Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories by Richard Matheson

mouth and plucked out chewing gum. She put it under her chair seat.
      "At least it stopped raining," said a redhead, tying her shoelaces.
      The seven girls looked around at each other. Are you ready? said their eyes. I'm ready, I suppose. They adjusted themselves on the chairs with girlish grunts and sighs. They hooked their feet around the legs of their chairs. All gum was placed in storage. Mouths were tightened into prudish fixity. The pretty little girls made ready for the game.
      Finally they were silent on their chairs. One of them took a deep breath. So did another. They all tensed their milky flesh and clasped fragile fingers together. One quickly scratched her head to get it over with. Another sneezed prettily.
      "Now," said a girl on the right end of the row.
      Seven pairs of beady eyes shut. Seven innocent little minds began to picture, to visualize, to transport.
      Lips rolled into thin gashes, faces drained of colour, bodies shivered passionately. Their fingers twitching with concentration, seven pretty little girls fought a war.
      The men were coming over the rise of a hill when the attack came. The leading men, feet poised for the next step, burst into flame.
      There was no time to scream. Their rifles slapped down into the muck, their eyes were lost in fire. They stumbled a few steps and fell, hissing and charred, into the soft mud.
      Men yelled. The ranks broke. They began to throw up their weapons and fire at the night. More troops puffed incandescently, flared up, were dead.
      "Spread out!" screamed an officer as his gesturing fingers sprouted flame and his face went up in licking yellow heat.
      The men looked everywhere. Their dumb terrified eyes searched for an enemy. They fired into the fields and woods. They shot each other. They broke into flopping runs over the mud.
      A truck was enveloped in fire. Its driver leaped out, a two-legged torch. The truck went bumping over the road, turned, wove crazily over the field, crashed into a tree, exploded and was eaten up in blazing light. Black shadows flitted in and out of the aura of light around the flames. Screams rent the night.
      Man after man burst into flame, fell crashing on his face in the mud. Spots of searing light lashed the wet darkness- screams-running coals, sputtering, glowing, dying-incendiary ranks-trucks cremated-tanks blowing up.
    A little blonde, her body tense with repressed excitement. Her lips twitch, a giggle hovers in her throat. Her nostrils dilate. She shudders in giddy fright. She imagines, imagines… …
      A soldier runs headlong across a field, screaming, his eyes insane with horror. A gigantic boulder rushes at him from the black sky.
      His body is driven into the earth, mangled. From the rock edge, fingertips protrude.
      The boulder lifts from the ground, crashes down again, a shapeless trip hammer. A flaming truck is flattened. The boulder flies again to the black sky.
    A pretty brunette, her face a feverish mask. Wild thoughts tumble through her virginal brain. Her scalp grows taut with ecstatic fear. Her lips draw back from clenching teeth. A gasp of terror hisses from her lips. She imagines, imagines. …

      A soldier falls to his knees. His head jerks back. In the light of burning comrades, he stares dumbly at the white foamed wave that towers over him.
      It crashes down, sweeps his body over the muddy earth, fills his lungs with salt water. The tidal wave roars over the field, drowns a hundred flaming men, tosses their corpses in the air with thundering whitecaps.
      Suddenly the water stops, flies into a million pieces and disintegrates.
    A lovely little redhead, hands drawn under her chin in tight bloodless fists. Her lips tremble, a throb of delight expands her chest. Her white throat contracts, she gulps in a breath of air. Her nose wrinkles with dreadful joy. She imagines, imagines…
      A running soldier collides with a lion. He cannot see in the darkness. His