by Romi Hart
He indicated a swath of islands south of New Orleans. Riley’s stomach flipped against her best efforts to stay calm. She swallowed hard to get her throat working. “When you say a flock, how many are we talking about?”
The Major scowled at her. She knew him too well to think he disapproved of her speaking out of turn. This team moved way beyond those petty concerns a long time ago. “The pilots didn’t say, which I take to mean there were too many to count.”
The others fell silent—all but Rover. That guy proved his worth a thousand times in battle. He earned his position as the team’s leader. “If that’s the case, it means this whole thing has gone way beyond what the suits in Washington want us to believe.”
“I think we can all safely assume we’ve been told a fraction of the real truth.” The Major circled his stylus. An area of ocean near New Orleans lit up. “This is the area the BLM admits got contaminated by the spill. It doesn’t come anywhere near Biloxi, but with the weather and currents, that means nothing. The slurry could have washed ashore anywhere. For all we know, it traveled farther down the coast, too. It could have contaminated the whole fucking bayou by now.”
“It would have to do a lot more than that to produce these mutations,” Riley pointed out. “We can’t be talking about an isolated spill. There must have been a leak going on for years to change the local wildlife into full-blown, fire-breathing dragons.”
Major Dickerson rounded on her. “You’re not here to discuss conspiracy theories, Lieutenant. You’re here to put those things down before they reach New Orleans. As long as they stay over the Wildlife Management Area, the government can plausibly deny their existence. If they get near New Orleans and millions of people see them flying around, Washington could have a massive PR disaster on their hands.”
Pineapple chortled. “Do you mean like toxic waste mutating gators into dragons isn’t enough of a PR disaster already?”
Major Dickerson pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. He always did that to shut down discussion. “This team will fly out over Biloxi. If last time gives us any indication, the things will come out to meet you. You’ll engage them and shut down as many as you can. If the terrain gives you even the slightest clue that any more of those things are waiting to rise, you’re to bomb the place to kingdom come and leave nothing alive. Are we clear?”
The whole team responded in unison. “Sir! Yes, Sir!”
Despite their apparent enthusiasm, though, Riley could tell her teammates agreed with her. The pontiffs in Washington didn’t want anybody knowing what was really going on, not even the pilots tasked with cleaning up their mess. That wouldn’t stop inquisitive people from seeing the truth. This business couldn’t come from a spill, not even a large spill, and they would never admit the spill was anything but a trifle.
No, she saw these dragons in combat. She fought them in the air and even shot them down. No isolated spill could create those things. They must have been exposed to high concentrations of toxic waste over a long time.
Major Dickerson pitched his stylus on the light table. “You’re dismissed. Be safe out there, all of you.”
The five pilots left the briefing room and headed for the flight hangar. They instinctively assumed their flight formation pattern crossing the runway. They always did even when they weren’t airborne.
Rover took the point with Riley and Bishop side by side behind him. Pineapple and Lancelot brought up the rear. When they first left the briefing room, Pineapple and Lancelot still joked. As they neared the hangar, their conversation changed to anxious murmurs.
“How are the five of us supposed to take on a whole flock of those things?” Pineapple whispered.
“We handled them last time,” Lancelot replied. “We’ll be fine.”
“We handled them last time because there were only three of them,” Pineapple returned. “We teamed up on them. We never could have faced them one on one and the Major said there were more than the chopper pilots could count. This is going to be a bloodbath.”
“Will you shut the fuck up?” Lancelot hissed. “You’re making me nervous.”
“I’m just saying,” Pineapple countered. “How do we know they don’t have hundreds of those things down there?”
“Down where?” Lancelot fired back. “Biloxi is flat as a skillet. They couldn’t be hiding in the razor grass. For Christ’s sake, Pineapple, use your god damned brain for once.”
“I am using it, man,” Pineapple argued. “Think about it. If the spill traveled as far as the Major says, more of those things must be living out in the swamp. We could be in for a serious problem going out there with only five pilots.”
Rover interrupted them by sliding back the hangar door. The scraping sound cut off any more talk. Riley thanked the stars for that. Their speculation only gave voice to all their worst fears. It didn’t help them mount up and go out to face those monsters.
In the short time since this team assembled, Riley and her comrades faced the worst horrors imaginable. The last time she encountered these dragons, they killed two pilots with their fiery breath and destroyed another plane. The pilot survived by ejecting over Lake Pontchartrain.
Rockets and gunfire did nothing to these creatures. Conventional weapons bounced right off their scales. Riley and Rover only succeeded in killing them by pulling a near-suicidal maneuver that almost cost their lives. They circled the dragons’ heads, stalled their engines, and then fired their jets into the dragons’ faces.
The scorching afterburn blinded them and made them crash into the ground. Then the pilots targeted the unprotected flesh connecting the dragons’ wings and limbs to their bodies. The dragons had no other vulnerabilities.
Riley tugged her helmet over her head and climbed into her plane. She was in her zone. She didn’t want to relive the past or to entertain fantasies about the future. She had a job to do. These five planes stood between the dragons and New Orleans—maybe even the whole country. They have to get rid of these things before the monsters decided to start attacking civilian areas.
Rover taxied out of the hangar. Bishop went second—not because of any particular rank order. Riley didn’t care who went first. She and Bishop took turns following Rover in situations like this. Pineapple and Lancelot bickered over the same issue for nearly five minutes before Rover hit the tarmac. He punched his throttle and his plane rocketed into the air.
The instant he gunned the engine, all chatter died. One after the other, the pilots took to the sky. They climbed to twenty thousand feet and resumed their formation.
Rover’s deep voice crackled in Riley’s ear. “Passing Kisatchie National Forest.”
“Copy that,” Bishop clipped back. “False River coming up fast. A hundred miles to New Orleans.”
“Keep your radar open for any unfriendlies.” Rover’s head swiveled to one side. “Anything on your side, Pocahontas?”
“Nothing yet,” Riley replied. “If they came from Biloxi, they might not have migrated this far inland yet.”
“Yet,” Rover muttered.
The team fell silent again. No one wanted to think about what lay ahead. Riley let her hands pilot the plane. She dove into herself and went through a few cycles of her biofeedback routine, but it didn’t help her right now.
Dragons. The Navy made this team sign non-disclosure declaration as part of their security clearance, but Riley would never tell a living soul about the dragons. No one would believe her. Who in their right mind would believe a toxic spill off the Louisiana coast could change local wildlife into these deadly dragons?
Pineapple’s voice pierced her brain. “Holy fucking shit! There they are! Where the fuck did they come from?”
The whole team spun around to look, but it was too late. Five enormous dragons rose out of thin air on Riley’s port wingtip. In a fraction of a second, they dwarfed the fighters.
“Evasive maneuvers!” Rover roared. “Split off and get behind them.”
Riley slammed her stick hard to the left. The plane tumbled si
deways and she hit the throttle with everything she had. Bishop rolled the opposite way and Rover veered straight up. He climbed over the dragons’ heads and dove around in a reverse loop to flank them.
The minute she got out of the way, thirty enemy reptiles swooped into sight. Their giant wings blocked out the sky. They arched their scaly heads to eye the jets.
Lancelot peeled right, too, but Pineapple didn’t react fast enough. He dipped his wing, but a massive green monster anticipated him. It dodged in front of him and unleashed a torrential jet of fire from its mouth. It incinerated the plane in an instant. Pineapple’s weapons detonated in the heat and a muffled concussion rattled Riley’s windshield.
“Pineapple!” she shrieked. “No!”
“Pull it together, Lieutenant!” Rover boomed. “Converge! Converge! We’ll pull the same routine as last time. It’s the only way to kill them.”
“We can’t converge, Sir! There are too many of them.” Riley fought down the urge to shriek in terror. She’d never seen so many of these things in one place. “They’re adapting. They’re acting like they knew we were coming.”
“They can’t be,” he snapped. “They’re animals.”
“What are they doing out here, then?” Bishop cut in. “How did they get so far inland? They were supposed to be in Biloxi.”
Before he could get the words out, the dragons grouped into a huddle in mid-air. Then they rotated outward. They faced the planes sweeping in all directions to stay out of their line of fire.
Riley’s heart raced faster. Everywhere she turned, those monsters watched her with their wicked, brutal glares. They traced her flight no matter where she went. Any second now, one of them would unload on her and that would be it.
She had to think. She had to come up with some way to tackle these creatures. Rover seemed to be going through the same quandary in spite of what he said. He circled the dragons again and again without making any move.
The dragons rounded on the four planes no matter where they went. No one could get behind them. The longer this went on, the more Riley became convinced of the horrible truth. The dragons must remember or know the maneuver she and Rover used last time.
That was impossible, though, wasn’t it? She and Rover killed all the dragons they faced last time. None of these could have seen it, much less remember it.
Every move they made solidified the realization in her mind. They were defending themselves against that and that alone. They refused to let any plane get behind them. They kept their backs to each other and pointed all their razor heads outward.
The four remaining pilots buzzed around them in confusion. One thought dominated Riley’s thoughts: stay out of their fire. She didn’t give a shit now if she shot any of them down. She sure as fuck didn’t care if any civilians saw the battle. She couldn’t stay in one place or their fire would rip her apart the way they killed Pineapple.
Rover’s voice belched down the coms. “Listen up. Here’s what we’re going to do. Bishop, you cover my tail. Pocahontas, you….”
He never finished. The dragons broke formation. The cluster shattered and they launched into space all at once. They exploded their grouping in a starburst pattern and four at a time went after each plane.
In seconds, Riley found herself racing for her life. Those things gained on her at every wing beat. She pounded her rudder to the right and banked, but they matched her every move to the micron.
Adrenaline torched her insides. She couldn’t think. Evade, she told herself. Evade! but she couldn’t evade. She could only fly and hope to High Heaven they didn’t catch her.
That was a stupid thing to hope. These monsters could outfly any plane. Two of them soared up alongside. They fluttered at each of her wingtips taking all the time in the world. She glanced behind her and saw that horrible green fiend riding up her ass.
The instant she saw him, he locked his eyes on her with murderous intent. He opened his mouth and her life flashed before her eyes.
“Heads up, Pocahontas!” Her spirits soared at the sound. Bishop came burning down the wind with another five dragons snapping at his tail. He darted right and left, but they cocked their wings to hem him in.
He streaked out of the sky going a hundreds of miles an hour. He zoomed straight at Riley and fired three rockets in rapid succession. One of them slammed her righthand enemy in the head. It peeled off, but the left-hand one only dove aside. The rocket sizzled under it and plowed into the ground far below.
Bishop opened fire with his guns. He peppered her adversaries with bullets. They sparked on the lizards’ scales and did no damage. He shrieked closer and closer with those things crowding him all the way. He would have collided with Riley’s plane, but at the last second, he yanked his stick back and whizzed upward. She lost sight of him. Now she was on her own again.
One more frantic glance over her shoulder brought all the terror and desperation crashing back on her shoulders. That hideous beast lunged for her and snapped his fangs.
The stick went slack in her hand and she stared at the demon menacing her from behind. The afterburn deflected off his cheeks. He closed his eyelids for a second, but that blast of heat did him no harm. He almost seemed to enjoy it.
What the hell was she seeing? That maneuver she pulled with Rover wouldn’t do anything to these creatures. The afterburn didn’t hurt him. Whatever else this thing was, he was different from the dragons the team fought last time. Maybe they adapted to that, too.
If they did, she was sunk. She couldn’t use weapons or anything else to defeat these things. She was finished.
In front of her shocked eyes, the monster made one more catastrophic dive for her. He flew faster than she ever imagined. He was just toying with her back there. He could kill her whenever he wanted.
He gave an Earth-shattering bite. His fangs punctured the fuselage and the plane shuddered. The engines coughed and the cockpit lurched under her. Rover’s voice thundered in her ear. “Eject, Pocahontas! That’s an order! Eject now! Eject! Eject!”
She froze staring at her death stalking her from behind. She couldn’t put her thumb on the eject button. This was her only chance at survival, but she couldn’t move.
Just then, the dragon to her left veered in. He slammed his iron frame into her plane. The wing snapped. The jet jerked away and the engines failed. The craft tumbled into a tailspin plummeting straight toward the ground.
The blow knocked Riley out of her stupor. She crammed her thumb onto the button. The windshield sailed back and the full brunt of rushing air hit her helmet. A powerful ripping motion tore her from her seat.
The next thing she knew, she was soaring through the clear blue sky. Dragons fluttered everywhere. Her plane raced away without her on its death dive to nowhere.
The huge green monster hovered over her head. He arched his neck and watched her flutter at the end of her parachute. She floated down, down, down and left Rover and Bishop and Lancelot to their fate.
The dense Louisiana forest rushed up at her fast. She made out roads and streams and fields. Houses and buildings dotted the landscape. She tried to steer for a field, but thirty feet off the ground, a gust of wind caught her chute. Against all her efforts to guide herself away, it puffed under her and swept her several miles south.
She kicked herself for not checking her location before she ejected. Never mind. She could check her GPS as soon as she landed.
That confounded wind wouldn’t leave her alone. It blew her miles away over some nameless bayou. Just when she hoped it would deposit her somewhere convenient, it died without warning. It dropped her straight into a swamp and the slimy water closed over her head.
2
Riley floundered to break the surface, but her parachute blocked her efforts. She pawed at it trying to move it out of the way. She sensed her air running out and struggled to free herself.
She did her best to remain calm, but the last particle of oxygen ran out all too soon. She coughed and swallowed ten or twelve
mouthfuls of filthy water before she managed to get out from under the chute.
She slapped the saturated fabric away and spluttered for air. She dog-paddled in one place for a second retching the water out of her lungs. In the midst of that, she felt her harness towing her underwater again. She clawed at the clips, but her fingers slipped in the ooze.
She kicked to keep her head above water while she extricated herself from this mess. When she got loose, she treaded water for a while trying to get her brain working. She couldn’t stay here. She dragged her sodden form to the nearest bank and hauled herself out.
Once she got on solid ground, she collapsed on her back panting for breath. She couldn’t bring herself to get up. Every limb weighed a ton. The whole scene from a few minutes ago kept repeating in her mind.
She nearly lost her life to those infernal dragons. They killed Pineapple. For all she knew, her teammates were already dead. She cracked an eye open, but she couldn’t see anything but endless sky in all directions.
At least she was alive. She was somewhere in Louisiana, but she had no idea where. The Navy would come and find her as soon as she activated her homing beacon.
The surreal confusion and anguish of the dog fight haunted her for longer than she expected. She let herself lie where she was. She dripped water into the grass and did her best to calm down.
The sun felt good on her face, but her wet clothes chilled her in spite of the heat. She had to change and she couldn’t do that lying here.
She pulled herself into a sitting position and rummaged her pockets. She found her GPS unit, but when she depressed the power button, it wouldn’t turn on. Damned thing. She couldn’t activate her locater beacon, either.
Whatever. How lost could she be? She just had to find a road and maybe a phone. As soon as she called Major Dickerson, he’d be able to trace her call and pick her up. He would take her back to Barksdale and that would be it.
She stuffed the unit back in her pocket and looked around. Dense vegetation surrounded her on all sides. A slick of motionless water glistened before her eyes. Her parachute covered half of it. The rest of it disappeared into the murky brown slurry.