Skye City: The Darkness of Emmilyn

The Clean Up

No dead bodies have been discovered so far, but this is one big airship and no one appears to be counting heads. The most badly injured have been taken away, out of sight, treated as best we could, left in their cabins to suffer, I mean heal. Many of the windows have shattered, letting in tree branches and a gentle breeze — I had not even noticed. The entire contents of the bar have been broken and spilled and given how badly I could use a drink for my nerves, that is a tragedy.

'What happens now?' Anguson booms from the middle of the deck, attracting all eyes.

'That's a good question.' The captain breaks from the crowd to approach the cage fighter. 'No one is gonna be sending a rescue party our way and I've no idea where the nearest settlement is.'

'Haven't you checked the holoscreen?' Anguson says.

'Bit of a problem. It's trapped inside the cabin which seems completely mangled. We could not even open the door wide enough to squeeze inside. Good job we got the crew out before the impact. There would have been zero chance of survival,' the captain says.

'No one can get a holowatch signal out here. Must be seriously remote for that. But you must have some idea where we are,' Anguson says.

'Last I checked, we were about one hundred miles from the border with Rexha and Geffenden. We could be in either of those countries or still in Anatolia. All I know is we are somewhere in the Boösaule mountains and the landscape is about as inhospitable as we're likely to find. We could be trapped here a while,' the captain says.

'You have any idea what happened?' Anguson says.

'Not a damn clue. Something brought us down though and logic suggests it could only have been enemy fire, but our sensors never detected a damn thing, according to the crew,' the captain says.

'Well, this has thrown one huge spanner in the works. We need to think of a plan,' Anguson says.

'Yes. First thing, don't panic. We have a decent amount of food here. We can survive a while if need be. We should get this place cleaned up and make life as comfortable as possible until we figure out our next step. Also, if we can take a look around outside, reach a good vantage point, we might get lucky. We could be closer to a settlement than we think. And we might still be able to find a way into the cabin. It's not unthinkable the holoscreen is still functional. But we're gonna need to switch to backup power though. Luckily, I have a power supply in the cargo hold,' the captain says.

The captain marches away, and the passengers who were listening intently are now murmuring among themselves, some panicking about the lack of information, others trying to remain composed. Some are already taking the first practical steps by replacing the upturned chairs and tables. We may as well join them, make the chaos less chaotic since we could be staying here a while.

'Are there any brooms?' I say.

'Through here,' a member of the cabin crew says and I follow him into a kitchen area behind the bar which is located near the front of the airship. The place is a mess of broken plates and scattered cutlery, but most of the food seems to be securely stored. Seems rather lucky. We grab sweeping brooms from a cupboard full of plastic bottles which have tumbled from the shelves.

Others enter the kitchen, collecting mops and binbags and whatever else they can find to help with the clean-up effort. And we spend hours salvaging whatever we can and sweeping all the crap into a corner and shovelling it into binbags until we have a mountain of rubbish which is just left near the front of the deck. Eventually all the food and drink has been mopped up and the place would be rather spiffing, were it not for the splintered deck and tree branches poking through the windows.

I join Nelson near the clearest broken window and peer outside but not much is visible through the foliage, other than slivers of grey sky. All I can make out is we are stranded within a dense jungle, but that is stating the exceedingly fucking obvious.

'We'll have to get the windows boarded up,' Nelson says.

'Yeah, that would be one hell of a fall, and if it rains...'

'And the animals could get inside too. We could be staying here a while so we'll need to stay as safe as possible.' Nelson clutches my hand.

'You don't think those demons—'

'Doubtful, they arrived in the cities and we're miles from civilisation,' Nelson says.

'So just regular mutants then?' I say.

'Nothing our rifles can't handle,' Nelson says.