The Fallen Mason

I rushed to the cabin door and shouted "DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO FLY..."

No. They were all murdered. Two rows of lifeless prisoners still chained, their mouths twisted in dying screams, their satin masks darkened by the same arterial spray that striped the filthy walls of the cabin. The second guard lay crumpled before me, his face so mutilated that I shot a look back at the other corpse and could discern which them had been my tormentor.

I rushed to the pilot's console, scouring the papers and white quill pens and sepia pictures of Constable pilots posing barrel-chested with now-widows and hollow-eyed children wrapped in lace and ribbons and dark schoolboy outfits. I was looking for a damned FLIGHT MANUAL!

"EUREKA!"

Yes, Table of Contents...Page 45...Altitude...Figure 2a...

I was two sentences into my required reading when I dropped the book, distracted by the din of the cockpit window shattering and pouring shards of glass upon me. I dared not look up, still covering my face with my bruised arms, but I knew full well what had happened. From outside I could hear the thunderous force of thousands of vulture-sized bats careening into the listing vessel, now far off-course. As deafening as lightning, then, was the savage rending of the canvas of the ship's airbag by that same flock of those accursed deadly bats!