Four Past Midnight (29 page)

“He did all this with a
toaster
?” Nick muttered. “Jesus and Mary, Tom, Dick, and Harry.” He got up and raised his voice. “He's not dead, Ace.”

Albert had bent over again when Nick left him. Now he straightened slowly and took a step toward him. “He's not?”

“Listen for yourself. Out for the count, but still in the game.”
Not for long, though; not by the sound of him.
“Let's check on Mr. Gaffney—maybe he got off lucky, too. And what about the stretcher?”

“Huh?” Albert looked at Nick as though he had spoken in a foreign language.

“The stretcher,” Nick repeated patiently as they walked toward the open Airport Services door.

“We found it,” Albert said.

“Did you? Super!”

Albert stopped just inside the door. “Wait a minute,” he muttered, then squatted and felt around for Don's lighter. He found it after a moment or two. It was still warm. He stood up again. “Mr. Gaffney's on the other side of the desk, I think.”

They walked around, stepping over the tumbled stacks of paper and the IN/OUT basket. Albert held out the lighter and flicked the wheel. On the fifth try the wick caught and burned feebly for three or four seconds. It was enough. Nick had actually seen enough in the spark-flashes the lighter's wheel had struck, but he hadn't liked to say so to Albert. Don Gaffney lay sprawled on his back, eyes open, a look of terrible surprise still fixed on his face. He hadn't gotten off lucky after all.

“How was it that Toomy didn't get you as well?” Nick asked after a moment.

“I knew he was in here,” Albert said. “Even before he stuck Mr. Gaffney, I knew.” His voice was still dry and shaky, but he felt a little better. Now that he had actually faced poor Mr. Gaffney—looked him in the eye, so to speak—he felt a little better.

“Did you hear him?”

“No—I saw those. On the desk.” Albert pointed to the little heap of torn strips.

“Lucky you did.” Nick put his hand on Albert's shoulder in the dark. “You deserve to be alive, mate. You earned the privilege. All right?”

“I'll try,” Albert said.

“You do that, old son. It saves a lot of nightmares. You're looking at a man who knows.”

Albert nodded.

“Keep it together, Ace. That's all there is to it—just keep things together and you'll be fine.”

“Mr. Hopewell?”

“Yes?”

“Would you mind not calling me that? I—” His voice clogged, and Albert cleared his throat violently. “I don't think I like it anymore.”

They emerged from the dark cave which was Airport Services thirty seconds later, Nick carrying the folded stretcher by the handle. When they reached the bank of phones, Nick handed the stretcher to Albert, who accepted it wordlessly. The tablecloth lay on the floor about five feet away from Toomy, who was snoring now in great rhythmless snatches of air.

Time was short, time was very fucking short, but Nick had to see this. He
had
to.

He picked up the tablecloth and pulled the toaster out. One of the heating elements caught in a bread slot; the other tumbled out onto the floor. The timer-dial and the handle you used to push the bread down fell off. One comer of the toaster was crumpled inward. The left side was bashed into a deep circular dent.

That's the part that collided with Friend Toomy's sniffer,
Nick thought.
Amazing.
He shook the toaster and listened to the loose rattle of broken parts inside.

“A toaster,” he marvelled. “I have friends, Albert—
professional
friends—who wouldn't believe it. I hardly believe it myself. I mean ... a
toaster.
”

Albert had turned his head. “Throw it away,” he said hoarsely. “I don't want to look at it.”

Nick did as the boy asked, then clapped him on the shoulder. “Take the stretcher upstairs. I'll join you directly.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I want to see if there's anything else we can use in that office.”

Albert looked at him for a moment, but he couldn't make out Nick's features in the dark. At last he said, “I don't believe you.”

“Nor do you have to,” Nick said in an oddly gentle voice. “Go on, Ace ... Albert, I mean. I'll join you soon. And don't look back.”

Albert stared at him a moment longer, then began to trudge up the frozen escalator, his head down, the stretcher dangling like a suitcase from his right hand. He didn't look back.

Nick waited until the boy had disappeared into the gloom. Then he walked back over to where Craig Toomy lay and squatted beside him. Toomy was still out, but his breathing seemed a little more regular. Nick supposed it was not impossible, given a week or two of constant-care treatment in hospital, that Toomy might recover. He had proved at least one thing: he had an awesomely hard head.

Shame the brains underneath are so soft, mate,
Nick thought. He reached out, meaning to put one hand over Toomy's mouth and the other over his nose—or what remained of it. It would take less than a minute, and they would not have to worry about Mr. Craig Toomy anymore. The others would have recoiled in horror at the act—would have called it cold-blooded murder—but Nick saw it as an insurance policy, no more and no less. Toomy had arisen once from what appeared to be total unconsciousness and now one of their number was dead and another was badly, perhaps mortally, wounded. There was no sense taking the same chance again.

And there was something else. If he left Toomy alive, what, exactly, would he be leaving him alive
for
? A short, haunted existence in a dead world? A chance to breathe dying air under a moveless sky in which all weather patterns appeared to have ceased? An opportunity to meet whatever was approaching from the east ... approaching with a sound like that of a colony of giant, marauding ants?

No. Best to see him out of it. It would be painless, and that would have to be good enough.

“Better than the bastard deserves,” Nick said, but still he hesitated.

He remembered the little girl looking up at him with her dark, unseeing eyes.

Don't you kill him!
Not a plea; that had been a command. She had summoned up a little strength from some hidden last reserve in order to give him that command.
All I know is that we need him.

He squatted a moment longer, looking into Craig Toomy's ruined face. And when Rudy Warwick spoke from the head of the escalator, he jumped as if it had been the devil himself.

“Mr. Hopewell? Nick? Are you coming?”

“In a jiffy!” he called back over his shoulder. He reached toward Toomy's face again and stopped again, remembering her dark eyes.

Abruptly he stood up, leaving Craig Toomy to his tortured struggle for breath. “Coming now,” he called, and ran lightly up the escalator.

Bethany had cast away her almost tasteless cigarette and was halfway up the ladder again when Bob Jenkins shouted: “I think they're coming out!”

She turned and ran back down the stairs. A series of dark blobs was emerging from the luggage bay and crawling along the conveyor belt. Bob and Bethany ran to meet them.

Dinah was strapped to the stretcher. Rudy had one end, Nick the other. They were walking on their knees, and Bethany could hear the bald man breathing in harsh, out-of-breath gasps.

“Let me help,” she told him, and Rudy gave up his end of the stretcher willingly.

“Try not to jiggle her,” Nick said, swinging his legs off the conveyor belt. “Albert, get on Bethany's end and help us take her up the stairs. We want this thing to stay as level as possible.”

“How bad is she?” Bethany asked Albert.

“Not good,” he said grimly. “Unconscious but still alive. That's all I know.”

“Where are Gaffney and Toomy?” Bob asked as they crossed to the plane. He had to raise his voice slightly to be heard; the crunching sound was louder now, and that shrieking wounded-transmission undertone was becoming a dominant, maddening note.

“Gaffney's dead and Toomy might as well be,” Nick said. “We'll discuss it later, if you like. Right now there's no time.” He halted at the foot of the stairs. “Mind you keep your end up, you two.”

They moved the stretcher slowly and carefully up the stairs, Nick walking backward and bent over the forward end, Albert and Bethany holding the stretcher up at forehead level and jostling hips on the narrow stairway at the rear. Bob, Rudy, and Laurel followed behind. Laurel had spoken only once since Albert and Nick had returned, to ask if Toomy was dead. When Nick told her he wasn't, she had looked at him closely and then nodded her head with relief.

Brian was standing at the cockpit door when Nick reached the top of the ladder and eased his end of the stretcher inside.

“I want to put her in first class,” Nick said, “with this end of the stretcher raised so her head is up. Can I do that?”

“No problem. Secure the stretcher by looping a couple of seatbelts through the head-frame. Do you see where?”

“Yes.” And to Albert and Bethany: “Come on up. You're doing fine.”

In the cabin lights, the blood smeared on Dinah's cheeks and chin stood out starkly against her yellow-white skin. Her eyes were closed; her lids were a delicate shade of lavender. Under the belt (in which Nick had punched a new hole, high above the others), the makeshift compress was dark red. Brian could hear her breathing. It sounded like a straw dragging wind at the bottom of an almost empty glass.

“It's bad, isn't it?” Brian asked in a low voice.

“Well, it's her lung and not her heart, and she's not filling up anywhere near as fast as I was afraid she might ... but it's bad, yes.”

“Will she live until we get back?”

“How in hell should
I
know?” Nick shouted at him suddenly. “I'm a soldier, not a bloody sawbones!”

The other froze, looking at him with cautious eyes. Laurel felt her skin prickle again.

“I'm sorry,” Nick muttered. “Time travel plays the very devil with one's nerves, doesn't it? I'm very sorry.”

“No need to apologize,” Laurel said, and touched his arm. “We're all under strain.”

He gave her a tired smile and touched her hair. “You're a sweetheart, Laurel, and no mistake. Come on—let's strap her in and see what we can do about getting the hell out of here.”

Five minutes later Dinah's stretcher had been secured in an inclined position to a pair of first-class seats, her head up, her feet down. The rest of the passengers were gathered in a tight little knot around Brian in the first-class serving area.

“We need to refuel the plane,” Brian said. “I'm going to start the other engine now and pull over as close as I can to that 727-400 at the jetway.” He pointed to the Delta plane, which was just a gray lump in the dark. “Because our aircraft sits higher, I'll be able to lay our right wing right over the Delta's left wing. While I do that, four of you are going to bring over a hose cart—there's one sitting by the other jetway. I saw it before it got dark.”

“Maybe we better wake Sleeping Beauty at the back of the plane and get him to lend a hand,” Bob said.

Brian thought it over briefly and then shook his head. “The last thing we need right now is another scared, disoriented passenger on our hands ... and one with a killer hangover to boot. And we won't need him—two strong men can push a hose cart in a pinch. I've seen it done. Just check the transmission lever to make sure it's in neutral. It wants to end up directly beneath the overlapping wings. Got it?”

They all nodded. Brian looked them over and decided that Rudy and Bethany were still too blown from wrestling the stretcher to be of much help. “Nick, Bob, and Albert. You push. Laurel, you steer. Okay?”

They nodded.

“Go on and do it, then. Bethany? Mr. Warwick? Go down with them. Pull the ladder away from the plane, and when I've got the plane repositioned, place it next to the overlapping wings. The wings, not the door. Got it?”

They nodded. Looking around at them, Brian saw that their eyes looked clear and bright for the first time since they had landed.
Of course,
he thought.
They have something to do now. And so do I, thank God.

As they approached the hose cart sitting off to the left of the unoccupied jetway, Laurel realized she could actually see it. “My God,” she said. “It's coming daylight again already. How long has it been since it got dark?”

“Less than forty minutes, by my watch,” Bob said, “but I have a feeling that my watch doesn't keep very accurate time when we're outside the plane. I've also got a feeling time doesn't matter much here, anyway.”

“What's going to happen to Mr. Toomy?” Laurel asked.

They had reached the cart. It was a small vehicle with a tank on the back, an open-air cab, and thick black hoses coiled on either side. Nick put an arm around her waist and turned her toward him. For a moment she had the crazy idea that he meant to kiss her, and she felt her heart speed up.

“I don't know what's going to happen to him,” he said. “All I know is that when the chips were down, I chose to do what Dinah wanted. I left him lying unconscious on the floor. All right?”