Maverick glanced over at Mark and the two of them suddenly both rose, moving for the cockpit.
Rosa saw the look of purpose in Maverick's eyes and the small smirk that she was already learning to worry about.
“Hey...” she started, before Maverick stepped into the cockpit, turning the pilot in his seat and slugging him dead in the chin.
“Ow,” Maverick said, shaking his hand, and tossing the pilot aside. “Hard jaw.”
The pilot groaned, starting to sit up. As Maverick took the controls, Mark shrugged, turning and knocking the dazed pilot the rest of the way out.
Rosa hadn't even finished her inhale as one of the soldiers started to his feet.
“What the hell...”
But he stopped as Allison's pistol was suddenly pressed against his ear, Lucas, wrapped in a bundle, still hanging nonchalantly off of one arm.
The second soldier turned to find Cameron holding a rifle, comfortably straddled across his lap, aimed dead at his chest across the cabin.
Bud and Mr. Wilson nonchalantly relieved the two soldiers of their weapons.
The first soldier, whose badge identified as Johnson, turned to Garner.
“Are you just going to let them do this?”
Garner glanced back at Shanna.
Then he shrugged, nodding to Maverick.
“Well,” he said, “we're already in the air, and right now, he's our only pilot.”
At that, the chopper suddenly skewed sharply with the crosswind. Maverick cursed under his breath as he wrestled the joystick.
Mark looked at him sideways, and then back at the pilot he'd just knocked-out.
“Say,” he said, belatedly, “you can fly this thing, can't you?”
“Crashed the last one,” Maverick admitted. “But I think I've got the hang of it now.”
Mark promptly buckled himself in.
The console radio barked General Rhodes' voice.
“Johnson? Are you there? For Christ's sake, we've got confirmed incoming, are you away?”
“Well, well,” Mark said. “General Rhodes.”
He picked up the radio.
“Johnson here, sir.”
“What's your status, son? Incoming is imminent. Are you in the clear? Have you got our asset?”
Mark glanced back at their asset. Shanna smiled back, holding her fingers in an okay-sign.
“We've got her, sir,” Mark said. “We are in the clear and we are on our way. Keep a candle burning for us.”
Maverick took them up in altitude, and finally seemed to be outracing the storm.
The weather, however, suddenly wasn't the problem anymore, as the darkened sky abruptly lit up like a torch.
Now the heavy winds were all of a sudden at their back, as the blast wave hit, forcing the storm right along with it, evaporating the very water in the air, igniting bursts of lightning like charging electrodes.
Maverick rode the chopper like a surfer on a suicide wave, his voice a long, howling yodel.
“Ohhhhh shhheeeiiiiittt!”
Rosa squeezed her eyes shut, not certain if this maniac was her new hero, or if he was going to kill them all yet.
The chopper spun crazily, the passengers clinging to their seats.
Around them, the world had gone white, the water-vapor burned into a soup of fog.
The chopper leveled out and they hovered somewhere in the middle of the smoky mist, hanging in a ghostly twilight, utterly blind in the solid white.
Maverick let the chopper ride along the buffeting wind-currents generated by the blast wave.
Finally, the fog began to dissipate.
The high-energy still sparked balls of lightning and cracks of thunder, but the storm itself had been literally blown-out.
“I think we're clear,” Maverick said, eliciting a collective sigh from the cabin.
Shanna, however, still had her eyes shut.
Rosa caught the sudden frown.
“Shanna?” Cameron said, alarmed. “Something wrong?”
But before she could speak, there came another rumble, this one louder than the thunder.
An explosion, coming from below, followed immediately by another.
Then there came a whole series of blasts, ever louder, like a run of firecrackers, all lighting up each other.
“Those aren't munitions,” Garner said. “Those are demo-blasts.”
Now there was a whole cacophony of explosions.
Rosa looked out the window as the chopper held steady, looking down at the mountain below.
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
As far as the eye could see, the surrounding peaks began to explode – staccato blasts that kept on growing, echoing for miles.
There was a geothermic belch as the mountains responded.
“What's happening?” Rosa breathed.
“Escalation,” Shanna said, without opening her eyes. “Exponential escalation. Beyond all possible reason.”
She shook her head.
“What's worse?” she whispered.
Below them, the earth visibly rocked, as the very geography itself seemed to blur – the vibrations of a massive quake triggered by seismic blasts along the entire range.
They watched from above as the world seemed to break itself in half.
Chapter 61
Naomi pulled on her harness, trying to follow Jonah as he was buffeted in the aftermath of the blast wave.
The wreckage of the jet impacted the jagged precipice below and exploded in a flaming ball that immediately lit the surrounding forest.
Jonah, hanging limp in his harness, was following the same trajectory, and barely missed the flames as his parachute piled into the trees.
Straining on her own chute, Naomi angled in after him.
She hit the rocky slope, bracing the impact with her feet, cutting her harness away lest she get sucked by the wind right back up into the sky.
Jonah had been caught in the trees, and she could see him dangling ten feet from the ground.
Below him, ready to leap, were three sickle-claws.
Naomi was reaching for her pistol before she even blurted her first curse.
She dropped the first of them with a single shot, but missed the second as it leaped, catching Jonah's harness with its claws, and pulling him down.
“Bastards!” Naomi screamed, starting to tear-up.
She aimed her pistol again, fighting the tremble in her cold hands, controlling herself as her Lieutenant Lucas had taught her.
You had to be cool to be an effective killer, and Naomi found herself emotionally involved.
She let out a slow breath, shutting her eyes for one second.
When she opened them, both dromaeosaurs were perched on Jonah's chest, claws extended, cutting at his harness.
Naomi dropped them in two shots.
Sucking her breath, staying cool, she holstered her pistol and ran to where Jonah had fallen.
She kicked away the dead sickle-claws and bent over him. She tried checking for a pulse, but her own hands were too cold and numb to tell if it was there or not.
But as the straps fell away, his head dropped, utterly limp, making a loud bonk on the rock.
It was a chilling sound – colder than the ice in the storm.
Then she heard a groan.
Jonah's eyes blinked. “Owwww.”
Naomi chirped a brief laughter, almost limp with relief, until she looked in his eyes.
He wasn't focusing. And his breathing was shallow.
Eleven months ago, Naomi had watched her husband die in a fiery explosion.
Today was more intimate.
She felt unwilling tears start to fall.
“You did it,” she whispered. “You pulled it off. And you still haven't killed us.”
Jonah tried to smile.
“Not... yet.”
His voice was a failing whisper.
“If I died tonight,” he said, “at least I got to have you.”
He reached up
and squeezed her fingers gently.
Then his hand fell away.
Naomi huddled over Jonah's still form.
She found herself remembering what she'd said to him back at the base – about their night together. At the time, she had thought she was being honest.
What she had actually been doing was rationalizing, trying to preserve a memory.
Lieutenant Lucas Walker had been her husband – he had been the best man she had ever met – ever dreamed of – her hero.
Every girl believes her man is special, but her man was one-of-a-kind.
The very idea of being happy with someone else, let alone some bush-pilot, threatened to cheapen the shrine she kept to him in her heart. And her memory was all she had of him. She didn't even have a picture.
Therefore, Jonah had to be an illusion.
Only now, here at the end, when it didn't matter anymore, did it finally occur to her that she might have simply been lucky enough to have found another good man.
After the end of the world.
Naomi lay her head down on his harness and wept.
And somewhere in the distance, she heard an explosion.
A military brat all her life, Naomi recognized a seismic charge.
There came another. And then a whole string.
Beneath her feet, she felt the first rumbling response in the earth.
Naomi looked up at the sky, where there was nothing but blank, misty white, and decided she was just too tired to run anymore.
As the earth began to shake, she held Jonah close and waited for the end.
But before that happened, she felt the rush of wind and the misty fog directly above was swept away by the blast of a rotor-engine blade.
Naomi looked up as the chopper circled down.
Half-a-dozen armed troops filed out, circling quickly, securing the area.
She'd seen Lucas do this in drills. She could tell this was a tight unit. All-American heroes, just like her man had been.
Naomi felt hands on her arms.
“Ma'am?” one of the soldiers said. “My name is Lieutenant Hicks. Are you injured?”
Naomi looked up at him, shaking her head, then back down at Jonah.
Hicks bent beside him, touching under his chin.
“I got a pulse,” he said. “He's alive.”
Naomi's heart skipped a beat.
“This the guy who was flying the plane?” Hicks asked, running a quick field check, looking for broken bones or obvious bleeding. “The General's gonna wanna meet this fella,” Hicks said. “Let's see if we can keep among the living.”
Beneath them, the ground was shaking harder, and from the nearest peak, came another series of seismic explosions, detonating all across the mountain.
This region was already unstable. It was always a volcanic range, but when the West Coast had broken loose, it triggered tectonic movement across the entire continent.
The Rockies were a natural break point.
“Sir?” one of the other soldiers said. “I think we better be getting the hell out of here.”
Hicks nodded to Naomi.
“On board, ma'am,” he said. “I'll take care of your fella.”
“He's not my...” Naomi began, reflexively, but stopped and simply nodded.
“Please,” she said.
Two other soldiers helped Hicks stretcher-up Jonah's unconscious form, and load him onto the chopper.
As Hicks pulled Naomi on-board, the earth was suddenly rocked again, and this time the quake didn't stop.
“Let's go!” Hicks shouted.
The chopper rose up into the air, even as the mountain began to break itself apart.
Chapter 62
The seismic blasts continued from the Midwestern United States all the way up through Canada.
Tom could see it from space.
And as he watched the mountains literally split the continent down the center, he now recalled all those topography maps, with thermal highlighting.
Kristie said she'd seen the lizards along her trek – and what she'd thought had been a military munitions unit, setting up seismic charges.
Tom was willing to bet those detonations were being set up for months, and no military, no human hand, had anything to do with it.
All those models, he thought, with thermal hotspots highlighted.
Detonation points. Spread out for five-thousand miles.
The semi-dormant volcano range was rumbling back to life. The skies filled with belching clouds of black smoke, from simultaneous eruptions along the entire length of the chain.
Circling in orbit, following the lifeboat's pre-programed path, Tom could see it all.
Tom tried to imagine what was happening on the ground. So far, his hail-frequency on the lifeboat had drawn no response.
He wondered what was waiting for him down there. He wondered if Rhodes would be able to find him once he touched down.
He hoped he landed in water. He also hoped there weren't any giant sharks or crocodile-toothed reptiles.
Perhaps more than anything, Tom hoped he'd get to meet Kristie, who'd been like a snapshot on the wall of his solitary prison cell for almost a year.
The first flames touched the metal of his lifeboat as the pod began re-entry.
After more than eighteen months in space, Major Tom was coming home to Earth.
Chapter 63
The upheaval lasted for the better part of a day.
It was doubtful anyone would ever be able to catalog the total number of eruptions along the entire chain, but the sky had grown nearly black with soot – black as sack-cloth made of hair.
Wildfires ran rampant, and when it was done, a new fault split the continental United States down the middle.
In spots, the broken chasm was separated by miles. All along the break was devastation.
Perched on the east side of the breach, Caesar looked out where the abrupt new canyon had fallen out of the earth.
Across the divide, staring back at him, was Trix.
Velma and the last two pussycats were gone, lost somewhere in the destruction.
Junior hovered at Trix' ankles, mugging at Caesar like a belligerent wolf-pup.
Shanna's aura had faded, but it was not gone. Caesar looked to the west.
He wondered if the rex would follow.
For his part, Caesar had left his tribe behind, and he had no idea how far the seismic upheaval might have spread, or how his people might have fared through it all. That was where his first duty lay.
But he believed he would see Shanna again.
For now, however, the west belonged to the rex.
Trix eyed him back – a dominant pack-leader, full of pregnant hormones – perched on her own side of the divide – simultaneously accepting those terms and claiming the entire region.
The big female rex let out a long trumpeting bellow that sent the message clearly enough.
That's your place. This is mine.
Caesar hooted back – just one parting taunt, before turning and disappearing into the tattered brush.
Trix stood at the opposite peak a moment longer.
And because tyrannosaurs don't think, she just followed her first impulse.
She still felt the light, somewhat more distant now, but having no further concern, Trix began to follow.
Junior tagged along at her heels.
Chapter 64
Maverick took them west as the wall of volcanic ash rose like a cloaked reaper, bigger than the sky.
Still latched in the co-pilot's seat, Mark cautiously unclasped one hand to point forward.
“I was on my way to the coast,” he said. “That was my home.”
Maverick glanced back to the others with a shrug.
Shanna had nodded. “I like that,” she said. “Sold.”
“First star to the left and straight on 'till morning,” Maverick agreed.
Rosa tended to the deposed pilot – Bradbury, according to his badge. A young guy, he eyed Rosa do
ubtfully while she dabbed the blood off his lip, even as Cameron held him good-naturedly at gunpoint.
Johnson and Cooper, the two accosted gunners, found a decidedly less-friendly face as Allison leveled her pistol at the both of them.
At one point, Johnson shifted his feet, as if coiling to make a move, and Bud had uttered one sardonic chuckle, shaking his head mildly.
Cold-bloodedly deliberate, Allison pulled the hammer back on her pistol, even as she bounced Lucas on one knee. Johnson remained compliantly still.
Before long, they were passing over a new range of mountains.
Many of the peaks along the Northwest Cascades had already experienced minor eruptions over the last year, and most remained active, burping periodic smoke.
But the initial break-point had been almost eleven months ago, after San Andreas had broken away, and most of the local peaks were currently winter white.
Further west, the Cascade mountains gave way to what had once been a fertile valley.
Like everywhere, seismic upheaval had left its mark, not to mention giant trampling feet.
The terrain was scarred. New canyons existed where none had before, and entire swaths of forest had been stamped out and burned.
But this one little valley seemed largely untouched.
“There's a commercial airport near here,” Mark directed. “We can refuel.”
That almost got Johnson on his feet, but for the immediate hammer-cock of Allison's pistol.
“We've got to stick to the high-ground,” Johnson objected. “The valley floor's not safe.”
Behind him, Shanna shook her head.
“Not here,” she said. “Not now.”
The air-park was easy to spot among the surrounding farms. Maverick circled them down, cussing at the unfamiliar back rotor, as the chopper's feet landed heavily on the runway.
But they at least settled to a stop without flipping over.
Wilkes and Garner slid open the cabin door.
Garner turned to Johnson and Cooper, holding up their confiscated weapons.
“So,” he said, “you with us, or do we shoot you?”
Johnson and Cooper exchanged glances, then back at Allison's levered pistol, and shrugged, reaching for the rifles.
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