Captain Steele is directed to return to Chicago. [Unsure we knew they were flying from Chicago.] Unknown event, not yet referred to as "Rapture" causing chaos and mayhem globally. "Where it's daylight there are car pileups, chaos everywhere. Planes down at every major airport." Unpiloted whatevers crashing into unraptured otherthings everyplaces. Much shrieking in the airplane, stoical attempts to preserve calm as passengers learn that seatmates are missing. Calm preserved through filling out of now completely beside the point foreign entry cards. First Officer Chris introduced as flight officer Smith, performing a head count and sealing his doom. All children and babies are missing.
Fearsome images of a 747 half strewn with clothes laid out as worn ("[his] clothes were in a neat pile on his seat, his glasses and hearing aid on top. The pant legs still hung over the edge and led to his shoes and socks.").
Buck contrives to use his in-flight phone to contact Global Weekly and receive his next assignment. Hattie tries to intervene, but is smooth talked with assurances that if he gets through to his editors, he'll have them look into her family for her. Could this be character development? Might Buck be a macher with a soft spot, a heart of gold beneath the slick exterior? Has a first petal of romance unfurled?
In Chicago:
"Every civil service agency [is] on full emergency status, trying to handle the unending tragedies." "[S]o many cabbies had disappeared from the cab corral at O'Hare that volunteers were being brought in to move the cars that had been left running with the former drivers' clothes still on the seats." "The expressways that led to the airport looked like they had during the great Chicago blizzards, only without the snow."
The recap:
Captain Steele safely navigates the perils of O'Hare and takes whats left of his manifest to ground in the Midwest. Buck has called Hattie "gorgeous" while hacking the in-flight phone system. Captain Steele ponders the meaning of it all.
The big question:
The cabbies get raptured?
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