And that’s good for arrogant, indignant Zippy, because he’s hungry – but that part’s not in the story. I mean, there’s probably only so much we can take of Zippy shoving food down his throat to satiate his gluttonous hunger
Having just received firm instructions from Codename Joe, Captain Dopobachennya now begins a gradual, careful, and highly skilled descent to bring the “Destiny Raven” safely down on the indicated landing strip at Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport.
Hearing the surprise announcement, Zippy is thrown for a loop and panics – he’s got to get that sandwich before he is forced to finally sit down, and stay down!
Otherwise, though perhaps a few passengers are, for one reason or another, only slightly inconvenienced by the unexpected communique, a positive murmur of appreciation for the fortuitous good news rises and spreads throughout the aircraft, regardless of seating class.
But, head down, Zippy barrels toward the food galley at the back of Economy Class.
Meanwhile, back in the cockpit, the steady and unvarying rate of Captain Dopobachennya’s highly skilled descent is, unbeknownst to him or anyone at ground control, putting the “Destiny Raven” on a collision course with a large migratory flock of red-winged blackbirds on their way to their breeding ground in Canada. The crash will take the well over 200 lives on the aircraft, leaving no survivors, with the exception, it is needless to say, of Nick Scratch Hiss-Elf, nor will there be that much to go by on the ground to identify the victims – for the “Destiny Raven” will be “nevermore”.
Again, meanwhile, back in Economy Class…
“Ya tye, blyat, destroy, blyat!”
Igor, the too-tightly dressed, grossly overweight, nervous and frustrated Economy Class man of Part 5 in stout little Zippy’s diminutive airplane saga, catches Zippy illegally removing a chicken-breast sandwich from Economy Class’s rearmost food galley as he emerges out of a restroom still trying to updo his pants.
With his belt buckle still hanging loose, Igor makes a Soviet-styled fat-man’s lunge for Zippy, who, apparently acting instinctively, and even, commendably for once, somewhat fiercely, deftly jumps back from the attack while holding the chicken sandwich as far out of Igor’s reach as his short arm will stretch.
“I am a puppet master… I am a puppet master…” Zippy oddly chants at Igor as he defiantly waves the sandwich at him in the air.
Igor wheezes and hits his chest with his fist, but is determined to follow through; but Zippy, without apparent fear – and again, we are forced to give him credit – skips up and down in the aisle to make sport of the self-styled “tough guy”, who now tries to rush Zippy, but largely manages to knock some older women seated either side his sudden madness in the head with his elbows.
And now it is no longer possible for Igor to simply give up and sit down, and so he begins his charge…
“Sir… sirs! Both of you! Sit down! Sit down, immediately! Sit down, or you will be restrained! Sirs!!! Sit down right now, or you will be restrained and placed under arrest in… L.A.! Sit down, sit down – or we will be forced to turn around this plane!!!”
“Yeah, right! I am a puppet master… I am a puppet master…”
Zippy has now turned to run down the aisle from the clearly out-of-shape, cuckolded, and unhealthy blowhard, whose fat bulldog face and neck look to be turning gray and green, as he pounds his fat chest with a fist and gasps for air.
“Sirs… sirs!!! Sit down… sit –”
“Yeah, right!”
“Ya, tye… blyat… ya, tye… ya, tye…”
Zippy astounds himself – the speed, the dexterity, the power! Even if he has to run to the very other end of the plane, there’s no way – “You got that… you fucking got that!!!” – yeah, there’s just no way in hell! he’s going to let go that sandwich, for “It is MINE!!!”
Amazing! For no one can now stand in Zippy’s way…
“Siiiiiiirrrs!!!”
As Igor grabs hold the partition separating Comfort Zone Class from Premier Class, tearing it down so that it covers him as he collapses, the copilot opens the door and steps out the cockpit to see what all the noise and commotion are about, and does not even see Zippy, whose explosive cannonball force throws the copilot against the side of the plane, knocking him out, while Zippy uses Captain Dopobachennya’s back as a brake.
Somehow it happens that Zippy just manages to turn as the plane begins its death-plunge to see Mr. Nick standing outside the cockpit door, grinning elastic and wide at Zippy, as Zippy takes a bite of the chicken-breast sandwich…
But, except for Mr. Nick, what no one sees is a black mass of birds curving up and blasting safely over the top of the plane at just the moment the craft’s nose turns down for its inevitable earthward dive.
This wipe’s the grin off Hisself’s prideful face, for he now understands what is actually meant to happen, and why he’d really been made to take special note of this Zippy. For this one, after all, will not be the instrument of the vessel’s destruction, along with all its lives on board, but of its salvation.
And he also understands that this will be something that Zippy himself would never come to know.
“Talk about mysterious ways…” Hisself says to himself. “But for me, just wasted time… Or… maybe…”
The Thin Air “Destiny Raven” plummets toward Earth, spiraling, as they say, out of control …
xxx
On the ground, Zippy is in a kind of liberal custody of some sort of local, militia-looking authorities, without handcuffs; just a rookie loosely holding on to a pinch of the back of Zippy’s rented tux between two fingers, as Zippy adjusts his fedora with one hand, while shaking his Bronx School of Scientists gym bag he holds in the other, as though making sure everything that’s supposed to be in it is still there. In addition to everything else they have on him, Zippy will now be facing charges of hijacking a plane with the intent to carry out a terrorist attack and the attempted murder of well over 200 innocent people.
As for the “Destiny Raven”, it is side-toppled wreckage, with the wheels missing, and one wing that sheared off impacting the tree line along a dirt road next to a presently fallow wheat field somewhere in Kansas, but well off the Wichita Airport mark.
There are no fatalities; only Igor’s heart attack, which he has survived, a knocked-out copilot, who has come to, and a woman with a broken arm. All the rest are generally banged up and bruised, with gashed foreheads and bodily cuts that are, ultimately, not all that severe.
“I broke my arm because of you,” the woman, whose limb is now in a sling, shouts at Zippy, having walked up to him to vent her rage.
“Good,” says Zippy. “Why didn’t you break the other one, too?”
“Sir,” says the rookie, who is now simply standing close to Zippy, but minus any physical contact, “you have the right to remain silent; anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right –”
“I hope you die!” cries the woman. “I hope they kill you!”
“In fact,” Zippy says, “it was you who was supposed to die… Why are you still alive?”
“Sir… sir… you have the right to remain –”
“Aaaaahhh!!! “You” this… and “You” that… The woman breaks up, and breaks down, into a verbal chaos of incoherent, hysterical Ukrainian village screaming. Mercifully, someone comes by to walk her away.
“What were you doing flying to L.A.?!” Zippy yells after the woman. “What business did you have going there, you stupid old village hag? Who needed your miserable old babushka ass there, anyway?!”
“Sir… sir… you have the right to –”
“Ah, shut up…”
“Boy,” says Hisself, who is suddenly there, to the rookie, “my client is well aware of his rights, so no need to waste your breath. And anyway, we’ll be moving this case to New Orleans. You’ll have no jurisdiction over my client here.”
“We’ll see about that. And… anyway… we have jurisdiction over him now… So, get out of my way, shyster…”
“Mr. Zamazda – believe me when I tell you: The ball is actually in your court on this one. Therefore, if you need me, I’ll be standing by, so to speak… kind of like a coach…”
Zamazda remains mute. And this Mr. Nick, Jacobin scholar and legal expert in the Napoleonic Code, fades away… or something of the sort.
Standing in the field, arrestee and rookie sway in place a little, as if stunned.
They snap to as voices call out to them from the gravelly parking lot of a diner, some hundred yards or so away, across the dirt road next the field they’re in: “Come on, there, George! Let’s get a move on… let’s go, let’s go!”
With a shove to Zippy’s elbow, the rookie turns his prisoner toward the diner and nudges him in the back to get him going.
As the two figures move across the field toward the roadside diner, where several men are posted at the door, waiting, we sense, we perceive, that by his comportment, Zippy is as recklessly arrogant and sanctimoniously indignant as ever…
Authored by Saint Stephan 5.10.25