J.D. Strunk
I had flown out of C___ International many times with my unit, so when the buses did not head to the main terminals, I knew we were headed straight for a plane. Sure enough, we took a service road that led directly to the runways. Even as we exited the buses, passenger flights continued to take off all around us, as if they existed in a separate reality. Or maybe it was us soldiers who existed separately, having unwittingly stumbled into some wraith world, where yellow school buses can drive onto an airport runway, and the world continues on like nothing strange is happening.
The next surprise: It was not a passenger jet that awaited us, but a military transport. The C-5B Galaxy is a quad-engine military cargo jet. It is 250 feet long, with a wingspan of 225 feet. (I looked this up after—I was unfamiliar with the plane at the time.) To see its forward jaws slowly open is to step into some Melvillian nightmare where mechanical whales take to the skies. Guns drawn, we marched the students off the buses and into the beast’s grinning maw. There were no seats inside the plane, and so the kids just stood in groups, as if they were on campus, chatting between classes. Except here, no one spoke—only silently embraced.
When the engines started, we all jumped—soldiers and students alike. As soon as we began down the runway, upwards of half of the students fell over, creating long domino runs of bodies spilling onto the metal floor. Most of them stayed down until well after we were in the air. Thankfully, it appeared none of them were seriously hurt, beyond rubbing heads and wrists.
Around half an hour into the flight, I felt a tap on my back. I turned around to find a fellow soldier distributing climbing rope and carabiners to our unit—instructing us on how to secure ourselves to the metal bracing of the plane. Immediately after receiving my carabiner, I unwittingly made eye contact with one of the students. She was a frightened deer of a girl, swimming inside an oversized sweatshirt and baggy sweatpants, and her gaze was at once pleading and hopeless. Knowing that I was her last chance at salvation made me hopeless as well. Sometimes I still see her in my dreams, and when I wake up, I am hysterical, sobbing like a child in the darkness. I hope she never leaves. That girl has earned the right to haunt my dreams.
Once our unit was all secured, a mechanical whine filled the plane. Even knowing what was coming did not prepare me for seeing the rear cargo bay doors begin to open. By this time, I figure I was wholly in shock. Because I’m sure there were screams—there had to have been—but I cannot recall hearing a single voice. Perhaps the plane was simply too loud—the roar of 500mph meeting 12,000 feet.
The entire flight hitherto, I had been under the assumption that, at some point, the students would panic, and would rush us soldiers. After all, there were only twenty of us: Even with our guns, they had an outside chance of overtaking the plane. But now, at their last opportunity to rebel, the students did nothing. Perhaps they understood (even better than I) that they had died the moment they boarded those buses back on campus. That everything since had just been details.
Past the open cargo bay, there was not a single light to be seen on the ground. It was only then that I realized we were likely over water—Lake Michigan, perhaps. Once the back bay was fully open, the plane began to tilt, climbing upward. When the first student fell out the back, it was the capstone to an evening of terror. I was almost relieved, in a way, to finally see an ending in sight—any ending. After that first student fell, the others began to slide down the hold, as if having only now been granted permission to obey the laws of physics. The grotesque pile of limbs tumbled down the plane and out the bay, where they separated in the sky, arms spread like wings. Watching their descent into that cold night, I was reminded of a line from Milton: “His legions—Angel Forms, who lay entranced/ Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks.”
I don’t recall the plane landing. Just like how I don’t recall getting back to base—I assume we took the buses. And I certainly don’t recall getting home that evening. When I woke up the next morning, I honestly did not know if it was all a dream. It was only when I found the carabiner clipped to my uniform that I knew it to be real.
For the longest time after that night, I had assumed that those students had been handpicked for those buses—that they were members of the College Socialists, maybe, or the local Hillel. But I learned later from a trusted source that this wasn’t the case. Those students were pulled at complete random: soldiers walking through a dormitory, opening doors, dragging them out. Some of those kids probably even voted for President V.
My same source told me that, earlier that day, the President had ordered the resignation of the university Chancellor. The Chancellor had refused and, even with all his power, the President had no control over a private university. And so began our mission, with all its horror.
To this day I sometimes wonder, as I mindlessly work through drills on base, how could such a spiteful child come to rule a country? How is this our world? But then, even I voted for him. The first time, I mean—not the second or the third.
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J.D. Strunk’s fiction has appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, The Louisville Review, Necessary Fiction, The Coachella Review, Summerset Review, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for The Bellingham Review‘s Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, and his story “Fresh Coffee” was nominated for Best American Short Stories. He lives in Denver, Colorado.