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round and round beating the air. A bass sound
so low that you felt it in the marrow of your ribs long before you heard it.
    I turned and looked up into the
inky black sky. A dark monstrous bird was descending from out of the clouds. It
behaved like a helicopter but it was no helicopter. I had had several
opportunities to ride in helicopters. They always looked like they were
precariously hanging in the sky seconds away from plummeting to earth in a
shriek of metal and petroleum fed flames. If I ever thought helicopters had a
tenuous grip on flight, this thing looked nothing less then miraculous. It was
a tilt-rotor, half airplane half helicopter. Its stubby wings rotated the twin
turbo props from horizontal flight to vertical flight. It had a long cigar
shaped body the size of a city bus. With the back end facing me its twin tail
just visible above the rear ramp I noticed a reddish glow emanating from within
the crafts body.
    My exhausted brain was just
catching up to what I was seeing and putting together the connection between
red light and night vision and how tactical that was when I heard a sound like
the fabric of space being ripped apart. At the same moment a brilliant white
flame leapt out of the craft’s backend. Hot angry air whipped past my head as I
put the clues together and realized there was some sort of weapon firing. I
could see a large multi-barrel gun mounted on the end of the load ramp. The
barrels were spinning with an audible electric whirr and thousands of glistening
brass shell casings were raining down into the water below. I turned as the
ripping noise grew louder and louder and great misty clouds of blood and gore
where blossoming in columns along the length of the pier. The weapons operator
was slowly working his way up and down the pier, back and forth. Bodies were
dropping left and right in a heap. I almost fell off the railing and then
awkwardly flopped forward onto the deck of the pier. I could smell the acrid
stench of gunpowder and watched as the large brass shells tinkled on the pier
around me. The noise resonated and my skull throbbed in pain.
    Then came the ropes. They dropped
from either side of the craft and armed soldiers, dressed in black, dropped
rapidly to the pier. As they hit the deck they fanned out, un-slung their
weapons and began to methodically walk down the pier dispatching the putrid
dead. Soon one was walking towards me. I turn and looked up. He was tall and he
had the look of a man who had the musculature you get from doing work, not
sculpted in front of a mirror but earned by doing hard, back-breaking work. He
had a rough angular face. He looked down at me and shouted something
unintelligible. I just looked in confusion up at him. He turned, looking down
the pier toward the carnage, and spit sunflower seeds off to the side. He then
turned back and shouted again “YOU OKAY?”
    While I was escorted to an already
cleared corner, the mop-up crew continued their progress down the pier in a
blur of progress. At one point someone produced a chain saw and cut rails from
the end of the pier and dumped them over the side. I was guided, half dragged
away from the end of the pier and soon we were clear for the tilt rotor to come
down. It landed on the pier in a cloud of mist and spray.   More soldiers exited the craft. Two
came towards me with duffel bags slung over their shoulders. They looked like
medics with clear plastic face shields that cinched tight around their necks.

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    “Sit him down. Sit him down dammit .”
    They both kneeled down in front of me
and started unzipping the bags. The one to my left pulled a plastic carboy out
with attached tube and sprayer. With one hand he motioned to his eyes, closing
them as his open hand slid in a downward motion over his face. Then he pointed
the nozzle at my face and started spraying. My eyes were stinging before I
realized he was telling me to close them. The smell of ethanol burned my nose
and tongue and soon I was