Blind Panic

by Graham Masterton

  A warm wind was blowing into the cabin from outside, tainted with the smell of aviation fuel and diesel, and the red fire truck lights were still flashing.

  Tyler shouted out, “Listen up, everybody! Listen! You need to get out of this plane real fast! There’s another plane landing on the same runway!”

  The senior flight attendant shouted out, too. “Forget about taking your shoes off! Just get out of here as quick as you can!”

  There were screams and shouts of alarm, and the passengers started to jostle one another. Tyler pulled the navigator and the copilot toward the exit.

  The navigator said, “God, don’t push me—I can’t see!” But Tyler pushed him all the same, and he somersaulted down the emergency chute, followed by a fat woman in a bright pink jumpsuit and a businessman still clutching his briefcase. Two elderly Japanese tourists tumbled down after them.

  Tyler looked back to see if Captain Sherman was close behind. The pilot was feeling his way unsteadily down the spiral staircase from first class, clinging to the handrail to prevent himself from falling. George O’Donnell was close behind him.

  Tyler was about to go to the foot of the stairs to help him when he heard a piercing whistle noise, and then a deafening explosion, which echoed from one side of the airport to the other. Somebody out on the runway was screaming, and somebody else was shouting, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

  Tyler pushed his way back to the exit, where the last four or five coach-class passengers were being hurried down the emergency chute. The red-haired flight attendant who had first woken him was there, along with a young black flight attendant with cornrow hair.

  “What was that?” asked the red-haired attendant, and she was white-faced with fright. “Was that a plane?”

  Tyler leaned outside, shielding his eyes with his hand. Less than a hundred yards away, he saw the fiery framework of a twin-engined private jet, rolling toward them on blazing tires. It had exploded on touchdown, but it was still trundling along the tarmac at sixty or seventy knots like a burning funeral wagon.

  Tyler grasped both flight attendants tightly by the hand and pitched himself out of the doorway. In a tangle of arms and legs they slithered down to the bottom of the emergency chute, and firefighters helped them onto their feet.

  “Run!" the firefighters shouted at them, and Tyler and the girls all ran across the runway, away from the 747, as fast and as hard as they could. Even the firefighters turned and ran now.

  Captain Sherman and George O’Donnell were still standing in the 747’s open doorway when the private jet crashed into its inboard port engine. There was another thunderous bang as the first of the 747’s fuel-tanks exploded, and a huge dragon’s tongue of orange fire licked up into the night.

  Tyler stopped running and turned around. By now he and the two flight attendants were nearly three hundred yards away from the 747, but they could still feel a wave of heat against their faces. The plane’s fuel tanks blew up, and fiery chunks of aluminum spun up into the night like Catherine wheels.

  Exhausted, sweating, gasping for breath, Tyler slid himself down against a taxi stand sign, and the two flight attendants sat down beside him. Together they watched as fire engulfed the 747 from nose to tail. They were too winded to speak, and in any case the noise from the burning aircraft was overwhelming. There was a series of smaller bangs as oxygen tanks exploded and the tires burst, followed by the crackling and popping of windows. Five fire trucks jetted thousands of gallons of white foam all over the aircraft’s carcass, and foam tumbled across the runways in the early-morning wind as if it were frolicsome ghosts.

  Up above them helicopters from the police and fire departments circled the 747, their floodlights crisscrossing through the thick black smoke. Shortly after five thirty A.M., with a terrible groan, the aircraft sagged in the middle and collapsed onto the runway.

  A Latina paramedic came bustling over to check that Tyler and the two girls were unhurt. She had very wide hips, but Tyler thought that she had a comfortingly beautiful face, like a Madonna. Then a tired-looking Federal Aviation official approached Tyler for his home address, so that he could question him later for the FAA’s official inquiry. He was followed by another manager from AMA Airlines, with a gray buzz cut and rimless eyeglasses.

  “Did Captain Sherman manage to get out?” Tyler asked him.

  The manager’s eyeglasses caught the first light of the morning sun. “Sorry,” he said. “So far we believe there were eleven fatalities altogether. Captain Sherman, I regret to tell you, was one of them.”

  Tyler said, “Shit. There wouldn’t have been any casualties at all if that second plane hadn’t come in.”

  “Well, we have no idea what caused that yet. But, yes, it’s a tragedy.”

  Tyler stood up and was ready to leave when a square-jawed blonde woman in a red polo-neck sweater approached him. “Mr. Jones? Tina Freely, LA Times. I understand you’re the man of the hour.”

  “I don’t know about that. In any case, I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about it just yet.”

  “Oh, come on, now, Mr. Jones. You don’t mind if I call you Tyler? AMA couldn’t keep a lid on it for very long. I’ve been talking to some of the air-traffic controllers, and they all know what happened.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Tyler. “I’m totally busharoonied, and I really need to get home.”

  Tina Freely walked beside him as he limped toward the airport terminal. “The whole flight crew went blind and you had to land the plane by yourself?”

  “It was totally automatic. All I had to do was press a couple of buttons, flick a couple of switches, and tell the passengers not to smoke in the toilets.”

  “That was still pretty brave of you.”

  “The crew was blind. I didn’t really have much choice, did I?”

  “Do you know why they went blind?”

  “Not a clue. The captain thought it might have been a virus in the AC. You know, like Legionnaires’ disease. But if that was true, how come nobody else went blind? How come I didn’t go blind?”

  They had almost reached the terminal. Planes were still landing and taxiing and taking off on other runways, and Tyler could hardly hear what Tina Freely said next, except that she finished up by saying “…called up to report that he had gone blind, too.”

  “Somebody else went blind? Sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

  “The private plane that crashed into the 747—that was a Learjet 45 owned and flown by Norman Rossabi, one of the partners in Kerwin, Rossabi, and Prink. Big showbiz lawyers.”

  “Sure. I’ve heard of them. Who hasn’t?”

  “Well, Rossabi was flying himself and one of his clients back from a weekend in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He called from someplace over the Tonto National Forest in Arizona and said that he had suddenly lost his sight. That was the last they heard of him. At least until they picked up his plane on their radar, winging its way back home. Nonstop.”

  Tyler said, “Maybe it’s just a coincidence.”

  “You think so?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s some kind of disease that pilots get—you know, people who fly at high altitude. Maybe it’s the pressure; or the effect of UV rays from the sun. The atmosphere’s thinner up there, isn’t it? Doesn’t give you so much protection.”

  “Well, maybe,” said Tina Freely. “You don’t mind if I take your picture, do you? Try to look—you know—heroic.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ladera Park, Los Angeles

  “What time did that children’s services person say she was going to be here?” asked Jasmine’s aunt for the seventh time. “He is a sweet little fella—I have to admit that—but I never did no baby rearin’, not myself, apart from mindin’ you when you was teeny and your momma had to go to work at Ralph’s, and I swear I hardly know one end of a baby from the other.”

  “It’s easy,” said Jasmine, without turning around. “All you have to do is sniff.”

  Jasmine’s aunt stepped out onto the balc
ony, holding the baby in her arms. She was small and skinny and stooped, with a dried-up-looking face that had always reminded Jasmine of a dark brown leather mask rather than a face. On her head she was wearing a red silk scarf that she had knotted up into an extraordinary floral shape, like a giant rose; and her dress was red silk, too, reaching almost to her ankles, with wide sleeves and yellow embroidery around the hem and the cuffs.

  She wore dangly gold earrings and more gold-and-silver bangles than Jasmine could count, and her two front teeth were gold, too. She called herself Auntie Ammy, here in Ladera Park, but her real name was Amadi, which meant “great rejoicing, because she seemed destined to die at birth.”

  She lifted up the baby and inhaled. “Seems okay for now. But if I catch even one whiff of doo-doo, I am passing him directly over to you. You hear?”

  “I hear.”

  Jasmine was watching the high gray veils of smoke that were still rising from the airport. They were leaning to the left now because the wind had changed around to the northwest. It reminded her of the line from the Bible that her grandmother used to quote: “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke.”

  Three helicopters were still droning and clattering around the end of the runway. She and Auntie Ammy had heard the explosion when the AMA 747 had blown up at 3:25 this morning, and they had rushed out onto the balcony in time to see the fireball rolling up into the darkness.

  A TV news bulletin had told them less than ten minutes after the explosion that two aircraft had collided on the runway at LAX, with an unknown number of fatalities. An hour later, chief of police William J. Bratton had announced at a hastily arranged media conference that although the LAPD had not ruled out a terrorist attack completely, they had information which led them to believe that what had happened was nothing more than “a tragic and catastrophic accident—but an accident all the same.”

  Auntie Ammy rocked the baby boy in her arms. He wasn’t asleep, but he seemed to be mesmerized by her rocking.

  “This was not no accident,” she said emphatically. “Just like what happened to you yesterday, that crash you had on the freeway—that was not no accident, neither.”

  “How do you know?” Jasmine asked her. She turned around and stroked the baby’s forehead, and then his hand. He clung to her finger and stared at her seriously, as if he didn’t want to lose sight of her.

  “I know it because I know it, that’s all. I feels it in the air.”

  “Now you’re getting all psychic on me again. You been throwing them bones?”

  “I don’t need to throw bones to know when there’s trouble brewin’. I feels it. It’s like the air all around us is startin’ to thicken up, like soup.”

  Auntie Ammy jiggled the baby a few more times. Then she said, “Maybe you should give children’s services another call. Maybe they forgot.”

  “Don’t be so impatient. They’ll be here. I need to speak to my insurance company; that’s a whole lot more urgent. I’ve tried them four times and still there’s nobody answering.”

  “I told you. Didn’t I told you? There’s trouble brewin’.”

  After another hour, Jasmine called children’s services again, but all she heard was a recorded message asking her to leave her name and number.

  “Maybe I should take him down there myself.”

  “Maybe you should. You can’t take him home with you, can you? And I can’t take care of him, poor little fella.”

  Jasmine tried her insurance company one more time. She had the same response as children’s services: a recorded voice telling her that “no associates are available to speak to you right now…please leave a short message and we’ll get right back to you.”

  “You can borrow my car,” said Auntie Ammy. “Take the poor little fella downtown and then drive yourself home. You can ask Hubie to fetch it back for me tomorrow.”

  “Okay, thanks,” said Jasmine. She held out her hands for the baby, and Auntie Ammy started to pass him over, but he clung tightly to her red silk dress and started to cry.

  “Hey, shush,” said Auntie Ammy. “Jazz is going to take you to meet some real nice folks who is going to take real good care of you.”

  Jasmine took hold of him, but he wailed even louder and wouldn’t release his grip on Auntie Ammy’s dress.

  “I think he wants you to be his new momma,” said Jasmine.

  “Well, I’m sorry, little fella, but being anybody’s momma just ain’t my forte. Even a little fella as cute as you.”

  At that moment, however, the baby abruptly stopped crying and looked up at the ceiling, his blue eyes still sparkling with tears. He looked as if he had heard something or was waiting for something. He frowned, and then he lifted one hand and pointed directly upward.

  “What is it, little fella?” Auntie Ammy asked him. But the baby continued to point and look upward.

  “A gah,” he said.

  “A gah?”

  “A gah,” he repeated.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” said Jasmine. “I don’t speak baby. I used to, once upon a time, but I’m afraid I clean forgot it all.”

  “A gah,” said the baby, and as he did so they heard a rumbling sound, and the windows in Auntie Ammy’s apartment began to rattle and buzz, and a brown pottery vase dropped off the shelf and smashed on the polished wood floor. The rumbling grew louder and louder until the whole apartment was shaking and a picture of some Santeria saint fell off the wall.

  “Earthquake,” said Jasmine, but it was more of a question than a statement, because she had never heard an earthquake like this before. The rumbling became a roar, and then the roar turned into an earsplitting scream, and a dark shadow passed over the apartment block as if a huge dragon had flown overhead. Pink clay tiles flew from the roof in a blizzard and leaves exploded from the trees in Ladera Park.

  Jasmine and Auntie Ammy rushed back out onto the balcony, Auntie Ammy holding the baby tightly against her chest. They were just in time to see the eighty-foot-high tail of an Airbus 380 disappear behind the apartment buildings opposite them. It was dazzlingly white, and so enormous that the buildings looked completely out of scale, like models.

  “Santa Theresa,” said Auntie Ammy, but Jasmine knew that she was not praying to any Christian saint—rather to Oya, the Santeria goddess of storms and lightning and cemeteries. As well she might, because the giant airliner came down on the intersection of West Centinela and La Tijera boulevards with a bang as loud as every thunderclap that there had ever been, its nose tearing into the teeming midmorning traffic, crushing automobiles and overturning trucks, its two-hundred-sixty-feet wingspan ripping up palm trees and streetlights and overhead gantries.

  It slid along La Tijera and buried itself underneath the concrete pillars of the San Diego Freeway before it blew up, throwing chunks of roadway into the air. A speeding bus plunged at fifty miles an hour into the gap that it had created, and buried itself at a sixty-degree angle in the fiery fuselage. It was rapidly followed by one automobile after another, like metal lemmings throwing themselves off a cliff.

  Jasmine and Auntie Ammy saw debris scattered high up into the sky, including several tumbling fragments that looked like people. The noise was horrendous: the screeching of steel and aluminum, the thumping of automobile gas tanks blowing up, and the seemingly endless clattering of falling wreckage. A brown mushroom cloud of smoke rolled up over the treetops, and even through the trees, Jasmine and Auntie Ammy could see the lurid orange flames as a shallow riptide of blazing aviation fuel spread across the streets.

  “My God,” said Jasmine, and crossed herself. She didn’t know what else to say. She went back into the living room and sat down on the red brocade couch, shaking with shock. “My God, that almost landed right on top of us.”

  Auntie Ammy came in, too, and sat down next to her. The baby was sitting up now, not crying, but staring at Jasmine with great solemnity.

  “He knew what was going to happen,” said Jasmine.
She took hold of the baby’s hands and said, “You knew, didn’t you? You could feel it coming, even before either of us could.”

  Auntie Ammy touched the baby’s cheek. “Maybe he got the power. Maybe he got the vision—he can see things before they arrivin’.”

  “My God, all those poor people,” said Jasmine. “Nobody could have lived through that. And it must have come down right on La Tijera. God knows how many people got killed on the ground.”

  The baby leaned his head against Auntie Ammy’s shoulder. His eyes were drooping as if he was tired. Through the open balcony window they could hear more explosions, and the honking and shrieking of fire truck sirens.

  “Turn on the news,” Auntie Ammy suggested.

  “I’m not so sure that I want to. This is just as bad as nine-eleven.”

  “Maybe—exceptin’ nine-eleven was Ay-rab terrorists and this is somethin’ altogether different. I know it, girl. I feels it. It’s like the air’s grown thicker, like soup, and the floor is crawlin’ underneath the soles of my feet. Somebody’s out to get us—you mark my words. Somebody who hates us with a passion.”

  Reluctantly, Jasmine switched on KCAL 9 News. It was too soon for them to have pictures of the airbus crash, but Kent Shocknek was already announcing with a grave expression that there had been a devastating air disaster in South Central Los Angeles.

  “The Airbus 380 is the world’s largest airliner and is capable of carrying over eight hundred passengers. Since its first commercial flight in 2006 it has had an unblemished safety record, but we are already receiving reports that there are substantial numbers of casualties, and emergency crews who are attending the scene of the crash are warning us that the figure may eventually run into the hundreds.”

  “Santa Theresa,” Auntie Ammy repeated, and she began to intone an invocation to the goddess Oyá. “Oyá yegbe iya mesa oyo orun afefe iku lelebe oke ayaba—”