CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ALEX
0 MILES
“Restricted area, boys!” a soldier said, barring us from getting on the military shuttle.
“Our mom’s in the Air Force,” Niko lied. “She told us to come and find her if Operation Phoenix was a go!”
“Oh, uh, okay,” the soldier grumbled, letting us past.
We slipped onto the shuttle and the doors closed right behind us.
The soldiers around us paid no attention to us. Some of them were Air Force, some were Army. Some were Marines, I guess. It was chaotic.
The shuttle opened up into the C terminal. They had it dedicated to military flights.
Through the big glass bays, where you’d usually see a Jet Blue 757, ready to take people to NY or Atlanta or wherever, there were military jets, helicopters in all different models, and giant Airbuses painted combat colors. At several of the gates, they had small decontamination tents. I guess if anyone needed to come back in, they got sprayed down here. There were also bins with clothing and gear near the entrances from the decontamination tents.
Pilots and soldiers were swarming purposefully every which way. Many were wearing flight suits with air masks. Niko and I were the only two people who didn’t seem to know exactly where we were supposed to go.
“Hey!” said a voice, headed for us.
“Come on,” Niko said, and we walked as fast as we could away from whoever it was who had noticed us.
“You kids!”
We searched frantically for any sign of Mrs. Wooly.
“You’re Wooly’s kids!”
We turned then.
It was Goldsmith, the medic.
“What are you guys doing here? I thought Wooly was putting you on a plane!”
“We need to find her,” I told him.
“Now is not the time!” he said. “They moved the whole operation up.”
“It’s life or death,” Niko pleaded, grabbing his arm. “Please, help us! Do you know where she is?”
“Last I saw she was near gate 33.” Goldsmith pointed. “You better hurry!”
We had a direction now and we ran, darting into the stream of pilots and soldiers.
“There!” Niko said, pointing.
We came close and heard her scolding, “Christopher Caldwell, I’ve known you since you were a kid! You’re gonna get in that chopper and you’re gonna run me over there!”
“No, Wooly. I said no, for God’s sake. I got orders. Orders!”
“They’re a bunch of kids, Caldwell, and they’re gonna be burned to a crisp. A bunch of kids you could save. Think about it. They’ll give you a medal!”
“It’s a suicide mission. The answer’s no!”
“Please, mister.” I went close and grabbed his arm. “It’s my brother, Dean. My big brother and he’s a great big brother and he’s counting on us!”
“Alex, Niko! What are you doing here? For Christ’s sake, you should be halfway to Vancouver!” Mrs. Wooly looked mad as hell.
“We can’t go without the others,” Niko argued. “We just can’t!”
“You kids go get on a godforsaken plane. I’ll take care of this.”
“Good luck, Wooly,” said Caldwell, and he turned and left.
“They’re little kids,” I screamed after him. “Two teenagers and an eight-year-old and five-year-old twins! Five-year-old twins! And we came all the way from Monument! Can’t you help us?”
Then there was a pilot coming at me wearing an air mask, all suited up to go. He grabbed me hard, I mean really hard, and he said, his voice all electronic, “What twins in Monument?”
And I opened my mouth to tell him but he ripped off his air mask and I saw his face.
It was Mr. McKinley. Our neighbor.
It was Mr. McKinley, Dean.
Henry and Caroline’s dad.
* * *
“Where are they?” Mr. McKinley asked.
“They’re at the Greenway, in Monument,” Niko said. “We left them three days ago.”
We hurried along with him.
“What’s the best way in?” he asked us.
“We should land on the roof,” Niko told him. “There’s a hatch and it’s easy to open from the inside.”
“There’s no ‘we,’” Mr. McKinley said. Captain, I mean. “I’m going alone.”
“What?” I screeched. “We’re going, too.”
“Yeah!” Niko shouted.
“You kids cannot go,” Mrs. Wooly yelled. “No way!”
“You need us!” Niko insisted. “We know how to get into the store.”
“We’re probably going to die,” Captain McKinley growled at us.
“No,” I told him. “We’re going to make it. We’re going to save them!”
I knew it, in my gut.
Captain McKinley nodded and wiped his eyes and gave me a clap on the shoulder.
“Grab masks,” he said, nodding to some canvas bins near the gate. “Get good ones.”
“All right, Jesus,” Mrs. Wooly said. “I’ll suit up.”
“We don’t need you,” Captain McKinley said. “Stay here. Help with the evac.”
“I should come,” she said.
“That’s an order!”
“But—”
Captain McKinley grabbed her by the front of her uniform.
“You want to help, try to get up to the control tower and get us cleared for takeoff so they don’t shoot us out of the sky for deserting!”
“Okay,” Mrs. Wooly said, shaken. “Will do.”
She hugged me and Niko, and took off at a run.
Niko and I rummaged through the bin, looking for good masks. Captain McKinley came back with flight jumpers for me and Niko.
“Airtight,” he said. “Get these on. They’re dropping bombs over NORAD in 20 minutes. We’ll have another 5 to 7 minutes after that before they level Monument. If we’re going, we’re going now.”
“How long will it take us to get there?” I asked as Niko struggled into his suit.
“In a Wildcat, at full throttle—16 minutes.”
“We’re going to make it!” I said.
* * *
Captain McKinley’s helicopter looked fast. I got to sit up front with him. Niko had to sit in the back.
Captain McKinley plugged a cord into his face mask and pointed for me to do the same. It was a jack into the communication system. I could hear the dispatchers going crazy giving directions to the planes and helicopters.
Captain McKinley reached over and across me, flipping switches all over the place. The engine roared to life and the propellers started. I was glad for the noise-cancellation headphones built into the air mask—it was loud!
“Wildcat 185, you are not cleared for takeoff! Repeat, you are not cleared!”
Mrs. Wooly had not made it! She hadn’t made it in time!
“Tower, this is Captain McKinley, going on a rescue mission.”
“McKinley,” shouted the voice on the headset, “what the hell are you doing? You are not cleared!”
“Sorry, Tower, it can’t be helped.”
“Stand down, Wildcat 185, we will open fire—”
“It’s my kids, Tower. They’re alive. They’re in the Phoenix zone and I’m going for them.”
“Jesus, McKinley…”
In the background, other voices were shouting directions to all the other planes, clearing coordinates and assigning them for takeoff.
“Go get ’em, Hank,” the tower man said. “God bless you. Wildcat 185, you are cleared.”
Then another voice added, “Good luck, McKinley!”
And another, “Go get your kids!”
Takeoff was bumpy.
“Visibility is limited,” Captain McKinley said to me. “It’s one hell of a weapon, the inkbomb. Lucky for us, though, we’re flying one hell of an aircraft.”
He wheeled toward Monument and I held on and even though I am agnostic, I prayed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
; DEAN
DAY 15
Jake had a different opinion about what we should do.
“Look,” he argued. “The bus is right outside and we know it runs! We should get out of here and go to Denver.”
“But the others could be coming here to rescue us!” I protested. “Someone could be on the way.”
“Dean,” Jake said solemnly, “Payton kicked them out of the bus. They were on foot. There’s no way they made it.”
I didn’t want him to be right. Maybe they were still out there. Maybe they had made it.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t get to Denver,” Jake continued. “We won’t stop for anyone. And we have guns. Lots of guns!”
“I think Jake’s right,” Astrid announced. “We should try the bus.”
“What?” I asked, dumbfounded. “Why? You were the one who made me stay!”
“I know it’s a long shot but … maybe we could find the others. I mean, they’re on foot.…”
That made me think.
“At least, let’s go look at the bus,” Jake pleaded. “Just to see if it works!”
I was sick of hiding in that dark, cold store. A part of me wanted to get out in the air, even if the air killed me. But it was what Astrid said about my brother that put me over the edge.
Maybe we could find them.
* * *
We layered up.
“But we don’t want to go outside!” Henry protested as I handed him his layers.
“It’s scary out there,” Caroline continued.
“But you’ll be with me this time,” I told them. “And you know I would never let anything bad happen to you.”
They looked at each other, clearly unhappy about this plan.
“Are you two crazy? This is what we’ve been waiting for!” Chloe gushed. “We’re finally going to Denver! We’re going to see our parents there and we’ll all get rescued to Alaska. And Alaska is awesome! Get your stuff on! Hurry!”
“Okay.” Caroline gave in. “We’ll go.”
I left them and crossed to Astrid.
“We should take supplies,” I said. “Food, water, lights, a tarp. If we’re really going to try to make it.”
And then I remembered the backpacks I’d packed for Mr. Appleton and Robbie.
I strode away from the group, into the storeroom. I looked around with my flashlight and there they were, behind a stack of packing crates.
I had thrown them back there after Robbie was shot. We had wanted it to look, to the little kids, like he had left so I’d hidden the backpacks there.
Astrid, Jake, and the kids came in, their headlamps bobbing all over the place. I prayed they wouldn’t see the bodies. Or that if they did, they wouldn’t understand what they were seeing.
“These are ready to go,” I said.
“Right on!” Jake replied.
Jake shouldered the heavier backpack. My shoulder still hurt plenty.
We had water, food, first aid stuff, some extra clothes (for full-grown men, but no matter), some flashlights. I couldn’t remember what else had been packed.
And we climbed, single file, up the stairway to the hatch.
We were leaving our Greenway and we didn’t have a moment to reflect or give gratitude to it. But of course, we were grateful.
“Wait!” Chloe shrieked through her mask. “What about Luna?”
“Shoot!” Astrid said. “She’s still asleep! I’ll get her. You guys go ahead.”
We climbed up.
It was dark up there.
Hard to see and breathe, with the mask on.
Hard to move, with all the layers on.
Henry clutched one of my hands, Caroline the other.
We made our way slowly over the pitted roof to the ladder.
“Dean, you go first,” Jake commanded. “Then the kids, then Astrid and me.”
The rungs were slippery. It seemed like there was a fungus growing on the rungs’ rubber foot treads.
But no one fell.
We waited for a moment at the bottom of the ladder, for Astrid. Then she came, wearing a new backpack.
“Where’s Luna?” Chloe asked.
“Look,” Astrid said and turned around.
Luna’s sleeping head stuck through the top of the backpack.
“This way,” Jake directed us.
And we followed him through the parking lot, away from the store.
* * *
I didn’t try to talk, it was too hard with the masks.
I was holding Caroline’s hand on one side and Henry’s on the other. Astrid was holding Chloe’s hand and Jake walked ahead of us.
Our little lights zigzagged the ground in front of us as we trudged through the parking lot toward the bus.
The ground was slick in places. The grass in the little sections near the light poles was all dead. The hail-crushed cars were slimy with rust and this weird white foam.
No wonder Jake had come back and no wonder the cadets were so eager to be inside. It was creepy out in the dead world.
There was some of the feathery white foam growing on the tires of the bus. Besides that, it looked fine.
We heard it first. A giant BOOM that made my ears ring.
I looked up. Over in the direction of NORAD, there was a giant fireball in the sky.
“Ooooh!” the kids yelled.
It did look far enough away to be fireworks.
Then, in the space where the fireball had been and in a circle around it, there was light. The sun had come in.
At first I thought, maybe this was good.… Maybe they’d found a way to clean the air.
Two more explosions came. They were bombing the sky.
And then hot winds raced toward us over the ground and I knew that we were going to die.
ALEX
69 MILES
I saw the Village Inn! I saw the 7-Eleven! We were in Monument! The chopper was equipped with searchlights and there it all was, Monument, from above.
There was the roof of the Greenway—our roof! I was so happy. I just kept seeing Dean’s face in my imagination. He was going to be so excited to see me!
The first bombs started exploding in the air above NORAD just as we touched down on the roof.
“We’ve got maybe five minutes!” Captain McKinley shouted.
We all scrambled out of our safety harnesses and raced across the scarred and hail-beaten roof to the hatch.
It was actually open, which was weird, but in the moment didn’t seem weird, it just seemed terrific—getting in was the part I’d been worried about.
Niko and I rushed down the stairs.
“Dean! Astrid! We’re here!” I shouted.
And then I saw the little girl.
The little blond girl.
She was just standing over the bodies of Robbie and Mr. Appleton, her wrists tied together.
“Little girl!” Captain McKinley called, coming down the stairs. “We’re here to rescue you! Where are the others?”
He didn’t know. He didn’t know who she was!
“You!” Niko shouted. “How did you get here?”
Captain McKinley moved past us into the store, yelling for Henry and Caroline.
“Where are they?” I screamed at the girl. “You tell me! You tell me right now!”
She was crying. I was crying.
“They left!” the girl said. “They went off the roof. They killed my uncle Payton and they left!”
Inside I could hear Captain McKinley calling, “Henry! Caroline!”
“Captain McKinley!” I screamed.
He came running.
“What is it? Where are they?”
BOOM came the sound of another bomb exploding over NORAD.
“They’re gone,” I sobbed. “They left the store!”
His face fell then. It went all gray.
“Right. Of course,” he said. Hard like a stone.
“I’m sorry!” I cried.
“Let’s move out.”
DEAN
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DAY 15
Jake was in the bus, trying to get it to go. But the wheels wouldn’t turn through the white stuff. They were disintegrated or something.
Astrid was next to me, the children huddled at our sides.
We would watch the bombs until they took us. That seemed to be the right plan.
Each detonation shook us and each detonation punched a hole in the sky. They were coming closer.
The light streamed in, in those pure, straight beams. “God light” was what my mom had called it.
I thought of my mom and my dad and Alex, and I was full of love for them.
I drew Astrid to me. Astrid was so beautiful in her gas mask and all her layers and the little kids, too, and Jake—now standing on the steps of the bus, his chest heaving, his head thrown back to look at the firebombs—was beautiful, too. And I thought of how perfect we all were at that moment. And had always been.
I was ready to die and then Chloe grabbed my arm and pointed back toward the store.
I turned and saw—there was a helicopter on the roof.
I turned to Astrid.
“Run!” I shouted.
ALEX
69 MILES
The sky had holes in it. The air was hot and windy and it battered us as we crossed the roof.
“Get in the chopper!” Captain McKinley yelled to us.
The stupid blond girl was getting rescued. She, who deserved it least of all.
Niko gave her a boost into the back. Her hands were tied so she couldn’t climb.
Captain McKinley and I got in the cockpit. He clicked on the switches and pressed buttons, like he had done before, but now he was like a robot. It was his training, doing the preparations—the man was gone.
He flipped a switch and said, over the intercom, “Be sure you’re strapped in back there.”
Let her not be strapped in, I thought to myself, let her fall out and die.
DEAN
DAY 15
The chopper started to lift!
They were leaving without us!
The explosions were closer now, coming more frequently. Every few seconds, we were thrown off our feet. It was like trying to run in a bouncy house.
Sky on Fire Page 17
