Showing posts with label airplanes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label airplanes. Show all posts

Monday, June 18, 2012

Not Quite a Short Story: Free Fall


I wrote this almost two years ago and it was kind of inspired by a level in the game "Wet" and a particular scene from the Bond flick "The Spy Who Loved Me." It was cool to play another scenario like the one below in the opening minutes of "Saints Row: The Third."
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I can hear wind. It's whistling and it feels like I'm falling. I open my eyes in a squint.

I am falling and I grab my chest, clawing at a rip chord that isn't there. It's then that I notice debris falling with me. A fuselage of some kind of plane matches my speed. I point myself toward it. I inch closer to it on the wind and in the dim moonlight the interior becomes visible.

I reach the jagged edge of the fuselage and hold on to it, using what little leverage I have to haul myself in. It's dark so I fumble the walls, floor and ceiling or some order of the three. My fingers touch something familiar.

I strap the parachute to my back and kick off one of the seats to get myself clear of the debris. The ground is so close, I can easily make out features of the city below framed in the glow of streetlights and vehicle traffic. I pull the chord and there's a dull flapping sound and the world jerks up with a punch. My broken ribs scream and my breathing struggles in ragged chunks.

The debris begins to the hit earth.

So very close to the ground, searchlights suddenly hold me. It's quickly followed by a sputtering of gun fire. A massive explosion rocks the area above me, another one a hundred feet to my right.

I steer myself toward a black area and hope for the best. At the rate I'm falling, I should be able to make it, unless the fireworks from the ground manage to punch a hole in my salvation.