by AR Shaw
“Yeager…” Cassie said.
“Yes, and Yeager went this time, and the children…”
“What do we do?”
“Right now, all we can do is wait.”
42
“At an hour and a half in flight, that puts them somewhere around Yellowstone National Park. They could be anywhere. Over.”
Jax always sounded so defeatist over the radio, but, heck, he sounded the same way right in front of him if he were honest, Bishop thought. “We can’t give up. We have to send a search team. Over.”
Silence remained for a few uncomfortable seconds. Their transmissions were less and less optimal, but this time Bishop knew Jax was stalling.
“You say that, like it’s a thing. There’s just no way. There’s a two-engine plane available, but, heck, if the Osprey went down with Walt at the helm, that would be suicide to even try. There’s only one way we’re going to find them. We can’t stay here, and we need to head your way. We’ll look for them as we go. That’s all we can do. But come on, Bishop, they did make it, and if they did, hell, there’s no way. I’m only saying that because I have twenty-five extremely angry and grieving parents on my hands. We made him take too many chances…no one’s that good. Over.”
This time Bishop couldn’t find the words to use. His own silence dragged on for a bit. Finally he said, “Just do what you need to do to move them here. I’m really…sorry, Jax. I wish I could do more to help. Over.” He knew the journey there would mean the certain death of many.
“Bishop…I’m just glad you and yours are safe and sound. We’ll do our best. Out.”
He held the mic in his hand like a lost lifeline…there was literally nothing he could do now to help them. They were as lost as Walt was lost. One of the worst feelings he ever experienced was helplessness. In one respect he was able to get Maeve and the children here safe and sound. He’d fought for that. He’d taken chances with their lives and even slaughtered for them, but there was nothing he could do about the weather. That he could not fight. He could not tear down that particular obstacle. He could only hope they made it through such terrible odds.
43
One week later, there was still no word from Walt. No radio transmissions. Nothing. Every day, the long stares from those who no longer held hope but refused to say the words. Maeve had not even uttered any hypothesis. She just held Bishop tighter. They both shared the same premonition but refused to say the words, knowing that then it would be true. Set in stone. They all died. All of them…No, instead, they talked of Jax and Austin’s latest plans to retrofit sled vehicles, as they called them.
The people willing to leave from Rockford Bay had joined them as well, bringing all of their equipment, and in reality, the fuel shortages were keeping them from starting the trip. Jax had even considered putting down all the horses, but then Bishop talked him out of it. Why not give them a chance? Why not see if they make it on their own. At least there was hope. They’d done it as a species this long. Why take that chance away from them? Jax finally saw it his way, though Bishop knew it was a hard decision to make. Jax never wanted to see a creature in pain, man or beast. They would lead them along with them as long as they could keep up.
With no weather predictions letting them know when there might be the best window to let out of Coeur d’Alene, Jax and the winter wagon train set off. And again, Bishop felt helpless. It was a slow march that he could only see ending in peril, and yet there was nothing else he could do but hope some of humanity would live on. It was the same for them and the horses. Again, he felt the same way he did all those years ago when his buddies died around him and yet he survived. They’d called it survivors’ guilt in therapy. He never cared for the term.
“Bishop, come here. You have to see this,” Cassie’s voice echoed from the front metal corridor.
Annoyed, he couldn’t believe she was interrupting him from his worrisome activity of drawing a schematic and plotting out where Walt might have landed safely. He’d nearly located a few places on the map that might have ensured their possible survival. Getting to those places first would mean their best chances of finding them safe and sound.
“What?” he’d yelled back but was already up on his feet and walking toward the hatch door. In the hall he saw a glow coming from the other side of the window. That couldn’t be right. There was something definitely wrong.
“Look,” she said, motioning him toward the small window.
As he neared he saw the torchlights. Then more. Then a lot more. There was a line of them flickering in the harsh wind. There was no way those lights could keep going. Then they moved, and they were coming nearer. An entire stream of them and those streams were connected by a rope. Forms of snow- and ice-covered people, carrying what they could carry, were in a single line like a mile long, coming toward them. It looked like the wall of China, torch lit at night in a waving line of humanity.
“It’s Morrow’s people…the locals. They’re coming now.”
“Did they call in?”
“No…I didn’t get a distress call. What should we do? We can’t turn them away.”
Bishop had no intentions of losing more people. It didn’t matter now if they were from Coeur d’Alene, Walt’s downed plane or Morrow’s people of Deer Trail. There was room underground. There were supplies available, thanks to Geller’s greed. And there was no way he could deny the Deer Trail people life. Not now. Not after losing so many. Save what you can. Those were his only thoughts now. Walt and his people from Coeur d’Alene may never make it; they might even be dead already. There was nothing he could do to prevent their deaths, but he could prevent the people of Deer Trail from dying. That was within his power. That he could do. “Open the door. Get the others up here. Open up the rooms.”
POINT OF NO RETURN
Surrender the Sun, Book Three
A. R. Shaw
1 WALT
The catalyst for the Osprey’s design—the need to land vertically in tight places—also proved to be its menace. With rotors that tilted to make way for landing, there was a point of no return that had killed marines in the past. As the Osprey hovered over its landing area, the rotors turned downward…at a point in this turn, a sudden drop could occur like a slip in a steering wheel. Engineers worked continuously to solve the problem, yet the bodies stacked up over time.
A fail-safe usually prevented sudden descents and the inevitable crashes in the modern-day design, but with conditions such as the severe wind shear during the Maunder Minimum and sustained wind gusts, something went wrong. The point of no return became just that as Walt frantically tried to hold the Osprey up. In the blink of an eye, the craft was descending. All he had time to do was to key the mic rapidly four times.
“WALT! WALT!”
Hands shoved under his armpits. Electric sparks flew as he opened his eyes. The black of night held only a golden flicker, its source a mystery. A searing pain shot through Walt’s left leg. He was trapped. Yelling in agony, Walt jerked his leg, attempting to tear himself away from what held him prisoner.
“Walt! Help me, here.” The gruff, panicked voice belonged to Garrett Yeager.
Somehow, Walt was lying on his back. He bent his right knee and pushed with the heel to gain more traction. He was trying to help. Again, a severe pain shot through his left hip. And blazing heat. Where was the warmth coming from? Could there be a fire? “Oh God!” he yelled out in agony.
“You’re trapped in the plane’s wreckage, okay?” Yeager seemed to be reasoning with him. Trying to get him coherent enough to help. A frightened child screamed in the distance…in fact, several children yelled, though he heard one terrified voice above the others, a higher-pitch screamed, a cry of utter terror.
“What? What happened?” Walt asked. Thick, choking smoke invaded his wretched lungs so that he had to cough over and over again, trying to get a decent breath of air.
“Gotta…get you out of here. It’s on fire…the whole thing.”
“What
!” The screaming…or was it ringing? Twisting his pounding head around, he struggled to find the source of alarm. Yeager pushed and pulled the torn wreckage that covered Walt’s lower body, the hard metal scratching against itself like nails on a chalkboard. Then Walt watched as Yeager ran around to the other side of the wreckage. He shoved his hands under Walt’s shoulders again and pulled relentlessly on Walt’s body, finally yanking him free, and dragging him through the twisted metal wreckage. Walt wailed with pain so excruciating that it felt as though his leg had ripped away.
2 WALT
“Put your coats on,” he told his two boys, though he barely heard himself say the warning words over the ringing in his ears. They stood before him in the dim light, wearing only their flannel pajamas, yet he felt the skin on his face freezing.
His two sons stood there, staring at him blankly, as if they expected something from him…waiting and watching him there on the frozen ground. His older son, only seven, one button of his blue spaceman flannel pajamas undone so that he saw his son’s exposed belly button from his position on the ground. The edges of the pajama top flapped like flags fluttering in a stiff breeze.
That boy of his was always in too much of a rush for the little details. He sighed heavily, but jeez, now that he looked again, they were both barefoot out there in the jagged snow, too. Their tender bare toes were turning a deep blue. Where the heck was Alyssa? She’d have his hide for this—another failure of his parental skills.
“Walt…”
“What in the hell…get your snow boots on, now!” he yelled at his sons as his fist came down to land on something cold and wet, not hard and substantial like he expected. The raw tone of voice usually made them scramble, yet neither of them budged or showed the least bit of parental fear now. Their eyes were transfixed on him, as if they were awaiting their daily morning waffles with eager anticipation.
Something’s wrong, he thought. He opened his fist into the searing cold, felt around, and clenched his hand again. Looking again, the boys faded. Then they weren’t there at all…not disregarding his orders and staring at him as though he were some lazy bum lying on the frozen ground.
He brought his icy hand to his face and managed to smear a handful of cold snow over his eyes. He blinked them.
“Walt!”
Suddenly, Yeager was standing over him again, which meant that his boys were never there at all. They were safe at their current underground home in the silo, or so he hoped. He was merely hallucinating.
Yeager pushed on his shoulders, rattling even his jaw.
“What!” he finally yelled, annoyed. “What do you want, Yeager!”
“Wake up! I’ve got to move you again. Hold on.”
What does he mean? Why again? Walt thought, but when Yeager rammed his hands under his armpits, he remembered the ripping flesh that he’d hoped was merely a nightmare. Something was burning nearby. He could smell a sickly-sweet aroma. A child screamed out again. “Wait,” he yelled, Walt shoved his arms out to the sides to stop the momentum. “Who’s hurt?”
Yeager ignored him and yanked on Walt’s torso, sending shooting pains up Walt’s left leg again. “Stop! Holy shit! Stop!”
But Yeager didn’t stop; he yanked again and again, sliding him across the jagged, icy earth.
In an attempt to end the pain himself, Walt began kicking the heel of his left boot at the snowy ground. The pain was like nothing he’d ever experienced, but he was willing to make it hurt worse just to get the relentless agony to stop sooner. His eyes flew open, and suddenly Walt was alert to the chaos around him. The first thing he noticed was that the farther they went from the searing heat and light of the plane fire, the opposite existed in the dark—a biting, gnawing cold.
Yeager managed to drag Walt through the billowing smoke, and as he did, Walt coughed for air and then his eyes landed on a diminutive forearm lying in the snow. A child’s. Facedown, one of the children lay there, utterly still, like a tree stump…something rooted to its position, forever unmoving, perfectly still. “Wait! Stop!”
“She’s dead, Walt. I already checked.”
Then it hit him…the mic clicks…his thumb rapidly tapping. He remembered the quick cadence by his own hand. The Osprey had crashed. They were flying to Deer Trail, Colorado, where an old, renovated, missile silo hid underground. He remembered now…he was flying the children of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, there so that they might survive the trip through the harsh conditions of the Maunder Minimum.
Brown blood covered the lower half of the child’s small frame. They’d been there for a while. His eyes pulled away even before his mind made the conscious effort to do so.
Crashed…we crashed.
Yeager stopped and abruptly let go of Walt’s body as if it were a sack of concrete, rushing to a group of yelling and terrified children, awash in utter pain and panic. This was where the terror lay.
Each time Walt tried to look at the grisly scene, the images were out of alignment. Yeager ran from one child to the next, and then he disappeared into the foggy smoke again. When he bent down, his tall frame was enveloped by the gray-and-black mist. Walt turned his sore head. A crying little girl sat next to him. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath as she gasped between sobs and shivers. He wanted to help her, but each time he tried to sit up, her image bounced around. Blood trickled from her swollen lip, and black soot covered her forehead where a gash in the skin released a bright-red river. When they’d left, all the children bundled in puffy snow gear, and there she was, with only a blue sweater on. She looked to be about three or four. Her bare little legs were nearly blue. He moved his shaking arm around her, trying to give her a bit of his own warmth.
Then Yeager came back again, out of the gray haze. Two images of him kept melding into one and then dividing again. He walked steadily toward Walt, a girl draped across his arms. Perhaps fourteen. From her long dark hair, smoke rose. Her pink snowsuit was mostly burned away; the flesh on her hip was exposed and reddened with a burn; a flap of skin hung down loosely. He couldn’t help but feel that the greater mercy would be to leave the girl to her death. It wouldn’t take long if she just breathed in the heavy smoke as she lay unconscious.
Yeager laid her next to Walt in the snow. Walt assumed there were no more to save because Yeager was in no hurry to return to the wreckage. He looked around, though the craning of his neck cost him. Fewer than half remain, he thought.
The semicircle of terrified children around him comprised fewer than half of the number they’d started with. He took comfort in the fact that he no longer saw the dead bodies; the smoke too thick now. The girl at his side was dead too. They were all dead now, or merely dying slower than the rest had. There was no saving them from this. That was Walt’s last thought as his vision faded in from the sides to deep, cold blackness.
3 BISHOP
Bishop found himself pacing once again through the main office and hallway that led to the bunker door. This was becoming a habit, the pacing. It was new…and it was a problem he’d recently recognized. Oddly restless, Bishop needed to deal with the caged-up feeling. He’d already moved Maeve and the two kids: Ben and Louna to the apartment next to the office on the main floor, using the excuse that he wanted to be nearby. But really, he wanted to be nearest the exit door. Never before, even in deep winter conditions in the cabin near Beauty Bay, had he felt like a caged animal.
Conditions outside, with the constant howling wind, made the safe haven inside feel like nothing more than a cylindrical tomb. He expected some of the other new arrivals from Deer Trail to have issues living underground, but as he was watching them for signs that they were going stir-crazy, he’d failed to spot his own early on.
Maeve and the children seemed to take to living underground in stride. He found that he was the one most adversely affected. A gnawing sensation grated on his nerves the instant he awoke, and nothing staved off that caged feeling until he was able to make his way to the porthole in the bunker door to look outside. Even if the
view was the black abyss, as it was now, even that nothingness was something to him. A lifeline. He’d never known himself to be seriously claustrophobic, but perhaps all of his experiences in war had made him this way. He couldn’t shake the feeling of being trapped in the only life-sustaining place below the earth’s frozen surface.
So, he paced back and forth. There was no way he’d go out there right now. It was more than forty degrees below zero in Deer Trail, Colorado, and visibility was zero. They didn’t even have the equipment to check the wind-chill factor. Heck, the ice-laden wind itself would peel the skin off your exposed face before freezing what tender tissue lay beneath.
No, instead he paced until his guard watch was over and someone came to replace him. There were other crises to deal with besides his craziness.
He lamented that perhaps the bravery he’d shown in the past was costing him now. Maybe there was a limited amount of that stuff within a human being, and once the well was depleted of heroism, the human mind made up for the loss by choosing weaknesses. He’d heard of war buddies who had scaled the highest mountains to gain a clear shot at the enemy but now developed a quickened heartbeat and panic attacks climbing a ladder to clean the gutters on their roofs. He’d thought those stories were crazy, but it was happening to him. He couldn’t afford this, not now.
“Bishop, you all right?” Cassie asked.
He stopped suddenly, realizing that he hadn’t heard the soft cadence of her steps coming down the long hallway. His situational awareness was off. He needed to clear his worried mind. This wasn’t good. “Yeah.”
“You look a little…lost. Everything okay? Did we locate them?”
“Walt’s group? No. Nothing yet.”
“We’ve got to go find them. Two days have passed. We’re just sitting here.”
