Read Online Hauntings by Ellen Datlow - Free Book Online Page A

some clear air turbulence, but it won’t be easy. Tell your passengers to expect some weather.”
    â€œWill do, sir. Anything else?”
    â€œThank you, Load Davis, that’s all.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    Finally time to relax. As I went to have a horizontal moment in the crew berth, I saw Pembry snooping around the comfort pallet. “Anything I can help you find?”
    â€œAn extra blanket?”
    I pulled one from the storage cabinet between the cooking station and the latrine and gritted my teeth. “Anything else?”
    â€œNo,” she said, pulling a piece of imaginary lint from the wool. “We’ve flown together before, you know.”
    â€œHave we?”
    She raised an eyebrow. “I probably ought to apologize.”
    â€œNo need, ma’am,” I said. I dodged around her and opened the fridge. “I could serve an in-flight meal later if you are...”
    She placed her hand on my shoulder, like she had on Hernandez, and it commanded my attention. “You do remember me.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    â€œI was pretty hard on you during those evac flights.”
    I wished she’d stop being so direct. “You were speaking your mind, ma’am. It made me a better Loadmaster.”
    â€œStill...”
    â€œMa’am, there’s no need.” Why can’t women figure out that apologies only make things worse?
    â€œVery well.” The hardness of her face melted into sincerity, and suddenly it occurred to me that she wanted to talk.
    â€œHow’s your patient?”
    â€œResting.” Pembry tried to act casual, but I knew she wanted to say more.
    â€œWhat’s his problem?”
    â€œHe was one of the first to arrive,” she said, “and the first to leave.”
    â€œJonestown? Was it that bad?”
    Flashback to our earlier evac flights. The old look, hard and cool, returned instantly. “We flew out of Dover on White House orders five hours after they got the call. He’s a Medical Records Specialist, six months in the service, he’s never been anywhere before, never saw a day of trauma in his life. Next thing he knows, he’s in a South American jungle with a thousand dead bodies.”
    â€œA thousand?”
    â€œCount’s not in yet, but it’s headed that way.” She brushed the back of her hand against her cheek. “So many kids.”
    â€œKids?”
    â€œWhole families. They all drank poison. Some kind of cult, they said. Someone told me the parents killed their children first. I don’t know what could make a person do that to their own family.” She shook her head. “I stayed at Timehri to organize triage. Hernandez said the smell was unimaginable. They had to spray the bodies with insecticide and defend them from hungry giant rats. He said they made him bayonet the bodies to release the pressure. He burned his uniform.” She shuffled to keep her balance as the bird jolted.
    Something nasty crept down the back of my throat as I tried not to visualize what she said. I struggled not to grimace. “The AC says it may get rough. You better strap in.” I walked her back to her seat. Hernandez’s mouth gaped as he sprawled across his seat, looking for all the world like he’d lost a bar fight—bad. Then I went to my bunk and fell asleep.
    Ask any Loadmaster: after so much time in the air, the roar of engines is something you ignore. You find you can sleep through just about anything. Still, your mind tunes in and wakes up at the sound of anything unusual, like the flight from Yakota to Elmendorf when a jeep came loose and rolled into a crate of MREs . Chipped beef everywhere. You can bet the ground crew heard from me on that one. So it should not come as a shock that I started at the sound of a scream.
    On my feet, out of the bunk, past the comfort pallet before I could think. Then I saw Pembry. She was out of her seat and in front of