“I didn’t hear any shots out there,” Jerry said. “Did anyone have a gun?”
Alex shook her head in a way that said two things: I don’t think so and I don’t know.
“Maybe it’s multipronged,” Jerry said. He directed his comment only to Eleanor. “Guns and gas. Outside and in here.”
“We’ve got no evidence anyone is atta—”
“Respectfully, Captain, let’s not be naive here. This world has gone to absolute shit. It’s a narco war zone south of the border, Arab teenagers run down innocent pedestrians in Jerusalem to say nothing of the rest of the Middle East, and it’s bleeding onto our soil. You can’t count on the cops. Hell, some are just hired guns of the government. Look at Oregon.”
“Why here, Jerry, in Steamboat?”
“Why anywhere?” Jerry answered.
“Alex,” Lyle said, “may I ask you a question?” He was looking at her square, very intensely.
She nodded.
“Is there anything you might be leaving out?” The way he said it was so graceful that only the most astute listener would hear the surgical challenge in it. Was she, he was in effect asking, telling the whole truth?
Eleanor picked up the subtlety and she blanched. This guy was good.
“Like what?” Alex asked, holding Lyle’s gaze. “Help me remember. I want to help. I don’t understand what’s happening.”
Lyle seemed satisfied.
“So speak, Doctor,” Jerry said. “Give us your opinion so we can make a decision. Are these people sick or dead or what?” In the military, Jerry had admired this medic who made a decision and went with it, making decisiveness the highest priority.
Fair enough, Lyle thought, and he flashed briefly on an experience he’d had while doing his CDC work when he had visited the Jewish Quarter in Barcelona, where there had been a small outbreak of SARS. One of the patients was the young daughter of a Hasidic rabbi. She wasn’t responding to any treatment. She was in agony, barely hanging on, having spent more than a week on the brink. Lyle recommended a new course of action. The rabbi called Lyle aside and, quietly, asked if he expected the treatment to do any good. “I can’t be sure, Rabbi. We should try everything.”
“Dr. Martin, may I ask you a question?”
Of course, Lyle had nodded.
“Do you know when to let go? When to stop fighting?”
Lyle had no ready answer to the questions or the rabbi’s soft but probing brown eyes.
“When you start to pray,” the rabbi said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re an agnostic or an atheist or a man of faith. You know, deep inside, when the better part of your treatment is hope rather than science.”
Lyle had attempted, without success, to hold the rabbi’s gaze.
As he stood now in the airplane, he tried to figure out if he was hoping or praying, applying science or faith. The answer rocked him: he wasn’t sure where he stood on any of it anymore. He couldn’t find his own center, let alone an answer for these people. All he could think was, I want out. Out of here, this situation, this flight deck.
“I’ll need to examine them.”
Eleanor made a clicking sound with her mouth, considering this.
“Do you want to turn the lights on again?” Lyle said, peering out the window.
Click went the lights.
“We’ve seen this,” said Jerry.
“Like I said, the only way for me to know for sure is if I can examine them,” Lyle interrupted. “Stating the obvious—repeating the obvious.” He noticed his phone on the instrument panel and snagged it. He felt an urge to say, I’ll just take my phone and be on my way. Maybe head back into the airplane and plop down and feel at home among people who were brain-dead or paralyzed or whatever they were. Is that what he was or was he just as terrified as everyone else and unable to tap into it because of the protective coating that had enveloped him since Africa and everything that had happened with Melanie?
He looked out through the right side of the window. Where he thought he’d seen something. And, again, he imagined he saw movement in the pitch black with snow collecting on the window. Impossible, right? Or, maybe, that’s why he looked in that direction in the first place—because he’d picked up motion of some kind.
“What?” Eleanor asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Yeah, we get that.” She waved him off—suddenly mistrusting everything, Lyle too. “Is it colder in here?” She studied the cabin, like a dog sensing something in the air. Then she realized what nagged at her. The first observer’s seat, the one behind the first officer’s chair, was folded up. It had been folded down earlier. On the floor below the chair, a compartment door was ajar. She looked at her copilot. “You didn’t shut the door.”
“What door?” asked Lyle. This piqued his interest.
“Earlier. Before you came in here, Jerry checked the main battery and the oxygen.”
“Was there anything…” Lyle looked for a word.
“Nothing strange,” Jerry said.
Lyle nodded. Could the fact that they were getting some air seepage from the belly of the plane have spared them the syndrome?
“There’s a case of champagne down there that looks like baggage handlers commandeered and stowed it for their own use. It’s nicely chilled,” Jerry said, trying for a joke.
“And?” Lyle said.
“And what?”
“Battery and oxygen. How are the levels?”
“Is that relevant?”
“Maybe.”
“Tip-top.”
Lyle now stared at Jerry until he thought it might raise a challenge and dropped his gaze. So this first officer was down in the hold, away from everyone else, and many people were dead? Or poisoned or something? Was that worthy of note?
Lyle wanted to keep the man talking.
“I agree with you,” he said, looking at Jerry, “that we’re running short on time. One question: How long can we keep this plane heated—in your estimation?”
“Like I said before, we’re airtight-ish, which helps. Beyond that, it comes down to how much we want to run the engine, which costs fuel, obviously. What’s your thinking?”
“Just, y’know, how long can these folks last if they’re not dead—whether in here or out there. Snowy day. Night.” He watched as a heavier snow flurry hit the windshield and stuck.
Eleanor shook her head. They were going to have to deal very soon with temperature and food.
“Open the champagne,” Lyle said. “It’d warm everyone up, at least temporarily.”
Eleanor blanched and Lyle tried to cover up his raw admission; he’d do anything for a drink right now.
“Sorry,” Lyle said. “Anyhow, cold has its advantages, on a serious note. It can chill the nervous system, the brain, keep it alive.”
“What’s that have to do—”
“I’m not sure. I’m thinking aloud about the implications for us.” He paused, then added, “And them.”
“So.”
“It slows the metabolic function. That can be useful.”
“Hmph. I thought you just said that we wanted heat…” Eleanor’s voice trailed into silence. It was so quiet Lyle could feel the flakes dusting the front window, melting, sticking, melting, sticking. Silence made a sound, that dull buzz you hear at a library that, in this case, no one seemed to want to break. Talk about a situation where there wasn’t much useful to say. Lyle scanned the instrument panel, the gauges he didn’t understand. He was looking for some logic to hold onto, a guidepost. He found only the memory of how he used to love the small-plane landings on makeshift strips in hidden parts of the world where he’d been called in to consult. Physics defying, he always felt it, the engines resisting gravity, commandeering it, that terrible moment before touchdown when it certainly seemed it might go either way. He loved the apparent confidence of the pilot and would try to draft on it. If the pilot can land this metal hunk on this slab of dirt, then I can walk into the village and give death a good licking.