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Showing posts with label Harvest of Souls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harvest of Souls. Show all posts
Monday, July 12, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Harvest of Souls, Chapter Seven
Say Ye Not, A Confederacy
As first light shone across the Shenandoah Mountains, Marine Two Foxtrot flew in low over a nondescript complex of low, rectangular buildings, roads, and parking lots set in a clearing surrounded by a forest of tightly-clumped deciduous trees. Richard held Beth’s hand tight with one hand, a telephone with the other.
“You got Britain, France, and China? Good, see what you can do about the other nuclear powers. Let them know I’ll be down in a few minutes. Then I’ll need a meeting with the Joint Chiefs, and a sitrep from FEMA. The leadership of the House and Senate should be in on that,” he said, then was silent as the other person spoke.
“…The ceremony can wait a bit…at least until we’ve got things in motion,” Deming said heavily. Those who called Huckabee and Deming a ‘team of rivals’ engaged in massive understatement. As hard-fought as the primaries had been, Richard never wanted to get the Presidency this way, at the expense of the man’s life, and those of his whole family. The ceremony can wait. To raise his hand and take the President’s oath would be to pronounce President Huckabee dead…and Emilie, James, Aisha, and Ricky Junior, and everyone else who was among the vanished. “Thank you. We’re setting down now.”
“Welcome to Mount Weather, Mr. Vice President,” a Marine guard said as Richard, Beth, and the Football were whisked into the elevator he was protecting. Deming gave him a nod, as that was all he had time for. Moments later, the doors whisked open on a scene of barely-controlled chaos. FEMA agents talked on phones, typed at computers, or hurried to and fro with printouts and manila folders. Knots of Senators and Representatives stood huddled in their pajamas with their families, all pointedly bereft of younger children. Some of them simply stared blankly, like poleaxed steers. Others, spotting Richard and his entourage, hurried over and started talking all at once.
“Mr. Vice President—“
“What’s happened?”
“Where are our chil…
“…alien attack?”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll meet as soon as we can,” Richard said. “First I’ve got to talk to the other nuclear powers,” he said with a glance toward the Football. That silenced them.
“Godspeed, Mr. Vice President,” the chairman of the Ways and Means committee said as they parted to let him pass. A harried staffer was waiting for him.
“The teleconference is set up, Mr. Vice President,”
“You got them all?”
“Except for North Korea and Pakistan.” Deming suppressed a groan of irritation. “The North Koreans refused to talk, and we weren’t even able to get someone on the phone in Pakistan. Their ‘net servers are down too.”
“Their leadership disappeared?”
“We don’t know that, sir. Their government was precarious to begin with, and now…”
Richard exchanged a pained look with Beth. Both knew that reminders of the catastrophe, of their missing children, would not stop coming. Beth gave him a quick, fierce embrace as they reached the conference room door.
“I’ll see what I can do to help out here,” she said, then released him and turned back toward the members of Congress. Richard gave her a wan smile, then went inside. The conference room was sleek and futuristic, Japanese-style black lacquer and accents of white marble. He sat down in front of a wrap-around green screen and nodded to the technician.
“Um…sir?” the technician said, glancing at his “outfit.” Someone at the National Military Command Center had given him an Army T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.
“Just do it, I’m not going to keep them waiting while I get on a suit and tie.” Though he’d managed to talk briefly with the Russian President over the Hotline before getting America’s missile-defense radars back online, Richard wanted to speak with the rest of the nuclear club as soon as possible. Especially the ones engaged in miniature Cold War standoffs: India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran. The joker in the deck, North Korea, apparently wasn’t interested in talking. Not with the U.S. anyway.
The other places at the table were taken by tall parabolic high-definition screens. They flickered to life, conjuring 3-D images of the other nuclear-armed world leaders. They all looked as haggard as he did, but due to placement in more fortuitous time zones, they were all dressed “properly.”
“Thank you all for being here. In case you haven’t heard already, President Huckabee is among the missing. I will be assuming Presidential duties until he can be recovered, or we discover for sure that he can’t. We all have to face the biggest national emergency in the history of our countries right now, so I don’t want to take a lot of your time--”
“My condolences for your country’s losses, Mr. Vice President,” the Russian President said. “From what we have learned so far, your country has been hardest hit among the developed nations. Under the circumstances, perhaps the United States should not be the nation coordinating our response to the crisis.”
“I’m not jockeying for position here, Dmitry Adreievich. No nation on Earth is responsible for what’s happened. The primate house behavior has got to stop. We have a common enemy now.” What if Mike was right? What if our ‘enemy’ is God? Richard thought, but he pushed it aside. First, keep people from nuking each other. Then find out if this is the Rapture or not. “If any of you knows the best way to respond to this crisis, I’ll be happy to go along. But right now—“
“We must neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal immediately!” President Patil of India said. “If militants should seize power—“
“Do you intend to continue President Huckabee’s policy on Iran’s arsenal?” the Israeli Prime minister asked. “We will not accept an Iranian Bomb!”
“We have two Bombs. You have two hundred, or more! Which you have been lying about for decades!” the Iranian President snapped.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” Richard shouted. “There’s two things we’ve all got to agree to do right now. One: let’s not make things worse than they already are. No mushroom clouds blooming over anybody’s cities. No preemptive strikes. Two: I want my kids back. I want your kids back. Some little tribe of Bushmen living in the Kalahari desert? I want their kids back! All of our grand strategies, our force deployments, our weapons procurement, our alliances, our foreign policies—all of that has to be focused on our kids and grandkids now. What else is there?”
“Do you really think we can get them back?” the British Prime Minister said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re up against, but I am convinced that our only chance is cooperation. It’s going to take all we can do just to maintain a semblance of order.” Dmitry’s eyes narrowed.
“You know more than you are telling us, Richard. I see it in your eyes.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘knowing,’” Richard said with a sigh. “Yesterday, this would have been crazy talk. The Rapture. Some of you may remember my debate with President Huckabee on foreign policy, when I grilled him about his belief in the Rapture. Well…this looks an awful lot like what President Huckabee and others like him have been talking about for years.”
“You mean, God taking all of the Christians away?” Dmitry replied. “I assure you, the churches in my country do not lack for attendance.”
“And what does that have to do with the children?” the French President asked.
“Well, the belief is that God would take the children too, ones younger than about 12 or so, what they call the ‘age of accountability.’ And as for the Christians in your countries, I think the idea is that God was only coming for the Christians who believe the same things as the Rapture Ready types. I’m not endorsing this idea, for all I know it’s aliens faking a Rapture the way the Spanish Conquistadors pulled one over on the Aztecs by playing the part of Quetzalcoatl.”
“But you think it could be true?” Dmitry asked. Richard gave him a lopsided grin. Now he was in the hot seat fielding questions about the Rapture.
“I’m not going to rule it out just because I hope it’s not. But I’m not going to just jump to it as a conclusion either. Whatever this is—“ Richard was interrupted by a military attaché entering the conference room and striding briskly over to him. He leaned over to whisper in Richard’s ear. Deming paled.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve just been informed that North Korea has started shelling Seoul and our defenses along the Demilitarized Zone with long range artillery. We can’t afford this distraction. Whoever or whatever took our kids could be just getting started. I’m going to be putting my country’s strategic forces on alert, but I want to do it in cooperation with the rest of you. Li, Dmitry, do you think you can get the North Koreans to stop?”
“Kim Jong-Il must be doing this because he feels he needs an external conflict to stabilize his regime. He may be too desperate to back down,” Li replied.
“Then I think the best approach is going to be a unified response from all of us with military forces in the theater, and we may need to include the Japanese. If they can’t be talked down, they’ll have to be taken down, as quickly as possible. Do we have an alliance?”
“What are your intentions for the Korean peninsula afterward? Unification with the South?” Li asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Maybe political unification with some kind of joint occupation of the North like we did with Germany after World War II. This is not about expanding American hegemony. This is about standing together to defend our world and keep human civilization alive. Do we have an alliance?”
“The anti-missile systems you have deployed against us, would you agree to relocate them?” Dmitry said. Upon taking office, President Huckabee had re-instituted the Bush policy of ringing Russia with forward-deployed anti-missile systems in allied nations in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and East Asia. The weapons had increased tensions with the Russians and led them to closer ties with China and Iran.
“In principle, yes. I can’t talk specifics until we can develop some kind of planetary defense strategy. I don’t know if those systems are going to be much use against whoever took our children, but that’s their purpose now. Get your military planners working on a way to coordinate your strategic defenses with ours and I’ll do the same. Do we have an alliance?”
“What if you become convinced that it is your Protestant God who has done this?” Dmitry asked.
“The God I believe in is the one who sent His Son to Earth with a choir of angels singing ‘Peace on Earth, good will towards men.’ My Jesus is the one who gave the Sermon on the Mount, and who went to the Cross instead of summoning twelve legions of angels to lay waste to the world. I don’t know of any place in the Bible where it says God will kidnap all of our children. But if I’m wrong, and it really is God, the creator of hundreds of billions of galaxies that did this to us, then honestly, what can we do?
“All I know is…humanity is under attack by something much more powerful than we are. If we can’t…at least try to stand together, to be on the same side for once, even now…to just try and keep our whole world from falling into war and chaos…what does that say about us? What does that say about us?”
There was silence for a moment as the other leaders looked each other in the eye.
“I cannot speak for others…but with Russia you have your alliance, Mr. Vice President.”
“We have an alliance,” Li Peng said.
One by one the leaders announced their solidarity, until it came around to the newest, and apart from North Korea, the least welcome member of the nuclear club.
“I…will need to speak with the Supreme Leader…but if I can bring him an assurance of security for our nation…”
“If you’re talking about the threat of a unilateral attack by Israel, I won’t stand for that,” Richard said, casting a warning glance toward the Israeli Prime Minister. “Nor will American forces be launching any attacks against Iran as long as we and our allies are not attacked by Iran. The only ‘assurance of security’ I can offer you is to have the United States and Israel as allies rather than as enemies.” He cast another hard glance at the Israeli Prime Minister, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable. “And yes, that means working out a Middle East peace that no one will like but everyone can accept.
“Making this work isn’t going to be easy. It’s going to be the most difficult thing humanity has ever attempted. And we have no assurance of success, not against something that can just come down and take over a billion children…right out of our arms. Getting through this is going to require the utmost from each and every one of us…the very best that humanity is capable of, in every area of endeavor. This is when we find out who we really are, as human beings.”
As first light shone across the Shenandoah Mountains, Marine Two Foxtrot flew in low over a nondescript complex of low, rectangular buildings, roads, and parking lots set in a clearing surrounded by a forest of tightly-clumped deciduous trees. Richard held Beth’s hand tight with one hand, a telephone with the other.
“You got Britain, France, and China? Good, see what you can do about the other nuclear powers. Let them know I’ll be down in a few minutes. Then I’ll need a meeting with the Joint Chiefs, and a sitrep from FEMA. The leadership of the House and Senate should be in on that,” he said, then was silent as the other person spoke.
“…The ceremony can wait a bit…at least until we’ve got things in motion,” Deming said heavily. Those who called Huckabee and Deming a ‘team of rivals’ engaged in massive understatement. As hard-fought as the primaries had been, Richard never wanted to get the Presidency this way, at the expense of the man’s life, and those of his whole family. The ceremony can wait. To raise his hand and take the President’s oath would be to pronounce President Huckabee dead…and Emilie, James, Aisha, and Ricky Junior, and everyone else who was among the vanished. “Thank you. We’re setting down now.”
“Welcome to Mount Weather, Mr. Vice President,” a Marine guard said as Richard, Beth, and the Football were whisked into the elevator he was protecting. Deming gave him a nod, as that was all he had time for. Moments later, the doors whisked open on a scene of barely-controlled chaos. FEMA agents talked on phones, typed at computers, or hurried to and fro with printouts and manila folders. Knots of Senators and Representatives stood huddled in their pajamas with their families, all pointedly bereft of younger children. Some of them simply stared blankly, like poleaxed steers. Others, spotting Richard and his entourage, hurried over and started talking all at once.
“Mr. Vice President—“
“What’s happened?”
“Where are our chil…
“…alien attack?”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll meet as soon as we can,” Richard said. “First I’ve got to talk to the other nuclear powers,” he said with a glance toward the Football. That silenced them.
“Godspeed, Mr. Vice President,” the chairman of the Ways and Means committee said as they parted to let him pass. A harried staffer was waiting for him.
“The teleconference is set up, Mr. Vice President,”
“You got them all?”
“Except for North Korea and Pakistan.” Deming suppressed a groan of irritation. “The North Koreans refused to talk, and we weren’t even able to get someone on the phone in Pakistan. Their ‘net servers are down too.”
“Their leadership disappeared?”
“We don’t know that, sir. Their government was precarious to begin with, and now…”
Richard exchanged a pained look with Beth. Both knew that reminders of the catastrophe, of their missing children, would not stop coming. Beth gave him a quick, fierce embrace as they reached the conference room door.
“I’ll see what I can do to help out here,” she said, then released him and turned back toward the members of Congress. Richard gave her a wan smile, then went inside. The conference room was sleek and futuristic, Japanese-style black lacquer and accents of white marble. He sat down in front of a wrap-around green screen and nodded to the technician.
“Um…sir?” the technician said, glancing at his “outfit.” Someone at the National Military Command Center had given him an Army T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.
“Just do it, I’m not going to keep them waiting while I get on a suit and tie.” Though he’d managed to talk briefly with the Russian President over the Hotline before getting America’s missile-defense radars back online, Richard wanted to speak with the rest of the nuclear club as soon as possible. Especially the ones engaged in miniature Cold War standoffs: India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran. The joker in the deck, North Korea, apparently wasn’t interested in talking. Not with the U.S. anyway.
The other places at the table were taken by tall parabolic high-definition screens. They flickered to life, conjuring 3-D images of the other nuclear-armed world leaders. They all looked as haggard as he did, but due to placement in more fortuitous time zones, they were all dressed “properly.”
“Thank you all for being here. In case you haven’t heard already, President Huckabee is among the missing. I will be assuming Presidential duties until he can be recovered, or we discover for sure that he can’t. We all have to face the biggest national emergency in the history of our countries right now, so I don’t want to take a lot of your time--”
“My condolences for your country’s losses, Mr. Vice President,” the Russian President said. “From what we have learned so far, your country has been hardest hit among the developed nations. Under the circumstances, perhaps the United States should not be the nation coordinating our response to the crisis.”
“I’m not jockeying for position here, Dmitry Adreievich. No nation on Earth is responsible for what’s happened. The primate house behavior has got to stop. We have a common enemy now.” What if Mike was right? What if our ‘enemy’ is God? Richard thought, but he pushed it aside. First, keep people from nuking each other. Then find out if this is the Rapture or not. “If any of you knows the best way to respond to this crisis, I’ll be happy to go along. But right now—“
“We must neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal immediately!” President Patil of India said. “If militants should seize power—“
“Do you intend to continue President Huckabee’s policy on Iran’s arsenal?” the Israeli Prime minister asked. “We will not accept an Iranian Bomb!”
“We have two Bombs. You have two hundred, or more! Which you have been lying about for decades!” the Iranian President snapped.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” Richard shouted. “There’s two things we’ve all got to agree to do right now. One: let’s not make things worse than they already are. No mushroom clouds blooming over anybody’s cities. No preemptive strikes. Two: I want my kids back. I want your kids back. Some little tribe of Bushmen living in the Kalahari desert? I want their kids back! All of our grand strategies, our force deployments, our weapons procurement, our alliances, our foreign policies—all of that has to be focused on our kids and grandkids now. What else is there?”
“Do you really think we can get them back?” the British Prime Minister said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re up against, but I am convinced that our only chance is cooperation. It’s going to take all we can do just to maintain a semblance of order.” Dmitry’s eyes narrowed.
“You know more than you are telling us, Richard. I see it in your eyes.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘knowing,’” Richard said with a sigh. “Yesterday, this would have been crazy talk. The Rapture. Some of you may remember my debate with President Huckabee on foreign policy, when I grilled him about his belief in the Rapture. Well…this looks an awful lot like what President Huckabee and others like him have been talking about for years.”
“You mean, God taking all of the Christians away?” Dmitry replied. “I assure you, the churches in my country do not lack for attendance.”
“And what does that have to do with the children?” the French President asked.
“Well, the belief is that God would take the children too, ones younger than about 12 or so, what they call the ‘age of accountability.’ And as for the Christians in your countries, I think the idea is that God was only coming for the Christians who believe the same things as the Rapture Ready types. I’m not endorsing this idea, for all I know it’s aliens faking a Rapture the way the Spanish Conquistadors pulled one over on the Aztecs by playing the part of Quetzalcoatl.”
“But you think it could be true?” Dmitry asked. Richard gave him a lopsided grin. Now he was in the hot seat fielding questions about the Rapture.
“I’m not going to rule it out just because I hope it’s not. But I’m not going to just jump to it as a conclusion either. Whatever this is—“ Richard was interrupted by a military attaché entering the conference room and striding briskly over to him. He leaned over to whisper in Richard’s ear. Deming paled.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve just been informed that North Korea has started shelling Seoul and our defenses along the Demilitarized Zone with long range artillery. We can’t afford this distraction. Whoever or whatever took our kids could be just getting started. I’m going to be putting my country’s strategic forces on alert, but I want to do it in cooperation with the rest of you. Li, Dmitry, do you think you can get the North Koreans to stop?”
“Kim Jong-Il must be doing this because he feels he needs an external conflict to stabilize his regime. He may be too desperate to back down,” Li replied.
“Then I think the best approach is going to be a unified response from all of us with military forces in the theater, and we may need to include the Japanese. If they can’t be talked down, they’ll have to be taken down, as quickly as possible. Do we have an alliance?”
“What are your intentions for the Korean peninsula afterward? Unification with the South?” Li asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Maybe political unification with some kind of joint occupation of the North like we did with Germany after World War II. This is not about expanding American hegemony. This is about standing together to defend our world and keep human civilization alive. Do we have an alliance?”
“The anti-missile systems you have deployed against us, would you agree to relocate them?” Dmitry said. Upon taking office, President Huckabee had re-instituted the Bush policy of ringing Russia with forward-deployed anti-missile systems in allied nations in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and East Asia. The weapons had increased tensions with the Russians and led them to closer ties with China and Iran.
“In principle, yes. I can’t talk specifics until we can develop some kind of planetary defense strategy. I don’t know if those systems are going to be much use against whoever took our children, but that’s their purpose now. Get your military planners working on a way to coordinate your strategic defenses with ours and I’ll do the same. Do we have an alliance?”
“What if you become convinced that it is your Protestant God who has done this?” Dmitry asked.
“The God I believe in is the one who sent His Son to Earth with a choir of angels singing ‘Peace on Earth, good will towards men.’ My Jesus is the one who gave the Sermon on the Mount, and who went to the Cross instead of summoning twelve legions of angels to lay waste to the world. I don’t know of any place in the Bible where it says God will kidnap all of our children. But if I’m wrong, and it really is God, the creator of hundreds of billions of galaxies that did this to us, then honestly, what can we do?
“All I know is…humanity is under attack by something much more powerful than we are. If we can’t…at least try to stand together, to be on the same side for once, even now…to just try and keep our whole world from falling into war and chaos…what does that say about us? What does that say about us?”
There was silence for a moment as the other leaders looked each other in the eye.
“I cannot speak for others…but with Russia you have your alliance, Mr. Vice President.”
“We have an alliance,” Li Peng said.
One by one the leaders announced their solidarity, until it came around to the newest, and apart from North Korea, the least welcome member of the nuclear club.
“I…will need to speak with the Supreme Leader…but if I can bring him an assurance of security for our nation…”
“If you’re talking about the threat of a unilateral attack by Israel, I won’t stand for that,” Richard said, casting a warning glance toward the Israeli Prime Minister. “Nor will American forces be launching any attacks against Iran as long as we and our allies are not attacked by Iran. The only ‘assurance of security’ I can offer you is to have the United States and Israel as allies rather than as enemies.” He cast another hard glance at the Israeli Prime Minister, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable. “And yes, that means working out a Middle East peace that no one will like but everyone can accept.
“Making this work isn’t going to be easy. It’s going to be the most difficult thing humanity has ever attempted. And we have no assurance of success, not against something that can just come down and take over a billion children…right out of our arms. Getting through this is going to require the utmost from each and every one of us…the very best that humanity is capable of, in every area of endeavor. This is when we find out who we really are, as human beings.”
Monday, November 2, 2009
Harvest of Souls, Chapter Six
Diversions
The litany of disasters coming over the radio from LaGuardia Control hit Ray like a series of hammer blows. It had begun with six simultaneous airline crashes at the time of the disappearances, but the total was now in the dozens in U.S. airspace alone. And no one knew how many more airliners were flying on autopilot with vanished or unconscious crews.
“DHS has declared all airspace within a hundred miles of New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and Boston restricted,” the LaGuardia controller said. “We have orders to ground all flights as soon as possible. We can try to divert you to—“
“Restricted airspace?” Ray asked, incredulous. “Why? They don’t seriously think terrorists with box-cutters are behind this, do they?”
“As far as I can tell, it’s some kind of contingency plan developed after 9/11. Something all ready-made and easy to trigger as soon as somebody suspected another attack. When the crashes started happening, some minor functionary probably activated it and nobody can get ahold of a decision-maker with the authority to rescind it. I don’t think they planned on having the higher-ups disappear.”
“Screw that. Rescind it yourself! Give us clearance!”
“Do you really think it’s that easy, Captain? Didn’t anybody teach you what ‘restricted airspace’ means? Post-9/11 it means fighters in the air and maybe surface-to-air missiles ready to fire. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe whoever’s supposed to scramble the fighters disappeared, but maybe not. Maybe the guy in charge of the SAMs disappeared, maybe not.
“The fighters would be under the control of the Air Force, and maybe the Navy if there are any carriers around. Surface to air missiles? Probably Army, maybe Navy if there’s a destroyer in the harbor. So that’s four huge government bureaucracies, five if you count the FAA and nobody knows for sure who’s in charge. Because half of the people who would be in charge are gone, and the other half are trying to find out what the fuck happened to their kids!” The man’s voice cracked, and Ray felt a stab in his heart. Raymie…
“So no, Captain, I’m not giving clearance for you to fly into a free-fire zone controlled by military guys who are probably wondering where the fuck their kids are, and just itching for a chance to shoot back at whoever did this to us! Or any handy substitute.”
I know who did this, Ray thought. And you can’t shoot back. Arms too short to box with God…
“We won’t reach the restricted airspace for another three hours. They should get things straightened out by then…”
“Captain, I don’t think you should count on things getting any better in the next three hours. There are reports that the President was taken! Anybody that’s left of the government is gonna be heading for the deepest bunkers they can find! There could be goddamn alien troop ships landing by then for all we know!” The radio went silent, save for the controller’s breathing as he struggled to calm himself. “I think I can get you in line at Atlanta.”
“That’s the only option?”
”The only other alternatives you could reach are Halifax and Chicago, and you’d wanna take a real close look at your fuel gauge before you even think about O’Hare.”
Ray was already looking at the EICAS screen and making note of remaining fuel and engine performance. “Nick, you have the aircraft.”
“I have the plane,” the First Officer said, giving Ray a quizzical look. But Ray was checking the feed from the National Weather Service on the multi-function display. The weather was clear, so he paged through to a wind-speed map for the Eastern U.S.. Plucking the calculator from his pocket, he made some rough calculations of fuel consumption. He stiffened as the numbers came up, but his face took on a look of grim determination.
“Chicago.” Nick looked at him suspiciously.
“Ray,” Nick said, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that your family lives in Chicago, would it?” Nick said.
“There are other trans-Atlantic flights coming in. They might need Atlanta more than we do.”
“Or they might not. Or, they could just land after we’ve taxied out of the way. Or we fly a holding pattern until they taxi out of the way. I think that beats the ‘we crash into Lake Michigan because we’ve run out of fuel’ option.”
“We’ll make it. We just angle ten degrees further north and catch this tailwind,” he said, pointing at the small screen. “That’ll save us enough fuel to make O’Hare.”
“Come on Ray, that’s crazy. Let’s say you’re right, and we get there flying on fumes—and then it turns out somebody else has crashed on the runway and we have to circle ‘till they can clear the wreckage. Or the weather changes by the time we get there and that tailwind is weaker, or the engines are burning just a little more fuel than they are now. If you haven’t noticed, Mr. Murphy of Murphy’s Law fame has just squatted on the whole goddamn planet and taken a dump. You really want to bet all our lives that everything’s gonna work out just right?”
“I’m the captain of this aircraft, Lieutenant Smith. We’re going to Chicago!”
“Ray, you’re not thinking clearly.” Ray put his hands on his control yoke.
“I have the plane.”
“Ray…”
“I. Have. The plane! Unless you’re planning on committing mutiny Lieutenant Smith, you’re going to turn over control of this aircraft right now. That is a direct order.” He locked eyes with his co-pilot.
“Gimme the calculator. I’ll check your numbers…” Nick said, then transferred control and took the calculator. After a few moments calculating and re-calculating, he sighed. “OK, it looks like we should make it, but it’s still too close. It’s a chaotic world out there Ray. Our first priority is to get this aircraft on the ground, safe.”
“We will.” Ray toggled the intercom as he gently banked the aircraft. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Due to emergencies on the ground, we will be diverting to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. We have been assured that we will be able to land safely there. We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for flying Pan-Global Airlines.”
The litany of disasters coming over the radio from LaGuardia Control hit Ray like a series of hammer blows. It had begun with six simultaneous airline crashes at the time of the disappearances, but the total was now in the dozens in U.S. airspace alone. And no one knew how many more airliners were flying on autopilot with vanished or unconscious crews.
“DHS has declared all airspace within a hundred miles of New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and Boston restricted,” the LaGuardia controller said. “We have orders to ground all flights as soon as possible. We can try to divert you to—“
“Restricted airspace?” Ray asked, incredulous. “Why? They don’t seriously think terrorists with box-cutters are behind this, do they?”
“As far as I can tell, it’s some kind of contingency plan developed after 9/11. Something all ready-made and easy to trigger as soon as somebody suspected another attack. When the crashes started happening, some minor functionary probably activated it and nobody can get ahold of a decision-maker with the authority to rescind it. I don’t think they planned on having the higher-ups disappear.”
“Screw that. Rescind it yourself! Give us clearance!”
“Do you really think it’s that easy, Captain? Didn’t anybody teach you what ‘restricted airspace’ means? Post-9/11 it means fighters in the air and maybe surface-to-air missiles ready to fire. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe whoever’s supposed to scramble the fighters disappeared, but maybe not. Maybe the guy in charge of the SAMs disappeared, maybe not.
“The fighters would be under the control of the Air Force, and maybe the Navy if there are any carriers around. Surface to air missiles? Probably Army, maybe Navy if there’s a destroyer in the harbor. So that’s four huge government bureaucracies, five if you count the FAA and nobody knows for sure who’s in charge. Because half of the people who would be in charge are gone, and the other half are trying to find out what the fuck happened to their kids!” The man’s voice cracked, and Ray felt a stab in his heart. Raymie…
“So no, Captain, I’m not giving clearance for you to fly into a free-fire zone controlled by military guys who are probably wondering where the fuck their kids are, and just itching for a chance to shoot back at whoever did this to us! Or any handy substitute.”
I know who did this, Ray thought. And you can’t shoot back. Arms too short to box with God…
“We won’t reach the restricted airspace for another three hours. They should get things straightened out by then…”
“Captain, I don’t think you should count on things getting any better in the next three hours. There are reports that the President was taken! Anybody that’s left of the government is gonna be heading for the deepest bunkers they can find! There could be goddamn alien troop ships landing by then for all we know!” The radio went silent, save for the controller’s breathing as he struggled to calm himself. “I think I can get you in line at Atlanta.”
“That’s the only option?”
”The only other alternatives you could reach are Halifax and Chicago, and you’d wanna take a real close look at your fuel gauge before you even think about O’Hare.”
Ray was already looking at the EICAS screen and making note of remaining fuel and engine performance. “Nick, you have the aircraft.”
“I have the plane,” the First Officer said, giving Ray a quizzical look. But Ray was checking the feed from the National Weather Service on the multi-function display. The weather was clear, so he paged through to a wind-speed map for the Eastern U.S.. Plucking the calculator from his pocket, he made some rough calculations of fuel consumption. He stiffened as the numbers came up, but his face took on a look of grim determination.
“Chicago.” Nick looked at him suspiciously.
“Ray,” Nick said, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that your family lives in Chicago, would it?” Nick said.
“There are other trans-Atlantic flights coming in. They might need Atlanta more than we do.”
“Or they might not. Or, they could just land after we’ve taxied out of the way. Or we fly a holding pattern until they taxi out of the way. I think that beats the ‘we crash into Lake Michigan because we’ve run out of fuel’ option.”
“We’ll make it. We just angle ten degrees further north and catch this tailwind,” he said, pointing at the small screen. “That’ll save us enough fuel to make O’Hare.”
“Come on Ray, that’s crazy. Let’s say you’re right, and we get there flying on fumes—and then it turns out somebody else has crashed on the runway and we have to circle ‘till they can clear the wreckage. Or the weather changes by the time we get there and that tailwind is weaker, or the engines are burning just a little more fuel than they are now. If you haven’t noticed, Mr. Murphy of Murphy’s Law fame has just squatted on the whole goddamn planet and taken a dump. You really want to bet all our lives that everything’s gonna work out just right?”
“I’m the captain of this aircraft, Lieutenant Smith. We’re going to Chicago!”
“Ray, you’re not thinking clearly.” Ray put his hands on his control yoke.
“I have the plane.”
“Ray…”
“I. Have. The plane! Unless you’re planning on committing mutiny Lieutenant Smith, you’re going to turn over control of this aircraft right now. That is a direct order.” He locked eyes with his co-pilot.
“Gimme the calculator. I’ll check your numbers…” Nick said, then transferred control and took the calculator. After a few moments calculating and re-calculating, he sighed. “OK, it looks like we should make it, but it’s still too close. It’s a chaotic world out there Ray. Our first priority is to get this aircraft on the ground, safe.”
“We will.” Ray toggled the intercom as he gently banked the aircraft. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Due to emergencies on the ground, we will be diverting to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. We have been assured that we will be able to land safely there. We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for flying Pan-Global Airlines.”
Harvest of Souls, Chapter Five
Autopsy in Absentia
“It’s everywhere! All the children!” a passenger said, looking up from his Blackberry and staring around the cabin in horror. Sofia gave him a startled look.
’Everywhere?' All over the world? she thought, trying to wrap her mind around it.
“You got service?” someone said. Passengers gathered around him, hoping for a glimpse of the outside world, while others kept trying with their own phones. The cabin erupted in a din of chatter as people talked into phones, tried to talk into phones, or pleaded with anyone with service to let them call their relatives.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, why? Why?! Clara McGillicuddy said, her words turning into a long wail of anguish. She reached out to scoop up her husband’s clothes, but Sofia caught her hands.
“Please ma’am, I need to examine—“
“Don’t you see?!” Clara cried. “Your science won’t do you any good. Won’t do any of us any good! Jesus has come back for His faithful! Why, Jesus, what did I do wrong?” This last was an entreaty, directed heavenward. “I believed…I believed!”
“Holy shit! What if it is?” a man two rows down from her said.
Sofia looked around and saw despair spreading across several of the faces of her fellow passengers. The flight attendant was on her way back up the aisle with the things Sofia had asked for, and she noticed it too.
“I’m sorry, but if this is the Rapture, isn’t that supposed to be a good thing? People getting beamed up to Heaven?” Sofia said. She’d seen the bumper stickers boasting “In the Event of Rapture, This Vehicle Will Be Unoccupied.” Some of her rationalist friends in America would make reference to the “Rapture Ready” crowd as an especially noisome sort of American crazy. It seemed like a weird kind of Christianity, waiting for Jesus to beam you out of life instead of living it for him. Sofia regretted not researching it further, but as paranormal beliefs went, it made no testable claims.
Until now.
“It was you…” Clara said.
“Ma’am?” Sofia replied
“When Frank tried to preach the Gospel to you…I was…I was embarrassed. I could tell you didn’t want to hear it and I was embarrassed because he always does it…he always leaves…left a tract at the table. He…when we’d call the plumber, he’d talk to him about Jesus while he worked…
“And I was embarrassed! ‘If you deny Me before men, then I will deny you before the holy angels…’ Oh Lord! I’m so sorry!” Sofia reached over and took the woman by the shoulders as more tears started streaking down her face.
“Ma’am, I find it hard to believe that Jesus would reject you for some momentary thought you had—“ Clara clutched Sofia’s upper arms and shook her feebly.
“Don’t you understand?! This is the Tribulation! God is about to pour out His wrath upon the world! There’ll be suffering and pain like mankind has never known before! And then Armageddon!”
“Oh, God…the End is fucking nigh!” the man said, then his face paled and he looked fearfully skyward as it hit him that he’d spoken an expletive.
“Alright,” Sofia said, struggling for calm, “Let’s say you’re right. That just means that you have all been given a special calling.”
“What are you talking about? He’s abandoned us! The Bridegroom’s feast has begun and we can’t get in! It’s too late!” Clara said.
“Well…if this is the ‘Rapture,’ then you know things the rest of us don’t, things we need to know. You can be happy that your loved ones are safe in Heaven, but… Well, Jesus left Heaven and all of its joys behind to come down and share the sufferings of humanity, to demonstrate compassion and show us the way. Isn’t that what the whole Jesus story is about?” Sofia said. “Why don’t you think of it this way: that Jesus chose you to remain behind so you could be the bearers of his light and love in dark times? ‘Deny yourselves, take up your cross, and follow me.’
“If you want to be followers of Christ, then follow him. Go where he went. Do what he did. Why aren’t you counting yourselves to be the lucky ones?” Their looks of incomprehension matched her own. Sofia ransacked her memories of Catholic school for anything resembling what these people were talking about, and came up empty. The Christianity Sofia had grown up with glorified suffering too much in her mind.
From Peter wanting to be crucified upside down because he thought himself unworthy of dying in the same manner as his Lord, to the torture and martyrdom stories of so many of the saints, to the self-imposed sufferings of the ascetics, to the images of Christ hanging heavily on the Cross with blood trickling from his wounds as he looked to Heaven in the moment of his death, the Christianity she knew seemed almost to worship suffering rather than seeking to alleviate it. But these Americans, they looked at her as if the idea that Christians might have to suffer, really suffer for their faith was completely alien to them.
“Oh, come on, you don’t really believe that Rapture bullshit, do you?” the man with the graying buzz-cut said. “Those End of the World prophecy douchenozzles have been predicting the Rapture forever, and they’ve always been wrong. ‘It’s gonna happen in 1988—no, wait, I forgot to carry a two, make that 1989. Oops, it’s gonna be October 2009. I mean, December 2012!’”
Sofia held up a hand to forestall an argument. “Please. I’m not going to say I think this is the Rapture, because I don’t know. These people do seem to have been expecting something like this, so I think that makes the ‘Rapture’ a hypothesis that deserves to be considered. We can’t jump to any conclusions until we’ve gathered as many facts as we can.”
“What ‘facts’ could you possibly need?” Mrs. McGillicuddy said. “Look!” she said, waiving a wrinkled hand at her husband’s suit.
“Whatever facts I can lay my hands on, ma’am. If you’re right, whatever I find will only support your beliefs.” Sofia turned to the flight attendant. “Thank you,” she said, taking the bags and latex gloves. She set the seating chart, passenger manifest, and other documents aside for later inspection.
“Here…I brought you this too,” the flight attendant said. It was a packet containing heavier rubber gloves, goggles, a face mask, and a roll of red Biohazard bags. “It’s a biohazard waste clean-up kit…we use it whenever we have to clean up vomit or blood or anything like that.”
“Thank you,” Sofia said, smiling at her. “I should probably use this at least,” she said, taking out the face mask.
“You think the clothes could be…contagious or something?” another passenger asked.
“No. But I should probably do what I can to keep from breathing any contaminants onto the scene,” she said, slipping the white mask over her mouth and nose. With practiced motions, she put on the latex gloves. “I’ll get done with this as quickly as I can so you can have your husband’s personal effects,” she said to Clara. “I think it would be good to send some of the smaller objects, like the dental bridge and fillings for laboratory analysis. I’ll be happy to inform you of what they find. Is that alright?” Clara nodded absently, then turned away to bow her head in prayer.
“So…you’re some kind of scientist?” the flight attendant asked as Sofia scrutinized the clothes, planning how to go about dissecting them.
“Yes,” Sofia said, glancing up at her. The flight attendant was so delicate it was as if she’d left her butterfly wings and flower-petal dress behind somewhere to go incognito as a human. Her big blue eyes held a hint of need, looking for some island of strength and stability in a world turned upside down. The eyes flitted away from Sofia, forward toward the cockpit. Sofia’s gut tightened at the thought of her going there for refuge.
“Can I get anything else for you?
“Are you free? Would you be able to assist me?” Sofia said.
“I don’t know anything about…”
“You don’t have to. Do you have anything to restrain your hair with?”
“Yes, I’ll have to go get it.”
“Good, does anyone have some Scotch tape, and maybe a Sharpie?”
“I might,” a man said, and retrieved his briefcase from under his seat. “Here!” he said, handing them over.
“Thank you,” Sofia said, and started using the Sharpie to label Ziploc bags. The flight attendant returned, her hair pulled back into a ponytail.
“I’m Sofia. Sorry I can’t shake, at least until you get your gloves on.”
“H-Hattie. Hattie Durham,” the flight attendant replied, slipping her slender hands into latex gloves. The gloves fit loosely, forming yellowish-white wrinkles over Hattie’s flawless porcelain skin.
“Nice to meet you, Hattie. Could you please take the tape and start making loops for me, sticky side out?” Hattie nodded and reached for the tape.
Sofia reached into her briefcase and took a small jewelry box out of a pocket on the lid. Inside the box was a lens cannibalized from a CD player, and squeezed through a hole made in a thick rubber band. This she stretched over her iPhone, adjusting the CD lens over the lens of the phone’s camera, turning it into a modest microscope.
Sofia pushed the cacophony of the other passengers’ conversations out of her mind. People desperately trying to get through to family members, or getting through and finding out their children, their nieces, nephews, grandchildren were gone… She felt a spike of worry for her own family pierce her heart.
I can’t do them any good right now, she thought. If I got through, people would be all over me wanting my phone. Just do this, so she can have her husband’s clothes…
Sofia touched her iPhone’s screen to start recording. “Investigation of unexplained disappearance, Seat 28-B, Frank McGillicuddy,” she said, her voice cracking. She gave the date and time, and started in. She held the phone close to the coat and twiddled with the focus until the coat’s fibers came in clear, then snapped a picture.
“You’ve done this sort of thing before?” Hattie asked. Sofia shut off the recording and took microscope pictures of the coat at different locations.
“Not this sort of thing…” I have to be strong…the world would be in panic…this may be the only scientific examination that gets done… “I’ve investigated alleged flying saucer landing sites, and crop circles…’haunted’ houses, people who claim to be mediums,” she explained, keeping her voice level by an act of sheer will. Carefully lifting back a flap of the coat, she took microscope pictures of the shirt, tie, and inside of the coat.
“Did you ever find anything?” the guy with the buzz cut asked. “Like proof of aliens? Do you think this could be aliens?”
Eyes. The eyes. Sofia shook her head, pushing the memory away.
“Not proof, exactly. Some anomalous trace evidence in a few cases, like heightened radioactivity in soil at a ‘landing site.’ Enough to keep my mind open, not enough to make me a believer,” she said, giving him a fleeting smile.
Though she’d tried to replace the coat flap as gently as she could, the coat finally slid down to crumple into the seat. With a startled jolt, Sofia grabbed the collar and kept it from landing on top of the Bible and the dental remains.
“Um…what do you want me to do with these?” Hattie said, holding up fingers draped with rings of tape.
“Keep them from getting stuck to anything,” she said, smiling at Hattie. Sofia took a ring and pressed it to the seat back that had formerly held the coat, flattening it all the way. She pulled it off and repeated the process at a different spot on the seat back with the other side of the tape to pick up more fibers, then slid it into a Ziploc bag labeled “28-B McGillicuddy seat back.”
Taking more tape rings, she collected fiber samples from the inside and outside of the coat, front and back, the tie and the shirt. Mrs. McGillicuddy finished her prayer and started to watch with teary eyes.
As Sofia unbuttoned the dress shirt and started examining the undershirt, she felt something hard slipping through its folds. Carefully pulling it up to expose the object, she saw a flat, lima bean-shaped piece of metal the size of a fifty-cent piece, with wires attached.
“Oh, Frank!” his wife said, snatching the object up and clenching it to her chest. “Sorry…” she said, opening her hands to reveal the pacemaker.
“It’s alright,” Sofia said. “I would like to take a picture if you don’t mind. Do you want to keep it?”
Clara looked at it for a long moment. Finally, she extended her trembling hands toward Sofia. “You can have it…”
“Thank you ma’am. You’ve been very helpful. I really appreciate your patience,” Sofia lifted the magnifier lens out of the way to take a quick shot of the pacemaker in the woman’s hands, then picked it up carefully and set it down on top of a Ziploc bag she spread out for it. Then she set the iPhone down and took another of the rings Hattie had made. “I hate to impose on you…but would you mind if I took a sample from your hands, so the lab techs might be able to separate the residue on your hands from any residue that might be on the pacemaker?”
Clara nodded and held out her hands. “Do you have a…a relationship with Jesus?” she said. “Please…let Him into your heart…oh, God, that sounds so hollow! I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be. Ma’am, I can’t really imagine how hard it must have been for you to just sit there next to your husband’s clothes and not touch them, not try to feel something of him. I’ll make sure the world sees the pictures, and whatever other information I can find. If this is the Rapture, and this is the proof,” Sofia said, gesturing at the pile of clothes, “then your act of simple kindness could reach millions. I think it was St. Francis who said, ‘Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words.’”
Would Jesus really do something like this? Sofia thought, trying to imagine events on the plane multiplied several million fold, all over the Earth. It’s more like something they would do, if they existed. It’s what they do isn’t it? Abduct people…terrorize them?
“Are you alright?” Hattie said.
“Yes…I’m fine…thank you.”
“It’s everywhere! All the children!” a passenger said, looking up from his Blackberry and staring around the cabin in horror. Sofia gave him a startled look.
’Everywhere?' All over the world? she thought, trying to wrap her mind around it.
“You got service?” someone said. Passengers gathered around him, hoping for a glimpse of the outside world, while others kept trying with their own phones. The cabin erupted in a din of chatter as people talked into phones, tried to talk into phones, or pleaded with anyone with service to let them call their relatives.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, why? Why?! Clara McGillicuddy said, her words turning into a long wail of anguish. She reached out to scoop up her husband’s clothes, but Sofia caught her hands.
“Please ma’am, I need to examine—“
“Don’t you see?!” Clara cried. “Your science won’t do you any good. Won’t do any of us any good! Jesus has come back for His faithful! Why, Jesus, what did I do wrong?” This last was an entreaty, directed heavenward. “I believed…I believed!”
“Holy shit! What if it is?” a man two rows down from her said.
Sofia looked around and saw despair spreading across several of the faces of her fellow passengers. The flight attendant was on her way back up the aisle with the things Sofia had asked for, and she noticed it too.
“I’m sorry, but if this is the Rapture, isn’t that supposed to be a good thing? People getting beamed up to Heaven?” Sofia said. She’d seen the bumper stickers boasting “In the Event of Rapture, This Vehicle Will Be Unoccupied.” Some of her rationalist friends in America would make reference to the “Rapture Ready” crowd as an especially noisome sort of American crazy. It seemed like a weird kind of Christianity, waiting for Jesus to beam you out of life instead of living it for him. Sofia regretted not researching it further, but as paranormal beliefs went, it made no testable claims.
Until now.
“It was you…” Clara said.
“Ma’am?” Sofia replied
“When Frank tried to preach the Gospel to you…I was…I was embarrassed. I could tell you didn’t want to hear it and I was embarrassed because he always does it…he always leaves…left a tract at the table. He…when we’d call the plumber, he’d talk to him about Jesus while he worked…
“And I was embarrassed! ‘If you deny Me before men, then I will deny you before the holy angels…’ Oh Lord! I’m so sorry!” Sofia reached over and took the woman by the shoulders as more tears started streaking down her face.
“Ma’am, I find it hard to believe that Jesus would reject you for some momentary thought you had—“ Clara clutched Sofia’s upper arms and shook her feebly.
“Don’t you understand?! This is the Tribulation! God is about to pour out His wrath upon the world! There’ll be suffering and pain like mankind has never known before! And then Armageddon!”
“Oh, God…the End is fucking nigh!” the man said, then his face paled and he looked fearfully skyward as it hit him that he’d spoken an expletive.
“Alright,” Sofia said, struggling for calm, “Let’s say you’re right. That just means that you have all been given a special calling.”
“What are you talking about? He’s abandoned us! The Bridegroom’s feast has begun and we can’t get in! It’s too late!” Clara said.
“Well…if this is the ‘Rapture,’ then you know things the rest of us don’t, things we need to know. You can be happy that your loved ones are safe in Heaven, but… Well, Jesus left Heaven and all of its joys behind to come down and share the sufferings of humanity, to demonstrate compassion and show us the way. Isn’t that what the whole Jesus story is about?” Sofia said. “Why don’t you think of it this way: that Jesus chose you to remain behind so you could be the bearers of his light and love in dark times? ‘Deny yourselves, take up your cross, and follow me.’
“If you want to be followers of Christ, then follow him. Go where he went. Do what he did. Why aren’t you counting yourselves to be the lucky ones?” Their looks of incomprehension matched her own. Sofia ransacked her memories of Catholic school for anything resembling what these people were talking about, and came up empty. The Christianity Sofia had grown up with glorified suffering too much in her mind.
From Peter wanting to be crucified upside down because he thought himself unworthy of dying in the same manner as his Lord, to the torture and martyrdom stories of so many of the saints, to the self-imposed sufferings of the ascetics, to the images of Christ hanging heavily on the Cross with blood trickling from his wounds as he looked to Heaven in the moment of his death, the Christianity she knew seemed almost to worship suffering rather than seeking to alleviate it. But these Americans, they looked at her as if the idea that Christians might have to suffer, really suffer for their faith was completely alien to them.
“Oh, come on, you don’t really believe that Rapture bullshit, do you?” the man with the graying buzz-cut said. “Those End of the World prophecy douchenozzles have been predicting the Rapture forever, and they’ve always been wrong. ‘It’s gonna happen in 1988—no, wait, I forgot to carry a two, make that 1989. Oops, it’s gonna be October 2009. I mean, December 2012!’”
Sofia held up a hand to forestall an argument. “Please. I’m not going to say I think this is the Rapture, because I don’t know. These people do seem to have been expecting something like this, so I think that makes the ‘Rapture’ a hypothesis that deserves to be considered. We can’t jump to any conclusions until we’ve gathered as many facts as we can.”
“What ‘facts’ could you possibly need?” Mrs. McGillicuddy said. “Look!” she said, waiving a wrinkled hand at her husband’s suit.
“Whatever facts I can lay my hands on, ma’am. If you’re right, whatever I find will only support your beliefs.” Sofia turned to the flight attendant. “Thank you,” she said, taking the bags and latex gloves. She set the seating chart, passenger manifest, and other documents aside for later inspection.
“Here…I brought you this too,” the flight attendant said. It was a packet containing heavier rubber gloves, goggles, a face mask, and a roll of red Biohazard bags. “It’s a biohazard waste clean-up kit…we use it whenever we have to clean up vomit or blood or anything like that.”
“Thank you,” Sofia said, smiling at her. “I should probably use this at least,” she said, taking out the face mask.
“You think the clothes could be…contagious or something?” another passenger asked.
“No. But I should probably do what I can to keep from breathing any contaminants onto the scene,” she said, slipping the white mask over her mouth and nose. With practiced motions, she put on the latex gloves. “I’ll get done with this as quickly as I can so you can have your husband’s personal effects,” she said to Clara. “I think it would be good to send some of the smaller objects, like the dental bridge and fillings for laboratory analysis. I’ll be happy to inform you of what they find. Is that alright?” Clara nodded absently, then turned away to bow her head in prayer.
“So…you’re some kind of scientist?” the flight attendant asked as Sofia scrutinized the clothes, planning how to go about dissecting them.
“Yes,” Sofia said, glancing up at her. The flight attendant was so delicate it was as if she’d left her butterfly wings and flower-petal dress behind somewhere to go incognito as a human. Her big blue eyes held a hint of need, looking for some island of strength and stability in a world turned upside down. The eyes flitted away from Sofia, forward toward the cockpit. Sofia’s gut tightened at the thought of her going there for refuge.
“Can I get anything else for you?
“Are you free? Would you be able to assist me?” Sofia said.
“I don’t know anything about…”
“You don’t have to. Do you have anything to restrain your hair with?”
“Yes, I’ll have to go get it.”
“Good, does anyone have some Scotch tape, and maybe a Sharpie?”
“I might,” a man said, and retrieved his briefcase from under his seat. “Here!” he said, handing them over.
“Thank you,” Sofia said, and started using the Sharpie to label Ziploc bags. The flight attendant returned, her hair pulled back into a ponytail.
“I’m Sofia. Sorry I can’t shake, at least until you get your gloves on.”
“H-Hattie. Hattie Durham,” the flight attendant replied, slipping her slender hands into latex gloves. The gloves fit loosely, forming yellowish-white wrinkles over Hattie’s flawless porcelain skin.
“Nice to meet you, Hattie. Could you please take the tape and start making loops for me, sticky side out?” Hattie nodded and reached for the tape.
Sofia reached into her briefcase and took a small jewelry box out of a pocket on the lid. Inside the box was a lens cannibalized from a CD player, and squeezed through a hole made in a thick rubber band. This she stretched over her iPhone, adjusting the CD lens over the lens of the phone’s camera, turning it into a modest microscope.
Sofia pushed the cacophony of the other passengers’ conversations out of her mind. People desperately trying to get through to family members, or getting through and finding out their children, their nieces, nephews, grandchildren were gone… She felt a spike of worry for her own family pierce her heart.
I can’t do them any good right now, she thought. If I got through, people would be all over me wanting my phone. Just do this, so she can have her husband’s clothes…
Sofia touched her iPhone’s screen to start recording. “Investigation of unexplained disappearance, Seat 28-B, Frank McGillicuddy,” she said, her voice cracking. She gave the date and time, and started in. She held the phone close to the coat and twiddled with the focus until the coat’s fibers came in clear, then snapped a picture.
“You’ve done this sort of thing before?” Hattie asked. Sofia shut off the recording and took microscope pictures of the coat at different locations.
“Not this sort of thing…” I have to be strong…the world would be in panic…this may be the only scientific examination that gets done… “I’ve investigated alleged flying saucer landing sites, and crop circles…’haunted’ houses, people who claim to be mediums,” she explained, keeping her voice level by an act of sheer will. Carefully lifting back a flap of the coat, she took microscope pictures of the shirt, tie, and inside of the coat.
“Did you ever find anything?” the guy with the buzz cut asked. “Like proof of aliens? Do you think this could be aliens?”
Eyes. The eyes. Sofia shook her head, pushing the memory away.
“Not proof, exactly. Some anomalous trace evidence in a few cases, like heightened radioactivity in soil at a ‘landing site.’ Enough to keep my mind open, not enough to make me a believer,” she said, giving him a fleeting smile.
Though she’d tried to replace the coat flap as gently as she could, the coat finally slid down to crumple into the seat. With a startled jolt, Sofia grabbed the collar and kept it from landing on top of the Bible and the dental remains.
“Um…what do you want me to do with these?” Hattie said, holding up fingers draped with rings of tape.
“Keep them from getting stuck to anything,” she said, smiling at Hattie. Sofia took a ring and pressed it to the seat back that had formerly held the coat, flattening it all the way. She pulled it off and repeated the process at a different spot on the seat back with the other side of the tape to pick up more fibers, then slid it into a Ziploc bag labeled “28-B McGillicuddy seat back.”
Taking more tape rings, she collected fiber samples from the inside and outside of the coat, front and back, the tie and the shirt. Mrs. McGillicuddy finished her prayer and started to watch with teary eyes.
As Sofia unbuttoned the dress shirt and started examining the undershirt, she felt something hard slipping through its folds. Carefully pulling it up to expose the object, she saw a flat, lima bean-shaped piece of metal the size of a fifty-cent piece, with wires attached.
“Oh, Frank!” his wife said, snatching the object up and clenching it to her chest. “Sorry…” she said, opening her hands to reveal the pacemaker.
“It’s alright,” Sofia said. “I would like to take a picture if you don’t mind. Do you want to keep it?”
Clara looked at it for a long moment. Finally, she extended her trembling hands toward Sofia. “You can have it…”
“Thank you ma’am. You’ve been very helpful. I really appreciate your patience,” Sofia lifted the magnifier lens out of the way to take a quick shot of the pacemaker in the woman’s hands, then picked it up carefully and set it down on top of a Ziploc bag she spread out for it. Then she set the iPhone down and took another of the rings Hattie had made. “I hate to impose on you…but would you mind if I took a sample from your hands, so the lab techs might be able to separate the residue on your hands from any residue that might be on the pacemaker?”
Clara nodded and held out her hands. “Do you have a…a relationship with Jesus?” she said. “Please…let Him into your heart…oh, God, that sounds so hollow! I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be. Ma’am, I can’t really imagine how hard it must have been for you to just sit there next to your husband’s clothes and not touch them, not try to feel something of him. I’ll make sure the world sees the pictures, and whatever other information I can find. If this is the Rapture, and this is the proof,” Sofia said, gesturing at the pile of clothes, “then your act of simple kindness could reach millions. I think it was St. Francis who said, ‘Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words.’”
Would Jesus really do something like this? Sofia thought, trying to imagine events on the plane multiplied several million fold, all over the Earth. It’s more like something they would do, if they existed. It’s what they do isn’t it? Abduct people…terrorize them?
“Are you alright?” Hattie said.
“Yes…I’m fine…thank you.”
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Harvest of Souls, Chapter Four
Weeping in Ramah
One of the Secret Service agents moved to answer the phone.
“No! Honey, could you get that please,” Richard said, keeping his gun held steady in the face of the chief of his Secret Service detail. “Back away from the phone, pal!” The other agent did as ordered.
“Hello?” Beth said. “General!” she said, then cupped a hand over the receiver. “It’s General Lind,” she said to her husband. “What’s happening, General? I’m sorry, we have...a situation here, he can’t come to the phone. Yes he’s still here,” she said with a little quake in her voice. “I need you to tell me what’s going on.” As she listened, Beth’s face grew ever more fearful. “Excuse me a moment, General.” She covered the receiver with her hand again.
“Honey...he says it’s happening everywhere…disappearances...not just here...our troops.... One of you, turn on CNN!” An agent slowly crossed the living room to the large high-definition home theater system that took up most of a wall. Careful to make no sudden moves, he turned it on.
“...from all over the world,” Christiane Amanpour said in her delicate accent. “Children…missing from their beds.” Her voice cracked, tears welling in her eyes. “Babies gone from their cribs. Entire elementary schools...suddenly emptied.” Her face was inset against a montage of handheld camera shots.
An Iranian woman in a black dress and hijab pressing a little shirt to her chest, her face aimed at the heavens wailing silently in pure anguish. A shaky, low-quality cell-phone video of small desks in neat rows. Piles of clothes in each chair, pant legs drooping down to empty shoes. A husband and wife in London bawling in each other’s arms, collapsed next to a stroller.
“The...Event appears to be limited to...to pre-teen children. My own son…Darius John Rubin...is among the missing.” A tear broke free and ran down her cheek, trailed down her jawline and dripped from her chin unnoticed. “If you still have your children...hold them. Hold them.” She failed to suppress a hitching sob.
“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted...because they are no more. They are no more.” Christiane turned away from the camera and buried her face in her hands just as CNN cut back to the studio.
An immaculately pretty young anchorwoman sat alone behind the expansive, sweeping glass-and-brushed-nickel desk, like a captain going down with her ship. She stared helplessly into the camera for long seconds, her perfect cupid’s-bow lips parted, but unable to speak.
“That’s enough, turn it off,” Deming said, lowering his weapon with shaking hands. “...Sorry.” It was the Secret Service agents’ turn to look shaken. “Go on, call home. I need to talk to the General anyway. There might not be a location secure enough to protect us against this.” He went to the phone and Beth handed him the receiver.
“General, this is Deming.” Probably President Deming, he thought, feeling it hit him like a tsunami. Mike and his whole family, gone...plane crashes...oh God no!
“Sir, the news reports are saying it’s only children, but that’s not true," General Lind said. "It hit our forces too. Hard. Casualty rates in some units may be at fifty percent, or more. We’ve been hit in all theaters of operation. So far as I can tell, the Air Force has been hardest hit, especially among officers and pilots, followed by the Marines and the Army. The Navy is in the best shape, and their command structure is mostly intact.”
“Is it the Christians, General? I mean, the conservative, fundamentalist Christians. Protestants.”
“Mr. Vice President, we don’t even know who’s missing, or exactly how many. I couldn’t begin to tell you what their beliefs were. Right now it’s all I can do to try to find out what forces we still have. Except for Admiral Fallon, I haven’t been able to get a hold of the other Joint Chiefs.
“What about the people in your command? Are the people missing the ones who went to Christian Embassy prayer breakfasts?” The silence on the other end seemed to confirm Deming’s worst fears.
“It seems that way sir...but right now my concern is the men and women who are still here. It’s not on the news yet, but there’s rioting in Baghdad and Basra, and attacks on our troops and installations are on the rise. They’re blaming us. Al-Sistani has called for order and a day of fasting and repentance, but Sadr is blaming us. He’s on radio and the ‘net saying we used a new weapon to exterminate Iraq’s children.
“We’re able to defend our bases at the moment because the so far the attacks are small-scale and disorganized. That’s going to change, and when it does we’re going to be cut off from re-supply, and frankly, I think we’ll be overrun. AfPak is the same situation, or worse. I’m requesting permission to evacuate our troops as soon as possible. If we can get moving before the Iraqis strike in force, I think there’s a chance we’ll be able to get the bulk of our remaining forces out intact, but it won’t be easy.”
“Mexico?”
“General Trujillo is going to be asking us for more troops, not less, especially if his forces have been hit as hard as ours. But if every child in Mexico has disappeared...sir, I don’t think his government will last the day. I recommend we pull back to the border and do our best to fortify and maintain order. To be frank sir, I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that much. Do you have any contact with National Command Authority?”
“So far as I know, General, I am National Command Authority. The Secret Service tells me that President Huckabee and his family are among the missing. Do what you have to do, General. Get as many of our people out of the Middle East as you can. I think we’re going to need them here at home.”
“Do you want me to put our strategic forces on alert, sir?”
“No. Not until we can do it in concert with Russia, China, and our NATO allies. In fact, I want you to shut off our missile-defense radars in Europe and Alaska, and pull back any subs we have patrolling near Russian or Chinese waters. I want them to know we’re not behind this, and we’re not planning on exploiting it to harm their national interests.”
"Sir, are you sure you want to have those radars off?"
"They didn't warn us about this. General, you know as well as I do that our 'missile defense' systems don't work for anything but Raytheon's stock price, and poking a stick at the Russians and Chinese. If they're thinking we might be behind this somehow, and wondering if they ought to launch, I want to give them something they can see that says we're not."
“Yes sir.”
“I have to go now, General. I’ll get in contact with you as soon as possible. Until otherwise directed, you have overall operational command of U.S. military forces.”
“Yes sir.” The phone slipped from Deming’s fingers to rattle in its cradle.
“My God...the whole world is going to fall apart...” Deming said. The chief of Deming’s Secret Service detail snapped his cell phone closed, his face pale.
“Sir, we have to move...”
“Take me to the White House.”
“We can’t go there sir, whoever did this knew to hit us there.”
“Then take me to the National Military Command Center, I need to get on the Hotline to the Russians.”
“Yes...Mr. President.”
One of the Secret Service agents moved to answer the phone.
“No! Honey, could you get that please,” Richard said, keeping his gun held steady in the face of the chief of his Secret Service detail. “Back away from the phone, pal!” The other agent did as ordered.
“Hello?” Beth said. “General!” she said, then cupped a hand over the receiver. “It’s General Lind,” she said to her husband. “What’s happening, General? I’m sorry, we have...a situation here, he can’t come to the phone. Yes he’s still here,” she said with a little quake in her voice. “I need you to tell me what’s going on.” As she listened, Beth’s face grew ever more fearful. “Excuse me a moment, General.” She covered the receiver with her hand again.
“Honey...he says it’s happening everywhere…disappearances...not just here...our troops.... One of you, turn on CNN!” An agent slowly crossed the living room to the large high-definition home theater system that took up most of a wall. Careful to make no sudden moves, he turned it on.
“...from all over the world,” Christiane Amanpour said in her delicate accent. “Children…missing from their beds.” Her voice cracked, tears welling in her eyes. “Babies gone from their cribs. Entire elementary schools...suddenly emptied.” Her face was inset against a montage of handheld camera shots.
An Iranian woman in a black dress and hijab pressing a little shirt to her chest, her face aimed at the heavens wailing silently in pure anguish. A shaky, low-quality cell-phone video of small desks in neat rows. Piles of clothes in each chair, pant legs drooping down to empty shoes. A husband and wife in London bawling in each other’s arms, collapsed next to a stroller.
“The...Event appears to be limited to...to pre-teen children. My own son…Darius John Rubin...is among the missing.” A tear broke free and ran down her cheek, trailed down her jawline and dripped from her chin unnoticed. “If you still have your children...hold them. Hold them.” She failed to suppress a hitching sob.
“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted...because they are no more. They are no more.” Christiane turned away from the camera and buried her face in her hands just as CNN cut back to the studio.
An immaculately pretty young anchorwoman sat alone behind the expansive, sweeping glass-and-brushed-nickel desk, like a captain going down with her ship. She stared helplessly into the camera for long seconds, her perfect cupid’s-bow lips parted, but unable to speak.
“That’s enough, turn it off,” Deming said, lowering his weapon with shaking hands. “...Sorry.” It was the Secret Service agents’ turn to look shaken. “Go on, call home. I need to talk to the General anyway. There might not be a location secure enough to protect us against this.” He went to the phone and Beth handed him the receiver.
“General, this is Deming.” Probably President Deming, he thought, feeling it hit him like a tsunami. Mike and his whole family, gone...plane crashes...oh God no!
“Sir, the news reports are saying it’s only children, but that’s not true," General Lind said. "It hit our forces too. Hard. Casualty rates in some units may be at fifty percent, or more. We’ve been hit in all theaters of operation. So far as I can tell, the Air Force has been hardest hit, especially among officers and pilots, followed by the Marines and the Army. The Navy is in the best shape, and their command structure is mostly intact.”
“Is it the Christians, General? I mean, the conservative, fundamentalist Christians. Protestants.”
“Mr. Vice President, we don’t even know who’s missing, or exactly how many. I couldn’t begin to tell you what their beliefs were. Right now it’s all I can do to try to find out what forces we still have. Except for Admiral Fallon, I haven’t been able to get a hold of the other Joint Chiefs.
“What about the people in your command? Are the people missing the ones who went to Christian Embassy prayer breakfasts?” The silence on the other end seemed to confirm Deming’s worst fears.
“It seems that way sir...but right now my concern is the men and women who are still here. It’s not on the news yet, but there’s rioting in Baghdad and Basra, and attacks on our troops and installations are on the rise. They’re blaming us. Al-Sistani has called for order and a day of fasting and repentance, but Sadr is blaming us. He’s on radio and the ‘net saying we used a new weapon to exterminate Iraq’s children.
“We’re able to defend our bases at the moment because the so far the attacks are small-scale and disorganized. That’s going to change, and when it does we’re going to be cut off from re-supply, and frankly, I think we’ll be overrun. AfPak is the same situation, or worse. I’m requesting permission to evacuate our troops as soon as possible. If we can get moving before the Iraqis strike in force, I think there’s a chance we’ll be able to get the bulk of our remaining forces out intact, but it won’t be easy.”
“Mexico?”
“General Trujillo is going to be asking us for more troops, not less, especially if his forces have been hit as hard as ours. But if every child in Mexico has disappeared...sir, I don’t think his government will last the day. I recommend we pull back to the border and do our best to fortify and maintain order. To be frank sir, I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that much. Do you have any contact with National Command Authority?”
“So far as I know, General, I am National Command Authority. The Secret Service tells me that President Huckabee and his family are among the missing. Do what you have to do, General. Get as many of our people out of the Middle East as you can. I think we’re going to need them here at home.”
“Do you want me to put our strategic forces on alert, sir?”
“No. Not until we can do it in concert with Russia, China, and our NATO allies. In fact, I want you to shut off our missile-defense radars in Europe and Alaska, and pull back any subs we have patrolling near Russian or Chinese waters. I want them to know we’re not behind this, and we’re not planning on exploiting it to harm their national interests.”
"Sir, are you sure you want to have those radars off?"
"They didn't warn us about this. General, you know as well as I do that our 'missile defense' systems don't work for anything but Raytheon's stock price, and poking a stick at the Russians and Chinese. If they're thinking we might be behind this somehow, and wondering if they ought to launch, I want to give them something they can see that says we're not."
“Yes sir.”
“I have to go now, General. I’ll get in contact with you as soon as possible. Until otherwise directed, you have overall operational command of U.S. military forces.”
“Yes sir.” The phone slipped from Deming’s fingers to rattle in its cradle.
“My God...the whole world is going to fall apart...” Deming said. The chief of Deming’s Secret Service detail snapped his cell phone closed, his face pale.
“Sir, we have to move...”
“Take me to the White House.”
“We can’t go there sir, whoever did this knew to hit us there.”
“Then take me to the National Military Command Center, I need to get on the Hotline to the Russians.”
“Yes...Mr. President.”
Friday, October 2, 2009
Harvest of Souls, Chapter Three
A Ray Without Hope
Carrying You-Can-Call-Me-Buck, struggling helplessly in the classic riding-out-of-town-on-a-rail posture, the passengers marched him to the emergency exit. Someone opened the door, and there was a howling rush of wind.
“Awww, come on! You know you want me, baby!” he said, just before they hurled him out into the slipstream. “AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaa…!” Somewhere far, far below, he hit, producing a little ring-shaped cloud of dust.
Sofia banished her fantasy. Unfortunately, something more practical had to be done with him. For all his towering braggadocio about his exalted position at Global Weekly, Sofia found it impossible to take the man seriously. Had he been born a hidalgo in the time of the conquistadores, he would surely have worn an enormous gold-plated codpiece festooned with tassels and ribbon, while boasting of his heroic exploits as the real Don Quijote de la Mancha.
In this century, he merely sported a rumpled suit at least a couple sizes too big for him. His baby face and head of untamable short curly hair completed the look of some malicious, barely-adolescent class clown suddenly thrust into the grown-up world. Tom Hanks had done it much better and more appealingly in Big.
“Perhaps you could go and see to the passengers in First Class, and investigate any disappearances that happened there?” she asked. Having heard no commotion from that section, she doubted there would be any.
“Yes, I could do that,” he said a little too quickly, avoiding the threatening eyes of the other passengers. “I’ve also got a major cover story I’m working on,” he said with a faltering smirk, then turned and hustled briskly back to First Class as if he was a Busy Man on Very Important Busy-ness.
Sofia sighed and shook her head, glad to see the curtain close behind him. But without him there to provide a comedic, if frustrating distraction, the fearful reality of the situation returned. She snapped back into action, lighting a campfire to keep the beasts lurking in the shadows at bay.
“Sir? Ma’am,” she said to the anxious parents. “Could you please search the airplane thoroughly from front to back? If you see anything at all unusual, like an unfamiliar piece of technology, scorch marks, anything, could you make a note of it and let me know?” she said, tearing off a page from her notebook and handing them her pen.
They nodded. They’d already searched the aircraft thoroughly, but not for anything that might be related to the cause of the disappearances. They headed to the back of the cabin to start their search.
“Sir,” she said picking out another man. “Could you please go through the aircraft and try to find out how many people are missing, and write down the seat numbers with a brief description of the clothes, and if they were with anyone still here?”
“Yeah…I can do that. Do you want me to find out what they ate or drank, things like that?”
“That’s a good idea, but I think it would be best to gather the preliminary information quickly. If you could tell people that I would like to interview them and get their contact information so I can keep them updated on anything I find, I would appreciate it.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Sofia saw the curtain part again. Thankfully, it was the flight attendant, returning with one of the pilots. Sofia felt a little chill when she recognized him. Waiting in the terminal before takeoff, she’d seen the two flirting. That the pilot had been subconsciously fingering his wedding ring wasn’t what bothered her the most.
Now as before, she noticed the stiff tension of his body language, the way he seemed to be enduring the young woman’s presence the way a medieval monk might endure some self-inflicted torture. Why, if he wanted to remain loyal to his wife, he didn’t simply tell the poor girl that and let her find love someplace else, Sofia couldn’t fathom. She’d briefly met his eyes in the terminal, and did so again now. Alarm bells of warning went off in her hindbrain. There was hatred in those eyes.
“It’s a joke. They’re hiding, trying to—“ the pilot said.
“Ray! Their shoes, their socks, their clothes, everything was left behind! These people are gone!” The flight attendant all but clung to him in desperation. He accepted her touch, but returned only indifference.
“Sir, she’s telling the truth,” Sofia said, doing her best to keep her tone clinical and her expression neutral. She’d seen this relationship before, in a Renaissance painting of Zeus. The god sat enthroned, one hand grasping his royal scepter, the other arm resting on a cloud. His broad, muscular chest was bare, shouting his masculinity to the Cosmos. He looked straight at the viewer with a stern, almost angry expression. A petite, naked goddess crouched at his side, one hand stretched out across his lap, the other reaching up to delicately stroke his chin. Her head was tilted all the way back, looking up at him with entreaty for the tiniest bit of kindness or affection. Clearly, none would be forthcoming.
Sofia led him to her row and pointed to Mr. McGillicuddy’s suit. She gave Mrs. McGillicuddy a smile of gratitude for leaving it intact this long.
“If you look closely, you can see how the cloth was abruptly compressed by air pressure. Apparently the body was dematerialized all at once, rapidly enough that air could not have time to flow in from the sleeves and pant legs before external pressure collapsed the core areas. We’ve had several other passengers disappear in this way. I have some volunteers getting an exact count.”
Sofia watched the man’s world come apart in front of her eyes. In his world there was Order. In his world there was Discipline. People and things knew their Place. Flight checklists were carried out in their proper steps and on time. Arrivals and departures occurred on schedule. And now, Mystery had dared! Dared! To puncture the pressurized cabin of his mental universe and let him know in no uncertain terms that he was not In Control.
His eyes went wide with a fear that looked more like savage rage. The muscles of his jaw clenched, his nostrils flared, and the veins in his neck bulged. A glance down to his hands revealed fists tight in a white-knuckle grip. His whole body vibrated like a tuning fork, as if barely able to contain some violent inner force. The Calista Flockhart-skinny flight attendant seemed to feel it. She looked up at him with big, round blue eyes and slipped her slender arms more around him, pressing against him to give and seek reassurance.
Wrong answer, Sofia thought. The pilot—“Ray,” she’d called him—bit down on his lower lip, hard. Sofia winced in tune with the man’s own jolt of pain. Blood trickled down toward his jaw line. It wasn’t hard for Sofia to imagine this man whipping himself for the sins of the flesh in some dark monastic cell, muttering prayers to a vindictive god while his raging libido burned within him, demanding some kind of release—and transmuting into a seething fury at any woman who stirred his forbidden desires. Not hard at all. She took an involuntary step back from him, but she managed to suppress a gulp of fear.
“Miss, could you please go and get me a copy of the passenger manifest, any information you might have on what people ordered for food and drink, and a seating diagram for the plane if you have one?” she asked the flight attendant, kicking herself for the tremor she heard in her voice. “And some plastic bags—Ziplock bags if you have them, wastebasket bags and latex or plastic gloves. So I can examine the scene and collect samples for analysis.”
The flight attendant gave a jerky nod and peeled herself off of the pilot. As she passed Sofia, she turned her head to give him what was no doubt a longing glance, her cascade of honey-colored fairy-princess locks flowing over her shoulders in curls and waves.
Sofia resisted an urge to reach out to the captain and offer him solace. Instead, she kept her distance and clasped her arms behind her back, taking a military-grade parade-rest stance. “My name is Sofia. I’m a scientist,” she said, struggling to keep her voice cool and professional. The pilot’s dark eyes looked her up and down, smoldering with resentment. “Sir, could you please find out if there are any reports of this sort of thing happening anywhere else?”
“It was the Rapture…” Mrs. McGillicuddy said in a trembling voice. By now her mascara was streaked down her face, runnels of smeared black twisting their way down her wrinkled skin. Her terrified pallor made her bright-red lipstick look like a bloody slash.
“That isn’t the only possible explanation,” Sofia said, but inwardly, she knew that reassuring the pastor’s wife would be impossible. The woman had probably been eagerly dreaming of a day of inexplicable vanishings for decades, except that her clothes were supposed to be a shed husk, too.
At the sound of the word “rapture,” the pilot flinched.
“Irene was right…” he whispered, backing away stiffly. The dark blue curtain flowed over him as he passed through the bulkhead, and Sofia heard a loud crack. Did he just…slap himself?!
Carrying You-Can-Call-Me-Buck, struggling helplessly in the classic riding-out-of-town-on-a-rail posture, the passengers marched him to the emergency exit. Someone opened the door, and there was a howling rush of wind.
“Awww, come on! You know you want me, baby!” he said, just before they hurled him out into the slipstream. “AAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaa…!” Somewhere far, far below, he hit, producing a little ring-shaped cloud of dust.
Sofia banished her fantasy. Unfortunately, something more practical had to be done with him. For all his towering braggadocio about his exalted position at Global Weekly, Sofia found it impossible to take the man seriously. Had he been born a hidalgo in the time of the conquistadores, he would surely have worn an enormous gold-plated codpiece festooned with tassels and ribbon, while boasting of his heroic exploits as the real Don Quijote de la Mancha.
In this century, he merely sported a rumpled suit at least a couple sizes too big for him. His baby face and head of untamable short curly hair completed the look of some malicious, barely-adolescent class clown suddenly thrust into the grown-up world. Tom Hanks had done it much better and more appealingly in Big.
“Perhaps you could go and see to the passengers in First Class, and investigate any disappearances that happened there?” she asked. Having heard no commotion from that section, she doubted there would be any.
“Yes, I could do that,” he said a little too quickly, avoiding the threatening eyes of the other passengers. “I’ve also got a major cover story I’m working on,” he said with a faltering smirk, then turned and hustled briskly back to First Class as if he was a Busy Man on Very Important Busy-ness.
Sofia sighed and shook her head, glad to see the curtain close behind him. But without him there to provide a comedic, if frustrating distraction, the fearful reality of the situation returned. She snapped back into action, lighting a campfire to keep the beasts lurking in the shadows at bay.
“Sir? Ma’am,” she said to the anxious parents. “Could you please search the airplane thoroughly from front to back? If you see anything at all unusual, like an unfamiliar piece of technology, scorch marks, anything, could you make a note of it and let me know?” she said, tearing off a page from her notebook and handing them her pen.
They nodded. They’d already searched the aircraft thoroughly, but not for anything that might be related to the cause of the disappearances. They headed to the back of the cabin to start their search.
“Sir,” she said picking out another man. “Could you please go through the aircraft and try to find out how many people are missing, and write down the seat numbers with a brief description of the clothes, and if they were with anyone still here?”
“Yeah…I can do that. Do you want me to find out what they ate or drank, things like that?”
“That’s a good idea, but I think it would be best to gather the preliminary information quickly. If you could tell people that I would like to interview them and get their contact information so I can keep them updated on anything I find, I would appreciate it.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Sofia saw the curtain part again. Thankfully, it was the flight attendant, returning with one of the pilots. Sofia felt a little chill when she recognized him. Waiting in the terminal before takeoff, she’d seen the two flirting. That the pilot had been subconsciously fingering his wedding ring wasn’t what bothered her the most.
Now as before, she noticed the stiff tension of his body language, the way he seemed to be enduring the young woman’s presence the way a medieval monk might endure some self-inflicted torture. Why, if he wanted to remain loyal to his wife, he didn’t simply tell the poor girl that and let her find love someplace else, Sofia couldn’t fathom. She’d briefly met his eyes in the terminal, and did so again now. Alarm bells of warning went off in her hindbrain. There was hatred in those eyes.
“It’s a joke. They’re hiding, trying to—“ the pilot said.
“Ray! Their shoes, their socks, their clothes, everything was left behind! These people are gone!” The flight attendant all but clung to him in desperation. He accepted her touch, but returned only indifference.
“Sir, she’s telling the truth,” Sofia said, doing her best to keep her tone clinical and her expression neutral. She’d seen this relationship before, in a Renaissance painting of Zeus. The god sat enthroned, one hand grasping his royal scepter, the other arm resting on a cloud. His broad, muscular chest was bare, shouting his masculinity to the Cosmos. He looked straight at the viewer with a stern, almost angry expression. A petite, naked goddess crouched at his side, one hand stretched out across his lap, the other reaching up to delicately stroke his chin. Her head was tilted all the way back, looking up at him with entreaty for the tiniest bit of kindness or affection. Clearly, none would be forthcoming.
Sofia led him to her row and pointed to Mr. McGillicuddy’s suit. She gave Mrs. McGillicuddy a smile of gratitude for leaving it intact this long.
“If you look closely, you can see how the cloth was abruptly compressed by air pressure. Apparently the body was dematerialized all at once, rapidly enough that air could not have time to flow in from the sleeves and pant legs before external pressure collapsed the core areas. We’ve had several other passengers disappear in this way. I have some volunteers getting an exact count.”
Sofia watched the man’s world come apart in front of her eyes. In his world there was Order. In his world there was Discipline. People and things knew their Place. Flight checklists were carried out in their proper steps and on time. Arrivals and departures occurred on schedule. And now, Mystery had dared! Dared! To puncture the pressurized cabin of his mental universe and let him know in no uncertain terms that he was not In Control.
His eyes went wide with a fear that looked more like savage rage. The muscles of his jaw clenched, his nostrils flared, and the veins in his neck bulged. A glance down to his hands revealed fists tight in a white-knuckle grip. His whole body vibrated like a tuning fork, as if barely able to contain some violent inner force. The Calista Flockhart-skinny flight attendant seemed to feel it. She looked up at him with big, round blue eyes and slipped her slender arms more around him, pressing against him to give and seek reassurance.
Wrong answer, Sofia thought. The pilot—“Ray,” she’d called him—bit down on his lower lip, hard. Sofia winced in tune with the man’s own jolt of pain. Blood trickled down toward his jaw line. It wasn’t hard for Sofia to imagine this man whipping himself for the sins of the flesh in some dark monastic cell, muttering prayers to a vindictive god while his raging libido burned within him, demanding some kind of release—and transmuting into a seething fury at any woman who stirred his forbidden desires. Not hard at all. She took an involuntary step back from him, but she managed to suppress a gulp of fear.
“Miss, could you please go and get me a copy of the passenger manifest, any information you might have on what people ordered for food and drink, and a seating diagram for the plane if you have one?” she asked the flight attendant, kicking herself for the tremor she heard in her voice. “And some plastic bags—Ziplock bags if you have them, wastebasket bags and latex or plastic gloves. So I can examine the scene and collect samples for analysis.”
The flight attendant gave a jerky nod and peeled herself off of the pilot. As she passed Sofia, she turned her head to give him what was no doubt a longing glance, her cascade of honey-colored fairy-princess locks flowing over her shoulders in curls and waves.
Sofia resisted an urge to reach out to the captain and offer him solace. Instead, she kept her distance and clasped her arms behind her back, taking a military-grade parade-rest stance. “My name is Sofia. I’m a scientist,” she said, struggling to keep her voice cool and professional. The pilot’s dark eyes looked her up and down, smoldering with resentment. “Sir, could you please find out if there are any reports of this sort of thing happening anywhere else?”
“It was the Rapture…” Mrs. McGillicuddy said in a trembling voice. By now her mascara was streaked down her face, runnels of smeared black twisting their way down her wrinkled skin. Her terrified pallor made her bright-red lipstick look like a bloody slash.
“That isn’t the only possible explanation,” Sofia said, but inwardly, she knew that reassuring the pastor’s wife would be impossible. The woman had probably been eagerly dreaming of a day of inexplicable vanishings for decades, except that her clothes were supposed to be a shed husk, too.
At the sound of the word “rapture,” the pilot flinched.
“Irene was right…” he whispered, backing away stiffly. The dark blue curtain flowed over him as he passed through the bulkhead, and Sofia heard a loud crack. Did he just…slap himself?!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Harvest of Souls, Chapter Two
Not Without My Children
“Mr. Vice President! Madame Vice President! We need to go! Now!”
Richard Deming, Vice President of the United States, shielded his eyes against the sudden blazing light in his elegant Queen Anne bedroom. Secret Service agents were boiling into the room, guns drawn, taking defensive positions with rapid efficiency. He could hear the whine and whir of a landed helicopter keeping its blades spun up. His wife Beth pulled up the blankets to shield her body, squinting against the light. There was no need. The agents weren’t looking at her, but outward toward any possible threat.
“What’s happening?” Richard asked, scrambling out of bed and reaching for his boxers.
“Plane crashes. FAA is reporting six so far. Most near or at major airports, but one went down in Iowa. DoD has declared Washington restricted airspace and they’re scrambling fighters.”
“Shit!” Another goddamn 9/11! Awkwardly stumbling into his boxers, Richard grabbed some sweats from his wife’s bureau drawer and had them in his fists, when he froze. The agents upstairs were still calling the names of his children.
He tossed the sweats to Beth, feeling a mounting sense of worry.
“Are there any planes headed this way? How much time have we got?”
“Sir, one of your detail is also missing. Your evacuation is a top priority.”
“Missing? Who?”
“Jenkins.”
“Leroy? He just left?”
“We found his clothes and weapon in a pile at his post.”
“Why aren’t the children answering?” Beth said worriedly as she squirmed into the sweatshirt.
“I’ll find out,” Richard said, jogging out of the bedroom, a pair of agents automatically forming up on him. He spotted a couple agents in the living room, crouched around what had to be Jenkins’ suit. On impulse, he sprinted over to it and bent down, reaching for the jacket. His hand froze.
The agents had rifled through the abandoned clothes and DragonSkin bulletproof vest, but it was still apparent that the suit had been found still buttoned up. As if Jenkins hand stripped out of it, then took the time to put it all back together again, including the top button of his shirt and his tie, all in place. But that was impossible. The agents patrolled.
“James! Emilie! Aisha!” An agent’s voice from upstairs.
“He won’t be needing this,” Richard said, finishing his reach under the jacket to pull the gun from Jenkins’ shoulder holster. In the back of his mind, Richard knew he looked ridiculous packing a Desert Eagle in his boxers with his paunch hanging out, and that the agents were all better shots than him. But it still felt better to have a gun in his hand. Keeping his finger outside the trigger-guard, he bounded up the stairs. By now Beth had emerged from the bedroom, and turned to run alongside him, her own pair of agents giving cover.
“Get to the helicopter!” he said.
“No!” Richard knew there was no point in arguing with her, especially when she was right. Beth’s blue eyes landed on the gun, and her eyebrow twitched upward with a hint of mischief. “I’ll get the baby.” He flashed her a brief smile, then hurried into James’ bedroom. The boy was nowhere to be found. His closet was already opened. His bed was empty, but the covers weren’t thrown back.
“Emilie! James! Aisha!” he called out sternly, with a creeping fear in his voice. “Now is no time to play hide and--!” He was cut off by his wife’s scream.
Richard turned back and ran to her side, his dutiful agents in tow. Beth stood by the crib, her face pale as death. Richard stepped up beside her, fearing what he would see. It was almost a relief to see the crib empty. No blood, no horribly mutilated child…but the crib wasn’t empty. Beth had pulled back the little quilted blanket. Rickie Junior’s knit cap was there, as were the matching knit booties. Between them was the diaper, still taped closed.
He exchanged a look of baffled horror with Beth. Then he reached in and pulled up the waistband of the diaper, looking inside for something…anything. It wasn’t even soiled. Beth looked over at the baby monitor. Its green LED was lit and cruelly steady, like a treacherous guard saluting crisply in front of a looted treasury.
Richard turned and ran to the next nearest bedroom, Aisha’s. Yanking back her blankets, he found her little nightgown crumpled onto the sheets, one sleeve draped over the stuffed unicorn she never went anywhere without. He reached out to touch the indentation on her pillow where her head should have been with trembling fingers.
“Oh, God, no…” Richard spun and ran back out into the hall. Beth emerged from Emilie’s room, flashing him a look of terror. By unspoken agreement, they ran into James’ room, Richard stalling just long enough to let Beth through the door first. She pulled back the blankets, then turned and threw her arms around her husband, burying her face in his shoulder.
Agents downstairs were still calling the children’s names, but the sounds of systematic ransacking were subsiding as the agents searched the last few possible hiding places.
“Sir…we have to go now.”
Richard whirled on the agent.
“WE ARE NOT! LEAVING THIS HOUSE! WITHOUT OUR CHILDREN!”
The agent consulted his earpiece.
“Sir, we’ve searched the house and the grounds completely.”
“SEARCH AGAIN!” Beth cried.
“Ma’am, we have to get you and your husband to a secure location.”
“Why? I’m just the fucking understudy!” Richard snapped. “If any of our children get away from whoever’s got them, they’re going to try to get here. And by God, their mother and father are going to be here waiting for them.”
“Sir…President Huckabee is missing as well. His entire family…” Richard stared into dark glasses for several pounding heartbeats. The gun in his hand snapped up to point its .50 cal. muzzle in the agent’s face. “Mr. Vice President—“
“The best goddamn security force on the planet,” Richard said in a low, deadly tone. “On the fucking planet! Now, I want you to tell me how in the hell someone can just waltz in here and steal my children out of their beds—out of their goddamn clothes for Christ’s sake!—and not one of you guys hears or sees or does a goddamn thing! What is this, a coup d’ etat? Hell, they even took one of your own guys for bonus points! Do you seriously expect me to believe that shit?”
“Mr. Vice President,” the agent said with a level of calm Richard would have admired under any other circumstances, “We don’t know any more than you do. That’s why we need to get you and Mrs. Deming to a secure location—“
“Secure location? THIS is supposed to be a fucking ‘secure location!’ Here’s the deal: You tell me what. The fuck. You people have done with my children. Or I blow your brains out, and then ask him" Richard said, jerking his head to indicate the detail's second in command, "what the fuck you guys have done WITH OUR CHILDREN!”
“Mr. Vice President, lower your weapon!” another agent said. They were clearly reluctant to make a move against the man they had sworn to protect, but they also had procedures in place for dealing with a charge who became mentally unstable and dangerous.
“You lower your goddamn weapons! Or use them. There’s two things I will not stand for: One is some banana-republic coup d’etat in my country. The other is anyone on this green Earth threatening my family, for any reason, what-so-fucking-ever.”
The phone rang.
“Mr. Vice President! Madame Vice President! We need to go! Now!”
Richard Deming, Vice President of the United States, shielded his eyes against the sudden blazing light in his elegant Queen Anne bedroom. Secret Service agents were boiling into the room, guns drawn, taking defensive positions with rapid efficiency. He could hear the whine and whir of a landed helicopter keeping its blades spun up. His wife Beth pulled up the blankets to shield her body, squinting against the light. There was no need. The agents weren’t looking at her, but outward toward any possible threat.
“What’s happening?” Richard asked, scrambling out of bed and reaching for his boxers.
“Plane crashes. FAA is reporting six so far. Most near or at major airports, but one went down in Iowa. DoD has declared Washington restricted airspace and they’re scrambling fighters.”
“Shit!” Another goddamn 9/11! Awkwardly stumbling into his boxers, Richard grabbed some sweats from his wife’s bureau drawer and had them in his fists, when he froze. The agents upstairs were still calling the names of his children.
He tossed the sweats to Beth, feeling a mounting sense of worry.
“Are there any planes headed this way? How much time have we got?”
“Sir, one of your detail is also missing. Your evacuation is a top priority.”
“Missing? Who?”
“Jenkins.”
“Leroy? He just left?”
“We found his clothes and weapon in a pile at his post.”
“Why aren’t the children answering?” Beth said worriedly as she squirmed into the sweatshirt.
“I’ll find out,” Richard said, jogging out of the bedroom, a pair of agents automatically forming up on him. He spotted a couple agents in the living room, crouched around what had to be Jenkins’ suit. On impulse, he sprinted over to it and bent down, reaching for the jacket. His hand froze.
The agents had rifled through the abandoned clothes and DragonSkin bulletproof vest, but it was still apparent that the suit had been found still buttoned up. As if Jenkins hand stripped out of it, then took the time to put it all back together again, including the top button of his shirt and his tie, all in place. But that was impossible. The agents patrolled.
“James! Emilie! Aisha!” An agent’s voice from upstairs.
“He won’t be needing this,” Richard said, finishing his reach under the jacket to pull the gun from Jenkins’ shoulder holster. In the back of his mind, Richard knew he looked ridiculous packing a Desert Eagle in his boxers with his paunch hanging out, and that the agents were all better shots than him. But it still felt better to have a gun in his hand. Keeping his finger outside the trigger-guard, he bounded up the stairs. By now Beth had emerged from the bedroom, and turned to run alongside him, her own pair of agents giving cover.
“Get to the helicopter!” he said.
“No!” Richard knew there was no point in arguing with her, especially when she was right. Beth’s blue eyes landed on the gun, and her eyebrow twitched upward with a hint of mischief. “I’ll get the baby.” He flashed her a brief smile, then hurried into James’ bedroom. The boy was nowhere to be found. His closet was already opened. His bed was empty, but the covers weren’t thrown back.
“Emilie! James! Aisha!” he called out sternly, with a creeping fear in his voice. “Now is no time to play hide and--!” He was cut off by his wife’s scream.
Richard turned back and ran to her side, his dutiful agents in tow. Beth stood by the crib, her face pale as death. Richard stepped up beside her, fearing what he would see. It was almost a relief to see the crib empty. No blood, no horribly mutilated child…but the crib wasn’t empty. Beth had pulled back the little quilted blanket. Rickie Junior’s knit cap was there, as were the matching knit booties. Between them was the diaper, still taped closed.
He exchanged a look of baffled horror with Beth. Then he reached in and pulled up the waistband of the diaper, looking inside for something…anything. It wasn’t even soiled. Beth looked over at the baby monitor. Its green LED was lit and cruelly steady, like a treacherous guard saluting crisply in front of a looted treasury.
Richard turned and ran to the next nearest bedroom, Aisha’s. Yanking back her blankets, he found her little nightgown crumpled onto the sheets, one sleeve draped over the stuffed unicorn she never went anywhere without. He reached out to touch the indentation on her pillow where her head should have been with trembling fingers.
“Oh, God, no…” Richard spun and ran back out into the hall. Beth emerged from Emilie’s room, flashing him a look of terror. By unspoken agreement, they ran into James’ room, Richard stalling just long enough to let Beth through the door first. She pulled back the blankets, then turned and threw her arms around her husband, burying her face in his shoulder.
Agents downstairs were still calling the children’s names, but the sounds of systematic ransacking were subsiding as the agents searched the last few possible hiding places.
“Sir…we have to go now.”
Richard whirled on the agent.
“WE ARE NOT! LEAVING THIS HOUSE! WITHOUT OUR CHILDREN!”
The agent consulted his earpiece.
“Sir, we’ve searched the house and the grounds completely.”
“SEARCH AGAIN!” Beth cried.
“Ma’am, we have to get you and your husband to a secure location.”
“Why? I’m just the fucking understudy!” Richard snapped. “If any of our children get away from whoever’s got them, they’re going to try to get here. And by God, their mother and father are going to be here waiting for them.”
“Sir…President Huckabee is missing as well. His entire family…” Richard stared into dark glasses for several pounding heartbeats. The gun in his hand snapped up to point its .50 cal. muzzle in the agent’s face. “Mr. Vice President—“
“The best goddamn security force on the planet,” Richard said in a low, deadly tone. “On the fucking planet! Now, I want you to tell me how in the hell someone can just waltz in here and steal my children out of their beds—out of their goddamn clothes for Christ’s sake!—and not one of you guys hears or sees or does a goddamn thing! What is this, a coup d’ etat? Hell, they even took one of your own guys for bonus points! Do you seriously expect me to believe that shit?”
“Mr. Vice President,” the agent said with a level of calm Richard would have admired under any other circumstances, “We don’t know any more than you do. That’s why we need to get you and Mrs. Deming to a secure location—“
“Secure location? THIS is supposed to be a fucking ‘secure location!’ Here’s the deal: You tell me what. The fuck. You people have done with my children. Or I blow your brains out, and then ask him" Richard said, jerking his head to indicate the detail's second in command, "what the fuck you guys have done WITH OUR CHILDREN!”
“Mr. Vice President, lower your weapon!” another agent said. They were clearly reluctant to make a move against the man they had sworn to protect, but they also had procedures in place for dealing with a charge who became mentally unstable and dangerous.
“You lower your goddamn weapons! Or use them. There’s two things I will not stand for: One is some banana-republic coup d’etat in my country. The other is anyone on this green Earth threatening my family, for any reason, what-so-fucking-ever.”
The phone rang.
Harvest of Souls, Chapter One
The Investigators
Sofia couldn’t move. Transfixed on the cool slab like a frog pinned down for dissection, there was only the white noise of the ship, the all-encompassing bright light that hurt her eyes, and the sound of her own panicked breaths.
A face. Pointed chin, high round forehead, ridiculously tiny mouth and nose. Impossibly thin neck, and a slender body with spindly insect limbs. But Sofia hardly noticed those details. The eyes. The eyes. Huge almond-shaped orbs cut from the dark void of space.
Ellen? Jay? Where are you?
They scrutinized her with an utterly impersonal curiosity, missing nothing. Their abyssal gaze tore through her naked flesh to violate her soul. Sofia tried to scream, hurl a stream of blistering curses, cry out ‘What do you want from me?!’ The words stuck in her throat. Her lips couldn’t move, save to tremble.
Ellen! Jay! This is the worst stunt you two have ever pulled! When I get my hands on you I’m gonna tan both your hides!
The eyes raked down Sofia’s body. There was no sexual interest, no personal interest at all. Nonetheless, Sofia struggled against her invisible bonds.
~Are you pregnant?~
The foreign voice inside her head chilled her like an ice-cold drop of mercury trickling down her spine. Somehow she could feel that the creature got the answer it wanted. Its arm reached for a tray beside the table Sofia was lying on. Too-long fingers wrapped around something. An instrument of shiny metal and translucent crystal, vaguely and threateningly phallic, with a cluster of sharp needles at its tip.
The pure black wrap-around eyes did not merely dismiss Sofia’s will, her horror at what was coming, her very being. Such things were so far beneath the creature’s concern that they did not even strike its consciousness. Its teardrop-shaped head turned to her pudenda with clinical detachment as it moved to insert the device—
A bloodcurdling scream. Not just Sofia’s, as she jolted bolt upright in her seat. Her heart hammered as she frantically looked around, taking in the clean, off-white walls of the airliner, the rows of little oval windows on each side, some of them with plastic shields pulled down like closed eyelids. Her thick, wavy black hair bounced off her cheeks as her head spun back and forth.
The reassurance she should have felt seeing the familiar, human contours of the airliner eluded her as she felt a mounting sense of panic spreading through the other passengers.
“Ellen?! Jay?!” a woman cried, hurrying back down the aisle, stooping to look under the seats. “Where are you?! Come here this instant!” she said, her voice cracking with fear.
“Hey, lady, shaddap, some of us are tryin’ to sleep,” a half-mumbled complaint from further back in the aircraft replied.
“Frank?” Mrs. McGillicuddy said, her voice a mix of interrupted sleep and confusion. Her voluminous cloud of too-elaborately-styled hair was dented on one side, no longer ministry-worthy. She was looking at the seat between herself and Sofia, where her husband had been sitting. Sofia’s dark eyes followed hers, and she gasped with a sharp intake of breath.
“What the...? Don’t touch anything,” Sofia said. She reached into her purse to retrieve a terrycloth-wrapped elastic band and pulled her hair back into a ponytail so it would not drape into the “scene” and contaminate the evidence. She turned in her seat so she could bend over for a closer look, careful to avoid sudden moves that might jolt the clothes.
The man’s suit sat in his seat like the shed skin of a snake. Sofia’s throat went dry as she noted the way the pants were scrunched up in the waist and hips. So was what she could see of the shirt in the torso area. Vacuum. And for that matter, the fact that the jacket was only slightly slumped at the collar but otherwise still upright, as if it had been pressed into the seat back hard enough for friction to keep it from collapsing. Fourteen point seven pounds of air pressure per square inch could do that…
Sofia whipped out her iPhone and started taking pictures.
A hefty leather-bound Bible with gilded pages lay in the suit’s lap, turned to the Book of Daniel. The arms of the gray polyester suit-jacket and cheap dress shirt were still aimed toward it, as if they would still be holding the book, if they only had hands.
A little scattering of teeth nested in the crook of the Bible’s pages like a bizarre bookmark. If you change your mind and decide you want to talk, I’ll be here, feasting on the Word. Those were the last words the man had said to her, when she’d claimed a need to sleep as a way to escape a session of evangelism. With a shudder, she examined them more closely. Three of the teeth were joined to a flesh-colored plastic resting plate and metal connectors to attach them to their natural neighbors—a dental bridge. The others turned out to be crowns, and there were a few bits of metal she guessed were fillings.
How could this happen?! No, it couldn’t be them. That was a hypnogogic dream, she thought, putting her abduction experience—and the nightmares it still caused, out of her mind. Whatever this is, it’s happening outside my head…isn’t it?
Sofia bit her lip, and glanced at the airline magazines in the pocket in the back of the seat ahead of hers. She could read the words without difficulty. Apart from the clothes, the little details of reality were stable and continuous. Mrs. McGillicuddy looked on with wide, teary eyes. Her hands occasionally fluttered over the scene as she fought a nearly irresistible urge to grab something of her husband to hold onto.
“Oh God!” the woman in the aisle said, clapping her hands over her mouth as she caught sight of the uninhabited suit, eyes wide with recognition.
“Did you find your children’s clothes in their seats like this?” Sofia asked, looking up from her work.
“Y-yes.”
By now several other passengers were starting to call out for missing loved ones.
“Children…missing?” Mrs. McGillicuddy said. “Oh dear Lord! It’s the Rapture!” Her eyes brimmed with tears as she started to tremble with incipient panic. Sofia set her iPhone down in her lap and took the woman gently by the shoulders.
“We don’t know that yet ma’am. There could be other explanations. We don’t even know that anyplace but this airplane is affected. Besides, if it was the Rapture, you’d have been taken too, wouldn’t you?”
“What else could it be? Oh Lord, I…I…must not have been sincere enough!”
“It could have been anything ma’am. Some kind of secret test like the Philadelphia Experiment, maybe even a natural phenomenon we haven’t encountered before. The Fortean literature is filled with reports of mysterious disappearances.” Sofia was highly skeptical of such things, and had personally investigated and found rational explanations some of the most popular accounts. But right now there was a terrified woman who needed alternatives to the idea that her God had turned his back on her and left her in the crosshairs of his wrath.
Sofia stood up. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said loudly, stepping into the aisle. “Whatever is happening here, the first thing we need to do is stay calm.”
“Stay calm?! My children are gone! We could all be next!” a man shouted. “And you want me to, what? Just relax and read a book?!”
“We’re flying at about six hundred miles an hour, thirty thousand feet above the ground. Do you think panicking could help?” Sofia said levelly. Emotions played across the man’s face. Fear, anger, helplessness… Tears welled in his eyes, but he gave a little nod.
“Alright, everyone who is missing someone, or sitting near someone who has disappeared, try not to disturb the clothes. We have to treat them like a crime scene. They’re the only clues we have about what happened. I don’t know if there’s a way to bring anybody back or not, but if there is, finding out what happened is the first step.”
Cameron “Buck” Williams sat in First Class, proof-reading his article about genetically-modified algae and bacteria developed by a biotech firm in Israel. His brow furrowed as he tried to make sense out of another one of Dr. Rosensweig’s explanations. All that science crap flew right over Cameron’s head, so he had no idea how to go about editing it.
Leave it raw, let the Gang of Four handle it. The Gang of Four was a team of junior writers and researchers Stanton Bailey had provided him as a personal staff to do the grunt-work.
Screams from the direction of Business Class and Coach broke Buck’s concentration. As far as he could tell, there was nothing wrong with the airplane, not so much as a moment of heavy turbulence. He grabbed his notebook and headed back to have a look, just in case there was a story to be had.
He stood in the doorway of the bulkhead that separated first class from the rest of the aircraft with a quizzical expression, trying to sort out the bizarre scene in front of him. It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone. People were calling names and staring into empty seats as if in panicked search for missing companions, or children. A young woman was leaning over toward the window seat comforting a crying old lady. As the younger woman released the elderly lady’s shoulders and leaned back, Buck caught a glimpse of a suit jacket, shirt and tie laid against the back of the seat, without a man in it. Fear and shock in the eyes of other passengers seemed to rule out a practical joke. But…people don’t disappear from airplanes in flight…
The young woman stood up from her aisle seat and stepped out into the middle. I’d hit that, Buck thought. Definitely. She had dusky skin and a head of thick, shiny black hair somewhat artlessly pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a sleek black leather jumpsuit that flattered her curvaceous figure.
Buck bristled as she started giving orders in a confident voice, telling people not to disturb the “clothes.”
“Excuse me, but who put you in charge?” Buck said. The woman turned striking gray eyes on him. They stood out brilliantly against her mocha complexion, fixing him with a penetrating gaze that made him lower his eyes to her chest.
“My name is Sofia Miranda Teresa de la Garza,” she said melodiously with a hint of a Spanish accent. “I am an astrophysicist and paranormal investigator working with the Center for Inquiry. And I’m not ‘in charge,’ I’m just--”
“A ‘paranormal investigator?’” Buck chuckled. “Seen any ghosts lately? Woo-ooo-OOO-ooooo,” he said, wiggling his fingers in an ooky-spooky gesture. “I’m Cameron Williams, senior writer for Global Weekly. But you can call me Buck,” he added with a lopsided grin. The other passengers didn’t laugh at his joke, staring at him open-mouthed instead. Being an award-winning reporter whose stories frequently graced the cover of the Weekly, Buck was used to the adoring public reactions that came with his fame, but this was almost enough to make him feel uncomfortable.
The woman looked at him incredulously for several seconds.
“As the leading reporter for a major news magazine, I’m much better qualified to lead an investiga—“
“You fatuous, supercilious popinjay! These people’s loved ones have apparently vanished into thin air, and your biggest concern is who’s in charge?!” she said, her eyes flashing like a freshly-drawn sword.
“It should be someone whose idea of ‘investigation’ doesn’t involve collecting blurry pictures of Bigfoot,” Buck said, feeling his neck redden and his pulse surge.
“If you want to investigate, then investigate.” Sofia turned to the willowy blond senior flight attendant who had just emerged from the service room in the rear of the aircraft and stopped in her tracks, trying to process the impossible situation of passengers just vanishing out of their clothes. “Could you please go to the cockpit, check on the status of the flight crew and the plane, and see if the pilots can find out if people have disappeared anywhere else?”
“Oh God! The pilots! What if they’re gone too?” a woman said, her voice rising to a high pitch of mounting horror.
“The plane is flying straight and level,” Sofia said, loudly enough for her voice to carry through the cabin. “We are not in any immediate danger of crashing. The flight crew, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are fully trained in dealing with the unlikely possibility of a pilotless aircraft.”
Buck doubted the flight attendant could do anything for them if the pilots were gone, but the ‘paranormal investigator’s’ words apparently had their intended effect: staving off, barely, an outburst of unrestrained panic. Buck had to fight down a jolt of anger at himself for feeling fear for his safety, and then relief at the woman’s words.
“Our first order of business is to find out what we can about the disappearances,” she added. Buck felt that too, and saw it spread through the passengers. Direction. Purpose. We are not helpless victims. Let’s roll.
The flight attendant snapped out of shell-shock, nodded, and headed toward the cockpit at a brisk pace. Buck took a moment to check her out as she passed, noting that she filled out her skirt rather nicely. He turned his attention back to Sofia. For the briefest moment, he had a thought of her and the flight attendant together. Their luscious lips shyly, hesitantly, yet irresistibly drawn together for a languorous kiss. The flight attendant’s slender fingers reaching for the standing collar of Sofia’s jumpsuit to begin slowly, oh so slowly, unzipping…
In the present, he leaned to get a better view as Sophia crouched to reach under her seat to pull out a briefcase and set it on her seat. Bent over the suitcase, she seemed so completely oblivious to his existence that he might as well have been watching through her bedroom window with binoculars. She snapped back upright in a crisp movement, having retrieved a notebook and pen.
The momentary stirring in Buck’s loins was doused as she started speaking again.
“I’m going to write a set of questions on the first page of this notebook. If you could each write your contact information on a separate page and then answer—“
“Now is not the time to be taking orders from Miss Weekly World News,” Buck said, rewarding his fellow passengers with a conspiratorial smirk. The smirk became a full-blown grin as he turned to Sofia. “Why don’t you go back and see if you can break into the booze while the stewardesses are busy? I know that’s normally reserved for First Class, but we can break the rules just this once. Am I right?” he said, turning to invite the other passengers into his little scheme. “While you’re doing that, I’ll start taking statements.”
“Hey buddy,” a bull-necked man with a graying high-and-tight snapped. “You got a reason to keep us from finding out the truth?” Buck turned to him with a quizzical look.
“…Um…What? No…of course not! But who couldn’t use a good stiff drink right about now, eh?” Buck’s smirk faltered into a nervous laugh as the passengers turned their gaze on him. Meeting their eyes, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He struggled to grasp why their looks were filled with suspicion and incipient hatred.
Then it hit him. It was like he’d fallen into an episode of The X-Files. His lofty mainstream press credentials, the speed-dial list and Rolodex full of insider contacts any reporter would kill for, the awards and photos with world leaders, celebrities and Fortune 100 CEO’s on the wall in his palatial Manhattan office, his long list of Establishment-friendly articles and op-ed pieces, his casual mockery of Sofia’s fringe ‘credentials’…all extreme liabilities in the topsy-turvy world within the pressurized cabin of this 747.
Here and now, Paranormal Girl would be exactly what the doctor ordered. And Cameron Williams, the Insider’s Insider, would be the closest thing they’d have to a suspect.
Sofia couldn’t move. Transfixed on the cool slab like a frog pinned down for dissection, there was only the white noise of the ship, the all-encompassing bright light that hurt her eyes, and the sound of her own panicked breaths.
A face. Pointed chin, high round forehead, ridiculously tiny mouth and nose. Impossibly thin neck, and a slender body with spindly insect limbs. But Sofia hardly noticed those details. The eyes. The eyes. Huge almond-shaped orbs cut from the dark void of space.
Ellen? Jay? Where are you?
They scrutinized her with an utterly impersonal curiosity, missing nothing. Their abyssal gaze tore through her naked flesh to violate her soul. Sofia tried to scream, hurl a stream of blistering curses, cry out ‘What do you want from me?!’ The words stuck in her throat. Her lips couldn’t move, save to tremble.
Ellen! Jay! This is the worst stunt you two have ever pulled! When I get my hands on you I’m gonna tan both your hides!
The eyes raked down Sofia’s body. There was no sexual interest, no personal interest at all. Nonetheless, Sofia struggled against her invisible bonds.
~Are you pregnant?~
The foreign voice inside her head chilled her like an ice-cold drop of mercury trickling down her spine. Somehow she could feel that the creature got the answer it wanted. Its arm reached for a tray beside the table Sofia was lying on. Too-long fingers wrapped around something. An instrument of shiny metal and translucent crystal, vaguely and threateningly phallic, with a cluster of sharp needles at its tip.
The pure black wrap-around eyes did not merely dismiss Sofia’s will, her horror at what was coming, her very being. Such things were so far beneath the creature’s concern that they did not even strike its consciousness. Its teardrop-shaped head turned to her pudenda with clinical detachment as it moved to insert the device—
A bloodcurdling scream. Not just Sofia’s, as she jolted bolt upright in her seat. Her heart hammered as she frantically looked around, taking in the clean, off-white walls of the airliner, the rows of little oval windows on each side, some of them with plastic shields pulled down like closed eyelids. Her thick, wavy black hair bounced off her cheeks as her head spun back and forth.
The reassurance she should have felt seeing the familiar, human contours of the airliner eluded her as she felt a mounting sense of panic spreading through the other passengers.
“Ellen?! Jay?!” a woman cried, hurrying back down the aisle, stooping to look under the seats. “Where are you?! Come here this instant!” she said, her voice cracking with fear.
“Hey, lady, shaddap, some of us are tryin’ to sleep,” a half-mumbled complaint from further back in the aircraft replied.
“Frank?” Mrs. McGillicuddy said, her voice a mix of interrupted sleep and confusion. Her voluminous cloud of too-elaborately-styled hair was dented on one side, no longer ministry-worthy. She was looking at the seat between herself and Sofia, where her husband had been sitting. Sofia’s dark eyes followed hers, and she gasped with a sharp intake of breath.
“What the...? Don’t touch anything,” Sofia said. She reached into her purse to retrieve a terrycloth-wrapped elastic band and pulled her hair back into a ponytail so it would not drape into the “scene” and contaminate the evidence. She turned in her seat so she could bend over for a closer look, careful to avoid sudden moves that might jolt the clothes.
The man’s suit sat in his seat like the shed skin of a snake. Sofia’s throat went dry as she noted the way the pants were scrunched up in the waist and hips. So was what she could see of the shirt in the torso area. Vacuum. And for that matter, the fact that the jacket was only slightly slumped at the collar but otherwise still upright, as if it had been pressed into the seat back hard enough for friction to keep it from collapsing. Fourteen point seven pounds of air pressure per square inch could do that…
Sofia whipped out her iPhone and started taking pictures.
A hefty leather-bound Bible with gilded pages lay in the suit’s lap, turned to the Book of Daniel. The arms of the gray polyester suit-jacket and cheap dress shirt were still aimed toward it, as if they would still be holding the book, if they only had hands.
A little scattering of teeth nested in the crook of the Bible’s pages like a bizarre bookmark. If you change your mind and decide you want to talk, I’ll be here, feasting on the Word. Those were the last words the man had said to her, when she’d claimed a need to sleep as a way to escape a session of evangelism. With a shudder, she examined them more closely. Three of the teeth were joined to a flesh-colored plastic resting plate and metal connectors to attach them to their natural neighbors—a dental bridge. The others turned out to be crowns, and there were a few bits of metal she guessed were fillings.
How could this happen?! No, it couldn’t be them. That was a hypnogogic dream, she thought, putting her abduction experience—and the nightmares it still caused, out of her mind. Whatever this is, it’s happening outside my head…isn’t it?
Sofia bit her lip, and glanced at the airline magazines in the pocket in the back of the seat ahead of hers. She could read the words without difficulty. Apart from the clothes, the little details of reality were stable and continuous. Mrs. McGillicuddy looked on with wide, teary eyes. Her hands occasionally fluttered over the scene as she fought a nearly irresistible urge to grab something of her husband to hold onto.
“Oh God!” the woman in the aisle said, clapping her hands over her mouth as she caught sight of the uninhabited suit, eyes wide with recognition.
“Did you find your children’s clothes in their seats like this?” Sofia asked, looking up from her work.
“Y-yes.”
By now several other passengers were starting to call out for missing loved ones.
“Children…missing?” Mrs. McGillicuddy said. “Oh dear Lord! It’s the Rapture!” Her eyes brimmed with tears as she started to tremble with incipient panic. Sofia set her iPhone down in her lap and took the woman gently by the shoulders.
“We don’t know that yet ma’am. There could be other explanations. We don’t even know that anyplace but this airplane is affected. Besides, if it was the Rapture, you’d have been taken too, wouldn’t you?”
“What else could it be? Oh Lord, I…I…must not have been sincere enough!”
“It could have been anything ma’am. Some kind of secret test like the Philadelphia Experiment, maybe even a natural phenomenon we haven’t encountered before. The Fortean literature is filled with reports of mysterious disappearances.” Sofia was highly skeptical of such things, and had personally investigated and found rational explanations some of the most popular accounts. But right now there was a terrified woman who needed alternatives to the idea that her God had turned his back on her and left her in the crosshairs of his wrath.
Sofia stood up. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said loudly, stepping into the aisle. “Whatever is happening here, the first thing we need to do is stay calm.”
“Stay calm?! My children are gone! We could all be next!” a man shouted. “And you want me to, what? Just relax and read a book?!”
“We’re flying at about six hundred miles an hour, thirty thousand feet above the ground. Do you think panicking could help?” Sofia said levelly. Emotions played across the man’s face. Fear, anger, helplessness… Tears welled in his eyes, but he gave a little nod.
“Alright, everyone who is missing someone, or sitting near someone who has disappeared, try not to disturb the clothes. We have to treat them like a crime scene. They’re the only clues we have about what happened. I don’t know if there’s a way to bring anybody back or not, but if there is, finding out what happened is the first step.”
Cameron “Buck” Williams sat in First Class, proof-reading his article about genetically-modified algae and bacteria developed by a biotech firm in Israel. His brow furrowed as he tried to make sense out of another one of Dr. Rosensweig’s explanations. All that science crap flew right over Cameron’s head, so he had no idea how to go about editing it.
Leave it raw, let the Gang of Four handle it. The Gang of Four was a team of junior writers and researchers Stanton Bailey had provided him as a personal staff to do the grunt-work.
Screams from the direction of Business Class and Coach broke Buck’s concentration. As far as he could tell, there was nothing wrong with the airplane, not so much as a moment of heavy turbulence. He grabbed his notebook and headed back to have a look, just in case there was a story to be had.
He stood in the doorway of the bulkhead that separated first class from the rest of the aircraft with a quizzical expression, trying to sort out the bizarre scene in front of him. It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone. People were calling names and staring into empty seats as if in panicked search for missing companions, or children. A young woman was leaning over toward the window seat comforting a crying old lady. As the younger woman released the elderly lady’s shoulders and leaned back, Buck caught a glimpse of a suit jacket, shirt and tie laid against the back of the seat, without a man in it. Fear and shock in the eyes of other passengers seemed to rule out a practical joke. But…people don’t disappear from airplanes in flight…
The young woman stood up from her aisle seat and stepped out into the middle. I’d hit that, Buck thought. Definitely. She had dusky skin and a head of thick, shiny black hair somewhat artlessly pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a sleek black leather jumpsuit that flattered her curvaceous figure.
Buck bristled as she started giving orders in a confident voice, telling people not to disturb the “clothes.”
“Excuse me, but who put you in charge?” Buck said. The woman turned striking gray eyes on him. They stood out brilliantly against her mocha complexion, fixing him with a penetrating gaze that made him lower his eyes to her chest.
“My name is Sofia Miranda Teresa de la Garza,” she said melodiously with a hint of a Spanish accent. “I am an astrophysicist and paranormal investigator working with the Center for Inquiry. And I’m not ‘in charge,’ I’m just--”
“A ‘paranormal investigator?’” Buck chuckled. “Seen any ghosts lately? Woo-ooo-OOO-ooooo,” he said, wiggling his fingers in an ooky-spooky gesture. “I’m Cameron Williams, senior writer for Global Weekly. But you can call me Buck,” he added with a lopsided grin. The other passengers didn’t laugh at his joke, staring at him open-mouthed instead. Being an award-winning reporter whose stories frequently graced the cover of the Weekly, Buck was used to the adoring public reactions that came with his fame, but this was almost enough to make him feel uncomfortable.
The woman looked at him incredulously for several seconds.
“As the leading reporter for a major news magazine, I’m much better qualified to lead an investiga—“
“You fatuous, supercilious popinjay! These people’s loved ones have apparently vanished into thin air, and your biggest concern is who’s in charge?!” she said, her eyes flashing like a freshly-drawn sword.
“It should be someone whose idea of ‘investigation’ doesn’t involve collecting blurry pictures of Bigfoot,” Buck said, feeling his neck redden and his pulse surge.
“If you want to investigate, then investigate.” Sofia turned to the willowy blond senior flight attendant who had just emerged from the service room in the rear of the aircraft and stopped in her tracks, trying to process the impossible situation of passengers just vanishing out of their clothes. “Could you please go to the cockpit, check on the status of the flight crew and the plane, and see if the pilots can find out if people have disappeared anywhere else?”
“Oh God! The pilots! What if they’re gone too?” a woman said, her voice rising to a high pitch of mounting horror.
“The plane is flying straight and level,” Sofia said, loudly enough for her voice to carry through the cabin. “We are not in any immediate danger of crashing. The flight crew, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are fully trained in dealing with the unlikely possibility of a pilotless aircraft.”
Buck doubted the flight attendant could do anything for them if the pilots were gone, but the ‘paranormal investigator’s’ words apparently had their intended effect: staving off, barely, an outburst of unrestrained panic. Buck had to fight down a jolt of anger at himself for feeling fear for his safety, and then relief at the woman’s words.
“Our first order of business is to find out what we can about the disappearances,” she added. Buck felt that too, and saw it spread through the passengers. Direction. Purpose. We are not helpless victims. Let’s roll.
The flight attendant snapped out of shell-shock, nodded, and headed toward the cockpit at a brisk pace. Buck took a moment to check her out as she passed, noting that she filled out her skirt rather nicely. He turned his attention back to Sofia. For the briefest moment, he had a thought of her and the flight attendant together. Their luscious lips shyly, hesitantly, yet irresistibly drawn together for a languorous kiss. The flight attendant’s slender fingers reaching for the standing collar of Sofia’s jumpsuit to begin slowly, oh so slowly, unzipping…
In the present, he leaned to get a better view as Sophia crouched to reach under her seat to pull out a briefcase and set it on her seat. Bent over the suitcase, she seemed so completely oblivious to his existence that he might as well have been watching through her bedroom window with binoculars. She snapped back upright in a crisp movement, having retrieved a notebook and pen.
The momentary stirring in Buck’s loins was doused as she started speaking again.
“I’m going to write a set of questions on the first page of this notebook. If you could each write your contact information on a separate page and then answer—“
“Now is not the time to be taking orders from Miss Weekly World News,” Buck said, rewarding his fellow passengers with a conspiratorial smirk. The smirk became a full-blown grin as he turned to Sofia. “Why don’t you go back and see if you can break into the booze while the stewardesses are busy? I know that’s normally reserved for First Class, but we can break the rules just this once. Am I right?” he said, turning to invite the other passengers into his little scheme. “While you’re doing that, I’ll start taking statements.”
“Hey buddy,” a bull-necked man with a graying high-and-tight snapped. “You got a reason to keep us from finding out the truth?” Buck turned to him with a quizzical look.
“…Um…What? No…of course not! But who couldn’t use a good stiff drink right about now, eh?” Buck’s smirk faltered into a nervous laugh as the passengers turned their gaze on him. Meeting their eyes, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He struggled to grasp why their looks were filled with suspicion and incipient hatred.
Then it hit him. It was like he’d fallen into an episode of The X-Files. His lofty mainstream press credentials, the speed-dial list and Rolodex full of insider contacts any reporter would kill for, the awards and photos with world leaders, celebrities and Fortune 100 CEO’s on the wall in his palatial Manhattan office, his long list of Establishment-friendly articles and op-ed pieces, his casual mockery of Sofia’s fringe ‘credentials’…all extreme liabilities in the topsy-turvy world within the pressurized cabin of this 747.
Here and now, Paranormal Girl would be exactly what the doctor ordered. And Cameron Williams, the Insider’s Insider, would be the closest thing they’d have to a suspect.
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