Combustion (24 page)

Lola watches. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Stand well clear.’ He points to the far side of the room, near the open roller door. She moves there quickly, Spike in tow, and turns to watch.

Corey cranks the Loach’s engine to life. A light clicking emanates from the turbine, then it catches and spools up. He turns and studies the stream of exhaust from the chopper, ready to kill the power if need be. ‘Please-no-purple-please-no-purple.’

There’s no sign of purple in the exhaust.

Lola calls out: ‘So far so good!’

Corey nods. ‘Yep, it looks okay.’

Then the exhaust turns a light shade of purple.

‘No!’ Corey and Lola say it at the same time.

It gets dark fast.

‘Jeezus.’ Corey kills the power and studies the canister in his hand. ‘I need to use all of it.’

Lola approaches. ‘Why didn’t you before?’

‘Wanted to save some, in case it needs to be synthesised later.’ He unscrews the fuel tank cap again and pours in every last drop, hopes to God Judd isn’t doing the same thing somewhere right now, then cranks the turbine once more. It spools up.

They watch the exhaust.

It’s purple immediately.

Corey’s head drops, the disappointment crushing. He reaches to shut down the turbine.

Spike barks.

Corey looks up at the exhaust again. The purple hue fades - then disappears completely. He exhales, his relief enormous. ‘Okay, let’s go. Everyone in.’ He nods at Spike. ‘The back.’ The dog jumps in.

Lola looks confused. She takes in the twenty metres between the chopper and the roller door. ‘Don’t we need to push it out?’

‘She’ll be right. Hop in and belt up and put on the headset.’ She does it, then he does the same himself.

Jeez. He almost forgot. This is the first time he’s flown in almost a year. He takes a breath. Okay. His hands work a series of switches and the rotor blades turn. He feels right at home. All good so far. He was worried that being shot down will come back and bite him on the arse, but he’s fine. Absolutely fine! Fine
and
dandy, in fact! His feet touch the tail rotor pedals as his hands find the cyclic stick and collective lever -

He freezes - and flashes back to that moment over the Pacific when his Loach was blown out of the sky.

Damn-it-damn-it-damn-it-damn-it-damn-it-damn-it!

It’s come back to bite him on the arse.

Lola’s voice fills his headset. ‘Are you okay?’

He nods, breathes out. ‘Yep, I’m good.’ But he isn’t good. At all. He feels sweaty and panicked.
Panicked!
Not once in his life has he felt panicked while flying a chopper, even when he was
nine years old
and on his first solo. And it’s happening in front of Lola! How bloody embarrassing! What the hell is he going to do?

Spike pushes himself between the front seats and rests a paw on his master’s arm.

Corey looks at him.

The dog barks - and Corey listens as he lays it out. Corey’s done this a million times before. Being shot down was not his fault. Judd needs his help right now so man up and get on with it.

Corey takes a breath and nods. ‘Yep.’

It’s like a switch has been flicked. His self-doubt instantly recedes. He takes the controls in hand and throttles up. Ever so gently the chopper lifts three inches off the ground then tilts forward and skims the ground towards the open roller door -

~ * ~

And blasts outside.

Corey threads the Loach through the tangle of buildings on the Fox lot then pulls it into a steep climb.

Lola’s impressed. She’s never seen him fly before. His deft touch with the chopper is quite something. She turns and watches the ground fall away and for the first time sees the scope of destruction across the city. It’s horrifying. Everywhere she looks a pyre of smoke reaches for the heavens.

‘Where are we going?’

She completes a quick scan of their surroundings, gets her bearings, then points left. ‘That way.’

Corey works the controls and tilts the little chopper into a steep turn.

Next stop Moreno High School.

~ * ~

32

Twelve minutes.

That’s how long it takes Kilroy to find a working payphone on Santa Monica Boulevard. He’s surprised it happens so fast.

The bigger surprise is the sheer number of walking wounded on the street. They are everywhere, thousands of dazed and injured people. It makes him sick to his stomach. He understands what Bunsen is trying to accomplish with the Swarm, but this is wrong, worse than ‘collateral damage’.
Much worse.
These people should have been warned - and
must
be warned before Phase Three begins in earnest.

Thump, thump, thump.
Kilroy looks up from his spot beside the payphone and scans the dark sky. That sound can only mean one thing -

With a hurricane blast of rotor wash, the Tyrannosaur swoops low, then drops quickly and settles onto the only clear spot on the road, fifty metres away. Kilroy runs towards it.

An old guy slumped against a nearby shopfront, his face blackened with soot and one trouser legs burned away, shouts at him in a hysterical voice: ‘No! Don’t go near it! It’ll explode!’

Kilroy ignores the advice, picks his way through the wrecked cars, ducks under the thundering rotors and pulls open the chopper’s rear cabin door. He steps in, buckles up and pulls on his headset, all without meeting Bunsen’s eyes.

The chopper rises off the roadway.

Kilroy can’t see Bunsen’s face from the rear cabin, but as soon as he pulls on the headset he can hear his voice. ‘Nice of you to join us.’

Kilroy knows he’s angry. He only uses sarcasm when he’s really pissed off and this unscheduled detour has done just that.

‘What the hell happened?’

‘Judd Bell.’

‘What?’ Bunsen is stunned. ‘You mean -
the astronaut?’

‘Yes. He’s with the Australian, the other one from the
Atlantis
4, you know, with the dog.’

‘Can’t remember his name but he was funny on Jon Stewart. Are you sure about this?’

‘I saw them up close after the Prius was destroyed.’

‘How did that happen?’

Kilroy takes a breath and runs through the whole sorry tale, doesn’t try to dress up the truth or leave anything out because he knows Bunsen will see straight through it.

‘Did
they get the counteragent?’

‘They had a conversation with Alvy before he died and then they were at his apartment so I’m guessing yes.’

Bunsen winces. ‘Jesus. It was your job to
contain
this.’

‘Tell me what you want me to do.’

Bunsen thinks long and hard. ‘We continue as planned, then we hunt them down.’

No one speaks for a moment, then Kilroy breaks the silence: ‘Have you posted the video yet?’

‘No.’

‘It should be the priority, Zac.’ If Bunsen didn’t yet understand how important this issue was to Kilroy he would now: Bunsen may have only used sarcasm when he was pissed off with Kilroy, but Kilroy only used Bunsen’s first name when he was pissed off with Bunsen. ‘People need a chance to leave the city before Phase Three begins —’

‘We’ll do it as soon as the prep work is complete. There’s no point warning anybody about anything until we know all the elements are in place and functioning. Thanks to this little detour we’re now behind schedule.’

Kilroy concedes the point begrudgingly. ‘Understood.’ He turns and looks out the rear window, watches the smoke haze whip past. He will hold Bunsen to his word.

~ * ~

33

Judd pedals the bike hard.

He glances at his Ploprof. He’s late. If the information in Ponytail’s iPhone is accurate, whatever’s happening at MHS began fifteen minutes ago. He hopes he hasn’t missed it.

He pulls out his iPhone and dials Rhonda once again. No joy. It goes straight to voicemail. Listening to her voice on the message makes him feel better for a moment. Man, he really hopes she’s okay. He hangs up and pockets the phone -

A bald guy bursts from behind a van and charges Judd, his expression hostile. Legs pumping, Bald Guy closes fast, extends his hands to grab the astronaut -

Judd pulls his pistol and points it directly between Bald Guy’s eyes. ‘Fuck off!’ Bald Guy throws up his hands and stops running, watches the bike speed away, clearly pissed off at the missed opportunity.

Judd ups his pace, pushes the pistol back into his belt line. ‘Christ.’
That’s
how valuable bikes are now. They’re the only viable transport in town.
Bicycles rule LA.
In a city built for automobiles, the car capital of the world no less, who’d have imagined that would ever happen?

He sees a Caltex service station to the right. It is, unsurprisingly, not only deserted, but filled with the smoking hulks of burned-out vehicles. Judd mounts the kerb, rides into the station and pulls up beside the only gas pump that hasn’t been destroyed by an explosion or melted by fire. The chainsaw still lies across the handle bars. He quickly fills its gas tank then rides on.

He takes a quick left then sees it in the distance: Moreno High School. It is dominated by a single piece of architecture that towers fifty metres above everything else. The soaring edifice, like a boxy, unsophisticated rocket ship, or a very thin ziggurat, is clad in soundproof panels painted with swirling flowers to conceal its true identity. The paint job isn’t fooling anyone. Everyone knows it’s an oil derrick.

Yes, an
oil derrick.
Only in LA would an oil-drilling island be built
inside
a school. Judd remembers he was covered in a fine spray of ‘black gold’ during the games he played there. He didn’t recall the details, but the school pretty much had every facility it needed because of those oil wells. The company that operated the drilling island paid a generous stipend for every barrel of oil they produced a year - and they produced a lot, around five hundred a day.

Thump, thump, thump.
Judd glances up as a helicopter thunders overhead. For a moment he thinks it must be LAPD, then he gets a better look and realises it’s one of those giant, water-bombing Air-Cranes. Didn’t he see one earlier today? His next thought is that it must be on loan to the fire brigade -

Wait a second! How is that thing even flying? Why hasn’t it exploded?

The answer is in his jacket pocket. He unconsciously touches the canister of counteragent. That chopper must be using it. How else is it flying? He watches it slow, bank to the right, then descend -directly towards the school.

Judd increases his pace and sets a course for the oil derrick.

~ * ~

The oil derrick towers above Judd, fifty metres to his right.

He turns into a narrow alleyway that runs adjacent to the oil drilling island. An eight-foot chain-link gate blocks his path. He dismounts the bike, throws it over, then, chainsaw in hand, scales the fence. He drops to the other side and moves along the alleyway, the drilling island’s cinderblock wall to the left, open ground to the right.

He can hear the Air-Crane’s turbines howl though he can’t see the chopper. It’s so loud he knows it must be close, guesses it’s parked on the baseball diamond that sits behind the oil drilling island.

Ka-boom!
An explosion shakes the air. Judd looks right. A fireball rolls into the sky directly above the drilling island. A moment later, a shower of white-hot metal shards rains down. He takes cover against the wall as they clink and thud onto the road. ‘What the hell is that?’

He props the bike against the cinderblock wall, steps onto its seat, levers himself up and looks over. He can’t see much except a tangle of pipes and reservoir tanks. He pulls himself over, drops into the drilling island and draws the 9mm pistol from his jacket, does it almost nonchalantly. A year ago he’d never held a gun in his hand but now he’s well practised with a weapon. He doesn’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing but it certainly feels like a necessary thing because he’s making this up as he goes along. He doesn’t have a plan because he doesn’t know what to plan for.

His eyes flick from the pistol in his right hand to the chainsaw in his left - he’s sure it will come in handy for something, but what, exactly, he does not know. He moves deeper into the facility, navigates those pipes and tanks, searches for what he does not know. The sound of the Air-Crane is even louder in here, the shriek of its turbines magnified as it bounces and echoes off the hard surfaces.

He rounds a three-metre-tall reservoir tank and sees a man in the distance. He studies the remains of a destroyed wellhead. On the ground in front of him a stream of oil flows out of a five-inch-wide pipe. He turns, kneels and from a long grey bag pulls out what looks like an aluminium baseball bat, but is in fact a three-foot-long, three-inch-wide cylinder with a two-inch-wide propeller at one end. He works his iPhone’s screen and the propeller spins up. He then slides the cylinder down the pipe and it disappears.