Four Past Midnight

by Stephen King

  He leaned out again, using both hands now that Nick had him firmly anchored, and slammed the nozzle into the fuel port. There was a brief, spattering shower of jet-fuel--a very welcome shower, under the circumstances--and then a hard metallic click. Brian twisted the nozzle a quarter-turn to the right, locking it in place, and listened with satisfaction as jet-fuel ran down the hose to the cart, where a closed valve would dam its flow.

  "Okay," he sighed, pulling himself back to the ladder. "So far, so good."

  "What now, mate? How do we make that cart run? Do we jump-start it from the plane, or what?"

  "I doubt if we could do that even if someone had remembered to bring the jumper cables," Brian said. "Luckily, it doesn't have to run. Essentially, the cart is just a gadget to filter and transfer fuel. I'm going to use the auxiliary power units on our plane to suck the fuel out of the 727 the way you'd use a straw to suck lemonade out of a glass."

  "How long is it going to take?"

  "Under optimum conditions--which would mean pumping with ground power--we could load 2,000 pounds of fuel a minute. Doing it like this makes it harder to figure. I've never had to use the APUs to pump fuel before. At least an hour. Maybe two."

  Nick gazed anxiously eastward for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was low. "Do me a favor, mate--don't tell the others that."

  "Why not?"

  "Because I don't think we have two hours. We may not even have one."

  5

  Alone in first class, Dinah Catherine Bellman opened her eyes.

  And saw.

  "Craig," she whispered.

  6

  Craig.

  But he didn't want to hear his name again. When people called his name, something bad always happened. Always.

  Craig! Get up, Craig!

  No. He wouldn't get up. His head had become a vast chambered hive; pain roared and raved in each irregular room and crooked corridor. Bees had come. The bees had thought he was dead. They had invaded his head and turned his skull into a honeycomb. And now ... now ...

  They sense my thoughts and are trying to sting them to death, he thought, and uttered a thick, agonized groan. His bloodstreaked hands opened and closed slowly on the industrial carpet which covered the lower-lobby floor. Let me die, oh please just let me die.

  Craig, you have to get up! Now!

  It was his father's voice, the one voice he had never been able to refuse or shut out. But he would refuse it now. He would shut it out now.

  "Go away," he croaked. "I hate you. Go away."

  Pain blared through his head in a golden shriek of trumpets. Clouds of bees, furious and stinging, flew from the bells as they blew.

  Oh let me die, he thought. Oh let me die. This is hell. I am in a hell of bees and big-band horns.

  Get up, Craiggy-weggy. It's your birthday, and guess what? As soon as you get up, someone's going to hand you a beer and hit you over the head ... because THIS thud's for you!

  "No," he said. "No more hitting." His hands shuffled on the carpet. He made an effort to open his eyes, but a glue of drying blood had stuck them shut. "You're dead. Both of you are dead. You can't hit me, and you can't make me do things. Both of you are dead, and I want to be dead, too."

  But he wasn't dead. Somewhere beyond these phantom voices he could hear the whine of jet engines ... and that other sound. The sound of the langoliers on the march. On the run.

  Craig, get up. You have to get up.

  He realized that it wasn't the voice of his father, or of his mother, either. That had only been his poor, wounded mind trying to fool itself. This was a voice from ... from

  (above?)

  some other place, some high bright place where pain was a myth and pressure was a dream.

  Craig, they've come to you--all the people you wanted to see. They left Boston and came here. That's how important you are to them. You can still do it, Craig. You can still pull the pin. There's still time to hand in your papers and fall out of your father's army ... if you're man enough to do it, that is.

  If you're man enough to do it.

  "Man enough?" he croaked. "Man enough? Whoever you are, you've got to be shitting me."

  He tried again to open his eyes. The tacky blood holding them shut gave a little but would not let go. He managed to work one hand up to his face. It brushed the remains of his nose and he gave voice to a low, tired scream of pain. Inside his head the trumpets blared and the bees swarmed. He waited until the worst of the pain had subsided, then poked out two fingers and used them to pull his own eyelids up.

  That corona of light was still there. It made a vaguely evocative shape in the gloom.

  Slowly, a little at a time, Craig raised his head.

  And saw her.

  She stood within the corona of light.

  It was the little girl, but her dark glasses were gone and she was looking at him, and her eyes were kind.

  Come on, Craig. Get up. I know it's hard, but you have to get up--you have to. Because they are all here, they are all waiting ... but they won't wait forever. The langoliers will see to that.

  She was not standing on the floor, he saw. Her shoes appeared to float an inch or two above it, and the bright light was all around her. She was outlined in spectral radiance.

  Come, Craig. Get up.

  He started struggling to his feet. It was very hard. His sense of balance was almost gone, and it was hard to hold his head up--because, of course, it was full of angry honeybees. Twice he fell back, but each time he began again, mesmerized and entranced by the glowing girl with her kind eyes and her promise of ultimate release.

  They are all waiting, Craig. For you.

  They are waiting for you.

  7

  Dinah lay on the stretcher, watching with her blind eyes as Craig Toomy got to one knee, fell over on his side, then began trying to rise once more. Her heart was suffused with a terrible stern pity for this hurt and broken man, this murdering fish that only wanted to explode. On his ruined, bloody face she saw a terrible mixture of emotions: fear, hope, and a kind of merciless determination.

  I'm sorry, Mr. Toomy, she thought. In spite of what you did, I'm sorry. But we need you.

  Then called to him again, called with her own dying consciousness:

  Get up, Craig! Hurry! It's almost too late!

  And she sensed that it was.

  8

  Once the longer of the two hoses was looped under the belly of the 767 and attached to its fuel port, Brian returned to the cockpit, cycled up the APUs, and went to work sucking the 727-400's fuel tanks dry. As he watched the LED readout on his right tank slowly climb toward 24,000 pounds, he waited tensely for the APUs to start chugging and lugging, trying to eat fuel which would not burn.

  The right tank had reached the 8,000-pound mark when he heard the note of the small jet engines at the rear of the plane change--they grew rough and labored.

  "What's happening, mate?" Nick asked. He was sitting in the co-pilot's chair again. His hair was disarrayed, and there were wide streaks of grease and blood across his formerly natty button-down shirt.

  "The APU engines are getting a taste of the 727's fuel and they don't like it," Brian said. "I hope Albert's magic works, Nick, but I don't know."

  Just before the LED reached 9,000 pounds in the right tank, the first APU cut out. A red ENGINE SHUTDOWN light appeared on Brian's board. He flicked the APU off.

  "What can you do about it?" Nick asked, getting up and coming to look over Brian's shoulder.

  "Use the other three APUs to keep the pumps running and hope," Brian said.

  The second APU cut out thirty seconds later, and while Brian was moving his hand to shut it down, the third went. The cockpit lights went with it; now there was only the irregular chug of the hydraulic pumps and the lights on Brian's board, which were flickering. The last APU was roaring choppily, cycling up and down, shaking the plane.

  "I'm shutting down completely," Brian said. He sounded harsh and strained to himsel
f, a man who was way out of his depth and tiring fast in the undertow. "We'll have to wait for the Delta's fuel to join our plane's time-stream, or time-frame, or whatever the fuck it is. We can't go on like this. A strong power-surge before the last APU cuts out could wipe the INS clean. Maybe even fry it."

  But as Brian reached for the switch, the engine's choppy note suddenly began to smooth out. He turned and stared at Nick unbelievingly. Nick looked back, and a big, slow grin lit his face.

  "We might have lucked out, mate."

  Brian raised his hands, crossed both sets of fingers, and shook them in the air. "I hope so," he said, and swung back to the boards. He flicked the switches marked APU 1, 3, and 4. They kicked in smoothly. The cockpit lights flashed back on. The cabin bells binged. Nick whooped and clapped Brian on the back.

  Bethany appeared in the doorway behind them. "What's happening? Is everything all right?"

  "I think." Brian said without turning, "that we might just have a shot at this thing."

  9

  Craig finally managed to stand upright. The glowing girl now stood with her feet just above the luggage conveyor belt. She looked at him with a supernatural sweetness and something else ... something he had longed for his whole life. What was it?

  He groped for it, and at last it came to him.

  It was compassion.

  Compassion and understanding.

  He looked around and saw that the darkness was draining away. That meant he had been out all night, didn't it? He didn't know. And it didn't matter. All that mattered was that the glowing girl had brought them to him--the investment bankers, the bond specialists, the commission-brokers, and the stock-rollers. They were here, they would want an explanation of just what young Mr. Craiggy-Weggy Toomy-Woomy had been up to, and here was the ecstatic truth: monkey-business! That was what he had been up to--yards and yards of monkey-business--miles of monkey-business. And when he told them that ...

  "They'll have to let me go ... won't they?"

  Yes, she said. But you have to hurry, Craig. You have to hurry before they decide you're not coming and leave.

  Craig began to make his slow way forward. The girl's feet did not move, but as he approached her she floated backward like a mirage, toward the rubber strips which hung between the luggage-retrieval area and the loading dock outside.

  And ... oh, glorious: she was smiling.

  10

  They were all back on the plane now, all except Bob and Albert, who were sitting on the stairs and listening to the sound roll toward them in a slow, broken wave.

  Laurel Stevenson was standing at the open forward door and looking at the terminal, still wondering what they were going to do about Mr. Toomy, when Bethany tugged the back of her blouse.

  "Dinah is talking in her sleep, or something. I think she might be delirious. Can you come?"

  Laurel came. Rudy Warwick was sitting across from Dinah, holding one of her hands and looking at her anxiously.

  "I dunno," he said worriedly. "I dunno, but I think she might be going."

  Laurel felt the girl's forehead. It was dry and very hot. The bleeding had either slowed down or stopped entirely, but the girl's respiration came in a series of pitiful whistling sounds. Blood was crusted around her mouth like strawberry sauce.

  Laurel began, "I think--" and then Dinah said, quite clearly, "You have to hurry before they decide you're not coming and leave."

  Laurel and Bethany exchanged puzzled, frightened glances.

  "I think she's dreaming about that guy Toomy," Rudy told Laurel. "She said his name once."

  "Yes," Dinah said. Her eyes were closed, but her head moved slightly and she appeared to listen. "Yes I will be," she said. "If you want me to, I will. But hurry. I know it hurts, but you have to hurry."

  "She is delirious, isn't she?" Bethany whispered.

  "No," Laurel said. "I don't think so. I think she might be ... dreaming."

  But that was not what she thought at all. What she really thought was that Dinah might be

  (seeing)

  doing something else. She didn't think she wanted to know what that something might be, although an idea whirled and danced far back in her mind. Laurel knew she could summon that idea if she wanted to, but she didn't. Because something creepy was going on here, extremely creepy, and she could not escape the idea that it did have something to do with (don't kill him ... we need him)

  Mr. Toomy.

  "Leave her alone," she said in a dry, abrupt tone of voice. "Leave her alone and let her (do what she has to do to him)

  sleep."

  "God, I hope we take off soon," Bethany said miserably, and Rudy put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

  11

  Craig reached the conveyor belt and fell onto it. A white sheet of agony ripped through his head, his neck, his chest. He tried to remember what had happened to him and couldn't. He had run down the stalled escalator, he had hidden in a little room, he had sat tearing strips of paper in the dark ... and that was where memory stopped.

  He raised his head, hair hanging in his eyes, and looked at the glowing girl, who now sat cross-legged in front of the rubber strips, an inch off the conveyor belt. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life; how could he ever have thought she was one of them?

  "Are you an angel?" he croaked.

  Yes, the glowing girl replied, and Craig felt his pain overwhelmed with joy. His vision blurred and then tears--the first ones he had ever cried as an adult--began to run slowly down his cheeks. Suddenly he found himself remembering his mother's sweet, droning, drunken voice as she sang that old song.

  "Are you an angel of the morning? Will you be my angel of the morning?"

  Yes--I will be. If you want me to, I will. But hurry. I know it hurts, Mr. Toomy, but you have to hurry.

  "Yes," Craig sobbed, and began to crawl eagerly along the luggage conveyor belt toward her. Every movement sent fresh pain jig-jagging through him on irregular courses; blood dripped from his smashed nose and shattered mouth. Yet he still hurried as much as he could. Ahead of him, the little girl faded back through the hanging rubber strips, somehow not disturbing them at all as she went.

  "Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby," Craig said. He hawked up a spongy mat of blood, spat it on the wall where it clung like a dead spider, and tried to crawl faster.

  12

  To the east of the airport, a large cracking, rending sound filled the freakish morning. Bob and Albert got to their feet, faces pallid and filled with dreadful questions.

  "What was that?" Albert asked.

  "I think it was a tree," Bob replied, and licked his lips.

  "But there's no wind!"

  "No," Bob agreed. "There's no wind."

  The noise had now become a moving barricade of splintered sound. Parts of it would seem to come into focus ... and then drop back again just before identification was possible. At one moment Albert could swear he heard something barking, and then the barks ... or yaps ... or whatever they were ... would be swallowed up by a brief sour humming sound like evil electricity. The only constants were the crunching and the steady drilling whine.

  "What's happening?" Bethany called shrilly from behind them.

  "Noth--" Albert began, and then Bob seized his shoulder and pointed.

  "Look!" he shouted. "Look over there!"

  Far to the east of them, on the horizon, a series of power pylons marched north and south across a high wooded ridge. As Albert looked, one of the pylons tottered like a toy and then fell over, pulling a snarl of power cables after it. A moment later another pylon went, and another, and another.

  "That's not all, either," Albert said numbly. "Look at the trees. The trees over there are shaking like shrubs."

  But they were not just shaking. As Albert and the others looked, the trees began to fall over, to disappear.

  Crunch, smack, crunch, thud, BARK!

  Crunch, smack, BARK!, thump, crunch.

  "We have to get out of
here," Bob said. He gripped Albert with both hands. His eyes were huge, avid with a kind of idiotic terror. The expression stood in sick, jagged contrast to his narrow, intelligent face. "I believe we have to get out of here right now."

  On the horizon, perhaps ten miles distant, the tall gantry of a radio tower trembled, rolled outward, and crashed down to disappear into the quaking trees. Now they could feel the very earth beginning to vibrate; it ran up the ladder and shook their feet in their shoes.

  "Make it stop!" Bethany suddenly screamed from the doorway above them. She clapped her hands to her ears. "Oh please make it STOP!"

  But the sound-wave rolled on toward them--the crunching, smacking, eating sound of the langoliers.

  13

  "I don't like to tease, Brian, but how much longer?" Nick's voice was taut. "There's a river about four miles east of here--I saw it when we were coming down--and I reckon whatever's coming is just now on the other side of it."

  Brian glanced at his fuel readouts. 24,000 pounds in the right wing; 16,000 pounds in the left. It was going faster now that he didn't have to pump the Delta's fuel overwing to the other side.

  "Fifteen minutes," he said. He could feel sweat standing out on his brow in big drops. "We've got to have more fuel, Nick, or we'll come down dead in the Mojave Desert. Another ten minutes to unhook, button up, and taxi out."

  "You can't cut that? You're sure you can't cut that?"

  Brian shook his head and turned back to his gauges.

  14

  Craig crawled slowly through the rubber strips, feeling them slide down his back like limp fingers. He emerged in the white, dead light of a new--and vastly shortened--day. The sound was terrible, overwhelming, the sound of an invading cannibal army. Even the sky seemed to shake with it, and for a moment fear froze him in place.

  Look, his angel of the morning said, and pointed.

  Craig looked ... and forgot his fear. Beyond the American Pride 767, in a triangle of dead grass bounded by two taxiways and a runway, there was a long mahogany boardroom table. It gleamed brightly in the listless light. At each place were a yellow legal pad, a pitcher of ice water, and a Waterford glass. Sitting around the table were two dozen men in sober bankers' suits, and now they were all turning to look at him.