The Last Survivor (A Wilde/Chase Short Story) Read online

  The pair collided with a whump. The gun came through the gap as Kroll lurched back – and reflexively pulled the trigger.

  Eddie flinched away from the muzzle flash, but the weapon wasn’t pointed at him. The bullet hit the pilot. A red line sliced open across his forehead as it grazed his skull. He thrashed against his seat belt, then slumped to one side, unconscious …

  His hands dropped from the controls.

  The LongRanger immediately pitched downwards, curving towards Liberty Island. Eddie glanced in dismay at the freely moving joystick, but there was no way to reach it from the rear compartment.

  Kroll threw himself at the Englishman with a roar. Eddie tried to brace himself, but the Nazi had sheer size on his side, slamming him back towards the starboard door. It had been forced shut by the slipstream but hadn’t latched, banging against the rear frame.

  The Yorkshireman changed tack, balling a fist and driving it with punishing force into the blond man’s stomach. Kroll grimaced, breath hissing between his teeth as Eddie pounded his other fist home, but the attacks didn’t stop him. The Nazi grabbed his opponent’s throat with one hand – and swept the empty gun at his face with the other.

  Eddie managed to bring up one arm to deflect the blow, but the weapon still caught him a painful crack to the forehead. ‘That hurt, you Nazi shithead!’ he growled, striking back with a vicious uppercut to Kroll’s jaw. Enamel splintered, tearing into flesh. The younger man spat blood from his lacerated gums.

  But he maintained his hold on Eddie’s neck. The gun lashed down again—

  Eddie caught his wrist, arresting the blow inches from his head. He sent another punch at Kroll’s chin. This time his adversary saw it coming and jerked away quickly enough to receive only a glancing blow. The Englishman tried to jab at his face, but the Nazi had a longer reach, straightening his arm and pushing down harder on his opponent’s windpipe. Eddie tried to draw in a breath, but managed only a choked rasp.

  Kroll squeezed harder, grinning psychotically as the other man delivered ineffectual blows to his shoulders and upper chest. ‘You thought you had killed us all, Engländer? You thought you had destroyed the New Reich?’ The grin twisted into a leer. ‘As long as one of us remains alive, the legacy of Adolf Hitler will never die!’

  Choking, Eddie twisted beneath him – and through the window saw something that made his eyes widen in shock.

  Kroll caught his change of expression and realised it was not his doing. He looked around – and his own eyes bugged. ‘Scheiße!’

  The LongRanger was on a collision course with the Statue of Liberty.

  The Nazi leapt upright, leaving Eddie gasping, and thrust an arm through the gap by the front seat’s headrest. His fingers grasped at the cyclic joystick between the unconscious pilot’s knees, but it was just beyond his reach. The statue loomed ever closer—

  Kroll grabbed instead at the collective lever between the front seats, managing to clamp his fingers around its base. He hauled it upwards, using sheer brute force to overcome the friction lock that kept it from moving of its own accord. The pitch of the rotor blades changed to provide more lift … and the helicopter started to climb.

  Not quickly enough. The plinth dropped out of sight beneath the instrument panel, followed by the tablet in the statue’s left arm, but her head grew still larger in the windscreen—

  Kroll drove himself deeper into the narrow gap – and yanked the collective up with all his strength.

  The LongRanger lurched as the rotor blades slammed to their maximum pitch. The statue’s head plunged away beneath the cockpit, the centremost spike of its crown whooshing between the skids as the aircraft ascended.

  The pilot slumped back against the headrest, then flopped to one side with a faint moan, knocking off his headphones. One of his feet pushed down on an anti-torque pedal. The helicopter turned sharply to starboard as more power went to the tail rotor, rising into a spiral above the statue.

  Kroll let out a gasp of relief. He released the collective and leaned back—

  Someone whistled behind him.

  He turned – to take a cartilage-crushing punch to his face.

  ‘Ay up!’ Eddie snarled, shaking the Nazi’s blood off his knuckles before delivering another brutal blow to his crushed nose. ‘You want Hitler – I’ll just hit yer! Okay, that was bad,’ he added as he kneed the other man in the groin. ‘But if you love that one-bollocked fuckwit so much,’ he grabbed the reeling Kroll, ‘you should go and meet him in person!’

  He shoved him towards the opening—

  The pilot groaned again, dazedly changing position – and pushed the other pedal down.

  The LongRanger’s spin abruptly reversed, the airframe creaking under the stress. Kroll staggered backwards, colliding with the Yorkshireman. As Eddie struggled to regain his balance, the Nazi whirled and slammed a savage backhander at his head. ‘English pig!’ he bellowed. ‘I will kill you!’

  He drove Eddie against the starboard door – which swung open.

  The Englishman toppled over the threshold—

  And fell.

  He threw out his arms in desperate panic as he dropped – catching the skid.

  The impact made the out-of-control helicopter lurch violently on to its right side … tipping Kroll out after him.

  The Nazi screamed as he followed his enemy into the wind-blasted void. He flailed, grabbing for anything within reach—

  Finding Eddie’s foot.

  Kroll caught it with his right hand, almost tearing the Englishman from his precarious position. Eddie yelled in pain as tendons strained. The Nazi dangled beneath him, right arm upstretched almost in a Hitler salute. The Statue of Liberty whirled below them both as the LongRanger continued its ever-tightening spiral.

  Eddie brought his other foot down … and found Kroll’s fingers with his boot heel.

  The bloodied Nazi looked up at him in horror as he realised he was doomed. ‘Nein!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t do it!’

  All he got in return was a pitiless scowl. ‘Sieg fail!’ Eddie shouted, cracking his heel down on the blond man’s hand.

  Kroll’s cry turned into a terrified wail as he lost his hold and plummeted away from the helicopter.

  He fell for hundreds of feet, shrieking the whole way down – until the sound came to an abrupt end as he was impaled upon the central spike of the Statue of Liberty’s crown. The tip of the great spear jutting from his chest, he slid slowly down its nine-foot length before coming to a limp, broken-backed stop just above the gore-splattered windows of the viewing gallery inside the huge figure’s head.

  Eddie regarded the corpse with grim satisfaction, then returned his attention to the considerably more pressing task of getting back inside the helicopter. The LongRanger was still tilted hard over as it spun around in its spiral ascent …

  The climb stopped – then became a fall.

  ‘Shit!’ Eddie gasped. The chopper had banked so far that its main rotor was no longer generating enough lift to keep it in the air. In normal flight, the weight of the fuselage beneath the rotor hub would have acted as a natural pendulum, swinging it back towards a level attitude, but with the pilot’s foot still wedged on the pedal, the centrifugal force of its spin was preventing that from happening. He looked back down. The LongRanger was dropping towards the statue.

  A burst of fear-fuelled adrenalin spurred him onwards. He dragged himself back on to the skid, grabbing one of the rear seat belts flapping through the open door and using it to haul himself into the cabin. The pilot was still slumped in his seat, head lolling against the window. ‘Hey! Wake up! Wake up!’

  Blood was running down the black-haired man’s forehead from the bullet wound. He mumbled vaguely in response, eyes fluttering weakly but not opening. Eddie cursed, then tried to reach for the joystick, with no more success than Kroll. The skyscrapers of Manhattan whisked across his view as the aircraft continued its crazy spin.

  Another hopeless grasp at the controls – then instead he br
ought his hand up to flick the pilot’s cheek just under his eye. ‘Come on, wake up!’ he yelled, repeatedly tapping the man’s face with his fingernail. ‘We’re crashing! Do something!’

  It was an old army trick to check if an injured person was responsive, not recommended for use by civilian paramedics if they wanted to avoid a punch in return, but it worked. The pilot jerked upright, trying to pull away from the harmless but infuriating little sting. ‘Hey, hey, what the hell ya doin’?’ he complained.

  ‘Trying to save our lives!’ Eddie shouted back. ‘Pull up!’

  The man’s eyes finally focused – and he saw the coastlines of New York and New Jersey flashing past. ‘Whoa, holy crap!’ he screeched, looking at the instrument panel to find the artificial horizon tumbling on multiple axes at once and the altimeter whizzing down towards zero. He grabbed both the control levers, jamming a foot down on a pedal to counteract the helicopter’s spin. ‘What the hell happened? Where’s that German asshole?’

  ‘He fell out with me! Can you get this thing under control?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, just give me a sec— Oh jeez!’ The LongRanger stopped spinning … and plunged down vertically towards the statue.

  The pilot pulled sharply on the cyclic stick. Eddie was thrown backwards as the helicopter’s nose pitched upwards. The engine shrieked through the bulkhead behind him as it went to full power.

  But they were still falling, the rotors struggling to find lift. The statue’s torch and arm rushed past, terrifyingly close—

  The pilot screamed, slamming the cyclic hard over to the left – and the helicopter reeled sideways.

  The rotor still hadn’t managed to overpower gravity, but it did pull the LongRanger away from the Statue of Liberty. The helicopter skimmed past the great green head, arcing downwards to slew sidelong over the tiered terraces surrounding the plinth. Tourists fled as it buzzed past just above them, finally levelling out over the lawns along the island’s southern side and clearing the water’s edge barely ten feet above the pavement.

  ‘That … that was too damn close,’ the pilot gasped, slowing the aircraft and bringing it to a hover. He pivoted it around to look back at Liberty Island. People on the waterfront stared at them in astonishment. ‘What’s going on? Who the hell was that guy?’

  Eddie peered up at the statue, seeing a line of red running down its face from the figure spiked upon its crown. ‘Nobody who’ll be missed. And hopefully there isn’t anyone left to miss him.’ He pulled the starboard door shut. ‘Take us back to the heliport.’

  The LongRanger swung about and started towards Manhattan, leaving behind the body of the last survivor of the Nazi colony.

  Once over his initial shock at the near-death experience, the pilot proved to be almost hyperactively chatty. ‘So anyway, my name’s Harvey, Harvey Zampelli,’ he said as the aircraft approached the South Street heliport. ‘You need anything from me, anything at all, just say the word and it’s yours. You want free flying lessons? I’m a qualified instructor – all you gotta do is ask!’ He briefly took his left hand off the collective to draw a business card from his breast pocket and pass it back to Eddie, who by now had donned headphones to block out the rotor noise. ‘There’s my number. And hey, if you wanna recommend me to your family and friends for a helicopter tour, that’d be great too. The best views of Manhattan, and very reasonable prices!’

  ‘Thanks,’ Eddie replied. ‘I’ve been thinking about flying lessons, actually. This isn’t the first time I’ve been on a flight where the pilot got knocked out, or worse. Be useful to be able to land the thing myself.’

  The pilot laughed, his nasal bray trailing off as he realised that his passenger wasn’t joking. ‘Anyway, the offer’s there, huh? Though don’t take me up on it for a coupla days, at least. I kinda get the feeling I’ll be answering a lot of questions from the cops and the FAA about all this!’

  ‘Yeah, me too.’ Eddie pocketed the card, then watched the final approach to the heliport. A couple of police cars had arrived, cops closing off the entrance to the pier, but the Englishman was more interested in the one Kroll had commandeered. Figures stood near it, the familiar red hair of one blowing in the wind. He smiled at the sight.

  Harvey brought the chopper in to a slightly shaky landing, letting out a gasp of relief as he started to power down his aircraft. Eddie climbed out and jogged clear of the still-whirling rotor blades. Nina was waiting for him near the police car with Natalia. ‘Are you both okay?’ he called as he reached them.

  ‘I am good, yes,’ Natalia replied, though her face looked drawn from the strain of her ordeal. ‘But what about you?’

  ‘Still walking, and blood’s mostly on the inside where it should be, so not too bad overall,’ he told her with a crooked grin, before turning to his wife. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Fine,’ Nina replied, with a tired sigh. She too appeared shaken, but experience had made her better at masking it. ‘What happened to Kroll? No, don’t tell me,’ she added quickly. ‘I can already tell from your expression that you’re going to come up with some God-awful one-liner, so I’ll just assume that you threw him out of the helicopter and he died.’

  ‘Close enough,’ replied Eddie, who had indeed already devised half a dozen terrible puns. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Thank God.’ She embraced him. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Me too,’ he said, kissing her. ‘Think the cops’ll want a chat with us first, though. I’d better phone Amy.’

  ‘There’s always something, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He smiled, then looked down at her, worry crossing his face. ‘Did he … did he do anything that might have hurt the baby?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He didn’t hit me in the stomach or anything, but I did get thrown around – and it wasn’t exactly a stress-free experience. I’ll need a check-up.’

  Eddie nodded. ‘Come on,’ he said, ushering the two women towards the terminal building. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  To the relief of all concerned, tests by an obstetrician at the hospital revealed that the three-month-old foetus still seemed healthy and unaffected by the day’s travails. After the examination, it was the turn of the police to seek answers – led by Amy Martin, who was furious that two NYPD officers had been injured as a result of Eddie’s not immediately calling in Kroll’s location, until he mollified her by pointing out that Nina had been about to be hanged when he arrived. The cops eventually accepted the couple’s version of events, albeit with a degree of grudging disbelief, and let them return home, Natalia accompanying them.

  ‘And after all that,’ Nina announced to the young German, once they were back at the apartment, ‘here’s the reason you’re here. I’d kinda hoped we could have done this right after you arrived, but, well, Nazis …’

  She opened a cupboard in the kitchen and delved into its deepest recesses, producing something that despite the dirt and tarnish on its surface was still clearly an item of both great age and value. It was a Greek amphora, a slim-necked silver vessel about eighteen inches high. She put it down on the counter in front of her guest.

  Natalia regarded the battered jug with a mixture of hope and apprehension. ‘This is it? The water from the Spring of Immortality?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Nina. It was in fact the only artefact that had survived the destruction wrought when she tricked the elder Kroll into setting off the trap awaiting anyone greedy enough to seek eternal life. A large dent on one side marked the spot where she had clubbed the Nazi leader’s head as he tried to drown her.

  ‘There isn’t much left in there,’ Eddie warned. ‘A couple of pints at most.’

  ‘I just hope it’s enough,’ the redhead said. She used a knife to prise open the stopper. ‘I don’t know how it works, but I’d recommend drinking it straight from the jug. Silver keeps the water’s properties active somehow.’

  ‘And you think it will cure me?’ asked Natalia.

  ‘It cured me. At leas
t, I can’t think of any other reason why my tumours went into remission.’ Nina offered the container to the younger woman. ‘Here.’

  The German stared at the vessel for a moment, then took it. A glance at Eddie, who gave her a reassuring nod, and she raised it to her lips to take an experimental mouthful. ‘Oh!’ she said, surprised. ‘It … it feels like a soda, as if it is fizzy. But there are no bubbles.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s weird. But it’s okay.’

  Natalia hesitated, then drank again, this time more deeply. She stopped after a few mouthfuls. ‘I do not want to take it all.’

  ‘You’re the only person in the world who’s still suffering from eitr poisoning,’ said Nina. ‘And you’ve had it your whole life. You need it more than us.’

  The other woman shook her head. ‘No, you should keep what is left. Eddie told me that it may cure more than just the eitr. You might need it some day.’ She gently but pointedly pushed the silver jug back across the counter to Nina, who reluctantly accepted it and replaced the stopper.

  ‘It’ll still be here if you need more of it,’ Eddie assured her. ‘I suppose now we’ve just got to wait and see if you get better.’

  ‘That may take some time.’

  ‘Hopefully not too long,’ said Nina. ‘It was only a few weeks before I started seeing an effect.’

  Natalia nodded, then glanced at the clock. ‘It is late. I should get to my hotel.’

  ‘You don’t want to stay for dinner?’

  She shook her head. ‘I do not want to impose on you. And after what happened today, I think you will both want some quiet time together, no?’

  ‘You sure?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘Yes, thank you. But I will see you tomorrow, I hope?’ She gave him a little smile. ‘I am looking forward to seeing New York – as a tourist this time!’

  He returned the smile with sympathy. ‘You’ve been through a lot too. Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes,’ she decided after a moment. ‘I will be. Thanks to you – both of you.’ With that, she said her farewells, then left.