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  ‘The plane itself has several communications systems, but none of them are operational. The power is out. Reckon that’s my next job, once I’ve grabbed a little rest. See if there’s life in the aft batteries. Coax a little juice to the flight deck, fire up the UHF and TACAN.

  ‘Truth be told, I’m scared to try. What if I can’t re-route the power? What if the batteries are dead?

  ‘Worse still: what if I restore current to the deck systems, broadcast on every channel, and get no reply? Thing of it is, Guthrie was infected. Must have been sick before he got on the plane. Can’t blame the guy for covering his illness. He was scared. If he’d sought help, told anyone at Vegas he was infected, they would have shot him in the head where he stood. But when did he get bit? The virus must have breached the wire. Someone brought it inside the airport compound. Maybe one of Trenchman’s boys got tagged during a supply run. Brought it home and spread infection across the base. Bunch of guys convinced searchlights and perimeter guns were keeping them safe. But the virus was already inside the garrison, picking them off one by one. Maybe we got out just in time. Maybe they are all dead.

  ‘That’s what I have to face. There’s a very real possibility that the last military installation in this time zone has been wiped out.

  ‘So what if I’m marooned in this god-forsaken place? That’s the question I’ve been trying to avoid. I’ll send out regular distress calls. But what if help doesn’t come?’

  11

  Frost lay in the sand and looked up at the stars. Constellations emerged from the darkening sky. Cassiopeia. Pegasus. Andromeda.

  She enjoyed the evening cool. A sensual, skin-prickle chill.

  She switched on her flashlight a while and let the beam shine upwards into the sky. No moths or mosquitoes dancing in the beam, batting the lamp. No insects of any kind. Implication: no water for miles.

  A distant shout.

  ‘Hey.’

  Frost struggled to sit upright.

  A silhouette at the top of a high dune. A guy in a flight suit.

  He fell. He tumbled in a cascade of dust.

  Frost scrambled to her feet and limped towards the prone figure.

  Hancock. Head bandaged with blood-blackened chute fabric.

  She knelt beside him.

  He fumbled at a pocket of his survival vest. She gently pushed his hands away, extracted a water sachet and tore the corner tab. She lifted his head and held the pouch to his lips.

  He sucked the pouch dry. Feverish thirst.

  ‘Another?’

  He nodded.

  She tore the tab and watched him gulp a second pouch.

  He lay back, panting.

  ‘More water on the plane, right?’ he asked.

  ‘Some.’

  ‘Anyone else make it?’

  ‘Pinback and Guthrie are dead for sure. No sign of the others. Poor bastards must be out in the desert. I’ll start a fire at first light. Put up more smoke. Maybe they’ll see it.’

  Hancock held up his CSEL.

  ‘Couldn’t raise anyone. Not a living soul.’

  ‘The airwaves are stone dead.’

  ‘Thought my radio might be damaged.’

  Frost shook her head.

  ‘There’s no one to raise. It’s as if the whole hemisphere has gone dark.’

  ‘Still,’ he said. ‘Glad you made it, Frosty.’

  He held out a hand. They shook.

  Frost gestured to his injured head.

  ‘Want me to patch you up, sir?’

  ‘Been walking all day. I’m beyond tired. Let me rest a while.’

  ‘Looks like you took a substantial knock.’

  ‘Woke up minus an eye.’

  ‘Lost some blood, by the looks.’

  He nodded. He gestured to his scalp.

  ‘Itches like I-don’t-know-what. Hard to stop myself scratching the wound right open. Torment. How about you? You okay?’

  ‘Messed up my leg.’

  He checked out the splint.

  ‘You can walk. You can put a little weight on it. So I guess it can’t be bust.’

  ‘Morphine dulls the pain. Not sure if that’s good or bad. Might encourage me to exacerbate the injury.’

  ‘You’ll be okay.’

  ‘Does your head hurt?’

  ‘It’s like my migraine has a migraine. Can’t hardly see straight. A thousand drills boring into my skull.’

  ‘There’s a trauma kit aboard the plane. Plenty of dope. I’ll fix you up. Get you high as a Georgia pine.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Pinback is dead, is that right? Then I guess that makes me AC. Better keep a clear head. Responsibilities. There’s a whole new day tomorrow and it ain’t been touched yet. Plenty to do.’

  ‘Maybe you ought to take a shot. Help you concentrate on the tasks at hand.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘With respect, being AC doesn’t mean a whole lot right now. The mission is over, sir. Not much to be done. Just got to sit tight and wait for rescue.’

  Hancock started to get to his feet. He looked resolute, like he was ready to take charge and issue orders. Then his strength gave out and he fell on his back.

  ‘Seriously, sir. You’re played out. Better rest a while.’

  They lay and looked up at the brilliant starfield.

  ‘No planes,’ said Hancock. ‘A dozen flight paths used to intersect over this desert. Few months ago we would have see contrails, running lights.’

  ‘We ought to concentrate on our immediate situation.’

  ‘A silent planet. Nothing moving on the highways. No ships at sea. Imagine the cities. New York. LA. The stillness. The silence.’

  Long pause.

  ‘What if we’re the last people on Earth? If Vegas got wiped out, if the airwaves are dead, maybe there is no one else but us. End of the species. Could be us. Right here, right now.’

  ‘You want to procreate, is that what you’re saying?’

  Hancock smiled.

  ‘Appreciate the offer, but right now I barely have enough energy to blink.’

  They lay in silence a while.

  ‘Thought I was going to die out there, Frost. Die among the dunes. Thought my end had come.’

  ‘Yeah. Me too.’

  ‘Least we survived, right?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Hancock. ‘Least we survived.’

  12

  Frost got to her feet.

  ‘We’ll freeze if we stay out here. We better get inside.’

  She held out a hand and helped Hancock to his feet.

  They leant against each other as they walked to the plane.

  The body.

  Pinback shrouded in the stars and stripes.

  Hancock stood a while, leaning against the hull of the B-52, and contemplated the dead man.

  ‘Don’t mean to speak ill of the departed. Understand he was your friend and all. But the dumb bastard should have punched out.’

  She helped Hancock squirm through the fissure in the fuselage and enter the darkness of the lower cabin.

  He lowered himself to the floor, sat with his back against the nav console.

  Frost crouched and found her survival vest by touch. She unzipped pouches and found her little Fenix flashlight. Cabin lit by a weak pencil-beam.

  ‘There’s a big Maglite in that locker,’ said Hancock.

  Frost threw him a parka.

  She zipped her flight suit and stepped into unlaced boots.

  ‘Try to sleep,’ advised Frost.

  ‘If there is stuff to be done, we ought to set to work before the sun comes up and heat starts to build.’

  ‘You’re in no fit state. Get some rest.’

  She pulled a tool pack from a floor locker. Duct tape. She twisted the reel onto her wrist like a bangle.

  ‘I’m going up top. See if I can patch a few holes, trap a little heat.’

  She climbed the ladder to the flight deck.

  Two of the roof hatche
s were open to the starlit sky.

  Sections of the cabin roof and walls were insulated by padded blankets clipped to the superstructure by poppers. She pulled a couple of blankets free.

  She stood on a trunk stamped LIFE RAFT. She bite-ripped strips of tape and patched the vacant hatch frames with insulation.

  She pulled down blast screens to curtain the missing windows.

  She climbed down the ladder and set the flashlight on the nav console.

  She pulled another blanket from the wall, held it against the split in the fuselage, measured it for size, prepared to seal the plane against a rising night wind.

  ‘I feel bad,’ said Hancock. ‘Sitting here, watching you work.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘No point messing yourself up any further. Just add to my problems. Want to eat? We’ve got food.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ he said.

  ‘Let me know if you get hungry. I’ll fetch snack bars.’

  She tore tape with her teeth.

  ‘Reckon they’ll show up? Trenchman and his gang?’ she asked.

  ‘Only hope we got is that nuke,’ said Hancock. ‘The Joint Chiefs, whoever the fuck it was ordered this mission, will regard you, me, the whole damned crew, as an expendable asset. No point crying about it. Came with the uniform, right? The moment we tied our boots. But promise you this: no way will they shrug off the loss of a tactical nuke, just leave it lying in the sand. They are desperate to erase something out there in the desert, and we got the only warhead at their disposal. If they’re still alive, if they’re still down a bunker somewhere issuing commands, they will make our rescue an absolute priority. Help will come. Just got to sit tight and not panic ourselves into anything stupid.’

  A flicker in the sky outside. Pinprick, brilliant white, falling out of view.

  She squirmed from the plane, limped to a nearby dune and scrambled to the top. Hancock stumbled in pursuit.

  ‘What can you see?’ he asked, looking up at her from the foot of the dune. He tried to stand, but fell on his knees. ‘A searchlight? A chopper?’

  She waved hush and squinted at the distant horizon.

  A distant star shell slowly fell to earth.

  ‘A flare. Somebody else survived.’

  Hancock and Frost stood at the ridgeline. They looked out over moonlit desert.

  She flagged a Maglite back and forth.

  ‘Sure it was a starshell?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Couple of miles.’

  She continued to flag the light.

  An hour later:

  ‘Hey.’

  A voice calling from the desert darkness.

  ‘Who’s out there?’ shouted Hancock, hand on the butt of his pistol.

  ‘Noble, two-nine-five-five-six.’

  Frost trained the Maglite.

  A figure strode towards them across the sand. Noble. He wore a chute fabric headdress. He shielded his face with his hand.

  ‘Get that light out my eyes.’

  He climbed the dune to meet them.

  ‘Good to see you, Frosty.’ Back-slapping hug.

  She looked him up and down. No sign of injury.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m good.’ He gestured to the splint lashed to her leg. ‘How about you?’

  She waved the question away.

  ‘Glad you made it,’ said Hancock. Brief handshake. ‘Thought we’d lost you.’

  Noble checked out the bloody bandage wrapped round his head.

  ‘Looks like you both took a bruising.’

  They stood a while and contemplated the wrecked war machine.

  ‘Breaks my heart to see a bird like that in the dirt,’ said Noble.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Iraq. Afghanistan. Not a scratch.’

  ‘Hunk of metal,’ said Frost. ‘No earthly use getting weepy. Want some water?’

  He licked parched lips.

  ‘I want all the water in the world.’

  She led Noble down the side of the dune.

  She stumbled. Noble put an arm round her shoulder and helped her walk back towards the plane.

  The lower cabin. They sat cross-legged on floor plates.

  Noble gulped from the canteen.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘We could put up flares. Fire them at intervals. You never know. If Early is out there, stumbling around the desert, it might lead him home.’

  ‘Not much point,’ said Hancock. ‘Judging by the direction of footprints, Early headed away from the plane, away from help. Maybe he panicked. Maybe his compass was fucked. Either way, the guy is almost certainly dead.’

  ‘We can’t give up on the kid.’

  Frost nodded.

  ‘It won’t hurt to send up a shell at the top of each hour.’

  Noble spread a map on the deck. Frost trained her flashlight on the chart.

  Miles of beige nothing. Shallow contour lines. Grid squares chequered with the legend: dunes.

  ‘Hard to get a fix on our exact location. Couldn’t get a clear lensatic reading. Couldn’t raise a soul on the CSEL, either.’

  ‘Plenty of metal deposits hereabouts,’ said Frost. ‘Iron salts. Manganese. Uranium. All kinds of shit. We’re probably sitting in the middle of some weird electromagnetic anomaly. Won’t clear radio interference until we reach the mountains and climb.’

  ‘Given our direction of travel, given that we were about six or seven minutes from the drop point, I’d say we were here.’

  He circled a central section of wilderness.

  ‘That’s a long fucking walk,’ said Frost. ‘A shitload of desert any direction you care to choose. On foot? Person couldn’t last more than a couple of days in this kind of environment.’

  ‘It would have to be our very last resort. But hey. There’s always the chance Trenchman will show up at first light. Long shot. But he might have spent the day fixing a fault with their Chinook, trying to get it back in the air. Can’t rule it out. This time tomorrow we could be feet-up in Vegas sipping a cold one.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Frost. ‘But I’d feel a whole lot better if we got power to the flight deck and actually raised someone on the damned radio.’

  13

  The upper cabin.

  Frost sat in the pilot seat and cycled the AC selector.

  Noble, from below:

  ‘Anything?’

  She tapped a volt gauge. The needle remained unresponsive.

  ‘Total flatline.’

  The lower cabin.

  Noble helped Frost lift a fuse panel from the wall behind the EWO console. The primary distribution bus. He held the flashlight steady while she examined tangled cable.

  Burnouts. They trimmed and spliced cable.

  They replaced the fuse panel. All load switches set to green. She returned to the pilot seat and toggled for power.

  Nothing.

  ‘We should be getting twenty-eight volts DC from the auxiliaries. Enough to restore essential systems.’

  ‘Line break?’

  Frost shook her head.

  ‘Cells must have shorted out, drained dry.’

  ‘Dammit.’

  ‘We’ve got one more shot,’ said Frost. ‘There is a backup power cell, a nickel-cadmium battery in the aft of the plane.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘So I guess someone will have to take a walk and find the tail.’

  Noble and Hancock looked out over the moonlit dunescape.

  A wide debris trench, like preliminary construction for a highway. The trench was littered with wreckage. Structural spars, scraps of fuselage, a massive undercarriage bogie ripped from a wheel-well.

  ‘Can’t be too far,’ said Hancock.

  They set off.

  Noble looked towards the horizon. Pinnacles and flat-top mesas, a jagged ribbon of black against a fabulous dusting of stars.

  ‘Funny. You can make out the mountains clearer tha
n day.’

  Hancock stumbled a couple of times.

  ‘You all right?’ asked Noble.

  ‘Concussion.’

  ‘Maybe you should sit this one out.’

  ‘It’ll pass.’

  ‘How much ground you reckon we’ve covered?’ asked Noble.

  ‘Quarter of a mile, give or take.’

  ‘Can’t be too far.’

  ‘Better watch where you tread,’ said Hancock, stepping over a torn wing panel. ‘This shit wants to cut you wide open. Like walking through a field of razors.’

  ‘Think we’re the first humans to set foot on this patch of ground? Sure, plenty of people criss-crossed the desert. Pioneers. Prospectors. But this particular stretch of sand. Think we’re the first?’

  ‘Pretty good chance we’ll be the last.’

  They kept walking.

  Their breath fogged the air.

  ‘Freezing.’

  ‘Enjoy it,’ said Noble. ‘Sunrise in a while. Another hot day.’

  ‘Shame about Early.’

  ‘Let’s not write him off just yet. He’s green, but he’s not stupid.’

  ‘You and Frost are pretty tight, yeah?’ asked Hancock.

  ‘The whole crew. Been flying a long while. Four, five years.’

  The tail section sat in the middle of the debris trench a quarter of a mile from the main fuselage. A massive cruciform silhouette against the stars.

  They trudged towards the wreckage until they were within the moon-shadow of the stabiliser fins.

  Tail number: MT66.

  The sand was carpeted with fluttering foil strips spilt by the underwing chaff dispensers.

  The orange brake chute was spread on sand behind the empennage. Fabric wafted and rippled.

  The rudder gently creaked and swung in the night breeze.

  They kicked through foil.

  Noble banged his fist on the fuselage. Hollow gong.

  ‘Early? Yo. Nick. You in there?’

  No reply.

  Hancock looked around.

  ‘No footprints, that I can see. Nobody here but us.’

  They peered into the cave-dark of the fuselage interior. The flashlight beam played over twisted spars and ripped fuselage panels.

  A tight crawlspace.

  ‘Think there might be snakes? Scorpions?’ asked Noble.