by Adam Baker
She stamped out the flame.
An empty water bottle. She uncapped the bottle and shook it into her mouth in case the slightest droplet of moisture remained.
She pulled an Arctic parka from a locker, slit the quilted liner and pulled out tufts of synthetic down. She stuffed the wadding into the bottle.
She unscrewed the hydraulic line and let clear fluid dribble into the bottle, soaking into the foam, then rescrewed the cap.
Down the ladder to the lower cabin. She put her ear to the stacked trunks blocking the tear in the fuselage wall, tried to hear if anyone were moving around outside.
Duct tape. She strapped the bottle to a strut above the door. She lashed a gyrojet flare pen to the bottle. She pushed the barricade aside, ran a monofilament trip line across the aperture and tied it to the deck grate.
She stood back and inspected the trap.
Nod of satisfaction.
Frost sat in front of the Camcorder and pressed Rec:
She wiped away tears of exhaustion.
She composed herself.
‘You never know what you got until it’s gone. Who said that? Johnny Cash? Kind of thing he would say. Never a truer word spoken. Can’t help but think back to stuff I took for granted. Queuing in the post office, pushing a trolley round the supermarket. Feels like a long-lost paradise. Guess everyone with a cancer diagnosis feels the same way. Leaving the clinic full of heart-pounding death-terror. Suddenly that hour you spent mowing the lawn the previous day feels like a lost Eden. Give anything to turn back the clock to that bored, complacent humdrum.
‘Right now I’d give anything to be back at home, cleaning my oven or something, living an average day.’
She re-angled the camera.
‘They’ll come for me, sooner or later. Wait until I’m least alert. Sneak inside, or rush en masse. Depends if they want me alive, I guess. Depends if they have a use for my ass.
‘I’ve got no illusions. Fight long as I can, but they’ll win for sure. Dead by sunrise. Am I scared? Tired. Just tired. Fuck it. If those bastards outside want my hide, they’ll have to work for it. Make them pay a heavy price.
‘I’ll hide this tape in the cockpit. My last testament. Maybe someone will find it, years to come. Long shot, but what the hey. And remember: if you are standing here in this cockpit, listening to my message, then take my warning. Get away from here. Get away from the sand. Nothing out here but death.’
She leant forwards and reached for the power button.
‘This is Lieutenant LaNitra Frost, signing off.’
Rising wind. Whisper to a moan. The fuselage creaked and ticked. Sand gusted through torn blast screens, coated control surfaces with dust.
She unzipped her flight suit and sponged herself with wet wipes. A grey layer of grime and grey dermis stripped away. Her bicep tattoo revealed clean and clear.
She combed her hair and freshened her face.
She squeezed toothpaste into her mouth and rubbed it round her teeth. She squeezed worms of paste onto her fingers and wiped stripes across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose like warpaint.
Codeine for her leg.
She strapped a gas mask pouch over her shoulder. The respirator would protect her airway if she found herself outside in a dust storm.
She rezipped her flight suit and buckled her survival vest. Pocket check. One spare clip. One in the gun.
She double-tied her laces, lashed duct tape round each ankle and wrist to proof her suit against sand.
She stood in the centre of the flight deck. She stretched and flexed her limbs, shook out cramp and cold.
She pulled on Nomex gloves and unsheathed her father’s survival knife. A Nam-era jungle blade. Rangers stamp on the weather-worn sheath. He used it to probe undergrowth for trip-wires. He used the tip to punch open beer cans. Visible strapped to his chest in the platoon group shot hung on his office wall. 151st. Eight grinning guys sitting on the roof of an M113 APC. Boonie hats, camo faces, jungle backdrop. Peace signs and a couple of fuck-you middle fingers.
She swept the blade back and forth, sliced the air.
Ready for war.
If she had to die, let it be here, let it be now.
Out onto the roof.
Strengthening wind. She wore the M40 respirator to protect her face from driving sand.
She looked up. Vaporous clouds scudding past the moon, east to west.
The signal fire had been extinguished. At first she thought the flames had been smothered by wind and sand, but she focused her flashlight and saw the tyre that provided fuel for the pyre had been removed. No doubt remnants of undercarriage, the buckled actuators, hydraulic cable, burned and shredded radials, had been returned to their respective wheel wells.
Conscious determination to get her shit together.
She stamped her aching, injured leg and savoured the invigorating jolt of pain.
The desert swept by intermittent moonlight. Deep shadows, pools of blackness coagulating around the plane and between each dune.
A dark shape near the extinct signal fire. The discarded jerry can. She held the pistol in both hands, took aim, and waited for moonlight to gift her with a clear shot.
Guncrack.
A neat hole drilled in the side of the can. The container pissed a thin stream of aviation fuel. The fuel spattered on sand, a spreading stain of wet.
Guncrack.
The bullet sparked metal. Vapour ignition. Double fireball: the spilt fuel caught alight then, a moment later, the fuel can blew with a concussive thud.
A slow-blossoming mushroom of fire rose over the crash site. Dunes and wreckage lit by flickering flame light.
A figure, standing at the ridgeline. Ragged flight suit. A patient sentinel, oblivious to the storm.
She pulled back her respirator to get a better view. Sand stung her face.
She threw her arms wide.
‘Come get some, motherfucker.’
She sat in the dark a while, perched on the lip of the ladderway.
She looked down into the lower cabin. Her eyes projected phantom shapes into nothingness. After a while, her sight adjusted, and she could see intermittent washes of moonlight filtering through the rip in the fuselage.
She shifted and stretched each time she felt herself sliding into sleep.
Flicker.
She sat still, breathless and unblinking, as she tried to discern movement below.
She followed her survival training: used peripheral vision to monitor deep shadow.
Flicker.
Someone, or something, outside the plane, hesitating at the threshold.
She slid a hand over the pistol butt and rested her forefinger on the trigger.
She waited. It seemed like an age.
The arachnid movement of fingers curling round torn aluminium. A grotesque silhouette. A guy in prison red, framed by ragged metal, about to pull himself through the rent in the fuselage.
Frost willed the creature to advance into the plane. It was inches away from the monofilament trip wire. All it had to do was step forwards.
The creature stood motionless.
Frost tried to regulate her breathing.
Minutes passed.
No movement.
She released her grip on the pistol, carefully unsheathed her knife and pricked her thumb. She squeezed a bead of blood and smeared it on the lip of the ladderway.
The creature stepped over the threshold into the lower cabin. Flicker of hesitation as its arm brushed monofilament.
The thread pull taut.
Frost shielded her eyes. Crack of ignition. The cabin instantly filled with magnesium fire.
The flare burned through the plastic bottle in an instant. Hydraulic fluid ignited in a flame-burst. The creature’s head and shoulders were engulfed by liquefied plastic, and melting insulation foam.
The revenant thrashed and bounced off the walls. It pawed at the flames, tried to wipe them from its face. Burning plastic adhered to its hands in gl
utinous strands. Bubbling, blackened flesh. Fingers quickly fused to charred clubs.
Frost got to her feet. She slid down the ladder.
She side-stepped the blinded figure as it slammed into the nav console, careened into the walls as it tried to find its way back outside to roll in sand and smother the flames.
She snatched up her crutch, held it at waist level like a pike staff, and rammed the jagged tip in the creature’s belly.
It thrashed. It fought. Frost threw all her weight, propelled the figure backwards until it slammed against the fuselage. The crutch bored deep into the creature’s stomach, grated against vertebrae. Foul rot-stink. She twisted the pole back and forth. It broke through the creature’s back. Metal screech as the jagged tip of the crutch punctured the skin of the plane like the blade of a can opener. She continued to twist and push. The pole speared through aluminium plate and pinned the burning revenant to the wall.
She stood back and caught her breath. She shook out cramped fingers.
The creature snapped and snarled as it was consumed by fire. Lips crisped and curled. Eyes burst and boiled away.
Frost checked out the prison fatigues.
‘What the fuck are you?’ she murmured.
She unsheathed her knife and drove it into his empty eye socket. She twisted the blade and churned brain.
She gripped burning hair and began to saw through the creature’s neck. Bone. She dug the knife tip between the joint and shucked vertebrae apart.
The head lifted free and clear.
She tossed it through the rend in the fuselage wall, out into the dust storm. The burning head hit the ground, bounced, rolled and came to a standstill face up. Flames guttered and died. Sand began to accumulate in empty eye sockets and an open mouth.
‘Fuck you,’ she yelled into the night. ‘Fuck the lot of you.’
She turned her attention back to the decapitated body.
An extinguisher lifted from a wall holster. She pulled the ring tab and trained the nozzle cone. Fire smothered by a jet of gas. The corpse pinned to the fuselage, white with carbon crystals like it was sculpted from ice.
Frost threw down the extinguisher, then cleaned her knife.
53
The blast blinds masking the cockpit windows billowed and cracked. The screens were fringed with a halo of phosphorescent blue. Oncoming day. The sun ready to breach the horizon. Soon, a tide of gold light would pour across the dunescape, burn away the sandstorm and dissipate turbulent air currents.
Frost blew her hands for warmth. Jet of steam breath.
‘Daybreak, fuckers,’ she murmured, anxious to hear her own voice, anxious to break the oppressive solitude of the cabin.
‘You bastards got an hour left before the heat begins to build. Storm will clear soon enough, then you’ll have to take cover. Dig in and hibernate. Won’t last a day above ground. Few hours in the sun and you’ll dry out like jerky. Cook rigid as a plank of wood.’
She allowed herself a sip of water.
‘Endurance, right? The desert will finish you soon enough. I’ve just got to sit here and outlast you.’
She casually picked through the trauma kit.
She found a small plastic bottle of eyewash. She squinted at the label. She unscrewed the spout and sniffed the contents. Sooner or later water would run out. She would close her eyes, knock back 75ml of saline and try to hold it down.
She tossed the bottle into the backpack.
‘I’ll outlast you fucks,’ she said, facing the fuselage wall, addressing the desert that lay beyond. ‘A parasite. Can’t live without a host. If you wipe out the human race, you’ll die with us. All I got to do is find an island someplace and wait. Couple of years you’ll be gone like a bad dream. All I got to do is endure.’
A cursory, time-killing search through a storage locker. Arctic gloves, foil blankets, hexamine blocks.
Something silver at the back of the locker. She tugged it free. A Thermos flask matted in dust. Must have belonged to the previous crew of Liberty Bell. A relic of night missions, stand-off patrols over Arctic waters. Thirty-six hours in the sky. Mid-air refuelling by a KC-10A extender. Caffeine to stay sharp.
She unscrewed the cup and cap, shone her flashlight into the flask interior.
Empty.
She sat back in the gunner’s chair. Her eyes wandered to the EWO seat beside her, the ejection rail that anchored the seat to the plane. An object in the base of the seat sprayed black and yellow. She stared blankly at the wasp-warning stripes, then she finally made the connection.
She leapt from her seat and knelt on all fours.
A cylindrical steel firing tube, thick as a length of drain pipe, beneath the seat. It contained a powerful pyro charge primed to propel the EWO’s chair up and out the plane once the egress systems were activated. A quarter ton of flesh and metal accelerated to 12g in less than a second.
She reached beneath the seat, tried to squeeze her hand past the catapult pylon and grip the firing tube. Couldn’t reach. The seat would have to be disarmed, unbolted and lifted clear before the divergence rockets could be removed.
She checked the headrest. Ought to be a small explosive cartridge rigged to fire a stabilisation drogue.
She sawed through nylon packing and cut through the chute harness.
She flipped open the cross-head screwdriver attachment of the Leatherman and unbolted the pyro tube. She lifted it clear and turned it in her hand. A silver cylinder with a red cap. Size of a cigar.
Early leant through a rip in the fuselage and surveyed the lower cabin. Transformed vision cut through shadows bright as day.
Burn-streaked walls and instrumentation. A decapitated corpse pinned to the wall.
He stepped out of the rising sandstorm, the wind moan and swirling particulates, into the stillness and shadow of the plane’s interior.
Careful footsteps. The grit-crunch of heavy soled boots on sand-dusted decking.
He could smell Frost in the upper cabin, hear her heartbeat, her breathing.
Fresh meat.
He gripped the ladder rungs and began to climb. Clumsy, jerking movements. Desiccated muscle and tendons hardened like leather.
Head above the hatchway. Frost asleep in the EWO seat, face to the wall, body blanketed by an NB3 parka. He slowly climbed the ladder and stepped onto the upper deck.
Frost slumped head to one side, still as she could. She breathed slowly, tried to calm her heart rate.
Faint creak of decking.
She opened one eye. A flight helmet on the console beside her. The dark visor reflected the flight deck in fish-eye distortion. She watched Early climb from the ladderway and creep towards her.
Early stood over Frost and listened to deep respirations.
He bent and reached for her. Diseased, dirt-caked hands. Broken fingernails.
Her eyes snapped open. She threw the anorak aside. The Thermos trailing wires: a 9v battery lashed to the cylinder with duct tape. She trained the blunderbuss barrel at his head.
‘Thanks for stopping by.’
Frost touched wire to a battery terminal.
Spark.
Flame-roar.
Thick smoke haze.
Frost lay with her face pressed to the decking. She searched out clean air. Her ears rang. Her belly bruised from the recoil of the rocket charge.
Her hands hurt. She bit the fingers of her torn Nomex gloves and slowly pulled them off with her teeth.
The trauma kit. She teased burn dressing from the Ziploc bag and tore wrappers with her teeth. She squirted anaesthetic burn gel onto her hands and lashed the dressings in place with bandage.
The flask lay beside her, smouldering, sides peeled open like petals.
She rolled. She crawled to the ladderway.
Early lay on the floor of the lower cabin. His face and torso were a pulped mess. Splintered bone and shredded muscle protruding through the fabric of the flight suit. His body glittered with embedded cockpit glass.
His
leg danced. Fingers twitched. Last nerve signals from a shattered brain.
54
A steady wind blew over the dunes, skimming granules from the crest of each ridgeline, gradually reordering the landscape.
The sky filled with serpentine dust eddies. A blizzard of sand particles. The weak sun glowed through the vaporous storm like Martian twilight.
Mournful wind-howl. Absolute desolation.
The thing that had once been Captain Pinback looked out over the storm-lashed wreck site, surveyed the reassembled plane.
The tail shunted back in position.
Battered engine pods resituated beneath each wing.
The fuselage scoured by sand, an unrelenting hurricane blast which would, in time, abrade shark-grey paint exposing silvered panels beneath.
Pinback descended the dust gradient. He gripped the tip of the starboard wing where it hung low to the ground and lifted himself effortlessly onto the wing surface.
A slow, purposeful walk towards the main fuselage. Wind snatched and whipped the flight suit hanging from his emaciated frame.
He climbed onto the roof.
He looked aft down the spine of the plane to the crooked tail.
He looked forwards towards the nose.
One of the retrieved ejection hatches had been pushed aside. Darkness within.
He approached the hatch. He could hear the low murmur of a woman’s voice above the unrelenting wind-roar. He crouched and listened. Frost talking to herself, mordant, resigned.
‘… Can’t help but think back to stuff I took for granted. Queuing in the post office, pushing a trolley round the supermarket. Feels like a long-lost paradise …’
Nothing left of Daniel Pinback, no pang of empathy for the exhaustion, the terror, in Frost’s voice.
The creature stepped into the vacant hatchway and dropped into the flight deck below.
He hit the gunner’s seat, fell hard and snapped his right arm near the shoulder.
He stood up, right arm limp and useless.
He approached the pilot chairs.
‘… that hour you spent mowing the lawn the previous day feels like a lost Eden. Give anything to turn back the clock to that bored, complacent humdrum …’