Dead On Arrival

by Matt Richtel

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Part I: Steamboat One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Part II: Three Years Earlier Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Part III: Steamboat Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Part IV: Nevada Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Part V: Six Months Before Present Day Thirty-Two

  Present Day Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Matt Richtel

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Tarry black horizon. So dark, without contrast, it was as if they weren’t moving at all. Flecks of condensation pecked the wide, arched windshield and disappeared.

  Inside the cockpit swirled the pungent odor of nerves. Delta flight #194, the night’s last inbound, and something wrong.

  Captain Eleanor Hall stared into the flat Colorado sky and reached overhead to the instrument panel. She twisted the backlit rate knob a quarter turn left.

  “Descend to Field Elevation Set. Anything on the radio, Jerry?”

  “All I got is static.”

  “Not good . . .” She shook her head and clicked on the engine anti-ice. Then double-checked to see that the fasten seatbelt sign was on. She glanced at the gauges. Just four miles out now, traveling 278 knots with 19 knots on the tail.

  “The protocol’s pretty clear.”

  First Officer Jerry Weathers put his mouth to the radio. “Hayden clearance, Delta one-nine-four ready to copy IFR.”

  In response, he got only static.

  “Hayden, copy. This is Delta one-nine-four . . .”

  Static.

  “Okay,” Pilot Hall said, looking for a steady voice.

  “No, not okay. It’s been ten minutes, Eleanor,” Jerry said. Not a peep from anyone—local or distant—in ten thousand feet. “Definitely not okay.”

  Eleanor tensed. Jerry bordered on the officious even when things weren’t going to shit. She went down her checklist. The protocol said you landed anyway. Communications systems could be finicky and, at a small airport like this, the regional control tower might actually be located a long way off, in Salt Lake City, maybe Denver, even Cheyenne. Still, it qualified as odd, in the least, the whole world having gone suddenly silent.

  “Hayden, copy,” Jerry said.

  Static.

  “We’re in control of this, Jerry.” She rubbed the slick perspiration of her palm on her blue pants.

  At least the plane seemed to be responding, and landing instrumentation had come a long way. If a pilot could land on an aircraft carrier in World War II, two seasoned pilots and a whole lot of technology could surely touch down softly on an actual landing strip, even in the dark.

  “Twenty-five hundred feet. You set the Nav?”

  “Yep, for the third time. I got a good ident on the localizer. Must be a glitch at the comm tower. Doesn’t explain why traffic is down everywhere.”

  “Stay with me, Jerry.”

  Eleanor listened to the wheels unfold—a sound that reminded her of a baby’s hum.

  “Landing gear down.” Ordinarily, composure was her forte. It’s why the airline used her for those corporate pep talks to new pilots, who could barely hide their displeasure at suffering a welcoming address. They were often military guys, not the kind of folks who relished a rah-rah speech unless it was before a bombing raid. They might’ve gotten a kick out of this: landing without communications, at night, at a tiny airport in the Colorado mountains outside Steamboat Springs.

  Two miles, 214 knots, still the tailwind.

  “What goes up must come down,” she said.

  “That’s odd.”

  “Sorry, I just meant: We went up in the air. We gotta come down. This is good a time as any.”

  “No . . .”

  “What? Fifteen hundred feet.”

  “Flaps 15,” he announced. “Never mind—the other thing.”

  “Jerry?” She allowed herself to turn to her first officer and copilot. He was more than a head taller than her, thin and bordering on gangly. Long arms and legs. His elbows always seemed to be in the way. He hunched his neck in the way of someone uncomfortable with his height when he was in middle school and so took to shrinking in. Still, to those who didn’t know him, he struck a pilot’s confident pose. Eleanor knew him. This kind of pressure could get to him. It’s why she had been pressing him on the communications.

  “It’s just . . . it’s okay. When I pressed the foot brake, it was a little givey,” he said.

  “At one thousand. And now?”

  “Less. I got this.”

  Less than a mile out, 150 knots.

  “Final flaps?”

  “At thirty. It’s just . . . the instrument panel, did you see it—a second ago?”

  “Jerry, I can see the ground, okay? We need to focus. The panel looks okay.”

  “It blinked.”

  “It looks fine to me. We’re at five hundred.”

  “It blinked on and off. It . . .” He shook his head and didn’t finish the thought.

  She clicked on her headset and spoke. “Hayden traffic, this is Delta 194. We’re in final, downwind from two.”

  More static.

  The plane decelerated with that vacuum roar, touched down with three bumps, and raced into a taxi, the midsize jet speeding down the strip. Eleanor exhaled loudly, with enormous relief. Ahead and through the flight deck window on both sides, she could make out the tiny airport lit only by the hazy light from the nose.

  “I think a drink is in order,” Jerry said. “Or five.”

  Eleanor felt an urge to discourage him but decided to let Jerry have his fantasy that they might, at last, share cocktails at some hotel port of call.

  “They put us at a lodge over by the mountain,” he said.

  She held her tongue. But it wasn’t only because she didn’t want to be presumptuous about Jerry’s overture. It was the eerie nature of the airport. Unusually quiet, even for this time of night. In her left hand, she held the intercom to communicate to the passengers, and on her lips she held the words: Welcome to Steamboat.

  But she couldn’t get them out.

  She pressed the button to talk and what came out was: “This is the captain. Please keep your seats for a moment; we’re still . . . we’re getting some unusual weather.”

  She depressed the button and stared out the window.

  “What weather? Eleanor, what are you talking abou—”

  He stopped fiddling with landing protocol. He looked over at her. “What are you . . .”

  “Look.”

  She was mesmerized by the image in front o
f the plane.

  “What the . . .”

  “Oh my God.”

  Part I

  Steamboat

  One

  “Dr. Martin?”

  The voice came from the distance, echoed, died out. Lyle looked down at a square oak dinner table carved with names and initials he couldn’t make out. Deep grooves etched inexpertly with a jagged blade. In the middle of the table stood an overstuffed burlap sack. It overflowed with fine white powder. Next to it, a small, clear plastic medicine cup.

  Lyle picked up the cup with an unsteady hand, studied it, squinted to make out the dose at three tablespoons. Jammed it into the chalky substance in the sack. He lifted it to his lips, tried to drink, then swallow. Coughed, dust flew. It settled.

  “Dr. Martin.” Closer now. “Please. It’s . . . it’s vital.”

  The powder stirred, churned. Then became a flurry, a miniature tornado, a violent dust storm, swirling and pregnant over the bag. Lyle withdrew, shielded his eyes. The bag bulged, a shape emerged. Black and angular. Wings. Then snarling nostrils, spewed spittle, venom. A bat. Bright red eyes. It flapped furiously. Lifted, became airborne but only momentarily. The bat stalled, fluttered, straining upward as it got sucked back down and submerged into the ashy grave.

  A nudge to Lyle’s shoulder. “I . . . wait . . .” The plastic cup spilled from his hand.

  He sucked in air, gulped, desperate to swallow. He shook his head. Another shoulder nudge, this one hitting its mark. Lyle willed his eyes open. He made out strands of red hair. I’m dreaming, he thought, managing, finally, a swallow. It, the dream, everything, has turned drug sour; too much diphenhydramine chasing too much insomnia.

  He studied the hair—still from the beachhead of wakefulness.

  “Melanie?” he whispered. The question was hardly out of his mouth before he knew the answer: no, not Melanie. Just someone with hair like hers, angry red. This woman was older than Melanie, not much of a resemblance at all. She blinked quickly. The clench of her jaw awoke Lyle.

  Something was wrong.

  “Are you Dr. Martin?”

  He focused on the name tag on the woman’s blue uniform. Stella. She leaned in, near his left ear. A flight attendant; he started to make sense of it. Full face, freckles, an animal smell—fear.

  “May I have water?”

  “They need a doctor,” said the woman. She lowered her voice further. “In the flight deck. Dr. Martin. Lyle Martin?”

  “How do you . . .”

  “The manifest has all the names. Please, are you a medical doctor?”

  He glanced around, saw eyes turned his direction. “Flight deck?”

  “You were sleeping. On the way to Steamboat. I’m sorry to have awakened you.”

  Lyle unclasped his hands. He stretched his arms so that his fingers rested on his knees. He pressed fingertips into jeans, creating sensation. He needed to get his bearings. But, really, he could see this woman’s desperation and it annoyed him. He sensed this infinitesimal delay in recognition would send a laser shot of annoyance, establish a pecking order. It was cruel and he didn’t like that he was doing it and he couldn’t help himself.

  “Are you listening? Please.”

  “Yes, a doctor.” More or less. Licensed, not practicing.

  “Is someone sick?” asked the woman sitting next to Lyle. “Is that the problem?” She was slight, didn’t take up the full width of even these tight quarters, with a mouth that looked to open little when she spoke.

  “The pilot asked for a doctor,” the flight attendant addressed the woman. “You know as much as I do from the announcement. I think everything is fine. Please keep the shades down.

  “Can you join me, Dr. Martin?”

  “Yes, right.”

  He stood, bumped his head on the overhead compartment, felt the eyes on him again, looked down. Focused on his right foot, the aged gray-and-maroon running shoe, and understood what it was that had caught his attention. His foot was stable. Not gently rocking as it would be in flight. No engine noise. Hadn’t she said they were on the way to Steamboat? They’d landed?

  He followed the flight attendant down the aisle. Around row 12, on the right, a woman with a shaking hand reached to open the shade.

  “Please keep it down,” the flight attendant chirped, her voice strained to the point of cracking.

  “Why?” asked the woman. “Give me a break,” someone else moaned.

  “The pilot said it’s to keep the temperature down. It’s cold on the tarmac.”

  “So.”

  Tarmac, Lyle thought to himself. Maybe the pilot got sick and there was an emergency landing. Maybe they never took off. The woman in row 12, with thick arms—probably diabetic, Lyle thought—closed her shade. It set off another little annoyance. People are pliant on planes. Powerless, Lyle thought, flying chattel. He kept walking forward. The plane was neither full nor particularly big. One of the midsize deals, smaller even, less than three-dozen people. Cloth seats, a worn plane, but with those little screens mounted behind each one.

  Lyle felt the eyes on him. Who, they must be wondering, was this man with the slight hitch in his gait, and light brown hair pasted to the side of his head from sleep? Still, even now, Lyle had the look of someone sturdy, even important, which he once had been.

  “Please take your seat,” the flight attendant urged a tall man as they threaded through four rows of first class.

  “I need to get something from the overhead,” the man protested. He wore noise-canceling headphones on his ears, and spoke a decibel too loudly.

  “Take your seat. Just give us a few minutes.” The flight attendant paused at the flight deck door and waited until Lyle caught up.

  “I’m Stella. You’re a doctor, doctor, right? Not a Ph.D. doctor.”

  “Both. Infectious disease, immunology. I’m not sure I can be of much help. We’re on the ground?”

  The woman nodded.

  “In Steamboat?”

  “Yes.” But she half shrugged, noncommittal.

  “Hang on.” The flight attendant knocked on the flight deck door. A small slider window opened, giving way to an eye. The flight attendant explained she had the doctor, and the eye blinked. Lyle heard a woman’s voice, faintly, say, “Step aside and let him in.”

  Lyle looked back at the planeload of passengers to see many of them craning into the aisle to glean his purpose.

  He walked into the flight deck.

  It was dark—outside, at least. Inside, the controls remained lit up, somewhat, a handful of red lights. The air hung, stale. Seated to his left in a tan chair, a woman, he thought, though her back was to him. She must be the pilot. To his right, facing him, sat the navigator or copilot or whatever. Between them, and overhead, a dense instrument panel that looked like the electrical version of wall-to-ceiling carpeting. In front of each pilot, two screens, each black. Between them, a big handle, which Lyle presumed to be the throttle. Other than that, it was Greek to him.

  “I’m Lyle Martin.”

  “Eleanor Hall; the first officer is Jerry Weathers. You’re a doctor.”

  “Yes.” Thought: Doctor-ish. Enough of one. Used to be. Maybe that’s why they kept asking him. To see if it was still true. “Is someone sick?”

  Eleanor reached down to her right to the control panel and flipped a white switch.

  Outside, there was an explosion of bright, the airplane’s headlights. They illuminated a swath of pavement, the tarmac. A second later, she turned off the light. But the images were burned into Lyle’s drug-tinged brain: a man in an orange jumpsuit, lying on the ground beside a luggage transporter; two other workers toppled upon each other; a desolate hangar to the right; and the clincher—inside the window of a small airport, a half-dozen would-be passengers or staff. Motionless.

  “As near as we can tell,” Eleanor said. “Everyone out there is dead.”

  Two

  Lyle hated stability and disruption in equal measure. When Melanie started putting sex appointme
nts on their shared Google calendar, he skipped town for three days. And stayed awake for most of it. Niceties give him Olympic-caliber insomnia. He twice turned down speaking gigs that offered fifteen thousand dollars because the anticipation of the event left him ghost-walking until dawn. It wasn’t the public-speaking part so much as the small talk afterward. It left him bobbing on the waves of inauthenticity, agitated, suffering fools, even ones not so foolish.

  The vision outside the flight deck reminded him of one of the worst sleepless fits. The waking nightmares. A hole remained in his bedroom wall made with a broom handle attacking a waffle-size tarantula that wasn’t there. Were these dead bodies for real? Were they dead?

  “Was that . . .” Long pause.

  “What it looks like,” Eleanor said. “Bodies. Nothing moving out there.”

  “Jesus.”

  “No one answering distress calls. Nobody responding at all,” the first officer chimed in.

  “I didn’t hear any shots,” Lyle said. He figured he must’ve slept through it. Naturally, his mind would go to armed attack—terror or some heavily armed, local madman. Even Lyle, as isolated as he’d made himself the last few years, overheard or read the drumbeat of periodic, indiscriminate mass killings. Just days ago, a guy at the mall in Corpus Christi had mowed down shoppers and left a manifesto about how these “materialists” didn’t understand the true spirit of Christmas.

  “I don’t think it’s . . . a shooting.” The pilot’s voice sounded hoarse, phlegmy, halting. “Everything is calm.”

  “You said everyone. Everyone is dead.”

  “Everyone.”

  Lyle cleared his throat, started to get his footing. “How do you know this isn’t an isolated thing—something at the airport?”

  “I don’t.”

  He looked outside, tried to. Not much to see, darkness and ghost outlines of the terminal, where he’d seen the bodies. “So why not just dock the plane?”

  “We can’t just pull up to a gate without help and, besides, I don’t know how safe it is out there. Could be . . .” She shrugged. Anything.