They rebuilt the barricade and climbed to the flight deck.
They sat opposite sides of the cabin, backs to the wall.
Hancock: the improvised bandaged wrapped round his head was stained with pus and blood. Stubble turning to beard.
Frost: crazy, sand-dusted hair, peeling skin, cracked lips.
‘Long fucking day,’ said Hancock.
Frost nodded.
Her eye was drawn to the trauma kit. A clear bag of saline protruded from a zippered pouch. The liquid sparkled as it refracted sunlight, like the surface of a lake inviting her to dive and swim. Tempted to pierce the bag with the tip of her knife and suck on it like a tit, guzzle salted water until the bag crumpled dry. She blinked to dispel the reverie.
‘Looks like we’re fucked,’ said Hancock. ‘Noble should have reached the target site by now. If there were serviceable vehicles to be found, he would be back already.’
Frost ignored him. Hancock seemed to revel in their predicament, seemed anxious to discuss every catastrophic possibility. She just wanted to rest.
‘How’s your head?’ she asked. The side of Hancock’s face was dark and swollen. She could smell rot. He didn’t seem to be infected by the virus. He was succumbing to septicaemia. They needed to make it to a pharmacy, find some antibiotics. ‘Want me to take a look at that wound?’
‘Can’t see the use.’
They sat a while.
‘So how long do you intend to wait?’ asked Hancock.
‘For Noble? A while yet. He’s got a long way to walk. Lot of rough ground. Might take him a few days. Can’t give up on the guy just yet.’
‘How much water has he got?’
‘Some.’
‘And if he doesn’t show up? What then? Given any thought?’
‘Walk.’
‘What the use?’ asked Hancock. ‘You’re lame. Those fucks hiding in the dunes would attack before you got a mile from here.’
‘Maybe.’
‘They’ll be back for sure, once the sun goes down.’
‘And we’ll be waiting.’
Hancock shifted position, tried to get comfortable.
‘We still got a mission,’ he said. ‘We still got something to achieve.’
‘Don’t start with that shit.’
‘We could make it to the target. You and me. Cover each other’s back. We could hold off those fuckers long enough to deliver the bomb.’
‘This whole kamikaze deal is turning into some kind of freakin’ monomania. You’re fucked up. You fall on your ass every couple of steps. You aren’t going anywhere. Let it go.’
‘I’m still AC. Remember that.’
‘Come on. Chain-of-command doesn’t mean a thing out here. The badge on your sleeve isn’t worth a damn. You’re like some shipwrecked guy on a desert island, driven mad by solitude. Crowns himself emperor of all he surveys. Sits on his bamboo throne, all regal and ragged. Lord of the Coconuts. King of the Crabs. I mean look around you, Jim. Aircraft Commander? There’s no aircraft to command. Just a pile of half-buried scrap.’
‘How do you want to die, Frost? That’s the only latitude we got left. We get to choose. A luxury most folks didn’t have these past months. Think back. Took a lot of guts to get those wings, right? A lot of sweat. The Academy. The graduation salute. LaNitra Frost. Officer of the United States Air Force. Flew these birds for Uncle Sam, and proud of it. Used to mean something. So why not put on war paint one last time? There’s a battle to be fought.’
‘No there isn’t. Remember those Japanese soldiers that hid in the jungle for decades because they didn’t know Hirohito surrendered? That’s us, right now, marooned, fighting a lost fucking cause.’
‘I still believe in you,’ said Hancock. ‘That’s the tragedy. I can see the officer you used to be. Wish I could hold up a mirror, make you understand.’
He drew his pistol, chambered and cocked. He pointed the weapon at Frost’s head, aimed with his one remaining eye.
They stared each other down. Hancock’s unblinking gaze lining the front and rear sights.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ said Frost.
‘Take out your side arm. Do it slow.’
She thought about it, tried to get the measure of the man’s resolve.
He let her see his finger whiten on the trigger.
She pinched the butt of her pistol between thumb and forefinger, and lifted it clear of the holster.
‘Eject the clip.’
She slid the magazine across the deck towards him.
‘And the gun.’
She span it across the floor.
‘Good. Now give me the authorisation code.’
36
Noble clambered across the rockface. He worked north, shuffled ledge to ledge. His arms burned with fatigue. His fingers cramped.
A low sun threw long shadows, turned the crags and boulders rich caramel. He could already see the moon in a darkening sky. A minor boon in a string of catastrophes: at least he would have good visibility tonight.
High above the desert. Could almost see the curvature of the earth.
An hour since he woke. He had spent the day on a plateau, curled in the shadow of a boulder. A febrile semi-sleep. He had an eagle’s eye view of the desert. The centre of the limestone outcrop had been burned black by campfires. The place had almost certainly been used as a vantage point by native Americans. Bet if he kicked around in the dust he would unearth flint arrowheads. If he climbed higher he would find rocks stained with alien, aniconic art. Handprints and swirls. Markers left by aboriginals who climbed to this remote elevation to commune with gods and vultures.
The plan: head north across the mountainside. Sooner or later he would find himself overlooking the aim point, the site targeted for destruction. He guessed he’d know it when he saw it. Must be something out here, some kind of significant installation.
Faint clatter of rocks to his left.
He looked up, studied the crags and ledges above. Trickling dust.
Couldn’t shake the skin-crawling sensation of being watched, the suspicion his steps had been dogged by an unseen presence ever since he reached the Range. He hoped any infected that might be haunting the mountainside wouldn’t develop the smarts to roll a boulder on his head.
A mine entrance. Truck rails. A couple of yards of shaft, then rubble.
He picked a tin DANGER sign from the ground and wiped away dust.
ANACONDA MINING CORP.
A shaft sunk by uranium prospectors looking for a seam. One of the few reasons a person would visit this blighted place.
Adventurers scoured the Panamints. They dynamited the cliffs and sifted scree, looking for a telltale sheen of gold. A fresh wave of chancers chipped samples with a rock hammer, scanned rubble with a Geiger rig, whooped like wildcatters when they struck a pocket of uranium ore. A Faustian deal. Euphoric prospectors would stake a claim with the county recorder, clothes matted with radioactive dust. A few years rolling in big money, then thyroid cancer.
Vague memories of The Conqueror, the god-awful Genghis Khan biopic staring John Wayne. Filmed in the desert downwind of the Upshot-Knothole nuclear tests, the night detonations that had Hughes-era tourists partying around the roof pools of their Vegas hotels, toasting the gamma flash as it lit the horizon like summer lightning. The crew spent a month filming their Mongol turkey. They erected a barbarian camp, marshalled a galloping hoard for the battle scenes, nursed embryonic carcinomas as they breathed dust tainted with lethal isotopes cooked in the radiant millisecond of fission.
The atomic desert. An implacably lethal environment.
Noble allowed himself a sip of water. His canteen was half empty. Another day, two at the most, and he would enter the terminal stages of dehydration. At which point he might as well eat a bullet, or swan-dive from a high crag.