Underworld Earth

by Nicholas Gagnier

  Laying eyes on New Orleans’ airport, it occurs to me I will never fully be rid of the sentiment.

  Several men patrol the perimeter and runway. Under darkness that has befallen the city, most of them sport large assault rifles and headlights, leaving no corner untouched by keen observation. The runway has not been used in several days, and the air traffic tower is dark.

  Getting in the base and past the men will be simple, since I can simply blink right past them, remaining invisible until the very last second. If I’m lucky, they’ll never see me at all, and the only difficult part will be dispatching Madison.

  I blink at the air traffic tower’s interior. Its walls slowly phase in, revealing two bodies surrounding the panels. One is collapsed on the floor beside his communication instruments, the other slouched directly over them. They are both men, but barely look human; their faces are swollen like balloons, the eyes are bloated painfully shut.

  And I thought I died horribly.

  From this vantage, the entire operation is visible, but infiltrating it doesn’t come without caveats. There are more soldiers at this angle than from the apartment building I first observed them. None of them could hurt me, but if one thing goes wrong, Madison will be alerted. If he escapes, this mission becomes that much more annoying.

  I would say the man’s death will mean signing over my soul to the Devil, but we are allegedly friends and the Atlas poses a greater threat. I scan the men’s faces below through dispirited glass. They all vary in size and nationality; their names do not matter, but one of them will lead my target to his death, and none will be any wiser I was here.

  I have to identify him first.

  One of the subordinates complains he is not feeling well to a superior and has to use the washroom. Since many of their faces are obscured by masks, improvisation may be needed to identify their leader.

  I have to follow that underling and use him to fulfill my objective.

  Blinking onto tarmac below, the locket keeps me clear of scrutiny. None of Madison’s men notice me zip past them. The underling disappeared into one of the hangars, his shadow dissipating into the darkness. I could directly follow him, but transport up the hangar’s eastern side instead, and again around its rear. One final teleportation puts me on its roof, peering in through a sun hatch encased between sloped shingles.

  A dual-engine Cessna loiters in the structure below. The ill subordinate is surrounded by several men, none of whom appear to be altruistic, nurturing types. My eyes follow him. He greets several of his friends along the way using nods or hand gestures. A few of the men return the greeting, asking if he is all right. Several others ignore him, either continuing to converse with their colleagues or fulfill assigned tasks.

  I need eyes on Campbell Madison.

  I refocus, zeroing in on a balding man with a red goatee. He wears no facial protection. Glints of light bounce off a gold molar as he patrols the common area, barking orders, presumably given the responsibility to keep the area secure.

  I wonder whether the locket should grant me the kind of powers my friend Tim possesses, to be all-knowing. It would help identify this man I have never met and am now responsible for murdering. But Tim is Death, and I am merely the supreme realm’s lapdog, bound to do their bidding.

  How does this fall to me?

  It’s an age-old question; one constantly rearing its head when I must save existence from rogue personifications of Death.

  An older gentleman I didn’t see before rounds the Cessna’s rear from the side obstructed from this angle. One look at the stubble and dead eyes, in conjunction with the swagger as he strolls into better view, I know he is my target. A shotgun held in his right hand points at the floor.

  “Matthias!” the older gentleman calls in a husky Southern accent, the words dripping off his lips like syrup. Turning to the balding man, who only sports a crown of auburn hair around his cranium, the drawled response reverberates throughout the hanger, pulling all eyes to him. “How many fuckin’ times do I have to tell these sorry freeloaders to keep an eye on the terminal?”

  Matthias nods, clutching a semi-automatic rifle in his grip. An initial bark at their hired help is lost in the thickness of a German accent before I adjust to its phonetics.

  “Yes, sir,” Matthias answers.

  “I want this plane off the ground in an hour,” the leader says. “We stay in this fuckin’ city, we’re dead. Just like the rest of them.”

  “Yes, sir. What about Rooster and Norman?”

  “Rooster sick now, too?”

  “Yes, and now Norman isn’t feeling well.”

  I’m not certain I expected empathy at the news of his group’s members falling deathly ill from the man in camouflage clothing, but he falls silent, hanging his head.

  “They don’t rally in the next twenty minutes,” Madison says, “you leave no survivors. Last thing we need is remnants of the government on our tail. They’ll be putting down anyone who is a threat to the power structure. That includes us.”

  “Bullet to the brain, then?”

  Madison considers it a moment, then nods, erasing any compassion I might have mistaken.

  “Make it quick. Make it painless. Those boys have served us well. No use making them suffer needlessly.”

  Hand signals motion to Matthias’ men, ordering them to follow him out the back of the hangar. Madison goes the opposite way, muttering to his favored firearm. Both sides have split off to make final preparations, leaving the area clear around the plane.

  It will clearly not fit more than four of the thirty-something men occupying New Orleans’ airport, and I wonder what the plan is for the others. It doesn’t matter. Matthias and Madison will soon board that plane, and it will be the last thing either ever do.

  The locket, as if it understands everything happening, filters to gold at the base of my neckline. Teleported groundside, I admire the dual-engine plane’s cleanliness, its fresh coat of yellow paint. The wings spread wide from its chassis offer the opportunity to fly far away from this madness.

  It will be wishful thinking on their part.

  Gravitating to a black chest, I kneel, inspecting its contents. Many of the cases surrounding it are oblong, likely containing rifles and other such weaponry. The small black box, stacked on two larger cases with keypads, is conveniently open. Its innards are lined with foam, cut deeper in certain places to hold the devices I will use to kill Campbell Madison.

  There are six, but I only require one. Along with a silver wrench from a toolbox nearby — a wallet-sized photo, depicting a smiling Hispanic family of three, is taped inside the steel box’s lid — I approach Madison’s escape vehicle.

  Knowing little about planes, and even less about the wiring which drives them will come in handy sabotaging one. Opening a rear panel concealing electrical boards and wiring, the locket’s gold state allows deftly applied force to its innards, scrambling circuitry and aerodynamic grace with several blows. Fastening the circular device in the panel’s interior, just below the door; I activate it, clicking both its sides at once. A sequence of red numbers springs to life— when Madison’s men are drawn to the plane’s warning signals, there won’t be much time other than to deduce sabotage.

  I close the service panel, concealing the damage. So long as the plane doesn’t start smoking before they climb inside of it, they will be dead shortly.

  I don’t envy having their blood on my hands, but if what Tim said about Campbell Madison is true, the world has been done a favor. The man who took a town called Haven hostage, and turned it into his personal outlaw paradise, will never harm anyone again.

  Watching from the darkened air traffic control tower, the plane exploding out of the hangar comes as no surprise. It consumes the plane’s occupants inside a fireball as Madison’s remaining men scramble to put out the flames devouring their fearless leader. Several were killed in the explosion, and lie crumpled next to my victims.

  I will not stay to watch, because the list is
long, and New Orleans is a long way from my next target.

  I am the unhinged, and senseless murder robs any asylum I might have taken from a monster’s death.

  Samantha

  I will never forget the day I told Catherine that Derek and I had left Haven forever.

  Our relationship had been going downhill for years. She knew I wanted a life outside our little nook in the world. For all its mom-and-pop stores and stretches of lonely suburbia with only a gas bar here and there; Haven is no place to grow old and waste away.

  On the other end of the most awkward phone call ever, I imagine Catherine sat in her old green armchair, scowling. The same pink bathrobe she wore for years was stained yellow with nicotine. She didn’t say much anymore, preferring to sip her gin and watch The Price is Right in silence.

  Just weeks after my nineteenth birthday, Derek and I were married by a waterfall.

  Now, I had to admit what I’d done. I was an adult and didn’t have to do as told anymore. I wanted to rebel against the sour woman who had made every minute of my teenage years miserable. After a lifetime of turning my siblings and I against each other, Catherine was in her golden years. She could sit back and watch her seeds of conflict sprout.

  I can imagine the blue trail of smoke billowing between her fingertips, as I told her with the safety of three thousand miles between us. All my young life, her knuckles were yellowed by them, her teeth stained. Catherine’s commands were made raspier by every hoarse inhale, shortly followed by wretched coughing.

  Now, she is a bag of meat and bones, sustained by machines, and will never see comeuppance.

  Perhaps this is it, but it feels there should be more.

  Mark drops me off at the hospital in Haven. What was a regular scene only hours ago, of elders with hip dysplasia and babies with whooping cough, is abject chaos. The lobby is filled with people I have known most of my life, who might immediately recall me if they weren’t sunken so far in suffering.

  Eugene Quade, who was a librarian when I was young, chokes in a handkerchief. If the last decade aged the old man poorly, I’d hate to see what the last day has done. In his patterned collar shirt under a white cardigan, a head of unbrushed hair sprouts in opposing directions as he leans on his walker for a complete breath. Bobby York, whose son I went to school with, and his much younger wife Becky sit together a few feet down, and both appear deathly ill.

  They are only a handful of many. Slowed in amazement of the retching that floods my senses and make my stomach perform backflips, a single question sits on my exposed tongue.

  If all the world is sick, why aren’t I?

  No time for that, Samantha.

  The nurse’s station, previously methodical and prepared for anything, is beset with panicking hospital staff delivering sample swabs from the back-up waiting area. Some don’t look much healthier than the people they are trying to save. Trying to avoid crossing paths, they can’t help bumping into each other behind the triage station.

  I’ve got to get to Catherine.

  Hysteria ensues when a man waiting to be seen collapses to the floor behind me. Alerted to the incident by his screaming spouse, nurses bolt past me, rolling the gentleman on his back as he begins to seize. They bark orders at each other over his despondent wife. I don’t want to stay and watch this, but turning to pass the triage, I am stopped by a uniformed paramedic. He is tall and blonde, an extra finger in an all-hands job.

  “Is there a problem here?” I ask.

  “I’m sorry ma’am,” he replies, holding out an outstretched palm. “The hospital is under quarantine. No one comes in or goes out.”

  “What? I’m not sick! I was here an hour ago, seeing my dying mother.”

  The EMT’s face radiates empathy, but his tone remains firm.

  “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”

  The unconscious man cannot be revived, much to his partner’s despair between her own oxygen-starved coughs. A woman attending nurses to the right of him also collapses, head smacking on the hospital floor. This prompts the paramedic blocking me to rush to their aid after requesting I remain here.

  “I will,” I say, but as soon as he is gone, I walk past where he stood. His eyes burn in the back of my head, and I clutch the leather purse which dwarfs me, gunning for the elevator at the hall’s end.

  He’s a paramedic, not a cop, with greater issues to attend to than a lone woman breaking quarantine in his hospital. No other staff challenge my intrusion—not that I see any who would.

  Catherine is not in her room. The bed has been emptied and re-made; the blue blanket folded beneath the white sheet and cotton pillow her head formerly laid on. The dry air persists, even without my mother to suck energy from the room. Comatose or not, she is a succubus of good intentions, with my younger sister as Exhibit A.

  Steph is not here, either. Wondering whether they’ve moved to the morgue—it seems a bit quick, but one can dream—I set off in search of whomever has information on their whereabouts.

  She couldn’t have died in three hours. I would have received an embittered series of texts by now.

  Someone knows where she is.

  When Steph and I were young, under Catherine’s single-parent tutelage, we were much closer. Laura was always too busy with her social life, and my brothers were occupied with getting into trouble, as boys ought to do.

  I don’t know when we grew to hate each other so much.

  At the ward’s reception, a harried nurse in wrinkled scrubs and short blond hair informs me Catherine was moved to Intensive Care an hour ago, but the outlook is bleak. In her eyes, there are more important people to attend to than an unrepentant alcoholic who would make her day hell, if she were awake. Descending one floor to the ICU, I find Steph right out of the elevator, sitting in a red chair with a handful of tissues bunched in her palm.

  Oh God, she’s sick too. The space around her eyes has turned a light pink, and hoarse coughs come in short intervals, sending her nose and mouth barreling into the crook of her sleeve.

  “Steph?” No thought is given to contagion as I approach her. Several other people are ill on both sides of transparent quarantine rooms lining the hallway. Beyond each lies a patient gated behind multiple safeguards. In the middle room is Catherine, presided over by faceless doctors in biohazard suits.

  My sister looks up from struggling for breath. The bitterness is not gone, merely on hold under these conditions.

  “Sam? I thought you left for the airport.”

  “I did,” I reply, taking the vacant seat next to her. “All planes are grounded, so I caught a ride back to be with you guys.”

  “Oh,” she says, concealing relief, “You didn’t have to—”

  “Stop,” I reply. “Are you sick?”

  She sniffles. “No, I don’t think so. Bit under the weather, maybe? Serves me right for hanging out in a hospital all day, unlike the rest of you.”

  It is not my place to tell Stephanie her contempt isn’t earned. Reaching across our chairs, my hand rests over hers, staring beyond the glass window at the woman who raised us, and only returns consistent pulses of a heart monitor, echoing through barriers.

  “How bad is it?” my sister asks.

  The question gradually tears focus from Catherine, and back to her.

  “Saw it on the news in the lobby,” she continues. “The media is just hyping this thing, right? That survival rate has to be a mistake.”

  I shake my head.

  “I don’t know, Steph. But if they have Mom in quarantine, they’re probably just taking every precaution, right?”

  She nods, trying to conceal terror running through morphing expressions. The skin around her eyes has reddened further in the few minutes I’ve sat here, preventing the tears she’s held in forever from going free.

  “Thank you for coming back.”

  I’ve rehearsed the words all the way from Connecticut—I wanted to say them before she kicked me out.

  “I hope you know... it
was nothing personal, sweetie,” I begin, “I could just imagine staying here. What would I have done with myself? I’d get old and fat and Derek might have left me for someone far more attractive.”

  Steph snickers, despite obvious discomfort.

  “If you really believe that, Sam, you need to file for divorce, because you obviously don’t know your husband very well.”

  “I just... needed a new start. I didn’t want to hang around where Dad could find me, asking for money, then not talk to me for months on end. I had to get away from her and the miserable person she wanted me to be. I didn’t want to raise Nathan around that.

  “I’m not saying what I did was right, Steph. In fact, it was probably incredibly selfish. But I would do it again. For my family. And I need you to make your peace with it. It’s not a fair thing to ask. Not even remotely. But I couldn’t uproot my guys, even if I wanted to. Stamford is our home now.”

  Steph says nothing, alternating her stare between Catherine and the marble floor between them.

  “I know,” she finally admits. “I’m just jealous I wasn’t brave enough to do it. Jealous I don’t have anything... except Mom.”

  We return to watching Catherine, mutually hoping her end will be more peaceful than it looks, and her youngest daughter is not sick with the illness making healthy people in the lobby drop dead.

  Hoping whatever this is, it will conclude quickly.

  Family is a bleak affair.

  Peter

  It only takes one moment to lose everything you held dear.

  Meghan’s illness was so quick, you think the signs would have been more obvious. Tired as she was last night, red around her eyes is par for the course and wheeze in her words could easily be attributed to the cigarette she sneaked on her lunch break.

  From a chair adjacent to her bed, I rack my brain for anything more I could have done. My wife’s eyes are closed. Her ordinarily tan skin is now pale, but she looks merely asleep.

  Beneath her nail beds tells a different story.

  How did it come to this?