He tosses his magazine into the sink, and stands to wipe and pull up his pants.
�Damn. Why do these things always happen at the worst possible time?� he groans. He zips up his pants and pauses for a beat. The pain in his midsection passes with a grumble.
Barry opens the door and peeks out, in order to get a sense of the situation before he runs headlong into it. People are standing in front of their seats, peering down the aisle.
He steps out of the lavatory and gets a better view of what�s going on. Toward the front of the plane, a man near the age of twenty, in an orange tee shirt, is being shoved down the aisle. He looks dazed as if he�s taken a couple hits to the head.
Barry heads up the aisle, telling people to sit down please. God only knows what would happen if everyone decided to run toward the front of the plane at once. He wasn�t sure, but it might be enough to knock the plane out of control.
When he gets to the group of people in the aisle, he grabs the arm of a stewardess. �I�m a cop,� he says, �maybe I can help out.�
Up close, Barry could tell that something is wrong with the guy. His head is swinging from side to side, and his eyes look glazed over. Drugs are Barry�s first thought, so the kid should be relatively easy to take care of. At least, he doesn�t look aggressive.
The stewardess turns and tells the other men that he�s a cop. And, Barry regrets thinking that maybe the kid�s on drugs. It becomes apparent that it�s not drugs, but insanity, or maybe a mixture of both.
Before Barry can react, the man snaps his head around and rushes at him. Barry tries to get his hands up in time, but the tight space in the aisle prevents him from protecting himself.
Barry sees the Starter logo on the guy�s hat up close and then his world becomes a bright flash. He reaches up to his face and finds his nose in a different spot than it normally is. Blood runs down his hand. There�s a lot of commotion. The cabin of the plane spins dizzily around him as he collapses to the ground. He goes down hard. Just before passing out, he realizes that he�s shit himself.
In an instant they�re on him like a swarm of ants. He feels fists and elbows hitting him all over his body. Maybe feel is the wrong word. It�s more like he senses them; he�s not feeling too much of anything.
As hard as they try they can�t bring him down. He won�t let them bring him down.
He swings wildly at everything around him. Hitting, hurting. He won�t let them hurt him. He won�t give up.
A glass shatters over his head. Blood runs down the side of his face. Someone goes for his feet. He swings and hits the person on the back. He loses his balance and topples to the floor.
They�re on him before he can regain his footing. Someone is lying on his legs. Another is pinning his arms to the floor. Someone is even standing on his head. He�s looking up her dress.
Another foot goes over his throat and presses down. His screaming is turned into a gag. He realizes that he had been hollering. It gets harder to breathe.
His struggle goes from trying to get up, to trying to stay conscious.
Colors start to fade.
Everything dims.
Sound is the last thing that lingers.
�It�s over! And you�re going to lie here until the end of the flight! We�ve had it!� someone hollers.
Barbara has a hand on his shoulder and is leaning by him, trying to see down the aisle. �I think they�re killing the kid,� she says. �There�s no way a human can take that kind of beating.�
Mark had stopped typing on his laptop when the kid ran through first-class and attacked the cockpit. Since then, they had been standing in front of their seats watching the scene turn violent. For a time Mark had wanted to become involved. It wasn�t right for someone to run around crazy when normal people were trying to work and rest. But, by the time he had worked up his courage to step forward, so many people were involved that he felt that he�d only be in the way.
�Relax,� he says to her. �They�re not hitting him anymore. They�re just holding him down until we land.�
Barbara looks at him as if he�s the crazy one. �Do you really think they need that many people to hold him down? They�re smothering him.�
�They�re just making sure he doesn�t get up. You saw what he did to that cop. What would happen if he turns violent again when we�re landing? With everyone buckled in and no one to stop him from getting at the cockpit?�
�Well, I guess,� Barbara says.
�We should be landing any minute now. Let�s get our stuff together.�
Gate 13 at Salt Lake City International Airport is full of people, but relatively still. Security has had the gate locked down so no one can leave. A baby whines on a young lady�s lap, and a few people whisper, but besides that the terminal is quiet.
Smoke rises gently from a cigarette, forgotten in a man�s hand. People sit near comatose in the multicolored plastic chairs dispersed about the gate. The seats range from red to green in no particular order.
A toddler waddles to the big glass window looking out onto the tarmac and swats at his own reflection. He giggles. No one makes a comment.
Heads rise as a man walks silently down the hall toward the gate. When he gets to glass doors a security guard reaches out and opens it for him. He stands just inside the door. The badge on his chest glints the fluorescent lights overhead.
�You,� he says, pointing a finger
A man with his arm around his teenage son looks up from his lap to see the finger directed at him. He gets up slowly, shaking off his son�s grasping hands. The man watches his own feet as he crosses the room.
No one says anything. Most look away. They know they�ll be in the same situation before daybreak. To explain what happened, what they saw.
Their thoughts can almost be heard floating through space above their heads. ... How do you explain it to someone who wasn�t there? ... What will I say? ... How could that have happened? ... I�ll tell him I was sleeping...
There are no thoughts of tomorrow. What will be had for dinner, what type of car will be rented. No worries about where a child�s next meal will come from. No cares about how mother recovered from her stroke. A crumbling marriage isn�t on anyone�s mind, nor is next year�s vacation.
Everyone�s personal worlds have been jarred out of place. Their future plans no longer matter. At least at this moment they don�t. Tomorrow may be a different story, but for now no one can believe what he or she witnessed only a few hours ago.
Murder. They had all just witnessed a teenage boy�s murder. It was nothing like what they�ve seen on television or the movies. His killers were not deranged psychopaths. They had all taken part in his death, every one of them. His killers were all ordinary people.