Necessary Evil and the Greater Good

by Adam Ingle

  Having your seatbelt on wasn't a guarantee that you survived either. Some were just too fragile to weather the sudden stop; others fell victim to all the various flying debris whether it was people, luggage, or seats that ripped away. Even at a cursory first glance it was obvious that more people didn't make it than did.

  Even the uninjured were going to leave this with lifelong damage as they were all given front row seats to the fate of those in the forward section of the plane. The tail had landed and come to a stop moments before the nose section of the plan hit the ground, and most were strapped in with no way of turning away from the horror of it all. The nose had evidently broken into two smaller sections when the left wing ripped away. The cockpit nose-dived directly into the ground and crumpled like an aluminum can a kid had stomped on. It rippled and compressed further and further until it was nothing but a flattened accordion of steel. The second half came in at a slightly more subtle angle and skidded violently through the rocky, sparsely wooded Icelandic coast, pulverizing the occasional tree or scrubby bush into a spray of splinters and leaves. It left a relatively short but very deep gouge into the black earth as it slid to a halt. There were some survivors, though not many were moving.

  A few seconds later the wing that had torn away flipped downward and pierced the cabin almost squarely in the center. The blades of the engine were still spinning, though it didn't sound like it was actually running, and they turned the inside of the cabin into confetti. It was all very definitive and final.

  It wasn't until the whole scene had played out—from violent beginning to violent ending—that anyone in the tail section of the plane pulled out of their shock enough to take account of what was happening to and around them. The first sound outside of the crash that seemed to register to anyone was the whimpering of a dog. Mestoph looked down and realized that he still had a death grip on Sir Regi and was actually hurting him. He loosened his hold and the dog calmed down, looked around, and then sighed. Sir Regi didn't seem any worse for wear after it was all said and done. None of them were really in too bad of shape. The only injury Mestoph had sustained was before they had fallen, Leviticus had a few cuts on his face from fallen debris, and Marcus and Stephanie didn't seem to have a scratch on them.

  “Mother fucker,” thought Mestoph with considerably more optimistic enthusiasm than the last time. He started to laugh.

  A mile away along the Icelandic coast, Atreyus jumped back into his SUV and gave a sigh of satisfaction. It had been a good thirty years since he had last shot an RPG. He was afraid that his aim was going to be a bit off, but he had done a pretty good job of knocking the plane out of the sky. He knew that he hadn’t killed either Mestoph or Leviticus because he hadn’t felt his powers leave, but it would just be a matter of finishing the job now.

  He sped down a rocky trail that passed for a road in the remote areas of the coast, following the flagging airplane. He watched with excitement as it tore itself to pieces on its descent. His trail and the path of the plane merged, and he was now directly behind the plummeting aircraft. Between trying to keep the SUV under control at a high speed and keep tabs on the plane, he didn’t pay much attention to the wing being ripped off the plane.

  If Atreyus had had an out-of-body experience at this moment, he would have seen the wing spinning through the air like a tomahawk. A two-ton tomahawk spinning at a couple hundred miles an hour directly toward his SUV. Atreyus was not having an out-of-body-experience, however, so he did not realize he was about to die yet again until the wing landed on top of him.

  “Shit,” said Atreyus as the SUV crumpled in a mess of aircraft and automobile debris and then burst into flames.

  The next hour passed by in a fog. It was a slow process to check all the passengers still in their seats to see if they were alive. The dead were pulled out of the wreckage and laid out on the ground in rows of ten. People walked up and down the rows of bodies trying to find those that were missing. Some of the more forward-thinking passengers were searching for wallets, passports, or anything to identify the fallen. There were some who couldn't bring themselves to handle the dead and weren't of any use with the injured living, so they were set to the task of going through the luggage strewn around the immediate site of the crash looking for items that would help them survive in the long and short-term. Slowly Mestoph and Leviticus found themselves taking charge of the situation, since they seemed to be more or less unfazed by the loss of life and were capable of thinking critically and strategically.

  No one ventured too close to the wreckage of the forward section of the plane. There were no cries for help, and they were more than busy enough with those immediately around their own wreck. It had become an unspoken taboo; they were the ones who had died and no one spoke about them. Being on the edge of the enormous storm was also creating its own difficulties. The rain wasn't torrential, but it was heavy and constant, and the remains of the tail section of the plane made a leaky, unreliable shelter at best. Mestoph and Leviticus had given Marcus and Stephanie the job of finding supplies to use to either reinforce the tail section or make a better shelter. Once everyone had been given a job, Mestoph pulled Leviticus aside; they needed to talk about what had really happened.

  “An RPG? Are you sure?” asked Leviticus.

  “I’ve sold enough of them to know the business end of one when I see it,” said Mestoph.

  There was no doubt in his mind that they had been shot out of the sky. The question was whether it was coincidence or if St. Peter had absolutely lost his fucking mind and was willing to kill a hundred innocent humans just to thwart two wayward Astral beings. They agreed that St. Peter was a fuck-head and completely capable of it, especially considering the shootout in T or C. They also had to consider the inevitable fact that whoever had shot them down, whether it was St. Peter himself, mercenaries he had hired, or some militant rebel group, would come to at least check their handiwork if not finish the job.

  “We have to get the Hell out of here. Now,” said Mestoph.

  “We can’t just leave these people here to die.”

  “Sure we can. It’s our job to leave them to their own devices.”

  “Oh, now you want to do your job? Well it’s too late for that. I’m staying, and you know damn well Marcus and Stephanie will too,” said Leviticus.

  “Fine,” said Mestoph, shaking his head in dismay. “But we’re gonna need some weapons.”

  Where they were going to find weapons at a plane crash in the middle of the uninhabited south coast of Iceland was anyone’s guess.

  Chapter 11

  ...friendly Iceland

  They had been walking all morning and they were cold, miserable, and weary. The shepherd was exhausted from carrying Persephone across the countryside in increasingly worse conditions for over a week. Luckily they hadn’t run into any snow, as spring didn’t necessarily mean the end of winter weather in Iceland. His clothes, which had become more and more ill-suited as the weather got colder and colder, were soaked and filthy. Persephone's soft wool was matted and caked with mud, and she shivered constantly.

  She had woken him up in the middle of the night over a week ago, bleating like she was being eaten by wolves, and banging on his front door. He hadn't recognized her at first, but when she spoke to him the voice was unmistakable. All he could get out of her was that “he” had found her and they had to run. He wasn't entirely sure who “he” was or where they were going, but Persephone insisted with such an intense fear that he couldn't tell her no. He could never tell her no. He was in love with a lamb. Now they were heading toward the only people that might take them in.

  They walked through a field and came up to a small, muddy country road. Out of habit the shepherd looked both ways before he stepped onto it. Safety first, after all. Despite the wind and rain, visibility was good enough that he see the coast was clear in either direction. It was quite a surprise, therefore, when an SUV with a couple of pickup trucks trailing behind seemed to appe
ar out of nowhere going incredibly fast. It didn't look like they were going to stop.

  St. Peter was complaining with much gusto about the lack of enthusiasm and intelligence the average henchman had these days. Though he was driving, he was only paying marginal attention to where they were going. They were in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere Iceland where there was nothing but sheep and inbred farmers.

  “What I want to know is why it takes so much fucking effort to get good henchmen?” asked St. Peter.

  He was unleashing this well-trodden tirade on the only passenger in the SUV, a long-time lackey named Wheezy whom he had recruited straight out of Hell over a hundred years ago.

  Wheezy was a tall, lanky man with a patchy beard and beady eyes, whose tanned and weathered skin constantly looked dirty even though he was a meticulous neat freak. He had been a guerilla fighter for the Dutch farmers during the First Boer War in South Africa in the late 1800's. Now he was a low-level Shadow in the employ of Hell Industries, so technically he was one of Satan's boys, but St. Peter paid him well and let him do things that he would never get to do as a Shadow. Hell Industries thought he was too stupid to do important work. The truth was that Wheezy was actually pretty smart, but he had been tortured so many times before and after his mortal death that he no longer had a tongue, and his vocal chords were either completely severed or severely damaged.

  “It’s not like I’m asking for a whole lot. I just want average intelligence and unwavering loyalty. I can get the loyalty, but then they’re too dumb to know the difference between following orders to the letter and following the spirit of those orders. On the other hand, if they show a modicum of common sense, I can’t get them to do shit.”

  The demon shot a quick look at St. Peter and sighed.

  “You don’t have to say something for me to know what you’re thinking. You think if they’re smart enough to know better than to follow me blindly. So what’s your excuse? Just smart enough to know you’re not smart enough to do it all by yourself?”

  Wheezy gave a concessionary shrug. He might be ignorant, but he wasn’t stupid; St. Peter decided he would have to keep an eye on him.

  “Don’t think that just because you can’t talk that I don’t know what you really—”

  Wheezy rarely made any noise unless it was necessary, and was completely incapable of forming words, so St. Peter didn't automatically recognized the meaning behind Wheezy’s haunting wet, raspy, whispered yell. It was more the spit flying than the noise that really got his attention. He still wasn't sure what he was trying to get across until he followed Wheezy's outstretched hand that was pointing out in front of the SUV to something standing in the middle of the road. St. Peter hit the brakes and fish-tailed in the thick mud, sliding directly toward the soon-to-be-hood-ornaments in the road. With less than a foot to spare, the large SUV slid to a halt. The other trucks in the convoy swerved to avoid St. Peter’s vehicle, barely avoiding a pile-up.

  St. Peter and Wheezy were staring at a wet farmer in tattered and muddy clothes that couldn't possibly have kept him warm even if it weren't raining. He was holding a soaking wet lamb in his arms. St. Peter imagined it had to smell like a sweaty jock strap. The stunned shepherd stared back with a blank expression. After a moment he looked down at the lamb said something to it, paused, said something else, and then shrugged. To St. Peter and Wheezy it looked like the shepherd was consulting with the lamb. They looked at each other, wondering if they were both seeing the same thing, and then looked back as the shepherd continued to cross the road and walked off in the direction of the mountains.

  “God damn it, I hate this country,” said St. Peter as he hit the gas again. The SUV threw up mud behind it and then roared off. The pick-up trucks, which were full of an assortment of large Nordic brutes in modernized armor with axes and war hammers, along with short, skinny Africans in military uniforms with AKs and an RPG, followed.

  It had taken all day, but the survivors had sorted through the bodies and reinforced the tail section of the plane with scavenged aluminum struts. Mestoph and Leviticus were quietly salvaging anything that could be used as a weapon. They had recovered two handguns, one that Sir Regi had rooted around and found on the body of a sky marshal that had died in the crash, and another that Mestoph had found in the cockpit when he sneaked off to the forbidden wreckage as the light was fading. Leviticus had crafted rudimentary but perfectly usable axes and machetes from sharp and jagged pieces of metal. Some of the passengers had apparently been adventurers, or just very well prepared and paranoid, and had flashlights, lanterns, a few headlamps, and even a pair of sinister looking ice axes in their luggage. The lights would come in handy and provide some much needed comfort, and the pair of axes could end up being useful if embedded into some mercenary asshole’s skull. Food had been recovered from the galley in the rear of the plane, consisting mostly of sandwiches and boxes of noodles with vegetables. Nobody had much of an appetite.

  Easily the greatest comfort came from the large campfire that Marcus and Stephanie had built at the edge of the refitted plane cabin with more wood from trees that had been torn up and split in the crash. It was only partially shielded from the weather, so they had made it big as much for warmth and safety as to survive the rain. There was something calming and familiar about a campfire and most of the survivors, of which there were now only twenty-three, crowded around its calming glow.

  There had been more survivors immediately after the crash, but injuries seen and unseen had claimed about a dozen more. One man had slipped away shortly after dark and killed himself, slitting his wrists with a jagged razor of aircraft aluminum. Sir Regi noticed him leaving and had followed him, but had been unable to convince him not to do it. He secretly feared that seeing a talking dog might have made it worse. Sir Regi quietly returned to let Mestoph and Leviticus know, and they buried him in a simple rock cairn beyond one of the surrounding hills. Morale was going to be low enough come morning, when it would dawn on people that no one had come to rescue them in the night; a suicide definitely wasn't what they needed looming over them.

  The fact that there hadn't been any planes or helicopters looking for the wreckage hadn't surprised Mestoph and Leviticus, and when Stephanie had mentioned it in a whisper to Marcus, he had just nodded. Mestoph had been unable to find the black box, which was actually bright orange, in the cockpit. Its absence confirmed his suspicions that this was no accident.

  “We're not going to be rescued, are we?” asked Marcus quietly, though it was much more statement than question. Mestoph shook his head.

  “We need to organize first thing in the morning, before dissent amongst the ranks can entrench itself. We're going to have to leave the wreckage behind and make it to the nearest town,” said Leviticus.

  Mestoph and Leviticus had decided to tell them the truth about the wreck, or at least their version of the truth. They told them that they thought the wreck was intentional. That they didn't know how, but that someone high up had made it happen. They didn't think the survivors were likely to believe a story about a conspiracy of shadow Angels and Demons, so they would have to tell them something they could believe. While the five of them, counting Sir Regi, would know the “truth”, they would tell the survivors it had been an RPG that brought them down. There was an odd sense of irony to telling complete strangers the truth and those close to them a complete fabrication, but Mestoph and Leviticus each had their own reasoning behind it.

  Mestoph thought an RPG attack made the mysterious fifth column group that Leviticus had invented sound too human, and he wanted their invented assailants to remain other-worldly. He was afraid that if Marcus and Stephanie thought humans were already involved it was too late and that there was already no hope of survival. Leviticus on the other hand thought it made them look far too vulnerable when some guy with an RPG could take them all out. The truth was they were both right in a way – they were far too vulnerable, and the only thing that allowed Marcus and Stephanie to continu
e trusting their fellow humans was the fact that it was still an Us vs. Them scenario.

  The sun hadn't even fully risen, and already there was whisperings amongst developing cliques about how they should have, at the very least, heard a plane or helicopter flying over, if not spotlights trying to find them. They also had a surprising ally that had come to them just as the sun rose.

  Mestoph recognized him as the priest that had been sitting behind him just before the crash. He couldn't help but feel uneasy. Mestoph had fought alongside African rebels in the early 60s when Muammar al-Gaddafi staged his coup to take control of Libya, he had fought with the Saracens against the Crusaders at Tyre, Jerusalem, and Cyprus, and he had seen the full wrath of Satan himself directed squarely at him—and yet he feared nothing quite so much as a Catholic priest. He blamed The Exorcist.

  “I'm Father Mike,” said the priest in what Mestoph was now fairly certain was the accent of a British-educated Kenyan. He extended his hand in a friendly gesture that made Mestoph hesitate. The priest, whose collar was smudged black with dirt and red with blood, noticed the awkwardness and smiled. “Forgive my forwardness; I feared your friend might be Shia from his complexion, so thought it safer to shake your hand instead. I meant no offense.”

  Leviticus slipped into the conversation and quickly shook the priest’s still awkwardly extended hand. “Please ignore my socially inept friend’s heirophobia,” he said, giving Mestoph a look of disdain.

  The priest looked at him—Leviticus couldn't tell if it was amusement or suspicion that he saw on his face—and smiled again. “Wrong on both accounts, I suppose,” said the priest.

  Leviticus shrugged. “I'm about as Christian as they come—short of being the savior himself.”