The Filter Trap (10 page)

“When the Sun came up at two in the morning I knew something wasn’t right. When all the satellites failed I knew it was worse. There were a lot of dazed people out in the streets, but nobody knew what was happening. I headed up here to see if I could get anyone on my battery shortwave. I picked up scattered bits and pieces until I tried one of the military frequencies. I don’t even know who I was talking to, but they knew who I was. They’d sent the Army to my apartment earlier and worried I was lost. Apparently I’ve gone from someone not worthy of a cent of federal funding to someone worthy of an elite military extraction team in a number of hours.”

“You heard her, Sands, I’m a member of the Elite!” Nana’s heavy hand slapped Allan’s shoulder, but Allan was concerned with a different part of her sentence.

“Wait, so you knew they were looking for you?” Allan asked.

“Sorry. I couldn’t help teasing you. I didn’t know they’d
find
me. I talked to a group of soldiers on my way up here and they looked at me like I was crazy, said if I had two legs I could take care of myself. I thought maybe they really
were
looking for someone else and the radio conversation was a big mistake. And I sure as hell didn’t know they’d send you. I’m glad you didn’t try to sabotage the operation.” She playfully slapped his chest.

“Do you know
why
we’re looking for you?” Nana asked.

She turned sullen. “I hope that part
is
a mistake.”

“A mistake!” Nana riled. “Listen, lady, we had to go through a lot of shit just to get up here.”

“It could be the end of the human race if they really do need me!” she clarified as they reached Columbus’ feet.

Nana sighed. “It’s always the end of the world with you folks.”

“I see Columbus had some trouble with his arm as well,” Jill said, cradling her broken arm.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry I didn’t notice before.” Nana ripped his shirt and constructed a makeshift sling.

“Been a long time since a man was so eager to take his clothes off in front of me,” she started and then slowed as she locked eyes with Allan.

He shook his head slightly and glanced at the pilot.

“You’re our top priority, Doc,” Nana assured her. “We’ve got to get you out of here and fixed up ASAP.”

“Speaking of which,” SIMI added, emerging from the dark, “we’ve got an evac in eight minutes. Still got Lee’s flare, Dr. Sands?”

“Of course,” Allan answered, handing over the gun with jittery hands.

“We don’t have time to wait for Lee and LARS to show up, let’s get to the top of the tower and see if we can spot them, or they us,” SIMI insisted.

The top of Coit Tower, an open circle of thick arches half-toppled by the tsunami, made it easy to spot the other two pilots. On the hill below, nightglow strips on the backs of each pilot glowed a soft blue. They joined SIMI at the top of the tower, and broke out binoculars, searching the northern sky for their evac scout.

The tower shook violently as if trying to shake them off. As the six humans and one scared cat steadied themselves, Allan muttered, “I had a feeling.”

Lee spun around and was close to putting him in a choke hold. “That’s strike two! Any more
feelings
you want to tell the rest of us about? I won’t ask you a third time to start sharing with us, Doctor!”

Nana opened his mouth, about to say something. Allan rushed to cut him off.

“I’m sorry, I’m not a seismologist. The tsunamis are a result of the same tidal forces that somewhat control the force of the plate tectonics. There are a whole host of things coming unglued on this planet because the Moon is gone.”

Jill got between them. “He’s right. The crust of the planet has always been moving around, but it had to contend with the tugging of the Moon. Now the San Andreas has a bit more freedom and it’s not unreasonable to expect a few small quakes as that pressure is released.”

“Let’s get out of here. We’ll signal the evac from the parking lot,” Lee commanded.

“Anybody smell that?” SIMI asked.

“That’s gas!” LARS answered immediately.

They clambered down the tower’s tiny winding stairway, the gas smell increasing with their descent.

Back in the parking lot the pilots scanned the sky, not wanting to be stuck for another six hours on a hill with uprooted trees and a gas leak in the middle of a city on fire.

“Gotcha!” Nana said. “Evac scout coming over the Golden Gate. Send up that flare!”

Reflexively SIMI shoved the flare gun into the air and pulled the trigger. It pelted out a short shower of sparks on its way up, lighting a ribbon of gas in the air. The red ribbon splashed down on SIMI’s raised firing arm and lit up the dark, expanding in every direction, rolling toward the rest of the group and the tower.

A shock wave blasted the rest of them onto their backs. An enormous orange undulating cloud descended on the hill. Columbus peered down through it ominously like the maniacal invader other parts of the world remembered him as.

Before it could touch the other pilots, the fire exhausted the gas holding it aloft and retreated, leaving a trail of burning gases hovering by the tower entrance.

The pilots reacted as they were trained, smothering and rolling SIMI to put the fire on his body out. SIMI didn’t scream, and everyone knew that signaled the worst. The pilots dragged their comrade further to the far lip of the cement parking lot at the edge of the hill’s crest.

“He’s not breathing!” Lee roared.

“No pulse neither, don’t s’pose either of you
doctors
can do anything for him?” Nana asked rhetorically.

Allan and Jill were petrified.

A sound like popcorn popping came from the tower, drawing their attention.

“Everyone get in front of Columbus!” Lee ordered.

“You want us to get closer to the gas?” Allan screamed back in disbelief.

Lee grabbed him by the hair and pulled, running to crouch behind the large block-shaped base of the statue. The rest of the group followed suit, Nana and LARS carrying SIMI’s limp body across their shoulders.

As they huddled, the thup-thup-thup of their evac chopper approached. Allan looked at the chopper, then Lee. She lowered her eyelids and made sure he knew she didn’t want him, or any of them, to move a muscle.

“I’m going to lower you a winchman,” a booming voice from above said. It might have been the voice of God himself for all Allan cared, he just wanted to get out of there. He looked at Lee again. She looked back sternly, as if she didn’t give a lick for their rescuing angels hovering above. She looked up and shook her head and her hands at the pilot.

The chopper pilot, sensing the same danger, pulled up and away. Allan opened his mouth to protest. Before he could say a word, Lee’s patience was rewarded. The tower sparked from the inside, shaking the entire hill. Flames climbed the little stairway up to the observatory on the roof and into the sky.

As if recognizing the flaming tower as the
great eye
, Gandalf scratched Jill and escaped, running back down the hill away from the tower-turned-torch.

“Don’t!” Lee screamed as Jill moved toward the edge, preparing to follow her cat. “It’s not over yet.”

The little group huddled under Christopher Columbus saw the intense light turning the tower into a new beacon that even Lady Liberty would envy. Christopher, however, would have to take another beating. Bits of concrete, metal, trees
—
anything near the entrance to the tower
—
came blasting at them faster than a bullet. Everyone quickly understood the need to huddle there.

Although they felt the vibrations of the shrapnel hitting the other side of the block, they couldn’t hear it, thanks to the deafening shock wave preceding it. The blast wind rushed back towards the tower, bringing smaller airborne pebbles and smoke rushing past.

Allan got a lung-full of SIMI’s charred flesh and vomited. This cued the group to separate and test the talents of the chopper winchman. They ran to the far side of the parking lot with their backs to the flaming tower.

They searched the sky for a few tense moments, praying their angels were still up there somewhere. Temporarily deafened by the shock wave they had no hope of hearing the winchman’s instructions.

Another agonizing few seconds later the helicopter made a triumphant appearance, glittering rotors pushing the smoke into a mesmerizing swirl of gray and orange. The group lost each other in the haze as ashes from the smoldering tower nipped at them.

Allan fell to his knees, as close to praying as he’d ever been. He felt a hand grasp his shoulder, then a forceful embrace and a rush of wind. A heartbeat vibrated in the air, the thumping of the blades getting closer. Cold corrugated aluminum pressed his face. Allan let it numb the rest of his senses for a moment.

The cold metal made patterns on his face while sparks danced across his back as the rescue crate hoisted him up. Allan would have kept his eyes closed anyway, as the experience of the winch pulling up through smoke, swaying back and forth as the chopper struggled to stay balanced in the updraft, became nauseating even to the experienced pilots who followed him.

Once everyone was secured the chopper banked forward. Allan opened his eyes as they pulled away from Telegraph Hill. A ring of fire supporting a central column of flame reached nearly thirty meters into the sky. The dark silhouette of a one-armed, but still elegantly caped Christopher Columbus, looked up at them, pleading for help.

Inside the belly of the chopper things weren’t much better. If anyone deserved help it was SIMI. The winchman tried to resuscitate him, but Lee put a stop to it. The fire had either melted clothing into SIMI’s body or burned it off completely. Covered in third degree burns, just touching SIMI caused his body to disintegrate further. He lay on the stamped metal floor and LARS clung to him like an ashen doll that might fly away in a strong wind.

As they drew further up into the sky, smoke began to obscure Telegraph Hill until only the loose, concentric, orange circles of flame remained in an inky receding depth.

“Are we going back to Edwards?” Lee asked the winchman.

“We’re taking you to Beale.”

The pilots looked at each other, wondering what the constant shifting of locations meant for their ever-changing mission parameters. And what would be done with SIMI.

“Are our birds there?”

“Your planes? I have no idea.”

The frustration clear on his face, she stopped questioning the winchman. He was just following orders like the rest of them.

“What was his name?” the winchman coldly asked, a rivulet of corrugated metal separating him and his rescues. The words floated over SIMI’s motionless body, a mass of charred meat arranged in the shape of a man.

Lee longed for a flag, or anything, to cover the corpse with, but the spartan rescue chopper had nothing. She reached out and touched SIMI’s arm, still hot. The others joined.

“SIMI, Stopped Ignoring Major’s—”

“No, his
real
name.”

That was much harder for Lee to say. She’d never faced real combat before the Event, let alone lost someone under her command.

“Lieutenant Alvin Jose Camarillo, Junior.” Lee’s voice cracked as she spoke. “The best pilot in Hawaii. A brother. A son. A soldier. Our friend.”

Chapter 10

After touching down, the winchman opened a compartment and helped smooth SIMI’s body into a body bag. Without a word they separated and the pilots saluted the winchman as the chopper flew back toward the bay.

The pilots carried SIMI’s body down the tarmac toward a deserted-looking Beale Air Force Base while the two scientists followed close behind. The lights near the helipad turned off after they landed. Apparently another landing wouldn’t be expected for some time.

“Why’d they shut off the lights?” LARS asked with caution.

“This must not be the most secure site,” Lee guessed. “It’s isolated, but there’s a town not far out, I saw it on the way in, lit up with emergency generators. I’m guessing, just like Edwards, they’ve got all their people and equipment in use, which means up in the sky. Like any good base they’ve probably got a pretty good storage hold for food and water, something the locals are likely to realize before too long. Best to make it look abandoned if they can.”

“If memory serves, this base hasn’t been a public relations accomplishment for the Air Force,” Nana added.

As they walked toward one of the dark buildings by the runway, Allan did a double-take at the only other aircraft, a C-40 in blue and white Air Force livery resting outside a hangar.

“Déjà Vu?” Jill asked.

“Maybe. This base looks familiar, even though there’s no way I’ve been here before.”

“Traitors and hipsters,” LARS boasted. “That’s what Nana was talking about. A few years ago this base was all over TV because they tried to do an ‘occupy’ movement on it. Protesting the drones, Chelsea Manning, and all that. Bet you they’d love our help now, though.”

“Maybe,” Allan admitted. “I didn’t pay much attention to all that.”

“Then the B1, B2, dragon lady and blackbirds, might have been it,” Lee clarified. “Beale’s a reconnaissance base for Air Force Intelligence. Half the promo shots you ever saw of our declassified spy planes were shot on this tarmac. That’s part of why they protested-all the drone killings.”

“And now they’re all up there?” Jill asked, pointing at the sky.

“I’m sure,” Lee answered. “Now they’re our eyes in the sky. Every spy plane and drone we own is probably on never-ending flight duty until this all gets sorted out. Until
you two
sort it out, I guess.”

As the group closed in on a large one-story building, a door on it opened. The first signs of life appeared in the middle of the barren desert base miles from Yuba City, California.

A young man came out to greet them. Allan studied the patches on the man’s arms, starting to think studying military rank and insignia might prove useful as long as he remained their practical prisoner.

“I see you’ve got our PhDs, but lost one of the bubbas,” the young soldier said.

“Yes, sir,” Lee said, without dropping her grip of the body bag to salute him.

Eight more men in uniform joined as they approached the base door. They quite forcefully took over the responsibility of transporting SIMI’s body. The bubbas were reluctant to let go at first.

“We’ve got this, Lieutenants,” a gruff but respectful soldier assured them.

As the new soldiers took control of transporting the body, the young man who left the building put his hand up to stop the pilots and scientists from following.

“I need you all to stay out here with me a moment. I’ll only give you two orders tonight and then you can relax, if that’s possible. First, you cannot speak of what you’ve seen or where you’ve been to anyone on base. Second, you are to go to barracks after we go through those doors and get some sack time. I know you need it. You’ll get a full briefing tomorrow morning, but I can tell you the good news right now. You’ll all be heading to Hawaii tomorrow.”

“The docs too, sir?” LARS asked. “Haven’t we babysat enough?”

Allan and Jill frowned but knew enough to stay quiet.

The young soldier looked directly at Lee, imploring her to get her bubbas in line.

She groaned through a fake grin. “Major Britely told us before we left for Frisco the hierarchy of command is fucked, kid. If you don’t mind, the bubbas and I have gone through a lot. I’m sure you can forgive momentary insubordination.”

He stiffened. “Keep in mind you’re not alone. Subordination is all we’ve got to keep things going. Information is in limited supply for all the branches. NASA and private entities are coordinating to get a satellite up in a few days, but even then they won’t share much with anyone at our level.”