Chapter Dragonedy o’clock
Dragonedy o’clock
She shoved through the curtain into economy and walked right into Albert Shook. Her head rapped against his. He shouted and
grabbed her by both shoulders.
“Will you please sit the fuck down?” he cried, which Allie thought was pretty restrained, given the circumstances.
Allie weaved around him, using the backs of chairs to steady herself. Van had been sent back to his window seat and watched
her approach with his lips pinched tightly together. He half got up as she fell over Robin and into her seat.
“Where did you go? What did you do, you dim gobdaw? It’s world war fecking three out there,” Robin asked. She had reclaimed
the empty wine bottle from Van McBride and cradled it to her chest like an infant.
“Goddamn it,” Van said, catching hold of Allie, half lowering her into her seat. “You were supposed to stay here. It was my turn to do something stupid and heroic.”
“I didn’t do anything heroic. Only stupid.”
The PA crackled and the pilot began to speak. His voice was still youthful and there was a tremor of emotion in it—but he
had discovered a new, deeper tone that was both urgent and assured, the voice of a man who had reached for his courage and
found it. “Folks, this is Captain Vanhoenacker on the flight deck. I’m going to be very simple and direct with you. Twenty-five
minutes ago the USS Nimitz, an American aircraft carrier, put up a pair of F-16 Falcons to investigate a bogey of unknown origin making a threatening approach toward this aircraft.
Some of you saw what happened next. They engaged and destroyed a hostile off our left wing.
We have had to make some pretty jarring maneuvers to clear the airspace for them, and I want to apologize for that.
I hope everyone is all right back there.
We are now making an emergency landing at Narsarsuaq Airport, on the southern tip of Greenland.
Carrier Air Wing Nine has been kind enough to escort us the rest of the way in, so if you see jets flying alongside us, don’t be alarmed.
Those are the good guys.” The PA hissed for a while.
At last, he added, “I don’t know what they blew up out there, but whatever you all saw?
We saw it too. So keep your belts buckled and do not leave your seat for any reason whatsoever.
We are bringing this bird down in a hurry. ”
“What’s happening?” Raymond Pinet asked, the old soldier looking at Allie through the gap between seats.
“You know as much as I do,” Allie said.
“I’m not talking about the announcement, and I’m not talking about what’s going on out there. Where do you keep going, darling?
And where did the other guy go—the country-soundin’ fella?”
“He’s upstairs,” Allie said. “I think he might be dead.”
“Oh, God!” cried Gregg Pinet. “What happened?”
“He did,” Allie said, nodding at the curtain as Horation came through it.
Horation’s collar was bloodstained and the gouge in the side of his neck was an ugly, glistening red hole. There was a long
red scratch down his face, running from his forehead and across his left cheek, skipping his eye socket. He scanned the cabin
for only a moment before he saw her and gave a bloody smile and began to walk toward them, the pistol in one sticky red fist.
Allie gripped Van’s hand. She didn’t want to cry and thought she might. “You deserved better than you got with me, Donovan.
I would’ve been a lucky girl to be your McBride.”
“There’s no such thing as better,” he said.
Horation reached their seats, looked at Robin, lifted one lip in a disgusted sneer. He shot a disbelieving look at Allie.
“You see this? You see why a man would want to build a world away from this? To keep his children away from this sort of perversion?”
He turned his bright, inspired gaze back on Robin. “You’re sitting in my fucking seat.”
There were hectic red blotches in Robin’s cheeks. She stood stiffly and said, “You’re bleeding.”
“It isn’t fatal,” he told her.
“Shame,” Robin said. She took her carry-on purse and empty wine bottle and sat directly across the aisle.
Van rose unsteadily to his heels. It didn’t seem possible he could get any paler; all the blood had drained from his face
so he looked like a ghost of himself.
“You want to get shot?” Horation asked him.
“If you were a man, you’d beat me to death with your fists, the honorable way,” Van said.
Horation grinned crookedly at that. “You got balls. You want me to feed them to you? Get lost.”
“You’ll have to shoot me,” Van said.
“No, you won’t,” Allie cried.
Horation rolled the hammer back on the gun. People in the cabin cried out. Some of them had already unbelted and fled for
business class.
“The way I see it,” Van said, “there’s only six bullets in that gun, pardner, and about four hundred of us back here.”
“I’ll be sure to put the first in your girlfriend’s face,” Horation said, and he stuck the gun into Allie’s temple and pressed,
so she had to bend her neck, put her right ear against her shoulder, and even then the barrel was digging into her.
“Don’t,” Van said. “Don’t don’t don’t.” Lifting his hands and shooting Allie a frantic look. He bent quickly and kissed her
right eyebrow and then shuffled out of their row, his hands raised, palms out.
Horation stepped back to make room for him, and Van found a seat across the aisle with Robin, both of them tensed for their
chance to make a move. Then the white supremacist lowered himself into Robin’s vacated seat, put himself shoulder to shoulder
with Allie. He didn’t bother buckling himself in.
Although some had gone running, most of economy had remained in their seats.
Some craned their necks to see what was happening, their faces ashen and fearful.
Allie turned her head and stared through the window and was surprised to glimpse a string of lights far below.
It was there, then it flickered out of sight, disappearing amid an archipelago of cloud.
What was down there? she wondered. A highway, perhaps, some road following a bit of Greenland’s coastline.
The F-16 on their starboard side was close, a black cutout against the paler darkness of the night. In outline it looked like
a raptor, like a weapon, with its back-slung wings and sleek profile.
“What are you going to do when we land, Hoary?” she asked.
“Who said I’m getting off? I’m staying right here and you’re staying with me. The dragon is dead. I don’t need to go to England
anymore. We could force them to take us to Afghanistan on this jet. I’ve read about the Taliban. I don’t share their faith,
but I admire their morality.” He looked at her slyly. “Tell me about the dragon.”
“You know what I know.”
“Oh, I doubt that very much. We used to talk, King Sorrow and I. When I asked him why I had been chosen for death, he told
me he served three daughters of Lilith and three sons of Cain, and they had picked me special. He offered to tell me their
names if I could beat him in a riddling contest. If I lost, though, he said I’d spend the last days of my life blind. I didn’t
want to chance it. I reckoned it’d be best to keep my eyes in my head, so I could watch for the ones who wanted me killed.
Are you one of them, Alice Toklas? Are you a daughter of Lilith?”
“’Fraid I’m just another child of MTV, champ.”
He gripped her face with his right hand and forced her face against the porthole window, thunk.
“You wanted to stop me from getting to England. To the well. You were afraid I’d get rid of the dragon and then I’d find my
way back to you. Admit it.”
He kept her face smashed against the porthole. She saw a delicate web of lights glittering brightly in the darkness, saw something
flicker between her and that distant city, something with enough mass to blot out the lights for a moment.
“I wasn’t afraid of your well,” Allie told him. “Because I don’t think what’s on you can be washed off.”
The F-16 tried, suddenly, to break right, rotating up on its side and dropping away, but it was too late.
It happened so fast. King Sorrow hit it from beneath and sliced straight through.
Flame erupted in a blinding sheet and King Sorrow screamed in triumph.
His shriek shook the whole plane and made the roar of the navy’s jets sound shrill by comparison.
A piece of the F-16 rattled off the 747, which dropped suddenly, falling hard to port. Allie didn’t know if people were screaming.
She knew she was, but she couldn’t hear herself over the ringing echo of King Sorrow’s cry.
Several things happened in the moments that followed, the handful of seconds that stretched like taffy, assuming the depth
and complexity of whole minutes, of hours. Bags flew. People were thrown from their seats. The pistol in Horation’s left fist
wavered, pointing up for an instant, long enough for an old soldier to move. Raymond Pinet’s hand shot between the seats and
caught Horation’s wrist, forcing the gun away, to point at the ceiling.
The gun went off. Somehow Allie thought it would be louder. Through the ringing in her ears, it sounded like a kid popping
a paper bag full of air in the next room over. The slug hit the luggage compartment above them. There followed a flat bang
and oxygen masks dropped throughout the cabin. Wails and sobs rose in a horrified chorus of fear.
The 747 banked the other way, leveling out. Allie’s head remained pinned to the window—she doubted Horation was even aware
he was still holding her there—and she could see straight up, could see another F-16 maybe half a mile above them.
King Sorrow dropped on it, grabbing it by the tail in one claw and flipping it over his shoulder. The F-16 spun around and
around, whirring like the blades of a fan. Allie didn’t see it explode, that happened out of sight, but she saw the bright
throb of light and heard the deep, reverberating wham! as it tore itself apart.
Allie twisted halfway around and was able to see into the aisle, past Horation.
Robin was on her feet, the big green wine bottle in one hand.
In that movie version of Allie’s life, Robin brought the bottle down on Horation’s head in a single glassy smash, coldcocking the man.
But the plane lurched, dropped, and then rose just as suddenly.
On Robin’s first wild swing, she missed Horation entirely and bashed it into Raymond Pinet’s brow.
His head snapped to one side and he grunted, but he didn’t let go of Horation’s wrist. On Robin’s second try, the bottle thudded dully off Horation’s left shoulder with a meaty thump.
Her third swing missed everyone entirely and carried her off balance, and she fell on her side in the aisle.
Van leapt up with a great war cry, launching himself across the aisle. But his feet caught and he fell, chinned himself on
an armrest, and collapsed on the floor. The plane heaved and Van and Robin were flipped into the air, like small children
on a trampoline, and fell out of her sight again.
Raymond Pinet blinked away blood, dripping from one battered eyebrow, and struggled with Horation’s wrist. The barrel of the
gun swung into Allie’s face and she stared into its darkness. It swung away. It swung back. Allie had a wild sidelong look
out the porthole and was surprised to see a corridor of jade lights, less than a thousand feet below: a runway.
She jerked her head to the side and the gun went off by her ear. The window exploded. There was a great grasping suction,
as if God himself were inhaling, and the pistol was snatched from Horation’s hand and disappeared. The wine bottle, which
had been rolling around on the floor, flung itself at the window, banged off the back of Horation’s head, and was vacuumed
into the night. Loose belongings of every description whirled in the wind tunnel of the cabin.
Allie was belted into her seat. Horation was not. The window was a black hole into some terrible alternate dimension of darkness
and uncaring stars, and it yanked Horation into it. His head disappeared into the night, then his shoulders caught on the
wall of the cabin and he plugged the porthole like a cork. His collarbone popped. A shoulder cracked and splintered. The night
was pulling at him, trying to turn him into toothpaste and squeeze him through the little hole of the window.
He had, in all this time, maintained a grip on Allie’s face with his right hand.
Now, though, his fingers slipped. He grasped wildly, reaching back, and caught the front of her blouse, tearing it open, buttons flying.
Another bone shattered and he was squished a few more inches through the porthole.
Allie looked down the length of her body and saw the red-and-black tattoo of the serpent winding around her torso, its spade-shaped
head resting above her left breast. She found it with two fingers of her left hand.
“King Sorrow!” She howled over the roar of air. She felt the tattoo flex and squirm, as if there was a living snake right
under her skin. She felt the serpent tighten around her ribs, driving much of the breath out of her. Not all, though. She
had enough air to shout, “Eat this evil motherfucker!”
Something struck the side of the plane. There was an anguished shriek of tortured metal and a dry snap, like someone breaking
a handful of branches over their knee. Horation’s right hand became a claw, gouging deep into Allie’s chest. Then his body
sagged, fell heavily upon her. Allie was pinned beneath him, face pressed to his abdomen, most of his upper body grotesquely
mashed to fill the porthole window. The landing gear hit the ground with a tap and a soft, shrill whine.