by Adam Baker
‘The Great Trek. You’ve been talking about it for days. Haven’t taken a single step.’
‘We leave tonight. Pinback, Guthrie, the rest. They’ll show when darkness comes. We’ll force a confrontation, put them down for good.’
He gave a derisive snort.
‘You need a major reality check,’ said Frost. ‘You’re dying of septicaemia. Forget the mission. You won’t be striding off across the desert to a hero’s death. Your skin is necrotising, rotting from your skull. Smells bad. Real bad. You need antibiotics. If we make it to a town, we might be able to find a pharmacy that hasn’t been looted bare. Grab what we can. Then we’ll find some kind of army unit, some place with a surgeon, some place that can perform a graft. Either that, or you can sit here and let the flesh peel from your bones like a leper.’
Frost held her canteen to Hancock’s mouth. He struggled to lift his head and drink.
‘This is a chance to become someone new,’ said Frost. ‘Ever think of that? This anarchy. A chance to erase your past. Pick up a dead guy’s wallet and take a new name.’
Hancock drank some more.
‘I don’t need a new name. I know exactly who I am.’
Frost unsheathed her knife.
‘Am I going to regret this? If I cut you loose, going to give me any trouble?’
‘Think I’m going to beg? Go fuck yourself.’
Frost cut him free. He groaned and stretched, massaged stiff, welted arms.
‘We ought to get inside,’ said Frost.
‘Sit in the plane and wait to die? That’s your big fucking plan?’
‘Like I said. We get our shit together then walk out of here.’
‘Never make it. Look what the journey did to Noble.’
‘He reached the foot of the Panamints. Could have gone a lot further, if he hadn’t turned back.’
‘He would have died in those mountains. Barren as the desert. Nothing living up there but vultures. He would have been carrion.’
‘He had a shot.’
She held out a hand. Hancock hesitated, then let her pull him to his feet.
He swung his arms, tried to restore circulation. He bent and stretched.
She waited to see if he were about to throw a punch. Too strung out. He sagged, exhausted, against the fuselage.
‘You better get inside,’ said Frost. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’
Hancock climbed through the rip in the fuselage. He stood a while, holding the wall for support, letting his eyes adjust to darkness.
He blinked to clear sunspots from his vision. He saw Noble lying on the deck, head propped by a parachute.
‘You look fucking awful,’ croaked Noble, looking up at him.
Hancock slid down the nav console and sat on the floor.
‘Take a look in the mirror. You’re no prom date.’
‘Your head. Looks bad. Smells bad.’
‘Not a whole lot I can do about it. And you smell pretty ripe yourself, by the way.’
Hancock spat dust. He sat, head in hands.
‘They’ll be coming for us, soon as night falls,’ said Noble.
Hancock pointed to Noble’s side arm, the vacancy in the butt.
‘She took your magazines.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Worried I would take your gun?’
‘That’s right.’
Hancock smiled and shook his head.
‘You need to sort your shit out, you and her,’ said Noble.
‘Going to help me suppress a mutiny?’
‘I’m not picking sides in this fight.’
‘I’m still AC, no matter what. And we got orders.’
‘Do I have to spell it out? That satellite link you’ve been fooling with? There’s no one at the other end. Those flash EAMs? Figment of your imagination. Just you, at the keyboard, typing little messages to yourself. There is no chain of command. We are utterly alone.’
‘Tell yourself whatever you like. The orders were real. They stand. We got a mission to execute, so are you going to do your job, or pussy out like her?’
‘I went out there, Captain. I saw the target site. Apache. Some kind of multi-agency installation. A FEMA/CDC slaughterhouse. You know full well this mission has no purpose. An attempt to whitewash the reputations of guys that probably died weeks ago. Pure bullshit. But you’re in a headlong rush to die for it anyway.’
‘Some folks choose to live by a code. No point trying to explain.’
‘Never understood guys like you. Itching to jump on a grenade.’
They each retreated into silence.
Noble supported himself on an elbow and sipped from a canteen. He offered it to Hancock as a conciliatory gesture.
Hancock hesitated, then took the steel flask.
‘I saw the damndest thing while I was at Apache,’ said Noble.
‘What?’
‘There was an office. Paper scattered everywhere. Some of it Japanese. Dense pages of kanji.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And there were pictures. Look.’
He dug in his backpack. He handed Hancock monochrome sheets. Poor quality. Copies of old woodblock prints, kind of thing held in a Tokyo museum. Stylised, grotesque.
Hancock examined the pages. One showed a city on a hill. Townsfolk leaning from their windows, watching some kind of shooting star fall to earth. Another showed a samurai warrior, sword drawn, confronting an army of deformed skeletal things.
He studied the samurai. Black armour. A white, half-face skull painted on the snarling helmet mask.
‘Japan.’
‘Maybe this isn’t the first time humans have faced off against the virus. Maybe it’s been here before.’
Frost paced the dunes. She took a last look around before sunset.
She sat on the half-buried undercarriage. She disassembled her Beretta and held the components in her lap. She blew them free of sand.
She sharpened her knife on the ragged stump of a hydraulic actuator. Steel-on-steel. Each rasping stroke honing the blade razor-sharp.
46
Frost uncapped a hypodermic auto-injector.
‘You’re pretty liberal with that shit,’ said Noble.
‘We got a fight on our hands. Need you fully functional.’
‘Don’t think a head full of opiates counts as functional.’
‘It’ll get you on your feet.’
She took his arm and sunk a needle into his vein.
Frost stood beneath the starboard wing. She reached up into the cavity behind the spoilers and worked at a fuel line.
‘Hold that flashlight steady.’
She loosened a nut joint with a wrench.
‘Ready with that jerry can.’
She unscrewed the joint. Noble held the can to catch a steady dribble of JP8. Dregs from a wing tank.
‘Better not breathe the fumes,’ said Noble. ‘Be tripping your ass off.’
The dribble slowed to a stop.
They capped the can and carried it back to the plane.
The lower cabin.
Noble held out empty mineral water bottles. Frost decanted fuel.
Hancock watched them work.
‘Don’t spill any of that shit.’
Frost tore strips of chute fabric and stuffed them in the neck of each bottle for wick.
‘These bottles are plastic,’ said Noble. ‘Throw them quick, once you light the fuse. Likely to burn through and blow up in your face.’
‘Touched you guys are so concerned for my welfare.’
‘Might as well just shoot the fuckers,’ said Hancock. ‘Only way to be sure.’
‘Fire will finish them well enough,’ said Frost. ‘Minute or two in the flames will turn eyeballs to steam. Couple more minutes will cook muscles rigid. Burn long enough, and their brains will poach in their skulls.’
She lined Molotovs on the nav console.
‘You guys better wait upstairs.’
‘Not sure I can move,’ said Hancock.
‘Giv
e him a hand.’
Noble helped Hancock to his feet.
Hancock gripped the ladder.
‘Honestly can’t pull myself up.’
Noble held Hancock’s hips and helped him upwards rung by rung to the flight deck.
He put an arm round Hancock’s shoulder and steered him to the pilot seat.
Frost joined them.
‘You should be safe up here.’
She slid down the cockpit ladder, letting her good leg take the impact.
She fetched her crutch from outside and crouched on the floor of the lower deck. She opened a parachute pack, slit fabric and wound it round the crutch. Wadded nylon lashed in place by paracord.
Noble climbed down the ladder.
He stumbled, grabbed the nav console for support.
‘I want to help,’ he said.
Frost handed him the crutch. She picked up the jerry can.
‘Let’s get a fire going.’
The setting sun turned the desert rich caramel. Dunes cast lengthening shadows.
The extinct signal fire. A part-buried tyre.
They knelt and shovelled sand aside.
Noble stood back as Frost slopped aviation fuel. She flicked her Zippo and jumped back as vapour ignited with a thump and a fireball. The wheel burned blue and belched acrid black smoke.
‘Should tip the scales when our friends come calling. Rob them of darkness. If they want to bite a chunk out of our derrières they’ll have to step into the light.’
She held an improvised torch in the flames. Chute fabric caught alight. Nylon melted to bubbling tar.
‘Sure this is a good idea? None of us in much shape for a fight.’
‘We’ll have to face these bastards sooner or later. Might as well dictate terms. The plane is a good killing ground. Plenty of bottlenecks and fallback positions. It’ll give us an edge. They can’t try for us on the flight deck without leaving themselves fully exposed. I’d rather face them here than out there in the sand.’
‘Must admit, I’m a trifle apprehensive.’
‘Between you and me, never been so scared,’ said Frost. ‘But it’s good to be taking action.’
Frost looked up. A dusting of stars across a darkening sky.
‘We better get inside.’
They walked back towards the B-52.
‘So you want to head for the Panamints tonight?’ asked Noble. ‘Is that the plan? Wipe out these bastards then hit the road?’
‘Maybe I should give you guys longer to recuperate, but you know what? There will always be a reason to postpone, to sit around, making excuses, until the water runs out. Been here less than a week, but this plane has become my world. Everything else is a fading dream.’
‘We can’t leave Hancock behind.’
‘Guess we help him all we can. But in the end, it’s down to him. He’ll need to forget his plans to deliver the warhead to the target site, and decide to live.’
Frost staked the torch in the ground near the aircraft entrance.
Noble looked up at the emerging constellations.
‘It’s going to be a beautiful night.’
The flight deck.
Frost took Hancock’s lock-knife from her pocket. A Benchmark Griptillian. She flipped it open, put it in his hand. Burned fingers closed round the silicon grip. He contemplated the blade.
‘You could put it in my back easy enough,’ said Frost. ‘But I’m the only thing standing between you and our friends outside. Think it over.’
She unsheathed her K-bar and gave it to Noble.
‘So what’s the plan?’ he asked.
‘I need you guys to watch my back. That’s all. If I can lure them into a stand-up fight, I can take them down. Don’t care how sly these bastards are, how resilient. A full clip to the face, and the dance is over.’
Noble examined the heavy survival knife. Seven-inch blade. Curved Bowie tip. Blood channels.
He saw the pink blur of his face reflected in steel. A gaunt stranger. Stubble. Blistered skin. Bloodshot eyes.
‘Want me to guard the windows?’
‘Yeah. You and Hancock. And watch the hatches. If you hear a sound, the slightest hint they are trying to worm their way inside, holler.’
He tested the tip of the blade, adjusted his grip.
‘Forget it,’ said Frost. ‘You’re in no shape to tussle. If any of those fuckers gets in here, just stand aside. I’ll deal with them.’
‘I can still handle myself. Soft entry point. Eye socket, base of the skull. Put them down for good.’
Frost sat with her back to the wall, gun in her lap. She massaged her leg.
Noble sat against the opposite wall. He used the knife to dig dirt from his fingernails.
They listened to the tick of cooling metal, the symphonic contraction of the fuselage.
A muffled thud from down below.
They froze: Noble picking his teeth with the knife tip, Frost biting cuticle.
Clumsy, shuffling footsteps. Boots on metal.
Frost rechecked her pistol. Safety to Off. Brass in the chamber.
She towelled the butt free of sweat on her sleeve. She wiped the palm of her shooting hand on her pant leg.
She crawled across the floor to the equipment trunk blocking the ladderway to the cabin below.
Rumble of a heavy object dragged across deck plate.
‘Sounds like they’re moving something around,’ whispered Hancock.
‘How many of them do you reckon?’
Frost listened to stumbling footsteps.
‘One, I think.’
‘You’re sure?’ asked Noble.
‘The others must be holding back.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘What’s to like?’
They listened a while longer.
Heavy bootfalls.
‘Pinback?’ asked Hancock.
‘Dragging foot. Hear that? Definite limp. Probably Guthrie.’
Fingernails raked metal. Frost listened hard, tried to picture the geography of the cabin below.
Clatter and thud.
‘Sounds like he’s trying to climb into the crawlspace. Fuckers are fixated on that payload hatch. They instinctually make for the warhead. Drawn back to it, time and again.’
She gripped the Molotov. She pulled the Zippo from her pocket.
‘You ready?’ she asked.
Noble crawled across the cabin floor. He put his shoulder to the trunk and got ready to push.
‘Count of three.’
He nodded.
She brought the lighter flame to the Molotov and lit the wick.
‘… One … two … three …’
Grit-grinding rasp as Noble pushed the trunk aside.
Frost held the bottle over the ladderway, using the fluttering wick-flame to illuminate the cabin below.
Stumbling footsteps. Something monstrous lurched out of shadow, gripped the foot of the ladder and looked up at her.
Guthrie. Half a head. Half a brain.
Frost hurled the Molotov. The plastic bottle hit Guthrie’s face and split open.
Fuel splash.
Fireball.
The creature ablaze. It thrashed and shrieked. The lower cabin was filled with fire and smoke.
Frost threw herself aside to avoid the wave of roiling fire rushing up the ladderway to envelope her. She kicked away from the hatch, covered her mouth and nose to mask the stink of kerosene and cooking flesh.
She waited while Guthrie burned.
47
Frost lay on the flight-deck floor. She gripped the lip of the hatchway and looked down into the lower cabin. Flame and smoke. Splashed fuel burned blue.
Pop and crack of bubbling cable insulation.
The lung-searing stink of melting seat foam.
She covered her mouth and nose with her hand.
She jumped back as Guthrie slammed against the ladder below her. He burned and flailed. His Nomex flight suit was fire retardant, but his desiccated body w
as alight. Slow-cooking body fat. Hands and face sweated boiling grease.
He gripped the ladder like he intended to climb but instead hung from the rungs, limbs locked and trembling, like the metal was delivering high-voltage current. Exposed brain tissue boiled and fizzed. The creature wracked by a long epileptic convulsion. Lolling tongue. Weird cackling scream.
‘Shoot,’ shouted Noble. ‘Shoot the damned thing.’
She took aim. She tried to centre the pistol sights on the remaining quadrant of Guthrie’s forehead. He was dancing around too much to get a clear shot.
The creature wrenched itself clear of the ladder, leaving a couple of crisped fingers glued to a rung.
Frost was overwhelmed by thick smoke. She retched. She shook her head and attempted to clear her vision.
She rolled clear of the hatch and kicked the trunk back in position.
She sat back, hands pressed over burning, watering eyes.
‘Let him fry,’ she said. ‘Maybe the poor bastard’s brain will cook. Save us a bullet.’
She blinked away tears. The dark cockpit interior slowly came into focus. Detail reasserted itself.
The flight deck was slowly filling with black smoke, fumes curling from cable conduits and vents recessed behind wall insulation.
‘You ought to get down there and put out the fire,’ said Noble. ‘It’s starting to spread.’
Frost shook her head.
‘No need to panic. Let him roast a little longer.’
She checked her leg, adjusted the bindings holding the calf splint.
Hancock watched from the pilot seat. He gestured to his missing eye.
‘Wears you down, doesn’t it? Constant pain.’
Frost didn’t reply.
Wisps of smoke from the trunk blocking the ladderway. The sides of the vinyl case starting to bubble and warp in the heat.
Frost lay her hand on the deck plate beside her. Metal warm from the fire below.
Muffled thud. An inhuman, mewling shriek from the lower cabin.
‘Unbelievable,’ said Noble. ‘Son of a bitch just won’t quit. This guy’s so hard to kill, it’s almost funny.’
Squeals of rage gave way to pitiful moans.
‘No point waiting any longer,’ said Noble. ‘Better head down there and finish him off.’