“You’re not going, Tucci,” Rocco said, shouting to be heard.
She’d thought the hangar was spacious before, but with the blast doors open and flooded with weak October sunlight, it felt massive. On the ledge outside the open hangar doors, the rotors of the helicopter were a spinning, semi-translucent blur. Victor sat in the pilot’s seat; between the white helmet and his mirrored sunglasses, his expression was unreadable.
Rocco’s hand thumped on her shoulder and twirled her around.
“You’ve been drinking, for Christ’s sake!”
Despite the truth of his statement, it had been one glass of wine. She knew she’d be fine. She shouted over the roar of the rotors. “Do you trust him to come back? Because I don’t.”
Rocco’s exasperation was plain. He leaned closer to her ear. “Exactly what do you think you can do? If he wants to fly off, you can’t stop him!”
She looked into Rocco’s brown eyes. She’d never noticed how warm they were—how caring—until the night she’d broken down and told him everything. Now she didn’t know how she’d missed it.
“See you later.”
Phineas waved as she walked through the blast doors. Alec waited on the helipad. He gave her the sharp edge of a grin when he leaned in close.
“Good luck.”
She nodded, glad that he was here to see her off. Now that she was doing it, she was nervous. She took the few steps to the cockpit, pausing before stepping inside. You’ve got this, she told herself.
Victor looked up and pointed to the helmet on her seat. She picked it up, surprised at the weight, and slipped it on as she sat down. She adjusted the chin strap. It was still a little big. Then Victor’s voice buzzed in her ears.
“You don’t need to do this,” Victor said, his voice tinny through the headset. “I’m not gonna fly off and leave you guys.”
“That’s what Rocco thinks,” she replied.
Victor’s mouth twisted to the side, then he shook his head. “Fasten your harness. And be quiet. It’s been a while… I need to concentrate.”
Miranda gave him a thumbs-up, then looked forward. Her heart thumped in her chest. She’d never flown in a helicopter before, and despite her bravado, was kind of freaked out. This thing had been mothballed for a decade, and now she was going to fly off in it with a guy she wouldn’t trust to tell her sunshine was warm. Rocco was right that she wouldn’t be able to do anything if Victor decided to fly off to only God knew where. She could pull her gun on him, but she couldn’t shoot him unless she wanted to die in a crash. Even she didn’t have that much of a death wish.
The vibration of the helicopter penetrated her bones, and even with the noise-canceling headsets, was noisy as hell. The vibration intensified, the whine and roar of the rotors growing louder. And then…a feeling of weightlessness, as if her seat had been welded tight to the Earth and then broke free. They rose into the air with a light rocking motion that was unlike flying in a plane, rising above the forest ceiling and into the gray sky above. Below her, the vista of trees and mountain, of buildings in the distance too far away to look neglected, opened wide. She inhaled sharply, overwhelmed by the vantage point, by a view that had once been commonplace from aircraft and ski lifts and skyscrapers. They soared through the air, gravity’s hold loosened by human ingenuity.
They banked left with a swoop, and Miranda’s stomach lurched. “Oh no.”
“You okay?”
She looked at Victor. He looked straight ahead, glancing at the seemingly endless dials on the dashboard. “It’s a little swoopy.”
He glanced at her. “You don’t get motion sick, do you?”
“Kinda,” she said, a sinking feeling that the helicopter played no part of hitting her in the stomach.
Victor’s large arm pointed across her. “Airsick bags.” He paused, then said, “I have to put this thing through its paces. You might get sick.”
She whimpered, the sound lost in the drone of the rotors. People make their own hell, she thought, and she was no exception.
She tried to distract herself with the view as they flew north. She’d assumed they would fly west, over Portland, but they hugged the spine of the Cascade Range. Victor barely spoke, and when he did, it was to himself as the helicopter swooped right and left, up and down. He even turned it three hundred sixty degrees in place. He checked dials and readouts and at one point, tapped on the glass over one of them, which sent a jolt of anxiety through her. She thought they only did that kind of thing in movies.
Victor’s voice crackled through the headset. “That’s Mount Saint Helens to the northeast.”
She followed the line of his pointing finger, hoping her quick compliance would return his hand back to flying the helicopter. The flattened, almost horizontal summit of Mount Saint Helens stood in contrast to the pointed peak of Mount Hood, a reminder of the violent eruption that had blown off the top of the volcano. She looked straight ahead again. It wasn’t quite as bad as looking sideways, which caused an unpleasant constriction in the back of her throat.
A few minutes later, a break in the clouds to her left revealed the blunted peak of Mount Rainier. Its white shroud of snow melted into the dark blues and greens of the forest on its lower slopes. Miranda had seen it countless times since she used to visit Portland as a child, but never from this vantage point. Even on a day like this, when the gray of late autumn dampened the light, it filled her with awe.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Sure is,” Victor said.
She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud, and didn’t say anything in reply. They flew north for about ten minutes more, then the helicopter banked east—but not sharply.
“Are we going back?”
“Yeah. Got what I needed.”
When he didn’t say more, she said, “So it’s working okay?”
“It’ll do.”
Her spirits soared, like the non-nauseous birds of prey she had tried to picture herself as. “Is it good for long distances?”
“Should be.”
“And we’re going back to the bunker now, right?”
“Just like I said.” He glanced at her, grinning, then his gaze stayed on her. She couldn’t see his eyes, but his lips compressed into a frown. “Are you okay?”
She was so relieved, giddy even, that the helicopter was working—and that he seemed to be keeping his word. She was also immersed in the struggle to not throw up, so for a moment his question didn’t register.
“Pretty green,” she said, seeing no point in lying.
“Sorry about that. I had to make sure—”
“It’s fine,” she said, cutting him off. Needing to concentrate on his voice made the nausea worse. Ahead of them to the south, the colors of Mount Hood seemed smudged by the veil of clouds that had drifted across it.
Victor said, “No more fancy stuff. You’ll be on the ground before you know it.”
“Thank God.”
He laughed. She struggled to tease out the tone of his voice and was startled when she realized it was sympathy. Even more surprising, it made her dislike him a tiny bit less, which made her uncomfortable. She knew she had to adjust her attitude about him, but she hadn’t considered that she might actually be wrong. Maybe he really did want to make a fresh start. Maybe he hadn’t always been a creep. Or maybe this generous impulse on her part was due to the lack of swooping and dipping.
The ground beneath them sped past, and soon they were following the line of the Columbia River. Even though conifer trees were more predominant in Oregon, there were a lot of deciduous trees, too. Miranda admired the yellows and reds of their turning leaves. Mount Hood grew larger, and she tried to figure out how far up the mountain the bunker was.
“How are you going to find the helipad again?” she asked, suddenly alarmed. She had no idea where it was, or how one navigated in a helicopter.
He must have heard the concern in her voice, for he said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got the coord—” He stopped talking, then said, “On the ground ahead, your one o’clock. Doesn’t look good.”
Where Victor had indicated, the land nudged the river into a northward bend. The bend was over a mile long before the river wound south again, with a ragged-edged sandy beach between the water and the forest. The beach was deep, a quarter mile in some places, the trees held in abeyance by the inhospitable sand. Hundreds of zombies spilled out from the trees, tumbling onto the beach, already halfway to the river. A group of people—twenty, maybe more—huddled on the sandy riverbank.
The helicopter began to descend.
“What are you doing?”
“Landing,” Victor said, as if it were self-evident. “We have to get them.”
On the beach, some of the trapped people had formed a fan-shaped perimeter around the rest of their group, the fighters, the strongest of them, attempting to defend the rest in a doomed last stand.
She knew they had to help, but she could see it playing out in her mind’s eye like a movie—too many people rushing them, climbing on board, weighing them down. Zombies latching on to the skids as they tried to lift off, the added weight tipping them sideways. Rotors chopping into the sand before smashing, jagged pieces of the blades hurtling across the beach. The moans and snarls and hisses as the undead overwhelmed them. If the helicopter didn’t crash, they might get away. They might reach the river and swim to safety, like the people down there should be doing. But they might not, and then she’d never get home. She’d never see Mario again, never make things right. Never know what happened to Father Walter and Doug and the rest of her friends. Never coax Kendall out of his bunker and into the world. Never know if the Portland vaccine would end the ruthless reign of the Council.
“We can’t risk the helicopter,” she said.
“There are people down there,” Victor said, sounding aghast at her unstated suggestion that they leave the people stranded below to their fate.
“What if there’s too many and we can’t lift off?”
“You do what I say when we land,” Victor said. Even through the mild distortion of the headset, his tone brooked no argument. “Now shut up.”
She bit her lip to keep from saying something stupid. She knew he was right, and she knew that if he listened to her, she’d hate herself for it. But the idea of it ending here, with all the damage she’d done never healed, was almost too much to bear. She was ashamed of how much she wanted to keep going, to turn away rather than risk it.
The people on the beach had noticed them. Those near the water’s edge jumped up and down, waving their arms frantically. Some of those on the firing line did, too, but more stayed facing the horde. They flew low over the river now, and Miranda thought Victor would go straight for the people. Instead, they dropped even lower and flew to the zombies.
Zombies didn’t have good balance at the best of times. But now, with the rotor wash pounding down, they toppled like pieces of straw. They banked left, making another pass. As they flew by, she saw some of the people on the beach had been knocked down, too. They made a final pass, but this time they didn’t overshoot the huddled group waiting for them. Slowly, the helicopter descended. Even though most of them were struggling on the ground to get back to their feet, Miranda’s breath caught in her throat when she saw how close the leading edge of the horde was. She could distinguish faces as the zombies crawled and lurched to their feet.
When the skids hit the ground, Victor started flipping switches. Then he leaped from his seat, shouting for her to follow. She scrambled after him, not taking her helmet off since Victor hadn’t taken off his. He stood at the side door just behind the cockpit. He had opened a box near the top of the mounted gun in the door and was feeding a bandolier of .50 caliber shells into it. He pointed at the tail of the helicopter.
“We can’t open the ramp because of the rear gun.” She nodded. The gun in the center at the back of the helicopter was huge. He pointed at the door almost directly across from them. “Open that door and get them inside.”
He slammed the lid on the gun shut and got behind it. It erupted in a staccato barrage of gunfire. The bullets blew off legs, vaporized heads, cut down swaths of the coming horde, many with enough damage that they couldn’t get up. They still dragged or rolled, writhing toward the noise of the helicopter. And still, behind them, the endless waves of zombies spilled out from the trees, but now the horde’s attention was on the roar of the helicopter. A primal jolt of fear ripped through Miranda’s core as they turned and adjusted course, almost as one organism.
She tore herself away and opened the door, struggling with the handle for what felt like a year. She shoved the door open, thinking she was ready for the rotor wash as she jumped out, but it pushed her hard against the body of the helicopter. She bent her knees, steadying herself. Sand and grit pinged off her helmet and visor. The people were already running toward the helicopter, dragging others along. Their hair swirled wildly, eyes squinted almost shut.
“Jesus,” she gasped.
The ones who’d been behind the line of defenders were mostly children. The older children ran alongside the adults. She didn’t need to encourage anyone inside, though she boosted many of them up. She took children from the adults carrying them and shoved them through the door while the adults ran back to help others. She scanned the beach but the last person, a dirty, bedraggled woman, was beside her.
“Is that everyone?” she shouted, wanting to make sure.
The woman nodded. Miranda motioned for her to climb inside, giving her a nudge. When she was inside herself, she pulled the door shut behind her, making sure it was locked.
Miranda patted Victor’s shoulder. “Everyone’s inside.”
Zombies still surged from under the tall pines. Closer, the beach was a mass of blown-apart bodies. Black blood stained the sand, made trails behind the zombies that crawled and dragged themselves forward, like the unnatural slime of toxic snails.
Immediately, the gunfire ceased. Miranda turned back to their passengers, who huddled on the seats along the walls and around the rear gun, which took up much of the cargo area.
“Sit down,” she told the few people still standing. “Hold on to something.”
When she reached the cockpit, Victor already had his hand on the stick. She pulled her harness into place. By the time she felt the buckle snap, the skids had broken gravity’s grip. The zombies behind the charnel of the first wave stumbled and tripped. Those that fell got up, like they always did.
An alarmed cry filled the cargo hold when they banked left abruptly. Miranda tried to twist in her seat to see if anyone had been hurt, but she didn’t have a clear line of sight. It would have to wait until they got somewhere safe.
Victor’s voice filled her ears when he said, “Good job.”
She looked at him, but he was absorbed in the task of flying the helicopter.
“You too,” she said.
There was just enough room to land the helicopter in the gap between the trench and LO’s palisade. Their arrival had created quite a stir, and an initial welcome of pointed gun barrels and wary faces, until those inside recognized Miranda and Victor.
For a while, Miranda would have sworn that every single person at LO was in the kidney-shaped parking lot. Larry, the Comm Shack operator and designated ‘In Charge’ person while Rocco was away, had quickly taken charge of the chaotic scene and getting the new arrivals to quarantine. Most of the gawkers had dispersed, but an undercurrent of excited energy made the air hum. The people they’d rescued had been making their way to Portland—they’d heard about the vaccine—when their boat hit something in the river and rapidly sank. Of the forty-two people on board, fourteen adults and eighteen children had made it to the beach. A scouting party of four people left to find a safe place. One returned, along with the horde that had been in the trees. It had been coincidence, luck, that Miranda and Victor had arrived when they did. Even five minutes later—
Miranda shuddered. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened if they’d arrived later, or if Victor had listened to her. Every grateful thank-you from the shell-shocked survivors had shamed her, until she’d retreated to the main gate’s watchtower. She stood on the catwalk, even though it reminded her of the terrible night when she, Doug, and Rocco had struggled to get the drawbridge up to save the community from a different horde. Victor had been part of why that night had happened, been part of the attack that almost wiped out LO. Miranda found she couldn’t dredge up the usual bitterness.
Larry and Victor came into view around the last turn of the narrow road from the parking lot. Miranda sighed, happy that they’d be leaving for the bunker. They’d been gone almost two hours. Everyone there must be frantic. Larry was smiling at Victor; a genuine smile, not the guarded one she’d seen on his face before when Victor was around. She was just about to call out to them when a woman darted into view behind them. It was Noelle, looking pale and anxious.
“Victor!”
Victor turned back, then said, sounding distracted, “Give me a minute.”
“That was some entrance, Miranda,” Larry said when he reached her at the gate; she’d come down to meet him. He ran his hand over his comb-over, looking a bit awestruck.
“I guess it was.”
She wasn’t close enough that she could hear their conversation, but Noelle’s face glowed with relief, quickly followed by concern. She didn’t know where Victor had gone or what he was doing, and then he showed up in a helicopter, so it was understandable. Her eyes were moist and bright. Victor’s tender smile, and the gentleness with which he cupped his hand alongside Noelle’s cheek, made no secret of how he felt about her.
“If they don’t hit the sheets when he gets back, one of them is gay,” Miranda said under her breath.
Larry laughed. “I’m starting to think he might be all right.” His voice became thoughtful. “He got really uncomfortable when he heard me telling people what he did to save those people, like he didn’t deserve any credit. He said he hadn’t been sure about it because you guys might get mobbed.”
“That’s not what happened,” Miranda said. “He—” She snapped her mouth shut. She’d almost said that Victor never hesitated, that she’d been the one who hadn’t wanted to stop, but she couldn’t admit that, not yet. At Larry’s quizzical expression, she said, “Doesn’t matter.”
“Maybe he really is trying to turn over a new leaf.”
Part of her didn’t want to agree with Larry, but after the day’s events, she couldn’t come up with a counter-argument. She still didn’t trust Victor, but perhaps what he’d said about wanting to get back to the person he’d been before all this had been true. She sucked at trusting people—she might not be the best judge. Softly, she said, “I think he is.”
When they were out of the gate, Miranda said, “What did you tell Noelle about the helicopter?”
Victor glanced at her, his brows knitted low. ‘Are you kidding me?’ was written all over his face. “Nothing. Just that I’d be back when I could.”
“You did a good thing today, Victor. I may have misjudged you.”
He stopped midstep, his blue eyes wide with a surprise that he quickly covered. “It really wasn’t a big deal.”
“Tell that to the people who were on the beach.”
His mouth settled into a frown. He looked at her, but he wasn’t seeing her. After a long moment, he said, “I don’t deserve any pats on the back. I have a lot to make up for.”
She knew how that felt. “You were right. I’m glad you didn’t listen to me.”
Victor’s mouth opened, then closed. After another moment’s hesitation, he said, “That’s not your style. I don’t know you well, but I know that.”
She’d never wanted the earth to open up and swallow her whole more than she did right now. Of all the people she never wanted to admit something like this to, Victor was at the top of the list. She looked at her feet, unable to meet his eyes, then steeled herself to peek up at him.
“I was afraid if… If we lost the helicopter, then I wouldn’t be able to use it to get home.”
“You’re going to need a pilot to do that.”
“Yeah,” she said, so uncomfortable she wanted to crawl out of her skin. “I was going to ask you. You have no reason to do it, I get that. I haven’t been very…nice…to you.”
One corner of his mouth quirked up, and a glint of amusement flickered in his eyes. “Seeing you the day after we heard about SCU, I figured you’d want to go home. Looked like you went on a hell of a bender.”
“Something like that,” she muttered, remembering how drunk she’d been when she’d finally confessed everything she’d been holding inside to Rocco.
Victor turned away, and her heart sank. He wasn’t going to help her. It was what she’d expected, but the disappointment tasted bitter in her mouth.
“Get a move on,” he said over his shoulder. “The sooner we get the food here, the sooner we can go.”
“Are you sure you won’t come? Just for a little while?”
Miranda and Kendall stood in the bunker’s hangar. The others were already in the helicopter with the last of the food they were taking to LO for now. Kendall’s hands fidgeted, his thumb worrying the broken section of another of his fingernails. He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“I’m not ready for that.”
Miranda sighed, hope draining down into her toes.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen when we get to San Jose. There’s a chance I may never come back.”
Kendall nodded, the owl blink kicking into high gear. “I know.”
The corners of her eyes began to prickle, promising tears. Kendall hadn’t set foot outside the bunker since Rich died. It didn’t seem likely he would anytime soon, and it was her fault. Even though she knew Rocco had every intention of coming out regularly to check on Kendall, and Kendall had even said he might be open to people coming out to live here once he had time to get used to the idea, she hated him being stuck here. She felt responsible. She’d accused him of being the reason Rich died, and all the progress he’d made fizzled. He was still trapped in his gilded cage.
She almost couldn’t bear it, but she’d have to. Shame welled up into her throat, making it tight.
“Don’t cry,” Kendall said, sounding alarmed.
She dashed the unwelcome tears away and bit down on her tongue to get them under control. When she thought she could speak without sounding too emotional, she said, “Will you promise to at least try?”
Kendall smiled, a tentative one. “I’ll try. I promise.”
She wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight. He returned the hug with just as much emotion
. “Thank you,” she said softly.
When the hug ended, she took a step back, glancing over to the helicopter.
“Good luck,” Kendall said. “I hope this guy knows what he has in you.”
That made her grin. If he knew what she’d put Mario through, he might revise that assessment. She took Kendall in one last time…the dark eyes and hair, the slender frame, the owl blink. He did look stronger, more sure of himself than when she’d first met him. Maybe someday he’d find it in himself to leave this place.
“See you when I see you,” she said.
She turned and walked quickly to the helicopter. She didn’t look back, afraid of how much it would hurt to watch him stay behind. Phineas gave her a thumbs-up from the cockpit as she approached, his face split by a grin below the helmet he wore. Phineas was so excited to be sitting in the cockpit that she was surprised he wasn’t levitating. Rocco gave her a hand up. She strapped herself into one of the jump seats along the cargo hold wall, between River and Alec. Clicks and beeps began in the cockpit, followed by the hum of the engine and the slow vibration of the rotors beginning to turn.
As the helicopter lifted off, Alec gave her knee a quick squeeze, and said, “He’ll be all right.”
She nodded but felt distracted. A tight ball of anxiety twisted her stomach. It radiated out to the tips of her toes and fingers and the crown of her head, as if her stomach were the sun and the rest of her body the solar system. At least now she knew to take something for motion sickness so she wasn’t queasy. She forced herself to breathe, in and out, steady and slow, because the closer they got to LO, the more anxious she became. She was one step closer to going home. They were leaving tomorrow at first light. She was getting exactly what she wanted: to go home, to see if she could find and help the people she loved. If they were even there, even alive. If she never got the chance to—
Stop it, she said to herself, trying to push her fear away, lest she somehow make it come true.
“They’re okay,” she muttered to herself.
They had to be okay. Mario would be there, and she’d tell him she hadn’t meant the horrible things she’d said. She’d tell him how sorry she was, and that she still loved him, and beg him to give her another chance.
She prayed it would be enough.