Desertcrawler

2

When his eyes opened, Jake found himself still buckled to his seat. He could not feel his legs. His back pained tremendously. It felt like his neck would snap. His eyes hurt like hell. He could smell the reek of burnt engine oil. He could taste blood. He saw flames and smoke. He felt the heat gushing. It took another minute for him to be completely aware of where he was and what had happened. He removed his seat belt. He was pinned on the seat by the nose machinery that lay crushing his legs. He pushed it with all his might. The heat was getting stronger. After much effort, he managed to push the machinery back enough to get himself out of there. He held on to the backseat and pulled himself. He moved, but a terrible pain shot up from his sausage legs. He managed to drag his legs along with his torso out of the cockpit. The plane was much larger for a lone man. It was supposed to be a family plane. It had cost Jake a fortune to buy this. His father had partly paid and part of the payment he loaned from the Zonal Bank. It had a fridge, a double-doored one. On the lower part of the fridge, he kept canned food and stuff, which was empty now; there had been no proper store in the Reserve. On the upper berth, he kept his liquor bottles. He held the handle of the fridge with his right hand and a shelf in the wall with his left to pull himself up. Opening the fridge and keeping the balance at the same time was difficult for him but he did it. He picked up a bottle of Rum and let himself down on the floor slowly. He sat there, leaning against the fridge and gulped down the rum neat. A few draughts later, his senses blurred. He had not touched liquor in the last three years. The Masters of the Reserve saw to that, just like they saw that he doesn’t get to call home. Or receive any correspondence, for that matter. 

The rum made him think of Mary and Lily. They didn't know he was coming. They might already have considered him dead. Did Mary find someone else to fill his absence? No, that was so unlike Mary. He had tried calling home after he was released, with his Portable Communicator, which the overseers called PorComm. But they must have changed the number or something, the one he remembered was not available anymore. There’s no other way of getting to them. He wished he had a phone or a laptop, he could have tried emailing them. But his old ones were confiscated by the Capitalists and where they had taken them, only they know. He was lucky that the Solo-Jet was there just where he had parked it when he first went to that hellhole. And now, he was stuck in a plane crash. But where was he? As far as he can remember the way from the Gellanum Reserves to Zone 13 didn’t have a single inch of uninhabited land. So he must have crashed in some city, or a town at the least. So, why was nobody coming to get him? Well, maybe they’re afraid or something. No matter, he can wait till help arrives. He will finish the rum till then. He took another sip and placed the bottle down. His eyes fell to something lying under the passenger’s seat. It was only two arm's length, but Jake thought over a minute whether he should see what it was or not, such was his exhaustion. In the end, he crawled towards it and picked it up. It was a ball of glossy paper. He uncurled the ball. It was the photograph of Mary and Lily. He must have dropped it during the crash. He brought it closer to his face and said to the two smiling faces in the photograph, “I am coming home, girls. I am coming home.”