by Ryan Schow
Gunderson stewed on this a bit, wondered what De La Fuente would have done. He would have killed her already.
“Why would this girl come after you?”
“I overheard them saying she stopped the crew from…whatever they were doing?”
“What were they doing?”
“Knowing them, they were probably stealing something, or killing something, or trying to rape something. It was probably one of the three, or all of the three.”
Gunderson looked at Jorge, who gave him a look like he knew exactly where Judah was.
“You going to be okay on your own?” Gunderson asked.
“If I was prettier, would you just leave me here to die?” she asked with red, swollen eyes.
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation.
“You gay?”
“No, just focused,” he said, not offended. “Thanks for your help.”
“You MS-13?” she asked as he was leaving. “I mean, before all this?”
Gunderson turned and looked at her.
“Thought so,” she said, tapping at the tattoo on her neck. “I was, too. Well as much as I could be. Most of them now, they’re dead. Betrayed by the Sureños and a few vigilante cops we killed.”
“What happened then?”
“The putas took off man, went south or something. You going south?”
“No.”
“Staying with The Horde?”
“Mind your own business,” he said. “And get something on those cuts.”
With that he turned and left her there, sitting and sobbing in her own filth but with her freedom and a few bottles of water.
After a bit of driving around, they found the mouth of Dirt Alley. It was a one lane, broken concrete drive. By the look of it, the dirt road cut through the middle of a city block. The Humvee might fit, but only barely. There were two concrete obelisks flanking the narrow road leading in. Each stood about three feet tall. One was painted white, the other mushroom. On closer inspection, he was afraid the Humvee wouldn’t fit, but even if it did, there was no way he was going to barrel down such a tight street making his presence known.
“I need a scout,” he said. Frank volunteered. “Good, we’re going together.”
“I can go alone,” Frank said.
“I personally need eyes on the targets,” Gunderson replied. Then to his compadres: “Watch our six, shoot anything suspicious.”
With affirmative nods, Gunderson and Frank got out of the truck and started down the alley on foot. Before long, it opened up to backyard fences and ramshackle driveways.
“This is unusual for the city,” Frank said.
He meant a dirt alley cutting through the city block. It was unusual, and gross. Then he saw it up ahead: the pile of ash. When they came upon it, Gunderson toed the powdery dust, unearthing a bone.
“These must be the bodies of the men from the Lincoln branch,” Frank said.
Looking around, his eyes roving from residence to residence, checking windows and doors and blinds, he said, “We need to come here under the cover of night.”
“Agreed.”
“Time to report in, get the cavalry.”
“And then?”
“Then we burn this neighborhood to the ground and shoot the rats as they scurry out.”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Everything in the chopper just went dead. The control panel went dark, the engines fell silent, all they could hear were the blades beating as they began to slow.
“What the hell?” Jagger rumbled. He turned to the CJCS and said, “What is this?”
“It was the only way!”
“What was the only way?” Camila demanded.
“I already told you. High altitude nuclear EMPs. President’s orders.”
“EMP’s? Did you say EMP’s, as in plural?” Camila asked, her timid voice sitting high in her throat. The CJCS looked over at her, his eyes wild with fear. “How many, Goddard?”
“Two,” he said, gripping the arms of his seat. “One over Chicago, one over St. Louis.”
“Christ on a crutch,” Jagger swore, his mind scrambling. They were just outside Sacramento. The sun would be setting soon, but not before they crashed.
And they were going to crash.
“It was the only way to stop them,” Goddard repeated.
“Surely there were other alternatives,” he growled, fighting to control the descending craft.
“They controlled everything plugged in. The entire national grid. Maybe more. Are we going to die? You do know how to crash this thing, right?”
Jagger had never crashed before. He’d been through crash school, of course, but he wasn’t used to the Valor like he was used to the Huey. He was trying not to panic, but panic was bubbling up from his gut, clenching his organs, making him sweat.
“Autorotation?” Camila asked. She’d been to crash school, too.
“Everything’s fried,” he reported.
The only reason they weren’t dropping faster was because the rotors were still turning at close to full speed. That was changing though.
Normally if you act fast enough, you can lower the pitch and reduce the lift and drag, but he hadn’t gotten to it fast enough. He was exhausted, out of sorts, on the run from certain death into…a more certain death.
“Jagger?” Camila asked, now showing her nerves.
“Give me a minute!”
He hadn’t realized how much his response time had slowed until that moment. He was a half beat behind everything in a helicopter he rarely flew.
“What are the RPM’s?” she asked.
“Too low. What’s the glide angle?!”
“I…I don’t know,” she said, fear now fully in her voice and features.
Gunnery Sergeant Planck was suddenly there, hanging on, the worry of the world in his eyes. “Did we just lose power?”
“Nuclear EMP’s,” Jagger said. “Over St. Louis and Chicago.”
“Dear God,” he muttered. “That covers the entire nation.” When no one spoke, he said, “And they gave us no advanced notice?”
“Not us, sir.”
Camila frowned at CJCS Goddard and said, “One of us knew and waited until the last second to say something.”
“You were on a need to know basis,” Goddard said, clearly freaking out. “Are we going to die?”
“If we don’t,” Planck said matter-of-factly, glaring at the CJCS, “that doesn’t mean you’ll personally survive this.”
Goddard dropped his head, clearly scared. The helo was losing altitude at a rapid click.
“I need that glide angle!” Jagger snapped.
“There’s no time,” Camila said. She was right, and she knew he knew it.
In most helicopters, the freewheeling unit is supposed to disengage the engine, but that’s only so the pilot can hit the right glide angle and keep the RPM’s steady. Of course, this all varies depending on the helo you’re in, the altitude, the speed and the nature of the weather…
The EMP did a number on the state-of-the-art craft. Things were no longer working. The ground was coming up fast and his glide angle was wrong. There was insufficient upward flow of air to spin the main rotor, therefore there was no kinetic energy. This caused a slowing of the RPM’s. A total loss of control of the craft. He felt the helo starting to turn off center. Gripping hard, but still trying to come in at least halfway right, he fought to the very last second to lift the nose.
Camila looked at him; he met her terrified eyes for one moment, then focused on trying to keep them all from dying.
They hit too fast and at the wrong angle. Every hard edge caught and buckled, their speed too great.
The helo spun sideways and went into a nasty barrel roll. Blades spun and broke apart everywhere; dirt and rocks blew in through shattering glass; something sparked a fire. None of this registered, though, because Jagger’s body was being hammered about so violently he lost consciousness almost right away.
Or maybe he died.
His eyelids weighed a thousand pounds.
He tried to keep them open, but they were stubborn, made of concrete. He thought of his boys as his eyes closed. He thought of Lenna as a steep, oily tide rolled over him, dragging him out into a sea of perfect nothingness. The delirium faded, as did everything else.
He didn’t even dream.
Minutes passed. Or maybe hours. He was dead, and then he wasn’t. Maybe he was never dead at all. Perhaps he was never fully alive.
The onset of consciousness afforded him perspective. He was in his seat, strapped in, but everything was everywhere and he was hanging upside down. That could account for him feeling out of sorts. That could account for the unbearable pressure and the steady throbbing in his head.
Flexing his fingers and toes let him know he was okay. He slowly moved his neck. Okay there, too. There was blood, but that was to be expected. But maybe that wasn’t his blood, and that was to be expected, too.
The helo survived the crash, but it didn’t do so gracefully.
It barely did so at all.
Unstrapping himself only partially (he didn’t want to drop head first and break his neck), he eased out of his harness and his seat, moving slow against a migraine headache and a few moments of nausea. When he was able to lower himself completely, he saw her. Camila. She was unconscious. He also saw CJCS Goddard, but he didn’t care about the man.
Only Camila.
He tried to wake her, but she wasn’t awake. He put two fingers to her neck. No pulse. Tears boiled in his eyes as he unstrapped her and carefully lowered her down. It was the first time he’d ever touched her, much less held her. This was not what he expected. On battered legs, with ruined arms and a beaten rack of ribs, Jagger carried her outside the destroyed craft. He propped her into a seated position against the overturned fuselage, but she wouldn’t sit right because her head kept flopping over. He felt her neck. It was broken in half.
Her bones weren’t as thick or dense as his, and they’d been flung around like rag dolls for God knows how long. A million memories were tearing their way through him right now. A debilitating pain that felt God sized and inordinately cruel.
He turned and threw up, vomiting so hard his already explosive head thumped with such ferociousness he felt dizzy. The nausea passed, but the headache remained. Sweat leaked from his face, a reaction to the physical sickness. He skin had that cold, clammy feel. Looking down, he saw all kinds of blood in his vomit. When he was done, he blew the throw-up snot from his nose and that was bloody, too.
Chances were better than fair he had a concussion. He was tired. He wanted to go to sleep, just to restore a bit of his strength, or at least to not feel this bad. He was smarter than that, though. For a long time he sat with Camila, holding her body close, sobbing. Then he pulled himself together.
Well, he tried anyway.
He hadn’t heard a peep from the other passengers. He was sure they were dead, too. Honestly, he didn’t care. He had a twenty-four hour clock he kept in his head, and that was all that mattered. If he was going to survive what he was sure was a concussion, he needed to stay awake for that long. He felt so drowsy though. Kept shaking himself awake when sleep wanted to drag him under.
Stand up, he finally told himself.
He stood.
Get moving.
Against the pain, the grief, the grim nature of his circumstances and his failure to get the CJCS to Sacramento, he got moving.
As he was checking the bodies for survivors, the guilt wormed its way into him. Survivor’s guilt. He would have an easier time getting over Gunnery Sergeant Planck and his crew. He didn’t know any of them. And Goddard would be no problem because the man could have told Jagger about the EMP sooner and Jagger might have been able to control the landing better, not to mention they all might still be alive instead of just him.
But Camila...
Man, that was going to stick. This was not a person who should have died. This was not someone the world should have to live without. He punched a nearby surface, then grimaced as the pain shot all the way up his arm. He sat down, fresh agony slamming into him, and he thought of her. For all her bright and shameful flirting, she was a talented pilot, an adorable person, a woman who would have one day made an incredible wife and mother.
To him, though, she was his closest friend.
Now she was gone.
Inside the overturned helo was a service pistol. He picked it up, pulled back on the slide, then unloaded the entire magazine into CJCS Goddard. He stood there, eyes wet, breathing heavy. He felt no better for the outburst though, only worse that he’d desecrated the dead man’s body.
It wasn’t Goddard’s fault. He was scared. Under orders.
Paralyzed.
Outside, the sun set low on the horizon, but the city lights did not come on. He was just outside Sacramento—a few miles west of Davis if he was thinking right—in the fields near Highway 80. The earth here was soft. Not farmland, but not stripped bare either. Looking around, he couldn’t imagine another soul coming to his rescue. Then again, there were no drones, so at least he wasn’t worrying so much about that.
He’d spent the better part of the night dragging bodies out of the helo. He’d rest (because he needed it), try not to fall asleep (when he so desperately wanted to), and try not to look at Camila and wonder if she was now looking down on him from a better place, feeling sad for him as he died inside over what had happened to her.
Sometime after he’d dragged the remaining corpses out of the fuselage and laid them in a row (as if he had anything at all to bury them with), he plopped back down next to Camila and watched the night sky. It had never been so bright before. He saw a shooting star, but he couldn’t seem to muster even an ounce of optimism, certainly not enough to wish for anything good. Even if he did make that wish, he would have wished for a safe afterlife for the passengers and crew who died on his helo he’d just crashed. Then after that, he’d wish this monstrous headache away, and for a safe return to his family.
Sometime after midnight—and against his better instincts—his eyelids dropped shut, then bounced back open, and then they dropped shut and fluttered open once more. He couldn’t hold out any longer. His will was gone. So when they next shut, he surrendered to the sleep that quickly and thoroughly overtook him.
Chapter Seventy
Over the next few days Macy begins to heal. She suffers some initial infection in her shoulder, but I discover this early on and am able to counter it with antibiotics from Rider’s medical grab-bag. Lenna and Rex are doing well, too. Her fever broke and the strength in Rex’s arm is making a slow but certain return. Rider is still anxious to get home. Back to Sarah. Back to the college/compound.
I’m a nervous wreck though. I’ll admit it.
I’m fretting too much over Macy, but I can’t stop thinking about Rex, about his ability to fight and defend us. He says he’s fine, and I guess I believe him, but I can see the stiffness in his arm from where he was shot. Lenna is starting to recover, at least that’s what she says. The woman is not interested in being a liability and has said as much. So now it’s Indigo I can’t stop thinking about.
I like her. A lot. But this only makes me think Rex does too.
Any fool can see the boy is falling hard for Indigo. That, when push comes to shove, he’s going to have a hell of a time choosing between her and family. When Rex asked her about coming with us, Indigo said she couldn’t leave her home and all her possessions. So yeah, I know Rex is torn.
If she doesn’t come with us, my little brother will certainly lose focus. I might lose him. To her, to death, to his own foolhardiness. The thing about Rex is he’s a lover and a fighter, but if he’s distracted with either, he’s a danger to himself, to all of us.
&nbs
p; God, I wish he’d never met that girl!
Dawn breaks over the horizon bringing life to the day, and though we have our home and our safety, Rex can’t stop spending the night at Indigo’s, which is to say he hasn’t slept in his own bed for days now.
As for Stanton, he protected us before and he’ll do so again, but having Rex nearby makes me feel so much better. My husband is on the mend these days, mentally and physically. I can see it in his eyes now, how he’s trying to rationalize our future, how he’s looking at all the pieces of this puzzle and seeing where he fits. He knows he can’t be a wallflower, that remaining quiet as he plays second or third fiddle to men like Rex and Rider isn’t the best way to lead a family. He knows in this world you’re either the hunter or the prey, and I married a man with the mindset of a hunter, never that of the prey.
We spend our nights talking about our future, how we’re going to handle this and that, what direction we should move in so as to preserve the safety of our family and the group. We talk like this and then he completely blows me away by saying, “Sin, I see who you’re becoming, and how this has changed you, and I have to say, it’s so damn hot.”
Yeah, I think we’re going to make it together.
Honestly, I’m starting to have hope again for the future. In fact, the way Stanton has been, I’m finding that I’m so damn happy with him, I’m learning once more what it means to pour your soul into a person.
So this morning—like every morning lately—it’s beyond freezing cold. All I want to do is light a fire, but smoke from the chimney is the announcement of resources and I refuse to put myself or this family at risk for a little heat. We still don’t know who’s out there or what they’re capable of, but for the love of Jesus, did I tell you I’m cold?
Fuhreeeeezing!
After crawling out of bed, I bundle myself in two shirts, a sweater, long johns and sweat pants. My toes are numb and this hardwood floor is like a long block of ice, so it’s one thick pair of socks over one thin pair.
But I’m still cold and this chill I can’t seem to shake has me looking for something more than the clothes on my back. A coat maybe? Winter boots? What I do find in rifling through the hall closet is a knitted purple scarf that’s like heaven around my neck. There are little bits of silver glitter in it, and it’s a bit scratchy, but whatever…it’s warm!