Dwellers of the Night: The Complete Collection (4 page)

Cries dance throughout the airplane. He turns and sees an old man standing. “My eyes! My eyes! I can’t see!” he shouts. The old man swivels around, and the pilot sees—to his ever-increasing horror—blood coursing down the contours of his cheeks. More and more people are beginning to panic, standing in their seats. The French waitress at the back of the plane rushes past him, yelling for help. The Latino waitress finds her, and both of them are bleeding from the eyes. The pilot forgets about the infant and her mother. He races down the aisle. “Everyone please sit down! Please be seated! We’ll take care of you as soon as we can! Please sit down!” He reaches the flight attendants. They are hysterical, crying, hearts hammering. Terror grips them. He pushes past them, rushing to the cockpit. Richard no doubt has heard the commotion, and the pilot wonders why he hasn’t done anything. He is ready to prepare for an emergency landing in Boston.

He enters the cockpit. The copilot is standing, facing the monitors. His hands are raised over his eyes. He doesn’t respond to the man’s presence.

“Richard?” he asks tentatively, suddenly afraid.

No response.

“Richard?”

Nothing.

He moves forward, cautiously, reaches out, grabs him on the shoulder…

Richard spins around, hands covering his face. Blood soaks his shirt, seeps between his fingers, hiding his eyes. “I can’t see,” he moans. “I can’t fucking see!”

The man’s heart pounds. “Richard. You’re covering your eyes…”

He lowers his blood-stained hands. His eyes are bulging from their sockets, rimmed with blood cascading down his face. “I can’t
fucking see
!” The copilot suddenly lurches forward, swinging his bloody hands; the pilot reacts, jumping to the side, slamming into the back of his chair. The copilot stumbles into the wall, hands smearing bloody streaks against the polished steel. The man watches in terror as Richard spins madly around, shrieking gibberish. The crazed man throws himself against Anthony Barnhart

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the cockpit windows, pounding, screaming, the noise unbearable, shocking the pilot’s ears. The man finds himself only able to watch as Richard continues hurling himself against the window. A moment passes, and the pilot finds himself moving towards the door. Everything is in slowmotion. He throws open the door. The Latino attendant is standing between the bathrooms, stabbing herself in the neck with pencils. The pencil-tips pierce the soft of her skin and cut into her neck. Her eyes are gouged, one of her eyes hanging from its socket. The man is repulsed, yet he moves forward, yelling at her to stop, oblivious to the chaos behind her in the passenger’s area. Before he can reach her, the pencil slashes across her jugular, and a spray of brilliant hot blood hits him in the face. It seems to burn at the touch, like spilt coffee; he staggers backwards and trips into the cockpit. He rolls against the chair. His legs kick out, hitting the door, slamming it shut. He lies on the floor, staring wide-eyed at the door, breathing heavily, frozen.

He hears a thump outside.

The attendant has fallen.

The door to the rest of the plane is shut. But he is not alone. He cranes his neck and sees the copilot on the floor beside him, going into convulsions, writhing in silence, blood seeping from all the openings on his face. The pilot scrambles against the wall, face ashen, eyes wide: the copilot shudders a few more times and then lies still. Blood continues to flow, soaking the carpet at his feet. His fingers twitch. His leg slowly moves back and forth. And then he is still.

He is crouched in the corner, staring at the lifeless body.

Richard. Richard. Richard
. The man’s name echoes in his mind. How much time passes? He doesn’t know. The plane is eerily silent. All he can hear is the droning of the engines, the beeping of the equipment. His mouth is dry, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. He clenches his eyes shut, can see nothing except those horrific images—Richard going mad, the flight attendant committing suicide, Richard dying. Somehow he finds himself standing, hand wrapped around the handle of the door. He pushes it open. It halts against the attendant’s body. He closes his eyes and pushes harder. The door opens, scooting the heavy body against the wall.

He doesn’t want to look, but he has to. He can’t trip over her body. He looks down and sees her lying in a pool of her own blood. The wound in her throat no longer bleeds. The walls are covered with speckles and smears from the gashing explosion which had covered his face—
his face
! He enters the bathroom. The elderly woman is on the toilet, blood covering her wrinkled features. He ignores her, looks into the mirror, met with his own horrid reflection. He twists the valve and cool water flows. He cups it in his hands and washes it over his face. He cleans most of it off, though specks linger on the fringes of his hair and in the scruff of his eyebrows. He turns off the valve, takes a deep breath, enters the corridor. He looks to his left, towards the passenger’s area—and he goes mad.

He looks only for a moment, but it is too much to bear: bodies slumped over in their seats, or riddled with masks of pain and contorted in awful positions, bodies lying on the floor. Blood everywhere. He unconsciously moves backwards. His feet trip over the body of the flight attendant. The last thing he remembers is the world spinning as he falls, and a searing pain courses through the back of his head.

Anthony Barnhart

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V

When he awakes, he remembers nothing. The back of his head throbs. He wonders what has happened, but all he can see in the darkness of his mind are disturbing images of death and mayhem, snapshots of a world shot to hell. He is sure it is a dream, and that he is lying beside Kira in their twolevel house… But when he opens his eyes and rolls onto his side, he is greeted with the body of the copilot, encrusted with drying blood.

The pilot’s stomach churns, his throat muscles contract, and he vomits all over the carpet, its sweet stench a pleasant escape from the scent of death and decay.

His mouth tastes of bile. He wants a drink of water, but nothing can force him to leave the only sanitarium he can find. He refuses to look outside the cockpit. He closes the door to the rest of the plane. He sits down in his pilot’s chair, muttering to himself, trying to console his burdened mind. He can still hear the screams of the passengers and Richard’s incessant babbling. He flips through the frequencies for the United States, but all of them are silent. He tries to raise someone—anyone!—but no one answers. He realizes, with a pall of terror, that he is utterly alone. He sits quietly in the chair.

And then he begins to cry.

It is 10:02 PM.

He walks down the aisles, desperate to find someone who had not met such a grisly fate, someone who could share with him in his fear and sorrow. But no such persons are found. 1st-class, 2nd-class, 3rd-class… Everyone is dead. Mortifying scenes greet him, images that will forever be tattooed into the back of his mind:

The woman with the bleeding infant had crushed the child’s head between her two hands; the infant’s feeble bones had snapped and popped, protruding from its skin; its eyes hung lifeless on either side of its blood-stained nose.

A little boy had choked his little sister and then died on top of her. Bruise marks covered the little girl’s neck, and her bloodied eyes had gone lifeless in a state of absolute terror. She looked to be about seven years old.

An older man had banged his head against his seat’s window, over and over again, until the front of his skull had imploded inwards, stained with brain matter. He had died in a contorted mangle of maniacal delight.

A young man had shoved his head in the toilet at the back of the plane, and then he had pulled the lever. The force of the flush had ripped the hair from his scalp, leaving hundreds of bloody pinpricks. He had died and slumped down, head flopped against the sink.

The man stands at the back of the plane, head hanging low.

A single word dances over his lips: “Kira. Kira. Kira.”

He whimpers like a baby.

Anthony Barnhart

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His eyes hurt from crying. How much time has passed? He doesn’t know. He looks at the digital clock on the dashboard: 10:23 PM. They will be reaching the New England coast soon. He tries to raise someone—
any
one—over the radio frequencies, but all he gets is either silence or white noise.

The first pinpricks of light appear on the horizon. They are nearing Boston. He frantically tries to call for help.
Why the hell isn’t anyone there?

A nonchalant sideways glance alerts him. Blinking lights in the sky. He leans forward, staring. Another plane. Coming straight for him. The equipment begins to wail. He looks down: an Airbus 310. The wail of the emergency audio is frighteningly loud. He wishes for the silence again. He returns his eyes to the windows. The blinking lights are growing closer. The display on the dashboard gives him the frequency of the airliner. He tries to connect with them. No one answers. He realizes with a striking calm:
We’re going to collide
.

His hands move instinctively. He brings the Boeing-777 off fly-by-wire and maneuvers the plane. The rudder responds. He banks to the south, hoping to cut around the Airbus. The other airliner grows larger, and he can see lights in the passenger windows just as it roars overhead. His plane shudders and shakes as the Airbus’ thrusts turn the air into a turbulent cesspool. Then everything calms. He returns the airliner to autopilot and walks over to the other window, stepping over Richard’s body. He peers out just in time to see the Airbus nosedive. A few minutes later the tiny blinking lights are enveloped in a flash of red and yellow light as the Airbus is scattered into the Atlantic.

He understands. He understands why all the planes were crashing.

The frenzied hysteria, ended only with death, had spread to them.
It’s spreading all over the world
. The thought makes him shiver.

The time is 10:35 pm. The New England coast vanishes beneath the airplane. He takes over the controls and flies lower, hoping to get a better view. Boston is off to his right. He levels the plane and crawls to the opposite window. He looks down and sees Boston aflame: the entire city is being consumed by fire. The skyscrapers reach into the sky like fiery pillars, and the harbor crumbles into the shallow sea of the Boston bay. Fires pepper the surrounding communities. He closes his eyes, takes several deep breaths, wants to cry again.
No
. He knows that if northern Kentucky is in such bad shape, he’ll be unable to land. Power will be out. The landing strip will be dark. The Control Tower won’t be sending him any directions. He’ll be entirely on his own. He has never been a man of prayer.

But now he prays so feverishly: for himself… and for Kira.

1:15 AM. The Appalachian Mountains are shrouded in darkness below. He fondles the engagement ring in his fingers.

The cut diamond glints in the wan blue light from the glowing screens. Kira’s words echo in his mind: “You’re so amazing…”

He wishes he would have woken her up last morning.

He wishes he would have held her one last time.

One last time
? He curses himself: she can’t be dead.

Why can’t she be dead?

Because I love her.

Anthony Barnhart

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He brings the Boeing-777 over Cincinnati, flying south. The city is not on fire; for this he is thankful. Peppered fires cluster on the hills, but downtown is clothed in a sinister darkness. He can’t tell much from his vantage point in the sky, but the city looks relatively peaceful. He wonders why Boston had been on fire—maybe a blown gas station? He wonders if cities can burn.
No
, he tells himself, then he laughs. He had seen Boston burning. Yes, cities can burn. But Cincinnati isn’t burning. Hope lurches inside him. He imagines Kira locked in their house, pacing back and forth, waiting for her prince to return for her.

“I’m coming, Kira,” he mutters as the plane flies over the black and snaking Ohio River. “I’m coming.” He begins to go over the landing checklist. He has simulated emergency landings in blackout conditions, during flight school… And he knows that if he doesn’t execute it exactly right, he will die.

He makes a pass over the airport. It looks quiet. The power is still on. He can see glows coming from the large bay windows overlooking the airstrips and hangars. He draws a deep breath and begins to circle the airport. He tries to raise the Control Tower, but he receives no response. One of the runways is burning: a plane had flipped onto its side and burst into flames. Debris coated several runways. The firelight illuminated yet another runway with an airline parked at its far edge, ready for take-off, the twin engines still running. He decides to land shallow on that airstrip and hit the brakes just in time to avoid smashing into the idling plane. AMERICAN AIRLINES is stamped along the airplane’s fuselage.

He leans back in his chair, breathing heavily, a cold sweat cascading down his brow. The nose of the other plane is only thirty feet away. Lights inside the plane’s cockpit illuminate bloody smears over the cockpit windows. He looks down at Richard’s body as he undoes his seatbelt and abandons the cockpit. He steps over the attendant’s body, keeps his eyes on the floor as he moves down the aisles—

he can almost sense the dozens of lifeless, vacant eyes staring at him in silent mockery as he walks. He reaches the door and cranks it open. The ground is fifteen feet below. He activates a switch on a side panel and an inflatable slide extends, reaching down to the ground. Without looking back, he slides down and glides to a stop at the bottom. He stands, brushes himself off, thankful the earth is beneath his feet.

VI

The aching night wraps around him, a heavy blanket pushing him down to his knees. In a rush he loses it once more, curling upon the cold pavement as tears rush down his cheeks in horrendous sobs. How long he lies there he will never know; but soon he is moving forward, abandoning the plane. He looks over at the AMERICAN airliner whose engines are still idling, and in the soft glow of the passenger’s cabin windows he can see nothing except bodies slumped against the windows. What madness has overcome the world, that he is left alone? What cruel fate has severed him from the lifeless destiny of all those whom he can see? These thoughts bombard his mind in a torrent of disjointed questions.