Ryan Westfield - Defending Camp

“You don’t think anyone would really be alive, do you?” whispered Mandy.

“Probably not,” said Max. “Not from the original crash, at least.”

They were approaching the plane slowly, guns ready. Mandy walked slightly behind Max.

The fuselage of the aircraft looked huge now that they were on foot and getting closer.

The middle of the aircraft was lying across the road. Aside from some intense scratches along the paint and some shattered windows, it was for the most part intact.

They were only feet away from it now. Max could have reached out and touched it. It was a strange sensation. The last time he’d been this close to a plane, he’d been heading back to the Philadelphia airport from a work conference in Seattle. He and the other passengers had been pampered, handed food and water, sitting in seats that leaned backwards. And all the while, the passengers had done nothing but grumble and complain about their discomforts.

Those discomforts were now absolutely nothing in the post-EMP world. The only times Max sat in a chair at all were when he was driving. And to be brought packaged snacks by a waitress, while hurtling through the sky at breakneck speed, well, that might never happen again. If things were as bad all over the world as they were in Pennsylvania, it might take the human race hundreds of years to get back to that point technologically.

Or maybe they’d never make it.

Max had other things to worry about.

He put his ear to the fuselage. No sounds.

“I don’t hear anything,” whispered Max.

From where they stood now, Max could see that the plane had crashed through the woods. It looked like the pilot had tried to make a landing. But why had he come in perpendicular to the road, rather than trying to land on it?

Maybe the road had been full of vehicles. Maybe there was a clearing, not visible to Max now, that the pilot had been aiming for. Or maybe something else had happened.

It didn’t matter much now.

The cockpit of the plane was nothing but charred remains. The wings had been ripped off completely.

“It doesn’t look good,” said Mandy.

“Let’s head over to the other side.”

It was a fairly long walk around the back of the plane.

Max led with his gun, taking a single step that placed him in view of the other side of the plane.

The door to the plane was open. There had been survivors.

And they were still here.

About ten corpses lay rotting in the immediate vicinity.

“I don’t think anyone made it out of here alive,” said Max.

Max didn’t know exactly what would have happened to the plane during the EMP, but he could take a good guess. The engines probably would have suddenly gone silent. The passengers might have been merely surprised at first. After all, strange things did happen on commercial airliners. Maybe there’d been one or two passengers who’d started to feel some anxiety or started to ask questions.

As the seconds had ticked by, turning into impossibly long minutes and the engines hadn’t come roaring back to life, the silence would have started to feel like a real, palatable threat. Nothing in the cabin would have worked. The stewardesses wouldn’t have known what to do. They might have started panicking themselves, knowing that this wasn’t normal. Maybe one would have gone to consult the captain, who’d never experienced anything like this. Maybe the stewardesses would have tried to assure the passengers everything was fine.

But the passengers would have known otherwise. The plane, after all, would have been shooting through the air, piercing the clouds, with absolutely no sign of electronic or motorized life. A ghost plane, in a sense.

The pilot would have probably been able to glide the plane down, trying to make a landing. Obviously something had gone wrong in some sense. There’d been some interference.

“So not everyone died in the crash,” said Mandy, taking a couple steps forward.

“No,” said Max. “But the ones who lived either didn’t know how to survive, or were too injured to take care of themselves.”

They walked towards the bodies, which gave off an incredible odor. They kept their guns ready and Max kept his eyes scanning their surroundings, rather than letting them focus on the corpses.

“What’s going on with this one?” said Mandy, holding her nose and bending down to take a closer look.

“What is it?”

“Shit,” muttered Mandy, taking a step back.

“What is it?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

Mandy set the butt of her rifle into the ground and used it almost like a walking stick as she leaned down, bending over. She made retching sounds, but didn’t vomit.

Max glanced at what she’d been looking at.

It was a corpse. An older man. His arm was missing. And it wasn’t the result of an injury. It looked like his arm, instead, had been sawed off roughly with some semi-blunt implement.

The “saw” wasn’t hard to find. Nearby, there was a piece of jagged glass covered in blood.

“They got desperate,” said Max.

“That’s disgusting,” said Mandy, wiping her mouth with a leaf, and regaining her composure.

“I’m going inside,” said Max. “Keep watch out here.”

“You’re going inside the plane? Why?”

“There might be something useful in there. Something we could use.”

“Don’t you think that the survivors would have gotten to it? Just look how desperate they were.”

“Maybe,” said Max, and he turned and walked through the door to the aircraft.

Light came in through the destroyed cockpit. Shadows were cast over much of the cabin.

More bodies. Many had died on impact. And they’d been wearing their seatbelts. Most of them, anyway.

There were bodies in the aisles. The plane had been almost full.

The stench was worse inside, even though it was open to the outside air.

Max moved by the bodies one by one, checking the pockets. There was nothing. Everything had been scavenged.

There wasn’t any food left in the battered flight attendant station. A couple cracker wrappers were all that was left.

Max headed back outside, shielding his eyes as they adjusted to the light levels.

“Anything?” said Mandy.

Max shook his head.

“So do you think anyone survived? I mean, is there someone out there who got away from all this?”

“Maybe,” said Max.

“It’s crazy,” said Mandy. “This probably happened all over the country. Who knows how many planes just lost power and fell from the skies. We’ve only experienced our own little slice of the chaos.”

Max nodded. “What we’ve got to do is figure out how we’re going to get around this plane, though. We can’t worry about all that now.”

“All right, Mr. Practical. Let’s go. Any ideas so far?”

“I don’t remember another road we can take. And the trees are too thick to get the truck through.”

“Let me take a look at the map once we get to the car. Maybe I’ll find something.”

“You do have a good eye for it.”

“It’s just that I pay attention to the details.”

“And I don’t?”

Mandy let out a little laugh. “You do, it’s just you’re focused on different things. That’s why we make a good team.”

“You’ve gotten over that missing arm pretty fast.”

“It was just a gut reaction,” said Mandy. “Literally, if you know what I mean.”

“I got the joke.”

“You know, I don’t know why we were so worried about being attacked.”

“We’ve always got to be careful. Never know what’s around the corner.”

“All the passengers would have gone through security. There’d be no guns on the plane.”