by Chris Capps
***
"Don't ask me why or how," Walter Garvey said pacing in the control station with a mug of instant coffee in each hand, "I can't put my finger on it. All I know is something isn't right this morning. It's the kind of morning that grabs you and lives with you your whole life afterward."
"Walt, I don't need to hear that right now," Willard said leaning back in the recliner he had dragged into the control room. His feet, clad in a pair of old army boots were still unlaced, dangling down past the edge of the control terminal near the microphone, "Your doomsday talk could use a rest. That's what I'm sure of."
Walter Garvey and Willard Nayfack had been placed in charge of the control terminal on that November morning. Three hours earlier, the helicopter had already left. The town had only one helicopter still operational, which was just fine according to Cairo's only surviving pilot, Chance Cooper.
Ordinarily, the radio would be alive with chatter from the chopper checking in every few minutes to update them on his position. On this morning, the last message they had received had been nearly an hour ago. Willard had written down the last transmission in his leather journal and waited. He had been sitting, chewing the cap of his pen, staring at the ukulele playing wooden hula girl standing on top of the CB speaker.
The room was heavy with smoke from Walt's seemingly endless supply of cigarettes. He paced the room with both mugs of coffee still spilling wild streams over his knuckles and the unfiltered smoke hanging from his lips,
"I'm not saying it's the end of the world, man. It's just the end of what we know. Something big's going to happen. I had a dream last night that I got struck by lightning and a million hands came up from the ground. The hands were like grass, man - just waving and grabbing at me-"
"Walt," Willard said staring at the hula girl's wooden cleavage. He was trying to think of another errand to send his companion on, "Did you remember to get me that coffee?"
"Here," Walt said setting the coffee down hard on the terminal desk, "And yeah I didn't put any honey in it. I only remember my dreams when something important is about to happen. You know what it's like. My grandmother always told me I had a way with dreams. I know things. Don't ask me how. I just do. And I'm telling you this is not good news. And instead of readying myself spiritually and mentally for these energies, I'm watching our only helicopter disappear in the void. Something's going on. They should have contacted us by now."
"I wanted honey," Willard said, breaking his eyes away from the radio and its companion for only a moment, "Please."
"You never want honey," Walt said, "Coffee black, no honey, no milk. It's always been that way."
"Honey, please," Willard said.
"Of course," Walt said, eyes wide and cigarette dangling loosely, "Of course. Everything else is coming to an end."
"Thank you," Willard said quietly as Walt carried both of their cups away down the hallway muttering to himself.
As soon as his companion was gone, Walt rolled the radio dial over to the police band and plugged the duct-tape covered headphones in, pressing them to his ear. The headphones had been a hand-me-down from the police station six years ago when they had their own replaced. Of course with only the one helicopter, the control terminal was a far lower priority. With fuzz edging out as he honed in on the police frequency he stared, as was his custom, at the hula girl.
"They're on their way," came Jessica's voice, "And send some people out here. Somebody's ripped these tracks up all to Hell."
"Can't wait," came the reply. That serrated voice could only have been the Sherriff.
"The tracks? Far out," Willard said chuckling and jotting the exchange in his ledger, "Why the tracks?" Energized, he rolled back the dial to the chopper frequency, hoping that during that fifteen second period nothing important had been broadcast. Just to be sure, he pressed down on the microphone switch and, as if in passing, said, "Rob, Chance, any word?"
No response. Only the swirling cackle of static breaching the gulf.
"Fine," Willard said, "Don't talk to me." As he rose to stretch and crack his spine, he turned behind him and spotted the massive windows letting a gentle ambient light into the room. The second story windows were virtually useless, thanks to the perpetual fog surrounding them, but very rarely the mist would clear up and he'd see the field where the helicopter was to land and take off. He certainly didn't know how Chance did it, flying in weather like this. As he turned to look down the hallway, he couldn't help but see the green domed lights hanging from the ceiling gently drifting from side to side. He glanced over back at the wooden hula girl and noticed her gently bobbling, her tiny strands of doll's hair shaking.
"Did you hear that?" Walt called back down the hallway, "Earthquake?"
"No," Willard said, snapping his fingers in thought, "I know that sound. That was a tree..."
"Chance Air One switching back on, we're coming in, please turn on the lights," the radio said. Both Walt and Willard breathed a chuckle of relief and smiled to one another, "Control, turn on the lights, we're coming in." Willard pointed to Walt,
"Switch them on. I'll meet them out there."
"No," Walt said, "You turn on the lights and I'll meet them. I got the coffee earlier."
"Whatever," Willard said grabbing Walt's leather coat and tossing it over, "Just stay off the landing platform this time." Pulling his coat on, Walt mocked Willard with a shrill sardonic voice.
Willard ignored him, hopped over to the radio terminal, and depressed the button on the microphone,
"Lights are turning on, Air One. Welcome back."
He reached over to the knife switch on the wall and pulled it down, closing the circuit to the spotlights outside with a spark. Out in the field he could see the brilliant spotlights even from the window. Looking down, Willard spotted Walt jogging out toward the landing platform.
If he had any sense, he'd wait at its base until Chance had safely landed the aircraft. Already, he could hear the gentle thrum of helicopter rotors moving toward them. Even in this fog, with the spotlights in place they should have little to worry about. He picked up his mug and took a sip, then winced. Way too sweet.
As he was out pouring the coffee down the drain, the radio piped up again,
"Chance Air One switching back on, we're coming in."
Outside, Walt was waving his hands above his head as the small craft maneuvered its way down virtually blind. It finally touched gear to the tarmac and settled. With the dying rotor still deafening him, Walt climbed up the landing platform and rapped his fingers on the window grinning. Inside, he could see Chance and his co-pilot sitting stoically. They were as white as ghosts.
Walt could tell they had seen something out there in the mist and trees. Something had changed them. Even now, the dream came flooding back to him. Hands like grass. Was he talking to Chance in the dream? No, it had been the older McCarthy brother, Felix. Strange, since they weren't friends. Regardless, it didn't help the prickling feeling of unease slowly reaching up his spine, clenching a ghostly hand to knock on his shoulder.
"Chance," Walt called out through the door, "You gave us quite a scare out there."
Chance was a younger man, aged prematurely by years of uncertain landings and last minute course corrections in a world where he rarely saw the ground in-flight. His co-pilot Rob was an old alcoholic, a cartographer, and a geologist. He was also the closest thing to family Chance had these days. Rob was staring down at his clipboard with his hand in his left armpit and a pained expression twisting his face. He wasn't moving. Walt knocked on the door again, this time a bit more frantically,
"Hey, come on out. We've waited on you long enough today."
Chance solemnly opened the door and got up from his seat. He was thin, almost to the point of looking sickly. His flight jacket ordinarily hid his bony frame, but he often didn't wear it on longer flights. He slowly opened the door and stepped out. He was saying something, but the rotors were beating too loud for Walt to hear. Walt cupped his ear and s
creamed into the wind for the pilot to repeat himself. Instead, Chance slowly shook his head.
Walt could see then that his eyes were red. Tears were freely welling up and dripping into his wind thrown hair. With Rob still sitting in the co-pilot's seat with his hand in his armpit, Chance suddenly grabbed Walt. He pulled his face near Walt's ear and yelled,
"It's the end of the line, Walt. I think it's the end for us."
From the fog above, a shape descended on them. It shrieked with a sound like metal tearing itself apart as it plummeted into the rotor blades, quickly becoming entangled with them and vomiting sickly green gasoline all over.
As it descended - in that single moment - Chance Cooper turned and looked up to see the thing collapsing on top of them.
Walt leapt instinctively from the landing pad onto the grass. With a sickening crack he felt his elbows break his fall. Startled, he let out a single frightened sound and wriggled on his back away. He screamed for Chance to run, but the pilot was only shaking his head. In that long second Walt was able to see what the shape was, but he didn't believe it.
It was a helicopter. Another helicopter.
The second impossible helicopter landing on top of this one keeled to the side and snapped into a handful of scattered pieces leaking gasoline in a semi-circle around the two entangled craft.
"Impossible! This is impossible," Walt kept wailing as he crawled on his back away, "Where did it come from!?"
And the whipping twisted blades atop this chimera of machines turned toward him.
The sound of smashing and twisting could be heard for nearly a quarter of a mile. The fire could be seen for only a fraction of that. There were no survivors. Inside the control terminal Willard took care not to spill his coffee when the dim fireball reached through the fog. He set the cup down with more care than Walt had earlier, rolled the dial, and radioed the police.
Chapter 2
As the McCarthy brothers' truck pulled into the lot behind the police station, the sound of sirens was breaking down the street. Jessica hadn't been listening to her radio, but she reached down to her hip and turned up the volume when the Sherriff's '71 Crown Victoria pulled up beside them. The windows were rolled up, making it impossible to see the vehicle's lone occupant. Jessica leapt from the truck bed as it stopped and leaned forward to peer into the car's tinted windows. Her radio buzzed,
"Jessica," he said, "We're going to the airfield. There's been an accident."
The car pulled away next to them and sped into the fog with blue and red flickering lights blazing on top of it. From the garage she could see the fire truck beginning to pull out, men crawling over it like ants to reach their positions in time. With a deafening warning, it droned along behind the Sherriff, itself flickering like all the firecrackers in the world. The ambulance was already screaming to life up the street, echoing eerily with the chorus of emergency vehicles converging on the airfield.
"That can't be all for a felled tree," Felix McCarthy said to his brother. Jessica tapped her fingers against the truck window and Mike rolled it down, letting the ear splitting wail of sirens spill into the cab.
"Open the door, Mike," she said, "I'm commandeering this truck."
"Now hold on, deputy," Mike said, "That's where I draw the line. If you need a ride, I'll get you there. But you can't just-" He was interrupted by a look. The words were incidental as Jessica said them,
"Mike, I'm not kidding around. Now scootch."
"When it rains it pours, eh deputy?" Felix said as Mike scooted to the center seat, trying to position his legs awkwardly away from the gear shift, "Go easy on the old girl."
When they arrived at the airfield, a small crowd was being held back by a gaggle of officers, shouting in a typically disorganized chorus. Jessica stopped the car and sat staring into the autumnal flames rising out through mist and the steam from the fire hose attempting to douse them. The fuel tanks to the old Bell 204 had been modified to sustain it for longer flights into the void. The fountain of liquid fire now pouring from the underside of the craft was pooling in a wide arc as the wreck lay on its side on top of the landing platform. The massive flames were dispersing the fog in the area slowly, even with the intense steam billowing from where water met fire. And that's when Jessica noticed something strange. Somehow entwined beneath the flaming craft, also engulfed in flames, was a second helicopter.
That was strange, considering there was only one known helicopter in the world.
It lay there, twisted and tangled, fiery magnesium quickly fusing the two craft, letting the intense flames slowly consume their interiors. Both of their fuel tanks had apparently ruptured in the crash, and the spark that unleashed this firestorm could have been from any number of sources. And while Jessica found herself able to diagnose this most simple element of the catastrophe that had unfolded here, she could not work out where the second helicopter could have come from.
"Jessica," the Sherriff said placing his hand on her shoulder, "Do you mind telling me how many helicopters you see out there burning right now?"
She turned to look at him. His eyes shadowed beneath his oppressive brow shifted to her in the flickering flames. On his bald and scarred head beads of perspiration were quickly forming from the onslaught of heat from the conflagration. And yet even with the sweat, even with the squinting sunken eyes, and even with the curious tone that had entered his voice, she knew he was comfortable now. It was the only emotion this machine had ever showed around her. Mild, cynical comfort. She looked back into the wreck and counted, despite herself.
"Yes," she said, "There are two."
"And how many helicopters are you aware of in the whole wide world? I don't want to hear about those that were decommissioned or cannibalized to keep ours running. How many helicopters are there that can fly?"
"Just the one," Jessica said coughing once as the smoke billowed out from the craft, "There aren't any others anywhere that we know of. That was it."
The Sherriff walked in front of her as the hose in the truck ran out of water. The black pool of hot fluid surrounding the craft was seeping outward and into the ground, boiling the grass nearby. The Sherriff threw his heavy arms out to his sides, as if to embrace the rolling flames,
"So then what you're saying is this situation is completely impossible."
"Sir," Jessica said watching the firemen scramble for a second attachment to a nearby fire hydrant, "it's impossible that a second craft could have been maintained all this time."
"Wrong," the Sherriff said turning and slapping his hands against his chest, "It's clearly not impossible. Where did the helicopter come from? Who were its pilots? How did we not know about it until just now? Furthermore, where was the air controller when all of this happened? Whoever was at that terminal is on the long list of people I want to talk to."
"There's more, too," Jessica said, "I followed the McCarthy brothers when they went on their scouting run to check the tracks before the lumber line headed into the woods."
"That's right!" the Sherriff said smiling. He was silhouetted now by the raging inferno behind him and closing in on Jessica, "Did you bring them back?"
"They're in the truck," she said, throwing her thumb back over her shoulder "But the tracks were pulled up. They were beyond out of commission. Nearby there was one set of footprints all over the place, possibly female."
"Female?" the Sherriff called over his shoulder as he lumbered now toward the pickup truck, "That puts me in a right curious sort of mood."
With the Sherriff off to interrogate the McCarthy brothers on their findings, Jessica walked over to the small crowd that had gathered near the gated airfield's other entrance. Three deputies were standing with wooden partitions and two squad cars. They were talking calmly to the excited crowd, trying to introduce reason to the mob. In the mist, dispersed by the fire, they could see the situation unfolding before them. On the other side of the field the EMTs were zipping a man-sized bag shut and wheeling it into the back of an ambulance. With
great care the ambulance was closed and began its slow drive back to the hospital with lights on, but siren off. The dancing spectacle drove through the temporarily clear field and into the mist where it disappeared. Left behind, standing at the end of the two long tracks the ambulance had trailed in the black mud, Jessica saw Willard. He was staring into the white void beyond.
"Willard Nayfack?" Jessica said, "Hey are you okay?" He turned and looked at her for a moment before suddenly recognizing her. He didn't say anything, but nodded, then looked back at the helicopters surrounded by flame. For a moment there was a question brewing in his open mouth, then he closed it and blinked, looking her in the eye uncertainly. He looked like he was going to run.
She moved toward him and, in keeping with her training, attempted to soothe him for a moment by placing her hand against his shoulder. He was clearly in some sort of shock. She was aware that it affected different people in different ways. And yet, this was Willard. She knew him. He made a gasping sound as she touched him, causing her to recoil her hand. And then he was fine. As if coming out of a spell, he half-smiled and said,
"What is it, officer?"
"Who was that?" she asked.
"Walt got caught in the fire. I was supposed to head down there, but then he went instead," Willard was shaking his head, drawing his shoulders up and shivering in the cool breeze, "Such a strange feeling. He was so sure he could see the future. Maybe this was how his dream came true."
"Let's talk about what you remember before the fire," Jessica said, "Was there any transmission from the second helicopter before it crashed?"
"No," Willard said, "Nothing. Just the transmission from Chance. Is he okay?"
***
With the wail of sirens blaring in the distance, Andrea hummed quietly to herself, quartering her last chicken of the day. The price of quartered chicken would have to be reduced to reflect the increase in temporary supply this year. Paradoxically, along with cattle, the number of chickens that had been slaughtered and placed in cold storage had increased this year thanks to a shortage in feed. Since her husband had stopped working, Andrea had started to understand the complex workings of his trade. She had never realized there was so much pricing involved. Rather than a simple whim of the salesman, it was a complex system of estimating demand, taking stock of the available supplies, and calibrating prices accordingly.