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2

I was headed home after the end of my three-to-midnight shift, driving down an empty country road to our farm. I inherited the property a couple of years earlier, but have never been able to think of it as mine. It still feels like my father’s, while I’m only the caretaker until I figure out what to do with it.

After coming around a bend in the road, I noticed a glow off in the woods. The forest here is dense, and the treetops had been sheared off in a path leading straight to those lights. My heart sank—this looked like a plane crash, and those flickering lights could’ve been a fire.

I’d been off duty for almost an hour, but the medic switch in my brain flipped itself back on right away. We’re legally bound to assist in any emergency we might come across, on duty or otherwise. I was spent, but the adrenaline surge woke me up as if I’d pounded a half-dozen espresso shots.

This area had always been a well-known dead zone, and sure enough my phone was useless. I kept an emergency-band radio in my pickup, but when I tried to call in there was nothing but static. That was strange, but I couldn’t lose time fussing over things out of my control. I hopped out and grabbed my personal first-aid gear out of the tailgate, and pulled a headlamp from one of the outside pouches. I put it on and began picking my way through the woods, toward what I hoped wasn’t a burning aircraft.

It was a rough couple hundred yards of crashing through underbrush. My feet kept getting tangled in vines and I stumbled, falling flat on my face. I reached up to feel the fresh cut on my right cheek—wet, but not too bad. So long as I wasn’t dripping my own blood onto the patient, I would deal with it later.

I made it to the crash site, which had pummeled a clearing out of the trees. Thankfully there was no fire, but there was an awful lot of smoke. The lights which had looked like fire from a distance were coming from the aircraft itself, some steady, some pulsing intermittently. Planes have running lights so this wasn’t particularly surprising, but these weren’t the familiar red and green strobes. There was a persistent yellow glow coming from one end, which I assumed were the engines. If those things were still turning then I’d give them a wide berth. Getting scorched by jet exhaust or sucked down an intake were things to avoid.

The plane’s fuselage was pretty banged up but still mostly intact, with skin as lustrous as polished silver despite the damage. It was shaped like a flattened cigar, so I assumed the wings had been torn off on impact. No tail, either. Maybe it was military?

Hopefully none of the passengers had been thrown clear, but even more so I hoped none were trapped inside. If I needed the Jaws of Life to pry anyone free, they’d be screwed until more help arrived. Airplanes have emergency locator beacons that automatically go off in a crash, so even if I couldn’t get through to anyone, somebody would be on their way soon.

That part I was right about. Exactly who “somebody” was would come as a surprise, though much later.

For now, I had to concentrate on doing first things first. That meant finishing my survey of the scene to make sure it was safe to get to work, though “safe” is an elusive term when it involves wrecked machinery and there’s no one else on scene. All bets would be off once I crawled inside this thing.

I didn’t see any bodies around the crash site, which made sense as there were no obvious breaches. No windows, for that matter, which made it really odd. Was it a drone? This thing seemed awfully big to be one of those. I called out, announcing EMS on the scene, but nobody answered. They had to be inside. It would’ve helped if there was a door somewhere. Eventually I found a section that had been torn open, and I could see partway inside.

I pulled on a pair of tough work gloves from my trauma bag and started prying away at the damaged section. It was very light stuff, but strong. The crumpled parts gave way as easily as tin foil, but the intact sections wouldn’t budge no matter how much weight I put into it.

Not that I had a lot of weight to begin with, being barely five feet tall and a hundred pounds soaking wet. The younger firefighters nicknamed me “Tiny,” but my size also made me a prime candidate for confined-space rescues. Think caves, collapsed buildings, mangled-up car wrecks. I can wheedle my way into most anything, which shuts the big guys up when I’m able to get into places they can’t.

I didn’t know much about airplanes other than what we learned in heavy rescue school, in particular what to look out for. One this size would have two pilots, maybe a flight attendant (“stewardess” had long since fallen out of favor). Probably passengers, but not always, so I was looking for at least two victims inside. I pulled aside a section of crushed metal and got a peek into what was left of the cabin. It was all white, or at least parts of it used to be. There’d been a fire, that much I could tell from the partially scorched interior.

That’s when I saw an arm sticking out from beneath a panel. It was thin, with unusually long fingers. I didn’t think much about this, as blunt force trauma can do awful things to a body. It appeared ashen under my headlamp, and gray skin is never a good sign. If this guy was already in pallor, he could have been dead anywhere from fifteen minutes up to a couple of hours.

I reached for his wrist to search for a pulse, but found nothing. I could move the arm, so rigor hadn’t set in yet. That meant they’d been here about two hours at most.

That was when the arm moved.

I recoiled in shock and banged my head on a dislodged panel. Postmortem muscle contractions are a thing, but it was nothing I’d ever experienced firsthand. What was most unnerving was when the hand opened up to grasp mine. Dead bodies can do some weird stuff, but they don’t do that.

Holy hell, this guy was still alive! I unwrapped his unusually elongated fingers from around mine and reached for his wrist again. It took a while to find it, but there was a pulse now. Thready, which explained the pallor. Something I couldn’t yet see had to be pressing against him and restricting blood flow.

It was decision time. Should I wait for heavy rescue to arrive, or keep making my way inside? A crashed aircraft is by definition of dubious structural integrity. I’m no engineer, but those are the kinds of questions we’re trained to ask ourselves before climbing into wrecked vehicles: namely, is this thing likely to come down on top of me?

I pushed against the side panels with my foot and braced my back against the bare metal behind me. Nothing gave way, and I didn’t hear any telltale creaks or groans that might signal impending collapse. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was all I had at the moment.

Besides the headlamp, there was a flashlight on my belt. I took it out and shined the beam into the small opening near my patient’s arm. It looked like there was enough space to work in, but it would be close quarters.

I shoved the trauma bag in ahead of me before crawling in up to my shoulders. If I could do that comfortably, then the rest of me could make it all the way through. “Hang tight, I’m coming in,” I announced to whoever was inside.

It turned out I didn’t have to worry about space. This machine had plenty of it after I got past all that crumpled metal. This part of the cabin was mostly intact, lined with soft paneling in varying shades of white mounted within a thin metallic framework. I made another quick assessment of the scene, looking both for victims and any signs of immediate danger. Smoke and fire would be the big ones, which were blessedly absent. No petroleum smells, either. Had it simply run out of fuel?

Searching the cabin with my headlamp and flashlight I counted three patients; two were in matching light gray skintight jumpsuits. One of them was the guy with the pinned arm. The third was up front, a long-haired blond fellow dressed in white. He sat in a sleekly curved seat, slumped over what I assumed were the controls. The instrument panel was devoid of any actual instruments, but I knew enough to recall that the latest jets had what they call “glass cockpits” which replace all of the dials and gauges with computer screens. I still had no idea what kind this was, but it was definitely new and very high-tech.

I turned to my first patient, the one with the trapped arm. I wasn’t looking at his face yet; my first impression was that he wore an odd kind of bug-eyed helmet. Again, this was unusual but not a complete surprise. This had to be a military jet, and who knew what sort of funky gear they wore?

He was pinned, but not badly. One of those interior panels was pressed against him. When I moved it I found it was as light as the metal skin outside, but its frame wouldn’t give way easily. It didn’t look like it was keeping anything from falling, so I put my shoulder against it and shoved off with my feet. There were scraping and groaning noises as it finally began to move, hopefully enough to pry this fellow loose.

His arm was free now. I could feel his pulse beneath my fingertips, much stronger with the blood flow unrestricted. A good sign. I began checking the rest of him for any signs of trauma—limbs out of place, bleeding, the obvious stuff. Now that there was a pulse, I pulled out my stethoscope and began listening for heart and respiratory activity. It took a while to find it, and when I finally landed on a good spot there still wasn’t much to speak of. His heart rate was weak and irregular and his breathing was shallow. This guy could crash any minute.

I checked my watch—twelve minutes since I arrived on scene. There still weren’t any sirens, and it’s not like I carried a defibrillator in my go bag. If this guy coded and I had to give CPR, that meant the others would be left to fend for themselves. This was not a good situation, but I could only assess one person at a time, so I had to quickly finish this guy and move on to the others. I began exploring with my fingertips, looking for more signs of trauma. I needed to check his pupils for response, so I reached for that strange bug-eyed helmet visor.

It wasn’t a helmet. It was hard to imagine how I missed that; maybe it would’ve been more obvious in daylight. That was his actual head, egg-shaped and of the same gray pallor, with glistening almond-shaped eyes, big and black as night.

My mind began racing. Already amped-up from the rush of being first on scene, now my heart was about to burst out of my chest like a creature from one of those space alien movies . . . 

Space alien.

The words tried to escape my mouth but I was dumbstruck. My attention was drawn away from my patient—which should never happen—for another look around this wrecked whatever-it-was.

It hadn’t resembled any airplane I’d ever seen in the first place, and now it looked even less so. To begin with, there were only a few seats. The rest of the cabin was empty, nothing but those spongy white wall panels. Where did everyone sit? It reminded me of a padded cell, of the kind sometimes used for mental patients. Maybe that’s where I needed to be myself, because this was all too crazy. For being in a crash, the interior was remarkably intact. There were a few things that looked like they might be out of place, but then I had no reference to judge against. It looked like nearly all of the damage was absorbed by the outer hull or airframe or whatever it was called. Just this one area I’d been able to crawl into got crunched, but the occupants had obviously been knocked around pretty hard.

I turned back to my patient. He turned his head to face me, but I couldn’t tell if there was any recognition in those jet-black eyes. The adrenaline was really pumping now; my hands were shaking and my stomach felt like it was doing backflips. I wiped my palms on my pants, suddenly aware that I was sweating profusely.

I heard movement. Something was shuffling behind me. A hand gripped my shoulder, firm but not in a threatening way. There was a voice but I couldn’t tell what it was saying. I felt a pinprick on my right temple.

The cabin swirled around me before everything went dark.


I woke up the next morning in my bed. Everything was normal, which wouldn’t have seemed odd except that I was on my back with my grandmother’s old quilt draped over me. I never sleep this way—I’m almost always on my stomach with the quilt and sheets in a tangle around my legs.

I must have totally zonked out, but that didn’t make any sense either. I was as alert as if I’d been up for hours and finished off the day’s first pot of coffee. My blue utility pants were draped over the back of a chair by the window, and my go bag was tucked away in a corner.

I never do that. The bag stays in the garage when it’s not in my truck bed, and the uniform gets stripped off in the mud room before I go in the house. There’s a good reason for this: we’re exposed to all manner of biological nastiness on the job, so every medic with half a brain strips down before coming inside. It’s basic decontamination. I was also still wearing my uniform T-shirt from the night before, so out of caution I’d have to strip the bed and spray the mattress down with Lysol.

I was never this careless. Maybe I was more wiped out than I thought, because this was not what my normal routine looked like. It was almost like I’d been led home and put to bed after staying too late at the bar after work.

What did I do after work last night, for that matter? I was on the late shift, so hitting the bar at midnight with the guys would’ve been a definite possibility. I felt a jolt of panic, that I somehow got blackout drunk and oh god I’m an alcoholic.

No. I was confident that wasn’t the case. Two drinks were my usual limit; it’s been that way since college because I don’t like losing control. It’s not fun anymore if I can’t drive myself home.

Did some sleazeball slip something into my beer? Did I get roofied? If so, they’d been awfully polite about it, what with tucking me into my own bed and putting my stuff away nice and neat.

That couldn’t be it either, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I hadn’t made it home on my own. Somebody had helped me, maybe one of the other medics who responded to that last run . . . 

The last run. That was it. I hadn’t been on duty, just passing by on my way home. It had been a plane crash, that much I remembered. It was all such a whirlwind, almost too much to handle. Good thing those other guys showed up . . . 

Who, though? I couldn’t recall which house responded, and I’d have remembered if it were one of our own. Maybe they’d come from the next county over; we’re spread far enough apart that jurisdictions get blurry. Ultimately it comes down to who can get on scene first.

I reached for my phone and saw it was dead. I must have forgotten to plug it in, because the battery was completely drained. The clock on my nightstand said it was almost noon. I wasn’t due at the station for another couple of hours, so I flicked on the TV. A plane crash would be all over the news.

I made a quick run to the bathroom, then impatiently sat through the last few minutes of The Price Is Right, waiting for the local news. I endured the flashy graphics and earnest music, impatient for them to get to last night’s big story.

At ten past noon, I was still waiting after nothing but weather and farm reports and human-interest nonsense about some old lady who lost her cat. The only halfway interesting bit was another report of some farmer’s missing cattle, but not one word about a plane crash. Odd, but I couldn’t dwell on it. It was time to get ready for work.


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