Will to Survive (14 page)

“Can we now cruise along Dundas toward the city?” Herb said.

I worked the pedals and rudder to bank us that way. “How far do you want to go?”

“As far as the compound,” Herb said.

“Do you think they're back?” Todd asked.

“I would be surprised, but I want to make sure it's still unoccupied.” Herb turned to look again at Lori and Todd. “Eyes open for any movement, any new settlements being established, anything at all that warrants attention.”

“This is exciting,” Lori said. “I always enjoyed going into the city.”

“I bet it never had as much potential as this to be exciting,” Todd said.

“Let's hope for a minimum of excitement,” I added. “Boredom is good.”

“Either way, keep your eyes open,” Herb cautioned. “Forewarned is forearmed. Either today or down the road, if we know what's coming we'll be better prepared to deal with it.”

There was no wind or cloud cover to speak of. We were flying through stable air, so I didn't need to pay much attention to my controls. As we hit the outskirts of the city, I kept scanning to the front and side to see the ground below. In the past—before all of this—it was only natural that the closer to the city you got, the more people and movement you would have encountered. Now it was the opposite. The sleepy suburbs and little towns had become active, and the cities had been deserted. You couldn't see many people, and you also couldn't see much cultivation of open land. There were more houses and apartments, of course, but many more of them seemed to be burned out. There were whole patches, entire neighborhoods, that seemed to be nothing more than blackened scars, completely destroyed by fire. An occasional fire could have been an accident. But there was nothing accidental about an entire city block being burned to the ground.

“There's the compound coming up,” Herb said.

Todd pushed himself forward, his arms on the seat, bumping me, in an effort to see out the windshield. “Where?”

“Right up ahead.”

Without being asked, I pushed forward on the stick to lose elevation and allow us all to have a better angle to see out through the front.

“Anything?” Lori asked.

“It's too far to tell for sure, but no movement from here,” Herb replied.

What I could see from this height and distance was the damage we had inflicted. The buildings were burned or torn down, or bombed to rubble. The gigantic crater at the end of their runway was like a big black scar. Getting closer I could see the fences, ripped open and smashed.

I eased off the throttle to slow us even more and pushed the stick down again. I wanted to come in so low and slow that we couldn't miss anybody or anything.

“It's completely deserted,” Herb said.

“That's great,” Todd said.

“That just means they're someplace else,” Herb said.

“Someplace else is better,” Todd said.

Unless that place was in the condo tower overlooking our neighborhood, taking shots and killing our people.

We quickly passed over. “Do you want me to go back around?” I asked Herb.

“No need. Take a sweep to the north, and then come back around along Highway 403.”

I had started the bank when Lori spoke.

“Couldn't we go farther into the city?” she asked.

“Yeah, that would be cool,” Todd added.

I looked over to Herb for direction.

“I think a flight around the city core would be a really interesting idea … but not this time. I want to see the activity on the highway, especially crossing the Credit River highway bridge,” Herb said.

I increased the bank and pulled up on the yoke to gain altitude and at the same time gave it more fuel to compensate for the rudder and the climb. Without realizing it, I'd gotten way too close to stall speed.

Off in the distance, just small bumps on the horizon, were the office towers of the city. In all my flights I'd never gotten much closer to them than this.

Part of me was relieved to be heading back home, but another part really wanted to go there and see for myself, up close, what the city was like. That would probably happen another time, but I already knew it would be bad there—a deserted jungle of concrete.

The other night I'd had a dream about piloting my ultralight between the giant buildings of the city. I couldn't spot any people or movement, and it had been a peaceful ride—until suddenly explosions erupted all around me. Glass-fronted office towers exploded in deadly blooms and the shock waves sent me plummeting toward the urban streets below as I woke up in a heavy sweat.

It was certainly a different view of the city from what I'd seen from commercial planes whenever we flew back from holidays and circled before landing at the airport. It was a beautiful city—or at least it
had
been.

Todd took the binoculars from his eyes. “It all looks pretty deserted down there.”

“There are still people, but there isn't the infrastructure to support many. You can only live where you can grow food,” Herb said.

“I haven't seen anything,” Lori said. “Do you think the Division is down there somewhere?”

“Somewhere,” Herb agreed. “I just hope that somewhere is far, far away. I can only assume that they're after easier targets.”

“Isn't almost everybody an easier target than us?” Lori asked.

“We've worked to be the hardest target we can be,” Herb said.

“Then you don't think they were behind the shootings from the condo tower?” Todd asked.

“There's no evidence it was them,” Herb replied.

And no evidence it wasn't, I thought.

“Is that what people are thinking, that the Division was behind it?” Herb asked.

“Some are,” Todd said.

“Others are thinking that it's Brett,” Lori added.

“We don't even know if he's still alive,” Herb said. His words were sharper than I'd expected. “Regardless, you two can help everybody by making sure you put down those rumors when you hear them. People need to have confidence and energy and optimism, and talk like that drains it away.”

Of course that didn't mean the rumors weren't true. In fact, the discussions in the committee—which remained unknown to the general population—even gave credence to those theories. However, Herb also tried to control the way people thought, mostly for what he believed was their own good.

“But really, it doesn't matter one way or the other because that condo tower is no longer a threat,” he said.

“And better than that, they're now our allies,” Lori said. “I was so surprised when the committee made that decision to help all of those people.”

“All of those people have Adam to thank,” Herb said.

“That was your suggestion?” Lori asked.

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

“No guessing involved,” Herb said. “Adam came up with the idea and then convinced everybody on the committee to go with it.”

I had made a point of not mentioning it because I thought it was best that it just was a committee decision. Now it felt good to have Lori and Todd know—especially Lori.

But while part of me was grateful that they'd decided on my plan, another part wondered how long it would be before one of my ideas backfired and cost all of us.

“Over there, on the road, do you see it?” Todd pointed ahead of us.

I didn't see anything except the abandoned vehicles that littered the road. And then I caught some movement. There were vehicles traveling quickly along the 403 to the west, toward our neighborhood. They were small and nimble, dodging the obstacles on the road.

I opened up the throttle and pushed back on the yoke. The plane practically jumped forward. Whoever they were, there were a lot of them, moving very fast.

“Go-carts,” Todd said, with the binoculars up to his eyes. “I count nine, ten,… a dozen.”

“Do you think they're heading to the neighborhood?” Lori asked.

“That's a long, long way off, almost twenty miles—and there aren't enough of them to pose a serious threat. Let's get a closer look,” Herb ordered.

“How low?” I asked.

“Buzz them. I want to see them and make sure they really see us.”

I pushed forward on the yoke and we dropped into a hard dive. Todd let out a little yelp. The pavement came rushing up toward us. At about fifty feet, I leveled off. They were no more than half a mile in front of us. I eased off the throttle. The slower the speed, the longer the look.

“Guns, I see guns,” Herb said. “As we pass I want you two to look back for muzzle flashes.”

“Do you really think they could fire?” Todd questioned nervously.

“I have no reason to think they will or won't. Just be aware if they initiate a hostile response.”

“Will we fire back?” Lori asked.

“We'll fly away. Don't worry, though, there's no chance in the world they can hit us … well, hardly any.”

They were dead ahead now. The little carts were driving across the whole width of the westbound highway, occupying all three lanes and both shoulders, zigzagging around the stranded cars, speeding along. The drivers were all wearing uniforms or at least the same color clothing, and I could see the rifles on each vehicle, held in place in racks along the side. We were coming up fast and, judging from their lack of reaction, they didn't know we were coming. The noise of the plane was probably obscured by the noise of their engines. Closer and closer and closer—it was like watching a video game being played before my eyes.

“They look like little doodlebugs,” I said, and then we zoomed over the top of them and flew on past.

“They scattered!” Todd yelled out.

“And stopped!” Lori shouted. “They all skidded to a stop.”

I pulled up, gaining altitude, and then banked sharply so that I could come back at them.

“No shots, no muzzle blasts,” Lori reported.

“They wouldn't have had time to do anything,” Herb said. “Take a big, wide circuit around them. I want another look, but make sure we're too far away to be hit.”

I pulled back on the yoke, opened up the throttle, and eased on the rudder to start our bank. As we started the curve they came back into view. I couldn't see much, but I could tell they hadn't started moving again. They had probably taken shelter behind the stalled and burned-out vehicles along the highway.

“I wonder what they're thinking,” Todd said.

“Whatever is going through their minds, it doesn't seem to be panic. They were surprised and probably shocked, but they still held their ground,” Herb said.

I pulled us around them in a circle, with Herb, binoculars up to his eyes, on the inside of the bank.

“All of the vehicles appear to be identical,” Herb said. “Same paint color, almost a dull camouflage brown. And it's hard to see at this distance, but I think they have some plating.”

“You mean like they're bulletproof?” I asked.

“At least bullet-resistant,” Herb said.

“They were all wearing helmets,” Todd said.

“And dressed almost the same,” Lori added. “I think I saw some body armor.”

“Does that make them military?” I asked.

“Maybe not military, but certainly organized. Look at the way they're acting.”

“What are they doing?”

“They're doing nothing. They have stopped, stayed in formation, and I suspect while we're looking at them through binoculars they're looking at us. Make sure you don't get any closer. We saw rifles, so a sniper scope isn't out of the question.”

“Could they be Division?” I pictured Brett down there tracking us through binoculars, and it sent a chill up my spine.

“Military or police would be my guess, but that doesn't mean they're out there causing trouble … or that they're up to any good either.”

More space was better, so I widened our bank to open up more distance. We had done a full circle and had started into the second when they finally moved, heading back in the direction they'd come from—away from the neighborhood.

“Do you want me to follow them?” I asked. “Maybe we could find out where they call home.”

“They'd see that as a threat,” Lori said.

“I think we already crossed that bridge when I buzzed them.”

Herb chuckled. “I wanted to get close and see their reaction. Besides, I suspect they'd simply wait until we ran low on fuel before they thought about revealing where they lived. Let's go back to our original course along the 403.”

We left the mysterious doodlebugs behind; they were going in one direction along the highway while we headed in the opposite.

“What do you think they were doing out there?” Todd asked.

“They certainly would have been a formidable force to many,” Herb said.

“Not formidable enough to threaten us, though,” I said.

“Not us, but not much out there could handle a dozen highly mobile, heavily armed opponents.”

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, I could see the outline of our neighborhood in the distance. Our north wall was the southern wall of the highway. The black strip of the asphalt roadway was empty, all of the cars harvested. It was a wide, clear stretch that was my other landing strip if the winds wouldn't allow me to come in on Erin Mills Parkway. That wouldn't be a problem today.

“Do you think we could go farther?” Lori asked. I thought I knew where she wanted to go.

“Where did you have in mind?” Herb asked.

“Could we go farther east to our farm? It wouldn't take long, would it?”

“No more than ten minutes round-trip,” I jumped in. “Have we done any scouting in that direction?”

“It wouldn't hurt to do a pass in that way,” Herb said.

I could sense Lori smiling in the backseat at the idea of heading home.

As we started across the neighborhood I noted that, unlike the rest of the world, the area under our wings was in good order. I dipped so that the neighborhood came more into view out my side window. It was like we were witnessing a little miracle of civilization and activity. Some of the fields had been harvested, and others had already taken on a second planting. The greenhouses filled with seedlings and the pools holding our water supply sparkled and glistened in the sun. There were no blackened houses—the one home that had caught fire had been taken down. I could see the watchtowers spaced out along the walls and knew that unseen guards were protecting it all.