Strike

by D. J. MacHale

  “What happened?” Sanchez asked.

  “They targeted our signal,” Brock shouted as he desperately fumbled to open the door.

  Up until that moment Brock had been the coolest guy under pressure that I had ever seen. Now he was in full-on panic.

  The three of us were momentarily frozen, not sure of what to do.

  Brock threw open his door and turned back to us.

  “Move!” he screamed, his face red and his eyes wild.

  He didn’t move until he saw that Tori and I had gotten our doors open. Tori scrambled out of her side and Kent was right behind her. I threw open my door and jumped out.

  “Run!” Brock yelled. “Get away from the vehicle!”

  I heard a faint whistling sound that quickly became louder. It grew into a terrifying shriek that foretold the destruction about to happen.

  A second later the missile, or whatever it was, hit the car. The Humvee exploded from the force of the powerful missile and the eruption of the gas tank. The concussion hit me in the back and threw me forward. I felt as though I was on fire. I hit the ground, face first, and saw stars. As I lay there, pressed against the ground, trying to catch my breath and pull my head together, I listened for another missile. There was nothing.

  I slowly got to my knees and turned around to see the Humvee in flames. They didn’t need another missile. One was plenty. I looked around for Sanchez, for we had both been on the same side of the vehicle.

  “Man that was close,” I said. “Another second and . . .”

  I stopped talking because nobody was listening. Sanchez wasn’t there.

  I staggered to my feet and looked beyond the inferno to see Kent kneeling over Tori. Though my head was spinning and my knees were weak, I ran for them.

  As Tori’s head lay in Kent’s lap, I flashed back to the final moments of Olivia’s life. Her other life. It was a “death” she recovered from. This was different. We had no miracle medicine to cure her.

  “Tori,” I called while running to her. I dropped to my knees next to her and stared into her closed eyes, willing them to open.

  They didn’t.

  Instead, she spoke.

  “That hurt.”

  I let out a relieved laugh.

  “You okay?” I asked Kent.

  He nodded quickly.

  Brock staggered up to us. “One of our operatives in the camp sent me the warning. He was in the command center when they fired the missile.”

  “He saved us,” Tori said.

  “Yeah, well, not all of us,” Brock said solemnly.

  I didn’t understand what he meant at first. My thoughts were too jumbled. It wasn’t until I realized he was staring at the burning wreckage that I put it together.

  “Sanchez,” I said.

  “Oh my God,” Kent said with a gasp.

  He hadn’t gotten out in time. Sanchez was yet another victim of the Retro invasion.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Brock replied through gritted teeth. “Get us to SYLO.”

  TWENTY

  “The dune buggy,” I said. “We left it on the edge of Area 51.”

  “That’s like, miles from here,” Kent said. “A lot of miles.”

  Brock glanced at his communicator.

  “Roughly sixty miles,” he said. “Over open desert, and it’s only going to get hotter. It’ll take hours that we don’t have.”

  “Then we better start walking,” I said.

  I helped Tori to her feet. She was shaken, but okay.

  “Can that thing tell us the right direction?” she said.

  Brock checked his device and pointed north. “Looks like there might be some rough terrain.”

  “Gee, big surprise,” Kent said sarcastically.

  We all took one last look at the burning wreck. The guy inside had sacrificed his life to try to stop the invasion and avert another massacre. No words were adequate.

  “He won’t be be forgotten,” Brock said.

  I started walking and the others followed. The sun was already heating up the desert floor. It wouldn’t be long before we would be laboring in hundred-degree heat, without water.

  “We find that dune buggy,” Brock said. “Then what?”

  “We left a car further back in the desert,” I said. “If we can get there we’ll have wheels that can cover a lot more ground. We can drive to Los Angeles. There’s a SYLO ark on Catalina Island. Hopefully between here and there we’ll get somebody’s attention and they’ll send a helicopter.”

  Nobody offered an opinion about the plan but I knew what was going through their heads. They were calculating the time it would take to do what I had just suggested. With the Sounders’ mission set to roll in under eight hours, the grim reality was that even if everything worked out perfectly, we would be cutting it very close.

  “Look,” I said, sharply. “I never said I could get us to SYLO. This whole plan is a total long shot.”

  “Understood,” Brock said. “We’ll just do what we can.”

  The sun was rising higher in the sky and along with it, the temperature. After walking for nearly an hour, the odds of us making it back to Area 51 were feeling very small.

  “We’re in trouble,” Kent said.

  “You think?” Tori shot back.

  “No, I mean we haven’t been walking for all that long and I’m already hallucinating.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “I’m seeing a mirage. It’s total wishful thinking because it’s something I’m dying to see.”

  “What? A swimming pool?” Tori asked.

  “No, that’s number two. I see somebody driving our way.”

  “Shake it off,” I said. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”

  “I see it too,” Brock announced.

  He pointed ahead to a distant dust storm that was rising from the desert floor. At first I thought it was being kicked up by the wind, which would have been a welcome relief from the heat, but as I focused I saw what was actually creating it: a speeding blue pickup truck.

  “Can you share a mirage?” Kent asked, dumbfounded.

  “No, it’s real,” Brock declared.

  We started waving our arms and screaming to make sure whoever it was would see us. Nobody feared that it would be a Retro vehicle. They didn’t drive beat-up old Fords. The truck definitely saw us and was headed our way, speeding across the dry lakebed.

  “Why would anybody be driving around out here?” Tori asked.

  “Who cares?” Kent shot back.

  The pickup drove straight for us. There were two people in the cab wearing cowboy hats. The truck may have been ancient with faded paint and rusted side panels, but it was the sweetest ride I had ever seen. It drove right up to us, then turned and stopped as the driver leaned out of the window.

  “No way,” Kent said with a gasp.

  “Never thought I’d be seeing you all again,” the driver said with a smile. “Looks like you’ve been busy.”

  It was the elderly Native American man who had set us up with the dune buggies for our assault on Area 51. The Paiute tribe had been helping the survivors of Las Vegas plan the attack. They were the survivors’ eyes in the desert, watching over the fleet of Retro drones.

  Tori ran up to him, reached into the cab, and threw her arms around him.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said.

  “It was quite the show you all put on the other night,” he said. “You really lit up the sky. We’ve been sifting through the wreckage of the base ever since, looking for survivors. We pulled a few out and got them help. Others weren’t so lucky. There was no reason to watch the base anymore, so we turned our eyes to the test site. Every so often we’d pick up someone who escaped into the desert but mostly we
just watched. After we saw this last explosion I decided to come see what was happening for myself.”

  He gave us all a quick look and added, “You join up with the other side?”

  “The uniforms?” Tori said. “No, this is how we escaped.”

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Foote,” he replied. “Jimmy Foote. This is my nephew, David Foote.”

  “Foot?” Kent said. “As in running stealthily through the forest?”

  “No. Foote with an ‘e,’ as in I’ll use it to kick your ass if you make any more racist jokes.”

  “Noted,” Kent said, chastised. “Glad to see you again, sir.”

  “Any chance of you giving us a lift back to our car?” I asked.

  “You don’t need the car,” Foote said.

  “But we do,” Tori argued. “We have to get to Los Angeles as quickly as possible.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Foote said. He held up a walkie-talkie and added, “As soon as I saw you I put out a call.”

  “Call to who?” Kent asked, skeptically. “Your tribe?”

  “Yes,” Foote said. “Without phones, this is the only way to relay messages across any distance.”

  “You mean beating drums doesn’t work?” Kent said, then quickly thought better of it and added, “Geez, sorry, that just came out.”

  Foote stared him down, then let out a small smile. “No. And it’s been too windy for smoke signals.”

  Kent kept his eyes on the ground, but he was smiling.

  I think those two liked jabbing at each other.

  “After the base blew up, I watched as you got picked up by that military helicopter,” Foote said. “You all seemed to know each other.”

  “The woman was my mother,” I said.

  Foote nodded knowingly, as if I had confirmed his opinion. “Well then, seems as though I made the right choice.”

  “What did you do?” Tori asked.

  As if in answer, the far-off sound of an engine began to grow. It quickly transformed into a distinct thumping.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Kent asked hopefully.

  “Please say it is,” Tori added.

  “It is,” Foote said.

  It was the sound of helicopter rotors.

  We looked to the sky to see a black speck in the distance that was approaching quickly.

  “Did I do the right thing?” Foote asked.

  Tori leaned into the car and hugged him again.

  “You have no idea,” she said.

  “Sir,” Brock said. “Forgive me for being dramatic, but you may have just saved the lives of millions of people.”

  Foote raised an eyebrow and said, “Really? I guess we redskins know a thing or two.” He looked to Kent and added, “Right, Paleface?”

  “Absolutely, sir,” Kent replied with a big grin. “Well done.”

  The two shook hands.

  The helicopter hovered overhead, giving us a clear view of something we had seen many times before. For the first time it was a welcome sight.

  Painted on its belly was the unmistakable rising-sun logo.

  SYLO had arrived.

  The flight to Catalina Island took less than an hour, which meant we had roughly seven hours to convince the SYLO command to storm the Retro camp and secure the dome.

  As we approached the island from the air, the scene reminded me of Pemberwick. The island was surrounded by Navy warships. There looked to be even more than on Pemberwick, because the entire land mass was surrounded, not just the stretch of shore between Catalina and the mainland. SYLO looked as though they weren’t taking any chances here. It made me wonder what kind of shape Pemberwick Island was in.

  When we circled down toward the center of the huge island, I saw that a tent city had been erected, much like SYLO had done on the golf course outside of Arbortown. Again, it was a much bigger operation than back home. This wasn’t just a makeshift prison camp. This had become a full-on military base with several barracks, antiaircraft guns along the shore, and what looked to be hundreds of attack helicopters lined up on a dusty field.

  There was also a herd of buffalo that bolted away from the landing pad as we came in. It was an odd touch to an already strange scene. As soon as we landed, several SYLO soldiers wearing the familiar deep-red camouflage fatigues threw open the door and motioned for us to exit.

  “Good luck,” I said to my friends and we all piled out of the helicopter.

  Brock was immediately taken into custody by two of the soldiers.

  “He’s a friend,” I called to them.

  They didn’t hear me. Or didn’t care. With a soldier on each of his arms, they hurried Brock to a waiting jeep.

  “Seven hours!” Brock called over his shoulder to us.

  “He didn’t need to say that,” Kent said.

  We weren’t treated much better. I guess the fact that Tori and Kent were wearing Retro uniforms didn’t help things much. A SYLO soldier was assigned to each of us. With other armed soldiers keeping watch, we were patted down and our pulsers taken. We were then separated and brought to individual jeeps.

  “Talk fast,” I called to my friends.

  We were each pushed into the back of a different jeep, along with our escorts, who had yet to say a single word. The jeeps took off, kicking up dust as we sped toward the encampment. I took those few minutes to try to figure out what I was going to say to whatever SYLO officer we would see. I had to believe that they knew everything about the Bridge through time, so at least I wouldn’t have to sell that part of the story. But convincing them to stage an all-out raid on the Retro base in Nevada? That was a tall order.

  We bumped along the dirt road and drove straight into the base. There were no fences and no barbed wire. This wasn’t a SYLO prison. SYLO soldiers were everywhere, but unlike Pemberwick Island, where they wore only fatigues, most of these soldiers also had on body armor and helmets.

  Everyone carried a weapon.

  This base was in war mode.

  The jeeps separated, headed for different destinations. I was driven to a small wooden hut and hurried inside. There was a long table with chairs spaced along one side. Across from it was a single chair. I knew this drill. I was about to be interrogated. Again.

  “Wait,” was the one word the soldier said to me as he headed for the door.

  He left, but then came back almost immediately with a bottle of Gatorade.

  He handed it to me and said, “Welcome to Catalina.”

  “Thanks,” I said and took the bottle, gratefully.

  He left and I downed the entire bottle in seconds. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was. I could have knocked back three more. A few minutes later three people filed into the room. There were two women and a man in fatigues. Officers, probably. They showed no emotion as they filed in, sat at the table, and set up recording devices.

  It was odd how nobody was talking. I could say that they were being all business, but I wished somebody would at least tell me why they were treating us like prisoners.

  “State your name please,” the man said.

  I sat in the chair and said, “Tucker Pierce.”

  “We will be recording this interview as well as the interviews of the others who were brought in with you. Forgive the perfunctory treatment. We do not want to influence or guide your statements in any way. We have separated you in order to get each individual version.”

  “To see if we’re all telling the truth,” I said.

  That got no reaction from the group.

  “Just for the record,” I added. “We’re running out of time. Do whatever it is you’ve got to do. Ask whatever questions you want, but do it fast. Once you hear what I have to say, you’ll know why.”

  “Understood,” the man said. “There will not be many questions. We want yo
u to do the talking. Please begin by relating the events between the time your helicopter was shot down over the Nevada Test Site, until you were picked up in the desert an hour ago.”

  I spent the next fifteen minutes telling the story. I needed to talk fast, but I didn’t want to leave out any key details. If my words were stunning to any of them, they didn’t show it. I didn’t see any reaction until I dropped the bomb about why the Sounders helped us to escape from the island: We were there to convince them to invade the Retro base and capture the dome.

  The three exchanged quick looks, which I’m guessing for this sober bunch was roughly the same as if they had all jumped up on to the table and shouted, “What!”

  “So that’s it,” I said. “The Sounders will detonate the bomb in roughly six and a half hours, and three hundred some odd years from now. If the dome in this time isn’t secured, there will be nothing to stop the Retro soldiers from going through the Bridge into the future and preventing the explosion. I know it’s a lot to swallow. Or maybe it isn’t. I’m sure you guys have known about this time travel Bridge for a long time. It’s all new to me. I have nothing else to say to convince you other than to remind you that my friends and I destroyed the entire Retro fleet of drones at Area 51. That ought to give us a little credibility. Now that you know why I’m here, you know why acting fast is critical. And that’s all I have to say.”

  The officers turned off their recording devices and stood.

  “Now what?” I said.

  “Obviously we will have to discuss this,” one officer said. “Please remain here for the time being.”

  With that they headed for the door.

  “Don’t take your time,” I said.

  They opened the door to leave, and another soldier entered carrying a tray of food. I’d never met the guy, but I loved him on sight. I was starving and still beyond thirsty. He put the tray down on the table and said, “I’ll be right outside. If you want anything else, call me.”

  “Thanks,” I said and sat down to chow.

  It was just like Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey and mashed potatoes and all the other goodies. I was in heaven. I also noted that they had given me a metal fork and knife. It was a small thing, but it proved they didn’t consider me a threat. I ate, too fast, and loved every second of it. Once I was done I was left not knowing what to do. I didn’t want to risk going outside. I didn’t want to do anything that would go against what they told me to do. It was crazy, but the future of our world could very well depend on our ability to convince these people that we knew what we were talking about. That was a scary thought.