by Romi Hart
Riley slammed her stick hard to the left. The plane tumbled sideways and she hit the throttle with everything she had. Bishop rolled the opposite way and Rover veered straight up. He climbed over the dragons’ heads and dove around in a reverse loop to flank them.
The minute she got out of the way, thirty enemy reptiles swooped into sight. Their giant wings blocked out the sky. They arched their scaly heads to eye the jets.
Lancelot peeled right, too, but Pineapple didn’t react fast enough. He dipped his wing, but a massive green monster anticipated him. It dodged in front of him and unleashed a torrential jet of fire from its mouth. It incinerated the plane in an instant. Pineapple’s weapons detonated in the heat and a muffled concussion rattled Riley’s windshield.
“Pineapple!” she shrieked. “No!”
“Pull it together, Lieutenant!” Rover boomed. “Converge! Converge! We’ll pull the same routine as last time. It’s the only way to kill them.”
“We can’t converge, Sir! There are too many of them.” Riley fought down the urge to shriek in terror. She’d never seen so many of these things in one place. “They’re adapting. They’re acting like they knew we were coming.”
“They can’t be,” he snapped. “They’re animals.”
“What are they doing out here, then?” Bishop cut in. “How did they get so far inland? They were supposed to be in Biloxi.”
Before he could get the words out, the dragons grouped into a huddle in mid-air. Then they rotated outward. They faced the planes sweeping in all directions to stay out of their line of fire.
Riley’s heart raced faster. Everywhere she turned, those monsters watched her with their wicked, brutal glares. They traced her flight no matter where she went. Any second now, one of them would unload on her and that would be it.
She had to think. She had to come up with some way to tackle these creatures. Rover seemed to be going through the same quandary in spite of what he said. He circled the dragons again and again without making any move.
The dragons rounded on the four planes no matter where they went. No one could get behind them. The longer this went on, the more Riley became convinced of the horrible truth. The dragons must remember or know the maneuver she and Rover used last time.
That was impossible, though, wasn’t it? She and Rover killed all the dragons they faced last time. None of these could have seen it, much less remember it.
Every move they made solidified the realization in her mind. They were defending themselves against that and that alone. They refused to let any plane get behind them. They kept their backs to each other and pointed all their razor heads outward.
The four remaining pilots buzzed around them in confusion. One thought dominated Riley’s thoughts: stay out of their fire. She didn’t give a shit now if she shot any of them down. She sure as fuck didn’t care if any civilians saw the battle. She couldn’t stay in one place or their fire would rip her apart the way they killed Pineapple.
Rover’s voice belched down the coms. “Listen up. Here’s what we’re going to do. Bishop, you cover my tail. Pocahontas, you….”
He never finished. The dragons broke formation. The cluster shattered and they launched into space all at once. They exploded their grouping in a starburst pattern and four at a time went after each plane.
In seconds, Riley found herself racing for her life. Those things gained on her at every wing beat. She pounded her rudder to the right and banked, but they matched her every move to the micron.
Adrenaline torched her insides. She couldn’t think. Evade, she told herself. Evade! but she couldn’t evade. She could only fly and hope to High Heaven they didn’t catch her.
That was a stupid thing to hope. These monsters could outfly any plane. Two of them soared up alongside. They fluttered at each of her wingtips taking all the time in the world. She glanced behind her and saw that horrible green fiend riding up her ass.
The instant she saw him, he locked his eyes on her with murderous intent. He opened his mouth and her life flashed before her eyes.
“Heads up, Pocahontas!” Her spirits soared at the sound. Bishop came burning down the wind with another five dragons snapping at his tail. He darted right and left, but they cocked their wings to hem him in.
He streaked out of the sky going a hundreds of miles an hour. He zoomed straight at Riley and fired three rockets in rapid succession. One of them slammed her righthand enemy in the head. It peeled off, but the left-hand one only dove aside. The rocket sizzled under it and plowed into the ground far below.
Bishop opened fire with his guns. He peppered her adversaries with bullets. They sparked on the lizards’ scales and did no damage. He shrieked closer and closer with those things crowding him all the way. He would have collided with Riley’s plane, but at the last second, he yanked his stick back and whizzed upward. She lost sight of him. Now she was on her own again.
One more frantic glance over her shoulder brought all the terror and desperation crashing back on her shoulders. That hideous beast lunged for her and snapped his fangs.
The stick went slack in her hand and she stared at the demon menacing her from behind. The afterburn deflected off his cheeks. He closed his eyelids for a second, but that blast of heat did him no harm. He almost seemed to enjoy it.
What the hell was she seeing? That maneuver she pulled with Rover wouldn’t do anything to these creatures. The afterburn didn’t hurt him. Whatever else this thing was, he was different from the dragons the team fought last time. Maybe they adapted to that, too.
If they did, she was sunk. She couldn’t use weapons or anything else to defeat these things. She was finished.
In front of her shocked eyes, the monster made one more catastrophic dive for her. He flew faster than she ever imagined. He was just toying with her back there. He could kill her whenever he wanted.
He gave an Earth-shattering bite. His fangs punctured the fuselage and the plane shuddered. The engines coughed and the cockpit lurched under her. Rover’s voice thundered in her ear. “Eject, Pocahontas! That’s an order! Eject now! Eject! Eject!”
She froze staring at her death stalking her from behind. She couldn’t put her thumb on the eject button. This was her only chance at survival, but she couldn’t move.
Just then, the dragon to her left veered in. He slammed his iron frame into her plane. The wing snapped. The jet jerked away and the engines failed. The craft tumbled into a tailspin plummeting straight toward the ground.
The blow knocked Riley out of her stupor. She crammed her thumb onto the button. The windshield sailed back and the full brunt of rushing air hit her helmet. A powerful ripping motion tore her from her seat.
The next thing she knew, she was soaring through the clear blue sky. Dragons fluttered everywhere. Her plane raced away without her on its death dive to nowhere.
The huge green monster hovered over her head. He arched his neck and watched her flutter at the end of her parachute. She floated down, down, down and left Rover and Bishop and Lancelot to their fate.
The dense Louisiana forest rushed up at her fast. She made out roads and streams and fields. Houses and buildings dotted the landscape. She tried to steer for a field, but thirty feet off the ground, a gust of wind caught her chute. Against all her efforts to guide herself away, it puffed under her and swept her several miles south.
She kicked herself for not checking her location before she ejected. Never mind. She could check her GPS as soon as she landed.
That confounded wind wouldn’t leave her alone. It blew her miles away over some nameless bayou. Just when she hoped it would deposit her somewhere convenient, it died without warning. It dropped her straight into a swamp and the slimy water closed over her head.
2
Riley floundered to break the surface, but her parachute blocked her efforts. She pawed at it trying to move it out of the way. She sensed her air running out and struggled to free herself.
She did her best to remain calm, but the last
particle of oxygen ran out all too soon. She coughed and swallowed ten or twelve mouthfuls of filthy water before she managed to get out from under the chute.
She slapped the saturated fabric away and spluttered for air. She dog-paddled in one place for a second retching the water out of her lungs. In the midst of that, she felt her harness towing her underwater again. She clawed at the clips, but her fingers slipped in the ooze.
She kicked to keep her head above water while she extricated herself from this mess. When she got loose, she treaded water for a while trying to get her brain working. She couldn’t stay here. She dragged her sodden form to the nearest bank and hauled herself out.
Once she got on solid ground, she collapsed on her back panting for breath. She couldn’t bring herself to get up. Every limb weighed a ton. The whole scene from a few minutes ago kept repeating in her mind.
She nearly lost her life to those infernal dragons. They killed Pineapple. For all she knew, her teammates were already dead. She cracked an eye open, but she couldn’t see anything but endless sky in all directions.
At least she was alive. She was somewhere in Louisiana, but she had no idea where. The Navy would come and find her as soon as she activated her homing beacon.
The surreal confusion and anguish of the dog fight haunted her for longer than she expected. She let herself lie where she was. She dripped water into the grass and did her best to calm down.
The sun felt good on her face, but her wet clothes chilled her in spite of the heat. She had to change and she couldn’t do that lying here.
She pulled herself into a sitting position and rummaged her pockets. She found her GPS unit, but when she depressed the power button, it wouldn’t turn on. Damned thing. She couldn’t activate her locater beacon, either.
Whatever. How lost could she be? She just had to find a road and maybe a phone. As soon as she called Major Dickerson, he’d be able to trace her call and pick her up. He would take her back to Barksdale and that would be it.
She stuffed the unit back in her pocket and looked around. Dense vegetation surrounded her on all sides. A slick of motionless water glistened before her eyes. Her parachute covered half of it. The rest of it disappeared into the murky brown slurry.
She took the time to examine her predicament. Nothing offered any a clue which way to go. The sun gave her a basic orientation. Other than that, she didn’t see anything that might guide her to a road or human habitation. That was strange. She ought to at least see some power lines or…or something.
She frowned. Then she shook those thoughts out of her head. No one could be that far from civilization in modern America, even in the Louisiana bayou.
She climbed farther up the bank and started walking east. Her wet clothes made traveling harder, but so what? Just a few more miles and she would find something or someone to help her.
She meandered through dense trees and forded ponds. She avoided a few small gators, but she didn’t see anything that could harm her. At least she got away from those dragons. She didn’t look forward to seeing them again anytime soon.
She walked for hours until she got tired. Her wet flight suit chaffed her elbows and knees and she sweated inside her jacket. She tied it around her waist and stripped her flight suit down to her tank top. She knotted the sleeves across her stomach. The sultry air felt a little better against her arms and neck, but not much.
She pulled to a halt when the sun dipped behind the trees. She scowled at the landscape one more time. How could she walk all that way without seeing the slightest evidence of humanity?
The bayou throbbed with life of all kinds—all except human. Insects, reptiles, and birds chirped and squawked and crept all around her as far as she could see. This was their domain. She didn’t belong here.
That was stupid, though. She grew up in the bayou. She belonged here as much as they did, but something didn’t fit right. From the vegetation, she guessed she was somewhere in mid-southern Louisiana, probably near Baton Rouge.
She scanned her memory. She couldn’t think of any patch of bayou big enough for a person to walk in for over seven hours without coming to any road or house. Maybe she’d been walking in circles all this time, but that wasn’t like her, either.
This made no sense. She forged ahead. This time, she made absolutely certain to locate a landmark first. She picked out a huge cypress tree that topped the canopy. She measured it up and down and detected a few irregularities in its branch pattern. She memorized it so she couldn’t mistake it for any other tree. Then she walked toward it.
When she reached it, she picked out another tree on an eastern line. She went through the same mental exercise until she would recognize that tree out of thousands. She repeated this process to make sure she continued heading eastward with no mistakes.
Still, she found no one, no roads, no trails, no fences, no overhead wires. This was really strange, but she refused to give in to phantoms and irrational fears. She was in Louisiana. What could possibly go wrong?
What went wrong was that the sun kept going down. The air cooled and still she wandered without any destination in sight. She never thought she’d live to spend the night out here, but what the hell?
Dusk settled over the bayou. Now she had to consider where to spend the night. At least she wouldn’t have to keep walking in these wet clothes.
She found a large tree with some branches near the ground. She decided how she would climb it. Once she got up there, she could take off her chilly flight suit and hang it out to dry while she got some sleep.
She started to relax. She hadn’t spent the night outdoors since she was a kid. This might actually be fun—at least, she could pretend she was doing it by choice and not because she was lost.
She put her foot on the lowest branch and took hold of the second one to pull herself up. She cast one fleeting glance around and froze. A hatchet-shaped face stared out at her from the dense undergrowth.
She blinked. It didn’t disappear. She didn’t imagine it. Then another face materialized out of the bushes. All at once, the whole area appeared alive with faces all glaring at her.
She scanned the vegetation and her heart skipped a beat. The next minute, she went back to relaxing into this. She was looking for people. Now she found them. Either way, she couldn’t run. She had nowhere to go.
She dropped her hand and her foot and confronted the strangers. “Hey! I’ve been looking for you.”
They didn’t move. The first face eyed her with wary reserve. It was a man, a white man with buzz-cut hair and a scruff of beard around his jaws. His brown eyes flashed at her, but he didn’t come out.
She dared a few steps toward him. The faces flanking him didn’t look like him at all. Some of them looked Native. Others were black along with a few more white people, and they were all men.
That should have made her nervous, but it didn’t. This was her ground. She knew her way around these swamps as well as the next person.
She halted in front of the short-haired man and peered at him through the bushes. “Hello? I’m lost. Can you tell me how to find a road or a phone or something?”
He blinked. He was alive even if he pretended to be a statue. Without warning, he crashed through the branches and emerged to stand in front of her. “You don’t belong here. You should leave.”
“That’s what I just said,” she returned. “I’m trying to leave. I’ve been searching for a road or something for hours. Do you have a truck or something nearby?”
His features darkened. “I don’t have a truck.”
She surveyed the area. “How did you get here, then? Are you hunting or what?”
“We’re hunting.”
His abrupt response confused her. Why didn’t he just answer her questions like a normal person? She rallied. She had to get through to him somehow. “Who are you guys? Where did you come from?”
He jerked his chin behind her. “Over there.”
She ignored that. “Do you have a name?”
/> He swiveled his gaze around and locked his brown eyes on her. That direct stare disconcerted her when she was trying to act casual and friendly. “Victor. Victor Griffin.”
She nodded for no particular reason. “Good name.”
“Pocahontas.”
Her head shot up and her eyes popped. “What did you say?”
“Pocahontas. Your name is Pocahontas.”
Her jaw dropped staring at him. “It is not!”
“He called you Pocahontas.”
She shut her mouth with a click. What the fuck was he talking about? “Who called me that?”
“The man. The man who told you to eject. He said, ‘Eject, Pocahontas’.”
She couldn’t blink. She could only gape at him in dumb shock. “How do you know that?”
“I heard him. I heard him say that to you before you landed here.”
She couldn’t get her brain to function. “My name is NOT Pocahontas. Don’t you dare call me that.”
He shrugged and looked away. “You shouldn’t be here. You should leave.”
She gritted her teeth. What a fucking jackass. “I’m trying to. If you just tell me which way to go, I’ll get out of your hair. I don’t want to stay here any more than you want me here.”
“This is our land. You have no right here.”
Now he was making her mad. “I have as much right here as you do, cracker—maybe more. I should be telling you to get off my land.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Your land?”
“That’s right. My land. Our land. I was born here and my people have lived here a lot longer than you have. Don’t you tell me this is your land.”
He rotated around and locked his gaze on her one more time. “You can’t be here.”
She compressed her lips. How could you talk to a slack-jawed caveman like this? “Look, just leave me the fuck alone, okay? I’ll spend the night here, and in the morning, I’ll leave. Just go back to whatever the fuck you were doing. I’ll be fine. Thanks for asking.”
She turned around and took hold of the branch to swing up. She withdrew her attention from this fuckwit. He couldn’t even carry on a civil conversation. Pocahontas, indeed! Who the hell did he think he was?
