by Dean Koontz
The cargo plane's engines grew even louder now, tantalizingly near, though the plane remained beyond the patch of open sky that the surrounding woods permitted them.
"It's close," Slade said.
Suddenly, the big aircraft was there. It came in so low over the pines that Kelly had difficulty separating it from the black trees. It carried only two running lights, one on each wing tip, and it seemed more like some gigantic bird of prey than like a machine.
"Here comes the plane," Slade said, though everyone had already seen it. Nothing ever improved. Not even the lieutenant.
"He isn't putting it down fast enough," Lieutenant Beame said. He thought: Christ, it's going to plow right through us, knock us down like three bowling pins at the end of an alley.
The DC-3 slanted in fast, correcting.
"Not enough," Kelly said.
The pilot had not cut back. The props churned as thunderously as when the craft had slipped in over the trees.
"What the hell's he doing?" Lieutenant Slade demanded.
The big plane roared toward them, a prehistoric behemoth bellowing a mindless battle cry. Its tires were still off the rugged, oiled strip. The tiny running lights on its wings seemed, to Kelly, to swell until they were gigantic searchlights.
"Run!" Beanie shouted. But he couldn't run. He could only stand there, hypnotized by the onrushing plane, blinking at the half-seen blur of the whirling props.
The pilot gave up on it. The craft rose sharply, tilting dangerously toward the dark earth, swooped over the three men and the trees behind them, racketing away across the forest.
"He's going to try again," Lieutenant Slade told them.
Able to run now that it wasn't necessary, Beame turned and loped into the trees, bent and vomited on a patch of wild daisies.
The moment the DC-3 had passed over them, all the fear went out of Major Kelly. Temporarily, at least. He had watched the plane plunging toward them, and he had been sure that he would die in seconds. The whole situation had that ironic touch which was so much a part of the war: surviving the Stukas and the Germans, he would now be slaughtered accidentally by his own people. When he wasn't, when he realized that the plane had passed over and left him unhurt, he chose to take his safety as an omen. If he had not been killed that time, he would not be killed the next. The pilot would put his ship down, and everything would go as planned. He would survive. For tonight, anyway. Maybe he would be blown to bits the first thing in the morning, but for the remainder of the night, he could rest easy.
The engine noise of the DC-3 faded, moving around them, then grew in volume again as the pilot made his second approach.
"Here he comes again," Slade said, unnecessarily.
Beame, back from vomiting on the daisies, said, "God."
The transport came into sight again, over the trees. It slanted in much more quickly than it had before. In fact, it angled too sharply, touched the runway at too high a speed, bounced. Tires squealed. The walls of the forest threw back echoes that sounded like anguished human cries. The aircraft shuddered, touched again, bounced again. The third time down, it stayed down. Its engines, thumping like a hundred hammers slamming into a block of wood, cut back, whined down, stopped with a suddenness that left them all deaf.
The silence of the night rushed in like collapsing walls of cotton, and they were too stunned to hear anything at all. Gradually, they began to perceive the crickets once more, the frogs, the breeze in the trees, the pounding of their own hearts.
"She's down," Slade said.
Even if they hadn't been watching, they would have known the plane was down, for in the cricket-punctuated night, they could now hear the pilot screaming. At some point during the flight from the west, he had cranked open a vent window, and now his arm was hanging out that window, and he was beating on the side of the plane. The sheet metal boomed like a drum, counterpoint to the pilot's unmelodic wailing.
Lieutenant Beame ran to the flare on the right, threw sand on it, and watched it sputter out. I would have gone out as easily, he thought, if the pilot had muffed that first try. I would have blinked out like a damped flare. He turned quickly and walked to the second spot of blue light, unwilling to carry that train of thought any further. He threw sand on this flare and looked toward the far end of the strip where someone else was just smothering the flares down there.
Above the runway, though he was still screaming, the pilot put out the running lights on the wings of the DC-3.
"There go the men to unload the plane," Lieutenant Slade said.
Beame squinted, but he could not see them. He had been night-blinded by the flares.
"Oh, God," Lieutenant Slade said, his voice breathy. "Isn't it all so inspiring?"
* * *
8
Lily Kain's high heels went tock-tock-tock on the wooden landing steps as she climbed up the hatchway in the hull of the cargo plane. She went inside, into darkness, her footsteps echoing from metal walls. Hunched over to keep from hitting her head on the low ceiling, and careful not to touch the loops of poorly insulated wire which drooped from their overhead moorings, she went forward to the cockpit and leaned inside.
"Hello there!" she said, trying to be cheery and sexy.
"Hello," the copilot said, turning around in his sweat-stained flight seat. He was a tall, thin kid from Texas with an Adam's apple that made him look like he'd swallowed a whole orange and got it stuck in his throat.
Lily ignored him. He was too young and ineffectual to help her. She turned all her charm on the pilot, who had just stopped screaming, and she said, "Hello there!"
"Hello, Lily," the pilot said. His voice was hoarse.
"That's a nice costume you're wearing," the kid from Texas said. He gulped wetly, as if the orange had come unstuck.
During the day, when the heat baked the earth and the trees stood limp and parched, Lily Kain wore a dancer's costume, even though the men had begun to call her Miss Cock Tease. She couldn't understand why they were upset by her near nudity; after all, they walked around shirtless, alt bronze and hairy. Didn't they understand that all those lovely, bunched and sunbrowned muscles made her horny? Sometimes she wanted to grab one of them and throw him down and rip off his khaki slacks and rape him. The only thing that gave her pause was the knowledge that, in the Army, rape was a crime punishable by ten years to life imprisonment. That would make her anywhere from thirty-four to - when she got out. It just wasn't worth it, not for a transitory thrill.
In the evenings, if it was cool, she wore one of Major Kelly's work uniforms which she and Nurse Pullit had cut down to size and resewn by hand. Lily's street clothes had been carried off with the rest of her USO troop, and she had been left behind with nothing more than a trunkful of scanty costumes. At least the work uniform afforded her a means of modesty whenever the mood struck her. It seldom struck her. Modesty just wasn't worth it.
When the transport plane landed this night, the air was chill, and it was a night for the work uniform and for modesty. However, Lily was wearing a pale-white velvet dancer's costume when she went to see the pilot. It was cut high along her hips, revealing all of her long legs, and it was cut so tight through the crotch that she knew she'd never be able to have children once she got out of it. She didn't want any children, of course. Raised a Roman Catholic, part of a large family, she had sworn off having her own kids when she'd been fifteen. One night, sitting at the family table, she'd looked around at all those shining Irish faces, then looked at her washed-out mother and her dried-up father, and sworn off pregnancy. Pregnancy was the most vicious disease imaginable. Now, she actually welcomed the murderously tight fit of her dancer's costume. It was tight in the top, too, so that her ample jugs were like tortured balloons that might squeak free and fly away. The costume had no back whatsoever. It was cut to her dimpled ass and gave a hint of backside cleavage. She might as well have been nude. That was the idea.
"Why don't you come outside?" Lily asked the pilot as she watched him watch
her jugs. "We'll go for a walk."
"I don't feel like it," the pilot said, watching her crotch now, his fine eyes desperately searching for a stray, curling pubic hair.
He always refused to get out of his plane when he landed. He told the men in Kelly's unit that he had been given a vision in a dream, and that this vision had warned him not to get out of his plane when he landed supplies there. In the dream, the pilot had seen FDR and Truman sitting on matched commodes with their faces wreathed in golden light. In unison, speaking as sweetly as angels, they had warned the pilot with this: "If you ever leave your plane at Kelly's camp, your life won't be worth a fart." Then they farted in unison, for emphasis. When Lieutenant Slade first heard about the pilot's vision, he said, "Inspiring!"
"Oh, come on," Lily said, holding a hand out to the pilot.
"No." He was adamant. He had suddenly abandoned his pubic-hair search and had focused on the bulkhead beside her.
Abandoning all pretense, as she always had to, Lily said, "Take me with you, please!"
"You know we can't, Lily," the pilot said. Though he was looking at the wall, he was seeing Lily in his mind's eye. He began to sweat.
"Why can't you?" she asked, pouting her full lips.
"Officially, you aren't here."
She twisted slightly, leaning against a steel strut that reinforced the cabin walls against major flak damage. She was lighted exotically by the green and amber scope bulbs on the control panels, and she looked very good. Long legs, perfectly curved. Firm thighs. Hips just wide enough. No waist at all. Swelling breasts, jammed up, nipples almost peeking over velvet cups. Face half in shadow, full lips parted with a promise of more than just a kiss. She looked tremendous.
"You look tremendous," the pilot said, still staring intently at the wall. "But that won't do you any good. You aren't here; no one's here." But he looked back at her jugs, now, as if they were here. "This place is two hundred miles behind German lines, and the high command hasn't ordered anyone in here yet. Therefore, there isn't anyone in here. Yet. And I can't bring back someone who wasn't here to begin with." When he was done with his speech, he was breathing heavily, and he was looking at her jugs more longingly than ever.
"You can't deny your senses," Lily said.
"Yes, I can," the pilot said.
"If I'm not here, who are you talking to?"
The pilot was silent awhile, thinking about that. The sounds of the ground crew unloading the big transport through both its bay and cargo doors were audible but somehow removed from his reality, a distant background noise that reminded the pilot of carnival workers setting up tents and stands and rides in the fairgrounds near the house where he lived as a child. He would have liked to think about that some more, except he remembered where he was and was too terrified to think about anything but death.
"Who are you talking to if I'm not here?" Lily asked again.
"A figment of my imagination," the pilot said.
"Major Kelly's already used that one," she said.
"What?"
"Never mind." She thought a moment. "If there isn't anyone here, who are these supplies for?"
"What supplies?" the pilot asked. He was gripping the edges of his battered flight seat with both hands, fighting off an urge to rise up and rip her clothes off and fuck her through the floor of the plane. His face was sheathed in sweat.
Lily sighed. "If you're not behind German lines, where are you?"
The pilot smiled and relaxed a bit. "Iowa City, Iowa."
"What?"
"I can see the cornfields from here," the pilot said, looking out of the windscreen at the cornfields.
Lily followed his gaze but could see nothing other than darkness and a few men carrying heavy crates of supplies. A small collapsible loading crane trundled toward the transport's cargo doors. But no cornfields.
"You're crazy," she said.
"No. I see fields of corn, endless fields, tall and green."
Lily stepped forward and touched the pilot's cheek as he stared out through the windscreen, and she jumped in surprise as he nearly leaped out of his flight seat. He smiled nervously and tried to pull away. He was pudgy and redfaced and in need of a shave; even when he wasn't terrified, he would have looked rather ordinary and unappealing. Still, she said, "I think I could get to like you."
"What's there to like?" he asked. "A knot of nerves, spastic colon, stomach ulcers... nothing..."
"Still, I could," she said. She bent closer to him, her jugs right in front of his face now. She was willing to tell the pilot anything to convince him to take her back to Allied territory. Actually, she found him revolting; however, telling him these fantasies didn't hurt anything. "We could have lots of good times."
The pilot took a thermos from a pouch on his seat, opened it, and poured himself a cup of steaming coffee. He did all this slowly, deliberately, as if he were trying to give himself time to gather his wits and meet the challenge she presented. His hands shook so badly that the coffee kept slopping over the rim of the cup. He said, "I'm sorry, Lily, but you don't arouse me at all."
"Don't I?"
"Not at all."
Suddenly, Lily could see only a bleak future. She could see another week here at the camp, another week of waiting for the inevitable flight of Stukas, another week of wondering if she would go home as a corpse or as a girl with a brilliant theatrical career ahead of her. Those were the only two possibilities, because she couldn't see any way she could go home as a corpse with a brilliant theatrical career ahead of her. She realized that she would have to go further than before, would have to pressure the pilot more than ever.
"So you might as well go," he said, slopping coffee all over his hand.
She reached behind, found the zipper on her velvet costume, tugged it down and peeled to the waist. Her large, fine breasts fell forward, a symphony of jiggling flesh, the dark nipples high on the top of their matched upward thrusts, hard and prominent.
"Gosh," the kid from Texas said. He squirmed in his seat, making the cracked leather squeak.
Lily ignored him. She had to ignore him. For one thing, he couldn't help her get out of the camp. For another, if she paid him any attention at all, he'd lose his head and take her while her back was turned.
The pilot watched her jugs. He seemed hypnotized. When he began to speak, he sounded far away, as if repeating something he'd memorized in church but had never really believed. "I am not aroused by you, because General Blade wouldn't like it if I were aroused by you and brought you back. You'd go around telling everyone about Kelly and this camp and the general's contingency plan, and you'd get the general in all sorts of trouble."
She moved slightly as she shook her head and her breasts shivered deliciously, the nipples swelling, the cleavage touched with a blush. "No, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't tell a soul. What would happen-you and I would have lots of fun. That's all that would happen."
"Gosh," the Texan said, still squirming. "Gosh."
The pilot licked his lips. He was shaking like a train on a bad track, close to derailment. Half the coffee in his cup was gone now, though he had not drunk any of it. "I know you better than that," he said. "I've heard you curse the general, and I know what you'd do. The general wouldn't want you to come back. Whatever the general wants, I want. There's a war going on. In a war, the little people only survive if they do what the big people tell them to do. I'm a little people. The general is a big people. The general doesn't want me to be aroused by you, and therefore I'm not aroused."
Lily slipped out of her costume altogether.
The Texan sucked in his breath and almost choked.
"You've got an erection," Lily told the pilot.
"I haven't." He was shaking so badly now that his coffee cup was empty. The controls in front of him gleamed wetly; steam rose off them.
Lily dropped one hand to the juncture of her thighs and performed a magic trick in which one of her fingers disappeared. "Yes, you have."
The pilot loo
ked down at his lap, at the telltale, arrow-headed bulge in his slacks.
Lily was running both hands up and down her body now, cupping her fine breasts, now her buttocks, caressing her thighs, almost encircling her waist.
The pilot opened his thermos bottle and dumped the whole batch of steaming coffee into his lap. He winced, bit his lip until blood came, but did not move otherwise.
"It didn't work," Lily said.
The pilot looked at his lap. He was still erect. "Damn," he said. By now, he had bitten his lip so hard that blood gleamed on his chin. His clothes were sodden with perspiration, and his hair lay in lank, damp strands across his dripping forehead. "I want what the general wants."
"You'll run out of coffee sooner or later," Lily said.
"No, I won't," the pilot said. "I brought three thermos bottles." He showed her the other two. "I want what the general wants," he repeated.
She stared him straight in the eye for a long minute, then sighed. She stopped caressing herself and picked up her costume. "I guess you're telling the truth."
"I am."
"It's sad," she said.
She turned and started out of the cockpit.
"Wait a minute, Lily!" the Texan said.
She turned, breasts slapping together, flushed green by the control lights. "What is it?"
His Adam's apple hobbled up and down. "I-Well, I don't care what the general wants."
"Yeah," she said. "But you aren't the pilot."
"I could be-one day soon."
"Hey!" the pilot said. "What's that supposed to mean?"