Free The Filter Trap by A. L. Lorentz Page A

“Does she know?”
    “That I like that Hobbit shit too?” LARS gave Allan a friendly pat on the back. “Better to let her think she’s smarter; takes ego and confidence to lead people, eh, professor ?”
    LARS yanked Allan back around to face the smoke and gave him a firm push.
    Lee had already jumped. LARS pushed again. Hard. Allan let out the most blood-curdling expletive he could think of and ran straight off the deck.
    Allan instantly regretted the bravado, spinning and falling at 120 miles an hour. His eyes struggled to make sense of the jumbled mess. Lee had told him to pull his parachute after her. He tried to find Lee, a speck floating in the maelstrom hurtling up. A large red and white striped ball spun past.
    Allan fumbled at his collar for his parachute, but the handle was gone. One of those damn pilots sabotaged him. Panicked and twirling into the earth, he worried he’d fizzle out of existence like a falling star. Why did they bring him? It wouldn’t help to show Jill his dead body. Or maybe it would, if she still hated him. The humor calmed his panic attack.
    Breathe. Close your eyes. Concentrate. How good will it feel to remind Jill for the rest of her life that she owes it to you? Save yourself first, hotshot.
    Reason revisited Allan. He replayed the instructions of the pilots before the jump. The handle sat on the other collar. In less than a second he felt the chute deploy and lift up, slamming his thighs into the thick straps and cutting a deep wedge into some very soft flesh between his legs. He didn’t feel it yet, focusing instead on the worrisome increase in spin.
    What had they said? Handles! Allan pulled two large canvas circles and began to unravel his swirl, allowing him to focus on landing. He searched the crowd below for an opening. Thousands of survivors from the tsunami took refuge in the Presidio among uprooted trees and stranded boats washed in from the western cliffs. They looked as scared as he was. Pulling down with all his strength on the canvas loops only delayed the inevitable. Allan’s knees slammed into shoulders wet from swimming through a wall of water only a few hours earlier.
    “Are they coming?” asked a ragged, bruised man pinned under Allan.
    “I’m sorry, what?” Allan gingerly stood and helped the man to his feet as an anxious crowd turned to face them.
    “That was a Chinook. My brother flew one in the Gulf. You’re the Marines, the first in. You’re here to help us, right?”
    The man’s lips turned down, realizing Allan’s soft belly and lack of uniform belied his civilian status.
    “I’m sorry, we’re here to find a scientist.”
    “Those your friends?” a woman asked, pointing behind Allan to a giant red and white parachute drowning in the crowd.
    “Yes!” Allan began pushing through the crowd. He jerked back, pulled by his still-attached parachute pack now trampled under many soggy feet.
    “Hey!” the man shouted. “Where the fuck you going!” He stomped on Allan’s parachute cords. “We need relief! These people are dying.”
    “There were supplies on the chopper,” Allan answered. “They planned to land, but there’s no space.”
    “Land where?” the man demanded, grabbing Allan by the collar. “The whole Presidio is surrounded by Army boys with rifles and nobody is letting us back out. There’s no food, and now they’re dropping in fat, hungry desk jockeys? You here to see some real action? Something to brag about when your contract is up? Where were you when the wave hit? I’ll show you what commitment looks like.”
    The man pulled his sleeve back, exposing a Vietnam veteran tattoo with the names of several men under a skull and crossbones. He flexed it in Allan’s face, still holding firm to his collar. Others in the crowd shouted their own frustrations at Allan.
    Allan crumbled in the duress of the surprisingly strong older man. Twelve years old again, about to be pummeled by the school bully for being first in class, he