The Dog Stars

planes. Different from Erie. Different from Denver, from Centennial, the old planes ripped from their moorings and cartwheeled over the airfield by wind. These were crashes. Live-engine wrecks. I did pull back the yoke, but not for a flare. I jerked it back and slammed the throttle to the panel and the engine caught and screamed and my palm slammed the carb heat knob back in and we lurched, reared skyward. We jumped off the field maybe steeper even than our takeoff half an hour before from the meadow. And the lambs wailed.

I looked out the low side window, the bowl of plexiglas, and in the same instant the cable came up. Sprung taut, probably missed my wheels by ten feet. Sprung like a trap. Which is what it was.

Holy fuck.

Hig, you are a cool bastard. That was Bangley talking. Giving me the rare Bangley thumbs up. And in that moment too I glanced at the fuel flow gauge and saw we had two gallons left. Ten minutes at most. Fuck.

I banked left to come around for a look and tensed for gunfire from the ground.

Goddamn. It was Pops. A taut line. He had moved the lamb and he had his gun up and he was scanning the hangars, the wreckage.

The cable stretched across the runway about a third of the way down and ten feet off the pavement, held taut by two sprung arms welded from T-bar steel. The arms were articulated downward like the bills of evil herons. The cable was painted black like the tarmac but I could clearly see its shadow and then the evil thread of it. No gunfire. I craned around.

Pops?

That was it, he yelled. Their one big trick.

Want to? I called back.

Get em? Fuck yeah.

Cima?

She looked confused, still sick, unable to appreciate the implications of what had just happened. She nodded.

We don’t have much choice, I yelled. We’re about out of gas.

I tightened the bank and swooped for another final, this time without checklists, without any thought at all except That motherfucker that motherfucker. I’m coming to get you. And the gut-punch feeling of betrayal. All those years, thinking about that radio call. The hope it had engendered. It drove me wild.

Everything was on automatic. I banked tight and swooped and touched down a hundred feet past the cable. Pops leaned forward and said:

Taxi past. There. Park behind that building, the second west of the tower.

I kept her rolling fast. The radio crackled on. Nice landing said the voice and it didn’t sound like Aunt Bee now. It sounded frayed and hard. Then laughter. Laughter like hanging metal scraping over pavement, loud and sustained. Congratulations. You’re the first.

I didn’t call back. I turned left onto a broad taxiway and found cover where Pops said and shut her down. We were in the cool shadow of Big River Flight School and Authorized Cessna Service Center and we were close enough to the wall that we couldn’t see the top of the tower and they couldn’t get a bead on us, whoever they were. Climbed out moved the seat forward for Pops so he could squeeze out. A cricket chirped loudly from the base of the wall. Cima sat. Hadn’t unbuckled. I didn’t know what to say, I had never seen her like this. She seemed in shock. She was in shock. I walked around to her door opened it. Her long hand pressed against the panel over the oil pressure gauge and a new bruise spread along her forearm. She turned. Her eyes were bleary.

It’s not just the meanness of it. The trap. That too. It’s the city.

I nodded. She and Pops had retired early from the world before it had fired into full conflagration. They had seen enough, enough to flee but not the full demise. Not what I had seen every day from the air. What Bangley and I had known in the middle of our nights. The charred town and all that it implied.

You want to stay here?

Nodded.

Okay.

I walked back around, reached across my seat and unclipped the Uzi from its rack and held it out to her.

If someone shows up that doesn’t look like me or your dad, plug em. It’s charged.

She hesitated, nodded, took the gun.

I unsnapped the AR. Also took the handheld radio. Turned it on and dialed in 118.1, the tower. Sometimes it’s a good idea to talk to your enemy. Not usually. Bangley had taught me that—the value of reticence. Also the value of overwhelming firepower. I reached back under one of the lambs and pried out the stuff sack that held the grenades, nodded at Pops, and we moved around the south corner of the building. I followed him. He hugged the wall so that we were still out of sight of the tower. Before we cleared the next corner and crossed the open ramp where small planes had once tied down, and came into full view of whoever was up there, we pulled up. It was about fifty yards to the next building, a single story brick, the offices of the FBO, a hangar adjacent and behind. We could see the back of it: a row of dark windows still mostly intact, and a metal door toward the rear.

Hig that old lady up there sounded just like my grandma.

And?

We’re gonna clean her clock and whoever else. No questions asked. He looked at me.

I nodded.

Those cocksuckers invited you out here under false pretenses. Did you see all those goddamn wrecks? How many planes you think they did like that?

A lot. Scores. It’s the biggest runway on the way to L.A. between Denver and Phoenix.

He leaned against the bricks.

Why? he said.

Why do they do it?

I mean not for the fuel. Half those wrecks burned. Not for the damn meat. Unless you like charcoal.

There’d be survivors. Some maybe not badly injured. And sometimes they didn’t burn. Not all the way, sometimes not at all. There’d be supplies, food, weapons. Lambs. Bahhh.

Okay so what did they do with the pissed off survivors?

Silence. He stepped around the corner and the shot cracked. Blew brick dust into my face. I thought he was cooked. He fell back. I grabbed at him blindly, hugged him to me.

Fuck. Losing my edge, Hig. Thanks.

He was fine. He was breathing hard. I wiped my eyes.

That’s what they do, Hig. Pick em off one by one. Come out of the wreck injured, dazed not even sure what hit em and bang. Or use em for whatever they use em for. Okay now I’m really pissed.

He unbuttoned his patched flannel shirt, scanned the ground behind us and picked up a two foot piece of rusty rebar. Hung the shirt on it.

Stick this out past the edge when I say. Up here like this. We get into that next building we’re made. Do NOT move from here until I tell you. He slid the bolt back, checked for a chambered bullet, crouched. Three two one, go!

I shoved out the shirt, the shot cracked, zinged, he was gone. He was sprinting toward that back door running like a halfback, feinting and zagging and two more shots exploded up pavement behind and ahead of him. He made it to the sight shadow of the building, to the spot where he could no longer be seen from above, and walked the rest of the way to the door. Turned, gave me a thumbs up before he tugged it open and disappeared inside. Fucking Pops. Hope I can run like that when I’m—what?—my age. I could never run like that. Damn. I pulled back the shirt. There was a neat hole halfway down, repeated in three folds. Gut shot. Ouch. I waited. One minute, two, began to count like I did for Bangley. At two hundred I wondered what was going on. At two twenty three: one shot. It rang over the airport like a bell. A single toll. Echoed and died. It was Pops’s .308. I knew the sound. Half a minute later the door in the back of the FBO scraped open and Pops waved me over. I ran. He held up his hand patted the air like Take your time, relax.

What the fuck? What happened?

A fool, that’s what. Those windows up in the tower are thick bulletproof. Been like that since 9/11. But they have to shoot out somewhere. They have gunports. Like an old fort. I knew once I was inside, I’d have all the time I