The day after: An apocalyptic morning (76 page)

              "Darling," Skip said, stepping forward and putting a kiss upon its windshield, "you are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life."

              The first thing Skip checked, before he even went into the hanger, was if there was a fuel supply for the helicopter. Without fuel to run it, the chopper was about as worthless as tits on a bull. He walked over to the fueling area and found the pump where jet fuel, which the turbine engine ran on, was dispensed. Though the pump itself could not operate without electricity, it was still possible to siphon the precious liquid out of the tank with a hose inserted into the vent cap if there was any fuel in there to be sucked and if it wasn't completely contaminated with rainwater.

              Their luck was in it seemed. Using the measuring stick he found near the destroyed fueling shack, he determined that there was more than two thousand gallons available for plunder and that there was only about a half an inch of water resting on the bottom of the tank.

              "If we get this thing running," Skip told his companions, "we're going to have to fly a squad out here to secure this area and then transport this fuel back to Garden Hill and store it."

              "Transport it back?" Jack asked. "How would we do that?"

              "A little bit at a time," Skip said. "It will take a while to get it all, that's for sure. And we'll have to come up with something to store it in back in town."

              "Like what?" Paula wanted to know.

              Skip shrugged. "That one is going to take a little thought. But why don't I see if the damn thing will even run before we start thinking that far ahead."

              While Jack and Paula kept watch outside, Skip and Mick searched through the hanger and the small office that was in the back of it. Skip had extensive experience flying the Apache, the Blackhawk, and the Bell that the San Joaquin Sheriff's Department had owned, but he had never flown an MD 500 before, with or without a tail rotor. He wanted to find the spec and maintenance manuals to help familiarize himself with the aircraft systems, capabilities, and limitations. Ordinarily a three-day training program was required for a pilot to be checked out on a new type of aircraft. Skip would have to figure it out on his own.

              The manuals he sought were found easily, as was a fairly good supply of basic maintenance parts like fuel and oil filters. That was about all that was useful in the hanger though. If there had been weapons, ammunition, or food, they had all been carted off by those who came before. Skip sat down in a chair and used his flashlight to read through the maintenance record.

              "All right," he said. "We're in luck. This thing was last given a routine servicing on September 28. That's just two weeks before the comet. As long as nobody's messed with it, it should be in fairly good shape."

              "What about the next time it needs work?" Mick asked. "Will you be able to do it?"

              "I think so," he said a little doubtfully. "These manuals are not as detailed as I'd like, but I think I'll be able to figure out the basic stuff. With any luck we won't need any parts that can't be found here for more than six or seven months. After that, who knows?"

              He set down the maintenance manual and picked up the flight manual. He opened it up and began to page through the specifications for the model. "Okay," he said, "here's the meat of the Micker. That chopper has a range of three hundred miles carrying a pilot and four hundred pounds of fuel."

              "How much is four hundred pounds?" Mick wanted to know.

              "About sixty-four gallons. Pretty shitty gas mileage, isn't it?"

              "I'll say. So that means that we can go up to a hundred and fifty miles to find supplies?"

              "Well, not exactly," Skip told him. "The three hundred mile range is just with the pilot and the fuel. Let me see what the weighted range is." He ran his finger down the columns of numbers and specs, finally finding what he was looking for. "Here we go," he said. "This thing can carry fifteen hundred pounds of internal cargo, or two thousand pounds hanging from the hook on the bottom. However, that cuts the range down to about a hundred miles."

              "A hundred miles?" Mick said, dejected. "That's not even enough to carry something back from Reno."

              "Actually, it is," Skip said. "Remember, we're talking about how the crow flies, not the distance on the road. Now Reno is seventy miles from Garden Hill by driving on Interstate 80, but keep in mind that the Interstate twists and turns up the mountain passes and back down the other side. I'll have to look at the maps, but I don't think its much more than forty miles in a straight line. And even if we have to go further away to find things, we can either make extra fuel part of the cargo or reduce the weight of what we carry. There are conversion tables in this manual that will let me calculate just how far with how much I can go."

              Skip spent another thirty minutes going over the flight manual carefully, familiarizing himself with the various features of the aircraft before he even walked over and had a look at it. Finally, though far from checked out to his satisfaction, he knew that it was time to get moving if he hoped to get the thing in the air by nightfall. Taking the manual with him, he began a complete inspection. He poked about in the cockpit, in the engine compartment, and along the tail, paying particular attention to the air intake system for the NOTAR, which he was completely unfamiliar with. He found a ladder and climbed up to have a look in the rotor housing. He checked fluid levels, finding all of them to be within specifications. Finally, with everything checked that could be checked without power, he flipped on the battery, expecting that it would be flat as a pancake after sitting idle for so long.

              It wasn't flat, but it wasn't fully charged either. The ready lights glowed brightly but the power gauge was well into the red zone. He turned off every unnecessary component to conserve the juice, hoping that it would be enough.

              "Come on," he told Mick as he stepped out and shut the pilot's door. "Let's push this thing outside and I'll see if it will fire up."

              "Push it out?" Mick said doubtfully. "Can just the two of us do that?"

              "Easily," Skip assured him. "It's lighter than a car."

              They put their hands on the back of it and started pushing. Slowly the helicopter rolled across the cement surface of the hanger and out onto the asphalt of the tarmac. Paula and Jack, seeing this, immediately came over to help but Skip told them to maintain their positions.

              "That's good," Skip said when they were about thirty feet from the hanger. Paula and Jack, unable to contain their curiosity, walked over despite his orders.

              "Will it run?" Paula asked.

              Skip let her insubordination slide. "That's what I'm about to find out. The battery is a little low but everything else seems to be in order. Everybody stand well back while I play with it."

              They all stood back about fifty feet and Skip climbed into the cockpit, sitting in the right hand seat where the controls were. He opened the flight manual and, using the checklist inside of it, performed the start-up procedures. This took about two minutes to do. Finally, the moment of truth arrived. With a silent prayer, he engaged the starter.

              It was a very near thing. It turned over very slowly, very sluggishly and seemed about to peter out for a moment but it hung in there and, after a brief hitch, the engine caught and began to emit the distinctive turbine whine. The cockpit lights flared brighter and the gauges all shot up as it cycled higher.

              "Yes," Skip said with a sigh of relief. He left the rotor disengaged and the engine in a low idle. He began to check the gauges, looking for any errant reading. Everything seemed to be within parameters, except for the fuel tank, which had less than a hundred pounds in it. That would need to be rectified before they tried to depart.

              He flipped a page in the manual and began going through the pre-flight checklist while the engine warmed up to optimum operating temperature. It took him about five minutes to run through it completely and he then took another couple of minutes to familiarize himself with the controls, which were marginally different than what he was used to. Once he thought he had the layout memorized, he looked out the window, which the wipers were keeping clean, towards his three companions. They were all standing there anxiously, watching his every move. He waved at them to get under cover, not wanting them in the open when he tried to lift off for the first time. They passed around a worried look and then trotted over to the corner of the hanger.

              "Okay," he said to himself as he clipped on his harness and put the helmet on his head. "Let's see what this thing feels like."

              He powered up just a little and engaged the rotor, lugging down the engine momentarily as its workload was suddenly increased. Out the window the blades began to spin, slowly at first, but rapidly picking up speed until they were moving at full idle. He checked the last few items on the pre-flight list, finding nothing amiss, and then, with no more excuses to delay, he began the take-off procedure.

              The engine wound up and the entire vehicle began to hum with vibration and noise. The rotor blades became a blur and water sprayed all over the tarmac from the downdraft. Slowly the downward thrust from the rotor blades overcame the force of gravity and the helicopter rose into the air, only a few feet at first, well within the ground effect.

              "Jesus," Skip said as he felt the tail sweeping back and forth. He flirted with the edge of control for a moment as his feet worked the pedals, which controlled the amount of anti-torque thrust being delivered by the tail. It seemed the NOTAR system was a little touchier than a conventional tail rotor.

              Finally, after nearly thirty adrenaline filled seconds of wagging his tail back and forth in twenty degree arcs, he began to get the feel of it and was able to keep it from drifting. Once he had firm control of the bird, he started experimenting a little bit. Staying in the ground effect about six feet off the asphalt, he moved forward slowly, practicing his maneuvering. He found that the MD reacted more quickly to control movements than did the larger Bell helicopter that he was used to. It lifted quicker, dropped quicker, and changed forward speed quicker. Using the anti-torque pedals to steer with, he moved further out onto the tarmac and then turned around, heading back. He set it back down on the ground momentarily to get the feel of landing.

              Finally, convinced that he was competent enough at maneuvering at a low hover, he lifted up again and continued to climb. The ground dropped away beneath him and the altimeter - which had rested near 2300 feet on the asphalt, began to wind upward. He took it up eight hundred above the ground and then began to move forward, slowly picking up speed until he was moving at about fifty knots. Below him he was able to see the mud pit that Cameron Park had become and the broken ribbon that had once been Highway 50 stretching off towards the sea that the Sacramento Valley now was.

              For the next ten minutes he circled around the airport, turning, hovering, starting and stopping, familiarizing himself with his new machine. He could see the tiny figures of Mick, Jack, and Paula below, looking anxiously up at him. Once he got over the fear of trying to control an unfamiliar aircraft without formal training, he found himself exhilarated. He was flying again, something he had loved to do since he was a child. He had thought those days had ended with the comet strike but here he was again, feeling the controls in his hand, feeling the responsiveness of his machine, looking at everything on the ground from far above. Flying was what he had been born to do, what he had geared his life towards, and it felt divine to be in the cockpit once again.

              He made one more circle around the airport and then brought the machine down to a gentle landing next to the fuel pumping equipment on the far side of the tarmac. He disengaged the rotor, letting it wind down and then shut down the engine. As soon as he opened the door to get out his three companions were there, their faces excited and relieved.

              "You did it, Skip," Paula cried, hugging him. "You flew it!"

              "That was awesome," Jack added.

              "It looks like we're in business," Mick put in.

              "Hey," he said, grinning at them. "Was there ever any doubt?"

              It took almost two hours to get the tank of the helicopter topped off. Skip cut off a long piece of the hose that had been connected to the pump and inserted it through the vent cap in the ground. After nearly ten minutes of frantic, nauseating sucking on the other end, the pungent fuel began to trickle out. Skip held his thumb over the end of the hose until he could put it in the chopper's fuel port. It ran in at a steady but agonizingly slow rate.

              "I wonder if Paul has got some sort of portable pump we can use to make this a little easier," Skip wondered aloud after an hour had gone by and the tank was still only half full.

              "I would hope so," Mick said. "If not, it's gonna take us a year to get this fuel back to town."