He must have yelled, too, because everybody turned around to look at him. Stupid idiots. And here came the fag trotting down the aisle to hand him some more airline bullshit. Too much. It was too much!
Umberto Olivares had been uncomfortable with the guy in the next seat since they had got on the plane. The guy didn’t want to talk, okay. Umberto generally liked to pass the time in conversation, but he didn’t need this guy. For sure.
What ticked him off was the way the guy kept complaining to the kid flight attendant — real nasty and for no reason. When they finally got into the air, the guy kept holding onto his head and moaning and making faces as if something were tearing away little chunks of him. When the kid asked if he was sick, the guy just got nastier. If there had been an empty seat on the plane, Umberto would have gotten up and moved. Just his luck that every seat was taken.
Jesus, what was happening to the guy’s face now?
Mike Endersbee had looked forward to the flight. He liked his job a lot, but he liked the Dallas flight best. Dallas was where Lisa lived. He had a week’s layover after this flight, and they would have all that time just for themselves. The flight figured to be an easy one. But Mike had reckoned without the passenger in 43A, a Mr. Hastings.
The man had been trouble since the minute he boarded. Clearly, there was something wrong with him, but he had refused any kind of help. Mike had spoken to the captain about 43A, but as long as he was not causing a physical disturbance, there was nothing to be done. Now, at forty thousand feet somewhere over Arkansas, it looked as though the physical disturbance was starting.
The man in 43B, a Mr. Olivares, let out a yell as 43A started to climb over him. Mike hurried down the aisle but slowed suddenly when he saw what was happening to Mr. Hastings’s face. The man was pounding crazily at his seat mate as he fought his way out into the aisle. Mike stepped in front of him but was thrown to the deck by a wild backhand blow.
Screaming incoherently, Norman Hastings ran up the aisle, setting off a panic among the passengers, many of whom had been dozing. He reached the emergency exit, threw aside the people who were sitting in the adjacent seats, and began clawing at the release lever.
Mike was not worried about Hastings forcing the door open; there was a fail-safe interlock to prevent that when the plane was airborne. However, the man was clearly insane and quite likely to do harm to himself and other passengers. Until he got help from up front, it was Mike’s responsibility to restrain him. He ran forward and seized the man’s shoulder.
Norman Hastings whirled toward him, his face a mass of angry red boils. Before Mike could speak, Hastings smashed him with a fist, breaking his nose and knocking him across the aisle. He fell back against the people sitting over there who were trying to scramble out of the way. As he struggled to regain his feet, Mike saw the crazed man use unbelievable strength and pull loose the safety lever on the emergency door.
The sound was like an explosion. There was a sudden rush of icy wind. Norman Hastings disappeared as though snatched through the gaping doorway by a giant hand. Mike Endersbee’s last impressions were of the rush of pillows, carry-on bags, blankets, trays, papers, and human bodies flying out through the opening into the night sky. Then his fingers were torn loose from the metal seat braces he had been holding on to. His body was banged across the empty seat, an ankle shattered against the edge of the open door, and the night sucked him out.
It was difficult to say which one of them attacked first. Jason and Nancy Dahlberg, quiet, seemingly happy, married twenty-one years, came up out of their chairs at the same instant and leaped at each other. They fell to the floor ripping with fingers and teeth at any part of the other’s flesh they could reach until they writhed together on a carpet that was soggy with their mingled blood.
On the flickering television screen, J. R. Ewing went about his weekly villainy with no one there to watch.
Vic Metzger, Norman Hastings, and the Dahlbergs were not the only ones to go suddenly, violently berserk that night. Beginning early Friday evening and continuing into Saturday morning, more than a score of normal-seeming citizens exploded into mindless mayhem. The toll of dead and injured mounted steadily. As the reports flashed over the nation’s news wires, a terrible pattern began to emerge.
Chapter 12
Hank Stransky whirled and danced a wild gavotte while his flesh blotched and bubbled and popped and oozed. He was joined by a gyrating middle-aged black man and a slim young girl. Their faces were grinning masks of suppurating boils. They cavorted in an ever-closing circle around a helpless Corey Macklin.
As the wild dancing threesome squeezed in on him, Corey tried to dash between them to freedom, but one or another of them always moved to block him. He struck out at them with his hands, but his blows found nothing solid. Closer and closer they danced, stealing his breath, suffocating him.
Corey fell to the spongy floor, his strength suddenly drained. He tried to rise, but his legs folded beneath him like loaves of soft dough. The three dancers closed in and began to rain blows on his unprotected head.
Bam! Stransky hit him.
Bam! DuBois Williamson.
Bam! Andrea Keith.
Bam!
Corey groaned. He fought his way out of the tangled bedclothes. His mouth tasted like old pennies. He blinked at the light streaming through the crack between his window blind and the edge of the frame.
Bam!
Gradually, he recognized where the sound was coming from. Who the hell would be hammering at his door at this hour?
“Minute!” he yelled. He swung his feet out of the bed and levered himself to a sitting position. His head hurt. His stomach squirmed.
Brandy. He’d been drinking brandy the night before. Cheap, no-name brandy at some joint he’d never been in before. He should have known better. It served him right. Brandy and he had never been great friends. There was no excuse except that it had seemed like the thing to do at the time.
Bam!
“All right!” Corey stood up. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over his dresser and winced. He looked just about as bad as he felt. “I’m coming.”
After the scene the previous day with Nathan Eichorn, he had needed a drink. He did not want to go to Vic’s. Vic’s had bad vibes these days. So he went somewhere else where he didn’t know anybody. Drank brandy like a damn fool. Came home and had ugly dreams. Now he felt like slow death, and some fool was battering at his door. It promised to be one rotten Saturday.
Without bothering to pull anything on over his underwear, Corey shuffled across the one-room apartment to the door and opened it.
A cloud of cigarette smoke rolled into the room. Doc Ingersoll followed it in. “You look terrible,” he said.
“You woke me up just to tell me that at — at — What time is it, anyway?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“In the morning?”
“In the morning.”
“Balls.”
Ingersoll took the crimped cigarette from his mouth, holding it between thumb and forefinger. “You haven’t been watching TV or listening to the radio?”
“Hell, no. I’ve been sleeping. Trying to.”
“There have been some developments I think you ought to know about.”
“Developments?” Corey’s head began to clear.
“You remember those three cases you were asking me about a few days ago? The three citizens who freaked out violently for no apparent reason?”