literature

In the dead of night

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In the dead of night
By AleXander

In the dead of night, on a small rural road in Ohio sits a modest farmhouse that nestled in the middle of a wheat field.  As the wind blows the light of the moon catches on the waving wheat and it moves like waves in the ocean.  Billy a 16-year-old boy from Chicago comes to this, his uncle’s farm every summer.  Here he meets his friend Susie who lives one house over, a mile away.  In the past few years she sneaks out of her house and meets him in the loft of the barn.  Its a traditional and cliché red but instead of hay the loft was converted into an apartment for billy and the bottom is now a garage and workshop for his uncle.  The young lovers lay in Billy’s bed post coitus looking up at the full moon through the loft’s upper open doors.

“You know” Susie says, “we haven’t been back there since 1972”

Billy laughs then chimes in, “unless you believe that YouTube video about Apollo 20”

“Have you decided where you’re going to school yet? Susie asks

Billy’s grin diapers and he sits in silence for a moment before speaking.  “I was thinking about going to the U of A, they have a good space program”

Susie breaks her gaze from the sky and fights back tears, “we have only one more summer after this one.  Then I may never see you again.”

Billy holds her tight and try’s to think of something that would reassure her that this is not the end.  Something that would keep her from crying no matter if it were true or not.  Billy looks up at the moon.  The moon has always been a constant in Billy’s life, hanging above him.  This night though, it was different.  Billy strains to focus on what’s different about it today.  “Is” Billy begins,  “is the moon…is part of the moon on fire?”

Susie sits confused and looks at Billy, sees his level of concentration and looks towards the sky, straining to see what he sees

Somewhere between the moon and earth, is a craft entering our atmosphere.  Its outer hull glows white with the heat of friction.  The hull plates strain against the welds and bolts that keep them in place as the craft speeds towards the earth.  The engines of the ship pivot and move to keep the little round ship on a steady course.  Inside the craft, what we would call lights, bells, and whistles are going off as the 3-man crew try to keep the ship from flying apart or falling out of the sky

The pilot of the craft tells the navigator to get the rest of the crew in the environmental suits.  The ship is going down and there is no stopping it now.  The pilot hits what we would call buttons and external wings extend into position.  The pilot tells the co-pilot to eject the rescue buoy and he pushes a few buttons, outside the ship a door in the back opens and a buoy rockets out and flies upward into space setting up orbit ant sending out a signal

On the ship you could almost hear a ping as the first bolt gets sheared off, lifting up an edge of the first part of the outer hull.  If the heat shield goes then they are all screwed.  The flotsam from the welds melts with the extreme heat of reentry.  The engine exhaust ports glow white hot.  With another ping, the second bolt is gone and the shielding folds back.  This houses the hydrogen scoops, which collects the fuel for the engines.  The duct work heats up igniting the hydrogen, sending a chain reaction down and blowing out engine number two.  

The ship's reentry is rocky already but when engine number two blows out the whole ship reacts violently.  The captain is thrown back and the copilot struggles to reach the master shut down control panel.  With a few passes of the buttons the last remaining engine goes cold.  All the lights on the ship go dark and the ship goes eerilycalm.  The auxiliary power kicks in and the control panel lights up again.  The copilot gets into the Manuel control seat and the captain checks the damage display on the main computer

Parts rain down from the sky, as the ship breaks apart.  A trail of flaming debit follows behind the broken little ship as it hurdles towards its final fate.  This area is dark, no streetlights, no cars and just one house.  The captain bull’s-eyes on the farm house lights and uses that as a point to land, he has no idea if the area is clear or not, with the engines down and working on only aux power the captain is flying blind.  The copilot struggles to keep the ship in the air and on target but they are dropping to fast.  The navigator coms on the flight deck and the captain orders him to get every one strapped in to the emergency restraints…including the navigator himself.  The navigator runs off and the captain relays his plan to the copilot, a cold restart of engine one.

The ship is below airplane height and falling fast when the captain gets the all clear from the navigator.  The captain types in the start up code in the computer and shoots his copilot a look.  With no words exchanged they know what’s about to happen, what they need to do, what will happen to them.  The captain hits what we would call the enter button and the engine roars to life with the same intensity that the other one exploded.  The ship starts to shake and with the main computer on line you can see that half of the heat shields are missing, the secondary hull exposed and beginning to strain under the extreme pressure.  The Captain retracts the s-foils and the wings revert into their main position, the jet screams as the captain pushes the throttle to full power, the ship starts to rotate, spinning it like a Frisbee.  The captain tries to stand his ground but the centripetal force pins him to the wall.  As the ship turns faster the captain is trapped unable to shut it down.  The copilot unstraps himself from his chair and flies across the ship crashing onto the control panel.  He shuts down the engines and the ship goes quiet again.

From inside the ship you can hear something striking the hull; from outside the ship you can see how the engine ignites the tops of the trees as it skims across the canopy of the forest that borders the farm.  The ship comes with in feet of striking the barn the two young lovers are in and with in inches of taking the roof off the house.  The ship strikes the ground throwing up dirt and wheat, bouncing off the earth and slowing the ships roll.  The ship strikes again and bounces off once more then strikes and slides across the field clear to the other side leaving a wake of burnt wheat and broken soil.  It almost smells like baking bread.  

The navigator unstraps himself after the ship comes to a complete stop.  He checks the flight deck to find both pilots dead, the controls dead and the ship on fire.  The belly of this beast is still full of hydrogen, so it’s a race against time to survive the exit procedure.  The navigator gets the other passengers out of the straps and they look for the emergency exit, though they come across the gaping hole in the ship that was created on impact, this serves good enough.  The hydrogen escapes and sends pillars of flame into the night sky as the crew struggle to get to a safe distance.  Not sure of where they are they just hope someone out there finds them before some one down here finds them.  

As the young lovers stand their watching this, all they can think of is “welcome to earth”
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