Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [44]
Then Albert Kaussner began to applaud.
After a moment, Bob Jenkins joined him ... and Don Gaffney ... and Laurel Stevenson. The bald man looked around and also began to applaud.
'What is it?' Dinah asked Laurel. 'What's happening?'
'It's the captain,' Laurel said. She began to cry. 'It's the captain who brought us down safe.'
Then Dinah began to applaud, too.
Brian stared at them, dumbfounded. Standing behind him, Nick joined in. They unbuckled their belts and stood in front of their seats, applauding him. The only three who did not join in were Bethany, who had fainted, the bearded man, who was still snoring in the back row, and Craig Toomy, who panned them all with his strange lunar gaze and then began to rip a fresh strip from the airline magazine.
6
Brian felt his face flush - this was just too goony. He raised his hands but for a moment they went on, regardless.
'Ladies and gentlemen, please ... please ... I assure you, it was a very routine landing -'
'Shucks, ma'am - t'warn't nothin,' Bob Jenkins said, doing a very passable Gary Cooper imitation, and Albert burst out laughing. Beside him, Bethany's eyes fluttered open and she looked around, dazed.
'We got down alive, didn't we?' she said. 'My God! That's great! I thought we were all dead meat!'
'Please,' Brian said. He raised his arms higher and now he felt weirdly like Richard Nixon, accepting his party's nomination for four more years. He had to struggle against sudden shrieks of laughter. He couldn't do that; the passengers wouldn't understand. They wanted a hero, and he was elected. He might as well accept the position ... and use it. He still had to get them off the plane, after all. 'If I could have your attention, please!'
They stopped applauding one by one and looked at him expectantly - all except Craig, who threw his magazine aside in a sudden resolute gesture. He unbuckled his seatbelt, rose, and stepped out into the aisle, kicking a drift of paper strips aside. He began to rummage around in the compartment above his seat, frowning with concentration as he did so.
'You've looked out the windows, so you know as much as I do,' Brian said. 'Most of the passengers and all of the crew on this flight disappeared while we were asleep. That's crazy enough, but now we appear to be faced with an even crazier proposition. It looks like a lot of other people have disappeared as well ... but logic suggests that other people must be around somewhere. We survived whatever-it-was, so others must have survived it as well.'
Bob Jenkins, the mystery writer, whispered something under his breath. Albert heard him but could not make out the words. He half-turned in Jenkins's direction just as the writer muttered the two words again. This time Albert caught them. They were false logic.
'The best way to deal with this, I think, is to take things one step at a time. Step one is exiting the plane.'
'I bought a ticket to Boston,' Craig Toomy said in a calm, rational voice. 'Boston is where I want to go.'
Nick stepped out from behind Brian's shoulder. Craig glanced at him and his eyes narrowed. For a moment he looked like a bad-tempered housecat again. Nick raised one hand with the fingers curled in against his palm and scissored two of his knuckles together in a nose-pinching gesture. Craig Toomy, who had once been forced to stand with a lit match between his toes while his mother sang 'Happy Birthday,' got the message at once. He had always been a quick study. And he could wait.
'We'll have to use the emergency slide,' Brian said, 'so I want to review the procedures with you. Listen carefully, then form a single-file line and follow me to the front of the aircraft.'
7
Four minutes later, the forward entrance of American Pride's Flight 29 Swung inward. Some murmured conversation drifted out of the opening and seemed to fall immediately dead on the cool, still air. There was a hissing sound and a large clump of orange fabric suddenly bloomed in the doorway.