Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (color ebook reader .txt) 📕

news. Finally ha connected with a Concorde several miles away heading the other direction. He nodded to Christopher to put on his own earphones.

"You got enough fuel to get back to the States, over?" the pilot asked Rayford.

He looked at Christopher, who nodded and whispered "We're halfway."

"I could make Kennedy," Rayford said.

"Forget it," came the reply. "Nothing's landing in New York. Two runways still open in Chicago. That's where we're going."

"We came from Chicago. Can't I put down at Heathrow?"

"Negative. Closed."

"Paris?"

"Man, you've got to get back where you came from. We left Paris an hour ago, got the word what's happening, and were told to go straight to Chicago."

"What's happening, Concorde?"

"If you don't know, why'd you put our the Mayday?"

"I've got a situation here I don't even want to talk about."

"Hey, friend, it's all over the world, you know?"

"Negative, I don't know," Rayford said. "Talk to me."

"You're missing passengers, right?"

"Roger. More than a hundred."

"Whoa! We lost nearly fifty."

"What do you make of it, Concorde?"

"First thing I thought of was spontaneous combustion, but there would have been smoke, residue. These people materially disappeared. Only thing I can compare it to is the old Star Trek shows where people got dematerialized and rematerialized, beamed all over the place."

"I sure wish I could tell my people their loved ones were going to reappear just as quickly and completely as they disappeared," Rayford said.

"That's not the worst of it, Pan Heavy. People everywhere have disappeared. Orly lost air-traffic controllers and ground controllers. Some planes have lost flight crews. Where it's daylight there are car pileups, chaos everywhere. Planes down all over and at every major airport."

"So this was a spontaneous thing?"

"Everywhere at once, just a little under an hour ago."

"I was almost hoping it was something on this plane. Some gas, some malfunction."

"That is was selective, you mean, over?"

Rayford caught the sarcasm.

"I see what you mean, Concorde. Gotta admit this is somewhere we;ve never been before."

"And never want to be again. I keep telling myself it's a bad dream."

"A nightmare, over."

"Roger, but it's not, is it?"

"What are you going to tell your passengers, Concorde?"

"No clue. You, over?"

"The truth."

"Can't hurt now. But what's the truth? What do we know?"

"Not a blessed thing."

"Good choice of words, Pan Heavy. You know what some people are saying, over?"

"Roger," Rayford said. "Better it's people gone to heaven that some world power doing this with fancy rays."

"Word we get is that every country has been affected. See you in Chicago?"

"Roger."

Rayford Steele looked at Christopher, who began changing the settings to turn the monstrous wide-body around and get it headed back toward the States. "Ladies and gentlemen," Rayford said over the intercom, "we're not going to be able to land in Europe. We're headed back to Chicago. We're almost exactly halfway to our original destination, so we will not have a fuel problem. I hope this puts your minds at ease somewhat. I will let you know when we are close enough to begin using the telephones. Until I do, you will do yourself a favor by not trying."


_______


When the captain had come back on the intercom with the information about returning to the United States, Buck Williams was surprised to hear applause throughout the cabin. Shocked and terrified as everyone was, most were from the States and wanted at least to return to familiarity to sort this thing out. Buck nudged the businessman on his right. "I'm sorry, friend, but you're going to want to be awake for this."

The man peered at Buck with a disgusted look and slurred, "If we're not crashin', don't bother me."


_______

 When the Pan-Continental 747 was finally withing satellite communications range of the United States, Captain Rayford Steele connected with an all-news radio outlet and learned the far-reaching effects of the disappearance of people from every continent. Communication lines were jammed. Medical, technical, and service people were among the missing all over the world. Every civil service agency was on full emergency status, trying to handle the unending tragedies. Rayford remembered the El-train disaster in Chicago years before and how the hospitals and fire and police units brought everyone in to work. He could imagine that now, multiplied thousands of times.

Even the newscasters' voices were terror filled, as much as they tried to mask it. Every conceivable explanation was proffered, but overshadowing all such discussion and even coverage of the carnage were the practical aspects. What people wanted from the news was simple information on how to get where they were going and how to contact their loved ones to determine if they were still around. Rayford was instructed to get in a multistate traffic pattern that would allow him to land at O'Hare at a precise moment. Only two runways were open, and every large plane in the country seemed headed that way. Thousands were dead in plane crashes and car pileups. Emergency crews were trying to clear expressways and runways, all the while grieving over loved ones and coworkers who had disappeared. One report said that so many cabbies had disappeared from the cab corral at O'Hare that volunteers were being brought in to move the cars that had been left running with the former drivers' clothes still on the seats.

Cars driven by people who spontaneously disappeared had careened out of control, of course. The toughest chore for emergency personnel was to determine who had disappeared, who was killed, and who was injured, and then to communicate that to the survivors.

When Rayford was close enough to communicate to the tower at O'Hare, he asked if they would try to connect him by phone to his home. He was laughed off. 

"Sorry, Captain, but phone lines are so jammed and phone personnel so spotty that the only hope is to get a dial tone and use a phone with a redial button."

Rayford filled the passengers in on the extent of the phenomenon and pleaded with them to remain calm. 

"There is nothing we can do on this plane that will change the situation. My plan is to get you on the ground as quickly as possible in Chicago so you can have access to some answers and, I hope, some help."

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Publication Date: 09-15-2011

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