Turning Point (Book 1): A Time To Die

by Wandrey, Mark

  Another robot arm moved a camera into place and revealed the inside of the craft. There was a space going down roughly half the thickness of the vessel and about a foot to either side. Several metallic looking cylinders were visible, all glowing a slight bluish color, arranged in a triangular formation pointing toward the front of the craft. The robot used the camera to take several high-resolution images, and experts began to examine them. The images revealed lines of what had to be text, written on the forward part of the craft, though they were not in any written language he’d ever seen.

  “Bingo,” Jeremiah said.

  The mechanical people were feeling bold, and with Jeremiah’s encouragement, they used the robot’s arm to reach inside and probe the trio of glowing cylinders. There was no indication of an electrical charge. “See if you can remove them,” he suggested. All manner of OOE experts now filled the room. If he’d bothered to take note, he’d have realized that just about every one of his employees was either in the room or watching via remote video. All eyes were wide as the robot arm grasped the cylinders and ever so gently…pulled. Click, they came free, and instantly stopped glowing.

  “The radiation level dropped,” the tech told them.

  A moment later the robot trundled over on rubber tracks, and set the cylinders on a plastic tray. Jeremiah was waiting, leaning in close to examine them.

  “What do you think they do?” someone asked.

  “I have no idea,” Jeremiah said. “But I intend to find out.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 15

  Saturday, April 21, Afternoon

  Andrew’s hands were raw, and his knees throbbed from crawling through the underbelly of the A380. It took several minutes to work his way through the engineering section adjacent to the galley. A hatch opened off it and led into the main central cargo hold. The lighting was slightly better, with lines of white, low-powered LED clusters every few meters; however, it was also completely full of contoured ULDs, or unit load devices, specialized containers custom-made to fit the cargo hold of an A380. There was a little space along each side...but not very damned much.

  “Good lord,” he grunted as he pulled himself between a ULD and the cargo hold bulkhead. The rear third was full of ULDs, packed in tightly. He squeezed past the last one and came to a huge fiber net stretched from floor to ceiling and side to side. On the other side were stacks upon stacks of luggage. And there was no way around them. “Fuck.”

  He managed to get one of the hooks on the luggage net to release, and he wiggled through the netting and started to worm his way through the sea of bags. It was like trying to swim in a pool full of logs. The bags looked like they were loosely dropped in the hold, but they were in a fairly tight matrix. The loaders played a huge game of Tetris and, with practice, did it well. Andrew found it nearly impossible to make progress and cursed whoever designed the bags with collapsible handles and wheeled coasters. Every one of them poked him in the head, jabbed him in the ribs, or raked painfully along his shins as he moved through the hold. “This is fun,” he muttered halfway through, pinned between a pink Hello Kitty bag and a suitcase large enough to hold a family of five and their SUV.

  He pushed through another pair of bags and came to another cargo net. “Finally,” he said and began working toward an edge, just as the entire plane shook. “Oh…shit.” A moment later, he felt the gut-wrenching drop of heavy turbulence. He laughed in relief—he’d been afraid the turbines had run dry—until another wave of turbulence hit. The plane shimmied and climbed, then fell. He grabbed at the connectors on the cargo net and pulled, his hands searching for a retaining clip. The craft shuddered again, and he worked even more frantically.

  The clip released and dumped him, and several dozen bags, in a huge heap on the floor. Another Hello Kitty bag landed painfully on his kidneys. He sat up and looked around. He saw a pair of unusual trucks strapped down on pallets in the forward hold area. They were obviously expensive if someone was shipping them that way.

  Andrew slipped between the trucks and reached the forward bulkhead. The turbulence was almost constant now, and he could barely keep his feet under him. The access door out of the hold was easier to exit than getting into it had been. There was a slight resistance from pressure differences as he pulled the hatch open, and he found himself in a mechanical space similar to the one aft of the hold. He moved through it quickly and was at the opposite access hatch in just moments. As he was working the hatch, a gust so intense that it lifted him off his feet hit the plane and slammed him to the deck with enough force for him to see stars. The engines raced, and the plane’s superstructure groaned.

  “Feels like we’re flying into a hurricane,” Andrew said as he rolled to his feet and shouldered the access hatch open. It took two hard shoves against the door before it flew open and dumped him on the floor of a dimly compartment. Andrew got his hands under him just as someone screeched and leaped on his back.

  “Agh!” he yelled as nails clawed at his flight suit. He felt hot breath against his neck and knew he was about to get bitten, so he threw his left elbow back as hard as he could and tried to flip.

  There was a grunt as his elbow landed, and the weight on his back shifted. He threw the elbow again and pushed sideways with all his might, and he managed to make them both roll. As they flipped, he spun in the crazy person’s arms. His adversary struggled to hold on, but wasn’t fighting with any forethought. In a flash, Andrew was on top of the person, straddling their chest, his legs pinning their arms.

  Andrew gawked at the flight attendant he had pinned. She was a lithe Middle Eastern woman no more than 30 years old, her head wrap loose, and her long, black hair in disarray. Her eyes were as crazy as any he’d seen. She screamed, hissed, and spat as she craned her neck, trying to reach far enough to bite at him. “Jesus, woman,” Andrew said.

  He looked around at his surroundings, hoping to find something to tie her up with. The plane jolted again, almost hard enough to dislodge him. He looked back down and saw a face stained dark red from blood with several broken teeth. There were no signs of sentience behind her eyes.

  “Damn it,” he cursed, realizing time was running out. He cocked his arm back and clubbed the side of her head. It rocked to one side, but instantly turned back with a snarl. He hit her again, and again, and again, with no apparent effect. His fist throbbed from the abuse. He couldn’t afford to get to the cockpit and have one of his hands useless when he tried to fly the beast.

  With a moan of desperation, he used both hands to grab her head, interlocking his fingers through her hair. He pulled her head toward him then slammed it down against the deck as hard as he could. She grunted and stopped trying to bite him. “Go down, damn you,” he snarled and slammed her head down again. That appeared to do the trick as she moaned, and her eyes rolled up in her head, then closed.

  Andrew got to his feet unsteadily, grabbing a table nearby to keep from falling as more turbulence hit. A counter against one bulkhead had various alcohol labels and locked racks of glasses; he was in a bar or gift shop. He walked around a bulkhead, found a spiral staircase going up, and started climbing.

  The stairs made a half turn and opened onto another deck. He looked carefully around the corner and onto the deck. It was the front of a first class or business section. The curtain was partially torn from its moorings and a huge spray of blood stained it. He could see people fighting over the bulky pods in the dim glow of the evening lighting.

  Andrew was about to make a dash around the corner when fingers snatched his ankles and pulled. He just managed to put his hands out in time to keep from slamming his face into the metallic stairs as his feet came out from under him. Teeth bit into the small of his back and he screamed as the flight attendant renewed her attack.

  He was past caring now as he threw his left elbow back and over with as much strength as he could manage, slamming the flight attendant’s head against the stairwell wall with enough force to crack the plastic trim. She released his
legs, and the bite on his back, allowing him to spin and bring his hands into play. This time he cocked back and drove a forearm into her throat. The expression on her face changed from feral rage to surprise as the strength of his blow crushed the cartilage. He pushed himself back a couple of feet, brought a leg up, and with all the force he could muster, he drove his boot into her once-beautiful face, slamming her head into the wall.

  He felt the crunch through his foot, and she instantly went limp. Andrew could see the look of surprise in her eyes as the trauma from the collapse of the back of her skull flipped the switch and shut off her life. She tumbled backward.

  He turned around before she’d fallen from view, afraid another person crazed by the sickness was going to come at him. Compared to the sounds of chaos from the passenger areas, his own life-and-death struggle had been a quiet one. He reached back to feel where she’d bitten him. To his surprise, considering the amount of pain from the bite, she hadn’t torn his flight suit, although he was certain he’d find a chunk of skin missing, at the very least. Andrew closed his mind to what was going on nearby and raced around the corner of the stairs and upward.

  After another half turn of the spiral, there was a landing. A small service area to one side held a bathroom. A sign on its door said, “Crew Only—No Unauthorized Personnel.” There was also a small fridge and an area for preparing meals and drinks. A long curtain covered the four tiny bunks in the off-duty crew sleeping area. To the other side was an armored door marked, “Flight Deck—No Unauthorized Personnel.” It was slightly ajar. “That’s definitely not good,” he thought as he took hold of the door and gently pulled it open.

  The first thing he noticed was the back of the captain’s head in the left-hand seat; the right-hand seat was empty. He had a moment of excitement, the captain was still there. The second thing he saw was the dark, angry storm they were flying through. Lightning crisscrossed the sky in furious displays.

  He looked at the captain’s chair, realizing he’d just broken a hundred FAA regulations for nothing. Leaning a bit forward he could see the four gold tabs on the pilot’s shoulder. He took a hesitant step into the cockpit before he spoke. “Captain?” There was no movement. The plane jerked and dipped, and he fell forward toward the flight seats.

  One hand grabbed the back of the copilot’s chair, the other found the step the flight crew used to get into the seats over the middle-mounted controls and landed in wet stickiness. His face even with the seated pilot’s, he turned his head and looked at the captain. Most of his face and part of his neck were completely gone, revealing bones and muscles. Blood coated the white front of his Saudi Airlines uniform as well as many of the flat glass monitors. What remained of the man’s face was frozen in a rictus of horror.

  “Fuck me,” Andrew said, falling back in disgust.

  “Graaar!” came an animalistic snarl outside the cockpit. Andrew cursed and jumped to his feet, moving to the rear of the cockpit as fast as he could. There were two people, men with blood all over their faces and arms, looking curiously into the cockpit. He didn’t hesitate. Andrew grabbed the handle on the door and slammed it closed. He looked for the latch, but couldn’t find it.

  Something outside grabbed the door and pulled, almost jerking it out of Andrew’s hand. He grabbed the handle with both hands and pulled it closed, then found the latch. Holding the door with one hand, he jerked the latch into place, then he let go and backed away, breathing hard as he heard fists pounding on the door. For a door armored against intrusion, the sound of their pounding was surprisingly loud. The door quivered with each impact.

  The plane lurched again, and Andrew became aware of the alarms. He returned to the control seats again and examined the screens. “Holy shit,” he said as he took in the relative sea of overhead-mounted switches. “And I thought my fighter was bad.”

  Climbing the step while trying to avoid the blood as much as possible, Andrew found the overhead handholds, took a grip, and chinned himself into the right-hand seat. Compared to a fighter seat, it was more comfortable and quite a bit wider. He looked for the manuals, cursing steadily as he did. It took him a minute to realize there weren’t any, only a tablet computer in a sleeve. “Okay then,” he said as he pulled it out.

  It took another frustrating minute to change the language to English, but once he did, he could finally read the basic checklists. There were a lot of them. “All right,” he said as he started scanning, “let’s see what’s going on.” Outside, lightning continued to race across the sky.

  Tapping an icon on his main screen set the alarms by order of priority. F20 was the highest priority alarm because he needed to acknowledge it. He indexed it in the manual; fuel below 20 percent. “Oh boy,” he said. Instantly he reprioritized his examination of the manuals. Grabbing a headset off the holder, he settled it on his head and started punching controls on the radio screen. He needed to find out where he was and call mayday. Outside, the storm raged on.

  * * *

  Kathy lifted the binoculars and looked across the landscape for the fifth time, trying her best to make sense of what she was seeing. According to her GPS, this should have been Mexico. She hadn’t even realized she’d crossed the border until she’d checked the device a few minutes ago, having stopped to refuel the ATV. True to his word, the machine Cobb sold her proved to be in great condition. It wasn’t, however, very good on gas. She’d left with five five-gallon cans after abandoning the road six hours ago. She was now down to two cans and a full tank. At least it was easier driving without pulling the trailer full of gas. There was more movement through the glasses, so she watched.

  A shallow valley snaked between hills covered in brown grass, a stream meandering back and forth. When she’d first gotten here, she’d spotted a few dozen cars and trucks circled around a camp. It looked like a bunch of people had killed a cow and were cooking it. She’d initially pegged them as illegals until she checked her GPS. Correction; I’m the illegal, she thought as she’d stowed the empty can.

  Kathy had been about to fire up the bike and ride down to test her limited Spanish, when a pair of brown Humvees appeared at the other end of the valley and headed toward the camp at high speed. “This could be interesting,” she thought and hooked her digital recorder to the input on the binoculars. The Humvees skidded to a stop and disgorged a squad of troops. And that was when she realized they were American soldiers, not Mexican. The leader of the campers came over and began an animated conversation with the soldiers. She wished she were closer. The sonic microphone, packed in its case, was good, but not good enough to pick up the conversation a mile away. After a few minutes, the soldier gestured, and the men dismounted and joined the campers. They appeared to have decided to share the barbecue.

  To the east a pair of helicopters passed, going south. They were too far away for her to figure out what they were, or who they belonged to. There’d been helicopters in the sky all morning.

  She eventually decided nothing was going to happen, and she abandoned her interview idea. The mystery of the U.S. soldiers south of the border would have to wait as she didn’t want to have to explain her own presence. She put the recorder away and went back to the ATV. Mounted to the handlebar was a GoPro HERO camera that would record anything she came across on the bike. A 256-gigabyte SD card would give her almost five hours of constant recording. She set an alarm on her watch for when the card would be getting low on memory. She had an aluminum case with 10 more cards just like it. Firing up the bike, she headed south, skirting the valley to stay out of sight of the picnickers below.

  Kathy’s arms were killing her. Riding the ATV turned out to be a lot more work than she’d originally thought it would. She normally worked out a couple times a week, and now she wished she’d spent more time on her upper body. She silently cursed the chest and arm muscles men got naturally, and she had to work for. She cleared the opposite ridge, found seemingly endless scrub desert spread out before her, and reached for a water bottle. Thunder rolled acr
oss the landscape.

  A jet passed overhead going from west to east. She slowed and looked up at its fast-moving delta wing shape. “That’s a fighter,” she realized as she watched it angle downward as it approached the horizon. More thunder rolled from that direction. She stopped, leaving the bike to idle, and checked her GPS. McAllen was many miles in that direction as were a few small towns. Was there a Mexican military base out there somewhere as well? She tried accessing the web on her smartphone without thinking, then cursed the “No Signal” message. “Well, no shit, Kathy,” she admonished. She briefly considered the Iridium sat-phone in her bag. There were a few megabytes of data left on it, but when it was gone, it was gone. There would be no automatic recharging by GNN this time.

  With nothing to the south but more desert, she decided to turn east. An hour later, she emptied her next to last gas can into the ATV and began to hope she’d come across some civilization. The desert stretched on and on.

  She stopped for some lunch, Mountain House Beef Ravioli in tomato sauce. She let it sit on the ATV muffler, buffered by a metal sheet from a camera case. In five minutes it was almost too hot to eat. Congratulating herself on her inventiveness, she made the best of her meal and drank warm water as the sun peaked in the sky.

  Kathy then drove until the tank was empty. Stopping to refill, she also swapped SD cards in the GoPro and looked for any signs of life. She had half a can of gas in reserve. On the horizon was a line among the heat shimmers. Kathy headed toward it. She spent a lot of time weaving around cacti and rocks, and it took almost an hour to reach the two-lane concrete road.

  “Thank God,” she sighed as the wheels mounted the roadway. Her triceps, pecs, and shoulders felt like she’d rowed across the Atlantic Ocean. She turned east and, in a minute, found out the ATV had a fifth gear! She’d never gone fast enough to realize it before.