SUPPOSED DEMISE
A half-hour earlier, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean
"Your coffee, Mr. President."
"Thank You."
It was still early morning outside the huge jet as it made its made its way toward the Eastern American Seaboard. Michael Thornton could have blended in on any American flight. In his mid-forties, he was a clean cut, respectable man with a firm handshake and a pleasant demeanor. He looked like any businessman. But Mike, as his close friends called him, was not just any regular traveler.
He was the President of the United States.
It was a position that commanded a great deal of respect. The leader of one of the most powerful countries on earth was not to be taken lightly. It was also a position Thornton earned. He was the first person in nearly a half-century to be elected to the Presidency who did not come from either of two of very elite houses, bar two, the U.S. Senate and the State Governors. The only exceptions were George Bush Sr. and Gerald Ford. He was now the third exception.
Mike Thornton was in fact a lawyer. Even though he had practiced law in his home state of Ohio for nearly a decade before moving to Washington D.C. and gaining an interest in politics, he was still a man of dignity and strong values. And he was a family man as well. His wife and young son however were not aboard. His mind began to return to the thoughts about his impromptu trip as he sat in the plane's small but spacious office.
His trip to Egypt had not gone so well. The day before, an American aircraft carrier had collided with a passenger ferry in the Suez Canal in a heavy fog and there were hundreds of deaths, and the President had visited the Egyptian Prime Minister personally to assure him it was not a deliberate hostile act. The Prime Minister however was not satisfied with the results of the joint investigation so far, and was demanding reparations.
The whole thing was bizarre. By all intents and purposes the accident should not have happened. According to witnesses, the strange fog came out of nowhere, settling on the canal in a thick blanket. At the same on both ships, the radar equipment conveniently malfunctioned. Minutes later the two ships had collided head on with each other in a cacophony of screeching steel and the screams of people. Very bizarre. The strangest thing was that witnesses to the catastrophe said they had seen a strange symbol in the fog right before the-
"Mr. President." Someone had come in and had been calling his name to get his attention.
"What is it?" The person calling him was an intern, a young secretary. She was holding a cell phone. "It's for you Sir. He says it is important, and that he knows you." Her face showed a look of shock.
"Well then who is it?"
"I don't know Sir. He won't give me his name. He wants to speak to you and only you."
The President, now wondering who the person was, took the phone. "Hello?"
"Hello Mr. President," a sickly voice said coolly from the other end. The voice gave the President chills. "I'm sure your trip to Egypt went well." The trip had not yet been revealed to the public, short of those who would have to have been notified of his departure. Who was this and how could he have known?
"Who is this? How did you get onto a secure line?" the President demanded.
"All in good time Mr. President, all in good time. It's you that I'm interested in. You're the most powerful man in your country, which in turn is the most powerful nation on earth. You see, Mr. President, I'm new to your world, everything is so strange here. So I decided to send the world a little message to announce my arrival."
Several Secret Service agents entered the office, trying to get the President's attention. They knew this was an unusual call.
"What do you mean Arrival?" The President was clearly getting upset. He wanted to know who this person with the strange voice was. He silently mouthed "Trace the call" to one of the agents, who then hurried off.
"I mean my arrival here on earth, of course. I have been trapped in a dank, dark hole for as long as I can remember, and believe me it feels so good to be out. But back to the reason for why I called. I want to let the world know I'm coming, and what better way than to do it than with a bang.
"What are you saying?" The President then got it. "You mean that you-"
- The voice finished for him. "Were behind the accident in the Suez yesterday, yes, I was."
"Then who the hell are you?"
"My name is Xana, remember it, Mr. President, or should I call you Mickey? Isn't that the nickname your mother gave you?"
"How do you know that?" The mention of his mother by this stranger had really gotten to him. Fortunately a Secret Service agent rushed in, and mouthed silently: "We don't know where he's calling from."
"I sensed it in the depths of your mind, Mickey. I found that telepathy is one of my new abilities. Even though we are miles apart, I can sense what you are thinking through this phone."
The President was clearly angry now. He realized that he was not dealing with just some clever computer-hacking crackpot. He had to take this guy serious he knew how to get a line to the most secure plane on earth and he knew about his own personal life.
"Mr. President, the Suez incident was just to draw you out to where I could plant my 'bugs' on your precious plane. You see Mr. President, I have decided that you are to be the message. A message the whole world will hear. Tough break." And with that, the line went dead. The dial tone returned.
The President turned to the Secret Service Agent. "Did you find out who that was?"
"No sir. We went as far as a relay station on Bimini, about a hundred miles south of here. From there the signal originates, but that's not possible, because the station is unmanned."
"Did you guys get that part about bugs?"
Yes sir, I believe we did. I'll have a security team sweep the plane, just in case we find anything."
"Thank you, that is all."
With that, the Agents turned and began to walk toward the door to leave.
But they never reached it. At that moment the door was ripped off its hinges with terrific force, thrown into the compartment. Two of the agents immediately hit the deck, the third jumped across the desk and tackled the President to the ground.
The President looked around the corner of the desk at the thing that threw the door.
Standing in what was left of the doorway, at the President's horror, stood what appeared to be a gigantic, robotic crab, its red shell and its six blank eyes staring out at its preprogrammed targets. It s eyes began to glow-
-And a blast of energy shot out from it, hitting the first Agent in the chest. He flew backwards, dying before he even hit the ground. The second Agent unloaded with his standard issue Uzi Submachine gun, hitting the creature in the eyes, blinding it. The Crab-robot screeched in pain and stumbled backward, as if it did not expect to be injured in such a manner.
And then it was riddled with submachine gun fire from behind by another two Agents who had rushed in from behind.
The gunfire hit the large symbol in its back, and at that moment it crumpled to the ground, lifeless.
"Mr. President, are you okay?" the remaining agent shouted over to him. Sounds of further laser blasts and gunfire emanated from elsewhere on the plane The President knew instantly that there were more of these freakish things aboard. He climbed over the now lifeless shell of his would-be assassin and into the next compartment. He saw the secretary who had given him the phone minutes before, slumped over a desk, her face burned off by a laser blast.
"Agent, what the Hell is going on!"
"I don't know sir. They came out of nowhere, caught us all off guard. We need to secure the plane. They tried to take the cockpit but the pilots barricaded themselves in, and we can't reach them on radio. Half of us are dead or are dying sir. And the other half is fighting these things. Those symbols are their weak points I think."
"Sir, we need to get moving, these things are all over the place."
"There are more of them?", Asked the President.
"Yes Sir, those, and others like them. We fought a pair of these little roach-things on our way up here, and there are more of those big red things further back. Christ, they came out of nowhere. Sir, we need to get the hell out of here-"
"And go where? We're at thirty-five thousand feet," the President retorted.
The cockpit. If we can reach it, we can take control of this heap and call for help, at least we can-"
At that moment, an explosion somewhere aft shuddered through the plane. A moment later, the President felt wind.
Ah, shit, the fuselage's been punctured, we're losing pressure!" One of the Servicemen said.
"Then let's get the hell to the Cockpit before we suffocate," the President ordered.
The group quickly traveled up to the next deck and forward, meeting no resistance at all. Thornton realized as the pressure leaked out, it became more and more difficult to breathe. They had to seal off the ruptured area, and quick.
At the first-class cabin, the President realized he had counted his blessings too soon. Standing at the door to the Crew area and Cockpit were a pair of the crabs, and at least a half-dozen of the "roaches", all firing at the rapidly disintegrating door, as shouts and cries issued from behind. When they creatures realized that they had company, the roaches rotated around and began to lay suppression fire on the assaulters.
The remainder of the Secret Service team with the President all took cover behind seats, as energy blasts whizzed over their heads. They began to shoot around the seats, keeping themselves covered.
"Damn, this shit's insane!" one of them screamed.
Suddenly, a staggering amount of automatic gunfire erupted from behind the tattered door, further disintegrating it and spraying the crabs head-on. One promptly collapsed, the other staggered for a moment, before it too crumpled.
A moment later, amidst the whizzing bullets from both sides, the remaining roaches, in a final act of bizarre, jihadi-style suicide, turned their lasers on each other and killed themselves off.
It was all quiet for a moment. Thornton did not know whether to credit that silence to a lack of air to carry it or to the shock of sudden and brutal battle on friendly territory.
The Agents suddenly sprang into action, storming into the Cockpit area, guns at the ready.
What they found was not the reception of shocked, fellow Agents, but an empty cockpit whose only occupants were the flight crew on duty, all dead. By the smell, they were all electrocuted.
One of them went for the flight controls. "Everything's ruined. No wonder they never sealed off the hull breach."
Everything necessary to fly an airplane in the cabin had been turned to slag, monitors, panels, and dials, all reeked of acrid burnt electrical equipment. Air Force One was now a lame duck, and the altimeter, one of the only instruments that still functioned, showed they were losing altitude, and fast.
Air Force One was going down.
An Agent started. "Where's the rest of them, the guys who were shooting out at those-, those things?"
"Wherever they are, they're no longer here," another replied.
"Then spread out across the plane," The lead Agent ordered. Find any remaining survivors that-"
The lead Agent stopped suddenly. Then he noticed a strange glowing aura around himself and his charge. Then the President noticed too.
What the hell- was the President's last conscious thought as his bodyguards, himself, and everyone still alive on board Air Force One vanished in a bluish-white light, right where they stood. The only people remaining on board were those who had been already killed by the Creatures.
Exactly one second later, in the skies over the Atlantic, the Most Important Airplane exploded in a gigantic fireball, the special sensors attached to microexplosives on the plane's fuel tanks no longer detecting the President's heartbeat. The chunks of the airplane plunged into the ocean, leaving trails of smoke as they fell. Soon, some debris would be left bobbing on the surface, bits of seat cushions and plastic, marking where the jet, and the First Man, had met their fiery and explosive end.
For all intents and purposes, to the rest of the world, Michael Thornton, the President of the United States of America, was now dead.