ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story)

by Chesser, Shawn

  “That’s a five-hundred-dollar fine,” Charlie said.

  Duncan shook his head at the notion of getting a parking citation after all that had happened in the span of twenty-four hours. He reached in, grabbed his bag and shotgun, and slammed the door. Looking over the hood at Charlie, he said, “Let’s hope we clear hurdle number four.” A statement that earned him a sideways look from his friend. “That the locks haven’t been re-keyed.”

  Charlie nodded and, walking a little doubled over, followed Duncan across the lot in the direction of the windowless steel door. Along the way he said, “Kidnapping. Abuse of a corpse. Illegal discharge of a firearm within city limits. Parking in a handicap space. Not to mention the breaking and entering with the intent to steal a multimillion-dollar aircraft that’s still to come. And all before noon. Pretty impressive for a former Army flyboy.”

  Addressing each accusation, Duncan said, “Guilty, not guilty, guilty.” He paused a second, peered over his shoulder at the illegally parked Dodge and added, “Definitely guilty.” He jangled his keys to find the one with the words DO NOT DUPLICATE stamped on the head. Saying a little prayer, he slid the key in the lock and smiled inwardly at the thought that the admonition stamped so permanently into the metal clutched between thumb and finger held no jurisdiction over keeping possession of the bronze item upon termination. Gray area, for sure. But a moot point, now. Because the mechanism moved smoothly and the deadbolt retreated from the strike with a resounding snik.

  Success.

  Chapter 37

  Several hundred yards west of Stump Town Aviation a man in a rumpled white shirt removed a navy blue ball cap, ran a hand through his thinning gray hair, and raised a pair of high-dollar binoculars to his eyes. Nose crinkling from the stench of coffee and cigarettes tainting his own breath, he trained the Steiners at a downward angle and panned them left-to-right in tiny slices until he found what he was looking for. Hangars 1, 2, and 3 were big enough to house the largest commercial planes able to utilize the single strip, and stood out like sore thumbs on the northeast corner of the tiny airport.

  “Two men just left the truck,” he called over his shoulder, addressing a man with an equally disheveled appearance.

  “What do you want me to do about it, Tony? If I go down there, I’m leaving for good.”

  “You can’t leave,” Tony called across the room. “What if they reopen us for military ops. Especially if PDX sees an outbreak of … what’s it called?”

  Lloyd said, “Those inbound Chinooks … the pilots were chattering big time on the military band. Heard them calling it Omega.”

  “Like the watch?”

  “No, Tony. Like the last letter in the Greek alphabet. As in our ass is grass. This is the end, man. And I only say that because the CDC or Joint Chiefs of Staff or President Odero … whoever usually attributes pandemics to some mutated strain of flu with a bunch of letters and numbers attached to it simply decided to cease that bullshit and call this what it is. At least behind the scenes, they are. No use in sugarcoating it for the ones actively dealing with it face-to-face.”

  Tony grunted. He didn’t really want to hear any more of Lloyd’s conspiracy talk. He had already endured round-the-clock chirping about it since all air travel was shut down. His nerves were shot. So he scooped up his smokes. Fuck the FAA rules, he thought, rattling a cigarette from a pack. Without a second thought for the ramifications, he struck a match and lit the Camel. After inhaling greedily, he changed the subject. With little puffs of smoke coming from his nostrils in accordance with each spoken word, he said, “They’re in.”

  “They trip the alarm?”

  The overhead lights in the control tower flickered, but stayed on.

  Tony watched his bank of computer monitors do the same. When he was confident they weren’t going to go offline, he turned to Lloyd and said, “Nope.”

  Lloyd pushed off the low shelf on the tower’s west side and, once momentum was lost, finished the trip Flintstone-style with a couple of pulls on the carpet using his feet. Sliding in on the rolling chair a scant few inches from Tony, he helped himself to the Steiners. “Probably should finish that smoke outside.”

  You should probably fuck right off,” Tony growled, lips curling over his teeth. He held his thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart. “I’m this close to resigning. I’m over this waiting for word from up on high crap.” Grumbling under his breath, he tossed the newly lit cigarette into a half-full cup of coffee. As the cigarette hissed out he stood up and began to pace along the length of the outwardly canted easterly facing windows.

  Unfazed, Lloyd leaned forward through the residual curl of smoke and trained the binoculars on the trio of hangars. He scrutinized the old pick-up, thinking for a second he’d seen it before. Quickly dismissing the notion, he walked the Steiners along the length of the metal buildings, starting at the door on Hangar 3 and finishing at the far corner of Hangar 1, where he caught a glimpse of dark blue followed instantly by a split-second glint of sun on polished metal. A uniform, he thought. There and gone. Like a wraith. Or a figment of his imagination. As tired as he was, he needed a second opinion to be sure. So he swiveled around to face his partner. “Is Javier still here?”

  “No,” replied Tony, still pacing. “Grant relieved him this morning.”

  “Grant? He hasn’t called in a change of shift sit-rep yet.”

  “This isn’t a normal change of shift,” Tony countered. “Besides, he’s still low man on the pole. With all that’s going on, probably just slipped his mind.”

  “Well speak of the devil. He just showed his face down there by Hangar 1,” Lloyd said, propping his elbows on the counter to steady the shaky image. “And our bud, Rick … he isn’t looking too hot.”

  “Let me see.” Tony hustled over and commandeered his binoculars. He trained them on the new rent-a-cop entrusted with patrolling the transient parking lots and commercial endeavors of the airport. Which had to suffice, since the contingent of Port of Portland Police that left in a hurry yesterday afternoon had not returned, and probably never would. “He looks like one of those things they’re showing on the cable news networks.”

  The lights flickered again and the computers began making out-of-place grinding sounds.

  Lloyd unclipped the two-way radio from his belt. He thumbed the Talk key and called out the new guy’s name repeatedly.

  Through the binoculars, Tony watched the figure several hundred yards distant stagger and pirouette clumsily as if he had come to work severely inebriated. “Looks like he hears you calling his name—” he began.

  “But he has no idea where my voice is coming from,” Lloyd finished in a low voice. “I think he has the Omega. You better call and warn those guys in Stump Town that they have company.”

  Tony handed off the binoculars and pulled the landline phone to the front of the counter. Snatched the handset from the cradle. “Just so you know, Lloyd. This is my last official duty as a P-O-P employee.” With the dial tone wailing in his ear, he punched in the four-digit extension and waited for the connection to be made.

  Lloyd trained the Steiners at where Officer Rick Grant was stopped in his tracks, arms hanging limply at his sides, his nose pressed to the south-facing metal doors fronting Hangar 1. He didn’t quite know what to make of the man’s erratic behavior. He said, “Any luck getting ahold of our visitors?”

  “Negative,” answered Tony. “It just keeps ringing.”

  “Sucks for them,” Lloyd said as he shifted the binoculars right by a degree. “’Cause it looks like the new guy has company … a couple of dumbass mechanics are walking across the runway.”

  “Does it look like they’ve got the Omega, too?”

  “Yep,” Lloyd answered, putting the binoculars down as the lights flickered for a third time. And the third time was the charm. At least if you were Amish and all the austere trappings of the Stone Age was what you preferred. Because this time the lights didn’t recover. Nor did the monitors used to track air tra
ffic. Of which there had been none to track for a long while. A drawn-out whirring noise came next as the computer hard drives on the desks in the center of the room spooled down. Instinctively, he glanced at the lights inset into the dropdown ceiling. An oh shit expression settled on his face. Grabbing his coat, he said, “If you’re leaving, then so am I.”

  Wearing a grim expression, Tony gently replaced the handset in the cradle. Then, eschewing his Port of Portland ball cap and windbreaker, he fished the keys for his Tacoma pick-up from his desk drawer, rose, and struck out ahead of Lloyd to the nearby elevator.

  ***

  With a tiny bit of trepidation creeping in, Duncan turned the knob and swung the door inward.

  “Add one more charge to that laundry list.”

  “Guilty,” Duncan said with a raspy chuckle as he entered the small office. It had been remodeled since he’d last set foot in it. The walls were recently painted a shade of tan that complimented the dark laminate wood flooring—also newly laid. The air inside was like that of a newly built home—fresh paint and adhesives, but tinged with the smell of settled dust cooking on hardworking electrical components. To the right of the door, awash in bars of light infiltrating the horizontal blinds on the adjacent window, was an IKEA-style prefab desk wrapped in a bleached-wood veneer. Parked in the desk’s kneehole was a mesh-backed office chair. On the desk was a mini tower computer, printer/fax/copier unit, and a wide flat screen monitor with the word DELL stamped on its vertical back. Flanking the monitor, which stood sentry over an aviation-themed desk blotter, were all of the accoutrements necessary for one secretary to keep a small branch of a bigger business on an even keel: stapler, electric pencil sharpener, Far Side desk calendar still showing Friday’s date, and an industrial-sized coffee mug—also aviation-themed—filled to brimming with complimentary Stump Town Aviation ballpoint pens. Free advertising, thought Duncan as his eyes were drawn to a shelf behind the desk. Arranged there side-by-side at eye-level on the six-foot-long slab of dust-free lightly-smoked glass was a scale model representing the new helicopters Hillary had said Darren had gone off to take possession of. Great marketing on the part of Valhalla. Done deal as soon as Darren opened the box. On account of the company logo painted on its sides, no doubt. Almost like taking one out for a test flight without having to leave Oregon.

  A dozen feet left of the desk was a third door. A sign affixed eye-level on the outside of the door read: UNISEX BATHROOM. Below the OHSA-approved labeling was a warning: PLEASE LOCK THE DOOR UPON ENTERING.

  As if reading his friend’s mind, Charlie said, “Let’s just say there’s a chopper beyond that”—he gestured at the windowless steel door to his left—“and you get it fueled up, moved outside, and the blade thingies spinning … how far will it take us? Surely not all the way to Salt Lake City.”

  “Where we’re going is outside of Salt Lake. But you’re right. Anything rotor-wing Stump Town owns that would get us all the way there is either already leased out or in a hangar down at PDX or operating out of Hillsboro.” Startling them both while sending golden dust motes scudding through the sun’s rays, a fan inside the desktop computer suddenly whirred to life.

  Wearing a nervous look, Charlie said, “Can’t exactly stop at any old gas station. You just going to put us down on the Interstate when the tank goes dry?”

  “Yeah. I figure I’ll leave it on 84 somewhere with an IOU to cover the hours and fuel stuck under one of the wipers. Then we can get some wheels with a working A/C and take turns driving the rest of the way.”

  Charlie said, “I was joking,” and shuddered.

  “So was I,” Duncan said, trying his best to ignore symptoms to a virus he knew could go one of two ways. Either Charlie was going to need some chicken soup and bed rest in the near future. Or, and Duncan’s jaw took a hard set as he thought it: he was on his way to being one of them. Praying for the former, he crossed the room diagonally right-to-left toward the door accessing the hangar.

  Charlie called after him, “What do we do when she gets low on fuel?”

  Without looking, Duncan answered over his shoulder, “Almost any little airstrip will do. We find one and land near their fuel bowser and top her off. But let’s clear the first few hurdles first.”

  Chapter 38

  Charlie had followed his friend across the office and formed up next to him just as the door was swinging inward on well-oiled hinges. Now he was peering into the gloomy interior over the taller man’s shoulder. For a second he felt normal—the hot and cold flashes nonexistent. In that moment of pure Zen, he discerned a change in the air at the jamb. Unlike the air inside the stuffy office, the light draft here was cool and dry on his sweaty face. Instead of the vinyl and wood aroma of new office furniture, the hangar smelled of metal and heat-stressed engine lubricants. There was also an odor he couldn’t quite peg—like gasoline, but with an underlying tinge of kerosene.

  Suddenly, making them both jump, the phone on the desk awoke with an electronic warble. Like a modern ringtone you might hear coming from a young person’s smartphone, the eerily soothing sound went on.

  “I’m not going to get it,” Duncan said. “I don’t work here anymore.”

  Charlie merely shook his head side-to-side. Vintage Duncan.

  So with the phone still calling out for attention, he followed Duncan into the massive hangar and paused shoulder-to-shoulder on the concrete pad staring into the darkness. As the seconds ticked by, two things happened. First, the phone in the office went silent. Then, as their eyes adjusted to the new environment, the hulking silhouette in the center of their field of vision slowly began to resemble a helicopter. The long black boom out back stretched away from them to the hangar’s far left corner. One stubby wing sliced horizontally into the darkness from the near side of the tail. The black rotor blades were at rest perpendicular to the shiny green fuselage, sagging near both ends, the painted yellow tip nearest them not too far from the tops of their heads.

  Duncan said, “She’s a Bell 212. A newer incarnation of the UH-1H Iroquois … workhorse of the Vietnam War.” He felt around the door jamb to his left, found the metal box protruding from the wall there, and flicked the first switch his fingers brushed. Nothing happened. He threw five more into the On position. Still nothing. So he craned around and peered into the office and noted that the DELL monitor no longer had a screensaver caroming randomly around its face. It was as dark as the voluminous space at his back.

  Charlie was about to recommend they open the large bay doors to shed some light on the subject when an invisible hand grabbed his guts in an iron grip. Clutching his stomach one-handed and groaning softly, he backpedaled into the office on his way to the toilet.

  “Go ahead without me,” he called out, still bent at the waist and grabbing blindly for the doorknob at his back. “This is going to take a while.”

  “You need some toilet paper … just holler?” Duncan laughed inwardly at the absurdity of a lack of asswipe being an issue, considering all that had happened.

  Charlie didn’t reply.

  From the direction of the office Duncan heard a door creak open, then close with a hollow clunk a second later. He swung his head around and found himself gazing up into the midnight black void. What a great place for a couple dozen skylights. Shaking his head, he set course for the vertical sliver of light peeking between the hangar doors. With the power out, he figured he would muscle them apart far enough to give him adequate light to see what kind of attention the bird needed to get her off the ground.

  Moving at a snail’s pace, he crossed the hangar in a partial crouch, one hand probing the air below his knees just in case something was waiting to trip him up or, worse, put a knot or two on his shins. Save for the kind a dentist was capable of inflicting, no pain was worse in Duncan’s humble opinion.

  Reaching the hangar doors, shins intact, he learned the light was infiltrating between the center two of four steel-clad leaves spanning the full width of the hangar. Each rectangular section l
ooked to be roughly twenty feet wide by fifteen tall. Definitely difficult to open without the powered assist—especially solo. So he fumbled his way in the dark to his left. Twenty paces in, he found the lever to disconnect the motor from the pulley system so the doors could move freely. Following the wall by touch, it took only a few seconds to get there, throw the lever, and return.

  Feeling the heat radiating off of the metal panel near his face, he took a deep breath and, with the word manually echoing in his head, gripped the inside flange of one panel and put his back into the effort.

  Legs pistoning and boots clomping loudly on the slick floor, he got the panel rolling while at his back an inches-wide bar of light was splitting the hangar in two. Feeling the momentum building, he turned his head away from the hot panel, gritted his teeth, and gave one more big push.

  Out of the corner of his left eye, Duncan saw the shaft of light widening little by little. Almost there. He swung his gaze to the floor near his feet, concentrating hard on each labored step, and consequently did not see the man in uniform until he was being sent sprawling face to the floor like the final pin in a 7-10 split.

  Wind stolen from the hard blind-side tackle to the smooth concrete, Duncan wheezed, “What’s your problem, asshole?”

  There was no immediate reply. He only heard the rustling of stiff nylon and what he thought to be shoe soles scuffing the ground behind him. And strangely, there was no ragged breathing or groans accompanying his own noisy attempt at getting his lungs working properly again.

  Wondering how someone big enough to put that kind of a quarterback sack on him could do so without taking licks of his own, Duncan spun around on his stomach and got his first look at the form lying face down on the floor an arm’s reach away. Dressed in the uniform of a low-on-the-pole security guard—navy blue windbreaker, like-colored slacks complete with a light blue stripe, wide leather belt holding every law enforcement tool save the gun—the man who had fallen through the door was now moving his arms and legs listlessly. If Duncan didn’t know any better, he would have thought the fella was doing the breast stroke, with the foot-wide splash of sunlight painting the hangar floor taking the place of the swimming pool lane.