Stage 3: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (3 page)

   "We'll have you sorted out in no time, Aaron," the captain assured him as the wail of sirens grew close, "It's probably just a delayed stress reaction. I wouldn't worry."

When the copilot started to cough again, Mason saw it was time for him to go. He popped open the door, offered a concerned, "I'll see if I can direct one of the EMT's up front," then he stepped back into the main cabin and closed the door behind him.

He hadn't given any thought to how the other passengers might react at knowing they were safely on the ground, but he could never have expected what he now saw. There was no cheering, no jubilation, no
hip-hip-hoorahs
for the gallant flight crew who'd fought through a fuck-ton of adversity to bring them back down to Mother Earth. Instead, there was bedlam.

Some passengers were still in their seats, sobbing quietly, wailing at the tops of their lungs or clinging to loved ones, but most were on their feet, yelling, shoving, and throwing blind punches at anyone who stood in their way. It wasn't a mad rush for the exits; it was simply violence for violence's sake. He saw a big man shove another man to the floor and begin to kick him wildly. He called out for the big man to stop, but it was pointless. Another man grabbed a young woman by the scruff of her neck and lined up a vicious punch that knocked her to the ground. An older woman made a grab for the crying baby, and when the child's mother pulled her child desperately away, the old lady actually bit the screeching mother on the arm.

Suddenly, a bit of coughing looked like a pretty damn reasonable after-effect of stress.

He saw cute little Katie still strapped in her stewardess seat. He unclasped the belt, but before he could even begin hauling her to her feet, she clawed at his face without warning, hissing like a feral cat. He shoved her away and stepped back, cursing.

"Yeah, you're welcome, honey," he spat as she fell back and collapsed to the floor.

As he turned away, he noticed that the drink cart hadn't been stowed properly and had rolled to one side, wedging itself against the sink. He helped himself to a double-handful of bottles, filled his pockets, and shoved through the maddening crowd to the closest door. The sirens outside had stopped, and red and yellow lights were flashing through the tiny window in the door. Well, thank
Christ!
A few seconds later, a face appeared in the window and the door cracked open. A set of stairs had been wheeled up, and a gruff older man was standing on the platform.

"They're all blind, and they're all batshit crazy," Mason told him plainly and shoved rudely past him.

"Are you Mr Tenby?" the man huffed.

Mason rolled his eyes. "The name's Mason. And by the way, the copilot's sick, and those two up front are the only people on this whole damn plane who deserve your help."

"Alright, Mr Tenby, we'll take it from here. See one of the fellows in the white shirts down there, and he'll give you the once-over."

Mason side-stepped several men rushing to the top of the stairs and avoided the EMT's eager to lend a hand down below. He found a quiet little corner of the chaos, reached into his pocket for a bottle of scotch, and unscrewed the cap with practiced efficiency. Turning away from the tumult, he downed the drink in a swallow. His head still ached, but now it wasn't all from the alcohol. Now it ached from a general disgust of his fellow man. The derisive words of Hamlet came suddenly to his mind, and he mentally recited them with a grimace on his face and antipathy in his heart.

What a piece of work is man…..

Here, he'd helped save a planeload of idiots from an ignoble death, and they thanked him by beating the hell out of each other.

How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties…… In form and moving, how express and admirable…..

Yeah, okay, the pilots seemed okay, but he'd bet money that if they ever met again, he'd be dismissed with a fake-polite handshake and a 'maybe see you around'. Hell, they didn't even bother to know his
goddam
name! 

In action, how like an angel….. In apprehension, how like a God!  The paragon of animals! 

He thought of cute little Katie, all smiles and sweetness one minute, and a jungle cat with a burr up her butt the next. Just like Becks. He fished another bottle out of his pocket and snapped it open.

And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
Man delights not me….. No, nor woman neither….

With a raising of the bottle in silent toast to the creatures he'd spent a lifetime coming to loathe, he put the bottle to his lips and tossed it back with a shudder.

CHAPTER II

He stuck around just long enough to see that he was within walking distance of the terminal and that everyone in a uniform was far too busy to bother with someone who didn't seem like he needed assistance. With one last furtive glance back over his shoulder, then, he began to make his way away across a series of access roads toward the terminal and home. He came across a door standing open, guarded by a group of guys in reflective vests and smokes on the go, but he strolled right past them as if he owned the place and found himself in the staff area below the terminal. No one stopped him, and no one questioned him, so he looked around, found a stairwell, and was soon on the main floor. Passing into the terminal proper, he saw a sign pointing to something-or-other Bar and followed the arrows. Within minutes, he was seated in a corner booth, drink in hand and watching the drama unfold through a huge window overlooking the runway.

No one willing to try parking that big beautiful girl, huh, Katherine?

The plane was just where he'd left it. People were being helped down the stairs to waiting EMT's, but things didn't appear to be going smoothly. More than one belligerent passenger was actually fighting with the people trying to help. And, oh look, there was his big fat neighbor! No longer weeping like a baby, the whale of a man was actually throwing punches.

Better you than me, ……
Mason concluded, and raised his glass in salute to the nameless, faceless peons in uniforms who were just trying to do their jobs. They wrestled the big man down the stairs and bundled him into an ambulance, and then a slim young woman appeared at the top of the stairs. She was one of the rescue people. A firefighter, by the look of her clothes. She was cradling her hand against her chest, and the front of her shirt was red with blood. She started down the stairs, but then a man appeared behind her; one of the passengers dressed in a blue power-suit and tie. Before the firegirl could reach the ground, the man tore down the steps after her and grabbed her from behind. Then, long before anyone could make a move to help, he grabbed hold of the girl's hair, jerked her head back violently, and buried his face in her neck.

What the hell? Is he trying to make out with her?
Christ!

The firegirl's knees gave out, and she slumped in his arms. Still, he kept his face buried in her neck until another firefighter raced up the stairs and pulled the two apart. Suddenly, the girl's entire front was a mess of blood. It streamed from her throat and cascaded down her chest in a river. She gave a single gasp and fell lifelessly into her colleague's arms, and then the man in the suit was on him. As they came together, the firefighter dropped the girl and raised his mouth to the sky. Mason couldn't hear anything through the plate-glass windows, but he knew that the man was screaming. The guy in the suit had his mouth pressed against the firefighter's face as if he were giving him a big sloppy kiss, but when he finally pulled back, the firefighters face was red with blood, and the man in the suit was like a wolf standing over the carcass of a caribou. He threw back his head, flipped a piece of meat into the air, caught it in his jaws, and chewed it until it was gone. Then he lunged once more at the firefighter.

Other people in the bar were shouting now. Gasps of disbelief, screams of horror, more than a few people cursing like sailors. So Mason wasn't seeing things, then. He was actually seeing what he was seeing. An otherwise respectable man had just physically attacked two rescue workers, and he'd done it with his teeth. His goddam
teeth!
What kind of unstable freak deals with fear and trauma by
biting
his rescuers? And he didn't just
bite
that poor bastard; he'd actually torn off the guy's cheek. And eaten it! He'd actually
eaten
it! What kind of fucked up monster does
that?

The bartender of this Whatever-the-fuck Bar was one of those in the crowd, watching the drama unfold. He'd come out from behind the bar to join a dozen others with their faces pressed against the glass to get a better look. They were just like the drivers that slow down at an accident scene, hoping they can maybe get a glimpse of blood or a dismembered body lying in the road.

What a piece of work is a man
, Mason thought again, downing his drink and stirring himself out of his comfortable booth.
Yeah, you guys go ahead and satiate your bloodlust. I'm going home
…..

He found his way outside and stepped bodily in front of a passing cab. The driver stuck his head through the window and made some protest about a cab stand fifty feet back and the hell he'd have to pay if he cut the line, but Mason had the door open and was inside before the statement could be finished. The driver relented with a shrug, nodded at the stated address and drove off. At that point, all Mason wanted was to be home. The airline would forward his luggage if they wanted, but Mason couldn't have cared less. A few lost t-shirts and a handful of ratty underwear was a small price to pay to put this whole damned episode behind him.

He laid his head back against the seat and retrieved another bottle from his pocket. And then another. And another. By the time they pulled up in front of his building, his pockets were empty and the floor of the cab was littered with tiny empty bottles. He paid the driver, took an elevator to the 16th floor and thanked whatever gods there be that he'd had the ride to himself. Once in his apartment, he bolted the door, drew the chain and released a breath he might have been holding for hours.

Thank
Christ!
What a week. What a horrible, godawful shit-storm of a week. It was supposed to have been wonderful. When he'd booked the flight and the bungalow six months ago, he'd done so giggling like a school boy. Becks will
love
Thailand, he'd thought.  One full week of sand and surf and umbrella drinks and couples' massages. Who wouldn't love that?

Yeah, it'd sounded great at the time, but he'd ended up going alone. All alone in a vacation paradise full of couples. Gay or straight, everyone was paired up. Everyone but him and one freaky looking dude with a 70's porn-stache and an eye for the young girls handing out towels at the pool. Everyone he passed by gave him the same look they gave to Porn-Stache;  a narrowing of the eye, a wrinkling of the nose and a barely-disguised scowl.

"Thanks, Becks," he said, popping open a beer and draining half of it in a single swallow. 

Despite the fact that it was barely morning and he'd already slept away half of the last 16 hours, he was suddenly exhausted. He carried the rest of the beer to the bathroom, dropped his sweaty clothes to the floor, swallowed a handful of aspirin and had a quick shower. Then he climbed into bed and tried to think of anything other than beaches and women and airplanes.

It was pointless. As he lay there pondering that finite moment when his life began to spiral downward, his mind kept returning to the more recent fiasco, and one thought always rose to the fore; who the hell copes with nervous exhaustion by assaulting his rescuers? Crying, he could understand. Shutting down, okay. Not his cup of tea, but understandable. He could even be generous enough to explain cute little Katie's feral cat routine away by supposing that it might have been his fault for not identifying himself, and she'd acted out of fear. But half the planeload taking swings at one another? And biting? Where the hell did
that
get fun? Okay, sure, Power-Suit was blind and scared, but what bizarre path must the rush of adrenaline and cortisol have taken through his fucked up brain that chowing down on another man's face seemed like a perfectly acceptable response to the situation?

The words of Manfred Mann suddenly started to rattle around in his brain.

Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night……

Lights. Lightning. The copilot mentioned lightning. Blue lightning, and the smell of ozone. Is that what blinded everyone? Mason knew that staring at the sun could cause eye damage, and watching a nuclear bomb go off or staring at an arc-welder would do it, too, or so he'd been told. But regular old lightning? Was that even possible? No, no way. If lightning caused blindness, there wouldn't be anyone left on the planet without a white cane.

But what about
blue
lightning? Could lightning even
be
blue? Mason wracked his brain, but couldn't recall ever hearing about blue lightning. Lightning was all white, wasn't it? All of those screen-saver pictures he'd seen on-line with dramatic images of lightning flashing across the heavens; they were all white, right? If someone had ever caught a picture of
blue
lightning, he'd certainly never seen it.

A side effect of the clouds, maybe. Was that possible? Mason's mind was many things, but first and foremost, it was logical, and he immediately chided himself.
All
lightning came from clouds, moron. Clouds don't
change
lightning, they
create
lightning. Still, he couldn't help but allow for one small caveat.
What about a cloud that smelled vaguely of chemicals?

Manfred Mann's lyrics came back, but this time Homer Simpson was singing, "….wrapped up like a douche, and I rolled her in the night….," and Mason knew that he wouldn't be sleeping any more today. Well, maybe that was for the best, after all. He looked at the clock on the far side of the bed—
Becks' side
, he thought with a grimace, and saw it was barely nine o'clock. If he slept now, he'd be awake all night. Better he stay up till dusk and sleep all night. He still had a full week until he had to go back to work, but the sooner he reset his body clock, the better. Besides, his head had stopped pounding at last. The aspirin had helped, but there was no doubt in his mind that the real remedy had been those little stolen bottles of Johnnie Walker.

He hauled himself out of bed with a groan and padded naked into the kitchen. Thankfully, he'd left the fridge full of beer.
And Becks' stupid ciders
, he remembered, looking at a door shelf lined with fruity drinks. Becks liked cider, so he made sure there was always cider in the fridge. Maybe one day he'd use those bottles of cider to play dodgeball with the people walking by sixteen floors below, he considered with a smirk, but for now he grabbed a beer, snapped it open, and kicked the door closed.

His computer was in a corner of the livingroom, tucked against a window so he could watch the ant-people down below as he surfed. He sat himself in the chair and toggled the machine on, and thirty interminable seconds later, it came to life with a
bing!

47 emails.
Christ!
He started at the top and deleted as he went. Unless it was family or a close friend, he got rid of it. Then he started at the bottom and checked the remaining emails one by one. A friend hoping he had a good flight. Delete. Another friend with relationship advice. Delete. A colleague at work wondering if he was available for overtime. Delete. More hopes for a safe flight and a nice vacation. Hope you can put this all behind you. Plenty of fish in the sea. Blah, blah, blah. Delete, delete, delete.

Finally, he closed his email and brought up the search engine. He typed the words 'blue lightning' and waited. To his surprise, sure as hell, blue lightning was a real thing. Something about the excitation of nitrogen in the atmosphere. He typed the words 'blue lightning strange clouds' and waited. Most of the pages were the same scientific websites he'd already seen, so he tried again with 'blue lightning chemical clouds'. It was all the same stuff, and nothing that could explain the weirdness on the plane. Yes, blue lightning was real. Apparently, lightning can be just about any color in the rainbow, depending on what's in the air. And yes, there was such a thing as 'upper-atmospheric' lightning, and things called 'Elves', 'Sprites' and 'Blue Jets', some of which shot energy far up into the ionosphere. 

Mason found it all fairly interesting, but none of it answered the question. Finally, Mason cut to the chase and typed the words 'can lightning blind a person'. The first few pages were more of the same information, but then he saw a page referencing something called 'flash blindness', and that's where he found it at last. Sure enough, lightning
could
cause flash blindness. It was rare, and you had to be close to it, but just like welding torches and intense sunlight, it could actually cause blindness. But, as he read further, he saw that it was always temporary.

Well, good for you, Aaron and Katherine
, he thought. They were the only two people on the plane who'd been nice to him, so he sent them a silent congratulations. Well, okay, cute little Katie was pretty nice, too, at least before she broke out her Selena Kyle impression. And Gloria had been alright, too. And that lady with the rosary seemed decent enough. The one with the baby as well, he supposed, although he always felt that there should be a special space in the cargo hold for babies. Let the dogs and cats run free in the cabin, but lock the babies below, he figured.

He spared a tiny thought to the others on the plane who would now be in the hospital with doctors shining penlights in their eyes and nurses bringing them pain meds and Jell-O and fruit juice. Right about now, they should all be getting their vision back and realizing what a bunch of idiots they'd all been. And Power-Suit? He'd wake up in a jail cell with a headache, dried blood on his chin, ink stains on his fingertips, and the prospect of lengthy prison sentence staring him in the face.
Good,
Mason thought.
Throw him in a hole.….. This world's fucked up enough without goddam
cannibals
roaming the streets.