CHAPTER 3
THE FIRE WITHIN
There was something sobering about the water. The threat of a cold death made the mind sharper and as I plunged into the icy bath, I immediately found clarity.
The man that had grabbed me was floating to the side unconscious. I pushed his limp body over as I searched for a way out. He bobbed in the water like a buoy then floated away.
With a droning thud, the plane leveled out. The water rushed across the floor and I caught hold of a seat then stood up. A current pushed against me as the rest of the river fought its way inside. The water was rising fast and was already above my chest.
I gasped for air in desperate gulps. Every breath the water rose higher, stealing my chances of survival. I knew the door wasn’t far ahead of me, but before I could move, the last air pocket vanished, and I was submerged.
I closed my eyes momentarily as the cold overwhelmed me. With clenched first, I shivered then got ready to fight for my life.
Through my blurry vision, I saw the door up ahead. Bubbles escaped through the opening along with the last few passengers that had any life left in them. The plane was sinking fast, quickly turning into a coffin.
I pushed off the seat below me and glided through the water. Broken bodies floated all around me with the pain of death frozen to their faces. Those were the last clear images I saw before the lights in the cabin went dim. With a stuttered flicker, the airplane died.
It wasn’t completely dark, but through the water I could hardly see three feet in front of my face. My lungs begged for air, which only made me more desperate. I clawed through the human soup, feeling for anything solid, but only gripping the flesh of those that had already succumbed to the frigid death trap.
As my body filled with carbon dioxide, thoughts of letting go gripped me like anchors. My mind wanted to rest, to leave this nebulous, cold place. The dark was peaceful, it was calm and quiet. All I had to do was let go, let it take me into its arms and rock me to sleep.
“No!” a voice inside of my head shouted back.
I’d been here before. I’d stared death in the eyes and not flinched. This was no different, just another test, another assignment, a job that had to be done.
Pushing the limits of my tolerance, I shoved aside the masses of ice-like flesh. My muscles sucked every bit of oxygen from my blood and propelled me toward the darkening door like a torpedo.
I sailed into the open water and felt a short-lived relief. I was still underwater and had to make it to the surface.
I kicked my legs with desperation and pulled myself toward the light. I felt like I was at the bottom of the ocean, though I was certain it wasn’t more than twenty feet. I saw the sun beaming through the water above, but it was miles away.
With everything in me I fought. I swung my arms until my shoulders burned and kicked my feet like an angry pendulum. Inch by inch I climbed the watery ladder towards freedom.
I’d decided I didn’t want to die, I wasn’t going to die. Death would have to wait just a little longer. I wasn’t going to survive a plane crash just to drown in the damn river.
I almost tasted the air, I was so close, but every second under the water was hell. My lungs felt like they were melting in my chest as the carbon gases turned to lava. My vision was going. It was like I was staring through a tunnel that was getting thinner and thinner with every passing second. Then my hand broke through and I was free.
I gasped, sucking in a lungful of the cold, crisp air. Every breath felt like new life, it felt like tomorrow. I was alive and it’d never felt so good.
Huffing, I collected myself then started to look around. Flaming pieces of the broken wing were scattered across the river. Bodies of the dead floated like lost sailboats as survivors clawed their way over them.
Suddenly, a long, loud horn broke the cries of panic. There were boats in the water, Coast Guard boats, plucking people out like fishermen. A feeling of relief rushed over me and I laid my head back and took a deep breath.
I’d made it. I’d fallen from the sky, crashed into a freezing river and sank to the bottom. But here I was, alive and still kicking. Damn you, death.
“Over here!” I shouted with a crackling voice. “Over here!”
One of the vessels turned and slowly started to move toward me. It looked like an angel, cutting through the fog to take me home. The gray hull and with a red, white and blue stripe was the most glorious thing I’d seen in my life.
The water splashed over my head as the boat slowed and pulled alongside me. Outstretched arms gripped my shirt and snagged me into the air.
“Are you okay miss?” a young man asked.
He looked like a teenager. His face was clean, not a hint of stubble. His dark skin glowed with sweat and salty, river water.
He grabbed my hand and helped me to my feet. “Miss?” he asked again.
“What happened?” I mumbled without thinking.
“Your plane crashed ma’am.” He looked at me with pity and wrapped a gray blanket around my shoulders. “Here, have a seat. We’re almost full then we’ll head for the port.”
I slowly squeezed in between two shivering bodies and pulled the blanket tight against my shoulders. My teeth chattered, and I squeezed my fingers together to stop them from shaking.
“That’s good,” the young man said.
“What?”
“The shaking, means you’re not hypothermic.”
I nodded then stared out to the water. There were so many people, so much destruction going on everywhere. Too much for me to make sense of, too much for me to be happy with my own safety when so many others were dead.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Shane Johnson…I mean Seaman Johnson,” he replied.
“Thank you, Seaman Johnson. You saved my life.”
He smiled then headed back toward the front. The boat rocked back and forth then the motor growled, and we started slicing through the choppy water.
They circled about until the boat was full then made a beeline for the port. I breathed a sigh of relief as the image of solid ground grew closer and closer. The Port of Yonkers beamed up ahead like a lighthouse.
Another loud horn blasted, and Seaman Johnson started to toss lines to the men standing near the dock. A lot of shouts and screams followed, but eventually we were moved from the boat and onto a rickety platform near the water’s edge.
Dozens of people were there, scared and bleeding, looking to one another for answers that no one had. Their shell-shocked eyes were cloudy and unfocused. Blank stares and pained faces washed clean by the river but broken and bruised underneath the water-logged flesh.
I couldn’t take looking at them, so I turned back to the water. It was then that I realized my plane hadn’t been the only casualty of the storm. From the dock, I beamed out across the river as flaming pieces of debris floated on the surface. Another flight had gone down in the Hudson and everything suddenly became clear.
“We’ve gotta get back out,” one of the men on the boat shouted.
Johnson started to untie the lines as the rest of the men took their places on the boat. There was so much confusion, I didn’t know how they prioritized anything, but there were plenty of people that still needed help.
I counted my blessings that I wasn’t one of the people still in the water. I got to live. I would see my son again, I’d get to kiss my husband.
I wondered if they’d heard anything about what had happened. Or maybe in their mind I was still safely gliding through the sky. I needed to talk to them. I needed to let them know I was okay and I owed my life to the young men that were preparing to go back and do it again.
But I knew that wasn’t possible. If the feeling that I had in my gut was right, they wouldn’t know a thing about what happened here.
“Seaman Johnson!” I yelled.
He paused and looked back at me with a rope in his hand. I smiled at him and the rest of the crew that were readying the boat.
&nb
sp; “Thank you,” I said. “All of you, you saved my life.”
The men on the boat nodded and smiled back. Johnson tossed the rope in his hand onto the deck of the boat then turned toward me.
“You’re welcome ma’am. Stay safe.”
He placed his foot onto one of the rails just as the dock began to shake violently. I felt fear crawl up my spine and reluctantly looked over my shoulder.
The 2nd level that hung over the peer had begun to crumble. A giant slab of steel reinforced concrete started to fall and was headed right for the boat. It looked heavy enough to crack the entire ship in half.
“Watch out!” I shouted and dove at Johnson.
Together we tumbled into the water. The slab crashed into the dock then hit the boat before flopping into the river. The sounds were deafening, and the crunch of bodies turned my stomach inside out.
More debris fell from above. Rocks and chunks of the wall crumbled, turning into meteors of death. People dove from the platform, entering the frigid water for the second time that day, but now the river was churning and swirling into a violent cyclone.
Johnson grabbed my arm in time to pull me away from a large piece of metal grating. It hit the turbulent water and quickly sank into the depths. The rusted metal vanished like the lost souls on the plane.
“Thanks,” I garbled between breaths.
“Thank you,” he grunted. “Come on.”
Towing me like a lifeguard, he swam away from the pier and headed toward the seawall to the left. I didn’t like the feeling of being a helpless child, but he was the professional and the water was moving like it had somewhere to be. There was no point in fighting against it.
He didn’t let up until we were nearly a hundred yards from the crumbling dock. Far away from the danger and madness that had nearly taken my life.
Out in front of me there was a rusted ladder screwed into the concrete on the wall. It looked like it’d been there for centuries and would probably outlast our entire civilization. Barnacles had grown up and down the rungs where the tide moved back and forth like a rocking chair.
I reached out and grabbed it, clinging to it so tightly that I felt the muscle fibers in my fingers stretching to their limit. With a deep breath, I pulled myself up a few steps then clawed my way out of the water. I laid my face against the cold, wet concrete as it vibrated like it had a heartbeat.
“Head toward the city!” Johnson shouted to me. “Take care of yourself.”
He turned and started to swim back toward the mayhem. I waved as I watched him go, feeling a sense of regret and sadness. I couldn’t imagine the courage that it took for him to head back, but that was exactly what he was doing.
Grunting, I pushed myself up and balanced on wobbly legs. Only it wasn’t my legs that were shaking. The ground was starting to contort and rattle itself into dozens of massive cracks. The sea wall warped like the side of a plastic pool and I stumbled backward and tripped on a newly formed mound of dirt and concrete.
The river whirled and churned like a washing machine. It crashed against the aging wall, sending icy spray and rock fragments into the air. The waves folded against themselves and the mountainous white caps obliterated anything in their path. The river was a death trap.
“Get out of the water!” I shouted in vain as I watched Johnson cut through the rapids.
He glanced back then put his head down and started to swim faster than I thought a human could move, but it wasn’t enough.
A wave of water rose high into the air. It seemed to hover momentarily as it reached the height of a skyscraper. The shadow it cast stretched onto the land, drenching me in darkness like a veil at a funeral.
Johnson paused and looked back at the massive wall of liquid. I saw in his face that he knew what I knew, he was going to die. That kind of realization was unmistakable, and I wished I had the power to change his destiny.
I wanted to scream for him to swim away, to run across the water and climb to safety. But he couldn’t, and the vain words got stuck in my throat like bone splinters. In silence, I watched as the wave crashed down and the river swallowed him whole.
CHAPTER 4
CITY OF TEARS
The land had settled, but it was destroyed. Cracks and fissures were everywhere, with steam rising into the cool, morning air. The water was calm, but there was no sign of Johnson. All that was left were the floating dead bodies in the distance and scraps of debris.
I whirled around and gazed at the city in the distance. It looked like something out of a comic book. Crumbling buildings and towers of smoke, clouding the skyline. The glow of fires and the screech of sirens reverberated through the air and I felt a chill deep down that nearly stopped my heart.
“Just move,” I mumbled to myself. “Just put one foot in front of the other.”
That was exactly what I did. Step after step, foot after foot, I moved toward what I thought was civilization. I needed to get to a phone because what I’d feared for so long was happening and now I had a job to do.
My jeans were ripped, and my t-shirt shredded on the sides, like I’d been attacked by a tiger. I’d lost a shoe to the river and the bottom of my bare foot burned as the coarse asphalt rubbed away my skin. My bones ached like creaking metal hinges on the door of some old barn, but none of that mattered.
I needed to keep moving, and lingering about, feeling sorry for myself wasn’t gonna change a thing. After what I’d seen, what I’d been through, I knew we’d crossed a threshold from which there was no returning. I knew what followed would be hard, but vital.
After another half-mile I stopped and doubled over. There was so much on my mind, it made my head hurt and with my declining body temperature, multi-tasking was becoming damn near impossible.
“F... find, find your people,” I mumbled to myself.
There were ten other government workers on the flight with me, ten people that I was responsible for. I could guess they were dead, but I didn’t know, and I wasn’t in the business of not knowing.
Running my fingers through my hair, I took a deep breath and tried to prioritize things. I couldn’t find out anything standing where I was and the ice water dripping from my fingers spurred a sense of urgency in me.
I needed to get dry and find warm clothes. I needed a phone and I needed to get back to Arlington. And somewhere in between all of that, I needed to make sure no one else found out what the hell was going on.
It took me another twenty minutes before I reached the city. And when I did, I came to find that the downtown area was in no better shape than the port. The ground was raked apart, cracked like broken pie crust. The fires that I’d seen from a distance had burned out and now a thick, gray smoke clouded the air. It burned my lungs when I breathed and made my eyes water.
The deeper into the city I walked the worse it looked. But as I passed my third block, I finally found some signs of life. People were running up and down the street, screaming and shouting for lost loved ones. Others dug through rubble until their fingers bled. It was like I’d suddenly walked into a war zone.
“Help me! Help me!” a frantic woman snapped as she fell into my arms.
Her face was bloodied and the skin on her gnarled fingers burned to a black-blue crisp. Her voice quivered when she spoke, her words drenched with sorrow and distress.
“I, I…calm down. Everything is gonna be alright,” I lied.
She glared at me for a moment then her eyes glossed over and her grip on my arm relaxed.
“Ma’am!” I shouted and shook her.
Her knees buckled and she collapsed to the ground without a word. I checked anyway, but I knew she was dead. I saw in her face, the expressionless look of an empty vessel. It was sad, but I knew many more would die before it was over.
Sighing, I looked the woman over and came to a gruesome conclusion. Her shirt had been burned apart and she was barefoot, but her pants looked like they may fit.
I kicked off my one shoe and squeezed out of my water-logged jeans
. The water had shrunk them nearly three sizes and it took me fifteen minutes just to get them past my hips. I didn’t even bother to make sure no one was watching, at that point I didn’t care, I just wanted to be dry.
Once I got her pants on and rolled them over to keep from falling, I pulled my shirt off and rang it out. The ragged fabric felt like it’d been in a freezer. It was torture putting it back on, but it was better than walking the streets half naked.
“Much better,” I said to myself.
Still shivering, I fumbled through the pockets of my newly acquired pants. There was a lump on the side and I pulled out a small, black cell phone. I ran my thumb over it in shock then pushed the home button to see if it worked.
The screen lit up and I smiled. It had one bar of service that flickered on and off, so I quickly punched in the first set of numbers I could think off.
“Director Andrews office,” a soft voice answered.
“Nancy, it’s MJ. Put Bill on.”
“One moment.”
Shivering, I waited for what felt like hours. People passed by me, paying little attention before vanishing into the dense smoke. Closing my eyes, I ran my fingers through my wet hair and let out a long, raspy breath.
“MJ,” Bill’s voice crackled in my ear.
“It’s happening,” I replied simply.
“What?”
“You need to start handling this now. I’m in Yonkers…my plane went down in the Hudson along with at least one more.”
“What?”
“Bill, it’s happening. This is gonna get out soon. There’s already massive storms and earthquakes. Get ahead of this.”
I heard him scrambling through papers. His frantic breathing was pissing me off and I wanted to shake him by the arms and slap him.
“Bill!” I snapped. “Get your shit together.”
“Okay, okay. Where are you.”
“Yonkers, Bill, in the middle of it.”
“Alright…we need to--- and----before anything else leaks,” the phone cut in and out.
Deconstruction- The Complete series Box Set Page 36