Armageddon Heights (a thriller)

by D. M. Mitchell

  ‘You knew how to open the door,’ said the businessman. ‘You know something about buses?’

  ‘I know something about a lot of vehicles,’ he replied distractedly, squinting.

  ‘Are you with the bus company?’

  Wade shook his head. Bent down to the side of the road and scooped up a handful of sand that slowly dribbled though his fingertips.

  ‘I’ve got to get to Edinburgh…’ the businessman said.

  ‘So I heard. Look, this isn’t my stop either,’ he said. ‘I’d forget Edinburgh – we’ve got bigger problems.’

  ‘There has to be a logical explanation.’

  ‘Sure there has. When you come up with it let me know,’ Wade said, walking past him to the small crowd of people who were getting increasingly agitated. He could sense it coming off them like bad steam. They’d get themselves worked up into a panic next.

  ‘It’s a dream, man!’ said the young man, twiddling with his headphones. ‘I’m gonna wake up and find out I’ve been having a nightmare. I ate cheese and onion crisps before I went to sleep. Cheese always gives me nightmares.’

  ‘There’s no real cheese in cheese and onion crisps,’ said the older man.

  ‘Sure there is!’ the young man almost squealed. ‘Cheese gives you nightmares. This is a nightmare!’ He began to close up on himself like a flower at night, his arms folding around his body.

  ‘There’s cheese powder, I believe…’ the older woman interjected.

  ‘What?’ said her husband.

  ‘Cheese powder in cheese and onion crisps.’

  ‘What the fuck does that matter?’ the businessman blazed, throwing up his arms in frustration. ‘Your dream, my dream, what does it matter? We’re all in the same fucking dream if you haven’t noticed!’

  ‘Calm down,’ said Wade, noticing how the rest of the passengers were starting to get restless.

  The young man who’d arrived late for the bus stepped up. ‘That’s easy to say, but this is weird. This can’t be happening. A bus can’t take a wrong turn and find itself in a desert, like the lady already said. We’re in the middle of nowhere in a place none of us recognise. And you tell us to calm down? Who the hell do you think you are?’

  ‘New Mexico,’ said the small balding man in his forties who had been sitting all alone on the bus. He was the last to vacate and was quietly watching proceedings.

  ‘Say again,’ said the businessman.

  ‘The man said it’s a place no one recognises. I do. It looks like parts of New Mexico. I went there five years ago.’

  ‘New Mexico!’ said the businessman. ‘I’ve got to get to Edinburgh! I don’t need to be in New Mexico.’

  ‘For God’s sake, cut the Edinburgh crap, will you?’ Wade snapped, and the man stared at him, swallowed and walked to the rear of the bus grumbling. ‘New Mexico?’ he asked.

  The balding man nodded. ‘Sort of. I went on a drive in the desert and this looks pretty much like what I saw there. Except…’

  ‘Except?’

  The man frowned. ‘Except it doesn’t. Some aspects of it do at first glance. This vegetation, such as it is. It reminds me of the stuff I saw over there, but when you look real close it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Like I say, it looks like New Mexico, but that’s as far as I can say. But whichever way you look at it, we can’t be in New Mexico or anywhere else like that, because it’s impossible.’ The man held out his hand. ‘Martin Bolan,’ he said. ‘I’m a travelling rep for an engineering company based in Birmingham.’ He shook Wade’s hand. ‘But I’ve never travelled here before.’ He gave a nervous laugh, ran a hand over his thinning hair. Bolan angled his head, waiting for Wade to divulge his name, which he resisted. ‘Where do you reckon the driver’s gone? Maybe he knows something we don’t.’

  Wade offered a barely perceptible shrug. ‘Beats me.’

  ‘The rest of them are getting jittery,’ said Bolan, casting a thumb in their direction.

  ‘And you’re not?’ Wade asked, looking the man over. He appeared unusually calm, at least outwardly.

  ‘Like the guy over there says,’ he said, nodding at the businessman who was standing at the rear of the bus staring into the distance and scuffing up clouds of dust in frustration, ‘there has to be a logical explanation for all this. We can’t all be dreaming the same damn nightmare at the same time, can we?’

  Wade thought about it. Went over to the rest of the group who were huddled close together as if for protection.

  ‘Are you in charge here?’ It was the woman who Wade noticed had been sitting alone reading her Country Life magazine. She came up to Wade and stared him in the face, searching his eyes as if trying to dredge up an answer.

  ‘No, sorry. I’m not in charge.’

  The others came forward to stand before Wade at the sound of her voice.

  ‘Well someone somewhere must be in charge,’ she said. ‘What are we going to do?’

  He licked his lips and wiped sweat from his forehead. The heat was quite intense, even hotter than the weather he’d experienced deployed in the Middle East. ‘My thinking is that everyone gets back on the coach out of this sunshine until we figure out what to do.’

  To his surprise the group stopped their frantic murmuring and began to file back on the coach. The businessman’s partner stared at them from her lonely seat, eyes wide and looking like a petrified deer.

  Wade bent low, searching the edge of the road.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Bolan said.

  ‘Tracks.’

  ‘What kind of tracks?’

  ‘The bus driver has to be somewhere. Must have headed off into the desert.’

  ‘Without telling anyone?’

  Wade chewed his lower lip in thought. ‘I don’t know, maybe he panicked, left the bus to try and find help. I don’t have any other suggestions, do you?’

  Bolan scratched his chin, his finger wiping away sweat from his eyes. ‘It’s blasted hot. He couldn’t have gotten far in this heat, could he?’

  ‘That’s my thinking.’ He stopped sharp. ‘Look, here’s a set of prints in the sand. Seems he was headed in that direction.’ He pointed towards the blistering heat haze in the far distance.

  ‘He must be mad,’ said Bolan.

  ‘Or frightened and desperate. I’m going to see if I can follow them,’ said Wade.

  The businessman came up to them, his red face already showing signs of the heat. ‘My mobile phone’s not working. Can’t get a signal. What’s going on? What you found there?’

  ‘The bus driver’s tracks by the looks of it,’ Bolan answered. ‘My phone’s useless, too. I’ve already tried ringing out.’

  ‘Could be anybody’s tracks.’ The businessman sneered, looking down.

  ‘It’s hardly Piccadilly Circus,’ Wade said quietly. ‘I’m going to see if I can find him.’

  ‘Best of luck with that,’ said the businessman. ‘It’s too bloody hot. You’ll fry out there. I say if the guy abandoned us then we take the bus and turn back.’

  ‘Turn back?’ said Wade. ‘Have you seen back? It’s the same as forward.’

  ‘Well we sure as hell can’t hang around here waiting for the goddamn bus driver to show his face. The best thing we can do is find some kind of town, get someone to come and find him when we’re all safe and well and out of this mess the guy put us in. Can you drive the bus?’

  ‘So now you’re blaming the bus driver?’ said Bolan.

  ‘Sure, who else?’

  Wade shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not going to abandon him. I’m going to find him,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Bolan. ‘Two sets of eyes are better than one.’

  ‘Three are better,’ said the Country Life Woman from behind them. ‘I’ll help you.’ She reached into a small bag she carried. ‘I have a full half-litre bottle of spring water, too. That might prove useful.’ She held it out hopefully.

  ‘You’re not exactly dressed for the terrain,’ said Wade. ‘W
e’ll be fine.’

  ‘Are you?’ she observed. ‘Is this man?’ she added, looking Bolan up and down. ‘I’m tougher than I look, you know.’

  ‘It’s up to you,’ Wade shrugged. ‘I don’t intend going too far. I’ve just got a feeling he’s out there, that’s all.’

  ‘Well you’re crazy,’ said the businessman. ‘All of you. You can see for miles – I can’t see the man, can you? I’m going to see if anyone else can get a signal on their phone, get us some help.’

  ‘I doubt they’ll work,’ Wade said. ‘I noticed a few people trying and giving up. Seems we’re cut off from the outside world for now. The only man that might be able to shed some light on this is the bus driver. And he’s out there somewhere.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said the businessman walking away back to the coach, holding his phone up in the air and twirling it around as if he could snatch a stray bit of signal that happened to be flying by. He grunted in disdain.

  ‘Not a happy fellow,’ said the Country Life Woman.

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ Bolan mused. ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name…’

  ‘Amanda Tyler,’ she offered.

  ‘Martin Bolan,’ he returned politely. ‘I’m an engineering rep…’ He trailed off into silence.

  ‘And this is?’ she said, looking at Wade who turned around and stepped off the road onto the soft desert soil. He ignored her and trudged away, his attention on the ground.

  ‘Looks like he’s the private kind,’ said Bolan.

  They set off after Wade.

  7

  Huge, Powerful and Vicious

  The tracks were relatively easy to follow. There had been no wind or rain to erase them. Samuel Wade noticed how they’d started out wide and confident, a man in a hurry, but pretty soon they tightened up as the man slowed down. Where was he headed? There wasn’t anything up ahead except desert. What had he hoped to gain? He could only put it down to sheer panic. Wade had no idea how long the bus driver had been out here, but in this heat, without cover or water he would soon have gotten exhausted and dehydrated. His two companions were soon feeling the effects. He stopped, brought them up short.

  ‘Look, it’s fine if you turn back now,’ he said as they stood gasping in front of him. It hadn’t been very long into the search before Amanda Tyler had taken off her Aran sweater. She was using it as a makeshift fan. Over their shoulders he could make out the shape of the bus some distance away, small on the horizon and looking like it sat in a pool of shimmering mercury. ‘It’s hotter than I thought. You shouldn’t stay outside too long,’ he advised.

  ‘You seem more immune to it than we do,’ said Martin Bolan, his face aglow and his skin wet with sweat. He gladly took a sip out of the water bottle Amanda Tyler handed him.

  ‘I’ve had practice,’ Wade said vacantly, studying the horizon for any sign of the bus driver. ‘I’ll be fine on my own.’

  ‘We’re good for a while yet,’ said Amanda.

  ‘We can’t stay out much longer,’ Wade observed. ‘If we don’t see him soon we’re going to have to call the search off anyway.’

  They began to move off again, walking in a line about twelve feet apart from each other.

  ‘So where do you reckon we are?’ said Amanda. ‘I mean, this is simply bizarre.’

  ‘No idea,’ Wade replied.

  ‘Aren’t you the least bit frightened?’

  He glanced at her. ‘I’m trying not to think too much about it.’ In fact he knew why he was out here searching for the bus driver, and why his two companions had offered to help. It gave them all a focus, helped redirect their fears into something useful, an action – any action – that put a lid on them having to face the incredible truth. It was evident from the way no one had mentioned their situation till now, each keeping their turbulent thoughts to themselves.

  ‘Rains of fish,’ Martin Bolan called as they trudged along.

  ‘Fish?’ said Amanda.

  ‘Sure, you know, you hear about such things, don’t you? All manner of things falling down from the sky in rainstorms. Fish, frogs – I even heard tell of dogs and cats. That’s where we get the phrase from: raining cats and dogs. Some experts say that things which live in the sea are scooped up into the atmosphere by storms and deposited on land many hundreds of miles away.’

  ‘And dogs and cats?’ said Amanda. ‘They don’t live in the sea.’

  ‘They don’t know everything, of course,’ said Bolan. ‘Some things remain a mystery.’

  ‘What has falls of fishes to do with us?’ Amanda said.

  Wade listened idly to their conversation, but his attention was elsewhere. His mind playing back the day of the doomed patrol...

  ‘We were driving through a storm last night. The worst I’ve seen in a long time,’ said Bolan. ‘I don’t know, maybe we were somehow picked up and dropped here by a freak of nature.’

  ‘An entire bus?’ said Amanda smiling.

  Wade remembered entering the mud-brick house, how cool it felt compared to the heat outside, but inside his uniform he was sweating like mad, his nerves balanced on a knife edge.

  John Travers was first in, checking all was clear. Wade hot on his heels, covering his back. Something felt wrong. Something that lingered just under the natural trepidation.

  ‘I’m just speculating, that’s all,’ said Bolan.

  ‘We’d have known about it, surely,’ Amanda said. ‘Being taken up in the sky. And that would have been some fall to earth!’ She smiled broadly, but realised by Bolan’s crestfallen expression that he’d taken it to mean he was being ridiculous.

  ‘It’s as good an explanation as any,’ he said quietly, his eyes on the horizon.

  ‘Of course it is,’ she replied.

  Their voices were fading as Wade’s memories began to intrude fully.

  Peterson was at the entrance to the house, covering the alley. Wade remembered how Peterson always looked cool, even under extremes like this. Nothing seemed to faze him, but he guessed that most of it was a front he put up to shield his true feelings. Whatever, he was a good guy to have covering his back. Travers was signalling silently at wade, indicating a blanket-covered doorway to another smaller room. Wade nodded.

  ‘Some kind of black hole, then…’ Bolan suggested. ‘There has to be some way we ended up here. A time-space-continuum-kind-of-thing. Maybe it’s to do with quantum physics. I read about such things, how weird stuff like that is. How the universe behaves strangely, far crazier than we’d ever thought. Maybe the explanation’s in there somewhere.’

  ‘Maybe it is,’ Amanda said encouragingly.

  ‘I once tried to read A Brief History of Time but had to give up halfway through. That’s how weird and hard to understand the universe is, even when someone tries to explain it in a simple way.’

  Wade’s breathing was becoming shallower. His mouth drying out, and it wasn’t simply the effects of the heat bearing down on him. It was the memory of Travers’ eyes as he glanced back at him once before approaching the blanket-covered doorway. Completely trusting in Wade to cover him.

  Wade stepped smartly to the exit that led onto an alleyway outside.

  Completely trusting.

  Travers slowly put the tip of his gun’s barrel to the edge of the blanket, stood to one side and signalled to Wade and Peterson he was going through…

  ‘What’s this?’ said Amanda.

  Her urgent voice struck through Wade’s memories and brought him back to the present.

  He looked across at her. She was bending down to look at something on the ground in front of her. Both Wade and Bolan strode across.

  ‘Are they tracks?’ asked Bolan.

  Wade nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But not the bus driver’s.’ Amanda said. ‘Because his tracks are over there, the ones you’re following.’

  On his haunches, Wade scanned the indentations in the sandy soil.

  ‘So someone else has been out here?’ Bolan asked. His breathing was becoming increasingly labo
ured.

  ‘They look like animal tracks,’ Wade observed.

  Amanda said, ‘What kind of animal?’

  ‘It looks like the prints of a very large dog or wolf.’

  She stepped back. ‘But wolves don’t live in this kind of landscape, so it has to be a feral dog, right?’ she said, her nerves nibbling away at the edge of her voice. She looked around her.

  Wade rose to his feet, followed the tracks in and amongst the harsh, low-lying shrubs. ‘That’s weird…’ he mumbled.

  ‘What’s weird?’ asked Bolan. ‘This is already too weird without more weird piled on top.’ He stroked his head. The sun had turned his thinly-thatched pate bright pink.

  ‘It doesn’t look like a four-legged animal. Whatever was following the bus driver moved largely on two legs, every now and again putting its front ones down.’

  ‘A kangaroo?’ said Amanda hopefully.

  Bolan picked up quickly on what Wade had said. ‘What do you mean following the bus driver?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like,’ said Wade. ‘And there’s another set of tracks here,’ he pointed. ‘There were at least two or more animals keeping close to his tracks.’

  ‘A kangaroo?’ Amanda repeated. ‘They live in the outback of Australia. Perhaps this is Australia…’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Wade absently. He began to follow the bus driver’s tracks again. He quickly came to a spot where there was an area of disturbed ground, and then the man’s footprints heading off at a sharp angle. Only this time they were spaced out.

  The man had started to run, thought Wade.

  ‘So what does all that mean?’ asked Bolan. ‘Are there wild animals out here? Is that what you’re saying?’

  But Wade wasn’t listening. He was following the bus driver’s tracks at a pace, every now and again losing them. The bus driver had been weaving, suddenly changing direction, making the tracks difficult to trace. It was clear that the animals – whatever they were – had been either keeping close tabs on the bus driver, or were deliberately hunting him down. Wade reckoned it was the latter.