Onboard the hijacked transport plane, the gang of now liberated military convicts was ready to pull out. Down in the hold, several of the men were strapping parachutes to the plane's cargo of military supplies and equipment, originally meant for the prison barracks on the Isle of Wight, and dumping it overboard; more parachutes and thermal uniforms were distributed around, as the men prepared to bail out.
Up in the cockpit, co-pilot-turned-captain Travis had successfully flown the plane through the time warp safely, following Crowley's plane, heading for the designated bail-out site. Crowley's Lockheed had already gone in to land at the nearest favourite landing site; but the DC-10 was too massive to attempt a landing in this futuristic wilderness, so Travis had instead resorted to taking them round in circles, while the crew and cargo parachuted to safety.
Holding level altitude at 10,000ft at airspeed 150 knots, Travis turned to Hirsh, "We're ready, sir. You can lower the tail ramp." Nodding to his partner, Hirsh gave the order over the intercom. In the tail cone, the ramp was depressurised and lowered. Ice-cold wind swept through the cabin, as the fugitives took their first breath of the future world's air. Below, the ground seemed but an endless stretch of darkness against the night sky, almost as if they were flying over the ocean. Although the men had been hurryingly brought up to speed on their 'unusual' assignment, the full details of which would be explained later, this sudden shift from day to night, as well as this inexplicable absence of life on the ground was enough to stir up quite some confusion among the convicts.
The supplies were dropped in an orderly manner, to be retrieved later on the ground: cases and boxes, all tagged with glowsticks so they could be traced in the dark, fell from the sky like rain, their mini-chutes deploying automatically in the fall like red mushrooms sprouting in mid-air. Soon, the hold was empty, leaving only the men to follow. The convicts, donning the service vests and utility belts they had taken off the bodies of their murdered guards, and armed to the teeth with the weapons they had seized from the plane's arms chest, resembled Green Beret paratroopers on a mission – a mission of conquest and destruction.
One by one, Crowley's mercenaries bailed out, to rendezvous with their new leader on the ground, and lay claim on the new world. Hirsh reluctantly donned his own parachute, preparing to follow the last of his fellow fugitives out; although he knew it was too late to turn back anymore, he still wasn't sure of the wisdom of letting himself be sold out to one of the world's leading criminals, who might ultimately decide he didn't need him anymore... Deciding that having any second thoughts now would do him no good, he followed the last of the men out through the ramp, and jumped.
Up in the cockpit, Travis was the last man still onboard, not counting the corpses in the rear cabin, including his own colleague's in the seat beside him. Jamming the controls on autopilot, locking the rudder in a slow turn, which would keep the plane flying around in a big circle until she ran out of fuel and crashed, Travis grabbed the last parachute and left the cockpit, heading for the ramp – but he never made it there.
Suddenly, without warning, a gunshot rang out over the wind blowing through the depressurised cabin. Travis never knew what hit him as the bullet found its mark in his turned back, blowing his spine apart at the base of the neck. His parachute pack slipped from his fingers and disappeared over the edge of the open ramp, as the wind swept it overboard without its owner.
As one more dead man hit the floor, another living and breathing one, but only barely, stood up. Major Haywood, who had taken a couple of bullets, but survived the massacre by assuming a dead stance on the floor between the seats, had recovered in time to retrieve his weapon and shoot the second of the three conspirators in the escape dead, but too late to stop the rest of his prisoners from getting away.
With blood leaking freely from gaping bullet wounds, dripping all over the floor in his wake, the wounded Haywood staggered up to the cockpit. A brief glance of the main cabin, filled with bloodied corpses and discarded prisoner restraints, confirmed all his colleagues were dead and that their prisoners, led by that traitorous turncoat Hirsh no doubt, had escaped. Up in the cockpit, he was confronted by the dead body of Captain Gallagher, realizing he was all alone up here. He cursed himself for shooting that scoundrel Travis not a moment ago; now he was trapped 10,000 feet above the earth, without a pilot or a parachute and with no idea of how to fly a plane. And meanwhile, there were a hundred murderous convicts on the loose down there with guns. He had to get word out to the authorities and fast!
Strapping himself into Travis' empty seat, the dying Haywood, only minutes from death but still managing to stay conscious thanks to the massive adrenaline rush pumping through his veins, turned his attention to his new, impossible mission: survival. Taking the headset off of Gallagher's bullet-penetrated skull, he tried the radio. It was silent. Where was that bloody RAF flight controller?
"Hallo? This is Major Haywood, RM, calling from Flight 911," he called in a raspy voice, ignoring the droplets of blood flying from his mouth due to a punctured lung, "We've had a security breach...plane hijacked...all marshals and flight crew dead...prisoners escaped by parachute...I need help..." But there was no answer, not even static. Thinking hard, he could vaguely remember reading somewhere that pilots pressed a mike button, or whatever it was called, to talk to the ground – but which button?
He tried throwing a few switches on the console, but nothing happened, other than a few insignificant beeps and some of the dials changing colour. He tried pulling back on the stick; it felt stiff in his grip, refusing to budge. The autopilot, which Travis had left engaged, was still in control, automatically keeping the aircraft locked on its set course and altitude. How did you turn that damn thing off? Unbeknownst to Haywood, both the mike button and autopilot override switch were right at his fingertips, mounted on the control stick – but he didn't know it. For the first time in his life of heroic accomplishments, Major Heywood was fighting a losing battle.
As he continued hopelessly playing with the flight instruments, trying to figure out what was what, Haywood felt himself start growing light-headed. Even the burning pain of his wounds was lessening. A layman in his boots might have actually welcomed that relaxing sensation; but Haywood's professional training told him this was death by blood loss creeping up on him. Sure enough, feeling the bullet wound in his abdomen, he realised he was soaked in his own blood; the bullet had ruptured his spleen, causing severe haemorrhage. And even all the adrenaline in the world isn't enough to keep a man from going into shock.
Soon, his vision went foggy; the cockpit swam all around him, as everything faded away into a peaceful, everlasting darkness, which was the end... Outside, the ghost plane continued flying straight and level on autopilot, carrying a dozen dead men on their final flight to eternity...
Sam opened her eyes to a scene of total catastrophe; she was on the ground, amidst the smashed-up plywood fuselage of the motor glider. She felt dazed and confused, with a funny iron taste in her mouth. The last thing she could remember was that other plane appearing out of nowhere, strafing them and causing the glider to spin out of control, before the warp had sucked them into the void – the crippled glider had come out the other side, tumbling down into the trees and then nothing... Had they done it? Had they made it into the future?
Removing her cracked goggles, she saw the glider had, by the sheerest luck, come down at a more-or-less horizontal angle; the trees had cushioned the fall somewhat, leaving her battered but still alive. The glider however, was pretty well trashed; the port wing had been snapped off at midsection and missing; the starboard one remained attached, but severely buckled from clipping the trees in the crash; only the tail and motor appeared mostly undamaged. The canopy above her head was gone, torn away completely, leaving her exposed to the bitter cold of the futuristic winter.
The crash site was a snow-covered clearing on an unfamiliar forest floor, beneath a ceiling of thick trees. It was night and a blizzard was slowly kicking up. Of course, the world doesn't suddenly shift from day to night, much less from summer to winter... There was no further doubt that the future world was indeed very real, just like Dr Johnson had written in his account. But this was not the time for popping open the champagne, as she slowly realised, what had started off as a bad day, had only gotten a lot worse.
As the initial shock of the crash wore off, Sam was struck by a new feeling: pain. As she tried to stand and climb out of the wreckage, she felt a burst of red-hot pain on her left thigh. Looking down, she saw a large wooden splinter, crimson with her own blood, protruding from an open wound on her leg, fixing her to the fuselage. The gory sight and the pain nearly made her pass out again, but she somehow managed to get a grip on herself. She couldn't give up now! Then, she suddenly remembered Stonecrop.
"Stonecrop?" she called, panting from the pain, "Stonecrop, are you all right? Answer me!" The back seat was empty; Stonecrop had been blown out, it seemed, when the canopy had been ripped off. But then, did this mean...? No, thought Sam, He has a parachute; he must have made it down safely. Taking comfort in that reassuring thought, she turned to her own troubles.
She tried pulling out the protruding splinter, but her efforts were only rewarded with excruciating pain. She wasn't going anywhere. Turning to her instrument panel, she was relieved to see one of the two batteries was still functioning, keeping the radio working. Using one hand to keep pressure on the wound, she hit the mike button with the other.
"Hallo, Mr Santon? Dr Drake? Are you still there? The glider's down! Repeat, I've crashed and I'm injured bad! Stonecrop's also lost... Hallo...?" But then she remembered she was now in the future, so logically Drake and Santon were no longer on the air.
Tuning to the international distress frequency used by private pilots, which Mike McEwen had advised her to use in such an emergency, and on the assumption that, if Johnson's colony had a working radio, they'd be using it too, she tried again.
"Hallo, can anybody hear me? Please, I need help! Is anybody out there...?"
On Watership Down, the Honeycomb was buzzing with laughter and chatter, as the two-species colony prepared to celebrate Frith's Eve at midnight. Baskets of freshly-picked flayrah, courtesy of Alan's greenhouse, and other treats for the feast lay in the centre of the main chamber, like an elaborate buffet.
Pipkin, Lucy and the other youngsters moved to and fro, putting up the last of the decorations in the form of bits of holly, ivy and yew – the sacred plants which Frith had blessed to stay green all winter as per His promise to always return in the spring -, turning the Honeycomb into an underground jungle. While the children tended to their chores, the adults went about their own business.
While the does brought along the flayrah from the greenhouse, the humans brought steaming dishes of delectables, fit for a king, to suit their own diet: a giant roasted owl with acorn-and-blackberry stuffing, badger chops and walnut sauce, fox-liver-pâté salad, and barbecued rat ribs with honey with herb seasoning. The rabbits' natural enemies ironically served up on a platter, so to speak, all part of the futuristic British cuisine, as the colony often called it. And, of course, there were the beverages, produce of the Watership Down winery: apple brandy, honeyed wine and carrot beer. Thanks to the ancient human art of distilling and brewing, the rabbits of Watership Down celebrated every Frith's Eve in godly luxury.
"All right, this is the last one, Deke," said Alan, setting down a large cask of his special flavoured beer, which he had been keeping in storage for six months now to let the fermentation run its course. Beside him, Derek Shaw passed out tankards, while another short, dark-skinned man, Hotdog opened up a box of home-made cigars.
Derek Shaw and Hotdog Boone were Alan's oldest childhood friends. Derek, a strapping, ginger-haired Irishman, originally an engineering professor, was the colony's chief engineer and Lucy godfather. The best in his field, he was in charge of all the mechanical and technological challenges of the colony. His fellow colonists were in debt to him for providing them with some of the comforts of modern civilisation, including electricity, plumbing, radio, among other advances. Hotdog, an ex-conman and smuggler of African-Scottish descent, and a last minute recruit on the colonists' group, had originally been their pilot, only to be grounded shortly after their arrival, when their plane had been wrecked, reducing him to a handyman.
"All right, time to propose a toast," said Alan, filling up tankards of the mouth-watering frothy brew and passing them around to his fellow colonists (excluding Lucy, who was still underage and thus not allowed to drink, much to her dismay), and even to some of the rabbits, who had learned how to drink using straws, "Everyone served...?" Then he suddenly realised he had one spare tankard left, "Hang on, where's Josie?"
"She said she was feeling tired and wanted to lie down for a bit," said Derek absent-mindedly, accepting a cigar from Hotdog, impatient for the feast to begin, starting off with the customary speech the colony's 'elders' – Alan, Hazel-rah and Hyzenthlay – made on every Frith's Eve, followed by food and entertainment, "I suggest you go get her, Al, or else we'll be eating air by the time those two tubs of lard are finished," he added, gesturing at Silver and Strawberry, the champion eaters of Watership Down, already stuffing themselves with chow from the buffet behind everyone's back, only to be angrily shooed away by Vilthuril.
Alan, however, was too preoccupied to laugh at the sight of Silver and Strawberry being furiously reprimanded by the little doe for their lack of manners, her fiery temper being so unlike her usually timid personality, thinking about Josie. It was the same story on every New Year's Eve; while everyone else rejoiced, she was the last person eager to join in the festivities, instead choosing to miss it. It so happened, this particular time of the year coincided with one the worst events of her life. Deciding he ought to at least try and cheer her up, he turned to Derek.
"Tell Hazel to start the speech without me – Bigwig can fill in for me. I'm going to check on Josie." Setting aside his tankard and putting on his coat, he hurried out of the Honeycomb, across the Down towards the lodge. The house was dark, all the lanterns having been moved to the warren for the feast, save for a single candle burning in one of the upstairs bedrooms. This was the guest room - an extra bedroom, which Josie had had set up for her son years ago, containing some of his personal possessions and those of his late father's, as if expecting him to come back to her someday. This room also served as Josie's place of recluse on every Frith's Eve – the anniversary of when her son went missing.
Over the last four years, the colonists had sent out countless of search parties, even enlisting the help of Vleflain's – originally Efrafa's – professional Wide Patrols, but had always come up with nothing. Young Jamie McEwen had finally been presumed dead, evidently having run afoul of the humanoids at Cowslip's Warren, while on his escapade to find his missing father James – now resting in peace in the colonists' graveyard. But, without a body to bury alongside her husband's, there was no peace for Josie, who refused to give up hope.
Even after the Wide Patrols had given up the search, she would spend hours on end on the radio they had set up in an attempt to make contact with other possible groups of survivors out there, listening on all frequencies for any sighs of transmissions from her son's glider. Finally, she had succumbed to depression, which she only managed to cope with by keeping herself preoccupied with her work as the colony's physician, and not talking about it – but on Frith's Eve, the resurfacing memories were simply too much for her.
Josie was there all right, lying on the bed, staring vacantly at the ceiling, her hand clutching a framed picture of her dead family, resting over her heart. Alan knocked and, without waiting for an answer, entered. Josie turned to stare at him, "Look, Alan, we go through this every year, so just leave me alone..."
"Josie, you have to give up this habit," said Alan gently, "You're only causing yourself more needless pain. We've done – you've done – everything possible to find your son. I think it's about time you did yourself a favour and leave his memory in peace..."
"How can I let things be, Alan, when my own son is still missing...because of my carelessness?" exclaimed Josie incredulously, wiping a tear from her eyes; although Alan admired how she always managed to hold herself together, even in the worst of times, he could tell, from bitter experience, that she was experiencing horrible mental anguish. Taking a seat on the edge of the bed, he tried to comfort her.
"Josie, you know that's not true. It was that crummy, good-for-nothing scoundrel Shelton's fault..." Josie only stifled a sob. Alan sighed, "Look, honey, when Mary died, I damn nearly let myself descend into madness from guilt. Half the time, I had a good mind to blow my brains out or jump in front of a moving train, and end it all – hell, I almost beat that drunken greaser to death for taking a jibe at me, that night on Baker Street, remember?" The memory of the eventful night, when Derek had approached him with the fabricated job contract Robbins has slipped him, to lure them both into a trap, which would incidentally start the chain of events which had brought them to this new world, was still a popular topic over dinner.
"But thinking back on those days now," he continued, "I realise I was nothing but a fool for letting myself drown in my own sorrows, and guess what, I no longer feel the least guilty anymore, because I know I'm not to blame. Likewise, you are not to blame for what happened to your son..."
"Only you had your chance to avenge your wife's death, and you got your daughter back in the end," Josie retorted, "How can I live with myself if I give up on Jamie now? He's still out there, all alone, probably thinking he's the last human being on earth..." Alan wanted to point out that that it was impossible for her son to still be alive after all this time and that the best she could do was accept facts and move on, but he never got the chance to when, suddenly, a sound from downstairs caught them both by surprise: a female voice calling over the radio, which they had left on to charge overnight.
"...Help...! Does anyone hear me...?"
In an instant, both Alan and Josie were dashing downstairs to the chart room – an office of sorts, adjacent to the lounge, which the colonists used as their centre of operations, so to speak, with a working radio, chart table, the colony's files, and other surveyor's instruments. A rickety-looking radio, cannibalised from the cockpit of their plane and jury-rigged to run off a rechargeable car battery, stood atop a desk in a corner. The device, normally used to monitor the walkie-talkies the colonists carried on their expeditions, was crackling with static, confirming the incoming transmission.
Who could it be? Thought Alan, Everyone is down in the Honeycomb and all the walkie-talkies are stored away. Could this be another of Lucy's little pranks? Frith help me, if it is, I'll give her the tickling of her life... However, as it turned out, it was far from being a prank, as Alan put on the headset and tuned in, trying to clear up the sound of the strange voice.
"This is Watership Down Base, come in?"
"Oh, thank goodness!" came the reply. The voice was unfamiliar to Alan, feminine, with a Welsh accent, "I've crashed and I'm trapped! I was searching for Dr Alan Johnson's colony of rabbits on Watership Down... Are you Dr Johnson...?" That last remark left Alan rooted to his chair in surprise; hearing the sound of a strange voice in a world where there were no other human beings around, save for their little colony, was a big enough surprise alone, but to hear that someone out there was in fact out looking for him was unbelievable...and very suspicious. How could have someone possibly have found their way into the future? How did this stranger know he was living here? And who was it?
Pulling himself together, he answered back, "Yes, this is Dr Johnson. Who is this? To whom am I speaking?"
"My name is Sam F-..." the voice replied, abruptly cutting off in mid-sentence, which Alan figured was probably due to a break in the transmission, "Please, I need help! I'm trapped and bleeding badly...!"
"All right, Sam, calm down, I hear you," said Alan, realizing the emergency at hand, which now took priority over any personal questions he might have. Reaching to a tape recorder hooked up to the radio, and pressing it to record the transmission, in case they lost contact, he gestured to Josie to go get the others in here fast.
"How many of you are there?"
"Two of us – me and my friend Stonecrop. He fell from the glider before we crashed..." Alan raised an eyebrow. Stonecrop? he thought in amazement, But that's a rabbit's name... How the bloody hell could a 21st century human being happen to have a talking rabbit...? Setting aside another question that would need answering later on, he jotted down the two names in a notebook.
"All right, can you give me your position, over?"
"I...I don't know, my GPS is down," answered Sam's stammering voice, barely audible over the static, "I'm surrounded by thick forest; I can see the edge of a large frozen lake just up ahead..." At that minute, the voice dissolved into static and was gone.
"Hello, Sam? Sam, come in...!" Alan tried fiddling with the bands, hoping to pick her up on another frequency, but there was nothing. Sam's radio had obviously died – and leaving them with only a vague idea of where to look for her. So much for an easy night.
Five minutes later, the entire colony of Watership Down – rabbits and humans alike – had crowded inside the chart room, as Alan played the recording of the transmission. Muttering and exclamations of amazement came from everyone's lips, as the news that another time traveller had dropped into their midst spread like wildfire. Some rabbits, including Pipkin and the children were excited at the news; but a few of the adults, most notably Bigwig, had reason to be suspicious.
"Something's off about this, Hazel-rah," he said with a frown, "Our world was supposed to be kept a secret from the Old World – we were never supposed to expect more time travellers arriving here. This stranger apparently knows quite a lot; she definitely knows about Alan and, by the sound of it, about us too... What if she's an enemy spy?"
"All this talking will get us nowhere, Bigwig," said Hazel firmly, "There's someone out there in trouble and it's our job to help them. Get your Owsla ready to move at once."
"You heard your Chief, chaps," said Bigwig without further argument. After all, orders were orders. "Frith's Eve leave is cut short. Owsla, line up outside and prepare for briefing on a rescue mission. On the double!"
"Go out in this weather, and at night?" groaned Hawkbit incredulously, staring at the snow falling outside, "Frith of Inle, Bigwig, this is Frith's Eve! You want us to go gallivanting around the countryside, looking for some stranger, who, for all we know might already be dead..."
"Now!" barked Bigwig, "And if I hear any further arguments, Hawkbit, I'll send you to carry out this mission solo!" Although Bigwig was by no means a cruel or brutal rabbit, at times he wouldn't hesitate to clamp down hard on his Owsla to keep them in line, Hawkbit's special-needs case of sarcasm and indiscipline being the most frequent of all – in other words, when duty called for it, he was a bully.
As a sulking Hawkbit scurried away, Bigwig turned to Hazel, "So, where are we supposed to look for this...stranger in distress?" The Chief Rabbit of Watership Down turned to Alan, who was already studying the large, hand-drawn map of the Meadows of Fenlo spread out onto the chart table – their homeland, a chunk of the former edge of northern Hampshire and southern Berkshire, whose borders ended at the River Test in the south, Wiltshire in the west and Surrey in the east, hardly exceeded the circumference of the long-gone former capitol of the United Kingdom - this tiny area was the only known region on the entire globe recorded on the map, with proper names and places.
Mostly due to their lack of means of transport for long-range exploring, save only for a hot-air balloon they had, the colonists hadn't been able to penetrate far into the uncharted, turned-wild territory, which had once been England and the rest of the outside world. But this little region, which they and their neighbours controlled using the intel brought back by Wide Patrols, as well as their own aerial surveillances, the humans had properly mapped, naming every nook and cranny in their territory, greatly helping coordinate searches such as this.
"She said she's on the edge of a large, frozen lake, surrounded by thick forest," said Alan, while Derek and Hotdog examined the map grid by grid, looking for a place which fitted that hazy description. The surrounding area in the vicinity of the Down had no lakes, so they could rule their own neighbourhood out; to the north, there was the Enborne River, which never froze over winter, and beyond that nothing but the abandoned ruins of Sandleford; to the east was the warren of Vleflain, surrounded by thick woodland but no lakes, and in any case, their Owsla, which remained active throughout winter, would have found any stranger-dropped-out-of-the-sky in an instant and turned her over to their ambassador there. Finally, they struck gold as they turned to examine the western border.
"The only likely place is that lake in the heart of Lord Brock's Wood," said Derek, slamming down his finger on a lake surrounded by a thick forest, named after the namesake mythical character of the Watership Down story, on the south-western edge of the map. This area, like several others on the map, was marked in red barber-pole, declaring it a restricted, dangerous zone. And for good reason too.
"Lord Brock's Wood?" gasped Holly, "That's homba territory! At this season, all the elil out there are starving and on their hunting grounds day and night. Nobody dares venture into that forest in winter - even the Wide Patrols of Vleflain stay well clear of it. The foxes would be upon you like rain if they get as much as a whiff of your scent...!"
"All the more reason to get this show on the road immediately," said Alan calmly, loading an old elephant gun he kept over the mantelpiece which had once belonged to his late father – the only weapon powerful enough to take down an eli that size with one shot. Derek, however, had another idea up his sleeve, as he gestured at them to follow him down to his workshop.
In direct contrast to Alan's reasonably tidy lab, Derek's workplace was a junk house; worktables and shelves strewn with worn-out tools and the rickety bodies of semi-complete inventions the engineer was working on, all fashioned out of components cannibalised from the husks of old machines and other pieces of junk collected from the old HAB, and other easy-to-acquire materials. Cardboard boxes full of unused bits of scrap of every description were stacked in piles around the workshop, their contents waiting to be used. Although a pigsty at first glance, the colonists had great respect for this place, where Derek 're-invented' some of the long-forgotten technology of the vanished human world.
Sitting there, under a strip of canvas, was Derek's latest greatest masterpiece: a motortrike, as it was called in the trade, fashioned out of aircraft wheels, some old I-beams, electric wiring and a jury-rigged old pickup-truck's engine, modified to run on wood-gas. There were three seats; one for the driver, two for the passengers, plus an open cargo enclosure in the back, housing a mounted wood gasifier fashioned out of two old oil drums, and for storing equipment and supplies. This awkward three-wheeled vehicle was designed as part of a planned expedition down to the coast next summer – but now, it would be put to use, still untested, to transport a casualty on a stretcher. Their 'ambulance' was ready to go.
They had just finished topping up the motortrike gasifier's inner container with dry wood scraps cut from old cargo pallets and crate planking, to produce the combustible mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and methane known as wood gas which was, in turn, fed into the carburettor through a fire-insulated hose, to power the engine, when Lucy came running in, "Dad, you've got to see this!"
Thinking that perhaps she had spotted a signal flare or something that may narrow down the search, the adults came running out. Lucy was pointing skywards at something, which was not a signal flare - instead, it was just what was needed to top up the number of unexpected surprises for one night: another plane. Not a crashed one, like Sam claimed hers was, but a flying one, high up in the sky. And it wasn't the only thing up there; although Alan had suspected they'd see it the minute he had heard Sam's transmission, it was still quite a surprise seeing the Aurora-like warp reappear in the sky to the west after four years.
"Prince Rainbow had returned again!" gasped Silver, referring to this rare phenomenon of an opening time portal that had once interconnected the distant time periods of 2012 and 2791, which the rabbits interpreted as a godly sign from the mythical Prince Rainbow, "Do you think he's sent us another Messenger?"
"Well, well, Alan, it looks like Prince Rainbow has decided to have you replaced as our Protector," said Bluebell, not missing the opportunity to crack a lame joke. The others ignored his humour however, as the idea of more groups of time travellers having arrived into their world through the warp also crossed their minds.
"It a jetliner of some kind," said Derek, observing the plane through his binoculars. Although they couldn't see it, they could still make out the blinking navigation lights on the wings and tail, and hear the distant roaring of the engines, as it flew straight and level overhead, apparently undamaged from the violent passing through the warp. But as to the condition of those onboard the aircraft, that was a different story.
"I'm not picking up anything on the radio," called Hotdog from the house, "Haven't they noticed their guidance systems are down?" Looking more closely, they saw the mysterious plane was slowly turning around, seemingly to do another fly-by. So why weren't the pilots answering? None of them had the slightest idea that, while their voices could be heard over the derelict DC-10's radio, the plane's remaining passengers and crew were all corpses, unable to answer them, much less that their murderers had parachuted to freedom not too far away. In the cockpit, a caution light had started buzzing on the instrument panel, warning no one in particular that the fuel was beginning to run low, and that the plane would soon reach the end of its journey. But the colonists on the ground had no way of knowing any of that.
"No time to worry about that now," said Alan, "We have a job to do. Let's go."
Since the motortrike was too small for the whole Owsla, Bigwig recruited Dandelion, Hawkbit (much to his dismay) and Fiver for this little escapade; Alan was the driver and Derek the vehicle engineer; Hazel also insisted on accompanying them as he often did, despite a traditional Chief Rabbit's custom of sending his Captain of Owsla out on the field while he stayed back at the warren. But Hazel was much more than just a Chief Rabbit to his friends.
With the wood gasifier piping hot, Derek turned on the hose valve, pumping wood-gas into the carburettor, preparing for ignition. Seated in the driver's seat – formerly a pilot's seat from their Cessna, with a control stick from the same plane for a steering wheel -, Alan pulled hard on the retractable cord of the engine's recoil starter; after a few tries, the engine came to life, spluttering and backfiring from the gas, rather than liquid, fuel intake, but working all the same. That left them with only one last thing to worry about.
Although the weather was fine at the moment, with only a mild snowfall, a massive blizzard could be seen moving in from the north; within another hour, maybe two, Alan reckoned, it would hit their area, at which point travelling would be impossible. Time was short.
Derek and the others hurryingly loaded up the gear: a stretcher, first aid kit, space blankets, radio, flashlights, rope, weapons and snow chains for the wheels, and then they were good to go. Bigwig, Hazel, Fiver, Hawkbit, Dandelion and Derek hopped on and the motortrike sped off down the side of Watership Down, heading south, towards Lord Brock's Wood, to the rescue.
Back at the crash site, a desperate Sam, working by torchlight, finally gave up trying to get the radio to work. The battery had died and the last of the power was gone. Now she was all alone. With Stonecrop lost, perhaps killed, and with no way to communicate anymore, she felt more alone than any other human being had ever been. There was no way of knowing how long it would take Johnson to send a rescue to find her, if they sent one at all.
Meanwhile, she could feel her skewered leg slowly growing numb. She didn't know much about first aid, but knew this wasn't good; her leg was slowly dying from interrupted blood flow, cell by cell, as the first stages of necrosis started kicking in. That stake piercing her leg needed to come out.
Stuffing a gag in her mouth, Sam grasped her leg again with both hands. Taking a couple of deep breaths, bracing for it, she pulled hard with all her might, not realizing that this would only cause more harm than good. Over her own muffled screams of excruciating pain, as bad as having her leg amputated with a chain-saw, she felt the splinter slide out. She was free.
Before she could recover from the pain, however, she felt a wave of dizziness sweep over her. Looking down, she saw the wound was now bleeding grotesquely, making her feel about to pass out. Not realizing that only a trained medic or surgeon was supposed to remove alien bodies from a wound, by removing the splinter, she had opened up the wound, letting the blood escape freely and causing her to go into shock.
Realizing her mistake, she grabbed the best thing she could use as a tourniquet – the cord of her radio headset - and tightened it around her thigh, just above the wound. This seemed to help a little, but it didn't stop the bleeding altogether. Her already diminished strength was quickly failing her, making it impossible to hold the tourniquet in place for much longer. Meanwhile, the smell of fresh blood in the air was attracting another enemy, far worse than isolation, exposure, or bleeding.
Around the crash site, a pair of luminous yellow eyes had appeared in the darkness, moving noiselessly through the trees, several others following not too far behind; the elil were coming, approaching from all directions, following the scent of blood. If Sam had been conscious enough to see them, she would have freaked out at the realisation that she had crash-landed right in the middle of the elil's game trail, and that the dinner bell had been sounded. She was on the menu.
Finally, she felt herself sink into unconsciousness from blood loss. Meanwhile, two sides were at a race; Alan's rescue party, currently underway, and the hungry elil, getting closer with every passing minute. Only question was who'd get to the finish first?
Author's note: So sorry for the delay, folks, but I've been battling writer's block, among other problems. This chapter was meant to be an Easter present to my readers, so I hope you don't mind it being a week late. And PLEASE, PLEASE REVIEW!