Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

On the agreed afternoon, the nurses were brought to the base at Bwejuu by an RAF auxiliary. Ray looked up from polishing his boots and saw all the men stop what they were doing as the women entered the compound. Henshaw stepped forward with a confident smirk, wiping his hands on an oily rag. The other men watched, with the exception of Flynn, whose uniform still bore one or two of the more obstinate traces of the engineers' ritual humiliation of him on the beach. The airman coloured up and looked away.

Dunstan appeared and made a swift assessment of the situation.

"Henshaw," he said, "shouldn't you be driving the supply truck up to Uroa? You'll have it dark, lad. Take Flynn with you."

Flight Lieutenant Campbell had been called away to deal with a discipline problem on Pemba Island, Dunstan explained to the two women. Because of the nurses' schedule, there wouldn't be another opportunity for a fortnight and Dunstan didn't want them to go away disappointed. Ray watched him stride out across the landing strip to the Hercules, his white silk scarf, an affectation only he had the dashing glamour to carry off, and then possibly only in Ray's opinion, flapping in the constant onshore breeze. Joan trotted behind him. Frankie stopped to fiddle with her heel and while doing so looked back at the men watching from the paved area outside the low huts. Ray, who was among those men, was struck for the first time by her resemblance to Victoria. When she smiled, it seemed directed straight at him. A nudge in the ribs from Henshaw confirmed this.

"Didn't you receive an order?" muttered Ray.

"Yes, Corporal," Henshaw replied sarcastically.

Ray looked away from Henshaw towards Flynn, who had also been watching the exchange of looks between Ray and Frankie with, it seemed to Ray, a look of hurt in his blue eyes.

"Corporal Cross," came a cry from the airstrip. "Get your flying jacket."

"Now it's your turn to be ordered about," said Henshaw. "Lucky bastard."

As Ray left to join Dunstan and the two girls, he passed close to Flynn.

"You'll get your chance, son," he said quietly.

As they taxied to the beginning of the landing strip, Ray looked out of the cockpit to see the fair head of Flynn bobbing into the supply truck alongside Henshaw.

"Hold tight, ladies," shouted Dunstan over the noise of the four engines as the plane started to rumble down the runway.

They flew across the island to Zanzibar Town. Dunstan pointed out the Arab Fort and the Anglican cathedral. Frankie spotted the clinic where she and Joan worked on the edge of the Stone Town. Dunstan turned the plane gently over the harbour and flew back over the so-called New City in a south-easterly direction so that he was soon flying parallel with the irregular south-west coastline.

" Uzi Island," shouted Dunstan as he pointed to the right. The two girls leaned over the back of his seat to get the best view. Ray watched the way their hips and bellies pressed into Dunstan's shoulders. The squadron leader seemed to sit up straighter, flexing the muscles at the top of his back, as if maximising the contact between them, his hands maintaining a firm grip on the controls.

"Where's that?" asked Joan, pointing to a tiny settlement in the distance.

"Kizimkazi. Not much there. Hang on." So saying, he banked sharply to the left, unbalancing both girls, who toppled over then picked themselves up, giggling. Ray watched a twitch of pleasure in Dunstan's cheek. Frankie smiled hopefully in Ray's direction. He smiled back instinctively, but looked away somewhat awkwardly at the same time.

They crossed the southern end of the island, then kept going out to sea before turning left again and gradually describing an arc that would eventually bring the plane back over land north of Chwaka Bay. The horizon-an indistinct line between two blocks of blue-had become a tensile bow, twisted this way and that in the hands of a skilled archer: the plane itself was Dunstan's arrow. Ray watched the squadron leader's hands on the controls, a shaft of sunlight edging through the left-side window and setting the furze of reddish hairs on his forearm ablaze.

The RAF station at Uroa came into view: a couple of low-lying buildings in a small compound, a handful of motorbikes, a Jeep and one truck that Ray surmised would be the supply vehicle driven there by Henshaw and Flynn. As they overflew the station, several men appeared from inside one of the huts, running out on to the beach waving their arms. Ray looked back as Dunstan took the Hercules into a steep left-hander and headed away from the island once more.

"They're moving the truck," Ray said. "They're driving it on to the beach."

"They must want to play," said Dunstan with a grin as he maintained the angle of turn.

The nurses grabbed on to the back of the pilot's seat.

"This is like going round that roundabout," said Frankie to Joan, "on the back of your Arthur's motorbike."

Dunstan looked around.

"My ex," Joan elucidated.

"What we're about to do," Dunstan yelled, "you can't do on a motorbike, no matter who's driving it. Hold on tight and don't look away."

Dunstan took the plane lower and lower. The beach was a mile away, the altitude dropping rapidly.

"Five hundred feet," Dunstan shouted. "At five hundred feet you can make out cows' legs."

"There aren't any cows," Frankie shouted back.

"That's why I'm using this," said Dunstan, tapping the altimeter with his finger nail.

Ray watched the needle drop to four hundred, three hundred and fifty, three hundred.

"Two hundred and fifty!" Dunstan roared. "Sheep's legs at two hundred and fifty. Not that there's any sheep either. We are now officially low flying, and below two hundred and fifty," he shouted as he took the rattling hull down even lower, "is classified as very low flying."

The ground looked a lot closer than two hundred and fifty feet to Ray, who knew that the palm trees on this side of the island grew to a height of more than thirty feet. He watched their fronds shudder in the plane's wake, then turned to face forward as the station appeared beneath them once more. The truck had been parked in the middle of the beach, the men standing in a ragged line either side of it, raising their hands, waving at the plane. From this distance-by now, free of the palm trees, no more than fifty feet-it was easy to recognise Henshaw, and Flynn, who was jumping up and down in boyish enthusiasm. The girls whooped as the Hercules buzzed the truck, leaving clearance of no more than thirty feet. Ray turned to watch the men raise their hands to cover their faces in the resulting sandstorm.

"Fifty feet, ladies," Dunstan boasted, enjoying showing off. "We're allowed to fly this low to make free drops."

"What are free drops when they're at home?" asked Joan.

"When we want to drop stuff without parachutes. Boxes of supplies. Equipment. Whatever."

Frankie had fallen silent and was looking back at the line of men.

"What is it?" Joan asked her.

"That young one, the blond one, I'm sure I've seen him before."

"He's been in the clinic, Frankie. I saw him in the waiting room. He must have been your patient, because he wasn't mine. I'd have remembered him, if you know what I mean."

Frankie put her hand up to her mouth as she did remember.

"Oh God, yes," she said. "Such a nice boy. He was so embarrassed. I felt terribly sorry for him."

Dunstan had already started to go around again. The blue out of the left-hand side of the plane was now exclusively that of the ocean, the sky having disappeared. Ray waited to see if Frankie would say more about Flynn. She saw him watching her and fell silent.

She was similar to Victoria, but when Ray looked at her he felt nothing. Victoria was gone and the feelings he had had for her were gone also. It didn't mean they hadn't existed. But they could not be reawakened. Something in Ray had changed, even if he didn't understand the full nature of the change. He didn't doubt that he was still grieving for Victoria, but living on the island, in the company of Dunstan and the other men, was changing him. He couldn't have said what he did feel, only what he didn't.