by Justin Bell
***
Javier put his head in his hand, sitting on the uncomfortable cot, even the small motion sending spurts of pain along his back where the buckshot wounds were raw and fresh. He winced and spasmed lightly as the pain flared.
“Are you all right?” Priscilla asked him, moving toward him and placing a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m good, Pris, thank you,” he replied. “Just worried about Mel.”
“That makes two of us,” she replied. “What was she thinking?”
“I don’t know if she had much of a choice,” Clark said from across the room, speaking as quietly as he could. “That Mayor dude… he gives me the serious creeps. Lights are on, but I don’t think anyone’s home.”
“He wasn’t always like that,” Lisa said from the other cell. “He seemed almost… normal. I’m wondering if what happened… I’m wondering if it broke him somehow.” She had been laying on her side, and pushed herself upright, her face indicating some deeper thought. “I think he was married. Pretty sure he had a child. Maybe even two. If something happened to them as a result of this, maybe he snapped?”
Clark nodded. “Possible. But you know, snapped or not, how people behave in the throes of crisis tells a lot about who they are. So far, I ain’t real impressed.”
Lisa nodded. “Believe me, I’m feeling you.”
A low scuffle outside the door brought Lisa’s head around and she glared at the entrance to the lobby as the door swung open. Mayor Harris stepped into the room, limping slightly, his left hand clasped tight around what looked to be a police issued nightstick. He looked at each person in each cell, meeting them all in the eyes, one by one, sizing them up and considering his options.
“One of you put her up to it, didn’t you?” he asked in a low voice. It was a sharp voice, a fragile thing, on the verge of shattering apart.
“Put her up to what?” Broderick asked.
“I didn’t have to do it,” the mayor continued. “I didn’t have to let her play, I could have just let her rot in that cell with you. But I was feeling nice. Generous, one might even say. I let her come out with me and play with some of the toys out of the kindness of my own heart.”
“What happened?” Javier asked, sensing something terrible, moving forward to grasp the prison bars with two hands. “What did you do?”
Harris sneered at him, taking an unsteady step forward, tapping one palm with the night stick. “What did I do?” he asked, aghast. “That little brat stabbed me in the foot and ran off. That’s the thanks I get!”
Priscilla bit her lip to hold back a chuckle.
Harris whirled on her. “Was that funny?” he asked, his voice high and on the verge of cracking. “Do you think this is a joke?”
“Nope,” she replied. “Definitely no joke.”
The mayor glared at her, as she shook her head, the scant drift of dark hair over her shoulder. She had round, slender cheeks, narrow shoulders, and she stood tall, her eyes blue and firm.
“Oh, I have a question for you, by the way,” he hissed at Priscilla, taking another step toward her. “We went through your things after putting you all in these cells. Imagine our surprise when we found a wallet that had a credit card in it, and that credit card said Doctor Priscilla Conrad.”
Pris narrowed her eyes at him.
“You didn’t tell us you were a doctor. Even after I told you we had some injured men.” He shook his head softly. “Not the best way to make friends and influence people, Doc. Especially not people who you depend upon for food, water… life itself.” The last two words came out in a growl and he stepped toward her, placing his own hand on the bars, drawing close to her face. Priscilla didn’t withdraw, she didn’t back down, she remained where she was.
There was a low clatter of metal on metal and her eyes drifted down just as he rammed the key in the lock and pulled the door suddenly open. Nobody in the cell was expecting it, each one of them withdrawing purely by instinct, and Mayor Harris reached in, clutching Priscilla’s shirt with clenched fingers. He wrenched her free of the cell, pulling her nearly off her feet and sending her stumbling out into the open room, then he used his shoulder to slam the cell door back shut, ripping the key from the lock before Javier or Lisa could figure out what was going on.
“What are you doing?” shouted Clark, shoving himself against the bars of his own cell.
“Leave her alone, Bruce!” shouted Lisa from the other side. “She’s done nothing wrong!”
He shot her an angry look, full of heat and rage, then glanced back at Pris who was standing in the middle of the room, her palms extended toward him, taking an uncertain step backwards.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I didn’t think it was a big deal—”
He didn’t reply, he just snapped his arm back, bringing the night stick crashing against the side of Priscilla’s face with a dull, echoing thwack. Her head snapped back, eyes pinching closed and she spun away from him, hair spraying in a fan of brown. Stumbling backwards, she tried to catch her balance, but he moved into her motion, turning the night stick and slamming it, end-first into her ribs. She coughed and doubled over as he pulled the truncheon away, spun it again and whipped his arm up and around, slamming the other side of her head with the narrow post. She snapped around again the opposite way, then crumpled to the floor noiselessly, laying in a rumpled pile, Harris standing over her, eyes wide and crazed as he glared down.
“Browning!” he screamed. “Russel!”
A few moments later, two of the military men appeared in the doorway, moving inside the room and toward the fallen woman.
“Pick her up. Take her to the injured men. When she’s awake, she can help where she’s needed.”
The two men moved to Priscilla’s fallen form and hooked their hands under her arms, pulling her limply into a hunched barely upright position.
“Think about this the next time you choose to not tell me the truth,” he hissed. “She got off easy,” he said. “We need her. I don’t need the rest of you.”
Turning on his heels, he followed the two men and Priscilla out the door, slamming it closed behind him, leaving the cells in stunned and shocked silence in his wake.
Chapter 7
Since the 1960s, the United States Marine Corps, among others, have used the Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion as one of its heaviest transport helicopters currently in circulation. The Air Force made their variant the Super Jolly Green Giant Pave Low MH-53 infamous during the Vietnam War, with its familiar shape hulking over the dense forest, transporting men and equipment to the most remote regions of Southeast Asia.
The Marine detachment at Fort Detrick, tasked with working alongside USAMRIID didn’t have any equipment, they just had ten bodies, but when the world teeters on the edge of Armageddon, you take whatever transport you can get. Developed within the last handful of years, the latest modification of the Sea Stallion was the CH-53K, a state-of-the-art modernized super transport scheduled for a major deployment that very year. Only a handful of them actually got released to bases throughout the nation, and luckily for the Marines at Detrick, one of them rested on a helipad there. The 53K was the latest upgrade to the Sikorsky transport, dubbed the King Stallion, featured three 7,500 horsepower engines, a wider cabin, and a wealth of other structural and operational upgrades, making it one of the largest and heaviest helicopters in existence.
Sergeant Davis whistled as he approached it, looking up at the flat gray surface of the bestial aircraft, a long and broad monster, composite rotors hanging even, the entire aircraft resting on three sets of wheeled struts. An extended fuselage grew out of each side of the paneled aircraft, making it look like a hulking beast, a modern, metallic dragon, hunched over on the helipad, bracing to launch itself on long metal whirling wings.
“Overkill?” asked Gunnery Sergeant Haskell, tipping his hat to Davis as he approached.
“No such thing in the Marine Corps,” Davis replied cleanly, still gaping at
the large aircraft. “I just wish we had a tank or something to stick in there.”
“What’s the matter, Sarge?” a man called from behind him, walking alongside and slapping him hard on the back. “Don’t think a dozen Marines can crack a wiring closet?”
“Sergeant King, glad you could join us,” Davis said. “Trust me, this thing is to wiring closets what Hiroshima was to a BB gun. Data centers are secure facilities, even if there’s no staff to watch them.”
“I got the key right here,” another man quipped, holding up his M4 carbine, military issue.
“That right there’s a skeleton key, Lassiter,” Davis said. The two men intersected and walked with the growing group toward the King Stallion, looking almost comically small against its broad, gray hide. Other figures joined the pair, making their way into the helicopter, leaving just Davis and Haskell standing outside.
“They up for this, Gunney?” Davis asked him, still looking at the helicopter. “It’s a scary world out there. Any of them got family at home?”
Gunnery Sergeant Haskell didn’t let his gaze waver. “Pretty sure every single one of them does, Sergeant. They know the stakes. They also know the country and the world needs them.”
Davis looked back over his shoulder, catching sight of Agent Craig who was moving alongside the group of Marines. He was dressed in dark tactical cargo pants and wore a black padded armored vest over his long sleeve shirt, a black windbreaker pulled tight over his shoulders. He looked almost comical alongside the squad of camouflaged foot soldiers, but Davis had to give him credit for coming along, even though he didn’t know what he might be getting into.
Looking back ahead, he and Gunny walked toward the helicopter. “King brings up a good point,” Davis said as they walked toward it. “It’s just a building we’re breaking into, not an insurgent compound or anything.”
“Times like these,” Haskell replied, “you can’t be too careful. You know that better than most.”
Davis walked in silence the rest of the way to the CH-53, agreeing with what the Gunnery Sergeant had said, and thinking back to the rest of Team Ten, nearly all of which was, as far as he knew, still laying lifeless in the Boston city streets when the B2’s dropped their bombs.
The King Stallion swallowed them, absorbing them into itself, the cargo door closing with an echoing bang. Slowly, assuredly, the rotors began their lazy spin, picking up speed, composite material whacking repeatedly against the still air of afternoon. Gradually, impossibly, the humongous aircraft lifted from the tarmac, rear end lilting up, massive blades carrying the fat creature up into the sky, banking gently left toward the northwest.
***
She’d burst from the front doors of the town hall, nearly stumbling down the entire flight of stairs, her small legs pumping as fast as they could. Her feet struck the sidewalk at the base of the stairs with two soft thumps and she bolted forward, veering right down the sidewalk. Already her breath was catching hard and fast in her small lungs, her muscles screaming to slow down, but all she wanted to do was push them harder, get further away, put more distance between her and the mayor. Muffled shouting came from within the town hall, a chorus of enraged bellows, answered by a series of more responsive ones.
They would be coming for her.
Melinda darted right, slinking behind a car, ducking low, moving down the sidewalk on the other side of the row of vehicles, continuing to move forward. The sun was bright even though this December day was brisk and chilly. She was fortunate enough to still be wearing her jacket; the mayor had never let her take it off, even when she was locked up in a hot cell. Another little bit of torment which was now saving her.
“Over there! Check over there!” men came charging from the town hall, men pointing and carrying weapons, and they all scattered, left and right, forward and around the back of the building. Mel looked back behind her, eyes focused on the narrow windows peering out from just above where the basement was buried beneath the ground. She’d thought about running into the basement first, she’d considered finding a dark corner to hide in down there, but she’d been too afraid, she needed to get further away, get some space between her and Mayor Harris. The way he’d looked at her when she played with her dolls had frightened her. There was a strange hunger in his eyes, a wickedness that seemed… wrong somehow. Like something inside of him was broken.
Mel had heard about people like that. Her dad was an orderly for a local hospital, working in their behavioral science wing where the broken people lived, and he’d spoken about that look in their eyes, some of them, anyway. The world they saw wasn’t quite the same as the world the rest of them did. In some cases, that was okay. Good even. Some of them saw a much better, nicer place than reality.
But for others, the world they saw was deeper and darker, and far fuller of horrors.
Melinda couldn’t think of too many more horrors than the ones she’d experienced already, but Mayor Harris seemed like he was looking at them for her. Peeling away the false layers of reality and thirsting for the wet underbelly hidden beneath. Her stomach squeezed as she thought of it, throat clenching.
“Don’t throw up don’t throw up don’t throw up,” she whispered to herself as she withdrew further down the sidewalk, lowering herself deeper behind the sloped roof of the car. Men ran up the street just on the other side of the vehicle, others sprang into an alley not two blocks away from where she crouched, barely sheltered by an old sedan. She hadn’t eaten enough to start puking it everywhere, and she was worried that the bad men might hear her. The last thing she wanted was the bad men to come. A bad world was enough without the bad men who inhabited it.
Another tight group of military guys charged across the sidewalk, from alley to street, running left to right, in search. She backed away, deeper and further, letting the car and the building’s shadow come down around her and cover her in a blanket of darkness.
There was an opening. A small one, a gap in the movement of the running men. By her feet she kicked a stone, and she bent down, scooping it up, acting by instinct, and not really thinking of her next move as the men fanned out, casting a vague, backwards net around her current position. Cocking her arm back, she let fly, hurling the rock, and it struck a window in a building a block to her north. There was a muffled pop, then a cracking shatter of glass, the front pane of the shop collapsing inward on itself with the impact.
“Over there!” one of the men shouted, and they were all converging, collecting into a massive group and surging toward the broken window. Melinda moved the opposite direction, sinking low and breaking left, cutting between two cars just as the groups of men surged back the other way. Bursting out onto Main Street at their backs, she picked up speed, running fast and hard across the two lanes of pavement, ignoring the scuffing of boots all around her, focusing her eyes on the narrow space between the movie theater and the library, an alley that wasn’t really an alley, more of a gap between buildings, a gap that no man could fit in.
No adult man, anyway. Probably no adults period. But she wasn’t an adult.
Shielding her young eyes from the brightening sun, Melinda slunk behind the squat building, sliding through the narrow space between the buildings, consumed in shadow, her eyes darting left as she heard the dashing footsteps of running guards. They were looking for her, she knew that. Crouching low, she looked out onto Main Street and could see the town hall a few blocks ahead and to her left, the three-story structure by far the tallest building on the main drag of Aldrich. A row of wooden stairs led down to the sidewalk, and all around the building and its surrounding area, men with army fatigues, combat boots, and even a few with rifles milled about, eyes glaring.
One of the men strode forward, halting in front of the gap between buildings, turning slightly to look down the darkened space. Mel froze, clenching her muscles tight, keeping herself locked and frozen. Her voice caught in her tight throat and she felt the pinprick stabs of tears starting to form in her eyes as the man glared deeper down.
She wanted to be invisible. Wanted to fade away into the dark shadows, disappear.
She wanted Javier. She wanted her mom and her dad and her stuffed hippo which she’d left back in the prison cell. She wanted it all and none of it, she just wanted to be done with the whole thing. Done with the running, the hiding, the dead bodies.
Her old life.
The man fumbled in his belt, looking for what Mel imagined was a flashlight. She stepped carefully backwards, fighting back the tears and sobs, trying to stay quiet because she knew that’s what her parents would want. She could feel snot bubbling in her nose, threatening to spill out, but she held herself from sniffling, taking one cautious step backwards. Then another, as quiet as she possibly could.
He pulled out a flashlight, lifting it, finger hovering near the button.
Tears spilled down Melinda’s cheeks, freely flowing and for one horrible second she thought she was going to bawl out loud at the top of her lungs. A hand clasped firmly around her mouth while a second wrapped hard and tight around her arm. They moved in concert with each other, yanking backwards, pulling her from her feet, tugging her up into the air, swallowing her and carrying her away, just as a narrow beam of pale light flashed down the darkened alley.
***
It was getting to be a familiar sight, a sight that Sergeant Davis was already tired of witnessing. Standing by an exit door near the sprawling canopy of the transport helicopter, he peered out through the square window and could see the Philadelphia skyline framed in the tinted glass. Normally he would have expected to see the sun glittering off the steel and glass buildings, sparkling as they approached, flying slow and low, but today, the sun was all but blocked out by a thick curtain of dark smoke. Everywhere he looked in the congested downtown area was obscured by the cloud, and the areas that weren’t were speckled with isolated ripples of yellow fire. It looked remarkably like Boston as they made their approach, enough so that he got some serious déjà vu as the helicopter gradually lowered its altitude. Another American city that looked like a war zone.