The Wreck

Iron Age Media Prompt: The Dirigible

When I awoke to a tremendous crash late last night, I had thought a tree had fallen during the storm. It wasn't until the first rays of dawn silhouetted the great metallic carcass strewn about the field that I realized my error. Normally I would treat myself to breakfast first thing in the morning, but today there were more immediately pressing matters, and so I hastily dressed myself and made my way out onto the dew-laden grass.

As I approached, I noted the scorched earth and the still smoldering remains of canvas on the wreck. The steel ribs of the partially collapsed envelope had become partially ensnared on now ashen trees. The engines, now cold and silent, were half buried in mud, their wooden propellers shattered by the impact. My gut chilled as it occurred to me that the odds of anyone surviving this catastrophe were slim, until a peculiar observation occurred to me, and escaped my lips in a quiet whisper.

"Where is everyone?"

Amidst the remains of the great mechanical beast, I could discern no sign of human remains, not a corpse, nor severed piece of anatomy, not even tatters of cloth. Perhaps if I ventured further into the wreck, I thought, I might find that which seems to be conspicuously absent from a disaster site. Maybe I might even find a survivor who could tell me what became of this magnificent flying vessel. Cautiously, I crawled my way through a gap in the envelope's ribs near the nose, and began to make my way aft.

It did not take long before I found the remains of the gondola. It had been pulverized by the impact, it was unlikely much of anything could be retrieved intact from this mangle of twisted iron. Just as I was about to dismiss the possibility of finding anything worthwhile, something caught my eye: on what had once been a chair sat a leather bound journal, oddly intact considering the violent, fiery end everything else had suffered. After brushing off some ashes from the cover, I parted its pages and rifled through them. Most of the entries, written across a period of twenty years, were pedestrian, nothing particularly noteworthy, and yet I felt compelled to continue. It occurred to me in short order that this had belonged to the airship's captain, and yet I could not find a name anywhere in it. Why? Then, I reached the last page.

To whomever shall find this, I fear this may be my last entry. We have suffered a failure of two out of four engines, and a third is looking to be in poor shape. Damned pencil pushers in accounting! So what if those surplus engines were cheap? There was a reason the military no longer wanted them! We will not have sufficient power to avoid the oncoming storm, and several of the crew have raised concerns that a lightning strike could ignite the hydrogen in our gas cells. I have considered the possibility of an emergency landing, but it is too dark to make out a safe spot to land. By the grace of God, we might ride out this storm.

Only here, at the end of this entry, did my eyes settle upon a name...my name. What a strange coincidence, I wanted to tell myself, but no, that was my name, written in my handwriting. This journal was mine, and this dirigible...no, it couldn't be! My heart raced as I tried to reconcile all this. Was I dead? Was this heaven, hell, purgatory? Why was I the only one here? If only I could just make sense of it all...

Then my eyes opened. I was on a cot, with a concerned, bespectacled man in a white coat standing over me. As the haze cleared from my mind I recognized him as a doctor. I was in a hospital, and sitting in the corner was another man in mechanic's coveralls. I attempted to sit up only for pain to shoot up my spine and force me onto my back again with a groan.

"Don't move, sir, you're lucky to be alive after a fall like that" the doctor implored.

"Fall? What happened?" I whispered through gritted teeth.

"Look out the window" the man in coveralls prompted. With some effort, I turned my head to find myself staring out across the ruins of a town, heavily damaged by the last war, in the process of rebuilding. There, standing amongst the ruins, an airship was wedged neatly into the burned husk of an apartment complex. The ship itself was intact, and around the crash site was a throng of locals, passers-by, journalists, and beleaguered police and firefighters doing their best to keep them at bay while the site was secured.

"We had a rough landing, sent you through the windows in the wheelhouse to the ground" he explained, "But the important thing is that nobody died, your quick thinking saved everyone on the ship."

I turned my head away from the window and let out a sigh. I supposed I must've hit my head, or perhaps it was the morphine, but I didn't remember any of this. If this was what people were saying I did, who was I to let my own doubts get in the way of a good story?

"...Where's my journal?" I asked.

"It was in your pocket, sir" the doctor answered, "what about it?"

"Well...I want you to write something in it for me" I told him, "Two words: I'm alive."