Loss Of Reason, Miles A. Maxwell [electronic reader txt] 📗

“Second, our job is to control debris!” Colonel Marsh explained. “What search quadrant were you flying?”

“Seventy-second street. West side. Uh, sir, it’s getting pretty damned hot, even up there.”

“Mueller’s just yellow!” a second pilot spat through clenched teeth.

“Sir,” the first pilot shot back, “it’s raining atomic fallout over there! If we fly another mission we’re in danger of being poisoned. We absorbed more that last flight through the chopper’s skin than all our other missions combined!”

“No reason we can’t wear radiation suits,” the second pilot shot back.

“How are we supposed to fly in a rad-suit, sir?”

General Anders roared up in an old staff car, one of the few still working. Shaven head, long military coat with sheepskin collar. He flew from the back seat.

“Report, Colonel.”

Marsh began explaining the progress with the tents, power and hospital facilities. The radiation picked up by the last three helicopters he’d sent in.

“Perhaps we ought to relocate our hospital facilities back some,” Anders agreed.

“Colonel!” The third pilot blurted as he ran up out of breath. “Unauthorized personnel snooping around our helicopters!” He swallowed and before Marsh could respond, added, “Uh — with what looked like a radiation counter!”

“We cannot have civilians taking radiation readings off our helicopters!”

“Uh, excuse me, Colonel Marsh, General.” A sergeant had been standing by, leaning foot to foot like he had to go to the bathroom. Anders’ and Marsh’s eyes shot to him. “I — I’m not sure,” he said hesitantly, “I think I saw him too. He scooped some dirt off the landing gear of one chopper into a water bottle —”

“What!” Anders yelled. “We can’t have that! Arrest him!”

“Yes sir. He disappeared somewhere into the row of jets here. I spoke to the same guy earlier this morning. He said he came on a Williams jet.”

“Describe him.”

“Long dark hair. Leather jacket. Blue eyes.”

“Well, search every single aircraft if you have to. Start on this end and work your way back.”

“There’s a big Williams Gulfstream up a little ways,” one of Marsh’s men said.

“That minister at the gate this morning, Sarge?” another man put in.

“You seen him?” the sergeant barked.

“He just got into that small Lear up at the beginning of the row. The one with Williams painted on it. I went past a minute ago and the door was closed. I think it’s leaving for the runway right now.”

Anders turned to Marsh. “I want three men.”

“Sergeant Rodriquez,” Marsh commanded, “you, Bell and Zimmer follow the general’s staff car . . .”

Holding Melissa in his lap, Franklin looked back through the cockpit door at the people traveling with them. Fourteen children and adults were belted to the white leather seats. There was a sense they were consciously avoiding the luggage door that shielded the wide black rubber bag — the way the parents had placed their kids away from the aisle.

The owl was shaking.

A single worry pushed the rest away: This owl looks pretty sick — that young woman, her little boy, the two old people who brought them too. Will Melissa be next?

He watched the jet two ahead turn onto the runway and accelerate to takeoff speed. Two old green staff cars with large stars on their doors sped down the opposite taxiway.

“What’re they doing?” Everon said.

The cars crossed the runway and stopped abruptly at Hunt’s smaller Lear, two jets back. Soldiers jumped from the cars. One banged on the Learjet’s door.

“That’s General Anders. And that security guard Vandersommen is with him!”

“They think we’re in there,” Everon said. “Whoa!” Bushes whipped around outside, then bent over. Just as suddenly, all was still.

“I — I think they might actually be looking for me,” Franklin said.

Globs of black pelted across the jet’s windshield. Big sloppy chunks.

Franklin leaned forward to see back through the cockpit window. It was falling all over the wings.

“Will the jet take off with that stuff on it?” he asked. “I remember you saying even a little snow can really cut a plane’s lift. That stuff looks a lot heavier than a little snow.”

“Unless it slides off. It increases the required runway length. A bunch. And we’re fully loaded.”

Franklin grabbed Chuck’s meter. He extended its probe. Waved it around the cockpit’s ceiling and walls. “It’s radioactive! The windshield’s off the scale! What do we do?”

Without waiting for a change in clearance, Everon made an illegal turn onto a runway access closer than the one assigned, braked the big jet and keyed his mic.

“Gulfstream — Five-Five-Six-Six-Sierra-Whiskey to Teterboro tower. Ready to depart Runway Two-Four.”

For many, many miles the second fish had been swimming patiently beneath the water’s surface. Nowhere near its planned destination, its nose hammered directly into shore. To the fish’s small but potent brain, the impact made one thing clear:

It had arrived.

Eight shakes of a second later it became nothing more than a ball of pure expanding energy.

Jet Confusion

Hunt’s Learjet joined the line of those waiting to depart. Two old green staff cars roared along the taxiway and screeched to a stop beneath Hunt’s wing. Out stormed General Anders.

Through the Lear’s front window, Hunt watched Everon taxi the big Gulfstream into position. A moment later, the monstrous WILLIAMS helicopter came overhead and turned south.

A fist pounded on the Learjet’s door. Hunt rose from his seat and opened the door himself.

“Mr. Williams?” Anders’ face tight, eyes squinting. “What are you — ? Who’s in your plane?”

“Everon Student. He’s going out west to pick up equipment and personnel.”

“Out west? Where?” Anders asked.

“Nevada,” Hunt replied. “Talk to him about it when he gets back. He’s returning to Pennsylvania to work for me.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Doing what?”

“Restoring my company’s part of the power grid.”

“Is there a dark-haired man in a black leather jacket with him?”

“Yes. Why?”

Big black blobs fell on the general’s windshield, the plane’s wings. A chunk of the stuff fell on the general’s shoulder.

“What do you call that?” Hunt asked.

The general’s eyes went big. “Crap!”

“Exactly.” Without another word, Hunt stepped back and pulled the door.

Anders threw himself into his car, hand out. “Give me the mic!”

There was no answer from the tower. Everon began to wonder, will they clear us? “Take that headset, Bro.” He pointed to a switch. “Make sure everybody’s buckled in tight.”

“Please make certain your seat belts are secure,” Franklin announced over the intercom, looking back into the cabin. Children held on parents’ laps. Every seat was full.

A familiar controller’s voice came over the radio. “Teterboro tower to Gulfstream Sierra-Whiskey —”

“Sue!” Everon whispered.

“Cleared for takeoff, Runway Two-Four. Have a safe flight.”

Everon put a hand on the throttle, ready to push up the engines, when a black kitten with matted fur skittered frightfully across the runway in front of them.

“How much worse can it get?” Franklin muttered to no one in particular.

“Probably a lot,” Everon replied nodding to their right, and gave the big Gulf full throttle. Off the jet’s right side a mob of thousands was climbing the airport fence. They disappeared behind.

Long seconds later, he eased back half an inch on the yoke. The jet didn’t lift.

“What’s going on?” Franklin asked.

“That goo’s giving us a real problem,” Everon said through clenched teeth, easing the yoke back still farther.

The runway ahead shrank to nothing.

“That flight never received military authorization,” Anders shouted at the tower. “I understand they’ve got bodies in there! No one’s seen their death certificates. And we can’t have them spreading rumors of radioactivity scares and panicking people!”

“Your people approved the flight,” The female voice radioed back.

“We thought it was Hunt Williams aboard. This is a direct violation of Emergency Executive Order 16-176. No unauthorized flights until national radar coverage has been re-established.”

“Too late, sir.” Anders’ sergeant interrupted.

The big jet was already rolling, gaining speed.

“Goddammit!” Anders roared.

“Why isn’t he lifting off?” the sergeant mumbled.

Ignoring him, Anders steeled back an angry retort then let out a blast of air.

“General, sir!” Colonel Marsh from the second car, braving the black chunks, tapped on the general’s window. “Sir!”

Anders lowered the glass. “What is it?”

“We’ve lost all communications with Washington!”

“What?”

“I was talking to General Thompson’s aide for you at the Pentagon and — they just weren’t there anymore. It’s like there’s nothing there.”

“Is it the satellite again?”

“I don’t think so. It never came back.”

With less than two hundred feet to spare, the Gulfstream’s nose left the ground. The rear wheels weren’t going to clear the airport boundary fence.

They did.

Everon felt like they missed the trees by inches. Immediately he banked west.

Straight into the nearest rain cloud he could find.

Vandersommen, the security guard who’d tried to prevent the brothers going in to rescue their family, stood on the Teterboro ramp watching the jet fly away as the first fat black drops came down.

The airport’s conical red windsock rotated randomly. North. East. Then south. The windsock hung limp against the pole.

And then it blew.

General Anders’ call to move had come too late. Tents flared and billowed in the cold increasing wind. Dark, gooey drops left stinging red marks on the skin of half a million Teterboro refugees.

Meters came out.

Radiation! A lot of it.

The black rain poured down. The cold dark water gathered in rivulets. The rivulets became streams that flowed through the tents, deadly even to the touch.

“Get out!” a confusion of voices exploded.

“Run!”