by Ray Gorham
Kyle felt the heat from the fire on his face and nodded in agreement, then continued dragging Ed towards the rear exit, his lungs burning from the strain and the smoke. Kyle guessed that Ed weighed less than he did, but with Ed’s body as dead weight in the narrow aisle, he was having a difficult time making it to the exit.
After a short struggle he worried might be his last, Kyle finally reached the exit. He released Ed and thrust his head out of the smoke-filled cabin. The outside air was hot and thick with humidity, but free of the dense, suffocating smoke that filled the airplane. Inhaling deeply, Kyle didn’t think he’d ever prized a breath so much in his life. After a quick second breath, Kyle lifted Ed, gave a powerful tug, and they plunged out the door. The two men tumbled down the yellow emergency slide, coming to a stop at the bottom.
The roar and heat of the flames pushing him forward, Kyle rapidly scrambled to his feet and shook Ed, but he just moaned and mumbled incoherently. With all the strength he could muster, Kyle draped Ed across his shoulders and set off toward a crowd of survivors who had gathered a hundred yards from the wreckage. He struggled with his load and stumbled on the uneven ground, twice falling to his knees, then rising again, until finally making it to the cluster of passengers.
Three men from the crowd came forward and helped lower Ed to the ground, then Kyle collapsed in a heap, coughing and completely spent. His whole body felt limp as he lay on his side and struggled to catch his breath, but his eyes stayed locked on the airplane, which was now almost entirely engulfed in flames.
Through the smoke he could see the flight attendant and the unconscious man at the bottom of the emergency slide. The attendant leapt to her feet and pulled on the motionless body, dragging it only a few feet before stumbling and falling to the ground. Two men from the group started to run towards her just as a massive explosion rocked the area and knocked them, and others standing nearby, off of their feet. Kyle turned away from the explosion and shielded his face with an arm, the heat from the fireball burning the skin on the back of his neck. Debris hit the ground around him, and people, already deep in shock, screamed and ran further away. Too tired to run, Kyle crawled to Ed and knelt over him, using his body as a shield against the debris.
A scrap of smoking metal landed a few feet away and bounced past. Exhausted, Kyle reached up with his arms in an attempt to cover the back of his head. When the sounds of the falling debris stopped, Kyle turned back towards what, just minutes before, had been a modern jet aircraft, but was now just a heap of burning wreckage, with smoke billowing in black, oily clouds from its twisted skeleton.
Ed stirred and looked towards Kyle, but his eyes were empty and far away.
“Ed, you with us?” Kyle asked, his voice weak and dry.
Ed stared blankly, like he’d been roused suddenly from a deep sleep, but didn’t answer. When he tried to get up, Kyle grabbed his arm and held him down.
“Just relax,” Kyle said. “You were hit hard. There should be an ambulance here soon. They’ll want to check you out.”
Ed resisted briefly, then relented and sat back down while Kyle scanned the wreckage of the airplane for any sign of the flight attendant. She had been just a few feet from the bottom of the slide when the explosion happened, but that area was now a smoldering pile of rubble with no sign of any survivors. The body of the airplane had broken in half just behind the wings, causing the tail portion to fall backwards onto the ground. Jagged, twisted openings covered the plane’s body, as if someone had ripped away the skin of the airplane to peer inside, the exposed seats suspended precariously in the air. A few scorched pieces of fabric dangled limply below what remained of the rear emergency exit. Nearby, dozens of small fires burned in the grass surrounding the wreckage, the twisting ribbons of smoke the only movement Kyle could make out in the vicinity of the plane.
Kyle turned reluctantly away, wondering how many people had died, and what loved ones they had left behind. Instinctively, he reached for his cell phone to call home and let his wife know what had happened, but his phone wasn’t there. Then he remembered tossing it into his carry-on after making his last call home.
“Ed, you got a phone?”
Ed’s eyes were still vacant, but he seemed to be slowly coming around. “I do,” he said groggily, then gingerly pulled his phone from his pocket and handed it to Kyle. “Where do you think the fire trucks are?”
Kyle took the phone and flipped it open. “I don’t know. They should be here by now; we’re not that far from the terminal.” As Kyle dialed his number, he stood and strained to hear the sirens. “You don’t have service,” he said, handing the phone back to Ed. “I want to get a hold of my wife before she sees the news. This is going to freak her out pretty bad.”
Ed took his phone and looked at the screen. He pushed a couple of buttons and tried to make a call, then put it back on his belt. “How’d I get off the plane?”
“You were a little out of it, so I helped you.”
Ed rubbed his head, and Kyle dropped to the ground beside him. “I don’t hear any sirens, Ed. I don’t know what’s going on.” Kyle looked towards the airport but could see only the tops of the buildings from behind the berm of dirt. “They should be here. There are a lot of people hurt.”
Looking around, Kyle noticed several other people trying in vain to use their phones. “There must be some kind of jamming device. No one’s phones are working,” he observed.
“My phone worked earlier,” Ed said matter-of-factly. “How’d you get me off the plane?”
“I had to drag you. Figured your family might want to see you again.”
“Do you think everyone made it?”
Kyle shook his head. “I don’t.” He paused. “I think we were about the last ones. There were still a few people in there when we got off, but I don’t think they made it.”
Ed looked at Kyle, his eyes becoming more alert. “Thanks. I appreciate you helping a stranger. I hope I would have done the same.”
“Don’t be too grateful. I almost left you behind. I was pretty scared.” Kyle stood back up. “Wait here. I’m going to see if I can tell where the emergency vehicles are. It’s like they don’t know we’re here.”
Kyle walked as quickly as his worn-out legs would go back towards the berm that had launched the airplane. It was some distance away, and required him to climb to the top in order to see the buildings of the airport. Another man from the airplane was already on top of the berm, frozen, one hand shielding the sun from his eyes as he stared into the distance. Kyle crested the short hill and as he reached the top he felt the air suck from his lungs as the scene unfolded in front of him.
The other passenger turned when he heard Kyle gasp. “Is this real?” he asked, his voice cracking.
Kyle recognized the man from the boarding area. “I don’t know,” he replied, barely able to speak. His head swung slowly from side to side. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It doesn’t seem possible.”
Deer Creek, Montana 16:20 EST
Jennifer pressed the power button on the TV one more time, then gave up and went back to putting the groceries away. As she carefully squeezed the eggs onto the crowded bottom shelf of the fridge, it dawned on her that the fridge light was out. She looked at the stove and saw that the clock was blank as well.
“Hey, Spencer,” she called out, “I think I know what’s wrong with the TV.”
Spencer was sitting on the floor in the corner of the kitchen, hard at work on a large dinosaur puzzle. A pterodactyl’s eyes peered from the piece he was using to scratch his head. “Are you done with the groceries? Are you going to fix it now?” he asked excitedly.
“No, not yet,” she answered. “Mommy can’t fix it. I think the power’s out,” she said with an exaggerated frown. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure, Mom,” Spencer replied. “What you need?”
“Go turn on the lights in the bedrooms and tell me if any of them work.”
“You bet,” he yelled
over his shoulder as he lumbered to his feet and ran down the hall towards the bedrooms.
George Bush International Airport, Houston, Texas 16:30 EST
The two men from the stricken airplane stood on top of the berm, trying to make sense of the scene in front of them. Between where they stood and the far side of the airport they could see the burning wreckage of three other airplanes, all with thick, oily plumes of smoke billowing skyward and casting a gray pall over the area. In a neighborhood further to the east, no more than a mile from the end of the runway, Kyle could see a thick column of smoke there as well.
After a long silence Kyle finally spoke. “I don’t think they’re coming for us.” He knew it was a serious understatement, but could think of nothing else to say.
The man merely nodded, but his expression spoke volumes. After a few more minutes of observation they returned to where the survivors from their flight, along with a number of people who had come from nearby buildings to offer assistance, had re-gathered.
Kyle found one of the pilots on the edge of the group, giving aid to an injured passenger and pulled him to the side. The pilot was young, maybe 30 years old, and his face was smeared with dirt and sweat and smoke.
“What do you need?” the pilot demanded, glancing back at the older woman he’d been attending to.
There was a gold pin on the captain’s chest, the name K. Hansen was printed in black letters. Kyle swallowed and was about to speak when the man from the top of the berm took the initiative. “There’s something seriously wrong, sir,” he began.
When their conversation was over, the pilot strode back towards the group, cleared his throat and called out to the survivors. “Attention everyone! I need you to gather in here closer, please. Quickly!” He waited as people moved towards him. After about 30 seconds he addressed the group. “As you can see, there’s smoke on the other side of that bank of dirt.” He motioned towards the airport, and people turned in that direction. “I’d thought the smoke was from our crash, but I’ve just been informed that other planes have crashed as well.” A murmur went up from the group. “It appears likely,” he continued, “that emergency vehicles won’t be coming to our assistance, at least not for awhile. I recommend that we start to move towards the terminal where we can find some help. Those who are able, please help those who are not.”
“What’s going on?” someone shouted.
“I have no idea,” the pilot answered, his voice shaking. “I just know what I’ve been told. But I know help should have been here a long time ago.”
NORAD headquarters, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado 16:32 EST
As the ranking commander at the time of the attack, Alan had the unenviable responsibility of communicating what little was known to those who ranked high enough to be informed.
General Glenn Young, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was on the line. “We don’t know,” Alan responded into the phone. “There were no military vessels in the areas the missiles launched from. We have two, small, navy vessels within one hundred miles of the launch on the East Coast, but that’s as close as we get.”
“Do we have any idea how effective the missiles were?” General Young asked.
“Preliminary indications are that this is a worse-case scenario,” answered Alan. “Obviously information is limited due to communication failures, but that in and of itself is an answer. All communication on the civilian networks is down. Our power supply has switched to self-generation. Satellite communication is no longer effective. NORAD has contact only through our military fiber optic networks. General, it’s bad. We just don’t know how bad yet.”
“The power’s out at my house in Virginia,” the general mused. “We were getting ready to head to the lake when everything went dead. I thought it was local until this phone started ringing.” General Young paused, his mind filtering rapidly through what he knew about a nuclear EMP. “If it’s as bad as the professors told us it would be, may God have mercy on us. I’ll contact the president once I figure out where he landed.” The general paused a second, then added quietly, “Alan, this may sound out of place, but I hope you find some time to pray. That may be our best hope for awhile.”
The solemnity in General Young’s voice reverberated in Alan’s ears. The general was typically a jovial individual, always upbeat and encouraging and one of the truly decent ones that Alan worked with, but today there was none of that. He sounded like a man who’d been told he only had weeks to live. “I will, sir,” promised Alan. “I’m sure I won’t be the only one.”
George Bush International Airport, Houston, TX 17:10 EST
A handful of survivors from Flight 17 moved slowly through the concourse, tired, bloodied, and shocked by the scene surrounding them. Kyle and Ed had helped an overweight, college student with a swollen ankle and knee abrasions into the terminal, along with a retired school teacher from Oklahoma who was physically fine, but suffering from shock.
After getting their two charges settled and finding a security officer to take responsibility for them, Ed and Kyle found two empty seats and dropped into them, exhausted and frightened.
Everywhere they looked it was chaos. People were pressed against the windows, watching the burning airplanes on the runways. Around the boarding counters frightened, unruly crowds gathered, demanding information, but receiving none. The occasional police officer or airport security personnel ran through the terminal, looking worried and official, but with no apparent plan of action. Parents stood guard over their children, protecting them from something unknown.
Kyle noticed that the monitors that usually displayed flight information were blank, and that the terminal was lit with sunlight and emergency lighting. “This looks like a war zone, Ed. What on earth is going on?”
“I don’t know, Kyle, but I need to sit down. Between my feet and my head, I’m about ready to fall over.”
Kyle nodded. “Wait here for me. I’m going to see if I can find someone who knows what’s going on.”
****
Ed’s eyes snapped open at the sound of Kyle calling his name. “I thought you might have abandoned me. What’d you find out?”
“I learned where there’s an emergency first aid office I can take you to, but that’s about it. I wish I knew more. Let me help you get down there.” Kyle assisted Ed to his feet and as they worked their way through the airport he described his 30-minute ordeal to find answers.
“So you’re saying they’re clueless?” Ed asked when Kyle finished.
Kyle nodded. “Total confusion. Practically on the verge of a riot. Security has no idea what’s going on, and everyone wants answers, which no one has. When I forced my way into the security office, some guy threw a punch at me before his wife pulled him away. I did get directions to where to take you to get looked at though. They were shocked to hear there was a crash that had survivors. The other planes that crashed were all airborne or landing apparently, but no one really knows for sure.”
At the end of a short hallway past the car rental counters, Ed and Kyle found the medical room bursting with people in a worse state of panic than they had seen at the gate area. Kyle recognized a handful of passengers from their airplane, but the most seriously injured hadn’t made it there yet, and most of those in the room seemed to suffer more from the stress of witnessing the crashes than from any actual physical injury.
“Do you want to find a chair?”
Ed surveyed the room from the doorway and watched the four overwhelmed medical personnel working frantically to help the crush of patients. “This is insane,” he said, shaking his head. “I feel half dead, but if I stay here, I think I might get all the way there. Let’s go find a seat somewhere else where we can rest a minute and figure something out.”
The found seats in the luggage claim area and Ed dabbed sweat off his face with his shirtsleeve, leaving a dark patch on his forearm to go along with the growing circles of sweat under his armpits. “Is this real or some kind of a nightmare?” he asked as an
other police officer ran by.
Kyle shook his head. “It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen. It’s unexplainable. I don’t know if the airport was hit by some cosmic force, or a terrorist strike, or who-knows-what. If someone told me UFOs caused this, I’d be hard pressed to argue.”
They sat in silence, lost in their thoughts and watching the pandemonium. Ed spoke after a long period of silence. “I don’t think we’ll be flying out of here today, even if we want to. I don’t think anyone is. This is completely different from anything I’ve ever seen or heard of. With all those crashed airplanes, there should be hundreds of emergency vehicles from all over the city out there, but I didn’t see a single one. There should have been enough help for us, even with the other planes down. I bet we’d still be waiting out by that airplane if we hadn’t come in on our own. Something is wrong at a level I can’t fathom.”
Kyle nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. I think everyone is. You can see it in their faces; there’s a fear and helplessness that I’ve never seen. Of course, how are you supposed to act when you’ve seen an airplane fall from the sky?”
“It’s not just one plane wreck, Kyle. It’s multiple wrecks. It’s no emergency assistance to our flight, and no response for those other planes. It’s no power in the terminal. It’s total confusion with the airport employees. You saw them. They had no idea what they should be doing. Some of the smart ones are faking it, but most of them look like they want to cry. And the passengers…they’re freaked out bad. There’s a deeper fear there than just the power being out, more than a plane crash. Have you noticed that no one is using their cell phone? We tried mine, but it’s dead. They’re all dead. In a situation like this, everyone would be on their phone. It’s like…I know this doesn’t make any sense, but it’s like we’ve been attacked.” Ed paused a moment before continuing. “You remember 9/11?”
Kyle nodded. “Who doesn’t? I’ll always remember it. I was listening on my car radio 2,000 miles away from New York when it happened, but I’ll always remember it.”