Мэтт Рихтел - Dead on Arrival

“My mom was a boozer.”

Lyle didn’t say anything as Jerry chucked the bottles into the distance where they shattered.

“So, where were we?”

“You were shoving a gun into my ribs and calling me a fraud.”

“Now we understand each other better. Let’s go back into the plane and you can brief us.”

“Okeydokey.” Lyle glanced in the direction of the hangar and the sliver of light. Then turned back to Jerry. “When we get in there, before we go up into the cockpit—”

“Flight deck.”

What an asshole. Let him think he’s manned up, Lyle. Long game. “Right, sorry, Jerry. Before we climb up there, we should disinfect. And maybe we should consider staying down in the hol—”

“Disinfect.”

“Right. I touched that guy, and I got a mucus spray when I tested his gag reflex.”

“Wait a second.”

“I’m not saying I’ve got it. I’m not saying you’ve got it. Certainly, you’re at least one step removed. But whatever we’re dealing with is clearly highly virulent. I can’t think of an analogue, not in my experience and not even in the literature.”

“You’ve read all the literature.” Jerry, with this poorly delivered snide remark, was showing his adolescent side and just exposing the breadth of his vulnerability. Then: “So we might have it?”

“I don’t think you do. I’m less sure of me.”

“You’re bluffing.”

Lyle tried to look vulnerable. “God, I hope so.”

Jerry took a big step backward. “Okay, so…”

“One way we might increase the odds…” Lyle tried to look like he was thinking.

“Yeah.”

“You keep your distance from me and from the guy on the ground. Get back to the cockpit, sorry, flight deck, give them an update. And I’ll chase the ghost.”

He had Jerry’s attention.

“I saw something move in there—over there.”

“I looked and I didn’t—”

“Maybe it was just light, I agree. I can’t be positive. But the way the shadows changed, it wasn’t… it was herky-jerky, like a person or an animal, not like snowfall or something. Speaking of which, it’s fucking cold.”

“Stay on topic.”

“Look, Jerry, I may have this thing. You may, too, I won’t lie. But I well might, and less likely you. So better me going in the hangar and you can tell them what I saw with Don. You know as much as I do—what I told you already.” Lyle thought about going on and remembered to keep it short and let Jerry reach his own conclusions.

They stood in silence as snow accumulated at their feet.

“The telephone game,” Eleanor muttered. Snow stuck to the window. Cold enough inside and out now that it wasn’t just melting.

The pilot turned around and saw that the woman from Lyle’s seat had her hand on the door. It had been a good three minutes since the two had spoken.

“I’m sorry I forgot your name.”

“Alex. Telephone game?”

“The kid game, where you whispered a secret to the next person and then little by little it got completely garbled.”

“Was a fan myself. It’s so quiet out there. What do you think he’s—”

“I mention it because that’s what this feels like. It’s so quiet, like everyone is whispering and then nothing makes any sense.”

“Were you ever a writer?”

“What a strange question,” Eleanor said. “Were you?”

“No, I… never mind. It is getting elliptical in here.”

Both women smiled for just an instant. The outskirts of a bond. They’d have made a striking buddy team in public, Eleanor as the one who attracted the immediate attention and Alex, slighter but with a depth anyone paying close attention could pick up. And on the steering yoke. Where were Jerry and that damned doctor? Wherever they were standing, the shadows or silhouettes were outside the view from the flight deck.

Eleanor turned on the light. The man on the tarmac lay there still. Then the light flickered and failed. Eleanor slammed her hand on the steering column.

A sound came from inside the cabin.

“You’re not taking the gun.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” Lyle said.

“You were thinking about it.”

“I wasn’t.” Lyle, in fact, hadn’t been thinking about it. But now that the idiot first officer brought it up, he wouldn’t have minded having the pistol. He just wanted it out of Jerry’s hands. He was more dangerous with that thing than a plane passenger with Ebola.

“You’re just going to walk into the hangar.”

Lyle nodded; more or less. “I’ll get close enough to call out. Maybe someone else is as confused as we are.”

“And they’ve not come out here to get our attention,” Jerry thought it out aloud.

“Would you?”

Jerry thought about it.

“If it was me in that hangar,” Lyle said, “and I saw some bodies and something had happened that scared the daylights out of me, I would keep glancing and trying to figure out what was going on.”

“Or glancing and waiting for another target.”

“Which is why you should go back into the plane.”

“But you won’t because you’re so selfless.” There it was again, Jerry’s skepticism, his arrested adolescence, that’s what it was.

“Jerry, listen to me.”

“You’re going to lecture me…”

“I lost my wife. She… we split. My family. You asked if I’m a drunk, and I don’t know if I am or not. But I have had a rough last couple of years. I’m in a good place to take a chance like this. And I really am a doctor and I used to be really good at it… so they told me.”

It sounded sincere.

“Go back and tell them to stay in the airplane, stay warm, not to touch that body, any of the bodies,” Lyle said.

Jerry didn’t give Lyle the courtesy of a sign-off, just turned and walked. He shrugged his shoulders, noticeably, sending a message Lyle received: This nut can do whatever he wants. It was passive-aggressive and way better, Lyle thought, than having a gun stuck to his viscera. Asshole.

Lyle turned to the hangar.

I’m going to be the voice of reason here.

Jerry willed himself to have the walk of a calm person. He imagined for a moment that he was that actor playing the lone wolf cop in Avalanche, the drama set in Park City. He was glad, in a way, Lyle had asked him to return to the plane. Now he was fully the first officer, first protector, federal flight deck officer licensed to carry, navigator. Jerry took that title very seriously. He kept things balanced. I know what Eleanor thinks of me. I know she thinks I’m neurotic. She’ll see I’m the voice of reason.

He reached the belly of the plane and looked up. Shit, the rope had fallen. Now how the hell was he going to get up there?

He heard someone yell from inside the plane.

Did he imagine it?

“Jerry!” Look. Did he hear it again? Stay calm.

He started running toward the downed man named Don. Jerry recalled that the luggage cart was near him. He could use the cart to climb into the plane. He shone the flashlight, made out the outlines of the luggage cart.

Noticed Don was sitting upright.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Jerry!” Eleanor yelled into the belly of the plane. It wasn’t panic but it was pointed. “Can you hear me?”

“There it is again,” Alex said. A sound from the passenger cabin. Scuffling or walking, something. Eleanor fiddled with the cabin camera but it wouldn’t work. The electrical system was all fucked up.

“Maybe they’re—” Alex said and didn’t finish the thought… sitting up or coming alive like that body out there .