Last Gasp

by Trevor Hoyle

  “Where are they?”

  “Level Two.”

  “What in God’s name are they after?”

  “Food.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we abandon?”

  “Unless you can come up with the brain wave of the century in the next two minutes. Are the charges primed?”

  “They prime automatically during an alert.”

  “Is everybody out?”

  The duty officer looked at him, gray in the face. “Do you expect me to check?”

  “All right. Set the timer and let’s go.”

  The duty officer lifted the circular stainless-steel plate to reveal a red stirrup handle. Quickly he unscrewed two chromium-plated bolts, turned the stirrup through 180 degrees, and pressed it fully down until it locked. A timing device whirred and began to tick away the seconds. There were ninety of them before the Tomb erupted.

  After ten the operations room was empty.

  Sixty feet above the jungle the black gunship banked left and aligned on the Strip, taking its bearings from the crumbling overgrown tower with the ornate lettering just visible through dense foliage and twining mossy creepers: The Dunes.

  Powered by chemical fuel and liquid oxygen, the gunship clattered over the swampy hollow formed by the convergence of roads and side streets between Flamingo Road and Sahara Avenue. Circus-Circus went by on the left, smothered in greenery; directly ahead was Las Vegas Boulevard South in the downtown casino section. The only gambling that took place now had to do with survival. Odds were laid on adaptation versus extinction: the chance of eating something smaller against the risk of being eaten by something bigger.

  Encroaching steadily northward, the tropical belt, fed by heat and the abundance of carbon dioxide, had taken possession of a wide swathe of desert. Farther south the swampland was too hot and stagnant even for amphibians. Deep down in the sludge new formations of molecules simmered and thrived, stirred into activity by the bombardment of radiation, creating forms of life that had yet to evolve and emerge into the light. Further south still lay the bubbling toxic ocean, a seething caldron of chemical soup.

  Safe behind tinted thermo plastic, breathing cool oxygen, the pilot eased back on the control column and ascended to two hundred feet. The steel-and-concrete blocks, the broken windows, and tilting neon signs merged and were lost in the close-packed growth, as effectively hidden as the remains of a long-lost civilization. Only the reflected gleam of the sun, picking out the shallow muddy strip like the trail of a slug with an unerring sense of direction, gave any hint of man’s erstwhile intrusion.

  Dan shaded his eyes and watched the speck of the gunship disappear into the hazy distance. His face and neck were caked with yellow cream. He slipped the dark goggles into place and moved slowly, measuring each breath, along the squelchy bank to where the others were stretched out under the giant ferns.

  He couldn’t help remembering Miami Beach 2008. In thirteen years he hadn’t progressed very far—as far as Las Vegas with the dismal prospect of not seeing his thirtieth birthday. At least here the air was just about breathable—2 or 3 percent lower and they would have been floundering about like beached fish.

  He stepped over something squirming in the mud and gained the higher, firmer ground. Once out of the direct sunlight he stripped off his goggles and dropped down, chest heaving, by his father’s side. Chase tried to smile through his yellow mask. He was nearing sixty and Dan was afraid that his respiratory system would no longer be able to cope with the thin atmosphere. During the last six days people younger than he had collapsed, frothing, blue-lipped. He tore his mind away from the stark possibility.

  “Couldn’t you make out any markings?” Ruth asked.

  “There weren’t any. But it was armed. Rockets. Guns.”

  “Against whom?” Chase said angrily. His eyeballs were crazed with broken blood vessels. “Why kill when we’re dying anyway?” He shook his head, dumbfounded.

  “The mutes aren’t dying, they’re flourishing,” Jo said. Her fine-spun hair spilled out from underneath her forage cap. “And those things back in the Tomb”—her throat muscles worked—“those white grubs or whatever they were. The conditions seem to suit them.”

  “No, they suit the conditions,” Chase said. “Nature always fills a niche.”

  Large brown opaque bubbles formed in the swampy hollow, burst with an explosive farting sound, and belched yellowy-brown steam that drifted slowly through the hot turgid air. It smelled of sulfur and methane laced with various oxides and nitrites. Back to the Precambrian, Chase thought with a sense of almost macabre relish. Theo had seen it coming thirty years ago. Perhaps even then it had been too late to change anything: The balance was already upset. Factors beyond anyone’s control had conspired to bring the earth to its knees and now the count had reached nine, the referee’s hand was raised, and there wasn’t going to be a bell to save it.

  Or them. There was nowhere to go from here.

  After evacuating the Tomb they had made for Interstate 15, intending to travel north, but the highway was impassable. From the experience of the reconnaissance parties they knew it was too dangerous to cross the border into Nevada, and all the evidence indicated that the tribal fighting among the prims, mutes, and other groups had spread across northern Utah, which meant the route was closed to them. So the raggle-taggle column had turned south, splintering into smaller groups and losing people on the way as they encountered the damp fingers of swampland reaching out from Lake Mead.

  Other travelers on the road had told them of conditions elsewhere.

  Arizona was a jungle as dense and impenetrable as any in darkest Africa. In California huge concentration camps covered half the state. Most of the travelers were hoping to find a way north, prepared to risk the tribal wars in getting to Idaho and Oregon. The jungle, so it was said, was advancing at the rate of four miles every month, but surely, surely, it had to stop somewhere; it had to, hadn’t it?

  “Is it still painful?” Ruth asked, examining Jo’s leg. The wound in her thigh was superficial, but she was afraid that with the humidity and insects it might turn gangrenous.

  “Not anymore. It’s kind of numb. Doesn’t bother me.”

  Ruth tightened her lips. “Well, that’s good,” she said, taking a fresh dressing from the medical pack. “I’ll give you a shot to stop the infection spreading. Not much point in telling you to rest it, I guess. Not until we find somewhere safe.” She glanced at Chase, her eyes clouded.

  Nick and two other men appeared through the greenish gloom cast by the tall rubbery plants and swaying ferns. On the far side of the clearing what at first sight was a sheer rock face was in fact the wall of a ten-story motel. Thick green lichen had gained a purchase in the pitted concrete, partly obscuring a signboard that read in faded Day-Glow: VIDEO GAMBLING IN EVERY ROOM PLUS 9-CHANNEL 3-D PORNO!

  “Did you hear it?” Nick squatted down, the breath rasping in his throat. “I think it was a chopper.”

  “We saw it,” Dan nodded. “It came in very low and flew straight down the river.”

  Nick’s eyes brightened. “Did they see you? Any signal?”

  “We kept out of sight.”

  “You ...” Nick stared at Dan, then looked slowly around at the others. “What the hell for? Don’t you know it means there’s some kind of civilization around here—somewhere!” His shoulders sagged.

  “That was a gunship with enough firepower to wipe out a city,” Chase said. “I want to know who they are and what they’re doing here. It’s too late to ask questions when you’ve been napalmed—”

  “You’re talking as if we had a choice. Look around, Gav, open your eyes for Christ’s sake!” Nick swept his arm out to indicate the thirty or so people in the clearing, weary, travel-stained, faces streaked with yellow, exuding hopelessness like a bad smell. “We’re down to a few days rations, we’ve used up nearly all our medical supplies, we’ve nowhere to go, and you’re fretting like a maid
en aunt that someone’s about to start World War Three.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Maybe it might be for the best if they did drop a nuke on top of us. At least it would be quick and painless.”

  Chase nodded grimly across the muddy water to the buildings choked with vines and foliage on the other side of the Strip. “If you’re that anxious to die, Nick, that way’s just as quick. I wouldn’t give you fifteen minutes.”

  “I don’t want to die, none of us do. But that’s precisely what’s going to happen unless we can get help. Any kind of help—and soon.” Nick looked around despairingly. “Stay here and we starve, rot, and get eaten, and not necessarily in that order.”

  One of the others said, “I think Nick’s right. Even if it was a gunship it must have been American, with our guys in it.”

  “Hell, for all we know it could have been a search-and-rescue mission!” said somebody else bitterly.

  Ruth was staring hard at Chase, her eyes holding a message it took him a moment to decipher. Then he understood: It concerned Jo. Ruth said quietly, “We’ve got to find help, Gavin, and very soon.”

  During the day they had to contend with the airless oven heat, but after nightfall was worse. Insects came out in their millions. Centipedes a foot long undulated across the clearing and had to be beaten to a pulp before they got to the ration packs. Dan and some of the others went down to the brackish water to see if it was fit for drinking and disturbed a tribe of alligators snoozing in the mud.

  They decided to seek shelter in one of the ruined buildings along the Strip.

  Everything of any value, everything portable, had long since been looted. The jungle had crept indoors, transforming the public bars and restaurants, the gaming rooms, the lobbies and passages into dank sweltering caves. By flashlight they explored the labyrinth, hacking through festoons of creepers and climbing stairs where the carpets squelched underfoot like thick moss. They came upon a swimming pool half-filled with green slime, the crusty surface broken here and there by snouts and unblinking eyes reflected in the beams of light. In other rooms the silence was intimidating. Tapestries of foliage clung to the walls, the leaves a dark mottled brown giving off an acrid scent that bit at the throat like ammonia. This vegetation was feeding off the poisoned air and becoming itself poisoned in the process, adding to the toxic fumes that formed the new atmosphere. The spiral of decay was winding tighter and tighter—each malfunction in the biosphere contributing to the next perverted link in the crooked chain. It was evolution but in the wrong direction.

  Dan, along with Art Hegler and two of the other younger men, went on ahead, leaving the main party in the corner of what had been an electronic amusements room on the third floor of the Stardust Hotel. The twin-seater booths with their controls and curved video screens were more or less intact, resembling the top halves of large colored eggs stuck to the floor. A section of the side was hinged, which the players pulled shut, sealing themselves inside a flickering green womb. Now the doors hung open, the insides inky black.

  Two floors above the advance group had battered down a fire door to find themselves in a corridor stretching the full depth of the building. The jungle hadn’t penetrated this far, although the humidity had rotted the carpets and the velvety embossed wallpaper made a perfect breeding ground for white bell-shaped fungi.

  Tentatively pushing open each door and standing well back, they investigated every room, some of which were untouched, the beds made up, the TV blank-faced in the corner, towels in the bathroom hanging flaccidly from chromium-steel rails. And in one room, which showed signs of occupation, Hegler slid back a closet door and goggled in amazement. The closet was crammed solid from floor to ceiling with cartons of tinned food—somebody’s secret hoard, which they hadn’t had time to eat.

  “Strike starvation off the list,” said Dan gleefully, ripping open a carton and spilling two-pound tins of smoked ham over the floor. “At least for the time being. This guy was all set for the millennium by the look of it.”

  Wayne Daventry, the twenty-year-old son of a biologist who had died of a heart attack two years ago, started to cry. The other three said nothing, averting their eyes, but they understood his emotion well enough. It was one thing to put up a stoic front in the face of adversity, yet impossible not to betray real inner feeling when Providence offers a small gift of kindness, the briefest glimmer of hope.

  “Now, if we can get a good movie on TV,” Dan said to divert attention and began punching buttons with a conjurer’s flourish, “I reckon the Stardust deserves a five-star rating!”

  As the set began to hum, Art Hegler yelped as if stung, staggered back, and tripped over his own feet.

  The others stood with hearts pounding as the concave screen lit up and a fuzzy picture appeared, which at first nobody could make any sense of. It was like a surgeon’s view of a pumping heart, stark eye-searing red, being pierced by an enormous black veined torpedo.

  Dan smiled bleakly in the artificial flickering twilight thrown by the screen. “Just what we need, the in-house porn movie. The circuit must be still wired up to the generator.” He shook his head sadly. “It’s true what they say: ‘The world will end not with a whimper but with a bang.’ ”

  One of the others gave a hollow laugh.

  Not really believing it would work, Dan tried to get another channel. Why bother transmitting pictures when there was nobody to receive them? Yet there were—dammit, had to be—other pockets of civilization, if only on the evidence of the gunship. Where had that come from? What was it looking for? Survivors?

  As he expected, nothing came through, and he switched it off. Hegler said, “If there’s power on maybe we can tap it. Get some light in this place if nothing else—”

  “I don’t think that’s wise, Art.” Dan crossed to the window. “Turn your flashlights off for a minute.”

  The four of them stood looking out at the jungle below, just about discernible in the fading light. It stretched away into the murky dusk, an unbroken canopy covering the low-level buildings with the multistory hotels and casinos poking through like concrete piles in an inland sargasso sea. Nearest to them was Circus-Circus, then the Sahara, farther yet the Hyatt, and in the distance the Union Plaza.

  “Think about it. Up here we’d be like a beacon for anyone or anything down there. I’ve no idea what’s living in the swamp and I’m not keen on finding out. I don’t think it’s sensible to advertise our presence, do you?”

  “It could bring help,” Hegler pointed out.

  “It could bring trouble. I think the only help we’re going to get is from ourselves. What do you say, Pete?”

  Pete Kosinski, who had worked as a technician with Ron Maxwell, stroked his week-old growth of beard, which softened the lower half of his angular jaw. “This seems to me like a good place for now. We’ve got a supply of food and we can make the place secure. I don’t want to share with nobody, least of all those little albinos with the soft handshake. Let’s keep it just for us.”

  “What about you, Wayne?”

  “I agree—I mean about the lights and everything. If we can rest up for a few days and get ourselves organized, give ourselves time to think, we stand a much better chance.” The young man sounded grateful to have been asked his opinion, anxious to show he’d recovered from his emotional spasm. “Let’s end with a bang, not a whimper.”

  Dan arched back, shaking with laughter. It flooded through him like sweet relief. The other two laughed with him while Wayne grinned amiably, not sure what he’d said or why it was funny but tickled pink that it was.

  They split up into pairs and searched the rest of the rooms along the corridor, thirty-six in all. Dan didn’t want any nasty surprises in the middle of the night and so paid particular attention to the doors at the far end of the corridor and the three fire exits. All were intact and could be made secure.

  Finding this place was the first stroke of luck they’d had since leaving the Tomb. He was still concerned about fresh water, and there was t
he problem of medical supplies, which were almost gone, but at least from here, in daylight, they’d have an excellent view of the terrain. Tomorrow he’d explore the upper floors. How high was the Stardust? Ten, twelve, fifteen stories? Despite his fatigue he felt buoyed up, almost cheerful, and he clapped Wayne on the back and told him to go back down to the third floor and bring everyone up.

  “Tell them we’ve got vacancies for everyone—including king-size beds, first-class food, and stimulating entertainment, all at no extra charge. The Stardust seasonal special, compliments of the management.”

  Wayne saluted smartly and trotted off, the wavering flashlight dancing over the mildewed carpet like a fairy’s halo.

  It wasn’t, as it happened, any of the four children in the party who were responsible for disturbing the blue-speckled spiders in their comfortable nests but a middle-aged computer technician named Richards who couldn’t resist taking a peek inside one of the egg-shaped video booths. Anything electronic drew him like an iron filing to a magnet, and after craning inside the padded interior and finding it empty, so he thought, he clambered in and settled back in the contoured seat.

  Of course nothing was working. The angled screen was layered in a thick film of dust and the grooved joy stick and control levers swathed in cobwebs, which he batted out of the way. Jesus, they were damn tenacious, clinging to his fingers, and strong too, so that he had to employ considerable strength to get rid of them.

  He examined the console by the light of two powerful battery lanterns that had been set up in the room, figuring out the object of the various games and tests of skill, from Star Pilot to Extermination Squad, with avid interest. As a youngster he’d been a sucker for electronic games, which had led to his career in computers. If he’d stuck to something simple like this, why, he could have made a fortune. The idea was the thing—the circuitry was dead simple, first-year stuff. All you needed was the basic know-how, a bright idea, and you had a license to print money, Richards thought as something stirred above his head.