Dead Things Page 3

  Boom.

  “—the roots of their disaffection live on.”

  Van winces upon hearing Ian’s theory. “That’s a prepared statement if I’ve ever heard one.” Van has a different theory. Of course, he’ll share it. If punk’s not dead, it may as well be. If punk’s not dead, then it’s in a coma and on life support, hidden away in some forgotten hospital.

  Flash.

  Ian takes the bait. “Punk’s about questioning authority. It’s about not taking things at face value…not accepting the status quo.”

  Boom.

  Van scoffs. “That shit is totally Christian now. It must be really hard for the disenfranchised youth of today, their mommies styling their pink Mohawks before their daddies drive them to the church parking lot for the sound check. Face it, bro. The punk message is dead, and the so-called punk aesthetic has been co-opted by a bunch of snot-nosed, Jesus-hugging brats.”

  Flash.

  Ian’s defensive. He calls Van a hippie.

  Boom. The thunder’s like an exclamation point.

  Everyone has a hang-up about an extremely personal matter, his or her “thing.” The lucky ones are driven by ideology, like politics, charities, religion, or ethnicity. The less fortunate are guided by trivial concerns. Did you hear about that pig Altha Phelps entered in the fair? I can’t believe it was corn fed…Clint Cooper brought down two bucks with one shot. One of them had an image of the Virgin Mary in its hide, so you know it was a miracle! Aren’t we lucky that Elder Sarah Palin was campaigning in Frankfort when the plague hit…and where did she get those amazing boots?

  Ian’s thing, trivial or not, is punk. Save for an old striped tie, all Ian has left to fill a vacuum are a few of his father’s old compact discs found under the seat in his mother’s defunct car. They speak to Ian, revealing to him something about his father that others, even his mom, could never know or understand. He imagines his father playing the Clash maybe for the first time, reading while singing along to the lyrics. This is Ian’s only connection to his past, this and his nightmares. His mother decided long ago to let the memory of his father slip away…all but the tie and the music. Ian’s face contorts into a grimace.

  Van sees that he has driven the shovel too deep, unearthed too much, and he beats a hasty retreat. “Punk’s not dead? It doesn’t even matter, anyway. ‘Dead’ doesn’t even have the same meaning. Not anymore.”

  Flash.

  Ian silently sulks.

  Van is contrite. “And when has my opinion meant anything, anyway?”

  True enough. Ian’s mood improves slightly.

  Van reads this, calls Ian a hardcore “punk rocker,” an “original gangster.” He makes quotation marks with his fingers.

  Boom.

  Ian scowls. “Shut up.”

  Van’s not done. No, straight up. Ian’s Iggy Pop, Sid Vicious, Paul Weller, and Willie Nelson all rolled into one.

  Ian shakes his head. “Willie Nelson is a country singer.”

  “Exactly,” says Van. “Nonconformity with expected punk norms. Nothing’s more punk than that.”

  Ian laughs.

  Flash/Boom.

  The cabin goes bright white. The passengers go deaf. The airplane shakes violently, battering them.

  Ian’s body seizes, lurches about like a doll broken at its waist. His belt strains but stays him, cutting across his thighs. His surroundings are shapeless, shaken to a blur by massive turbulence.

  The hulking propellers go silent. Their steady hum is replaced by howling current, air that snakes about the hull. Blue and orange flames lap from the fuselage.

  They pitch forward, on this insane fun-park ride, this rollercoaster diving from its apex. They are falling from the sky. And, as if on cue, they scream like children.

  Chapter Three: Plane in Vain (or, the Clash)

  Ian’s head is held firm against the seat. The compartment is dark. He strains to find Van through a dark cloud of smoke and ozone. He calls to Van. Through the haze, he discerns an outline, Van’s limp arm hanging over the armrest. He is unconscious. He did not buckle his belt. He has hit his head.

  Things go from bad to worse. A resounding pop, and the cabin loses pressure.

  A shopping list of items, papers, pens, bottles, jackets, hats, nuts—swims upstream, hurtling toward the rear of the plane, toward Ian. He covers his face with a forearm.

  His lungs feel constricted. He fights for oxygen. A mask connected to a clear bag drops. It slaps Ian about the face, toying with him as he tries in vain to grab it. He throttles the tubing high up and works his hand down, taming the serpent. He wraps the elastic bands about his head, feels the air flow freely.

  He remembers something. Make sure your mask is securely in place before assisting children.

  Van.

  The smoke exhausts rapidly from the plane. Van is slumped forward, blood streaking from a gash on his forehead and flying from his hair in droplets. Ian lunges at the mask dangling above Van. His seatbelt labors to hold him in place. The belt stretches hard, nearing its limits. Ian’s back throbs, G-forces trying to fold him like a poolside chair. He works feverishly to secure Van’s mask, but the elastic straps are slick with blood and make slow work of it. Over one ear, then the other, he finishes and tries to return to his seat.

  A first aid kit tears through the air. It looms larger and larger until it strikes Ian between the eyes. The irony is almost lost on him, his consciousness threatened.

  He feels himself going limp, his spine bending, his arms fluttering like streamers over his head. His oxygen line pulls taut, threatens to break. Blackness visits Ian from the edges of sight. He’s facing the rear of the plane now, and a sickening revelation shocks him to life.

  A ragged hole, two to three feet across, occupies the space where a passenger once sat five rows back. Ian watches the sky pluck another, screaming and still strapped to his chair, into the abyss, as effortlessly as a child ripping the head from a dandelion.

  His seatbelt is slipping. He claws for a hold, laboring to pull to a seated position. His biceps and shoulders burn. His abdominals tense and knot. He leans forward, preparing for the imminent crash. Dear God, not like this.

  The plane screams, muscles toward a more gradual descent. Ian feels the gravity slam him again. It is still much too quick, much too steep, yet the cabin pressure is closing in on that of the air howling about the plane’s shell. The aircraft pierces the clouds, plunging through them, a diver with no thought of ever surfacing.

  From the jump seat, Wright shouts at the top of her lungs. She orders them to assume crash positions. But no one can hear her over the maddening drone of the plane slicing through the black sky. The noise is terrifying, but Ian dreads the coming silence more.

  There isn’t a young adult who hasn’t at some point or another considered his or her legacy in the wake of a premature death. Ian has. Like others his age, he kind of dwells on the thought. Understand, Ian is not suicidal or depressive. He likes dark and mysterious things, but the thought of taking his own life never enters his head. Too many people have sacrificed themselves, sacrificed for him, to end it all because of some selfish caprice. In Ian’s dreams of death he finds martyrdom. Or, better, justification for his existence as a tragic epic hero:

  Ian the Selfless.

  Ian the Courageous.

  Ian the Defender of the Helpless.

  In truth, he believes he is something less, something akin to Ian the Frightened, something akin to Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim.

  Ian’s assessment is a little unfair. Fate has never found an opportunity to present Ian a significant risk. Unlike Lord Jim, Ian has never confronted a ship flailing in a storm or an army of pirates. Sure, there had been schoolyard fights, and his defense mechanism kicked in. But those shoving matches never really amounted to much beyond juvenile posturing.

  There are greater things to be scared of than middle-school bullies. Things like this. This is different. Neither fight nor flight is an option. Even if they were, Ian
doubts he could make a decision between the two, conscious or not.

  Ian’s fear supplants all else. His breath comes in desperate pants. Panic engulfs every fiber of his being. An insane scream builds deep in his chest.

  There’s heavy tapping against the plane’s undercarriage, the heads of trees snapping. Ian braces as the plane bounces, then drops heavily into the foliage. Cedar elms and spruce pines flog the aluminum body. Their limbs lacerate the wings, like whips against swollen flesh, pulling away metal and exposing the frame. The airplane’s husk pops and bubbles, a cauldron. Firework displays of glass explode, raining upon Ian’s neck and shoulders.

  The thumping intensifies. Swampbays now slap the plane back and forth, delivering crushing blows. The cabin threatens to split, until—

  A convulsive lurch. The plane comes to an immediate, screeching stop. The nose cone digs deep into soft soil, hundreds of pounds of thick clay, roots, and mulch jetting from the impact crater. The plane’s tail heaves upward, revealing the rough break in the underbelly and threatening to spin the craft on its tip like some giant top. Its line rises, perhaps forty degrees, before groaning to a halt. The slain dragon expels a final breath before its belly crashes hard against the forest floor.

  **

  Ian is on the floor, spilling into the aisle, his seatbelt finally giving way. He hears Van from somewhere above him. He is griping about the oxygen mask on his face. The bastard was unconscious, basically sleeping through the entire ordeal.

  The air marshal orders everyone to stay calm. She offers Ian a hand, asks if he is all right. Her fingers are thin, almost delicate, but she lifts him with one swift jerk. “Are you okay?” she asks again. Ian thinks so.

  Van is a different story. “Holy shit! I’m bleeding!” He stammers something about needing medical marijuana.

  Wright asks Ian if Van is all right.

  “Seems normal to me,” Ian responds.

  She surveys the cabin. One of the passengers is a doctor. His name is Heston. He’s traveling to Mustang Island, just north of Padre, first to fix a child’s cleft palate then to fix his relationship with his wife. Wright enlists his services and asks Ian to assist the doctor with the passengers.

  Ian feels her warm breath dance on his neck as she whispers, “Work quickly and quietly. Keep them calm. I’ll be back in a minute.” She needs to check on the crew.

  Before Ian can question whether the pilots’ survival is even possible, she is gone. His query dies on his lips.

  **

  The cockpit door is difficult to open, its frame twisted. Wright gives the door her shoulder, and it pops open, but just a foot or so. There are inches of soil on the floor, preventing further access. She doesn’t hesitate, sliding in with purpose, closing the door behind her with her back. She leans against it momentarily, panting lightly.

  It is pitch, the nose is buried, and she smells something like the scent of cut lawn. She steeled herself for the destruction, but she’s not sure she’s ready for the complete truth.

  An emergency beacon blinks weakly, painting the room in blood red. Earth pours in from the shattered windshield, burying the dead instrument panel and...the captain. He lurched forward upon impact; his upper body is entombed.

  The co-pilot was no luckier. His head was punched from his shoulders by the fist of a splintered tree trunk. His corpse remains seated, his skull dangling behind the back of his chair. Bits of spine, muscle, and sinew just barely lay claim. She need not worry about him.

  Wright moves to the captain’s chair. Straddling him, she plunges her hands deep into the soil. She doesn’t have much time. She feels along the pilot’s shoulder and upward toward the nape of his neck. She uncovers his collar and tugs the body free. The soil breaks and crumbles to the floor as he emerges. She grunts, bares her teeth, leverages a foot against the console. With one last mighty heave, she frees him from his filthy shroud. The pilot sails backward, his barreled torso resting stiffly in the seat. His mouth is agape, full of mud. His chest looks compressed, punched by the steering column.

  Her hands work quickly, moving across the Captain’s face, delicately but swiftly pushing dirt from his cheeks and eye sockets. Her eyes begin to well. She looks for a pulse, finds none. “Oh, Richard.”

  There’s no time for this. She dives into the dirt, furiously clearing away mounds of soil. She’s looking for something, but earth seeps in, frustrating her. She needs the coordinates of the plane. How funny, she thinks, she can’t even make time for him in death. Sorry, baby. You were right again. I’m just a selfish bitch.

  She pins down the location of the dials, finds the red glow of the longitude and latitude. But today, at least, I’ve got a reason to ignore you…at least one other than hating you.

  She draws her face in close to the dim red glow. She hangs her head low, shaking it from side to side. “Damn it.” They are off course. They did not follow the flight plan. And then, to the Captain’s reclined corpse, she spits, “Richard, you fucking bastard.”

  She hurriedly digs for the radio, tossing dirt between her legs like a Jack Russell terrier hot on the heels of a burrowing chipmunk. Soon, her knuckles scrape metal, and she feels its rectangular face. She fingers the power switch, toggling it up and down.

  Nothing. No power.

  The device is ancient. Despite this, she keys in frequencies frantically hoping against all hopes for something. Before long, she realizes it is pointless. This unit will not broadcast.

  There is no time to sulk. She has to move. She unbuttons the top of her blouse, clasps a key on a chain from around her neck, yanks hard, pulling it free. She pounces to the wall behind the helm in one feline bound. Deep red courier on the panel says, “Emergency Use Only.” She locates the dimpled keyhole and pops the lock.

  Inside are her tools.

  In a heartbeat all of her training comes back to her.

  **

  Doctor Heston asks if Ian knows basic first aid. Ian thinks so, and Heston sends him to the front of the plane.

  He administers first aid as best a former cub scout barely attaining the rank of Webelos can. What if someone has had a concussion? Let them sleep? Don’t let them sleep? He knows how to start a fire with sticks, how to lift ten times his weight using pulleys, but he cannot remember the basics of first aid. So he treats everyone for shock, mumbling repeatedly under his breath, “If the face is pale, raise the tail; if the face is red, raise the head.” Just scrapes and contusions, no one (no one left on board, anyway) looks too—

  “—Ian,” Van shouts from three rows ahead. “This lady looks hurt.”

  The doctor’s at the back of the plane attending to the woman with the baby. Shit, Ian thinks. “What color is her face?”

  **

  Wright’s holster needs no adjustment. It fits snugly, tight around her waist and chest. She handles the pistol, feeling for errant dirt. The clip slides in, and she thrusts a bullet into the chamber. Then she removes the machete.

  They don’t always come back from death. No, as often as not, slumber is eternal. But sometimes the proverbial dirt nap is just that: a nap.

  Before the Church, before the concept of earthbound souls, doctors put a more clinical spin on death, declaring it nothing more, yet nothing less, than a process. Death is something beyond a single temporal event, something beyond a sheer moment in time.

  The heart stops, and with it, blood flow. Deprived of oxygen, brain cells die. The body cools, blood settles, then other cells, like muscles and skin cells, die, disintegrate, and decompose at varying rates.

  Unless something hijacks the process.

  For the lucky ones and their friends and families, death runs its course. For them, peace is everlasting and a place in heaven is secured. For the unlucky, those damned in the eyes of the church, death is suspended. Not reversed, but suspended. The dead can rise again in a day, an hour, or in the mere stutter of a faltering heartbeat.

  The problem?

  One can never know. So assume the worst.

/>   Wright stands above the Captain’s torn face. The machete feels heavy at her side. Be a good soldier. Remember your years of preparation, your training. Remember that he’s no longer your lover. He’s not even the man you grew to hate. He’s dead. Or something else…

  She raises the blade above her head; her gaze locks on his neck, just below his Adam’s apple. Her will goes with her knees, and she nearly loses her balance.

  “Damn it!” she cries, tears now running down her cheeks, a hand at her brow.

  But then a noise, a soft crackling, like dry leaves…

  She is taking too long. She gathers her composure lest she be interrupted or lose her resolve altogether. She wipes her face, leaving dark, raccoon-like streaks about her eyes. With a final and hearty sniff, she brings the weapon above her head once more. She steadies herself, switching her weight from foot to foot. Her countenance goes cold, her strength returns.

  She thinks she sees a twitch, maybe a slight change in the reflection off the whites of his eyes.

  Now.

  She severs his head at the line of his jaw, through his brain stem, the part of his brain housing his motor cortex, connecting his forebrain and cerebrum. His head spins away like a demented dreidel. She wipes the blade on his chest, and her hands on her shirt. The machete slips into the sheath at her hip. She gathers her gear. “Rest in peace.”