Adam Baker - Impact

‘So what did it look like?’ asked Hancock.

‘A silhouette,’ said Frost. ‘Couldn’t make out a face.’

‘Did it speak?’

‘No.’

‘A man?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘A guy. For real. Wearing a flight suit.’

‘How could you tell?’

‘The outline. Boots, pockets, straps.’

‘Early?’

‘Couldn’t be anyone else. Not unless there’s a second aircrew wandering around.’

‘Guthrie was infected, right? Bitten back at base. What if Early turned as well? Maybe that’s how he survived the desert. Maybe that’s why he won’t approach.’

Frost thought it over. She shook her head.

‘You saw those prowlers back at Vegas. Hoards of the bastards butting the wire. Dumber than plankton. Dumber than rocks. I talked with the sentries. Said they thinned out the crowd with gasoline every couple of days. Sprayed them down and lit them up. Stinking fucks just stood there and burned. Shit, even the average roach has an instinct for self-preservation. These bastards haven’t got a thought in their heads. You can shoot them point blank, run them down with a truck. They won’t do a damned thing to save themselves.

‘I rode shotgun on a supply raid to Grand Forks a few weeks back. Six Hummer convoy. Cover fire while we liberated canned food from a Hugo’s and brought it back to base. One of those sorry skeletal things spotted us from a furniture store across the street, slammed into plate glass time and again like a trapped wasp. Damn near beat his brains out.

‘You know what I’m saying, yeah? These things don’t have an ounce of cunning. They don’t make strategic decisions. They don’t hang back and pick their moment. They attack. They bite. That’s all they do. If Early had turned, he’d be on us until he sank his teeth or got a bullet in his brain.’

‘So why would he lurk out there in the dark?’

‘He spent a long day in the sun. Maybe he’s not thinking straight. Be a tragedy if he died in the dunes, yards from help.’

‘Reckon he might be dangerous?’

‘Danger to himself. Anyway, we each got a gun, right?’

‘So does he.’

Hancock suddenly cocked his head and held up a hand for quiet.

‘Hear that?’

‘What?’ asked Frost.

‘A noise.’

‘Care to be more specific?’

‘A sort of scratching sound.’

They listened.

‘Can’t hear anything.’ Frost gestured to the ladderway and the cabin above. ‘The windows and hatches are taped up. One of them might have come lose, started flapping in the breeze.’

‘No. It’s down here, with us. It’s real close by.’

They listened.

‘Sure you can’t hear it?’ he asked.

‘It’s just the wind. Sure as shit isn’t mice.’

‘Scratching. Don’t know how else to describe it. There it goes again. Hear? Plain as day.’

‘The airframe is broke in a hundred places. She’ll creak day and night.’

Hancock put his ear to the bulkhead like he was eavesdropping on an adjacent room.

‘Could be the pipes,’ said Frost. ‘The fuel lines, coolant, hydraulics. All of them bust open and drained dry. They’ll make weird music as the plane expands and contracts.’

Hancock shook his head. He signalled hush, listened a while, ear still pressed to the wall.

‘Hard to explain. The noise. It’s not structural. It’s not mechanical. How come you can’t hear it? Just sit quiet and listen. Really listen.’

They sat a while.

Frost shrugged.

‘Sorry, Cap.’

‘Scratching. Like claws. Like nails. Plain as day.’

‘Don’t take this wrong, but maybe we should have a look at your head.’

Hancock seemed ready to argue, then gave in to a wave of fatigue.

‘Whatever.’

She sat beside him.

She hooked the trauma kit with her foot and dragged it close.

She gestured to his head.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Cranium feels like I’ve been hit with a bag of nickels. Constant ache. Wearing me down.’

‘How’s your balance? Any improvement?’

‘No. Each time I stand up the ground bucks around like I’m riding a bareback bronc.’

She carefully pulled at the chute fabric that bound his injured head. It was stiff with dried blood. It was gummed to his hair.

She carefully lifted the filthy rag clear and threw it aside.

‘Oh, man.’

The side of his face was swollen and crusted black.

He pulled a Spyderco folding knife from his pocket. He flipped open the blade and examined his reflection.

‘Puts paid to my modelling career.’

‘Probably looks worse than it is. Lot of dried blood. Bet if we clean you up, it won’t be so bad.’

She tore open a packet of towelettes and began to dab flakes of dried blood from the skin surrounding his vacant eye socket.

Awkward silence. Strange to be up close, face to face.

‘So how much water does that tank contain?’ she asked, by way of conversation.

‘No idea. Twelve-hundred-gallon capacity, but it’s ruptured. Not much left. Might give us a couple more days. Best to tape the cracks, see if we can limit evaporation.’

‘Maybe we should share it right now.’

‘Three-way split? What if you ran out before me? Got enough self-control to watch a guy sip a drink while you die of thirst? You and Noble might go back aways, but all that good feeling won’t count for shit once we are down to the last drop.’

‘We’re not animals.’

‘That’s exactly what we are.’

Frost probed the split in Hancock’s scalp.

She said:

‘Apparently, when Eskimos share fish, the guy who does the cutting gets last pick. Helps keep portion size honest. Read that somewhere.’

She dabbed dead and hardening skin. She dabbed exposed skull.

‘Lot of sand in this wound. We better rebandage your head when we’re done, try to keep it free from dirt.’

‘Okay.’

‘Any pain?’

‘No.’

‘Can you feel anything at all?’

‘A little.’

‘You got a wide lesion. I can see bone. We ought to stitch it up. If we leave it untreated the skin could die back further. State of the world right now, we got no one to pull a tooth, let alone perform a graft.’

‘So get sewing.’

She used surgical scissors to trim hair surrounding the scalp wound. She tore open an antiseptic wipe and disinfected the wound.

She found a suture pack. A curved needle and eighteen inches of monofilament.

‘Let me give you a shot. For the pain.’

‘No.’

‘Come on. There’s no one here to impress.’

‘Fuck that shit. Mind you, if you’ve got a hip flask about your person, I wouldn’t say no.’

Frost tore another antiseptic wipe and disinfected her hands.

She ripped open the suture pack and threaded the needle.

‘Don’t expect fine embroidery. Not much of a dressmaker.’

‘Always wanted some bad-ass scars.’

‘Reckon I ought to stitch your empty eye as well. Best way to keep the socket clean.’

‘Do it.’

He adopted a meditative posture and prepared to tough out the pain.

She leant forward, ready to sew skin.

‘Hold on,’ said Hancock. He sat straight and pushed her hands away. ‘There it is again. Hear it?’

Frost sighed.

‘There’s nothing.’ She froze. She cocked her head. ‘Hold on. Yeah. Yeah, I hear it.’

She set the needle and suture aside.

‘A scratching sound.’

‘Yeah,’ said Hancock.

A persistent abrasion like dragging nails. She slowly turned her head left and right, tried to pinpoint the locus of the noise. She looked down at her feet.

‘It’s beneath us. It’s under the plane.’

A red grating set in the cabin floor. It hid the egress hatch, the ventral door and fold-down ladder that would, under normal conditions, allow the crew to enter the plane.