He came to a stop within arm’s reach of the engage button. His head dropped to the side, a look of surprise on his face. He almost seemed to be deciding whether he should die or not. Then he fell.
The soldiers converged on me, and I dropped the gun.
“When I say I’m taking control, that means everyone drop your weapons,” Captain Hollister said. “Disarm and take into custody everyone here,” he ordered his men. “Feel free to shoot anyone who so much as picks their nose without permission. And someone get some fire extinguishers in here.”
“Captain,” Arianne said, “there’s a nuclear missile ready to be launched. Someone needs to carefully disarm it from that console.”
I was about to add my voice to Arianne’s when one of the soldiers grabbed me roughly by the arm, pushing me to the floor. His knee touched my thigh, and I blacked out.
Chapter 8
For the first time in several days, I woke in a familiar place: a devastator brig. I didn’t have the familiar raging hangover, though. In fact, I felt no pain, just a happy floating feeling. Drugs, I realized. Sweet, sweet painkilling drugs.
I tried to sit up, and wooziness forced my head back to the pillow. I lifted the blanket and glanced underneath it. I was wearing a hospital gown, and my thigh was heavily bandaged.
“I was just told that you woke up.” Darius walked in, still wearing a suit and with the presidential seal hanging from his neck. “Is this the part where I get punched in the face for making you think I was dead again?”
“No,” I said. “That last time was because it hurt when you died. This time around, I knew what a snake you had become, so it didn’t bother me.”
Darius chuckled, and I decided to laugh along. I hadn’t exactly been joking, but I decided to pass it off as one. This wasn’t the time for recriminations.
Darius spread his arms wide. “You got me.”
We laughed harder this time. We laughed together, and it felt good. Perhaps it was the drugs or the knowledge of victory, but I couldn’t find it in me to care that my brother and mother had sent me into the sky as a diversion and sent me to die. I felt happy.
“So you pretended to be in a plane while controlling it on the ground again?” I asked.
Darius pulled up a chair and sat beside me. “Yes. I even had it set up to transmit radio as if I was on board. Couldn’t talk too much, though, as I was trying to infiltrate Washington District at the same time.”
“No one would imagine you’d try the same trick twice.” I certainly hadn’t.
Darius chuckled. “I’m afraid that at my real funeral, people will have to poke at my corpse to make sure I’m really dead. Perhaps run a stake or two through my heart to be certain.”
“And the other planes? They were also empty?”
“Some were. We had a system set up at the start of the runway where most of the pilots were able to leave the cockpit without being seen. We knew that INSH had several agents with us, and we weren’t sure of the loyalty of others. We had to make Burnett believe that the real attack was on the Roosevelt.”
“So you knew that Burnett had compromised your plan to shut down the Roosevelt’s defenses, and you didn’t care.”
“We needed to have some pilots in the sky.”
“None of the pilots realized they were flying into certain death.” The pitch of my voice began to rise. I was beginning to forget that I was in celebration mode.
“It wasn’t certain death. You and Arianne are still alive. Everyone who was part of the rebellion took risks. Some of those who helped us take Under Nyork also died.”
“You couldn’t have known that Burnett would capture me and Arianne.”
“We suspected that Burnett had gotten the idea in his head that converting you over to his side would be a big victory over Celeste. Having you agree to take part in the attack ensured it would be the perfect distraction.”
“Glad I could be of some use.” The drugs were wearing off fast. I wasn’t feeling too happy anymore.
“It wasn’t an easy decision,” Darius said. “But didn’t you need to get back in the saddle after what happened the last time you were in a cockpit? As it turned out, we needed you more than we realized. We thought we knew all INSH’s secrets. We had planned for every eventuality. But we had no idea about those secret nuclear bombs on board the devastators. So you have our heartfelt thanks. Mine, Zirconia’s, and I’m sure everyone inside Under Nyork’s. Everything ultimately came down to your and Arianne’s efforts on board the Roosevelt.”
“Will?” I just remembered. He had saved me.
“Major Will Saunders is in a medical center. He lost a kidney, but he will recover.”
“Thank the heavens. And Burnett? Mari Larsen?”
“Burnett is dead. Larsen is also dead—strangled by a pair of handcuffs. I hope that you and Arianne don’t intend to play rough much.”
I didn’t reciprocate his smile. “You said that you and Zirconia wanted to thank me. I don’t see her here.”
Darius put his hand on my arm. “She’s not someone for social visits. She’s building a new future.”
“Of course she is.”
“She may not be the mother we needed. But she’s the person this world needed. Maybe it won’t be much comfort to you, but I often remind myself of that when dealing with her. This fucked-up world needs someone like her to help make it right.”
I shook off Darius’s hand. “You’re right. Not much comfort.” But it was something to consider. Now that I knew what Zirconia had been doing all these years—and how important it was—perhaps I would begin to see her differently.
“Burnett gave Celeste an ultimatum. You didn’t know that I’d get free and stop Burnett. Did you consider surrendering to save the city?”
“That would mean saving ourselves, too,” Darius said. “No, we wouldn’t have gotten this far if we weren’t willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.”
“It wasn’t just about you,” I said. “You had to think about the hundreds of thousands of people who would have died if Burnett had managed to fire the nuke.”
“If he decided to follow through on his threat, that would be on him. We couldn’t give up when we’d come so far. What we were fighting for was too important.”
I snorted. “Celeste and INSH are two sides of the same coin—both believing in their cause so much that they are blind to all else. Both eschewing all compassion and human feeling in the pursuit of their goals.”
Darius stood up. “But the difference is that we are on the right side.”
I couldn’t deny that after having wrestled with the decision over the last several days and coming to the conclusion that INSH was terribly wrong. I’d realized that even before INSH made the cold-blooded decision to destroy Under Nyork.
“What happens now?” I pointed at the seal around Darius’s neck. “You’re in charge?”
“The American Conference has accepted me as their leader. I will be a true president now, not a puppet of INSH. We have agreed to a truce with Ulrika Eschenback and the other members of the Grand Council. They’ll leave us in control, and we’ll consult with them on major decisions. The delayed peace summit will go ahead tomorrow.”
“And after? The next world war?”
“We have plenty of time to prepare for that. We’ve done the hard part, cracking a hole in the INSH hegemony. The rest will happen in time.”
The Australian Colonies probably figured they’d done the hard part, before they were destroyed by the other superpowers. But I didn’t say it. It wasn’t the day to worry about the distant future. There would be plenty of other days for that.
Darius walked to the door of the brig then turned around. “I’ve just arranged for your release with Captain Hollister. And you’ve been cleared of your wife’s murder and association with terrorists. You will find you are now a hero rather than a villain. You’ll be transferred to a medical center shortly, but first, there’s someone who wants to see you.”
Da
rius stepped outside, and Arianne entered.
Seeing her alive was a huge relief after all we’d been through. “What are you doing just standing there? Kiss me,” I told her.
She made no move toward me. “Darius wants you released, but I’m not too sure. You were in league with Burnett.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You surrendered to him over my objections. You tried to make a deal with him when we first reached the control center.”
“But, but…”
Arianne burst into laughter. “You should see your face. We did it, idiot. We won.” She pumped her fists in front of her, a beaming smile across her face.
“And you don’t care about how it all happened? The way that we were tricked by Darius and Zirconia.”
“They did what they had to do. We did what we had to. Everyone did their part. And we won.” She bent down and kissed me on the mouth. “Be happy.”
The dark shadows that had lodged inside me during the conversation with Darius were blown away, and joy flowed freely through me again. “I am happy. I’m deliriously happy,” I told her.
She nodded. “That would be the morphine. Come with me.” She flipped the blanket off me and lowered her arm to help me up.
“A doctor hasn’t told me that I’m too weak to leave the bed. But if one was here, I’m sure that’s what she’d say.”
“Don’t be a baby.” She lifted my legs and swiveled them out of the bed. I pushed myself into a sitting position then took Arianne’s proffered arm and pulled myself to my feet. My left leg couldn’t take weight, but there was no pain. The room spun, but Arianne held me firmly until the dizziness passed. She ducked under my left arm, and with her support, I was able to hobble out of the brig.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
We went slowly so it didn’t take too much out of me. “It better not be far, or I’ll start to get flashbacks of our journey through the tunnels.”
“This is about not being underground,” Arianne said, and she stopped in front of a porthole. “Have a look.”
I put my hand against the wall to support my weight and peered out. We were hovering above a massive waterfall.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Captain Hollister continued beyond Under Nyork and decided to wait here. When Darius came on board, he insisted that the devastator get as low as possible to give everyone a good view.”
It was a giant waterfall. White water tumbled down from three sides into a basin from which the spray plumed upward into a cloud. The sun was low in the sky, dyeing the river that fed the waterfall in hues of pink and orange. Beyond the water, verdant green forests disappeared into the horizon. “It’s beautiful,” I said.
“Imagine if we could all live aboveground again. See sights like this up close every day. It’s now become possible. Because of what we have done.”
Still, we were viewing it from the decks of a devastator—the very weapon that made Arianne’s vision unlikely. But what Arianne had said was true. With our victory, there was hope that the cycle would end and something better was on the horizon. No more world wars. Burnett was right about one thing, though—as human beings, we needed something to strive for. But it had to be something worthwhile. I held Arianne tighter and watched the sun sink.
“To a better tomorrow,” I said.
“A better tomorrow.”
Author’s Note
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The Narrowing Path: Out of over a hundred teenage boys, only six will be found deserving of survival by the leaders of the great families. Bowe is expected to die on the very first day of the path; instead he begins a journey no one could have anticipated.
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COPYRIGHT
WORLD WAR 97—PART 5
Copyright © 2015 by David J. Normoyle
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art © 2015 by S. Frost Designs
Edited byRed Adept Editing Services
First eBook edition: November 2015
Published by David J. Normoyle
www.davidjnormoyle.com
World War 97 Part 5 Page 6