Runway to Hell

"We have a problem," said Ciri.

Lilli snapped her pen in half, spattering her desk with blue-black ink. "We have a what? A what? Well, what have I been dealing with the last eight hours?"

"No...ma'am," Ciri said, oozing strawberry-rhubarb passive-aggression. "A bigger problem."

"A bigger problem." Lilli placed her black nail-polished hands on the table and rose from her expensively upholstered office chair. "Sweetheart, when flat hair made us all aerosol a hole in the ozone layer, that was a bigger problem. When a Cold War experiment went down over the Arizona desert and spawned a cult-like race of people obsessed with blurry photos of interstellar anal-probers, that was a bigger problem. When your emotionally stunted mother tricked a guy into using a colander for a condom, and nine months later, you popped out, that was a bigger problem. Now when you say 'a bigger problem'"--she leaned over the desk with an incandescent squint--"I want to be sure you got the scale right."

Swallowing all the curse words she knew, Ciri said, "I have the scale right; this problem is bigger. He's here."

Lilli waved an impatient hand through Ciri's dramatic pause. "He's here? He, who? Your father? My ex? Adolf Hitler? Very similar men."

"No," Ciri intoned. "Him."

After a second's piercing stare to make sure Ciri was serious, Lilli muttered, "Oh, shit," and clickity-clacked her high heels out from behind the desk. "He's here right now? Who the hell told him?"

"Nobody did, that's part of the problem." Ciri was not as fast as Lilli when motivated, and was quickly burning through her reserves of breath. "He had a flight scheduled to Atlanta, and he says he will rip off the head and shit down the neck of anyone who uses the word 'delays'."

"Well, he's in a good mood, at least." Lilli had enough steam in her engine to light a cigarette as she marched through the double doors into Concourse D.

All along the corridor, board after board was flashing red. Every flight for the foreseeable future had been cancelled, every island hopper, every jumbo jet, every Stephen King Cessna was beached, and tower radar was showing a big, fat zero. The initial riot of people demanding a refund had been quelled, and there was a post-apocalyptic population of stranded passengers with diminishing hope that they would ever see their destination, or indeed any location that didn't reek of Auntie Anne's pretzels and despair.

"There's an update from J Tower," Lilli said, flicking her ash in Ciri's direction. "Get there, and have a progress report ready. I'm taking his highness over the tarmac, so you won't have much time." Dropping the singed filter, Lilli snapped her fingers at a security officer driving a passenger shuttle. "You! You're my ride, and you're late!"

Lilli didn't have to guess which gate. When it came to Him, there was a certain, luxurious protocol that other flyers could never aspire to, like the heated LED toilet seat with a custom-pressure bidet hidden in the executive bathroom. Security was something he just never had to plan around, and no plane he was scheduled to be on would dare take off without him on board.

An unfortunate desk clerk was crying like the boss just fired her, but Lilli suspected that would only go through if anyone could remember her name later. "There you are!" the abominable boss thundered as Lilli's shuttle approached. "I am not accustomed to waiting, Lil. None of these idiots will tell me what's going on!"

"None of these idiots know what's going on," Lilli said, stepping down from the shuttle, which was ready to race off again until she slammed her cigarette hand down on the skittish hood. "I know the signs are usually bullshit, but today is not bullshit. All our radar is down, our towers are blind, nobody knows what started it or how long it's going to last."

He raised an eyebrow at her, and even his eyebrows spoke in all caps. "Is this your way of negotiating a raise?"

"Nope. That involves one erection and a lot of crying." She lit a fresh cigarette with a Zippo that snapped shut in a viper strike. "And I don't want to mess up your make up. That plane's grounded like a twelve-year-old with a DUI, so let me take you to J Tower, and we can see what the nerds know."

He studied her face, eyes blazing through a veiled squint. "You're not playing."

Lilli put her cigarette out in the middle of her reddening palm. "I never play."

"That is not true," he said. "But whatever's happening, you're more scared of it than you are of me."

The shuttle zipped through a transport exit, crossing the rubber-melting asphalt over the quickest route to the control tower. Lilli glanced up at the wide glass windows, where miserable faces of stranded passengers leant comparative cheer to an Auschwitz tour. The irate VIP shifted in the seat beside her, fashionably-tailored knees folded up too close to the artistically-shaved chin. "When did this all start?"

"Some hours ago," Lilli said. "It happened everywhere, all at once. According to the techs, the equipment is functioning fine, it's just that the readings we get don't make any sense. All the other airports are reporting the same thing."

"So, absolutely nothing has taken off," he guessed. "What about the planes already in the air?"

Lilli winced. "We don't know. If they had enough luck and enough fuel, they might have made emergency re-routes, but we honestly just don't know."

He threw a sideways glance in her direction. "Why didn't you call me?"

Lilli had two cigarettes in her mouth, now, like ember-tipped tusks framing an irritated exhalation of smoke. "For what? For you to run around eviscerating minimum-wage staff, making a world-wide disaster all about you? Mr. Don't-come-to-me-with-problems-unless-you-have-solutions? We're an under-regulated joke with delays and disasters every day, it just so happens you had a ticket to this one."

There was a scream as they approached the tower, and a small silhouette became rapidly larger as it smacked down onto the pavement in a spreading red mess. Flicking a scarlet drop from his tie, the sarcastic castaway asked, "Is this an every day thing?"

"No." Lilli stepped down and examined the fallen unfortunate. "He's cold."

"Miglione!" Ciri came rushing out, stopping suddenly when she saw the shuttle. "Sir! Ma'am! We, uh...there was an accident--"

"Just take us inside," the abhorrent boss said, then held out his hand to Lilli. "I'm going to need a nail for this."

Ciri hurried up the slasher-movie stairs, followed by two scowling bosses with twin streams of smoke. "Using tighter and tighter refinements, the data tapped out at a universal altitude," Ciri explained. "Across the board, we go blind at 400 feet."

"Any flight has to clear 500 feet," Lilli told her ignorant overlord. "What was Miglione doing about it?"

Ciri had to wonder if there was extra oxygen in those cigarettes as she gasped around the stitch in her side. "This tower is 375 feet tall. Miglione had a ladder."

The three of them got up to the tower roof, where half a dozen controllers were carefully folding a twenty-foot ladder. Lilli flicked her filter over the side and asked, "What happened to Miglione, exactly? Did he over-balance, lose his grip?"

One of the techs shrugged. "He jumped. He stood on top of the ladder, screamed, and jumped."

The imperious overseer crossed his arms. "Well? Data comes from repetition. Put the ladder back up."

"Sir!" Lilli hissed. "I do not think throwing tech bodies at the problem is going to help."

"Couldn't agree more," he said. "Hope you're not afraid of heights."

The heat of Lilli's barely tamed rage was enough to light the cigarette between her teeth. She gripped the ladder and climbed, one high heel at a time, with a backpack full of sensory equipment and a very optimistic rope around her waist. The wind was biting at that height, far colder than she expected it to be, but not quite strong enough to blot out the loathsome voice below shouting, "If you're going to jump, put me in your note!"

Lilli reached the top of the ladder, and looped the rope around the final rung. She was five foot nothing, but wearing six-inch heels, and before she could cautiously straighten up to her enhanced height, she felt something pressed against the top of her head. Keeping a white-knuckled grip on the rope, she reached up her free hand, and flattened it against the unexpected surface. It was freezing to the touch, enough to burn, and seemed far too solid to break through. With a damp hiss, Lilli put out her cigarette against the cold, slick ceiling. "It's ice."

The devil down below cried out, "Do you see something?"

"It's frozen over," said Lillith, mother of demons. "All of Hell hath frozen over."

* * *

High above them, rumbling over the railroad running through Sweetwater, Tennessee, the squeak of bicycle tires underscored the battle-cry of a triumphant nerd who hollered, "Molly Tyler kissed me!"