Michael Grant - Monster

“Aaahh!” Justin’s bladder emptied into his ripped jeans, but that was the least of his concerns.

The window cracked and blew out. A hurricane of cold wind rushed in, grabbing inflight magazines and menus and whirling them around the cabin. And now came more screams, screams of disbelieving panic as everyone in the first-class compartment saw, and lurched up from their seats and backed away, toward the cockpit or down the aisle into coach, piling over each other while the jet shuddered and rocked violently. Everyone was in a panic, rushing to get away, staggering, slipping, shouting, everyone but the elderly couple seated just ahead of Justin and Erin who were either asleep or amazingly oblivious.

Justin tried to draw his sword hand back, but it was too long ( Not my fault! ), too long to fit inside the plane and, instead of retracting, that blue and coral blade sliced upward ( Not my fault! ), ripped effortlessly through the molded plastic and the aluminum outer skin of the plane, ripped up through the overhead luggage compartment, bisecting carry-on bags, and the plane lurched more wildly than ever, and an appalled Justin ( Not my fault! ) saw that the cut he’d made was widening. An inch. Two inches. Three! The plane was breaking apart, and in a few more seconds the rear seventy percent of the plane would break off and they would all die in a fiery crash.

And people will say it’s my fault, but it’s not—I didn’t ask for this!

The wheels touched tarmac with a rubber squeal, the plane bounded, slewed sideways, bounced again, screams and screams and screams all the while, and Justin screaming too, and Erin knocked into the now-empty seats across the aisle, staring at him with eyes so wide her pupils were just dots surrounded by white.

And then, miraculously, the plane was rolling on all three wheels, rolling down the tarmac, but the screaming did not stop because now they all knew that a monster was among them, a nightmare creature who rose from his seat, head scraping the ceiling. It turned heedlessly to look back at the passengers and swept his blade hand forward, slicing through the seat ahead and the elderly couple occupying those seats. ( Not my fault! ) The blade cut through their chests and the tops of their bodies, from mid-chest upward, toppled off, landing with a wet and heavy impact, like cattle in a slaughterhouse, nothing but slabs of meat. Blood and gore bubbled up from their torsos, and in pure panic now, seeing what he had done ( Not my fault! ), not knowing what else to do, Justin surged toward the exit door, but his blade swept on, slicing through the galley, through the bathroom, and through the back of the cockpit, and suddenly there were no controls, and quite likely (though Justin could not see for sure) no pilots either.

The plane was rolling too fast, the reverse thrusters had not been engaged, and with no one steering, the jet veered wildly off the runway, careening with unstoppable momentum toward the terminal building and fiery destruction.

It was then that Justin’s mind cleared enough to see what he must do.

He swept his blade upward, cutting through the ceiling, and continued on, cutting a jagged path around the circumference of the fuselage until, with a deafening screech of tortured metal, the front of the plane fell away. Justin saw the terrified eyes of the flight attendant still buckled into her jump seat as she was carried off with the cockpit section.

The cockpit section slewed right, tumbled madly, turned again and again, sparks everywhere, and was struck by the right wing which sheared off from the impact, spraying jet fuel over the runway. The right-side jet engine snapped off the broken wing and cartwheeled fantastically, bounding away like a living thing, still running on the last of its fuel.

The main body of the plane slumped hard to its right as the wheel on that side had been carried away with the wing. Erin tumbled into Justin and her wrist was stabbed by one of his thorns, but he caught her in the crook of his arm. The fuselage, now skidding on its side, bucked and vibrated with an end-of-the-world sound of ripping aluminum and carbon fiber, the lower edge chewing and sparking along the tarmac. The forward momentum that would have slammed them into the terminal at a deadly speed bled off, and the fuselage stopped suddenly, sending loose luggage and unbelted passengers flying forward.

Just above them, not fifty feet away, faces pressed to the glass of the terminal windows stared down with mouths open.

And then: silence. Silence as everything, including the remaining engine, stopped. Dust and smoke filled the air. The fuselage was cantilevered, the broken front down, the bent and twisted tail up, the entirety lying half on its right side with the remaining left wing soaring up and away at an angle.

Justin stood at the front of the plane, his now-massive shape filling the open circle where once the plane had had a front. His feet were the claws of a T. rex. His shoulders were chitin-armored boulders. His head was five times its normal size. His flesh was hard and shining dully. His hands—a massive pincer and an unwieldy blade—were blue and coral. His body where exposed was the sickly white of a trout’s belly.

“We have to get out of here!” Erin cried. She’d lost both her shoes, her hair was a mess, her face was smeared with tears and the blood and gore of the elderly couple. “Listen to me: we can’t stay here!” Erin screeched. “We have to get away! You’ve killed people!” Her hand gripped his thick, inhuman forearm then recoiled from touching him.

Justin could feel that his face—the face he had not yet seen—was not good at expressing emotion. He did not seem to have lips quite where they should be, and his tongue was like something you might cut out of an ox. He was scared, stunned, overwhelmed, but even in the midst of that flood of emotion, he sensed something . . . something dark and distant yet right there inside his brain, something that was . . .

. . . watching him.

He shook off that thought and forced himself to recognize and accept what Erin was saying. He had probably killed the pilots and the flight attendant. He had certainly killed the old couple. He hadn’t meant to ( Not my fault! ), but they were dead just the same and he was looking at their torsos, sagging ovals of exposed organs and hanging viscera, still buckled in.

Even now, even amid the rising chorus of screams joined by cries of pain, even in the swirling midst of his own impossible nightmare, some part of Justin wished he had a camera: there was a terrible, gruesome beauty to all of it. The bodies. The gore. The impossible angles. The swirling dust. Shirts and underwear, the contents of carry-on bags, draped over seat backs like some demented granny’s idea of doilies.

A beautiful annihilation.

A new note could be heard in the screams, the beginnings of rage to join the horror. Justin saw staring eyes, animal fear in bulging eyes, pointing fingers, mouths open in shock and disgust, and all of it turning to fury against him.

And there were cell phone cameras.

Justin grabbed Erin around her waist—careful, so careful with the pincer hand that looked as if it could snap her in two. He lifted her insignificant weight and hopped down to the tarmac. Effortless! His claw feet gripped the tarmac, sinking into it like bare toes in mud.

The smell of jet fuel was all around. The emergency slide unfolded from a rear door and in seconds the people on the plane would get free of the wreck. The people . . . and their cell phones.

“Lighter,” Justin said in that harsh, deep, reverberating voice.

“What?”

“Give me your lighter. Now!”

Erin fumbled in her clutch purse, spilled out a bottle of pills, a pack of foreign cigarettes, a tampon, and came up with the lighter, holding it out for him and he cursed, “My hand is . . .! You have to do it!”