Breaking Through Page 4

  The tall one turned back to John and shrugged. “How ‘bout it, you a Rat?”

  “What? I, uh, I don’t…who are you?”

  He adjusted the pack strapped over his left shoulder and said, “Actually, Buddy, we were just wondering the same about you.”

  “This is not smart,” the shorter one said. He looked nervously back over his shoulder. “They’re going to realize what happened any minute now.”

  “I—”A loud twang echoed through the air and John’s stomach came up into his throat as one of the parachute cords snapped. The ejection seat dropped several inches before the remaining cords snapped taught. He grunted and grasped desperately at his harness straps as he bounced to a stop.

  After swallowing his lunch for a second time, he said, “Look, I don’t have any idea who or what a Rat is, and I don’t know how I got here, but can we talk about this when I’m not hanging by a thread a few thousand feet in the air?”

  The taller one considered John for a moment then took his foot off the rail and pulled the pack off. The shorter one caught his hand as he reached to open the pack. “What the hell are you doing? How do you know he’s not with Him?”

  “Come on, Tom, you saw him come through, same as me.” He pointed above them with the jerk of a thumb.

  “Doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Just look at him then.” He pulled a coil of rope out the pack and stood, “Does he look like a Rat? He’s obviously scared out of his mind.”

  John wasn’t sure if he was scared out of his mind or not, but he knew he would much rather be standing on the catwalk and not getting ready to fall to his death. He winced at the twang of another chord snapping. “Uh, guys…a little help here?”

  Tom stepped back and waved a frustrated arm through the air, “So, what, he just appears out of nowhere and were just going to help him, just like that? What if this is some kind of trap or something?”

  “Hey,” the tall one warned, “you know the Rules. You don’t like it you can take it up with her later.” Without waiting for a response, he turned and heaved the rope into the air.

  John snatched it out of the air and was about to thank him when a loud WRAAAH pierced the still night air around them. The loud, obnoxious wail reverberated through the maze of the factory, echoing off its structures. John almost lost his grip on the rope and cursed as the siren blasted a second time.

  “Damn it, come on!” Tom grabbed the other’s arm and pulled.

  “Wait!” The tall one snapped back and began pulling the other end through and around the rail in front of him, “Come on, man, let’s go. Swing over, we’ll pull you up.”

  John looped the rope around his arm, but had serious doubts about whether or not Tom was actually going to participate in the process or not. Then again, it wasn’t like he had a whole lot of options; he could either take a chance on his relief chute or trust these two would pull him up. He gave the rope a tug. “You guys ready?”

  Another blast from the siren drowned out the response, but both men had taken up positions on the rope, ready to pull.

  “Please, let this work,” John prayed then unclipped the harness.

  The metal clasps of the straps clicked together as he dropped from the seat. Memories of the County’s Annual Dunk-tank Fundraiser flashed in his mind. Someone had just hit the release with a well-thrown baseball, but instead of landing of a pool of cold water, he dropped into the cool, open air and swung underneath the catwalk. The rope twisted tightly around his arm, it burned as if someone had lit it on fire. He hung briefly at the apex, twisting around in the air, and then swung back.

  The two men above pulled hard, hand over hand, and then seconds later, John climbed over the rail and onto the catwalk. He dropped to knees and began painfully unwinding the rope from around his arm. After pulling the last of the rope free, he massaged it gently, trying to ease the pain.

  The tall man reached to help him to his feet, and said, “Name’s Michael.”

  John took the outstretched hand and answered simply, “John.”

  The siren blared again.

  “Come on!” Michael shouted over the siren. “We’ve gotta go!”

  Tom was already fifteen feet ahead of them when Michael turned and chased after him, boots clanging against the metal grating. It only took a second for John to make up his mind before he was racing after them.

  The catwalk made a ninety-degree turn and continued around a vertical support column. After another forty feet, they came to a set of stairs that took them down to another level. Tom leapt forward, grabbing either side of the rail and launched himself down the flight of stairs. He landed, rolled back up to his feet and kept running.

  “What is he, some kind of gazelle?” John shouted, as he and Michael took the stairs two at a time.

  “Not sure…what a gazelle is…” Michael answered between breaths.

  They pulled themselves around another turn and came to a second flight of stairs. This time John attempted to copy Tom’s leaping technique, and regretted it almost immediately. He misjudged the left rail and missed his grip. Instead of swinging out over the stairs, he fell hard midway down and rolled painfully to the bottom. He slammed hard onto the metal walkway, knocking the wind out of him. Michael almost tripped over him, but was able to jump over at the last minute. It took him several steps to stop, then came back and pulled John to his feet.

  “Get up, man! We don’t have time to—”

  A bright light flashed into existence around them, turning night to day and a voice boomed around them, “You are in a restricted area, stop where you are or you will be shot.”

  A deep thumping of engines reverberated around them as a long, sleek craft appeared in the air next to them. Two large multi-directional engines swiveled back and forth, keeping the craft steady. The two men froze, John still only halfway to his feet as hot jet wash from the engines blasted them. Two gun turrets folded out from recesses on the fuselage, just under the main struts, and aligned themselves on Michael and John.

  Tom skidded to a stop outside the reach of the spotlight and pulled his pistol. The roar of the engines muffled the report of the weapon and the bright spotlight vanished in a shower of sparks. Tom continued to fire as the other two dove for cover, his rounds causing small eruptions of sparks over the skiff’s surface. The craft banked sharply then pulled away from the gantry, gun turrets blazing.

  Michael landed on top of John, as bullets whizzed over them, pinging off the metal around them. Michael rolled off John and got to his feet, simultaneously drawing his own pistol and returning fire. “Get up!” he yelled over the cacophony of gunfire, sidestepping toward Tom. “Come on, move!”

  As John pulled himself to his feet Michael took off at a full run. A minute later they came to another platform, similar to the one John had crashed into but only half the size.

  Tom moved to the edge and peered over the side. “It’s going to be close.”

  Michael bent over, hands on his knees. “I know.”

  John walked around him in a wide circle, hands on his head, trying to get a good breath. His heart raced. He’d been shot at before, more times than he could count, in fact, but he’d been strapped into his Falcon every time. Being shot at like this was a completely different experience; one he didn’t care for. He felt so helpless.

  “Shit!” Michael shouted, spinning on his heel.

  “What?” Tom asked.

  “I left the pack.”

  Tom nodded toward John, “You think you can handle two?”

  “Don’t have much of a choice, do I?” Michael said, shaking his head.

  “Handle what?” John asked.

  Michael ignored him. “How long?”

  “If Tim didn’t screw anything up,” he paused to do some mental math, then said, “ten minutes, fifteen max.”

  “All right.” Michael stood and moved up beside Tom. “We should still be able to make it.”

  John had stopped pacing, and eyed the two men suspiciously.
“Uh, guys, what exactly are we discussing here?” Because it sounds like something, I’m not going to like.

  Michael turned. “Getting the hell out of here, man.”

  “Okay…”

  Michael sighed. “Look, I know this doesn’t make any sense right now, but believe me you don’t want to be here when they come back.”

  “Who?” He asked, making no effort to hide the apprehension on his face.

  The still night air erupted into roaring daylight as another skiff shot into the air above them, its searchlight scanning around to find them. The light panned over them twice as it banked around and this time there was no warning. Michael was already moving when the guns opened up, grabbing John by the flight suit and yanking him toward the edge of the platform. Hypersonic projectiles slammed into the white and red painted composite behind them, sending sparks and tiny shards of platform bursting into the air.

  “Wait! Wait! Wait!” John’s cries were ignored, as Michael hurled him off the platform and into the cold night air.

  John screamed until he ran out of air, took a deep breath, and screamed again. His vision blurred and his eyes squinted against the force of the chilly air. Wind buffeted violently against him as he strained to flatten himself out, his arms and legs flailing uncontrollably around him. After a second or two, he gained control of his body, falling spread eagle; perfect position for parachute deployment. Not that it mattered. Even if his backup chute hadn’t been damaged, it wasn’t going to do him any good sitting back on the catwalk.

  The voice of his Jump School instructor barked in the back of his mind, “The human body can fall through the air at up to 120mph! If you ignorant asses do not learn to operate this equipment properly and efficiently, your precious little baby-faces will be nothing more than soup when you slam back down onto God’s green Earth, and I am not going to scoop your filthy bodies off the pavement so mommy and daddy have something to put in the urn over the fireplace. So listen up, and listen good…”

  John wondered who would clean up the goo his body left behind after he slammed into the surface of whatever world this was. He squinted his eyes against the roaring wind, trying to see anything around him. In the darkness of this strange place he might not have been falling at all, if not for the wind he could’ve imagined himself floating. He tried to make himself relax. After all, it wasn’t the fall that killed you, it was the sudden stop at the bottom.

  “Stay just like that!” Michael shouted, reaching down and grabbing the back of John’s flight suit.

  As Michael adjusted his grip, John twisted around and shouted, “Are you fucking crazy?”

  A yellowish-green glow pulsed under Michael’s clothes. Ripples of light flowed outward along his limbs, from a central point on his chest. Small bands of energy stretched out along his arms and legs, to his wrists and ankles. Several smaller, thinner lines snaked off from the main bands and wrapped themselves around his body, as if his very veins were alive with some kind of energetic light.

  “This might feel a little weird.” Michael shouted, reaching out with his other arm.

  John felt a slight tingling sensation begin to wash over his body, from his shoulders all the way down to his feet and out to his fingers. As Michael pulled himself closer, the sensation grew stronger. Michael wrapped one arm around John’s chest and pulled him in tight.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Despite being right next to John’s ear, Michael still had to yell, “You’re going to have to trust me!”

  “Trust you? You just threw me off a building!”

  “I need you to climb on my back,” Michael said, oblivious to John’s terror. The fact that they were plummeting to their deaths didn’t seem to faze him. Great, John thought, they saved me from falling accidently to my death to join in their group suicide.

  “What good is that going to do?” John argued, briefly resisting the man’s muscling.

  “Please, John, now is not the best time for explanations.”

  The two men twisted in the air and after several tense seconds of maneuvering John managed to move around to Michael’s back and wrap his arms tightly around the man’s chest. Michael’s face was a mask of concentration as he worked, and the yellowish green pulses began to accelerate. The tingle flowing through his body increased to the point that John knew he was going to be sick. Not only was he going to die clutching onto another man’s body, he was going to do it with vomit all over his face.

  “Okay, hold on,” Michael said.

  He felt the tingling sensation dissipate, and after a few seconds, John realized that they were slowing down. The cool onslaught of air rushing against them abated and after several seconds John was able to look around without squinting.

  “How?”

  “Later,” Michael answered. Every muscle in his body seemed tense and focused. “This is tricky enough as it is.”

  John craned his head around to look below them. The orange glow had transformed into separate orange lights, lined up in a grid-work that stretched out for miles. A city. To the right the mass of lights broke up and and became sporadic, until they ultimately faded into darkness. High cliff faces shown in the pale moonlight, beginning as coastal bluffs then curving down past the city where they turned into tall, jagged mountains that disappeared into the night.

  Light from the twin moons gave surprising detail to the ground below. The city lights ran along the shoreline to their left, where it melded into a wide plain. Several large boats moved slowly through the dark waters below, heading out toward the horizon and in toward the large harbors of the city.

  The city reminded John of many coastal metropolitan areas back on Earth. Tall high-rises lined the water, radiating warm colorful lights into the darkness around them. The buildings grew shorter the further the city stretched away from the coast, with the exception of several lone skyscrapers that rose sporadically out of the city and seemed out of place with the buildings surrounding them.

  To their right, most of the city was almost devoid of light. What minimal light there was came from the odd streetlights that still worked, and even those were starting to flicker. Further on, the only light came from fires lit on roofs and in the middle of abandoned streets.

  An alarm sounded and a small display unit on Michael’s wrist flashed a warning.

  “Shit.” Michael said, checking the readout.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Our flight is going to be cut a little short I’m afraid.”

  The alarm sounded again, and the weightlessness John had been feeling began to fade as their decent began to quicken.

  Michael’s voice was calm and focused, “Tom, get over here.”

  John glanced around frantically, and Tom appeared on their right-hand side, coming down from above them. “What’s up?”

  Michael motioned to his wrist display, “Down to ten percent.”

  Tom glanced down at the city below, then back to Michael, “You see where we are don’t you?”

  The alarm beeped again.

  “No choice.” Michael pointed to a cluster of taller buildings in the distance ahead of them. “The closer we can get to the Conray Building the better off we’ll be. At least that will put us near the outskirts.”

  Tom seemed to consider that for a second and then said, “Goddamn Dusters.” He reached into his cargo pocket and brought out a small, fist-size device. After punching in a series of commands, he slipped it back into his pocket and sealed the closure. “Beacon’s up.”

  “John, you’re going to want to hold on.” Michael warned.

  The tingling sensation vanished and they dropped through the air.

  John’s grip on Michael tightened as they dropped. His screams were lost amidst the roaring wind that slammed against them. He squinted hard, as Michael tried to keep them more-or-less on course. Every few seconds the yellowish green lights would pulse, adjusting their trajectory.

  Tom flew off into the night in front of them, becoming a mere bl
ur of light as he twisted through the high rises ahead. He sailed between two identical buildings, his glow reflecting off the few remaining windows. The majority of the windows had been knocked out long ago, fragments of mirrored glass, leaned out of their frames at odd angles.

  A sign on the right tower read, “EEN MEDIA GRO,” dark shadows were all that remained of the missing letters. The remaining ones hung precariously off the side of the building, waiting for their turn to break loose and plummet to the dark streets below. It seemed like everything about this place was either dead or dying.

  Michael adjusted their path again, following Tom through the lifeless towers. They both stood thirty stories tall, but were relatively short compared to the towering monstrosities that lined the coast. Even then, they still loomed over their shorter brothers and sisters, whose average height was only five or six stories.

  After passing through the twin towers, Michael lined them up on what looked like a main thorough-fair, a wide four lane avenue that stretched out for miles in both directions. Broken down wrecks—what must have been cars or trucks—lined the street on both sides, in burnt and smashed piles of metal. They passed over what might have been a bus, a long rounded frame three times the length of any city bus John had ever seen with twice as many wheels.

  The alarm beeped again as Michael adjusted their glide path. This time when John felt the tingling return, he was grateful for it. The feeling of weightlessness returned and a calm relief came over him. It was short lived.

  “Okay, John,” Michael said, a hint of trepidation in his voice. “This is going to be a little rough. You’re going to have to jump off when we get low enough, make sure you move, I don’t want to roll over you.”

  “Oh, great,” John said, looking over the other man’s shoulder, trying to judge where he would land.

  They dropped several more feet in a matter of seconds, and Michael adjusted their approach again so they were gliding parallel down the middle of the street. Michael held them steady and gave John the go-ahead.

  “Here goes nothing,” John muttered, and let go. He slid off Michael’s back, and a second later, landed on the pavement below. Pain shot through his legs as his feet slammed down and immediately fell forward into a roll. He slid to a stop after several feet, and dust he’d kicked up washed over him, making him cough. He covered his mouth and then looked up in time to see Michael touching down a few feet away. The glow was already fading as Michael came to a stop and turned back toward John.