Stage 3: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (4 page)

Hey, wait a minute. Maybe he could know about Power-Suit right away. Surely the news would have spread by now. Hell, it was probably front page on all the news sites, right? It had to be. A plane autolanding at SFO and some poor firefighter getting his cheek bitten off? That's the kind of thing news channels eat up!  Mason smiled at the unintended pun, brought up the Google page, and selected 'news'. Sure enough, under Top Stories, there was a description of the drama at San Francisco airport.

Mason read several linked pages. They told of the bold actions of the flight crew, both of whom had been transported to the hospital for observation, and made vague mention of 'some trouble with a few of the passengers'.
Really? Some trouble? All that was missing was the fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Some
trouble, indeed!

One of the pages mentioned a temporary blindness and blamed it on lightning striking close to the plane. Mason raised his beer in silent salute of Aaron's spot-on analysis and continued reading. The pilot was a 25 year veteran with the airline and should be commended for her quick thinking and calm demeanor, blah blah blah. Again, Mason raised his beer, this time to Katherine the Great. And then he read something that nearly knocked him off of his chair. Apparently, just before the pilot collapsed at the bottom of the stairs and was carted away in an overstuffed ambulance, she wished to thank a passenger by the name of Mason Tenby who had assisted the flight crew in their endeavors.

Again, Mason raised his beer, saluted Katherine for her kind words, and laughed aloud, "And here's to you, Mason Tenby!"

He drained the last of the bottle, belched his derision, and went back to the kitchen for something stronger.

CHAPTER III

By morning, Mason expected his phone to be blinking to show a voicemail. By now, they must surely have had time to identify everyone on the plane and see that the guy in 10B was missing. He'd used his passport, so how difficult would it be for the FAA or Homeland Security or whoever to figure out who he was and where he lived? He'd gone to bed all but certain that there would be a knock on his door sometime during the night, so he even kept pajama bottoms next to the bed lest they break the door down and catch him in his altogether.

Aha! There
was
a voicemail! But looking at the call log, he saw that it wasn't from the FAA or the police or the ghost of J. Edgar. It was from Becks. With a gnawing pain deep in the pit of his stomach, he dialed his voicemail, set it on speaker, and hit '1' to hear his voicemail.

It was Becks' alright. Her voice was meek and quiet, and she was telling him again how sorry she was, and that she never wanted to hurt him. "You're a good man, Mace," she hushed through the speaker, "but there's something inside of you that keeps you from really living. Like a dark cloud hanging over your heart. Even in your most contented moments, you can't help but gaze out at the world with a sense of… …..of……..
hopelessness
. You're afraid to be happy, because you despair of it ending." She went on a bit longer, mostly about how she couldn't live that way, and how truly sorry she was, then she finished up with a dagger straight through the dark cloud and into his heart.

"I
hope
you'll be okay, Mace."

With that, she started to cry, so she sobbed one last "I'm sorry, Mace", and hung up. Mason replayed the message four times and cried harder every time he heard it. At last, he had a decision to make. The computer-girl was telling him once again that he could either press '1' to save the message or press '7' to delete the message.

Why can't you offer me a third option
, Mason thought,
like maybe press' 4' to relive all of those great times over all of those years?
Or better yet, how about I press '9' to delete all memory of that incredible girl and let me get on with my life? Why can't you offer me
those,
Siri?

He pressed '1' and saved the message. Then he shut off the phone and poured himself an orange juice with a splash of vodka to take the edge off. Or maybe it was a vodka with a splash of orange juice. What the hell…..he still had six days of vacation time left and nowhere he had to be, so why not?

Once he got some eggs and toast down, he actually started to feel almost human again. After a visit to his own toilet and a hot, prolonged shower, Mason could almost imagine himself ready to face the day. Still, he had nowhere to go and nothing to accomplish, so he flicked on the TV and spread out naked on the couch to see what was going on in the world. He flicked aimlessly through the channels and finally settled on the news. Maybe there would be something about the emergency landing, and he could have a chuckle at the witless alphabet agencies being unable to track down this mysterious Mason Tenby.

No, there was no talk of the near-catastrophe at SFO.  Not a word. That potential tragedy was already old news, and all of the news channels had gone on to the next big thing. They were talking now about some strange new flu sweeping the West Coast. Washington State had 400 new cases reported since midnight. Nearly as many in Oregon. 600-plus in California. Another 250 in British Columbia. Canadian authorities were speculating that it had something to do with the Fukushima reactor in Japan, the one that nearly went all China Syndrome after the earthquake and tsunami. Maybe it was back to venting radioactive steam, and we weren't being told.

The US authorities said that it was a simple flu virus; nothing else. But the first symptom of this unprecedented illness was what caught Mason's attention. They didn't know if it was temporary or permanent, but the first symptom of this new unknown disease was loss of sight.

"Son of a bitch,….." Mason muttered aloud.

The two events couldn't possibly be related. It was coincidence, surely. The powers-that-be had thousands of doctors and scientists and professional analysts chained to desks whose sole job it was to find connections between disparate events. A car bomb could explode in Venezuela, and within an hour they could trace it back to a random cell-phone call in Azerbaijan a month earlier. They were the goddam
government
, for chrissakes. If the craziness on the plane and this flu were connected, they'd know it. But then a dark thought fell across Mason's thoughts. Maybe they
did
know, but weren't telling. Was that such a stretch?

He went to his computer, woke it up with a tap, and brought up the search engine. After some consideration, he typed 'polar jet stream'.

…..here we were, trying to latch onto the polar jet stream, and suddenly we're lost in an altocumulus billow!……

He read that the polar jet stream moves at speeds greater than 100 miles per hour. He searched for the distance across the Pacific and saw that it was over 6,000 miles. 60 hours for anything riding along in the jet stream to make the journey. Alright then, that tenuous little whisper of an idea nagging at the back of his mind could effectively be silenced. He'd had a crazy and, truth be told, fleetingly chilling notion that maybe the strange cloud they'd passed through had been carrying the virus aloft. It was really the only way the two things could logically be connected. The captain had explained about modern aircraft drawing fresh air in from the outside, so it was at least conceivable that something else might have hitched a free ride on the wind. But that was only a day ago. 30 hours at best. So, there went
that
theory.

But wait a minute. He'd already been pas….uhh….
asleep
by the time they flew through the cloud and the eerie blue lightning. What time did he finally unplug Jumbo and plug in Pink Floyd? He hadn't looked at his watch, but he remembered the little cartoon plane as being about halfway across the ocean. That'd put it around 3,000 miles out, give or take.

30 hours. Maybe less.

Suddenly, it made horrifying sense.

…then the lightning started up. Great flashes of blues and violets. We could actually smell the ozone!….

Okay, well, so what? So he might have been exposed to this crazy new flu. He wasn't sick, was he? If a virus had snuck its way on board, it must have taken one look at the drooling, snoring drunk curled up against the bulkhead and passed him by.
Even viruses have standards,
he thought to himself, and gave a little chuckle at his self-deprecating wit.

The talking heads went on to a new subject. Just in case people were getting inured to the possibility of a world-wide pandemic, they had to keep the fear level amped up, or viewers might change the channel. There had been fatal assaults in several large cities, but was it a terrorist plot or mere coincidence? No doubt, the US of A was more than capable of churning out its own unique brand of home-grown nut cases, but the implications were that it was all a coordinated attack by some nefarious, read 'foreign', entity. The part that struck Mason, though, was the quickly-mentioned and just as quickly disregarded fact that the assaults had not been by AK-47's or Uzi's or any other weapon of mass destruction so dear to the US populace. The attacks had all been hands-on.

Christ!
Just as well that he had a bunch more days of vacation time left. This sounded like the perfect time to hunker down, rest and recuperate, and pursue his most pleasurable pastime; eschewing all contact with his fellow human beings. He had a cupboard full of food, a fridge full of beer, a bottle of Stoli, another of Malibu rum, and a freezer stuffed with frozen pizzas and TV dinners. Hell, six days alone in his private kingdom would be a joy! He could hole-up here for a
month
if he'd had any more vacation days in the bank.

So that's the plan then
, he told himself,
six days alone in my own private paradise
.
No matter what, it's bound to be better than that awful week in Phuket. I'll stay inside, see what's been piling up on the PVR, and avoid the hell out of those crazy-ass humans. I'll leave the phone off, ignore my email, and won't even check in on the news. In fact, I'll turn the computer off entirely, close the blinds, and won't even watch live TV just in case there's a news flash. As far as I'm concerned, this place is a desert isle, and I'm Robinson-frigging-Crusoe. For the next six days, the world outside doesn't even exist!

He went to the kitchen and poured himself another drink. He drained half of the glass in one big gulp and sighed complacently.
Six days all alone in my private kingdom.…. No human contact whatsoever….. avoid all people, come what may…..
He smirked at the brilliance of the plan and tossed back the rest of his drink.
Hell, you just watch me. I'll avoid people like the plague!

CHAPTER IV

He snapped awake and saw that he was in his own bed. Thank Christ! The hotel room was just a lingering nightmare. But it was still dark. Why did he wake up? His head was pounding, but that wasn't it. Hell, if he hadn't already figured out how to sleep through hangovers, he wouldn't have had a moment's sleep in twenty years.

Had it been a noise? Were the kids next door fighting again? He lay there for some time, listening, but everything was quiet. Well, maybe one of them had finally ended the tumultuous relationship with a poker, and he'd been stirred awake by the thud of a body hitting the floor. They both seemed like nice guys, but Mason thought it oddly satisfying that gay couples could be stuck in as bad a shit-storm of a relationship as anyone else.

He rubbed his eyes and checked the clock beside him. He saw a dark lump that had to be the clock, but it was dead.
Oh well
, he thought,
it was only a 20 buck Walmart special, easily replaced
. He rolled over to check the clock on the other side—
Becks' side
, he remembered with a grimace, and saw that it was dead too. 

Damn! Power outage. Probably some dick with a snootful piled his car into a power pole.
Thanks, dick
, Mason said to himself and climbed awkwardly out of bed. He put a finger to the blinds and had his first look at the outside world in nearly a week. Okay, so maybe it wasn't some dick with an over-powered muscle car going all Dominic Toretto after polishing off his first bottle of Zima all by himself. The whole city was dark. Probably some dick at PG&E asleep at the switch.

Thanks, dick
, he thought again.

He went to the kitchen and instinctively flipped the light switch, then he sighed and rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. He looked to the microwave to find the time, then he mused over how inane human beings were in the face of change.
What next,
he thought, shall I
turn on the TV to see why the power is out?
He found his cell phone where he'd left it six days ago and grudgingly turned it on. Sure enough, it still had a full battery, but with no active cell towers to tie into, it didn't show the time. He'd thought that maybe the clock was internal, so at least he couldn't fault the human condition for this one. It was a lack of understand, is all.

The little telephone icon showed a backlog of fourteen voicemails.
Fourteen
, for the love of God! What, the world couldn't get by without him for a week? He considered playing them one by one, but he knew it would either be work asking him to come back early or well-wishers calling to see how he was doing, and he had no stomach for either. One of them might be from Becks, he considered, but he didn't have the stomach for that either. Besides, with the power out, he had no choice. He put the phone to sleep to conserve the battery and went to the bathroom. Again, he flipped the light switch, then he cursed aloud.

Rather than take a chance at splashing his business all over the floor, Mason put a match to one of Becks' votive candles on the edge of the tub. After emptying his bladder more or less accurately, he gathered up the other three candles and carried them to the kitchen. He lit one from the other and soon had a dull glow to light his way around the apartment. As far as he could tell, it was the only part of the entire relationship that had any lingering benefit.

"Thanks, Becks," he said aloud, "The light of my life."

Just then, he remembered the wall clock in the entranceway. It was battery-operated. He could hear it ticking away in the harsh stillness around him. He went to the entrance, rolled his eyes again, then went back to collect one of the candles.

4:00 o'clock. Okay, at least he could orient himself now. He returned to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of Dasani water from the bottom shelf. Thank God, it was still cold. That meant that the power hadn't been out for long, so the stuff in the freezer would be okay for a while. He opened the bottle and drank the cool water in one long swallow.

4:00 o'clock. His vacation days were gone, and he was due to clock in at work at seven. There was no point in trying to sleep any more, and honestly, he'd spent enough time in the past few days enjoying cat naps in the front of the TV or passing out in bed for 12 hour stretches that he figured he was all slept out anyway. Maybe he'd even show up at the works yard half an hour early and surprise the hell out of everyone. No doubt, they'd expect him to drift in late on his first day back, so let them be astonished and bewildered at his perceived work ethic, and they could suck on that for a while.

But just to set the record straight, the first person to mention Becks or the wedding or the honeymoon might just get a bloody nose. And when the big shots called him on the carpet for assaulting a coworker, he'd show them the news stories about the mystery man who'd helped land a of planeload of idiots, and wouldn't the papers just salivate at the chance to interview the genuine hero who'd helped save countless lives and was then sacked for showing obvious signs of PTSD?

Smiling now, Mason carried two of the candles to the bathroom and braved a quick shower. Once the water started to get truly frigid, he quickly washed away the last of the soap, dried himself, and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Then he went to the fridge, found some leftover pizza, and had a breakfast of sorts. He filled the next hour by collecting empty bottles and cans from around the apartment and washing a sink full of dishes, and as the sun started to rise, he finally peeked through the blinds for his first real look at the world since arriving home.

Apparently, the ant-people were in hiding. It was all quiet down below. The street fronting the building was empty most nights, so it wasn't surprising, but there should be some traffic on the major roads a few blocks away. Okay, there were a few sets of double pinpoints of light at a distance, but they weren't moving. Probably newspaper men dropping off their bundles, or cabbies picking up their fares.

He had vague memories of sounds wafting up from down below and impinging on his sanctuary over the past few days, but he'd purposefully ignored them. He'd heard car horns and raised voices and the odd screeching tires, but he'd made a deal with himself that nothing was going to intrude on his little island of bliss, so he'd dismissed it all, cranked the music louder, and tuned out everything beyond his four walls.

Only now, he began to wonder what he'd missed. It was odd that there was no traffic roaring past. By this time of day, there should be a whole line of lights streaming toward the 101. Had someone declared a national holiday or something? As he gathered up his wallet and keys and slipped his cell phone into his back pocket, his mind kept returning to one idle thought.

What the hell did I sleep through?

The hallway was dark. Two pale yellow emergency lights were still on; just bright enough that Mason could make out the exit sign over the stairwell. As he passed the elevators, he noted a smeared handprint on the wall, and he cursed whichever of his neighbors had been such an ass, even as he wondered what kind of drunken revelry ends with a handprint in strawberry jam on a wall.

Goddam humans
, he cursed to himself.

He pushed his way into the stairwell, letting the door close with a bang behind him, then he peered down into a column of blackness and sighed. Sixteen floors. It wouldn't be fun, but at least he was going down instead of up. The power'd just better be on by the time he got home, or there was gonna be hell to pay down at PG&E.

He started down and used the light from his phone to read the numbers on the wall as he went. 12, 11, 10… ..Suddenly, the silence was broken from somewhere down below. There was a scuffling, a curt little yelp, and a heavy thud. His immediate thought was that someone had missed a step, maybe barked a knee, and had howled in pain. Taking the hint, he slowed his descent and held onto the railing for good measure…. . 9, 8, 7… …..Somewhere between the 7th and 6th floor, an absolute tumult echoed up through the dark. Sounds of a fight, close by. One floor below. Curses, thuds, shouts, grunts, then a shrill, frantic scream that went on and on and on.

This wasn't someone tripping over his own feet, it was something more. That scream was the desperate howl of someone dying!

Despite his actions on the plane, Mason knew he was no hero. Sure, he'd milk that story for all it was worth, but in his heart, he was just like everyone else. If he could save a life by making a phone call or reading numbers from a control panel, that was one thing. What was going on one floor down was something else entirely. This was someone fighting for their life. And losing! Was there any point in stepping into a scene like that? Isn't that the part of the movie where the  Good Samaritan stumbles in and takes a chainsaw to the face?

Mason backed up a few steps and unlocked his phone, then silently cursed himself when he remembered the lack of service. And then he listened.

Rough scrabbling. The moans finally dying away altogether. Then an indistinct wet sound, like moist tissue paper tearing.

Whatever the sounds represented, it was close. He leaned over the railing, but could see only darkness. At last, he brought up his phone and aimed the screen downward. The soft, ambient glow cast a dull light over the scene; just enough to make out two hunched figures. One was laying on his back, and the other looked to be hovering overtop. Maybe he'd been mistaken. Maybe someone had fallen, and a passerby was administering first aid. If so, then maybe Mason could do something after all.

The light should have caught the attention of the man on his knees, but it hadn't. Still uncertain of what exactly he was seeing, Mason passed carefully down to the next level so that the scene was directly before him and one short flight down.

At last he could make out who was who. The man on his back was in shorts and a t-shirt. Another man in a flowered shirt was bent over him performing mouth-to-mouth. He was bent low over the other man, giving him the kiss of life. So, it hadn't been a fall, after all. It had been a heart attack or a stroke. Okay, at least this was within Mason's wheelhouse. He didn't know anything about CPR and had no wish to share saliva with another man, but there was something he could do.

He shone his weak light on the scene as he raced down the last flight of stairs, shouting, "Hey, keep at it! I'll run down and call an ambulance!"

Immediately, the man in the flowered shirt lifted his face and turned to Mason. Blood poured from the man's mouth and dripped from a grizzled grey beard onto a shirt stained red down the front. Mason's eyes went to the man in the shorts, and he saw a throat that more resembled raw hamburger than human anatomy. A pool of blood grew lazily out from the fallen man, and he stared at the ceiling with the hollow eyes of a dead man.

"Jesus f
uck!"
Mason howled, backing up several steps.

The man in the flowered shirt climbed awkwardly to his feet and bared his teeth. To Mason, it looked as if he'd just interrupted a wolf in the middle of its meal. The man's teeth were red, and blood formed frothy little bubbles at the corners of his mouth, but it was the man's eyes that froze Mason's blood in his veins. They were empty, blank, completely devoid of anything that was ever human. The crazed man looked up at Mason, his eyes fixed clearly on Mason's chest, then he was on him in a flash!

The madman sprinted up the steps in a rush. Instinctively, Mason threw out a leg and struck the man squarely in the chest. The man dropped back and fell to his knees, but he was quickly back up in a crouch. Mason expected another attack, but the madman simply squatted there and swiveled his head from side to side like a radar dish looking for a signal. Of course. The eyes. They were utterly blank. And he'd paid no attention to the light. Obviously, this man was blind. He couldn't see Mason, and now he'd lost his sense of bearing. Slowly, Mason backed up another step, but his heel scuffed on the concrete and the man's head immediately flicked toward the sound. Then he jumped to his feet and tore up the steps, howling like an animal.

Mason brought his foot back up and forcibly kicked the man away. The man clawed at the air, and one hand narrowly missed grabbing onto Mason's trouser leg, then he fell backward, landing atop the dead man in the shorts. Once again, the creature was on his knees immediately, swinging his head from side to side. This time, Mason froze in place. He drew in a slow lungful of air and held his breath, then he moved not a muscle. Sure enough, after a handful of seconds that seemed an eternity, the crazy man gave up. He uttered an annoyed huff, then crouched down and settled his face back into the dead man's throat. There was a wet crunching sound, and Mason felt bile rise up in the back of his throat.

Mason's mind was in a state of utter confusion. What should he do? Go back up? Go down and call the cops from a landline in the lobby? If there was a second staircase in the building, the decision would have been an easy one, but this stairwell was the only way down.

And then he had a crazy, dangerous thought. The man in the flowered shirt was blind, to be sure. If he was very careful, maybe he could sneak past him without making a sound, and the madman would be none the wiser. The more Mason considered the idea, the more he realized that it was the only way. But if he actually did this, he had to do it without making a sound. Not a single, solitary sound. No scuffing of a shoe, no jingling of keys in his pocket, not a whisper of a breath.