‘She’s got no standard inventory. Most of the lockers are empty. Nothing but a bunch of Arctic survival gear.’
Frost contemplated the featureless landscape. Scalloped dunes. Flare light transformed the desert to a vista of rippling dream-forms.
‘No tracks,’ she said. ‘Not a single footprint.’
‘My first thought? Vultures. Wolves. Pinback got snatched while our backs were turned. Something big, with a taste for carrion.’
‘He weighed over two hundred pounds in flight gear,’ said Frost.
‘Just running through the possibilities.’
‘Said you saw two guys standing by the fire. Two. If one of them was Early, who the hell was the other guy?’
‘Not sure what I saw,’ said Hancock. ‘I got one eye. Can’t see too clear. Might have been nothing. Nothing at all.’
‘Maybe there are preppers out here. Kind of remote location a survivalist might build a refuge for himself and his family. Cache weapons and cans during the good times.’
‘But why take Pinback?’
‘Running low on food.’
‘Perhaps he was infected. Dead, but not dead.’
‘Maybe. Maybe he got up and walked. By like I said: no tracks.’
The star shell fell to earth and died. Dark dunes and a starlit sky.
‘Bullshit aside,’ said Hancock. ‘Someone’s out there for sure, watching us, determined to fuck with our heads.’
The lower cabin.
Frost unclipped an insulation pad from the wall, exposing cable runs and pipe work.
She examined pipes. She wanted a section of tubing thick enough, strong enough, to support her weight.
The wrench. She unbolted a four-foot section of inch-thick hydraulic line. She unscrewed restraining brackets and lifted it clear. Residual hydraulic fluid dripped and pooled on the floor.
She measured the pipe against her body, wedged it beneath her armpit, tested it as a crutch.
A good fit.
She sat in the nav seat, unsheathed her knife and began to slit the insulation pad.
Noble joined her.
He shook sand from his hair, slapped dust from his clothes. He looked around the lower cabin, assessed its potential as a defensible redoubt.
He nodded approval.
‘This is good. This is secure. One way in or out. We ought to barricade this opening, though. Block it with a couple of equipment cases.’
He picked up a canteen. He rubbed the cool canister across his face and neck, and set it down unopened.
He gestured to the upper cabin.
‘Not much we can do to block the flight deck windows. The blast curtains could deter snipers, I guess. Deny a target.’
Noble stood at the ragged fissure in the fuselage wall and stared out into darkness.
‘Why don’t they attack? Couple of determined guys could take us out anytime they want. Wouldn’t break a sweat.’
His hand strayed to his shoulder holster. He stroked the polymer grip.
‘Must be toying with us. Psy-ops. Some kind of mindfuck.’
Frost padded the crutch with insulation fabric, and lashed it with cable cut from the sixty miles of wiring that snaked through the conduits and cavities of the plane.
‘Got to keep a little perspective. Easy to go nuts in a place like this. The space. The silence. Easy to fill it with our fears.’
‘Pinback is gone. That’s real enough. And whatever took his body snatched it quick and clean. Didn’t make a noise, didn’t leave a trace. Sure as hell wasn’t Early. Not without help.’
‘I suppose.’
‘What if we have to walk out of here? Think about it. We’ve got precious little water. You and Hancock are hobbled by major injuries. We’d struggle to cover ten miles a night. And if we had hostiles dogging our steps? Bastards intent on taking us out one by one? We wouldn’t stand a chance. We’d be easy prey.’
Frost tested the crutch. She walked back and forth. She glanced at Noble. He looked exhausted, strung out.
‘Take a moment. Get your head together. We’re armed. We’ve got plenty of ammunition. We’re badder than anything cat-stepping around those dunes, all right? Just got to watch our backs until daybreak. If anyone is out there, messing with our heads, they won’t try anything after sunrise. Too much exposure.’
Hancock, called from outside:
‘Guys. Better get out here.’
‘My turn to bring bad news.’
Hancock held up his CSEL.
A voice, heard through crackling interference. Male, stern:
‘…cabinet officers… terms of The 1947 Presidential Succession Act, I have assumed that grave respons…’
‘Is this the BBC?’ asked Frost. ‘Is this a live transmission?’
Hancock mimed hush.
‘…unthinkable, only to be countenanced as an absolute last resort. But, I have to tell you now, at five o’clock, eastern standard time, I gave that terrible order. Our courageous armed forces, both at home and abroad, did their duty…’
The voice swamped by static. Hancock held the radio above his head to regain signal.
‘…San Antonio, Dallas and Detroit. And I ask anyone who can hear this broadcast, whether you are a citizen of the United States or not, to pray for their souls…’
‘What’s the guy talking about?’ asked Noble.
‘Evergreen,’ said Hancock. ‘He’s talking about Evergreen. I heard rumours. Didn’t think they’d go through with it.’
‘Evergreen?’
‘OPLAN eight-oh-eight. The final roll of the dice. If they couldn’t stop the virus, if major cities become hot-beds of infection, they could invoke a doomsday option.’
‘Jesus,’ said Frost, catching the obvious implication. ‘You can’t be serious.’
Hancock nodded confirmation.
‘Nuclear strike. Incinerate every substantial metropolitan area.’
‘…both Berlin and Munich… still no world from our French correspondents… lit the northern sky… no further communication from Paris…’
‘Dear God.’
‘Enhanced radiation weapons. Tritium/deuterium nukes. Sandmans. Way more lethal that the tac we’ve got in our hold. The blast itself is pretty low yield, but they pulse intense gamma radiation at the moment of detonation. No hiding place. Cuts through concrete and steel. Any mammal within a ten-mile radius; human, whatever, will sicken and die in hours.
‘The blast itself will spread cobalt-sixty and a bunch of other isotopes over the surrounding area. Lethal contamination. Long half-life. Even if we make it out of here, we will have to keep away from cities. They’ll be dead zones. No cats, no dogs, no birds. Centuries before a person could walk the streets.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ.’
‘What else could they do? Only way to purge the virus. Destroy the world in order to save it.’
‘God in heaven.’
Frost looked towards the starlit horizon.
‘So what do we do? America is a wasteland. Even if we make it out of this desert, where on earth can we go?’
21
Frost, Hancock and Noble climbed to the top of the ridgeline and watched the sky lighten with the first trace of dawn. They were cotton-mouthed with thirst, each determined not to be the first to break resolve and gulp their morning ration from the canteen.
‘Twenty-four hours since the crash,’ said Noble. Dry cough. ‘Feels like a month.’
‘We need a plan,’ said Frost. ‘An actual plan. We’ve spun our wheels twenty-four hours. Time to face reality. No one is coming for us. So we better decide, here and now, how we intend to get back to the world.’
They sat in the sand and looked out over the crash site. The eastern sky turned fine azure. One by one, stars faded into oncoming day. The sun would break the horizon within the hour. Nightmare light. It would quickly cook the desert like a blowtorch flame, turning the dunes to a heat-rippling hellscape by mid morning.