“Okay, well doesn’t matter, I’m sure you’re on top of it. Look, I just wanted to check in with you guys and let you know I landed nineteen miles east of the transmission site. The place is called Angels Station... that mean anything to you?”
“I have searched my databases and have found nothing relevant. At least, nothing in 2070 when I last synchronized to the internet.”
“Okay, thanks, Laetitia. I’m signing off now to preserve power. You may not hear from me for a while. Give my regards to Reichs. I like him much better when I’m down here,” I said, grinning.
“Copy that, Mr. Luker. Good luck down there.”
“You too, Laetitia. You too.”
I clicked off and took one more look outside on the camera feed displays. The light had faded and in the tenuous sliver of sky, the blue now wore hints of orange in the west, casting a warmer glow over the barren world. I switched on the flashlight and shut down the lifepod’s main power. The temperature would steadily equalize with the cold outside, so I retrieved the sleeping bag and ate my ration pack quickly. With my thermal coat and pants still on, I zipped up the sleeping bag and checked the safety on the holstered 9mm that I still wore. I guessed the risk of hostiles coming at night was near zero, but I knew so little about this place that I could assume nothing. My watch said just after 2 a.m.—probably GMT, not local. I couldn’t sleep yet, so I thought about my mission here. Survival was the first priority, of course. Then after that came satisfying my desire for the truth, knowing what had happened to Earth, to my loved ones drove me onward. I couldn’t rest until I knew. Then after that? Well, I guess starting again. A new life. There’d been so many fresh starts in my life already: going to London full of hope at a career in top-flight soccer. Then coming home to Idaho, full of bitter disappointment at losing my dream through injury. Starting as a cop. Moving to LA. Losing Juliet and Ryan and running away from the hurt and sorrow. Then, finding myself back here, alone on what was essentially an alien planet.
Tiredness came quickly and, despite my efforts, I napped until the alarm went off at 4 a.m. Prof. Heinz time, not local. I got out of the sleeping bag and went by flashlight to the cockpit, turning on the main lifepod power. I could’ve opened the hatch, but I wanted to be miserly with the warmth inside, so I used the camera feeds instead. Dusk had settled over the icefields. The sun had recently set initiating some simple arithmetic in my mind. At this latitude in late July sunset would be around 8 p.m. I knew because L.A. was at about thirty-two degrees north—within the estimate range Laetitia had calculated. So perhaps Prof. Heinz time was GMT as I’d guessed. Not that it mattered. I’d decided here was 8 p.m., so adjusted the time back six hours because it made more sense that way. I thought back to my L.A. summers and what time the sun rose this time of year. About 6 a.m., I concluded. After shutting down capsule’s main power again, I went back to the sleeping bag in the noticeably cooler air. The alarm on the watch was set for 5:30 a.m. to get on the road at sun-up, maximizing daylight hours. That’d give me the best chance of finding shelter before nightfall. I didn’t want to sleep in the ATV at night if I could avoid it.
Exploration of this now alien planet would need to wait until morning. I closed my eyes wondering what this place had become.
***
The 5:30 a.m. wakeup call ended my dreamless sleep before I came to my senses and remembered where I was. My nose was numb and the air in the capsule was a super-cooled gas that caused thick plumes of fog with every breath. I reached for a cold ration pack and a chocolate bar and washed it all down with some energy drink before rolling up the sleeping bag and securing my pack.
Dragging the transceiver outside, I set it up and tried again to hail Angels Station. Only the recorded message filled my ears—the one warning of my impending execution for use of their airwaves. Once I’d rigged down the transceiver and stowed it, I secured the lifepod doors. I checked my gear inside the shelter of the ATV cabin. I was traveling light, so it didn’t take long. Maybe it was the improved weather—still overcast, but less windy—or maybe a good night’s sleep, but my mood had definitely lifted since yesterday. There was the feeling of anticipation and of finally contacting new people—hopefully, more normal that Reichs. The sun must have been rising behind me on the eastern horizon, but all I saw was the veiled glow of its brilliance from behind the omnipresent cloud. Just as I looked down to power up the ATV, something caught my eye hovering over the ridgeline to the north. In the distance, a single bird silhouetted against the cloud. A broad smile grew from the inside and out.
“Well, would you look at that,” I whispered. “There is life over them there hills.”
It was too far away to tell what kind of bird—a seagull was my best guess. It swooped around in an arc, headed back toward the ridgeline, and disappeared into the low cloud. I watched for a time more, but it had gone. What if it was a seagull? That meant the sea must be around here. But then I saw the outside temperature was minus twenty-two. Seawater froze at minus two or thereabouts, so how could it be? Whatever kind of bird, it was a good sign. Life had a habit of finding a way, even in the harshest of climates. And where there were animals there was food—after air and water, kind of vital.
Full of hope, I powered up the ATV, accelerating gingerly to a sedate 15mph. Somewhere over the western horizon lay Angels Station and civilization.
11
Fifteen minutes had elapsed and nothing had gone wrong. With it, my confidence had grown and I now sped along at the ATV’s top speed of 40mph—hardly NASCAR, but fast enough for the twenty-mile journey. I’d expected rocks and obstacles but found none—just ice under a layer of compacted snow with some gently undulating drifts. The worse that could happen, aside from ATV failure, was plowing into one of them. Still, I needed to keep full focus on the way ahead. If anything did happen there was no triple-A to come and tow me. As I drove westbound, I noticed that what had started flat and level had become a downward slope.
Perhaps it’s leading toward the ocean, I thought, considering what might have been a seagull I’d seen earlier.
But even after the first half-dozen miles, and with no snowfall, the icefield still spread out westward to the horizon. If the ocean was out there, then it had frozen beyond recognition.
Another five miles rushed past and I found myself remembering the hours spent in L.A. traffic that even the advent of self-driving cars hadn’t solved. In the LAPD, we only drove our squad cars manually on very rare occasions and only with authorization. Long gone were the days of the traditional car chase where the humans did the driving. Far too many had ended in tragedy and, although I found manual driving exhilarating, I agreed with the overall goal to save lives. There was a time and a place for racing and driving the hi-tech ATV over the deserted icefield was one of them. It was the most fun I’d had for a while, a long while if I wanted to get technical about it.
Continuing to scan ahead—near, middle, far—something caught my eye and as I got closer, it grew darker and more defined through the mist. Smoke. A dirty plume of darkness climbing at a slant in the breeze. I kept going, the discovery leading to acceleration. At six miles from my target destination, I could see the smoke was brown, not black. There were also some dark spots on the icefield, buildings perhaps. One of them sat under the rising column and others resolved into view around it. I slowed to focus on them, wishing I’d brought binoculars. There were two— no, three spaced quite far apart. Darker than their brilliant white surrounding, they looked geometrical, taller than they were wide. The brown sooty cloud emanated from the middle one, somewhere near the top.
I sped up again, closing the distance over the next few minutes until more detail resolved by the time I stopped perhaps a mile and a quarter away. Each of the three structures had a unique shape and height. The farthest one was a simple cube shape with a dark, irregular surface. It rose as high as it was wide and looked like a squat little office building. The middle one—from where the smoke came—stood the tallest at about twice the
height of the first. This cylindrical tower was a mixture of concrete gray, dark, and rust-colored patches. Parts of the outer skin were missing, exposing some of the building’s floors—mainly the upper ones. I could just about make out the hair-thin outline of an antenna and guy wires. This had to be where the transmissions were coming from. Alongside it, but protruding a fifth of the height above the roof, ran a flue pumping out its pollution into the pristine ice world. And where there was pollution, there were humans. Sad but true. The nearest building bore the shape of a box cutter blade, it’s skeletal structure clearly visible under the remaining glass panels covering no more a third of its area. This one stood at a height intermediate to the other two.
With part-relief and part-reluctance, I continued on, adjusting toward the closest of the three buildings. At a thousand yards out, what had been just a series of dark specks near the base of the cylindrical, middle building resolved into a handful of sled-like vehicles—a simple, open-topped design maybe half the length of a semi-trailer, fashioned from rusted steel. I had no idea how they worked or what their specific purpose was other than transport.
The skeletal box cutter blade grew quickly, looming large above the ice as I drew near. The angled roof ran across my field of view—from north to south—and I hadn’t noticed it as I approached, but the building had a pronounced lean. Like a derelict latter-day Leaning Tower of Pisa, the blade face of the box cutter leaned precariously eastward—toward me. I drove the ATV closer then stopped three hundred feet away. Some small pieces of freshly fallen rubble from the decaying building littered the floor below its overhang. I looked up at its decaying facade and then I realized something else. I recognized this building. The last time I’d seen it though it stood not at a hundred and fifty feet but more like twelve hundred feet above the downtown streets. The downtown streets of Los Angeles. This was the Hertford Building, finished in 2066—a year that will forever live in memory as the year I lost Juliet and my unborn son.
I edged closer in the ATV, keeping the speed low and quiet. The building had been there for this long, so I wasn’t concerned about it collapsing just in time for me. But there was always the risk of falling debris and some of the cracked, degraded glass panels that remained, so I skirted around to the north, looking for signs of life and an entry point. The ground floor panels were mostly gone, revealing the rusty reds of the outer steel framework, some of which clung onto patches of fire-retardant coating. As I parked up right outside, the crumbling central core, complete with rusting rebar and a doorless elevator opening came into view in the gloomy interior. Snow and ice covered the floor, and drifts had congregated on the southern and western sides, halfway to the ceiling in places. The place was an empty shell, abandoned and unused. I pulled the orange-tinted goggles over my black ski mask and got out of the ATV. With the retention strap unclipped on my holster, I advanced gingerly toward the threshold, aware that this place could be a deathtrap. The space that would’ve once been an office was largely empty, but not completely. A handful of rusted office chair frames, with the plastic fittings still attached sat upturned here and there. There were a few broken pieces of wooden furniture and partitions and what looked the remains of some smashed up electronics. It looked as if scavengers had been through and left very little. I stood looking at the rusted plaque beside the elevator opening and could just about make out the number sixty-eight. Five hundred years ago, the Hertford Building would’ve commanded some of the best views in the city. Now, it was two minutes to midnight and nearly gone. I surveyed the open-plan space and looked at the ceiling. Only the stumps of piping, cabling and false ceiling framework remained. Whoever had stripped this place had done a thorough job. I imagined manufactured goods were at a premium ever since the impact. Then something struck me. I’d expected to see some evidence of blast damage—scorch marks, embedded glass fragments or such like.
Is that what happens when an asteroid hits? I thought. Or maybe it struck halfway around the world and the west coast suffered from its other effects.
With nothing else to see on the sixty-eighth floor, I skirted around the concrete core and found the doorless stairwell. As I exited on the sixty-ninth—or second—floor, the taller, cylindrical building came into view through behind the rusty girders and glassless window framing. It stood about six hundred feet away, pumping out fumes as furiously as ever. I thought back to the last time I’d been downtown in 2070 and realized which building it was—the Sigma Tower. In 2070, the site had recently been cleared after the demolition of the previous buildings. Boarded off with images of the planned sixteen hundred foot high tower, they were to start construction that same year. I recalled the boasts about it being the tallest building west of the Mississippi. They said it’d take three years to complete. Apparently, that was fast. So whenever the asteroid had hit, it wasn’t before 2073. Three more years of life for Mom and Nikki, a minor highlight in the scheme of things, but sometimes you had to count your blessings.
The sixty-ninth was much the same as the floor below, but something drew me to the west-facing side—the unmistakable sight of a human skull. The other bones were loose, but beside it. There were no clothes, shoes or anything else nearby. Just as I started wondering how and when this person died, I heard something outside—men’s voices and the sound of a dog growling from the direction of Sigma Tower. I glanced up and instinctively drew my 9mm. There were two of them, clad all in white and both armed. The dog-handler had his rifle slung over his shoulder, while the other one held his gun across his chest, barrel down. Both of them continued jogging double-time straight toward me. In less than a minute, they’d see the ATV—a priceless asset—and then I’d have no choice but to stay. Running away from men with rifles across the icefield was not an option. We had to meet at some point, may as well start things off friendly and civilized. I chambered a round and left the safety off the 9mm, placed it in back in the holster. I did the same with the .45 cal in my jacket pocket and kept my hands in both. With any luck, they’d just focus on the holstered piece.
I went to the edge of the building closest and waved all friendly, calling, “Hey, how you doing? Let me come down there and say hi.”
They slowed and the dogless guy raised his rifle.
“No need to get jumpy, friend. Let’s talk. I’m coming down there now. Stay calm.”
I ran down the stairwell and behind the central core to the ATV, leaning inside to check it was ready to go. With the door open, I leaned on the ATV, casually awaiting their arrival, hands in my jacket pockets.
Seconds later, they emerged from the side of the building and the dog started growling menacingly, pulling on its leash. It had to be the biggest German Shepherd I’d ever set eyes on—sized more like a wolf than a family pet.
“Heel boy!” shouted the dog handler, calming the beast somewhat as the other guy covered me with his rifle.
Apparently, the handler was dissatisfied with his charge and kicked it hard in the side, quelling its aggression. The dog sat and winced quietly. Both men wore dirty white coveralls, woolen beanies and round, tinted goggles that looked more like swimming goggles than snow-wear. The dog-handler had a faded number 19 painted on his chest, his buddy pointing the gun wore a number 13. Both were small in stature, with gaunt faces above their scraggily dark beards and aged, windswept skin, all dark and cracked. It was hard to tell them apart.
“Who are you?” barked Number-13, looking edgy like he was dealing with something new. He was.
“My name is Dan Luker, I’m from the Juno Ark—a starship that left Earth over five hundred years ago. I’ve been in stasis for most of that time.”
“What’s that … thing?” he asked, pointing his rifle at the ATV.
“That’s an All-Terrain Vehicle.”
Number-13 said something in a low voice to Number-19 with the dog. He reached behind his back, took out something on a chain, and threw it over to me, where it landed on the floor at my feet. It was a pair of manacles. They looked homemade, with
a pair of hinged circular wrist irons, each with a little padlock, the keys still in them. The last time I saw this type of padlock I was securing my suitcase for vacation.
“Put them on!” ordered Number 13.
Once I did, I’d be one step closer to being at their mercy. I bent down and picked up the manacles, deciding what to do next.
12
“Put them on!” repeated Number-13, angrily.
Or maybe it’s fear, I thought, picking up the roughly made manacles. I had choices to make. And fast. Did I try for the 9mm in the holster and beat a man with a rifle at thirty yards, or maybe fire through the jacket pocket with the .45 cal? Their rifles looked primitive, homemade, and probably less accurate than my handguns. Possibly. And the ATV was only six feet to my right—would jumping in get me out of there? Perhaps. But if it did, then what? Wander the icelands until the power cell ran out, then wander some more until my food did the same, hoping to find some more friendly natives? Holding possibly the only buildings within tens of miles, using fossil fuels and having men in uniform with guns told me they were a powerful group. Besides, they looked jumpy as hell.
“Okay, man, no need to be so up-tight,” I said as I put on the left wrist iron, clicking the ancient little padlock closed.
“You want the key? Or should I swallow it or something?”
“And the other one!”
“Okay, okay mister grouchy … But can you tell me why I’m under arrest?”
“Just put it on!”
“Tell me why I have to wear these, then I’ll consider it.”
“You’re an outlander!”
“That’s a crime around here?”
“No.”
“So why the frosty reception? Excuse the pun.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Okay, what crimes are you accusing me of if being an outlander isn’t one of them?”
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