by Adam Baker
‘Hot damn. Fuel. Tainted with fuel.’ He gagged. ‘Mouth full of freakin’ carbon tetrachloride.’ He bent and wretched. ‘Man, that’s nasty.’
‘Better check the other wing. Maybe the fluid lines are intact.’
‘You be taster. I got a tongue coated in gasoline.’
Frost stood and contemplated the stars. She found an austere consolation in the fact ten thousand years of human civilisation, the slow rise and abrupt fall, had been a fleeting moment of cosmic time, and the universe would continue regardless.
Movement in the periphery of her vision.
A figure, fifty yards away, silhouetted against the stars. It seemed to be watching her.
‘Hey,’ shouted Frost. She fumbled for her flashlight. ‘Early? That you?’
She glanced over her shoulder. Hancock and Noble walking the starboard wing.
She turned back. The figure was gone.
Cupped hands:
‘Early. Early, can you hear me?’
No reply.
‘It’s us, man. You made it.’
No reply.
She stumbled in pursuit, followed footprints down the side of a dune, anxious not to be drawn too far from the crash site in case she became disoriented in the darkness.
‘Wait up, dude. You’re not thinking straight.’
She struggled to climb a steep rise.
‘We got water, we got meds. Come on. Let us help.’
She reached the top of the ridge. She swept the surrounding sands with the beam of her flashlight.
A trail of prints heading out into deep desert.
The lower cabin.
Noble pulled insulation from the back bulkhead.
A simple crank-handle hatch. A pressure door that allowed access to the crawlway that ran the length of the aircraft.
He pulled the door wide, crouched and shone his flashlight inside the tight passage. Sheet metal slick with hydraulic fluid. A rat-run that led through the ECM equipment bay, to the payload compartment.
‘Step aside,’ said Hancock.
‘You don’t looks so great.’
‘Let me do my job.’
Hancock unzipped a tool pouch and took out a compact Geiger handset.
‘Real bag of tricks you got there,’ said Noble.
Hancock scanned the crawlspace interior. Flickering numerals. Steady background crackle.
‘Guess the warhead survived the crash. Otherwise this thing would be singing to high heaven.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘If we were sharing this plane with a bunch of spilt plutonium, we’d be puking blood already.’
Noble climbed inside the crawlway and lay on his back. He held out his hand. Hancock slapped a cross-head screwdriver into his palm. He began to unscrew the panel above his head.
Twelve screws. The panel dropped loose. Hancock helped manhandle it clear.
Noble shone his flashlight into a dense nest of cable and pipe work.
A large water tank bolted to the airframe above his head. Reservoir for the engine injection system.
‘Can you see the tank?’ asked Hancock.
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you reach it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is it intact?’
‘Ripped open. But not all the way. Give me the hose.’
Noble reached up and fed siphon hose through the cracked skin of the tank. He squirmed out the crawlway.
‘Give me the bottle.’
Noble sucked the pipe until he drew liquid. He caught a mouthful, then jammed the pipe into the neck of the two-gallon bottle. The bottle began to fill.
‘Drinkable?’ asked Hancock.
Noble swilled the water round his mouth with relish. He gave a thumbs up.
Sudden commotion. Frost threw herself through the rip in the cabin wall, tripped and hit the deck. She crouched beside her survival vest, hurriedly checked the pockets and extracted a flare.
‘What’s up?’ asked Hancock. He clapped for attention. ‘Hey. Lieutenant. What’s going on?’
She didn’t reply.
She gripped the flare and headed outside.
They followed.
Frost hurriedly limped to the peak of a high dune and fired a star shell.
The crash site lit brilliant white.
Noble waded up the gradient and joined her. They looked out over the desert.
‘What can you see?’ called Hancock from the foot of the dune. ‘Is someone out there?’
Frost tracked footprints, pistol drawn and chambered. She followed the trail, flashlight trained on the ground ahead of her.
‘You saw somebody?’ asked Noble, keeping close in case her leg gave out and she fell. ‘Who is it? Early?’
‘Couldn’t say for sure.’
‘You didn’t see a face?’
‘No.’
‘Flight suit?’
‘I think so.’
‘Then it’s got to be Early. Couldn’t be anyone else.’
The prints came to an abrupt halt halfway up a dune, as if whoever made the tracks winked out of existence mid-stride.
‘What the hell?’ murmured Noble. ‘It’s like the fucker grew wings and took off.’
Frost crouched and raked the sand.
The star shell above them fluttered and dimmed.
She peered into the surrounding darkness. Growing apprehension.
‘I think we should get back to the plane.’
18
The lower cabin.
‘So what did it look like?’ asked Hancock.
‘A silhouette,’ said Frost. ‘Couldn’t make out a face.’
‘Did it speak?’
‘No.’
‘A man?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘A guy. For real. Wearing a flight suit.’
‘How could you tell?’
‘The outline. Boots, pockets, straps.’
‘Early?’
‘Couldn’t be anyone else. Not unless there’s a second aircrew wandering around.’
‘Guthrie was infected, right? Bitten back at base. What if Early turned as well? Maybe that’s how he survived the desert. Maybe that’s why he won’t approach.’
Frost thought it over. She shook her head.
‘You saw those prowlers back at Vegas. Hoards of the bastards butting the wire. Dumber than plankton. Dumber than rocks. I talked with the sentries. Said they thinned out the crowd with gasoline every couple of days. Sprayed them down and lit them up. Stinking fucks just stood there and burned. Shit, even the average roach has an instinct for self-preservation. These bastards haven’t got a thought in their heads. You can shoot them point blank, run them down with a truck. They won’t do a damned thing to save themselves.
‘I rode shotgun on a supply raid to Grand Forks a few weeks back. Six Hummer convoy. Cover fire while we liberated canned food from a Hugo’s and brought it back to base. One of those sorry skeletal things spotted us from a furniture store across the street, slammed into plate glass time and again like a trapped wasp. Damn near beat his brains out.
‘You know what I’m saying, yeah? These things don’t have an ounce of cunning. They don’t make strategic decisions. They don’t hang back and pick their moment. They attack. They bite. That’s all they do. If Early had turned, he’d be on us until he sank his teeth or got a bullet in his brain.’
‘So why would he lurk out there in the dark?’
‘He spent a long day in the sun. Maybe he’s not thinking straight. Be a tragedy if he died in the dunes, yards from help.’
‘Reckon he might be dangerous?’
‘Danger to himself. Anyway, we each got a gun, right?’
‘So does he.’
Hancock suddenly cocked his head and held up a hand for quiet.
‘Hear that?’
‘What?’ asked Frost.
‘A noise.’
‘Care to be more specific?’
‘A sort of scratching sound.�
��
They listened.
‘Can’t hear anything.’ Frost gestured to the ladderway and the cabin above. ‘The windows and hatches are taped up. One of them might have come lose, started flapping in the breeze.’
‘No. It’s down here, with us. It’s real close by.’
They listened.
‘Sure you can’t hear it?’ he asked.
‘It’s just the wind. Sure as shit isn’t mice.’
‘Scratching. Don’t know how else to describe it. There it goes again. Hear? Plain as day.’
‘The airframe is broke in a hundred places. She’ll creak day and night.’
Hancock put his ear to the bulkhead like he was eavesdropping on an adjacent room.
‘Could be the pipes,’ said Frost. ‘The fuel lines, coolant, hydraulics. All of them bust open and drained dry. They’ll make weird music as the plane expands and contracts.’
Hancock shook his head. He signalled hush, listened a while, ear still pressed to the wall.
‘Hard to explain. The noise. It’s not structural. It’s not mechanical. How come you can’t hear it? Just sit quiet and listen. Really listen.’
They sat a while.
Frost shrugged.
‘Sorry, Cap.’
‘Scratching. Like claws. Like nails. Plain as day.’
‘Don’t take this wrong, but maybe we should have a look at your head.’
Hancock seemed ready to argue, then gave in to a wave of fatigue.
‘Whatever.’
She sat beside him.
She hooked the trauma kit with her foot and dragged it close.
She gestured to his head.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Cranium feels like I’ve been hit with a bag of nickels. Constant ache. Wearing me down.’
‘How’s your balance? Any improvement?’
‘No. Each time I stand up the ground bucks around like I’m riding a bareback bronc.’
She carefully pulled at the chute fabric that bound his injured head. It was stiff with dried blood. It was gummed to his hair.
She carefully lifted the filthy rag clear and threw it aside.
‘Oh, man.’
The side of his face was swollen and crusted black.
He pulled a Spyderco folding knife from his pocket. He flipped open the blade and examined his reflection.
‘Puts paid to my modelling career.’
‘Probably looks worse than it is. Lot of dried blood. Bet if we clean you up, it won’t be so bad.’
She tore open a packet of towelettes and began to dab flakes of dried blood from the skin surrounding his vacant eye socket.
Awkward silence. Strange to be up close, face to face.
‘So how much water does that tank contain?’ she asked, by way of conversation.
‘No idea. Twelve-hundred-gallon capacity, but it’s ruptured. Not much left. Might give us a couple more days. Best to tape the cracks, see if we can limit evaporation.’
‘Maybe we should share it right now.’
‘Three-way split? What if you ran out before me? Got enough self-control to watch a guy sip a drink while you die of thirst? You and Noble might go back aways, but all that good feeling won’t count for shit once we are down to the last drop.’
‘We’re not animals.’
‘That’s exactly what we are.’
Frost probed the split in Hancock’s scalp.
She said:
‘Apparently, when Eskimos share fish, the guy who does the cutting gets last pick. Helps keep portion size honest. Read that somewhere.’
She dabbed dead and hardening skin. She dabbed exposed skull.
‘Lot of sand in this wound. We better rebandage your head when we’re done, try to keep it free from dirt.’
‘Okay.’
‘Any pain?’
‘No.’
‘Can you feel anything at all?’
‘A little.’
‘You got a wide lesion. I can see bone. We ought to stitch it up. If we leave it untreated the skin could die back further. State of the world right now, we got no one to pull a tooth, let alone perform a graft.’
‘So get sewing.’
She used surgical scissors to trim hair surrounding the scalp wound. She tore open an antiseptic wipe and disinfected the wound.
She found a suture pack. A curved needle and eighteen inches of monofilament.
‘Let me give you a shot. For the pain.’
‘No.’
‘Come on. There’s no one here to impress.’
‘Fuck that shit. Mind you, if you’ve got a hip flask about your person, I wouldn’t say no.’
Frost tore another antiseptic wipe and disinfected her hands.
She ripped open the suture pack and threaded the needle.
‘Don’t expect fine embroidery. Not much of a dressmaker.’
‘Always wanted some bad-ass scars.’
‘Reckon I ought to stitch your empty eye as well. Best way to keep the socket clean.’
‘Do it.’
He adopted a meditative posture and prepared to tough out the pain.
She leant forward, ready to sew skin.
‘Hold on,’ said Hancock. He sat straight and pushed her hands away. ‘There it is again. Hear it?’
Frost sighed.
‘There’s nothing.’ She froze. She cocked her head. ‘Hold on. Yeah. Yeah, I hear it.’
She set the needle and suture aside.
‘A scratching sound.’
‘Yeah,’ said Hancock.
A persistent abrasion like dragging nails. She slowly turned her head left and right, tried to pinpoint the locus of the noise. She looked down at her feet.
‘It’s beneath us. It’s under the plane.’
A red grating set in the cabin floor. It hid the egress hatch, the ventral door and fold-down ladder that would, under normal conditions, allow the crew to enter the plane.
Frost knelt, knitted her fingers through the grate and lifted it aside.
The hatch had been ripped away during the crash. They looked down on sand.
The scratching sound abruptly ceased.
‘Could it be snakes?’ murmured Hancock. ‘Scorpions? Some kind of burrowing thing?’
She shook her head.
‘Middle of the desert. No bugs, no brush, no nothing.’
‘The sound. It was a living thing. Something moving with purpose, deliberation.’
‘I think you might be right.’
Frost reached down like she intended to dig sand. She hesitated, fingertips an inch from the surface, then slowly withdrew her hand.
19
Hancock tied a fresh length of chute bandage round his stitched scalp and eye socket. He clenched teeth as he knotted and pulled tight. He sweated with pain. His skin steamed in the night air.
He sat cross-legged with his eye closed, locked his face in a mask of calm. He rode out head-pounding discomfort, let it peak and dull.
‘Thought the wound was numb,’ said Frost.
‘That was before you got to work with a needle and thread.’
He relaxed and opened his eye as pain began to abate.
Frost sat with her back to the bulkhead. She pointed to the grate covering the ventral hatch.
‘Maybe we should stack a few boxes,’ she said. ‘Don’t know what the hell is down there, but I’d feel better knowing it can’t get in.’
‘Let’s not freak out,’ said Hancock. ‘We’ve got more than enough bullets to greet anything that might come knocking.’
Frost bit the cap from a morphine auto-injector and punched the needle into her thigh. She waited for the opiate to hit.
‘Okay, Cap,’ she gestured to her injured leg. ‘Your turn to help me out.’
‘What do you need?’
‘Release the splint. Let my leg breathe a while. Check my foot isn’t about to rot off.’
Hancock knelt beside her. He released splint straps. She winced.
Her calf bruised bla
ck.
‘Looks all right,’ said Hancock. ‘Messed up, but not gangrenous.’ He examined her foot, checked it for warmth. ‘You’ve still got circulation. Guess your leg will be all right, given time. Want me to strap it up?’
She shook her head.
‘Give me a minute or two. Got to psych myself. Bound to hurt like a motherfucker.’
Frost stepped outside and leant against the fuselage.
The moonlit crash site surrounded by a high ridge of dunes.
She bent and massaged her strapped leg. She studied shadows, did it sly, glanced around without moving her head. Half expected to see a solitary figure watching from the darkness.
She straightened up. She stopped her hand as it strayed towards her shoulder holster.
‘Everything okay?’ called Noble.
He lay on his back looking up at the stars.
Frost nodded, non-committal.
Sunstroke. Early driven out of his mind by thirst and unrelenting light. Only thing that could account for his behaviour. He no longer recognised fellow crewmen, saw them as threatening strangers. In which case he would soon die in a wretched delirium, like a rabid dog. Succumb slow and nasty. Stumble through the dunes ranting and raging. Too dangerous to approach, too far gone to accept help. Nothing they could do but let him prowl the wreckage-strewn perimeter, screaming at the sky, until he fell dead in the sand.
Lieutenant Nicholas Early.
A serious-minded kid, with a degree in aeronautical engineering. Had a young wife somewhere. A likeable guy. Sad to think of him lobotomised by the cruel sunlight.
Hancock crossed the sand towards the signal fire. He swayed. He stumbled. He kept his eyes fixed on the flames to help him walk straight.
He popped the restraining strap of his shoulder holster and kept a hand on his pistol butt. Couldn’t aim worth a damn. One eye, no balance. But at close range it wouldn’t matter. Lieutenant Early might have been driven mad by the sun, degenerated to a raging berserker so demented he couldn’t feel pain or injury, but a couple of 9mm hollow points centre-of-mass would put him down for good.
Hancock dropped to his knees next to the satcom.
Battery at seventy-three per cent.
The screen still hung at Acquisition.
He cancelled and selected preset Alpha.
Comsec sign-in:
AUTHENTICATE
He keyed:
VERMILLION