Dead On Arrival

by Matt Richtel

  Lyle looked Jerry straight in the eye, something approaching contrition, and gently pushed the gun down from his rib cage. Jerry allowed it to happen, indicating he’d had his say. But it was clear to Lyle this conversation wasn’t over. He needed to get the hell away from this guy.

  “The man over there is named Don.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It says so on his name tag. He’s alive but he’s sick.”

  “Yeah?” A generally skeptical tone.

  “I don’t have any idea with what,” Lyle said, suddenly realizing his strategy. He’d pepper humility with medical talk. He just had to get away from this guy.

  “His pupils are moving so rapidly that they look fixed. Fixed usually means brain-dead. But it’s not that, I don’t think. He’s got mildly inflamed organs and heavy mucus around his pharynx, both of which indicate an immune system response. Tight muscles might mean any number of things. I can’t really tell out here if he’s febrile.”

  “Fever.”

  “Right.” Lyle allowed himself a quiet exhale; Jerry was calming down.

  “Give me the bottles,” Jerry said.

  “What?”

  “If you think you’re off the hook with me, you’re wrong. First step, hand me the booze in your pockets.”

  Lyle felt anger’s electricity. For just a moment, it was a rush to have such an unscrambled emotion. Then a major downer. Pissed off about losing his cheap swill. That was a very bad sign. Pissed off at the one guy with a gun. Maybe a worse sign. Tied for last. Lyle reached into his pocket and pulled out two bottles. Tried to look unfazed. Time to play the long game.

  “My mom was a boozer.”

  Lyle didn’t say anything as Jerry chucked the bottles into the distance where they shattered.

  “So, where were we?”

  “You were shoving a gun into my ribs and calling me a fraud.”

  “Now we understand each other better. Let’s go back into the plane and you can brief us.”

  “Okeydokey.” Lyle glanced in the direction of the hangar and the sliver of light. Then turned back to Jerry. “When we get in there, before we go up into the cockpit—”

  “Flight deck.”

  What an asshole. Let him think he’s manned up, Lyle. Long game. “Right, sorry, Jerry. Before we climb up there, we should disinfect. And maybe we should consider staying down in the hol—”

  “Disinfect.”

  “Right. I touched that guy, and I got a mucus spray when I tested his gag reflex.”

  “Wait a second.”

  “I’m not saying I’ve got it. I’m not saying you’ve got it. Certainly, you’re at least one step removed. But whatever we’re dealing with is clearly highly virulent. I can’t think of an analogue, not in my experience and not even in the literature.”

  “You’ve read all the literature.” Jerry, with this poorly delivered snide remark, was showing his adolescent side and just exposing the breadth of his vulnerability. Then: “So we might have it?”

  “I don’t think you do. I’m less sure of me.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  Lyle tried to look vulnerable. “God, I hope so.”

  Jerry took a big step backward. “Okay, so . . .”

  “One way we might increase the odds . . .” Lyle tried to look like he was thinking.

  “Yeah.”

  “You keep your distance from me and from the guy on the ground. Get back to the cockpit, sorry, flight deck, give them an update. And I’ll chase the ghost.”

  He had Jerry’s attention.

  “I saw something move in there—over there.”

  “I looked and I didn’t—”

  “Maybe it was just light, I agree. I can’t be positive. But the way the shadows changed, it wasn’t . . . it was herky-jerky, like a person or an animal, not like snowfall or something. Speaking of which, it’s fucking cold.”

  “Stay on topic.”

  “Look, Jerry, I may have this thing. You may, too, I won’t lie. But I well might, and less likely you. So better me going in the hangar and you can tell them what I saw with Don. You know as much as I do—what I told you already.” Lyle thought about going on and remembered to keep it short and let Jerry reach his own conclusions.

  They stood in silence as snow accumulated at their feet.

  “The telephone game,” Eleanor muttered. Snow stuck to the window. Cold enough inside and out now that it wasn’t just melting.

  The pilot turned around and saw that the woman from Lyle’s seat had her hand on the door. It had been a good three minutes since the two had spoken.

  “I’m sorry I forgot your name.”

  “Alex. Telephone game?”

  “The kid game, where you whispered a secret to the next person and then little by little it got completely garbled.”

  “Was a fan myself. It’s so quiet out there. What do you think he’s—”

  “I mention it because that’s what this feels like. It’s so quiet, like everyone is whispering and then nothing makes any sense.”

  “Were you ever a writer?”

  “What a strange question,” Eleanor said. “Were you?”

  “No, I . . . never mind. It is getting elliptical in here.”

  Both women smiled for just an instant. The outskirts of a bond. They’d have made a striking buddy team in public, Eleanor as the one who attracted the immediate attention and Alex, slighter but with a depth anyone paying close attention could pick up. And on the steering yoke. Where were Jerry and that damned doctor? Wherever they were standing, the shadows or silhouettes were outside the view from the flight deck.

  Eleanor turned on the light. The man on the tarmac lay there still. Then the light flickered and failed. Eleanor slammed her hand on the steering column.

  A sound came from inside the cabin.

  Seventeen

  “You’re not taking the gun.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” Lyle said.

  “You were thinking about it.”

  “I wasn’t.” Lyle, in fact, hadn’t been thinking about it. But now that the idiot first officer brought it up, he wouldn’t have minded having the pistol. He just wanted it out of Jerry’s hands. He was more dangerous with that thing than a plane passenger with Ebola.

  “You’re just going to walk into the hangar.”

  Lyle nodded; more or less. “I’ll get close enough to call out. Maybe someone else is as confused as we are.”

  “And they’ve not come out here to get our attention,” Jerry thought it out aloud.

  “Would you?”

  Jerry thought about it.

  “If it was me in that hangar,” Lyle said, “and I saw some bodies and something had happened that scared the daylights out of me, I would keep glancing and trying to figure out what was going on.”

  “Or glancing and waiting for another target.”

  “Which is why you should go back into the plane.”

  “But you won’t because you’re so selfless.” There it was again, Jerry’s skepticism, his arrested adolescence, that’s what it was.

  “Jerry, listen to me.”

  “You’re going to lecture me . . .”

  “I lost my wife. She . . . we split. My family. You asked if I’m a drunk, and I don’t know if I am or not. But I have had a rough last couple of years. I’m in a good place to take a chance like this. And I really am a doctor and I used to be really good at it . . . so they told me.”

  It sounded sincere.

  “Go back and tell them to stay in the airplane, stay warm, not to touch that body, any of the bodies,” Lyle said.

  Jerry didn’t give Lyle the courtesy of a sign-off, just turned and walked. He shrugged his shoulders, noticeably, sending a message Lyle received: This nut can do whatever he wants. It was passive-aggressive and way better, Lyle thought, than having a gun stuck to his viscera. Asshole.

  Lyle turned to the hangar.

  I’m going to be the voice of reason here.
>
  Jerry willed himself to have the walk of a calm person. He imagined for a moment that he was that actor playing the lone wolf cop in Avalanche, the drama set in Park City. He was glad, in a way, Lyle had asked him to return to the plane. Now he was fully the first officer, first protector, federal flight deck officer licensed to carry, navigator. Jerry took that title very seriously. He kept things balanced. I know what Eleanor thinks of me. I know she thinks I’m neurotic. She’ll see I’m the voice of reason.

  He reached the belly of the plane and looked up. Shit, the rope had fallen. Now how the hell was he going to get up there?

  He heard someone yell from inside the plane.

  Did he imagine it?

  “Jerry!” Look. Did he hear it again? Stay calm.

  He started running toward the downed man named Don. Jerry recalled that the luggage cart was near him. He could use the cart to climb into the plane. He shone the flashlight, made out the outlines of the luggage cart.

  Noticed Don was sitting upright.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “Jerry!” Eleanor yelled into the belly of the plane. It wasn’t panic but it was pointed. “Can you hear me?”

  “There it is again,” Alex said. A sound from the passenger cabin. Scuffling or walking, something. Eleanor fiddled with the cabin camera but it wouldn’t work. The electrical system was all fucked up.

  “Maybe they’re—” Alex said and didn’t finish the thought . . . sitting up or coming alive like that body out there.

  “Get your jacket,” Eleanor said. “I’ll put on the heat in here and we’ll consult with them before we do anything. . . . Are you limping?”

  Alex swallowed. “I told Dr. Martin I have arthritis.”

  Eleanor studied Alex, wondering if she had it. “I’ll lower you down—” she started to say.

  Alex interrupted. “Captain. He’s out there.” She pointed.

  Eleanor turned and looked through the window. She couldn’t see details through the snow. Just silhouetted light and movement of Jerry walking toward the baggage handler.

  “Captain . . .” Alex said. She cleared her throat. “How do you feel?”

  “How do I feel?”

  “Faint or dizzy or anything like that?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “A little, I’m not sure. I—” Alex didn’t finish nor did she have to. She’d made her point that she didn’t feel exactly right.

  Cough.

  No doubt about it, Lyle thought. Someone coughed. He stood in the doorway of the hangar. He contemplated saying hello. Instead, he flicked off his phone. No need to bring attention to himself. It was an extreme version of what he told his students; the less attention you bring to yourself, the better. That helps avoid the observer effect.

  Here, though, it was a different aim. What was the intuition, the feeling he was having? He strained to look into the dark. Not much to be made out. The light he’d seen earlier coming from this direction had disappeared. So had someone turned it off?

  He peered into the darkness and thought, simply, Cavernous.

  His feet felt numb. Cold coursed up his legs and back and he shivered. Untenable, this situation. He fished around in his pocket. He felt what he was looking for, a quarter. He tossed it deep into the dark cavern, giving it a three-quarters heave. It flew a long way and then clanked against something metal. A plane, Lyle surmised, or a truck or other machine.

  “Hello,” he finally said.

  His voice echoed.

  Cough.

  Lyle finally realized the feeling he was experiencing. It had been a long, long time. Fear.

  Jerry kept his distance, willing himself to be that sheriff. He held the gun out front, pointed at the baggage handler who was prone again. Jerry had to check himself. The guy had been sitting upright, yes? Now he was down again. Was this some sort of zombie shit? Or, Jerry wondered, maybe this was the beginning of some kind of illness, his brain hallucinating.

  “Don’t move,” Jerry muttered. “Do. Not. Move.”

  No way around it, he was going to have to walk somewhat in the direction of Don if he was going to get the baggage cart. Well, unless he took a circular route. That’s what he’d do. He held the flashlight and the gun on the dude on the ground and he circled to his left, walking sideways, never taking his eyes from the man covering up with falling snow.

  Cough.

  There it was again.

  Then another sound. A click. It didn’t take a firearms expert to recognize it.

  Somewhere in the darkness, someone had a gun. Lyle froze, hoping whoever was aiming at him was equally blind in this darkness.

  Eighteen

  “I don’t think I should breathe on you, Captain Hall,” Alex said. She held a blue-and-white scarf over her nose and mouth, blue eyes visible over the top.

  Eleanor barely registered the comment. She was too busy vacillating between duty and fury. Duty told her to retreat to a triage checklist. Not that she’d ever prepped for anything exactly like this. Who could have? But she’d prepped for disaster. Fury told her she’d already failed. She’d allowed herself the ignominious thought: all her passengers were dead, and she was the only one who hadn’t gone down with the ship. Who gave a shit if this last passenger got her sick? What was left? Not honor? Not the rest of the world?

  “Jerry!” No answer. “Damn it.”

  Eleanor felt light-headed. She wondered when she last ate; it was the two homemade powdered-sugar-coated lemon bars she’d stuffed into her jacket pocket in the Ziploc. She turned to the slight passenger pressing her back against the flight deck wall; the captain felt like the day she lost Frank. Outside on the windshield, white flakes blotted out the coal-black night.

  The body was down again. So maybe, Jerry thought, he’d only imagined it had been sitting up. He stood ten feet away, gun out, scanning the area around him. Suddenly, he realized he was in the midst of the very fantasy he’d had a thousand times if he’d had it once; in the fantasy, for some reason set at a football stadium, militant gunmen had descended by parachutes and were killing everyone in sight until Jerry leapt on one from behind, stole his gun, started the heroic mutiny that saved the day. One of the presidential candidates in the last election had said he’d never sit around and just watch militants kill people. He’d do something. Jerry thought, Damn right. The thought of it now made him brave. With his gun, he could handle one crazy, virulent person who, anyhow, seemed paralyzed. So what, he remembered, that he’d lapsed on his gun training. At this distance, it didn’t matter. He shook off the cold that was trying to nestle in the exposed areas around his neck and wrists. He allowed himself a step forward. He trapped the flashlight right next to the muzzle of the pistol. It shone on the guy being covered up with snow, who had more of the icy slivers concentrated on his legs. That suggested that, yes, he’d sat up. The snow on his torso had dropped to his legs. Poor fucker, Jerry thought. God, just like his mom, dying right in front of him, second by second, in her case from booze, and not a damn thing he could do about it. Just watch the silent angel.

  Gun on the guy, he wound a semicircle around Don to get to the luggage rack. He kept himself facing the fallen man and pulled the cart so he’d never lose eye contact. Then he pushed the cart until he reached the plane, finding confidence with each step in the ease with which he was pushing. At the base of the plane, he let himself relax a touch. He locked the wheels of the luggage cart and stepped up to the second level, which allowed him to pop his head inside the hold.

  “Eleanor!”

  His voice echoed without response. Huh.

  “Yo, Eleanor, the cavalry is back.”

  Again, nothing.

  He bent and stuck his head out, trying to peer, neck craned low, wondering if she’d slipped out when he was getting the cart. But why wouldn’t she have said something? Then he fought off a malignant thought: What if she somehow was in cahoots with that manipulative doctor? He saw how she looked at that cunning shit. Stop it, Jerry. That makes no sense. C�
�mon, Jerry, he told himself, you’re the guy with the gun. Eleanor needs you. You have been called.

  “Captain Hall,” he said, “I’m coming up.”

  He pulled himself into the airplane’s gelid belly.

  “You should know,” Lyle said into the darkness, “that I really don’t give a fuck.”

  He almost laughed; for whose benefit was he being so honest, cavalier, or fraudulent? Or, fairly, some combination thereof—regardless, a recipe for danger in practically any ratio. He stepped forward into the cavern. Cough. Then a scuffling of feet. One, two. Lyle closed his eyes. What had he always told students? Drop the textbook and use your senses. Given the blackness in here—he was essentially blind—he could toss out sight so he closed his eyes and took in the rest of it. Now, silence. A mausoleum. Then a dampened scuffling sound, echo, then nothing. Quietly as he might, Lyle reached again into his pocket and fished. Bingo, a dime. Lyle pinched the chilly coin between his thumb and forefinger and flipped it into the nothingness in the direction of the cough and other sounds. Tink, tink, it hit cement, then skidded—clink—into something metal.

  Would it prompt more movement?

  Quiet. Nada. That was telling. Lyle was getting a picture.

  Eyes still closed, he inhaled deeply. Bacteria smelled like roadkill, decomposition. But that wasn’t here. Nor anything smoky from fire or metallic that he imagined resulted from an explosion. He detected a whiff of almond, sweetened. Probably, he thought, oil and oxidation. Okay, so? Machine shop, Lyle told himself, and then took comfort in two things the air didn’t carry: fire or blood. Fire would’ve meant gunpowder, ignition. Blood, that spoke for itself. Another scent then. Was that coffee? No, couldn’t be.

  Cough.

  Cough.

  Scuffle.

  Aha. Lyle opened his eyes. Nearly smiled with epiphany. What he’d suspected.