‘If we were sharing this plane with a bunch of spilt plutonium, we’d be puking blood already.’
Noble climbed inside the crawlway and lay on his back. He held out his hand. Hancock slapped a cross-head screwdriver into his palm. He began to unscrew the panel above his head.
Twelve screws. The panel dropped loose. Hancock helped manhandle it clear.
Noble shone his flashlight into a dense nest of cable and pipe work.
A large water tank bolted to the airframe above his head. Reservoir for the engine injection system.
‘Can you see the tank?’ asked Hancock.
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you reach it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is it intact?’
‘Ripped open. But not all the way. Give me the hose.’
Noble reached up and fed siphon hose through the cracked skin of the tank. He squirmed out the crawlway.
‘Give me the bottle.’
Noble sucked the pipe until he drew liquid. He caught a mouthful, then jammed the pipe into the neck of the two-gallon bottle. The bottle began to fill.
‘Drinkable?’ asked Hancock.
Noble swilled the water round his mouth with relish. He gave a thumbs up.
Sudden commotion. Frost threw herself through the rip in the cabin wall, tripped and hit the deck. She crouched beside her survival vest, hurriedly checked the pockets and extracted a flare.
‘What’s up?’ asked Hancock. He clapped for attention. ‘Hey. Lieutenant. What’s going on?’
She didn’t reply.
She gripped the flare and headed outside.
They followed.
Frost hurriedly limped to the peak of a high dune and fired a star shell.
The crash site lit brilliant white.
Noble waded up the gradient and joined her. They looked out over the desert.
‘What can you see?’ called Hancock from the foot of the dune. ‘Is someone out there?’
Frost tracked footprints, pistol drawn and chambered. She followed the trail, flashlight trained on the ground ahead of her.
‘You saw somebody?’ asked Noble, keeping close in case her leg gave out and she fell. ‘Who is it? Early?’
‘Couldn’t say for sure.’
‘You didn’t see a face?’
‘No.’
‘Flight suit?’
‘I think so.’
‘Then it’s got to be Early. Couldn’t be anyone else.’
The prints came to an abrupt halt halfway up a dune, as if whoever made the tracks winked out of existence mid-stride.
‘What the hell?’ murmured Noble. ‘It’s like the fucker grew wings and took off.’
Frost crouched and raked the sand.
The star shell above them fluttered and dimmed.
She peered into the surrounding darkness. Growing apprehension.
‘I think we should get back to the plane.’
18
The lower cabin.
‘So what did it look like?’ asked Hancock.
‘A silhouette,’ said Frost. ‘Couldn’t make out a face.’
‘Did it speak?’
‘No.’
‘A man?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘A guy. For real. Wearing a flight suit.’
‘How could you tell?’
‘The outline. Boots, pockets, straps.’
‘Early?’
‘Couldn’t be anyone else. Not unless there’s a second aircrew wandering around.’
‘Guthrie was infected, right? Bitten back at base. What if Early turned as well? Maybe that’s how he survived the desert. Maybe that’s why he won’t approach.’
Frost thought it over. She shook her head.
‘You saw those prowlers back at Vegas. Hoards of the bastards butting the wire. Dumber than plankton. Dumber than rocks. I talked with the sentries. Said they thinned out the crowd with gasoline every couple of days. Sprayed them down and lit them up. Stinking fucks just stood there and burned. Shit, even the average roach has an instinct for self-preservation. These bastards haven’t got a thought in their heads. You can shoot them point blank, run them down with a truck. They won’t do a damned thing to save themselves.
‘I rode shotgun on a supply raid to Grand Forks a few weeks back. Six Hummer convoy. Cover fire while we liberated canned food from a Hugo’s and brought it back to base. One of those sorry skeletal things spotted us from a furniture store across the street, slammed into plate glass time and again like a trapped wasp. Damn near beat his brains out.
‘You know what I’m saying, yeah? These things don’t have an ounce of cunning. They don’t make strategic decisions. They don’t hang back and pick their moment. They attack. They bite. That’s all they do. If Early had turned, he’d be on us until he sank his teeth or got a bullet in his brain.’
‘So why would he lurk out there in the dark?’
‘He spent a long day in the sun. Maybe he’s not thinking straight. Be a tragedy if he died in the dunes, yards from help.’
‘Reckon he might be dangerous?’
‘Danger to himself. Anyway, we each got a gun, right?’
‘So does he.’
Hancock suddenly cocked his head and held up a hand for quiet.
‘Hear that?’
‘What?’ asked Frost.
‘A noise.’
‘Care to be more specific?’
‘A sort of scratching sound.’
They listened.
‘Can’t hear anything.’ Frost gestured to the ladderway and the cabin above. ‘The windows and hatches are taped up. One of them might have come lose, started flapping in the breeze.’
‘No. It’s down here, with us. It’s real close by.’
They listened.
‘Sure you can’t hear it?’ he asked.
‘It’s just the wind. Sure as shit isn’t mice.’
‘Scratching. Don’t know how else to describe it. There it goes again. Hear? Plain as day.’
‘The airframe is broke in a hundred places. She’ll creak day and night.’
Hancock put his ear to the bulkhead like he was eavesdropping on an adjacent room.
‘Could be the pipes,’ said Frost. ‘The fuel lines, coolant, hydraulics. All of them bust open and drained dry. They’ll make weird music as the plane expands and contracts.’
Hancock shook his head. He signalled hush, listened a while, ear still pressed to the wall.
‘Hard to explain. The noise. It’s not structural. It’s not mechanical. How come you can’t hear it? Just sit quiet and listen. Really listen.’
They sat a while.
Frost shrugged.
‘Sorry, Cap.’
‘Scratching. Like claws. Like nails. Plain as day.’
‘Don’t take this wrong, but maybe we should have a look at your head.’
Hancock seemed ready to argue, then gave in to a wave of fatigue.
‘Whatever.’
She sat beside him.
She hooked the trauma kit with her foot and dragged it close.
She gestured to his head.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Cranium feels like I’ve been hit with a bag of nickels. Constant ache. Wearing me down.’
‘How’s your balance? Any improvement?’
‘No. Each time I stand up the ground bucks around like I’m riding a bareback bronc.’
She carefully pulled at the chute fabric that bound his injured head. It was stiff with dried blood. It was gummed to his hair.
She carefully lifted the filthy rag clear and threw it aside.
‘Oh, man.’
The side of his face was swollen and crusted black.
He pulled a Spyderco folding knife from his pocket. He flipped open the blade and examined his reflection.
‘Puts paid to my modelling career.’
‘Probably looks worse than it is. Lot of dried blood. Bet if we clean you up, it won’t be so bad.’
She tore open a packet of towelettes and began to dab flakes of dried blood from the skin surrounding his vacant eye socket.