by Amber Fallon
An airplane sat on the tarmac several hundred feet away from us. It seemed to be intact. It wasn’t one of the jumbo jets that I’d seen crash as this whole nightmare got started, but something smaller. It didn’t bear any giant corporate logos, only a single gold stripe down its sides. Both of the emergency chute/life raft ramp things had been extended and stuck out from the doors on the side of the plane like giant yellow tongues. Its nose was already pointed straight at the wrecked airport.
“Ah, makeshift bomb assembly plant! Got it!” I grinned, throwing an over eager thumbs up at my coconspirator.
“Ah, no.” John turned towards the plane, a look of admiration in his eyes, “A makeshift bomb.”
“Ok, you lost me.”
“It’s simple. We assemble all the ingredients for making the bomb in the nosecone of the plane. I rig up a pressure sensitive detonator, then we crash the whole shebang into the terminal. Once you’ve lured all the aliens into it, of course.”
I stared at the plane appraisingly for a moment. I really had no idea if what he was suggesting would actually work, but he seemed pretty damned sure of himself. And if he really could build a bomb big enough to do that kind of damage with stuff we could get our hands on, then using an airplane as our delivery system actually seemed like a startlingly brilliant idea. Maybe this really would work after all. We’d be heroes! I could see it in my mind’s eye, the two of us splashed across the front page of the New York Times, right below a headline that proclaimed “The Men Who Saved Chicago!” Only for that to actually happen, there’d have to be a Chicago left to save.
“Okay,” I said. “Where do we start?”
Jimmying open the locked maintenance shed proved to be no more of a problem for John than popping open the roof hatch had been. Within seconds and aided only by a screwdriver we’d found in the baggage cart, he had popped the padlock off the doors and made his way inside. We found what we needed up against the back wall: fifty-pound bags of fertilizer stacked ten feet high. I dragged them one by one, heaving them onto the waiting cart, while John slung two of them over each shoulder.
Once we’d finished, I stopped to catch my breath, leaning against the shed door and wheezing like an old pug.
John had been wrong about the location of the other supplies we needed. Just behind the shed was a small fenced off area containing a big propane refilling tank and about a dozen little white tanks like the kind used for grills. I watched as he grabbed the tanks two at a time and jogged back and forth to the cart with them. Then my eyes drifted back up to the airport. Most of the glass had been shattered, leaving huge portions of the building completely open to the elements. There were cargo van sized holes and craters here and there, scattered across the airport and the surrounding area (including the tarmac we stood on) like chocolate chips in the world’s largest, most unappetizing cookie. Small fires burned in some places, sending smoky gray columns of various sizes up into the sky. On the other side of the terminal facing us, I could just make out the wreckage of the plane Dylan and I had watched crash earlier. The debris still smoldered. Here and there amidst the broken glass, furniture, and structures I could make out shapes I assumed were probably bodies. Now and again I caught a flicker or a flash of white darting past my field of vision, somewhere in the depths of the shadowy airport. I didn’t hear any howls or roars or anything, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t seen us. I wanted to get out of here, and soon. Standing in the open like this just made me feel too exposed. Better to be moving. Doing something. Making progress on the bomb building so we could blow this pop stand. Literally.
“I think we should get going,” I said as he loaded the last propane tank onto the back of the trailer.
“You see something?” He scanned the scenery, hand going instinctively to his gun.
“Uh, no, I uh... I just don’t think we should take any chances.”
“You’re right.” He climbed into the drivers’ seat and started the baggage cart.
John kept his eyes on the road, swerving to avoid debris. “You see a diesel station anywhere?”
“Um, what would one look like?”
“Like a pump you’d see at a gas station. Probably just one, maybe two, off by itself.”
“Yeah! I saw a gas pump looking thing over there, past that plane wreck.” I pointed in the direction of a burned out hulk that had once been an airplane. I wondered fleetingly how many people had been onboard when it had crashed.
“You’re a lifesaver, buddy!” John turned the wheel in that direction, curving the ware laden vehicle around the body of a ground control crew member. His head was missing and his bright green vest was soaked with blood.
When we got to the little gas pump, we found several five-gallon containers of diesel, already filled and capped off. There was a little metal stool beside the pump. It had been knocked on its side in a pool of blood. There was no other sign of what might’ve happened to the employee who’d filled the cans. I found that unnerving at best.
John shoehorned the containers into the front of the vehicle. It was a tight fit, and damned uncomfortable, but it worked. As a bonus, the strong smell of diesel overwhelmed the just slightly weaker smell of fertilizer I’d been choking on. Sometimes it really was the little things.
On the way back to the plane, John stopped next to one of those stairs-with-wheels contraptions and somehow managed to secure it to the back of the trailer. We hadn’t exactly been stealthy before, but now with that metal contraption being dragged along behind us, I think they probably heard us in Cleveland. I was tense the entirety of the short ride back to the plane. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see a pack of aliens chasing after us.
John whipped out a black knife and began hacking at the yellow evacuation slide. I stood watch. It’s the task I seemed best suited to. Once in a while, I’d pause in my surveillance of the area to watch John as he efficiently did away with the giant safety device blocking our entrance into the plane. At one point he bent over to free a piece of strapping and his dog tags fell forward, exposing something that made my eyes widen.
On the same silver chain as the tags was a little gold charm shaped like an upside down tear.
My lungs suddenly felt like they were made of cement. No. This simply wasn’t possible. John couldn’t be Hannah’s father.
I cleared my throat, hoping to high heaven that my voice sounded normal. “Hey, I think I should probably go get started on luring those bastards into Terminal D. Don’t you?”
John looked up at me, his face unreadable. “You really want to split up? Go off by yourself?”
“Yeah.” I scratched the back of my head. “I just, I think it would be more efficient this way.”
John stood up, sliding the knife back into his belt sheath. He reached for his gun with the other hand. Oh fuck. He knew. How did he know? Shit.
I was trying to make up my mind about whether or not to bolt when John handed me the weapon.
“Be careful, okay?”
I gripped the gun tightly, holding it to my side. I nodded as I turned away, unable to look him in the eye. It took an incredible amount of will to keep myself from running away from him. I forced myself to walk at a somewhat normal pace back towards the airport.
I looked back over my shoulder just before ducking inside. John was busy hauling sacks of fertilizer up the portable staircase. What the hell was I going to tell him? Could I tell him anything? How do you even bring something like that up? It might not have been so bad if he’d known she was here... although, let’s be honest, telling someone you shot their kid is never going to be well received... but he had no clue. She said it herself; she got a friend to bring her to the airport to surprise her dad. What a sweet, thoughtful gesture. And she’d wound up dead for it. Although he might’ve been expecting her to be dead anyway. After all, the city was in ruins. Even if she hadn’t come to the airport, there’s a good chance she’d still have died. None of that seemed to make it any better, or make the prospect of
telling John what I’d done any easier to stomach, though.
I crept into the access way where we’d found the baggage cart. It was still quiet, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I held John’s silver pistol at the ready. I wished he’d shown me how to use it. I wished I’d had the guts to ask.
“Spineless, Dirk.” I chided myself in a hushed whisper.
Deeper in the open room was a little office under a set of corrugated metal stairs, which led to a catwalk overhead and a door. If I had my bearings straight, and I thought I did, the door at the top of the stairs would lead me to Terminal A, which was on the other side of the food court and past the shopping pavilion from Terminal D, which was my ultimate destination. To get there, I’d have to go back the way I’d come through the “International Atrium” and face the place I was when all of this began. Somewhere along the way I’d have to find a security office or something along those lines to obtain the necessary items to carry out my brilliant plan; the golf cart, walkie talkies, and bullhorn.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t any kind of indication on the evacuation map where a TSA office or guard outpost might be. While I could rule out a couple of places, I’d have to do more exploring than I felt comfortable with. Hopefully fate would remain on my side, despite the karmic blow I’d dealt myself by ducking out instead of fessing up to my new found friend that I’d killed his daughter, however inadvertently.
I paused before opening the door, listening for a moment as John had done outside the kitchen. I didn’t hear anything, but I suppose that didn’t mean much. Maybe the door was thick, even soundproofed, to prevent the noises of loud equipment and whatnot from getting through. Maybe the aliens had wised up and were waiting for me on the other side. Maybe I just needed to man the fuck up and grow a pair.
Cautiously, I opened the door and peered around the narrow, dimly lit hallway. The door across from me read AIRPORT SECURITY in big block letters.
It was locked, of course, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. It wouldn’t have stopped John, after all. I’d seen that at the shed. I used the gun like a hammer to shatter the glass. Then I unlocked the door and made my way inside. The lights were out. There was a set of three standard looking chairs and a coat rack flanking the door. Directly across from it was a desk with a tall bullet proof glass partition with a little slot cut out of it for passing things through. There was a black nameplate stuck to the glass. It read “Sgt. Franks”. The glass was splashed with blood.
Readying my gun, I took a few cautious steps towards the door beside the desk. It stood open a few inches. There were papers and shards of a ceramic mug on the floor, both covered in a drying brown liquid I assumed was probably coffee. I nudged the door open and pushed past it, scanning the area. There were three other, smaller desks behind the partition. Similar black nameplates proclaimed the owners as “Ofc. Dawson”, “Ofc. Samuels” and “Ofc. Gonzalez”. Dawson and Gonzalez had cluttered desks, covered in the sort of things people accumulate when they work somewhere for a while; knickknacks, pictures, piles of papers and multiple souvenir mugs. I avoided looking too closely at the desk belonging to the late Officer Gonzalez. I didn’t think I could stomach seeing more dead people’s loved ones. Samuels’ desk, on the other hand, was almost bare, save for a single frame containing a photograph I didn’t want to see.
I soon spotted the source of the blood that had been spattered on the glass up front. Sergeant Franks himself slouched behind the desk, just out of view for anyone on the other side. He had a cell phone in one hand and a gun in the other. Dimly, I wondered if he’d been trying to call someone or if someone had called him. The top of his head was missing.
I was kneeling down to grab his gun when I heard a rustling sound behind me. Panicking, I whirled around.
A woman was curled into the fetal position in the corner behind the desks. Her eyes were wide with terror, her mouth contorted in silent sobs. I raised the gun, aiming it at the ceiling and took a step towards her. She wore the same blue polyester uniform Gonzalez had been wearing. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail or a bun, but errant wisps stuck out around her face, some matted to her cheeks with tears and snot.
At my approach, the woman flinched, cringing back into the corner and making more of those horrible silent sobs.
“It’s okay,” I soothed, “I’m one of the good guys.”
She stared up at me with eyes like saucers, eyes long since emptied of tears. Her lower lip trembled pitifully but the sobs subsided. I knelt down a few feet away from her and placed the gun on the floor beside me in what I hoped was a gesture that showed I meant her no harm.
“What’s your name?” I asked, hoping to calm her down a bit.
“What the fuck is happening?” She cried in a broken voice that faded into more sobs.
How was I supposed to answer that? “A race of hostile aliens is killing everyone in sight and eating the corpses like Sunday dinner?” I decided that part was best left unsaid.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “But I don’t think you should stay here.”
The traumatized officer’s only response was more silent sobbing.
“Look,” I said, “You’re an officer of the law, a protector of the people. There are people out there right now that need your protection. You can’t just hide away in this dark office waiting for things to go back to normal. You have to get up and do something. You have to leave this airport. Now.”
She seemed stricken at that, looking at me with a wounded expression. “They didn’t prepare me for anything like this to happen. I’ve only been on the job for a week!”
I looked over my shoulder at the three workspaces behind us. Given the shininess of the nameplate and the relatively empty desk, I made a guess.
“Officer Samuels? Is that your name?”
She nodded.
“Okay, Officer Samuels. I need you to help me with something. Can you do that?”
She looked uncertain for a second, but she slowly sat up, uncurling from her protective ball. Then she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands and nodded.
“Do you guys use golf carts or something to get around the airport?”
Samuels nodded and choked, then cleared her throat and tried again to speak. “Y-yeah. We have two of them in the room next door.”
“That’s good. Do you have walkie talkies?”
She nodded again, gesturing toward what I had earlier assumed was a closet. “All the communications stuff is in there.”
“Thank you.” I picked up my gun and stood. “I have to go now. Someone is counting on me. But I need you to do one more thing for me. You have to get out of this airport. Now. Bad things are going to happen. Well, worse I mean. Go through the access way in the hall and out across the tarmac. Find a way through the fence somewhere.”
“Where should I go?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But you need to be away from here. My friend and I are going to blow up this airport. You don’t want to be here when that happens.”
“Be careful,” she said as she left the office. I thought that was a pretty odd thing to say, given the circumstances.
“You, too.” I told her, but the door was already swinging shut.
The communications closet ended up being an absolute treasure trove. Inside I found four banks of walkie talkies on charging stations, a pair of bullhorns, two useless Blackberry devices and a tablet computer. I grabbed the walkies and the bullhorns and kicked the door shut behind me.
Samuels had been as good as her word. Next door to the security office was a set of wide double doors that lead to a large maintenance room, something like a miniature mechanic’s shop. In the center of the room was the main event—not one but two golf carts, parked in neatly outlined little spaces.
There was a tall standing toolbox against one wall. A metal shelving unit stood against the adjacent wall and held spare batteries, cables, tire pumps and other assorted equipment. There was a work bench with a few more tools on the
opposite wall and a corkboard with pictures of officers past and present attending various functions behind it. I dumped my gear on the bench while I looked for the keys to the golf carts. I found what I was looking for in a drawer beneath the work table. Two sets of keys, identical except for the “A” and “B” marked key fobs they dangled from. I also found a roll of duct tape. That would definitely come in handy for what I had planned. Duct Tape: Is there anything it can’t do?
I began duct taping the walkies, speaker side first, to the bullhorns. I managed to fit two of them on each, leaving me with two extras apart from the one I’d need to broadcast with. Then I pinned down the talk buttons on the bullhorns and wrapped them tightly with duct tape to keep them in place. Pleased with my creations, I set them carefully on the work bench and darted to the other side of the room. I pressed the thumb switch on the walkie talkie in my hand and whispered “testing” into the mic. I could hear it clearly from the other side of the room.
My plan had proven a success, at least in part. I duct taped the two bullhorn assemblies to the poles on the front of the golf cart marked “A” and plunked down in the driver’s seat to review my map. It looked like Terminal D would be a straight shot if I could make it back to the area by the escalators. Common sense dictated that getting in the cart and booking it back there myself was the best course of action. But before I could be on my way, I’d have to find some way of rigging the gas pedal down so that the cart would drive itself once I had it aimed in the right direction. I scanned the room hopefully before my eyes lit on the perfect thing; a cinder block sat behind one of the double doors, probably used to hold them open. Perfect. I was sure I’d be paying for this amount of good luck at some point in the future, but right now I didn’t care. I just wanted to lure some aliens into a trap and blow the fuckers into chunky soup. I’d worry about karmic retribution later.