To The End
Flash Fiction February (Day 10)
Bessie Thompson gripped the yoke of the B-29 Superfortress with white knuckles as the entire bomber seemed to shake all around her. She was a fighter pilot and had never flown a bomber.
It was the last days of the war, though, and pilots were scarce. This also wasn’t exactly the kind of mission people volunteered for.
She saw nothing but ocean outside of the spiderweb windows of the cockpit. To her right, a co-pilot sat wide-eyed, their entire body shaking alongside the aircraft. Behind her, the flight crew readied a weapon that would end the war.
A weapon that would end all wars, forever. A nuclear bomb.
The B-29 Superfortress was unproven. Fresh off the assembly line from a manufacturer named Borning. It has remote control turrets, computerized targeting, a pressurized cabin, and powerful new engines. None of that mattered, of course, because it was designed to fight a human enemy.
The bomb behind Bessie wasn’t meant for a human enemy.
Bessie playfully pushed Lydia up against the cold steel of the P-51 Mustang, pinning her wrists to the metal with a mischievous grin. Lydia giggled, her eyes fluttering as her cherry red lipstick shimmered in the moonlight.
“How dare you insult such a fine piece of machinery!” Bessie said, “This beautiful fighter has gotten me out of more than a few close calls.”
Lydia craned her neck to get a better look. “You know, sometimes I think you love this damn plane more than you do me.”
Bessie leaned in and kissed Lydia. As she pulled back, Lydia cackled with delight.
“You got some lipstick on you!” she said.
Bessie grunted, trying unsuccessfully to rub the lipstick off using the sleeve of her jacket. With her hands free, Lydia draped her arms over Bessie’s shoulders.
“Hey, do me a favor, will you?” Lydia asked.
“Sure, anything you want.” Bessie replied.
“Don’t ever leave me, okay?”
Bessie smiled and kissed Lydia again, just a bit longer this time.
“I’m with you to the end, baby. That’s a promise!”
“Hey! You with me?” a voice shouted.
Bessie turned away from the flight controls of the B-29 and saw one of the flight crew’s faces hovering beside her. He was a young kid, not a day older than twenty-three. Way too young to be on a mission like this one.
“Yeah! I’m here,” Bessie replied.
The kid gestured toward the back. “The bomb bay doors aren’t responding!”
“Can you fix it?”
The kid shrugged. “We’ll keep working on it, but you may want to consider plan B.”
Bessie let out a sigh that was fully smothered by the roar of the flying fortress around her.
“Keep me posted,” she yelled back.
Bessie looked out the front window of the cockpit. She could see the silhouette of it in the distance. Writhing tentacles stretched into the clouds like swaying skyscrapers.
It looks just like the pictures.
Captain Randal Baxter clicked the button on the slide projector, and a new image came into view. There were over fifty people in the auditorium, but when that thing came up on the screen, you could have heard a pin drop.
“This is our target. Designation: Omega. While we have lost contact with our FOB in the area, intelligence seems to indicate that the entirety of the Nazi war machine has been devoured by this unknown entity.”
“We should be thanking it, then!” a soldier in the audience shouted.
A few other soldiers laughed, but the room quickly fell back to silence.
“Given the rate at which Omega is growing, we believe it will be large enough to devour the planet within ten days, which is why we will now be using the nuclear weapon developed by the Manhattan Project to destroy Omega through a direct strike.”
The captain clicked the button again, switching to a new photograph. It was a bomber. Sleek, massive, bigger than anything Bessie had ever flown.
“This is a B-29 Superfortress.”
Bessie turned away from the thing that was devouring the horizon and looked at the crew in the back of the bomber.
“Any updates?” she shouted.
“It’s armed, but the doors still won’t respond!”
Bessie pulled a black-and-white photo out of her jacket pocket. It was a picture of her and Lydia. One was wearing a leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, while the other was in a floral pattern sundress.
“Plan B it is, then,” Bessie whispered.
Bessie pushed past the nurse blocking the double doors that led into the back of the hospital. She could hear the woman protesting behind her, but she didn’t care.
She stomped down the sterile white hall, shoving past doctors and nurses in equal measure. Her face glistened with fresh tears. Her eyes were puffy and full of rage. She turned into room 201 and froze.
The woman she loved most in the world. The person that kept her going through the utter hell that was war, laid unconscious in a hospital bed. Her beautiful, perfect face was bruised and bloody.
Bessie stumbled to the side of the bed and fell on her knees. She had been drinking all night. The world wobbled around her. Reality was less concrete and more of a suggestion since she had received the news.
It was an accident. The driver fell asleep at the wheel.
Then how the hell was it an accident? Were they drunk?
No, they’re just overworked. It’s not easy keeping the world turning while you’re off fighting wars.
You’d better get down here.
Bessie hung up on the doctor and rushed to the hospital right after she received the call. She picked up Lydia’s hand and held it to her cheek.
“I’m here baby, it’s going to be okay. I’m with you to the end,” Bessie said, her words fractured by sobs.
Bessie kissed Lydia’s hand. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.
Lydia died two hours later.
Bessie held the photo of her and Lydia tightly in her right hand as she attempted to stabilize the yoke with her left.
She glanced to the right at her co-pilot, who looked back at her with tears forming in her eyes.
“Plan B?” the co-pilot asked through the headset.
Bessie nodded. “Plan B.”
The kid from the flight crew showed up again. His face was covered in streaks of black grease. He wiped a dirty cloth over his sweat-stained face.
“It’s all ready. The rest is up to you, Bessie,” he said, shouting over the roar of the aircraft.
Bessie nodded. “I never did get your name, by the way.”
He extended a filthy hand. “It’s Frank!”
Bessie shook his hand. “It’s been a pleasure serving with you, Frank.”
The kid nodded, his lips quivering as tears welled up in his eyes. “Same to you, ma’am. Let’s save the world, shall we?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Bessie tucked the photo of her and Lydia onto a space next to the altitude gauge, right in her line of sight. She put both hands on the yoke and focused ahead.
Tentacles thrashed all around outside the cockpit, like a wavering skyline. Bessie pushed the yoke forward, turning the bomber's nose down.
A gaping maw had taken the space where the city of Berlin used to be. Circular rows of gnashing teeth, each one the size of a house, rotated like saw blades around the edge. Rippling layers of flesh gave way to infinite black.
No one knew how far the gullet of Omega went down into the Earth, but the eggheads in charge seemed to think a nuclear bomb named Little Boy would be enough to kill it. It was just like the damn Nazis to create a mess like this and leave it for someone else to clean up.
As the B-29 Superfortress crossed the edge of Omega’s maw, and darkness began to swallow the marvel of American engineering, Bessie plucked the photo from its spot beside the altitude gauge.
She smiled through tears as her finger traced the shape of Lydia’s face in the photo. Behind her, the nuclear payload detonated, unleashing hellfire upon the beast known as Omega.
To the end, baby…
Thanks for Reading! Here’s Your Musical Pairing
If you’re not already crying, this will do the trick!
😭😭😭😭
I feel so bad for these characters, they found such a rare love I hate that it was cut short. I love how she stayed committed and went to the ultimate limit for the world they shared 😭
What an amazing story! I love the occult aspect to it! It was such a heartwarming story 💕
😭😭 Bessie 😭😭