by Mark Tufo
By the time I got out of that seat I looked like I’d gotten into a fight with a prize fighter or perhaps tried to swallow a porcupine whole. Even my mother, who sometimes took things too far, had not been prepared for the bloodied up, bandaged son who greeted her back in the waiting room. I glared at the hygienist the entire time and flipped her both birds as my mom and I walked out of the office.
Right now, as the ship started to melt, I would go back to that dental seat in a heartbeat, even after flipping her off.
“Africa!” Tracy shouted.
The thought of falling into the middle of the Sahara and getting munched by a wayward hyena did not improve my spirits. The change from brain-slamming, concussion-causing shaking, to calm stillness, happened so fast that the contents of my skull hadn’t stopped moving yet to register that fact. Plus, the ear piercing alarms had yet to yield their incessant blaring.
“We’re through! We made it!” The sheer jubilation with which my wife shouted those words led me to believe that she didn’t for a second think this was a possible outcome. And we sure as shit weren’t out the woods quite yet. The back of the ship was a curtain of fire.
“BT, man, get out of your seat. Gonna need your help!”
He opened one eye just wide enough to look around. “We land yet?”
“No, and we’re not going to if you don’t help me.” I was going for the fire extinguisher. Had I known how useless that was going to be, I would have gone up and sat my final few moments with Tracy. The fire extinguisher was empty.
“Tracy, you’d better land this thing!” I shouted from the cab where smoke was beginning to roil.
She spared a glance backwards. “Both of you get up here. I can shut the door, it will give us a little more time.”
“Enough time?” I asked when we got up there.
The air was marginally better as the cockpit door whooshed shut behind us. I finally took the time to look at the world we were rapidly approaching, countries whipping past at an alarming rate.
BT said it first. Good thing too, as Tracy looked like she was going to snap. “Aren’t we going a little fast?”
“Yeah, tap the brakes or something,” I said encouragingly. “Aren’t there air brakes?”
“I’ve lost most ability to maneuver, we’re a shooting star at this point.” Tracy was smacking some dials.
“Most shooting stars burn up upon entry,” BT blurted out, like he was reciting some long lost fact for his fifth grade science teacher.
“What happens to the ones that don’t burn up?” I asked.
“They crash into the ground at twenty-six miles a second.”
“That’s pretty fast, huh?” I asked him.
“Fast enough. There’s usually nothing left.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty fast. Air brakes, honey, slam those fuckers on.”
“I think I can level us off, not sure what that’s going to do though.” Tracy was pushing the stick forward, it didn’t much look like it wanted to comply with her order. It should have known better than to defy her. I have no idea how far off the surface we were, the altimeter—
along with most of the instruments—was beyond salvage at this point. I thought we’d clear the Rockies, if we got that far, but not by much. The ship had been bucking as Tracy imposed her will upon it, and once again it calmed as we rocketed around the planet.
“What’s that?” BT was pointing to somewhere off to the left.
I spotted two smoke contrails. “Those are fucking missiles! Someone thinks we’re a Prog ship and is trying to shoot us down.”
“Aren’t we going too fast?” His tone implied he hoped so.
“Let’s see, you said we were traveling around twenty-six miles a second. ICBMs go about fifteen thousand miles per hour, and we had a hell of a time trying to shoot those down, although, with the advent of the alien technology, our tracking and targeting have seriously improved. Okay, they are going a paltry four miles per second, I think we’re safe.”
“Is he serious?” BT asked of Tracy.
“He does this sometimes, almost like an idiot savant.”
We were either going slower than we’d initially thought, or whoever had shot those missiles was a crack shot, because they still very much looked like they were on a collision course. I was so fixated on the missiles I almost didn’t register the fact when blue streaks shot past us.
“Fighters,” Tracy grimaced.
“We can’t catch a break!” BT’s hands went up to the side of his head. I’m sure he would have paced if he’d had the room to do so.
Tracy dropped the front of the ship down at a severe angle, so much so that I had to place my hands against the window. BT had one hand on my back and one on the glass. I was fighting, trying not to become a biology slide as I was pressed in between them. One of the missiles blew right over the top of us, close enough I felt like I could have reached out and touched it if I so desired. The second still looked like it had a bead on us. Tracy dropped the nose even further; we were perpendicular to the ground making as small a target of ourselves as possible. Most of my body was against the glass. Not sure why I hadn’t thought to sit down in the co-pilot seat. BT was doing his best to keep us from knowing each other in the biblical sense.
The landmass below us was taking on definition at an alarming rate. Blue streaks of fire were still being shot but they weren’t close; apparently the fighters following us didn’t have as much a death wish as our pilot.
“Damn,” Tracy said so quietly I wasn’t even sure I heard it. In my head I kept hearing the imaginary sound of glass slowly cracking.
“Damn? What’s damn?” Well now I knew that I didn’t imagine it, because BT questioned her on it.
“You heard that?” She didn’t spare a glance over to him. “So this is what it’s like for you?” This time she did spare that glance. “The talking out loud and not meaning to, I mean.”
“I know what you are referring to. Answer the man.”
“The controls aren’t responding again.”
“What?! And all you could muster was a ‘damn’?”
More missiles left the ground, but they looked to be tracking other targets, I would imagine the fighters. I figured that those on the ground thought if the fighters were trying to kill us, then we must be enemies of the Progs. We had that going for us for at least, like, the next minute before we became a shuttle pancake.
“Got something.” Tracy’s tongue was firmly lodged in her cheek. Even as near to death as we were I found the rare expression endearing. I wondered if BT would mind me hugging him as a proxy.
“What’s that mean?”
“Let her fly, man. Either she gets us out of this dive or she doesn’t,” I said.
“You’re pretty cavalier about the whole thing.”
“I actually feel like screaming my fucking lungs out, but I don’t think that’ll do any good.”
BT grunted in agreement. At least I think it was in agreement, kind of tough to discern an exact response from a grunt. By degrees I would have had to measure with a protractor, we began moving in a horizontal fashion. I most likely wouldn’t have even known if I hadn’t been sliding down the glass and onto the console. BT’s eyes were closed again and his mouth pulled back in a grimace. The ground was still coming up to greet us. Tracy was sweating bullets, something she hadn’t even done when she’d had Travis. She’d made a few puffing noises through her mouth and then we’d had a baby. She’d made that a relatively easy looking experience. I didn’t remember the lack of sweat until right this moment when I saw how much she was bathed in.
“We’ll make it,” I told her.
“Thank you,” BT answered instead.
Tracy nodded slightly.
The next few moments were tense; the cords on Tracy’s neck standing out, and her teeth clenched tight, maybe not as tight as my asshole, but tight nonetheless. Something rocked the ship, could have been treetops. BT involuntarily cried out. Our slow slide down to the floor ab
ruptly changed in an instant as we now found ourselves in a tangle of arms and legs as we tried to get up. After a few more seconds I was able to roll out from under BT and push myself up. Within an instant, I got to the chair and buckled in. I was not going to be the big man’s cushion any longer.
“Holy shit,” I said as I looked out. We weren’t more than a couple of hundred or so feet from the ground.
“What’s holy shit?”
“Open your eyes and find out for yourself.”
BT sat up. “Whoa,” was his response as we barreled across what looked like an arid desert.
“Any idea where we are?” I asked Tracy.
“Fifty-seven miles south of Las Vegas.”
“Nevada?”
“You know another one, Talbot? I have to land this thing now before the fire destroys anything else.”
Nevada was a long ways from Maine, but it beat Uganda or somewhere equally as far away. But even Uganda beat dead.
“Can you slow this thing down?” I asked in all seriousness.
“Some, not enough to land safely, though. We’re going to have to jump.”
I barely choked down what raced up my throat.
“The chutes are in the cargo hold in a closet right outside the door.”
“Why does an alien spacecraft have parachutes?” BT asked. I think he questioned it only because he didn’t really want to believe they were here and we would have the opportunity to use them.
“We put them there,” Tracy informed him.
I began to open the door that separated us from the cargo space and was immediately met with a wall of smoke and heat. I quickly closed the door. “There might be a problem. The fire is too strong.”
How it was possible, I don’t know, but an even louder alarm began to go off. The ship once again began to vibrate. I was surprised the thing was still holding together. Now we started to slow considerably.
“Check now,” Tracy said.
“What did you do?”
“Mike, just check, I don’t have time to discuss everything.”
“Better do it, man.” BT was looking at me.
“Why the fuck don’t you do it then?” I was asking of him even as I was opening the door. The smoke had cleared considerably and the fire was no longer visible, that was due to the fact that the rear shuttle door was open. The sound was loud enough I thought my eardrums were going to shred. We had depressurized to the point where I didn’t feel like I was going to be pulled through the door. It still didn’t make me feel much better though looking out upon that vast expanse. The idea of free falling was not high on my list of priorities for the day.
“Mike, the fucking parachutes!” Tracy yelled.
I’d been sidetracked by the fear of death. It happens sometimes. I was snagging any handhold I could as I worked my way to the closet, which of course was right next to the opening. BT reached out and grabbed a fistful of my clothing. I nodded to him in thanks. I stretched and just hit the handle of the door, which opened. What do you know? It appeared that some of the contents had shifted during flight as two chutes spilled to the floor. The second one had tumbled onto the top of the first and was now teetering. If it fell, it would be out the door and on a solo flight. I wrenched myself free from BT and dove for the chute, just snagging a strap as it began to fall away.
“What the fuck, Mike!” BT yelled as he dove for my foot. My momentum was taking me out the door. I wondered what the odds were that I could somehow put the chute on and deploy it while I was whistling through space. He yanked me back so hard I thought he was going to dislocate my leg from my hip.
“What’s going on?” Tracy asked, concern tingeing her question.
“Your damn fool husband almost killed himself saving a parachute.”
“Why would you do that, Mike?” she asked.
Adrenaline was still pumping through my veins; staring into the abyss had that affect. “Because I figured we would all need a parachute,” I shot back, defending my actions.
“How many did we lose?” She again had concern in her voice.
“None, I saved it,” I said proudly. I would have beaten my chest if I didn’t have to let go of handholds to do it.
“It, as in one?” she asked.
“Umm, yeah.”
“You risked your life for one parachute? Mike, there’s like a dozen in there.”
BT still had a grip on my leg, but he was laughing. I now took the time to look into the closet where ten parachutes were neatly strapped in to their respective slots. “I…I just thought there was three.”
“Just hurry up and get two more and an equipment pack.” I couldn’t see her, but I was pretty sure she was shaking her head back and forth in that “what the hell was he thinking” gesture.
“How was I supposed to know?” I asked as we were all once again in the cockpit.
BT hadn’t stopped laughing.
“Having a good time?”
“I am, man, I really am.” He placed his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for that.”
“Kiss my ass. I hope your chute isn’t the one I packed full of my lunch.”
“That’s not funny.” He got real serious real quick when the gravity of what we were about to do crashed in on him.
Poor choice of description, I suppose; the “crash” part, I mean.
“Could you check my pack?” BT asked, turning around. “Not you, Talbot.”
“We’re both Talbots,” I told him.
“The one that wasn’t born with the curse.”
“You’re fine,” Tracy told him.
“How fast are we going?” I asked as I watched the ground whipping by.
“I figure a little under three hundred miles an hour.”
“That’s a lot better than twenty-six miles a second.” BT seemed relieved.
“Three hundred miles an hour? Can we survive that?”
“Don’t know. But we definitely can’t survive hitting the ground in this thing that fast.” Tracy was heading for the door.
“Have you always been this hardcore?” I asked her.
She smiled. She was busy stuffing weapons into the battle pack. When she was done she looked to BT. “Get up here. You’re jumping first.”
“Why does it always have to be the black man?”
“It’s not because you’re black, it’s because if Mike and I go first I know you won’t follow.”
“You don’t know that.” He seemed indignant.
“Statistically I do. I know I’ll jump because, although it’s not much better of a survival chance it still is better, and Mike will jump because well, because frankly speaking, my husband is fucking nuts.”
“Thanks, honey.” I furrowed my eyebrows. She’d said it in a complimentary tone, but it sure didn’t seem like it was meant that way.
“It’s always the last person that starts to think that maybe it will be better to go down with the ship. Trust me it won’t. Now get your ass up here so you can jump. Now remember, when you’re about twenty to thirty feet off the ground pull down on the two yellow handles that will be almost in your face. This causes the chute to cup air and to slow your speed down considerably. Got that?”
We both nodded. If BT got any paler, his lineage was going to be questioned.
“Want me to hold your hand?” I asked him.
“I’ll always hate you, Talbot.” Those were the last words he spoke inside the ship. He was glaring back at me even as he pushed himself away from the craft.
Tracy stuck her head out for a few seconds to watch. “Okay his chute deployed and he appears to be giving you the finger. You’re up, Mike.”
“Wait, I maybe thought that you wanted to get rid of him so we could be alone.”
She pushed me out. “Not cool!” I shouted. I was happy my parachute automatically deployed, as I think I was too scared to find the ripcord. I was momentarily afraid for my wife’s safety when I saw the ship burst back into flame, but she had already departed and was off to the left and
a little higher than I was. I should have relished those final moments of peace as I drifted down, but I was done with being in space. I just wanted to have my boots on the ground. I wanted to be in control of where I was going or at least where Tracy told me to go.
I looked down and to my left, I saw BT was close to landing. “Brakes, man, hit the brakes,” I said softly. Even if I had shredded my voice screaming, he wouldn’t have heard me over the whipping wind as it passed by his ears and ruffled the parachute. It’s not nearly as quiet as you might think—in fact it’s not really quiet at all. Kind of think about if you were driving down the roadway at eighty miles an hour and stuck your head out the window, guarantee you wouldn’t hear anything except the wind. BT bounced upon impact with the earth, any lesser of a man most likely would have shattered his pelvis. I cringed just thinking of that. Not BT, though. He stood back up, undid the harness, looked up, found me in the sky and again flipped me off. It’s always good to have friends.
I pulled down on my cords maybe a tad late, landed hard, ran for a few steps and started a tumble a gymnast would have been proud of. I stood up, undid my straps and dusted off every inch of myself. BT was heading my way.
“Nice landing.”
“Better than yours,” I told him. He nodded in agreement. “You alright by the way?”
“I’d be better if you hadn’t seen it.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t have everything.”
The ground shook very slightly as our shuttle finally landed. Couldn’t even see it, it was so far away. BT and I both shielded our eyes to the sun as we watched Tracy descend. Her leading battle pack caused a plume of dust as it struck terra firma first and then Tracy. She stuck the landing like a much better version of the aforementioned gymnast. She took two steps and was out of her harness.