Impact (30 page)

The stench of rot-gas still hung in the air.

Boot prints on dust-matted deck plate. She examined the overlapping trail, tried to reconstruct Pinback’s movements. Scuff marks centred on the rear of the cabin: the crawlspace that led to the bomb bay.

Frost shone her flashlight into the narrow passageway half expecting to find Pinback curled foetal, hibernating until nightfall.

She climbed into the steel tunnel and crawled on her hands and knees. She inspected the hatch leading to the payload bay. Palm prints and scratch marks. A crude attempt to force his way inside.

She stroked abraded metal.

‘Why did you want to get inside the bomb bay, Pinback? What was on your mind?’

Frost stepped from the plane into dazzling morning light. She shielded her eyes and let them adjust.

Blurred prints heading away into desert.

She drew her pistol, and limped in pursuit. She followed the trail across the sand, up the lee side of a dune.

Additional prints. Three people walking side by side. Pinback joined by his companions. Equidistant tracks, like they were marching in lock-step.

She stood at the crest of the ridgeline, squinting into the low morning sun.

The tracks led away across the sand, then abruptly terminated as if the three figures simultaneously dropped to their knees and burrowed beneath the ground.

She led Hancock outside. His arms were lashed to the crutch with chute harness straps. She tied cable round his neck like a leash, and tethered him to the undercarriage wheel.

He knelt and looked up at her. He was gaunt. Skin blistered and peeling. Stubble lengthened to a scraggy beard.

‘Reckon you’ve aged twenty years these past few days,’ she said. ‘Can’t imagine I look much better.’

She gestured to the sun.

‘Ready to catch a few rays?’

Hancock didn’t reply.

Frost uncapped a bottle of water and held it to his lips. He hesitated, like he wanted to refuse but was too parched to turn down the offer.

She let him take a couple of long swigs, then pulled the bottle away.

He swilled water round his mouth like he was debating whether to spit it in her face.

‘Enjoying your revenge?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.’

She walked to the B-52 and sat in the shadow of the nose.

Hancock shuffled around, turned his back on the sun.

‘How long will you leave me out here?’ he shouted.

‘Haven’t given it much thought.’

Frost pulled a bandana from her pocket, dabbed perspiration from her brow and neck.

‘If you want me dead, then man-up and put a bullet in my brain.’

‘I’ll sit you in the shade soon enough. Just want to see you sweat a little first. Childish retribution, but fuck it. Maybe it’ll encourage you to act like a reasonable human being.’

She browsed the survival manual and studied a line drawing.

She leant forwards and dug a hole. She fetched a plastic beaker from the plane and set it in the hole. She slit open a plastic bag, placed it over the hole and pegged it down with a couple of wrenches.

‘Condensation still. Might be able to decant a dribble of water if we leave it overnight. And it’s a good way to purify urine. Use evaporation to filter the liquid clean. So if you need a piss, you let me know, you hear?’

She unzipped the trauma kit.

She pulled off a boot, untied the splints and examined her injured leg.

‘Still planning to take a walk?’ asked Hancock.

‘Yeah. Head for the mountains. Hoping you’ll see sense and join me.’

‘If I don’t? Going to leave me tied to this fucking wheel?’

‘I’ll cut you lose when I go.’

‘How about water?’

‘Fifty-fifty split. I’ll drain half from the tank, carry it on my back. Leave you with the rest.’

‘What about Pinback and his pals? How am I supposed to defend myself?’

‘That won’t be a problem.’

‘How do you figure?’

‘Because, when they show up tonight, I aim to kill them.’

Sunset.

Noble stumbled through endless dunes.

‘Bobbi,’ he shouted. ‘Bobbi, you there?’

Noble willed her voice to come to him.

‘Come on, Bobbi. Talk to me.’

Hours teetering on the edge of madness. Why couldn’t he will himself over the precipice? Why couldn’t his broken mind allow a retreat into dreams?

Countless times he had stood outside the barracks at Andrews Air Force Base, ignored CANNOT CONNECT TO NETWORK and thumbed his wife’s number.

Torrential rain. Standing on the barrack porch, phone pressed to his ear.

‘Love you, babe.’ Feeling connected to his Cedar Street home despite the absence of signal bars. The kitchen counter where he often ate breakfast, hair still wet from the shower. He would sip coffee, watch birds perch on the yard fence. ‘I miss you. Love to Malcolm. Hope to see you both soon.’ A kind of prayer. Committing his love to UHF.

Why couldn’t she be here now? Why couldn’t he summon her from memory?

‘Hey. Bobbi? You there?’

No sound but the rasp of his own breathing, the crunch of his boots, the blood-rush in his ears.

He was irrevocably sane, fully present, condemned to endure merciless heat, merciless light.

Noble staggered across sand, determined to cover as much ground as he could before dark.

A glint on the horizon. The wrecked limo still sitting beached among the dunes.

Trenchman’s parting words:

‘Don’t get caught in the open at night. Not if you can help it. Find shelter. Once they get your scent, they won’t quit.’

Noble broke into a run.

The limo.

Noble tossed his backpack through a shattered side-window. He squirmed through the window and rolled onto a bench seat. He lay on sand-dusted leatherette, panting with exhaustion.

Fitful moonlight shafted through the windows. The limo interior glowed with phosphorescent light.

Noble pulled down his bandana mask, bit the fingers of his gloves and tugged them from his hands.

He uncapped his canteen and let water wet his lips and tongue. He quickly resealed the cap in case he lost self control and drained the canteen dry.

He unlaced his boots and kicked them off. He slapped sand from crusted socks. He massaged blistered feet.

No sound but the mournful wind-whisper of the desert night.

He sat back, pulled a sheaf of research notes from his backpack and thumbed pages by torchlight. Too tired to make sense of the text. He shut off his flashlight and set the pages aside.

He turned up his collar, curled foetal on the back seat and fell into a fitful sleep.

Noble snapped awake. Vague sense of unease.

He lay beneath a blanket of research notes. He shuffled them neat and stuffed them in his backpack.

He sat up.

Stench of rotted flesh.

A heavy thud. He flinched.

Slow, deliberate footsteps. Someone pacing the roof.

He snatched the Beretta from its holster. Footfalls directly above his head. Heart-pounding adrenalin rush.

He looked out the window. Moon shadows. The silhouette of a man crouched directly above him on the limo roof.

A guttural, dirt-clogged voice:

‘How you doing, Harris?’

‘Early?’

‘Long journey. Bet you’re exhausted.’

Noble took aim and fired a shot into the ceiling. The retort made his ears sing. Coiling barrel fumes filled the compartment like cigarette smoke.

A smouldering notch in the roof vinyl. A pencil beam of moonlight shafted through the bullet hole.

The moonbeam flicked as the figure on the roof paced back and forth.

‘What if this landscape exists in your head? What if you’re not actually here, in the desert? Ever think of that? Remember that mountain bike you used to ride round town? Maybe you fell off and hit your head. You could be in a hospital bed right now, comatose, surrounded by beeping machines. What do you think this fucked-up desolation would say about your subconscious? Must hate your own guts. Every dune, every grain of sand, built it to punish yourself. Your mind could have taken refuge in a tropical paradise. You could be reclining on a beach right now. Palm trees, bikini girls, mojito. Instead you chose this nightmare.’

‘You’re not Early. You’re an echo, reflex. All this talk. It’s like zapping the legs of a dissected frog to make them twitch.’

Long silence.

‘Trenchman was right, wasn’t he? You. The virus. You’re studying us.’

Long silence.

Noble slowly pulled the flashlight from his vest pocket.

‘You could snuff us out in an instant. Me. Frost. Hancock. Why play games? Are you tormenting us, like a kid frying ants with a magnifying glass?’

Noble lunged out of a side window, pistol at the ready. The light-cone of his flashlight lit the empty roof.

He shone the flashlight at surrounding dunes. No tracks.

‘You’re nothing,’ he shouted, bellowing into darkness. ‘A germ. A string of RNA. Come on. Face me, motherfucker.’

The limo shuddered and lurched. Noble fell back inside the vehicle. He dropped his flashlight and gripped the seat. Deafening torsion and metal shriek.

The limo shook like it was taking a series of heavy side-impacts.

He hit the floor.

Another sudden jolt. The front of the Humvee dropped like both front tyres had simultaneously blown out.

Sudden wrench. Explosion of dust beyond the hood of the limo. The vehicle began to tilt nose-down, front fender disappearing beneath the sand as it was dragged below ground.

Noble grabbed his flashlight as it rolled past and trained the beam on the driver’s compartment. Sand pouring through the side windows, the windshield, filling the footwells, engulfing the dash.

Groan and judder. He gripped the stripper pole. Some Herculean force continued to wrench the limo below ground in a series of powerful jerks.

The gradient inside the vehicle grew more precipitous as the nose sank further. Noble hugged the stripper pole. Boots pedalled carpet as he scrambled for a foothold.

The mini-bar flipped open, spilling garbage. He was pelted with snack wrappers, empty cans and plastic vodka bottles.

The Humvee at forty-five degrees. Noble clung tight to stop himself sliding into the streams of dust slowly inundating the body of the limo.

He dropped his flashlight. It tumbled along the limo floor, bounced over the driver partition, beam quickly smothered by cascading sand.

He grabbed his backpack as it slid past.

He clawed towards a side door, kicked at it, desperate to get clear of the vehicle before he got buried alive.

He rammed the door with his shoulder. Jammed.

He climbed towards the rear window, desperate to escape the fast-filling passenger compartment.

Roof glass burst inwards. A stream of sand slammed his head and shoulders like it was jetting from a fire hose. He fought the torrent, pawed dust from his eyes, coughed and spat.

The rear window was cracked and frosted. Noble punched an opening. Glass crumbled to granules as he forced his way through the aperture.

He squirmed out the rear window and tossed his backpack. He jumped and rolled clear.

Shriek of rending metal.

He lay on his side and looked back.

The limo jerked fully vertical, dust streaming from the rear wheels and transmission.

The vehicle was relentlessly hauled beneath the ground. Awful cracks and groans as body panels buckled and the roof collapsed. Windows frosted and shattered. Sand poured into the passenger compartment.

Last glimpse of the trunk, the chromed rear fender and canary yellow SINCITY plate, as it submerged.

Sudden silence.

Noble got to his feet. He stood at the lip of the crater and tried to comprehend what he had seen.

Granules of glass glittered in the sand. Empty whiskey miniatures.

He backed away.

He turned, snatched up his backpack and ran.

Noonday sun.

Frost sat in shadow, back to the fuselage. She kept still as she could, tried to breathe steady and slow. Eyes half closed. Sweat dripped from the tip of her nose. She watched heat ripple from surrounding dunes.

Hancock knelt in full sunlight, head bowed, arms lashed cruciform. He cooked in the heat. Cracked lips, peeling skin.