Razor’s Traitorous Heart

Chapter 2-2

Kali drew in a deep breath, forcing the cold night air into her starving lungs. She bent over with her hands on her thighs, drawing in the clean, fresh air before standing straight and looking up at the stars.

She was near the downtown area tonight. She loved escaping the confining spaces of their current headquarters. She loved being outside. She always had.

She had climbed to the top of the Harrison Hotel Electric Garage. She wanted to go higher, so she walked over to the steel framing that held the partial remains of the sign, high above the city. At over twenty-one stories, it wasn’t the tallest structure still standing, but it was close. She didn’t bother going up to the top of the crane mounted on top of the building. It was a left over from BTA, before the aliens. It was too windy tonight to chance climbing it.

Kali scaled the metal girders holding the lettering of the sign like a monkey. She’d had plenty of practice over the past few years. She didn’t stop until she reached the top of the ‘H’. Most of the other letters had fallen away, but this one still stood proudly against the inky skyline. The letter was wide enough that on a calm night she could stand up on it and raise her arms to the sky. If she closed her eyes as a gentle breeze swept by, she could almost imagine she could fly. Tonight it was too dangerous to stand up. Instead, she contented herself by sitting on the edge and looking out over the city she called home.

“I wonder what it will look like in the future,” she murmured as she gazed out of the ghostly remains. “When Destin reclaims the city, we’ll rebuild it even better than it was before.”

Kali didn’t want to admit in her heart that she was afraid that would never happen. If Colbert… if Colbert was successful in killing her brother and overtaking the northern half of the city, she knew it never would. She lowered her head as she remembered how the young boy she and Destin had befriended as kids had betrayed them in the cruelest way.

“Why?” she whispered as she ran her fingers over the scar on her wrist. “How could he do this? To us? To our own people?”

She shook her head and blinked back the tears of anger. It had been almost two years since Colbert had turned on them. Destin hadn’t believed her at first when she expressed her concern over Colbert’s increasingly irrational behavior. He thought it was the stress they were all under. He often told her it wasn’t easy trying to rebuild a world amid all the destruction and uncertainty of their future, that some people handled it differently than others. Destin had embraced the chance. He was determined to use the skills he had been learning as a mechanical engineer before the world went crazy to build a city like the ones they saw in the Sci-Fi movies they used to sneak into.

Colbert… Colbert saw a chance to rule through power and he wanted Destin by his side. Colbert saw what he thought was a chance to rise above the street kids they had been and become the absolute leader. Only one person stood in his way. One person who knew his weakness. One person who knew who he really was inside and what he desired most next to power.

Destin had almost died because she had been afraid to speak up. She had always known that Colbert loved her brother. When she was younger, she thought he loved Destin like she did, as a brother. When she was sixteen, she caught Colbert looking at Destin with a silent hunger that she recognized as anything but brotherly. Colbert had been eighteen to Destin’s twenty at the time and was the leader of one of the most dangerous gangs in their neighborhood. He didn’t like that she and Destin chose a different path. Kali knew Colbert blamed her for that. Destin would never have allowed that type of danger to come near her and he told Colbert as much. Both she and Destin had other dreams they wanted to follow.

Colbert’s obsession with Destin remained hidden from her brother, but once Kali had glimpsed the hunger in his eyes that day, she had quietly watched Colbert from a distance. Two years ago, she caught Colbert spying on her brother when he was with one of the women who had joined up with them. Kali finally broke down and told her brother about her suspicions.

Two days after her meeting with Destin, the woman was found dead. The woman, Maria, had broken her neck when she supposedly fell through a weak spot while on patrol with Colbert and Johnson, Colbert’s second-in-command. Colbert swore that he tried to save Maria but Kali had been suspicious and asked Doc do an autopsy on Maria. Doc said that the bruising around Maria’s neck indicated she had been strangled and that additional bruising and blood under her nails showed she had fought against her attacker.

Colbert overheard Kali telling Destin the results. At first, Colbert had denied it, claiming the cuts on his arms and face were the result of retrieving Maria’s body from the building. When Kali presented the evidence from Doc and asked for a blood sample to see if it matched the blood under Maria’s fingernails, Colbert exploded into a desperate, jealous rage. The knife aimed for her brother’s heart had cut a deep path across her wrist as she stepped between them to protect Destin.

Destin’s call for help was answered by Jason and Tim. They had subdued Colbert, but his treachery ran deeper than either she or Destin knew. His followers helped him escape the makeshift jail they had constructed. Several good men died that night. Men that had families. All because Destin didn’t love Colbert the way Colbert loved Destin and refused to join him in ruling Chicago.

“What a screwed up world we live in,” she murmured as she leaned back and stared up into the night sky again. “Why can’t people just learn to live together?”

She gasped as the dark lit up when someone from the southern half of the city launched a ground-to-air missile. Her eyes followed the path as it streaked across the night sky. Her low cry of denial was carried away on the wind as she saw the target. A Black Hawk helicopter flying low dipped to the left, heading toward her.

Kali watched as the helicopter approached in slow motion. It took a moment for her to register that it was heading straight toward her. She rolled backwards and flipped over the side of the sign. She scrambled down the metal frame, jumping or sliding as fast as she could. She was almost to the bottom of it when the sound of the helicopter grew louder and she swung around to look. A hoarse curse burst from her lips and her eyes widened in horror as she recognized the shapes of two men in the cockpit.

Time appeared to stand still as the pilot swerved again. It was obvious he didn’t see the outline of the large rooftop crane sticking up like a greedy hand. Kali jumped off the sign’s metal frame as the tail rotor caught in the thick metal cables of the nearby crane. The horrific sound of screeching metal echoed above the wind. She hit the ground and rolled as another sound mixed with the doomed aircraft. The whistle of the missile ended with an ear-shattering explosion.

Kali continued to roll until she was under the metal overhang of a fresh air intake duct mounted on the roof. She curled into a ball and covered her head as flaming shards of hot metal rained down around her. Fear threatened to engulf her as a part of the helicopter’s main rotor blade snapped and several large sections flew wildly through the air. One long piece, approximately six feet long, pierced the metal duct inches above her head.

She lay breathing heavily as the sounds of creaking metal and the snapping and popping of flames continued to fill the air. Cautiously raising her head, she looked around at the wreckage. She was amazed that she was still alive. Rolling until she was on her hands and knees, she slowly crawled out from under the impaled duct. She knelt on the gravel and tar-papered roof staring in shock and horror at the destruction.

The crane that had been installed to replace some of the lettering before the alien invasion now stood twisted and disfigured, as if it had been made out of papier-mâché instead of steel. The ‘H’ was broken in half. The section that was missing had taken out a good ten feet or more of the short wall surrounding the roof. Long ropes of steel cabling hung like the remains of a spider’s web blowing in the breeze. Sparks and small fires continued to burn, lighting the darkness so she could see the hideous outline of what remained of the helicopter.

Kali walked slowly toward the edge. There was no way anyone could have survived such a crash. The tail boom was shredded with large chunks missing from it. The tail rotor was completely gone. She glanced around and saw what she thought were pieces of it sticking out of the building across from her. Climbing over the rubble, she raised a trembling hand to push the hair that blew into her eyes back behind her ear and looked over the edge of the building to see if the helicopter had fallen all the way to the ground.

She drew in a surprised breath when she saw that it hung suspended two floors below her. Her eyes followed the tangle of steel cables that barely held it. She jerked back when the whole thing shifted as the crane tilted and bent under the weight of the helicopter. Scrambling backwards over the broken brick and mortar from the building, she turned and headed for the back corner where the metal fire escape was attached to the side of the building. She doubted that the two men were still alive, but she needed to confirm it. She couldn’t leave them if they were hurt.

One thing is for sure, she thought as she climbed over the edge and began working her way down through the narrow caged ladder to the floor below. If those men did survive the crash I have to help get them out because that crane sure as hell isn’t going to be able to hold them for long.