Chapter 14

The Wrath of Mother Nature:

A sense of melancholy swept through Dust. He watched in silence as Raymond and the others waved them off. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw see Josie start to lift her hand. He turned, lifted his hand, and wiped his fingertips gently across her cheek.

“You okay?” he quietly asked into the microphone attached to his helmet.

She nodded, but he could see the trembling of her fingers. Unsure of what to do, he reached over and cupped her hand in his. She threaded her fingers through his and held on. Returning his gaze to the window of the closed door, he saw that the snow had fallen on the higher elevations in the distance.

A shiver ran through him as the frigid air inside the helicopter swept over him. He blinked when he felt a wave of warmth glide up his arm and over his body. He turned and looked at Josie again. She was resting her head against the backrest of the seat, and a small smile was on her lips. He squeezed her fingers in gratitude. Looking out the window again, he watched as they swept over the tall mountains of the Rockies, heading northwest.

* * *

An hour into the flight, Dust was jolted awake when the helicopter violently dropped. He grabbed onto a bar next to the door. Josie loudly cursed when the helicopter tilted.

“Make sure you’re strapped in tight. We are in for a rough ride,” the pilot stated in their headset.

“Where are the parachutes?” Josie muttered, frantically looking around.

“I don’t think it would help if we had one,” he replied, desperately looking out the window at the storm. “Where is the other helicopter?”

“They’re behind us. They’ll see the storm and go around,” the co-pilot answered.

The soldier sitting next to them looked grimly down at the ground. Dust’s dark eyes focused on the storm. There was something wrong. He could feel it. Josie squeezed his hand to get his attention.

“What’s going on?” Josie mouthed, nodding toward the soldier.

Dust shook his head. She sensed it as well. Looking back at the soldier, he leaned forward.

“Does this happen often?” Dust demanded.

The soldier glanced at him and nodded before returning his attention to the storm. Dust was about to ask why they came this way if it did when the sound of alarms began to blare. He immediately looked toward the front of the helicopter and saw multiple lights flashing on the console.

He winced and closed his eyes when a brilliant flash of green light blinded him. A fraction of a second later, he heard a loud snap and the helicopter began to spiral at a dizzying speed. The alarms became louder before the movement slowed. Dust heard the pilot yelling at them to brace for a hard landing. Frigid air blasted them when one of the doors of the helicopter was ripped loose. The sound of metal-on-metal above the roar of the wind resonated through his head before everything went dark as they impacted with the ground.

* * *

“Pull the clip out. Do you know how to use a firearm?”

Dust could hear the urgency in the man’s voice, and it pulled him back to consciousness.

The world looked funny. There was a hazy green hue to it. He turned his head and realized that he was lying on the ground several yards away from the remains of the helicopter. The three soldiers were unloading it. One was inside handing equipment to the second one who was standing at the door tossing the items down to the third. Josie stood over him.

“I use my own brand of firepower,” she said, wrapping her arms around her waist.

Dust groaned as he pushed himself into a sitting position. Josie immediately knelt next to him. She was looking at him with a worried expression mixed with awe.

“What… What happened?” he asked in a thick voice.

Josie ran a warm hand along his cheek. “You saved us,” she informed him. “Again.”

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He blinked and looked at the helicopter. It was lying on its side, the rotor was shattered and some of the blades were missing or twisted at a grotesque angle. One skid was still intact while half of the other was gone. The canopy of the cockpit was torn open and at least half of it was buried in the rocky surface of the mountain.

He looked up at the trees. Most were dead and several nearby had parts of the helicopter embedded in their broken limbs and trunks. A light snow had begun to fall. He frowned when he saw that it had a green tint.

“Why is the snow green?” he mumbled.

Josie released a shaky laugh. “I have no idea. Maybe the Jolly Green Giant took a piss,” she answered with a shake of her head.

“I think it would still be yellow,” Dust replied, still feeling dazed.

“You might want to put this on,” suggested one soldier, whose name tag read B. Daniels.

Dust looked at the heavy clothing the man was holding out. Rising unsteadily to his feet, he took the outfit. There was a pair of weather-resistant dark thermal lined beige pants, a matching jacket, gloves, sock cap, thick socks, and to his surprise, a pair of boots.

“Major Mendoza thought of everything,” Josie replied.

He blinked and looked at Josie again, realizing for the first time that she was dressed in a similar type of clothing. She grinned and shrugged. He saw her look down at herself.

“I don’t really need it, but it was nice of her to think of me. I decided it might help conserve some of my energy,” she said.

Dust nodded and looked around again. He pulled on the jacket before kicking off his left shoe and sliding his foot into the pants. Josie helped to steady him when he wobbled. He pulled on a sock over the pair he was wearing and slid his foot into the boot before repeating the procedure with his other leg. Once he had fastened the pants, he bent over and laced up the boots. They were a pretty good fit with the thick socks on.

“What happened? Where are we? And where is the other helicopter?” he demanded.

“Right before we hit the ground, you made some kind of shield. You literally pulled the pilot and co-pilot out of their seats and encased us all in this bubble, then pulled us out of the helicopter,” Josie explained.

Dust paused as he pulled on the sock cap. He looked at Josie with a confused expression before looking at the helicopter again. He didn’t remember any of that.

“We’re on the edge of the dead zone,” the pilot stated.

“The dead zone?” Dust repeated.

“My name is Captain Eric Bowling. He’s Captain Dave Matthews. You’ve met Sergeant Brian Daniels. This area is part of the dead zone. The storms don’t normally move this far north. The zone is spreading north and south. The scientists studying it believe it will cut off the west coast within a year at the rate it is spreading,” Bowling explained.

“Not that there is a lot left of the west coast,” Matthews replied, dropping two packs next to him and Josie. “One is for you, the other is for you.”

“We need to get out of here. This site will be a magnet,” Bowling continued.

“A magnet for what?” Dust asked.

He wondered if he hit his head during the crash. Everything felt strange, disconnected, and he was having a hell of a job focusing on everything that was said and done. The other men must have sensed his confusion.

“Bad things,” Daniels stated as he was loading another pack.

“Let’s move out,” Bowling ordered.

Dust was about to protest when Josie touched his arm. She shook her head and gave the men a wary look. Understanding that she was trying to warn him about something, he kept quiet.

He bent over, picked up Josie’s pack, and held it out for her to slide her arms into it. After her pack was securely strapped on, he strapped his on as well. He widened his eyes when she held out an energy bar that she had pulled from his pocket. Taking it, he sent her a grateful smile before ripping it open and devouring it.

“Don’t let your energy get low,” she murmured under her breath. “We need to watch our backs with these guys and with whatever else is out here.”

He glanced out under his lashes at the three soldiers. They were huddled together a short distance away, waiting for him and Josie. He saw Bowling look in their direction with a sharp, suspicious expression on his face.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“The crash itself is sort of hazy. You probably remember about as much of it as I do. After the door took out the rear rotor, lightning hit it on the top, and we went into a tilt-a-whirl on steroids ride to the ground,” she shared.

“I remember all of that,” he said, walking slightly behind her as they followed the three men.

“Do you remember creating the bubble wrap around us and flinging us out the door?” she asked, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Maybe—a little,” he grudgingly admitted.

He did remember—and it scared the crap out of him. He had never physically transported anyone before, including himself. Sure, he had basically become invisible and passed through walls, but he had never been able to do it with someone else.

There had been more than that, though. The green mist that swept inside the helicopter had supercharged him. He’d felt like someone had plugged him into an electrical outlet. Then there had been the lightning strike. The hair on the back of his neck and along his arms had stood straight up. He had literally looked at the world around him through a green haze, the same one that still clung to him when he woke up.

He had realized they were going down and that there was a high probability they wouldn’t survive. Less than a hundred feet from the ground, he had reached out with his mind, pulled everyone close to himself, and created a shield similar to the one that he had created back in the complex against the bugs. The only difference was that he swept them out of the open door and into thin air. The green cloud had wrapped around the bubble, and they floated to the ground where they landed a short distance from the crashed helicopter.

“Are you okay? You look a little, um,—green,” she said, looking at him again.

“I’m good. Do you—feel anything different?” he asked.

Josie shook her head. She climbed over a fallen tree. He followed her.

“Not really. I feel a little tingly. You don’t think this green stuff is radiation, do you?” she suddenly wondered.

“I don’t know. I hope not,” he replied, remembering the episode of the Simpsons where Homer was exposed.

He instinctively raised his hand and moved it to cover his groin. Boy, I really hope this isn’t radiation, he thought with a shudder.