Амброз Бирс - Flight or Fright - 17 Turbulent Tales

Huddled against the door, it slowly dawned on him that he didn’t have to die. Numbly, he picked up the mask, seeing it too late with new eyes. It was not a trinket or a treasure, or even a mask.

It was a door.

The blood he’d spilled had opened it. To let them leave this place, the door only had to open again. It was simple, when there was no other choice but to accept.

Ryan put the mask to his face. The hard, rough inner surface caressed him with splinters that grew and intertwined under his skin.

They climbed each other to reach his lips. The narrow, fanged mouth only allowed one at a time, and they were beyond counting. They scuttled up his shivering body and into the gate of teeth, but he could feel them piling up inside his belly, restless, hungry for trouble, and he could feel a whole new world, cold, black and infinite, inside.

Before the last one had disappeared into his mouth, the 727 touched down with a rough jerk and skidded on the tarmac as if the runway were a plain of loose boulders.

When the plane finally pirouetted to a stop and the cabin lights turned on, not a single passenger stirred to turn on cell phones or try to pull their luggage out of the overheads. Ryan hauled himself to his feet and knocked once more on the cockpit door, but whatever was on the other side was quite content to stay behind.

He pulled the latch on the cabin door and turned the wheel. Two baggage handlers pressed quizzical faces to the porthole and tapped on the glass. Ryan smiled at them, forgetting he was wearing a mask, and threw open the door.

He tried to explain, but they didn’t see him at all. They fell to their knees, choking on red phlegm. He pushed past them and skipped down the stairs to kneel and kiss the tarmac with a forked black tongue.

It was so good, after all his wandering, to be at home…

John Varley was born in Texas and went to Michigan State University on a National Merit scholarship—supposedly because of the schools he could afford, MSU was the farthest from Texas. There are science fiction writers who have brilliant ideas, and science fiction writers who are fine prose stylists. Varley is one of the fortunate few who are both. “Air Raid” was published in 1977 (under the pen name Herb Boehm, an amalgam of his middle name and his mother’s maiden name, because he had another story appearing in the same issue of Asimov’s ), was nominated for both a Hugo and a Nebula Award, was expanded into the novel Millennium in 1983, and became a movie in 1989. Once you start this one, you won’t be able to put it down. So welcome aboard Sun-Belt Airlines Flight 128, departing Miami and bound for New York. The passengers, however, may be heading for a far different destination.

I was jerked awake by the silent alarm vibrating my skull. It won’t shut down until you sit up, so I did. All around me in the darkened bunkroom the Snatch Team members were sleeping singly and in pairs. I yawned, scratched my ribs, and patted Gene’s hairy flank. He turned over. So much for a romantic send-off.

Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I reached to the floor for my leg, strapped it on and plugged it in. Then I was running down the rows of bunks toward Ops.

The situation board glowed in the gloom. Sun-Belt Airlines Flight 128, Miami to New York, September 15, 1979. We’d been looking for that one for three years. I should have been happy, but who can afford it when you wake up?

Liza Boston muttered past me on the way to Prep. I muttered back, and followed. The lights came on around the mirrors, and I groped my way to one of them. Behind us, three more people staggered in. I sat down, plugged in, and at last I could lean back and close my eyes.

They didn’t stay closed for long. Rush! I sat up straight as the sludge I use for blood was replaced with supercharged go-juice. I looked around me and got a series of idiot grins. There was Liza, and Pinky and Dave. Against the far wall Cristabel was already turning slowly in front of the airbrush, getting a caucasian paint job. It looked like a good team.

I opened the drawer and started preliminary work on my face. It’s a bigger job every time. Transfusion or no, I looked like death. The right ear was completely gone now. I could no longer close my lips; the gums were permanently bared. A week earlier, a finger had fallen off in my sleep. And what’s it to you, bugger?

While I worked, one of the screens around the mirror glowed. A smiling young woman, blonde, high brow, round face. Close enough. The crawl line read Mary Katrina Sondergard, born Trenton, New Jersey, age in 1979: 25 . Baby, this is your lucky day.

The computer melted the skin away from her face to show me the bone structure, rotated it, gave me cross-sections. I studied the similarities with my own skull, noted the differences. Not bad, and better than some I’d been given.

I assembled a set of dentures that included the slight gap in the upper incisors. Putty filled out my cheeks. Contact lenses fell from the dispenser and I popped them in. Nose plugs widened my nostrils. No need for ears; they’d be covered by the wig. I pulled a blank plastiflesh mask over my face and had to pause while it melted in. It took only a minute to mold it to perfection. I smiled at myself. How nice to have lips.

The delivery slot clunked and dropped a blonde wig and a pink outfit into my lap. The wig was hot from the styler. I put it on, then the pantyhose.

“Mandy? Did you get the profile on Sondergard?” I didn’t look up; I recognized the voice.

“Roger.”

“We’ve located her near the airport. We can slip you in before take-off, so you’ll be the joker.”

I groaned, and looked up at the face on the screen. Elfreda Baltimore-Louisville, Director of Operational Teams: lifeless face and tiny slits for eyes. What can you do when all the muscles are dead?

“Okay.” You take what you get.

She switched off, and I spent the next two minutes trying to get dressed while keeping my eyes on the screens. I memorized names and faces of crew members plus the few facts known about them. Then I hurried out and caught up with the others. Elapsed time from the first alarm: twelve minutes and seven seconds. We’d better get moving.

“Goddam Sun-Belt,” Cristabel groused, hitching at her bra.

“At least they got rid of the high heels,” Dave pointed out. A year earlier we would have been teetering down the aisles on three-inch platforms. We all wore short pink shifts with blue and white stripes, diagonally across the front, and carried matching shoulder bags. I fussed trying to get the ridiculous pillbox cap pinned on.

We jogged into the dark Operations Control Room and lined up at the gate. Things were out of our hands now. Until the gate was ready, we could only wait.

I was first, a few feet away from the portal. I turned away from it; it gives me vertigo. I focused instead on the gnomes sitting at their consoles, bathed in yellow lights from their screens. None of them looked back at me. They don’t like us much. I don’t like them, either. Withered, emaciated, all of them. Our fat legs and butts and breasts are a reproach to them, a reminder that Snatchers eat five times their ration to stay presentable for the masquerade. Meantime we continue to rot. One day I’ll be sitting at a console. One day I’ll be built in to a console, with all my guts on the outside and nothing left of my body but stink. The hell with them.

I buried my gun under a clutter of tissues and lipsticks in my purse. Elfreda was looking at me.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Motel room. She was alone from 10 PM to noon on flight day.”

Departure time was 1:15. She cut it close and would be in a hurry. Good.