Death flies over Spain

The thrum of the engines beginning to roar into action, the petrol motors coughing and then catching with their propellers spinning in their concentric circles with a growing whine that reached into a shrill roar, was just entering the air as the flaming disk of the sun peeked shyly over the mountains. Cool air of dawn welcomed it, and pale clouds drifted through the air, far above in a vault which was still purple and dark, pierced still by the brightest stars to the west. A light wind ruffled them, causing them to float gently along, towards some unknown destination, these clouds that man on the ground knows not their origin, nor where they shall one day find their place of rest.

Antonio Cicerono stared up at the arch of the heavens, trying to lose himself in its peace and solitude. A falcon swooped high above in the morning glow, although as the engines whined to life it flew away, flew away from this place. Liberty, liberty - a bird had that, but a man didn't. He thought back to when the police had arrested him, arrested him for being part of the rebels. It was true, he had supported them, he had run information, messages, he had served in one of the units protecting a factory from the government when they tried to obliterate them, he wasn't innocent, if fighting in the defense of his liberty was guilt - but why? Why? It coursed through his mind, the thought, why they had chosen for him to die, why. He thought of the fat priest who had leered at him, who had hated him ever since he had refused his advance as a young boy. The government took their word seriously, took what these men of god said to heart - but why did a man of god have to do this to him? He didn't believe in god, but if there was one, surely He would save him from this plight? Did not His son himself die upon the cross, a victim of tyranny too, when he had fought for the poor and for the oppressed? And yet clearly if there was a god, He was silent up there in he-

His vision exploded into white stars, as felt a blinding pain strike the back of his head, and was knocked to his knees, returning to this world from the path that his thoughts had wandered. Dazed and bruised, he looked behind him, as a guard, dressed in a military uniform and carrying a rifle, smashed the butt of the gun into his back once more. Another blinding flash of pain exploded across his bruised and battered body, as he bent over in agony.

"Get moving you traitor!" screamed the guard, a harsh and raucous voice, as cruel and unfeeling hands gripped his head and pulled him back to his feet. The man pushed him forwards, a hard and heavy shove that nearly toppled him again, but he stayed on his feet. It was a miracle that he did so, with his eyes tied behind his back with rope, the harsh hemp fiber granting on his skin, already feeling chafed and raw. His legs obeyed without thought, as he stumbled along, stumbled forwards.

There was a line of them. Men, of all ages, clad in rags, gaunt and bruised. Blood spilled down from the cut of one man, a jagged slash across a cheek that still showed the red-drenched flesh underneath the skin, a stocky figure perhaps in his 40s, a muscular figure, his arms toned by labor. Some of them shivered, shivered in the chill dawn air, but for most of them it was a trembling, a quaking, as they gazed upon the gaping door of the plane, into its cavernous interior, with insufficient light from the windows casting it into dim shadows. The livery of the plane still included the gold and red of Iberia airlines, bright, too bright, in the early morning sun.

He was the youngest of the file of prisoners. A thin mustache was on his upper lip, but he hadn't even celebrated his 18th year yet, he was still 17. It hurt, it hurt to know that life ended so young, for so little reason, before he had ever had a child, before he had ever known love, to die young instead of old in a warm bed surrounded by his children and grandchildren. There was still a part of him, young, that saw death in a glorious cause as well - glorious - but now, as he ached from the cuts, from the bruises, from hunger and pain, he felt nothing, nothing at all, save for a feeling of incomprehension and dreadful, gaping, sadness.

Antonio had always liked planes. He had had a little model, a little wooden thing, that his father had carved for him. Whittled it around the fire, in winter, out of some piece of balta wood that he had found thrown away next to a carpentry factory. Long nights, whittling away with the knife, crafting it piece by piece. The wings, the monoplane emerging from the grainy wood, then the cockpit, an open affair with the carefully sculpted faux-glass protection, the tail and the rudder, the long and graceful body, even the little propellers on the front and the tiny outlets for air and for cooling, his patient and skilled hands working constantly, scanning it with his eyes, comparing it to a depiction in a newspaper. And then he had set to painting it, with red and gold, with black and grey, drawing the depiction of canvas and the flaps and the Spanish roundel, until there it was - the fairy-like light little plane of Antonio, which his father had given to him with his unassuming honesty, a smile as he put it in his child's hands. Antonio had run outside and run around and around with the plane, holding it up into the air, swooping up and down with it, imaging that someday he would fly up in the sky, like a bird. The other boys had been jealous, and they had played with it, as a bomber in games of cowboys and Indians - the absurdity of using it a war from the last century where no airplanes yet flew had never occurred tho them - or in adventures and explorations, travelling through the great jungles of Africa, finding tribes in Brazil or New Guinea, crossing over the vast gulf of the Atlantic, each time the light little plane guided by a child's hands against the sky.

He had always kept the aircraft, and it was somewhere back at home, with his father still. As he had grown older he had played with it less and less, but he still had always loved to watch planes, he had hoped that one day he could be a pilot. He had bought books, with his precious little money, about aircraft, about how to train to become a pilot, and had asked and wondered, started to plan, to dream of amassing his little cash and savings to one day go to some school that would send him soaring into the air. The knights of the air, that would take him away from this cruel and callous lair of misery, to something greater and more beautiful.

And now it would kill him. The first time he had ever been in an airplane, and it would be his death.

They shuffled into the hold, into an interior free from seats, being pushed up against the wall in their rows. Antonio had been nearly the last in the line, so he was far away from the door, being led through the interior past the rows of kneeling men or men pushed up against the walls, like passing through the mass of a crowded cathedral. Guards on the inside stood with guns, checking the ropes to make sure they were secured as they tied them once again, this time to rails in the plane, occasionally hitting one of them with a rifle butt or the blow of their booted feet. Then one of them closed the door, as it shut with a metallic clang, coming back in on its rollers, and it being locked and secured.

It was silent inside, as silent as it could be with the continuing rumble of the engines, even the guards silent for once. The prisoners simply sat, sat as the plane's engine reached their crescendo and it moved forwards, and halted on the runway. The man next to Antonio stirred, and turned to him. "Your first time on a plane?"

"Yes", worded back Antonio.

"Myself as well". It was such a strangely calm voice, in this time.

"I always loved aircraft. I loved their freedom, to go anywhere they wanted."

"I've always been afraid of them. I thought if I got on one I would die." He laughed, a bitter, harsh laugh. "And I was right".

Antonio did not reply.

The engines thrummed once more, and they felt the sense of acceleration as it bounced down the runway, and into the air. It was strange, to be pushed sideways like that. Despite himself he looked out the porthole in front of him, seeing the sky behind it. Then the aircraft banked, and the ground hove into view, and a brief moment of happiness crossed his mind, that he had finally seen it, like a bird from above, seen the earth so far below, its emerald and auburn plants, its rising and falling hills, the little homes of peasants and the towns of workers, where people were ants at most, where the troubles of the world were left behind.

And then the aircraft steadied out once more, and it flew through the sky like an arrow, the slight winds leaving its progress untrammeled. All he could see was the vaguely greenish color of the metal, not quite living even like moss, not quite dead, just.... there, set against the blue portal of the sky from the porthole. The sound of the engines filled the cabin, making conversation impossible. The door to the pilot's cabin opened, and one of the guards filed inside.

A few seconds later he re-emerged, and signaled to the guard by the door, who gripped its locking wheel and wheeled it in a circle, then pulled it open. The sound of the airstream and the engines filled the aircraft, a deafening roar, louder than even before. The guard grabbed the prisoner crouched the closest to the door, untied his rope to the plane, pulled him upright, and pushed him towards the opening into infinity. The man began to resist frantically, struggling, attempting to push and break free, and for a second the guard lost him and he tried to throw himself back into the plane - and then another one caught him, and they wrenched him in front of the door. With a great heave, he was thrown out the airplane - thrown into the sky.

It had only taken seconds, only seconds, such a brief span of time to bring the life of a man to an end. The other prisoners sat stunned, stunned despite it all, then tried to struggle, to stand up, to go somewhere in this closed cylinder of aluminum so far above the earth - but they were tied, and there was nothing they could do. The next man tried to bite the guard, but he dodged the canines, and hit him with a twack of a rifle barrel into his head. The prisoner felt dazed, faint, perhaps unconscious. Antonio felt sympathy for him, sympathy that at least he would die without knowledge that death awaited him, that he would die in inky blackness rather than in the horror of the light.

It repeated itself with its cruel and dreadful methodical nature, time and again. Antonio felt sick to his stomach as he watched, pained, horrified, and the terror in his soul grew as the guards approached closer and closer to him. And then it was his turn, as the ropes were untied, as his legs kicked desperately, as a faint trickle of urine ran down his legs from the terror and the horror, as the guards held him and dragged him towards the door, as he cried and even as he knew not god, prayed - prayed and hoped, hoped that this world that he he had seen so little of, this world that he would say goodbye to in horror and those terrifying final seconds of terror, was but the prelude to the next as the priests had always promised.

And then he was pushed out the door, and into the air, to fly like he had always dreamed of, to fly like a bird, to fly upon the flight of man through the great vaulting arch of the heavens, to fly for the first and the last time. But even birds must in the end return to the ground, and the human bird shall be no different, as Icarus falls from the sky to the distant soil.

Antonio would never see his 18th birthday.

And thus continued the rain of death over the lands of Spain, to purge the enemies of king, faith, and fatherland.