Altered America (20 page)

             
The sound of a woman crying filled the air around her and she looked around for Jackie until she realized the sounds were coming from her own mouth.

             
Get yourself together, woman.

             
A few raspy breaths later, she eyed the pit around her. The tunnel back to the bunker proper was gone, filled with more debris than she could dig through in a lifetime. Jackie and the senator were dead now anyway. Like Jimmy.

             
Above, the shaft stretched to the surface—to ground level. If she stayed here, she would die.

             
If she climbed...

             
Fresh tears stung her cheeks and her throat burned from bile as she choked back the sobs that came. Where was Jack?

             
When was he coming for her?

* * *

              Thump-thump.

             
Someone was beating at her door.

             
Thump-thump-thump.

             
She started to yell for them to go away but the corners of her mouth felt raw and her tongue two sizes too big for her mouth. The sound that came from her throat was a groan.

             
Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.

             
Sand rained down on her, each grain pricking at the skin of her face like needle points. Marilyn opened her eyes as a large white cloud drifted across the sky. She rested on a section of flat pavement at the edge of the shaft that led down to the bunker, her arm wrapped around a partially melted parking meter. Sand whirled in the air around her, making a clear view of anything more than a few yards away impossible. All she could be sure of beyond that was that the world had been transformed into a flattened, smoldering heap. Not a single building or tree reached skyward. She had made it to the top of the shaft the night before, but then lacked the energy to continue on.

             
The face of the parking meter was smeared, its glass missing. To her right the black hole of the shaft leading to the bunker sat waiting for her. She had to get away from it. She'd never survive if she fell back down there—but maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen. The pain in her head and the war in her guts were so bad now, dying didn't seem so bad.

             
The white cloud moved slowly, descending until it touched the ground in the distance. A helicopter.

             
Jack.

             
He
had
come for her.

             
She knew it. Everything was going to be okay.

             
Marilyn struggled to raise an arm, to wave at the helicopter, managing only to flail the reluctant limb into the air a couple of times. Calling out wasn't an option, she could barely force air in and out of her throat, and when she did she tasted blood and bile.

             
Bloated figures spread out from an open door in the helicopter's side, moving clumsily but quickly across the rubble.

             
Every movement an effort, a new stab of pain, a vain attempt to avoid scraping against the busted mortar and melted metal that coated the landscape, Marilyn pulled herself toward the cloud—no, the helicopter. Toward her knight in shining armor.

* * *

              "Shall I, sir?"

             
The voice startled her and she was suddenly aware of the two people looming over her. They wore bulky white coats like parkas, hood up. Mirrored masks covered their faces and she couldn't see who they were.

             
"No, Sergeant," answered the closer of the two men in a voice she recognized instantly.

             
Marilyn screamed relief but the only sound that came from her mouth was a gurgling groan. He'd come for her. Just like he said he would.

             
Everything was going to be all right. She wanted to cry, but the pain behind her eyes told her she was out of tears.

             
Just take me away. Please just take me away from this place.

             
"We do not kill our own," said Jack. On the chest of his parka was a small American flag and an              embroidered patch reading
Lancer
. "Whoever this person was will not die at the hands of their own government."

             
"With respect, sir. It would be an act of mercy."

             
Static popped from a radio and the second man raised it close to his visor. The buzz that came from the device was unintelligible but the man answered anyway "Very well. I'll tell him. Mr. President, I have good news, sir. The First Lady has been pulled from the bunker through the emergency access tunnel, sir. It was virtually untouched by the recent collapse."

             
"Any others?"

             
Marilyn's thoughts were thick. She reached a hand toward him, toward her love, the blistered skin on her arm a surprise to herself even as Jack took a step away.

             
"Just Senator Johnson, sir," answered the man. "No other survivors, sir. We have to get them and you to Greenbrier, sir. We've been here too long already."

             
A blur of movement surrounded Marilyn, sometimes fast, sometimes slow as bloated men, figures in white, rushed this way, then that.

             
Marilyn watched as the white cloud rose into the air. Wetness burned down her cheeks.

             
She couldn't remember who was on the cloud. The helicopter.

             
But that didn't really matter. Jack was coming for her.

             
She just needed to wait.... a little... longer...

Wild Blue

by Jeff Provine

             
Someone was yelling something behind him. Sylvester didn’t listen.

             
He stood on the bow of the airboat, that glorified basket that rocked on thick hemp cables under the enormous globe of the balloon. It was shady there, cool in the breeze of the high winds.

             
In his hands, he held a small balloon made of paper. He had folded like the old balloonsmen had taught him during his navigator’s apprenticeship. Most of it was a round top with a small hole to let the harshest of the heat out. Below, a long string wick dangled.

             
The yelling kept going.

             
He took the match from his shirt pocket and sparked against his thumb nail on one hand as he rubbed at the scruff of his neck with the other. It had been a week since he shaved last. There wasn’t much water to spare up in the balloon, not even the salt water sailors at sea could use. The air was so empty.

             
The match burst to life with a crying hiss. It flashed as bright as lightning and settled into a low red-yellow flame. Even in the breeze, he could smell the sulfur.

             
He set the match to the wick, which lit up with its own orange flame. Heat poured off it, prompting air to head upward as it warmed. The updraft caught in the folds of the top of the balloon and began to pull. He held onto it a moment longer, feeling the tug, and then let it float free.

             
The paper balloon sailed out into the open blue sky, the “Wild Blue” the boys called it. The balloon was free now, drifting on the winds and hanging like a hawk making its lazy circles.

             
Beyond it, the huge blue of the desert sky stretched forever. It was free. No one could predict the weather day-to-day, let alone give it orders.

             
Even though mankind had been peppering the heavens with balloons for a century-and-a-half, the sky was still unconquered—a spacious frontier man could visit but never colonize. It all started when a young Brazilian priest named Gusmão had made a little balloon just like the one he had set free. It entertained the King of Portugal back in 1709, and they thought that would be the end of it. Little did the priest know that he had suddenly unlocked ethereal buoyancy. Merchants realized it, though, and only a few decades passed before tar-lined silk balloons began flying back and forth to Brazil high above any would-be pirates.

             
Sylvester watched the small balloon float. It flew, silently, bravely. It was free as a bird. He stretched out his hand toward it, wishing he could follow. How free he would be in the sky, nothing but his body and the cold wind and the warm sun. The world would be at his feet, and he could go anywhere he pleased.

             
A hand grabbed his shoulder. Even through the thick flannel, he could feel the hand’s grating calluses. “Pay attention!”

             
Sylvester turned. It was the first mate, short and thick, a man who’d worked the skylanes since before Andrew Jackson was president. He wore a thick leather cap and his long oilskin coat.

             
“What is it?” Sylvester asked calmly, yet insubordinately.

             
The first mate pointed a stubby, callused finger toward the horizon. A trio of balloons rose up over the mountains. “There!”

             
Sylvester narrowed his eyes at the balloons. They were small and looked ramshackle even from this distance. “Who are they? Paiute Indians?  No, we’re still south of their territory...”

             
The first mate stood silent, looking irritable as ever.

             
Sylvester scratched at his scruff. It would be a beard soon, but he could shave it off when they landed in California. “Let me get my glass.”

             
Sylvester stepped back from the rail at the edge of the deck, heading back to the tar-lined wicker trunk where the crew kept its gear. The other men had gathered around, staring off at the balloons in the distance. The captain kept his post at the wheel, carefully guiding the canvas rudders that let the balloon tack in unfavorable winds.

             
He dug through the stacks of log books, hand tools, and mislaid hardtack until he came across the telescope. Without a word, he hefted it and elbowed past the gawking crew. The telescope slid into position with a grind and a click. He needed to grease it.

             
It was heavy from brass and glass, but it fit his eye perfectly. Sliding the glass forward and back, he brought the balloons into focus as if they were just beyond his fingertips.

             
The wide Sierra Madres stretched out bland and brown behind them, rolling under the perfect blue of the sky, unbroken by clouds. The three airskiffs had been patched and re-patched, making the balloons look more like quilts than the airtight canvas they should be. Below them, their baskets hung, ratty wooden constructs with spokes sticking out haphazardly.

             
“Not Paiute, probably not Comanche,” Sylvester muttered.

             
Just like guns a century before and horses a century before that, Indians had adopted—even improved—European balloons. The Comanche used a series of balloons that could be cut at any time to make for a fast escape from an uneven raid. Sioux in the north had managed to build wide wings that could steer a balloon just as well as a canvas rudder, better vertically.

             
These three balloons were nothing like those. They looked as if they’d been glued together just enough to get into the air.

             
“Who is it then?” one of the riggers blurted.

             
“Mexicans?” a fire-stoker asked.

             
Sylvester nodded.

             
Their route was a long one, but far shorter than the sea-sailors who took ships all the way around Cape Horn to get up to the newfound wealth of California. The gold rush was over by a decade, but it had brought thousands of people there, all clamoring for mail and manufactured goods. People back East wanted their gold and business. The Balloony Express, Est. 1860, was the way to get it to them.

             
They had left San Francisco weeks ago from the airfield built south of the city in the warmer, peaceful area tucked behind the hills. Huge balloons rested half-filled like stumbling drunkards in the soft breeze. Most of the wind was blocked by the rise in the land, making a vertical harbor. Just like at the San Francisco docks in the bay, strong, weary men wrestled with cables and loaded crates. Sylvester’s work didn’t begin until they took off, so he spent most of his time in the saloons, playing cards in the hopes of winning enough gold for his own airboat.

             
When the hold beneath the airy deck was packed, they launched with fire. The furnace heated the air to pull them into the sky. They rode the west winds up over the Rockies and then through the plains before landing at the end of the fast-growing railroads in Missouri. He liked the Rockies. The mountains were beautiful seen from above in their humble grandeur. Rivers and trees gave way to snowcaps. He would have loved to moor there, drink from fresh springs, but the schedule prevented any stopping. They could only drink the watery grog they brought with them until returning to civilization.

             
In St. Joseph, Sylvester would again sit in the saloons while the deep hold was emptied and repacked with goods brought across the Mississippi on trains. He hated trains. They were heavy, they were loud, and they belched horrific smoke. Worst of all, they followed rails, only going where someone told them to go. Balloons were light; one didn’t steer them so much as dance with the wind.

             
Sylvester was always relieved to be back in the air after Missouri. Going back to California was a longer trip, meaning the water tasted fouler and the hardtack was more of a brick by the time they arrived. But the air was clearer, freer from the stink and smoke of civilization. It was all sky, and he loved it.

             
Their route involved sailing far south to catch the easterly winds over Mexico. Giving American airboats the freedom to pass was part of the agreement in the war years before, when his father had been a marine dropping out of a war-balloon to seize Mexico City. He’d once wondered if he should join the Army Air Corps—keeping an eye on Indians from forts scattered up and down the Plains—yet it made him shake his head. That would only mean
more
people giving him orders.

             
Instead, he’d traverse the route the bosses told him to follow; there he could at least watch the scenery change. A day or two more and they’d pick up the high, hot winds over the Sonoran Desert then tack up the coast. They would see blonde deserts, red hills, and brown scrub until finally the blue of the Pacific appeared. It wasn’t often they saw other balloons out here, let alone three at once.

             
A sharp crack of thunder rang. Sylvester glanced up from the telescope. The sky was clear and blue, innocent.

             
Another crack fired, followed by another. He leaned back into the telescope. Lights flashed from the spiny baskets beneath the trio of balloons. They were shooting.

             
“Banditos,” Sylvester muttered.

             
“Get to your posts!” the first mate shouted.

             
Everyone scattered, but Sylvester didn’t move. The banditos were closing in fast on the lumbering, huge balloon, but it would still be several minutes before they actually came into rifle range. If they were firing already, it was only to panic the crew.

             
Sylvester wouldn’t let himself be panicked.  Folding up the telescope, he rested on the thin wooden rail. There were two ways this could go. The banditos could try to get close enough to the balloon to board it and take the cargo intact. Or...

             
A deafening explosion from the middle of the trio of balloons rang out. The basket was swinging wildly in a cloud of white smoke. Sylvester grimaced. There it was—the cannon, the other way to pillage an airboat.

             
The first shot had missed, but a balloon was a huge target. After the airboat crashed, all the banditos had to do was pick through the wreckage for anything of worth that wasn’t broken. If they were lucky, the banditos might bury their victims’ bodies instead of leaving them out for the buzzards and coyotes.

             
Sylvester straightened up and turned back to the crew. They were all shouting and picking up weapons as the first mate handed them out from the locker. The captain’s face was taut, paralyzed in terror.

             
“Parachutes!” the first mate shouted, clearly prepared for the worst.

             
Remaining optimistic, Sylvester grabbed the captain’s sleeve.  “Open up the furnace! We can get above them!” he asserted.

             
The captain’s lips didn’t move. His knuckles where white on the wooden wheel. The rest of the crew was lining up at the rails, ramming powder into their muskets and readying to fire back. A few of them paused to pull the sacks of silk over their shoulders, hoping for a soft landing.

             
Sylvester could only shake his head. Fighting was ridiculous—it would tear them both apart. If they poured on the heat, they could rise up so far the ragged banditos’ balloons couldn’t follow. No one seemed to think of the balloon first; it was always just something—

             
There was a horrid crack, and the world began to spin around him. He felt his feet skitter, and landed hard on his back.  Then, he rolling. A louder thunder clapped, the distant sound of the cannon-fire catching up with the ball. His eyes whirled, nothing seemed to make any sense, and then all was peaceful.

             
All he could see was blue. All he could feel was wind. It whipped around him, catching at his clothes and brushing his face like a girl’s playful slap.

             
They must have hit the deck or enough of the cables to partially dislodge it from the airboat. Now Sylvester was in the air, arms spread like wings. There was no balloon between him and the sky, just naked air.  He smiled. He was flying. The wind seemed to lift him, tossing him, dancing with him. He stretched himself out to enjoy its embrace. The Wild Blue was unpredictable.

             
He was flying, and he would fly free until he hit he ground.