Adam Baker - Impact

Good place to die. Better than a hospital bed.

A water sachet. She sucked it dry and crumpled the plastic envelope.

A morphine syrette. She bit the cap and injected her thigh.

She limped east, leaving Guthrie dead on his throne, marooned in vast solitude.

Sunrise.

Hancock lay sprawled in the sand. He got dragged a quarter mile through dunes before he regained consciousness and released the chute harness.

He knelt in the sand at the crest of a steep rise, concussed by the explosive force of egress.

He reached up with a gloved hand, fumbled a latch and unhooked his oxygen mask.

Cough.

Spit.

Phlegm wet the dust. A string of saliva tinted pink with blood.

He released the chin-strap and eased the helmet clear. It rolled down the side of the dune kicking up dust in its wake.

Head shake. Blurred vision.

He held up a gloved hand and tried to focus. He moved the hand back and forth.

Blind in his right eye.

He pulled off gloves and gently touched his face. He flexed his jaw. Unbroken. Fingers crept up his right cheek delicately exploring skin swollen tight.

Flaccid eyelids. A vacant socket. Pulped flesh. His right eyeball was gone.

He fell forwards, crouched on hands and knees a long while, trying not to puke.

Enough. Get your act together.

He sang:

He sang because, despite his injury, despite the pain, he was still, defiantly, James Hancock.

Maimed. He’d lost part of his body. Grieve for it later.

He straightened up, returned to a kneel. He shrugged off his life preserver and survival vest.

His bicep pocket. Three morphine auto-injectors which could render him numb in an instant.

He examined the hypodermics. A moment away from opiate bliss:

Bite the cap.

Stab.

Press.

Warm wash of analgesia.

Throw the depleted hypo aside.

Instead he returned the unopened syrette to his sleeve pocket.

No point fleeing pain like a bitch. Got to keep an unclouded mind.

A signal mirror the size of a playing card tucked in a zip-pouch of his vest. He held up the tab of polished metal like it was a powder compact and examined his face.

He’d taken a massive blow to the head. The right side of his face was bloody and swollen. Ripped forehead, ripped cheek. Barely recognised himself. He gently lifted his right eyelid. Wet muscle. Severed optic nerve. Giddy realisation: he was peering deep inside his own head.

Careful scalp examination. A classic aviator’s flat-top buzz-cut matted with blood. He ran fingers through his hair. Split skin. Possible skull fracture.

He unzipped his flight suit. The force of ejection had ripped the hook-and-loop patches from his sleeve and chest. The stars and stripes, Second Bomb Wing insignia, and Pork Eating Infidel emblem were gone. His name strip had survived: HANCOCK, J.

He tied sleeves round his waist.

The CSEL. He held it up to his good eye, squinted as he tried to discern function buttons.

‘Mayday, Mayday. Pilot down, anyone copy, over?’

Dead channel hiss.

‘Mayday, Mayday. Anyone copy on SAR? Air Force personnel in need of assistance, come in.’

Nothing.

The CSEL should have been unaffected by atmospherics. It should have been unaffected by nearby mountains. But if the USSTRATCOM net were down, if the military had become so degraded Tactical Air communication hubs had been abandoned and satellites were floating dead in orbit, if all AWACs were grounded, then he was truly on his own.

He sat a while and looked around.

Fierce sun.

Endless dunes.

No trace of Liberty Bell or its crew. No chutes, no wreckage.

Oppressive solitude. No roads. No pylons. No sign humanity ever walked the earth.

Cupped hands:

‘Hey. Anyone?’

The desert sucked all power from his voice, made him sound weak and small.

‘Anyone hear me?’

His helmet lay at the foot of the dune. He slid down the gradient and picked it up. The composite crown had been split by a massive impact. The padded interior was crusted with blood. Something gelatinous smeared across the cracked visor. He touched and sniffed, then gagged as he realised the tips of his fingers were wet with the remains of his eyeball.

Head-spinning nausea. He threw the helmet aside and sat head in hands.

One eye. He would never fly again. Desk job or discharge. Next time he filled out a form he would reach DISABILITIES, and instead of ticking NONE, he would have to specify PARTIALLY SIGHTED.

Fuck it. The world was falling apart. He’d watched it on TV. Safely garrisoned behind concertina wire and HESCO baskets at Andrews AFB. Big plasma in the canteen. Every news outlet live-streaming Armageddon. Crowds of infected charging Humvee roadblocks with demented aggression, barely slowing as .50 cal rounds blew holes in their flesh. Channel surfing montage: tent cities, corpse-pyres, cities under martial law.

One by one stations went off air, cellphone signals died, and grieving base personnel were left to picture dead family members bulldozed into a grave-trench, bedsheet-shrouded bodies doused with quicklime or gasoline.

There would be no desk jobs, no carefully worded résumés. A post-pandemic interview would involve a guy trying to plead his way into a barricaded community: ‘Are you one more useless mouth to feed, or do you have a skill?’ Hancock had basic EMT training and could field-strip/reassemble/function-check an AR-15 in forty seconds. In this new, brutal world, that made him bad-ass ronin. The new American stone age. Cave clans warring over canned food. Folks would offer everything they had – booze, women – to live under his protection.

Crush this reverie. Face the here-and-now.

Better bandage the wound. Ensure his eye socket was kept free of dust.

A rudimentary first-aid kit in a pocket of his vest. He tore open the pouch. Gauze dressing folded into a pad and pressed to the vacant socket. He held the dressing in place with a cross of micropore tape.

Better shield his head from the unrelenting, blowtorch intensity of the sun.

The chute lay spread over a nearby dune. He strode towards it.

Headrush. The world tilted sideways and smacked him in the face. He got to his feet, stood and picked his way slow and careful, swayed like he was crossing the deck of a storm-tossed ship.

He threw himself down near the chute, pulled the cord hand over hand and brought the fabric within reach. Flipped open his pocket knife and slashed the material, cut a bandana square and tied it round his head. He adjusted the drape of the headdress so it covered his bandaged eye.

He coughed. Bruised lungs. Might have cracked some ribs.

More blood in his mouth. He tongued his gums. A missing tooth.

Supposition: the roof hatch misfired. Should have blown clear soon as he triggered the ejection sequence, but maybe the rim charges didn’t detonate. His seat must have punched it clear as it propelled up and out. Lucky he didn’t lose his legs. Lucky his head wasn’t wrenched clean off.

Death Valley.

Tough choice. Head east and cross the Armagosa Range and back into Nevada. Or head west and enter the Panamints, hope to find blacktop road, an easy route into southern California. Either journey would require superhuman endurance.