splat chapter twenty-eight, part two

SPLAT CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT, PART TWO

 

Suzie got on the Connector behind Jerry and followed him up 85, weaving in and out using her best driving skills to sneak up on him in the rain. But he was a road hog, and loved the left lane. She found it hard to keep pace with him, but a series of fortunate slowdowns prevented him from getting too far ahead. It was the start of rush hour. In all this rain, it was going to be one hell of a rush hour.

5:14 pm. Six miles southwest of Suzie, Michelle Robineaux was cruising down I-85 in her minivan, a Christian audiobook playing at top volume. She was driving fast, as she usually did, hanging out in the left lane, running people off the road like she was in a hurry to be somewhere. Michelle was driving from Raleigh, North Carolina to New Orleans, going down to visit her latest grandchild. She was well rested, despite having spent the night in some fleabag hotel halfway between Charlotte and Greenville. She was taking her time, and had all evening to get west of Montgomery before stopping again.

Right now she was occupied taking pictures of all the interesting sights as she traveled through the city. She had her camera on her lap, and every now and then she would grab it in her right hand, swing it up, and press the shutter release, hoping to capture something that caught her interest. Being a digital camera, it would miss most of her shots while the computer thought about the settings. Most of the pictures would turn out blurry, and those that didn't would show perfectly focused shots of the raindrops on her window.

She was listening to something she'd ordered from the 700 Club: Women Who Make the World Worse: And How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. She found it very convincing, and she was gripping the wheel with a fist while taking notes on a pad of paper resting on the airbag.

Michelle had been driving like this for years now. She was over seventy, and considered herself one of the best drivers in America. In her youth, people told her she should have been a race car driver, but of course, that's a man's job, so she never took them seriously. But she did enjoy displaying her skills. The fact that her vision and hearing were going did not diminish her ability to drive at all.

Right now she was behind some slowpoke in the left lane, impatient for him to move out of her way. She crept up onto his bumper and flashed her lights, but he ignored her, so she got closer still, and honked. Still no response. So she kept it up, getting annoyed at the guy for being so inattentive, asking God to move him out of her righteous path. She would have cursed him, but she wasn't mad enough yet.

Michelle was very religious. The only thing she ever read was the Bible. She kept sneaking peeks at the juicy parts, though it filled her with guilt. If you'd dropped her Good Book on the floor, it would have fallen open at Judges 19:24-29, or the story of Amnon and Tamar, or of Lot and his daughters, or her favorite, the Song of Solomon.

She was still in the left lane as 85 and 75 joined at Brookwood. Traffic slowed dramatically. She was listening with great interest as her tape exposed the horrible excesses of women who didn't keep their place, and her ire was rising.

She crept up on the bumper of the inconsiderate jerk who was blocking her way. 'In the name of Jesus, move the hell out of my way,' she shouted, full of righteous indignation. Slowly the car moved over to let her pass. But the tape said something inflammatory just then, and she got busy writing it down on her pad of paper, unconsciously matching speed with the driver she was trying to pass. The car behind her began flashing its lights, and she got annoyed. What's wrong with him?

Michelle felt thirsty and reached for her coffee mug. The coffee was cold, so she lowered the window and threw it out. It splashed milky white onto the window of the car behind her, which swerved and slowed, honking. She cursed the driver to a fiery death, in the name of God's merciful justice.

Holding the steering wheel with her knees, she reached onto the floor of the passenger seat and grabbed the thermos bottle. She looked up and jerked her minivan back on course. She put the thermos between her thighs while unscrewing the cap. Then, holding her mug in her left hand, and hooking onto the steering wheel with a finger, she poured herself another cup of coffee. She drifted into the next lane. The car next to her honked and slowed. Michelle understood why people said Atlanta drivers were so rude. She took a sip of steaming hot coffee. Happy now, she returned her attention to her audiobook. Wives should submit to their husbands in all things.

There was downtown Atlanta spread out before her, the tops of all the new skyscrapers lost in the mist. Holding the coffee in her left hand, she reached for her camera with her right. Holding the steering wheel with both pinky fingers, she aimed her shot, but unfortunately some Antichrist in the next lane chose that moment to honk at her and swerve away, and she became distracted. The shot blurred.

The rain had slowed to a drizzle. Her windshield wipers squealed for rain. She drove with unfocused eyes, drinking coffee, listening to the words of Truth, every moment tempted to snatch up her pen and make a note. Her mind was full of thoughts. Michelle had long ago taught herself to multitask. She found it no trouble at all to do five things at once. In fact, the more she had on her plate, the sharper her mind got, the swifter her reactions.

Just then, her cellphone rang. It was somewhere on the passenger seat, buried under the pad of paper, sandwiched between her Bible, a bag of half-eaten chips, and the can of mace she kept to ward off attackers. She fumbled for it as her minivan rounded the Marta curve. Her car yawed way out into the next lane, to a chorus of angry honks and obscene gestures. Michelle cast her condemning eyes on the offenders, corrected her position with a jerk, and raised the phone to her ear with her left hand, struggling to hold her coffee mug with her pointer finger while balancing the phone in her palm.

It was Michelle's daughter-in-law, calling to find out where she was. At first her eyes darted actively about the road, consciously paying attention, showing that she was better than most people at not being distracted by phone conversations. But then she started thinking about how annoying she found her daughter-in-law, how unchristian her son's family was, how she was planning to baptize her grandson secretly when his parents weren't looking. Her eyes glazed over. She didn't notice the cop behind her trying to get past. She was thinking how that hussy gave every sign of being possessed by a demon.

A truck passed her on the right, hissing at her as it threw up a fine mist onto her windshield. 'Demon from Hell,' she shouted. She had to let go the wheel with her right hand, still holding the camera, and reach through it to activate the wipers. They were on the Grady Curve. Her bitch daughter-in-law was warning her they had rules for her to follow, insinuating that they didn't trust her to behave herself. This made her furious. She didn't notice the cop's lights go on, only partly because she was using her jaw to hold the phone to her shoulder and couldn't turn her head.

Her daughter in law was Satan's spawn, and it was time to perform a deliverance ministry on her. 'You are possessed by the devil,' she foamed, beginning an impromptu exorcism. 'In the name of Jesus Christ crucified, I adjure you to leave this unclean body. Direct your power to this sinner. Drive Satan, this unclean demon within her, away. I command you, demon, whoever you may be, by the power of God.' She went to make a mystical sign she thought she'd seen Pat Robertson make on TV. 'I cast you out in the name of Jesus the Destroyer of Lies,' she said into the phone. 'I praise you Jesus...'

She suddenly felt suffused with the Power of the Holy Spirit. Her hands shook. Her vision clouded. She dropped everything to praise the Lord. She spilled coffee all over herself. She dropped the phone. Her hands left the wheel and raised to the sky in supplication and praise. She started speaking in tongues. She took her foot off the accelerator.

The cop behind her got on the loudspeaker and told her to pull over. She felt the voice as a vibration going through her chest. Believing she was being thanked by Jesus Christ, her personal lord and savior, Michelle Robineaux prayed in glorious glossolalia as her car drifted across two lanes, sideswiped a Krispy Kreme van, flipped, rolled, and burst into flames.

Traffic on the southbound Connector stopped dead in the road, as parts of her car covered six lanes, and avoidance-accidents filled the rest. Traffic on the northbound side stopped dead in the road in a big pileup, as rubberneckers paid attention to the fire and brimstone and ignored the brakelights in front of them. It was an unholy mess.

Suzie was stuck in traffic going the opposite direction and miles north, still fairly confident that she was following Jerry. The traffic was diabolical all the way to 400. One car moved at a time, and then stopped. Like dominoes on acid. It was taking forever. The rain was to blame. The standing water stalled some cars, other cars overheated, and there were fender benders as people tried to jockey for better lanes. She passed them all at a snail's pace. A drowned snail.

Suzie peered through the rain at the cars ahead. All she could see were tail lights and shadowy boxes in the thick, heavy, visible air. The wind swept the rain into curlycues and tendrils of moving atmosphere. The cars were cutting through standing water on the road. Nobody was going more than 12 miles an hour. She kept looking for Jerry's BMW, and kept not seeing it.

5:27 pm. Fifteen miles to the west, Jimmy James ('JJ') Jackson was driving around Atlanta on 285, coming from Roswell. He was going around the west side of town to take I-20 to his next stop, a Shell station on MLK Drive. He was driving a Mack MR cab-over truck, hauling gasoline. It was starting to rain again, the road was slick, and the four-wheelers were all driving like assholes.

Cars and trucks were backed up on the right to take the I-20 exit westbound, so JJ moved over, and over again to position himself for the left exit onto 20 eastbound, maintaining a safe distance between him and the car in front of him. As they approached the I-20 overpass, a four-wheeler traveling beside him suddenly sped up and pulled right in front of him, as if the driver didn't see him. JJ peered through the back window and saw the driver flailing her hands. Then he saw her turn around and gesture into the back seat. Then she slammed on the brakes, in the grip of some emergency.

JJ carried out evasive maneuvers, consisting of swearing impotently and braking as gently as he could to avoid jacknifing on the wet road. He was tempted to just drive right over the idiot, but then he spotted a baby carrier in the back seat, and had no choice but to veer off onto the shoulder. He was doing fifty-eight when he hit the bridge abutment.

JJ Jackson was killed instantly. The tanker, weighing 56,000 pounds, smashed him to jelly as it followed him into the concrete bridge, and then blew up. All lanes of I-285 in both directions stopped dead in the road as truck pieces scattered like burning shrapnel. Above, all lanes of I-20 stopped dead in the road as huge cracks opened up in the bridge surface and flames shot through them. Smoke rose like an atomic cloud into the air. The rain increased, but did nothing to lessen the intensity of the flames.

5:31 pm. Sixteen miles away, Suzie decided that Jerry was going to take Georgia 400, and followed, still crawling thru a downpour. Suddenly she made out the bumper sticker on a BMW that moved in front of her, and realized with a thrill that she'd caught up to the bastard. He got into the left lane, driving aggressively, if slowly. He pulled away, but she was confident now.

5:34 pm. The airborne rush hour was every bit as bad as rush hour on the ground. Twenty miles east of ATL airport, Flight 666 from DCA, a 727 three-quarters full, was on final approach. Conditions were marginal. Light rain, patchy ground fog, scattered clouds at 1,000 feet; an overcast cloud layer at 2,000 feet and thunderstorm anvils to 40,000 feet. Gusting crosswinds to sixty-five knots. The tower informed the pilot that the whole area was under a wind advisory, and tornadoes had been reported up and down the path of one of the larger feeder bands.

A hurricane churning northwards past Atlanta goes like this: gusty winds, low clouds, and torrential rain for awhile, followed by gusty winds, hot sun, and instant fog as the air steams right up like someone's focusing the sun with a magnifying glass, followed by another line of thunderstorms. There was a recent storm cell cruising north away from the airport at speed, and another cell in Fayetteville heading toward the airport. Flight 666 was positioned to come in during the lull between one cell and another.

Even in a hurricane, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was open for business, planes dodging the thunderheads on their way in and out. The busiest airport in the world, the airport too busy to close. It might be gusty and rainy with nine inches of rain forecasted, but that was a lot better than anything west or south of there. All over the Southeast, flights were being diverted and schedules were being tossed into the trash. Incoming air traffic was stacked up thirty thick, flying procedure turns all the way up to Charlotte, with barely the required three miles between them, all traveling at 150 knots, all getting lower and closer, all coming in to land. And more behind them, all flying into a headwind that gobbled up their fuel like nobody's business.

The aircraft passed into range of the ILS beacon at the end of the runway. That's an electronic marker  that sends out a very narrow beam three degrees up and to either side of the runway. The closer planes get to the beacon, the more accurate the reading on the beam. However, there was a little problem with Flight 666. The aircraft was not getting the ILS signal, but the plane's internal navigation computer said they were right on target, lined up on the final approach, getting lower and closer.

The pilot and copilot spent time looking for a visual, but it was soup out there. It was like flying through bunches of cotton candy, playing peekaboo with the ground. Ground so dark under the clouds that you couldn't see any features. Ground so obscured by rain that even the lights grayed out. They kept flying lower and closer.

The clouds broke up as they approached, and for a moment they saw the runway. The pilot adjusted his heading slightly until it was right in front of the nose. However, the computer still indicated that the runway should be slightly to the north, so he and the copilot feverishly tried to identify the error and make a correction so the instruments would agree with their eyes.

He called in. 'Tower, I see the runway.'

'Do you have the runway in sight?'

'Uh, yepper.'

'It has stopped raining temporarily. You're cleared for visual approach.'

'Uh, be advised we are low on fuel.'

'Copy, so is everyond else..'

The pilot kept checking out of his window. Clouds clouds clouds Runway clouds clouds Runway clouds clouds. Lower and closer, lower and closer. 'Where's that cone?' he demanded. 'We're not getting the signal. We're supposed to be right there.'

Four miles. Constant pressure on the stick was beginning to cramp up the pilot's hand. For a moment, they thought they saw runway 8/26 through the clouds at ten o'clock. This satisfied and comforted them, because they knew that if there was another runway to their right, then they must be heading for the south runway. And there it was again, so all was well. But it was strange, because they couldn't see the terminal lined up between runways. They couldn't see runway lights. Maybe there was a power outage.

Three miles. Though they had intermittent visual identification of the airport, they were still not picking up the runway beacon, so something was wrong. Their eyes reassured them every few seconds that they were heading right toward the runway, but they weren't getting confirmation. Their error checks were getting more frantic and desperate. Lower and closer. Lower and closer. The copilot reached  to contact the tower.

Two miles. The computer kept insisting that the plane was outside of the glide path. Either the aircraft was left, right, or somehow too high. But it was time to land, and a last view out the windscreen confirmed that the runway was right there. So the pilot pulled the flaps back and dropped the landing gear.

The pilot was certain of his visual on runway 9R/27L. They were now below a thousand feet . The aircraft dropped down through the clouds, which tore away in patches. He started to see lights, the ground, and suddenly it all unfolded beneath him, with absolute clarity. The runway, eight hundred feet down, a mere mile and a half in front of him, the airport lights, the neighborhoods and roads they were flying over. The runway disappeared back into the clouds. The pilot adjusted power, aiming straight ahead, lower and closer.

One mile. The crew was real busy doing stuff in the cockpit. There was a lot of noise and concentration and frantic figuring going on, and they didn't really hear the tower screaming at them over the radio. They were doing fifteen things at once. They weren't even looking out at the ground anymore. When things go crazy, sometimes you miss a few steps.

Then the clouds were gone and the runway was below, and so they went roaring on in there, and it was too late to do anything about it when they saw that everything was wrong. All sorts of things were different from your typical 9,000 foot runway - there were no lights, no markings, no skid marks, no concrete, Instead, they found themselves landing on top of a pretend runway, a faux runway, a phantom runway, a soon-to-be completed runway. A runway made out of a pile of dirt, shaved flat, and left to erode in the rain.

The pilot was still flying right at it, however, lower and closer. And because his brain knew it was the runway, he was still flying right at it. He didn't have a lot of choice. The aircraft was two hundred feet off the ground, they were close to stall speed, they were too low on gas to call a missed approach and go around again. So while his copilot screamed incoherently at the tower, the pilot put his aircraft on the ground. As gently as possible.

The first few moments went really well. The construction had gotten to a point where the dirt subsurface of the runway-to-be was packed and polished smooth, a giant dirt road. It was pretty muddy at the moment, however, because of the six and a half inches of rain the hurricane was in the middle of dumping on top of Atlanta.

The wheels fouled with mud, and started skidding, and then collapsed, and the plane flopped into the mud, still sliding faster than most cars could drive. Belly down in the mud, like some giant dog, the plane slid down the runway while the pilot tried to steer with the engines. The plane crept ever so slightly to the right as it slowed. Against all odds, it looked like it might work out. The men in the cockpit were extremely tense, every muscle straining, every hand clenched, every thought ending with, 'Oh, fuck.' Fractions of a second crept by as the pilots watched the muddy red simulacra of a runway whirr past.

Even if they couldn't hear over the noise of the plane scraping through the mud, the pilots were marginally aware that there was horrible pandemonium going on back in the cabin as passengers panicked, all the sinners said, 'Oh, fuck,' and absolutely everyone hurled prayers back into the sky as if the plane could follow them.

Slowly, the plane slowed. Both pilots had their feet jammed to the floor, as if trying to brake a semi on a sheet of ice, down to body english and elbow grease and willpower and prayer. It was plowing more toward the right, and the pilots got a better view of the construction site as the plane turned sideways, and continued to skid down the pretend runway.

The copilot reached for the microphone to say something reassuring to the passengers as the plane slowed to a gentle slide, but just then the left wing tip, at that point the leading edge of the plane, began to dig into the dirt of the artificial hill that the runway was being built on top of. With the sound of a shovel prying up roots, the wingtip sliced into the dirt. Then the whole plane flexed and pulled its wing back out of the ground. The fuselage rolled as the plane bounced to its other side, rocking until the opposite wing touched the ground, and rocking back again.

The second time the leading edge of the wingtip sliced into the surface of the runway, it hit a hole. A rather large hole. The left wing of the aircraft went through a missing section of runway. Instead of a hundred feet of bridge to slide safely over, there was a sudden 60 foot drop from the edge of this missing chunk to the surface of I-285 below.

The tip hit the road surface and stopped abruptly. The plane's wing flexed sharply, and then rebounded slowly, taking passengers and crew through a half gainer. The aircraft bounded into the air, its right wing pointing straight up at ninety degrees. It balanced for a very long split second on its wingtip, and then tilted over, and came gently - for a million-ton aircraft - to rest, leaning up against the side of the hole, the left wing stuck in the eastbound lanes of the tunnel, the fuselage twenty feet off the surface of the soon-to-be-completed runway, mostly upside down, and the right wing waving back and forth hundreds of feet above the westbound lanes of 285.

The tail was out over the other side of the runway, hanging by its cables. The plane was suspended there, cracked open at the seams. The passengers could see daylight above their feet. They were on their backs, strapped in upside down. The tail snapped off and fell onto the Perimeter. The rest of the plane shifted ominously. The rain picked up.

5:43 pm. Traffic on the westbound side of I-285 stopped dead in the road at the sight of a huge jet plane facing them like some bomber from hell. Drivers panicked, causing a forty-eight vehicle pileup. Unhurt motorists stopped and got out of their vehicles to stand in the pouring rain, staring up in amazement, taking pictures with their cellphones and calling 911.

The captain reached for the intercom. He put a jauntiness into his voice that made the copilot blush. 'Well, folks, looks like we had a bit of a bumpy landing. I'd like to apologize for putting us down a little farther from the terminal than expected. Right now our capable flight crew will see you safely off the plane, and we'll have you reunited with your luggage in no time. On behalf of the crew and myself, we hope you enjoyed your flight.'

138 passengers were upside down in their seats. Flight attendants started trying to open the cabin doors and get the emergency chutes switched around opposite their suggested positions . In the cockpit, the pilots were busy shutting down the equipment.

138 passengers dropped and rolled and were picked up off the ceiling of the aircraft, or turned summersaults over their seat belts, or dangled upside down until they were released into waiting arms. Lines formed for the chutes. There was very little talking. Overhead bins had all come loose underfoot, and some alert passengers managed to find their carry-ons.

The flight attendants would get special awards later. They were tight, trained, and keeping it all together. Passengers were deplaning as fast as they could be unfastened, turned upright and shoved out the door.

The crash victims stood huddling in the rain and wind at the foot of the chute. News helicopters began bobbing above their heads. They could see the lights of emergency vehicles bogged down in the mud of the almost completed runway. The passengers were silent, stunned, waiting meekly, lucky to be alive and really glad to be off the giant plastic slide that was held in place with velcro. It took under two minutes to empty the equipment.

The flight crew abandoned the plane only after the last passenger went down the chute into the wind and rain. A feeble cheer went up from the passengers when they appeared at the plane's mostly upside down door.

The crew began herding passengers away from the aircraft, faces bowed to avoid the rain, slogging carefully through the mud to be rescued. Rescue vehicles were bogged down completely in the muck, a quarter of a mile away.

Brave drivers in the far right lanes of 285 westbound began to creep along the shoulder, trying to get into the tunnel and resume their journeys. But most people turned their engines off and gawked up at the nose and the slowly oscillating wing of the crashed airplane.

The rocking of the fuselage had never ceased, and now a combination of wind and weight began to pull the plane over, making a great gnashing sound. Passengers and crew fled the scene leaving shoes and carry-on bags stuck in the mud. Drivers standing around the mouth of the tunnel scurried back into the shadows. The fuselage came farther over the edge. It began to tilt; it began to teeter right at the edge of the bridge, the top wing yawing out over the stopped vehicles below. Stuck travelers heading westbound sat there in their cars, mesmerized.

And then, with one long metal screech, like ten thousand fingers on a blackboard the size of Turner Field, the aircraft slowly pirouetted and bowed its head, both wings coming to rest across the rim of the bridge, bAllencing on their leading edges as the airplane's black nosecone came to rest straight down, and the back end of the fuselage stuck straight up into the air. Like a cartoon plane crash, stopped in the air mere feet off the ground.

5:47 pm. The rain let up to a drizzle. Low clouds raced across the sky heading due north. Wind pushed and prodded the wet, weary passengers as they stumbled toward the flashing lights.

Thirteen miles north, Suzie was just creeping past the exit to Lenox Mall, afraid maybe Jerry would have gotten off there. But she spotted him heading up the road at the last minute, and continued her slow-motion pursuit.

Uncle Daddy was driving around the bottom end of the Perimeter heading for 75 South, taking a load of auto parts to Macon. He was having some trouble driving in the rain; the rig was handling sluggishly in all the water, he could feel the load shifting every time he took a curve, and his stopping distance was enormous. He cursed all the silly little ants in four-wheelers that kept squeezing in front of him. Traffic kept coming to a stop, every mile or so. It had been stop and go all the way around the Perimeter because of the rain, because of construction, because of rush hour.

As he entered the new 285 runway tunnel, and his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that something was very wrong. First he noticed what looked like an enormous knife blocking the tunnel's exit. Then he noticed a great deal of mud on the road surface. And cars stuck in it, pointing every which way. Uncle Daddy braked to a smooth stop with only a slight skidding of his trailer. He was rear-ended by a four-wheeler trying to stop, but there was no damage to his Kenworth. Cars pulled to a stop behind them, causing more crashes as traffic stopped dead on the road in the almost-completed bridge tunnel.

5:54 pm. Traffic had been stopped below the crash scene for eleven minutes. A new feeder band had moved over the area, and the wind and rain picked up until you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. The traffic jam gurgled and regurgitated around the Perimeter like a snake with constipation.

The flow around the bottom end of the Perimeter stopped, choked to death at the south end of the airport. Vehicles came to a stop further and further along 285 every moment. Traffic coming both ways along 75 was affected next, and the right lanes backed up as drivers were prevented from exiting onto the Perimeter. Then traffic coming up from 85 South jammed at the entrance to 285.

Northbound travelers started to encounter massive brake light zones as they made their way past exits onto the Perimeter. A fender-bender occurred in the middle lanes of I-85 South at the 285 East exit, and while the drivers were inspecting the damage, another fender bender occurred a hundred yards to the rear. This narrowed the road down to one left lane. On I-75 South, a tanker carrying septic sludge grazed a Dodge Ram maneuvering past the exit to 285 West, and jackknifed, car after car impacting its side as it slowly came to a halt, sewage spreading out and beginning to dilute in the rain. All lanes were now blocked on 75 South. Several injuries were reported.

6:00 pm. Seventeen minutes after Flight 666 came down on the wrong runway, the northbound lanes of both 75 and 85 were barely creeping past the exits to the Perimeter. Traffic was slow in all lanes all the way from Union City on 85, and Tara Boulevard on 75. The Connector into town had palsy, as cars shuddered to a stop further and further away from the rapture of Michelle Robineaux.

As the rainy rush hour continued, more and more motorists tried to get from Downtown where they worked, to some point outside the Perimeter where they lived. More and more motorists came around a bend in the rain and saw completely stopped traffic in front of them, put their brakes on, and came to a halt while the cars behind them came to a halt, and the cars behind them, and the cars behind them.

6:05 pm. Traffic came to a stop at Spaghetti Junction on 85 North, and just before Cobb Parkway on 75 North. The top end Perimeter came to a creaking, splintering halt as car after car slammed into car after car. This kind of jam happened every day, but as luck would have it, it was complicated by a fresh twelve-car pileup at Spaghetti Junction, and an accident involving a drunk driver in a pickup just before Windy Hill on 75.

6:11 pm. Atlanta rush hour traffic was a necklace of pain around the city. Suzie was in an enormous line at the tollbooth on 400, beating the steering wheel in frustration. Jerry was in a much shorter, actually moving line of cars with prepaid cruise cards who were jaunting through the tollbooth at a speedy five miles an hour. He was getting away. Suzie yelled and screamed, jumping up and down in the seat, honking madly. He was out of sight, and she was still five cars back from the tollbooth. Would she have been mad to learn that Ed's car also had a cruise card.

Slowly, slowly, she crept forward. Then she was through the toll, creeping forward. Then she was approaching the exit to the Perimeter, crawling. Her throat was ragged from screaming. She passed the exit, and traffic stopped dead on the road in front of her.

A mile in front of her a car had tried to change lanes to take the Sandy Springs exit, and got hit by a bunch of other cars that didn't want him getting in front of them. It wasn't a high speed crash, but it was just as dangerous, because he'd pissed off a lot of people who were now dragging him out of his car and beating him with tire irons and flashlights.

It stopped raining. Dark purple clouds barrelled along right over their heads. People all around Suzie turned off their engines and rolled down their windows and left their cars to peer up the road and wonder. Suzie sat in the developer's car listening to traffic reports on the radio, fiddling the dial from station to station, bored. Seething with anger and frustration.

6:25 pm. The only moving vehicles within sight of Atlanta's highways were helicopters, traipsing from one interchange to another, battling the winds, floating just under the clouds, gleefully reporting massive traffic jams everywhere.

Suzie sat and fumed for twenty-eight minutes. Jerry was somewhere ahead, a sitting duck. And she was helplessly stuck somewhere behind him. Her one meaningful act of vengeance, and she was stuck in traffic. It had started to rain again, hard and pelting. It made insistant tapping sounds on the hood and roof.

Suzie found that she couldn't just sit there and let her opportunity for vengeance pass. She grabbed her bag and checked her things, and then got out of the car and started walking forward through the line of cars. She hardly saw anything around her. Her ears were filled with the sound of roaring blood. Her head pounded with rage, her heart beat wildly with the desire to inflict pain. She was barely thinking.

It was almost by reflex that she reached into her bag and put on her disguise. The weight of the glued-on cellphone dragged the wig over slightly, but she didn't care. She reached back into her bag and patted her paintgun. She was full of purpose now. Full of hate. The rain stopped again. Her wig stuck in limp strands to her face and neck, and began to itch.

She saw Jerry's BMW in the distance. Still in the left lane. She walked along the shoulder steadily, slowly, ignoring the other cars. Every step felt like it took a month, every breath felt like thirty gallons in and out of her lungs. Every car she passed seemed like it was half a mile long.

Jerry was smoking in his car. His windows were down slightly and Suzie heard classic rock coming from inside the car as he leaked cigarette smoke into the air. She walked calmly up to the car. Her mind was blank. She had rehearsed his crimes for hours, all day long, proving over and over to herself how inhumanly wicked he was. But now she felt mostly fatigue. Numbness. A weariness unto death.

She stopped by his open window and looked down at him. He sat staring forward out the windshield, his fingers busy tapping in time to the music. She stood there quietly. It was as if she were back at the Club, waiting for him to order. Finally, he looked up. An annoyed look crossed his face and he reached for the window switch. He took her for a beggar. 'I don't have any money for you,' he snarled and turned away. The window began to close.

Something snapped in Suzie's brain, setting off a reflex she'd been practicing for months. 'Well, I've got something for you,' she said viciously. Her finger curled around the gun and brought it out of her bag, and with one swift tremor, she jerked it toward him and pulled the trigger. Bloop. Suzie shot Jerry in the temple with a menstrual-red paintball. His head continued to turn, sped up considerably by the force of the projectile.

Bloop. Another red paintball hit the back of his neck. It wasn't going very fast, but it had enough impact to explode all over him. Jerry looked startled, and went limp in his seat. His cigarette fell into his lap. The side of his face and the back of his neck looked like Suzie'd been at him with a kitchen knife.

She bent over to have a good look at him. He wasn't moving. Only the dripping red paint was moving. Only the smoke from his cigarette was moving. 'Enjoy,' she said. 'No tipping allowed.' She looked back at him as she moved away. 'And no smoking in the dining room.' Maybe he'll be out long enough to catch on fire, she thought.

Suzie walked slowly back to Ed's Mercedes. It had begun to rain again, harder every moment as another feeder band moved over. Suzie had begun to cry. She wasn't sorry for Jerry. She would have liked to torture him to death, to hear him beg, to see him in real pain. Hell, with her lousy paintgun, she didn't actually think she'd done more than stun him. Suzie was crying for herself.

It rained harder than ever. Suzie had left the bag opened and rain poured into it like she was standing under a rain spout, soaking everything, ruining her picture of her dad. She cried harder than ever.

She got back to the car. Up ahead, where drivers had beaten the lane-crosser within an inch of his life, the ambulance was heading off to the hospital and the tow trucks had begun to arrive. Traffic was beginning to move minutely in the lanes farthest from the scene of the incident.

Suzie sat in Ed's car, sopping wet, waiting for traffic to stir in front of her. She pulled her wig off once she sat down, and was slowly pulling herself together. Her gloves were stuck on. She'd cried pitifully all the way back to the car, sobbing, horribly sorry for herself. She felt as if the world was coming to an end and she was more of a loser than ever.

The cars close to her began to creep forward. Suzie turned on the engine and followed an inch at a time, barely paying attention. The cars in the left lane weren't moving at all, blocked by Jerry's BMW. She stared straight ahead as she drove past in the next lane, not daring to look over. She was certain that everyone would automatically know she had shot him. But they all assumed the car had stalled and he must have walked off and left it, because he was invisible, slumped out of sight in his seat. Suzie glanced in her mirror and noticed a police car approaching his stalled car along the shoulder. She had a few moments of absolute panic, but as the traffic continued to move, she felt like maybe she might make it away. It was close.

Twelve responsible citizens had called 911 on her. One saw her putting on her disguise. Two more saw her stalking toward Jerry's car along the shoulder. One saw her whip out her gun and fire into the car. Two saw her putting the gun back into her bag, and half a dozen called simply because they thought she looked suspicious walking through stalled traffic. The reports dwindled to almost nothing by the time she got back to the developer's car, so the cops got a very good description of the assailant, but they only knew the make, model and color of the car she got back into. Traffic was too thick and the rain was too heavy to get the license plate from the traffic cameras.

6:49 pm. The Perimeter, I-85, I-75, I-20 and GA 400 resembled movie sets from The Day After, with isolated zones resembling the aftermath of the chase scene from The Blues Brothers.

Suzie got off at the Northridge exit and made her way back home along the surface streets, making the usual detours to avoid flooded out sections. She felt numb, and very tired. She hardly thought of Jerry at all, and when she did it was with a certain satisfaction.

By 5:28 the next morning, most of the rain had blown past the metro Atlanta area. But the interstates were closed. I-75 North was thick with trucks coming up from Florida, all lined up with nowhere to go, and traffic was solidly packed north of Macon. By early afternoon, it was a parking lot all the way down to Valdosta near the Florida border. Traffic on 85 North from Montgomery was likewise stopped. 75 South from Chattanooga was being rerouted through Birmingham, and 85 South was rerouting traffic from Greenville to Augusta. I-20 travelers were being stopped at the border and told to visit Birmingham or Augusta for a couple of days. Across the nation, it was the top story on the morning news.

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next, mort trouble