by Stephen King
Prowlers. Three of them. (Or tricks? Richards wondered, suddenly agonized. She had sounded slightly furtive on the telephone, as if holding something back—) They had been hopped up, probably. Perhaps they had made some threatening move toward Cathy and Sheila had tried to protect her daughter. They had both died of puncture wounds.
That had snapped him out of it. “Don’t feed me that shit!” he screamed suddenly. Amelia flinched backward and suddenly hid her face. “What happened? Tell me what happened!”
“There’s nothing more I can say. Your wife was stabbed over sixty times.”
“Cathy,” Richards said emptily, without thought, and Killian winced.
“Ben, would you like some time to think about all this?”
“Yes. Yes, I would.”
“I’m desperately, desperately sorry, pal. I swear on my mother that we had nothing to do with it. Our way would have been to set them up away from you, with visiting rights if you agreed. A man doesn’t willingly work for the people who butchered his family. We know that.”
“I need time to think.”
“As Chief Hunter,” Killian said softly, “you could get those bastards and put them down a deep hole. And a lot of others just like them.”
“I want to think. Goodbye.”
“I—”
Richards reached out and thumbed the Free-Vee into blackness. He sat stonelike in his seat. His hands dangled loosely between his knees. The plane droned on into darkness.
So, he thought. It’s all come unraveled. All of it.
…Minus 012 and COUNTING…
An hour passed.
The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things…of sailing ships and sealing-wax, And whether pigs have wings.
Pictures flitted in and out of his mind. Stacey. Bradley. Elton Parrakis with his baby face. A nightmare of running. Lighting the newspapers in the basement of the Y.M.C.A. with that last match. The gas-powered cars wheeling and screeching, the Sten gun spitting flame. Laughlin’s sour voice. The pictures of those two kids, the junior Gestapo agents.
Well, why not?
No ties now, and certainly no morality. How could morality be an issue to a man cut loose and drifting? How wise Killian had been to see that, to show Richards with calm and gentle brutality just how alone he was. Bradley and his impassioned air-pollution pitch seemed distant, unreal, unimportant. Nose-filters. Yes. At one time the concept of nose-filters had seemed large, very important. No longer so.
The poor you will have with you always.
True. Even Richards’s loins had produced a specimen for the killing machine. Eventually the poor would adapt, mutate. Their lungs would produce their own filtration system in ten thousand years or in fifty thousand, and they would rise up, rip out the artificial filters and watch their owners flop and kick and drum their lives away, drowning in an atmosphere where oxygen played only a minor part, and what was futurity to Ben Richards? It was all only bitchin.
There would be a period of grief. They would expect that, provide for it. There would even be rages, moments of revolt. Abortive tries to make the knowledge of deliberate poison in the air public again? Maybe. They would take care of it. Take care of him—anticipation of a time when he would take care of them. Instinctively he knew he could do it. He suspected he might even have a certain genius for the job. They would help him, heal him. Drugs and doctors. A change of mind.
Then, peace.
Contentiousness rooted out like bitterweed.
He regarded the peace longingly, the way a man in the desert regards water.
Amelia Williams cried steadily in her seat long after the time when all tears should have gone dry. He wondered indifferently what would become of her. She couldn’t very well be returned to her husband and family in her present state; she simply was not the same lady who had pulled up to a routine stop sign with her mind all full of meals and meetings, clubs and cooking. She had Shown Red. He supposed there would be drugs and therapy, a patient showing off. The Place Where Two Roads Diverged, a pinpointing of the reason why the wrong path had been chosen. A carnival in dark mental browns.
He wanted suddenly to go to her, comfort her, tell her that she was not badly broken, that a single crisscrossing of psychic Band-Aids should fix her, make her even better than she had been before.
Sheila. Cathy.
Their names came and repeated, clanging in his mind like bells, like words repeated until they are reduced to nonsense. Say your name over two hundred times and discover you are no one. Grief was impossible; he could feel only a fuzzy sense of embarrassment: they had taken him, run him slack-lunged, and he had turned out to be nothing but a horse’s ass after all. He remembered a boy from his grammar school days who had stood up to give the Pledge of Allegiance and his pants had fallen down.
The plane droned on and on. He sank into a three-quarter doze. Pictures came and went lazily, whole incidents were seen without any emotional color at all.
Then, a final scrapbook picture: a glossy eight-by-ten taken by a bored police photographer who had perhaps been chewing gum. Exhibit C, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. One ripped and sliced small body in a blood-drenched crib. Splatters and runnels on the cheap stucco walls and the broken Mother Goose mobile bought for a dime. A great sticky clot on the secondhand teddy bear with one eye.
He snapped awake, full awake and bolt upright, with his mouth propped wide in a blabbering scream. The force expelled from his lungs was great enough to make his tongue flap like a sail. Everything, everything in the first-class compartment was suddenly clear and plan-gently real, overpowering, awful. It had the grainy reality of a scare tabloid newsie clip. Laughlin being dragged out of that shed in Topeka, for instance. Everything, everything was very real and in Technicolor.
Amelia screamed affrightedly in unison, cringing back in her seat with eyes as huge as cracked porcelain doorknobs, trying to cram a whole fist in her mouth.
Donahue came charging through the galley, his gun out. His eyes were small enthusiastic black beads. “What is it? What’s wrong? McCone?”
“No,” Richards said, feeling his heart slow just enough to keep his words from sounding squeezed and desperate. “Bad dream. My little girl.”
“Oh.” Donahue’s eyes softened in counterfeit sympathy. He didn’t know how to do it very well. Perhaps he would be a goon all his life. Perhaps he would learn. He turned to go.
“Donahue?”
Donahue turned back warily.
“Had you pretty scared, didn’t I?”
“No.” Donahue turned away on that short word. His neck was bunched. His buttocks in his tight blue uniform were as pretty as a girl’s.
“I can scare you worse,” Richards remarked. “I could threaten to take away your nose filter.”
Exeunt Donahue.
Richards closed his eyes tiredly. The glossy eight-by-ten came back. Opened them. Closed them. No glossy eight-by-ten. He waited, and when he was sure it was not going to come back (right away), he opened his eyes and thumbed on the Free-Vee.
It popped on and there was Killian.
…Minus 011 and COUNTING…
“Richards.” Killian leaned forward, making no effort to conceal his tension.
“I’ve decided to accept,” Richards said.
Killian leaned back and nothing smiled but his eyes. “I’m very glad,” he said.
…Minus 010 and COUNTING…
“Jesus,” Richards said. He was standing in the doorway to the pilot’s country.
Holloway turned around. “Hi.” He had been speaking to something called Detroit VOR. Duninger was drinking coffee.
The twin control consoles were untended. Yet they swerved, tipped, and turned as if in response to ghost hands and feet. Dials swung. Lights flashed. There seemed to be a huge and constant input and output going on…to no one at all.
“Who’s driving the bus?” Richards asked, fascinated.
“Otto,” Duninger said.
“Otto?”
“Otto the automatic pilot. Get it? Shitty pun.” Duninger suddenly smiled. “Glad to have you on the team, fella. You may not believe this, but some of us guys were rooting for you pretty hard.”
Richards nodded noncommittally.
Holloway stepped into the slightly awkward breach by saying: “Otto freaks me out, too. Even after twenty years of this. But he’s dead safe. Sophisticated as hell. It would make one of the old ones look like…well, like an orange crate beside a Chippendale bureau.”
“Is that right?” Richards was staring out into the darkness.
“Yes. You lock on P.O.D.—point of destination—and Otto takes over, aided by Voice-Radar all the way. Makes the pilot pretty superfluous, except for takeoffs and landings. And in case of trouble.”
“Is there much you can do if there’s trouble?” Richards asked.
“We can pray,” Holloway said. Perhaps it was meant to sound jocular, but it came out with a strange sincerity that hung in the cabin.
“Do those wheels actually steer the plane?” Richards asked.
“Only up and down,” Duninger said. “The pedals control sideside motion.”
“Sounds like a kid’s soapbox racer.”
“A little more complicated,” Holloway said. “Let’s just say there are a few more buttons to push.”
“What happens if Otto goes off his chump?”
“Never happens,” Duninger said with a grin. “If it did, you’d just override him. But the computer is never wrong, pal.”
Richards wanted to leave, but the sight of the turning wheels, the minute, mindless adjustments of the pedals and switches, held him. Holloway and Duninger went back to their business—obscure numbers and communications filled with static.
Holloway looked back once, seemed surprised to see him still there. He grinned and pointed into the darkness. “You’ll see Harding coming up there soon.”
“How long?”
“You’ll be able to see the horizon glow in five to six minutes.”
When Holloway turned around next, Richards was gone. He said to Duninger. “I’ll be glad when we set that guy down. He’s a spook.”
Duninger looked down morosely, his face bathed in the green, luminescent glow of the controls. “He didn’t like Otto. You know that?”
“I know it,” Holloway said.
…Minus 009 and COUNTING…
Richards walked back down the narrow, hip-wide corridor. Friedman, the communications man, didn’t look up. Neither did Donahue. Richards stepped through into the galley and then halted.
The smell of coffee was strong and good. He poured himself a cup, added some instant creamer, and sat down in one of the stewardesses’s off-duty chairs. The Silex bubbled and steamed.
There was a complete stock of luxury frozen dinners in the see-through freezers. The liquor cabinet was fully stocked with midget airline bottles.
A man could have a good drunk, he thought.
He sipped his coffee. It was strong and fine. The Silex bubbled.
Here I am, he thought, and sipped. Yes, no question about it. Here he was, just sipping.
Pots and pans all neatly put away. The stainless steel sink gleaming like a chromium jewel in a Formica setting. And, of course, that Silex on the hotplate, bubbling and steaming. Sheila had always wanted a Silex. A Silex lasts, was her claim.
He was weeping.
There was a tiny toilet where only stewardess bottoms had squatted. The door was half ajar and he could see it, yes, even the blue, primly disinfected water in the bowl. Defecate in tasteful splendor at fifty thousand feet.
He drank his coffee and watched the Silex bubble and steam, and he wept. The weeping was very calm and completely silent. It and his cup of coffee ended at the same time.
He got up and put his cup in the stainless steel sink. He picked up the Silex, holding it by its brown plastic handle, and carefully dumped the coffee down the drain. Tiny beads of condensation clung to the thick glass.
He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket and went back into the narrow corridor. He stepped into Donahue’s compartment, carrying the Silex in one hand.
“Want some coffee?” Richards asked.
“No,” Donahue said curtly, without looking up.
“Sure you do,” Richards said, and swung the heavy glass pot down on Donahue’s bent head with all the force he could manage.
…Minus 008 and COUNTING…
The effort ripped open the wound in his side for the third time, but the pot didn’t break. Richards wondered if it had been fortified with something (Vitamin B-12, perhaps?) to keep it from shattering in case of high level turbulence. It did take a huge, amazing blot of Donahue’s blood. He fell silently onto his map table. A runnel of blood ran across the plasticoating of the top one and began to drip.
“Roger five-by, C-one-niner-eight-four,” a radio voice said brightly.
Richards was still holding the Silex. It was matted with strands of Donahue’s hair.
He dropped it, but there was no clunk. Carpeting even here. The glass bubble of the Silex rolled up at him, a winking, bloodshot eyeball. The glossy eight-by-ten of Cathy in her crib appeared unbidden and Richards shuddered.
He lifted Donahue’s dead weight by the hair and rummaged inside his blue flight jacket. The gun was there. He was about to drop Donahue’s head back to the map table, but paused, and yanked it up even further. Donahue’s mouth hung unhinged, an idiot leer. Blood dripped into it.
Richards wiped blood from one nostril and stared in.
There it was—tiny, very tiny. A glitter of mesh.
“Acknowledge E.T.A. C-one-niner-eight-four,” the radio said.
“Hey, that’s you!” Friedman called from across the hall. “Donahue—”
Richards limped into the passage. He felt very weak. Friedman looked up. “Will you tell Donahue to get off his butt and acknowledge—”
Richards shot him just above the upper lip. Teeth flew like a broken, savage necklace. Hair, blood, and brains splashed a Rorschach on the wall behind the chair, where a 3-D foldout girl was spreading eternal legs over a varnished mahogany bedpost.
There was a muffled exclamation from the pilot’s compartment, and Holloway made a desperate, doomed lunge to shut the door. Richards noticed that he had a very small scar on his forehead, shaped like a question mark. It was the kind of scar a small, adventurous boy might get if he fell from a low branch while playing pilot.
He shot Holloway in the belly and Holloway made a great shocked noise: “Whoooo-OOO! His feet flipped out from under him and he fell on his face.
Duninger was turned around in his chair, his face a slack moon. “Don’t shoot me, huh?” he said. There was not enough wind in him to make it a statement.
“Here,” Richards said kindly, and pulled the trigger. Something popped and flared with brief violence behind Duninger as he fell over.
Silence.
“Acknowledge E.T.A., C-one-niner-eight-four,” the radio said.
Richards suddenly whooped and threw up a great glut of coffee and bile. The muscular contraction ripped his wound open further, implanting a great, throbbing pain in his side.
He limped to the controls, still dipping and sliding in endless, complex tandem. So many dials and controls.
Wouldn’t they have a communications link constantly open on such an important flight? Surely.
“Acknowledge,” Richards said conversationally.
“You got the Free-Vee on up there, C-one-niner-eight-four? We’ve been getting some garbled transmission. Everything okay?”
“Five-by,” Richards said.
“Tell Duninger he owes me a beer,” the voice said cryptically, and then there was only background static.
Otto was driving the bus.
Richards went back to finish his business.
…Minus 007 and COUNTING…
“Oh dear God,” Amelia Williams moaned.
Richards looked down at himself casually. His entire righ
t side, from ribcage to calf, was a bright and sparkling red.
“Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?” Richards said.
McCone suddenly dashed through into first class. He took in Richards at a glance. McCone’s gun was out. He and Richards fired at the same time.
McCone disappeared through the canvas between first and second class. Richards sat down hard. He felt very tired. There was a large hole in his belly. He could see his intestines.
Amelia was screaming endlessly, her hands pulling her cheeks down into a plastic witch-face.
McCone came staggering back into first class. He was grinning. Half of his head appeared to be blown away, but he was grinning all the same.
He fired twice. The first bullet went over Richards’s head. The second struck him just below the collarbone.
Richards fired again. McCone staggered around twice in an aimless kind of dipsy-doodle. The gun fell from his fingers. McCone appeared to be observing the heavy white styrofoam ceiling of the first class compartment, perhaps comparing it to his own in second class. He fell over. The smell of burned powder and burned flesh was clear and crisp, as distinctive as apples in a cider press.
Amelia continued to scream. Richards thought how remarkably healthy she sounded.
…Minus 006 and COUNTING…
Richards got up very slowly, holding his intestines in. It felt as if someone was lighting matches in his stomach.
He went slowly up the aisle, bent over, one hand to his midriff, as if bowing. He picked up the parachute with one hand and dragged it behind him. A loop of gray sausage escaped his fingers and he pushed it back in. It hurt to push it in. It vaguely felt as if he might be shitting himself.
“Guh,” Amelia Williams was groaning. “Guh-Guh-Guh-God. Oh God. Oh dear God.”
