("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._ `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' (((' (((-((('' (((( K R I S T E N' S C O L L E C T I O N _________________________________________ WARNING! This text file contains sexually explicit material. If you do not wish to read this type of literature, or you are under age, PLEASE DELETE THIS FILE NOW!!!! _________________________________________ Scroll down to view text Archive name: timefram.txt (F+/M, rom, v, mast, sci-fi) Authors name: Marcia R. Hooper (marciar26@aol.com) Story title : Timeframe -------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2003. As the author, I claim all rights under international copyright laws. This work is not intended for sale, but please feel free to post this story to other archives or newsgroups, keeping the header and text intact. Revision to the text (such as the basis for another story) is acceptable as long as the original author is given credit and the resulting story is distributed free of charge. Any commercial use of this work is expressly forbidden without the written permission of the author. -------------------------------------------------------- Timeframe (F+/M, rom, v, mast, sci-fi) by Marcia R. Hooper (marciar26@aol.com) *** What might have happened to another 767 flying through the time-rip in Stephen King's story, The Langoliers. This group of survivors ends up in the future instead of the past, and have serious problems of their own. Especially with a deranged United States senator named Catherine Montes. (A long read at 123 pages, so don't say I didn't warn you.) *** This is a work of fiction and is not meant to portray any person living or dead, nor any known situation. This story is meant for adults only and is not to be read by person’s under the age of 18, or the legal age in the county/state/country in which the reader resides. If you would like a Microsoft Word version of this story (much easier to read), please contact me at MarciaR26@aol.com Note to the Reader: This story is based upon the short novel, The Langoliers, by Stephen King. After the novel The Stand, The Langoliers is my favorite Stephen King story. I have read it half a dozen times, listened to the Books on Tape version, and seen the made for TV movie. (Which wasn't really bad, except I hated Patricia Wettig in the main role and Bronson Pinchot as Craig Toomey. David Morse was perfect as Captain Engle, and so was Mark Lindsay Chapman as Nick Hopewell.) I just couldn't get enough. I started writing this version of the story right after reading The Langoliers the first time. It was hopeless to even think I could come close to the original story, but I didn't care. It was a compulsion. I had to do it. To make a long story short, I envisioned what might happen if the very next airplane flying through Stephen King's time-rip flew into the future, instead of the past. I envisioned all kinds of cool things that future "timeframe" might hold. Since King's characters slept their way from the dead past into the waiting future at the end of his story, I figured things could go both ways. I even figured out what caused his characters to skip across their own "present" to get there. Anyway, I got as far as getting the survivors onto the ground in Washington, DC, and into the Mid-field concourse, and then I gave up. I'm no Stephen King. I couldn't come up with the rest of the story. For the next couple of years, the story sat around on my hard drive gathering dust. Then one day I opened it up just to take a look, and of course I started rewriting as I read. What a dumb thing to do. By the time I got to the end I was totally frustrated, wanting to finish the story. So I grabbed the book, located the approximate corresponding place in his story, threw it onto my scanner, and scanned the rest of the pages. I then ran the scanned images through my OCR program and cleaned them up. Then I sat down and did the disgusting job of substituting my own characters into the rest of Stephen King's story. Although I used much of his dialogue and much of his narrative, I also kept in most of what I had originally envisioned for my story. In the end, even though it REALLY disgusted me stealing his story, I liked my alternate version. To all of you Stephen King fans, I can only say that I'm sorry for what I did and hope you like what you read despite that. Just remember, I'm basically just an Internet hack, so don't expect too much. TIMEFRAME by Marcia R. Hooper (MarciaR26@aol.com) Adapted from the novel: THE LANGOLIERS by Stephen King Chapter 1 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 2:54 A.M. PDT Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 (Departed LAX, 11:30 p.m.) Destination: Washington, D.C. Jill Cooney awoke to confusion. "Don't tell me to be quiet!" a woman stridently yelled. Fear was in her voice, and anger as well. "I want to know what's going on!" Jill blinked rapidly, unsure if she were still dreaming. Her heart raced. Her chest ached. She had indented both palms with her fingernails. Eight tiny red crescents stood out like angry grins. What had she been dreaming about? Looking around she blinked again; except for herself, the row of seats was empty. It had not been empty before. Had it? Unsure of anything after being startled awake, Jill checked her watch and found it to be just before three a.m. Only that wasn't right. The view through the window was an incongruously blue sky, with brilliantly white and fluffy clouds all the way to the horizon. The belligerent woman's voice rang out again: "Where are the others?" Someone tried to calm her--another woman, Jill heard--who sounded none too calm herself. "If you'll just calm down," the woman said, "we'll find out what's going on." "I will not calm down!" the woman exclaimed. "And I won't be spoken to like a child. I'm a United States senator." Jill, still trying to make sense of the scene, was startled when a voice behind her asked: "What's going on?" She turned around to find a sleepy-eyed young man standing in the aisle. The hair on his right side was corkscrewed and pillow marks creased his right cheek. Perhaps sixteen, thin and wiry, he wore thick glasses and had the look of someone who had until recently, worn braces. His lips tried to hide the metal pads. He moved cautiously forward. "Is something wrong with the plane?" Jill shook her head. "I'm not sure. I don't think so." I sure hope there isn't! she thought, looking out at the brilliant white clouds. "Something else is wrong here, though." Drawing abreast her, the boy stopped, then peered out the window. When he looked up again, his expression was blank. He looked at his watch. "Is it afternoon? It should be night." "I know," she said. Stepping into the aisle, Jill examined the cabin. Although apparently empty now, there were signs of recent occupation: lowered food trays, pillows wedged into corners, books and magazines scattered about. On one seat was a woman's' purse, and two seats over was another. She counted three open laptop computers. On the floor at to her feet was a spray of loose change and a man's silver wristwatch. Feeling dislocated, she closed her eyes and willed herself to awaken. "Easy," the boy cautioned. Jill sensed him move closer. "Do you need to sit down?" Jill opened her eyes and found his hand at her elbow. "I'm fine," she said. "I just want to know what's going on." Hearing their voices, the woman in the next cabin hollered: "Who's back there!" and Jill heard footsteps marching toward them down the aisle. "Uh-oh," the boy said. The shouter appeared, a severe looking woman in her late thirties or early forties, dressed in a severely cut, expensive gray suit. She had short gray hair and imperious blue eyes. Tortoise-shell glasses hung from around her neck. She was followed haltingly by another woman in a beige coat. "Where are they? Where are the others?" the woman demanded. Her face was dangerously red. Somewhat defensively, the young man answered, "I don't. They seem to all be gone," and took a hesitant step backwards. The woman harrumped. "I can see that, young man! But where did they go?" Intimidated by her fierce tone, the boy only shrugged. Taking a step forward down the aisle, the severe looking woman said: "People don't just disappear. Not off an airplane. So either they're hiding, or someone took them off." She suddenly let out another bellow: "I hear you back there! Come out right now where I can see you!" Jill and the young man both turned to look. Standing at the divider between the mid-section and the rear of the plane, was large black man in a brown shirt and blue slacks. He started to speak, then started as a pretty blonde teenager touched his arm. He stood aside to let her through. Pony-tailed, the girl wore a powder blue top and white shorts. She had a very deep tan and Jill guessed her age at seventeen. She started to speak, but was abruptly cut off. "Who else is back there?" the woman demanded. The girl blinked. "No one that I saw," she said in a low, intimidated voice. She looked behind her, then out the window, then down at her watch. Like Jill and the young man had done before her, she looked back out the window in consternation. "What is going on here?" "The Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar question, sweety!" Halfheartedly, Jill offered: "Maybe we landed." The young man said, "No way! Think I would I have slept through that? I can't believe I slept at all! And could somebody please explain to me why it's light outside at three o'clock in the morning?" "Yeah," the black man said,. "What's up with that?" With more conviction now--she could not believe anything else could be the answer--Jill insisted: "We must have landed then. People got off. The flight wasn't that full to begin with and--" She was about to say that her flight out to the west coast three weeks before had been even less full, when the woman flatly declared: "Changes in altitude affect my eardrums. The pain is intense. I'd have awoken immediately had that happened and it didn't. No. Something else is going on." The curtain on the far aisle suddenly pulled back, and a head poked through. It was another young girl. "What's all the noise?" she asked pointedly. "And where'd everybody go?" The woman eyed the girl distastefully and said: "If there's any noise, young lady, it's entirely in your head. Now come out here where we can see you." The girl stepped forward. Perhaps sixteen, she had stiff, bleached-blonde hair, eyes so overdone that she looked like a startled raccoon, and way too many ear rings in her ears. Beneath her black leather jacket was a Marilyn Manson tee-shirt that left much of her midriff bare; she wore badly ripped jeans. Large, ugly rings adorned each finger--thumbs included--and there was a stud in her right nostril. She wore a lizard-shaped stud through her navel. "Perhaps we should do a head count," Jill suggested. "Find out how many of us there are." She met eyes momentarily with the woman in the beige coat, then looked away. Before anyone could speak, an eighth passenger appeared. Short, slight and prematurely balding, he wore a rumpled blue suit and a rumpled expression. He looked tired to the point of exhaustion. He was the last passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 74. "Excuse me," he said, grimly. "But does anyone see the bigger picture here?" Everyone stared. The man said, impatiently: "Everyone else seems to be missing, the flight attendants included... so who's flying the plane?" The rest continued to stare, but now open-mouthed. Then the girl in the Marilyn Manson tee-shirt exclaimed, "Oh shit!" to which the young man answered, "He's right!" and they all headed toward the front of the airplane. All except Jill, who sat down in the closest aisle seat. Suddenly there was no air in the cabin and no air in her lungs; her legs were made of rubber. Closing her eyes, she bit the inside of her lip. "Wake up, Jill," she whispered. "You need to wake up." When nothing happened, she bit down even harder, tasting blood. Panic started to rise and when a hand touched her shoulder she almost screamed. It was the woman in the beige jacket. "Are you okay? The plane seems to be doing just fine right now and we don't seem in any real danger... at least not yet." Jill gulped and heard a loud click . "Where is everyone?" she whispered. The inside of her right cheek hurt, badly. "This can't be happening... it can't be real." A year or two older than Jill, the woman had hazel eyes, blonde hair, and an attractive, if not overly pretty face. She squeezed Jill's right shoulder. "Happening or not," she said. "We have to deal with it. Panicking won't help." Jill nodded, though panicky she was. "Do you think the pilots are gone?" she asked. The woman shrugged. "Only one way to find out." She held out her hand and asked: "You with me?" Jill reached out and took the woman's hand. Her knees felt like well-oiled hinges. "I'm Tanya," the woman said. "Jill Cooney. Thank's for your help." Tanya smiled. "I'm a nurse. It's what I do. Now, shall we join the others?" As they went forward, Jill's legs gradually strengthened; she felt stronger and clearer in the head. In the next cabin forward--business class, she knew--there was the same strange profusion of notebook computers, abandoned purses (who leaves their purse unattended? Jill thought. Even to go to the bathroom?), loose change and abandoned wristwatches. Beside the wheel of drink cart, which someone had shoved into a row of seats, was a spilled cup of coffee. The stain had dried around the edges, looking a couple of hours old. On one of the seat-back TV's, John Travolta with a really bad haircut blew up a bank with a shoulder launched missile. She saw a pair of dentures on a seat. What is going on here? Until now, she had operated under the assumption that the airplane had landed--despite protestations from the rest- -and that the other passengers had disembarked. But this... this was... "How could someone disappear from under a coat?" she asked. In one of the center three-seat rows, someone had raised the armrests and fashioned a bed. A pair of pillows nestled against the far seat, and draped down the length, was a man's gray suit coat. It had settled loosely onto the seat cushions, in the general shape of a man. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. "This is crazy." "No argument from me," Tanya said. From up front came the sound of a hand repeatedly striking a door. The balding man's voice demanded: "Captain? Can you hear me in there?" There was a pause while the man awaited an answer. "Captain? This is Frank Trafano of the National Transportation Safety Board." Still no answer and moments later, the pounding resumed. "We better go forward," Tanya said. Moving up the aisle through first-class, they joined the others in the forward lounge. Trafano was in the narrow hallway leading to the cockpit door. Head bent low, a fist up, he listened for sounds inside. Jill suddenly remembered a stewardess, standing before that very door, greeting herself and the other passengers aboard Flight 74. Jill had ignored her, interested only in making her seat and sitting herself down. Then going to sleep. Sixteen days before, Northwest Airlines flight 701 had taken off from Los Angeles International Airport carrying her mother, Denise, and three hundred other passengers. Bound for Singapore, via Hawaii--this was to have been Denise's first vacation in five years--the Boeing 747 had exploded in an immense fireball off the California coast, raining debris from twenty-four thousand feet. Of course, no one had survived. The media had had a field day. What little information there was, was hashed and rehashed a thousand times. No one knew if it was terrorism, a mishap, or criminal negligence on the part of the airline. For fifteen days, Jill had waited through interminal anxiety and gut- wretching pain, learning more from the newscasts sometimes, than through official sources. Finally, she had given up. Suddenly her eyes erupted and Jill turned away. Everything disappeared in a blur. Collapsing into the first seat she found--luckily it contained no leftovers from another passenger--Jill put her head in her hands and began to sob. Chapter 2 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 3:26 A.M. PDT Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 Near Springfield, Illinois Tanya was in the aisle, hovering above her. From her expectant expression, she had already asked a question. "I'm, sorry," Jill said. "What did you say?" "I asked if you were okay." "I'm fine," Jill lied. "I just needed to rest." "Bullshit," Tanya said softly. She squatted down beside her. "Tell me what's going on." Jill gave her an abbreviated history of the last three weeks. "I am so sorry." Tanya said. She felt Jill's head. "It's mostly exhaustion and electrolytic imbalance. You wouldn't believe what trauma does to the body." Jill laughed. "Oh, yes I would." She struggled to her feet. "I'm fine, really. Was anyone in the cockpit?" Tanya's expression tightened. She shook her head. "The good news is though, we do have a pilot aboard." A surge of adrenalin hit Jill's bloodstream, quickening her heart. "The National Transportation Board guy?" Tanya nodded. "He's trying to get inside." Together, they went forward again. The group, still assembled before the cockpit door, argued amongst themselves. As usual, the belligerent woman held center court. "I don't understand why we don't just break it down," she complained. "It can't be all that strong. I'm sure you strapping young men could do it." Frank Trafano shook his head. "These new airliners have Kevlar reinforced doors and walls. You may as well slam your shoulder against a concrete wall for all the good it will do you." The woman scowled. "There must be a way in. What happens in an emergency? Are the pilots going to fry?" "Of course not," Frank said. "There's an escape hatch inside leading to the nose wheel compartment. It's also used to access the flight instrumentation, in the compartment below." He studied the floor just where she stood. Stepping forward, he indicated for the woman to move aside, which she did with a frown. Going to one knee, Trafano placed his fingers on the carpet and pressed into the nap. "Excuse me," Jill interrupted. "You can fly this plane?" Frank didn't look up. "I've had extensive time on aircraft of similar types," he said. "Gulfstream jets, Lears, twin engine corporate jets. I've even flown A- 230's, the military version of the 737. I can handle this aircraft, don't worry. What concerns me is I have no idea where we are, how long we've been up, or how much fuel we have left. Obviously," he said, looking at his watch, "we can't trust the time." "Okay!" Ms. Belligerent exclaimed. "So get on with it, already. I, for one, have no wish to experience the Big Bang." Looking irritated, Frank said, "Nor do I." Nor did Jill. Probing a small area of the carpet, Frank said: "If I remember right, the 767's floor hatch is right here." He waved everyone back, except the black man in brown shirt and blue slacks, whom he waved forward. "We need to pull this up, okay? Give me a hand." The black man stepped forward and the rest of them backed into First Class. Peeling back the carpet which was held down by velcro tape, they exposed the metal deck. A two foot wide inset hatch was in it. Jill felt like cheering. "Okay," Frank said. "Let's get this thing opened." A ring-pull with a lock was set off to one side but Frank was unfazed. "Don't worry," he said. "This is nothing compared to the cockpit door. I need a knife. Can somebody get me a knife?" From one of the galley counters, the young man picked up a butter knife and said: "This okay?" "Just right." The young man handed it over. "I'm Gregory, by the way. Gregory Stein." "Frank Trafano. Glad to meet you, Gregory." The two shook hands. While Frank examined the lock, the rest of the group traded names. Christine Tuozzo, the spiky-haired teenager, was from L.A, visiting a cousin in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Great Falls. Jessica Gibson, she of the powder-blue top and immaculate white shorts, was an L.A. native also, visiting her dad in Baltimore. The black man, Solomon Howell, an engineer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was on his way to D.C. for a conference. "Catherine Montes," the belligerent woman said. The others waited expectantly, but when she said nothing more, Solomon finished for her. "Four term United States senator from the great state of California. Ranking member of the Senate Armed Services committee. Possible Vice-Presidential candidate next election, under Jeb Bush. Think you're constituency knows where you are?" Catherine gave him a withering look. "Just get the door open, please." Placing the knife tip in the lock, Frank twisted it hard, managing to snap it on the first try. "Simple as that," he said. "That makes me feel safe," Solomon Howell muttered. Slipping a finger through the pull ring, Frank lifted and twisted it to the right. The hatch popped open with a slight puff of air, and he lifted it up. "Yes!" Gregory exclaimed, punching the air. Christine echoed loudly. "Don't get over-exuburant," Catherine Montes warned. "We're not in there yet." Rising, Frank went to a locker and removed a flashlight and a flat-headed, yellow-handled screwdriver. He pointed the flashlight into the darkness below. There was a yellow ladder. Looking down, Jill discovered a rack full of electronic equipment, all with flashing lights. It looked like a telephone switching room. "How many hatches between us and the cockpit?" Solomon asked. "One," Frank said, maneuvering into the hole. He turned around and stood up. "In the bulkhead right below. It's pressure sealed, but there shouldn't be a lock." "What about the cockpit hatch? Can we assume it's not locked?" Frank said: "It should be, but very often the flight crew leaves it open. No one wants to be digging for a key in an emergency." He shrugged. "We'll just have to see." "I'll pray for our good fortune," Solomon said. As Frank started down the ladder, the others grouped around the hatch. "If you need anything," Solomon advised. "Just yell." Frank grunted. The equipment rack took up every inch of space, leaving barely enough room to maneuver. Set into the wall between the two compartments was an access hatch with a large yellow sign with black lettering. DANGER! THIS IS A PRESSURE-SEALED HATCH OPENING DURING FLIGHT COULD CAUSE DECOMPRESSION OF THE AIRCRAFT. ALWAYS VERIFY NOSE WHEEL COMPARTMENT PRESSURIZATION BEFORE OPENING HATCH A green lamp was illuminated beneath the sign, indicating, Jill assumed, that the next compartment was pressurized. Frank flipped a switch back and forth, then looked up. "Close the hatch," he said. "Just in case." Catherine Montes said: "Why? Think anyone else can fly this aircraft if you're killed?" Frank said, "I see your point," and took hold of the handle. The door opened with a pop. Although a waft of frigid air rose up through the open hatch and the noise level increased markedly, the airplane did not explode. Frank pushed through the doorway and after locating the light switch on the other side, waved farewell. He shut the hatch and secured it again. Jill wondered if they would ever see him again. Chapter 3 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 3:44 A.M. PDT Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 Somewhere near Indianapolis After an interminal five minute wait, the cockpit door opened. Everyone cheered. "Welcome," Frank said, inviting them in. He sat down and strapped himself into the left hand seat. Grouped around the door, each person stared tight-lipped at the abandoned controls. On the center console was a plastic tray with a half-eaten sandwich; the unconsumed half lay beneath a protective plastic film. Beside it, centered between four small dials, sat a half-empty cup of coffee. Frank removed the tray and the Styrofoam cup and handed them to Jill. "Dispose of these, please." Jill held them in her hands--she was going nowhere. On the right hand seat lay a Rolex watch and a folded up pair of Ray-ban sunglasses. Another watch hung in surreal stillness from one of the throttles, which inched ever so slightly back. The auto-pilot was engaged, making minor course corrections, Jill supposed. Only Frank seemed unaffected by this surreal tableau. Slipping the headset into place, Frank looked back. "I need a volunteer for the other seat," he said. "Anybody with flight experience? A simulator even?" Everyone shook their heads. "Well, I'm not looking for a Lindbergh," he said. "If you can take instructions, you qualify." He pointed at Solomon Howell. "Have a seat." Solomon took the right-hand seat and belted himself in. Indicating two folding seats on the rear wall, Frank said, "A third hand might be welcome, as well. Who's up for the job?" They looked back and forth again, and when nobody volunteered, Frank pointed at Jessica Gibson. "You can read and write?" "Me?" Jessica looked thoroughly perplexed. "Sure." "Then you can read manuals just fine. Sit down, please." Obediently, Jessica sat down and belted herself in. She looked very, very young and scared. Turning back to the controls, Frank said: "The rest of you can stay as long as you remain quiet. I need to examine the controls." Looking things over, he compared position and function of each control against some checklist in his head. There were enough dials, switches and lights, Jill thought, to make a person cross-eyed. "In what direction are we headed?" Catherine Montes asked. "Due east," Frank said, indicating a readout. "Nine-zero degrees. Just as we should be." He double-checked the reading against an instrument near Solomon's left knee. They apparently matched. "Considering the time, the sun should be directly ahead," the woman said. "Unrisen for another three hours, but still there. How come it's behind us. " Everyone, Frank included, looked around in consternation. Leaning to his left, Frank looked out the window. He looked at the directional readout again. "I can't answer that," he said. "But the time is obviously different from what shows on my watch and the navigational controls." "Obviously," Catherine said dryly. "Could we be heading in the opposite direction," Solomon asked. "West?" "I don't see how." Frank pointed to a color display, a representation of a map. Lines across the face traced slowly right to left. "This tracks our flight in real time, both with the VOR beacons and omni-direction bearings. Also our inertial guidance system." He indicated a group of numbers below the symbol. "The readings say we're heading east." There was a moment's silence. "Where exactly are we?" Solomon asked. "Just crossing the Indiana state line, I think." Frank touched a bright spot on the screen. "This is Indianapolis. Only–" "Only what?" "There's no corresponding VOR beacon," Frank said, sounding disturbed. "No beacon and no omnidirectional bearing. In fact, no signals at all." He paused. "What the hell is going on?" No one was brave enough to reply. Finally, Gregory asked: "What does that mean? No signals of any kind?" "It means we're lost," Catherine Montes said. "It means we're lost as hell." Frank turned around. "That is not what it means, Catherine. Look, I understand your concern, which I certainly share. But there are too many things going on here to be jumping to conclusions. The last thing we need is to doubt the controls." He hesitated. "In spite of how they may seem." "Well, at least tell us that we're all right," Catherine complained. "That we're not going to crash into a mountain top, or fall out of the air because we burned all the fuel." "The fuel is just fine," Frank said, pointing out a readout on another display. "We have fuel enough to reach Washington, and then some." "What time are we due?" Solomon asked. Frank looked at his watch, "About an hour and forty-five minutes minutes. Five-thirty or so. Five-thirty our time, anyway. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to make a call." First asking for the Airman's Information Manual--a thick white volume beside Solomon's seat--Frank said: "I also need the Quick Reference Manual and the Sectional Charts." He pointed to a cabinet beside Jessica's foot. "The cockpit checklist, if you please," he said, pointing to a clipboard beside Solomon's right knee. While the two men conversed, and Jessica searched through the cabinet, Jill looked forward out the windshield. There was a break in the clouds ahead, and through it, she saw the ground. There had never been such a wonderful sight. Though unwilling to admit it, some part of her had secretly believed that land no longer existed, that they were in fact sailing over a dreamscape of clouds, a bottomless void waiting to swallow them up in an instant. Seeing the ground, with its intricate patchwork of fields and ribbon-like highways, brought her back to Earth. Setting a dial on the center console, Frank flipped a switch and then tapped his microphone. "Indianapolis Center, this is American Airlines seven- four. Over." He waited. He looked down at the dials. He checked the microphone again. "Indianapolis Center, this is American Airlines flight 74, heavy. Over?" He tilted his head in concentration. "What's the matter?" Solomon asked. "You're getting no response?" Frank tapped his earphone and said, "Something's wrong. I'm not getting a thing." For a moment he fiddled with the dials, then flipped a toggle back and forth. He blew experimentally on the mike. "It's working," he said. "At least through the circuit." Looking at the panel above his head, he pushed two rocker switches back and forth, and then pushed two red buttons. A pair of green lights appeared. "Breaker's okay," he said, resetting the switches. "Let's try another frequency." Adjusting the dial, he once again called Indianapolis Center. While the rest looked on, increasingly anxious, Frank adjusted the dial again. He checked the book to verify the setting. For the first time, his voice showed strain. "We're not supposed to do this," he said. "But here goes. Chicago Tracon, this is American Airlines seven-four, out of LAX, en route IAD. I am unable to contact Indianapolis Center. Do you copy? Over." More perplexed by the moment, Frank repeated his message. Then he tried two other frequencies, getting the same result. Exasperated, he tore the earphones from his head and growled: "What is going on!" His face was a mottled red. Stepping back, Jill thought: If our pilot is this alarmed, maybe it's time for the rest of us to panic. Catherine Montes said: "Are you sure you know what you're doing, Frank?" Jill heard Solomon groan. She took a step to her right, away from the senator. She held her breath. Twisting in his seat, Frank fixed Catherine with magnesium flare-eyes. For a long moment, Jill thought he would explode. Literally explode. Then, reigning himself back under control, he said: "I should hope I know how to set a radio frequency, ma'am. I've been doing it half my life." Catherine Montes remained undaunted. "First of all, Frank, my name is not ma'am. It's Catherine. And you don't need to address me in that tone of voice. I am not a moron and I am not a child. I am a United States senator." She took a deep breath. "Yes, I'm scared, and yes we are all scared, and yes, I do have a bluff personality. For that I apologize. But the truth is, you do not have all the answers here, and neither does anyone else. I suggest that you remember that. I suggest that you all remember that." The color had drained from Frank's face and his lips moved in silent cursing. With a deliberate movement, he reached overhead and flipped a switch. There was a load pop and Jill realized he had activated a speaker. "Hear that?" Frank asked, indicating the grill in the ceiling. Other than a low hum, which Jill thought might be the electronics themselves, there was no sound. "You should be holding your ears," Frank said. "The volume is all the way up." Each passenger looked around, unsure what to think of this latest development. "There should be background interference," he said. "Lots of it. The spectrum is pure noise at this frequency." He adjusted the dial in either direction. Other than a slight whisper as the frequencies changed, there was nothing. A knot the size of a softball formed in Jillian's gut. She wanted to sit down. "This is UNICOM," Frank said, switching frequencies again. "It's used mostly by small airports and private aircraft." He moved the drum again. "Another UNICOM band, this one for non-towered locations. With either one, you'd be standing in line like someone buying tickets for a Rolling Stones concert. Worst chatter-boxes in the world. If it's not someone yelling about his ex-wife, it's someone crying about being lost." He moved to a another selector, this one with a red and white cap surrounded by a metal drum. "This is the FAA emergency band. One-twenty-one, point five. It's monitored twenty- four hours a day. Not getting an answer on it is like dialing 911 in New York City, and getting a recording saying that we're all out to lunch." Frank toggled the switch. "FAA Emergency, this is American Airlines flight 74, en route Los Angeles to Washington, DC. We are declaring an emergency. Do you copy?" There was a small burp, no louder than a fingertip striking skin. Nothing else. Jill would have welcomed a damned recording. "The radio must be out then," Catherine Montes insisted. "Or you've got something set wrong. You can't be picking up nothing." "That's exactly what we're picking up," Frank said. "Nothing. And that's just impossible." Before Catherine could speak, Gregory said: "What you'd expect if there were a nuclear war, maybe." Solomon vehemently shook his head. "No! No way. There'd be static galore if that had happened. In every different frequency. No, this is... this is the opposite effect. As though the source of the noise itself was gone and that is impossible. Most of it is generated by our own sun. And the last time I checked," he said, nodding to the radiant sky outside the windows, "the sun was still there." "Then the radio must be on the fritz," Tanya said. "Because otherwise... " Catherine Montes finished the sentence for her: "Because otherwise, your precious rules of nature no longer apply." Everyone looked around. No one said a word. Chapter 4 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 3:55 A.M. PDT Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 Somewhere near Columbus, Ohio "No way," Frank insisted. "It's not possible." This was in response to a question from Tanya. "You can fly a 767 on autopilot, even have it set up the approach, but you need a pilot to takeoff or land. And forget bailing out once the aircraft reaches altitude," he said. "It would decompress the plane. At low altitude, maybe, but the cabin would be a wreck." "The cabin is a wreck," Christine Tuozzo observed. "That's not what I meant." To which Catherine replied: "Which means the pilots are with everyone else. Hiding down below." This woman, Jill thought, really does have a one-track mind. "Maybe we're looking at this all wrong," Jessica said. "I mean, wouldn't it make sense if the world had ended?" Solomon said, "I already explained that. Besides, if a war had taken place, we wouldn't be here to discuss it." "EMP, you mean." Frank said. "Yes." "What is EMP?" "Electromagnetic pulse. It happens when a nuclear weapon fires off. Wrecks everything electronic within hundreds of miles." "Everything working at the time," Solomon corrected. "Right." "But what about--" Jessica tried to say. Frank cut her off. "Our flight path took us near half a dozen major military installations. Not to mention Las Vegas, Denver, and Colorado Springs. We'd have gone down seconds after any nuclear explosion. And as you can see... " he swept his hand over the instruments. "We're doing just fine." "That's not what I meant," Jessica objected. "I'm talking about the Rapture." Gregory blinked. "The what?" "The Rapture," Jessica repeated. "As in the Holy Bible. Maybe it happened while we were asleep. Maybe everyone but us was taken away." Solomon--and everyone else--looked at her skeptically. "I'm just trying to keep an open mind, okay? So far, no one has offered a better suggestion." Catherine, looking very annoyed, said: "Fat chance." "Why not?" Christine retorted. "She could be right, you know. Maybe you're just too pig-headed to listen." "Miss--I'm sorry, what was your name?" Frank asked. "Christine." "Well, Christine, I for one don't believe I'd be left behind. I'm a devout Christian--you have to be in my line of work--and if God in his wisdom chose to leave me behind, I'd be sorely pissed." "So would I," Solomon Howell agreed. Jessica, who was growing red-faced with embarrassment, argued: "I'm a devout Christian too, but maybe I've done enough bad things since my last confession to get myself booted out. Although I doubt it," she said, shrugging sheepishly. "I lead a pretty boring life." "You don't go to Heaven for being a bore, hon," Christine said. "You go there for your faith." Frank waved his hand. "Enough. We can find a plausible reason later on. Right now we have a decision to make." Catherine Montes said: "Which is?" "Land in Washington, or find another location closer." Catherine Montes' face tightened. Before she could object, however, Solomon asked: "What are the advantages of that?" "Well, to save fuel, for one. And I'd rather put down under conditions I know. It's perfect visibility here... who knows what Washington is like. We could find ourselves in a snow storm or something else." Frank hesitated, than added: "And there's another problem." "What now?" Catherine demanded. Looking at her askance, Frank said, "Our ground speed is really lagging behind. Badly." He pointed out a display. "We're clocking just over five hundred and forty knots. It should be six-hundred at least. The winds blow west- to-east this time of year, giving us a sixty knot tail wind." "And it's not?" Frank shrugged. "It seems to have vanished." Catherine sighed. "Just one more thing." Crossing his arms, Solomon looked out the window. "This is really messed up." For a time, no one spoke. They flew through perfectly clear skies, the ground below stretching away into the crisp blue distance. Directly below, a highway traced an almost perfectly straight line toward the approaching mountains. Those must be the Appalachians, Jill thought. It was four a.m. "What about other aircraft?" Solomon asked. "There are none," Frank said, distractedly. "We've got the sky to ourselves." "Fuel?" Solomon tried, "In case we do go to D.C. and it bombs out. How far can we go?" Frank just stared ahead, massaging his right temple. Finally he roused himself. "We have plenty. Almost twenty-four thousand pounds. Enough to get us to New York if we have to. But the truth is, I don't want this plane under fourteen thousand pounds. That's an hour's worth of flight time. Any lighter than that, and I'm going to get very worried." "Okay," Solomon said. "So what about these other airports?" Opening the sectional chart, Frank placed it on his lap. "To land this thing, we need a minimum fifty-eight hundred feet. I've never flown this particular beast before, so let's tack fifty-percent onto that. Anything less than eight thousand feet is out of the question." He looked in the Airman's Information Manual. "I'll call off each of these locations, state-by-state and you give me the length." He showed Solomon the proper number. Right away, four nearby airports--two of which were behind them--flunked the test. Frank said, "Cincinnati is to our south, but the runway there is too short. Which basically leaves Cleveland or Pittsburgh. Either of these airports we can reach in about half an hour." He looked at the group. "The good news is, I'm familiar with both. I've landed there a number of times." Jill immediately clapped her hands and a small cheer went up. The celebration ended just as abruptly, however, when Catherine inquired: "And the bad news is?" Frank made no attempt to hide his irritation. "Cleveland is on the lake, and according to the last weather forecast, conditions there were iffy. Scattered thunderstorms and a ceiling of one thousand feet. Not the best conditions to be landing in. And that was three hours ago." Trying to sound upbeat, Jill said: "The weather could have changed." "For the worse, yes. It almost always does. I've seen thunderheads over Cleveland a hundred-thousand feet high. And the FLR--forward looking radar--only has an effective range of one-hundred and twenty miles. We're twice that far away. By the time we got there, Cleveland could be totally socked in." "You're pissing me off, Frank," Catherine growled. "You and your sour news." Solomon intervened: "What about Pittsburgh?" "Pittsburgh is better. It lies within a deep valley and the weather there is stabler. The forecast was for broken clouds at ten-thousand feet, light north-westerly winds." "Then I vote for Pittsburgh!" Christine exclaimed. "All those in favor–" "I'm glad you think this is a democracy!" Frank snapped. "It's not that simple!" "Goddammit, Frank, if you don't make a goddamned decision--" "I want to go home," Jill interjected. It came out so low and so soft that no one even heard. "--I will fly this airplane myself!" "Catherine!" Solomon exclaimed. "Save me the lecture, Mr. Engineer! I make critical decisions all day long, day in and day out. Decisions affecting peoples lives. If this overgrown boy-toy can't make up his mind--" "I want to go home," Jill repeated. "What?" "Washington is my home," she said. "If conditions on the ground are anything like they are up here--" Everyone began to argue. "--then I want to experience them there. Not in Pittsburgh. Not in Cleveland, Ohio. I want to go home." Christine said: "Well, if it comes to a choice between a safe landing, and inconveniencing someone waiting on the ground, I vote for the safe landing." Jill had heard enough. She turned around and walked out of the cockpit, tears burning her eyes. Returning to her seat in the rear of the plane, she sat down and fastened the seat belt. Let the others argue, she thought. What difference does it make anyway? Something extremely bizarre was going on here and Jill suspected that, given the indications they already had, life down on the streets and highways of America was no less bizarre. It wasn't something she wanted to consider too hard. After a few minutes, Tanya joined her. "Congratulations. You won." Jill shook her head. "I only offered my opinion." "Well, it worked. Everyone concurred. Catherine especially championed your position." Jill was surprised. The woman was so contrary. "Of all the people on this aircraft," she said, "why just the eight of us left?" Tanya looked caught off-step, then shrugged. "Something to do with sleep, I imagine." Jill started to object. "Think about it," she said. "Gregory and Catherine both were asleep, I heard them say so. I was out like a light- -I pulled a double shift before flying out--and you and Frank certainly looked exhausted. What else could we have in common? ." "I was asleep," Jill concurred. She suddenly remembered a snatch of her dream... something with stainless steel shark's teeth whirring like a chain saw... it made her shudder. "But I'd have thought more people would have been asleep than us. Shouldn't there have been more?" "I can answer that," Gregory said. He sat down in one of the seats opposite. Christine passed by and sat down two rows behind him and took off her coat. Gregory watched her distractedly for a moment, looking away quickly when she looked up. Then he continued. "Most people take time to settle in," he said. "Some can't settle in at all. I went out the minute we left the ground, but that's an exception. I usually don't sleep at all. Way too nervous." "Okay, then,"Jill said. "Let's consider that's true." She thought to ask Christine whether she also was asleep, but, nibbling on a pretzel, the girl stared sullenly out the window. You can do better than that, she thought, considering Gregory's hesitant interest. Even up here. "So what significance did that have?" she continued. "Did it save us? Or did being awake doom the other passengers? And where did they go?" Gregory shrugged. Tanya did also. Christine surprised them by speaking up. "We flew through some kind of a portal," she said. Gregory turned in his seat. "A portal?" "Yes." "What kind of a portal?" One corner of Christine's mouth tugged down in irritation. "The kind of portal that put us where we are now, stupid!" she snapped, before returning to her sullen examination of the clouds. Gregory turned away, looking stung. Jill sighed. She watched Catherine enter the First Class cabin ahead and sit down a few rows in. She carried a white plastic food tray with a plastic film lid. She had discovered the in-flight meal, it seemed. Peeling back the plastic film, she picked at the contents with a plastic forth, ignoring the others. Jill could not imagine eating right now, much less airline food. Even First Class airline food. Gregory looked at his watch. "An hour to go." When no one answered, he tried: "What about the "landing the airplane and taking everyone off," scenario?" Tanya said, "If they drugged everyone on board and left the eight of us alone, I suppose. But who are "they" and why would they do that? And who piloted the aircraft when it took off again? Is he here now?" Gregory looked around the cabin, then down at the floor. "Catherine's right about one thing. There's plenty of room below. If the cargo holds were empty." Again, Tanya asked: "But why?" Christine spoke up. "It's some kind of goddamned experiment, that's why. The military, the CIA, Homeland Security... who knows. I wouldn't put anything past those assholes. At the FBI academy they send new recruits out to follow the local population, I read. Surveillance training," she said sarcastically. "And as far as the pilot? I think he's still right here with us." "Who?" Gregory said. He lowered his voice. "You don't mean Frank?" Christine gave him a withering look. "Of course I mean Frank. And that other fellow too, maybe. Solomon. They could both be in on it." Tanya, keeping her voice level, asked: "You're suggesting that a government agency drugged all of the passengers on our plane, landed us at some remote location, off-loaded everyone but us, dressed the interior of the plane to look like everyone had disappeared mid-flight and then woke us up again? As a test? Not to mention that they doctored all the instruments, shut off all the radars and radios on the ground, and banned all other air-traffic within hundreds of mile?" Christine grinned tightly. "So what did happened then?" Tanya answered only with silence. "I thought so," Christine said, and went back to her pretzels. Chapter 5 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 4:50 A.M. PDT Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 Somewhere near Washington, D.C. "So I guess we're all agreed then," Gregory said, sometime later. "We were asleep." He cast a glance at Christine, expecting a sarcastic remark. Christine remained silent. Tanya said, "I've been on these late flights before and they're all the same. The first half-hour or so, it's passengers trying to settle in, getting the kids to sleep, attendants passing out drinks, blankets and pillows. Half an hour after that, everyone but the overachievers are out." She looked pointedly around at the scattering of open, laptop computers. Gregory stretched. "Well, I was certainly gone," he said. "I've been up every night this week, getting ready. I hardly slept at all." "Getting ready for what?" Christine asked. Gregory lowered his arms. His expression grew cautious. "I have a summer internship in the U.S. congress," he said. "Our high school debate team won the national award, and part of the prize was two weeks during the summer working for our local congressman." A quick look forward told Jill that the young man was grateful it wasn't internship in the U.S. Senate. "Anyway, three of us were flying out last Wednesday, but because of a death in the family, I missed my flight." He looked glumly at the floor. "I certainly wish I had made it now." The look of annoyance on Christine's face momentarily lessened. For a moment, Jill thought she might even offer a word of solace, but then her expression hardened again and she went back to looking out the window. Tanya said, "I'm sure we all wish we were another flight, Gregory." Jill asked, "Assuming it wasn't a plot, and that we didn't land somewhere, what happened to the others passengers?" Before anyone could venture a guess, the intercom popped. "This is Frank, ladies and gentlemen. In the next few minutes, I'll be performing a number of simple maneuvers to get the feel of the plane. I won't do anything radical... just some easy turns and a few changes in altitude." There was a brief pause, during which Jill heard a muffled conversation between he and Solomon. "First thing we'll do is a two-minute turn. This turns us in a three hundred and sixty-degree circle--" "As if there were any other kind," Catherine Montes observed. She had left First Class for the more suburban environs of economy. And the other passengers, of course. "--which allows me to verify compass heading and function. I'd like everyone to sit down now and buckle themselves in, just to be safe." The Fasten Seat Belt signs above the aisle seats chimed on, drawing a chuckle from Catherine Montes. "Okay," Frank announced. "Here goes." For the first time since awakening, Jill felt the aircraft move. The left wing dipped slightly, and she sensed a shift in her center of gravity. She gripped the armrests tightly. Her heart rate soared. If she were this frightened during a simple maneuver, she thought, what would happen during landing? "We're halfway through the turn, ladies and gentlemen, and so far, everything's just fine. Both compasses are tracking correctly and so is the INS computer. Once we resume out original heading, I'll take control of the plane." "Do you really have to do that?" Jill whispered. She looked around to see if anyone had heard. Tanya smiled at her reassuringly. The aircraft righted itself, and everyone sighed. "Okay," Frank said. "We're back on course. I'm going to descend a bit now and then come back to level. You'll feel this, but the maneuver will be nice and gentle." "What time is it?" Jill asked. She was afraid to look at her watch. "Five-oh-eight," said Gregory. "Twenty minutes to go." "We don't need a count-down, young man," Catherine grumbled. "We'll know plenty well when to start screaming." The nose of the plane dipped hard enough to make Jill's stomach lurch. "Whoa!" Gregory croaked. "What was that?" "That was a little more angle than I had intended," Frank said, hurriedly. "Sorry. Won't happen again." "Nice of you to own up," Catherine groused. For ten seconds the nose remained down, then, with more care, Frank leveled the aircraft off. Then they were climbing again and, after dipping the wings slightly side to side, Frank leveled back off. "We'll begin our descent now, ladies and gentlemen. You'll feel a reduction in speed as I throttle back. In about five minutes I'll deploy the air-brakes, and that you should feel as well. Any final maneuvering we'll do once we're in the airport's vicinity. Believe me, this 767 handles like a dream and I doubt we'll have any further surprises along the way. Frank out." True to his word, Frank reduced power, and the aircraft began to slow. Catherine rose and moved down the aisle, taking the seat directly ahead of Gregory. She buckled herself in. Gregory looked relieved that she had chosen not to sit beside him. "Any bets on our going around?" Catherine asked. Tanya said, "Catherine, this is hard enough without you second-guessing every move. Frank said he'd get us down, and I for one believe him. He seems like a very reliable man." Catherine grinned. "We'll find out soon enough. And the offer's still open." Nobody placed a bet. The airplane took a sudden, jolting bounce. "Jesus!" Gregory cried. "What was that?" "Turbulence," said Tanya, calmly."We've all felt it before. Just relax." The aircraft took another, harder bounce and suddenly shuddered sidewards. Catherine laughed and Jill clamped her armrests tight. "Nothing to worry about, folks," Frank said, over the intercom. "Just normal clear air turbulence. We're doing just fine." He maintained a running commentary and bit by small bit, the knot in Jill's stomach relaxed. "Ten minutes to go, fifteen minutes tops. There's a few scattered clouds ahead, otherwise, the skies are clear." Jill heard Solomon speak in the background and then Frank said: "Just to let you all know, I tried Washington Center one last time, and Dulles approach. No luck with either. It seems that whatever is going on up here, has happened on the ground. But the airplane is handling five-by-five and everything is green across the board. So just sit tight and we'll be on the ground in... well, before you know it, Catherine." "Fuck you, Frank," Catherine Montes whispered while everyone else laughed.. Ten thousand feet came and went; there was a low, mechanical whirr. "That's the air brakes you feel, ladies and gentlemen. Next, I'll lower the flaps. I'll let you know when." Jill turned to Tanya. "Why were you coming to Washington?" she asked. Tanya hesitated a moment, then said: "Trying to salvage a relationship that's probably unsalvageable." "Oh," Jill said. She had asked only to get her mind off the descent. Now she wished she hadn't. Sneaking a look at Tanya's left hand, she saw there was no band on her third finger. "We've been on the outs for months," Tanya said. "She went to visit her mom in D.C., two weeks ago and-- whoops!" Tanya looked chagrined. "Well, I guess I gave that away. Anyway, she didn't came back and now you know." Jill was perplexed. Her strange attraction to Tanya was hard enough to deal with. Knowing that she was gay--or bisexual at least--made it that much worse. And somehow, she knew there was more to the story than that. "What's your friend's name?" she finally asked. "Claire." "Is she a nurse?" Tanya laughed. "Real estate agent. She sold me my house. That's how we met," she said, breaking into a sad smile. The 767 took another hard, jolting hop and, gripping the armrests, Jill asked: "How long were you two together?" Tanya sighed. "Would have been three years next week. Two months ago, she decided things were no longer to her liking and I couldn't convince her otherwise. Two weeks ago, she up and left." She shrugged. "Can't say I really blame her. I'm not the easiest person in the world to get along with. Jill understood. If there was one thing she knew about, it was unsalvageable relationships. "Five thousand feet, ladies and gentlemen," Frank announced. "I'm extending the wing flaps now, so expect another noticeable drop in speed." Jill heard the mechanical whine and confirmed out the window that the flaps were in fact, extending. The aircraft slowed. "I can see the airport!" Gregory exclaimed. He unbelted and moved across the aisle to the window seat behind Jill. "It's right ahead! I can see the runways." Christine switched seats as well, pressing her face against the window directly behind Gregory's. She made no comment, but withdrew a crumpled pack of Marlboro's from her jacket pocket, and shook one loose. "Anyone care if I smoke?" Jill, for one, would have loved a smoke. She had never lit up. Catherine said dryly: "Light up two if that helps." Christine put the cigarette between her lips and was about to light up when Frank came on the intercom. "Okay, everyone. Time to lower the gear. You'll feel a good bump--" the gear lowered with a thud and the aircraft slowed "--as it locks into place. I'm lined up with Runway 12, which runs west to east. We should be down in less than two minutes. I'll leave the intercom on so you can listen in." "Great," Catherine said. "We get to hear ourselves die." The aircraft suddenly jolted and skidded right, making the door of the overhead compartment above Jill pop open. A flight bag and two briefcases fell out, thudding into the aisle by her feet. The deck canted steeply and to the right and there was a load crash forward, followed by the sound of breaking glass. "What was that!" Gregory cried. "Are we crashing?" Jill's chest spasmed and she heard herself begin to keen. Then Tanya had her hand squeezed tightly in her own and she said: "It's okay. It's just turbulence. Take deep breaths and hold them a while." Jill did as instructed. "I don't want to die," she moaned. "We're not going to," Tanya assured her. The confidence in her voice made Jill feel better... until aircraft shuddered and from behind, sounded another loud crash. "What is going on?" Christine cried out. "Are we going to crash?" Tanya said loudly: "It's just turbulence! Buckle yourself up!" On the next bad jolt Gregory deserted his window seat and scrambled back across the aisle. He strapped himself in, looking absolutely petrified. Christine did the same, stubbing her cigarette out on the top of the no-longer- functional ashtray of her armrest. Her face, now totally white, made the raccoon effect of her heavy black eyeliner almost comical. Over the intercom, Frank was having problems. "Get the gear up!" he shouted. "Flaps up too!" There was a whir and the landing gear thumped home. "Everybody stay calm!" he yelled. "The plane is under control!" There was a brief, heated exchange between Solomon and himself--Jill heard Jessica squealing in the background--and then the nose pulled up sharply, pressing her deeply into her seat. "There we go!" Frank said. "There we go, now." There was undisguised relief in his voice. "We hit a pocket of turbulence, ladies and gentlemen, much greater than I had expected. Rather than chance landing too hard, I decided to go around." Catherine laughed. Over the intercom, Solomon and Jessica both laughed. They sounded as petrified as Gregory had looked. Then Jessica coughed and began to sob. What had Frank been thinking? Jill wondered. A child in the cockpit? "If that happens again!" Catherine suddenly yelled out. "I will personally throw you out of this aircraft! Do you hear me, Frank Trafano?" There was a momentary silence and then everyone laughed-- including Frank up front in the cockpit--and Jill's blood pressure dropped. It still took effort to breath, but at least her lungs worked. Then she hiccuped loudly, and everyone, Catherine included, laughed again. Jill turned bright red "Threats on a pilot's life are a federal offense, Catherine," Frank commented dryly over the intercom: "I'll have to report you once we're on the ground. In fact, I might have them to take you off in handcuffs." Catherine growled: "Your not going to live through this, Frank Trafano. Even if we do land this plane." The 767 settled into a soft, left-handed bank, and everyone relaxed. Christine released her seat belt and stood up in the aisle. She looked toward the rear of the plane. "Another fucking drink cart," she pronounced, sitting back down. She lit another cigarette but her hands shook badly. The aircraft resumed level flight. Releasing Tanya's hand, Jill said, "Keep that handy, okay? I might need it again." Tanya laughed warmly. "I rent by the hour, okay? But I do offer discounts and reservations as well." Catherine, as though offended by any attempt at levity under the circumstances, warned: "Don't get complacent just yet, kiddies. It's not over until we hit the ground and the last time I looked, we were still in the air." "Don't remind me," Gregory muttered. "Catherine," Tanya sighed. "You are such a well of optimism. Remind me not to vote for you next term." Catherine barked out a laugh. "If we get down in one piece, honey, I'll fill out your ballot myself. But the way it looks now, I'm not sure who I'll run against." The aircraft once again banked right. "Okay," Frank said. "Rather than circle completely around, I've lined up with Runway 19L, which runs north to south. It's longer by fifteen hundred feet, which is better anyway. This time, I promise a more gentle approach." Catherine mumbled something indecipherable. Gregory, unbelting himself and moving back across the aisle, took up watch at his port-side window. Christine stayed where she was. Blowing out smoke, she asked: "Anything there?" "Buildings, roads, cars. Only... " "Only what?" Gregory looked around. "Nothing's moving. Nothing at all. Anywhere." "That's impossible," Tanya said. She rose from her seat and joined Gregory at the window. They both looked out. Jill, deciding she had as much fear as she could handle, chose not to join them. "Okay, folks," Frank announced. "Here we go again. Flaps down." The flaps extended and the gear lowered again and Jill heard a steady drone of conversation from the front. Then Tanya returned to her seat and took Jill's hand. This time it was she who needed reassuring. "Gregory's right. Everything's down there, but nothing is moving." She looked at Jill with worry-filled eyes. "The roads are totally deserted. Parking lots are empty. It's like everyone just left the state." Continuing its slow descent, the aircraft stayed nose- level, free of buffeting this time. Landscape became visible outside the windows; most of what Jill saw was power lines, trees and the tops of distant buildings. Frank made one last attempt at contact: "Dulles Tower, this is American Airlines Flight 74, over?" No answer, just the same spooky silence. "Well, folks, I'm going to concentrate on getting this bird down. We'll face what we face once we're on the ground. Good luck to us all." "Amen," Gregory whispered. The intercom clicked off. For a time, there was only the sound of the engines and the passing air. Christine stubbed her cigarette out and gripped her armrests. "Everyone strapped in?" Tanya asked. Everyone's belt was cinched. "I don't want to hear another word until we land," Catherine commanded. "No problem there," Gregory whispered and indeed, his words were the last spoken until the main undercarriage touched the ground. Looking out the window to her left, Jill caught the red and white structure of a radio tower flash by, then a row of poles. Then they were over the runway and the huge terminal with its convex roof hove into view. A pair of smaller jet aircraft sat on one of the aprons close at hand and beyond them, a larger United Airlines jet. Smaller aircraft were scattered everywhere about. Absolutely nothing moved. At the same moment that the mid-field concourse building appeared, the landing gear touched down and the aircraft took one soft bounce and then settled to the ground. Jill gripped Tanya's hand so tightly that it made her jump. Tanya didn't complain or let go. Although it seemed forever, the nose wheel finally touched as well and then there was a thunderous roar as the engines reversed thrust and Frank applied the brakes hard. The aircraft decelerated quickly. "We're down," Jill whispered. "We are down." Tanya squeezed her hand tightly. When they had slowed to maneuvering speed, the 767 swung to the right and rolled onto a taxi-way and then turned around. Everyone breathed again. Then the intercom clicked on. "Ladies and gentlemen," Frank said. "Welcome to Washington, D.C." The applause was instantaneous and loud. Jill clapped so furiously that it stung her palms. Tanya embraced her in a massive hug, and before she could stop herself, Jill kissed her hard on the lips. When she came away again, shocked, her face was very hot. Tanya stared, then broke into wonderful laughter. "Welcome home," she said. Indeed. Chapter 6 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 5:32 A.M. PDT (8:32 A.M. EDT) Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. The euphoria was short-lived. Rolling along at a leisurely pace, the 767 headed for the mid-field concourse. A parallel runway was to their left, a large number "1L" painted at its end. Beyond it were half a dozen hangars and smaller buildings. There was no sign of activity. In fact, the opposite was true. The place looked like a huge, still-life painting. There was no sense of depth to the buildings, no sense of three- dimensions at all. Everything looked totally flat. Jill blinked, but the effect remained. The knot in her stomach tightened. "This is so totally weird," Gregory said. He moved to the opposite side of the aircraft and stared out. "What's with the buildings? They look like pictures in a book." Christine joined him. "There's no one in the building ahead," she announced, "and there's not a soul outside. It's still pretty far away, but I'd swear the terminal is empty too." "That's impossible," Catherine said. "I won't accept that." Christine grunted: "Come see for yourself." A quarter of a mile long, the mid-field concourse was home to a dozen aircraft with American Airlines markings, all parked neatly against jet-ways; where service personnel would normally be loading fuel, piloting baggage trains, and delivering food, there was not a soul. The airplane suddenly halted. "What's he doing now," Catherine groused. "We're still a hundred yards away from the concourse." Frank's voice came over the intercom to explain: "Sorry, ladies and gentlemen. I didn't mean to stop so abruptly, but I don't like what I'm seeing out there." "Join the club," muttered Gregory. "We're staying right here where we are," Frank said. "With room to maneuver. I don't want to have to back this baby up." Gregory added Frank's unspoken words. "In case of a needy escape." "Dream on, young man." Catherine Montes muttered. "No one's ever getting me off the ground again." As it happened, Catherine Montes was absolutely right. * Standing inside the forward galley, they waited for Frank to finish up. The engines wound down, and the 767 became uncomfortably silent. "Where is everyone?" Jessica asked, stepping out of the cockpit. Her eyes indicated she didn't really want to know. Frank called out: "I'm leaving the APU on. There's no way to tell if the power's on out there or not, and I'm damned if I'll leave restarting the engines up to a battery." "What's an APU?" Jill asked. "Auxiliary Power Unit," Solomon said. "We'll need it to get the engines started again." He paused, looking at Catherine Montes. "Should the need arise." "By all means," Gregory agreed. "Keep the APU running." Then Frank appeared and a second round of applause went up. He scowled. "Find something to be excited about here, and I'll join in. Until then, let's refrain." He looked at the starboard hatch. "Let's get this open, okay? I want to smell fresh air." Set into the surface of the door was a long yellow handle; Frank had just gripped it and started to push down, when Gregory reached out. "How do we know it's safe?" he asked. "What if the air's like, poisoned or something? Radioactive?" "You're breathing it now," Frank answered. "Now please, step aside." Frank lowered the handle and with a slight pop of depressurization, the door released. Holding it back in mid-swing, Frank looked about. He took an experimental sniff. Then he pushed the door back to its locked position and warned: "Don't get to close to the edge. It's a twenty foot drop." Catherine approached the door. She sniffed the air as well. She blinked and her nose wrinkled. "There is something wrong with the air," she proclaimed. "Smells stale, like a closed-up room." Solomon said, "Lifeless." To Jill, the smell was... There is no smell, she thought. It's like breathing air out of a tank. Frank dismissively waved his hand. "Whatever the smell," he said, "it's breathable. That's all that matters. Now, let's get out of here, shall we?" "How?" Jessica wanted to know. She looked at the tarmac below. "There aren't any stairs." Frank ushered them away from the door. "Down the inflatable ramp. I'm sure you've seen them before on TV." He knelt and prepared to deploy the slide. He stopped when Tanya asked: "What about the hatch in the nose wheel compartment, Frank? Can we use that?" Frank looked momentarily hesitant, then relieved. "Good idea. Keep us from having to jettison the ramp." Grasping the handle, he pulled the door shut again. Then he went into the cockpit. "This will take just a moment," he said. "Be right back." Raising the floor hatch, he lowered himself into the hole, cursing softly when something got snagged. A moment later he switched on a light and called up: "Almost there!" There were two soft thuds, and a mechanical clank which Jill assumed was the ladder dropping down. Frank reappeared in the hatch. "Normally, I'd say ladies first," he said. "But in this case, Gregory or Solomon might be a better idea. Just to be safe." Solomon motioned Gregory ahead and, looking at the others, Gregory smiled bravely, climbed into the hole and and started to descend. Solomon went next. A few moments later, Frank's head reappeared and he beckoned Jessica forward. She approached the hole with a look of dread. After a false start, she made her way down. Then it was Christine's turn. "This really sucks," she said. "I didn't want to be here in the first place." She zipped her coat closed and rubbed the sides of her jeans. She looked from Tanya to Jill. "See you in the outside world," she said. "We're right behind you," Tanya encouraged. With Frank motioning impatiently, Christine disappeared into the hole. "Catherine next. Then Jill. Tanya last." Grumbling, Catherine descended the ladder, then Jill took her place. Tanya extended a hand, which Jill gratefully accepted. For a moment their eyes met and Jill felt that stab of attraction again. Then she looked away. "Come on, and watch your head," Frank cautioned, guiding her down. She had to duck beneath a low spar. With Frank beside her, it was a very cramped fit. "Be careful of the cabling," he said. Sitting on the narrow edge of the coaming, Jill swung her legs free and began to descend. Then she stopped. "What do you mean before?" she inquired. "When you told Gregory we were breathing it now. The air, I mean?" Although looking irritated, Frank explained. "The air in the cabin is circulated with fresh air from outside. It's compressed by the engines and bled into the air- conditioning system. We've been breathing it since leaving L.A." "Oh," she said, still feeling unsettled. He looked at her with impatience. "Don't you feel it, Frank?" "Feel what?" "That it's difficult to breath. Like being trapped inside a smoky room." Frank shook his head. "It's just the exertion," he said. "Anxiety. That alone could account for the feeling." "I didn't feel it earlier, while we were aloft." Frank was caught up short. "I... " he began to say, but he didn't have an answer. "What's the hold-up there, people?" Catherine Montes called. "We have an airport to explore. Time to chit-chat later." Shrugging, Frank helped Jill down the ladder. She stepped onto the concrete apron, not sure that solid ground was where she wished to be. "Having a tea-party, were we?" Catherine asked. Jill smiled, tightly. "Dissecting the Cheshire Cat." "First disembodied smile I see," Christine said, "I'm running like hell." Me too, Jill thought. Except for the steady drone from the rear of the aircraft, which she assumed was the APU, she heard not a single sound. "It's like being in a sound-proof room," Gregory said, turning around in a circle. "I can hear myself breathing." Jill realized this was true. She also realized that the two-dimensional effect had not let up. Everything still looked flat. Clutching herself across the chest, Christine said: "No birds, no wind blowing, no nothing." Descending the stairs, Tanya stood on the apron, looking around. Jill moved silently up beside her. Frank was last out of the plane. "Come on," he said, heading for the mid-field concourse. "Let's see what goes." Setting off as a group, Frank leading and Tanya and Jill trailing behind, the eight members of Flight 74 made their way toward the long, low building. Jessica and Solomon talked quietly together, looking cautiously around, while Gregory and Christine walked side by side as well, though not conversing. Though she obviously considered him a geek, Christine seemed in need of his company, "David Duchovny and Tea' Leoni, they're not," Tanya said of the odd couple, though not unkindly. Jill laughed. She judged Tanya to be older than she had originally thought, probably in her early thirties. She appeared quite fit. Her blue eyes were set either side of a long, straight nose, and she had high and distinctive cheekbones. Her chin was almost too strong, Jill thought. She found herself wanting to stare. Up ahead, Gregory asked, "How do we get in? With security nowadays, I can't imagine just walking into an airport door." "There's always a way in," Frank said. He surveyed the side of the building. "You need a swipe card to access an outside door, but there are bays and service entrances. If nothing else, we'll find a rock and break out a window." Suddenly, Christine waved her hand. "It's not hot," she said. "Or muggy. Today's the twentieth of July and it should be unbearably hot. But it feels like a spring day. No... it doesn't feel like anything at all." Gregory said, "Think that's weird? Look at the horizon." Everyone looked. The horizon was sharp as a razor, perfectly clear. "When was the last time you saw that in July?" he asked. Across the apron, perhaps two hundred yards away, was a very large hangar. In the far right corner was a built- out office structure with a flagpole either side. Jill noted the twins flags dangling limp at the tops. They could have been made from bronze. Catherine Montes said: "Will you stop with the sightseeing, already! Let's find a way inside and make some calls. It does us no good standing around discussing the weather." She strode away at a crisp pace, arms swinging purposefully at her sides. "That woman," Christine said. "Has a serious hemorrhoid problem." No one disagreed. Reaching the building first, Catherine went directly to the closest door, a service entrance. Printed on the glass was the following inscription: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY ONLY PROPERLY CREDENTIALED AMERICAN AIRLINES EMPLOYEES BEYOND THIS POINT. Gregory said, "Maybe some big-assed guard will come out and whack her over the head with a night stick." "We can only hope," Christine said. "I'd be happy to see anyone right now." Catherine grasped the doorknob firmly in her hand and yanked the door wide open. "Son-of-a-bitch," Gregory muttered. Giving a triumphant smile, Catherine marched right through the door. "Catherine wait!" Taking off at a run, Frank reached the closing door just as it slammed shut and wrenched it back open. On his face, relief and anger battled for control. "Catherine! Come the hell back out here!" Catherine was halfway down the dimly lit, narrow corridor. She turned, hands on her hips. "Are you waiting for a written invitation?" she asked. Tanya called out, "Let's not be hasty here, Catherine. For all we know, this hallway is a dead end. There are security doors all over the place. We don't want to be getting trapped." "Yeah," Gregory muttered. "No 911." Examining the lock, Solomon said, "Must be the power. Off, the lock won't engage. Would have thought it just the opposite, though." Mounted on the wall halfway down the corridor was a red and white fire-extinguisher. Catherine looked at it for a moment, then unbuckled the metal strap, removed the bottle and headed back. "This should work just fine," she said, thrusting the canister into Frank's hands. "Block the door with it." She then stood back to wait while Frank lay the fire extinguisher on its side. The rubber hose kept it from rolling. "Did you think to bring along the flashlight, dear?" Frank looked chagrined. Patting his right coat pocket, he withdrew the black Maglight. "Forgot I had this," he said, flicking the beam on and off. "Lucky you. Try not to drop it, okay?" With that, she spun on her heel and headed back down the corridor. Solomon slowly shook his head. "I'm going the whack that woman myself," he said. Then he said, thoughtfully, "You know, I follow California politics pretty closely. I voted for her in the last election." "Not exactly an informed choice," Christine said. "That's what I'm getting at. I've seen this woman in action, and she is a real tiger. Devours Democrats for lunch, Republicans too, if they get in her way. Sharpest woman I've ever seen. The way she's acting now?" He shrugged. "Don't know what to think." Tanya said, "Stress manifests itself in some pretty ugly ways. Aggressive behavior can degenerate into outright paranoia overnight. I'd keep an eye on our Ms. Montes." "Agreed," said Frank. "Wouldn't do to have her dropping off the deep end." "I think she's already jumped," Gregory said. Having taken up position halfway down the corridor, Catherine waited. She tapped her right toe. "Any time today would be fine," she said. Frank addressed Solomon. "Why don't you bring up the rear. I'll take point." "More than happy to," Solomon said. Moving carefully into the dim corridor, the small group walked single file down the middle. Although it wasn't as pronounced as outside, the corridor exhibited that same, flat-world effect. It made judging distances a difficult task. Coming to the first door on the right--a maintenance office--Frank tried the knob. It was unlocked. He swung the door open. Inside they found a large, darkened room. One wall was was lined with small offices--cubicles really--while the other three were lined with racks. The wall opposite them held an open doorway, flanked either side by shelving. Shining the flashlight around, Frank showed them spare parts ranging in size from jewelry-size boxes to a huge coils of tubing sitting on pallets. Most, if not all the parts were tagged. A red and blue American Airlines logo decorated the wall above the door, and as with everything else in this strange world, its colors were flat. Inside the nearest cubicle sat a telephone on a desk. "Hey!" Gregory exclaimed. Darting inside, he snatched up the receiver and jammed it to his ear. He flicked the plastic tongue. "Hello? Anybody there?" "Push one of the buttons, Gregory," Tanya advised. Gregory punched the top button on the right. It did not light. "No dial tone," he said. Drifting over to the next cubicle on the right, Tanya went inside. Jill heard her pick up the handset and then press a button. She rattled the tongue. "No luck here either," she called out. "Dammit," Solomon muttered. "I'd like to see something-- just one thing--work in this fucking place." "Let's move on," Frank said. "The sooner we get upstairs to the concourse and back into the light, the better I'll feel." Jill was set to follow the rest, when something caught her eye. At first, she couldn't put a name to it; then she called out. "Could I borrow the flashlight, please?" "Why?" Frank asked. "I just want to examine something." Scowling, Frank handed Jill the light. His expression said: Hurry it up! Shining the light around the first cubicle, Jill tried to understand what she saw. Everywhere was the same disturbing pattern. The telephone sat beside a stapler and a scotch tape dispenser, which in turn sat next to a HP LaserJet printer. All were neatly aligned. The monitor and keyboard sat directly in the desk's center, placed as though by exact measurement. Shelving in the cubicle held manuals and stacks of leaflets, all perfectly arranged, as were rows of binders. Nowhere was there a thing out of place. "So?" Frank asked. "When was the last time you saw a desktop like this?" Jill asked. She tracked the flashlight across the surface. Frank said: "So he's a neat freak. Let's go." Jill went to the next cubicle over. The desk and shelving were the same. "This guy too?" she asked. "What's your point?" Frank asked back. "My point is, this is more than just a tidy desk. It's been arranged, set up. It looks like a window display. Wait a second," she said. Pulling back the swivel chair, Jill opened the center drawer: Pens, pencils, rubber bands, large and small paper clips, all were precisely placed. The pencils were all of uniform length, their points neatly sharpened. Nothing, not even a paper clip, was out of place. "No one keeps a desk like this," she said. "No one." "So, again?" Frank asked. "What's the point? Or do you have an aversion to cleanliness?" Fighting an alarmingly strong impulse to smack Frank Trafano across the face, Jill left the cubicle, going to the nearest rack. "Look at this," she said, holding a tag in the light. "Notice anything strange?" Unexplainable fear had her heart in its clammy grip and wouldn't let go. "The tags are perfectly symmetrical," she said, ticking off four with a fingertip. They marched along the shelf and up and down all the shelves in the same, letter perfect rows. It was as though some schizophrenic had spent days arranging this inventory and every shelf was the same. Suddenly the bolts holding her intellect started to slip and the room felt half the size. Then the floor became a hole into which she was falling and far off Jill heard a forlorn cry. When it stopped, there was only blackness. Chapter 7 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 6:18 A.M. PDT (9:18 A.M. EDT) Ground Level, Mid-field Concourse Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. She lay in the corridor, on her back, looking up into Tanya's eyes. Tanya was speaking her name and stoking her hair. Her head was cradled in her lap. She had a bruising headache. "She's coming around," Gregory said. "You okay?" Frank asked Tanya's stroking hand felt wonderful. Jill wanted to close her eyes and go back to sleep. But then Frank and Gregory leaned over into view and Jill guessed the respite was over. "What happened?" "You fainted," Tanya said. "Just dropped the flashlight and collapsed on the floor. I grabbed your blouse as you were going down," she said, grinning wryly. "But I'm afraid I snapped your bra. It kept your head from hitting too hard, though, so maybe you'll forgive me." Jill became conscious of the other's ill-at-ease looks. The attraction she felt for Tanya was mutual, she realized. "I'd rather be braless than brainless any day," she said, sitting up. Pain shrieked behind her eyes. "Thank you." "Your welcome." "Help me up?" Carefully, she placed a hand on the floor and allowed Tanya to help her to her knees. Nausea swept through her. "Lie back down if you need to," Tanya said. "We're in no hurry." I bet Catherine Montes would disagree. That, as it turned out, was wrong. Catherine Montes was gone. "She got tired of standing around," Tanya said. "Frank sent Solomon to track her down." "How long was I out?" "Five minutes or so. You came around nearly as soon as we moved you out into the corridor." Jill blinked. "What time is it now?" Tanya consulted her watch. "Six-ten. Nearly time for breakfast." JIll groaned. "Please don't mention food." The pain in her head had subsided to a more reasonable level, and Jill felt well enough to stand. Tanya remained close at her side. "I'm okay, Really I am. Thank you, so much." Tanya smiled and Jill felt it was a smile meant just for her. Her heart rate quickened. "I'm not usually this wishy-washy," she apologized. "I've never passed out before." Tanya remained a reassuring presence at her elbow. "After what we've been through," she said, "it's a wonder any of us can function." Jill remembered her conversation with Frank in the nose wheel compartment. "Something is wrong with the air," she said. "Ever since we left the airplane I've had a really hard time breathing." Tanya nodded. "So have I." "Me too," Jessica chimed in. Gregory said: "I thought it was just my asthma." They all looked at Frank Trafano. "Either the oxygen content here is lower than normal," he grudgingly admitted, "or we're having problems breathing it. Either way, I don't like the implications. Your fainting might not have been hyperventilation at all, Jill, but too little oxygen in the bloodstream. It would explain other things as well." "Like what?" Gregory asked. "Like why our fuel consumption was so high," Frank said. "And why the engine exhausts were consistently running hot. We landed with just under ten thousand pounds of fuel, fifteen hundred pounds lighter what we should have. Lack of a tail-wind accounts for some of it, but no more than twenty percent." "So what you're saying is that the oxygen doesn't burn right," Tanya said. Frank shrugged. "It might have reduced ignition, yes. The computer offsets the condition by enriching the fuel mixture... consumption goes up, and so does the exhaust temperature." "What could cause oxygen not to burn right?" Gregory wanted to know. "We're talking laws of physics here, right?" Christine said: "Laws are meant to be broken." "Not these laws," Frank said. "Not by us." Tanya interjected: "Let's find our way up. Leave these questions to a more appropriate time. Besides, I don't like the idea of Catherine wandering around alone. No telling what she might be up to." She looked Frank in the eye. "Catherine Montes scares me," she said. Frank had to agree. Continuing up the corridor, they reach a T-intersection with another hallway. Nothing was to their left but utter darkness, but to their right, where the corridor ended in another T-intersection thirty feet away, they saw dim light. Then they heard Solomon's voice. "This way!" he yelled. "We found a way up!" His voice was odd, Jill thought--as flat sounding as everything around her looked; she realized there was no echo. As they approached the corridor's end, Solomon appeared. "We found a flight of stairs," he said. "Leading up to the concourse." A handkerchief was wrapped around his left hand. It showed a large, dark stain. "We had to break out a window and guess I got a little careless." "It's nothing," Catherine Montes said, appearing suddenly. "A scratch. Let's go." Jill was appalled at her callousness. "Catherine, Solomon's been injured!" Taking Solomon's hand, she removed the bandage and was shocked by the ugly gash. Two inches long, it split Solomon's palm, cutting deeply into the meat of his thumb. "This is serious!" she exclaimed. "Tanya, look." Tanya examined the wound. "This has to be attended to, Solomon. And soon. It needs disinfecting, and stitches as well. It could easily become infected." Solomon pulled his hand away. "It barely hurts," he muttered, reapplying the bandage. "I'll be fine." "No, you won't," Tanya argued. "It doesn't hurt now, but- -" Frank interrupted. "I'm afraid Catherine is right. Our first priority is in getting upstairs. Once there, we can find the medical office and get Solomon fixed up. Until then, I suggest we keep focused on the problem at hand." Jill's temper flared. "I don't know who's lack of compassion is more alarming," she said. "Your's or Catherine Montes's! We don't know if this building even has a medical office, much less where it might be." Everyone looked surprised, which only fueled Jill's anger. "I think we've already lost sight of the problem," she insisted. "Which is what happened to us and why only to us. We haven't a clue what danger this place poses, microbe-wise, or other. Until we do, I think we better concentrate on remaining safe." Now, everyone just looked embarrassed. "Fine!" she said, throwing up her hands in defeat. "Lead the way." Rounding the corner, the group followed Catherine Montes thirty paces to a door with a broken-out window. On the floor, amidst shattered glass, sat another fire extinguisher. It bore a smear of blood. Stepping forward, Frank shown the flashlight up the stairwell, illuminating a door at the top. It was a security entrance, with a sign. "Don't worry," Catherine said. "It's open." "After you, then," Frank said. Grinning tightly, Catherine began to climb. Her four inch tall heels clacked hollowly on the linoleum treads and again, Jill was struck by how sound failed to carry in this deserted world. Reaching the top, Catherine stuck out her hand and gripped the doorknob. She pushed the door open and one by one they emerged onto the main floor of the mid-field concourse. They all stood about, looking around in wonder. Imported Langoliers Text here, 11-24-02 Starting with page 94 Jill's shocked amazement at having awoken on a plane magically emptied of people had worn off; dislocation now took the place of wonder. She had never been in an airport terminal which was utterly empty before. The rental-car lines were deserted. The ARRIVALS and DEPARTURES monitors were blank. No one stood at the bank of counters serving Delta, United, Northwest Air-Link, or Southwest Airlines. The huge tank in the middle of the floor with the BUY MARYLAND CRABS banner stretched over it was empty; both of crabs and water alike. The overhead fluorescents were off and the light entering through the windows on the far side of the concourse petered out halfway across the floor. The little group from Flight 74 stood huddled together in an unpleasant nest of shadows and light. "Okay, then," Catherine said, trying for briskness and managing only unease. "Let's try the pay phones, shall we?" While Catherine went to the closest bank of telephones, Jill wandered over to the Hudson News counter for a browse. Neatly stacked along the front in their own individual bins were copies of The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the USA Today. Below the counter were neatly arranged shelves of People magazine, Harper's Bazaar, Time and Newsweek, and dozens of other glossy publications. Candy, mints and gum sat neatly in the wire racks above. Each carton was full and every label faced the same way. At the threshold between store and concourse, immaculate carpet transitioned to lustrous marble tile. Again, Jill was struck by everything's eerie flawlessness. She had just bent over to inspect the cover of the The Washington Post newspaper more closely--it was dated for today, July 20, 2013--when a dry scratching noise sounded behind her. She whirled about, staggering back against the counter and letting out a choked cry. Christine, just touching a match to the tip of her cigarette, cried out as well, then laughed. "God! You scared me!" "I scared you?" Jill said, catching her breath. She offered a small, embarrassed smile. Christine shook out the match and dropped it on the marble flooring. "I find this place to be seriously fucked-up," she said, taking a deep pull on her cigarette. "Almost as bad as the airplane." Solomon strolled over. "You know, I quit those about ten years ago. "Oh, please," Christine said. "I've had lectures up the ying-yang." Solomon raised an eyebrow. "Actually. I was going to ask if I could borrow one, my dear. Seems like an excellent time to renew bad habits." Christine grinned and offered him a Marlboro. She lit it for him with a match. He inhaled deeply, then explosively coughed. Christine laughed. "You sure you want to do this?" Solomon blinked his eyes. They were brimmed with tears. "I'd get used to it again in a hurry," he said, though he looked at the cigarette askance. "That's the real horror of the things. By the way, did either of you notice the clock?" He pointed to the wall above the entrance to the men's and ladie's restrooms. The clock mounted there had both hands pointing straight up. "High noon," Christine observed. Solomon slowly nodded. "The flight took off at a quarter to twelve. We were in the air for awhile before the event--whatever the event was--occurred. I fell asleep no earlier than quarter to one, so by any measure, that makes the time it happened sometime between one a.m. and three, Pacific Daylight Time. Twelve o'clock their time translates to nine o'clock our time, be it day or night." "So?" Christine asked. "So, the clock should read sometime between four and six a.m., not midnight." "Or noon," Gregory said. "Or noon," Solomon agreed. "And what do you think the chances are it would happen right at the top of the hour?" "Great," Christine said. "Another dilemma." Solomon said: "Which still doesn't explain the sun. It should be early A.M., yet it's the middle of the afternoon." "That problem again," she remarked. Jill looked at her watch. It was 6:34 A.M. Something more troubling than an errant wall clock had her attention though. "If this all happened at... " she glanced toward the useless clock again "... between four and six a.m., Washington time, then almost everyone in town was asleep." "Yeah," Solomon said blandly. "So where are they?" Jill was nonplused. "I don't know!" There was a bang as Catherine slammed down one of the pay telephones. It was the last one in the bank. "They're all dead!" she complained. "The coin-fed ones as well as the direct-dial-outs! I could just scream!" Jill prayed that she wouldn't. "So what do we do now?" she asked. Hearing the forlorn sound of her own voice made her feel very small and lost. Beside her, Jessica was looking slowly around. Her head canted first one way, then the other, as though trying to identify a sound. "What's wrong?" Jill asked. Jessica shook her head. "I don't know. I thought heard something." "Like what?" Christine wanted to know. "Like... I don't know, something." They spent the next fifteen seconds listening to silence. Finally, Solomon said: "Let's go find a place to eat. I'm starved." They all looked at him as though he'd told them to take off their clothes. Solomon snorted. "People think better on a full stomach," he said. "And right now I need to think." "Solomon's right," Frank said. "We could use something to eat. And I doubt seriously if anything here will point us in the right direction." Catherine looked distractedly up and down the long concourse. "Why not?" she said. "I'm starting to feel like Mrs. Robinson Bloody Crusoe anyway." Her demeanor, Jill thought, had lost some of its piss and vinegar. They all started toward the egress to the main terminal, following the signs for food. Jill, Tanya, and Solomon walked together, toward the rear. "You know something, don't you?" Jill asked. "About what it is?" Solomon shrugged. "If I know something, it's only that I'm confused. I have one suggestion, though." "What's that?" He turned to Christine. "I suggest that you save your matches. They may come in handy, later on." "Why?" Christine asked. "There's a news stand right over there," she said, pointing out the Hudson News. "They'll have plenty of matches. Cigarettes and disposable lighters, too." "I agree," Solomon said. "But I still advise you to save your matches." Jill was about to loose her temper over Solomon's obtuseness when Frank Trafano stopped. It was so sudden that she didn't have time to halt. She bounced off his shoulder and staggered into Tanya Raum. "Frank, watch out where you're going, please!" Frank ignored her. He was looking all around. "Where's Catherine?" he said. "What?" from Christine. "The woman with the pressing hemorrhoid problem." "Who cares?" Christine asked. "Maybe she joined the rest of the human race." Everyone else offered their agreement, but Jill still felt uneasy. She didn't like Catherine off on her own. She glanced at Tanya, who shrugged, then shook her head. "Sorry, I didn't see her go." "Catherine!" Frank shouted. "Catherine Montes! Where are you?" There was no response. Only that queer, oppressive silence. And in a high-ceilinged place like the concourse, there should have been at least some echo. But there was none. No echo at all. Chapter 8 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 6:45 A.M. PDT (9:45 A.M. EDT) Concourse Level, Mid-field Concourse Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. While the others had trundled off in search of food, Catherine Montes held back, creeping down a stalled escalator when no one was looking. She knew exactly where she wanted to go, and exactly what to look for when she got there. What she didn't know was how close to the edge her mind was straying. Unlike the others, who unbeknownst even to themselves had been in Stage 3, or "REM" sleep (short for Rapid Eye Movement) when the "event" occurred, Catherine was barely unconscious, dozing really. Half a dozen others in even lighter sleep hadn't crossed over at all. But the result of this closeness to wakefulness not only allowed her to be dragged along with the seven others across the transition--whatever that transition was--but had left her in a very dangerous spot. Her tenuous grip on reality had drastically lessened her grip on reality now. She now walked a razor-thin line between madness and sanity. And madness was winning. Striding briskly across the large empty room--the Airport Services department--Catherine ignored both the empty chairs and the large empty kiosk marked INFORMATION. At the far end of the room above a darkened corridor was a sign. It read: AIRPORT SECURITY That was the place she wanted. She had almost reached the head of the corridor when, glancing toward one of the wide, tarmac level windows, her pace faltered. She slowly approached the glass and looked outside. "What?" she whispered. Other than the Boeing 767 she had just departed, there was nothing but wide empty concrete and the moveless blue sky; her eyes began to widen nonetheless. Fear stole into her heart. They're coming, a long dead voice said. "What?" she whispered, again. They're coming, the dead voice repeated. It was the voice of her mother. It spoke to her from a small, haunted mausoleum tucked away deep inside Catherine Montes's brain. "No," she whimpered. The word formed a little blossom of fog on the window. "No one is coming." You've been bad, the voice said. Worse, you've been whorish! "No!" Yes. You had a showdown with David Twomy this afternoon and you ran away. You ran away with a bunch of losers and freaks! "It wasn't my fault," she protested. She gripped the window mullion to her right with almost painful tightness. "I was taken against my will. I... I was shanghaied!" No reply from that long ago voice. Only waves of disdain. Catherine intuited the pressure she was under, the terrible, never-ending pressure, the weight of her own name. THEY were here, her mother said. And they will return. You know that, don't you, Catherine Marie?" Catherine knew. The langoliers would be back. Their job, their mission in life was to prey upon lazy, promiscuous women like her. She had never seen them, but she knew how horrible they would be. And she was not alone in her knowledge, oh-no. That little blonde girl knew something about them too. Catherine could tell by the way she had listened. Pulling herself away from the window, away from the stillness outside, Catherine plunged into the corridor beneath the sign. She came to a door with a small rectangular plaque mounted just above a peephole. AIRPORT SECURITY, it said. All of this... this craziness, she thought. It doesn't belong to me. I don't have to own it. She reached out and touched the door and pushed; the door swung easily open. Either it was left slightly unlatched or, like the entrance door they had come in, it had unlocked when the power went off. She didn't care which. The important thing was that she wouldn't need to muss her clothes crawling through an air-conditioning duct or something stupid like that. She had every intention of showing up for her Appropriations Committee meeting later that day and one of the simple, un-exceptioned truths of life was this: Girls with dirt on their clothes had no credibility. She pushed the door open and went inside. * Frank and Tanya were the first to reach "restaurant row." The others gathered around them. Surrounding them were contour plastic seats (many with coin-op TVs bolted to the arms). To their left was an empty kiosk filled with cellular telephones and paraphernalia, the floor-to- ceiling polarized windows looking out on the tarmac, another airport news stand and the security checkpoint serving Gate 12. To their right was The Gridiron Bar and The Mile High Restaurant. Beyond the restaurant was the corridor leading to the Main Terminal loading dock. "Come on," Frank said. "We'll just--" "Wait!" It was Jessica and she spoke with such urgency that everyone turned to stare. Frank speared her with a look of annoyance. "What is it, Jess?" Tanya asked. Jess closed her eyes and performed a graceful but comical looking pirouette. She stopped midway through the second turn. She then stood there, listening. "What is it?" Frank repeated. Jessica issued a strong "Shhh!" and completed her turn. She stood facing the floor-to-ceiling windows. When she opened her eyes again, she seemed unsurprised to be facing that way. "There," she said in a low, uncertain voice. Anxiety touched Jill's heart. She was not alone in her angst. Christine had crowded close to Gregory's side, and Tanya had moved in against her own. Frank, however, gave an impatient sigh and Jill sensed he was mentally counting. Just as he appeared ready to open his mouth, Jessica opened hers. "The sound is... there," she said. "What sound?" Frank demanded. Everyone canted their heads. Walking almost like a sleep-walker, Jessica crossed to the glass and placed her right hand against it. She hurriedly drew it away. "I can hear it," she said. "From out there." Jill looked down to see that she had crossed her arms across her chest and was clutching herself hard. She heard her own breathing, and the breathing of the others... but nothing else. It's her imagination, she thought. Just her imagination. But still she wondered. Tanya joined Jessica at the window. "What is it you hear, Jess?" "I don't know," Jessica said, staring out through the glass. "It's faint. I thought I heard it a few minutes ago when we came upstairs, but decided it was just my imagination. Now I can hear it very plain. Even through the glass. It sounds--" she paused, furrowing her brow "- -like the crackling on an old cassette tape. Only without the music." Behind Jill, Christine turned to Gregory and asked in a whispered voice. "Do you hear anything?" Gregory shook his head. "I have to tell you though, I am totally weirded out. This place needs some sound." "I think it's hysteria," Christine whispered, almost into Gregory's ear. Although she could not hear Christine's words, Jill caught his blink of pleasure--and embarrassment. Jessica turned from the window. Her face was vermilion. "I am not imagining it!" she exclaimed. "If you can't hear it, then go outside! I'm sure you'll hear it then!" She pointed due east through the glass. Her eyes, wet with angry tears, swept over them. "It's a sound that scares the shit out of me, too! I want it to go away." Everyone looked astonished, especially Tanya, who stood at Jessica's side. Her expression said she had heard nothing of the whispered conversion. Christine blinked rapidly half a dozen times, and mumbled an apology. Solomon moved forward. "If you know what it it, Jess, that probably would help." Jessica shook her head. "I don't know what it is. I only know that it's closer than it was before." She looked apprehensively out the glass. "We need to get out of here, Solomon. We don't want to be around when that sound arrives." Frank said, "Jess, the plane is low of fuel. We're not going anywhere." "Then put some more in," she cried. "Because, I'm telling you, Frank! Whatever is out there is not something we want to meet face to face! Not if we want to live!" With that, Jessica brushed roughly past Tanya and Frank and stomped tight-fisted toward the opposite side of the room. Her blonde hair swept behind her listlessly in the motionless air. As she passed by, Solomon made to grab her arm with his uninjured hand--so much for the medical office, Jill thought--but she side-stepped him neatly. "Leave me alone!" she hissed. She stopped before the entrance to the Mile High restaurant and stood looking in. Shocked and confused, Jill looked from the angry young girl to the still-life scene outside. Although she heard nothing of the crackling noise, she absolutely believed that anything alive in this lifeless world was nothing she'd want to meet. * Catherine heard the blonde brat begin to carry on somewhere upstairs and ignored her. She had found what she wanted and, unsnapping the strap on the leather holster, she withdrew the nine-millimeter automatic and held it up to see. She moved into the open doorway where the light was better and ejected the clip. It was full. The gun belonged to a TSA agent named Reginald Lawrence (a black name for sure, she thought, grinning tightly) which she had found in an unlocked locker along with a cell phone and a can of Mace. The cell phone didn't work, of course, but that didn't surprise her. What mattered was the fully loaded clip and the box of shells on the top shelf. And the fact that the trigger guard was not installed. That had been on the shelf alongside the box of shells, another testament to the fuck-you attitude of some big black stud. And a big black stud he would certainly be, she knew, based on her first-hand knowledge of airport security guards. And a black man with a gun-- legally or otherwise--was always a stud. Checking the safety, Catherine slapped the magazine home and chambered a round. She raised the gun and taking up a three point stance, sighted along the barrel. She kept her trigger finger outside the guard, but couldn't stop the finger from twitching. She smiled again. Then the smile faded as she realized it was the American Airlines Boeing 767 she had sighted on. She lowered the gun. Her gaze dropped. She turned around and without warning the most intense feeling of loneliness gripped her. She was twelve years old again, alone in her bedroom, shivering beneath the bedclothes as in the next room over, her mother banged relentlessly away in bed. The bed's headboard sounded the fucking couple's rhythm in an almost musical beat. She listened to the chuffs and the grunts, the gasps and the squeals, the urgent commands to move this way or that, squeeze now or grip harder, spread that damn thing wider white bitch! No! she had thought desperately, clamping her eyes. I will not cry! I will not tell mommy that her precious stud muffin had plucked the delicate petals from her own precious flower, that she, Catherine also knew how to gasp and to squeal, to squeeze now or grip harder, and to spread that damn thing wider, white bitch! "I don't want to hurt anyone," Catherine muttered, through her tears. "I don't want to, but this... this is intolerable." She looked again out the windows. For a moment, the truth of what had happened, what was still happening, hit home. It broke through her complex system of defensive shields and into the air-raid shelter in which she had retreated. Everyone is gone, Cathy-wathy. The whole world is gone except for you and the people who were with you on that airplane. "No," she moaned, collapsing against the wall. "That's not so. That's just not so at all. I reject that idea on the grounds it's a plot to keep me away from David Twomy." No, the voice insisted. The langoliers were here, and you better be gone when they get back... or you know what will happen. Catherine knew of course. They would eat her. The would gobble her right up. Worse, they would tear her clothing to shreds, pitch her screaming and flailing through the air like a bonsai badminton puck, and then devour her in malicious little bites until nothing was left but her screaming mouth and her bugged out eyes. As they did in her dreams. The langoliers would eat her all up. Crossing to a desk in the center of the room, Catherine lay the automatic down upon a stack of reports. Then, as though unaware of her actions, she slowly raised the hem of her dress up to her waist, slid her thumbs beneath the waistband of her pantyhose, and slid them down to her knees. Sitting back in the chair, she then kicked off her high heels and removed her pantyhose completely and sat them on the desktop alongside the gun. Pushing back from the desk, she raised up and placed her heels on either corner of the desk, She spread wide her legs. "I don't want to hurt anyone," she repeated in a distant, low voice. Still looking unaware of her actions, she slid aside the crotch of her white Victoria's Secret panties, touched the bulge of her baby-clean vulva and moaned deep within her throat. "I won't hurt anyone," she whispered. "Not unless I have to." Locating the nub of her clitoris, she began to rub it gently. It felt very good. In fact, it felt wonderful. Continuing this pleasurable massage, she allowed the fingertips of her left hand to glide gently over her genitals which, thanks to the miracle of modern day technology were permanently free of hair--as were her legs and her underarms--and slip stealthily inside. "Ummm," she moaned softly as the finger on her clitoris continued going round and round. Her chest visibly rose and fell. Soon she was hypnotized as breath fluttered in and out of her lungs but, even as she danced around the fringes of her orgasm, the cold, niggering voice of her mother would not entirely leave her alone. Be gone, it said, or you know what will happen when the langoliers arrive. Catherine knew, all right, but left that problem for later. * The silence following Jessica's outburst was finally broken by Solomon. Gently rubbing the pad of his right thumb over the makeshift bandage, he said: "If Jessica hears something outside--and I for one believes she does--it would be helpful if we knew what it was. It would also be helpful if we could come up with an idea for getting more fuel." She looked expectantly at their pilot. "I don't like the idea of being stranded here, Frank." Frank said, "Neither do I, but I'd like to know where we'd go." "Away from here!" Jessica called loudly from across the room. "How much fuel do we have, Frank? Really?" Frank considered. "Maybe an hour's worth. Maybe a little bit more. But again, where would we go?" Jessica turned back to face them. "Away. Away from that sound." Jill interjected herself into the conversation. "When we were landing, I saw a big jet out near the runway, a United Airlines jet. Could you pilot that if you had to, Frank? Or use it to fuel us up?" Frank looked doubtful. "There are other aircraft out there as well," Tanya pointed out, "pulled up to the jetways. Can you fly one of those?" "Yes," Frank said. "Depending on the make and model. And I seem to remember one 767 out there, at least." Tanya raised her eyebrows in a Well, that's one problem solved, expression and from across the room, Jessica said: "Good. The sooner the better." Tanya left the window and moved halfway between Jessica and the group. "How far is it away?" she asked gently. "The noise. Do you have any idea?" Jessica bit her lip. "A ways off, I think. It fades in and out. Right now I can barely hear it. But... " "Then I suggest we do exactly what Solomon suggested," Frank said. "And get something to eat. I for one am very hungry." "Me too," Gregory seconded. "Uh, huh," Christine chimed in. "We shouldn't wait," Jessica said fretfully. "Fifteen minutes. Twenty tops. Then we can beat this thing around and hash it out. Okay?" Everyone, other than Jessica, nodded their heads. * The Mile High Restaurant was little more than a glorified cafeteria. A trio of cold-drink cases ran along one wall, with a pair of sandwich, burger and sub cold-cases against the other. Between them were cheap plastic chairs around half a dozen circular tables; a stainless-steel deli counter ran lengthwise across the back. All the bins and compartments in the counter were empty, all spotlessly clean. There wasn't a speck of grease on the floor, the counter or the grill. The bottles of cola, juice and other soft-drinks inside the drink cases were placed with their labels facing front. "More perfect housekeeping," Jill observed, walking behind the deli counter and up to a shelf. She fingered the perfectly positioned and sparkling new rows of glasses. Frank shot her a pointed look, then opened the first drink case and removed a bottle of Gatorade. Solomon, standing by the cash register and continuing to rub his palm, said, "Okay. Can I have another cigarette, Christine?" "Mooch," she said, crinkling her mouth. "Next time, buy your own." Producing her box of Marlboro's, she shook one free. Solomon took it, but shook his head to the proffered matches. "Let's try one of these," he said, fishing a book from a green and red wicker basket beside the cash register. Christine shrugged and pulled out a cigarette of her own. Opening a book of matches emblazoned with the familiar red and white Marlboro logo--an attractive young woman in tight jeans with a pack of cigarettes protruding from her rear pocket graced the cover--Solomon clumsily pulled one free and glanced at the others. They all stared back. Everyone seemed to understand this was an important test. Other than leaving a track of white on the black striker, the match did nothing. Solomon struck it again with the same result. On the third try, the tip of the match broke off. "Well, shit," Christine said. "Let me try." Grabbing a fresh book of matches, she pulled one out and tried to light it against the back. It didn't light. She tried it again. She tried it with half a dozen more when the first one broke, and then with a different pack altogether. "Son of a bitch!" she said. "I don't get this." "Try it with your own," Solomon directed. Christine, looking unhappy as hell, fingered her own pack without a word. "Solomon?" Jill said. "What do you know?" "Only that this situation has worse implications than we originally thought." His eyes were calm, but a tick had started up in his right temple. "I have an idea that we've all made a wrong assumption about what happened on that airplane. Until we get it right, I don't think there's any getting on top of this problem." Taking Christine's pack of matches out of her hand, he pulled one free and struck it against the back. It lit on the first strike. "Okay," he said, and looked at the flame. He applied it to the tip of his cigarette, and then to Christine's. They both sucked down smoke. They both blew it out. To Jill, it smelled almost divine. Then she realized that it was the only thing she smelled. She turned and inspected Tanya's neck. "What?" Tanya asked. Jill looked away in embarrassment. "Nothing," she said. But she remembered the distinct, if very light smell of Tanya's perfume on the plane. "So what does this tell us?" Gregory demanded. Solomon held the burning match between his fingertips until it was almost burned down. Bending back the top of the book he'd taken from the red and white bowl, and exposing all the tips, he touched the lit match to their ends. For a long moment nothing happened. Then, with a pfffff of weak ignition, the heads flared into life and ignited the ones next in line. Barely visible flame traversed from the center out to the ends, and then went out. A few wisps of smoke drifted lazily upward. Jill smelled sulfur... but just barely. "That," Solomon said, answering Gregory's question. "Is your answer." At that moment, Frank uttered a cry of disgust. Jessica, standing to his right, gave a little cry and danced away; Jill felt her heart take a skip. "What's wrong?" Gregory demanded. Instinctively, he had embraced Christine about the shoulders and moved her away. She blinked big-eyed in response and he self- consciously removed his arm. "It's bad!" Frank exclaimed. He had uncapped the bottle of Gatorade and taken a swallow, then spat it out on the floor. Wetness formed an exclamation point on the carpet. "Bad?" Solomon asked. His eyes flicked from the bottle in Frank's hand to the glass-fronted drink case. "Are you sure?" Frank stared leary-eyed at the bottle. "Maybe not bad, but... something." He wiped his mouth. "Is it cold?" Solomon asked. "Yes... no. Room temperature." Solomon crossed to the drink case closest and opened the door. He felt amongst the rows of bottles on each level; glass clanked dully. When he removed a bottle of diet Coke and unscrewed the cap, there was no escape of compressed gas, no bubbling of the dark liquid at all. The drink was flat. Closely watched by the others, he brought the bottle to his lips and tasted it. He pulled it quickly away. "That's bad too?" Christine said. Her voice held a note of tremulation. Jill felt dread as well. For if the liquids here were somehow poisoned, it would be a very short stay. Solomon took another sip, then a long pull. He gulped the liquid down. "It's okay," he said, wiping his mouth. "Just pretty... tasteless." Frank sniffed the mouth of his bottle of Gatorade and concurred. "Like water, almost." Tanya took a whiff of the bottle, then Jill. It wasn't entirely odorless, she realized, but like the burning matches, only marginally there. She took a sip, swallowing experimentally. The taste was like nothing she could describe. She handed Frank back the bottle. "Thanks, but I'll stick to water." Reopening the drink case, Solomon removed four bottles of Dasani bottled water and passed them around. "What about food?" Gregory asked, looking at the neatly placed rows of offerings in the sandwich cases. "Think they're okay?" "I should think so," Solomon said. "Stuff like that has preservatives enough in it to embalm them forever. Beside, it's been what? Just a few hours since the power went out." "A few hours, our time," Christine observed. Setting his mouth in a grim line, Solomon said, "Only one way to find out." Except for Jessica, who had walked to the entrance and stood listening to the sound of the phantom menace, they formed a semi-circle around the right-hand case. "What strikes your fancy?" Christine asked. Solomon shrugged. Sandwiches, cut in half and packed in triangular plastic containers, filled the top four racks of the case. He opened the door and selected a container; sliced turkey on rye. No cheese and no Mayo, Jill thought. Nothing to go bad. Examining the label, Solomon showed the container around. The expiration date was seven days away. "It's fresh," he said. "Probably made just today." "Probably," Christine agreed. But her tone and the hunched position of her shoulders said otherwise. Gregory looked as though he wanted to put his arm back around her and Jill wished someone felt that way about her. Then she realized someone did. Unconsciously, she had bumped against Tanya's shoulder and Tanya had bumped her right back. Jill felt her skin tingle. "It's cool at least," Solomon said, peeling back the label. He sniffed and nodded his head. Carefully removing half of the sandwich from the container, he smelled it again, then lifted back one corner of the bread. The sliced turkey was freshly white. He took a bite and Jill saw an expression of disgust pass over his face--but he did not get rid of the food. He chewed once... twice... "Man!" Moving hurriedly to the closest trash can, he pushed back the lid and spat the the turkey sandwich out. He rinsed with a gulp of bottled water and spat that out as well. "Spoiled," Frank said. "Not spoiled. Just tasteless." His mouth puckered, as though from a bite of lemon. He opened the flap of the trash container again and dropped in the remainder of the once-bitten sandwich inside. He kept the second half in his hand. "Like rubber," he said. "I'm not even sure it was food. It was more like... like... " "Like a food display?" Christine ventured. Jill thought of those realistic looking fake deserts they show you in restaurants. "Yeah, like that," Solomon said. He offered the remaining sandwich-half around. No one volunteered. "Thought so," he mumbled, sending the second half after the first. "So what do we do now?" Gregory wanted to know. "We get away from here," Jessica said from twenty feet away. "As soon as we can." * Catherine sat very still in the chair. Her legs quivered and her chest labored up and down--otherwise she was motionless. You have to act soon, her mother's voice warned. Or they'll be back. Catherine wagged her head from side to side. "In a minute. I need to rest." Rest is for the lazy, the voice said. Or the whorish. "I am not a whore," Catherine said aloud. You are not a model of virtue, either, my dear. Catherine stirred, unhappily. "Why can't you just leave me alone, mother? How old do I have to be out of your grasp?" When you act like an adult, her mother said. "I'm forty years old!" Don't raise your voice to me, Catherine Marie. Catherine settled back, dejectedly. She mumbled things under her breath. What was that? "Nothing." For a time, neither Catherine nor her mother spoke. She slid the crotch of her panties back in place--they were wet, despite her best efforts to keep them safe--and lowered her dress. She sat up and smoothed out the wrinkles. "There," she said, taking a deep breath. "I feel better now." Her mother's voice said nothing. It didn't have to. Catherine felt her contempt. You have nothing to say to me, mother, she thought, remembering the thudding headboard against her bedroom wall. At least I'm not married. For some reason Catherine didn't understand, her unspoken thoughts were unhearable by her mother. Good thing too, otherwise she'd surely get spanked. Spanked. Now there was a double-entender word. She hadn't been spanked by a parent since she was thirteen. Only by her lovers. But like the many men (and the occasional woman) who had taken Catherine Montes bare-bottomed over their knees, Catherine's father always paddled his offspring naked... naked, kicking and screaming in front of everyone in the house, regardless of age, sex or the severity of their crimes. It was her worst memory as a child... and her fondest as an adult. It was time to go. Picking up the gun and her purse, Catherine stood up and left the room. She walked slowly, rehearsing as she went: My fight is not with you, it's with David Twomy. Take me to see David Twomy. My fight is not with you, it's with David Twomy. Take me to see David Twomy. Her thumb found the hammer of the gun and pulled it back, locking it with a dull snick-click. Halfway across the room, her attention was once again captured by the high, wide windows and the airplane just beyond. It was the only thing with depth. The langoliers are coming, she thought. They were here before and ate all the promiscuous, slatternly people; now they were returning for her. She had to see David Twomy first. She had to set things right. She couldn't save the others--their death would be horrible indeed-- and probably not herself either, but things had to be set right before the miserable creatures arrived. Heading for the waiting and silent escalator stairs, she cocked and uncocked the gun. * Upstairs in the Mile High Restaurant, Solomon performed an experiment. Pouring a measure of liquid from half a dozen bottles into glasses set side by side, he observed with the others the results. Coca-Cola, Dr.Pepper, Heineken and Michelob beer: the contents of each was flat. "So what's that prove?" Christine asked. "We already know something's wrong." "Yeah," Frank said. "If you know what's going on here, Solomon, just spill it. We don't have all day." "But I think we do," Solomon said, "and that is what worries me most." Christine said: "Huh?" Solomon lowered his head and rubbed his brow. "Look around you," he said. "Tell me what you see?" They all looked around. Jill, for one, saw only the clean but lonely looking collection of tables and chairs and the glass-fronted cases. She felt rather stupid, as though missing something important in plain sight. But she was not alone. Tanya said, "I'm sorry, Solomon, but I don't see a thing. What are we looking for?" Solomon answered: "Airports are like police stations. They're open twenty-four hours a day. When this thing happened, it was probably around five a.m. Not the busiest time of the day, but certainly not the deadest either. There should have been delivery people about, cleaning personnel, aircraft maintenance people, people arriving for the earliest flights. Yet we saw no one. Correction, we saw evidence of no one." "And the gates," Tanya said. "The gates were all up." Again, Christine said, "Huh?" Tanya said: "I fly all the time and I never see a concession gate up before six a.m. It's like a regulation, or something." "So what?" Christine demanded. "That makes a difference?" "It makes a big difference," Solomon replied. "As much as the clocks." "Them again," she sighed. "What I'm getting at is that we saw evidence of the event on the plane. Half-eaten meals, half-empty glasses, the drinks trolley in the middle of the aisle. Not to mention clothing and watches and purses and loose change. There is nothing like that here. Nothing whatsoever. It's like no one was here when the event occurred." Jill looked around again. She felt like blinders had been lifted from her eyes. "You're right," she said. "The place is completely abandoned, sterile almost. Like it was--" "Waiting?" Jill shuddered and nodded her head. Somehow, the idea of an airport just waiting, like a parked car beside the curb, was more disturbing than the disappearances themselves. "When we were on the airplane," Solomon said, "I was thinking of the Mary Celeste." "Right!" Gregory said, snapping his fingers. "The abandoned ship." "It was found drifting off the coast of Africa, still under full sail; they had to chase her down in order to board. They almost got outraced. Anyway, what they found was a ship with no people on it." "No crew, no passengers, no nothing," Gregory added. "Only their stuff. Someone even found a pipe lying on the foredeck and food in preparation in the galley." "They say it was still lit," Gregory said, sounding awed. "The pipe I mean. And the food was still cooking on the stoves." Solomon said, "I won't comment on that. But there was another famous disappearance off the coast of North Carolina. The colony at Roanoke Island. They disappeared as well, leaving behind remains of campfires, open houses, and partially completed work. There was even a half-butchered cow being dressed. The rescuers found nothing but a strange name carved into a tree." "Croatoan," Gregory said. Solomon nodded. "Sound familiar?" "You really think we've flown into some kind of other dimension?" Christine asked. "Like in a science-fiction story or something?" "A bad science-fiction story," Frank appended. "No," Solomon said. "I think we--" "Hey!" Jessica cried sharply. "What are you--" "Shut the fuck up!" They all turned to find Catherine holding Jessica in a choke-hold. She pointed a gun at the group, swinging it back and forth. Jessica uttered a desperate, terrorized squawk and tried to pull herself free. "Be still! I don't want to hurt you," Catherine said to everyone, and to no one in particular. "But I will if I have to. Take me into the city!" Her eyes were hard and narrowed and constantly scanning the others. "Do you hear me? I want to go into the city!" "No!" Jessica yelped. "We have to leave!" "You shut up!" Catherine hissed. She yanked hard enough to make Jessica dance on her toes. Solomon started forward but Tanya restrained him with a hand. "No," she said. "No one move." She directed her words to Catherine. "Put down the gun, Catherine. Let Jessica go." Jessica continued to squirm on her tiptoes and her face was an alarming red. "You're choking her, Catherine. Let her go." "Not until I get what I want," Catherine said. Her voice was low and controlled. "Now, who's going to drive me in?" None of the others moved, nor said a word. Jessica continued to fight. Her eyes were bright with fear and locked on the sights of the gun. It pointed directly at Tanya. "Quit struggling, Jess." Tanya said softly. "Stop it now." Jessica halted her movements. Catherine loosened her grip and Jessica began to breath again. "That's better," Tanya said. "Now, why do you want to go into the city, Catherine?" Catherine's eyes narrowed further. "That's my business." "What concerns you, concerns us." Catherine shook her head. "You wouldn't understand." "Try me." Catherine hesitated, looking from one group member to the other, and just as she seemed on the verge of speaking, Jessica's right foot raised up and came down hard on her arch. Everyone--Catherine included--yelled at once. Gregory leaped forward. "Gregory, no!" Christine and Tanya yelled together. Catherine lost her hold on Jessica but not on the gun. Her hand swung right and then left, making everyone scatter. Everyone but Gregory, who ducked and ran like a middle linebacker up the line. Coming up beneath Catherine's arm, he yanked Jessica free and pushed her roughly to the ground. Solomon and Frank then sprang forward at the same instant, coming from the left and the right. They had almost made it to Catherine when she let loose an enraged shriek and the gun fired with a dull pop. Fifteen feet away, Jill staggered backwards and clutched at her chest. Tripping over her own feet, she sat down hard on her behind and blinked disbelievingly at her chest. There was blood. There was also pain. And then there was only darkness. Chapter 9 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 7:50 A.M. PDT (10:50 A.M. EDT) Concourse Level, Mid-field Concourse Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. She was in the restaurant, laying on her back. Tanya was above her, slowly speaking her name and stoking her hair. Jill realized her head was again cradled in Tanya's lap. She had a bruising pain in her chest. "She's coming around," Gregory said. Frank and Gregory hove into view. "You okay? Frank asked "What happened?" "You fainted," Tanya said, looking up at the others. Jill complained: "Again?" Then she remembered the shot. "It's okay," Tanya said, as Jill struggled to feel her chest. "You're not badly hurt." "I'm not?" "Not badly." Jill raised a bloodied hand. "The bullet penetrated your left breast," Tanya said. "About half an inch." "It fell out," Gregory said. Jill realized her blouse was fully open, leaving her bare-chested and exposed. "It's okay," Tanya said. "Solomon's gone for a bandage. He'll be right back." She closed the sides of Jill blouse over her chest as Frank and Gregory exchanged uncomfortable looks. "I thought I was dead," Jill said. She heard the awe in her voice. The look in Tanya's eyes said that she had as well. "You're fine," she assured, and then her eyes overflowed with tears. Jill encircled her shoulders and pulled Tanya down to her neck. They cried together. Now the others must really look embarrassed, she thought. She didn't care. She cared only that she was alive and in Tanya's arms. * "That should do the trick," Tanya said. Jill sat in one of the cheap plastic chairs, bare-chested again, but only herself, Tanya and Christine were in the room. The wound was closed by butterfly bandages, covered by a sterile gauze pad covered with antibiotic cream. The bleeding had almost stopped. "Thank you," Jill said. Tanya smiled. "It's what I do for a living, remember? I only wish there was some way to suture you up. But I don't think you'd appreciate five or six stitches without anesthetic." "I don't think so either," Jill said, closing her blouse and buttoning it up. She had removed her useless brassiere. "Is Catherine all right?" A grin crossed Christine's face. She looked at the entrance to the restaurant, beyond which voices could be heard. It was the three men, outside with Catherine Montes. "I think she's okay," Tanya said. Gregory, frantic to stop any further shooting, had decked the hysterical Catherine with one wild punch. "Can you stand up?" Jill rose cautiously from the plastic chair. Christine and Tanya hovered either side. "I'm okay," she said, holding the edge of the table for support. "Just a little rattled." From outside on the concourse, Solomon called in: "Things all right in there?" Tanya called back: "You can come in now. We're done." Solomon, Frank, Gregory and Jessica came into the room. The men stopped in a rough semi-circle five feet away, while Jessica hurried over to Jill and gave her a big hug. "I'm sorry," she said, her expression somewhat shame-faced; she was on the verge of tears. "Don't be. You're not the only one that faints at the sight of blood." This drew an uncomfortable laugh from the others. Taking a step back, but holding onto Jill's forearms, Jessica nodded uncertainly. For a long moment there was silence, then Solomon said: "If it's any consolation, Catherine swears she didn't mean to shoot you, Jill. Says the gun just went off." "Where is she," Jill asked. "Is anyone with her?" Solomon cracked a grin. "Tied up. Very well tied up. We don't have to worry about her for the time being." Jill felt un-reassured. "What was she talking about, anyway? Going into the city?" Solomon shrugged. "Haven't had the opportunity to ask her yet." "Why not?" The three men exchanged looks. Gregory offered a sheepish grin. "Well... she, uh... she was yelling so loud when she woke up that I put surgical tape over her mouth. From the First Aid kit," at which point Christine broke into delighted laughter which made Gregory grow all the more redder. The two exchanged a hasty, though meaningful look, which embarrassed Gregory even more. "Anyway," he muttered. "I used the whole roll." Christine moved deliberately to Gregory's side and made a point of shooting him a quick, "maybe I like you, after all" look. Gregory grew beet red. Waiting out a momentary wave of dizziness, Jill asked, "So who has the gun?" "I do," Frank said, patting his coat pocket. The gun was plainly visible in outline. "I also have this," he said, extending his right hand. Between forefinger and thumb he held a bullet. "A little souvenir." Jill did not extend her hand. "No, thank you. I had it once already." Frank said, "I'd make the fucking bitch eat it, myself." "Frank!" Tanya exclaimed. Frank turned to her. "It was a misfire," he said. "Otherwise the girl'd be dead. I think a little anger is well-deserved under the circumstances." "Are you sure it was a misfire?" Solomon asked. "I'm not so certain about that." "You mean the matches?" Gregory asked. "Yes." Solomon rubbed his jaw, thoughtfully. "There must have been just enough oomph in the powder to get the bullet out. A little more oomph and it could have penetrated her lungs." Thanks, Jill thought, experiencing a shiver. "What do you think is wrong with her?" "Catherine?" Solomon asked. "Well, I'm not sure what brought on this gun waving business, whether it was the disappearances or what, but I think she has definitely slipped a cog." Christine chimed in: "A whole bag of them." "She's exhibited steadily worsening behavior since we woke up on the plane. Demanding answers when answers were obviously out of our reach, refusing to accept Frank's authority, heading off on her own. I have to assume she's been pushed past the limits of reason." Christine said, "She needs a good shrink." Solomon gave a sorrowful laugh. His hand was finally bandaged, Jill saw, although blood had spotted through. He rubbed it absentmindedly. "Afraid that's a bit out of reach right now. Best we can do at the moment is keep her restrained." "Very well, I hope," Jill murmured. She felt very unsettled about Catherine, bound or not, especially out of sight. Frank said: "We cut strips off of a tablecloth and wove them into thin, very strong braids. Then we bound her hand and foot. She's not going anywhere, Jill, you have my word." "I'd still like to see," Jill said. The rest of the group escorted her outside. Despite knowing what to expect, the sight of a United States senator laying hog-tied on the floor, the lower half of her head bound in surgical tape--Jill could well imagine what an ordeal getting her hair free of the tape would be--brought an instant pang of sympathy. "Can't you at least sit her up?" she said. "Or put down something to lay on?" Frank gave her a look saying, don't try my patience, okay? Then he said to Solomon, "Would you like to pick up where you left off, before we were so rudely interrupted?" Solomon looked at him, dazed and blinking. "What?" "Your hypothesis," Frank said. "You were comparing Flight 74 with the Mary Celeste?" Solomon looked lost for words. Finally, clearing his throat and looking askance at Catherine on the floor--she returned his glance with a hell-fire glare--he said: "I was offering a correlation between our plight and theirs." Catherine made sudden angry noises through her surgical tape gag and kicked at Solomon's feet. He backed away. Jill understood Catherine's indignant, "Let me up!" even through the gag. The surrealness of the situation was compounded by the muted thud of her heels on the carpet and the muffled sounds of her cries. "Shut the hell up, Catherine," Frank warned. "Before I take you over my knee." Despite her instantaneous expression of outrage, Jill thought there was something more to Frank's threat than simple intimidation. Especially when Catherine cut her eyes around to see who may have understood. Solomon, after clearing his throat for the second time, continued: "I think we've all made the wrong assumption about what happened on the plane. When the rest of the passengers disappeared and we began to find out how wrong things were on the ground--" "And in the sky," Christine said. "--and the sky too, yes, we immediately assumed something happened to the rest of the world. An easy enough assumption to make, given we were fine and everything else had gone to shit. But the evidence doesn't support that. I think what happened, happened only to us. I think the rest of the world is just cruisin' along just as hunky-dorry as ever, hardly missing us at all. Only the eight passengers Flight 74 are lost. Lost and without a whole hell of a lot of possibility of getting back." "Maybe I'm just dumb," Christine complained, after a moment's intense thought, "but I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about." "Me either," Jessica said. Neither did Jill, but from the expectant look on Gregory's face, she suspected he did. Solomon said: "There's been other high profile disappearances besides the Mary Celeste. Amelia Earhart in the Pacific back in 1938, the squadron of Navy P-51's just after the war--" "The Bermuda Triangle," Gregory interjected, excitedly. "Back in 1945!" "Yes, exactly. They received a garbled transmission from the flight leader, saying his instruments had all gone haywire, then they disappeared." "And the rescue plane disappeared as well," Gregory added. "Just the same way." "Anyway, what I'm getting at is that each of these disappearances took place at sea, or very close to the sea, as in Roanoke Island. In fact, there've been so many disappearances at sea, people have made fortunes writing up their stories." Gregory said: "I've read every single one." He glanced around as the others laughed, his grin turning wry. "I just never expected to be in the middle of one, you know?" The others--except Catherine Montes--laughed again. "What about over land, though?" Christine asked. "I've never heard of that." "It happens with small planes," Frank said, "all the time. About sixty years ago, it actually happened with a commercial airliner. This was back in 1955 or '56. There were about a hundred people aboard. Out of Denver bound for San Francisco, and right about seven o'clock, the pilot made last contact with the Reno tower. Then it disappeared. There was a massive search, of course, but since it went down over the Rockies... well, it may never be found." Solomon nodded thoughtfully. "They might as well not have even looked." Jill threw up her hands in frustration. "Solomon! This is all great as a history lesson, but what do you know?" She grimaced from the pain in her chest. "If you don't tell me what's going on... I swear to God I'll go just as crazy as Catherine!" Catherine thumped both heels on the carpet in answer. She shouted muffled obscenities around her gag. Jill looked at her uncomfortably, muttering an obtuse apology, then moved a step further away. Christine echoed Jill's thoughts. "I'll probably go nutzo whether you explain it not," she said. "But a little light at the end of tunnel wouldn't hurt." Solomon gave a sigh. "Okay, let's count the things down. First, there's a mess on the airplane, but nothing down here. Second, power's out here, but the food and drinks should still be cold, sitting there in their cases. But they're right at room temperature. Then there's the matches. Christine lit up on the plane and also down here, and her matches worked fine. The matches from the basket over there might as well be made of wood. Then the gun Catherine picked up from who knows where barely fired... thank, God for that... and the battery powered lights up there on the wall don't work." Everyone turned to follow Solomon's pointing finger. True enough, the emergency lighting throughout the entire concourse was out. "The clocks here all read twelve o'clock," he continued. "If the batteries had died, they would have stopped somewhere between four and six a.m. Instead, they seem to be waiting. The whole place seems to be waiting. We have ourselves a world where everything is newly-minted and waiting to be used. But things are like prop pieces in a play, or the background set of some movie... real looking but totally fake. Two dimensional, almost. We still give off scents--I can smell Tanya and Jill's perfume when we get close together--but everything else is practically odorless. The same is true for sounds. Flat and one- dimensional, as though heard from an old AM radio. They barely carry and they don't echo at all." As though offering up an example, Catherine chose that moment to erupt in a fit. Banging her heels on the carpeting and caterwauling around the gag, she nonetheless sounded almost distant. Jill was reminded of the dull clack-clack-clack of her heels climbing the steps. It was like the air didn't want to transmit sound. "I got worse news for you than that," Christine said."If you want to know." Solomon and everyone else turned to stare. Casting an uncertain look first at Gregory, who gave her an encouraging smile, she said: "You're not going to like this at all." "Go on." "It's the sun." "What about it?" Frank said. "It's not moving." Frank snorted and rolled his eyes. "That's impossible. Go away." Christine grew an angry red. "Look around yourself then!" she retorted. "You'll see!" Frank waved the suggestion aside. "There's some things even this weird place can't entertain," he said. "And that's one of them." With the exception of Solomon, everyone nodded in reluctant agreement... Solomon stared worriedly at one of the shadows cast across the floor. He followed the line of demarcation between light and shadow back to the tall concourse windows, and when he spoke, his voice wavered a bit. "What makes you say that, Christine?" "Because," she said, "when I sat my pack of cigarettes down on the table over there... " everyone followed the direction of her pointed finger "... I lined it up edgewise with the shadow. That was fifteen minutes ago and the shadow hasn't moved." For a long moment, all eyes locked onto the red, white and black pack of Marlboro's. Then, en masse, they moved to encircle the table. Jill momentarily blocked the light, then scuttles hurriedly out of the way. As Christine had said, the long edge of the pack and the shadow neatly aligned. "You moved it," Frank said. "You had to have moved it. You just don't remember doing it." Christine shook her head. "I haven't been near this table since I first put it down. That was before Catherine... well, before Jill got shot. I've been over there ever since." Everyone stared hard at the shadow. They held their collective breaths. Because, Jill realized, if the shadow stayed put, and Christine were right... it meant a whole lot more was wrong with this picture than flat buildings and odorless beer. And that thought absolutely terrified her. "What if she's right?" Gregory said, after a thirty- second wait. "She isn't." "But what if she is?" Frank refused to budge. "First of all," he said. "the sun doesn't make the shadow move. The earth makes the shadow move, rotating on its axis. For the shadow not to move, the earth would have to be stopped. The earth weighs eighty billion billion tons. Its nine thousand miles in diameter. It travels through space at forty-thousand miles an hour. Nothing but the hand of God could alter its progression by even a single degree. And it would take the hand of God to stop it." Even as he said this, however, Jill realized that the shadow-line had maintained a hammer-lock on its position. The distance between it and the cigarette pack's edge hadn't changed even a millimeter. It should have moved, she thought, the sound of blood thudding in her ears. It should have moved a lot. But, as she continued to stare unblinkingly at the straight-edge of light, the tip-toeing specter of madness bared it's vicious claws. And that's when Jill perceived that a sound had impinged on the dreadful silence of the place. That some distant thing was out there in this flat-as-a- pancake world, heading determinedly this way. Some thing worse than the uncooperative knife-edge of light. It was the sound of death. "What is that?" she said in a tiny, high-pitched squeak. Tanya looked up. "What?" "That noise. That noise, what is it?" As a group, the others looked at her, then at the windows across the concourse, then concentrated their looks on Jessica. "I told you so," she said. Solomon broke away, then Frank, then everyone else. They scurried across the concourse to the tall plates of glass, Jessica trailing behind. Lining up at the glass, they all looked out. All except Jessica and Jill, who heard it well enough. "I told you," Jessica repeated. Barking out a "Sshhhh!" Frank leaned close to the glass. "What the hell is that?" The others shook their heads. Jill and Jessica exchanged looks. You have some really good ears, Jill thought, to have heard that before. Because, although the sound was there, it was still very faint. And from the expressions on Gregory's, Christine's and Tanya's faces, she wasn't sure they heard it at all. But she certainly did. And if her sense of direction was right, it was coming from the east. Jill felt the skin all over her upper body goose-flesh. She shivered violently. What had Jessica said: The crackling of an old cassette tape? To Jill it sounded more like the static of Solomon's old AM radio. But she agreed with Jessica about one thing; it sounded bad. It sounded very, very bad. Frank turned toward Solomon. "What do you make of that, Solomon? Any ideas?" "No," Solomon said. "Not even a clue. I'm not even sure I hear it." "You hear it, all right," Jessica said, softly. "You just don't want to admit it." Solomon gave her a worried look. "Is it closer?" he asked. Jessica nodded her head. The way she clutched herself across the chest, Jill knew she had goose-flesh as well. "How much closer?" Solomon asked. Jessica shrugged. "Not sure. A ways away yet, but closer." Tanya left the window and came to join Jill. "I don't hear it," she said, "But I have significant hearing loss in both ears. The higher frequencies, which is where it must be." Jill thought Tanya's hearing loss might have been fortunate. She hated hearing the sound. She said: "Jessica's right, we really need to leave." "No," Frank said. "What we really need is to find out what's going on, and then leave. Heading someplace else where the noise might be even closer, is not a good plan." "Then head west," Jessica said. "Away from the noise. Away from the east." "We don't know for sure that's where the noise is," Frank said. "It is!" Jessica insisted. Jill was reminded of high school football games in the fall, played on the athletic field of the high school behind her house. Although the front of her house faced away from the field, she often heard the boisterous cheering and the cacophonous loud speaker from the front, as sound bounced off the townhouses across the street. It had always fooled her guests. Still, she had a deep, if unprovable conviction, that the sound was only to the east. "I say we finish off where we left," Frank said, "and plot out a course of action." "I think he's right," Solomon said. "I think we should get out of here while we can," Christine disagreed. "Me too," Gregory said. Solomon shook his head. "Without a plan, we're just running around in the dark. Let's finish up what we started." The others, Jessica included, grudgingly agreed. They returned to where Catherine lay on the floor. "I'm undoing your feet," Frank told her. "So you can sit up. Any funny business and its back on the floor. Understand?" Catherine's eyes blazed anger, but she nodded agreement. Frank pulled loose the knots from around her ankles and she allowed herself to be stood up. They escorted her into the restaurant where Solomon and Frank guided her into a chair. "Stay put," Frank said. Catherine cursed him through the gag. "Bitch!" Catherine cursed again. "I'm not undoing your gag," Frank said. "So just forget-- " "She has to go the bathroom," Christine interrupted. "And so do I." "Me too," Jessica said. Tanya smiled apologetically and raised her hand. So did Jill. Frank, already red in the face, became even redder. Then he looked resigned. "Okay," he said. "All of you go." He handed the flashlight to Tanya. "Do not undo her hands," he said. "Someone will have to wipe her." Tanya and Christine assisted Catherine to her feet-- Jessica remained a safe distance away, as did Jill, their eyes watchful and a little scared--and the group of five headed toward the ladies bathroom. Exchanging looks, the three men smiled. "Women," Frank said, with mock disgust. One at a time, Gregory first, the three men went to the rear of the store, where Gregory had discovered a small, employee restroom. Not unexpectedly, there was no water in the bowl and no running water when Gregory tried the tap. He urinated in the empty bowl, the sound unexpectedly dull in the tiny room. When he came back out, he washed his hands using one of the bottles of Dasani bottled water. He wiped his hands on his pants. "Bet the girls love this," he said, grinning wryly. Both Frank and Solomon laughed. When the three of them went outside to await the return of the girls, Gregory's mouth fell open. Solomon muttered, "My God, who is this?" Christine had transformed from a frog into a princess. If not a princess, at least into a pretty young girl. The nose-stud was gone, as were the plethora of jewelry which had adorned her ears. Her fingers were also bare, save the third finger on her right hand. That sported a thin, silver heart-shaped ring with an inset diamond. Her face was devoid of make-up; no longer did she look like Rickie the Raccoon. And although unable to do much about her hair without the presence of water, she had at least brushed it out. "Wow!" Solomon commented. "It's a girl!" Christine shot him a mock-injured look. "Watch it," she said. Gregory, red-faced and shuffling from foot to foot, grinned ear-to-ear. After exchanging glances with Tanya and Jill, Jessica said: "I'd like to introduce Elise Gallo. She turned up in the ladies' restroom." Gregory's grin faltered. "What?" Christine looked at him, shrugging in a way that said, I'm sorry. "Kinda useless keeping up the disguise. Not like anyone here'll find me." Gregory said: "I don't understand." He was not the only one confused. Solomon stared at Christine/Elise for a moment with a furrowed brow, then said: "You're the missing Gallo wine heiress?" Elise said, "Yes." Further comment seemed to escape him, so he merely said: "I see." Frank had no such trouble. "You've been on the run for quite a while now," he observed. "Nearly a month." Elise fidgeted nervously. "I guess," she answered, defensively. "It's not like you think." The story was coming back to Jill. The heir to the orchards of Ernest and Julio Gallo, one of California's most celebrated landmarks, Elise Gallo had disappeared a month or more back. Kidnapping was suspected at first, but when no ransom note arrived and a week passed without word, the authorities's suspicions--and those of the press--turned to foul play. Two weeks later Elise was discovered in Portland, Washington, camped out at the home of a friend. She then disappeared again. Frank addressed Elise, levelly: "The FBI and half of law enforcement on the West Coast is looking for you, young lady." "I know that." Frank's face was a dangerous red. "It may seem like innocent fun hacking bank and corporate security systems, but when you start screwing around with air traffic control, you put lives at risk. Many lives. Being young and stupid doesn't exonerate you from responsibility. You should have given yourself up." Elise looked away. "I swear, I had nothing to do with that. I would never do anything to hurt another person, much less a whole plane load of them. You have to believe me." Frank grit his teeth. "LAX was shut down for two whole days. The whole fucking western region suffered recurring crashes for two weeks, and they still haven't got back up to snuff. Just two days ago Los Angeles Tracon failed again and two hundred flights had to be canceled. God only knows how many near misses there were. Two 727's came within feet of colliding! Do you know how many lives would have been lost?" Elise began to cry. "I didn't do it!" she exclaimed. "Somebody used my computer!" Frank's jaw muscles worked. "You expect me to believe that?" Elise yelled: "I don't care what you believe! I didn't kill those people!" "What people?" Jill cried in horror, although she already knew. "The people on Flight 701!" Jill fainted dead away. Chapter 10 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 9:05 A.M. PDT (12:05 PM. EDT) Concourse Level, Mid-field Concourse Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. She awoke this time out on the concourse, on her back again, but this time on a row of cushioned seats. Once again, Tanya rubbed her hair. "What happened?" she asked. Tanya smiled sadly. "You fainted again." "Three times," Jill groaned. "I'm setting a record." Tanya's eyes held only sadness. "It was about the plane," she said. "Wasn't it?" Tanya nodded. "She didn't do it, Jill." "What?" "Elise and her friends were breaking into systems all over the county, disrupting public utilities, stealing bank records, stuff like that. They even found a way into the Air Traffic Control system." "God, no," Jill groaned. "One of the boys was of Middle Eastern descent--his name was Fisal something--and Elise says he was absolutely brilliant. He was also the nephew of some al-Queda bigwig as it turns out, and they got him to sabotage the system during the busiest moment of the busiest day of the week. Unfortunately, your mom just happened to be on a plane that went down in the confusion." She squeezed Jill's hands tightly. "Frank said it had nothing to do with your mother's plane. It was almost certainly a fuel tank explosion like happened with the TWA flight over Long Island." Relieved, though no less angry with Elise, Jill asked, "Was he investigating the crash?" "Heading it up," Tanya said. "He was on his way back to Washington to listen to the cockpit voice recorder." Jill nodded. She remembered it was discovered amongst the wreckage four hundred feet down. The second box, the flight date recorder, had not yet been recovered. "Where is he now?" she asked. "In talking with Solomon, I suppose." Jill stood up. "Come on," she said, casting an apprehensive glance back at the windows--was the noise louder now?-- "Let's go back in." Tanya continued to hold her arm. Suddenly her hand slid down Jill's biceps and forearm and into her open hand and she gripped it. The two stood very close together, eyes locked. I want you to kiss me, Jill thought. And suddenly Tanya did. * Everyone looked around as they entered the restaurant. If anyone guessed that only moments before, they had just been locked in a passionate, desperately wonderful kiss, they didn't let on. Solomon, Frank and Jessica sat at a table two rows back--Catherine stared hard at them from the table beside it--while Christine (Elise, Jill reminded herself) and Gregory shared a table in back. The two sat very close together, evidently in deep conversation. Meeting Jill's eyes for only a second, Elise cast her eyes down. She wrung her hands on the table. Her cigarette pack, still untouched, bordered the knife-edge of light cutting across the nearest table. "You okay?" Solomon asked. "Fine. Thank you." "How about something to drink? Some water?" Jill shook her head. "We don't have time to waste. Let's not waste it." Solomon nodded. Then he motioned for Elise and Gregory to join them. "What we have here," he said, "is a completely impossible situation. Nothing moves. Not the sun, not the air, not the clouds. It's like a picture postcard you can walk into. It has depth and texture and substance, but time stands absolutely still. Energy doesn't exist here, nor does sound, and neither, I think, does life." He paused for a moment, suddenly looking frightened and helpless and old. "I think it's about time," he continued. "Not some other dimension, as Christine--I mean, Elise--suggested, but time. Suppose that, every now and then, a hole appears in the time-space continuum? A warp of some kind, like happens around a worm hole or a cosmic string. A rip in the temporal fabric." "Like in Star Trek," Gregory ventured. "Only instead of jumping through time," Solomon continued, "supposed we jumped out of time altogether." "That's the craziest thing I ever heard!" Frank exclaimed. "No," Solomon replied. "What's happening to us here... that's crazy." Frank scowled, but said nothing more. "Go on," Jill urged. Solomon nodded. "I'm not saying that this is absolutely right. It could be completely wrong. Or somewhere in the middle. I'm just offering my hypothesis. But say such a rip occurs every now and then, for whatever reason, mostly over unpopulated areas. The Earth is seventy- percent covered by water; so most often that would apply. But statistics always tell you that sooner or later, whatever can happen will happen." He cleared his throat. "So let's assume that tonight... this morning... whenever it was, one of these things did appear over land and we flew right threw it. Our bad luck. And maybe the bad luck of other aircraft as well. We just don't know. Some weird property of sleep made it possible for us to make it through alive, where everyone else was subtracted." "This is unimaginable," Frank said, rubbing his brow. "I agree completely," Solomon said. "But give me a better scenario." Frank lowered his head into both palms. "It sounds right to me," Elise said in a low voice. "We're out of step with... with everything." "You shut the hell up!" Frank yelled, raising his head. "I wouldn't be here if not for you!" Elise jerked as though slapped. "Take it easy, Frank," Solomon put in, softly. "The girl isn't responsible for our problems." Frank directed his anger Solomon's way. "Maybe not! But she's damn well responsible for what she is responsible for. I've spent the better part of my adult life confronting the aftermath of human mistakes. No one understands how unforgiving that aftermath is. For a bunch of stupid kids to mess around with the safety of thousands of innocent passengers... well that's a hard thing for a man like me to forgive." Elise turned away, rose from the table and walked out to the concourse; sobs racked her thin frame. Gregory joined her, putting an arm around her shoulders. Jill was stunned enough by Frank's vehement outburst to feel sorry for the girl. She put her hand on top of Frank's. "Leave it alone, Frank." "What?" "Everyone does stupid things. If my friends and I had to account for every prank we pulled in high school, I'd still be in jail." Frank's eyes flashed. His jaw muscles worked. He appeared to be heading for a tirade when Tanya said: "Frank, Jill's mother died in the crash." Frank blinked his eyes. Gulping hard, he said: "What?" Jill slowly nodded. "Oh, my God," Frank said, looking suddenly defeated. "I'm so sorry." Jill withdrew her hand. "So am I. So is Elise. But she didn't crash the plane." Staring at the pair of teenagers out in the concourse, Frank nodded. "Okay, let's move on." Rising, Jill went out to the concourse and brought Elise and Gregory back. Elise didn't resist, but neither did she want to come. The three of them sat down. After an uncomfortable silence, Gregory asked. "What happened to the crew and the rest of passengers?" His expression said he didn't really want to know. "If the airplane came through, and we came through, what happened to them?" Jill's imagination provided her an answer. In her mind's eye, she witnessed hundreds of passengers tumbling through the open air, yelling and shrieking in the frigid, sub-zero conditions, as lack of oxygen knocked them out. They continued to plummeted earthward, their clothes ripping apart, shoes torn from their feet, change and other personal items ripped away from their pockets-- what wasn't left on the airplane--before impacting the ground. She would not allow herself to envision that. "My guess is nothing at all," Solomon said. "They all still exist. I suspect that unlike the Mary Celeste, our aircraft remained in the air, continuing to fly with its crew and remaining passengers, and is even now sitting someplace on the ground, chock full of inspectors, with a great many questions being asked." "It is?" Jill, Frank and Gregory asked together. Even Christine blinked her eyes. "Yes. I think that's one of the manifestations of this particular event. I think every event is slightly, if not subtly different. I think in this case, the rip is more of a thinness in time, allowing some of us to pass through it--those of us asleep and less tied to reality, for instance--and others to continue on. The aircraft continues to exist in both timeframes at once, both here and there, with us and the other passenger attempting to figure out what had happened. I also think that whatever this place is, we are not meant to be here. It's more alien to human life right now than the surface of the moon." He shook his head. "I have the feeling we've contaminated someone's carefully laid out universe, and that somebody is really pissed." Christine looked at him as though he'd just introduced God himself, which Jill imagined he had. "Get to the bottom line," Frank said. "Because wherever we are, whatever place this is, whatever time it is, I have a bad feeling that it's very late in the day. That noise is getting louder and I want to know how it fits into the scenario." To Jill, the noise was the scenario. Solomon said. "The bottom line is this. We've gone through this time-rip and somehow into the future. Only it's not really time-travel we've done; it's stepping out of time. You won't see the next great push forward in man's ascension to the throne: the first rocket trip to Mars or a trip to a distant star. You won't see the medical breakthroughs like the first cloned baby or the cure for AIDS." He spread his arms to encompass their whole silent world. "Take a good look around you, fellow time-travellers. This is the future. Empty and silent. A universe waiting to be born. A template into which all life and all energy will soon arrive. We may have hopped an absurdly short distance into the future, as little as six or seven hours, or as little as ten minutes... who knows. But the sun is right overhead and the clocks are set at twelve o'clock noon. When the rest of existence catches up to us, they'll exit out of the timeframe they're in--like a frame of celluloid film--and continue on into this one. Because that's how its done. Time chopped into finite little mouthfuls, easier to maintain and to adjust. And when this one is done, worn out or whatever happens to it, maybe in a day, maybe in a billion years, the next timeframe will be waiting, brand new and pretty." "Couldn't this be the past?" Gregory asked cautiously. Solomon shook his head. "I have the feeling the past is even worse. A world... a whole universe, slowly winding down. Sensory input disappearing. Electricity gone. The weather what it was when you made the jump into the past. A universe where time itself is winding down in a kind of spiral... crowding in on itself." Solomon suddenly looked very tired. "I don't know this for sure, of course--how could I? But that place would feel old and stupid and feeble and meaningless. Here it feels... I don't know... " Elise spoke up. "It feels new," she said. "Yes," Solomon agreed. "New. That's the word I was looking for." "Solomon?" "Yes, Jessica?" "The sound is getting worse." She paused. "It's closer now. Much closer." They all fell silent. Jill heard the noise much better herself. It was... what? Not static, after all, but like the buzzing of angry bees. Giant, tremendously angry bees. "I want to go out by the windows again," Solomon said. He rose from the table and strode from the restaurant without another word. "Hey!" Gregory cried. "Wait for us!" They all followed, all except Catherine, who struggled loudly in her chair. Jill and Jessica trailed behind. They stopped in the doorway to watch. "You don't want to go?" Jill asked. "I can hear it fine from here," Jessica said. She paused and added: "We're going to hear it a lot better though, I think, if we don't get out of here soon." Jill glanced over to where Tanya stood peering out the window. Solomon stood beside her. "You like her," Jessica said softly. Jill nodded her head. "Did you know each other before?" "Just met her tonight. Today. Whatever," she said, laughing softly. "You're lucky," Jessica said, looking rather wistfully across the room. Jill watched her words. "You were involved with someone, Jess? Someone not on the plane?" Jessica stared at the incongruously blue sky. "A boy named Steven Greer. We were, well... very close. He moved out to Maryland last winter, and I was on my way out to visit." She shifted uncomfortably, playing with the end of her ponytail. "You were going without permission," Jill said, guessing the truth. Jessica shrugged. "I planned it out for months. I booked the flight myself yesterday morning, online--God, was that only yesterday?--so that my mom wouldn't know. Right now they're in San Diego, at their time-share condo. I was staying with my aunt." Jill concluded that her earlier assessment of Jessica's age was wrong. "How old are you really, Jessica?" she asked. "Fourteen." Jill mouthed the word to herself and Jessica offered a sheepish grin. "Guess I'm in trouble, huh?" Jill could only nod. Going back into the restaurant they sat down at the table across from Catherine. The woman's eyes beseeched them to take off the gag. Knowing the idea was a bad one, Jill rose again and began unwinding the tape. "Should we really do that?" Jessica asked. "It'll be all right. Right, Catherine?" Catherine swiveled her eyes upward, then nodded. She made noises through the tape. Jill was amazed how well the tape had her gagged. "Thank, God!" Catherine exclaimed, when the last winding came off. She grimaced as Jill worked it loose from her hair, then said, "I could bloody well kiss you!" She ran her tongue over her lips. "Get her some water, Jess." "Bless you both!" Catherine flashed a brilliant white smile. "Untie my hands? "Don't push it, Catherine," Jill warned. Catherine bridled slightly, but then relaxed. "At least you have some common decency," she said. "Not like the others." Approaching Catherine slowly, Jess unscrewed the water bottle's top. She started to bring up the bottle, before Jill took it away. "I'll do that." She put the bottle to Catherine's lips. "Drink slowly, Catherine." Catherine watched her with impenetrable eyes. After taking down half the bottle's contents, she said, "Take me to Frank." "I don't thing that's a good idea," Jill said, replacing the plastic cap. She glanced nervously out to the windows. "Frank is not in a very good mood." "He's going to be in a worse mood when I'm through with him," Catherine growled. "When we get back from wherever we are, he'll be lucky to get a bush-piloting job, or running cocaine in from Colombia after dark." Jill looked at Catherine in wonder. "Catherine, are you aware of what's going on here? What's happened to us?" "Of course I'm aware!" Catherine spat back. "You kidnapped me and now you're holding me against my will!" Jill and Jessica exchanged looks. They both shook their heads. This woman is certifiably nuts, Jill thought. She tried a different approach. "Who was it you wanted to see in town?" Catherine's look immediately became guarded. "I'd rather not say." Jill ventured, "It must have been very important for you to have resorted to such drastic measures, Catherine." "It is," Catherine corrected. "Very important." "Then you should let us help. We're all in this together, you know. What's important for you, is important for us." Catherine gave Jill a considering look. Then she said: "Have either of you ever heard of the langoliers?" Jill blinked, but before she could give an answer, Tanya entered the room. After raising her eyebrows, she said: "Frank wants to see us out at the windows." "What about her?" Jessica asked. Tanya said, "I'll stay with her. Just try and hurry back." Jill nodded and handed Tanya the bottle of water. "She might want more of this." Tanya asked: "Get anything out of her?" Jill thought for a moment about Catherine's weird question, then shook her head. She wasn't bringing up anything she didn't understand. "Nothing," she said. Then, along with Jessica, she went out to join the others at the windows. But she wasn't halfway across the room when the thought hit her: God, it's so much louder now. The goose-flesh on her chest and arms erupted again, and beside her, Jessica shivered. The final ten feet before reaching the windows, she had to force herself to walk. Solomon turned to greet them. "Our mysterious noise is getting louder," he said. "Any ideas?" Both Jill and Jessica shook their heads. "All I know is I don't want to be here when it hits town," Jill said. She reached out and touched the glass with her hand. Either she imagined it, or the window was vibrating faintly. The feel gave her a bone-numbing dread. "We have to get out of here!" Elise suddenly cried. "We have to get out of here now!" Her voice cracked like that of an eleven-year old child's. Gregory put an arm around her shoulders and she gripped it between her shoulder and jaw. There was no mistaking her continual shiver. Solomon said, "She's right. We have to get out of here." Turning to Frank, he inquired: "What Jill suggested earlier, about refueling the plane? Is that possible? Can it be done?" Everyone stared at Frank in expectation, except Jill, who realized what no one else understood, not even Solomon, as sharp as he was. That no matter how much fuel there might be, or how easily it might be loaded, except for the fuel already aboard Flight 74, the 767 was a flightless bird. This understanding made her feel like a penny dropping down a very deep well. "Again," Frank said. "Where would we go? New York? Chicago? Bangor, Maine?" "I don't care where, Frank. Just away from here." "Okay, maybe. With the help of a few able-bodied men. What then?" "Then we take off again!" Solomon yelled. Sweat stood out on his deeply lined face. "The time-rip is several thousand miles to our west. That sound is coming from the east. If we refueled now, and retraced our original course... could that be done?" "Well, yes," Frank admitted. "I left on the APU. The INS computer is still on, which means the program is intact. It contains our exact movements and headings from the moment Flight 74 left the ground. The auto pilot would fly us right back to the rip, considering of course, that it's still there. Is that what you have in mind?" "Of course!" Solomon exclaimed. "Don't you see?" Jill's train of thought got shunted off to a side-track. If Flight 74 was on a frequently used heading--she remembered reading somewhere that aircraft followed each other through the sky--then how many other aircraft had gone through the rip? And how many other minuscule bands of survivors might there be, sitting on the ground at distant airports, trying to figure this out? None, she thought, realizing the truth. We had a pilot aboard. One who fell asleep. What were the chances of that happening twice? Then she said. "He might or he might not, Solomon. It doesn't really matter, because we're not going anywhere in that plane." Everyone turned to face her. "Why not?" Jessica asked. "Remember the matches? The ones that wouldn't light? And Catherine's gun?" Solomon put one large hand to his forehead and staggered backward against the glass. "Oh, God," he croaked. "Oh, God, no." "What?" Jessica asked. "What is it?" "Don't you see?" Solomon said quietly. "If matches don't light, and gunpowder doesn't burn--" "--then jet-fuel won't burn, either," Jill finished. "It may as well be dog piss for all the good it does us in this world." She looked at each of the others in turn and then finished: "Whatever that noise is, we can not outrun it." Chapter 11 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 10:10 A.M. PDT (1:10 P.M. EDT) Concourse Level, Mid-field Concourse Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. "What are these langoliers you talked about, earlier?" Jessica asked, sometime later. She, Tanya and Jill sat with Catherine around the table. The mood was glum. Catherine jumped as though pinched on the leg; she looked nervously out at the tall windows where the others stood, talking. "I'm not sure you'll want to hear this," she said cautiously. "You might be scared." "Don't talk to her, Jessica," Tanya said, irritably. "She's mental." Catherine's face grew red. "I wouldn't have hurt anyone," she said. "I was frightened. Aren't you frightened?" "Yes," Tanya snapped, "but I don't take hostages of teenage girls and shoot defenseless woman when I'm frightened." Catherine grimaced slightly. She peered at the blood- ringed hole in Jill's white blouse and then quickly away. She mumbled a half-heard apology. After an extended silence, Jessica said: "Tell me about the langoliers, Senator." Catherine sat up. "Well, I used to think they were just made up," she said in a mellow enough voice. "Now I'm not so sure." She looked again toward the rest of the group out at the windows. "I hear that noise and I think maybe my mother was right." Jessica looked out at the windows. "That sound is the langoliers?" Putting a hand on Jessica's shoulder, Jill cautioned: "Don't jump to conclusions, Jess. We don't know what that noise is." "I know," Jessica said, "but I want to hear what she has to say. That's all right, isn't it?" Tanya said, "I guess so. Just don't get to carried away in her tale. She's not stable." Jessica gave her a laconic smile; Catherine's look was glacial. Then her expression softened and the smile that came on her face reflected the charm and force of personality which had kept Catherine Montes firmly entrenched in politics for twenty-one years. "My mother claimed the langoliers were awful little creatures that lived in sewers and deserted old mines and dark places like that." "The monster in the closet," Jessica said. Catherine laughed. "Quite so, I'm afraid. She told me what they really were was gristle and teeth and powerful little legs, legs so powerful and fast that bad little boys and girls--girls especially, she said--didn't stand a chance. No matter how fast they ran, the langoliers could always catch up." "Oh, for God sakes, Catherine," Tanya said. "Give us a break." "I'd love to," Catherine said, nastily. She leaned forward. Her eyes flashed. "My uncle Roger used to tell the very same tale to my cousin Craig. When they were very young kids, my uncle Roger said, he and my mother got chased up a tree out back of their house. The langoliers caught them playing doctor and wouldn't let then down again the whole night. My mother was naked and Uncle Roger was fully dressed." Catherine laughed. How else would a session of Doctor progress between youngsters, the laugh said. "Anyway, my grandparents sat at the window laughing for hours on end, taunting them with how badly the langoliers teeth would ravage their tender skin and what they'd do to them with their claws. That was the worst part, my mother used to say, what they would do to you with their teeth and claws." Catherine leaned back in the chair, and despite herself, Jill shivered. "If you're trying to frighten us, Catherine," she said. "You're doing a fine job." Catherine smiled tightly. "If ever a time there was to be frightened, my dear, isn't this it?" Jill didn't reply and after a moment Catherine resumed. "My mother said there were thousands of langoliers. She said there had to be, because there were millions of bad little girls like me. Bad little girls who didn't learn from the previous generations lessons and would face the langoliers themselves. Face them and find out what really happened with their teeth and claws." "Stop it!" Tanya barked. "This is totally absurd. You can't--" "Tell me you haven't heard them yourself," Catherine said, robbing Tanya's steam. "In bed at night, with your finger up your little hole, thinking of all the bad little things you learned as a child and now do as a big adult? Don't you hear the sound of crunching and smacking coming your way in the darkness, and even if you try to scamper off, you know your short little legs are no match for the powerful ones on the langoliers. They run faster than any little whore with a--" "That's enough," Tanya said, coming right out of her seat. Her voice was high and hard. "Say one more word, Catherine, and I swear I'll smack your mouth!" Catherine settled back in her chair. Her expression was smug. "The sound is out there," she said softly. "You can't deny that. And the sound is the least horrible thing about the langoliers." Tanya ground her teeth and clenched her fists on the table; Catherine rose from her chair and sat down in one two tables away. "Okay," she said. "I can tell when I'm not wanted. A person gets tired of being beaten when they're down." Tanya turned away and said nothing. Shaking her head, Jill thought: This woman is as looney as a toon; crazy as a bedbug; cracked as a cooter. And yet, that noise was growing louder by the very second. Soon it would be-- "You must have been very afraid of your mother," Jessica said. Catherine looked around, startled. She smiled again, but this smile was different. It was totally devoid of pleasure. She said. "I was terrified of my mother." "Is she dead?" Catherine paused. She gave a drawn out, "Yes," and slowly blinked. "Was she caught by the langoliers?" Jessica asked. "Doing something they didn't like?" Catherine looked into space for a very long time. Jill wondered if she had drifted off into some other plane, a world where things like the langoliers really existed. Then she looked up. "My mother drank herself to death, young lady. She had a penchant for vodka on the rocks. One night she drank one vodka-rocks too many, threw up on the couch and choked on her own vomit. I was seventeen." After an appropriate amount of silence, Jessica said: "And you blame yourself for her death?" "Yes," Catherine said thoughtfully. "I guess I do. I guess I always did." "Senator?" "What?" "I know this is kinda stupid coming from me, but you're wrong to blame yourself. You're not ugly inside, you're not evil. And you're not your mother." Catherine looked at Jessica, blank-faced. After blinking several times, she said, "Every woman is her own mother," and turned away. Suddenly unable to be in the presence of Catherine any longer, Jill got up and walked outside. Ignoring Tanya's startled, "What's wrong?" she joined the other passengers on the far side of the concourse. Together, they listened to that low rattling, beehive sound and said nothing. "So what do we do?" Jill finally asked. "I don't know," Solomon said. He seemed to have wilted inside his brown cotton shirt. He stood slumped- shouldered and glum. Feeling a horrible impotence eating away away at her belly, Jill looked out at the plane; she was struck by its bold lines and almost cheery glow. The 727 sitting to her right at the jetway looked as flat as an old poster by comparison. It only looks good because it's the only familiar object in sight. It belongs to this world no more than the eight of us. And it's never going to fly again. "How much fuel is left, Frank?" Gregory suddenly asked. He had become excited. "Maybe we could take off and glide part of the way back. I saw that once in a movie about a Canadian jet that had run out of fuel. Maybe with no wind and all--you said the winds aren't blowing, right?--it won't take as much fuel going back." Frank shook his head. "When we landed, I had just over 10,000 pounds. We burned 70,000 pounds getting here. You do the math." Everyone again fell silent. Jill watched Elise reach for her pack of cigarettes and sigh when she realized where they were. Walking silently back to the restaurant, she started to pick them up, then snatched back her hand. Her look of wide-eyed astonishment made Jill's gooseflesh explode again. She hurried back to the restaurant. The others followed. "What is it, Elise?" The pack of cigarettes was her answer. Where only minutes before, the edge of the box and the knife-edge of shadow were perfectly aligned, now they were not. A quarter-inch gap separated the box from the dark. "Somebody moved it," Frank said. Everyone looked around. As a group, they all denied responsibility. Then they all followed the line of shadow and light back across the concourse to the windows. Breaking away, Jill dashed to the first cold-case of drinks, knowing what she would find. On each of the lower shelves--the shelves no one had touched--the labels on the bottles no longer faced perfectly forward. The next case was the same, and the next one after that. No one had been even close to these cases. "Something is happening!" Gregory said excitedly. "Things are going on!" Frank and Solomon both shook their heads. "Don't jump to conclusions," Solomon said. "We don't have enough info yet." Suddenly, a clear image filled Jill's mind: a sign she had passed every day for the last five years on her way to work. CAUTION, the sign said. ONCOMING TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP. What the hell does that mean? Getting an idea, Jill said, "I'll be right back," and hurried out of the restaurant and down the concourse. At the Hudson News stand, she dashed by the not-so-perfectly aligned stacks of newspapers and stepped up behind the counter and grabbed a pack of Marlboro's out of the rack. She also grabbed a handful of match packs from beside the register and hurried back to the restaurant. On the way, she peeled the gold-colored strip from around the cigarette pack and opened the top. Tanya met her at the door. "What do you know?" she said. Jill stopped and very nearly kissed her on the lips. Excitement had her giddy. Grabbing Tanya's hand, she pulled her alongside her into the restraint. "Light me up," she said, stopping before Solomon. "Excuse me?" "Light me up." She withdrew a cigarette from the pack, put it in her mouth and waved the matches impatiently. "Okay," Solomon said and struck a match. It lit, but the flame was low, guttering, unenthusiastic. He applied it to the tip of Jill's cigarette. Jill inhaled and immediate started to cough. "H-here," she said, handing the cigarette to Elise. "Try it." Elise reacted as though she'd been offered a dog turd. "Go on," Jill said, still coughing. "It won't kill you." Gingerly, Elise took the cigarette and took a puff. She didn't immediately inhale. Finally doing so, she grimaced. "Yuck. It tastes like a Carlton, or something. " "Blow smoke in my face," Jill said. "What?" "Blow smoke in my face!" Elise did as Jill asked, surrounding her face with smoke. It wasn't the sharp fragrance of Elise's Marlboro's, Jill realized, but neither was it odorless. In fact, it smelled quite good. CAUTION: ONCOMING TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP. "I'd like to know what this proves," Frank said, looking annoyed. "Me too," Elise said. She stubbed the once-puffed Marlboro into an ashtray and then went to stand beside Gregory. Suddenly Gregory's eyes grew wide. "Wait a minute!" he said. He turned Elise around, pulled her to him, and stuck his face into the hollow of her neck. He breathed in deeply. "Hey!" Elise trilled. "Have we been introduced?" Then she giggled helplessly and put her arms around Gregory's neck. Gregory, a boy whose intense shyness usually disappeared only in his daydreams, Jill imagined, paid no notice. He took another deep breath through his nose. "Wow!" he said, standing up. "You smell great!" Elise titterered, "You are so strange, Gregory!" Then Gregory surprised them all--all except Jill--by letting Elise go and hurrying back out to the windows. Gregory had sensed it as well. Blushing a bright red, waving at her face, Elise shared a knowing look with Jessica before saying: "That is a very strange boy!" Taking Tanya's hand, Jill lead her out of the restaurant and toward the high windows. Halfway across, Flight 74 came into view, reinforcing what she had seen before: the 767 was clean and bright and almost impossibly there. It seemed to pulsate in it's drab surroundings. Suddenly Gregory yelled:"Captain Trafano! Solomon! Captain Trafano, come here right now!" * Outside, the noise was louder. To Jill it was no longer the sound of radio static or of swarming bees. It now sounded like... "Like a washing machine with a load of wood chips," Gregory offered. Frank thought it sounded like French fries in the world's largest deep-fat fryer. A swarm of ravenous termites, Jill thought, put through a synthesizer and amplified a thousand times. A horrible noise. And to her it was definitely noise; sound implied a mechanical or otherwise man-made origin... this had no human qualities at all. Again, the hair raised on the back of her neck. The four of them moved away from the door held open by the fire extinguisher and onto the concrete apron, listening to the sound of what Catherine Montes called the langoliers. "How much closer is it?" Frank asked the group. Solomon said, "Can't tell. It sounds closer, but of course we were inside." "Come on," Gregory said impatiently. "How do we get back into the plane? Through the nose wheel again?" "Won't be necessary," Frank said, pointing. A rolling stairway marked with the American Airlines logo stood on the far side of Gate 12. They walked toward it, their shoes making noticeably louder thuds on the concrete. "You know this might not pan out, Gregory; Jill?" Solomon warned. "I know, but--" "I just don't want you to be too disappointed if it doesn't pan out." "Don't worry," Frank said gruffly. "I'll be disappointed enough for the lot of us. But the idea should work. It does makes sense." Solomon said, "There may be factors here we know nothing about. Murphy's Law, remember." "I remember," Gregory said. "I've lived it every day of my life." Reaching the rolling ladder, Frank kicked up the foot- brake and paused. "I don't feel good about leaving Catherine alone with the girls." "They'll be okay," Frank said, casting a glance at Jill. "As long as no one releases her hands. I checked the bindings before we left." "Even so," Solomon said. He looked up at the tall concourse windows where Elise and Jessica stood, looking back. Tanya was with Catherine. Taking hold of the grip jutting from the left railing, while Frank laid hold of the one on the right, Gregory said, "I hope it still rolls." "Only one way to find out," Solomon answered. "Push!" Slowly, the stairway began to roll. The two men trundled it across the apron toward the 767 with Solomon and Jill walking behind. One of the wheels squeaked rhythmically. The only other sound was the constant crunch-rattle- crunch from somewhere over the eastern horizon. "Look at it," Gregory said as they neared the 767. "Just look at it, will you. Can't you see how much more there it is than anything else?" Yes, Jill thought. Like a ten-carat diamond dropped in the dust. They rolled the stairway to a stop against the side of the airplane. The placement wasn't perfect, but close enough. "After you, mon Capitan," Solomon said. Frank scrambled up the ladder. At the top, he withdrew his keys and fit one into a small cover plate beside the hatch. Pulling it open, he punched numbers into a keypad and a one foot square door below the cover plate popped open. He pulled down a yellow and black handle inside and the hatch made a thunking sound and then opened outward. Frank maneuvered it out and against the aircraft's side. Turning, he gave a big wide grin and said: "What are you waiting for? Christmas?" * Inside the Mile High Restaurant, Tanya baby-sat Catherine while Elise and Jessica stood lined up at the concourse windows, looking out. Catherine seemed barely able to keep her eyes open; Tanya felt exhausted too. The very stillness of the place seemed to bleed energy away . Rousing herself, she got up from her chair and walked to the restaurant's entrance. "What are they doing?" she called across in a hushed voice. "They've put a stairway up to the door," Jessica called back. "And now they're going up." She looked at Elise. "You're sure you don't know what they're up to?" Elise shook her head. "All I know is that Gregory started raving about the plane being more there, and the same about my perfume." She paused, smiling, "I'd like to think it was this mad sexual attraction I have with men, but I don't think so." Her grin widened. "At least, not yet." Elise and Jessica shared a giggle. * "All right, Ace," Frank said. "On with the show." Gregory's hands shook as he set the four elements of his experiment out on the shelf in First Class and arranged them neatly. Jill and the others watched closely as Gregory fingered a book of Marlboro-embossed matches, a bottle of Heineken, a can of diet-Coke (for Jill, if she ever dared try it), and another plain turkey sandwich from the restaurant cold-case. The sandwich remained sealed in its plastic tray. "Okay," Gregory said, taking a deep breath. "Let's see how this goes." * Tanya was growing impatient. "What's happening now?" she asked. "We don't know," Jessica replied. "They went inside the plane and they're still there." Elise had coaxed a flame from another of the restaurant's book of matches and was lighting a cigarette. When she removed the flame from the tip, Tanya saw that her hands shook. Tanya gazed at the two for several seconds. "Is everything all right?" "Everything's fine," Elise said, fingering her tongue. She flicked away a shred of tobacco. "They just haven't come out yet." Her voice was calm enough, but her expression implied something akin to dread. Tanya stared at the two for several more seconds, then shrugged. "It's the sky," Elise abruptly said. "Doesn't it look different to you?" Jessica looked upwards through the top of the glass. "Clouds," she said, sounding somewhat awed. "I see clouds." There had been no clouds before. Looking indecisively back into the restaurant, Tanya crept halfway across the concourse. "I keep thinking this place can't get any weirder," she said, crouching to look up through the windows. "And then something new pops up. Gregory was right. This place is coming alive." Jessica suddenly said: "How is Catherine?" Tanya laughed without humor. She looked back at the entrance. "Asleep, if you can believe that." "Are you sure?" Elise asked. "I'm not sure about anything," Tanya sighed. "Concerning this place." * Catherine Montes, of course, was not asleep. People who fell asleep at moments like this deserved to meet the langoliers. And she had no intention of meeting the langoliers "Oh, no," she whispered to the echoless room. "No langoliers for this girl." She had watched Tanya carefully through narrowly slit eyes, willing her to go away. All the way to the windows, preferably, but at least to the restaurant door. She gladly accepted halfway across the concourse floor. Beginning to work her wrists up and down against the tight figure-eight of cloth that bound them, she watched the whore. Although she tried to stop it, a devilish grin spread across her lips. "I've been tied up better than this," she whispered. "By better boy scouts than you, Frank." She just couldn't remember wanting out of her bindings quite this badly before. Moving her wrists in short, purposeful strokes, carefully watching the whore's back, Catherine made ready to cease her movements the instant the whore--or any of the three- -showed signs of turning around. She willed them not to turn around. The knot loosened. Now Catherine began to work her wrists from side to side, ignoring both the presence of her mother, who stood silently by with her critical eye, and the sound of the approaching langoliers. She intended to be out of here and on her way to David Twomy before they arrived. After David Twomy she'd be safe. After David Twomy, the langoliers would know she meant business. After David Twomy, she really didn't care what happened at all. But God help anyone--man, woman, or child--who got in her way. * Gregory picked up the book of matches. "Okay," he said. "Here goes." Tearing a match from the pack, he struck it against the back. The match sparked, but did not light. "Shit!" he exclaimed, shaking his hand. He sucked at his right index finger. "Try it again," Frank said. Gregory tore another match free from the book, offered them a smile, and struck it against the back. The match flared and struggled to life. It burned half- way down the paper stick and died. He tried it again, with the same results. But just as the flame began to licker and die, it regained its strength, taking on the familiar shape of a teardrop. Blue at its base, yellow at its tip, the flame merrily consumed the paper stick. Gregory broke into a wide grin. "You see?" he said. Then: "Yeouch!" as the flame caught his fingertips. Both Frank and Solomon laughed. Shaking the match out, Gregory dropped it and pulled out another. This one blazed up on the very first try, fizzing loudly. He bent back the cover of the matchbook and touched the flame to the remaining matches and they all flared up with an even louder fsss! It took two puffs to blow them out. "Not so slow-catching now?" he said. "The present is with us," Solomon said excitedly. "We brought it with us through the hole!" To Jill, everything seemed possible again. She felt a wild, almost unrestrainable urge to pull Gregory into her arms and kiss him on the mouth. She felt her face get red. "The beer!" Solomon said. "Try the beer!" Gregory grabbed the bottle of Heineken and spun off the the cap while Jill searched for an unbroken glass amidst the clutter of the drinks trolley. "Where's the vapor?" Frank asked. "What?" "The smoke, the vapor you get when you open a bottle." Gregory furrowed his brow, then sniffed the bottle. "Smell," he said, holding the bottle out for Frank. Frank did, and began to grin. "Maybe it only does that when the beer is cold," he said. "It sure smells good." Jill held out the glass at an angle, and Gregory poured golden liquid down the side. As the glass filled, Jill tipped it upright. Everyone lost their smiles. The beer was flat. The beer was absolutely, totally flat. Lacking even a hint of carbonation, the yellow liquid sat in the tumbler like a urine sample awaiting a test. * "It's not just clouding up," Jessica said, looking up at the sky and then out toward the horizon, where buildings and trees shared equal footing. "It's beginning to haze up pretty good, too." Where only an hour before, the demarcation between sky and land had been unbelievably sharp, the air now held a noticeable touch of smog. Jessica looked around, worry plainly visible in her eyes. "I don't know whether to be scared or glad." Tanya looked at the sleeping--or not sleeping--Catherine Montes, and edged closer to the windows. She said. "I don't know which is worse," she said, "being here in the first place... or watching the place slowly change. And that noise... " Jessica shivered. "I just can't help feeling that somehow, that sound is not part of THE BIG PICTURE, you know." She blinked very slowly. "I think Solomon was right." "About what?" Elise wanted to know. "About us being contamination. As though that sound's not associated with this place at all," she said, "but with us." Tanya said, "Come on, you two. Don't go jumping to conclusions. We have no more clue what's going on here, then we do about the Holy Trinity." Jessica turned away from the window. "I think we better check on Catherine," she said. "I'm worried about Catherine. I don't think she's asleep." Tanya backed up a step and looked back over her shoulder. "She hasn't moved," she said. "But maybe you're right." Elise grinned tightly. "I'd like to leave her here for the langoliers, what do you think about that?" Jessica only shook her head. "Don't joke. It isn't funny." Tanya said: "Let's just be glad the langoliers are something made up by a wickedly perverted mind, and not what's making that noise." Jessica was again shaking her head. "Maybe they were made-up monsters once," she said, turning her eyes back to the tall windows--and to the growing noise, "but not anymore." * The knot Frank had tied securing Catherine's wrists had finally worked loose. Gritting her teeth, Catherine pulled her left hand free and got quickly to her feet. A bolt of pain shot right through her head and for a moment she swayed. Black dots swarmed in packs around her field of vision; they slowly cleared away. Was she suffering from the punch? Had the damned boy hit her hard enough to cause a concussion? Fucking brat, Catherine thought. Fucking brat and his scuzz-ball girlfriend. Rage, bright, livid and unrelenting shot through her head and made Catherine stumble sideways on her feet, jarring against the table one over. She cursed at the scraping sound of the chairs. Then her rage was gone, replaced by a cold resolve. She would show them, she thought. Mess with Catherine Montes... Stepping slowly out of the line of sight from the windows, Catherine headed for the entrance. The crunch- rattle-crunch sound of the langoliers was louder now, either because her ears were more attuned, or because they were closer. Though she hoped for the former, it was the latter Catherine feared. She stopped when two shadows over by the windows headed her way. A third shadow, obviously that of the whore, waited halfway across the floor. She back-pedaled toward the deli counter in the rear. The two silhouettes grew closer to the third and Catherine backed away faster. She couldn't let them raise the alarm. She had to get free. Reaching the stainless steel counter, Catherine stole around it, never taking her eyes from the approaching shadows. There were bins of eating utensils set into a counter to her right, but it was plastic stuff (did she just see some of the packages shift?) totally worthless as weapons. Then she saw something that made her eyeballs ache: lying on the counter next to the grill was a wood- handled butcher knife with a six inch blade. Grabbing it, she crouched behind the cash register to watch them approach. She watched the pony-tailed blonde with a particular concern. The girl knew too much. About Catherine, about the langoliers... about David Twomy? Her eyes drawn down to slits, teeth bared in a primitive snarl, Catherine waited behind the counter. The blonde bitch had to be dealt with. The blonde bitch had to be dealt with now. * Frank looked from Solomon to Gregory to Jill. "Okay," he said. "The matches work but the Heineken doesn't?" He took the glass from Jill and held it up for a closer inspection. "What the hell does that mean?" All at once, an eruption of bubbles burst from the bottom of the glass, rising swiftly to the top. They mushroomed over the rim and spilled down the sides of the glass. "Whoa!" Frank exclaimed, holding the glass away. Foam splattered on the carpet. "That caught up in a hurry!" Gregory said, laughing. "Once it got going," Solomon observed. "It takes a moment or two to adjust." He took the glass, blew a hole in the settling foam, and sipped.. "Excellent," he said, smacking his lips. "Best brew I ever tasted." Gregory poured more beer into the glass and this time it came out foaming; the head over spilled the rim. Frank took a sniff. "Sure you want to do that, Captain?" Solomon asked, grinning. "We have a schedule to keep" Frank grinned widely. "In cases of time-travel, all rules are suspended." He tilted the glass, drank two cautious sips, then handed it back. "You're right, though," he said with a sigh. "Try the soda, Gregory." Gregory grabbed the can of diet soda and popped open the lid. It opened with a reassuring, pop-hisss of carbonation. He took a cautious drink. Then he poured the fizzing brown liquid into a second glass offered by Jill and handed it back. "Cheers," Jill said, tapping her glass against the aluminum container. They both took a drink. When he lowered the can again, tears danced in Gregory's eyes. "Gentlemen and lady," he said, "the cola is very good today!" * Tanya stopped Jessica and Elise twenty feet from the entrance. "Oh, shit!" she hissed, looking around. "Where'd she go?" The plastic chair formerly occupied by Catherine Montes was empty. "I don't know!" Elise whispered in alarm. "I didn't see her go." They stood rigid and absolutely quiet. For a moment there was no sound from the restaurant, then a telltale rasp. "There," Jessica whispered, pointing at the rear counter. "She's behind there." "How do you know that?" Elise asked. "That noise could have come from anywhere." "I know," Jessica said. She suddenly stepped forward and called out: "Catherine? Are you there?" "Jessica, no!" Tanya hissed. Grabbing for Jessica's arm, she missed. "Come back here, girl!" Jessica took no notice. Walking toward the counter, hands out in the universal sign of welcome, she went from light into shadow. "Catherine? Come out, okay? It's all right that you're here. No one is going to hurt you. We just want to get everyone out of here safe and--" A sound arose from behind the counter, high and keening and wild. It was a word, or something akin to a word, but with no sanity in it at all. "Youuuuuuuuuuu- " Catherine arose with the knife upraised, her eyes blazing, suddenly understanding that it was she that was to blame for all of this, she that kept her away from her appointment in D.C., she that had allowed David Twomy to post those filthy pictures of her on the net. "Youuuuuuuuuuu-fuckiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing- biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch!" Tanya shoved Elise sideways, knocking her to the floor, leaping forward with desperate speed. She was fast, but not fast enough. Catherine Montes bore down on Jessica with the knife raised high, and Jessica, too stunned to move, could only stand there and watch. She made no effort to flee. "Catherine! No!" Tanya screamed as Catherine buried the butcher knife up to the hilt into Jessica's chest and then collided with Tanya full tilt, bowling her over. Tanya came to rest sitting on her calves, listening to the still-shrieking Catherine Montes run away down the concourse. "Jessica," she whispered. Jessica stood where she was, hands groping her chest, fingers locating the stub of blade jutting from her shirt. The wooden handle--which Catherine even now clutched in her hand as she ran screaming down the escalator steps--had broken off. Jessica's fingers fluttered over the jagged metal edge, exploring the profile as she sank slowly, gracefully, to her knees. Tanya caught her as she settled to the floor, cradling her head as she had done with Jill before, three times that very day. Chapter 12 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 11:05 A.M. PDT (2:05 P.M. EDT) Aboard Flight 74 Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. Gregory, Frank, Solomon, and Jill passed the turkey sandwich around. They each had two good bites and then the sandwich was gone... but while it lasted, Jill thought she had never tasted anything so good in her life. Her belly awakened and immediately began clamoring for more. "I think our friends inside will like this part best," Solomon said, swallowing his second bite. He looked at Gregory. "Why didn't you bring more, Gregory?" Gregory laughed happily. "I was afraid of being wrong and didn't want more of the stuff around reminding me of how stupid I was. When I saw what was happening with the matches and the shadows and all, it just sort of fit. If things were starting to catch up here, as I thought, then maybe they'd catch up a whole lot faster on the plane. After all, the plane is a part of the world being caught up to." He paused to look at the bubbling glass of beer. "Fill this plane up with gas, and I really think we can make it back to the rip." Solomon said purposefully, "I think that's correct and I also think we should start the process right now. Those sounds coming from the east worry me to death, but there's something that worries me even more. This airplane is part of a world not yet in existence here. I think that world is barreling along like a relay runner on it's very last leg, ready to hand off. This one is preparing to meet it. When that hand-off occurs, I don't think we should be around to see it." "Why?" Gregory asked. "Wouldn't we just blend in?" "I don't think so," Solomon said. "I think the hand over only works one way." One way, Jill thought suddenly. Oncoming traffic does not stop. Then a jarring realization hit her. "My God!" she said, touching her suddenly numb lips. "It was today's date." Solomon blinked in confusion. "Excuse me?" "The Washington Post. It was dated today." She told them of the neatly stacked offerings of papers. "My God," Solomon concurred. "If that's true... " Gregory had not yet caught on. "Is that important?" Solomon gave him an incredulous stare. "Important? Of course it's important! It means the transitions today! At twelve o'clock noon! We may have only minutes--hours at most--before the past arrives!" Gregory understood now. "We either get back to our side," he said, unhappily. "Or we get bowled over when it does." Nodding, Solomon looked nervously out one of the fuselage windows. "If the noise doesn't mow us down first," he muttered. "Maybe the noise is the transition," Gregory suggested. His tone said he believed this not at all. And neither did Jill. She was in complete agreement with Jessica about the noise: It was not of this world. "How do we start, Frank?" Solomon asked. Frank paused, as though running the process over in his mind. Jill knew it would be awkward, working with men and women whose only experience with aircraft probably began and ended with boarding the aircraft... but she thought it could be done. "We start by turning on the engines and taxiing as close to that L-1011 as we can get," he said, pointing out a starboard-side window to the red, white and blue United Airlines jet parked out near the runway. "Both the 767 and L-1011 are equipped with fueling ports beneath their wings. Our aircraft has ports on both sides, but the L- 1011 only has them under the right. That's okay though, because the 1011's pointed west along the apron and we'll be rolling east. I can lay our wing directly over the 1011's right. When we get there, I'll kill the starboard engine and leave the port-side engine running. This 767 is equipped with wet-wing tanks--we can fuel ourselves. The APU can still generate enough power to fill us up, even if its on its own." "Why don't we just bring that fuel tanker over here? Gregory asked. "Like we did the ramp?" He pointed out the port-side windows to a large red truck backed neatly against the concourse wall. It was emblazoned on the sides with: Jet-A Fuel. Highly Inflammable. Keep Flame Away. Then he answered his own question. "It's probably too heavy, huh." "A lot too heavy," Frank agreed. "Another thing we're going to do is segregate all the existing fuel into the center tank. Right now it's spread out evenly between the wings for weight distribution. But I don't think we want to mix the two of them together right away." "You're thinking about the catch-up time," Gregory said. "Exactly. It may work just as fast with volatile fuel, but then again, it might not." Just then, a spiraling, frenzied wail cut across the low rattling background noise like an air-raid siren. It was followed by bounding footfalls on the ladder. As Jill turned in that direction, Elise Gallo, pallid, wide-eyed and out of breath burst into the hatchway. "Come on!" she yelled. "You've got to come back!" Then she lost her balance on the top step and began to ferociously windmill her arms. For a moment Jill was sure she would tumble down the steps, then Gregory sprang forward, grabbed her by the front on her shirt. He yanked her back in. She tumbled into his arms and knocked both of them backward. "Elise! Elise, what is it?" Solomon shouted. His face had a sickly look. Elise yelled: "She stabbed her! She stabbed the fucking girl, and I think she's dying!" Solomon put his hands on her biceps and shook her gently. "Who has stabbed whom?" he demanded, very quietly. "Is it Catherine?" Elise bobbed her head energetically up and down. "She stabbed Jessica in the chest!" "Oh, Jesus Christ!" Frank cried out. He smacked the counter in frustration. "We should not have left her alone!" Solomon compressed his lips to a very thin line. "Bloody fucking bitch. That's all that we need." Then he raised his voice as Frank and Gregory both headed for the ladder. "Stop!" he shouted in a drill sergeant tone that stopped them both in their tracks. "Stay fucking put!" Jill, who's father had served two tours in Vietnam and had retired a full bird-colonel, knew the sound of unquestionable command. "Do you know how this happened or where the wretched bitch is?" Solomon asked Elise. Elise bobbed her head up and down again, then she shook it. "She took off running down the concourse," she said, her eyes cutting to Gregory and then back to Solomon again, as though afraid of loosing his respect. "We didn't see where she went. I came running as soon as --" "Never mind!" Solomon snapped. He glanced briefly over at Frank, then at Jill; his eyes were black with rage. "The fools left her alone. I just know they did. Well, the bitch has had her last hurrah on my watch." He looked back to Elise, whose mouth was open; she breathed in labored, noisy whoops of breath. Tears brimmed in her eyes. "Is she alive, Elise?" Elise bobbed her head. "She was," she said. Her tone indicated she might not think so now. Moving up beside her, Gregory slipped an arm around her shoulders and she moved in close against his side. Solomon released her biceps. He turned to Frank. "I'm going back to the terminal," he said. "You start the engines but keep the aircraft where it is. If the girl is alive, we'll need to bring her up the stairs. Elise, you man the bottom of the stairs. Keep an eye out for Catherine Montes." He handed her the yellow-handled screwdriver. "Use this if you have no other choice, otherwise, get the hell up the stairs and shut the hatch. Do not let her on board the plane. Gregory and Jill, you come with me." Then he said something which chilled Jill to the bone. "If Catherine lives, I plan to leave her to her langoliers." * Jessica was still alive and still conscious. Tanya had found a linen napkin and was using it to wipe away the sweat on the young girl's brow. Jessica's eyes, deep blue and very scared, looked up into Tanya's. "I'm sorry, " Tanya said for the twentieth time. "I never should have left her alone." Jessica did not speak. Her breath wheezed in and out. There was very little blood on her shirt, at least so far; a jagged-edged stain the size of a baseball spread out around the base of the knife. "You're going to be all right," Tanya said, but her eyes were drawn relentlessly back to the stub of metal. "You... must... out of here," Jessica struggled to say. A thin, ghastly bubble of blood formed in one corner of her mouth and burst. Blood trickled down her cheek. "Don't try to talk," Tanya said, brushing back damp locks of hair from Jessica's forehead. "You have to get out of here now," Jessica insisted. Her voice was a gaspy whisper. "And you shouldn't blame Catherine. She's... she's over the edge." Tanya looked around malevolently. "I'll over-the-edge her," she said. "I'll make her wish she'd died an abortion." Solomon came dashing into the restaurant, followed by Gregory and Jill. He knelt beside Jessica and took her hand. He exchanged looks with Tanya, then fixed his gaze on the stub of knife. "You were right, Jess," he said, keeping his voice low and controlled. "This place is no place for humans." He smiled gently. "We'll get you fixed up and out of here before you can say boo. Okay?" Jessica tried to smile. "Boo," she whispered. More blood seeped out of her mouth and Jill's stomach did a slow, lazy roll. While Solomon stroked her hand, Tanya said to Jessica: "I'm going to turn you up slightly on your side, Jess. It may hurt." "Okay," Jessica whispered. Leaning far over Jessica's chest, Tanya gently lifted up her right shoulder. "Hurt?" Jessica grimaced. "Yes," she croaked. "Hurts to... breathe. " Thin streamers of blood ran from either side of her mouth and pooled at the lobes of her ears. She nodded sympathetically and then looked across the concourse to the tall bank of windows, where the unmistakable whine of a jet engine began to build. Solomon, Jill and Gregory followed her gaze. "Here that?" Solomon said. "That's our ticket out of this place." Jessica coughed up blood. Looking almost panicked, Tanya quickly, but gently advised: "Don't do that if you can help it, hon. I know it must hurt, but you'll do yourself worse until we get that blade out of you. Do you understand?" Jessica moved her head. She didn't speak. Jill sensed that speaking would make her cough. Tanya said as much. "For the next couple minutes, I want you only to nod or shake your head. Don't talk. Talking will make you want to cough. Okay?" "Don't... you... Catherine," Jessica stubbornly whispered. Her eyes, locked on Tanya's, conveyed great urgency. Tanya shook her head. "Leave her to us. We'll take care of her, I promise." Jessica grit her teeth. Concentrating hard, she got out: "Don't... hurt... don't... " before Solomon bent down and kissed her on the forehead. "No more, Jess. Just lie still and let us take care of things, okay?" Jessica looked pleadingly at Jill. "She's trying to tell you something impor--" Jill got out before Solomon cut her off with a swipe of his hand. To Tanya, he said: "You tried to remove the knife?" "No." Tanya swallowed hard. Her breathing was ragged. "I didn't want to take the chance. But it has to come out, Solomon. Now." Both her tone and the look in her eyes left no doubt of the urgency. Tanya looked around at Gregory and Jill. "We need something to act as bandages, something cotton; tablecloths, clean white uniforms, folded up towels. We also need alcohol if you can find it." Good luck, Jill thought. "I also need to know if either of you are going to faint," she said, looking pointedly at Jill. Jill said, "I'm fine. Don't worry about me." Gregory gulped, and slowly bobbed his head. "I won't let you down either, Tanya." "Good," Tanya said. "Now get moving. And for Christ's sake, don't split up!" No one had to ask what she meant by that. Turning back to the pasty-faced and desperately wheezing girl, Tanya said: "Don't worry, Jess. We'll get that thing out of you in just a second and you'll begin to feel better." To Solomon, she said, "Run back down to the airplane and get the pliers out of the tool kit. No! Bring the entire thing! There may be something in there we can use." Solomon jumped to his feet. "And for Christ's sake, Solomon--keep an eye out for Catherine!" "Don't you worry!" he said, spinning on his heel. "Don't you worry about that at all!" His look was absolutely murderous. Flying out the restaurant door and down the concourse at full tilt, he passed Jill and Gregory outside the Gridiron Bar, shouting that he'd be right back. Jill watched after him, thinking: Even in a place and a situation as fucked up as this, good people always show their colors. She almost teared up. Then she thought about Tanya and the kiss... What's the matter with you? Jessica's in there probably dying, and you're wondering what being in bed with her is like? Stop it! Inside the restaurant, Jessica stared up into Tanya's blue eyes and whispered, "They're closer now. You really... " She coughed again and a large bubble of blood appeared between her lips and popped, splattering her cheeks. Tanya shuddered, but did not look away. "... really need to hurry," Jessica finished. Tanya's kindly smile did not falter. "I know," she whispered back. "And we will." * On the lower level, Catherine Montes stood panting before the tall, wide windows. She stared distractedly at the 767, and the small form of Elise Gallo standing watch outside. The crunch-rattle-crunch of the langoliers vibrated the glass. It was louder here, so much louder... They're almost back, her mother's voice whispered. They're almost back to get you! "No!" she said aloud. "There's still time!" Not if you don't hurry. Breaking her trance, Catherine spun about and headed determinedly across the Airport Services area. She still had the knife handle in her hand, knew that something terrible had occurred upstairs, but in her present state of mind was not sure exactly what--or to whom. Her mother offered clarification. You skewered the little bitch. "I did, didn't I?" Catherine said with heartfelt, if somewhat uncertain anger. Thought she could figure you out, did she? Won't have her to worry about anymore, poisoning the others against you. Catherine nodded in emphatic agreement. "I put her right in her place. The impertinent little bitch." She suddenly slowed. There was a small, windowless door to her left leading outside--Customs Personnel Only, a sign upon it read in bold black letters--and for a moment she started in that direction. Then she stopped. So what if there was a road out there, and that road led eventually to Washington, D.C... this fuck-up was not her own. Why should she have to hoof it into town, twenty- some miles, when the others had brought her here. Damned if they wouldn't take responsibility for their actions! Make them stop SCAMPERING AROUND and GET WITH THE PROGRAM! her mother commanded. Her mind seized on this idea the way a shark seizes on a swimmer's leg. If she could get to Washington, D.C., take care of her business with David Twomy, this whole fuck-up would be... would be . . "Forgiven," she muttered. At the words, a razor edge of rational thought sliced through the darkness inside her head, giving birth to a sudden and crystal clear realization: If she were really here alone--she and the worthless others--then what difference did a few pictures floating around cyberspace make? Sure, some big bull-nigger had his pecker up her ass, dog-fucking her with every inch of the thing as another bull-nigger fucked her mouth. So what? No one even knew they were here. And with no electricity to power up a computer, no one ever would. The others, though... they wanted to return to the previous world, wanted to set things back. Wanted to undo the work the langoliers had worked so hard to attain. With a single, styptic blink, Catherine's dark eyes narrowed and went from glassed-over to glassed-in. "That's it then," she whispered softly. "We have to stay." Stay... and let the langoliers finish the job they had started. Catherine turned her narrowed eyes to the dead escalator leading upstairs. They would be hunting her soon--the son-of-a-bitch Frank undoubtedly leading the pack--and being found here as exposed as her spread-assed cunt in those cyberspace shots... I have to hide, I have to plan my attack. Turning away from the window, she heard the whine of the jet engines winding up outside, but after a brief glance back at the aircraft, continued on. Frank was aboard the 767, of course, she should have figured that. But she also understood that Frank couldn't go anywhere until the 767 had refueled. And refueling would take time. She needn't worry about them leaving just yet. Heading resolutely toward the Airport Security office, Catherine stopped when she heard the sound of running feet and an indistinct shout. She ducked instead through the door marked, AIRPORT SERVICES, and closed it carefully behind her. Total darkness swallowed her up. Unh-uh, Catherine thought. That won't do. Won't do at all. In the dark, things came out of the corners and out from under the bed--desk, in this case--to swallow you up. Things a lot worse than the dark. Carefully, she opened the door back open a crack and thought: Better. At least she could see. And though the crunch-rattle-crunch of the langoliers was still oppressively loud, it was less distinct. Not waiting for her eyes to adjust, she felt her way slowly forward, hands outstretched, feet testing the unseen floor. Her left thigh came into contact with the edge of the desk and she reached forward and down and let her hands flutter over the items sitting atop it. She felt a neatly stacked pile of paper, an IN/OUT basket, the edge of a blotter, and a caddy filled with paper- clips, rubber bands, pencils and pens. She worked her way around the desk, found the chair, and rolled it silently out. Then she sat down. "Better," she muttered. Being behind the desk made her feel like a person again, someone with purpose. Something the langoliers would understand. Fumbling open the center drawer, she felt inside for something specific, something instinct told her was there. Her hand came upon it almost immediately: the slender, cold-steel handle of a letter-opener. She held it aloft. She smiled. Not as good as a six-inch steak knife, perhaps, but the handle wouldn't break off in her hand. She closed the drawer, and put the letter opener on the desk by her right hand. Then she just sat there a moment, feeling the distinct whisk-thud of her heartbeat and the even more distinct resonance of the approaching langoliers. Then she pushed back in the chair, placed her heels of the corners of the desk, raised her dress and slid her hand inside her panties. That's it, Cathy-wathy, her mother said. You just sit here in the dark, relaxing your mind. The others will come to you when it's time, and when they do, everything will be crystal clear. "That's right," Catherine said. Her fingers splayed the moist petals of her labia and snuck inside--she shuddered. "I'll just wait right here. They'll come when I'm ready." She tittered at her unexpected pun. Just relax, her mother said. "Think of water... cool, cool water." "Water. Cool, cool water,"' Catherine repeated. Calm filled her mind and she let her legs drop fully apart. She began to sing under her breath in a tuneless, throaty whisper. "Water... water... cool, cool water... " The tip of her middle finger gently but determinedly massaged the bundle of nerve endings known as the Graftenberg spot (did it really exist? Catherine didn't know for sure, but thought it probably did), as she continued to sing the old Roy Rogers ballad that her mother had taught her so long ago. "Water... water... cool, cool water... " Chapter 13 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 12:00 P.M. PDT (3:00 P.M. EDT) Concourse Level, Mid-field Concourse Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. "Listen carefully," Tanya said. "We have to take her aboard the plane on something stiff, a carry-board or a stretcher if we can find one. There's none aboard the plane, but there's probably one here. Go look, okay?" Jill and Gregory exchanged looks. They had returned only moments before with half a dozen folded white tablecloths from the Gridiron Bar. "We should wait for Solomon," Gregory said, uncertainly. "He'd know where--" "Solomon isn't here," Tanya cut in. "You'll just have to manage on your own." Jill and Gregory both frowned... then Jill thought of a sign she had seen at the escalators leading downstairs. "Airport Services?" she asked. "Does that sound right?" "It certainly does," Tanya said. "Where did you see that?" Jill explained. As she finished, Solomon came running back into the restaurant, huffing and puffing; his face was bright red. He looked at each of the others in turn, then down at the bleeding Jessica. He handed the tool kit to Tanya. "See anyone?" Tanya asked. Solomon shook his head. "All right," she said. "This is what we're going to do. Jill and Gregory will go find a stretcher. Solomon, you check the grill behind the counter, which is where I suspect Catherine got her knife. Get whatever is there, the biggest thing you can find." Solomon went behind the counter without a word. He returned with a pair of butcher knifes and a long, wooden-handled spatula. The spatula handle was lightly stained with grease. Tanya continued: "You probably won't see Catherine," she said to Gregory and Jill. "My guess is she left out of here unarmed, in a panic, and ran as far away as possible. Still, if you do see her, I want you to stay clear. Do not bother her unless she bothers you first." She indicated for Solomon to give Jill and Gregory the two knives. "Keep your priorities straight, you two. Your job is to bring back a stretcher, not to recapture Catherine or subdue her. As far as I'm concerned, she's cooked her own goose." Jill took one of the knives, but Gregory shook his head. He went behind the counter, peered around, then went back to the supply closet next to the bathroom. He returned with a five foot long, wooden mop handle. Holding it out straight before him, he dipped low on one foot and swung the handle in a series of rhythmic, whooshing arcs. Then he stood back erect. "When I was a kid," he said, grinning, "me and my friend Tommy used to play Star Wars a lot. I was Darth Vader and he was Obi-Wan Kenobi." His grin turned laconic. "I broke his arm once and my mother bought me a plastic light- saber afterwards. Not as dangerous," he said, hefting the wooden handle in his hand, "but not so much fun, either." Jill looked dubiously at Gregory's makeshift light-saber, then at the knife in her hand. If push came to shove, she'd rather just be smart and run away. Tanya said: "Good enough. Go find that stretcher and bring it back. If you don't find anything in say, fifteen minutes--make that ten--just come back and we'll carry her out by hand." "You can't do that!" Jill cried softly. "If there's internal bleeding--" "There's internal bleeding already! And ten minutes is all we can spare." Jill opened her mouth to answer, but Jessica's husky whisper cut her off. "She's... right. Can't... wait. Go... now." Jill gripped the handle of the knife tightly in her hand and said: "Come on, Gregory, let's go." They left the restaurant together and walked in silence down the concourse to the bank of escalators. As they started down, Gregory tucked the mop handle beneath his right armpit and gave Jill a tight-lipped grin. "It'll be okay," she assured him. But, of course, it would not. * Turning her attention back to the girl on the floor, Tanya asked: "How are you, Jess?" "Hurts bad," Jessica said faintly. "Yes, of course it does," Tanya said. She swallowed loudly, and sweat stood out on her brow. She turned to Solomon. "Down here beside me." Solomon knelt down beside her and took Jessica's hand. Tanya said: "I'm afraid what I'm about to do is going to make it hurt worse, Jess. For a few seconds, at least. But the blade is in your lung, and it's got to come out. You understand that, right?" Jessica's frightened eyes looked up at her. "Scared," she said, nodding weakly. "So am I, Jess. So am I." She turned to Solomon. "Ready?" "Yes," he said, removing a stubby pair of pliers from the kit of tools. "Good." She turned back to Jessica. "This won't take long, hon, I promise. I want you to lie as still as you can, and try not to cough. That's very important. Try not to cough." "I'll try." Tanya took the pliers from Solomon's hand and held them out of sight. "There may be a moment or two when you feel that you can't breathe. It will probably be painful. But I promise you, the pain will be less afterwards, and it won't be as painful to breathe. Okay? And remember, Jess, you mustn't cough. You mustn't cough at all." Jessica made a reply neither of them could understand. "I'm going to grasp the stub of the knife and draw it out," she said to Solomon. "Let's pray it's not caught in her ribs. The moment it's out, I'll draw back, giving you clear access to her chest. Place two of the pads over the wound and press hard. Press very hard. Don't worry about hurting her. She's got a perforated lung, and if air gets into her chest cavity, it could collapse. That's what we've got to worry about. Understand?" "Yes." "Then take off your belt." When Solomon had removed it, and handed over the belt, Tanya continued: "After you've placed the pad, I'm going to lift her up. You have to keep on the pressure. I'll slip the other pad beneath her and tie the compresses in place with your belt." She glanced at Solomon's noticeably lighter complexion. "Are you all right?" Solomon nodded. "I'm fine." "You don't look fine to me." Solomon turned his dark eyes upon her. "I'm fine," he repeated. They stared at each other until Jessica muttered something undecipherable. "All right," Tanya said. She drew a deep breath and then let it out slowly. "Jesus help us." Bringing up the pliers and clamping them carefully onto the stub of knife, she set her teeth and suddenly pulled. Jessica shrieked and a great gout of blood spewed from her mouth onto Tanya's neck and left cheek. She recoiled minutely but continued withdrawing the knife. Solomon, however, emitted a gurgling, half-strangled cry and reared back. "No!" Tanya spat without looking around. "Don't you dare! Don't you fucking dare!" Solomon leaned forward again, gagging and shuddering. The blade, a red-streaked wedge of silver six inches long, emerged from Jessica's chest and hung in the air. Jessica's chest heaved and there was a high, unearthly whistling as the wound sucked air. "Now!" Tanya cried. "Press down! Press as hard as you can." Solomon leaned forward and pressed the thick compress against the blood pouring out of Jessica's chest. The tablecloths grew bright red around the edges. "Harder!" Tanya yelled, adding her hands to the compress. "Seal the wound! Seal the fucking wound or she'll die!" "I can't!" Solomon yelled. "I'll break her ribs if I push any harder!" "Fuck her ribs! You have to make a seal!" Solomon rocked forward and brought his entire weight down on his hands. Blood seeped slowly between his fingers, even though the tablecloths were folded thick. Jessica was no longer awake. "That's it!" Tanya grunted. "Keep the pressure on." "There's so much blood!" Solomon moaned. "Will she drown?" "Not if you keep the pressure on. Ready?" "Christ, I guess so," Solomon croaked. "Here we go, then." She slipped his hands beneath Jessica's right shoulder and levered her up. "It's worse than I thought," she muttered. "Far worse." She pulled Jessica upward against the pressure Solomon was putting on, and Jessica uttered a thick, croaking moan. A gout of half-congealed blood erupted from her mouth and spattered across the carpet. The look on Solomon's face said the world was swimming away and Tanya cried loudly: "Keep the pressure on, Solomon! Don't let up!" But Solomon was fading fast. Suddenly, there came a shriek of pain and surprise from the level below, followed by a hoarse shout, and then a loud drilling scream. This brought Solomon snapping back; through clenched teeth, he hissed: "We told them to stay the fuck away from her!" Tanya looked both alarmed and relieved by the distant ruckus. Tendons on her neck stood out like steel supports. "Don't worry about them!" she exclaimed. "Concentrate on this!" Applying the second compress to Jessica's back, Tanya wrapped her chest with Solomon's belt, then cinched it tight. Jessica groaned again. "Now that you've found her," Solomon grunted as they lay Jessica back on the floor, "you have my permission to royally fuck her up." There was a thud and a shout from downstairs, followed by a howl of agony. Then a whole series of muffled thuds. "Jesus Christ!" Solomon said, suddenly rearing back, "I didn't mean literally!" Breathing heavily, Tanya said: "How do you know that's her?" * Jill led the way down the escalator, stopping briefly at the bottom to test the flashlight. Balancing the butcher knife atop the black escalator grip, she thumbed the flashlight on. The light was reassuringly bright. "Do you think she's down here?" she asked. "I don't know," Gregory said. "Let's hope not." He swung the mop handle back and forth. "Or hope she is." "Gregory... " "Sorry," he said. "Just angry about Jess. Anyway, where's this Airport Services office?" Jill spotted the door Catherine Montes had gone through less than five minutes before. "There," she said. "Do you think it's unlocked?" Jill shrugged. "Only one way to find out." The knife left atop the black rubber grip temporarily forgotten, they crossed the terminal, Jill still leading the way with the flashlight in her hand. * Catherine heard them coming, but she wasn't worried in the least. She had taken care of her doubts and her frustrations... her course was clear. Pressed hard against the wall beside the door, she clutched the letter opener in her hand. "Do you think it's unlocked?" Gregory's voice sounded from outside. "Only one way to find out." You're going to find out something, Catherine Montes thought. She raised the letter-opener to shoulder height. The door pushed silently inward and Catherine tensed. * Gregory stepped in, blinking at the gloom. Jill moved into the doorway beside him and swung the flashlight beam all around. What she saw was a combined office and storeroom, with a tidily arranged stack of luggage in one corner and a photocopy machine in another. The back wall was lined with shelves and the shelves were stacked with what looked like supplies of various kinds. One shelf held half a dozen Epson Ink-jet printers, in unopened boxes. Jill stepped further into the office, pointing her flashlight beam against the rear wall. "Gregory, look!" Beneath a poster showing three radiantly smiling flight attendants in extremely skimpy dress, was a large white box with a large red cross. Beneath that was a collapsible, folded up stretcher about four feet long. Perfect. Jill wasn't looking at the poster or the first-aid kit or the stretcher, however. Her eyes were glued to the desk in the center of the room. Or rather, the pushed back, out of place chair behind it. "Look out!" she shouted. "Gregory, she's in the--" Catherine Montes stormed out from behind the door and struck. * The sounds from downstairs had ceased. There was only the crunch-rattle-crunch from outside and the steady, thrumming hum of the 767's engines. While Tanya brushed hair off of Jessica's damp forehead, Solomon stood up and looked out the entrance. His expression was grimly determined. "Are you going downstairs?" Tanya asked. "That seems expedient." "Be careful," she said. "Please be careful." Solomon grinned down at her. The grin was entirely mirthless. He said: "It's my intention to stay very much alive, don't worry." He reached down and squeezed her shoulder. "Thank you, Tanya. Thank you so very much." As he turned away, Jessica's thin white hand groped out and caught the cuff of his pants. He looked down and saw that Jessica's eyes were open again. "Don't... you... " she began, and then choked on blood. Blood and phlegm flew from her nose in a spray of fine droplets. "Jessica," he said, stooping down again. "You mustn't--" "Don't... you... kill her!" she hissed. Solomon lost his composure. "For God's sake, why not! She stabbed you, child!" Jessica's chest strained against the belt. The bloodstained tablecloths leaked blood. She managed to say one thing more before she passed out. "All... I know," she announced, with painful clarity, "... is that... we need her." Then her eyes closed again and she was gone. * Catherine buried the letter-opener fist-deep into the nape of Gregory's neck. Or she would have, had Gregory not reacted to Jill's scream in time and dodged forward and sideways at the last moment; instead of suffering a serious, possibly fatal spinal cord injury, he got the letter-opener embedded in the hard bone of his right shoulder blade. Screaming loudly, he dropped the mop handle onto the floor, kicking it backward toward Jill as he staggered forward. Catherine hollered in rage. Leaping forward again, she grabbed the silvery object sticking out of Gregory's back and tried to reclaim it. Gregory yowled in pain, clawing at Catherine's hand as he fell over the desk. His arms flew out ahead of him, knocking the IN/OUT box to the floor, and the neatly placed stack of forms. Grabbing the opener with one hand and planting her other against Gregory's back, Catherine simultaneously pushed and pulled; Jill heard the sound of a drumstick being pulled off a well-done turkey. Then the letter-opener was free. Without even thinking, Jill grabbed the mop handle off the floor and advanced on the pair. Just as Catherine raised the office-dagger high above her head for another strike, Jill smashed her mercilessly across the back. Catherine yowled in pain. "You fucking bitch!" Jill screamed. She began to swing again but Catherine whirled on her like a human cyclone knocking both the mop handle and flashlight from her hands. They fell clattering onto the floor. Staggering back, she barely deflected a well-aimed jab at her throat. Then the flashlight went out with a flash, leaving them in near-total darkness. The door had swung closed. Catherine laughed softly in the darkness. Jill stepped backward and felt a whoosh of air in her face as Catherine swung the blade through the spot where she had just been standing. She searched behind herself with both hands, terrified of backing into a corner. Her fingers found only empty space, and she backed until her shoulder hit the door. Then she whirled and flung it open and scrambled through, the letter-opener deflecting with a load scrape off the face of the door and catching her glancingly across the back. She fell to her hands and knees, scrambling desperately away from the door. "You are so fucking pitiful," Catherine laughed. She stood calmly in the doorway, wiping a thin smear of blood up and down the letter-opener with her fingertip. She seemed almost mesmerized by the blood. Jill crab-walked away. "I'm staying here," Catherine said. "And so are you. Only, unlike you, I won't have to deal with the langoliers." Jill continued crab-walking away. Keep her talking. Keep her mind off Gregory behind her. "And why is that?" she asked. Catherine looked up and grinned. "Because I am not lazy and worthless." She took a step forward. "I am not a cowardly piece of cunt trying to escape my punishment through some ridiculous slight-of-hand." She stopped playing with the smear of blood and leveled the knife at Jill. Only it wasn't a knife as Jill had originally thought, but a plain old stainless steel letter-opener. Careful! It can kill you just as dead! Jill got cautiously to her feet, ready to flee. Catherine circled to her right, the letter-opener raised, a graceful, light-stepping cat with insane eyes. "I see you, kitty," she purred. "Kitty, kitty, kitty. Come to mama." Jill backed away, keeping her eyes off the Airport Services door. Gregory was there, mop handle in hand, pain and fury pinching his face. Jill kept backing toward the escalators, holding Catherine's attention. "You belong in a psycho ward, Catherine." Catherine laughed. "You can do better than that. You better do better than that." Behind her, Gregory set his teeth and held the broom handle like a bat. He advanced on Catherine's back. "How can you not see what's going on, here?" Jill demanded. "For God's sake! Open your eyes!" Catherine kept the letter opener moving continually back and forth--Jill struggled to keep her eyes off it--and settled into an anticipatory crouch. Just as she appeared ready to spring forward at Jill, she spun around and charged Gregory instead. Gregory hollered and swung awkwardly at her in self-defense. The mop handle caught Catherine across the right shoulder and biceps, not hard enough to stop her lunge, but enough to deflect it. The letter-opener caught Gregory just above his left pectoral at an angle sufficient to penetrate the skin but not to plunge straight through. He shrieked in pain, then twisted sideways out of Catherine's reach. "Run, Gregory, run!" Jill cried. At the same time, she threw herself forward and struck Catherine in the back with both hands. Catherine staggered forward against the wall, instantly spinning about to confront her again. Jill could not believe her quick reactions. "I going to skewer you like a kabob," Catherine growled. She moved toward Jill again, weaving and bobbing like a professional knife-fighter. Her eyes shifted constantly back and forth between her two quarry, her teeth bared in a feral leer. Casting a quick glance behind her, Jill saw she was backing toward the Information counter. If she retreated much further, Catherine would have her cornered. To her left, Gregory had rejoined the fight, but the upper left side of his shirt was growing dark with blood; the mop handle shook in his hands. It had to be soon, or one or the other of them were fucked. "Jill, here!" Gregory suddenly hollered. He pitched the mop handle through the air, and Jill, though caught by surprise, deftly snagged it in one hand. She brought the makeshift bat back over her shoulder in best Mark Maguire form, and stood her ground. Catherine sprang forward. "You fucking bitch! I'll cut your fucking--" Jill swung the handle with all her might. It came round in a perfect fast-ball swing, arcing up on the upswing toward Catherine's dodging head. Catherine cooperated by dodging to her left at the last possible moment. The wooden handle caught her right above the temple with a hard, toneless thud, stopping her shriek dead in its tracks. She staggered sideways, the letter opener dropping from her hand, as blood gushed from a long gash opened by the handle. "Now, Jill!" Gregory screamed. "Get her now!" Jill bounded forward. Catherine's hands were at the left side of her head, blood from the gash pouring out between her fingers; a warbling wail like an air raid siren came out of her mouth. Jill was terrified that she had already delivered a possibly fatal blow, but was even more terrified that she hadn't. The mop handle flashed forward again, catching Catherine across her raised hands. Jill heard and felt bones snap. Staggering backward, Catherine put out her hands to stop the next blow. The pinky and the two fingers beside it on her left hand were bent horribly crooked, and looking at them in seeming disbelief, she shrieked in agony as the mop handle hit them again. Jill shrieked as well. Then the bat smashed Catherine in the mouth, mauling her lips and shattering most of her front teeth. There was a sound like glass crushing underfoot. Catherine sat down hard, no longer howling, but her ruined mouth agape, blood pouring down her chin. Glassy-eyed, she looked at her blood-covered hands, and then up at Jill. She made words no one could understand. Lowering the mop handle, Jill muttered, "No more! No more!" and her stomach lurched; vomit hot as erupting lava filled her mouth. Then she threw up all over the lower half of Catherine's dress and staggered backwards. Dumbfounded, Catherine looked at the steaming porridge in her lap, then back up at Jill. Then her eyes rolled back into her head until only the whites showed and she flopped backwards onto the floor. Her head banged with a resounding thud. Then she was still. "Is she dead?" Gregory asked. His voice rasped and his face was a mask of pain; he gripped his right shoulder and his chest. He looked ready to pass out. "I don't know," Jill said. She thought that maybe she was. Dropping the mop handle from her sensationless fingers, she took two long, shambling steps toward the escalators, bowed deeply and threw up all over the floor. * Frank took a deep breath as he keyed the alert code into the INS computer. The screen flashed the American Airlines logo for a long five seconds, then cycled to the status screen. Beneath neat rows of cryptic numbering sequences, the following line was displayed: LAST PROGRAM COMPLETE. ENTER NEW PROGRAM? Y/N "Atta baby," he whispered to himself. He typed the letter Y. At the prompt, he selected the choice for Special Options, then the option to reverse-plot the previous course. The computer mulled this over for a while, then stated: PROGRAMING COMPLETE. AA 74 IAD/LAX DIRECT "Frank?" Frank turned around to find Elise standing in the cockpit doorway. She bit nervously on the nail of her left thumb. "What is it, Elise?" His voice was restrained, but also had a touch of sympathy. "I'm rather busy right now." She nodded apologetically. "Is everything all right?" "Everything's fine," he said, then amended: "Here, anyway. Shouldn't you be out guarding the ramp?" "I keep hoping someone will come to the door and yell out to me what's going on." She looked uncertainly back over her shoulder. "I thought I heard someone yelling a while ago. It's hard to be sure though... with the noise and all." Frank nodded. The noise was alarmingly loud. "Do you think they're all right?" "I'm sure they are," he said. "If it'll make you feel any better, you can stand in the hatchway instead of at the base of the ladder. Just yell if you see any trouble." "Okay," Elise murmured. She started to turn away, then stopped. "Are you scared, Frank?" Concentrating on the INS console, Frank replied in an assured tone: "I am, Elise. But I'm keeping it under control. You do the same." Looking not at all reassured, Elise turned away. Suddenly, Frank admitted: "I'm scared to death, okay. I'm scared that noise will reach us before we get this bird in the air. I'm scared that crazy fucking woman's gone and killed our poor Jessica and will kill someone else before she's taken down. I'm afraid the fuel won't burn." He took a deep, shaky breath, exhaled, then continued in a soft voice. "Most of all, I'm afraid what will happen when we do get in the air and head back." He turned around. "That scares me the most, Elise. If you really want to know." Elise's face was pasty-white. She looked on the verge of tears. "Thank you," she whispered. "I just don't want to be terrified alone." And then she left. Watching after her for almost fifteen seconds, Frank slowly shook his head, then turned back to the INS computer. The display read: EXECUTE NEW PROGRAM--IAD/LAX DIRECT Y/N? Frank hit the EXECUTE button. INSTRUCTIONS ACCEPTED. THANK YOU FOR FLYING AMERICAN AIRLINES. "You're very welcome, I'm sure," Frank muttered. Then he said: "Just let the fucking jet fuel burn." * Elise fidgeted restlessly atop the mobile ramp. She took out her pack of Marlboro's, shook one free, then slid the cigarette back into the pack. This was the third time she had done this since returning outside. One of the experimental books of matches that Gregory had brought aboard was tucked beneath the cellophane wrapper; she had struck one a few minutes before and it had lit right up. She shared Frank's fear about the fuel, however. "Please let it burn," she whispered. "Please, please." The noise from the east had taken on a new and even more ominous sound. Underlaying the crunch-rattle-crunch was a high, inanimate screaming. It sounded to Elise like the whine of her ex-boyfriend Jeff's Camaro when it was red- lined in first. "It's a lot closer now, isn't it?" she whispered to herself. She looked nervously around, as though someone might answer. Taking the pack of cigarette's back out of her pocket, she lit one up. Drawing deep and holding the smoke in, she released it slowly, watching the smoke drift lazily through the air before dispersing--a breeze had started up. Wondering if she should report this newest change to Frank Trafano, Elise was startled to find him by her side. Thin strands of hair lifted off his forehead in the gentle breeze, then settled back. He patted at them gently. "From the southeast," he said, reflectively. "Just as it should be." He cocked his ear to the east. "What do you think it is, Frank? Really?" He shook his head slowly. "My dear, pray we never have to find out." * Halfway down the escalator, Solomon stopped. Jill was bent over in the middle of the floor, coughing miserably, strings of saliva dangling from her lips. Between her feet was a splatter of vomit. Catherine was flat on her back, arms outflung, her face a horrible mess. Gregory sat in one of the plastic chairs, looking mournfully at Catherine and gripping his left arm. Blood stained the left side of his shirt front. "Are you all right?" Solomon asked, hurrying down the remaining steps. Jill stood erect and wiped her mouth. Tears danced in her eyes. She hiccuped loudly. "I-I think so," she said, looking at Catherine's recumbent form. "I don't know about her, though. And Gregory's hurt." She went to stand beside Gregory's chair. "We need to get him upstairs, Solomon, find out how badly he's injured." "I'm okay," Gregory said. "It's just a couple of flesh wounds. They're not as bad as they look." Solomon crossed to where Gregory sat, unbuttoned his shirt, and pulled it back over his shoulders. The wound on his chest was an inch long and puckered at the edges. It bled only lightly. He inspected Catherine's attempted stab in the back. "They don't appear to be life threatening," he concurred. "But they do need to be dressed." He helped Gregory rebutton his shirt. "Is Jessica alive?" Jill asked. "For now." Taking Gregory's arm, Jill said: "I should take him upstairs." Solomon nodded distractedly and walked over to where Catherine lay on the floor; he stood looking down at her, frowning. He slowly shook his head. "You did this?" His tone was almost reverent. Jill said dully, "Yes." "Good work." Jill's face crunched in distress and she took two hitching, deep breaths. "She--she was in the Airport Services office. Waiting for us. If I hadn't seen the out-of-place chair... " Gregory finished for her: "She'd have killed us both." All three looked at Catherine's prostrate form. Gregory said: "You should have seen her, Solomon. She was pure Rambo. She saved my fucking life." Jill looked away in indifference, or what could be mistaken for indifference, but neither Gregory or Solomon were fooled. "Are you all right, Jill?" Solomon repeated. "I never killed anyone before," she uttered with another strangled sob. "You haven't now," Solomon told her. "She's still breathing." "She is?" Jill's face was equally hopeful and anxious. "Yes." Jill then heard the harsh rasp of Catherine's labored breathing, and saw the movement of her rising and falling chest. She let out a long, silent breath of her own. She averted her eyes from Catherine's devastated mouth. "What about the stretcher?" Solomon asked. Gregory looked at Solomon as though he had spoken in Aramaic. "The stretcher?" he repeated. "Oh," Gregory said. "In there," indicating the open Airport Services door. "Great! We certainly need it." "There's a first aid kit too," Jill said, suddenly remembering. "Even better." Jill accompanied him to the door. "I'm afraid the flashlight broke," she said. It lay forlornly on the carpet, the plastic lens cracked neatly up the middle. Solomon dug in his pocket. "Wait a minute," he muttered, coming out with a battered old Zippo lighter. It gleamed faintly in the dark. He thumbed back the cover, held it up, and flicked the wheel. There was a spark and the wick caught at once, producing a bright yellow flame. "You smoke?" Jill asked. "Not anymore," he answered. Walking around the desk, glancing momentarily at the spray of papers on the floor and the upside down IN/OUT basket, then at the swivel chair, now pushed up against the back wall, he said: "You two were lucky. Catherine could have gotten you both." Jill only nodded. Opening the first aid kit, Solomon removed a handful of gauze pads, a roll of medical tape, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and half a dozen foil packets of antiseptic cream. These he handed to Jill. Closing the box up again, he then removed the folded stretcher from beneath it. "Let's go," he said. "We're running out of time." Emerging from Airport Services offices, they hurried over to where Gregory sat; Solomon helped him to his feet. "You two head upstairs and get Tanya to dress those wounds. I'll be up momentarily." Jill's eyes narrowed. "What are you going to do?" "Check on our troublesome friend." "Solomon... " "Take the stretcher upstairs. I'll join you shortly." "What are you going to do?" Jill insisted. Solomon looked at her with his oddly gentle eyes. "Go on, Jill. I'll join you soon. And don't look back." Jill stared at him a moment longer, then wordlessly took the folded up stretcher and lead Gregory over to the frozen escalator. Head down, the stretcher dangling from her hand like an empty suitcase, she helped Gregory climb the stairs. She didn't look back. * Solomon waited until Jill and Gregory had disappeared up the stairs, then walked back over to Catherine Montes and squatted down beside her. Her breathing seemed a little more regular now, and her color better. Some of the bleeding had stopped. Given a day or two of intensive care--and a good lawyer--she'd certainly recover. He reached out, placing one hand over Catherine's mouth and the other over her nose. He looked up the frozen mechanical stairs. This was murder, he thought. Cold-blooded murder. It made him recoil. Then he remembered the shaft of bloody steel coming out of Jessica's chest and her tortured scream; his resolve hardened again. Besides, if he did leave Catherine alive, what was he leaving her for? A short, haunted existence in this crazy world until whatever was approaching from the east--approaching with a sound like that of a colony of giant, marauding termites--arrived? No. Best to put her out of it now. This would be painless, and that would be good enough. "Better than you deserve," he muttered. But still he hesitated. He remembered the white hand snaking out and grasping his cuff; Jessica's tortured blue eyes. Don't you kill her! Not so much a plea as a command. A command that had taken her final, pitiful reserves of strength to utter. All I know is that we need her, she'd said. "How can we need her?" Solomon demanded aloud. "She's been nothing but fucking trouble!" We just do! Jessica's disembodied voice answered. Abruptly standing up and bunching his hands, Solomon left Catherine Montes to her tortured breathing. He tromped over to the motionless escalator and bounded up, two steps at a time, muttering obscenities under his breath. "You better be fucking right!" he warned. Chapter 14 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 12:42 P.M. PDT (3:42 P.M. EDT) Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. Elise cast away her half-burned cigarette and began to slowly descend the stairs. She was halfway down when the others emerged through the maintenance door. They carried Jessica strapped down to a stretcher, Solomon on the front and Jill and Tanya side by side at the rear. Gregory jogged along beside them holding his right shoulder. Elise gasped at the blood on the front of Gregory's shirt and ran down to meet them. "What happened!" she demanded. Gregory shook his head. He indicated the white-faced Jessica on the stretcher. "We need to get her inside." "Let me help," she said, taking one side of the front of the stretcher. Solomon looked relieved. "We need to go up as level as possible," Tanya said. "And try not to jiggle her." Elise and Solomon both stepped up on the ramp's first tread, and then turned sideways. "How bad is she?" Elise asked. "Not good," Solomon said grimly. "Unconscious, but still alive." "What about Catherine?" She had to raise her voice to be heard; the crunch-rattle-crunch was louder now, and that wound-out transmission screech was becoming the dominant factor. "She's alive, but I don't know what bloody well for," Solomon growled. "We'll discuss it later. Right now there's no time." Together they ascended three steps and at the other end, Tanya and Jill raised the stretcher to shoulder height. "Keep our end low," he said. They moved the stretcher slowly and carefully up the stairs, Solomon and Elise stepping sideways at the front, Jill and Tanya struggling with the other end. Gregory followed half a dozen steps behind, alternately throwing looks back at the concourse, and then to the east. He clutched his right shoulder tight. Frank arrived at the hatch just as Solomon and Elise reached the top of the ladder and eased their end of the stretcher inside. "I want to put her in First Class," Tanya said, "with that end of the stretcher raised so that her head is up. Can I do that?" "No problem that I see," Frank answered. "The seat belts can run up through the hand holds and lock it down. But you may want the general cabin instead, right across the central seats. That way you can have access from both sides." "Good idea." To Solomon and Elise, she said: "Go ahead. You're doing just fine." Under the cabin lights, Jessica's blood stood out starkly against her pale white skin. It covered her cheeks and chin in a drying crust. Her eyes were closed, but her eyes moved restlessly back and forth beneath them; her lips uttered silent but urgent words. Her breathing had the sound of death. "How bad is it?" Frank asked, his voice cracking. He ran his hand over Jessica's damp hair as they lowered the stretcher into a row of seats. Tanya grunted. "Her lung was punctured on both sides. The knife went straight through. She's bleeding into her lungs and the chest cavity, but not as fast I had feared." "Will she live until we get back?" "How the fuck should I know?" Tanya shouted at him suddenly. "I'm a nurse, not a fucking guru!" The others froze, looking at her with shocked eyes. Jill put her hand on Tanya's arm and said softly: "You're doing wonderful. Better than we could have ever hoped." Tanya muttered: "Sorry. This has been a very trying day." "For us all," Frank said, gripping her right shoulder. "We're all just thankful you were here." Tanya gave a tired smile and brushed back her hair. "We need to strap her in. Then we need the hell out of this place." Five minutes later, the group gathered around Frank in a tight little knot in the First Class cabin. Jessica continued to mutter in her sleep--only it wasn't sleep, Jill suspected, but a type of trauma-induced coma. Before leaving to go forward, she thought she had made out Catherine's name--and it gave her the chills. Frank said: "I'm going to run this thing over to the L- 1011. While I do that, three of you--" he pointed to Jill, Tanya and Gregory "--are going to bring down that hose-cart sitting right there between the jetways." He pointed out a gray and white cart sitting beside the red tanker truck. "We'll need that for refueling." "What about me?" Elise asked. "What am I going to do?" She stood closely beside Gregory--Jill realized she was holding his hand--and her tone indicated she felt picked upon again. Frank fixed her with a slightly irritated look. "Don't worry. You're temporarily off the hook." He turned his attention back to the group. "Two strong men can push a hose cart, no problem; I've seen it done before. Two strong women and a slightly injured man should be able to in a pinch. Gregory, you steer. Just check the transmission to make sure it's in neutral before you move. You want to end up directly beneath the overlapped wings. Got it?" They said that they did. "Solomon, you and Elise move the ladder away, then reposition it next to the wings once I've stopped the plane. The wings, okay--not the door. Got it?" Solomon and Elise both nodded. "Let's get to it then!" he said, clapping his hands. As a group, they all made for the hatch. Their eyes were bright and for the first time in many hours, they looked ready to smile. Of course we are, Jill thought. We have something to do. Something constructive. Pausing for just a moment to consider the noise pounding in from the east, she wondered if they had time remaining to complete their missions. And what would happen then. * As they approached the hose cart, Jill realized they had transitioned from shadow into light. Looking up, she watched the sun get blanketed again by slow moving clouds, moving in from the south. "It's catching up fast. The sun has moved... what? Almost an hour?" "At least that," Tanya said. She put out her hand, moving it open-fingered through the gently stirring air. Then she touched her hair. "The humidity is back and I swear it feels ten degrees warmer." Jill looked down at the ground. As if by magic, oil stains and grease spots had appeared on the previously immaculate concrete. "I wonder how much time we've got?" Her instincts told her it wasn't a tremendous lot longer. Tanya said: "Let's hurry." The cart was a small vehicle with a tank on the back, an open-air cab, and thick black hoses coiled on either side. Jill and Gregory stood back as Tanya inspected inside the cab, then walked completely around the cart in a circle. She pushed experimentally against the tank, rocking the cart gently back and forth. This seemed to reassure her. "You get in, Gregory," she said. "Jill and I can handle this." Gregory one-armed himself up into the cab, examined the rudimentary set of controls, depressed the clutch and moved the shift lever into neutral. Behind them, the pitch of the 767's engines wound higher as Frank powered them up. The noise from the east was very loud now, but the roar and throb of the jet engines almost drowned it out. Jill found she didn't mind that at all. She joined Tanya at the rear of the cart. "Ready?" Tanya asked. Jill nodded. Placing her hands against the smoothly rounded surface, she got ready to push. Tanya did the same. "Would you like to have dinner with me when we get back to LA.?" Tanya suddenly asked. Jill's eyes opened wide. "Yes," she said immediately. "That would be nice." That would be nice? That's the best you can do? "I'd like that very much," she added, laughing softly. "For whatever its worth." Tanya's eyes sparkled. "Right now, its worth a lot." Up front, Gregory shifted through the gears again, then moved the shift lever back into neutral and jumped down. "Let's go!" he yelled. Jill started to object but Gregory cut her off. "Once we get it going, I'll jump back in and steer. Until then... " he put his good shoulder against the frame of the open door and and began to push. Jill put her back into it as well and the cart rolled forward with almost absurd ease. Tanya let out a little laugh and wagged her head. "Two strong women, indeed!" Once up to walking speed, Gregory jumped back in the cart and turned it toward the 767, which was trundling slowly into position aside the parked L-1011. "You know, the difference between the two aircraft is barely visible now," Tanya marveled. Jill had to agreed. Where before the 767 was the only "real" looking object in this crazy, flat as a pancake world, the landscape's third-dimension was reasserting itself. Everywhere she looked, things looked almost normal again. She had that alarming sense of time running out. The 767's turbines slowly died away, leaving only a steady low rumble. Then the starboard engine died away completely as Frank shut it down. The idling port-side engine and APU were no longer loud enough to blanket the noise and where before, that sound had had a kind of massive uniformity, a bee-hive syncophany of beating wings, it was fragmenting now; the wound-out transmission screech still held the dominant edge but other sounds-- sounds within sounds--the sum of which seemed horribly familiar, began to make themselves heard. Army ants in a feeding frenzy, Jill thought. Billions of marauding ants, defoliating not a broad swath of tropical forest, but an entire planet, a planet laid completely bare by their passing. She shivered violently and felt panic chomping away at her thoughts like an attacking barracuda, an elemental force she could control no more than she could control whatever it was making that sound. "Maybe if we could see it," Gregory said as they pushed the fuel cart into position, "we could deal with it better." Jill glanced at him briefly and said, "I don't think so. I don't think so at all." * Once the plane had stopped, Solomon and Elise rolled the ladder to the hatch where Frank stood waiting, then over to the overlapping wings. Touching it gently against the flaps of the 767, Solomon used the foot-kick to lock the ladder in place. Frank then carefully climbed down the steps until his head was level with the underside of the United jet's wing. Flush to the riveted aluminum skin was a small square hatch with the words FUEL TANK ACCESS and CHECK SHUT-OFF VALVE BEFORE REFUELING stenciled on the lid. A ring-pull similar to the one for the access hatch inside the plane was inset into its surface. Bracing himself with a leg around a rail-post, Frank reached out and sprang the fuel lid open. "We okay?" Solomon called up. The army-ant clamor almost drowned him out. Frank leaned over and shouted down: "See those two hoses? Hand me up the shorter of the two!" Tanya worked loose the hose on the right-hand side of the cart and handed it over to Solomon, who passed it up to Frank. Pointing to a long, yellow-handled shut off valve to which the hose was connected, Frank instructed Tanya to make sure it was in the closed position. Then, holding the ladder rail in one hand, and the nozzle of the hose with the other, he leaned far under the wing and positioned the nozzle directly beneath the fuel port. A male connector with a single steel alignment pin was inside. Loosely meshing the two of them together and looking down at the others, he yelled: "Unless you want a jet-fuel bath, I suggest you stand back!" Solomon, Jill and Tanya scrambled back. Elise remained stationed at the bottom of the ladder, trying to keep it steady. Taking a deep breath, Frank muttered, "Considering, of course, there's anything inside to leak," and using both hands, twisted the nozzle upward and counter-clockwise, locking it onto the fuel port. There was a brief spatter of fuel--a very welcome spatter--and then the tough, canvas hose grew rigid as jet-fuel ran down to the cart below. "Okay," he called, pulling himself back to the ladder. "So far, so good." He climbed down to the ground, where Solomon pumped his hand with a well-deserved handshake. "What now? Does the cart have something to do with it? Or is it just a pass-through device?" Frank said, "Normally, the cart does the pumping. It acts as a fuel-filter also, trapping condensated water and other impurities in the fuel. The hose we hooked to the underside of the L-1011's wing usually goes right there." He pointed to a round brass cover plate embedded in the concrete near the fuel tanker truck. "We'll hook the other hose up to the underside our wing, throw a couple of switches, and let the port-side engine power the transfer." "How long will it take?" Frank consulted his watch; his look of expectation faded. "Under optimum conditions--which would be pumping from the ground through the fuel cart--we could load 2,000 pounds of fuel a minute. Doing it like this is harder to figure. I've never had to use the engines before to power a transfer." He looked cheerlessly at the waiting cart. "70,000 pounds? If the 1011 even has that much? At least an hour. Maybe an hour and a half." Solomon gazed anxiously toward the east. After a time, he shook his head and said in a low voice: "I hope you're wrong about that, Frank." "Why?" "Because I don't think we have an hour. We may not even have half of that. " * Alone in the first class cabin, Jessica opened her eyes and saw. What she saw, however, was not the white plastic structure of the 767's ceiling liner, but the formless gray-white of someone else's eyelids. "Catherine," she whispered. * Catherine. Catherine slowly stirred. She slowly shook her head. Go away mama! she said inside her head. I want to sleep. Slowly it dawned on her, however, that the voice was not that of her mother. Catherine! Get up! "Leave me alone!" Her head had become a vast echoey chamber of pain. Pain roared back and forth within it like a gaudily painted circus bandwagon, blowing it's horn and screeching its tires on the tarmac of her brain pan. Circus clowns from the Barnum and Bailey Circus beat monstrous drums and pounded horrific kettles, insisting on driving her mad with their bedlam. She uttered a thick, industrial-sized groan and tried chasing them away with her hands. Catherine, you have to get up! Now! Her head rocked slowly back and forth on the carpeted floor. You can't stay here, the voice insisted. The langoliers will come. "Let them," she answered in a barely audible croak. "I don't care. In fact, I welcome it!" Her effort was rewarded by a shriek of trumpeting pain. Clouds of bees, furious and stinging mad, flew from the horns as they sounded. Suddenly, her mother's voice took over: Get up, Catherine Marie. It's payback time. As soon as you get up, our little friend is going to invite you out for a walk. A gun is waiting for you, all silver and shiny and has bullets inscribed with somebody else's name. Catherine, despite the swirling, bottomless pit of her anguish, found herself interested. "Who's name?" she asked. You know who... Catherine's hands shuffled on the carpet. She made an effort to open her eyes, but glue held them closed. Someone had super-glued her eye lids together. "No," she muttered. "He's dead. You're dead. They're all dead. You can't trick me anymore, mama, and you can't make me do things I don't want to do. The langoliers are all made up and I don't have to listen to you anymore!" Only... that wasn't true. Somewhere beyond her mother's phantom voice--and the weird voice of that other--she heard the thrum of jet engines... and something else. Something else that had the ability to make the kettle drums and trumpets of pain in her head seem like the soft touch of a finger. Something that made all the ravenous army ants that had ever existed since the beginning of time look like purposeless, meandering slugs. Catherine, get up. You have to get up! The weird voice of the other was back. It emanated from far away, soft and yet damnably insistent. It seemed to come from outside her head, not from the inside as did her mother's. It was familiar too, almost like that of... Catherine. He's come here to you! He's left the city and come here to let you have your say. That's how important this is. You can still do it, Catherine. You can still stick the pin. Hand him his walking papers; bail out while you still have the time... if you're woman enough to do it. "Woman enough?" she croaked. "Woman enough? You dumb fucking bimbo--you've got to be kidding!" Struggling onto her elbows and then into a sitting position--darkness exploded inside her head like a detonation of thunder--she tried again to open her eyes. Blood bonded her eyelashes together. Working one hand up to her face, and then to her right eye, she used two fingers to pry her eyelids apart. Light was admitted, and inside her head, pain buzzed and grumbled and paced back and forth--but the worst of it had subsided. Slowly, a little at a time, Catherine looked around. And saw her. "What the... " It was the young girl, Jessica, but her stab wound was gone and her powder blue top was spotless again. She gently smiled, even with her blue eyes. Come on, Catherine. Get up. I know it's hard, but you have such an opportunity here. The man is waiting outside. Outside where the world can witness your retribution, your vindication! But he won't wait forever. The langoliers will see to that. The girl was not standing on the carpeted floor, Catherine saw, but on what appeared to be... clouds? In fact, the air surrounding her was different. She seemed encapsulated within an eggshell of shimmering white light, superimposed on the air. Only it wasn't the light alone that shimmered... Catherine realized she saw right through Jessica to the Information counter beyond. Prying open her left eye, she saw that it wasn't a trick of the light. Come on, Catherine. Get up. Catherine struggled to her feet. It was very hard--her sense of balance seemed ninety degrees out of kilter--and her head buzzed and swarmed with the sound of angry bees- -killer bees. Bees that stung her brain and poisoned it with their venom. Twice she fell back, each time barely keeping her feet, until finally she staggered to the closest row of chairs and clung to the back of one like a Central Park drunk. "This better be good," she muttered. I promise, the young girl said, smiling gently. Now hurry, Catherine. He's waiting. Waiting for you. Always, waiting for you. * Jessica lay on the stretcher, her eyes moving relentlessly back and forth beneath her translucent, red- veined eyelids; the drawn, starkly-white pallor of her skin lay in sharp contrast to the bright red blood staining her teeth. She muttered wordlessly as, one hundred yards away, Catherine Montes distractedly pushed at her hair, twisted and pulled at her severely cut gray blazer and skirt, and stretched the muscles in her neck in some grotesque parity of preparing for a speech or to walk out on stage. On her bloody face was a restrained yet clearly evident mixture of emotions: anger, hope, and a kind of merciless determination. I'm sorry for you, Jessica thought. In spite of what you did to me, I'm sorry for you. The ordeal affected you so much worse than it did the rest of us, Catherine. I think you should have gone over. You were so close to the edge. But you're here now and we need you, Catherine, we really do. Bringing her thoughts into narrow focus, Jessica pushed them with great effort across the intervening distance to Catherine's head. Hurry, Catherine! It's almost too late! And she sensed that it was. * After attaching the second of the two hoses to the 767's fuel port, Frank returned to the cockpit, cycled up the port-side engine, and went to work sucking the L-1011's fuel tanks dry. The bulk of the original fuel--eight thousand pounds of it--was tucked safely away in the center tank; the port-side engine and the APU ran on what remained in the left. As the LED readout on his left tank slowly began to register the oncoming fuel, he waited tensely for the engines to falter. They did not and he began to breath easier. But as the LED ticked over the 4,000-pound mark, he heard a change in pitch of the small jet engine at the rear of the plane, and then the port- side engine changed as well--they both grew rough and labored. "What's happening?" Solomon asked. He had joined Frank in the cockpit and sat in the copilot's chair. His shirt was disarrayed, with wide streaks of grease and blood across its formerly natty, button-down front. "The APU and Number One are getting a taste of the 1011's fuel and don't like it," Frank said. "I sure hope Gregory's magic works." "Why don't you switch over?" Solomon asked. Frank positioned his hand over a set of switches marked FUEL TRANSFER and gave Solomon an apprehensive look. "I can switch them back to the center tank, but that leaves us not knowing if the fuel's changing over or not. And if this isn't going to work, we need to know about it right now." "What about just the port-side engine? Can you switch that over?" Frank shook his head. "It's all or nothing." "Fuck." Just as the LED reached 9,000 pounds in the left wing tank, the port-side engine flamed out. A red ENGINE SHUTDOWN light appeared on the master console and klaxon alarmed. Frank throttled back, then restarted the engine. Roughly, it cycled back up. "This is not good," he mumbled. Adjusting dials marked FUEL MIXTURE RATIO on the console just below the throttles, he let breath out in a low soft whistle as the engine slowly smoothed out. Then the APU suddenly died. "What can we do about this?" Solomon asked. He got up to look over Frank's right shoulder. "Restart it and hope it keeps running. We need them both." Frank restarted the APU, adjusting the fuel mixture then consulting a readout. "Number One is running hot." "Is that bad?" "Not yet." Thirty seconds later the left engine started to fail again and while Frank was moving his hand to adjust the mixture ratio, the APU flamed out; the cockpit lights went with it. "No! No! No!" Frank said, flipping the fuel transfer switches over to the center tank. "Not now!" he hissed, "Not fucking now!" As the APU slowly came back to life, he moved the port engine's throttles to idle, then restarted it again. Smoothly, it cycled up to speed. "That was close. That was way too fucking close." He dialed the fuel mixtures down to normal. "We'll just have to wait." Staring at Frank with big round eyes, Solomon said: "What if we're wrong? What if it doesn't change over?" Frank looked back at him with eyes equally as scared. "Let's just pray it does." Five minutes later the left wing tank contained nearly 24,000 pounds, its maximum load. Frank crossed his fingers in a sign of hope, then switched the fuel transfer over to the opposite tank. Waiting in silence for another five minutes, he then reached out and switched the APU and port-side engine back to the left tank. Two nerve-jangling minutes went by. "We might have lucked out," Solomon said, a big, slow grin lighting his face. "We might just have lucked out!" Frank raised his hands, crossed four sets of fingers, and shook them in the air. "Let's fucking hope so!" When another two minutes went by and the APU and left engine showed no signs of quitting, they both whooped and high-fived in the air. Christine appeared in the doorway behind them. "Is everything all right?" "My dear," Frank said without turning, "I think we might just have bought our way out of this thing!" * Catherine had finally managed to make herself right. Or as right as a devastated mouth, a severely lacerated left temple and cross-eyed vision would alloy. She looked slowly around. The encapsulated Jessica had disappeared for a time, but had now rejoined her. She floated twenty feet away, near the immobile set of escalators, her feet in the clouds. She looked at Catherine with a benign sweetness. A benign sweetness and something else... something Catherine had worked for her entire life, but had never really attained It was understanding. Understanding and compassion. It almost made her cry. Looking around, she saw through the floor to ceiling windows that the 767 was no longer parked in its expected spot. She blinked slowly in confusion, then walked toward the windows between two rows of seats. An unexpected fear speared her heart. If David Twomy were truly here, if the girl had actually brought him--and she was certain she had--then she could complete her mission and go home. Safely home, where the thoughts of others would cease to matter and the langoliers with their crunch-rattle-crunch couldn't bother her again. But only if the others were here. If they had left... Hurrying over to the windows, Catherine released a lungfull of pent up breath. The plane was still there, parked down by the runway beside a United Airlines jet. Some Rube Goldberg-contraption had been set up beneath the overlapped wings--probably refueling, some pitifully small part of her logical brain put forth--so she still had time. Not much, but a little. "Wait for me," she said out loud. "I'm coming." They'll wait, the encapsulated Jessica said. But you have to hurry, Catherine. You have to hurry before they decide you're not coming and leave. Nodding her head comically up and down, Catherine began to make her way forward. The girl's feet did not move, but as Catherine approached her, she floated up the motionless escalator like a balloon, toward the main concourse above her, and the way out. And... oh, glorious, Catherine thought: To the waiting David Twomy. * They were all inside on the plane now, all except Elise and Gregory, who stood halfway up the metal stairs and listened to the sound roll toward them from the east. It was almost intolerably loud. Jill, who stood at the open hatch and watched the terminal building, still wondered what they would do about Catherine, if Catherine were still alive. She hoped Solomon had told the truth. She felt miserable about what she had done. She jumped when Tanya appeared beside her. "Jessica is talking in her sleep. To Catherine, I think. She's delirious." Jill accompanied her back to the cabin, where Solomon, sitting across from Jessica, held one of the young girl's hands. He looked up at them anxiously. "I think we might be loosing her," he said. "She's very hot." JIll felt the young girl's forehead. She nodded slowly. The bleeding had slowed to an acceptable level, but the girl's respiration came in a series of pitiful whistling gasps. Blood encrusted her mouth like a child's attempt to apply lipstick . Tanya began, "I think--" and then Jessica said, quite clearly, "They'll wait. But you have to hurry, Catherine, have to hurry before they decide you're not coming and leave." Jill, Solomon and Tanya exchanged puzzled, frightened looks. "She's dreaming about Catherine," Solomon said. "She keeps repeating her name over and over again." "Yes," Jessica said, as though in answer. Her eyes were closed, but her head moved slightly to the right; she appeared to listen. "I will," she said. "But you have to hurry. The langoliers are close, Catherine, and are getting closer by the minute. The others might wait, but the langoliers surely won't." Her use of the name of Catherine's childhood specter gave Jill the creeps. From the looks on the other's faces, it did them as well. She shivered lightly. That sound... that sound is so-- Real? "We are loosing her, aren't we?" Solomon whispered. "No," Tanya said. "I don't think so. I think she's just... dreaming." But that was not what Jill thought. What she thought was that Jessica might be in the throes of something else entirely. Something possibly even worse than the mess they now found themselves in, something possibly related. For if the two of them--Catherine and Jessica--really were in metal contact, had they not been quite as asleep as the others? What had Jessica said? I'm a very light sleeper... I wake up at the drop of a leaf? If being too close to the edge of consciousness at the moment of the event had somehow bound them together, if the fates of Jessica and Catherine were intertwined like some mental pair of Siamese twins, then what of their own fates? Could they all be in danger? "Leave her alone," she said in a dry, abrupt tone of voice. "Leave her alone and let her sleep." Solomon let out a miserable breath. "God, I hope we take off soon." Nodding, Tanya put a comforting arm around his shoulders. * Catherine reached the top of the escalators and stood there panting. A throbbing agony had settled on her mouth and would not let her think. She tried to remember just what had happened to her, what had brought her to this, but nothing would come. Nothing at all. Squinting her eyes against the pain, she looked around for the encapsulated girl, locating her fifty feet down the concourse. She was so lovely, that small part of her functioning mind thought, so full of life. How could she ever have thought that Jessica would betray her? "You are an angel," she croaked. Yes, the waiting girl replied. If that's what you want. Catherine was overcome with joy. Her vision blurred and then tears--the first ones she had ever cried as an adult (other than when being spanked)--began to run slowly down her cheeks. She found herself remembering that old song, sang by her mother sometimes as a drunken taunt, a song that as an adult Catherine normally despised. Just call me angel of the morning, angel... "Are you an angel?" Catherine asked. "My guardian angel?" That's why I'm here, Catherine--to help guide you out. But for God's sakes hurry! The langoliers are almost here and David Twomy will not wait! "Yes," Catherine sobbed. She began to stagger down the concourse, one eye open, one eye closed--blood had reglued her left eyelid shut--and though every step was an exercise in pain, it was pain she gladly accepted. She would crawl if that's what it took. Ahead of her, the smiling girl had stopped before the service door and showed it to Catherine with a sweep of her hand. She seemed so kind, so understanding, so gentle. So much like... What I might have been if not for my mother, she thought. What I still might be, once this is done. Her eyes pouring out fresh tears, Catherine grasped the door handle in her undamaged right hand and pulled it open. "Just call me angel of the morning, angel. Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby," she sang as she started unsteadily down the stairs. * To the east of the airport, there was an immense cracking sound like the shattering of a concrete column in an earthquake. Gregory and Elise, silently watching the horizon, both jumped and had to clasp the rails of the ladder to keep from tumbling down. Their faces, pallid and filled with dreadful questions, went utterly white. "What was that?" Elise cried. "A tree maybe?" Gregory replied. "But there's no wind!" "Not enough to do that," he agreed. The noise had escalated to an almost unbearable decibel level. It was a plethora of sound, some monstrous soundtrack made up of individual, yet weirdly overlapping tracks. One track would momentarily advance to the forefront, only to be shoved aside moments later by another, even louder track. At one moment Jill, back at the hatch now along with Tanya, would swear she heard some nightmare animal howling, only to hear that sound swallowed up like a minnow on the end of a hook by something even worse, something like the world's largest shovel scraped across the world's widest sidewalk. Then that sound was supplanted by the screeching, red-lined transmission sound. And supporting all those, like the underlying bass line of a heavy metal soundtrack, the constant crunch-rattle-crunch of marauding giant army- ants. From beyond the far line of trees came another rending crack. "What is that?" Elise cried shrilly. She started to cover her ears and then Gregory seized her arm and pointed. "Look!" he shouted. "Look over there!" Far to the east of them, on the horizon, a series of high rise towers jutted their final few stories above the tree line. Suddenly, one of the towers gave off an immense plume of dust from the northeast corner, and the corner began to sink. Then, like a building dynamited from within in a controlled demolition, the entire structure sank down, replaced moments later by a billowing cloud of dust. As the deep-throated rumble of its destruction reached them, the tower just to the south began to collapse as well, and then the one beside it. Within thirty seconds, the entire series was gone. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" Elise trilled. She began to backpedal up the steps, dragging Gregory along with her. From within the open hatchway, Jill yelled loudly: "The trees! Look at the trees! They're coming down too!" As all of them watched, a great swath of trees in front of the demolished buildings simply fell away from sight. Jill had the crazy idea that some massive hand had just yanked them down through the earth by their roots. And all the while, the crunch-rattle-crunch, the nightmare animal howling and the red-lined transmission sound grew stronger. "We have to get out of here!" Tanya cried. She gripped Jill with both hands and her eyes were huge with a kind of reverential terror. "We have to get out of here right now!" On the horizon, perhaps ten miles distant, the slender silhouette of a radio tower trembled, then swayed in a gentle S-curve as the series of guy wires holding it erect snapped; it delicately fell in upon itself into the quaking, disappearing trees. Then the earth began to vibrate with the destructive force's elemental power and, all along the length of the mid-field concourse building, windows began to flex and bow. "Make it stop!" Elise suddenly screamed. She clapped her hands over her ears and no one was getting them off. "Please make it STOP!" But the sound-wave only intensified, rolling toward them with a terrible frenzy--the crunching, smacking, eating sound of the langoliers. * "I don't want to rush you, Frank, but how much longer?" Jill had appeared in the cockpit doorway and her voice was rigid. "Whatever is out there is within sight--less than ten miles away--and it is definitely not friendly!" She started as Tanya appeared beside her. "There's no word for how unfriendly this thing is," Tanya stressed. Her face was white and she croaked the words out more than spoke them. Frank glanced at his LED readouts. "24,000 pounds in the left wing, 23,000 pounds in the right, 8000 in the center tank. It's going faster now that we don't have to pump the fuel over-wing to the other side but we still have a ways to go." He stared fixedly at his watch. "Twenty minutes, no less." "You can't cut that? Please say you can cut that!" Frank shook his head. "We need seventy-thousand pounds at least. Any less, and we'll come down smack in the middle of the Mojave Desert." He turned back to the gauges. "Ten more minutes to pump, ten to unhook, button up, and taxi out. Then we're gone." * Catherine emerged from the apron level doorway into the bright white light of the new and ever-accelerating day. She took a step backwards. The sound was horrendous, overwhelming. The ground, the air and even the sky seemed to shake with it. For a moment, she stood frozen in her tracks, big-eyed, shocked and confused. Maybe, she thought, as a shaft of nearly-rational thought speared her mind, maybe this is not such a good idea. Maybe her gripe with David Twomy had somehow gotten overblown in her mind and this calamitous noise and the fear of the others were of more importance than she'd originally admitted. Maybe what she really ought to be worried about was getting back onto that plane! Then she forgot her doubts. Because just beyond the American Airlines 767, set down incongruously in the margin of grass between the taxiway and the long north- south runway, was a detached, three-story townhouse. It appeared exactly as it had the last time she had seen it, except the right-hand side was no longer connected to the townhouse to the right, but open on all three levels. Even the chain link fence bordering the townhouse was there--it just stopped at the property's edge. From deep within the townhouse, somehow coexisting with the cacophony of the approaching langoliers, was the sound of David's barking Rotweiler, Max. And the front door stood invitingly open. * As the others argued in the cockpit about fuel levels and minutes remaining, Jessica, alone in the back, choked out a strangled plea. "Run to him quickly, Catherine! He's waiting inside. You must confront him now!" * Catherine stumbled out of the doorway, struck the base of the fire extinguisher with her left foot, and hit the concrete apron with a bone-jarring thud. She stayed there a moment on her hands and knees, blinking and dazed, then struggled back to her feet. She gave no thought to the lacerations on her palms and knees--pain no longer mattered. Only the townhouse mattered... and the person inside. Run to him, Catherine! Run around the plane! Run away from the plane! Run to him now! Catherine glanced dazedly at the encapsulated girl--she now shown twice as brightly in the midday sun, like a vision of the Virgin Mary herself--and then began to run. She ran toward that brick-faced, nondescript townhouse, a place where (spread that damn thing wider white bitch!) relentless men and foolish women played regrettable games. A place where thumping, wailing, pleading and demanding brought about not only incredible sexual highs, but ruinous scandal. "I'm coming," she muttered through her shattered teeth as her stride lengthened and grew stronger with every yard. "I'm coming right now!" * The LED readout for the center tank began to slow when it reached the 16,000 pound mark, and by the time it topped 18,500 it had almost stopped. Frank counted under his breath as the numbers crawled slowly up to 18,782 and stopped; he quickly flicked two switches, shutting off the hydraulic pumps. The L-1011 had given up all that it had to give: a little less than 57,000 pounds of jet- fuel. It had to be enough. "Come on!" he yelled, standing up. "We're uncoupling this bird and getting the fuck out of here now!" The approaching noise had now reached catastrophic levels. The entire airplane shook. Mixed into the crunch- rattle-crunch and the wound-out transmission screech were the sounds of splintering concrete and the continuous, dull whump of collapsing buildings. As Jill stood aside to let Frank and Solomon pass by, she heard a series of staccato, gun-like reports, followed by a deafening, splintering crash. She knew instinctively that what she had just heard was the collapse of the world-famous curved roof and support columns of the main terminal building. "Catherine!" Elise screamed suddenly. "It's Catherine Montes!" Tanya and Jill followed on Frank and Solomon's heels through First Class to the open forward hatch. They were just in time to see Catherine running bandy-legged across the taxiway to the median of freshly mowed grass beside the runway. "What's she doing?" Gregory exclaimed. "Forget her!" Frank barked. "We're all out of time!" Pointing at Gregory and Elise halfway down the ladder, he yelled: "You two get the hell inside! Solomon? Go down the ladder ahead of me and hold me while I uncouple the hose." Jill, backing away from the hatch to allow the others free access, felt like a woman strapped naked to a bench while a vengence-seeking and thoroughly enraged Super Bowl-losing team tramped into the locker room at half time. Descending the steps two at a time, Solomon braced himself against the rail with his leg as Frank had done earlier and grabbed Frank's belt with both hands. Frank leaned out and twisted the nozzle of the hose off the coupling ring. Precious fuel spurted out. "Come on, you mother-fucker!" he yelled as he struggled to get the fuel-port door closed. The nozzle-ring clanged loudly atop the L-1011's wing below, then snaked free and dropped to the cement, where it clanged dully. Frank finally got the fuel-port door slammed shut and yelled: "Let's go!" But Solomon did not move. He was frozen in place, staring to the east. His eyes had grown to the size of silver dollars and his jaw had dropped. His lips were drawn back over his teeth, making him look like a freshly unearthed mummy. Swiveling his head in that direction, Frank mimicked Solomon's expression exactly as the langoliers finally entered stage left. * Catherine swung back the metal gate and stepped onto David Twomy's front walk. She closed the gate cautiously behind her. She need not have bothered--the thunderous noise from the east swamped all other sounds. Casting a series of swift glances around her--why were the others standing like dummies on the ladder, staring open-mouthed toward the east?--Catherine ventured down the walk. "I'm here," she said softly, mounting the three steps of the concrete stoop. The mahogany-veneered front door stood open, and reaching out, she found the storm door unlatched as well. She swung it open and stepped inside. The noise outside vanished immediately. Suddenly she was on a quiet, residential street in Georgetown. "David? It's Catherine. Are you here?" Her words echoed softly throughout the luxuriously appointed townhouse. A highly respected lobbyist for the timber industry, David Twomy had first wooed Catherine three months before, over cocktails and shrimp scampi at Martin's of Georgetown. He then convinced her--as though she had needed convincing--to accompany him back to his digs (spread that damn thing wider white bitch!) for the main course. For sixteen wonderful and incredibly painful hours, she had endured the cuisine of his secret room downstairs, finding hitherto unthought of uses for her asshole, vagina and mouth. Hobbling out to the taxi the following morning for the ride home to Capitol Hill, she had prayed not to leak all over the vinyl seat. Her bottom had remained closed, but only because of the butt plug she wore. David had insisted she wear it. "Come out, come out, where ever you are," she cooed. Raising her right hand, she discovered in it a chrome- plated Smith & Wesson 44 Magnum... Dirty Harry's gun. Pulling back the hammer with a loud snick-snick, she sighted along the barrel and targeted a lamp. It disintegrated in an eruption of shards and dust as the pistol went WHOOM! throwing back Catherine's hand. She exploded in laughter. "David! David, come out and take your medicine!" she yelled, exploding another lamp. Suddenly, Max the Rotweiler--he was in the basement, of that Catherine was sure--came to angry life, barking and snarling and thudding heavily against a wooden door. Grinning, Catherine cocked the gun and lofted it before her in both hands, striding purposefully toward the staircase leading both upstairs and down. The closer she got to the landing the louder the snarling grew. "All right, David!" she screamed. "If you're not man enough to come out and face me, then let's see how Mr.Max likes a little attention!" Starting down the stairs, Catherine caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her right eye and spun about. She stumbled and the gun went off, blowing a baseball-sized hole into the soffit above her head. Gypsum dust and splintered wood rained down on her hands and forearms and she angrily shook it off. Three shots gone, only three remaining. She cocked the pistol again and reentered the living room. "David, you mother-fucker! Come out and face me like a man!" Suddenly he was there, naked and imposing as a bear. His enormous cock, long as a forearm and as wide across as a fist, rocked with his roaring laughter. "Why are you laughing!" she screamed. His laughter came so hard and so loud that it made the flooring shudder beneath her feet and the furniture and belongings around her rattle and dance. Dust showered lightly down from the ceiling and in all the walls, nail heads popped. Centering the gun on his chest, Catherine snarled: "You posted those mother-fucking pictures!" Slowly, reluctantly, David Twomy stopped his laughter. He said in a low, booming voice: "Of course I did, Catherine. That was the idea." "To ruin me?" she said incredulously. "To destroy my whole life?" "You had no life." The Smith & Wesson leapt in her hands, opening a dime- sized hole in David Twomy's chest. Blood and viscera exploded from his other side, scaling the furniture and the wall behind him. He seemed not to notice. "Two to go," he taunted. Enraged, Catherine raised the gun and centered it right between his eyes. Her own eyes narrowed. "Laugh about this," she murmured and suddenly lowered her sights. Twomy's expression changed from hilarity to alarm as the muzzle flashed and his penis exploded in a spray of red and pink. The shot vaporized his testicles as well, opening an almost comical-looking trench between his legs, a trench filled with blood; he stood emasculated, shocked and confused. It was Catherine's turn to laugh. "How do you like that!" she screamed joyfully into his shocked face. "Think you can screw with Catherine Montes? Think you can get one over on me?" She was about to go on, to really elaborate on this question, to really elucidate her feelings, when she was stopped by the sound. Suddenly, the house was no longer on a quiet residential street, but dropped right in the middle of a giant, malfunctioning machine. A machine that would chew her into itty-bitty pieces of gruel with its dry hungry teeth and spit out her bones. Suddenly Catherine felt a deep need to raise the chrome- plated revolver to her right temple and pull the trigger, but when she raised her hand, the revolver was gone. So was the townhouse. So was Max the Rotweiler downstairs and his incessant barking. So was David Twomy. "Where am I?" she asked in a small, perplexed voice. She looked around and saw the 767 just to her right, the partially demolished terminal building beyond, the huge outpouring of dust and debris in the air, and suddenly she understood. The langoliers had returned. The langoliers had returned for her. The langoliers had returned for the entire fucking world! Catherine Montes began to scream. * Jill could see them, but could not understand what it was she was seeing. In some strange way they seemed to defy seeing, in the same way air seemed to defy your sense of touch. She felt her frantic, over-stressed mind battling to change the incoming information, to make the shapes which had begun to appear at the near end of Runway 19L into something its gray matter could comprehend. Are they mechanical prunes? her embattled mind asked. Could they be mechanical prunes? As insane as the idea sounded, something actually seemed to click in the center of her head and the forms took on a more solid appearance, becoming not just prunes, but prunes with three jaws and chainsaw teeth. At first there were only the two shapes, one black, the other a dark, shoe-leather brown. (Male and female! her frantic mind insisted.) They roared across the grass at the end of the runway, crisscrossing madly, leaving deep swaths of blackness behind them. Only they were not cutting just the grass, her mind screamed... No! They were devouring the grass and everything that lay beneath it! Everywhere they darted they left behind a ten-foot wide swath of terrible, perfect blackness, a blackness that was both empty, and yet somehow full of... what? Her mind refused to put forth an answer to that. Suddenly, the black object swerved and raced erratically across the white concrete at the end of the runway and onto the taxiway beside it, followed moments later by its mate. Where they went they left the same eerie black tracks of nothingness. No, her mind reluctantly denied. Not nothingness. You know what that blackness is. It's the opposite of nothing--massless, formless energy! Energy in its most primitive state. Bound where it was by some terrible force until what? Until its needed again, for some new use? As destructive as their passage was, there was something even more malignantly destructive about their behavior. They crisscrossed each other's paths with an almost gleeful abandon, leaving a series of wavery black X's on the taxiway. Then they leapt high in the air, did an exuberant, crisscrossing maneuver there, and then dove straight into the earth, leaving behind twin black holes. They reemerged moments later fifty feet further up the taxiway and raced straight for the plane. As they did, Frank screamed and Solomon screamed beside him. Faces lurked beneath the surfaces of the racing monstrous forms--alien faces. They shimmered and twitched and wavered like faces made of glowing swamp-gas. The eyes were only rudimentary indentations but the mouths were huge: three giant triangular flaps, lined with gnashing, blurring teeth. As the langoliers advanced they rotated freely in the air, the faces within seeming to rotate in the opposite direction, always maintaining an upright position. They ate as they came, rolling up ten- foot strips of the world. A Lufthansa 747-400 sat parked on the taxiway at the east end of the concourse. The langoliers veered off and pounced upon it, high-speed teeth whirring and crunching and bulging out of their convoluted bodies. They went through it without pause. One of them burrowed a path directly through the fuselage, twenty feet behind the wings. The aircraft shuddered and shifted slightly to its left, then settled back again. A moment later the langolier returned and took a second mouthful out of the plane, leaving a perfect figure eight where the holes overlapped. Debris rained down inside the body of the aircraft and then, shorn of most of its interior structure, the fuselage simply crumpled and the plane's tail section fell to the ground, where it rocked slowly back and forth. The other langolier--the black male, Jill's mind insisted--leaped high in the air, disappeared for a moment behind the 747's thick midsection, then blasted straight through, leaving a metal-ringed hole through the center of the wing. Aviation fuel sprayed out in a dull amber flood, splashing onto the concrete below. The two langoliers then struck the ground together, bounced as if on springs, crisscrossed again in mid-air--Jill would swear they'd have high-fived had they only had hands--and raced on toward the 767. Just as they reached the edge of the tarmac however, they paused, rotating uncertainly in place for a moment, looking like giant hovering bees. Then they turned and zipped off in a new direction. Zipped off in the direction of Catherine Montes, who stood watching them and screaming into the white day. With a huge effort, Jill snapped the paralysis which held her. "We have to go!" she screamed. Frank reacted as though stung by a bee and elbowed Solomon, who was still frozen below him. "Come on!" he yelled. Solomon didn't move and Frank drove his elbow back harder this time, connecting solidly with Solomon's forehead. "Come on, godammit! Move your ass! We're getting out of here!" Down at the end on the runway, more black and brown prunes had appeared. They darted, danced and circled... and then raced directly toward the 767. * You can't get away from them, her mother had said, because of their legs. Their fast little legs. Catherine tried, nevertheless. She turned and ran screaming for the airplane, waving her arms and casting horrified, grimacing looks behind her as she did. Her heels clattering on the pavement only slowed her down and she kicked them off. Ahead of her, the 767 was again cycling up, both engines bellowing heat. The movable ladder had been shoved aside, but the hatch remained open. It was ringed by horrified, watching faces. No, Catherine, her mother laughed. You may THINK you're running, but you're not. You know what you're really doing don't you--you are SCAMPERING! Behind her the male and female langoliers sped up, closing the gap with effortless, joyful speed. They crisscrossed twice in the concrete apron, leaving jagged lines of blackness behind. They rolled after Catherine several feet apart, creating what looked like giant, negative ski-tracks in the white pavement. They caught up with her twenty feet from the movable ramp, crisscrossed directly before her, and Catherine barely halted in time. She stood wind-milling at the edge of blackness, just millimeters from death. Understanding there was no way across the ten-foot void, Catherine spun on her heel and headed for the open doorway in the mid-field concourse. If she could draw them away, get them headed toward the long structure instead of toward the airplane, get them on her right, then maybe she could backtrack to her left and get to the ramp unimpeded. The others would let her on. The others would surely let her on! After all, she was human! But even as she argued this point in her mind, the black male (the black male, of course!) zig-zagged across her path and her feet were gone. At one moment her briskly scampering feet were there, the next, Catherine was three inches shorter and scampering on the stumps of her calves. There was no blood; the wounds were cauterized instantly in the langoliers' scorching passage. And as the first needles of pain began to sizzle up her legs, the black langolier banked tightly to its right and came rolling back, rolling up the pavement in a beeline for Catherine's pistoning legs. And where its inbound-trail crossed its out-bound trail, a crescent of cement was created, bordered in blackness, like a depiction of the moon in an outhouse eave. Only this crescent began to sink. Not into the earth--for there appeared to be no earth beneath the surface--but into nowhere at all. Instead of gobbling her up whole, at the last possible instant the black langolier swerved left, clipping Catherine off at the knees She came down hard, still trying to run, sprawling on her chest and her face. She stared at the concrete, stunned. Aboard the airplane, turning her eyes away from the horrible tableau, Jill muttered, "No... no more... no more," as Tanya put her arms around her and held her tight. Her own eyes, shell-shocked into pop-eyed wideness, couldn't leave the visage beheld through the open doorway. She watched in horrid fascination as Catherine flipped over onto her back and screamed, "No!" at the black langolier rotating above her. In the half-instant before her death, Catherine saw in the machine blur of its gnashing teeth, the robust vitality of its leering grin, the shifting, glimmering, wavering of its hideous face that it was not some strange space alien at all, but her own David Twomy, bent on revenge. Her final thought before the motorized teeth closed in and ripped her apart was: You can't do this to me! I'm a United States senator! Chapter 15 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 2:10 P.M. PDT (3:42 P.M. EDT) Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C. Scores of the ravenous prunes had now appeared, and Jill understood that soon there would be hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of the things. She clung to the galley partition and watched through the open forward hatch as Frank wound up the engines and pulled the 767 away from the ladder and the wing of the United Airlines jet. She watched as great looping helix's of blackness crisscrossed the end of Runway 19L, heading for the mid- field concourse, then tracked suddenly right, converging on the spot where Catherine Montes had died. I guess they don't get live meat very often, she thought, and almost threw up. Then she did throw up, swinging around in time to do it into the galley sink. "The hatch!" Frank yelled from the cockpit. "Somebody get the fucking hatch!" Tanya ran back and slammed the door and dogged it shut. Then she grabbed Jill and the two of them began to stagger down the aisle, swaying from side to side like two drunks clinging together for support. Flopping down side by side in the center row, they belted themselves in, then faced each other like undying lovers. Tanya's eyes seemed to fill her entire face; her mouth moved wordlessly. She put his arms around Jill and Jill put hers around Tanya and they buried their faces into the hollows where their necks and their shoulders met. They cried together in abject horror. * In the cockpit, Frank locked the nose wheel fully to the right, caught the first taxiway with perhaps a foot to spare, circled the airplane in a tight, 360 degree loop around the grassy island on which Catherine Montes had played out her last scenario before a crowd, then chocked the throttles fully open; the 767 went charging west down the apron at a suicidal rate of speed. Their only hope now lay in Runway 30, which took off to the west; the entire eastern edge of the airport was now black with the invading prunes and the end of Runway 19L had completely disappeared. The world beyond it was almost gone and in that direction, the blue unclouded sky now arched down over a world of scrawled black lines, toppling buildings and fallen over trees. As the plane neared the end of the apron, Frank throttled back and grabbed the microphone and shouted: "Belt in! Belt in! If you're not belted in, hold on to something!" He braked marginally, then slewed the 767 ninety degrees onto the shared taxiway for Runways 30 and 19R, making the tires squeal and burn. The right wing dipped perilously low, and he felt the hydraulics on the right main gear bottom out. He prayed that they were not damaged. Then the plane righted itself and he charged south along the taxiway toward the end of Runway 30 and safety. Back in the main cabin, Jill saw something out the port- side windows which made her mind quail: huge sections of the world which lay to the east of the airport, huge irregular pieces of reality itself, were sinking into the void like floundering ocean liners, tipping up whatever end was lighter, slipping away and leaving big senseless chunks of emptiness behind. They are eating the world, her shocked mind thought. They are eating the world alive. Then the aircraft dipped hard to the left and Flight 74 screeched through another ninety degree turn and was pointed west again, with Runway 30 lying open and long and deserted before it. * First, when the 767 careened onto the shared taxiway, then again when it swerved onto Runway 30, overhead compartments had burst open, spewing carry-on luggage across the cabin. Elise, who hadn't had time to fasten her seat belt, was thrown across Gregory's lap on the first turn, in an almost perfect spanking position. If Gregory noticed his lapful of girl or the laptop computer case--obviously still full--ricocheting off the seat back directly before him, he didn't show it. His attention was glued to the windows to his left, through which could be seen hundreds--no, thousands!--of the malignant speeding shapes. They rushed across Runway 19L and the taxiway beside it and onto the apron where a giant well of blackness had opened up where Catherine Montes had died. "They're being drawn there," he muttered to himself, as the aircraft made its second, wildly careening turn onto Runway 30. His voice sounded awed. "Or to where Catherine was. If she hadn't come out of the terminal when she did- -" he unknowingly put his hand on Elise's slim rear end "--the things would have gotten us instead. The plane, us, everything." Elise had struggled almost into an upright position when a duffel-bag, balanced precariously on the edge of the overhead bin above, came down on her back. "Oof!" she went as the blow knocked her back over Gregory's lap, then, "Gregory! Help me up!" Gregory picked the bag up off of Elise's back and pitched it absently into the aisle. He helped her sit up. He was now watching the langolier's erratic behavior through the window to his right and shaking his head. Behind them, Solomon Howell spoke in a trembling, horrified voice. "Now we know, don't we?" "What? What do we know?" Gregory demanded. "Why, what happens when you fuck up a perfectly good world. It gets them, these magic fix-it-uppers, these time-keepers of eternity. They clean up our mess in the most efficient way... by eating it!" Jill thought this wasn't exactly true, but she wasn't bent on arguing. "My guess is they get used exclusively in the past," Solomon said, "when today becomes yesterday, when the timeframe we normally inhabit is used up and left behind... dead and empty and deserted. They get released into it, to button things up, to recycle the materials into something suitable for later use. Energy, maybe, or plasma." So he does understand, Jill distractedly thought. She was looking out the window again, something her cerebral cortex said not to do, but her cerebellum insisted upon. "Being set loose here, in a perfectly new world," Solomon mused, "that must be a real treat for these things." "Catherine knew about them," Jessica said in a low, dreaming voice. "Catherine says they are the langoliers." Then the jet engines cycled up to full power and the plane charged down Runway 30 for the open air. * Out his cockpit window, Frank watched two of the buzz-saw prunes (only he saw them as something different than Jill--compact car-sized globes shaped exactly like that old Pac-Man game piece--wonka-wonka-wonka!) bore though the grass to his right and zip across the runway ahead of him. It was too late to stop and the tracks were much too wide to bridge with his tires. Knowing his chances were 50/50 at best, Frank dragged back on the wheel and lifted the 767's nose wheel into the air. As physics demanded, the rest of the aircraft followed but its speed was too low and a stall immediately set in; the jet came back down hard, right gear first, shuddering like a minor earthquake as the other gear touched down and then the nose wheel. The plane skidded hard to the left and then to the right, and it took every ounce of his skill to get it righted again. In the main cabin behind him, everyone screamed. "Sorry! Sorry! I'm sorry!" he yelled as he jammed the throttles against the stops. They did not move--the engines had all the fuel he could muster. As the ground- speed indicator rose toward V2, the commit point, he prayed in a manic, silent whisper: "Hail Mary full of Grace... Hail Mary, full of Grace... Hail Mary full of Grace... " over and over again. And watched two more langoliers bearing in from the right. * Still resisting her cerebral cortex, Jill leaned over Tanya to look out the window. She watched as the mid- field concourse, already jagged and collapsing on the eastern end, was buzz-sawed to death by a thousand marauding shapes. Huge and small sections alike, left tottering on their meager supports by the chainsaw teeth, crashed inward into the concourse or outward onto the tarmac--or were buzz sawed themselves into oblivion where they tottered. Dust billowed everywhere and everywhere, it seemed, that the passengers of flight 74 had once stood, the langoliers attacked with preferential glee. Solomon's right, she thought. Getting set loose here really is a treat for these things, like a bunch of inner city kids set loose in a candy factory. And our presence here is just icing on the cake. As more and more of the structure was cut away, the ground beneath the remainder became riddled with jagged black lines, until nothing was left to support it. Taking a sizable section of as-yet untouched apron with it, the remaining end of the building reared up in the air, corkscrewed slowly clockwise, and disappeared into the meaningless chasm like the doomed Titanic. Jill saw, or imagined she saw, waves of darkness boil up around the descending mass, and then wash up over the edge of the concrete apron after its passing. A moaning, incoherent whisper escaped her throat and she sat back. No more, her tortured mind ordered. No fucking more! Then Elise Gallo screamed. A pair of buzzsaws were speeding along next to the 767, chewing up the edge of the runway. Suddenly one jagged to the left and disappeared beneath the plane, only to reappear seconds later. There was terrific bump as the right wheels hit something jagged and hobbled over it. "Did it get us?" Elise shouted. "Did it get us?" No one answered her. Their pale, terrified faces stared straight ahead or out the windows, depending upon their level of fright. Terrified almost beyond belief, Jill fought the movement of her eyes as they scanned sideways across the cabin back out the windows, muttering, "No, stupid, no!" as her hands clamped painfully to the armrests. Scenery rushed by in a gray-green blur and then suddenly there was a pair of the langoliers abreast the aircraft, matching its speed, looking in through the oval windows. One was black and the other was shoe-leather brown. Though it was impossible to tell one pair of langoliers from the other, Jill understood that these were the same two langoliers she had originally seen. And she also understood that, even as she started to scream and try to claw her way out of the seat and away from the gnashing, whirring teeth, that the langoliers were letting them go. The langoliers were letting them go. In the cockpit, Frank screamed in terrified triumph as the last red light turned green on his board and hauled back on the yoke and the 767 was airborne again. Chapter 16 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 2:18 P.M. PDT (5:18 P.M. EDT) Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 Above Washington, D.C. The plane climbed impossibly steep, shaking loose the jumbled remainders of the lost passengers of Flight 74. Luggage, watches, handbags and wallets, loose change by the score went cascading down the isles and beneath the open-bottomed seats in a minor landslide. A Coca-cola can, spewing brown and bubbling liquid, bounced off Jill's right foot, soaking her ankle, and continued down the inclined deck until hitting the back-cabin divider. Jill felt neither the impact nor the wetness on her ankle. She was too busy praying. "Are we up?" Elise frantically cried. "Did we get up?" "Yes!" Tanya got out through her ground together teeth. "Now shut the fuck up!" The plane suddenly leveled off then took a hard right turn, bringing the ground into view and again, Jill's eyes were forced out the windows. She stared down incredulously at the airport... or where the airport had been. The main terminal and the mid-field concourse were completely gone, and most of the hangers and ancillary buildings. A growing abyss of darkness expanded westward beneath Flight 74, an eternal chasm that stretched off to the east with no apparent end. "Oh dear Jesus," Jill moaned, and put her hands over her eyes. Tanya took her head and buried it against her neck, cooing soft reassurances into her ear, while beneath them, thousands of black lines raced left and right, this way and that, parallel and crisscrossing each other as huge sections of ground--farmland, subdivisions, industrial parks and shopping centers--fell away into the inky-black void. On the other side of the aisle, Elise slammed down the window-shade beside Gregory's head with a loud bang and yelling, "Don't you open that again! Don't you dare fucking open that again!" put her hands over her face. "Don't worry," Gregory said, and abruptly put his hands over his own face as well. * Frank let the aircraft come around a full 360 degrees and then headed west again. What he had seen out the cockpit windows made him wish he had never looked out. What lay east of the airport--only there is no airport, his shocked mind remembered--was nothing. Nothing at all. No Washington, D.C., no Potomac River, no Chesapeake Bay. Only a titanic ocean of inky-blackness running in an unbroken sweep from horizon to horizon, north to south. And spreading rapidly west. The airport was gone, the city was gone, the earth itself was gone. This is what it must be like to fly an airplane after death, he thought... a ghost pilot with ghost passengers over a ghost-peopled world. He shuddered deeply and clutched himself tightly across the chest with both arms. Then he did something he had never done before while in the cockpit of an airplane: for a moment he shut his eyes. Shut them and willed them never to open again. Then he made himself take the controls and fly the airplane, because his responsibility was the same as it always had been... the safety of the flying public. All six of them. * The cloud cover had advanced to within a hundred miles to the west and as he caught up with it, counting the minutes until the hellish vision below was blotted out, Frank kept his eyes and his attention focused entirely on his instruments. He didn't look out. But in the final moments before the 767 entered the clouds, he did look back and saw the hills and woods and lakes which stretched to the west of the airport, saw them being ruthlessly sliced and diced by thousands of black spider web lines. Huge and small swatches of reality slid soundlessly into the void. And as they climbed into the clouds and the world outside mercifully turned white, Frank saw something else, something that cowed his mind entirely... the destruction was not falling behind, as he had supposed, but keeping pace, possibly even catching up. Possibly even catching up... He closed his eyes again and let the autopilot take over the plane. * There was almost no turbulence this time, for which Jill was grateful. Five minutes after entering the clouds, Flight 74 emerged into the bright-blue world which resumed at 18,000 feet and went on forever. The six remaining passengers looked around at each other nervously, then at the speakers as Frank came on the intercom. "We're up," he said simply. "You all know what happens now: we go back the way we came, and hope that whatever doorway we came through is still there. If it is, we'll try going back through it again. "Our inbound flight took four and a half hours. Under ordinary circumstances, the flight back should take somewhat longer--six hours, perhaps--because of prevailing winds. From what I can see, however, the wind strength is less than a quarter of what it should be, so I can't be more exact than that." He paused for a moment and then added, "There's nothing moving up here but us and I'm seriously considering altering our flight plan to conserve fuel." That was all Frank had to say and the intercom clicked off. * A few minutes later, Tanya gave Jill a brief hug, then unbuckled her seat belt and stood up. "I should go forward for a while," she said. "See if Frank needs any help. Want to come?" Jill shook her head and nodded across the aisle at Jessica. "I'll stay with her." "There's nothing really you can do," Tanya said softly "She's in God's hands now." "I know that," Jill said, "but I want to stay." Tanya combed her fingers gently through Jill's hair. "We still have a dinner date for tonight?" "Yes," Jill said, smiling. "Absolutely." Tanya bent down and brushed a kiss lightly across her lips. "Good," she said. "I can't wait." Then she went forward and Jill pressed her fingers lightly against her mouth, as if to hold the kiss there. Dinner with Tanya Raum. Maybe with candles and a good bottle of wine. More kisses afterward--real kisses, and so very much more. It all seemed so unreal. And so unlikely ever to happen. Unbuckling her own seat belt, Jill crossed the aisle and put her hand on Jessica's forehead. The frightening heat she had felt there before was gone; Jessica's skin was now frighteningly cool. I think we're loosing her, Solomon had said shortly before they started their frantic effort to refuel the plane. Now the words recurred to Jill and rang sickeningly true. "Don't you leave us, Jess," she whispered. "You hang in there, girl. You fight this thing!" Jessica took air in in pitiful little sips, her chest barely rising and falling. The belt cinching down the tablecloth pads sealed her wound, but also constricted her breathing. Jill thought a moment about loosening the belt, letting it back a notch, then decided that was a bad idea. Better to breathe hard, she thought, than not to breathe at all. Did you really save us, Jess? Did you know that Catherine Montes was our ticket out? Brushing the girl's hair off her forehead, she remembered her earlier thought that Jessica and Catherine were mentally joined. "You did, didn't you," she said. "You foresaw it somehow and knew it was Catherine's life... or the rest of ours." Or maybe, for ours, she thought. A sacrificial lamb. She thought about this a time, and decided that, if it was true, then this little girl, almost surely mortally wounded, had made a dreadfully difficult decision. For them all. She leaned down and kissed each of Jessica's cool, now motionless eyelids. Jessica's time was almost over. * Elise turned to Gregory, interlaced the fingers of her right hand with those of his left, and asked: "What happens if we get there and the time-rip is gone?" Gregory looked out at the dazzlingly white cloud cover below, then at the overarching blue sky above, and answered as gently as he could: "I think you know the answer to that." Frowning numbly, she fumbled out her cigarettes, looked at them with sudden distaste, then crunched the entire pack in her hand. She dropped them onto the floor between her feet and kicked the pack violently backward. "That!" she said with surprising alacrity, "Is history!" She paused, looking at Gregory with some embarrassment. "I picked it up on the road." "You don't have to explain," he said. "I do to someone," she said, softly. "Not to me. Not now." He smiled uncertainly. "Maybe when we get back." "If we get back." They were silent a time. "You know what?" Elise asked. Gregory slowly shook his head. He seemed quiet content to sit there and hold Elise's hand. "If we can't find that hole again, I hope Frank doesn't even try to land the plane. I hope he just picks out a nice high mountain and crashes us into the top. Did you see what happened to that crazy Catherine back there?" She shook her head sadly. "I don't want that happening to us." Gregory released her hand and put his arm around her shoulders. "It won't," he said bravely. "I promise you that." Elise laughed. "I'm holding you to that, big fellow." Gregory broke into an embarrassed grin and Jill, watching from across the aisle, would have sworn he had never been complimented like that before by a girl. In fact, she doubted if a girl had ever held his hand, much less offered her mouth up for kissing as Elise so obviously was. "Are you going to kiss me?" Elise finally asked. Red-faced, Gregory said: "Yes." "Then you better go ahead. Because, like my friend Bethany likes to say: The later it gets, the later it gets." Gregory bent down and tentatively placed his lips atop hers. Elise rotated into his arms and took control and, fighting the grin taking control of her face, Jill thought that if Gregory had never been kissed before, he was making up for it now. * Jill stuck her head into the cockpit doorway. Tanya was sitting in the copilot's seat, leafing through the Airman's Information Manual with single minded intensity. She was glad that Tanya had joined Frank up front. She suspected that after all that had taken place on the ground, Frank was in serious need of company. Announcing her presence with a small clearing of the throat, she asked Frank: "There's none of those things up here, I hope?" Frank thought it over for a moment. "Judging from what we saw back at Dulles, I doubt it. They seemed pretty much confined to the ground. Or bound to it. Or whatever." He shrugged. "All things considered, though... " Jill sighed. "You're right, I guess. All bets are off." She tried another line of thought. "What about this time- rip of Solomon's? Think we can find it again?" Again Frank shrugged. Tanya, without looking up from the thick manual, though smiling ironically, said: "I give us one in a thousand odds." Jill thought this over. After a moment, a radiant smile spread across her face. "I'd say those odds are not so bad at all. Not when you consider the alternative." * Forty-five minutes later, thinking about the strange circumstances that had brought the eight survivors of Flight 74 together--Elise on the run; Frank and herself, opposite ends of another, more explainable mystery; Tanya and Jessica, attempting to repair splintered relationships that Jill could testify were probably unrepairable; Solomon, on his way to a meeting to determine the future of manned space flight after the latest shuttle disaster; Gregory to his summer internship, Catherine... well who knows what Catherine had been up to--she looked over and found Jessica's eyes upon her. She reached out and gently squeezed one of the young girl's hands. "Don't try to talk," she said quietly. "Don't try to talk--just listen. We're in the air. We're on our way back, and you're going to be all right--I promise you that." Jessica's hand tightened on hers, and after a moment, she smiled weakly. "Liar." Tears brimmed in Jillian's eyes. "Don't worry," Jessica said. "I'm more all right than you think." Jill sniffed and wiped her nose. "I know you are, honey." Jessica slowly shook her head. "You don't understand," she whispered. "I'm going to be all right." "Jessica, you shouldn't--" A sweet, almost angelic smile spread across Jessica's lips. "While I was out," she whispered, "I saw something... " she took a deep, shuddering breath, "... something that made me not be afraid." Her voice, barely audible as a whisper, became even softer. "I saw Jill. I saw where it is that I'm going. It's a nice place, full of bright white light and people who really want to see me again. It was a wonderful place. My aunt Dana was there--" she coughed, and small specks of blood flew from her mouth "--and my Uncle Joe, and... " here her eyes clouded over in sudden, uncertain wonder. "... even my cousin Dinah was there, who isn't even dead." Jill looked at the girl with her own uncertain wonder. "Catherine is there too," Jessica said. Her hand let go of Jill's and rose waveringly to touch her cheek. "She wasn't such a bad person, you know. She was just--" She coughed again and more small flecks of blood flew from her mouth. "Please, Jessica," Jill said. She had a sudden directionless panic. If this girl should die, should she be pulled away from them in this meaningless, abandoned nonexistence, where was there for her soul to go? "Please don't try to talk anymore." Jessica's smile faded and her eyes lost focus, looking slightly away, as though she were listening to another, more distant voice. Jill's heart began to accelerate as fear that Jessica was slipping away gripped her. Then Jessica looked back again. "You have to promise me something," she said, not waiting for a reply, "Promise you won't fall asleep." "What?" Jill said through her tears. But now Jessica was slipping away. Her beautiful blue eyes lost focus again and began to close. The angelic smile which had made Jill's heart want to break snuck back onto her lips. She took in one of her tiny sips of air, let it out, and simply didn't bother with the next. Her hand went slack within Jill's. "Please breathe, Jessica," Jill said. She stood up and moved between the rows of seats, placing her hands above the young girl's chest, agonized indecision wracking her face. It was so unfair to have this girl die, after she had probably just saved them. Yet, what good would it accomplish to prolong her life by a few minutes or maybe an hour, when in all likeliness, they all would die anyway. That seemed so totally unfair. Letting her hands fall to her sides, Jill looked numbly around and found Elise and Gregory standing at the end of the aisle. Tears coursed down the wayward heiress's cheeks, and brimmed in Gregory's eyes. They all looked at one another, then down at Jessica's peaceful face. "Someone should say a prayer," Elise whispered. Holding each others hands, the three bowed heads and by undecreed consent, recited the Lord's Prayer. Then Jill found a pair of folded up blue blankets in one of the overhead compartments, and used them to cover Jessica's unmoving form. Her hands shook badly and she fought back stubborn sobs laying the hem over Jessica's face. While I was gone I saw something that made me not be afraid. I saw, Jill. I saw where it is that I'm going. It's a nice place, full of bright white light and people who really want to see me again. It was a wonderful place. Jill placed the palm of her hand on Jessica's shrouded forehead and thought: Yes. I can live with that. She left Jessica to dream. * American Airlines 74 flew west through the unchanging day, marking time and distance only by their progress over the peaks and valleys of the ocean of white below. A little over three hours into the flight, the clouds below them tapered off, and gave way to the Great Plains. It lay below them in a silent roan-colored expanse of land. "No sign of them here," Frank said. He did not have to specify what he was talking about. "No," Tanya agreed. "We seem to have outrun them." But they had not. As Flight 74 crossed the Rockies, they began to see the black lines below them again, thin as threads from this height. They shot up and down the rough, slabbed slopes and drew not-quite-meaningless patterns in the blue-gray carpet of trees. As they watched, two of the thin black lines split apart, raced around a jagged, snow-tipped peak, met on the far side, crossed, and raced down the other slope in diverging directions. Behind them the entire top of the mountain fell into itself, leaving something which looked like a volcano with a vast dead caldera at its truncated top. "No-no-no-no-no," Tanya muttered, and passed a quivering hand over her brow. As they crossed the Western Slope toward Utah, the sun threw an unrelenting glare over a fragmented hellscape that none of them could look at for long; one by one, the passengers in the main cabin followed Elise's example and pulled their window shades down. * Piece by jagged piece, Western Colorado and eastern Utah fell into the pit of eternity. Frank was forced to look at it. There were no shades in the cockpit. Below him and ahead of him, mountains, buttes, mesas, and canyons one by one ceased to exist as the crisscrossing langoliers cut them adrift from the rotting fabric of this undead world, cut them loose and sent them tumbling into sunless endless gulfs of forever. There was no sound up here, and somehow that was the most horrible thing of all. The land below them disappeared as silently as dust-motes drifting in the air. Half an hour later the world below was gone; utterly and finally gone. The deepening blue sky was a dome over a cyclopean ocean of deepest, purest black. Frank felt his sanity give a deep shudder and slide closer to the edge of its own abyss. Elise's thought suddenly crossed his mind; if push came to shove, if worst came to worst, he could have put the 767 into a dive and crashed them into a mountain peak, ending it for good and all. But now there were no mountains to crash into. Now there was no earth to crash into. He turned deliberately back to his sheet of calculations, working on them, referring frequently to the INS readout, until certain that he had things right. Then he reached for the switch that controlled the cabin intercom and opened the circuit. "Tanya? Can you come up front again?" Tanya appeared in the cockpit doorway less than thirty seconds later. Grimacing, she looked out through the windshield. "Everything's gone," she said dully. "Yes. Everything." "Jessica's gone as well, I'm afraid. Jill was with her at the end, and she's taking it pretty hard. She liked Jess a lot. So did I." Frank nodded slowly. He was not surprised--the girl's wound was the sort that demanded the immediate attention of an emergency room, and even then the prognosis would not be good--but it still made his heart ache. He believed what Jill believed--that the girl was somehow responsible for their continued survival. So, if her death was an omen, it was one of the very worst sort. "At least she's up here with us," he said. "Yes." "And Jill is okay?" "More or less." He was quiet a moment. "You like her, don't you, Tanya?" Tanya said. "I do, yes. I'm sure she's rather confused by the situation--" she laughed bitterly "--as if I'm not, but I think we'll be okay." Frank nodded. "Well, if we get back, I wish you the best of luck." "Thank you." She sat down in the co-pilot's seat again. "So what's up?" "If Solomon's time-rip actually exists, and if it's still in the same place, we've got to be getting close to it by now. We need four eyes manning the search. You take the starboard side and right center; I'll take port and left center. If you see anything that looks like a time-rip, yell out." Tanya grinned. "Are we looking for a TV Star Trek variety of time-rip, Frank? Or one of the big extravagant Hollywood varieties?" "Very funny," Frank said, a grin touching his lips. "I don't have the slightest fucking idea what it's going to look like, or even if we'll be able to see it at all. If we can't, we're in a hell of a mess. If it's drifted to one side, or if its altitude has changed... " He shrugged. "What about radar?" Frank pointed to the color monitor before him. "Nothing, as far as that can tell. But that's not surprising. If the original crew had seen the thing on radar, they sure as hell wouldn't have flown through it in the first place." "That's supposing they could see it at all," Tanya pointed out gloomily. "You could be right. Maybe it's not visible." Frank shook his head. "That's not necessarily true. They might not have seen it in time to avoid it. Jetliners move pretty fast and crews don't spend the entire flight watching out the windows for bogies. They don't have to; that's what ATC is for. Thirty or thirty-five minutes into the flight, the crew's major outbound tasks are completed. The plane is up, it's out of L.A. airspace, the anti-collision system is on and beeping every ninety seconds to show it's working, the INS is telling the autopilot what to do. From the look of the cockpit, the pilot and co-pilot were breaking for coffee. The flight attendants were getting ready to serve drinks to the passengers, so none of them were up front to lend another set of eyes." "That's an extremely detailed scenario," Tanya said. "Are you trying to convince me... or yourself?" "At this point, I'll settle for convincing anyone at all." Tanya smiled and stepped to the starboard cockpit window. "All my life," she said, "I've thought of New York when I thought of places I would never want to visit." She looked out the window, at the endless inky-void. "I was so wrong about that." Frank checked the INS and the charts again, and made a small red circle on one of the charts; they were now on the verge of entering the airspace that circle represented. "Time to start looking," he said. "You okay?" "Yes," Tanya murmured. She had torn her eyes away from the huge black socket below and was scanning the sky. "I only wish I knew what I was looking for." "I think you'll know it when you see it," Frank said. He paused and then added, "If you see it." * Jill sat with her arms folded tightly across her chest, as if she were cold. Part of her was cold, but this was not a physical coldness. The chill was coming from her head. Something was wrong. She did not know what it was, but something was definitely wrong. Something was out of place... or lost... or forgotten. Either a mistake had been made or was going to be made. The feeling nagged at her like some pain not quite localized enough to be identified. That sense of wrongness would almost crystallize into thought... and then it would skitter away again like some small, not-quite-tame animal. Something was wrong. Or out of place. Or lost. Or forgotten. Ahead of her, Gregory and Elise were head to head, talking contentedly. Behind her, Solomon, who seemed to have lapsed almost into a coma since leaving the ground, was sitting with his eyes closed and his lips silently moving. The beads of a rosary were clamped in one fist. Across the aisle, Jessica lay peaceful and still beneath the thin blue blankets, her golden-hued hair and her right hand the only things visible. Jill wanted to cross the aisle, take that hand in hers and gently stroke it. Wrong. Something is wrong. Easing up the shade beside her seat, Jill peeked out, then slammed it down again. Looking at that would not aid rational thought. I must warn them, she thought. I have to. But warn them of what? Again it almost crossed into the plane of her focused thoughts, then it slipped away, becoming just a shadow among shadows... but one with shiny, feral eyes. She abruptly unbuckled her seat belt and stood up. Gregory looked around. "Where are you going, Jill?" "Insane," Jill said grumpily and began to walk down the aisle toward the tail of the aircraft. * Frank tore his eyes away from the sky long enough to take a quick glance first at the INS readout and then at the circle on his chart. They were approaching the far side of the circle now. If the time-rip was still here, they should see it soon. If they didn't, he supposed he would have to take over the controls and circle them back for another pass at a slightly different altitude and on a slightly different heading. It would play hell on their fuel situation, which was already tight, but since the whole thing was probably hopeless anyway, it didn't matter very-- "Frank?" Tanya's voice was unsteady. "Frank? I think I see something." * Jill reached the rear of the airplane, made an abrupt about-face, and started slowly back up the aisle. She passed row after row of empty seats. She looked at the objects that lay in them and on the floor in front of them as she passed: purses... pairs of eyeglasses... wristwatches... a pocket-watch... two semi-clear, crescent-shaped pieces of silicone that she recognized as breast-pads... dental fillings... wedding rings... . Something is wrong. Was that really so, or was it only her overworked mind nagging fiercely over nothing. The mental equivalent of a tired muscle which won't stop twitching? Leave it, she advised himself, but she couldn't. If something really is amiss, why can't you see it. Didn't you read all those mystery novels as a teen and peg most of them halfway through, often just turning to the last few pages to prove yourself right? Weren't you so sure of your cleverness and deductive abilities that you even tried writing one of your own? Jill snorted. What a disaster that had been. Hours spent in front of her Gateway PC (before losing half the abortive little monster and switching over to a Mac), endlessly typing and retyping her pages, until it finally dawned on her that she was not writing, but simply "processing words." The Sleeping Madonna she had meant to call it... "a masterpiece of logic." Jill came to a stop, her eyes widening. They fixed on the port-side seat near the front of the cabin where Solomon sat silently reciting his prayers. Seen from behind, he could just as easily have been asleep. In fact, he did look asleep. What had Jessica said? Her last words before slipping off into the great hereafter? You have to promise me something, she had said. Promise you won't fall asleep. Jill had of course thought that the young girl just didn't want to be left alone, wanted Jill there with her during her final moments. But had that been what she really meant? Now Jill wondered. Promise you won't fall asleep. But we had been asleep, she thought. That's why we survived. Now, with the possible exception of Solomon, none of them were asleep. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Her throat was locked. Terror sat on her chest like a circus elephant. She tried again to scream and managed no more than a breathless squeak. They had all been asleep! She opened her mouth once more to scream and once more nothing came out. * "Holy Mother of God," Frank whispered. The time-rip lay about ninety miles ahead, off to the starboard side of the 767's nose by no more than seven or eight degrees. If it had drifted, it had not drifted much; Frank's guess was that the slight differential was the result of minor navigational errors due to his having changed course. It was a lozenge-shaped hole in reality, but not a black void. It cycled with a dim pink-purple light, like the aurora borealis. A wide white ribbon of vapor was slowly streaming either into or out of the shape which hung in the sky. It looked like some strange, ethereal highway. We can follow it right in, Frank thought excitedly. It's better than an ILS beacon! "Son of a bitch!" he yelled, smacking his palms against the wheel grips. "It must be two miles across," Tanya whispered. "My God, Frank, how many other planes do you think went in." "I don't know," Frank said, "but I'll bet you my ass and a hole in the ground that we're the only one with a chance at getting back." He opened the intercom. "Listen! We've found what we were looking for, gang!" His voice crackled with triumph and relief. "I don't know exactly what happens next, or how, or why, but we have sighted what appears to be an extremely large cough drop in the sky. I'm going to take us straight through the middle of it. We'll find out what's on the other side together. Right now I'd like you all to fasten your seat belts and --" That was when Jill Cooney came bolting madly up the aisle, screaming at the top of her lungs: "No, Frank! No! Turn around! We'll all die if you go through! Turn back! For God's sake, you've got to turn back!" Frank swung around in his seat and exchanged an open- mouthed look with Tanya Raum. Tanya unbuckled her belt and stood up. Her face was distraught. "It's Jill," she said. "She must have had some kind of... of... " She cursed vehemently under her breath. "Anyway, go ahead. I'll take care of this." "Okay," Frank said. His face reflected the same distress. After all they'd been through, it was amazing everyone hadn't cracked. "Just keep her away from the cockpit. I'd hate to have her grab me at the wrong moment and send us into the edge of that thing." He turned off the autopilot and took control of the 767 himself. The floor tilted gently to the right as he banked toward the long, glowing slot in the sky. It seemed to slide across the windshields until it was centered in front of the 767's nose. Now he could hear a sound mixing with the drone of the jet engines--a deep throbbing noise, like a huge diesel idling. As they approached the river of vapor--it was flowing into the hole, he now saw, not out of it--he began to pick up flashes of color traveling within it: green, blue, violet, red, candy pink. It's the last real color left in this world, he thought. Behind him, Jill sprinted through the first-class section, up the narrow aisle which led to the service area... and right into Tanya's waiting arms. "Easy," Tanya soothed. "Everything's fine. We--" "No!" Jill struggled wildly, pushing Tanya backwards toward the open cockpit door. "You don't understand! He's got to turn back! He's got to turn back before it's too late!" Tanya used their momentum to turn them ninety degrees to the left. Although now backed against the door of the First Class restroom, she kept tight hold of Jill's biceps. "Calm down," she said in a low, urgent whisper. "You'll get everyone else worked up!" As the 767 entered the wide flow of vapor streaming into the time-rip, it surged forward, seized as though by an immensely powerful hand. Jill and Tanya both staggered sideways, back into the narrow cockpit vestibule. The rip lay dead ahead of the 767's nose now, growing rapidly. We're going in, Jill thought frantically. God help us, we're really going in. Steadying herself, she made the words come out slow and crystal clear. "Don't you understand? We were all asleep when we came through the first time. We were asleep! If we go back through awake... You've got to stop him!" Tanya froze as what Jill was saying suddenly struck home. Air rushed out of her lungs like someone had punched her in the gut, then rushed back in. "Frank!" she shrieked. "Frank, stop the plane! Turn back! Turn back!" * Frank had been staring into the rip, nearly hypnotized, as they approached. There was no turbulence, but that sense of tremendous power, of air rushing into the hole like a mighty river, had increased. He looked down at his instruments and saw the 767's airspeed was increasing rapidly. Then Tanya began to shout, and a moment later she and Jill were behind him, Tanya ricocheting off the back of his chair in her desperation to get inside. She grabbed frantically at the co-pilot's seat back and stared open-mouthed at the rip as it swelled in front of the jet's nose. The steady thrumming sound had become Niagara Fall's thunder. "Turn back, Frank, you have to turn back!" Like a man forced to make a life-threatening decision on no basis other than gut instinct, Frank hesitated one moment longer, then grabbed the steering yoke and hauled it hard over to port. Tanya was thrown across the cockpit and into a bulkhead while Jill nose-dived into the floor. They both hit with resounding thuds and shrieks of pain. In the main cabin, the luggage which had fallen from the overhead compartments when Frank swerved onto the runway at IAD now flew once again, striking the curved walls and thudding off the windows in a vicious hail. Elise screamed and Gregory hugged her tight against his chest. He narrowly missed getting his bell rung by an open laptop computer winging its way across the cabin. Two rows behind, Solomon jammed his eyes tighter, clutched his rosary harder, and prayed faster as his seat tilted away beneath him. Now there was turbulence; Flight 74 became embroiled in a deadly, choppy surf, a surfboard with wings, rocking and twisting and thumping through the unsteady air. Frank's hands were momentarily thrown off the controls and then he grabbed them again. At the same time he opened the throttles all the way to the chocks and the plane's turbines responded with a deep snarl of power rarely heard outside of the manufacturer's test floor. The turbulence increased until Frank was forced to back off the turn in order to save the aircraft. It slammed up and down like a basketball under Michael Jordan's hand. For one frightful moment the aircraft seemed to skid sideways, down and up all at the same time, then rocked up almost to the vertical on its port-side wing. From somewhere came the deadly shriek of over-stressed metal. Ahead of them, the hole continued to swell even as it continued sliding off the starboard side. The turbulence continued to increase as Frank drove the 767 across the wide stream of vapor feeding into the rip. Then, after one particularly vicious jolt, they came out of the rapids and into smoother air. The time-rip disappeared to starboard. They had missed it... barely. Continuing to bank the plane, but at a less drastic angle, Frank shouted, "Tanya! Jill!" without turning around. "Are you all right?" Tanya got slowly to her feet, holding her head. There was a bright red line running diagonally across the middle of her forehead, a trophy of her battle with the bulkhead. She helped Jill up, who came erect holding her fingers against her bloodied nose. Both were ashen and both asked at the same time: "Did we miss it?" "We missed it," Frank confirmed. He continued to bring the aircraft around in a big, slow circle, babying the controls. "And you're damned well going to tell me why we missed it," he said severely, "after all we went through to get here. And it better he good, or I'll break someone else's nose." Reaching for the intercom switch, he flipped it on and then he flipped it back off again. Gregory, Elise and Solomon all stood in the doorway. Gregory clutched Elise tightly to his side; Solomon clutched his rosary. "I got to tell you," Frank said to them all. "This damn bird nearly came apart. A little more turbulence and I think we would have. Even now, I'm not sure something critical didn't fail. We were very lucky to get out of that thing alive." Blood had soaked the front of Jill's shirt and even putting back her head couldn't stanch the flow. After removing a bunch of wadded up tissues from her coat pocket, Tanya guided Jill into the co-pilot's seat and took up position behind her. Tilting back her head, she held the tissue against Jill's nose. "What the hell is this all about?" Frank demanded. "I think I can explain," Solomon answered softly. It was the first full sentence he'd spoken since finding the rosary and sitting down with it nearly five hours before. He made a visible effort to compose himself, then went on in a firmer tone of voice. "We have been extremely lucky... thanks to Jill we're all still alive." There was a deep, shuddering groan from below decks and everyone looked at their feet. "So far, at least," he amended. "Anyway, we forgot the most important detail of our transference. When we came through the time-rip the first time, we were all asleep. Everyone else was subtracted." Frank jerked in his seat as though someone had smacked him in the face. Elise and Gregory both groaned. Some thirty miles distant, the faintly glowing time-rip had reappeared in the sky, looking like some gigantic semi- precious stone. As it again centered on the 767's nose, it seemed to mock them. "If we go through awake now," Solomon concluded miserably. "Logic tells me that we also, will be subtracted." Frank ripped off his headset and flung it against the console. The foam covering separated from the ear piece and bounced back into his lap; he swept it away viciously. Behind him, Elise said in a voice that seemed to sum it all up: "We have to go to sleep? How do we do that? I never felt less like sleeping in my whole life!" Chapter 17 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 7:12 P.M. PDT (10:12 P.M. EDT) Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 At the Time-rip Solomon took a step forward and gazed out through the cockpit window in silent fascination. After a long moment he said in a soft, awed voice: "So that's what it looks like out there." Frank nodded numbly and indicated the LED fuel readouts. "I don't know what we do now," he said, "but if we're going to try that hole, it has to be soon. We have enough fuel for maybe an hour's flight time; after that... " He shrugged. "Any ideas?" Removing the tissues from her nose, Jill lowered her head experimentally. The bleeding had stopped. She wiped gingerly at her upper lip, cheeks and chin. "Yes," she said. "As a matter of fact, I do. I have a bottle Xanax in my purse and I'm sure if we look through the rest of the purses and carry-on's out in the main cabin, we'll find plenty more." Everyone suddenly looked hopeful... until Tanya shook her head. "Why not?" Jill insisted. "Because I've seen enough Xanax and other sedative induced OD's to know better. A dose strong enough to knock you out is almost always enough to kill you. We'd need intense medical treatment to bring us back out again. Besides, nothing on the market short of a true narcotic works fast enough to be of use. Most sedatives take a minimum of half an hour to forty-five minutes to work. And a borderline dosage for Solomon, might be lethal for someone like Elise. No," she said, slowly shaking her head. "We have to find another way." Jill looked out at the glowing lozenge shape in the sky. Frank had locked Flight 74 into a two-minute turn and the rip was on the verge of disappearing off the starboard side. It would be back shortly... but they would be no closer to it. "This is unbelievable," she said. "After all we've been through... to have survived the tip-rip and the langoliers... to have actually found the damned thing... " She took a deep, tremulous breath. "And now we can't go back through it because we can't go to sleep? That is bullshit!" "We don't have forty-five minutes, anyway," Frank said glumly. "If we're not through that thing in... " he consulted his gauges. "... the next twenty minutes, you can kiss it goodbye. I need thirty-five minutes to reach LAX and that's cutting it hairline close. Otherwise, we drop into the suburbs on approach. And that's supposing no one is in our way. I'd hate to think--" "What about other a-airports?" Gregory cut in, his voice cracking with tension. "None big enough to handle this bird. Las Vegas is possible," he said, looking at the instruments again. "But we'd have to turn back immediately after going through and pray nothing was in our way. And we'd have to do it in the next eight minutes. 'Vegas is farther off." Everyone looked around, thoroughly depressed. Then Elise said in a very low voice: "We're all forgetting something. Maybe the most important thing of all." They all turned. Elise, white and haggard, had folded her arms across her chest as if she was cold and was cupping her elbows in her hands. "If we're all knocked out, who is going to fly the plane?" she asked. "Who is going to land the plane in L.A.?" The others gaped at her wordlessly as, unnoticed, the large semi-precious stone that was the time-rip glided into view again. "Well, we are fucked," Tanya said, laughing bitterly. "We are totally, thoroughly fucked!" She put back her head and began to laugh uproariously. Jill, watching in alarm, had just begun to raise out of the co-pilot's chair when Gregory said: "Maybe not." "What?" Frank said over Tanya's raucous laughter. "Maybe not," Gregory repeated. His pallor was ashen, but his dark eyes were clear and intent. They were focused on Frank. "I think you can put us to sleep," he said, "and I think you can land us safely in L.A." "What the fuck are you talking about?" Frank asked roughly. "That," Gregory replied, pointing to a spot on the center console. "I'm talking about that." Looking down, Frank's eyes scanned across the myriad dials, buttons and switches... and then he sat up bolt upright. "Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!" He looked up again with silver-dollar eyes. "What does he mean, Frank?" Tanya asked, suddenly sober. "He's got something--I can see it in your face. What?" Frank ignored her. He looked steadily at the seventeen- year-old wunderkind. "That's fine for getting us through, yes. But what about after, Gregory? What do I do to wake us up again. How do I land the plane?" "Will somebody explain please?" Jill pleaded. She had gotten up and gone to Tanya, who put an arm around her waist. "Gregory's suggesting that Frank lower the cabin pressure to knock us all out," Solomon said. "Can you do that, Frank?" Tanya asked excitedly. "Would it really work?" Frank nodded in agreement. "I've investigated pilots-- charter pilots--who have done just that. A drunken passenger or passengers get too rowdy, they sometimes knock 'em out by lowering the cabin pressure. Alcohol diminishes the blood's ability to transport oxygen. Lower the pressure and the drunks go to sleep while everyone else just gets a little bit sleepy. It's strictly against the rules, but it happens all the time. To knock out everyone--" he tapped on a silver dial. "--all I have to do is lower it to half sea-level pressure... you're out like a light." "The trouble is getting the pressure back up again," Solomon pointed out. "After we pass through the rip." Gregory opened his mouth, then closed it again. His look of triumph had faded. Their window of opportunity had also faded--to fourteen minutes. "I think that leaves only one solution then," Solomon said a dry, toneless voice. "In order for you to fly the rest of us home, Frank, someone will have to die." "What?" Jill demanded. Frank sighed. "I'm afraid your probably right. Someone has to stay awake to--" "Turn the air pressure back up," Gregory finished for him. "Yes," Solomon confirmed. They all were quiet a moment, looking at the growing lozenge in the sky. Then in a low, thoughtful voice, Tanya asked: "That would work though, Frank?" "Yes," Frank said absently. "No reason why not." He looked at the chronometer again. Eleven minutes remaining. Eleven minutes to get across to the other side of the rip. It would take almost that long to line the airplane up, program the autopilot, and move them along the forty-mile approach. "But who's going to do it? Do the rest of you draw straws, or what?" "No," Tanya said. Her voice was low and determined sounding. "I'm going to do it." "What!" Jill cried. Her eyes were wide and alarmed. "You? Why should you do it?" "Yeah!" Elise chimed in, although her confused blinking indicated she wondered why she was speaking up. Gregory glanced unhappily at Elise, then at Jill, and then back at Tanya. Fear as intense and as personal as any of them were feeling flashed across his face as he opened his mouth and then closed it again without speaking. "Why you?" Jill asked again, urgently. "Why shouldn't we draw straws? Why not Solomon? Or Gregory? Why not me?" Tanya took her arm. "Come with me a moment," she said. "Girls, there's not much time," Frank said. He tried to keep his tone of voice even, but Jill could hear desperation--perhaps even panic--bleeding through. Tanya said. "Just start doing what you have to do to get us through, Frank." She drew Jill through the cockpit doorway. "We'll be right back." Jill resisted for a moment, then allowed herself to be guided out into the small galley alcove. She faced Tanya, and in that moment, with her face less than four inches from hers, she realized a dismal truth--this was the man she had been hoping to find all her life, and it wasn't a man at all, but another woman. In the space of their few hours together, she had grown to love Tanya Raum. There was nothing at all romantic about this discovery; it was horrible. "I think there might be something really strong between you and me," Tanya said. "If you agree, please say so okay, because there's no time left." "Yes," Jill said. Her voice was dry and uneven. "I think that's right." "Then listen to me. Remember what Solomon said about passing through the time-rip? That the plane had continued on with the others as though nothing had ever happened? That somewhere a plane is sitting on a runway that's eight people short?" "Yes, but--" "Well, I think Solomon is right. To an extent, anyway. I think being asleep caused us to have a little less grip on reality then everybody else and that's why we're here. We slipped through and because we did, because it wasn't our turn to die, God was forced to make an allowance. He duplicated the plane, gave us a replacement pilot and said 'Now here, here's your second chance. Make the best of it you can.' Well, we did and we didn't and it's lead us to this." "Okay, but--" "Girls!" Frank called from the cockpit. Tanya looked rapidly in that direction. "Coming!" she shouted, and then looked back at Jill. "I'm not absolutely sure of this, nobody can be really sure, but I think--I'm betting--that as soon as you pass through the rip, you'll be right back on the airplane. Like you had never left. All of you. I don't know why, but I do. Catherine was our right of passage away from the langoliers and Jessica was our payment. It's like a Stephen King novel--you pay for everything good with something really awful. Well, we've paid and we're still paying, Jill. No one gets away free." Jill could only look at her, her lips trembling. She had no idea of what to say. Her mind was tumbling helplessly. Tanya's grip on her arms was very tight, but the grip of her eyes was stronger. "Listen very carefully," Tanya said. "When I boarded this plane last night, it was not for the reason I told you. I had no intention of trying to patch things up with Claire... I meant to show up at her doorstep and kill her." "What?" Jill asked in a small, quivery voice. "I've been obsessed, Jill... manic. Every waking minute spent plotting how I would get even with her. I bought a Smith and Wesson automatic from a pawn shop in Hollywood and mailed it to a post office box I had rented in Maryland. I meant to pick it up after we landed. I'd kill Claire and her new girlfriend inside their own house, then shoot myself lying on her bed. I even left a suicide note on my dining room table at home, propped up against the centerpiece, explaining why. No loose ends. All nice and efficient. I brought an overnight bag with me so as not to arouse suspicions." She paused, tears brimming her eyes. She shook with a small shudder. When she spoke again, her voice had a peculiar, measured emphasis. "What's important is that I had changed my mind, Jill. After boarding the plane, before boarding the plane... I don't know. It doesn't matter. What matters is that I finally did come to my senses and scrap the plan." Jill slowly blinked her eyes and realized she was crying. She wiped them with the side of her hand. She watched as Tanya's face suddenly relaxed, her eyes growing soft. "I need for you to believe me that I had changed my mind," Tanya said. "Do you?" "Yes," Jill said. "I do." "Girls!" Frank warned from the cockpit. "We're heading toward it!" Tanya shot a glance toward the cockpit again, "Coming!" she called. When she looked at Jill again, her eyes were almost pleading. "Claire lives in the village of Reston, west of D.C. Her last name is Conyers. She's in the phone book under her last name and her first initial. I want you to give her something for me." She fished a small, sealed cream- colored envelope out of her front pocket and pressed in into Jill's hand. "She won't want to take this from you, will probably order you right off her stoop when you say my name, but it's important she gets this. Tell her that I took it from her on the day she left. Tell her I'd thought to send it to her a thousand times, but just couldn't do it. You can even tell her what I'd meant to do, only please, make her take this back. Will you do that for me?" Jill answered numbly: "Yes." Tanya nodded and smiled wanly. "Good. Thank you so much." Jill slowly nodded. She wanted badly to know what was in her hand--it felt like a ring under the tips of her fingers--but would not ask. They stood looking at each other for a long moment, then Tanya put her left hand against the nape of Jill's neck, drew her mouth to hers, and kissed her long and deep. When they finally ended the kiss, Jill kept her mouth open and her eyes closed. Tanya was gone when she opened them a moment later. * "What's this going to be like?" Elise asked, her face a pasty white. "Will we feel like we're choking?" "No," Frank said. He had gotten up to see if Tanya was coming back; now, as Tanya reappeared with a very shaken Jillian Cooney trailing behind her, he dropped back into his seat. "You'll feel a little giddy... swimmy in the head... then, nothing." He glanced at Tanya Raum. "Until we all wake up." Tanya stared stone-faced out the windshield at the growing apparition. She muttered, "I hope we're right about this thing and it doesn't work the opposite way in the opposite direction." She looked around at Solomon. "You don't think that's possible, do you?" Solomon shrugged. "If it is, you're gonna find yourself suddenly alone in a pilotless airplane," Frank joked. He smiled apologetically and inched the throttles forward slightly. The rip lay dead ahead. "Anyway, you all take your seats in back and Tanya, right up here beside me. I need to show you what to do." Aside from Tanya, who began to slip into the co-pilot's seat, no one moved. "Wait," Jill said. She had regained some of her composure. Moving forward, she placed a hand on either of Tanya's cheeks, drew her forward and kissed her deeply again . "Thank you," Tanya said, cracking an ironic smile. "I needed that." Helping Tanya belt in, Jill whispered, "I'll make sure she gets this," her hand gently patting the front pocket on her slacks. "Don't you worry." "I won't. And thank you again." Standing erect, Jill looked out at the rapidly approaching time-rip. "We all better go now," she said, softly. "Let you get to work." She herded the others out of the cockpit and back to the first class cabin, where they all sat down in a tight little group. Two minutes later, Frank opened the intercom and said: "I'm starting to decrease pressure now. Check your seat belts, and wish us luck." They did so. "Gregory?" Elise said in a small, fractured voice. "Would you hold me, please?" Gregory wrapped her up in his arms. His eyes were round and starey and his teeth chattered loud enough to be heard over the steady, droning rumble of the engines. Behind them, Solomon was reciting his rosary again. Across the aisle, Jill gripped the arms of her seat and silently offered up prayers of her own. She could still feel the warm print of Tanya's lips on her own. She raised her head, looking at the overhead compartment, waiting for the masks to fall. Twenty seconds later they did, dropping down in almost perfect unity throughout the cabin. The yellow plastic cup of her mask bounced grazingly off her nose, and catching it, Jill suddenly laughed. I should be absolutely petrified, she thought. But I'm not. It's like that old movie with Jeff Bridges in it, the one where he survives a crash and no longer has fear. I'll be okay. We'll be okay. We'll land this thing in L.A. and I'll hop the first flight back east, gives this ring or whatever it is to Claire Conyers, maybe try to explain a little of what happened to her... In the middle of that thought, her mind drifted away. * "You know... what to do?" Frank asked again. He spoke in a dreamy, far off voice. Ahead of them, the time-rip was once more swelling in the cockpit windows, spreading across the sky. It was lit from inside by a fantastic array of colors that coiled, swam, and then streamed away into its queer inner depths. "I know," Tanya said. Her words were muffled by the oxygen mask she wore. Above the rubber seal, her eyes were calm and clear. "You go on to sleep now, Frank. Let me take care of this." Frank was fading fast. He felt himself going... and yet he hung on, staring at the vast fault in reality. It seemed to be swelling toward the cockpit windows, reaching for the plane. He felt that invisible hand again seize the plane and draw it quickly forward. He suddenly remembered Tanya's question of a few minutes before, when she had wondered almost absentmindedly if the effect might work in the opposite manner going back. Asleep, he thought. We were asleep and passed through the rip into the future. Slept our way into the future. What if... "Ta-Tanya," he struggled to get out. It now took a tremendous effort to speak; he felt as if his mouth was a hundred miles away from his brain. He reached out his hand toward the cabin pressure controls but it seemed to stretch away from him at the end of a cartoonishly long arm. It overshot the controls and ended up on Tanya's left thigh. "Go to sleep," Tanya said, grasping his hand. "Don't fight it, Frank, unless you want to join me in the great hereafter. It won't be long now." Frank struggled to meet her eyes. "Have to... have to... " Tanya smiled and gave Frank's hand a squeeze. "Don't you worry about it, old man. I'll turn it back up before we go through, I promise. Now just relax and let yourself go." Frank suddenly realized he had lost the thought, and then he lost the memory of having lost the thought. His head drifted back to a centered position, and he looked into the rip again. So beautiful, he thought. A river of gorgeous colors. For one fleeting moment the thought resurfaced and he mumbled: "Oncoming traffic does not stop." Then darkness swallowed him. * Tanya was alone now, the only person awake on Flight 74. She was not afraid, but an intense loneliness filled her. The feeling wasn't a new one. She had been alone and lonely since driving Claire away, her intense jealousy a scalpel used to slash and tear at her lover until self- preservation made Claire pack up and run. She had given chase, of course, but had not found Claire until a month before--or rather the detective she'd hired had found her. Jealousy, rage and an intense feeling of desertion had boiled over at the discovery that Claire lived not just with another woman, but Tanya's own sister; it had driven her to lengths she could scarcely now believe. But she was better now--free--and her mind was completely clear. She prayed that her penitence was enough. Ahead of her, the rip neared. She dropped her hand to the rheostat which controlled the cabin pressure and clasped it between her thumb and forefinger. It's gorgeous, she thought. It seemed to her that the colors that now blazed out of the rip were the antithesis of everything they had experienced in the last few hours. Colors ran across her cheeks and brow in a fountain-spray of hues: jungle green was overthrown by lava orange; lava orange was replaced by yellow-white tropical sunshine; sunshine was supplanted by the chilly blue of northern oceans. She looked down and was not surprised to see that Frank Trafano's slumped, sleeping form was being consumed by color, his form and features overthrown in an ever- changing kaleidoscope of brightness. He had become a fabulous ghost. No, Tanya thought, looking at her own hands and arms which were as colorless as clay. Frank's not the ghost; I am. The rip loomed. Now the sound of the engines was lost entirely in a new sound; the 767 seemed to be rushing through a wind tunnel filled with feathers. Suddenly, directly ahead of the airliner's nose, a vast nova of light exploded like a heavenly fireworks; in it, Tanya saw colors no woman had ever imagined. It did not just fill the time-rip; it filled her mind, her nerves, her muscles, her very bones in a gigantic, coruscating fire flash. "Oh my God!" she cried, covering her eyes with the back of her right hand. "It's so BEAUTIFUL!" And as Flight 74 entered the rip, she twisted the cabin-pressure rheostat, bringing it back up to full. A split-second later the 767 plunged through and Tanya suddenly was no longer one woman, but two, overlapped in twin realities like some sort of ethereal Siamese twins. For a hairs breath of time she had two heads and two torsos, four arms and as many legs. Her eyes opened in a reaction of unimaginable pain, then she was gone, ripped wholesale from whatever existence the other, sleeping passengers of Flight 74 now found themselves in. There was a small thump as the oxygen mask she had worn landed on the cockpit floor between the seats, and that was all. Tanya had vanished from this existence. Chapter 18 Saturday, July 20, 2013, 7:49 P.M. PDT (10:49 P.M. EDT) Aboard American Airlines Flight 74 Somewhere above Southern California The first things Frank was aware of were that his shirt was wet and his head ached something fierce. He sat up slowly in his seat, wincing at the bolt of pain in his head. He tried to remember who he was, where he was, and why he felt such a vast and urgent need to wake up. What had he been doing that was so important? The Black Box, his mind whispered. The Black Box has been recovered and I need to get to D.C. to watch it opened. No, that wasn't right. The flight data recorder was waiting for him in Washington, D.C., but getting data from the thing was far from certain and besides... Wait. He was looking through a cockpit window at a sky filled with stars. He was not at the controls of one of the NTSB Go-team's sleek silver Gulfstream jets, but a commercial airliner trundling along under autopilot. Suddenly it came roaring back to him--all of it--and he sat up with a start, way too quickly. Blood flew from his nose and splattered on the center console as his vision momentarily doubled from the pain. He looked down and saw the front of his shirt soaked with blood. Of course, he thought. Depressurization does that. 1 should have warned the passengers before... How many passengers do I have left, anyway? He couldn't remember. His head was filled with sludge. Looking at his fuel indicators, he saw that their situation was rapidly approaching critical status--they had less than eighteen hundred pounds remaining. He checked the INS readouts and discovered they were exactly where they should be, over the outer marker and descending rapidly toward L.A. But at any moment they might wander into someone else's airspace while the someone else was still there. Reaching for the radio dials, he suddenly remembered that someone else had been sharing his airspace just before he had passed out... who? He fumbled, and it came to him. Tanya, of course. Tanya Raum. Tanya was gone. He looked down between the seats and saw the dull gray oxygen mask on the floor and suddenly he was sick all over again. She had done the job--otherwise he wouldn't be awake now--but at what cost? He got on the radio, fast. "LAX tower, this is American Airlines Flight--" He stopped. What flight were they? He couldn't remember. The fog was too heavy. "Seventy-four," a dismal voice said from behind him. It was Jill Cooney. "Sit down and buckle up. I may have to put this plane through some pretty rough maneuvers." He spoke into his mike again. "LAX tower, this is American Airlines Flight 74, I repeat, seven-four. I am declaring an emergency. Clear everything out of my way because I'm coming in on fumes. Do you read me, tower? Over." Jill began to laugh miserably beside him. "Right, Frank. They read you all right." She began to laugh harder. "They read you just fine!" Frank wheeled around then, ignoring the flash of pain through his head. "Look, goddammit!" he growled. "We haven't got time for you to have a nervous breakdown! If you can't get yourself together, go back to the cabin with the others. We're breaking into heavy traffic unannounced and we'll be damned lucky if we don't get creamed." Jill laughed again. "There's no traffic here!" she shouted in a voice more than tinged with hysteria. "No heavy traffic, no tower, no ground beam thingies to guide us in! Don't you get it, Frank?" She pointed out and down through the windshield. "Tanya died for nothing, and I'll never get a chance to deliver her message!" Frank looked out and felt his stomach crash to the soles of his feet. For although they were now over the outlying suburbs of Los Angeles, he saw nothing but darkness. There was no one down there, no one at all. Beside him, Jill burst into harsh, raging sobs of horror and frustration. * A long red, white and blue passenger jet dropped resolutely toward the ground thirty miles east of Los Angeles International Airport. Along the fuselage, the words AMERICAN AIRLINES were printed in bold red, white and blue letters. The plane printed no shadow on the deserted grid of streets as it passed above them; dawn was still an eternity away. Below it, no car moved, no streetlight glowed. Below it, all was silent and move- less. Ahead of it, no runway lights flashed an inviting glow. The plane continued to slip down the chute toward L.A. for five seconds longer, then nosed up and banked gently left as the engines wound up to full thrust, Then, increasing its angle of bank until it had come around one hundred and eighty degrees, the plane flew back in the direction from it had come. Inside the aircraft, a heated argument raged. "This is insane!" Elise insisted, straining for a look at the ground through one of the port-side windows. "The city is there! There have to be people!" Gregory was one seat behind her, face pressed hard up against a window of his own. "It's there all right," he concurred in a voice wound tight as an overtaxed spring. "But there's no more people down there than there were in D.C." His voice cracked so badly it mangled his last words, making them all but indecipherable. Solomon was on one knee on the seat behind him, the hand clutching his rosary on the top of Gregory's seat back. His fingers worked one of the beads relentlessly while his eyes blinked in consternation and disbelief. The intercom clicked on. "Everybody get up here," Frank ordered. "Now!" The remaining three passengers of Flight 74 scrambled up the port-side aisle through First Class and into the small galley. Crowding into the cockpit door, all began babbling at once. "Shut up!" Frank yelled, loud enough to bring instant silence. "We have no time!" He turned to Jill and ordered: "Tell them what you just told me." Jill turned in her seat. She was as white as a sheet of high-grade copier paper and trembling uncontrollably. She brought herself under control by digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands. "I was wrong," she said in a low, dull voice. Her tone conveyed an absolute acceptance of guilt. "I thought that, because we came through asleep the first time, that getting back meant sleeping again." Elise, Gregory and Solomon all nodded. Frank was too busy with the controls and course alterations to listen. He did however, remember his train of thought just prior to slipping into unconsciousness and needed no further convincing. This had forced his snap decision to reverse course and head back toward the rip. The question was, with barely fifteen hundred pounds of fuel remaining, would they make it? "But it should have worked!" Solomon insisted. "We were all asleep. The plane should have transitioned back to our own time and--" Jill shook her head. "It transitioned yes, but through our time, not into it." "What?" Gregory's face lost all color. "Oh, my God," he muttered, looking from face to face. "Of course." "Of course what?" Elise demanded. Her face was a battlefield of mottled reds and grays. She had begun to shiver and once again crossed her arms over her chest. "We were asleep," Gregory whispered. "Of course we were asleep!" she exploded. "What went wrong?" Jill, scanning the night sky ahead for some sight of the time-rip--she saw nothing but stars and low lying scud clouds--answered for him. "The rip isn't really a rip at all, but a weakening in the fabric of time. We discussed that in the restaurant in D.C., remember? The spot's thinness let us pass through because we had less of a grip on reality than our wide-awake fellow passengers. They kept on going in our own timeframe while we slipped through into the next. But going back through the second time asleep weakened our grip just as much, and we ended up flying right through our reality and into the timeframe on the other side." "Into the past," Gregory said, miserably. "Into the past." Solomon nodded solemnly while Elise groaned, "Oh God, not again," and broke into tears. "When Tanya and I talked, before she... " Jill's voice momentarily faltered. "Before we flew through the rip, she told me that she thought we all would reappear on the plane again, at the exact instant we had disappeared. That flying through the rip would reunite us with our own world. I think she was right. Only wrong." For a long time, no one said a thing. Then, as though rousing himself from a long, deep sleep, Solomon said: "That may happen, or it may not, but either way we're running out of fuel. Do we have enough to make it back to the rip, Frank, and then land again if we're all still aboard?" Frank shrugged. "Maybe." He tapped the INS readout. "According to this, we're on the right heading and at the right altitude for this distance out from the airport. If we can find the damned thing and get through it right away... " Elise protested: "We saw it easily before, and that was in bright light. It should be visible now for a hundred miles!" Frank gestured to the night sky ahead. "See anything?" Elise searched the night sky and slowly shook her head. "Well, no. But--" "But nothing," Frank said, pointing into the distance. "It should be right there, dead ahead. Eighty miles out. But it's not." Elise stubbornly searched the sky; Gregory wrapped her waist comfortingly with one arm. Solomon, rubbing his forehead thoughtfully, said: "In the previous timeframe, our rip was a gateway into the present, funneling energy into it from a brand new existence. The results were spectacular. Here, the rip is in the past, sucking energy into a useless void. The rip might very well appear as a black hole, a dark spot against the background of stars. It could very well could be mistaken for a cloud. We might not realize what it was until too late." "Fuck," Frank grumbled, adjusting the throttles. "That's just fucking great." He started flipping switches and turning knobs. "What are you doing?" Gregory inquired. "Shutting everything down not essential to flight." Behind them, lights died out in the cabin, plunging the aircraft into darkness. The only illumination came from the instrument panels around them. Then he shut down even the air conditioning and the outboard beacons... they were now flying completely dark. "Better pray nothing's out there," Gregory said. "For real." Ahead of them, the sky remained studded with pinpoints of light. Nothing showed on the radar display. If there were a "black hole" ahead, a thin spot in the fabric of time, the radar couldn't detect it either. "Warning!" a mechanically generated voice bellowed. "Fuel levels are critically low! Fuel levels are critically low! Land the aircraft at the first available airport or- -" "Shut the fuck up!" Frank shouted. He slammed the heel of his hand against a set of switches, silencing the voice. His color was high and his breathing was audible to all the others. "Where is that fucking rip!" They all searched the night sky, Jill straining her eyes until she thought they'd pop from her head, but no time- rip could be found. "Fuck!" Frank cursed again, striking the yoke with his fist. "We have to turn back. We'll circle around for another pass at a slightly different altitude and on a different heading. It'll play hell with our fuel, but we can't make it back to L.A. now, regardless." He flipped the autopilot off and took the controls. "Worse comes to fucking worse, after going through I'll take us down and land in the middle of the fucking desert. Route 15 should be down there somewhere below us. It runs straight as an arrow into Las Vegas. We can land on that if nowhere else. Fuck it--we'll land somewhere!" "We should have just landed in L.A.," Elise complained. "Fueled ourselves up again and then taken off. There's no langoliers here." "Not yet," Solomon observed. "But you can bet they will be, if this used-up timeframe is the one our reality transitioned out of." Elise, looking anxiously out the side window, said: "I didn't think of that." Jill thought it unbelievable that she hadn't thought of it either. And if they did have to land in this used-up world, even at an airport where fuel was readily available, would that jet-fuel burn? "Frank?" Gregory's voice was unsteady. "Frank? I think I see something." * "I'll be a son of a bitch," Frank whispered. "Good eyes, Gregory," The time-rip lay about two miles off their starboard side and maybe half a mile below. Either it had drifted, or the airplane had. Either way, there was no way to reach it without circling back. Frank began a gradual turn to his left. The time-rip had maintained its lozenge-shape in this reality but was very nearly the black hole postulated by Solomon. It cycled with a dim purple-green light, visible more peripherally than when viewed straight on. It was no wonder they had missed it. The wide white ribbon of vapor had been replaced by a shimmering, jet-black river of... something... Jill could not tell what. Whatever it was, as with the time-rip itself, the shimmering flow was better seen from the corner of her eye. Then it was lost from sight. "Okay," Frank said. His face reflected a grim determination. "We found it, now let's not lose it again. Solomon, Elise, Gregory--go back into First Class and watch out the windows. It should be visible off the port. Keep me posted on its location. Jill, you keep an eye on the gauges. The instant we hit four hundred pounds, you sing out like a bird. Got it?" "Yes," Jill said, happy for something useful to do, even if she wasn't sure exactly what for. "What happens at four hundred pounds?" "We head back toward the rip," Frank told her. "No matter where we are. Lined up or not. Any less fuel than that and... " Jill didn't have to be told the rest. Locking her eyes on the readouts, Jill watched the digits decline, silently counting off the pounds with numb lips. The fuel was going alarmingly fast. At what she judged as the halfway point of the turn, the readout had dropped by half. "Five hundred pounds," she warned. "Shit!" Frank increased the angle of bank and drew back on the yoke. The G-force increased as the turning radius grew tighter, and Jill felt herself try to climb upward out of her seat. She wrapped her legs around the struts at the bottom and maintained her downward count. "Four hundred and fifty pounds," she said. "Shit!" Frank growled again. Behind them in the cabin, a second avalanche of luggage, watches, handbags, wallets and loose change went cascading across the isles and beneath the open-bottomed seats to impact against the bulkheads. There was a load crash, followed by the sound of breaking glass and Elise shrieked loudly once and then let out an avalanche of her own... of hot invective. Gregory erupted in explosive laughter. "Shut up!" Elise bawled, which only made Gregory laugh harder. Then Elise began to laugh as well and Jill, watching the numerals wind inextricably down toward the four hundred mark, began to laugh herself. She saw in her mind's eye a clear image of the young heiress attacked by a homicidal drinks cart. "Four hundred pounds, Frank." Cursing vehemently under his breath, Frank brought the 767 back to level flight and centered the lozenge-shaped time-rip on the aircraft's nose. It was perhaps twenty miles off. He adjusted the throttles slightly, then sat back in the seat. "Either we make it," he said, "or we don't." The aircraft approached not straight-on as Frank had wanted, but at an angle that Jill estimated as around thirty degrees. She wondered if entering at an angle made a difference. If so, there was little they could do about it now. The others joined her and Frank in the cockpit. As they approached the river of... what?--Jill thought it looked like foam breaking over a midnight-darkened beach --she discovered it was flowing out of the hole, not into it as had been the case in the future. She began to pick up flashes of color traveling within it--anti-colors, her mind insisted--mold-green, bruised-violet, rust-red. The colors of death, she thought. And although it was hard to tell for sure against the night sky, Jill suddenly wondered if-- "It looks smaller," Elise said uncertainly. Grimly, Gregory said, "It is." Frank made a slight course correction. The tip-rip had either drifted off to their left, or it was smaller--much smaller--and closer than they had imagined. "Don't jump to conclusions," he cautioned in a voice nonetheless tight with worry. "It's hard to judge distances and size at night." Elise was unswayed. "It's not just smaller, Frank, it's closing up." Her voice had shifted an octave mid- sentence, making her sound like a preteen. "Nonsense," Frank insisted, but his tone held little conviction. Solomon said quietly: "Elise is right. That thing has shrunk to less than half its original size." "More like a quarter," Elise put in. Frank shook his head. "It's big enough. We'll get through." He made another course correction and the floor tilted gently to the left as he banked toward the elusive, shrinking slot in the sky. It seemed to slide off the 767's nose even as he banked toward it. Now they could hear a sound mixing with the drone of the jet engines--a deep-throated rumbling--like the breathing of a t-Rex in one of the Jurassic Park movies. It made gooseflesh erupt all over Jill's arms and torso. As they approached the half-seen river of black, the plane encountered turbulence. "Hold onto something," Frank said. "This could be bad." Jill belted herself into the co-pilot's harness while Gregory sat Elise down in the jump seat and belted her in. Then he braced himself in the cockpit doorway as Solomon took the other seat. As the 767 entered the narrow flow of vapor streaming out of the time-rip, it slowed appreciably, as though Frank had extended the air brakes. But Frank had done nothing. "A head wind," Frank muttered, placing his right hand atop the throttles. His eyes flicked momentarily down to the fuel readouts, and Jill's eyes did the same. They had less that two hundred pounds remaining. When she looked back up, Frank's mouth was set in a thin, grim line. "We'll make it, Frank," she said in a reassuring whisper. Frank only grunted. Their airspeed continued to drop. Suddenly, as though seized from behind by an immensely powerful hand, the 767's airspeed dropped precipitously. The aircraft staggered sideways and Gregory staggered with it, ending up in Elise's lap. Looking both terrified and ironically amused, Elise wrapped both her arms around him and Gregory clutched her arms with his own. "Christ on a pony," he muttered. The rip lay dead ahead of the 767's nose now, but refused to grow. Alarms were going off and the yoke before Jill shook alarmingly. We're not going in, she thought frantically. God help us, we're not going in. "Up, Frank! We have to go up!" Frank pushed the throttles dead against the stops and pulled back on the yoke even as she yelled the words. For one long terrifying moment, the aircraft refused to respond. Then, like a man extricating himself from ankle- deep, life-sucking mud, the 767 struggled upward. It climbed out of the black vapor and that sense of tremendous power, of air rushing out of the hole like a mighty river, marginally eased. Jill looked at the instruments and saw the 767's airspeed was slowly increasing again. The shaking of the controls had let up. Although she knew little of flight aerodynamics, she suspected they had come deadly close to a stall. "Are we okay, Frank?" Frank's snarled expression was all the answer she needed. Looking again at the gauges--she had to force her eyes to move down--she watched in horror as the green numerals, now flashing in strident warning, ticked down below one hundred pounds. Please, she thought. Please let the numbers be wrong. Let them be like the fuel gauge in my car; let there be some fuel left in the tanks. Let there be a buffer! But as the numerals wound their way down past the fifty pound mark, half a dozen red indicators lit up across the board. A klaxon loud enough to herald the end of the world went off. "What is it! What is it, Frank?" Elise wailed. Frank calmly set about responding to the alarms. When he settled the left throttle to its idle position at the bottom of the track, Jill knew the worst. There was no buffer. The left engine had quit. Now they really were flying on fumes. Rising from his seat and coming up behind Jill, Solomon gripped both of her shoulders. Grateful for his touch, Jill clasped her hands over his. Beneath the fingers of her right hand she felt the smooth round shape of rosary beads; clasping one, she silently began to pray. The turbulence increased; Flight 74 became embroiled in a deadly, choppy surf, a surfboard with wings, rocking and twisting and thumping through the unsteady air. Frank's hands clutched the yoke so hard his fingers left indentations in the rubber coating. The 767 remaining power plant strained valiantly against the buffeting winds, as though aware that only seconds of fuel remained. At least there's ground to crash into here, Jill thought wildly. We don't have to face that inky-black void of the langoliers. Being turned into human pate after a fall from 35,000 feet was still a better fate than that. The turbulence increased until Frank was forced to raise the nose in order to save the aircraft. It slammed up and down and for one frightful moment rocked up almost to the vertical on its starboard wing. From somewhere below came another of those deadly shrieks of over-stressed metal and then a second. Somehow, even though the fuel gauges flashed a terminal zero-zero-zero across all tanks, the starboard engine continued to turn. "Go baby, go," Frank muttered over and over again. Jill prayed hard on the beads of Solomon's rosary, her whispered words matching Solomon's own. Behind her, Gregory and Elise both recited the Lord's Prayer, even though Gregory was Jewish. The turbulence continued to increase as Frank lowered the 767's nose again and headed back into the vapor-stream. Ahead of them, the hole continued to swell even as it insisted on sliding off the nose. Frank fought the yoke and cursed vehemently at the turbulence. After one particularly vicious jolt, everyone aboard screamed, Frank included. "We're not going to make it!" Elise shrieked. "We're not going to make it in!" As though accepting her words as the penultimate truth, the world-ending klaxon began yowling again and lights sprang on across the board. The right engine failed. Unable to remove either hand from the yoke, Frank could only sit there and yell at the klaxon to shut up. It continued to wail. The turbulence increased. Everyone prepared to die. "Grab the yoke!" Frank yelled. "Grab the yoke and help me get it under control." By now, the aircraft was pitching so badly that Jill had to clutch the armrests to keep control of her arms. They wanted to fly away in all directions. Grabbing the yoke first with one hand and then with the other, she struggled to keep her hands upon it. Never had she experienced such a wildly bucking ride. How in the name of God, she wondered, did the aircraft hold together. Ahead of them, the time-rip was centered in the cockpit windows again, spreading across the sky. It was lit from inside by an awful array of colors that coiled, snaked, and then streamed away into its aberrant depths. The aircraft fell toward it, bucking, shaking and skidding left and right. "Will we make it?" Jill screamed. "How the fuck should I know?" Just as things seemed unable to get any worse, they did. With the starboard engine's final winding down, the power went out. The lights in the instrument clusters stuttered and then died, plunging the cockpit into darkness. "No!" Frank yelled. "Don't you dare! Don't you fucking dare!" Beneath her hands, Jill felt the yoke tighten up and freeze. They no longer had control. "Hold it!" Frank yelled, releasing the yoke with his right hand and grabbing a lever between the two seats. He yanked it violently up, then began vigorously pumping the handle up and down. "What is that?" Jill cried. The nose of the 767 was falling off to starboard and the left wing was coming up fast. They had only moments remaining. "Ram jet!" Frank yelled. "It should have deployed on the loss of power but it didn't. I'm lowering it manually now!" Jill felt a sudden movement in the controls and lights on the panels flashed sporadically on and off. Then the power stabilized, triggering a cacophony of alarms. "Back!" Frank yelled. "Pull back on the yoke! We have to raise the nose!" Pulling with all her might--Solomon added his hands to hers--Jill watched the dangerously off-center time-rip continue to rise. For three or four seconds--an absolute eternity--nothing happened, then slowly, agonizingly, the aircraft began to respond. The nose came up and the left wing depressed, and suddenly, miraculously, the time-rip again headed toward the center of the windows. They would not hit it dead center, but at least they had a chance. The colors boiling in the rip were the antithesis of everything God had ever intended. It was not a black hole, Jill thought, but the back end of a black hole--its relativity asshole. Color drained from her cheeks and brow in a mad rush out of existence. She looked left and was not surprised to see that Frank Trafano's rigid, struggling form was also depleted of color, his form and features overwhelmed by the life-sucking hole. He had become a living ghost. They all had become living ghosts. Now the sound of passage was lost entirely in a new sound; the 767 seemed to be rushing through a wind tunnel filled with pummeling rocks. Suddenly, directly ahead of the airliner's nose, a vast nova of blackness exploded like a hellish firework; in it, Jill saw colors no man had ever imagined. It did not just fill the time-rip; it filled her mind, her nerves, her muscles, her very bones in a gigantic, coruscating fireflash. "MY GOD NO!" she screamed, covering her eyes with the back of her hand. "HELP US! HELP US PLEASE!" A split-second later the 767 plunged into the depths and Jill suddenly was no longer one woman, but two, overlapped in twin realities like some sort of ethereal Siamese twins. For a hairs breath of time she had two heads and two torsos, four arms and as many legs. Her eyes opened in a reaction of unimaginable pain, then she was gone, ripped wholesale from whatever existence the dying jetliner found itself in. There was a final, brilliant explosion of nothingness and that was all. The five remaining passengers of Flight 74 had vanished. Chapter 19 Monday, July 20, 2015, 7:54 A.M. PDT On the banks of Lake George, Sacramento, California The sun had only begun to burn off the morning chill, and the lake was practically deserted on this fine Monday morning. Frank Trafano cast out his line, dropping the lure close to the spot where moments before a flash of silver had broken the surface. It was almost certainly another spot–-Frank had seven of the palm-sized fish on the stringer already. With luck, by the time he went home that evening, he'd have enough to feed the crew. The only sounds interrupting the lakeshore's quiet were those of nature: the squawk of a circling crow, the melodious cry of a songbird in the woods behind him, the whisper of the July wind. Frank was grateful for these sounds; they held none of the unwelcome reality which technology brought to man-made noise. And in Frank Trafano's opinion, noise was all man was capable of making. Other than a solitary fisherman in a jon-boat close to the opposite shore, and a pair of love-birds in a canoe drifting near the lake's center, the two hundred or so acres of water were his. Frank gave the couple in the canoe an occasional glance, trying not to let thoughts of his own loneliness intrude on the day's otherwise perfect balance. The last thing Frank needed on this day were disturbing thoughts, especially if they lead his mind back to Jill Cooney, which they invariably did. It had been two years to the day since Frank and his seven fellow passengers leapt from the sanity of the normal world into the horror of non-existence. Scarcely a night went by uninterrupted by troubled dreams; the past month had been especially bad. Jessica Gibson--their young and fragile savior--seemed to torture Frank the most. Sometimes she appeared on the concrete apron of that bizarre world, standing silently before the dead concourse building. More often, however, it was inside the murky interior of the snack bar, where Catherine Montes had plunged six inches of metal into her chest. It either case, Jessica was as Frank saw her last, lips and chin slicked with rose-colored blood, a badly folded and blood-soaked tablecloth strapped across her chest, her breathing labored. It was her eyes, though, that were the worst. Those dying, all-seeing eyes. Frank was unaware of his thoughts until they were interrupted by a tug on the line. Suddenly cognizant of his surroundings, he looked at the red and white plastic bob just in time to see in dip below the surface. He snapped the line too late and missed setting the hook. The fish was gone, and probably with it his bait. He swore softly and reeled in the line. A moment later he heard footsteps behind him. "Hello, Frank." Frank recognized the speaker's voice and turned slowly around. In the twelve months since Frank had last seen him, Solomon Howell had aged. His hair was a mixture of salt and pepper, and new lines had etched his face. He seemed shorter than Frank remembered. Frank got up and grabbed the man's hand. "Solomon! Why didn't you call! I could have picked you up at the airport." Solomon's dark eyes almost teared. A moment later the two men were hugging ferociously and when Solomon spoke, his voice was close to breaking. "I didn't want to interrupt your fishing, Frank. I knew you'd be out here catching our dinner." "Nonsense," Frank said with amusement. "You just wasted a ton of good dollars." A maroon Ford Taurus--certainly a rental--stood vigil in the parking lot above. Looking slowly around the lake, Solomon asked, "Heard from the others?" "Gregory and Elise, yes. Jill... " Trafano shrugged. Obviously he had no more idea of her whereabouts than did anyone else. "Jill will find us," Solomon said. "When and if she needs us." Frank nodded. "You could probably use something to eat. I have crackers and some beer in the cooler." Solomon looked at the water's edge, where a stringer-full of palm-size spot lay submerged next to a red & white Igloo cooler. He grinned. "Have a head on them I hope? You know how I hate beer without a head." A smile tugged at the corners of Frank's mouth, then took over his entire face. The two men broke into laughter, horse laughs from deep down in their bellies, fighting away tears, eventually having to hold onto each other for support. Out on the lake, the heads of the two young lovers turned to watch the men with expressions of not quite alarm, not quite disdain. * Frank opened the door of the rental car, climbed out, and stretched his limbs mightily. Before him, the grungy facade of the apartment building rose four stories into the air. He looked at the grimy windows, the stoop in disrepair–-one railing canted crazily off to the side while the other was missing entirely–-and then up and down the block. What a depressing place to live, he thought. Solomon smiled in agreement. But it was all the young lovers could afford. "Elise turned eighteen last month," Solomon said. "You knew that?" Frank nodded. "We spoke briefly over the phone. I sent her a birthday card with a small check inside. Nothing extravagant, you know. Enough to treat them to a good dinner or a couple of movies." They approached the front entrance of the building. "They probably put it toward the rent." Upon their return to Los Angeles and the normal world, the five survivors of Flight 74 were besieged. The authorities first, and then by the press. Then the general public. For a month Frank and the others had found themselves at the center of a whirlwind. What had happened to the aircraft everyone wanted to know? What happened to Catherine Montes? The little girl with the powder blue top? The dozens of others? Four aircraft altogether had flown through the "atmospheric disturbance" over the Mojave desert before air traffic control got wise. The first aircraft, a US Airways 737 bound for Cleveland, Ohio, had nine passengers exit the flight. None had returned. A second aircraft, American Airlines Flight 1210 en route to JFK had gone through next, with twelve passengers deserting their seats. Ditto no returns. Next came American Pride Flight 29, another 767, bound for Logan Airport in Boston from which eleven passengers, including a little blind girl, a junior attache at the British Embassy in Washington, DC, and a scoundrel name Craig Toomey who purportedly had embezzled fifty million dollars from the Desert Sun Bank had gone missing. American Airlines Flight 74 went through last. The only survivors of this man-eating hole in space, the five returnee's had endured everything from public ridicule to Congressional hearings, to threats of a public lynching. Their explanations were brushed aside out-of-hand while numerous other hypothesis, no less crazy than the truth--brilliantly masterminded and executed hijackings, military experiments gone awry, and alien abductions--abounded. And just as in the case of UFO's, neither the media, the scientific community nor the authorities were willing to consider--much less accept--a non-natural explanation. As the two men approached the entrance to the building, Frank Trafano slowed, then came to a stop. He stared in disbelief at the slight, chestnut-haired woman standing inside the building's front lobby. Smiling hesitantly, the young woman raised her hand and waved. "You all right?" Solomon whispered to Frank. Frank nodded. His throat was suddenly dry. "I'm fine," he said. "Let's go inside." Together, the two men climbed the front steps and joined the woman in the lobby. She looks exhausted, Frank thought, and indeed Jill did. Dark smudges stood out below both eyes and her pallor was nearly the white of Solomon's shirt. Her hair was lank and un-styled and despite this--or possibly because of it--Frank found it hard not to stare at Jill's face. That familiar old crunch gripped his stomach and he looked away. "Hello, Jill," Solomon said. His voice was surprisingly level. He extended his hands in greeting. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised." Jill smiled again briefly, then gave Solomon a hug, then hugged Frank. She stepped quickly away. "They don't know I'm coming," she said, indicating the mailbox with the last names of Gregory and Elise taped upon it in Dymo tape. "I wasn't even sure they'd be here." Solomon gave an understanding nod. "I spoke with Gregory just before leaving Frank's," he said. "He hoped that you'd make it. So did we." Because of the investigation and the continuing public scrutiny, Gregory was unable to attend USC/Berkeley during the fall or winter semesters. His parents had offered surprisingly little support, considering the circumstances. And where it came to Elise Gallo, rich heiress or not, they were openly hostile. The situation came to a head the month before, when Elise turned eighteen and the two had moved in together. Gregory no longer talked to his parents. "We should go up," Solomon said. They climbed the narrow steps single file, having to climb over a Big Wheel parked on the second floor landing. The stairway smelled of ethnic cooking and an underlying odor of urine. Solomon helped support the couple himself, offering a small monthly stipend to help offset the cost of Gregory's tuition, and to help pay the rent. Even so, Gregory and Elise were forced to seek off campus housing. Elise worked full-time, but at a minimum wage job doing cosmetic's makeovers. Her legal problems from the computer-hacking incident were never-ending and because she'd see no money until her twenty-first birthday, her family had to foot the bill. Like Gregory, she was presently estranged from her parents. They stopped before the door to apartment 4-B. Solomon raised a hand and knocked gently on the wood. A rattle came from the other side of the door–the sound of a chain being drawn--then of the dead-bolt flipping back. The door cracked open and Elise look out. "Hi," she said, opening the door and standing back. "Come in." Jill entered first, trying not to stare at the couple's decrepit belongings. Frank went next and Solomon followed him through the small foyer and into the living room where Jill stood with her feet together and her hands clasped on her purse. Elise shut and locked the door. She did not set the chain. "Hi," Elise said again. She had gained some weight, Frank noted, but still looked like a poster child for anorexia nervosa. But her color was good and she fought not to grin childishly at their presence. Clad in cut off jeans, a tank top and white sandals, she looked ready for the beach. "All together again, aren't we?" The others smiled. "Greg?" Solomon asked. "Went to get some Italian dressing. We ran out." From the slightness of her waist and thighs, Frank guessed she ate a lot of salads. If anything at all. "He's on his bike," she said, " so he shouldn't be long. Why don't you sit down." Frank chose the ratty old recliner, while Solomon and Jill sat down on the ratty couch. Everything in the apartment was ratty. But it was clean, Jill saw, spotless, in fact. Polished hardwood flooring bordered the perimeter of the room and the threadbare carpet showed recent signs of being vacuuming. The rattiness was further offset by half a dozen vigorously growing potted plants. "Sorry about the place," Elise said. "It's all we could afford." She shrugged. "Better than a shelter, I guess." Or jail, Jill thought. Solomon said: "No apologies are needed and none will be accepted. You and Gregory have done quite well for yourselves and its a roof over your head." Elise turned pink. "Right," she muttered. "The important thing is that you're happy. Nothing other than that matters." Elise smiled while Jill looked unhappily at her shoes, then out one of the yellow curtained windows. They chatted for a time, avoiding anything of importance, the conversation staying clear of the reunion's purpose. After ten minutes, footsteps sounded on the hallway outside and a key was inserted into the lock. Elise rose and met Gregory coming in. They kissed quickly while the others watched in varying amounts of embarrassment and pleasure. Then they entered the living room. "Hello, everyone," Gregory said. The others got up and all five formed together as a group, embracing tightly with their arms locked around each other's shoulders. They finally broke apart, standing back and looking abashed. "This is so embarrassing," Gregory said. Tears stained his cheeks and he wiped them clean with the back of his hand. "I'm so glad to see you all. I can't tell you how much." "Gregory, believe me," said Solomon. "We believe you." Gregory's hair was long and beginning to curl around his ears; light fuzz covered his cheeks and chin. He had noticeably lost weight but his posture was good and his eyes shown with joy. "You all look so good," he told them. "And it's so good to have our family together again." Yes, Jill thought sadly. If only it were complete. * On the east-bound flight to Washington D.C., Jill had awoken to confusion. "Are you all right?" a woman asked. There was fear in her voice, anger as well. Then: "What is going on!" Unsure if she were still dreaming, Jill looked up expecting the scowling face of Catherine Montes above her. It wasn't. The woman was the same overweight Latina that had sat across from her on the aisle. She looked quickly up and down the plane, both relieved and alarmed to see so many staring, fright-filled faces. She unbuckled her seat belt and stood up. "What time is it?" she asked. The woman blinked, nonplused. "Never mind," Jill said, pushing brusquely past her. She headed forward up the aisle. Scanning the faces of the other fliers, she was endlessly glad to see Frank Trafano battling his way down the aisle through First Class. His face was a sign board of relief, consternation and fear. His clothing--Jill's as well--was covered with blood. From twenty feet away, irritably brushing aside a red- faced and thoroughly distraught flight attendant, he yelled: "The others?" Jill spun around, looking in all directions. Trying to remember their placement throughout the aircraft, she recalled that Tanya and Catherine had come from the front, Gregory had been with her and the other four had all come from the rear. "Catherine?" she asked. Frank shook his head. His mouth, already drawn in a grim frown, drew grimmer. No Tanya either, it said. Feeling a rising panic, Jill fought her way up the crowded, noisy aisle. They met halfway. "Jill--" Frank started. "Where is she?" "Not here. Maybe in the back. She did come through first, remember?" Looking through the shouting, gesticulating crowd into First Class, Jill refused to accept this. "Are you sure?" she demanded. "I'm sorry," Frank said. He pushed her before him down the aisle. "Come on. We need to find the rest." The rest, as it turned out, were as equally anxious to find them. Laboring their way up both aisles from the rear compartment, Gregory and Elise on one side, Solomon on the other, the three remaining survivors of Flight 74 joined Frank and Jill in the middle of the plane. "Tanya?" Jill desperately pleaded. "Have you seen Tanya?" The others shook their heads. "Where is she?" No one had an answer for that. * "This is the best fish I've ever eaten," Gregory said. "I can't remember the last time anything tasted so good." Jill took a sip of her Earnest and Julio Gallo white wine and concurred. "To Frank for catching it," she said, "and to Elise for learning to cook." The whole group laughed. On the occasion of their first reunion--the press had by then mostly lost interest in the five and were leaving them alone--the duties were done by Solomon and herself. Jill had prepared the favorite dish of her mother--smoked Salmon--while Solomon prepared everything else. They had dined together in the dining room of Solomon's modest house in L.A. "My pleasure," Elise said, blushing prettily. Gregory cleared his throat. "We have something to tell you," he said, also beginning to blush. "Greg!" Elise canted her head. Her look was both threatening and pleased. "We, uh... we're going to get married." Following their initial shock, Solomon and Frank both thumped Gregory on the back, while Jill leaned over and hugged Elise tightly. Drawing away, she saw in Elise's eyes that there was something more. Elise slowly smiled. "February the fifteenth," she said, eliciting a huge grin from her future husband--and the baby's father. "Well, congratulations!" "That's great!" "Do you know what it is, yet? No! Don't tell me!" They all laughed again. In coming to grips with the loss of Tanya Raum, Jill had at first shut everyone out, then slowly, incrementally, learned to accept it. Because, as postulated by Solomon, Tanya was not really gone, but lost amidst all the myriad, other possible time-steps. She might even now, Jill thought, be sharing wine with another, more fortunate Jill Cooney. At least she could hope. And she had made a decision. "Frank?" she asked softly. "Yes?" "Is that offer of Prince Edward's Island still open?" Frank looked momentarily nonplused, then struck dumb. "Yes," he said in a faltering voice. "If you want." Slowly and with great caution, she slid her hand off the table and took Frank's hand in her own. She clasped it tightly. "I think I'd like that," she said. Blushing until even the shiny pate of his head was red, Frank grinned. * Three months after their plunge back into reality, Solomon had visited Jill at her home in Bethesda, Maryland. By then, the worst of the shock had gone, but Jill still refused to meet with the others. She wouldn't even entertain the notion that life could return to normal. Bullying himself through the door, Solomon spent the rest of the day, that night, and the following day pulling her back into the reality shared by the others. She had finally broken down, crying and fretful, and had listened. "Listen," Solomon said, taking hold of her listless hands. They sat opposite one another on the living room floor. "Remember what I said in the concourse restaurant? About timeframes having a definitive span of time?" "Yes." "Well, I think there's more to it than that. I think they also have a multitude of moments." He took a deep breath, before pressing on. "I've spent a lot of sleepless nights thinking this out. I imagine our own timeframe to be like a single frame of film, amongst thousands of others. Only instead of running end to end, like a normal roll of film... " He placed the palm of one hand atop the back of the other in demonstration. "... they lay atop one another, making up one continuous, if not contiguous span of time." Jill thought she understood. "So space-time is actually made up of these thin bites of reality, stretched all the way from one end of eternity to the other." "Yes," Solomon agreed. "That's basically right. What I also believe is that each timeframe is made up of what could be described as quantum moments... discreet packets of time. What physicists use to describe the transference of light and other forms of electromagnetic energy throughout the subatomic world. Everything on the infinitely small scale--and theoretically the large--is controlled this way." "So when we work our way through the allotted number of quantum moments in our own timeframe," Jill said, "the timeframe is used up?" "And we move on to the next. It's nature's quantum clock." Jill smiled ironically. "What an absolute load of bullshit." After Solomon had stopped laughing, he went on. "When we slipped through to the next timeframe ahead of everyone else, we triggered that timeframe's quantum clock. That's why everything began to slowly change. But there was only our life force to cause a reaction, I think, which, is like dropping a few drops of water into the desert sand. Inconsequential. Reality coming across wholesale, I'm sure, triggers an instantaneous transition. Anyway, because we had triggered things ahead of time, the timeframe was yanked and set upon by the langoliers. How we managed to exit it again, I haven't figured out. The hole should have been closed. Perhaps that's why it was so much smaller on the opposite side. Perhaps it was divine intervention, I don't know. What I do know, is that somehow we did pass through and ended up back in our own timeframe." "What about Tanya?" Jill asked softly. Both knew this therapy session was really about her. All the scientific expostulation in the world, without some explanation of what had happened to Tanya Raum, would not benefit Jill. Solomon looked at her sadly. "What happened, I believe, is this. When Tanya preceded us back, she reentered at the exact same instant she had left . . or rather, on the next tick of the quantum clock. I don't believe, if my grasp on quantum physics is right, that anything else is possible. But because Tanya went through fifteen or so minutes prior to our arrival, she in effect proceeded into the future without us. "I know, I know," he said, heading off her objections. "It doesn't sound right. We should have joined her in the same instant when we slipped back through. But that's not how it works. Each tick is a separate layer of time, a subdivision, let's say. We exist in every subdivision simultaneously, past, present and future, and together, they make up the whole of existence. Tanya, I'm afraid, moved farther forward into the future with each tick of the quantum clock. Or perhaps, if it's easier to understand, we fell behind her. Either way," he said, shrugging, "It's not something we can do anything about. We have to live with it." And live with it Jill had, for another six months. Then, one fine April evening, Frank showed up on her doorstep and invited himself in... and then invited Jill out to dinner. She had accepted--reluctantly--and surprisingly to both, the dinner turned out a success. Not smashing, but better than either had expected. Three months later, on the advent of their first reunion, the other three members of the group learned of their blossoming affair. Three months after that, Frank asked Jill to marry him, going so far as to promise they could live as close or as far from the others as she pleased... Prince Edward Island in Nova Scotia, for all he cared. Jill had asked for time to think it over... and had disappeared the very next day. Today was the first time anyone had heard from or seen her in nine months. Gregory lifted his glass. "A toast," he said, "to our missing companions." All raised their glasses and clinked them softly together. They each took a sip. "And to the others who went through before and behind us," Solomon said, "and never came back. We commend their souls to God." To which Jill added: "Including Catherine Montes who, despite everything that happened on the other side, certainly didn't deserve the end she got." They clinked their glasses again. "And to us," said Elise, who wisely chose to let the wine touch her lips but not enter her mouth, "the five shooting stars of Flight 74, back for all time." Then all of them but Elise, who would in the very near future increase their number by two, threw back their heads and made the toast to friendship complete and legally binding. The End ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Please keep this story, and all erotic stories out of the hands of children. They should be outside playing in the sunshine, not thinking about adult situations. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Kristen's collection - Directory 23