With resounding thuds, the TRTVs landed in a semi-circle around the pile of steel. Evangeline began issuing orders to Daryl and the other pilots to use the armatures on their vehicles to move the pipes from the pile. Opening the visual shield of her cockpit, she pulled up the high-tech visor on her helmet to show her face to the man with the ginger mustache.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Chief Chris Roberts. I lead the rescue teams of this district,” he replied with a wary tone.
“Chief, I’m Captain Evangeline Evans,” she called down to him with authoritative courtesy. “I need you to guide us in the removal of these pipes. Direct us as to which pipes we need to move first so we don’t upset the stack and do more harm than good. We’re just here to assist, not take over.”
Chief Roberts looked through the cockpit glazing into Evangeline’s eyes, determining if he could trust an Olympian pilot to keep her word. He had endured more than one occasion in which an arrogant, impatient pilot overstepped their bounds because they had the more powerful and sophisticated equipment. “Might makes Right” did not end with The Collapse
They both knew what his decision was going to be. Pulling a piece of chalk from his vest pocket, he started marking the pipes one by one. “This one has to go first, then these two and then this one here.” He was moving around the pile of pipes like a squirrel scavenging for nuts.
Evangeline and her team began to pick up the pipes and moved them away from the scene of the accident, forming a loose pile on the other side of the street. Another delivery vehicle arrived, along with a ground loader, which picked up the pipes from where Evangeline’s team had been dumping them and loaded them onto the new transport. Many of the pipes showed signs of damage from the collision and the rescue effort. The mangled and dented pipes were unusable for any building project; they would have to go back to the mill and recycled.
Evangeline scanned the heat signature each time she approached the pile in her TRTV. The body beneath the pipes continued to lose heat, the life seeping out of it each passing second. Pressing urgency to free the feeble body surged through Evangeline’s veins. She made herself hope the waning life form was nothing more than someone’s pet; the loss of a pet would still be a tragedy, but far less tragic than the other dreadful alternative. The removal of a few more pipes allowed the scanners to get close enough for the crisp resolution of the heat signature. The evidence was undeniable that the figure crushed beneath the mound of pipes was, in fact, a person. She estimated that the individual was no more than five feet tall, perhaps a child or even an adolescent struggling for life. The urgency swelled in her heart again like the tide.
Never a sound was heard from the person entombed under the pile of heavy steel. Evangeline’s omnidirectional microphone picked up Chief Roberts comforting a nearby pedestrian, explaining that the trapped individual may be unconscious or unable to move. As they extracted each pipe, he called into the pile, asking for signs of life and reassuring that help was on the way.
Daryl’s TRTV picked up yet another pipe, revealing a dirt covered foot underneath. As the soiled toes wiggled, a collective sigh and hopeful cheers erupted from the onlookers. Whomever the victim was, Evangeline prayed they would to make it to a medical center for treatment. She imagined an hourglass with the top bulb almost depleted as the final few grains of sand crept toward the neck to remind them all death still lingered very near.
The pilots and emergency personnel hastened to recover the body at the base of the wreckage. They eased the body out from under the last few pipes, which had formed a shallow teepee, protecting the body from the weight of the pipes above. The small gap made the difference between survival and ending up as a statistic.
The dirty foot was the only appendage that was visible outside of a heavy blanket, which was wrapped around the helpless victim. Even the face was veiled beneath the dirty, grey wool. Images of mass graves documented during The Collapse erupted in Evangeline’s mind. Layers upon layers of bodies wrapped in tattered sheets, blood-soaked blankets, and even plastic tarps flooded her memory. The meager shrouds were the only means to give some dignity to the thousands and millions who died from disease and starvation.
“Captain?” Daryl whispered from his cockpit, “How did a body end up in the street and wrapped up in a blanket? I doubt the person walked themselves here, bundled up, and laid down to die.”
Evangeline realized her trainee made a simple, but valid point. The survivor did not get to the scene under his or her own power. “I don’t know Simmonds,” she replied, “I’ve read patrol reports about something like this before. Zoners would take the body of a person who died, and then hide them in a place where an Olympic transport would be sure to pass over. Then, they would reveal the body at the last possible second and make the driver believe he had committed vehicular manslaughter. The family of the deceased would be given some kind of settlement under the pretense of an accidental death. Only an autopsy revealed that the victim was already dead before the vehicle struck them.”
Evangeline could hear Daryl shiver in his seat. “That’s gross,” he murmured under his breath.
“Yes,” she answered, “but gross or not, it happened quite often about a hundred years ago.” Evangeline left out another motive for leaving a body in the street to be crushed by an unsuspecting vehicle: to cover up a crime.
The rescuers tenderly lifted the survivor, still shrouded by the blanket, onto a stretcher. As the emergency workers carried the stretcher toward their medical vehicle, one of the medics pulled the folds of the blanket away from the survivor’s face. She jumped away from the stretcher, a look of astonishment in her eyes. The other emergency workers stopped in their tracks, searching for what had startled the medic. When they saw what had been concealed beneath the blanket, they almost dropped the stretcher as if their hands forgot how to hold onto the aluminum handles.
The medic re-approached the stretcher with tentative steps and stared down at the survivor, still cocooned in the blanket. She covered her gaping mouth with her gloved hands and shook her head back and forth, defiant to the image attacking her mind. A tear coursed down her cheek.
On the stretcher, swaddled in the soiled blanket, laid an Angel, but not just any Angel. This Angel was a pre-adolescent, a not-yet fully-grown female Angel. Not once in the history of Angels living on Olympus had anyone ever seen one so young before. Her face was like pure alabaster, and of unspeakable beauty. No human could imagine a face more perfect than the Angels they associated with in their day-to-day lives. Nothing could have prepared the crowds at the accident scene to witness her flawless, child-like face.
She laid on the stretcher with a content smile molded on her porcelain face, staring upward into the sky. Staring up at it, Evangeline noted, but not quite seeing it somehow. Evangeline first thought the smile reflected her gratitude of the rescue. However, there was something else about the young Angel’s expression, something out of place. Evangeline recognized that same blank, unaffected look from the faces of the Angels on the train earlier that morning.
Serenity. Peace. Tranquility. Those were the only words she could conjure to describe the girl’s expression, which seemed out-of-place after surviving a burial beneath cold steel for an hour. Evangeline wondered how the girl could be so calm after the drawn-out calamity.
The emergency crew composed themselves from their shock and shifted the stretcher in their hands. As they carried her to the medical vehicle, the medic began grilling the Angel with typical post-trauma evaluation questions: What’s your name? Where do you live? Are you hurt? Is there anyone we can call? Question after question, the girl remained unresponsive. If it were not for her eyes flitting about following soaring birds in the sky, it would have been difficult to determine she was alive.
Evangeline had to take a closer look at this young Angel for herself.
She evacuated her TRTV before the rescuers secured the Angel within the medical vehicle. They were treating her injuries wi
th fresh bandages and inserting an IV in her hand as Evangeline approached. She removed her helmet and placed it inside the door. The rescuers again asked the Angel her name, where she lived, who she lived with, what work she did, but she never said a word. She just stared up at the ceiling of the medical transport as if she were all alone in a quiet sanctuary.
Evangeline took notice of the blanket. It was old, generic, and dirty. Her eyes were drawn to a deep red spot soaking the blanket just as the medic lifted the Angel’s head to place a neck brace underneath. The rescue worker at the head of the stretcher looked down as he set the handles down on the lip of the doorway. “Look at this… behind her head on the blanket. That looks like blood.”
The medic rolled the Angel’s head to one side, to get a closer look. Neither the rescue worker nor Evangeline were prepared for what they saw. Instead of bloody, matted hair or a gash in the Angel’s flesh, Evangeline was stunned to discover a wide, gaping hole where a scalp and cranium should have been. The gap was big enough, she was certain, that she could have fit her fist inside with room to spare. However, the hole was the least macabre aspect of the discovery.
Evangeline had witnessed head injuries from combat off world, even in gruesome training accidents. She had long ago grown desensitized to spilt blood and gory injuries. What made her taste bile in the back of her throat was the emptiness within the skull. Absolute emptiness. No brain matter or tissues as far as she could detect from her point of view over the rescue workers shoulder.
Behind her, she heard the strangled voice of her trainee. “What the…?”
Evangeline turned around to see the three other TRTV pilots standing in a half-circle, holding their helmets. Behind them, the crowd of pedestrians and rescue workers craned their necks to get a glimpse of the bizarre aberration that had caused the medics to drop the survivor on the hard, dusty road.
One of the other patrol pilots spoke first. Evangeline did not know him by name. He was a tall, tough looking man, with dark skin and short-cropped blond hair. She always thought he looked intimidating on base, but at that moment, he looked frightened.
“Captain?” he said in a hoarse whisper. “What the hell is that?”
THIRTEEN
Derek Campbell, Director of Angel Affairs, sat typing on the holographic keyboard, floating on the glass top desk in the dim light of his office. The only feeble light in the room emanated from a small lamp perched at the edge of the desk. Campbell thrived in shadows. He was a lover of secrets, and secrets were best kept in darkness. As a youth he learned to lurk in the shadows at the fringe of activity, away from the eyes of onlookers, perfecting near-invisibility. As fiercely as he cloaked his own secrets in the darkness, the shadows were the perfect place to discover the black secrets within others.
“Mr. Campbell, Director Wright is here to see you. He said it’s urgent.” Campbell’s stony face cracked with a quick sneer. Director Mitchell Wright was another member of the committee formed by the Quorum of Zeus to integrate the Angels into Olympic society. Campbell oversaw their housing in the Cathedrals. Wright was responsible for their education. The thought of educating Angels both amused and frustrated Campbell. At times Campbell pitied his colleague.
Campbell’s tenure on the committee was in its ninth year when Mitchell Wright accepted the vacant seat. Wright had no idea what kind of world he was stepping into when he joined the group that was even unknown to the most elite families of Olympus.
The airy voice of Campbell’s Angel assistant, Sienna, piped into his office over the intercom. Campbell kept an Angel in his employ because she did her job efficiently and minded her own business. Angels were also well-versed in secrecy, and in his line of work there were a great number of sensitive secrets to protect.
Sienna dressed in simple clothes, like most Angels. Unlike Graham, a man Campbell loathed for his opulent lifestyle, he never required his assistant to dress in provocative fashions. He failed to see the necessity of his colleagues’ investments in the lavish appearance of their staff. Most importantly, an Angel in flamboyant attire would draw unwanted attention to himself, and attention was something he despised and shunned.
“Send him in,” he answered.
The office door flung open and Mitchell Wright strode in, making a point of securing the door behind him.
“There’s no need for that, Mitchell,” Campbell said, glancing up. “You know she won’t repeat anything she might hear.”
Mitchell Wright sat down in the hard, straight-backed chair in front of Campbell’s desk. Such an uncomfortable seat discouraged visitors from remaining in it for long periods. Campbell did not like visitors -he preferred his shadowy solitude.
“Perhaps,” Wright replied. “But I would prefer to have this discussion behind closed doors. I thought you of all people valued privacy above all else.”
Campbell grunted in acknowledgement. He finished scribbling some notes on the glass, placing the pen with sharp precision on the desk. He leaned forward in his chair and folded his hands on the desktop in front of him. His eyed bored into Wright.
“What do we need to discuss that merits this interruption, Wright?” he said.
Wright cleared his throat and squirmed in his chair. Perspiration ran along his hairline. “An Angel was found at the scene of a vehicular collision in the southwest LTZ this afternoon.”
Campbell’s face was impassive, which made Wright feel even more nervous.
And?” Campbell prompted.
Wright cleared his throat again. “I’m aware this isn’t the kind of development I would typically waste your time with, Derek. However, the peculiar condition of the Angel flagged the special alert. She was found by rescuers, under a pile of construction material. She was wrapped in a blanket and suffered severe head trauma.”
“And?” Campbell’s eyebrows knit together as he drummed his fingers on the desktop. “Please get to the part where this becomes my concern.” Most people would have shrunk at the withering glare of Campbell’s eyes.
However, Wright matched Campbell’s contempt with his own dark glare. He not only despised Campbell for his demeaning behavior, but for enabling the life of secrets, which burdened him every day. Had Wright known, had he had an inkling of what risks would be involved, he would never have accepted this position. The perks he had once thought would outweigh any downside were few and far between. The only thing Wright longed for was to wash his hands of the messy business and leave it behind forever.
“The Angel was found alive. With a hole in the back of her head,” he whispered through gritted teeth.
Campbell remained impassive, staring at Wright across the desk. Wright could see the wheels turning in his mind as he calculated the gravity of these ramifications.
Campbell’s stern façade transformed, like a wax statue melting in the sun. “I see.” Like a switch, his expression changed again from disappointed to threatening. Wright was shifting in his seat - he was not eager, for what he knew was coming next.
Campbell resumed his earlier posture, closer to Wright than before.
“You haven’t told me the worst part, have you?” his voice seethed.
“No.” Wright squirmed. He swallowed and took a deep breath, screwing up his courage “The Angel is an adolescent.”
Campbell sat still as a sphinx, unyielding his gaze upon Wright the entire time he processed the new data. Wright stared back, swallowing several times, wary of how Campbell would respond next. He was locked in a cage with an unpredictable beast.
Campbell closed his eyes and sat back in his chair, taking a slow, deep breath. He kept the tips of his fingers together, drumming them in a pattern, as had been his habit his entire life. He swiveled his chair away from Wright to stare out the window. When he turned back around and faced Wright, his glare was intense and laser-focused.
“Who else knows about this?”
FOURTEEN
Moments after the gruesome discovery to the Angel’s head, the medics whisked her away to the neare
st Cathedral for treatment. It was standard procedure to allow Angels to look after their own; they preferred to receive medical care in their own facilities. In the aftermath of the collision, Chief Roberts took eyewitness statements from everyone on the scene, including Evangeline and the other pilots, for his official report. However, the mystery of how a juvenile Angel came to be found under a pile of steel in the middle of the LTZ.
Following the cleanup of the accident in the LTZ, Evangeline, Daryl, and the other patrol team prepared their TRTVs for the return to the base. The TRTVs had loaded the rest of the pipes onto the second freight hauler, but when additional emergency and service vehicles arrived, there was not enough room in the intersection for the TRTVs and the new LTZ crews. Evangeline and the others had become an unnecessary hindrance.
Evangeline glanced around and spotted Daryl down a side street flirting with some local girls. In Olympus or the LTZ, there was something that excited women about a man in uniform..
Evangeline stood for a moment studying Daryl in his prime flirtatious form. Although their training relationship had been brief, she thought of Daryl almost like a little brother. He had quite a bit of maturing to do, and she was going to be there to show him the ropes.
Alpha patrols Seven and Eight had already reconnected to their vehicles by the time Evangeline returned to the cluster of grounded TRTVs. She let out a shrill whistle at Daryl, signaling him to cease and desist flirting and get back in his cockpit.
Evangeline stopped in her tracks when she discovered a woman in a drab olive scarf examining the armature of her TRTV. A man was doing the same thing next to Daryl’s TRTV. She hastened her pace to a brisk stride.
“Can I help you with something?’ Evangeline called out, carrying her helmet under her left arm. The woman froze and turned around, startled.
Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) Page 8
