Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Darren Stapleton

  Vedett put the van into reverse, to drive out of the hangar.

  It was then he noticed a guard emerge from one of the store cupboards. He was bigger than most and looked a lot worse for wear. It was hard to make out in the pre-storm gloom but Vedett could see blood on his face and a hulk at his back underneath the guard’s coat. He watched the guard as he first looked at the restored aeroplane and then up at the hanging corpse, then he saw the guard’s face constrict into an anguish almost as dark as the cloying, massing skies.

  ‘Hello Drake,’ whispered Vedett, who smiled and waved at him from behind the steering wheel.

  He depressed the accelerator, quietly drove out of the hangar and was gone.

  Grief is defined not by whom you are missing, but by what they left behind.

  Deadlook

  G. Aleass

  CHAPTER 93

  In the soft underbelly of the hangar I looked up at the swinging corpse and felt something break inside. The plans I had, the thoughts and subtleties and processes I was evolving as I entered the large open space evaporated like the first drop of rain on desert heated metal. A shudder coursed from the nape of my neck down my spine and it was all I could do to not collapse on the spot, ruined by the worse gut shot I had ever taken.

  Doc.

  The very thing I had tried to avoid, the only thing more important than avenging my brother and clearing my name, the person I wanted to keep safe, was now swinging gently from side to side above me. His white coat was almost entirely dark brown and red. Blood had been slowly dripping from the soles of his bare feet and had dried in cakes and clots.

  As I walked across the mainly empty floor of the hangar, I heard a van reverse at speed to leave. I was worried my cover was blown, that they were going to raise the alarm but they just waved at me from behind the windshield. I returned the gesture. I then heard a collection of different voices coming through the open main door, the voices were raised, agitated. Someone shouted an order then there was a clamour of booted feet across a wet surface, getting out of the rain. I placed my hand instinctively on my bow and paused. My position was entirely exposed. I could hope for two, maybe three successful shots before they retaliated or withdrew to leave me stranded in the middle of the floor, a sitting duck. I could still not even think straight so I took refuge in the only place I could.

  The aeroplane.

  A plan can be a self-generated purgatory.

  Ludicrously Brilliant

  Jack Slater

  CHAPTER 94

  ‘Does he really have to be up there?’ Rose asked as she made her way to the middle of the hangar floor.

  Leonora nodded. ‘It should push all the right buttons when Jackdaw drops him off. We can film him going berserk in the hangar, even film the plane crash. Are the hidden cameras all in position? Shouldn’t he be here soon?’ Her voice was raised as she tried to speak above the noise of the wind and rain.

  Cowlin nodded. ‘Yes cameras are on and running. And yes, he will be here soon. There is no answer at the Arena so I assume Jackdaw is on his way. I have also dispatched three men to check the culvert and perimeter.’ He walked over to the plane, placed his hand on the rail and began to climb the temporary, crude steps into the cockpit, instructing one of the engineers in brown coveralls to top up the fuel tank as he went.

  ‘Where do you think you are going?’

  Cowlin paused in midstride.

  ‘One last check of the instruments, Governor. I am concerned about …’

  ‘That will not be necessary. Check all of your men are in position, we need to ready for him. Have your patrols come back with anything?’

  ‘Nothing but complaints about the weather, Ma’am. I have pulled the man off the roof and the storm drain/perimeter patrol will not be able to radio in until they are out of the underground systems.’

  ‘Well, that will do then,’ said Rose.

  Cowlin remained where he was, a statue to his own stubborn concern.

  ‘With all due respect, Governor, I have only ever flown this thing on two dry runs. Literally dry. The atmospherics today are all over the place. You would do well to get a person with wings flying in these conditions, let alone an ancient tin bucket like this. I want to check everything again, Ma’am. With all due respect.’ His tone implied no respect at all.

  A gust of wind howled through the hangar, the building’s shape amplified the gust in both sound and intensity.

  A drop of blood fell and landed on Leonora's lapel.

  ‘Ugh! Shit. Shit.’ She immediately swiped at the blood and smeared it into the material. She and the Governor both took a couple of steps back.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Leonora, you will not be the one on camera,’ Governor Rose said. She looked back to Cowlin. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘just be quick about it.’ Cowlin was already on his way inside the plane.

  ‘Now let’s retire to the main office to get this public address recorded. Outside would have been better, but it does not look like our Deadlands weather is colluding today.’ Rose walked off towards the lower floor office.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Leonora, ‘maybe we could use that in your speech.’

  Cowlin exploded from the door of the plane backwards, holding his head as he fell.

  The Governor’s professional façade totally slipped away in an instant.

  ‘What the f…?’

  Nothing, but nothing, is created without struggle.

  The House on Dormant Street

  Clarissa Took

  CHAPTER 95

  Just listen to her, I thought, no need to come inside.

  I could make out most of the voices and what they were saying. Just leave the plane well alone for a few minutes and …

  Cowlin’s large frame filled the cabin doorway.

  I lay prone and near the door, in between the two rear rows of passenger seats, my head propped up against the interior of the plane, my feet in the aisle. I lunged out and kicked up, missing Cowlin’s jaw but connecting with the side of his head and ear. He tumbled back through the door, swearing. I then loaded my bow and stooped out onto the steps.

  I pointed my bow straight at Governor Rose.

  ‘Just give me a reason someone. Anyone.’

  Facing death in battle has a way of clearing your head of incidentals, so that it may

  be lighter when it leaves your shoulders.

  The Omega Machine

  H. Morthread

  CHAPTER 96

  The engineer finished refuelling the aircraft and unscrewed the heavy fuel - pump nozzle. It was made of old world brass and he did not want it scuffing on the floor or exposed to the elements. He was on his way over the wings of the aircraft when he saw Cowlin fall backwards out of the door, totally missing the stairs and crashing to the hangar floor.

  He then saw a guard emerge from the plane and point a crossbow at the Governor.

  Stephan Evers was a good engineer. Not destined for warfare or frontline skirmishes, he had immersed himself in academia and excelled in engineering mechanics and history. Fossil fuels had become his speciality and for years he had worked on a pioneering team that lead the way in those fuels’ synthesis and replication. Fossil fuel had been the main reason for the old world’s almost-demise. Today they devoted more resources, as a global community, towards solutions to the fossil fuel conundrum, than they did to curing cancer. After all, compared to cancer, had not fossil fuels, oil, caused more deaths? More wars? More geopolitical backstabs and sideswipes? More misery for those who did not have it and even more for those that did?

  He was not a soldier, he was an engineer first, historian second. And being an engineer, especially on this project, had taught him that anything can be put together again but people. Being a historian he had also read that all evil needed to triumph was for good men to do nothing.

  And Stephan Evers was more than a good engineer, he was a good man.

  He took the only justifiable action a good man could and brought the brass nozzl
e down, collar first, onto the top of Drake’s head.

  There is nothing more likely to keep you going than thinking of the consequences of giving up.

  A Hero’s Tale

  L. Dodsley

  CHAPTER 97

  The daylight was drowned. Thunder rumbled and sounded like cannons firing barrages of booming doom at a distant shore. The wind was bellowing into the guts of the hangar and whined a clangourous din through rusted struts and loose rivets.

  I felt, at first, as if I was rising from a deep and natural sleep, but then that gave way to disorientation and unease.

  My senses were slowly fading in, consciousness wavering, teasing me from a distance just too far away to fully grasp. The whole world was happening at a sensory periphery; all but the sound of the elements at play, alien and indecipherable.

  My head was down and I was seated.

  The phonics told me I was inside a small space, though there was no distinct sound that gave it away; I just knew, like stepping into a small store cupboard or great hall or theatre with your ears open, even when the lights are off.

  I tried to raise my hand to my nose and my banging head but found my hands were tethered.

  I was not gagged.

  I felt a strange twisting weight at my back, then remembered my wings. I tried to flex them, but as I was sitting upright and leaning back slightly, any kind of movement was negated by my own bodyweight. Pain still crawled out from my wing’s base warning against further exertion. The back of my head sang from its recent, unforeseen blow.

  Someone I had not seen must have taken me out.

  I strained my eyes open, blinked a few times until they became more accustomed and the instrument panel of the aeroplane swam vaguely into focus. Did they intend to take me up on this thing? Where were we going?

  My hands were tied to the steering yoke, a metal column that disappeared into the console, with no discernible joins or weaknesses. I gave a tentative pull.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ a voice from beside me said.

  I jumped and abruptly stopped my feeble struggling.

  ‘You’re in the co-pilot’s chair and, as the honorary passenger for the inaugural flight of this, erm, antiquated contraption, I encourage you to keep your seat.’

  I said nothing and turned to face Governor Rose.

  ‘One of your eyes is swelling shut. Are you comfortable?’ she asked, smiling.

  I said nothing.

  ‘Glad you could finally pay us a visit, Mr Theron, we have been waiting quite some time for you to join us.’

  Leo squeezed between the gap of our chairs and, after checking her rear would not engage or flick something vital, she leaned back onto the pilot’s console. I looked at her, then beyond her, out of the windscreen and through the open hangar doors. The sky was imbued the colour of overripe plums. The clouds churned and roiled in a maelstrom, the down sides burgeoning and blood blister black. Fat with rain and malevolence, their pregnant underbellies seemed so low that a tree or sharp roof could at any moment prick their pressurised gut and bring the whole oceanic torrent of spume and crashing tides down, to wash us away.

  Another cannon shot at a closer target, underscoring the dirge.

  ‘Remember me?’ Leonora asked.

  I ignored her and instead addressed Rose. ‘This is the bit where you tell me the whys and the hows isn’t it? Where you gloat as you sum it all up for your absent audience and public?’

  ‘I have already done that, whilst you were sleeping. Talked about my vision for a unified people, for mass travel between the ground and the sky. I extolled the virtues of endeavour and triumph, our triumph, together through the ages. It was optimistic and it delivered Mr Theron.

  ‘It was a speech entitled ‘Bringing the Sky and Earth Together’, something I thought your friends at Horizon would appreciate.’

  ‘I don’t have any friends.’

  ‘Not anymore,’ Leonora said.

  I had received a great deal of knocks and bumps in the last few weeks, throughout my life really. We all do, but nothing had ever hurt me more than the words that had just spilled out of her manicured, sneering mouth. Nothing. My brother. Pan. Doc.

  A swarm of hatred rose up inside me and I glared at Leonora, from beneath my bruised and scowling brow.

  Her gaze shrank away.

  Rose continued as if nothing had been said, ‘I announced Nimbus’ progress with this flight, how it could open up links between Nimbus City and the Lowlands, that it could be the blueprint for a new way of life. A future shared, in the skies.’

  ‘New? Progress?’ I looked around at the shabby craft.

  Rose was smiling. A smear of dark red lipstick clung to one of her canine teeth. ‘I am the old bringing in the new.’

  Leonora was busy looking elsewhere.

  ‘Now ordinarily, I would oppose this,’ Rose went on, ‘I would loathe getting any closer to the scum that wander around in the swamps and sulphuric hovels down here.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘But this paints me as an …’

  ‘So this is where you give me the why’s and how’s’ I said.

  Rose leaned over from her chair. ‘It’s more than your brother got.’

  I was already numb, nothing she could say or do would affect me anymore. The smug expression slid slightly from her heavily made up face, when she did not get a reaction.

  ‘OK, have it your way. But I want you to go to your death knowing this, Mr Theron: Bethscape was me, I tipped them off, the Blackwings knew you were coming.’

  ‘I know,’ said Drake. ‘We all did.’

  ‘That’s why I had your brother killed in the end. He was still digging around about that, would not stop, and he was very good at his job. I can tell you are brothers. Sorry, were brothers.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Then I thought I could be rid of him and entangle you at the same time. Even frame you for it. For the whole mess, call it a family vendetta, and just think …’ She looked out of one of the side windows. ‘When your failed assassination plot against me is revealed to the nation, I would have overcome adversity, though once again, adversity engineered by me. A survivor for my people. Genius don’t you think?’

  ‘Do you think people down here care about what you do? About politics or which eyebrow you’ve plucked today? They just want...’

  Governor Rose’s temper flared, ‘My people love me. Love me. What do you know about what people want? You don’t spend your time with anyone unless it suits you. I tell them what they want. Then I give it them.’

  ‘Or take it away.’ I said.

  ‘At Bethscape I created a crisis in the black void of public opinion and shone like a star. And I’m doing the self-same thing now. Blackwings and unhinged Slayers on the prowl, the perfect public and political backdrop to remind people of their history and of who was there for them back when things were this bad. Back when your kind, the last remnants of the flying freak show, thought you served your country, thought you served me.’

  Her speech gathered momentum, she spoke faster, her face illuminated with excitement.

  ‘I will resurrect the glory days I had after Bethscape. Just think of it, the story of how I tried to unite Nimbus but got kidnapped, sabotaged by you. A madman mutant with his stolen, dead brother’s wings stitched to his back, a path of death and destruction in his wake. Perfect. And you have played along. How you have played along.’ She clapped her hands, with genuine smug satisfaction.

  ‘The Bethscape massacre, for which, in my opinion, you acted like you were culpable anyway, your brother, your funereal meltdown, your Doctor friend, your bottle through the Horizoneers window, Coyle. All of it. And now this plane crash, killing the hope of the Groundbound and taking this ludicrous notion of equality off the agenda. I do not want Nimbus united, but I want it to look like I tried.’

  I looked at my trussed hands.

  ‘And I have tried Mr. Theron, and now the stage is set. And you have helped me do it. You will just be remembered, depicte
d, as a demented madman who, at every juncture has behaved psychotically, predictably and selfishly. And you have made it all possible Mr. Theron, so thank you …’ She dropped her voice to a whisper, I had to strain to hear the words above the storm outside, ‘Thank you.’

  I was tired.

  Leonora stepped forward and came over to me. ‘I only have one regret, just one.’ She leaned in, closer, closer still, her mouth almost touching my ear, whispering conspiratorially, as only thieves or lovers do: ‘That the Blackwings didn’t finish you off like they were supposed to, all those years ago.’

  I spat blood onto the floor, right next to her feet.

  ‘Thanks for the kiss,’ I said.

  She slapped me with a backhand across my face, then barged between the Governor and me towards the back of the plane; blood started to trickle down my cheek from Jackdaw’s reopened rake.

  Rose stood to follow her. ‘Take comfort, Leonora, at least we will be right behind him, to watch the show.’

  She looked back at me, pointing over her shoulder, ‘Our parachutes are back there.’

  ‘Ladies love silk,’ I said.

  She glared.

  ‘So where are we going?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not ‘we’ at all Drake. Just you.