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  Or maybe his oxygen supply failed and he lost consciousness. Succumbed to hypoxia. Desperately slapped and clawed at harness buckles as his vision narrowed and his mind began to fog.

  Or maybe he chose to die. A dark supposition: Guthrie watched mesmerised as the ground rushed to meet him and became gripped by the same strange throw-yourself-on-the-track death wish that tugs at subway commuters as their train emerges from a tunnel and pulls into the station. The world in ruins, everyone he knew and loved dead or worse. Maybe he couldn’t find the will to grip the parachute cord and save himself.

  ‘Via con Dios, brother.’

  Pat down. She unzipped sleeve and thigh pockets.

  A Spyderco lock-knife. She tossed it. She would stick with her old K-Bar survival blade.

  Morphine shots. She stuffed them in her pocket.

  She searched his vest. She took water, batteries, matches and flares. Felt like grave-robbing, but the guy would understand. He would want her to live.

  She tried his radio in case her own were defective.

  ‘This is Lieutenant Frost, US-B-52 Liberty Bell, any one copy, over?’

  No response.

  ‘Mayday, Mayday. This is an emergency. Airmen in need of rescue. Does anyone copy this transmission, over? Any one at all?’

  NO COMMS.

  She dropped the radio in the sand.

  She ejected the mag from Guthrie’s Beretta and stashed the clip in her survival vest.

  His head jerked and trembled.

  ‘Jesus. Guthrie?’

  She leant close, examined his chest for the rise and fall of respiration.

  He slowly raised an arm. His gloved hand gently pawed her shoulder.

  She knelt in front of him. She squeezed his hand.

  ‘Hold on, dude.’

  She unlatched his oxygen mask. Shattered teeth. He drooled blood.

  She gently lifted his head, and raised the smoked visor.

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  She jumped backwards, stumbled and fell on her ass.

  Guthrie’s upper face was a mess of suppurating flesh. Metallic spines anchored in bone, protruded through rotted skin like a cluster of fine needles.

  ‘So they got you too.’

  He wretched and convulsed. He reached for her, clawed the air, constrained by his seat harness.

  Jet black eyeballs. Guthrie, his mind and memories, replaced by a cruel insect intelligence.

  He raged with frustrated bloodlust.

  Frost struggled to her feet. She watched him thrash in his seat. She contemplated his onyx eyes, his livid, bruise-mottled skin.

  A choking, inhuman howl. He spritzed blood and teeth.

  She unholstered her pistol and shook it from its protective bag. She racked the slide and took aim, anxious to silence the guttural vocalisations, the imbecilic aks, das and blorts of a friend succumbed to dementia.

  ‘Sorry, Guss. Best I can do.’

  Point blank through the right eye. Whiplash. He slumped broken doll, wept blood from an empty socket.

  Sudden silence.

  She blew the chamber cool then reholstered.

  She sat in the sand beside the dead man.

  She contemplated the view.

  The desert. Harsh purity, endless dunes and the widest sky. The kind of place a person might come to confront an indifferent God. Like Buzz Aldrin said, standing in the Sea of Tranquillity, looking out at an airless wasteland: magnificent desolation.

  Good place to die. Better than a hospital bed.

  A water sachet. She sucked it dry and crumpled the plastic envelope.

  A morphine syrette. She bit the cap and injected her thigh.

  She limped east, leaving Guthrie dead on his throne, marooned in vast solitude.

  7

  Sunrise.

  Hancock lay sprawled in the sand. He got dragged a quarter mile through dunes before he regained consciousness and released the chute harness.

  He knelt in the sand at the crest of a steep rise, concussed by the explosive force of egress.

  He reached up with a gloved hand, fumbled a latch and unhooked his oxygen mask.

  Cough.

  Spit.

  Phlegm wet the dust. A string of saliva tinted pink with blood.

  He released the chin-strap and eased the helmet clear. It rolled down the side of the dune kicking up dust in its wake.

  Head shake. Blurred vision.

  He held up a gloved hand and tried to focus. He moved the hand back and forth.

  Blind in his right eye.

  He pulled off gloves and gently touched his face. He flexed his jaw. Unbroken. Fingers crept up his right cheek delicately exploring skin swollen tight.

  Flaccid eyelids. A vacant socket. Pulped flesh. His right eyeball was gone.

  He fell forwards, crouched on hands and knees a long while, trying not to puke.

  Enough. Get your act together.

  He sang:

  ‘Oh, I’m a good ol’ rebel,

  Now that’s just what I am,

  And for this yankee nation,

  I do not give a damn.

  I’m glad I fought again’er,

  I only wished we won.

  I ain’t asked any pardon for anything I’ve

  done.’

  He sang because, despite his injury, despite the pain, he was still, defiantly, James Hancock.

  Maimed. He’d lost part of his body. Grieve for it later.

  He straightened up, returned to a kneel. He shrugged off his life preserver and survival vest.

  His bicep pocket. Three morphine auto-injectors which could render him numb in an instant.

  He examined the hypodermics. A moment away from opiate bliss:

  Bite the cap.

  Stab.

  Press.

  Warm wash of analgesia.

  Throw the depleted hypo aside.

  Instead he returned the unopened syrette to his sleeve pocket.

  No point fleeing pain like a bitch. Got to keep an unclouded mind.

  A signal mirror the size of a playing card tucked in a zip-pouch of his vest. He held up the tab of polished metal like it was a powder compact and examined his face.

  He’d taken a massive blow to the head. The right side of his face was bloody and swollen. Ripped forehead, ripped cheek. Barely recognised himself. He gently lifted his right eyelid. Wet muscle. Severed optic nerve. Giddy realisation: he was peering deep inside his own head.

  Careful scalp examination. A classic aviator’s flat-top buzz-cut matted with blood. He ran fingers through his hair. Split skin. Possible skull fracture.

  He unzipped his flight suit. The force of ejection had ripped the hook-and-loop patches from his sleeve and chest. The stars and stripes, Second Bomb Wing insignia, and Pork Eating Infidel emblem were gone. His name strip had survived: HANCOCK, J.

  He tied sleeves round his waist.

  The CSEL. He held it up to his good eye, squinted as he tried to discern function buttons.

  ‘Mayday, Mayday. Pilot down, anyone copy, over?’

  Dead channel hiss.

  ‘Mayday, Mayday. Anyone copy on SAR? Air Force personnel in need of assistance, come in.’

  Nothing.

  The CSEL should have been unaffected by atmospherics. It should have been unaffected by nearby mountains. But if the USSTRATCOM net were down, if the military had become so degraded Tactical Air communication hubs had been abandoned and satellites were floating dead in orbit, if all AWACs were grounded, then he was truly on his own.

  He sat a while and looked around.

  Fierce sun.

  Endless dunes.

  No trace of Liberty Bell or its crew. No chutes, no wreckage.

  Oppressive solitude. No roads. No pylons. No sign humanity ever walked the earth.

  Cupped hands:

  ‘Hey. Anyone?’

  The desert sucked all power from his voice, made him sound weak and small.

  ‘Anyone hear me?’

  His helmet lay at t
he foot of the dune. He slid down the gradient and picked it up. The composite crown had been split by a massive impact. The padded interior was crusted with blood. Something gelatinous smeared across the cracked visor. He touched and sniffed, then gagged as he realised the tips of his fingers were wet with the remains of his eyeball.

  Head-spinning nausea. He threw the helmet aside and sat head in hands.

  One eye. He would never fly again. Desk job or discharge. Next time he filled out a form he would reach DISABILITIES, and instead of ticking NONE, he would have to specify PARTIALLY SIGHTED.

  Fuck it. The world was falling apart. He’d watched it on TV. Safely garrisoned behind concertina wire and HESCO baskets at Andrews AFB. Big plasma in the canteen. Every news outlet live-streaming Armageddon. Crowds of infected charging Humvee roadblocks with demented aggression, barely slowing as .50 cal rounds blew holes in their flesh. Channel surfing montage: tent cities, corpse-pyres, cities under martial law.

  One by one stations went off air, cellphone signals died, and grieving base personnel were left to picture dead family members bulldozed into a grave-trench, bedsheet-shrouded bodies doused with quicklime or gasoline.

  There would be no desk jobs, no carefully worded résumés. A post-pandemic interview would involve a guy trying to plead his way into a barricaded community: ‘Are you one more useless mouth to feed, or do you have a skill?’ Hancock had basic EMT training and could field-strip/reassemble/function-check an AR-15 in forty seconds. In this new, brutal world, that made him bad-ass ronin. The new American stone age. Cave clans warring over canned food. Folks would offer everything they had – booze, women – to live under his protection.

  Crush this reverie. Face the here-and-now.

  Better bandage the wound. Ensure his eye socket was kept free of dust.

  A rudimentary first-aid kit in a pocket of his vest. He tore open the pouch. Gauze dressing folded into a pad and pressed to the vacant socket. He held the dressing in place with a cross of micropore tape.

  Better shield his head from the unrelenting, blowtorch intensity of the sun.

  The chute lay spread over a nearby dune. He strode towards it.

  Headrush. The world tilted sideways and smacked him in the face. He got to his feet, stood and picked his way slow and careful, swayed like he was crossing the deck of a storm-tossed ship.

  He threw himself down near the chute, pulled the cord hand over hand and brought the fabric within reach. Flipped open his pocket knife and slashed the material, cut a bandana square and tied it round his head. He adjusted the drape of the headdress so it covered his bandaged eye.

  He coughed. Bruised lungs. Might have cracked some ribs.

  More blood in his mouth. He tongued his gums. A missing tooth.

  Supposition: the roof hatch misfired. Should have blown clear soon as he triggered the ejection sequence, but maybe the rim charges didn’t detonate. His seat must have punched it clear as it propelled up and out. Lucky he didn’t lose his legs. Lucky his head wasn’t wrenched clean off.

  Death Valley.

  Tough choice. Head east and cross the Armagosa Range and back into Nevada. Or head west and enter the Panamints, hope to find blacktop road, an easy route into southern California. Either journey would require superhuman endurance.

  Best shot at survival would be to locate the wreckage of the plane and wait for SAR extraction.

  He unholstered his Beretta, blew dust from the weapon, checked the magazine and chamber.

  He slung the survival vest over his shoulder and began to walk.

  ‘I hates the yankee nation and eveything they do.

  I hates the declaration of independence, too.

  I hates the glorious union, ’tis dripping with our blood.

  I hates the striped banner, and fit it all I could.’

  High dunes. Treacherous, sliding sand. He followed contours as best he could.

  His balance was shot. Lurching like a drunk. Each time he looked down the ground flipped up and smacked him in the face like he’d stood on a garden rake. He resolved to stare straight ahead. Distant dunes gave a fixed reference point. Best treat them like an artificial horizon gimbal monitored during a night mission. Imagine he was watching the tilt of a line marker by the eerie green glow of an EVS terrain scope, alert for any pitch deviation. Pretend he was strapped inside his skull, steering his body like a plane.

  He felt dizzy and traumatised. The adrenalin rush, the near-miss euphoria he felt when he woke and discovered he had survived the crash, had ebbed and been replaced by all-pervading fatigue that robbed his limbs of strength.

  He stopped and caught his breath.

  He could barely see. He blinked perspiration from his remaining eye.

  Sweat burned his split scalp and empty, swollen socket as if someone had poured vinegar on the wound.

  Utter exhaustion. His hand kept straying towards his bicep pocket as if it were seeking out morphine of its own volition.

  Time to rest.

  He made for the highest dune, the best vantage point to sit and survey his surroundings.

  A parched wind blowing from the east. He closed his eyes and turned his face to catch the breeze.

  Awful, last-man-on-Earth silence.

  That which does not kill me makes me stronger.

  One of the tough-guy mottos pinned to the wall of the gymnasium annexed by Hancock and his clique of steroidal muscle freaks each morning. Planet Fit, Temple Hills, just off Andrews AFB. They bellowed encouragement and motivational abuse, buckled powerlifter belts, added plate after plate. Vein-popping exertion. Chalked their hands, struggled to bench their own bodyweight, pumped to collapse. They swigged protein shakes, admired their ripped musculature in wall mirrors, daydreamed of acing special forces induction.

  Pain is just weakness leaving your body.

  Time to put that Spartan ideology in motion.

  Remember the warrior creed:

  ‘I will always place the mission first. I will never quit. I will never accept defeat. I will never leave a fallen comrade.’

  You are still in the field, still combat effective. You’ve been tasked. You have a mission to accomplish.

  He reached the top of the dune, stumbled to regain balance. He drew his pistol and fumbled the gun. A clumsy Weaver stance, squinting down the sight with his remaining eye, taking aim at vast nothing.

  ‘Picked the wrong guy to fuck with,’ he shouted, addressing desolate terrain. ‘I’m ready. Been ready my whole goddamned life.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘Give it your best damn shot. Come on. I’ll break you. I’ll take anything you got.’

  He dropped his arms and laughed at himself.

  Losing it. Totally losing it.

  He stowed his pistol, clumsily slotted the weapon into the passive retention holster. Then his legs gave out. He rolled onto his back and lay there a long while, hand pressed to his pounding head.

  Merciless fucking sun.

  He yearned for nightfall.

  He got to his feet and forced himself to walk.

  Lost track of time. His Suunto watch was smashed. The cracked LCD display projected weird, scrambled digits like it was alien tech.

  The sun was still high. Felt like it had been noon for ever.

  A chunk of wreckage.

  Sheet metal protruded from the sand.

  He gripped the panel and dragged it free.

  An ejection hatch. One of the portals blown clear when the egress sequence triggered. Riveted steel streaked black by the detonation of explosive bolts.

  He thought it over.

  Implication: he was walking along the debris trail. Detritus scattered during the plane’s terminal descent. His current bearing would bring him to the crash site. A chance to inspect the fuselage. Because the debrief would begin the moment he boarded the Chinook. Trenchman would demand an immediate sitrep. Hand him bottled water, then clamp earphones to his head so they could communicate above the rotor-roar. What’s the status of the aircraft? What’s the con
dition of the bomb?

  Seventy yards north-west: an ejector seat. The seat had fallen out of the sky, rolled down an incline and come to rest at the foot of a dune.

  He slid down the slope.

  A chute had been balled and stashed beneath the chair frame. Another airman survived the crash.

  He cupped his hands:

  ‘Hey. Sound off.’

  Pause.

  ‘Anyone?’

  A white scrap of garbage at his feet. He tugged it from the sand.

  A torn water sachet.

  Someone impulsive. Someone without the smarts to conserve water.

  He crumpled the plastic in his fist and tossed it aside.

  ‘Lieutenant Early? You out there?’

  Lieutenant Early. Youngest of the crew.

  Hancock stumbled to the crest of a dune and sank to his knees. He shielded his eye from the sun’s glare and scanned the horizon for any sign of the crewman.

  Hoarse bellow:

  ‘Hey. Early?’

  A discarded flight helmet. He picked it up, turned it in his hands. Undamaged.

  Blurred footprints heading out into the wilderness, away from the plane, away from any kind of help.

  He thought it over. Head for the wreckage, or pursue Early into deep desert?

  Poor kid must be terrified. Alone in the wilderness. Struggling across the dunes, mile after mile, head full of panic and fear. He wouldn’t last long.

  Hancock unholstered his pistol and fired a signal shot.

  One final shout:

  ‘Kid, you out there?’

  No sound but a rising, mournful wind. Sand blew from the crests of dunes like smoke. The desert transformed to a smouldering, infernal hellscape.

  I will never leave a fallen comrade.

  But:

  I will always place the mission first. I will never quit.

  Best find the plane.

  He threw the helmet aside and headed north.

  A column of smoke on the horizon. Hard to judge distance.

  Black fumes. A fuel fire. Must be the remains of Liberty Bell.

  Each crewman carried a radio which could switch to transponder mode and act as a homing beacon. Geostationary SAR satellites would pick up the signal. Just set it beeping and wait for rescue. But if comms were down, they would need to make themselves visible from the air. Surest chance of deliverance would be to reach aircraft debris.