Damn, damn!
Russell wondered how things were going at the observation post. Was the barrier still standing? Had colonists already died? What was happening to his wife and children? He bit his lip. Marlene hadn’t reported back since letting them know that the attack had started.
“For God’s sake! Please tell me the fucking bomb is going to work!” Russell spurted out angrily.
Dr. Dressel didn’t even look at him. “We’ve done everything in our power!”
That’s not what I wanted to hear.
“Shall I drive down to the observation post with the boy?” asked Albert, who had remained in the background the whole time. “Maybe we can help.”
“No,” said Lee, who was looking at the pressure gauge again. He looked up and smiled tentatively. “It’s ready. There’s no more air in the pipe. I just need one more minute.”
The engineer disconnected the pump, but left the generator running. He checked the safety relay again, which would prevent the bomb from detonating by accident. “Finished. Let’s get out of here. To the bunker!”
Finally!
The men ran out of the cave, through the short tunnel and climbed down the scaffold to the jeep. Russell grabbed the radio as Lee started the motor.
“Marlene, Russell. Report!”
No answer. The queasy feeling in Russell’s stomach intensified.
“Marlene, please report!”
“Marlene here,” came the rustling reply through the little loudspeaker. In the background, Russell could hear the sound of the battle. Shots. Detonations. Then a bloodcurdling scream that made the hairs on Russell’s neck stand on end.
“We’re finished. I repeat: the bomb is ready to detonate. You can retreat.”
“Understood.”
“How is it down there?”
“We’ve suffered heavy losses. No time!”
Then there was silence again.
Damn, if only those beasts had given us one more hour!
“Sounds pretty bad down there,” said Max.
Nobody answered. The jeep roared along the bumpy track. Russell hoped that they could clear the observation post in a halfway orderly fashion. Dr. Dressel sat silently beside him. He stared into space. Russell knew exactly what the physicist was thinking, because the same thing was going through his mind.
Hopefully the bomb will detonate!
Chapter 49
Marlene put down the radio and picked up the megaphone. “Everybody prepare to retreat.” She turned to Eliot. “Prepare the flamethrower!”
He looked at her in horror. “Are you crazy? Did you just see what happened with the other one?”
“Damn it, we need the wall of fire to cover our retreat, otherwise we don’t stand a chance. The monsters will run us down while we retreat!”
Eliot glanced uncertainly at the nozzle of the flamethrower, as if he were looking at a wotan that could attack him at any moment. “I . . . I . . .” he stuttered.
Marlene shoved him aside. “Everyone down. I’ll do it myself. Go!”
A few seconds later, Marlene was standing alone on the platform. She also didn’t trust the construction of the flamethrower, but she had no choice. She threw a quick glance over the railing. Men, women, and teenagers were fighting for their lives. The fence had been broken through in many spots. Dead animals lay next to dead and injured colonists. Under her lookout, sixteen-year-old Edward Grazier was doubled over and screaming with pain. There was a gash up the length of his thigh, and red muscle mass hung in ugly shreds out of the wound. Several feet from him, Linda Ladish lay under a dead sniper. Blood was trickling out of her mouth, her eyes were blank.
Let’s finish this!
Marlene pointed the nozzle of the flamethrower at a point directly beyond the fence. She closed her eyes and pressed the trigger. There was a loud hissing noise as gelatinous kerosene spouted out of the tube and immediately ignited. Liquid fire rained down on the hordes. Marlene swung the flamethrower back and forth until a thick barrier of yellow and white flames blocked the pass completely. Her face felt as if she were standing in the middle of the fire herself. With a short burst, the last drops of napalm from the empty vat spurted out of the flamethrower.
Marlene grabbed her weapon and scrambled down the ladder from the platform.
“Retreat! Retreat! Everyone in the vehicles. Take the wounded with you!”
She almost tripped over Dr. Cashmore. The chemist was bleeding from a deep wound on his chest. He groaned, as Marlene propped him up and dragged him to the nearest jeep. With the help of Sophia O’Hara, she heaved the wounded man onto the trailer, on which several groaning and screaming colonists were already lying.
She hurried back to the barbed wire fence and helped Christian Holbrook carry the body of Lucia Sargent. The fourteen-year-old’s face was covered in blood. She was spitting and wheezing, so at least she was still alive.
The first vehicles started to move. They laid Lucia down on the truck bed of the next jeep, then jumped into the back seat next to Holbrook. Marlene looked back and saw William Lennox, another one of the injured, lying on the truck bed of the last vehicle. Further behind, Ben was staggering toward the jeep, a lifeless body in his arms.
“Come on! The fire won’t last forever,” she bellowed.
William waved to her to start, then jumped into the driver’s seat of his jeep.
Marlene turned around and sank back in the seat. “Go!” she said to Ernie Lawrence, who was screaming the name of his dead wife. She was beyond tired and her mind was numb.
The cries of the burly soldier were swallowed up by the sound of the motor as he turned the key.
“That was close!” groaned Holbrook. He had a wound on his shoulder, but it didn’t seem to be very deep.
“So many dead! But at least we did it!”
Marlene looked him coolly in the eyes. “We’ve only done it when this damn bomb has detonated!
Chapter 50
“They’re on their way,” said Russell.
“Casualties?” asked Lee.
“Marlene reckons there are at least ten dead and as many injured.”
“Ten,” repeated Lee. “Did she say who?” His wife and his eldest son had fought at the observation post.
“No, I have no idea,” said Russell tonelessly. He couldn’t stop thinking about Ellen and the children, how they had lain in the dirt at the observation post and fought against the wotans. He could barely contain his worry.
Lee raced with squeaking tires around the last curve. Dirt and stones were thrown into the air. The jeep reached the grassland of the plateau and turned left, toward the bunker.
The vehicle had barely come to a stop when Lee and Dr. Dressel jumped out and hurried to the cave. Maxwell and his buddies ran toward the pass to greet the returning fighters from the observation post. Russell resisted the temptation to follow them. He remained with his radio in his hand next to the vehicle. Making contact with the vehicle in the canyon was difficult enough. In the bunker they would definitely have no reception. Albert came and stood next to him, in silence. He fished a little package out of his pocket and held it up to Russell.
Russell raised his eyebrows. “Where did you get that?”
“Saved it for a special occasion. Help yourself.”
Russell hesitated. “I don’t know. With the state of my health . . .”
“You’ve already got lung cancer, so what the hell?”
Russell shrugged and pulled a cigarette out of the packet. He couldn’t help grinning.
“How on earth were you able keep these hidden from Lindwall?”
“To be honest, I stole them from his infirmary,” admitted Albert. “Years and years ago.”
Albert took one and put the packet back in his jacket. Then he lit it with the cigarette lighter next to the driver’s seat in the jeep.
“This is horrendous,” whispered Russell. “I can’t bear it anymore!”
“You mean, wondering if the bomb will explode, or who will return from th
e observation post alive?”
“Both! But mostly, wondering if one of my family has died. . . . At times like this, there’s an advantage to being single. You can be glad that you don’t have to go through this torture of not knowing.”
Albert smiled weakly. “You’re wrong.”
Russell was silent.
“There was someone I was particularly worried about,” said his friend.
Russell smiled. “You sure know how to keep a secret! Who . . . Hang on. You said was!” His eyes widened. Up to now they only knew for sure that one person had survived the attack. “Marlene?” he asked in amazement.
Albert smiled.
“How long has this been going on?”
“Almost twenty years.”
“Why did you both keep it secret?”
“Because . . .” he stopped. Lee came out of the bunker, white as a sheet.
“What . . .?” asked Russell.
“We have a problem,” croaked the engineer. “Come inside.”
Russell dropped his cigarette.
In the cave, Dr. Dressel was wrestling with the electrical detonator and cursing.
“Leave it, it’s no use,” said Lee. He pointed at the red light and turned to Russell. “The safety relay isn’t working. We can’t detonate.”
“What?” Russell felt the blood draining from his face.
“I told you from the start that it was a bad idea to use that old relay,” said Albert angrily.
“I wanted to prevent a bolt of lightning or some other voltage spike from detonating the bomb while we were still in the cave or on our way back. After all, there are several miles of cable,” shouted Dr. Dressel. He was angry—whether with himself or the broken mechanism was hard to tell.
“We shouldn’t have used that damn relay!” Albert couldn’t hide his anger.
“Enough!” said Russell in a loud voice. “What can we do?”
“Somebody has to drive back to the bomb and disconnect the relay,” said Lee.
“Damn it, the barrier is unprotected,” countered the physicist. “Thousands of these creatures are storming into the canyon as we speak. Whoever drives down to the bomb now will run straight into the beasts.”
Russell planted himself in front of the engineer. As if he didn’t know! “Tell me exactly, what I have to do!”
“It’s quite simple,” Lee explained. “You take out the two red cables from the relay and connect them directly to one another. Then we can detonate from here.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Russell turned around without a word, ran out of the bunker, jumped into the jeep and started the engine. Maxwell and his friends stared after him, dumbfounded, as he raced past them.
He had hardly gone more than three-hundred feet along the dusty track when the first jeep from the observation post came racing toward him. His heart jumped for joy when he saw Ellen, Jim, and Grace on the back seat. As he drove past he waved at them encouragingly, as they stared after him in horror.
We have to detonate this fucking bomb!
Ben had been staggering numbly through the smoking debris when he’d stumbled over the body of his wife. There was no visible wound, but her eyes were devoid of life. Ben stood for a long time, unable to feel anything. Finally he kneeled down robotically, picked up Drew’s body, and carried it to the next jeep. Slowly, almost tenderly, he laid it on the truck bed.
“Come on, man! We have to get out of here, before the fire goes out!” shouted William Lennox from the driver’s seat. Without replying, Ben swung himself into the passenger seat. Bill stepped on the gas and cursed as the gear stick jammed briefly.
Behind him, Paulina Hill was moaning on the back seat. “Was that your Drew?” asked Bill. “Is she . . .?”
“Dead,” said Ben. From the corner of his eye he had seen his daughter jump into another jeep. She was alive. She didn’t know yet that her mother was dead. If only Drew had stayed in Eridu, as he had ordered her to do! He should have felt rage, but there was none. Neither rage nor sorrow . . . nothing.
They rounded a curve and the bomb construction site came into view. Ben gasped as he saw Russell racing toward them in a jeep, which came to a halt in front of the scaffold of the cave.
Bill slammed on the breaks and stopped with the engine still running. “What’s going on?”
Russell had difficulty breathing. He looked as if he were about to collapse. “The detonating mechanism is malfunctioning. I have to bypass the safety relay.” Coughing, he climbed up the ladder.
Ben stared after him, in two minds.
“Jesus Christ, did you see how he looks?” asked Bill. “Russell is going to collapse at any second. And this bomb is our last chance. We should help him.”
Ben hesitated for a moment as he thought about his daughters, but then he jumped out of the jeep. “I’ll do it. You drive with Paulina back to Eridu. She needs medical attention.”
He followed Harris onto the scaffold.
Harris stumbled along the tunnel to the cave. The generator was still making a noise.
Where is the damn relay?
“What’s the problem?” asked Ben, coming up behind him.
“The safety relay is broken. It’s blocking the remote detonation of the bomb. We need to disconnect and bypass it.”
Russell had found the relay, and dropped to his knees in front of it. He began to disconnect the cable, but was overcome by a coughing fit. Ben pushed him aside. “I’ll do it!” Hastily, he disconnected the last cable from the relay in the little plastic box.
“You have to connect the two red cables,” said Russell, his voice rattling.
Ben jiggered the thin wires apart until he had found the red wires. Then he groaned. “It doesn’t work! They have different plugs!”
“What?” said Russell, aghast.
Damn Dr. Dressel! He hadn’t said a word about that!
“I said, they have different plugs. I need some pliers, so I can disconnect the plugs and twist the wires together.”
“Lee took all the tools with him, but I saw a toolbox in the car.”
“Then get me the pliers. Quick!”
Breathing with difficulty, Russell climbed down the ladder and stumbled over to the vehicle. He heaved the heavy toolbox out from beneath the driver’s seat and searched for the pliers. He paused as he noticed a tremor and looked down the canyon. The ground was vibrating.
What the hell is that?
Then he heard the stampeding.
My God. They must be close.
Russell grabbed the pliers and was about to climb back up the ladder, when a lone wotan came around the bend. Instinctively, Russell dropped the pliers and grabbed his pistol from the holster. He still had time for two shots, then the beast would be on top of him. Russell fell to the ground and protected his head with his hands. He screamed as something hit him on the left shoulder. The animal flew over him and Russell rolled over to fire again. The body hit the support of the scaffold. Massive planks of wood snapped in two like matches, and with a huge crashing noise, the whole scaffold collapsed. Only a few struts of the ladder remained. The creature was dead.
Ben appeared at the entrance to the cave and looked down. He must have heard the noise. Thirty feet of smooth cliff-face separated him from the ground of the canyon. He had no way of getting back down. Then his eyes fell on the cable leading out of the cave. It was severed just below the entrance to the cave. The collapsing scaffold had torn it into pieces. There was now no way the bomb could be ignited remotely.
“Ben!” screamed Russell.
Ben’s face distorted into a grimace. “The pliers!”
Russell looked up at Ben, aghast.
What’s he planning to do?
“Throw up the goddamn pliers!”
Russell swung himself up and threw the pliers to the entrance of the cave. Ben caught them.
“The beasts are nearly there. I’m going to ignite the bomb from here. Go! I’ll give you five mi
nutes.”
“Ben!” screamed Russell. There must be a way of getting him down. But the sound of the animals thundering through the canyon was getting louder by the second.
Ben held up his right arm with the pliers. “I’ve always hated you, Harris!” he bellowed. “I’ll see you in hell!” Then he disappeared back into the cave.
For several seconds, Russell stood as if petrified in front of the scaffold, which lay around him in ruins. Then he hobbled back to the jeep. He wanted to turn, but heard a loud bang from the engine compartment.
Oh God! The transmission must be broken!
The engine made a yowling noise. Russell wanted to try another gear, but the gearstick was jammed.
Five minutes!
Russell jumped out of the jeep.
I’m standing on Ground Zero of an atomic bomb, I’ve got no vehicle and only five minutes!
Russell briefly played with the idea of simply sitting on the ground and waiting for the end. It’s what he’d wanted. His wish of not dying slowly from cancer would be fulfilled. But then he saw the faces of Ellen and his children when they had passed him in the canyon. They had survived the battle.
No! I want to hold them in my arms. At least one last time!
He mustered all his strength and started to run. He ran as fast as he could. He gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the pain in his knees.
How far will I get in five minutes?
The ground was vibrating. Small pieces of rock loosened from the sides of the cliff and rolled onto the track. Russell kept on running until his lungs were on fire.
Ben walked along the narrow tunnel. He felt completely numb.
This is the day I’ll die.
He stood in front of the borehole and the thick metal pipe. He thought of the lifeless body of Drew on the back of Bill’s jeep and didn’t know what he should feel.
He had loved Drew once, but it was a long time ago. The more she had caused him problems, the more he had fallen out of love. His children were also nearly grown up, and no longer as easy as they had been as children. Cathy’s stubbornness made life particularly hard, and recently it had dawned on him that she might actually hate him. Perhaps he just wasn’t suited to family life. Just as he wasn’t suited to the life of a settler on this godforsaken planet. So it was really for the best if he took the highway to hell with these beasts. He couldn’t remember when he had last been really happy. And who was responsible for that? Harris! Why had he even given that bastard five minutes? It would have been more than fair if Harris had died with him. It would have been one last triumph.
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