by Rob Boffard
“What are you doing?” she yells after him. No reaction. She abandons the table, shielding her eyes against the biting wind.
By some miracle, she manages to get in front of him. He doesn’t look at her. His eyes are fixed on a point in the distance. He keeps walking, as if determined to get as far away as possible.
“Mikhail, no,” she says, putting a hand on his chest.
He shrugs her off. “We have to go back,” he says.
“What?” She can barely hear him over the wind.
When he doesn’t answer, she plants herself in front of him. He finally looks at her, and that’s when she sees what’s really happening. The panic she heard in his voice, back at the lake, has taken over completely. It’s the panic of someone who finally realises that all their plans are utterly useless.
“Listen to me,” she says. “We—”
Mikhail puts a hand on her neck, and shoves her to one side. She goes down hard, twisting her ankle, bruising splayed fingers on the hard dirt.
“It was a mistake,” Mikhail says, raising his voice so that it cuts above the wind. Tears are streaming down his face. “All of this. We should never have come.”
He starts walking again, and that’s when Janice Okwembu decides she’s had enough.
No matter what she tries to do, no matter how well-meaning her intentions, she is met with stupidity and cowardice. She is confronted by people who hate her, who want her dead, who would take everything she’s worked for and smash it to pieces. None of them realise how much she’s sacrificed, how much she’s put on the line for humanity. They’re weak. All of them.
And she is tired of weakness.
She doesn’t know how she finds the rock, but suddenly it’s in her fingers, almost too big for her hand. She gets to one knee, then to her feet. Mikhail is almost at the trees.
Okwembu sprints after him. He doesn’t look round as she approaches, and he doesn’t see her raise the rock.
She swings it into the side of his head. He goes down, his legs crumpling, sprawling on his stomach in the dirt. Okwembu doesn’t wait for him to roll over. She plants a knee in his back, and brings the rock down on the base of his skull. Then she does it again. And again.
Blood spatters her upper arms, dots her face. She barely feels the wind now.
After a while, Mikhail stops moving.
Okwembu takes a long look at what’s left of his head. I should feel something, she thinks. Guilt, triumph, sorrow. He saved her life, pulled her out of the freezing lake. He should mean something to her.
But for all that she’s done, for all the lengths she’s had to go to ensure her survival, Okwembu has never killed anyone. Not directly. Not before now. And as she stares down at Mikhail’s body, she feels nothing but quiet satisfaction.
She met weakness with strength. Cowardice with courage.
She tries to rise, but the wind is so strong now that it almost knocks her over. She saves herself by grabbing hold of a tree trunk. Her back is to the wind, and it cuts through her thin, damp clothing, turning her skin to ice. Strength and courage got her this far, but if she doesn’t get shelter soon, she’s not going to live long enough to reap the benefits.
She drops to her knees alongside Mikhail, wedging her hands under his torso. Gritting her teeth, she rolls him onto his side. Then she lies prone, curling her knees to her chest, pushing herself into the gap. The thought of being this close to his body is revolting, but Okwembu finds herself regarding the feeling at a distance, like it’s someone else’s problem.
She’s not completely out of the wind, and she’s still bitterly cold, but it’s a vast improvement. They’re low down on the ground, and she doesn’t think a falling tree or snapped branch will hit them. She can feel the last residual heat from Mikhail’s body leaching into her. Nothing to do now but wait for it to stop.
Janice Okwembu closes her eyes.
She’s still lying there when bright lights illuminate the clearing.
19
Prakesh
“What the hell is happening?” Carver shouts.
Prakesh can barely hear him. It’s not just the roaring wind: it’s the trees. The trunks are creaking, the branches grinding together. The cacophony is unbelievable. The air is a swirling maelstrom of twigs and dead leaves, scratching at his face.
Microclimates, Prakesh thinks. Extreme weather. We should have expected this. We should have prepared for it. He wants to shout all of this to Carver, but there’s no point. They have to find shelter, and they have to find it soon.
All three of them–Prakesh, Clay and Carver–are bent over, leaning hard into the wind. Prakesh glances back at Clay. The man’s eyes are screwed shut, his mouth set in a thin line, like he’s trying to pretend this isn’t happening. Prakesh takes a step, then another, willing his frozen muscles to work. How strong is this wind? Sixty miles an hour? Seventy?
Carver is the first to lose his footing. He skids backwards, his feet sliding along the ground as if it’s turned to ice. Then he tumbles over backwards, somersaulting, face frozen in surprise. Prakesh throws himself to the ground just before Carver smashes into him–he feels Carver’s feet thump across his back, a hand scrabbling at his jacket.
He looks up to see Carver slam headlong into Clay. Somehow, Carver manages to hold on, grabbing him by the ankle. It stops him moving. He motions Clay to stay put, so they expose as little as possible to the wind. Smart, Prakesh thinks. If they don’t freeze to death, then they might just make it through this storm. He makes himself stay down, too, tries to control his shivering.
There’s a crunch. Prakesh raises his head a fraction, squinting against the icy rush of air.
A huge branch is tumbling towards them. It’s coming end over end, ripping up the ground, and it’s heading right for Carver and Clay.
They haven’t seen it. They’ve both got their heads down. Prakesh shouts a warning, but it’s lost under the wind. The branch is bouncing off the other trees, gaining momentum, smashing its way towards them.
For a second, he’s amazed that they can’t hear it, that they haven’t noticed the presence of something that big and that destructive. Then he’s moving, staying low, leading with his shoulder. A second later, he connects with Clay, his numb body barely registering the impact. Then he and Clay collide with Carver, and all three of them tangle up, a chaotic mix of limbs and dirt and wind. The crunching and cracking is deafening now.
The last thing Prakesh sees is the branch, rushing towards them. He closes his eyes, waiting for it to hit.
A bough rips across Prakesh’s cheek, scratching his skin, drawing blood. Then the air rushes back into the space above them. The branch crashes further into the forest, finally wedging itself against another tree, ten feet off the ground.
The wind drops a fraction, just enough so that Prakesh can raise his head without feeling like the muscles in his neck are going to snap.
“Come on!” he shouts. He doesn’t know if the other two can hear him, and he doesn’t wait to find out. The ground is still a gentle slope, and Prakesh propels himself down it, the wind at his back. It’s all he can do to keep his balance. There has to be a dip in the landscape, a large rock, anything that will get them out of the wind. Carver and Clay have caught up, running alongside him.
Abruptly, the ground levels out. Prakesh looks around, and for a moment he doesn’t understand where they are. The uneven forest terrain has given way to hard-packed ground. It’s a strip, around ten feet wide, stretching away into the darkness on their left and right.
Prakesh’s body is firing on all cylinders, his heart hammering in his chest. He knows the strip is man-made, but he can’t seem to think beyond that. Doesn’t matter. They won’t find shelter, not here, not out in the open. He yells for Carver to keep going.
Lights explode out of the darkness.
Two huge yellow circles, four feet off the ground, heading right for him. It’s such a strange sight, so alien, that all three of them freeze. It’s only in the la
st instant that Prakesh moves. He throws himself to the side, his hands out in front of him, but he’s much too late. It’s going to crush them.
There’s a grinding screech. The lights swing to the side, and whatever is behind them turns sideways. Prakesh sees wheels spinning, kicking up huge clouds of dust which are instantly whipped away by the wind.
The thing comes to a skidding halt, rocking gently from side to side. It’s solid enough to resist the wind–Prakesh can almost see the air skating over the top of it. It’s like the vehicle that Carver put together on Outer Earth, only bigger. This one has a fully enclosed body, squat and boxy, with a slightly angled back. The wheels are enormous, resting in the tracks the thing made when it skidded sideways.
One of the doors on the side of the vehicle flies open. The figure in it is silhouetted by the interior lights.
“Get in!” the figure shouts.
20
Okwembu
Okwembu doesn’t have a chance to process the sudden arrival of the others. They tumble into the vehicle, sprawling across the floor in a tangle of limbs.
The man who pulled them in screams over his shoulder to the driver. “Get us out of here!”
The woman next to him slams the door shut. The driver floors it, and the vehicle bucks and writhes as it fights against the wind.
The inside of the vehicle is cramped and low, with two rows of seats facing each other. The seats are covered in torn brown fabric, worn enough that Okwembu can feel the metal frame beneath digging into her back. The others throw themselves into the seats next to hers. She can feel Carver staring at her, taking in the streaks of blood on her face.
The noise makes speaking impossible. The wind has picked up again, and it’s as if what came before was only a warm-up. She can feel the constant pressure on the vehicle’s right-hand side, an angry god trying to shove them off the road. Okwembu can just see through the glass at the front of the vehicle. The headlights illuminate a world of flying debris, most of it moving too fast to identify.
A rock appears in the windshield, tumbling slowly, nearly as tall as the vehicle’s front end. Okwembu flinches, but the driver is already spinning the wheel. The tyres screech as they dig into the dirt.
None of them have seat belts. Aaron Carver slams into her right side, squashing her up against the side of the vehicle. For a moment, her ear is pressed against the metal, and she can hear the true ferocity of the wind. She actually feels the rock scrape the car.
The skid has made them tilt, lifting the wheels on the right side an inch or so off the ground. The driver spins the wheel the other way, but the wind has them in its teeth. They’re slowly tilting, inch by inch.
And Okwembu sees why. The skid has shifted everyone in the vehicle to one side. If they don’t shift their weight to the other in the next few seconds, they’re going to roll.
Nobody else has figured it out. They’re all scrambling to stay in their seats, all panicking. She has to act, and she has to act now.
She manages to get a hand between her and the wall. But she’s not strong enough. She gets her foot flat against it, half twisting her ankle, gritting her teeth against the pain.
She pushes hard, shoving them off her. Carver was a tracer, wasn’t he? Someone used to movement and centres of gravity? Surely he’ll see what she’s doing. But when she looks into his eyes, she sees only anger and confusion. He’s not going to do anything. It’s up to her, like it always is.
Janice Okwembu scrambles off her seat, and hurls herself to the other side of the vehicle. The tilt pauses, just for a fraction of a second, but it’s enough. And it’s Clay who reacts, scuttling on all fours across the vehicle, pushing his back up against the right-hand door. The woman does the same, and finally the others figure it out.
The vehicle slams back to the road with a bang that rattles Okwembu’s skull. The driver wasn’t expecting it, and for a moment it feels as if the vehicle will spin out of control.
Okwembu closes her eyes.
When she opens them again, they’re back on course. She can still hear debris scraping across the vehicle’s body, but they’re on a steady path, the headlights slicing through the darkness ahead of them.
Trembling, she pulls herself back onto her seat. The others do the same. She glances at Carver, but he’s not looking at her. He’s staring at the floor, hugging himself, shivering with cold.
“Almost out of it,” the man says, raising his voice above the wind. His accent is unbelievably thick, like he’s chewing a mouthful of food. “Everybody just hang on.”
Okwembu can feel that they’re descending, winding down the slope, away from the lake. Exhaustion and adrenaline catch up with her. She bites the inside of her cheek–she has to stay awake. Her hand moves to the data stick around her neck, grasping it through her shirt.
After a while, the road straightens out. They’re still deep in the forest, but now the wind is nothing more than a low murmur.
The man in front reaches over the seats, resting a hand on the driver’s shoulder. “We OK there, Iluk?” he says.
Iluk nods, and the man turns back to them. He puffs out his cheeks, shaking his head.
“You’re damn lucky,” he says to them. He’s a big man, with short black hair and a neatly trimmed goatee under a pockmarked face. “You hadn’t come out onto the old forest road when you did, we’d’ve gone right past you, praise the Engine.”
Okwembu doesn’t have time to question the strange phrase. The man keeps talking. “These storms can last for days,” he says, looking up at the roof as if he expects what’s left of the wind to lift it right off. “We get the real big ones once or twice a year. Real big ones. Nothing like the dust storms they get further south, though. Those things last for months.”
“Who are you?” Prakesh says. His voice is a croak, and he’s shivering badly.
“Hell–hang on,” the man says. There’s a storage locker bolted to the vehicle frame above him, and he clicks it open. Okwembu can see food containers, water canteens, equipment the purpose of which she can only guess at. And blankets.
It’s these that the man goes for, passing them out. Okwembu gives him a grateful smile, wrapping one around her. It’s scratchy, and smells of alcohol and sweat, but it’s warm. Their rescuers pass out canteens of water, and they drink deeply.
“I’m Ray,” the man says. “Iluk’s doing the driving, and this here is Nessa.” He gestures to the woman. She has a face that looks as if it’s chiselled out of stone, framed by long, dirty-blonde hair. Like Ray and Iluk, she wears camouflage-patterned overalls, open at the neck, with a thick hooded sweater below them.
One by one they introduce themselves. Ray nods to each of them in turn. “Any more of you out there?” he says.
The others look at Okwembu. She shrugs. “No. There was just the one–the man you found me with.”
Carver opens his mouth to speak, but she cuts him off. “He wanted to go back to the lake, and I tried to stop him. He attacked me.”
“Gods,” Clay says. His face is pale, his shoulders shaking.
“You’re lying,” says Carver.
Okwembu shrugs. “You heard him, back at the lake. He panicked, and I had to defend myself. I didn’t have a choice.”
Okwembu can feel suspicion radiating off Prakesh and Carver. Before they can say anything, Ray clears his throat. “What about the ship you came down in?” he says. “Where’d you land?”
Prakesh lifts his head. “We hit the lake. It’s gone. Anyway, it was just an escape pod, not the ship itself. That burned up in the atmosphere.”
“So no supplies? Any fuel, or anything?”
“Gone.”
“Ah, shit.” Ray shakes his head. “Prophet’s not going to like that.”
He glances at Nessa, and something passes between them, something that Okwembu can’t quite figure out.
“Who’s Prophet?” says Clay.
“We saw your ship come down,” Ray says, ignoring him. “And I said to myself, Ray,
the Engine has provided for us. It has sent survivors to join our cause. Prophet sent Nessa and Iluk and me up here, see if we could find where you landed.”
He pauses. “Are you really from…” He raises his eyes, lifts his chin towards the roof.
It takes them a moment to realise what he’s referring to. Prakesh speaks first. “Outer Earth?”
“I knew it!” Ray slaps his knee, a huge grin spreading across his face. His teeth have been worn down to tiny stubs.
“Outer Earth’s a myth,” says Nessa. But she’s glancing at Ray, like she wants him to confirm it.
“Ain’t no myth,” Ray says, grinning. “Told you, didn’t I? Where else could they have come from?”
“Why’d you leave?” Nessa says.
“Ask her,” Carver says, jerking his head at Okwembu.
Okwembu’s calm has returned. Carver seems to speak at a distance–he can’t hurt her, not any more. She glances at him, then turns to Ray and Nessa, lifting her chin slightly as she speaks. “Outer Earth was hit by a virus,” she says. “It killed almost everyone it touched. A few of us escaped.”
Carver gives a bitter laugh. “She left out the part where she and her buddies blew a hole in the side of the station dock.”
Stupid, she thinks, looking over at him. Stupid and petty and small-minded. Just like Mikhail. She exhales through her nose. “I’ve already explained why I—”
“You don’t get to explain shit.”
Ray clears his throat. “I see you folks have a lot to work out. But you’re going to be fine. We’re going to get you to the Ramona, and we’re going to look after you.”
Nobody speaks. The rumble of the engine is undercut by the howling wind, not as strong as it was but still forceful enough to rattle the sides of the vehicle.
Eventually, Prakesh says, “What’s the Ramona?”
Ray smiles again. “You’ll see.”
21