Locomotive to the Past by George Schultz (iphone ebook reader .TXT) 📕

GEORGE D. SCHULTZ

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© Copyright 2014 George D. Schultz.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4907-1911-5 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4907-1910-8 (e)

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Trafford rev. 02/13/2014

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CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY ONE

TWENTY TWO

TWENTY THREE

TWENTY FOUR

TWENTY FIVE

TWENTY SIX

TWENTY SEVEN

TWENTY EIGHT

TWENTY NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY ONE

THIRTY TWO

THIRTY THREE

THIRTY FOUR

THIRTY FIVE

EPILOGUE

ONE

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001! The DAY! The deadly occasion! When those horrible, terrible, God-awful, tragedies—the unimaginable ones, inflicted upon those poor people, at The World Trade Center, in New York—cane crashing down, upon this unsuspecting country!

Good heavens! The anchors, and reporters—who’d populated the three “24/7”, national, all-news, television channels—seemed to be as unbelieving, as everyone else! Startled—as they continued to show the lethal images, of those, terrorist-controlled, 747s! The ones being—so calculatingly—flown, into the twin towers, in lower Manhattan!

The TV cameras showed the ruthless, hideous, without-mercy, images—and, continually, “reshowed”

them! Countless times! Countless times! Each blood-curdling repetition was—always, without fail—as shockingly devastating, as the horrible shot, that had gone before it! Always!

The buildings! Those vulnerable buildings! They seemed to be disintegrating! Before our very eyes! Those mind-warping images turned out to be—the feared truth!

Time after time after time, the deadly, unbelievable, visuals crossed—and re-crossed—our

screens! Continually! There was no escaping the, deadly, from-hell, images! Visions!—of heavy, blinding, billows of smoke! Suffocating, deadly, impenetrable, black, smoke—pouring from those ready-to-collapse, ill-fated, defenseless, structures!

And yet, 22-year-old Jason Rutkowski was beginning to believe—as the treacherous morning had ground along—that even high-tech cable TV was nowhere nearly equipped, to completely cover a disaster, such as this! Totally incapable of actually showing, or accurately reporting, anything even close! Anywhere near—to encapsulating the complete, God-awful, story! Unable to accurately relate (“in real time”) the deadly visions! All of which were taking place—before our stunned, disbelieving, eyes!

Try as they might, the many networks—who’d begun dropping their planned programming were not nearly capable, of showing us the true dimension—in the true-to-life, gut-wrenching, depth—that the craven attack would’ve required! That the cowardly scenario actually did require!

No matter how efficient the news-gathering facility might’ve been—that any, of the highly-sophisticated news channels might’ve been—Jason was convinced that each was totally incapable, of truly recording the unthinkable, the unimaginable, devastation! The vast, blood-curdling, mind-boggling, carnage—that the, without-warning, act had actually produced! Continued to produce! The entire holocaust seemed to be beyond the capability—of a “mere” news organization! In many cases—in most cases—the holocaust was beyond mortal comprehension!

Who—or what—could completely capture the mind-numbing devastation? The total, absolute, hell—that those death-dealing airplanes had wrought? The tragic, God-awful, loss of life? And how many, among us, could even conceive—of such a brutal, demonic, mass slaughter? Could ever imagine the deadly, incomprehensible, “choices”—that so many innocent people would be forced to make?

People! Dear Lord! All those poor, horribly-doomed, people! People—all kinds of poor, God-forsaken, people! People! Human beings! Can anyone believe this? Actually believe it?

People! Those poor, helpless—hopeless—people! Incredibly—without-hope—people! People—jumping from the 96th floor! From the 87th floor! From the 101st floor! Incredible! People—knowingly, willfully—leaping! Plunging—to their unthinkable deaths! Jumping from every one of those floors—above where the planes had crashed into the rapidly-disintegrating, fire-consumed, buildings! Dear Lord!

All those stunningly-doomed people! On all those stratospheric floor levels! And there they were! These poor human beings! Jumping! Hurtling—to their unthinkable deaths! Dear Lord! Mothers! Fathers! Sisters! Brothers! Cousins! Aunts! Uncles! All plummeting—out of countless windows! Literally hundreds of people! Maybe thousands of people! Probably thousands of people! And why? WHY? Who knew?

Plummeting! All these people! From, literally, dozens upon dozens of floors! Literally hundreds of feet—from above the waiting cement! Plunging—from dozens of floors above! It appeared—for all intents and purposes—to be hundreds of floors! From—again, literally—hundreds, of feet above street level! People, jumping—from jagged, smoke-coated, literally-exploding, windows! Dear Lord! How can this be?

It was—it had to be—inconceivable! Plummeting to one’s death? From literally hundreds of feet—above the street/sidewalk? So incredibly high—above the concrete! Onto which they would, in simply a matter of seconds, splatter! Literally splatter! Who could possibly imagine—having to make such a decision? Having to face such foreboding choice?

Jason shuddered! Again and again! From head to toe! He was in the midst of a whole, body-ravaging, series of almost-convulsions! To think of someone—to think of anyone—being confronted with such a ghastly decision! A literally lethal, totally-incomprehensible, choice! Either way! A horrible, without-mercy, “fork in the road”! A fork—with which so many doomed human beings—in those under-terminal-siege towers—were, devastatingly, forced to deal! Who could even imagine?

It had to be some kind of mind-shattering choice! Jump—be willing to die, by being splattered, on the unyielding cement below! Or else die—while being consumed by an unrelenting, ravaging, foundry-like, inferno! By being burned! To a cinder! Consumed by out-of-control flames! While still alive! Dear Lord!

The best that any one of those poor, doomed, people could hope for, Jason reasoned—would be to, possibly, die of smoke inhalation! To be allowed that much, of a “merciful” exit! That sort, of “escape”—from this suddenly-unbearable life! “Relief”? In that still-atrocious manner! And that? That would, undoubtedly, be the best case scenario? Unimaginable! Incomprehensible!

Dear Lord! How can this be? How can this be happening? Who could possibly have contrived . . .