The Dire Earth: A Novella (The Dire Earth Cycle)

by Jason M. Hough

  “If we let it get close it will be ten times worse,” the one called Blackfield shot back.

  “Find another way, that’s an order.”

  Below, Skyler saw a trail of smoke suddenly lance between the line of guards and the oncoming truck. The grenade fell ten meters short, exploding in a brilliant flash of yellow. Shrapnel flew, leaving a thousand little smoke trails in the air.

  “Goddammit, that was an order!” Braithwaite shouted through the speaker.

  The truck lurched left. Not damaged, just a change of course. It veered ninety degrees and careened down a side street. From his vantage point Skyler could track the vehicle easily. He saw it turn again and barrel down a narrow alley between two warehouses. Then soldiers were scrambling. More shouting came over the radio as chaos won out over order.

  “Maybe we should back off,” Skadz said. “I don’t like this. Not one bit.”

  The armored truck lurched again, sliding sideways into another street that faced in toward Nightcliff’s tower, behind where the guards had set up their final barricade. The vehicle surged forward then, building speed like an enraged bull now that its target, the base of the space elevator, lay directly ahead. There was nothing to block it. Skyler glanced at the soldiers, who were moving that way but far too slow, still unsure where the intruder had gone.

  “Hold on to something,” Skyler said. He slammed the flight stick forward, tilting the craft’s nose nearly straight down. At the same instant he cut power to the engines, dropping the vehicle like a stone.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Skadz roared.

  Skyler ignored him. He angled toward the speeding truck, turning to face it as his plane fell toward the ground. Somewhere in the cockpit a collision beacon started to chirp, high and scathingly loud.

  “Bloody hell!” Skadz shouted again, gripping his armrests.

  The armored truck careened on, oblivious to the aircraft about to meet it. At the last possible instant Skyler slammed the accelerator to pull and yanked back on the stick. The electric motors screamed to life. The whole cockpit shook with the force of it. Something cracked behind Skyler’s head. Skadz’s knees pressed hard into the seat from behind. Skyler winced, groaning against the sudden reversal of g-forces.

  Somehow he managed to keep his eyes open just enough to watch through the footwell window. The driver of the truck hadn’t seen them. The vehicle did not slow or turn. It rolled straight into the sudden and massive flow of air being pushed by the aircraft’s huge vents. The vehicle’s nose lifted. Once the balance tipped it was all over. Heavy plates of armor did nothing against the sheer force of the airflow. The truck flipped upward, its rear sliding underneath from sheer forward momentum. With a massive clang that rattled Skyler’s teeth the vehicle slammed down onto its roof and came to rest.

  Skyler leveled out and allowed the craft to gain some altitude. Below, a man in a white robe crawled from the driver’s-side door, spilling himself out onto the asphalt and crawling away. He tried to get up, tried to run, and then he was shaking violently as little red splotches appeared across his white garment from shoulder to knee. The driver jerked and stumbled before falling flat on his back, dead.

  The soldiers moved up and surrounded the truck. They shot into the passenger window a few times. As they flowed around to the back, Skyler lost them from view. He’d seen enough.

  A few minutes later, ignoring the angry commands from the controller in the tower, Skyler set down on landing pad four and killed the engines. It took a force of will to release the flight stick, releasing his fingers one by one.

  His co-pilot, quiet for the last few minutes, let out a long breath in the newly silent cockpit. “That was brilliant, mate. Mental, but brilliant.”

  “I thought you’d be angry.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  With a shrug Skyler said, “Risking ourselves just to help these guys out.”

  “Ah, well,” Skadz said, unbuckling his harness, “next time you put my ass on the line I’d prefer a little heads-up. As for these blokes, I don’t care about them at all, that’s a fact, but the Elevator? Worth the risk if it is really the only thing keeping the rest of us safe.”

  With that he extricated himself from the bulky chair and headed aft. Skyler finished the shutdown sequence, content to lose himself in the familiar task. He could handle this process with his eyes closed, but right now shutting out the world didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

  The space elevator had changed the world, but that had been twelve years ago. He’d been a kid, wide-eyed with dreams of aliens and space travel. Adults wrestled with the implications of intelligent life beyond Earth, and even as he came of age he’d always been content to leave such matters to those wiser than himself. He’d just wanted to be a pilot, eventually maybe an astronaut.

  Now everything had changed again. The boyish dreams that had guided his ambition were crushed along with everything else he ever knew. Everything save this cockpit, and the memories he carried of his brief military career. His family, his instructors, his friends and fellow soldiers … everyone he’d ever known, all dead. Or worse, transformed into a creature that was human only in shape.

  He’d shot one of them in Abu Dhabi. Right between the eyes, from just two meters away. In the time it took the old man to fall to the ground Skyler had seen the change in his face. Perhaps it had just been an illusion, something projected from his own desperate hope, but he’d seen it. The return, in that crossing between life and death, of the human within.

  Skyler had never shot anyone before this madness. He’d never done anything worse than punch a man in a drunken back-alley brawl over a skirt who wanted nothing to do with either of them. For the hundredth time in a week, Skyler wondered if he would have been able to pull the trigger on someone he knew.

  Making sense of this world loomed beyond his mental capability. Better to leave solutions to the surviving power players and focus on what he could do. Let the great Neil Platz figure it all out. Offer to serve if the opportunity arose.

  Voices drifted in from the cargo bay. Skadz and a few others. Skyler’s hand went to the harness buckle. He stopped himself, eased back in his chair, and flipped on the intercom.

  “… the right thing to do,” Skadz was saying. “We made a snap decision. Sorry if anything was damaged, but from our vantage point—”

  “Look, mate,” someone said, cutting him off, “you almost got a grenade up your backside. Next time you find yourself in the middle of a security operation you back off and stay the fuck out of it.” The voice, a man with a strong Australian accent, spoke in a hushed tone.

  The tone of a slighted man, a bruised ego. The idea that someone could be worried about their reputation or jurisdiction given the billions dead or dying across the world just made Skyler sink farther back into his seat. He decided he wouldn’t move unless called. Let Skadz deal with it. If he’s so anxious to take credit for flipping that truck, he can take the fallout, too.

  Boots clanged on the scaffold stairs that led to the aircraft’s side door, and a new voice came through the intercom speaker. “Two hundred and fifty kilos,” a man said. An older man, Skyler thought. Australian, but a bit more refined than the first speaker.

  “Pardon?” Skadz asked.

  “Two hundred and fifty kilos of explosives in the back of that truck, the blokes outside are estimating. Religious paraphernalia on the two occupants, who are unfortunately beyond questioning.” A pause. “Chief Constable Arthur Braithwaite,” the man said then. “We’re in your debt.”

  “Skadz,” Skadz replied. “A nickname, and all I’m willing to share if you don’t mind,” he added at a presumed raised eyebrow.

  “Fair enough. Welcome to Darwin.”

  The slighted man spoke up again. “That grenade was just a warning shot. We could have—”

  “That’ll be all for now, Mr. Blackfield. Thank you.”

  “We had them—”

  “Thank you.”

  Sil
ence followed, then boots on the ladder again, receding this time.

  “Don’t mind him,” Braithwaite said. “We’re all a bit tense, I suppose. The security situation … well, you saw it for yourself. The disease is driving people insane whether they’re infected or not. A nasty business.”

  “We heard Darwin was safe.”

  Skyler flipped off the intercom and slipped out of his harness. He pulled the last three switches in his shutdown sequence to the off position and sat in the silence of the darkened cockpit. Before him lay a city under siege. The streets, those he could see, were a morass of people silhouetted against trash fires and the headlights of hastily abandoned cars. Everyone seeking shelter or defending it. A giant and lethal game of musical chairs too complex and fluid to wrap the mind around, like a fog that blocked sight of anything beyond the immediate surroundings.

  He went back then, and shook Arthur Braithwaite’s waiting hand. “Skyler Luiken. Dutch air force. Or was, I guess.”

  The old man nodded. “Tell me truthfully now, boys. You’ve really been exposed? No symptoms at all?”

  “None,” Skyler said.

  Skadz nodded. “We put down in Abu Dhabi for a bit, then Diego Garcia after that for almost a day. Before that I ran into Skyler in Amsterdam after everyone else … well, you know. We hoped there’d be more like us here.”

  “Only one or two that I know of, sadly,” Braithwaite said, a genuine gloom in his wrinkled features. “The rest of us are confined here. A nine-kilometer radius around the Elevator, unless that changes, too.”

  “Not a lot of space to work with,” Skyler said.

  The man studied him for a second, then sighed. “Well, you both look like you could use a hot meal and a pint. I’ll take you to the cafeteria and get someone to find you some quarters.”

  Skyler’s stomach growled at the prospect of real food.

  “Once you’re settled,” Braithwaite added, “some doctors will want to examine you. Maybe …” He trailed off, a faint twinkle of hope in his blue eyes. “Look, I can’t order you to stay close, but if you’re really immune …”

  “We’ll help any way we can.”

  “My thanks.” His gaze gravitated to the sealed plastic crates, each labeled with their contents: DUPONT LEVEL-B HAZMAT, QUANTITY 50.

  Skadz cleared his throat. “They were just sitting there in Diego Garcia. We thought … well, they might be useful, right? And nobody else was around.”

  The police chief stepped up to one of the yellow boxes and ran a hand along it. “I’m not sure what would constitute a fair payment.”

  “Well,” Skadz said before Skyler could speak, “take a crate now. Gesture of goodwill and all that. You’ll want to make sure they work, somehow. We can discuss the others later, once we all know the lay of the land.”

  Skyler closed his mouth. He’d been ready to say “take them,” before Skadz stepped in. His new friend had a different way of thinking. Survival instinct mixed with business acumen. They would need both to thrive here.

  Chapter Two

  DARWIN, AUSTRALIA

  21.APR.2278

  A day later, in a room of white, Skyler sat on a paper-covered bed. He was naked save for a thin blue gown that covered his front. A team of doctors surrounded him, waiting for the vitals harness to complete the basic examination. An array of articulated arms and protrusions extended out from the box, sampling Skyler’s pulse, blood pressure, and reflexes. Imaging his eyes, mouth, ears, and nostrils. Foam-padded robotic fingertips probed his scalp, neck, spine, and abdomen.

  The machine chirped the conclusion of its examination and rose back into the ceiling. One of the doctors stepped in and began the more delicate work. He took blood—three vials’ worth—from Skyler’s left arm, and moved on from there. Skin samples, hair samples, a swab of the tongue. On and on it went, all the while the doctors in the room talked quietly among themselves. Occasionally a runner would come in and summon one or more of them in hushed, urgent tones. They’d leave reluctantly, probably off to deal with an actual injury. The city was a mass of terrified, hungry savages, after all, and those were the ones without the disease. But the doctors always came back. They couldn’t resist the curiosity that had flown in from beyond the aura.

  A thousand questions were asked. Allergies? Medications? Family medical history? Ever dabbled in experimental drugs or designer viruses? Did the Luchtmacht do anything to you? There’s no secrets now; you can tell us if they did. On and on it went.

  “Lie down, please,” one said when the questions finally ended. She was an Indian woman with graying hair and a kind, wrinkled face. “We’re going to take you down the hall for an LMRI.”

  “I can walk,” Skyler said.

  The woman insisted, so Skyler lay back and allowed the team to escort him through the wide, white hallway outside. Through the door of the next room he caught a glimpse of Skadz undergoing his equally invasive exam. Skadz saw Skyler, too, and flashed a middle finger and a twisted-up face of mock horror. Skyler returned the obscene gesture and lay back, a mild headache nagging at him.

  Scans of his brain were taken. So detailed that a datacube had to be fetched to store the three-dimensional imagery. Then he was wheeled to an elevator and taken up twenty stories to a recovery ward. “This floor has been cleared for you and … well, the others like you,” a nurse explained. Skyler was about to ask what that meant when the young man pushed him into a long room with two rows of beds—twenty at least—along the ubiquitous white walls. Skadz sat on one, still in his exam gown.

  Only two other beds were occupied. A man lay in one, studying a personal comm. He glanced over at Skyler’s entrance and sat up. Neatly folded on the table next to his bed were military fatigues, though of what nation Skyler couldn’t tell.

  A few bunks farther down the line lay a woman, one leg wrapped in bandages from ankle to waist. Her eyes were closed. An IV drip line snaked from her wrist to a clear plastic bag hanging from a chrome pole beside her. She had blond hair and an imposing build, tall enough that her feet dangled over the end of the bed.

  “Turns out we’re not alone,” Skadz said. “Skyler, meet Jake.”

  The man rose to his feet with a soldier’s practiced efficiency and shook Skyler’s hand.

  “Immune, I take it?” Skyler asked.

  “Yep,” Jake said. His face betrayed nothing.

  “You’re military?”

  He nodded. Again, the lack of expression.

  “Who with? What’d you do?”

  “Sniper,” Jake said flatly. “Australian Army.”

  Skyler let go of the man’s hand. Sniper made sense. The man was calm, precise. His face conveyed, well, not confidence exactly but something between it and boredom.

  Turning back to Skadz, Skyler jerked his chin toward the sleeping woman farther into the room.

  Skadz only shrugged. “Don’t know about her, she’s been asleep. Now that we’re all here,” he said, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial level, “and without our minders hovering, perhaps the three of us could talk.”

  Jake sat back down on his bed. An answer without answering.

  Skyler sat across from him and nodded to Skadz.

  “Jake here was just telling me a bit more about what’s going on,” Skadz started. “Seems the specifics of who’s running what around here, and above, are still being settled.”

  “Makes sense,” Skyler said. “The world is suddenly a lot smaller.”

  “Musical chairs,” Jake observed.

  Skadz flashed the man a grin, then continued. “Be that as it may, there’s talk of putting some kind of militia together. They’re testing using hazmat suits as a way to venture out, and if it works they want a few hundred people who know the business end of a gun to go out there and clear the diseased from the land around the Elevator’s aura. A purge. Then they’re going to barricade us all in and wait for this all to blow over.”

  “Assuming it ever will,” Skyler said.

  Jake grunted.
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  “Stands to reason,” Skadz said, “they’re going to view us as particularly important in this operation. Maybe even put one of you in charge, with your backgrounds.”

  “I’m not so sure.” At the puzzled expression on Skadz’s face, Skyler went on. “We represent a possible cure for, um, this thing.”

  “SUBS,” Skadz said. “They call it SUBS. Synaptic Uncoupling … I forget the rest.”

  Skyler spread his hands. “I think they’ll keep us here. Study us to the atomic level if they have to. We’re rare specimens to them, nothing more.”

  “Well,” Skadz said, “I don’t know about you two but I can’t live like that.”

  “I’m not sure we have any choice.”

  “Of course we do.”

  “You think they’ll just let us walk out of here?”

  Skadz’s face twisted up, dubious. “They can’t exactly follow us.”

  “This again,” Skyler said, shaking his head. “Look, do what you want, but this is no time to be selfish.”

  “Jake?” Skadz asked, turning to the other man.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re a quiet bastard, aren’t you?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Skadz grinned, despite himself. “Well, talk, man! What’s your take on all this?”

  Jake glanced at each of them in turn, then looked down at his hands. “We, our kind, need to stick together.”

  “Look, you two are military. This life-of-service bullshit is in your bloody genes. But that’s not for me, mates. I need something more. I need a life. I need to make my own decisions.”

  “No one’s stopping you,” Skyler observed.

  “Yeah, well,” Skadz said, “that’s the thing. Jake here is right. We need to be unified if we’re going to control our own destiny. A unified front, right? That shit only works if we’re unified.”

  Jake nodded solemnly.

  Skyler shook his head. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying I won’t leave. We can help these people, in more ways than just as specimens.”