Stephen King - The Langoliers

There was only the continuing drone of the jet engines.

The panic overshadowed her mind again, and Dinah did the only thing she could think of to stave it off: she unbuckled her seatbelt, stood up, and edged into the aisle.

“Hello?” she asked in a louder voice. “Hello, anybody!”

There was still no answer. Dinah began to cry. She held onto herself grimly, nonetheless, and began walking forward slowly along the portside aisle. Keep count, though, part of her mind warned frantically. Keep count of how many rows you pass, or you’ll get lost and never find your way back again.

She stopped at the row of portside seats just ahead of the row in which she and Aunt Vicky had been sitting and bent, arms outstretched, fingers splayed. She knew there was a man here, because Aunt Vicky had spoken to him only a minute or so before the plane took off. When he spoke back to her, his voice had come from the seat directly in front of Dinah’s own. She knew that; marking the locations of voices was part of her life, an ordinary fact of existence like breathing. The sleeping man would jump when her outstretched fingers touched him, but Dinah was beyond caring.

Except the seat was empty.

Completely empty.

Dinah straightened up again, her cheeks wet, her head pounding with fright. They couldn’t be in the bathroom together, could they? Of course not.

Perhaps there were two bathrooms. In a plane this big there must be two bathrooms.

Except that didn’t matter, either.

Aunt Vicky wouldn’t have left her purse, no matter what. Dinah was sure of it.

She began to walk slowly forward, stopping at each row of seats, reaching into the two closest her first on the port side and then on the starboard.

She felt another purse in one, what felt like a briefcase in another, a pen and a pad of paper in a third. In two others she felt headphones. She touched something sticky on an earpiece of the second set. She rubbed her fingers together, then grimaced and wiped them on the mat which covered the headrest of the seat. That had been earwax. She was sure of it. It had its own unmistakable, yucky texture.

Dinah Bellman felt her slow way up the aisle, no longer taking pains to be gentle in her investigations. It didn’t matter. She poked no eye, pinched no cheek, pulled no hair.

Every seat she investigated was empty.

This can’t be, she thought wildly. It just can’t be! They were all around us when we got on! I heard them! I felt them! I smelled them! Where have they all gone?

She didn’t know, but they were gone: she was becoming steadily more sure of that.

At some point, while she slept, her aunt and everyone else on Flight 29 had disappeared.

No! The rational part of her mind clamored in the voice of Miss Lee. No, that’s impossible, Dinah! If everyone’s gone, who is flying the plane?

She began to move forward faster now, hands gripping the edges of the seats, her blind eyes wide open behind her dark glasses, the hem of her pink travelling dress fluttering. She had lost count, but in her greater distress over the continuing silence, this did not matter much to her.

She stopped again, and reached her groping hands into the seat on her right. This time she touched hair... but its location was all wrong. The hair was on the seat — how could that be?

Her hands closed around it... and lifted it. Realization, sudden and terrible, came to her.

It’s hair, but the man it belongs to is gone. It’s a scalp. I’m holding a dead man’s scalp.

That was when Dinah Bellman opened her mouth and began to give voice to the shrieks which pulled Brian Engle from his dream.

Albert Kaussner was belly up to the bar, drinking Branding Iron Whiskey. The Earp brothers, Wyatt and Virgil, were on his right, and Doc Halliday was on his left. He was just lifting his glass to offer a toast when a man with a peg leg ran-hopped into the Sergio Leone Saloon.

“It’s the Dalton Gang!” he screamed. “The Daltons have just rid into Dodge!”

Wyatt turned to face him calmly. His face was narrow, tanned, and handsome. He looked a great deal like Hugh O’Brian. “This here is Tombstone, Muffin,” he said. “You got to get yore stinky ole shit together.”

“Well, they’re ridin in, wherever we are!” Muffin exclaimed. “And they look maaad, Wyatt! They look reeely reeely maaaaaaad!”

As if to prove this, guns began to fire in the street outside — the heavy thunder of Army .44s (probably stolen) mixed in with the higher whipcrack explosions of Garand rifles.

“Don’t get your panties all up in a bunch, Muffy,” Doc Halliday said, and tipped his hat back. Albert was not terribly surprised to see that Doc looked like Robert De Niro. He had always believed that if anyone was absolutely right to play the consumptive dentist, De Niro was the one.

“What do you say, boys?” Virgil Earp asked, looking around. Virgil didn’t look like much of anyone.

“Let’s go,” Wyatt said. “I’ve had enough of these damned Clantons to last me a lifetime.”

“It’s the Daltons, Wyatt,” Albert said quietly.

“I don’t care if it’s John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd!” Wyatt exclaimed. “Are you with us or not, Ace?”

“I’m with you,” Albert Kaussner said, speaking in the soft but menacing tones of the born killer. He dropped one hand to the butt of his long-barrelled Buntline Special and put the other to his head for a moment to make sure his yarmulke was on solidly. It was.

“Okay, boys,” Doc said. “Let’s go cut some Dalton butt.”

They strode out together, four abreast through the batwing doors, just as the bell in the Tombstone Baptist Church began to toll high noon.

The Daltons were coming down Main Street at a full gallop, shooting holes in plate-glass windows and false fronts. They turned the waterbarrel in front of Duke’s Mercantile and Reliable Gun Repair into a fountain.

Ike Dalton was the first to see the four men standing in the dusty street, their frock coats pulled back to free the handles of their guns. Ike reined his horse in savagely and it rose on its rear legs, squealing, foam splattering in thick curds around the bit. Ike Dalton looked quite a bit like Rutger Hauer.

“Look what we have got here,” he sneered. “It is Wyatt Earp and his pansy brother Virgil.”

Emmett Dalton (who looked like Donald Sutherland after a month of hard nights) pulled up beside Ike. “And their faggot dentist friend, too,” he snarled. “Who else wants—” Then he looked at Albert and paled. The thin sneer faltered on his lips.

Paw Dalton pulled up beside his two sons. Paw bore a strong resemblance to Slim Pickens.

“Christ,” Paw whispered. “It’s Ace Kaussner!”

Now Frank James pulled his mount into line next to Paw. His face was the color of dirty parchment. “What the hell, boys!” Frank cried. “I don’t mind hoorawin a town or two on a dull day, but nobody told me The Arizona Jew was gonna be here!”

Albert “Ace” Kaussner, known from Sedalia to Steamboat Springs as The Arizona Jew, took a step forward. His hand hovered over the butt of his Buntline. He spat a stream of tobacco to one side, never taking his chilly gray eyes from the hardcases mounted twenty feet in front of him.

“Go on and make your moves, boys,” said The Arizona Jew. “By my count, hell ain’t half full.”

The Dalton Gang slapped leather just as the clock in the tower of the Tombstone Baptist Church beat the last stroke of noon into the hot desert air. Ace went for his own gun, his draw as fast as blue blazes, and as he began to fan the hammer with the flat of his left hand, sending a spray of .45-caliber death into the Dalton Gang, a little girl standing outside The Longhorn Hotel began to scream.