey, it’s okay—”
“Please, I don’t want to die! I just don’t want to
die!”
“Normal turbulence, folks.” Brian’s voice, coming
through the speakers, sounded calm... but Bob Jenkins thought he
heard barely controlled terror in that voice. “Just be—”
Another rocketing, twisting bump. Another crash as
more glasses and mini-bottles fell out of the overturned drinks
trolley.
“—calm,” Brian finished.
From across the aisle on Don Gaffney’s left:
rii-ip.
Gaffney turned in that direction. “Quit it right
now, motherfucker, or I’ll stuff what’s left of that magazine right
down your throat.”
Craig looked at him blandly. “Try it, you old
jackass.”
The plane bumped up and down again. Albert leaned
over Bethany toward the window. Her breasts pressed softly against
his arm as he did, and for the first time in the last five years
that sensation did not immediately drive everything else out of his
mind. He stared out the window, desperately looking for a break in
the clouds, trying to will a break in the clouds.
There was nothing but shades of dark gray.
2
“How low is the ceiling, mate?” Nick asked. Now
that they were actually in the clouds, he seemed calmer.
“I don’t know,” Brian said. “Lower than I’d hoped,
I can tell you that.”
“What happens if you run out of room?”
“If my instruments are off even a little, we’ll go
into the drink,” he said flatly. “I doubt if they are, though. If I
get down to five hundred feet and there’s still no joy, I’ll take
us up again and fly down to Portland.”
“Maybe you ought to just head that way now.”
Brian shook his head. “The weather there is almost
always worse than the weather here.”
“What about Presque Isle? Isn’t there a long-range
SAC base there?”
Brian had just a moment to think that this guy
really did know much more than he should. “It’s out of our reach.
We’d crash in the woods.”
“Then Boston is out of reach, too.”
“You bet.”
“This is starting to look like being a bad
decision, matey.”
The plane struck another invisible current of
turbulence, and the 767 shivered like a dog with a bad chill. Brian
heard faint screams from the main cabin even as he made the
necessary corrections and wished he could tell them all that this
was nothing, that the 767 could ride out turbulence twenty times
this bad. The real problem was the ceiling.
“We’re not struck out yet,” he said. The altimeter
stood at 2,200 feet.
“But we are running out of room.”
“We—” Brian broke off. A wave of relief rushed over
him like a cooling hand. “Here we are,” he said. “Coming
through.”
Ahead of the 767’s black nose, the clouds were
rapidly thinning. For the first time since they had overflown
Vermont, Brian saw a gauzy rip in the whitish-gray blanket. Through
it he saw the leaden color of the Atlantic Ocean.
Into the cabin microphone, Brian said: “We’ve
reached the ceiling, ladies and gentlemen. I expect this minor
turbulence to ease off once we pass through. In a few minutes,
you’re going to hear a thump from below. That will be the landing
gear descending and locking into place. I am continuing our descent
into the Bangor area.”
He clicked off and turned briefly to the man in the
navigator’s seat.
“Wish me luck, Nick.”
“Oh, I do, matey—I do.”
3
Laurel looked out the window with her breath
caught in her throat. The clouds were unravelling fast now. She saw
the ocean in a series of brief winks: waves, whitecaps, then a
large chunk of rock poking out of the water like the fang of a dead
monster. She caught a glimpse of bright orange that might have been
a buoy.
They passed over a small, tree-shrouded island, and
by leaning and craning her neck, she could see the coast dead
ahead. Thin wisps of smoky cloud obscured the view for an endless
forty-five seconds. When they cleared, the 767 was over land again.
They passed above a field; a patch of forest; what looked like a
pond.
But where are the houses? Where are the roads
and the cars and the buildings and the high-tension
wires?
Then a cry burst from her throat.
“What is it?” Dinah nearly screamed. “What is it,
Laurel? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing!” she shouted triumphantly. Down below she
could see a narrow road leading into a small seaside village. From
up here, it looked like a toy town with tiny toy cars parked along
the main street. She saw a church steeple, a town gravel pit, a
Little League baseball field. “Nothing’s wrong! It’s all there!
It’s all still there!”
From behind her, Robert Jenkins spoke. His voice
was calm, level, and deeply dismayed. “Madam,” he said, “I’m afraid
you are quite wrong.”
4
A long white passenger jet cruised slowly above
the ground thirty-five miles east of Bangor International Airport.
767 was printed on its tail in large, proud numerals. Along the
fuselage, the words AMERICAN PRIDE were written in letters which
had been raked backward to indicate speed. On both sides of the
nose was the airline’s trademark: a large red eagle. Its spread
wings were spangled with blue stars; its talons were flexed and its
head was slightly bent. Like the airliner it decorated, the eagle
appeared to be coming in for a landing.
The plane printed no shadow on the ground below it
as it flew toward the cluster of city ahead; there was no rain, but
the morning was gray and sunless. Its belly slid open. The
undercarriage dropped down and spread out. The wheels locked into
place below the body of the plane and the cockpit area.
American Pride Flight 29 slipped down the chute
toward Bangor. It banked slightly left as it went; Captain Engle
was now able to correct his course visually, and he did so.
“I see it!” Nick cried. “I see the airport! My God,
what a beautiful sight!”
“If you see it, you’re out of your seat,” Brian
said. He spoke without turning around. There was no time to turn
around now. “Buckle up and shut up.”
But that single long runway was a beautiful
sight.
Brian centered the plane’s nose on it and continued
down the slide, passing through 1,000 to 800. Below him, a
seemingly endless pine forest passed beneath Flight 29’s wings.
This finally gave way to a sprawl of buildings—Brian’s restless
eyes automatically recorded the usual litter of motels, gas
stations, and fast-food restaurants—and then they were passing over
the Penobscot River and into Bangor airspace. Brian checked the
board again, noted he had green lights on his flaps, and then tried
the airport again ... although he knew it was hopeless.
“Bangor tower, this is Flight 29,” he said. “I am
declaring an emergency. Repeat, I am declaring an emergency.
If you have runway traffic, get it out of my way. I’m coming
in.”
He glanced at the airspeed indicator just in time
to see it drop below 140, the speed which theoretically committed
him to landing. Below him, thinning trees gave way to a
golf-course. He caught a quick glimpse of a green Holiday Inn sign
and then the lights which marked the end of the runway—33 painted
on it in big white numerals—were rushing toward him.
The lights were not red, not green.
They were simply dead.
No time to think about it. No time to think about
what would happen to them if a Learjet or a fat little Doyka
puddle-jumper suddenly trundled onto the runway ahead of them. No
time to do anything now but land the bird.
They passed over a short strip of weeds and gravel
and then concrete runway was unrolling thirty feet below the plane.
They passed over the first set of white stripes and then the
skidmarks—probably made by Air National Guard jets this far
out—began just below them.
Brian babied the 767 down toward the runway. The
second set of stripes flashed just below them... and a moment later
there was a light bump as the main landing gear touched down. Now
Flight 29 streaked along Runway 33 at a hundred and twenty miles an
hour with its nose slightly up and its wings tilted at a mild
angle. Brian applied full flaps and reversed the thrusters. There
was another bump, even lighter than the first, as the nose came
down.
Then the plane was slowing, from a hundred and
twenty to a hundred, from a hundred to eighty, from eighty to
forty, from forty to the speed at which a man might run.
It was done. They were down.
“Routine landing,” Brian said. “Nothing to it.”
Then he let out a long, shuddery breath and brought the plane to a
full stop still four hundred yards from the nearest taxiway. His
slim body was suddenly twisted by a flock of shivers. When he
raised his hand to his face, it wiped away a great warm handful of
sweat. He looked at it and uttered a weak laugh.
A hand fell on his shoulder. “You all right,
Brian?”
“Yes,” he said, and picked up the intercom mike
again. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “welcome to Bangor.”
From behind him Brian heard a chorus of cheers and
he laughed.
Nick Hopewell was not laughing. He was leaning over
Brian’s seat and peering out through the cockpit window. Nothing
moved on the gridwork of runways; nothing moved on the taxiways. No
trucks or security vehicles buzzed back and forth on the tarmac. He
could see a few vehicles, he could see an Army transport plane—a
C-12—parked on an outer taxiway and a Delta 727 parked at one of
the jetways, but they were as still as statues.
“Thank you for the welcome, my friend,” Nick said
softly. “My deep appreciation stems from the fact that it appears
you are the only one who is going to extend one. This place is
utterly deserted.”
5
In spite of the continued radio silence, Brian was
reluctant to accept Nick’s judgment ... but by the time he had
taxied to a point between two of the passenger terminal’s jetways,
he found it impossible to believe anything else. It was not just
the absence of people; not just the lack of a single security car
rushing out to see what was up with this unexpected 767; it was an
air of utter lifelessness, as if Bangor International Airport had
been deserted for a thousand years, or a hundred thousand. A
Jeep-driven baggage train with a few scattered pieces of luggage on
its flatties was parked beneath one wing of the Delta jet. It was
to this that Brian’s eyes kept returning as he brought Flight 29 as
close to the terminal as he dared and parked it. The dozen or so
bags looked as ancient as artifacts exhumed from the site of some
fabulous ancient city. I wonder if the guy who discovered King
Tut’s tomb felt the way I do now, he thought.
He let the engines die and just sat there for a
moment. Now there was no sound but the faint whisper of an
auxiliary power unit—one of four—at the rear of the plane. Brian’s
hand moved toward a switch marked INTERNAL POWER and actually
touched it before drawing his hand back. Suddenly he didn’t want to
shut down completely. There was no reason not to, but the voice of
instinct was very strong.
Besides, he thought, I don’t think
there’s anyone around to bitch about wasting fuel ... what little
there is left to waste.
Then he unbuckled his safety harness and got
up.
“Now what, Brian?” Nick asked. He had also risen,
and Brian noticed for the first time that Nick was a good four
inches taller than he was. He thought: I have been in charge.
Ever since this weird thing happened—ever since we
discovered it had happened, to be more accurate—I have been
in charge. But I think that’s going to change very
shortly.
He discovered he didn’t care. Flying the 767 into
the clouds had taken every ounce of courage he possessed, but he
didn’t expect any thanks for keeping his head and doing his job;
courage was one of the things he got paid for. He remembered a
pilot telling him once, “They pay us a hundred thousand dollars or
more a year, Brian, and they really do it for just one reason. They
know that in almost every pilot’s career, there are thirty or forty
seconds when he might actually make a difference. They pay us not
to freeze when those seconds finally come.”
It was all very well for your brain to tell you
that you had to go down, clouds or no clouds, that there was simply
no choice; your nerve-endings just went on screaming their old
warning, telegraphing the old high-voltage terror of the unknown.
Even Nick, whatever he was and whatever he did on the ground, had
wanted to back away from the clouds when it came to the sticking
point. He had needed Brian to do what needed to be done. He and all
the others had needed Brian to be their guts. Now they were down
and there were no monsters beneath the clouds; only this weird
silence and one deserted luggage train sitting beneath the wing of
a Delta 727.
So if you want to take over and be the captain,
my nose-twisting friend, you have my blessing. I’ll even let you
wear my cap if you want to. But not until we’re off the plane.
Until you and the rest of the geese actually stand on the ground,
you’re my responsibility.
But Nick had asked him a question, and Brian
supposed he deserved an answer.
“Now we get off the airplane and see what’s what,”
he said, brushing past the Englishman.
Nick put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Do
you think—”
Brian felt a flash of uncharacteristic anger. He
shook loose from Nick’s hand. “I think we get off the plane,” he
said. “There’s no one to extend a jetway or run us out a set of
stairs, so I think we use the emergency slide. After that, you
think. Matey.”
He pushed through into first class ... and almost
fell over the drinks trolley, which lay on its side. There was a
lot of broken glass and an eye-watering stink of alcohol. He
stepped over it. Nick caught up with him at the rear of the
first-class compartment.
“Brian, if I said something to offend you, I’m
sorry. You did a hell of a fine job.”
“You didn’t offend me,” Brian said. “It’s just that
in the last ten hours or so I’ve had to cope with a pressure leak
over the Pacific Ocean, finding out that my ex-wife died in a
stupid apartment fire in Boston, and that the United States has
been cancelled. I’m feeling a little zonked.”
He walked through business class into the main
cabin. For a moment there was utter silence; they only sat there,
looking at him from their white faces with dumb
incomprehension.
Then Albert Kaussner began to applaud.
After a moment, Bob Jenkins joined him... and Don
Gaffney .. and Laurel Stevenson. The bald man looked around and
also began to applaud.
“What is it?” Dinah asked Laurel. “What’s
happening?”
“It’s the captain,” Laurel said. She began to cry.
“It’s the captain who brought us down safe.”
Then Dinah began to applaud, too.
Brian stared at them, dumbfounded. Standing behind
him, Nick joined in. They unbuckled their belts and stood in front
of their seats, applauding him. The only three who did not join in
were Bethany, who had fainted, the bearded man, who was still
snoring in the back row, and Craig Toomy, who panned them all with
his strange lunar gaze and then began to rip a fresh strip from the
airline magazine.
6
Brian felt his face flush—this was just too goony.
He raised his hands but for a moment they went on,
regardless.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please... please ... I
assure you, it was a very routine landing—”
“Shucks, ma‘am—t’warn’t nothin,” Bob Jenkins said,
doing a very passable Gary Cooper imitation, and Albert burst out
laughing. Beside him, Bethany’s eyes fluttered open and she looked
around, dazed.
“We got down alive, didn’t we?” she said. “My God!
That’s great! I thought we were all dead meat!”
“Please,” Brian said. He raised his arms higher and
now he felt weirdly like Richard Nixon, accepting his party’s
nomination for four more years. He had to struggle against sudden
shrieks of laughter. He couldn’t do that; the passengers wouldn’t
understand. They wanted a hero, and he was elected. He might as
well accept the position... and use it. He still had to get them
off the plane, after all. “If I could have your attention,
please!”
They stopped applauding one by one and looked at
him expectantly—all except Craig, who threw his magazine aside in a
sudden resolute gesture. He unbuckled his seatbelt, rose, and
stepped out into the aisle, kicking a drift of paper strips aside.
He began to rummage around in the compartment above his seat,
frowning with concentration as he did so.
“You’ve looked out the windows, so you know as much
as I do,” Brian said. “Most of the passengers and all of the crew
on this flight disappeared while we were asleep. That’s crazy
enough, but now we appear to be faced with an even crazier
proposition. It looks like a lot of other people have disappeared
as well ... but logic suggests that other people must be around
somewhere. We survived whatever-it-was, so others must have
survived it as well.”
Bob Jenkins, the mystery writer, whispered
something under his breath. Albert heard him but could not make out
the words. He half-turned in Jenkins’s direction just as the writer
muttered the two words again. This time Albert caught them. They
were false logic.
“The best way to deal with this, I think, is to
take things one step at a time. Step one is exiting the
plane.”
“I bought a ticket to Boston,” Craig Toomy said in
a calm, rational voice. “Boston is where I want to go.”
Nick stepped out from behind Brian’s shoulder.
Craig glanced at him and his eyes narrowed. For a moment he looked
like a bad-tempered housecat again. Nick raised one hand with the
fingers curled in against his palm and scissored two of his
knuckles together in a nose-pinching gesture. Craig Toomy, who had
once been forced to stand with a lit match between his toes while
his mother sang “Happy Birthday,” got the message at once. He had
always been a quick study. And he could wait.
“We’ll have to use the emergency slide,” Brian
said, “so I want to review the procedures with you. Listen
carefully, then form a single-file line and follow me to the front
of the aircraft.”
7
Four minutes later, the forward entrance of
American Pride’s Flight 29 swung inward. Some murmured conversation
drifted out of the opening and seemed to fall immediately dead on
the cool, still air. There was a hissing sound and a large clump of
orange fabric suddenly bloomed in the doorway. For a moment it
looked like a strange hybrid sunflower. It grew and took shape as
it fell, its surface inflating into a plump ribbed slide. As the
foot of the slide struck the tarmac there was a low pop! and
then it just leaned there, looking like a giant orange air
mattress.
Brian and Nick stood at the head of the short line
in the portside row of first class.
“There’s something wrong with the air out there,”
Nick said in a low voice.
“What do you mean?” Brian asked. He pitched his
voice even lower. “Poisoned?”
“No... at least I don’t think so. But it has no
smell, no taste.”
“You’re nuts,” Brian said uneasily.
“No I’m not,” Nick said. “This is an
airport, mate, not a bloody hayfield, but can you smell oil
or gas? I can’t.”
Brian sniffed. And there was nothing. If the air
was poisoned—he didn’t believe it was, but if—it was a slow-acting
toxin. His lungs seemed to be processing it just fine. But Nick was
right. There was no smell. And that other, more elusive, quality
that the Brit had called taste ... that wasn’t there, either. The
air outside the open door tasted utterly neutral. It tasted
canned.
“Is something wrong?” Bethany Simms asked
anxiously. “I mean, I’m not sure if I really want to know if there
is, but—”
“There’s nothing wrong,” Brian said. He counted
heads, came up with ten, and turned to Nick again. “That guy in the
back is still asleep. Do you think we should wake him up?”
Nick thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“Let’s not. Haven’t we got enough problems for now without having
to play nursemaid to a bloke with a hangover?”
Brian grinned. They were his thoughts exactly.
“Yes, I think we do. All right—you go down first, Nick. Hold the
bottom of the slide. I’ll help the rest off.”
“Maybe you’d better go first. In case my
loudmouthed friend decides to cut up rough about the unscheduled
stop again.” He pronounced unscheduled as
un-shed-youled.
Brian glanced at the man in the crew-necked jersey.
He was standing at the rear of the line, a slim monogrammed
briefcase in one hand, staring blankly at the ceiling. His face had
all the expression of a department-store dummy. “I’m not going to
have any trouble with him,” he said, “because I don’t give a crap
what he does. He can go or stay, it’s all the same to me.”
Nick grinned. “Good enough for me, too. Let the
grand exodus begin.”
“Shoes off?”
Nick held up a pair of black kidskin loafers.
“Okay—away you go.” Brian turned to Bethany. “Watch
closely, miss—you’re next.”
“Oh god—I hate shit like this.”
Bethany nevertheless crowded up beside Brian and
watched apprehensively as Nick Hopewell addressed the slide. He
jumped, raising both legs at the same time so he looked like a man
doing a seat-drop on a trampoline. He landed on his butt and slid
to the bottom. It was neatly done; the foot of the slide barely
moved. He hit the tarmac with his stocking feet, stood up, twirled
around, and made a mock bow with his arms held out behind
him.
“Easy as pie!” he called up. “Next customer!”
“That’s you, miss,” Brian said. “Is it
Bethany?”
“Yes,” she said nervously. “I don’t think I can do
this. I flunked gym all three semesters and they finally let me
take home ec again instead.”
“You’ll do fine,” Brian told her. He reflected that
people used the slide with much less coaxing and a lot more
enthusiasm when there was a threat they could see—a hole in the
fuselage or a fire in one of the portside engines. “Shoes
off?”
Bethany’s shoes—actually a pair of old pink
sneakers—were off, but she tried to withdraw from the doorway and
the bright-orange slide just the same. “Maybe if I could just have
a drink before—”
“Mr. Hopewell’s holding the slide and you’ll be
fine,” Brian coaxed, but he was beginning to be afraid he might
have to push her. He didn’t want to, but if she didn’t jump soon,
he would. You couldn’t let them go to the end of the line until
their courage returned; that was the big no-no when it came to the
escape slide. If you did that, they all wanted to go to the
end of the line.
“Go on, Bethany,” Albert said suddenly. He had
taken his violin case from the overhead compartment and held it
tucked under one arm. “I’m scared to death of that thing, and if
you go, I’ll have to.”
She looked at him, surprised. “Why?”
Albert’s face was very red. “Because you’re a
girl,” he said simply. “I know I’m a sexist rat, but that’s
it.”
Bethany looked at him a moment longer, then laughed
and turned to the slide. Brian had made up his mind to push her if
she looked around or drew back again, but she didn’t. “Boy, I wish
I had some grass,” she said, and jumped.
She had seen Nick’s seat-drop maneuver and knew
what to do, but at the last moment she lost her courage and tried
to get her feet under her again. As a result, she skidded to one
side when she came down on the slide’s bouncy surface. Brian was
sure she was going to tumble off, but Bethany herself saw the
danger and managed to roll back. She shot down the slope on her
right side, one hand over her head, her blouse rucking up almost to
the nape of her neck. Then Nick caught her and she stepped
off.
“Oh boy,” she said breathlessly. “Just like being a
kid again.”
“Are you all right?” Nick asked.
“Yeah. I think I might have wet my pants a little,
but I’m okay.”
Nick smiled at her and turned back to the
slide.
Albert looked apologetically at Brian and extended
the violin case. “Would you mind holding this for me? I’m afraid if
I fall off the slide, it might get broken. My folks’d kill me. It’s
a Gretch.”
Brian took it. His face was calm and serious, but
he was smiling inside. “Could I look? I used to play one of these
about a thousand years ago.”
“Sure,” Albert said.
Brian’s interest had a calming effect on the boy
... which was exactly what he had hoped for. He unsnapped the three
catches and opened the case. The violin inside was indeed a Gretch,
and not from the bottom of that prestigious line, either. Brian
guessed you could buy a compact car for the amount of money this
had cost.
“Beautiful,” he said, and plucked out four quick
notes along the neck: My dog has fleas. They rang sweetly
and beautifully. Brian closed and latched the case again. “I’ll
keep it safe. Promise.”
“Thanks.” Albert stood in the doorway, took a deep
breath, then let it out again. “Geronimo,” he said in a weak little
voice and jumped. He tucked his hands into his armpits as he did
so—protecting his hands in any situation where physical damage was
possible was so ingrained in him that it had become a reflex. He
seat-dropped onto the slide and shot neatly to the bottom.
“Well done!” Nick said.
“Nothing to it,” Ace Kaussner drawled, stepped off,
and then nearly tripped over his own feet.
“Albert!” Brian called down. “Catch!” He leaned
out, placed the violin case on the center of the slide, and let it
go. Albert caught it easily five feet from the bottom, tucked it
under his arm, and stood back.
Jenkins shut his eyes as he leaped and came down
aslant on one scrawny buttock. Nick stepped nimbly to the left side
of the slide and caught the writer just as he fell off, saving him
a nasty tumble to the concrete.
“Thank you, young man.”
“Don’t mention it, matey.”
Gaffney followed; so did the bald man. Then Laurel
and Dinah Bellman stood in the hatchway.
“I’m scared,” Dinah said in a thin, wavery
voice.
“You’ll be fine, honey,” Brian said. “You don’t
even have to jump.” He put his hands on Dinah’s shoulders and
turned her so she was facing him with her back to the slide. “Give
me your hands and I’ll lower you onto the slide.”
But Dinah put them behind her back. “Not you. I
want Laurel to do it.”
Brian looked at the youngish woman with the dark
hair. “Would you?”
“Yes,” she said. “If you tell me what to do.”
“Dinah already knows. Lower her onto the slide by
her hands. When she’s lying on her tummy with her feet pointed
straight, she can shoot right down.”
Dinah’s hands were cold in Laurel’s. “I’m scared,”
she repeated.
“Honey, it’ll be just like going down a playground
slide,” Brian said. “The man with the English accent is waiting at
the bottom to catch you. He’s got his hands up just like a catcher
in a baseball game.” Not, he reflected, that Dinah would know what
that looked like.
Dinah looked at him as if he were being quite
foolish. “Not of that. I’m scared of this place. It
smells funny.”
Laurel, who detected no smell but her own nervous
sweat, looked helplessly at Brian.
“Honey,” Brian said, dropping to one knee in front
of the little blind girl, “we have to get off the plane. You know
that, don’t you?”
The lenses of the dark glasses turned toward him.
“Why? Why do we have to get off the plane? There’s no one
here.”
Brian and Laurel exchanged a glance.
“Well,” Brian said, “we won’t really know that
until we check, will we?”
“I know already,” Dinah said. “There’s nothing to
smell and nothing to hear. But ... but...”
“But what, Dinah?” Laurel asked.
Dinah hesitated. She wanted to make them understand
that the way she had to leave the plane was really not what was
bothering her. She had gone down slides before, and she trusted
Laurel. Laurel would not let go of her hands if it was dangerous.
Something was wrong here, wrong, and that was what
she was afraid of—the wrong thing. It wasn’t the quiet and it
wasn’t the emptiness. It might have to do with those things, but it
was more than those things.
Something wrong.
But grownups did not believe children, especially
not blind children, even more especially not blind girl
children. She wanted to tell them they couldn’t stay here, that it
wasn’t safe to stay here, that they had to start the plane
up and get going again. But what would they say? Okay, sure,
Dinah’s right, everybody back on the plane? No way.
They’ll see. They’ll see that it’s empty and
then we’ll get back on the airplane and go someplace else.
Someplace where it doesn’t feel wrong. There’s still
time.
I think.
“Never mind,” she told Laurel. Her voice was low
and resigned. “Lower me down.”
Laurel lowered her carefully onto the slide. A
moment later Dinah was looking up at her—except she’s not
really looking, Laurel thought, she can’t really
look at all—with her bare feet splayed out behind her on the
orange slide.
“Okay, Dinah?” Laurel asked.
“No,” Dinah said. “Nothing’s okay here.” And
before Laurel could release her, Dinah unlocked her hands from
Laurel’s and released herself. She slid to the bottom, and Nick
caught her.
Laurel went next, dropping neatly onto the slide
and holding her skirt primly as she slid to the bottom. That left
Brian, the snoozing drunk at the back of the plane, and that
fun-loving paper-ripping party animal, Mr. Crew-Neck Jersey.
I’m not going to have any trouble with him,
Brian had said, because I don’t give a crap what he does.
Now he discovered that was not really true. The man was not playing
with a full deck. Brian suspected even the little girl knew that,
and the little girl was blind. What if they left him behind and the
guy decided to go on a rampage? What if, in the course of that
rampage, he decided to trash the cockpit?
So what? You’re not going anyplace. The tanks
are almost dry.
Still, he didn’t like the idea, and not just
because the 767 was a multi-million-dollar piece of equipment,
either. Perhaps what he felt was a vague echo of what he had seen
in Dinah’s face as she looked up from the slide. Things here seemed
wrong, even wronger than they looked ... and that was scary,
because he didn’t know how things could be wronger than that. The
plane, however, was right. Even with its fuel tanks all but empty,
it was a world he knew and understood.
“Your turn, friend,” he said as civilly as he
could.
“You know I’m going to report you for this, don’t
you?” Craig Toomy asked in a queerly gentle voice. “You know I plan
to sue this entire airline for thirty million dollars, and that I
plan to name you a primary respondent?”
“That’s your privilege, Mr.—”
“Toomy. Craig Toomy.”
“Mr. Toomy,” Brian agreed. He hesitated. “Mr.
Toomy, are you aware of what has happened to us?”
Craig looked out the open doorway for a
moment—looked at the deserted tarmac and the wide, slightly
polarized terminal windows on the second level, where no happy
friends and relatives stood waiting to embrace arriving passengers,
where no impatient travellers waited for their flights to be
called.
Of course he knew. It was the langoliers. The
langoliers had come for all the foolish, lazy people, just as his
father had always said they would.
In that same gentle voice, Craig said: “In the Bond
Department of the Desert Sun Banking Corporation, I am known as The
Wheelhorse. Did you know that?” He paused for a moment, apparently
waiting for Brian to make some response. When Brian didn’t, Craig
continued. “Of course you didn’t. No more than you know how
important this meeting at the Prudential Center in Boston is. No
more than you care. But let me tell you something, Captain: the
economic fate of nations may hinge upon the results of that
meeting—that meeting from which I will be absent when the roll is
taken.”
“Mr. Toomy, all that’s very interesting, but I
really don’t have time—”
“Time!” Craig screamed at him suddenly.
“What in the hell do you know about time? Ask me! Ask me! I
know about time! I know all about time! Time is short, sir!
Time is very fucking short!”
Hell with it, I’m going to push the crazy son of
a bitch, Brian thought, but before he could, Craig Toomy turned
and leaped. He did a perfect seat-drop, holding his briefcase to
his chest as he did so, and Brian was crazily reminded of that old
Hertz ad on TV, the one where O. J. Simpson went flying through
airports in a suit and a tie.
“Time is short as hell!” Craig shouted as he
slid down, briefcase over his chest like a shield, pantslegs
pulling up to reveal his knee-high dress-for-success black nylon
socks.
Brian muttered: “Jesus, what a fucking weirdo.” He
paused at the head of the slide, looked around once more at the
comforting, known world of his aircraft... and jumped.
8
Ten people stood in two small groups beneath the
giant wing of the 767 with the red-and-blue eagle on the nose. In
one group were Brian, Nick, the bald man, Bethany Simms, Albert
Kaussner, Robert Jenkins, Dinah, Laurel, and Don Gaffney. Standing
slightly apart from them and constituting his own group was Craig
Toomy, a.k.a. The Wheelhorse. Craig bent and shook out the creases
of his pants with fussy concentration, using his left hand to do
it. The right was tightly locked around the handle of his
briefcase. Then he simply stood and looked around with wide,
disinterested eyes.
“What now, Captain?” Nick asked briskly.
“You tell me. Us.”
Nick looked at him for a moment, one eyebrow
slightly raised, as if to ask Brian if he really meant it. Brian
inclined his head half an inch. It was enough.
“Well, inside the terminal will do for a start, I
reckon,” Nick said. “What would be the quickest way to get there?
Any idea?”
Brian nodded toward a line of baggage trains parked
beneath the overhang of the main terminal. “I’d guess the quickest
way in without a jetway would be the luggage conveyor.”
“All right; let’s hike on over, ladies and
gentlemen, shall we?”
It was a short walk, but Laurel, who walked
hand-in-hand with Dinah, thought it was the strangest one she had
ever taken in her life. She could see them as if from above, less
than a dozen dots trundling slowly across a wide concrete plain.
There was no breeze. No birds sang. No motors revved in the
distance, and no human voice broke the unnatural quiet. Even their
footfalls seemed wrong to her. She was wearing a pair of high
heels, but instead of the brisk click she was used to, she seemed
to hear only small, dull thuds.
Seemed, she thought. That’s the key word.
Because the situation is so strange, everything begins to seem
strange. It’s the concrete, that’s all. High heels sound different
on concrete.
But she had walked on concrete in high heels
before. She didn’t remember ever hearing a sound precisely like
this. It was ... pallid, somehow. Strengthless.
They reached the parked luggage trains. Nick wove
between them, leading the line, and stopped at a dead conveyor belt
which emerged from a hole lined with hanging strips of rubber. The
conveyor made a wide circle on the apron where the handlers
normally stood to unload the flatties, then re-entered the terminal
through another hole hung with rubber strips.
“What are those pieces of rubber for?” Bethany
asked nervously.
“To keep out the draft in cold weather, I imagine,”
Nick said. “Just let me poke my head through and have a look. No
fear; won’t be a moment.” And before anyone could reply, he had
boosted himself onto the conveyor belt and was walking bent-over
down to one of the holes cut into the building. When he got there,
he dropped to his knees and poked his head through the rubber
strips.
We’re going to hear a whistle and then a
thud, Albert thought wildly, and when we pull him back, his
head will be gone.
There was no whistle, no thud. When Nick withdrew,
his head was still firmly attached to his neck, and his face wore a
thoughtful expression. “Coast’s clear,” he said, and to Albert his
cheery tone now sounded manufactured. “Come on through, friends.
When a body meet a body, and all that.”
Bethany held back. “Are there bodies? Mister, are
there dead people in there?”
“Not that I saw, miss,” Nick said, and now he had
dropped any attempt at lightness. “I was misquoting old Bobby Burns
in an attempt to be funny. I’m afraid I achieved tastelessness
instead of humor. The fact is, I didn’t see anyone at all. But
that’s pretty much what we expected, isn’t it?”
It was... but it struck heavily at their hearts
just the same. Nick’s as well, from his tone.
One after the other they climbed onto the conveyor
belt and crawled after him through the hanging rubber strips.
Dinah paused just outside the entrance hole and
turned her head back toward Laurel. Hazy light flashed across her
dark glasses, turning them to momentary mirrors.
“It’s really wrong here,” she repeated, and pushed
through to the other side.
9
One by one they emerged into the main terminal of
Bangor International Airport, exotic baggage crawling along a
stalled conveyor belt. Albert helped Dinah off and then they all
stood there, looking around in silent wonder.
The shocked amazement at waking to a plane which
had been magically emptied of people had worn off; now dislocation
had taken the place of wonder. None of them had ever been in an
airport terminal which was utterly empty. The rental-car stalls
were deserted. The ARRIVALS/DEPARTURES monitors were dark and dead.
No one stood at the bank of counters serving Delta, United,
Northwest Air-Link, or Mid-Coast Airways. The huge tank in the
middle of the floor with the BUY MAINE LOBSTERS banner stretched
over it was full of water, but there were no lobsters in it. The
overhead fluorescents were off, and the small amount of light
entering through the doors on the far side of the large room
petered out halfway across the floor, leaving the little group from
Flight 29 huddled together in an unpleasant nest of shadows.
“Right, then,” Nick said, trying for briskness and
managing only unease. “Let’s try the telephones, shall we?”
While he went to the bank of telephones, Albert
wandered over to the Budget Rent A Car desk. In the slots on the
rear wall he saw folders for BRIGGS, HANDLEFORD, MARCHANT, FENWICK
and PESTLEMAN. There was, no doubt, a rental agreement inside each
one, along with a map of the central Maine area, and on each map
there would be an arrow with the legend YOU ARE HERE on it,
pointing at the city of Bangor.
But where are we really? Albert wondered.
And where are Briggs, Handleford, Marchant, Fenwick, and
Pestleman? Have they been transported to another dimension? Maybe
it’s the Grateful Dead. Maybe the Dead’s playing somewhere
downstate and everybody left for the show.
There was a dry scratching noise just behind him.
Albert nearly jumped out of his skin and whirled around fast,
holding his violin case up like a cudgel. Bethany was standing
there, just touching a match to the tip of her cigarette.
She raised her eyebrows. “Scare you?”
“A little,” Albert said, lowering the case and
offering her a small, embarrassed smile.
“Sorry.” She shook out the match, dropped it on the
floor, and drew deeply on her cigarette. “There. At least that’s
better. I didn’t dare to on the plane. I was afraid something might
blow up.”
Bob Jenkins strolled over. “You know, I quit those
about ten years ago.”
“No lectures, please,” Bethany said. “I’ve got a
feeling that if we get out of this alive and sane, I’m in for about
a month of lectures. Solid. Wall-to-wall.”
Jenkins raised his eyebrows but didn’t ask for an
explanation. “Actually,” he said, “I was going to ask you if I
could have one. This seems like an excellent time to renew
acquaintance with old habits.”
Bethany smiled and offered him a Marlboro. Jenkins
took it and she lit it for him. He inhaled, then coughed out a
series of smoke-signal puffs.
“You have been away,” she observed
matter-of-factly.
Jenkins agreed. “But I’ll get used to it again in a
hurry. That’s the real horror of the habit, I’m afraid. Did you two
notice the clock?”
“No,” Albert said.
Jenkins pointed to the wall above the doors of the
men’s and women’s bathrooms. The clock mounted there had stopped at
4:07.
“It fits,” he said. “We knew we had been in the air
for awhile when—let’s call it The Event, for want of a better
term—when The Event took place. 4:07A.M. Eastern Daylight Time is
1:07A.M. PDT. So now we know the when.”
“Gee, that’s great,” Bethany said.
“Yes,” Jenkins said, either not noticing or
preferring to ignore the light overlay of sarcasm in her voice.
“But there’s something wrong with it. I only wish the sun was out.
Then I could be sure.”
“What do you mean?” Albert asked.
“The clocks—the electric ones, anyway—are no good.
There’s no juice. But if the sun was out, we could get at least a
rough idea of what time it is by the length and direction of our
shadows. My watch says it’s going on quarter of nine, but I don’t
trust it. It feels later to me than that. I have no proof for it,
and I can’t explain it, but it does.”
Albert thought about it. Looked around. Looked back
at Jenkins. “You know,” he said, “it does. It feels like
it’s almost lunchtime. Isn’t that nuts?”
“It’s not nuts,” Bethany said, “it’s just
jetlag.”
“I disagree,” Jenkins said. “We travelled west to
east, young lady. Any temporal dislocation west-east travellers
feel goes the other way. They feel it’s earlier than it
should be.”
“I want to ask you about something you said on the
plane,” Albert said. “When the captain told us that there must be
some other people here, you said ‘false logic.’ In fact, you
said it twice. But it seems straight enough to me. We were all
asleep, and we’re here. And if this thing happened
at”—Albert glanced toward the clock—“at 4:07, Bangor time, almost
everyone in town must have been asleep.”
“Yes,” Jenkins said blandly. “So where are
they?”
Albert was nonplussed. “Well ...”
There was a bang as Nick forcibly hung up one of
the pay telephones. It was the last in a long line of them; he had
tried every one. “It’s a washout,” he said. “They’re all dead. The
coin-fed ones as well as the direct-dials. You can add the sound of
no phones ringing to that of no dogs barking, Brian.”
“So what do we do now?” Laurel asked. She heard the
forlorn sound of her own voice and it made her feel very small,
very lost. Beside her, Dinah was turning in slow circles. She
looked like a human radar dish.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Baldy proposed. “That’s where
the restaurant must be.”
They all looked at him. Gaffney snorted. “You got a
one-track mind, mister.”
The bald man looked at him from beneath one raised
eyebrow. “First, the name is Rudy Warwick, not mister,” he replied.
“Second, people think better when their stomachs are full.” He
shrugged. “It’s just a law of nature.”
“I think Mr. Warwick is quite right,” Jenkins said.
“We all could use something to eat ... and if we go
upstairs, we may find some other clues pointing toward what has
happened. In fact, I rather think we will.”
Nick shrugged. He looked suddenly tired and
confused. “Why not?” he said. “I’m starting to feel like Mr.
Robinson Bloody Crusoe.”
They started toward the escalator, which was also
dead, in a straggling little group. Albert, Bethany, and Bob
Jenkins walked together, toward the rear.
“You know something, don’t you?” Albert asked
abruptly. “What is it?”
“I might know something,” Jenkins corrected.
“I might not. For the time being I’m going to hold my peace ...
except for one suggestion.”
“What?”
“It’s not for you; it’s for the young lady.” He
turned to Bethany. “Save your matches. That’s my suggestion.”
“What?” Bethany frowned at him.
“You heard me.”
“Yeah, I guess I did, but I don’t get what you
mean. There’s probably a newsstand upstairs, Mr. Jenkins. They’ll
have lots of matches. Cigarettes and disposable lighters,
too.”
“I agree,” Jenkins said. “I still advise you to
save your matches.”
He’s playing Philo Christie or whoever it was
again, Albert thought.
He was about to point this out and ask Jenkins to
please remember that this wasn’t one of his novels when Brian Engle
stopped at the foot of the escalator, so suddenly that Laurel had
to jerk sharply on Dinah’s hand to keep the blind girl from running
into him.
“Watch where you’re going, okay?” Laurel asked. “In
case you didn’t notice, the kid here can’t see.”
Brian ignored her. He was looking around at the
little group of refugees. “Where’s Mr. Toomy?”
“Who?” the bald man—Warwick—asked.
“The guy with the pressing appointment in
Boston.”
“Who cares?” Gaffney asked. “Good riddance to bad
rubbish.”
But Brian was uneasy. He didn’t like the idea that
Toomy had slipped away and gone off on his own. He didn’t know why,
but he didn’t like that idea at all. He glanced at Nick. Nick
shrugged, then shook his head. “Didn’t see him go, mate. I was
fooling with the phones. Sorry.”
“Toomy!” Brian shouted. “Craig Toomy!
Where are you?”
There was no response. Only that queer, oppressive
silence. And Laurel noticed something then, something that made her
skin cold. Brian had cupped his hands and shouted up the escalator.
In a high-ceilinged place like this one, there should have been at
least some echo.
But there had been none.
No echo at all.
10
While the others were occupied downstairs—the two
teenagers and the old geezer standing by one of the car-rental
desks, the others watching the British thug as he tried the
phones—Craig Toomy had crept up the stalled escalator as quietly as
a mouse. He knew exactly where he wanted to go; he knew exactly
what to look for when he got there.
He strode briskly across the large waiting room
with his briefcase swinging beside his right knee, ignoring both
the empty chairs and an empty bar called The Red Baron. At the far
end of the room was a sign hanging over the mouth of a wide, dark
corridor. It read
GATE 5 INTERNATIONAL ARRIVALS
DUTY FREE SHOPS
U.S. CUSTOMS
AIRPORT SECURITY
DUTY FREE SHOPS
U.S. CUSTOMS
AIRPORT SECURITY
He had almost reached the head of this corridor
when he glanced out one of the wide windows at the tarmac again ...
and his pace faltered. He approached the glass slowly and looked
out.
There was nothing to see but the empty concrete and
the moveless white sky, but his eyes began to widen nonetheless and
he felt fear begin to steal into his heart.
They’re coming, a dead voice suddenly told
him. It was the voice of his father, and it spoke from a small,
haunted mausoleum tucked away in a gloomy corner of Craig Toomy’s
heart.
“No,” he whispered, and the word spun a little
blossom of fog on the window in front of his lips. “No one is
coming.”
You’ve been bad. Worse, you’ve been
lazy.
“No!”
Yes. You had an appointment and you skipped it.
You ran away. You ran away to Bangor, Maine, of all the silly
places.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he muttered. He was gripping
the handle of the briefcase with almost painful tightness now. “I
was taken against my will. I ... I was shanghaied!”
No reply from that interior voice. Only waves of
disapproval. And once again Craig intuited the pressure he was
under, the terrible never-ending pressure, the weight of the
fathoms. The interior voice did not have to tell him there were no
excuses; Craig knew that. He knew it of old.
THEY were here ... and they will be back. You
know that, don’t you?
He knew. The langoliers would be back. They would
be back for him. He could sense them. He had never seen
them, but he knew how horrible they would be. And was he alone in
his knowledge? He thought not.
He thought perhaps the little blind girl knew
something about the langoliers as well.
But that didn’t matter. The only thing which did
was getting to Boston—getting to Boston before the langoliers could
arrive in Bangor from their terrible, doomish lair to eat him alive
and screaming. He had to get to that meeting at the Pru, had to let
them know what he had done, and then he would be...
Free.
He would be free.
Craig pulled himself away from the window, away
from the emptiness and the stillness, and plunged into the corridor
beneath the sign. He passed the empty shops without a glance.
Beyond them he came to the door he was looking for. There was a
small rectangular plaque mounted on it, just above a bullseye
peephole. AIRPORT SECURITY, it said.
He had to get in there. One way or another, he had
to get in there.
All of this ... this craziness ... it doesn’t
have to belong to me. I don’t have to own it. Not
anymore.
Craig reached out and touched the doorknob of the
Airport Security office. The blank look in his eyes had been
replaced by an expression of clear determination.
I have been under stress for a long, a very
long, time. Since I was seven? No—I think it started even before
that. The fact is, I’ve been under stress for as long as I can
remember. This latest piece of craziness is just a new variation.
It’s probably just what the man in the ratty sport-coat said it
was: a test. Agents of some secret government agency or sinister
foreign power running a test. But I choose not to participate in
any more tests. I don’t care if it’s my father in charge, or my
mother, or the dean of the Graduate School of Management, or the
Desert Sun Banking Corporation’s Board of Directors. I choose not
to, participate. I choose to escape. I choose to get to Boston and
finish what I set out to do when I presented the Argentinian
bond-buy in the first place. If I don’t ...
But he knew what would happen if he didn’t.
He would go mad.
Craig tried the doorknob. It did not move beneath
his hand, but when he gave it a small, frustrated push, the door
swung open. Either it had been left slightly unlatched, or it had
unlocked when the power went off and the security systems went
dead. Craig didn’t care which. The important thing was that he
wouldn’t need to muss his clothes trying to crawl through an
air-conditioning duct or something. He still had every intention of
showing up at his meeting before the end of the day, and he didn’t
want his clothes smeared with dirt and grease when he got there.
One of the simple, unexceptioned truths of life was this: guys with
dirt on their suits have no credibility.
He pushed the door open and went inside.
11
Brian and Nick reached the top of the escalator
first, and the others gathered around them. This was BIA’s central
waiting room, a large square box filled with contour plastic seats
(some with coin-op TVs bolted to the arms) and dominated by a wall
of polarized floor-to-ceiling windows. To their immediate left was
the airport newsstand and the security checkpoint which served Gate
1; to their right and all the way across the room were The Red
Baron Bar and The Cloud Nine Restaurant. Beyond the restaurant was
the corridor leading to the Airport Security office and the
International Arrivals Annex.
“Come on—” Nick began, and Dinah said,
“Wait.”
She spoke in a strong, urgent voice and they all
turned toward her curiously.
Dinah dropped Laurel’s hand and raised both of her
own. She cupped the thumbs behind her ears and splayed her fingers
out like fans. Then she simply stood there, still as a post, in
this odd and rather weird listening posture.
“What—” Brian began, and Dinah said “Shhh!”
in an abrupt, inarguable sibilant.
She turned slightly to the left, paused, then
turned in the other direction until the white light coming through
the windows fell directly on her, turning her already pale face
into something which was ghostlike and eerie. She took off her dark
glasses. The eyes beneath were wide, brown, and not quite
blank.
“There,” she said in a low, dreaming voice, and
Laurel felt terror begin to stroke at her heart with chilly
fingers. Nor was she alone. Bethany was crowding close to her on
one side, and Don Gaffney moved in against her other side. “There—I
can feel the light. They said that’s how they know I can see again.
I can always feel the light. It’s like heat inside my head.”
“Dinah, what—” Brian began.
Nick elbowed him. The Englishman’s face was long
and drawn, his forehead ribbed with lines. “Be quiet, mate.”
“The light is ... here.”
She walked slowly away from them, her hands still
fanned out by her ears, her elbows held out before her to encounter
any object which might stand in her way. She advanced until she was
less than two feet from the window. Then she slowly reached out
until her fingers touched the glass. They looked like black
starfish outlined against the white sky. She let out a small,
unhappy murmur.
“The glass is wrong, too,” she said in that
dreaming voice.
“Dinah—” Laurel began.
“Shhh ...” she whispered without turning around.
She stood at the window like a little girl waiting for her father
to come home from work. “I hear something. ”
These whispered words sent a wordless, thoughtless
horror through Albert Kaussner’s mind. He felt pressure on his
shoulders and looked down to see he had crossed his arms across his
chest and was clutching himself hard.
Brian listened with all his concentration. He heard
his own breathing, and the breathing of the others ... but he heard
nothing else. It’s her imagination, he thought. That’s
all it is.
But he wondered.
“What?” Laurel asked urgently. “What do you hear,
Dinah?”
“I don’t know,” she said without turning from the
window. “It’s very faint. I thought I heard it when we got off the
airplane, and then I decided it was just my imagination. Now I can
hear it better. I can hear it even through the glass. It sounds ...
a little like Rice Krispies after you pour in the milk.”
Brian turned to Nick and spoke in a low voice. “Do
you hear anything?”
“Not a bloody thing,” Nick said, matching Brian’s
tone. “But she’s blind. She’s used to making her ears do double
duty.”
“I think it’s hysteria,” Brian said. He was
whispering now, his lips almost touching Nick’s ear.
Dinah turned from the window.
“ ‘Do you hear anything?’ ” she mimicked. “ ‘Not a
bloody thing. But she’s blind. She’s used to making her ears do
double duty.’ ” She paused, then added: “ ‘I think it’s hysteria.’
”
“Dinah, what are you talking about?” Laurel asked,
perplexed and frightened. She had not heard Brian and Nick’s
muttered conversation, although she had been standing much closer
to them than Dinah was.
“Ask them,” Dinah said. Her voice was
trembling. “I’m not crazy! I’m blind, but I’m not
crazy!”
“All right,” Brian said, shaken. “All right,
Dinah.” And to Laurel he said: “I was talking to Nick. She heard
us. From over there by the windows, she heard us.”
“You’ve got great ears, hon,” Bethany said.
“I hear what I hear,” Dinah said. “And I hear
something out there. In that direction.” She pointed due east
through the glass. Her unseeing eyes swept them. “And it’s
bad. It’s an awful sound, a scary sound.”
Don Gaffney said hesitantly: “If you knew what it
was, little miss, that would help, maybe.”
“I don’t,” Dinah said. “But I know that it’s closer
than it was.” She put her dark glasses back on with a hand that was
trembling. “We have to get out of here. And we have to get out
soon. Because something is coming. The bad something making the
cereal noise.”
“Dinah,” Brian said, “the plane we came in is
almost out of fuel.”
“Then you have to put some more in it!”
Dinah screamed shrilly at him. “It’s coming, don’t you
understand? It’s coming, and if we haven’t gone when it gets
here, we’re going to die! We’re all going to die!”
Her voice cracked and she began to sob. She was not
a sibyl or a medium but only a little girl forced to live her
terror in a darkness which was almost complete. She staggered
toward them, her self-possession utterly gone. Laurel grabbed her
before she could stumble over one of the guide-ropes which marked
the way to the security checkpoint and hugged her tight. She tried
to soothe the girl, but those last words echoed and rang in
Laurel’s confused, shocked mind: If we haven’t gone when it gets
here, we’re going to die.
We’re all going to die.
12
Craig Toomy heard the brat begin to caterwaul back
there someplace and ignored it. He had found what he was looking
for in the third locker he opened, the one with the name MARKEY
Dymotaped to the front. Mr. Markey’s lunch—a sub sandwich poking
out of a brown paper bag—was on the top shelf. Mr. Markey’s street
shoes were placed neatly side by side on the bottom shelf. Hanging
in between, from the same hook, were a plain white shirt and a
gunbelt. Protruding from the holster was the butt of Mr. Markey’s
service revolver.
Craig unsnapped the safety strap and took the gun
out. He didn’t know much about guns—this could have been a .32, a
.38, or even a .45, for all of him—but he was not stupid, and after
a few moments of fumbling he was able to roll the cylinder. All six
chambers were loaded. He pushed the cylinder back in, nodding
slightly when he heard it click home, and then inspected the hammer
area and both sides of the grip. He was looking for a safety catch,
but there didn’t appear to be one. He put his finger on the trigger
and tightened until he saw both the hammer and the cylinder move
slightly. Craig nodded, satisfied.
He turned around and without warning the most
intense loneliness of his adult life struck him. The gun seemed to
take on weight and the hand holding it sagged. Now he stood with
his shoulders slumped, the briefcase dangling from his right hand,
the security guard’s pistol dangling from his left. On his face was
an expression of utter, abject misery. And suddenly a memory
recurred to him, something he hadn’t thought of in years: Craig
Toomy, twelve years old, lying in bed and shivering as hot tears
ran down his face. In the other room the stereo was turned up loud
and his mother was singing along with Merrilee Rush in her droning
off-key drunk’s voice: “Just call me angel ... of the
morn-ing, bay-bee ... just touch my cheek ... before
you leave me, bay-bee ...”
Lying there in bed. Shaking. Crying. Not making a
sound. And thinking: Why can’t you love me and leave me alone,
Momma? Why can’t you just love me and leave me alone?
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Craig Toomy muttered
through his tears. “I don’t want to, but this ... this is
intolerable.”
Across the room was a bank of TV monitors, all
blank. For a moment, as he looked at them, the truth of what had
happened, what was still happening, tried to crowd in on
him. For a moment it almost broke through his complex system of
neurotic shields and into the air-raid shelter where he lived his
life.
Everyone is gone, Craiggy-weggy. The whole world
is gone except for you and the people who were on that
plane.
“No,” he moaned, and collapsed into one of the
chairs standing around the Formica-topped kitchen table in the
center of the room. “No, that’s not so. That’s just not so. I
refute that idea. I refute it utterly.”
The langoliers were here, and they will be
back, his father said. It overrode the voice of his mother, as
it. always had. You better be gone when they get here ... or you
know what will happen.
He knew, all right. They would eat him. The
langoliers would eat him up.
“But I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he repeated in a
dreary, distraught voice. There was a mimeographed duty roster
lying on the table. Craig let go of his briefcase and laid the gun
on the table beside him. Then he picked up the duty roster, looked
at it for a moment with unseeing eyes, and began to tear a long
strip from the lefthand side.
Rii-ip.
Soon he was hypnotized as a pile of thin
strips—maybe the thinnest ever!—began to flutter down onto the
table. But even then the cold voice of his father would not
entirely leave him:
Or you know what will happen.