The day after: An apocalyptic morning (77 page)

              At last the process was finished and Skip removed the hose and allowed the residual fuel in it to run back into the tank. He stored the length of hose where it could easily be found later and then looked at his troops. "Shall we blow this scene?" he asked them.

              They all enthusiastically agreed that that would be a fine idea.

              "How long will it take us to fly home?" Jack asked.

              Skip chuckled a little bit. "Maybe fifteen minutes or so."

              All three jaws dropped in surprise.

              "Do you mean," Paula asked carefully, "that it took us eight fucking days to walk here, but that it will only take us fifteen minutes to get back?"

              "Isn't modern technology wonderful?" Skip replied. "Come on, let's climb aboard."

              Paula, executing her privileges as Skip's wife, claimed the passenger seat. She strapped herself in and put on the helmet. Jack and Mick, on the other hand, were forced to cram themselves into the small cargo space in the back, both sitting atop the patient litter. None of the three had ever flown in a helicopter before and Jack had never flown in anything before. Their enthusiasm changed to quiet nervousness as they looked at the cramped confines of the small space and as they watched Skip going through the start-up procedure.

              It was as the engine wound up and the rotor started to spin above them that Mick finally expressed this nervousness. "You're sure that this thing is safe, right?" he asked with a broken voice.

              "It's safe as long as we don't crash," Skip said mildly.

              "That's comforting," Mick replied, gripping the handhold on the wall a little tighter.

              Skip put on the power, spinning the rotor up to take-off speed and the aircraft shuddered as it left the ground. Though the noise made conversation impossible (except between Skip and Paula, who were plugged into the intercom system), there was a distinct groan of fright from Mick as the ground dropped away beneath them. Jack, on the other hand, seemed to be thrilled with the sensation.

              Skip took them up to about two hundred feet above the ground and then, using the anti-torque pedals, spun the nose around until his compass read 045, or northeast. He began to move forward, picking up speed as he continued to climb into the sky. The windshield wipers flapped steadily at the raindrops and the scenery, such as it was, opened up below them. He leveled off at 2000 feet above the ground and ninety knots of forward airspeed. His passengers seemed to relax a little once the alarming jerks and jars of lift-off were over with.

              "Look at that down there," Paula said, peering out the window.

              Skip saw immediately what she was referring to. From this height, through the rain, they could see several miles in all directions. Below them they could see that every un-vegetated hillside that had existed before the comet had collapsed into huge piles of mud and debris. Every low-lying area was flooded. Cameron Park was only thirty miles from Sacramento, well within easy commute distance, and most of those hills had had expensive homes upon them. Most of those low-lying areas had had trailer parks or apartment complexes. Had all of those people that lived there perished in the mudslides? Or had they lived long enough to die of starvation or to be eaten by cannibals? And the highways and roads that criss-crossed through the area. Huge sections of them had been washed away as well. Power lines, which had once traced across the landscape in every direction were now nothing more than collapsed towers. Seeing these sights from ground level did not convey the sheer scale of things like seeing them from the air. It wasn't just the area around Cameron Park that had been washed away or buried; it wasn't just the hillside along the canyon edge in Garden Hill. It was everywhere.

              "That is some shit," Skip said softly.

              Behind them, though they couldn't talk, Jack and Mick seemed to be having the same thoughts. They were staring out the side windows at the passing landscape, their mouths hanging open, their eyes wide.

              As the land around them rose in elevation, Skip climbed gently with it, keeping the helicopter at a more or less constant 2000 feet above the ground. It took them about six minutes to come out over the rain swollen Auburn Ravine. Had he turned left, to the southwest, he would have been over the town of Auburn in less than two minutes. Instead, more interested in getting safely back to Garden Hill than exploring the surrounding landscape at the moment, he turned right, to east-northeast, and began following the canyon towards home.

              "There's the bridge," he said to Paula about seven minutes later.

              She looked and, sure enough, the ghostly specter of the Garden Hill span was materializing in front of them through the haze of rain.

              "I just can't believe how fast we got back," Paula said in wonder.

              He slowed a bit and made a pass directly over the span. Looking to his right he was able to see the sandbagged entrenchments that had recently been built on the hill across the canyon from town. By now, if the guards were alert (and they probably were these days), they would have been spotted and the word would have been passed to Christine.

              He banked to the left, skirting the eastern side of the subdivision, between the wall and the cliffs beyond them. He bled off more speed and dropped altitude down to less than a thousand feet as he headed for the community center. Already he could see people emerging from the building, most with guns in their hands in case, by some fluke, this chopper turned out not to be the one they were expecting. He could not see well enough to identify individual faces, but he knew that Christine would be one of the gun carriers.

              He circled twice around the parking lot, checking to make sure that nobody was near his landing site. Finally he eased down, coming to a gentle landing about eighty feet from the front doors. As he shut down the engine he saw that the townspeople were crouched behind cars in the parking lot, their weapons trained on the chopper. He beamed with pride as he saw this. Christine was leading them well.

              "Let's not make any sudden moves," Skip told his crew as he pulled off his helmet and dropped it to the floor. "They're covering us with guns."

              "Right," Paula, dropping her own helmet, replied a little nervously.

              "I hope they're careful out there," said Mick, who still sounded a little shaky from the flight. "It would be kind of ironic to come all this way and then get shot in the community center parking lot because someone's a little loose on the trigger."

              Skip slowly opened his door and, keeping his hands high in the air, stepped out. On the other side Paula did the same. As soon as they were in the open and recognizable Skip yelled out, "It's okay, it's Skip, Paula, Jack, and Mick. We're back and we're safe."

              Christine was the first to emerge from cover. She had an AK-47 in her hands and a broad smile on her face. She shouldered the weapon and came running over to them as the rest of the gun toting townspeople came out. She slammed forcefully into Skip, her arms going around his neck, her face showering him with wet kisses. "You're back!" she squealed happily. "God, I was so worried!" She let go of him with one arm long enough to pull Paula into the embrace as well. "I'm so glad to see you guys! Is everyone all right?"

              Before anyone could answer a complete crowd was around them, a thousand questions being asked at once. "How was it out there?" and "Did you find any supplies?" and "Did you see any other people?" and many other inquiries about the trip. Stacy, who was wearing her dinner preparation apron, pushed her way through the crowd and found Jack just as he pulled himself free of the helicopter. She slammed into him so hard that he did fall over. Maureen, Mick's significant other, hit him with a similar force.

              It was a good ten minutes before the excitement died down enough to hold a coherent conversation. Each of the expedition members gave a brief summary of the trip to those around them, all of them, for the moment, leaving out the unpleasant details about the cannibals or the widespread destruction.

              It was Christine who made perhaps the keenest observation. After holding Paula and Skip closely, after kissing both of them on the cheeks, she could contain herself no longer. "My God," she said, wrinkling her nose. "You guys really smell bad."

              Though this could have been taken as an insulting statement, laughter was the only response.

              Jack and Mick, more disgusted with the grime clinging to them then concerned about hunger, headed off to the bathing area to clean themselves off. They flipped a coin to see who would go first (which was about the only thing a coin was good for anymore) and Jack won. Stacy, who had been excused from dinner detail for the night (thanks to Paul, she and Sara now had an additional staff of two town women to help on kitchen detail - one of them none other than Jessica) joined him in there to "help with the filling". They were in there considerably longer than was probably necessary for strict bathing and they went immediately home afterward. Mick didn't mind the wait however. Maureen helped him fill the tub when it was his turn.

              Paula and Skip took the opposite approach. They were more anxious to get their teeth on some real food for a change then they were to get immediately clean. Only Christine was brave enough to sit with them (and even she had to sit two spaces over).

              Just as the meal was finishing up - and as Paula and Skip were working on the second helpings that they had been granted as a reward for their mission - Paul got behind the podium and flipped on the PA system. He publicly thanked the expedition crew (two of whom were conspicuously absent, but this was not commented on) and invited Skip to come up and give a general briefing on the mission.

              Skip swallowed down the rest of his tuna salad and canned corn, drank the rest of his powdered lemonade, and then walked to the front of the room. He was cheered as he made the trip but more than one person was forced to hold their breath as he passed, so powerful was the odor of him.

              "First of all," he said into the microphone, "I'd like to promise everyone here that I'm going to bathe just as soon as I'm done talking to you all."

              This statement was greeted with a burst of playful clapping and laughter.

              "It is rather difficult to keep yourself clean out there," he said. "It seems all the decent motels have gone out of business." He let the smile go from his face, putting a serious expression on. "Let me begin by telling you what you probably already know. We have managed to recover a highway patrol helicopter from Cameron Park Airport. As far as I can tell, it is in fairly good shape, there are some basic spare parts and maintenance supplies back where we found it, and there is about two thousand gallons of fuel there as well."

              A prolonged burst of applause greeted this statement.

              "Now this helicopter is a McDonnell-Douglas model 500. It had a range of about 300 miles with only a pilot in it, and a range of about a hundred miles full of cargo. What this means to our community is that, if I can keep this thing running, we'll be able to search for supplies or even game from the air and bring them back here to Garden Hill. We'll be able to recon the surrounding area to try to determine if there are any friends or enemies out there. As a defensive tool, this helicopter will also serve an important role since attackers will be able to be spotted from the air and even engaged from where they least expect it. With the forward-looking infrared pod that's installed in it, we can even see people at night. This aircraft is quite possibly this town's saving grace."

              More applause echoed through the room.

              "But there is going to be some more work involved before we can start using it for this purpose," he said next. "First of all we're going to have to figure out a way to get that two thousand gallons of fuel from Cameron Park to Garden Hill and we're going to have to figure out a way to safely store it. We're also going to need to get all of the spare parts and maintenance supplies over here. What that means is that I'm going to have to fly enough people over there to secure that airport long enough to make ten or fifteen trips back and forth."

              Though he had yet to ask anyone, dozens of volunteers immediately stood and offered their services. Many of them were the newest members of his guard force.

              "We'll figure out who is going to do it once we have the logistics of it down," Skip said, waving them back to their seats. "But before everyone get too enthusiastic about this, I think that maybe I should explain just what kind of thing we're up against out there."

              They all quieted down and he told them, using his no nonsense, this-is-the-absolute-truth, courtroom voice, about the destruction of the land, the dead bodies, and the evidence that cannibalism was taking place outside their walls. Almost everyone winced as he described this last bit.

              "Now what I just told you should serve to clue you in to the danger out there before you volunteer," he said. "It should also serve to clue you in to the danger that just might show up on our doorstep one of these days. So think carefully about it before you put your name up for consideration of this mission. You'll probably have to spend at least one night in Cameron Park, well armed but beyond the reach of help from the rest of us. Keep that in mind."