by Dean M. Cole
Adding to the room's stench, the skillet's melted plastic handle sat on the stove top, the portion closest to the still glowing burner bubbling and smoking.
Vaughn rotated the stove's knob and clicked it into the off position.
He looked at Mark. Where did they all—?"
A loud explosion—felt as much as heard—rocked the building.
After exchanging shocked looks, the two men, still in their helmetless spacesuits, ran toward the exit. Moments later, they stood under a surreally normal blue sky.
Panting, trying to purge the smells and images from his head, Vaughn looked around. They had emerged into a central courtyard. He could hear the rumble of a far-off fire, but the buildings and trees that ringed the quadrangle made it difficult to see very far. Distant columns of smoke dotted the bits of horizon visible through a couple of the gaps.
Vaughn shook his head. "What the hell?"
Mark pointed over his shoulder. "Over there!"
He looked in the indicated direction. From behind the building they'd just exited, a black column of smoke stretched high into the sky. Then a roiling churning tumor of orange fire climbed into view above the roof of the Space Power Annex. It raced heavenward, following the black column's path.
Vaughn looked at Hennessy. "That's Cleveland Airport, isn't it?"
Mark nodded. "Must've been an accident."
Vaughn's eyes widened. "Maybe that's where everyone went."
"You're right," Mark said. He started to jog toward the corner of the facility. "Let's see if we can help."
Vaughn followed him, struggling to keep up with the man. As they neared the building's edge, the faint whisper of a distant fire rose into a deep roar that sounded like continuous thunder.
A moment later, he rounded the corner and plowed into Hennessy. The man had stopped dead in his tracks.
"Jesus, Mark! What in the …?"
The words died in his mouth. The devastation before them defied logic.
Across the expansive field, it looked as if giants had started a bonfire using broken aircraft hulls as kindling.
"What in the hell?" Vaughn croaked.
"Come on," Mark said. "We need to help them." He pointed toward the burning mass of heaped airplanes. "I don't see any fire trucks. Crash rescue hasn't responded."
Mark jogged toward a nearby gate in the fence that ran along their shared property line. He punched in a code, and it opened.
They were still a mile from the crash site, but a couple of hundred yards into the airport property, they found an idling truck. It sat in a low drainage easement. The pickup's right front wheel had dropped into the shallow concrete culvert at the ditch's center. Mark jumped behind the wheel and quickly backed the truck out of the jam. Vaughn hopped into the passenger seat and soon the two men were racing across the grass field. He braced his forearm against the ceiling to stop from slamming into it as the truck lurched across low mounds hidden in the knee-deep grass.
Braking hard, Mark brought the truck to a sliding stop on the sod adjacent to the west end of the airport's main runway.
They jumped out of the vehicle. Vaughn raised an arm to shield his face from the heat that radiated from the tremendous fire and scanned the area. They stood in knee-deep grass, but ten feet in front of the truck, nothing remained of the sod but smoldering embers. A burning pile of ruptured airplane hulls covered the ground a quarter-mile ahead of the two men, but their spilled contents littered the intervening earth. Busted suitcases and mangled metal lay strewn across the tortured field. Closer to the colossal Boeing-fed bonfire, scattered clumps of luggage burned. Under the smoke-darkened sky, they looked like surreal campfires, but not one body, alive or dead, stoked these untended flames.
This didn't make any sense. As a pilot, Vaughn had seen crash scene photos. In them, bodies had littered the ground. But here, he couldn't see a single one.
Vaughn looked at his old friend and then down at his own grass-stained spacesuit. The two men looked like lost spacemen as they stood stupefied before the hellish altar of piled fuselages and shattered flight surfaces. Broken wings and tail sections protruded from the mass at odd angles. Squinting and using raised forearms to shield their faces from the heat, the two men exchanged confused glances.
Vaughn scanned his surroundings again. They couldn't move any closer. The flames were too intense. He could already feel the inner half of the suit that faced the fire starting to warm. But it didn't matter.
"There's no one to save, Mark. They're all gone."
"How can that be?" the astronaut shouted over the din of burning airplanes. "How could everyone just … disappear?"
Vaughn shook his head. "That light we saw. It … it must have—"
Suddenly, a new noise rose above the roar of the burning airplanes, an odd metallic scraping noise. The sound had come from behind them.
The men looked over their shoulders.
Two miles to their east, a wide-bodied jet had just landed on the approach end of the runway they were standing next to. The airplane's pilots had failed to extend the landing gear. They'd belly-landed the Boeing 777.
"Why in the hell would they land on this runway?" Vaughn said. He stared incredulously at the rapidly approaching passenger jet. "And why aren't they using their reverse thrusters?"
Something knocked into him. Vaughn lunged sideways. His feet pumped, just managing to stay under him.
"Run!" Mark screamed into his face.
Shocked into action, Vaughn chased after his fleeing friend. Running away from the runway perpendicularly, they ran for their lives.
Looking over his right shoulder, Vaughn watched the plane as it bore down on them. In spreading fans, twin streams of phosphorescent white sparks flew from its belly, but even with all that drag, the triple seven wasn't slowing fast enough. It would soon pass right behind them! Then the right wing dropped a few feet, and the bottom of its engine ground into the tarmac. Fresh gouts of white-hot sparks spewed out from the contact point. The additional drag pulled the Boeing off of the runway centerline.
Now the plane was heading straight toward Vaughn!
The dragging right engine suddenly snapped off of the wing. Earth and sod sprayed up into the air, and the massive turbofan started tumbling across the field. No longer being pulled right by the now departed engine, the wide-bodied fuselage stopped its right turn and tracked straight, but it still looked determined to run down Captain Singleton.
"Shit, shit, shit!" Vaughn shouted.
Mark was just ahead of him. "Come on!" he screamed. "Run faster!"
Vaughn stopped looking at the onrushing plane and focused on the ground in front of him, running as fast as he could muster in the heavy spacesuit.
Now twenty feet ahead of him, Mark dove for cover.
The nose of the huge airplane passed just behind Vaughn. Then a blast of wind shoved him in the back, flinging the man to the ground face first just as the wing flashed over him.
Pulling his face out of the dirt, he looked left, watching as the plane rushed to join its burning friends.
Mark stood up a few feet in front of him. After watching the retreating jet for a moment, he turned an astonished face to Vaughn. "Can you believe tha—?"
The ground shook as if a mine had detonated, and the man disappeared mid-word. Where Mark had been standing, a geyser of dirt spewed into the air. The still tumbling engine leaped into the air and continued its mad dash to catch up with the careening airplane.
"Mark!" Vaughn screamed. Then as if someone had opened a blast furnace door, a wave of heat washed over him as the Boeing Triple Seven slammed into the pile of demolished planes.
Numbing shock wrapped the man in its cold embrace. Vaughn took a hesitant step toward the place where his friend had been standing just moments before. "No, no, no," he whispered as he stopped, pulling up short. "No!"
His friend … There was nothing left of him!
Falling to his knees, Vaughn stared into the small crater, unable to wrap his mind around wh
at had happened to his buddy.
After a few minutes, the blossoming heat of fresh explosions shook him out of his trance.
Like a zombie, he climbed to his feet and trudged to the miraculously untouched pickup truck. Now covered in mud and grass, Vaughn sat behind the steering wheel of the still idling vehicle. Looking through the passenger window, he stared across the field, unable to pull his eyes from the small, red-ringed crater: all that remained of his flight schoolmate, his friend, his only friend.
"No, no, no," he said over and over again. Like a chanting monk, Vaughn continued the incantation until a new sound came from behind him.
Again the squealing protest of metal sliding across pavement rose above the roar of the jet-fueled fire.
In the truck's rearview mirror, Vaughn watched another empty passenger jet slide down the runway, directly at him.
Chapter 6
Beneath the space station, tall cumulous clouds reached into the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean. Like fingers extended into a river of golden light, they cut long shadows that flowed into the darkness of the planet's ever-advancing day-night terminator.
The world wavered as if globe-spanning earthquakes had liquefied entire continents. Angela tried to blink the distorting moisture from her vision, but in the station's zero-G environment, the tears only piled up on the surface of her eyes. She dabbed them and then watched as the ISS and the US West Coast crossed into the night as one. The day that might have seen the end of humankind along with most, if not all, of the planet's animal life ended with a surreally beautiful sunset.
Could every person Angela had ever known be … gone? She didn't want to say dead, couldn't even think it. Like Randy had said: They were gone. But where? And could it have affected everyone? Surely someone had been far enough underground to remain. The last thing the director had told her was that they'd heard from people in the zone. But she still hadn't heard back from Houston. That radio had remained stubbornly quiet.
In the meantime, Commander Brown had watched the wave of light burn its way across the entire planet. At its widest, the white wall of energy had girdled the Earth like a globe-spanning gimbal. Then the ring had begun to contract as it continued its path of annihilation across the second hemisphere. On one orbit, the shrinking circle of light had been closing on a point in the South Pacific. When the next circuit returned her to that side of the planet, the white curtain had vanished. Having swept across the entire Earth, the miles-high wall of light had just … disappeared.
As far as Angela could tell, the wave never lost any of its energy. As it crossed New Zealand, one of the last places to fall, it looked just as bright and reached just as high into the atmosphere as it had the first time she'd crossed its boundary.
That had been five orbits ago. She'd spent most of the intervening hours in the Cupola, looking down on the scrolling surface.
She knew that Teddy and Bill had landed in the desert southwest, somewhere beneath the station's current position. Their reentry track should've deposited them in the Mojave Desert. They had probably come down just before the light wave had swept across this part of North America. By the time they'd touched down, Houston had … gone. After Texas, the arid states of the desert Southwest had fallen like dominoes.
Angela believed that somewhere below her rested an empty Soyuz capsule, the only marker her two friends would likely ever have. Looking down on that portion of the night-drowned continent, she placed a hand against the cold glass panel. Again, massive, continent-displacing waves crowded her vision. Angela dabbed the tears from her eyes.
She grabbed the headset floating next to the window on her right. After pulling it over her tied-back brown hair, she fished its cable out of the air. Angela toggled its midspan switch, activating the transmitter.
"To any station, this is Commander Angela Brown aboard the International Space Station. Please, please, please, come in."
She released the transmit key. A burst of static provided the only reply. After several additional fruitless attempts, Angela adjusted a knob. Then she began transmitting anew on the next frequency. She'd been at this for the last several hours.
After losing contact with NASA, Commander Brown had dragged the two-meter packet radio into the Cupola. Over the last three months, she had used it to communicate with amateur radio operators around the globe. It had been part of her daily routine since arriving on the station.
Her interest in radios dated back to her childhood. Angela's mom had given her a walkie-talkie as a kid. Even as a thirteen-year-old, she'd been fascinated by the space program. The young girl would track the location of the ISS. When it was overhead, she would run outside and try to call them on that little handheld radio. Of course, the only replies she ever got were from other kids and weirdos. But the magic of the idea had never left her.
Angela had first heard about the station's ham radio set during her astronaut training. She had immediately taken a course and received her radio license. The investment had paid off shortly after she'd arrived on the ISS. The woman had dusted off the equipment and turned it on. Soon she was talking with all manner of people. Angela smiled wistfully as she recalled all of the times that radio operators had asked, "What can Brown do for you?"
She shook her head. Right now, Angela would give anything to hear that annoying greeting just one more time.
Anyway, the payoff had come during her second day aboard the ISS. She'd had a conversation with a young African girl in Equatorial Guinea. Her name was Afia, and Angela had heard the magic and wonder in the little girl's voice. It was her most poignant moment as an astronaut, but now the memory drove fresh daggers into her heart.
Today, as she'd followed the light's path across the surface, Angela had spoken with several people. She'd tried to reach Afia, but her calls had gone unanswered. The terror in the voices of those she had reached had torn at Angela's heart. In each instance, she'd told them to seek shelter, to get as far underground as possible. She doubted it would help, but Angela wouldn't accept that it was hopeless.
Station after station had fallen silent. The last had been an older gentleman in New Zealand. He'd seemed resigned to his fate, even cracking a few jokes. Then he, too, had gone quiet … or just gone. Since then, Angela had been unable to raise anyone.
Now, after another fruitless attempt to make contact, she tried the final listed ISS frequency. "To any station, this is Commander Angela Brown aboard the ISS. Please respond."
As empty static filled her ears, fresh tears threatened to flood her vision. "Anybody. God, please!" She sniffed and then in barely audible words said, "Somebody, please answer."
A soft object bounced into Angela's face again.
"Stop it, Teddy," she mumbled. "Five more minutes. Just a little more sleep."
Another gentle bump.
"Stop."
Angela's eyes opened to half-mast.
Something yellow and out of focus flickered through her vision. Angela blinked, and the yellow smudge resolved as a floating ration bag. A lanyard prevented it from drifting too far. A moment later, it floated in front of a vent. The current of air tossed the bag into her face again.
Reality crashed down around Angela. Teddy was gone, and Bill, too, along with the whole damned world.
She angrily batted away the ration bag. Its lanyard snapped, and the pouch ricocheted off of the module's far wall and disappeared down a dark passageway.
The dim lighting of the station's sleeping quarters matched her mood. She felt hollowed out, but at the same time, there was a part of her that kept saying it wasn't real, like it all had been nothing but a bad dream.
Angela shook her head. She knew better. Before seeking the refuge of sleep, she'd already seen signs of humanity's disappearance.
Our cities were burning.
Even from the altitude of the space station, she had already seen massive columns of smoke streaming from a few major metropolitan areas. At first, the sight had confused her, but then Angela pictured
all of the ignition sources present in everyday life: everything from a suddenly empty car careening into a gas station to an airplane crashing into a refinery. Even something as mundane as a kitchen grease fire left unchecked could wipe out an entire community. Without the taming hand of man, fire had run rampant. It was as if the planet was in a hurry to purge the stench of humanity from its surface.
And she was lonely. Not that she was unused to being alone. After her father's death, she'd been a loner as a latchkey kid. She'd nurtured the trait at MIT, often holing up in her dorm room for an entire weekend of study.
But this was different. As far as she knew, no person had ever been this alone in the entire universe. That knowledge alone served to deepen the sense of loneliness.
A deep gurgling rumble rose from her abdomen.
Angela was starving.
She shook her head. What was the use? Starvation was likely going to kill her. She might as well get used to the sensation. It wasn't like she had an endless reserve of food, especially considering the loss of the last resupply mission.
The astronaut shook her head. No, she couldn't think that way. There had to be somebody. Surely some coal miners deep underground had survived. Not that they could help Angela in her current predicament. But maybe the President and the Joint Chiefs had survived deep in their bunkers. They would know what to do.
Freeing herself from the sleeping restraints, Angela pushed off the near wall. Practiced maneuvers and small trajectory adjustments guided her floating body through the hatch and into the passageway. There she snatched the yellow pouch and tore it open. Soon the sound of smacking peanut butter echoed through the empty module.
She departed Zvezda, the Russian module that served as the station's primary sleeping quarters, and glided deeper into the ISS.
A few moments later, Angela floated into the Japanese Experiment Module. Stopping herself in the JEM, she squirted a glob of raspberry jam into the air, careful not to launch it across the round room. The managers of the Japanese space program might get upset if she soiled the inside of their module. A hysterical laugh escaped her lips as she considered the absurdity of the thought.
