Captain Lewis had no time to even reach for the pistol he kept tucked in the side of his seat before the two corpses launched themselves into the cabin.
•••
From the runway apron everything looked good with the C-17's approach. The aircraft was lined up perfectly, the pilot expertly shifting the aircraft's attitude as it was buffeted by the California night winds gusting across the base. The wheels touched down and even from where he stood, Major Victor Bobek heard them screech and complain before settling into a low thrum as the pilot throttled back and began to slow the aircraft, easing it toward where he and his repatriation crew of fifteen men and women waited with trucks to transport the bodies of the Special Activities Division teams stowed in the aircraft's belly.
So it was a complete surprise when the plane suddenly veered to the left and began to cut through the grass separating the runway from the ten foot high security fence surrounding the base.
The plane got approximately halfway across the open ground before the wheels shredded and the landing gear dug into the wet soil. The C-17's left wing dipped, dug a deep, ragged furrow into the ground... and stuck. The huge transport aircraft bucked; quite gracefully for such a massive and cumbersome machine, Bobek thought. The tail pitched into the air at a twenty-degree angle as the nose of the aircraft dug into the ground, sending a wave of earth flying into the air. The nose and cockpit crumpled, the left wing detached from the body and went careening out into the darkness, trailing sparks like fireworks behind it. The main fuselage hung upright, and for a second Bobek thought it might just stay that way, but then with a creak of twisting metal, it crashed to the ground, sending a plume of debris and smoke into the air.
A profound silence settled over the airbase, broken a second later by the swell of emergency vehicles' sirens as they began to race toward the crash site. Bobek braced for an explosion, but none came. The fuel tanks were probably close to empty by the time they landed, he thought.
"Get me over there," Bobek snapped at his driver. The man nodded and headed around to the other side of the vehicle at a jog while his boss climbed onto the Jeep's foot plate and slammed the door behind him.
What a complete cluster, Bobek decided as the Jeep took off across the concrete runway toward the crash site. A total and utter screw-up. The emergency vehicles—two ambulances and a couple of fire engines—had already arrived at the broken plane. The wreckage was illuminated by the fire engines' spotlights. A stream of fire retardant foam was already being laid over the smoking engines by one of the fire engines.
By the time Bobek and his convoy of vehicles arrived at the site almost a minute later, rescue personnel were already beginning to move through the wreckage.
Given the violence of the crash, the remains of the aircraft were remarkably intact, Bobek thought as the Jeep pulled to a stop. The main fuselage was more or less still in one piece. A few windows were busted out, and a jagged scar, about twenty feet in length ran from the midway point of the plane before disappearing where the plane's belly lay against the ground. The nose was not so lucky. It was crushed, and the windshield of the cockpit was completely gone. The pilot was visible, still strapped into his seat, his head slumped to his chest. A medic climbed a ladder that had been placed against the side of the plane. He reached the pilot, took a few seconds to check his vitals, then shook his head slowly at Bobek and began to climb down again.
"Goddamn it," Bobek cursed quietly. He'd already lost twelve of his best men in the failed raid in Afghanistan, now he'd lost another. And he didn't hold out much hope for the other two crew members either.
This was turning into the shittiest of weeks.
Bobek opened the door and signaled to his men in the other three vehicles to rally up. One by one the doors opened and his team followed behind as he picked his way through the rutted, debris-littered crash site toward the rear of the aircraft.
The loading ramp was down, as if it had been lowered on purpose, which made no sense. Maybe a fault? Maybe that was what caused the crash?
His driver handed Bobek a flashlight as they approached the rear of the wrecked aircraft. Multiple beams of light cut through the darkness, illuminating the cavernous interior of the C-17 like it was a gutted whale. Bobek and his men climbed up the ramp and made their way inside.
Flashlights played left and right through the darkened interior. Close to the front section of the plane, a woman's body lay crumpled and broken. Bobek could see she was undoubtedly dead; the right side of her face crushed to the point of being unrecognizable. A surprisingly small amount of blood surrounded the remains of her head like a crown, clotting in her long hair. Despite the terrible injuries, Bobek still recognized her as the copilot, Cece.
"Cover her up," Bobek ordered one of the rescue teams while he continued to make his way carefully through the wreckage.
Most of the coffins of the twelve-man strike team were still laid out in two neat rows. The couplings that secured them to the cargo bay floor had done their job, for the most part. Three of the coffins had been dislodged from their fixtures and lay askew. Another had come away completely and lay almost upright against the right side of the C-17's bulkhead, but the crash must have dislodged the locking mechanisms of all of the caskets because every one of the lids was wide open.
Bobek walked slowly between the two lines of coffins, shining his flashlight into each of them one after the other.
"Holy. Shit," someone enunciated slowly from behind Bobek.
Holy shit indeed, the Major thought as he stared into the final coffin. Each and every one of the caskets was empty of its occupant.
Presumably, somewhere in the plane's wreckage was the body of the Loadmaster, but apart from Cece's corpse, there wasn't a sign of any of his strike team's bodies.
"Check with whoever is in charge of the emergency services and see if he or his people have found any of our men outside," Bobek ordered a corporal sifting through the debris. "And if he hasn't found anything, take four of our guys and start working your way back to the runway. See if you can find them."
This just did not sit right with the major. A crash he could understand. That could be put down to bad luck or bad piloting, but this was all just too damn weird. Where the hell were the bodies of his men? They couldn't have just gotten up and walked away. And why had the copilot been back here when the plane was landing?
Bobek had spent his life relying on his instincts. It was why he was still above ground rather than buried in some unmarked grave in some shit-hole country most Americans had never even heard of, let alone could find on a map. He was alive because his instincts were good, reliable. He trusted them. And right now, his instincts were screaming that something was wrong, something was terribly wrong.
•••
In the shadows surrounding the runway, twelve shapes made their way through the darkness from the broken remains of the C-17. One after the other they clambered over the security fence like spiders navigating a web, the razor wire slicing through skin almost to the bone but leaving no blood, causing no pain, eliciting no reaction. Dropping to the ground on the opposite side of the fence, the figures paused and stared at the sleeping city that lay before them. Despite the chilly air, not a single breath escaped their mouths, their chests remained still, their skin as pale as the cloud-blanketed moon.
A single thing bound the twelve; a desire to feed.
One by one the dead men began to move toward the houses, apartment buildings, and businesses of Los Angeles, and an unsuspecting humanity that slept silently in their beds, unaware of the storm that was approaching.
- LOS ANGELES -
Nine days later
FRIDAY
The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.
"The Night is Darkening Round Me"
~ Emily Brontë ~
CHAPTER THREE
Tyreese felt
like a man hanging on a cliff's edge by his fingertips, slowly slipping toward oblivion.
In the movies it was easy to move on; writers just gave the lead character a couple of months and they were blissfully emptying out their dead wife's or husband's closet, falling in love, finding someone new. Leaving the past behind.
In reality, it wasn't anything like that. Emma's clothes all still hung in the closet. Her hairbrush, makeup, even a half-empty bottle of her pain meds were still exactly where she had left them on the dresser.
Sometimes, when the pain of her loss just got so bad he felt like he could not take it any longer, Tyreese would open her side of the closet and bury his face in her blouses, skirts, and t-shirts, moving slowly from one to another, trying to find a remnant of her scent. Trying to find something that would ease the pain that squeezed his heart, something that would resurrect her in his mind, triggered by the fading molecules of a perfume she had worn, or the faint musk of her body odor. As the years after her passing moved by him, those moments of relief became harder and harder to find. Strangely, the weight of Emma’s loss became lighter and lighter. Memories faded, so her presence became less real, and bits of her began to be chipped away, leaving a space within him that was a perfect vacuum in the shape of his life with Emma. But the pain of his wife’s absence grew heavier and heavier. It was a weird, contradictory experience; a circular feeding frenzy of despair and loss and emptiness.
Two nights ago, he'd woken from a dream just after midnight unable to remember Emma's face. He had thrown back the covers, his consciousness straddling the thin, hazy line between dream and wakefulness, and in his panic he'd forgotten that he had lost his legs and tried to make it to the kitchen for a glass of water. He had, of course, fallen to the floor, his face thumping against the musty carpet. He didn't know how long he'd lain at the side of his bed, his confused mind trying to make sense of where he was, what had happened.
When his mind had finally staggered back to this world, Tyreese found himself huddled in the corner of the closet, an old t-shirt of Emma's balled up around his fist like a boxing glove, soaked through with his tears.
First his legs. Then his wife. Gone.
Now his mind.
He was losing it, he realized, sliding down into a black pit of despair and loss that there was no getting back out of. Where only death awaited.
And that was okay.
That, he welcomed.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
The Los Angeles Unified School District announced today that it is taking precautionary measures for its 649,000 students by immediately closing all school campuses throughout Los Angeles County. Due to the forecast of heavy rainfall leading to anticipated widespread flooding across Southern California, all 900-plus public schools and 187 charter schools within the district will remain closed for the next seven days.
CHAPTER FOUR
Birdy ran. Each sneaker-clad foot momentarily touching the gym floor, kissing it, then lifting again as she accelerated herself toward the waiting vault box. Her heart thrummed in her chest, a finely tuned, supercharged V6 engine, her lungs pumping fuel to it with rhythmic ease. Muscles expanded and contracted with the fluidity of a natural-born athlete. Sweat popped on the young girl's forehead, dripping toward her eyes, she caught it with the quick stroke of the back of her hand and flicked it away.
You are alive, her body sang. Alive.
Birdy launched herself into the air, pushing forward off her left foot, her arms outstretched ahead of her, as though she were diving into water. Her torso was almost parallel with the gym floor, her hands reaching for the top of the vault box. Both hands landed with a slap as Birdy pulled her knees almost to her chest and allowed her momentum to carry her forward and over the box before landing perfectly on the foam crash mats on the opposite side.
"Awesome!" Bryanna, Birdy's trainer, yelled, spontaneously applauding as the girl landed and immediately dropped into a forward roll, only to bounce up again and jog back to where the rest of the class waited.
Birdy was in complete awe of Bryanna. She had participated in the TV show American Ninja Warrior three times. The last time, she had been one of the small but growing group of women to make it to the final stage; Mount Midoriyama in Las Vegas. Bryanna had been to Las Vegas and she had appeared on TV. Birdy had downloaded all her videos and watched them on her phone. Bryanna was her hero. Birdy tried, but could not conceal the smile she felt ease onto her lips at her trainer's effusive praise.
"And that, kids," Bryanna said, turning to the class of children, most of whom were not much older than nine or ten, "is exactly how you perform a Kong vault. So, who wants to give it a try?"
Hands went up immediately amid calls of "Me! Me!" The ten kids, all of them younger by a third than Birdy's fifteen years, excitedly vied to be the next to learn to fly. And flying was exactly how Birdy would describe what she experienced when she was here.
Parkour—free-running, whatever you wanted to call the sport—was what Birdy loved, and she was damn good at it too, even if she did say so herself. She taught kids with Bryanna three nights a week, and weekends when she could. In fact, any time Birdy could spend here at the YMCA was better than being at home. Because around this neighborhood, the Y was the closest to after school activities as you could get without either running with or from one of the local gangs. Or spending time sitting mindlessly in front of the TV or a computer screen. The freedom parkour gave her, the way it had altered her perception of the world, transformed buildings and apartment blocks into her personal training ground, and allowed Birdy to turn the towers and multi-level apartments into ladders to escape their confines, rather than the prison walls almost everyone else she knew regarded them as. Instead of concrete obstacles, now she was surrounded by adventure.
Birdy was young, just two months past her fifteenth birthday, but the second she turned eighteen, she would be gone from here, and parkour was going to be her golden ticket out. She just needed to practice, practice, practice.
"Okay, I'm going to form you up into two groups. This half," Bryanna split the group of kids down the middle with a chopping, sweeping motion of her hand, "you're with me. The rest of you guys go with Birdy."
Obediently, each group of kids followed their assigned trainer.
An hour later, as the last child left with his mom, Bryanna and Birdy were alone in the YMCA gym.
Bryanna grabbed her training bag, stuffed a sweat-dampened towel into it and zipped it closed. "Nice work today," she said to Birdy. "You need a lift home?"
Birdy shook her head. "Nah! I think I'll stay and practice a bit, if that's okay?"
"'Course. Just put the equipment away when you're done."
Birdy nodded.
"See you," Bryanna said, as she slipped through the exit with a final smile at Birdy.
Finally alone, Birdy turned, inhaled and exhaled a deep breath, and surveyed the gym. She loved Bryanna. Adored the kids she tutored. But it was only when she got this place to herself that she really felt present. This was her time. She looked at the clock on the far wall: 3:30 pm. That gave her just about an hour to herself before she had to get home. She had been trying to master a few moves over the past week and she felt confident she was on top of them, but a half hour with each wasn't going to hurt.
•••
The next time Birdy checked the clock, her hour was almost up. She dutifully put all the equipment away, then jogged over to where she had left her duffel bag, pulled a towel from it and wiped the sweat from her body. I'll shower when I get home, she promised herself. She tossed the towel back in the bag, pulled a light sweater from within, threw it on, and headed for the exit.
Outside, the sky was a sullen gray, the threat of rain distant for now, but the usual warm California air was instead chilled and Birdy congratulated herself for anticipating she would need a sweater. Home was a twenty-minute walk from the YMCA, past block after block of four, five, and six story apartment buildings, the only difference between them the co
lor each was painted. To Birdy's fifteen-year-old mind, the stark utilitarianism of the apartment buildings was the norm. This was her neighborhood and, even with the gangs and the shootings and the drug dealers hanging around the street corners, she loved it. Had no intention of spending the rest of her life here, mind you, but it was still home. For now, at least.
Birdy tapped in the code to her apartment building's security gate and let herself into the forecourt. The locked gates were a pointless feature, she'd always thought, because everyone knew the code to her building, just as she knew the one to every other building on her street. Still it probably made the old people feel a little more secure.
She thought about using her usual route around the back of the building, but Mom would be home by now and she didn't want to spook her by suddenly appearing from her bedroom, so instead she climbed the stairs to the third floor.
•••
"Hey, baby. Is that you?" Elizabeth Finch's voice floated down the hallway to Birdy from the living room. Her mom was watching a TV show; the actors' tinny voices chattering in the background.
"Yeah," Birdy called back. She locked the front door behind her.
"How was your training?"
"Good," Birdy called back. She walked into her bedroom, tossed the gym bag into the closet, pulled her sweater over her head and balled it up; her mom always kept the apartment warmer than Birdy liked. She tossed the sweater onto a pile of other clothes collecting in the corner of her room.
"Don't leave those clothes on the floor," her mom called out. "That's what we have a washing machine for."
Birdy sighed. She still wasn't convinced her mom wasn't psychic, or maybe she had put hidden cameras in her room. Birdy began picking up the clothes.
"What're you doing for the rest of the day?"
The Darkening Page 3
