Bobby woke up peacefully, smiling. He felt something unexplainable come over him. He felt like he finally figured out what Nikki has been trying to tell him along. He thought to himself, why am I wasting my life away at this shitty news station? I should be writing. He had his answer. He decided at that moment that once this trip to Kentucky is over, he’s going to march into Masterson’s office and tell him to shove this job straight up his ass so far he chokes on it. Bobby wanted to wake Pete up and tell him the good news. It was a sudden decision, but a smart and realistic decision. He knows he can do it and that his wife would support the decision. He let out a long and relaxing breath that seemed tucked away somewhere deep within that had been waiting for him to finally come to the realization of what his real purpose in life is to do.
The plane suddenly shook. The pilot’s voice came over the intercom and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen. This is your Captain speaking. We are going to be experiencing some severe turbulence as we fly over Paducah, Kentucky due to a severe thunderstorm. Please stay seated and keep your seatbelts on. Thank you very much.”
Bobby shook his head and couldn’t believe that his dream had lasted nearly the entire flight. He felt a little nervous considering he does not like to fly. Pete woke up and caught the last of the Captain’s speech. “Thunderstorm? Seatbelts?” said Pete.
“It’s fine. Just some turbulence,” said Bobby as he buckled his belt. The plane shook more vigorously.
The beautiful flight attendant, Abby, walked by their seats. Pete stuck his hand out and stopped her. “Can I get a soda, honey?” asked Pete.
“I have water. Is that fine?” she said.
“I guess that will work,” said Pete. The flight attendant smiled and walked toward the back of the plane. “Why can’t a man get a soda on a plane these days? I hate water. You know Bobby, it’s all about advertising. I bet those assholes pay the airline to serve their drink on this plane. Either that or some nutjob somewhere in a leather chair in a conference room said ‘let’s make it bottled water. That’s what they’ll drink. I like soda.’”
“Can’t always get what you want,” said Bobby. He reached for a magazine that was stuck in the pouch of the seat in front of him. It wasn’t exactly Bobby’s preferred reading, but anything would do to take his mind off the turbulence. The plane shook again. Bobby suddenly remembered he was going to tell Pete about his new plan in life. He wanted to spill the beans to him. Hell, maybe Pete would build up the courage and quit, too. Bobby turned to Pete and opened his mouth, but the words didn’t come out. They couldn’t. Not at the sight of the man in his fifties, sitting across the aisle from them. Bobby leaned forward and got a better glimpse of him. The man had turned a bluish-pale color and kept breathed heavily.
“Oh shit, Pete,” said Bobby as he raised his finger and pointed over to the man. “Look at that guy.” Pete looked over and flinched at the grotesque sight of him. “Hey, man. Are you alright?” asked Bobby.
The flight attendant appeared in the aisle with Pete’s water and blocked their view. “Here’s your—” Suddenly, she let out a viscous and loud scream as if someone had just bitten her. Someone did bite her. The man in the aisle across from them stood up after biting her upper thigh. Blood dripped from his mouth and from Abby’s leg. He growled at her and jumped at her, latching on to her with a deathly grip. At that instant, Bobby unbuckled his belt and reached out, pushing the man away from her face as he tried to snap at her nose. Pete sat in his seat, shocked and frozen stiff. The water fell on his lap and soaked into the front of his jeans, looking as though he had just pissed himself. Maybe he did. The man fell back into his seat and growled louder. The plane was now going through rough turbulence and shook more and more, bouncing the luggage up and down in the overhead storage area. One of the bins burst open toward the back the plane and luggage fell on the head of an older lady. She screamed.
The flight attendant screamed and ran down the aisle toward the cockpit of the plane. More screams came from the back of the plane. Bobby broke his attention from the growling man and saw a passenger toward the back, eating away at a young woman’s neck. Blood spurted as her screams faded into a gargle and then stopped. Now, everyone screamed and it echoed loudly throughout the entire plane. Bobby didn’t know what to think or do. His thoughts scrambled through his mind, thinking about what he should do in a situation like this. Is it terrorists, he thought. He never heard of terrorists biting their victims. Usually, they would just blow the shit out of the plane or crash it into a building right? The growling man sprang from his seat again and turned to the passenger sitting next to him. He lunged at the passenger, an elderly man who must be in his early seventies. The growling man grabbed the passenger’s throat. He squeezed tightly as he opened his mouth wide, and clamped down on the old man’s nose. The old man screamed as his nose ripped from his face between the teeth of the growling man. Blood spurted from the old man’s face and across the back of the seat and onto the heads of the people in front of him. Bobby’s stomach convulsed as he watched the growling man chew and then swallow the old man’s nose. He could have sworn he heard the crunching of the cartilage between the growling man’s teeth.
From the front of the plane, Bobby heard more growling. A woman, with blood dripping down from her mouth and covering the top half of her shirt, walked from first class down the aisle hissing and growling at other passengers. Her elbow appeared to be broken as her arm dangled at her side. Someone must have fought back, but not hard enough.
“What the fuck is going on here?” screamed a woman sitting in front of Bobby. She screamed more and tried to undo her belt. It seemed to be stuck. The growling man turned his attention from the old man and to the screaming woman. He hissed as he stepped across the aisle, his mouth hanging open, and blood dripping and falling to the floor. He leaped across the seat in front of Pete and lay across the top, with his teeth less than an inch from the woman’s ear. She screamed as she turned her head away, smacking it on the side of the plane next to the window. The blow knocked her out cold. She lay limp in her seat.
More screams from the back of the plane. Bobby looked back there again, his mind racing, not knowing what to do. He jerked his head up and looked at the intercom as the pilot’s voice came through. “No! Stop! Please, no!” The intercom cut out. The plane suddenly felt like it dropped a thousand feet in less than a second, then another thousand feet. Several passengers threw up from the sudden drop.
A man wearing a trucker hat jumped on the back of the growling man. He punched the growling man in the back of the head several times, knocking him out. The growling man fell across Pete’s lap and then slumped back into the aisle. Pete let out a girlish scream. The flight attendant ran from the front of the plane, screaming in pain, and frightened at what she just witnessed inside the cockpit. “He’s—eating him,” she screamed as she pressed her hand against the bite on her upper thigh. Blood ran down the side of her leg and turned her white ankle sock into a red, blood soaked mess.
The hissing woman turned around and looked at the flight attendant. She sprang forward, but the man with the trucker hat came to save the day again. He leaped across the seats and jumped on her back, sending her to the floor with a loud crash. Her head hit the floor hard and bounced up, then back down again as the man with the trucker hat fell flat onto her back. He grabbed her hair and smashed her head into the floor several times, sending splatters of blood high enough to touch the ceiling.
Bobby felt the sudden urge that he needed to help, too. For God’s sake, he did spend four years in the Marines. He is not a coward so he must do something. The Marines have landed. Bobby jumped over Pete’s lap, who still sat stiff as a piece of lead, and ran to the back of the plane. The plane dropped another thousand feet, bouncing the overhead luggage, causing some compartments to open and heavy bags to fall onto screaming passenger’s heads. It silenced some of them. Bobby fell to the floor after having come off it a foot. He jumped back up and continued his mad dash to the back
of the plane. The man enjoying his breakfast of jugular vein and washing it down with blood was still gnawing away at a woman’s throat. She certainly had died since the blood stopped spurting from her neck and just flowed slowly down the front of her chest and across her breasts beneath her shirt. The passengers sitting around her were as stiff as Pete, but screaming to God and praying this nightmare would end.
The gnawing man fell to the floor as a laptop Bobby found came crashing down across the back of his head. The man twitched a moment then stopped moving completely. The woman with the gnawed out neck, fell forward and her head rested against the back of the seat in front of her. A girl, no more than seven years old, screamed sharply as she thought the dead woman was staring at her as the blood dripped from the woman’s neck and onto the floor. Bobby stood over the man’s body, breathing heavily, and trying to gather his thoughts to make sense of what the fuck just happened.
Everyone’s attention quickly changed from the blood thirsty, growling passengers to the fact that the plane is falling out of the sky at a rapid pace. Someone must do something or they will all be dead soon. Bobby stood over the man who had eaten away at the woman’s neck, holding the laptop and ready to give him a good whack again if needed. The emergency oxygen masks jolted out of the bottom of the overhead compartments. Someone screamed that everyone is going to die and the bloodthirsty people must be terrorists. Most of the other passengers, who were not screaming, froze stiff in their seats out of sheer terror they were going to die in a horrific plane crash over Tennessee. The man with the trucker hat grabbed Bobby’s shoulder. Bobby, thinking it was another crazy person ready to tear away some of his flesh, flung the laptop around. The man with the trucker hat ducked, barely escaping a crashing blow from it.
“Fuck,” said the man as he ducked. “I’m not one of them. Come to the front. You got to help me.” He grabbed Bobby’s arm and pulled him down the aisle.
“What’s wrong?” asked Bobby. He looked around at the other passengers as the plane shook as though they were in a car, bouncing down a graded road with no shocks.
“You seem like the only person not frozen stiff or eating anyone.” The man pushed the flight attendant out of their way. She continued to scream. “Something’s wrong with the pilot. We got to get in there and stop it before we all die.”
Bobby’s face turned pale as he realized that the plane is going down. The pilot’s voice that came over the intercom only moments before echoed through his mind. He watched the man with the trucker hat kick the door to the cockpit several times. It finally burst open after the seventh kick. The sight inside the cockpit was gruesome and at that moment, Bobby felt like there would be no hope of landing in Nashville safely. There was nothing in the little cards in the back of the airplane seats that said what to do in a situation like this. The next thought that ran through his mind was seeing Eddie grown up and in college. He thought about Nikki for a moment. He felt his life flash before his eyes and felt disappointment that it was not a very good life. Bobby told himself there would be no way he will die today, not in an airplane, 2,000 miles from his family.
“Oh my God,” the man with the trucker hat said, as he rushed into the cockpit. The co-pilot chewed away at the pilot’s face. Most of it was nearly gone. The co-pilot’s face dripped with blood and it ran down his neck and soaked to the front of his shirt. The co-pilot ignored Bobby and the man with the hat. “Get the fuck off of him,” yelled the man with the hat.
Bobby snapped out of his dazed faze of confusion and shoved the man out of his way. He leaped in the cockpit, put the co-pilot into a headlock, and pulled him back into the aisle outside of the cockpit. The co-pilot kicked and growled, blood dripping from his mouth. A piece of meaty flesh hung from between his teeth. Bobby squeezed tighter around his neck as they fell backwards with the co-pilot landing on top of him. The co-pilot kicked his feet and gasped for air. Bobby held him in a chokehold he learned in boot camp when he was in the Marines and wouldn’t let go. The co-pilot’s eyes bugged out and his body stiffened at one last breath he took in and then feel limp. Bobby held on for what seemed like an eternity, not sure if it was safe to let go. The co-pilot stopped moving completely.
The plane shook more and took a deeper dive. The co-pilot’s lifeless body bounced off Bobby. The passengers in first class screamed louder at the sight of the co-pilot. It added to their already intense deathly screams, knowing they are likely going to die in a matter of minutes. The man with the trucker hat grabbed the pilot and shook him. “Are you alright?”
“I...can’t...see.” The pilot gargled on his own blood and stared ahead, not looking at anything. He raised his shaking hand and pointed to the microphone hanging from the instrument panel. “Call...this...in.” His hand dropped quickly. He surely won’t be alive much longer with his blood gushing from several bites on his face and neck.
“Relax buddy,” said the man. “I’m going to do the best I can to help you. My name’s Troy Olson. You’re going to be alright.” Troy patted the pilot on the shoulder. He lifted his hand and grimaced at the sight of the warm blood on his palm. He quickly wiped it on his pants.
Bobby rushed into the cockpit. “Holy fuck.” He looked at the pilot and then to Troy. “What the hell are we going to do?”
“He’s still alive. Maybe he can still fly it...He pointed to that mike right there. Said to call it in.” Troy pointed to the mike. Their only hope. A microphone that could call into to someone to help land the plane. Hopefully, someone will answer.
Their attention quickly turned from the pilot as the sunlight blared through the windshield. They were out of the clouds now and could see the city of Nashville. The tallness of the L&C and the “Batman” building looked close enough to throw a baseball and knock out one of the windows. They had dropped over 30,000 feet in a matter of only a few minutes, long enough for a few passengers to have their faces eaten and the pilot to lose most of his. Bobby looked around and decided to sit in the co-pilot’s chair. Troy grabbed the microphone and pressed in the button on the side.
“This is Troy Olson. Hello. We are going to crash.” Screaming from the passengers behind them became intensely louder. A few all the way at the back of the plane screamed, “We’re going to die.” Troy and Bobby looked at each other, then to the instrument panel. The frequency was set to INTERCOM. Troy quickly flipped it to TRANSMIT and pressed the button again. The buildings were closer now. Bobby looked out the windshield and could see cars backed up on the interstate. He noticed smoke coming from several small buildings and houses.
“This is Troy Olson. Is anybody there?” Troy let out on the button. The radio remained silent. “Hello. Can you hear me?” Troy let out on the button again. Still silence.
“Why aren’t they answering?” asked Bobby. A strange sense of terror over took his body as he thought about the plane and smoking buildings below. No one is answering because there is no one to answer, he thought.
“I don’t know, but I’m not dying today.” Troy grabbed the pilot and shook him. “Wake the fuck up. You’re going to land this fucking plane.” The pilot fluttered his eyes and did his best to stay alert. He could not speak, he just gargled and blood dripped from his mouth. Bobby thought that if the pilot’s face was not shredded the pilot could pass for being drunk. Such a silly thought at a time like this.
Troy noticed the pilot taking control of the plane. He turned quickly, took the closest seat, and buckled himself in. Bobby buckled his belt and put his hands over his face. “God help us,” said Bobby. He and Troy prayed that the pilot was actually trying to control the plane and land it, not just grabbing onto something to keep from leaving this world in a bloody mess.
The passengers screamed and screamed. The plane shook vigorously as if a child were shaking a toy airplane and flying it across his play pin. The pilot, looking on the edge of death, succeeded in leveling out the plane and steered clear of the buildings in downtown. The landing gear barely missed a big sign labeled LP FIELD. Bobby fel
t like his heart was going to explode as he peaked through his fingers, watching the pilot struggle to steer the plane to his left. They were now only 100 feet from the ground. The pilot turned back to his right and pulled the yoke up. The nose lifted high and all that appeared in the windshield were the clouds. The pilot pushed the yoke down and fell forward on it. Bobby pulled his hands from his face and grabbed the instrument panel. The wide lanes of an interstate suddenly appeared in the windshield.
The initial touchdown of the plane along the interstate flung the passengers forward in their seats like rag dolls. The screaming stopped as soon as the wheels touched ground. Everyone froze stiff with a death grip on the armrests of their seats. Any tighter and they would surely tear through the cloth and plastic. The plane vibrated and shook and luggage bounced out of the overhead bins, falling on people and in the aisle. The lights flickered on and off and on and off. The sound of the jet engines and the crunching of vehicles underneath the plane echoed over and over again. Bobby stared out the windshield, shocked and amazed, at the cars and trucks that were not moving. They just sat there, waiting for the plane to hit them. He moved his eyes from the cars and saw a bridge up ahead and a sign reading CUMBERLAND RIVER. He gasped for air and felt like he held his breath in until it was all over. A loud crash came from underneath the plane and an explosion on the right side shook the plane harder. The landing gear had collapsed and the right two engines exploded into a ball of fire, taking out most of the side of the plane with it. The plane dropped to the ground and slid like a sled closer to the split in the interstate just before the river. Bobby covered his face and screamed. Troy screamed just as loud. The screaming from the back of the plane grew louder as passengers on the right side burned alive. There was nothing they could do as they were locked tightly in their seats.
The plane finally stopped inches from the mouth of the river. A stalled semi-truck in front of the plane blocked it from going any further. There was not complete silence, but Bobby felt as though it were when the plane finally stopped. The crackling and roaring of the fire from the right side of the plane intensified as Bobby struggled to undo his seat belt. He couldn’t believe he was still alive. He looked back at Troy.
The Gorging Page 9