Twisted bodies at the bottom of the gradient. Red jumpsuits, snapped limbs, part-buried beneath stones. One of the revenants was pinned under a boulder. Skeletal hands feebly slapped the massive stone, tried to roll it aside.
Noble sat a while and contemplated the compound.
He gestured to the wrecked buildings.
‘So what is this place? Evidently some pretty dark shit going down, some army docs getting in touch with their inner Mengele, but is it truly worth a nuclear weapon?’
‘Wait till sunrise,’ said Trenchman. ‘I’ll give you the full tour.’
40
The lower cabin.
Hancock pulled the barricade aside as quietly as he could and leant through the fissure in the fuselage wall. The desert night. Deep darkness. He shone his flashlight left and right. Undisturbed sand.
‘Frost?’
He reluctantly stepped from the plane, torch in one hand, Beretta in the other.
‘Frost? You still there?’
He approached the extinct signal fire. Anxious three-sixty scan of surrounding dunes.
Frost still knelt with a leash round her neck, arms locked cruciform.
‘You okay?’
She looked up. She didn’t speak. Haunted, terrified eyes.
He held the flashlight under his armpit, took a knife from his pocket and flicked it open. He cut the leash.
‘Let’s get inside.’
Hancock rebuilt the barricade.
He cut Frost free of the crutch. She sank to the floor, still set cruciform. She slowly flexed her shoulders, winced as she tried to bend her elbows and lower her arms. Sensation gradually returned to numb limbs.
Hancock kept the gun trained on her head.
‘Climb the ladder.’
Frost pulled herself upright. She gripped the ladder for support.
‘Take a long, hard look at yourself,’ said Hancock. ‘Dead on your feet. Planning to throw some kung fu my way? Best think again.’
She gripped the ladder rungs. She tried to climb. She gnashed her teeth and snorted in pain as her injured leg refused to hold her weight.
Hancock pushed her ass, forced her up onto the flight deck.
She fell on her hands and knees.
He climbed the ladder. He stood over her, pistol trained at her head.
He took wire from his pocket and bound her hands to a wall stanchion.
‘Stay there. Don’t fuck around.’
He set his flashlight on top of the avionics console.
An eerie stillness. They could hear a rising night wind whistling through the broken cockpit windows, fluttering the nuclear blast curtains. They could hear the tick and creak of the plane’s superstructure contracting in the evening cool.
The flashlight beam flickered and dimmed. A dying battery. They stared at it, like they were contemplating a guttering candle flame.
‘We need more light,’ said Hancock. He checked lockers.
‘Why did you change your mind?’ asked Frost. ‘Why bring me inside?’
‘I got lonesome.’
He found a large 3xD cell Maglite. He tested the beam.
‘You were out there, in the dark, for a full hour,’ he said. ‘See anything? Hear anything?’
‘I heard them walking around. They paced the site like they were checking it out.’
‘They didn’t come near you?’
‘One of them stood behind me,’ said Frost. ‘I didn’t dare move. He stood there a long while. Stank to high heaven. Then he moved off.’
‘Why did he leave you alone?’
‘No idea.’
He sat in the pilot seat, lifted one of the blast screens and peered into the dark.
‘Anything?’ asked Frost.
‘No. But I reckon they’re out there, circling like sharks. Wish I could make sense of it. Fucking mind games. It’s as if they’re trying to drive us nuts.’
‘Doing a pretty good job,’ muttered Frost.
‘It’s a virus. Nothing more than a strain of flu. Hard to credit any kind of smarts. Maybe it’s studying us. Testing our resolve, trying to find a common breaking point. Sort of thing a general might do in wartime, right? Send out a raiding party. Use provocation to draw the enemy out, gauge the strength of its forces.’
Frost shook her head.
‘It’s already got the measure of us.’
‘Well, in that case, maybe it’s just having fun.’
Hancock bent and peered through a vacant cockpit window.
‘I can see one of them. About fifty yards, dead ahead. Just standing there, in the moonlight.’
‘Who? Pinback?’
‘Can’t tell.’
Hancock continued to squint into the darkness.
‘What’s it doing?’ asked Frost.
‘Nothing. Just standing there, looking at us.’
‘Looks like we got a straight choice. Hide in here all night and hope they don’t attack or suit up and take the fight to them. I vote we head outside and push for a stand-up fight. Fuckers aren’t supernatural. They’re flesh and blood, just like us. A well-placed bullet will put them down for good.’
‘You shot Guthrie in the head. Didn’t slow him down much.’
‘Then let me finish the job. Put a round in his medulla. That’ll stop his clock.’
Hancock thought it over.
‘Time to decide,’ said Frost. ‘You wanted to be AC. You wanted to be the boss. So how do you intend to play it? Do we cower in here all night, or head outside and seize the initiative?’
Hancock sipped from his canteen.
Frost watched him drink, listened to liquid slosh in the metal flask. She was tempted to lick parched lips, but didn’t want to betray any signs of weakness.
He saw her attention fixed on the canteen.
‘Cheers,’ he said. He toasted her and took another gratuitously long sip. He screwed the cap back on the metal bottle.
‘You know the deal. All the water you want, in return for the code.’
‘I told you. I don’t remember a single digit.’
‘You’ll remember. When you are strung out, desperate enough. Your subconscious will offer it up.’
‘Untie my hands, at least. What if those things outside decide to attack? I got a right to defend myself.’
Hancock shook his head.
‘Ain’t got the energy to keep chasing you around. I’m going to keep you on a very short leash from now on.’
‘You got the gun,’ she said. ‘I’m in no shape to give any trouble.’
He thought it over.
‘All right.’
He cut her free from the wall stanchion.
‘Thanks.’
She flexed her arms and rubbed wrist welts.
‘Hold out your hands.’
‘For God’s sake.’
‘If they attack, you can run. Save yourself. But that’s all you get.’
He retied her hands.
‘Shift that trunk. Block the ladder.’
A Peli trunk full of life preservers. Frost shunted the box to cover the ladderway hatch.
She gestured to the windows.
‘Maybe you should check outside one more time. See what those bastards are doing.’
He hesitated. He didn’t want Frost to call the shots.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We need to know what’s going on out there.’
Hancock crossed the flight deck and pulled back a blast screen. He checked over his shoulder to make sure Frost was still sat on the floor.
‘Anything?’
‘Nothing. No sign.’
Hancock sat opposite Frost.
Frost exhaled and watched her breath fog the air.
‘Getting pretty cold.’
He didn’t reply. He stifled a yawn.
‘Long night, huh?’ she said. ‘How long do you think you can stay awake?’
‘I’ll sleep sound enough, once you’re lashed to the wall.’