Sanctuary (39 page)

Samantha called, “Great. Just frickin’ great. Anything else you’re not telling us, Puck?”

“Just one more thing.

“Which is?”

“Tigers. At least four tigers spotted prowling the Skid Row area.”

Samantha said, “This is a nightmare.”

I agreed. “I hate those things.”

Puck said, “We can’t stop him. We’ve lost.”

“We can try!” I shouted. I was still playing catch-up, trailing the faster helicopters, streaking towards Downtown. “He brought enough firepower to take down almost every tower. We can limit him to one or two. We’ve already destroyed four helicopters-”

“Six,” Puck interrupted. “Don’t forget the two Pave Hawks you dropped.”

“Whatever! Point is, we’ve already reduced the destruction, and we’re not done. He wants to level the city. We’re not going to let him!”

“Outlaw, MOVE!” Samantha screamed.

One of her pursuing Apaches broke off and came at me, guns blazing.

No time! I unfettered the wings, which zipped back into my pant-legs, and I dropped like a stone underneath shredding gunfire.

Wings re-engaged! They caught the air with a Snap and thrust me forward. The Apache and I crossed paths, me twenty feet under, slashing through rotor wash.

At my initial jump, I was nine hundred feet high. Now I was at four hundred. Running out of sky!

I flew serpentine patterns, desperate turns, toward the Aon tower. The Apache pursued, firing wildly, the lion chasing a gazelle.

“There he is!” I cried. “The Chemist’s helicopter, next to Aon! He’s watching the attack.”

Samantha replied, “I’m dropping now! He’s my primary target!” Her chute opened directly above the nearby City National tower, the same building I’d been on when I first jumped after the Chemist’s helicopter. From there she’d be able to fire directly at the other attackers.

“Geronimo, Samy-girl!” Croc laughed.

Bullets ripped through my leg webbing. The Apache was too close behind me! I immediately lost stability.

“This is a bad idea,” I mumbled, but I did it anyway.

Zip! I released the wings.

Pop! I launched the parachute and was jerked to a painful and jarring stand-still, swinging crazily in the sky, earth off its axis.

The Apache bore down at a trillion miles per hour. He was going to slice my canopy lines with his blades.

“Whoa!” Puck cried. “What??! What are-”

At the very last instant, I hauled the chute back in with a mighty yank. It disappeared into my vest with a hiss.

The Apache crushed me. I hit his windshield like a bug on a semi-truck, just like the Grumman Greyhound cargo plane so long ago. Shoulders, hips and ribs all popped.

But I held on. My face was twelve inches from the astonished gunner’s. I saw him through my reflection in the glass.

I shoved the canopy assembly upwards. Metal locks and clasps squealed, bent, and broke. That wasn’t humanly possible but I was mad.

“I’m NOT happy with you!” I yelled. The gunner squawked as I stepped onto his lap, reached over the tandem cockpit bulkhead, and ripped
out
the pilot’s control stick. “Have fun with
that
.”

I abandoned ship as the Apache began plunging.

“Well,” Puck mumbled, “more than one way to skin a cat, I guess.”

I opened the wing-suit, which caught air with a sharp crack, and I darted toward the Aon Center, the nearest and southernmost tower in the cluster. I was sailing two hundred feet in the air.

The attack choppers released their first bombardment on the Aon. The western glass face shattered, filling the skyline with deadly confetti.

“I don’t have a shot on the Chemist,” Samantha snarled.

“Take out those choppers!” I yelled. “They’ll have that tower down in less than a minute!”

No time! They were ready to fire again.

I remember the next fifteen seconds only through a series of mental snapshots.

The attack choppers were gathered at the tower base like yellow jackets fighting for pollen.

I rocketed into the cloud of fragmented glass at a hundred miles per hour.

The airborne glass cut my wings to ribbons.

I flew at the tower without control.

Out of options, I threw the Rod like a hatchet into the nearest chopper, a heavy Black Hawk.

The Rod entered the Black Hawk’s cockpit like a wrecking ball.

I entered the Aon Tower’s seventeenth floor like…well, a wrecking ball.

Samantha told me later what happened. The Black Hawk’s pilot was either killed or injured by the Rod. The Black Hawk reeled sharply to the left and banked into the next helicopter. The two aircraft ruined each other and erupted, slamming the third chopper into the fourth, a deadly domino effect. Another thunderous detonation, and the entire sky was set on fire. The fifth chopper corkscrewed away from the high-rise, smoking and whining. The brilliant red billows of flame and fury stormed against the teetering tower, but the steel held.

Samantha disintegrated the sixth and final attack chopper’s windshield with multiple rifle rounds as it fled the mushroom blast, forcing it to spin aground in a shower of sparks, near the Dignity Health Hospital.

Echoes of eruptions. A ceiling of rising filth and particles. But the heavens were temporarily clear of aircraft. For the moment, the Aon and all persons inside were safe.

Samantha radioed, “Where?? Where is the Chemist?”

“Dunno, love,” Croc called. “I’ve lost the bloody Apache that was chasing me, too. That rascal’s ‘round here somewhere.”

PuckDaddy said, “Too much smoke, too many hiding places. I’m scanning.”

“Outlaw, you alive?” Samantha called. “I need you up here.”

I pulled myself out of a supply closet, covered in buckets and mops and spray bottles. “Okay,” I groaned. “Gimme a sec.” The thin carpet glistened with sharp flecks. This floor appeared to be empty. At least offices in this engineering firm were. A good sign. I staggered out.

“Harrier jets approaching,” Puck warned. “Coming in from the west, instead of south.”

“Croc, you need to find a hiding spot,” Samantha called. “Those jets might have air-to-air missiles.” I could hear noises of her reloading. “And I’m not sure how much help I’ll be. Outlaw, where are you?”

“I’m coming,” I grumbled.

“The Chemist is broadcasting live from his helicopter,” Puck announced. “But the camera is out of focus on his face. I can’t tell where…”

I asked, “What’s that maniac saying to the camera?”

“He’s describing the future. A new age, ruled by his Chosen. Earlier he recited a poem about the Outlaw.”

Four minutes later, I laid down at Samantha’s feet, on the hot tarred rooftop, gasping. “That’s…a long…climb…”

She wrinkled her nose. “You’re all gross and dusty. Get up, wimp.”

“Shut up,” I wheezed. “Just need…a quick nap…”

“Bad place for a nap. We’re exposed and we’ve got enemies inbound.”

Puck said, “I have bad news and good news.”

“Bad news.”

“America sent reinforcement fighters, but they’re still thirty minutes away. Won’t get here in time.”

“Good news?”

“
Two
pieces of good news, actually!” Puck chirped. “First, the final Apache just crash landed to the north. It was forced down by police with assault rifles.”

“There you go, Los Angeles,” Samantha nodded grimly. “Good work.” She was scanning the western horizon with her scope.

“Woohoo,” I offered weakly.

“Secondly, I have Isaac Anderson on the line.”

“Anderson,” I yelled into the mic with all the air I had. It wasn’t much. “We need to stop the inbound Harrier jets. Or at least stall.”

“I’m here,” Anderson called. My ear piece was getting crowded with voices. “I’m in the FBI’s last helicopter, a Little Bird. I’ve got a launcher and two rockets. That’s all we could find on short notice. The army won’t get here in time.”

“You’ll only get one shot off before those Harriers blow you out of the sky,” Samantha warned.

“I know. But we have to try.”

“And here they come.”

I stood beside Samantha and peered west. The Harrier Jump Jets were fifty feet off the ground, skimming houses. They were
fast
. We couldn’t stop them. Helicopters were one thing, but fighter jets moving at three hundred miles per hour were another.

“I see them. Preparing to launch,” Anderson said.

“He’s going to fire the rocket launcher from inside that tiny chopper’s backseat,” Samantha chuckled. “Going to be loud. And hot.”

“Damn right it is,” he radioed, and he fired. We couldn’t see his vehicle, but a missile flared from the downtown maze and arced towards the Harriers.

These pilots were good. They scrambled and climbed into the atmosphere, and the rocket missed by a mile. We watched them thunder overhead, turbines hurting our ears. The Jump Jet wings were freighted with deadly Maverick missiles.

“I’m never going to hit those bastards,” Samantha snarled, tracing jets through the air from behind her scope. I watched. Nothing else I could do.

All three Harriers loosed a Maverick missile on their first pass above Downtown. The missiles dove into the city bowels and connected with three different structures. The earth shook. Fire plumed east of us.

The Harriers executed sharp turns and came roaring back, prepared for another bombing run. They could strafe with impunity until exhausting missile supplies. Samantha fired her whole magazine to no effect. Three more Mavericks fell and the city was rocked to its foundations. Los Angeles was a city in torment.

The Harriers were just past us when one erupted. A lance of fire pierced the turbines and the Jump Jet loudly broke apart. The pilot ejected.

“Got one!” Anderson announced. “But now I’m out of rockets.”

Puck laughed, “But the Navy isn’t! Way to go, USS Gravely! Watch this!”

Two massive eruptions shattered the sky, larger and more violent than Isaac’s rocket impact.

The Harriers had flown high enough in the sky to be fired upon from ten miles away. The naval destroyer, USS Gravely, had launched three guided missiles at the Harriers during their first staffing run. The missiles arrived and connected with the final two Jump Jets as they banked over Korea Town. Instant destruction.

Reverberations caromed off remaining downtown windows. Burning gasoline and debris filtered down to earth.

Samantha and I watched the show, our hearts heavy with loss and massacre.

But we’d forgotten about our real enemy. He attacked from behind.

Puck cried, “Sammy, move!”

The Chemist’s television chopper rose straight up from the eastern face of our tower. We turned in time to see his aircraft plunge, poor Carla’s eyes scared and angry. He was ramming the tower’s helipad, kamikaze-style.

In that instant, I saw how it would happen.

He was too close. We couldn’t reach the open air before his machine detonated. We’d be engulfed in fire. Even if we could jump, Samantha was dead. She wore no parachute. And she was too far from me.

We would die.

So would he.

So would Carla. And the pilot, and the girl operating the camera.

I could see the Chemist. I could hear him screaming.

I was almost too tired to care.

But I didn’t want to disappoint Katie.

I bolted for Samantha. Maybe I could reach her. Maybe the explosion would throw us out of harm’s way. Maybe we could land before we burned to death. Maybe a miracle.

“Not today, ya tosser!” Croc laughed.

Croc’s FBI Little Bird materialized out of nowhere and plowed into the Chemist’s television chopper. The two machines tangled, a riot of twisted metal, and glanced off the edge of the City National, swaying the entire high-rise.

Croc rammed him! Sacrificed himself to save us! Above the screaming steel, the Chemist howled in rage.

The wreckage plunged in slow motion. Nine hundred feet is a long way to fall. An eternity.

“Croc!” Samantha cried. She slid to the edge, an inch from falling, and watched in horror. “NO!”

Crackles of static reached our ears.

“…now, Sammy-girl…all my love, the rest of your long gorgeous life…my pretty sheila…”

Spilled gasoline caught fire. The ruined vehicles touched down. 5th Street became an inferno, instantly destroying the beautiful street and the beautiful life of our dear friend Mitchell.

Samantha and I remained on the tower another hour. Too exhausted and heartbroken to evacuate.

Downtown Los Angeles still stood. But it was being rapidly overrun by hundreds of Infected and twenty thousand drugged gunmen.

As the dust settled and reports began coming in, we learned the Chemist had attacked multiple locations. Multiple BIG locations.

Houston was being invaded, evidently by Infected in substantial numbers. Videos also showed assailants dressed like the Outlaw.

Seattle was under attack too.

Plus, additional California military bases were being ambushed, and their vehicles immobilized.

Every report was the same: the enemy’s goal wasn’t death, but destruction of property and vehicles. He wasn’t after lives; he was after structures and systems. He was disabling the country, piece by piece.

“Think Martin died?” I asked Samantha after we stared at the azure infinity for forty-five minutes.

“Doubt it.” Her face, like mine, was a mask of caked dirt and tears. “The older we get, the stronger. The harder. The faster.”

“Carter was right,” I sighed. “Los Angeles was already lost.”

“No. No, we saved thousands of lives today. Those lives weren’t lost. The Chemist didn’t get them. We did the right thing.”

Puck spoke up. “Meanwhile stupid ‘ol Carter is just circling New Mexico, looking for a place to land. All airstrips are closed. Even if he made it to Houston, George Bush International is locked down tight.”

I grabbed Samantha’s hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back, uncharacteristic of her. She must’ve been as stressed and overwhelmed as me. “Thanks for coming back,” I said.

“We’re a team. That’s what we do.”

“Yeah,” Puck said. “We
are
a team.”

Anderson arrived in his small FBI chopper and plucked us off the helipad. We were too tired to fight the gunmen that Puck reported were about to arrive.