Phantom
They weren’t dead.
I refused to believe it.
My brother. His team. All the others. Those kids.
This wasn’t real.
It couldn’t be.
This was too much.
My fingers moved of their own accord over the keyboard. Almost as if I was on autopilot. My brain was of two minds. One crying as chaos reigned around me. My voice screamed inside my head as grief tried to take hold, while the other part of my head was hell-bent on doing what needed to be done.
I couldn’t focus.
I couldn’t make anything out.
The screen was blurry.
Yet, I knew what everything said.
I saw it all clearly.
The second I was in, I hit enter as the television screen on the wall went from black to a crystal-clear picture. Looking up, I stared in abject horror as smoke plumes and fires raged over both locations. One in the middle of the ocean, the other in the mountains of Tennessee.
Both locations were gone.
Nothing was left.
“Phantom, pan out to the west. There is a runway on the island.”
Doing as Dylan asked, I toggled the frame, moving the satellite to the west. The destruction was immense. Structures leveled, burning uncontrollably. As I tried to zoom in, I could see people lying motionless on the ground. I couldn’t make out who they were. Their bodies burned until they were unrecognizable.
I just prayed that someone survived.
Someone had to.
I couldn’t lose anyone else.
As the satellite shifted west, the tarmac came into view.
Just like the main compound, the hanger and flight tower were gone. Two planes and a Chinook helicopter sat burning. I jumped when one of the planes exploded.
There was no way off the island.
That’s when reality hit me.
They were all dead.
I knew it now.
There was no way they could have survived that kind of destruction.
My brother was gone. His friends, my friends, all of them.
“Fuck.” Dylan cursed as he fell into his chair, his hands holding his head as his body began to shake. We were all feeling it. The realization of what we all saw. The severity of what just happened.