Dark Dragons (33 page)

Darren turned away from the door, found the Vorvon right
behind him, its arms outstretched and ready to attack.  Without a weapon,
the alien could only punch.  And it did.  Hard.  The fist came
from the left, and Darren found himself up against the back wall, two feet off
the floor.  Pain of broadening horizons opened across his left face. 
He slid away, trying to regain his stance as well as his senses.  The
alien stepped forward to attack again.

He backed away for a split second of momentum, still trying
to shake the hurt from his jaw, and then lunged to retaliate.  With a
wide, countryboy roundhouse, Darren aimed for the alien’s exposed face and
connected against its toothy jaw.  The head went sideways, and then Darren
came with the other fist and a terror-laden cry.  Stunned, perhaps
surprised, the Vorvon took a few steps back and tried to block his attack with
its arms, but Darren kept slugging away, little jets of purple blood striking
the walls with each punch.

He had been in agitated, desensitized states before during
fist fights——that feeling of being distant and detached from the world with
only the single-minded intent to destroy——but nothing like this.  Darren
was absolutely gone.  He had forgotten about the rising helicopter and
where it could be going.  He ignored the pain in his body and the great
howl of the turboshaft engines.  Only the desire to kill this beast
mattered.

His right hand went under his left arm and came back with
the 8-inch vibro-knife from the scabbard slot.  The alien’s eyes locked
onto the weapon, and Darren grinned when he saw them widen.  He
outstretched his arms.

“C’mon, bitch!” he screamed.

The Vorvon’s right forearm vanished behind its back . . .
and reappeared with what looked like a cross between a sword and a chainsaw
connected to a power cable.  Darren heard it thrum to life.  It
outstretched its arms, too.

To his left——the needle pistol.  With the helicopter’s
slight tilt, the weapon was slowly sliding away toward the door, and he
scrambled for it.  So did the alien.  Darren swung his leg up and
around like Jackie Chan, just under the Vorvon’s swinging blade weapon, and
booted the creature square in the head.

The kick pushed the alien’s clumsy weight toward the open
doorway.  It was as good as dead, just seconds from taking a backward
dive, but Darren snatched the pistol up anyway and squeezed off a single shot
with a defiant war scream.  The needle pierced the alien’s exposed
forehead and exploded, spraying the ceiling with purple blood, brains, and
black-leathery flesh before the behemoth leaned out and fell to earth.

Still aiming his weapon toward the doorway, Darren gave
himself a quick moment to collect his bearings and some much needed
oxygen.  He stood there surveying the battered cabin, the urge for action
and violence still with him, his thoughts crazy.
  Any more
takers?  You want some?  No?  How ’bout you, mother fucker,
huh?  You want some?

Cold wind howled through the shattered windshield, swirling
around the battered cabin and whipping his hair.  Squinting from the icy
air, his gaze went across the control board——the altimeter read 10,500
feet.  He looked for the auto-pilot controls but wasn’t sure a helicopter
even had an auto-pilot.

Then he remembered the dead pilot still jammed into the
collective and cyclic sticks where the alien had stuffed him.  Darren
reached down and tried to pull him off, but the guy was heavy.  He tugged
harder, and just when the body began to budge, heard something outside the helicopter
snap.

Darren let go of the pilot, stared up at the ceiling, his
mouth suddenly dry.  The helicopter shuddered violently, dipped its nose
slightly, and Darren was sure his balls had just shriveled up into his butt
crack.

An alarm began to blare like an electric goose.  Dozens
of lights lit up on the control board, and Darren caught the dark flash of
something rotor-like just outside the open door before it disappeared. 
The fuel truck explosion had caused damage after all.

With nightmare slow motion, the helicopter rose a few feet
more, carried by its own momentum, and simply stopped in midair.  It
seemed to hang there impossibly, a blasphemy of gravity.  Unexpectedly,
absurdly, Darren imagined Wile E. Coyote suspended over a precipice in the same
manner, an “Oh Shit!” sign in hand, before the Blackhawk began to drop. 
His boots drifted off the floor.  The dead pilot, too, rose from his spot
and hovered toward the ceiling.  Through the open doorway, he watched the
ground trade places with the sky and back again.  The helicopter began to
nose dive.

Darren’s head touched the ceiling, and he managed to pull
himself to the rear wall.  Now he was shouting, screaming words that made
no sense.  He felt vomit coming up and tightened his throat to keep it
down.

The helicopter began to roll to starboard like a spinning,
plunging toy.  Darren’s universe became a revolving, gut-wrenching world
of horrifying motion.  He looked out the open doorway, but what he saw was
surreal——it didn’t make sense——the horizon was spinning.

That’s when he knew he was going to depart this world
flatter than a sheet of tracing paper.  He continued to bawl and scream as
he waited for the impact, gritting his teeth, feeling vomit rise again, his
stomach up in his chest, the butterflies in his gut stinging like wasps.

Darren felt an indentation on the wall next to him and
seized it, as if it were the only thing that meant anything to him at the
moment.  He pulled himself toward the open door and the spinning world
outside.  Downtown L.A. and the sky filled his view as they spun after
each other in a crazy promenade.

He groped the hull outside with his gloved hand, found
something he could hold on to and reached out with his other hand, shifting his
weight toward the entrance.  Now he was outside the helicopter along with
the icy wind biting and pulling at his face, riding the wild chopper toward the
ground like some crazy bull rider in an aerial rodeo.

Everything spun too quickly and violently to register. 
He didn’t care anymore.  He wanted to die, to end the nightmare, not even
sure what he was trying to do.  All he knew was that he wanted to get away
from the helicopter.  It seemed to be the only sensible act to do, the
only one he could think of.

Darren let go of the strut, and the helicopter’s rotation
shot him away from the dying machine.  Now he was free-falling, nothing
but air and downtown streets beneath him.  He dreamed for a Dragonstar to
magically appear below, piloted by Tony perhaps, and by the living will of God
put something solid between himself and the ground.  He began to blackout
but accepted it.  A peacefulness came over him, and he finally felt calm,
not afraid to die, ready to see dad in heaven.

What’s your name?

Below him, slightly to the left——a massive skyscraper.

The name!

Then with a move that had come from nowhere, without
rationality he brought his right arm up and fired the hoist-cable gun toward
the approaching skyscraper with the emergency fire switch.  He closed his
eyes, relaxed his muscles, and waited for the impact he knew he wouldn’t feel.

“What’s your name?” he murmured to the wind.

Darren felt the cable suddenly tug on his arm, heard a dull
sprong!
when the slack in the cable tightened.  He snapped his eyes open.

He hit the goddamn skyscraper!  The grapnel’s exploding
tip had embedded the device into the steel between the windows.  He
swooped down in a wide arc, just as the helicopter rushed past him toward the
street below, the dead pilot hung up in the rear seats.

Darren realized he had to be going over a hundred miles an
hour toward the building.  He was either going to smash through a window
or strike a steel partition——fifty-fifty.  Praying his armor suit was
strong enough to absorb the coming smack, he stretched his legs out against the
air to stop spinning the way skydivers did so that he would go in feet first to
shield his unprotected head.

Fifty-fifty.  Darren said goodbye to the world.

And to her.

*

Dick Edmonds, of Edmonds, Taylor, and Coyne Advertising,
Inc., stood at the head of the long conference table, cleared his throat, and
nervously began to sing an experimental jingle for Kind Kitty Kat food for the
painfully bored execs at the other end of the table.
  “Kind Kitty Kat
tastes soooo gooood, and when he comes ’round, I’ll know——”

Something dark and fast smashed through the window like a
150-pound sparrow drunk on fermented berries and slammed into the conference
table between two people, upending that section of it toward the far wall.

*

Darren caught a split-second image of startled faces in
business suits, flying BlackBerries and laptops, before finally cartwheeling
into the bathroom and smashing into the toilet.  More white lights flared
in his eyes, and a fountain of cold water exploded around him.  Chunks of
porcelain and plumbing scattered across the bathroom, and he suddenly found
himself lying in a rapidly spreading puddle of water.  A sheet of paper
with a smiling cartoon cat landed gently on his chest.

He heard people gasping, cursing.  A woman cried
out.  Something fell over.

“Goddamn window washers,” a whiny voice called out.

Darren just laid there, arms splayed, lungs sucking air,
trying to decide if he was still intact.
  Legs?——check.  Arms and
hands?——check.  Testicles?
——check.

Another voice: “You okay in there?”

He disconnected the grapnel cable and staggered out of the
bathroom, giving the room a quick once over.  Then he finally let his
stomach do what it had wanted for the past ten minutes and began to dry heave.

“Goddamn drunk window washers!”

With nothing to puke, he straightened up.  Blood gushed
off his scalp.  A ringing had come to a high pitch in both ears.  His
left wrist felt badly sprained, and both ankles were screaming.

But he was alive.

Tuesday, May 17

Darren cleaned himself in the men’s room down the hall the
best he could and took the elevator to the top floor, telling curious onlookers
he was going to a costume party.  After finding an ancient Pacific Bell
pay-phone and graciously asking a lady for a quarter——“I’m going to a costume
party, thanks”——he dialed his number.

His phone rang three times before someone answered, but it
wasn’t Allison.  A deep, male voice said, “Hello?”

Darren hung up.  He asked for another quarter, received
three ——“Thanks a lot, really”——and dialed again.

The telephone rang twice, then the same voice: “Hello?”

He hung up.  The neighbors had apparently called 911
during the shootout and now L.A.’s finest was walking around his demolished
house.  He picked up the receiver again and dialed Jorge’s place. 
The phone rang twice before he heard Jorge’s old man say,
“Sí?”

“Is Jorge there?”

“Jorge! 
Teléfono!”

A second later, “Yes?”

“Jorge, this is Darren.”

“Darren!
  Where are you?  We just got back
from your house . . . the place is crawling with cops . . . and your mom was
sitting in the driveway bawling, and they had to call an ambulance because she
was going bug-shit crazy.”

Darren heard Tony in the background.  “Is that
Darren?  Where’s he at?”

“Where are you?”

“Downtown.  The Paul Hastings Tower on the corner of
Fifth and Flower.  I need one of you guys to pick me up on the roof. 
The other two I need to wait for me in the ravine two houses down from
mine.  You got that, Jorge?”

“Yeah, I copy.  So how did you get down there?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.  Just have somebody come
pick me up.”

*

While he waited for one of his bros to show, Darren spent
that time watching the firefighters attack the blazing Blackhawk from the roof
of the Paul Hastings Tower, its emergency air-rescue exit now with a shattered
lock from his alien needle pistol.  The helicopter had landed in the L.A.
Central Library Park across the street, and thank God, there wasn’t anyone on
the ground killed.  At least the ambulances on site were still empty.

Five minutes later, he heard a whistle behind him. 
Darren turned and saw the upper half of Tony’s body suspended twelve feet in
the air, his helmet off.  He had just brought the helmet, not needing the
rest of his combat suit.

“Going my way, miss?” he asked.  “I’ll let you sit in
my lap and promise to keep my hands to myself.”

Darren walked over.  “Boy, I have I got a story to tell
you.”

“We got nervous when we didn’t see you in school this
morning . . . called your PDA and your cell but no answer, so we left and
booked over to your crib.  We saw two police cars parked outside, and
about three or four cops walking in and out of your house.”

“Great,” Darren said.

“I thought you were dead or something.  So I go up to
one of the cops and ask what’s up.  He says”——Tony lowered his
voice——“‘You live here, young man?’  I say no I don’t.  Then he says,
‘There’s been a fight inside.  You better stay off the premises.’ That’s
when we started shittin’ bricks because we thought you were dead.”

“I almost was.”

Darren gave Tony about a three minute brief detailing the
events since two o’clock this morning.  When he finished, Tony had that
look on his face that usually pissed Darren off.

“You dove out of a falling helicopter and used your
hoist-cable to fly into an office?  C’mon, Spider-Man.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Tony looked off in the distance.  “Yeah, I believe
you.”