John Travers moved his hand slowly to the curtain that covered the doorway. There was the sound of a child laughing outside, at odds with the tension inside the mud-brick dwelling. Travers glanced back at Wade, signalled for him to watch the exit. He quickly pulled back the curtain, and a thick pall of dust fell from it as the cloth came loose from its hangings to fall to the straw-covered floor, revealing another, smaller room beyond.
It was empty.
Wade instinctively turned his head to see watch Travers. A split second, that’s all. No more than that. His attention momentarily diverted. A moment in time that would have disastrous consequences for all concerned.
A man appeared at the exit – nothing more than a shadow flitting by – and before Wade could respond, raising his gun, a cry of alarm on his lips, he was aware of something small and black being thrown into the room.
There was a deafening explosion and he was blown across the room, hit something solid and crumpled up on the floor, a searing pain tearing through his legs. He cried out a warning, but he could not hear anything except the dull pounding of waves on some faraway cliffs. An acrid, familiar smell stung his nostrils as he struggled to lift himself and see through the billowing smoke that filled the room.
That shadow at the doorway again, holding a machinegun, the sharp rat-at-tat and staccato flashes piercing his fogged mind, dust flying from where bullets ripped into the dry-mud walls, dirt spouting from the floor in aggressive little fountains beside him. Another burst of pain in his side.
He saw Peterson collapse like a shop-window dummy that had accidentally been knocked over. He fell heavily across Wade, causing Wade to scream out in pain. More firing, penetrating the fug of his blast-befuddled hearing. The shadow – now more than a single shadow, at least three people in all – dashed into the room, and Wade saw Travers’ body being dragged across the floor. He appeared to be dead.
Blinking away the pain and dirt that clogged his vision, Wade reached out for his gun that lay where he’d dropped it after the blast, but Peterson’s lifeless body pinned him down.
‘Travers!’ Wade yelled, watching helplessly as his friend and comrade-in-arms disappeared, taken from view into the bright, scorching sunlight outside. ‘Travers!’ He screwed his eyes up in agony as he attempted to remove Peterson from him, realising with horror that Peterson’s body had been riddled with bullets and he was almost certainly dead. He thought himself fortunate, for he too might also be lying dead, if Peterson’s lifeless form hadn’t acted as a shield against the insurgent’s wild, indiscriminate firing.
Wade collapsed onto the floor again. He was about to pass out, and was fighting the hot, numbing feeling that was creeping into his head. ‘Travers!’ he shouted again, the strength ebbing from his frame.
Just before he succumbed to the faint he saw two young boys enter the house. Wade watched them as his world became blurred, as if the lights were dimming down. The two boys came up to him and began to unfasten his helmet. One of the boys put it on his head; it looked comical and precariously balanced on his tiny skull. The other boy picked up Wade’s fallen gun, pointed it at the helpless soldier. The boy made a sound like all boys make when imagining they are firing a gun. The kids laughed and ran out of the house, taking their trophies with them.
Wade mouthed the word help, but he could not resist the piercing pain anymore, and his world clouded over completely.
‘Penny for your thoughts.’
It was Amanda Tyler standing at his side.
His head snapped round, his eyes momentarily glazed over. A tiny trickle of sweat ran down to his eye, which he wiped away with his index finger.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘Huh? Yeah, fine…’ He let out a quick breath, shoved his hand in his pocket to hide its trembling.
He watched as young Steven Lindsey stepped off the road and wandered into the scrub, still trying to get his phone to work. He put his earphones into his ears, messed some more with his phone and gave up, whipping out the cords in frustration and stuffing them into his pocket. He scuffed at a pile of stones with his shoe and looked expectantly at the horizon, as if staring would make something appear there.
‘We don’t seem to have gotten very far,’ Amanda said. ‘It still looks the same, as if we haven’t moved at all. It’s a big place…’
‘That’s an understatement,’ Wade said.
‘Are we going to have enough fuel to get us out of here?’
Wade stroked his coarse beard. He didn’t particularly like the feeling of having a beard, but it at least helped disguise him, if only in a small way. ‘I don’t know how far we have to go,’ he said. ‘But the fuel is doing okay for now. We’ll have to turn off the air conditioning more, though, to conserve it. I’m more concerned with the state of this road and its effects on the bus’s suspension. We don’t want to bust an axle or anything.’
She nodded. ‘They’re already starting to look to you to get them out of this, you know.’
He blinked in the harsh sunlight. ‘Well they ought not to put such faith in me,’ he said harshly, his change in tone taking her by surprise. ‘I’ve got troubles of my own without shouldering anyone else’s. The only reason I’m driving the damn bus is because I’ve got to get out of here alive. I’ve got unfinished business that needs taking care of.’ He put his hand to his pocket where the accursed gun sat heavy and insistent.
She eyed him, watched how his lower lip shivered faintly, and how his eyes were almost feral in their intensity. ‘They need hope. You’ve given them that hope. We certainly can’t rely on people like Hartshorn.’
‘Well I ain’t the goddamn Messiah leading everyone out of this bloody desert!’ he snapped. He looked over to the bus where Lauren Smith was standing in the vehicle’s shade, unfolding the newspaper that he saw her reading when he first got to the bus station. The front-page headline stood out stark and accusing.
MURDER HUNT CONTINUES
Soldier-husband suspect still at large
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked calmly, following his gaze to the young woman.
‘The paper…’ he said, not to Amanda but to himself.
‘Perhaps she’s trying to seek normality where she can find it,’ she surmised. ‘Reading about everyday life helps keep her grounded, I reckon.’
Wade wasn’t listening. He strode over to Lauren and snatched the newspaper brusquely from her.
12
An Impossible Possibility
‘Hey, that’s mine!’ she said, surprise on her face. ‘Give it back, I was reading it!’
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ her boyfriend said to Wade. ‘Give her back the paper.’
The others turned their heads at the sound of raised voices.
‘We need it,’ Wade said shortly.
‘A bloody newspaper?’ Jack Benedict’s brows lowered. ‘Give Lauren her paper back.’
‘Or what?’ said Wade, his own face clouding over. He stepped threateningly close to the young man, who back off slightly.
‘Jesus, it’s only a newspaper,’ Benedict said.
‘It’s okay, Jack,’ Lauren said, ‘I’ve read it all anyway. I was just checking my horoscope…’
‘But he can’t just do what he wants,’ Jack Benedict protested, looking to the others for some kind of tacit agreement.
Wade’s countenance softened as his moment of madness passed. He stared at the paper in his hands, the headline staring straight back at him. He folded it so that he couldn’t see it. He saw how upset and concerned Lauren was and reached out a hand. ‘I’m sorry…’ he said.
She backed away, regarding him as she’d regard a large unpredictable dog. ‘Keep the paper…’ she said. ‘If you want it.’
‘We need it,’ he said, realising how quickly his temper had risen and feeling sick over it.
‘Yeah? What so bloody urgent you have to snatch her paper away from her?’ Jack Benedict asked, folding his arms.
He paused, though
t about it. ‘Toilet paper,’ he said. ‘We need toilet paper…’ It was all he could think of.
‘That’s it? You bully someone because we need toilet paper?’ said Benedict. ‘Fine, take the thing, but you do something like that again…’ He frowned and pushed by Wade to get back on the coach.
‘Look…’ Wade said. ‘I didn’t mean…’
‘Sure. Captain Mainwaring…’ Benedict said as he boarded the bus.
Wade was aware of everyone staring silently at him. ‘It’s only a newspaper,’ he said awkwardly. Then straightened up. ‘Save any paper you have,’ he said shortly, walking away from the tiny knot of people to stand at the edge of the road again. He tore off the front page of the paper and screwed it into a tiny ball and shoved it deep into his pocket.
‘What was all that about?’ Martin Bolan said, coming up to him.
‘You heard,’ Wade replied.
‘You could have at least let her finish reading the thing before you snatched it from her. It wasn’t exactly polite, was it?’
‘Polite?’ Wade gave a stifled, humourless chuckle. ‘Like being polite is going to help us.’
‘Well we have to maintain some kind of dignity,’ Bolan said. ‘What’s so important you didn’t want anyone else to see?’
‘What?’
‘You tore a page out and put it in your pocket. I saw you. What was on it?’
‘You’re seeing things,’ Wade countered.
‘Have it your way. But feelings are like dry tinder waiting for just one tiny spark to send them all up in flames.’
‘I’m aware of that, Martin. Have you got the carrier bag with the food in?’ he said, changing tack.
‘It’s ready. But there’s not an awful lot in there.’
‘Well we’ll have to ration it,’ Wade said. ‘God knows how long we’re going to be out here…’
‘And I guess arse wipes are that important, too, right?’ He gave a small grin aimed at defusing the heavy atmosphere. ‘I’ll have everyone collect paper, and we can ration that as well. One small sheet – how does that sound?’
‘Point taken, Martin. Let’s see what food we have, eh?’
‘You ought to apologise to Lauren. She was looking up to you.’
‘Give it a rest, Martin,’ he said. But he sighed and nodded. ‘Yeah, I will, just as soon as she’ll allow me near her.’
‘Hey, everyone, come look at this!’
It was Steven Lindsey. He was about fifty metres from the coach, bending down to something on the ground. Wade and Bolan went over to him.
‘What have you got there, Steven?’ Bolan said.
The young man had his hand on what appeared to be a large rectangular piece of slightly domed, rusted metal protruding above the ground.
‘I dunno,’ he returned. ‘Is it a trapdoor or something?’
Wade’s eyes narrowed as he inspected the find. He scraped away some of the loose sand and rocks from around the edges of the large metal plate. He went down about five inches and then raised an eyebrow when his fingers probed inside a void. ‘It’s a car,’ he said.
‘Someone has buried a car? Out here?’ said Bolan, shaking his head.
Wade continued to scrape away the dirt, and sure enough he revealed more of the car’s side window, missing its glass but clearly recognisable as such. ‘That’s what it is. A full car by the look of it.’ He got down flat and peered through the hole into the car. ‘It’s filled with sand and the like, but it’s a car all right.’ He rose, brushing away dirt. ‘And by the looks of it this thing is an old car – I reckon 1950s or 60s.’
‘There’s another,’ pointed Steven Lindsey. He strode over to yet another similar lump of rusted metal. He skipped about the scrubland energetically. ‘And I think this is another!’
‘A car’s graveyard,’ said Bolan light-heartedly. ‘It’s where they come to die. You reckon this was once a scrap yard?’
Wade wiped dirt from his hands. ‘I don’t know. There’s no sign of any buildings here. And why would anyone bother to bury the things?’
‘Maybe they were brought out here as part of an insurance scam,’ said Steven, his eyes scanning the ground around him. ‘You know, they get someone to steal a car, they take it somewhere quiet and torch it while the owner claims insurance against it.’ He lifted his head. ‘Which means there has to be some town or such not far away,’ he added hopefully.
‘I don’t think anyone would actually take the time trouble to bury them. You know how much work that would take? There must have been a scrap yard here a long time ago when these sorts of things were on the road. I guess time simply buried them.’
‘I once read of a guy who buried his old car in his back garden,’ said Bolan. He saw Wade looking at him. ‘Just saying, is all. It was discovered when someone wanted to put in a fish pond.’
‘They’ve been buried naturally…’ Wade said, stroking his beard in thought.
‘What, like in a sandstorm or something?’ Bolan ventured.
Wade shrugged. ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He gazed at the horizon. ‘But it means there were people here at some time. That’s reassuring. There could still be people nearby.’
‘Maybe they can help us,’ Steven said, coming over to them. His expression had changed markedly, his gloom suddenly lifted.
‘If we could see the car’s registration plate we could work out where we are,’ Bolan pointed out.
‘But we’d need digging equipment to get down that far,’ said Wade, ‘and we can’t spend time and energy doing something that may have no point. It’s not the place to be caught outside too long.’
Bolan wrinkled his nose. ‘I guess so.’ He patted his stomach. ‘I’m getting peckish…’ But Wade’s attention had wandered. Something else had caught his eye. ‘What is it?’ Bolan asked, sensing everything was far from well.
‘Those look like tracks…’ Wade said, narrowing his eyes and walking away from the car to a patch of bare ground between spiky, grey shrubs. His fears were confirmed. ‘Yeah, they’re the same all right…’
Bolan forgot about his grumbling stomach. ‘You mean the same animal tracks we found near the bus driver?’
He nodded. ‘Recently made, too. A few hours old. A few of them headed that way…’ He pointed to the horizon. The sun was now at their backs, their shadows growing long and thin before them. He squinted. Strangely, he could plainly see their inky-black shadows moving, creeping slowly across the ground, lengthening as he watched. He glanced back at the sun, and swore he could see it moving slowly, as if sinking down towards the roof of the bus behind him. ‘That’s the weirdest thing,’ he said. ‘At this rate night will be on us in less than half an hour…’
‘What?’ said Bolan. ‘You must be mistaken – look how high the sun is, there’s a good two or three hours yet…’ But his mouth hung open as he too saw how the sun was definitely dropping lower in the sky far faster than it should be. ‘That’s impossible…’ he said in a hush. Already the air was getting decidedly cooler.
‘Out here, everything’s an impossible possibility, I guess,’ said Wade.
‘What does it mean?’ Steven said tentatively, coming up to the two men and following their rapturous gaze. ‘Is that a bad thing?’
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ Wade said. ‘And the way the temperature is falling then I’m pretty certain it’s going to drop cold, too. There’s not a cloud in the sky to keep things warm, so all the heat will be lost as soon as the sun drops below those mountains.’
‘So that’s bad, then?’ Steven persisted.
‘It means we ought to get back to the bus and prepare for the night, decide what we should do. Unless there’s a moon out it will get pretty dark out here, and I don’t fancy taking the bus down that road in the pitch-black.’
‘Wait – what’s that?’ said Bolan. He had his hand up, waving a finger in the same direction the tracks had been headed. ‘There – far away on the horizon… What is that?’
Wade shielded his eyes. He sa
w it too. Tiny flashes of light. Two or three times. Blinking on and off. ‘It looks like whatever’s causing it is miles away,’ he said under his breath.
‘Is someone signalling to us? It looks like a signal,’ Steven put forward.
The flashes of light stopped. Their eyes watered as they focussed on the shimmering, watery heat haze.
‘Or it could be a mirage,’ Bolan offered. ‘You hear about such things. Do you reckon it’s a mirage?’
It had all the appearance of the slanting sunlight bouncing off glass, Wade thought. He’d sometimes seen something similar in the Middle East, light reflecting off military and other vehicles way in the distance. That was his first guess, but he didn’t say anything.
‘It’s stopped, whatever it is,’ Wade said.
‘They could help us,’ said Steven. ‘We ought to signal back to them. Do you reckon we should make a fire or something, send up some smoke to get their attention?’
‘What is it?’ said Bolan quietly to Wade. ‘Something wrong?’ He was getting proficient at picking up on Wade’s shifting moods.
‘I wish I knew.’ He sighed. ‘It’s gone now. We ought to be getting back to the bus, like I said.’ He began to walk back to the road.
‘We could make a fire,’ Steven said. ‘We need their help.’
‘It might not be anything,’ said Wade, observing the growing dusk. ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ he said, feeling nervous about the sighting of fresh tracks.
‘Tomorrow will be too late!’ Steven protested. ‘Whoever it is will have been long gone by then!’
‘He could be right,’ said Bolan. ‘We should try to signal them.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Wade without looking back. ‘But stay close to the bus; whatever killed the bus driver is still out there, and those tracks are pretty fresh. I wouldn’t want to be caught out in the dark and in the open. Me, I’m going to get something to eat.’
Armageddon Heights (a thriller) Page 11
