Trenchman sombrely nodded his head.
‘It simply wants us dead.’
The compound.
The sun was high. Heat starting to build.
‘There’s nothing left to see,’ said Trenchman. ‘I could show you dissection footage, autopsy photos, but you wouldn’t learn anything more than you already know. Even horror gets monotonous after a while. We should find shade.’
They walked through a break in the perimeter wire and headed for the mountain wall.
Trenchman sniffed the air. Stink of burning flesh carried on the breeze. Seemed to be coming from behind an outcrop to the north.
‘They burned the bodies?’ asked Noble.
‘A big pyre, behind those rocks over there.’
‘How many?’
‘A lot. You don’t want to see it, believe me.’
They climbed the crags and boulders until they reached Trenchman’s camp. Blankets, cached food and water.
They sat in shade and looked out over the battle-torn compound. They opened a couple of bean tins and ate with sporks.
‘So you’ve been waiting for us?’ asked Noble.
‘Seemed a better idea than chasing you guys round the desert. Figured you folks would head this way sooner or later. Better sit tight and wait for you to show up.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘Wait until sundown, then head west across the mountains. Try to find a backcountry road, see where it leads.’
‘Frost. Hancock. I can’t leave them.’
‘I came out here hoping to scoop you all up, get you to safety. Not sure it’s going to be possible. This is your only shot at survival, dude. Come with me. Tonight.’
Noble shook his head.
‘I have to go back.’
They sat a while and ate.
‘I’ll leave a stash of food and water,’ said Trenchman. ‘If you make it back here with your friends, there’ll be enough supplies for you guys to recuperate a while, then try to cross the mountains. Who knows? Maybe we’ll meet again, somewhere down the line.’
They sat looking out over the vast aridity and relished a parched desert wind. They listened to the unearthly silence.
‘Seen so many people die,’ said Trenchman. ‘Still have a hard time comprehending it will happen to me. One day the sun will rise, and I won’t be there to see it. Leaves on the trees, birds in the sky, but I won’t exist.’ He took a sip from his canteen. ‘They say you shouldn’t be scared of death. Pure nothing, same as before you were born.’
‘One last question for you,’ said Noble.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Why drop a bomb? They nuked the cities. I get it. Exterminating a termite nest. But this place? Apache? Sure, nefarious shit went down, but there’s no one left alive to give a damn.’
‘No idea. But I’d be willing to speculate. The continuity government. Bunch of politicians and generals hiding in a NORAD bunker. They signed the order for these human trials. Command responsibility. So now they are covering their tracks.’
‘Like I said. Why give a damn? It’s not like they’ll ever face trial. There’ll be no Nuremberg tribunal. And even if there were, who would blame them for trying to defeat the virus?’
‘They’re rewriting history. If the human race survives this mess, if there’s a new America, then the decisions that were made, the battles that were fought in these dark days, will be part of a new founding myth. The guys in that bunker, the generals, the cabinet officers, know they’ll be dead soon enough. Entombed deep underground, sealed behind a thirty-ton blast door. But they want to be remembered like Lincoln or Jefferson. One day, if the nation is rebuilt, the country may have a new capitol, a new Washington. The top brass expect to be commemorated. Sculpted in marble. Printed on dollars. So that’s why they want to erase this place. To sanitise the historical narrative. To make them undisputed heroes.’
‘All this death, to serve some fucker’s ego.’
Trenchman smiled.
‘Same as it ever was.’
42
The lower cabin.
Frost picked through ransacked gear. A nylon tool roll. Wrenches and sanitary wipes scattered on the deck plate. A parka, ripped down the back, spilling synthetic down.
Pinback had stumbled around the cabin, kicking over equipment boxes, punching open wall-mounted lockers.
Frost tried to make sense of his actions. Had there been any method to his search? What had he hoped to achieve? The ladder to the cockpit was visible enough. He could have climbed, pushed aside the trunk blocking the hatchway and attacked. Yet he seemed intent on exploring the interior of the plane rather than acquiring fresh victims.
She threw an empty chute pack aside. She pushed scattered meds back inside the trauma kit.
She studied handprints on the fuselage wall. Dust streaks where fingers raked metal.
A strand of flesh hung from a fractured spar at hip level. She leant close and inspected it.
Skin tissue dried like jerky.
The horror of infection. A living death. The parasite that colonised her fellow crewman was vibrantly alive, swelling and spreading through blood vessels and musculature, but his body was a fast-decaying hunk of meat. The creature that explored the plane the previous night, clawed metal and stumbled against the walls, was effectively a walking cadaver.
The stench of rot-gas still hung in the air.
Boot prints on dust-matted deck plate. She examined the overlapping trail, tried to reconstruct Pinback’s movements. Scuff marks centred on the rear of the cabin: the crawlspace that led to the bomb bay.
Frost shone her flashlight into the narrow passageway half expecting to find Pinback curled foetal, hibernating until nightfall.
She climbed into the steel tunnel and crawled on her hands and knees. She inspected the hatch leading to the payload bay. Palm prints and scratch marks. A crude attempt to force his way inside.
She stroked abraded metal.
‘Why did you want to get inside the bomb bay, Pinback? What was on your mind?’
Frost stepped from the plane into dazzling morning light. She shielded her eyes and let them adjust.
Blurred prints heading away into desert.
She drew her pistol, and limped in pursuit. She followed the trail across the sand, up the lee side of a dune.
Additional prints. Three people walking side by side. Pinback joined by his companions. Equidistant tracks, like they were marching in lock-step.
She stood at the crest of the ridgeline, squinting into the low morning sun.
The tracks led away across the sand, then abruptly terminated as if the three figures simultaneously dropped to their knees and burrowed beneath the ground.
She led Hancock outside. His arms were lashed to the crutch with chute harness straps. She tied cable round his neck like a leash, and tethered him to the undercarriage wheel.
He knelt and looked up at her. He was gaunt. Skin blistered and peeling. Stubble lengthened to a scraggy beard.
‘Reckon you’ve aged twenty years these past few days,’ she said. ‘Can’t imagine I look much better.’
She gestured to the sun.
‘Ready to catch a few rays?’
Hancock didn’t reply.
Frost uncapped a bottle of water and held it to his lips. He hesitated, like he wanted to refuse but was too parched to turn down the offer.
She let him take a couple of long swigs, then pulled the bottle away.
He swilled water round his mouth like he was debating whether to spit it in her face.
‘Enjoying your revenge?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.’
She walked to the B-52 and sat in the shadow of the nose.
Hancock shuffled around, turned his back on the sun.