Impact

by Rob Boffard

  He falls silent, still holding the binoculars at chest level, staring out across the water.

  Janice Okwembu has always trusted her instincts. Sometimes, she thinks that they are all that has kept her alive. They’ve led her here, up to the bridge, and now she understands why. Despite the belief in the Engine, despite the military uniforms and the rudimentary chain of command, Prophet and his followers aren’t good at reacting to the unknown. They’re fine as long as new workers keep coming in, as long as there’s a constant stream of supplies. She’s an anomaly: a potential worker who somehow managed to avoid her fate, to position herself next the ship’s leader. That seaplane is an anomaly, too. It’s upset the balance, disrupted the status quo.

  Which gives her the perfect opportunity.

  “You need to send some men out there,” she says, careful to address herself to Prophet–she’s not at the stage of giving orders. Not yet.

  Prophet looks at her, his eyes wide. “You forget your place.”

  She pushes on. “You need to be sure. If there’s someone on that island, they might be able to tell you about where the plane came from.”

  “She calling the shots now, Prophet?” says someone from behind her. Prophet’s eyes are dark, but Okwembu holds his gaze. Strength over weakness.

  After a moment, he turns away. “The Engine has brought her to us for a reason. We’ll take her advice, for now. Ray: take Iluk and get out there. Bring Koji with you–if there’s any debris, I want him to take a look at it first.”

  Okwembu turns back to the window, looking back out into the darkness.

  54

  Riley

  Crying or screaming isn’t enough. I want to turn and go back into the ocean, stop swimming, let myself sink into the blackness.

  He saved my life. He helped get me to the Nomads’ camp. He got me all the way here, and now he’s dead. Just like Amira, and my father, and Syria, and everyone else. I can’t save any of them.

  My legs stop supporting me. I drop to my knees, bent over, digging furrows in the dirt with numb fingers. The tears finally come.

  Maybe I shouldn’t try to find Prakesh and Carver. They’re not safe around me. Maybe I should just… vanish.

  Listen, says the voice inside me.

  And I do. I listen as it tells me what I need to do next. Because, right then, I realise that it’s something that will never let me down. It’ll help me, and it’ll keep me alive. As long as I trust it. As long as I pay attention to it.

  What was it Finkler said? Post-traumatic stress disorder. The result of bottling everything up, pretending that these horrible things never happened. Not any more. I’m not going to bottle this up. Finkler isn’t going to have died for nothing. I’m not going to die. I’m going to find Prakesh and Carver, I’m going to take out Okwembu, and I’m going to make sure that this never happens again.

  Somehow, I manage to get to my feet. I stumble over to the rocks, retching and coughing. When I’m a few feet away, my legs give out again. I go to one knee in the sand, breathing hard. I make myself get up, make myself pull Finkler’s body off the rocks. It takes almost all the strength I have to do it, and when I feel that there’s still body heat under the clothing, it nearly stops me in my tracks.

  I pull Finkler’s clothes off him, working his pants down around his ankles, rolling him over to get to his jacket sleeves. What I’m doing is awful, like spitting in his face, but I do it anyway, because I don’t have a choice. I need dry clothes.

  I strip naked, right there on the beach. The tips of my fingers have gone blue, and it takes everything I have just to stay upright. The enormous grey coat, and the shirt and sweater underneath it, almost swallow me whole. The pants balloon around my waist. My skin is still wet, and the remaining water makes the clothes a little damp, but I barely notice.

  His boots are far too big. My feet slide around in them, threatening to slip out at any moment. In the end, I have to wear my own shoes. They’re soaked, and the water bites through the dry socks instantly, but it’s better than nothing.

  I stand up, shivering in the wind, clutching my arms around me with my hands jammed in my armpits. I’m still far too cold, my thoughts coming in sluggish waves.

  Harlan and Eric.

  My eyes go wide. How could I not have thought about them? It was as if what happened to Finkler took up all the space in my mind. I scan the sky, hunting for the plane, listening hard for the noise of the engine. Several times I think I spot it, a black dot against the clouds, but then I blink and it’s gone. They’re gone.

  I try to tell myself that they stayed in the air, try to make myself believe that they’re OK. But how can they be, after that barrage? I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting off the despair.

  There’s nothing you can do for them, the voice says. You need fire.

  That’s what Harlan said, too. Clothes, shelter, fire. Whatever happened to him, he’d want me to keep going.

  Finding shelter here isn’t an option–it’s rocks and sand and scrub as far as the eye can see. Fire it is. But how? Harlan never showed me how to make it. Back on Outer Earth, we’d use fuel oil, drenching rags with it and igniting it all with a lighter…

  I jog over to the discarded jacket. It feels frozen solid when I pick it up, but I manage to keep hold of it, turning it the right way up and digging in the pockets. I feel something, pull it out. It’s the bear spray, the one Harlan gave me. I growl in frustration, stuffing the spray into the pocket of Finkler’s jacket, then keep digging. There are a couple of meat strips, a spare scarf, also soaked through, and a folded-up map. I shake it out, but it’s too wet to even think about using as kindling.

  There’s something else in the pockets, something round and solid. A flare. Harlan was the one who gave me two of them to use on the wolves–he must have kept one for himself.

  It’s soaked, what’s left of the label peeling off. Shivering hard, I clamber up the rocks towards the trees. I’m finding it more difficult to flex my fingers, and it’s tough to get a good grip on the rocks, but somehow I manage it. I don’t dare strike the flare until I have something to light it with. I try not to think about what will happen to me if this doesn’t work.

  The trees are spaced widely apart, pushing their way out of the uneven ground. They’re tilted at odd angles, as if they’ve been frozen in the act of trying to escape. It takes me a few minutes to find some old man’s beard. I let out a harsh, ragged cry of joy when I find some, and one of my fingernails breaks as I scrape it off the bark. It’s a tiny amount, no larger than my palm, but it will have to do.

  Harlan didn’t explain how to keep a fire going after you start one, but that’s not hard to work out. I dump the flare and the old man’s beard in a clearing, and start collecting twigs. The ground is frosty beneath my shoes, and my feet have gone completely numb, but I keep going.

  It seems like hours before I have enough. I crouch in the clearing, back aching, and squash the old man’s beard into an uneven lump. I reach out for the flare, but it’s not there any more. My fingers scramble at the ground in horror. Have I lost it? Did I take it with me? The cold is making it hard to focus. My mind keeps drifting, and it’s hard to pull it back.

  Then I spot the flare, a little way behind me, and grab it as if it’s a lifeline. With shaking fingers, I turn it upright, and pull the tab. If it doesn’t work…

  It hisses like an angry animal, burning bright. It happens so quickly that it burns my eyes. I snap them shut, feeling the heat bake onto my hand, then jam the flare onto the old man’s beard.

  Nothing. There’s smoke, lots of it, and some pieces of moss start to catch, but it’s not working. The moss is too damp, too—

  Flames. Shooting upwards. With a cry of triumph, I jam the flare deeper into the moss, and start piling sticks on the fire.

  The smoke is unbelievable now, acrid and hot. The flames start to lick upwards as I add more twigs, little by little, and it’s not long before the fire is a foot high. I get as close as I can to it, h
ugging my knees, letting the heat bake onto my face. The wind has grown worse, but I just manage to shield the fire from it with my body, kicking off my wet shoes and propping them as close to the heat as I dare.

  I don’t know how long I’m out for, but when I wake up the fire has burned down to cinders, and it’s daylight–or what passes for it, under the grey clouds. Slowly, I pull my shoes on. They’re still damp, but much less than before. The wind has died down, and I’m not quite as cold.

  The faces of Harlan and Finkler and Eric swim to the surface of my mind. I push them away. I can’t mourn for them now, not if I want to make it through this.

  I try to picture Fire Island as I saw it from the air. It didn’t look too big–I can probably make it to the far shore in a few minutes. I stand up on shaking legs, and start walking.

  The pain in my back has settled into two burning rods at my shoulder blades, but I make good time, pushing through the scrub and stumbling onto the rocky beach. The ocean in front of me is enormous. It’s become choppier, the waves slamming onto the sand. I can just make out the land on the horizon, a dark line above the water, reflecting the grey sky.

  There’s something else there, too. A black shape, separate from the line of the land. I squint, putting a hand up to my eyes, but I can’t figure out what it is. It’s too far away.

  My shoulders sag. It doesn’t matter what it is. I have to get across this expanse of water, and I don’t have the first clue how to do it. If Carver were here, he’d—

  Voices.

  I stop, listening hard, then hear them again, coming from further down the beach. I react fast, hurling myself to the ground. Sand scratches against my palms as I crawl behind a nearby rock. I put my back against it, trying to ignore the pain in my shoulders.

  The voices are coming closer. I can’t make out the words yet, but I can hear that the speakers are male. Their footsteps crunch on the sand.

  “… the whole damn island,” I hear one of them say. His voice is gruff.

  Another one speaks. He’s using a language I’ve never heard before, all elongated vowels.

  “There’s nothing here,” says a third. “We would’ve found them by now.”

  “In the water, you think?”

  “Then what about the dead guy? What happened to his clothes? Unless you’re telling me they stripped him, then threw him out of the plane.”

  Finkler. They know about him, which means they know I’m here. Any second now, they’re going to come round the side of the rock. I have no weapons, and I can’t even imagine fighting three people in this cold. I close my eyes, trying to stay as still as possible.

  “You’re sure you saw—”

  “Yes, Koji, I’m damn sure. Two of ’em, clear through the binocs.”

  There’s a pause. The footsteps stop.

  “Let’s get back to the boat,” the first one says.

  When the reply comes, it’s in an angry burst of that strange language.

  “Tell you what, Iluk. You can stay here and double-check. Me, I’m going back to my booze and my bed. Only thing the Ramona’s good for any more.”

  I lick my lips. These people, whoever they are, have a way off this rock. I can’t let that slip away.

  But the second the thought occurs, so does every problem with it. I can’t fight them–not in my current state, with no weapons.

  I could follow them, track them across the island. I’ve done it before, on Outer Earth, when I followed a psychotic killer named Arthur Gray onto the monorail tracks. But this isn’t Outer Earth–here, the ground is uneven, littered with rocks and branches, and staying silent will be difficult. I could try and get ahead of them, make it to the boat before they do, but I don’t even know where it is.

  There’s another way, the voice says.

  I stand up, turning to face the men, my legs burning as I push up off the sound. Then I cup my hands to my mouth and yell, “Hey!”

  55

  Prakesh

  This time, Prakesh pays more attention.

  He hardly got any sleep, but even a little is better than nothing. He’s more alert now, looking for anything that he can use.

  They’re back in the farm, carrying the last of the soil sacks to their new position. Some of the workers have already begun filling the troughs, and the hangar is alive with the thumping, scratchy sound of dirt on metal. As Prakesh drops a sack on the pile, he takes a closer look at the guards.

  It isn’t hard to see how they’ve kept control. The workers might outnumber them three to one, but they’ve got all the guns. And they’re smart about their positioning, too, spacing themselves out around the edges of the room, always keeping the workers in view. It would be easy to see a coordinated attack coming–and even if it succeeded there’s no telling how many workers would die in the attempt.

  Prakesh looks back at the troughs. They stretch all the way from the middle of the hangar to the far wall. Each one is waist-height, around forty feet long. Easy enough for a man to hide behind. If he could slip out of view, he could find a way out. And once he’s out into the ship…

  But there’s no way he’ll be able to get to a hiding place before being cut down. It would take an extraordinary amount of luck. For a moment, he entertains the idea that the guards have set movement patterns, but then discards it. They aren’t robots.

  Frustrated, he starts walking back the other way, his shoulders groaning under the heavy sack. Jojo passes him on the right, not looking at him. He hasn’t said a word to Prakesh since the night before, as if the act of talking as much as he did has exhausted him. Prakesh can’t help thinking of their conversation–how Jojo shut down the man who tried to stop them talking. He may have a stutter, may not even be out of his teens yet, but the other workers respect him.

  The sack slips a little, sliding down Prakesh’s shoulder onto his upper arm. He stops, shifting it back, and that’s when the idea comes.

  It’s not just what Riley would do in this situation. It’s what Aaron Carver would do, too. Carver, whose first response to any situation was to use a gadget or a tool, to use something he’d made. Carver, who was (is, he tells himself) always looking for new equipment.

  Carver wouldn’t just rely on what was here. Carver would be looking to see what he could do with it.

  Prakesh stands there for a moment too long, and one of the guards shouts at him to get moving. He bobs his head in apology, hefting the sack as he starts walking.

  He can’t take out the guards individually. None of them can. But what if he could take them all out in one go?

  They move to the troughs, all of them unloading the soil now, dumping it in and mixing it with fertiliser. The stuff comes in foul-smelling buckets, the white granules gritty and slightly slimy. There’s insecticide, too: yellowish dust that Prakesh recognises as sulphur. He spotted it earlier, off to one side in a pair of grimy containers. It stains his hands and prickles the inside of his nose. You’re supposed to handle this stuff with gloves–it can irritate the skin, causing blisters if you use a lot of it.

  Jojo is next to him, head bent, patting the soil down. Prakesh doesn’t look at him. Keeping his voice low, he says, “Jojo.”

  No response.

  “Jojo,” he hisses, a little louder. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Jojo’s hand flick the air twice. No. Not now.

  “Then don’t talk, just listen,” Prakesh says.

  It doesn’t take him long to explain his plan. Jojo does nothing, doesn’t even register that he’s heard, but Prakesh isn’t worried. He wants this more than you do, he thinks, pushing a handful of fertiliser under the soil.

  When Prakesh is finished, Jojo doesn’t respond for a long minute. Then his right hand forms a quick thumbs up.

  It takes a long time for Jojo to tell the rest of the workers the plan. He has to be careful, changing places only when the guards’ attention wanders, conferring with them in an almost inaudible voice. Eventually, he makes his way back to Prakesh, and flashes another thumbs up, m
ore emphatic this time.

  Prakesh lifts his hands out of the soil. He can feel the other workers watching him. There’s a guard close by, a stick-thin woman with a shorn head, and Prakesh slowly starts to walk towards her.

  The guard sees him coming before he gets within twenty feet. Her rifle goes up instantly, finger in the trigger guard. “Stop right there.”

  Prakesh can feel the other rifles on him, like needles sticking into his back. For a moment, it’s as if all activity on the floor has stopped. He can’t hear anything but the roaring of blood in his ears.

  “Back in the line,” the guard says, jerking her rifle. “We’ll take a break in an hour. You can piss then.”

  “I don’t need a piss. I need to ask you something.”

  “I said, back in the line.”

  Prakesh looks over his shoulder, gestures to the troughs. “I can make your fertiliser better.”

  The guard’s eyes narrow. “What?”

  “Fertiliser. I used to be a plant technician, a biologist—”

  He feels the bullet before he hears the gunshot. It spangs off the floor a few feet away, the gunshot echoing around the hangar. Prakesh jumps, and the workers hit the deck, throwing themselves to the floor.

  “Move away!” shouts a voice. One of the other guards. “If she doesn’t shoot you, I will.”

  Prakesh puts his hands above his head. He speaks as loudly and clearly as he can. “I can make it so everything grows faster. OK? Faster and stronger. I can make you a new batch of fertiliser. We can grow new plants–tomatoes, fruit, whatever you want. I just need a few things to do it.”

  Silence. The guard still has her gun on him. He tenses, sure that at any second a bullet is going to slam right through him.

  But he guessed right. A grow-op like this won’t give them a lot of variety in their diet. He’s offering them some new tastes, and he can see them looking at each other, thinking it over.

  One of the guard’s colleagues wanders over, and they have a whispered conversation. Prakesh watches, not wanting to move, not wanting to give the others any reason to shoot.