by Logan Keys
The sergeant nodded, and Colton backed up to the corner of the block as Rufus did the same.
“We better book it, son,” Rufus said, and Colton was surprised that when they turned to run down the street, the older man was spry, legs pumping fast beneath him as they fled.
When they got far enough away, and after a few confusing turns through the mess that was once the great city of Chicago, they paused with their hands on their knees to catch their breath. Rufus nodded towards a building where the doors were wide open, the place having been burned out. What had once been a place for business was now cold and empty. A perfect depiction of how far the world had fallen in just a few short weeks.
Colton followed Rufus inside and together they ducked down behind some charred furniture just as the sergeant rushed by with back up. The group was looking for them, the sergeant wasn’t going to let it go that easy.
But they missed the hiding spot and Colton breathed a sigh of relief.
“Good to see you again,” Rufus said patting Colton on the back. “Figured you’d be lost to the meat grinder of a government.”
“I did too.”
“Your friend…? You find her?”
Colton shook his head. “But I know where she might be. I have to get back to an alleyway not far from where we just were.”
“Nothing but trouble in that direction,” Rufus said.
Colton nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’d better go with you then.” Rufus winked.
“What about your daughter?”
“She’s good for now. Safe. I thought maybe you could use a hand.”
Colton felt his throat tighten. Rufus had come into the dangerous city just for him?
“Don’t get all soft on me,” Rufus said. “I did it for the dog.” He chuckled petting Rex on the head. “So where is this friend of yours?”
“They said Justice, I know the guys name now, was looking for another gang member named Spider. If we can find him, maybe… I dunno, I just know I need to find the guy. It’s my only lead.”
Rufus nodded. “Then let’s go.”
Colton edged out onto the street, but he could see some of the soldiers in the direction they needed to go. “We have to go the long way ’round. If you see anyone that looks like they could be in a gang, tell me. The guy said “bloods” would be running this place soon, so try to spot anyone in red, I guess. I’m not quite up to date on my gang wear.” Colton laughed. This was quickly turning into a live action version of Grand Theft Auto.
The jovial mood died a quick death. Poor Brittany was probably freaking out. Or worse…he tried not to think about the “worse.” Instead, hoped he’d be in time.
“So, Justice is the guy?” Rufus asked as they walked.
“Yeah.”
“Nice name.”
“Right?”
Together they worked their way back towards the alleyway, stopping here and there to ask if anyone knew Justice or Spider. They had to stop a couple times to help injured people as best they could. A woman was limping down the street, her leg badly burned. Colton helped her into a place with a few people, and Rufus made sure they were going to get her medical aid.
Rufus and Colton made a good team. They worked through the epic madness flawlessly. Although, the few gang members that they found were either injured too, past being able to answer, or avoiding someone with a military grade weapon in hand. It stuck out like a sore thumb and if Colton hadn’t lost the Mossberg, he’d trade it back for something more reasonable. He didn’t have ammo for it anyway, so it would be out soon.
“There are some guys down the alleyway.”
Colton did a double take. This was it. This was the spot where Safford had shot the gang members and Trevor. A few guys were picking up the bodies of their friends as Colton slowly approached.
One guy stood up tall. He had to be at least six feet and he was stacked. He pointed at Colton, unafraid of the rifle. “You see what went down in here?”
“Yeah,” Colton said sadly. “But it wasn’t me. I was locked up in the back of the truck. Sorry about your friend.”
“He wasn’t no friend, man. My friend is the one there that his guy shot. Did you see what happened to the other guy?”
“Trevor…er. T?”
The gang member nodded. “Yup. That’s him. So, he’s okay then?”
Colton shook his head. “I’m sorry. He didn’t make it. But, I was with him, he uh…if you know his family, tell them he talked about them.”
The guy glanced up at the sky, seeming to fight tears. “Who did it?” he asked after he got control of his emotions.
“I don’t know,” Colton lied. He wasn’t going to start a war between the gangs and the military…anymore than had already begun. “I’m looking for a guy named Justice.”
The man turned suspicious. “Why? Who are you?”
“Or Spider.” Colton didn’t offer anything else.
The two of them stared at each other, sizing one another up for a moment.
“You’re looking at him.”
Colton let out the breath he’d been holding. One step closer to helping Brittany, it felt like. “I’m trying to find my friend and I know Justice was looking for you last anyone saw him.”
“He’s alone,” Spider said. “No friends with him.”
Colton stiffened. “You’ve seen him?”
The guy nodded. “I know where he’s at. All banged up. But he’s alone. I swear it.”
“Bring me to him.”
“Nah, man. Not gonna happen.”
Colton felt his pulse pounding in his ears. He lifted the M16 but didn’t aim it. “Look. I don’t want to do this the hard way, but your friend and I have business.” His hands shook and an inner rage enveloped him. Had Justice killed her? Dumped the body? He saw red when he pictured the scenario. “I won’t take no for an answer.”
Why was Justice banged up? Images of Brittany in her final moments made Colton feel like he was going to be sick.
Spider seemed to weigh his options before he reached for his belt.
“Don’t move!” Colton barked, rifle up, and Rufus moved to his side, pistol aimed at Spider. The others grabbed their guns and held them on Rufus and Colton but it was Rex who acted. He went off, barking and growling, before he rushed after Spider, grabbing the guy by the arm and shaking savagely. “Get your dog off of me! Get him off!” Spider screamed in a high-pitched voice that would have been funny had it been any other moment.
Colton snapped, “Rex.”
The dog let go and trotted back to his side.
“Put ’em down,” Spider shouted, holding his bleeding arm. “I’ll take you. All right? Justice isn’t worth all this bullshit.”
“You lead the way,” Rufus said, and Colton was so glad he had Rufus to back him up.
Spider started walking but Colton kept the M16 trained on his back. Luckily, they headed away from where the military vehicles drove back and forth, and deeper into the alleyway. Spider approached a rusted door on the left and then he pounded on it. “J. Hey, J! Someone out here wants to talk to you.”
It took a few long minutes before the door creaked open with a loud squeal. He looked different, and part of that was his face was cut up and swollen, but another part was Colton could see the real person now instead of who he’d imagined the guy to be. He was a monster, and Colton wondered how he’d missed that before.
“What do you want—” Justice froze and glared at Colton who held the M16 aimed at his head. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Yes. You will,” Colton growled. “Where is she?”
Justice wiped his face and smiled. “You won’t shoot me. Put that thing down. If you do, then how will you find her?”
Colton had never felt such anger and fear mixed together before. His adrenaline was pumping full blast. It made the situation surreal. He moved his aim to Justice’s knee. “You don’t need kneecaps to tell me where she is.”
Justice huffed a laugh and r
aised his one non-swollen brow, like he was proud of Colton’s guts. It only made Colton angrier. “She’s dead,” Justice said, and Colton felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach.
He fought to keep breathing and not blast this guy.
“You’re lying,” Colton said quietly.
“Well,” Justice said, scratching his ear is if it was no big deal. “She looked dead to me last I saw her.”
“Where?” Colton demanded, his voice cracking with the pain of it being possibly true.
He sensed Rufus shifting beside him.
“Where?” Colton snapped and pointed the rifle back at Justice’s head. “If she’s dead, then what do I need you for?”
“All right. Let me show you. You gotta ride?”
Rufus answered, “We have my truck about two miles that way. Get walking.”
Chapter Nine
Wellington, New Zealand
“Lucky, you can open your eyes now.”
Luckman cracked one eye open and let out the breath he’d been holding in a long hiss.
“We’re climbing again!” Greg shouted, still glued to the window where moments ago the wave had been ready to overtake the tail end of the plane.
“We are!” Terry cried, and everyone erupted into cheers of excitement as the giant metal bird inched away from the melee below.
Luckman put his head in his hands before he finally turned to look at German.
“This guy,” the big Russian said, motioning toward the cockpit, and Luckman nodded. “Still a better flight than the last one, yeah?”
Then Luckman smiled. German did too. And soon they were laughing like loons.
The release of tension made Luckman’s eyes water as he cried out his laughter. Everyone was staring at them.
Luckman explained, “We jumped out of his plane last time.”
Terry’s mouth dropped open. “You what?”
“What, why?” Greg asked.
German and Luckman shared a glance and roared all over again. It wasn’t hilarious…but it kind of was. Even almost having the tsunami wave pull them into the ocean was better than before.
“Because it was crashing,” German said between gulps of air, slapping his knee, and wheezing.
“It was going down like a rock!” Luckman chortled, and they started cracking up all over again as German mimicked it with his hands.
This time, the gesture caught Luckman in the funny bone, and he laughed until his sides ached.
“I don’t see how that’s funny!” Holtz said with feigned outrage.
And that made German laugh even harder.
Danielle crossed her arms. “He seriously crashed a plane already? That you were on? And you’re letting him fly us?”
“We had no choice,” Greg offered with a shrug, though he was cutting eyes at their hilarity.
Terry sighed. “No one else would do it. Would we have stayed?” she asked her sister who flopped back in her seat, angrily.
Luckman took notice of the woman’s bravery. Terry was made of stern stuff. To get to her family she would do anything. Even gripping her armrests until her knuckles were white, she forged ahead, and agreed that they wouldn’t have chosen differently.
“Well. We are in the air now.” Greg sighed and finally pulled away from the window as the plane entered dense cloud cover.
“Yes,” Terry said into the quiet that followed his statement. “We will be home soon.”
But California wasn’t home to Luckman. He had to go onward to New York after they landed. It all seemed so far away. And, at the moment, it really was.
“I’ll go check on our pilot,” Luckman said, unbuckling.
He kept a hand on the back of the seats as he went down the aisle. The door was closed, so he had to fiddle with the latch to get it open.
“How’s it going?” he asked, once inside.
“Toob-you-lance.” The man pointed at some of the screens. “Is dis word? Toob-you-lance? Yes…?”
“Turbulence?” Luckman asked, and the pilot nodded happily. “There is going to be turbulence?” The plane bounced hard in answer, making him stumble and then sit.
“You,” the pilot answered with a motion across his chest. “Put you rope.”
“Rope?”
The man touched his seatbelt.
Luckman almost asked him if the guy should be smoking inside the cockpit, but instead he offered, “Coffee?”
“Yes. Coffee. Later. Put on rope first.”
Luckman understood. It was going to be a bumpy ride.
He returned to the group, informing them to buckle up. As soon as he did, it was like a switch turned on, and the plane began to rattle like a train on a bad line of tracks. He sat down immediately and strapped in, his guts churning with fear. Even though he told himself it was just air pockets, Luckman’s heart hammered, and his memory showed him image after image of himself leaping out of the last plane he’d been in. Only, this time, there were no parachutes.
“It’ll be okay,” German said to no one in particular.
The plane slammed down hard in answer. “It will,” he said again, and the thing bucked like a bronc. “It’s fine,” he chuckled as the plane once again defied his promise.
“Would you shut up?” Holtz demanded through clenched teeth.
German laughed as the nose dipped and they started losing altitude. The overhead clicked and crackled as the pilot tried to use the intercom. “Dis is captain speaking. Yah? It is toob-you-lance. We go lower. It gone. Coffee then. Okay?”
Luckman grinned but it was fleeting. The plane suddenly dropped again, at least a thousand feet, before it slammed into another pocket of turbulence so that he was certain they were going down.
But just like the pilot said, it suddenly stopped at the lower altitude and smoothed out. The pilot even figured out how to shut off the fasten seatbelt sign and Terry jumped up and ran for the bathroom. Probably to be sick.
Luckman felt like his body was made of jello from all the tension and he sagged against his headrest a moment before he finally forced himself up to make that coffee. The pilot was going to need it for such a long flight solo. He might even have German and himself take shifts chatting up the guy since it was already dangerous enough without a sleepy hungover pilot at the helm.
He made the coffee enough for everyone in the small, but well stocked kitchen. Luckman realized he could get used to flying private. They didn’t have the cheap stuff, this was an espresso machine. He brought a cup to the pilot who thanked him and sipped while he spoke in Russian. Luckman nodded and drank his own coffee, trying not to be horrified by the dark clouds flying by, or the electrical storms they were obviously inside of. He’d never seen the air from this vantage point. It was cryptic to say the least…like a front row seat to your destruction if it came to that.
German wandered in and offered to give him a break saying something about Lucky needing beautiful sleep.
“Beauty sleep,” Luckman corrected.
“That’s what I said. Beautiful sleep. If you get a nap, then I get one and so on. We will get through this faster.”
Luckman didn’t think he could sleep, but Terry showed him the bunk beds in one room. “Don’t you want one?” he asked her.
“I have a master bedroom in here. It’s nothing big, but the bed is divine. Besides I’m not ready to sleep. Not yet. I can’t now. My stomach is still sour. You go rest, that way I know someone is with that guy in front the whole flight.”
Luckman laid down, tossing and turning first, but finally he drifted and had fitful dreams about crashing. That is, until a hand touched his shoulder and he shot up and fell out of the bunk with a yell. “You scared the hell out of me, man!”
German put a finger to his lips. “Everyone is asleep. Shhh.”
“What time is it?”
It’s been five hours. You’ve got pilot duty for the next five, all right?”
Luckman blinked like an owl. He’d slept that long? “Sure, yeah. Sorry.”
Luckman went up and sat with the pilot. They couldn’t speak with understanding, but they found an iPod with speakers. Luckman would start each song until the pilot nodded and pointed at what he liked.
Greg woke up after two hours had passed and came and sat up front trying to figure out what was what as the pilot explained in Russian.
It gave Luckman some time to stretch just before more turbulence had him buckled into the copilot seat for another hour or so.
“Everyone has to get up and buckle in,” he called back using the intercom. The pilot was doing that excited thing again and shouting, “Toob-you-lance.”
Luckman put the mouthpiece down by the speakers and the pilot and him played some music for the passengers for another two hours of bumps and bangs. It got so bad that Luckman’s teeth felt chipped by the time it smoothed.
But they made it and were somehow in the final hours of the flight.
German got to sleep another two hours and Lucky woke him up as they neared California. They both spoke, in disbelief at the fact that they were so close to America. “We will start descent soon,” Luckman said.
German grinned and shook his hand fast. “We made it! You made it, man.”
“That we did. Now we just have to land first. And then make it to New York.”
“Hey. I’ve always wanted to see the city of apples.”
“It’s not…okay. You….ha ha. Very funny.”
Luckman didn’t want to be in the cockpit for landing. He didn’t want to see his doom rising up to meet him if he could help it, but the pilot pointed to him by request when German offered.
“He wants you, Lucky. Maybe he knows your name now. A little good luck might be good for landing, yeah?” Before Luckman could argue, the big Russian shrugged and left them alone.
Luckman strapped back into the copilot chair. The pilot gave him the thumbs up and pointed as if to offer Luckman a chance to steer the plane. “Um. No. I’m good.”
They descended through the dark clouds slowly, and with only thirty minutes left, Luckman could see the coastline. Home, he thought. I’m finally home. It was day time but dark and dreary. They descended more, and he felt such a joy at seeing the coastline appear out of the water like a welcoming friend. “Try to call them on the radio.”
