David Robbins - Seattle Run

That passenger, a giant of a man attired in a black leather vest, green fatigue pants, and black combat boots, stared at the countryside sweeping past below with a mixture of fascination and apprehension. “I’ll never get used to this,” he absently mumbled, momentarily forgetting every word he spoke was amplified by his helmet mike and picked up by the pilot’s helmet.

“Give yourself some time, Blade,” the pilot promptly responded, chuckling. “This is only the second time you’ve flown in one of these babies.”

“I could fly in a Hurricane a hundred times, Laslo,” Blade remarked, “and I’ll never get used to what this feels like.”

Captain Peter Laslo laughed. “It is mind-boggling, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Blade mentioned, gazing to the north, catching sight of his white helmet reflected in the aircraft’s windshield.

“Do you want to go straight in or give your friends at the Home a show?” Captain Laslo inquired.

Blade grinned. “Give them a show. It isn’t every day they get to see a functional jet. They’ve only seen this one twice before, when you flew here to take Plato, Hickok, and myself to the summit meeting in Anaheim, and when you brought Plato and Hickok back four days ago. So give them a treat.”

“Will do,” Laslo said.

The Hurricane roared over the Home at 647 miles an hour, then banked to the east, its engines thundering.

Craning his neck, Blade caught a glimpse of the survivalist compound in which he had been raised. The Home. The brainchild of a man named Kurt Carpenter, the 30-acre compound had been constructed prior to World War Three. Situated in extreme northwest Minnesota, surrounded by brick walls 20 feet high capped with barbed wire, and containing six massive concrete structures designed to withstand nuclear and chemical warfare toxins, the Home, as Carpenter had dubbed the site, had survived the insanity of the “final” holocaust. For a century after the war the descendants of Carpenter’s followers, those whom he had affectionately christened as his Family, had kept to themselves, seldom venturing far afield, isolated from the rest of the world. Only within the last five years, Blade reflected, had the Family undertaken to explore a world environmentally, culturally, and biologically deranged by humankind’s ultimate folly.

With astonishing results.

Blade’s mind reviewed the highlights as the Hurricane arched toward the Home. There had been enemies galore: the Trolls, the Watchers, the Brutes, the Wacks, the Doktor and his personal army of genetically engineered mutations, the Reds, the Zombies, and more. And the Family had made friends too, had found allies in the struggle to restore some semblance of civilization to the ravaged planet. Those allies included the Flathead Indians in Montana, the superb horsemen known as the Cavalry in the Dakota Territory, the Clan and the Moles —both based in Minnesota, the Civilized Zone in the Midwest, and finally the most recent addition, the Free State of California. Including the Family, all seven factions had banded together to form the Freedom Federation, a mutual alliance of self-preservation. And as the head of the Federation’s newly appointed tactical strike squad, the Freedom Force—or the Force as it was simply called—here he was returning to the Home from Los Angeles after finalizing the details for the Force’s formation. He planned to escort his wife and young son to California.

The Hurricane slowed dramatically as Captain Laslo angled the aircraft toward the large field bordering the Home to the west. As a security precaution, the Family regularly cleared the land for 150 yards on all four sides of the square compound. By doing so, they insured potential enemies could not launch an assault undetected by the Warriors manning the ramparts on the brick walls.

“You know,” Blade commented, observing a bustle of activity in the Home as the aircraft approached, “it never ceases to amaze me.”

“What does?” Laslo asked.

“That with all their technological wizardry, the leaders of the prewar society stupidly managed to destroy their way of life,” Blade said. “They could build wonders like this Hurricane, they dominated the globe scientifically, yet they were unable to dominate their baser emotions and wound up turning their technology against themselves.” He sighed.

“Pitiful. They could have transformed the world into a Utopia. Instead, they came damn close to obliterating the human race. Instead, they unwittingly unleashed horrors beyond their wildest imaginings. They could have created a Utopia, but they created a hell.”

The Hurricane coasted to a stop approximately 100 yards above the field located to the west of the Home, and poised in the Hover Mode, suspended in the air like a gargantuan dragonfly.

Blade could see dozens of figures lining the top of the west wall, and the huge drawbridge situated in the center of the wall was lowering outward.

He felt eager to be on the ground again, to be with his loved ones and friends.

Captain Laslo was busy flicking several switches in the cockpit. The Hurricane’s engines decreased in volume from a raucous crescendo to a muted whine, and the aircraft slowly descended toward the middle of the field.

Blade could see a small cloud of dust swirling below the Hurricane as they dropped down. “How small a landing space do you need?” he inquired.

Captain Laslo was occupied with his landing procedure, watching the ground below. “What?”

“How small an area can the Hurricane land in?” Blade asked, rephrasing his query.

“The Hurricane requires about eighty square feet of landing space,” Laslo disclosed. “And the same amount to take off.”

“That’s all?” Blade asked.

“Some of the earlier versions required even less,” Laslo mentioned.

“One of the popular models in use before World War Three was called the Harrier. That beauty only needed seventy-two square feet of landing or takeoff space. Of course, the Harrier was smaller than the Hurricane. The Harrier normally carried just the pilot, but this Hurricane, as you know, can transport up to five passengers in addition to the pilot. The Hurricane is larger than the Harrier was, primarily because the Hurricane was designed to carry a strike team or squad into combat, instead of just serving as a fancy fighter with unique capabilities.”

Blade had detected a note of pride in Laslo’s voice whenever the pilot talked about his craft. “The Hurricanes were built right before the war, weren’t they?”

“Yep. Not many came off the assembly line before the radioactive shit hit the fan. This baby was one of the last ones built. California had four of them at one time, but only two are still flyable. The other two were salvaged for spare parts.” He paused. “What a waste!”

“You like to fly, don’t you?” Blade inquired. He noted the Hurricane was about forty yards above the ground.

“I love to fly,” Laslo replied. “And I love the Hurricane. She’s a distinct improvement over the earlier V/STOLs.”

“The what?”

“Oh. Sorry. The Harriers I told you about were called V/STOLs. It’s an abbreviation for vertical-short takeoff and landing ability. But they dropped the S for the Hurricanes and called them VTOLs, like the pre-Harrier models. Bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, I guess. Understand?”

“I think I follow you,” Blade said.

“This beauty carries up to ten thousand pounds of firepower. Rockets, bombs, Sidewinder missiles, you name it, the Hurricane packs it. I could level a city if I had a nuclear warhead,” Laslo declared, sounding excited at the prospect.

The Hurricane settled onto the earth with a gentleness belying its size and weight. Dust enveloped the cockpit.