The Shattered Earth (Surviving the Fall 3)

Rick ducked down behind the dashboard, keeping his foot on the gas pedal, though the Humvee shrugged off the low-caliber shots as though they were confetti. Screams and shouts came from all directions as Rick plowed through the group of people. Some of them were quick enough on their feet to get out of the way while others were injured or killed under the thick treads and massive weight of the military vehicle.

While the hangar doors were reinforced and, under normal circumstances, could have stopped the Humvee in its tracks, the structural damage done by the people breaking in was enough that Rick was able to plow through the door with ease. Metal screamed as it slid together, scraping large gouges in the sides and top of the Humvee. The vehicle began turning as the rear end squeezed through the gap on the hangar door and Rick clung to the wheel, trying to keep the top-heavy piece of machinery from overturning. When he finally got it back under control he headed straight down the middle of the nearest road he saw, cutting across a series of walkways and small areas filled with artificial turf.

Rick hadn’t seen much of the massive air base when he and Jane had been brought in over a week prior and as he drove through it searching for a way out he was stunned by its enormity. Most of the fighters that had been cleared for takeoff in the days prior had been evacuated from the base before the looting began. Colonel Leslie, as altruistic and potentially foolhardy as he had been in ceding the base to the nearby civilian population in lieu of killing them, had taken steps to ensure that anything of value was locked away in the specially-built underground bunkers used to store the aircraft when they were being fitted with classified hardware.

The bunkers were a new and relatively unheard of feature of Nellis, as was the entire underground section, which the Colonel had managed to keep secure from the civilians. While the administrative offices would no doubt be overrun relatively quickly, the jets, explosive ordinance and literal tons of ammunition would be kept safe until—or if—the Air Force returned. Colonel Leslie’s decision to not fire upon the civilians hadn’t been made entirely in a vacuum. Orders to prepare the base for abandonment had come down from the top prior to the civilian overrun. After a brief—yet fierce—debate with others in his chain of command, his argument for leaving them (mostly) alone had won out.

The staggering amount of people running through the secured areas of the base were mind-blowing to Rick, and made him wonder how the base looked prior to being overrun. Another explosion came just off to Rick’s right and he turned sharply around a corner, catching a glimpse of a group of people lighting fuses stuck into makeshift explosives. The absence of law enforcement, food and the general panic and horror that the surviving population had been forced to endure was the root cause for the mass rioting and looting. A herd mentality had taken over and there was nothing anyone could do to negotiate with them.

After passing through several streets in the small town situated next to the airfield, Rick groaned as the Humvee bounced out into an open dirt field. Hills rolled upward away from him, stretching out for what seemed like eternity. The bumps and jolts from the rough terrain lanced through Rick’s legs and rear end, shooting up his back and jittering his teeth.

“I’d better find a road soon before my fillings rattle themselves loose.” Rick mumbled to himself

as he struggled with the vehicle, trying to keep it on course to head away from the base before turning east.

As he sat on a helicopter spinning up as it was lifted from a bunker to the surface, Colonel Leslie thought about the strange pair that had come into the base. After throwing Rick into a holding cell the Colonel had a long chat with Jane, finding out a great many details about the mysterious man in the meantime. Jane’s stories of Rick’s tenacity and compassion over their trip through the city forced the Colonel to consider Rick in a new light. Though Leslie was quickly overtaken by matters more urgent, he gave one last thought to Rick as the helicopter soared westward.

Good luck, you bastard. You’ll need it.