Forecast

by Chris Keith

  “He stole it?”

  “Yeah, the rascal. But it kept him entertained.” He pocketed the photo. “Ready to go?”

  “I suppose.”

  Both Sutcliffe and Hennessey had that feeling, one that could not be put into words. The time had come to leave the White Room – a place of belonging and of misery. The room looked sorry for itself with its sagging ceilings and dirty floor, the black smoke stains up the wall from the fire, the blood stain on the other wall, a missing utility door, a broken toilet door, scattered insulation blankets and life jackets, two abandoned first-aid kits, the space helmets and the life support systems, a radio, a dead laptop, an empty water drum, the champagne bottles with melted candle wax stuck to the glass, the empty tins, flattened boxes, a bucket with a mop head inside, many scattered shoes, the crew’s old clothes and bags suspended on the hooks and, next to the clothes, a gasmask. The room bore all the signs of a refugee settlement.

  Sutcliffe ran over the emotions of his time living underground. The man coming out of the White Room that day was not the same man who had gone in. He had lost something of his soul, he felt. He had seen and done enough terrible things in the past year and a half to have all the evil engraved on his brain, embodied in his memory forever. The strained relationships had enveloped his entire life at a multitude of levels. They both brooded over their former lives – the crew, the discoveries, the conflicts, the deaths. The events down there had become nothing but a hazy procession of mental pictures and it was a moment to reflect, but that was all. Considering that he had slept only an hour or two, Sutcliffe felt quite alert that morning, dressed in his business suit. He still managed to retain the elegance of a businessman, despite the crumples and excessive filth and his shirt missing buttons. It would be in his suit that he would leave the White Room, his departure replicating his arrival with his head still held high.

  Hennessey took him by the hand to stop him. “Before we leave here, I want to confess something to you. What Simon said, about me joining the Fable-1 team to gather information for NASA, it was partly true. My superiors wanted the historic balloon flight to be synonymous with NASA. Chandra II and the Akroid balloon were just an excuse to get me onboard.” She waited for his reaction. He was about to speak when she got in before him. “I just want you to know that if I’d known you beforehand I wouldn’t have done it. It’s just…it’s important, to me, that you understand I wasn’t out to hurt anyone.”

  “I appreciate your honesty, Jen. I’m a little disappointed. At the same time, with all that’s happened, it seems so insignificant.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  “What would be the point?”

  She tightened her hand around his and smiled.

  They departed the White Room in a fug of musty air. Sutcliffe stepped out into the lobby to leave for good, but his hands couldn’t complete the job of closing the door because to him it meant closing a door on a fortress of protection and leaving it behind felt wrong. As if by magic, the door swung shut and he saw the American’s fingers on the handle.

  “It’s the right thing to do,” she said.

  They crossed the door bridge and stepped into the elevator. The carpet in the elevator had rotted away somewhat. The dry blood of Fred Farrell still marred the elevator wall, morbidly presenting them with the image of a man desperate to end his life. Hanging from the hatch in the roof hung enormous icicles, blocking their exit. Sutcliffe stood on the second rung of the stepladder and snapped them off, dropping them to ground where they shattered into shrapnel

  Wearing the backpack with four insulation blankets stuffed inside, Hennessey climbed the stepladder and out of her home, while Sutcliffe looked back one last time before leaving. At the foot of the pit, he closed the hatch and emitted a large breath. He put down the accessory case and fitted on his thermal gloves. Hennessey had made it halfway up the snow-laden rubble already leaving footprints. When Sutcliffe reached the top, she was getting on her gloves. He clambered out of the shaft feeling weak and weary, taking note of his hot breath making clouds in the bitterly cold air. The colour ebbed from their faces immediately and they narrowed their eyes in the dim daylight, straining their vision. When the searing light faded and the world appeared before them, they saw the physical features of the landscape had changed again with much thicker snow and ice and a pale sky that still hid the sun. The land looked like a moonscape, a lifeless black and white world with an infinite shadow cast down.

  The cold buried beneath their skin. The morning breeze tossed Sutcliffe’s thick hair. He had to admit that it was a pleasing change of sensation. Replenishing their lungs with an indefinable scent, the first sentiment they felt was the exposure, which gave them a sense of vulnerability. Without their space helmets they felt naked to the bone. What they felt was not fear, more the feeling of adjusting to change. The coming days would present them with their futures or their deaths. And after so many months of uncertainty, they would finally learn their fate. Sutcliffe gave it three days, four tops, before the starvation, dehydration or cold killed them. Since the bombs had changed the world, they had taken each emotional setback, one after another, yet they still moved on with the determination of survivors.

  Chapter 40

  A snow-entombed body appeared at the edge of the cliff. Only the head and right shoulder were protruding from the snow. The head was cocked to one side and was facing the icy Atlantic. Hennessey charged off towards it and Sutcliffe tried to stop her.

  “Jen, wait!”

  Reaching the body, Hennessey got to her knees and started brushing away the snow. The dead eyes were slightly open, the lips bloodless and parted, the hair crystallised and some decomposition had formed around the face.

  Sutcliffe arrived with outstretched arms. “She’s dead, Jen.”

  Hennessey stood up and went into his clasp. “It’s not fair,” she said. “It’s just not fair.”

  “I know.”

  Her throat tight with emotion, Hennessey fought the urge to cry, forcing her lips together to silence her whimpering. When she was certain she could speak without sobbing, she said, “Claris loved the ocean. She told me she always used to sit and watch the ships go by in her hometown. I guess she died in a good place.”

  “Yeah, she did.”

  Sutcliffe was thinking he was going to have to build another grave. It would be his fourth. It would be the fifth. It would be his last, he decided. Although he insisted she didn’t have to, Hennessey helped carry Faraday’s body to the top of the hill to the gravesite that seemed to be continually expanding. The tips of four crosses were poking out of the snow, clinging to existence. The handle of the makeshift spade also protruded from the snow beside the graves where it had been for eighteen months, always on standby, waiting for the next customer.

  First they shovelled away the snow to clear the graves. Then they dug a hole in the hard ground and it took them close to an hour. From the shaft, they unburied some wood from the snow and constructed a cross to complete the grave. The sight of five wooden crosses filled them both with a surfeit of emotions. Paying their final respects to the crew of Fable-1, Fred Farrell and Trev Gable, they left and resumed their steady march along the coast. Each step equalled the cost of two on ordinary soil in ordinary clothes on an ordinary day.

  Miles passed and they each felt the overwhelming sensation of homesickness, with the atmosphere outside just as bleak as the land-scape itself. Sutcliffe felt as though he’d give his right arm to walk into a pub for a pint or sit down in a fire-heated restaurant where he could order a hot meal and some home baked bread. The idea of taking a hot bath or sleeping in a comfortable bed flirted with his mind. Simple things that he had once taken for granted were merely fading memories.

  After a while, they passed alongside a river frozen solid, no bridge in any foreseeable direction, though crossing the iron-like ice required no bridge. Soon, they arrived at a clearing where the snow thinned and jutting out of the white ground they saw fragments of bark. S
o far there’d been no promise in their search and Hennessey stopped, slipped off her backpack and dropped it.

  “Let’s camp here for the night. I’m pooped.”

  “Alright,” he agreed. “I’ll make us a fire.”

  As the light from the day began to fade, they made a great fire using the debris of trees pulled out from the snow and they shaved them down using the safety-knife. They sat in silence, warming their hands on the flames, the shapes of the fire fascinating and hot on their faces with the cold of night pressing against their backs. They both soaked up the warmth, the indulgence new and unfamiliar to them. They wrapped themselves in the insulation blankets and took out all the food, choosing between soup and artichokes. There were only five tins left; a number corresponding with the crew of Fable-1 and the number of graves upon the hill. For the first time in eighteen months, they heated the food in the fire and warmed their cold stomachs.

  “December? January?” asked Sutcliffe.

  “What?”

  “The month?”

  “I’d say early January.”

  “In that case, it’s my birthday soon.”

  Hennessey smiled. “Is there anything in particular you want?”

  “Wouldn’t mind a bar of soap, or a toothbrush.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a new sports car or a cruise around the Pacific Islands, but if it’s a bar of soap you want, I’ll see what I can do.”

  They talked more, sharing thoughts on the time they had spent in the White Room, gossiping about each member of the crew and what the next day might bring. They dwelled particularly on their old lives in Britain and America. And when the long day of burial, trekking and big change finally caught up with them, they cuddled up close, shivering nonstop beneath their blankets while the dying fire cracked and hissed, offering inadequate heat and light on their bodies. Sutcliffe closed his eyes and reopened them with a thought. If he slept, he might not wake up. He had no fear of death. Being there with Hennessey made it all easier to bear even with the bitter wind soughing over them and the surrounding gloom of darkness. If he died, there, on that night, he would die with dignity and self- pride and he would die beside a woman he had grown to love. At peace, he allowed his eyes to close.

  At first light, in a dense morning mist, the unexpected blare of a trombone-like horn echoed throughout the land. The first time it sounded, they awoke, remembering suddenly where they were with absolutely no idea why they had awoken. The dying embers of the fire popped and smouldered at their side and a mist impenetrable to the eye had settled around them. Then they heard it again and the booming one-tone horn made them twist out of their blankets and rise to their feet on high alert. It sounded as though it’d come from a prehistoric mammal. Sutcliffe did not know what he expected to see, but what he saw he was not expecting at all.

  Chapter 41

  Whorls and spirals of ghostlike mist formed around the forthcoming shapes. There were three in total, they were human form and they were disappearing away from Sutcliffe and Hennessey’s temporary camp. Stunned and unsure what to do, what to think, and trembling with exaltation, Sutcliffe put his fingers to his lips and whistled. He whistled again and again but they did not return.

  “The flares!” Hennessey said. “Fire the flares.”

  Unfastening the locks on the case, Sutcliffe pulled out two flares and gave one to Hennessey. In unison, they removed the caps at both ends, held them by the base and struck the bottom of the flares on the hard shell of the case. They held them away from their faces as hot, sparking ash oozed from the flares and a bright red light accompanied a large volume of smoke. After a few frantic minutes of waving and shouting, the flares faded and they stared into the mist where they had seen the human figures.

  They waited.

  And waited.

  Nobody came.

  “No more flares?”

  “I only brought two. There wasn’t enough room in the case for any more.”

  Hennessey began shouting for help, her voice frail and hoarse. Sutcliffe joined in. After several minutes, they stopped shouting.

  “We should go looking for them,” Hennessey suggested.

  “Who do you think they were?”

  “I don’t know. Survivors?”

  “If they were survivors, what was that horn sound we heard?”

  “Maybe they found a horn and they are using it to locate other survivors,” she said. “Whatever the noise…”

  Sutcliffe wondered why she had stopped speaking. When he followed her gaze, he saw two men and a woman running towards them and he almost stopped breathing. They were wearing the same uniform – a navy blue jacket covered in shiny buttons and badges with trousers to match and a concealed white shirt. In the next instant, his bewilderment turned to enormous relief.

  “My name is Clive Barker,” one of them said. “I’m Chaplain in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. This is Terry McPherson and Annabel Davis. They are medical officers.”

  Sutcliffe and Hennessey froze. It took a while for the news to sink in and they turned to hug each other in tears.

  The officers gave them a moment. Barker looked over at their temporary camp and spotted four insulation blankets spread by a smoking mound of ash. “Are there any more of you?”

  Sutcliffe wiped his eyes. “No, just us.”

  “What are you doing here?” asked Hennessey.

  “Long story,” said Barker. “I’ll explain on the way. We have to leave at once. I’m afraid there’s nothing left for you here. Are you both alright to walk?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Leaving their bags, blankets and their smoking fire, Hennessey and Sutcliffe followed the officers off into the mist.

  “A few months after the war,” Barker began, “we carried out coastal searches from our submarines around Europe to look for survivors, but we had little luck. About three weeks ago, we picked up a weak signal coming from the southwest of Britain. We assumed that survivors had figured out a way to communicate and so we travelled here, but found the signal was coming from the beacon of a large gondola. I don’t know if you remember the day the bombs went off, but a balloon team went high up into the sky to perform weather experi–”

  “I remember it well,” Sutcliffe cut in with a straight face. “That was us.”

  Barker saw it now, recognising the strangers all of a sudden. The pair looked so different. They were both skinny and fragile with dark, sunken eyes. The man had a scraggily beard and dishevelled hair. The woman was dangerously malnourished.

  “Brad Sutcliffe?”

  “Just about.”

  “And you must be the American, Jen Hennessey?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. Then he put his hand on his heart. “I’m honoured to meet you both. When we saw the state of the gondola, we assumed you had fallen out of the sky after the explosions.”

  “That’s a pretty close assumption.”

  Barker gazed at his colleagues walking closely behind. “Can you believe it?” he said to them.

  They both shook their heads, smiling.

  Barker glimpsed at his watch. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Hennessey.

  “Greenland.”

  They arrived at a cove where the mist had weakened somewhat. On the shore was an inflatable dinghy with an officer stationed beside it, waving at them. A good mile out to sea they could just make out the top section of a submarine sitting in the water like a sea monster. A horn sounded.

  Down at the beach, Barker and his colleagues dragged the red dinghy into the water. “Jump in.”

  Sutcliffe assisted Hennessey onboard and then followed her on. Barker cast them off, skipping into the dinghy as the officers rowed them out to sea. It bobbed towards the submarine carving its way through the clearing mist. The submarine began to take on a more distinctive shape the closer they got and more officers congregated on
the top deck, cheering and applauding the survivors. The dinghy drew up alongside the submarine and a rope ladder rolled down the wall. Hennessey went first followed by Sutcliffe, and they ascended the ladder. An officer at the top pulled them up onto the watchtower where a small gathering of seamen clapped and offered their hands to be shaken, congratulating their remarkable survival.

  Standing on the observation deck, staring back at his country, Sutcliffe turned to Barker. “How did you all survive?”

  “I’m not sure if you know, but North Korea started the war. On that day, there were hundreds of submarines sailing deep beneath the ocean which survived the bombs. I don’t know if you’re aware, but every major power was directly hit with nuclear bombs. It’s all a little hazy, even now. Intelligence sources believe that North Korean satellites were fooled into thinking reflected sunlight had been the inferno from a group of ICBMs.”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  “It means that their Missile Early Warning System would have detected a false nuclear strike on their country. The North Koreans believed they were retaliating when really they were instigating the war and therefore were retaliated against. Whatever the story, the fact remains the world has suffered irreparable ecological damage. Temperatures around the world dropped dramatically because the sun’s rays couldn’t get through all the smoke and crap in the sky and, consequently, freshwater lakes froze over in less than a month. The reduction in sunlight affected photosynthesis. Hydrographic, meteorological and oceanographic specialists aboard our submarine have spent months monitoring and analysing the weather and ocean conditions. According to their analysis, massive firestorms polluted the air so severely for several months after the explosions that they believe the ozone layer has depleted enormously. And I’m not lying when I tell you that we travelled around Europe for almost a year and not once did we see the sun. We’ve been communicating with other submarines in the world doing similar searches in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Baltic, Arctic, South China Sea and the Southern Ocean and the feedback we’re getting is always the same. They believe that more people have died and are dying because of famine and the decline in global temperatures than those people who perished initially when the nuclear bombs went off. Some of our weather experts believe that this could last as long as a decade, maybe longer. You could say the world is pretty screwed up right now.”