Under a Broken Sun (2 page)

2.    

Normally a message from my dad gets deleted immediately following the standard "Hello Adam".  But I’d never heard my dad freak out like that.

I checked my watch:  12:45 pm.  The terminal bustled with business folks searching for their own liquid lunches.  Dad said to check my email.  He was being roughed up on the plane.  Terrorists?

I launched my email on my cell and sure enough, there was his email address.  The subject line was “urgent”.  I opened it and read this:

Adam – PRINT out these attachments.  Save them.  I’ve got to get them to land this plane.  Solar flare heading towards Earth.  Massive EMP - in one hour, no electricity.   Could b cataclysmic results. 

See instructions on what will change and what will be needed.  Find me in Chicago.  That’s the safest area: moderate temperatures, fresh water, and protection.  Save yourself.   Copying POTUS as well.

I love you, and I’m sorry.

For everything.

Dad.

POTUS.  President of the United States.  The email was time-stamped at 12:00pm.  I had fifteen minutes.  My body went cold.  I looked at the note one more time.  Protection? 

I ran back to the restaurant and saw Marilyn.  “Where’s the nearest computer I can get on?” 

Her smile at seeing me quickly faded.  “You ok?” she asked.  I must’ve looked panicked, and sounded even worse.

“Where’s the nearest computer?” I shouted.

“Hey, buddy, back off,” the Harley Mustache bartender said.  “Don’t make me kick your ass outta here.”

Marilyn shot him a glance. “Easy, Jake!”

“Marilyn, please,” I pleaded with her.

“Terminal 4, I think.  The international terminal.”

“Thanks,” I said as I took off.  I left my carryon at the gate.  Figured the cops can come after me later. 

Terminal 4 is at the end of the airport.  It took ten minutes to run there.  Just before I reached it I saw a Mobile Office store where you can buy computer time.  I needed five minutes.  I slapped a credit card on the counter.  “I need a computer.  Now.  And a printer.”  The dude behind the desk, who seemed a little flaky to begin with, actually sneered.

“They’re all booked up, I’m afraid.” 

“I need one NOW!”  I shouted.

The dude flipped through a calendar book.  “The next available time I have is-“

“Now!” I said, slapping my hand on his bullshit book.  “Find me one now.”

Five minutes.

“I’ll get the manager.”

He disappeared around the back, leaving his terminal open.  I moved behind the counter and clicked on my email site.  Logged in.  Saw the email from my dad with the attachment. 

Clicked on OPEN.   The PC decided to take its own friggin’ time.

“SHIT!”  I checked my watch again, three minutes.  When dad gives a time estimate, he’s never wrong.  His job is time.

Finally, I was staring at a formal memo addressed to the President of the United States.  I didn’t even read it, I just clicked PRINT.

It started printing one of seventy-seven pages.  Slowly.

The manager and Snippy de Moron came back.  “What the hell are you doing?” the manager yelled, puffing out his beer-bloated muffin top gut.  I wanted to rip his cheesy mustache off. 

Page 3 printed.  One minute.

“I need this.  See?  A memo to the President of the United States,” I said shoving the first page in his face.

“Get the hell outta here before I call security.” 

“In one minute you won’t be able to.”  I collected another two pages.

“Is that a threat?” He asked, bumping nearer to me.

“Back the fuck off, man.  Just let me get this printout.”

“That’s it.”  He huffed and picked up the phone.  Pressed 0.  “Security?  I have a-“

Everything shut off at exactly the same time.  Like the world’s plug was just yanked out of a wall socket.

Dead.

Shadows exploded in dark corners while streams of afternoon sunlight pierced the terminal hall.  I watched the entire terminal go out in the blink of an eye. 

The manager pressed the release button a few times, saying “hello”, looking for help that fell off the other end of the line.

I looked at my phone: gone.

People poked their heads out of the cubes where they were renting time.  “What’s going on?”

“Hey, do I get a refund?”

The manager backed me away from the dead printer, a single sheet sticking halfway out like a tongue.  I grabbed it before I moved away.

“What did you do?” Snippy boy asked.  The manager clicked on the PC keyboard but nothing was happening.  Just like Dad said. 

I took off back towards the gate.  Towards my carryon, left unattended at the gate.  Sure enough, as I turned the corner to the gate, four cops surrounded my bag.  They tried talking into their radios, but there wasn’t a response.  I held my breath as three of them took off down the terminal.  Figuring I could snow one, I walked casually up to the remaining cop.

“That’s my bag,” I said, pointing. 

“Step away sir,” he said, motioning.

“No, really, that’s my bag officer.  I just left it to go to the bathroom.  Totally forgot about the rules.  Sorry.”  People turned and stared.  The blackout morphed from a simple annoyance to something sinister.

“Sir, you come closer I’ll have to arrest you.”

“Dude, there’s nothing in there but shirts and underwear.  I swear.  I made it through the checkpoint fine.” I thought about my knife.  Might wanna shut up now.

Someone screamed in front of the glass looking out over the runway.  Up ahead, a 747 had stalled.  It sat in the middle of the runway like a stuffed, prized bird.  

But that wasn’t what caused the scream.  Hundreds of people ran up to the glass.  To our left, down the way, we could see another plane coming in for a landing.  No lights, no steam, its engines dead.  It floated down in a straight line, wobbly and gliding to its destination: the other plane.

“Terrorists?” someone said.  The cop next to me tried to calm people down, but after that one word came out, more screams echoed down the terminal.  It sounded like a cave.  When the cop looked out the window as saw the incoming plane, he went nuts.

“Everyone get away from the glass!  Go, go, go!”  People screamed, a woman grabbed my shirt and pulled like I was going with her no matter what.  Footsteps clacked on the terminal floor.  No one knew where to go.

The plane drifted lower to the ground.  It was going to T-bone the stalled plane.  The passengers knew it too.  I could just make out the frantic movement of the people in the stalled 747.  They scrambled around like rats in a cage.  Finally an emergency door burst open with a cloud of smoke and a bright yellow slide inflated from the side.  The passengers threw themselves down it, clawing at each other, scurrying away as fast as they could.

I ran to the restaurant.  I don’t know why, but I had to find Marilyn.  Maybe it was because she was the only person I knew there, and because I “knew” her, I felt I had to be with her. 

“Where’s Marilyn?” I asked.  A woman ran over me with a block an NFL player would be proud of.  “MARILYN!” I shouted.  No response.

“What the hell did you do?” asked the bartender.  Again with the accusations!  I didn’t wait – I leveled him with a right hook across the jaw. 
Sue me later, big guy
.  When he dropped to his knees holding his chin I saw Marilyn standing behind him with a tray of food. 

“What the hell?” she said.  I moved just as the bartender fired a round where my balls would’ve been.  He clocked me in the thigh, which hurt like hell.  I stumbled to Marilyn and grabbed her hand.  She tried to balance the tray of food.  “Adam?   What are you doing?”

“DROP IT!” I shouted, knocking the tray out of her hand.  “Follow me, now!”  I led her to the back, barged into the men's room, and kicked open the door to the back stall.  I pulled her down to the floor.

“Get your fuckin’ hands off of me!” she said, smacking me.  I pulled her close just as the explosion hit.  It sounded like a train chugging through the terminal.  My ears rang.  Marilyn’s screaming didn’t help.  More explosions, like one setting off another.  The ceiling tiles splintered and fell on our legs, and white dust clogged our hair and made it hard to breath.

Another explosion.  This one nearby.  The door to the bathroom blew off and hit the stall door in front of us.  That flung open and hit Marilyn in the shoulder.  A stream of fire blew in, like someone with a flamethrower targeting us.  I slammed the stall door shut with my foot, but flames still slipped under it onto my pants leg.  My leg was on fire.

Marilyn screamed again.  I turned on my butt and stuck my foot in the toilet, hoping like hell the last person to use it flushed.  The flame went back into its hole, but the heat in the room had to be ten times higher than before.  I could smell the burnt hairs on my head and felt the sweat squeezed out of me from the fire.  Marilyn's sweat mixed with her tearful hysterics, wetting her face like a shower.  I held her close trying to breathe through the fumes, the smoke, and the white puffs of God-only-knows-what kind of chemicals floated around us. 

I lay back on the floor with Marilyn clutching my chest.  “What the hell’s going on?” she sobbed, over and over.  “What the fuck just happened?”

I wish I knew.  I only had three and a half pages from my dad in my back pocket to explain it all.

Quiet again.  I helped Marilyn up and slowly pushed open the stall door, now hanging on one hinge.  My foot hurt a little from the burn, but I knew I'd live.  A ringing in my ears, over the course of a few minutes, gave way to the sounds of airport.

I really wish it hadn’t.

A choir of high pitched moans, ceaseless crying and sobbing, and an occasional scream bounced down the terminal.  Fires crackled all around, and broken and splintered steel groaned under the weight of concrete it could no longer support.  People in charged shouted orders to others.

But there wasn't a single siren.  No alarm or electronic
whoop
telling people to get the fuck out.

I stepped over the door to the bathroom, gripping Marilyn’s hand, and stepped out into the terminal.  My eyes had seen what my brain couldn't process.   An apocalypse.

Some tables in the restaurant lay on their tops like dead four-legged animals.  Some formed piles of rubble against the far wall to our right.  Pointed shards of glass, like the gapped toothy smile of a vampire, stood in the frame where the glass wall had been.  One person hung halfway out of the window, bent backwards, looking up to the sky with lifeless eyes, impaled on one of the longer glass teeth.  Marilyn saw the woman and let out a moan, like her stomach was going to leap out of her throat.

I pulled her along, stepping over wood chairs, broken dishes and glasses, and food that the patrons would never finish.  A light fixture over the bar fell with a crash.  Marilyn jumped and I pulled her closer.  She screamed.

Her boss’s head lay on the floor near the bar, staring up at the ceiling. 

Marilyn buried her face in my neck, hysterical.  I hustled her out of there.

In both directions down the terminal the same carnage sprawled in front of us.  Louder shouts echoed with no mechanical sounds to interfere.  Most people not wearing a police or emergency uniform sat in shock, some with their knees to their chest, rocking back and forth.  One little boy with a charred stuffed animal ran by us screaming for Momma. 

All this from two planes colliding?  It didn’t make sense.  Something else must’ve happened.  Something triggered a series of explosions.  This was just too big. 

I found an open area in the entrance way to the terminal men’s room amongst the debris and I sat Marilyn down.  She clawed at her skin, a learned reflex to calm herself down.  I recognized the need immediately, but knew this was the wrong time to be cutting. 

“Marilyn,” I said.  She didn’t look at me.  She just heaved in air.  “MARILYN,” I shouted.  Slow head turn.  Her vacant eyes stared into mine, but didn't see me.  Her right hand fingernails dug deeper ridges into her left arm.  I grabbed her hand. 

“It’s ok.  We’re ok.”  I said.  I pulled her in close.  As she shook in my arms I realized her cutting was more than just creating a feeling, or getting people to care.  It controlled her panic, soothed her.  My need for cutting kept me from losing control.  I hated intense feelings of pain or fear.  I fucking hated to cry.  Cutting kept me from doing that.  It got me fired up.

“Hey, buddy, give us a hand,” someone behind me said.  “C’mon!”  He wasn’t too patient.

I looked at Marilyn.  “I gotta go help someone.  You stay here, ok?”  She looked up at me with huge red-rimmed blue eyes, pleading without saying a word.  “Stay calm.  Don’t go crazy on your arm.  It could get infected.”  She looked down at her arm, which already had three streaks of blood on it, and put her right hand down.

The guy pulled at my arm.  “C’mon, man, this dude’s gonna die!”

I ran behind the guy to the waiting area of Gate 47, three gates down.  It was like running an obstacle course of toppled seats and steel.  We had to step around people helping other people, some in uniform, some not.  Hanging electric cables dangled like dead snakes from the ceiling - no spark of leaking electricity.

We reached the gate and there, underneath a beam from the ceiling, lay an old man who had to be in his seventies.  We could hear his sobbing before we even saw him.  Tears streaked his ash-covered face, but his crying and moaning immediately struck me as more disappointment than pain.  More like he was whining.

“No, no.  Please, Lord, no.”  He shook his head back and forth as the husky guy who grabbed me pointed me to the end of the beam.

“Lift it up; Ashley here will drag him out.  We only need to lift it up a little.  Lucky the thing didn't crush him."  I looked over at a girl, no more than fourteen, crouching with her arms under the old guy’s armpits. 

“NO!” the old guy shouted.  “Let me die!  It is Judgment Day!  I cannot be left behind.  Please!”