More Stories from the Twilight Zone (33 page)

“The pilot,” she shouted. “Both pilots! They're gone!”

Which left only the navigator to attempt any landing. Not an unreasonable situation. But her outburst wasn't exactly helpful, damaging what little calm had remained aboard the plane.

“What?” seemed to be the overall response. Followed closely by at least a half-dozen shouts of “How?”

Coming in third, but still placing, was a man at the back of first class who asked, “Was there a bomb?”

And that took care of any remaining fragmentary restraint. Especially from the air marshal who leapt out of his front-aisle seat (the one across from my contract-hustling Halliburton neighbor), digging a Glock 9mm out of his shoulder holster.

Brandishing a gun inside an airplane at over thirty thousand feet is never a good idea. Especially when your first words aren't “I'm an air marshal,” or “This is all under control.” Or, even better: “The safety is on and I'm not going to put my finger near the trigger while on this pressurized aircraft.”

First, it encourages anyone else with a gun to reach for their weapon as well. I had high hopes and better than average odds that this was an unlikely possibility. Second was the very real chance of an accidental discharge. That direction lay madness, panic, and the very unpleasant thought that I would never get back to my Bloody Mary. Maybe it seems to you that my priorities weren't quite straight, but then, Hey! I'd just missed the Rapture train. Allow me to take what simple pleasures were left.

Besides. Chopin!

I'm certain the next few minutes looked more impressive than they actually were. I mean, it helps when you have at least a feeling for the ultimate set of actuarial tables. But just as quickly as the atmosphere on the plane seemed to be deteriorating, I was moving. Having left my drink in (hopefully) good hands, I met the flight attendant near the head of the first-class aisle, stuck out a foot, and tripped her forward into the arms of the senator who had been riding at the back of first class. This was the guy who had asked about the bomb, so I didn't feel bad when a flailing hand raked two bloody furrows down the side of his face. So long as it kept him busy for a moment.

That left the air marshal. I didn't
know
he was about to cause a rapid and violent depressurization event, but the smell of sulfur in the air suggested that it was possible. And his wild-eyed stare made it seem more so. Not less. Which was the only thing that made me reach for the gun, clamping a hand down over the back end. The air marshal spasmed, and the Glock's hammer fell down (hard!) on the fold of skin between my thumb and forefinger. Yeah, the guy had cocked it back while pulling the gun free.

The bright spot of pain and more than a little anger lent me enough strength to wrench the gun from his grasp. I stiff-armed it back into his face, and he went crashing down to the floor. Stunned, but hardly out for the count. It gave me time to eject the clip and toss it to the senator who was untangling himself from the stewardess, while I traded the pistol to the would-be Halliburton whore for my cocktail.

Standing at the front of the cabin, I felt fourteen pairs of eyes slowly focus on me. Some in surprise. At least two pairs in mild anger. And the dazed air marshal with something akin to smoldering rage. A ten-year-old girl riding next to her mother stared at me with her mouth forming a perfect little “O” of amazement. Suddenly, I had become the center of attention in the middle of a terrifyingly stressful moment. I wondered if that had been a rather stupid choice to make.

From the back of the plane, I felt a strong wave of anger surge forward. And then I was sure.

“If we can all calm down,” I said, “I think I can help get us through this.”

The senator, holding the flight attendant in one arm, stared down at the pistol clip in his other hand. “We're going to be all right,” he said with all the conviction of a campaign pledge. And he heard the lie in his own voice, I knew.

The little girl curled over next to her mother. Peeked back. “Is that true?” she asked in a very small voice.

There wasn't much wiggle room in the question. Not really. So I swirled the last of my Bloody Mary in its cup, drained it, and allowed myself one last second of Zen-like tranquility as the smooth blend worked its own form of magic. I felt a warm flush spread out through my chest. Considered the very real problem of an aircraft caught in slow descent with no real pilots left aboard, a demon flying coach, and about two hundred people upon whom He had just turned His back.

Were we going to be all right?

“Probably not,” I said. “But that shouldn't stop us from trying.”

There were things that needed to be done, and (from the expectant looks of my captive audience) things that likely needed to be said as well. But since it is impossible to hold an audience captive for long with only an empty cocktail glass—especially one made from plastic, give me a heavy glass tumbler and I'll give it a shot—I decided it was the better idea to get straight to work.

“There's a demon in coach,” I said, moving up the aisle. I stepped over the air marshal, who sat up behind me, and handed my empty cup to the flight attendant. “I need salt, or sugar. Lots of it.”

“You're insane,” the air marshal said. He held his hand to a bloody nose. “And you're under arrest.”

If only. “Don't mix them,” I warned her, “but get me all you have of one or the other.”

Whether she was humoring the guy who had just taken—and thrown aside—a gun, or believed I was speaking in metaphor, at least she was calm enough now to not incite more panic. She smoothed down her flight dress. Tried to adjust her cap, and then pulled it free and tossed it aside.

While she hurried to the forward galley, I knelt next to the little girl who shrank away from me. Her mother covered her with a protective arm. “Can you do me a favor? I need you to be strong, and tell me if you see or hear anything strange.” One green eye,
peeking through a crook in her mom's elbow, blinked slowly. She nodded and I nodded back. “And I need a few strands of hair.”

“Get away from her,” her mother warned. She had gray at her temples and a strong brow over fierce green eyes. A natural, confident woman. The best (and the worst) kind.

Fortunately, I had somehow drafted a Washington politician to my side. The senator leaned over, pinched a few strands of stray golden hair from the little girl's head, and gave a quick yank. She yelped and the mom glared, but that was as far as it went.

The flight attendant returned with a dry coffee cup filled with an inch of white powder. Dipping a finger into the substance, I tested it on my tongue. Artificial sweetener. Well, it would have to do.

I crouched at the curtain that protected first class from coach. It had always amazed me, that power of suggestion. Twenty square feet of fabric, and so far as most people were concerned, their world ended at the first thread. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. Thou shalt not pass and get thee gone. (Under the curtain's hem, I saw a reddish-golden light glow bright and hard. There were a few shouts of despair from coach.) I hoped those rules still applied. Belief might be the last weapon we had left to us.

The senator hunkered down next to me, watching as I carefully set the young girl's hair on the floor and then crossed it with a small, continuous line of sweetener. The powder weighed down the hair, which suddenly curled and waved as if it were something alive.

“You know what you are doing?” the senator asked.

Not exactly, though I didn't see any reason to worry him with that. I had instinct and a little inside information to go on. Not much more. From both ends of the powdery line I drew a small arc back to the walls on either side of the curtained opening. One side was a wall to the forward lavatory. Solid enough. The other wasn't much more than a plastic cubicle wall. Worth a moment's delay. Maybe.

“Are you with . . . them?”

Hard to say which
them
he was referring to. Like most Americans, I'd like to believe that my elected representatives are on the side of truth, justice, and God. Experience, of course, has taught us to be wary.

Then again, I had thought well enough of him at the time to toss him the Glock's clip. So—I decided—play the odds.

“I'm in insurance.”

And I gave him
the look
.

It caused him to lean back. Just a touch. “I'm covered,” the senator said.

I considered that. I didn't have the man under any policy I'd written, not for one side or the other. So he obviously didn't know what to believe. Five minutes ago, I'd have given him a coin flip at best. Now?

Grimacing, I shook my head. “No. Not for this.”

“It happened, then?” There was a sound from the back cabin, like the flap of enormous wings. He leaned back. Shook his head. “This is real? It seems like there are still a lot of people here.”

“I'm surprised we lost as many as five. Didn't take into account the flight crew. Flying with God as their copilot, I guess.”

“Then how do we land this plane?”

That was the question. Then again, with the world falling to hell below us, I was quite tempted to let the whole thing just continue on until we ran out of fuel, wasabi nuts, or Bloody Marys. Cleaner. Quicker. And with some luck we'd bypass that whole trials and tribulations thing.

“I said
you're under arrest
,” the air marshal tried again. There was a quality in his voice. A new confidence I didn't like. When people took safety in something they believed in, they often got confident. And dangerous.

So when the little girl whispered, “He's coming,” I naturally assumed she was talking about the smoldering marshal.

She could have been. As I stood back above my work and turned, I caught the marshal just as he moved for me down the aisle. Like some perpetual motion engine of law enforcement, he was determined to remain in motion along the path he'd chosen earlier. Maybe he was taking the bloody nose a bit too personally. Or his lack of selection for the Rapture. As snubs went, the former was more immediate and the latter far more severe. Of course, most people had trouble with the long view. Hence, only five.

My earlier neighbor, the industry pro, had risen from her seat to stand in the aisle behind the advancing air marshal. She still held the clip-less Glock in her hand, as if unsure what exactly to do with it. Under better circumstances she would certainly have handed the man back his gun. Law and order was also about belief as much as it was about the strength to enforce it. In most cases, the air marshal would have been invested in the highest authority. But anyone willing to do what she had been flying to Washington for, all in the name of personal interest, had to be considering the implications of the last ten minutes, and what that might mean to her future.

Basically, she seemed to be giving me the benefit of her doubt.

Too bad that just wasn't going to be enough.

With a snarl of rage, the air marshal leaped forward, hands outstretched. I believe he might have been thinking to strangle me. In the back of my head, I felt the probability stretch out along long lines of chance. The foundation of creation, of weight of original sin, and the power of personal choice, all coalescing into a new moment where I'd have an equal chance of surviving (or, at least, of remaining free to act) or falling. The same choice and chance that had once been faced (and lost) by the Morningstar himself.

Fortunately for me, the senator had not yet chosen to abandon my side. He stepped into the narrow aisle with me, grappling with the frenzied marshal. My tax dollars at work. Finally.

Together we threw the crazed man back. And, really, that should have been the end of it. Except that he stumbled right back into the Halliburton Blonde, who tangled up with him in a quick flurry of arms and legs. Then she sat back hard, and he spun around with his gun pointed out at arm's length in a classic shooting stance.

It caught me halfway down the aisle, thinking to secure the man before he caused more trouble. I pulled up short, staring into the dark tunnel of the Glock's barrel, never once doubting that there was a bullet in the gun. No clip, true, but I hadn't thought about the very real (and still painful) fact that his gun had been cocked before. And why cock a gun over an empty chamber? The simple answer: You didn't.

There had been one bullet already in the pipe. Of course there had.

I was reasonably sure that the marshal now meant to kill me. It wasn't anything personal. Like I said before, there were certain probabilities that would likely play out once someone drew a gun aboard an airplane.

“Mister!” The little girl, breaking away from her mother's hold as she half-stood in her chair. “Mister, he's
here!
”

He certainly was. I felt the stench of warm, sulfurous breath on the back of my neck, and the entire forward cabin filled with a reddish-golden glow. Like a small, cramped room bathed in firelight. It played in the eyes of the air marshal, dancing with terrifying fear. It reflected painfully off the diamonds worn around the throat of the military-industrial merger waiting to happen.

It touched everyone but the clear green eyes of the ten-year-old who had frozen in place. I felt her terror as it turned me around, but saw that she, at least, had been untouched by corruption. It made me wonder (albeit briefly) how such a strong, pure soul had not been called.

Because it wasn't going to matter much longer. Standing in the
aisle, curtains thrust aside, bathed in an infernal aura, was the demon.

And I'd be damned (possibly very soon, in fact) if he wasn't also wearing a white Elvis jumpsuit, with dark, jet hair greased back into a proper pompadour, and a rhinestone-studded cape that spread out behind him, furling and unfurling, like jeweled wings.

Now I can't say one hundred percent that there hadn't been a demon flying coach already made up as an Elvis impersonator. As disguises go, in fact, that wouldn't be half bad. Demons want to be noticed, and yet dismissed. Never taken seriously while being afforded some measure of respect for what they are or what they are about to do. And, after all, didn't they all want to be the King? That's where the whole mess had started with them.