The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse (7 page)

Suddenly it felt wrong. Elliot should be with him on this adventure. They’d always made a good team when it came to fighting rather than sneaking. There was nowhere in the cramped plane, of course, and there was no way Bobs would trade the food or ammunition required to purchase a seat for Elliot.

It was a full ten minutes before the pilot turned the plane to aim north down the highway. “Name is Milan Novak!” he shouted. “Just so that you know who to curse if we crash. Here we go!”

Tevy gave a last wave to Emile and Helen and braced himself for thrill of acceleration, only to be disappointed. This wasn’t like a jet at all. They simply rolled up to a speed not much faster than a car, but suddenly the plane lurched up, pressing his bum into the seat. He grabbed the sides of his seat to fight the vertigo. They were high in a way you didn’t get a sense of in passenger jets, because they flew too high for the ground to be real. From this height, not much higher than a tall office building, the houses and streets looked like a little model city, albeit one that had been damaged by an angry child stomping with muddy feet.

“You can see everything up here.” Tevy pointed to the highway and the abandoned suburbs. “I bet you could even track the rippers at night!”

“Back when there were street lights, maybe.” Milan ignored Tevy and the ground and concentrated on his instruments and the horizon. “But I don’t fly at night anymore, unless there is an emergency. You cannot see anything below in the dark, and unless someone on the ground helps, you cannot land. Unless it’s a full moon, I could fly straight in the Hancock building and not know it until my asshole passed through my brain.”

They flew in silence while the plane climbed until they were so high that Tevy relaxed. The ground, the houses and streets, the trees, and now even Lake Michigan on their right, were so far below that Tevy’s vertigo, his sense of helplessness, faded. The earth wasn’t real anymore and instead a distant toy.

Milan leveled the plane. “Okay my ladies and gentlemen. We’ve reached our cruising altitude of 13,000 feet, which we’ll stay at unless the head gasket blows, in which case we will land very quickly, probably nose first. The in-flight movie today is called
Sky and Ground
, and will hopefully feature more sky than ground. The weather forecast is who the hell knows, but I do see some clouds off to our left that I’m not happy about, and I’ll decide when we reach Duluth whether we park for the night or go on to our destination. Please be advised that there’s an emergency exit on your right called a
door
. Don’t open it unless you are planning to jump out and die. In the unlikely event of a water landing, you will definitely drown.”

Milan reached behind Tevy’s seat and hefted up a small pack, which he thrust into Tevy’s lap. “Our in-flight meal today is chicken or beef sandwich, courtesy of Helen, and warm beer courtesy of Emile. Very nice of him. They must like you. Be sure to drink plenty of water, too, because it is very dry up here. You will dehydrate quickly. Did I mention that you are the flight attendant? Open one of those beers for me, please.”

There were only four brown bottles in the bottom of the pack, underneath sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. Tevy pulled one out and tried to figure out how he could open it. He knew that bottles used to be twist tops, but he couldn’t get this cap to turn.

“Wait just a moment.” Milan rummaged in a pocket and pulled out a bottle opener. “They’re too old to work like they used too. The caps are sticky.”

Tevy opened it and passed the bottle to Milan.

“Ah that is very amazing. Chateau 2012 I bet, and not at all skunky. This must be from Emile’s private reserve. What a guy.” Milan looked over. “Come on, young man. Don’t make me drink all these myself. It doesn’t make me a better pilot.”

Tevy reluctantly opened a bottle and sipped at it, discovering that it was nothing like the hooch that had made him so sick during his first experience with alcohol. The beer was even a little chill, which gave him a clue as to the location of Emile’s cache. The basement of his blockhouse was cool and damp, and one spring it had flooded a foot deep, which would explain why the labels were missing.

“So, would you be willing to tell me exactly why Bobs is willing to rush you all the way to St. John’s on short notice?”

How to handle this without offending his pilot? Bobs had sworn him to secrecy during his last briefing.

“I don’t want everyone panicking and running for the hills,” she had said. “So you keep your mouth shut about all these new traitors and this fricking asshole who says he’s Vlad back from the dead.”

Tevy understood better than Bobs knew. It wasn’t just losing troops that was the danger, but if everyone scattered to the countryside, the rippers would be able to go after them one small farmhouse at a time. Humanity, at least in Illinois, would be wiped out or enslaved.

“Just supposed to go see how things are going up there,” Tevy said. “What’s up and stuff. The general is worried about them.” Bobs was the general.

Milan looked over, and Tevy deliberately looked straight into the man’s sunglasses, hopefully meeting his eyes. When lying, always look them straight in the eye. Elliot had taught him that. He was much better at it than Tevy.

Milan nodded and looked back to his controls, the horizon, and the clouds to the west. “She has no need of worry. They’re one tough crowd up there. They had a very big fight just a couple of days ago and cleared out a ripper hole in Atherley, a big one. Some ripper believed himself a general, I guess, and had built some college into a fort, but they didn’t have any daytime slaves, thank’s God. Word is that they routed the place.”

“Things should be peaceful for a while, then.” Tevy couldn’t decide whether his head was light from the beer or the flying.

“This I doubt. The place was a maze, my friend Jeff told me. Yes, the very Jeff who was one of Bertrand Allan’s Companions through the end.” Milan glanced over, his chest puffed out, but when Tevy didn’t express his wonder that Milan knew someone so famous, he continued. “Anyhow, at least some of those rippers must have found places to hide until dark, and they surely will not spend another day in the college, so that means they’re out in the woods. And they must be very hungry.”

“But they’ll die when the sun rises. It’s all good.”

“You are very much a city man. Rippers can bury themselves very easy, especially in the swamps, if they need to hide from the light.”

In Tevy’s experience rippers always went into basements for the day. That’s why you never went into a house without a gun and some friends. It had never occurred to him that they could shelter anywhere else.

“But how would they breathe?”

“The bugs make them hibernate. They hardly breathe all night, maybe just a few tiny breaths, until the sun goes down. I don’t believe they like this very much, but it works.”

Tevy had to rethink everything he had known about fighting rippers. If they could hide anywhere for the day, it meant even the country side wasn’t safe. It also explained why there were still so many rippers—why they couldn’t seem to get to the end of them with the daytime neighborhood sweeps, clearing them out of the basements block by block. They weren’t all hiding in basements. They could be in parks or backyards. Hell, they could be anywhere. Did Emile know this? Did Bobs?

After a few minutes of silence, Milan turned on some music—heavy, rocking pre-Vlad recorded music—and Tevy lost himself in the miraculous sound, so much better than the choir at St. Mike’s. It passed the time until Duluth.

They landed at the airport, its runway still clear, small and large planes still neatly waiting in rows, but the appearance of normalcy was an illusion. No one met them, and Milan cursed the absence of a promised fuel truck. He got on his radio and started an angry conversation with someone in town, his accent getting thicker in his excitement, but it was obvious they would be delayed.

“Damn them to hell and back!” Milan hammered the mic a couple of times on the dashboard in his frustration. “I don’t want to be landing in the dark with all the rippers running toward the sound of my engine. This could be very bad.”

“That’s enough to just book outta here and refuel in St. John’s, isn’t it?” Tevy pointed to the fuel gauge, the only one he’d been able to understand. It looked halfway to him.

“They have no aviation fuel at St. John’s, none they can spare for my little plane anyway.” Milan opened his door and hauled himself out of the plane, pulling a pipe from his pocket as soon as he was standing on terra firma. “Besides, I have cargo coming that is helping pay for this flight. I shall go for a smoke. You may take a break, but if you hear a truck, come right back.”

Tevy wandered into the little airport building while they waited, and it was like stepping back in time. The place hadn’t been ransacked, and the ticket counters still sat as if just waiting for staff and travelers to arrive. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the terminal building were grimy, yes, but intact. Tevy walked through the security checkpoints just for fun, amusing himself as he remembered the full-body scan on the trip to Disney World. He hadn’t wanted to walk through, because his friends said the staff would take pictures of his penis and put them on the internet, but the guy running the scanner gently assured him that wouldn’t happen.

Tevy snoozed on the seats for a while as if he were a passenger waiting for a connecting flight, but he finally rose to stare out the windows at a line of intact planes, trying to imagine the airport in better times. A question for Milan occurred to Tevy, and he hurried to rejoin him when he noticed a tanker truck was now parked beside their Cessna.

“Why don’t you have a bigger plane?” Tevy said as the truck owner reeled in the hose.

“I have many planes—many, many planes, but I don’t have much fuel, and we’re a little short on aircraft mechanics.” He walked around the Cessna, doing his pre-flight check, and Tevy followed him to hear more. “I had a bit of fun at first when everything went to bad,” Milan said. “I started flying a Herc, even though I have no license for those big babies, but people cared little anymore as long as you could get them where they wanted to go. Some of my clients were even government, not that I knew at the time, or I’d never have given those traitorous bastards the time of day.”

“But you ran out of fuel for it?”

Milan stopped in front of the single propeller and ran a hand along one blade. “No, but fuel is expensive and this little plane does not use much. Ran out of many other things, though. Patience for one and a mechanic for another—anything as big as a Herc is much more complicated to keep in the air. Then the airports became a problem.” He waved at the clear runway. “We are very lucky here, but most airports got bombed by one side or another, depending on who was winning and who was losing. I chose a little Cargomaster until a couple of weeks ago, but it wouldn’t start one morning. I have no idea why.” Something near the terminal building caught his attention. “Ah, finally, here’s the mail. Grab the bag and let’s go. We are just going to beat sunset to St. John’s. I hate cutting it very close.”

A man about Tevy’s age bicycled up in a big hurry, sweating and out of breath.

“Thanks for waiting.” He passed Tevy the heavy pack. “Good flying.”

“I can’t believe people will pay for mail,” Tevy said after they were airborne and back at their cruising altitude.

Milan’s head turned, the sunglasses hiding his expression. “You’re old enough to remember the internet. You must have used a phone now and then—watched TV.”

“Of course!” But Tevy knew he sounded defensive. He vaguely remembered talking to his Grandma once via Skype, and he liked to play
Halo
with other kids online. His dad and mom had watched the news on their big flat screen, but he had usually just watched movies—a magic that was only available on Saturday night at St. Mike’s, and only if Emile felt there was plenty of fuel for the generator.

“People still need to keep in touch. They are mad to know how their family members are doing, and crazier still to know what’s going on in the world. Maybe you’re too young to remember, but we used to know everything that happened everywhere in seconds.”

“I’m not too young.” But Tevy only remembered his dad talking about the economy, house prices, and politics in impossibly far away places like Washington. Tevy had followed basketball but never really thought about the cities the other teams were from. They were just names.

He hoped that would all come back. There was talk that they might start up a power station and light up the city, making it easier to hunt rippers at night. Then they could expand out, doing the same thing in other towns. If they killed enough rippers, maybe things could get back to normal again, and Tevy could live in a house with a wife and kids like his parents’ generation. Maybe even Amanda would marry him, although he knew if she favored anyone it was Elliot. Tevy entertained himself with these happy thoughts until he dozed off, still exhausted from his night in the Loop.

The change in engine note, a stutter that wasn’t right, woke him. Tevy sat up straight and looked over at Milan to see whether this was normal. The set of Milan’s jaw said it wasn’t, and Tevy’s heart rate picked up. There was nothing he could do but watch. There was no ripper to fight, nowhere to hide or run. The sun hung so low on the horizon that it was obscured by low cloud.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Milan shook his head as he struggled with the yoke. “No. This is very bad. I cannot climb. We’re losing power. This could be bad fuel, or maybe the timing chain is stretched. I really don’t know, but you are about to be very glad we’re in a small plane. Get on the radio and start calling Mayday.”

Tevy picked up the microphone for the radio, remembering that he had to push the button before speaking. “Anyone out there? We’re in trouble.” He tried not to let the panic, the sense of helplessness, flow through his voice.

“Wrong. Give me that.” Milan snatched the mic away. “Mayday, Mayday. This is Milan Novak. Mayday. Mayday. St John’s come back.” He passed the microphone to Tevy. “Keep saying that, but let go of the key after every repeat and give them a chance to respond.”