Excerpt from my 9/11 Historical Fiction Thriller, “Forecast”:

23 Days To Go

August 19th, 2001 • Manhattan, NY

It was utterly confusing, and utterly terrifying. I just stood there, wondering what all of it meant this time.

A blinding flash had lit up my mind with white once more; my body hummed and buzzed, and I couldn’t move until it was all over: the same paralysis always set in and took over until the vision abated, and then I’d come to and find people awkwardly staring at me. But why was this happening?

I was still reeling, trying to catch my breath, panting hard. The sweat trickled down my temple. I clutched the pole in the subway car to steady myself, and once again everyone was staring at me awkwardly like I was a homeless drunk. Some shifted uncomfortably away from me and gawked from afar, murmuring to other passersby.

A kind, elderly woman leaned in toward me and asked “Sir? Sir, are you alright? Do you need to sit down?” She motioned to her own seat, willing to let me take it.

I shook my head. “I’m fine, thank you,” I said to her, and she smiled. She reminded me of my sweet Nona, gone long before her time. If only I could have done the thing then, and staved off her death for a few more years, maybe. Who knows? It was like chaos theory or the butterfly effect, only I couldn’t alter time. What the hell was happening to me?

The first one: that poor girl. I still can’t shake that guilt. I could have done something. No, I should have done something. And the second one, at the bank: all those innocent people just…gone. I should have helped there too. I got the visions. And then when I saw the perpetrators in both situations afterward on the news, and knew that they were the same people I had seen around Jersey and New York in my mind’s eye. I was racked with shame. Racked. That was so hard to get through.

But…this was the starkest one yet, and now I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that this was a powerfully massive threat. How I could possibly intervene, I wasn’t certain. I was just one man. I wasn’t sure I could help at all, frankly, but I had to at least try.

The first two I initially chalked up to coincidences… but then each came true. I looked around. Who had triggered it this time? I didn’t recognize any of the few people whose faces I dared connect with. None of them were in my vision. It had to have been someone who just got on the subway, close to me, as before. But who? People were crammed in here like sardines, and you just don’t look at people.

I swallowed hard, knowing full well that I had to find a way to stop this latest one from happening. Something about planes this time. Airplanes. Large commercial airliners. A hijacking? Just snippets of images. Fights high in the sky. Dark-skinned men. A language I didn’t recognize, but something from the middle East, arguably. And then…black.

The headaches were too much, the bloody noses were getting thicker, and now I was starting to pass out from exhaustion. The last time, someone stole my wallet and I wound up at the hospital, questioned by the police. I clutched the handkerchief in my pocket, readying it for the inevitable nosebleed. A woman saw me perspiring and made a face, putting some distance between us.

Everyone should technically have known who I was. I was a weatherman, for goodness’ sake. I guess I looked different in real life without the green-screen weather map behind me. Now, here, they all pretended I was just some intoxicated buffoon. Maybe the sweat and the strained look made me fairly unrecognizable.

I searched around me again, anxiously, still not seeing the face that had come with that flash, doubting myself the whole time.

I’m Roland Bishop, and I know where I am, I repeated in my mind. I had to tell myself that over and over just to center myself…and to bring me back to the present.

The subway began to move once more, and I held on, headed for the PATH Station.

It had literally only been two weeks since the hospital released me. “Lightning never strikes twice,” they said, but that didn’t curb the tension or make things any easier. Since the strike, the air was so thick around me I could chew it, and the buzzing in my ears wouldn’t dissipate or disperse.

In the New York subway system, you don’t really look at people for too long. That just freaks them out and makes them tense. Penny — Dr. Penelope Eggers, that is — believed me at least, and she told me not to stare. That would just make people uneasy, and I might lose the tail. But she cautioned me to be extra careful and not go being any kind of Lone Ranger vigilante.

The roar of noise rushed over us as we made our way into downtown Manhattan. There, I knew, rising somewhere above me in vast fingers pointing triumphantly into the sky, stood the Twin Towers, the World Trade Center.

I’d never been up in them. I’d heard about the Windows on the World Restaurant and all the big businesses in there, but it was a bit imposing, and I wasn’t a fan of heights, really. Down on the ground I could gaze up at them with my feet still attached here to the earth, and I was still me down here. I was safe.

But I’m losing me to these damned visions. I sighed. I’m Roland Bishop, and I know where I am. I’m Roland Bishop, and I know where I am. I’m Roland Bishop, and I know where I am.

Nope. Still confused and blurry. I probably looked like some stupefied idiotic vagrant staggering around in here, aimless and bereft of home and purpose. All I knew was I had to find that face before it was too late again.

More white flashes, and somewhere in the mix the hazy, barely distinguishable number twenty-three materialized mistily, being driven off by a wind as little bits of it splayed clumsily around. It wasn’t clear what it meant.

The Kawasaki PA5 stormed over the rails, and then started to slow. People jockeyed for position to get to the doors first. I never understood why people did that. So you’re five seconds later than if you had just stayed where you were in line…big deal. Why such urgency? You don’t even know what urgency is. What I’m doing is urgent, I thought, disapprovingly. My head throbbed.

The doors opened. We filtered out like cattle. People jostled all around me. Someone bumped me hard and didn’t even say ‘excuse me.’ Another person swore at the sheer idiocy of people who push and shove others out of their way. I let both go. They weren’t my mark. I needed to find the face I had seen.

A good twenty or thirty of us were walking across the concrete platform to the stairs. I could feel something warm trickling out of my nose. My skin began to tingle and my head started to swim. They were close, whomever they were. Abruptly, the flashes resumed, without warning.

A plane streaking across the sky.

People screaming.

Rubble everywhere. Smoke. Dust. Ash.

A cockpit being intruded into.

That was all I needed. I was now certain that this particular vision was of a hijacking.

I looked around me. A young man met my eyes and then pulled away in revulsion at the blood I wiped from my nose onto my handkerchief. He put a few other people in between us and went on his way.

Suddenly, a face stood out to me in the crowd. A familiar face. The one I had seen in my vision.

There he is!That was him, from my vision!

I found the target shortly up ahead. He was walking with someone, briskly, and talking with them. The other man was looking back repeatedly.

My target had thick, puffy black hair, thin pursed lips, a solid clenched jawline, and beady eyes set under darkly outlined lashes. He looked around. I didn’t know who the other man was. I didn’t even know who my mark was. I just knew he was going to do something awful.

My head was buzzing. The mark turned to look almost right at me. Dr. Penny said not to confront people, and I wasn’t going to. She cautioned me to just follow them at a distance — observe and report — but no more. I was starting to feel like that might not be enough.

Sudden white flash. And just like that, I was down.

People cleared away from me, eager to get to where they were going and not be inconvenienced. The old woman finally caught up to me and asked me again if I was alright. God bless this saint, I thought. The good Samaritan insisted that I should get to a doctor as I struggled to my feet and braced myself against the wall.

I shook my head and told her once more that I was fine. The buzzing lessened. He was getting away. I don’t know why, but I was getting a name this time. The flashes of airplanes seared through my brain once more. I felt heat. Heat and wind.

I felt like I was going to pass out.

“Sir?” the old woman asked me again.

“M-Mohammed,” I muttered. She tilted her head, confused. “Mohammed,” I repeated. “Mohammed something. And…something about airplanes. I think there’s going to be a hijacking.”

That’s all I remembered saying before I turned to look at my target again, and then the white faded to black. As my head fell to the floor and my body crumpled beneath me, I thought I caught a brief glimpse.

The man was of Egyptian descent, at the top of the stairs now, and the other man was with him. They were both staring back at me, and then rounding a corner.

The buzzing was gone. And so was my target.

And then, so was I. My Nokia 3310 fell out of my pocket and clattered to the ground, right before my head smacked into the concrete.

[embed]Forecast - by Aaron Ryan - Author Aaron Ryan Forecast - A 9/11 Historical Fiction Novel. One man will change the past...and stop the future. Alternative History…www.september11thstory.com

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