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“If we can see them, they can see us too.” This time, it’s X-Ray talking. “We can disguise our signature from radar, but not from native fowl. They’ll hear us before the guards will, too. Doc, you on it?”
I sit up straight and squint into the darkness, trying to make out the birds. My job is to sever their connections with Raptor as quickly as possible so they can’t report back to him that we’re here.
“Doc to chopper,” I say. “I’m trying, but I can’t see anything up there.” I reach out mentally to see if I can connect with the birds, but I get nothing in return. Shep’s the one who can connect with them. Unfortunately, he’s in the other truck, so I’m on my own here. “Any chance you can get me a visual on the flock, chopper?” I need to lay eyes on the birds to be able to help them. I’m hoping a video image will suffice.
“Scrap to chopper.” Scrap’s voice fills the airwaves, fast and clipped, efficient. The kid’s in tech-mode. “Flip the switch for night-vision cam. It’s on the box I soldered to the overhead control panel this morning.”
“Copy that, Scrap.” X-Ray says. “Got it. Red light means we’re streaming, right?”
“Red light rolling,” Scrap confirms. “Doc. Your tablet should have the live stream load up automatically. You got it there?”
I tap the Bluetooth connection on my tablet. There it is, just like Scrap said:chopper-vid.“Got it,” I say as the app opens. Out the windshield of the MTV is nothing but blackness, but on the screen, I see the chopper’s green-tinted view of a distant structure, long and low, snaking between darkened buildings to separate one abandoned neighborhood from the other. The wall.
As the chopper zooms closer, the wall comes into focus. It’s less of a straight, brick-and-mortar structure, and more of a mound of junk and rubble. In fact, calling it a wall is like calling a chihuahua a guard dog. But I’m more concerned with the small, winged bodies moving in unison above it. From the chopper’s perspective, they’re the size of pinheads, and there are tons of them. They move like a swarm, each individual adding to the swooping, swirling pattern.
“I’ve got ’em,” I say, and I train my focus on the birds. It’s not easy to focus on thousands of tiny moving targets, but it helps to think of the swarm as a single entity.
“I feel them,” Shep says over the comms. “So does Bernard.” The pelican is riding in the cargo hold of alpha truck. We tried to get him to stay behind—he’s no spring chicken, after all, and he’s been doing a lot of flying the past weeks. But he insisted on coming. He wants to find his mate, and I can’t blame him. “I told them it’s okay,” Shep says. “We are friends, and they will soon be free.”
“Roger that, Bird Whisperer.” I hope I don’t make a liar out of him.
I think back to when Shep and I healed Bernard back in the cave. I was able to somehow sense these black spots inside him that didn’t belong. Those spots aggravated my Gift like a burr in a wool sock. But that was just one bird, up close and standing still for me. The thought of widening my focus to so many moving targets overwhelms me. How can I sense tiny black spots from so far away when there are so many patients in need of healing?
I shake my head, frustrated.
Then I feel a gentle touch. Cora. She’s leaning forward and gripping my shoulder. I turn to see her smiling at me and nodding with confidence.
“You can do this,” she says.
And then I think about Grim bringing the dead birds back to life outside the lodge. It wasn’t just Grim. I helped too. It was both of us concentrating on the task that made it work. It took teamwork.
“Grim, help me out,” I say, loud enough for him to hear me in the back seat. Then, over the comms, I say, “Shep, give me an assist, here buddy. Focus on the birds with me, will ya?”
“Already on it,” Shep says.
Grim says from the back, “What can I do?”
Cora answers for me. “Just want it,” she says. “Just want the birds to be free.” From the backseat, her hand applies gentle pressure to my shoulder.
Reaching up, I squeeze her hand and drag her confidence inside me like soothing smoke from a cigarette. Digging deep inside myself, I find the shimmering light I’ve learned to associate with my Gift. Then an image comes to me. In my mind’s eye, I’m picturing thousands of tiny chains connecting each of the moving targets on my screen to a single, evil master. Mentally, I shape my light into a blade, and, with a single swipe, I sever the chainsen masse.
Just like that, the swarm disperses. Each bird goes his or her own way, no longer a slave to Raptor’s whims.
“It worked,” Shep says. “They are free.”
I sigh with relief and give Cora’s hand one last squeeze before letting it go. “Let’s hope they stay that way,” I say.
“I told them to get out of the city,” Shep says. “They are going. They say thank you.”
“Tell them they’re welcome,” I say with a smile. It feels nice to help out a bunch of little souls.Fly free, my friends.
Ahead of us, alpha truck takes the exit for the French Quarter, and Sarge steers our truck to follow. Around the Superdome we go, headed for Poydras. At the bottom of the exit, alpha truck’s brake lights come on, and I get my first in-person view of the wall.
It’s a barricade about twelve feet high, and it stretches to the left and right, blocking out what would normally be a view of downtown’s brightly-lit city center. It looks like something beavers built if beavers were big enough to move wrecked cars and chunks of concrete. Past the eyesore, all I can make out of downtown are the very tops of the tallest buildings. The ones closest to us are dark, but there’s one building in the distance lit up against the night sky. Harrah’s Casino and hotel. Raptor’s headquarters.
Directly in front of us is a massive, reinforced door in the wall, and on either side of the door are towers with armed men on top. They’re so close—or rather, we’re so close to them—that they should have noticed us. They should be aiming their weapons at us. But they’re completely oblivious. They don’t even have their weapons raised. Their machine guns just hang there, several seconds away from being useful.
“Nice job, Stealth,” I say.
