Adam Baker - Impact

The arachnid movement of fingers curling round torn aluminium. A grotesque silhouette. A guy in prison red, framed by ragged metal, about to pull himself through the rent in the fuselage.

Frost willed the creature to advance into the plane. It was inches away from the monofilament trip wire. All it had to do was step forwards.

The creature stood motionless.

Frost tried to regulate her breathing.

Minutes passed.

No movement.

She released her grip on the pistol, carefully unsheathed her knife and pricked her thumb. She squeezed a bead of blood and smeared it on the lip of the ladderway.

The creature stepped over the threshold into the lower cabin. Flicker of hesitation as its arm brushed monofilament.

The thread pull taut.

Frost shielded her eyes. Crack of ignition. The cabin instantly filled with magnesium fire.

The flare burned through the plastic bottle in an instant. Hydraulic fluid ignited in a flame-burst. The creature’s head and shoulders were engulfed by liquefied plastic, and melting insulation foam.

The revenant thrashed and bounced off the walls. It pawed at the flames, tried to wipe them from its face. Burning plastic adhered to its hands in glutinous strands. Bubbling, blackened flesh. Fingers quickly fused to charred clubs.

Frost got to her feet. She slid down the ladder.

She side-stepped the blinded figure as it slammed into the nav console, careened into the walls as it tried to find its way back outside to roll in sand and smother the flames.

She snatched up her crutch, held it at waist level like a pike staff, and rammed the jagged tip in the creature’s belly.

It thrashed. It fought. Frost threw all her weight, propelled the figure backwards until it slammed against the fuselage. The crutch bored deep into the creature’s stomach, grated against vertebrae. Foul rot-stink. She twisted the pole back and forth. It broke through the creature’s back. Metal screech as the jagged tip of the crutch punctured the skin of the plane like the blade of a can opener. She continued to twist and push. The pole speared through aluminium plate and pinned the burning revenant to the wall.

She stood back and caught her breath. She shook out cramped fingers.

The creature snapped and snarled as it was consumed by fire. Lips crisped and curled. Eyes burst and boiled away.

Frost checked out the prison fatigues.

‘What the fuck are you?’ she murmured.

She unsheathed her knife and drove it into his empty eye socket. She twisted the blade and churned brain.

She gripped burning hair and began to saw through the creature’s neck. Bone. She dug the knife tip between the joint and shucked vertebrae apart.

The head lifted free and clear.

She tossed it through the rend in the fuselage wall, out into the dust storm. The burning head hit the ground, bounced, rolled and came to a standstill face up. Flames guttered and died. Sand began to accumulate in empty eye sockets and an open mouth.

‘Fuck you,’ she yelled into the night. ‘Fuck the lot of you.’

She turned her attention back to the decapitated body.

An extinguisher lifted from a wall holster. She pulled the ring tab and trained the nozzle cone. Fire smothered by a jet of gas. The corpse pinned to the fuselage, white with carbon crystals like it was sculpted from ice.

Frost threw down the extinguisher, then cleaned her knife.

The blast blinds masking the cockpit windows billowed and cracked. The screens were fringed with a halo of phosphorescent blue. Oncoming day. The sun ready to breach the horizon. Soon, a tide of gold light would pour across the dunescape, burn away the sandstorm and dissipate turbulent air currents.

Frost blew her hands for warmth. Jet of steam breath.

‘Daybreak, fuckers,’ she murmured, anxious to hear her own voice, anxious to break the oppressive solitude of the cabin.

‘You bastards got an hour left before the heat begins to build. Storm will clear soon enough, then you’ll have to take cover. Dig in and hibernate. Won’t last a day above ground. Few hours in the sun and you’ll dry out like jerky. Cook rigid as a plank of wood.’

She allowed herself a sip of water.

‘Endurance, right? The desert will finish you soon enough. I’ve just got to sit here and outlast you.’

She casually picked through the trauma kit.

She found a small plastic bottle of eyewash. She squinted at the label. She unscrewed the spout and sniffed the contents. Sooner or later water would run out. She would close her eyes, knock back 75ml of saline and try to hold it down.

She tossed the bottle into the backpack.

‘I’ll outlast you fucks,’ she said, facing the fuselage wall, addressing the desert that lay beyond. ‘A parasite. Can’t live without a host. If you wipe out the human race, you’ll die with us. All I got to do is find an island someplace and wait. Couple of years you’ll be gone like a bad dream. All I got to do is endure.’

A cursory, time-killing search through a storage locker. Arctic gloves, foil blankets, hexamine blocks.

Something silver at the back of the locker. She tugged it free. A Thermos flask matted in dust. Must have belonged to the previous crew of Liberty Bell . A relic of night missions, stand-off patrols over Arctic waters. Thirty-six hours in the sky. Mid-air refuelling by a KC-10A extender. Caffeine to stay sharp.

She unscrewed the cup and cap, shone her flashlight into the flask interior.

Empty.

She sat back in the gunner’s chair. Her eyes wandered to the EWO seat beside her, the ejection rail that anchored the seat to the plane. An object in the base of the seat sprayed black and yellow. She stared blankly at the wasp-warning stripes, then she finally made the connection.

She leapt from her seat and knelt on all fours.

A cylindrical steel firing tube, thick as a length of drain pipe, beneath the seat. It contained a powerful pyro charge primed to propel the EWO’s chair up and out the plane once the egress systems were activated. A quarter ton of flesh and metal accelerated to 12g in less than a second.

She reached beneath the seat, tried to squeeze her hand past the catapult pylon and grip the firing tube. Couldn’t reach. The seat would have to be disarmed, unbolted and lifted clear before the divergence rockets could be removed.

She checked the headrest. Ought to be a small explosive cartridge rigged to fire a stabilisation drogue.

She sawed through nylon packing and cut through the chute harness.

She flipped open the cross-head screwdriver attachment of the Leatherman and unbolted the pyro tube. She lifted it clear and turned it in her hand. A silver cylinder with a red cap. Size of a cigar.

Early leant through a rip in the fuselage and surveyed the lower cabin. Transformed vision cut through shadows bright as day.

Burn-streaked walls and instrumentation. A decapitated corpse pinned to the wall.

He stepped out of the rising sandstorm, the wind moan and swirling particulates, into the stillness and shadow of the plane’s interior.

Careful footsteps. The grit-crunch of heavy soled boots on sand-dusted decking.

He could smell Frost in the upper cabin, hear her heartbeat, her breathing.

Fresh meat.

He gripped the ladder rungs and began to climb. Clumsy, jerking movements. Desiccated muscle and tendons hardened like leather.

Head above the hatchway. Frost asleep in the EWO seat, face to the wall, body blanketed by an NB3 parka. He slowly climbed the ladder and stepped onto the upper deck.