Where there's a will

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Silence, as sudden as a stopped heart.

After the monotonous grind of the engine for the last three and a half hours, and then the brief stuttering and missing, it seemed to Claudia that the absence of sound had a physical presence, a doughy mass that filled the cockpit, pressing on her eardrums and stopping her nostrils.

“The fuel’s run out,” she told the old man.

“So that’s that, then,” he said. He’d had plenty of time to get used to the idea, and he spoke as much in resignation as in fear. In the red glow from the instrument panel, his weathered face, even the billy-goat scrap of beard, might have been a carved mask, all stark planes and angles. On his lap, his left hand gently cradled his heavily bandaged right. The bleeding had slowed down to an ooze now, or maybe it had stopped altogether. For a while it had been pumping steadily, soaking the gauze and staining his pants. He’d fainted a couple of times, and she’d thought he might die on her, right there in the cockpit.

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