Chaos Rising

by Kyla Stone

  The leaked jet fuel had ignited in a massive fireball. Flames licked the sky as black oily smoke poured from the mechanical monster’s guts. The remains of the plane rose above him in a mountain of rent metal and twisted, melted fiberglass.

  Dozens of vehicles were obliterated beneath the crash site. There were bodies. Dozens—hundreds—of bodies, crushed and maimed beyond recognition.

  Passengers were flung free of the wreckage, still belted to their seats. Others were coated in jet fuel, their corpses still burning. Some hung from broken-off sections of the plane. Others had been flung atop cars or hurtled through shattered windows.

  He’d seen his fair share of death in his life. But not like this. Never like this, not even in the warzones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

  No one could’ve survived a crash like that. Not the passengers, and not those unfortunate souls trapped beneath the onslaught.

  Lincoln was dead.

  His brother was gone. For an instant, the grief rose up like a towering tsunami, so huge and all-encompassing it threatened to crush him, to pull him under then and there.

  A memory seared through his mind unbidden, as clear and luminous as if it were happening right in this moment, a fragile, perfect thing surrounded by chaos and carnage.

  It was their thirteenth birthday. An important milestone marking the end of childhood and the beginning of manhood. Their father had promised to take them fishing at Burton Lake ten miles across town. But their birthday dawned, and he lay on the couch in a drunken stupor, oblivious and in no condition to move, let alone drive anywhere.

  Liam had been looking forward to it for weeks, months. Unlike Lincoln, Liam didn’t care about the fishing part. Lincoln regularly went hunting and fishing with his best friend’s family. Liam never went. He was withdrawn, a loner. Back then, he hadn’t found solace in nature the way he did now.

  It wasn’t the trip itself but the connection that he’d craved as a boy. The one bright spot in an increasingly toxic homelife. A day where things could be different, where they might all pretend their father wasn’t a monster; that he was a good father who deserved their adoration and they were good sons who didn’t bitterly resent him in equal measure with their love.

  The boys sat in the darkened house stinking of booze and vomit and broken promises, waiting for nothing, for the miserable day to end so they could go back to expecting little and getting less.

  It was Lincoln who’d stood suddenly, a fierce scowl on his young face. “To hell with this. We’re going anyway.”

  “What? No, we can’t—”

  “And why the hell not?” Lincoln grabbed the truck keys from the hook by the door and spun to Liam. The anger and disappointment gone, replaced with a wicked, mischievous grin. “I can drive us. The old man isn’t ruining this birthday. Not for you. Not for us.”

  The fishing trip had always meant more to Liam than to Lincoln, who was already pulling away, already covertly mutinous, who always had friends and an outside life to escape to.

  It was Liam who still stubbornly held onto the futile dream of a family that didn’t exist. And Lincoln knew it.

  They’d nearly crashed the truck twice. Lincoln was a horrible driver. By some miracle, they’d made it to the lake alive. The sun was bright in the cloudless sky, the water blue and sparkling. They set up their tackle and gear and Lincoln spent the whole day patiently showing Liam how to hook the worm, how to cast his line properly, how to reel in the fish once it was caught.

  It was Lincoln who made that awful house bearable with his gregarious personality, his infectious laughter, his adamant optimism. Lincoln who drew Liam out of his moods, his loneliness and isolation. Lincoln who’d saved him.

  Liam closed his eyes, blinking away the sudden stinging in his eyes. With every step, he felt his twin’s absence like a hollowness in the center of his chest, like an amputated limb that pulsed with agony.

  That always would.

  He forced himself onward. The devastating pain would come later.

  Now he had a mission. A purpose. The only thing keeping him going.

  He said nothing to Jessa. Grief would only cripple her further. They had to move. He continually scanned their surroundings, searching for threats in the chaos of destruction and death.

  Something low and lumpy lay directly ahead of them. For an instant, his brain told him it was two mannequins lying side by side on the sidewalk in the middle of downtown Chicago.

  The woman was lying faceup and looked like her head had been scalped with a razor. The man was lying face down. He was completely naked but for a scorched belt wrapped awkwardly around his legs.

  They were both unequivocally dead.

  Jessa sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Keep going,” Liam said. “Don’t look.”

  But it was impossible not to look.

  They kept moving. Jessa coughed. Liam’s eyes watered. The smoke nearly gagged him, burning the back of his throat and his eyes. He couldn’t wipe his face or cover his mouth, not helping Jessa with both hands.

  He carried as much of her weight as possible, acting as a crutch as she hobbled on her one good leg. Her every step caused her incredible agony. She took short, gasping breaths, but didn’t cry or complain.

  His heart thundered in his chest. His breath came in rapid pants, cold adrenaline surging through his veins. The terror was mind-numbing, made it hard to think straight. But he’d felt terror before. The soldier in him took over, focused on the task at hand. He scanned the road and buildings ahead of them, alert to obstacles and further dangers.

  Those not injured by the driving debris and shrapnel hunched in front of the windows of cafes and shops, shivering, terrified, and in shock. Liam felt their eyes on him burning like brands. But none of them were armed. No one brandished weapons or telegraphed danger.

  “Hey!” a familiar voice called. Liam looked back.

  David Jenkins had stumbled out of the Dunkin Donuts shop. Blood speckled his coat and Bears scarf and matted the side of his head. His glasses were gone—a large shard of shrapnel jutting from his temple.

  “Hey!” he called after them, his voice rising in panic. “Help me, please!”

  But Liam didn’t stop. He didn’t owe a thing to David Jenkins. He owed everything to his dead brother and to his pregnant sister-in-law. She was all that mattered.

  The street and sidewalks were strewn with pieces of plane wreckage—hunks of floor and ceiling, shredded seats, broken sections torn open, disgorging miles of tangled wires like guts.

  A grouping of three plane seats hung half-way out of a third story window, teetering dangerously. The seats were empty. The nubby blue fabric was stained with large crimson blotches.

  They passed a torn-off section of the cabin half-embedded in the façade of the building across the street, windows and seats intact, a few crumpled bodies still strapped in.

  Suitcases and carry-on bags were flung about, some burst open, clothing and shoes and sunglasses and phones and toiletries hurled here and there by a raging monster. Credit cards, driver’s licenses, and passports, torn wallets and family photos littered the dirty snow piled along the curb.

  “Don’t look,” Liam said again.

  But Jessa looked, just like he did.

  He couldn’t make himself turn away from the horror.

  The second engine and a huge hunk of the tail had broken away from the fuselage and barreled down the center of the street, skidding and rolling and smashing cars and signs and streetlights, finally coming to a rest on its side a hundred yards from the main crash site.

  A passenger slumped in the middle of the street, right on the center line. He was still seat-belted to the lower half of his seat. His clothes were shredded, his skin hanging in strips from his arms and his legs.

  Liam and Jessa stumbled past him.

  Liam gripped Jessa’s waist tighter as he helped her step over a small Minnie Mouse suitcase, the kind that belonged to small girls who loved princesses and Disney.
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br />   They’d made it barely two hundred yards when a voice called out to them. “Help me…please…”

  A dark-haired Asian woman in her thirties lay trapped beneath a ten-by-ten scrap of the cabin floor. Her left side was severely burned. Her right arm was three-quarters severed, barely attached to her shoulder by tendons and strings of muscle.

  She moaned, barely conscious.

  Liam’s stomach roiled. He turned away and nearly wretched.

  “My daughter…” the woman groaned.

  Liam could barely look at the little girl a dozen yards away. She was curled into the fetal position, still clutching a stuffed teddy bear. Next to her lay a sparkly purple purse turned inside out.

  The girl was gone. Her mother would soon follow.

  Jessa looked at the girl, then turned to the woman. “Your daughter is going to be just fine. You just hold on, honey. Help is coming.”

  The woman nodded weakly, relieved and grateful, and closed her eyes.

  Liam tugged at Jessa, but she hesitated, torn. Liam could see it in her face—the part of her that longed to help, the doctor who always jumped into the chaos first, ready to do her part, to save lives. She couldn’t do that this time, and it was killing her.

  “Come on,” he urged her.

  “I could use my scarf to stop the hemorrhaging…”

  “You don’t have the time, Jessa!”

  She cupped her belly with her free hand, closed her eyes for a moment, and nodded.

  They turned from the wreckage and hobbled north toward Michigan Avenue. Liam didn’t look back. Back was destruction and devastation and death. Back was grief and loss and the remains of his shredded heart.

  There was only forward.

  7

  Jessa staggered. A low moan escaped her lips.

  They’d left the crash site far behind. The screams of pain and terror faded. Liam couldn’t see the smoke through the fog wreathing the tops of the skyscrapers, but he could still smell it. The caustic stench of burning jet fuel, melting plastic, and scorched flesh would haunt him forever.

  The cold air grated against his nostrils, drying them out, making every breath raw and painful. His pulse thudded in his throat from the exertion.

  They made their way along Michigan Avenue, passing the Art Institute of Chicago and Millennium Park. To his right, the open sky over Lake Michigan boiled with thick clouds that promised more snow.

  Fog swirled so heavily, they might have been cut off from the rest of the world. It already felt like they were. Trapped in some eerie, bizarre episode of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror where everything had been turned upside down and nothing would ever be the same again.

  They were still more than a mile from the hospital.

  The sidewalks were filled with milling, confused crowds that spilled into the streets. The traffic lights were all dark. Dozens of accidents jammed every street. Most of them were fender benders, but several were more serious. The few older model cars that worked couldn’t move, trapped in the snarl of wrecked and broken vehicles.

  Workers, staff, customers, and tourists streamed from offices, hotels, shops, and restaurants suddenly rendered powerless. Most of the buildings maintained back-up generators, but many newer generators now contained sophisticated electronic chips and would be as useless as everything else.

  It felt like every citizen of Chicago and then some were assembling outside, braving the cold, hungry for answers.

  Several Chicago PD officers were stationed at intersections working to calm the crowds and directing the injured to the closest hospitals. Two men were shouting at a police officer, waving their hands belligerently.

  Liam scanned their faces—tense, nervous, bewildered, frustrated, upset. Some seemed to be verging on panic, but outright pandemonium hadn’t broken out.

  They didn’t understand yet. Most people were used to everything on demand— electricity, heat, power, transportation, food, medicine. They were used to a world working just like it was supposed to. If something broke, a fix was a simple phone call or internet search away.

  The idea that the world could go so wrong in a heartbeat—it was such a foreign thought that their brains couldn’t—or wouldn’t—comprehend it.

  Not yet, anyway.

  They would soon.

  Likely, the criminal element would comprehend the gravity of the situation faster than the law-abiding population. They were used to adjusting to change on the fly, used to seizing the opportunity inherent in every disaster.

  Liam had to make sure he and Jessa were off the streets long before then.

  At least he had his pistol holstered beneath his coat. He would do whatever he had to in order to protect her.

  “Liam…” Jessa mumbled. “I don’t feel good…”

  Liam helped her beneath an awning, physically shouldering several people out of their way, and settled her against the wall so she could rest her leg a little apart from the jostling crowds.

  He paused to examine her. Her skin had an ashen, unhealthy sheen. Sweat beaded her forehead even though she was shivering. It was so cold that he could see the puff of each ragged breath.

  He tugged off his right glove with his teeth. Cold needled his bare skin as he took her hand—cold and clammy—and felt her wrist with his index and middle fingers. Her pulse was thready against the pads of his fingers.

  He checked the tourniquet. Blood still leaked in slow streams down her leg. They’d left a trail sprinkled with red along the snowy sidewalk behind them. At least it wasn’t gushing.

  The tourniquet appeared to be holding, but she’d lost so much blood already. They didn’t have much time.

  “I’m going into hypovolemic shock,” Jessa said weakly.

  They still had a mile to go, with no help in sight. With the crowds and the snow and the ice-slick ground, it had taken them nearly an hour to go the first mile. He didn’t see them making it any faster.

  He pulled his glove back on. “What do you need?”

  She smiled wearily. “Blood plasma, platelet, and red blood cell transfusions. Intravenous crystalloids to start. A shot of epinephrine. You see any IVs lying around?”

  “I don’t have any of that.”

  “I know.”

  He wanted to smash the wall with his fist in frustration. “What do I do?”

  “I need to lie down.”

  “We have to keep going.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t, Liam. I won’t make it.”

  He didn’t doubt her word. She knew the medical aspects of the human body far more thoroughly than he did.

  She cupped her belly protectively. The simple action nearly undid him.

  He said, “I’ll carry you.”

  She started to shake her head in protest, an automatic, instinctive response. She was a strong, smart, capable woman used to caring for herself and others.

  Not this time.

  “Not giving you a choice,” he said gruffly.

  He bent and scooped her awkwardly into his arms. His thighs and back strained as he lifted her and cradled her like a baby. At 5’7”, large-boned and curvy even before the pregnancy, she wasn’t a small woman. With her enormous belly, it felt like trying to balance a small whale in his arms while walking a tightrope encased in ice.

  Jessa wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her cheek against his chest. Her whole body was trembling uncontrollably. Even through her coat and clothes, she was cold. Too cold.

  One mile. During his time with the military, he’d regularly hauled eighty pounds of gear through blistering deserts or tangled, mosquito-infested jungles. But that was before his back injury.

  He was still in great shape. He could do this.

  8

  “Move,” Liam snarled at a clump of teenagers huddled on the corner of Madison and Jackson. They stepped quickly aside.

  “Jerk,” a girl mumbled.

  He ignored her.

  He trudged on, passing Madison, Washington, and Randolph.

 
He considered telling everyone he passed to get home, pack up everything they could carry, and escape the city while they still could.

  The generators would run out in a few days. Then what would all these people do in their freezing buildings in sub-zero temperatures? They had no fireplaces, no wood-burning stoves, no firewood.

  What would they do when the food and water stopped arriving at the stores like clockwork, and they were trapped with almost three million hungry, freezing, desperate people?

  At his homestead in Mayfield, just south of Traverse City and located outside of Traverse City State Forest, he didn’t have much, but he had enough firewood cut to last the harshest winter. He had twelve months of supplies and woods chock full of deer, squirrels, and rabbits to hunt. His property had a well with a handpump, a wood-burning stove, a generator, and a few solar panels.

  He would survive—as long as he could return safely to his homestead.

  His handheld GPS wasn’t working, and he hadn’t had time to acquire a paper map of Chicago. While he’d waited at the terminal before his departure, he’d downloaded a map of Chicago onto his phone. Little good that would do now.

  At least he had the paper map of Michigan he always kept with him. With the built-in compass on his mechanical watch, he could find his way.

  He had his go-bag with forty-eight hours of emergency supplies. He had his pistol with three magazines of extra ammo and his tactical knife. He could find an older car that still worked, hot-wire it or steal the keys, and make it out of the city and home by tomorrow night.

  It sounded easy enough. He knew it would be anything but.

  Anxiety tangled in his gut, but he tamped it down. Those were problems for later. Right now, he had Jessa and the baby to worry about.

  They crossed DuSable Bridge and began the trek up the Magnificent Mile.

  Wreaths hung along the streetlamps. Christmas lights were strung from windows and wrapped around sign posts—none of them working. The decked out Christmas trees in the display windows looked garish and wrong without the warmth of twinkling yellow lights.