The Remnants of Yesterday (4 page)

9

“KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED for Walter,” I said as we stepped from the safety of the convenience store out onto the gas station forecourt.

“No shit.” Clara brandished the tire iron like she was carrying a machine gun. Her eyes darted from side to side.

We moved forward slowly, making our way past the abandoned BMW, toward my own car. As we passed the pump where Walter had been tied up just hours before, my eyes fell to the nylon rope.

Clara saw it too. She reached down and plucked it from the concrete. “Look at this.” Despite still being tied, the rope was separated, the ends frayed and ragged. In a couple of places there were small linear indentations in the weave. She examined them closely. “These look like-”

“Teeth marks.” I finished her thought.

“Oh my God. He chewed his way free.” Clara’s eyes were wide with shock. “How is that possible?”

“He obviously didn’t like being tied up.” It made my teeth hurt just thinking about biting through nylon rope.

“It must have taken a while to do this.”

“I don’t want to think about it.” Clara dropped the rope and focused her attention on the car. “We should get out of here before anything else happens.”

“Sure.” We covered the last few steps to the car in a hurry, aware that at any time we might find ourselves dealing with Walter once again. “Hop in while I disconnect us.”

“Keys?”

I threw them to her and sprinted to the front of the car, leaned into the engine compartment, and unclipped the charger cables. The positive sparked with a gratifying pop of electricity when I pulled the clip off. “Okay, start her up.”

There was a moment of silence, then the engine turned over. It caught for a moment, almost starting, but then fell off to nothing more than a grinding cough.

“Try again.” I poked my head around the hood.

“Okay.” Clara turned the key a second time, and again it resulted in nothing but a rasping, choked rattle.

“Dammit.”

“The check engine light just came on,” Clara said. “Plus a bunch of other lights. It looks like Christmas on the dash.”

“Try it one more time.” The knot of frustration in my stomach told me it was no good, but I didn’t want to give up just yet.

“Here goes.”

Same again. The engine shuddered and sputtered, but we were still stranded.

I waved her off. “That’s enough. It’s pointless.” I grabbed the charger, my anger flaring, and threw it with all my might. It bounced off a pump and landed several feet away, surprisingly unharmed. I leaned my elbows on the front of the car and stared, forlorn, at the engine, as if somehow I might have an epiphany and figure out what was wrong. Needless to say, no such bolt of mechanical inspiration struck me.

After about a minute of silence Clara spoke up. “Now what?”

I slammed the hood down. “Now we walk.”

10

WE DIDN’T PASS A SINGLE vehicle on the way to the Interstate. The two-lane road was empty and desolate. We walked in silence, both of us consumed by our own worries. We sported backpacks liberated from the convenience store on our shoulders. These were filled with as much water and food as we could stuff in them. I’d also transferred most of the clothing from my overnight bag. I would have taken the bag, but it was cumbersome, and I didn’t want to be weighed down. We decided to hike along the Interstate to Clara’s college first, since it was only one exit down, and then make further plans depending upon what we discovered there. She could use a change of clothes anyway, and I could tell she was worried about her roommate.

It wasn’t until the highway was in sight that we got our first glimpse of the devastation the previous evening’s event had caused.

“Look.” Clara spotted the car first. It was blocking half the blacktop, nose down in a ditch, with its rear wheels a foot in the air.

“They must have been coming off the ramp and lost control.”

“Do you think they blacked out like us?”

“Don’t know.” We drew close to the car. I scanned the ground. “There are no skid marks, no rubber on the road.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they didn’t try to stop.” I peered in the window. The airbags were deployed, but there was no sign of anyone inside. “It’s empty.”

“Then that means they got out okay. Right?” Clara was eyeing the front of the car, which had crumpled upward when it hit the ditch. One wheel was bent out at a crazy angle, the tire flat.

I reached down and pulled on the door handle, then went around to the other side and did the same. “They’re locked.”

“What?” Clara tried a handle too. “That’s impossible. How did the driver get out?”

“This just keeps getting weirder doesn’t it?” I turned from the car. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“Up there.” I pointed to the off ramp.

“I’m not sure I want to know what’s up there.” Clara looked nervous.

“I don’t think we have much choice.” I wished I could tell her everything would be just fine, but I had a feeling we weren’t going to like what we saw on the Interstate. “Besides, there might be people up there.”

“I suppose.” Clara did not look convinced, but followed me anyway as I made my way to the ramp and started up, looking back every once in a while to make sure she was still with me. As the ramp leveled out and joined the Interstate, we saw for the first time the cause of the glow we’d observed on the horizon the previous evening.

I stopped, shocked.

Clara, who was only a few feet behind me, almost walked into me, her attention fixed on the scene of carnage that now presented itself.

“What the hell…” She spoke in a whisper, her eyes wide.

A pall of acrid black smoke hung over the highway, under which sat the remains of several cars, some burned out, others shunted into each other, a couple upturned, their wheels pointing skyward as if they were accusing some angry god of smiting them. Here and there flames still licked at a few smoldering wrecks. Further down the highway a thick column of smoke weaved into the sky, rising for hundreds of feet before being carried eastward on the wind. One vehicle, closer than the others, was mashed into the safety barrier, its right side torn away, the interior scorched almost beyond recognition. The remains of the driver looked at us through empty eye sockets surrounded by black charred flesh. His hands, if indeed it was a he, still gripped what remained of the steering wheel even though his arms were nothing more than bone and gristle.  The rancid stench of death permeated the air like a sickly perfume.

I heard Clara gag. She turned away and bent over.

“Are you okay?”

“Give me a minute.” Her voice sounded thin, hollow.

“We can go back down,” I said. There were other wrecks dotting the highway for as far as the eye could see. I was pretty sure this wasn’t the worst of what we’d find.

“No.” She straightened up and wiped her mouth. “We need to get to the college. This is the quickest way.”

“Okay.” I reached down and took her hand.

She closed her fingers over mine, and then we walked.

11

WE HAD BEEN WALKING for about half an hour when we came upon the cause of a rising smoke column. At first I couldn’t make out what I was looking at, but as we drew closer I recognized the familiar shape of a commercial jetliner, or at least what was left of it, blocking our path ahead. The terrain was uneven, the highway cutting across a steep slope bounded on one side by a steadily ascending wall of rock, and on the other by a steep drop off that reached flatter ground about eighty feet down. The airplane had punched into the side of the hill, leaving the slope strewn with wreckage. The front section, the cockpit and about a quarter of the fuselage, had smashed into the highway and buckled against the cliff, demolishing a large portion of asphalt in the process.

I spotted the remains of a wing, its aluminum skin burned and black, then part of the passenger section, open to the sky as if it had been peeled apart by a huge can opener. Next to this, a wheel and landing strut stuck straight up out of the soft ground almost like it were still doing its job, only there was nothing above it except a mangled mess of wiring and torn metal.

“Oh my God.” Clara looked frightened. “It looks like it just fell out of the sky.”

“I think that is exactly what happened.” A smell of burned jet fuel lingered in the air. If we were unsure that this was an event of greater proportion than just our immediate area, the sight of the downed aircraft, and lack of any emergency response, seemed to confirm it.

“Is it safe?” Clara asked. “It’s not going to explode or anything?”

“I don’t think so.” I could see a jet engine laying in a depression near the road, the turbines shattered and burned. “I think it did all of its exploding already.”

“This is horrible.” She looked like she was about to burst into tears. “Do you think there were a lot of people onboard?”

“It’s a big plane.” I couldn’t tell what type of plane it was, but from the amount of wreckage, and the recognizable logo painted on the vertical stabilizer, it was almost certainly a passenger aircraft.

“What do you think happened to it?” Clara asked.

“Same thing that happened to us. Only we weren’t in the air when we blacked out and all the batteries stopped working.” The aircraft had not completely disintegrated upon impact, which meant it must have been fairly low when it went down, probably taking off from Burlington Airport. Here and there on the hillside I could see rows of chairs, some with what looked like blackened bodies still strapped in. Other seats were empty. “They never stood a chance.”

“How are we going to get around it?”

“We’re not.” There was no way around on the right. The rock face was almost vertical. I picked out the remains of old dynamite bore holes, vertical shafts drilled into the rock from the construction workers when they blasted the roadway out of the hillside. The downward slope on the left might have been an option if not for the amount of debris. As it was, we would never be able to negotiate such a steep drop and also climb over the shattered remains of the plane. That left the road, and the wrecked cockpit. “We will have to go through it.”

“I’m not climbing through that.” There was a look of horror on her face.

“We don’t have a choice,” I told her. “It’s either that or we turn back.”

“We can’t,” Clara said. “I need to get to the school.”

“Then we go forward.” We were almost upon the wreckage now. I could see the deep gouge the impact had made on the roadway. I pushed a piece of twisted metal to the side and picked my way forward, then looked back at Clara. “Be careful. There are a lot of sharp edges.”

“We’re really going to do this?”

“Yep.” The ruined cockpit loomed large over us. I chose my footfalls with care, aware that the ground under my feet was unstable, and approached the wreck. Ahead of me a service hatch hung open below a large hole in the floor of the main cabin. Beyond that was a jumble of debris. I motioned to Clara. “I think we can get through here if we’re careful.”

“There?” She didn’t look convinced. “We’re going to climb into the plane?”

“It’s the only way.” I reached out and gripped the edge of the hatch, testing to make sure it was not going to give way, then pulled myself into the aircraft.

“What about me?” Clara looked up at me.

I leaned down. “I’ve got you, hold on to my wrists and climb up.”

“Okay.” She paused a moment, took a deep breath, and then gripped my hands before finding a foothold on the side of the fuselage and scrambling up. She stumbled forward into the aircraft, swaying for a moment before regaining her balance.

“You good?” I asked her.

“Sure.” She brushed a smudge of soot from her arm. “Can we move on? I don’t want to linger any longer than necessary.”

“Me either.” My eyes roamed our surroundings, looking for the best way through. On our right was the cockpit, while on the left the remains of what was probably business class fell away on a downward slope until it ended in a mess of twisted, torn metal. I counted ten seats, most were empty, but two were not. The passengers, both male as far as I could tell, were still strapped in. One wore a gray suit, now ripped and dirty, the other a shredded polo shirt. It didn’t look like this part of the plane had burned. Maybe it detached upon impact and was spared the almighty fireball that surely ensued as the jet fuel ignited. Despite that, these two hadn’t fared any better than the burned up passengers in the rear sections. Their bodies were shredded, pummeled by flying debris and deadly shards of metal until they looked like they had been pushed through a meat grinder. A sickly smell of cooked meat mixed with an overpowering stench of jet fuel lingered in the air.

“Oh, I think I’m going to be sick.” Clara was shaking, and her bottom lip trembled. She gripped my shoulder.

“Don’t look at them. Just turn away.”

“I’m not sure that will do any good.” Her voice wavered as she spoke. She covered her mouth with one hand, the other still gripping my shoulder like a vice.

“Let’s just keep moving.” I heaved a service cart aside. It teetered for a moment, and then toppled, tumbling down the aisle and out into the emptiness beyond. A few moments later there was a thud as it smacked into the hillside somewhere far below us. “Try to focus your attention ahead.”

“I’ll try.”

“Good.” I took her hand and led her forward, picking my footfalls with care as I worked forward toward a large opening ripped out of the fuselage ahead. Even so, the wreckage shifted under our weight. I stopped and waited, praying that it would not slip from the road and tumble down the hillside, carrying us with it.

“We’re moving,” Clara said, gripping my hand tight.

“It’s fine, just keep still for a moment, it will settle down.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then we run for the opening as quick as we can and hope we make it,” I said, doing my best to keep my balance on the shifting debris.

“That doesn’t sound like much of a plan,” Clara replied. “Got anything else?”

“No.” I felt the craft tremble, and for a moment thought it would go over the edge, but then, mercifully, it settled back down. After a few moments, sensing that the worst was over, I chanced a step forward. The wreckage held. “I think we’re fine.”

“Great. Let’s not linger.” Clara followed me, keeping her eyes down toward the ground.

I stepped over a suitcase, its contents spilled across the floor. To my right was the cockpit, the door buckled and torn from its hinges. Unable to help myself I glanced inside, steeling myself against the sight of the traumatized bodies I was sure to find, but the cockpit was empty, the seats strewn with glass from the broken windshield and pieces of the crushed instrument panels.

“Where are the pilots?” Clara voiced what I was thinking.

“No idea. Maybe they got out.” But I didn’t believe it myself. It was unlikely they would have survived such a devastating impact. There was little time to reflect on it however. The front section of the plane could lose its battle with gravity and plummet down the hillside at any moment, and I didn’t want to be there when it did. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

We climbed forward, moving a little faster as we neared the torn hole that served as our escape from the wreck. There should have been a passenger door, but the shell of the plane was stripped away exposing the interior supports between the outer skin and the passenger sections. All that remained was one twisted hinge. Wiring and the remains of an overhead locker hung down, partially blocking the hole. Below that was a drop of almost six feet.

“We’re pretty high up,” Clara said, peering over.

“I know.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’ll jump.” I felt my throat tighten as I said the words. Jumping was the last thing I wanted to do.

“Together?” Clara asked, a look of panic on her face.

“I’ll go first,” I said. “I think I can make it if I’m careful, then I’ll help you.”

“Are you sure?” Clara said. “Maybe we should find something to use to climb down.”

“We don’t have the time,” I told her. “This section of the plane isn’t safe. With all the moving around we’ve been doing it could go at any time.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Sure as I’ll ever be.” I took a step to the edge of the hole and looked down. The ground below was broken and cracked, parts of the asphalt missing entirely. Pieces of the plane, jagged and sharp, were scattered around, along with all manner of personal belongings, shoes, coats, carry-on bags and even a stuffed bear with one arm missing and white fluffy stuffing poking through the wound.

“Here goes,” I said, trying to control the slight quaver in my voice. There wasn’t much margin for error. If I didn’t land exactly in the right place I might go over the edge, or worse, impale myself on a piece of wreckage. Finally, realizing it was now or never, I took a deep breath, and launched myself out of the airplane.

The ground rushed up fast.

I prepared for the worst, falling down the slope to my death, breaking an ankle, or landing on one of the wicked sharp pieces of debris. Incredibly, none of that happened. Instead I hit the ground square, my legs buckling under me and absorbing the impact. I dropped to my knees, putting my hands out to break my fall.

“Are you alright?” Clara’s voice sounded from above.

I looked up to see her peering out of the hole.

“Yes. I think so.” I stood up, wary of any unforeseen injury, but I was fine. I’d made it.

“What about me?” Clara asked.

“You’re next. You are going to jump and I will catch you.” I planted my feet and reached up, letting her know I was ready. “Come on.”

“I can’t.” She shook her head.

“Yes you can.”

“It’s too far. I’m scared.”

“Don’t be. I won’t let anything happen to you,” I shouted up to her. “But you have to jump. It’s the only way.”

“Well–“

“Just do it. Don’t think about it,” I said, coaxing her. “Do it right now.”

“Just make sure you catch me, okay?” She stepped to the edge, a look of determination on her face, and stepped off the side of the airplane.

She dropped toward me fast. At the last moment, just before she hit the ground, I closed my arms around her and together we tumbled backward. She landed on top of me, her body pressed against mine, and there we lay not moving for the longest time. Then, when she realized we were both fine, she pushed herself up, dusted herself off and said, “let’s go.”