Next morning, two of the Special Forces troopers had disappeared. So had two girls from the base that they had been seen spending a considerable amount of time talking with. It could only be concluded that they had unilaterally deemed their military careers to be over.
The showers in the changing rooms at the rear of the hangars still worked and delivered hot water, and for fifteen minutes Keene abandoned himself to the luxury of washing away the feeling of two days and two nights spent in the same clothes, and of getting rid of the all-pervasive red dust. It got in the eyes, in the ears, and in the nostrils, and lodged in the creases of collars, hoods, and seams until it found a chink to get inside. It itched and it burned, and when rubbing and scratching broke the skin it caused sores that inflamed. “The plague of boils,” Keene thought to himself as he applied a soothing cream to painful areas on the sides of his neck and the backs of his hands, then covered them with adhesive dressings. Then, wonder of wonders, he put on a clean change of underwear, shirt, and pants from the bag he hadn’t opened since before leaving the hotel in Pasadena.
Penalski and his Marines had not changed their minds about rejoining their unit at Twentynine Palms. The Cessna had taken minor damage but was up to making the short return trip, for which its fuel was ample. They also had enough space aboard to take four casualties who would otherwise have had to be moved by road. Dan and Cliff drove with a couple of Air Force ground crew and two Marines riding shotgun to refill a bowser at the fueling point on the far side of the airfield for the Rustler. While volunteers from among those who were due to leave in the Samson-now pushed up beyond 400 people-risked intermittently falling gravel to clear debris from the main runway, the remainder of Keene and Cavan’s groups held an impromptu conference inside the smaller hangar.
There was some dissent among Mitch’s force. General Ullman had offered them a clearance into the Cheyenne Mountain refuge, and Mitch’s second-in-command, a Captain Furle, felt they should take it. Since there were no fixed orders to return East, and it was far from certain that there was anywhere organized for them to return to even if they made it, their first priority should be to get the men to safety while the opportunity was there. Although Mitch hadn’t gone into details with the men as to why they were talking about going to Texas and Mexico, Furle gathered it was some private business of Keene’s and didn’t think it should be their affair-certainly not something to be risking lives over. They should put down first at Peterson Base near Colorado Springs where the Samson was heading, Furle argued, and anyone who wanted to do Keene a favor could carry on from there.
“The problem with that is that we might not get past Peterson,” Mitch replied. “We didn’t exactly come by this piece of equipment in a way that you’d call official. Some brass there might just take it into his head to decide that it’s government property with better things it could be doing, and impound it.”
“And he might have a point there, right enough, too,” Furle agreed, not giving an inch. And maybe Furle had a point too, Keene had to admit as he stood listening. Normally, he would have been surprised at such discord within an elite fighting unit of this kind. But Cavan had mentioned that not all of these men had trained together in the way that creates trust and cohesion. It was a scratch force, thrown together at a moment’s notice from whoever had been available.
Mitch stepped to the center of the group, his hands raised for attention. He was tall and broad, with solid, square-jawed, handsome features topped by a mane of black, wavy hair. Keene saw him as confident and capable, but with something of a flamboyant streak that put him in his element before a crowd. Good leader material and a natural as a showman, easily pictured as a performer or media personality if he had applied himself to it. But there was a lot of the adventurer there too, which perhaps went some way to explaining how he had ended up in an irregular military unit-and perhaps why he had agreed to go along with the Texas escapade.
“Guys, strictly, Terry is correct,” he began. “What we did the other night was without official orders. A matter of pure initiative. But as a force, we’ve always taken pride in our ability to act independently when the need is there, right? That’s what we’ve all trained for, what our reputation is built on. And there’s no question that what we accomplished was fully in accord with top national priority. The President-your commander-in-chief-was personally concerned that the Kronians were returned safely to their ship, and that was what we helped him do.”
He turned, appealing to all of them. “One, maybe a couple of hours longer than we’d take anyway. That’s all that’s being asked, guys. How long did it take us to make it here to Vandenberg from Washington? This time we’re talking about four states, that’s all. Half the distance we did the other night. We drop down into Texas, pick up a few people, shuttle them across the border-and then it’s on up to Atlanta for dinner. Only the difference is that you’ll be able to enjoy your dinners better from knowing that we finished the job.”
Mitch put his fists on his hips and looked around. From the looks and the glances being exchanged, Keene could see he was carrying them. Even Furle was looking less militant. “What do you say, guys?’ Mitch invited, looking at the Rustler’s two crew.
“Sure-one, maybe two hours extra should do it,” Dan agreed, nodding.
Cliff seconded by nodding. He was curly haired and boyish, said little but was widely liked. He seemed to have touched a mothering reflex in Alicia.
It was enough. The majority responded with nods and assenting murmurs. Furle accepted the verdict without further protest.
The bowser returned, and while the Rustler’s tanks were being filled, Keene went with Cavan, Penalski, Mitch, and a squad of Mitch’s troopers to the larger hangar to present compliments to General Ullman and mount rearguard while the final boarding of the Samson was completed. The Cessna, already loaded, taxied up to collect Penalski and then took off first, banking into a turn out to sea and disappearing southward at low altitude, following the coast. The huge Samson went next, rolling almost the length of the runway before lifting, fading quickly, and then vanishing into the overcast-a slightly higher ceiling than before after the previous day’s winds, but still agitated and muddy. Lightning flashed distantly among the heaps of cloud, which were beginning to disgorge spots of rain. The raindrops were black and oily with soot.
Keene stood for a minute, looking at the derelict control tower and the savaged buildings around it, and across to the wrecked launch complex with its fallen gantries while the sound of the Samson’s engines grew muffled and more distant. Only days before, it had all been vibrant and thrusting, a symbol of endeavor and industriousness; now . . . a preview of what was to come everywhere. Silence took over as the engine noise faded, broken only by the cawing of gulls wheeling in from over the point. A feeling of stillness and desolation overwhelmed him suddenly. He turned away to catch up with the others.
A small procession of vehicles, presumably drawn by the sounds of the planes taking off, approached from the direction of the base as a trooper driving a tow tractor pulled the Rustler out onto the tarmac. There were several cars and trucks, a Dodge van with boxes and baggage piled under netting on the roof, and a four-wheel-drive pulling a U-Haul trailer. They were way overloaded, all their occupants disheveled, many of them bandaged, most seeming dazed. Several badly injured cases were laid on makeshift beds or blankets in the trucks and the trailer. Three men got out from the front of the car leading. Three more people were crammed in the back, along with some small children. The man in front had a gray mustache and face disfigured by angry-looking, open sores. He half raised an arm feebly.
“We don’t know what to do with ’em. . . . They’ll never make the trip, but we can’t stay here.” There was nothing demanding or even expecting in his voice. Just a plea for help.
“This is a military mission,” Mitch replied. “We’re not going anywhere you’d want to be-probably as bad as this. Worse.” An ashen-faced woman stared from the window of the car following, mechanically rocking a baby that was crying.
Alicia looked at them, then Mitch. “We can’t just leave them. The plane wasn’t full on our way over. We can take the worst, yes? What did you say yourself-a few hours to Atlanta? I’ll look after them. That way the others will have a chance.”
Keene could see the resistance in Mitch’s face, the beginnings of the double standard that demands loyalty to one’s own group but hostility to outsiders when survival becomes the issue. But it hadn’t asserted itself strongly enough yet to prevail. Mitch turned his head toward Dan in an unvoiced question.
“How many stretcher cases?” the pilot queried.
The men looked at each other and muttered between themselves. “Eight that are bad,” one said finally.
Dan did a quick mental estimate. Besides its passengers, the Rustler was carrying a generous reserve of supplies, fresh water, weapons and ammunition, various types of tools and equipment. “Those, then, plus four more,” he announced. “But let’s be sensible about this. If somebody’s obviously not going to make it, don’t waste the space.” Mitch looked at the man with the mustache and nodded curtly. Keene and Cavan caught each other’s eye, then looked away. Although there was nothing more to be said for the moment, each had read the same in the other’s look: They were going to have to learn to harden themselves to leaving a lot of people to their fate before this was over.
The Rustler carried four folding stretchers, which were brought out. The troopers helped people from the vehicles load them aboard the plane, along with four more of the injured on improvised pallets. The worst seemed to be a woman who was moaning deliriously, both her legs crushed in a traffic accident out on the highway. After another brief conference, the men who appeared to be speaking for the group selected two couples to accompany the eight. Keene was relieved to see that all the children would remain. This was already getting complicated enough.
Keene watched the hapless group through one of the forward windows as the Rustler turned to begin taxiing out, standing expressionlessly before their vehicles. They were still there when the plane roared back along the runway and lifted off, as if not knowing where to go next.
The sea seemed amazingly calm, Keene thought as the strip of dunes and beaches came into view. Then he realized that what he was looking at was mud. The tide was out to a distance that must have been close to a mile.
At the back of the plane, the woman with the crushed legs was starting to scream.
Cliff scanned through frequency bands as the Rustler climbed. “Santa Barbara’s out. LAX is out. Seems the West Coast is about out of business,” he reported. Charlie Hu was behind him in the jump seat, following the procedures. “Military Sector Control is operating at San Bernardino. They’re routing us over Phoenix. Come around onto zero-nine-eight degrees and make for thirty thousand to try and get over the turbulence. Two transports and a high-altitude reconnaissance flight in the area. I’ve got ’em on radar. Otherwise free of traffic. Still a lot of clutter. Reports of heavy rock falls in the Midwest, all flights grounded there.”
“Gotcha,” Dan drawled from the captain’s seat.
When they leveled out, Alicia and the medic in Mitch’s team, whom the others called Dash, opened up the Rustler’s medical locker and went back to see what they could do for the injured who had been brought aboard. With some sedation, the woman with the hurt legs quietened down. There were two more women, both hit by falling rocks, one with a shattered arm and shoulder, the other comatose from a head wound. A man had a leg almost severed at the thigh by a piece of flying metal. Two more were head injuries, both with concussion. One had lacerations and probably fractures from being in a truck hit by a mast that was blown down. The last was a youth of about seventeen who had been blinded by flying glass. Dash confided quietly to Mitch that he didn’t think the kid’s sight could be saved.
Between washing and dabbing with pads, and helping to place dressings and tie bandages, the two couples-Denise and Al, Cynthia and Tom; it was funny how they had suddenly become people now that they had names-who had accompanied the injured recovered their faculties sufficiently to tell the gist of their story. They had been among somewhere around fifty or sixty friends, neighbors, and relatives from nearby Vandenberg village, many of them employees of the base, who had decided to travel inland to Arizona as a group. Less than twenty miles along the highway, they had been caught in the the gravel storm of the previous day. Seven of the party were dead, including the husband and sister of the woman with the crushed legs, who was called Joan and worked as a teller in one of the banks on the base. A group of them had brought the worst cases back into the base believing they would find help, while the rest had arranged to meet farther up the highway. There were a lot like that out there. Police, paramedics, and volunteers had set up emergency dressing stations along the way, but they were swamped.
As the Rustler with its forty-two souls aboard climbed above the denser blanket of cloud, the surroundings transformed into a shimmering panorama of surreal yellow and orange sculptures twisting and unfolding upward toward a sky woven from streamers of electric violets and pink. Beneath them, foaming curtains of vapor descended, raining amber and ochre into the cauldron that the world had become. Above it all, blurred through the watery opacity of the cloud and the plasma filaments, glowed the light of two suns.
Cavan and Mitch were up front, immediately behind the flight deck, conferring in low voices. One of the NCOs handed out breakfasts, which today consisted of reconstituted egg, sausage and hash browns, rolls with butter and jelly, apple juice and coffee. Colby sat next to Keene, staring past the seats in front and for a while lost in thoughts of his own. Then, suddenly, he said, “Those people back there. Just imagine, a week ago they were anyone you might have sat next to at a movie or met in a restaurant. Last night we mounted armed guards against them as if they were enemies. The veneer’s about to come peeling off, Lan. We’re all about to go back to being jungle tribes again.”
Those that survive, Keene thought. He had been thinking similar things too. For what they’d just heard described had to have been typical of events that had been happening on other highways too, leading inland from San Diego and Anaheim, San Luis Obispo and San Jose, Napa and Kelso; and not just in California but every other state and all the provinces he’d never heard of in every other country too. If the rate worldwide was even a tenth as great as the sample figures he had heard, Keene estimated that the number killed would already be about equal to the total battle and civilian dead of both world wars put together.
The hit came with a bang like a bomb exploding in the forward part of the cabin. Keene had a fleeting impression of a flash and Charlie being hurled back from the flight deck like a rag doll; and then came a roar with an invisible, freezing fist that snapped him back in his seat. Mitch, Cavan, and a couple of others who had been near the front were swept back along the aisle in a tangle of arms and legs. Shouts of alarm came from all round, terrified screams from the back. Next to Keene, Colby had gone into an emergency crouch, head down, arms crossed and braced against the seat in front. Keene hauled himself up against the pressure and peered forward with streaming eyes. A hole the size of a door had appeared where Cliff and the electronics officer’s station had been. Around the sides, torn edges of metal and a section of switch panel still attached to a finger of ribbing flapped crazily in the airstream. The plane was dipping to starboard. On the still-intact left side of the cockpit, Dan pulled a yellow oxygen mask over his face, at the same time fighting to keep control as violent judderings shook the plane from end to end. One of the smashed consoles began smoking, and moments later choking fumes poured back into the cabin.
“Jesus! Jesus!” one of the women at the rear was shrieking.
“What is it? What’s happened?” Jed, the blinded kid, yelled from his pallet.
The pressure drop following the blast pulled air the other way, carrying bodies and loose objects toward the breach. Dan banked and throttled back, shedding speed, and the press of bodies trying to untangle themselves in the aisle fell forward and went down again. Mitch dragged himself out and braced himself half-standing between the front seats and bulkhead, where he was able to tear a fire extinguisher from its mount and smother the burning. Then he folded over and sank to his knees. Keene tried to stand up further and leaned over the seatback to find Charlie . . .
A report sounded somewhere distantly, like a bucket being struck by a hammer, and a shock jolted him. Then came two more, sharper. Keene found himself slumped over an arm of the seat; he realized muzzily after a few moments that he had passed out. He straightened up stiffly. Dan’s voice shouting into his microphone came from up front over the roaring of the wind.
“Still taking multiple impacts. What’s your range, what’s your range? I need a vector. I have no radar and controls are jamming. Visibility nil up here.” Keene looked around. Some of the others were moving groggily, others slumped unconscious in their seats or lay still on the floor. At the back, Alicia was standing, clinging to the side netting with one hand while she tried to revive Dash, the medic, with the other. Dan’s voice came again, louder this time, switched into the cabin address. “Attention all. We’re near an evacuation reception area, but going down. This wagon is shot. Get everyone into seats or buckled down. Use whatever you can for padding and brace hard. This may not be the softest landing I ever made. . . . And thanks for choosing U.S. Government Air.”
Keene turned and lifted Colby up in his seat. He was out cold, his face ashen, lips blue. Keene took his glasses, which were hanging from one ear, and slapped his cheeks alternately, then shook him by the shoulders.
“Uh? . . . Wha . . .”
“Colby, snap out of it. We’re going down. We need you here, fella.”
Colby leaned his head back and gulped in a series of long breaths. “God I’m cold. . . . The job description never said anything about this.”
“You need to move. There’s guys the other side of you that we have to get up off the floor.”
Still wobbly, Colby moved into the aisle, and Keene followed. Mitch was up again, and several others were moving to assist, including Cavan, who seemed to be okay. They maneuvered the still-inert forms into seats or positions against the bulkheads, wedging their limbs with seat cushions, packs, and clothing. Keene went around the front seat to see to Charlie, who was crumpled across three seats and motionless. Colby helped Keene buckle him into one of the seats and pile up as much protection as they could. Then the floor tilted back, and the roar came of the engines diverting to reverse and vertical thrust. “This is it!” Dan’s voice yelled. “Maybe ten seconds. Hang on!” Keene wedged a pack on his lap and hugged it to his chest, arms gripping the seatback in front.
The impact was fierce but not as bad as Keene had feared-Dan was using what power he had as a brake. They were thrown sideways, and then the starboard side of the cabin imploded amidships as the broken main spar of the wing plowed into the ground and was driven inward. The plane pivoted around the wing, grating over rocks, and slewed to a standstill with its fuselage broken into two parts lying joined at an angle. Cries of pain and fear came from all sides as the last movements and shrieks of rending metal died away. Keene raised his head gingerly. It was as dark as night, dust everywhere. Shadowy figures were moving, cursing, fumbling with flashlamps. Somebody farther back was calling for help. Keene spat blood from his mouth. He had bitten his tongue. His knee burned and his neck felt as if it had been wrung, but nothing seemed broken. Releasing his seat harness shakily, he rose to follow Colby, who was feeling his way into the aisle. A thudding concussion like an artillery shell landing came from somewhere outside.
In front, Dan was clambering back from the flight deck over a crazily leaning floor panel. “Move, move! Get ’em out!” Mitch’s voice came through the gloom and the dust. “This whole thing could blow. Furle, are you there? You okay?”
“I . . . think so.”
“Good. Go check the tail section. The rest of you who can move, give a hand with the ones that can’t.” One of the soldiers rose and just stood, staring dazedly. Mitch jabbed him several times in the chest and shoved a shoulder. “Behind you. Out that way. Move it!”
Ignoring the doors, the ones who were able began passing the injured and unconscious out through the break in the ruptured fuselage. Slowly, the rest came to their senses and lent help. Colby already had Charlie by the shoulders; one of the troopers took his legs. Several who had been sitting where the wing root had broken through were past any help. From the rear section, Al was helping Denise out, blood streaming down her face, while Alicia and Dash directed others lifting out the pallets and stretchers. A corporal called Legermount-strong, black-haired, always silently competent-became a human conveyor line, effortlessly carrying out one limp form after another and returning for the next.
They were on a slope of rock and sand that could have been a valley side or part of a mountain, vanishing into the dusty air. A hundred yards or so away was a ravine flanked by mounds of boulders. Mitch waved everyone toward it, then, while they were making their way across, he ducked back inside the front section of the fuselage to check that no one had been left. Keene and Dan hung back in case he should need help. Mitch reappeared briefly to go into the tail, and reappeared finally, hauling two packs of provisions and a medical chest. He threw them down and jumped after. “Let’s get out of here!” he yelled. Keene grabbed one of the food packs, Dan, the other, and Mitch picked up the medical box. They got to the ravine, which was dry, and passed the items down to the others, who were spreading along the sides and finding places. And then, suddenly, the murk in the direction away from the plane lit up as if aflame, and for several seconds a ridge above them, rising to a rocky peak at one end, was silhouetted through the haze against a blaze of light from somewhere behind. Darkness closed again. Five seconds or so went by, and then the foot-jolting shock wave arrived through the ground, causing everyone standing to stagger. Cynthia and one or two others were knocked over. They all looked at each other bemusedly. And then, as if responding to the same cue, everyone not already down there threw themselves into the ravine. “Cover!” Mitch shouted one way, then again the other. “Get down! Take cover!”
Keene had landed near Tom, who was holding a blood-drenched handkerchief to Denise’s head. Together they leaned over to shelter her. Keene pressed his face down into the coarse sand of the ravine bed, pulled his hood close over his cap, and covered his head with his arms. The boom came maybe twenty seconds later, like something solid hitting his head, jarring his teeth and numbing his ears. How many miles away did that put it? He couldn’t think. “Stay down!” Mitch’s voice called from a thousand miles away through the ringing in his ears. They waited, unmoving. Denise was twitching and moaning. And then earth and rocks rained down out of the sky in a torrent. Keene felt it peppering his arms and landing in drumming waves along his back. It was like being in a grave with the dirt being shoveled in. He convulsed suddenly, slapping at his leg as something hot seared through the calf of his trousers. From beyond the ravine the sound of rocks hitting the plane came like hail on a tin roof.
The rain eased gradually to become just a waning spatter of lighter particles. Keene waited, then moved to look up, feeling rivers of sand running off his neck and shoulders. The other mounds of dust around him were stirring, shaking themselves, starting to sit up. . . .
And the next impact came five seconds later.
He lost all track of how long they lay there, clawing and scraping as if trying to burrow into the earth, while detonation after detonation shook the ground and pounded at their senses. The large bolides came over with a noise that sounded like freight trains crossing the sky; others made sighing moans mixed with jet-engine-like whines. The concussions grew so frequent that it was impossible to say which blast wave was associated with which flash, and the rain of ejected debris became continuous. In a temporary lull, four of the soldiers ran to the plane to get folding entrenching spades, hard helmets, and flak jackets. One was hit on the way back and had to be dragged by the others. Keene’s mind went into a numbed, suspended state, rejecting the sensory overload, ceasing to register the passage of time. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the fuel from the Rustler’s punctured tanks ignited.
It was another hour, maybe two, before the infall eased and the dazed survivors finally began emerging.
Thirty-four were left. Charlie Hu had come around at last, and was miraculously okay except for head-to-toe bruising down one side of his body that would keep him wincing for weeks-assuming they lasted that long. Cavan was bearing up well, and Colby and Alicia had nothing worse than bruises and cuts. Three soldiers had died in the crash, two more in the impact storm, and six were hurt badly enough to be nonfunctional. Of the party taken on at Vandenberg, Denise had scalp cuts, not as bad as had at first been feared; the man with the severed thigh had died from blood loss, which was probably merciful; the woman in a coma had succumbed; one of the two men with head injuries had been thrown loose in the landing, breaking several bones, and was not looking good. Joan was rallying and showing astonishing strength. Most remarkable of all was Jed, the blinded youth, who seemed the most resilient of all and was trying bravely to crack jokes. Maybe it was delirium. Keene saw tears on Alicia’s face as she changed his dressing.
It was mid afternoon, although the sky was too dark to give any hint. They had flown for a little under an hour after leaving Vandenberg early in the morning, which put them just short of Phoenix. The broken starboard wing and nose of the plane had burned out, but the fractured center section and tail were not completely gutted. Some usable items, including most of the food packs and water containers, were retrieved. The port wing, remarkably, while looking as if it had been shotgunned, was still in one piece. All electronics were dead, and the mobile radios unusable with the static.
Twenty-two unscathed or with minor injuries; twelve unable to walk. There were two choices. The twenty-two could divide into two groups, one to stay with the injured while the other went to find help; alternatively, the twenty-two could simply press on together, promising only to send help if they found any. In normal circumstances, the latter would have been unthinkable. But as things were, it had an undeniable element of realism. Keene expected that Mitch, if anyone, would take the lead in stating the unmentionable but obvious: that huge numbers had already died, and more would yet, by far; that leaving the fit behind if there was no help to be found would just be condemning them along with the unfit; that any potential help they might find would be already overwhelmed and unlikely to be swayed much by the thought of a dozen more one way or the other. Alicia was waiting to hear it too; Keene could see the anticipation on her face. Maybe Mitch saw it too, and perhaps that was why he refrained. Or could it have been that even in Mitch’s eyes everyone had become “ours” already?
Cavan asked Dan how much he could tell them about where they were and the reception area he had been talking to just before the crash.
“It was an Army mobile unit operating at a local airstrip where they were setting it up,” Dan said. “From the fix they gave me, we must have been almost there-maybe just a few miles short. The last bearing they gave me was . . . I think, one-twenty-four degrees.” He stood up and looked back, estimating the final course that the Rustler had been following and trying to reconstruct the turns he had made bringing it down. Finally, he pointed to a low pass, barely visible through the dust, a little to the left of the now-invisible ridge behind which the first impact had occurred. “I’d say it has to be that way.”
Mitch nodded as if to say that was good enough for him. “I’ll take a squad to check it out,” he said. “The sooner we leave, the better. Debating will only waste time.” Cavan agreed but said he’d stay with Alicia, who insisted on remaining to help Dash; in any case, at his age, he said, he would only slow everyone down. Mitch didn’t argue. Charlie Hu had little choice, since he would have been hard put to walk the length of a football pitch. That left Keene and Colby to go with Mitch, which seemed advisable in case their political credentials still carried weight, and Dan as the navigator. Nine fit soldiers remained, including Legermount and Furle. Mitch assigned four who were at least up to marching to stay behind under Furle’s command with the injured and the civilians. The other five would accompany Mitch and his party, Legermount acting as second in command.
Keene saw suspicion in Furle’s eyes as he watched the departing party sorting out supplies and equipment to take with them. “A couple of hours in Texas, then on to Atlanta,” he heard Furle murmur sarcastically to one of the others as they picked up entrenching tools and went back to remove the bodies from the plane for burial along with the others.
When that task was complete, the soldiers began cutting and dragging parts of the plane to bridge a narrow section of the ravine, which they fashioned into a shelter with draped camouflage netting weighted with rocks and sand. Then they got a couple of stoves going, so at least the departing party were able to get a hot meal inside them before setting off.
If ever there was a preview of Hades, this had to be it. The nine-Mitch and Dan; Keene and Colby; Corporal Legermount and the four troopers-trudged in single file up the slope, their bodies stiff from hours of lying pressed against the rocks, slipping and sliding on sandy gravel that rolled from under their feet, wind-borne grit stinging their faces and eyes. Around them, a desolation of humps and boulders extended away to shadowy forms of hillsides and mesas outlined dimly in the dust-laden, sulfurous air. The knee that Keene had struck in the landing was throbbing, and after about thirty minutes he had to stop to put a dressing over the burn on his calf, which was chafing painfully. He was grateful that they had accepted the Guard-issue kit in Pasadena, including boots. His civilian shoes wouldn’t have hung together for a mile in this.
At the top of the rise, Dan halted to check his compass bearing. The men stood waiting, adjusting pack straps and repositioning weapons. Then Legermount pointed; Keene looked with the others, his eyes at first narrowing in puzzlement. . . . They were looking down over what seemed to be an expanse of desert extending away into the pall of dust through which something was glowing dull red. Then, as the pattern resolved itself, his jaw fell incredulously. The size and distance were impossible to estimate, since in the murk there was nothing to provide a reference of size-but a part of the desert seemed to be burning. He felt a nudge on his shoulder and turned. Mitch handed him a pair of field glasses. Keene raised them to his eyes, adjusted the focus, and peered.
The ground itself was glowing. . . . A vast, smoldering depression extended back into invisibility, looking like a lake of fire behind a darker dam of boulders and earth mixed with embers. He was looking at a crater. The “dam” was part of the wall. As he studied it more, he made out another glow, dimmer and more distant, with no details discernible, that had been invisible without the glasses. They could be just two of thousands scattered for hundreds of miles. Too stupefied to speak, he passed the glasses to Colby. They resumed moving to cross the head of a valley descending away to their left, and followed the far side around a shoulder of mountain, all the time angling down the slope. After about another mile they came to a track heading in roughly their direction, which made the going easier. Following the track, they came across an abandoned pickup with dents in the roof and a shattered windshield. Legermount tried jumping a wire from the battery to the starter in the hope of getting them a ride, but the pickup was out of gas.
Lower down, they heard screams-not human but shrill and whinnying, which sounded even more blood-chilling. They found horses, dozens of them, in a corral behind an obliterated farm. Most of those not already dead were writhing with smashed legs, burns, broken backs. The soldiers stopped long enough to despatch them with bullets. A handful remained, milling around each other aimlessly, their eyes bulging in terror. Legermount looked at Mitch questioningly. Mitch scowled, then shook his head. “Hell, let ’em have what chance they’ve got.” He waved toward the gate. One of the troopers opened it to turn the surviving animals loose.
Below the farm was a graveyard of cattle piled in heaps around a pond of red sludge. Nearby was what was left of a car that looked as if it had been hurled some distance, its wheels in the air. There were bodies inside, and two more thrown clear. What little light there had been had faded, and Mitch and Dan, leading, had to use flashlamps to find the trail. From somewhere ahead came the sound of an aircraft climbing. At least, it seemed Dan’s sense of direction had been good.
The valley seemed to be opening onto flatter terrain. The ground still rose to their right, but on the other side fell away more gently and broadened. The track merged with another and became gravel now instead of just dirt, though sometimes disappearing beneath mounds of rubble and sand that looked as if they had been thrown by a giant shovel. Light began appearing below on the left, strung at intervals along a still-invisible road. Dan confirmed that it had to be Interstate 10. There didn’t seem to be a lot of movement on it.
Some distance ahead, the lights became more numerous, fading into the darkness along a line veering left as if the road curved suddenly in that direction. But interstates didn’t change direction that abruptly. An area beyond was still glowing. They could feel the heat on their faces, even at that distance. It seemed that something sizable had impacted square across the highway. Mitch and Dan conferred briefly. The choice was either to head directly down to the road now and follow it to what appeared to be workings in progress to create a traffic road around the far side of the crater; or alternatively, to stay above the road and head right of the crater, which while more direct could mean having to negotiate the broken rim in the darkness and possibly being driven farther uphill again. Deciding not to risk any further unknowns they went with the first, taking the next track they came to pointing directly down toward the lights. From somewhere in the direction of the highway, the muffled whop-whop-whop of a helicopter rotor came distantly through the night.
In the darkness and with all the dust in the air, the road turned out to be closer than they had thought. They passed several houses, some stores, and a gas station, all ruined and partly buried in rocky debris. There were more wrecked vehicles, some thrown topsy turvy, others pinning bodies of people who had apparently tried to shelter under them. And then lights and activity, accompanied by the sounds of voices and motors, were immediately ahead. Approaching, they found there were more vehicles than they had realized; the lights were from just a few with engines running that were being used to illuminate rescue operations in progress among more houses and commercial premises built along a service road paralleling the interstate, now discernible beyond. Workers were shining lamps among collapsed timbers and shoveling away rubble. One building, lit by the headlamps of a couple of trucks in front, had been adapted as an aid station, with casualties being helped and carried in out of the surrounding darkness. A group of hooded and hatted figures approached, presumably having seen the flashlamps coming down the road off the hill. The one leading had a bandage showing below his hat and was wearing a sheriff’s deputy’s badge with a storm coat.
“Looks like we’ve got some fit people here. You boys wanna enlist? We need all the help here we can get.”
Mitch answered. “We need help ourselves. Bunch of people in a plane crashed back over in the next valley, some of them hurt.”
“Are you serious? They’re only just starting pulling bodies out of what’s left of Phoenix. Right here we’ve got wrecks backed up into California that nobody’s gotten to yet and probably won’t for days. There’s about a couple of hundred thousand people in line ahead of you already.” The voice was weary, not prepared to debate the obvious. Mitch sighed and nodded. It was obvious that they didn’t have a case.
“Military mission. We have to try and see it through.”
The deputy shrugged. “Well . . . good luck.”
“Which way’s the reception center?” Mitch nodded in the direction of the crater ahead. “That way, past where the big one hit?”
“Right-about two miles farther on.” The deputy’s face showed for a moment in the light of a turning car: young, crusted with dust, streaked on one side with congealed blood that had trickled down from the bandage. He wiped his mouth with the back of a gloved hand. “Say . . . would you guys have any spare water? We’ve been waiting two hours for our truck to get back. Can’t take any from these people. The ones that thought to bring some are gonna need it.”
Mitch passed his water bottle over. Several of the other troopers did likewise. The deputy took a modest swig, washed it around, swallowed, and nodded gratefully. “Oh boy. You’ve no idea . . .”
“Is that where the chopper we heard would have come from?” Mitch asked.
“Right.”
“Who’s operating them?”
“I couldn’t tell you. The Army’s in charge now, trying to get some organization together. Where are you guys heading?”
“Texas.”
“Texas? Jeez! I’m not sure there is a Texas anymore. It might be part of the Gulf. Everybody else is coming the other way.”
“Like I said, it’s an official mission.”
“Well, I’m glad something’s still functioning. Just follow along where they’re leveling a road around the crater-there’s no way you can miss it; you’ve got a mountain blocking the road. You can see the lights they’ve got set up from here. Then pick up the interstate again on the other side.”
It was like a scene out of a war. There were hundreds of wrecked and damaged vehicles there in the darkness, stretching in a gigantic tailback from the crater, they realized as they came out onto the highway. Thousands. Standing amid a litter of glass and debris, roofs and hoods buckled by falling rocks, some apparently unscathed, others flung or pushed off the roadway completely. A number were burning. Twisting lines jammed nose to tail showed where drivers had weaved as far as they could before being brought to a halt. Many were helping each other check among the vehicles with flashlights and in headlamp beams, pulling out the injured and doing what they could for the ones trapped. Others just sat along the verge, in shock and bewildered, waiting for direction. Farther along, a tractor trailer had somehow balanced itself on end. A woman was wandering among the cars, frantically calling someone’s name. A headless body hung from the window of a Chevrolet, dripping blood onto the asphalt. A dog whimpered at the door of a stove-in Nissan van full of tangled forms, none of them moving.
Keene walked by it all at the center of the silent column, unable to suppress a feeling of callousness, yet mindful that nothing they could have done would alter anything materially. Millions of people were dying, millions no doubt already had, and many more millions would still, and nothing was going to change it.
Crunch . . . Crunch . . . Crunch . . . Crunch . . . He followed Legermount’s tirelessly swinging heels ahead of him and let his mind sink into numbness, shutting out the groans, the cries, the shouts of the rescuers, the bodies laid out in rows under blankets and tarpaulins. Others who were part of their own microworld were depending on them, he told himself, and for now nothing more mattered beyond that. Crunch . . . Crunch . . . Crunch . . . Crunch . . . In such a way was life reducing to minor achievements and small things taking on immense significance; that kept you alive and got you through to tomorrow. And that was good enough. Both his legs hurt. The boots were chafing his heels, and he could feel blisters starting to form. He hadn’t hiked like this for years. He would have to get used to it again soon. There would be plenty of it in store when gasoline stocks started running out.
Crunch . . . Crunch . . . Crunch . . . Crunch . . . And so it went until the mounds of rocks and debris rose to become a huge rampart of earth and boulders standing fifty to a hundred feet high in the light of arc lamps running from a mobile generator. In places, crushed and partly buried vehicles protruded from the slope. Police, military, and emergency vehicles were clustered along a strip that had been leveled to the left of the crater wall, beyond which more lamps illuminated earth-moving machines and road gangs making an earth-and-gravel road to reconnect the severed portions of the interstate. Mitch led the way along the foot of the crater wall, at the top of which figures were clambering about, taking photographs of the other side and making observations with various instruments. The object that gouged the crater had come in from the east, throwing most of the ejecta westward in the direction that Keene and the others had come from. As they progressed along the edge, the wall gradually became lower until they were walking almost on the rim itself. The ground underfoot was hot, and the heat radiating from inside was intense enough to keep them several yards back from the actual edge, in the shadow of the lip. Even so, every now and again one or a couple of them would venture closer for a few seconds to get a glimpse of the crater floor, glowing eerily red. Red was shining above them, too, reflected down through the dust pall by the cloud blanket. What was left of Phoenix was on fire.
A sound came of distant freight trains in the sky, followed minutes later by the rumbling of explosions somewhere to the north.
The reception center was another oasis of light and activity involving trucks and earthmovers, located a short distance from the interstate beside a small airfield littered with wrecked planes. It looked like an original cluster of buildings from a one-time military base of some kind, expanded probably within the last few days to the beginnings of a minicity by the addition of scores of portable huts and cabins, only to be flattened by the meteorite storm. The work going on currently was to clear the devastation and convert as many of the buildings as were salvageable into earth-covered dugouts and sandbagged shelters. Refugee arrivals were already being moved into one part, where food was being dispensed from a field kitchen. In another area, bodies were being carried from where they had been laid out in lines numbering dozens and loaded onto a truck, presumably for burial or disposal elsewhere.
Everything was improvised and chaotic, and Mitch’s initial queries yielded mixed answers as to who was in charge. No one seemed to be, exactly, but different individuals were running different things, which they seemed to have taken charge of on their own initiative. Hopes were that it should all get more coordinated tomorrow. Eventually, they found an Army major who had set up with a small staff in a sandbagged trailer equipped with a telephone exchange operating over landlines. Apparently, he was in touch with the regional command center being established at El Paso.
Colby Greene produced his government credentials and explained that people who were involved in a vital official mission were stranded up in the hills about ten miles west where their plane had crashed, and he needed assistance. The major regarded him with much the same look as the sheriff’s deputy had given them back along the interstate.
“Well, I’m not sure that kind of authority means too much anymore,” he said. “And even if it did, we’ve got our hands kind of full right now to be worrying about a few more people ten miles up in the hills. And even if we didn’t, we don’t have any way of getting anyone there.”
“You’ve got choppers,” Dan said. “We heard one ourselves, coming in-when we were back the other side of the crater.”
“No av-gas,” the major told him. “A plane that went out of here earlier took the last we had. Two road tankers were on their way here to fill our tanks, but they didn’t make it through Phoenix. We’re supposed to be getting an emergency load flown in tomorrow morning, but until it gets here nothing’s going out. So why don’t you and your boys get something to eat, find a corner to bed down, and rest up for the night? You all look as if you could use it.”
The tanker flight was diverted elsewhere. Back in the trailer the next morning, Keene listened with Mitch, Colby, and Dan while the major talked on the line with somebody in El Paso.
“Look, we’ve got half of California coming in off the interstate this morning. I need food, I need doctors, and I need medical supplies. But I can’t have anything flown in, because until I’ve got something to refuel them with, nothing that brings any of it can get out again. . . . Base facilities? What are you talking about, base facilities? There aren’t any base facilities. They got wiped out yesterday. What planet have you been on? We’re having to dig ourselves holes in the ground here.”
He listened a while longer, then replaced the receiver and looked at the four who were waiting. “All I can tell you is that this isn’t the only area that got pounded. It’s still going on in some places. Everywhere’s a mess. They said they’ll do what they can. We might be able to get a supply through by road from a depot I’ve located in California. What else do you want me to say?”
It seemed there was nothing more to be done, probably for the rest of that day. The group vacated the space they had been using in one of the previously prepared shelters, and Mitch detailed Legermount and three troopers to begin constructing one of their own. He outlined a plan for a rectangular pit five feet deep, the excavated material being used for sandbags to build up the sides, with a roof of alloy beams and corrugated steel sheet from some wreckage nearby, topped with four feet of sand. With that task under way, he left for a tour of the center, accompanied by Dan and the two other men to see what else was happening and if they could be of help. Thousands of people were beginning to appear now, jammed into their own vehicles or brought in by emergency trucks, many others walking. There simply weren’t the facilities or staff to take care of the horrendous numbers of injured; trucks stacked with bodies left regularly for the mass graves that had been bulldozed behind a hill a mile or so from the center.
The entire center had become a maze of workings and diggings along one side of the airfield, made by human moles burrowing into the soil. Keene tried to put in his share of pickaxing and shoveling, but it was hard to match the pace of younger men at the peak of fitness and training, especially since his legs had stiffened since yesterday. The dust choked, even through a wetted handkerchief tied around his mouth. His lips had swollen and dried, and his tongue was painful where he had bitten it in the crash, making speaking and eating difficult. His face felt like one throbbing, open sore, and he could no longer bear the touch of trying to wipe off the perspiration.
Halfway through the morning, meteorites and gravel began falling again. There were no big detonations like the one that had gouged away part of I-10 the day before, but a steady rain continued of missiles thumping into soil or impacting on rocks and metal with bangs like rifle bullets. People were hit, though surprisingly infrequently. But they had no choice but to press on. Those who weren’t actually digging or roofing stayed under cover, making whatever excursions they had to as quick dashes from one shelter to another. In a depression a short distance from the main area, a crew in hard hats and Army flak jackets began erecting a derrick to drill for water. Meanwhile, three sandbagged trucks loaded with drums were sent to see what could be recovered from the ruined water tower serving the area.
By the middle of the day, Keene was realizing that more than the years and his sedentary lifestyle were slowing him down. He found himself alternately sweating and shivering, and once or twice almost keeled over from dizzy fits; but he settled to a rhythm and drove himself doggedly, resolved not to become an additional burden to the others. When the roof was completed, a scavenging party went away to see what they could find to make the new abode more habitable. At this, Mitch’s men turned out to be quite accomplished, coming back with a forklift pallet and some boards for flooring, assorted pieces of tarp, several sticks of furniture, and even a mechanic’s inspection lamp with good batteries. Finally, they were able to flop down and rest. Keene lowered himself gratefully onto a strip of foam rubber laid on the pallet, which had been set aside for him and another of the men who was also feverish, and another hit on the knee by a ricocheting rock. At last, he could just lie back, let his whole body go limp, and abandon himself to the exhaustion that had been building for days. . . .
And then the rain started-not like a spring freshening but hammering and relentless, turning the dugout city into a labyrinth of mud and pools through which rivulets trickled, then poured, joined up and grew into a network of torrenting streams within minutes. Water seeped through the loose-packed roof and flowed down into the entrance; just as they had started to get comfortable and talked about eating, everyone had to get up, put on coats and capes, and go out again to dig drainage trenches. When they finally came back inside, Keene drifted into a series of fitful dozes that really weren’t sleep or rest, coming back to semiconsciousness each time to be greeted by the drumming of the rain. At one time he was vaguely aware of Colby holding a dish of soup and urging him to eat, but Keene’s mouth was too sore to accept more than a taste of water. Thoughts flitted through his mind of Cavan, Alicia, and the rest still up on the mountain; but in too much of a detached kind of way to for him to feel concern. Enough of his faculties were working to tell him he should feel concern, but the numbed remainder admitted that he didn’t. Not just now, anyway. All that registered was the sweating and shivering of his fever, the single, continuous ache that his body seemed to have turned into, and the burning pain of his mouth and face. Maybe tomorrow, he would.
Rain was still falling the next morning. But the meteorites had slackened, and, wonder of wonders, Mitch announced that the road tanker from California had arrived! The major was making calls to El Paso. Keene was able to manage a breakfast of hot cereal and coffee, and afterward, finally, felt his body easing sufficiently to rest. He began drifting away, warm and comfortable at last, telling himself that he never wanted to move or have to think again. . . .
And then Colby was shaking him. Keene forced his eyes to open. Then he heard the sound of helicopter rotors getting louder, then settling to a steady roar somewhere not far away. “Lan, move. Mitch has gotten us a ride out,” Colby was saying. Keene sat up groggily to find the dugout full of bustling figures collecting kit, closing and strapping packs, snatching up weapons. Colby helped Keene get his things together and pull on his parka and helmet. “They just ferried in a medical team and supplies from El Paso. They’re going straight back as soon as it’s topped up. Say good-bye to Phoenix. I hope you didn’t want to send any postcards.”
Keene pulled on his boots and took his pack as Colby thrust it at him. They stumbled out after the others into the rain. Ahead, Legermount and two others were assisting the sick trooper and the one with the hurt leg. Several times, Keene had to take Colby’s arm to steady himself over the slippery rocks and gulleys. Mitch was at the edge of the airstrip, waving them in the direction of a large Sikorsky sitting with its rotor idling. Another helicopter farther back was being unloaded. Dan and one of the helicopter’s crew were waiting at the door to give them a hand up and inside. Another half dozen or so passengers going back with the chopper for one reason or another were already inside. The pilot, the only other crew member, was turning and looking back from his seat, waiting for the boarding to be completed.
“That’s it,” the copilot called forward, closing the door while the men found places among the folding side seats and rubber cushioning on the floor. Keene was ushered forward to one of the fixed seats behind the crew stations, along with Colby, Dan, and Mitch. The copilot went up front beside the pilot, and the engine note swelled. The pilot tried a couple of times to contact someone by radio, then shook his head and flipped the set off as useless. He checked his instruments, peered through the rivers of rain running down the windshield, and prepared to lift off.
“We’re looking at El Paso in about two hours, maybe a little over,” he shouted above the din. “What are you guys up to in all this, as a matter of curiosity?”
“Just an official mission,” Dan called back vaguely.
“You mean there are people around who still care about stuff like that?” the copilot threw in.
The Sikorsky rose and began turning. Only now was Keene able to begin collecting his swimming thoughts. . . . And suddenly his mind rebelled as the words that he had just heard replayed themselves. “El Paso in two hours . . .” No! This was all wrong! He turned to look at Mitch, but the soldier’s face was set impassively, staring ahead at the windshield. Keene looked at Dan. Dan was looking forward between the crew seats, scanning the instruments-as if to distract himself.
Keene remembered the look on Furle’s face when they had left him in charge of the group on the mountain. Furle didn’t really know Mitch, and he hadn’t been sure if he could trust him. Keene didn’t know Mitch either, he realized. And what little he had seen cast Mitch as one who confronted brutal realities. Was this his way not only of saying that there was only one realistic option for them to take now, but presenting it as a fait accompli? Keene tried to moisten his cracked lips, asking himself if he could accept it. In his weakened condition, he simply wasn’t up to a face-off with somebody like Mitch. He glanced at Colby, and from the concerned look on Colby’s face could see that he was wrestling with the same problem. Maybe it was time, Keene told himself. Eventually, one way or another, they were all going to have to learn hardness. Was that what Mitch was telling them?
The blank wall of orange-pink outside brightened as the chopper climbed. Takeoff complete, the engine noise settled back to its cruising level.
And then Mitch said, “Oh, there’s just one more thing. We have another group to pick up. They’re about ten miles back the other way, where our plane came down. Twenty of ’em.” At the last count there had actually been twenty-five. But the Sikorski had plenty of room to spare.
The pilot raised a hand and shook his head. “Sorry. We’re on a tight schedule. I hate to say it, but twenty isn’t any big deal one way or another in all this.”
“This twenty happen to be important to us,” Mitch told him.
“Everybody’s got someone who’s important. Like I said, sorry, but this isn’t a taxi service. I’m under orders to return directly to El Paso. They don’t say anything about going the other way.”
Mitch produced his automatic and pointed it. “Now you have orders,” he said.
The copilot turned around sharply, his arm reaching out reflexively, but Dan produced another pistol and eased him back. Several of the other passengers started in alarm, but none seemed prepared to risk interfering. It seemed Mitch and Dan had planned it. “Go on, pull it,” the pilot challenged, showing his teeth. “Then the only way you’re going to get back down is as a piece of jelly.”
Mitch turned his head toward Dan. “How long did you fly choppers in the Air Force?” he asked casually.
“Oh, five or six years, probably.” That was news. Keene had never heard Dan mention anything about choppers.
“You reckon you could handle this bird?”
“Sure. No problem.”
Mitch looked back at the pilot. “Sometimes things work two ways,” he said him. “I hate to say it, but one pilot isn’t any big deal to me one way or another in all this. It’s your call.”
There was a long, agonized silence. Finally, the pilot sighed. “Okay, you’ve got it. Ten miles? Which way do I go?”
“Back along I-10 past the crater, then over a ridge to the left a couple of miles farther along. Stay in sight of the ground, and I’ll direct you from there.”
When the rain turned their shelter into a torrent, the group left on the mountain had abandoned the ravine and made a new refuge for themselves underneath the surviving parts of the Rustler. Jed was still cheerful and had been making himself useful cleaning cutlery and pots and talking to the injured. Joan was hanging on but needed surgery urgently. Two of the ones left hadn’t pulled through: the man with the head injuries and fractures whose chances hadn’t looked good when Keene and the others left, and a soldier with his back broken in the crash. In addition, three more were missing through a tragedy of a different kind.
After two days passed by, Captain Furle had seen himself with no other choice but to assume that no help would materialize and his group was going to have to make its own arrangements. Accordingly, he sent two of the soldiers that he had available to reconnoiter the way down to the Interstate to see if help could be summoned, and failing that to search around for a vehicle, cart, or any other means for moving the nine badly injured that they still had with them. Tom, the civilian, Cynthia’s friend, had offered to go too, pointing out that two would be a perilously small number if anything happened to one of them, and he was an experienced mountain hiker. Furle had agreed, and the three departed shortly afterward. They still hadn’t returned when the helicopter arrived. By the time loading was complete there was still no sign of them and attempts to contact them by radio had failed. There could be no question of tarrying longer. Mitch ordered supplies, water, and ammunition to be left for them. Furle and a couple of the troopers stacked a selection of items in the space under the Rustler’s wing and prepared to clamber aboard as the Sikorsky revved up for takeoff. And then Cynthia, who was still on the ground with them, announced blank-faced that she would stay and wait for Tom. Apparently, they had lived together for eight years.
“Ma’am, you’re being crazy,” Furle said. “What if they don’t come back? You’ll die out here.”
“What if they do come back . . . and I’d never see him again?”
Mitch glowered down from the helicopter door. “There isn’t time for this. Grab her and put her on board,” he ordered. The three soldiers closed around her, pinning her arms, and lifted her inside forcibly over her struggling and hysterical protests. Moments later, the Sikorsky lifted off once more into the violent skies.
El Paso was about as far west as it was possible to go and still be in Texas. But at least they had made it to Texas-twenty-nine of the forty-two who had left Vandenberg in the Rustler.
The scene as the helicopter came in was like the reception center at Phoenix, but with everything on a vaster scale. A quarter of the city had been obliterated by a new crater, which had buried the former downtown area under its wall. The pilot, who seemed to have relented after being uncooperative earlier and wouldn’t be filing any complaints, said reconnaissance flights had shown an immense crater field extending westward from Phoenix and to the northeast, but he didn’t know how far. The ruins of what was left of the city were being reinforced and bombproofed, while for miles around, earthworks, bunkers, and connecting roads looking like extended military fortifications were appearing across the desert slopes and among the mountains. But it still wasn’t matching the scale of the problem. The numbers of people pouring in were even vaster, their vehicles visible everywhere in thousands, in some places pulled off the roadways in untidy sprawls stretching for miles, filling the verges and any open ground, in others tossed like the aftermath of an air strike.
They landed at what looked like a regional airport, amidst the kind of scene that was becoming familiar: demolished and damaged buildings, excavations and repairs going on around the runways. One runway appeared to be serviceable. Mangled aircraft of all types were everywhere, and the hangar buildings that had survived reasonably intact were being shored up and earthed over as protective bunkers for any that were salvageable. The air, as they climbed out of the helicopter, was hot, heavy, clammy, and oppressive.
Leaving Furle to supervise the unloading of the injured and find them some kind of temporary accommodation, Cavan and Dan left on what showed signs of being an impossible task of finding them medical attention while Alicia and Dash stayed to do what they could. The best the helicopter pilot could suggest as a lead to whoever was running things was the colonel in charge of flight operations, and Keene went with Colby and Mitch to seek him out. After some asking around they found him in the glassless but functional control tower, following the approach of an incoming aircraft on a screen connected to an Army mobile field radar located somewhere nearby. He was obviously busy, stressed, and listened to them impatiently. When Colby presented his White House papers and Presidential staff ID, the colonel seized the opportunity to have his switchboard call the office of the acting commander of the area to get rid of them. The colonel then returned his attention to the business at hand, and a guard escorted them back downstairs to wait.
Less than half an hour later, an Army sergeant driving a Ford van with netting draping its sides and a layer of sandbags on the roof arrived to collect them. Apparently, everything had happened too quickly and universally to allow martial law to be declared formally in the U.S. Military control had been instituted as an automatic reaction locally, nevertheless-as doubtless had been done in all areas retaining any organizational capability at all. In El Paso an Army general called Weyland had taken charge after just about all of the area’s regular command structure and FEMA directorate were wiped out along with the fifty-plus percent of the city that was now craters and rubble.
As the sergeant talked, they negotiated their way around mounds of fallen rock and debris, wrecked vehicles, and mud traps created by the recent rain. Parts were like Boston in January, but with paths being cleared through mud and sand instead of snow. Along whole blocks, rescuers were still hauling the dead and injured from collapsed buildings. Sandbagged bunkers and shelters were being constructed wherever opportunity presented itself, and undamaged stores, homes, and offices adapted into dressing stations. But even with all the bulldozing and shoveling, the medics and nurses working frantically under tents and awnings and in hollows dug amid the debris, the mobile kitchens and relief workers handing out rations from trucks, untended cases and others too shocked or exhausted to help were everywhere: laid out along the roadsides, sitting blankly outside their vehicles, or just wandering aimlessly. The sergeant said that the services had been hard put to cope even before yesterday, which had been a massacre. Today they were overwhelmed.
The route took them west of the city along another piece of Interstate 10, with dry red mountains flanking the road on one side, and slopes leading down to the Rio Grande river marking the Mexican border on the other. They exited on a road that climbed for a short distance through a spread-out residential area that had been fairly evenly battered, and led into a valley with boulder-strewn sides and a scattering of industrial buildings and other facilities strung along the bottom. A gate through a chain-link fence, attended by sentries outside a gatehouse that had been reinforced by sandbags and corrugated steel sheeting, brought them into a parking area in front of a couple of office buildings, some sheds, and several unidentifiable structures standing below a high cliff with a mountain ridge rising beyond. Work crews in helmets, flak vests, and military fatigues were clearing rubble, filling craters, and finishing more dugout constructions. Both office buildings had every window shattered and were showing damage, especially to the upper parts.
The sergeant took Keene and the two others through a side door into one of the sheds, across a floor where stores were being sorted and vehicles unloaded, to the entrance of a tunnel leading into the mountain. He explained that Weyland had located his headquarters in a former mine working that had been converted years before into a repository for banking and financial documents as a precaution in the event of a major war. The tunnel led to a cage elevator which they took to a lower level, emerging into well-lit corridors with white, ribbed-concrete walls. After all the destruction and chaos of the preceding days, the order and normality of the surroundings seemed almost unnatural.
They came to an open area where military personnel at desks were working in front of a situation board occupying most of one wall, the others covered in charts, maps, and an array of aerial photographs. A large map of the surrounding parts of Texas and New Mexico was marked with red circles showing what looked like craters, and various other annotations. Weyland’s office was at the far end, consisting simply of a smaller space separated by a partition. It had a desk and side table covered with papers, more wall maps, and several upright chairs along two of the walls. A naked bulb hung from a cord overhead, shaking slightly to the vibrations of machinery somewhere nearby.
Weyland was tall and wirily built, on the young side for his rank, Keene thought, forceful in manner, with straight black hair brushed to one side and dark, intense eyes that refused to be cowed by the situation. His face was dark with stubble, and he wore a flak jacket over a grimy, sweat-stained shirt. The three arrivals were shown in by the sergeant, who then left. They introduced themselves; Weyland invited them to take seats. He draped his elbows over the arms of his chair and looked them over.
“I understand from the phone call that you just got here from Phoenix, and before that you were in a plane crash. You just about look it, too. We’ve got soup, beans, and coffee going, if you could use some.”
Mitch said that sounded great but explained that they had some injured back at the airfield who needed medical attention urgently. Weyland stared at them for several seconds. Then, sparing them a lecture on the obvious, he got up, went to the gap at the end of the partition that served as a doorway, and called over one of his officers. He outlined the situation, and the officer went away to make some calls. Keene and Colby nodded their thanks. Keene didn’t feel entirely comfortable about jumping the line. But there are times when one has to look after one’s own. “And now can we get you people something to eat?” Weyland asked again. They accepted.
It turned out that the general’s readiness to receive them stemmed more from a hope of being told more himself of what was going on than any recognition of a need to inform them. He had assumed from Colby’s credentials that they represented, or at least could enlighten him as to the existence of, some administrative authority that had survived of a national or even international nature. He was in landline contact with the military command at Cheyenne Mountain, several regional headquarters, and also a number of FEMA centers. As far as he was aware, Washington had ceased functioning. The President, along with his family and immediate staff, had vanished three days previously with Air Force One when the administration left for the war-survival and command center located near Atlanta. The Secretary of State was supposed to have taken charge in Atlanta provisionally, but Weyland hadn’t had any contact from there. A further mystery was the disappearance of the Vice President, who had left to set up a West Coast shadow government a day before the President’s departure from Washington. Colby set the record straight on that score, which led to an account of the mission that had taken him and Keene to California. It was the first news Weyland had heard of what had become of the Kronians. Keene presumed that General Ullman would have reported it at Cheyenne Mountain, which seemed by default to have become the nearest that existed to a national coordinating center. Weyland noted the details, clearly with the intention of reporting them independently anyway. His unspoken implication-that there was no guarantee that anyone from Vandenberg had made it to Cheyenne Mountain-didn’t hit Keene until a couple of minutes afterward. Maybe he was more tired than he realized, he told himself.
Weyland then moved to local and more immediate matters. Sitting on America’s rocky spine, El Paso was the focus of two floods of evacuees converging eastward from southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico, and in the opposite direction from Texas and Oklahoma. They were arriving hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and traumatized, the survivors of meteorite falls, firestorms, hurricanes, and rain torrents, bringing their sick and their injured by the tens of thousands; by the hundreds of thousands. And there, in the dust, the dryness, and the heat that was setting in after the rain, they would die, as they were already starting to, in numbers almost as large. The emergency measures that it had proved possible to mobilize in the time available were too few and too late. And in any case, all the planning had been a product of the slowly evolving thinking of years gone by. None of it had envisaged anything like this. The worst that had been imagined was nuclear war, in which strikes on worthwhile targets and perhaps population centers would produce intense devastation in relatively localized areas, but with comparatively unscathed regions between, able to provide help and relief. But with everywhere smitten equally, there was nowhere to turn to. For every township and community, enclave and locality, anything beyond the preoccupation of staying alive from one hour to the next and securing a refuge to gain some respite vanished from the equation of reality. The result was that the whole infrastructure by which the nation maintained itself as a cohesive social and productive organism was coming apart with a rapidity that in any other circumstance would have been deemed impossible; and the same was no doubt true for every other part of the world also.
“What you’ve told me confirms what we already guessed,” Weyland concluded. “We’re going to have to rely on our own resources to get us through this. No supraregional authority is going to emerge and start giving directions. The centers that I mentioned earlier have all got problems of their own as bad as ours here. Nobody has anything to spare. Our immediate concern is providing shelter accommodation and conserving fuel and provisions. The eventual aim is to consolidate communications between key centers along a line running through here, Denver, and up along the Rockies, that will enable mutually supportive logistics, including the restoration of a minimal power grid. With tight management I’m estimating hitting a rock-bottom situation at about three months from now, after which we should be able to start pulling things back together. In the war game scenarios, they used to figure on getting back to normal forty years after an all-out exchange. So maybe if we doubled that, we wouldn’t be too far out. What do you think? I wouldn’t be around to see it, but at least it would mean leading a useful life. So there’s my take. Where are you people going to fit in? What kind of plans do you have next?”
Three months? Start pulling things back together? The words echoed dully in Keene’s mind. It seemed that President Hayer had done too good a job in instilling hope and optimism when he addressed the nation. No concept of what the present events were leading to had yet taken root on any significant basis. Probably that was just as well.
Right now, Keene wasn’t about to launch into anything that would give Weyland cause to reappraise the prospects. Nothing was going to change them, and there was probably no better way in which he could expend his energies. And besides, Keene could feel his own energy draining, even as he turned the thought over. His eyes were closing involuntarily; he felt himself sway on the chair and checked himself with a start. The surroundings seemed to float out of focus and reverberate with hollow sounds and voices that came and went. He was distantly aware of Colby and Mitch looking at him strangely, and himself murmuring that he didn’t have any plans. . . .
And either he passed out then, or simply fell asleep on the spot.
Keene was out until the next day and awoke to a feeling of having slept solidly for the first time in a week, probably having been given sedation. His sores had been cleaned and treated. He felt stronger. And once again a shower and a shave worked their wonders. He was in a room that Weyland had assigned in the mine vaults, where Cavan, Alicia, and Charlie Hu had also been brought. Cynthia, now resigned to the loss of Tom, had come too rather than remain with the group from Vandenberg. It seemed she wanted to break from everything connected with her old life. Nobody objected. Mitch and Dan, with the uninjured remnant of the Special Forces contingent, had moved into military quarters in the upper levels.
Charlie Hu was mobile again, although stiff, and hobbled in with the others when word went around that Keene was conscious. The news was that Ullman’s group in the Samson had made it to Cheyenne Mountain. Meteorite storms east of the Mississippi had been severe. Communications were poor, and nothing had been heard from the national administration supposedly being set up in Atlanta. Huge tides were developing in all coastal areas. Aircraft losses had been horrific; since the surviving equipment would have to serve for an indeterminate time, further flying, except where deemed essential by the highest authorities, was discontinued until conditions eased. In the El Paso area, rock and gravel falls were continuing steadily, with occasional showers of flaming naphtha. There had been armed confrontations over demands for supplies, access to care and shelter, and possession of ownerless goods and vehicles.
Alicia appeared just as Keene was settling down to the first food he had been able to enjoy for days. She had conceded to the inevitable and cut her hair short. Her face, while less red and inflamed than when he had last seen it, was smeared with cream and still a far cry from the cover-model complexion that had emerged from the Rustler at Vandenberg. “You’re looking amazingly better already,” she told Keene. “Quick recovery means there’s a lot of reserve left yet. Eating well, too. Even better.”
“I never thought there’d be a day when I’d say Army cooking beats anything I can name,” Keene replied. “But there it is.” He dug hungrily into the plate of eggs, biscuit, gravy, and sausage. “What about you? How have you been? Have some coffee.”
“Apart from the outside, not too bad. My face feels as if it’s been sandpapered.” Alicia poured coffee into a mug for herself, adding milk from a cardboard carton.
“You’ve been working nonstop. How do you do it?”
“It must be my virtuous character. And then having Leo around is always an inspiration.”
“There’s another one who amazes me. How did you get to meet him? You know, in all the years I’ve known him, he’s never told me.”
“Oh, really?”
“No. Tell me. I’m curious.”
“Oh, it was in a bar in Manhattan. I was young and new here-just took a notion to see the other side of the world. This guy was coming on strong and being a pain-you know, a jerk. Leo saw that I didn’t know how to deal with it, so he moved in and gave him a lesson in charm and manners. I think I just wanted to see the look on the guy’s face when I walked out to go someplace else with a man twice his age.” Alicia chuckled. “Leo knew I would, because he’s got the same kind of humor. Anyway, it grew from there. He thinks I’m crazy, you know.”
“Does he really?”
“Don’t tell me he never told you.”
“If he had, I’d probably choose not to remember.”
Alicia started to smile, then winced as it stretched the dried skin around her mouth. “Oh, how gallant! I love it. You see, underneath all this outside, you’re just a romantic too.”
“Maybe.”
“You give up your place on the shuttle to go and find Vicki, and even that gorgeous Kronian woman can’t make you change your mind? Of course you are! What else is there to call it?”
“Maybe I just didn’t like the thought of being privileged,” Keene suggested. “Equal opportunity. An old American tradition.”
“Pah. I don’t believe a word of it. It’s just the gruff outside switching itself on again.” Alicia helped herself to a spare piece of biscuit. “So tell me about her, Lan.”
Keene leaned back in the chair and sighed. “Oh . . . It wasn’t anything romantic. Just a kind of closeness that comes from two people who think the same way and share a lot of values and things. You know-she was the kind of person you never had to explain to about what you were thinking or how you felt, because she already knew. I don’t think I even realized it myself much until these last few weeks. . . .” Keene broke off when he realized that Alicia was frowning at him. He raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“Why do you say she ‘was’?” Alicia asked. “You make her sound like a thing of the past, a piece of history already.”
Keene stared at her uncertainly, then jerked his head in agitation. “Well, I mean, it’s . . .” He faltered, unable to say the painful but obvious.
“Lan, what are you saying?”
“What else is there to say? We tried. . . . That’s not an option anymore. All we can do now is stay here and figure out what-”
“Lan!” Alicia protested. “You can’t! We’re not staying anywhere. We’re going on to San Saucillo like we said. You can’t change your mind now.”
“But . . .” Keene shook his head. What other way was there to put it? “Alicia, there isn’t any way to get there. All flying is over, finished. They’re saving the planes for when things get better. It’ll be years before anyone can make any again. The roads are all choked or blocked, and whatever can move on them is going the wrong way.”
“We don’t need the roads,” Alicia said. “I’ve been talking to some of General Weyland’s staff. Stocks of gas and supplies from south and east Texas have been concentrated in San Antonio. A train is leaving here tonight to bring a load back up to El Paso. There will be plenty of room on the outward run.”
“And what do we do after San Antonio, walk?” Keene demanded. The words came out sharper and sounding more sarcastic than he had intended. He realized that his nerves were still on edge.
“Snap out of it, Lan. It’s not like you,” Alicia said. “I don’t know what we do from there. Maybe with everyone coming the other way the roads will be easier between there and the coast.” Her eyes flamed at him. “But you just said yourself that things are going to get worse. How long will sitting down here do any good? There is only one way out now, and that’s off the planet. And the means to do it is down there in Mexico, not here.”
Keene felt himself starting to object; then he checked himself, hunched forward to rest his elbows on the table, and stared at her. She was right. Like a soldier who refuses to leave a foxhole under fire, even though the position must ultimately fall, he wanted to put longer-term considerations from his mind and cling to the respite they had found here after the ordeal of the last few days. The security was an illusion that would last only so long. The more they delayed, the worse, at the end of it all, the odds must become. He shook his head, as if to reawaken the sense of realism that normally resided there.
“Have the others said what they think about it yet?” he asked her.
Alicia shook her head. “You are the first one I’ve told. I assumed they’d think the same way as I did-that there wouldn’t be a problem.”
Keene finished the last of his coffee and stood up. “Then let’s go and find out,” he said.
The upshot was that Cavan knew Alicia well enough not to bother arguing. Colby, in his inimitable way, agreed as casually as if they were planning a weekend vacation trip. Charlie Hu, more than any of them, was under no illusions as to what was in store. He expected there to be a lull of several days as Athena and Earth locked gravitationally to gyrate past each other like two passing skaters momentarily linking hands, during which time the bulk of the tail would be directed away. The train of debris following Athena would then wrap around Earth, causing falls more fearsome than anything that had occurred so far. Then, after actually receding for a distance as it swung by, Athena would be drawn back in for a final close pass before being ejected on a trajectory away from Earth. Charlie’s vote was to go for any chance of getting out if a chance was there. And Cynthia, having committed herself, had little choice but to go along with the rest of them.
The only unresolved question was whether Mitch and his men could be induced to. With conditions deteriorating and violence breaking out, to press ahead without the protection of an armed force would be folly bordering on recklessness. There was only one way to find out. First, they went to talk to Mitch.
Mitch’s initial reaction was surprise that they were still even contemplating Mexico. He had assumed that they’d tried their best, the fates had come out against them, and the only thing left to consider was whether to stay in El Paso and place themselves under Weyland’s command or head for Colorado. He changed his opinion somewhat when Charlie explained why the worst was far from over yet, but he still seemed uneasy at the thought of deserting his command and taking useful men away from where they might be needed. Cavan tried to set his doubts at rest.
“This is hardly a normal situation, Mitch. Your sentiments are admirable, but I have to be honest here. The figures Weyland and his staff are estimating are wildly unrealistic. They’re doing their best, but they just don’t have any concept of what’s going on. Don’t you understand? A month from now there isn’t going to be any command worth talking about to have deserted.”
Mitch pondered the point, scowling at the wall for a minute or two before turning back to face them. “You’re talking about getting to a place that might no longer exist, for a shuttle that mightn’t fly, and if it does, taking it up through this mess to find a spaceship that mightn’t be there. And I’m supposed to believe that the odds are better than what I’d have if I stay on with this outfit. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Just the latest of Landen’s crazy schemes,” Cavan said, as if that explained everything. “Only this time he’s got Alicia with him too.”
“Sure, they’re lousy odds, no question,” Charlie Hu said, nodding and keeping a serious note. “But better than the alternative. I’ll take them.”
Mitch looked around at them. He seemed persuaded, and was running over the practicalities in his mind. “It means we have to be up-front with the men too,” he said finally. “This isn’t something I can order them into blindly-or would be prepared to. They have to make their own choices too.”
Everyone looked at everyone else. Nobody dissented.
“So be it,” Cavan said.
“The reason we’ve been talking about getting to Mexico is that there’s another shuttle down a silo at a site just south of the border,” Mitch told the soldiers a half hour later. Apart from himself and Dan there were Furle, Dash, Legermount, and six troopers: four from the group that had hijacked the chopper and two uninjured from those who had stayed with the crashed Rustler. “Now, we’re not talking about huge numbers of people being there like you saw at Vandenberg. There’ll be just us here, plus a handful to be picked up in Texas. That means there’ll be extra room. After listening to Charlie, I’m willing to go for it. And for anyone else who’s prepared to take his chances, that’s the bonus at the end of the ride. But I’m not going to hang this on you as an order. It’s a volunteer mission. You’ve all heard the arguments. Each man is free to make his choice.”
Captain Furle still remembered the couple-of-hours-extra assurance that he’d heard the last time they talked about going to Mexico. “I can’t say I see how it’s going to change anything,” he objected. “Except for making our chances worse, that is. Whatever hits here, the same thing is gonna hit there just as bad. The only difference is that here we’ve at least got protection and some backup that’s halfway organized. There, we’d have nothing. We did what we could once, and it’s over. I’m still for heading north to Cheyenne Mountain. General Ullman promised us at Vandenberg that he’d find us room there.”
They showed mixed reactions. Keene could understand why. It hadn’t been that long ago when he himself had been looking for excuses to stay with the apparent safety that the military bases represented. Dan decided to attempt returning to the Air Force command in Colorado too and throw his lot in with Earth, come what may. The trooper with the hurt knee and the other who had come down sick were not up to such a further mission, and two more stayed with Furle through choice. That left two-their names were Birden and Reynolds-who would go with Mitch, Legermount, Dash, and the six civilians, including Cynthia.
Keene wondered if he was the only one who understood how much smaller the Amspace minishuttle was than a regular Air Force shuttle or the Boxcars that had gone up from Vandenberg. There was no telling how many people Harry Halloran might have brought with him, assuming he made it to San Saucillo. Keene didn’t relish the thought of possibly having to explain the situation to armed and angry men, should it turn out that there were no spare places after all. A likely response in that event might be an insistence at gunpoint that everyone submit to a draw. But first, they would have to get there. He would worry about it then, he decided. It was always possible that by that time the problem would have solved itself.
* * *
Eleven in all were driven that night to the repaired siding in the railroad yards on the east side of the city, where the train to make the run to San Antonio was being assembled and fitted out. It consisted of six locomotives, three in tandem to the front and rear of a long line of boxcars and tankers with protected tops, with flatcars at intervals mounting sandbagged machine guns and posts for armed guards. Two coach cars in the center carried the command staff and guard reserves. Two flatcars pushed in front of the lead locomotive carried rails and equipment for track repairs. To reconnoiter and clear the route ahead as far as possible, a small scout train comprising a locomotive pushing several cars with engineers and a work crew, more rails and track-laying equipment, lifting gear, a couple of small earthmovers, and an Army escort had left earlier in the afternoon.
The big train rolled out shortly before midnight under the light of floodlamps and the orange glow from a sky of flame dancing among black clouds. Beyond, the diffuse incandescence from Athena showed, moving around to Earth’s night side. Above the growl of the diesels and the rumbling of the wheels, distant thunder boomed continually. In the wilderness to the north and the south, patches of orange and red flickering through veils of unseen smoke glowed where the mountains and the desert were on fire.
The eleven shared space in one of the coaches with guards who were off duty or resting. It had open seats that could be folded down to make beds, rather than being divided into compartments, and a galley and dining space at one end next to the bathrooms. Several layers of corrugated sheeting alternating with sandbags overlaid the roof, and the windows were covered outside by steel mesh. Most of the soldiers were making the best of the chance to rest, and the lighting was kept dim.
Keene and several of the others remained awake, but there was little talk among them. They sat staring out through the windows at the Dantean sky and the intermittent glows shimmering through the dust and smoke-laden air-perhaps, like Keene, able for the first time since the nightmare began to reflect on the meaning of what they were seeing. The world they had known was being destroyed, never to be rebuilt in any of their lifetimes. Having risen to the highest peak in its history of comprehending and harnessing the physical universe, the human race had become distracted from its quest for truth and worthwhile knowledge, and been mesmerized instead by the pursuit of false values based on vanity and petty ambitions. The remnant that was holding together did so on time bought with the salvaged residues of a civilization that had already died. When the machines became still and the bulbs flickered out, the last ruins were ransacked for a surviving stash of cans, ammunition for a useless gun, a cake of soap, a knife, then those left would be reduced to the condition of the tribes that had wandered amidst the devastation in the years following the Exodus. The only hope for recovering in a period that would not extend over millennia now lay with the Kronians-assuming that Kronia itself was able to survive. The biblical accounts had been pretty close to the truth when they said that God periodically destroyed the world and its life, and replaced it with a new world. Now, it seemed, He was displeased with the latest life that had set up its own golden calves. Keene wondered if the next form to arise would meet with better approval as a more faithful rendering of what life and its expression were supposed to be. Did the Kronian model hint at a possible way? A light flaring suddenly, close enough to be visible through the murk, then followed several seconds later by a whoosh ending in a sharp report like a thunderclap, reminded them that the bombardment had just eased for a while, not ceased.
About three hours out from El Paso, the train halted. The lights were turned up, and the NCO in charge ordered the guards down with their weapons to stand to outside. A few minutes later, an officer from the staff coach in front came through to say that they had picked up a detail left by the scout train ahead to warn them to slow down over a risky stretch of patched track. Searchlights played over the area revealed just broken cliffs, rocky slopes, and clumps of scrub. The guard contingents manning the flatcars were changed, and the train got under way again. Everyone began settling down except Mitch and Legermount, who sat around the dining counter at the end with the troops who had just been relieved, talking, drinking coffee, and eating. Cynthia, who had been tending Charlie’s bruises and lacerations, was now huddled up with him. Tiredness overcame Keene too, finally. He stretched out, using his folded parka as a pillow, pulled his blanket close around him, and slept.
It was a little after eight the next morning when they caught up with the scout train in the rugged country between the Davis Mountains and the Tierra Vieja Mountains. They were roughly a hundred fifty miles from El Paso, having left the Rio Grande valley to cut across the large southward bend in the river, which they would rejoin two hundred miles farther on at Langtry. The scout train had halted on the approach into a shattered township, where the engineering crew were still fixing torn track and improvising repairs to an embankment. The activity had drawn out the survivors, now clustered along both sides of the tracks with the same shock-widened eyes staring from dazed, blackened faces, holding up unfed babies and injured children in the desperate appeals for help that Keene had seen a hundred times already and was sickened by because he knew there was no help, would never be help for them. But there was a lot of anger out there too. An officer came back to tell everyone other than the guards deployed outside to remain on the train.
The second in command got down from the staff coach to talk to what seemed to be the representatives-it was virtually the scene outside the hangars at Vandenberg repeating itself. The train had ample room, and the people wanted to be taken aboard. The officer tried to explain that there was nothing for them in San Antonio, where the train was going. Their hope lay in the other direction. They didn’t care. After days of exposure, all that mattered was the chance of respite and to come inside anywhere that offered an escape from the terror. The problem was that the space was needed to bring supplies back. If these people were taken aboard they would never be induced to leave again, and forcing them off at San Antonio would only leave them in a worse predicament still. The officer was adamant. The best he could offer was to leave them supplies and water and pick up as many as could be fitted in on the return trip. Moreover, there was always the possibility that another train could come through before then.
With the repairs complete, the equipment was loaded and the guards climbed back aboard. Slowly, the train began moving to howls of anguish and rage from outside. Several seconds later, a window farther along the car shattered. “Incoming!” a voice yelled. Everyone threw themselves away from the windows and down behind the seats and the sills. But there were just a few scattered shots. It was impossible to tell where they were coming from. The guards didn’t return any fire.
When the train was clear, Cavan moved over and sat down opposite as Keene regained his seat.
“It’s a sad world we live in, Landen,” he observed somberly. “A sad world.”
Birden and Reynolds, the two Special Forces troopers who had thrown their lot in with Mitch, were both from his own unit and not part of the scratch force that Cavan had thrown together in Washington. Birden had dark wavy hair and an easy smile, and was from New York City. Raised in an orphanage, he had not done well in foster homes and joined the military as soon as he was old enough. This was the first time he could say he was honestly glad to have no immediate family or anyone close anywhere.
Reynolds was from Texas originally-not that far from San Antonio, as it turned out-but had moved with his family to South Carolina as a child. He was tall, with olive skin and straight black hair that suggested an Indian or Hispanic element, and was from a solid Baptist upbringing. For him, serving in the military was a way of answering a calling to serve the nation. He tried not to think too much about his folks back East, but his staunch belief enabled him to accept that whatever happened was for a reason. Keene almost envied him for that. As far as Reynolds was concerned, they would make it to Montemorelos and get away if the Lord needed them for other things, otherwise not, and that was all there was to it.
“But you’re not saying we should just sit back and wait for things to work out by themselves,” Alicia said as they talked while the miles rolled by. “I couldn’t accept a philosophy like that. I have to do what I can.”
“That was what got Charlie and the rest of us this far,” Keene agreed.
Reynolds thought about it. “No, ma’am, I wouldn’t say that,” he conceded finally. “The Lord is never ungrateful for a helping hand from those who are disposed to lend it.” He added, after a moment more of reflection, “Unlike some people.”
Legermount had grown up partly in Europe, where the family had been expanding its sporting goods business, and come back to Pennsylvania to complete high school and two college years. He had fled to the military from a tyrannical father bent on molding him into a management executive and fitting heir. “I just don’t have a head for it,” he told the others. “Never could get the hang of double entry bookkeeping. Every way I figured it, I always ended up wanting to make the entry on the wrong side. So I tried putting it on the opposite side from what I thought, instead. And that was always wrong too. So that was when I gave up.”
“Maybe too hastily,” Colby mused, cleaning his spectacles, which had still, somehow, miraculously survived. “I’m sure you’d have qualified for a high position in government accounting somewhere.”
Dash had an unassuming but intense personality. He was from a small town in Ohio, had wanted to be a doctor but been deterred by the demands of med school and joined the service to acquire practical medical skills a different way. He remembered seeing Keene on TV in the weeks before the conference in Washington. “You were one of the guys trying to get scientists to take the Kronians seriously about Venus,” he said. “And now everything’s happening again just the way you said. I was with you. It made a lot of sense to me. I mean, the evidence was right there all the time. They’re supposed to be logical people. How come you couldn’t get through to them?”
“I asked that question a lot too,” Keene replied. “I guess once people are indoctrinated into a system, they’re unable to see things in any other way than from that worldview. What you get is experts trained to know every detail and argument of the subject, but only within the system. They can’t question its premises. The notion that the whole system itself might be wrong is literally inconceivable. To do that, you almost always need somebody from outside-like you. Most of the big scientific revolutions happened in that kind of way.”
Cynthia, who was doing a wonderful job of putting the past behind, looked at Charlie Hu questioningly. “Hear what he’s saying about scientists, Charlie? Are you going to let him get away with that?”
“Oh, that’s not us. He means those guys at Yale and Cambridge,” Charlie replied.
Keene turned his head toward the window and thought back to it all. It all seemed an eternity ago, not just weeks-as if belonging to another world. Outside, the clouds of dust, smoke, and ash writhed in wind that was beginning to rise again. They passed a creek bed choked with rotting corpses of cattle underneath a strangely swaying black cloud that it took Keene a moment to realize, when they swarmed outside the window, was composed of flies. Fortunately, the window hit by the bullet had been covered with a plastic sheet. Close by, a bus had gone down the side of a ravine, spilling bodies that still lay where they had fallen or crawled to. There were more clouds of flies. Cynthia gripped Charlie’s arm as she stared out tight-mouthed, her face white and strained.
What had he been thinking? Keene asked himself. There was no “as if” about it. It had all been part of another world.
Progress was slower now that they were following behind the scout train. For long stretches the railroad ran close to the main east-west highway-still Interstate 10, running from the Atlantic coast of Florida to Los Angeles. The masses flocking into El Paso had been just the beginning. For mile after mile, the train rolled past the same scenes repeating themselves: of packed vehicles winding their way cautiously forward through the rock debris and wrecks; survivors from abandoned ones huddled in makeshift shelters, others continuing doggedly on foot; crowds pressed around emergency service vehicles; relief camps trying desperately to cope; and everywhere were the black clouds of flies signaling their gruesome message.
Keene found that he was registering it merely as a record of events having happened. The sights no longer had the ability to evoke any feelings. Twice in the course of the day, the train had to stop for major track repairs, each time being beseiged by supplicants who had to be turned away. On the second occasion, a group of them tried to rush the train and were stopped by the machine guns.
Nightfall found them past the halfway mark, descending from the southern Texas plateau into the valley of the Pecos. Repair crews had been pushing westward from San Antonio also, and the going actually became easier.
“You must be a man uniquely gifted with persuasiveness, Landen,” Cavan said. His tone was low, not intended to carry. “Did you ever think of yourself as charismatic? It isn’t a quality that I’d normally associate with my image of engineers.” It was mid morning of the second day. The country to the north was dotted with fires fanned by fierce winds. Draperies of oily flame still descended from a heaving sky. Cavan was wearing Army pants and a sweater with a scarlet neckerchief knotted at the throat. The incredible thing was that he looked younger and more vibrant than Keene had seen him for years.
“What are you talking about?” Keene asked.
Cavan raised a hand vaguely. “Look at all the people you have following you to help you find this woman of yours.”
Keene snorted. “Ah, come on. It’s the only chance they’ve got to get out of this to something better, Leo. That’s the reason, and you know it.”
“I’m not so sure that Alicia would agree that’s the only reason.”
“Well, she doesn’t count. She’s crazy. You’ve told me enough times.”
Cavan lowered his voice further. “But not crazy enough to think you could do it alone, without the military to help. That’s why they’re here, you know. She can be quite an engineer of things too, in her own way.”
“Oh?” Keene knew what Cavan meant but chose to act dumb, letting his frown ask the question.
“She bewitched Mitch into it, and the others followed. He’s a compulsive performer in front of any woman that happens to be around. Don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed, Landen.”
Of course Keene had. It just wasn’t the kind of thing to go making uninvited comments on. “Well . . . I suppose it’s not something I really thought about,” he replied. He studied Cavan’s face for a moment. “Why? It’s not bothering you, is it, Leo? If she did, it’s as you say: to get some backup for me. Unless my judgment of people has gone to hell in the last week, there’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“Oh God, I’ve been around too many years for that. She could do worse. He’s got nerve, he’s dependable, and he commands loyalty. If she had any sense, she’d have found herself someone like that years ago.”
Keene managed a wisp of a smile. “Well, there you are, Leo. Who’s got the charisma now?”
“Charitable of you, I grant, but where would be the future? Back in the days when there was a future, I mean.”
Keene looked at him reproachfully. “Don’t tell me you’ve given up hope.”
“Seriously, what do you think the chances are?”
Keene stared down at his hands. They were blistered and split from all the digging and shoveling that he wasn’t used to. He looked up. “If we’d had a clear run through with the Rustler, I’d have said pretty good. But with the way things have gone instead . . . who knows? Maybe Furle was right. What else can I tell you?”
After a long wait near Uvdale for a damaged bridge to be shored up, they were held in a siding to let a loaded train from San Antonio through the other way, heading for El Paso. They reached San Antonio late that night to find the city in flames. A shrieking wind turned the buildings into torches, lighting up the overcast for miles. Spitting trails of burning naphtha left veils of smoke curling downward between the cloud blanket and the ground. The scout train had stopped a couple of hundred feet ahead. Two of its officers came back to confer with the commander on the wisdom of taking the main train any farther in until the route had been reconnoitered. The decision was to hold it back until more was known. Keene and his party transferred their kit to the lead train to go into San Antonio with it and explore what further options existed from there.
The railroad yard and its surroundings were an inferno of burning rolling stock and warehouses. There appeared to be no organized effort to fight or contain the conflagration. It was past being containable in any case, and from the look of things any focus of authority capable of organizing anything had ceased to exist; very likely, there wasn’t enough water available, anyway.
Many people had headed for the open ground along the tracks and were trying to follow that route out of town. A crowd closed around the train as it slowed to a halt, their eyes wide against streaked, smoke-blackened faces, some wailing uncontrollably, obviously aiming to get aboard and stay there till the train departed. The soldiers accepted the injured, laying them out among the sandbags and what materiel remained on the flatcars, while the officers did their best to control the numbers trying to follow. A woman tore at Keene and Colby’s jackets as they climbed down. Her face was a mass of sores and blisters in the light from the fires; her hair looked charred. “My husband! He’s trapped . . . over that way. You have to help me get to him!” Colby disengaged himself, not wanting to be brutal but needing to keep sight of the officer in charge, who was already striding ahead along the track with two of his aides. A couple of the guards drew the woman away. Keene hastened on after the others, raising an arm to his face to ward off the sparks and cinders being driven in the wind.
An effort was under way to salvage as much as possible of the stockpiled stores. Heavily muffled figures were manhandling crates out of a burning warehouse and stacking them beside the track while others played hoses over them. A forklift following waved directions came out through the doors at the end of the building and deposited a loaded pallet. After being pointed from one place to another, the officers from the train eventually found an Army colonel and a couple of railroad managers who were trying to keep the operation moving. As Keene and the others caught up, the gist of the exchange, shouted above the roaring of the wind and the sounds of cries and screams in the background, was that it would be too risky to bring the main train in until the fires had burned down. If the track was blocked the next morning, they would move what they could out to it by road. There was no shortage of trucks, since they had been bringing loads in to San Antonio for days-although how many of them might survive the fire was another matter. Meanwhile, they could make a start by using the scout train to take back what it could carry while the connection was still there.
Mitch, Keene, and Cavan exchanged glances at the mention of the trucks. While the officers from the train were organizing their men to begin loading, Mitch identified himself to the colonel and asked which way the trucks were. The colonel, who was clad in a water-doused firefighter’s smock, pointed farther ahead, beyond the blazing remains of some tank cars that had exploded. “There’s a whole bunch around the loading docks that way. A lot of the drivers quit here and went out on the train that left this morning.”
“Is there anywhere we can go to for gas?” Mitch asked.
“Like everything else-grab what you can.” The colonel shook his head uncomprehendingly. “You don’t want to go back to El Paso?”
Mitch shook his head. “We’re going on through.”
“Where to?”
“The coast, Corpus Christi.”
“What in the name of Christ for? There’s nothing left there.”
“Special mission. . . . So there’s nothing like any kind of train heading that way?”
“You’re out of your mind. I just said, there’s nothing left there. Mission? No kind of mission makes sense anymore. Put your men on this job instead, and you might stand a chance. Get sane.”
“Sorry. We have to give it a shot.”
The colonel shook his head hopelessly. There was nothing more to say. Mitch clapped him on the shoulder and moved on, waving for the others to follow. Dash and Birden stayed close behind him, Keene and Colby next, followed by Cavan and Alicia, Charlie and Cynthia. Legermount and Reynolds brought up the rear to prevent anyone from straggling. Even after everything, Keene was unable to avoid a stab of guilt as he looked back at the colonel and the others returning to their tasks.
The heat from the burning tank cars was too intense for them to pass, forcing them to detour behind a locomotive shed that seemed to have escaped major damage. A roadway flanked on one side by office and commercial buildings in various stages of burning and collapse led in the direction that the colonel had indicated. Survivors were still emerging from the side streets amid overturned autos with motionless forms inside or thrown nearby. More bodies lay scattered along the roadway. The sight no longer attracted attention.
The road ended in a large parking area outside the loading bays of warehouses serving an end of the rail yards that the scout train had been unable to get to. There must have been hundreds of trucks, lined in some semblance of order in some places, scattered haphazardly in others, many smashed or on fire. Not all had been unloaded, and in places groups of figures were braving the heat and the risk of exploding gas tanks to pass cartons and boxes down to others who were loading cars and other vehicles. Who were they? . . . Who could tell?
Mitch stopped beneath one of the high concrete lamp masts that was still standing. “The quickest way to get separated is if we all start running around without a system,” he yelled through the wind. “This is the reference point we’ll work from and use as base.” He looked at Charlie Hu, who was clutching his side and wheezing heavily. “Charlie, you’re not up to any more. Cynthia, stay with him. And Legermount, stay here too to keep an eye on them. The rest of us divide into twos: Lan, you can come with me; Leo, go with Birden; Alicia, stick with Dash; Reynolds, you take Colby. We’ll take a quadrant each, and when you find something to report, you head back here.” He pointed at the base of the mast. “In any case, check back after thirty minutes. We want a vehicle that’s intact, all wheels good, preferably with the keys. If you can, check for lights, battery, and gas. Flatbed trailers would be better. If this wind gets any worse, anything higher is gonna get blown off the road. Okay?”
“Assuming we find a road, that is,” Colby muttered in Keene’s ear as they split up.
Keene went with Mitch toward the west side. They passed the wreckage of several trucks and cars all entangled with another truck that looked as if it had landed on them, scraping them all into a heap. Beyond that were two more trucks almost burned out, several abandoned cars, and a truck that looked reasonably unscathed until walking around the front revealed the cab smashed in by a rock. The next two were in good shape; one had its keys in but wouldn’t start. A short distance farther on Mitch tried the cab of another, then reemerged, shaking his head. As they turned away, they saw watching them two men who had been draining fuel from the tank of a tractor unit minus trailer. They looked apprehensively at Mitch and Keene’s military garb and the automatic rifle that Mitch was carrying.
“It’s okay, ain’t it?” one of them said. “Hell, it’s not as if there’s any law left to be breaking.”
Mitch had noticed the several cans that they had with them. “What do you guys have planned?” he asked, ignoring the question.
“Getting the hell out of here.” The heftier one gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. “Our rig’s shot, but we found another that’ll move. No sense staying here to be roasted. Looks to me like you two guys was pretty much figuring on the same thing yourselves, anyhow.”
“What have you got?” Mitch asked them. “Another tractor-only, like this, or does it have a trailer too?”
“It’s a full rig,” the hefty one replied. “We figured on picking up more people along the way. Chances are gonna be better for bunches of folks that stick together.”
Keene and Mitch exchanged quick glances. Both nodded at the same time. “Then you’ve got that already,” Mitch said, looking back. “There’s eleven of us, including five Army. The others are over that way, not far.”
“Which way you intendin’ on headin’?” the smaller of the truckers asked.
“South-toward Corpus Christi.”
The larger trucker shook his head emphatically. “That’s crazy. Everyone’s going the other way. You’re on your own, soldier. They’re collecting everybody around El Paso. That’s where they’re gonna hold out until it’s over.”
“We just came on a train from El Paso,” Mitch told them. “You’re not going to get through by road. It’s blocked all the way.”
“So what in hell do you think you’re gonna do in Corpus Christi that’s any better?” the big trucker demanded. “It’s all under water. You expecting an ark?”
“Do you guys know the road down that way?” Mitch asked.
“Sure we do. Been driving it for four years.”
“Okay. Then this is the deal. We pick up some people south from Alice and then head on into Mexico. Not too far past the border there’s a space base that’s got a shuttle down a silo, ready to go.” Keene marveled at the unqualified uncertainty that allowed Mitch to say this, but he wasn’t about to muddy any waters. “We launch and meet up with the Kronian ship that you’ve been hearing all about, and we go back with them. There it is.”
The trucker looked at Mitch warily. “Man, you are crazy! Even if it was still up there, you think it’s going to hang around for you? What makes you think they’d even have heard of you?”
Mitch fumed impotently for a second, then threw out a hand to indicate Keene. “Do you recognize this guy?” he snapped. The two truckers looked, shrugged, obviously didn’t. “On TV all the time just a couple of weeks back,” Mitch said. “The guy in that nuclear stunt that made the Air Force look stupid, who’d been trying to tell the world to wake up to what the Kronians had been telling it.”
The smaller trucker peered more closely at Keene, squinting his eyes against the wind. “You know, it could be him too,” he pronounced. “Tried to take their side in that stuff that went on in Washington.”
“Landen Keene. I am,” Keene confirmed.
“That’s him, Buff. That’s the name, all right,” the smaller trucker said, nodding. Buff, the larger of the two, looked back at Mitch, uncertain now.
“You see, they know him. He’s with them,” Mitch said. “That’s why they’ll wait. Now are you with us? I’m telling you, there won’t be anything for you in El Paso, even if you got there. This is gonna get a whole lot worse yet.” He looked at Keene. “We could fit a couple more in, right?”
Keene just showed his hands and shook his head. “Why not? Sure.” He didn’t know. It wasn’t a time to be calculating liftoff weights.
The two truckers looked at each other in bewilderment. “What do you think, Luke?” Buff asked, seemingly willing to be sold now.
“I dunno. . . . Goin’ off somewhere all that different. Where is it? Saturn out there some place? . . .”
“There isn’t going to be anything for you here,” Mitch said. He looked from one to the other. “What do you have? Any folks you can get to?”
Buff looked down at the ground. “Mine were in Virginia. . . . I don’t want to think about it.” Luke just shook his head bleakly. Keene turned his head away, not sure how much more of this he was going to be able to take. Mitch seemed about to say something, then stopped, trying to let the obvious speak for itself.
Finally, Luke said, “Maybe, if it’s like they say. . . . We should give it a try, I reckon.”
Buff looked back at Mitch, tightened his mouth for a second, then nodded. “I still think you’re crazy. But Luke’s usually right. We’ll do it.”
Leaving Keene to give Buff and Luke a hand filling the cans, Mitch went back to the rendezvous point to round up the others. “So who else you got with you in that group back there?” Luke asked Keene as they moved on to check another tank.
“One’s from SICA-one of the guys who went with the Kronians on their tour. There’s a scientist from the tracking labs in California. And then we have one of President Hayer’s aides from the White House.”
“Holy shit,” Buff breathed, shaking his head.
The others appeared in a gaggle, Mitch in front, Legermount shepherding from the rear. With the soldiers taking some of the cans, Buff and Luke led the way through to the rig they had found. It was an eighteen-wheel Freightliner, aluminum sided full-box, its windows still intact and showing just a few dents in the trailer. “Are you sure this will handle in the wind?” Mitch yelled dubiously to Buff, looking up at it.
“There’s only one way to find out. It’ll run. That’s the main thing. You wanna go looking around the whole of San Antonio for something better, go right ahead.”
The two troopers helped Buff and Luke finish filling the tank, while the others loaded whatever they could find that might come in useful. Then everyone climbed aboard except Mitch, who would ride up front in the cab. Buff closed the rear doors. A minute or so later, the truck began moving.
It started rocking violently almost at once. As they went into a turn, Keene sensed it veering erratically, trying to lift. Moments later, there was a crash as they struck something, followed for a few seconds by a rending noise outside. A short distance farther on they halted again.
“Don’t tell me this isn’t going to work,” Cavan muttered, sounding worried.
“I suppose they are truckers,” Colby mused. “Did anyone think to check their licenses?”
“Colby, you’re insane,” Cynthia told him.
“That was a prerequisite for anyone wanting to work in the White House,” Colby said. The truck remained at a standstill.
“Seems like they’re having a conference up front,” Keene observed. The troops sat stoically, waiting for what they couldn’t change to reveal itself.
Cavan produced his pocket radio, usable at short range, and buzzed Mitch. “What’s the problem?” he said into the mike end. There was a short pause. “He says something about a shopping trip,” Cavan told the others. “Don’t ask me. I don’t understand it either.”
At last the truck pulled away again. For what felt like a mile or two it slowed, speeded up again, turning and stopping several times. It didn’t feel as if they were on a highway or making discernible progress anywhere. All the time, the trailer heaved and bucked, seeming a couple of times to be on the verge of turning over. Then they stopped again, reversed slowly, and a few seconds later the shock came of the tail hitting something, accompanied by crashing and the sound of breaking glass. The gears shifted, and the truck moved forward again and stopped. Doors slammed up front. Moments later the rear was opened to reveal Mitch and Luke.
They were at a shopping mall and had demolished the side entrance of a Montgomery Ward store. Buff was climbing in over the wreckage of the wall and doors, probing into the darkness with a flashlamp beam. “We need everybody out again,” Mitch called inside. “This thing will never take the wind. We’re going to have to turn it into a flatbed ourselves.”
The store had been broken into already from a different entrance and was well ransacked. However, there were still axes, sledges, and other heavy tools in the hardware and garden sections, which was what they needed. For the next two hours they labored to cut and hammer the side and roof panels from the trailer, leaving the supporting ribs. From the pieces and the doors, and with the help of line and wire from the store, they fashioned a crude, ridged shelter, looking like a shallow tent, standing on the trailer’s chassis between what had been left of the sides. For ballast and protection they lashed mattresses from the bedding department over the top, weighed down with bags of fertilizer and lawn food, to be supplemented by sandbags when they came across some.
Finally, Keene stood looking at the result of their handiwork. It looked oddly inappropriate. A moment of doubt assailed him. “I don’t know,” he said to Cavan, shaking his head. “Are we wasting our time? Is there really any point to any of this, do you think, Leo?”
“Who knows?” Cavan replied. “There’s an old Irish saying: ‘Now is the time for the futile gesture.’ I’ve always thought it had a wonderful ring of magnificence about it. If anything does, it surely characterizes this obdurate species of ours. . . . Without it, I doubt if we’d even be here at all.” Keene was really beginning to believe that Cavan was enjoying it.
The time by now was well into the small hours of the morning. Everyone was exhausted. They rested up until dawn, and then set out for the ring road on the south side of the city. As they negotiated their way around blocked streets and through burning suburbs, sometimes having to bulldoze wrecked or abandoned vehicles aside, a huge fireball came out of the sky and exploded to the north, sending up burning tracers dripping flames. Minutes later, another fell farther away to the west. The frequency increased as the truck made its way onto Interstate 37 South, signposted for Pleasanton.
But at least it handled manageably now.