Sarah and Adam looked at one another and grimaced.
“As often as we’ve had to get on these flying mechanical beasts, you’d think we’d get use to disrobing in front of strangers!” Sara quipped.
“I can’t believe I still keep forgetting to buy slip on shoes. I ought to wear sweatpants and a t-shirt; I don’t want to keep doing this.” Adam was every bit as frustrated as Sarah, but the truth of the matter was that they were both griping for despondency’s sake. Neither one of them wanted to go on this business trip. Minnesota was dreary, cold and miserable in November.
Sarah took her time and gathered up her belongings. She methodically restocked her purse with her license, iPad and cell phone. She’d forgotten to get rid of her mace before coming through the security gate, so she instructed the TSA agent to toss it once they detected it on the x-ray machine. In haste, Adam scooped up his belongings into a makeshift bundle and waddled over in his stocking feet to an open seat near the large, pane glass window overlooking the airport runway.
Sarah skimmed through her magazine while Adam bent over to lace his shoes. The rest of his removable items were still in a heap on the floor in front of them. Adam made an awkward go of trying to even his shoelaces. Sarah gave him a puzzled look as if to say, “and why are you doing this now??”
Sarah looked up and noticed an airplane approaching the terminal from the horizon. “That’s odd, …that plane seems to be coming in pretty low.”
Adam glanced up and looked out of the window. “Yeah, and pretty fast. It has no business heading this direction. Something must be wrong…”
The airplane covered the space between its appearance on the horizon and the building in less than a minute. As its image expanded in the window, the plane began a sickening drift to the left as it became clear to every onlooker that they were in imminent danger.
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A crescendo of gasps followed by an escalating pitch of screams filled the airport terminal. A cacophony of shrieking voices, the sickening sounds of bodies being trampled and random items crashing into one another was replaced by the growing sound of the airplane’s engines.
There was no escape. The metal giant crashed into the top of the structure and the left wing sliced through the glass window and tore through the terminal seating area. Masses of people scattered like thousands of ants fleeing from an unearthed mound hill. The scraping sounds of metal and objects being dragged as the monolithic structure forced its way into the unyielding aperture of the terminal. Appendages were strewn everywhere, and bodies were being forced, wedged and compacted into every nook and cranny of the waiting area.
The deafening sounds of mayhem engulfed the cloverleaf terminal for almost an hour. The unholy mixture of inanimate items and smells that were never intended to blend created an unimaginable collage of death. Metallic and glass shards, both large and small were embedded in chairs, luggage, bodies and walls. Every square foot of space was covered or splattered with blood. Each engine managed to claim the life of a would-be traveler who found themselves too close to the spinning turbines. The area around the plane was covered in blood. Both engines seized up and black smoke billowed out into the terminal and threatened to asphyxiate anyone left alive.
When first responders arrived at the scene, they realized it would be days before they could get to the spot of the initial impact. They did the best they could to contain the fires and cordon off the wreckage until aviation officials could arrive on the scene to recover the black box. First aid and rescue personnel focused on getting treatment for the people and passengers on the periphery of the wreckage. Before morgue and mortuary personnel could arrive, news reporters were taking pictures and footage of a truly macabre view of body bags being lined up on the tarmac.
“How could this have happened?” asked one of the exhausted firefighters. He was talking to no one in particular. “Nothing like this has ever happened at this airport or any other that I know of!”
As dusk fell across the city, onlookers could see flickering emergency lights and a smattering of small fires through the thick billows of smoke coming from inside the building. The shrieks of terror and pain turned to cries and whimpers. By nightfall, there was solitary-like silence; and no sign of life in C-terminal.
No one seemed to notice the shadowy figure near the edge of the parking garage. The person extinguished a cigarette, closed what appeared to be a laptop and started taking pictures with an iPhone. Moments later, the phone lit up and the person answered.
“It looks like it worked. I’ve got to get out of here before someone notices me. Someone will contact you tomorrow.”
In the meantime, Sarah struggled with her vision. She could feel small shards of glass in her eyes and she felt blood trickling down her cheeks. Sarah wondered how long it would take them to find her in the dark. She wondered if this was an accident or terrorism. She called out for Adam…and then she lost consciousness.
