Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [21]
Until now, at least, Brian thought.
He switched to UNICOM, where private pilots obtained landing advisories at small airports. No response. He listened ... and heard nothing at all. Which just couldn't be. Private pilots chattered like grackles on a telephone line. The gal in the Piper wanted to know the weather. The guy in the Cessna would just flop back dead in his seat if he couldn't get someone to call his wife and tell her he was bringing home three extra for dinner. The guys in the Lear wanted the girl on the desk at the Arvada Airport to tell their charter passengers that they were going to be fifteen minutes late and to hold their water, they would still make the baseball game in Chicago on time.
But none of that was there. All the grackles had flown, it seemed, and the telephone lines were bare.
He flicked back to the FAA emergency band. 'Denver, come in! Come in right now! This is AP Flight 29, you answer me, goddammit!'
Nick touched his shoulder. 'Easy, mate.'
'The dog won't bark!' Brian said frantically. 'That's impossible, but that's what's happening! Christ, what did they do, have a fucking nuclear war?'
'Easy,' Nick repeated. 'Steady down, Brian, and tell me what you mean, the dog won't bark.'
'I mean Denver Control!' Brian said. 'That dog! I mean FAA Emergency! That dog! UNICOM, that dog, too! I've never -'
He flicked another switch. 'Here,' he said, 'this is the medium shortwave band. They should be jumping all over each other like frogs on a hot sidewalk, but I can't pick up jack shit.'
He flicked another switch, then looked up at Nick and Albert Kaussner, who had crowded in close. 'There's no VOR beacon out of Denver,' he said.
'Meaning?'
'Meaning I have no radio, I have no Denver navigation beacon, and my board says everything is just peachy keen. Which is crap. Got to be.'
A terrible idea began to surface in his mind, coming up like a bloated corpse rising to the top of a river.
'Hey, kid - look out the window. Left side of the plane. Tell me what you see.'
Albert Kaussner looked out. He looked out for a long time. 'Nothing,' he said. 'Nothing at all. Just the last of the Rockies and the beginning of the plains.'
'No lights?'
'No.'
Brian got up on legs which felt weak and watery. He stood looking down for a long time.
At last Nick Hopewell said quietly, 'Denver's gone, isn't it?'
Brian knew from the navigator's charts and his on-board navigational equipment that they should now be flying less than fifty miles south of Denver ... but below them he saw only the dark, featureless landscape that marked the beginning of the Great Plains.
'Yes,' he said. 'Denver's gone.'
8
There was a moment of utter silence in the cockpit, and then Nick Hopewell turned to the peanut gallery, currently consisting of Albert, the man in the ratty sport-coat, and the young girl. Nick clapped his hands together briskly, like a kindergarten teacher. He sounded like one, too, when he spoke. 'All right, people! Back to your seats. I think we need a little quiet here.'
'We are being quiet,' the girl objected, and reasonably enough.
'I believe that what the gentleman actually means isn't quiet but a little privacy,' the man in the ratty sportcoat said. He spoke in cultured tones. but his soft, worried eyes were fixed on Brian.
'That's exactly what I mean,' Nick agreed. 'Please?'
'Is he going to be all right?' the man in the ratty sport-coat asked in a low voice. 'He looks rather upset.'
Nick answered in the same confidential tone. 'Yes,' he said. 'He'll be fine. I'll see to it.'
'Come on, children,' the man in the ratty sport-coat said. He put one arm around the girl's shoulders, the other around Albert's.