by Dave Lacey
“All good?” Jack asked as Bill dropped down into the gulley twenty minutes later.
“Yeah, so far as I could see.” Bill looked around at the gathered press of bodies, the fires and sounds of chatter.
“They won’t see the flames will they?” Jack asked.
“Not directly, no, the structure should hide it. But they may see a bit of smoke as it leaves this canopy.” Bill gestured at the edges of the flyover as he spoke. “The fires’ll die down soon enough though.”
“You okay?” Jack asked. As he watched Bill, he felt his own weariness envelop him. It seemed an age since he’d seen his remaining family and friends. He wondered if Bill was having the same thoughts.
“Yeah, just a couple of things I’ve been mulling over,” said Bill.
Jack waited for him to go on. He was human, he must have given them some thought.
“It’s still puzzling me how will we get the seeds and the information to those on the Moon?” Bill said, his eyes a little glazed as he stared out at the dark. Maybe not, Jack thought.
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” Jack said. “What sort of equipment do they have at Jodrell Bank?”
Bill frowned. “Not sure, why?” he asked. In truth, Bill was a little distracted. He wanted to close his eyes, and not open them for a week. He felt an upwelling of strong emotion, as his wife and his children’s faces scrolled through his mind’s eye. Would he ever see them again? But he knew he couldn’t discuss it with anybody in the group. Not even Jack.
“Well, I wondered if they’d have any meteorological gear there,” Jack said. He was watching Bill closely, and Bill had almost missed the question. His eyebrows flicked up and his mouth popped open as it took him unawares.
“I guess they’d have some. I know they used to get involved with the odd bit of research or help out the Met Centre with weather patterns. Why?”
Jack crossed his arms across his chest and smiled broadly. “Weather balloon,” Jack said, looking very smug.
Bill continued to frown, then his face changed gradually to a smile. “That’s not the worst idea you’ve had.” Bill folded his arms across his chest. He was grateful for the idea, distracting him from his own internal thoughts. Weak thoughts. “That’s not a bad idea at all.” He turned to look out into the night again. “I can’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t work.”
“Me neither. We’d have to warn them to expect it mind. And they’d need to send out a craft of some sort to collect it, but…” Jack trailed off.
“Yup, I like it.” Bill ran his tongue along his back teeth as he thought some more.
“But…what happens then?” asked Jack. “It’s not so easy for them to communicate with us, so how do we know what to do next?” Jack frowned as he finished. His mind racing ahead of him, in it, he was already back home. Below ground. Safe.
“We wait, I guess. They’ll know what they want to do, and they’ll get a message to us. One way or another.” Bill spoke more in hope than belief.
Jack pursed his lips and nodded. “Well, let’s hope so. We’ve gone to a great deal of trouble to secure this stuff,” Jack said, patting the aluminium case beside them. “And the fate of what’s left of humanity rests upon them closing the deal.”
“Yeah, but whatever it is, it’ll take some time to refine,” Bill said, his eyes staring into the dark. His thoughts turned to those they had lost already, and those they might lose in the months to come.
Marl tucked himself under some loose corrugated sheet and tried to sleep. His friends came to him at various times, crowding his mind until he had to shake his head to banish them. You could have done more; You should have done more. The mantra played over and over in his head. Another rational voice told him that there was nothing he could have done to have saved them, but most of the time this was drowned out by sadness and guilt.
Another ‘Lander patrol hovered back and forth overhead, but their heat detection equipment hadn’t picked him up under the iron sheet. A large part of him hadn’t cared whether they found him or not. He made the decision that if they detected him he wouldn’t run for it. Whatever will be, will be, he thought. After ten or fifteen minutes the patrol drifted off lazily into the black night, intent on finding some other poor schmuck. Marl had lain awake for quite some time after that, unmoving. Then sleep had come for him, for a short while at least.
He woke as the dawn light filtered through his reluctant eyelids. He stretched his aching back and checked on his sore feet. There was no food left, but there was coffee. He used the last of the water from his canteen and made himself a brew, then set off. And here he was, back on the lonely road, with nothing but the horizon and the twisted carapaces of vehicles to look at.
Then…voices. More stragglers, he guessed, a community without a commune. He quickly ducked below the chassis of a rust brown car. None of its softer materials remained, just the corroded chassis. He shuffled towards the rear end, then hurriedly but carefully ran in a low crouch and rolled under a truck, which gave him better cover. He counted fifteen pairs of legs as the group trundled by, unaware of his presence. Marl held his breath. He had no intention of getting caught up in another fight, especially one that he couldn’t win.
His mind raced. His thoughts leapt from one to another, never settling on any one. He tried to fight it, but had no control. His imagination revived memories that he’d tried hard to suppress. His breathing became ragged. The screams. The pleading. His lungs pumped, his lungs never feeling full. Panic spread through his blood and muscles. Fight or flight. It was only ever going to be flight.
Blind to his actions, Marl began to scrabble from his hiding place. Trying to outrun his imagination. He stopped, rolling onto his back again. He couldn’t breathe. He tore at his coat fastenings. His shirt. He needed air. Through his madness, he heard them moving away. He became aware of tears as they tickled the small hairs of his ears. He cupped his hands over his mouth. An old technique intended to limit your oxygen intake. Anxiety isn’t the lack of oxygen, it’s too much.
After a couple of minutes, it worked. When he was certain he had outstayed any stragglers, he rolled out from under the vehicle and got to his feet. He blinked away the residual moisture and leaned on the cab. Marl squinted down the road, already suffering misgivings about whether he had made the right choice. Should he have joined them? He shook his head; there was no time for doubts, not now. He quickened his pace and topped the next rise in the road. He was still heading down the M6.
Bill’s group had spent an uneventful night, and the following morning Jack continued with the driving. He was beginning to find the rhythmic toing and froing across the motorway, dodging the stationary skeletons of vehicles, somewhat comforting. Though from the noise they made, his passengers in the load bay were not enjoying it quite so much.
They banged on the panel that separated him from the rear, shouting their discord. He smiled, and slowed. There was no reason to prolong their torment, though it made him smile. They were approaching the junction of the M42 and the M6.
He had forgotten how much quicker their progress would be in the truck. And it was much more comfortable, especially for someone with a dodgy ankle.
“You look happy with yourself,” Smithy accused from the passenger seat.
“That’s because I am happy,” Jack said. “Aren’t you?”
“I suppose so,” Smithy said.
“Well tell your face then, you miserable little runt,” Jack replied.
Smithy affected a wounded look, and clasped his hand over his heart. “I’m just thinking,” Smithy said, his face drooping and hangdog.
“Ah,” Jack said, “we’ve been here before haven’t we, Tobias? What have I told you about thinking?”
“Shut up,” said Smithy “I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if all this worked.”
“Pretty good I would think,” Jack said. He sighed as he leaned back into his seat.
Smithy swung his head round to look out of the front
windscreen once more. He took a deep breath and continued his train of thought. “Yeah, I guess. There’ll be a lot of shit to get through though.”
Jack looked sideways at him, shaking his head and tutting. “Good God man, you’re really pissing on my chips now. What’s your problem?” Jack asked.
“Well, it’s just that…”
As Jack looked back at the road, he thought he saw something move in the distance. “What was that?” he asked, interrupting Smithy’s dopey monologue.
“What?” Smithy sat up straight, alert now.
“Something moved, I think. Over there, near that car.” Jack pointed at a car that was still a couple of hundred yards away.
When he heard the sound of the engine, Marl stood riveted. Another patrol? Something in the back of his mind stirred, but not enough to surface. His face screwed up tight, as he tuned out everything else that was clamouring in his head, trying to think. What’s different about this sound?
Then, he knew what it was. “It’s not a ship,” he muttered, a small smile flitting across his features like a lone cloud on a windy day. “That’s a diesel.” Then he saw it, a large truck picking its way down the motorway towards him.
He was tempted to run up the slope, get away, but they would probably have seen him if he did. So he decided to hit the deck, and then move. He scampered across the warming tarmac, careful to avoid the treacherous crevices in the surface structure. He scrambled under a dilapidated coach this time. He considered going inside, but knew he would have a better view from underneath. And being inside meant being trapped, possibly with remains of those long since dead. The truck rumbled closer, its noisy diesel engine chugging and protesting against the gearing selected by the driver.
He waited, hardly daring to breathe. He willed the truck to go by. But as it got closer to the coach, it ground to a halt. They had seen him. He heard a discussion from up in the cab, then a door opened, followed by another. He craned his neck to try and see something, but the angle was all wrong. Two figures, men he thought, were examining the bank at the side of the road and the surrounding vehicles.
The search lasted a couple of minutes, then he heard them moving back to the truck. Then, a voice cut clearly through Marl’s thoughts. A voice that he recognized. Jack. Marl began to roll out from the cover of the coach, but, as he moved, his clothing caught on a loose bracket on the underside of the coach, holding him back. Panic hit him.
His breathing changed again, he was suffocating. Sweat broke out across his body. Sobs wracked his frame. His hands scrabbled at the rough metal above him, seeking release from his snagging captor. He could feel it cutting his fingers, scraping skin from his knuckles. “Fuck” he half shouted, half sobbed. Every bad emotion he could feel, squeezed his chest.
In a frenzy, he used his adrenaline and rolled hard. He heard, and felt, material ripping, but still he was stuck, half in, half out from under the bus. The truck had started and was rumbling into life again. Marl shouted Jack’s name as a gear was selected, but the engine noise covered the sound. He fumbled quickly at the buttons on the front of his coat.
Finally free of the jacket, Marl staggered to his feet, emotion making him shaky and unstable on his feet. He ran a few shambling yards, yelling Jack’s name and waving his arms like a rookie swan in first flight. The truck was around a hundred yards away, accelerating, opening up the gap. He would never catch it. From somewhere, he found enough energy to jump onto the roof of a car, and still the truck moved away.
He slumped to his knees. “Nooo!” he shouted. He could feel tears stinging his eyes. It was all for nothing. All of it. It’s true what they said, about your life flashing before you in such circumstances. It had all come to this. Nothing. He had failed. Failed his friends. Failed his family. Failed Jack and Bill, everyone. He had betrayed his only friends, and now he had failed to warn these good people of the danger that waited. He dropped to his knees on the roof of the car and felt it sag.
A sound punctuated his torment. So was this it, the patrol that would see them all dead? He looked up, expecting to see a ship. Instead, he saw that the truck had stopped. The sound was the hiss of air brakes. He stood up slowly, then jumped from the bonnet and ran hard, his legs pumping, his feet flying over the tarmac towards the truck, and Jack. “Jesus, Marl,” said Jack, as the collision with the younger man robbed him of air, “you ran that close.” Jack slapped him on the back.
“I thought you’d missed me,” said Marl, tears and emotion rendering him insensible. “I thought it was all for nothing.” “What was all for nothing?” Jack’s face took on a look of concern. “What’s up, Marl? What’s happened?” He took Marl by the shoulders. “Where are the others?”
Marl checked a sob. “They’re dead. That gang, the one that was chasing you? They found us,” he cried harder, coming undone. “They killed Eileen and Eric.”
Jack hugged him. “Marl, I’m really sorry. Are you okay? You’re safe now, with us.” Bodies crowded around them. The clamour for information growing with their anxiety.
“Jack, they have the map,” Marl said, tears blinding him. “I’m sorry, but they have the map.”
“What map, Marl?” Jack asked. His eyes had drifted out of focus, he licked his lips and his breathing became shallow. He knew the answer already. His eyes drifted out of focus. His grip tightened on Marl’s shoulders. Not again, please not again. But then Marl confirmed his thoughts.
“Your map, Jack. They know where you live.”
Fin.
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The End, by Dave Lacey
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Book three in the Series will be out in the Autumn of 2014.