The 1000 Souls (Book 2): Generation Apocalypse (8 page)

Tevy continued, trying not to exclaim in surprise every time the seat dropped out from under him only to press back up when the engine stabilized for a few moments. They passed through a gray cloud and dropped again, and now an evergreen forest stretched below them, only broken by rocky hills and narrow lakes.

“Look for the highway,” shouted Milan. “It should be close. Look for any landmark.”

Tevy turned to look east through his window, and the plane banked for a moment, giving him a good view down. Trees and unforgiving rock were spilt by a deep gorge with a foaming river, but otherwise it looked hopeless: there was nowhere to land.

A man’s voice crackled over the radio. “Go for St. John’s. Is that you Milan?”

“It’s Tevy. I mean, yes, it’s Milan. I’m just using the radio for him.”

“Are you putting down on the highway? Where are you?”

“Tell them we should be close.” Milan squinted north through the windshield and through his side window to the west, where the sun hung low and red on the horizon. “Where the hell are we?”

“You don’t know?”

“We had some headwinds pushing us around, so I was planning to find the tower. It is not like I have a GPS anymore.”

Tevy keyed the microphone. “We should be close. Can you see us?”

“Not that close!”

The plane dropped again and stabilized. Tevy, still desperately scanning the trees, caught his breath. “Look, over there. I think it’s a bridge.”

Now Milan banked the little plane sharply, and, sure enough, a gray curve of steel rose up above the trees. “Thanks God. Good eye. Give me this.” He snatched the microphone back. “St John’s, we’re just passing the Mattagami River Bridge. I must put down soon, so we will only make it to a couple of miles north. Come get us, ASAP. I have brought Jeff some NATO ammo.”

The engine went dead, and the rushing wind under the wings emphasized the silence. Milan dropped the microphone and took the yoke firmly in both hands. “Oh, my little baby. Just a little farther. Come on, please, just a little farther.”

Pine and spruce trees raced under them, and Tevy could have jumped to a rock hill that swept below if they weren’t going so fast. He even thought about it, anything to take control, to be the master of his fate instead of sitting there, helplessly waiting for the end, his heart pounding to get out of his chest

The rocky hill dropped away to reveal the gray line of the highway. Milan banked left as gently as he could, but the maneuver cost them precious height. A bough from a particularly tall spruce slashed their underside, pitching the plane forward, but Milan managed to pull them to level.

They were too low and too far from the highway. The top of another tree slammed the wing strut on Milan’s side, ripping it away, but the wing held in place, giving him a fighting chance.

“Time is now to pray!” shouted Milan.

They almost overshot the highway, but a sharp twist on the yoke banked them north. It proved too sudden a maneuver for the left wing, which tore away from the craft but not off. The plane rolled sharply to Milan’s side as they lost lift, and the left wheel hit the ground first and hard.

Pink granite and green spruce spun by so fast that they meshed into a blur. Tevy fought to maintain some sense of direction, holding onto the side of the plane and the roof as if he could stop them from crushing in as the plane flipped and turned and smashed. Sky, asphalt, shattering glass, more sky and asphalt that didn’t flip from view. The plane came to a stop with a screech of metal.

Tevy stopped screaming, and took several choking breaths of smoke and fumes, relishing in the fact that, even though he was upside down and hanging from his seat belt, he was alive. But the shadows warned that the sun hung low, and he had no idea how far it was to St. John’s Keep.

They were down in the wilderness at sunset—a wilderness full of recently displaced and starving rippers.

Tevy succeeded in releasing his seat belt and dropping onto the crumpled ceiling, twisting so that he could kick out the remains of the windshield for an exit. It would be impossible to open the crushed passenger door.

“Good idea,” Milan said, also hanging upside down. His sunglasses were gone and his face was bloody. “Quick! Please, help me out of here. I smell gas.”

Tevy twisted around and fought to release Milan’s seat belt, but the buckle was jammed. He got his switchblade from his back pocket and flicked it open, sawing through the tough material of the belt near the seat. Milan dropped heavily to the roof with a cry. “My ribs! Fuck! Let us get out of here.”

Milan twisted around and crawled along the roof and through opening left after Tevy had kicked out the windshield. Tevy followed, smoke stinging his eyes and gas dripping on him from the engine housing. He wanted to lurch up and run once he was clear of the plane, but Milan was having trouble getting out, so Tevy repressed the desire to escape and turned to help. Milan crawled on his forearms, his left leg dragging, and for a moment Tevy thought it was caught in the wreckage until he realized that it was injured. He reached back under the engine housing and took Milan’s hands, standing to drag him clear of the plane. Milan tried to get up, but when his left ankle took weight he gasped and would have fallen but for his left arm around Tevy’s shoulders. Together, they staggered away from the plane, Milan hopping on his right foot.

When Tevy stopped and sat heavily on the asphalt, Milan turned to look back at the crumpled little plane. He held his side and looked pale with shock. “You feeling lucky, young man?”

“Dude, I’m still alive, ain’t I.”

“There are four boxes of fifty-cal ammunition in the back of that plane, and another of 5.56 NATO rounds. It’s worth very much to me and the good people of St. John’s. Would you wish to make some friends very fast?” He turned to look Tevy in the eye. “Climb back in there quick and get it out. It is in the cargo compartment.”

Tevy had to guess whether Milan was joking or not.
Go back in the plane?
“Don’t those things blow up?”

“Not like in the movies. It may catch fire any second now though. Go! Quick!”

Tevy went, crawling over the asphalt and broken glass, ignoring the pain from cuts to his hands and knees, holding his breath as he got close to the wreckage. With the plane upside down, it was actually easier to squeeze under the seats and get into the back, and sure enough, when he wrenched open the cargo compartment, he found five military-grade metal boxes with convenient handles. He grabbed two of them and hauled them along as he backed out of the plane. He dragged them over near Milan.

“Dude, these are heavy.”

“Go! Go! Very quick!”

Tevy obeyed the imperative, crawling frantically back into the plane, snatching the handles of two more boxes and heaving them out of the mess, gasping and choking as he crawled back out of the plane. He set them just clear of the wreckage and went after the last box, holding his breath against more fumes as he pulled it free.

He found Milan had dragged himself through the ditch at the edge of the road so that he could sit up with his back to a tree, comfortably far from the wreck. Tevy stood and hurried to carry the ammunition boxes across the street, making three trips.

“Don’t put them near me, young man. The rippers must not find them. Hide them back in the forest and then get back to here.” Milan pulled a large revolver from under his jacket.

“My shotgun!” Tevy ran for the plane but didn’t need to crawl back in. The rear window on the Milan’s side had popped out, and Tevy was able to reach in and grab the shotgun and his pack from the back, but the mailbag was out of reach. He considered crawling in when a
wump
and rush of heat pushed him away. Orange flames enveloped the engine housing. Tevy ran.

“I thought you said these things didn’t blow up.” Tevy said as he slumped down near Milan, resting his back on another tree and uncontrollably trembling. The plane burned, the fire accelerating with frightening speed. Before Milan could even answer, the entire plane was engulfed.

“I said they don’t blow up like in the movies. But they burn very well.” Milan opened the chamber on his revolver to check that it was loaded and slapped it closed. “I thought since the engine was already stopped that maybe it would not catch, but I guessed wrong.”

Tevy nodded and let his breathing slow. He was safe. He was on the ground. “How long till the St. John’s people get here?”

“Depends on whether the rippers have felled any trees across the road in the last few days.”

“Why would they do that?”

Milan looked over in the gathering dusk, the flames lighting his weathered face and giving it a reddish hue. “Of course because they like to try and catch people driving up the highway close to sunset. This is most unfortunate.” He took a deep breath. “Fuck. Listen, young man, my ankle is hurt somehow, not broken I think because I can move it, but I can’t be sure. I can maybe limp but I can’t get far and that is going to attract rippers like moths to the flame.” He pointed with his revolver at the burning wreck. “Save yourself. Run up the road for St. John’s, travel like a mouse, very quiet, and when you see headlights, drop your shotgun and put your hands on your head so that they know you’re surrendering. They will probably put you in a cell overnight till the sun can prove you, but I promise you will be okay.”

Tevy thought of the Brat Pack, of promises they all made to one another. No one would be left to the rippers. No one would be left behind alive. That left two choices: shoot Milan now or stay, and Tevy had never before killed a human. “I’m not leaving you to die—or worse.”

Milan sighed in relief. “I was hoping you would say this, but in my conscience I had to give you the chance to leave. I will owe you very big for this if we live. That shotgun, is it your only weapon?”

“My Glock is loaded, and I’ve a couple of extra clips ready to go.” Tevy stripped off the old jacket, even though an evening chill was settling. He wanted freedom of movement. “And as a last resort I’ve got my knives.

They waited in silence, watching the orange flames burn low, but the column of smoke from plane was turned into a gray pillar by the light of a rising full moon, even though it was still low and huge on the horizon. The stars, dimmed by the moon, were occluded by a column of smoke, and Tevy could imagine just how significant a direction signal this was from every hill and valley for miles. “Here are humans,” it stated. It might as well be an arrow pointing down to the burning plane. They spent most of the time waving away and slapping at tiny blood suckers—mosquitoes.

When it was full dark, Tevy decided to move. “I’m going off for a bit,” he said to Milan. “Over that way. Don’t shoot that way.”

“You are leaving after all?” Milan looked glassy-eyed and vulnerable in the fading firelight, and Tevy suddenly wondered how much pain the man was in. They hadn’t even checked his ankle or his ribs, which seemed to be giving him more pain than his ankle judging by the way he held his side.

“I’m using you as bait. Let them come. Let them get close. Let me start the shooting.”

“This all supposes they don’t see you first.”

Tevy stood. “They won’t. I’m very good at being quiet and still.” He trembled again, but this time with excitement. He would get to kill rippers and avenge his parents. It was a madness, a relief from all the sneaking around. He hadn’t really stayed for Milan’s sake, but his own. Was he crazy? Suicidal? It didn’t matter now.

But Tevy was a city boy, and he discovered that pushing through the undergrowth on the side of the road was noisy and painful work, generating many scrapes. He finally found a wide spruce that had killed its competition with a bed of needles, and its lower branches, starved of sunlight, had died off and were easy to snap away so that he could put his back to the tree and wait. The smells were so different from the city. Mold from the needles, sap from the spruce, some of it sticking to his hand. He held his hand close to his nose and took a deep breath, for a moment transported back to a Christmas long past with his parents—their living room, the tree, and his father in his housecoat as Tevy tore at the wrapping paper. He couldn’t remember his father’s or mother’s faces, though, as much as he tried. But under that tree near St. John’s, Tevy did remember a presence, a sense of father and mother, of his loving parents.

Milan’s form, his right leg bent at the knee so that his gun could rest there, was silhouetted by the firelight less than three car-lengths away. The plane may have been their nemesis, but it’s cremation provided the light they needed to see and shoot.

Milan began to sing, a ballad about Bertrand in the mountain, about the end of the Vlad. It was a song best sung with guitar, a lament for a lost hero. He switched to an older song, one Tevy remembered from his iPod, one his father warned him not to play too loud, one with electric guitars and drums, with amplified voices and lots of other instruments and strings. Tevy missed that song, but Milan’s voice evoked it hauntingly, even though he sat alone and injured in the woods and waiting to die.

A crack of a breaking branch sounded behind Tevy.

Quiet as a mouse
. Tevy pressed himself back into the tree, willing himself to be part of the trunk. He had assumed that the rippers would approach from up and down the road, not from deeper in the woods. An unpleasant thought crossed his mind. He could just stay here, silent and still. Milan was probably done for anyway, even if Tevy managed to surprise and kill the first few rippers that came along. When the St. John’s people came down the road, they would understand, wouldn’t they? There had been no hope for a man who couldn’t run.

But Tevy remembered Bertrand Allan opening the door to the closet to find a terrified little boy. That man had run into a burning building even when the odds of saving Tevy’s parents were very low. He was a saint. Tevy drew strength from that, from the lesson that the fight must be brought to the rippers, no matter how hopeless. Good might come from it—even if Tevy died. His heart started to beat faster, the anticipation of the fight growing. Tonight, he would not just hide.