17
Frost, alone on the flight deck.
She set the camcorder on the pilot console and pressed REC.
‘First night in the desert. It’s cold. Damn cold.’ She exhaled, watched her breath steam in chill air. ‘My fingers are numb. But I got to relish every second because, few hours from now, the sun will rise and we’ll burn in hellfire all over again.’
She rubbed her eyes.
‘It all happened so fast, you know? World fell apart so damned quick. Entire cities wiped out in a matter of weeks. Shit, by the time we realised we had a fight on our hands, we were already beat.
‘Must admit, I didn’t pay much attention when the outbreak began. Safe on an airbase. Whole thing: Not My Problem.
‘Spokane. Barely made the news. Some poor bastard found a half-melted lump of space junk out in the woods. Guy was some kind of survivalist. Headed into the forest with his bug-out bag to snare squirrels or some shit. Fucking ironic, right? Doomsday, end-of-the-world guy brings on Armageddon. Seems he came across a bunch of toppled trees and a smoking crater. Chunk of Soyuz buried in the soil. Remains of a fuel tank coated in some kind of carbonised residue. Dug it up thinking it might be worth a buck or two. Drove it to town strapped to the back of his pick-up. Posed with his boot planted on the thing like he was some big game hunter standing over his kill. Day later, he was quarantined in an ICU oxygen tent. FEMA locked down the hospital, taped the windows, the doors. TV crews and their satellite vans ringed the perimeter. Footage of trucks pulling up outside, guys in biohazard suits getting scrubbed in decon showers. National Guard rolled out concertina wire, set up searchlights and gun posts. Nobody in or out.
‘Know what? Looking back, they could have stopped it right there. Sacrificed the town. Dropped a nuke. Sterilised the region with a well-placed airburst. Would have killed the virus dead. But they dithered. And the moment passed.’
She sighed, looked down at her hands a while.
‘Guess that’s all it took. A few hesitations, a few bad judgement calls, cost the world.’
She hit OFF.
The lower cabin.
Noble pulled a quilted insulation blanket from the wall.
Ducting. A cluster of aluminium pipes.
He traced one of the pipes to an overhead vent.
‘This one. Air con.’
Hancock handed him a wrench.
He rapped the pipe with the wrench. Hollow chime.
‘Empty?’
‘Hard to tell.’
Noble adjusted the wrench and began to unscrew a bolt joint.
‘Ready with that canteen.’
He pulled the pipe from the wall. Metal squeal. Hancock held out the canteen and caught a brief piss-dribble of moisture.
‘Guess that’s all she’s got.’
Noble shook the last drips from the pipe. He licked the bolt-joint dry, grimaced at the metallic taste.
‘Window wash?’ suggested Hancock.
‘Thirty per cent ethanol.’
‘Maybe we could distil it clean.’
‘How?’
‘No idea.’
‘We could take a look at the wing, I guess. Took off with a thousand gallons of water, give or take. Engine boost. If we cut into the injector feeds we might be able to rescue a few cupfuls.’
‘We’ll need a siphon hose and some sort of container.’
Noble looked around.
‘Anyone use the urinal while we were in flight?’
‘Not that I saw.’
‘Then let’s see what we can scavenge.’
Frost went outside. She climbed a dune, sought a little solitude.
She surveyed the dark horizon, the lip of the world, the point where the starfield met the dunes.
She looked north-west. An irregularity on the horizon. Distant mountains. A snag-tooth ridgeline. The peaks had been obscured during the heat of day, but were now visible in outline as they eclipsed low constellations.
Somewhere out there was the target site. The god-forsaken stretch of wasteland they had been dispatched to sear with nuclear fire.
A distant thud. She turned round. The massive, broken airframe lit by moonlight. She watched Noble haul himself up onto the starboard wing. He held a plastic two-gallon piss bottle and a length of hose. He crouched, extended a hand and pulled Hancock up onto the wing beside him.
No doubt they were trying to siphon residual water from the plane’s sub-systems.
Probably ought to help, but she didn’t have the energy.
Noble walked the wing. Popped rivets. Split panels. He knelt, held his breath against the stink of JP8 and shone his flashlight into a fissure.
The interior of the wing. Fuel tanks. Spoiler servos and screw jack actuators.
The main manifold had broken in a dozen places. Every strut and spar greased with leaked aviation fuel.
‘Here,’ called Hancock.
The hydro-feeds.
Water injected into the turbojets on take-off, boosting each engine to seventeen thousand pounds static thrust.
Noble kicked at a buckled wing panel with his boot, hammered the aluminium sheet aside. He crouched and peered into the wing cavity.
‘The waterline is cracked. Might be able to siphon some dregs. Pass me the hose.’
He fed tube into the mouth of a fractured aluminium pipe, sucked until he drew liquid.
He convulsed, choked and spat.
‘Hot damn. Fuel. Tainted with fuel.’ He gagged. ‘Mouth full of freakin’ carbon tetrachloride.’ He bent and wretched. ‘Man, that’s nasty.’
‘Better check the other wing. Maybe the fluid lines are intact.’
‘You be taster. I got a tongue coated in gasoline.’
Frost stood and contemplated the stars. She found an austere consolation in the fact ten thousand years of human civilisation, the slow rise and abrupt fall, had been a fleeting moment of cosmic time, and the universe would continue regardless.
Movement in the periphery of her vision.
A figure, fifty yards away, silhouetted against the stars. It seemed to be watching her.
‘Hey,’ shouted Frost. She fumbled for her flashlight. ‘Early? That you?’
She glanced over her shoulder. Hancock and Noble walking the starboard wing.
She turned back. The figure was gone.
Cupped hands:
‘Early. Early, can you hear me?’
No reply.
‘It’s us, man. You made it.’
No reply.
She stumbled in pursuit, followed footprints down the side of a dune, anxious not to be drawn too far from the crash site in case she became disoriented in the darkness.
‘Wait up, dude. You’re not thinking straight.’
She struggled to climb a steep rise.
‘We got water, we got meds. Come on. Let us help.’
She reached the top of the ridge. She swept the surrounding sands with the beam of her flashlight.
A trail of prints heading out into deep desert.
The lower cabin.
Noble pulled insulation from the back bulkhead.
A simple crank-handle hatch. A pressure door that allowed access to the crawlway that ran the length of the aircraft.
He pulled the door wide, crouched and shone his flashlight inside the tight passage. Sheet metal slick with hydraulic fluid. A rat-run that led through the ECM equipment bay, to the payload compartment.
‘Step aside,’ said Hancock.
‘You don’t looks so great.’
‘Let me do my job.’
Hancock unzipped a tool pouch and took out a compact Geiger handset.
‘Real bag of tricks you got there,’ said Noble.
Hancock scanned the crawlspace interior. Flickering numerals. Steady background crackle.
‘Guess the warhead survived the crash. Otherwise this thing would be singing to high heaven.’
‘You’re sure?’