The Shining

The Overlook was not going to let him call Dick. That might spoil the fun, too.

They were alone.

Outside the snow came harder, curtaining them off from the world.

42. Mid-Air

Dick Hallora

“Okay,” the clerk said, and issued Hallora

Hallora

“We're serving breakfast on the flight,” the stew said. “If you'd like-”

“Just coffee, babe,” he said, and went down the aisle to a seat in the smoking section. He kept expecting the no-show Vecker to pop through the door like a jack-in-the-box at the last second. The woman in the seat by the window was reading You Can Be Your Own Best Friend with a sour, unbelieving expression on her face. Hallora

At 7:05 the stewardess informed them that there would be a slight delay while the ground crew rechecked one of the latches on the cargo door.

“Shit for brains,” Dick Hallora

The sharp-faced woman turned her sour, unbelieving expression on him and then went back to her book.

He had spent the night at the airport, going from counter to counter-United, American, TWA, Continental, Braniff-haunting the ticket clerks. Sometime after midnight, drinking his eighth or ninth cup of coffee in the canteen, he had decided he was being an asshole to have taken this whole thing on his own shoulders. There were authorities. He had gone down to the nearest bank of telephones, and after talking to three different operators, he had gotten the emergency number of the Rocky Mountain National Park Authority.

The man who answered the telephone sounded utterly worn out. Hallora

He was put on hold.

The ranger (Hallora

“They've got a CB,” the ranger said.

“Sure they've got a CB,” Hallora

“We haven't had a Mayday call from them.”

“Man, that don't matter. They-”

“Exactly what kind of trouble are they in, Mr. Hall?”

“Well, there's a family. The caretaker and his family. I think maybe he's gone a little nuts, you know. I think maybe he might hurt his wife and his little boy.”

“May I ask how you've come by this information, sir?”

Hallora

“Tom Staunton, sir.”

“Well, Tom, I know. Now I'll be just as straight with you as I can be. There's bad trouble up there. Maybe killin bad, do you dig what I'm sayin?”

“Mr. Hall, I really have to know how you-”

“Look,” Hallora

“Mr. Hall, you're not calling from Colorado.”

“No. But what difference-”

“If you're not in Colorado, you're not in CB range of the Overlook Hotel. If you're not in CB range you can't possibly have been in contact with the, uh…” Faint rattle of papers. “The Torrance family. While I had you on hold I tried to telephone. It's out, which is nothing unusual. There are still twenty-five miles of aboveground telephone lines between the hotel and the Sidewinder switching station. My conclusion is that you must be some sort of crank.”

“Oh man, you stupid…” But his despair was too great to find a noun to go with the adjective. Suddenly, illumination. “Call them!” he cried.

“Sir?”

“You got the CB, they got the CB. So call them! Call them and ask them what's up!”

There was a brief silence, and the humming of long-distance wires.

“You tried that too, didn't you?” Hallora

“No, we are not,” Staunton said angrily. Hallora

“Yeah,” Hallora

“Now my guess as to why I couldn't raise them on the CB is very simple. I don't know what time it is where you are, but out here it's nine-thirty. I think they may have turned it off and gone to bed. Now if you-”

“Good luck with your climbers, man,” Hallora

He had hung up the phone.

At 7:20 A. M. the TWA 747 backed lumberingly out of its stall, turned, and rolled out toward the runway. Hallora

Flight 196 parted company with the ground at 7:28, and at 7:31, as it gained altitude, the thought-pistol went off in Dick Hallora

(!!! DICK PLEASE COME QUICK WE'RE IN BAD TROUBLE DICK WE NEED)

And that was all. It was sudd enly gone. No fading out this time. The communication had been chopped off cleanly, as if with a knife. It scared him. His hands, still clutching the seat rests, had gone almost white. His mouth was dry. Something bad happened to the boy. He was cure of it. If anyone had hurt that little child-

“Do you always react so violently to takeoffs?”

He looked around. It was the woman in the horn-rimmed glasses.

“It wasn't that,” Hallora

“Is that so?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“It is the line soldier who ultimately pays for any foreign intervention,” the sharp-faced woman said grimly.

“Is that so?”

“It is. This country must swear off its dirty little wars. The CIA has been at the root of every dirty little war America has fought in this century. The CIA and dollar diplomacy.”