Dead On Arrival

by Matt Richtel

  Alex. His seatmate, the woman who had survived. Where had she said she worked? She hadn’t, just that she was in technology sales. He shrugged and turned.

  At the flight deck door, he stopped. Attached to the door, with adhesive, was a small gold rectangle, almost like a playing card. But it was made of metal. He pulled it off and after a brief wrangle with the powerful double-sided tape that held it, freed the unusual object. Hardly knowing what to make of it, other than its anomalous presence—had it been there before? He put it in his back pocket.

  Lyle lowered himself through the bottom of the plane, hit the ground, saw the barrel of the gun.

  Twenty-One

  “Get in the truck,” Jerry said. He pointed his pistol at Lyle, then raised an eyebrow, like Try me.

  Behind Jerry, Eleanor idled a heavy-load pickup truck. The back windows of the vehicle were tinted but Lyle felt he could see Alex and the two children in the backseat.

  “Get that out of my face,” Lyle said.

  “Get in the truck.” Eleanor repeated Jerry’s command.

  Lyle stared at her.

  “Heading to town. For help and to avoid whatever is here if it’s . . . contagious,” she continued. “We need to get on the same page. No more renegade missions.”

  “This is a dead zone, a freaking patient-zero cluster fuck. We can’t be around this anymore,” Jerry spat. “If these kids get sick, we might need a real doctor.”

  Lyle ignored him and spun an instant analysis. How best to isolate and build on the clues?

  Useful to stay at the airport?

  Maybe.

  “Should we make a last attempt to call out over the radio?” Lyle said.

  “So now you’re a doctor and a pilot,” Jerry said.

  Useful to see the surrounding area?

  Likely.

  Lyle moved around to the passenger side of the dark blue cab and felt a gentle push from behind. “You heard the captain,” Jerry said. He climbed in after Lyle, sandwiching him in the middle.

  The girl whimpered in the back. The cab smelled like Kentucky Fried Chicken. A driver’s license hung by a clip from the visor over Eleanor. The picture on the license belonged to the mechanic.

  Eleanor pulled the silver lever and put the truck in drive and it slid to a start. The girl’s whimpers intensified. Eleanor turned on the radio but all that came out was static. Lyle reached up and turned it off.

  “What are you doing?”

  “It’s best.”

  Eleanor shoved in a cassette tape. The voice of James Taylor filled the cab. The clock read 1:45.

  Eleanor turned the truck in a tight U-turn and they headed to the edge of the terminal. They passed a movable ramp, and then an unblocked stretch of window through which they could see into the terminal, and the handful of bodies. One looked slumped on the counter. The sounds of “Sweet Baby James” filled the cab.

  The tires slid on the ice as Eleanor pulled behind the right of the low-slung terminal and swung out of the airport. She reached in front of Lyle and turned up the heat. It was roaring now, actually starting to feel warm.

  “The music and heat should let us talk without scaring them,” she said. She turned to Lyle, briefly, then back to the road. The headlights illuminated dancing snow. Not much beyond that. Dark ground stretched out in front of them. Then a sign emerged on the right. “Slow,” Jerry said. Eleanor slowed. The sign read steamboat, 19 miles.

  “Dr. Martin, we’re not going to stop until we get to town,” Eleanor said and punched the accelerator.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Well, look who is suddenly agreeable,” Jerry said.

  “Jerry, stop. Listen, Lyle, Jerry and I discussed it and agreed we’ve got to get these passengers somewhere safer and we’ve got to, in general, look for help. We need you to cooperate. It’s too complicated to be divided in a crisis situation.

  “But I would welcome your insights. Do you know why these children are immune?”

  “I work best at gunpoint.”

  “Why don’t you try to knock it out of my hand again?” Jerry said.

  Lyle stared straight ahead.

  “That’s what I thought,” the first officer said. “Y’know, goddamn if this isn’t exactly why we have a Second Amendment.”

  “Jerry, what are you talking about,” Eleanor said and sounded like what she meant was Stop talking. “What’s your medical opinion?” she asked Lyle.

  “No, I don’t know why they’re immune.”

  “Just hold on, Eleanor,” Jerry said. “We knew the shit was going to go down at some point. We have to be able to protect ourselves.”

  “You’re gonna shoot the virus, Jerry?” Eleanor wiped the inside of the window in front of her, smudging the condensation.

  “This is just one topic where we’re going to have to agree to disagree, Eleanor,” Jerry said. “I’m sure you’d at least agree we’re lucky to have this with us right now.”

  “Jerry, the whole world nearly came apart the last two years. It’s been a shooting gallery in this country.” She paused and gritted her teeth. This couldn’t be more irrelevant and she couldn’t believe she was being drawn into his narrow world.

  “Stop, please, the fighting,” Alex said. In the backseat, she had her arm around the girl, who had her hands over her ears.

  “Dr. Martin, what’s your latest medical opinion?” Eleanor repeated.

  Lyle shrugged, too imperceptibly for them to see. He looked out the right side of the front window at what appeared to be a barn, at least something that shape, no lights, and it quickly disappeared from view.

  “What did you see in the plane?” the pilot pressed him.

  “More of the same,” Lyle said without elaborating. Then, “Slow down.”

  “We already told you, Dr. Martin, you’re not giving orders,” Jerry said.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Eleanor slowed down.

  “Eleanor, I thought . . .”

  “Look.”

  She’d come nearly to a stop, and no wonder why: on the other side of the freeway, a car sat flipped on its roof. It looked to be a boxy four-door, like a Honda. The front of the car had slid off the road and tilted into a ditch.

  From the backseat, the girl from the airplane let out a sob.

  Eleanor put the truck in park and unlatched her belt.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Jerry asked.

  “Jerry . . .” she said.

  “What?”

  “That’s the last time you’re going to use that tone with me,” she said.

  Lyle made sure to keep his head turned forward, fearing that if he turned to see the humiliation on Jerry’s face, the first officer would put a bullet in his head. Eleanor opened the vehicle’s door, bringing in a rush of frigid air. Her foot crunched on the fresh snow. She walked to the overturned car.

  “She’s gonna get it herself,” Jerry whispered, barely audible to Lyle. “Eleanor, please . . .”

  The pilot leaned to the side, peered inside the car. She backpedaled.

  “Shit, shit!” Jerry spat.

  Eleanor turned and nearly ran back to the pickup, slipping as she reached the door, saving herself from falling only by grabbing the door handle. She climbed inside.

  “Are you okay?” Jerry said. “Or do you not like that tone, either?”

  Eleanor put the truck in drive and punched the accelerator. Her hands gripped the wheel and still shook. The cab felt like it might explode with tension.

  “She was . . .” Eleanor started; she couldn’t seem to get the words out. Her sharp exhales puffed into tiny clouds. “She was—”

  “Smiling,” Lyle said. “Was she smiling?”

  “Yes, yes. Smiling. Upside down, blood on her face and forehead. But smiling. Jesus. How did you know?”

  “I just realized. It just hit me. So were a lot of the people in the plane.”

  A sob came from the back. Now it was the boy.

  “What, Tyler?” aske
d Alex. “What’s the matter?”

  “My dad. He was smiling.” This seemed to just crush the little guy, the idea that his father could have become comatose with a smile on his face.

  “This is a nightmare,” Eleanor said. It wasn’t anything revelatory, except the way she said it, the recognition, finally spoken aloud, that an inconceivable reality had dawned or, rather, that they’d landed inside of it.

  “Not usually part of the immune response,” Lyle muttered.

  “Maybe they were happy to meet their maker,” Jerry said. “Eleanor, do you feel okay? Seriously, any—”

  “No symptoms, if that’s what you mean.”

  On the right, they passed a green sign: steamboat springs, elevation 6695. Then a yellow one advertising e.m. light & sons. And then, a half a minute later, an isolated housing development called Heritage Park with houses set back at least a quarter mile from the road. One house had a light on and Lyle could see that Eleanor was tempted to turn down the road, but she persisted.

  “Dr. Martin—” Eleanor said.

  “Call me Lyle. Was the radio on?” he answered.

  “Where?”

  “In the car back there.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I . . .” His voice tapered off. Then he reached into his back pocket and withdrew the golden-colored metallic rectangle he’d found attached to the flight deck door. “Anyone know what this is?” He held it up in front of him.

  “Where did you get that?” Jerry asked.

  “I found it in the plane.” Lyle decided not to specify; maybe one of these people put it on the door and could explain it. “Do you know what it is?” He directed his question to Jerry.

  Jerry took it in his hand. “A memory card or something like that. No idea.”

  “So it’s not instrumental in flying?” Lyle asked.

  “Was it in the flight deck?” Jerry asked.

  “Near there.”

  They stared at it. It looked almost like it could be a mezuzah holder, the little rectangular boxes that Jews put inside their front doors. But gold colored. “A good luck charm of some kind?” Lyle muttered.

  “May I see it?” Alex asked. “I do the tech thing.”

  Jerry shrugged and handed it back to her.

  While she looked, Eleanor said, “Lyle, you keep talking about the immune system, immune response. I’m assuming you mean that the body is fighting off something. Do I have this right?”

  “Are you asking me if that’s what’s happening now?”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m not sure. It looks to me like these . . . bodies are fighting in the way you would if you got a virus. To answer your question more directly, the immune system, obviously, is the body’s defense. It is miraculous. Within seconds, it can sense a foreign organism in a body and begin to mount a defense.”

  “What does this have to do with—”

  “Please, Jerry, let him talk,” Eleanor said. “I’m sorry, Jerry. I’m asking because I’m trying to figure out what to do when we get to town. What if we see a bunch of these people? Are we worried about infection? Can we help them?”

  “After the immune system shows up, it sort of defines what sort of enemy it is up against and then starts making millions of copies of immune-system soldiers that are specifically built for this enemy. When the immune system gets overwhelmed, it can mean that the foreign organism, say, a virus, is not just powerful but novel.”

  He got quiet. Everyone did, even the girl in the back.

  “Can’t the immune system be dangerous, too?” It was Alex.

  “How so, Alex?” Eleanor said.

  “Crohn’s disease, arthritis, and on and on. All sorts of autoimmune disorders,” Lyle said, picking up Alex’s thread. He seemed lost in thought. “It’s a very good point. I—how do you . . .”

  “When I was younger, I had arthritis,” Alex said. She held the odd gold object in her hand.

  “The limp,” Eleanor said.

  Lyle turned his neck around and was looking at Alex. With her bangs, she looked like a member of a girl punk band. She met Lyle’s eyes and she tilted her head just a touch to the side.

  “Did I get that right?” she said, sounding full well like she knew she had.

  “It’s a fair point, if likely off topic,” Lyle said and turned forward again. He paused. “But not necessarily.”

  “Somebody explain what the hell is the point, then,” Jerry blurted.

  Lyle wanted to wring his neck. “You love guns, right?”

  “I love the right to own a gun, my constitutional right.”

  “Why?”

  “Get this guy. So I can defend myself, like when the shit goes down, like right now.”

  “Okay, so this is a way of thinking about the immune system. Guns are a defense system but also dangerous in their own way. If we run amok with guns, we destroy ourselves—”

  “Pinko.”

  “Let him finish, please,” Eleanor said. “What’s that have to do with—”

  “The immune system can spin out of control. That’s why one of its most important features is its brake.”

  He explained that immune systems have two key switches, a brake and an accelerator. When the immune system is needed, neurochemicals cause the accelerator to get switched on. But when it’s done, the brake starts. “The immune system must be stopped in its tracks, a fast, immediate cease-and-desist,” Lyle continued. “It will consume the body faster than any foreign organi—”

  Before he could finish, Eleanor slammed the truck brakes.

  They were paused in front of the Sleepy Bear Mobile Home Park. It was fed by a paved road with snow-draped trees on either side. A dozen cars parked at an angle near what looked like a front office. Mostly hidden behind the trees, mobile homes jagged at various angles. A floodlight from somewhere in the middle of the camp gave more visibility than the group had had in miles.

  “I saw a bear,” Eleanor said. She paused. “Do you see it?” She stared in the direction of the front office.

  “Can you scare it off, Jerry?”

  “Why?”

  “If it’s in the camp, it might . . .” She didn’t finish the thought.

  “I don’t think it’ll eat people, Eleanor. It can’t get into the homes.”

  “Right.”

  “Can you pull in there, anyway?” Lyle asked.

  “Why?”

  “I’m curious how it moves.”

  “To see if it’s sick?”

  “Just to be clear,” Jerry interrupted the flow between Eleanor and Lyle, “I’m not taking any chances.” Meaning: I will shoot it.

  Eleanor exhaled with her growing loss of patience at his bravado. She did pull into the driveway. Trees loomed overhead, the most beautiful mobile home park setting they’d ever seen. Lodgepole and Ponderosa pines, Douglas firs, and the backdrop, the gray outline of mountains. The bear stood at a metal trash bin. It tried to shove a paw inside an opening too small for its arm. Lazily, it looked back at the pickup.

  “Is that a bear?” said the girl. Her inner child had surfaced.

  “Black, probably a mom,” said the boy, perking up. “You have to bundle up your food and can’t put out compost or anything like that. Sometimes, my dad . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence, the thought of his father too much to handle. Then: “He’d just shoot in the air.”

  “A honk should suffice,” Lyle mumbled.

  Eleanor honked. The bear seemed largely unfazed but put its heavy haunches on the ground and ambled away from the pickup, in the direction of the trees and two yellow mobile homes beneath them. It moves naturally, Lyle thought, so very likely not sick. Anyway, why would it be? It’s not like animals died off when the flu came in 1918.

  “Shit!” Jerry exclaimed. He opened the car door.

  They could see why. There was a person who looked like he was sitting on the ground next to a white-and-gray mobile home. The more they looked, the more they realized the man was surely another victim
who had slid to the ground with paralysis, or with whatever he was suffering. The bear walked near, sniffing the air.

  “Be careful, Jerry,” Eleanor said.

  “Honk again.”

  Eleanor laid on the horn. Now, though, the bear had moved beyond twenty yards away and was half hidden by a tree. The truck horn no longer dissuaded it. It ambled forward toward the mobile home and the man slouched next to a ladder with the brand name Hitch Hiker in black letters on the top. Jerry made his way toward a lodgepole pine that was slightly to the left and between the pickup and the bear. The bear seemed to speed up. Lyle slipped to the right of the seat and out the door. Lyle shut the door to protect the people inside. It was freezing. He moved absently, curiously, almost an automaton, looking through a scientific lens. Part of him wandered, without him fully realizing it, thinking about whether the man on the ground might awaken if attacked. Part of him wondered whether the bear might ultimately ignore the man. Most animals don’t eat people if they’ve not had the taste.

  Jerry stood behind the tree and leveled his gun.

  “You could hit the man,” Lyle said, quickly catching up now. Snow already burned at the exposed parts of his neck and licked through his thin shoes. Jerry turned back to him and, inadvertently or not, turned the gun in Lyle’s direction. “Do not tell me what to do again.” He turned back to the bear. He whistled.

  The bear half turned and then resumed its approach, albeit more slowly. It was ten feet from the man now and seemed as curious as hungry. Jerry pointed the gun at the ground and pulled the slide back. He looked up into the sky in the direction of a collection of trees and seemed to make a calculation. He aimed over the trees and pulled the trigger.

  The bear froze.

  “Scat,” Jerry mumbled, as if speaking to himself, hoping.

  The bear turned and looked in the direction of Jerry and Lyle. Big, not huge, 225 pounds, Lyle thought. The paws, though, that was the scary part. The big prints made gaping wounds in the snow, giant mitts with razors on the edge. The bear growled. Low.

  “I don’t want to shoot you,” Jerry said to the bear and sounded like he very much meant it.

  The bear turned back to the man felled against the mobile home.

  Jerry aimed at the bear. “Please stop.” The bear took another step. Jerry tipped the gun slightly at an angle, over the bear’s head.