Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days Page 3

  “What’s going on, Ray?” he said. “We got us more than a hundred people gone with nothing but their clothes left behind.”

  “That many?”

  “Yeah, like it’d be better if it was only fifty? How the heck are we gonna explain landing with less passengers than we took off with?”

  Rayford shook his head, still working the radio, trying to reach someone, anyone, in Greenland or an island in the middle of nowhere. But they were too remote even to pick up a radio station for news. Finally he connected with a Concorde several miles away heading the other direction. He nodded to Christopher to put on his own earphones.

  “You got enough fuel to get back to the States, over?” the pilot asked Rayford.

  He looked at Christopher, who nodded and whispered, “We’re halfway.”

  “I could make Kennedy,” Rayford said.

  “Forget it,” came the reply. “Nothing’s landing in New York. Two runways still open in Chicago. That’s where we’re going.”

  “We came from Chicago. Can’t I put down at Heathrow?”

  “Negative. Closed.”

  “Paris?”

  “Man, you’ve got to get back where you came from. We left Paris an hour ago, got the word what’s happening, and were told to go straight to Chicago.”

  “What’s happening, Concorde?”

  “If you don’t know, why’d you put out the Mayday?”

  “I’ve got a situation here I don’t even want to talk about.”

  “Hey, friend, it’s all over the world, you know?”

  “Negative, I don’t know,” Rayford said. “Talk to me.”

  “You’re missing passengers, right?”

  “Roger. More than a hundred.”

  “Whoa! We lost nearly fifty.”

  “What do you make of it, Concorde?”

  “First thing I thought of was spontaneous combustion, but there would have been smoke, residue. These people materially disappeared. Only thing I can compare it to is the old Star Trek shows where people got dematerialized and rematerialized, beamed all over the place.”

  “I sure wish I could tell my people their loved ones were going to reappear just as quickly and completely as they disappeared,” Rayford said.

  “That’s not the worst of it, Pan Heavy. People everywhere have disappeared. Orly lost air traffic controllers and ground controllers. Some planes have lost flight crews. Where it’s daylight there are car pileups, chaos everywhere. Planes down all over and at every major airport.”

  “So this was a spontaneous thing?”

  “Everywhere at once, just a little under an hour ago.”

  “I was almost hoping it was something on this plane. Some gas, some malfunction.”

  “That it was selective, you mean, over?”

  Rayford caught the sarcasm.

  “I see what you mean, Concorde. Gotta admit this is somewhere we’ve never been before.”

  “And never want to be again. I keep telling myself it’s a bad dream.”

  “A nightmare, over.”

  “Roger, but it’s not, is it?”

  “What are you going to tell your passengers, Concorde?”

  “No clue. You, over?”

  “The truth.”

  “Can’t hurt now. But what’s the truth? What do we know?”

  “Not a blessed thing.”

  “Good choice of words, Pan Heavy. You know what some people are saying, over?”

  “Roger,” Rayford said. “Better it’s people gone to heaven than some world power doing this with fancy rays.”

  “Word we get is that every country has been affected. See you in Chicago?”

  “Roger.”

  Rayford Steele looked at Christopher, who began changing the settings to turn the monstrous wide-body around and get it headed back toward the States. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Rayford said over the intercom, “we’re not going to be able to land in Europe. We’re headed back to Chicago. We’re almost exactly halfway to our original destination, so we will not have a fuel problem. I hope this puts your minds at ease somewhat. I will let you know when we are close enough to begin using your cell phones. Until I do, you will do yourself a favor by not trying.”

  When the captain had come back on the intercom with the information about returning to the United States, Buck Williams was surprised to hear applause throughout the cabin. Shocked and terrified as everyone was, most were from the States and wanted at least to return to familiarity to sort this thing out. Buck nudged the businessman on his right. “I’m sorry, friend, but you’re going to want to be awake for this.”

  The man peered at Buck with a disgusted look and slurred, “If we’re not crashin’, don’t bother me.”

  Later, when Captain Rayford Steele was finally able to take a minute from flying tasks, he used the satellite phone to dial an all-news radio outlet and learned the far-reaching effects of the disappearance of people from every continent. Communication lines were jammed. Medical, technical, and service people were among the missing all over the world. Every civil service agency was on full emergency status, trying to handle the unending tragedies. Rayford had covered terrorist attacks and was reminded how the hospitals and fire and police units brought everyone in to work. He could imagine that now, multiplied thousands of times.

  Even the newscasters’ voices were terror filled, as much as they tried to mask it. Every conceivable explanation was proffered, but overshadowing all such discussion and even coverage of the carnage were the practical aspects. What people wanted from the news was simple information on how to get where they were going and how to contact their loved ones to determine if they were still around. Rayford was instructed to get in a multistate traffic pattern that would allow him to land at O’Hare at a precise moment. Only two runways were open, and every large plane in the country seemed headed that way. Thousands were dead in plane crashes and car pileups. Emergency crews were trying to clear expressways and runways, all the while grieving over loved ones and coworkers who had disappeared. One report said that so many cabbies had disappeared from the cab corral at O’Hare that volunteers were being brought in to move the cars that had been left running with the former drivers’ clothes still on the seats.

  Cars driven by people who spontaneously disappeared had careened out of control, of course. The toughest chore for emergency personnel was to determine who had disappeared, who was killed, and who was injured, and then to communicate that to the survivors.

  When Rayford was close enough to communicate to the tower at O’Hare, he asked if they would try to connect him by phone to his home. He was laughed off. “Sorry, Captain, but phone lines are so jammed and phone personnel so spotty that the only hope is to get a dial tone and use a phone with a redial button.”

  Rayford filled the passengers in on the extent of the phenomenon and pleaded with them to remain calm. “There is nothing we can do on this plane that will change the situation. My plan is to get you on the ground as quickly as possible in Chicago so you can have access to some answers and, I hope, some help.”

  The in-flight phone embedded in the back of the seat in front of Buck Williams was not assembled with external modular connections the way most phones were. Buck imagined that Pan-Con Airlines would soon be replacing these relics to avoid complaints from computer users. But Buck guessed that inside the phone the connection was standard and that if he could somehow get in there without damaging the phone, he could connect his computer’s modem directly to the line. His own cell phone was not cooperating at this altitude.

  In front of him, Harold’s wife rocked and whimpered, her face buried in her hands. The executive next to Buck snored. Before drinking himself into oblivion soon after takeoff, he had said something about a major meeting in Scotland. Would he be surprised by the view upon landing!

  All around Buck, people cried, prayed, and talked. Flight attendants offered snacks and drinks, but few accepted. Having preferred an aisle seat for a little more legroom, Buck was
now glad he was partially hidden near the window. He removed from his computer bag a tiny tool kit he had never expected to use, and went to work on the phone.

  Disappointed to find no modular connection even inside the housing, he decided to play amateur electrician. These phone lines always have the same color wires, he decided, so he opened his computer and cut the wire leading to the female connector. Inside the phone, he cut the wire and sliced off the protective rubber coating. Sure enough, the four inner wires from both computer and phone looked identical. In a few minutes, he had spliced them together.

  Buck tapped out a quick message to his executive editor, Steve Plank, in New York, telling of his destination. “I will bang out all I know, and I’m sure this will be just one of many similar stories. But at least this will be up to the minute, as it happens. Whether it will be of any use, I don’t know. The thought hits me, Steve, that you may be among the missing. How would I know? You know my computer address. Let me know you’re still with us.”

  He stored the note and set up his modem to send it to New York in the background, while he was working on his own writing. At the top of the screen a status bar flashed every twenty seconds, informing him that the connection to his ramp on the information superhighway was busy. He kept working.

  The senior flight attendant startled him several pages into his own reflections and feelings. “What in the world are you doing?” she said, leaning in to stare at the mess of wires leading from his laptop to the in-flight phone. “I can’t let you do that.”

  He glanced at her name tag. “Listen, beautiful Hattie, are we or are we not looking at the end of the world as we know it?”

  “Don’t patronize me, sir. I can’t let you sit here and vandalize airline property.”

  “I’m not vandalizing it. I’m adapting it in an emergency. With this I can hopefully make a connection where nothing else will work.”

  “I can’t let you do it.”

  “Hattie, can I tell you something?”

  “Only that you’re going to put that sat phone back the way you found it.”

  “I will.”

  “Now.”

  “No, I won’t do that.”

  “That’s the only thing I want to hear.”

  “I understand that, but please listen.”

  The man next to Buck stared at him and then at Hattie. He swore, then used a pillow to cover his right ear, pressing his left against the seat back.

  Hattie grabbed a computer printout from her pocket and located Buck’s name. “Mr. Williams, I expect you to cooperate. I don’t want to bother the pilot with this.”

  Buck reached for her hand. She stiffened but didn’t pull away. “Can we talk for just a second?”

  “I’m not going to change my mind, sir. Now please, I have a plane full of frightened people.”

  “Aren’t you one of them?” He was still holding her hand.

  She pursed her lips and nodded.

  “Wouldn’t you like to make contact with someone? If this works, I can reach people who can make phone calls for you, let your family know you’re all right, even get a message back to you. I haven’t destroyed anything, and I promise I can put it back the way I found it.”

  “You can?”

  “I can.”

  “And you’d help me?”

  “Anything. Give me some names and phone numbers. I’ll send them in with what I’m trying to upload to New York, and I’ll insist that someone make the calls for you and report back to me. I can’t guarantee I’ll get through or that if I do they’ll get back to me, but I will try.”

  “I’d be grateful.”

  “And can you protect me from other overly zealous flight attendants?”

  Hattie managed a smile. “They might all want your help.”

  “This is a long shot as it is. Just keep everybody away from me, and let me keep trying.”

  “Deal,” she said, but she looked troubled.

  “Hattie, you’re doing the right thing,” he said. “It’s OK in a situation like this to think of yourself a little. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “But everybody’s in the same boat, sir. And I have responsibilities.”

  “You have to admit, when people disappear, some rules go out the window.”

  Rayford Steele sat ashen-faced in the cockpit. Half an hour from touchdown in Chicago, he had told the passengers everything he knew. The simultaneous disappearance of millions all over the globe had resulted in chaos far beyond imagination. He complimented everyone on remaining calm and avoiding hysterics, although he had received reports of doctors on board who handed out Valium like candy.

  Rayford had been forthright, the only way he knew to be. He realized he had told the people more than he might have if he’d lost an engine or his hydraulics or even his landing gear. He had been frank with them that those who had not had loved ones disappear might get home to discover that they had been victims of the many tragedies that had ensued.

  He thought, but didn’t say, how grateful he was to have been in the air when this event had taken place. What confusion must await them on the ground! Here, in a literal sense, they were above it all. They had been affected, of course. People were missing from everywhere. But except for the staff shortage caused by the disappearance of three crew members, the passengers didn’t suffer the way they might have had they been in traffic or if he and Christopher had been among those who had disappeared.

  As he settled into a holding pattern miles from O’Hare, the full impact of the tragedy began to come into view. Flights from all over the country were being rerouted to Chicago. Planes were reorganized based on their fuel supplies. Rayford needed to stay in priority position after flying across the eastern seaboard and then over the Atlantic before turning back. It was not Rayford’s practice to communicate with ground control until after he landed, but now the air traffic control tower was recommending it. He was informed that visibility was excellent, despite intermittent smoke from wreckages on the ground, but that landing would be risky and precarious because the two open runways were crowded with jets. They lined either side, all the way down the runway. Every gate was full, and none were backing out. Every mode of human transport was in use, busing passengers from the ends of the runways back to the terminal.

  But, Rayford was told, he would likely find that his people—at least most of them—would have to walk all the way. All remaining personnel had been called in to serve, but they were busy directing planes to safe areas. The few buses and vans were reserved for the handicapped, elderly, and flight crews. Rayford passed the word along that his crew would be walking.

  Passengers reported that they had been unable to get through even on the in-flight satellite phones. Hattie Durham told Rayford that one enterprising passenger in first class had somehow hooked up the phone to his computer, and while he composed messages it was automatically dialing and redialing New York. If a line opened, this would be the guy who got through.

  By the time the plane began its descent into Chicago, Buck had been able to squeeze onto only one briefly freed-up connection to his computer service, which prompted him to download his waiting mail. This came just as Hattie announced that all electronic devices must be turned off.

  With an acumen he didn’t realize he possessed, Buck speed-tapped the keys that retrieved and filed all his messages, downloaded them, and backed him out of the linkup in seconds. Just when his machine might have interfered with flight communications, he was off-line and would have to wait to search his files for news from friends, coworkers, relatives, anyone.

  Before her last-minute preparations for landing, Hattie hurried to Buck. “Anything?” He shook his head apologetically. “Thanks for trying,” she said. And she began to weep.

  He reached for her wrist. “Hattie, we’re all going to go home and cry today. But hang in there. Get your passengers off the plane, and you can at least feel good about that.”

  “Mr. Williams,” she sobbed, “you know we lost several ol
d people, but not all of them. And we lost several middle-aged people, but not all of them. And we lost several people your age and my age, but not all of them. We even lost some teenagers.”

  He stared at her. What was she driving at?

  “Sir, we lost every child and baby on this plane.”

  “How many were there?”

  “More than a dozen. But all of them! Not one was left.”

  The man next to Buck roused and squinted at the late-morning sun burning through the window. “What in blazes are you two talking about?” he said.

  “We’re about to land in Chicago,” Hattie said. “I’ve got to run.”

  “Chicago?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Buck said.

  The man nearly sat in Buck’s lap to get a look out the window, his boozy breath enveloping Buck. “What, are we at war? Riots? What?”

  Having just cut through the cloud bank, the plane allowed passengers a view of the Chicago area. Smoke. Fire. Cars off the road and smashed into each other and guardrails. Planes in pieces on the ground. Emergency vehicles, lights flashing, picking their way around the debris.

  As O’Hare came into view, it was clear no one was going anywhere soon. There were planes as far as the eye could see, some crashed and burning, the others gridlocked in line. People trudged through the grass and between vehicles toward the terminal. The expressways that led to the airport looked like they had during the great Chicago blizzards, only without the snow.

  Cranes and wreckers were trying to clear a path through the front of the terminal so cars could get in and out, but that would take hours, if not days. A snake of humanity wended its way slowly out of the great terminal buildings, between the motionless cars, and onto the ramps. People walking, walking, walking, looking for a cab or a limo. Buck began plotting how he would beat the new system. Somehow, he had to get moving and get out of such a congested area. The problem was, his goal was to get to a worse one: New York.