Certain Death One

The Horror-2

All five scrambled from the room and pushed the door closed behind them, hoping to contain the erupting lethal gas. Lindsay Becker, who held the toximeter, hurried from the loading area, expecting the reading to fall back into the danger zone as space dissipated the cloud. But the whistle screeched "Lethal" all the way back through the industrial area, passed their point of entrance, passed the toppled container, to the farthest corners of the plant. The gas poured into every crack and crevice as if probing for an avenue of escape.

In a narrow, foot-long tear in the untested canopy, it found one.

The Second Hour

Marcel Evaneau's digital watch beeped for a full minute before anyone stirred. Then, all awoke simultaneously - Jeanne, his wife, Claudia and Marc, his daughter and son. Marcel emitted a hearty yawn, briskly massaged his scalp and announced breakfast. His wife, sitting beside him in their rented four by four, spoke to him in French.

"Do I have to go in looking like this?" she pleaded.

"Come, Love," he answered. "Disney World beckons, and we're only half way there." At the sound of those beloved words, the two children sprang upright in their seats and coaxed their mother to move. Reluctantly, she slipped from the vehicle, stretched languidly and grimaced at the stinging acrid smell. She heard rumors about the fabled aromas of the New Jersey Turnpike, but until this moment had believed them to be exaggeration. No more, she thought. It is every bit as bad as her friends had said.

Marcel read his spouse's thoughts. Her vigilance concerning potential pollutants bordered on fanaticism. She even advised detouring through Pennsylvania, adding hundreds of miles to their trip, in order to avoid this particular stretch of the most heavily traveled highway in the world - a region known far and wide as Cancer Alley.

"Do you know, my dear," she reported a week prior to departure, "That a combination of automobile exhaust and industrial fumes in that area has resulted in a cancer rate fifty percent higher than the rest of the country? Why look here!" She pointed to a magazine article. "They even have experts from the Center for Disease Control coming up from Atlanta to investigate why black people moving there from the south seem to be developing cancer at an incredible rate. And look here!"

She lifted another magazine. "There's a hazardous waste storage site with over forty thousand drums less than a mile from our route, and at least ten thousand of those drums sit in the same room with an open incinerator. They found over a hundred pounds of high explosive in that same facility, which is located less than a thousand feet from one of those huge gas storage tanks!"

Marcel frowned and took the magazine from his wife. After sifting through the pages, he smiled. "Jeanne," he said, "This was reported in 1984."

"Maybe so, but are you certain they've cleaned it up?"

Only after hours of debate did Marcel assure her that their brief exposure to carcinogens would not result in a life-threatening illness. The benefit of saving four hours driving time far outweighed the potential hazards.

Sniffing the air on this morning, however, gave him reason to pause.

Hand in hand, the four of them strolled to the restaurant at the Vince Lombardi rest stop, ten miles north of the Garden State Parkway intersection. Despite his early morning daze, Marcel found it peculiar that the parking lot held no cars. The gas station seemed deserted, as did the highway beyond. He knew the last two weeks in August were the most popular vacation months in the United States, as they were in his native Montreal, but he had not anticipated that everyone would vacate at the same time.

Marcel worried that all had gone to Disney World and envisioned hours-long waits in sun-drenched lines.

Ah, well, it's the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for the children, he reasoned. For the children!?

Marcel stifled a laugh, so he would not have to explain his thoughts.

They agreed on their first stop: the rest rooms. Then they would meet at the restaurant entrance. Marcel advised them not to linger. They still had a thousand miles to go and would not reach their destination until after midnight. Fortunately, it appeared they would slip by this hurricane that had earlier threatened to dash their plans.

Little Marc gave his father a mock salute, eliciting laughter and insincere obeisance from the women. Marcel laughed, too. For the first time since they left Montreal he was beginning to relax and truly enjoy the company of his beloved family.

This was going to be a wonderful trip.

Like a demon with an independent mind, the angel of death seeped through the tiny slit in the Plasti-Seal canopy, and received its baptism for destruction in the open air outside. Slowly, it gathered its body into a concentrated bubble until Arnie Jacobsen discovered the tear five minutes later, and sealed it shut. Now dismembered from the core, the invisible cloud broke free and drifted over the rugged ground, past oblivious policemen and dark suited professionals, some of whom stood only feet away. A light west wind pushed the bubble over the terrain toward the turnpike and a rendezvous with tragedy.

The Evaneau family stopped in their tracks, stunned to find all of the facilities tightly closed. Fighting anger, Marcel deduced that they had missed an announcement when they pulled off the turnpike last night after a ninety-minute traffic delay, even though everything had been open when they got here. Obviously, in pulling behind a row of pine trees to escape the caustic fumes of eighteen wheelers, they had missed the closing of this facility. Marcel took careful stock of the situation, remembered with some relief that he still had a quarter tank of gas, and recommended to all that they find a private spot somewhere to relieve themselves, women included.

Little Marc laughed at the girls as if to say, "I came prepared and you didn't"

Soon, they climbed back into the camper intending to stop at the next rest area for some much-needed refreshment. This was only a minor setback, Marcel declared. They had lost no time and should not let this little inconvenience affect their day together.

The two women smiled at their patriarch, because it seemed he needed more convincing than they did. Jeanne gave him a kiss on the cheek and Claudia squeezed his shoulder. Marc had slumped back into his seat, and was already giving signs that he had more sleep in him. With good-humored resolve, Marcel turned the key, gunned the engine and started down the ramp toward the southbound truck lane of the New Jersey Turnpike, one mile north of the Carteret Chemical Company.

Slightly heavier than the air around it, the cloud rolled languidly toward the most heavily traveled stretch of road on earth, a road so popular that even the most intense security could not detour every last vehicle from using it on that fateful morning. One might have thought the cloud possessed a mind and intended to hail the Toyota 4-Runner carrying the Evaneau family. But it was sheer, dumb, tragic luck which brought them together - and no more.

Had Jeanne Evaneau decided to turn on the air conditioning rather than roll down her window to catch a few breaths of fresh air before the heat of the day, it might have saved their lives, given the facts that were learned later.

It ended for them all very quickly. Jeanne turned to inspect her children lovingly. Claudia read a teen magazine and Marc slumbered. When she shifted to cast a smile toward her husband, she felt the excruciating agony of a disintegrating windpipe and the mind-numbing horror that she was suddenly drowning in her own blood. She grabbed her throat with a look of terror and bewilderment and spun to see Claudia and Marc, eyes wide and mouths gaping, clawing at the air. Her last conscious vision in this lifetime was the sight of Marcel, his face bathed in despair, coughing blood and slumping over the steering wheel.

The camper careened twice off the concrete divider splitting the highway, spun wildly out of control, seemed to teeter almost supernaturally on one set of wheels, then rolled twelve times before coming to a stop - a pile of crumpled metal containing four bodies that were once human beings.

Oblivious to the c*****e it had wrought, the cloud rode the breeze over the turnpike toward the giant freighters docked in the harbor beyond.

On this morning the captain and crew of the Oslo Maiden decided to heed the advice of Port Authority officials and cut shore leave by a full day. They would head north for a few hours, steer clear of the worst of the storm, then change course to due east. The day promised heavy seas, but that evoked no concern in experienced mariners like these. Besides, their cargo delivered, they risked inordinate delays if Hurricane Jill damaged the docks or dented some hulls. Delays cost money, so wisdom and the promise of a payback brought the men around for an early morning departure.

The last eleven Norwegian crew members to arrive ambled down the concrete dock, some walking in pairs, some alone, some nursing wicked hangovers, some rehearsing their tales of s****l adventures the night before. The strong likelihood of rough sailing rendered conversation light. Lars Johansen, the last in line, checked his watch, slung his backpack over his shoulder and quickened his pace. It never looked good to be the last on board, no matter how close you were to the others, especially with the captain watching, and especially if you were responsible for a fifteen-minute delay the last time out.

Just ahead, Erik and Jonnie seemed to be settling a long-standing argument.

Suddenly, Lars felt like he had gulped down a jigger of boiling Slivovitz, one hundred and eighty proof plum brandy, the kind of stuff that clamps the throat shut for a full five uncompromising seconds. Only Lars could not even gasp. His respiratory system had disintegrated. He fell to his knees amidst confusion and shock, blacked out, and died.

Eric and Jonnie did not notice the man falling behind them. If they had, it probably would have made no difference, anyway. They would have rushed back to help instead of running in the only direction that offered survival. Seconds later, the gas caught them as well. Eric fell as if he had tripped on something. Jonnie felt the urge to laugh for only an instant. Then he, too, fell to the ground, waving at the air, convulsing.

When Ingmar Olsen glanced over his shoulder wondering why his fellows had suddenly fallen silent, the scene which greeted him provoked instant alarm. He managed to shout a warning to those ahead before he too choked to death on the invisible horror.

Now fully alert to approaching danger, the rest of the crew broke into a frantic dash for the gangplank. One man collapsed, causing the two behind to sprawl over him. The rest sidestepped or ran over top of the prone bodies, all three of whom futilely struggled to regain their footing.

But it was too late. They, too, fell in full stride.

The remaining five reached the gangplank simultaneously, each lunging desperately to squeeze past the other and bolt up the metal ramp.

One last man, Karl Ringlaand also grabbed his throat in rage and anguish, spat blood and crumpled to the cement, his life drifting away through open eyes.

The rest froze, unable to explain why they had not been claimed as well, why the mysterious force, or poison, passed within a few feet of the bottom step, down the dock, passed the prow of the Oslo Maiden and into the Kill Van Kull.

The Third Hour

Fifteen dark suited professionals filed into a conference room on the thirtieth floor of an office building on Manhattan's West 34th Street, the headquarters of Futura Industries. Futura owned Carteret Chemical along with nine other facilities scattered along the eastern seaboard. Some of the men wore ashen expressions, while others, apparently ignorant of the meeting's purpose, joked or exulted over last night's Yankee game.