Adam Baker - Impact

Gunfire. Frost aimed for a headshot, but Noble was already half through the aperture. Bullets blew chunks out of his chest. Spark and metal-slam as a round ricocheted from the hatch frame, deflected off a couple of control surfaces. Frost ducked. Hancock covered his head. The bullet punched a neat exit hole in the fuselage. A pencil beam of moonlight shone into the flight deck, projecting a radiant disc on the floor like a shiny nickel.

Frost stood on the pilot seat, intending to follow Noble out the plane. She glanced at her weapon. The gun was jammed slide-back with a spent cartridge case wedged in the breech.

Frost worked the slide, struggled to clear the mechanism. Rasp of sand-clogged metal.

‘Motherfuck.’

She stepped down from the pilot chair and backed away from the ejector hatch.

Hancock struggled to his feet.

‘This is so fucked. We can’t stay here. We need to get somewhere more secure.’

The bomb bay.

Hancock removed fresh bandages from his head and examined the near-gangrenous wound using a pocket signal mirror.

Frost disassembled her Beretta and blew grit from the mechanism.

‘Noble was infected,’ said Hancock, ‘but he didn’t know.’

‘It wasn’t him any more. Nothing but a shell.’

She reassembled and reloaded the weapon.

‘Makes you wonder,’ said Hancock. ‘If I were infected, how would I know? I think I’m real. I think I’m me. But I can’t be sure.’

Frost didn’t reply. She retreated to the corner of the bay, balanced the video camera on a thick wall cable and hit REC.

She looked at her image in the playback window. Cheeks sunken with dehydration. Eyes dark with exhaustion. Hair matted with dust. She looked like she had aged twenty years.

She tried to compose her thoughts. ‘It’s Thursday. Thursday? Yeah, Thursday. Must be one, maybe two in the morning. It’s cold. Got to admit, I’m tired. Bone tired.’

She coughed.

‘I can hear them outside. They’re moving stuff around, moving with a purpose. Get the crazy impression they are trying to rebuild the plane. No point trying to understand, I guess.

‘We’re the last survivors. Myself and Captain Hancock. We’re sealed in the bomb bay. Seems the safest place. Easy to defend. Easier than the flight deck, at any rate. Nothing to do but wait until dawn. We’ll have more options once the sun comes up.’

She sipped water.

‘There was a mist in the sky yesterday, way to the east. A dark haze. I didn’t pay it any mind. But only one thing it could be. Vegas. Unchecked fires setting whole streets ablaze. Plenty of timber structures in the older suburbs, whole neighbourhoods baking in the sun, waiting for a spark. Must be a hell of a firestorm.’

She rubbed her eyes.

‘New York. Chicago. Los Angeles. All those cities. Hard to picture the death, the desolation. The horror is too damned big for my head.

‘I mean, Washington is gone. Who gives a shit, right? Piss on them. But Jesus. The White House. The Capitol. America, the idea of America, swept away. Nice while it lasted.’

She glanced up as red compartment lights flickered.

‘Not sure how much longer we’ll have power.

‘Know what? I haven’t smoked since college but, Jesus, I could use a cigarette right now.’

She reached for the camera and signed off.

‘Lieutenant LaNitra Frost, United States Air Force.’

She pressed Stop. She stuffed the camcorder in her pocket.

Frost and Hancock sat side by side, backs to the curve of the fuselage wall, each lost in thought.

‘So hungry I could weep,’ said Hancock.

‘Yeah?’

‘Been craving apples. Lovely crisp apples. Hard to think of anything else. Tried singing to myself. Doesn’t help. Can’t get them off my mind.’

Frost glanced at the Tomahawk suspended above them.

‘So how about it?’ she asked. ‘Want to disable this thing, or detonate?’

‘Tempted to fire her up. Painless way to go. And we’d have the satisfaction of taking those fuckers outside with us. How about you? Want to call it quits?’

Frost thought it over. She shook her head.

‘Think I’d rather go down fighting.’

Hancock stood up. His laptop balanced on the hull of the missile. He refreshed the screen. A winking cursor. An eight-digit input screen.

‘There’s a disable code?’

‘Yeah,’ said Hancock. ‘Shuts it down, nice and simple.’

Fingers poised over the keyboard.

A hand erupted from the sand floor of the bomb bay. It seized Frost’s ankle.

‘Fuck,’ she yelled. ‘Got my leg.’

Her injured leg hauled knee-deep below the sand. She snatched her pistol from her shoulder rig and fired a volley, kicking up dust.

Hancock grabbed the collar of her flight suit and tried to drag her clear.

‘Hands. Claws. Pulling me down.’

She kicked with her good foot, tried to push herself clear. She felt herself dragged deeper. She thrashed. She strained.

‘Help me for God’s sake.’

Hancock pulled the Beretta from his waistband and fired into the dust near Frost’s feet.

Frost jerked her leg free. The fabric of her suit was torn. Her makeshift splint had been ripped away.

‘Help me up.’

Hancock helped Frost to her feet.

The ground bulged and seethed.

‘Got to get out of here.’

They lunged for the crawlspace hatch. Frost scrambled inside. Hancock followed.

Frost shuffled on hands and knees towards the crew cabin.

‘Shit. They got me.’ Hancock’s voice resonated loud and metallic in the confined space.

Frost squirmed around and trained her flashlight.

Hancock scrabbling for purchase on the smooth sides of the conduit.

‘They got my leg.’

Frost grabbed his wrists, but he was wrenched from her grasp.

‘Jesus, help.’

His hands slapped and squeaked as he tried to grip smooth metal. He was relentlessly dragged backwards towards the bomb bay.

‘Shoot me,’ shouted Hancock. ‘Fucking shoot me.’

Frost drew her pistol, but he was wrenched out of sight.

She crawled forwards, approached the infernal compartment light of the payload bay.

More screams.

She reached the hatchway.

Hancock chest deep and sinking fast.

She took aim.

‘Do it.’

She fired. His head jerked back. Neat bullet hole between the eyes.

His limp body was pulled beneath the dust. Sand closed over his head. Arms and hands dragged below ground.

Sudden stillness.

The flight deck.

Frost slowly climbed the ladder. She crouched, weapon raised. Sweep of the compartment, flashlight in one hand, Beretta in the other. A vague plan. Twelve rounds in the clip. Eleven for any prowler she might confront. Last bullet for herself.

The two missing ejector seats, co-pilot and electronic warfare, were back at their stations. She shone her flashlight at the roof. The jettisoned ejection hatches were jammed back in position.

She stood and approached the flight controls. Glittering chunks of polycarbon piled on the sill above the EVS controls. She picked up a transparent chunk and turned it in her hand. Fragments of cockpit window. Collected from the half-mile debris trench. Picked from the sand, and mounded next to the empty window frame. A crude restoration.

The blast screens flapped and billowed. A rising night wind. She tore a couple of strips of duct tape to lash them down, but the screens tore open immediately. She tossed the tape aside.