“Die, you Nazi bastards, die,” said James, almost reverently.
“Language, James,” Rob said mildly. “You’re not at home now. We have a priest on board.”
James slammed the bomb-bay doors shut and went back to his gun. He grabbed the barely cooled grips with both wounded hands and bared his teeth in the old familiar grin. The gun bucked and heaved, pumping out tracers and blessed bullets, fifty-fifty.
All across the city of Dresden, planes were dropping their bombs. Long streams of certain death, falling with almost casual ease. Buildings exploded. Fires rose up. Black smoke everywhere. Whole streets disappeared, blown apart, as the center of the city became a great inferno, a firestorm whipped up by overheated winds. Dresden became a raging hell, with hardly a trace left of where the city had been. People were dying, too, of course. But they were too far below to see.
The surviving planes peeled away to every side—bombs gone, job done, heading home. The Spitfires and the Ubershreck were gone, all dead. Flak was still coming up from guns on the perimeter, not yet affected by the spreading fires. Planes were still being hit, plummeting from the sky, falling into the inferno they’d made below.
The Hampden rocked suddenly, slapped to one side by a terrible impact, and the plane dropped like a stone. Something had blasted a massive hole through the left-hand side, leaving a ragged gap big enough to drive a car through. So many Bible pages gone in a moment. Fires broke out down the whole left side of the plane; whipped up by the air blasting in through the hole.
“We’ve been hit!” yelled Chalkie, beating at the nearest flames with his gloved hands.
“I noticed, thank you,” said Rob. He fought the dead controls with all his strength, struggling to bring the nose back up. “Uriel! Anything you can do?”
I can only possess this plane as long as the fuselage survives, said the angel. There is enough left for me to remain—for a while. I will stay with you for as long as I can.
The nose came up slowly, reluctantly, as life returned sluggishly to the controls. Rob found he was breathing a little more easily. James and David left their guns to try and help Chalkie put out the spreading fires. David struggled forward with the plane’s only fire extinguisher, but ran out of foam long before he could make any real impression on the flames. David threw the empty canister aside and turned back to the rear cockpit. He ripped the water cannon out of its mounting through sheer desperate strength, turned it around, and used the last of the holy water on the flames. It helped, but not for long. David dropped the cannon and went to join Chalkie and James, beating out the flames with his gloved hands.
The Hampden left the burning city behind and headed on, back across Germany and into France. Burning ever more fiercely, and sinking ever lower in the sky as the angel’s power weakened. Half the plane was ablaze now. Rob finally looked back over his shoulder.
“Hate to say it, chaps, but I really don’t know if the Hampden will hang together long enough to make the French coast. Never mind the Channel. We’re losing more Bible pages every minute, and once enough of them are gone, so is Uriel. And a Hampden with no angel—and no engines—has roughly the same glide ratio as a brick. Chalkie, where are we, precisely?”
“Still over Occupied France,” said the navigator. His face was blackened and scorched from the heat and the smoke.
“Then everyone check your parachute—and jump,” said Rob. “Take your chances below. I’ll hold the plane steady.”
“No!” said David. “I won’t leave you!”
“I have to stay,” said Rob. “Try and nurse the Hampden home. We’re short of planes, you know. Especially after all the craft we lost tonight. But you can go. You’ve done your duty.”
“But . . .”
“We go,” James said roughly. He stood stiffly on his ruined feet, clutching his burned hands to his chest. “Pilot’s right. Better to risk a landing in Occupied France than a splash in the Channel. Those waters are cold enough to kill you in minutes. Let’s go. Help me check the straps, Davie boy.”
David checked James’s parachute, and then his own. They moved over to the open bomb-bay doors, and peered down at the ground rushing past.
“Will you be able to pull the ripcord okay?” said David.
“Bloody well have to, won’t I?” said James. “Sorry, Father.”
James jumped, with David right behind him.
“You’re next, Chalkie,” said Rob.
Chalkie shut the bomb-bay doors and staggered back down the plane, wincing away from the roaring flames he passed.
“How are you going to get the Hampden home without me to guide you? If I keep fighting the fires, there’s still a chance this old crate will hang together long enough.”
“Lot of ifs and buts in that,” Rob said mildly.
“No buts,” said Chalkie. “We’re going home.”
“No,” said Father John. “I don’t think so.” He squeezed up into the cockpit and jammed the barrel of his pistol into Rob’s ribs. “Land the plane, Mister Harding. Put us down, anywhere. You’ve done enough.”
“What’s this, Father?” said Chalkie. He wanted to jump the man, wrestle the gun away from him, but he was too far away.
“It would appear our new priest is a traitor,” said Rob. Looking carefully straight ahead, not down at the gun in his side.
“I am not a traitor! I am a pacifist.” The priest’s voice shook with the strength of his emotions, but his gun hand remained steady. “I am what I’m supposed to be: A man of peace, as all good Christians should be. I cannot believe my God wants so many people to die. I cannot believe my good and just God approves of this . . . madness! No. It has become clear to me that Hell is on both sides of this war.
“I came aboard this plane to do my duty. To sabotage your mission. I poisoned Father Alistair; I pray he will recover. I supplied you with altered maps, to steer you away from your target. I may be only one man, but I wanted to stop one plane at least, tonight.”
“But you stood to be killed along with the rest of us!” said Chalkie.
“I am ready to die, to put an end to at least some of this madness, this evil,” said Father John. “The Church has always been strengthened by the blood of martyrs.”
“Who got to you?” said Rob. “Who have you been listening to?”
“My conscience,” said Father John. “No more talk. Land the plane. There have been enough deaths this night.”
“How can you not believe God is on our side?” said Chalkie. “The plane’s possessed by an angel!”
“Hell is full of fallen angels,” said the priest. “No more arguments! I will do as my conscience and my God commands!”
You are wrong, said Uriel. Everything that happens, happens for a purpose.
And once again the Hampden disappeared as the angel showed them a vision, this time of what the Nazi Hierarchy had been doing in Dresden that night. Afterwards, Rob would only remember some of the details in his worst nightmares. Blood and horror, slaughter and suffering, on a scale almost beyond comprehension. The massacre of an entire city’s population, in horrid and vicious ways, to open the Gates of Hell, for a time. For those still left alive in the city, the falling bombs had come as a blessed release. For the Nazi Hierarchy, distracted and caught off guard, it was judgment day.
Father John cried out miserably as the vision disappeared and the Hampden returned. He fell back out of the cockpit, the gun dropping from his hand. He dropped down on both knees, wringing his hands together, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t understand! I didn’t know . . .”
Now you know, said Uriel.
Holy fires burst out of the priest, blasting from his eyes and mouth as they consumed him from within. He burned up in a moment, unable even to scream, as the terrible heat sucked the air out of his shriveling lungs. And all that was left was a charred and blackened shape, curled up on the floor of the plane. Chalkie retched and turned his head away.
“Why did
you do that? Why did you have to kill him? He said he was sorry!”
Penance isn’t good enough, said Uriel. We’re at war.
“Why didn’t you know he was a traitor?” said Rob.
I knew. But things must play out as they must. Men must save or damn themselves. I can only aid in human affairs; not meddle.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” said Chalkie.
The angel was silent.
Chalkie looked back down the length of the plane. Half the fuselage on the left side was gone. Fires burned fiercely. Bible pages blackened and curled as they were consumed. Chalkie could see the night sky rushing past, through the remaining struts and supports in the tattered gaps. He lurched down the plane, stamping out flames on the floor, beating out fires with his charred and smoking leather gloves. The heat inside the plane was almost unbearable now. His bare face smarted, and then burned. Until he couldn’t force himself forward into the heat any more and he had to fall back and stand below the pilot in his cockpit. Rob concentrated on the controls, and the way ahead, ignoring the heat as best he could, nursing the Hampden along.
“How much ammo do we have left, Chalkie?” he said. “Be a bit of a bad idea if the heat got to it.”
“The ammo!” said Chalkie. “If it explodes inside the plane . . .”
“Better do something about it, then,” Rob said mildly. “I’ve rather got my hands full up here.”
Chalkie braced himself, and made himself go back down the plane, into the awful heat, foot by foot. Until he reached the ammo cans stacked below James’s gun. He grabbed them up in his burned hands and tossed the metal canisters out through the holes in the open left side. Any one of them could have exploded at any time, from the raging heat, but he wouldn’t let himself hurry, determined to do a proper job. He got them all away and then hauled the gun up off its mounting and threw it after them, just in case it still had ammo up the spout. He staggered back to the front of the plane. His eyes were streaming with tears from the thickening smoke and he hacked and coughed violently.
“Well done, Chalkie,” said Rob. “We’re over the Channel now. Coast up ahead. Almost home. The Hampden will get us there. She’s a good crate. Uriel . . . Uriel?”
My hold on the plane is weakening, said the angel. Soon, I must leave you.
“There must be something more you can do!” said Chalkie.
Perhaps. One last, small miracle. For two good and brave men who did their duty.
The Hampden passed over the coast, sweeping over the English countryside, driven on by the last of the angel’s power. Under a full moon, a bomber’s moon. And a great shimmering path of silver moonlight suddenly appeared on the ground below, pointing the way back to the airfield. Showing them the way home. Rob laughed out loud and pointed the Hampden down the glowing moonlit path.
Good luck to you both, said Uriel. God be with you.
And just like that, Rob and Chalkie felt the angel’s presence go. The plane was just a plane. No longer possessed, the Hampden dropped suddenly, all power gone. Gliding over the English countryside, limping on toward the airfield up ahead. The shimmering, shining path hung on to the very last minute, right up to the edge of the runway, before it finally faded away.
An angel’s gift, from a bomber’s moon.
They came down hard, at the end. More a series of controlled crashes than a landing. But the plane finally skidded to a halt on a mostly deserted runway. Ambulances and fire trucks came rushing forward. Rob and Chalkie left the plane through the bomb-bay doors and staggered away from the Hampden, leaning heavily on each other. They looked back at what was left of their plane. Half destroyed, half still on fire: a battered and charred frame, never to fly again. It didn’t matter.
The Hampden had brought them home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Simon R. Green has written over forty books, all of them different. He has written eight Deathstalker books, twelve Nightside books, and thinks trilogies are for wimps. His current series are the Secret Histories, featuring Shaman Bond, the very secret agent, and The Ghost Finders, featuring traditional hauntings in modern settings. He acts in open-air productions of Shakespeare, rides motorbikes, and loves old-time silent films. His short stories have appeared in the anthologies Mean Streets, Unusual Suspects, Powers of Detection, Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, The Way of the Wizard, The Living Dead 2, Those Who Fight Monsters, Dark Delicacies III, and Home Improvements: Undead Edition.
IN SKELETON LEAVES
Seanan McGuire
“He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out of trees . . .”
—J.M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy
The sun rising over the lagoon tinted the water in shades of red and gold. Nothing moved, not even the wind, which had ceased blowing sometime after midnight, stranding the ships at sea and the rafts on shore. It was a moment of rare peace, and while it held sway, it was almost possible to pretend nothing had changed: that this was still a place of endless summers and endless games, where growing up was a choice and not a foregone conclusion. This was still Neverland.
Then the sun finished rising, and the red streaks on the surface of the water remained behind, the blood marking the places where the dead had fallen. This was still Neverland, but it was no longer suited for bedtime stories.
“I don’t think I can betray her.”
“Do you ever want this war to end?”
The ragamuffin army gathered in the shadow of the oaks drooped, their thin shoulders weighed down by birch-bark armor, their arms exhausted from the strain of holding swords and shields against the enemy. Those who had been lucky enough to stay behind and miss the night’s battles moved through their ranks, offering cups of water and wiping blood from split lips and bruised foreheads. Only whimpers broke the silence; whimpers, and sighs as Wendy after Wendy found one of their charges on the verge of collapse.
“This can’t go on much longer,” murmured one of the Wendys, whose name had been Maria before she came to Neverland. She barely remembered the life she’d left behind. She knew there’d been a man who had hit her, and a woman with sad eyes who had never intervened, but more and more she found herself wondering if that was really worse than this endless parade of dead and dying children.
“It will go on for as long as the Pan wills it,” said another Wendy stiffly.
Invoking the Pan’s name ended all attempts at conversation. The Wendys scattered like so many birds, the blue ribbons in their hair and tied around their upper arms standing out like brands in the gloom beneath the trees.
The sound of distant crowing alerted them that their time was almost up, and they worked faster, trying to bandage every wound and wipe every eye before the inevitable happened: the curtain of branches at the far end of the clearing spread wide, and the Pan floated inside, her feet drifting a foot above the hard-packed ground. Her Wendy walked after her, hands folded behind her back, and the Pan’s three lieutenants followed. They were the children who had survived the most battles, and their eyes were dead and dark with too much dying.
“Five Lost Children died last night—rejoice, for we killed twice that many pirates.” The Pan’s voice was jovial, as it always was; she announced death as if it were just another game. “Their bodies have been given to the mermaids, as apology for the three mermaids who were also killed in last night’s fighting. Our alliance continues strong.”
Each of the Wendys looked to their own charges and then, with pleading eyes, to the Pan’s Wendy. There was not a one of them who was not missing someone, but that could mean their children had been sent to scout, or were out gathering ripe apples and fresh strawberries to feed Pan’s army.
The Pan would never think to give the names of the fallen—forgot them, in fact, as soon as each Lost Girl or Boy breathed their last. Dead things held no interest for the Pan.
Her Wendy sighed and named the dead: “Christopher, Agnes, Jimmy, Minuet, and Xio.”
One of the male Wendys cried out before muf
fling his sobs with the heel of his hand. The other four who had lost children managed to keep themselves under tighter control. It was too late: the Pan’s eyes had found the Wendy who dared to cry aloud. She loosed herself like an arrow across the clearing, stopping to hang in the air before him as she demanded, “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
The Wendy swallowed, trying to take back his tears. It didn’t work, but he pressed forward all the same, saying, “Minuet was one of mine, Pan. I didn’t realize . . . I’m going to miss her.”
“Miss her? Miss who? All your children are here!” The Pan shook her head, pouting petulantly. “It’s like you don’t want us to have any fun, Wendy. You’re a stick in the mud. Why, I bet your children never get to play any good games.”
The Pan’s Wendy took a sharp breath as she grasped the danger. She stepped forward, forcing a laugh as she said, “Why, that’s not so! I’ve seen his children playing lots of games. He’s an excellent mother, Pan, one of the best. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s crying only because Minuet is going to miss playing with her brothers and sisters, like any good Lost Girl.”
The cornered Wendy nodded in rapid agreement. “Yes! Yes, Pan, it’s just as she said. We play such lovely games, it’s a pity Minuet won’t be able to play them with us anymore.”
“Ah,” said the Pan, starting to turn away. “You must have the best games in Neverland, then.”
“Oh, yes,” said the Wendy carelessly, thinking that the danger was past. He didn’t see the sudden tightness in the eyes of every other Wendy in the clearing.
The Pan whirled back toward him. “Liar!” she crowed. “My Wendy is the best Wendy, which means I get the best games, and not your children at all! And if you lied about this then you must have lied about that, because that’s what liars do! Snips! Gantry! Take this Wendy’s children to the enlistment tent. They need to learn how to play properly.”
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