The day after: An apocalyptic morning (159 page)

              "Okay," he said as the altimeter approached 5000 feet above sea level, "let's get back into position and we'll start slowing down."

              Jack and Sherrie both quickly resumed their respective places at Skip's side. Skip had to stifle a scream as Sherrie grabbed his leg a little too hard and then another as Jack's boot nudged his foot.

              "Are you all right?" they both asked, looking at him anxiously.

              "Yeah," he breathed, biting his lip a little. "Everyone ready?"

              They assured him that they were as ready as they were going to get.

              "Then let's land this thing," Skip said.

              He continued to descend, letting the helicopter take a gentle angle downward. They passed over the hills between the town and the canyon and then over the southern wall itself. The rooftops and winding streets of the subdivision grew bigger and bigger in their field of view. Ahead of them and slightly to the left, the park and the community center could be seen, including the large parking lot that was their landing zone. Skip eased up on the airspeed a little more, keeping them just above the point where Jack needed to actively intervene. He banked a little to the left and then back to the right, putting the landing zone directly in front of them.

              "Okay," he said once they were lined up. "We're on final approach now. I'm going to slow up some more. Get ready to do your stuff."

              "I'm ready," Jack said, chewing his lip a little.

              "Remember," Skip said as he pushed down a little more on the collective, "once we get into the ground effect, you're going to have to ease up. The blades won't be biting into the air as hard and the torque is going to suddenly lessen."

              "I'll remember," Jack said, his eyes watching out the windshield in front of them.

              They passed the outer edge of the park, still descending, and Skip dropped the airspeed past the critical point. "Down a bit, a bit more," he said, and Jack pushed down on the pedal. The back end, which had been trying to swing, stabilized for a moment until the speed dropped even more. "More," Skip said. "Just a bit more."

              They passed over the baseball diamond at a little over a hundred feet above the ground, still slowing, the tail swinging spastically back and forth about three feet in both directions. Skip continued to slow them up and Jack continued to apply pressure to his pedal.

              "Doing good, doing good," Skip said, feeling sweat dripping down his face, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. He slowed some more. "A little more, a little more."

              They passed over the southern edge of the parking lot, still slowly dropping, still moving at about twelve knots, the back end still swinging back and forth as Jack's control movements lagged just behind Skip's voice commands.

              "Coming up on the LZ," Skip warned, slowing them even further. "Here's where it really gets tricky."

              "Bring it on," Jack said, wiping his own face, watching with intense concentration as the white lines of the parking spots grew larger and larger.

              Skip dropped a little further, until they were about six feet above the ground. "We're going to hover now," he said, bleeding off the rest of the speed. The tail swung out a little wider as Jack struggled to keep up with the maneuver. For a moment it seemed they were going to spin wildly but it was only a moment. He pushed down a little more and arrested it and then overcompensated just a little, forcing Skip to counter his move. At last the airspeed stood at zero knots six feet above the ground.

              "Good job," Skip said with a little sigh of relief. "We're almost home free. I'm gonna drop us down now. Get ready for the ground effect. As soon as we start to swing, let up on the pedal slowly and I'll give a little push on mine."

              "Let's do it," Jack said.

              Skip let them drop down a little bit more and, at three feet, they were firmly in the ground effect, where the air from their own rotor was bouncing off the ground and pushing them back upward. The helicopter suddenly didn't need as much power to keep aloft and in order to get them the rest of the way down, Skip pulled back on the collective considerably more than he would have to make the same adjustment at altitude. As such the rear end tried to swing around since the force of torque was equally reduced.

              "Ease up, ease up!" Skip barked, feeling the swing.

              Jack eased up a little faster than he had been, countering the action. The rear end stabilized.

              "Out of sight," Skip said, dropping them the rest of the way down. There was a thump from beneath them as the skids touched semi-gently down on the asphalt. It was almost anti-climatic.

              "We did it!" Jack yelled, feeling the wonderful sensation of being back on mother earth. "We're down, Skip! We did it!"

              "We're down?" Sherrie asked. She too had felt the thump of landing but was having trouble believing that they were really safe.

              "We're down," Skip said, neutralizing the collective and turning the throttle back to idle. The whine of the turbine engine, which had been screaming a moment before as it held the helicopter at a hover, died down to a soft, almost gentle hum. The rotor blades began to slow down. "It wasn't the prettiest landing I've ever participated in, but Goddamn if it didn't feel the best once it was over."

              Now that the immediate crisis was over and the adrenaline had a chance to slack off some, Skip's leg began to seriously scream at him for the abuse that had been inflicted upon it. The pain swelled up like a balloon, traveling up and down his body in sickening waves, commanding his attention. He had never imagined that a simple gunshot wound could be so freaking painful. Hadn't he been told once that they were almost painless? What moron had pulled that information out of his ass? Obviously someone who had never been shot in the knee before.

              "Are you all right, Skip?" asked Jack, still quite elated at the fact that he was actually alive and not a burned up, smashed up corpse. He didn't like the way that Skip was leaning back in his chair with his eyes squeezed shut.

              "I think..." he said, "that you... you better do the shut-down checklist for me. Do you mind?"

              "I'm on it," he said worriedly. He gave his mentor one last glance and then began the process of disengaging the rotor and shutting down the engine.

              Sherrie meanwhile, jumped out through the missing door on the side and fell to her knees on the wet asphalt. She leaned down and put her lips to the ground, kissing it several times. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said, over and over again, presumably to God or Jesus or whatever entity she believed in.

              Across the parking lot the door to the community center opened and Paul came out, followed by two of his medical team. They had a wheeled table with them - a makeshift gurney that had been constructed by Steve Kensington a few days before. They reached the helicopter before the blades were even able to stop turning. Paul ripped open the pilot's side door and looked in.

              "Hey, Paul," Skip groaned, trying a grin on for size and doing a miserable job at it. "What's the good word?"

              "That was some kind of fucked up looking landing," Paul said, his eyes dropping down to the bloody bandage on Skip's knee. He also took note of the blood, now congealing, that had dripped down to the floor.

              "Any landing that you walk away from," Skip quoted, "is a good landing. I learned that in flight school. I think they laid that one on us the first day. It's right up there with the old, bold pilots saying."

              "Well, it was a good landing then, I'll agree with that," Paul said, "but it don't look like you are going to be walking away from it. How bad is the injury? Give it to me straight."

              "It went in below my kneecap and went out just above it," Skip told him. "I saw bone fragments and tendons sticking out of the exit wound. I can't move my leg at all."

              "Do you mean you physically can't move it, or do you mean it hurts too much to move it?"

              "Both," Skip told him. "It's agony to even try, and it won't move even when I do."

              Paul nodded. He reached down and began unlacing Paul's left boot. "I'm going to check and make sure you're still getting blood flow down there," he said. "How's the pain?"

              "Horrible," Skip said honestly. "I had a kidney stone once and I thought that was bad." He shook his head. "That felt like a blowjob in comparison to this."

              Paul laughed a little, taking the laces all the way off. "You have a way with words, Skip," he said. "You oughtta be a writer. Are we gonna be able to get the wounded to El Dorado Hills?"

              "Yes," Skip said immediately. "We'll get them there."

              "Are you gonna fly there the same way you landed? With Jack pushing one of your pedals and Sherrie holding your leg up."

              "There's no other way," Skip said. "Just shoot me up with some of that morphine to take the edge off of this. We'll make it."

              Paul looked up at him. "Shoot you up with morphine before you fly a helicopter? Isn't that just a little unwise?"

              "It's the only way," Skip said. "Don't give me enough to put me out. Just give me enough to make it tolerable."

              Paul gave him a doubtful look and then began trying to pull Skip's boot off of his foot. The moment he moved the leg in order to accomplish this, Skip screamed as the pain flashed white-hot once again.

              "Skip," Paul said softly, "I can't give you enough morphine to make this tolerable. That much will put you out like a light."

              Skip panted for a few moments, wiping a fresh sheen of sweat from his face. "Give me what you can," he said. "There's no other way to do it. We have wounded that need to get there, don't we?"

              He nodded. "Yes, we do. Lucy and John are both dead - we did everything we could for them but... well, it just wasn't enough. Susan, Lori, and Sandy will need to get there at some point for treatment but they can wait for a while. Sarah, Rhonda, and Megan all have pretty serious wounds however, particularly Megan. They need to get to the doc right away, like within the next twenty minutes."

              "Then it's settled," Skip said. "I was the one that went against common sense and got myself shot up. I'm the one that'll just have to deal with the consequences. Give me as much dope as you think I can tolerate and then lets get those casualties loaded up."

              "And what if you pass out from the pain while you're in flight?" Paul asked. "Or what if you pass out from the dope? I'm not a doctor, Skip. I'm not an expert at medicating people. That shit could happen. What will you do then?"

              "Then we'll crash," Skip said, not mincing words.

              Paul looked at him sternly, shaking his head hopelessly. "What a clusterfuck," he said. "Is that really our only choice? What about Jack? Do we have the right to ask him to risk his ass on this screwed up mission? If you crash, you'll be taking him with you."

              Both of them looked over at Jack, who was still sitting in the observer's seat, following the conversation. "Well?" Skip asked him. "What do you think, Jase?"

              "I'll go no Micker what," Jack said. "My place is in this chopper. But... maybe there's another answer."

              "Another answer?" Paul asked. "What do you mean?"

              "No," Skip said immediately before he could even say it.

              "I could fly this thing to El Dorado Hills," Jack said, ignoring him.

              "Absolutely not," Skip said. "This is not the time to learn to fly. Not with casualties on board."

              "Skip..." Jack started.

              "I said no," Skip said. "That's final."

              "I can do it," Jack said defiantly. "I've been watching you fly this thing for weeks now. You've taught me every system, every control, everything."

              "Jack, you can't just jump behind the controls of a helicopter and start flying," Skip told him. "It doesn't work that way, no Micker how much you think you know about it."

              "Is that any riskier than flying the damn thing all shot up with morphine, with one foot on the controls and a woman holding the other foot? And there's not even room for Sherrie and the casualties anyway, even if we could talk Sherrie into climbing back in here."

              "No," Skip repeated.

              "I can do it," Jack said, staring at him. "Skip, I can. I know I can."

              "No!"

              "I'm not a kid, Goddammit!" Jack yelled, leaning closer to him. "You're sitting there thinking that I'm talking out of my ass because I'm fourteen fucking years old and I don't know any better. I'm not, Skip. I know exactly what I'm saying. It might be a little rough at first, it might take me a few minutes to get the feel of the thing, but if you help me, I can fly this helicopter. I know what I'm saying and I know what the risks are. I wouldn't tell you this if it wasn't true."