Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) (10 page)

Six-year-old Evangeline was helping her mother in the kitchen. A pan of corn bread was hot from the oven and chili simmered on the stove. The small girl picked at the cornbread and tasted a morsel. Her expression soured as she chewed and swallowed the yellow bread.

“I don’t like cornbread!” she said, waggling her tongue. “It tastes weird!”

Elizabeth smiled, amused at her daughter’s blunt honesty. “Well, it’ll taste better with some honey-butter. We should be grateful we can even digest it.”

“What do you mean digest it? You mean eat it?” Evangeline asked puzzled, tilting her head to one side.

Her mother laughed. “No, not just eat it. Our stomachs can turn corn into energy for our bodies. Centuries ago, our bodies couldn’t process corn very well. It was mostly used to feed animals. Then some scientists figured out how to make a new kind of corn that humans can digest. Now, we can enjoy the corn’s flavor, as well as use it for energy.”

Evangeline’s parents were always explaining how life was better now than it had been before The Collapse. She could only understand how things were in her small six-year-old sphere, not how they used to be. Nor did she care.

Evangeline and Daryl continued observing the rescue effort from overhead in spite of the rescuers’ repeated assurances they could handle the situation without Olympic oversight. Pedestrians salvaged the precious corn while the emergency workers tended to the drivers and overturned vehicles. The vehicle that had been carrying the corn was going to be difficult to deal with. It sustained more damage in the collision than the one that had been hauling steel pipes. Evangeline guessed they were being transported to a construction project in Olympus.

The infrared scanner cycled from her HUD, showing a flash of red swimming among blues and greens on her display. She cycled back to it to find out what it was, locating a heat signature buried under the pile of steel pipes. It was smaller and less intense than the other heat signatures swarming below. Judging by its size she thought that it might have been an animal crushed during the accident, but the shape of the heat signature suggested the body was humanoid.

Her breath caught in her throat when she noticed the heat signature pulsating. A heartbeat! Whatever was under the pipes was still alive, but its temperature was below normal and dropping. They would need to act fast if they were going to save whoever was buried alive beneath the mass of pipes. She activated her PA, calling down to the rescue workers on the ground below.

“Attention! Attention!” The crew on the ground all raised their eyes to Evangeline’s TRTV.  “There is a person trapped below the pipes. Someone is still alive under there, but their temperature is dropping rapidly. You need to move the pipes fast.”

The man with the ginger mustache motioned toward the pile and flailed his arms over his head, beckoning the people around him. The rescuers and bystanders that had been scooping up the corn all dropped their tools and moved toward the pipes. It took a group of five or six people to remove a single pipe from the pile. Nearly twenty minutes had passed and the pedestrians had only managed to move few from the precarious stack. The pipes were much heavier than they looked; Evangeline knew whoever was trapped at the bottom would not survive if the rescue effort continued at this snail-like pace.

A second TRTV patrol hovered over the scene of the collision while Evangeline and Daryl watched the ground crews scurry around and on top of what she could only describe as a giant game of pick-up-sticks. It was Alpha Seven and Eight patrol. Evangeline and Daryl hovering around a single spot for longer than usual, which meant something interesting was going on below, drew them in. It was rare that anything interesting happened on patrol in the LTZ, which resulted in the air patrols congregating to witness whatever was breaking up the monotony.

The man with the ginger mustache spoke over his PA system. The panic in his voice betrayed the bravado he displayed when the TRTVs first arrived on the scene.

“These pipes are too heavy!” he barked into his handset. “We need your help!” Shattered pride clouded his expression. He started ordering the pedestrians to clear the scene of the accident to make room where the pilots could land. Evangeline felt a slight wave of claustrophobia as she imagined all four of the TRTVs working in the tight area between the buildings below.

Dust and debris from the street danced in a cyclone created by the four sets of powerful engines as they descended from the air. Many of the spectators ran to find shelter from the veritable sandstorm blasting them from all directions. A few pedestrians and emergency crew covered their faces, while they waited for the roaring engines to disengage and stop sandblasting the intersection.

With resounding thuds, the TRTVs landed in a semi-circle around the pile of steel. Evangeline began issuing orders to Daryl and the other pilots to use the armatures on their vehicles to move the pipes from the pile. Opening the visual shield of her cockpit, she pulled up the high-tech visor on her helmet to show her face to the man with the ginger mustache.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Chief Chris Roberts. I lead the rescue teams of this district,” he replied with a wary tone.

“Chief, I’m Captain Evangeline Evans,” she called down to him with authoritative courtesy. “I need you to guide us in the removal of these pipes. Direct us as to which pipes we need to move first so we don’t upset the stack and do more harm than good. We’re just here to assist, not take over.”

Chief Roberts looked through the cockpit glazing into Evangeline’s eyes, determining if he could trust an Olympian pilot to keep her word. He had endured more than one occasion in which an arrogant, impatient pilot overstepped their bounds because they had the more powerful and sophisticated equipment. “Might makes Right” did not end with The Collapse

They both knew what his decision was going to be. Pulling a piece of chalk from his vest pocket, he started marking the pipes one by one. “This one has to go first, then these two and then this one here.” He was moving around the pile of pipes like a squirrel scavenging for nuts.

Evangeline and her team began to pick up the pipes and moved them away from the scene of the accident, forming a loose pile on the other side of the street. Another delivery vehicle arrived, along with a ground loader, which picked up the pipes from where Evangeline’s team had been dumping them and loaded them onto the new transport. Many of the pipes showed signs of damage from the collision and the rescue effort. The mangled and dented pipes were unusable for any building project; they would have to go back to the mill and recycled.

Evangeline scanned the heat signature each time she approached the pile in her TRTV. The body beneath the pipes continued to lose heat, the life seeping out of it each passing second. Pressing urgency to free the feeble body surged through Evangeline’s veins. She made herself hope the waning life form was nothing more than someone’s pet; the loss of a pet would still be a tragedy, but far less tragic than the other dreadful alternative. The removal of a few more pipes allowed the scanners to get close enough for the crisp resolution of the heat signature. The evidence was undeniable that the figure crushed beneath the mound of pipes was, in fact, a person. She estimated that the individual was no more than five feet tall, perhaps a child or even an adolescent struggling for life. The urgency swelled in her heart again like the tide.

Never a sound was heard from the person entombed under the pile of heavy steel. Evangeline’s omnidirectional microphone picked up Chief Roberts comforting a nearby pedestrian, explaining that the trapped individual may be unconscious or unable to move. As they extracted each pipe, he called into the pile, asking for signs of life and reassuring that help was on the way.

Daryl’s TRTV picked up yet another pipe, revealing a dirt covered foot underneath. As the soiled toes wiggled, a collective sigh and hopeful cheers erupted from the onlookers. Whomever the victim was, Evangeline prayed they would to make it to a medical center for treatment. She imagined an hourglass with the top bulb almost depleted as the final few grains of sand crept toward the neck to remind them all death still lingered very near.

The pilots and emergency personnel hastened to recover the body at the base of the wreckage. They eased the body out from under the last few pipes, which had formed a shallow teepee, protecting the body from the weight of the pipes above. The small gap made the difference between survival and ending up as a statistic.

The dirty foot was the only appendage that was visible outside of a heavy blanket, which was wrapped around the helpless victim. Even the face was veiled beneath the dirty, grey wool. Images of mass graves documented during The Collapse erupted in Evangeline’s mind. Layers upon layers of bodies wrapped in tattered sheets, blood-soaked blankets, and even plastic tarps flooded her memory. The meager shrouds were the only means to give some dignity to the thousands and millions who died from disease and starvation.

“Captain?” Daryl whispered from his cockpit, “How did a body end up in the street and wrapped up in a blanket? I doubt the person walked themselves here, bundled up, and laid down to die.”

Evangeline realized her trainee made a simple, but valid point. The survivor did not get to the scene under his or her own power. “I don’t know Simmonds,” she replied, “I’ve read patrol reports about something like this before. Zoners would take the body of a person who died, and then hide them in a place where an Olympic transport would be sure to pass over. Then, they would reveal the body at the last possible second and make the driver believe he had committed vehicular manslaughter. The family of the deceased would be given some kind of settlement under the pretense of an accidental death. Only an autopsy revealed that the victim was already dead before the vehicle struck them.”

Evangeline could hear Daryl shiver in his seat. “That’s gross,” he murmured under his breath.

“Yes,” she answered, “but gross or not, it happened quite often about a hundred years ago.” Evangeline left out another motive for leaving a body in the street to be crushed by an unsuspecting vehicle: to cover up a crime.

The rescuers tenderly lifted the survivor, still shrouded by the blanket, onto a stretcher. As the emergency workers carried the stretcher toward their medical vehicle, one of the medics pulled the folds of the blanket away from the survivor’s face. She jumped away from the stretcher, a look of astonishment in her eyes. The other emergency workers stopped in their tracks, searching for what had startled the medic. When they saw what had been concealed beneath the blanket, they almost dropped the stretcher as if their hands forgot how to hold onto the aluminum handles. 

The medic re-approached the stretcher with tentative steps and stared down at the survivor, still cocooned in the blanket. She covered her gaping mouth with her gloved hands and shook her head back and forth, defiant to the image attacking her mind. A tear coursed down her cheek.

On the stretcher, swaddled in the soiled blanket, laid an Angel, but not just any Angel. This Angel was a pre-adolescent, a not-yet fully-grown female Angel. Not once in the history of Angels living on Olympus had anyone ever seen one so young before. Her face was like pure alabaster, and of unspeakable beauty. No human could imagine a face more perfect than the Angels they associated with in their day-to-day lives. Nothing could have prepared the crowds at the accident scene to witness her flawless, child-like face.

She laid on the stretcher with a content smile molded on her porcelain face, staring upward into the sky. Staring up at it, Evangeline noted, but not quite seeing it somehow. Evangeline first thought the smile reflected her gratitude of the rescue. However, there was something else about the young Angel’s expression, something out of place. Evangeline recognized that same blank, unaffected look from the faces of the Angels on the train earlier that morning.

Serenity. Peace. Tranquility. Those were the only words she could conjure to describe the girl’s expression, which seemed out-of-place after surviving a burial beneath cold steel for an hour. Evangeline wondered how the girl could be so calm after the drawn-out calamity.

The emergency crew composed themselves from their shock and shifted the stretcher in their hands. As they carried her to the medical vehicle, the medic began grilling the Angel with typical post-trauma evaluation questions: What’s your name? Where do you live? Are you hurt? Is there anyone we can call? Question after question, the girl remained unresponsive. If it were not for her eyes flitting about following soaring birds in the sky, it would have been difficult to determine she was alive.