Come Back

by George Erlynne

  "Give me an alternative." I said quietly.

  "Canals." Mike said suddenly. "What about the Caledonian canal? The other end of Loch Ness, remember? It leads out to the open sea."

  I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought of that idea when Melanee beat me to the punch. "Yes. If engine does not fly we s-skim? Yes, skim over sea."

  "Fuel consumption." Mike said. "Don't know what it would be with one engine but we throttle right down it should be a hell of a lot better than this tub trying to fly."

  "Should it?" I grunted. "OK, we come out and skim down the Irish Sea, with no hover ability we have to stick to water, right? Let's hope the wind doesn't get up to more than a brisk breeze because this thing will behave like a submarine if it gets choppy. Then we have to go round Cornwall, that'll be fun with the Atlantic swell coming in and where do we end up?"

  This diatribe was received in silence but I had only done what Mary had done to me and it didn't help. Mike knew the answer. "Goddammit, we need fuel. There must be fuel somewhere, there has to be." He banged his fist on his knee.

  The silence came back and lasted while we gloomily finished off the meal and stared at the fire, sparks rising to a dark sky. It was Melanee, of course, who came up with the solution.

  "Why not ask mm machine on hill? Knows everything, yes?" She looked brightly at me.

  We all gaped at her but it was so obvious I wagged my head in disbelief that I for one hadn't thought of it before, let alone the big brains staring at her. There was no going back there before morning however and then it dawned on us that we'd have to climb back up on our own two feet, the car being unavailable. Mary seemed appalled at the idea which certainly had its spiky points, the first of which was our local cousins who might be very interested in our movements. A brisk argument started up, the nub of which was the desire to keep Mary and Melanee safe in the car while the intrepid male club swarmed up a mountain. The female emancipation syndrome snapped on abruptly with Mary at any such suggestion despite reasonable objections from Mike in the shape of wishing to protect his future prospects from undue shock. Then I realised that Mary was the one who had doctored the nexus program and she had to go anyway which meant we all went because no power on Earth was going to make Melanee stay behind all by herself.

  Having established the futility of the heated discussion we had all taken part in for the last hour, Mary promptly fell into a fit of convulsive crying, making Mike even more alarmed than he was before. All her miseries came out, the worry over whether she would see another dawn every time she went to sleep, the dread that whatever she had had done to her would pass on to her child, the weary despair that we could ever find peace and tranquility. The weight of the lost billions was pressing down on her as she sobbed, clinging to Mike who didn't seem too cheerful himself.

  Mary's inner horrors laid bare all our fears, all of us except Melanee having the same dark terrors floating in our heads. She had dreads of her own and went down on her knees in front of Mary, taking her hands in her own, gazing into her eyes with such calm compassion that I wondered, not for the first time, what limits there were on her intellect, if any.

  "Mary," her quiet voice told us how much she cared. "Please, I am one of you. I am not different, I have David's child growing. I know what you have lost, all of you because I have lost the same. It is in your memories but it is my inheritance as well. What can we do but go on and try our best? I swear to you we will survive and David and Mike will protect what you and I both have so that they can grow up in a better world."

  The sentiments and the words were ordinary but the commitment and, yes, the love shone out of her. She reached out and took my hand as she knelt there and pulled me down so that we were on the ground, sitting on our heels, looking up at Mary's tear stained face. Mike was standing rigidly, his arm round Mary's shoulder but his eyes on Melanee.

  "My God." He muttered. "We had some luck when we found you."

  Melanee smiled her brilliant smile and squeezed my hand. "Oh no." She retorted. "The luck was mine."

  Slowly, like light washing over a dull painting, a smile appeared hesitantly on Mary's face. "I believe you, I do." She said, choking a little. "Please, let it come true."

  Mike leaned over and picked her up, holding her tight, walking her to the car's open hatch. Neither of them said anything more, so I made Melanee settle down beside me in the small cleared area we had made and we stared into the fire as the silence of the Northern night came down on us. Presently, sleep arrived as we let the warmth and slight crackles from the fire seep into us. Branches snapped and sparks rose, waking me from almost the first happy dream I remembered since we landed. Linda had smiled, not that terrible tortured smile as she died, but a smile of a friend who understood. Gathering a sleepy Melanee, I followed Mike's example and took her into the car, shut the hatch and laid her down beside me, waiting for the dream to start again, knowing that it would.

  We had to take precautions for our trip to the mountain top. First of all, it was bloody miles off so that meant food and water, guns and ammunition. Then we had to think up some way of stopping the locals from dissecting the car during our absence, a problem I solved by programming the forward auto cannon to fire a short burst at anyone who didn't have the radio remote control. Rope from the stores in case of need, paper and pens that Mary insisted on and various odds and sods. Hefting my share in the pack, I grinned at Mike and led off. Crunching noises from the rear told me they were following in Indian file as instructed. We only had one movement tracker which was strapped to my back and I hoped the damned battery lasted out.

  We left soon after dawn which meant we started virtually in the middle of the night, dawn being light that arrived not long after the sun set up here, but I felt marvellously refreshed after the dreams, the tearing misery and grief lifted almost for the first time. Melanee looked at me with such intelligence when we woke that bright day. The long caress and kiss told me she knew what I had in my head and she was glad for me. I resolved to shoot Max, Mark, Selena and anyone else who got in the way of her happiness, including any army of programmed slaves they let loose on the world. I didn't tell Melanee about this private promise, of course, she would not have approved, but it cheered me up immensely.

  We miscalculated. That damned hill was only three and a bit miles from the Loch side but it was nearly straight up and filled with dense fir and birchwoods, packed so close we had to force our way through. If the locals had sharp ears they could have heard us from half a mile off, all of us panting like geriatric elephants, the packs weighing more with every step. Inconvenient streams fell down vertically, icy cold and it took me all my time to stop the movement tracker from getting a shower which would certainly scramble its brains. After two hours Melanee took to hanging on to my belt, puffing like a steam engine and after another hour we had to call a halt in the best spot I could find, a jumble of round boulders where a healthy burn ran down. Visibility was bad, no more than thirty yards, well within arrow or spear range.

  Pacing carefully around the slippery rocks and pointing the tracker in all directions gave us some security but not much. "How much further?" Mary gasped.

  "Another half a mile." Mike supplied, throwing water over his face.

  "Up or sideways or both?" She asked painfully.

  The tracker let out a bleep abruptly stopping all conversation. Everyone slid behind the nearest boulder in response to a hiss from me and we stared fixedly into woods that emitted a crackle of branches being thrust aside. Presently a large boar pushed its snout through the branches, stared at us suspiciously and departed. Miraculously, no one fired but the burst of relieved laughter we let out should have woken up every Scotsman within miles.

  "Come on." I grunted. "Before the bloody pigs eat the terminal."

  Two more hours of looking over our shoulders and struggling up what seemed at times a vertical slope found us at the ruined beacon station. Seating myself as before to survey the oncoming hordes, I left the tinkerin
g to the others. Surprisingly, in minutes they scrambled back up to sit on the top of the wall with me. Mike looking mystified but elated, took some deep breaths and expounded.

  "Portsmouth." He said obscurely. "The Navy base." He added as if to explain everything. Seeing from my growing exasperation that it didn't, Mary sighed and pointed vaguely South.

  "That machine says that in the nuclear loading docks at Portsmouth there is a store of fuel kept in sealed containers. It was a nuclear reserve shelter inside the submarine docks, an emergency store to provide generator power when the balloon went up if it ever did."

  "In the missile loading dock? Bloody hell, how do we get in there? The place was worse than Fort Knox." I growled. "In ten thousand years the entry locks would have turned to dust, we'll never find it."

  "It's pressurised. We have the exact co-ordinates." Mike muttered. "It says the security doors were opened when something nasty happened to the world."

  "Opened?" I felt my mouth gape in sympathy. "Who did that and what the hell for?"

  "Someone, we don't know who, decided that the fuel would come in handy for the right people. They knew that the refineries would shut down and probably burn out without control and fuel in ordinary stores, tankers and the like, would just turn to tar and evaporate." Mary said.

  "Forward planning." Mike continued. "It's not just Portsmouth, there's a score of other places where fossil fuel stores were kept in case of worldwide catastrophe. All of them are available but this is the closest."

  "But how did they know?" Mary wailed. "How could they know?" She wiped tears which suddenly started to roll down her cheeks. "Secret underground nurseries full of slaves, we know that. Plans to let them loose on to an empty world, is that it? But how did they know it would be empty? What the hell made it happen? How? And who made all those plans? They've been dead for millennia so what did they gain?" She shouted this out to the still landscape. No one answered her because we didn't know. The same questions had battered my brain for hours. How the hell did any conspiracy survive the event and what was the point?

  "Gods." Melanee said into our silence. We all turned heads and stared at her.

  "Yeah." I breathed. "You could be right."

  "What Gods?" Mike demanded.

  "People who think they are." I told him, watching his face change from irritation to slow understanding.

  "Surely not. No one could...I don't believe...and even if they think they are it still doesn't tell us how it happened." Mary stared at me with dismay coupled with disbelief.

  I shrugged. "Probably we'll never know." I said. "Meanwhile what do we do about an aircar with only one engine?"

  Melanee smiled at me. "I think like you tell me." She said obscurely. "We stay here, we make new friends perhaps? Grow mm old and wise? No?" She gazed at Mary who had an expression of horror at the prospect. "We go then. Simple."

  Mike laughed, an edgy sound. "Jesus, let's go back before she thinks up another universal truth."

  Mary shot a look at him but slid down from the wall. Mike took her arm as they started back down the steep slope sparsely covered in low shrubs but with belts of scree scattered about which must have complicated any maintenance parties in the old days. I presumed they visited the place by helijets, the only way, I mused, as Melanee and I followed them. The strong sun was beginning to cast long shadows as the early evening approached, that elongated twilight that threw bright sun over the Scottish hills as the night hesitated up here near the damned Arctic or so it seemed. Overhead, a long way up, birds, odd birds circled in the calm air.

  The attack came as we entered the thick growth lower down the slopes, pine trees mixed with larch getting denser as the lower ground approached. Mary and Mike were maybe twenty yards in front of us and my supposed sixth sense let me down because the first I knew was Mary's scream. Fast moving shapes came out of the trees like greyhounds and they were on top of Mike before he could do a thing. I had a glimpse of Mary in a flurry of movement her head snapping back as a tall figure wacked her with what seemed a heavy club. Mike was on the ground with figures over him stabbing furiously. Melanee, beside me, let out a yell and jumped sideways but by this time, ten seconds late, I had the rifle ready. The two that leaped at me staggered back as the rounds took them and the man who seized Melanee by the neck received the barrel over his head followed up by three rounds in his stomach.

  Melanee, to my intense surprise, snatched up the club the man dropped and welted the next volunteer across the jaw with it. He sat down clutching a long spear with a metal tip, but I let her get on with it because Mary was lying still with lots of blood on her face and several men were bunched around Mike's prone form. They had all frozen at the gunshots but that wouldn't last so with both our friends conveniently on the floor and out of the line of fire I switched to automatic and hosed them all. The roar of auto fire and the juddering of the rifle in my hands turned on my well-trained instincts. Fleeting memories of long ago flashed into my head just as the magazine ran out. Slapping in another one quick, I glanced at Melanee to assess progress, finding her retreating hastily in front of her victim who had recovered enough to stand up and lumber towards her with evil intent, his bloodstained face distorted with hatred. One shot through his head flung him backwards in a spray of blood and tissue. The sound lost itself in the woods and silence came down like a thunderclap.

  Nothing moved. Slowly, I relaxed, took Melanee's arm, feeling the quiver as she stood rigidly, fear and shock creeping over her. "Come on!" I hissed, dragging her over to where Mary was lying. "We're alive! See to Mary!"

  She gave me a frightened glance and fell on her knees whilst I pulled off two heavy men who were slumped over Mike's body. Three others were close by and the mass of blood told me one of them was still alive. Making damned sure my special soldiers sixth sense, the one that tells you how bloody scared you are, was working full blast, I scanned round us. We had disposed of eight men but were there any more? Did they have reserves ready to follow up the first assault?

  Mike had been wearing a sleeveless heavy jacket, a survivor from our original stores, water proof, supposedly knife proof and it had saved his life. For how long I didn't know but the spears they had stabbed him with hadn't penetrated very deep. Tearing his shirt, I found four wounds in his upper chest, a shallow cut in his neck which was bleeding badly plus a deep and serious looking gash in his right thigh. He wasn't going to walk very far today, if he ever walked again. He'd been hit on the head but it didn't seem too bad because his eyes flickered open as I prodded various bits of him to see if he had anything else wrong to add to the collection.

  "David." The whisper was hoarse, a spasm of pain hitting him as he spoke. He gasped and his teeth showed but he fought it. "Mary....Mary, please."

  In the corner of my eye, I was watching Melanee wash Mary's face free of the blood. She was breathing but she wasn't with us yet. I grinned down at Mike. "She'll have a headache but she'll outlive you, old son."

  A shadow of a smile crossed his face as his eyes closed. I sat back on my heels and watched the surroundings. If ten more of them were prepared to take casualties we were finished but the forest was quiet, very quiet, no birds, nothing. The tang of gunsmoke still hung in the air as I slithered over to Melanee who greeted my arrival with wide eyes and a tear stained countenance.

  "What we do?" She whispered, a good question. One body I could carry back, maybe, but sure as hell I couldn't manage two and if we stayed here the clans would be back.

  "How long to real darkness?" I muttered, glancing at my fancy digital watch. "Five hours, I guess." Mike couldn't walk on that leg for weeks and that left Mary. We had to get her mobile.

  Pouring ice cold water over her face was the obvious first aid but if that didn't work we had a problem. Her eyes fluttered, opened, her dark stare focusing on me for seconds before memory came back and she gasped, trying to sit up. Melanee grabbed her shoulders, easing her to a sitting position from whence she could see Mike's blood-stained torso. T
he cry that she let out told us more about their relationship than any words.

  "He's alive and he's going to stay that way." I told her hastily. "Can you stand?"

  She could and she did, wincing but determined, making us take her over to Mike where she promptly fell on her knees and burst into a flood of tears. He was feeling the pain now and I knew what it must be like, red hot needles boring into your flesh deeper and deeper.

  Mary's head had blood seeping from under the hairline but on examination it didn't seem too bad. The club must have skidded off her skull, or so I thought as I peered carefully at it. She stopped sobbing and started to tear her clothes to pieces for bandages before I stopped her. Mike needed a pressure bandage on that leg wound but the sight of Mary reduced to essentials would not help his treatment, quite apart from me not wanting her to collect exposure and shock.

  Stemming the blood from his leg with a tight roll of cloth from Mary's shirt, I stood up and examined her with a clinical eye, but she was ahead of me, her splendid brain having already worked out the problem. "You can carry him, you have to, right? Give me your rifle."

  "I carry Mike gun." Melanee entered our conversation with a determined face. I wasn't at all sure she knew just what the hell made our weapons work and had doubts about letting her walk behind me fiddling with rifle mechanisms in a spirit of scientific enquiry. "No shoot you." She added with a smile I thought ill placed, but sure as hell I couldn't carry Mike plus firearms.

  Mike groaned to add urgency to the scene and screwed his face up, biting his lip. "It'll take you God knows how long so get on with it." He muttered hoarsely.

  He was right but a soft moan from one of the corpses distracted my attention. The man was bleeding profusely from a chest wound plus he had several more bullet strikes in his lower stomach. He gazed up at me with agonised eyes, blood seeping from his mouth. His lips parted and a croak emerged. Melanee lifted him as his eyes continued to stare at me. Another croak was followed by words I didn't like too much.