“The captain will make an announcement as soon as we are on the ground.”
Luke stared at the window watching the fire-trucks with lights flashing and sirens blaring running parallel with their predicted landing route.
The captain’s voice crackled over the tannoy. “Flight attendants to your seats. Ladies and gentlemen assume the crash position.”
Luke crunched forward to put his head between his legs, remembering that he’d heard that the recommended crash position was best to preserve the teeth for future identification if bodies were burned to a crisp. He shuddered at the thought and sat up. He decided he’d rather try to work out where they were.
Flight 416 bumped heavily to the runway with a painful screech of the tires, then the reversal of the engine throwing Luke forward. The airplane finally stopped at a remote part of the airport and he saw in astonishment that the military, fully attired in camouflaged biohazard suits had encircled the Boeing 777.
“What the f—?”
The Captain interrupted his thoughts. “Ladies and gentlemen do not be alarmed, we’ve temporarily been diverted to the Caribbean, where we are to re-fuel and then return to Miami.” The passengers, who seconds earlier were begging for their lives, now groaned and bitched, and threatened to sue the airline. “The soldiers outside,” continued the captain. “Are going to hose down the aircraft, it seems that we may be contagious.”
The word caused the expected pandemonium amongst the passengers. The flight attendant shushed them. “Listen, this is important.”
He continued. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about; it’s only a precaution and the locals are following the instructions from our government. It seems there has been a kind of chemical incident and they are being prudent and recalling all airplanes back to Miami International, where they will check us out and give us the all clear. Thank you.”
The mumbling and complaints got worse, when the tannoy crackled once more, “One more thing,” the captain said. “On a more serious note, the local authorities have said any attempt to alight from the aircraft will be met with the, erm, utmost force.” The passengers took the latest news with righteous indignation. “Sit tight, we’re already refueling and naturally we have priority to take off, so we’ll be out of here in a jiffy. Thank you.”
Luke observed the local militia looking like spacemen in their biohazard suits.
Armed and trigger-happy spacemen.
10:15 AM
Kelvin Copnik awoke and stirred in his Key West penthouse apartment. He smiled broadly at the person asleep next to him — a pick-up at a Miami nightclub who’d agreed to come all the way back with him. Kelvin smiled, looked out through the floor-to-ceiling windows down onto the town at the southernmost tip of mainland USA, ninety miles to Cuba, which oddly made him closer geographically to Havana than Miami.
He loved the Key West life-style, what with the applauding of the wondrous sunsets that were plentiful, to the seven-toed cats at Earnest Hemingway’s home, and to the laid-back live-and-let-live attitude of the locals. He rolled to his side to gaze at his latest conquest, long shapely legs, shaggy blonde hair… and beard.
Kelvin, or to call him by his Miami alter ego’s name, Big Mary, was the queen of the Fairy Grotto, a gay Miami drag show, where he was the star act. He blew in the man’s ear while trying to remember the dude’s name, Dave, Daniel, or Danny. Something like that, anyhow, they were all the same to him. Big Mary loved the gay scene and its promiscuous life-style although nowhere near the early '80s heights.
During the 1980s heyday of the bathhouses some guys would have anything up to ten encounters per night. The bathhouses catered for all tastes what with the notorious glory holes, where you could be the giver; oral, accepting a penis pushed through the hole cut into the WC cubicle partition or the receiver, where you put your erect penis through the gap to be fellated anonymously by a giver. It meant that anyone could get or receive a blowjob, meaning that there was even a place for the fat, misshapen or downright ugly; that they too could a have a full and promiscuous sex life. There was even talk of a sub-culture for the unattractive. Still today, some guys hunting bears, they adored their men covered in hair, or chubby chasers, whose tastes led to the corpulent, there was even a part of the bathhouse designated pig-alley, for the truly foul and unattractive.
Not that any of these groups would have interested Big Mary, and this was before the days of AIDS. Big Mary had made it a point to learn all the statistics concerning the AIDS epidemic. Better forewarned he’d thought. Although the western media ignored the Aids problem, it still had a terrible effect in Africa, particularly in the sub-Saharan region, where one in twenty adults had contracted HIV and over seven hundred children were dying from the disease each day!
Mind you, that was through their mother’s breast-milk not their lifestyle choice. In fact, sixty-nine percent of adults suffering with the HIV virus lived in the sub-Saharan area. It was incredible that the western world had buried it’s head when it came to AIDS, probably due to information overload during the 1980s and 1990s, what with the bombardment of charity gigs, and infomercials from minor celebrities joining the cause. It did not concern most of the American population as they had little or no chance of catching the ‘gay’ plague, and they quickly tired of the news items and tuned them out. Even today nearly forty million people worldwide suffer from the disease and an astonishing 1.6 million sufferers would die horribly each year from the syndrome, only to have 2.3 million newly effected victims replace them.
Big Mary would check his nightly conquests thoroughly, no point in taking chances, he’d thought. A rash or any sort of skin blemish would have him running for the hills, as would anyone severely underweight. He would check carefully for herpes-like symptoms around the mouth; blistering or evidence of cold sores would have him find a different partner. Flaky skin was another indicator, not that he would entertain sleeping with a guy with flaky skin however gorgeous he was. Flaky skin? Urgh, heaven forbid. He’d always give anyone with fever or flu-like signs a wide berth naturally enough. Big Mary was overcautious. He’d also shun a guy with a cold. He'd look elsewhere because there would always be more guys willing to spend the night, thank goodness, plenty more.
Only the best, most gorgeous, fittest — and healthy — guys were good enough for him, like Dave, Daniel or Danny. He was sure it began with a ‘D’. He wished he could remember, he wanted to wake him and send him on his way, he had things to do, people to see, fish to fry. He was a sailor, he remembered that much, there was a submarine in town and the clubs were brimming over with muscular sailors, who after months at sea playing it ‘butch’, could finally let themselves go.
And boy did they let themselves go.
He shook the guy under the sheets, he’d have to wing it regarding his name. “Hey wake up.” He shook the guy’s shoulders. No reaction. Kevin flipped back the sheets and gasped. Black lesions covered the guy's torso.
“Holy shit, he’s got Aids!” Kelvin leaped from the bed and paced the room, No, no, no, this could not be happening. The lesions weren’t there last night. He checked, he always checked. Yet these lesions looked different. His torso was black from where the ring-like lesions had multiplied. There also appeared to be lumps under the skin. He wrinkled his nose and detected the stench of feces. Christ, what had they done the night before? This wasn’t normal. He edged back the covers further to see the guy was laying in a pool of excrement. Kelvin felt tears running down his face and realized that through his carelessness the night before, he’d signed his own death warrant. He grabbed the guy and recoiled, as he was stone cold.