Free Last Man Standing (Book 2): Cordyceps by Keith Taylor

that top that height, but he knows he's a capable pilot. He's confident he can glide safely between the skyscrapers for the three passes it'll take to cover the center of the city.
     
    The sprawling suburbs of Columbus pass beneath him as he approaches. Somewhere down there Mandy has tucked the kids in bed and settled down to watch her shows. She doesn't know he's up here. He didn't have time to call her before he was pulled from the bar, bundled into a black SUV and whisked to the hangar. She probably thinks he's still getting hammered at McCluskey's with the guys right now. She's probably cursing his name, but she'll change her tune when she hears what he's done. When he walks in, sober and clear eyed, and tells her he's saved the city.
     
    Here it is. He sees the narrow ribbon of the 270 pass beneath him, and he tugs the red tank release lever beside the stick. He can't see the fine mist spray from the ass of the plane, but he can hear the hydraulics whir as the nozzle opens. He can feel the upward pressure tugging at the stick as the scrappy little Piper lightens its heavy load.
     
    He skirts the city center, pulls east towards Bexley and Whitehall then curves back around in a lazy arc, bringing it in for another pass, another spray. Out towards Valleyview and Upper Arlington then back once more. All those fancy houses he could never hope to afford. All those city folk who looked down their noses at him and wrote him off as a dumb hick. They'll all owe him their lives come the morning. Everyone will know his name.
     
    He's flying so low he can see the people down in the streets below clear as day as they emerge from their homes and lean out their windows to see what's causing the racket above. They're probably cursing him right now. They have to get up for work in a few hours, and Eric's engines just woke the kids and set off the dog. A few of them are probably even calling the airfield to complain about the nuisance. Come the morning they'll be singing a different tune.
     
    Would a ticker tape parade be asking too much? He doesn't know if they even do those any more, but it'd be real nice to sit in the back of a convertible, riding slowly through the city as thousands of people chant his name.
     
    It takes a half hour of dusting before the tank runs almost dry. The gauge has been busted a few years, but he cuts it off when it feels like he has maybe five percent left. That should be more than enough.
     
    This next part of the job is kind of off script, but he has one final special delivery to make before returning to the airfield. He guides the little Piper southwest out of the city back towards Bolton Field, but angles it so it'll take him just a couple of miles to the west. The lights begin to fade out here in the boondocks, but he doesn't need much light to find this particular target. He knows this place like the back of his hand. He could find it with his eyes closed.
     
    There it is, a mile or so west of the cookie cutter suburban sprawl of New Rome. The unlit, unpaved track cuts a clear path between the overgrown fields and there, half hidden in a grove of willow trees at the very end of the trail, he spots the dirty white roof of his small home. The rusted wreck of an old pickup out front in a mass of crabgrass. The tire swing he put in for Dan rocking back and forth in the breeze. Out front the porch light is on, and he can almost imagine Mandy sitting out there watching her little portable set while she waits for him to return home.
     
    Once again Eric drops to the deck, bringing his little plane down so low he almost grazes the treetops, and with a broad smile he tugs the red lever as he passes over, emptying the last of the tank directly above his wife and three sleeping children.
     
    They'll be so proud of him. They'll be so proud of their old man when they wake up in the morning.
     
    They'll be so, so proud to learn he saved the very last drops of vaccine for them.

 
     
    The radio crackles as