Days of Fire

by Rebecca Fernfield

  “Yes,” he replies and steps away from the plane. He turns to face her, his face grim. “We can hope.”

  “We should look further up—follow the plane’s path,” Jessie suggests with a sickening thud in her chest. “You know, perhaps he’s alive and making his way back up to the top?”

  “It’s possible,” Alex replies without conviction.

  Jessie looks up the bank to where the plane had broken through the trees and notes the sheer drop of its trajectory. Her confidence fades. “Let’s look up here,” she suggests determined to be practical despite the grief that is riding over her. She moves up the steep slope of the plane’s route through the trees, using branches and rocks to climb where the incline is too steep to walk.

  As they reach a ledge that leads to a clearing, Jessie leans back and looks to the sky. The grey has cleared and the sun, though low, casts a bright and clear light. The ferns that fill the space are a brilliant green against the dark rocks. As she looks around, her stomach lurches. A patch of khaki fabric catches her eye and then the outline of a leather boot. She can’t tell from this distance if it’s Ridley or Briggs.

  “Alex!” she says in a low voice as she steps forward.

  Long-stemmed ferns bow over the body hiding the torso and head. The legs are twisted at such a grotesque angle that he must surely be dead—she hopes he’s dead!

  “What is it?” Alex replies and steps next to her. “Oh.”

  Jessie takes another step alongside the body, takes a breath and pulls at the ferns.

  “Oh!” she can’t help blurt. “It’s Briggs.” The relief that washes over her is replaced with a surge of remorse. How could she be relieved when he’s dead!

  “Hell!” Alex exclaims as he bends to look. “I hope he didn’t suffer!”

  Jessie remains silent, as the images of Briggs, terrified and falling to his death, that had plagued her through the night, taunt her again. She pushes them away. “Well, we’ve found Briggs. Now we need to find Ridley,” she says forcing her mind to be practical once more. She steps back from the body and releases the ferns. They bow on their long stems and Briggs disappears.

  Turning back, she scours the area, looking for any clues as to where the Captain may have fallen. Ten minutes later and there’s still no sign until a low growl sounds from the undergrowth.

  “Did you hear that?” Alex asks.

  “Yes,” Jessie replies and scans the undergrowth.

  “It could just be an animal.”

  Another groan, low and guttural, clearer this time.

  “That was human! Captain!” she calls as she steps in the direction of the noise.

  “It came from over there,” she says pointing to the roots of a windblown tree. Alex steps ahead of her, slow and careful. A rustle overhead and he stops. Looking up, a bird flutters from the canopy. Jessie listens again but hears only the noise of the forest.

  “Are you sure it was human?” Alex asks as he looks into the undergrowth. “It could have been an animal—maybe a deer?”

  “Well … I thought it sounded human, but I’m not sure,” she replies as she steps over a fallen tree laying across her path.

  Scratching sounds from the undergrowth and, as she turns to follow the noise, a fern shakes and a flash of dark fur scurries away.

  “What was that?” Alex asks.

  Jessie freezes. Ahead, just beyond where the creature had caught her attention is a boot, an unmistakably military-issue boot.

  “Jess?”

  “He’s there,” she says as cold washes over her. “Captain Ridley. He’s there.” She points to the boot.

  “Oh.”

  “It’s him.” Suddenly animated, she strides across to where he lies. “Captain Ridley” she says as she pushes at the ferns.

  His head is rolled to the side and his eyes are closed and although his arms are splayed cross-like, she can see no evidence of injury to his body. His face is pale though a deep gash runs from his temple to his jaw. Blood has seeped across his cheek and into his hair, pooling in his ear. Jessie kneels at his side. “Captain!” she whispers. “Captain,” she repeats placing her hand on his shoulder as Alex crouches on the other side of his body.

  “Don’t move him.”

  “He’s unconscious,” she says taking in the paleness of his skin next to the dark of the drying blood. “He just looks like he’s asleep.”

  “Perhaps,” Alex replies as he leans across and places his fingers at the base of Ridley’s throat. He waits a moment then leans down and puts an ear to the Captain’s mouth. Jessie waits, staring at Alex as he checks for signs of life.

  “Well?” she asks as her heart races. A deep pain is already growing in the pit of her stomach.

  Alex sits back on his haunches. “There’s no pulse and he’s not breathing.”

  “No!” Jessie blurts as the pain grows. “That can’t be right. We heard him! Look at him. He’s just asleep.” Desperation gnaws at her and she takes his arm, determined to prove Alex wrong. She feels for the pulse at the Captain’s wrist. The skin is clammy, cold from a night on the forest floor, moist from the morning dew. There is no pulse.

  “This must be where he fell,” Alex says looking up through the trees. “I think this is where he fell out of the plane. There’s no evidence he moved once he landed here. It was cold last night and if he couldn’t get himself warm … well, perhaps hypothermia set in? He would have been in shock from the fall and whatever injuries he sustained.”

  “The noise? It was him, wasn’t it.”

  Alex shrugs. “I’m not sure-”

  “If we’d just been here a few minutes earlier!”

  “I’m not sure there’s anything we could have done even if he had been alive when we got here. See,” he says pointing to Ridley’s head. The soil beneath is the blackest red. “He’s got a head injury. A bad one by the look of that.”

  “But if he’s only just gone? Perhaps there’s a chance.” Jessie bends over the lifeless body and presses her hands against his chest.

  “Jessie! He’s gone.”

  “Yes, but sometimes people come back, if he’s only just died, we can re-start his heart. He’s been so cold. It can be done, Alex. It can!” She pumps again at his heart.

  “Jessie! I think he died hours ago. The head injury looks bad. He probably died not long after he fell.”

  “Captain!” Jessie calls as she rocks his torso.

  “He probably died when he hit the ground, Jess.”

  “Captain, wake up!”

  “Jessie!” Alex says, her voice firm but gentle as he grasps her shoulders and pulls her back from the body. “He’s gone.”

  A pain, overwhelming and familiar rises from her belly and spreads through her body as she shrugs Alex off and rests her head on the Captain’s chest. The flesh is firm and muscular, but cool and silent.

  “Jessie,” Alex says placing his arm across her back and pulling her to him.

  “What will we do now? I need … we need him, Alex.”

  “Shh,” Alex croons as she sits back on her haunches staring at the dead man. Memories rise and wash her with pain; she’s a child again, standing at her father’s graveside, disbelieving and full of anger. It had been Ridley who’d held her hand that day as her mother had stood unreachable, consumed by her own pain.

  She sits in silence with the reassuring weight of Alex’s arm across her shoulder and Ridley’s cold and lifeless hand in hers. “I can’t stand the thought of leaving him here,” she says looking around at the forest, “on his own.”

  Alex nods and looks up to the sky beyond the woodland canopy. “We’ll tell them where he is … where they are, at the first town we come to.”

  Chapter 12

  The light filters into the room as Michael wakes. Tess snorts next to him, her bleached blonde hair splayed across the pillow, mouth open. He turns to face the wall and away from her sour breath. The light shining through the gap in the curtains is weak so it can’t be more than six a.m. Damn! Four ho
urs sleep and now he’s wide awake! Damn the shifts—and he was on the night-shift tonight. He needs to find another job—shift-work was playing havoc with his natural rhythms. He looks to the bedside clock. The face is blank. He frowns. Surely there can’t still be a power-cut? Throwing the bedsheets back, he swings his legs over the side. The floor is cool to his feet and he sits, raises his arms, stretches backwards, stands then farts. Tess grunts and rolls over, her breasts shifting beneath the baggy t-shirt she insists on wearing to bed. He’d prefer something a little more … womanly. Didn’t matter how many hints he gave though, she just didn’t get it, and made no effort to please him in that department. Time to get rid! He farts again and chuckles. It stinks.

  “By that’s a ripe ‘un,” he mutters and makes his way to the toilet. Let her suck it up whilst she sleeps—serve her lazy arse right.

  One hand pressed up against the wall, the arc of urine splatters against the back of the toilet seat as he relieves himself. Shaking off, he frowns. There’s something unusual, something not quite right. Even this early in the morning there’d be the sound of cars passing the house, the noise and fumes making their way through the open bathroom window. This morning there’s nothing. He pulls up his boxers and peers through the gap; nothing moves on the street although Joe from down the road is walking his dog. He stares at the man with the tiny dog on its lead and waits. The dog squats to relieve itself and Joe tugs at the lead oblivious to the dog’s efforts. Hah! I’ve gotcha this time! The dog resists Joe’s tugging and holds its ground as sausages of brown dangle then drop from its backend. Yeah, I got you now, Joe! Michael watches as Joe turns to look at the dog, gives a sharp yank of the lead and pulls it away from the offending trail of dog turds. I knew it! I knew you were the one! “Hey!” he shouts through the open window. “Hey, Joe! Pick up that mess!”

  Joe looks up to the window. “Ey?” he calls.

  “Pick it up! Your dog just crapped on the path. Pick it up!”

  Joe stares, flicks him the V, then yanks at the dog and walks on.

  “Right!”

  Incensed at the man’s disrespect and the dog-shit now trailed across the path outside his house, Michael turns and makes his way down the stairs. Taking them two at a time he lurches to the front door and flings it open.

  “Get back here and sort this mess out!”

  Joe pulls at the dog’s lead.

  “Right! That’s it, Joe. I’ve stepped in your dog’s shit for the last time.” He grabs the spade propped up against the door and runs barefoot to the gate. The offending turds sit brown and silent on the path, steam still rising in the cold morning air. He scoops them with the shovel and launches himself down the pavement after Joe, balancing them with ease on the flat of the spade—he always was good at the egg and spoon race.

  “Hey, Joe,” he calls as he closes in.

  Michael stops, and, as Joe turns, he swivels the spade, careful not to spill its contents, and launches them at the man in a ferocious arc. He watches the turds’ trajectory as they hit Joe and bounce off his cheek and his nose. With triumph, but a rising sense of mortification, Michael watches as the final piece slithers across Joe’s cheek leaving a brown trail before landing with a splat on the tarmac.

  Joe stares at him. Michael doesn’t meet Joe’s eyes.

  “Well … you should have picked it up,” Michael says before turning to walk back to his house. As he takes a step forward his foot sinks into something soft. Looking down, the familiar stench of dog mess is already at his nostrils as the brown and ginger turd is forced between his toes.

  Joe laughs and then a door opens and a woman steps out.

  “Don’t be stupid, Laura,” a man’s voice calls from the open doorway. “It’s too early to go to the shops.”

  “Mum said that people were queuing at the corner shop last night and they had a guard on the door. She said that they weren’t taking cards neither. The power’s still out. Something’s wrong and you know what happens if people think there’s going to be shortages …”

  “Yeah, they get up at godforsaken o’clock and wait outside the supermarket to be the first one in,” he laughs.

  “Yep. First come, first served. You won’t complain when the food’s in your belly.”

  Michael watches as the woman leaves her gate and steps up to her car, pointing the fob at the door as she approaches. The car’s lights don’t give their usual flicker. She presses at the fob again, jabbing it now at the car. Still nothing.

  “Craig!” she calls back to the man still standing in the doorway. “Why won’t this fob work?”

  Laura tries the fob one last time, sighs, ignores Craig’s cackle, then strides in the direction of the supermarket as she drops the fob into her bag. The sun was on the rise. Without the electricity working she had no way of knowing what time it was but, by the look of the sun, it was perhaps nearly seven, give or take half an hour.

  As she quickens her stride, Maureen from number thirty steps out of her door. Laura eyes the woman with caution, surprised at the emotions waving through her. What if Maureen was going to the shops too?

  “Morning,” she calls as Maureen walks up her garden path.

  “Morning, Laura,” the woman returns. “Cold this early isn’t it!”

  “Yes, but lovely with it,” she smiles. “Maureen, is your leccy still out?”

  “Yes, it is and my Neil is doing my head in—on the rampage he is about suing British Gas.”

  “Oh. We’re with Npower. Don’t you think it’s odd it’s been off this long?”

  “I’ve not really thought about it. Neil got the camping stuff out last night so at least we’ve had a cup of tea and a slice of toast.”

  Tea? “Oh? We’ve not got any water.”

  “I buy bottled,” Maureen replies with an air of superiority. “We hate the tap stuff!”

  “Oh. And where you going now—bit early to be up?”

  “I’ve got an early start today—at work.”

  “Oh,” Laura says with a smile trying to hide her relief. “Bye then,” she finishes with a small wave and quickens her step. The faster she can get to the supermarket the better. The likes of Maureen perhaps wouldn’t be aware of the implications of the power cut going on this long, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d watched the hoards over in France when they’d reduced the price of that spread they all liked—horrible sickly stuff it was, but there’d been fights at the supermarket. What would they be like here if there was a food shortage? Her heart begins to race as she imagines the scenario. What if it wasn’t just the town that was effected? What if the lorries couldn’t make their deliveries today? She quickens her pace. What if the factories were down too? What if there wasn’t even any bread to deliver? Her chest tightens as her mind whirrs and her thighs ache with the effort of walking at such a speed. When another pedestrian appears at the end of the road, shopping bag hooked over his arm, and crosses in the direction of the supermarket, she breaks into a run.

  Chapter 13

  “Ridley is dead then?” Clare asks offering her hand as Jessie takes the final step out of the gorge.

  “Yes,” she replies.

  “Hell!”

  “Did you find the back of the plane?”

  “Yes, and … and I found Tom and Ryan too.”

  “Dead?”

  Clare nods in silence.

  “Faye? What about Faye?” Jessie asks remembering the last time she’d seen the woman.

  “No sign.”

  Jessie sighs as the pain of loss washes over her again. Tom and Ryan were good men—too good to lose their lives so young, but perhaps there was a chance that Faye was still alive, after all she was. She hopes they didn’t suffer. “Did you find any water?” she asks. Being logical, thinking straight, was what Ridley would want them to do. She’ll save her tears for later, when they’re out of this mess and back to civilisation.

  “Yes,” Clare replies without a smile. “Five bottles.”

  “Good. We can make that last fo
r a few days if we’re careful.”

  “A few days!”

  Jessie nods and Clare reaches into her rucksack and passes a bottle first to Jessie and then to Alex. Jessie takes it with gratitude. The water is refreshing, without the sweetness of the water from the stream, but at least she’s sure it’s purified. Her body urges her to drink more, but she stops after two mouthfuls and screws the lid back on. Sure, they’d reach the town by afternoon at the latest, but until she could see a sign with the town’s name stamped on in bold letters she was going to drink just enough to keep her going.

  “When we get to the town, I guess we need to phone the base and let them know what happened,” Clare suggests as they begin their journey away from the plane.

  “If the phones are working! Mine’s still out. What about yours?”

  “Same.”

  “But they’ll know we crashed—they track everything. They’re probably sending out search and rescue now.”

  “Only if the EMP didn’t knock out all their systems.”

  “Do you really think it would?”

  “If their equipment wasn’t protected, then yes.”

  “But … they may have already started searching.”

  “Sure,” Jessie replies as she steps down the steep slope. She doesn’t share Clare’s hope on that score, but she won’t knock her confidence. She needs Clare to be strong and not crumble under the pressure of getting back to civilisation the way she had during training. She grabs a sapling to help steady her as she side-steps downwards. The sun flickers through the trees and dapples the forest floor where the canopy is less thick.

  “We’re about three miles from the nearest town,” Alex says as they reach another clearing and look out across the horizon.

  Jessie takes a sip of water from her bottle and looks across at the sprawling conurbation in the distance that had been a cluster of lights the night before. The grey, black and red of its rooftops and tower blocks are just discernible. Grey plumes of smoke still wind into the sky, evidence of the fires that raged there last night.