We took off from the Seattle area just after half past three. All airspace was officially closed, but by then the water had already dropped ten feet in the Tacoma Narrows. We still had six or seven hours, that’s what they said. Enough time for me to get my son and fly back the three hours to Dallas in my Cessna Citation jet. But it wasn’t. Not enough time. Forty-five minutes into the flight, I’d climbed to thirty-three thousand feet, scanning the airspace for any oncoming aircraft as all ATC were down; clear blue skies, no pressure fronts along the whole route. Perfect day.
That’s when it happened. Bands of white light appeared in the deep blue sky, rippling, and a second later all the electronics went blank. Just like that. Everything gone. No GPS, no digital displays. My old Citation works off manual hydraulics, thank God, so I switched to dead reckoning and the six-pack of analog controls. Then straight ahead, a black smudge appeared. It seemed to engulf the entire horizon. Never seen anything like it. It stretched up, high into the sky, higher than any thunderhead I’d ever seen. Those usually flatten out at the tropopause, at the edge of the stratosphere, thirty or even forty thousand feet. But this was a black wall, shooting into the sky, way beyond that.
I changed course away from it and was picking up my altitude when a shock wave hit us. Damn near tore the plane apart, dropped us to twenty thousand before I regained control. By the time I looked back, the wall had mushroomed out at over a hundred thousand feet, an inky black pool spreading across the sky… I put us down in Salt Lake after the second shock wave ripped into us. The black cloud enveloped us by the time we secured the jet on the empty runway. That was two days ago. Now there’s three feet of it in the streets, a suffocating sludge coating everything… I don’t know how long we’ll be able…
Transmission ended high ionization static. Freq. 9660 kHz.
Subject not reacquired.
OCTOBER 17th
7
CHIANTI, ITALY
JESS AWOKE TO birds chirping in juniper trees outside the open windows of her room. In the huge bed, set high from the floor with a sash draped along the headboard and with tapestries flowing over the stone walls—fairytale princesses came to mind. Would she let her hair down? Let the prince climb up and save her? The idle daydreaming screeched to a halt almost before it started. She was the last person on Earth who needed saving.
And fairy tales were just that.
She’d spent the balance of the day before in bed, enjoying the doting attention of her mother. Maybe that's why she dropped off to sleep early. She had awakened earlier than she usually did, but Jess got up and showered. After toweling off, she didn’t feel like leaving her sanctuary, so she deposited herself back in the luxurious bed and pulled her pajamas back on. For a while she just lay there and listened to the chirping birds, but she eventually opened her laptop, answered some emails and started a game of online chess.
Jess pondered the long-lost relative Facebook-messaging her mother. Jess had nothing to do with the message, but it had given her the perfect excuse to convince her mother to come to Italy. A cover for Jess’s real motive of getting her in the same country as Jess’s father. Now she just needed to connect her mother and father in Rome. They had honeymooned here, and as infantile as it sounded, Jess wanted to get them to meet and spend time together here in Italy with her as a family. For once.
She’d tried pinging her dad that morning, but he wasn’t available, and didn’t return any of her calls. Unusual, but then Jess didn’t take it the wrong way when people didn’t answer their phones right away. She liked to have her own space too.
A knock at the door.
“Yes?”
“It’s me.” Her mother didn’t wait for a reply. She opened the door, asking, “You spending today in bed as well?” Closing the door behind herself, she dropped a cup of coffee next to Jess and draped herself across the foot of Jess’s bed. “Giovanni already took me on a tour of the castle, but we didn’t want to wake you.”
“Thanks.”
Her mother frowned. “Do I detect sarcasm?”
“No, really, I mean thanks for letting me be.” She pushed her laptop forward and picked up the cup of coffee to take a sip.
Her mother glanced at the laptop screen. “Are you still playing chess with your father?”
“Sometimes, but not today.” Jess put the coffee down and pulled her legs to the side of the bed. She noticed her mother watching her. “Mom, could you give me a minute?”
Celeste smiled. “I’m your mother, sweetheart.”
Jess sighed. “Fine.” She swung her legs off the side of the bed, pulling off the covers, and her right foot dropped to the ground. Her left leg, however, ended in an angry red stump just below the knee.