ARIA

by Geoff Nelder

  Gustav cut through the chains, and they used the pickup to push the gates down. Ryder was afraid of the noise of crashing metal. People might wake and think there were vandals rampaging or a train crash, one of which was true.

  Away from the bridge, Ryder could see the moon and stars once more. He tried not to think of the latent terror lurking in the silhouetted landscape flitting by. The demon-looking trees threw their branches menacingly. Gusts of westerly winds grabbed their leaves and hurled them into the air. Many splattered across the windscreen.

  Ryder lifted his spirits where he could by absorbing the monochrome scenery. Megan sat beside him, Teresa in the back with Bronwyn. Jena joined the two astronauts in the estate.

  Unlike the stomach-gripes he had driving on the road towards the Chester airfield, they drove in relative safety. Away from the trees, they had miles of mostly flat and undulating fields on either side, with an occasional sight of the ocean on their left.

  Teresa’s phone beeped. “Hey, I hope you two aren’t quarrelling back there.” Ryder heard Jena laughing.

  Teresa snapped, “Don’t you know which way to go?”

  “You know there’s only one railway line all the way,” said Ryder, then shut up knowing he’d best not get in the way.

  Jena spoke up again. “This is a courtesy call to let you know there’s a tunnel up ahead. Could be trouble. Teresa, do you want to run ahead again?”

  “Stop just inside the tunnel, leaving room for us behind you,” said Ryder.

  They could easily flood the tunnel with vehicle headlights but that might give them away.

  Ryder and Abdul used dimmed torches to walk in the tunnel. They stumbled on the uneven ground. They were both man enough to ignore the scurrying rats, but their noses twitched at the stench of a rotting corpse. They didn’t wait to investigate whether the odour came from a dead human, but rushed the remaining 200 metres to see moonlight again.

  Heading towards the semicircular exit, Ryder’s torch picked out a pair of eyes, and then another, and so did Abdul’s.

  “Gustav,” Ryder whispered into his phone. “Bring the estate up here to collect us. Quickly. There are dogs.”

  Abdul and Ryder turned their torches off but knew the dogs would still detect them. They walked to the side of the tunnel and stood with their backs to the grimy wall. Ryder could smell the mix of diesel and soot.

  He heard a growl and then another.

  “We could shoot them,” Abdul said. “I know it would make a noise, but maybe most of the sound would stay in the tunnel. Anyway, who’s going to come running in the middle of the night when they know a pack of bloodthirsty hounds are at large?”

  “We’d just need to kill one. One dead dog is food for the rest.” Ryder said. “Where’s that car?”

  A developing lump in his throat, he scrutinized the three dogs, which became four. More came, edging forward, emboldened by hunger and sensing the fear in the humans. He realized he hadn’t brought his rifle. “Abdul, shoot one of them.”

  “Can you use yours, Ryder? Mine’s back in the car.” One, then two of the dogs barked while the others growled.

  “Stay, boy!” shouted Abdul. The dogs moved closer.

  “I don’t think they speak English in Anglesey. Did you bring your knife?”

  “Penknife, but one of those beasts would be able to take my hand off before they noticed the blade. Do you think Gustav’s stalled the car?”

  The dogs, all barking, were only two metres away.

  “Let’s shine our torches in their eyes.”

  “Yes, blind them to death,” Abdul said, putting his torch on full power. It stopped the dogs from advancing but they barked louder. Ryder noticed a couple at the back edging round. He tried to dazzle them but they continued. Another minute and the they were going to be dinner. He shone his torch at the nearest dog while he called Jena.

  “What the bloody hell’s happening back there! We’re about to be eaten here. Jena? Speak to me.” He tried to listen to her response, but the situation didn’t offer a two-way conversation with his ears full of a cacophony of hungry barking.

  “They aren’t responding. I hope they haven’t been attacked back there.”

  “No, he’s stalled or run the car into the tunnel wall. It’d help us now if they put their headlights on full. Get back!” Abdul yelled as one of the dogs tested its luck with a snarling lunge at his arm.

  Ryder picked up a handful of stone chippings and threw them at the nearest dog. It yelped with surprise. Ryder was shocked to hear the dog’s snarl transform to one of a puppy’s whimper. But it hardly lasted two seconds as it leapt at him, this time with spittle flying from its bared teeth. Ryder fell on his back, his brain telling him to strike the dog with the torch, his only weapon, but he needed both hands to hold the beast’s gaping mouth from biting his face. Its fetid breath made Ryder retch. Drool splattered his face and his leg kicked with a sharp pain. He heard Abdul shouting, but couldn’t make out words.

  It was a matter of moments before they both died ignominiously on the grimy shale floor of a railway tunnel.

  A shock of bright light followed by explosions behind him gave Ryder instant relief as the dog vanished. Dazed, he lay back and looked to the right to see Abdul sitting up against the wall, looking and shouting at him. Ryder’s ears buzzed with more bangs and dogs’ yelps, so he couldn’t hear what he was saying although his hand gestures and mouth said “stay down.” No argument there.

  “YOU DID WELL TO LIE DOWN,” Jena said, applying more antiseptic wipes and plasters to Ryder’s wounds. “One of my bullets might have found you instead of the dog.”

  “Don’t think we’re not grateful, but what kept you?”

  “You told us to stay put until you called.”

  “We kept phoning.”

  “We thought you might have been. Gustav suggested the tunnel might have interfered with the phone signals. Teresa reckoned she could hear shouting, barking or whatever. But maybe she didn’t and she was tired, so we waited some.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Anyway, Gustav and I decided to investigate, drove the car halfway. Turned the engine off and heard the racket. Turned on the lights and walked in blasting like Clint Eastwood.”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, THEY MET ANOTHER BARRIER. A double set of impressive 10-foot high wire gates where the railway entered the airfield. As Ryder decelerated the pickup, he saw Abdul’s dark shape against the predawn. He stood on the roof-rack of the estate car, peering through his binoculars. Moments later, Ryder walked up dangling his own night-sight glasses.

  “Several aircraft that should do,” said Abdul.

  “But do you see people, lights, smoke, or bloody dogs?”

  “Nothing. Except what might be a wisp of smoke from a building over to the right on the opposite side of the runway from the planes.”

  Ryder stood on a boulder and focussed at the same spot. “What else could it be? Condensation from a hot-water system? Too far away for us to be able to see cigarette smoke. How far?”

  Abdul flipped a switch on his sights. “Exactly 231 metres on the range finder. Shall we try to sneak around the outside of the fence to get a closer look?”

  “No, we’d lose too much time. We’ll get these gates open, head for the plane park on the left, and get Megan to keep a close watch on that side. It could be a smouldering fire from yesterday, and now they’re gone.”

  Gustav made short work of the gates. They refastened them after going through and drove to the left, cruising in front of an open hangar where two RAF jets waited to be scrambled. Like Hawarden Airfield, the evidence of looters littered the area. Not slowing, they passed more fighter jets and an air-sea rescue helicopter before reaching three large aircraft: two Airbus 300YC cargo planes and a Boeing 757 cargo plane. All three were in RAF grey paint, just a few passenger windows near the front, and all appeared to be in good condition.

  “Gustav, just look at this Airbus,” Ryder said. “Looks brand new,
apart from the leaf and grime that’s settled on them in seven months. One has mobile steps to an open door. Shall we?”

  “Yeah, but it means it’s been ransacked,” Abdul said. He was right, the cockpit had been vandalised with spray paint everywhere. Ryder looked in disbelief until Teresa interpreted.

  “People, really frustrated, assume their problems are caused by science so take it out on modern examples like this.”

  “To be honest,” Jena said, “Abdul and I have our aviation experience in American aircraft. I’ve clocked about a thousand hours flying Boeings and none with your European Airbus. Not a hell of a difference but...”

  “You’re right,” Ryder said, “let’s move the ladder over and see if we can get in the Boeing.”

  They couldn’t get in the passenger, cargo bay, or pilot’s locked exterior cabin doors and didn’t want to use a crowbar.

  “Two options,” Gustav said. “Either find the keys, or force the cargo bay door. The cargo bay would be pressurized differently to the forward crew area and we’d get away with a jerry-rigged door.”

  Ryder put Megan on watch for the smoke, which drifted up and over to the north side of the runway. He and Jena went to look for the plane’s keys in nearby buildings while Teresa and Gustav looked for a laden fuel truck and start-generator vehicle. Abdul made a closer inspection of the aircraft. He hosed muck off the windscreen, examined flaps, tyres and did other external pre-flight checks before looking for a place the engineer might have hidden a key. An aircraft sitting idle accumulates dust and grime on the wings, so he found a higher-pressure hose and gave the whole plane a blast, especially the airfoils and tailfin. Luckily, the jet intakes had been capped.

  Ryder and Jena found an engineers’ office that was the best candidate for holding the keys, but it had been hit by multiple earthquakes of the human variety. Jena knew what the key should look like, a metallic-plastic card.

  “I wonder if they armed it from here,” Ryder said, looking at a console after sweeping the furry debris of someone’s lunch from the nearby raided snack machine.

  “Good point,” Jena said. “We did at Houston. Remotely locked and alarmed the military aircraft from a place like this. Well done, Ryder.”

  Ryder used his phone to get onto Gustav, and within twenty minutes, the generator he and Teresa found vibrated with a worrying loud noise. But it lit up the console. It took another twenty minutes to find the necessary buttons and codes to unlock the plane. It was seven in the morning before they had refuelled, loaded, and re-pressurised the tyres.

  “I couldn’t find Megan when I went for her,” said Jena.

  “Wasn’t she on lookout?”

  “Not when I searched for her. She said she needed the bathroom, but I thought you ought to know that when I looked for her, I thought I saw someone near the smoke, and we have to take off near them.”

  Ryder noticed Megan opening the passenger cabin door from the cargo area. He would have liked to have had a go at her, but other matters were more pressing.

  “I think we should go,” Jena said. “Now.”

  “Do it quickly then,” Ryder said, looking out of the cockpit window. Jena acted as pilot, Abdul as co-pilot. Apart from Ryder, sitting in the cockpit, the others were belting up in the small passenger lounge behind the flight cabin.

  “There!” shouted Abdul. “Over to our left, three, no four people, men, walking towards us. They look as if they might have weapons, oh, and a military vehicle is on its way.”

  Jena needed to manoeuvre the plane to the start of the longest runway, which meant heading towards their would-be attackers and then a 90-degree right turn to take off.

  The military vehicle was an armoured scout car with a heavy-machine gun.

  “Forget protocol,” Ryder said. “We’ve a light load and should take off without having to use the whole of the tarmac. Just head 45 degrees away from that lot.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jena said.

  “We’d already decided that,” Abdul said, as the engines made a satisfying roar, accelerating them away from the surprised airfield occupiers. “I don’t know why they’re upset. We’ve exchanged two good vehicles for one they don’t know how to use.”

  Grateful for the relief from tension, Ryder and Jena laughed. Fingers crossed, they’d lift off before hitting the perimeter fence and before any bullets overtook them.

  Saturday 10 October 2015. 10:00 hours GMT:

  Mid-Atlantic. Most people will have lost up to twenty-six years of their memory.

  THE NAVIGATION COMPUTER ON THE BOEING CARGO AIRLINER plotted the most efficient route to Rarotonga. A Great Circle route took them within a hundred miles of Banff, in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Lit by the morning sun, Ryder watched the cyan-blue Atlantic shimmering six miles below. At that height, he would have been able to see ships, evidenced by their wake, but none sailed. He knew Jena had no worries about collisions with other aircraft although she kept the intercept-prediction and proximity-alert warning switched on.

  “What if you can’t raise Manuel?” Jena said to Ryder.

  “Then we circle the airfield to check no one has parked a bus on the runway, land, and deal with the refuelling ourselves. I’d like to know how Manuel is.”

  “Yes, Teresa told me the same thing.”

  “Her interest in Manuel is as a biological specimen. He was one of the first to get ARIA.”

  “Is that your NoteCom beeping its low battery warning?”

  “Plug it into the navigation console for recharging, Ryder,” Abdul said.

  As soon as he did, the NoteCom bleeped a different tune. “It’s from Manuel, but it’s just a message to say he’s found his NoteCom, found my contact details, and is going to read the rest before getting back.”

  Abdul grinned. “That’s promising.”

  “Depends when it was sent,” Jena said.

  “Yesterday morning, over twenty-four hours ago. Damn, I hope he hasn’t lost it again.”

  Jena thought a moment. “Buzz it.”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” Ryder’s frustration simmered.

  “At the risk of being sulked at,” Jena said, “I suggest you put it on an automatic buzz every five minutes.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Abdul said. “He might think it’s just a repetitive noise from a faulty gadget.”

  “I can set it to buzz randomly with a maximum interval of five minutes,” Ryder said. A memory flash hit him...angry at a computer pop-up message getting in the way of his watching a live image of an asteroid intercept with an unmanned lander. He pushed his clawed fingers through his hair.

  “Hey, who wants coffee? Two, is that all?”

  Ryder returned with the drinks. Megan, silent headphones acting as a hair band, followed him in.

  “Megan, how you doing?” said Abdul. “I thought all our passengers were catching up with their sleep. How’s Bronwyn?”

  “She’s fine, asleep. Can’t I come up here? Or is this a private club?”

  “Course not,” Jena said. “You’re always welcome. Wanna drive?”

  “Yeah, as if.” Megan chewed gum and leant back against the aluminium wall.

  “Look, Megan, you can see the sea,” Abdul said.

  “Big deal, seen it before.”

  “Can you see the different hues of turquoise and blues?”

  She stepped closer, put a hand on Abdul’s shoulder. “Has the sea lost its memory as well?”

  Jena said, “Hey, that’s pretty deep, isn’t it?”

  “What, the sea?” Abdul said, then winked.

  Megan’s eyebrows raised in puzzlement at the others as if they didn’t know the sea had memory. “How does it know where to send its currents, or how cold to be?”

  Jena looked at Ryder, then at Megan. “I mean, Megan, you are a deeper thinker than I gave you credit for.”

  “Whatever. Hey, I need to go back into the cargo area. Is it safe? Pressure and all?”

  “It’ll be quite chilly, but there’s enough pressur
e to breathe. I’d rather you didn’t,” Ryder said.

  “I’m bored and my player’s in there. I’m going to get it. Right?”

  Jena shook her head at Ryder to shut him up. “Don’t be long and shut the door properly when you get back. Okay?”

  Megan left.

  Jena said, “She’s a teen, right? Didn’t she have her player with her?”

  Ryder’s NoteCom tinkled the Where are you now? tune he’d selected for incoming calls. With an accelerated heart thumping, he grabbed it and plugged in the external microphone and speakers.

  “Is that you, Ryder?” said Manuel. “Oh, I see your face now. Hey, you look older than I remember.”

  “I’m not surprised. Just a minute...you can’t remember what I look like at all.”

  “I know, just kidding. But my notes tell me we went back to when you worked with me on several NASA projects.”

  “You still have your trademark sense of humour, Manuel. I need to ask you a gigantic favour, and it has to be done today.”

  “Sounds intriguing, Ryder. Every day is a new day to me, though here in the cabin, I expect I do pretty much the same thing every damn day. How can a feeble-minded duffer whose only skill is chopping wood, help you?”

  “Do you have transport?”

  “Probably. There’s supposed to be a pickup with the keys under the mudguard down in the lane. I haven’t looked today, though I might have done yesterday and found it had changed into a Cadillac.”

  “Manuel, I am with a small group of friends in an airplane over the Atlantic.”

  “Good for you. I could do with a trip to a warm country. Are the trolley dollies pretty?”

  Ryder looked at Jena and Abdul. Manuel’s brain assumed flights were a normal event. “Do you know about ARIA?”

  “I’ve just been told about it by my cabin-mate. Oh, I get you. There haven’t been international flights for several months, have there? Where are you flying to?”

  “Our destination, Manuel, is one of the Cook Islands in the South Pacific, but we need a refuelling stop halfway. Guess who lives under our flight path?”