“I don’t want to die.” I whisper, staring down the length of my FN Fal into the face of the creature that stands before me. “I want to live.”
I wonder if it wants to live as much as I do.
I feel so guilty standing here, as strange as that sounds, whining about how I want to live when all around me are the ghosts of all my comrades. Men who have reason to live, when I have none. Ten men lay dead around me; six of those have families, wives children, brothers, sisters anything. Those that love them and whom they love. And I ain’t got no-one. Haven’t seen my father since I was five, mothers dead, no grandparents, brother overdosed six months ago and my sister, well she don’t like me very much and the feeling is mutual.
There’s no one who would mourn the loss of me.
It’s funny how you can remember every detail about the day that you stared death in the face.
0945 hrs on the dot. In the morning sky we see an orange glow to the south. We can’t tell what it is due to the low cloud, blasted Falklands. We haven’t seen the sun since we hit soil at Goose Green. But damned if we didn’t feel the impact shake the ground so hard that Tully lost his footing on the wet grass and went down amidst a flurry of curses and coffee. We all had a good laugh at Tully’s expense. Good old Tully, three kids all under eight and a wife…such a rare beauty she is.
I’m looking into the obsidian eyes of this wanker and thinking how am I going to tell Katy what happened to her husband.
After Tully had picked himself up we sat chewing on hard biscuits and speculating about what it was. Meteor was the popular one, that or an Argie spy plane but I didn’t even know they had one.
1021 hrs and the OC walks up. Lieutenant Wells tells us that one of our Vulcan bombers has been shot down and the Argies are boasting about it all over the news. That’s bullshit of course and we know it. It’s time to go and check it out.
“It isn’t far,” Wells says, “Just over ten kilometers.”
“Any further and we’re off the island.” Christansen says. Christy with a pregnant wife when we left, his first kid, he’ll never even get to see the baby now.
Mouth is so dry, if I could bring some up I’d spit in this bastard’s face. Maybe if I start to inch backwards I could get out of this. Or maybe that would make it shoot. I don’t want to trip over a body and I can’t take my eyes off it.
It took three hours at double time to find the wreckage. We would have arrived there sooner except for an Argentine patrol that had the same idea as us, we sent them packin’.
First glance told us what we had known all along: it was no Vulcan. Maybe three times the size of one but roughly the same shape with the delta wing and all. The nose of the vessel was in the ocean and out of sight under the surf; the arse end was on the beach, shiny with sea spray. We moved towards it in silence. Not really sure what to say, only Wells spoke and that was to HQ over the radio.
I can still see Wells knocking back pints with us at the local. Not many OC’s would do that. Another good man down and another reason to take the risk.
Ashton and Grilky were the first to reach it and they scrambled onto the wing. Tully and I covered them. Germaine noticed that the…plane, for lack of a better word, was slipping slowly into the sea, being dragged by the tide. We could see where the sandbank ended and then the water turned black, must’ve been a long way down. Or long enough. I could tell that Wells wanted to leave but then Grilky called out that he had found a hatch open and I guess that curiosity won over. Wells ordered us in.
The hatch lead to a narrow room that opened into a larger hall with ribbed walls, enough space behind the ribs for two men to hide if one crouched. And that’s just what we did. In twos we moved from rib to rib towards the front of the plane.
It never really occurred to us what we were in until we actually saw them. Must admit that I thought it must have been some sort of Yank spy plane or new transport. We were all huddled around the last of the ribs before a door that must have lead into the cockpit. With rifles facing forward we all sat there wondering what to do. To our surprise the door opened and standing was this thing that weren’t no Yank. It was dressed in fatigues like us except it was all mottled browns, boots, helmets, webbing. The sucker had these round bulgy black eyes with others smaller ones set all around, like a spider’s, in a T-shaped head, four sets of arms. Two stubby little ones that stuck out from the front of its chest and two normal ones with fat, three fingered hands and legs bent backwards like a birds. It stood there and stared at us as shocked at our appearance as we were of its. Behind it I could see others that were starting to look towards us.
We all stood there for what felt like ages, not moving. I think it was Ashton who fired first and I don’t know why he did. The next thing, however, the alien had a hole in its chest I could put my fist in and all this white shit was flyin’ out. It was falling backwards. The others I had seen drew guns, heavy rifles and pistols. Then everything seemed to happen at once. Without even realising it we were in what looked more like a bridge than a cockpit. Weapons firing all over the place. Someone to my left went down and then Lieutenant Wells did; I didn’t see what hit him but I could smell the result - charred flesh and cloth. He fell in front of me and I tried to grab his body. The dead weight over balanced me and, rifle firing, I went down, not without seeing my rounds punch into the chest of one of the beasts and blow apart the head of another.
The sounds of the alien technology and our FN Fal’s continued as I found my feet and then stopped. The silence alone could have killed me. I was hyper-alert, though I couldn’t recall what had just happened and a scrape of movement spun me to my right. My FN Fal was up and ready to kill, but so was its gun. That kept me from the trigger and must have worked for it too, ‘cause it didn’t shoot.
I didn’t know if I was out of ammo or not. Easy enough to find out and my finger flexed. If I was out though then I was doomed. Maybe it’s out of ammo and that’s why it hasn’t fired yet or doesn’t it know either? The muzzle of its rifle is at my throat and mine is on its.
Tully… Katy, how do I tell her?
“I don’t want to die,” I whisper, “I want to live.”
All I have to do is just pull the trigger to find out.
