May Day (The Erelong Trilogy Book II)

Popping Smoke

Strapped into chromed rigs under clapping sails, they flew east to the fortress city between burned ground and heavy sky. The gray clouds churned over the shadows in the valleys and the stark peaks between. The land they passed over was desolate and ruined, but three paramotor pilots were alert and full of purpose.

The astronomer's warning could not be ignored. There could be no sanctuary on the surface of Earth. When the event struck, oceans would rise to slosh over the coastline for a hundred miles inland. Earth would stop rotating, leaving the atmosphere to roar over the surface. The Sun would cast off superflares in response to its intruding sibling. The charged particles would blast what remained of Earth's atmosphere and dance a fiery waltz around the planet.

Two weeks was all they had in Sydney to convince Alistair Tremain's comrades. The three could stay no longer in the city. Not if they were to make it back in time to the farm and join the others on their journey to the caverns.

Storm as the only one of the three to have any pilot training advised Cameron and Taylor they should fly low over the terrain. The two soldiers never argued with him. An unseen tornado tracking down from above was uppermost on their minds. But nature was not the only menace. Government security forces patrolled every major road, and from above mechanical eyes scanned for the heat signatures of insurgents.

They were on constant alert for the telltale metallic glint of a drone on the horizon. Apart from looking for groups labelled by the government as terrorists, the robots were also programmed to search for survivors. And the three, having chosen to avoid authorities, were suspicious no distinction would be made by the security forces should they be discovered.

So they remained vigilant, dreading the moment they glimpsed a sharp outline of a machine flying high. It was with relief when they did glimpse a drone, they saw it continue on its precise course, with not the slightest apparent interest in the paramotors. Taylor suggested it was most likely engaged in a routine re-mapping of the forest floor, and the other two agreed.

Most of the valley floor seemed little more than a sea of ash spiked through with the blackened remains of tree trunks. Looking down from the paramotors the burned forest looked like the back of a giant porcupine. A constant drizzle had left the embers a sodden mass, and for that, the men beneath the sails were truly thankful. There was no dust to blind them or stall their engines.

The ancient wind-carved peaks of the Blue Mountains pressed in on them from all sides. Most of the vegetation was burned off the ancient rock, but in places, there were scatterings of green where copses of trees and bush had been protected from the firestorm showed through. Whenever they saw an oasis, they swooped low to inhale the sweet scent of vegetation. Each man hung in his harness below a multi-colored sail with a gutsy engine and a large single propeller on their backs. It would have been a hell of a lot of fun if it wasn't for the many lives at stake, and that included their own.

They stared in wonder at the damaged land below them. The surface broken by fresh gaping cracks that sometimes ran for miles, and where the earth was moist, it was often pockmarked with giant sinkholes. They crossed into the ranges, flying over wide rivers of broken rock and soil. Flying over what were once hillsides, now lying strewn across the valley floors. It was while flying into one of those river valleys, sliced through with avalanches, that Storm allowed his mind to wander.

Hours earlier, Storm, Cameron, and Taylor were readying themselves for takeoff. They stood on the top of the only sloping field on the farm. It was almost a mile from the house on a farm.

Only three days before, he had hugged his mother and sister goodbye. Penny had allowed him the briefest of embraces. She had turned inward after the death of her beloved mother. It was during the goodbye that he knew for sure it was no use hoping they could ever be together again.