Slowly he closed the door and bolted it. “Oh Gil old boy…you DID not just see what you think you just saw.” he quickly scanned for anything large enough for those things to get into and saw nothing.
“Shit!” he sprinted to the office and closed the window knowing that it was well over ninety degrees in the hanger already, but decided that he’d rather die of heat stroke than be eaten by those flying piranhas.
“Christ! What kind of world have I awakened into?” he slowly slid down the wall until he was sitting on the concrete floor “Huge things with basketball sized mouths to run from at night, and now these swarming things that pick a body clean in minutes during the day.” Gil held his head in his hands and groaned. After sighing deeply and feeling a bit lost, he stared at the corner of the hanger through the open office door. “Well, kiss my ass!”
There kitty-cornered in the far rear corner and tucked in behind the old Piper was an ultralight aircraft skeleton. Things were looking up, Gil had flown many types of these over the years and the frame looked great. It was all aluminum and stood his ‘shake it like hell’ test. He spun the propeller and it turned; the engine had not seized. A quick check of the oil showed it was a little thick, but it had stood the test of time sealed in the dark oil pan of the engine… The fuel was another thing; well non-existent…the tank was dry.
Searching through the hanger he found an unopened crate of cans of octane booster. A quick shake told him the cans were still sealed and full, now all he needed was to find some gas.
The plane had been emptied and with another deep sigh Gil slowly slid the door open to peek outside…the swarm was flying far away and away from his location. Opened a little more he craned his neck and checked all that he could see. He dashed to the open hanger, grabbed a long piece of hose and a hand crank as he ran toward the set of fuel pumps. He tried to open the tank’s fill door…” Crap, frozen shut!”
He ran back to his hanger and grabbed a wrench. Finally after straining for a few minutes came a squeak and the fill cap unscrewed. He shoved the hose into the dark opening and began pumping…nothing… “Crap!”
Another mad dash to the hanger he grabbed more hose, screw clamps and a screw driver, ran back to the tank and lowered the hose into the hole and pumped. Fuel or at least something that looked and smelled like fuel spilled out onto the concrete…nothing to put the fuel in… “Jesus, you dumb shit…stop and think!” he reprimanded himself.
“Ok Gil, this time think, go into the hanger and…” he sighed as he stared at a fuel truck sitting alongside of the hanger he was in “ohhh…talk about feeling stupid.” he bemoaned. Feeling a bit moronic he walked over and cracked the valve free and as the squeaky valve turned, out came fuel. Gil thought that he’d cry from joy and couldn’t stop smiling as he went to retrieve a five gallon fuel can that he’d seen near the plane.
“Well…” he muttered as he lowered the now full can and looked at the locked hanger door “I have an ultralight, fuel, and something to energize the fuel with. Now if I…” his eyes fell upon a crate tucked atop a high rack of steel shelves “naw, couldn’t be that freakin’ lucky.”
A quick climb and carefully opening the old wooden crate Gil found that he was indeed ‘that lucky’. Inside was the nylon cover for the wing; his heart leapt.
As the sun lowered in the west, Gil had to stop and wait for morning as he curled up inside of the old Piper and snacked on a MRE (meals ready to eat)
“Ready but not too tasty.” he muttered and snuggled down in the musty old seat. Strangely even after sleeping in stasis for fifteen years, he slept like a baby. In the morning he attributed that good sleep to his long walk the day before and as he snickered, his mad running back and forth to gather stuff that normally he would have thought to get in one trip. This also made him wonder if perhaps he might be starting to panic, the evening before he was not the careful, well prepared guy that he usually was.
Gil carefully covered the ultralight with the old nylon covering and thanked whomever had stored it away had done so with such care. Lastly he sat down and tried to figure what ratios he would have to use to get the proper fuel mixture. Finally getting the small puddle of fuel to light properly he figured it would have to do. Carefully he mixed the fuel with the octane booster in the five gallon can and filled the small tank, and then mixed up some more to take with him. He stepped back and looked at his new ride and wondered if he had missed anything…but daylight was here and not to be wasted.
A walk around the area he found nothing to cause worry, so back inside to push the ultralight to the door. He pulled the prop around a few times to circulate the oil. He flipped on the ignition and hoped that his fuel mix would be sufficient and jerked the propeller…it fired once and quit.
Pull number two was the same as the first. Pull numbers three, four, and five…nothing.
“Throttle not set!” he shouted and ran around the prop to set the throttle to start “Stupid, Gil, stupid!”
He cranked the engine and the little engine roared to life with his sixth pull and after a rough start, it leveled out. The sun was brightly shining, so no shaft creatures, no flying creatures, life was good. The ultralight was pushed closer to the daylight, but not too far just in case he had to close the doors in a hurry. A good look around as he couldn’t hear a swarm over the motor, Gil quickly pulled the hanger doors open, dashed back to the ultralight that he decided that he’d name Val. He plopped into the seat and buckled himself in. A final check of the rudder and flight controls, he shoved the throttle forward and began to move away from the dark hanger and out into the bright morning light.
He swung toward one end of the runway and prayed that he had not overloaded the tiny Val with too much fuel. A rev of the engine and he began to taxi down the cracked concrete and hoped that the weeds poking through wouldn’t slow him too much and that thought was multiplied many times over as he glanced back to check the engine… and saw a swarm flying behind him.
“Oooo…baby you’d better get your ass off the ground.” he screamed as he pulled back on the stick. The front wheel lifted off instantly, but without wind…could he lift off?
Suddenly the windsock on the pole half way down the runway filled and noticing that it was slightly off his left side, he swung Val left and into the long grass.
The grass and weeds grasped at his wheels and axle, but the gust was all he needed and the tiny plane jerked upward and banked more into the wind farther to rise higher.
Gil soared higher and glancing back noticed the swarm had given up on him and had now found another deer. Now with the proper airspeed he swung his ultralight south-southwest. Gil’s answers would lie either in Texas, or Florida…now he just hoped that he had just enough fuel to make Kansas.
***************************
Only stopping long enough to fill his tank, re-energize this fuel, and fill two small extra gas cans, Gil managed to near the Kansas state line. As it turned out it was farther than he had estimated and longer than he figured that he’d survive.
As the days passed he had seen several swarms far below, but making the mistake of allowing the shadow of the ultralight to pass over one swarm brought him closer to death than he had been on previous occasions. There was the brush with the creature in the shaft, and then again the close call with the airport swarm, three days before he barely got off the ground when a swarm closed on him, but once again was saved by a fleeing animal.
Gil had seen swarms below and was relieved to see they didn’t seem to be great numbers of swarms as if they were territorial. About every one hundred miles or so he might see one or two, but never more. Feeling much safer flying hundreds of feet higher than he had ever seen a swarm fly, he relaxed his caution. Trying to see if he could make any rhyme or reason from their flight patterns, he soared along and slightly above and over by a few hundred feet…until they turned and he did as well. As he swung the ultralight to the west a bit, the sun got behind him and as if someone had put a target on his back,
the swarm turned and gained in altitude.
Gil shoved the throttle forward and threw the stick hard left to head back on his general southerly direction and tried to gain altitude. Even at several thousand feet the black writhing mass gained on him. All he could do was level out, and when that failed, dove at a slight angle and that allowed him to keep about three hundred feet away from the things that tried to catch him. The shallow dive kept him alive, they weren’t gaining on him…nor was he putting distance between them and himself.
Gil at some point realized that they had seen his shadow. The wind was in his face and thusly theirs, so sound couldn’t have been the issue, nor smell, it had to be they noticed his shadow. Now he raced southward and was not gaining ground on the swarm, as a matter of fact they may have been slightly gaining on him once again. If he tried to turn out of his head wind, they’d catch him in an instant; they were light and had a hard time flying directly into the slight headwind. To this point everything had been going so well, and now he had to push his luck and once again was in danger.
A quick glance of his two full fuel cans, he wondered if he’d be able to lose this swarm before he had to land to refuel. It was getting close to sundown and if he stayed up much longer, then he’d have to face those damned glowing things that he had seen the one night he figured he’d fly all night. Full moon, wind in his favor and from above he realized that if he had to put down at night, those things from the shaft were too many for him to survive without shelter. That and the fact that he still had little information about the creatures, so staying up until the swarm looked for cover, was out of the question.
“Crap, think Gil, think!” Gil nearly shouted as he remembered something “The fuel dump, the guy that built this must have had a fear of burning.” A wide grin crossed his lips as he began to increase his altitude. Even at full throttle he began to lose speed and the swarm slowly closed. Gil fumbled around until he found the little stopcock and turned it.
From behind the ultralight a mist of fuel sprayed as his translucent fuel tank began to empty. Up to now, Gil was unsure why he took the flares from the hanger, but as he struck one, he was glad he did. With the control stick wedged tightly between his knees, he struck the flare and as it burst to life, he glanced back one last time…the swarm was flying in the misty stream. Gil closed his eyes and prayed the flare would hit the mark, bent and tossed the flare under the aircraft…and missed. “SHIT!” he screamed “I knew better, the down draft, the air under the body…”
He pulled the second flare and struck it, but this time he held it in one hand and took the control stick in his other, straightened and leveled out, and tossed the flare directly over the wing and behind him, just barely clearing the prop.
There was a pause that seemed to last forever and then as he watched, a huge flame that traveled back through the air to the swarm. The entire swarm had flown through the gasoline and now burst into flames. Gil twisted as much as the shoulder belt would allow; the swarm seemed to burn extremely hot. As they fell from the sky, they seemed to flare as if something within them had caught fire and burnt as well as the fuel.
“YEAH! Better turn off the fuel before the flame reaches back to the source.” He started to reach for the stopcock and looked back one more time as he shouted and fist pumped the air “YEAH! Burn you mother f…” his engine sputtered and died. He snapped back forward, looked up to see no fuel sloshing around in the plastic tank.
“No wonder the flame didn’t come back this way,” he sighed “ok Gil, we’ve been hang gliding a million times.” He swung toward a highway that was running north and south and lined up with it. Scanning for any signs of other swarms he sighed a quick breath of relief and concentrated on landing.
With little breeze the landing went pretty much as he expected, smooth and actually enjoyable now that he didn’t have a swarm after him. The ultralight rolled to a stop and the first thing Gil did was to refill the tank with what he had. Each time he siphoned fuel he’d mix in the octane booster so the fuel would be ready at a moment’s notice. Now he stood nodding in satisfaction that it was ready to fly again, but he’d have to find shelter fast, the sun was already filtering through the trees in the west; night was coming.
He hurried to the rear, cranked the prop and the tiny motor roared to life. Hopping back in and fastening the belt as he rolled down the narrow highway, he quickly soared into the sky. A quick look for swarms and once again he headed southwesterly. As the shadows lengthened Gil spotted what appeared to be small group of buildings and to his relief, one was a gas station. Now if it was one that hadn’t been drained of fuel like several he had tried had been. As he did a quick circle to look for signs of life and saw none, he lined back up on the highway and set down. He rolled as close to the service station as he dared. All around the buildings and near the road were rusting hulks of what used to be vehicles. By the looks of things, the newest vehicle must have been there at least the full fifteen years…that was what Val had estimated.
“That was what she said, wasn’t it?” he muttered as he unbelted and headed toward the metal fuel tank filler necks “She did say fifteen years didn’t she…but was that after when I should have been awakened, or when I was first put into stasis?”
The one for diesel had been left open and he knew someone had been there since whatever hit this planet, happened. As he opened the second cover, the filler cap was gone and someone had left a small pipe in the hole. This one he’d come back to if the third was empty.
Luck once again smiled on the ex-Air Force pilot…the third produced fuel as he cranked the small hand pump he remembered to bring with him. He lashed the extra containers back on the frame after he filled the tank, and sighed deeply as he tossed the last empty can of booster on the ground.
“Well Gil, might make it to the Okie border, if the winds hold,” he sighed again “and then we hoof it.”
Using a short piece of rope he pulled the ultralight off the road and lashed it between a couple of rusting vehicles, one off each wingtip. Gill did not want some night wind to flip or even damage his only mode of transportation. He carefully tied off each wing with a slip knot and loosely tied the ends to either side of his seat…in case his departure in the morning required a fast get away.
Looking around he could see about six or seven buildings back of the station and across a grassy field and guessed that it might have been a subdivision by the looks of it. As he walked the small field that separated the station from the buildings, Gil saw a road heading toward the structures.
“Wonder if anyone’s still around?” he muttered and hurried his pace as he noticed that the sun was fading fast.
As he neared the first structure that was still mostly hidden by the separating trees and brush, he froze…a sound that he had heard back in the shaft, one or more of those things were around and he had no idea as to where.
Chapter 9.
Gil had always been good as far as a decision maker, but now indecision muddled his brain. This time he had no steel door to kill the creature with, nor explosives, nor an elevator to bring crashing down. Remembering Val’s analysis, he wondered if a gun could even kill one of those things.
As dusk fell upon the field he quickly checked for any movement in the waist high grass and saw none. A second and closer scream could be heard…
“Yeah,” he whispered hoarsely and pulled the long butcher knife that he’d found at the airport to accompany the M-16 in the other hand.
“Any port in a storm.” he looked through the trees at the closest house and sprinted toward it. One thing that Val had pointed out was the fact that she thought the creature used radar to see; out in the open was not an option.
A quick run to the trees and Gil’s heart sank, there were houses…all under construction. Some did have roofs, and some had most of their outer walls, but as another of those horrible screams pierced the darkening skies he knew he had to move fast and find a place to hide.
Scrambling from house to
house Gil would run in and hope for any room with four walls. As he got to the last few structures, he prayed for anything that could hide him from radar; four walls of any kind even if they didn’t form a complete room would work.
Finally the fourth house had a flight of stairs heading to the second floor, so he vaulted through the open wall and ran up the flight of stairs. Two of the outer walls were still open, but there was one room in the middle that had three walls and a half wall leading to where the door was going to be. Seeing all the open wall studs, Gil wished that he had stuck to the mostly finished first floor, but his instincts told him to go high and he had assumed that the second floor was as finished as the first. “Yeah, was I wrong about that.” he snorted “At least it has a roof if it rains.”
The wood was old and in many places rotten, time had taken its toll. But shelter was still shelter and hunkered down in one corner Gil settled in for the night. Thankful that any of these houses even stood after all these years, he realized that perhaps it was an area with a serious lack of rainfall. Most of the exposed wood seemed to suffer from dry rot. He sighed knowing that any place at the moment was better than ‘open’.
Seeing the grinders from the air, he knew what their glow was and never wanted to see it again close up again. Yet still, he knew at some in time point he would see the glow again. Looking around the rest of the second floor he wondered if that it might have been a good idea to try to rip the stairs out…just in case he had a visitor or two. His one flight at night did teach him one thing, they seemed to run in pairs; one blue, one violet. Now and then he noticed a faint glow of either color and assumed they were mates and the solo ones were looking for a mate. He also noticed that mated pairs rarely were separated for long. It appeared from the height he was at, that they tended to stalk prey by flanking it, and then closing in on it for the final kill from both sides. Now Gil wondered as he had only heard a scream that sounded like it was from the same creature, perhaps it was alone.
Terra Page 24