Hissers

by Ryan C. Thomas

  “The party probably already started.”

  “So?”

  “Everyone is already there. We’re gonna get there late and look like losers.”

  “I don’t think everyone’s there,” Connor said. “See, you can see Jason Drake’s house from up here. Next to the pizza place. Doesn’t look like a lot of activity.”

  “What do you mean? There’s like a hundred people there already.”

  Nicole added, “Wow, that’s a cool view.”

  They all followed her, moving through the trees to the edge of the hill looking out over the town.

  Amanita pulled her cellphone out and took a picture. “Have to admit, it is a cool view.” They all looked at the picture but it was pretty blurry. “Well, what do you want,” she said, “it’s a cheap phone.”

  “I don’t even have one,” Connor said. “My parents said I have to wait until I’m sixteen.”

  “My parents took mine away,” Seth added. “I didn’t know they charged you to download the video games.”

  Nicole took her iPhone out of her purse and took a photo of the view. The quality was much better than Amanita’s. “I’ll put it on Myspace tomorrow so we can all see it.”

  “I’m not your friend on Myspace,” Connor said.

  She smiled playfully. “Well, send me a friend request, dummy.”

  They all looked back out over the town again, lost in the view. “Which one is your house, Connor?”

  He knew she knew where he lived but he pointed it out anyway. “Over there. The trees are blocking it but you get an idea. Your house is over there.”

  “Over there?” she asked, pointing too far to the right.

  “No, um, over…” he took her hand and moved it to the left. Her skin was warm and soft and standing this close to her he could smell her shampoo and perfume. It was weird to smell the scents of a girl so close up. He could feel the tiny soft hairs on her arm and, somewhat embarrassed, withdrew his touch.

  She turned back and smiled, so close that he could almost taste the Jack Daniels on her breath. “Thanks.”

  “You guys hear that?” Amanita asked.

  Connor was frozen still, looking at Nicole’s eyes. He was afraid that if he moved at all he might throw up. “Um, no,” he said.

  “No really. Listen.”

  “I hear it too,” Seth said. “Sounds like a motor.”

  Now that Connor listened, he could hear a strange noise, like a combination of distant screaming and a truck rumbling by at high speed. No, it was more than that. It sounded like a freight train. And it was getting louder. Damn loud.

  “What the hell is that?” Seth asked.

  All four of them looked out over the town, trying to find the source of the noise. There was something dangerous about it, something that felt entirely out of place.

  “Oh my God.” Nicole pointed up into the sky.

  Connor looked up. Every hair on his body stood on end.

  Saturday, 8:24pm

  At first it was just in the clouds. A light, blue and glowing, turning the clouds into pulsating purple blobs. Then tiny red flashing pinpricks joined in, and everyone knew what it was—the familiar strobing lights of an aircraft. The jet engines sounded too low to the earth. As the lights grew brighter, the sounds got louder. Nicole, Connor, Seth and Amanita stood fixed on the top of the hill, eyes watching as if in a trance.

  Then…

  It swam down through the lowest layer of clouds, a massive steel beast angled at some sixty degrees. If the angle was any steeper it would be in a complete nosedive, its speed in excess of five hundred miles per hour. The wings tipped too far to port, showing the four teens the metallic underbelly of the craft and the collection of desperately winking safety lights. It threatened to roll over but whoever was flying it was fighting to roll it back and it pitched like a canoe on heavy waves. The tail swung, as if the plane were skidding in the air.

  Connor heard the screams from next to him, knew it was his friends, but could not register it as more than background noise. The thunderous sound of the plane almost drowned out all sound and threatened to burst his eardrums. He knew nothing of the plane’s make, just that it was giant and fast and flying the wrong direction. Down!

  He felt his pulse race and his body go cold with sweat as his brain finally made sense of what he was seeing.

  Nicole grabbed his arm and screamed in his ear. Her grip threatened to rip his skin off. He couldn’t understand what she was screaming, couldn’t turn his head away. She was in hysterics but he didn’t care. He was frozen.

  The plane slammed nose first into the ground with a force that shook the entire town.

  Connor, Seth, Nicole and Amanita fell backwards as the concussive wave of heat from the explosion screamed up the hill and slammed into them. All four threw their arms up over their faces and yelled but there was little coherence in anything they cried before they were hurled backwards into the dirt.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Oh my God!”

  “I’m on fire!”

  The last was not true, but their close proximity to the crash, and the severe temperature of the fireball, made it feel like they were.

  The blast wave passed over them with a howling whoosh. Connor sat up and rolled to his knees. He crawled on all fours back to the edge of the hill and looked out over the town. The fireball was turning black with carbon smoke, debris flew in every direction, almost like a fireworks show. He could see something soaring through the air at them, something large and on fire and coming at a speed too fast to outrun.

  The thing in the air was on a trajectory for them.

  He turned back to his friends, trying to issue a warning from his quivering lips. He saw Nicole standing up, brushing dirt from her eyes, trying to get her bearings. Suddenly he felt like he was on the soccer field again—the ball in front of his feet, the goal a few yards away and closing, adrenaline pumping, a massive defensemen chasing him, threatening to sweep his legs out. He sprinted at Nicole and hit her full force in the stomach, hugging her, driving her to the ground, spinning as they fell so she’d land on him instead of the other way around.

  The force of the impact knocked the wind out of him. He looked up and saw her looking down at him, total surprise and fear written in her eyes. He watched as the massive, flaming wing of the airplane sliced through the air above them, missing them by mere feet.

  It severed the trees around them like a scythe through wheat, crashing through the woods with the squealing protest of twisting metal. Tree tops and bifurcated trunks toppled to the ground, rumbling against the forest floor. Branches exploded outward and struck the dirt with enough force to crack a skull. The flora rained down on top of them, cutting their bare arms, breaking their skin like BBs shot from an air rifle at close range. For a fleeting moment Connor thought his actions would be for naught, that they’d be shredded by the trees, but the wing lodged itself in a towering pine with an ear-splitting crunch, gave one last creak, and finally came to rest.

  “You okay?” Connor asked, his breath coming back to him. He could feel Nicole’s lips just about touching his.

  She pushed off of him and brushed her hair out of her face. She was shaking, and had a superficial cut above her eye, but otherwise looked in one piece. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “No problem.” Connor stood up and took note of his own injuries. Twigs had lacerated his shin pretty badly, cutting through his jeans. Blood was running into his sock from a deep gouge. The entire area felt numb, but it didn’t hurt to stand on. He could feel a bruise forming on his shoulder. “Seth? Amanita?”

  “Over here.” Seth’s hand stuck up from a mound of broken branches.

  Connor and Nicole rushed over and pulled the larger ones off of him. He emerged covered in dirt and bleeding from his nose. “What the hell was that?”

  “I think it was the wing of the plane.”

  “I felt the air from it.”

  “Yeah, it was close.”

  Nicole step
ped over a fallen tree and picked up the broken bottle of Jack Daniels. “Where’s Am?”

  Both boys spun in a circle, kicking aside the piles of branches now littering the ground. Amanita was nowhere to be found. They found Nicole’s purse and handed it back to her. She accepted it with a thanks, too concerned about Amanita to bother checking inside.

  “She’s got to be around here somewhere,” Seth said.

  Nicole put her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God, she wasn’t standing when that thing…when it…”

  Nobody dared finish the sentence for her, the thought was too horrible. If Amanita had been standing when the wing flew over them it would have crushed her instantly and sent her flying through the air like a ragdoll. She would be nothing but a lump of broken bones deep in the woods.

  Nicole began to cry, which prompted Seth and Connor to start overturning branches at a frantic rate. They called out for Amanita but got no response. Connor started to think Nicole might be right. Amanita must have gotten hit by the—

  “She’s here!” Seth exclaimed.

  Nicole and Connor rushed over and found Seth lifting up one of the pallets from the fort. It must have ricocheted away from the fort when the wing did its damage. Amanita was lying under it, her eyes closed. She looked dead.

  “Oh no, Am. No, please be okay.” Nicole bent down and lifted Amanita’s head, put two fingers against the girl’s throat. “I…I don’t know how to check for a pulse. I mean I do, but I’ve never done it. Not for real. I don’t feel anything. Oh my God, she’s dead!”

  Connor knelt down beside her. “Is she breathing? Feel her chest.”

  Nicole put her head on Amanita’s chest. She actually cried harder. “Yeah, she’s breathing. She’s alive.” She wiped her tears away and sniffled.

  Connor shook the unconscious girl and gave her a little slap in the face—the same kind of medical treatment he’d seen in so many bad movies—hoping to jar her awake.

  Amanita’s eyelids began to flutter. Shit, it actually worked.

  “She’s coming to!” Nicole yelled.

  “I’m to already,” Amanita said. “For fuck’s sake stop yelling in my ear.”

  “Sounds like her,” Seth said.

  “Can you walk?” Connor asked.

  Amanita rolled herself onto her knees and then steadily got to her feet. She moved all her joints and didn’t scream out in pain. Like the others, she had cuts on her bare skin, and her shirt was torn near her right hip, but she was fine to travel. “Something hit the back of my head,” she said, rubbing the spot in question. She pulled her hand away but there was no blood.

  “You might have a concussion,” Nicole said. “Do you feel dizzy or is your vision wobbly?”

  “I’m fine, McDreamy. Really. Except my fucking shoes are gone. I just bought those shoes. Damn!”

  “So we’re all okay, then?” Connor asked.

  “McDreamy is a guy,” Seth added. This generated looks of disbelief. “What, it’s a good show.”

  For the next few seconds everyone checked themselves over once more and concluded they were all just the worse for wear. The worst of the injuries seemed to be Connor’s shin, which needed stitches and a bandage.

  “What do we do about that?” Nicole asked, pointing into the woods where the wing had gone. A pool of fire was casting orange light up into the surrounding treetops.

  “More importantly,” Amanita added, “What the hell do we do about that?” They followed her finger as she pointed out over the town.

  A trail of fire cut through the center of Castor. Flaming debris was spread out in what had to be a mile-wide radius. Nearby houses had been torn to pieces, businesses reduced to kindling, trees and cars smashed to bits. The smell of burning wood and metal was everywhere. The plane itself, throwing walls of fire into the sky, was situated just beyond the pizza place.

  As the four of them stood on the hill, looking down in awe, rubbing bruises and wiping blood off their skin, they heard the cries of the entire town float up the thermals from the crash site and wash over them like a nightmare.

  Their friends and families were injured, dead or dying.

  Saturday, 8:29

  As a tight group, the four teens hobbled through the dark woods, careful to find footing over the newly fallen trees. Their flashlights were gone, and even though the severed wing was still burning and lighting nearby vegetation on fire, dense shadows still made it dangerous to walk.

  The path led down to the south end of Farmers Road, which was flanked on both sides by woods. Farmers Road cut like a river through the center of town, passing by the park and angling up toward the Jefferson Bridge on the north end, winding through many miles of wooded nothingness on the south end until it met State Road 134 to Wallington. It was just the one road into and out of town unless you counted a few dozen dirt “roads” that cut through the wooded hills encircling the majority of Castor. There had once been second bridge over the Jefferson River’s deep but empty riverbed, but it had been deemed unsafe after a wild storm had loosened its struts in 1987. The town had voted and eventually torn in down.

  Connor, Nicole, Seth and Amanita reached the bottom of the dirt trail and began jogging down Farmers Road. The blaze from the crashed plane seemed brighter, hotter.

  Connor stopped at the edge of the park and pointed across the giant green lawn. “We can cut across the soccer fields to Union Avenue and hop over the chain-link fence around the supermarket. That’ll put us on top of the hill near Pizza King.”

  Nobody protested, but Nicole pointed to his leg. “Can you climb like that?”

  “I’ll be alright.”

  “I have a feeling you’re not going to be high on the ER’s list of priorities,” Amanita added.

  The park lights were off, the games having ended for the day. In the near distance they could see the orange glow of the blazing fire reflecting off the low clouds. It looked like a gigantic pit from hell had opened under their town and was trying to crawl up to the sky.

  “I can’t get service.” Nicole held her cell phone up, trying to find reception. “One hundred and twenty bucks a month and it doesn’t work.”

  “There’s a cell tower on top of the high school,” Seth said. “That’s not too far from the crash. Maybe some debris hit it? Knocked it out?”

  Connor shook his head. “We have to have more than one tower.”

  “I can’t get Internet on it either,” Nicole added.

  Amanita took out her own cellphone. Its face was cracked and dirt fell out of the battery housing. “Mine’s busted. Shit, I don’t even have insurance on it.”

  Connor said, “The plane must have messed up the town’s system. But we can hear sirens so somebody already called.”

  Not that the whole town wouldn’t have felt that, he thought.

  Nicole put a hand on Connor’s shoulder and stopped him for a second. “I need to make sure my Mom’s okay.”

  “Yeah sure, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I feel like we should get to the crash and see what’s what. I’m sure we’re not going to be able to do anything anyway, but we witnessed the whole thing so you never know. We’ll head home right after.”

  Nobody spoke as they crossed the remaining fields and emerged onto Union Avenue. The backside of the local supermarket was before them, the fence to the truck loading docks already locked for the night to keep riff raff out.

  Amanita climbed up first, cursing as she went, but her body was toned and she had no problem lifting her weight. Nicole went next and Connor stayed back to help her in case she fell. But like Amanita she proved athletic enough to hold her own.

  She landed on the other side and waved for Connor and Seth. “Come on, let’s hurry.”

  Seth went next and got halfway up before he stopped. He was having difficulty getting his weight up to the top. On the other side of the fence Amanita rolled her eyes. “Oh for fuck’s sake just put your foot there—”

  “I can do it,” Seth yelle
d back. With a grunt he rolled himself over the top and almost fell all the way down to the ground on the other side but both Amanita and Nicole put their hands up to stop him, allowing him to get a grip.

  Connor went last, and while he had no problem getting over, he felt his shin burning as he used his calf muscles. At one point the open wound grazed a link and sent shockwaves of pain up his back. He winced when he landed next to Nicole.

  They walked around the side of the supermarket, across the small parking lot, and onto the road. They followed it up a steep grade until it was level with the rooftops of the surroundings homes and businesses. Here they stopped and stared at the scene before them.

  The Pizza King was gone. The gas station across the street was just a pile of flaming tinder. Up and down the street debris burned and keened as it melted. The fuselage of the plane lay in the middle of what had once been a house, now torn in half, passenger chairs piled up around it, everything alight. The cockpit had driven further into the surrounding homes, leaving a trail of destruction and fire in its wake. The other wing was nowhere to be seen, neither were the jet engines. The tail of the plane had been sheared off as well and was also missing. It was hard to tell what had gone where, but judging by the number of burning houses surrounding the crash it was obvious the rest of the plane, like the wing that almost crushed Connor and his friends, had been flung off on impact.

  Sprawled on the street at varying intervals were dead bodies, some of them in one piece, others missing essential parts. One of them was headless. Limbs poked out from under burning bits of metal. Some limbs were not attached to a body.

  A fire truck sped to the scene, joining two others that were already on site. Long arcs of water shot into the towering flames but did little to extinguish the blaze. The entire town’s collection of police cruisers was on site, red and blue lights all but lost in the intense orange blaze of the fire. An ambulance appeared out of the black smoke and pulled to the stop near one of the fire trucks. More sirens could be heard approaching. All of the emergency personnel were so overwhelmed they looked like baseball players caught in a pickle, frantically running back and forth but not sure what to do.