Authors: Dean M. Cole
Retarding the throttles a shade while applying enough forward stick pressure to maintain their separation, she allowed the F-22 to drift aft.
Finally, the ejection seat came into view. With the light still in her mouth, Sandy tilted her head back.
"Oh my god!" she gasped around the metal cylinder clamped in her teeth, almost dropping it.
Its lower half still encased in a G-suit, the pilot's empty flightsuit sat on the seat. His upside down helmet and oxygen mask rested on top of the piled garments. The helmet's inner liner, visible in the wan light, showed no sign of damage. Sandy saw nothing of Major Stillson. The garments and equipment formed the rough outline of the pilot. However, nothing else remained, no body or any part of it.
Shattering her shocked trance, a computerized voice shouted with programmed urgency. "Terrain! Terrain! Pull up! Pull up!"
This time, Sandy did drop the flashlight. Wide-eyed, she looked forward. An upside down snow-covered mountain was dead ahead. Still inverted, she jammed the stick forward, sending her fighter rocketing up. A split-second later, a blinding explosion illuminated her cockpit as the F-18 slammed into the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
Rocky outcroppings, followed by streaks of snow-covered surfaces, flashed past her inverted canopy. Under the extreme negative G-forces, every beat of Sandy's racing heart pumped more blood and pressure into her upper extremities. Threatening to rob her of consciousness, blood pooled in her head. There was no time to maneuver. It was all she could do to keep her fighter off the rocks. Unable to flip the plane, Sandy pushed the stick harder as a cliff came into view. Pinned to the canopy's underside, the dropped Maglite danced like a trapped bumblebee. Grunting against the pain building in her head, she watched as the rocky surface passed a few short feet beyond the vibrating flashlight.
Then the mountain was gone. Her fighter rocketed straight up, the whizzing rocks replaced by a disorientingly motionless backdrop of stars, the half-moon filling the front of her canopy.
"Space Control, this is Turtle One, over."
No reply.
"Come in, Space Control," Victor repeated, stress cracking his voice.
Exchanging glances with Richard, Jake shared Lieutenant Croft's despair. Whatever it turned out to be, he was sure the alien energy sphere portended a dark evil.
Wanting a closer view, Jake repositioned the
Turtle
. Swinging in well behind the mysterious squadron, he brought it to a stationary hover five hundred miles above central North America.
On the hologram, he watched Colonel Newcastle's squadron bare down on the alien ship. Having wreaked its havoc over DC, it now moved northeast. As Jake watched it slide over Chesapeake Bay, a crushing realization hit him. "Oh my god. It's heading to New York!"
"Shit!" Richard and Vic replied, both as pale as Jake felt.
He placed his right hand back into the flight controller. "We need to find out what that ship did." Seeing a protest forming on Vic's lips, Jake held up a hand. "I want to know what they plan for New York."
Nodding, Richard panned the hologram, centering it on their current location. He brought his hands together in a macro zoom-out gesture. The ground fell away, and the enemy ship shrank. All of North America entered the field of view. The red pulsing holographic renderings of two additional enemy ships slid into view. One glided over Central America. Over California, the other accelerated northbound, a trail of destruction and the San Francisco Bay Area in its wake.
With a grim face, Richard pointed at the other two ships. "And, the rest of the world, for that matter."
Jake barely registered the comment. The image of the West Coast destruction and the apparent attack of the San Francisco area hit him like a freight train. All this time, he'd been too engrossed in the events over the East Coast to consider what Sandy might be doing. Now, she was all he could think of. Had she and her squadron been thrown at that ship? No fighters had attacked the first ship, but that might have been a timing issue. He looked to the west. Was she still alive?
Victor's anxious voice snapped Jake from his thoughts. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" Victor asked. "There could be radiation and god knows what else waiting for us down there."
Jake's patience evaporated. "Damn it Vic! That's a chance we'll have to take! Millions, fuck that, billions of lives are at stake! Unless we know what we're dealing with, we don't stand a chance!" Jake paused, casting a forlorn look at the ship plowing through the atmosphere over Chesapeake Bay. "Hell, even that probably won't be enough." He faced Victor, again. "But, dammit, we have to try."
Looking like a scolded dog, Vic backed off. "Sorry."
"Jake is right. We need to get in there and find out what happened," Richard said.
Not waiting for Vic's reply, Jake actuated the controls. The ship rocketed toward DC. In less than a minute, they were blazing through the atmosphere over Western Maryland.
"Look, there's still traffic moving in this area," Richard said, pointing at an ant-like line of vehicles streaming along an unknown Interstate.
Jake slowed their approach. Progressing east, they continued to descend. In the course of a few miles, the traffic along the Interstate tapered off, finally dropping to zero.
"There are no cars here, moving or not," Richard said.
Victor pointed farther up the highway. "Look up there,"
To the east, a huge traffic jam capped off the long expanse of an empty roadway. Smoke billowed from several points. Ominously, beyond that, all activity ceased: cars, buses, trucks, everything sat dead-still.
"Whatever it was, it ended there," Jake said pointing at the leading edge of smoking cars. "Everyone outside of its influence kept driving."
"That would explain the long stretch of empty interstate we're passing over," Richard said.
Mute, Victor stared east through the view-wall.
Passing over the smoldering vehicles, Jake brought the ship to a high hover. Studying the orientation of them, he saw a pattern. The pileups congregated at curves and intersections while straight-line sections of the road were relatively clear.
A glint of movement caught his eye. Scanning for its source, Jake made a shocked double take. "Hey, look there!" he screamed, pointing off to their left. Flying much lower than the
Turtle
, a large passenger jet was skimming across the ground at tree top level. It was north of them. Moving opposite their approach, it headed west.
Vic followed his line of sight and froze. "Oh my god." Then, he smiled. "It looks like some people made it through. That had to have come from DC."
Jake saw little puffs of smoke coming off the fuselage and wings as it started clipping treetops.
"Oh no," Richard whispered.
Vic's smile collapsed. "Why aren't they pulling up?" he screamed.
The impacts accelerated its descent, slamming the passenger jet into the ground. The plane burst into a racing ball of flame. The conflagration consumed everything for the next half of a mile.
They all stood in quiet shock.
After a few moments, Richard broke the silence. "I don't think there was anyone still alive or conscious to control the plane."
"Me neither," Jake said.
"That can't be," Vic protested.
Richard pointed through the view-wall. "Vic! Look at the cars and trucks. I don't see one person moving. Not a single car, truck, bus, or van is trying to get through the streets."
Lieutenant Croft studied the surreal scene in silence and then dropped his head in capitulation.
Jake realized his junior wingman was trembling.
"That's why I didn't want to come here," he whispered. When Vic looked up, tears fell from his eyes. "My mom was visiting DC this week. I didn't want to know this. I didn't want to lose hope."
Jake and Richard stood in shocked silence. Richard's face looked like Jake felt.
"Oh shit, I'm sorry—" Richard started.
"Don't worry about it," Vic snapped, shaking his head. As he stared through the view-wall, a range of emotions paraded across the lieutenant's face. Jake was shocked to see a sardonic smile in the mix. After a moment, Victor seemed to collect himself. His voice took on a steadier tone. "Let's just go find out what the hell happened."
Nodding, Jake turned back to the view-wall. Seeing DC on the eastern horizon, he guided the
Turtle
toward it. "We need to talk with Space Control. They'll have a better idea of what's going on. Hundreds of feet of earth and stone protected them. The weapon must've fried their aboveground radios. Since we can't reach them that way, we'll just have to go visit them."
Moments later, they were on final approach to the Pentagon. Jake activated the landing gear and brought the ship to a high hover. As they descended vertically toward its expansive central courtyard, he had a flare of hope and optimism. He halted the
Turtle's
descent and pointed northeast. "Look!"
Across the river from them, over the lake in front of the Jefferson Memorial, flocks of birds were coming in to land.
As he scanned the surrounding area from their high hover, Jake's hopes faltered. No one walked within the marina to the northeast. The repeated lift and drop of a security gate was the only movement in the northwest parking lot. Hitting the hood of a stalled car, the gate lifted. A moment later, it dropped onto the hood again, repeating the cycle.
Aside from the pattern of crashes he'd noticed earlier, there was no rhyme or reason to the placement of the various vehicles left strewn throughout the city streets. Some were in the middle of intersections, others had run up on the curb.
Jake rotated the
Turtle
. Just south of the Pentagon, a huge collection of smoldering vehicles filled a curving section of I-395. Piled up on the outside corner of the turn, it appeared the drivers had forgotten to follow the curving white lines.
He and Richard exchanged worried looks.
"Let's go find out what the hell is going on," Jake said. Rotating the
Turtle
to face north, he lowered it into the Pentagon's center courtyard. A moment later, they landed in a clearing between the Ground Zero Café and the northern courtyard entrance.
Shutting down the ship, Richard secured all of its systems. Each lost in thought, they wordlessly proceeded to the airlock and exited the ship.
Passing through the outer door, an unexpected air of normalcy struck Jake.
"Do you hear that?" Richard asked. "I don't know what I expected to hear, but it wasn't this."
Jake nodded. To his surprise, everything sounded and looked perfectly normal. Over the ever-present sound of urban machinery, he could hear birds chirping, the sound periodically dampened by rustling leaves as a light southerly breeze blew through the trees. Somewhere, elevator music droned from a loudspeaker.
"Look, by the entrance. Are those bodies?" Vic asked. He started jogging toward the north end of the courtyard.
Exchanging confused glances, Jake and Richard followed.
With mounting unease, Jake studied the dark shapes scattered about the stairs. "Something doesn't look right."
They arrived to find small piles of clothes, each grouping arranged as if the person wearing it had vaporized. The garments had dropped in place, socks still in shoes, ties still wrapped around collars.
In a surreal moment of disconnected reality, a new tune, an orchestral waltz, blared from the overhead speaker as Victor searched through a pile at the top of the stairs. He stood up, holding a ring.
Jake saw the single-star rank insignia of a US Army brigadier general on the uniform's epaulets.
After studying the ring for a moment, Vic handed it to him. "It's a West Point class ring."
Jake turned it over in his hands. "Class of 1986."
Richard stood from his investigation of a separate pile. "There's nothing. They're just … gone."
Like an icy snake seeking a warm shelter, a shudder slithered up Jake's spine and wrapped around his heart. Turning from the two, he walked to the main doors of the north courtyard entrance. "Let's get down to Command."
They passed into the foyer. As they moved beyond the range of the courtyard's surreal melodic cacophony and into the silent interior, their footfalls echoed off the walls.
Walking down the long corridor, they checked each office. Collections of uniforms, dresses, and suits congregated below every exterior window.
Jake nodded at a particularly large pile in front of a wide briefing room's window. "They must have been watching the ship hovering overhead."
The other two nodded in reverent silence.
Turning from the room, they continued the emotionally onerous search. Jake felt overwhelming despair tugging at his chilled heart. W
hat happened to everyone, where did their bodies go?
Victor slipped, arms flailing as he fought to catch his balance. Water sprayed from his surging feet. Grabbing a door jam, he arrested the fall.
Over his panting, Jake heard the sound of splashing water coming through the doorway Victor was clutching.
Seeking the source of the sound, all three peered into the room. It had vending machines along one wall and a kitchenette along the other. It was a break room. Half-eaten meals sat on the room's two dining tables. The same mixed groups of clothes lay in crumpled piles in front of the exterior window. Although, these sat in a pool of water.
Turning to the source of the noise, Jake saw a blouse draped over the edge of the kitchenette's sink, its arm hanging over the faucet's lever. A skirt, undergarments, and heels sat beneath the miniature waterfall cascading over the sink's front. Having flooded the entire break room, the water now flowed into the hallway. Victor walked to the sink and shut it off, staunching the flow. He stood there, unmoving, head down studying the blouse.
Standing in the doorway, Richard gave Jake a meaningful look.
Jake nodded. Walking up to Lieutenant Croft, he placed an arm around his shoulders. "Come on, buddy, we have to get—"
"They're all gone," Victor said, crumpling to his knees on the flooded floor. "They're all dead!" he screamed through his hands, voice cracking with the weight of it.