She looked back, feeling the heat on her face.
“Now, Deni!”
“Dad, the people! They’re burning. Somebody has to get them out!”
“They’re trying.” He grabbed up her suitcase, and she followed him up the steps that took them into the terminal.
They were greeted by darkness.
They ran into the arriving gate where a window provided some light. A crowd of people were clustered around it, watching the plane burn.
Doug headed for two Delta employees who stood talking with intense urgency. “Where are the fire trucks?” he asked them. “Has anybody called them?”
“The phones aren’t working. Everything’s out.”
He grabbed his cell phone out of his pocket, and Deni watched him try to dial 911. But the phone was dead. “My battery must have lost its charge. Try yours, Deni.”
She dug her phone out of her purse and hit the on button. There was no readout, nothing indicating it had any power. Had both their batteries died on the plane?
She looked back out the window. The plane continued to burn…engulfed in a conflagration that wouldn’t be quenched. Helpless airport employees stood back from the fire, looking around for help. Someone had pulled out a fire extinguisher and was shooting white foam, but it was like squirting a water pistol at a towering inferno.
Deni thought of herself and her dad, sitting among all those passengers just moments ago. It could have been them out there, trapped in a burning metal coffin.
She gritted her teeth and pounded her fists on the window. “Where are the stupid fire trucks?”
Doug’s whisper was helpless, horrified. “I don’t know.”
She watched the chaos on the tarmac as employees ran in different directions, looking confused and defeated, shouting and gesturing wildly for help.
She heard the sound of another plane coming in, loud and urgent, and the people standing near her began to scream and hit the floor as that plane shot in, descending too fast, too steep…
She couldn’t watch as it hit the ground, but she heard the deafening sound of another crash, felt the impact shake the building. Screams crescendoed…
Shivering in terror, she looked up. The plane was spinning and tumbling across the grass separating the runways.
“Daddy!” She looked up at him, saw the tears on his face, the horror in his eyes. She followed his gaze to the sky. Was something shooting the planes down? Were there more to come? Deni slipped her hand into his and felt his trembling. For the first time in her life, she was aware of her father’s fear. And though his strong, confident grip held her tight, she knew that everything had changed.
CHAPTER TWO
Doug Branning’s mind raced to solve the problems—planes falling out of the sky, crashing, burning, people dying…There was a power outage, but that wouldn’t have caused planes to crash. Maybe there was some kind of battle going on in the air that they couldn’t see. If someone was shooting the planes down, maybe they’d also knocked out the power on the ground. Was it some kind of terrorist attack? An ambush by a hostile nation?
In all his uncertainty, he knew one thing. He had to get his daughter to safety. The airport felt like a target for whatever evil hovered above them. He put his arm around Deni and pulled her from the window. He hoped she couldn’t feel his trembling. “Come on, Deni, we’re getting out of here.”
For once in her life, she was compliant as he pulled her up the long dark hall, past the empty gates. Several Delta ground clerks came running past them.
“Excuse me,” he called out. “Can anyone tell me what’s going on?”
“Power’s out,” one of them called back. “Nothing’s working.”
“Did the planes crash because the tower’s electricity is down?”
“May have. We can’t say for sure.”
But that didn’t make sense. Didn’t pilots have emergency procedures for situations like this? Couldn’t they land the planes without an air traffic controller talking them through it?
He walked Deni past another window and saw the balls of fire, still burning. The other plane hadn’t caught fire, and men rushed toward it, fighting to get the door open. Still no fire trucks had come.
“Dad, this is insane. How could a power outage cause planes to crash?”
“Maybe it’s the other way around.” As he thought out loud, he realized that didn’t bear up. The power had shut down before the crashes. That’s why things went quiet. He’d heard their own plane’s engine power off at the same time that everything else stopped. The luggage belt, the maintenance cars…
Clearly, there was nothing they could do for the poor souls on the planes. Dozens of people were at the second plane now, but they couldn’t seem to get inside. Grimly, he realized they had all probably died in the impact. How could anyone have survived?
“Let’s go to the car.” Still carrying Deni’s suitcase, he headed to the exit. “Maybe we can get a signal on our phones after we leave the airport, and call your mother. She’s probably heard about it on the news and can tell us what’s happening.”
She followed him at a trot. He reached the front door, but it didn’t open.
“Power’s out, Dad, remember?”
He turned and found a manual door. As they pushed through it, he was struck with the silence in the street. There were no cars moving through, and the security guards were probably helping the rescue effort. They hurried across the street into the big parking garage. They’d parked on the fourth level, but the elevators weren’t working, so they found the stairs and trudged up.
They were soaked with sweat by the time they reached their level and made their way to his new Mercedes. Doug used the remote on his key chain to pop the lock on the trunk, but when he got to the car, the trunk was still closed. Jabbing the key into the lock, he opened it. Quickly, he loaded their two bags, slammed the trunk, then manually unlocked his car door and got in. Deni knocked on the passenger window.
He frowned at the door lock. The power locks weren’t working—how could that be? The power outage couldn’t extend to his car, could it? He leaned across the leather seat, and opened the passenger door.
As Deni got in, he put the key into the ignition and turned it…but nothing happened.
Deni just looked at him. “The car’s dead too? Dad, this is like the Twilight Zone. What could cause this?”
Doug looked around. Usually cars circled everywhere, looking for a parking spot. But not today. He got out and walked to the edge of the parking structure, looked over to the roads that took them out of the place. There were a few cars lined up at the toll booth, but they weren’t moving. No cars ran on the streets leading to the interstate, though several looked stalled in the middle of the road. People stood outside their vehicles, opening the hoods…
He ran back to his car and tried turning the key again, to no avail. He tested the radio. Still nothing.
Deni slapped the dashboard. “This is just great! Are we going to have to stay in this creepy place with planes crashing all around us? I want to go home.”
“I don’t believe this.” Doug turned to the back seat and saw a Walkman one of the kids had left there. He grabbed it, shoved the headphones on, and tried to get a radio station.
All he got was silence.
Slowly, he took the head phones off as the stark realization took hold of him. Everything was dead. Electricity, phones, cars, radio waves…even planes in mid-flight.
As he sat in his useless car with the keys in his hand, Doug Branning felt the world spinning out of control.
And he was powerless to stop it.
About the Author
Terri Blackstock is an award-winning novelist who has written for several major publishers including HarperCollins, Dell, Harlequin, and Silhouette. Published under two pseudonyms, her books have sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide.
With her success in secular publishing at its peak, Blackstock had what she calls “a spiritual awakening.” A Christian since the age of
fourteen, she realized she had not been using her gift as God intended. It was at that point that she recommitted her life to Christ, gave up her secular career, and made the decision to write only books that would point her readers to him.
“I wanted to be able to tell the truth in my stories,” she said, “and not just be politically correct. It doesn’t matter how many readers I have if I can’t tell them what I know about the roots of their problems and the solutions that have literally saved my own life.”
Her books are about flawed Christians in crisis and God’s provisions for their mistakes and wrong choices. She claims to be extremely qualified to write such books, since she’s had years of personal experience.
A native of nowhere, since she was raised in the Air Force, Blackstock makes Mississippi her home. She and her husband are the parents of three children—a blended family which she considers one more of God’s provisions.
About the Publisher
Founded in 1931, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Zondervan, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, is the leading international Christian communications company, producing bestselling Bibles, books, new media products, a growing line of gift products and award-winning children’s products. The world’s largest Bible publisher, Zondervan (www.zondervan.com) holds exclusive publishing rights to the New International Version of the Bible and has distributed more than 150 million copies worldwide. It is also one of the top Christian publishers in the world, selling its award-winning books through Christian retailers, general market bookstores, mass merchandisers, specialty retailers, and the Internet. Zondervan has received a total of 68 Gold Medallion awards for its books, more than any other publisher.
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Terri Blackstock, Private Justice
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