Still Valley At 20,000 Feet, Mike Burns [read books for money .TXT] 📗

(CONTINUED)
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FLIGHT ENGINEER
Yeah. What I didn’t tell her was, it’s Librium Ultra. It’s strong. We’re talking in the same league with Seconal or Quaalude. He’s probably gonna have to be carted out of here in a wheelchair. Suits me.

STEWARDESS (giggling slightly)
Me, too. That’s one way to pull the rug out from under a screwball.

FLIGHT ENGINEER
And a good thing, too. This turbulence just seems to keep following us. And it’s gradually getting worse. I don’t need that joker on top of everything else.

The stewardess heads for the rear. The flight engineer heads back to the cockpit, knocking, entering when the captain opens it, and closing it firmly behind him. The lock clicks back into place. Julia is dozing again. Bob is...awake, with eyes open again. He looks out the window, seeing nothing. With hand to mouth, he removes the unswallowed sedative, and now sees the Klansman From Hell take up his position near the engine once again. Bob quietly drops the pill on the floor, and silently rises to a crouching position. He looks around, quietly but frantically.

He sees what he’s looking for. A few rows behind him, on an aisle seat, sits a burly security guard-type, in black slacks, white shirt with goldbraid and epaulets...and a .45 sticking out of a holster on his left hip, the one facing the aisle. Probably the security for the governor of California (who has continued to snooze through all these goings-on), who came aboard a little later, unobtrusively, Bob reflects. And he is just as soundly asleep as the governor. Some security, Bob notes ruefully.

Bob has a plan now. He exits his seat with elaborate casualness (but quietly, not disturbing Julia), and makes his way back along the aisle to where the security man is, fumbling with his own pocket notebook computer as he does so. He goes up to the stewardess and asks her an unexpected question.

BOB
Ma’am, I’m trying to keep track of my accumulated frequent flier miles. Can you give me an exact figure for the distance from DFW to Richmond?

Bob is (supposedly) looking at the computer’s display and punching in numbers. In reality, he’s edging his way next to the security guard’s seat while concocting this excuse to get her out of the vicinity for a few moments.

Relieved to see him taking an interest in something “normal,” the stewardess replies amicably.

STEWARDESS
I’ll check, Mr. Wilson. If you can return to your seat, I’ll bring you that information.

Concentrating on the computer and acting distracted, Bob temporizes.
BOB: Okay...Just let me finish setting this up...

The stewardess falls for it, and turns to go back to the front area of the cabin. Bob “drops” his computer, right next to the security man’s seat. Bending over to pick it up, he pulls the weapon from its holster quickly but unobtrusively. He clasps it to his midsection, using the computer to conceal it. Back in his seat, the one between Julia and the window, he moves the firearm around behind him to keep it concealed. The stewardess returns with the mileage figure, and he makes a big show of entering it in the notebook computer, then covers for the fact that he’s still awake and active.
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BOB
Ma’am, I’m really tired. That pill’s startin’ to kick in, I think. Please wake me up right before we get to Richmond.

STEWARDESS
Yes, Mr. Wilson. We’ll be there in less than an hour.

Once she’s gone, Bob looks around the cabin, then looks out the window. The demon dressed in white is right where Bob left him, cutting and ripping merrily away at the engine, the flaming cross in his huge hands blazing brighter with each metallic cut. Judging by the gaping hole and the amount of wire and parts he’s pulling out, and by the sudden cessation of engine sound from that side of the plane, Bob realizes it’s probably too late already.

PILOT’S VOICE (FROM PA)
Ladies and gentlemen, please resume your seats and put seatbelts on immediately! A...a situation has developed, and we’re going to have to make an emergency landing! Please remain calm.

Bob straps himself into his seat. He‘s damned if he‘s not going to at least try to stop it, and he knows that it’s going to be awkward and difficult to shoot through the window at the Klansman From Hell. But what choice does he have? Leaning his seat backwards as far as it will go, and leaning himself back away from the window (toward Julia), he thumbs the safety to the “off” position, and shoves the muzzle of the pistol right against the transparent plastic of the window. He draws a bead on the Klansman From Hell, who stops tearing at the engine and looks fixedly at Bob. The Klansman’s body language changes subtly, indicating hostility, but no fear. He leaps upward and out of view in the split second before Bob fires.

Pandemonium ensues in the plane cabin after the window shatters. Decompression causes the oxygen masks to drop from above the seats, and some passengers pull them on. The swirling air currents that are exiting from the shattered window hurl a multitude of papers and wrappers and paper cups and other small, light objects into the air and send them tumbling and gyrating in every direction. People scream, hit or blinded by the blizzard of debris suddenly assaulting them.

A massive, ear-rending sound of ripping metal soars momentarily above all the screaming of passengers and whistling of decompressed air. The plane loses all stability. Bob feels the whole plane beginning to twirl on its axis, the cabin spinning crazily through upside down and rightside-up orientations in quick, sickening succession. The bastard must have torn off the vertical stabilizer! That’s what that tearing-metal sound was! he thinks in his panic-addled brain. He finds himself looking downward from his seat as the whole plane noses over and begins to head almost straight down. He flings the gun away, and hears it discharge as it hits something. Bob grabs Julia’s arm, and looks into her fully-awake, terror-stricken face, wanting to look at her in his last moments.

BOB
Julia!

JULIA
Bob!

But the last thing Bob sees before impact is the governor of California, across the aisle from them, fully awake himself now, leaning forward in his own seat, gripping the seat in front of him, leaning into Bob’s field of view. The man has a thick sheaf of papers clutched tightly in his left hand--maybe the speech he had prepared for the press conference in Richmond, just before going to Still Valley? With President
(CONTINUED)
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WALLACE? A number of things suddenly fit smoothly together in Bob’s mind.

Then engulfing sound, massive impact, and a momentary feeling of unbearable pressure fill his being, followed by black, star-strewn, forced unconsciousness.

(FADE OUT, BLACK AND ABRUPT)


(FADE IN)


EXT. OPEN MEADOW IN HILLY COUNTRY, STREWN WITH SCATTERED, FLAMING PLANE DEBRIS AND SURVIVORS