They rounded the corner, turning north onto 13th Street. Just one block away, beyond all the cordons and emergency lights, stood the broken tail cone of a jumbo jet. The buildings around it were devastated with ash and debris. One apartment complex had crumbled to rubble.
Hannah covered her mouth. “Oh my God.”
More than a hundred thousand planes, jets and helicopters had been up in the air seven hours ago, when all the world’s engines fell still. A third of them plummeted into water. Another third hit the hard empty spaces between human life. The final third just hit hard. San Diego had suffered twenty-two crashes within its borders.
Hannah gaped at the tall gray clock tower of the 12th & Imperial Transit Center, just a hundred yards away. It was a local landmark, one she’d passed a thousand times on her way to work. Now it had been de-clocked, decapitated. Every window on the south side of the building was shattered, with burn marks all over the frame.
All around her, people fretfully chattered. A stringy blond teenager brandished a transistor radio, declaring to anyone willing to listen that he’d heard voices through the static. People in other cities were talking about the same things.
“This is happening all over,” he insisted. “Everywhere!”
Copyright © 2014 by Daniel Price. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
