The End Read Online Free PDF Page A

was sprawled, legs splayed, at the base of the stairs.  Leo stood up, "Come on, dumb ass, I'll help you up."  The Goofball just lay there, "Fine, whatever, have fun with that."
    Making his way to stand 3 he noticed piles of clothes laying around and a lot more litter than usual.  As he approached the workstation he saw the CAT5 cable dangling haphazardly disconnected from the main unit and rolled his eyes, "Sylvia, you need to keep this connected like I told you before." He plugged the cable back in, "It's already a 10/half connection without people unplugging shit all the time," he mumbled then immediately jumped back.  On the ground next to the stand was a set of yellowing teeth on top of a green polo.  The name plate attached to the shirt read Sylvia. 
    Leo started looking around harder now, noticing more, realizing something was more than just not right.  Quickly he ran to the stairs leading to the seating area.  The smell of beer was strong, beer dripping into the stands from dropped cups, but he paid no attention to this.  As he reached the top of the stair case he barely had a chance to be shocked at the site of an empty stadium that just moments before had been packed when a Delta dc-9 nosedived into South Street Philadelphia.  A few seconds later something erupted to the west closer to the airport, then again along route 95.  Leo turned around and ducked as yet another plane plunged overhead. 
    He slammed his hands over his ears when the Lincoln Financial Field sign was struck by the Gemini A321 Jet.  The sound of wrenching metal was overpowering followed by the blast of heat that hit his face even from across the parking lot when the tail exploded.  The rest of the jet crashed into the Navy yard and across the Delaware expressway.  Leo ran back down to the breezeway.  His Blackberry was cracked and not responding.  He threw it away and tried the radio again, "Mike, holy shit, man, are you seeing this?" 
    He was only 8 years old when the twin towers were struck but he still remembered the day it happened.  Growing up in South Philly he also remembered the speculation that Flight-93 might have been headed back towards Philly instead of the White House had it not been brought down in Somerset County.  He remembered seeing the footage of ashes raining down in New York City and the plume of smoke at the pentagon and yet this felt different.  This didn't feel planned, it was too sporadic, too quick and where the hell was everybody? 
    More explosions were occurring outside but they were muffled now as he made his way to the basement level where the offices were.  He ran to the TV that was there on top of Angie’s filing cabinet that always had the news on.  He saw her blue dress with the low neckline crumpled on the floor in front of her desk.  On the TV was a skewed view of the News 7 studio, nothing more.
    He ran to his boss's office, Mike's glasses were on top of his keyboard, his blue jeans and red polo on his chair and the floor.  Leo's heart was racing, he knocked the glasses out of the way and began typing.  First he checked the news websites and then the social websites but there was nothing.  He picked up the phone and called over to headquarters but there was no answer.  He tried a few other sites, he tried calling a few friends, he tried calling Dominoes pizza.  Nothing.  Nobody answered. 
    He sat there for at least ten minutes more hitting refresh on various news sites but nothing changed.  Eventually he pulled up the jumbo -tron interface, logged in, and typed in the sequence he'd seen Mike enter so many times in the off-season. The clear text entry for the display opened and he typed in "WTF?”  Why not?  If anything would get someone's attention it would be 15' letters on a screen that could be seen for miles in two directions and at this point he'd be happy to see even a terrorist.
     
    . . .
     
    Flight 799 landed uneventfully on the runway at Philadelphia International