by Nick Cook
‘You’re not thinking straight, Jake. We don’t know Air Force One’s location – besides, it would be a moving target.’
‘Damn it!’
Everyone in the room watched events on the screen play out in a stunned silence.
Plumes of white smoke burst from the fighter jets as their missiles streaked towards the incoming flock of shadow crows; the officer dragged Whitlock away from the camera as other people rushed past; four flashes of light beamed through the window in the background as the missiles took out half the cloud of shadow crows swarming towards Air Force One.
Just for a moment, I thought they were going to make it. But then the rest of the flock were on top of the fighters, engulfing them. A moment later, two fireballs blossomed and the burning wrecks of the F22s tumbled towards the ground, smoke and debris spinning, their cockpits almost certainly empty of pilots – the latest victims to be wiped out by the Shade.
The eyes of everyone in the room filled with shock.
We heard screams and shouts over the video as the view through the window tilted.
‘Air Force One is going into a powered dive,’ General Hammond said in a quiet voice, shaking his head.
Alarms warbled out as the world beyond the aircraft’s window became pitch black. The window shattered and shadows crows poured into the cabin, a black stream of death that tore at people. The chorus of frantic screams rose to a deafening level as people died, ripped to shreds by thousands of claws. And then mercifully the screen broke up with static, the words Transmission lost flashing up.
No one said anything for several seconds.
‘They didn’t stand a chance,’ Carter said at last. He turned towards Chloe and me. ‘Whatever you need, I will personally make sure the world delivers it directly to your doorstep at Culham. Is there anything else that we can do to help?’
Of all things, I thought of the farmer harvesting his field and I knew exactly what the world needed. ‘Yes. The lies stop now. Every person on this planet deserves to know the truth.’
‘But there will be widespread panic if we basically tell them our world has been attacked from creatures beyond this dimension,’ Carter replied.
Hammond stood up. ‘Do you mind if I say something, Jake?’
I felt drained to the core and dipped my chin towards him. ‘Go ahead.’
‘They will be shocked, of course they will be,’ Hammond said. ‘But the human race has lived through plagues, natural disasters, wars – through the worst that mankind can do to each other. And despite everything that has happened in our history, our species has always prevailed because that’s what we do. Don’t underestimate people, Prime Minister, especially not at a time like this.’
‘Time for the truth…’ Carter slowly nodded. ‘Yes, everyone deserves that, particularly the survivors who will have to live with the aftermath. I for one don’t want to go down in history as a man who tried to pull the wool over the eyes of the world during its darkest hour. Leave this with me, Jake. I will take this to the UN at its new HQ in Geneva.’ Carter’s sharp blue eyes looked deep into mine. ‘And I promise you, from the bottom of my soul, we’ll get the truth out there.’
‘Thank you…’ But even as I replied, my mind was somewhere else. The initial shock was ebbing away, and now all I could see in my mind was Gem’s beautiful face looking at me when we’d last said goodbye in a city that no longer existed. My jaw tight, a storm in my chest, I turned away.
Chapter Twenty-Three
We teleported back to Culham, my head a kaleidoscope as I imagined Gem’s last moments witnessing the nuclear blast a moment before it took out New York. I hid myself away for a moment in Dad and Claire’s Portakabin lab to try to gather myself together, while more technicians arrived by the second. Activity out on the production floor was frantic as they all tried to repair the Waverider motherboards by hand.
Chloe, Dad, Claire and Hammond, who was carrying a tough-looking green-metal briefcase, suddenly entered the Portakabin together. Their concerned faces made it obvious they’d been looking for me.
‘How are you holding up there, Jake?’ Chloe asked as Hammond placed the case onto a table.
‘Not well. All those people in New York… Gem and her team…’ I stared through the window at the star-filled night sky.
‘The Shade have claimed too many lives already,’ General Hammond said.
In my imagination, Gem’s face was replaced by Dave’s, Allen’s, Ethan’s – and countless others – a flicker book of all those who had died.
‘I know this is going to sound lame compared to everything that’s happened, but I never got the chance to make things right with Gem,’ I said.
Chloe sat down next to me. ‘That’s not lame at all; it just really sucks.’ She placed her hand on her chest. ‘I’m not sure I’ll ever get over Ethan either. But both of them fought for what they believed in, so we have to do our best to live by their examples and continue that fight.’
‘All we can do is keep on fighting. We can never surrender,’ General Hammond said.
Claire patted me on the shoulder. ‘Despite all the heartbreak.’
‘Yes…’ I gestured with my chin to the green metal briefcase. ‘What’s that about?’
‘More bad news I’m afraid. It’s why we had to track you down,’ Hammond replied. ‘It turns out that the US nuke did a lot more damage than we originally realised – and not to the Shade. It seems that, far from collapsing the singularity, the dark energy field around it actually absorbed most of the blast, which increased its mass significantly. In addition, our current revised estimates suggest a tenfold increase in the number of shadow crows appearing through the rift at the Brookhaven site.’
My feeling of helplessness was suddenly overwhelming.
‘I’m afraid it’s even worse,’ Chloe said.
She took the briefcase from Hammond and sprang its catches. She placed it on the lab bench and opened it to reveal a rugged laptop. She tapped a few keys and the GCHQ live feed appeared.
My eyes took in the Shadowlands, now covering a large slab of the eastern seaboard of the United States, including Washington – and a fair chunk of Canada too. ‘That looks awful, but nothing that we didn’t expect.’
‘That’s not live feed,’ Claire replied. ‘It’s a snapshot taken just before the nuke hit. The next image is an update taken four hours after the detonation.’
The screen refreshed, showing the black fog slick over Atlanta, all the way down to Virginia and across the border up to Montreal.
‘The Shadowlands has spread that far already?’ I said, a sense of bewilderment swirling through me.
‘Yes, it seems as if the nuke actually increased the expansion rate of the Shadowlands,’ Chloe said.
‘How much faster is it spreading?’ I asked.
‘Revised estimates suggest that in another eight days the whole of North America will be swamped,’ General Hammond replied. ‘Eight days after that, South America, Canada and the Arctic regions. Seven days after that, Japan and the Pacific Rim nations will fall. Ten days later, Asia and the UK, shortly followed by the rest of Europe. Five days after that, the remainder of the whole world will be blanketed by the Shadowlands. Thanks to those idiots launching that nuke, in around thirty days the entire Earth will be under the influence of the Shade.’
I was on my feet and pacing the room. There were five thousand major cities in the world. The thousand Waveriders already built are nowhere near enough to protect them – and we haven’t got time to make any more.
‘But we’re already too focused on repairing the ones we have to make any more,’ I said.
‘You’re right, Jake – alone, there’s no chance of making anywhere near enough Waveriders,’ Hammond said. ‘The only thing that can save us now is by throwing all of humanity’s resources at this problem. For maybe the first time in our history, we need to pull together as one species, both Awoken and Normals, as you so quaintly refer to us, working towards a common target: na
mely the survival of our race.’
‘But surely that’s impossible?’ I replied. ‘The logistics for organising all of this must be off the scale.’
His gaze narrowed on me. ‘I know you and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, Jake, but this is our fight too – not just the Awoken’s. We have to fight shoulder to shoulder. And working together, anything is possible. The PM has already spoken to the other world leaders. Every single one of them has agreed to give you all the resources you need. You’ve already asked for technicians, a thousand of them – well, you’ll have ten times that number, a person for every single Waverider within the next twenty-four hours.’
‘That’s a start, but we don’t have the space here to manufacture that sort of number.’
‘He did say any resources we need,’ Claire said. ‘Manufacturing car plants right around the world are being turned over to the production of Waverider machines based on Martin’s specs. Their robotic systems have been replaced with human labour to build them.’
‘With a wing and a prayer, we should just about be able to produce enough additional machines to protect every remaining major city on our planet,’ Chloe said.
‘You really believe we have a chance of doing this?’ I asked.
‘I have to, Jake,’ Hammond replied. ‘It’s all we have left – to help those we can save.’
My heart clenched. ‘The projected fatalities were bad enough when we thought we had five hundred days, so what are they now?’
Hammond didn’t reply straight away. Instead, he headed over to the window and looked out at the fields beyond the science park, much like I had done from the roof. Maybe he was looking for his equivalent of a farmer to inspire him.
He finally turned his eyes to mine. ‘There is no way to dress this up, so we may as well hit you with the facts, Jake. The best case simulation estimates that around seven billion people will probably die – and that is if everything goes to plan.’
I felt the blood drain away from my face, leaving it icy cold. ‘Are you sure?’
Hammond gave me the barest nod and hung his head. ‘I am. I wish it were different.’
In that moment he looked as broken as I felt, lines radiating out from his eyes as though he’d aged ten years in the last day.
‘But there must be something we can do – something that we’re missing?’
Dad looked at me with a pleading gaze in his eyes. ‘If you can come up with anything, Jake, then I want to hear it. Unfortunately, the greatest minds in the world have got nothing at the moment.’
‘I… I…’ I searched for something, anything, that we could do, but all I could see was the awful cold logic of the numbers. We didn’t have enough time to save everyone. I slowly shook my head.
‘Then all we can do is speed up the evacuation of the world’s population into the major cities,’ Hammond said. ‘That process will begin with a coordinated announcement from the world leaders, including our own PM, telling them the truth and instructing them to begin the worldwide evacuation.’
‘They’re really going to do this – and tell people the truth?’
‘They’ve got no other choice, Jake,’ Claire replied. ‘You were more than persuasive in our meeting with the PM and he relayed that message to the other leaders during an emergency conference with the UN in Geneva. When it became clear just how bleak the outcome would be if the evacuation was not initiated immediately, one by one every single world leader fell into line.’
Dad nodded. ‘Once people around the world are told the truth, we’re going to witness a human exodus the likes of which has never been seen in the entire history of our species. And every person who makes it to a Waverider-protected city, each life saved, will be a victory in its own right. That’s what we’re fighting for now, Jake.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I replied.
Hammond glanced at his watch. ‘The PM is about to begin his broadcast…’
‘I’ve managed to rig a fix for the big monitor in the production room,’ Chloe said. ‘I suggest we go and watch it with everyone else.’
She was right. This was going to be one of those moments that people would remember for the rest of their lives…however long that might be.
A short while later, we were all crammed into the production room, gazing at the big screen, which showed the words:
Urgent broadcast from the prime minister, please stand by.
Chloe hooked her hand through my arm. ‘Here we go…’
Carter’s face appeared on the massive screen and a hush fell over the room. ‘Right now, at fifteen hundred hours GMT, I and all other world leaders are talking to their citizens. It is my solemn duty to tell you that our world is under attack…’
Everyone listened with rapt attention as the PM laid out the facts. This was it – the truth was finally out there.
As Carter continued to talk, I stole away and headed outside to breathe in the night air. At last everyone would know that we were fighting for the very survival of our world and that felt like a victory of kinds.
A single meteorite streaked across the night sky and my eyes fell to Pleiades, the Celtic constellation of the dead I’d once seen from Raven’s Hill with Chloe – a lifetime ago.
‘God protect us all,’ I whispered into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The combination of men and women in lab coats, soldiers in military uniform of every country and all the Awoken meant Culham was seriously lacking on space. Four additional huge production tents had been erected by the Royal Engineers to hold the additional Waveriders being rapidly assembled at Culham. I was emotionally and physically wrung out, but I helped wherever I could.
In need of a chance to breathe as much as anything else, I headed outside to Claire, who’d been talking to somebody with a clipboard next to a long line of lorries.
‘How’s it going?’ I asked.
‘This is our first delivery of central charge spheres for L2s and L3s from Germany. Another hundred will be with us by tomorrow. And before you say anything, I realise that’s nothing like enough. But those factories’ efforts are being replicated by another hundred similar facilities, right around the world.’
‘So…’ I did the mental maths. ‘That would be enough for ten thousand Waveriders. I thought we were aiming for five thousand?’
‘Better to aim high than undershoot,’ Claire replied. ‘Besides, the more capacity we have, the more L2s and even L1s we can turn out for the smaller population centres. Not to mention the fact that none of us know how long these machines will need to run, so we’re aiming to produce spares for every critical component.’
That was one thing I hadn’t begun to even consider: just how long would the survivors have to live under the energy domes? Months, years, or even for ever? That was a terrifying thought in itself.
Claire headed off towards another lorry that had just pulled up and I walked back inside.
Thanks to Chloe’s efforts, we now had a live feed from the BBC news channel that was once again broadcasting in a window on the Shadowlands map.
As I picked my way through the crowds of people, the same news that’d filled the last six hours of airtime was being picked over yet again by the so-called experts who’d been pulled into the studio. The scene then switched to a reporter on top of a skyscraper in Seattle where her cameraman zoomed in on long lines of almost stationary traffic snaking their way into the city.
The evacuation of humanity into cities had gone far from smoothly. From broken-down cars to fights between angry mobs – and everything in between. There were a thousand flavours of stressed-out humans fleeing for their lives – all being relentlessly reported about by the twenty-four-hour news channel.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Chloe offering me a mug of coffee and a cheese sandwich. ‘Here, you need to keep your energy up.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, suddenly aware of just how hungry I was. I had no idea when I’d last eaten. I took a big bite of the sa
ndwich, gulped down some coffee and gestured up at the screen. ‘It’s not getting any better out there, is it?’
Chloe clicked her tongue. ‘Nope. It’s the looting that’s getting to me. You would think those idiots would have something better to do than stealing giant TVs from abandoned homes at a time like this.’
‘There will always be self-centred jerks out there who grab any opportunity.’
‘You think with their lives on the line they’d have bigger priorities right now.’
‘I know. The worst thing is, it’s distracting the police and military from concentrating on the important stuff, such as getting everyone into the cities as fast as possible.’
I took another sip of coffee as the newsfeed cut to the interview it’d been recycling endlessly.
Chloe sighed. ‘Not this again.’
‘I think it’s what they refer to as a human interest story,’ I said.
Across the bottom of the screen, a banner read: McCullin family in Massachusetts takes a stand.
The interview of a man and a woman with their two children began for what felt like the hundredth time.
Their living room looked ordinary enough – just an everyday American family house. Maybe apart from the hunting rifle resting against the arm of the sofa by the dad.
‘I’m with the McCullins, one of countless families across America who have refused to take notice of the evacuation order and are insisting on staying put,’ an auburn-haired reporter said. She thrust a microphone towards the mother. ‘Why would you endanger your children like this, Mrs McCullin?’
The woman waved her hand around her. ‘Because this is our home and our community. It’s where we belong – not at some refugee camp in a big city.’
‘But what about these Shade creatures that have been reported? In less than two hours, they will have overrun this town. What will you do then?’
‘We will be at church like many of our neighbours, praying to the Lord Almighty to protect us,’ the dad said. He patted the rifle beside him. ‘And if that isn’t enough, I know how to protect my own.’
