“Is this the way to Business Class?” I asked.
He hit me again and my head made a clanging noise against the floor.
“You’re that Limey kid,” said the man.
“Limey?” I said, playing for time. “Do people really say Limey? Isn’t that a bit out of date now?”
“Where are the others?”
“Others?” Suddenly there was a knife at my throat.
“We were given orders not to kill you,” said the man in black. “The general wants that pleasure himself. But hey, he’s not here so if I drop you out the back no-one will ever know.”
In the confusion of embarkation there was every chance that he wouldn’t have heard about any skirmishes that took place, so I said: “No others. Just me. They didn’t make it.”
“Right,” he replied mockingly. “Hey Joe, check around. He must’ve come out of one of the vehicles.”
I couldn’t see who he was talking to. It was impossible to know how many of them there were. I wondered what they could have been doing lounging around the unheated fuselage of a cargo plane full of vehicles and supplies, then I registered that his black clothing was a jump suit.
“So you’re, like, American parachute ninjas or something?” I asked.
“Or something.”
There was a loud thud and a groan from the end of the plane then a floodlight came on, momentarily blinding me. The man atop me rolled sideways and ducked behind a pallet, seamless and silent.
I blinked at the light and realised it was the spot on the top of the Stryker.
“Come on, Lee,” shouted my dad. I pulled myself upright and ran for the vehicle, past the stunned body of another man in black. I vaulted up on to the Stryker, where Dad was standing behind the spotlight and mounted gun emplacement, his eye pressed up against the huge sighting lens. “Get inside.”
I slid down into the belly of the vehicle, where Tariq was waiting, gun at the ready.
“You couldn’t fucking hold it?” he said, witheringly.
“The sights on this thing are great,” said Dad loudly. “I mean, I can only see your right foot, but if I...” There was a loud report as he squeezed the trigger, then he ducked back down to join us. “They’ll be considering their next move for a minute or two. Lee, how many are there?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I only saw two. I think they’re parachutists, and they’re blacked up, so I reckon they’re dropping from this plane before we land. Advance guard, maybe.”
“And we thought it was only kit in here. Bloody hell,” said Tariq.
“We don’t want to get into a firefight,” said Dad. “Pressurised cabin, all sorts of bad things happen.”
“But you just shot at him!” I said.
“Calculated risk. Just to make a point. Let’s hope he doesn’t call my bluff, or things will go wrong very quickly.”
A voice echoed down the plane, barely audible above the roar of the engines.
“Hey, Limeys!”
Dad popped his head back up and shouted: “Yeah?”
“Hold on!”
There was a clunk and a whirr of machinery.
“Oh shit,” shouted Dad and he ducked back inside the vehicle, pulling the hatch closed behind him. He looked white as a sheet.
“What?” asked Tariq and I, in unison.
But Dad wasn’t listening, instead he scrambled past us and into the driver’s seat, where he started pressing buttons frantically. Tariq and I followed, taking up positions either side of him, looking down at the various touchscreens which were illuminating one by one as the vehicle powered up.
“What are you doing?” I asked again.
“Got to initialise the CBRN, it’s our only chance,” he muttered. Tariq and I looked at each other and shrugged. Suddenly the plane lurched to one side and began to descend. The noise from outside the vehicle began to get a lot louder.
“Oh fuck me, no,” I whispered as I realised what was happening. The look on Tariq’s face told me that he’d worked it out too.
“Got it!” yelled Dad. There was a hiss of compressed air and the sound of bolts locking. “I’ve turned on the CBRN system. We’re airtight and pressurised.” He pulled the seatbelt across, strapping himself in.
“Lee, strap yourself into the other seat,” he ordered. I sat down and did as I was told. “Tariq, you’re going to have to find something to brace yourself against back there. I think I saw some straps you could use. Just lie flat on one of the couches and try not to let go. This is going to be rough.”
Tariq nodded wordlessly, and disappeared into the back.
“CBRN?” I asked, trying not to think about what was about to happen.
“Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear warfare system,” he replied.
“Cool.”
The vehicle shook.
“Tariq, you strapped in?” Dad shouted.
“Yeah,” came the tremulous reply from the back.
“They must have decided we were too much trouble to flush out,” said Dad.
“They’re right,” I replied.
“Remember that time at Rhyll,” said Dad, “when I took you on the rollercoaster?”
“Jesus, do I ever.”
“Fifteen people with your sick in their hair. I thought they were going to lynch us. This is going to be much worse.”
“Oh, thanks for the...”
The vehicle flew backwards at enormous speed, flinging Dad and I forward against our straps and squeezing the air out of us. Time elongated, and the g-force was overwhelming. I tried to breathe but couldn’t force my lungs to inflate. My eyes watered, my ears roared and popped, I would have screamed if I could. Then my stomach flipped and we were falling, weightless. The seat fell away from my arse and the straps dug deep into my shoulders as I was dragged down by the dead weight of the plummeting metal cage that surrounded us. It went on forever until there was an almighty snap as the cords on the ’chutes went taut and our descent slowed. Now the pressure went the opposite way, as the deceleration forced me down into my seat, crunching my spine and pressing my chin down in to my chest as I suddenly felt twenty stone heavier. Eventually we hit our descent speed and returned to normal. I gasped like a fish on dry land, hyperventilating.
I looked across at Dad. He was stunned, but okay.
I craned over to see if Tariq was okay. He was lying on the couch, tied by thick straps designed for holding equipment steady on rough terrain, grinning fit to burst.
“Again! Again!” he shouted, like a demented Tellytubby.
The vehicle rocked from side to side in the winds, making me feel seasick.
Dad unbuckled himself and tried to stand. His legs went from under him, though, and he fell forwards on to the console. “Woah, dizzy,” he gasped.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Need to see where we’re coming down,” he wheezed in reply, then he staggered back into the belly of the vehicle, bracing himself against the walls as it swayed.
“Are you mad?” I asked, unbuckling myself and tumbling after him. “You don’t know how high we are, whether we’re even in breathable air yet. If you go too soon, we’ll depressurise. If you go too late, you could be unbuckled when we hit the ground and that would not be good.” I grabbed his arm and held him back.
“Lee, we might not even be over land.”
“Shit,” said Tariq, who hadn’t bothered to unstrap himself, and was still lying there. “You mean...”
Dad nodded. “We could hit water and sink like a stone. We could be over the Med or the Channel, I don’t know. Or maybe over a mountain range. For all we know, we could hit the top of a snow ridge and tumble all the way down the bloody Eiger.”
“And what would we do if we were coming down over the sea or somewhere worse?” I asked. “What good would knowing do us? I doubt this thing has a life raft, or skis. Does it have retractable skis?”
Dad glared at me and then smiled in spite of himself. “No, no skis.”
He paused and then nodded. “When did you become the grown-up?” he asked as we strapped ourselves back in.
“Ask Mom,” I replied and then instantly wished I hadn’t. I avoided his eyes and didn’t say another thing.
“All right,” said Dad a few minutes later. “We’ve got lots of parachutes holding us up, and the pallet we’re on is slightly cushioned, but it’ll still be a hell of a jolt when we land. So be ready.” We sat, rocking gently, listening to the wind whistle by outside, feeling the hollowness in our stomachs as we fell.
“Do you reckon...” began Tariq, but he was interrupted.
We hit something but we didn’t stop falling. The vehicle spun 180 degrees around its centre axis until we were upside down. Then there was another crash and we spun the other way, facing nose down, still falling. Loud cracks and bangs echoed through the metal structure as we fell, swivelling and spinning wildly.
“Trees!” shouted Dad.
Our stop-start, rollercoaster descent slowed as we crashed down through branches and bowers until finally we came to a halt, swinging, facing downwards at 45 degrees. We all caught our breath. The only sound was the creak of wood from outside.
“Everyone okay?” asked Dad.
Tariq groaned and lifted a thumb. I tried to nod, but my neck hurt in all sorts of interesting new ways. “Yeah,” I said. “Nothing two years of intensive physiotherapy wouldn’t fix.”
“Good.” Dad breathed out heavily. “Fuck me, that was a bit drastic wasn’t it? Remind me never to do anything like that again. And next time, son, bring a bloody gazunder. Anyway, we’re stuck. Which is good.”
“Huh?”
“If we’d just hit the ground cold, it would have been the equivalent of falling twelve feet. In a chair. We’d have been lucky not to break our backs.”
“Now you tell us,” groaned Tariq.
Dad activated the driver’s side periscope, but the view was obscured by parachute silk, so he unbuckled himself and clambered down the cabin to the gunner’s periscope, which was also blocked. He climbed to the hatch, pulling his knife from its sheath as he did so.
“You both stay here, buckled up. I’ll go see what state we’re in.”
The vehicle swung perilously as he moved around in it, making me feel seasick. He opened the hatch and shoved aside a swathe of silk.
“We’re in a forest,” he said. “Pitch black, no lights, could be anywhere.”
He climbed outside and we could hear him scuttling around on the shell of the vehicle. “We’re only about six feet off the ground and we seem pretty well braced. I think you should unbuckle and jump down.”
Tariq and I unstrapped ourselves, climbed to the edge of the roof and jumped on to a soft bed of pine needles. Dad stayed on the vehicle.
“Get clear,” he shouted. “I’m going to cut some of the parachute straps and see if I can get this thing on the ground the right way up.”
“Don’t be daft,” I replied. “If you cut the wrong cord, the Stryker could flip and land on you.”
“Just get clear, Lee,” he said impatiently.
I knew that tone meant no arguments, so I walked away and watched, nervous as hell, as Dad sawed away at the various parachute cords that were holding the vehicle in a complex swaying web. Each cord gave way with a loud twang, huge amounts of tension being released as they snapped. The vehicle lurched, first one way, then the other, then forwards, then backwards. It was like Dad was playing some vast, lethal game of Kerplunk. Cut the wrong cord and it was all over.
Bit by bit the vehicle came free, swinging more wildly as it hung by fewer threads. Then Dad made a mistake, cut the wrong cord and the whole thing pivoted and pointed nose down. Dad was flung forward and was left hanging off the gun turret. Tariq and I gasped, but Dad pulled himself up the roof until he reached the rear bumper. Reaching up with his knife, he cut the last cord and the vehicle dropped on to its nose. Then it slowly toppled backwards and landed the right way up, flinging Dad off it like a bronco rider on a bad day. He landed in a heap, but he was fine.
He stood up, brushing the dirt and pine needles off him. “Right,” he said, “let’s get this show on the road!”
We cut the straps that bound the vehicle into the pallet, and disconnected the final straggling parachute cords. Then we climbed inside and Dad booted her up. Even after that insane descent, she started first time. The touchscreens came to life. Dad pored over them for a minute or two and then announced: “It’s Bavaria.”
“What?” I said, incredulous.
Dad turned around, facing Tariq and me with a big smile on his face.
“It’s Bavaria. We’re just outside Ingolstadt.”
“How the hell do you know that?” I asked.
“The satnav’s working!” he replied with a grin. “All right, what’s your postcode?”
THE STRYKER WAS designed for road clearance, and Dad drove like a demon, so we made good time. Germany’s autobahns and France’s highways proved impassable, but the satnav steered us down side roads and country lanes, always heading for our next stop – Calais station and the Channel Tunnel.
A couple of times we encountered roadblocks manned by gangs of marauders, but we kept driving straight through them as the bullets pinged harmlessly off our carapace. I knew that the Americans would have attacked England by now, and the knot of fear and anticipation in my stomach wound tighter with every mile. What would I find when we got to the school? Would it be a smoking wreck, ringed by the impaled corpses of my friends? And if so, how could I ever live with myself? I grew quiet and sullen, eaten up with stress, so it fell to Tariq to pepper our journey with anecdotes and nonsense. Sometimes he managed to get a smile out of me, but not often.
Dad and I didn’t talk much, but the silence was less charged than it had been in Iraq. Perhaps he was starting to accept that I was more man than boy now, whatever my age. Or perhaps I was just enjoying being with him, watching him be heroic and confident, enjoying having someone look after me for a change, instead of me bearing all the weight. Either way, it was better. Not right, but at least better.
Eventually, after four days of negotiating our way across Europe, we arrived at the station in Coquelles, near Calais. We knew that the Chunnel might be blocked, but we fancied holding on to the Stryker, and if the tunnel were passable it would be a quick and easy trip. What we didn’t reckon on was the welcoming committee.
From my position at the gunner’s post, I kept lookout using the periscope as the Stryker nosed its way through the station entrance and on to the concourse. Burnt-out trains stood at the platforms, shattered glass everywhere.
On a bench in the middle of the concourse, a solitary man sat watching us.
“You see him?” I said.
“Uh-huh,” replied Dad, slowing to a halt and putting on the handbrake.
“What do you reckon?”
Dad didn’t answer, I glanced over my shoulder and saw that he was using his periscope to scan the windows of the buildings that overlooked the concourse.
“What you looking for?” I asked.
“Anything. Keep an eye on the guy. What’s he doing?”
I pressed my eye against the periscope and zoomed in.
“He’s smiling.”
“Like a ‘hi guys, good to see you’ kind of smile?” asked Tariq, frustrated that he couldn’t see what was going on.
I zoomed in closer, until the man’s face filled my vision. He was dressed in black and grey combats and was wearing sunglasses. I couldn’t see his eyes, but there was a cold malevolence about his smile; something feral yet amused.
“No,” I said. “More a ‘come into my parlour said the spider to the fly’ kind of smile.” I described a circle, checking for snipers or traps. I saw nothing, but I w
asn’t reassured.
“I can see the way to the tunnel,” I said. “Should we just drive?”
Dad considered it, and shook his head. “No. I dunno who this bloke is, but he could have booby traps anywhere. The tunnel might be exactly where he wants us.”
Before we could decide what to do, the man took the initiative. He got up and walked towards us, stopping just in front of the vehicle. He removed his glasses to reveal jet black eyes.
“Bonjour,” he said affably.
Dad stroked the touchscreen and spoke into the mic on his helmet. “Parlez vouz Anglais?” His awkward schoolboy French echoed around the empty concourse and he stroked the screen again, turning down the loudspeakers.
“Ah,” said the man in a strong French accent, his eyes full of calculation and surprise. “We thought perhaps some Anglais might come through the tunnel. We were not expecting any to go the other way.”
Dad put his hand over his mic. “He said ‘we.’ Lee, keep looking, he’s not alone.” Then he took his hand away and replied: “We just want to go home. We’ve travelled a long way.”
“I can see that,” said the man. “This is not a British fighting vehicle.” It was not a question, which told me that he knew his stuff. Military background, perhaps? “My name is De Falaise,” said the man, rather more grandly than seemed appropriate. “My colleagues and I control this station. If you wish to pass, we would expect some form of consideration.”
“Here we go,” said Tariq.
“What do you have in mind?” asked Dad.
“Information.”
“What kind of information?”
“Have you been in contact with Britain since The Cull? By radio perhaps? Can you tell us anything about what is happening on the other side of that tunnel? My friends and I, you see, are thinking of relocating.”
I caught a glint, just for an instant, in a window behind us. I thumbed the zoom button and sure enough there was a man in position there; tripod, sniper rifle, telescopic sight. I didn’t think he could do us any damage, but there might be more.
School's Out Forever (The Afterblight Chronicles: The St Mark's Books) Page 44
