Flashback by Amanda Carpenter

unblinkingly. He asked her gently, “Dana, what’s happened? Why do you need the gun?”
    “I—I crashed,” she whispered dully. “I crashed the helicopter. They shot me down. I can’t get to those poor kids, they—they’re dying. I know they are.”
    David looked and felt like he’d been hit unexpectedly in the stomach. He moaned something under his breath, queerly. Then he took a deep breath, the passage in his throat sounded ragged in the tense filled room. “Oh, Dana, Dana—the kids are all right. I know, I’ve just come from there. I’ve seen them. You don’t have to worry. The fighting’s all over with. Please put down the gun. You’re scaring your mother, see?”
    “You’re lying!” Dana screamed, and Denise screamed too. Only David was as still as a statue. Furiously, Dana continued, “You’re lying to me, damn you! I know they aren’t all right! I was the only pilot free to answer their radio signals! They’re dying! Those kids…” Her eyes, after misting over with such anguish that both Denise and David caught their breath at it, sharpened into such a look of fury and hate that her whole face was altered. She spat out, “Get the hell out of my way! Move back from the door! Both of you, go on! Get over to that side of the room!”
    Slowly both David and Denise complied. Dana’s mother’s face was so grey and full of fear that something in Dana’s face flickered for a moment as a sliver of reality wedged into her nightmare. But it was gone again in a split second, and her face was full of desperation and futile determination.
    Dana edged from behind the desk, opposite to the two watching her, and she slowly inched out of the door, never taking her eyes from them. Then she whirled and ran as fast as she could, forsaking her little bundle of supplies and breaking out of the door fast, hitting one of the many paths that converged to their lawn at a dead run. She had to find those kids and help them, she had to.
    Back at the house, David took a deep, steady breath and then turned his attention to Denise, who looked suddenly older and completely colourless. He was alarmed at what he saw, and he took her gently by the arm and forced her to sit down. She stared up at him fearfully. “What happened to her?” she asked. “She’s never been this way before, never! Oh, God, what if she hurts someone? David, we’ve got to stop her!”
    “No—no, Mrs. Haslow,” he said, making her sit still in the chair with both hands. “Just take a few minutes and try to calm down a bit. Will you do that? Will you try to keep as calm as you can about this? I’ll go and look for her. I promise, I’ll find her, and everything will be all right.”
    Denise stared at him and she saw the emotion that darkened his eyes, the expression of something horrifying that clung to him like a black clawed thing, how he was so utterly white. He was labouring under some terrific stress. “What was Dana talking about when she said she crashed?” she asked him slowly, staring. He swallowed and her eyes sharpened. “You know, don’t you? This has something to do with you, doesn’t it?” He didn’t answer, and she said, seemingly to change the subject, “I tried to call you when she left the house earlier. She was acting so strangely then, too, and I—I thought that maybe you could see her safely to the store and back, to make sure she was all right. But you weren’t home.”
    A muscle jerked in his jaw. His hands tightened on hers, tightened spasmodically and then, as he became aware of her stare, and his tight grip on her, he let go and stood back. “I was coming over here,” he said flatly. Her eyes widened.
    “Why? You surely didn’t knock on the front door, did you? Did you change your mind? David—”
    “I went to the store instead,” he said interrupting her harshly, and his face creased with some kind of pain. He saw her expression and continued angrily, “Don’t look at me like that! Of course I