Tears pricked Ellen’s eyes but she angrily blinked them away. There was no time to grieve. If she and Jake managed to get out of here alive they could have a memorial service for Daniel; for all the fallen members of their team. But first, they had to escape. She scrambled through the plane to join Jake in the cockpit.
“Where’s Daniel?”
“Not coming.” Ellen said. “Daniel is wounded. He’s holding them off for as long as he can, but we haven’t got long.” Ellen stared out at the hangar doors, trying to ignore the tears that had started to well up in her eyes again. “How do we get those doors open?”
“We’ve got to take a direct approach. There’s no time for anything else. Go down to the gun turret and blast the hell out of those doors. After that, swing the turret around and take out any bad guys in the hangar. I’m going to focus on getting the plane in the air.” Jake fastened the pilot’s seat belt over his body and flicked some switches on the instrument panel with his right hand, reaching up for the headset hanging above his seat with his other hand.
Ellen got up and scrambled out of the cockpit, losing her balance as the plane lurched backwards.
She climbed into the gun turret. As she settled into the gunner’s seat, she pulled the headset off its holder, fastening it into place with the microphone by her mouth. “Jake? Are you there?”
“I read you Sparrow.” Jake’s voice sounded tinny over the headset. “Just concentrate on clearing a path.”
Jake manoeuvred the plane backwards. Ellen swung the gun turret around to point at the hangar doors. She let loose with a volley of fire.
When the smoke cleared, the right-hand door had a man-sized hole in it. The Arctic ocean beyond glistened. Ellen pointed the gun at the left door and prepared to fire.
The plane suddenly lurched to the left, and Ellen was staring at the wall. “Hey, I’m not finished yet,” she complained into the headset.
“Sorry, babe, I’m not used to flying one of these things. Give me a minute.”
Jake moved the plane back into position. Ellen opened fire on the left door, punching a hole in it big enough for the plane to pass through.
The plane moved forward, aided by its aquablades. Ellen swung the gun turret around a hundred and eighty degrees, pointing it back into the hangar.
She could no longer see Daniel. Half a dozen Frost Giants had descended onto the hangar floor, obscuring him from view. They lobbed spears at the plane. One charged with an axe.
Swearing under her breath, Ellen opened fire on the Frost Giants. She took out three of them, as well as a big chunk of the wall, and knocked the others off their feet. She prepared to fire again, but then Jake’s voice squawked over the radio, “Strap yourself in. We’re leaving this party.” The engines whined as the plane accelerated.
Ellen fastened her seat belt. The plane lurched and made a terrible sound of tearing metal as it hit the hangar doors. She worried the plane’s wings would be torn off, but it appeared the DO was made of sturdier stuff. The hangar doors, however, were not, and were ripped off their hinges as the plane barged through them.
The plane, now floating out on the Arctic ocean, accelerated. “I hope this crate can take off from water,” Ellen said into the headset.
“It’s designed to do that,” Jake said. “But we have to gain a lot more speed. Sit tight.”
Ellen sat back in the seat and stared back at the cliff as the plane moved away from it. The stark white landscape permanently bathed in twilight.
She noticed what looked like a blob of colour on the horizon. It looked like a lake. But it was moving. She leaned forward.
It was an army of Frost Giants. There were hundreds of them. And they were marching over the Arctic landscape.
“Jake, do you see that?” she said.
“See what, babe?”
“Two o’clock on the horizon.”
Jake went quiet for so long that Ellen began to worry he’d lost consciousness or something. But eventually he said, “Oh fuck.”
“We can’t take them all out. There are too many of them.”
“We’ll be at take-off speed in a second. But we’ll have to pass over them to get to altitude. See if you can take some of them out as we go. At least try and distract them from throwing the fucking spears.”
“Roger that.” Ellen gripped the gun controls so hard her knuckles went white. She was pressed back in the seat as the plane started to take off. She kept her gaze fixed on that army as the plane began to climb, turning gently to fly south.
Ellen manoeuvred the gun as best she could, but the angle of the plane made it impossible to get an accurate shot. As the plane climbed and began to fly back over the cliffs, she caught a glimpse of a smaller figure that seemed to be leading the army, a man who was large, but not giant, dressed entirely in furs. He had red hair and a long red beard and a wild expression on his face.
Then she leaned on the gun’s trigger and opened fire on the army of Frost Giants.
There was a lot of smoke and noise, and from below the distant roar of the Frost Giants. Some of the bullets hit the ground and churned up ice and snow, sending it flying into the air and obscuring the view. Some of them may have hit Frost Giants but it was impossible to see. Spears flew up from the ground. One bounced off the wing and one lodged in the rubber seal around the pilot’s window, but still the plane kept climbing and Ellen kept firing the gun.
Eventually she was aware of Jake’s voice over the radio. “It’s OK, babe, we’re clear.”
She let go of the trigger; the turret gun had run out of bullets some time ago. Her grip on the trigger had been so tight her hand was numb; she shook it to try and get some feeling back into it. Tears streamed down her face and she wondered how long she had been crying and who, in particular, she was crying over. Maybe all of them. Neeta. Pete. David. Andres. Daniel. Allison. Even Nathan.
Outside she could see nothing and thought for a minute that they were in fog. But then she realised that they were flying through clouds. They were at altitude. They were safe.
She fumbled to release the catch on her seat belt and crawled out of the gun turret, staggering on legs that seemed unable to hold her, over to the cockpit, where she dropped into the co-pilot’s seat next to Jake.
Jake sat frowning at the instrument panels.
A dreadful thought took hold of Ellen. “You can fly this thing, can’t you?”
“These birds pretty much fly themselves,” Jake said. “That’s not a problem. More of a problem is where the hell we’re going to land.” He picked up the radio and pressed a button. “Mayday, Mayday, this is F132 requesting emergency landing. Is anyone out there? Repeat, requesting emergency landing.”
Jake thrust the radio at Ellen. “I want you to take this and keep repeating that message until somebody answers. I need to concentrate.”
Ellen took the handset and pressed the button on the side to activate the radio. “Mayday, Mayday, emergency landing requested. This is F132 requesting emergency landing. Please respond.”
Eventually, her voice grew hoarse. She felt bone weary. Her injured leg throbbed, her entire body ached, and she felt like she could sleep for a week.
Then the plane emerged from the clouds into blue sky. The sun was a yellow ball low in the sky, and below them was a bank of cloud looking like fluffy cotton wool that you could curl up and sleep on.
The radio squawked. “Reading you F132. What’s your position? Over.”
Jake whooped and grabbed the handset off Ellen. He read out the latitude and longitude co-ordinates from the radar.
“This is Outpost 473, F132. Your flight number is not listed. What is your destination? Over.”
“We don’t care, friend,” Jake said. “We’re just glad to be out of there. Over.”
“Where was your take-off point? Over.”
“Outpost H311,” Jake said. “Otherwise known as Hell. Over.”
There was a pause, and then the voice on the radio said, “Outpost H311 is not on
our charts. Over”
“It wouldn’t be,” said Jake. “Not unless you’re using charts from Nazi Germany. Over.”
“So you’re a non-existent flight taking off from a non-existent location.” The voice sounded suspicious. “Have you any form of identification? Over.”
“It’s a very long story, and we haven’t got enough fuel to tell it,” Jake said. “I am a US marine, formerly of the second battalion, but I don’t have my papers on me. We need to land urgently and I’ve got a passenger who needs medical attention. Please advise. Over.”
There was another pause, and then the voice said, in a resigned tone, “We’ve got a small runway here on our base. We’re an oil exploration outpost on the outskirts of the Arctic rim.”
“Snap,” said Ellen wearily.
The voice rattled off co-ordinations and Jake checked them against the controls. “Thanks a lot, Outpost 473. We’ll see you soon. Over.”
“Roger that. Over.”
The radio fell silent. Jake made some adjustments to the controls and stared out the window at the cloud blanket below them. “Well, it may not be civilisation, but it’s better than where we came from.” He grinned at Ellen. “We made it, babe. We’re going home.”
Ellen thought about her colleagues who hadn’t made it. There was so much she wanted to say, but she couldn’t find a voice, couldn’t find any words.
She leaned her head against Jake’s shoulder and closed her eyes as he brought the plane down out of the clouds and towards home.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sara Jayne Townsend is a UK-based writer, and someone tends to die a horrible death in all of her stories. She was born in Cheshire in 1969, but spent most of the 1980s living in Canada after her family emigrated there. She now lives in Surrey with her guitarist husband, and two cats who have decided their home is an acceptable dwelling place.
Sara decided she was going to be a published novelist when she was 10 years old and finished her first novel a year later. It took 30 years of submitting, however, to fulfil that dream.
She is author of several horror novels, and a series of mysteries featuring contemporary actress and amateur sleuth Shara Summers.
Learn more about Sara and her writing at her website:
http://sarajaynetownsend.weebly.com and her blog http://sayssara.wordpress.com Find her on Twitter under the handle @sarajtownsend.
MORE BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
THE WHISPERING DEATH - Death comes to us all; life is the name of the game and everyone has a role to play.
When a group of live action role-players perform a ritual as part of a game, they unwittingly unleash an ancient evil that tears their world apart. The reanimated corpse of a long-dead magic user, corrupted by powerful dark magic, offers a promise of unlimited power, but at a terrible price. Having helped open this Pandora’s box, Mark and Elizabeth must race against time to close it again – before it’s too late.
This scary, at times touching, horror novel by Sara Jayne Townsend is a must read for all horror and gore fans.
AMAZON UK:
http://amzn.to/1TOdzMa
AMAZON USA:
http://amzn.to/1flAcd1
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
Outpost H311 Page 21