by Justin Bell
***
The smoke was a thick, physical object, tangling on his skin like fingers, clutching at his nostrils, trying to force its way down his throat. Jackson walked away from Hanscom Field, leaving the terminals and smoldering trees in the distance, keeping along the shoulder on Route 2A which would lead him straight into the heart of the city yet avoid the potential business of Route 2 itself or, even worse, Interstate 95. It would be a long walk, somewhere around fifteen miles, but Jackson was in good shape and thought that if he pushed it he could make it in a few hours.
Stiffness in his legs had eased as he moved, his frequent running and Tai Chi lessons loosening his working joints, though the backpack hanging off his shoulders added some weight and slowed his pace slightly. He was tempted to break into a run, to try to cut the time to the city in half, but every breath he drew was thick with a choking smoke, his nostrils and eyes stinging lightly, and he knew trying to run in this hot and smoky weather was asking for trouble. So far, Route 2A had been quiet, with only the occasional vehicle speeding by, most of them away from the city.
He pressed his cellphone to his ear, hitting the redial button, and again the automated voice informed him that all circuits were busy and to try his call later. Lowering the phone, he looked off into the sky, thinking about Lisa, wondering what she was doing in Connecticut right now, if she was worried about him, or if she even knew what was going on. A plane crash deep in the heart of the city of Boston was certainly national news, but if he couldn’t get through the cell towers, maybe all communications in and out of the city had been diverted.
Was that even possible? What kind of disaster would have to take place to cut off all forms of communication? Didn’t they build in all sorts of redundancies for this, especially after September 11th? Sirens warbled in the distance, shaking him from his momentary daze and he looked down the stretching path of Route 2A. Two small vehicles emerged, grew larger, the volume of the sirens growing steadily louder and longer. They blared next to him as the two firetrucks passed, then faded behind them as they continued along, somewhere further west on 2A. Some strange invisible destination… a place on fire. One of many places on fire he was guessing, though they were a decent distance outside of the city at this point.
Were the issues in Boston spreading this far out? Or was this something different?
Every step he took, a new question formed in his mind, and as the smoke thickened and the sky slowly shifted toward darkness, Jackson Block seemed to have far more questions than answers.
***
TK Foods’ main warehouse and distribution center sat just west of the city of Boston, an unremarkable structure of flat, brown brick. Built for function over form, it was a large, spacious facility to handle storage and distribution of food products to a wide array of local grocery stores. Three long semis were parked out in the loading dock, an innocent, normal day in this building sitting on the crest between city and suburbia.
Inside the facility, however, a siren wailed.
Javier glanced both ways down the hall as he exited the warehouse facility itself, the doors to all of the administrative offices wide open, a flood of exiting bodies growing smaller to his left as they rushed toward the emergency exit. He’d been through his share of fire drills in his decade of working for TK Foods, and this wasn’t that. It felt nothing like that, and even buried in the doldrums of the cold storage wing, he’d heard that dull, muffled roar coming from the east.
“What’s going on out there, Javi?” a voice asked, coming up behind him. Javier turned to see Maria and Jake making their way down the hall behind him. They were both day shift warehouse pickers with him, and he’d worked with Maria for the majority of his ten years at TK.
“I got no clue,” he replied. “Something.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Jake whispered. “Everyone’s leavin’.”
“Doesn’t sound any better out there than it is in here,” Javier replied. “Did you hear that boom?”
Jake and Maria both nodded. The rest of the warehouse had cleared out, leaving the space wide open, empty, and deathly silent, a condition that was never seen this time of the morning.
“Everyone out!” a hoarse voice barked from the other end of the hallway as Craig, the day shift security guard emerged from the dim lighting. “This ain’t a drill, Javi, let’s go, okay?”
Javier nodded and withdrew from the hallway, Maria and Jake close behind. Lights pulsed on the wall, and a shrill screech warbled in the air, urging them to leave immediately, and they complied.
The sun had been high and hot in the sky when Javier had arrived at work today, but as he exited out into the parking lot, he couldn’t help but notice the overall dull gray shade. It was as if they were under particularly thick cloud cover, the outside looking as if it were the evening instead of the height of mid-morning.
“Yo, Javi, what’s going on, man?”
Javier turned and narrowed his eyes at the familiar faces of Gray and Porter, two other shift workers at the warehouse. Gray was dressed in torn blue jeans and a black t-shirt while Porter wore stained cargo pants and a white tank top. They both typically worked the night shift, when the dress code was somewhat more lax, and they looked pretty out of place in the current surroundings.
“Porter? Gray? What are you doing here?”
“Boss asked if we wanted to get some extra hours. We come in early, and everyone’s leaving. Fire drill?”
Javier looked up into the cloudy sky, his eyes focusing on the haze just above. The way the sky was moving told him that it wasn’t cloud cover he was looking at, it was a layer of thick smoke drifting from the East.
“Not a drill, man,” Javier replied. “Don’t you see that smoke? Where’s it comin’ from?”
Gray looked up, then looked to his right, where the smoke drifted over the squat, green trees.
“Comin’ from the city,” said Gray.
“Didn’t you hear?” shouted Jake. He had wandered toward a different crowd of people huddled together outside the warehouse.
“Hear what?” Gray asked, nodding at him.
Jake walked over, keeping his voice low as if speaking the words aloud would somehow break some kind of strict confidentiality.
“Plane crash,” he said quietly. “Right in downtown.”
“Holy—” Gray said.
“Jenny from HR heard there were two of them.”
Javier and Gray exchanged nervous looks.
“Two of them crashing don’t sound like an accident,” hissed Gray. “Sounds like some bad mojo going down.”
“No kidding,” Javier replied.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not hanging around here. This is gonna go sideways real quick.”
Javier glanced up into the sky again. A dull ache gripped at the sides of his skull, cold fingers squeezing gently. The similarities to September 11th hit him quick and hard, a recollection that one couldn’t help but make upon hearing of two planes crashing into the clutch of tall buildings in a major downtown East Coast city.
“You think it’s terrorists?” Javier asked as Gray started moving away. Porter was matching him step for step, Javier following along behind.
Gray glared back at him as if he were crazy. “It ain’t about terrorists, Javi. Never has been.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wait up!” Maria said, falling in behind them and Jake next to her. They walked as a group, leaving the parking lot and angling down one of the side streets.
“Terrorists. Bunch of bull,” Gray continued. “Just government cronies looking for an excuse. Inventing an excuse.”
“Nah,” Javier said, shaking his head. “Bunch of conspiracy crap.”
Gray glanced back at him and shrugged lightly. “Believe what you want, man. I’ve seen the proof, man. I’ve heard it from people who were in those towers.”
Off in the distance another muffled, thunderous blast shook the ground beneath their feet. Javier whirled around, eyes w
idening and he could see a rising cloud of smoke and flame rolling up over the low roofs of nearby buildings.
“What are we gonna do?” screamed Jake, looking at the fires, then looking back at Gray. “Where are we going?”
“I think they’re pulling out the stops,” Gray whispered. “I guarantee you, by tonight Boston will be under martial law. This is where it happens. Government moves in, lays down the law, exerts their power. They’re creating another crisis.”
“So what do we do?” Javier asked.
“Do what you want,” Gray replied. “I plan on fighting back.”
Javier and Maria glanced at each other as Porter, Gray, and Jake moved on down the sidewalk, striding at a brisk pace. In the air, smoke thickened, choking the breath in their lungs, and they turned back and continued in pursuit of their friends.
Chapter Two
His back was pressed tight into the slight curve of the seat, his hands clasped in his lap, covered by a folded, black jacket. Eyes narrowed behind mirrored sunglasses, he angled his neck slightly, glaring all along the aisle of the aircraft, looking at each other person lining the outside row of seats. He pulled his lips into a tight, straight line, the six-day stubble curling his mouth, a look of silent, repressed frustration.
Vasily hated flying commercial airlines; he much preferred the open nature of the military flights he was accustomed to, the wide-open cargo area allowing for some freer motion and breathing room. Not at all like being shackled into narrow rows of seats, like cattle led to the slaughter. He was far more used to the freedom of motion and fewer creature comforts afforded by the Antonov AN-124 Ruslan transport aircraft, and even with the free Wi-fi, numerous seat-mounted power outlets and false, recirculated air conditioning, he felt more at home aboard the bare boned, large bellied 124. These 737’s were not for him.
It didn’t help that he was currently strapped tight into the seat, his wrists pressed together and concealed under the thick black fabric of his jacket draped over his large lap. He was expected and encouraged to sit straight and still, to not make any drastic movements for fear of frightening the passengers.
Not that he could if he wanted to. Turning to look toward the rear of the aircraft, his shoulders strained against the seat belts, his wrists digging into the metal rings clamped around them.
“What are you looking at, Vasily?” asked the man in the seat next to him, his own eyes narrowed.
“I make you nervous?” he asked, looking at the air marshal next to him. Frank Kellerman was dressed in a neatly pressed gray suit, his baggy coat wide enough to conceal the SIG Sauer P250 pistol in .357 magnum that was tightly hugged by the leather holster and pressed to his chest. Passengers were antsy enough about an obvious prisoner on board without actually seeing the weapon the air marshal was carrying around.
“You’re the one in handcuffs, Roserov,” replied Kellerman. “I’ve got nothing to worry about here.”
“In Spetnaz,” Roserov spat, “we learn to kill in handcuffs. I can count six different ways just sitting here.”
“And yet here I sit, and there you are.” Kellerman turned toward him. “Big tough Russian special forces… next stop? Guantanamo.”
Vasily leaned forward, looking across the broad shoulders of Kellerman and out the narrow, oval window. “You fly me to Boston to send me to Guantanamo? I think there is something you’re not telling me, Marshal.”
Kellerman glanced at his watch melodramatically. “Thirty minutes and we’ll find out. Won’t that be exciting?”
As if on cue, the surrounding voices rose slightly, the normal near-silent murmur of air flight chatter rising to an elevated volume of excited apprehension. The air marshal turned in his chair, watching the reactions from other passengers, trying to translate what he was seeing. In the row ahead of them, the low mumbling became an almost frantic, hoarse whispering.
Kellerman pressed his hands to the chair backs and leaned forward. “What’s the excitement?” he asked.
One of the passengers turned toward him. “Plane crash. Downtown.”
“In Boston?”
The passenger nodded excitedly. “Ain’t that some crazy?”
Just as Kellerman leaned back, a shrill, abrupt scream split the air near the front of the airplane. This single scream was chased by a frantic chorus of shouts and fearful clatter of voices.
“Something’s happening!” a voice shouted. “What is it?”
“Is it the pilot?”
“Oh God it’s the pilot!”
The Marshal twisted in his chair, looking at the crowd, then glancing at his watch, shaking his head. “Stay here,” he hissed to Vasily Roserov, as if he had anywhere to escape to. Kellerman unhooked his belt and pushed himself to his feet, sliding past Vasily and working his way out into the aisle.
“I’m a United States Air Marshal!” he shouted, making his way toward the front. “How can I help?”
All at once, the 737 seemed to lurch forward, then dip, losing significant altitude in an instant, moving downward as if some large, angry spirit pressed it deeper under water. Kellerman shouted as the plane charged, and he was lifted off his feet, shooting up into the arced roof of the aircraft, overhead storage bins bursting open, bags and suitcases spilling out, tumbling over the hapless passengers strapped into their rigid, narrow seats. Shouts and voices immediately shifted to screams and cries, the entire interior of the aircraft a shrill orchestra of horror and panic.
Vasily turned, looking throughout the plane, moving his hands toward his seat buckle, working the strap free. Without warning, the plane dipped left, turning almost sideways in the air, passengers from the opposite side screaming. A handful of people who weren’t buckled in spilled from their seats, toppling end over end and crashing into people on the opposite side of the plane. Vasily twisted away as a suitcase slammed into his right shoulder, the seam bursting open and throwing clothes across his unshaven face.
Slowly the plane evened out, but was still streaking downward, and he could see the layout of the city of Boston out of his own window. A vast and thick cloud of dull, gray smoke had consumed the majority of downtown; a strange, blob creature devouring the buildings and drawing everything into itself, feeding itself and growing with power. A pair of stubborn buildings rose high out of the growing smoke cloud as if standing in stoic resilience to the attacking beast.
Somewhere in the distance, something detonated, a muffled, resonating blast, audible even through the thick wall of the airplane, and the skyline grew taller and closer as the plane drew nearer to the ground, slamming toward the runway, striking the pavement nose first, scraping and tearing, sheet metal twisting away. Inside the airplane the cabin throttled with the impact, the actual superstructure contorting in pressure, starting to tear. Vasily saw plates of metal separating near the middle of the plane, tearing away, letting in a swift blast of choked sun, grabbing two people and yanking them hard through the narrow gap. A blasting wave of heat and smoke slammed up through the cabin like a physical wall, washing over him and the others, stinging his eyes, scalding layers of flesh, and then all that existed in the world was fire.
***
The sky above was darkening, as if on a manual dimmer switch, the sky shifting from a light blue to dull darkness. The sun was still visible over the trees and low buildings of downtown Arlington, Route 2A cutting straight through downtown of the small city outside of Boston. Jackson was already making good time, moving quickly, his legs not tiring, his lungs well-conditioned, and even the backpack was not feeling especially heavy.
Arlington was a small city by Boston standards, though it was a bit larger than Jackson’s home town in rural Connecticut with rows of houses upon houses leading directly to small stores, markets, coffee shops and small pharmacies sitting wall-to-wall on each side of the two-lane road.
He’d seen a scattering of vehicles as he approached civilization, what felt like a normal amount of back road traffic, and here in downtown, it could have been any other day of th
e week. A handful of inhabitants walked the streets, a pair of young girls coming out of one of the coffee shops. At a restaurant with outside seating, there were two couples and a family eating, though nobody was talking. On the surface, everything seemed normal as he passed through, but there felt like a lot going on underneath the surface, just below this narrow layer of normalcy. He looked at people’s eyes as he walked past, trying to get a read on them, and he saw a strange, far-away glassiness in nearly everyone. The feeling that they were there in body, but not in spirit.
Glancing both ways, he crossed 2A, no cars anywhere in sight. Approaching the outside seating area of the small restaurant, he raised a hand and gestured toward one of the couples.
“What’s going on in Boston?” he asked, feigning ignorance.
“What isn’t going on, more like it,” a young blonde replied. “At least one plane crash. My cousin’s brother says he heard of four.”
“Four what? Four planes?”
The blonde nodded. “Train derailed, too. Something nasty going on.”
“It’s not just Boston either,” her friend said. “Facebook is blowing up. People are freaking out everywhere. Something is going on.”
“Something? Like what kind of something?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t get through to my parents, though. Cell service is crapping out. Twitter won’t even load right now. Nobody seems to know what’s going on.”
“Half the wait staff is gone,” the blonde continued. “One of the cooks went home sick. I haven’t even seen our hostess in fifteen minutes.”
The faint, tinny taste of stale smoke was on Jackson’s tongue. He couldn’t decide if it was a leftover from his rough landing at Hanscom, or lingering in the air all the way from the city.
“Other cities are on fire, too,” the blonde’s friend spoke up. “Newark’s burning, supposedly. Philly has gone dark.”
