Saturday, March 10, 2007

The Unauthorized Autobiography: Chapter 2C

The spell of piety having been broken, Gunnar would continue.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the noise, the lights. And the smell! Red hot metal and gunpowder, boy. You fire four 303's for any length of time and you’re gonna smell gunpowder and hot metal, enough to burn the hairs right out of your nose. Here, look!”

At this point Gunnar tilted his head back to show me. Of course, I’d have to scrunch down and lean forward to peer up his nose. Sure enough, there was not a single nose hair to be seen.

It was a helluva thing,” he said. “I never stopped firing except to reload and those birds just kept buzzing around us like angry hornets. Suddenly the plane shook! It was like we stopped in midair. There was a tremendous crash and my radio went dead. I said to myself, ‘I gotta get the hell outta here!’. Problem was, my turret was turned, so the exit was closed off. No problem, right? Just turn the turret back to centre and climb out. Except that the turret was jammed. Or non-functional, as they say in the tech biz. Whatever shut down the radio also blew the hydraulics to hell. I was stuck in there but good!”

That was my cue to say, “What did you do then?”

I screamed bloody murder, that’s what I did. I started to kick at the plexiglass, until I hurt my foot and realized that was no good. I did everything I could think of, short of setting off a grenade. Finally I was too exhausted to move. The guns were still working but I didn’t bother with them. Didn’t care anymore. The Schmitts were all over us, even more now that we were damaged. I just didn’t care.”

Gunnar always stopped here for a minute to let that feeling of desperate indifference sink in. He’d sit with his eyes closed, shaking his head slowly, or if he was standing, his gaze would wander off into the distance as if he were transported back to the event.

Then, drawing in his breath, he would say, “It’s a damn miracle I didn’t get my ass shot off, sittin’ there twiddling my thumbs while a dozen or more bandits zipped in and out. We were sitting ducks, plain and simple. And having a hell of a ride. The old bird was shaking like a drunk with the DT’s.

Suddenly there was a huge explosion. BOOM!

I always jumped in my seat here, mainly out of a sense of duty. I mean, the old man was going to all the trouble of telling his life-altering story . . . again . . . and the least I could do was supply the proper reactions.

I’ve never quite figured out what happened. They must have hit a fuel tank. Anyway, the blast knocked me silly for a spell, and when I came to, I took a look around and realized I was all by myself.”

But you were already all by yourself.”

No, Lanc. I mean I was all by myself! Just me and the turret and a piece of the tail section. The rest of the plane was gone!



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