We Will Be Crashing Shortly (22 page)

“WorldAir Flight 9000, Bodies Identified”

April 4, 9:11
A.M.
by Clay Roundtree

Three bodies found floating in the Caribbean Sea were discovered by passengers on the Carnival cruise ship
Exclamation!
earlier today. “I was showing my new bride how to flick bottle caps off the front of the ship and all of a sudden I says to myself, I says, ‘What the hell is that out there floating in the ocean?’” passenger Mike Hammond recalls. “So I pointed it out to the cocktail waitress and she set out screaming for the captain.”

Floating in the ocean were three travel caskets containing human remains, each marked with stickers identifying them as cargo from WorldAir flight 9000, which crashed into the ocean two days ago. At a press conference held just minutes ago, search and rescue agency chief Fernando Montillo had this to say:

“The caskets contained the remains of three WorldAir employees, the identities of whom we were able to recover because of their work badges. Those identities are: Bus driver Whitney Smith, security officer John Parkerson and someone we believe to be a WorldAir mechanic. We actually found several different ID badges on that last one, so we picked the name with a picture to match his face: Otis Blodgett.”

It was unclear if the victims perished as a result of the crash or had been in the cargo area being transported as human remains. “Well, since they were in caskets,” Montillo said, “logic leads us to believe they’d been boarded that way, as human remains.” Just then Montillo was taken aside by his assistant. When he returned to the microphone, Montillo said, “Ah, we have a survivor.”

After the uproar quieted, questions arose as to where the search team found the survivor, to which Montillo answered, “I didn’t say we found one. I said we have one.”

Update EXCLUSIVE: “Body from WorldAir Flight 9000 Suddenly Springs Back to Life”

12:32
P.M.

Doctors, medical personnel and two passengers aboard the Carnival cruise ship
Exclamation!
were startled speechless today when—after their ship was commandeered by an international search task force to temporarily store occupied caskets recovered from the wreckage of WorldAir flight 9000—a body inside one of the caskets suddenly sat upright and began howling like a wolf. Two nurses, an orderly and two passengers in the clinic waiting room immediately fainted, reportedly.

“I could have sworn he was dead when he got here,” says Dr. Veronica Li, communicating via her cellphone from the ship’s hospital, where the formerly dead man had instructed her to call me. She reiterated, “That man looked pretty dead.”

That man is Otis Blodgett, a WorldAir mechanic whose presence on board the doomed airplane was not documented on the passenger manifest and still needs to be explained. Blodgett tells this reporter, “Not dead, just rebooting.”

Blodgett informs that he was in the cockpit at the time the plane crashed into the sea, at which point he got flushed through a break in the fuselage and out into the open water. “I just grabbed onto any flotation device I could find, and lo and behold”—his laughter does sound much like a wolf howling—“this casket knocks against me in the water. It’s a perfectly sized little life boat, if you ask me.”

Update: “WorldAir Flight 9000; Five Survivors, Plus One Dog, Found”

3:24
P.M.

Guided by airline mechanic Otis Blodgett, who earlier had been mistaken for a dead body rather than a survivor of the wreckage of WorldAir flight 9000, search and rescue task force members spotted a large yellow raft eight miles off the coast of Cuba just moments ago. Inside the raft were five more survivors of the crash: Malcolm Colgate, 15, Anita Washington, 42, WorldAir shareholder April Mae Manning, 16, WorldAir head of security Ned Rockwell, 41, and WorldAir flight attendant Flo Davenport, 67. All but Davenport’s name were absent from the doomed plane’s departure report. Their presence on the aircraft has yet to be explained and constitutes a major security breach in the company.

“How should I know?” an exasperated Vernon Wadley, the recently appointed CEO of WorldAir, says of the security breach. “My head of security is on a raft in the middle of the ocean right now.”

Also on the raft was Captain Beefheart, the beloved mascot of WorldAir, shown here in a picture with rescue workers appearing on naval helicopter pilot Tyrone Bradley’s Instagram account.

“Look who we found floating in the ocean! #CaptainBeefheart,” the caption read. The update has received over 700,000 hits in the last half hour alone.

UPDATE: “WorldAir Mechanic’s Head Found, America’s Most Wanted Molly Marichino (aka Molly Hackman, aka Molly Martindale, aka Molly Taguchi) Among Perished in WorldAir Crash of Flight 9000”

April 6, 2014
by Clay Roundtree

Molly Marichino, or Molly Hackman as she’s been called of late, was known to collect men. At the time of her death, which occurred horribly and accidentally by her own hand when she shot out the window of a WorldAir jet during flight and was sucked though the hole and into the airplane’s engine, she had been married five times. Not five consecutive times, mind you, but five times concurrently.

“To pigeonhole her as just a bigamist would be like saying O.J. was just a football player,” says Detective Jeffrey Wilson of the Beaumont Police Department. (For the purpose of combining all her aliases, she will be referred to as “Molly” from this point forward.) In 2000, Molly had escaped the Beaumont prison system by murdering and then impersonating the prison nurse, whom she’d befriended. She’s been on the run ever since. “Whenever the police got close, she seemed to disappear again,” Wilson observed. “It’s like she was smoke.”

Molly’s fourth marriage was to Archibald Hackman, a mechanic for WorldAir whose severed head was among the items recovered from a rescue raft containing five survivors of the crash into the sea of WorldAir flight 9000. The head was discovered wrapped in plastic inside a rucksack said to have belonged to Molly. No one on board the raft is responding to requests for an interview.

“It was all part of one of her scams,” Wilson explained. In this case the scam reportedly involved a half-million-dollar insurance policy that Hackman was due to collect. The policy centered on a woman clinging to life at the hospital, and if Hackman was discovered to have died before she did, the insurance company would not be obligated to pay out a settlement, leaving Molly unable to access the funds herself. “I knew she was evil, but to chop off someone’s head? That’s despicable.”

The woman in the hospital died this morning. Hackman had identified her as his wife Molly upon admittance, but police discovered the woman’s true identity to be Matilda Marie Remington Colgate, the former wife of Morton McGill Colgate, the beleaguered CEO of Colgate Enterprises.

Morton Colgate was Molly’s fifth husband. According to Wilson, it was a move that led to the man’s demise, as well as to the crash of WorldAir flight 9000. “She got greedy, that one,” says Wilson. “Even for her, that was greedy.”

Mr. Colgate’s body was recently found partially incinerated in the downstairs bathroom of the house in Alpharetta that he bought for Molly. The death is still under investigation, but Wilson is certain Molly, along with Hackman, the husband who was also her partner in crime, had something to do with it. “No doubt in my mind,” he says.

Update: “Search for Last WorldAir Flight 9000 Passenger Called Off”

April 6, 2014
by Clay Roundtree

Moments ago search and rescue agency chief Fernando Montillo delivered the grave news that today he planned to cancel search efforts for LaVonda Morgenstern, the WorldAir trauma liaison lost at sea in the crash of WorldAir flight 9000. Shown below is a picture of Morgenstern taken last year upon her training-day graduation at WorldAir.

“It is with much sadness and regret . . .” Montillo began, but then, as often happens during these press conferences, he was interrupted with a touch on his arm by an assistant. After a few cursory whispers, Montillo returned to the microphone and said, “We have a body.”

Asked to clarify whether it was a body or a survivor, Montillo bent to confer with his assistant again, then readdressed the room. “Both,” he said.

Update: “This Casket Washed Up on the Beach of Jamaica—What Partygoers Found Inside Will Surprise You”

3:08
P.M.

Spring breakers on the sands of Jamaica were in for a start when a weathered travel casket washed ashore this afternoon on the beach in front of a four-star resort. When the bravest of the beachgoers opened the casket to look inside, he was surprised when a small puff of white fur flew at his face.

“I didn’t know what it was,” says Trey Whitfield. “It had tiny teeth and tiny claws—it was like an albino bat or something. It really freaked me out.”

Whitfield had no choice, he said, but to swat the creature to the ground. At that point a voice came booming from the casket.

“Oh no you did NOT just hit Trixi. You did NOT!”

Whitfield and his friends fled in terror. But others went toward the casket to find a corpse and a castaway, both wearing life vests.

“Where’s Trixi?” the voice called. “There you are!” The dog jumped back into the casket. The voice belonged to none other than LaVonda Morgenstern, a WorldAir employee believed to have perished at sea after the crash of flight 9000, and the body was that of Roy Coleman, the late genius engineer whose legacy is presently in dispute until DNA results confirm the paternity of his granddaughter, April Mae Manning. Manning was set to inherit his portfolio, which contained controlling stock of the WorldAir corporation, until the newly appointed CEO put a stop to it by demanding a DNA test to assure her lineage.

Most people would be traumatized after spending nearly two days in a floating travel coffin accompanied by a corpse, but Morgenstern seemed to take it in stride once she was assured her friends had survived the crash and her family members were on their way to join her in Jamaica. “I’m alive, I lost ten pounds and I’m sitting at a Tiki bar drinking a pina-damn-COLADA waiting for my boss to get out of the hospital and come pick me up!” she said, laughing.

A child selling turquoise jewelry sauntered by and Morgenstern called him over. “I’ll take it all, your whole supply, tell the hotel to put it on WorldAir’s bill—thank you, WorldAir!”

EXCLUSIVE: “WorldAir Survivors Finally Talk about Their Ordeal”

April 29, 2014
by Clay Roundtree

So far it’s been a harrowing month for the seven heroes of WorldAir flight 9000, scooped from the waters of the Caribbean after their plane crashed into the ocean on April 2. Today I meet with six of them, pictured below gathered around survivor Ned Rockwell’s hospital bed, for an exclusive Q&A. The seventh, Malcolm Colgate, was unavailable for comment today, and the others agreed to this interview on the condition his privacy be respected.

Clay Roundtree:
First, congratulations on surviving your harrowing ordeal.

Flo Davenport:
[Laughing] Congratulations on your book deal about our harrowing ordeal.

CR:
Thank you! How is Malcolm doing?

Flo Davenport:
Not bad for an instant orphan.

CR:
I understand he’s accessed his father’s Grand Cayman accounts and is cooperating with federal investigators to return the money.

Flo Davenport:
Good kid, that one.

Anita Washington:
Flo, put that cigarette out. This is a hospital room!

CR:
Anita, is it true that the person who leaked the FBI documents and emails between Ash Manning and the WorldAir CEO is your son, a sergeant in the Atlanta police department?

Anita Washington:
No comment.

CR:
Ms. Manning, may I call you April?

April Mae Manning:
I prefer it over “Crash.”

CR:
Do you have any comment on the allegations that WorldAir CEO Vernon Wadley was behind the counterfeit airplane parts smuggling ring?

April Mae Manning:
No.

CR:
Or that he bribed the pilots to crash WorldAir flight 9000 into the ocean in order to collect the total insurance money for the L-1011 aircraft?

April Mae Manning:
No.

CR:
Or the allegations that your stepfather, Ash Manning, stole your grandfather’s body in order to halt the collection of DNA evidence because he’s still considered by the court to be your custodial parent and therefor still stood the possibility to be the executor of your inheritance?

April Mae Manning:
He is not my custodial parent! That was just a filing mistake. My attorney is fixing it right now.

CR:
I see that the status hearing is set for . . . next year?

April Mae Manning:
Ugh! No comment!

CR:
April, it must come as a relief to you to know that your inheritance was validated by the Supreme Court yesterday. The decision didn’t come without its surprises, though. Your mother testified that your grandfather was the donor who provided the sample for in vitro fertilization, and her testimony was confirmed by DNA analysis. So your grandfather was really your father. What are your thoughts on that?

April Mae Manning:
My grandfather was my
grandfather
. I had a father, his name was Robert Madison Coleman, and he was my father no matter what scientific tests you want to perform. And I loved them both—so much . . . I’d gladly sacrifice every cent of my inheritance to spend another minute with either of them.

LaVonda Morgenstern:
Girl, you know it. I ain’t even related to my babies by blood, but they’s my babies. Ain’t no test on earth to tell me otherwise. It ain’t about tests. It’s about
love
. Love is a bond you can’t break. Your daddy loved you, your granddaddy, too.

Flo Davenport:
They were both amazing men, Crash.

Ned Rockwell:
Now we know where you get your brains.

CR:
Mr. Rockwell, when are you expected to get out of the hospital?

Ned Rockwell:
Who knows. I should just rent a room here. [They all laugh.]

Otis Blodgett:
Ned, did you get the good painkillers? You need morphine and Percocet.
Combined
. I tell you, that’s the stuff. Where’s the pump? I told them to give you the pump.

Ned Rockwell:
I don’t need any more painkillers.

Otis Blodgett:
I meant for me. Don’t be selfish.

CR:
Mr. Blodgett, why were you absent from the mayor’s ceremony awarding you citizen of the year for your part in breaking up the smuggling ring and solving the mystery of the disappearance of WorldAir flight 0392? All the others were there, including Malcolm Colgate.

Otis Blodgett:
I had to get the dent in my steel plate popped out. I kept shorting out and having to reboot. The other day I woke up in a pen at the zoo surrounded by pygmy goats.

April Mae Manning:
How’s that any different from a normal day?

CR:
Seriously, Mr. Blodgett, you were the one who connected the counterfeit plane part as a faulty breaker that causes decompression and cockpit silence. Based on your calculations, the search and rescue task force has been redeployed. Yesterday they discovered a small piece of the wreckage off the coast of New Guinea. It’s the first sign of the aircraft since last November 18, when it disappeared.

LaVonda Morgenstern:
Ooh, you did NOT just say “aircraft” and “wreckage” in the same sentence. No you did NOT.

April Mae Manning:
LaVonda, you
survived
a plane wreck! Nothing should scare you now.

LaVonda Morgenstern:
I just don’t like those words together in my head; they traumatize me. I wish sweet Mr. Beefcakes was here.

CR:
Where is Captain Beefheart?

April Mae Manning:
He’s with Fifi Trixibelle at Malcolm’s place. You can’t separate those two.

Flo Davenport:
[Laughing] That’s not the only budding romance around here, is it, Thor?

Ned Rockwell:
Stop it, guys.

CR:
Right, Anita, from what I understand Ned has you to thank for keeping him from succumbing to shock while in the raft awaiting rescue.

Anita Washington:
Yeah, well, I may be small, but I’m like a furnace when it comes to body heat.

CR:
Flo, it was revealed last year that you are Ash Manning’s biological mother . . .

Flo Davenport:
I need a drink.

CR:
. . . who put him up for adoption at birth . . .

Flo Davenport:
Where’s my flask?

CR:
I was able to obtain Mr. Manning’s actual birth certificate. Let me show it to you. It says here the father is . . .

Flo Davenport:
Everybody cover your ears.

CR:
. . . Otis Thelonius Blodgett

LaVonda Morgenstern:
Uh oh, I think Otis died again. His good eye’s gone all glassy.

Anita Washington:
Get the defibrillators!

Ned Rockwell:
Get the nurse!

April Mae Manning:
I’ll get the nurse.

LaVonda Morgenstern:
Otis!
You okay?
Otis!
Nurse! I’m sittin’ here next to a dead man!

Otis:
[Coughs] What dead man?