Dark Screams: Volume Two Read Online Free PDF

happened?”
    “I need you to come with me. We can close out your terminal.”
    True enough. Joanie and Erika could handle the few remaining departures that night, and her own shift was due to end within the half-hour. Was he asking her to stay late?
    “A lot of back and forth on the phone,” Wade continued. “I’ve been told we need to keep people calm.”
    He still hadn’t answered her question. “What happened?”
    “Probably, uh.” He pressed his thumb on the bridge of his glasses, pushing them tight against his face. “Probably what you think.”
    —
    Courtesy office 2-C was a former smoking lounge, from the days when the airport allowed smoking in designated areas. Now it was a meeting area available for training sessions, policy announcements, sometimes even for staff birthday or holiday parties. They’d met in the same room yesterday, at one o’clock, when the morning and evening shifts overlapped, so Wade could privately announce the pending bankruptcy. Perhaps the main office gave him the same advice at that time:
Keep everybody calm.
    Two-C needed a key card for entry, a benefit Wade impressed upon her as they headed downstairs. They needed to control who entered the room—only immediate family members (he didn’t quite say “next of kin”). The airline’s name was already tarnished by the bankruptcy announcement, and they needed to minimize further negative publicity. He’d already deflected calls from two different reporters. “Wouldn’t be surprised if someone showed up here, tried to get some awful story to turn things against us.”
    All Michelle could think of was the intrusion on people’s privacy. For the sake of an exclusive story, would a reporter dare sneak into the group, try to catch people’s grief when it was fresh and agonizing and newsworthy? Not if she could help it.
    Wade gathered his laptop computer and clipboard under one arm, then slid his magnetic card through the reader slot. The door opened with a click. A large refreshment cart was already inside the doorway, parked at a haphazard angle: two metal canisters of coffee, a tray of doughnuts, and a bowl of oranges. Next to it, dozens of in-flight snack boxes filled a bin, along with plastic bags of napkins and cups bearing the airline’s logo.
    “Let’s line the tables along the outer wall,” Wade said. “We can spread food out more easily.”
    The six long tables were usually pushed together in the middle of the room, forming a large conference table. The food items weren’t enough to cover all the tables; Michelle suspected her boss didn’t want their guests to stare at each other while they waited for news.
    Wade’s arrangement of the chairs confirmed her suspicion. He set them up press-conference style, in rows that faced the lectern and projection screen at the front of the room. Then he opened his laptop and plugged it into the network and presentation system. Eventually computer icons flickered onto the screen, then after a few clicks a large representation of the public arrivals monitor appeared. The image was grainy but easy to read even with the overhead light on. The status column next to Flight 1137 was still blank.
    She looked over Wade’s shoulder at the lectern. The laptop’s smaller screen was divided into four quadrants, like a security monitor. The upper left panel, surrounded by a yellow selection frame, indicated the projected image. Next to it was the evening’s view from the front of the airport, taxis and shuttle buses and passenger cars rolling past in a jerking motion caused by the camera’s slow refresh rate. On the bottom row, an innocuous view of a random runway, a plane safely landed and baggage being unloaded from beneath. The final quadrant contained another low-resolution image, but the refresh rate was better than the airport’s typical security feed. Emergency lights strobed red over a darkening field: ambulances and fire trucks at the perimeter, a scorched stretch of ground,