Impact (37 page)

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.

Frost slumped head to one side, still as she could. She breathed slowly, tried to calm her heart rate.

Faint creak of decking.

She opened one eye. A flight helmet on the console beside her. The dark visor reflected the flight deck in fish-eye distortion. She watched Early climb from the ladderway and creep towards her.

Early stood over Frost and listened to deep respirations.

He bent and reached for her. Diseased, dirt-caked hands. Broken fingernails.

Her eyes snapped open. She threw the anorak aside. The Thermos trailing wires: a 9v battery lashed to the cylinder with duct tape. She trained the blunderbuss barrel at his head.

‘Thanks for stopping by.’

Frost touched wire to a battery terminal.

Spark.

Flame-roar.

Thick smoke haze.

Frost lay with her face pressed to the decking. She searched out clean air. Her ears rang. Her belly bruised from the recoil of the rocket charge.

Her hands hurt. She bit the fingers of her torn Nomex gloves and slowly pulled them off with her teeth.

The trauma kit. She teased burn dressing from the Ziploc bag and tore wrappers with her teeth. She squirted anaesthetic burn gel onto her hands and lashed the dressings in place with bandage.

The flask lay beside her, smouldering, sides peeled open like petals.

She rolled. She crawled to the ladderway.

Early lay on the floor of the lower cabin. His face and torso were a pulped mess. Splintered bone and shredded muscle protruding through the fabric of the flight suit. His body glittered with embedded cockpit glass.

His leg danced. Fingers twitched. Last nerve signals from a shattered brain.

A steady wind blew over the dunes, skimming granules from the crest of each ridgeline, gradually reordering the landscape.

The sky filled with serpentine dust eddies. A blizzard of sand particles. The weak sun glowed through the vaporous storm like Martian twilight.

Mournful wind-howl. Absolute desolation.

The thing that had once been Captain Pinback looked out over the storm-lashed wreck site, surveyed the reassembled plane.

The tail shunted back in position.

Battered engine pods resituated beneath each wing.

The fuselage scoured by sand, an unrelenting hurricane blast which would, in time, abrade shark-grey paint exposing silvered panels beneath.

Pinback descended the dust gradient. He gripped the tip of the starboard wing where it hung low to the ground and lifted himself effortlessly onto the wing surface.

A slow, purposeful walk towards the main fuselage. Wind snatched and whipped the flight suit hanging from his emaciated frame.

He climbed onto the roof.

He looked aft down the spine of the plane to the crooked tail.

He looked forwards towards the nose.

One of the retrieved ejection hatches had been pushed aside. Darkness within.

He approached the hatch. He could hear the low murmur of a woman’s voice above the unrelenting wind-roar. He crouched and listened. Frost talking to herself, mordant, resigned.

‘… Can’t help but think back to stuff I took for granted. Queuing in the post office, pushing a trolley round the supermarket. Feels like a long-lost paradise …’

Nothing left of Daniel Pinback, no pang of empathy for the exhaustion, the terror, in Frost’s voice.

The creature stepped into the vacant hatchway and dropped into the flight deck below.

He hit the gunner’s seat, fell hard and snapped his right arm near the shoulder.

He stood up, right arm limp and useless.

He approached the pilot chairs.

‘… that hour you spent mowing the lawn the previous day feels like a lost Eden. Give anything to turn back the clock to that bored, complacent humdrum …’

He craned round the high-back frames.

No sign of Frost.

Something on the pilot’s seat. A video camera. Frost’s gaunt, weathered face in the playback window.

‘… Fuck it. If those bastards outside want my hide, they’ll have to work for it. Make them pay a heavy price …’

Pinback slammed across the head by an empty extinguisher. He reeled. He turned. Frost wielding the canister.

She threw the cylinder at his head. He ducked. It bounced off avionics.

He lunged, left arm outstretched.

She snatched the pistol from her shoulder holster and fired. Three bullets smacked into his chest, knocked him sprawling across the refuel controls.

She tried to get a clear shot at his head. He rolled aside. A couple of mis-aimed rounds smashed fuel gauges.

He stood up.

He shielded his face with his hand. Bullet punched through his hand. Bloodless entry, neat stigmata. The round shattered his cheekbone. Pinback ducked a couple more headshots. One of them caught his clavicle, span him one-eighty and threw him against the wall.

Frost took aim: split-second opportunity to put a round in the base of his neck.

Gun jam.

She struggled to clear the breech. No good. The slide gummed with sand.

Pinback turned to face her.

She tossed the weapon, pivoted on her good leg and delivered a belly kick that sent him to the floor. Jarring pain from her injured shin.

Knife snatched from its sheath.

He reached for her leg.

She swept the blade, slashed his arm, sliced flesh to the bone.

She lunged at his left eye socket. He deflected the blow. The knife slit open his forehead.

She danced round his prone body. He tried to get up. She kicked him in the face. She stabbed downwards, once again aiming for his eye. He jerked his head clean. The tip of the blade shrieked across deck plate.

He gripped her ankle, threw her balance and sent her stumbling backwards. She fell between the pilots’ seats, thrust levers jammed in the small of her back. She dropped the knife.

Fingers gripped her hair. Hancock crouched on the nose outside, reaching through a broken cockpit window. She punched his arm, tried to tear her head free. She reached for her knife wedged between the arm rest and seat cushion of the pilot chair. Out of reach.

Rotted hands gripped her head and shoulders. She was slowly pulled through the window, out into the storm. She kicked and squirmed, tried to hook her legs round the window frame as she was pulled onto the nose of the plane. She lost grip, fell fifteen feet, and hit the sand below.

Face down in the sand. She spat dust from her mouth.

Boots. She looked up. Noble and Hancock looking down at her.

Noble: a fleshless, grinning skull face.

Hancock: empty eye socket, grey skin, face slack and dead.

She scrambled to her feet. She put her back to the wind, to shield her eyes from driving sand.

The two creatures stood motionless.

She balled her fists.

So here it was. The moment of her death.

The dojo above Suds Laundromat. Monday night. Rain-lashed windows.

Frost and her Sensei circling on the mats.

Kumite: block, punch, kick. Orange belt versus black belt, fourth dan.

Frost was exhausted. Panting for air, gi hanging dark and heavy with sweat.

Sensei jabbed at her face. She blocked the blow.

‘Breathe. Breathe like I showed you.’

Feint to the head. She raised her arm to block and got punched in the side. She staggered backwards, cursing with frustration.

‘You done?’ asked the instructor. ‘Been a long session. You looked wiped out.’

She nodded and dropped her guard.

‘Want to quit for the night?’

She nodded.

Sensei smiled.

‘Nice work. You busted your ass tonight.’

He held out his hand for a shake. She took it. He twisted her fingers back, sent her to the floor. She lay, snorting with pain, arm twisted at near-breaking point.

‘Today’s lesson. The fight doesn’t end just because you want a rest. When you are at your lowest, when you are beaten down, exhausted, ready to quit and crawl away, that’s when you are truly tested. Seen it countless times. In here, out on the street. When the battle seems to be over, that’s when it truly begins.’

He released her arm and stepped back.

‘Now get up and fight.’

‘So what are you waiting for?’

Noble and Hancock immediately diverged and began to circle. Frost backed away, careful not to be caught between them.

Hancock stepped close and grabbed her arm. She twisted free, pivoted on her good foot to deliver a knee-break kick to his leg. Mistimed. He backed off.

Sixth sense: Noble behind her. She turned, ducked beneath grasping arms and shouldered him to the ground. She tried to stamp on his face. He rolled out of reach and got to his feet.

They moved in, trying to crowd her. She skipped clear.

She lunged at Noble. A sharp shuto strike should have crushed his larynx, but he took the blow like it was nothing and straightened up.

Kick to the chest. She heard ribs break.

She backed off and flexed her shoulders. Faint smile on her face. Fear turning to weird exultation. This was her last dance. She would go down fighting, go down throwing a punch.