The New Haven Incident - Part Fifty-One

Uncurling and letting her hands drop from her ears, Lilith watched the hound’s head roll, the body following not long after, toppling sideways and shaking the ground beneath her. She blinked, then turned.

The black Department gun ship was still hovering, turned so that the open side faced her. Mendez stood at the gun; the muzzle cooling rapidly from white hot to red, smoke rising in thin tendrils from the end.

Mendez shouted something, waving his arm. Lilith couldn’t hear it above the din of the engine and the chopping of the blades keeping the transport in the air. But she understood well enough. 

“Go!”

As the chopper pulled up and away, she flashed Mendez a brief, bright smile. She turned and ran, vanishing into the rubble that had become the stadium walls.

Mendez shook his head as the winged woman disappeared from view. Two more attack drones buzzed past the chopper, firing their missiles at the swarm, giving the final evacuating aircraft more space.

“Good luck,” he whispered to Lilith. He turned to look down at Sebastian, unconscious on the floor of the chopper, a Department field medic keeping a firm hand on his chest and watching him carefully.

With nothing left to do, Mendez stepped back from the gun in a daze. Exhaustion flooded his body, making everything seem distant, and his limbs about as useful as over-cooked noodles. He felt hands on his shoulders as some of The Department soldiers guided him to a seat and strapped him down. He stared out the window, unable to comprehend anything as the chopper flew over the quiet, dead city at incredible speeds.

Lucidity returned briefly as he spied a large number of drones and planes headed towards them. They moved past at speed. He blinked. The world flooded in orange, heat buffeting the transport, even as far away as it was from the first of the explosions. The cleansing had begun.

There had been too little time. Closing his eyes, Mendez prayed that Lilith had somehow found somewhere safe before the bombs started dropping. He looked down at Sebastian, whose body twitched at the first explosion; evidence that he was fighting the drugs.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” Mendez murmured. He turned away from the explosions, ignored the second flight of bombers that zipped past the chopper and focussed instead on the approaching horizon where he knew the government would have set up a quarantine and interrogation zone. He was almost home.

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