“In the stairwell, by the library roof door. I’ve set a sandbag firing position up there.”
The sound of rotors grew louder as the chopper thundered by overhead. John maneuvered for a better view.
“She one of ours?” Moss asked.
“Afraid not,” John replied, watching it speed by. “Looks to me like a Chinese Z-10.”
“Just one? Can’t be all that bad,” Moss said, racking the bolt on the Ma Deuce.
“Well, it certainly ain’t good, that’s for sure.” Breaking cover, John darted down Municipal Drive, heading for the library. Unassuming as it was, the building’s three-story height made it the ideal choice for housing the Stinger anti-aircraft missile system.
As he burst through the front entrance, a group of frightened adults and children were kneeling behind the checkout desk. They’d apparently been using the building as a dormitory.
“Get yourselves into the air-raid shelter,” John ordered, not caring a whit whether he sounded like some grouchy old dog.
He wasn’t sure what the Chinese rules of engagement were, but it stood to reason the gunner would need permission from headquarters before opening fire. The fear wasn’t so much that Moss would rush out with his hillbilly technical, but more so that the chopper might spot the sandbag emplacements strewn throughout the town and report back to base. If word got out that there were hostile elements in Oneida preparing against an assault, this Z-10 would only be the first of many paying them a visit. John needed to knock this sucker out of the sky with a single shot before they had a chance to radio back.
Just as Moss had said, the metal case containing the Stinger was in the stairwell. A missile had already been loaded in the launch tube. The last time he’d fired one of these was on a training exercise, more years ago than he cared to admit, so he grabbed the manual and shoved it into his pocket.
Slinging his AR over his shoulder, John grabbed the launcher with both hands and charged out onto the roof.
For now the sound of the chopper had faded into the distance. Had they flown away after calling in what they’d seen?
Just in case, John put the launcher down and flipped through the manual, his breathing harsh and punctuated by his beating heart. This was not the way he liked to wake up in the morning.
“‘Place the weapon on right shoulder, grasping the pistol grip to provide support,’” he said out loud. “Okay. ‘Unfold the antenna, and remove the front cap,’” he said, skipping ahead. “Done. ‘Now raise and lock the sight assembly into position.’”
The sound of rotor blades again.
“‘Weapon activation occurs when the safety and actuator device is operated.’ Okay, tell me something I don’t know.”
Growing louder by the second.
It’s nearly on you, John, hurry! he told himself. If they spot you wielding an anti-aircraft missile, you’ll be dead before you know what hit you.
He released the safety and actuator device. The launcher began making a sound, like a gyro spinning up. Yes, it was all starting to come back now. With his hand clutching the pistol grip, he turned to his left and spotted the chopper, a thousand feet in the air, bearing down on him. The distant sound of cannon fire came right as he pulled the trigger.
A whoosh and a blast of white smoke came as the missile was flung from the tube, igniting a split second later. A vapor trail streaked across the sky until it intersected with the approaching chopper. The gunship tried to turn away at the last minute only to take the impact right below the rotor. A burst of yellow flame shot out, then a delay as the sound of the explosion travelled to where John was kneeling on the library rooftop.
The Z-10 spun in wild circles as it plummeted out of the sky. From the street came whooping and cheering. John went to the edge of the roof to see Moss pull up alongside the building, a group of citizens trailing behind him.
“Get over to that crash site right away,” John barked. “And bring me back any survivors.”
Chapter 24
Finding and then emptying the hot water heater in that funeral home along Highway 104 hadn’t been difficult for Brandon. Finding bleach in one of the maintenance closets and pouring a few drops in the way John had taught him was also easy. But braving the cloying odor of formaldehyde and decaying bodies, that had been something else altogether. The worst room by far, and one they’d done little more than glance in through a porthole-style window, had been packed with bodies, many of them laid out, little more than clothed skeletons with bits of flesh clinging to bony faces and hands.
It was starting to look as though this place had gone from the town funeral home to the town morgue. Burying the dead was a much better idea, but Brandon sensed that many of the decisions made by the ones who ran this place as well as those living in the area were the product of wishful thinking. The power was bound to come back on any day now, that was probably the story they told themselves.
The open floor safe in the office only reinforced that theory. It told Brandon that whoever was running the funeral parlor had still believed paper money had some value. And more than that, it revealed a critical point in time when the dead began piling up and the harsh reality started sinking in that the lights would never be coming back on. And so a funeral home had gradually become a crypt.
No matter how thirsty they were, the two boys had held off until they were outside and a safe distance from the suffocating odors before they drank. After they had their fill, they left the bucket on the side of the road, a tin cup floating on the surface. A sign written with a sharpie along the side read: Clean water.
Brandon and Gregory hadn’t made it more than a dozen yards before they turned and caught sight of a ragged group of three men and one woman stopping to have a drink.
“I’d heard my dad talk about using bleach in water, but I never saw how he did it,” Gregory said with something that resembled admiration.
“Your dad and I spent a lot of time together when you and the rest of your family were being held by the Chairman.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Gregory snapped, and Brandon realized it wasn’t admiration at all. But what child wouldn’t be sore about their father spending time with someone else’s kid?
“I never asked for things to turn out the way they did,” Brandon said, offering a kind of truce.
“Well, maybe if you’d stayed on Willow Creek, things would have been different.”
“Maybe,” Brandon shot back. “Or maybe we would be dead, along with the rest the neighbors who didn’t make it.”
“You survived because you ran away to our cabin.”
“I thought we already settled this months ago.”
“Just seems like you’re in the habit of taking things that don’t belong to you.”
Now Brandon was starting to get angry. “We helped defend the cabin too, don’t forget. And do I need to remind you that my dad was killed raising the alarm when the Chairman’s men attacked us?”
Gregory shook his head. “It just isn’t fair. I’m just saying that it shoulda been me he taught all that stuff too, not you.”
“He musta shown you some stuff over the years,” Brandon replied, but quickly saw he was barking up the wrong tree. John had taught his son some survival skills, but Gregory felt Brandon was his dad’s favorite, a protégé of sorts. If that were the case, then nothing Brandon said would convince him otherwise.
They walked on in silence until they spotted an old sports car from the sixties racing up the highway in their direction. It screeched to a halt when it reached a handful of people walking a few hundred meters ahead. A moment later, it continued in the boys’ direction. When it braked next to them, they saw two men in desert camo military uniforms. The one in the passenger seat was broad-shouldered and mean-looking.