The Brightlings

9. Angels One

The cottage is gently trembling. The mattress springs sing out from beneath him, their buzzing metallic drone strangely melodic. He lifts his head from the pillow and drowsily looks around. Everything looks the same, but it is somehow different. The room is still glowing orange, but this orange is not the flicker of the oil lamp. His belongings are nowhere to be seen. There is some sort of commotion occurring outside.

He staggers over to the window and peers out, his nose stopping the glass from vibrating in its frame. He has a clear view out over the orchard. The scene unfolding before him is jarring. A fire is raging, out of control, in the fields just beyond the edge of the village. The flames are reaching high into the night sky, and the hedgerows and surrounding crops are catching light in a series of smaller fires wherever the sparks land.

He can hear raised voices, as shadowy figures appear in the street and begin to run towards the scene. A siren sounds, cutting through the hubbub like a wailing baby with a megaphone. The trembling stops.

He reaches for his clothes, but they aren't where he left them. He rummages in a drawer and finds a pair of trousers and a thick woolen jumper. They are not his. The fabric feels rough and itchy against his skin, and the trousers are an unusual fit. He throws them on as fast as he can, and runs downstairs calling out to Lucy and Cookie. There is no response. He looks in their rooms, but the beds are empty. He flicks the light switch in the hallway. There is still no power.

When he reaches the front door, he steps into the boots on the doormat, but they feel big on his feet. They certainly aren't his high tops. They are made of sturdy leather, and feel much heavier. He feels around on the floor, but he can't find his own pair. As he leaves the cottage, he notices that there is no car in the driveway.

He can hear more shouting. Somebody is screaming. The people in the road are all running towards the fields, carrying rakes, shovels and hosepipes. A man shoves a metal bucket filled with water into his hands, and tells him to follow. He can hear distant gunfire, and there are planes flying overhead. In the distance, rockets of some kind are being fired high into the air, before exploding with a puff of white smoke, while several spotlights are sweeping the sky, illuminating the underside of the lowest clouds. He is scared, but he follows.

When they reach the fields the source of the flames becomes apparent. Not far from the road, an enourmous wing, with two large engines still attached, has come to rest, its tip partly buried underneath the soil. One of the engines is ablaze, roaring like a furnace, its large propellor twisted and buckled from unexpected contact with the ground. The other propellor is missing.

A group of men are setting up a hand pump with a hose running from a water trough to try and extinguish the fire, but the water is not effective on the burning fuel. He can feel the heat on his skin. The acrid smoke is making him feel sick.

The blazing fuselage of the plane has ground to a halt approximately fifty metres away from the severed wing. The corn has been flattened, and the soil has been ripped up where it flipped and slid into its final resting place, straddling a hedgerow between two trees.

Flames are leaping out from inside the smashed windows of the cockpit, and licking around the upturned nose section. The tail fin has snapped off underneath the weighty bulk, but the second wing is somehow still attached. Panicked villagers rush around the wreckage, beating the burning corn with their shovels, throwing soil onto the embers, and struggling to keep the flames from engulfing the entire field. It is already clear that they will have to let the fire run its course.

Away from the danger, three women are standing over a man in a dirty grey uniform with a stained lifejacket tied over the top. One of the women has a shotgun trained on his chest, while another points a torch at him. The man is babbling incoherently, and his eyes roll back into his head as he clutches at a large wound on his leg. A sharp slither of metal is protruding from the shin of his blood soaked trousers, just above the top of his black leather boot. He looks terrified, but calms a little as the third woman applies a tourniquet above his knee.