by Sean Ellis
But he could see the dark shape that was racing directly toward it
He found Kiong’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “Keep her safe,” he whispered, but whether he was talking to Kiong or God, he couldn’t say.
74.
It started as a tingle of apprehension.
Turn away. Danger.
And quickly grew to a scream.
Wrong way. You’re going to die.
Mira could no more ignore the sensation than stop her ears from hearing the roar of the turbines. All her life, this sixth sense had guided her away from trouble, and sometimes led her in the direction of success. Now, there was no separating the two. Victory in this battle would only come by rejecting her most primitive instincts and charging into the throat of danger.
Would she die? Probably.
No! Turn! Dodge! Escape!
Was she okay with that? Not by a longshot.
She had been raised to believe that survival was, above all else, sacrosanct. Oh, she’d been spoon-fed a healthy dose of patriotic fervor during her childhood at the Farm, but that had always been rooted in the abstract realm of ideas. What did it even mean to die for your country? She didn’t know and no one had ever tried to put it simple terms. She had no family, and everything she had learned upon discovering the Trinity only made her feel less connected to the human race. Atlas had talked about the Wise Father’s plan, and now he was living proof that the Great Work would mean nothing but destruction for the human race, but did saving them really matter to her? Her family, her real family, had been exterminated ten thousand years ago.
So, what was driving her now? Revenge for the Ascendant Ones? That would mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things, especially if she got herself killed in the process.
No, not revenge. Not exactly.
Whatever it was, the scream of her precognitive warning was nearly overpowering. It was all she could do to focus on the monstrosity that dominated the sky ahead of her.
The heads moved like snakes, darting glances in every direction as if trying to spot a threat or perhaps, locate prey.
But you can’t see what’s coming your way. Thank you, Kiong!
A gleam atop one of the heads caught her eye. A pinprick of light a thousand yards away. The Trinity. A Pandora’s Box the Wise Father had inflicted on the world. That was why she was doing this, to destroy the goddamned Trinity once and for all.
Her finger sought out the trigger that would release a volley of Hellfire missiles, but she didn’t depress it. She would only get once chance to destroy it. If she fired them too soon, Atlas would fill the sky with fire, destroy the missiles and her, and that would be the end.
No! Fire them now and break off!
She fought against the nearly irresistible urge and stayed on course, keeping the gleam of the Trinity’s crystal in the crosshairs, watching the range finder count down the distance to the target in meters. The laser guidance system in the missiles wouldn’t be able to differentiate the Trinity from the rest of Atlas’ massive bulk, so the only way to ensure a direct hit was to get so close that he wouldn’t have time to react.
She wouldn’t either, but she promised the frantic voice in her head that she would try. Five hundred meters was the minimum range. Any closer and the missiles wouldn’t arm. At her current speed, pushing the Apache as hard as it would go, she would have about four seconds to get clear.
I can do that, she told herself, knowing it was a lie.
The range finder ticked into the five hundreds and Mira pressed the trigger.
The solid rocket motors ignited with a hiss and Mira felt the helicopter lurch. It took just a fraction of a second for the missiles to generate enough thrust to break free of the launch rails. As the stubby projectiles raced away, a cloud of exhaust engulfed the helicopter, eclipsing her view the target.
She pulled back on the cyclic, the frantic voice in her head begging her to climb higher, faster….
Then her world vanished in fire and fury.
75.
The missiles transformed the dragon’s monstrous heads into a halo of fire. Booker looked away, pulling Kiong flat, covering her body with his own. The shockwave, radiating outward at the speed of sound, took almost a full second to reach them.
A hot wall of compressed air slammed into his back, driving him into the lawn. The thunderclap was deafening, rattling his teeth, but the height and distance spared them from serious injury. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs and risked a look up at the aftermath.
Atlas was still there, a colossus rising above the landscape, more solid, more real than the monuments of granite and marble that ringed the surreal battlefield. And he was moving.
Despair crashed over Booker with more force than the explosions. Mira had failed. Now there was no hope at all….
A monstrous leg lifted, wings rippled as air billowed in the capacious membranes, and then the creature began to tip backward, falling.
A tentacle of smoke spiraled away from atop the monster’s shoulders and Booker caught a brief glimpse of the place where its heads had been, now just a smoldering crater.
The great red dragon fell once more to earth, and the ground shook, but this time Booker knew it would not rise again.
Mira Raiden had slain the dragon.
“You did it!” he shouted, and only then did he think to look for her.
He scanned the sky for the helicopter, then felt a hand grasp his arm. He turned toward Kiong. Her blind eyes did not seek to meet his stare, but he knew in her own way, she was looking right at him.
“Can you see her? Is she okay?”
Kiong just shook her head.
EPILOGUE: FAITH
The world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for the reprieve to be withdrawn, for the dragon to rise again.
When it did not, when even the last few shudders of its death throes had ceased, the frightened witnesses to the cataclysm began to lift up their heads. They were bruised and bloodied, burnt by the wildfires that had raged through their tents, trailing limbs that had been broken underfoot by the mob in its panic. These were the ones who had stayed behind, though not because of their faith in the promise of deliverance from evil, but rather because they simply could not flee.
Yet now, they beheld the miracle and their faith was restored. The great dragon had been cast down.
They fell to their knees, only a few at first, but then like a wave, all were kneeling. Giving thanks.
Many of those who had fled only moments before began to return and they too joined in the prayer.
Booker hugged Kiong tightly, unable to share their gratitude. Their faith had not saved them; their God had not intervened. It had been Mira, only Mira, flying her helicopter down the monster’s throat, blasting the Trinity to Kingdom Come. Giving her life to save them all.
None of them would ever know it.
Stop it, he told himself. Don’t dishonor her sacrifice. She beat that goddamned thing.
Easier said than done.
The noise of distant sirens crept into the surreal silence, reminding him that there was a lot to be done. It was time to save those who could still be saved. The dead—including Mira—would have to wait.
A gasp arose from a thousand lips, and for a moment, Booker feared the worst. He turned in the direction of the fallen beast, afraid of what he would see.
Something was happening, but exactly what, he had no idea.
The dragon’s crimson skin was…he wasn’t sure what it was doing. Rippling? His impression was of a beehive or an anthill, with millions of tiny insects moving together like a single mass. The mass was diminishing with the movement. Atlas, or rather the thing he had become, was dissolving.
As the constituent particles decayed and collapsed, white light began to burn from within the corpse, growing brighter.
Booker felt his apprehension return. Was this more Trinity voodoo?
“Please God, no,” he whispered, embarrassed now by the contempt he ha
d felt for the prayers of the others.
The dragon’s body went charcoal gray for an instant and then imploded like a house of cards. The light continued to burn at the center of the crater where it had fallen, but it was different than the corona that had enveloped the beast and healed its wounds. Something moved behind the light, or rather beyond it, and Booker understood now that the light was a doorway.
“Shit. What now?”
Though distant, there was no mistaking the figure that stepped through. It was a likeness engraved into the collective unconscious of humankind for thousands of years: a tall man in flowing white robes, with a mane of white hair and a stern but expansive visage.
Kiong moved beside Booker, hugging him fiercely, but she was smiling now. So was he, because the Wise Father was not alone.
1993
After the flames were extinguished, the firefighter combed through the rubble in a vain search for survivors. It was dangerous work. He had been warned of the very real likelihood of unfired ammunition cooking off beneath the smoldering debris, possibly even homemade explosive devices. But fire was a strange beast and if there was even a possibility that someone had survived the conflagration, then he and his brothers were going to find them and rescue them as quickly as possible.
He froze at the sound of a strange noise, turning his head from side to side, homing in on the source. The sound was all too familiar, and recognition lent a new urgency to his search. He had mixed feelings about the people who had died in the fiery siege—religious nut-jobs if the feds were to be believed—but if the noise was what he thought it was, then there was at least one survivor who was completely blameless.
He traced the sound to a piece of sheet metal, threw it back frantically to reveal a partially charred corpse. Underneath it, evidently untouched by the flames, was a squalling baby.
He scooped the child up and slid it into the folds of his heavy coat, instinctively protecting it even though the danger from the fire had long passed, and hastened through the rubble to the perimeter of emergency vehicles.
He rushed the child to a nearby ambulance and revealed it to a paramedic who, after overcoming his awe, quickly began assessing and treating the child, a little girl.
“No teeth yet,” observed the firefighter, who had a one-year old at home. “He can’t be more than three months old.”
“She,” corrected the paramedic, shaking his head. “Not a mark on her. It’s a goddamned miracle, is what she is.”
“Keep it down,” warned one of the federal agents. “We’re going to take enough heat on this as it is. The last thing we need is people talking about a miracle baby.”
The two emergency workers exchanged a glance, then the firefighter looked at the fed. It was standard procedure to withhold information about minor accident victims from the press, but this was an unprecedented situation. “What’s going to happen to her?”
“We’ll try to figure out who she belongs to. Find some family somewhere. Hopefully, she’ll grow up and never know a thing about any of this.”
The firefighter knew that scenario was unlikely at best. The little girl would probably wind up in the system, and even though a healthy white baby girl was a prime candidate for adoption, the circumstances of her origin would cling to her like the smell of smoke.
He bent over the little girl, wiggling a finger in front of her. She grasped it with her tiny hands and held on fiercely.
“You got quite a grip there, Miracle Baby.” He looked up at the government agent again. “Hey, do me a favor.”
The fed rolled his eyes.
The firefighter shook his head. “No, man. It’s not what you think. I got a kid at home. No room at the inn.”
“All right. What then?”
“She needs a name. When you put her in the system.”
“Miracle Baby? I don’t think so.”
“Close.” The firefighter grinned. “I was thinking something more like ‘Mira.’”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean Ellis is the author of several novels. He is a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, and has a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Resources Policy from Oregon State University. He lives in Arizona, where he divides his time between writing, adventure sports, and trying to figure out how to save the world.
Visit him on the web at
http://www.seanellisthrillers.webs.com
BOOKS BY SEAN ELLIS
Magic Mirror
Ascendant
The Nick Kismet Adventures
The Shroud of Heaven
Into the Black
The Devil You Know
Fortune Favors
The Adventures of Dodge Dalton
In the Shadow of Falcon’s Wings
At the Outpost of Fate
On the High Road to Oblivion
Secret Agent X
The Sea Wraiths
Masterpiece of Vengeance
The Scar
With Jeremy Robinson
Callsign: King
Callsign: King – Underworld
Callsign: King- Blackout
Prime
With David Wood
Hell Ship
Oracle
With Steven Savile
Wargod