Four Past Midnight (31 page)

“Use the other three APUs to keep the pumps running and hope,” Brian said.

The second APU cut out thirty seconds later, and while Brian was moving his hand to shut it down, the third went. The cockpit lights went with it; now there was only the irregular chug of the hydraulic pumps and the lights on Brian's board, which were flickering. The last APU was roaring choppily, cycling up and down, shaking the plane.

“I'm shutting down completely,” Brian said. He sounded harsh and strained to himself, a man who was way out of his depth and tiring fast in the undertow. “We'll have to wait for the Delta's fuel to join our plane's time-stream, or time-frame, or whatever the fuck it is. We can't go on like this. A strong power-surge before the last APU cuts out could wipe the INS clean. Maybe even fry it.”

But as Brian reached for the switch, the engine's choppy note suddenly began to smooth out. He turned and stared at Nick unbelievingly. Nick looked back, and a big, slow grin lit his face.

“We might have lucked out, mate.”

Brian raised his hands, crossed both sets of fingers, and shook them in the air. “I hope so,” he said, and swung back to the boards. He flicked the switches marked APU 1, 3, and 4. They kicked in smoothly. The cockpit lights flashed back on. The cabin bells binged. Nick whooped and clapped Brian on the back.

Bethany appeared in the doorway behind them. “What's happening? Is everything all right?”

“I think.” Brian said without turning, “that we might just have a shot at this thing.”

Craig finally managed to stand upright. The glowing girl now stood with her feet just above the luggage conveyor belt. She looked at him with a supernatural sweetness and something else ... something he had longed for his whole life. What was it?

He groped for it, and at last it came to him.

It was compassion.

Compassion and understanding.

He looked around and saw that the darkness was draining away. That meant he had been out all night, didn't it? He didn't know. And it didn't matter. All that mattered was that the glowing girl had brought
them
to
him—the
investment bankers, the bond specialists, the commission-brokers, and the stock-rollers. They were here, they would want an explanation of just what young Mr. Craiggy-Weggy Toomy-Woomy had been up to, and here was the ecstatic truth:
monkey-business!
That was what he had been up to—yards and yards of monkey-business
—miles
of monkey-business. And when he told them that ...

“They'll have to let me go ... won't they?”

Yes,
she said.
But you have to hurry, Craig. You have to hurry before they decide you're not coming and leave.

Craig began to make his slow way forward. The girl's feet did not move, but as he approached her she floated backward like a mirage, toward the rubber strips which hung between the luggage-retrieval area and the loading dock outside.

And ... oh, glorious: she was
smiling.

They were all back on the plane now, all except Bob and Albert, who were sitting on the stairs and listening to the sound roll toward them in a slow, broken wave.

Laurel Stevenson was standing at the open forward door and looking at the terminal, still wondering what they were going to do about Mr. Toomy, when Bethany tugged the back of her blouse.

“Dinah is talking in her sleep, or something. I think she might be delirious. Can you come?”

Laurel came. Rudy Warwick was sitting across from Dinah, holding one of her hands and looking at her anxiously.

“I dunno,” he said worriedly. “I dunno, but I think she might be going.”

Laurel felt the girl's forehead. It was dry and very hot. The bleeding had either slowed down or stopped entirely, but the girl's respiration came in a series of pitiful whistling sounds. Blood was crusted around her mouth like strawberry sauce.

Laurel began, “I think—” and then Dinah said, quite clearly, “You have to hurry before they decide you're not coming and leave.”

Laurel and Bethany exchanged puzzled, frightened glances.

“I think she's dreaming about that guy Toomy,” Rudy told Laurel. “She said his name once.”

“Yes,” Dinah said. Her eyes were closed, but her head moved slightly and she appeared to listen. “Yes I will be,” she said. “If you want me to, I will. But hurry. I know it hurts, but you have to hurry.”

“She
is
delirious, isn't she?” Bethany whispered.

“No,” Laurel said. “I don't think so. I think she might be ... dreaming.”

But that was not what she thought at all. What she really thought was that Dinah might be

doing something else. She didn't think she wanted to know what that something might be, although an idea whirled and danced far back in her mind. Laurel knew she could summon that idea if she wanted to, but she didn't. Because something creepy was going on here,
extremely
creepy, and she could not escape the idea that it
did
have something to do with
(don't kill him ... we need him)

Mr. Toomy.

“Leave her alone,” she said in a dry, abrupt tone of voice. “Leave her alone and let her
(do what she has to do to him)

sleep.“

“God, I hope we take off soon,” Bethany said miserably, and Rudy put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

Craig reached the conveyor belt and fell onto it. A white sheet of agony ripped through his head, his neck, his chest. He tried to remember what had happened to him and couldn't. He had run down the stalled escalator, he had hidden in a little room, he had sat tearing strips of paper in the dark ... and that was where memory stopped.

He raised his head, hair hanging in his eyes, and looked at the glowing girl, who now sat cross-legged in front of the rubber strips, an inch off the conveyor belt. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life; how could he ever have thought she was one of
them
?

“Are you an angel?” he croaked.

Yes, the glowing girl replied, and Craig felt his pain overwhelmed with joy. His vision blurred and then tears—the first ones he had ever cried as an adult—began to run slowly down his cheeks. Suddenly he found himself remembering his mother's sweet, droning, drunken voice as she sang that old song.

“Are you an angel of the morning? Will you be my angel of the morning?”

Yes
—
I will be. If you want me to, I will. But hurry. I know it hurts, Mr. Toomy, but you have to hurry.

“Yes,” Craig sobbed, and began to crawl eagerly along the luggage conveyor belt toward her. Every movement sent fresh pain jig-jagging through him on irregular courses; blood dripped from his smashed nose and shattered mouth. Yet he still hurried as much as he could. Ahead of him, the little girl faded back through the hanging rubber strips, somehow not disturbing them at all as she went.

“Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby,” Craig said. He hawked up a spongy mat of blood, spat it on the wall where it clung like a dead spider, and tried to crawl faster.

To the east of the airport, a large cracking, rending sound filled the freakish morning. Bob and Albert got to their feet, faces pallid and filled with dreadful questions.

“What was that?” Albert asked.

“I think it was a tree,” Bob replied, and licked his lips.

“But there's no wind!”

“No,” Bob agreed. “There's no wind.”

The noise had now become a moving barricade of splintered sound. Parts of it would seem to come into focus ... and then drop back again just before identification was possible. At one moment Albert could swear he heard something barking, and then the barks ... or yaps ... or whatever they were ... would be swallowed up by a brief sour humming sound like evil electricity. The only constants were the crunching and the steady drilling whine.

“What's happening?” Bethany called shrilly from behind them.

“Noth—” Albert began, and then Bob seized his shoulder and pointed.

“
Look!
” he shouted. “
Look over there!
”

Far to the east of them, on the horizon, a series of power pylons marched north and south across a high wooded ridge. As Albert looked, one of the pylons tottered like a toy and then fell over, pulling a snarl of power cables after it. A moment later another pylon went, and another, and another.

“That's not all, either,” Albert said numbly. “Look at the trees. The trees over there are shaking like shrubs.”

But they were not just shaking. As Albert and the others looked, the trees began to fall over, to disappear.

“We have to get out of here,” Bob said. He gripped Albert with both hands. His eyes were huge, avid with a kind of idiotic terror. The expression stood in sick, jagged contrast to his narrow, intelligent face. “I believe we have to get out of here
right now
.”

On the horizon, perhaps ten miles distant, the tall gantry of a radio tower trembled, rolled outward, and crashed down to disappear into the quaking trees. Now they could feel the very earth beginning to vibrate; it ran up the ladder and shook their feet in their shoes.

“Make it stop!” Bethany suddenly screamed from the doorway above them. She clapped her hands to her ears. “
Oh please make it STOP!
”

But the sound-wave rolled on toward them—the crunching, smacking, eating sound of the langoliers.

“I don't like to tease, Brian, but how much longer?” Nick's voice was taut. “There's a river about four miles east of here—I saw it when we were coming down—and I reckon whatever's coming is just now on the other side of it.”

Brian glanced at his fuel readouts. 24,000 pounds in the right wing; 16,000 pounds in the left. It was going faster now that he didn't have to pump the Delta's fuel overwing to the other side.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said. He could feel sweat standing out on his brow in big drops. “We've got to have more fuel, Nick, or we'll come down dead in the Mojave Desert. Another ten minutes to unhook, button up, and taxi out.”

“You can't cut that? You're sure you can't cut that?”

Brian shook his head and turned back to his gauges.

Craig crawled slowly through the rubber strips, feeling them slide down his back like limp fingers. He emerged in the white, dead light of a new—and vastly shortened—day. The sound was terrible, overwhelming, the sound of an invading cannibal army. Even the sky seemed to shake with it, and for a moment fear froze him in place.

Look
, his angel of the morning said, and pointed.

Craig looked ... and forgot his fear. Beyond the American Pride 767, in a triangle of dead grass bounded by two taxiways and a runway, there was a long mahogany boardroom table. It gleamed brightly in the listless light. At each place were a yellow legal pad, a pitcher of ice water, and a Waterford glass. Sitting around the table were two dozen men in sober bankers' suits, and now they were all turning to look at him.

Suddenly they began to clap their hands. They stood and faced him, applauding his arrival. Craig felt a huge, grateful grin begin to stretch his face.

Dinah had been left alone in first class. Her breathing had become very labored now, and her voice was a strangled choke.

“Run to them, Craig! Quick! Quick!”

Craig tumbled off the conveyor, struck the concrete with a bone-rattling thump, and flailed to his feet. The pain no longer mattered. The angel had brought them! Of
course
she had brought them! Angels were like the ghosts in that story about Mr. Scrooge—they could do anything they wanted! The corona around her had begun to dim and she was fading out, but it didn't matter. She had brought his salvation: a net in which he was finally, blessedly caught.

Craig began to run—a shambling stride that quickly became a crippled sprint. As he ran his head nodded up and down like a sunflower on a broken stalk. He ran toward humorless, unforgiving men who were his salvation, men who might have been fisher-folk standing in a boat beyond an unsuspected silver sky, retrieving their net to see what fabulous thing they had caught.

The LED readout for the left tank began to slow down when it reached 21,000 pounds, and by the time it topped 22,000 it had almost stopped. Brian understood what was happening and quickly flicked two switches, shutting down the hydraulic pumps. The 727-400 had given them what she had to give: a little over 46,000 pounds of jet-fuel. It would have to be enough.

“All right,” he said, standing up.

“All right what?” Nick asked, also standing.

“We're uncoupling and getting the fuck out of here.”

The approaching noise had reached deafening levels. Mixed into the crunching smacking sound and the transmission squeal were falling trees and the dull crump of collapsing buildings. Just before shutting the pumps down he had heard a number of crackling thuds followed by a series of deep splashes. A bridge falling into the river Nick had seen, he imagined.

“Mr. Toomy!” Bethany screamed suddenly. “
It's Mr. Toomy!
”

Nick beat Brian out the door and into first class, but they were both in time to see Craig go shambling and lurching across the taxiway. He ignored the plane completely. His destination appeared to be an empty triangle of grass bounded by a pair of crisscrossing taxiways.