Zone

by Jack Lance

  He remembered something his flying instructor had once told him. Jim, there’s only one thing missing in the cockpit and that’s a crystal ball.

  Ben grumbled something and Greg decided not to press the issue. And Jim decided not to stoke up the fire.

  ‘Let’s keep our heads together, guys,’ he said, with all the objectivity he could muster.

  Jim had dealt with these kinds of issues before. Once, in another Boeing 747-400, two engines had stalled. On another occasion they had lost air pressure, causing oxygen masks to drop down in the passenger cabins. In both cases he, as captain, had kept his cool. That kind of professional behavior had been expected of him then and it was expected of him now.

  The engines are fine. We’ll land safely somewhere.

  That was Jim’s most devout hope and prayer. But something deep within him questioned whether that was true.

  You’re a murderer. Remember yesterday? Jody suddenly whispered into his ear. Again it seemed as though she was right there beside him.

  A shiver assaulted him.

  He understood, of course, that Jody’s voice had emanated from his own mind. The phenomenon had started ever since he first realized that his marriage was heading for the rocks regardless of his decision to quit flying. He could remember the exact moment he had heard that voice for the first time.

  It had been last year, on November 12th, the first day of his life he’d spent in a hospital. The previous night he had cruised the local bars on a serious drinking binge. As a result of his intoxication, twelve hours of his life had been permanently erased from his memory. He was told that he had consumed enough alcohol to knock out a normal human being and should thank God that he was still alive. After that near-death experience, Jim had controlled his liquor intake. He had to if he wanted to keep his job. He had taken a few weeks off to clear his head, and by the grace of God had managed to keep the ‘incident’ a secret from his superiors at Oceans Airways.

  But ever since that awful night Jim had been having trouble staying asleep. He often had weird dreams. At times he would dream about a frightening darkness that hid something evil that wanted to hurt him. Sometimes he would wake up drenched in sweat. He also started having emotional problems: listlessness, hypersensitivity, mood swings, depression, and rage. At times his world seemed to turn surreal. Sounds became much more intrusive. Normal street noises or the crash of breaking glass sounded to him like a recycling bin being emptied a foot away. Everything pointed toward a mental breakdown. That worried him, but what worried him most was his anger. Sometimes he felt like he had awakened from a daze, unable to remember what he had done, or to whom.

  He had felt that way only yesterday, in the hours preceding this flight.

  ‘Jody’ – the mysterious voice that had suddenly materialized during or right after the night he almost killed himself drinking – helped him remember. It was his subconscious, painstakingly reporting to him everything he had lost on a conscious level. Although likely a self-inflicted punishment rather than a coincidence, the voice in his ear sounded disturbingly like her voice.

  He hadn’t been himself in the final hours before this flight. He was sorry about that now, but it was too late. He had hit his wife in a fit of rage and frustration. He had lost it after another fierce argument, this one over Jim’s visiting rights with their two daughters, Cara and Natalie, once the divorce was finalized. Jody had talked about that as if it were already a fait accompli. She was claiming custody of their daughters and had every intention of keeping them from him. When she told him that, something inside him snapped and he hit her hard in the face.

  All true. But he hadn’t killed his wife, had he?

  Jim rubbed his eyes and shook his head to clear the demons.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, adding evasively, ‘I was just thinking of something.’

  His thoughts kept churning.

  What if he had left Jody’s dead body behind when he left the house yesterday? If that was true, she should have been found by now and the police would be arranging a reception committee for him at the airport when they arrived in Sydney.

  Bearing that in mind, perhaps it wasn’t so bad that the onboard radio had failed. Up here in the sky he might have his worries, but down there on terra firma hell could be awaiting him.

  But it made no sense.

  How could he have killed Jody without being aware of it?

  He didn’t want to imagine that. He couldn’t.

  Yet his imagination was running wild and he saw no possibility of reining it in.

  How often had he hurried to the airport wondering if he had switched off the coffee maker? Or if he had locked the door properly? Yesterday had been no different. He may have swept out the door fuming like an angry bull, but certainly he was aware of where he was going.

  You were too far gone, Jimmy, he thought to himself. You weren’t yourself yesterday.

  Although he had calmed down in the car on the way to LAX, he still couldn’t remember much of what had happened before he left the house. Not whether the coffee maker had been switched off, or whether the door was locked, and whether or not he had hurt Jody more seriously than he had intended.

  What if she had hit her head on a sharp edge of the kitchen table? What if he had attacked her with a knife – a long, sharp-edged carving knife?

  A terrible image appeared in his mind: the head and arms of a corpse, not buried deep enough, revealed in a shallow grave after a heavy rainstorm. He only needed to dig a little deeper to see what had truly happened yesterday.

  He didn’t want that. He really didn’t want that.

  He started sweating and gasping for air. He couldn’t afford to lose control, not tonight. He needed to keep a clear head. He glanced over his shoulder, worried that his evil thoughts and deeds were being scrutinized by his copilots. Ben frowned at him, but said nothing. Greg didn’t seem to have noticed anything. He was speaking into the microphone again, appealing to anyone who could hear him to respond.

  I didn’t kill her.

  He had to hold on to that.

  But if he didn’t kill her, then there was something inside him – his subconscious – trying to contradict what he believed to be true. And his subconscious usually knew better than his conscious mind.

  ‘Jody’ was silent, for now.

  Tonight Jim had to get more than 350 people safely back on the ground.

  Do your job. Put everything else out of your mind!

  His gut instinct was to descend a few thousand feet, to see what lay beneath the clouds. But he didn’t. If the plane descended, it would burn more fuel. If this flight were to last much longer, he would need every pint of kerosene he had in the tanks.

  Outside, he saw only the limitless darkness of eternity.

  You’re going to kill them, Jody said.

  ‘No!’ he said aloud through gritted teeth. He had to put an end to this.

  He hadn’t killed anyone and he wasn’t going to start now.

  Oh, yes! Jody said in a dry voice. You’re going to kill them all.

  NINETEEN

  Phyllis

  When the plump woman named Phyllis ordered her to open the toilet door, Sharlene felt as if her throat were being squeezed, as Todd Bower had done to her.

  ‘Hurry up!’ Phyllis barked.

  Sharlene’s hands were sweaty, and she had a bad headache. The fat lady had clenched her fists. What did she intend to do? Hit her?

  ‘Jerrod is in there! Do something!’

  She just couldn’t.

  A mystery presence was with them on the plane. That presence had fondled her.

  And now Phyllis was screaming at her and her co-workers were staring at her, as were the passengers, as was that young girl with the ponytail. Not able to retreat somewhere and put a pillow over her head, she felt like a doe frozen in a car’s headlights.

  When she saw Aaron hurrying up the aisle toward her, she softly exhaled a sigh of relief. ‘Wha
t’s going on here?’ he asked when he reached her.

  She took a deep breath before answering in a shaky voice. ‘This lady’, she said, indicating Phyllis, ‘claims that her husband has been inside this stall for quite some time.’

  ‘You’re damn right!’ Phyllis roared. ‘He’s been in there for half an hour. I pounded on the door, but he’s not responding. And she won’t open the damn door!’

  ‘All right, calm down, we’ll have a look,’ Aaron said.

  Sharlene stepped to the side. As Aaron overrode the door lock, she looked away from what might be revealed inside the stall.

  The door opened, and she heard a shriek from Phyllis and a startled cry from Aaron. Despite herself she chanced a quick peek.

  A slender man was down on the floor. One of his legs rested on the metal toilet seat, and the other was lying crookedly beside it. The man’s eyes and mouth were open, and he was staring at them with a glazed, lifeless expression.

  Phyllis dropped down beside him.

  ‘Jerrod!’ she croaked. ‘Jerrod!’

  When she shook him, the man’s head fell backward and his eyes rolled in their sockets.

  Aaron tried to squeeze inside, but Phyllis’s massive back and bulbous derrière blocked access. When he asked her to move out of the way, she acted as though she either didn’t hear him or just didn’t give a damn.

  Just then, Ray Jacobstein stepped forward and grasped one of the woman’s arms. As he struggled to heave her upright, she teetered, and for a moment Sharlene feared the woman would topple over backwards and crush Ray beneath her. Whimpering, the woman finally agreed to step back and make room for Aaron.

  Aaron knelt down and felt for a pulse in Jerrod’s neck. Sensing nothing in the carotid artery, he shook his head and turned toward Sharlene.

  ‘See if there’s a doctor on board,’ he said grimly.

  Sharlene had only seen a dead person once before in her life. Her father had stared at her the same way, with his eyes and mouth open, while slouched grotesquely on the living room sofa.

  She nodded and grabbed the nearest public-address speaker.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, unable to keep tremors from her voice. ‘If there is a doctor, nurse, or paramedic on board, would you please identify yourself to one of the crew members.’

  She repeated the message and replaced the speaker in its cradle. With over 300 passengers on board, the probability was high that there would be a physician among them.

  With that announcement, Phyllis emerged from a trance-like state she had briefly entered.

  ‘Jerrod!’ she screamed. ‘Get up! Get a hold of yourself and get up!’

  It was heartbreaking. A blanket of sympathetic silence settled over the passengers seated nearby. Moments later Mara approached, followed by a balding, muscular man in his fifties. He was a good six feet tall.

  ‘This gentleman is a doctor,’ Mara announced.

  ‘My name is James Shepherd,’ the man said. ‘I’m a surgeon. What’s the problem?’

  Aaron pointed to the stall and the doctor peered inside.

  ‘This gentleman apparently collapsed,’ Aaron said, as Shepherd leaned forward to examine the man. Nobody spoke while the surgeon did his work.

  In short order he said softly, ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for him.’

  With those words Phyllis lost it. She flung Ray away from her while making hysterical noises that combined the howling of a jackal with the grunts of a pig.

  ‘This can’t be happening!’ she uttered more intelligibly, after the first wave of savage disbelief. ‘Jerrod is healthy. There’s nothing wrong with him. This can’t be happening!’

  Shepherd stepped back and Aaron took over. He seized Phyllis by the shoulders and spoke calmly and soothingly to her. At length, he managed to quell her fury.

  The surgeon placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Madam, I’m truly sorry,’ he said evenly and authoritatively, a tone of voice he had undoubtedly used to break bad news to countless people in the course of his career. Phyllis, tired and pale and lips twitching, stared back at him as if she were on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

  ‘It’s impossible,’ Phyllis suddenly cried out. But her voice was weaker, as though the utter horror of it all was beginning to sink in and she had not the strength to fight it. ‘There was nothing wrong with him,’ she added as a plea. ‘He’s just pretending. That’s what Jerrod does. Believe me, I know. I always need to watch him, he’s such a baby. He needs me.’

  Her cries of despair morphed into babbling sounds as she looked past Shepherd at her late husband lying motionless in the toilet stall. ‘Jerrod,’ she said, as though making a final assault on reality, ‘for the last time, stop being ridiculous and get up!’

  He did not stir.

  ‘Don’t do this to me!’ Phyllis insisted woefully.

  Sharlene stood there motionless. ‘How?’ a voice asked, and then she realized it was her own voice.

  The surgeon looked at her, his eyebrows raised in question.

  ‘How did he die?’ she asked quietly.

  Shepherd’s answer was directed to both Sharlene and Phyllis. ‘I really can’t say. It looks like a heart attack. That would be my first guess.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a bad heart. Never had any problems,’ Phyllis contradicted him. She was sounding more and more washed out, like a wind-up toy crippled by a broken spring.

  The surgeon shrugged. ‘That’s just a guess. An autopsy will tell us more.’

  Phyllis fainted. What Shepherd had just said may have been the last straw, Sharlene mused. Only a few hours ago Phyllis and Jerrod had boarded the plane to start a wonderful vacation. Now there was talk of cutting open his corpse to conduct an autopsy.

  Aaron acted quickly, catching Phyllis before she collapsed and holding her even as he lost his balance from the sheer crush of her weight. Gradually he let her fall to the cabin floor without hurting herself.

  Aaron beckoned Ray over, ‘Let’s put her in First Class for the time being. Sharlene, lock this door. Everyone, for God’s sake, keep calm. We must attend to the passengers. You can imagine what they’re thinking.’

  ‘What do we do with … What do we do with him?’ Sharlene asked, pointing inside the stall.

  Aaron bit his lip. ‘Leave him where he is. We have nowhere else to put him. Just lock the door and keep an eye on things here.’

  He and Ray escorted Phyllis to the First Class cabin as though she were a member of the walking dead. Aaron could not recall seeing anyone acting so despondent.

  ‘Tell the passengers someone has been taken ill,’ Sharlene told her colleagues as they gathered around her. ‘These things happen. They’ll understand. I’m going after Aaron.’

  ‘Is there anything else I can do?’ Shepherd asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think so, Doctor. Thank you very much for your assistance.’

  ‘I’m in Business Class, seat 72D, should you have further need of me,’ Shepherd said, before turning away. Sharlene lingered a moment to watch as her colleagues informed the passengers that someone had been taken ill. Then, feeling strangely calm – or perhaps in a state of shock – she followed Aaron and Ray. When she joined them, they had settled Phyllis in an empty seat and were tending to her.

  ‘He’s making a fool of me,’ Phyllis was saying, while rubbing her red-rimmed eyes. She sounded like she actually believed it. ‘He doesn’t know how to behave himself sometimes. He’s lost without me.’

  Aaron offered her some water and, when she refused that, offered her something stronger. Again she refused. Because Phyllis was busy reproaching her deceased husband, Sharlene had difficulty consoling her. The brutal reality of Jerrod’s demise had not yet fully sunk in.

  Phyllis did love Jerrod, Sharlene suspected, but in her own rather odd way. She talked about her husband as if he were some sort of a pet who required a firm hand and short leash, who otherwise would be unable to fend for himself.

  As Aaron and Ray continued tal
k soothingly to her, Phyllis revealed that her last name was Kirby. Sharlene offered no comment.

  A heart attack?

  It was possible, of course.

  But she didn’t believe it.

  At length, Phyllis became drowsy. A frontal assault of dismay, dizziness, and depression had taken its toll. She stopped reprimanding her dead husband and sat quietly.

  Aaron made eye contact with Sharlene and Ray. ‘I’m going to report this to Jim,’ he declared.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.

  Aaron nodded. ‘Ray, will you stay here with her?’

  ‘Sure,’ Ray said.

  Aaron led the way to the cockpit.

  Halfway up the stairs to the upper deck, Sharlene suddenly stopped.

  Something was behind her. She knew it with an absolute certainty. A cold draft hit her, as it had earlier in the galley.

  As if something dead was breathing on the back of her neck.

  TWENTY

  Where We’re Not Going

  Aaron had already disappeared around the corner upstairs, leaving Sharlene alone with whatever was behind her.

  She was afraid to look. She couldn’t move.

  A scream formed inside her throat.

  Just as she was about to scream, the chilly breath on her neck faded and was gone.

  She stood there for a while longer, gathering her courage. Then she whirled around, to find no one behind her.

  Not anymore.

  But something or someone had been there. And it might come back.

  Propelled into action, she ran up the last few steps and heaved a sigh of relief when she saw the Business Class passengers sitting upright or stretched out comfortably in their seats as if nothing untoward was going on – or had gone on.

  Would she be brave enough to go back down those steps later on?

  She saw Aaron, who had been held up by the short man in the brown suit, the one with the Hannibal Lecter eyes who seemed to have such a terrible headache earlier. The Danny DeVito look-alike had risen from his seat and was gesticulating urgently as he spoke quietly to Aaron.