Offworld (20 page)

Terry stood over him, and without a word reached down and
grasped Chris' bad arm in both hands. He placed his foot into the
crook of Chris' other arm for leverage, and Chris braced himself. Terry
pulled and twisted at once, while Chris let out an agonized scream
loud enough to be heard above the roar of the storm.

"You'll need to go easy on that for a few days, you know," Terry
remarked.

"I'll worry about it later," Chris said, sitting up, painfully and slowly
rising to his feet. "We've got to get to the hangars." He looked out
to the northeast, trying to see the elusive buildings and hoping they
weren't so far away that he couldn't.

"Chris, you're in no condition to swim with that arm. All due
respect ... you barely made it here."

Chris faced him. "You remember what I said about questioning
my orders?"

"Yeah.

"Then why are you arguing? Let's go, the storm's only getting
worse."

At last, the heavy sounds of the tornado began to recede, and
Trisha and Owen took that as their cue to return up the stairs and get
the big light working.

All of the windows in the light room had been broken out by the
vicious wind. The two of them took a moment to stop and survey the
area outside, waiting for lightning strikes to give them a brief flash of
insight into the state of things. Fortunately there was no sign of the
tornado; it appeared to have dissipated.

Satisfied, they knelt and returned to their work on the damaged
generator. Trisha took a moment to attempt contacting Chris and Terry
through her earpiece, but all she heard was static. The storm was
causing too much interference.

"What if they didn't make it?" Mae asked, looking up from just
below the top of the spiral stairs.

Trisha's gaze whipped toward Mae, anger warming her drenched
skin. "Questioning the capabilities of me or my people is something I
don't want to hear coming from your mouth ever again," Trisha said.
"Christopher Burke is not in the habit of failing. At anything. They're
already on their way back."

It felt like hours had passed when their slog through the water
finally led them to the nearest hangar, some three hundred feet away.
Like everything else they saw, it proved impossible to enter from the ground. The water had crested even higher, high enough to let them
easily reach a fire escape this time.

The tiny balcony led to a side door well above the water, which
Chris blasted open with Terry's pistol. It was dark inside, but their eyes
were already attuned to the dark. They walked out onto a catwalk
that looked down upon the interior of the hangar. There, they found
a single modified C-130 resting peacefully in the rising water.

Chris slumped over, leaning on the catwalk's railing. "Well," he
panted, still tired from the swim, "that's one down."

Terry put a hand out. "Chris, please. The other hangars are very
close by. I can check them all and be back here in ten or fifteen minutes. Come on, let me do this. You can take a few minutes to give
that shoulder a rest."

The idea of sitting idly by and letting someone else do his task
for him raged against everything he was made of, but Chris was too
tired and feeling too much pain to argue.

`All right," he said, pulling out the pistol and placing it in the dripping wet hand of his companion. "Don't forget the people that are
waiting on us. Be quick."

When Terry had gone back outside, out of sight, Chris allowed
himself to land on the catwalk with a thud loud enough to echo
throughout the gigantic hangar. He doubled over a bit, working hard
to catch his breath, and cradling his bad shoulder with his other arm.
Despite Terry's warnings not to, and his own training telling him not
to, the only way he'd been able to make it here was by using his bad
arm to swim. It was in agony now, a searing fire that knifed through
his shoulder and down his whole arm.

He looked down at the hangar below, taking in more of its details.
It was much like every other aircraft hangar he'd ever been inside of.
Plenty of supplies, tools, workstations, electronic equipment. Of course,
it was nothing compared to the caverns and high-tech gadgetry of
NASA's spacecraft hangars, several of which would dwarf this place.

Chris half-expected to hear the clicking of mouse feet scurrying across the catwalk, or maybe feel the soft brushing of mosquitoes on
his skin. But there was nothing. Just dead silence set apart from the
overwhelming storm outside. His thoughts wandered.

No insects. No animals. No people.

Why the animals? The people I could see being abducted somehow,
but what's the point of taking all the animals away?

Remembering a series of detective novels he'd read in his youth,
his thoughts arrived at the one question every good detective knew
to ask in trying to solve a crime:

Who benefits?

Who-or maybe, what gainsfrom removing all ofEar h'speople
and animals?

He tossed around several theories, ranging from contact with an
alien life form to humans from the future traveling back in time to
alter history, but he never managed to arrive at an explanation he
found satisfying.

Soon, he heard the telltale sounds of feet clomping up the fire
escape landing outside, and he quickly lurched back to his feet before
Terry ran in, still sopping wet and panting for air.

One look at Terry's face was all he required to know the answer.
Terry shook his head to confirm it.

No helicopters. No anything.

Chris closed his eyes his shoulders fell. He let out a despairing
mouthful of air.

"Now what?" Terry asked between breaths.

"You didn't see anything that might be useful? Anything at all?"

Terry shook his head again. "Just more Hercs."

Come on ... Please, just a little help. Please.

"There's got to be some place around here that has a helicopter,"
Chris sighed.

"But where?" Terry replied. "Where else but an airfield would you
find parked helicopters?"

Where, indeed.

"Wait, wait, wait a minute," Chris said, his head popping back
up with renewed vigor. "Isn't Keesler home to a large military
hospital?"

Terry nodded. "Sure, I saw it on Beech's map. But what-oh, a
medivac, of course!"

Chris' eyes grew wider by the second. "They'd have a helipad on
the roof. How far away do you think it is?"

Terry looked momentarily dejected. "It's on the other side of the
base. At least half a mile north of where we came in."

Chris' mind spun. "Then we swim back to where we were thrown
off the jet ski and see if we can find it again. Come on, let's go. Too
had we won't know until we get there if there's a chopper waiting for
us or if the pad is empty."

"Come on, man ..." Terry began, stopping in his tracks and
blocking Chris' path. `Are we really going to have this conversation a
third time? You know I have to do this without you. I'll try to get the
jet ski, find a chopper, and come back for you-"

"Not a chance," Chris replied, trying to mask his wincing in pain
with an authoritative scowl.

"Chris!" Terry shouted. "Seriously! You're in no shape to swim all
the way back to where we crashed. I know you're trying to hide it,
but you're barely standing upright, and you're going to do irreparable
damage to your shoulder if you keep this up! You know I'm right;
you're just too stubborn to admit it."

"I make the calls, Terry. That's what being in command means.
Now move out of my way or-"

Terry whipped the pistol out from the back of his pants, pointed
it at Chris, and thumbed the hammer back. "Or what?"

Chris looked at the gun, then back at Terry. "What are you
doing?"

"What you're forcing me to do," Terry replied. "The whole world
is counting on us. I'm expendable. You're not. That's just how it is. If
you make me, I'll pop you in the leg."

Chris' eyes bore into Terry's. He wouldn't really shoot him, would
he?

Then again, this was Terry.

"This is mutiny," said Chris.

"That's right. And you can write me up all you want once we're
out of this mess."

Chris knew Terry was just impulsive enough to actually pull the
trigger if he believed he was right, and this time even Chris knew
that he was.

"Fine, go," Chris said at last. "But be careful, and don't do anything
dumb . . . -er," he added.

Terry pocketed the gun again. "I'll see you soon," he said.

With that, he turned and ran for the door. He stumbled over his
own feet at the metal threshold, but turned quickly back to the open
doorway and shouted inside, "I'm good, totally meant to do that!"

Chris didn't laugh. He thought instead of the many obstacles and
unknowns standing in Terry's way. If just one thing went wrong, if
Terry were to get hurt as well, or worse ...

Then it was over.

Please ... Just a little help.

Watch out for him. Please.

Keep him safe.

The bright light of the Biloxi Lighthouse illuminated the flooded
Gulf Coast.

The rain continued to fall, the wind continued to roar, but they opted
to sit out on the balcony and get soaked through once again. Between
the two generators, Owen managed to jury-rig one that worked, and
if rescue arrived, they wouldn't see it coming from inside.

Trisha was watching the horizon to the northeast, hoping to see
a moving light in the air that signaled their rescue. Mae, against all
odds, was actually asleep in the rain, her back propped against the white outer wall. Owen had to assume that given her lifestyle, she
was used to falling asleep in strange conditions. Meanwhile, he was
gazing upward at the sky from behind his prescription glasses, wishing he could see beyond the storm clouds.

"I wonder if they're still the same as I remember," Owen mused
aloud.

"Who?" Trisha replied, barely paying attention.

"The stars. Constellations. We haven't been able to get a good
look at them since we got back. It's been too cloudy."

"You think somebody else is out there? Another race? Another
culture?"

"Honestly," said Owen, "until this week, I had never given it any
serious thought."

Trisha was visibly stunned. "You're an astronaut. How could
you have never wondered about the existence of life beyond our
planet?"

He glanced at her. "I wasn't always an astronaut."

Trisha hinphed. "Then why are you so interested in constellations?"

"I just can't help wondering if they are as we left them."

"Why wouldn't they be?"

He cocked his head. "Why would the entire population of a planet
vanish in an instant?"

It was clear from Trisha's expression that she didn't understand
where he was going with this, so he forced his brain to backtrack,
slow down, and attempt to put it into words she could follow.

"Do you remember that movie-it was out years ago-about
nature developing an airborne toxin that wiped out all of humanity?
Can't remember what it was called. But the story went that nature
grew tired of people destroying and polluting the environment, so it
created a natural defense to fight back against the species that was
doing all that damage-us."