The Lucifer Gospel by Paul Christopher Page B

of the valley.
    Finn, crouching, did a quick four count then leapt up and ran, keeping her eyes on the dark shadow that marked the canyon entrance. She reached the canyon just as the first grenade exploded. She tried to look back over her shoulder but felt Hilts’s palm in her back, pushing her forward into the entrance. She stumbled and his hand was on her arm, pulling her up. The second grenade went off with a sharp bang and then she was in darkness.
    “Go! Go! Go!” Hilts yelled, and she went. Behind her there was a harsh coughing sound as the engine of the Mil hesitated, then caught, then hesitated again. “I think I hit the rotor!” said Hilts.
    Finn nodded blindly and kept on running, finally coming out of the narrow canyon entranceway and into the open desert. The little airplane stood waiting a few hundred feet away. There was no sign of the helicopter.
    She stopped, horrified, staring to the left, into the desert. Rising like a brutal wave was a dark curtain a thousand feet high, blotting out the sun.
    “Look!”
    “Sandstorm!” Hilts yelled. “Get to the plane!”
    Finn ran harder, lungs bursting, heart hammering in her chest. Her breath came in harsh, hot gasps. She reached the shadow of the wing, ducked under it and wrenched open the door of the little airplane. The wind blowing against her back was fiercely hot and filled with grains of sand that burned, stinging into her exposed skin, even tearing at her hands. The sound of it against the wings and fuselage was like the frantic tapping of a million bony fingers foretelling her choking, blast-furnace end in the immense dark thing that loomed behind her like a gargantuan, living creature, the desert’s own spawn or demon.
    She threw herself into the plane and scrambled to shut the door as Hilts climbed in beside her. He immediately began going through his preflight routine, reaching up to hit the button on the flap selector switch, then punching the air bottle valve between the seats and the fuel primer simultaneously. The radial engine started with a roar. He released the brake and pushed the throttle forward hard with his left hand, his right holding on to the steering column. The oversize propeller windmilled, seeming almost to suck them forward, the wall of the cliff directly in front of them.
    “Aren’t you going to turn?!” Finn yelled, staring at the cliff less than two hundred yards away.
    “Too slow! She turns like she’s sleepwalking!” he answered, pushing the throttle forward even harder. They raced across the hard-packed sand, the steamroller of the sandstorm coming up on Finn’s right, filling her entire field of vision.
    “Are we going to make it?!”
    “Think elevating thoughts!”
    The helicopter came over the top of the cliff and swooped down directly in front of them. Finn could see a spurt of flame from the twin-barreled turret gun slung under the nose and suddenly the ground immediately in front of their little plane was torn to ribbons.
    Hilts jerked the steering column hard to the right, slammed his foot down on the right rudder pedal and pushed the throttle forward as far as it would go. The plane swung to the right and leapt into the air, the Mil-24 sliding away to the left, heading directly into the oncoming wall of the howling storm. There was a sudden clattering sound from behind them and Finn felt as though a giant hand had grabbed the plane and shaken it. Then the sandstorm hit and they vanished into its hungry jaws.
    They flew within the storm, blind, desperately climbing until they rose above the dark, roiling horror and came out into the sunlight. Below them the storm was like the surface of some black, awful sea, shot through with streaks of lightning.
    “It really is a storm,” said Finn, staring down.
    “Crazy things,” Hilts said and nodded, checking his instruments. “The friction of the sand causes the lightning. All sorts of magnetic disturbances as well.”
    “Down there, you flew right at that