Combustion (15 page)

The building looms out of the haze and suddenly she’s in front of it. She scans the flagstone wall for a way in but can see no obvious doors or windows -

There! What’s that? She sees a vehicle has hit the building, dented a metal roller door and created a gaping hole. There’s no one inside the car and both doors are open, surely the first time a Mercedes Gullwing has been abandoned with keys in the ignition.

She has a way in, except she’ll need to roll the Merc out of the hole to gain access. She leans in, thumps the gearbox into neutral, releases the handbrake until it clears the hole where the dented roller door has pulled away from its tracks, leaves herself a half-metre gap, then pulls on the handbrake again. She ducks low, works her way through the hole and enters the building.

She instantly feels safer; the explosions outside now remote. She looks around, realises it isn’t an office building, it’s a self-storage facility. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around. She knew these kinds of places didn’t need many people to operate but she’d have thought there’d be at least one person there, just to keep an eye on the joint?

Boom.
The explosion is vast, comes from her left and blows in part of the flagstone wall. She’s knocked to the floor.

Crunch.

‘Ahhh!’ Something very heavy lands on her left leg. The pain is horrible and instantly she feels dizzy. She can’t see anything through the haze of smoke and dust and she can’t move either - she’s pinned to the ground. The dizziness gets the better of her and she decides she just might have a little nap. As she closes her eyes she wonders if she’ll ever open them again.

~ * ~

20

The Baldwin Hills Overlook offers a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of Los Angeles. Actually it’s not quite three hundred and sixty degrees, more like three hundred and twenty, but you can pretty much see everything that’s going on in the city.

Bunsen stands atop the overlook and takes in the destruction he has wrought. Phase Two has been a total success. The Swarm has performed exactly as intended, though watching it work its terrible magic has been difficult. The human toll - just an abstract idea previously - is very real to him now. Even so, he has no regrets.

The plan was, simply, to make people switch off their combustion engines. That’s why the Swarm was designed to turn a vehicle’s exhaust purple as soon as the engine was infected, then black before it exploded. It was a
warning,
so people understood that if they
didn’t
turn off their engines they would die. Of course, for the warning to be effective, some people needed to die early in the process.

Kilroy didn’t agree with this. Even though he is a stone-cold killer with years of experience in the ways and means of death, he baulks at hurting anyone he believes is innocent. That’s why he wanted Bunsen to release the video this morning. Kilroy had created a two-minute Flash animation that explained the virus, what the purple and black colour of the exhaust meant, told people to turn off their combustion engines before there was any chance they could explode and urged them to leave Los Angeles ASAP.

Kilroy wanted to post it online and send it to all the news outlets before the Swarm was released but Bunsen overruled him, explaining that the threat needed to be real and obvious or it would have no power. Bunsen did, however, promise to release it before Phase Three, and he expects Kilroy to remind him of that as soon as he returns from dealing with Alvy.

Bunsen takes in the burning city and draws a deep breath, steels himself for what comes next.

Phase Three.

He moves towards the Tyrannosaur, which is parked nearby. The irony is that everything he has done today is to free mankind from its reliance on fossil fuels by forcing it to develop clean energy alternatives, and yet his primary mode of transportation is an Erickson Air-Crane, the thirstiest, dirtiest, most inefficient and polluting helicopter to ever grace the skies. Oh well. After today it will never fly again.

He climbs into the cockpit beside Enrico, buckles up and pulls on the headset. In a flash the giant chopper lifts into the sky and Bunsen takes in the hundreds of smoke spires that dot Los Angeles and snake towards the heavens.

Phase Two has laid this city low.

Phase Three will change this planet forever.

~ * ~

21

Judd, Corey and Spike run hard, keep to the edge of the freeway in case they need to use the cement retaining wall as cover.

The destruction is overwhelming, the sound of distant explosions constant. The lanes are littered with abandoned or burning vehicles, but few people. Traffic is almost non-existent: the odd car or bike races past with a purple exhaust, but that’s it. It seems most people have had the good sense to get off the road.

They skirt a line of smoking wrecks and Judd glances behind him, can’t see any sign of Ponytail or his silver Prius. Maybe the old guy didn’t survive the plane crash, or maybe he just cut his losses and went home. Here’s hoping.

Judd pulls in a deep breath and looks across at Corey, who, in spite of all the running they’ve done, doesn’t seem to have cracked a sweat. Judd tries not to breathe too deeply as he speaks: ‘You know, when I was a kid I thought LA would be great if it wasn’t for all the cars. Now I’m not so sure.’

‘You lived here?’

‘Not for long. We spent a year here in the eighties. My dad was in the army so we moved around a bit, up and down the west coast mainly.’

‘I moved with my dad too.’

‘Really? Where did you guys live?’

‘Started out in Adelaide, in South Australia. Biggest move was to Broome, over in the west. Then up to Darwin for a while. Ended up in the Alice eventually.’

‘Why’d you move so much?’

‘He was a heli-musterer so he had to go where the work was.’

‘How’d you find it? Gotta say I didn’t love it myself. As soon as I’d settle somewhere, make some friends, we’d be up and going again. Pissed me off for years.’

Corey takes it in with a nod. ‘Yeah. We were never in one place for very long.’

They run on in silence. Corey doesn’t tell Judd the reason his father was always looking for work was because he was a shocking drunk. Once he was hired it was only a matter of time before he’d be found inebriated on the job (not a good look for somebody who flies helicopters for a living) and would be let go. The poor bastard just never got over the death of his wife, something Corey completely understood. Once he lost his pilot’s licence it only took a year before he drank himself into the grave. He was fifty-two.

Corey never speaks about it, his mother’s death or his father’s truncated life afterwards. Of all the people he’s ever known, Judd is the one person he’s come closest to telling - just a moment ago, as they ran along this freeway. The Yank knows everything else about Corey’s life, knows he can communicate with the bloody
dog
for heaven’s sake, so why doesn’t he just tell him about his parents? He thinks about it and realises he knows the answer: he wants at least one part of his life to be unaffected by it.

Spike barks.

Corey glances at Judd. ‘He wants to know how much further. The question had a lot more uppity attitude than I can convey.’

‘A while. Never done it on foot before —’ Judd stops running. Corey and Spike pull up too.

‘What?’

Judd points. ‘And might not have to.’ Across the road is an SUV, a large, black Cadillac Escalade, jammed between a cement dividing wall and a truck. On the SUV’s roof are strapped two mountain bikes. ‘We use those we’ll be there in twenty minutes.’ Judd sets off for the SUV. Corey and Spike follow.

They approach the vehicle and Judd sees it. ‘Oh, come on!’ The engine runs and the exhaust is light purple. Inside, a guy is slumped over the steering wheel, quite clearly dead.

Corey turns to leave. ‘Oh well, we tried. Let’s get out of here before it blows.’

‘No. We switch off the engine.’ Judd moves to the rear passenger doorhandle, the only one he has access to, and pulls on it. Locked.

‘Like I said, we tried.’ Corey turns to leave.

‘Wait.’ Judd’s hands face each other and turn, like he’s working an invisible Rubik’s cube.

Spike barks.

Corey nods. ‘Yeah, I see it.’

‘See what?’

‘You’re doing that Rubik’s cube thing with your hands again.’

‘It helps me think - we can break the window!’ Judd steps forward and hits the rear windscreen with his fist.

Whack.
It bounces off, painfully. He wrings his hand. ‘Well, that’s not going to work.’ He searches the road, finds a piece of the SUV’s bumper bar, picks it up, feels its weight, swings it at the rear window.

Whack.
It bounces off. He tries again. No joy. ‘Come on!’

Corey stares at the exhaust, concerned. ‘Mate, it’s getting darker.’

‘I can do this!’ Judd swings the bumper at the window again. It bounces off, barely leaves a mark. ‘If we can get them it’ll save us hours and we won’t be wandering around like sitting ducks on the road —’

Corey’s not convinced. ‘Just step away from the vehicle.’

Judd drops the bumper and clambers onto the Escalade’s roof.

‘That is the opposite of stepping away!’

Judd goes to work on the clamps that hold the bikes’ rear wheels to the roof racks.

Corey’s eyes move to the tail pipe. ‘The exhaust is really dark.’

Judd’s having trouble undoing the first clamp. ‘Tell me when I need to get down.’

‘Now!
Now is that time.
Right now.’
Corey’s eyes are locked on the puffing exhaust. It’s dark purple.

Judd’s frustrated. The clamp will not come off. ‘I just can’t - this thing - it won’t come loose.’

Corey looks at what he’s doing. ‘Don’t
pull
it,
push
it.’

‘That’s not going to work —’
Click.
The clamp unfastens. ‘Oh, good tip.’ Judd moves to the second rear wheel. Click. He then turns to the front wheels.

Corey stares at the exhaust. ‘Must go faster!’ He backs away from the vehicle. ‘It’s turning black!’

Click. Click.
Judd unfastens both front tyres then flings one bike off the roof. It bounces on its tyres and Corey grabs it as Judd jumps down with the second bike and runs hard -

Boom.
The Escalade detonates.

The blast hits them like a hammer, the heatwave extraordinary. Corey can hear the hair singe on the back of his head as the wall of flame reaches out for them - then dissipates. They both stay upright, but only because they have the bikes as support. Judd turns to Corey with a smile. ‘See? No problem.’

Corey’s furious. ‘What the hell are you
doing?’

‘What?’

‘Do you have a bloody death wish?’

‘I got the bikes, didn’t I?’

‘Yeah, and nearly - rolled them, to our deaths.’

Judd looks at him. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’

‘It sounded better when I was thinking it —’

Judd hears a noise over the crackle and pop of the burning SUV. It’s a high-pitched whir. It is distant but grows louder. Judd turns and scans the freeway, then sees it through the flames. A car swerves through the wrecks and races towards them. It whirs because it’s a hybrid. A Prius.

A silver Prius hybrid.

‘Ponytail.’

Corey’s not happy to see it. ‘Oh, come on!’

The car will arrive in twenty seconds.

Spike barks.

‘Yes, he
really
is a mofo.’

Judd glances at the mountain bike he holds. ‘See? Aren’t you happy I got these things now?’ He pushes the bike, skips once, throws his leg over the seat, finds the pedals and rides away. ‘Follow me.’

Corey push-runs his bike behind him.

Judd glances back. ‘What are you doing? Get on.’

‘I can’t.’

‘What’s wrong? Is it broken?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then what?’

‘I can’t.’

‘That’s not an answer —’

‘Ride a bike! I can’t ride a bike.’

Judd is dumbfounded. ‘You’re thirty years old. Didn’t you learn when you were a kid?’

‘You don’t ride a bike if you have your own
helicopter!’

‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘I was hoping you’d teach me.’

The Prius whirs.

They turn.

It’s just ten seconds away.

Judd looks back at Corey. ‘First lesson! Throw your leg over the seat, sit down and put your feet on the pedals.’

Corey doesn’t need to be told twice. He pushes off, throws his leg over the seat, sits and finds the pedals with his feet - then topples over. ‘Christ!’

Spike barks.

‘I’d like to see you do it.’ Corey pushes off again - and stays upright this time. ‘Yes!’ Cocky, he looks over at Judd, then realises the astronaut is riding beside him and holding his bike’s seat to keep him upright. ‘Oh.’