Four Past Midnight

by Stephen King

  "Listen for yourself. Out for the count, but still in the game." Not for long, though; not by the sound of him. "Let's check on Mr. Gaffney--maybe he got off lucky, too. And what about the stretcher?"

  "Huh?" Albert looked at Nick as though he had spoken in a foreign language.

  "The stretcher," Nick repeated patiently as they walked toward the open Airport Services door.

  "We found it," Albert said.

  "Did you? Super!"

  Albert stopped just inside the door. "Wait a minute," he muttered, then squatted and felt around for Don's lighter. He found it after a moment or two. It was still warm. He stood up again. "Mr. Gaffney's on the other side of the desk, I think."

  They walked around, stepping over the tumbled stacks of paper and the IN/OUT basket. Albert held out the lighter and flicked the wheel. On the fifth try the wick caught and burned feebly for three or four seconds. It was enough. Nick had actually seen enough in the spark-flashes the lighter's wheel had struck, but he hadn't liked to say so to Albert. Don Gaffney lay sprawled on his back, eyes open, a look of terrible surprise still fixed on his face. He hadn't gotten off lucky after all.

  "How was it that Toomy didn't get you as well?" Nick asked after a moment.

  "I knew he was in here," Albert said. "Even before he stuck Mr. Gaffney, I knew." His voice was still dry and shaky, but he felt a little better. Now that he had actually faced poor Mr. Gaffney--looked him in the eye, so to speak--he felt a little better.

  "Did you hear him?"

  "No--I saw those. On the desk." Albert pointed to the little heap of torn strips.

  "Lucky you did." Nick put his hand on Albert's shoulder in the dark. "You deserve to be alive, mate. You earned the privilege. All right?"

  "I'll try," Albert said.

  "You do that, old son. It saves a lot of nightmares. You're looking at a man who knows."

  Albert nodded.

  "Keep it together, Ace. That's all there is to it--just keep things together and you'll be fine."

  "Mr. Hopewell?"

  "Yes?"

  "Would you mind not calling me that? I--" His voice clogged, and Albert cleared his throat violently. "I don't think I like it anymore."

  16

  They emerged from the dark cave which was Airport Services thirty seconds later, Nick carrying the folded stretcher by the handle. When they reached the bank of phones, Nick handed the stretcher to Albert, who accepted it wordlessly. The tablecloth lay on the floor about five feet away from Toomy, who was snoring now in great rhythmless snatches of air.

  Time was short, time was very fucking short, but Nick had to see this. He had to.

  He picked up the tablecloth and pulled the toaster out. One of the heating elements caught in a bread slot; the other tumbled out onto the floor. The timer-dial and the handle you used to push the bread down fell off. One comer of the toaster was crumpled inward. The left side was bashed into a deep circular dent.

  That's the part that collided with Friend Toomy's sniffer, Nick thought. Amazing. He shook the toaster and listened to the loose rattle of broken parts inside.

  "A toaster," he marvelled. "I have friends, Albert--professional friends--who wouldn't believe it. I hardly believe it myself. I mean ... a toaster."

  Albert had turned his head. "Throw it away," he said hoarsely. "I don't want to look at it."

  Nick did as the boy asked, then clapped him on the shoulder. "Take the stretcher upstairs. I'll join you directly."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I want to see if there's anything else we can use in that office."

  Albert looked at him for a moment, but he couldn't make out Nick's features in the dark. At last he said, "I don't believe you."

  "Nor do you have to," Nick said in an oddly gentle voice. "Go on, Ace ... Albert, I mean. I'll join you soon. And don't look back."

  Albert stared at him a moment longer, then began to trudge up the frozen escalator, his head down, the stretcher dangling like a suitcase from his right hand. He didn't look back.

  17

  Nick waited until the boy had disappeared into the gloom. Then he walked back over to where Craig Toomy lay and squatted beside him. Toomy was still out, but his breathing seemed a little more regular. Nick supposed it was not impossible, given a week or two of constant-care treatment in hospital, that Toomy might recover. He had proved at least one thing: he had an awesomely hard head.

  Shame the brains underneath are so soft, mate, Nick thought. He reached out, meaning to put one hand over Toomy's mouth and the other over his nose--or what remained of it. It would take less than a minute, and they would not have to worry about Mr. Craig Toomy anymore. The others would have recoiled in horror at the act--would have called it cold-blooded murder--but Nick saw it as an insurance policy, no more and no less. Toomy had arisen once from what appeared to be total unconsciousness and now one of their number was dead and another was badly, perhaps mortally, wounded. There was no sense taking the same chance again.

  And there was something else. If he left Toomy alive, what, exactly, would he be leaving him alive for? A short, haunted existence in a dead world? A chance to breathe dying air under a moveless sky in which all weather patterns appeared to have ceased? An opportunity to meet whatever was approaching from the east ... approaching with a sound like that of a colony of giant, marauding ants?

  No. Best to see him out of it. It would be painless, and that would have to be good enough.

  "Better than the bastard deserves," Nick said, but still he hesitated.

  He remembered the little girl looking up at him with her dark, unseeing eyes.

  Don't you kill him! Not a plea; that had been a command. She had summoned up a little strength from some hidden last reserve in order to give him that command. All I know is that we need him.

  Why is she so bloody protective of him?

  He squatted a moment longer, looking into Craig Toomy's ruined face. And when Rudy Warwick spoke from the head of the escalator, he jumped as if it had been the devil himself.

  "Mr. Hopewell? Nick? Are you coming?"

  "In a jiffy!" he called back over his shoulder. He reached toward Toomy's face again and stopped again, remembering her dark eyes.

  We need him.

  Abruptly he stood up, leaving Craig Toomy to his tortured struggle for breath. "Coming now," he called, and ran lightly up the escalator.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  REFUELLING. DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT. THE APPROACH OF THE LANGOLIERS. ANGEL OF THE MORNING. THE TIME-KEEPERS OF ETERNITY. TAKE-OFF.

  1

  Bethany had cast away her almost tasteless cigarette and was halfway up the ladder again when Bob Jenkins shouted: "I think they're coming out!"

  She turned and ran back down the stairs. A series of dark blobs was emerging from the luggage bay and crawling along the conveyor belt. Bob and Bethany ran to meet them.

  Dinah was strapped to the stretcher. Rudy had one end, Nick the other. They were walking on their knees, and Bethany could hear the bald man breathing in harsh, out-of-breath gasps.

  "Let me help," she told him, and Rudy gave up his end of the stretcher willingly.

  "Try not to jiggle her," Nick said, swinging his legs off the conveyor belt. "Albert, get on Bethany's end and help us take her up the stairs. We want this thing to stay as level as possible."

  "How bad is she?" Bethany asked Albert.

  "Not good," he said grimly. "Unconscious but still alive. That's all I know."

  "Where are Gaffney and Toomy?" Bob asked as they crossed to the plane. He had to raise his voice slightly to be heard; the crunching sound was louder now, and that shrieking wounded-transmission undertone was becoming a dominant, maddening note.

  "Gaffney's dead and Toomy might as well be," Nick said. "We'll discuss it later, if you like. Right now there's no time." He halted at the foot of the stairs. "Mind you keep your end up, you two."

  They moved the stretcher slowly and carefully up the stairs, Nick walking backward and b
ent over the forward end, Albert and Bethany holding the stretcher up at forehead level and jostling hips on the narrow stairway at the rear. Bob, Rudy, and Laurel followed behind. Laurel had spoken only once since Albert and Nick had returned, to ask if Toomy was dead. When Nick told her he wasn't, she had looked at him closely and then nodded her head with relief.

  Brian was standing at the cockpit door when Nick reached the top of the ladder and eased his end of the stretcher inside.

  "I want to put her in first class," Nick said, "with this end of the stretcher raised so her head is up. Can I do that?"

  "No problem. Secure the stretcher by looping a couple of seatbelts through the head-frame. Do you see where?"

  "Yes." And to Albert and Bethany: "Come on up. You're doing fine."

  In the cabin lights, the blood smeared on Dinah's cheeks and chin stood out starkly against her yellow-white skin. Her eyes were closed; her lids were a delicate shade of lavender. Under the belt (in which Nick had punched a new hole, high above the others), the makeshift compress was dark red. Brian could hear her breathing. It sounded like a straw dragging wind at the bottom of an almost empty glass.

  "It's bad, isn't it?" Brian asked in a low voice.

  "Well, it's her lung and not her heart, and she's not filling up anywhere near as fast as I was afraid she might ... but it's bad, yes."

  "Will she live until we get back?"

  "How in hell should I know?" Nick shouted at him suddenly. "I'm a soldier, not a bloody sawbones!"

  The other froze, looking at him with cautious eyes. Laurel felt her skin prickle again.

  "I'm sorry," Nick muttered. "Time travel plays the very devil with one's nerves, doesn't it? I'm very sorry."

  "No need to apologize," Laurel said, and touched his arm. "We're all under strain."

  He gave her a tired smile and touched her hair. "You're a sweetheart, Laurel, and no mistake. Come on--let's strap her in and see what we can do about getting the hell out of here."

  2

  Five minutes later Dinah's stretcher had been secured in an inclined position to a pair of first-class seats, her head up, her feet down. The rest of the passengers were gathered in a tight little knot around Brian in the first-class serving area.

  "We need to refuel the plane," Brian said. "I'm going to start the other engine now and pull over as close as I can to that 727-400 at the jetway." He pointed to the Delta plane, which was just a gray lump in the dark. "Because our aircraft sits higher, I'll be able to lay our right wing right over the Delta's left wing. While I do that, four of you are going to bring over a hose cart--there's one sitting by the other jetway. I saw it before it got dark."

  "Maybe we better wake Sleeping Beauty at the back of the plane and get him to lend a hand," Bob said.

  Brian thought it over briefly and then shook his head. "The last thing we need right now is another scared, disoriented passenger on our hands ... and one with a killer hangover to boot. And we won't need him--two strong men can push a hose cart in a pinch. I've seen it done. Just check the transmission lever to make sure it's in neutral. It wants to end up directly beneath the overlapping wings. Got it?"

  They all nodded. Brian looked them over and decided that Rudy and Bethany were still too blown from wrestling the stretcher to be of much help. "Nick, Bob, and Albert. You push. Laurel, you steer. Okay?"

  They nodded.

  "Go on and do it, then. Bethany? Mr. Warwick? Go down with them. Pull the ladder away from the plane, and when I've got the plane repositioned, place it next to the overlapping wings. The wings, not the door. Got it?"

  They nodded. Looking around at them, Brian saw that their eyes looked clear and bright for the first time since they had landed. Of course, he thought. They have something to do now. And so do I, thank God.

  3

  As they approached the hose cart sitting off to the left of the unoccupied jetway, Laurel realized she could actually see it. "My God," she said. "It's coming daylight again already. How long has it been since it got dark?"

  "Less than forty minutes, by my watch," Bob said, "but I have a feeling that my watch doesn't keep very accurate time when we're outside the plane. I've also got a feeling time doesn't matter much here, anyway."

  "What's going to happen to Mr. Toomy?" Laurel asked.

  They had reached the cart. It was a small vehicle with a tank on the back, an open-air cab, and thick black hoses coiled on either side. Nick put an arm around her waist and turned her toward him. For a moment she had the crazy idea that he meant to kiss her, and she felt her heart speed up.

  "I don't know what's going to happen to him," he said. "All I know is that when the chips were down, I chose to do what Dinah wanted. I left him lying unconscious on the floor. All right?"

  "No," she said in a slightly unsteady voice, "but I guess it will have to do."

  He smiled a little, nodded, and gave her waist a brief squeeze. "Would you like to go to dinner with me when and if we make it back to L.A.?"

  "Yes," she said at once. "That would be something to look forward to."

  He nodded again. "For me, too. But unless we can get this airplane refuelled, we're not going anywhere." He looked at the open cab of the hose cart. "Can you find neutral, do you think?"

  Laurel eyed the stick-shift jutting up from the floor of the cab. "I'm afraid I only drive an automatic."

  "I'll do it." Albert jumped into the cab, depressed the clutch, then peered at the diagram on the knob of the shift lever. Behind him, the 767's second engine whined into life and both engines began to throb harder as Brian powered up. The noise was very loud, but Laurel found she didn't mind it at all. It blotted out that other sound, at least temporarily. And she kept wanting to look at Nick. Had he actually invited her out to dinner? Already it seemed hard to believe.

  Albert changed gears, then waggled the shift lever. "Got it," he said, and jumped down. "Up you go, Laurel. Once we get it rolling, you'll have to hang a hard right and bring it around in a circle."

  "All right."

  She looked back nervously as the three men lined themselves up along the rear of the hose cart with Nick in the middle.

  "Ready, you lot?" he asked.

  Albert and Bob nodded.

  "Right, then--all together."

  Bob had been braced to push as hard as he could, and damn the low back pain which had plagued him for the last ten years, but the hose cart rolled with absurd ease. Laurel hauled the stiff, balky steering wheel around with all her might. The yellow cart described a small circle on the gray tarmac and began to roll back toward the 767, which was trundling slowly into position on the righthand side of the parked Delta jet.

  "The difference between the two aircraft is incredible," Bob said.

  "Yes," Nick agreed. "You were right, Albert. We may have wandered away from the present, but in some strange way, that airplane is still a part of it."

  "So are we," Albert said. "At least, so far."

  The 767's turbines died, leaving only the steady low rumble of the APUs--Brian was now running all four of them. They were not loud enough to cover the sound in the east. Before, that sound had had a kind of massive uniformity, but as it neared it was fragmenting; there seemed to be sounds within sounds, and the sum total began to seem horribly familiar.

  Animals at feeding time, Laurel thought, and shivered. That's what it sounds like--the sound of feeding animals, sent through an amplifier and blown up to grotesque proportions.

  She shivered violently and felt panic begin to nibble at her thoughts, an elemental force she could control no more than she could control whatever was making that sound.

  "Maybe if we could see it, we could deal with it," Bob said as they began to push the fuel cart again.

  Albert glanced at him briefly and said, "I don't think so."

  4

  Brian appeared in the forward door of the 767 and motioned Bethany and Rudy to roll the ladder over to him. When they did, he stepped onto the platform at the top and pointed to the
overlapping wings. As they rolled him in that direction, he listened to the approaching noise and found himself remembering a movie he had seen on the late show a long time ago. In it, Charlton Heston had owned a big plantation in South America. The plantation had been attacked by a vast moving carpet of soldier ants, ants which ate everything in their path--trees, grass, buildings, cows, men. What had that movie been called? Brian couldn't remember. He only remembered that Charlton had kept trying increasingly desperate tricks to stop the ants, or at least delay them. Had he beaten them in the end? Brian couldn't remember, but a fragment of his dream suddenly recurred, disturbing in its lack of association to anything: an ominous red sign which read SHOOTING STARS ONLY.

  "Hold it!" he shouted down to Rudy and Bethany.

  They ceased pushing, and Brian carefully climbed down the ladder until his head was on a level with the underside of the Delta jet's wing. Both the 767 and 727 were equipped with single-point fuelling ports in the left wing. He was now looking at a small square hatch with the words FUEL TANK ACCESS and CHECK SHUT-OFF VALVE BEFORE REFUELLING stencilled across it. And some wit had pasted a round yellow happy-face sticker to the fuel hatch. It was the final surreal touch.

  Albert, Bob, and Nick had pushed the hose cart into position below him and were now looking up, their faces dirty gray circles in the brightening gloom. Brian leaned over and shouted down to Nick.

  "There are two hoses, one on each side of the cart! I want the short one!"

  Nick pulled it free and handed it up. Holding both the ladder and the nozzle of the hose with one hand, Brian leaned under the wing and opened the refuelling hatch. Inside was a male connector with a steel prong poking out like a finger. Brian leaned further out ... and slipped. He grabbed the railing of the ladder.

  "Hold on, mate," Nick said, mounting the ladder. "Help is on the way." He stopped three rungs below Brian and seized his belt. "Do me a favor, all right?"

  "What's that?"

  "Don't fart."

  "I'll try, but no promises."

  He leaned out again and looked down at the others. Rudy and Bethany had joined Bob and Albert below the wing. "Move away, unless you want a jet-fuel shower!" he called. "I can't control the Delta's shut-off valve, and it may leak!" As he waited for them to back away he thought, Of course, it may not. For all I know, the tanks on this thing are as dry as a goddam bone.