Nocturne

2: arrival

Below me, metal and concrete buildings turned to wood and grass landscape as the helicopter zipped through the infinite azure sky. But soon, that landscape would probably be marred by the ongoing war.

The helicopter's frame screamed as its cockpit was sheared open. The cockpit windows were seemingly clawed open with long jagged streaks interrupting the otherwise uniform bulletproof glass. The pilots there fared no better.

Their bodies were cut into ribbons; flesh, bone, blood, and organs were all visible and exposed to the air. A strawberry jam of what seemed like blood, bile, mucus, and urine spilled out from the cockpit into the cabin. It would be inaccurate to say they were filleted alive; they were finely sliced, like human charcuterie with bones. There were no discernible details other than small strips of crimson. Nothing that could be considered a face, or even an identifiable body.

This was beyond the work of the most deranged and ill of serial killers.

Looking around, the soldiers were clearly unnerved. Some were facing the floor, gloved hands covering their mouths. Others had a different reaction, but were visibly disturbed. Eyes were wide in disbelief, and skin was paler than alabaster. Aoi, being a doctor, also didn't have as much of a reaction as I did behind my mask. She maintained what I could barely make out to be a poker face. Behind his bike helmet, Thaddeus seemed to be retching from seeing the very dead pilots. I couldn't see Cynthia clearly from where I was sitting, but it seemed like her head was down with her hands covering where her mouth would have been.

It was gory, sure. Blood and guts spilled everywhere. But gore would soon become the norm. With all of the fighting that will inevitably happen as a result of a Malthusian catastrophe, much of the peace that everyone is used to will vanish like a piece of paper exposed to flame. The sooner I adapt to the gore, the better.

I want to live. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want my life of 80 years to be trisected.

My life is something that is irrecoverable if I lose it. If I throw away my morality, I can always get it back as long as there's nothing major stopping me from doing so. But if I lose my life, then whatever happens is out of my control.

I'll do whatever it takes to live.

I braced for impact, curling into fetal position. I saw everyone else bracing for impact in their own way, which looked pretty similar to standard brace position on commercial aircraft. As the Chinook hit terra firma, its landing gear broke with compression fractures.

Flames that flared the colors of a tropical sea engulfed the sides of the helicopter. Black haze seeped into the cabin, eventually obfuscating anything above waist height. The air was scalding; the passengers of the chopper were the filling of a very large roulade.

I crawled out of Muspelheim, and waited for the others to come out. The smell of the burning helicopter reminded me of the barbecues I'd used to go to with my parents as a child. Thaddeus, Cynthia, and 2 soldiers crawled out. Then, Aoi, and another soldier crawled out. Cynthia and the soldiers were covered in burns. Surprisingly, Aoi and Thaddeus emerged without injury.

The air suddenly chilled. Dew visibly forming on the grass around my feet confirmed that this was a physical phenomenon, and unrelated to my emotions. I glanced at the helicopter, and the blue flames froze into crystal ice.

The scene around me was impossible. It was a tundra in the middle of Washington state during the summer. Nay, the whole day was impossible. The front of a bulky and armored helicopter nonchalantly sheared off. Walking corpses avoiding damage from gunfire. The inhuman motions of an ill person who by all accounts should have been weakened to the point of being bedridden. I'm not religious, so I'm not going to credit this to some god. But it is very unusual for laws of physics to be broken. There are glaring violations of the first law of thermodynamics.