Eric Walters - The Rule of Three

I started to climb. The plane responded, but slowly. It was like everything was heavy when it should have been light. We’d lost a ton of weight with what Herb had dropped over the side.

It didn’t matter; slowly climbing was better than quickly crashing.

“That was the shock wave of the explosion,” Herb said. “You should see what I can see. The middle trucks are gone. Just gone, almost disintegrated by the force.”

“I wish I could have seen it.”

“There are people down there who wish they hadn’t. The people who lived aren’t going to ever forget what they saw. And they’re not going to forget us, forget the ultralight.”

“And that’s good, right?”

“Sometimes you have to poke the tiger with a stick to get him to do what you want him to do. If you can’t avoid a battle, it’s always best to have it happen when and where you want. Especially when your opponent doesn’t know you decided those things. Today we set the direction they’ll follow. But now we have to get home.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice.” I corrected course. “All I want now is to get on the ground in one piece.”

“How is the plane flying?” Herb asked.

That was an unusual question. Why would he ask that? “It’s fine… a little slow. Why?”

“Just curious about how important the tail is to turning and landing.”

“It’s important, but— How bad is it?”

“Some of it’s still there.”

I turned around to see what wasn’t there, but in the dark, blocked by some of the plating, I really couldn’t see it. Besides, I had to focus on flying—especially now.

I leveled off. We didn’t need any more height. I was almost straight over the top of Burnham, and there were long clear stretches of open road not too far ahead. Maybe I should just land it when I could. No—if we were going to crash, it was better to be closer to our clinic and Dr. Morgan.

“Radio in and let them know to light up the walls along Burnham,” I said.

I was sure Danny and Rachel would be waiting for me when we landed. So would Lori. I needed to get home, lie down in my bed, and go to sleep, maybe for a few days. Did we have a few days?

“How long before you think they might attack?”

“It could come as early as tomorrow morning,” Herb said. “We stung them. They’re going to want to sting back. As far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better.”

“Are we ready for an attack?”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

In the distance the multicolored Christmas lights appeared. Despite it all I couldn’t help but smile. I pointed at them. “Merry Christmas, Herb.”

He laughed. “Merry Christmas, Adam. I think we’ve already gotten part of the gift we were hoping for.”

After a few hours’ sleep, I was back up, thinking about this new day. Would the group from the city be able to organize a counterattack as quickly as Herb thought they might? The feeling throughout the whole neighborhood was electric—we’d all been shot at and missed… and now we were all waiting to be shot at again. Everybody seemed to be talking too fast and asking too many questions, and I just needed to be left alone. That was why I was so grateful to be outside and away.

It was only a five-minute drive from our neighborhood to the bridge. I was happy to have Lori in the passenger seat beside me. I was also happy that I had a rifle in the backseat and just plain grateful for the ground under my tires. The landing after the attack, with only half a tail, had been difficult. No, not difficult, terrifying. It was a classic case of the old saying “Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.” With the nearly missing tail, I’d come in too hard and done some damage to the landing gear. Mr. Nicholas was confident they could repair the damage and have me up in the air again by noon.

Lori reached over and took my hand, and my whole body tingled. I hadn’t told her everything about the attack yet, and she’d been thoughtful enough not to ask. I always needed time to think about how much I should unburden myself to her. Right now she had enough to be worried about without knowing what I’d seen and done and how close those bullets had come to my head.

In some ways we were all just dodging bullets. And rocket-propelled grenades, because that’s what they were going to fire at us. If they came— when they came—they were going to come in hard and mean and merciless. There was going to be little time to escape and few places to hide.

About a mile north, Herb had secured a small house—previously abandoned—and sealed up the garage. In it was a working truck, extra ammunition and weapons, some fuel and food. Nobody else knew about it except me and my mother. I hadn’t even told Lori. She didn’t need to know unless we needed to use it. From there, once things had settled down, we’d make our next move, trying to reestablish ourselves out at her family’s old farm.

It wasn’t that we were abandoning the neighborhood. We’d be there to fight to protect it, but if we had to flee, if we were overwhelmed, the first stop was at the secure house. Herb knew that if people were captured it wouldn’t be long until they told everything they knew. The men from the city would want to find our leaders and kill them. They might be particularly interested in finding the pilot of the ultralight. I was a marked young man.

Our people had closed off Burnham at the bridge, blocking it on both sides where it went over the river so that nobody—no cars or people—was allowed on this stretch of road, except for people from the neighborhood.

I slowed down as we came up to the roadblock. There were a dozen vehicles parked to the side and two dozen armed guards manning the makeshift blockade, which was made of half a dozen overturned cars thrown across the lanes of the bridge.

“There’s your mother and Herb,” Lori said.

We got out of the car and joined them.

“I was hoping to see you up there,” Herb said, pointing to the sky.

“They’re still working on the tail. Mr. Nicholas said it might be ready by noon.”

“Personally I like having my son with his feet on the ground,” my mother said.

“I like him right here as well,” Lori agreed as she squeezed my hand.

“Up there is better for everybody. We need to see them coming,” Herb said.

“Do you think it’s possible they won’t come?”

“They’re going to come. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Maybe we inflicted so much damage they’re not able to mount an attack,” I suggested.

“We didn’t disable them. They still have hundreds of men and more than enough vehicles to get them here.”

I knew our own casualties—four killed, two wounded, three missing and presumed dead.

“I guess we should just hope it isn’t today,” Lori said.

Herb shook his head. “The longer they wait, the more potential they have to get stronger. We have to hope that if it isn’t today we can provoke them into attacking tomorrow.”

“How would we provoke them?” I asked. I was almost afraid to ask.

“We’ll put snipers around their base and pick off their men and drop some more bombs on their position. Are you ready for another flyover?”

“I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

“Shouldn’t we want them not to attack us?” Lori said.

“We know they’re going to attack,” I explained. “We want to control the timing and the location. Rather than wait for them to attack our neighborhood when and where they want, we need them to come right along here, right across this bridge, where we’ll be waiting for them.”

“What if they take another way?” she asked.

“There are only three routes. Here, to the north along the 403, and Dundas Street. Three ways, three bridges over the river. We’re prepared whichever way they come, but this is the most direct, and they seem to like direct.”