“Yeah, shouldn’t men with guns be chasin’ us by now?” Pat concurred.
“No-one’s out here. The base is deserted,” said Luckman. “Mel, get your camera out.”
“I’m on it,” she told him.
“So if the base is deserted what the hell are we doing here?” Bell screamed.
Luckman lacked the strength to put his thoughts into words. The furious howl in their heads was becoming excruciating. The Americans had departed the day of the Sunburst. They drove their trucks through the portal and there had been no reason for them to return. The Others had found another way to keep the people of Alice Springs alive.
“Look,” Bell pointed through the windscreen, his voice no more than a rattled whisper.
Luckman was so busy negotiating a sharp bend in the creek bed that he was the last to see it, but he heard Mel’s frightened gasp and knew it couldn’t be good. When he finally looked into the distance the shock of what he saw hit him like a javelin in the chest. He could do no more than stare open-mouthed as he choked on the impossibility. A 10-metre maelstrom of black water roared towards them up the creek bed at a phenomenal rate. Uprooted trees and boulders preceded the tsunami, wiping out everything in their path. They would be crushed like bugs in a matter of seconds.
“For Christ’s sake, reverse,” Pat finally screamed.
“No!” Luckman heard himself answer. “We keep going.”
This made no sense at all because the wall of water was almost upon them. But it was only a little further.
“Oh-god-oh-god-oh-god,” Bell cried desperately.
“Don’t look Eddie,” Luckman told him. “Mel, tell me you’re getting all of this.”
“Every insane moment,” she confirmed from behind the viewfinder.
He threw the car sharply to the right and the creek bank acted like a ramp that sent them airborne. He had reacted on instinct to avoid crashing head-on into the wall of death. The 4WD came down haphazardly on a small verge and the wheels began ripping through a knot of spinifex as Luckman juggled the steering wheel to avoid hitting a large desert oak. A road that bisected the creek was just ahead of them. He willed the car toward it as if this alone would guarantee their safety.
“I can’t see the water,” Bell reported.
“Thank God for that,” said Luckman.
“No, I mean it’s gone.”
“It was never there,” said Mel. She was busy spooling back through her footage. “It’s not on here. We imagined it.”
“Listen,” said Luckman.
“I don’t hear anything,” said Pat.
“Exactly.”
They were heading away from Pine Gap now. Judging by the silence, they had finally moved beyond the worst effects of the psychic defence system. The car sailed along the remainder of the trail like they were taking a Sunday drive in the desert wilderness until they came abruptly to a T-junction. From memory Luckman knew the teardrop loop was immediately to their right. He turned the car around and brought them to a halt pointing back the way they had come. He checked his watch.
It was time.
“We need to get out of the car. Mel, keep the camera rolling.”
The white radomes of Pine Gap were painted yellow by the fading light of late afternoon, almost as if they were glowing from within.
The motorbike that had been tailing them appeared on the track about 100 metres away as it rose up from the creek bed. When the rider saw them the bike ground to a halt.
Luckman turned toward the camera. “It would seem someone is following us.”
His final words were drowned out as the two largest radomes at the defence base exploded into a ball of flames.
“Holy hell, someone just blew up Pine Gap!” yelled Bell.
Luckman turned around to see for himself, smiling inwardly. “That is not good,” he offered, aiming to keep his response short and sharp. He was no actor.
When a third explosion took out the smaller of the radomes, the motorbike began moving down the track toward them.
“Everyone back in the car,” Luckman ordered. He tapped Mel on the shoulder and waved his hand in a circle to indicate he wanted her to keep filming. She nodded.
“Where to now?” Bell asked.
“We’re going through the portal.”
“I was really hoping you weren’t going to say that.”
Luckman threw the 4WD into reverse until they hit the T-junction, then threw the car forward toward the loop in the road.
At the apex of the loop the desert disappeared and the sky turned a deep emerald green.
Forty-Seven
As the desert twilight reappeared in front of them, Luckman spotted a woman standing on the road directly ahead of the four-wheel-drive. She raised a pistol and fired. The bullet thumped into the front door pillar. He recognised the shooter – it was Maxine Warrington. She didn’t have a chance to fire twice. The car hit her a glancing blow and she was catapulted sideways, the gun flying out of her grasp.
Luckman slammed on the brakes and leapt out of the car, not so much concerned for her welfare as he was worried that she might still be deadly. She was barely conscious when he knelt down in the dust beside her.
“You’re supposed to maintain a discreet distance when you tail someone,” he told her.
“You broke my arm,” she complained.
“Sorry about that,” he said, not at all sure he meant it.
He was dimly aware of Mel moving around behind him in a state of agitation.
“I remember, Luckman!” she told him. “I remember it all.”
He, on the other hand, remembered none of it. He wanted to hear more but dared not take his eyes off Warrington. She still had one good arm and undoubtedly another gun stashed somewhere within reach.
“Mind telling me why you want to kill me?” he asked.
“Shearer’s orders,” said Warrington. “You blew up Pine Gap. You’re a terrorist.”
He wished he was more surprised. “You saw for yourself, I was nowhere near the base when it exploded.”
Captain Warrington tried to smile but it became a grimace. “You’ll need to do better than that to survive a court martial.”
Mel started to scream. For a moment he thought it was in response to Warrington’s threat. Then he realised something else had happened when the scream was suddenly cut off. He turned around briefly and saw Bell and Pat pulling on Mel’s legs, seemingly in a tug of war with an unseen foe. The top half of her body had disappeared. Someone was trying to pull her back through the portal.
Mel’s video camera fell from her hand and hit the ground. Her hand dangled uselessly by her side and vanished briefly before reappearing as it swung back and forth through the portal. Bell began throwing punches into the gap. One of them must have connected because eventually the assailant let go. Mel, Pat and Bell collapsed to the ground, momentum throwing them clear of the portal.
Luckman roughly searched Warrington for concealed weapons and found her second pistol. “Stay here,” he hissed, brandishing the weapon at her. As he stood up he grabbed her other pistol for good measure.
Bell and Pat rolled away from Mel and sat up slowly. She remained face-down in the dirt. Luckman handed the guns to Bell and glanced in Warrington’s direction. “If she makes any sudden moves, shoot her,” he ordered as he sank to the ground and helped Pat gently roll Mel onto her back.
Her eyes were open and she was breathing. But she wasn’t moving.
He touched her face. “Mel? Can you hear me?”
She stared back at him vacantly. She offered no indication she understood. He touched her face again.
“Say something. Are you all right?”
She opened her mouth and closed it again, almost as if in mockery. But her eyes were devoid of all recognition, intelligence or personality. She stared at him with a dull and inhuman expression he had seen too many times before.