Marcus Pelegrimas - The Breaking

“You mean the door that’s flat against the cement?”

Looking up to see which side the plane was laying on, Nadya replied, “Yes. That side.”

“Then we’re headed to the cockpit.”

Both women ran along the airstrip, doing their best to ignore the heat from the fires and the constant threat of being stricken down by a force of nature on four legs. The closer they got to the downed plane, the more it looked like a giant creature that had been frozen while stretching an arm up from a turbulent, smoky sea. The nose cone was cracked open and split against the runway, leaving the tail section several feet off the ground. Although that made it easier for Paige to get to the cockpit, the mangled frame and shattered windows provided a formidable barrier between her and the pilot’s seat.

Half of the curved canopy at the front of the plane was completely gone and was mostly impassable due to the mangled structure. Using whatever footholds she could find, she climbed up the Gulfstream’s nose cone.

“What do you see?” Nadya asked from ground level.

Looking through a crooked frame of shattered glass or plastic, Paige spotted a control panel that had been reduced to a tangled mess of broken, exposed wires and cracked dials. Along with the throttle and flight control levers, it was wrapped around the slumping body of a young man who looked to have been cut in half by a set of rough pincers. “Just a lot of wrecked controls,” Paige said. “Where’s the kit?”

“Do you see where the pilot would be sitting?”

Trying not to meet the dead man’s final, desperate, pleading gaze, Paige replied, “Yeah.”

“The kit should be down near his left hand.”

The pilot’s left hand was nowhere to be found. When she forced herself to look at the section Nadya had described, she realized that the pilot’s left leg had also been sheared away by the crash, or by the Full Blood that had surely followed it. Swearing under her breath, she pulled herself up to clear the window frame, using the side of her hardened right arm. Rather than healing, her wounds on that limb had merely piled up like gouges in a cement post. There was pain, but no more than usual. She couldn’t move it very well, but that was nothing new. It looked bad, but she could go on, so she continued climbing into the cockpit but made it less than a quarter of the way before her foot slipped. After sliding an inch or two along the outside of the plane, her foot was stopped by something solid.

“Got you,” Nadya said while bracing Paige’s foot in both of her outstretched hands.

When she let out a relieved breath, Paige fogged a jagged piece of broken window half an inch from her chin. She leaned back, failed to get a handhold on the frame, and then fell forward. Only by twisting her stomach muscles was she able to avoid impaling her throat. Once Nadya had helped her climb back up again, she found herself looking at a pile of miscellaneous debris that had collected on the co-pilot’s seat almost directly beneath her.

“That medical kit,” Paige grunted while shifting to get a more solid grip on the plane. “Does it look like a gray metal shoe box?”

“Yes. Did you find it?”

“I think so!”

As she stretched her arm toward the co-pilot’s chair, she heard what sounded like car engines nearby. Since the street was too far away to be heard over the crackling fires and the rush of blood in her ears, she guessed the vehicles had to be pulling up to the airport or even onto the airstrip itself. “Is that the fire department?” she asked.

After a few strained breaths, Nadya turned beneath Paige’s weight. “No,” she replied. “Just a couple of trucks.”

Paige could feel heat from the fires on her hands and smell the buildup of smoky grease on her face. The medical kit was within her grasp. If she flexed her fingers, she could feel the tips brush against the heated metal of the box. Standing tiptoe on the shaky platform of Nadya’s hands, she leaned forward and squirmed over the sharp edges of the twisted frame. “Almost got it,” she said to herself as much as to the Amriany beneath her.

“Hurry,” Nadya said. “Vitsaruuv!”

“Vitsa-what?”

“Half Breeds!” Nadya shouted in an accent that apparently thickened under duress. “They are coming!”

Too close to the medical kit to even think about leaving without it, Paige closed her eyes so she could focus on her other senses. Tires skidded against pavement, people shouted back and forth to each other, and the slap of paws approached the plane. The air reeked of blood and burning oil. The box was warm against her fingers and rattled when she managed to pry it loose from the pile of other items on and around it.

“Didn’t do all that goddamn running to quit now,” she grunted. “If I have to climb in there myself, I’ll pull you out.”

“Get back!” Nadya screamed. “Get away from here! Run!”

Since the hands beneath her were steady, Paige figured Nadya was yelling at the locals who’d pulled up in the trucks. She stretched her arm as far as it would go and kept straining until she felt her thumb slide down against the other side of the box. Pinching her fingers together, she gritted her teeth and started lifting it off the co-pilot’s seat. After some struggling, straining, and what could very well have been a self-inflicted dislocated shoulder, she liberated the medical kit from the pile of junk. “How many Half Breeds?” she asked.

“Two.” Nadya’s hands twisted in one direction, which meant the rest of her was most likely twisting that same way to get a better look around. “No. Three!”

Gunshots were fired not far from the airstrip. Paige twitched at the sound of them and nearly dropped the medical kit onto the floor, where it would have slid completely out of her reach. “What the hell is going on out there?”

Enthusiastic hollers erupted from the airstrip, reminding Paige of a Civil War movie she’d seen where a division of Rebs sent a line of Federal troops running for the hills. From what she could hear, the local boys were packing hunting rifles and a few large caliber pistols. Suddenly, she developed a fondness for Oklahoma.

“All right,” she said while sliding away from the window. “Got the kit.”

Nadya helped her down and pointed toward a pair of pickup trucks idling nearby. One was a dark red model with a wide bed and a polished chrome box placed just behind the cab, which looked like it was used for secure storage. The second was a light green rust bucket with a set of lights bolted to the roof, which probably could have lit a full stage performance of “Free Bird.” The red truck’s bed was full of young guys who used the top of the cab to steady their arms as they fired at the Half Breeds.

The werewolves chasing after the trucks had all been hit and were bleeding, but weren’t about to stop. There was too much fresh meat in front of them and the air was thick with the scents of their brethren. Whatever tiny bit of reasoning they had was overcome by those factors, fueling the Half Breeds with a rage that made them send bits of concrete flying when their claws scraped against the airstrip.

“You can’t hit them,” said someone from directly over Paige’s head, addressing the pickup trucks.

She looked up to find a lean animal perched on top of the wreckage. Instead of a bulky Full Blood, this one looked more like the gnarled, beefier cousin of a coyote. Its dull orange eyes weren’t the same as the ones she’d seen in Toronto, but Kawosa’s voice struck a chord deep inside her.

“You men are too frightened to fight,” he said.

The hollering faded away and the rifle shots began sparking against the concrete, when only a few moments ago they’d been thumping solidly into werewolf flesh.