Marc Zicree - Magic Time

He’d spent yesterday afternoon felling trees in the surrounding woods and hauling them up to the kitchen and repairing the plastic rainwater catches. His arms were now sore and stiff.

“About Mr. Brattle-well-being able to do things. Mr. Dean says Mr. Brattle could make a horse spook just by looking at it, and when one of the men argued with Mr. Cadiz, Mr. Brattle sort of-sort of waved at him, and the man doubled over and almost fell down.”

And that explained, thought Shango grimly, what probably happened to that nice Captain Brady and the National Guard.

The thought of it shivered across his skin like rat’s feet.

In his widening search for United Flight 1046, he’d heard of people with unexplained powers. Whispers at first, and he’d put them aside as fear-fed rumors. Then near Spotsylvania he’d encountered a woman who could start or extinguish fires just by looking at wood. Something was turning people into gremlins or trogs or boogies or whatever else they were called-and apparently turning people into other things as well.

No wonder McKay had looked scared that first morning, when everyone else was just concerned because the lights were out.

Hang on, Chief, he thought. The fear that had grown inside him for weeks now tore at him like broken glass. He reached into the pocket of his shorts, touched the dog tag he’d taken from Czernas’ backpack. Just hang on and keep the lid on things. I’ll get you whatever Bilmer knew, whatever Bilmer had.

And then what?

He looked out the windows again, to the neat row of grass-dusted graves.

“Now, you watch out for yourself in those woods.” Mrs. Close pressed into Shango’s hand a block of much-recycled tinfoil enclosing bread that Shango knew the community could not spare. “I don’t suppose. .” She bit her lower lip. Tiny and fragile, she couldn’t have weighed eighty-five pounds; the medication that had kept her thyroid from over-burning-devouring her body at a rate faster than food could replenish it-had long since run out. “I don’t suppose when you’ve looked at that plane wreck Mr. Dean gave you the map to, you could come back? Mr. Dean says Mr. Cadiz and his men seem to be collecting all the food and water and things and taking them back to Lynchburg for their own families and people who’ll work for them. We don’t have very much here to begin with, and I’m sure none of us are in any shape to work for Mr. Cadiz even if we wanted to. If he takes what we have, or if he hurts Mrs. Soniat or Mrs. Metcalf, I don’t know what we’ll do.”

His father had brought him up not to lie. “Is it yes or is it no?” he’d say. “Don’t say yes and then do no. That’s being a coward, and a liar.”

But he couldn’t speak, knowing that when he left this place she would die. They all would die. He’d done what he could to bar the windows with two-by-fours, had helped them set up a lookout post on the roof, had given them Czernas’ binoculars, and he knew these defenses would do no good at all.

In his mind he saw Czernas in the hot sunlight of the parkway, standing before that beautiful old woman in the green sweatpants: that woman who might be dead now, as Czernas was dead. Like Czernas, he could not speak.

Mrs. Close patted his arm gently and smiled her understanding. “It’s all right,” she said. Shango wondered how many times this woman had heard Sorry, we can’t , since her family had put her in Angels Rest. “You just do what you can, dear, and we’ll hang on here. We’re a lot tougher than we look. It was sweet of you to stay and cut the wood and put those bars on the windows.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it, hurting inside for her courage.

“We’ll be all right,” she said again. “You be careful out there.”

In Charlottesville they’d told him about four planes that had come down south of town, in the green woodlands that lay along the knees of the mountains. One of these had proved to be an American flight, he’d seen the fuselage of the plane and hadn’t gone any nearer than that. The other had burst its belly open when it first hit the ground and had spewed passengers, seats, luggage over about a thousand yards of highway 29. Shango had searched the rotted, unburied corpses until he’d found half of a boarding pass that identified it as an Air France plane.

Old Mr. Dean, who didn’t look like he could stand up to a stiff wind, had gone over Shango’s map last night and marked the precise location of the third plane, as well as innumerable minor landmarks of the woods. The witnesses at Angels Rest had all seen it come down, catching a wing on the ground and pinwheeling as it sheared apart; using the map and his compass-at least that still worked-Shango set up a grid, doing alone and without equipment a task that usually fell to professional investigation teams with helicopters, dogs, radio communication and metal detectors at their disposal. He worked doggedly, patiently, pacing himself; rationing his energy and his concentration as he’d learned to ration water and food.

There was little chance McKay or anyone else would have recognized him as the quiet, blue-blazered agent of the White House detail he’d been a few weeks ago. He was ragged and indescribably filthy-making it more of a wonder that the folks at Angels Rest had let him through the gate-and the clothes he’d gleaned from the luggage of downed planes were stained, mismatched and torn. He kept his beard clipped short but it started high, just under his cheekbones, and above it his eyes were red-rimmed, hollow with fatigue. It was as if all the disguise he’d worn for years in the service, all the neatness and presentability that made him invisible, had worn away, leaving. .

What?

Exhaustion had ground him down to the point of feeling very little, either of revulsion or pity-only weariness, and the growing dread he felt every time he thought of McKay, of the man he should have been protecting but wasn’t.

He’ll think I’m dead , Shango thought. Or worse, that I’ve given up, leaving him, and by now there’s no one else he can send .

And his mind turned backward on itself, conjuring images of despair and ruin until he forced it to stop, forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. If she was on a plane, if her stuff was on a plane, it’ll be out here somewhere.

One chance, out of how many?

Shut up and search , he told himself. Shut up and do your job. If it’s here, I’ll find it . There was nothing else but that.

The first body he found, at the edge of a burn scar in the thin woods a few miles from Angels Rest, had a boarding pass in what had been her jeans pocket. It was hard to read- blood and fluids from three weeks of decay had badly discolored the card, and animals had mauled the body-but he made out the flight information.

United 1046 from Houston.

Shango closed his eyes and thought, Shit . He sat down on the ground, shocked that he’d actually found the flight. That it had, in fact, come down here, instead of clear the hell on the other side of the Appalachians. For a moment he felt disoriented, like a dog who’d chased a Cadillac and then actually caught it.

Then, hearing his mother’s admonishing voice in his mind, he added, Thank you, God .

And opening his eyes again, he viewed the scene of the wreck.

Coming down without instruments, the big 747 had caught wind shear off the Allegheny Plateau, had veered over on its side, caught its wing and bounced. At least that’s what Shango guessed from what little he knew about flight dynamics, coupled with Mrs. Close’s description. The thing must have been burning after the first bounce. Bodies, seats, luggage, debris would be scattered all over the back half of Albermarle County. Shango could see twisted hunks of metal on the ground among the charred trees, a couple of corkscrewed seats, a smashed and gutted suitcase, a shattered stroller. Close by, the stink of decay and a humming column of flies marked another body.