by Dave Brown
“Ha!” Hayes barked, raising his hands above his head in a gesture of triumph. Patty followed where he was looking and then understood what had excited him. In the corner of the garage, farthest from where she was standing, were a dozen bicycles lined up in two rows. Wheels, tires, and diamond frames hung from hooks suspended above the bikes, and she saw a large shelf on the wall behind them that was stuffed with smaller parts.
“Hey, not bad,” Jones said.
After letting Jones ensure the garage was clear and the door into the rest of the house was secure, Hayes hurried to the rear corner and began inspecting his find. Patty wandered back to see as well. She didn't know much about bikes but she had a good eye for simple machines. Ten of the twelve were in remarkably good repair. The two exceptions had clearly been works in progress when Doc Gardener had last been in this room. Patty saw almost no rust on the frames or wheels, and this prompted her to look around the rest of the garage. Few of the items displayed the telltale orange rash, that destroyer of mankind's labors.
“There's almost no rust anywhere,” she remarked.
Hayes answered without looking up from his work. “The Doc had the place sealed up good. Rubber seals on the doors and windows. Man knew what he was doing.”
Patty glanced back at the doors hanging open into the gravel drive and saw what he was describing: long black strips of material all around the wood. With that question answered, she returned to try and assist the doctor. Within half an hour he had selected a bike for each member of the team. Three of those selected had racks mounted above the rear wheel, so they were able to lash down some of their gear with bungee nets they found on the spare parts shelf. With everything prepared, they guided their mounts back down the gravel path to the road. Hayes stopped when they got there and turned around.
“Thanks, Doc, wherever you are. You really came through for us.”
They stood together in silence for a moment. Patty was aware that they were wasting time they didn't have, but she found she was unable to turn away from the house. Maybe they'd done too much turning away. Maybe it was time to face reality.
“How'd you know?” she asked Hayes as they pedaled along at the rear of the group a few minutes later.
“When I was doing my pre-med up in Seattle, I worked part time at a bike shop, one of those big national chains. They mostly sold new stuff, not really a repair place.” He wove around a motorcycle lying dead in the road. “I got to know a few of the veterans, guys that had been biking around there for a couple decades. They told me about this grizzled old dude, ran a repair shop out of his barn. Solid work. Iron Mike, he called himself. Something about that sign just spoke to me, said this was the same kinda deal.”
There wasn't much to say after that. Patty dropped back a bit, letting the group get ahead of her. She spotted a mile marker coming up and checked her watch. Just under six minutes since the last one. That put them doing right around ten miles an hour. They'd be in Lompoc within forty minutes if they kept up this pace.
Chapter 35
Reg had a bad feeling from the instant Jimmy called them in distress on the radio. It was more than just hearing that a friend was in danger. He'd seen too many suspicious circumstances in the last four years to believe Jimmy and Lana had simply been attacked by some land-locked lunatic. As he watched the skiff zip away, his beloved Anne at the controls, the troubled feeling deepened. He was a trained member of Her Majesty's Royal Navy, but he had never considered himself a leader or even a warrior. He was good with electronics and signal processing. Watching the two most capable people on the ship, Jones and Miss Devoux, being carried toward the shore made him profoundly nervous. The nebulous feeling he'd been having since the call began to take on a clearer shape. He started to think the attack on the plane had been meant to draw the ship's defenders away. Just over an hour later, his fears were confirmed.
He was standing on the catwalk outside the bridge, Jones's spyglass in his right hand. He brought it up frequently to look at the skiff. He couldn't see Anne -- the boat was barely visible even with the powerful scope -- but he kept checking just the same. Barbara walked onto the metal framework and handed him a Thermos. Reg took it and offered her a weak smile. He was just lifting it to unscrew the cap when a familiar sound reached his ears from the port side.
“Oh no,” he said and dropped the Thermos. He ran to the left side of the bridge and looked frantically out into the water. He saw the source of the sound immediately, a long black submarine sitting a few hundred meters to port and aft. Water was still streaming off the hull, which gleamed in the bright sunlight, as he knew it would. The sound had been that of the bastard surfacing. He couldn't see behind its conning tower but he guessed it looked quite similar to what he spotted in front, an ugly welding job that covered up the gaping hole left when Jones had launched a rocket-propelled grenade at the sub months before.
The radio inside the bridge was crackling, and Reg hurried inside. “Keep an eye on them,” he yelled to Barbara. “Shout if you see anybody moving around.” He reached the radio and adjusted the gain. A voice emerged from the speaker, jovial on the surface, but he could hear a dark rage boiling underneath.
“Santa Fe calling Errol's Folly, please respond.”
Reg thought briefly of keeping his silence, but there was no point. “This is Errol's Folly, we read you.”
“Ah, good afternoon Folly! This is Captain Miller! How are you this fine day?”
He gritted his teeth. “Doing well, Santa Fe, and you?”
“I am beside myself with glee, Folly.” This was followed by a low chuckle that sounded anything but gleeful. “I'm about to go from Captain to Admiral!”
“Like hell, you are,” Reg hissed without pressing the transmit button.
“So, let's get things moving, okay?” The jovial veneer was beginning to fade. “I'll be sending over some of my men to facilitate the transfer of authority. Please give them your full cooperation. Anything less will be met with a torpedo.”
A bolt of fear ran through him at those words, but also a strong sense of defiance. Just you try it, he said to himself, and glanced at a small black piece of electronic equipment laying in a cradle bolted to the bridge controls.
“The rear hatch just opened,” Barbara called from outside. “Guys coming out of it.”
That would be the emergency hatch near the far end of the stern. “How many?” Reg asked her.
“Two... three... four... five... five! They've got a raft.”
Reg did some quick math in his head, accounting for how many of Miller's men Jones had killed back on Lusty's deck and the five coming over now. The number he came up with gave him a creeping grin. There was no way Miller had enough men for fire control, sonar, countermeasures, and helm. If he had to guess, and he most certainly had to now, he would say fire control was the only thing properly manned at that instant.
“Barbara,” he called and paused. He had to be sure. If he made a mistake now, it could doom them all. He thought over his numbers again, thought what he would do if he were in charge of that sub, and came to the same conclusion as before. “You know the box at the stern?”
“Yeah?” she called back.
“Get back to where you can see it and then tell me when the raft is... fifty meters away.”
“Meters?”
“Yards!” He added under his breath, “Bloody yanks.”
The little black device had wires coming out the back, bound together with plastic zip ties and disappearing into a neat hole that had been cut in the Folly's bridge panel. He lifted the control from its cradle and pulled gently. There was over a meter of slack, enough for him to bring it close and begin working. He tapped in commands from memory, having drilled over the manual twice a day for a month. Direction, distance, depth. He finished and then grasped a key in his right hand. It was set in a lock near the bottom of the panel, next to a red button about two centimeters square. He turned the key to the right and the button lit up. Now he just had to
wait.
He didn't have a clock in front of him, and he didn't dare look away from the button. Seconds, minutes, hours seemed to pass as he stared at that red-lit square. His right thumb hovered just above and to the side and he began to feel sweat greasing the back of the control in his left hand. Bloody hell, where were they? “Come on,” he whispered. “Come on, already.”
“Fifty yards!” Barbara shouted. The sound of her voice startled him and the unit nearly slipped from his hand. He stabbed at the button with his thumb and heard a series of sounds from the stern. A metallic thunk, a rasping scrape, and a second later, a satisfying splash. “HOLY SHIT! Is that a torpedo?” Barbara yelled from outside.
Reg dropped the control in its cradle and sprinted out to the catwalk, a powerful need to bear witness rising within him. He reached the railing and spotted the sub. The scene before him was one he would recall with almost perfect clarity for the rest of his life, and with great pleasure in most cases. He saw the submarine, water frothing from behind it as its screw began to turn. He saw the raft approaching the Folly and the five men inside all looking back toward their own boat. Lastly, he saw the v-shaped wake of the fish speeding toward the Santa Fe. It was a light torpedo, salvaged from one of Lusty's Merlin helicopters. Sub-hunters. A second later it slammed into the side of the boat, creating a fountain of water that erupted from just below the waterline. A scream of bloody triumph erupted from Reg's throat. Lusty had finally struck down her foe. As the water settled he saw the sub was still afloat, though it wouldn't be for long. He glanced back at the box mounted on the Folly's stern. There were three more fish in there. No, he thought. Don't waste them. We might need them. Then he saw Captain Raleigh's face in his mind's eye. And Lieutenant Montrose. And Lenny. He ran back into the bridge and jammed his finger into the red button again, then raced back outside, nearly falling over himself in his hurry. The second torpedo took only seconds to join the first, connecting in nearly the same place. This time the sub broke apart, two halves that filled with water in very little time. Reg watched the broken remains of the Santa Fe disappear beneath the ocean and felt a completeness that he hadn't even known he was missing.
A splashing sound drew his attention to the water closer to the Folly. The raft full of invaders was still approaching, the rowers doing their jobs with renewed vigor. Reg walked back inside the tower and picked up the ship's address microphone.
“Attention, wankers in the raft,” he said, hearing his own voice amplified over all the intercom speakers on the ship. “We have a great many grenades on board that we'd love to share with you. If that does not sound appealing, I highly recommend paddling south until we can't see you anymore.”
“Ha!” Barbara yelled from outside. Reg hung up the microphone and picked up the spy glass again, then went outside to look for the skiff. “They're leaving,” Barbara called to him from the other side of the tower, but he didn't really hear her. The skiff wasn't where he'd last seen it. He began scanning the water, searching for the boat, and finally found it several hundred meters north of where it had been. He still couldn't see Anne. He ran inside again and switched frequencies on the radio, back to the one designated for the away team. There was nothing. She would have to be unconscious or worse to have missed the explosions just now. So why wasn't she calling in?
Chapter 36
The farmland they had been riding through abruptly stopped, butting up against a crossroad with houses on the other side. Errol understood they had arrived at the town proper and immediately began looking around frantically for the dead. Jimmy had told him there was a significant presence here after their first over flight the day before. So where were the Z's now? Jones must have noticed his rapidly shifting gaze.
“They went after the plane,” he said, and it immediately clicked in Errol's mind. Jones continued. “Still, we need to keep things quiet. Conversation to a minimum, radios off while we're together.”
The group came to a halt and spent a few minutes going over their gear. Errol switched off his radio, then helped Patty adjust the straps around her tool bag, compressing it as much as possible to keep the items inside from rattling. Renee helped Hayes get his med kit under better wraps, and then they were off again. “Pick a nice easy gear and stick with it. Even shifter noise will attract them if they're close enough,” Hayes whispered just as they started to pedal.
They rode slowly then. Errol was behind Renee and Jones, quickly shifting his eyes between them for any sign of trouble. They hadn't gone more than ten blocks before Jones raised a hand and braked gently to a stop, the group pulling up behind him. Errol looked past the Texan but couldn't see much. He became acutely aware that it had been over five years since his last eye exam and new pair of glasses. Renee was already walking her bike off to the right, toward some buildings, and Jones was following her. Soon they were all crowded together between two low structures, the bikes leaning against the walls.
“I can see a few moving around up there,” Jones said, his voice low.
“Four at least,” Renee added.
Jones nodded and continued. “We should go on foot, and maybe go a block over, see what the side streets look like.” They had been continuing to travel down the same road since the beach, though it had changed from Lasalle Canyon Road to Ocean Avenue just outside of town. It was a wide boulevard with plenty of exposure.
“Sounds good,” Errol said.
“Remember,” Jones said, eyeing each of them as he spoke, “stay quiet.”
It wasn't difficult to pick their way through alleys to the next street south. After a quick look around, Jones motioned all of them to follow him east again. It was dead quiet. As Errol stalked down the sidewalk trying not to make any noise, he suddenly remembered standing at the front door of his old house in Seattle, a few years before the fall. He would open the door, and a soft white noise would rush into his ears. Close the door, silence. He had never noticed it before but he realized that day that it had always been there, omnipresent, the soundtrack of city life: the combined waveform of hundreds of thousands of cars, voices, devices, and machines, blanketing the landscape in a permanent low-decibel hum. It was gone now, though he wasn't sure if this town had ever been big enough to generate it in the first place. How odd would it be, he thought, to stand in that doorway again and hear complete silence?
Renee put a hand on his shoulder, drawing his attention back to the present. Jones was holding up his fist in the hold sign again. They had almost reached an intersection, and the street ahead appeared to be another major one. A Street, the sign said. Jones made a few motions with his hand, completely unintelligible to Errol, but Renee began to move forward past them. She went to the wall of a building on the corner and crept to the edge. After just a few seconds, she turned and walked back.
“I see the plane, crashed into a gas station. Still just the four Z's we saw earlier.”
“Can you take 'em?” Jones asked. Renee just smiled and swung the rifle off her shoulder. Errol started to object, but she spoke before he could.
“Don't worry, honey, I'll keep it quiet.” She fished around in a bag Jones was holding out to her and extracted a black metal tube. They had all seen enough action movies to know a silencer when they saw one. After screwing it onto the barrel, she slipped back to the corner and crouched down. Errol watched as she raised the weapon and took aim. She fired four times, pausing after each squeeze to find her next target. The gun made a little clicking sound each time, not much louder than the shifters on their bicycles. The whole thing took about ten seconds. She sat perfectly still then, probably waiting to see if more targets presented themselves. When she rose to her feet again and jerked her head, the rest of them caught up with her.
“Looks clear,” she said.
The scene was just as she had described it. The sea plane with the bold red stripe was jammed under the overhanging shelter of a gas station on the corner of Ocean and A. The right wing looked okay but Errol could already see that the left one was badly
damaged, hanging askew from the fuselage and dragging on the ground. The cabin didn't look too damaged, but as they got closer the bullet holes were obvious.
Jones and Renee circled around, keeping their eyes on the surrounding streets and buildings. It was left to Errol, Patty, and Hayes to see what they could find at the crash site. There were more fallen zombies around than Renee had just dispatched, an observation which raised Errol's hopes considerably. Lana carried her Russian service pistol whenever they were on a flight. He took in the scattered bodies near the left side of the plane as he circled around, each with a neat hole somewhere on the head, and was certain they had survived the crash.
Hayes brushed past him and entered the body of the plane. “Nobody here,” he said from inside. “I don't see any blood either. Maybe they're okay?”
The plane had knocked over two of the pumps. They lay tumbled in the drive path of the station like broken robots from an old black and white movie. There was a little gas on the ground but not much. The electricity had gone off long ago. Errol looked at the corpses again and saw a shape appearing, the bodies laid out in a narrow path leading north. “I think they went that way,” he said
Patty was leaning against the windows looking in at the instruments. “No time for salvage, I guess. Too bad.”
Jones had wandered down A Street a few paces, gazing in the direction indicated by the bodies. He turned abruptly and jogged back to the group. “Big crowd of 'em up there, two or three blocks away. Looks like a taller building there but I can't see much else.”
