Just as he started to leave, he saw the first flash of light.
Then another.
He expected an instant loss of power, but that didn’t happen. He knew it would.
“Was that a nuke?” Carillo asked.
“I don’t know,” Staab answered. “I’m not seeing any fire. Maybe it was something else. Biological maybe, conventional.”
Abe couldn’t take it. It was over. The first impact sent him into a state of despair.
He wasn’t going to stand in that cockpit, watch the world go ablaze and then witness first hand as the plane nosedived powerless from the sky.
He exited, shut the cockpit door and went immediately to the galley.
He grabbed a handful of liquor bottles, uncapped them and downed them quickly. He consumed at least four while standing there, then another two as he walked straight through a crowded first class into the main cabin.
It was dark. He looked about the passengers, they were sleeping and so unaware of their horrible fate that lay head. He spotted only a few who were still awake. One, a women, she locked eyes with him as if she knew something was up.
He acknowledged her, then Abe took the first empty seat, buckled his belt and waited.
It would only be a matter of minutes and it would be over.
Abe expected the landing to not go well, for the plane to lose power and the nose to break off the second they hit ground. He did not, however, expect to live.
Though he had buckled in, he didn’t plan on taking the crash position. Part of the protection of bracing was the seat in front and Abe took an empty seat in the front row.
The plane had descended quite a bit and hadn’t lost power, for a split second Abe was hopeful.
Maybe they could land the plane.
Then in the midst of the flight attendants ‘brace’ chant, the cabin brightened as the residual flash from bombs hundreds of miles way flowed into the plane. And the interior remained illuminated. The aircraft picked up speed, angling forward.
The moment the craft went quiet and the engines all lost power, Abe made a last second decision to brace.
He placed his head as close to his knees as he could, grabbed his ankles and the impact came a second later.
His buckle snapped. Sending him flying forward into the separation wall and the folded upright crew seat… Because of his bent over position his shoulder made the connection first. Abe didn’t recall much of the remaining sixty or so seconds of the crash, only that he curled his body as tightly as he could into a ball and held on to that seat.
When it was done, he was alive.
So were others. They screamed and cried in fear.
Uninjured, Abe stood and had the wind knocked out of him, not by anything physical, but rather by seeing that a cooling rod had impaled his seat. Had he not bent over that would have been in his chest.
On that particular plane, passengers boarded through a door located just behind first class, that door, however was gone. His first inclination was to leave, but he couldn’t see anything, only an illuminated cloud around them. The air was cold, and he didn’t smell any fire.
The moans and cries of people called to him and since he wasn’t hurt, he had an obligation to help. Just as he turned to make his way into the galley he watched a huge cloud of dust blasting from the front of the plane.
Covering his mouth, he faced the wall of the plane until the debris had rolled by. It moved with a force causing a prickling pain against his bare arms as it hit him. The dust settled low to the floor causing people to cough and choke.
In the darkness he made his way into the galley. He knew there was a flashlight there and the vodka could be used to clean wounds. Plus there was a canister of oxygen.
It was overwhelming.
All he heard was people calling out.
“Help me.”
“Someone.”
“Margret! Are you there?”
“Oh, God, help me.”
“Mom! Mom!”
“Can someone help me?”
Found them.
Abe flicked on the flashlight, placed vodka in his pockets and tucked the oxygen under his arm. His immediate thought was to go to the small first class section, knowing they took the brunt of the crash. But there was no movement, no noise, yet cooler air flowed into that compartment. The cockpit was definitely gone.
When he turned again to go back into the main cabin, he saw people standing, looking around, or helping others. A couple of people fled from the plane.
The man that was seated next to him in that row was slumped over and still buckled in. Abe walk to him and felt for a pulse, but as soon as his hand touched his throat, Abe knew the man’s neck had been snapped and was broken.
There were so many people needing help, Abe didn’t know where to go. Then he heard the sound of motors and he looked out the door to see headlights heading their way.
Agent Staab did indeed call for help. That call probably had those individuals at a distance from the nuclear blast.
“Hey over here!” a man called to Abe.
Abe looked to his left, a man was trying to assist the woman next to him.
“She’s not breathing. She was a second ago, then she coughed and that was it,” the man said panicked.
“Hold this.” Abe handed the man the oxygen and switched positions with the man. It was the woman he made eye contact with moments before the plane crashed. He felt her neck. “She’s dead.”
“She wasn’t a minute ago, I swear.”
Abe lifted the arms of the seats and placed the woman on her back across the seats. It wasn’t an ideal place to help her, but there wasn’t room anywhere else.
After listening for breath sounds, finding none, Abe began CPR.
He was at it for a while, with no success. It was long enough that the Schriever people in hazmat suits had rushed on board. They were just pulling people off left, right and hurriedly, too, disregarding injuries.
Just as he was about to give up, the woman coughed.
“I got her. She’s back. Give me that,” Abe requested of the oxygen bottle as he placed the mask on the woman. “Here. Here. Take a breath.”
The woman struggled against the mask, but Abe held on.
“You hurt?” he asked the man.
“Um… yeah.” The man exposed his stomach wound. “I don’t know how this happened.” He swayed. Before he toppled one of the Hazmat men grabbed him and immediately escorted him.
“Hey!” Abe called out. “Over here. I have one here.”
He grunted in frustration, debating on just carrying the woman out until one of the rescue workers said they’d be back and asked Abe to stay with her. He did, until they carried her to one of the trucks. He didn’t know how he was going to, but he promised he would find her later, and her response was for him to find her son.
The workers accepted his offer of help, but cautioned they had to move fast, and they’d deal with the injuries later. Fall out would begin in the hit areas, and it would take another thirty minutes until it reached them. Time was critical, radiation would be more deadly than the crash.
Abe would help as much as he could, but he would also keep an eye out for the woman’s son. He didn’t know what he looked like or how young he was, fortunately there weren’t many children on board. Abe would look, hopefully the child was okay and looking for his mother. He just wished he had a name, it would make his search so much easier.
NINE – Spread
Kit passed out, but woke up in the front seat of a fast moving pickup truck that smelled like old coffee and cigarettes. She sat up quickly in fear.
“Easy. You don’t want to hit your head.”