Fight for Power
Authors: Eric Walters
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Contents
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“Swing us back around!” Herb yelled.
I banked the ultralight to bring the wreckage back into view, and gasped. The dust and dirt rose in a column, forming a cloud that towered higher and higher into the sky. Through the haze I could make out two thick concrete pillars soaring upward but supporting nothing. The rest of the bridge was goneâcollapsed and crumbled under the force of the explosives that had been wrapped and wired across the span, then detonated.
“I can't believe it's gone,” I said over the intercom.
“Not gone so much as rearranged,” Herb said.
I looked below. The explosion had sent the bridge to the valley floor. I could make out the hulks of shattered vehiclesâthe two dozen trucks that had been on the bridge only a minute before.
A couple of the trucks had caught fire and were sending out black smoke. Most were simply on their sides, smashed in pieces scattered among the rocks, some partially submerged in the river or covered by the chunks of concrete and mountains of asphalt that had come down with them.
We'd done it. We'd blown up the bridge and all the trucks that were on it and all the men who were coming to destroy us. Just seconds before, they had been racing across the bridge to kill usâmy family, my friends, my neighborsâand destroy all that we had worked so hard to build. And now they were lying at the bottom of the valley, dead. And because they were dead we could live.
“Nobody could have survived that, could they?”
“Adam, I can't imagine it would have been possible to live through that,” Herb said.
“How many enemies are down there? How many men did we kill?”
“An awful lot,” he said.
That boggled my mind. Just three months ago, we had all been leading normal, everyday lives. And then the computer virus or whatever it was had come out of nowhere and cast us all into the darkness. We'd walled off our neighborhood, and outside those walls we'd found enemies among former friends. And now we had taken part in killing dozens, no,
hundreds
, of men. But what choice was there? They were coming to destroy our homes, take all the things we'd worked so hard to create, the things we needed to survive, and they would kill whoever stood in their way. It was us or them. So it was them, down below, lying in the wreckage.
I couldn't allow myself to feel sorry for them or regret what we'd done. I knew they wouldn't have felt sorry for usâthey wouldn't have felt anything.
“Bring us down,” Herb said.
“How low do you want me to get?”
“I want you to land.”
“Down there?”
“I'd like to get as close to the site of the collapse as possible. Can you do that?”
“Sure, I guess so.”
Running alongside the river was a small paved stripâwhat used to be a walking path for hikers, and cyclists, and mothers pushing babies in carriages. It wasn't wide and it hugged the curves of the river, but I'd spied one section that was straight enough and long enough to be a landing strip for my ultralight.
“I'm going to tell your mother what we're doing,” Herb said. Then he spoke into the walkie-talkie. “This is Herb. Captain, can you read me?”
There was static and then my mother's voice. She was holding a position a short distance from the bridge site. “Roger, Herb.”
Along with her voice were screams of joy coming through the radio: celebration. The squads gathered around my mother were cheering the deaths of those murderers who had plunged into the river. It had happened right before my eyes, I was
seeing
the results below us, but still it was hardly believable. A mixture of emotionsâjoy, sadness, grief, confusionâwashed over me. We were going to live, we were going to survive.
Their
death meant
our
life.
“Captain, what are the plans to secure the crash site below the bridge?”
“Already working it through, Herb. I'm going to ask Brett to leave half his team at the top of the ravine to control and offer protection on the east rim and for him to lead the other half down to the site of the wreckage,” my mom said, sounding like the former police chief she was.
“I'm also sending two squads, one north and one south of the collapse site, to seal it in on both sides.”
“Excellent, that will give us the coverage we need to secure the site. We're going to put down ⦠if we have your permission.”
“You're going to land?”
“Roger on that, Captain. With the site secured we'll be fine. That's why it will be good to have Brett's team down there with us. Why don't we send almost everybody else back to the neighborhood, just in case? No sense in winning the battle but losing the war.”
My mother hesitated. “Is there another threat that you've seen from up there heading for the neighborhood?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay. I'll let them stand down, go home, and spread the news. We made it.”
“Affirmative.”
“And, Herb? You need to take care of my son,” she said.
“You've got that backward, Captain. Adam's the one taking care of me.”
“Then take care of each other until I see you. I'm heading back with the reserves. I can leave Howie up here in command.”
“Good idea. It should be you leading the way back and telling the people that they're safe.”
“I guess it will help them trust that we know what we're doing. As if.”
“You read my mind,” Herb said. “It'll also help them deal with the bad news that's going to come.”
“Over and out,” my mother signed off.
“Bad news?” I said. I'm sure my voice had a panicked tone.
“Not today, Adam. Today is only good, but bad news will follow, sooner or later,” Herb said. “And when it does they'll need to remember your mom as one of the leaders who brought them through this crisis successfully so they can trust her to lead them through the next one.”
“Got it,” I said. Suddenly we hit a patch of rough air and the ultralight dipped and shuddered like a roller coaster. Herb gasped and grabbed hold of the windshield frame. I smiled to myself, amused that I was probably the only one who knew that fearless Herb was afraid of flying.
“I'll put us down there,” I said.
I eased off the throttle to reduce our speed and got us lined up on the path. The slower the landing speed, the shorter the distance I needed to land on. Now we were angling into the river valley, and the cliffs on both sides protected us from crosswinds. We dropped down, lower and lower. The river was off to my right, and the eastern cliff face to the left. Up ahead the cloud of dust and smoke rose peacefully into the air. I could almost taste the dust in my mouth, and the smell of the explosives and car fires and burning gasoline was already sharp.
The walking path rushed up to meet us. It was much narrower than the roads I was accustomed to using as landing strips, so I had to be more precise about placing my wheels on the asphalt. If one of them dropped off onto the softer and rougher ground beside the pavement, the whole plane could spin out or even flip over. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, but it was too late to argue. Besides, after dodging bullets and explosives from people and a plane trying to shoot me down, I knew a strip of grass wasn't going to kill me.
I hit the right rudder to put my front wheel directly into line with the center of the path, and pulled slightly back on the stick to soften our descent. I eased off the throttle even more, slowing us down but still listening for the sound of the engine, making sure it was getting enough gas to keep us from stalling out. Lower and lower we came, the whir of the propeller behind our seats a constant background noise, until we were no more than a dozen feet above the ground. We touched down, bounced slightly up, and settled in again. Then I eased completely off the throttle and focused on the path, keeping us on line as we rumbled along the rough asphalt strip, slowing down and finally coming to a stop. I let out a big sigh of relief.
“Nice work,” Herb said.
“Do you want me to taxi along to get us closer?”
“Closer, but not too close,” he said. “I want to make sure your plane is out of harm's way if something explodes. We know the trucks contained weapons and ammunition, and there's always the potential for gas tanks to blow,” Herb said.
“Then shouldn't we all just stay away until we know that there isn't going to be any explosion?”
“We don't have time to wait. We have to scavenge before they're in the water too long or consumed by secondary fires. There's a lot in those vehicles that we need.”
“Okay, I see,” I mumbled. I gave the plane more gas to taxi us along the strip.
“It's not going to be pleasant,” Herb said. “I know it feels like stealing from the dead, but it's not like they're going to use those things anymore. Besides, anything we leave can easily fall into the hands of other people who can turn them against us.”
“I understand ⦠but they're all dead, right?”
“Anybody on that bridge is gone. It would be like falling from a twenty-story building. Regardless, if they did somehow miraculously survive, they won't be surviving for long.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The injuries would be devastating. There's no way they can be saved. If we come across anybody who's alive, we'll have to, well, take action.”
My stomach lurched.
Take action.
I knew what he meant. At least I thought I knew what he meant.
“I can't ⦠I can't do that,” I stammered.
“No one is asking you to. It's on me. I wouldn't leave a dog to die in pain.”