Dead Harvest

  "I told you, I've got no intention of killing you – or anyone else for that matter. Just keep us over the city, and soon enough, we all go our separate ways. Or you could keep on heading east and see what happens when I get angry."

  The pilot hesitated, but only for a moment. Then, without a word, he turned the bird around. He was going easy on the throttle, but whether it was because of the chopper's ever-worsening tremors or to give the authorities on the ground a chance to keep up, I didn't know. Besides, I couldn't exactly tell him to hurry if I had no idea where we were headed, and right now, our speed was the least of my concerns.

  No, what worried me was the radio.

  "Hey," I said, gesturing toward my headphones, "these things got a volume knob?" He looked confused for a moment, and then pointed at the console. I fiddled with the knobs he'd indicated, flinching as I inadvertently changed the frequency, and my headset filled with static. Eventually, though, I found what I was looking for, and the police band rang loud and clear in my ears.

  "… two suspects – one a teenaged girl, possibly a hostage…"

  "… chopper headed northeast along Park, approximately forty miles per hour…"

  "… flight nurses were evacuated – only the pilot remains…"

  I sat lost in the radio transmissions for God knows how long, only snapped back to reality by a tug on my sleeve. It was Kate. Her brow was furrowed with worry, and she tapped at her ear with frustrated urgency as I stared, puzzled, back at her. Finally, she yanked the headset off of my ears, and I heard what it was she wanted me to hear.

  It was a low, rhythmic whumping, out of sync with the thudding of our own blades. I looked from window to window to find the source of the noise, and soon enough, I spotted it: a news chopper, keeping pace with us maybe fifty yards to our left. Mounted on their nose was a camera, on a sort of swivelling rig that allowed it to pan from side to side. Right now, though, it wasn't panning anywhere – it was pointed right toward us.

  It looked like our days of staying off the radar were over.

  All right, I thought. No need to panic. All we needed was a plan, and we'd get out of this just fine.

  And that's when everything went to shit.

  There was a screech of rending metal as our damaged elevator tore free of the chopper's tail, and then a horrible racket like a golf ball caught in a box fan as it got chewed up by the tail rotor. The world outside the cabin lurched sideways and began to spin. Our pilot doubled over, and the cabin filled with the acrid reek of sick. As our pilot slumped across the control panel retching, his task forgotten, the chopper dipped precariously. Kate slammed head-first into the cabin ceiling, collapsing in a heap onto the floor. And then a hand, strong as iron, closed around my neck.

  I struggled against the pilot's grasp, so impossible in its strength, my arms flailing wildly as I struggled for breath. His face split into a grin, and he pulled me close, breathing two words into my ear, somehow audible even over the roar of the chopper: "Hello, Samuel."

  Fuck. Bishop. Apparently the bastard had nothing better to do than sit around and watch the news.

  The world around us continued to spin, and I felt curiously light, as though I were barely even there. I thought then that it was just the lack of oxygen, playing tricks on my brain. It hadn't occurred to me that the chopper was going down.

  I clenched shut my eyes and forced myself to focus. It wasn't easy, what with Bishop squeezing the life out of me while my overwhelming dizziness made my limbs heavy and uncooperative. If I didn't do something fast, I was gonna lose consciousness, and Kate was as good as gone. It was then that I realized I still had the gun.

  I tried to bring the gun to bear on the pilot/Bishop's face, but he just slapped it away with his free hand, cackling with delight. A second try, the same result. I realized that as long as he had my neck in a vise, I was at a disadvantage. That's when I decided to shoot him in the wrist.

  I pressed the barrel to his arm and pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening, and my face was spattered with blood and gunshot residue in equal measure. Still, it did the trick – Bishop's hand withdrew, his borrowed face twisted in pain. Thanks to the lurching of the chopper, the shot had been a graze – a diagonal furrow maybe two inches long, halfway up the forearm. In truth, I was grateful – if I'd shot the pilot's wrist clean through, he'd have bled out in no time flat. Least this way, I had a shot at saving him – but that meant I had to knock him out, and quick.