by Howard, Bob
One plane was already in flames at the end of the runway, having tried to take off through the throngs of infected dead. A second plane had attempted to reach the runway by cutting across the grass. Its nose landing gear had become stuck in the mud and then collapsed under the weight of the plane that was pushing too hard to get itself free.
Hundreds of passengers sat in the plane at a steep down angle, and no one had an idea of what to do next. The infected dead wandered around the plane, reaching up and touching it as if they knew what was inside. Some of the passengers were screaming that they wanted out while a few others were trying to come up with a plan of escape.
Across the devastation of John Glenn International Airport, the pilot of the plane that had formerly been Executive One was trying something different. They didn’t have anywhere to go even if they could take off, so they were going to try for the terminal in the hopes that someone had found a way to take control of the crisis.
“Over there,” said the copilot.
He pointed at a terminal gate that was extended but did not have a plane docked at it.
“At least we’ll be able to walk out of the plane instead of jumping or sliding down a ramp. If there’s a problem inside the gate we can also just get back in the plane and close the door.”
The pilot applied just enough forward power to start the plane rolling toward the gate. Without an airport tow truck he would have to do it the hard way. The nose had to be turned slightly to the left, but that was no problem while the plane was rolling. The gate was extended far enough for him to coast the plane into position between two other United Airlines flights that hadn’t been able to leave when the infection started to spread.
He finished the slight turn and eased back on the power to begin coasting. It was going to be an easy task on the first try if no infected got in front of his wheels.
The navigator had opened the flight deck door and left it open since there were no passengers on board. There was no sense in keeping the four members of the flight attendant staff separated from the flight crew. There was one male attendant, and the other three were women. He gratefully accepted cups of coffee from the youngest member of their crew. He saw that she was wearing a grave expression and didn’t make eye contact.
Her name tag said, “Addison”. She had shoulder length blonde hair that was pulled back into a ponytail and neatly tied with a bow.
“It’s going to be okay, you know.”
She didn’t lift her head when he spoke, but she stopped for a brief moment as if the sound of his voice was unexpected. Then she started handing out the cups again.
“No, sir. I don’t know that. I’m only twenty-one years old, and I had never seen even one person die before today. Now I have no idea how many I’ve seen, and God knows how many I can see walking around out there that are supposed to be dead.”
The navigator hadn’t expected the response. He had hoped that hearing someone say things would be fine would be enough for her, but he could tell she had a good grasp on exactly how bad things were. Worse, she had a good idea of how things were likely to turn out.
There was a slight jolt as the pilot applied the brakes a little harder than intended, but he had managed to get the door of the plane right up against the extended terminal gate.
“How’re we doing out there?” he asked no one in particular.
“Not so good.”
They wondered why the copilot had said that and saw he was watching something out his side window. The pilot and navigator moved up behind him to see what was there while Addison stepped out of the cabin to observe through a window from a starboard side passenger seat.
The copilot had been right. It wasn’t so good. A quick glance out the port side window told the same story.
They were parked between two planes very similar to their own 737, but both were full of passengers. Each plane had the telltale signs of the worse case scenario. The windows from the front to the back of both planes were smeared with a brownish, rust color. Hands and faces were pressed against the dirty glass, spreading the smears even more. If they were closer, the crew of Executive One would be able to see the eyes in those faces were a smokey, milky white color with a bright red ring around the corneas.
The senior flight attendant stepped into the flight deck and said in a sober voice that the doors on the other planes must be closed, but the terminal gates were open. She had been able to get a good view through a small tube shaped window at eye level on the forward door, and there wasn’t anything moving on the other side.
“Why do you think the forward doors of the other planes aren’t open?” asked the pilot.
“I don’t know, I guess because they aren’t trying to get off the planes.”
“I hate to tell you this, Anne, but I don’t think those things know there’s a forward door, let alone whether or not it’s open.”
They gathered at the door and none of them were convinced they should open it until everyone had the opportunity to study the view through the small window. In the end, they knew they either had to open the door or try to fly the plane to some other place where there were no infected dead.
The pilot unlocked the door and eased it open just a few inches. It was quiet, but the reaction was immediate. The smell that came in on the air through the small gap was enough to make all of them want to be sick.
No one had to say they wanted the door shut again, but they didn’t have another choice. The pilot slid the door shut and then went to the galley. He grabbed linen towels and soaked them in water. As he passed them out, he told them to keep their mouths closed and breathe through the towels.
His next stop was to retrieve the contents of a special safe on the flight deck. He uncovered the hidden safe and pulled out a black box. Inside was an automatic pistol and two magazines of ammunition. As he shoved in one of the magazines, he thought back to the day when the airlines had decided the pilot and copilot could be armed. He had been against the decision.
The copilot remembered his own weapon and uncovered the safe by his seat. He had also been against the decision, but hind sight was always 20/20.
When they were ready to open the door again, the pilot slid it open, and they all covered their faces. They noticed that the overhead lights were flickering which gave the appearance of moving shadows up ahead. They stayed bunched together and moved slowly into the retractable passageway. Mike was the last to go through the door, and as a precaution, he slid it shut behind them.
“Why’d you close the door?” asked Addison.
Mike, the male flight attendant whispered, “If we have to come back in a hurry, I don’t want to find something has wandered inside.”
“Not to mention the smell,” said Anne. “It would be good to keep it out of the plane.”
The passenger loading gate was about thirty yards long with two turns. Airport security called the turns defendable points, but to the Captain the turns meant they could peek around the corner before giving away their position. When they got to the last corner before the main passenger concourse, he motioned for everyone to stay where they were, then he slowly leaned forward.
The concourse was surprisingly empty. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but he didn’t expect the place to be empty. There was no sign that there had been a panic or stampede of people trying to escape from the infected.
Once again he motioned for the others to stay where they were, and he tiptoed quietly toward the place where the passengers would have checked in. The smell was worse, but he still didn’t see the source.
It wasn’t until he reached the door to the passenger waiting area that he understood. From his vantage point behind the check-in counter he could see the doors to the other boarding areas were all closed. The doors all had panic bars across them, which meant they opened outward. Someone had looped chains through the door handles and effectively sealed off the passenger waiting area. On the other side of each door, movement could be seen through the smeared glass windo
ws. That would explain the smell.
The pilot of Executive One said a quiet prayer of thanks to the unknown person who had sealed those doors and wondered what had happened to them. When he was finished, he went back to the group waiting for him in the corridor.
He spoke in a low voice even though nothing would be able to hear him but his friends.
“It’s one of those good news and bad news things. The passenger waiting area is sealed off from the other corridors, and nothing can get in with us. Of course the bad news is that we can’t get out.”
“Can we see it?” asked Anne.
“I don’t see why not, but stay really quiet. I think the infected are behind every door.”
They went single file out to the passenger waiting area, and they were ready to turn and run if there was even the slightest threat.
There was a waiting area with rows of uncomfortable chairs facing large plate glass windows on each side of the concourse. Waiting passengers could watch planes coming and going through those windows, and the crew of Executive One found themselves going in the direction of the view facing the place where they had spent the night. When they got to the windows, they could see Columbus in the distance and the smoke rising from many buildings. They could also see the plane that was still sending up plumes of smoke from its wreckage at the end of the runway, and to their horror they could see the forward door of the 737 that had gotten stuck in the mud was open.
The nose of the plane was resting on the ground where it sloped upward toward the runway, so the door was only a few feet above the heads of the infected that were crowded around it. They were reaching upward toward a man who was trying to climb the door to reach the top of the plane. Where he planned to go from there was anybody’s guess.
Anne screamed and Addison almost passed out when they saw the man slide from the curved side of the plane and fall into the outstretched arms of the infected. Someone reached out and grabbed the door to pull it shut again. It stopped almost completely shut, but there were fingers in the way. They saw the door open and slam shut a few more times until it was flush to the fuselage.
Until the door was shut, they had been too distracted to notice that another 737 had moved into take off position at the end of the same runway where the other plane had crashed. The only thing anyone could try to do was stay at the airport or leave. Both were bad choices, but someone else had decided it was time to go.
They watched the plane roll forward and build up speed. The runway was dotted with infected that were wandering from one place to the next, and the big plane was cutting a path through them. The tail shimmied to the left and right as the plane bounced over a group of infected that had grown too large.
From the place where the seven survivors from Executive One were watching, everything was moving in slow motion. The 737 was almost as far as it could go before it would run into the wreckage of the last plane that tried to leave. The right wheel lifted into the air first because the tail shimmied to the left, and the right side bounced a few feet higher into the air. Then the left wheel came up along with the nose landing gear, and for a moment the plane was level and climbing.
It was like any other take off once the plane was level, but the pilot and copilot of Executive One saw the problem first. The vertical stabilizer and rudder on the tail were out of position to the right, and they were not moving back to the center. To their trained eyes, they knew that the pilot of the plane was fighting to keep the plane pointed straight ahead. It was trying to yaw to the right, and the pilot was fighting to make it yaw to the left.
In the end, the pilot won the battle and made the plane come back to the left, but as the nose climbed higher, the plane leaned over and pointed the right wing toward the ground.
The crew of Executive One watched as the plane made a giant, sweeping turn to the right over the airport and was almost upside down as it disappeared into downtown Columbus. The fireball that erupted was somehow larger than it should have been.
******
When the Presidential train reached the platform at the end of the line, it came to a stop in front of a tremendous door that resembled the door of a bank vault, except larger. The President had never been to Cheyenne Mountain, but he had seen enough pictures to know he would be safe inside this place. He expected more of a military presence, but he was safe, and that was what mattered the most to him.
The platform outside the door was decorated with brightly colored tiles and murals depicting historic locations in Washington DC. Considering where they had come from only an hour earlier, this was an incredible sight, and for the first time since leaving the White House, the President wore a genuine smile on his face.
Secret Service agents escorted the President and his family into the shelter, followed by the lucky few service staff members and flight crew of Air Force One who had ridden with him in the first train. Everything was spotless and smelled clean, and they were all impressed. Not one of them would have guessed they were going to be inside a shelter on this scale, and the mood had changed from one of hopeful desperation to one of total relief.
The automated train closed its doors and pulled away from the passenger platform almost unnoticed. It disappeared down the dark tunnel on its way back for a second load of passengers.
“How long are we supposed to stay on watch out here?” asked one of the Secret Service agents. He had waited until he was sure the Presidential party was out of earshot.
“You know the drill, Jack. We have to make sure some of the reporters get inside so they can document all of this for the history books.”
“Can’t we just wait inside until the train gets back? You have to admit, not much gets under my skin, but that dark tunnel gives me the creeps.”
“I agree, but the boss said to wait out here. If the reporters don’t get any pictures of him, it’s going to be our fault. Besides, someone will want a picture of this big door and your pretty face standing guard next to it.”
It seemed like it took forever, but eventually the headlights of the next train filled the darkness. The agents who had remained outside exchanged worried glances with each other. They should have been relieved to see it returning, but every instinct told them not to let down their guard.
When the train came to a smooth stop in front of the passenger platform, they could see their instincts had been correct. There were streaks and smears of something on the glass and the colorful sides near the doors. The train also wasn’t as packed with reporters as they had expected.
The doors slid open, and the first passenger to step out didn’t exactly step out gracefully. As a matter of fact, she fell flat on her face as one foot went through the narrow gap between the train and the platform. The unnatural angle of the leg and the sound of bones breaking was sickening. If not for the stained appearance of the train, every agent watching the spectacle would have rushed forward to help the woman, but they held their positions and took aim on the infected that were trying to climb over the fallen woman.
There was a whining sound that seemed to be rising in pitch and growing louder by the second, but the noise was almost completely muted by the steel and stones surrounding the vault door. Only a few feet into the shelter it sounded more like a loud hum.
Outside the shelter it was like a scream that didn’t stop. If the agents inside had been able to hear the intensity of the sound, they would have ordered everyone to retreat to safety, and they would have closed the tremendous, impenetrable door.
Several agents of the Secret Service detail moved into a defensive position between the train and the open vault door, keeping their sidearms aimed at the infected as they backed toward the safety of the shelter.
As the volume of the scream rose to a deafening level, it drowned out everything so completely that when the order finally came to close the door, no one could hear it. The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere at the same time, and it was like nothing they had ever heard.
The floor seemed to be movin
g, and the agents were having a hard time keeping their feet under them, but they also couldn’t believe their eyes. The walls of the tunnel were swaying, and the train was rocking from side to side. The lights on the passenger platform went out, and for a few moments the only light was the light escaping from the inside of the shelter.
Then the entire world became light and sound for seconds that stretched into minutes. There was also searing heat that followed the bright flash of light and the ear splitting explosion. Everything in the area outside the shelter door was incinerated, and a wave of fire and superheated air shot through the open door of the shelter and raced down the main corridor in search of more oxygen to burn.
******
In the quiet moments before the 737 slammed into the street above the shelter, the only witnesses to the crash were the infected dead. Like every other city in the country, the number of people downtown had an effect upon how rapidly the infection had spread, and traffic had brought the city to a standstill. Where cars were abandoned there were also trucks and trains unable to move, and the dead wandered among them.
The propane tanks lined up on the freight train sitting on the railroad tracks near the old High Street Station were a common sight to the citizens of Columbus, and safety studies had shown there was a low risk of rupture or fire when propane was transported by rail. There were, however, no studies that considered the effect of a propane car being hit by a 737.
The studies talked about fire, and anyone hit by the fireball caused by a propane explosion would not survive. The studies also talked about fragmentation. Anything thrown through the air by the explosion would become killing missiles.
The worst part of the explosion, according to the studies, is the overpressure shock wave that travels ahead of the flame front at supersonic speeds. If a study had been done to measure the shock wave caused by a 737 hitting a propane train, it would have concluded that the force would travel downward into the ground with a spectacular result. It would create an ear splitting sound followed by a concussive wave that would collapse the surrounding area for blocks around the center of impact.
