I’d told him the story of the video the Denver station had played soon after the world began spinning toward anarchy, footage captured by a driver trying to flee from the mile high city with his family, only to have their route of escape cut off by a sleek black Apache attack helicopter that fired upon the convoy of civilian automobiles.

  “This is an old warbird,” I told him. “And he’s not carry—”

  What I glimpsed through the binoculars ended the incorrect observation I was about to convey. The Huey turned sharply, pointing north up the valley, giving a momentarily clear glimpse of its front in silhouette, revealing the pods hanging from stubby pylons on either side of its fuselage.

  “Miniguns,” I said.

  I’d seen enough war movies and military documentaries to be fairly certain that the multi-barreled weapons mounted to either side of the aircraft were modern versions of the venerable Gatling gun, capable of spitting thousands of rounds per minute at a target. Chewing it to pieces from a distance.

  Neil swung his shotgun around from his back and held it at the ready, an instinctive move. Or a fatalistic one. Going down without a fight was not in either of our natures.

  But there was no fight, and no one was going down. Yet.

  “It’s still heading north,” Neil observed.

  I nodded against the binoculars, lowering them and looking to my friend as he shifted his gaze to me, the both of us realizing at that instant just where the black helicopter was heading.

  My refuge.

  We began running together, down the slope, cutting across the tangled, snowy landscape at an angle, racing straight for my house. Straight for Grace and Krista. Concealment worried us no more as we vaulted obstacles. The limbs of one felled pine snagged my foot as I attempted a running leap over it, sending me tumbling. I rolled down the slope twenty yards before recovering. When I was moving again at speed I was half a football field behind Neil. He was just visible through the trees at the base of the hill beyond the gully, scrambling up the slippery slope. I pushed hard to catch up, yelling at him to wait, but he was driven. On some personal mission to get there. To put himself between the black helicopter and those who’d traveled with him to my refuge. Before something terrible happened.

  Neither of us, it turned out, was swift enough to prevent that.

  We both heard it, a buzzing louder than the throbbing helicopter rotors. A whine like a beastly saw, spinning and screaming. Neil hesitated at the sound, looking in its direction. I did the same, just making out the faint outline of the aircraft, hovering now beyond ranks of rotting woods, streams of fire spitting from its sides.

  “NO!” Neil screamed, his cry audible even above the maelstrom of violence a few hundred yards to our east.

  It was shooting at my refuge. At Grace and Krista. Nothing mattered, to either Neil or me, except stopping that. As if connected psychically, we both shifted direction, aiming ourselves now at the black helicopter, Neil weaving through the trees on the far side of the gulley, and me on my side. The bird continued to fire in bursts, adjusting its position, seeming to spray an area with flaming bits of deadly lead. Ahead of me by only a few yards now, Neil nonetheless came into view of the chopper first, the thing hanging in the air three hundred feet away, and maybe half that above the grey canopy. He stopped at the first opportunity and brought his shotgun up, snugging it to his shoulder and firing, seven loads of double ought buck spraying uselessly toward the helicopter. But then, he had no illusion of doing it damage. He simply wanted to draw its attention.

  And that he did.

  Pellets from his fire ricocheted off the old Huey’s metal skin, enough to draw the crew’s attention. The fire directed at my refuge ceased and the aircraft swung left, its nose dipping as it repositioned itself, closing the distance as Neil ducked behind a thick stump, all that was left of a once mighty fir, and fed fresh rounds into his Benelli.

  I ran along the slope of the southern hill, the screen of bare trees enough, for the moment, to shield me from the helicopter’s view. It skimmed the top of the dead woods, almost directly over me. My turn had come. My best chance. Maybe my only hope. Our only hope. I took aim with my AR and fired at the belly of the Huey, suppressed rounds peppering it. Without effect. It flew on, no different than a hawk might through a swarm of gnats.

  Brr-brrrrrrrrrr-brrrrrrrrrr-

  The helicopter opened up on Neil as it banked, clouds of snow and earth and rock tossed into the air from the twin streams of 7.62 mm rounds digging into the landscape by the hundreds. Trees splintered as the torrent of fire dragged across the slope, shards of dead wood raining down, the stump where Neil had sought cover erupting in a shower of flame and dust as the crew found their mark.

  I ran toward my friend as the helicopter swooped low over him. It swung hard around beyond the crest of the hill and lined up for another strafing run. Neil took advantage of the brief lull and rolled down the slope, sliding to a stop behind a cluster of jagged boulders just above the icy flats of the gully. I took aim and fired off rounds, ten or fifteen, I wasn’t sure, the volley having no more effect than my previous attempt to do some damage to the craft.

  It did, however, draw attention to me, and the helicopter slipped left, its nose tipping toward me as the miniguns opened up again. The ground around me exploded into the air, throwing a cloud of debris in my path as I ran toward the boulders shielding Neil. He popped up from cover as I neared and fired at the helicopter, buckshot spraying into the air as the bird roared overhead, miniguns quieting, the black craft disappearing over the crest of the hill.

  I stumbled forward, collapsing next to my friend. He grabbed me by the coat and pulled me fully into the cover the angular rock pile afforded.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, checking myself. No minigun rounds had found me. The worst I’d suffered was a burn on my neck from a piece of hot brass raining from the sky as the helicopter passed over. I reached to the collar of the shirt beneath my jacket and pulled the still-warm 7.62 mm shell casing from where it lay against my skin, tossing the expended round aside.

  The sound of the helicopter rumbled beyond the hill, echoing within the shallow valley, shifting, to the left, the right, behind and ahead of us. But never retreating. It was still out there. Maneuvering for another run at us.

  “We’ve got to get to Grace and Krista,” Neil said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Which means getting past that thing.”

  The throbbing of the bird’s rotor blades changed, seeming sharper now. Clearly just to the east, from the same direction we’d first seen it.

  “He’s coming back,” I said.

  Neil reloaded again. I fed a fresh magazine into my AR.

  “We’ve got to hit something vital on it,” Neil said.

  There was no disputing that. But that miracle shot, from a either a shotgun or my AR, finding something mechanical or human, would also have to happen while twin Gatling guns were spitting death at us. And now, I was realizing, rather than having two targets to deal with, the helicopter had only one. Coming to my friend had been the natural thing to do, but it had also been tactically wrong in this situation.

  Brrrrrrrrrrrrr-brrrrrrrrr-brrrrrr-

  The sound of the miniguns firing reached us at nearly the same instant as the smack of impacts against the boulders jolted us. Bits of rock, large and small, leapt into the air and fell upon us. We ducked closer to the back of the massive boulder, as if trying to crawl inside it for some ultimate shelter.

  Then the hunk of ancient granite split in half, the relentless stream of fire taking its toll. A sizable portion on the downslope side broke free and tumbled a few yards below, crashing into the frozen gully. Half our cover was instantly gone.

  “We’ve got to do something!” Neil shouted.

  The fire continued in short, measured bursts. Chipping away at the fractured boulder. Soon we’d have nothing to shield us.

  “Okay!” I said. “Next break between bursts, we take our shots!”

  Neil nodded and readied his Benelli.

  Brrrrrrrrrrr-brrrrrrrrrr-

  I shouldered my AR. As I did, the oddest thought rose. Neil’s pronouncement to me, more than a year old now, shared on the cusp of the old world descending into the terrible new—‘there’s always hope’. One of us could make the shot. Could hit something, or someone, that would bring this to an end. It could happen, I told myself. It was possible.

  Neil and I looked to each other, waiting for a break between bursts that was long enough to take our shots from cover. To momentarily expose ourselves. To play upon the hope that our aim would be true.

  The miniguns fell silent. A long pause. We reacted, Neil popping up from behind the boulder as I leaned right, clearing myself around the sheared-off edge. It was time. Our time.

  But neither of us fired a shot. Past the sights of our weapons we saw the dark helicopter pitching backward, executing an ungainly turn to the east, its tail wagging back and forth like a stinger swatting about.

  “What the hell...”

  Neil’s comment about summed up my feeling at the moment as we watched the helicopter struggle awkwardly away from our position, lurching right and left.

  “He’s out of control,” Neil said.

  Both of us rose slightly behind the shattered boulder, watching the helicopter shudder into the distance, disappearing over the trees, losing altitude, our last sense of it being any sort of airworthy craft ending as a low boooom rolled over us from a place beyond my refuge. It was down.

  “Maybe we hit it,” I suggested, though our early volleys had seemed ineffective at the time.

  “Maybe,” Neil said.

  Then, in an instant, the surprise of the moment was gone, and Neil’s gaze shifted, slanting up the hill. In the direction of my refuge. Where Grace and Krista were.

  He scrambled from behind the boulder and ran up the hill, slinging the Benelli across his back. I ran with him, half sprinting, half clawing my way up the incline. Grabbing at deadfall for handholds. Pushing off bits of stone poking from the slope. It took us five minutes to cover the distance.

  What we found sent our hearts falling.

  “Grace!” Neil shouted, almost stumbling from the dead woods toward what had been my refuge. “Krista!”

  I followed. Slowly. Scanning the clearing where my house had stood for any sign of the girl and her mother. All I saw, though, was a pyre.

  My refuge was ablaze. The structure collapsed, shredded by the minigun fire. A dozen yards away, the front half of the barn had folded in on itself, smaller flames sprouted there. Just beyond it, the truck that Neil and the others had arrived in rested low on the snowy ground, front tires flattened, windshield blown out. The tough old vehicle’s hood had been twisted upward and off of one hinge by the impact of rounds from the helicopter.

  “Grace!” Neil shouted again into the terrible silence. “Krista!”

  Fire crackled. Timbers snapped. The sounds of destruction rose before us. And, beyond that, a voice.

  “We’re here.”

  It was Grace. She appeared beyond the flames, emerging from the naked grey pines between my refuge and the road, Del’s rifle in one hand, the other holding Krista close.

  Neil bolted toward them. Grace let the rifle slip from her grip as he reached them. Krista ran toward me, launching herself into my arms.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?”

  She nodded against my shoulder, face buried against my neck. Her warm tears trickled onto my skin.

  “Mommy heard a sound and said we had to get out of the house,” Krista told me.

  “Everything’s gonna be fine,” I assured her, rubbing her back as I looked toward my friend.

  Neil reached Grace and pulled her close, holding her. She eased her arms around him, a flood of relief seeming to wash over her as they embraced. Truly embraced.

  But the relief lasted but a moment. In an instant, as if realizing he’d crossed some line of propriety, Neil let go of Grace and pried himself from her, stepping back, a look of abject shame upon his face. Or was it apology? He looked at her for a moment, then turned, avoiding my gaze altogether as he looked off over the barren woods. Toward the spot where the helicopter must have gone down, a thin ribbon of smoke rising from that unseen spot.

  Neil stormed away from the smoldering ruins. Away from Grace. From Krista. From me. He swung his shotgun around and aimed himself at the gauzy black marker wafting into the sky.

  “Wait!” He didn’t react at all to my call. “Neil!”

  Where fear had driven him a short time before, rage now filled his veins. The desire to do harm to any who had tried to bring harm to Grace and Krista. Or to see, with his own eyes, that they’d already paid the ultimate price.

  I put Krista down and took off after my friend, following him into the decaying woods, toppled pines and snapped limbs laying a colorless weave of obstacles in our path. Neil dodged the deadfall, and from my position of pursuit some twenty yards behind, I could see he was losing his bearings, tracking to the left, more north than where the marker of the downed craft indicated it was. I didn’t follow. Instead I maintained a course that I knew should bring me to that point, moving as fast as I could through the organic debris and intermittent drifts of snow, pushing to get to the crash site ahead of my friend.

  I could never have imagined what, and who, I would end up finding there.

  Five

  The crumpled fuselage of the Huey lay across the road beyond my property, tail wrenched off, its nose buried halfway into a snowdrift rising out of the drainage ditch along the two lanes of asphalt mostly hidden beneath winter white.

  I emerged from the woods and leveled my AR at the wreckage. Smoke swirled through holes torn in the aircraft’s metal structure. What had been the rotor blades where shattered and snapped, lengths of the slender metal strewn across the roadway for a distance in either direction. The craft that had tried to kill us, all of us, had come in hard. Snatched from the sky for some reason and discarded here.

  Movement. I heard it without seeing its cause. It might have been a loose bit of metal swinging about within the fuselage. A bare wire sparking. Or, I knew, it could be a survivor.

  I advanced slowly, suppressed end of my AR shifting as I directed the muzzle toward openings in the craft. Through the crushed side door I could just make out the back of a seat in the cockpit, on the right side, some figure still and slumped there. A few steps more took me past that opening and near the torn left front of the cockpit, metal and side window ripped away. I inched forward now, wary, tilting my head as I looked past the sight of my rifle and saw, finally, the maker of the sounds I was hearing.

  “Are they alive?!”

  It was Neil. He’d realized his directional error and come out of the woods just a bit north of the crash. I looked toward him just in time to see him bring his Benelli up as he moved fast toward me and the downed helicopter.

  “Back off,” I told Neil.

  He kept coming.

  “Neil!”

  “Get out of my way, Fletch.”

  Calm fury. That’s how his voice came across, his demeanor little different than it had been when I’d watched him execute the three men ready to feast on their fellow man near my refuge. He was determined then, as he was now. The only thing that stood between him and another execution was me.

  I stepped in front of Neil as he reached the wreckage and pushed the muzzle of his shotgun aside, shoving him back, away from the still living crewman.

  “We need information!” I shouted. “Not revenge! Not now!”

  Neil didn’t calm. But he gave in, backing up, seething in silence.

  “Stay back,” I said, and he looked away.

  I turned back to the helicopter and approached the twisted cockpit. Smoke drifted from the fuselage just above and behind the man in the left seat, what I could make out of his body covered in jet black coveralls lacking any insignia whatsoever. The man moved his head. Steamy breaths bubbled from his mouth mixed with frothy blood. Factoids from documentaries dribbled into my consciousness—he was the co-pilot. Maybe some sort of weapons officer, responsible for the mini-guns. The dead man to his right, windshield before him spider-webbed and torn from its frame, was the pilot. At least that’s what I recalled, that, converse to airplanes, the pilot in command in a helicopter sat in the right seat.

  This man, I realized, was likely the one who’d pulled the trigger on us.

  “Who are you?”

  The man shifted his head in my direction, weight of the bulbous helmet atop it pulling his neck to the right. His gaze found me, one swollen eye and one uninjured. There was no overt visual plea for mercy. For help. In fact, what I thought I saw in both his eyes, and on his lips as they curled slightly, was disdain. Maybe pity.

  “Why did you try to kill us?” I pressed.

  The look upon his face now came plain and caustic. A sneer. An expression of unwavering derision directed at me. For all of us, I assumed.

  “Who sent you?”

  He chuckled now, breath and bluster wet with blood. I could feel Neil drawing close again behind, and I glanced over my shoulder. His Benelli was lowered, but his gaze was locked on the man beyond me. He stopped a few steps back and advanced no further.

  I looked to the crewman again, raising my AR this time, putting the business end of the suppressor against the side of his helmet.

  “Your last chance to answer,” I warned him. “Who sent you?”

  Another chuckle slipped out, and the sneer turned to a grin, and then the words came.

  Words I could not understand. A language I did not understand, but that I knew. That I recognized. As did Neil.

  “Is that...”

  I nodded, never looking away from the crewman as his gaze dimmed and his face went slack. The weight of his helmet pushed his chin against his chest as the life left him.

  “What the hell is going on, Fletch?”

  I brought my AR away from the dead man and turned to my friend.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  All I did know was that we’d both heard the unmistakable. The accent. The soft inflection.

 

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