A Worm Is A Bird and Other Bad Things

Amongst the ruins of her ship, crawls Captain Isabel Deckard. She can see Paris, blazing. They’ve reached Europe. “A woman’s no substitute for the real thing!” She looks towards a shadow turning into a man, can see the smugness on her first mate’s face as he offers his hand, to mock her.  “M’lady!”

She growls, “This is no time for blame, Mr. Bailey.” She scrambles to her feet, pushes him away, and points towards the sky. “I suppose men can fight gravity? An unnatural gift if that were the case!” Through the smog and dust of falling debris, they see more Zeppelins plucked, like fledglings crashing to the war torn streets, once the cultural hub of Paris.

She barks, “Mechanical worms! The laws of science have reversed the natural order of things. We’re living in a land where worms eat birds!” She grabs his hand. “Run, Bailey. Or are you immune?” They run far enough away to see the full damage to the Zeppelin. A home for five months to twenty crew, burnt beyond the survival of anyone trapped inside. But Deckard didn’t earn her place without the respect of her men, or most of them, at least. She begins to turn, in hope that others were fortunate enough to be thrown from the cabins. “My crew!”

Bailey screams, “Captain, get back!” A tremor underfoot begins to break the ground beneath until the ship is taken, sliding into a place deeper than it was designed to venture. It was made for the sky, not for the depths of earth. They run, avoiding death, like insignificant specs in a landslide. “It’s chaos!” cries Bailey, dragging his captain, sensing her reluctance to leave her ship.

Other ships are being plucked from the sky. More worms drag a once proud army into graves, marked only by the craters left behind. The mechanisms screech, like living creatures, driven by human pilots, trained for terrestrial conquest. Deckard takes some explosives from her coat, more for comfort than use. “The world’s turning to ash, and the sky even more so.”

Mr. Bailey draws his rifle. “It would have been kinder, if we’d died with the others.”

Dwarfed by their enemy, the two of them run between the shrapnel from exploding Zeppelins, amongst the falling debris of their once proud fleet. “We fell two hundred feet and survived, Mr. Bailey. Maybe we yet have purpose in this terrible series of events?” She points towards the Flight Academy, a giant amongst the Parisian landscape. “The project, Bailey. There’s a chance it’s not damaged.” He calls, “What project?”

She dodges the back end of a molten statue, as it shakes loose from the top of a building, the cause of its crumbling, quite obviously, another fallen ship. She drags him into a side alley with buildings still attached and points towards the Flight Academy. “It’s said the French government were working on a way to drag these worms from the ground, just like they’ve plucked our ships from the sky.” She grins. “A reversal of physics sounds much more palatable than death, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Bailey?”

He smiles at last. They run, towards the Flight Academy, a dream of something to cure this infestation speeding them past the dangers all around. Flashing by are all the possible avenues for failure, the alternatives, which shadow victory, the chance that death will take them, sooner, like everyone else around.

As they continue to run, Captain Deckard, hollers. “It’s three streets away, we can get there. It’s supposed to be in the lower levels.”

Bailey isn’t so hopeful. “What if this project’s gone?”

She growls at him. “I lost eighteen good men and women back there. Don’t make me regret you survived!”

He stops and waves his arms at the chaos, pulling her backwards. “But look around you! If this miraculous project existed, these worms would be in the sky already!”