At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (36 page)

Penelope and Maggy were observing the
phenomenal event, mouths parted.

“Infrared lasers,” Maggy gasped, gazing at
the aimed satellites. “Undetectable to our eyes.”

Suddenly the realization of all the deaths
taking place struck me. “All those people,” I whispered.

“There was nothing we could do . . .”
Penelope reassured me. With the daze fading, she returned her
attention to Burnhammer. “Get us out of here, Darrel.”

“Yeah, all right. I’ll try to.” I located
the correct button and the engines fired up. The controls were
surprisingly easy, designed similar to a computer game.

“I’ll be with Tortilla,” Maggy said.

Focused on the controls, I barely heard what
she had said. I flew over the satellites aimed at the mother ship
and the invisible lasers destroying it. Turning towards the Earth,
hundreds of black clouds came into view across North and South
America.

A smile broke on my face.

We were blasting the beasts across the
entire world. Unprepared, their ships felt the full force of our
weaponry, most of which I had never known existed, but I was glad
it did.

I grabbed the radio, trying to remember the
woman’s name before I asked for help. It popped into my head a
moment later. “Albores, come in . . . Albores, please come in.”

“This is Albores, who am I talking to?”

“This is Darrel Reid from the ship.
Burnhammer is out of commission, and she desperately needs medical
attention. I’m flying the ship right now, how do I get to your
base?”

“Copy that, Darrel. Hold on a second,”
Albores said. “I’m transmitting our coordinates to your PocketPad.
You’ll have to transfer them to the ship’s navigation system.”

“Okay, thanks.” I turned to Penelope behind
me. “Where is the PocketPad?”

“I had it here somewhere,” she replied.
Still clutching Burnhammer’s stumpy elbow, she searched her
pockets. She found it on the ground a short distance away, blood
pooling around its casing. “Hope it still works.” She tossed
it.

I caught the slippery device, wiping it on
my shirt, then began trying to send the coordinates to the
computer. A window kept popping up on the ship’s display in front
of me, requiring a code to transfer the data. I hadn’t a clue what
it was.

I had to put the transfer on hold as the
ship started to enter the atmosphere. The blinding light made it
difficult to make out anything on the screen.

When the intensity dwindled, I glimpsed a
yellow ball fly right past the right wing. Several more zoomed
past. “We’re under attack!”

“Fire back,” Penelope yelled.

“I don’t know how!”

“Maggy! Maggy!” Penelope cried out.

Maggy rushed into the room. “What is
it?”

“We’re under attack,” I panted. “Do you know
how to use the weapon systems?”

“Yeah, hold on.” She plunked herself down in
a chair behind me and buckled up.

I rolled the ship. My stomach hated that. A
ball nearly hit the left wing. I started to curse as my panic
peaked. I dipped the ship this way and that, suddenly changing
directions, barrel rolling and diving.

I looked back. Penelope had Burnhammer
pinned down as she held on to a bar. I’m sure Penelope’s stomach
despised me as much as mine did.

“Missiles away!” Maggy called out.

“There’s another,” I informed her.

“We’re out of missiles.” She began cursing
but didn’t stop working at the terminal before her.

“What do we do?”

Her fingers were speeding as rapidly as the
ship was bolting through the air. “There’s a machinegun and a
laser. Don’t worry. I’ll get it.”

The next thing I knew, debris was hurtling
past the ship, wreckage colliding with the tail. The minimal damage
did not slow our blazing-fast pace.

“Can you transfer the coordinates to the
navigation?” I asked Maggy.

Unbuckling, she sprung from her chair and
set about the transfer. “Done,” she said a blink later.

A dot appeared on the navigation screen.
Circles expanded from the dot like ripples in a pond.

“I have to get back to Tortilla.” She patted
my back and dashed away.

I followed the navigation arrow. I pulled
back on the yoke and leveled out: the attitude indicator showed the
wings even across a blue-sky horizon. The crust of the Earth lay a
hundred meters down. Smoke clouds blackened the real horizon. We
were closing fast upon the coordinates. Hills began to populate the
terrain underneath the ship. The hills soon grew into mountains,
spots of white snow upon black rock and dark evergreens. The dot
pointed me to a valley below the snowline.

“Albores, I’m approaching the base. Where do
I land?”

A long pause ate away at my nerves, worried
that no response would come. I radioed again.

“This is Albores, Darrel. There is a landing
strip below the base. Some of the tarmac has been demolished, but
there should still be enough for you to land safely. I cannot give
you the coordinates; you’ll just have to keep an eye out for it.
It’s not far.”

That wasn’t music to my ears. “I don’t know
how to land a spaceship!” I shouted. “Can’t it be done by an
autopilot system?”

“Negative. I’ll try to find a pilot to talk
you through it, but it’s chaotic down here, so I can’t promise I’ll
find one. Just circle the base until I get back to you. Over and
out.”

I didn’t bother with a reply.

Satellite towers of the base appeared soon
after Albores parted. The complex itself was harder to find, hidden
well within the tall needled-trees. Hangars, as well as a long,
thick wall gave away the base’s location. I flew south down the
mountain, hunting for the airstrip.

I circled the area over and over without a
sign of the runway. The trees concealed it too well for my
exhausted eyes. I desired sleep more than food or water, or
anything else that I could think of, except for maybe one last kiss
from Penelope.

I decided to try my luck at a lower
altitude, though I was shaking as it was, and I didn’t want to
accidentally dive and hit a tree. I glided along the treetops, and
at last, a strip of black materialized out of nowhere. Climbing a
little to get a better view, I could see the yellow lines that
divided the tarmac evenly.

Then the waiting began. I passed over the
airstrip a couple more times before Albores came over the
radio.

“Darrel, you there?”

“I’m here! I’m here!” I screamed into the
radio. “I can see the runway. What do I do now?”

“I found a crop pilot who says he knows
everything there is to know about landing a plane, big or small.
I’m going to pass you over to Lenny Gortel. Here he is.”

A harsh smoker’s voice took over Albores’s
soft, musical one. “You there, kid?”

I had never agreed with the term kid, not
since I was ten. “You the crop duster?”

“Sure am, kid. I hear ya need some advice
about how to land a plane.”

“Not a plane, a spacecraft.”

“Does it have wheels?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “It has wheels.”

“Then it’s the same damn thing,” he said
curtly. “All ya need to do is listen and not jerk the controls.
Don’t jerk the damn controls. Ya hearin’ me, kid?”

I didn’t want to answer him; his tone
irritated me. “I hear you, crop duster.” I could hear my voice
faltering over the words. Even though I couldn’t see him, he made
me nervous. I tried to emphasize
crop duster
the way he was
calling me
kid
, but I didn’t think it was working.

“All right, good. This is probably goin’ to
be a rough landin’, but you’ll survive. Line up with the
tarmac.”

“I did but the wings keep dipping,” I
reported.

“Bring her around and hold her steady.”

I looked back at Penelope.

“Just land it, Darrel!” Penelope shouted.
“She’s going to die!”

I circled again. I swallowed hard at her
tone, aligning the ship with the tarmac. “Aligned,” I told the crop
duster.

“Now pull back on the throttle,” he said.
“Ya may have to push the yoke to dive. Keep the airspeed within the
green arc.”

I pulled the throttle and dipped the nose of
the ship, pushing on the yoke. I held my breath.

“Breathe,” Penelope encouraged.

I exhaled until my lungs were empty.
“Done.”

“Good. Now to slow the plane without losin’
lift, you’ll have to use the slats and flaps next to the throttle.
Almost there, just hang on, kid.” He guided me well enough and the
plane slowed. “Just before ya touch down, ya have to flare the
nose, or raise it, pullin’ back on the yoke. Not too much now.”

The ship must have been centimeters from the
ground, though it was hard to tell. I breathed out again as the
back tires touched down. The front tires seemed to take forever to
connect, but eventually they tapped the ground, bouncing up, then
touching down for good. “Down,” I yelled into the radio.

“Activate reverse thrusters!”

I did as told. Rapidly decelerating, the
ship rocked from side to side as I held the yoke as straight I
could, and every second I hoped that the plane wouldn’t fall apart
or hit a lethal object to pop a tire. My nerves calmed when the
wheels came to a stop. I saw the sign labeled idle and pulled the
throttle all the way back. “We’ve stopped and the engines are
idling.”

“Well hey, ya sound like ya got it under
control there, kid.”

“Thanks. Thanks for everything, crop duster.
Could you put Albores back on?”

“Sure thing, kid. And you’re welcome. Glad
ya made it all right.”

“Darrel, this is Albores. A team is waiting
for you at the end of the runway.”

“Got it,” I said crisply, though it was not
my intent.

“Help me carry her,” Penelope said, almost
as if an order.

Without another word to Albores, I darted to
Burnhammer’s side. I groaned from the effort necessary to lift the
soldier. The ramp at the tail was already down when we lugged her
back there. A group of soldiers rushed up and grabbed Burnhammer
with ease, running her down to a stretcher on wheels. She was
loaded into a van that drove away before I could barely glimpse
it.

Félix was moaning, drenched in sweat. “What
about me? They forgot me.”

A soldier walked up the ramp. “Maggy Li?” he
said, eyeing Maggy. The man was a tower.

“Yes?” she answered.

He stuck out a strong hand. “I’m Major Henry
Higgans. I cannot tell you the debt this country . . . this world
owes you. Without the Planetary Defense Network, we would be
sitting ducks, with a snowball’s chance in hell in defeating the
enemy. You saved us, Maggy Li.”

Maggy accepted his massive hand and
gripped.

“And that goes for each of you up
there—”

“My leg,” Félix interrupted the major. “My
leg, my leg, my leg!”

The major swiveled around. “Privates, get
this man to the base ASAP!”

Two soldiers bolted up the ramp and hauled
Félix away to a nearby jeep. The entire way he complained about the
gash in his leg.

“Let’s get you three some food and water,
and anything else you need.”

“A shower would be nice,” Penelope said.
“And a comb.”

The major nodded, pointing the way down the
ramp. He followed behind us, jumping into the front of the jeep
once we were all loaded and secured.

I fell asleep on the ride to the
complex.

Night passed and a new morning arrived. I met
Maggy, Penelope, and her sisters in a cafeteria several floors
below the ground. The complex amazed me. If the elevators were to
be believed, then it spanned near 75 levels. It was monstrous.

“You ready to go visit Tortilla?” Maggy
asked, finishing a plate of spaghetti.

The cooks had made us special meals that
morning, anything we desired. Penelope had ordered a bison steak
and a plate of vegetables. The twins had ordered a stack of giant
pancakes. I had ordered my favorite cereal: a bowl of sugarcoated
wheat flakes.

“Yeah, I am,” I said. I pushed aside the
empty bowl. “You?” I turned to Penelope.

“Yeah, hold on. Two more bites.” She stuffed
a huge chunk of bison meat into her mouth.

We headed down to a lower level, to an
infirmary where they were keeping Félix and Corporal Burnhammer. We
met Burnhammer first, who was in an isolated recovery ward. At her
elbow, only a stump was left, but the arm had been saved. I had
feared they would have to amputate the entire limb.

She greeted us with a warm smile. “I may
have lost part of my arm, but we saved the world,” Burnhammer spoke
softly.

“Not completely,” Maggy said. “Even with the
ships destroyed, there are still alions on the ground that need to
be dealt with. I’ve signed up to make sure we get them all.”

“Good for you . . . I’ll probably join you
if you save some for me.” Burnhammer winked at Maggy.

“I’ll try,” she responded.

We left Burnhammer to check on how Félix
fared. He had a slight fever, but the attending doctor assured us
that it was normal and would decline within the day.

“How’s the food down here?” I asked him.

“Had vegetables and bread this morning.” He
grinned. “But I enjoyed them.”

“Have you heard about the new colony
starting up in Santa Barbara?” Maggy asked.

“Yeah, I did, where survivors are going to
rebuild. I’m not sure why they aren’t going to hunt down the
remaining alions.” He adjusted a new pair of black spectacles.
“That’s what we’re doing, right?”

“That’s right,” Maggy answered. “Soon as
your leg starts to mend.”

“Actually . . .” I started, taking a breath.
Penelope seized my hand. “Uhrm. Actually, Penelope and I are going
to help out in Santa Barbara.”

“What?” Maggy spat. “You never said anything
before.”

“I didn’t think you would like the idea . .
. but it’s safer for the twins . . . It’s where we need to be.”