12

Craig Toomy heard the brat begin to caterwaul back there someplace and ignored it. He had found what he was looking for in the third locker he opened, the one with the name MARKEY Dymotaped to the front. Mr Markey’s lunch — a sub sandwich poking out of a brown paper bag — was on the top shelf. Mr Markey’s street shoes were placed neatly side by side on the bottom shelf. Hanging in between, from the same hook, were a plain white shirt and a gunbelt. Protruding from the holster was the butt of Mr Markey’s service revolver.

Craig unsnapped the safety strap and took the gun out. He didn’t know much about guns — this could have been a .32, a .38, or even a .45, for all of him — but he was not stupid, and after a few moments of fumbling he was able to roll the cylinder. All six chambers were loaded. He pushed the cylinder back in, nodding slightly when he heard it click home, and then inspected the hammer area and both sides of the grip. He was looking for a safety catch, but there didn’t appear to be one. He put his finger on the trigger and tightened until he saw both the hammer and the cylinder move slightly. Craig nodded, satisfied.

He turned around and without warning the most intense loneliness of his adult life struck him. The gun seemed to take on weight and the hand holding it sagged. Now he stood with his shoulders slumped, the briefcase dangling from his right hand, the security guard’s pistol dangling from his left. On his face was an expression of utter, abject misery. And suddenly a memory recurred to him, something he hadn’t thought of in years: Craig Toomy, twelve years old, lying in bed and shivering as hot tears ran down his face. In the other room the stereo was turned up loud and his mother was singing along with Merrilee Rush in her droning off-key drunk’s voice: “Just call me angel... of the morn-ing, bay-bee... just touch my cheek... before you leave me, bay-bee...”

Lying there in bed. Shaking. Crying. Not making a sound. And thinking: Why can’t you love me and leave me alone, Momma? Why can’t you just love me and leave me alone?

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Craig Toomy muttered through his tears. “I don’t want to, but this... this is intolerable.”

Across the room was a bank of TV monitors, all blank. For a moment, as he looked at them, the truth of what had happened, what was still happening, tried to crowd in on him. For a moment it almost broke through his complex system of neurotic shields and into the air-raid shelter where he lived his life.

Everyone is gone, Craiggy-weggy. The whole world is gone except for you and the people who were on that plane.

“No,” he moaned, and collapsed into one of the chairs standing around the Formica-topped kitchen table in the center of the room. “No, that’s not so. That’s just not so. I refute that idea. I refute it utterly.”

The langoliers were here, and they will be back, his father said. It overrode the voice of his mother, as it always had. You better be gone when they get here... or you know what will happen.

He knew, all right. They would eat him. The langoliers would eat him up.

“But I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he repeated in a dreary, distraught voice. There was a mimeographed duty roster lying on the table. Craig let go of his briefcase and laid the gun on the table beside him. Then he picked up the duty roster, looked at it for a moment with unseeing eyes, and began to tear a long strip from the lefthand side.

Rii-ip.

Soon he was hypnotized as a pile of thin strips — maybe the thinnest ever! — began to flutter down onto the table. But even then the cold voice of his father would not entirely leave him:

Or you know what will happen.

Chapter 5

A Book of Matches. The Adventure of the Salami Sandwich. Another Example of the Deductive Method. The Arizona Yew Plays the Violin. The Only Sound in Town.

1

The frozen silence following Dinah’s warning was finally broken by Robert Jenkins. “We have some problems,” he said in a dry lecture-hall voice. “If Dinah hears something — and following the remarkable demonstration she’s just given us, I’m inclined to think she does — it would be helpful if we knew what it is. We don’t. That’s one problem. The plane’s lack of fuel is another problem.”

“There’s a 727 Out there,” Nick said, “all cozied up to a jetway. Can you fly one of those, Brian?”

“Yes,” Brian said.

Nick spread his hands in Bob’s direction and shrugged, as if to say There you are: one knot untied already.

“Assuming we do take off again, where should we go?” Bob Jenkins went on. “A third problem.”

“Away,” Dinah said immediately. “Away from that sound. We have to get away from that sound, and what’s making it.”

“How long do you think we have?” Bob asked her gently. “How long before it gets here, Dinah? Do you have any idea at all?”

“No,” she said from the safe circle of Laurel’s arms. “I think it’s still far. I think there’s still time. But...”

“Then I suggest we do exactly as Mr Warwick has suggested,” Bob said. “Let’s step over to the restaurant, have a bite to eat, and discuss what happens next. Food does have a beneficial effect on what Monsieur Poirot liked to call the little gray cells.”

“We shouldn’t wait,” Dinah said fretfully.

“Fifteen minutes,” Bob said. “No more than that. And even at your age, Dinah, you should know that useful thinking must always precede useful action.”

Albert suddenly realized that the mystery writer had his own reasons for wanting to go to the restaurant. Mr Jenkins’s little gray cells were all in apple-pie working order — or at least he believed they were — and following his eerily sharp assessment of their situation on board the plane, Albert was willing at least to give him the benefit of the doubt. He wants to show us something, or prove something to us, he thought.

“Surely we have fifteen minutes?” he coaxed.

“Well...” Dinah said unwillingly. “I guess so.”

“Fine,” Bob said briskly. “It’s decided.” And he struck off across the room toward the restaurant, as if taking it for granted that the others would follow him.

Brian and Nick looked at each other.

“We better go along,” Albert said quietly. “I think he knows stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” Brian asked.

“I don’t know, exactly, but I think it might be stuff worth finding out.”

Albert followed Bob; Bethany followed Albert; the others fell in behind them, Laurel leading Dinah by the hand. The little girl was very pale.

2

The Cloud Nine Restaurant was really a cafeteria with a cold-case full of drinks and sandwiches at the rear and a stainless steel counter running beside a long, compartmentalized steam-table. All the compartments were empty, all sparkling clean. There wasn’t a speck of grease on the grill. Glasses — those tough cafeteria glasses with the ripply sides — were stacked in neat pyramids on rear shelves, along with a wide selection of even tougher cafeteria crockery.

Robert Jenkins was standing by the cash register. As Albert and Bethany came in, he said: “May I have another cigarette, Bethany?”

“Gee, you’re a real mooch,” she said, but her tone was good-natured. She produced her box of Marlboros and shook one out. He took it, then touched her hand as she also produced her book of matches.

“I’ll just use one of these, shall I?” There was a bowl filled with paper matches advertising LaSalle Business School by the cash register. FOR OUR MATCHLESS FRIENDS, a little sign beside the bowl read. Bob took a book of these matches, opened it, and pulled one of the matches free.

“Sure,” Bethany said, “but why?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” he said. He glanced at the others. They were standing around in a semicircle, watching — all except Rudy Warwick, who had drifted to the rear of the serving area and was closely inspecting the contents of the cold-case.