Part 21 (1/2)
Sparky was still running, hunched down now, and Lucy-Anne had appeared once more, eyes wide with shock, waving him towards her and shouting for him to Run! Run!
He won't miss a second time, Jack thought, looking along the street at the soldier. The Chopper was changing his stance, settling into a proper shooting posture this time, and behind him the other soldier was taking aim as well.
”Run, Sparky!” Jenna shouted, and the second soldier looked their way.
The circling rooks dived, silent and fast. They moved like a single slice of night, and somewhere in their cries as they powered into the two soldiers, Jack was sure he heard gunshots. The men disappeared, replaced by a vicious cloud of pecking, clawing birds.
More people tumbled from the helicopter. Two soldiers fired into the birds, oblivious to whether they were hitting their companions, and the third man retreated behind the wreck, talking into something in his hand. Jack recognised him: grey hair, short...Miller.
As Sparky reached the house and Lucy-Anne greeted him with a confused smile, two doors on that side of the street but closer to the helicopter crashed open. The several people that emerged must have been rus.h.i.+ng through the gardens and houses to get here, and Jack guessed they were sorry they had missed all the action. They certainly looked like fighters. One was short and dressed in black, and Jack had difficulty focussing on him...almost like a shadow where the sun still shone. Another carried a variety of guns and knives, her eyes milky white and blind. They darted across the street and approached the downed helicopter, working well together, their movements fluid and rehea.r.s.ed.
Jenna had run after Sparky, and as Jack climbed across the last of the burnt cars, he looked that way, too...
...and saw his father emerging from an open doorway close to the helicopter.
”Dad,” he croaked, his voice hoa.r.s.e.
His father looked so different. Still tall and trim, but his face carried so much more than his forty-five years now, and his mouth was cruel, laughter lines turned into creases of worry and stress.
”Dad!” Jack shouted at last.
Reaper turned and looked directly at him. For that moment, they were the only two people in the street. Nothing else mattered. Here was his father, missing for two years and considered a lost cause by his wife. Jack tried to welcome a rush of memories similar to when he and Emily had found his mother, but the memories he found were more elusive, and less joyful. They were tinged by the present, and the blank mask that this man had become.
Not even a smile.
”Dad, it's me, Jack!”
Reaper took one step towards his son, then stopped. He turned and said something to the blind Superior now standing by his side, and Jack was terrified that the order had been given to kill him. But the Superior merely walked towards the downed helicopter. Miller was at the ruined aircraft, screaming into the thing in his hand. Two soldiers flanked him, guns at the ready, and rooks were settling all across the wreckage. More circled above, and yet more pecked at red things scattered across the street. Dead birds, dead people; meat was meat.
The second helicopter returned.
”Over here!” Sparky called. He and Jenna were with Lucy-Anne now, and they retreated into the house's shadow.
Jack wanted to run. But even when the helicopter's machine guns opened up, tearing chunks of masonry from the terrace's facade, smas.h.i.+ng holes in roofs, shattering those few whole windows that remained, all he could do was look at his father.
The helicopter was hovering above the opposite row of houses, and Reaper faced up to it as bullets impacted all around him. He seemed to be drawing a long, deep breath.
Jack dropped to his stomach just as his father screamed. It was a short, sharp sound, but louder than anything Jack had ever heard before in his life. A grunt of unimaginable volume, it caused a storm of movement across the street: dust and shrapnel was driven away as though by a huge storm; bodies of dead rooks fluttered through the air once more; windows and doors, all but untouched on that side of the street, blew inwards.
The shout struck the helicopter, and it went into a spin. Bullets raked along the street as its guns continued firing, tearing up the ground a few feet from Jack's face and ripping through the tangle of crashed, blackened cars. Then the shooting stopped, and the aircraft dropped as though punched from above. It hit the row of houses and sank in, rotors shredding two roofs of tiles and timber and filling the air with chaos once more. Walls blew out, floors collapsed, and the sudden quiet after the crash was stunning.
Jack lifted himself and looked around to make sure everyone he loved was okay. Sparky and the others peered out from the house once again, and along the street the other Superiors picked themselves up, dusted themselves down.
Reaper stood where he had been before, staring at the downed aircraft. He smiled.
Jack looked at the new wreck as well, and through the ruin of a house's facade he saw movement as people tried to climb from the twisted metal and piled masonry.
The second shout came without warning. More directed this time, still the volume was agonising and unbelievable, and Jack fell to his knees with his hands clasping bloodied ears.
The helicopter exploded. It was a small blast, but the fuel tanks ignited, and the fire spread quickly.
People started screaming.
Reaper was smiling wider now.
”Dad, get them out,” Jack said.
”Never call me that,” Reaper said. Jack realised that he was more than aware of what was happening, who had found him, and why Jack was here.
It simply did not matter.
The screaming from the burning helicopter was terrible, and Jack walked back and forth with his hands over his ears, hating what he was hearing but unable to do anything about it. He felt the heat of the flames on his back as he turned to his father, and past him to the house. Jenna and Sparky were standing by the front door, holding each other as they watched, but Lucy-Anne was trotting along the street with the boy with rooks on his shoulders.
There were a series of smaller blasts from the fire as ammunition ignited, and the last of the screams was cut off.
”No,” Jack said, not wanting to see his dad like this, not wis.h.i.+ng to believe the man who had loved him and read to him and played football with him could be standing here with the burnt-flesh smell of his victims hanging in the air. And smiling. He was still smiling.
Jack ran past his father towards Sparky and Jenna, and as he pa.s.sed he muttered, ”b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”
”You okay?” Sparky asked.
”Yeah. You?” Jack's friends nodded.
”You're bleeding,” Jenna said, nodding down at Jack's leg. There was a wound in his calf that poured blood, and his trouser leg and shoe were sodden.
”Doesn't matter,” he said. ”Can't feel it.”
”Your dad's nice,” Sparky said.
Reaper was walking slowly along the street, his shadow dancing beside him as he pa.s.sed the flaming wreck. The fire had spread to the houses' structures now, and smoke was seeping from the roofs of buildings several doors along. Soon, the whole terrace would go up.
”I can't give up on him,” Jack said.
”Jack, he could kill you.” Jenna stepped forward and held his face in her hands, and he saw the pity in her eyes. He hated that.
”But he won't.” Jack ran along the street after his father, and he heard his friends coming along behind him.
Reaper had reached the first downed helicopter, where his Superiors were flanking Miller and two surviving soldiers. The soldiers each nursed a broken arm, and looked around in obvious terror.
”Miller,” Reaper said. ”It's been a long time since we were face to face.”
”And I remember what happened then,” Miller said.
Reaper smiled and lifted his s.h.i.+rt, displaying an ugly, bubbled scar across his stomach and hip. ”Smarted for a bit,” he said, nodding. ”But I'm much stronger now. Just ask your barbequed friends.”
Miller glanced along the street toward the burning helicopter, then he saw Jack, and his eyes went wide.
”Dad, Emily was here too,” Jack said. ”But she's gone. We found Mum and they've left together, and I want you to leave too.”
”With you?” Reaper asked.