by Adam Baker
Frost pulled on gloves. She opened a locker, threw clutter aside and retrieved an M40 respirator with a charcoal hood. Anti-radiation gear left from the days Liberty Bell carried gravity nukes during stand-off patrols near the Arctic Circle.
She put on the mask and adjusted straps.
She pushed the trunk aside.
Hancock held back a cockpit blast screen to vent thick fumes which immediately filled the flight deck. He fanned his hands, tried to encourage the noxious fog out the window.
Frost pulled the ring-tab from a wall extinguisher and trained a jet of carbon smoke into the lower cabin. She swept the nose cone back and forth, blasted every surface.
She dropped the depleted extinguisher through the hatchway. Metal clang.
She fumbled her flashlight and hit On. The beam shafted downwards into the smoke-filled lower compartment. Seething, swirling fumes. Black combustion smoke replaced by white, dry-ice mist from the extinguisher.
She turned and slowly climbed down the ladder, craning to make sure Guthrie didn’t lie in wait.
She stepped to the floor.
Harsh filter rasp. Each panting exhalation amplified to a guttural breath-roar.
She looked around through the fogged portholes of her mask. Broiling suppressant smoke. A sweep of her flashlight lit deck walls and control surfaces cover in glittering carbon rime.
Double take: her ejector seat was back in position. The metal chair frame had been shunted in front of the nav console. She reached out and tentatively touched the headrest. The seat had fallen miles from the plane. Fell out the sky at three-hundred miles an hour and buried itself among the dunes. Yet here it was, back in situ, warped by impact and gritted with sand.
She continued her search.
She crouched and checked the bomb bay crawlspace. Metal conduit leading to the payload hatch.
No sign of Guthrie.
Frost left the plane. She leant against the fuselage to take weight from her injured leg. She pulled off her mask.
She looked around. Dunes lit infernal red by the signal fire.
‘Where are you, Guss?’
She took a gyrojet flare pen from her pocket. She twisted a shell the size of a shotgun cartridge onto the head, pulled back the spring bolt, and fired the cartridge. The shell soared skyward. Crack. Starbust. The landscape lit harsh white.
Guthrie lay face down in sand. Blackened, smoking flesh. A grotesque stick creature hauling itself towards the dunes. Fingers raked dust. Crisped skin split and wept pus. It left a drag-trench flecked with flaked flesh and scraps of suit fabric.
Frost unholstered her pistol and walked towards the prone man.
‘How you doing, Guss? Think it’s about time you got some sleep.’
Hancock pulled back a blast screen and peered through the shattered cockpit window. He watched Frost cross the sand towards Guthrie, pistol drawn.
‘One down,’ he murmured.
A hand lunged down from the exterior roof, reached through the cockpit window and snatched at Hancock’s head. It gripped the dressing wrapped round his scalp and seized a fistful of hair. He felt sutures tear. He felt skin rip further open and a warm wash of blood behind his left ear and down his neck.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he shouted. He grabbed the emaciated hand, tried to prise fingers, but they dug into scalp-flesh like talons.
He struggled and thrashed as he was wrenched from his seat. He looked up, glimpsed a cracked Luminox and a rot-streaked sleeve. He punched at the arm, tried to break bone.
‘Frost,’ he bellowed, ‘Frost, fucker’s got me.’
He grasped at avionics, gripped thrust levers as he felt himself drawn inexorably up and out through the cockpit window.
48
Frost limped across the sand. Cold magnesium radiance turned the dunescape to ice. Each foot-crunch left a boot-print like she was walking through powdered snow.
Guthrie squirmed through the sand in a series of spastic convulsions. Flailing limbs churned a shallow trench.
She watched him crawl. Only the left side of his body retained function. He kicked with his left leg, clawed with his left hand.
She held her pistol in a double grip.
‘How you doing, Guthrie?’
The broken creature turned towards Frost. Face burned away. Stump nose. Skeletal grin. Its remaining eye socket was a charred pit.
‘Where are your friends? Are they coming out to play?’
She circled the prone creature.
‘Why don’t you folks attack en masse? Drawing us out? Is that the idea?’
Guthrie slowly turned his head, drawn by the rustle of her flight suit, the faint crunch of boots pressing sand.
He slowly pulled himself upright, balancing his weight on his leg. He faced Frost. She continued to circle. He followed every move.
‘Tracking by sound. Smart motherfucker.’
They continued their slow dance. Frost gripped her pistol, ready to put Guthrie down the moment he lunged.
‘What are you? Some kind of super-species? Some kind of evolutionary leap?’
‘Reesus,’ hissed Guthrie.
Frost cocked her head.
‘What did you just say?’
‘Reesus.’
Hancock crouched on the riveted metal of the cockpit roof. Dust-caked boots in front of him. He wiped blood from his eyes and looked up. A ragged flight suit matted with sand. Name strip: PINBACK. Hancock craned to see the man’s face. Black eyes. Peeling flesh. Hancock struggled to his feet. He pulled the lock-knife from his pocket and flipped open the stubby blade. He gripped the knife with a trembling hand.
‘All right, bitch.’ He swayed and stumbled, almost fell from the plane, then regained his balance. ‘Let’s boogie.’
Hancock slashed the knife back and forth, waited for Pinback to make a move.
‘Show me what you got. Come on. Let’s go.’
Sound of ripping fabric near his feet. Noble forcing his way through one of the patched ejection hatches. He squirmed through the aperture onto the roof.
He stood between Pinback and Hancock. Classic knife-fighter crouch, knife hugged to his belly.
He gestured to Hancock.
‘Get down below.’
‘To hell with that shit.’
‘Seriously. You’re in no shape. Get below. I got this.’
‘So what are you waiting for? Kill the fucker.’
Noble addressed Pinback.
‘Hey. It’s me. Harris. Remember? Think back. You got to remember.’
The blank face stared back at him.
‘We all said it, right? Every guy in uniform, some time or other, sitting in a bar. Shoot me. If I get fragged by an IED, if some jihadi motherfucker takes my legs, my dick, shoot me in the damned head. Don’t let me suffer. Don’t leave me paralysed. That night at The Barracuda. You and me. We shook. We had a deal. Take care of each other, no matter what. Do what’s got to be done.’
No response.
Noble shuffled closer to the cadaverous figure.
‘I’m talking to Pinback, Captain Daniel Pinback. You in there, Dan? Let me help you. Let me set you free.’
Pinback turned away and walked aft down the spine of the fuselage.
‘So what do you want from us?’ shouted Noble. ‘Rip out our throats? Go ahead. Turn around and take a shot.’
Pinback kept walking.
‘Fucking with our heads, is that it? To see how bad we want to survive?’
Noble spread his arms wide.
‘Come on, you bastard. Get your ass back here. Try and take a bite.’
Frost and Guthrie continued their dance.
She tried to work out if he were struggling to talk, or if the vocal sounds were an involuntary convulsion of the throat. One of the blackly comic aspects of infection: belches and long, rippling farts. A consequence of internal decay, bodies starting to bloat with rot gas.
‘Raysus.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘
Raysus.’
He tried to run at her. A loping, convulsive limp. She shot him in the thigh, shattering his femur. He fell to the ground.
Frost dug the flare pen from her pocket and sent up another star shell.
The flare hung in the sky projecting harsh light and sliding shadows.
Guthrie lifted his head.
‘Joysus.’
‘Jesus. Is that what you’re saying? Jesus?’
‘Joysus.’
‘Can you remember your old life? Is some of you left?’ She stepped closer to the prone figure. ‘Guss. Are you still in there? Concentrate. Think. Can you remember who you used to be? Hail Mary, full of grace. Can you say it? Hail Mary, full of grace. Say the words.’
Guthrie lunged, snapping, biting. She backed off. She lowered herself to her knees, well out of reach.
‘What’s it like? Death. You died, remember? Your parachute failed. Hit the ground full speed. Guess the virus jump-started your heart. What was it like on the other side? Can you tell me? Did you go someplace? What did you see?’
‘Joy. Suss.’
‘Is there anything at all?’
‘Joy.’
‘Tell me it’s all true. There’s light on the other side. Light and love.’
He snarled and reached for her, tried to crawl. She got to her feet. She stamped on his ankles until they broke.
‘Joy.’
She stood over him.
‘Infection. Is it better than death? Can’t help wondering. If I injected the virus to avoid dying of thirst, would it be worth the extra days? Surely some kind of sensation, some kind of half-life, would be better than nothing at all.’
‘Joy.’
Frost kicked Guthrie’s shoulder, rolled him onto his back. She planted a foot on his chest.
He broke teeth trying to chew the splint binding her leg.
She stamped on his neck, boot jammed beneath his chin.
‘Joy,’ he hissed, head pinned to the sand.
She took aim.
‘Join us.’
She fired a full clip into his face. Muzzle roar and gun smoke. Sand splashed with brain, teeth and splintered skull.
49
Frost climbed up the ladder into the cockpit.
‘Hancock? Noble?’
She checked the cabin interior. The beam of her flashlight shafted through residual smoke haze.
She checked the pilot’s chair, made sure Hancock wasn’t sitting with his back to her.
The seats were empty.
One of the blast curtains was pulled back. Blood and tufts of flight-suit fabric on broken polycarbon.
She looked through the window. She shone her flashlight down at the sand fifteen feet below. No sign of Hancock or Noble. No disturbance in the dust.
Cold air on the back of her neck. She looked up. Starlight. A vacant ejection hatch above the co-pilot station.
She jumped, gripped the lip of the hatch, hauled herself up and out.
The fuselage lit by moonlight. The huge body of the plane. The vulpine wings.
Hancock and Noble fifteen yards distant, facing aft.
She got to her feet and limped towards them.
‘You guys okay?’
They turned. Faces full of exhaustion and fear.
‘Fucker is messing with our heads,’ said Noble.
‘Who?’
‘Pinback.’
‘He was here?’
‘Didn’t you see?’ asked Hancock. ‘Didn’t you hear us shout?’
Frost gestured to her left. Guthrie’s body lying in the sand seventy yards distant, lit by weak flame light.
‘Otherwise engaged.’
Hancock’s exposed head wound glistened with fresh blood.
‘Jeez. You okay?’
Hancock ignored the question, stared towards the aft of the plane as if he expected Pinback to return.
Frost trained her flashlight on riveted roof plates. Boot-prints in the dust. She followed footprints aft to their abrupt termination.
‘Looks like he jumped,’ she said.
Noble squinted at the body lying near the signal fire.
‘Who was it?’
‘Guthrie.’
‘Dead?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yeah, I’m sure. He’s down for good.’
‘Then I guess we’ve got two to go.’
‘It’s cold. Let’s get back inside.’
They turned to retrace their route back to the cockpit roof hatch.
Muffled thump from down below.
‘Dammit,’ muttered Frost. ‘Hear that? They’re still trying for the bomb bay.’
Hancock shook his head and said:
‘Persistent sons of …’
His foot slipped on the sand-dusted curve of the fuselage. He fell on his back and began to slide legs first from the plane. He rolled onto his belly. His hands slapped the hull as he tried to find purchase. His boots thumped against smooth aluminium fuselage panels. No foothold. He tried to grip flush rivets and broke fingernails.
‘Take my hand,’ said Frost.
She reached down and gripped his right hand. Noble grasped his left.
Hancock continued to slide, threatening to pull them both from the roof.
They lost grip. He fell from the plane.
‘Christ.’
Frost leant forwards and shone the flashlight downwards.
Hancock sprawled on the sand.
‘Are you all right?’ shouted Frost.
‘Think so,’ said Hancock. He raised his head. He flexed his arms. ‘Think I’m okay. Don’t think I broke anything.’
The sand behind his head began to shift and bulge.
‘Get up,’ shouted Frost. ‘Get off the sand.’
Hancock looked around. He saw dust ripple and seethe.
‘Shit.’
He tried to galvanise sluggish limbs and get to his feet.
‘Just get off the damn sand,’ yelled Frost.
She ran down the spine of the plane, sat on her ass and pushed herself from the roof. She slid, fell, and hit the starboard wing. Clumsy parachute roll on sand-dusted metal. She crawled to the leading edge of the wing. She hung, arm outstretched.
‘Get over here. Grab my hand.’
Hancock staggered towards her and reached up. Their fingers brushed. Too high.
Frost pointed to the tip of the wing where the drape of the metal brought it close to the ground.
‘Run.’
Hancock ran for the tip of the wing. He stumbled like a drunk.
Frost ran a parallel course, limping along the wing surface.
She reached the tip of the wing and threw herself to her knees. Noble joined her. They stretched out their hands.
‘Come on,’ shouted Noble. ‘Keep running.’
Hancock lurched across the sand, desperately trying to keep his balance. He toppled and fell. The ground behind him began to bulge and undulate.
‘Get up,’ shouted Frost. ‘Get up, you fuck.’
Hancock climbed to his feet. He grabbed at their arms. He missed. One eye: no depth perception. Second try. They seized his wrists and pulled.
Explosion of sand. Glimpse of a dirt-clogged, skeletal thing, reaching from the dust.
Early.
Helmet. Matted flight suit. Skin like leather. It grasped at Hancock’s ankles.
Hancock kicked and jerked his legs free. They hauled him onto the wing. They lay panting on the sheet-metal surface.
Frost rolled, pulled the pistol from her waistband and fired a volley into the sand.
Stuttering muzzle flash lit the cadaverous creature as it squirmed below ground. Meat-smack. Bullets hit flesh. Spark and whine: a round grazed the visor hinge of a flight helmet and deflected into the night.
She swept the dunes with her flashlight. Churned sand. The figure was gone.
She and Noble helped Hancock to his feet. They walked the length of the wing, leaning against each other for support.
‘Sly bastards. Do anything to avoid a straight fight.’
Frost wasn’t listening.
‘My God,’ she murmured, looking past Hancock and Noble to the darkness at the rear of the plane.
She pulled the flare pen from her pocket, loaded a cap and fired.
Crack. The star shell streaked skyward. Magnesium burn. The crash site lit harsh white.
‘Jesus,’ murmured Noble.
The tail section of the plane sat fifty yards away.
‘Tell me I’m not going nuts,’ said Noble. ‘That wasn’t there before, right?’
Frost shook her head.
‘It was a quarter of a mile back in the debris trench.’
‘Fuckers are trying to reassemble the aircraft,’ said Hancock. ‘Putting it back together, piece by piece.’
‘That thing has to weigh fifty tons,’ said Frost, pointing at the tail. ‘Couple of guys couldn’t drag it on their own. There must be more of them out there, working in concert. A lot more.’
50
They lowered themselves into the flight deck.
Frost retaped the insulation blanket, sealed the ejection hatch.
Hancock lowered himself to the floor. He tried to steady his breathing. He placed a hand on his chest.
‘Heart like a jackhammer. Might keel over right here. How about that? All of this shit going down, and I drop from a cardiac arrest.’
Frost peered down the ladderway into the lower cabin, pistol drawn.
Empty.
Noble picked a sand-dusted flight helmet from the pilot seat.
‘Hey. This wasn’t here when we left, right?’
He threw the helmet to Hancock.
Hancock examined the name stencil-sprayed above the visor.
GUTHRIE.
‘They left it on your seat,’ said Noble. ‘Must be intended for you. Maybe it’s some kind of message.’
‘What do they want from me?’
‘Damned if I know.’
Frost sat on the deck beside him. She ejected the pistol mag and counted bullets.
‘Whole lot of running around and not much achieved,’ said Hancock.
‘Achieved plenty. Lured Guthrie inside and took him down. Proves they can be killed.’