Dead On Arrival

by Matt Richtel

  He fell silent and realized he had no idea what they were asking of him. A medical opinion? Or some reassurance? Neither seemed realistic. He settled on a more primitive and frightening reason: they had no clue what was going on. They must have been sitting here for a while and had finally succumbed to getting outside input—from the doctor with hair matted against his forehead who had drugged himself to sleep.

  “You can’t get the police?”

  “Like we said.” Jerry’s voice had an edge. Lyle got the impression the man didn’t much want Lyle in the middle of this.

  “You’ve sealed the vents.” Lyle heard the scratch of sleep still thick in his throat.

  “We’re getting only recirculated. Mostly. The APU takes some from the outside.” The pilot paused. “Auxiliary power. We used it briefly but decided against.”

  “We have flight deck oxygen. Discrete source, in the aft hold. Just below us,” Jerry added.

  “Are you . . .” Lyle tried to pick his words carefully but couldn’t find suitably diplomatic ones. He asked, “Are you two feeling okay? Are you sick or is anyone on the plane feeling ill?”

  “Not to our knowledge.”

  “I guess we’re looking for a second set of eyes,” the pilot said.

  Lyle appreciated the frankness and its tone. But what good was he? He let himself tick down a list of options that might explain a handful of bodies inert here and no communications beyond the airport. The greatest likelihood was a terrorist attack, foreign or domestic. Nut job with a gun, or many of them.

  After that, what?

  Dirty bomb. One of those nasty things that leaves the buildings intact and kills all forms of life. He’d heard of it, but hardly could offer counsel.

  Nuke.

  So this was everywhere? Or the epicenter was near here? Small potatoes. In the middle of nowhere? Without fire? No.

  His mind wandered further, drawing less from the literature than from more exotic theories. Nothing he’d ever read about resembled this.

  Nerve agent, likelier than a nuke, given the modest evidence in front of him, maybe even likely. Sarin gas. It inhibits release or transfer of acetylcholine, a neurochemical that caused muscles to contract. In its absence, paralysis, asphyxiation. He’d heard about the Iranians’ testing of a Zyclon B with hyperspeed effectiveness. It moved at the rate of data. A long shot but not as long as something organic, a virus, not very likely at all; nothing he knew about killed this quickly without killing the host so fast that the pathology couldn’t spread. It’s what made Ebola so, ultimately, self-destructive. When the CDC flew him into a Pakistani village, years earlier, after a Washington Post blog called him Young Dr. Pandemic, Lyle saw bodies akimbo much like the guy in the orange jumpsuit next to the luggage carrier, but in that case, with more signs of trauma, not, like this guy, just frozen in his tracks.

  Bacteria. Forget it. The time between onset and death took, at its quickest, a day. Unless something had been gestating. But why only the people on the ground? Not in the plane?

  He taught his last adjunct class at UCSF three years ago. Maybe there had been developments, diseases, stuff he hadn’t kept up with, a superbug in the literature or lab. It is flu season, he thought. But no flu ever acted like this.

  Could he be sleeping? Could this be a drug-induced hallucination, all the toxins in his brain and liver finally spilling over into madness? All this inside his mind. And this was going to be the trip that righted his ship.

  “Say something,” the pilot said.

  “Food poisoning,” he muttered.

  “Seriously,” said Jerry. Unclear if he was being sarcastic.

  “Maslow’s hierarchy. People gotta eat. You said no one is answering the communications?”

  The pilot reached to the center console, unlatched a headset, brown leather strap across the top smudged from handling. He accepted them in his right hand, tentative.

  “You have to put them on your ears.”

  They were tight—the pilot had a small head—and now he glanced at her as he widened the gadget’s setting, catching her allure. Graceful, thin fingers on her right hand gripped tightly around a smaller throttle-type device, not the main throttle, next to her leg. Still couldn’t see her face.

  “Just static,” he said.

  She reached to the center console and turned a knob on the radio. New channel. More static. New channel. More static.

  “The first two are the main air traffic control channels, the second two are backups. Nothing for nearly an hour.”

  “You’ve been sitting here an hour?”

  No answer.

  “How did you land?”

  The copilot turned to Lyle. He looked a little bit like a fish—sloping forward, eyes bugging, and widened, wide lips. He said: “When the comms go down, you land.”

  Again, a slight edge. Defensive. Lyle decided not to wholly trust him but gave no indication. If Lyle had a true gift, it was mistrusting with great dignity, never with personal disdain. No one ever disliked Lyle for his healthy skepticism. Fact is, people liked Lyle, admired him, let him get away with his apparent non sequiturs and creative flights because they always sensed his goodness, even after he could no longer feel it himself.

  “Mountains,” Lyle said.

  “What had you expected coming to Steamboat?”

  What had he expected? Not much. A keynote address to a small conference and a chance to begin to make amends. Pay the bills again.

  “Can you turn on the lights?”

  “We don’t want to bring attention to ourselves or continue to bring unwanted scrutiny from the passengers.”

  “Because?”

  “Because I said so. Because it’s obvious.”

  The pilot inhaled deeply. Click. In the five or so seconds during which lights flooded the tarmac, Lyle narrowed his focus from the macro—a small tarmac, such that it was, with one, two bodies lying on the ground to the desolate corporate jet parked to the left, painted red with the insignia “Corp Go,” to the modest lounge in the single-story ranch-style airport frozen with bodies, to the dark maw of the hangar on the far right and, in the distance, wisps in the air, smoke?—to the micro—a single body, the man in the orange jumpsuit beside the luggage rack, frozen in time and space. Too far to discern anything. Other than: comatose or dead. No evidence of shrapnel wounds. No signs of explosion anywhere. But no movement since the last flood of light.

  And mountains. They were in a valley.

  Lights off. Just vapor trails of images. Then a fuzzy picture, inside his mind’s eye, bodies on the corrugated roof shack off a dusty road in southern Tanzania. The images jolted Lyle, turned to static, faded.

  “Looks like the Andes. Ski town, right?”

  “Not in November. Mud town, now. Decent airport, though. Yampa Valley Airport, popularly known as Hayden.”

  “It’s gun country.”

  “What?”

  “People love their firearms here.”

  “We’ve been over this. Where’s the blood?” the first officer asked.

  Fair question. Why didn’t anyone come to help? Where was the ambulance, the firefighters?

  “Maybe he killed everyone in sight and flipped the power switch.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Screw Loose. It’s as good a working theory as any. Good reason to stay on the plane, I guess. What time is it?” Lyle asked.

  “Here, just past one, in the morning.”

  “What’s the temperature?”

  “High thirties, but not trusting our gauges.”

  “You have electricity.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lyle squinted.

  “Well?”

  “We have fuel?”

  “Yes.”

  Lyle looked at the pilot with a clear, unspoken question: Then why not let’s get the hell out of here?

  “Maybe enough. Probably. We’ve kept the engine running for the heat. No engine, no heat.”

  “But that burns fuel,” said Jerry.


  Lyle thought, I slept through it. He’d taken a Benadryl, or four. What you do when you can’t get the good stuff. He rubbed his fingers together, creating sensation, assuring himself he’s awake, sure now that he is.

  “What kind of plane is this?”

  “Do you know planes?”

  “Not really.”

  “It’s a 737, Boeing, two turbofan engines. But no communications and the electrical has been less than reliable. Some systems have gone offline. We have auxiliary power. I’m saving it. We take off, we risk coming straight down,” the first officer said. “What we’re asking is whether you’ve ever seen something like this—or read about it? That’s the opinion we’re interested in.”

  Lyle reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone. “May I?”

  “It won’t work. But be my guest.”

  He could look something up, but what exactly? It wasn’t like he was going to go into PubMed and look up the symptom that everyone not on an airplane was dead. His phone came to life. No signal.

  “Besides food poisoning,” the pilot said with patience. Lyle liked the nuance in her voice, the control under pressure.

  Lyle inched forward, as much as he could, before his knees hit the instrument panel. He put his phone down and peered into the night. Useful words and thoughts failed him.

  “So in sum . . .” the first officer said.

  “It’s very hard to know from here. Looks to me like those people are either dead or quickly heading that direction.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s very cold.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “A storm is blowing in.”

  “How do you know?” Lyle asked. How could they see anything blowing in? No radar, presumably. But his interest was piqued; maybe the storm already came through, bringing something deadly, carried on the wind.

  Jerry sighed. His meaning clear enough: You might be a doctor but we’re pilots.

  “What happens when you call someone, anyone?”

  “It goes directly to voice mail or says all circuits are busy. We’ve been trying to find another human being for over an hour, just on the ground. I can barely contain the passengers.”

  “Won’t they look for us, a plane that’s off the radar?”

  “One would think,” the pilot said.

  As Lyle took it in, he found his attention tugged to the dark horizon outside the plane.

  “There,” Lyle said.

  “What?”

  “The hangar. Movement.”

  Three

  “I don’t see anything. It’s too dark,” said the pilot, turning to her second in command. “No need for that, Jerry.”

  Lyle saw the gun for the first time. It was holstered, sitting on the button-laden dash, beneath the copilot’s sweaty palm. Lyle knew a bit about guns from the protection he sometimes got overseas and figured rightly it was a nine millimeter, standard issue for a licensed flight officer.

  Jerry drummed his fingers on the gun. Lyle felt like the presence of the weapon should be telling him something but he wasn’t sure what. It reminded him distantly of the meeting he had with the dean as things were spiraling downward. There was someone from the university’s human relations department in the meeting, like a gun, just in case the dean needed to defend herself. Lyle, your behavior belies the intellectual maturity of a . . .

  “Maybe I imagined it.” Lyle sensed he didn’t. But there was nothing there. Shades of black; even the grays were black, no reflections or shadows. “Why aren’t the lights on out there?” Anywhere. He assured himself he saw something: a wisp, shape, vapor trail in an embodied form. Yet as he tried to see it again, he couldn’t even make out the hangar.

  “Some attacks disable electrical systems.”

  “So do some storms. Not unheard of.”

  “I’m not sure I can be of much help. I’m sorry,” Lyle said. “Is there something specific you want from me?”

  “We’re grasping at straws,” Eleanor said. Then, after a beat, she added, “I wanted to have something reasonable to say to them.” It wasn’t immediately clear who she was referring to but then, in the silence that followed, Lyle could hear the dull cacophony that swirled from outside the cabin. Voice stew starting to boil. “I wanted to make sure that we weren’t missing something.”

  The pilot lifted the intercom. “I better say something.”

  She sat, lifted the intercom, pressed a button on the side with a sweaty-damp thumb. “Folks, I’ve got an update for you.” Lyle almost laughed. She was using the same tone of voice they use when the gate’s not ready or they need to deice the wings. He imagined what he’d next hear: We’ve got a slight delay because everyone in the world is dead. Have some peanuts!

  “As you know, we’ve arrived safely at our destination in Colorado. Just outside Steamboat Springs. We are still working to fix our communications glitch.” She stopped. Swiveled. Looked directly at Lyle for the first time. His first impression was that she was unwavering, and strikingly attractive but with slightly crooked front teeth, WASPy with a lemon twist, what his friends in college called light blue blood. He wanted to be on her team, could picture her painlessly climbing the company ladder, making only friends. “I’m going to come out and discuss all of this with you in person,” she told the intercom, then took her thumb from the button on its side.

  Just as she reached for the door, a rap of knuckles came from the other side, then a scratching sound.

  “Hold on, Stella,” Eleanor said through the door. “I’m coming.” She cleared her throat, muttered something that sounded to Lyle like “No manual for this one.”

  To Jerry: “Only I get in here.” To Lyle: “Would you mind joining me? Follow my lead. We’re improvising, but with authority.” Paused. “Got it?”

  No answer required. She slid by Lyle to the flight deck door, glanced at him. “In your considered opinion, we’re waiting to get some more information but there’s no reason at all to panic.”

  “Yep. Been there, done that.”

  “Not that I expect you’ll say anything.”

  Eleanor thought about what she’d say: I’m Captain Eleanor Hall—the voice from the intercom. We’re taking a cautious approach. Waiting for a position at the terminal. No reason for alarm.

  Another rap on the door and a woman’s voice said, “Please.”

  “Okay, Stella.” Eleanor opened the door.

  She wasn’t looking at Stella but a passenger.

  “I’m coming out, I’d appreciate your—”

  “They’re all dead,” the passenger said.

  “What?”

  The passenger, a short woman with short, bleach-blond hair beneath a gray-and-gold-colored knit hat, wobbled on her feet. She looked stunned and grabbed the side of the door. Eleanor glanced at Lyle, pursed her lips, and said to the passenger, “That’s not at all clear. I’ve got a doctor here and there is evidence that people in the terminal may be ill or have some syndrome. I’m coming out to address that, and it’s very important that we not spread rumors.”

  “What? Outside the plane?” the woman said. “No, I’m talking about . . . I’m saying that—”

  It dawned on Eleanor and Lyle at the same time. They jointly pushed open the cockpit door all the way. They saw what she meant.

  Row after row of passengers just like the man on the tarmac. Collapsed, tilted, crumpled, absent any signs of life.

  “No, no,” Eleanor said.

  Lyle pulled on the arm of the passenger and yanked her inside the flight deck. He slammed shut the door.

  “What the hell is going on?” Jerry said.

  “It’s in here.”

  Four

  “Cover your nose and mouth,” Jerry said.

  They all did it—Jerry, Eleanor, and the passenger—well, not Lyle. It wouldn’t matter. Microbacteria or viruses would easily sneak through fabric or hands. He steadied himself against the wall and he whisked down a catalog of deadly invaders carried
by air—the hantavirus and its many species: Puumala, Muleshoe, Black Creek Canal. Carried by rodents, defecated, dried and baked into dust, inhaled by humans. Inhaled. Delivered through the air. There are horses up here, cows, presumably, lots of dry air. Dried.

  Where, he thought, was Melanie? And the baby. Got to be, what, three years old now and change? Safe, surely. Wherever they were.

  “We have to get out of here,” Jerry said.

  “A spore, maybe, something that comes and goes,” Lyle said, shrugging off the idea as quickly as it came, thinking aloud. Then he looked at the passenger. “What happened out there?”

  “I . . .” Tears filled her eyes. “I came out of the bathroom.”

  “Where?”

  “The back. Stop, stop, just tell me what’s going on!” Freaked out, yes, but not entirely plaintive. Wavering between shock and what Lyle surmised as a basic inner strength. She looked distantly familiar and then he placed her; she’d been sitting next to him, sharing his aisle.

  Eleanor stood and Lyle, without being aware of it, put out a gentle hand, trying to calm everyone. He made an equally subconscious decision to deliberately ask the passenger the most basic questions to steady her, so he could get as much information as possible before she imploded.

  “We’re trying to figure that out. You can help us. What’s your name?”

  She took a second to process it. “Alex.”

  “Alex?”

  “Jenkins. It’s a dream . . .”

  “Alex, was there a noise? Before people got . . . sick. Was there a noise?”

  “What kind of noise?”

  “A scream,” Eleanor said. “Was anyone in pain? I thought I heard voices.”

  “I was just going to the bathroom,” she said. She brought a petite hand to the side of her face. Clear-painted fingernails had been gnawed. A nervous person, Lyle thought. Now trying to hold it together.

  “And then you came out of the bathroom, and—”

  “And I started to walk up the aisle and I noticed this guy was falling out of his seat—”

  “Was in the process of falling, or had already fallen?”

  “Cut this bullshit out!” Jerry said through the jacket he held to his mouth.