Short Story: Shutdown

 

The day the planes crash into the ocean, splash after splash, wings like humpback tails crashing into the sea, the sky is a cold hard blue and the birds are quiet. All around the Sound, as if in mourning for their larger metallic counterparts, the birds hide under branches and push tiny beaks into the dirt. Silence. The orcas, on the other hand, marvel loudly at the shiny arrows shot into the sea from above. They chirp and whistle and playfully rub against the twisted metal sinking into the plankton-foggy depths, push the occasional body to the surface, human arms streaming limply across orca eyes. 

Looking up on that day, you see the sun gleaming off tiny pieces of metal. Well, tiny to you, standing there looking up from the Market or a rocky beach, but you gasp as they started to fall more and more rapidly and grow in size until you can make out whipping propellers and gigantic engines and shards of paneling the size of your camper van. You run for cover to the nearest park bathroom, cool cement floors and opaque metal rectangles for mirrors lulling you into thinking that you are safe, secure, that a stray piece of airplane machinery could not pulverize a park service metal roof or crush a porcelain toilet like a breath mint. 

You hide underneath the sink and wait for impact.

When the propeller hits the ground it does not just hit but shred. Blades whirring as if it hates to give up its only job, it cartwheels across the baseball field: third base, second base, into the foul zone, into the cages where small children often sit staring at spiky shoes their mothers bought for them and wondering if they would strike out again or trip on first like last time or puke at home base like the time before last. The propeller gashes the field and tangled into the empty cage. There are no children but a squirrel foraging for abandoned peanuts is cut in two by the precisely honed blade.

You shit your pants in the public bathroom listening to the shriek of metal.

You vomit on yourself when you feel the engine hit the beach.

The sand sprays everywhere, not that you are outside to see it. It can be felt across the park, maybe further, and you sit in your shit and vomit and wonder how two objects could land in practically the same spot after falling through an immensity of sky. When you wipe your ass and throw out your underwear and your sweatshirt, the sand in the air is settling. You hold your (clean) shirt over your mouth and run towards the flaming heat. You can’t help it. Half buried in the sand, saltwater steaming from the bruised metal, the engine is bigger than your house. Granted, your house is a tiny house but it is still a house and this fucking airplane engine cratered in the sand is something that you could easily walk through if it weren’t a twisted pile of metal and goddamn dripping heat.

You don’t know much about planes but you know this engine and the propeller are too disparate in size to be from the same craft. You heard that the air controllers were walking off the job. Hadn’t been paid in months. Fuck you government, they chanted. Head phones with microphones around necks, leather bags filled with notebooks of call signs and airport codes, they left the towers en masse. But the planes kept flying. Greedy airlines and cocky pilots. We can find our way, you could almost hear them saying. No. Greedy airlines, hungry pilots. No. Greedy customers, tired pilots. It didn’t matter. What mattered is that they were up in the air and no one was watching where they were going. Mayhem above the clouds, in the clouds, in clear blue sky with jets roaring at 500mph. No time to put on the brakes up there. Skidding through the atmosphere.

A small single prop and a jumbo jet collide and plummet. Twin props and commuter jets collide and nearly explode and then plummet to the earth or the sea where the birds are silent and the orcas push their metal and flesh around icy water. Uninspected 777s trail parts and fall out of the sky around you. 

All this for a wall, you think, scraping more vomit from your chest.

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