Read Online The Strain, the Fall, the Night Eternal by Guillermo del Toro - Free Book Online
Authors: Guillermo del Toro
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read, all of them impossible to part with—and lifting the cover off the cake tin to retrieve the last of the good rye bread he had been saving. He carried the paper-wrapped loaf back to his cushioned kitchen chair, settling heavily, and went about picking off the little bits of mold as he enjoyed another tender sip of the delicious broth.
Slowly, the image on the screen claimed his attention: a jumbo jet parked on a tarmac somewhere, lit up like an ivory piece upon jeweler’s black felt. He pulled on the black-rimmed glasses that hung at hischest, squinting in order to make out the bottom graphic. Today’s crisis was taking place across the river, at JFK Airport.
The old professor watched and listened, focused on the pristine-looking airplane. One minute became two, then three, the room fading around him. He was transfixed—nearly transported—by the news report, the soup spoon still in his no-longer-tremulous hand.
The television image of the dormant airplane played across the lenses of his eyeglasses like a future foretold. The broth in the bowl cooled, its steam fading, dying, the picked-apart slice of rye bread remaining uneaten.
He knew .
Pick-pick-pick.
The old man knew—
Pick-pick-pick.
His malformed hands began to ache. What he saw before him was not an omen—it was an incursion. It was the act itself. The thing he had been waiting for. That he had been preparing for. All his life until now.
Any relief he had felt initially—at not having been outlived by this horror; at getting one last-minute chance at vengeance—was replaced immediately by sharp, painlike fear. The words left his mouth on a gust of steam.
He is here … He is here…
Regis Air Maintenance Hangar
B ecause JFK needed the taxiway cleared, the entire aircraft was towed as is into the Regis Air long-span maintenance hangar in the hour before dawn. No one spoke as the lame 777 full of dead passengers rolled past like an enormous white casket.
Once the wheel chocks were put down and the airplane was secured, black tarpaulins were laid out to cover the stained cement floor. Borrowed hospital screens were erected to curtain off a wide containment zone between the left wing and the nose. The plane was isolated in the hangar, like a corpse inside a massive morgue.
At Eph’s request, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York dispatched several senior medicolegal investigators from Manhattan and Queens, bringing with them several cartons of rubber crash bags. The OCME, the world’s largest medical examiner’s office, was experienced in multiple-casualty disaster management, and helped devise an orderly process of cadaver retrieval.
Port Authority HAZMAT officers in full contact suits brought out the air marshal first—solemnly, officers saluting the bagged corpse as it appeared at the wing door—and then, laboriously, everyone else in the first row of coach. They then removed those emptied seats, using the added space to bag the corpses before evacuating them. Each body,one at a time, was strapped to a stretcher and lowered from the wing to the tarp-covered floor.
The process was deliberate and, at times, gruesome. At one point, about thirty bodies in, one of the Port Authority officers suddenly stumbled away from the retrieval line moaning and gripping his hood. Two fellow HAZMAT officers converged on him, and he lashed out, shoving them into the hospital screens, in effect breaching the containment border. Panic erupted, people clearing the way for this possibly poisoned or infected officer clawing at his containment suit on his way out of the cavernous hangar. Eph caught up with him out on the apron, where, in the light of the morning sun, the officer succeeded in throwing off his hood and peeling off his suit, like a constricting skin. Eph grabbed the man, who then sank down onto the tarmac, sitting there with sweaty tears in his eyes.
“This city,” sobbed the officer. “This damn city.”
Later, word went
Slowly, the image on the screen claimed his attention: a jumbo jet parked on a tarmac somewhere, lit up like an ivory piece upon jeweler’s black felt. He pulled on the black-rimmed glasses that hung at hischest, squinting in order to make out the bottom graphic. Today’s crisis was taking place across the river, at JFK Airport.
The old professor watched and listened, focused on the pristine-looking airplane. One minute became two, then three, the room fading around him. He was transfixed—nearly transported—by the news report, the soup spoon still in his no-longer-tremulous hand.
The television image of the dormant airplane played across the lenses of his eyeglasses like a future foretold. The broth in the bowl cooled, its steam fading, dying, the picked-apart slice of rye bread remaining uneaten.
He knew .
Pick-pick-pick.
The old man knew—
Pick-pick-pick.
His malformed hands began to ache. What he saw before him was not an omen—it was an incursion. It was the act itself. The thing he had been waiting for. That he had been preparing for. All his life until now.
Any relief he had felt initially—at not having been outlived by this horror; at getting one last-minute chance at vengeance—was replaced immediately by sharp, painlike fear. The words left his mouth on a gust of steam.
He is here … He is here…
Regis Air Maintenance Hangar
B ecause JFK needed the taxiway cleared, the entire aircraft was towed as is into the Regis Air long-span maintenance hangar in the hour before dawn. No one spoke as the lame 777 full of dead passengers rolled past like an enormous white casket.
Once the wheel chocks were put down and the airplane was secured, black tarpaulins were laid out to cover the stained cement floor. Borrowed hospital screens were erected to curtain off a wide containment zone between the left wing and the nose. The plane was isolated in the hangar, like a corpse inside a massive morgue.
At Eph’s request, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York dispatched several senior medicolegal investigators from Manhattan and Queens, bringing with them several cartons of rubber crash bags. The OCME, the world’s largest medical examiner’s office, was experienced in multiple-casualty disaster management, and helped devise an orderly process of cadaver retrieval.
Port Authority HAZMAT officers in full contact suits brought out the air marshal first—solemnly, officers saluting the bagged corpse as it appeared at the wing door—and then, laboriously, everyone else in the first row of coach. They then removed those emptied seats, using the added space to bag the corpses before evacuating them. Each body,one at a time, was strapped to a stretcher and lowered from the wing to the tarp-covered floor.
The process was deliberate and, at times, gruesome. At one point, about thirty bodies in, one of the Port Authority officers suddenly stumbled away from the retrieval line moaning and gripping his hood. Two fellow HAZMAT officers converged on him, and he lashed out, shoving them into the hospital screens, in effect breaching the containment border. Panic erupted, people clearing the way for this possibly poisoned or infected officer clawing at his containment suit on his way out of the cavernous hangar. Eph caught up with him out on the apron, where, in the light of the morning sun, the officer succeeded in throwing off his hood and peeling off his suit, like a constricting skin. Eph grabbed the man, who then sank down onto the tarmac, sitting there with sweaty tears in his eyes.
“This city,” sobbed the officer. “This damn city.”
Later, word went
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