All Fall Down: The Chronicles of Altor, page 21
“I’m going to talk to Emmanuel. If any of these people make a false move, shoot them.”
Harry nodded and let the pistol hang by his side.
Nyx hurried back to Emmanuel and said, “Any opinion on what we need to do here?”
“We’re on the ground, so you’re in charge. Me? I don’t see that there’s anything we need to do.”
“Agreed. How long until we’re ready to go?”
“Ten minutes.”
“I’ll round up Harry and Allison.”
She went back into the office and the woman put her arms around the young children. “What are you going to do with us?”
Nyx ignored her. Allison emerged from the bathroom and Nyx nodded to Harry to take his turn. “It’s a long trip to Dust City.”
Harry nodded, handed the pistol back to Nyx and closed the door behind him.
“Wait here, with me,” Nyx said to Allison. “We can all walk out together.”
“Won’t Emmanuel need to go?”
Nyx peered out the window at the plane and the man now refueling the tank in the other wing.
“He’s taking care of business out there. No need.”
Harry came out a few seconds later and Nyx handed him his gun and stepped into the bathroom.
A minute later, she came back out and said, “Let’s go. No need to talk to these people.”
“Aren’t we going to do anything for them?”
“I’m not shooting them,” Nyx said. “They should be thankful for that, since they would have happily killed us. What else would you like me to do for them?”
Allison hesitated, looking at the woman and her children. “Nothing. I just don’t like it.”
“There’s not much to like about any of this,” Nyx agreed. “Let’s go.” She pushed right past the woman as though she wasn’t there.
Allison and Harry followed in her wake, though Allison mumbled, “Sorry,” as she passed.
The three of them hurried to the plane, where Emmanuel was already in the pilot’s seat. Nyx closed the door and they immediately turned and taxied away.
Perhaps not quickly enough, though.
As they passed the spot where the two men still lay on the ground, the woman emerged from the business office. She was holding a rifle. The man who had refueled their plane dove for cover. It was obvious the woman had handled a gun before. She walked steadily toward the man until he was forced to give up his cover and run. She fired twice and the man went down. She turned the rifle on the plane.
“Trouble,” Nyx said. “I should have done a more thorough weapons search.”
“I see it,” Emmanuel said. He increased the speed down the runway. As loaded as the Cessna was with people, fuel, and cargo, it was not swift to respond.
The woman aimed as the plane went by, tracking them. She fired once, twice, three time before the plane was far enough down the runway that it presented a rapidly diminishing target.
Emmanuel put the plane into as steep a climb as he could, moving away from the landing strip.
Nyx ran her hands over her arms and legs, as did Emmanuel. “Check yourself and make sure you weren’t hit,” she said to Harry and Allison. “You don’t always know immediately.”
They did as she asked, and Harry said, “We’re fine.”
Nyx nodded and said, “We’re good,” to Emmanuel. “Did she hit anything that matters on the plane?”
“I don’t think so. I’ll keep watch on the gauges to see if she punctured one of the fuel tanks.”
“That would be bad,” Nyx said.
“That would be bad. I don’t have another place to land between here and Dust City.”
“We could go back there and I could kill them all,” Nyx offered. “Then we could double-check and fix things if necessary.”
From behind, Allison gasped audibly at the callousness Nyx displayed.
“I think we’re okay,” Emmanuel said. “I’ll keep an eye on the fuel gauge for the next few minutes. It will drop pretty quickly if one of the tanks got punctured.”
Nyx nodded and went back to watching the scenery roll by beneath them.
Half an hour later, Emmanuel glanced at her and said, “I think we’re fine. Consuming fuel at a normal rate. We should get to Dust City by sundown.”
Nyx closed her eyes and went into a quiet trance that wasn’t quite sleep, not quite fully awake.
Ninety minutes later, she opened her eyes to see that they were flying due west and the sun was getting lower in the sky.
“Another hour and we’ll be there,” Emmanuel said.
Behind them, both Harry and Allison were sound asleep.
Fifteen minutes later, almost under his breath, Emmanuel said, “Shit.”
Nyx was immediately alert.
Emmanuel took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. “We’re overheating.”
“Can we limp into Dust City?”
Emmanuel squinted one eye as if in contemplation. “I think we’re too far out. We can’t run for too long at these temps. I’ll get us as close as I can, though.”
Behind them, Harry said quietly, “Problems?”
Nyx just nodded but didn’t say anything else. She looked down and saw that they were flying over a low mountain range, which wasn’t ideal if they had to do an emergency landing.
A new kind of silence filled the cabin. The engine shut off completely and the only sound was the buffeting of the wind. They had become used to the constant vibration of the engine, and when it stopped it left an eerie void.
Nyx tensed but knew that their survival did not depend on her. She glanced at Emmanuel.
Calmly, he said, “We’re a glider now. A heavy glider.”
Nyx looked directly below them and saw that they had cleared the range of mountains, but now there was a forest of sorts leading out from the foothills. Ahead, there was nothing but desert.
In the back, Harry and Allison held each other close, hands intertwined, but didn’t say anything. Silently, Allison’s lips moved in what appeared to be a prayer.
“We’ll need to clear those trees,” Emmanuel said.
It would have been easy for Nyx to say, Are we going to make it? or some such, but she sat still, estimating how fast they were dropping as compared to where the edge of the tree line was in the distance. The variables changed too fast for her to be able to make a meaningful calculation, but it kept her mind focused.
Emmanuel was an island of calm in the pilot’s seat. He constantly checked gauges and made adjustments, but without an engine, he was limited in what he could do. Cheerfully, he said, “If you’re wondering, the answer is, yes, I have done a lot of glider work. Generally not in a Cessna, though, so I’ll have to improvise.”
The drop became more precipitous and the forest below was easier to see. It wasn’t really a typical forest like you might see a little farther north in the Pacific Northwest, where the trees stood proudly side by side, effectively blocking sunlight from reaching the ground. Instead, it was sparser, with room between the trees for scrub brush and other vegetation to grow up. Not nearly enough room to land a small plane, however.
Nyx leaned her head toward the window. With the distance between the plane and the ground shrinking rapidly, it was easier to estimate their odds of survival. Even though she didn’t like the way those odds shook out, she refused to give in and let her mind wander to her home in Colorado. She didn’t think of her family. Rather, she did as she had been trained, which was to stay focused in any emergency.
“Come on, baby, come on,” Emmanuel said.
Nyx thought that was something people only said in movies, but there was evidence they said it in real life as well.
Just as it looked like the landing gear would brush against the tops of the tallest trees, they passed the tree line. They dropped suddenly again, and the plane slammed into dry desert hardpack. It was too much of a collision with the ground to be considered a landing, but not enough to be a crash, either.
The Cessna jumped back into the sky for a few seconds, then landed nose first.
The utter silence was nearly deafening.
Nyx whipped around in her seat to check on Harry and Allison. They were obviously shaken up but didn’t appear to have any major injuries. “Okay to open the door?”
Emmanuel nodded and said, “This is your captain speaking. Feel free to get out and vomit.”
Chapter Thirty
So Close, So Far
Nyx pushed the door open and hopped down to the ground, then turned and helped Harry and Allison out of the back. She walked fifty feet from the plane and looked back at where they had first touched down. It was frighteningly close to the outermost trees. They had missed a sizable boulder by less than fifty feet.
Emmanuel stepped out, grinning. “Nice bit of piloting, if I do say so myself.”
“You saved our lives,” Allison said.
“All in a day’s work, ma’am,” Emmanuel said, then dropped the act. “We’ve got to figure out our next move. Nyx, this is more your area of expertise.”
Nyx pulled her phone out of a pocket. “Let’s give a call and see if we can have an Uber show up and take us in the rest of the way.” She turned the phone on. It powered up, but when she hit the button to connect to Steele, the circular icon just spun around and around. “Not good. Try yours.”
Emmanuel grabbed his phone out of the cockpit and pushed the power button.
It powered up and showed ninety percent battery power, but when he pushed the button to connect, he got the same response. He shrugged and said, “I think we’re on our own.”
Nyx nodded, calculating. “How close to Dust City are we?”
Emmanuel climbed back in and reemerged with a rolled map. After glancing at the sun, which was almost touching the horizon to the west, he knelt and unrolled the map.
“Look. These are the mountains behind us.” He moved his finger an inch and a half. “And that’s where Altor is.”
“Distance?” Nyx asked.
Emmanuel scrunched his face up, calculating. “Forty miles? Maybe a bit more than that?”
“Oh!” Allison said. “Harry can’t walk that far!”
“Don’t worry about me,” Harry said. “I’ll wait for you here.”
Nyx acted as if she hadn’t even heard them. She looked at Emmanuel. “You stay here with them. I’ll make the hike and return ASAP with the rescue team.”
“That’s better,” Allison said, as though she still believed she had some input into what the plan would be.
Nyx went around the plane and opened the cargo door. Things had gotten tossed around and everything was jumbled, but it didn’t look too bad. The mysterious box was intact. The canvas bag with the meteor chips in it was still closed.
While she was taking this inventory, Emmanuel approached.
“We’ll be fine. We’ve got a case of water tucked away back there. I don’t have a lot of food, but we won’t starve to death in just a few days.”
“I’ll fill my canteen,” Nyx said, “and leave the rest of the water. I don’t need to take any food.” She reached inside and grabbed her rifle. “I’ll be fine.”
“According to the map, the terrain looks relatively flat.”
“I’m planning on hitting at least twenty-five miles the first day, and then I’ll try to finish up on day two if there are no complications. Once I get there, we should be back here in almost no time. With any luck, you’ll see me again in forty-eight hours. I don’t like the way Harry looks, so I’ll push a little.”
“When are you leaving?”
“We’ve got a three-quarter moon, so that will provide plenty of light. I’d rather hike in the nighttime, so I’ll leave now. During the day, I’ll see if I can find a place to hole up and rest for a few hours.”
Emmanuel reached into the hold and pulled out his own rifle. “Shouldn’t need this. We’re in the middle of nowhere. I’ll be surprised if there are any humans that are much closer than Dust City.”
Nyx filled her canteen and dropped it in her small pack.
“Take at least another four or five bottles,” Emmanuel said. “We don’t need all this for two days.”
Nyx considered, then took two bottles and dropped them into her pack. “You won’t need all that if all goes according to plan.” She waved a hand vaguely at the plane, sitting dead on the hardpack of a Nevada desert. “We both know how rarely that happens. With my canteen, this will be enough.” She shifted the pack into a comfortable position, then slung the rifle over her shoulder.
“Just head west-southwest. Altor is big enough that I don’t think you can miss it.”
Nyx turned and headed in that direction, offering a small wave over her shoulder.
The sun would be down in just a few minutes, but she knew that the temperature wouldn’t drop for quite a few hours after that. She would take advantage of those cooler temperatures by pushing harder, but until then, with temps in the nineties, she kept a steady three miles an hour.
The soil was mostly crust, and made for easy walking. From time to time, she would step on a spot that gave way and her hiking boot would sink several inches into the ground. She also came across the occasional gopher hole that was a tripping hazard.
Other than those small obstacles, the first hours of the trek were just monotonous. It was long walks like this that were the reason why she still took five and ten mile hikes in the woods surrounding her home in Colorado. She hadn’t known she would be undertaking a marathon walk like this, but it could never be completely discounted.
By midnight, the temps had dropped and the moon had risen. She took out her water bottle and drank a few ounces of it.
She pushed on through the night, staying constantly vigilant for visitors of any sort. Humans were at the top of that list, but she knew there were poisonous snakes and insects in the Nevada desert. On more than one occasion, she heard the yipping of coyotes that sounded not that far away. She never slowed but did slip her rifle off her shoulder and carried it as she walked.
She didn’t think a pack of coyotes was likely to attack her, but if their normal food chain had been interrupted, it was possible. If she saw the shadowy forms approaching, she would stop and try to put one down.
Their eerie cries echoed across the landscape throughout the night, but she never saw any of them.
Several times, she stopped to rest for a few minutes, drank a little water, then proceeded on. When the first light of dawn illuminated the sky behind her, Nyx estimated that her overnight walk had probably gotten her fifteen or sixteen miles closer. A good start, but no more.
She still felt fine. Muscular tiredness, but nothing more than that. Ahead, she saw a small hill that rose a few hundred feet from the desert floor. There were a few scraggly trees scattered across it. She kept her same steady pace until she reached the top of the hill and could look out over the plains ahead.
It looked exactly like all of the landscape she had seen since she had started. It was as if she had fallen into a Roadrunner cartoon, where she kept moving, but the background never changed. She took her compass out to make sure she hadn’t wandered off line, then slipped it back into her pocket.
As the sun rose, so did the temperature, and quickly. Nyx looked for a place where she could escape the heat. She knew that walking during the hottest part of the day would use more of her water than she wanted to consume.
She had been sincere when she said she didn’t like the way Harry looked. His complexion was splotchy and he constantly seemed like he was in danger of nodding off. As sick as he was, one of those nod-offs could slip him into a deep sleep that he didn’t want to wake up from.
She knew she needed to hurry, but more important than that was that she needed to make sure she arrived. If she got lost, or perished due to heat stroke or water loss, she would probably be killing Harry and possibly Allison. Emmanuel would likely wait double the time she said she needed, but by then, the three of them would be nearly out of water. He would be forced to leave Harry and Allison behind and attempt the same trek Nyx was doing.
Speed was of the essence, but arriving trumped all.
There was nowhere that looked like it would provide the kind of shelter she hoped to find. No rock outcropping extending out and granting shade or even a small indent in the hill she had climbed. She looked from one of the pine trees to the other. There was one spot where one tree offered at least some shade against the trunk of another. Not ideal, but it would do. She would still be hot and would still sweat, but not like she would if she was maintaining her normal steady pace.
Not to mention that after nearly twelve hours of hiking, her muscles needed the rest. She stood quietly with her back to the tree, moving only her eyes, and scouted the area. It would be difficult for anything to sneak up on her here. It was the highest spot for a number of miles.
She walked a fifty-foot perimeter around the tree to see if there was any telltale sign of an anthill. Small red ants could sneak up on her and she would be nearly covered in bites before she got up and away. She found scorpions lounging on small rocks, absorbing the heat of the day, but they showed no interest in her.
She returned to her small sliver of shade, dropped her pack and sat with her back against the tree, looking out at the plain she would soon have to cross. After setting her mental alarm for two hours, she closed her eyes and fell into the same resting semi-trance she always used in situations like this.
Slightly less than two hours later, her eyes flew open. She stayed completely still, but scanned the area in front of her. She couldn’t see anything in her field of vision. She closed her eyes again and listened. No danger signs there, either.
She heard a slight rustling above her. Nothing more than the whisper of the movement of feathers. Lightning fast, she pulled her pistol and looked up.
A crow stared down at her.
Nyx smiled to herself. To some, a crow was a symbol of death or disaster. She had always liked them. They were intelligent creatures who were capable of remembering faces and who had an active social life.
