Beware of Flight Attendant

by Cactus Moloney

  He had a gun. He must be an Air Marshal, she thought.

  “Thank God,” Carmen traced the cross on her vested chest, keeping eye contact with the pimply boy, she whispered, “We’re going to be okay.”

  She stood up from her crouched position, hiding behind the cart, and was bombarded by the display of carnage in the aisle in front of her. The Air Marshall cowboy was straddling the old woman’s poinsettia-flowered corpse with his gun still drawn.

  “Did you kill the dog?” She asked the cop, a bit too loud.

  He turned to look at her. His rugged mouth shaped the letter O. He looked surprised at the question in the moment. She was registering the bewilderment on the Air Marshal’s face when the bloodied dog pounced. He emerged from behind the seats, appearing as large as the giant cop. Its thick muscles flexed as it knocked the cowboy backwards, its jaws powerfully gripping the man’s wrist. The cowboy tripped over the old woman, banging his head against the cart, before landing on Nicco’s blood-soaked body.

  She heard the man cry out.

  The hulking blood covered creature had overpowered the large officer. She grimaced, witnessing the dog holding the cop’s severed hand in its mouth, still entangled with the gun. Carmen watched the weapon slip from the mutilated cowboy’s dead fingers. It landed with a plop next to the frizzy haired old woman’s head. The dog spit out the chewed up detached hand, before it started to maul the cowboy’s shoulder—inching towards his neck. The cowboy, in a fight for his life, started to drag himself into the floor space of the row closest to him, holding his butchered arm close to his body. Scooting. Dragging. All while the dog continued to gnaw at his flesh.

  Carmen, in her skirt and heels, sunk back down behind the cart. Her instincts told her to not provoke the dog. She put her finger to her mouth trying to shush the murmurs and the crying she could hear all around her.

  Her friend Nicco was dead on the floor, three feet away from her, separated by an aluminum drink cart.

  No sudden moves. She knew about aggressive dogs. Rottweiler, Pitbull, and German shepherd guard dogs were commonly found at her friend’s and family’s homes. She knew dogs could sense fear.

  Carmen peeked through the gap between the cart and the seat, looking towards the front of the plane. She could see part of Nicco’s shredded arm; a red stream was running down it, flowing into his open blood-filled palm, like a Greek fountain. Nicco’s hand pointed to a pair of cowboy boots curled together; the cop had tucked his long body into the row on the other side of the cart. She couldn’t tell if he was alive. Looking past her dead friend and past the cowboy boots, she was able to spot the old woman’s large flowery body submerged in a blackening pool of blood. The woman’s wispy white hair was soaking up the sticky flow, turning it a Cuban favored red-orange hair color.

  The boy’s body was hidden from her sight by the woman’s flowery mound. The dog sat at the side of its deceased owner facing away from her. Its enormous back was caked in gore and what looked like flaps of human skin and tissue. The dog was mourning the loss of its master and guarding the woman’s body.

  Click.

  The sound came from the back of the plane. Carmen’s heart skipped a beat as she waited for the dog to respond to the noise. The brute remained next to its owner. Carmen turned to the passengers behind her to see who or what had made the sound. A nice-looking Asian man in designer jeans and a tucked in red flannel shirt had opened the upper storage compartment nearly ten rows back. His daughter looked to be around seven years old. She was dressed in a blue t-shirt, with a picture of a panda on the front.

  The little girl was clinging to him fiercely, refusing to let go, as he tried to pry her off. He finally managed to unwrap her fingers from their tight grip. He proceeded to lift her into the air and stuff the her into the storage space above the seat. The girl stopped struggling. Carmen could see snot oozing from her small nose. The man handed his daughter his cell phone to play with and for light, Carmen supposed. Then he reached down to his seat and grabbed a cocktail napkin to wipe her face clean. He clicked the compartment shut with his child in it. Lowering himself into his seat, he rested his head in the palms of his hands and shook.

  God, please don’t let that child suffocate, Carmen crossed herself.

  A squeaky high-pitched yip screeched through the cabin, sending shivers down Carmen’s back. The colossal brute stood and began to pace a few feet up the aisle. Tremors were running up and down its pulsating fur after hearing the tiny Pomeranian dog bark.

  God, please don’t let that little dog bark again.

  The killer dog returned to its spot next to the old lady’s body, sitting with his back to Carmen once more.

  Carmen turned to face the back of the plane. People were whimpering around her. Otherwise they were being quiet.

  She needed to do something now.

  27 Derek Beeman

  Derek heard the commotion coming from the coach section. It started with a piercing whistle…then a thump…and a scream.

  It could be anything, he thought.

  Probably that annoying kid bumped into someone and fell. The little twerp in a striped shirt had come running into the first-class area several hours earlier.

  “Get the hell out of here, kid!” Derek promptly scolded him.

  He watched the kid take off in his little red shoes, running back to his mom. He hadn’t seen the kid again.

  The first-class stewardess was a middle age woman with faded auburn hair loosely piled on top of her head. A spare tire had formed around her gut from her age and he suspected a poor diet. She probably consumes excessive amounts of alcohol, he judged by her ruddy complexion, taking a sip from his own gin and tonic.

  “They probably gave her the first-class section because she couldn’t fit down the coach aisle anymore,” he joked to the senator after the flight attendant served him his sixth cocktail. “She should retire.”

  “Why couldn’t we have had that Carmen stewardess?” he slurred. “She makes me crack a fat.”

  Derek was feeling toasty from the mixed drinks. Carmen was the hottest piece of ass he had seen in a while. Well, since last night at the strip club anyway.

  “Hair of the dog,” he held his drink in the air to cheers the senator. “I’m cactus from getting pissed in Vegas last night!”

  Then he heard the roar from a gunshot.

  Derek had been around long enough to know this was a serious problem. He immediately thought of the 9/11 terror attacks. He had always wondered if all the TSA and Customs security checks were necessary.

  “Yeah, apparently they fucked up this time,” he trembled.

  Derek unhooked his seatbelt and twisted his body around to face the rear of the plane. He was sitting in the last seat in first class and was able to reach his hand over to pull the blue fabric curtain divider an inch to the side to peek through into the economy section.

  He saw the kid he had yelled at earlier was dead in the aisle. The red puddle his body rested in matched the kid’s red Converse sneakers. A large elderly woman lay incapacitated behind the boy. Behind her, the male flight attendant sat upright on the floor against the cart. The man gazed back at Derek with empty clouded eyes behind a bloody mask. The biggest, nastiest dog he had ever seen was straddling another man who was fighting for his life on the floor of row 15. Derek could see the man’s cowboy boots twitching in the aisle as the dog continued to maul him.

  Derek’s scrutinizing eyes connected with an attractive young woman, in tall black boots, sitting in the second row of coach. She appeared to be petrified in her seat. He slowly let the curtain slip from his fingers.

  “What the hell was that, Beeman?” inquired the confused Senator.

  Derek needed to take charge of the developing situation.

  The frumpy stewardess, Nancy, came charging out from her galley area to see what the commotion was about. She was walking towards the back of the plane with a chieftain like authority. Derek stood up in the aisle with his legs spread wide and his ches
t inflated to block her.

  “Look we need to barrier off the first-class cabin, NOW,” he bored into her hazel eyes, whispering frantically, while pointing to the rear of the plane. “There is a dog attack happening just behind the curtain.”

  The look on her face showed complete disbelief; she glanced down at his half-empty cocktail sitting on the tray next to his seat. She immediately dismissed his claim. He knew the woman was going to squeeze past him and walk through the curtain to her likely death in the coach cabin.

  Derek was a man of action. He reached his arm back, pulling his hand into a tight ball, and punched her in the face as hard as he could. He heard her nose crunch as she dropped back. Derek lunged forward to catch her. At the same time the senator had come out of his seat, and was able help block her tumble by swooping to catch her under the arms, almost falling backwards himself under her dead weight.

  “What the fuck?” he sputtered at Derek.

  Derek held his finger to his lips, and started frantically making slicing motions across his neck, as he pointed at the curtain separating the coach section.

  The senator looked at the curtain and shook his head not understanding.

  “Help me get her into the seat man,” the senator barked at Derek.

  They dragged her into the second row and dropped her into the leather seat.

  “A vicious dog is loose on the plane,” Derek said under his heavy breathing.

  His nostrils flared as he addressed the first-class passengers.

  “The dog has already killed several people and it looks like it isn’t stopping. It’s mauling a huge guy right now. We need to try and block it from gaining access to our cabin.”

  “That is the most ridiculous idea!” A businesswoman, wearing tortoiseshell glasses, dressed in a blue Armani suit, responded from the front row. “You will just draw more attention to us by making all that noise trying to block the entry. Who made you commander of this ship anyway?”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Derek asked her. “If not, I say we start piling up carry-on luggage between the last row seats in first class...slowly and quietly please.”

  The disgusted businesswoman muttered, “If people need the sanctuary of the first class from being mauled to death, by all means we should allow them in…My God people.”

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what you think,” the senator said. “Shut the Hell up.”

  “This will be on your conscious!” The woman hissed.

  “Look lady, if people start to mob towards the front of the plane, the weight distribution will take the damn thing down, and everyone on board,” Derek seethed at the businesswoman. “I saw it happen in the Congo.”

  Derek had been sitting in the open-air airport in Bandundu, Congo, sifting through a seven-year-old People magazine he had found in the seat next to him. Large groups of people had formed outside the exit of the airport waiting for the plane's arrival. He had been biding his time so he could collect his hired guide. Derek was flying the English-speaker from Kinshasa to help scout out locations for a remake of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

  He watched the plane shift forward as it lined up with the runway. He could tell it wasn’t coming in straight. As the pilots attempted to land, the nose of the plane hit the ground before the back wheels, causing the airplane’s metal to collapse into burning scraps.

  According to the lone survivor, a crocodile had escaped from a passenger’s duffel bag during the flight. The reptile caused the flight attendant to run towards the front of the plane, followed by a stampede of passengers, throwing the aircraft off balance. Surprisingly, the crocodile also survived the crash, but was later neutralized by a blow from a police officer’s machete. The police never notified Derek to let him know if the guide had perished in the flaming crash; he had just assumed so and carried on with scouting out film locations solo.

  Now he had to think of a way to separate the first-class section from coach with more than a thin blue fabric curtain.

  He needed a wall.

  He tiptoed to the galley frantically looking for something to block the passage. There was no trolley because it was first class and the flight attendant prepared the food and drinks in the galley, but it looked like the food warmers were on wheels and could be wheeled down the aisle like the drink cart. He unlatched the hook holding the warmer in place, pulling it from its designated spot to push it down the aisle. Murphy’s Law in place; each rotation of the wheels sounded like the high-pitched squeals of pigs going to slaughter.

  Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!

  He stopped the cart at the last seat and locked the wheels in place. The senator had started to unload the carry-on luggage from the above storage compartments and began passing hard shell Samsonite bags to Derek, who crammed the pieces between the open gaps along each side of the cart.

  ALL DOGS DON’T GO TO HEAVEN

  28 Nick O’toole

  Nick wished he were sitting in the window seat, instead of the aisle seat he requested. The initial attack on the little boy happened just inches behind him. He watched the back of the rock-solid dog’s skull mutilating the child, before he squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Nick did nothing to help the boy. The man with the ponytail sitting next to him did nothing either.

  Yip…yip…yip! The little freaking dog barked again.

  Nick was too afraid to turn around and see the carnage from the ruthless rampage. After hearing the passengers’ screams, then the sound of a gunshot, the plane had become eerily quiet. It was like people knew the dog was the predator and the passengers the prey.

  Nick closed his eyes; his fingers began stroking the cross pendant, hanging from the gold chain around his neck.

  “God help me live through this senseless slaughter.”

  Soundlessly Nick began rocking his head back and forth, as the Holy Spirit whispered his heavenly dialect through him.

  Nick had been strong in his convictions, but recently he had questioned his faith and his actions. Could he have been wrong about vaccines…did Green Juice Protocol really save lives and heal cancer like Drew had told him…did it matter if he purchased organic or non-organic products…was Jesus listening…why did God take his best friend Lola…where does a dog’s soul go if it can’t enter heaven…could he have prevented her from dying from parvo?

  Nick was a staunch anti-vaxxer, even joining demonstrations with other like-minded individuals. He would hold oppositional protest signs at each venue; Veggies not Vaccine$ and Vaccinated Kids are Sloughing Diseased Skin onto our Healthy Kids.

  One of his aunts knew a woman whose kid was diagnosed with autism shortly after being vaccinated. He had read the numerous articles supporting his views of big pharmaceutical company’s moneymaking schemes. He liked the memes on Facebook. He didn’t trust the government, so he didn’t trust any of the Centers for Disease Control’s lies. He was sure they were trying to poison the population. His co-workers mostly agreed with him, but some friends would make outrageous claims trying to antagonize him.

  “Vaccines have saved millions of people’s lives from the horrible infectious diseases—polio, measles, typhoid, rubella and smallpox.”

  “Polio still exists—it’s just called a different name!” He posted on Facebook. “Bill Gates is a murderer!”

  He opted out of vaccinating his boxer pup, Lola. He felt good about the decision. On his days off from work and church, Nick and Lola would drive to Tahoe for a weekend of biking, Lola pacing him with her exuberant energy. People would comment on how Lola and Nick looked alike, with their fawn colored rich auburn hair, dark eyes, and squashed snouts. They both had athletic builds with muscular frames; funny how dogs could look like their people. Lola had a racehorse metabolism and needed a high protein diet to keep the weight on. Unlike Nick who had to watch every morsel that went into his mouth, eating a high protein diet to keep the weight off.

  Lola picked up the crushing parvovirus at the dog park after sniffing poop. The veterinarian rebuked Nick, informing
him the disease had been preventable with the vaccine. Lola was hooked to intravenous fluid to help with her severe dehydration, and then a week later she was diagnosed with a bacterial infection, a result of a weakened immune system—and she died.

  Nick sought the counsel of his pastor at the Los Angeles Christ First Church, north of L.A. He lived in a suburb apartment complex almost an hour south, but chose to drive to Christ First, because he loved the music and the friendly people. He loved the way they loved him.

  The pastor was a recovering drug addict who had found salvation through Jesus Christ his savior. The pastor’s entire family would break out in fantastic worship songs, even writing and performing their own biblical lyrics. The youngest son in a suit and tie would play the drums, the next son up in a bow tie played the guitar, and the third son wore a fedora while playing the upright bass. His redheaded wife was on vocals, with their bleach blond tween daughter running the screen projector. The holy songs praising the Lord were displayed for the whole congregation to join in hymn. The spirit would envelope the worshipers; with shy people belting out chorus, business owners speaking in tongues, and old folks holy rolling.

  “The only solace I have after Lola’s death is that she is with God in a better place,” Nick explained the comfort it brought him knowing he would see Lola again to Pastor Rick. “One day I’ll be reunited with her in heaven.”

  The pastor’s face turned down in pity and he rested his hand on Nick’s shoulder.

  “Sorry Nick, but dogs don’t go to heaven,” Pastor Rick said honestly and forthright while opening his Bible to Revelations.

  “In the final chapter of the Bible, it says, ‘Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the Tree of Life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.’”