Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [43]
He let the engines die and just sat there for a moment. Now there was no sound but the faint whisper of an auxiliary power unit - one of four - at the rear of the plane. Brian's hand moved toward a switch marked INTERNAL POWER and actually touched it before drawing his hand back. Suddenly he didn't want to shut down completely. There was no reason not to, but the voice of instinct was very strong.
Besides, he thought, I don't think there's anyone around to bitch about wasting fuel . . . what little there is left to waste.
Then he unbuckled his safety harness and got up.
'Now what, Brian?' Nick asked. He had also risen, and Brian noticed for the first time that Nick was a good four inches taller than he was. He thought: I have been in charge. Ever since this weird thing happened - ever since we discovered it had happened, to be more accurate - I have been in charge. But I think that's going to change very shortly.
He discovered he didn't care. Flying the 767 into the clouds had taken every ounce of courage he possessed, but he didn't expect any thanks for keeping his head and doing his job; courage was one of the things he got paid for. He remembered a pilot telling him once, 'They pay us a hundred thousand dollars or more a year, Brian, and they really do it for just one reason. They know that in almost every pilot's career, there are thirty or forty seconds when he might actually make a difference. They pay us not to freeze when those seconds finally come.'
It was all very well for your brain to tell you that you had to go down, clouds or no clouds, that there was simply no choice; your nerve-endings just went on screaming their old warning, telegraphing the old highvoltage terror of the unknown. Even Nick, whatever he was and whatever he did on the ground, had wanted to back away from the clouds when it came to the sticking point. He had needed Brian to do what needed to be done. He and all the others had needed Brian to be their guts. Now they were down and there were no monsters beneath the clouds; only this weird silence and one deserted luggage train sitting beneath the wing of a Delta 727.
So if you want to take over and be the captain, my nose-twisting friend, you have my blessing. I'll even let you wear my cap if you want to. But not until we're off the plane. Until you and the rest of the geese actually stand on the ground, you're my responsibility.
But Nick had asked him a question, and Brian supposed he deserved an answer.
'Now we get off the airplane and see what's what,' he said, brushing past the Englishman.
Nick put a restraining hand on his shoulder. 'Do you think-'
Brian felt a flash of uncharacteristic anger. He shook loose from Nick's hand. 'I think we get off the plane,' he said. 'There's no one to extend a jetway or run us out a set of stairs, so I think we use the emergency slide. After that, you think. Matey.'
He pushed through into first class ... and almost fell over the drinks trolley, which lay on its side. There was a lot of broken glass and an eye-watering stink of alcohol. He stepped over it. Nick caught up with him at the rear of the first-class compartment.
'Brian, if I said something to offend you, I'm sorry. You did a hell of a fine job.'
'You didn't offend me,' Brian said. 'It's just that in the last ten hours or so I've had to cope with a pressure leak over the Pacific Ocean, finding out that my ex-wife died in a stupid apartment fire in Boston, and that the United States has been cancelled. I'm feeling a little zonked.'
He walked through business class into the main cabin. For a moment there was utter silence; they only sat there,