“Please, Tucker,” Mom said, pleading. “Come with me. All of you. Please.”
I looked at Kent and Tori and said, “I’ll do whatever you want. I just don’t want us to split up.”
“I say we go with them,” Kent said quickly. “It can’t be any worse than being lost in the desert.”
I turned to Tori. “What do you think?”
Tori looked at Granger. I saw the hatred she held for him. But I also saw that she was torn. And injured. There was so much that still didn’t make sense. So much we didn’t know. We had already decided that despite his cruel tactics, Granger and SYLO had been protecting Pemberwick Island from the Retros. Was that enough to trust him, in spite of his deadly tactics?
“I guess we have to play the odds,” Tori said. “If you’re willing to go with them, Tucker, I’ll go too.”
“Oh, thank God,” Mom said with total relief.
“Good. Let’s not waste any more time,” Cutter commanded. “Load up.”
Granger made a move to help Tori, but she pulled away. She wanted nothing to do with him.
Kent and I took her arms and helped her toward the helicopter.
“Find a seat and buckle in,” Granger ordered as he took his place up front next to Cutter, who strapped himself into the pilot’s seat. “Put on headsets,” Cutter called to us. “It’ll be about an hour to Catalina.”
We helped Tori climb aboard and saw that seats lined both sides of the chopper, facing the center. Mom sat on one side. I chose the opposite side. Tori sat next to me, and Kent sat next to my mom. We all buckled in and put on headphones.
“Everybody set?” Cutter asked through the intercom.
We all gave him a thumbs-up. The engines whined, and the rotor began to turn. The blades quickly picked up speed, and in minutes we were airborne. The chopper gained altitude quickly, and we got our first good view of the ruins of Area 51.
The destruction was complete. Every last building was either on fire or a charred wreck. There wasn’t a single fighter plane left intact.
I had to agree with Kent. We were seriously badass.
Only one thing disturbed me. It was the shadow I saw launch from the monstrous plane. What exactly was that?
“I don’t care what anybody says,” Kent said through his headset. “It sure looks over to me. They’re done.”
“You need to see something,” Granger said.
I didn’t like the tone of his voice.
We flew north for maybe five minutes, traveling over barren wasteland.
“Bring us a little lower,” Granger ordered Cutter. “Once around quickly. Keep your wits about you.”
The helicopter dropped fast and banked to the right.
“Take a good look,” Granger said.
We all strained to look out of the small windows.
Once my eyes adjusted, I was able to make out detail on the ground.
“Oh my God,” Tori exclaimed.
The desert was littered with the wreckage of a battle. A huge battle. There were downed jet fighters as well as wrecked Retro jets. Hundreds of them. We had seen the aftermath of battles before, but nothing like this. Not only were there untold numbers of downed planes, but also the burned-out remains of tanks and assault vehicles. The ground itself was torn apart from the impact of multiple explosions. The carnage seemed to stretch out for miles in every direction.
We were flying over the physical remains of a nightmare.
“What happened?” were the only words I managed to croak out.
“I’ve seen a lot in my time,” Granger said. “But nothing remotely like this. It was the greatest battle of all time . . . if you could use a word like ‘great’ to describe something this horrible. It’s the night it all began. Hard to believe it was only a few weeks ago.”
I thought I actually detected a hint of emotion in his voice. The steely soldier had a conscience.
“Who won?” Kent asked, cutting right to the chase.
Granger turned around to look at us and said, “That’s yet to be decided. Like Cutter said, wars aren’t determined by a single battle.”
“Look!” Tori shouted. “Is that what I think it is?”
Tucked near the foot of a mountain was another air base. It wasn’t as large as Area 51, and there were no fighter planes on the runways. What was there instead was a massive steel structure that looked like a colossal igloo.
“It is,” I exclaimed. “It’s the same thing they were building in Fenway Park.”
To me it looked like a giant beehive: innocent looking from the outside but hiding danger.
“Look at the base of that thing!” Kent declared frantically. “The big door! Oh man.”
Like the structure being built in Fenway, there was an immense door built into the dome. It was open, and bright light shone from within. A shadow moved through the light. Something was coming out from the depths of the dome.
It was a black fighter plane.
“What is that thing?” I asked.
“That,” Granger replied, “is the gate to hell.”
“Incoming!” Cutter yelled.
The chopper was hit. It shuddered and began to spin. The rotor whined as the craft counter-rotated, desperately clawing at the air to try to maintain altitude. I glanced out of the window to see the ground approaching quickly. We wouldn’t be in the air much longer.
Kent screamed in panic. Tori grabbed my arm.
The SYLO commander was right.
The Retros weren’t done.
Not even close.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
Storm Page 40