Sunday 29 April 2012

Hostage at 15,000ft (Extract)

Nobody was expecting the plane to make such a big bang... Or such a high wall of flames, but it did. The sound of first class being burnt into the back of their seats is all that was incredibly audible at this exact point in time. The plane looks like a downed bird, wings broken and skin torn from its body in many different directions. The seats are covered in blood, odd bits of flesh, here and there and the still seated corpses of people who were lucky enough to be killed by shock or bits of debris, slicing and crushing, from the falling man-made disaster. It may be wise to omit how exactly the plane was downed, for now anyway, you know how these sorts of things work? You have to wait for the plot to expand; all good things come to the patient few.
                I lumber into this new world and it looks like hell has burned over; behind the plane a path of crumpled concrete, bruised to the point of annihilation, a flame trail that lead to ground zero. I remove my mask, throw it to the ground and move forward, away from flames. My face was sweating and beads of sweat dripped from my brow onto destroyed concrete. The crash has shaken the survivors, but, it feels like you’re walking through the spirit world... People stumbling around, their faces covered in gore, stepping around as if some important part of the brain was removed from their skulls. The streets had been set ablaze and the echoes of sirens were not far, but not close enough to be useful. Buildings began to crumble; the assault led by the wings on the architecture of the buildings was fierce and had no mercy on the immobile giants. It’s clear that someone had called the emergency services upon the initial impact, but the content of this call may have been... questionable and incoherent. It could be speculated that the services were only aware of what was happening due to word of mouth, not because of a panic induced phone call that described a plane crashing into the busy streets of London.
                I waver out of an emergency exit on the side of the plane; it had been deployed at some point during the drop. Clutching at my sides, I limp to look for safety and to look for what I was missing.
Dalton’s missing.
Dalton had planned the hijack for around 01:00am, but due to unforeseen circumstances had to start things a bit early; isn’t that always the way? Problems occur and you have to rush ahead with something you’re not completely comfortable with; it chills your fingertips and electrifies your spinal Colum.
The carbon fibre semi-automatic rifles that had been planted on the aeroplane earlier that day by our ‘guys on the inside’ were cracked out early, fully loaded and ready for the plan to be laid down in the most professional manner that we had planned.
We never intended things to get this out of hand, but there’s always some guy who wants to be a hero, some asshole who wants to be John-fucking- Maclane.
I won’t go into graphic details of how the pilots were shot to the point of no repair, but it happened, you know? Blood got everywhere, no-one could see out of the cockpit.
Both Dalton and I knew how to fly, but kept getting distracted by passengers who thought they could be heroes. I think at that point, everyone wanted to be a super-hero, just to fly away from this mess... Maybe saving a few loved ones in the process of liberating themselves from this mess.
                God only knows where Dalton is... Is it possible for him to be here or there? I mean, he could have been sliced in half by some vicious debris, soaring through the plane. Maybe he fell out of the plane prematurely and fell to be made into pulp by the ground below? Maybe the furious flames had ticked him and he was running around trying to put the fire out.
There was a time when the fire inside him was the brightest burning light, when we first started planning this caper; Dalton had a clear set of rules, principles and goals for us all to follow to make sure things are done the right way! This is not the right way.
                At a snail’s pace I waver out of the way of anything immediately dangerous and rest my back against a car that remained untouched in the heat of everything; the plane had missed it, the wings had already been destroyed by the buildings and the fire was far enough out of the way for it to be unaffected by all the chaos around to it. I clung to it, in hopes everything would stop being so manic, just for one moment, just let me catch my breath for a second.
It just seems to be one of those moments in life where gravity tightens around you and everything seems to be moving in slow-motion with a black and white filter lazily slapped over the top, just to make everything seem that little bit more epic and moving.
                My vision sways from side to side, looking for the only connection to all of this I had. He was probably dead, but I have to make sure, if the cops got him, he could sell us all out.
And if he sold us out, that could be a major problem for me; jail-time. I wouldn’t go down well in a prison; they’d pass me around like a peace-pipe, which is not my idea of fun.
It’s time to decide what to do; action needs to be taken and it won’t be taken if I just stay here, waiting for the emergency services to appear. They’d just have me wasting time, making sure I’m alright and then I’d have to write a statement about what happened; bullshit.
Just a short extract of something bigger I've been working on. Not so much for class, but, that is where the idea came from originally.
Hope you kids enjoy.

1 comments:

DWei said...

Oh my, at this point I'd agree that everyone dead in the crash is much luckier.

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