by Adam Baker
Trenchman poked through clutter on one of the desks until he found a digital recorder.
‘Listen to this.’
He pressed Play.
‘Let’s start with the basics. Tell me your name.’
Long pause.
Louder, clearer:
‘Tell me your name.’
A guttural, unearthly slur:
‘Franklin Delano Fuckyourself.’
‘Do you know where you are?’
‘West of hell.’
‘Do you understand what’s going on here?’
‘Better than you.’
‘According to the ECG, your heart is beating about once a minute. You shouldn’t be conscious. Hell, you shouldn’t be alive. How do you feel, Valdemar? Tell me what it’s like.’
‘Guessing you’ll find out soon enough.’
Long pause. A faint slurp suggesting the interrogator was taking a meditative sip of coffee, gathering his thoughts.
‘Okay. I want to talk to someone else, Val. There’s something inside you. Something keeping you alive.’
Long pause.
‘Can you hear me? I’m talking to the thing inside Valdemar. Can you understand what I’m saying?’
Long pause.
‘I know you’re in there, looking through Val’s eyes. Use him. Use his mind, his speech. Please. Talk to me directly.’
Another long pause, then the microphones picked up a slow exhalation like a venomous hiss.
‘Val. The thing in your head. The thing that’s taken over your body, invaded your mind. What can you tell me about it? Can you tell me what it wants?’
The convict’s voice, tired, broken:
‘Help me. Please. It won’t let me die.’
Trenchman shut off the recorder.
‘Is that what all this shit is about?’ asked Noble, gesturing to the paperwork and trashed laptops carpeting the floor. ‘They were trying to talk to the disease?’
‘The virus isn’t some mutated strain of Ebola or Spanish Flu. It’s way more complex. Super-lethal, super-adaptive. Some of the guys that studied its behaviour started to think it might, on some level, be sentient.’
‘A self-aware disease?’
‘It dropped out of the sky with a bunch of contaminated Soviet space junk. Maybe it’s some kind of messed-up bioweapon. Or maybe it originated from somewhere else entirely.’
‘Somewhere else.’
‘That’s the one question that nags at anyone who studied this disease. Where exactly did it come from?’
Trenchman thumbed through pictures.
The same convict, strapped in the chair, the crown of his head removed, exposing brain. Electrodes sunk in his parietal cortex like a row of acupuncture needles. The convict was looking up, and to the left.
‘Eyes always point to the site of a stroke, ever hear that?’ said Trenchman, gesturing to the picture. ‘They turn towards the point of cerebral occlusion.’
‘Talking to a virus,’ said Noble, shaking his head. ‘Unbelievable.’
‘Pretty interesting project, right? What if you could interview a brain tumour? What if cancer could talk? What would it have to say?’
‘So how did they go about negotiating with a virus?’
‘They tried everything to establish a common language. They used mathematics as a universal baseline. Fired synaptic impulses, ran sequences of prime numbers, logic gates, all kinds of shit way beyond my pay grade.’
‘Did the disease ever answer back?’
‘No. The head CDC guy was the conservative type. Didn’t say much. But last time I was here he was in a bad way. Big sense of failure. He and his boys came out here looking for some kind of breakthrough. But, in the end, they achieved jack shit, so he took to his trailer with a case of Scotch. I got him talking. He reckoned the virus understood their communications well enough. Reckoned all the while Disease Control were studying the disease, it was studying them back. Some kind of hive mind. A single intelligence. Every infected bastard the world over is a facet of a vast, all-seeing eye.’
‘So I guess that’s definitive,’ said Noble. He crouched and stuffed jumbled papers into his backpack. ‘No vaccine. No cure.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And no reasoning with it.’
Trenchman sombrely nodded his head.
‘It simply wants us dead.’
The compound.
The sun was high. Heat starting to build.
‘There’s nothing left to see,’ said Trenchman. ‘I could show you dissection footage, autopsy photos, but you wouldn’t learn anything more than you already know. Even horror gets monotonous after a while. We should find shade.’
They walked through a break in the perimeter wire and headed for the mountain wall.
Trenchman sniffed the air. Stink of burning flesh carried on the breeze. Seemed to be coming from behind an outcrop to the north.
‘They burned the bodies?’ asked Noble.
‘A big pyre, behind those rocks over there.’
‘How many?’
‘A lot. You don’t want to see it, believe me.’
They climbed the crags and boulders until they reached Trenchman’s camp. Blankets, cached food and water.
They sat in shade and looked out over the battle-torn compound. They opened a couple of bean tins and ate with sporks.
‘So you’ve been waiting for us?’ asked Noble.
‘Seemed a better idea than chasing you guys round the desert. Figured you folks would head this way sooner or later. Better sit tight and wait for you to show up.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘Wait until sundown, then head west across the mountains. Try to find a backcountry road, see where it leads.’
‘Frost. Hancock. I can’t leave them.’
‘I came out here hoping to scoop you all up, get you to safety. Not sure it’s going to be possible. This is your only shot at survival, dude. Come with me. Tonight.’
Noble shook his head.
‘I have to go back.’
They sat a while and ate.
‘I’ll leave a stash of food and water,’ said Trenchman. ‘If you make it back here with your friends, there’ll be enough supplies for you guys to recuperate a while, then try to cross the mountains. Who knows? Maybe we’ll meet again, somewhere down the line.’
They sat looking out over the vast aridity and relished a parched desert wind. They listened to the unearthly silence.
‘Seen so many people die,’ said Trenchman. ‘Still have a hard time comprehending it will happen to me. One day the sun will rise, and I won’t be there to see it. Leaves on the trees, birds in the sky, but I won’t exist.’ He took a sip from his canteen. ‘They say you shouldn’t be scared of death. Pure nothing, same as before you were born.’
‘One last question for you,’ said Noble.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Why drop a bomb? They nuked the cities. I get it. Exterminating a termite nest. But this place? Apache? Sure, nefarious shit went down, but there’s no one left alive to give a damn.’
‘No idea. But I’d be willing to speculate. The continuity government. Bunch of politicians and generals hiding in a NORAD bunker. They signed the order for these human trials. Command responsibility. So now they are covering their tracks.’
‘Like I said. Why give a damn? It’s not like they’ll ever face trial. There’ll be no Nuremberg tribunal. And even if there were, who would blame them for trying to defeat the virus?’
‘They’re rewriting history. If the human race survives this mess, if there’s a new America, then the decisions that were made, the battles that were fought in these dark days, will be part of a new founding myth. The guys in that bunker, the generals, the cabinet officers, know they’ll be dead soon enough. Entombed deep underground, sealed behind a thirty-ton blast door. But they want to be remembered like Lincoln or Jefferson. One day, if the nation is rebuilt, the country may have a new capitol, a new Washington. The top brass expec
t to be commemorated. Sculpted in marble. Printed on dollars. So that’s why they want to erase this place. To sanitise the historical narrative. To make them undisputed heroes.’
‘All this death, to serve some fucker’s ego.’
Trenchman smiled.
‘Same as it ever was.’
42
The lower cabin.
Frost picked through ransacked gear. A nylon tool roll. Wrenches and sanitary wipes scattered on the deck plate. A parka, ripped down the back, spilling synthetic down.
Pinback had stumbled around the cabin, kicking over equipment boxes, punching open wall-mounted lockers.
Frost tried to make sense of his actions. Had there been any method to his search? What had he hoped to achieve? The ladder to the cockpit was visible enough. He could have climbed, pushed aside the trunk blocking the hatchway and attacked. Yet he seemed intent on exploring the interior of the plane rather than acquiring fresh victims.
She threw an empty chute pack aside. She pushed scattered meds back inside the trauma kit.
She studied handprints on the fuselage wall. Dust streaks where fingers raked metal.
A strand of flesh hung from a fractured spar at hip level. She leant close and inspected it.
Skin tissue dried like jerky.
The horror of infection. A living death. The parasite that colonised her fellow crewman was vibrantly alive, swelling and spreading through blood vessels and musculature, but his body was a fast-decaying hunk of meat. The creature that explored the plane the previous night, clawed metal and stumbled against the walls, was effectively a walking cadaver.
The stench of rot-gas still hung in the air.
Boot prints on dust-matted deck plate. She examined the overlapping trail, tried to reconstruct Pinback’s movements. Scuff marks centred on the rear of the cabin: the crawlspace that led to the bomb bay.
Frost shone her flashlight into the narrow passageway half expecting to find Pinback curled foetal, hibernating until nightfall.
She climbed into the steel tunnel and crawled on her hands and knees. She inspected the hatch leading to the payload bay. Palm prints and scratch marks. A crude attempt to force his way inside.
She stroked abraded metal.
‘Why did you want to get inside the bomb bay, Pinback? What was on your mind?’
Frost stepped from the plane into dazzling morning light. She shielded her eyes and let them adjust.
Blurred prints heading away into desert.
She drew her pistol, and limped in pursuit. She followed the trail across the sand, up the lee side of a dune.
Additional prints. Three people walking side by side. Pinback joined by his companions. Equidistant tracks, like they were marching in lock-step.
She stood at the crest of the ridgeline, squinting into the low morning sun.
The tracks led away across the sand, then abruptly terminated as if the three figures simultaneously dropped to their knees and burrowed beneath the ground.
She led Hancock outside. His arms were lashed to the crutch with chute harness straps. She tied cable round his neck like a leash, and tethered him to the undercarriage wheel.
He knelt and looked up at her. He was gaunt. Skin blistered and peeling. Stubble lengthened to a scraggy beard.
‘Reckon you’ve aged twenty years these past few days,’ she said. ‘Can’t imagine I look much better.’
She gestured to the sun.
‘Ready to catch a few rays?’
Hancock didn’t reply.
Frost uncapped a bottle of water and held it to his lips. He hesitated, like he wanted to refuse but was too parched to turn down the offer.
She let him take a couple of long swigs, then pulled the bottle away.
He swilled water round his mouth like he was debating whether to spit it in her face.
‘Enjoying your revenge?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.’
She walked to the B-52 and sat in the shadow of the nose.
Hancock shuffled around, turned his back on the sun.
‘How long will you leave me out here?’ he shouted.
‘Haven’t given it much thought.’
Frost pulled a bandana from her pocket, dabbed perspiration from her brow and neck.
‘If you want me dead, then man-up and put a bullet in my brain.’
‘I’ll sit you in the shade soon enough. Just want to see you sweat a little first. Childish retribution, but fuck it. Maybe it’ll encourage you to act like a reasonable human being.’
She browsed the survival manual and studied a line drawing.
She leant forwards and dug a hole. She fetched a plastic beaker from the plane and set it in the hole. She slit open a plastic bag, placed it over the hole and pegged it down with a couple of wrenches.
‘Condensation still. Might be able to decant a dribble of water if we leave it overnight. And it’s a good way to purify urine. Use evaporation to filter the liquid clean. So if you need a piss, you let me know, you hear?’
She unzipped the trauma kit.
She pulled off a boot, untied the splints and examined her injured leg.
‘Still planning to take a walk?’ asked Hancock.
‘Yeah. Head for the mountains. Hoping you’ll see sense and join me.’
‘If I don’t? Going to leave me tied to this fucking wheel?’
‘I’ll cut you lose when I go.’
‘How about water?’
‘Fifty-fifty split. I’ll drain half from the tank, carry it on my back. Leave you with the rest.’
‘What about Pinback and his pals? How am I supposed to defend myself?’
‘That won’t be a problem.’
‘How do you figure?’
‘Because, when they show up tonight, I aim to kill them.’
43
Sunset.
Noble stumbled through endless dunes.
‘Bobbi,’ he shouted. ‘Bobbi, you there?’
Noble willed her voice to come to him.
‘Come on, Bobbi. Talk to me.’
Hours teetering on the edge of madness. Why couldn’t he will himself over the precipice? Why couldn’t his broken mind allow a retreat into dreams?
Countless times he had stood outside the barracks at Andrews Air Force Base, ignored CANNOT CONNECT TO NETWORK and thumbed his wife’s number.
Torrential rain. Standing on the barrack porch, phone pressed to his ear.
‘Love you, babe.’ Feeling connected to his Cedar Street home despite the absence of signal bars. The kitchen counter where he often ate breakfast, hair still wet from the shower. He would sip coffee, watch birds perch on the yard fence. ‘I miss you. Love to Malcolm. Hope to see you both soon.’ A kind of prayer. Committing his love to UHF.
Why couldn’t she be here now? Why couldn’t he summon her from memory?
‘Hey. Bobbi? You there?’
No sound but the rasp of his own breathing, the crunch of his boots, the blood-rush in his ears.
He was irrevocably sane, fully present, condemned to endure merciless heat, merciless light.
Noble staggered across sand, determined to cover as much ground as he could before dark.
A glint on the horizon. The wrecked limo still sitting beached among the dunes.
Trenchman’s parting words:
‘Don’t get caught in the open at night. Not if you can help it. Find shelter. Once they get your scent, they won’t quit.’
Noble broke into a run.
The limo.
Noble tossed his backpack through a shattered side-window. He squirmed through the window and rolled onto a bench seat. He lay on sand-dusted leatherette, panting with exhaustion.
Fitful moonlight shafted through the windows. The limo interior glowed with phosphorescent light.
Noble pulled down his bandana mask, bit the fingers of his gloves and tugged them from his hands.
He uncapped his canteen and let water wet his lips and tongue. He quickly resealed the cap in case he los
t self control and drained the canteen dry.
He unlaced his boots and kicked them off. He slapped sand from crusted socks. He massaged blistered feet.
No sound but the mournful wind-whisper of the desert night.
He sat back, pulled a sheaf of research notes from his backpack and thumbed pages by torchlight. Too tired to make sense of the text. He shut off his flashlight and set the pages aside.
He turned up his collar, curled foetal on the back seat and fell into a fitful sleep.
Noble snapped awake. Vague sense of unease.
He lay beneath a blanket of research notes. He shuffled them neat and stuffed them in his backpack.
He sat up.
Stench of rotted flesh.
A heavy thud. He flinched.
Slow, deliberate footsteps. Someone pacing the roof.
He snatched the Beretta from its holster. Footfalls directly above his head. Heart-pounding adrenalin rush.
He looked out the window. Moon shadows. The silhouette of a man crouched directly above him on the limo roof.
A guttural, dirt-clogged voice:
‘How you doing, Harris?’
‘Early?’
‘Long journey. Bet you’re exhausted.’
Noble took aim and fired a shot into the ceiling. The retort made his ears sing. Coiling barrel fumes filled the compartment like cigarette smoke.
A smouldering notch in the roof vinyl. A pencil beam of moonlight shafted through the bullet hole.
The moonbeam flicked as the figure on the roof paced back and forth.
‘What if this landscape exists in your head? What if you’re not actually here, in the desert? Ever think of that? Remember that mountain bike you used to ride round town? Maybe you fell off and hit your head. You could be in a hospital bed right now, comatose, surrounded by beeping machines. What do you think this fucked-up desolation would say about your subconscious? Must hate your own guts. Every dune, every grain of sand, built it to punish yourself. Your mind could have taken refuge in a tropical paradise. You could be reclining on a beach right now. Palm trees, bikini girls, mojito. Instead you chose this nightmare.’