Armageddon Heights (a thriller)

by D. M. Mitchell

  Travers’ wife Deidre was worried sick. She had a young kid, a boy aged two and a bit. Wade’s wife Colleen and Deidre were close friends, so Colleen offered a shoulder to lean and cry on, but the ordeal of waiting for news of her husband took its toll on the pretty young woman. She became drastically thin, her skin sallow, her mood one of creaky forbearance. Deidre cried a lot, Colleen told Wade.

  And then, unexpectedly, out of nowhere, there was a video of Travers posted by the insurgents on the internet. He was on his knees, head bowed, hands tied behind his back. When he was ordered to look up to the camera Wade could hardly recognise his friend. His head had been shaved, but his face was swollen as if he’d taken a recent beating, his eyes mere slits in puffed-up pillows of bruising, his left cheek looked to have been broken at some recent time, his skin caked with dried blood and filth. When he spoke, his words were slurred and barely intelligible, saliva dribbling from the corner of his puffy lips. He gave his name, rank, serial number and regiment.

  It was on all the news channels and Travers’ battered face featured in all the national newspapers, along with the telling of the frenzied diplomatic activity that burst back into life to retrieve the prisoner. Initially there were threats of beheading, but this soon gave way to clandestine meetings between negotiators and leaders of the insurgency. Whatever demands were made and met, two months later Private John Travers was released from captivity, and his final, silent and almost abashed arrival in the UK plastered all over the media.

  But all was not well. The man was broken. Whatever hell they put him through stayed with him. Haunted him. Wade knew only too well what that meant, as well as the fact that his own ordeal was nothing in comparison to the terrors his friend must have been put through. Travers shunned the attention of the media until they gave up and searched for the next big thing. As far as his career in the army went, he was finished. His commanding officers knew that, his psychologists and counsellors all knew it, his wife, his friends, and, most of all Samuel Wade, though he scarce wanted to admit it. Everyone except John Travers, it seemed, was able to foretell the inevitable.

  Just being in his company confirmed the grim reality for Wade. Violent mood swings, aggression, tears, rage, a veritable tsunami of emotions Travers could do little to control. It was shocking to behold, and though Travers’ wife Deidre assured Wade the doctors had told her it would take time, lots of it, before her husband was ever going to be anything like his old self, even she doubted the wisdom of their clinical predictions the longer her ordeal went on. Months passed. A year. More. Travers was discharged from the military. And it became clear to all that Travers’ old self had perished on the day the insurgents hauled him from that mud-brick house in that faraway land fought over for generations.

  And all for what? Why John, why us? Deidre asked these questions and more. She did well to hide her own frothing emotions, but to a close family friend like Wade she opened up just a little, so he could see the painful red sore of her hurt festering away beneath the Bandaid of her stoical exterior. It screwed him up to see her like this, to think that if he hadn’t taken his eyes off the ball for that split second his friend might never have been taken and this nightmare could have been avoided. His own counsellor told him he wasn’t to blame. It was war. Things like that happen at such times. He needed to stop beating himself up over it.

  But Wade couldn’t, and he drank himself into oblivion, put his own army career in jeopardy with his increasingly erratic behaviour fuelled by anger and guilt. Finally he was discharged, honourably at least, but that didn’t stop the downward spiral. He discovered later that Travers and Deidre split up, and though Wade tried to be supportive to both parties, Travers wanted nothing to do with his one-time friend. Wade had to concede that the best thing for all of them was to never see each other again, at least for the foreseeable future, a foreseeable future that eventually stretched quietly into forever. Wade stumbled from mediocre job to mediocre job, drank way too much and found himself waking from unconsciousness and close to death in A&E without the faintest idea how he got there.

  And that’s where the angels intervened. Here he met Colleen. The old cliché – a nurse, a patient, a mutual attraction, a marriage, a house and a daughter. Salvation and redemption all rolled into one. And they might have lived happily ever after, but that simply would have been too good to be true. There was one last twist of the knife to be suffered for those caught up in that doomed patrol all those years ago. One final agony to endure…

  John Travers, his body still bearing the scars of his capture, his mind equally scarred and broken, but invisibly so, his career and private life in tatters, was out for revenge. He sought to take it out on Wade.

  ‘You ought to rest. You can’t go on punishing yourself like you are.’

  Samuel Wade’s thoughts were derailed by the sound of Martin Bolan’s voice close by his shoulder, the gruelling recollections turning to a vile mush that settled like obnoxious silt inside his head awaiting the next disturbance, when it would rise up again to cloud his very being with its insidious poison.

  Wade relaxed his hands on the steering wheel, aware of his fingers hurting with the pressure he’d been unconsciously applying. ‘We need to get as far as we can,’ he said.

  ‘Then let me drive, or hand the wheel over to someone else.’

  ‘I can’t. I need to make sure we get out of here…’ Wade said.

  The road ahead was still dark, the headlights struggling to penetrate the sheet-like blackness of the desert night.

  ‘Sure, you’re on a mission, I get that,’ said Bolan, ‘but you’re so tired you’re liable to land us in a ditch or something. You didn’t eat anything either. You have to rest and eat. It’s what you keep telling us.’

  ‘You’ve seen how many provisions we’ve got,’ Wade said. ‘The average person drinks up to two litres of water a day. We’ve got four litres of fluid, some of it water, most in the form of energy drinks, and that’s it. The food is not going to last long, if you can call it food, but at least the human body can last longer without food than without water. We need to get to somewhere where there might be water.’

  ‘That’s your excuse? Water?’ Bolan said quietly. ‘You’re desperate to get out of here to kill the man who killed your family. You’re driven blind by it. You said yourself that we might bust the axles on this terrain if we’re not careful, and yet you’re risking it. You’re putting all our lives in jeopardy, especially now you’re tired.’ Then he raised an eyebrow. ‘Wait, I get it. You daren’t fall asleep, right? You think I’m going to pounce on you or something, or we’ll all overpower you. Is that it?’

  ‘They don’t exactly trust me now, do they?’ Wade pointed out. He glanced briefly over his shoulder. People weren’t sleeping. Their faces were white as sheets and bearing worried expressions. They hadn’t taken their eyes off Wade since they found out who he really was.

  ‘Sure they’re scared, but I figure they’re more scared of what’s out there than of you. Well I ain’t about to jump on you when you least expect it. We need each other to get out of this mess. And I say you have to let me take over the driving at least, or you pull over for a while and grab some shuteye.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Wade with a non-committal flick of his head. ‘The fuel is running low. Another half day’s worth, I’d say.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ said Bolan.

  ‘Get them to wrap up warm, I’m going to turn off the air conditioning again. This time for good.’

  ‘It’s getting pretty cold out there,’ said Bolan. ‘And how will we stay cool in the heat of the day? We’ll bake like beans in a can without the air con.’

  ‘Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it. We have to conserve fuel and the air con laps it up.’

  Surprisingly, Wade braked and the bus came to an untidy stop, throwing Martin Bolan forward. There were murmurs of complaint from the rear of the bus where everyone else had gathered after the impromptu prayer meeting, putting a little dis
tance between the man with the gun and themselves.

  Bolan said, ‘What’s wrong? Have you seen something? Is it the creatures again?’

  Wade stared through the large windscreen into the night, his eyes wide. Something stirred within his insides, a curious feeling.

  ‘I dunno,’ he replied. ‘It’s like I’ve just become aware of crossing over something…’

  ‘What kind of something?’

  ‘A boundary…’

  He opened the bus doors and skipped from the cab. The cold air rushed inside and nipped at their exposed skin like rats of ice.

  ‘What boundary? You’re not making sense, Wade,’ said Bolan. ‘Look, is it safe to go out there? What the hell are you doing, man?’

  Samuel Wade stepped outside and walked to the front of the bus, the biting air eating through his thin clothing almost immediately. It must be minus 20, he thought vaguely. But it wasn’t the temperature that froze him to the spot; it was the thought that he knew – just knew – he’d crossed an invisible line that he shouldn’t have crossed. As if he’d moved over a boundary from one place into another. And yet, as he looked about him, up front and behind, everything looked the same, no evidence of anything that should cause him to think such a thing. Desert all around. The same dry earth and ghostly scrub. But the feeling was tremendous, like a physical pain that shot through his insides, forcing him to want to turn back.

  ‘Wade, get back inside,’ said Bolan. ‘You’re freezing up the bus and it’s not safe.’

  ‘There’s food and water up ahead,’ said Wade clambering back on board and closing the door.

  ‘Food and water?’ said Amanda, who had come to the front of the bus. She alone out of the rest of the passengers did not seem to view Wade as a threat. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Yeah, how’d you know that, Wade?’ asked Bolan. ‘What have you seen?’

  He shook his head, suddenly feeling the cold and shivering, folding his arms about him. ‘I don’t know. I have this feeling…’

  ‘Great,’ said Hartshorn from the back. ‘The man’s got a feeling. Are we supposed to buy that? You say there’s food and water up ahead and we all have to buy it?’

  ‘I don’t care what you think, Hartshorn,’ Wade snapped. ‘I just know we’re headed to where we’re going to get something to eat and drink.’

  ‘The man’s delirious,’ offered Jack Benedict. ‘We shouldn’t trust him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Amada asked Wade.

  He nodded. ‘I feel it in my bones. That’s all I can tell you. There’s something up ahead.’

  ‘Okay, say there is. How far up ahead?’ Bolan said.

  ‘I dunno. I guess we just keep driving till we find it.’

  Bolan shook his head. ‘How can you be so certain? I think you need to stop, have something to eat and catch up on a little sleep. Maybe Jack’s right; maybe you are delirious because of it. I’ve heard of such cases…’

  Wade ignored him and clutched the steering wheel. He hit the gas and continued to gaze unblinkingly out into the night, the curious feeling inside him getting even stronger, till it wrapped its claws tight around his guts and crushed them till it hurt.

  The others watched him, their faces unaccountably blank.

  20

  A Flood of Black Oil

  She awoke with a start. Something nudging her into wakefulness.

  Lieutenant Linda Keegan – on the outside at least – skipped from the bed and picked up her assault rifle. She was still fully clothed, and needed to be, given the drop in temperature. The small heating unit in the bolthole offered some comfort but even that struggled to keep the place warm. She shivered as she went to the metal door and listened intently. Not a sound. Not that she expected bonesnappers to be around once daylight came, and she knew from the mechanical watch she wore that it was already dawn, the nights in the Heights fortunately very short, the temperature beginning to rise with the sun. Dawn was the coldest time, touching minus 21 degrees centigrade in places, but the heat would start to build up rapidly as the sun climbed swiftly into the sky and she had to be on her way before the full heat of the day made itself felt.

  She double-checked everything, weapons and ammunition at the ready, and ensured her backpack was packed with as many provisions as she could carry before sitting on the edge of the bed to eat a can of cold beans for breakfast.

  Once her hunger had been satisfied she gathered up the pack, her assault rifle and the AT4 anti-tank weapon, loaded during the night with a rocket. Cautiously, she unlocked the door to the bolthole and pushed it open. The sky was sore-red, the eye of the sun a fiery scarlet ball just peeking above the mountains as dawn broke, the landscape all around painted a lurid pink colour. She looked across to the motorcycle. It still stood where she’d left it; thankfully it appeared undamaged by the bonesnappers. The ground outside the bolthole’s door had been churned up by the frenzied feet of the bonesnappers, but she was glad that’s all that remained of the repulsive creatures of the night.

  With agile bounds she ran across the flat floor of the gully to the incline of its bank and mounted it, throwing herself down flat as she reached the top. Through her binoculars she scanned the terrain. There was no sign of the two armoured trucks, and she dared to believe she’d lost them. Giving herself another five minutes to make sure her pursuers had indeed disappeared for now, she went back to the bolthole and strapped the AT4 to the motorcycle’s side. Sliding her arms into her heavy backpack, she adjusted her helmet, pulled down the goggles and gunned the bike’s engine. It spluttered noisily – too noisily for her liking, but it was the best way of getting around this terrain, and quite frankly, all that was on offer. Weapons and vehicles were in short supply here in the Heights, so beggars could not be choosers, she thought, and rode the bike up the side of the gully, pausing only to get her bearings before starting out across the fiery landscape, the bleeding disc of the sun at her back casting a long shadow in front of her.

  She had to get to Wade fast, hoping she’d get to him before he entered Cain’s Territory. She tried not to dwell on the fact that Samuel Wade might be her final target. Time was running out for men and women like Wade, only they didn’t know it. They were totally unaware of what they really were and how, very soon, unless it could be prevented, men like Wade and many like him, would perish, if Lindegaard had his way.

  She was galvanised into near recklessness by her thoughts, the bike roaring across the land, throwing up a cloud of dust behind her. Just let me bag Wade, she thought. Please, for the sake of everything I’ve ever worked for, let me get to Wade before…

  Half an hour later, the sun now beginning to scorch her back and causing her to break out in sweat, she reached the dirt-track road, coming to a halt and taking out her binoculars again. She steadied her breathing as she narrowed her eyes and trained the binoculars down the long, straight roadway. She thought she saw something. A dot in the distance, a cloud of dust maybe? That had to be the coach. Christ, she was going to be too late. She reckoned they’d already crossed over the boundary and into Cain’s Territory.

  Damn! If they ran into a patrol – which was very likely – then that was going to make things a lot harder for her. To the point that it might not be worth risking her life going in there after Wade.

  What are you saying, girl? You’d abandon him? You don’t really mean that, do you? Not after finally finding him.

  ‘Shit, no, I ain’t going to abandon him,’ she growled, stowing away the binoculars and revving up the bike’s engine. She’d give it her best shot. She wasn’t going to let Wade go without a fight. ‘Why’d you bring all this gear with you if you didn’t expect to use it at some time?’ she told herself, racing down the road, thankful at least for the level, if not entirely smooth, handling of the bike.

  The old machine’s joints rattled painfully, and its wheezing engine seemed to cough on the dust being thrown up. But she smiled at how doggedly it responded to her demands. They didn’t make them like this anymor
e, she thought; they knew how to build things to last back in the 1960s.

  Samuel Wade slowed the coach right down to a crawl. There was something in the middle of the road ahead.

  He’d seen it some distance away. So too did Martin Bolan, never very far away from the driver’s cab. Both men were staring silently out of the window, passing each other a curious, questioning glance. As the coach slowed down everyone else became aware of the object and gradually filtered towards the front of the coach. At last Wade stopped the coach some fifty yards away from it. The object had its back to them, but it was plain to see what it was.

  Amanda Tyler asked, ‘Is that a chair? An old chair?’

  ‘Sure looks like it,’ Jack Benedict said. ‘Well I’ll be…’

  Benedict’s wife Lauren came to his side. ‘It’s like one of those padded ones my great grandma used to have,’ she said. ‘What’s an old chair doing out here in the middle of the desert, and stuck in the middle of the road?’