The Langoliers fpm-1 Read online

  A crazy but somehow wonderful thought filled Albert’s mind for a moment: By God, I never played better in my life! And then he realized that he was no longer able to get his breath. He turned to the others, the corners of his mouth turning up in a thin-lipped, slightly confused smile. “I think I have been plugged,” Ace Kaussner said, and then the world bleached out to shades of gray and his own knees came unhinged. He crumpled to the floor on top of his violin case.

  6

  He was out for less than thirty seconds. When he came around, Brian was slapping his cheeks lightly and looking anxious. Bethany was on her knees beside him, looking at Albert with shining my-hero eyes. Behind her, Dinah Bellman was still crying within the circle of Laurel’s arms. Albert looked back at Bethany and felt his heart — apparently still whole — expand in his chest. “The Arizona Jew rides again,” he muttered.

  “What, Albert?” she asked, and stroked his cheek. Her hand was wonderfully soft, wonderfully cool. Albert decided he was in love.

  “Nothing,” he said, and then the pilot whacked him across the face again.

  “Are you all right, kid?” Brian was asking. “Are you all right?”

  “I think so,” Albert said. “Stop doing that, okay? And the name is Albert. Ace, to my friends. How bad am I hit? I can’t feel anything yet. Were you able to stop the bleeding?”

  Nick Hopewell squatted beside Bethany. His face wore a bemused, unbelieving smile. “I think you’ll live, matey. I never saw anything like that in my life... and I’ve seen a lot. You Americans are too foolish not to love. Hold out your hand and I’ll give you a souvenir.”

  Albert held out a hand which shook uncontrollably with reaction, and Nick dropped something into it. Albert held it up to his eyes and saw it was a bullet.

  “I picked it up off the floor,” Nick said. “Not even misshapen. It must have hit you square in the chest — there’s a little powder mark on your shirt — and then bounced off. It was a misfire. God must like you, mate.”

  “I was thinking of the matches,” Albert said weakly. “I sort of thought it wouldn’t fire at all.”

  “That was very brave and very foolish, my boy,” Bob Jenkins said. His face was dead white and he looked as if he might pass out himself in another few moments. “Never believe a writer. Listen to them, by all means, but never believe them. My God, what if I’d been wrong?”

  “You almost were,” Brian said. He helped Albert to his feet. “It was like when you lit the other matches — the ones from the bowl. There was just enough pop to drive the bullet out of the muzzle. A little more pop and Albert would have had a bullet in his lung.”

  Another wave of dizziness washed over Albert. He swayed on his feet, and Bethany immediately slipped an arm around his waist. “I thought it was really brave,” she said, looking up at him with eyes which suggested she believed Albert Kaussner must shit diamonds from a platinum asshole. “I mean incredible.”

  “Thanks,” Ace said, smiling coolly (if a trifle woozily). “It wasn’t much.” The fastest Hebrew west of the Mississippi was aware that there was a great deal of girl pressed tightly against him, and that the girl smelled almost unbearably good. Suddenly he felt good. In fact, he believed he had never felt better in his life. Then he remembered his violin, bent down, and picked up the case. There was a deep dent in one side, and one of the catches had been sprung. There was blood and hair on it, and Albert felt his stomach turn over lazily. He opened the case and looked in. The instrument looked all right, and he let out a little sigh.

  Then he thought of Craig Toomy, and alarm replaced relief.

  “Say, I didn’t kill that guy, did I? I hit him pretty hard.” He looked towards Craig, who was lying near the restaurant door with Don Gaffney kneeling beside him. Albert suddenly felt like passing out again. There was a great deal of blood on Craig’s face and forehead.

  “He’s alive,” Don said, “but he’s out like a light.”

  Albert, who had blown away more hardcases than The Man with No Name in his dreams, felt his gorge rise. “Jesus, there’s so much blood!”

  “Doesn’t mean a thing,” Nick said. “Scalp wounds tend to bleed a lot.” He joined Don, picked up Craig’s wrist, and felt for a pulse. “You want to remember he had a gun to that girl’s head, matey. If he’d pulled the trigger at point-blank range, he might well have done for her. Remember the actor who killed himself with a blank round a few years ago? Mr Toomy brought this on himself; he owns it completely. Don’t take on.”

  Nick dropped Craig’s wrist and stood up.

  “Besides,” he said, pulling a large swatch of paper napkins from the dispenser on one of the tables, “his pulse is strong and regular. I think he’ll wake up in a few minutes with nothing but a bad headache. I also think it might be prudent to take a few precautions against that happy event. Mr Gaffney, the tables in yonder watering hole actually appear to be equipped with tablecloths — strange but true. I wonder if you’d get a couple? We might be wise to bind old Mr I’ve-Got-to-Get-to-Boston’s hands behind him.”

  “Do you really have to do that?” Laurel asked quietly. “The man is unconscious, after all, and bleeding.”

  Nick pressed his makeshift napkin compress against Craig Toomy’s headwound and looked up at her. “You’re Laurel, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, Laurel, let’s not paint it fine. This man is a lunatic. I don’t know if our current adventure did that to him or if he just growed that way, like Topsy, but I do know he’s dangerous. He would have grabbed Dinah instead of Bethany if she had been closer. If we leave him untied, he might do just that next time.”

  Craig groaned and waved his hands feebly. Bob Jenkins stepped away from him the moment he began to move, even though the revolver was now safely tucked into the waistband of Brian Engle’s pants, and Laurel did the same, pulling Dinah with her.

  “Is anybody dead?” Dinah asked nervously. “No one is, are they?”

  “No, honey.”

  “I should have heard him sooner, but I was listening to the man who sounds like a teacher.”

  “It’s okay,” Laurel said. “It turned out all right, Dinah.” Then she looked out at the empty terminal and her own words mocked her. Nothing was all right here. Nothing at all.

  Don returned with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth in each fist.

  “Marvellous,” Nick said. He took one of them and spun it quickly and expertly into a rope. He put the center of it in his mouth, clamping his teeth on it to keep it from unwinding, and used his hands to flip Craig over like a human omelette.

  Craig cried out and his eyelids fluttered.

  “Do you have to be so rough?” Laurel asked sharply.

  Nick gazed at her for a moment, and she dropped her eyes at once. She could not help comparing Nick Hopewell’s eyes with the eyes in the pictures which Darren Crosby had sent her. Widely spaced, clear eyes in a goodlooking — if unremarkable — face. But the eyes had also been rather unremarkable, hadn’t they? And didn’t Darren’s eyes have something, perhaps even a great deal, to do with why she had made this trip in the first place? Hadn’t she decided, after a great deal of close study, that they were the eyes of a man who would behave himself? A man who would back off if you told him to back off?

  She had boarded Flight 29 telling herself that this was her great adventure, her one extravagant tango with romance — an impulsive transcontinental dash into the arms of the tall, dark stranger. But sometimes you found yourself in one of those tiresome situations where the truth could no longer be avoided, and Laurel reckoned the truth to be this: she had chosen Darren Crosby because his pictures and letters had told her he wasn’t much different from the placid boys and men she had been dating ever since she was fifteen or so, boys and men who would learn quickly to wipe their feet on the mat before they came in on rainy nights, boys and men who would grab a towel and help with the dishes without being asked, boys and men who would let you go if you told them to do it in a sharp enough tone of v
oice.

  Would she have been on Flight 29 tonight if the photos had shown Nick Hopewell’s dark-blue eyes instead of Darren’s mild brown ones? She didn’t think so. She thought she would have written him a kind but rather impersonal note Thank you for your reply and your picture, Mr Hopewell, but I somehow don’t think we would be right for each other — and gone on looking for a man like Darren. And, of course, she doubted very much if men like Mr Hopewell even read the lonely-hearts magazines, let alone placed ads in their personals columns. All the same, she was here with him now, in this weird situation.

  Well, she had wanted to have an adventure, just one adventure, before middle-age settled in for keeps. Wasn’t that true? Yes. And here she was, proving Tolkien right — she had stepped out of her own door last evening, just the same as always, and look where she had ended up: a strange and dreary version of Fantasyland. But it was an adventure, all right. Emergency landings... deserted airports... a lunatic with a gun. Of course it was an adventure. Something she had read years ago suddenly popped into Laurel’s mind. Be careful what you pray for, because you just might get it.

  How true.

  And how confusing.

  There was no confusion in Nick Hopewell’s eyes... but there was no mercy in them, either. They made Laurel feel shivery, and there was nothing romantic in the feeling.

  Are you sure? a voice whispered, and Laurel shut it up at once.

  Nick pulled Craig’s hands out from under him, then brought his wrists together at the small of his back. Craig groaned again, louder this time, and began to struggle weakly.

  “Easy now, my good old mate,” Nick said soothingly. He wrapped the tablecloth rope twice around Craig’s lower forearms and knotted it tightly. Craig’s elbows flapped and he uttered a strange weak scream. “There!” Nick said, standing up. “Trussed as neatly as Father John’s Christmas turkey. We’ve even got a spare if that one looks like not holding.” He sat on the edge of one of the tables and looked at Bob Jenkins. “Now, what were you saying when we were so rudely interrupted?”

  Bob looked at him, dazed and unbelieving. “What?”

  “Go on,” Nick said. He might have been an interested lecture-goer instead of a man sitting on a table in a deserted airport restaurant with his feet planted beside a bound man lying in a pool of his own blood. “You had just got to the part about Flight 29 being like the Mary Celeste. Interesting concept, that.”

  “And you want me to... to just go on?” Bob asked incredulously. “As if nothing had happened?”

  “Let me up!” Craig shouted. His words were slightly muffled by the tough industrial carpet on the restaurant floor, but he still sounded remarkably lively for a man who had been coldcocked with a violin case not five minutes previous. “Let me up right now! I demand that you—”

  Then Nick did something that shocked all of them, even those who had seen the Englishman twist Craig’s nose like the handle of a bathtub faucet. He drove a short, hard kick into Craig’s ribs. He pulled it at the last instant... but not much. Craig uttered a pained grunt and shut up.

  “Start again, mate, and I’ll stave them in,” Nick said grimly. “My patience with you has run out.”

  “Hey!” Gaffney cried, bewildered. “What did you do that f—”

  “Listen to me!” Nick said, and looked around. His urbane surface was entirely gone for the first time; his voice vibrated with anger and urgency. “You need waking up, fellows and girls, and I haven’t the time to do it gently. That little girl Dinah — says we are in bad trouble here, and I believe her. She says she hears something, something which may be coming our way, and I rather believe that, too. I don’t hear a bloody thing, but my nerves are jumping like grease on a hot griddle, and I’m used to paying attention when they do that. I think something is coming, and I don’t believe it’s going to try and sell us vacuum-cleaner attachments or the latest insurance scheme when it gets here. Now we can make all the correct civilized noises over this bloody madman or we can try to understand what has happened to us. Understanding may not save our lives, but I’m rapidly becoming convinced that the lack of it may end them, and soon.” His eyes shifted to Dinah. “Tell me I’m wrong if you believe I am, Dinah. I’ll listen to you, and gladly.”

  “I don’t want you to hurt Mr Toomy, but I don’t think you’re wrong, either,” Dinah said in a small, wavery voice.

  “All right,” Nick said. “Fair enough. I’ll try my very best not to hurt him again... but I make no promises. Let’s begin with a very simple concept. This fellow I’ve trussed up—”

  “Toomy,” Brian said. “His name is Craig Toomy.”

  “All right. Mr Toomy is mad. Perhaps if we find our way back to our proper place, or if we find the place where all the people have gone, we can get some help for him. But for now, we can only help him by putting him out of commission — which I have done, with the generous if foolhardy assistance of Albert there — and getting back to our current business. Does anyone hold a view which runs counter to this?”

  There was no reply. The other passengers who had been aboard Flight 29 looked at Nick uneasily.

  “All right,” Nick said. “Please go on, Mr Jenkins.”

  “I... I’m not used to...” Bob made a visible effort to collect himself. “In books, I suppose I’ve killed enough people to fill every seat in the plane that brought us here, but what just happened is the first act of violence I’ve ever personally witnessed. I’m sorry if I’ve... er... behaved badly.”

  “I think you’re doing great, Mr Jenkins,” Dinah said. “And I like listening to you, too. It makes me feel better.”

  Bob looked at her gratefully and smiled. “Thank you, Dinah.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, cast a troubled glance at Craig Toomy, then looked beyond them, across the empty waiting room.

  “I think I mentioned a central fallacy in our thinking,” he said at last. “It is this: we all assumed, when we began to grasp the dimensions of this Event, that something had happened to the rest of the world. That assumption is easy enough to understand, since we are all fine and everyone else — including those other passengers with whom we boarded at Los Angeles International — seems to have disappeared. But the evidence before us doesn’t bear the assumption out. What has happened has happened to us and us alone. I am convinced that the world as we have always known it is ticking along just as it always has.”

  “It’s us — the missing passengers and the eleven survivors of Flight 29 — who are lost.”

  7

  “Maybe I’m dumb, but I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” Rudy Warwick said after a moment.

  “Neither do I,” Laurel added.

  “We’ve mentioned two famous disappearances,” Bob said quietly. Now even Craig Toomy seemed to be listening... he had stopped struggling, at any rate. “One, the case of the Mary Celeste, took place at sea. The second, the case of Roanoke Island, took place near the sea. They are not the only ones, either. I can think of at least two others which involved aircraft: the disappearance of the aviatrix Amelia Earhart over the Pacific Ocean, and the disappearance of several Navy planes over that part of the Atlantic known as the Bermuda Triangle. That happened in 1945 or 1946, I believe. There was some sort of garbled transmission from the lead aircraft’s pilot, and rescue planes were sent out at once from an airbase in Florida, but no trace of the planes or their crews was ever found.”

  “I’ve heard of the case,” Nick said. “It’s the basis for the Triangle’s infamous reputation, I think.”

  “No, there have been lots of ships and planes lost there,” Albert put in. “I read the book about it by Charles Berlitz. Really interesting.” He glanced around. “I just never thought I’d be in it, if you know what I mean.”

  Jenkins said, “I don’t know if an aircraft has ever disappeared over the continental United States before, but—”

  “It’s happened lots of times with small planes,” Brian said, “and once, about thirty-five years ago, it happened with a c
ommercial passenger plane. There were over a hundred people aboard. 1955 or ’56, this was. The carrier was either TWA or Monarch, I can’t remember which. The plane was bound for Denver out of San Francisco. The pilot made radio contact with the Reno tower — absolutely routine — and the plane was never heard from again. There was a search, of course, but... nothing.”

  Brian saw they were all looking at him with a species of dreadful fascination, and he laughed uncomfortably.

  “Pilot ghost stories,” he said with a note of apology in his voice. “It sounds like a caption for a Gary Larson cartoon.”

  “I’ll bet they all went through,” the writer muttered. He had begun to scrub the side of his face with his hand again. He looked distressed — almost horrified. “Unless they found bodies...?”

  “Please tell us what you know, or what you think you know,” Laurel said. “The effect of this... this thing... seems to pile up on a person. If I don’t get some answers soon, I think you can tie me up and put me down next to Mr Toomy.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Craig said, speaking clearly if rather obscurely.

  Bob favored him with another uncomfortable glance and then appeared to muster his thoughts. “There’s no mess here, but there’s a mess on the plane. There’s no electricity here, but there’s electricity on the plane. That isn’t conclusive, of course — the plane has its own self-contained power supply, while the electricity here comes from a power plant somewhere. But then consider the matches. Bethany was on the plane, and her matches work fine. The matches I took from the bowl in here wouldn’t strike. The gun which Mr Toomy took — from the Security office, I imagine — barely fired. I think that, if you tried a battery-powered flashlight, you’d find that wouldn’t work, either. Or, if it did work, it wouldn’t work for long.”

  “You’re right,” Nick said. “And we don’t need to find a flashlight in order to test your theory.” He pointed upward. There was an emergency light mounted on the wall behind the kitchen grill. It was as dead as the overhead lights. “That’s battery-powered,” Nick went on. “A light-sensitive solenoid turns it on when the power fails. It’s dim enough in here for that thing to have gone into operation, but it didn’t do so. Which means that either the solenoid’s circuit failed or the battery is dead.”