900 Miles (Book 2): 900 Minutes Page 10

  “Think we’ll be able to get through to them?”I heard Rodgers ask.

  “I certainly friggin’hope so,”I answered as I swung my shoulders toward the dials.

  Pulling the headset over my ears, I hit the switch. Flipping through various MHz channels on what Kyle told me was a Very High Frequency (VHF) Aviation band I looked at Jarvis.“Avalon can pick this up, right? I mean this type of a radio signal?”

  Pulling a second headset over his ears, while nodding, he replied,“Yes, boys, Avalon has a doozy of a communications array. I just hope someone’s listening.”

  Jarvis was telling me which channel to tune into when we hit an air pocket that made the helicopter drop suddenly. I felt it in my stomach, and threw my hands up on the flashing dashboard to steady myself. Jarvis and Rodgers almost lost their balance but managed to stay upright.

  I noticed Kyle had a half-smile spreading across his face that said, overreact much?

  Feeling a tad foolish, I pulled my arms back, shook my head, and asked Jarvis.“You want to do the honors?”

  Nodding, his eyes narrowed as he steadied the microphone into place, while I hit the talk button on the radio. Swallowing hard, he closed his eyes completely, took a deep breath in, and finally opened his mouth to speak.

  Using a code that we’d established when we first started heading outside the walls, he said“King’s Landing, King’s Landing, this is Iron Eagle. Please reply…Over.”

  After he had repeated it several times, we sat there in anticipation, hanging on every millisecond of static. I could feel my palms sweating as I thought about Tyler. We had to get through. I needed to know he was all right.

  “Come on!”I inadvertently voiced as I reached up and hit the roof of the cabin.

  Standing next to Jarvis, Rodgers chimed in with his usual rose-colored commentary.“We’re probably too far away. Either that or somebody is taking a piss break.”

  Ignoring him, Jarvis repeated his call to our friends. Lowering my head, I started to believe we might actually be out of range when we heard a distant echo in the earphones.

  “Asshole” …chhhhhh… “get back here” …chhhhhh… “son-of-a-bitch Kyle” …chhhhhh.

  “Do you hear that?”Kyle asked, looking at us wide-eyed.“That sounds like Mia!”

  Meeting his expression with what I’m sure was a reflection of his surprise, I said“Yeah, I do, and she sounds pissed!”

  Jarvis raised his voice, as if it would help the transmission.“King’s Landing, King’s Landing, is that you? Do you hear us? Over.”

  Now a male voice replied,“Yes…chhhh. We can hear you. Can you hear us? Over.”Recognizing it immediately, we all knew Richards, Jarvis’s second-in-command.

  That anxiety-driven feeling of a cinderblock crushing my chest inadvertently began to ease up. We had gotten through. Unclenching my fists, I couldn’t help but feel a seed of hope growing deep down in my core.

  I should have known better.

  Jarvis’s face went dead serious as he held his hands up to the headset.“Your voice is filled with static, but we can make out most of what you’re saying. For right now, what is most important is that you listen.”

  Jarvis went on to quickly explain the circumstances by which we found ourselves flying in an Army helicopter. He spoke of Gordon, and the mad plan he had to take back Avalon.

  When he was finished, Richard spoke up. Even through the static-filled response, we could hear the concern in his voice. He asked four simple words:“What do you need?”

  “That’s a good chap. First, don’t worry about any of us. We’ll get back there in a few hours. Kyle tells us we’re around fifty miles south of Lexington, Kentucky, putting us roughly two hundred miles away.”

  I glanced at Jarvis, then out at the sky, sharing his optimism.

  “Second, I need you to get the defenses locked down. Everybody is on full alert, and make sure Project BOHICA is ready to go.”

  Kyle and I exchanged a brief, yet distressed glance. We had often discussed the hope that BOHICA would never need to be used.

  As the most drastic of Kyle’s countermeasures, it was designed for the most extreme of events—if we ever got trapped in the bunker and had to be ready to fight off some group of assholes who had forcefully entered our little sanctuary. Months earlier, Kyle had gotten hold of some sort of nerve gas contained in twenty-five small yellow gas grenades, which he referred to as“drop you like a fly”gas. We all pulled together and helped him rig a system that would set them all off around the inside halls of the bunker at the same time. The common sleeping quarters—or what we called the bunkroom—and the cafeteria in Avalon were, for all intents and purposes, the only safe places that the gas was supposed to not be able to get into.

  The idea was for whatever survivors we had left to bunker down in those areas while we waited for the halls to fill up with the enemy forces. Then we’d…well, we’d make sure that there wasn’t an enemy force to deal with by releasing the gas inside the bunker. According to Kyle, it wouldn’t kill them (at least he thought), but it would give the bastards a hell of a nice headache when they’d finally wake up.

  When I asked Kyle what BOHICA meant, he simply smiled and told me it was a military acronym for“Bend Over! Here It Comes Again.”It literally refers to the acceptance of forced sodomy. However, the term is typically used to describe unavoidable, unpleasant situations that have inconvenienced one before, and are about to yet again.

  Kinda like some assholes trying to take over Avalon. Only this time, we wouldn’t be the assholes.

  Jarvis continued,“Third, I want you to—”

  Rodgers interrupted from behind us with a sudden realization.“Hey, this big bastard is still back here, and he’s starting to stir. What do you want to do with him?”

  “Shit!”I called out, slightly surprised. We’d escaped in such a hurry that we’d totally forgotten about the Hulk passed out back there.

  Jarvis twisted around, pulling the handgun from his waistband, and tossed it toward Rodgers.“Keep this on him for right now. I’ll come back to help you tie him up in a minute.”

  Jarvis trusted Rodgers. We all did. There was no reason for us not to. That was our biggest mistake.

  Rodgers caught the weapon and stepped over the giant, holding the gun above him. The conversation over the radio faded out of my mind. I’m not sure why I kept watching Rodgers. Maybe it was the slight smile that sprang across his face as he held the firearm confidently in his grasp. Maybe it was the look of madness that for just a moment all but seemed to disappear in his eyes. Either way, almost immediately, something in the back of my head told me that everything was about to go wrong.

  It did.

  I watched in utter shock as Rodgers reached down, grabbed the giant’s arm and pulled him up. Unable to speak, I managed to reach up, punching Jarvis in the arm, directing his attention to the two men in the rear of the cabin. He spun around just in time to witness Rodgers lifting the gun up in the direction of the cockpit, directly toward Jarvis’s surprised face.

  Standing taller than I’d ever seen, and pushing his chest out like a peacock displaying its feathers, Rodgers met our gaze and spoke.“I’m going to need you to stop talking with your friends from Avalon. Turn the channel to that radio…now!”

  “What is this?”Jarvis asked, clearly as stunned as I was.

  The Hulk was standing tall now, and rubbing the blood from his nose off his face. Kyle was still piloting the helicopter, but not exactly keeping his eyes on the sky. We were all dumbfounded.

  “No. What the fuck, Rodgers? You’re not the mole…”Kyle said in immediate disbelief.“Ahh shit. Yes, you are. You’re just crazy enough to do it.”He bellowed in frustration slamming his fist into the ceiling above.

  The reality of the situation had set in for Kyle.

  Ignoring the question, Rodgers barked at me to change the channel of the radio to 124.050 MHz. Still stunned, it took the gun being pointed at my face before I reached down and hit
the buttons, repeating the channel out loud. The last thing I heard before pulling the headset from my head was Mia yelling at Kyle in the background. I could only hope that they would be smart enough to tune in.

  With another headset over his ears, Rodgers looked over at the Hulk. Following his gaze, I noticed that the big bastard actually had my hammer held in his meaty paw, which I was none too thrilled about.

  “Gordon, I’ve got them. We’re on our way back. Over.”

  My heart dropped into the seat. The bastard. We’d been together for months. He was one of us…how the hell did he pull this off? So many things were firing in my mind. In that instant, I was connecting many of the dots. It was all starting to make sense.

  Was it possible that he started the fire in the Med Center? After all, he’d picked the location we’d be heading to for the meds. The timing couldn’t possibly have been a coincidence. For a moment, I wondered what else he’d done that I didn’t know about. Could he have been the one feeding Gordon info from inside the walls of Avalon? My mind was racing at all the questions. However, amongst it all, I knew one thing with absolute conviction. If he was the reason, my son was just hours from death, then I’d be making damn sure that the other side of that ledger would be settled for good.

  “Hello, friends, miss me?”I heard Gordon’s voice boom through the speaker.

  I wanted to disappear into the cockpit seat.

  “Well done, Rodgers. I was wondering when you’d call. I trust you’re doing well. Can’t wait to get my best, and most trusted friend back here into the mix.”

  In the world of prostitution, there are pimps and there are hookers. The pimp usually“watches”after a number of hookers. That is his job. The pimp, usually, has his favorite hooker. She’s been there the longest and has the highest status. This woman is referred to as his“bottom bitch.”

  I had the sudden realization that one of our most trusted friends had just turned out to be the“bottom bitch”to the Antichrist.

  “Well, men, I’ll look forward to seeing the lot of you upon your return. Good ol’Rodgers there will be sure to explain how he infiltrated your camp, befriended you, and lured you out into the open when we signaled him yesterday.”

  Patience wins wars. It ran through my head.

  “I was afraid you didn’t get the message sent by the Jeep, Rodgers. Unneeded worry, I can see. I almost pulled you from our captors when we had all of you tied up, but something told me that keeping you as one of them would pay off.”

  “You were right, Gordon. You should see the looks on their faces. This was worth it.”

  “I can’t wait to see it, Rodgers. We’ll catch up shortly. Over and out.”

  Glancing at Kyle, I noticed he had turned beet-red from the neck up, the anger stewing in his bloodshot eyes. Kyle wasn’t one to sit on his hands when his temper was flaring. Deep in my gut, I felt certain about one thing. There was no way in hell that we were heading back to see Gordon.

  Chapter 14

  My knuckles turned white.

  “Turn us around, Kyle,”Rodgers said, pointing the gun at Kyle’s head.

  “What are you going to do? Shoot me?”Kyle challenged in a very low, murderous tone.

  “I just might. There’s a shit-ton you don’t know about me. Now turn this fucking bird around.”

  “No, go ahead and shoot me,”Kyle replied. I think he was bluffing, but I’ll never know.

  “It’s not you I’m going to shoot. It’s your good buddy, John here that gets the first bullet.”

  Not the best news I had heard all day…

  Kyle’s eyes locked on to mine. He was stuck, and I certainly wasn't going to scream, pull the trigger.

  “You’re outta time, Kyle. Turn us around now, or your butt buddy bestie here isn’t gonna last another minute!”

  Kyle’s knuckles turned white against the yoke. Jarvis started to speak, but Rodgersstopped him.“I don’t want to hear from you, old man.”

  Flinching, I heard the firearm cock into place, something deep down I knew just to be for dramatic effect. It was working like a charm. My breathing stopped, and I waited for the bullet. For a moment, I found myself wondering which would come first: hearing the gunfire or feeling the bullet pierce my body.

  In my mind, I could practically hear the second hand of Kyle’s wristwatch tick slowly around the dial before what was left of the fading sun piercing through the portholes abruptly began to shift around the cabin. As Kyle turned the helicopter the full one hundred and eighty degrees back toward Gordon’s base, I felt the air slowly begin to enter my lungs. However, I found myself unable to ease the iron grip around the seat cushion that I’d unwittingly clasped below.

  “That’s a good boy, Kyle. I like the obedience. Now I get to bark out the orders.”

  Kyle didn't respond until he had us completely pointed back toward the direction from which we’d come.“Why, Rodgers? Why the hell would you work with that madman?”

  “Why?”Rodgers paused for a moment, looking up ever so slightly at the roof of the helicopter as if trying to compose himself.“Don’t get me wrong. I know we’ve been through some shit. I’ll even admit that there were a few days here and there where I actually thought I might be playing for the wrong team.”He spoke with a distant look in his eyes. Almost as if he felt some semblance of remorse for what he was now doing.

  “It isn’t too late, Rodgers. We can still put this behind us and head back to Avalon together. We can survive against Gordon,”Jarvis replied, slightly holding up his hands.

  “That’s funny coming from you, Jarvis. You think you’re the good guys,”Rodgers said with a laugh.

  “Well, what have we done, Rodgers? What have we done that makes us so evil?”

  “What have you done? Well, let’s add it up. First, you stole Avalon from a man that trusted you like a brother. If that wasn’t enough, you did it before my men and I had a chance to make it there. That’s right, I had a small force of ex-military friends and family that I was responsible for. We’d all made plans to meet up with Gordon as part of his utopia. We would have been there to protect it from people like you. It should have been our home. The home of my friends. My brothers. My family.”

  He stopped speaking for a moment, glaring at Jarvis with that all-to-familiar crazed look in his eyes.

  “We were a hundred miles away, pushing through hordes of the dead…all with the hope of finding refuge in our sanctuary. Instead, we were met with the nightmare of living off the land. There were over one hundred and fifty of us. Less than half were still alive by the time we finally emerged from the madness of those first months. Soaked in blood, and wrung out by Death…we’d been broken down to nothing by the time we met up with Gordon.”

  Ohh shit, I thought to myself.

  Pointing toward the Hulk, Rodgers sneered,“This big bastard lost his sister. Many of my men, goodmen, died. All because you didn’t like the ways things were being run by Gordon.”

  He had a venom in his voice that I had never heard from him before.

  “Do you, the good guys, have any idea how many people you killed because you decided to take over Avalon? Do you?”he screamed at the top of his lungs, giving me enough reason to wince back.

  Not one of us knew how the hell to respond. All that could be heard was the roar of the twin engines. The smell of piss, still lingering in the cockpit, served as the single distraction from the mounting tension.

  Jarvis broke the silence.“He’s a lunatic. You have to know that his plan for this so called utopia was never going to work. Gordon is wired all wrong! He does nothing, other than manipulate and try to control people. He’s probably using you too, Rodgers. It isn’t too late to make things right. You have a choice here. We can do it together.”

  “Ha! I think you’re confused, Jarvis. You’re the one who’s trying to manipulate people. You have everybody convinced that we can still follow the old world’s rules. We can be decent. We can be good. Everybody is equal. That is bullshit! In the
end, you actually believe you’re right and the rest of the world is wrong. Well, I’ve got news for you! There is no more good. All the good people died in the beginning. There’s not a single person alive who is still innocent.”

  Jarvis fought to stay composed through the screaming. However, for the briefest of moments, I saw him glance down…taking it all in. I hoped he wasn’t second-guessing his actions.

  “This makes you weak. I’ve watched as your numbers have dwindled. You’re too afraid to do what you need to in order to survive. You’ll be picked apart one by one. If it isn’t Gordon, it will be someone else who tears Avalon from your grasp. Hell, I volunteered for this job. After Gordon had told me all about you, I knew there was nochance to fail.”

  “So you’re just playing for what you think is the winning team?”I heard Kyle ask with an intentional note of sarcasm in his voice.

  Just as Rodgers was getting ready to respond, I felt my stomach move into my chest. The whole helicopter dropped, and then pulled back up. Throwing my hands across the dashboard to steady myself, I looked over to see Kyle throwing the yoke back and forth. I don’t know if he did it on purpose or if we hit another air pocket, but at that moment, everybody in the rear cabin was being thrown around like rag dolls.

  Rodgers fell back into the Hulk, and they were both pressed against the wall on the right. Jarvis was floating mid-air for a moment. It looked like he was weightless before he came crashing down to the ground.

  Just as the helicopter steadied, I heard Kyle scream out,“Go! You gotta get that gun!”

  My hands were shaking as I tore off the harness and leapt out of my seat. Jumping over Jarvis, who was still trying to pull himself up, I darted toward Rodgers, who was stunned. I could see the panic in his eyes as he fought to free himself from beneath the leg of the giant pinning him to the floor. As I came within striking distance, I realized his hand was no longer holding the gun.

  Frantically, I searched around the cabin for the weapon.