【英文短篇小说】The Night Flier（2）

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6

 

Now, two bad hours after leaving Washington National, things had suddenly gotten a lot worse, and with shocking suddenness. The runway lights had gone out, but Dees now saw that wasn't all that had gone out — half of Wilmington and all of Wrightsville Beach were also dark. ILS was still there, but when Dees snatched the mike and screamed, 'What happened? Talk to me, Wilmington!' he got nothing back but a screech¹ of static in which a few voices babbled² like distant ghosts.

He jammed the mike back, missing the prong. It thudded to the cockpit floor at the end of its curled wire, and Dees forgot it. The grab and the yell had been pure pilot's instinct and no more. He knew what had happened as surely as he knew the sun set in the west . . . which it would do very soon now. A stroke of lightning must have scored a direct hit on a power substation near the airport. The question was whether or not to go in anyway.

'You had clearance³,' one voice said. Another immediately (and correctly) replied that that was so much bullshit rationalization. You learned what you were supposed to do in a situation like this when you were still the equivalent of a student driver. Logic⁵ and the book tell you to head for your alternate and try to contact ATC. Landing under snafu conditions such as these could cost him a violation⁶ and a hefty fine.

On the other hand, not landing now — right now — could lose him the Night Flier. It might also cost a life (or lives), but Dees barely factored this into the equation . . . until an idea went off like a flashbulb in his mind, an inspiration that occurred, as most of his inspirations did, in huge tabloid⁷ type:

HEROIC REPORTER SAVES (fill in a number, as large as possible, which was pretty large, given the amazingly generous borders that mark the range of human credulity) FROM CRAZED NIGHT FLIER.

Eat that, Farmer John, Dees thought, and continued his descent toward Runway 34.

The runway lights down there suddenly flashed on, as if approving his decision, then went out again, leaving blue afterimages on his retinas that turned the sick green of spoiled avocados a moment later. Then the weird⁹ static coming from the radio cleared and Farmer John's voice screamed: 'Haul port, N471B: Piedmont, haul starboard: Jesus, oh Jesus, midair, I think we got a midair — '

Dees's self-preservation instincts were every bit as well honed as those which smelled blood in the bush. He never even saw the Piedmont Airlines 727's strobe lights. He was too busy banking¹⁰ as tightly to port as the Beech¹¹ could bank — which was as tight as a virgin's cooze, and Dees would be happy to testify to that fact if he got out of this shitstorm alive — as soon as the second word was out of Farmer John's mouth. He had a momentary¹² sight/sense of something huge only inches above him, and then the Beech 55 was taking a beating that made the previous rough air seem like glass. His cigarettes flew out of his breast pocket and streamed everywhere. The half-dark Wilmington skyline tilted¹³ crazily. His stomach seemed to be trying to squeeze his heart all the way up his throat and into his mouth. Spit ran up one cheek like a kid whizzing along a greased slide. Maps flew like birds. The air outside now raved¹⁴ with jet thunder as well as the kind nature made. One of the windows in the four-seat passenger compartment¹⁵ imploded¹⁶, and an asthmatic wind whooped¹⁷ in, skirling everything not tied down back there into a tornado¹⁸.

'Resume your previous altitude assignment, N471B!' Farmer John was screaming. Dees was aware that he'd just ruined a two-hundred-dollar pair of pants by spraying about a pint¹⁹ of hot piss into them, but he was partially²⁰ soothed²¹ by a strong feeling that old Farmer John had just loaded his Jockey shorts with a truckload or so of fresh Mars Bars. Sounded that way, anyhow.

Dees carried a Swiss Army knife. He took it from his right pants pocket and, holding the wheel with his left hand, cut through his shirt just above the left elbow, bringing blood. Then with no pause, he made another cut, shallow, just below his left eye. He folded the knife shut and stuffed it into the elasticized map pocket in the pilot's door. Gotta clean it later, he thought. And if I forget it, I could be in deep shit. But he knew he wouldn't forget, and considering the things the Night Flier had gotten away with, he thought he'd be okay.

The runway lights came on again, this time for good, he hoped, although their pulsing quality told him they were being powered by a generator²². He homed the Beech in again on Runway 34. Blood ran down his left cheek to the corner of his mouth. He sucked some in and then spat²³ a pink mixture of blood and spit into his IVSI. Never miss a trick; just keep following those instincts and they'd always take you home.

He looked at his watch. Sunset was only fourteen minutes away now. This was cutting it much too close to the bone.

'Pull up, Beech!' Farmer John yelled. 'Are you deaf?'

Dees groped for the mike's kinked wire without ever taking his eyes from the runway lights. He pulled the wire through his fingers until he got the mike itself. He palmed it and depressed²⁴ the send button.

'Listen to me, you chicken-fried son of a bitch,' he said, and now his lips were pulled all the way back to the gum line. 'I missed getting turned into strawberry jam by that 727 because your shit genny didn't kick in when it was supposed to; as a result I had no ATC comm. I don't know how many people on the airliner²⁵ just missed getting turned into strawberry jam, but I bet you do, and I know the cockpit crew does. The only reason those guys are still alive is because the captain of that boat was bright enough to allemande right, and I was bright enough to do-si-do, but I have sustained both structural²⁶ and physical damage. If you don't give me a landing clearance right now, I'm going to land anyway. The only difference is that if I have to land without clearance, I'm going to have you up in front of an FAA hearing. But first I will personally see to it that your head and your asshole change places. Have you got that, hoss?'

A long, static-filled silence. Then a very small voice, utterly²⁷ unlike Farmer John's previous hearty²⁸ 'Hey bo'!' delivery, said, 'You're cleared to land Runway 34, N471B.'

Dees smiled and homed in on the runway.

He depressed the mike button and said, 'I got mean and yelling. I'm sorry. It only happens when I almost die.'

No response from the ground.

'Well, fuck you very much,' Dees said, and then headed on down, resisting the impulse to take a quick glance at his watch as he did so.

 

 

7

 

Dees was case-hardened and proud of it, but there was no use kidding himself; what he found in Duffrey gave him the creeps. The Night Flier's Cessna had spent another entire day — July 31st — on the ramp²⁹, but that was really only where the creeps began. It was the blood his loyal Inside View readers would care about, of course, and that was just as it should be, world without end, amen, amen, but Dees was increasingly aware that blood (or, in the case of good old Ray and Ellen Sarch, the lack of blood) was only where this story started. Below the blood were caverns³⁰ dark and strange.

Dees arrived in Duffrey on August 8th, by then barely a week behind the Night Flier. He wondered again where his batty buddy³² went between strikes. Disney World? Busch Gardens? Atlanta, maybe, to check out the Braves? Such things were relatively³³ small potatoes right now, with the chase still on, but they would be valuable later on. They would become, in fact, the journalistic equivalent of Hamburger Helper, stretching the leftovers³⁴ of the Night Flier story through a few more issues, allowing readers to resavor the flavor even after the biggest chunks³⁵ of raw meat had been digested.

Still, there were caverns in this story — dark places into which a man might drop and be lost forever. That sounded both crazy and corny, but by the time Dees began to get a picture of what had gone on in Duffrey, he had actually begun to believe it . . . which meant that part of the story would never see print, and not just because it was personal. It violated Dees's single iron-clad rule: Never believe what you publish, and never publish what you believe. It had, over the years, allowed him to keep his sanity³⁶ while those all about him had been losing theirs.

He had landed at Washington National — a real airport for a change — and rented a car to take him the sixty miles to Duffrey, because without Ray Sarch and his wife, Ellen, there was no Duffrey Airfield³⁷. Aside from Ellen's sister, Raylene, who was a pretty fair Socket³⁸ Wrench³⁹ Susie, the two of them had been the whole shebang. There was a single oiled-dirt runway (oiled both to lay the dust and to discourage the growth of weeds) and a control booth not much bigger than a closet attached to the Jet-Aire trailer where the Sarch couple lived. They were both retired⁴⁰, both fliers, both reputedly as tough as nails, and still crazy in love with each other even after almost five decades of marriage.

Further, Dees learned, the Sarches watched the private air-traffic in and out of their field with a close eye; they had a personal stake in the war on drugs. Their only son had died in the Florida Everglades, trying to land in what looked like a clear stretch of water with better than a ton of Acapulco Gold packed into a stolen Beech 18. The water had been clear . . . except for a single stump⁴¹, that was. The Beech 18 hit it, water-looped, and exploded. Doug Sarch had been thrown clear, his body smoking and singed⁴² but probably still alive, as little as his grieving parents would want to believe such a thing. He had been eaten by gators, and all that remained of him when the DBA guys finally found him a week later was a dismembered skeleton, a few maggoty scraps⁴⁴ of flesh, a charred⁴⁵ pair of Calvin Klein jeans, and a sport coat from Paul Stuart, New York. One of the sport-coat pockets had contained better than twenty thousand dollars in cash; another had yielded nearly an ounce of Peruvian flake⁴⁶ cocaine⁴⁷.

'It was drugs and the motherfuckers who run em killed my boy,' Ray Sarch had said on several occasions, and Ellen Sarch was willing to double and redouble on that one. Her hatred⁴⁸ of drugs and drug dealers⁴⁹, Dees was told again and again (he was amused by the nearly unanimous feeling in Duffrey that the murder of the elderly Sarches had been a 'gangland hit'), was exceeded only by her grief and bewilderment over the seduction of her son by those very people.

Following the death of their son, the Sarches had kept their eyes peeled for anything or anyone who looked even remotely like a drug transporter. They had brought the Maryland State Police out to the field four times on false alarms, but the State Bears hadn't minded because the Sarches had also blown the whistle on three small transporters and two very big ones. The last had been carrying thirty pounds of pure Bolivian cocaine. That was the kind of bust⁵⁰ that made you forget a few false alarms, the sort of bust that made promotions⁵¹.

So very late in the evening of July 30th comes this Cessna Skymaster with a number and description that had gone out to every airfield and airport in America, including the one in Duffrey; a Cessna whose pilot had identified himself as Dwight Renfield, point of origination, Bayshore Airport, Delaware, a field which had never heard of 'Renfield' or a Skymaster with tail-number N101BL; the plane of a man who was almost surely a murderer.

'If he'd flown in here, he'd be in the stir now,' one of the Bayshore controllers had told Dees over the phone, but Dees wondered. Yes. He wondered very much.

The Night Flier had landed in Duffrey at 11:27 P.M., and 'Dwight Renfield' had not only signed the Sarches' logbook but also had accepted Ray Sarch's invitation to come into the trailer, have a beer, and watch a rerun of Gunsmoke on TNT. Ellen Sarch had told all of this to the proprietor⁵² of the Duffrey Beauty Bar the following day. This woman, Selida McCam-mon, had identified herself to Dees as one of the late Ellen Sarch's closest friends.

When Dees asked how Ellen had seemed, Selida had paused and then said, 'Dreamy, somehow. Like a high-school girl with a crush, almost seventy years old or not. Her color was so high I thought it was make-up, until I started in on her perm. Then I saw that she was just . . . you know . . . ' Selida McCammon shrugged⁵³. She knew what she meant but not how to say it.

'Het up,' Dees suggested, and that made Selida McCammon laugh and clap her hands.

'Het up! That's it! You're a writer, all right!'

'Oh, I write like a boid,' Dees said, and offered a smile he hoped looked good-humored and warm. This was an expression he had once practiced almost constantly and continued to practice with fair regularity⁵⁴ in the bedroom mirror of the New York apartment he called his home, and in the mirrors of the hotels and motels that were really his home. It seemed to work — Selida McCammon answered it readily enough — but the truth was that Dees had never felt good-humored and warm in his life. As a kid he had believed these emotions didn't really exist at all; they were just a masquerade, a social convention. Later on he decided⁵⁵ he had been wrong about that; most of what he thought of as 'Reader's Digest emotions' were real, at least for most people. Perhaps even love, the fabled⁵⁶ Big Enchilada, was real. That he himself could not feel these emotions was undoubtedly⁵⁷ a shame, but hardly the end of the world. There were, after all, people out there with cancer, and AIDS, and the memory-spans of brain-damaged parakeets. When you looked at it that way, you quickly realized that being deprived of a few huggy-kissy emotions was fairly small beans. The important thing was that if you could manage to stretch the muscles of your face in the right directions every now and then, you were fine. It didn't hurt and it was easy; if you could remember to zip up your fly after you took a leak, you could remember to smile and look warm when it was expected of you. And an understanding smile, he had discovered over the years, was the world's best interview tool. Once in awhile a voice inside asked him what his own inside view was, but Dees didn't want an inside view. He only wanted to write and to take photographs. He was better at the writing, always had been and always would be, and he knew it, but he liked the photographs better just the same. He liked to touch them. To see how they froze people either with their real faces hung out for the whole world to see or with their masks so clearly apparent that they were beyond denial. He liked how, in the best of them, people always looked surprised and horrified⁵⁸. How they looked caught.

If pressed, he would have said the photographs provided all the inside view he needed, and the subject had no relevance⁵⁹ here, anyway. What did was the Night Flier, his little batty buddy, and how he had waltzed into the lives of Ray and Ellen Sarch a week or so earlier.

The Flier had stepped out of his plane and walked into an office with a red-bordered FAA notice on the wall, a notice which suggested there was a dangerous guy out there driving a Cessna Skymaster 337, tail-number N101BL, who might have murdered two men. This guy, the notice went on, might or might not be calling himself Dwight Renfield. The Skymaster had landed, Dwight Renfield had signed in and had almost surely spent the following day in the belly-hold of his plane. And what about the Sarches, those two sharp-eyed old folks?

The Sarches had said nothing; the Sarches had done nothing.

Except that latter wasn't quite right, Dees had discovered. Ray Sarch had certainly done something; he had invited the Night Flier in to watch an old Gunsmoke episode and drink a beer with his wife. They had treated him like an old friend. And then, the next day, Ellen Sarch had made an appointment at the Beauty Bar, which Selida McCammon had found surprising; Ellen's visits were usually as regular as clockwork, and this one was at least two weeks before Selida would next have expected her. Her instructions had been unusually explicit⁶⁰; she had wanted not just the usual cut but a perm . . . and a little color, too.

'She wanted to look younger,' Selida McCammon told Dees, and then wiped a tear from one cheek with the side of her hand.

But Ellen Sarch's behavior had been pedestrian compared to that of her husband. He had called the FAA at Washington National and told them to issue a NOTAM, removing Duffrey from the active-airfield grid⁶¹, at least for the time being. He had, in other words, pulled down the shades and closed up the shop.

On his way home, he'd stopped for gas at the Duffrey Texaco and told Norm Wilson, the proprietor, that he thought he was coming down with the flu. Norm told Dees that he thought Ray was probably right about that -he'd looked pale and wan⁴³, suddenly even older than his years.

That night, the two vigilant⁶² fire wardens⁶³ had, in effect, burned to death. Ray Sarch was found in the little control room, his head torn off and cast into the far corner, where it sat on a ragged⁶⁴ stump of neck, staring toward the open doorway⁶⁵ with wide, glazed⁶⁶ eyes, as if there were actually something there to see.

His wife had been found in the bedroom of the Sarch trailer. She was in bed. She was dressed in a peignoir so new it might never have been worn before that night. She was old, a deputy had told Dees (at twenty-five dollars he was a more expensive fuck than Ezra the Amazing Gin-Head Mechanic, but worth it), but you still only had to take one look to know that there was a woman who'd dressed for bed with loving on her mind. Dees had liked the c w twang so much that he wrote it down in his notebook. Those huge, spike-sized holes were driven into her neck, one in the carotid, the other in the jugular⁶⁷. Her face was composed, her eyes closed, her hands on her bosom⁶⁸.

Although she had lost almost every drop of blood in her body, there were only spots on the pillows beneath her, and a few more spots on the book which lay open on her stomach: The Vampire⁶⁹ Lestat, by Anne Rice.

And the Night Flier?

Sometime just before midnight on July 31st, or just after it on the morning of August 1st, he had simply flown away. Like a boid.

Or a bat.

 

 

8

 

Dees touched down in Wilmington seven minutes before official sunset. While he was throttling⁷⁰ back, still spitting blood out of his mouth from the cut below his eye, he saw lightning strike down with blue-white fire so intense that it nearly blinded him. On the heels of the light came the most deafening⁷¹ thunderclap he had ever heard. His subjective⁷² opinion of the sound was confirmed when another window in the passenger compartment, stellated by the near miss with the Piedmont 727, now coughed inward in a spray of junk-shop diamonds.

In the brilliant glare he saw a squat⁷³, cubelike building on the port side of Runway 34 impaled⁷⁴ by the bolt. It exploded, shooting fire into the sky in a column that, although brilliant, did not even come close to the power of the bolt that had ignited it.

Like lighting⁷⁵ a stick of dynamite⁷⁶ with a baby nuke, Dees thought confusedly, and then: The genny. That was the genny.

The lights — all of them, the white lights that marked the edges of the runway and the bright red bulbs that marked its end — were suddenly gone, as if they had been no more than candles puffed⁷⁷ out by a strong gust³¹ of wind. All at once Dees was rushing at better than eighty miles an hour from dark into dark.

The concussive force of the explosion which had destroyed the airport's main generator struck the Beech like a fist - did more than strike it, hammered it like a looping haymaker. The Beech, still hardly knowing it had become a ground-bound creature again, skittered affrightedly to starboard, rose, and came down with the right wheel pogoing up and down over something — somethings — that Dees vaguely⁷⁸ realized were landing lights.

Go port! his mind screamed. Go port, you asshole!

He almost did before his colder mind asserted itself. If he hauled the wheel to port at this speed, he would ground-loop. Probably wouldn't explode, considering how little fuel was left in the tanks, but it was possible. Or the Beech might simply twist apart, leaving Richard Dees from the gut⁷⁹ on down twitching⁸⁰ in his seat, while Richard Dees from the gut on up went in a different direction, trailing severed⁸¹ intestines⁸² like party-favors and dropping his kidneys on the concrete like a couple of oversized chunks of birdshit.

Ride it out! he screamed at himself. Ride it out, you son of a bitch, ride it out!

Something — the genny's secondary LP tanks, he guessed when he had time for guessing - exploded then, buffeting⁸³ the Beech even farther to starboard, but that was okay, it got him off the dead landing lights, and all at once he was running with relative smoothness again, port wheel on the edge of Runway 34, starboard wheel on the spooky verge⁸⁴ between the lights and the ditch he had observed on the right of the runway. The Beech was still shuddering⁸⁵, but not badly, and he understood that he was running on one flat, the starboard tire shredded⁸⁶ by the landing lights it had crushed.

He was slowing down, that was what mattered, the Beech finally beginning to understand that it had become a different thing, a thing that belonged to the land again. Dees was starting to relax when he saw the wide-body Learjet, the one the pilots called Fat Albert, looming⁸⁷ ahead of him, parked insanely across the runway where the pilot had stopped on his taxi out to Runway 5.

Dees bore down on it, saw lighted windows, saw faces staring out at him with the gape⁸⁸ of idiots in an asylum⁸⁹ watching a magic trick, and then, without thinking, he pushed full right rudder, bouncing the Beech off the runway and into the ditch, missing the Lear by approximately an inch and a half. He heard faint screams but was really aware of nothing but the now exploding in front of him like a string of firecrackers as the Beech tried to become a thing of the air again, helpless to do so with the flaps down and the engines dropping revs⁹⁰ but trying anyway; there was a leap like a convulsion in the dying light of the secondary explosion, and then he was skidding⁹¹ across a taxi way, seeing the General Aviation Terminal for a moment with its corners lit by emergency lights that ran on storage batteries, seeing the parked planes — one of them almost surely the Night Flier's Skymaster — as dark crepe-paper silhouettes⁹² against a baleful orange light that was the sunset, now revealed by the parting thunderheads.

I'm going over! he screamed to himself, and the Beech did try to roll; the port wing struck a fountain of sparks from the taxiway nearest the terminal and its tip actually broke free, wheeling off into the scrub where friction-heat awoke a dim fire in the wet weeds.

Then the Beech was still, and the only sounds were the snowy roar of static from the radio, the sound of broken bottles fizzing their contents onto the carpet of the passenger compartment, and the frenzied⁹³ hammering of Dees's own heart. He slammed the pop release on his harness and headed for the pressurized hatch even before he was totally sure he was alive.

What happened later he remembered with eidetic clarity, but from the moment the Beech skidded⁹⁴ to a stop on the taxiway, ass-end to the Lear and tilted to one side, to the moment he heard the first screams from the terminal, all he remembered for sure was swinging back to get his camera. He couldn't leave the plane without his camera; the Nikon was the closest thing Dees had to a wife. He'd bought it in a Toledo hockshop when he was seventeen and kept it with him ever since. He had added lenses, but the basic box was about the same now as it had been then; the only modifications⁹⁵ had been the occasional scratch or dent⁴ that came with the job. The Nikon was in the elasticized pocket behind his seat. He pulled it out, looked at it to make sure it was intact, saw that it was. He slung⁹⁶ it around his neck and bent⁹⁷ over the hatch.

He threw the lever, jumped out and down, staggered, almost fell, and caught his camera before it could strike the concrete of the taxiway. There was another growl⁹⁸ of thunder, but only a growl this time, distant and unthreatening. A breeze touched him like the caressing⁹⁹ touch of a kind hand on his face . . . but more icily below the belt. Dees grimaced¹⁰⁰. How he had pissed his pants when his Beech and the Piedmont jet had barely scraped by each other would also not be in the story.

Then a thin, drilling shriek¹⁰¹ came from the General Aviation Terminal — a scream of mingled¹⁰² agony and horror. It was as if someone had slapped Dees across the face. He came back to himself. He centered on his goal again. He looked at his watch. It wasn't working. Either the concussion¹⁰³ had broken it or it had stopped. It was one of those amusing antiques you had to wind up, and he couldn't remember when he had last done it.

Was it sunset? It was fucking dark out, yes, but with all the thunderheads massed around the airport, it was hard to tell how much that meant. Was it?

Another scream came — no, not a scream, a screech — and the sound of breaking glass.

Dees decided sunset no longer mattered.

He ran, vaguely aware that the genny's auxiliary¹⁰⁴ tanks were still burning and that he could smell gas in the air. He tried to increase his speed but it seemed he was running in cement. The terminal was getting closer, but not very fast. Not fast enough.

'Please, no! Please, no! PLEASE NO! OH PLEASE, PLEASE NO!'

This scream, spiraling up and up, was suddenly cut off by a terrible, inhuman¹⁰⁵ howl. Yet there was something human in it, and that was perhaps the most terrible thing of all. In the chancy light of the emergency lamps mounted on the corners of the terminal, Dees saw something dark and flailing¹⁰⁶ shatter more glass in the wall of the terminal that faced the parking area — that wall was almost entirely¹⁰⁷ glass — and come flying out. It landed on the ramp with a soggy thud, rolled, and Dees saw it was a man.

The storm was moving away but lightning still flickered¹⁰⁸ fitfully, and as Dees ran into the parking area, panting now, he finally saw the Night Flier's plane, N101BL painted boldly on the tail. The letters and numbers looked black in this light, but he knew they were red and it didn't matter, anyway. The camera was loaded with fast black-and-white film and armed with a smart flash which would fire only when the light was too low for the film's speed.

The Skymaster's belly-hold hung open like the mouth of a corpse¹⁰⁹. Below it was a large pile of earth in which things squirmed and moved. Dees saw this, did a double-take, and skidded to a stop. Now his heart was filled not just with fright but with a wild, capering¹¹¹ happiness. How good it was that everything had come together like this!

Yes, he thought, but don't you call it luck — don't you dare call it luck. Don't you even call it hunch¹¹².

Correct. It wasn't luck that had kept him holed up in that shitty little motel room with the clanky air-conditioner, not hunch — not precisely¹¹³ hunch, anyway — that had tied him to the phone hour after hour, calling flyspeck¹¹⁴ airports and giving the Night Flier's tail-number over and over again. That was pure reporter's instinct, and here was where it all started paying off. Except this was no ordinary payoff; this was the jackpot, El Dorado, that fabled Big Enchilada.

He skidded to a stop in front of the yawning belly-hold and tried to bring the camera up. Almost strangled himself on the strap¹¹⁵. Cursed. Unwound the strap. Aimed.

From the terminal came another scream — that of a woman or a child. Dees barely noticed. The thought that there was a slaughter¹¹⁶ going on in there was followed by the thought that slaughter would only fatten¹¹⁷ the story, and then both thoughts were gone as he snapped three quick shots of the Cessna, making sure to get the gaping¹¹⁸ belly-hold and the number on the tail. The auto-winder hummed.

Dees ran on. More glass smashed. There was another thud as another body was ejected onto the cement like a rag doll that had been stuffed full of some thick dark liquid like cough-syrup. Dees looked, saw confused movement, the billowing of something that might have been a cape¹¹⁰ . . . but he was still too far away to tell. He turned. Snapped two more pictures of the plane, these shots dead-on. The gaping belly-hold and the pile of earth would be stark¹¹⁹ and undeniable in the print.

Then he whirled and ran for the terminal. The fact that he was armed with only an old Nikon never crossed his mind.

He stopped ten yards away. Three bodies out here, two adults, one of each sex, and one that might have been either a small woman or a girl of thirteen or so. It was hard to tell with the head gone.

Dees aimed the camera and fired off six quick shots, the flash flickering¹²⁰ its own white lightning, the auto-winder making its contented¹²¹ little whizzing sound.

His mind never lost count. He was loaded with thirty-six shots. He had taken eleven. That left twenty-five. There was more film stuffed into the deep pockets of his slacks, and that was great . . . if he got a chance to reload. You could never count on that, though; with photographs like these, you had to grab while the grabbing was good. It was strictly¹²² a fast-food banquet.

Dees reached the terminal and yanked open the door.

 

 

9

 

He thought he had seen everything there was to see, but he had never seen anything like this. Never.

How many? his mind yammered. How many you got? Six? Eight? Maybe a dozen?

He couldn't tell. The Night Flier had turned the little private terminal into a knacker's shop. Bodies and parts of bodies lay everywhere. Dees saw a foot clad in a black Converse¹²³ sneaker; shot it. A ragged torso; shot it. Here was a man in a greasy¹²⁴ mechanic's coverall who was still alive, and for a weird moment he thought it was Ezra the Amazing Gin-Head Mechanic from Cumberland County Airport, but this guy wasn't just going bald; this guy had entirely made the grade. His face had been chopped wide open from forehead to chin. His nose lay in halves, reminding Dees for some mad reason of a grilled¹²⁵ frankfurter, split and ready for the bun.

Dees shot it.

And suddenly, just like that, something inside him rebelled and screamed No more! in an imperative¹²⁶ voice it was impossible to ignore, let alone deny.

No more, stop, it's over!

He saw an arrow painted on the wall, with the words THIS WAY TO COMFORT STATIONS below it. Dees ran in the direction the arrow pointed¹²⁷, his camera flapping.

The men's room happened to be the first one he came to, but Dees wouldn't have cared if it was the aliens' room. He was weeping in great, harsh, hoarse¹²⁸ sobs¹²⁹. He could barely credit the fact that these sounds were coming from him. It had been years since he had wept. He'd been a kid the last time.

He slammed through the door, skidded like a skier¹³⁰ almost out of control, and grabbed the edge of the second basin in line.

He leaned over it, and everything came out in a rich and stinking¹³¹ flood, some of it splattering back onto his face, some landing in brownish clots¹³² on the mirror. He smelled the take-out chicken Creole he'd eaten hunched¹³³ over the phone in the motel room - this had been just before he'd hit paydirt and gone racing¹³⁴ for his plane - and threw up again, making a huge grating sound like overstressed machinery¹³⁵ about to strip its gears.

Jesus, he thought, dear Jesus, it's not a man, it can't be a man —

That was when he heard the sound.

It was a sound he had heard at least a thousand times before, a sound that was commonplace in any American man's life . . . but now it filled him with a dread¹³⁶ and a creeping terror beyond all his experience or belief.

It was the sound of a man voiding into a urinal.

But although he could see all three of the bathroom's urinals in the vomit-splattered mirror, he could see no one at any of them.

Dees thought: Vampires¹³⁷ don't cast reflec —

Then he saw reddish liquid striking the porcelain¹³⁸ of the center urinal, saw it running down that porcelain, saw it swirling¹³⁹ into the geometric arrangement of holes at the bottom.

There was no stream in the air; he saw it only when it struck the dead porcelain.

That was when it became visible.

He was frozen. He stood, hands on the edge of the basin, his mouth and throat and nose and sinuses thick with the taste and smell of chicken Creole, and watched the incredible yet prosaic¹⁴⁰ thing that was happening just behind him.

I am, he thought dimly, watching a vampire take a piss.

It seemed to go on forever — the bloody¹⁴¹ urine striking the porcelain, becoming visible, and swirling down the drain. Dees stood with his hands planted on the sides of the basin into which he had thrown up, gazing at the reflection in the mirror, feeling like a frozen gear in some vast jammed machine.

I'm almost certainly dead meat, he thought.

In the mirror he saw the chromed handle go down by itself. Water roared.

Dees heard a rustle¹⁴² and flap and knew it was a cape, just as he knew that if he turned around, he could strike the 'almost certainly' from his last thought. He stayed where he was, palms biting the edge of the basin.

A low, ageless voice spoke¹⁴³ from directly behind him. The owner of the voice was so close Dees could feel its cold breath on his neck.

'You have been following me,' the ageless voice said.

Dees moaned.

'Yes,' the ageless voice said, as if Dees had disagreed with him. 'I know you, you see. I know all about you. Now listen closely, my inquisitive¹⁴⁴ friend, because I say this only once: don't follow me any more.'

Dees moaned again, a doglike sound, and more water ran into his pants.

'Open your camera,' the ageless voice said.

My film! part of Dees cried. My film! All I've got! All I've got! My pictures!

Another dry, batlike flap of the cape. Although Dees could see nothing, he sensed the Night Flier had moved even closer.

'Now.'

His film wasn't all he had.

There was his life.

Such as it was.

He saw himself whirling and seeing what the mirror would not, could not, show him; saw himself seeing the Night Flier, his batty buddy, a grotesque¹⁴⁵ thing splattered with blood and bits of flesh and clumps¹⁴⁶ of torn-out hair; saw himself snapping shot after shot while the auto-winder hummed . . . but there would be nothing.

Nothing at all.

Because you couldn't take their pictures, either.

'You're real,' he croaked¹⁴⁷, never moving, his hands seemingly welded to the edge of the basin.

'So are you,' the ageless voice rasped, and now Dees could smell ancient crypts and sealed tombs on its breath. 'For now, at least. This is your last chance, my inquisitive would-be biographer. Open your camera . . . or I'll do it.'

With hands that seemed totally numb⁸, Dees opened his Nikon.

Air hummed past his chilly¹⁴⁸ face; it felt like moving razor blades. For a moment he saw a long white hand, streaked¹⁴⁹ with blood; saw ragged nails silted¹⁵⁰ with filth¹⁵¹.

Then his film parted and spooled¹⁵² spinelessly out of his camera.

There was another dry flap. Another stinking breath. For a moment he thought the Night Flier would kill him anyway. Then in the mirror he saw the door of the men's room open by itself.

He doesn't need me, Dees thought. He must have eaten very well tonight. He immediately threw up again, this time directly onto the reflection of his own staring face.

The door wheezed¹⁵³ shut on its pneumatic elbow.

Dees stayed right where he was for the next three minutes or so; stayed there until the approaching sirens were almost on top of the terminal; stayed there until he heard the cough and roar of an airplane engine.

The engine of a Cessna Skymaster 337, almost undoubtedly.

Then he walked out of the bathroom on legs like stilts¹⁵⁴, struck the far wall of the corridor outside, rebounded¹⁵⁵, and walked back into the terminal. He slid in a pool of blood, and almost fell.

'Hold it, mister!' a cop screamed behind him. 'Hold it right there! One move and you're dead!'

Dees didn't even turn around.

'Press, dickface,' he said, holding up his camera in one hand and his ID card in the other. He went to one of the shattered windows with exposed film still straggling from his camera like long strips of brown confetti, and stood there watching the Cessna accelerate down Runway 5. For a moment it was a black shape against the billowing fire of the genny and the auxiliary tanks, a shape that looked quite a lot like a bat, and then it was up, it was gone, and the cop was slamming Dees up against the wall hard enough to make his nose bleed and he didn't care, he didn't care about anything, and when the sobs began to tear their way out of his chest again he closed his eyes, and still he saw the Night Flier's bloody urine striking the porcelain, becoming visible, and swirling down the drain.

He thought he would see it forever.

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