Yesterday's Flight

by Martyn Ellington

  “We’re going to collect the stuff out of our overheads then we’ll come back down and split this stuff.”

  William shouted at him with a concern in his voice, “Now? The day is half-way through; you won’t get very far before it gets dark. You’ve heard the noises at night, things moving outside. Why not wait till morning?”

  Marcus didn’t give John time to answer. “Let them go. Tonight, tomorrow night, they’ll be outside at some point so why worry.”

  “Exactly,” John answered. “We’ll go today then that way we can send the emergency crews back for you sooner.” John smiled at William as he said it and continued, “that is unless your dinosaur finds us, eh, William?”

  “Yeah, that’s right, and when it does just remember I tried to warn you before it eats your fat arse.” With that William turned his back on him and walked towards Marcus; who was stood over the camping equipment as if he was on guard duty.

  Marcus smiled at him. “Marketing executives? Typical arsehole.” William smiled and nodded at him.

  As John and the group headed up the ladder back to the cabin Marcus started to unload the container. “Here!” he said, “put these lanterns away and leave them just the one torch, they can take the tent and the groundsheet, a blanket and two water flasks.”

  “They’ll need more than that,” Amy protested.

  “Yes they will, Amy, assuming that they will survive out there, but you and I know they won’t so we’re not giving them equipment that we can’t afford to lose for it to be left abandoned when they’re all dead!”

  Amy didn’t like it but she knew he was right and she knew there was no way they could go looking for it. William and Nick looked at each other. There was a mutual agreement between them that they were glad Marcus was staying with them.

  The ladder rattled again as John and the rest of the group climbed down it. Amy stepped back behind Marcus, who now stood in the middle of Nick and William with the equipment they had placed for them, in front of them by the door.

  “Is this it?” John asked.

  “That’s all we can spare. It’s not that cold at night, I’m sure you can build a fire, you’ve got the tent!”

  John stared at Marcus for a few seconds and then his eyes admitted defeat. Even with the majority of the passengers behind him, John knew Marcus had the gun and that weighted it in his favour.

  “Can we take our own baggage?” A voice from behind John asked. William answered her, “You can take your own stuff but I’m not sure you will want to carry it all. I would just take what you need.”

  With that, one by one, the group moved over to the luggage racks and started to pull down their bags. Amy stood and watched as the bags were ransacked. She felt a wave of sadness wash over her. “This isn’t the way we should be behaving, we should be sticking together, helping each other.” Her whisper found William’s ear and he turned his head towards her. He could see that her eyes had started to water and with that William’s started, he couldn’t hold himself back any more. He stepped forward and grabbed John’s arm. “Listen, you can’t go out there, you won’t last, you won’t make it!” He had a sense of desperation in his voice. John pulled his arm away.

  “Don’t try and scare us, you want to stay here and rot? so be it, but we’re going to find help and get back to our families.”

  William’s voice started to break up. Amy could hear the anxiety coming through in it. “Listen all of you, there are things out there, they took Lynsey and David. I saw them. Please don’t go.”

  This time John didn’t answer William, he just turned his back on him and hurried his group. “C’mon everybody let’s just go with what we have, it won’t be that far.”

  William went to move forward again but Marcus grabbed his wrist and pulled him back. “Leave it, William, they won’t listen,” he whispered to him.

  The group headed for the cargo bay door with John at the front. Raising his index finger and pointing at the door he looked at Marcus with a look of contempt on his face. “Can we go now?..PLEASE!” he said to Marcus and smiled.

  Marcus didn’t even return the look to John. He simply moved to the crank handle and started to open the door. Once it was half open he tossed the net out and turned to John. As he did he waved his hand towards the door as if he was an usher at a wedding and he was directing John to the bride or groom’s side. “Be my guest!” he said.

  John got down onto his hands and knees and turned to lower his legs over the side of the plane. Grabbing hold of the net he shuffled the rest of his oversized body over the side and started the climb down.

  One by one the remaining passengers followed him and all William could do now was stand and watch them go, his arms crossed, as a single tear ran down his cheek. Amy put her arm around him and gave it a squeeze. “There was no more you could do, William, it was their choice.”

  “Yeah, but they’re still going to die, Amy. I’m off to see how Holly is.” He pulled out of Amy’s hug and pushed through the group that were still waiting to climb down the net to what William, Nick, Marcus and Amy knew would be certain and probably a terrifying death

  William came out of the galley and headed over to where Holly was lying with Sarah. “How is she?”

  “She’s still running a temperature and the cut on her arm has become infected.” As she spoke, Sarah pulled the blanket from Holly’s arm and peeled back her dressing. Holly didn’t react a lot; she winced and groaned softly but that was all and William knew that this wasn’t a good sign.

  “Here, take a look,” Sarah said.

  William looked down at the wound. The first thing that hit him wasn’t the discolouration of it or the skin that was drying and cracking around the open wound; what he noticed first was the smell. It was the smell of dead and rotting flesh and whilst William, like most people, hadn’t experienced this before the last few days, he now knew exactly what it smelt like.

  Steven had had the same smell about him when they buried him earlier and now Holly had it.

  William sat back on the floor next to Sarah’s seat and rested his head against the side of her chair. He pulled out his phone and looked at the display. “It’s only 3:30 pm and already the day has been shit, I wonder what else could go wrong!”

  “William!” Amy’s voiced shattered the uneasy silence. “William, Marcus wants you down here.”

  William looked up at Sarah and smiled. “I had to ask.”

  It was a tired and weary look that he had on his face. It reminded Sarah of the look a defeated person gave you when almost everything that could go wrong had, and all they wanted to do was curl up and ignore the world.

  Hauling himself up, he headed back towards the galley where he could see Amy’s head poking out of the open hatch.

  “What is it, now?” he asked her.

  “They’re leaving,” she answered and then she disappeared back into the hold.

  William climbed down and headed towards the half open cargo door. He squatted down next to it so that he could see the group as they stood on the ground outside the aircraft ready to leave. “Don’t go, please think of what I’ve said,” William pleaded with them one more time.

  As he did, John turned to look up straight into William’s eyes. “Goodbye.” And with that the group of sixteen set off, soon disappearing from the view William had out of the door.

  He jumped up and raced back up the ladder heading over the left side of the aircraft. He pulled up a window blind and through the now dirty water-stained window, watched as they moved across the open ground and vanished into the jungle that surrounded them. As he did, he could hear the now unmistakable clank of the cargo bay door closing. He sank back in the seat, sighing to himself. He knew he would never see any of them again. Amy sat next to him. “You really couldn’t have made them stay, you know.” William didn’t turn to her. He continued to look out of the window; even though the group had long gone. “I know, Amy, but that doesn’t change anything, they’re still all going to die. I suppo
se we can thank God there was no children on this flight.”

  Amy didn’t really answer him she just smiled even though William couldn’t see it and rested her head on his shoulder.

  Marcus and Nick made their way back into the galley, pulling the hatch cover shut as they did. Marcus looked at the wall-mounted clock above the microwave oven, “4:12pm.” He leaned against the galley worktop. “It’s too late to go get water now; I doubt we’ll be back in time. We’ll head off first thing.”

  John was at the front of the group slowly pushing his way through the thick shrubs and foliage that they had stumbled in since leaving the open plane. Next to him walked Victoria Downs. Vicky, as she liked to be called, was a legal secretary heading home following her mother’s illness. She a was a tall, thin woman with sharp facial features, long dark hair and a flare for designer clothes and make-up. “Why won’t this stupid thing work?” she moaned. John turned his head to see what she was making such a fuss about as she walked. Vicky slapped her cell phone with one hand while pressing down on its touch screen with the other.

  “You don’t really expect that to work, do you?” John said with a sarcastic tone.

  “The man in the shop told me this would work anywhere I go,” she snapped back.

  “Yeah, but I doubt he thought you were going here!”

  John looked at her while he spoke to her. He had a big grin on his face but it wasn’t an affectionate one, it was one of victory, the type of annoying glance he would give after pulling some useless fact out of the air to make a point or prove someone wrong.

  Vicky pushed the phone back into her small shoulder bag and dropped back away from John.

  After a further time pushing through the ever-thickening shrubs and plants they entered a clearing. It was a track that ran as far as they could see in either direction. The group stopped in a line along its edge with John in the middle of them. He noticed they were all looking at him, all looking to him for guidance and instructions. Suddenly he felt important as he did back in the office when he sat behind the over-sized meeting desk with his focus group trying to think of new ways to say the same things again and again for each new product; that none of us knew we needed, and if truth be told, we don’t. But it didn’t matter where he was, he considered himself a born leader, a cool-headed individual who could lead, given any situation, and after completing the previous weekend’s outward bound team-leading course; now he was an expert in field survival as well, or so he thought! Standing as tall as his 5ft 6’ frame could manage, he announced to his assembled followers that they would camp here.

  After a couple of hours they had managed to erect the tent and build a couple of camp fires with the matches Vicky had had in her bag to support her smoking habit. John was sat by one of the fires when one of the group approached. “Hey, John, can I ask you something?” came a nervous sounding request. John smiled. He liked to keep his team on their toes, he liked to be unpredictable so that they would always be nervous around him; at least it worked for him in the marketing world so why not out here? He looked up and saw a man standing just off to his left. “What is it?” John answered him with a cool tone. “What exactly are we going to do for food and water?”

  John turned back towards the fire, holding his hands up in front of it, warming his palms.

  “Well, ermm, sorry, what’s your name?”

  “Oh, it’s Tony,” came the reply.

  “Well, Tony, tonight we won’t do anything, its not safe to go wandering, there could be ditches or water you can’t see or even one of William’s dinos; so just sight tight and we’ll have breakfast in the morning.”

  John didn’t look at Tony when he gave him the answer, he couldn’t be bothered and Tony didn’t reply, he just turned and headed back towards his wife, who he had left sitting around one of the other small fires.

  The group had a restless night. Used to the comfort the plane had given them since their forced landing here, the ground proved to be hard and uncompromising, and the sounds of the night that William had told them about; they had all heard while they were in the plane but in there, they didn’t matter; out here in the open with no protection they seemed to take on a new menace, and Tony was convinced something was out there in the absolute dark of this place and it was circling them, checking them out and waiting for its chance.

  Daylight broke on the group and they had all made it through their first night outside of the protection of the plane. John had claimed the tent for himself whilst the rest had huddled around the fires to keep warm and offer some deterrent to unwanted guests through the cold dark cloudless night.

  In the morning they packed up and headed south down the trail. It wasn’t long before they arrived by the bank of a large river. John turned in the general direction of Tony, the man who had annoyed him the previous night. There were a few reasons why he had annoyed him but the main reason was that John had been so preoccupied with getting as many people off the plane to follow him, finding water had slipped his mind and Tony had left him feeling embarrassed and stupid. “I give you water,” he announced. “Now fill the canteens and water bottles we brought with us and then we’ll keep moving.” One by one the group made their way to the edge and started to crouch as they filled their containers.

  From under the water the predator could see the line of individuals clearly; slowly it moved forward camouflaged by the water reflecting the sun which now shone high in the sky directly behind them causing a blinding sheen across the surface. It made its way down the line until it reached the end figure. Evolution had taught it to always take the end one, it was the least protected and usually the weakest.

  The group was spread out thinly along the river bank. They were all concentrating on getting the water they needed and no-one was acting as a look-out.

  Everyone heard the single splash but no-one looked up. Each person thought it was just an over enthusiastic attempt to get the water in the container and the air out. It wasn’t until blood started filling the containers as well as water that the first alarm was raised.

  Vicky was the first to spot it. John jumped back when the scream came from her. It startled him so much that he released his water bottle in an instant flight reaction. He was just about to shout at her for screaming when, one by one, the screams and shouts started to move down the line as the blood moved down until it reached him.

  In the confusion Tony grabbed his wife’s arm.

  “You got water?”

  “Yes, it’s full” she replied.

  “Good.”

  Still holding her arm tightly he stood and dragged her backwards.

  “Tony, you’re hurting me, what’s wrong?”

  As the words left her mouth the air was filled with another cry, but this wasn’t the group being startled by the blood that now ran freely down river, this was something ungodly, something none of them had heard and Tony knew it was coming.

  “That’s what’s wrong. Now, with me!”

  His wife did as Tony told her.

  They had been married for thirteen-years and she had never known a time when she could not trust him.

  They turned and headed for the cover of the brush. Pushing frantically through into it, he dragged her down and laid over her in a protective position.

  “Stay still and keep very quiet.” His words came slowly and forcefully, “DO NOT MAKE A SOUND!”

  She lay flat, her face barely out of the soft moss that covered the hard floor under it.

  “Tony, you’re scaring me, what is it?” Her voice trembled and fluttered as she whispered.

  “I heard them last night circling us and they’ve been following us but that fat bastard’s too full of himself to notice. We’re going to split and make our own way; it’s our best chance!”

  Tony looked back up away from his wife’s face at the group in front of them. They were still standing in fear, rooted to the spot like lost, frightened prey animals, everyone just looking at each other. The sound came again then another
and another, overlapping each time.

  Tony’s spine ran cold. Whatever was making this noise there was more than one of them. The sound from the group changed from sullen moans of worry and fear to shrieks of absolute terror when the first animal appeared; heading up the river edge from the north at a lightening speed, roaring as it did, its feet pounding into the ground with each huge stride.

  The group turned and ran in unison, heading away from it, heading south and away from Tony and his wife. Both of them lay still as the huge feet came into view and then vanished in an instant as it chased down the remaining people they had left the plane with only a day ago. Then the second animal burst through the cover of the tree line it had used as ambush cover directly ahead of them.

  Now with the group stopped they had nowhere to run but the second one didn’t charge. It just stood and blocked their escape route.

  John turned and headed for the cover of the trees. As he did he pushed Vicky as hard as he could, causing the second animal - that was playing sentry - to turn its attention to her as she yelped and protested. She fell forward, her bag landing heavily, spilling its contents onto the river bank as she was sent sprawling into the water. As her phone landed on the hard ground the one touch facility was hit and the video camera came to life.

  Its lens looked upwards, capturing the deep blue sky; only slightly obscured by the large green canopy of the trees and neighbouring shrubs.

  Its view was soon obscured by the large snout of the first animal that had charged them. Its teeth jagged and razor sharp, the perfect natural knife for carving through raw flesh and bone; they jutted out from its mouth too large and uneven to sit behind the thick lips that were now wet with saliva dripping from its mouth.

  From its nostrils two large red crests rose from its skull over its eyes, and the HD video system captured the look in them perfectly; and it was a look of absolute abhorrence.

  With a smooth quick motion the head disappeared from the view finder as it dived past it and then came back up. The auto focus struggled at first to home in on the new image but when it did, her own phone recorded Vicky’s death.