SECTOR 64: Ambush

by Dean M. Cole

  As she emerged from between the fires, the oppressive heat finally relented. Sandy allowed a little hope to creep in as she identified the object she'd spotted. It was an airport maintenance pickup truck.

  A few minutes later, she hobbled to the truck's side. Inaudible over the din of burning airport, its engine was still running. Nosed into the chain-link fence, its body panels vibrated as the still engaged motor struggled against the restraining perimeter barricade. A man's empty coveralls and work shirt lay in a heap under the steering wheel.

  The driver had locked the door, but fortunately, he had left the window rolled halfway down. Standing on her tiptoes and reaching through the opening, Sandy pulled the inner handle. The door popped open. A startled scream slipped past her lips as a hardhat fell out, landing on her right boot. Resisting the angry urge to sweep the pile onto the dusty ground, Sandy folded the clothes and respectfully placed them into a neat stack on the edge of the road, topping it with the boots and hardhat. The collection looked like an odd memorial. She supposed it was.

  Sandy climbed into the truck. As she suspected, it was still in drive. Selecting reverse, she backed the truck away from the fence. Initially, it snagged the truck's front bumper. She pumped the accelerator, but the fence wouldn't let go. On the third attempt, it finally broke free. Being careful not to run over the airport worker's memorial, Sandy guided the truck back onto the perimeter road.

  Ahead, paralleling the airport boundary, the road disappeared into the northern fire. Behind her to the south, the other conflagration obscured that end of the road. Hammering the truck's accelerator, Sandy spun the truck one hundred eighty degrees. Following the perimeter road south she crossed the runway's east end. Here, the road disappeared into the southern fire.

  "Shit!"

  Sandy looked west. The runway was still a narrow canyon between two churning walls of fire and smoke. "Screw that!"

  Looking left, she studied the fence and the down-sloping terrain beyond. She knew Highway 68 lay at the bottom of the scrub-covered hillside that formed the airport's eastern boundary. The road's southeast trajectory would take her farther from the weapon's epicenter. Had she still needed to find its range, Sandy would take that route. Also, it led to her parent's home. She could only hope they were outside of its reach. Along with a pang of worry, an epiphany blossomed, and a plan took root.

  "That's it!"

  With her aircraft destroyed, along with apparently every airplane at the airport, Sandy realized she now had a good excuse to check on her parents.

  Utilizing her hand-held emergency radio, Sandy contacted Omaha Four-Four and appraised him of her situation. Shocked to hear she had ejected, the controller kept asking if she was okay.

  Glancing at her leg, she said, "I'm a little banged up, but nothing I can't handle." Since the iPhone likely was a melted bubbling lump, Sandy had the controller relay her plan to General Pearson.

  A few minutes later, the Base Commander's response came through. "Sorry to hear about your fighter, but glad you're okay. I like your plan, Captain. I'll see you back here when you're done."

  Smiling for the first time that day, Sandy tucked the radio into its holster. The truck rolled to a stop pointing due east, aimed straight at the field's perimeter fence. Sandy buckled her seatbelt. After a few deep breaths and a short prayer, she floored the truck's accelerator.

  The airport maintenance truck crashed through the fence. With the inertia of its thirty miles an hour velocity, the vehicle shredded the wire mesh. Now outside of the airport's perimeter, Sandy struggled to rein in the truck as it sped down the sharply sloping terrain. Braking, Sandy felt the tires slide across the hill's gravelly surface. Unsuccessfully, she tried to steer away from a doomed scrub bush. The impact sent leafless brown branches flying. The plant's root mound launched the truck, its tires momentarily leaving the ground. Sandy braced her hand against the cab's ceiling, glad she'd put on the seatbelt.

  Letting off the brakes, Sandy finally gained a measure of control. As long as she kept the tires rotating and didn't turn the steering wheel too sharply, she could maneuver around the biggest obstacles.

  A horrifying minute later, the truck crashed through a wood rail and passed from the steep limestone onto the gently sloping grass of a small municipal park. Rolling to a stop, Sandy leaned against the headrest. Staring at the sagging dust-covered headliner, she slowed her breathing, willing herself to calm down. Another bout of coughing wracked her body.

  She killed the pickup's engine. Grasping its handle, Sandy threw open the door. Spilling out of the truck's cab, she fell to the damp grass, crumpling awkwardly onto her side because of the splint on her left knee. She breathed deeply between coughs. While she was able to purge the airport's smoky air from her lungs, she knew she'd never purge the horrific visions of the last few hours.

  Looking around, Sandy rolled onto her butt. Intermixed with the sweet aroma of freshly mown sod, the bitter smell of damp bird guano wafted from under a nearby tree. An asphalt jogging trail ringed the park. Scattered piles were all that remained of the early morning joggers present when the alien's energy wave struck. While the majority of the people in San Francisco had known of the menacing alien presence hovering over their city, many here had likely not been aware of their otherworldly presence. When the ship approached from the south, its catastrophic atmospheric entry had reportedly lain waste to a huge swath of southern California. However, the ship had passed this area slowly enough to go unnoticed by most. They may have heard distant sonic booms, but many had likely written it off as something with a terrestrial origin and gone back to sleep.

  Sandy saw plenty of evidence the Montereyans had been going about their normal morning rituals. A collection of three bicycles painted a tragic scene. Two laid on their side while a third smaller bike stood in the middle, its training wheels still holding it upright. Lying on its right side, mom's pink trimmed mountain bike led the way while dad's black bike brought up the rear. His black biking gear and safety helmet, as well as mom's pink gear and helmet, sat strewn around the bikes. The toddler's pink and lime green shirt had fallen across her pink bike's handlebars. White handgrips, their red, white, and blue tassels fluttering in the wind, protruded from either side of the tiny shirt. Buffeted by the onshore breeze, the little girl's safety helmet rocked like an upside down turtle in front of the small bike.

  Sandy imagined the threesome pedaling in formation, the parents assuming their normal protective stations front and rear. In her mind's eye, Sandy saw herself on the front bike, looking back at Jake and then to a beautiful blond girl with the same curly golden hair she'd had as a toddler. Then, night turned to day as the onrushing energy wave filled the sky. All three froze in horror. As it neared, they screamed in agony. Deafening silence fell over the scene as the weapon's life stealing wall of light passed. As if in slow motion, their empty clothes and unsupported bicycles drifted earthward.

  Shaking her head, Sandy banished the disturbing imagery. To her left, lay another tiny outfit, this one trimmed in blue. The bird-shit tarnished odor of toddler-trampled sod still hung in the park's air. However, all that remained of the little boy was the small turf stained shoes and clothes that had hopped, rolled, and tumbled with him through sandboxes, over climbing-timbers, and down slides.

  Sandy looked down. Unbidden, her hand had gone to her abdomen again. She hadn't told Jake about the baby, yet. She'd thought about it during their video call, but she wanted to tell him in person.

  Standing, Sandy turned back to the truck with mounting anger. The park's scenery was too much. Everywhere she looked, signs of lost life screamed for recognition. Her hormonal state turned every loss personal. She couldn't help but see every tragic waste of human life from a first-person perspective.

  Sandy placed both hands on her stomach. Her maternal instinct kicking in, she'd never felt so protective. Glaring at the northern horizon, in the direction the aliens had departed, she screamed, "Fuck you!"

  Ready to put the
scene behind her and get on with the mission, she turned and stepped toward the truck. An advertising flyer tumbled across the grass. It came to rest against Sandy's right calf. As she climbed into the truck, she grabbed the yellow sheet. Across the top, it read: "Buck's Sport and Fish." Under a long-handled fish net graphic, it said: "Open till 9:00 p.m. Saturday and all day Sunday for last minute Father's Day shoppers."

  Forlornly, she looked southeast. "Please be okay, Daddy."

  With reverence, Sandy set the damp sheet on the seat next to her right leg. Wiping another tear from her wet cheek, she started the old truck's engine. Placing it in drive, she guided the vehicle across the park, turning to avoid running over any of the small piles of clothes or bicycles.

  As the truck dropped across the curb onto Salinas Highway, Sandy turned it southeast. The tires squealed as she floored the accelerator. Slowly, it rattled up to sixty miles per hour. She pressed the pedal harder, but the pickup refused to go faster.

  Behind Sandy, the park's disturbing milieu shrank. Dwarfing it, the airport's inferno painted a hellish panorama across the truck's rear and side-view mirrors.

  She spent the next few minutes negotiating the highway's post-apocalyptic obstacle course. Several times, Sandy had to veer to the shoulder and even off the road to maneuver around pileups. As she'd seen from the air, the wrecks were concentrated at intersections and bends in the road.

  Finally, she approached the crossing highway that would take her over the ridge separating Salinas Valley from her parent's Carmel Valley. A burning heap of cars, SUVs, and tractor trailers blocked the entire intersection.

  She bounced on the bench seat as the airport truck rode over the curb and into a bank's tree-lined parking lot. Picking her way around and through the confused mass of vehicles, she worked her way across the lot. Passing between a burned out hulk she recognized as a Toyota Highlander and a still running late model red Camaro, Sandy gasped and locked the truck's brakes. Something about the car made her do a double-take. It was running, and the doors were open, something she'd already seen numerous times. However, in its ashtray, a wispy trail of smoke rose from a half-burned cigarette.

  Sandy leaned across the cab and cranked the truck's right window halfway down. "Hello, is anybody there?"

  For a moment, there was no response. Then, she heard a commotion inside the bank. It was hard to tell over the combined noise of the truck and Camaro engines, but it sounded like someone was arguing. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she slid across the bench seat. Sandy reached for the door handle, but before she could open it, a sallow face peeked out from inside the bank. The hollow-cheeked man was sporting a three-day beard partially obscured by the long greasy hair dangling in his face. A look of anger and hate banished the nervous curiosity. Apparently, seeing the roof mounted lights and the airport logo on the door, the man mistook the truck for a police vehicle. "It's the fucking pigs," he yelled.

  From nowhere, he produced a huge shotgun. Before Sandy realized what was happening, the truck's right mirror and half-open window exploded in a cloud of flying glass and metal. Sandy screamed. Sliding back in her seat and ducking, she floored the accelerator, the truck lurched and died. Cursing, she put the transmission in park and fumbled with the keys. Two excruciating seconds later, the engine fired up.

  Glass shards rained down into her hair as another shotgun blast took out the rearview mirror and driver's side window. Sandy couldn't believe this white-trash asshole was trying to kill her. "I'm not a fucking cop, jackass!"

  The click-clack sound of the idiot pumping another round into the shotgun's chamber rewarded her communication efforts. Not willing to wait for improved discourse, she dropped the transmission into drive and hammered the truck forward, tires squealing as it raced away.

  Sandy hazarded a peek over the truck's steering wheel just in time to avoid plowing into one of the trees lining the parking lot. Yanking the wheel to the right, she guided the pickup across the landscaping and onto the intersecting Laurel's Grade Highway. She knew the road well as it had been the route her parents used to cross from Carmel Valley to Salinas Valley on their regular trips to and from Monterrey.

  Panting through gritted teeth, Sandy stared ahead. Periodically, she cast nervous sideways glances into the left mirror that had miraculously escaped destruction. The truck lumbered its way back up to the agonizingly slow sixty miles per hour governed limit. The rising winding road cut back and forth several times. Finally, it straightened for a mile. Reaching the far end, she allowed herself to relax as the red Camaro failed to manifest. Sandy hoped the road was well enough off the beaten path to dissuade the looters from veering too far away from the chain of goldmines that the Salinas Highway represented.

  Slowly prying her white knuckled fingers away from the steering wheel, she flexed the blood back into them. Sandy willed her respiration rate down, fighting to rein in her emotions. Now anger had rejoined the party. Except this time, the catalyst was terrestrial in origin. She was amazed that the situation had degraded to looting so quickly.

  The realization brought in a whole new concern. With her parents at the periphery of the weapon's effective range, she now realized they were also at the advancing forefront of human society's darker side.

  Sandra pressed the accelerator harder. Stubbornly, the pickup refused to break sixty.

  Five minutes later, she crested the ridge and passed into Carmel Valley. Like undulating corrugated ribs, parallel lines of grape vines rose and fell as the unending panorama of the valley's ubiquitous vineyards unfolded.

  Frustratingly, driving downhill afforded no additional speed. The old white and blue pickup rattled down the winding country road at a steady sixty miles per hour. On both sides, purple accented, lush green vinery slid past at a glacial pace.

  The scenery brought mixed feelings. As memories of her parents competed with worry for their safety, nostalgia and dread sat side by side in her heart. Cool, dry air whipped an unrestrained strand of blonde hair across Sandy's eyes. Annoyed, she tucked the wayward lock behind her left ear, then pounded the truck's steering wheel. "Come on, you piece of shit. Move!"

  Ahead, where organized lines of vines gave way to open cow pasture, the road made a sharp turn. The rural highway swept left, but fresh wheel tracks continued straight, leading to a new hole in the pasture's barbed-wire fence. Beyond the breach, the rear bumper and spare tire cover of a black H2 Hummer protruded from a ditch.

  Slowing for the curve, Sandy studied the scene. The rocky soil showed little sign of the vehicle's passage. A couple of scrub bushes had fresh damage. Dragged from their original upright positions, several fence posts on either side of the break in the barbed-wire leaned away from the road.

  As the pickup rounded the corner, the scene moved into the truck's right window. Taut as a guitar string, a single strand of wire stretched from the last upright post on the left side. Running through a broken post laying on the ground, the wire appeared to be tangled in the Hummer's undercarriage.

  Something moved in Sandy's peripheral vision. Snapping her head left, she slammed on the brakes. "Shit!"

  A black and white cow stood in the middle of the road. The truck slowed to thirty miles per hour, but it was still too fast. The surging antilock brakes wouldn't stop the pickup in time.

  Sandy yanked the wheel right. With the road still curving left, the truck shot off the paved surface. She missed the beast, but the left mirror ran out of luck. Striking the bovine's left hip, it shattered and fell off the pickup.

  Crossing the gravel on the road's right shoulder, Sandy spun the steering wheel left.

  It didn't respond.

  Blasting through the barbed-wire fence, the truck created another exit for any additional cows remaining within the field's confines.

  As if hitting a surface covered with ball bearings, the old pickup seemed to accelerate as the pasture's gravelly hardpan afforded the tires no purchase. To Sandy's horror, the Hummer-eating ditch passed under the sliding truck's front right fe
nder. Then, the vehicle's slow left spin threw the right rear tire into what Sandy now realized was a small washout.

  The truck fell sideways into the gully, striking the wash's dusty floor with a bone-jarring impact. The collision threw Sandy across the cab, slamming her into the right door as the truck finally stopped on its right side, wedged between the narrow walls of the arroyo.

  The impact knocked the wind out of her. After a few hard-fought ragged breaths, she lifted her head from the dirt floor filling the blown-out right window. "Holy shit!" she growled through clenched teeth. Doing a personal inventory, she tentatively flexed her arms and legs. Finding no new injuries, Sandy gave silent thanks that it hadn't been the same side she'd injured when the last minute parachute maneuver had slammed her into Monterey Airport's Runway Two-Eight Left.

  From her crumpled position on the inside of the truck's right door, Sandy reached up and switched off the truck's ignition. The sputtering engine finally fell silent.

  From the bottom of the sideways cab, the truck's interior felt like a skinny phone booth. Overhead, the left window looked impossibly distant. With her uninjured leg, Sandy kicked at the shattered windshield. On the third try, the whole thing popped out as a flexing mass. Another string of profanities followed as she scrambled through the opening. Glass crunched underfoot as she stepped onto the crumpled windshield.

  As Sandy inspected herself for cuts, a new shadow crept across the gully. Throwing her back against the dirt bank, Sandy snatched the nine-millimeter pistol from its shoulder holster and pointed it at the shadow owner's head.

  Apparently uninjured, the offending cow stared at her over the edge of the gully. Silhouetted against the deep azure sky, its backlit black and white ears twitched. Regarding her, the cow batted its ludicrously long eyelashes. Somehow, Sandy resisted the urge to put a bullet between those eyes.