A New World: Reckoning (11 page)

Climbing off the pile filling the hall, barely noticing the scrapes and bruises, I look down the section of hall behind. Immediately ahead, another hall opens to the right. Across from it is a closed door. Hoping the door will lead to a room that will allow me to circumvent the blocked hall, I run toward it. Muffled shrieks from Bri’s side increases, driving me to move quicker. The panic lingering just below is threatening to break free.

Not wanting to even take the time to see if it’s locked, I send a burst of fire into the latch. I slam into it with my shoulder. The door crashes open and hits the interior wall with a bang. Splinters from the shattered jamb fly inside. Stumbling into the room, I look to the far side thinking this is a way that will connect with the hall past the blockade…and Bri. I come up short seeing I am wrong.

From all appearances, I’ve stumbled into a storage room. Boxes are stacked along the walls and on shelves which fill the entirety of one side. As with the walls of the corridor, the ones enclosing the room are made of concrete.

My heart sinks. I don’t know how to get to Bri and there are night runners. My throat fills with a huge lump and my heart threatens to rip apart. I want to just fall to my knees on the floor and sink into oblivion.

The only thing I can think to do is open up. I send to the night runners. Through a complicated series of images, I send that death awaits them if they run any farther. The image I send is that of the sun shining brightly, along with the intense, burning pain of dying. Anything to slow them down and give me more time.

With tightness gripping my insides, I glance frantically around the room. Looking for something…anything…some way to get to Bri before it’s too late. The back wall catches my attention as I fight the rising panic. It’s painted a similar gray to the concrete walls, but its texture shows that it’s made of drywall.

Without hesitating, I remove three grenades hooked into my vest. There were four, but I guess one is now buried in the rubble. Back at the door, I quickly pull the pins and toss the grenades against the back wall, one after the other.

Overriding the muffled shrieks coming from the other side of the barrier, I hear the sound of footfalls. I hurriedly turn around, going to one knee, and bring my carbine up. Lynn is running down a short hall across from the door with the others behind. I assume they made their way down from the stairs. I lower my M-4 thinking it’s a good thing that I am able to see in the dark. If I only saw shapes moving quickly for me, considering there is a night runner presence in the basement, I might have added to the mistake I’ve already made.

Seeing me through her NVGs, Lynn comes to a halt. “Don’t you answer your radio anymore?”

“It doesn’t work,” I say, pushing her back from the door.

“Wher” Lynn starts.

A rolling explosion rocks the basement, deafening with its intensity. My ears begin ringing and a roil of smoke thrusts out of the open doorway. Leaving Lynn and the others startled in the hallway, recovering from the unexpected explosion, I turn and bolt into the room without giving them an explanation.

Smoke fills the room. Most of the boxes along the walls are shredded from shrapnel that was flung at high speed. Two of the shelves have fallen over, throwing their contents across the floor. Particles of cardboard and paper slowly drift down.

I race to the back end of the room to see a large hole has been torn in the wall. I tear several electrical wires to the side and step through shattered beams. It’s a larger room, yet similar to the one I was just in. Pieces of the drywall and boards are strewn across the floor; the remains of a wooden desk, ripped apart from the explosion, lies at an angle in the middle.

I notice, with a deep-set fear—my mind numbed with it—that the shrieks have stopped. My ears are ringing from the explosion, but I’d hear them if they were present. I race to the door on the far side of the room, ready to take down anything that might be between me and my girl. Fearing the worst, I send a burst into the door and throw it open.

The door slams against the inside wall and I look out. The smell of gunpowder is the first thing I notice, mixed with the odor of age-old sweat, bowels, and blood. The second thing I notice is the end of a barrel whipping in my direction. I throw myself backward as rounds stitch up the jamb holding the door’s hinges, destroying the upper one. The door, unable to support its weight, topples, shearing the bottom hinge loose. Continuing its fall, it hits me on the head.

Shoving the door away from me, my heart soars from the fact that bullets tore into the wood. My sweet Bri is alive. In my panicked haste, I didn’t call out and damn near paid the price for it.

“Bri, it’s me, hold your fire,” I call.

“Okay, Dad,” she returns.

Peering back into the corridor, with the mixture of smells wafting past my nose, each making itself known, feces, sweat, blood, then gunpowder, I notice night runner bodies covering almost the entire hallway floor. They begin a few yards past the door opposite the blockage, with the last lying almost on top of Bri. Some lie singly while others are stacked on top of each other. It looks like someone hastily stacked them like dominos, not paying attention to alignment, and tipped them over.

Stepping over the bodies, I hurriedly walk over to Bri and kneel. She’s covered with dust and splotches of night runner blood.

“Are you okay, Bri? Did they get you anywhere?” I ask, concerned that the blood might be hers.

“I’m fine, Dad. I just can’t get up,” she states.

“I love you so much.” I pull her tight against me, hugging her, not ever wanting to let go.

My relief so thoroughly takes hold of me that tears run down my cheek, unbidden. Hearing that first shriek, I thought I had lost my little girl.

“I love you too, Dad.”

Releasing her and looking down the hall at the numerous dead, I realize that ‘little girl’ may not fit her very well. However, she will always be that to me. I open up to see if there are any more night runners about and don’t sense any.

“Jack, are we clear?” Lynn calls from within the room.

“Yeah, we’re good,” I answer.

Lynn and the others enter the hall, staring at the bodies. I hear Henderson give a low whistle as he looks at the scene. I see Gonzalez look from Bri, to the bodies, and then back again, slowly shaking her head.

Recovering from disbelief and shock, the others emerge into the present. Henderson and Denton kneel in the hall, covering its length. Gonzalez, with a final look at Bri, turns and covers the room we entered from. Lynn weaves her way through the bodies toward Bri and me.

I move to the concrete slab pinning Bri’s leg as Lynn kneels beside her, asking if she’s okay. I grab the block and pull. It doesn’t move. Getting a firmer grip, I lift will all of my strength. The slab lifts mere inches.

“Can you pull your leg out?” I ask, straining.

Bri pulls and her leg slides out. Once she’s clear, I let go of the block and it falls back into place, grinding several bricks beneath it. I quickly check her leg to find that nothing feels broken.

Bri rolls from her sideways position and rises. Brushing herself off, she stoops to pick up an empty mag and places it in one of her vest pouches. She then bends to the night runner that was almost on top of her. Rolling it over, she retrieves a knife, its hilt protruding from just under the sternum. With a casual motion, she wipes it on the night runner’s clothing and slips into a sheath at her side. I watch this whole thing, along with Lynn, stunned.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I say.

Finished, Bri rises and we begin making our way through the bodies to the door leading to the room. At the door, Bri looks over the bodies and down the hall, seeming to come out of some state of mind. Her face prior to this seemed devoid of any expression. Looking around, that changes to one of surprise.

“Holy shit! I did this?” she asks, dumbfounded.

“Yes you did, my little warrior princess,” Gonzalez says, turning toward Bri.

We make our way through the short hall and up the stairs. Entering into the daylight filling the building on the first level, we leave this nightmare behind. However, the lesson stays with me. Anything can happen at any time and I almost lost my daughter through carelessness. There was no need to go into a building only to satisfy a curiosity. I feel sick to my stomach thinking what might have been. And I’m still in a state of shock and awe over
Bri’s
handling of it. It’s just not real and feels as though I read the story in a book.

Careful with our footfalls, we arrive back at the front entrance. Glancing over my shoulder inside the building, I see the difference in the large field of debris. It has shifted, becoming lower and covers the hole we fell through as if it didn’t exist. I look toward the upper levels, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever, or whatever, is or was in there. I neither see nor hear anything.

Entering the sunshine, the breeze blowing strong, still moaning as it gusts through the building, the tension and extreme emotions I carried through our ordeal, diminish. The lesson stays with me though. I put my arm around Bri once again and pull her close. She looks up and, through the grit still covering her face, and entangled in her hair, she smiles.

“So, what happened in there?” Gonzalez asks, brushing some of the grit from Bri’s hair after I reluctantly release her.

Bri tells about her becoming disoriented during the fall and not really knowing what was going on.

“I don’t really remember much. It just sort of happened. I remember being scared and then, I just sort of reacted without thinking about it, like I was watching someone else doing it,” Bri says.

“And the knife?” Lynn asks.

“Well, I remember running out of ammo. I couldn’t get to my handgun so I pulled out my knife. This one night runner tripped and fell down next to me. It smelled really bad. Anyway, it was struggling to get up. I remember feeling it paw at me so I stabbed it. It screamed in my ear and went limp. I tried to push it away thinking there were other night runners coming, but there was only silence.”

Hearing her story horrifies me and makes me sick to my stomach. I’m so happy that she’s okay, but I can’t shake the terror inside that I was the reason she had to go through that. And my daughter doing that, well, once again, it just seems like someone else is telling the story.

Retracing our steps across the airfield, we arrive back at the ramp. Walking toward the aircraft, passing by the wreckage that was once the mechanic hangar attached to the FBO, I notice something out of place underneath several twisted girders that have fallen. Detouring only slightly, I reach down and pluck a journal-sized notebook that is near a small pile of ash and place it in one of my cargo pockets.

We load up. We’ve been here considerably longer than I wanted, so I’m eager to be off. The sun is starting to cast long shadows, and I’d like to be back at Cabela’s before dark. It’s a lot different landing on a short, narrow dirt strip than having a wide, two mile length of pavement. And doing that at night adds an additional pucker factor. Plus, I’m worried about Robert and Greg. I know he’s capable of making it back but, as I well know, anything can happen at any time.

As I taxi out, while making sure to keep us on the pavement, I also keep an eye on the flat plains surrounding the airfield. While we were on the ground, it would have been easy for a motorized group to race to our position. I’m sure the other group knows what we did to their column, assuming it was theirs, and where we are.

With the gear tucked into the wheel wells and the flaps up, I turn us west. It’s about a three hour flight home and we climb to clear the peaks rising above forested ridgelines. Robert should be close to landing back at the compound or has already done so. It’s comforting to note that there isn’t an emergency locator beacon going off over the radio. That’s an automatic signal generated in the event of an aircraft accident, and the fact that I don’t hear one is a good indication that he made it.

Leveling off, I set the auto pilot. With the amount of adrenaline that coursed through her, Bri is looking a little tired. She has that faraway stare that isn’t focusing on anything in this reality.

“Bri, go lie down. I have this,” I say.

Her eyes refocus on the here and now. “What, Dad?”

“I said go lie down. I can take care of things here.”

Without saying anything, she unplugs from the console and removes her helmet. Small particles of grit fall out of her hair, some landing in her lap while others float gently in the air. She leaves to find a bunk.

Turning back to the flight controls, in my pocket I feel the hard shape of the journal that I picked up. With us chasing the sun west, I pull it out and look at it. The edges are scorched and the cover blackened. There isn’t any name or title that I can identify but that could easily have been burned away. Opening the cover with care, I see that several pages in the front have been charred, some of them completely gone. Leafing through the journal, most of the remaining pages have differing degrees of scorch marks. However, some writing is still visible.

Checking the gauges and our flight path, I settle into my seat and turn to the first legible writing.

…writing this. It’s probably a waste of time, but I have to do something to keep myself occupied. There are long moments between scavenging and nightfall and I’ll go crazy if I don’t do something…