She waited while Guthrie burned.
47
Frost lay on the flight-deck floor. She gripped the lip of the hatchway and looked down into the lower cabin. Flame and smoke. Splashed fuel burned blue.
Pop and crack of bubbling cable insulation.
The lung-searing stink of melting seat foam.
She covered her mouth and nose with her hand.
She jumped back as Guthrie slammed against the ladder below her. He burned and flailed. His Nomex flight suit was fire retardant, but his desiccated body was alight. Slow-cooking body fat. Hands and face sweated boiling grease.
He gripped the ladder like he intended to climb but instead hung from the rungs, limbs locked and trembling, like the metal was delivering high-voltage current. Exposed brain tissue boiled and fizzed. The creature wracked by a long epileptic convulsion. Lolling tongue. Weird cackling scream.
‘Shoot,’ shouted Noble. ‘Shoot the damned thing.’
She took aim. She tried to centre the pistol sights on the remaining quadrant of Guthrie’s forehead. He was dancing around too much to get a clear shot.
The creature wrenched itself clear of the ladder, leaving a couple of crisped fingers glued to a rung.
Frost was overwhelmed by thick smoke. She retched. She shook her head and attempted to clear her vision.
She rolled clear of the hatch and kicked the trunk back in position.
She sat back, hands pressed over burning, watering eyes.
‘Let him fry,’ she said. ‘Maybe the poor bastard’s brain will cook. Save us a bullet.’
She blinked away tears. The dark cockpit interior slowly came into focus. Detail reasserted itself.
The flight deck was slowly filling with black smoke, fumes curling from cable conduits and vents recessed behind wall insulation.
‘You ought to get down there and put out the fire,’ said Noble. ‘It’s starting to spread.’
Frost shook her head.
‘No need to panic. Let him roast a little longer.’
She checked her leg, adjusted the bindings holding the calf splint.
Hancock watched from the pilot seat. He gestured to his missing eye.
‘Wears you down, doesn’t it? Constant pain.’
Frost didn’t reply.
Wisps of smoke from the trunk blocking the ladderway. The sides of the vinyl case starting to bubble and warp in the heat.
Frost lay her hand on the deck plate beside her. Metal warm from the fire below.
Muffled thud. An inhuman, mewling shriek from the lower cabin.
‘Unbelievable,’ said Noble. ‘Son of a bitch just won’t quit. This guy’s so hard to kill, it’s almost funny.’
Squeals of rage gave way to pitiful moans.
‘No point waiting any longer,’ said Noble. ‘Better head down there and finish him off.’
Frost pulled on gloves. She opened a locker, threw clutter aside and retrieved an M40 respirator with a charcoal hood. Anti-radiation gear left from the days Liberty Bell carried gravity nukes during stand-off patrols near the Arctic Circle.
She put on the mask and adjusted straps.
She pushed the trunk aside.
Hancock held back a cockpit blast screen to vent thick fumes which immediately filled the flight deck. He fanned his hands, tried to encourage the noxious fog out the window.
Frost pulled the ring-tab from a wall extinguisher and trained a jet of carbon smoke into the lower cabin. She swept the nose cone back and forth, blasted every surface.
She dropped the depleted extinguisher through the hatchway. Metal clang.
She fumbled her flashlight and hit On. The beam shafted downwards into the smoke-filled lower compartment. Seething, swirling fumes. Black combustion smoke replaced by white, dry-ice mist from the extinguisher.
She turned and slowly climbed down the ladder, craning to make sure Guthrie didn’t lie in wait.
She stepped to the floor.
Harsh filter rasp. Each panting exhalation amplified to a guttural breath-roar.
She looked around through the fogged portholes of her mask. Broiling suppressant smoke. A sweep of her flashlight lit deck walls and control surfaces cover in glittering carbon rime.
Double take: her ejector seat was back in position. The metal chair frame had been shunted in front of the nav console. She reached out and tentatively touched the headrest. The seat had fallen miles from the plane. Fell out the sky at three-hundred miles an hour and buried itself among the dunes. Yet here it was, back in situ, warped by impact and gritted with sand.
She continued her search.
She crouched and checked the bomb bay crawlspace. Metal conduit leading to the payload hatch.
No sign of Guthrie.
Frost left the plane. She leant against the fuselage to take weight from her injured leg. She pulled off her mask.
She looked around. Dunes lit infernal red by the signal fire.
‘Where are you, Guss?’
She took a gyrojet flare pen from her pocket. She twisted a shell the size of a shotgun cartridge onto the head, pulled back the spring bolt, and fired the cartridge. The shell soared skyward. Crack. Starbust. The landscape lit harsh white.
Guthrie lay face down in sand. Blackened, smoking flesh. A grotesque stick creature hauling itself towards the dunes. Fingers raked dust. Crisped skin split and wept pus. It left a drag-trench flecked with flaked flesh and scraps of suit fabric.
Frost unholstered her pistol and walked towards the prone man.
‘How you doing, Guss? Think it’s about time you got some sleep.’
Hancock pulled back a blast screen and peered through the shattered cockpit window. He watched Frost cross the sand towards Guthrie, pistol drawn.
‘One down,’ he murmured.
A hand lunged down from the exterior roof, reached through the cockpit window and snatched at Hancock’s head. It gripped the dressing wrapped round his scalp and seized a fistful of hair. He felt sutures tear. He felt skin rip further open and a warm wash of blood behind his left ear and down his neck.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he shouted. He grabbed the emaciated hand, tried to prise fingers, but they dug into scalp-flesh like talons.
He struggled and thrashed as he was wrenched from his seat. He looked up, glimpsed a cracked Luminox and a rot-streaked sleeve. He punched at the arm, tried to break bone.
‘Frost,’ he bellowed, ‘Frost, fucker’s got me.’
He grasped at avionics, gripped thrust levers as he felt himself drawn inexorably up and out through the cockpit window.
48
Frost limped across the sand. Cold magnesium radiance turned the dunescape to ice. Each foot-crunch left a boot-print like she was walking through powdered snow.
Guthrie squirmed through the sand in a series of spastic convulsions. Flailing limbs churned a shallow trench.
She watched him crawl. Only the left side of his body retained function. He kicked with his left leg, clawed with his left hand.
She held her pistol in a double grip.
‘How you doing, Guthrie?’
The broken creature turned towards Frost. Face burned away. Stump nose. Skeletal grin. Its remaining eye socket was a charred pit.
‘Where are your friends? Are they coming out to play?’
She circled the prone creature.
‘Why don’t you folks attack en masse? Drawing us out? Is that the idea?’
Guthrie slowly turned his head, drawn by the rustle of her flight suit, the faint crunch of boots pressing sand.
He slowly pulled himself upright, balancing his weight on his leg. He faced Frost. She continued to circle. He followed every move.