SkyDie
By David Bond
Copyright 2014 David Bond
Thank you for downloading this ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favorite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
Table of Contents
Title Page
SkyDie
About David Bond
Other books by David Bond
Four backpackers were having the time of their lives. Liam, his girlfriend Chloe, and their friends Ryan and Jen had all finished university and wanted to do something a little bit different to all the other graduates. They wanted to rend themselves free of the system for a little while longer, and therefore chose to take a gap year and spend it travelling. This, they were sure, was an adventure undertaken by the brave few who dared to dream. They failed to realise that quite a lot of other people do the same thing, and go back to work when they’re done, but that’s beside the point. Bold and daring their adventure was, but their adventure was ill-fated. This story follows their tragic journey.
#
Everything was in its place. Liam took up his position up in the flat green field where the descending skydivers were soon to land. Watching the skies patiently, he set up the pocket action camera so he could get the best shots. Liam knew, even without doing a skydive himself, that the memories would last a lifetime. He wasn’t wrong.
Liam spotted the gaudily coloured biplane arch through the clean blue sky in the distance, and followed its path with excitement and just a little bit of fear. Soon enough, the side door of the little plane was thrust open and Liam watched his friends leap out one by one, strapped to their respective instructors. The small harnessed figures plummeted towards the earth, but from the ground they appeared to be floating without care or worry.
‘It doesn’t look so bad’, Liam thought to himself, as he started filming with the pocket action camera. A sudden pang of regret took him by surprise, knowing he had been conquered by an irrational worry. His friends were perfectly safe, and they were having the time of their lives.
The solitary backpacker lambasted himself for a moment or two, until he was sucker punched with a fist of fear. ‘How long have they been falling for? The parachutes aren’t opening!’ The pang of regret was mild compared to this feeling.
The moment Liam tried to wrestle back control from his scaremongering brain was followed immediately by several bodies hitting the ground. Surrounded by snapped bones, patchy pools of blood, twitching limbs in their final throes of death; Liam knew there was not much time to save his friends and therefore the trip. Checking the pulse of each of his fallen friends, it was quickly confirmed they were all very very dead.
Opting to leave his recently deceased travel companions lying in the field for the time being, Liam picked up their rented pocket action cameras and other personal belongings and made for the rental campervan as quickly as possible. He mulled over what to do next.
‘The police? Ambulance? Fire? . . Oh shit, the deposit on the cameras!’
Like any legitimate backpacker, Liam prioritized the retrieval of his deposit over health and safety concerns. He quickly sorted out the curtains in the back of the vehicle and was soon on his way, back to the skydive company’s office at the airport hangar.
The journey to SkyDie’s office was made slower by Liam politely pulling over into several stopping bays along the way in order to allow the speedier local cars to get by. When he eventually reached the office he made several attempts at parking the campervan before nailing it the seventh time, after which he rushed into the office and was greeted by a very friendly receptionist.
‘Hi there, how are you?’ She chirped.
‘My friends just did the skydive, something went wrong with their gear, and now they’re all dead.’
Without any hesitation, the receptionist replied politely.
‘Oh that’s too bad! Sorry about that.’
An awkward silence followed, and the receptionist continued to smile, until Liam remembered the rented pocket action cameras.
‘Oh I need to give you these back too.’
The receptionist flashed another big smile as she took the cameras from Liam, handed back the deposit money, and began to process the pictures. He waited patiently. Having retrieved the full deposit, he felt much better.
‘OK here’s your pictures’, showing Liam the image on her PC monitor, ‘now you can have these in any size you want, from wallet to poster size, and we can also make up a keyring for you.’
Liam nodded and started to scan through the images of his former friends on the screen - ranging from excited happy faces leaping from the plane, moving to abject horror, followed by blissful acceptance of their impending death, and finally to splatters of guts, bloods and bones amidst a tangle of limbs.
‘I’ll pass, thanks.’
‘OK no worries! Also, please check out the gift shop before you leave, we have a great collection of souvenirs available!’
Liam was speechless at the lack of sensitivity shown by the receptionist, and walked out of the office still struggling to understand what had just happened, but the anger and confusion was eased somewhat by his new SkyDie baseball cap.
‘OK, what next?’ Liam thought to himself when he returned to the campervan. The priority - the deposit on the cameras, was dealt with. Liam pondered calling the emergency services, but had no idea what number he needed to ring as he wasn’t in his home country. He had not planned to be in this sort of situation. He drove to the nearest town, stumbling around searching for free wifi in order so he could google what the local emergency number was. He did not think to ask any of the locals.
Not long into his fruitless search, Liam realised something. He couldn’t ring the emergency services because of his dark past. Like all backpackers, Liam and his friends had committed a series of petty offences whilst travelling. The misdemeanors include: using free wifi outside a cafe without buying anything, accidentally stealing a fork from the last hostel, checking out of a campsite half an hour later than the deadline, failed to give way to queuing traffic, and driving the rental campervan for a short distance along an unsealed road.
These offences loomed large in Liam’s brain, and he quickly made a decision. He was clearly a wanted man, a hardened criminal, and had thus far evaded capture because his campervan looked the same as everybody else’s. However, it was nevertheless wise to avoid any unnecessary attention - he did not want the police getting within handcuffs distance. Therefore, Liam opted to destroy the evidence, return the campervan back to the depot, and catch the next flight home. Only SkyDie knew about his friends’ whereabouts that day, and Liam reasoned that they also would not like any attention to be drawn to the fatal incident.
Making the decision was relatively easy, but going through with it was more tiresome. Liam was unsure of where to dump the bodies, so decided to bundle the corpses into the campervan, out of sight from prying eyes. He hoped to figure out a way of disposing of his deceased load en route to the depot.
A short drive back to the flat green field, and soon Liam was removing the skydive gear from his friend’s bodies, piecing bits of limbs back to torsos with some duct tape and string, and bundling the mangled remains into the campervan. He carefully placed Chloe in the front passenger seat, whilst Ryan and Jen’s corpses took up the rear seats. Any bits of body that Liam could not find a place for he put underneath the fold out double bed. Nobody would suspect a thing. Once he had checked his mirrors he was ready to go.
That night, parked up by the side of the road, Liam was deep in thought. Lying next to three rapidly decom
posing dead bodies was a tad uncomfortable, but the real problem was what to do with them. The bodies needed to be disposed of permanently. Once he was happy with his plan (burial, preferably underwater) he caught some much needed sleep.