The Midnight Ride

Three

A couple of skipped stones later, we start making our way back toward Greyson, taking the straight path through Marling to the other side of Downtown. As we come up toward Greyson's tallest office building, I say, "Perfect night for flying, eh?"

But Nora doesn't reply. I look over to find her floating in silence. There's a different look on her face than before-- she's tensed up, like something's bothering her.

"Is everything alright, Nor?"

We stop at the corner of Clom and Petersburg. “Something’s fishy. I can smell it.”

I sniffed. “It doesn't have that seafood stink...”

Nora shushes me. “Not like that, genius! I mean, I'm not really sure if we're alone.”

As Nora pulls me away from Coleman Tower, I spy an obsidian shine against the blue night sky, and that’s when I notice it: a stout-nosed, squat aircraft with a dark coat of paint. I couldn’t make out who or what was inside because of how dark the windows were, but there was a familiar glyph on the nose of the helicopter: the logo of a company who sort of accidentally funded a zombie outbreak two years before, and who we’d gained the ire of by stopping said outbreak.

“You were right!” I shout, noticing the generously-sized weaponry at its right side. Nora turned around and bit her lip, and I gulped. There’s a click, and the copter opens fire. I cower, but before the shots make contact Nora lifts me up to her level, and I grasp her hand as hard as I can as she speeds up. The copter stays hot on our trail, letting up on its fire ever so slightly before resuming without a significant pause. One shot grazes my right hand, and in a fit of panic I start to slip away from Nora. I scramble back toward her and grab her leg as she shifts direction, back toward the city.

Behind me, I start to hear the sound of glass windows breaking as the shots start to go wayward. Hey, what kind of sicko would have to do so much property damage just to get to us two?

I turned back around to find that the cockpit was absolutely empty under the light of the nearby Harmister Co. billboard. There wasn’t a pilot in sight.

I tug Nora’s leg. “Nor, you’ve gotta throw me at it! I think I might be able to get it off of us!”

“The adrenaline’s making you lose your mind again! I won’t!”

“Just trust me!”

She looks down at me with pure dread on her face, but I smile at her, and even though I’m just as unsure if I want to do this as she is, it’s legit. She shuts her eyes, and then I found myself going backward. I turn around and, with a pair of purple clouds around my hands, weave through the shots from the copter—up, down, up, down. My jacket flaps out behind me with gusto, and I reach my left arm out, smirking to myself as I hook onto the right landing skid of the copter. The metal comes close to freezing my hand off, but I grip it as hard as I can as I pull Sal out of her makeshift sheath with my open arm.

I'm not sure if the strategy I'm going for is going to work, but I figure there's no reason not to try it, so with a sweep of the right hand, I shove the plastic sword into the glass of the windshield above me.

It gives way with a loud crack, and I start my climb into the copter with a near-jump up to the window.

The sound of the propeller's almost deafening, and it tries to drill its way into my head without remorse, but I won't let it. I can't. Not now, not earlier, not ever.

I keep my head low as I scamper into the cockpit. To my slight surprise, I actually was right-- inside, it's just me and a smorgasbord of instruments. Beyond one touchscreen with a variety of different options, the gallery of gauges and gadgetry is Greek to me, so I thumb through its options until I find something relevant-- aerial camera, no, autogyro mode, no... autostrike?

I press on the option, and the machine gun fire ceases. With a swipe of sweat off of my brow, I breathe a sigh of relief...

Hey, why is this thing going down?

I glance back at the screen to find both "autostrike" and "autopilot" cloaked under a red stripe amongst the green of the other options. I launch myself to the screen to turn the autopilot back on, but try as I might, it stays red.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up with a jolt, and I grit my teeth as the windshield shifts its view to Rubin Road below. The traffic starts going haphazard, with a once straight line of cars becoming a messy jumble.

I brace myself for the impact, with my arms to my chest and my eyes wide shut. But just as I'm expecting the copter to drive a divide into the street, there's nothing. It was almost as if the fall had stopped completely...

I open my eyes to find a cascade of purple wind between the copter and the asphalt, and I gasp with glee as the copter regains altitude.

The glint of the windows around the scene got brighter as my girlfriend enters into the view of the windshield, and she steers herself into the broken window with exquisite finesse. I throw my arms around her and squeeze tight.

"Thank you," I whisper into the shoulder of her sweater. She pats me on the back as I let go.

"Let's get this thing landed," Nora says, and the glow around the aircraft localizes itself around the skids. With a pushing motion, the helicopter advances toward the sky, and the golden glow of the streets fills the view of my side window.

The copter comes to a stop atop the Pert Building nearby, and Nor floats out Olympic swimmer-style while I drop down the old fashioned way. She gives me a high five as I join her outside, and we both start to let out a sigh of relief but a shrill beeping noise from the copter interrupts us.

We turned around to find a red light accompanying the beeps, which accelerate with every passing second. I gasp, but Nora groans.

"I don't have time for this crap," she says, throwing her hands upward. The chopper zooms upward instantly, and with a smacking motion, it's rapidly growing smaller and smaller, moving straight to the horizon. It makes contact with the ground of Phillips Sound, where a tiny orange fireball billows in the air momentarily before dissipating with a pop.

 "Did you really just do that?" I exclaim as I glance back and forth between her and the smoke cloud over the Sound.

 "Just your friendly neighborhood Irving at work," she replies as her hands lose their aura.

"Hey, Nora," I say, and with a light brush of her hair, she turns to me. "Were you, y'know, moving me through the gunfire back there, or just keeping me afloat? Because it felt kind of weird, it wasn't like how I was tumbling before. Was more natural, y'know?"

"The best in the business never reveal their secrets," she dryly replies, and I nudge her a little with my shoulder. She gives a laugh, and we both dangled our feet over the edge of the Pert Building's roof as we looked up at the prismatic November moon above us.

"Well, after that, I don't think I'm getting to sleep. I think I could eat, actually," I state, with a humble growl of my stomach accentuating the end of the sentence. "After all that action, I think I could really use a burrito."

"Dude, where are you gonna find good Tex-Mex at this hour?"

"24-Hour Tacos! Located for your convenience at the corner of Logan & Wilson," I reply in a deep TV commercial announcer voice. "Call 555-8226!"

She gives me a blank stare. "Only you would have that memorized."

"Well, I can pay for your burrito," I say, pulling myself up to the edge. As she followed suit, I finished, "But only if you can provide the transportation."

"Make it a chimichanga and we've got a deal." She reaches her left hand out with a sly grin.

I roll my eyes and close my right hand around hers. "Fiiiiine," I say, faking a whine.

"You ready to go?" she asks.

"Only if you are."

She gives me a classic smirk, and with that we jump, without a worry in the world and tortillas on the brain.