Jessamy Beech Ch. 04: Keswick

"I may have been right about them running out of fuel," said Scanlan.

"Why?" Jessamy was uneasy. She was beginning to regret her request to explore the wreck but wasn't going to admit it.

"This thing would've exploded on impact if it had been still carrying ..."

A blur of movement in Jessamy's peripheral vision accompanied the impact of something solid lunging out of the water onto the airliner's wing. She spun around in time to see what she could only describe as a monster seizing Scanlan by both legs and yanking him off his feet.

"Shoot it!" he screamed as teeth longer than Jessamy's fingers tore viciously into Scanlan's legs.

"Where?" Jessamy caught only glimpses of the enormous creature as it thrashed from side to side. Scales, reptilian eyes, short muscular legs ...

"Anywhere!"

But it was too late. The crocodile rolled sideways back into the water with its prize and was gone, leaving waves lapping against the slippery metal she stood upon.

Scanlan was dead.

"F-fuck!" Jessamy scanned the water, expecting the beast to come back for seconds. She had to get back to the boat. She'd be safe in the boat.

She turned, shaking with fear. The splash caused by the crocodile's retreat had been just enough to nudge the inflatable away from the airliner's wing. Fifteen feet of murky water now lay between her and it.

"Shit!" Before meeting Ewan and Merida, Jessamy had rarely used profanity. But now seemed as good a time as any to let slip a few four letter curses. Threlkeld's leader, Scanlan was gone, eaten alive by a monstrous crocodile, their boat was drifting ever further away across polluted floodwater that harboured who knew what, and she was alone. Ewan and Merida were on the other side of town.

A blunt, armoured snout and a pair of lifeless yellow eyes broke the water's surface barely a yard away. Jessamy stumbled back. What were crocodiles even doing here in Cumbria? Ewan and Merida had said things might be different once they'd crossed the border into England, but surely not to this extreme ...

Another crocodile eased its way out of the water and and ambled towards her, hissing, the airliner's wing creaking under its considerable weight. Then a third.

Jessamy backed away, not taking her eyes off the three advancing creatures. The wing sloped upward towards the pitted and stained fuselage, the paintwork worn down to bare metal in places making the wet surface smooth and slippery, her footing unsteady.

One of the crocodiles uttered a gurgling, gutteral sound that may have been a roar but to Jessamy seemed like a gloating laugh. She barely registered the squeal of rusted hinges behind her as she raised her crossbow. She might be able to take out one of the things but there was no way she'd have time to reload before the others rushed her ...

"In here, quick!" whispered a hoarse voice.

Jessamy risked a glance behind. A lozenge shaped hatch in the airliner's fuselage was open just wide enough to allow a person to squeeze inside.

Taking her distraction as an opportunity, the lead crocodile charged. Jessamy raised her crossbow and fired from the hip. Not even looking back to see what damage she'd inflicted, Jessamy turned and sprinted to the doorway. A inhuman squeal of pain pierced the still air behind her and the metal beneath her feet vibrated to the impact of heavy clawed feet. She sidestepped through into the airliner's interior and the hatch slammed shut ...

. . .

Even with feeble light penetrating through the dozens of small windows, it took Jessamy's eyes a few seconds to acclimatise to the gloom inside the airliner. She'd expected the stomach churning stench of decomposition, but all she could smell was a faint whiff of mouldy, damp carpet and body odour. Rows of identical blue upholstered seats stretched away into the darkness, each piled high with cardboard boxes, crates and tinned food.

"Wh-who are you?"

Jessamy peered into the shadows. A small, bearded man wearing a grimy black suit and white shirt had an assault rifle levelled at her face. The weapon gleamed as if it had just been cleaned and freshly oiled. She had no doubt it was in full working order. She carefully, slowly stooped and placed her unloaded crossbow on the carpetted floor, "I'm Jessamy. Jessamy Beech. You s-saved me from those monsters. Thank you."

"Crocs. Pr-probably escaped from a z-zoo down south. Moved up here, got fat ... and bred."

The man's voice was faint and hoarse as if he was unused to using it. His accent was peculiar with a twang to it that Jessamy was unfamiliar with.

"Are you here alone?" Jessamy asked, furtively eyeing the boxes and boxes of provisions piled on the seats. Was all this plundered from the supermarket they'd planned to raid? There was enough here to feed Threlkeld for years.

The man relaxed a little and lowered his weapon, "It's so long s-since I've seen another person," he looked close to tears.

"How about you put the gun down and we can talk?" Jessamy suggested.

The man took a step back but made no move to surrender his weapon.

"Where are you from?" asked the man.

"Long story," Jessamy replied. Faint thudding, squeaking noises came from the other side of the metal hatch as clawed feet scrabbled around looking for a way in, "I'm originally from Cornwall, but we've just come from Scotland ..."

"We?"

"Yes. I've got two friends, Merida and Ewan."

The man's face lit up, "There's other survivors! Thank God," he shouldered the assault rifle and beckoned Jessamy to follow him.

The interior of the jumbo jet was in semi-darkness, the only light coming in through the grime streaked windows. The man led the way down a spiral staircase to another deck, passing more boxes and crates of food, medical supplies and cleaning products. A thick, reinforced wooden door opened into a plush, blue carpeted office. A huge coat of arms featuring a shield and what Jessamy guessed to be an eagle covered one wall. She spotted a makeshift bed in one corner of the room surrounded by books and magazines. This was obviously where the man had been sleeping.

Jessamy noticed with a shock of embarrassment than many of the magazines featured naked women. Glistening with oil and pleasuring themselves, or being serviced by muscular men with dark skin ...

The man deposited his assault rifle on the corner of the huge desk that dominated the room and turned to face Jessamy, "I'm Dr Bromden. W-welcome to Air Force One."

Jessamy stared at him blankly. She felt a little flustered by the magazines she'd glimpsed and wished that she could have a few minutes alone to peruse them a little more closely.

"Y-you know? A-air Force One? The President's plane?"

Jessamy didn't have a clue what the man was talking about. He's obviously not seen a woman for such a long time that he'd resorted to looking at photos of them. She gazed around at the other walls, covered in scribbled calculations, maps and dozens of grainy photos of what looked like either a potato or a rock. She peered closely at one of the largest prints, "What is this?"

Bromden laughed, "What IS it? That's Thanatos for Chrissake!"

Jessamy had heard the name Thanatos mentioned many times in her life. It seemed to be the source of all the world's current woes. But she didn't have a clue what it was. She leaned against the wall, "What exactly is Than ... Thanner ..."

"Thanatos," supplied Bromden. He studied Jessamy for a few seconds, making her feel somewhat uncomfortable, "Of all the p-people to survive this m-mess, it has to be an idiot. No offence. Admittedly a very pr-pretty idiot, but an idiot nevertheless. Can I get you a coffee or so-something to eat?"

Jessamy shook her head, "I wouldn't like to eat your food."

"Nonsense," answered Bromden, gesturing to the piles of boxes visible through the open door, "I've got pl-plenty. Plenty."

"Where did you get all this?" Jessamy asked.

"See the su-supermarket across the way there? We cleaned it out when we f-first ... er, landed. Hah, landed. That was back before the crocs showed up."

Jessamy frowned, "Exactly how long have you been here Mr Bromden?"

"Ten or eleven years, give or take. And it's DOCTOR Bromden. Doctor Bromden," Bromden hurried through into an anteroom and set a metal pan of water on a camping stove to boil.

While Bromden prepared coffee and freeze dried noodles, he explained to Jessamy how Air Force One had been about to land at Glasgow airport when a strike had obliterated Paisley and everything else in a five mile radius. The President's 747 had diverted to Edinburgh but all runways there were damaged too. With fuel running low, the pilot had turned south towards Manchester.

The shockwave from another strike at nearby Sellafield had all but destroyed the control surfaces on the aircraft's starboard wing. With no other option, the pilot had dumped what little fuel remained and executed an emergency landing, skimming the top of Skiddaw and ploughing into the flooded outskirts of Keswick.

The President, his staff and most of the jet's crew had either died on impact or in the fireball that had engulfed the nose section. Bromden had been lucky, or unlucky, depending on how one looked at it.

Realising that the chances of rescue were practically non-existent, Bromden and the few remaining crewmembers had removed the bodies one by one, looted the nearby Booths supermarket for everything useful and settled in for a long wait. After just a fortnight, the others had left. That was the last Bromden had seen of them.

Over coffee, noodles and something dry and tasteless called Soreen malt loaf, Bromden told Jessamy about Thanatos ...

"Fifteen years ago, the International Space Station detected a rogue asteroid entering the solar system. A big one, about the size of France. It was estimated that it would pass within 200,000 miles of Earth, inside the Moon's orbit."

Much of Bromden's story was nonsense to Jessamy, but she listened in silence. She would ask Merida and Ewan what all these things meant when she saw them again.

IF she saw them again ...

"It was named Thanatos after the personification of Death in Greek mythology. The asteroid would pass very close by but would just miss us. Unfortunately, the political situation at the time changed all that. With the s-second Korean War in its fifth year, Russia, China and the United States were on the verge of going to war themselves. But with most of our nuclear weapons dismantled, it would be a long and bloody conflict fought with conventional weapons."

Jessamy sipped her coffee. It was strong and bitter and the rush of caffeine to someone unaccustomed to it made her head swim. She noticed that Bromden's stammer all but disappeared when he was discussing a topic he was passionate about.

"Why, uh ... why don't your take your jacket off?" Bromden suggested. Jessamy noticed that ever since she'd sat down, the scientist had been stealing glances at her chest and thighs.

"I'm fine, m-maybe later," Jessamy answered. She had to admit though that it was actually quite stuffy in the office.

Bromden gave a leery smirk, "I may hold you to that. Anyway, where was I?"

"War?"

"Ah, yes ... war. The Russians decided to get the first p-punch in. Waiting until Thanatos was at its closest point as it passed over the US, they launched a single missile. We guess that it was designed to hit the asteroid, make it explode and rain fiery death down on North America and Canada, leaving Asia virtually unscathed ..."

Jessamy waited for Bromden to continue, "But it didn't?"

Bromden shook his head, "Their calculations were spot on ... I've gone over them time and time again. But the problem was they hadn't been entirely sure of the asteroid's composition. They'd guessed. When it hit, the nuke didn't make the asteroid explode, it merely split it in two. One half splintered into thousands of fragments and the other half was nudged into a slowly decaying orbit around the Earth."

"And the fragments are what's been landing on us for the last ten years? The strikes?" Jessamy blurted out, pleased with herself for making the deduction.

"Yes. Every strike, every town and city annihilated, every tsunami, every million souls vapourised over the last ten years ... has been caused by a piece of Thanatos dropping out of the sky. Some no bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle, some as big as a house."

Jessamy stared at him, wide-eyed. Thanatos had always been a part of her life without her even realising. Then something occurred to her, "What about the other half, the big piece?"

Bromden continued quietly, in a more subdued tone, "When we dismantled most of our nukes, we secretly replaced them with a series of defence satellites. Satellites armed with charged particle beam weapons that could take out any target on Earth's surface with pinpoint accuracy. The Russians knew nothing about them. With much of the world's communications out, President Bibbit was on her way to authorise the use of the satellite network to destroy the remaining pieces of Thanatos. I was one of her scientific advisors."

"Did the satellites work?" Jessamy asked.

"We never got the chance to try them out. The nearest control centre is hundreds of miles south of here, near Gloucester, and all of the few personnel who knew the activation codes are probably long dead. Long dead."

"So what happens with the big asteroid?" asked Jessamy around a mouthful of noodles. She'd learned a long time ago to never pass up the chance to eat as she never knew when she'd get another chance.

Bromden looked her in the eye, "According to my calculations, in roughly twenty years time, Thanatos will hit the Earth somewhere in central Europe. The impact and resulting ash cloud will wipe out every last living thing on the planet. What we call an Extinction Level Event."

It was difficult for Jessamy to imagine how the state of the world could possibly get any worse. She chewed her malt loaf slowly, "Is there anything we can do?"

Bromden laughed, "Sure! Track down any of the top brass who knew the activation codes. Find the control centre if it's still there. IF it's still there."

"Do you have their names?"

Bromden shook his head, "Jeez girl. Don't you get it? We're all fucked! Fucked!"

"But didn't you say we have twenty years to sort this?"

"Twenty or twenty thousand. It makes no difference! We're fucked! The list is in the top desk drawer if you're that interested ..."

Watching Bromden warily, Jessamy crossed the thickly carpeted room and opened the top drawer of the President's desk. As promised, a laminated A4 sheet topped with the President's seal lay on top of all the other clutter, "General Sir Kenneth Turkle, Admiral Dale Fredrickson, Air Chief Marshal Charles Harding ..." the list went on. The once highest ranking men in the United Kingdom's military who, she had to admit, were probably all corpses by now.

"Well? Happy now?" asked Bromden. He quickly flicked his eyes to her face from where he'd been hungrily ogling her ass.

"And wh-where exactly is the control centre place?" asked Jessamy. She hadn't understood much of what Bromden had told her but it had seemed like important information that she could pass on to someone else.

Bromden was about to answer when he suddenly stiffened and held up a finger for quiet, "Ssh!"

The muffled sound of an engine from somewhere outside.

"Merida and Ewan! My friends!" Jessamy scrambled for the door, but Bromden beat her to it, snatching the assault rifle from the desk and blocking her way.

"It could be anyone," Bromden hurried up the stairs to the top deck and peered through one of the grimy windows with Jessamy following close behind.

Through the scratched perspex, Jessamy could just about make out the other inflatable, circling slowly in the oily water outside Booths supermarket.

"We have to warn them about the crocodiles," breathed Jessamy.

"No. We don't kn-know who else is out there."

"MERIDA!" shouted Jessamy at the top of her voice, "EWAN! STAY IN THE B -"

Bromden shoved her hard away from the windows with the butt of his rifle, "I said NO!"

Outside, the engine noise grew louder as Ewan steered the boat towards the jumbo jet's wing.

"Doctor Bromden, please! If they get out of the boat ..."

Bromden sighed, staring at Jessamy but flicking his eyes to the hatch, "You win. B-but if there's anyone else out there your fr-friends are on their own."

Shouldering his M16, Bromden twisted the hatch's locking lever. Jessamy trembled with fear as she waited just behind him.

"JESS?" shouted Ewan's voice from outside. Through the widening gap, Jessamy thought she could see Merida climbing out of the inflatable onto the airliner's wing.

"IN HERE! BUT STAY IN THE BOAT!"

Bromden pushed the hatch wide and raised his assault rifle, "Stay where you are."

In the inflatable, Ewan automatically raised his crossbow. Merida paused, one foot on the jumbo jet's wing.

To their right, a scaly snout broke the surface ...

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!

Bromden sprayed the surface of the water with bullets where he guessed the crocodile was about to emerge.

"EWAN, NO!" Jessamy screamed.

But Ewan had misinterpreted Bromden's action as hostility towards them. He fired his crossbow ...

Bromden stumbled backwards with Ewan's crossbow bolt embedded in his larynx, his rubber soled trainers squeaking on the wet metal. Jessamy caught him and lowered him gently down as he coughed bubbles of dark red blood.

"Jess? You okay? Who is this? Where's Mr Scanlan?" Merida had rushed up the wing to her side.

"He was shooting at the fucking crocodiles!" shouted Jessamy through angry tears, "Mr Scanlan is dead."

Bromden gurgled as he tried to speak, gasping for breath.

"I'm so s-sorry. Ewan didn't think," Jessamy squeezed the dying scientist's hand as Bromden clutched desperately at her. Then, with one last rattling gasp, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he was still.

Jessamy gently laid Bromden's head down on the airliner's wing and rose to her feet.

"I'm sorry Jess," called Ewan, "I thought he was shooting at us!"

"You stupid, stupid ... FUCKING TWAT!" Jessamy cried, advancing towards him with her fists clenched at her sides.

Ewan stood his ground as Jessamy advanced, tossing his unloaded crossbow back into the boat. She slapped him across the face, hard, then punched him in the shoulder, knocking him back a step, "Jess, I ..."

"You stupid, stupid BASTARD!" Jessamy hit him again and again, forcing him back until, with a loud squeak of walking boot soles on moss streaked metal, Ewan slipped backwards and with an almighty splash fell into the floodwater.

Jessamy looked stunned, "We have to get him out!"

"What's the rush Jess? He can swim!" called Merida.

"Because there's fucking crocodiles! Get Bromden's gun!"

A few yards away, a black tail churned the water ...

"EWAN! Grab my hand!" Jessamy lay on her stomach, leaning over the edge of the wing. Ewan flailed around, wiping filth from his eyes, still shocked by the vehemence of her attack.

Something dark sped towards them, just below the surface ...

"Meri, shoot it!"

Perhaps it was the desperation he saw in Jessamy's eyes that made Ewan realise how serious his situation was. He lunged forward and grabbed her hand and began scrabbling and climbing back up on to the sloping wing.

"DUCK!" shouted Merida and let loose a volley from the M16.

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!

Bullets whipped into the swirling water as Jessamy strained with all her strength to lift Ewan out of danger. With one final grunt of exertion, she fell back as Ewan slumped, panting, onto the jumbo jet's wing.

. . .

The trip back to Threlkeld was a subdued affair. Ewan found the other inflatable, trapped against one of the decorative slate pillars outside the entrance to Booths supermarket. They loaded it with as much as it would carry from Bromden's stash on Air Force One and towed it back behind the other.