Joanne walked into the cockpit, her eyes wide and her face pale. An odd silence came from the rest of the plane, while along the corridor the automatic lights lit up in sequence, due to the sudden reduction of brightness.
Joanne gave a soft sob then hugged him, resting her cheek against his uniform shirt.
"What's happened?" Adrian asked.
"Almost all the passengers disappeared… with a strange noise… like a sigh… oh thank god, thank god, we still have a pilot…"
The woman became incoherent. Adrian grabbed her shoulders and eased her away to look her in the eyes. "And the other crew members?"
"There's no one left. No one. What's going on, sir? Is it something like the Bermuda Triangle?"
"I really, really don't know. But I'm going to do something about it immediately. This is an emergency situation, a red code. I'll execute a one eighty-degree turn and fly back to the airport."
"Oh, thank you, thank you so much!"
Joanne threatened to hug him again, but Adrian stopped her. "You're still the chief attendant, Joanne. You're still responsible for the passengers. I'm assigning you a task—get back in the cabin, gather the survivors, make sure they're all right and then come back and report to me. Clear?"
Joanne sighed in relief. She could deal with the assignment Adrian had given her. The remaining passengers weren't his highest priority at the moment, but he wanted to calm her down.
"Clear, Captain."
Adrian winced at being called by the title, but Joanne was right. Adrian was the captain of Flight 512 now.
* * * *
Adrian banked the plane into the clouds and brought it back en route to the airport. In the meantime, he again tried to contact air traffic control, even using the emergency systems, but without success. The equipment worked, but ATC didn't respond. There seemed to be no air traffic control whatsoever. Adrian imagined the inside of the control tower, the empty clothes abandoned on the seats. He looked again at the Captain Santoro's uniform on the chair next to him. A great man like him gone in the blink of an eyelid.
Adrian felt sick.
The Boeing flew back towards the airport, but it didn't emerge from the green clouds. Adrian's blood ran cold, but he'd keep the development to himself, for now at least.
Joanne returned to the cockpit. She seemed to have regained a bit of self-control; at least now her cheeks were flushed instead of the deathly pale color they were earlier.
"I checked on the survivors, sir, including a young girl who locked herself in the bathroom. There are twenty passengers left."
"Twenty?"
"Yes, Captain."
Now Adrian verged on fainting. There had been two hundred and sixteen passengers at the time of takeoff, plus five flight attendants and two pilots.
Only twenty-two left out of two hundred and twenty-three.
"They're upset as is to be expected," Joanne continued. "The young girl has lost her parents and a brother."
"Captain…"
A young man peered into the cockpit through the security door Joanne had left ajar.
Joanne put a hand on the door. "Please, sir, this is a cockpit! Entrance is strictly forbidden!"
The black-haired man wore a university coat of arms on his jacket. Maybe it was one of the canoeists. Joanne tried to push him back to close the door.
"Let him in, Joanne," Adrian said. He checked the autopilot then got up from his seat. "What's your name?" he asked the guy.
"I'm Eric, sir."
"I have to talk to my passengers and there's no sense in using the intercom, since they are only a handful of people. Can you gather them in the hallway, Eric?"
"Sure, Captain!" The guy even made a military salute and ran off.
Adrian turned to Joanne. "I need you to keep an eye on the console, Joanne."
"Oh, Captain…"
Adrian took her shoulders. "You know the safety procedures prohibit both pilots getting out of the cockpit, but I'm alone, Joanne. You just have to check that no lights flash and no alarms ring. I'll be just out here in the hallway. I have to talk to these people and reassure them, you understand?"
"Yes, Captain, sure. I'll do it."
"Good," Adrian said. "Whatever happens, you and I are still responsible for these passengers, Joanne."
"Sure. Don't worry. I'll keep an eye on the cockpit. But can you hurry, please."
Adrian nodded and headed for the door.
"Mr Mesler?"
Adrian turned to Joanne.
"Perhaps you won't agree with me, Mr Mesler, but this morning, when I saw you crying in the hall of the airport, I was about to report you to the captain, but now I'm glad I didn't."
"Thank you, Joanne. I appreciate that," Adrian said, exiting the cockpit.
Chapter 3
In business class, Adrian faced the survivors of Flight 512.
There were five canoeists, an assorted group of tourists of various nationalities, a few who were elderly, a priest, a red-haired girl of about fifteen, her face streaked with tears, and a boy of about eleven with coffee-colored skin, his eyes dazed in disbelief. The canoeists were young and vigorous, and Adrian immediately thought they could be useful in any rescue operation.
"Captain," the canoeist named Eric began, taking a step forward. "Have we been Bermuda triangulated?"
Adrian almost smiled at the strange way Eric worded the question. "I don't know what happened. I have no explanation. But I assure you, I'll do everything possible to land this plane safely. I have reversed course and we're returning to the airport.
"What do air traffic control say about that green stuff in the sky?" another canoeist asked.
Adrian took a breath. "I lost air traffic control. They haven't responded at all."
People started shouting and complaining. Someone cried. The priest closed his eyes and prayed.
"Even those at air traffic control have disappeared, haven't they?" Eric asked.
"Silence, please," Adrian said, and people fell silent at once. "I'm unable to find out what happened, and it makes no sense to speculate just now. What we need to do is work together to arrive safely on the ground."
People looked at him hopefully.
"Does anyone have any questions?" Adrian added.
One of the canoeists raised his hand as if he were at school. "Can you land without the help of air traffic control?"
A perfectly logical question. "The control should assign me a runway for landing, but in emergency situations I'm authorized to make decisions independently, so I can choose a runway at sight, and land. And that's what I intend to do."
The girl in tears wiped her face and lifted up her hand. Adrian raised his eyebrows in surprise. Joanne had said she had locked herself in the bathroom, upset after her entire family had disappeared, but the courage and determination on her face amazed him. She had a great mass of curly red hair and a pretty, freckled face. Scrawny like a twig, she wore a pair of cropped jeans, high purple Converse and a Homer Simpson T-shirt.
The girl watched him, her eyes wide and shining. "Are you sure landing is the right thing to do, Captain?"
"What the hell are you saying, girl?" Eric snapped.
"Maybe a nuclear war broke out!" the girl exclaimed. "Maybe the world is no longer under there! Have you thought about that?"
A stunned silence fell upon the cabin. The girl was smart. Adrian couldn't disregard her issue.
"We can't fly forever," Adrian said. "If there is a ground, I'm going to land on it."
No one objected.
"Would you and the other canoeists," Adrian asked Eric, "feel like helping the chief attendant?"
"Sure, Captain. We were just going to ask if there was anything we could do."
"And you," Adrian said turning to the red-haired girl. "What's your name?"
"Samantha, Captain."
"Do you feel like staying in the cockpit with me? I'll need to communicate with the chief attendant, but she won't always be near the intercom. If I need to tell
her something quickly, I'll send you to her. Can you do this for me?"
"Geez!" the girl exclaimed. "This is way too cool. I can do that! It's the right task for me, I assure you!"
"Okay," Adrian said. "I want everyone sitting in business class, seatbelts fastened. The chief attendant will instruct you again on security procedures. Thanks for your attention. You can go."
One of the canoeists started the applause before everyone else joined in. Adrian returned to the cockpit with his cheeks burning. Not bad for someone who, according to the airline's psychological test, couldn't handle emergency situations and take on leadership roles. People were calm now, there wasn't an air of panic, and they trusted him. The test was bullshit. Despite everything, the knowledge consoled Adrian.
* * * *
"I didn't think aircraft captains were so young and cute," Samantha said, tilting her head. "Have you got a girlfriend?"
Adrian didn't respond.
"Yeah, sorry. I was going to ask you for a date, but someone like you, beautiful and shining in that uniform, would have a lot of women, all with bodies that bear no resemblance to a broom handle, like mine."
"Samantha, one rule—silence."
"Sorry, sorry, I'll keep my mouth shut."
He found her chatter funny, to tell the truth. She needed to talk to get over the shock, but Adrian really didn't have time for her. He was worried. He had begun to pitch angle, but the weather conditions hadn't changed. The greenish clouds were still there, forcing him to make an instrumental approach.
"I hope the world is still there," the girl began again, despite having said that she would remain silent. "To go out for dinner, or go to the movies, or do all the things I never did or I did too little of. I also hope all the people who have gone missing are there somewhere, in a parallel reality of sorts; but even if they're alive, they'll be going around completely naked… ah!"
The girl jumped as something solid struck the windscreen. Adrian saw it too, but couldn't work out what it was.
Then, a great flaccid mass slapped hard against the windscreen. Samantha let out an earsplitting scream.
A kind of whitish jellyfish, as big as a pony, stuck to the glass for some seconds before slipping away and leaving a sort of greenish slime behind it. Then, several other smaller creatures bumped the windscreen.
"What-what…?" Samantha stammered.
Suddenly, the lights indicated a right engine failure.
"No, no, no! That stuff is slipping into the engines!"
He didn't finish the statement before the second engine exploded with a terrible bang. Adrian heard the pieces of metal sheet flying off, piercing the fuselage.
Desperate screams arose from business class. The survivors had probably seen the engine explode from the windows. Adrian prayed the plane wouldn't decompress.
The alarm for all the engines off burst out, then most of the instrument panels went blank. As the alert turned off abruptly, a deadly silence wrapped the cockpit. With the engines off, Adrian heard the wind rustling on the fuselage.
"Oh, my god," Adrian whispered. "We're gliding!"
This situation hadn't been covered in flight simulator training. No one ever anticipated the need to glide a 767. With all engines out, the hydraulics, electrics, brakes, fuel, flight controls and landing gear systems were all compromised.
"What the hell am I supposed to do now?"
Adrian could barely keep the jetliner upright, struggling to maintain the necessary speed to prevent stalling.
Suddenly, the clouds unraveled in front of the windscreen, and the Boeing emerged from the green murkiness. The situation worsened, if that was possible, because Adrian couldn't see the airport below. They were in a totally different position from what he expected, and the ground approached at terrible speed.
"C-captain?" Samantha stammered, fear creeping into her voice.
"Get into business class and give this message to the chief attendant: everyone in brace position for impact! Run!"
The girl flew like the wind.
Adrian panicked. He didn't know what to do. A big beast out of control, gliding the Boeing down was like riding a mastodon.
He looked towards the left seat, to Captain Santoro's clothes, remembering the man's last piece of advice.
"Okay," Adrian said. "I'm in the simulator!"
It didn't work, the terror remained. However, Adrian remembered how he experienced situations in the simulator and then some exceptional cases in which jetliner pilots found themselves over the years.
It would be hard find a condition like this. There had been some bird strikes, but surely no giant jellyfish strikes.
But there had been some cases of both engines failing, right? He needed an emergency landing without engines and a scenario came to his mind.
23 July 1983. Air Canada Flight 143 runs out of fuel at 41,000 feet.
"The captain of Flight 143 was an experienced glider pilot, and I'm not! Fuck, I'm not even a pilot, I'm a fucking reserve!"
No time to complain. The ground approached at monstrous speed. He didn't know where they were, but the place seemed habited. There were houses, roads. Adrian drifted towards an open field as a violent rain whipped the windscreen. His hands numb, he pulled the manual lever to release the landing gear via gravity drop, then he flipped the fuel dump system, releasing all the fuel to avoid fires. "Shit, too high, too fast!"
As the captain of Air Canada Flight 143 had done, he had to execute a forward-slip. He had performed the maneuver many times on light aircrafts, but never on a dinosaur like the Boeing. However, he had no choice. He changed the heading of the Boeing downwind, tilting it sideways, using the force of the wind to slow down the massive airplane.
It worked. The air friction slammed the jetliner, which also lost altitude abruptly. The fuselage groaned, screamed, and shrieked, the landing gear touched the ground, exploding before sending the plane back into the air.
"Fuck!"
There was a viaduct in the valley. Through the rain hitting the windscreen, Adrian saw they were heading at full speed towards one of the pylons. "Oh shit!"
Adrian tilted sideways once again, and the nose impacted the ground. The windscreen cracked. The Boeing slid to the surface, digging a trench, spraying dirt and debris in the air. The impact shook his brain inside his skull and pulled his body towards the seatbelt that seemed to encompass his flesh. But the soft soil stopped the uncontrolled beast. The Boeing ended its ride with a deep moan of tortured metal sheets.
A disturbing silence fell.
Through the cracked windscreen, Adrian saw that the nose of the Boeing was just a few meters away from the viaduct pylon.
"Oh, shit."
Adrian unfastened his belt and stood up but staggered. His head buzzed like hell and he felt like throwing up. He supported himself using the captain's seat.
"I did it, Captain Santoro."
He couldn't believe it.
Speaking to Captain Santoro's empty seat, he exulted, "I landed!"
Chapter 4
"Hey, are you okay?"
Someone hit his face, waking him up. Paul Mendoza, lying on the ground, grabbed the hand that slapped him.
"Hey, take it easy. I was just trying to help."
Mendoza let go of the hand. Black Rose stood in front of him. They called him the nickname because of tattoos of black roses and thorny branches covering both the man's arms. He wasn't bad, although he had the annoying tendency to follow Mendoza everywhere, but Mendoza barely talked to him. He didn't talk to anyone.
Mendoza stood. He was covered in plaster dust. Half of the structure had collapsed, like a bad dream. Mendoza had often wished that everything went to hell, but seeing it really had happened amazed him. Only the main building had remained partially upright. All the side structures were torn down. One of the watchtowers lay in the middle of the courtyard, practically intact. Mendoza saw everything from a hole in the wall.
His ears still rang from the uproar, but now all was utter
ly silent. No one around. Mendoza, legs still uncertain, approached the open section. The outdoor courtyard, covered with rubble, deserted and abandoned, lit up in him the impression he'd been unconscious for a hundred years. A strange greenish sky full of ominous clouds loomed on the disaster. As if the whole godforsaken prison had been teleported to another planet.
"Shit," Mendoza said.
The guy approached him near the crack on the wall. "Yes, that's the only thing to say."
"What's happened to everyone?"
"There was a sort of rustling," Black Rose said. "It was the sound of suits sagging. They're all gone, leaving just their clothes."
"Are you taking the piss?"
"No. Come and take a look."
They sneaked out through the collapsed wall and reached the courtyard, climbing a slight hill of rubble. In the square, orange jumpsuits lay scattered all over the concrete floor.
"Shit," Mendoza repeated.
"Maybe we're dead," Black Rose said. "This is the afterlife."
"Well," Mendoza said. "I thought I was going to hell. At least there's no fire."
Black Rose laughed.
At the sound, unusually loud in the silence, one of the empty orange suits came to life. Mendoza almost jumped. A guy, squatted behind a pile of rubble, turned to them, his face white as a ghost.
"Who the fuck is that?" Mendoza asked.
Black Rose worked his way among the fragments of bricks and concrete towards the guy. After a moment's hesitation, Mendoza followed him.
Moving away from the main building, Mendoza glanced around slowly. The earthquake had destroyed the prison, leaving a strange apocalyptic landscape under a greenish sky, but something was wrong. The angles were all wrong. The courtyard had an unfamiliar shape and tall sharp spikes surmounted the perimeter walls.
Mendoza had been locked up in that damn hole for three years, and he was absolutely certain he had never seen spikes like that before.
They joined the third survivor and stopped. Mendoza had never seen him either.
The Landing (Apocalypse) Page 2