Under a Broken Sun (3 page)

I looked over at the husky guy who nodded.  “On the count of three.  Ready Ashley?”  The girl nodded.  The guy counted to three and we lifted; the friggin’ beam must’ve weighed five hundred pounds.  To her credit, Ashley pulled with everything she had and dragged the cry-baby out. 

We dropped the beam with a clang that echoed all over.  Heads turned towards us, as others expected the ceiling to cave in.  I knelt down to the old fart.  “You ok?”

He smiled through his tears.  “Yes.  I suppose I should thank you.  I am the Right Reverend Jesse Hill.”  He extended his hand, somewhat feebly. 

“Adam Dawson,” I said, feeling his weak, almost feminine grip.

I got up and turned to go when Hill called after me.  “Dawson?"

I turned to him.  "Yeah, that's right."

He stared at me like he recognized me, wiping the dripping snot from his thin, wrinkled nose.  He straightened himself out and sat up.  His face grew dark, despite a forced smile.  "How interesting.  I’ve just returned from a seminar by a Dr. Dawson in Washington, D.C.”

I stopped and gave him my best bullshit smile.  “Yeah, that’s my dad."

Hill’s smile evaporated.  “He is the antichrist, bent on ridding the world of God.”  I sighed.  Another whack-job.  Dad attracted them like steel to a magnet. 

I turned to leave. 
To hell with you, bub
.  He shouted.  “Don’t turn your back on me!”  I looked back at him.  “I am the Right Reverend Jesse Hill," he continued.  "I am the shepherd to millions of people.”  I stared at him with my best ‘who gives a shit’ look.  

"Yeah," I said to him, "And a minute ago you were pissing your pants in fear."

“Today is the day of Judgment.  The rapture!  Your father and all his demonic fiends will perish.”  His voice rose like a southern Baptist minister; people stopped talking and watched.  “I thought I’d be taken up with the others, but now I know why I wasn’t.  I am the Lord’s Crusader!  I am left behind to battle Satan and all who follow him.”  He pointed his crooked, arthritic finger at me.  “Like you."

Ok, time for me to split.  "Dude, it’s a power outage.  Get a grip."

I walked away, listening to him shout.  “I will destroy you, boy!  You and all the other minions of Satan!”

Crazy ass.  Looking back, I really should’ve let him die.  Would’ve made life easier for everyone.

I trotted the rest of the way to the bathroom to see if Marilyn was ok. 

But she wasn’t there.

3.    

I searched the terminal, but there wasn’t any sign.  She just disappeared. 
Shit
.  I called out her name, but my voice just joined the cacophony of a thousand names.  I started to get angry. 
Fuck her
.  I could feel the anger building up.  

It wasn't just her.  The adrenaline had kicked in like a drug.  The whole fucking world was collapsing around me.

I looked down as the pain started to come forth in my arm.  Without thinking about it, I had dug my fingernails deep across my arm.  Just like Marilyn.  I could feel the tension releasing.  Able to focus.

The noise settled and people fell closer to some level of organization.  I helped some guy limp off to a wall where he could prop himself up.  Another woman asked me to hold a bandage while she wrapped cloth around her knee.  The cops did their best to direct the human traffic, but you could sense an underlying panic building the longer every electronic device remained dead.  Everyone knew it.  Something should work.  Even a fucking flashlight.  Or one of those radios you hand crank.  Something.

A cop shouted, "Can I have your attention please?"  Everyone jumped and turned in the direction of the cop standing on chairs in front of a gate.  “Ladies and gentlemen, please give me your attention.”  Things quieted down except for the hysterical few who couldn’t hold it in.  “There are several police officers on the scene here as well as EMT’s and trained doctors and nurses.  Please remain calm.  We will be setting up a triage area to move the wounded to.  If you’re not injured, please report to me so that we can put you to work.  We will definitely need your help.  If you are wounded, please stay where you are, don’t try to move.  You may only cause more harm to yourself.”

“What the hell happened?” Someone shouted.  "Where are the ambulances, or firemen?"

“We’re not sure,” the cop offered.  “All we know is that all power, communications, and electronics are out.”  The crowd grew restless: “what?”, “terrorists?”, “it’s a nuclear bomb”.

The cop raised his hands to quiet everyone down.  “We’re working the situation and hope to have an answer soon.  Please remain calm and stay where you are.”  He paused, looking down at a piece of paper.  “Would the following individual please report to me: Mr. Adam Dawson.” 

What the fuck do they want with me?
  I looked around.  I didn’t have much time to make a decision.  People shuffled around me moving bodies, parts of bodies, or wounded.  Humans acting on their basic need for organization and structure.  Was anyone looking at me?

Everyone is
. 

My carry-on.  The cop calling my name. 
They can't know it's me.

They can, and they do.

“Let’s go,” someone said behind me.  I turned.  It was Marilyn, her eyes still red and swollen.  “Now,” she whispered.  “They think you did it.  Or know something.  They asked me about you.  Move!  Now!”

I didn’t have to be told twice.

I’ve had enough run-ins with the boys in blue to know how they think: solve the case first, worry about proof after.  After my DUI (my
only
DUI, thank you), they worked their ass off to make me seem like an asshole, even though it was my first offense.  They’ve got a job to do, I guess, and they’ll do it no matter who they crush.

Marilyn led me by the hand as we walked at a quick pace out of the terminal wreckage.  She seemed much more in control, even calm.  Then I saw why; her arm was a mess.  Small streaks of blood ran down from thin lines of red up her left arm, I counted about six of them.  She’d been busy.

“What did they say?” I asked her.

“After you left, I saw the cops talking to each other.  They pulled me aside and asked if I knew an Adam Dawson.  I said no.  They wrote down everything.”

“Hill,” I said. We passed a dark McDonald’s with a handful of very confused workers.  “He must’ve told them it was my fault.”

“Who?” 

“Never mind.  I should go to the cops."

Marilyn stopped me and turned towards me.  “No way.  Look, everyone thinks we’ve been hit by terrorists.  They’re sure they flew into the other plane on purpose.”

“Yeah but that’s not true-“I protested.

“It doesn’t matter,” she went on.  “They believe what they want to believe and the police want to show authority.  If your name is out there it’s out there in a bad way.”

I looked around at the crowd buzzing from one point to the next.  Many ran, several sat wide-eyed and trembling, some tried in vain to use a phone, but nothing worked.  Cell phones were dead.  Phone lines were dead.  Even the cops’ radios were dead.   Marilyn was right.  People were panicking.  And when they panic, they need a release, a bad guy.  Finding, blaming, and killing the bad guy.  A communal means of cutting.

“C’mon, we have to get out of here,” she said grabbing my hand. 

More cops evacuated the international terminal; lines of people spilled out from the exits like kids executing a school fire drill.  Officers stood along the line with their arms outstretched making sure people stayed in line and orderly.  One younger cop - husky, like an ex-football player - waved us over.  “You two, let’s go.  Get in line.”

Marilyn and I hustled to the back of the line and watched carefully.  We walked down the frozen escalator, filed out of the double door with the others, and entered the departure zone.

The heat blasted my face like a desert; dry and abrasive, not at all like what you'd expect on the east coast.   It had to be over a hundred.  Terrorists couldn’t do that.  Not even the worst solar flare I could think of could alter the Earth's atmospheric conditions.  What the hell happened?

Marilyn led me back to the edge of the crowd furthest away from airport.  I scanned the faces while Marilyn looked for our escape.  Some people, lost and wandering like the walking dead, drifted towards parked cars, probably looking for theirs.  Shock resonated on just about everyone’s face.  Especially the guy up ahead of me.  His eyes locked on mine, his grew wide, and he turned and muscled his way towards the nearest cop.

It was the manager from the PC place.  He remembered me, frantically trying to get on the internet, print something out, and then BOOM.  Everything died.

I watched him grab an officer, turn and point towards me.  I ducked down, grabbing Marilyn.  “Shit.  We gotta go,” I said. 

We ran out towards the parking garage.  I stole a glance behind me but no one was following.  Maybe the cop thought the manager was whacked.  Maybe he didn’t care. 

Then again…

“STOP!” the cop yelled from behind a wall of people.  “Hold it right there!”

Marilyn and I ran full force.  I heard the cop stumble through the crowd but we didn't hang around to check.  We bolted out of the front of the garage towards the highway. 

Time had come to a standstill.  Cars sat on the highway, in the parking lot, in mid-turn, completely frozen.  People sat on their cars, some sunbathing, some just looking confused.   None of them noticing another airliner floating down behind them in the sky.

“Freeze!”  The cop yelled.  We didn’t.  I grabbed Marilyn’s hand and ran towards the landing plane.

“Adam, Jesus, what are you doing?”

“You wanna run back to the airport?” I yelled.

The plane dipped lower, far too low to clear the parking garage.  It glided over our heads, close enough for me to see the rivets on its underbelly.

We ran into the underpass of the highway as the cop fired a warning shot, exploding concrete close to my head. The plane slammed into the parking garage with a thud followed by an air-ripping explosion.  Both Marilyn and I left our feet as the shockwave tossed us forward.  I don’t remember what happened to her.  I met a concrete pillar face first and blacked out.

When I came to the sun was just beginning to set.  My head throbbed so hard I could’ve taken my pulse just by paying attention.  I looked around the underpass.  To my left, Marilyn lay on her back, arm flopped over her head.  Fires roared in the parking garage, and black smoke rose mixing dark grays on the canvas of the sunset. 

I crawled my way over to Marilyn and turned her over, afraid she’d be dead.  Blood had pooled under her head and got on my hands as I touched her.  I reached down to check her eyes, looking for something, like pupil dilation, I guess.  I didn’t need to, they flittered open on their own.  She scanned the area and then looked at me.

“Adam?” she said.  I nodded.  “Head hurts.”

“I know.  Mine too.  Take it easy.  Can you sit up?”  Her eyes closed again.  “Stay with me, Marilyn!  Hey!”  I tapped her face to open her eyes again.

“Ow,” she said.

“You ok?”  She nodded slightly.  “Stay with me, ok?  We’ve got to get you some help.”

“No." she said as she reached for my arm.  “I’m ok.  They’re looking for us.   Remember?”  She touched a lump on my forehead, making me twitch.  "You ok?"

I nodded, distracted.  She was right.  We were lucky they hadn't caught us already.  “I'm fine. I'm gonna look for some supplies,” I said. 

I stepped out from under the highway, and stopped at the sight of a blazing sunset.  It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  Colors danced behind the clouds like a light show at a concert.  Usually sunsets are fairly stable in terms of color progression, but this was all over the place.  Like watching aurora borealis while on acid.

And the temperature.  A cold settled in that wouldn’t have fit anywhere south of Canada for this time of year.  I could just barely make out puffs of my own breath.  After the heat of the day, it was a welcome relief, but definitely not normal.  A gift I wanted to accept but knew wasn't good.  Something about the Earth had changed dramatically.

The crowd came into view.  I was so struck by the sunset that I had lost focus on the disaster behind us.  The fire raged on, and masses of people scurried with buckets; some held back as they defended their cars, some ran wild like children in an abandoned house.  The few cops there were tried to keep order, but it was useless.  EMT’s tried to help people, but the wounded surrounded them, like lepers reaching out to Jesus. 

Jesus.  Was this really his second coming?  I always thought that was crap because my father made sure I KNEW it was crap.  But something
did
happened, something either really unnatural (terrorist?) or so weirdly natural that it took us completely by surprise.   I remembered the paper in my back pocket.  I thought of Reverend Jesse Hill and my dad.

I thought of Marilyn.  To hell with figuring it out now, I had to help her.

Towards the crowd, in the back long-term parking lot, an EMT raced from an open ambulance.  I just needed supplies, and I needed to get to them before the crowd did.  I had to risk it.

I ran towards the ambulance and went to the back.  Perfect.  I grabbed some bandages and boxes of other stuff that I didn’t even recognize.  Had to be something there I could use.

A hand grabbed my shoulder.  “Hey!”

I turned and saw an EMT.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“My friend needs help.  Head wound.  It’s ok”

“No, it’s not.  You know how many people need help?  Put that shit away, son.  We’ll get to your friend when we can.”

I knew he was right; others needed help just as much as Marilyn. 

Fuck 'em.
I bolted out of the back, over the top of the EMT, and across the parking lot back to the underpass.  I don’t know if I caused it, but I left just in time: a riotous crowd surrounded the ambulance and began the looting.