The day after: An apocalyptic morning (85 page)

              Jack, peering through the camera lens, zoomed in as close as the optical setting would allow. "There's a bunch of them," he said. "They don't seem to know we're here yet."

              It was then that Skip, whose view was not magnified but who did enjoy the advantage of taking in everything at once, spotted the defensive emplacements along the Interstate. He slowed up and veered the chopper slightly to the left. "I've got defenses on top of those hills in front of us," he told Jack. "Zoom in on them and tell me what you see. Be sure to record."

              "Got you," Jack said, swiveling his head that way. He looked them over, verbalizing what he was seeing. "Looks like a sandbagged emplacement on top of each of those hills. I got three people in one, two in the other, and they're all pointing guns at us. Looks like assault rifles."

              "Are they shooting?" Skip asked, bleeding off a little more speed and angling further to the south.

              "Negative, no muzzle flashes. They're just pointing them."

              Barnes ran outside as fast as he could, accompanied by his staff sergeant and two of his officers who had been in for a briefing. Barnes carried a portable radio set to the command channel and all of them carried automatic weapons. The moment they were out in the open they began scanning the sky, looking for the mysterious helicopter. They spotted it almost immediately, at a near hover off to the southeast.

              "Listen up, everyone," he said to his guards through the radio, all of who would now, because of the level one alert, be sighting in on the aircraft. "Hold your fire unless they do something hostile. I repeat, hold your fire unless they provoke us. That helicopter is something we could really use around here."

              No one acknowledged but all the same he knew they had heard him and would follow his directions.

              "Hansen," Barnes said into the radio, "do you have an ID on it yet?"

              "I'm looking at it through the binoculars, sir," came his voice a moment later. "It's a highway patrol helicopter, the same one that used to patrol around here I think. It's one of those quiet ones that they came out with a few years ago. It's less than six hundred yards from us and I can't hear it at all. No external weapons visible. The thing hanging from the hook appears to be a steel container of some sort, probably empty based on the way it's swinging back and forth in the wind."

              "Copy that," Barnes said. "Continue to hold your fire and keep an eye on it. If they approach I want you to try to wave them down. Try to get them to land here."

              "I got people with guns now," Skip said, his eyes tracking tiny figures running from several of the buildings and taking up defensive positions. "It looks like they know we're here."

              "I'm filming 'em," Jack said, panning and zooming madly.

              Skip let the chopper drift a little closer, still staying well clear of the defensive emplacements but wanting to get better shots of the town. As soon as he began to move that way the guards in the bunkers stood up and started waving at them, making gestures that they should land.

              "They're waving us down," Jack said, zooming in on that.

              "I see it," Skip said.

              "Should we do it?" Jack asked. "Maybe they've got food we can trade or something."

              "Maybe. Or maybe they're dangerous. You can see better than I can, are those cammies they're wearing?"

              "Yes."

              "Cammies and assault weapons make me a little nervous," Skip said. "I'm gonna skirt this town for now and we'll talk about it with Paul and the others when we get back. Keep filming as I go around. Get as much as you can, particularly any weapons or other emplacements."

              "Okay," Jack said.

              "They're moving off to the south, sir," Hansen's voice said a moment later, unnecessarily since Barnes could clearly see that. "They ignored our attempts to wave them in."

              "Continue to hold your fire," Barnes said, watching as the tiny helicopter moved silently away over the canyon. "They may be back at some point. Maybe they'll land the next time."

              "Continuing to hold fire," was the reply.

              Skip flew slowly over the canyon and its raging waters, staying well clear of the bridge, which he was surprised to find still standing. Utilizing his military mind he examined the terrain and tried to think where he would put a bridge emplacement if he were in charge of Auburn defense. After a moment's thought he decided on the tall hill on the far side of the bridge, basically the same place he had put it in Garden Hill. With that in mind it took him less than ten seconds to spot their camouflaged lookout bunker.

              "I have an emplacement on the big hill on the south side of the canyon, just east of the bridge," he told Jack. "Get some shots of it and tell me what's there."

              "Right," Jack said, swinging that way. It took him a little longer to find it but finally he did and zoomed in. "Looks like two people in there," he said. "Both have assault weapons that they're pointing at us, both in cammies."

              "Okay," Skip replied, nodding. "Let's give them a wide berth and then swing along the south side of the town as we pass. Keep filming."

              Skip flew slowly - less than twenty knots - but it still took them only three minutes to pass clear of the town of Auburn. On the way out they were able to spot and film the bunkers that guarded the west side of the town as well.

              "What do you think?" Jack asked as he lowered the camera and took a few deep breaths to try to clear the nausea that looking through the viewfinder while in flight had caused.

              "They've got their shit together down there," Skip said, putting on a little more speed. "Maybe a little more together than we do. And they have a hell of a lot more people and guns than we do too."

              "Is that good or bad?"

              Skip took his eyes off the view before long enough to look at his companion. "It could be either," he said. "It could be either."

              They reached the Sacramento Valley six minutes later. The foothills of the Sierras came to a sudden end and they were looking at brown water stretching off to the west, north, and south as far as they could see. The surface of this water was not smooth by any means. It was cluttered with floating debris of all shapes, forms, and sizes, everything from tree branches to lumber to tin cans. In addition to the debris there were thousands of human and animal corpses bobbing around, most near the end of the decomposition cycle. The stench was so strong that they could smell it even from two thousand feet in the air.

              "Jesus," Jack mumbled, staring downward in awe through the viewfinder. "Look at all of the bodies."

              "About a million people lived in Sacramento County," Skip said. "About six hundred thousand in San Joaquin County. All of them died when the water came in."

              Jack said nothing else, knowing that Skip's wife and daughter were probably among the floating bodies, although much further to the south, and that that was preying on his mind.

              Skip banked gently to the left, turning them to almost a due south heading. He stayed out over the water about half a mile from the point where the foothills rose up out of it.

              "How much water is down there?" Jack asked after a few minutes of staring at it.

              "A lot," Skip said, his eyes looking straight ahead. "The Central Valley is about four hundred miles long from north to south and about sixty miles wide. All of it will be flooded now thanks to the rains draining down out of the mountains."

              "What about on the other side? Is this the coastline now?"

              "The coast mountains will still be poking up," Skip said. "But everything on the other side of them will be washed away from the tidal waves I would think. San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Monterey, they're probably nothing but mud flats now."

              "Christ," Jack said, looking off towards the horizon. "That one little comet really did a number on us, didn't it?"

              "It really did," he agreed sadly.

              Skip spotted the twin black ribbons of Highway 50 rising out of the water and into the hills a few minutes later. He turned back to the east when he was directly above them, carefully avoiding a radio tower that was miraculously still standing just on the edge of the Central Sea. Two miles from the shoreline was the town of El Dorado Hills, a bedroom community for the Sacramento region and the town that Paul had advised him to keep an eye out for.

              Like most of the other foothill and mountain communities, landslides or flooding had flattened most of the buildings but some of the town remained standing. Like Garden Hill, there were several walled subdivisions full of expensive houses dotting the landscape. Unlike Garden Hill, there was absolutely no sign of people. El Dorado Hills appeared to have been abandoned.

              At the same time, something about the town was telling Skip that it was different than the other dead towns they had come across. He could not put his finger on just what it was, but his instincts were being jigged by something. He kept clear of the actual town but slowed up considerably as they passed. "Get a good record of this place," he told Jack.

              "Why?" Jack asked. "There's nothing there. It's about as empty as can be."

              "Just do it," Skip said.

              With a shrug, Jack did it, filming every inch of what was still standing and then panning out to the surrounding area to get that as well.

              Five minutes later they were back over familiar ground. The destroyed town of Cameron Park loomed ahead of them and beyond it, its rich airport. Skip circled several times around the airport, Jack and the troops in the back keeping a sharp lookout for anything amiss. They saw nothing but what they expected to see. The airport and the surrounding terrain looked the same as it had two days before. Skip made the decision to take them down.

              He descended slowly until he was hovering right over the fueling area. Inch by inch he decreased his altitude until the tank was resting on the ground. Though he couldn't see this happening, he was able to feel it when forty pounds of weight was suddenly removed from the aircraft. Jack, looking out through his open door, confirmed the touchdown visually. Skip pulled the release latch that opened the cargo hook and allowed the rope holding the tank to fall free.

              "It's down and safe," Jack confirmed, bringing his head back in and closing the door.

              "Okay," Skip said. "Let's take one more pass around and then we'll set it down. Be ready for anything down there."

              "Ready for anything," Jack repeated. He looked back behind him at the three newbies. "Lock and load, guys," he yelled loudly enough for them to hear over the engine noise. And then, by example, he flipped the safety off on his weapon and jacked one into the chamber.

              "Where did that chopper come from?" Barnes asked the assembly of officers in the room. "That is the question that we have to address."

              It was an hour after the flyby had occurred and Barnes had gathered the two remaining platoon commanders he had left in town - Lieutenants Corban and Smith - for a meeting on the ramifications of what they had seen.

              "It came from the east," said Corban, a dark haired neo-nazi who thought that Timothy McVeigh had been framed. "That means Garden Hill, Blue Canyon, or Truckee."

              "No," said Smith, a former naval officer aboard a fast frigate. "We know from Bracken's recon trip that Garden Hill didn't have a chopper. I hardly think he could have failed to note a helicopter in the town. That chopper was based at Cameron Park before the comet. I bet that's were it came from."

              "But it came from the east!" Corban insisted. "Cameron Park is to the southwest!"

              "So they went north and flew along the canyon before they got to us," Smith said. "Just because it flew in from that way doesn't mean that's where it came from. Who the hell do you think was flying it if not for the pilot that flew it before the comet? It had to have come from Cameron Park!"

              "Either way," Barnes said, silencing both of them just by talking, "we have to find out. That chopper and its pilot are perhaps the most valuable things left in this region, more valuable than food even. We need to get our hands upon it, not just so we can utilize it ourselves but so we can keep others from utilizing it against us. We must stop at nothing to get our hands upon it. We must sacrifice men to take it if that is necessary and we must destroy it if we can't take it.

              "Our mission for the near future has just changed, men. Once our battalion returns from Garden Hill we will concentrate all of our efforts upon finding that machine and its pilot. Nothing else will take precedence until that is done."

              "Okay," Jack, the videographer, said as the section with the train cars started to play. He was sitting at the front of the conference table next to the television set that Paul had utilized during Jessica's trial the previous night. He held the video camera in his hands and was using the controls to fast forward and rewind sections for Paul, Skip, and Paula. The camera was wired into the TV so that its images could be seen on the large screen.