by Dean M. Cole
249 miles!
"The source is the Super Collider?!"
That didn't make sense! Primordial black holes or PBHs likely contained the mass of a mountain but should be smaller than an atom. Even if a pair of PBHs had impacted Earth, they would have quickly passed through the entire planet, leaving nothing but a microscopic trail of radiation. On the other hand, if a slow-moving pair of singularities had merged with the surface, they would have fallen into the planet's gravity well. They wouldn't hang around CERN.
Not without an external force keeping them in check.
Angela's eyes drifted back to the image of the surface as it scrolled beneath the station.
"What the hell is going on down there?" she whispered. Her eyes narrowed. "And who is controlling it?"
Part II
"He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it."
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Chapter 9
Vaughn woke to the sound of rolling thunder. Blinking sleep-clouded eyes, he stared up at water-stained, sagging ceiling tiles. The thunder continued unabated, sounding like an unrelenting artillery barrage.
"What the hell is that?"
Vaughn struggled out of the clutches of the overstuffed couch that had served as his bed for the night. Finally free of it, the man stood, panting already.
Yesterday, before the universe had changed, he'd resolved to get back in shape. Now Vaughn looked at his exposed belly and shook his head.
"What's the use?"
Then his thoughts returned to his mother. He needed to find her, to know, one way or the other, if she was okay.
The deep, distant rumble continued its roaring report.
He'd ended up here in Gary, Indiana, last night.
Originally, Vaughn had planned to stop at Chicago O'Hare Airport. However, a huge column of black smoke had obscured the setting sun, accelerating the onset of night. It pierced the upper atmosphere ahead of his appropriated helicopter. Vaughn had first seen the dark cloud as he closed to within a hundred miles of Chicago. Then, from the outskirts of the city, the rising black pillar's base of orange fire and its churning intensity had made it look as if a volcano had sprouted from Lake Michigan's southwestern shore.
At ten miles away, the massive black column blotted out half of the sky. Just then, another airport had scrolled beneath his helicopter. Vaughn checked the moving map and then nodded. "Gary, Indiana, it is."
With the reincarnation of Krakatoa blowing its top dead ahead, the pilot opted for the relatively clear-aired and fire-free environs of Gary-Chicago International. A strong easterly breeze had kept the area's air fairly clear. Vaughn reasoned that it should keep the worst of the fires at bay as well.
The two-hour flight from Glenn Research Center had drained the helicopter's fuel tanks and filled the pilot's bladder. En route, Vaughn had tried multiple air traffic control frequencies, all to no avail.
The situation on the ground in Gary had looked the same as it had in Cleveland. Before landing, he'd circled the airport. Crashed airplanes littered its main runways. The terminal had burned down, and the tail section of a large passenger jet protruded from the airport's still-burning jet fuel tank farm. Sporadic fires dotted the surrounding suburbs, but nothing like the firestorm to the west.
After scanning the rest of the airfield, Vaughn had landed on the general aviation ramp, next to its fortunately unscathed fuel pumps. Numb and probably in shock, the pilot had stumbled from the helicopter and walked into the nearest building. The offices of the airport's Fixed Base Operator or FBO featured an opulent pilot lounge with a comfortable-looking couch. Vaughn had broken the glass front of their vending machine. After downing a soda and two bags of Funyuns, he'd collapsed into the waiting sofa.
The man barely remembered lying down. He'd fallen asleep the instant his head had hit the black leather armrest.
Images from the day's apocalyptic events had haunted his dreams. Again and again, he watched Mark's astonished face disappear behind a brown and red geyser of gory dirt. Between those horrible visions, Vaughn had wandered an empty street. In his spacesuit again, he would clamber to the end of the block. There, the road made a hard left, and then the street, identical to the last, continued for another block before turning left yet again. The roads formed a loop that the man couldn't escape.
In every version of the dream, a UPS truck stood alone on one of the four streets. Each time he'd seen the vehicle, Vaughn's eyes had gravitated to the slogan emblazoned across its side, but as in the waking world, its significance remained a mystery.
Now awake but exhausted and bone-weary, he walked to the door of the windowless room. It opened, and bright light assaulted his dark-adapted eyes. Blinking against the amber brilliance, Vaughn stared open-mouthed at the hellish panorama that filled the portion of the world visible through the next room's glass wall. From the window's left extremity to its right, coruscating orange fire tumbled through churning black shadows.
Across the river from the airport, a wall of roaring fire boiled up from a residential subdivision. Vaughn stepped forward on unsteady legs. The eastern edge of the conflagration came into view on his left as he neared the twenty-foot-wide window.
While Vaughn had slept, the firestorm had burned its way into East Chicago, somehow swimming upstream against the protection of the opposing wind.
Vaughn remembered the massive tank farm that occupied the industrial district. He leaned forward and looked right. To the west, fire lined much of the horizon. The white metal tanks stood as black silhouettes against its orange brilliance. He could see fumes rising from some of them.
The man flinched as one of the storage tanks erupted in a blinding flash.
Vaughn registered the onrushing pressure wave in time to throw up his arms. The ear-splitting explosion struck the building. The glass wall shattered and blew inward, pelting Vaughn's exposed skin with pebble-sized glass shards. With ringing ears, the dazed man stared at dozens of small cuts on his belly and legs.
Another tank cooked off. Its shock wave knocked Vaughn into action. He ran across broken glass in socked feet. In the pilot lounge, he threw on his pants and jabbed already bloodstained socks into the waiting boots, not bothering with the laces. Then the man grabbed the rest of his clothes and ran back out of the building, exiting through the blown-out glass wall.
As he sprinted across the tarmac, a third tank exploded. The shock wave knocked him sideways, but Vaughn kept his footing. Radiant heat from the massive fires soaked into his bloodied bare skin. Squinting, he held up the top half of his flight suit, using the flame-retardant garment to shield his face from the heat.
"Good thing I refueled you last night," Vaughn said between wheezing breaths. He threw open the pilot door and tossed his clothes onto the left seat. Then the man flung himself into the right one. The heat assaulting his exposed skin halved as soon as he passed behind the protection of the windshield. Even though the glass blocked most of the radiant heat, the cockpit's interior already felt hot.
Vaughn would cook in here if he didn't get moving.
A fourth tank detonated. The pressure wave's sonic vapor cloud raced toward the helicopter. Its passage shook the aircraft and caused the still stationary rotor blades to heave. Even though the Black Hawk's nose pointed straight at the exploding tanks, its windshields held.
The pilot raced through the aircraft start procedure. He soon had both engines at flight speed. Just as he began to take off, three more storage tanks exploded in a rapid-fire cascade. The shock wave shoved the hovering helicopter a few feet across the tarmac. Then a smoking, curled-up chunk of metal slammed into the concrete where the Black Hawk had b
een only a moment before.
"Son of a bitch!"
Vaughn jammed in right pedal. The aircraft pivoted about its mast. Now facing east, away from the worst of the fire, he pulled an armload of collective and shoved the cyclic stick forward. The helicopter quickly accelerated toward the only portion of the horizon not blotted out by smoke and flames.
The aircraft leveled off at a thousand feet—about the height of a skyscraper. At this altitude, Vaughn could see narrow, but easily navigable paths between the columns of roiling smoke. He turned the Black Hawk toward downtown, giving the exploding tank farm a wide berth.
The man wanted to see what had happened to the city. As he approached Chicago proper, the few remaining low clouds dried up completely. Apparently, the atmosphere had grown too hot to support them.
The helicopter passed between two massive columns of smoke, and a scene from Hell revealed itself. Entire residential blocks burned. Multiple pillars of towering flames tilted to and fro in unison, whipped about like tall grass in a windstorm by the relatively cool air that rushed in from Lake Michigan.
Then he saw downtown.
"Jesus Christ!"
In the incredible panorama revealed across the helicopter's windshield, halos of fire burned from the roofs of skyscrapers like candles of the gods.
"How in hell did all these fires get started?"
But then he remembered a thought he'd had over the suburbs. The light wave had passed through this region during breakfast. The image of the charred eggs in the NASA break room swam into his mind's eye. Ahead of him now lay the evidence of what happened when you multiplied that problem a millionfold.
The entire city of Chicago was burning again, but an old lady and her cow had nothing to do with it this time.
A few minutes later, O'Hare Airport emerged from the smoke. Fire fully engulfed its expansive jet fuel tank farm. Above it, a roiling column of orange flame and churning black smoke disappeared into the dark sky. The overhanging cloud of the stuff turned day into night. In the surrounding area, only sporadic fires and patches of still functioning city lights illuminated the hellish scene. Barely visible in the darkness, a macabre line of burned-out Boeing and Airbus wide-bodied jets filled the south end of all four north-south runways.
It was as if God had swept humankind from the planet, and now he was in the process of scouring its residue from the surface as well.
Vaughn shook his head.
"Enough of this shit!"
He banked the helicopter and departed Chicago, heading southwest—toward Colorado.
Dense unending smog reduced Vaughn's flight visibility. That and strong headwinds turned what should have been a six-hour flight to Denver into a two-day ordeal. After leaving Chicago, he overnighted in Lincoln, Nebraska. Vaughn landed there completely exhausted and distraught.
Along the way, he had gazed upon each new horizon with renewed hope, sure this would be the edge of the devastation. But in every instance, the short-lived wave of hope died as it crashed against the rocks of burned-out cities, piled-up vehicles, and crashed airplanes. Mile after agonizing mile, Vaughn stitched together a chain of dashed hopes that extended into the desolate Plains States. Just as a watched pot never boils, apparently, a watched apocalypse never ends: the constant vigil seemed to pack six extra hours into the day. By the time he reached Lincoln, the dejected man could barely pull himself from the cockpit of the quieted helicopter.
Twice during the eternal day, he'd worked up the nerve to try his mother's number again. Both attempts went unanswered.
After another night of pilot lounge couch surfing and vending machine cuisine, Vaughn refueled the helicopter and departed west. Again, he hadn't bothered with supplies. A towel bath in the airport's bathroom had alleviated his case of swamp ass, but Vaughn's flight suit was rank. By now, it could probably stand on its own. He didn't care about any of that. The need to find the edge of the destruction drove him to continue. It afforded no opportunity for detours or respite.
An hour into the flight, the first lightning bolt lit up the murky morning sky. Then another followed by two more struck off the nose of the Black Hawk. Gray skies gave way to charcoal and then black.
Vaughn guided the helicopter closer to the rolling wheat-covered plains. Soon he drew level with the tops of the region's few trees. In the diminishing daylight, he had trouble discerning the lay of the land ahead of the Black Hawk.
Then the bottom fell out of the storm. Rain pelted the low-flying helicopter, further degrading his forward visibility. Vaughn slowed the aircraft to thirty knots and brought it down so low that its tires dragged through the tops of the manic waves of grain.
The helicopter shuddered. Its indicated airspeed shot up to ninety knots, but the GPS's ground speed held firm at thirty. The needle of the Black Hawk's round outside air temperature gauge turned like an unwinding clock hand, dropping thirty degrees in seconds.
Vaughn realized that he'd just plowed into the leading edge of a powerful cold front.
Horizontal rain crashed into the Black Hawk, rendering the windshield completely opaque, even with the wipers on high. Vaughn kept the helicopter level by looking out the side window, but that, too, proved difficult. Wind-driven ripples raced through the straw-colored fields. The ephemeral waves of grain lashed at the helicopter's tires without effect, but the visual illusion created by the rushing undulations made sideways surface navigation all but impossible.
"This is too much!"
Vaughn slowed the copter to ten knots and then drove it onto the ground. The four-foot-tall stalks of spring wheat parted, yielding to the insistent nose of the onrushing helicopter. Vaughn bounced up and down as the main landing gear skipped over the furrowed ground. Then the vertical movement stopped.
For a moment, the pilot thought the helicopter must have left the ground and lifted back into the air. The yellow field appeared to rush past his door. He tried to push the collective control, but it was all the way down. Then he saw that the ground speed had fallen to zero.
The helicopter had stopped.
Vaughn reached up for the throttles, intent on shutting down the engines. Then he saw the surging airspeed needle. The winds were blowing it better than eighty miles an hour.
Since when do cold fronts have winds this high? Vaughn wondered, but then his eyes widened. He yanked his hand from the throttles.
"Tornado Alley!"
He'd landed in the heart of it!
After squinting through the windshield, Vaughn eyed the throttles again. Taking off wasn't an option, not in this storm. He could kill the engines, but in high winds, helicopter blades could flap dangerously, especially during coast down. They'd been known to cut through cockpits. At full speed, the rotor blades were more stable, but if he kept running and a tornado did come—
Suddenly, a violent gust rocked the helicopter.
Vaughn froze.
The wind had shifted. Now it blew across the aircraft, racing in from its left.
The man growled and shook his head. "Stupid move, Singleton." He could have at least tried to check the weather before he'd departed Lincoln. Vaughn doubted he would have found a current forecast, but he hadn't even bothered to check the airport's pilot planning room. Who knows? He might have found some leftover prog charts–weather maps that plot regional conditions for days in advance.
No, he'd been too goddamned single-minded.
Vaughn could almost see Mark shaking his head.
Then surging winds howled, eclipsing the roaring engines and pulsing rotor blades. The helicopter leaned right. Vaughn pressed the stick left, tilting the rotors into the screaming hurricane-force winds. Something dark flew across the field ahead of him. Then amber straws and dark earth sprayed the windshield. The still beating wipers smeared the mess across the glass.
"Shit! Tornado!"
Then Vaughn glimpsed it as a charcoal smudge against the backdrop of black clouds. Through the mud-streaked windshield, the pilot tried to judge the distance. The vortex
looked huge. He couldn't tell for sure, but it looked as if the tornado was crossing from left to right. It didn't appear to be growing closer.
The pitch of the wind rose another notch. The Black Hawk leaned precariously. If it got any stronger, the helicopter would roll over and beat itself to death.
The pilot didn't dare move the collective control. That would only make things worse, but he did have another option.
Vaughn eased in a little left pedal, and the nose shifted a few degrees in that direction. He applied additional pedal, and it continued the yawing turn. The back of the copter jumped a few times as the tailwheel skated across furrowed ground, but it finally came to a stop with the nose facing back into the wind.
The turn had placed the funnel cloud on the helicopter's right side. Looking through the right window, the pilot now had an unsullied and literally front-seat view of the tornado.
Something dark flew over the Black Hawk. Vaughn looked up and suddenly understood why he'd seen so few trees. A small, uprooted oak tumbled overhead and then disappeared behind the helicopter.
For an insane moment, the pilot considered trying to fly away from the tornado. He looked at it with wide eyes.
Still no closer.
Vaughn would sit still, for now, take his chances with flying debris. If he launched into this storm, he'd likely lose sight of the ground or lose control of the helicopter or both.
Through slitted eyes, Vaughn watched the swirling cloud. He gripped the sticks with two white-knuckled fists, feeling like a loaded spring trap, ready to snap the flight controls up the instant the funnel cloud moved toward the helicopter.
Suddenly, the tornado appeared to turn away from him. Its apparent width rapidly diminished and then it drew up, away from the ground. A moment later, it disappeared into the base of the black clouds.
Before Vaughn could relax, another bolt of lightning struck, this one so close the sound arrived in unison with the light. Then the sky opened up again. Rain crashed down. The helicopter shuddered violently as a fresh blast of wind raked across it.
