Flight 666 (Moment of Death) Read online

  “I said, give me your money, or die,” Glen said. He pulled the man to his feet and shoved him into the depths of the alley.

  The man snickered and said, “What goes around comes around.”

  Glen shoved him harder.

  Sirens blared, and flashes of red and blue lit up the night, throwing alternate bursts of lurid color into the dark alley. Car doors slammed and footsteps echoed in the narrow passageway. Glen let go of his victim and covered his face as two policemen grabbed him and flung him to the ground. They kicked his ribs so hard he coughed up blood before passing out.

  Glen came to in the back of a moving police car. The sirens were silent, the streets were deserted. The officer in the front passenger seat turned and looked at Glen. “Ready for some fun?” he asked.

  “I’m not talking until I get a lawyer,” Glen replied.

  “You don’t need a lawyer. We’re giving you a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  The driver finally parked the car under a bridge and killed the motor. Glen could hear the gurgling of a nearby river. There were no lights. The night was as dark as Glen’s prospects.

  The policemen got out of the vehicle, opened the back, and yanked Glen out. “You hungry?” the older policeman asked. “How about I feed you Atherton style?”

  The name sent a chill down Glen’s spine.

  The other policeman, a man who easily tipped the scales at four hundred pounds, smacked Glen in the back of the head, knocking him to his knees. “The man asked you a question, bum.”

  Glen stayed down, but he glanced up at the fat man, readying himself to ward off another blow. Glen’s mouth gaped open and he felt his muscles jerk involuntarily. The fat policeman looked like Gabriel’s brother, Tony Tulgrin.

  The huge man turned to his partner. “You got his dinner, Captain?”

  “Coming right up,” the other policeman said. He went to the car and returned with a canvas bag. He shook it in Glen’s face, and the sound of hundreds of coins clinking together split the quiet of the night. The policeman looked at Tony. “Let’s give this bum some spare change. He deserves it.”

  Glen tried to crawl away, but Tony turned him face up and sat on his chest. The other one opened the canvas bag and began shoving loose change into Glen’s mouth. Glen stared at the man in disbelief. He looked like William Atherton. He’d recognize his former boss’s snarl anywhere. Glen struggled against them, to no avail. He began to gag, but the nickels and dimes kept coming. Finally, Atherton shoved a roll of quarters down his throat.

  “Swallow it like a hot dog, bum.”

  Glen was choking to death, but he remained conscious.

  “You think he’s had enough, Captain?” Tony asked.

  “Not nearly enough,” Atherton replied. “This is the scumbag who looted our pension fund. He’s the reason we’ll never be able to retire.”

  Tony pulled Glen’s head back again as Atherton began feeding quarters down his throat like a slot machine.

  “Lift his arm up and down and see if his eyes roll until they land on two cherries,” Atherton said.

  Tony roared with laughter and Glen felt him bouncing on his chest.

  Atherton taped Glen’s mouth shut with a length of duct tape. “This will keep you from spitting up your food.”

  Glen tried to swallow the change they had stuffed into his mouth, but the money stuck in his throat. His last earthly sight before he faded to black was two men picking his pockets.

  “Proud Mary,” as her patrons called her, was a knockout, and she knew it. She was a stunner, a hottie, a fox. She was a babe and an enchantress, a femme fatale. She made Aphrodite look like Medusa’s twin sister. Her best friend was her mirror. If there were a more beautiful woman on the planet, Mary hadn’t seen her. There was no more beautiful woman on the planet than Mary.

  She was looking at herself in the mirror in the airplane’s rest room even as the man who had just paid for her services finished up. Mary smiled. She loved her job. But not as much as she loved herself.

  The man grunted as he pulled away from her. It sounded as if he had a frog stuck in his throat, but she’d heard grunts of all kinds before. Mary smiled when she heard his long sigh of satisfaction.

  “You finished, baby?” she asked, still looking in the mirror. When there was no response, she turned away from her own reflection and looked at him. He had dropped to a sitting position on the closed toilet seat, his head leaning back, his eyes closed.

  Mary giggled. “What’s wrong, G-Money, did I wear you out?” She slapped his face lightly to try to revive him. Still no response. Oh well, he wasn’t the first man who couldn’t handle Proud Mary, and he wouldn’t be the last. Best to leave him alone to recuperate.

  As Mary stepped toward the door she noticed something in his mouth. She bent down and looked. It was a wad of cash. She pulled it out and stared at it.

  “Man, you’re kinkier than I thought,” she murmured. “Never saw anyone biting on bills before.”

  She wrapped the damp wad in some toilet paper and dropped it into her purse. Then she picked up the tightly rolled hundred-dollar bill lying on the sink and stuffed it into her cleavage. Finally, she turned to her sleeping customer and gave him a quick salute. “The pleasure was all yours.”

  Mary cracked open the lavatory door and peered out. She exited the restroom and strode toward the front of the plane to find another lavatory. There were two right across from each other, but both were occupied, and someone else was ahead of her, a Chinese woman who was tapping her feet. Finally, both doors opened and a child came out of each. The woman, who must have been their mother, barked orders in Chinese and chased them back to their seats. Mary went in one and locked the door. She turned toward the mirror and looked at her face. Then she began reapplying her makeup. Even perfection needed a little touch up after strenuous activity.

  When she was finished, she sat on the toilet seat to count her money. It had been the easiest she’d ever made. Only twenty minutes’ work, and she had earned triple her hourly fee. She stuffed the cash back into her purse and leaned back. She closed her eyes and thought about her life. She could have been a supermodel, but she doubted she would have made any more money. She could have done porn, too, and had once had an offer from that dirt bag T-Sul, but she’d turned him down flat. The only people who made money in that business were people like him. She could earn ten times the money on her own.

  The plane suddenly dipped alarmingly, knocking her purse off her knees. She reached out a hand to brace herself and nearly swooned. She was dizzy and disoriented, and she closed her eyes to stop the feeling of vertigo. Her head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and she struggled to hold it upright as the plane bounced and rocked.

  The plane settled, and her dizziness faded. She felt like she’d been sleeping for hours. She opened her eyes, and was startled by a painful jolt of bright light. She clamped her eyes shut again, then gradually opened them. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She must be having a nightmare. She was strapped to a chair, facing a man strapped to a gurney. Cables snaked in all directions from the center of the room, and one cable was attached to her chair. She couldn’t move, except for her eyes. She looked left and then right. She saw six other chairs, with men and women strapped to them. They looked as if death had come to collect them one by one. The seven chairs were arranged in a circle. In the center of the circle was the man on the gurney. Mary heard his rasping breaths.

  She looked at the circle of chairs again, and her mouth fell open. She recognized all of them. To her immediate left was Glen, her recent customer, followed by William Atherton, a former customer, and his assistant. To her right was Terrance Sully, the man who had tried to talk her into a porn career. Next was Sarah Loth, her friend from boarding school, and Tony Tulgrin, who had rented her live daily feeds back when she owned her own web cam business. Most bizarre of all was the man in the middle, who rolled his head toward her until they locked eyes. It was Gabriel, her number one client.
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  She wanted to ask him where they were, but her voice wasn’t working. She looked around again, and the realization hit her—they weren’t sleeping, they were dead. Mary screamed, and the sound echoed throughout the room.

  She heard a commotion and saw a Chinese nurse running toward Gabriel. “He’s coding,” the nurse shouted. Mary looked at Gabriel, saw him convulsing. A tall, blonde doctor with blue eyes and a facial scar appeared. They tried to shock Gabriel back to life with a defibrillator, but it was no use. He was gone.

  “No!” the doctor screamed. “This can’t be happening.”

  “What about the others, doctor?” the nurse asked.

  “They’re all dead now, save her,” he said pointing to Mary. “The mental overload was too much.”

  “So, we failed?”

  “I don’t accept failure. This is a learning experience. One is still alive.”

  Mary broke free of her semi-comatose state and screamed as loud as she could.

  “She’s waking up,” the doctor said. “Sedate her.”

  The nurse added a morphine drip into an IV connected to Mary’s arm.

  Mary fought the drowsy sensation induced by the morphine and struggled against her bonds. But the restraints were too strong, and they bit into her wrists as she wriggled against them. Exhausted, she stopped struggling and looked out into the room beyond the circle of chairs. The entire room was made of mirrors, the floor, the walls, even the door and ceiling. Mary leaned her head back to look up at herself. In the mirror she saw not only herself but also the six other people in the circle, the nurse, doctor, and the now-dead Gabriel in the center. But the slant of the mirror revealed much more. The shape of the room reminded her of something. It looked like a racquet ball court. She saw a group of people peering down at her from a large balcony near the top of the ceiling at the far end.

  “Help me,” she cried out, but the onlookers ignored her. She leaned back, and tears of frustration flowed down her face. She understood that she would be the last to die.

  She opened her eyes wide and looked up. If she were going to die, she wanted her last sight to be a vision of herself and her unique beauty. She even managed a small smile as she gazed at the wondrous picture of perfection that was Proud Mary. But something was wrong. Her tears must have ruined her makeup. Her beauty was fading. She stared in horror as wrinkles spread over her face like vines seeking light. She saw dark circles grow under her eyes as her skin began to sag. Dark splotches stained the skin on her arms, and varicose veins appeared on her legs. Her gorgeous thick hair slowly thinned and faded to gray and then turned white.

  Mary screamed. She closed her eyes, but the horrific vision remained, as if she could see through her eyelids. The flesh was melting off her face. The last vision she saw before closing her eyes for the last time was a skull staring back at her. The last thing she heard was her final scream. It faded and was replaced by the shrill, insistent sound of a heart monitor flat-lining.

  “She’s flat-lining, doctor,” the nurse said, standing over one of the eight patients.

  The doctor swore. “If she goes, it’s back to square one. Are you still using the same frequency?”

  “Yes doctor, it hasn’t changed. It’s still set to 666 hertz.”

  “Give her a shot of epinephrine!”

  “We just drugged her. She won’t be able to handle it.”

  “It’s the only chance we have. Do it!”

  The nurse gave the volunteer known as Mary Hartsford a shot of epinephrine. The patient’s body jumped in response, then went limp and still.

  The doctor growled in disappointment. “This approach isn’t working.”

  “What now, doctor?”

  “Back to the drawing board. Call in the team. Get rid of the bodies, grab the data, and we’ll relocate to the lodge.”

  Join us at the Lodge for

  the next installment in the

  Moment of Death trilogy.

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