5

Sylvia Six Flags

 

 

January 20

P

rotected by only a fleece-lined windbreaker over the loose clothing of her work-camp uniform, Sylvia Morales shivered away the frigid darkness behind the abandoned entrance to the shale mine. Huddled next to her were three men in their mid-forties; two of them suffered from late-stage two and three cancers brought on by the carcinogens of all the shale they’d all been mining for over three years.

Behind, them one of the shift managers aimed the dim beam of his flashlight along the rugged, sharp-stone floor of the mine. The feeble light set the four of them off from the mire of darkness. By now, the 10 a.m. shift was underway, and they heard the thin echoing of feeble scrapings of shale being mined in distant shafts by other inmates working otherwise in silence. Noises carried. Voices carried. Their two-hour wait had been accentuated by their occasional hushed whispers and the restrained, dry coughs and light groans of pain from the two men suffering from cancer.

So far, they’d heard none of the shrill whistle alarms signifying a break, so they were safe. But it was only a short matter of time before their absences would show up through the worker’s roll call.

One of the two sick men was Hugh Blanc, Sylvia’s former associate and adjunct professor back in the philosophy department at Yale. The other one, Mitch Krane, had been an investigative journalist for the Washington Post until the Kenton Regime shut it down back in 2022. Having been in the Unqutuck Gulag for four years, Mitch was one of its veteran inmates, and after mining all those years, his cancer had advanced the farthest. His cloth mittens were stained and clotted hard with two months of the blood he had coughed up through his fetid, toothless mouth.

Dave Harleson, the shift manager who had guided them here and waited with them for their transport, provided three rucksacks piled near the door containing their scant belongings. In spite of the danger they were in, Dave risked the worst punishment. If he was caught in aiding their release, and wasn’t executed, he would be publicly whipped, then sent shirtless with his open sores into the mine with the other inmates. He’d be lucky to survive two months. In his mind, it would have been worth it as his contribution to the cause, and the importance of releasing Sylvia to carry out her grand plan.

The amputated third and fourth fingers of her right hand—sawed off recklessly after an onslaught of frostbite and gangrene two years before by the camp doctor, seared with stabs of hot pain as she flexed them. She clutched a ragged manilla envelope close to her chest as though she was protecting the child she regarded it to be. In it were pieces of notes, written with soft-lead nibs and hardened charcoal upon whatever paper could be gathered. Anything to write on was considered as criminal a possession as a weapon, so possession of paper was punishable as a whipping offense. Sylvia had had her back bared twice for flogging, because bits and pieces of blank, note-sized paper had twice been discovered in her pockets. The notes she now carried, written in code and shorthand, had been strategically scattered about within her, Mitch’s, and Hugh’s cells. Once sequestered under the protection of academia on the Yale campus, the three of them planned to put all their scribblings together as a Neo-Publica Manifesto. Her grand plan had been to advance its message though a massive public demonstration in front of the Kenton Tower offices in mid-Manhattan.

She heard a scuffle of footsteps in the snow. “I think they’re here, Dave,” she whispered breathlessly to her rescuer.

She stepped aside as he shouldered the door open a crack and aimed the beam of his torch down onto the snow. “Yeah. It’s them. Finally,” he said, as Brad pulled open the old door. “‘Bout time y’all got here, Brad,”

“Well, what can I say, Dave? We been waitin’ on the weather.” He peered over Dave’s shoulder. “Sylvia Morales. Great to finally meet you.”

She chortled ruefully that his greeting sounded like one at a faculty cocktail party. Then tears came to her eyes. She smiled for the first time in three years in the realization that simple remembrances like that had come to mean so much. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you.”

He extended his hand. “Your plane is waiting for you. You ready to go home, now?”

“More than ever,” she said, choked up by tears. She grasped his arm and he pulled her out from the moist darkness and into the free world—for what it was.

Dave ushered Hugh and Mitch up from behind where he remained in the shaft. “Sure you don’t want out too, Dave?” Brad asked. “I can Cat you back to Birch Creek.”

“I can do more here. ‘Sides, it might only add to more suspicion at camp if I turned up missin’ alla sudden. Who the hell knows? I might-can help later on to get some more people outta this hell-hole of a icebox.”

Brad smiled at him. “Well, at least let me come back with a quart of J.D. Black for ya.”

“Thanks, brother! I’ll never turn down a free toot from anyone. Y’all let me get back now...time to show up for work.”

Sylvia huddled Hugh and Mitch close to her to keep them all warm. “Aw, Dave, I could kiss you if I weren’t so fuckin’ frozen out here. Thanks for everything.”

She saw his mittened hand wave though the shaft’s murk. “You can pay me back with a kiss once you get done what you’re out there to do.”

She smiled back at him. “Well, you’ll have to meet me in New York City for that.”

“With pleasure.”

“A steak at Gallagher’s”

“With ab-so-lute pleasure, hon! Y’all just get that stuff of yours out there, y’all hear me?”

“With pleasure,” she said before he closed and sealed the door, perhaps for another three years. He knew where all twelve of the ancient and nearly forgotten entrances were—each one waiting for a new cache of released inmates.

————————————————————————-

Devon was not quite as enamored to meet Sylvia as Brad had been. His only concern was the ponderous weight she’d brought abroad with the two extra passengers. Knowing nothing about their circumstances, he worried that he might catch something from Mitch’s coughing spates, and then saw the blood covering his mittens. He looked over toward Sylvia crammed into the undersized right front seat next to his. “He okay?” Right away he knew it was a dumb question.

She looked over her shoulder at the two men now wrapped in quilted blankets and filling the little back bench seat as one big bundle. “You okay, guys? We’re going home!”

“I’ll celebrate once we’re outta here and on our flight from Fairbanks, Syl,” Hugh called weakly over the growing high rumble of the engine and the tinny rattle of the cockpit as Devon opened the throttle to half while braking to hold the plane back.

“Not me. I’ll wait til we’re in San Francisco—“ Mitch said, then broke into a spate of coughing. “Better yet, when we land in Boston.”

Sylvia trained her gaze out the windshield into the snowfall misting the fully realized high dawn, then looked at Devon. “I can’t see any runway. Can you see anything?”

“Nope.”

“Well, Devon. That certainly is a cause for confidence.” How ironic it would be if she’d come all these years—with all her sketched-out revelations—only to have it dashed in a plane crash on take-off two hundred yards from the prison that had silenced her for four years. Then she heard something else above the groan of the Maule’s engine—a higher tone, like the bleeping of a fire engine.

“Oh, shit!” Mitch coughed.

The snow intermittently glittered from the distant sweep of the searchlights.

“Get us outta here!” she said to Devon. “They’ve found we’re missing!”

Hoping that the engine was fully warmed, Devon set the mixture to rich, and jammed the throttle forward to full. He released the parking and foot brakes, and the Maule, her fuselage rattling and trembling, lurched into motion.

“Christ! Here we fucking go!” Hugh said, his voice tightened with concern.

The snowfall had now started to lift, providing more visibility of the departing plane.

The plane wobbled to get traction, accelerated to ten miles per hour—the skis chattered against the welts of the snow cover—twenty—the snow became dense as a deep foggy curtain; pattering as crystalline pellets against the windshield and fuselage—thirty—the skis juddered furiously on the snow—forty—almost there; but still no tail lift as the rear wheel skid was drawn down by the softening wet snow. The rotation speed for take off with a load such as this was around sixty-five. Forty-five—the tall tree line coalesced dimly through the snowfall as if under their own power, as they came toward them, they became clearer—

“Shit, Devon!” Sylvia cried. “Are we gonna hit those trees?”

The trees came closer as a forgone conclusion. Devon quickly throttled back a little as he adjusted his left foot on the toe and rudder pedal. “When I tell you all—lean far to your right!”

“What?” someone asked.

“Your right! Lean to your right! NOW!” Devon shouted as he jammed his foot down hard on the left rudder-brake pedal. The plane tilted as though on only its left ski as the horizon listed and swiveled around and the Maule turned ninety degrees left to face south. The plane now had only the edge of the left ski in the snow, and the left wingtip was nearly hitting the ground. The weight had to be counterbalanced, as the plane waddled ahead. “LEAN! MORE!” Devon shouted.

Finally, the Maule righted with a soft bang as the right ski hit back upon the snow, and Devon took his foot off the pedal and jammed the throttle to full as they wobbled ahead east—away from the wind. They’d lost some forward momentum in the runway-turn: thirty-five— skis again chattering in complaint against the snow—forty-five— Devon applied a notch of down-flap—fifty-two—the trees at the other end of the clearing came closer into view in the diminishing snow as the tail finally lifted—sixty—another notch of flaps; now to half —sixty-five—rotation speed for takeoff and a point of no return. Devon yanked back on the yoke then furiously cranked the elevator trim handle to offset the climb away from a possible engine stall. The Maule took to the air at a thirty-five-degree pitch. He thought he heard and felt the tip of one of the right skis catch on a treetop as they barely cleared it.

Sylvia let out a heavy sigh as her head went buoyant, and she felt her chest fall weightless toward her rising stomach in the g-force. Devon leveled out the flight at 750 feet, and she settled back down into one piece. “Jesus! That that was...interesting. I haven’t had that much fun since my last trip to Six Flags.”

“You don’t seem like the Six Flags type to me,” Devon said as he settled back into his seat, then flicked the flaps back up to neutral. “When was that?”

“When I was twelve, Devon. And you don’t have to question me any further on that.” She looked behind her at Mitch and Hugh bunted up in their quilts in the backseat. She smiled, realizing how yellowed and browned her teeth might have become. Vanity was just another luxurious little devil. “You guys having fun?”

“I’m too busy back here puking up nothing,” Hugh said.

Mitch waved his acknowledgement through another clasp of coughing.

“Well, that happened,” Devon said relieved as he fondly recalled his flying days during the war. He reached into a pocket for his pack of cigarettes and noticed Sylvia leering longingly at it. “You want one?”

“Oh yeah. But after three years, I think I forgot how. I was just remembering how much I’d enjoyed it.”

“Here. Take one then. A late Merry Christmas to you, Sylvia,”

“Thanks.” She took the mitten off her left hand—intact with all its fingers, took the Marlboro in her shaking hand, and regarded it longingly as a relic. Devon lit his, then hers. She coughed.

Devon offered up a smile. “Take it easy, cowgirl.” He looked ahead into the thinning snow and the brightening silver-clouded grey sky. He banked the Maule north toward Fort Yukon. “Looks like we’re losing our cover. We’ll need to stay low outta the radar.” He said more to himself as he throttled to half to bring the plane down from fifteen hundred to a thousand feet and below the radar tracking from below.

“What the fuck was that?” Mitch gasped.

“What?” Devon said, as a sliver glimmer caught his eye. “Well, it’s a tracking drone.”

“Shit,” Hugh muttered. “Are we ever gonna get out of that fucking place?”

“Yes!” Sylvia assured him. Then to Devon: “Right?”

Devon bit his chapped lower lip in the sudden realization that if the PRICE goons ever tracked them down, he, too wold end up chipping shale in the bowels of hell for the rest of his days. “Not if I can fuckin’ help it,” he said, as the drone leveled itself with the right landing gear. “Keep an eye on that thing, Sylvia, and tell me if it moves from where it is.”

“Can you do something?”

He peered at a dense copse of high trees a few miles ahead of them. He remembered a tactic he’d used back in the shit when an RPG tracked onto his plane. But then, his twin-engine Cessna had twice the speed, power, maneuverability, and body strength of this little Maule-7. “Maybe.” He lowered the throttle to one-quarter, then jammed down the right rudder pedal, while pulling left on the yoke for a tight, synchronized quarter-turn. He heard the clanking impact of the drone against the right ski-strut.

“You crashed into the drone,” Sylvia duly told him.

“Yeah. That’s what I wanted to do.”

Sylvia heard the light clattering of the drone’s two fore-props against the tip of the ski. She took a jab on her cigarette. “Well now their tracking drone is stuck to us.”

“Right.” The whooshing of the cold air filled the cockpit as Devon opened the window vent on his side to flick his cigarette out through it and left it open to air out the stench of body-smells. He lowered his flaps a notch and cranked down the elevator trim to slow and lower the plane. Eight hundred feet—the plane shuddered and yawed against the wind. Five hundred feet—once again trees loomed upon them, a hundred yards ahead. He flicked on the landing lights. Three hundred—almost at treetop level as they passed over the first line of them; he idled the throttle and the plane wiggled into a low-powered glide. Two hundred—Devon picked out one of the taller trees and banked toward it. It lightly scraped the bottom the plane, and the landing gear, dislodging the ruined drone, and along with it, the ski, which had been already loosened upon take off. He then immediately throttled up full and pulled back on the yoke as he added another notch of flaps for altitude.

“The ski fell off,” Sylvia warned him. She seemed more excited than scared. “Did you want that to happen, too?”

“We still have a wheel.”

“Well, that’s comforting, I guess.”

“Do me a favor, Sylvia, and flick on that map light to your right.” She did.

Once they were back up to 1,000 feet and flying level, he lifted the map from between the seats. “Take up your yoke, Sylvia, and keep us level, while I look at this map.”

“You want me to fly this thing?”

“Oh, Jeeezuzz,” Hugh complained from the back. He remembered riding with her when she drove her Volkswagen back in the day. “Syl flying a plane?”

“Shut up, Hugh,” she chortled as she grasped the yoke in both hands.

The Maule juddered a little as Devon throttled back to half. He spied the glimmer of the Yukon River in the distance, then spread out the map on his lap and saw where they were to land on the ice-covered river almost ten miles east of the Fort Yukon airport. He only hoped the air-temp was less than ten degrees out there. If the snow was too soft on landing—if the temperature was any higher than ten degrees—a wheel without a ski would sink in, causing a spin-out and a sudden foreword tilt. If the ice were thin, as it could be even in January, and if the river was too shallow, the nose weight could crack the ice, especially if the prop was still powered up as it should be on such a landing. The torque of the prop could chop a hole in the ice and collapse them into the frigid water.

He squinted ahead and saw the pinpoint glimmers of flame light marking their landing path on the river. “There’s our spot, Sylvia. Ten degrees to the right. See it?”

She swiped off her watch cap. Devon noticed her ragged hair was a deep chestnut color, bordering on black. Bundled up as she was, he hardly imagined a person within the garb. “I think so.”

“Aim us there, turn the yoke toward the right, just a little.”

“You really do want me to fly this thing?”

Devon was confident he could even teach an elephant to fly. Acting the part of an instructor calmed him down. “Just ease her toward the right. Good. Stop there. Now do you see those marker lights?”

“Yeah. I think.”

“That’s your point. Keep us going there. Now, lower the nose a little. Push in on the yoke. Not so hard! Just ease it in.” The altimeter showed they were descending slowly at ten degrees below the horizon at a rate of six hundred feet a minute. “Good, Sylvia. Hold us just like this.” He throttled down a little more and applied a second notch of flaps, as the flickering runway lamps seemed to be rising up upon them more than the actuality of them coming closer to the lamps. After a minute of watching Sylvia relax her concentration, he reached for his controls. “Okay, I’ll take it from here. Good job, and welcome back to the real world,”

She choked up and felt as though she could kiss him, but she was afraid of the fright she would cause from her breath. Instead, she opened her vent window and flicked out her cigarette as Devon had done. Somehow the rushing air smelled fresher than she could ever remember.

Devon had landed on one wheel before, and this landing was not as difficult as he was concerned it might be. It was merely a matter of applying more left aileron and tapping the brakes. The Maule skittered into an easy stop on the hardened ice.

A grey half-track was waiting to take them to the Fort Yukon airport, where Devon would fly them on to Fairbanks in a tour plane as if the extractees from Unqutuck gulag were just three moose hunters on a jaunt.

————————————————————————-

Finally in Fort Yukon, Hugh and Mitch were secured into place in the spacious, warmed passenger cabin. Washed up and somewhat more groomed and dressed in civilian clothing and a clean, white parka, Sylvia savored the fresh, mint taste of toothpaste in her mouth. She stood at the base of the ladder to climb into the big Cessna, as she hugged her precious envelope closer to her chest. She still wore a mitten to hide the ugly, cauliflowered tips of her brutally amputated fingers. She leaned her head back to bask in the sun as if it was something she’d waited to do for four years. “Thank you so much, Devon,” she said as he stepped up beside her. “You really are one hell of a pilot. And thanks for the flying lesson.”

“You’re welcome, Sylvia Six Flags. Anything more I can do for you?”

She lifted her sunglasses to harden a friendly gaze into him. “Yes, there is.” He sensed an important request as he stared back into her deep brown eyes. Serious. She puckered a tight, impish smile while trying not to display her damaged teeth. “You got another cigarette you can give me?”

He smiled back and handed her his nearly full pack of Marlboros and his spare Zippo. “Keep ‘em, Sylvia. You earned it.”