Impact (16 page)

Frost, Hancock and Noble climbed to the top of the ridgeline and watched the sky lighten with the first trace of dawn. They were cotton-mouthed with thirst, each determined not to be the first to break resolve and gulp their morning ration from the canteen.

‘Twenty-four hours since the crash,’ said Noble. Dry cough. ‘Feels like a month.’

‘We need a plan,’ said Frost. ‘An actual plan. We’ve spun our wheels twenty-four hours. Time to face reality. No one is coming for us. So we better decide, here and now, how we intend to get back to the world.’

They sat in the sand and looked out over the crash site. The eastern sky turned fine azure. One by one, stars faded into oncoming day. The sun would break the horizon within the hour. Nightmare light. It would quickly cook the desert like a blowtorch flame, turning the dunes to a heat-rippling hellscape by mid morning.

‘I saw a flash last night,’ said Noble. ‘A pulse of light to the west. Flickering white, like summer lightning. Didn’t pay it any mind.’

‘Must have been Los Angeles going up.’

‘And one to the east, a couple of minutes later.’

‘Evergreen,’ murmured Hancock.

‘I suppose we’re part of it,’ said Noble, gesturing to the saurian hulk of the B-52. ‘We got the last tac nuke in the arsenal. Last one they could lay their hands on, at any rate. Something out in the desert they wanted vaporised with all the rest. Not sure I want to be involved.’

Frost paced the crest of the dune. She kicked at sand. She tried to picture the atomic devastation that lay beyond the horizon.

New York in ruins. The broken skyline of Manhattan. Toppled skyscrapers, avenues clogged with rubble.

Los Angeles. Gridlocked freeways seared by a nuclear firestorm. Automobile bodywork scorched down to base metal, seats reduced to frame-springs, tyres melted to bubbling tar.

Atlanta. Scoured by uncontrolled block-fires, street grid razed, ten kiloton airburst repeating the destruction wrought by the Confederacy before they ceded the city to Sherman.

Had Europeans bombed their major conurbations? The Russians?

Maybe astronauts marooned on the International Space Station were looking down on Europe and the United States at that moment, watching the smoke of burning cities taint the stratosphere, filthy soot plumes carried on prevailing winds.

Nuclear Winter. How long before a radiotoxic haze encircled the earth, and darkened the world to a grey twilight which would last centuries?

Maybe snow would fall on the desert. Flakes grey with ash.

Maybe, as she and her companions trekked across the sand, day would be overtaken by premature dusk. The temperature would plummet. Shimmering heat would give way to a fierce blizzard. They would trudge onwards, leaning into a driving snowstorm, until they succumbed to hypothermia and dropped dead among the dunes, bodies feathered with ice.

‘So,’ said Noble, calling her back from her reverie. ‘Canada or Mexico?’

Frost thought it over. She opened her mouth, intending to say Canada, but Hancock cut her off:

‘We find the nearest functioning military unit and report for duty.’

‘The war is over, sir,’ said Frost. ‘The virus won.’ She lifted the dog tags from around her neck, disentangled them from the code lanyard, and toyed with the tin tabs. ‘Rank. Insignia. Flag. Not sure they mean a great deal any more. Just souvenirs.’ She tossed the dog tags onto the sand beside her. ‘Feel like secession troops after the surrender. Ragged losers. Column of Johnny Rebs trudging home.’

‘Best put a lid on that shit, airman.’

‘We got beat. Time to be realistic. All that’s left is survival.’

‘You are an officer in the United States Air Force. Still bound by oath. Don’t fucking forget it.’

Noble spoke up, aiming to divert the argument.

‘This valley extends a long way south,’ said Noble. ‘Unbroken desert. Certain death. North, east or west: that’s the only real choice we got.

‘If we head west, we’ve got a long walk across dunes, then our troubles really begin. We’d hit the Panamint Range. Barren as the moon. Like crossing the Himalayas with nothing but the clothes on our back. And then we have to repeat the trick. Cross Saline Valley and the Inyo Mountains, and onwards into the Mojave. Miles of impossible terrain between us and Edwards. It’s not an achievable journey. Certain death, unless we got lucky, real lucky. Stumbled across an RV or something.’

‘And we’d be heading towards the ruins of LA,’ said Frost. ‘Walking into a lethal fallout plume.’

‘Well, the journey east isn’t much more enticing. Miles of desert, then we hit the Black Mountains. Not much on the other side. Could make for Vegas, I guess, but it’s probably a smoking crater. Or we could head through the Amargosa Desert which is also, let’s not forget, the Tonopah Bombing Range. Dirt peppered with unexploded munitions. If we made it across the Amargosa, beat thirst, exhaustion, the prospect of getting our legs blown off, we might finally reach Nellis Air Force Base. But we took off from Vegas precisely because Nellis has been overrun.’

‘Hangman’s choice,’ said Frost. ‘Want to flip a coin?’

‘West,’ said Hancock. ‘We head west. Hike till we find a highway. This is a National Park. There are blacktop access roads running through the hills. All we got to do is find a car, start it up and we’re home free.’

‘We got enough water to last about five days, more or less. Journey like that could take a couple of weeks. Our luck would have to make a one-eighty turn.’

‘It can be done. Just depends how badly a person wants to live.’

‘What about our unseen friends?’ asked Noble, gesturing to surrounding dunes.

‘We’re well armed. Once we are out in the desert we’ll have an unimpeded sight-line. Hard to see how anyone could mess with us.’

‘Pretty hopeless plan,’ said Frost. ‘But I guess it’s all we got.’

‘We’ll leave tonight. Wait till the sun sinks to the horizon and the day begins to cool. Yeah, we’re not in great shape. But if we summon a little determination we should be able to set a decent pace, cover ten, fifteen miles a night. Rest during the day. Take a chute so we got a little shade.’

‘We got some Gatorade, a few No-Doz,’ said Noble. ‘Bit of sugar and caffeine might boost us a couple more miles.’

‘The will to live. That’s the bottom line. If we set our minds, we can drive ourselves past the point of endurance, past the point at which regular folks would lay down and die. We’ll make it.’

Hancock got to his feet and began to walk back to the plane.

Frost and Noble watched him stagger and sway, each calculating bleak odds of making it out the desert alive.

‘All that believe-in-yourself bullshit,’ said Noble. ‘Tired of it already. We’re constrained by reality. Can’t cross those mountains on foot any more than we can flap our arms and fly.’

‘Where the hell are my tags?’ asked Frost.

She raked the sand beside her.

‘My dog tags. They were here.’

‘What do you care?’

‘They’re gone, that’s all I’m saying.’

She stood and kicked at the dune.

‘Swear to God, they were right here.’

Noble looked up. Sky tinged red. Mid morning, but it looked like sunset.

He walked towards the eastern ridgeline. He broke into a run. Growing sense of panic and urgency. He scrambled the gradient and stood at the crest.

‘Get up here guys,’ he shouted. ‘Take a look at this.’

Frost and Hancock climbed the dune. The three aircrew stood side-by-side.

A red blur on the horizon. An oncoming wall of dust.

‘Sandstorm. Heading this way.’

They watched, mesmerised, as the dust storm approached. A wall of sand, infernal red, half a mile high. It rolled like a wave hitting the shore, a wave that wouldn’t break, wouldn’t disperse, just kept coming, slowly blotting out the sky.

‘Damn,’ muttered Noble.

The wind rose to a steady moan. It tugged at the fabric of their flight suits. It ruffled their hair.

The signal fire guttered and died. Burning rubber smothered by driving sand. The column of black smoke rising from the smouldering tyre snatched by the wind.

‘How long do you reckon we got?’

‘Looks like it will hit in ten, twelve minutes,’ said Frost. ‘It’s a long way off, but moving fast. Look at it. Big bastard. Don’t want to get caught in the open. It’ll flay the skin from your bones.’

‘We got the plane, right? We’ll be okay.’

‘Better get as much stuff stowed as we can.’

They hurried back to the plane. Noble supported Hancock, held his arm to keep him upright. Frost limped behind.

‘Best head inside, sir,’ advised Noble.

Hancock leaned against the fuselage and looked up at the sky.

‘Seriously, sir. Better head inside.’

Hancock looked like he wanted to protest, but couldn’t argue with the sense of it. He was a liability. Slow. Disorientated. If he were caught in the open when the sandstorm hit, Frost or Noble would have to risk their lives to save his ass. Better to head to the flight deck. Stay out of trouble.

He ducked inside the plane.

Frost turned to Noble:

‘Go with him. See if you can reinforce the windows and hatches. Keep the storm out.’

Frost picked up equipment and supplies scattered on the sand.

Toothpaste.

A canteen.

Remains of the flight manual.

She gathered an armful of gear and stashed it in the crew cabin.

She glanced up at the darkening sky. Wind whipped her clothes and hair. She looked east. An oncoming tsunami of sand. She could feel it. A hot magnetic charge. She ran a hand through her hair and felt it crackle with static. Saltating particles pushing an intense electromagnetic field ahead of them.

The nose section.

Hancock sat in the pilot seat, tore fresh lengths of duct tape and re-enforced blast curtains covering the broken windows.

He stood and looked up at the cabin roof. Two vacant ejection hatches patched with insulation blankets.

He stood on a trunk, pulled the satcom antenna back inside and resealed the hatch frames with tape.

Noble climbed the ladder to the upper deck.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Not sure how long these taped sections will hold,’ said Hancock. ‘Guess we’ll have to keep up running repairs. Stick them down each time they tear lose.’

Hancock stepped from the trunk. He lost his balance, fell, hit the wall and slid to the floor.

Noble held out a hand and helped him to his feet.

‘Feel like a freakin’ invalid,’ muttered Hancock. ‘Sick of it. What kind of shape are we in? Did we get everything inside?’

‘Yeah,’ said Noble. ‘We’re locked down.’

‘Temperature is dropping. Soon be cold as a meat locker.’

Patched windows began to flap and billow. The fuselage creaked.

Noble slid down the ladder to the lower cabin.

He and Frost stood at the fissure in the wall, shielded their eyes and looked out at a curtain of driving sand.

‘Best close the plane.’

They slid equipment trunks across the floor, shunted them against the fractured wall and shut out the storm.

The flight deck.

Storm winds raged outside. The fuselage shuddered and flexed. Broken struts and spars deep within the war machine’s superstructure ground like fractured bone.

Noble placed his hand against the cabin wall. Static crack. Blue spark.

A fine vibration ran through the hull. High velocity granules scouring the aluminium skin of the plane.

So dark he could barely see. He switched on the cabin lights.

He lifted one of the blast screens that curtained an unbroken window and looked out at swirling red twilight.

‘Nasty out there,’ said Noble.

‘Silicosis,’ said Frost. ‘Get that shit in your lungs, well, I’m not a doctor. But you’d catch a real graveyard cough.’

One of the nuclear blast curtains tore open. The silvered nylon screen flapped and whipped. The cockpit was filled with swirling dust particles and hurricane wind.

Hancock threw himself into the pilot seat. He shielded his remaining eye from the gale. He pressed the curtain back in place, secured brass popper studs set in the window pillars.

‘Get tape,’ he shouted, fighting to keep the screen from ripping open once more.

Frost fetched duct tape.

Hancock tore strips and lashed the curtain with a triple layer.

He sat back. He rubbed sand from his ears and spat dust.

‘Check the hatches. See if they are secure.’

Noble trained a flashlight and inspected the hatch seals.

‘Good. So far.’

A sudden buffet slammed the fuselage. Groaning metal. The cabin gently listed starboard.

Noble stumbled, then regained his balance like he was walking the deck of a ship in high seas.

‘Jesus,’ said Noble. ‘This thing isn’t going to roll, is it?’

‘She’s bedded pretty tight.’

‘What can you see from the window?’

‘Not a damned thing.’

Frost sat cross-legged on the deck plate, back to the wall.

She switched on Hancock’s survival radio. Thirty-seven per cent battery. She set it for Acquisition and watched numerals flicker.

‘Why bother?’ asked Hancock. ‘We know the score. The world is in flames. We’re on our own.’