Scare Tactics (23 page)

Evelyn broke off and stared at the bulkhead, still panting like a horse broken to the rope. Her tongue sneaked out and moistened her lips.

“What am I—Zack couldn’t have—he’s
dead,
isn’t he? You know what he looked like? All the bones were broken on one side of his head. And his eye—they told me they didn’t know
what
happened to his eye, they couldn’t find it in the car.” She sat back, thinking. Nussbaum looked at her, turning his head one way, then another, then almost completely around.

“Stop doing that!” Evelyn snapped. “You’re driving me crazy! It is a game, isn’t it? One hides, then somebody goes to find him, and then they
both
hide, and somebody else—” Evelyn laughed, hiccuped, bawled. “Everybody’s hiding but me! It’s my turn. But I don’t want to play. I’m going to fix myself a good stiff drink of scotch and go back to sleep because, you see, my husband’s dead and I’m not feeling so good myself.”

“Oy,” Nussbaum moaned. “Oy, oy, oy! Ve’re going to crash vhile you sit there pretending nothing is wrong!”

“What am
I
supposed to do? I don’t know how to fly, I can’t land this plane—besides, they
are
here!” Her face took on an ecstatic, religious glow. “Nobody got off, that’s ridiculous! All I have to do is find them.”

Evelyn sprang up from the seat.

“Lady, vhere are you going?”

“To the cargo holds. I’m going to put a stop to their stupid game right now!”

“Please, like a
shmegegge
you’re talking! Ve are alone on this airplane! Evelyn and Nussbaum! Hoo-ha! Next ve are running out of fuel, and after that I hate to think.”

Evelyn gave Nussbaum a harsh and bitter look and continued right on to the cockpit.

“Vait! Vhat are you going to do?”

“Don’t bother me. I know these airplanes. My husband used to fly one. I know how they all got to the cargo holds.”

“You shouldn’t go down there!”

“I told you, I’m stopping their little game, and when I get through with this crew and this airline, their stock won’t be worth a plugged nickel anymore. I have had it, I’m fighting mad now!”

Nussbaum flew over Evelyn’s shoulder, causing her to flinch and curse. He landed on the floor of the cockpit, facing her.

“Can I maybe talk sense to you?”

“If you don’t get out of my way, I’ll stomp you flat. I’d like to know how much talking you’ll do then. I never have cared for parrots. My uncle Joe brought one back from Tahiti, I think it was. It was red and blue. All it ever wanted to talk about was sex. Ha-ha. Oh, this is wonderful, Evelyn. Acting just as if this little computerized monster was real. I’m so tired. Why can’t I have some peace? Why is everybody tormenting me, I don’t deserve it!”

Evelyn stamped her shoeless foot, and Nussbaum flapped into the air. She went down on hands and knees, pried at the carpeting that covered the cockpit floor, and yanked it up. There was a hatch in the floor underneath with a countersunk ringbolt. She split a couple of nails trying to claw the ringbolt out of the recess.

“Psssh,” Nussbaum went, disconsolately. He was perched on the yoke at the captain’s station. “Don’t take my advice for nothing.”

Evelyn raised the hatch. There was a perpendicular steel ladder below. She climbed down into the snug communications room under the cockpit.

“Nussbaum is coming!” the parrot squawked, and followed her.

Next to a bank of monitors—radio, radar—there was a narrow door to the forward cargo hold. Nussbaum gripped a rung of the ladder and peered over Evelyn’s shoulder.

“I don’t like this. Ve shouldn’t disturb him, it’s a mischief. On the other hand, vhat’s to lose? Ve’re going to crash anyvay.”

“What are you mumbling about?”

“Your husband, the pilot.”

“My husband is dead.”

“There’s dead, and there’s not so dead.”

“I
hate
parrots,” Evelyn said, and went through the doorway into the cargo hold. Nussbaum remained hunched on the ladder until she screamed again.

“Ay-yay-yay! Now you are satisfied maybe?”

There was a crashing of things, as if Evelyn were taking out her fright and fury on stored luggage. Then her face appeared in the doorway. Nussbaum cringed at the sight.

“I want to know ...
where
they all are! I want to know ...
what
this is about! Talk to me, you stupid bird!”

“Maybe if ve eat a little something, it vill calm our nerves.”

Evelyn’s mouth formed a smile, but her eyes were dreadful.

“What did you mean? About Zack—my husband? What was it you said?”

“There’s dead, and there’s not so dead.”

“Meaning?”

“Veil—he’s not here. But he’s not
there
yet, either. Until you both get to vhere you are going, vhich is, of course, a cemetery.”

“Get this straight—bird—”

“Nussbaum, if you vouldn’t mind. Might as veil be friends, nuh?”

“
You
should have seen Zack, the way I saw him. Squashed. That’s the only word to describe how he looked. He went off a four-hundred-foot cliff in his stupid little car. i was always afraid to drive with him. All those speeding tickets didn’t teach him a thing. He’s dead, all right. Crate’s in there. Coffin’s in the crate. Dead.”

“Go, try. Vhat do you think ve are looking like in a couple hours if ve go flying through downtown Chicago vith no pilot.”

Evelyn wiped away something yellowish from the corner of her mouth. She had violent hiccups again. In between heaves she trembled, orgiastically.

“Ha-ha. Ha!”

“Look around, there’s tools maybe. Vhat’s to lose? Open the crate.”

“What do I do then? Say, ‘Zack, wake up, we need you to fly the plane?’ ”

“No, you can’t vake him. To you, he is dead forever. But to
me,
that’s a different story. I have the power to bring him back to life. A few hours only. But how long are ve needing him for?”

“You want me to break open the crate?” Evelyn clenched her shaking hands and rolled her eyes.

“After you have done that, leave me here and go, make preparations. You vill need ashes, bread crumbs, salt. A bone or two. Those things you vill find in the galley.”

“What f-for?”

“A matter of protection. Perhaps there is nothing to vorry about. On the other hand, he could be hungry vhen I call him out. The salt, the bread vill satisfy him. Othervise—”

“I don’t like—uh—otherwise. I d-don’t like any of this! Honestly, I just don’t want to see Z-Zack again.”

“You should be convinced by now. There is no alternative.”

Evelyn stared at Nussbaum and smiled earnestly, childishly. “Are you under
a
spell of some kind? Is that it? Are
we
under
a
spell? I never believed in those things. I hated storybooks. I thought they were lies. I never looked under the bed before I went to sleep at night. I was a h-happy and well-balanced child. I ate my vegetables. I had a puppy.”

“Ve can talk later. Now you must look for tools to open the crate.”

“H-human remains,” Evelyn said bleakly, hiccuping. But she soon located a toolbox and went back into the cargo hold, where the temperature was twenty degrees colder. There was
a
crowbar in the toolbox,
a
hammer. She broke into the crate, laying bare the bronzed metal casket. When she finished, two of her fingers were bleeding from the quick. She stared at the casket, unsteady on her numbed feet, too exhausted to cry.

“New-new-Nussssbaummmm!”

“Coming,” the parrot said. He had found a swatch of black cloth somewhere, and wore it draped like a shawl over his narrow shoulders.

“Do you think he—can you—”

“Mreye/i. Go now. Prepare yourself. Vhen you have filled your pockets, rub the thumb of your right hand three times behind your ear vhile making a circle in the air vith the index finger of your left hand.”

“How many times?”

“Three also. Did I forget to say that?
Oy vehl
If I don’t do this right, such a curse I’m bringing on our heads.”

“I think I—I’m going to throw up.”

“You’ve got the time. A miracle worker I’m not. The truth is, I never did this before. Book-smart is one thing. But raising the dead—”

Evelyn scrambled to reach the head in the first-class compartment.

She had no idea of how long she was there, sitting coldly on the small floor, all retched out, too dizzy to lift her head. Too weak to scream anymore. There was a noticeable bump, as if the Airbus had run over something in the road, a small tilting; then they leveled off again and everything was as it had been.

Evelyn got to her feet and edged out of the bathroom, dimly hoping to see that the passengers had returned to their seats. No such luck. The movie was still playing, Stallone pitting his biceps against another arm-wrestler. The huge plane droned eastward, pilotless. Or so she assumed. But she had to go find out.

“Nussbaum?” she called, when she reached the front row in first class. The door to the cockpit was standing open a few inches, but she couldn’t see inside.

It was no longer sunny in the plane. The sky had darkened. There was a dull red glow in the massing clouds outside the window where she had been sitting.

Evelyn approached the cockpit and looked in.

At least one crew member was back at the controls, sitting in the captain’s seat.

“Thank God!”

He turned and looked at her and grinned. But his lips, when he spoke, were too stiff to move. The grin didn’t change either. It was permanent, molded in place by the fingers of the undertaker. Too bad they couldn’t have done more with the side of his head that had been so badly smashed.

“Hello, Evie,” he said, winking. He had only one eye to wink with.

“Zackkkkkkk!”

“Can’t talk now,” he said, grinning like a badly carved jack-o’-lantern. “We’re almost there. Taking her down now.”

“Down? Where?” Through the windscreen she saw smoke, and what appeared to be the pit of an active volcano.

“Straight to hell, Evie,” Zack said pleasantly, and turned his attention to the controls. “Three-quarter flaps,” he called out. “Air speed two-seventy.”

“No, Zack, no! You son of a bitch, you can’t do this to me! Nussbaum,
where are you?
I want him back in his coffin, and right now!”

Zack put the Airbus into a steep dive. Evelyn had to hold on to keep from falling down. She could see flames leaping high from the surface of seething molten rock in the maw of the volcano. Intense heat clouded the windscreen, blistered the paint on the nose of the Airbus.

“Damn you, Zachary, pull up!” She looked around frantically. There was a fire extinguisher clamped to the wall just above her head. She reached for the heavy steel cylinder and pulled it down with one hand.

“I don’t deserve to go to hell! I was a good wife. It’s not
my
fault I fell in love with Clive! Those things happen! You had a hundred cheap tramps and all I ever had was Clive! I tell you I’m not going with you! I killed you once, and I’ll do it again!”

He was turning, slowly, to look at her once more with that artificial, intolerable grin. Just as she’d done in the kitchen of their home, Evelyn swung the fire extinguisher hard, this time to the right side of his head. But Zack didn’t go sprawling on the quarry tile floor with blood running from his wounds, nothing but the whites of his eyes showing, no—

This time Zack’s head came off, rebounded from the slanted windscreen, and flew breezily past her out of the cockpit, the grin still fixed on his waxen face.

The rest of Zack Hammons remained strapped in the captain’s seat, and one bloodless hand pushed hard on the throttles; with his left foot jamming down on the rudder, Zack put the big plane into a destabilizing yaw. Evelyn lost her balance; her head struck the bulkhead.

She smelled smoke and something worse: brimstone, perhaps. She heard a scream that might have been her own scream, or the hot wind outside the plane. They were going down so fast she was pinned to the floor, unable to breathe. A light flashed in her eyes, flashed again; she struggled to get up and reach the controls before—

—

“Take it easy, Mrs. Hammons.”

Zack? No. Why would he call her “Mrs. Hammons”? She heard the shrill screaming, she had inhaled smoke or fumes that nauseated her. The light again, in her eyes, blinding her.

They had crashed, that had to be it. But not in hell. Her vision of hell had been some sort of nightmare or hallucination.

“Am I—all right?” she said, but couldn’t hear herself because of the high-pitched scream. Wherever they were, they were rocking along at a good clip.

“You’re going to be all right, Mrs. Hammons. Probably it was the medication you took with your glass of wine. Happens sometimes.”