by Rohan Gavin
What better place to hide someone than in a place that wasn’t supposed to exist?
CHAPTER 13
THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL HIGHWAY
The Knightleys and the Bradleys agreed to meet in the hotel lobby at 9 p.m., giving both families time to regroup before setting out for the desert by nightfall.
It turned out that Irwin Bradley also had an ex-wife, Angie, who he had to make excuses to; and, from what Darkus could tell, Angie still loved Irwin, as Darkus suspected his own mother still loved his father. It brought into sharp focus how dearly Darkus wanted his parents to get back together, even though the whole situation felt like a dropped pie that would take an army of people to clean up. Wolseley Close, as long as Clive was in it, was never going to be home. That was part of the reason Darkus chose detective work over the domestic strife he’d had to endure all those years. Though neither of them made reference to it, Darkus sensed that he and Rufus shared the same feelings about their outlandish dads and long-suffering mums. As detectives do, they weighed opposing theories, they understood both sides of the argument, but they still wished for a solution – no matter how unrealistic that dream might be.
Almost as if Jackie knew her son was thinking about her, the secure phone rang and the word Mum appeared on the screen. Remembering his dad’s strict instructions to keep her out of the investigation for as long as possible – for her own safety – and even though Darkus longed to hear her reassuring voice, he let it ring, and ring, until it went to voicemail. The secure phone would re-route the call and disguise the ringtone so she wouldn’t know that he was currently on the other side of the world. After a few moments, he checked the message.
‘Hi, darling, it’s your mum here,’ Jackie’s voice said chirpily on the message. Even the ambient noise of the kitchen reminded him of home. ‘I’ve got some exciting news to tell you. I know you’re busy with your dad, but if you can, give me a call. I’m here for another few hours, then I’m … well, I’ll tell you when I see you. Love you.’ She hung up.
Much as Darkus wanted to know what this news was, he decided to trust his dad. With any luck, Bogna would soon be safely back in pocket and they could return to England and maybe, just maybe, family life would slowly take the shape he dreamed of – and the dropped pie could be cleared up.
In her own room at the other end of the suite, Tilly stared at her smartphone. The timer had reached twenty-four hours and forty-nine minutes, with the seconds steadily ticking down until the contents of Underwood’s hard drive would be revealed. It was probably a daydream to think that the solution to all her problems would just pop up on a screen. And when she finally got the names of everyone responsible for her mother’s death, if she tracked them down one by one, would it make her feel any better? Would she be able to shed the enormous burden of loss on her shoulders? Or would it only make things worse? Almost as if the phone knew it was being watched, the handset buzzed and she checked her email inbox.
Her eyebrows lowered into two acute angles as she opened the message. It read:
T*
First instalment attached.
Will send u the rest in 24 hrs.
Peace.
^M^
It was Mike, her associate from the dark cloud – she didn’t know his surname, and never asked. She moved her finger towards the attachment and felt her hands go red-hot with anticipation, as if the phone was on fire. She tapped on the file, sat down on the edge of the bed and began to read …
An hour later, the Knightleys and Tilly crossed the lobby carrying their rucksacks and kitbags. Knightley informed the receptionist that they were going on an impromptu camping trip, and, not wishing to question a close associate of the President, she smiled and waved.
The Bradleys waited outside in a blacked-out Chevy Suburban SUV, complete with off-road tyres, roof-mounted spotlights and heavy-duty bull bars and grilles. The route to Survival Town had been mapped out. They had to avoid Area 51 itself at all costs, or risk a mammoth response from whatever military units were active there; not to mention the possibility of aliens, UFOs and the paranormal, which Knightley continued to remind them of.
Darkus felt he was not only taking a journey into the unknown, but into one of the least known corners of American history.
The Knightleys and Tilly climbed into the large back seat with Irwin and Rufus sitting up front. The dashboard was ablaze with flashing lights from radar detectors and police scanners. Knightley nudged Darkus in the ribs, impressed. If anyone could help them find Bogna, Darkus was confident it was the Bradleys. Tilly remained silent as the car quickly left Beverly Hills and entered the on-ramp to the nearest freeway, which was never far from reach.
Los Angeles took on an eerie glow in the night. The palm trees were still painted orange, this time by neon instead of sunshine. The billboards broadcast their images to empty streets and discreet homeless encampments. Office buildings loomed overhead, half lit and completely deserted. Even the freeways were almost devoid of traffic, except for an occasional convoy of big rig trucks, or a sedan with tinted windows disguising the identity and motive of its occupants. Irwin Bradley navigated the city with just the palm of his left hand on the power steering, while the other lay relaxed on the centre console.
Outside the Bradleys’ own tinted windows, the city receded below them as they climbed the 405 Interstate over the hills and down into the San Fernando Valley, where the landscape flattened out into an endless basin of lights. Darkus turned to Tilly, finding her unusually quiet. She either didn’t notice him or didn’t acknowledge him, and just kept staring into the luminous grid. They followed the superhighway through more ten-lane-wide inclines forged out of the hills, until it became a two-lane blacktop and the desert opened up around them, revealing what an oasis LA had been. Epic stretches of dusty lunar landscape extended on all sides, with only occasional road signs and street lamps to light the way. Darkus glimpsed the odd stainless steel Airstream caravan parked among the rocks and wondered who on earth would choose to live there – and why?
After several hours on the same unending road, punctuated only by isolated motels and petrol stations, Darkus and his father nodded off, until Irwin cranked his head round from the driver’s seat.
‘We’re coming up on Route 375, also known as the E.T. Highway. That stands for extraterrestrial, obviously. There have been more UFO sightings reported on this stretch of road than anywhere else in the world.’
Darkus rubbed his eyes and looked out into the darkness. The desert was flat and featureless, apart from a range of hills just visible in the distance. The night sky displayed a constellation of stars twinkling from outer space, as if they knew they were being observed. A green road sign announced the Extraterrestrial Highway, the metal smattered with bullet holes, stickers of American flags and drawings of UFOs.
Irwin pulled the SUV into a lonely petrol station and got out to fill the tank.
Tilly stayed in the car while the Knightleys stretched their legs, entering the attached convenience store.
‘Nice night, ain’t it?’ grunted the cashier: a large bearded man in denim dungarees and a trucker hat. Talk radio rattled out of an old stereo.
Darkus noticed a row of plastic action figures lined up behind the counter, then realised they were all little green men with reptilian eyes and no ears: aliens. With some trepidation, Darkus noticed the cashier’s hat had a slogan on it: They’re Out There!
Knightley smiled, feeling right at home, finding a model of a flying saucer suspended over the cold drinks section. He selected a bottle of water for Darkus and a Dr Pepper for himself, then approached the cashier.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ Knightley put a couple of dollar bills on the counter. ‘Have you ever actually seen an Unidentified Flying Object?’
The cashier looked up from his magazine. ‘Seen one?’ he squeaked. ‘How ’bout every darn night? Just over that ridge …’ He pointed a grubby finger through the window. ‘Like the Fourth o’ July.’ He let out a hysteric
al giggle.
‘Can you describe what you saw?’ Darkus enquired from beside his father.
‘On the inside or the outside?’ the man responded, adjusting his dungarees.
‘You’ve seen the inside?’ asked Darkus, confused.
‘Oh, sure. When I got abducted by a couple of greys over at Billy Bob’s.’
‘Greys?’ asked Darkus.
Knightley gently guided his son away from the counter, explaining privately: ‘“Greys” is a term for light-skinned aliens. But I fear this witness is not to be relied upon.’
The Knightleys got back in the SUV and Irwin pulled out of the service station with Rufus riding shotgun.
Darkus noticed Tilly still staring into the night, her hand clutching the smartphone, her knuckles showing white. ‘Is everything OK?’ he asked her.
‘Never been better,’ she murmured.
Not wishing to trigger the fine tripwires of her personality, Darkus left her alone in a cocoon of silence. The stress of waiting for answers was taking its toll on Tilly. Or there was something else going on – but Darkus couldn’t deduce what.
Just then, Knightley leaped out of his seat and pointed through the window. ‘Look! There …’
Incredibly, in the night sky, four brilliant white lights appeared on the horizon, then scorched a path upwards in rapid succession, each following their own trajectory.
‘I don’t believe it,’ shouted Knightley excitedly, grinning like a child. ‘Real UFOs!’
Darkus followed his father’s gaze and saw them too; then furrowed his brow, not sure what to make of them. They appeared to accelerate and disperse with such smooth, steady velocity. Strangely, the Bradleys didn’t even look twice.
‘Hate to break it to you, Alan,’ said Irwin, ‘but they’re military flares, released to guide airplanes into Area 51 under cover of night.’
‘Ah,’ said Knightley, deflated.
‘But what type of airplanes they’re guiding in,’ Rufus elaborated, ‘and why they’re flown at night, that’s a whole other mystery. Early prototypes resulted in innovations like the stealth bomber.’
‘He’s right, Dad,’ said Darkus. ‘There are even theories that UFOs were just a smokescreen created by the US government to cover up their own technological advances.’
‘Next time, I shall be more rigorous in my deductions,’ Knightley apologised.
Irwin informed his passengers, ‘OK, things might get a little rough.’
The SUV detoured right off the highway on a dust track. Tilly and the Knightleys took hold of the overhead handles as the Chevy went off-road, bouncing and lurching over the uneven surface, its knobbly tyres throwing up rocks and sand in their wake. Outside, Darkus noticed a faded government sign that read:
WARNING. RESTRICTED AREA.
NO TRESPASSING BEYOND THIS POINT.
PHOTOGRAPHY IS PROHIBITED.
Behind it, a high wire fence extended along the crest of the hills.
‘Switch to infrared,’ Irwin instructed his son.
‘Ten-four, Pops.’ Rufus pressed a row of switches that turned off the vehicle’s headlights, tail lights and even the dashboard.
Bradley & Son then flipped down their sun visors, which each contained night vision goggles that they quickly strapped to their faces. The SUV skirted the perimeter of the restricted area and entered a vast valley with dunes looming on either side.
‘Off to your left you’ll see the infamous Groom Lake, aka Area 51,’ announced Irwin, like a tour guide.
In the distance, Darkus could make out a community of white, rectangular aircraft hangars and a set of runways, like a concrete village at the base of a small mountain range. The whole area was fenced off with checkpoints and razor wire. A few floodlights were the only signs of life.
The SUV bounced further into the desert, crossing an enormous, dry lake bed, navigating a wide path around the restricted area, before progressing deeper into the former nuclear testing ground.
‘We’ll have to hike the last mile or two, to avoid detection,’ said Irwin as he pulled the SUV over in a cloud of dust.
Darkus and the others got out and shouldered their rucksacks. The ground was rocky, dotted with parched, skeletal bushes and teeming with tumbleweeds rolling in the direction of the breeze. The only illumination came from the coin-like edge of a crescent moon.
‘Look out for rattlers,’ advised Rufus.
‘Snakes?’ said Knightley, alarmed. ‘Nobody mentioned those.’
Irwin led the group into the bleak scrubland in single file.
‘That’ll be to disguise our numbers,’ Darkus told Tilly, but was met with a disinterested shrug.
They cut across the brow of a hill, then descended through dense brush and cactus trees, reaching a flat plain. In the distance the moonlight picked out gaping, circular craters stretching as far as the eye could see. The chasms were perfectly round, ranging from approximately a hundred to a thousand metres in diameter, and evenly spaced in geometric patterns. Darkus realised these were entirely man-made: the result of decades of underground nuclear testing.
A white metal sign stood straight up in the ruined earth, with a warning:
RADIATION HAZARD. TOUCHING OR REMOVING
SCRAP OBJECTS IS PROHIBITED.
A hundred metres away, they saw an even stranger sight: the chassis of a classic American car, charred and twisted by an unimaginable force. Beside it was a collection of long steel rods, like dropped toothpicks, that had once formed the reinforced concrete of a building. Darkus felt his catastrophiser jittering unevenly at the back of his head, like a compass needle jumping at a magnetic field, or a Geiger counter detecting a radioactive charge. The fallout here had long settled, or been blown elsewhere by the wind, but the memory remained. Of all the crime scenes he’d ever witnessed, there was something very wrong about this place.
Tilly was visibly shaken too, though it did nothing to change her mood – in fact, it seemed to match it. Darkus suspected she was bottling up a highly flammable emotion that could go nuclear and tear them apart at any moment. The tension was compounded by the spectre of the Combination looming over every step of the investigation. Darkus wondered: had they really outplayed the enemy? Or were they being watched at this very moment?
Darkus continued after the Bradleys as a familiar square shape emerged from the gloom. It was a house: a mock home that had somehow been saved from the annihilation, perhaps fortunate enough to be standing just outside the blast radius. Around it were an array of half-destroyed structures; some with supporting walls still standing, but the roofs blown off; some reduced to blocks with wires protruding like torn ligaments; others simply razed to the ground.
Irwin checked a GPS device and confirmed: ‘Welcome to Survival Town.’
CHAPTER 14
SURVIVAL TOWN
‘This is all that’s left?’ said Darkus, inspecting the single family home.
‘It would appear so,’ replied Irwin.
The mock house was clad in wooden boards, the windows were long shattered and gone, but the frames were still intact. A neatly pointed brick chimney extended upwards, but there was no light or life within the building’s walls.
It appeared that nobody was home.
Darkus took a small penlight from his top pocket and approached the doorway, which lacked a door. His father quickly stopped his arm and led the way instead. The others watched cautiously.
The Knightleys crept over the front step and Darkus angled the penlight from behind his father, illuminating the faded decorations of a living room, casting long shadows across the peeling walls. Knightley Senior stepped inside the room while Darkus panned with the torch beam, until …
A face leered up at them, its arm reaching out for theirs. Knightley grabbed his son in fright.
‘It’s OK, Dad. It’s just a dummy.’
Darkus focused the beam on the figure: a grossly distorted mannequin, still dressed in a business suit, its eyes staring out, its head partly caved in a
nd its limbs bent in unnatural angles. Darkus swallowed his fear.
Knightley Senior caught his breath. ‘I believe I’m the dummy.’
‘Bogna …?’ Darkus called out into the dead air of the house.
There was no response.
Darkus continued to probe the room with his penlight, picking out a lounge with a sofa, the remains of a TV set and a kitchen complete with cupboards and a cooker. Then he flinched as he saw the rest of the mannequin’s family in various poses around a dining table. The wife was wearing an apron, her shoulders hunched over and her head planted face down on a dinner plate. Two children, one with short hair, one with pigtails, had fallen off their chairs and were lying in abject positions surrounded by cutlery. Darkus started as a large rodent scampered across the kitchen counter, rattling the chinaware and vanishing behind a cupboard door.
Feeling a shudder, Darkus crept over the terrifying human figures and followed the torch beam through a narrow hallway to a back room.
‘Bogna?!’ Knightley yelled.
‘Dad …’ Darkus beckoned him down the hallway.
The floorboards were covered in a fine layer of dust and desert sand, revealing several footprints circling the room.
Darkus knelt down and observed three sets of distinct prints. ‘Size twelve Crocs,’ he noted, pointing at one set with a sharpened pencil that he’d plucked from his top pocket.