“Try, ‘infected, for sure.’”
“You seem pretty sure you’re right.”
Chloe smiled. “I’m always right. Seriously though, dogs are better than sentries. Particularly if something doesn’t smell right. And I mean that literally, ’cause those zombies we saw back at Husvik—they were seriously messed up. Skin all peeling and skeevy. Dogs will smell that almost as far as they can see it. So, at night—”
“—dogs are the best alarm system.”
She hefted the gun so it rested on her lap. Which was a little less wide than when we had left South Georgia, even more so compared to when I first met her. She stared at me staring at her. “Whatcha lookin’ at?”
“You don’t know?”
She rolled her eyes but smiled. “Down boy. You wanted to trade with the locals, so go to it.”
“You coming?”
Her grin widened. “It’s always about sex with you, isn’t it?” Which was kind of a weird thing for her to say. I just smiled back. She shook her head, still grinning. “Like you always tell the rest of us, we work and then play.”
“I don’t say that. Much.”
Both her eyebrows rose high.
I must sound like a prick a lot of the time.
I went ashore, mingled with the locals, and thought about what we could trade with them.
Mostly.
* * *
The moment we’d shared the last of our news from St. Helena, the crowd didn’t just disperse; it vanished. I imagined that’s what it was like to be a “one-hit wonder” band. Back when such things existed.
A few final stragglers mentioned that we could probably find a meal at the Obsidian Hotel, the only spot ever built for tourists. We trailed after them.
The owners were nice enough, but the restaurant was just a bar, now. No reason to serve food when it was going to be the same as what everyone was eating at home: fish, turtle meat, turtle eggs, and occasionally—very occasionally—vegetables from rooftop gardens. We saw the same signs of borderline malnutrition we’d seen in ourselves about two weeks before reaching St. Helena. But the tap-room was pretty full because the Obsidian Hotel was still serving drinks.
Actually, there was only one drink to have and it was awful. Not that I could tell good liquor from bad, but hell, I grew up in a poor neighborhood and the only booze that cash-strapped teens can score for parties is crap. But this was so much worse that I wondered if a little actual shit hadn’t been mixed in. For taste.
The locals had run out of real booze months ago, so they were making this sorry substitute out of carrot peelings and something else that none of us had the nerve to ask about. Still, everyone in the bar was sipping that vinegar-and-old-socks poison. But no one just tossed it back: doing shots was not a good plan unless you wanted to encounter your dinner again.
A minute or two after we finished shuddering down the first tiny taste, we started making small talk, the way you do when you want to be sociable but really don’t have much of anything to say. So we started by asking about the town.
First thing they told us was its name: Georgetown. GEORGE town.
I swear: for one second, I really did think about going back to the boat. Was this whole part of the world named George?
But the barkeep didn’t miss a beat telling us about how Ascension had started out as a military base back in Napoleon’s day and that nothing much grew here until some botanist came in and made it his personal mission to change that. He’d succeeded. Maybe we’d noticed that the slopes of the old volcano were mostly green?
Before we could reply, the next local picked up the tale. Others chimed in. By the end, we had a far more detailed picture than we needed. Or wanted.
Here are the useful high points. Ascension is just under eight miles east to west and not quite six north to south. It became strategically important as soon as the European empires started spreading by sea, because it was the only land for thousands of miles in any direction. (Okay, if you head due north, it’s “only” nine hundred miles to Africa). So the island was a natural stopover point for ships and, later, aircraft.
For much the same reason, it became a listening post and rebroadcasting hub for radio and television throughout that part of the world. During the Cold War, the island was also a major site for spook-work: intel gathering, eavesdropping, signals assessment. The space race brought the addition of a downrange tracking and telemetry station for anything launched from Kennedy Space Center. Later on, those services mostly switched over to monitoring and communicating with the rockets that went up from the ESA’s facility in French Guiana.
So although Ascension Island was in the middle of nowhere, it was a stop on the way to almost every place else. Which was why we made landfall there, ourselves.
The weirdest thing was that despite being inhabited since the Brits built Georgetown, it never had a permanent population. There was no private ownership of land, of buildings, of anything except personal items. Everyone was contract labor, so it wasn’t really anyone’s “home.” They just happened to be stranded together on that splinter of volcanic rock when the world ended.
The locals didn’t put it that way, of course. They told the story of their island with a bland version of English good cheer tinged with a creepy mix of “we’re all in it together” and “stiff upper lip.” Even their weak smiles seemed to assert that:
1) shit happens,
2) particularly to them,
3) and they can even taste it in their booze.
They asked a few questions, showed a momentary spark of interest about our fight with the pirates and infected (they call them “stalkers”) in Husvik, and then drifted off.
Once they were out of earshot, Jeeza frowned and asked, “Is it just me who was tempted to ask why they haven’t returned to St. Helena?”
Rod nodded. “Yeah, ’cause sailing between the islands isn’t hard. Hell, we just did it.”
I decided not to mention the storm. “Maybe they wouldn’t have been welcome back there.”
“Not just that,” Chloe added. “Why did these guys go radio-silent on the Saints? Something doesn’t add up.”
As they batted possible explanations back and forth, I noticed a guy sitting alone. The only solo patron in the Obsidian. Nobody even glanced at him. And he didn’t look at anyone. Except us.
I nodded at him. He nodded back. I pushed away from the table, opening up a spot for another chair. As the Captain used to say, a wink is as good as a nod.
The solitary guy did in fact nod, picked up his shot glass, and joined us. He was as tall as Rod—so about 5'10" or so—and thin. I mean, all of the locals were thin, but his arms and legs and shoulders looked like they’d always been light. I thought he might be three years older than us. At most.
As he slid his nonexistent butt into a chair he’d pulled from an empty table, he asked, “You lot certain about this?”
“About what?”
“About being seen sharing a glass with the local pariah.”
I shrugged. “We drink with whoever we choose.”
“Besides,” added Chloe, “we’re moving on soon.”
“Looks like you might be interested in doing the same,” Silent Steve added.
I managed to keep myself from staring at Steve in surprise. However, to use one of Rod’s favorite gamer terms, he and Chloe failed their saving throw at him. Silent Steve typically saved his words for crucial moments.
But he might have been on to something. The Brit smiled slowly. “Sometimes, you Yanks are a bit too blunt. But sometimes”—he nodded at Steve in what looked like gratitude—“it is very welcome.” He leaned back. “I might be considering a change of location, but perhaps we should get acquainted first.”
Yeah, we should definitely get acquainted first, I thought. But I just nodded and introduced myself after the others had.
When we’d finished, he leaned forward. “I am Percival Halethorpe. Ex-Her Majesty’s Royal Air Force, ex-Edinburgh student on defe
rral, ex-everything. Except being The Reviled of the Earth, here on Ascension. That I can still claim without doubt or debate.”
“And why are you ‘The Reviled of the Earth’ here?” Jeeza asked, propping her chin on her palm. She was clearly infatuated with the guy’s accent and use of the word “reviled.”
“Because I am the architect of all the misery suffered by the good people of this island.” To say that his tone was facetious would be like saying that the pre-plague world was a slightly nicer place to live.
“Sounds like you’ve got a story to tell,” I observed.
“A timeless one, in fact. It’s called, ‘Blame the Outsider.’”
Rod frowned. “But—you’re all English here. More or less.”
Halethorpe cocked a wry eyebrow. “Be that as it may—and I underscore may—I was, and remain, the living symbol of how the plague came to our inhospitable shores. No one says as much, of course. They’re all too proper. Too English—more or less,” he concluded with a wink at Rod.
Chloe folded her arms. “As a blunt American, I gotta tell ya: I don’t know what the hell you’re getting at.”
Halethorpe’s smile was genuine, even appreciative. “What I am getting at is that it was the military that brought the plague here, my dear girl.”
“Okay,” Chloe answered. “But since you ain’t my daddy, I ain’t your ‘dear girl.’”
That surprised him for a moment. Then he smiled widely—which showed us why England used to be such a cash market for orthodontists. “Fair enough, Chloe,” he agreed. “I will try to be less cryptic. But old habits die hard.”
“So what do we call you?” asked the no-longer-Silent Steve. “I mean, you don’t go by ‘Percival’—do you?”
Rod stared at Steve. “You think ‘Percy’ is any better?”
“Guys,” I interrupted. “In case you’ve forgotten, the man in question is sitting right here.” I turned to Halethorpe. “Sorry. We don’t get out much. So what did they call you at home?”
“Nothing at all,” Halethorpe answered brightly. “Since I was never there.”
“Never off duty?”
“Never welcome.”
“Oh.” Shit. “Sorry.”
He smiled. “No harm done. And I should have spoken plainly, rather than leading you up the garden path to where my family and titanic irony intersect.”
Chloe shook her head. “I know you’re speaking English, but it still sounds like a foreign language.” She frowned. “It also sounds like you had it pretty rough at home. And here, too, I guess.”
He shrugged. “I can’t honestly complain. After all, I’m not dead—or what might be worse.” He began glancing westward over his shoulder, stopped himself, downed his drink instead.
“Is that where your base is?”
“Was,” he corrected. “My mates—and your lot—all became stalkers. Or meals for them.”
“What do you mean, ‘your lot?’”
He stared. “I guess your welcoming committee didn’t mention that there were only thirty of Her Majesty’s Finest on the island when the plague deplaned. Because that is almost certainly how it arrived. And almost certainly from your Air Force’s weekly flight from Patrick AFB in Florida. It was the last flight that ever came in and it was almost full.” He shrugged at our dubious stares. “You had almost three hundred personnel here, most from the 45th Space Wing.”
Jeeza stuttered. “A-and the town blamed you?”
Halethorpe shrugged. “It wasn’t you Yanks who brought it into Georgetown proper. And to their credit, your officers closed the airfield and base. No one in or out.”
“Why didn’t your commander do the same?” Chloe asked.
He sighed. “We didn’t live on base. Most of us rented rooms here in town or stayed in barracks out at Two Boats. Probably wouldn’t have mattered, though. It spread so rapidly. A few of the aircrew from Florida felt a bit dodgy on the pub night we hosted a few days after they arrived. The first few who turned overran the rest.” His eyes seemed to stop seeing our faces or the bar of the Obsidian. “Two weeks later, most of my best friends in the world were dead. And there was no time left for anything but remaining alive. Which was a pretty grim business.”
“What do you mean?” Jeeza’s voice was hushed.
Halethorpe stared down at the tabletop. “Families locking each other in attics, in basements. The healthy having to kill their turned relatives, friends. If they didn’t turn before they could bear to pull the trigger. By the third week, everyone that wasn’t a stalker had barricaded themselves in.”
His gaze rose up from the tabletop. “And since no one is truly a resident, there was no true community to rely upon. Not in the sense of people who’d grown up around each other. After most of the children were gone, it was every man and woman for themselves.”
We were quiet for what felt like a long time. It probably wasn’t more than ten seconds. But when you’ve been talking and then everyone stops all at once, the only thing you notice is every moment that passes in complete silence.
Even though we’d heard about the onset of the plague, we’d never seen, or even had to think about, it in this kind of detail. But now it was like waking up in a deserted movie theater where the screen was still showing a horror flick of all the misery we’d missed. All because we were among the lucky few who hadn’t been there for the grand premiere of the end of the world.
Percival told us how, like sirens in a big city at night, the screams never stopped. And you never knew the cause of the screaming. Maybe someone was being killed by a loved one. Maybe it was because they were having to kill a loved one. Or maybe they were just losing their shit, because there’s only so much terror and loss and hopelessness that most people can take.
But some people, most of who wound up surviving, became nearly as silent as the corpses around them. Their bodies were still alive, but their ability to feel and react—that died. At least until the worst of the madness was past. Because the insanity of the plague either broke you into pieces, or your emotions became like a ghost: all the horror just drifted through. Like you weren’t there. Because, in a way, you weren’t.
Those people survived. Whether what remained of their existence could be called “living”—well, that was another matter.
On the other hand, you could say that we were more spoiled than when we’d boarded Voyager. Yes, we’d lost people: probably everyone. But we’d been spared seeing all the mad shit that kept on going down until there was no one sane left to see it. Just stalkers, hermits, and survivors who had holes where their hearts used to be.
Halethorpe pushed back from the table. “Sorry. Damn dull talk.”
“Not to us,” I assured him. “But there’s still something I don’t understand.”
Percival nodded. “Of course: why we didn’t all evacuate to St. Helena.” He rolled his empty shot glass between pale palms. “To make a long story brutally short, the Saints were glad to talk to us over the radio, but not eager to have us show up at their island.”
“B-but, most of the people here—they’re from there,” Rod objected as if personally offended.
Halethorpe nodded. “Yes. But on this end, it was an all-or-nothing proposition. The civilian council decided that if any significant number of us left, it would mean the death of everyone who didn’t get to go.”
Chloe frowned. “And everyone agreed to that?”
Halethorpe’s smile was crooked. “It sounds a great deal more democratic than it actually was. The guns were mostly in the hands of lads from other branches of the Royal government: support for the RAF facility and the comms station, mostly. Not a Saint among them. Nor among most of the boat-owners; they’re ex-pats who provided charters and yacht servicing.
“Mind you, even the Saints here weren’t in lockstep on the issue.” (He pronounced it “iss-yoo.”) “Nearly half wanted to stay away for the same reason that their relatives weren’t keen to have them back: the possibility of contagion. So St. Helena’s
government dictated that we should ‘shelter in place for the duration of the outbreak.’”
Giselle’s voice was almost a squeak. “Seriously? They said that? Who are they to give orders to the people here?”
Percival shrugged. “They are the duly appointed authorities of what is known as the Overseas Territory of St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha. Would you care to guess where the governor resides?”
I shrugged back. “Biggest population center: St. Helena.”
“Got it in one. So you see, the Saints really did have the first and last word.” Halethorpe stared at the boarded windows of the taproom. “Can’t say I blame the governor. Or even think he was wrong.” Another silence threatened to suffocate the table. Percival straightened in his seat. “Right. So why did you come to Ascension?”
I managed not to blink at the sudden change of tone and topic. “To trade. And to stop over. We’ve got a long stretch of open sea once we leave here.”
“So, back to the New World.” He thought for a moment. “Next stop, Fernando de Noronha?”
Wow, that was fast. “I didn’t think our destination would be so obvious.”
“Wouldn’t be, except that your stop at St. Helena suggests a pattern.”
“What pattern?” Steve asked.
I answered before Percival could. “That we’re island hopping back to the New World. More than that: our accent tells him we’re from the U.S., but Voyager’s stern shows its port of registry as Port Stanley, Falklands. And instead of retracing our steps, we are headed north for a transatlantic crossing. So logically, we are taking a different—and easier—path back to the States.”
Halethorpe’s grin was genuine. “Also, it’s a safe bet that whoever taught you to sail that boat also warned you that the mainland of South America was sure to have gone completely pear-shaped. So, since you can’t safely stop there on your way to America, you’re going to the closest off-shore waypoint: Fernando de Noronha.” He frowned. “Still, its pre-plague population was larger than St. Helena’s, and it was a vacation spot. When the virus struck, its population would have included tourists.”
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