The Langoliers Page #7

on the plane. Why isn't it here?

Maybe nobody was here

when it happened.

No, that's nonsense.

An air terminal is like

a police station or a fire station.

There's people there regardless.

Watch out, I hear someone.

I don't wanna shoot her, but I will

if I have to. Now take me to Boston.

- What's happening?

- You hear me? Take me to Boston.

- You're choking me. Stop!

- What is he doing? What's going on?

- Steady on, old mate.

- Stop moving around.

You're gonna make me do something

I don't wanna. Stop moving.

Do as he says, Bethany.

I don't wanna shoot her,

but I will if I have to.

- No, Albert.

- No.

I think I've been shot.

Albert. It's all right, Albert.

Albert? Albert?

You all right, kid? You all right?

How bad am I hit?

Were you able to stop the bleeding?

Oh, I think you'll live, old son.

Here, souvenir for you.

Found it on the floor.

It must have hit you

square in the chest and bounced off.

I was thinking of the matches.

I sort of thought it wouldn't fire at all.

That was very brave, Albert.

And very risky.

God, what if I'd been wrong?

You almost were.

A little more pop and Albert here

would have had a bullet in his lung.

You okay?

All right. So here's what we do...

I thought it was really brave.

- Would you pass me that rope?

- I mean, incredible.

It wasn't much.

I don't want him moving at all.

All right.

Hold his hands for me.

Say,

I didn't kill that guy, did I?

I hit him pretty hard.

He's out like a light,

but he's still alive.

His pulse is strong and regular,

he'll live.

He'll just wake up

with a bad headache.

In the meantime, I think it might be

wise to take a few precautions,

don't you?

- Do you have to be so rough?

- Yes.

If you want him safely secured. You

do want him safely secured, don't you?

All right.

Just like one of Father John's

Christmas turkeys, neatly trussed.

Now, where were we

before we were so rudely interrupted?

Let me up. Let me up.

- Let me up right now.

- Shut up.

- Stop it.

- Hey.

What did you have to do that for?

Now, listen to me. You need

waking up, fellows and girls,

and I haven't got the time

to do this gently.

Dinah says something's

coming towards us,

rather nasty, at a rate of knots,

and I for one believe her.

Now, having a knowledge of what it is

may not save our lives,

but I'm bloody sure that a lack of it's

gonna put an end to us, and soon.

Anybody disagree?

Jolly good.

Mr. Jenkins, pray continue.

I'm sorry, but I write

about these things.

I just haven't taken part in them.

Until now, that is.

I think you're doing great, Mr. Jenkins,

and I like listening to you too.

It makes me feel better.

Oh, well, thank you.

Thank you. That's very nice

of you to say that, Dinah.

I think I found a fallacy

in our thinking,

and it is this:

We all assumed as we began to grasp

the dimensions of this event

that something had happened

to the rest of the world.

But the evidence doesn't bear

that assumption out.

What has happened

has happened to us,

and us alone.

I am convinced that the world

as we know it

is ticking along as it always has.

But it's we,

the 10 survivors of Flight 29,

who are lost.

Please tell us what you know,

Mr. Jenkins.

I can't help but feeling

that we're running out of time and fast.

Yes, of course.

There's no mess in here,

but there's a mess on the plane.

There's no electricity in here,

but there's electricity on the plane.

Neither of these

are conclusive, of course,

but then there's the matches.

Bethany had her matches

on the plane, they work fine.

The matches in here, they just fizzle.

The carbonated drinks are flat.

The food is tasteless,

the air is odourless,

and sound fails to reverberate.

Then we have a madman,

he fires a gun,

and the bullet travels mere inches

and it has no force.

- Then, of course, there's the weather.

- What about it?

Well, there's a strong wind blowing

out there in heavy gusts,

and yet there's a low cloud cover

that doesn't move at all.

It's frozen in place.

I think the weather patterns

are stopping

or they're running down

like an old pocket watch.

Which brings me right

to the very hub of the matter.

I said not 15 minutes ago

that I felt it was lunchtime.

Well, now I feel

it's a lot later than that.

I feel it's 3:
00, 4:00 in the afternoon.

And I have a terrible feeling that we're

gonna see it getting dark outside

before our watches tell us

it's a quarter to 10 in the morning.

Please, Mr. Jenkins,

can we get to the point?

Well, the point is

that what we're dealing with here

is time,

not dimension

as Albert has suggested.

Let's say that every now and then,

a hole appears in the stream of time.

Not a time warp, but a time rip.

A rip in the temporal fabric.

That's the craziest thing I ever heard.

Amen.

Mr. Gaffney, what's happening to us,

the situation that we're in, this is crazy.

- Go on.

- Well, let's say

that such a rip in the fabric of time

does occur now and then.

It would be similar to certain

rare weather phenomenon

that are reported,

like upside-down tornadoes

and circular rainbows

and daytime starlight.

The aurora borealis.

What?

There was an aurora borealis over

the Mojave Desert when we left LAX.

We were supposed to fly right into it.

Well, that's it. That's it.

An aurora over the desert.

That strengthens my point, doesn't it?

If we had the bad luck to fly into that,

and it was a time rip,

well, that means that we're no longer

in our own time, ladies and gentlemen.

Look, I have to agree with the lady,

time is short.

Could we just get to the bottom line,

please, Mr. Jenkins?

The bottom line?

The bottom line is, I believe,

that we have hopped an absurdly short

distance into the past,

say as little as 15 minutes,

and we're discovering the unlovely

truth about time travel.

That one can't appear in the Texas

State School Book Depository

on November 22nd, 1963 and hope

to stop the Kennedy assassination.

One can't witness the building

of the pyramids or the sack of Rome,

or investigate the age

of the dinosaurs firsthand.

No, fellow time travellers,

have a look around you.

This is the past.

It's empty.

It's silent.

It's a world with all the meaning

of a discarded old paint can.

Sensory input has disappeared.

Electricity has already disappeared.

And time itself is winding down

in a kind of a spiral that's going

faster and faster.

But what about us?

If this place is winding down

and we're caught in it...

I suppose

we'll wind down with it.

Or else wink out of existence like

the other passengers on our flight.

Mr. Jenkins?

The sound I told you about before,

I can hear it again.

It's getting closer.

Much, much closer.

I'm going back out to the windows.

And what about you two,

you coming?

We can hear it as well

as we want to from here.

All right.

Mind you stay away

from Mr. Toomy.

"Stay away from Mr. Toomy."

What do you make of it, Brian?

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