“So can I, Sis. This place evokes all the good memories of our childhood. Mom knew that.” He went quiet and took a deep breath. “It was our Disneyland, Tara. The Riker family Disneyland. She wanted us to be happy and be with her—feel her presence—whenever we visited here. On the phone when she was giving me my marching orders, she said to me how one day she expected us to bring our kids here to meet her.”
Steve-O took his eyes off the water churning below and fished a napkin from a pocket. He put a hand on Tara’s shoulder and offered it to her.
She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. After thanking Steve-O, she said, “Let’s do this,” and forced a half-smile.
“The slider will only open a few inches,” said Clark over the shared comms. “Underneath Lee’s seat is a funnel.”
Riker snaked an arm under his seat and felt around blindly. Feeling his fingers brush the wide end of the cylindrical device, he found purchase and dragged it out.
The funnel was red and made of the type of hard plastic that leached that Made in China odor. It was free of oil residue and still bore the instruction and warning stickers. The same kind of generic item could be had at every truck stop and gas station Riker had ever set foot in.
Riker took the urn from Tara. He pried off the top, then removed the softball-sized box from the base.
The box was wrapped in a small plastic bag, which Riker slipped off and stowed in his pocket. There was a strip of tape securing the box top. He peeled off the tape and opened the cardboard cube. Inside was another plastic bag, its contents light gray and malleable through the plastic.
“It’s like opening a Russian nesting doll,” joked Tara.
Steve-O was watching intently. He said, “That’s all that’s left of her?”
Riker handed the empty box to him. “Yep, Steve-O. The human body is mostly water.”
As Riker slid the window open, a blast of rotor wash found its way inside. It was cold and carried with it a dampness and an underlying odor of kerosene-tinged exhaust.
“You get honors,” said Riker. “Mom insists.” He handed Tara the bag of ashes then threaded the funnel’s flexible nozzle through the window opening.
Holding hands, brother and sister recited the Lord’s prayer.
Finished saying a short eulogy for their mother, Tara held the bag in both hands and poured while Riker steadied the funnel. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” he said as the last of the gray powder trickled into the funnel and the bag sucked in on itself.
Crossing himself, Steve-O said, “Rest in peace, Rita.”
Tara gasped as she took her eyes off the spot in the water that had just swallowed up the last of the ashes and regarded Steve-O.
Riker’s head snapped in Steve-O’s direction. “How’d you know her name?” he demanded.
Steve-O upended the box. “It’s written right here.”
Sure enough, her name was scrawled there in black ink.
Suppressing a grin, Riker said, “That it is.”
“Let me have that,” said Tara. She took the box, stuffed the bag inside, and put it in with the reassembled urn.
“Thank you, Clark,” said Riker. “We’re done here.” He stowed the funnel, then reclaimed his seat and buckled in.
“Always a pleasure,” replied the pilot. Then, voice going soft, he added, “My condolences. Sounds like Rita was a helluva lady with a good head on her shoulders. Pretty good combination, if you ask me.”
“That she was,” said Riker agreeably. “She and Dad are together now.”
“Are we continuing on to destination number two?”
“Yes, sir,” said Riker.
There was no acknowledgement from Clark. He simply banked the helicopter to starboard and set them out on a mostly southbound heading.
Tara looked a question at Riker.
He said, “No more secrets. We’re going to see the Big Apple.”
“New York City?”
“As close as we can get.”
“Right now Manhattan airspace is closed,” said Clark. “But I’ll get you as close to Ground Zero as I can.”
Chapter 66
Riker spent the first hour of the flight observing the goings on down below through the Steiners. From an altitude that varied between three and five thousand feet, save for seeing a couple of military convoys heading in the same general direction as the Dauphin, it looked like business as usual.
Across the aisle from Riker, Tara was all but swallowed up by her seat. Listing to the left, head pressed against the window, her eyes had been locked on the landscape below since they left the airspace over Niagara Falls.
Steve-O had lost all interest in the sprawl of towns and their car-choked thoroughfares ten minutes into the flight. He had managed to get his chair reclined and had removed the headset and kicked off his boots shortly thereafter. Now he was fully stretched out with his tube-sock-clad feet crossed and the Stetson balanced on his upturned face.
“Steve-O’s sound asleep, Sis. Anything we need to discuss?”
She sat up in her seat and stretched and yawned. “For the record,” she said in a low voice. “I’m not mad at you for—”
“For what … honoring Mom’s wishes?”
“I was over that the moment you told me why Mom chose Niagara. I’m talking about the whole secret helicopter trip and now this little sojourn to New York. I was pretty pissed up until about ten minutes ago.”
“What changed?”
“It’s more a question of what’s changing. What do I have to go back to in Middletown? My car? My apartment and the second-hand-store furnishings? My wardrobe that fits in one drawer and on two dozen plastic hangars?”
“Now you’re sounding like me, Tara. Restless. Irritable. Discontented. One or all of those things rearing its ugly head is all it takes to make me want to pick up and relocate. As a matter of fact, I’ve had a habit of falling prey to it and moving on every few months.”
“So what are we doing after we check this next item off your bucket list?”
“I think we owe it to Steve-O to see what he has in mind. If he doesn’t want to go back to Middletown, we can all come up with a couple of alternate destinations and put it to a vote.”
The helicopter slowed considerably and began to descend. Clark came on over the comms and said he had just received clearance to land and refuel at Wilkes-Barre International in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He wasn’t sure how long airspace would remain open over the southern half of New York and didn’t want to get caught light on fuel.
Riker flashed a thumbs up as the distinct sound of the landing gear deploying made its way into the cabin.
“We’ll be back on track in thirty minutes,” Clark promised.
***
Twenty minutes after the bowser hooked up and started transferring fuel, it was driving away and Clark was going through his pre-flight and awaiting the all clear from the tower.
***
They sat there with the rotor spinning over their heads for another fifteen minutes as a trio of commercial jetliners taxied one at a time to the runway, burned a minute or two each waiting for their clearance, then thundered into the pale blue sky, off to their next destination.
Finally clearance to launch came from a male air traffic controller in the tower.
Riker found it humorous how Clark instantly switched into professional mode and his voice lost some of its twang as he spoke to the controller. Riker also noted how Clark’s launch from the tarmac under the watchful eye of the tower personnel was nothing like that at the vineyard.
The liftoff was smooth and measured and likely barely perceptible unless one was watching the horizon. Only after the helicopter had gained a considerable bit of altitude did Clark stow the gear. Then, instead of pouring on the power and dumping the stick forward and closing the gear doors on the fly as he had back at the vineyard, he gave the doors ample time to close, rotated the craft clockwise on a flat plane until its nose pointed south, and then slipped away slow and st
eady. It wasn’t until the Dauphin was well clear of the airport’s fenced perimeter that Clark spooled up the turbines and the ground below began to blur and fall away.
For the remainder of the flight Clark pushed the Dauphin hard, keeping her charging southeast just a few knots shy of the manufacturer’s recommended top speed.
“Twenty miles out,” called Clark. “We’ll be following the Hudson in and the East River out. Get your cameras and binoculars ready. We’re only going to get one pass.”
Tara leaned across the cabin and gently nudged Steve-O awake. Once he removed the Stetson from his face and brought his seatback up, she explained to him where they were.
Twenty miles. Riker did the math in his head. Came to the conclusion that Lady Liberty would be outside the windows in seven or eight short minutes. Wanting a preview of things to come, he steadied his elbows on his knees and pressed the Steiners to his face.
Aiming down the center axis of the helicopter allowed Riker to see through the cockpit glass the plume of pale gray smoke rising into the cobalt sky. Just like 9/11, he thought. The extremists raising another middle finger to the Great Satan.
***
Barely two minutes had elapsed when Clark was back on and directing all eyes to port. As he slowed the craft, he said, “Some kind of mass exodus happening. That’s Riverside Park there. The Hudson Greenway is next.” He whistled. A long drawn-out and mournful sound. “Look at those lines at Convention Pier.”
Peering out his window at the gridlocked vehicles choking nearly every arterial in and out of the city core, Steve-O said, “Looks like rush hour down there.”
“And then some,” remarked Tara.
“Bridges and tunnels have been closed since last night,” added Clark. “Manhattan’s locked down. I have contacts at Logan International in Boston who tell me some of the terrorists were taken care of yesterday. There’s a big manhunt underway for the rest here in Manhattan. Likely why it’s all choked up.”
On the greenspaces below, Riker saw thousands of people milling about. There didn’t appear to be any order. There were no lines here. If there was any attempt being undertaken by government officials to check IDs prior to the boarding of the myriad watercraft waiting to ferry people across the Hudson, Riker didn’t see them.
“Lady Liberty,” said Clark. “And out the port windows is 4 World Trade Center. She’s still burning internally.”
The airspace over Battery Park as well as a good deal of that on the Manhattan side of the Hudson was home to a half-dozen news helicopters as well as a trio of Black Hawks moving out eastbound fast and low. The civilian birds were mostly hovering in place, no doubt waiting like mechanical vultures for the other shoe to drop.
Tara unbuckled and wormed in between Steve-O and Riker and pressed both hands to the window. “Think it’s going to come down?”
“Not likely,” said Riker. “They designed the hell out of this one. So much so that it would hold up to a fuel-laden airliner hitting it.”
Tara said, “I read on the television in the vineyard bar that they think the fire suppression systems were sabotaged before some type of incendiary bombs were detonated.”
“I’m not surprised they struck again. But I am baffled as to why they left the Freedom Tower alone. This one though, it’ll burn itself out before it collapses,” said Riker, voice filled with confidence.
“Those black squares—” began Tara.
“That’s where the towers used to stand,” finished Riker. He pointed out the building twisting its way skyward kitty corner to the 9/11 Memorial. “And there’s its replacement. The Freedom Tower is the tallest building on the island.”
The middle of the Freedom Tower was at eye level with the helicopter as it curled around the tip of Manhattan. The distant landscape was reflected back at them in the mirrored glass. And as the angle changed, they caught a glimpse of the back side of 4 World Trade Center in the larger building’s southeast-facing windows. And strangely, it looked untouched.
It wasn’t until Clark brought them around to the East River side of Manhattan Island that they saw the true scope of the disaster. It was nothing like what they saw three hours ago on television. The top two-thirds of the structure was listing. Captured by the mirrored glass in the windows of the lower floors were the constantly strobing lights of dozens of first response vehicles. Parked on the east side of the building were a trio of ladder trucks. White horsetails of water under pressure arced from nozzles in the extended ladders.
Nearby it looked as if a skirmish had broken out. Six deep and growing, a crush of bodies pressed against chest-high metal barriers erected around the ladder trucks. On the opposite side of the fencing two dozen people in black, wielding body-length shields and black batons, were giving the nearest of the rioters a vicious beating.
“The water isn’t reaching the fire,” said Steve-O.
“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Riker.
Tara stabbed a finger at the glass. “What kind of dicks would attack firefighters?”
“The world is full of dicks,” replied Riker. “I’m sure reinforcements are on the way.”
On the tail end of Riker’s response, a whole bunch of things happened one right after the other.
From the point where the building began its lean right on up to the top stories, a ripple pulsed through the intact windows. In the next instant, mirrored glass was raining down ahead of a tsunami of debris being jettisoned through the newly created openings.
As glass and insulation and papers rained down on the streets and vehicles below, the top two-thirds of 4 World Trade Center slipped away from the rest of the building. While the weakening of the building’s core structure took forty-eight hours, its final act happened incredibly fast.
When the helicopter banked hard to starboard—surely an instinctual maneuver on Clark’s part—Riker was afforded a panoramic view of the breadth of Battery Park. What he initially thought were people waiting to board ferries to take them across to the New Jersey side were suddenly revealed for what they truly were: thousands upon thousands of mindless automatons, their pale faces turned up, dead eyes gazing expectantly skyward. Though they were ant-like from this distance, he knew they were no different than the creatures prowling the streets of Middletown, the ones on the cannibal attack videos playing on the Deep Web site, or the ones coming through Peter’s corn maze.
Hands pressed to his face, Steve-O said, “No … this can’t be happening again!”
Voice unwavering, Clark said, “This is not good.”
On the tail end of Clark’s statement, the comms came alive and a tower controller at John F. Kennedy International began to address all Eastern Seaboard air traffic.
Waiting for the controller to finish the preamble to the emergency mandate and get to the meat of the order, Riker cocked his head dog-like.
The meat never reached Riker’s ears. Instead, he was cut out of the comms and had to resort to watching Clark’s mouth move during the five long seconds of silence.
When Clark finally opened up the channel, the controller was finished relaying the emergency declaration, and all that was coming through was what sounded like the pilot drawing some calming breaths.
Riker was watching some kind of a melee taking place on the upper deck of the Staten Island Ferry. There were a dozen people in a scrum with a handful of attackers. In a matter of seconds the attackers had overtaken the larger crowd and freshly spilled blood was being smeared across the wooden deck planks.
Directly below the ferry’s port side, seven or eight people were huddled in a small pocket created where a gore-streaked ambulance was backed in against the sloping gangway and chest-high cement seawall.
On an electronic reader board nearby an appeal for calm and maintaining orderly lines was still being broadcast.
As the helicopter passed over the group behind the ambulance, one of their own was yanked forcibly underneath the rear wheels and disappeared into the crazed throng pressing in from a
ll directions. The last thing that registered with Riker was the half-dozen faces looking expectantly skyward.
Tearing his eyes from the carnage, Riker looked straight ahead and out the cockpit glass. Having come to a decision, he rattled off everything he knew about the things Tara was calling zombies.
Soberly, Clark said, “I saw what you saw down there. Good enough name for them as any.”
Relieved the aviator didn’t call him crazy, Riker asked, “What was the emergency declaration?”
“The entire Eastern Seaboard has been declared a no-fly zone,” answered Clark. “I’m not going to be able to finish the tour, let alone return you to the vineyard.”
“Where do we go from here?”
“I’ve been ordered by JFK Control to immediately land at the nearest airport.”
“Why ground all flights?” asked Tara. “A plane did not do that to the tower.”
“You’re right,” replied Clark. “This order has nothing to do with that building coming down. And if we’re comparing events … the FAA let the news choppers own the airspace up here after the towers came down.” He went silent for a beat. When he came back on the comms he made it known that he was convinced the grounding order was a direct result of the madness happening at Battery Park.
Tara put a hand on Steve-O’s shoulder and shot her brother a worried look. “What do we do now, Lee?”
Riker covered the boom mic and mouthed, “I’m thinking.”
Steve-O wiped a tear. Looking Riker in the eye, he said, “The world just changed again, didn’t it?”
For the first time since he met Steve-O, Riker was certain the man wasn’t voicing a lyric from a country and western song. Another thing Riker was certain of after seeing Battery Park teeming with things whose existence defied all logic was that Steve-O’s statement was directed at the wrong threat. Terrorists, homegrown or otherwise, were the least of their worries. Riker feared that what he was seeing now and what he had witnessed the day before in Middletown was but the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Riker's Apocalypse (Book 1): The Promise Page 34
