Eric Walters - The Rule of Three

“Got it!” he yelled.

“Got what?”

“I dropped it on an abandoned car.” He lit and dropped the second. “And that was a miss.”

Again and again he lit and dropped cocktails over the side of the plane.

“Hopefully it will slow them enough to get them to bunch up.”

I pulled back on the stick and we gained some height. Up ahead I could see the bridge with its blockade of overturned cars. Between the cars were bricks and stones and pieces of wood embedded with nails designed to puncture tires. Wires and cables had been strung between the bridge supports, and some of them had been booby-trapped—work that had all been done in the days before we launched our attack. The question remained, though: Would any of this stop them or even slow them down?

The other end of the bridge came up. It was blocked off as well, piled even higher with overturned cars and logs wedged between the cement supports to form a solid wall. I waved at the people below, and they waved back. I knew my mother was down there somewhere, but I couldn’t pick her out among the people lining the barricade. There were guards, sentries, and snipers all along the bank ready to fire on the convoy as it crossed.

If they crossed the bridge, if they broke through the barricade and got past, there was nothing but a clear stretch of pavement leading them right to the walls of the neighborhood. If they weren’t stopped here, they weren’t going to be stopped.

I banked sharply, accelerated, and pulled back on the stick to gain height.

“Do you think they’re ready down there?” I asked.

“They have to be.”

“I just wish we could ask.”

We couldn’t. Any attempt to use the walkie-talkie would just give information to anybody else who might be listening. Surprise was still almost all we had.

“Swing extra wide,” Herb ordered. “I want to come back toward them from the valley, right as they’re crossing the bridge.”

I banked to the left, still climbing, giving it almost full throttle.

As we gained height I could see our neighborhood in the distance.

Eden Mills. I guessed it was as close to Eden as anyplace that existed anymore. Would it still be Eden in a few hours? Would it even still exist?

We came back around, and I could see the bridge ahead but couldn’t see down the road itself.

“Can you see them?” I asked Herb.

He was peering through his binoculars. “Not yet. My view is still blocked so I can’t—”

A truck burst through the barricade, sending abandoned cars and timbers flying up and into the air! It was followed by a second truck and a third and a fourth! They rolled across, pushing the abandoned cars off to the side, bumping and rumbling over the rocks and obstacles strewn along the bridge.

“It’s not stopping them!” I yelled.

“But it’s slowing them down. Get me closer, aim right for the lead truck.”

I didn’t hesitate. I dropped down and hit the left rudder, trying to aim for where the truck would be by the time I got to the bridge, but if it wasn’t slowed down, it could be over the bridge before I got there.

I opened up the throttle all the way. We were streaking toward the bridge, dropping down on it like a dive-bomber. More and more trucks were rumbling onto the bridge. There were at least a dozen, and each few seconds another started over.

There were flashes—muzzle blasts—we were taking fire…

I dropped down and—

“Keep it level!” Herb yelled. “I may need to take a shot!”

Herb had the rifle out and was aiming at the lead truck. I felt his gun discharge, again and again, as he fired. I eased off my rudder, slowing down. I had to adjust and— I felt something strike the plane—we’d been hit. I struggled to keep the plane straight and in control, but I could feel us starting to slide.

There was an explosion, and flames engulfed the lead truck. It must have hit a trip wire with a grenade attached. It now blocked the way, but the second truck pushed on, knocking the flaming vehicle through the guard rail and off the side of the bridge, charging forward, followed by the third. The whole top of the cliff lit up with muzzle flashes from our side’s guns, trying to slow them down.

“Come on,” I said. “They’re all on the bridge now, don’t wait any longer.”

The lead truck was almost over, bearing down on the second barricade, when there was a tremendous explosion, and a second and a third. The whole bridge trembled and a shock wave rushed out and bucked the plane upward. I struggled to regain the controls as the second and third waves washed over us. One of the gigantic pillars of the bridge started to disintegrate. The pavement began to buckle and then it just melted, flowing into the valley, the lead truck and the second tumbling with it!

Everything just slowed down. The thin black ribbon of asphalt, the whole bridge shattering, falling, the whole structure collapsing, all of the vehicles on it falling into the valley, twisting and turning as they plummeted!

I pulled up on the stick and we rose, practically flying through where the bridge had been only seconds before. It was gone. They were all gone. I soared through the open air. Another shock wave hit the plane, throwing us up and off to the side. I struggled to retain the controls in my hands and pulled back on the stick as we were buffeted by the explosion from below.

And then we stopped shaking and flew steadily through clear blue sky. I looked back over my shoulder. I couldn’t see much behind and below except gigantic clouds of dust and smoke. I was just happy to see that the tail of my plane was still there.

“The charges took down the bridge!” I screamed. “It worked!”

“Bring us back around,” Herb yelled. “Bring us around!”

I banked hard to the left, the plane tilting to the side, and eased off on the throttle, slowing down to allow a tighter turn. We soared up and over the edge of the river valley, and I looked out. In the distance I could see the edge of our neighborhood. There behind those walls were my brother and sister, Lori, her family, and almost every other person in the world who meant anything to me, and I knew something that they didn’t know. We were going to live.

I came around hard and fast until I was facing back at the bridge—at where the bridge used to be.

In its place was a haze—a cloud of dust and dirt and smoke rising up into the air, two of the thick concrete pillars still intact, soaring toward the sky but holding up nothing, while the rest were gone—collapsed and crumbled under the force of the explosives that had been wrapped and wired around them.

“The bridge is gone,” I gasped.

“And everybody who was on the bridge is gone with it.”

I looked down and tried to see through the cloud. There, through the haze, I could make out the shattered hulks of vehicles, trucks littering the valley floor, some half hidden in the river itself. I could see them, but they didn’t look real—it was like they were little toy trucks. Dozens of trucks, hundreds of men, and all of their weapons were at the bottom of the valley, shattered and crushed and finished. They couldn’t harm us anymore.

“We’re safe.”

“We are safe,” Herb said. “At least for today.”

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Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers