Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

‘What have you got?’

‘It’s a hatch leading up into the cockpit. It’s open. I’m going to stick my head up inside.’

‘Be careful! I don’t want you knocking that equipment, or even worse, puncturing your tank. No squeezing through anything, okay?’

‘Okay… okay, no squeezing.’

Chris shone his torch up through the belly hatch into what looked like the bomb-aimer’s observation blister. The torch beam slid across the plexiglas panels and metal struts of the canopy, throwing them into sharp relief and sending phantom shadows dancing across the confined space. He could see a short ladder leading up from the blister into another area above.

The cockpit?

Chris studied the width of the hatch and decided it was wide enough to climb through. With a tug on the hatch rim he pulled himself up. His helmet thudded noisily against a cross strut inside. ‘Shit!’

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing, I’m fine.’

‘I’m fzffzf ing forward.’ Mark’s transmission crackled. Chris silently mouthed a curse. He must have given the radio a knock. There’d be a lecture coming his way when they went topside, and Mark discovered the damage.

Great.

He shone his torch down inside the fuselage. There was a bulkhead six feet back and a narrow doorway. The light picked out a cloud of floating debris hanging in the space between the blister and the bulkhead. Shreds of paper, a pair of headphones, several life jackets.

‘Some of this stuff looks like it could have been left here a couple of days ago.’

‘Yeah? I’ll be ther… a second.’ Mark’s signal was getting worse.

Chris took another couple of shots and then reached out for the short ladder leading up to what he guessed must be the cockpit. He studied the size of the opening, it was narrower, but still just wide enough to get through. Chris, much more carefully this time, pulled himself up through the opening. He heard his air cylinder scrape noisily against the edge of the hatchway and cringed at the thought of the scratches it would leave.

Mark was going to kill him.

He shone his torch around inside the cockpit. There was a lot less space than he’d imagined, and he found himself bumping and scraping on all sides. His torch panned up and across the co-pilot’s seat.

He lurched backwards. ‘Oh Jesus!’

‘What… it?’ he heard Mark call.

He took a few deep breaths to steady himself and then trained his torch back on the seat.

‘I… uh… think I’ve found one of the crew,’ he said pulling himself closer to get a better look.

The skeletal remains, long since stripped of soft organic material save for a few fibrous strands, seemed to be held together and in place by the body’s clothes and the seat’s harness. It was all there, a complete human form except for one of its hands. Chris spotted a leather flying glove on the cockpit floor. He picked it up delicately by a fingertip and a cloud of organic mush floated gently out, followed by a cluster of small white bones that see-sawed down through the water and settled on the grey, silt-covered floor.

It looked like the remains of a KFC dinner. Chris felt his stomach churn ever so slightly at that thought.

He heard his helmet speaker crackle. ‘… found?’

Chris tapped the radio casing with his torch. It crackled and hissed in response.

‘Mark? Can you hear me? I’ve found one of the crew.’

‘Jeeeez, glad you found him and not me.’ Mark was coming through clearly now.

Must be a loose wire, then.

‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘He’s not a pretty boy. I’m going to grab a couple of shots.’

‘Okay. I’m coming up over the other side of the fuselage. I can’t see any tears or breaks or any way to get in. How do I… in up there?’

‘Hatchway right under the nose.’

‘Okay, see… in a second.’ The signal was breaking up again.

Chris continued to study the corpse. He was amazed at how intact the clothing and equipment was. The only concession to sixty years of undisturbed submersion was a thin coat of grey sediment that seemed to have settled on everything. The leather flying cap still rested dutifully on the body’s skull, a solitary tuft of pale blond hair poking out from beneath it, and its radio mouthpiece dangled from the end of a short length of coiled rubber flex beside the lower jaw of the skull. The jawbone had at some point fallen away and now rested on the collar of the thick, fur-lined flying jacket.

Chris reached out slowly for the jawbone, careful not to disturb too much of the sediment. He lifted it up and placed it back as it should be and then pulled the radio mouthpiece in underneath to hold it in place.

He felt a passing twinge of guilt for messing with the body. But, it did make for a better picture, having the skull and jaw reunited again. Without the jaw it simply wasn’t a face. Chris had learned from freelancing in several war zones in the last ten years that you needed to have a face in the shot when photographing a body. People always look for it, look for an expression on it. Perhaps as a way of understanding what death must be like, what emotion is drawn at the moment it occurs.

Without a face, a body is just a bundle of clothes.

Chris unhooked his camera and aimed it at the long-dead pilot.

‘Say cheese.’ The flashlight of the camera strobed again as he hit off a few shots.

He heard Mark’s voice. ‘I can li… out seeing the…’ The popping and whistling on the helmet speaker was driving him mad. He tapped the radio housing.

‘What’s that, Mark? Your signal’s breaking up again.’

He tapped it again, this time much harder, hoping his big-mallet repair philosophy would deliver the goods. The low-frequency, almost inaudible buzzing that had been constant since locking the helmet down and turning on the speaker suddenly stopped. The only sound he could hear now was his own breathing reverberating inside the plastic bowl of the helmet.

‘Mark? Can you hear me?’

Nothing.

It’s not just a loose wire now, you muppet; you’ve broken the bloody thing.

Mark was going to be pissed at him for that. He decided he’d offer the guy money to replace it. He could afford it.

He turned back towards the body of the co-pilot and took a few more shots. The camera flash strobed again, throwing a blinding white light at its fleshless face. He half expected the skeleton to angrily reach out with its one remaining hand and snatch the camera from him.

Professional guilt. Ignore it and finish the job.

Movement.

An eel shot out through the opening in the bulkhead; a silvery streak headed straight towards his face and thumped against the glass plate of his helmet. Chris, startled, dropped both the camera and his torch. The torch landed face down in the silt. The light inside the cockpit was suddenly gone, leaving it in absolute darkness. He could sense the eel thrashing around in the cockpit with him, disturbed currents of water, disturbed sediment floating once again.

‘Shitshitshitshitshit!’

Chris felt himself beginning to panic. The damn thing was going crazy. He felt its long and strong body bump against him several times, each time anticipating the needle-sharp teeth slicing through the neoprene of his dry suit and into his flesh. It passed between his legs, and then with no warning he felt it clunk against the glass of his helmet again.

A hard clunk, not a soft thump. That was the sound of a tooth hitting the glass.

And then suddenly it was gone.

Chris could feel the water around him quickly growing still once more. He waited for the eel to return, to renew its attack on him. Seconds passed.

It was gone.

He bent down carefully and let his hands fumble along the floor, desperately seeking the torch.