Frostpoint

by Kenny Soward

  The rest of the crawler soldiers backed up, their heads swiveling in confusion. They were waiting for someone to intervene, their loyalties shifting and changing between the two leaders like a fluttering wind. Some of them turned their weapons on the Good Folk, but didn’t pull their triggers.

  Sara saw Ivan backing down the hill with Zoe still in his arms. If the two sides opened fire now, Sara might not see her little girl alive again. And Sara was sure to be caught in the crossfire herself.

  She held up both hands in a desperate attempt to keep the sides from firing on one another. Tension balanced in the air, and Sara felt like she was walking on a tightrope wire. One faint wind, one tug on the line, and she’d tumble down to a hard landing.

  Katrya’s blade flashed toward Yi like the head of a snake. Yi grunted and countered with a strong kick to the woman’s face. Katrya snarled, her lip cut and bloodied.

  Ivan backed farther down the hill.

  Sara’s eyes darted to Ivan and Zoe. Zoe stared back at Sara, her eyes terrified the farther she was pulled away from her mother. Then the little girl’s face twisted in sudden rage. She cried out, flailing her arms and legs madly. One of Zoe’s fingers struck Ivan in the eye. Throwing his hand to his face, Ivan allowed the little girl to squirm out of his grip and sprint for Sara.

  “Run, Zo! Run!” Sara shouted frantically, the last word rising in a scream.

  The Russian charged after Zoe, his big paws reaching out for her, his face a mask of fury.

  Sara shoved the little girl behind her before raising the rifle she’d picked up off the ground. It was either Yi’s or Katrya’s, she didn’t know. And she didn’t know if the safety was on, either, but she didn’t have time to check. She pulled the trigger and held on to the weapon for dear life.

  To Ivan’s detriment, the safety was off.

  Bullets pounded the big Russian’s chest and exited his back in a spray of blood. Skin and pieces of his combat uniform flew off like confetti. His eyes went wide as his brain caught up with the destruction of his flesh. The force of the automatic rifle setting caused the barrel to rise in Sara’s hands, stitching a quick line of bullets across the big Russian’s face before Sara released the trigger and got the gun back under control.

  With a desperate, animalistic cry, Sara pulled her daughter against her side with one arm as she swept the barrel of her rifle across the crawlers.

  Good Folk and crawlers opened fire on each another, the air suddenly filled with flying lead. Steven yelled something about a grenade before an explosion shook the ground, causing Sara to stumble as the world began to crumble.

  A new sound reached her ears. It was a fluttering sound, like a cloud of bumblebees or a whirling thrum of rotor blades that was altogether mechanical and fluid. She looked up into the sky as a helicopter swept around the curve of the mountain and hung suspended in the air just above the road.

  The side door was open, and a huge gun pointed down at them. The gun’s operator hesitated for a moment as people shifted in the helicopter cabin. Then the gun swung down at the crawlers hiding behind the cars along the guardrail. The gun spat fire, cracking the cars with metallic pinging noises. Sparks flew from the tops of the vehicles, and one crawler’s head split in half and nearly disintegrated as bullets ripped through them.

  Crawlers dove for cover or lifted their rifles toward the helicopter, firing back. Sara squinted upward, heart pounding as wind whipped across the road and bullets pounded the concrete all around them. There was nowhere to run from the storm, nowhere to hide. Throwing an arm protectively over Zoe, Sara turned the girl’s face away from the shrapnel and prayed they didn’t die.

  Chapter 9

  Jake, Gatlinburg, Tennessee | Moments earlier.

  The helicopter flew around the south side of the mountain along the main road before following curvy Pine Bluff Road around to the west. There, right on the side of the hill near a row of cabins, all hell was breaking loose.

  Over a dozen black-clad crawlers were stretched out across the road exchanging fire with some locals who seemed to be defending the cabins. Several crawlers already lay dead in the road, and the locals looked to have taken their share of punishment, too. Men and women in civilian clothes lay dead over a long, roundwood gate that stretched across the road, and a trail of smoke rose through the air where it appeared a mortar had gone off.

  “Crawlers spotted,” Jenkins’s voice cut through the generic headset Jake was wearing. “Permission to fire.”

  The red-haired Jenkins squatted behind the .50 cal gun nicknamed Clara on the right side of the helicopter, sunglasses covering her eyes as she waited for targets.

  Spitz, the computer nerd, sat strapped into one of the seats opposite Collier and Ostrosky, hands gripping the arm rests and keeping his heels locked against the computer box tucked beneath his seat.

  Jake clung to a ceiling bar that ran down the center of the helicopter’s rear cabin as the aircraft cut back and forth across the sky.

  He spotted a pair of crawlers at the edge of the road, where they were preparing to launch another mortar. “There, along the guardrail!” Jake stretched out, nearly losing his grip on the bar, and tapped Jenkins’s shoulder, pointing down.

  The soldier nodded and directed Clara’s barrel in that direction.

  “Crawlers confirmed,” the co-pilot said. “Fire at will, Jenkins.”

  Immediately, almost eagerly, Jenkins pulled the trigger on her weapon. Jake had fired many guns in his lifetime, and standing behind Clara was a completely different experience. The bullets seemed to pour from her barrel like molten lead, chewing up the vehicles below them, popping tires and sending glass flying in all directions.

  The two crawlers firing mortars had a moment to look up before the bullets chewed them up and melted them like hot slag poured over papier-mâché.

  “Get ’em, Jenkins,” Collier cheered from his seat.

  Both Collier and Ostrosky held their weapons tightly across their laps in preparation to disembark, hungry for action.

  “Getting them.” Jenkins’s voice was edged with tension, though she maintained her cool professionalism as she continued to rake the crawlers without mercy. Her ammunition feed never stopped, and big shell casings pinged around inside the helicopter cabin like a brass rainstorm.

  Jake kept his eyes turned away from the flying casings as he tried to determine what was happening below. The pilot kept them moving around so they weren’t a stationary target, and looking down over the sheer drop made Jake’s stomach turn with nausea. Just as he thought about sitting down in his seat, he spotted something that made his heart thud heavy in his chest.

  A woman was running up the road toward the roundwood gate with a little girl in her arms. The woman’s light brown hair and sturdy frame were achingly familiar to Jake. And the little girl’s curly brown locks bounced lightly as she was jostled around. They’d never been able to figure out where Zoe had gotten her hair. No one in the family had curls like that, even though the girl’s green eyes matched her mom’s, and her smile matched Jake’s.

  Jake pulled the headset microphone down over his lips. “That’s Sara and Zoe down there. It’s…my wife and daughter.”

  “Where?” Jenkins asked, releasing the trigger as she lifted Clara’s barrel just slightly.

  “Near the gate, running toward the cabins,” Jake stated, his voice rising as he failed to control the fear. “The woman and a little girl.”

  “Roger that,” Jenkins said with calm intensity. “Consider them covered.”

  The gunner resumed firing, this time choosing targets farther south along the road. Jake looked down to see one of the terrorists retreating down Pine Bluff Road with a suitcase-sized box exactly like the one Jake and Spitz had rigged to intercept the crawler transmissions.

  Destroying it might be a major blow to them, so Jake tapped on Jenkins’s shoulder to direct her to fire on the man.

  Bullets ricocheted inside the helicopter’s cabin, so Jake jerked to the si
de and dove for his seat, trying to make himself small inside the cabin. Something zipped through the air and struck the helicopter with a jarring impact.

  The aircraft jerked and tilted hard to the left where it fell away from the mountain. Then it banked back to the right. Jake squeezed his eyes shut and held on tight, figuring they were going down. They would either tumble down into oblivion or slam into the mountainside.

  He could only hold on. Hold on and wait.

  Chapter 10

  Sara, Gatlinburg, Tennessee| 9:02 a.m., Tuesday

  Once the gunfire was directed away from her, Sara scooped up her daughter and ran as hard as she could toward the cabins. Steven was by the roundwood gate, holding out his arms despite the blood leaking through his jacket. Sara took his hand and allowed him to pull her along faster. They ducked beneath the gate and ran toward Natasha’s cabin.

  Barbara was suddenly there beside them, running even as she fired over her shoulder at the crawlers. Sara stomped up the stairs and pitched Zoe through the open front door where Natasha was waiting to take her. Sara turned and pointed her rifle back down the road.

  The last of the crawlers disappeared around the bend, out of sight. Sara didn’t know what had happened between Yi and Katrya, and she didn’t care. Two Good Folk lay on the ground, crawling toward the cabin, while several others would never move again.

  Steven leapt off the porch and went to help them just as Natasha came outside. “Karen has Zoe,” the woman reassured Sara. “But Dion got hit.”

  “Take care of Dion,” Sara said, coming down the steps and laying her rifle down. “We’ve got more wounded—”

  “Sara, look!” Barbara pointed at the sky as she walked slowly into the middle of the road.

  Sara’s head jerked up and saw the helicopter that had saved them bending in a wide arc toward the mountain. Its engine trailed smoke, and a chunk of the fuselage had been taken out of the engine like a shark’s bite. The pilots were desperately trying to bring the helicopter under control as it disappeared around the curve and out of sight.

  “It’s going down!” Sara shouted to Barb. “There might be injured.”

  “Take a radio,” Natasha said, tossing one through the air to Sara.

  The radio passed through Sara’s hands and hit her chest, but she squeezed her arms together and caught it. And then she and Barbara sprinted up the road to find the crashed chopper.

  As Sara ran, a strange feeling nagged at her brain. She’d only glanced at the helicopter for a second as it fired down on the crawlers, and the chaos at the time kept her from fully registering what she was seeing. There’d been a gunner and another man standing up in the crew area. He’d appeared to be hanging on and looking down at them. While Sara couldn’t see his face, there’d been something familiar about the way he stood and his broad shoulders as he balanced inside the rocking aircraft.

  She pumped her legs faster, leaving Barbara behind, her breath turning ragged as the steep incline took its toll on her. Smoke wafted through the air. It was oil and grease and something like burning plastic. Wrinkling her nose, Sara followed the offensive smell until they came around the next bend to face a cut in the mountain where two cabins sat upon a tree-covered hillside.

  The helicopter had landed on one of the cabins, the pilot skillfully using the roof as a cushion. The tail was pointed toward the road, broken in two, while the body had rolled on its side as it slid down away from the cabin’s wreckage.

  Sara moved around to the far side, away from the smoking engine, and climbed a short stretch of hill to stand next to the belly of the craft. She reached up to grab the lip, but she couldn’t make it. Barbara came running up and placed her back against the belly, forming her hands into a cradle.

  “I’ll boost you,” the tall girl said.

  Sara nodded and put her foot into Barbara’s cradled hands. Barbara leaned back and lifted so that Sara fell against the belly of the craft. Grabbing the lip, Sara swung her leg up and squatted on the edge with her hand on one of the seats.

  Sara could see eight feet to the other side where people had spilled through the open door into the mud when the chopper had flipped on its side. It was a miracle they hadn’t been crushed.

  There were three people still buckled into their seats. Two were soldiers. The third appeared to be a civilian who sat across from the soldiers, staring blankly into his lap. One of the soldiers, a tall man with his knees sticking up awkwardly, groaned and began looking around.

  “Ostrosky?” The tall soldier nudged the man next to him.

  “Are you okay?” Sara asked, turning her head away as a waft of smoke drifted by. Once it passed, she turned back to them and raised her voice. “Is everyone okay?”

  "I think so,” said the tall soldier, and he started to unbuckle himself from his seat. “I think Ostrosky is knocked out, though.”

  Sara turned her attention to the civilian. “How about you?

  “I’m okay,” the man said, looking around as Sara helped him get unbuckled.

  “Can you climb out yourself?”

  “Yeah,” the man said. Sara helped him as he grabbed onto the edge of the floor and pulled himself up to sit on the edge next to Sara. Then he swung his legs to the other side and slid to the ground with Barbara’s help.

  Another waft of the smoke hit Sara right in the face. She coughed, eyes burning, nearly falling from her precarious position on the edge.

  “We need to hurry,” she called down. “This thing’s on fire.”

  The tall soldier climbed out of his seat over the unconscious Ostrosky and lowered himself to the muddy ground to help the two who had fallen through.

  The man was tall enough to easily reach Sara if he raised his arms.

  A man dressed in worker’s coveralls and a military helmet stood up and brushed himself off. He was just two feet below her, and Sara could reach out and touch him if she wanted to.

  “Hey down there,” Sara said. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  The head paused, shook itself, and turned upward. Sara’s heart skipped a beat when she saw the man’s face. It was Jake, only not Jake. His cheeks had a slightly sunken appearance, eyes with dark circles beneath them, and a growth of dark brown beard covered his jaw and cheeks. A streak of blood ran from his temple to his chin, and he appeared dazed from the wreck.

  Yet, his baby-blue eyes hadn’t changed at all. They were still the same soft powdery color she remembered them to be. The same eyes she’d seen every night in her dreams for the past several weeks. They were her husband’s eyes.

  “Jake?”

  A smile creased Jake’s beard, and his expression turned apologetic. “Hi, honey. Sorry I’m late. I had some issues getting home.”

  Sara stared at Jake a moment, then she reached back and tossed the radio down to Barbara. “Tell Natasha and Steven we’ve got wounded up here. Tell them to bring a car if any still run. Tell them…” Sara’s words trailed off as emotion welled up inside her, and she had to wipe away the tears that blurred her vision.

  The cockpit door flew open, and Sara turned her head to watch one of the pilots climb out and stand on the side of his seat. “My co-pilot is knocked out, but I think I can get him out.”

  Sara nodded and turned back to those trapped inside. Jake and the tall soldier unbuckled Ostrosky, then Jake climbed up to the edge and squatted next to Sara. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and held his arms out to take Ostrosky as the tall soldier handed him up.

  Sara’s skin burned pleasantly where Jake’s lips had touched her, and she worked with a pleasant buzz in her belly and newfound strength as they lifted Ostrosky over the edge and handed him down to Barbara and the civilian.

  The tall soldier named Collier handed up a dazed woman with auburn hair next, and together Jake and Sara lifted her over the edge and handed her down like they’d done with Ostrosky.

  The fire coming from the engine kicked up a notch, and Sara heard the flames lick upward like a campfire. Still, the tall soldier
had not tried to climb out. Instead, he seemed to be digging around in the wreckage for something.

  Jake threw his arm up to cover his face from the smoke and flames. “What are you doing down there, Collier?”

  “Take this,” Collier shouted, handing Jake a backpack and a suitcase-sized piece of equipment that Sara immediately recognized as a Box. Jake and Sara took them and handed them down to Barbara and the civilian.

  “My gear!” The civilian snatched the backpack and hugged it to his chest.

  “And this,” Collier shouted, handing Jake a wide-barreled machine gun, which Jake grasped and lifted with a grunt before handing it down on the other side. Sara instantly recognized it as the weapon that had chewed the crawlers to pieces back at the cabins.

  “Stand back,” Collier shouted. “I’m coming up.”

  Sara and Jake leapt off the edge and stood back from the belly of the chopper as Collier pulled his lanky form over the side and dropped to the ground.

  “A little help,” the pilot called, and Jake and Sara rushed to help him get the wounded pilot the rest of the way out of the cockpit as the engine flames grew into a roar.

  The blood on the pilot’s flight suit told Sara he’d been hit by bullets, not just knocked around inside the craft.

  “We’ve got to get clear before it blows,” the uninjured pilot said, and Sara believed him. The flames had become a full-on roar, and smoke covered most of the aircraft. Jake and the uninjured pilot got beneath the wounded pilot’s shoulders and carried him down the hill while Sara helped Barbara with the auburn-haired soldier.