But that wasn’t what caused the scream. Hundreds of people ran up to the glass. To our left, down the way, we could see another plane coming in for a landing. No lights, no steam, its engines dead. It floated down in a straight line, wobbly and gliding to its destination: the other plane.
“Terrorists?” someone said. The cop next to me tried to calm people down, but after that one word came out, more screams echoed down the terminal. It sounded like a cave. When the cop looked out the window as saw the incoming plane, he went nuts.
“Everyone get away from the glass! Go, go, go!” People screamed, a woman grabbed my shirt and pulled like I was going with her no matter what. Footsteps clacked on the terminal floor. No one knew where to go.
The plane drifted lower to the ground. It was going to T-bone the stalled plane. The passengers knew it too. I could just make out the frantic movement of the people in the stalled 747. They scrambled around like rats in a cage. Finally an emergency door burst open with a cloud of smoke and a bright yellow slide inflated from the side. The passengers threw themselves down it, clawing at each other, scurrying away as fast as they could.
I ran to the restaurant. I don’t know why, but I had to find Marilyn. Maybe it was because she was the only person I knew there, and because I “knew” her, I felt I had to be with her.
“Where’s Marilyn?” I asked. A woman ran over me with a block an NFL player would be proud of. “MARILYN!” I shouted. No response.
“What the hell did you do?” asked the bartender. Again with the accusations! I didn’t wait – I leveled him with a right hook across the jaw. Sue me later, big guy. When he dropped to his knees holding his chin I saw Marilyn standing behind him with a tray of food.
“What the hell?” she said. I moved just as the bartender fired a round where my balls would’ve been. He clocked me in the thigh, which hurt like hell. I stumbled to Marilyn and grabbed her hand. She tried to balance the tray of food. “Adam? What are you doing?”
“DROP IT!” I shouted, knocking the tray out of her hand. “Follow me, now!” I led her to the back, barged into the men's room, and kicked open the door to the back stall. I pulled her down to the floor.
“Get your fuckin’ hands off of me!” she said, smacking me. I pulled her close just as the explosion hit. It sounded like a train chugging through the terminal. My ears rang. Marilyn’s screaming didn’t help. More explosions, like one setting off another. The ceiling tiles splintered and fell on our legs, and white dust clogged our hair and made it hard to breath.
Another explosion. This one nearby. The door to the bathroom blew off and hit the stall door in front of us. That flung open and hit Marilyn in the shoulder. A stream of fire blew in, like someone with a flamethrower targeting us. I slammed the stall door shut with my foot, but flames still slipped under it onto my pants leg. My leg was on fire.
Marilyn screamed again. I turned on my butt and stuck my foot in the toilet, hoping like hell the last person to use it flushed. The flame went back into its hole, but the heat in the room had to be ten times higher than before. I could smell the burnt hairs on my head and felt the sweat squeezed out of me from the fire. Marilyn's sweat mixed with her tearful hysterics, wetting her face like a shower. I held her close trying to breathe through the fumes, the smoke, and the white puffs of God-only-knows-what kind of chemicals floated around us.
I lay back on the floor with Marilyn clutching my chest. “What the hell’s going on?” she sobbed, over and over. “What the fuck just happened?”
I wish I knew. I only had three and a half pages from my dad in my back pocket to explain it all.
Quiet again. I helped Marilyn up and slowly pushed open the stall door, now hanging on one hinge. My foot hurt a little from the burn, but I knew I'd live. A ringing in my ears, over the course of a few minutes, gave way to the sounds of airport.
I really wish it hadn’t.
A choir of high pitched moans, ceaseless crying and sobbing, and an occasional scream bounced down the terminal. Fires crackled all around, and broken and splintered steel groaned under the weight of concrete it could no longer support. People in charged shouted orders to others.
But there wasn't a single siren. No alarm or electronic whoop telling people to get the fuck out.
I stepped over the door to the bathroom, gripping Marilyn’s hand, and stepped out into the terminal. My eyes had seen what my brain couldn't process. An apocalypse.
Some tables in the restaurant lay on their tops like dead four-legged animals. Some formed piles of rubble against the far wall to our right. Pointed shards of glass, like the gapped toothy smile of a vampire, stood in the frame where the glass wall had been. One person hung halfway out of the window, bent backwards, looking up to the sky with lifeless eyes, impaled on one of the longer glass teeth. Marilyn saw the woman and let out a moan, like her stomach was going to leap out of her throat.
I pulled her along, stepping over wood chairs, broken dishes and glasses, and food that the patrons would never finish. A light fixture over the bar fell with a crash. Marilyn jumped and I pulled her closer. She screamed.
Her boss’s head lay on the floor near the bar, staring up at the ceiling.
Marilyn buried her face in my neck, hysterical. I hustled her out of there.
In both directions down the terminal the same carnage sprawled in front of us. Louder shouts echoed with no mechanical sounds to interfere. Most people not wearing a police or emergency uniform sat in shock, some with their knees to their chest, rocking back and forth. One little boy with a charred stuffed animal ran by us screaming for Momma.
All this from two planes colliding? It didn’t make sense. Something else must’ve happened. Something triggered a series of explosions. This was just too big.
I found an open area in the entrance way to the terminal men’s room amongst the debris and I sat Marilyn down. She clawed at her skin, a learned reflex to calm herself down. I recognized the need immediately, but knew this was the wrong time to be cutting.
“Marilyn,” I said. She didn’t look at me. She just heaved in air. “MARILYN,” I shouted. Slow head turn. Her vacant eyes stared into mine, but didn't see me. Her right hand fingernails dug deeper ridges into her left arm. I grabbed her hand.
“It’s ok. We’re ok.” I said. I pulled her in close. As she shook in my arms I realized her cutting was more than just creating a feeling, or getting people to care. It controlled her panic, soothed her. My need for cutting kept me from losing control. I hated intense feelings of pain or fear. I fucking hated to cry. Cutting kept me from doing that. It got me fired up.
“Hey, buddy, give us a hand,” someone behind me said. “C’mon!” He wasn’t too patient.
I looked at Marilyn. “I gotta go help someone. You stay here, ok?” She looked up at me with huge red-rimmed blue eyes, pleading without saying a word. “Stay calm. Don’t go crazy on your arm. It could get infected.” She looked down at her arm, which already had three streaks of blood on it, and put her right hand down.
The guy pulled at my arm. “C’mon, man, this dude’s gonna die!”
I ran behind the guy to the waiting area of Gate 47, three gates down. It was like running an obstacle course of toppled seats and steel. We had to step around people helping other people, some in uniform, some not. Hanging electric cables dangled like dead snakes from the ceiling - no spark of leaking electricity.
We reached the gate and there, underneath a beam from the ceiling, lay an old man who had to be in his seventies. We could hear his sobbing before we even saw him. Tears streaked his ash-covered face, but his crying and moaning immediately struck me as more disappointment than pain. More like he was whining.
“No, no. Please, Lord, no.” He shook his head back and forth as the husky guy who grabbed me pointed me to the end of the beam.
“Lift it up; Ashley here will drag him out. We only need to lift it up a little. Lucky the thing didn't crush him." I looked over at a girl, no more than fourteen, crouching with h
er arms under the old guy’s armpits.
“NO!” the old guy shouted. “Let me die! It is Judgment Day! I cannot be left behind. Please!”
I looked over at the husky guy who nodded. “On the count of three. Ready Ashley?” The girl nodded. The guy counted to three and we lifted; the friggin’ beam must’ve weighed five hundred pounds. To her credit, Ashley pulled with everything she had and dragged the cry-baby out.
We dropped the beam with a clang that echoed all over. Heads turned towards us, as others expected the ceiling to cave in. I knelt down to the old fart. “You ok?”
He smiled through his tears. “Yes. I suppose I should thank you. I am the Right Reverend Jesse Hill.” He extended his hand, somewhat feebly.
“Adam Dawson,” I said, feeling his weak, almost feminine grip.
I got up and turned to go when Hill called after me. “Dawson?"
I turned to him. "Yeah, that's right."
He stared at me like he recognized me, wiping the dripping snot from his thin, wrinkled nose. He straightened himself out and sat up. His face grew dark, despite a forced smile. "How interesting. I’ve just returned from a seminar by a Dr. Dawson in Washington, D.C.”
I stopped and gave him my best bullshit smile. “Yeah, that’s my dad."
Hill’s smile evaporated. “He is the antichrist, bent on ridding the world of God.” I sighed. Another whack-job. Dad attracted them like steel to a magnet.
I turned to leave. To hell with you, bub. He shouted. “Don’t turn your back on me!” I looked back at him. “I am the Right Reverend Jesse Hill," he continued. "I am the shepherd to millions of people.” I stared at him with my best ‘who gives a shit’ look.
"Yeah," I said to him, "And a minute ago you were pissing your pants in fear."
“Today is the day of Judgment. The rapture! Your father and all his demonic fiends will perish.” His voice rose like a southern Baptist minister; people stopped talking and watched. “I thought I’d be taken up with the others, but now I know why I wasn’t. I am the Lord’s Crusader! I am left behind to battle Satan and all who follow him.” He pointed his crooked, arthritic finger at me. “Like you."
Ok, time for me to split. "Dude, it’s a power outage. Get a grip."
I walked away, listening to him shout. “I will destroy you, boy! You and all the other minions of Satan!”
Crazy ass. Looking back, I really should’ve let him die. Would’ve made life easier for everyone.
I trotted the rest of the way to the bathroom to see if Marilyn was ok.
But she wasn’t there.
3.
I searched the terminal, but there wasn’t any sign. She just disappeared. Shit. I called out her name, but my voice just joined the cacophony of a thousand names. I started to get angry. Fuck her. I could feel the anger building up.
It wasn't just her. The adrenaline had kicked in like a drug. The whole fucking world was collapsing around me.
I looked down as the pain started to come forth in my arm. Without thinking about it, I had dug my fingernails deep across my arm. Just like Marilyn. I could feel the tension releasing. Able to focus.
The noise settled and people fell closer to some level of organization. I helped some guy limp off to a wall where he could prop himself up. Another woman asked me to hold a bandage while she wrapped cloth around her knee. The cops did their best to direct the human traffic, but you could sense an underlying panic building the longer every electronic device remained dead. Everyone knew it. Something should work. Even a fucking flashlight. Or one of those radios you hand crank. Something.
A cop shouted, "Can I have your attention please?" Everyone jumped and turned in the direction of the cop standing on chairs in front of a gate. “Ladies and gentlemen, please give me your attention.” Things quieted down except for the hysterical few who couldn’t hold it in. “There are several police officers on the scene here as well as EMT’s and trained doctors and nurses. Please remain calm. We will be setting up a triage area to move the wounded to. If you’re not injured, please report to me so that we can put you to work. We will definitely need your help. If you are wounded, please stay where you are, don’t try to move. You may only cause more harm to yourself.”
“What the hell happened?” Someone shouted. "Where are the ambulances, or firemen?"
“We’re not sure,” the cop offered. “All we know is that all power, communications, and electronics are out.” The crowd grew restless: “what?”, “terrorists?”, “it’s a nuclear bomb”.
The cop raised his hands to quiet everyone down. “We’re working the situation and hope to have an answer soon. Please remain calm and stay where you are.” He paused, looking down at a piece of paper. “Would the following individual please report to me: Mr. Adam Dawson.”
What the fuck do they want with me? I looked around. I didn’t have much time to make a decision. People shuffled around me moving bodies, parts of bodies, or wounded. Humans acting on their basic need for organization and structure. Was anyone looking at me?
Everyone is.
My carry-on. The cop calling my name. They can't know it's me.
They can, and they do.
“Let’s go,” someone said behind me. I turned. It was Marilyn, her eyes still red and swollen. “Now,” she whispered. “They think you did it. Or know something. They asked me about you. Move! Now!”
I didn’t have to be told twice.
I’ve had enough run-ins with the boys in blue to know how they think: solve the case first, worry about proof after. After my DUI (my only DUI, thank you), they worked their ass off to make me seem like an asshole, even though it was my first offense. They’ve got a job to do, I guess, and they’ll do it no matter who they crush.
Marilyn led me by the hand as we walked at a quick pace out of the terminal wreckage. She seemed much more in control, even calm. Then I saw why; her arm was a mess. Small streaks of blood ran down from thin lines of red up her left arm, I counted about six of them. She’d been busy.
“What did they say?” I asked her.
“After you left, I saw the cops talking to each other. They pulled me aside and asked if I knew an Adam Dawson. I said no. They wrote down everything.”
“Hill,” I said. We passed a dark McDonald’s with a handful of very confused workers. “He must’ve told them it was my fault.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. I should go to the cops."
Marilyn stopped me and turned towards me. “No way. Look, everyone thinks we’ve been hit by terrorists. They’re sure they flew into the other plane on purpose.”
“Yeah but that’s not true-“I protested.
“It doesn’t matter,” she went on. “They believe what they want to believe and the police want to show authority. If your name is out there it’s out there in a bad way.”
I looked around at the crowd buzzing from one point to the next. Many ran, several sat wide-eyed and trembling, some tried in vain to use a phone, but nothing worked. Cell phones were dead. Phone lines were dead. Even the cops’ radios were dead. Marilyn was right. People were panicking. And when they panic, they need a release, a bad guy. Finding, blaming, and killing the bad guy. A communal means of cutting.
“C’mon, we have to get out of here,” she said grabbing my hand.
More cops evacuated the international terminal; lines of people spilled out from the exits like kids executing a school fire drill. Officers stood along the line with their arms outstretched making sure people stayed in line and orderly. One younger cop - husky, like an ex-football player - waved us over. “You two, let’s go. Get in line.”
Marilyn and I hustled to the back of the line and watched carefully. We walked down the frozen escalator, filed out of the double door with the others, and entered the departure zone.
The heat blasted my face like a desert; dry and abrasive, not at all like what you'd expect on the east coast. It had to be over a hundred. Terrorists couldn’t do that. Not even the worst solar flare I c
ould think of could alter the Earth's atmospheric conditions. What the hell happened?
Marilyn led me back to the edge of the crowd furthest away from airport. I scanned the faces while Marilyn looked for our escape. Some people, lost and wandering like the walking dead, drifted towards parked cars, probably looking for theirs. Shock resonated on just about everyone’s face. Especially the guy up ahead of me. His eyes locked on mine, his grew wide, and he turned and muscled his way towards the nearest cop.
It was the manager from the PC place. He remembered me, frantically trying to get on the internet, print something out, and then BOOM. Everything died.
I watched him grab an officer, turn and point towards me. I ducked down, grabbing Marilyn. “Shit. We gotta go,” I said.
We ran out towards the parking garage. I stole a glance behind me but no one was following. Maybe the cop thought the manager was whacked. Maybe he didn’t care.
Then again…
“STOP!” the cop yelled from behind a wall of people. “Hold it right there!”
Marilyn and I ran full force. I heard the cop stumble through the crowd but we didn't hang around to check. We bolted out of the front of the garage towards the highway.
Time had come to a standstill. Cars sat on the highway, in the parking lot, in mid-turn, completely frozen. People sat on their cars, some sunbathing, some just looking confused. None of them noticing another airliner floating down behind them in the sky.
“Freeze!” The cop yelled. We didn’t. I grabbed Marilyn’s hand and ran towards the landing plane.
“Adam, Jesus, what are you doing?”
“You wanna run back to the airport?” I yelled.
The plane dipped lower, far too low to clear the parking garage. It glided over our heads, close enough for me to see the rivets on its underbelly.
We ran into the underpass of the highway as the cop fired a warning shot, exploding concrete close to my head. The plane slammed into the parking garage with a thud followed by an air-ripping explosion. Both Marilyn and I left our feet as the shockwave tossed us forward. I don’t remember what happened to her. I met a concrete pillar face first and blacked out.
Under a Broken Sun Page 2
