ARIA

by Geoff Nelder

  “You make it sound like all this has been a school project from Alpha Centauri,” Ryder said. “More likely an attempt to help that’s gone horribly wrong. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are the same aliens who brought the first amino acid life-building blocks to our planet.”

  “I thought life rode in on the tails of comets,” Abdul said.

  “Or even from God,” Bronwyn said, as she collected dirty mugs.

  “God might have told the aliens to bring life here a billion years ago,” Ryder said, teasing Bronwyn as he gave her his mug.

  “Finished the first run-through of the data,” Abdul said. “It’s not on a slingshot route. It’s heading out of the solar system at forty-five degrees to the ecliptic plane. No, it’s not going to Alpha Centauri, but it might change. It’s gone. Hubble has lost it.”

  “Told you we should have sent a rocket to it,” Jena said. “We could have planted a homing device on it.”

  BRIAN CHARGED IN THROUGH THE LAB DOOR. “Why is no one answering the bloody phone?”

  “Sorry Brian,” Bronwyn said. “I’m on office duty, but what with all the excitement...”

  “Never mind that, there’s trouble.”

  “I know, Brian love. Did you feel the earthquake up on the road?”

  “Earthquake? What bloody earthquake?”

  “Interesting,” said Vlad, tapping on his console. “It must have attenuated really quickly. A controlled local event.”

  “Don’t you go believing my stupid husband. You’d have to knock his legs from under him first.” Vlad stopped calculating.

  Brian glared. “No, listen. Ryder, there’s people on the lane.”

  “What? Why didn’t you say? Which side of the double gate?”

  “The other side. I don’t think they saw me. They were about half a mile, on foot, away from the gate. The zoom on the south hill camera should have them.”

  Derek tapped his computer and the screen flickered to show a long-distance view of the two gates a hundred metres apart and the winding, narrow lane going down the heather-covered slopes. A small group showed on the lane.

  “Awful timing,” Ryder said.

  “They might just go away,” Dan said, “having two razor-wired and locked gates is a pretty good deterrent.”

  “We can’t take the chance,” Ryder said. “Abdul and Vlad, get tooled up—you know where the firearms are—get me the updated AK4S rifle and ammo. I’ll meet you out front in the Volvo Estate—it’s quieter than the other vehicles. Derek, monitor us; keep a special eye on the other cams and sensors in case there are others.”

  “It’s very unlikely that infected people could organise a co-ordinated raid, Ryder,” Dan said. “But you’re right to be prepared. I’ll stop here to talk to Antonio, with Teresa and Jena.”

  “Yes, fine, but have your weapons on you. Gustav and Laurette, arm yourselves too, and do a continuous close patrol of the centre. Everyone keep their mobile phones on.”

  “What about me?” Brian said. “They might be Welsh speakers.”

  “Good point.” Ryder noted Brian already had a pistol in its holster at his waist. “Come with us.”

  Vlad said, “I’m coming in case they speak Russian, and Abdul—”

  “Funny men,” Brian said, leaving to have a word with Bronwyn.

  “Have I missed anything?” Ryder said.

  “Antonio?” Teresa said. “What do you want him to do?”

  Ryder looked at her, confused. “He has to stay down there. Derek, Dan, and you will be here to keep talking to him. It would be a good idea to ask him to shut the case, put it back in its padded bag and lock it in its cage.”

  RYDER PARKED THE VOLVO TWO-HUNDRED METRES FROM THE GATE. A bluff of the mountain hid the lane on the other side. A laptop screen in the car gave him a clear view from the camera on the hill. He zoomed in on four people in the lane. It wasn’t possible to tell their gender. They’d dropped large bags on the ground.

  “It looks like they’ve seen our gates and are discussing whether to breach them,” Brian said.

  “It was always a risk that creating a barrier would indicate there was something worth protecting,” Ryder said. “Vlad and Abdul, go up on the right with those telescopic sniper rifles. Find a good spot to cover the gate, the slope down to the river, and the lane. Don’t shoot unless I say.” They all checked their radio headsets.

  “This is a shoot-first situation,” Abdul said. “You can’t stroll up and shake hands, can you?”

  “No,” Ryder said. “But we have a strategy worked out. I repeat, don’t shoot unless I give the order.”

  “We shoot if you’re dead and can’t say?” Vlad said. “Da, at that point, we’re allowed to use our initiative.”

  “I’m turning into a control freak,” Ryder said.

  Once they left, Brian whispered. “We really going to kill those innocent people who are just looking for food?”

  “You know the drill. We have to deal with certainties. If they’re about to breach the first gate, we stop them, and try to ascertain if they are infected. Just in case they are a group who’ve been holed up somewhere like us—unlikely, but we give them a chance. No time to argue now. We get down on the ground on this side of the nearest gate to us. I’ll be on the right, you the left. I’ll have the mike linked up to speakers near the other gate.”

  Ryder wished he’d arranged for hidden mikes on the lane, but he couldn’t think of everything. For all his precautions, he bit his knuckles. He doubted the group in front were armed.

  Two of the strangers wore army camouflage trousers and jackets. It didn’t mean much, but it heightened Ryder’s tension in case he had to deal with combat-trained invaders. Two wore blue jeans and the sort of yellow jackets road workers wear. A fifth person, all in black, appeared behind them, running up the lane. All had shoulder-length hair. Ryder thought he saw beards on three.

  “Brian, do you recognise any?”

  “They’re not local.”

  Ryder said into his radio mike, “The shorter one is female and the others male. Agreed?”

  Vlad said, “All male. One of the non-bearded has big shoulders and struts around like a man. All late twenties to mid-thirties.”

  “Agreed on the ages,” Abdul said. “Which means they all have the memories of children to teenagers. So maybe not very mature.”

  “More likely to fight silly odds than walk away, see?” Brian said.

  “Don’t be too sure,” Ryder said. “It could be that they’ve survived their scavenging existence by running away when the situation became difficult. I hope so.”

  He breathed out a long, relieved breath when he saw the group turn and walk down the lane.

  Brian stood. Agitated, Ryder waved at him to get down again, forgetting he could speak without shouting.

  Just as Brian settled, Ryder saw the group bend down in the road and then start back.

  “Vlad, speak to me.”

  “They’ve picked up a big piece of wood, holding it like a battering ram.”

  “I see them,” Ryder said. “Vlad and Abdul, train your weapons on the two nearest you, they both have army uniforms. If you have to shoot, do it to kill. We don’t want wounded combatants wandering.”

  “All of us astronauts have had military training.”

  “Of course, Vlad. Excellent. I’m going to talk to them.”

  The man in black made the others hold the battering-ram horizontally. Ryder would’ve put the base of the ram under the bottom bar near the hinge and using a boulder, lever upwards. They were going for the more obvious, but wrong, solution of trying to batter a super-strong padlock and reinforced bolt section of the gate. Again, if Ryder was going to do that, he would have had them stationary, near the gate, and swing the ram at it. But they were going to do a running battering-ram, which meant they would miss the lock and just crumple part of the gate. He waited for them to get back with the post, then just as they were about to run, he shouted into the mike.

  “Sto
p! Stop!”

  The group stood, paralysed. As if they hadn’t heard another person for weeks. If they had ARIA that wouldn’t matter for they’d only remember normality. But they’d woken into trauma, and he needed to add to their shock.

  “You are breaking into a restricted area. Put down the post.”

  Two of the group let go, so the wood started to fall. The man in black looked up, then around. Maybe he thought someone was shouting in person nearby rather than a loud speaker.

  “Let’s be seeing you,” he called. “Show your fucking self!” The two wearing jeans started back down the lane. “Oi, come back here, you two scumbags! What was your names again?”

  “What is your business here?” called Ryder, through the speaker.

  The man in black looked again then spotted the speaker where it had been bolted into a dry stone wall at waist height. He picked up a rock and smashed the speaker.

  “Maybe a shot over their heads would scare them off.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Brian, how many times have we been over this? Just scaring them is no good. Worse than no good. They’d probably come back but at night or in the pouring rain, and maybe get through. We have the element of surprise. Listen, they’re talking.”

  The two runaways had returned. Clearly, they were afraid of the man in black, or knew they were dependent on him for their food.

  One of them said, “What? The voice said to stop.”

  “This is the voice, scumbag.” He hit the speaker again.

  “My name is Robin and he’s Andrew,” Scumbag said.

  “And mine is Batman. Now, scumbag, pick up the fucking pole so we can bash in the gate. That goes for you, woman.”

  The speaker still carried Ryder’s voice. “Put down the post!”

  “No!” shouted Batman, who let out a long, loud moan, which could have been a war cry in another millennium. Then he shouted, “Right! One...two...three!” He pushed the one called Andrew to encourage the others who ran with the post at the gate.

  “Stop!” hollered Ryder, and again the group faltered.

  One of the army-uniformed men shouted, “We’ll stop if you give us ammo. Give us ammo!”

  “Yeah,” the other army man shouted, while Batman hit the first. “Give us ammo, we’ve only got grenades. See?” He picked one out of the olive-green bag on the ground and waved it. Batman grabbed it off him.

  “You prick. Hey, I forgot about these. Right, everybody back a bit.” He pulled out the pin and placed the grenade under the lowest bar of the gate before he took a few steps back.

  “Oh my God,” Brian said.

  Ryder echoed that thought as he dared to look. Batman must have decided he needed to relocate the grenade and went back to it. The grenade detonated. The blast hit him in the middle, throwing him back and in the air, doubling up as shrapnel shot through his body. Although shrapnel, flesh, and shock must have hit the others, the two army men threw themselves forward, ran through the remains of the tangled gate, and waved grenades. The one Batman referred to as “woman” ran for the grenade bag, and Scumbag started running down the steep slope on Brian’s left to the stream.

  Ryder shouted, “Shoot now!” One of the army men fell backwards, with a shot in his chest. The other clutched an arm and ran off to his left, away from Ryder, ducking low, putting him out of shot of Abdul.

  The woman had dived for the bag with the grenades. Ryder lined up the telescopic sight so the cross-hairs centred on the woman’s stomach. The largest target and most likely to get a hit if she moved. With his own stomach threatening to revolt, he pulled the trigger for a single shot. She staggered back with the bullet’s impact, but threw herself forward again. It was the first woman he’d taken any kind of violent action against. The first woman he’d fired a weapon at. The first person.

  He smelt the cordite but tasted acid in his mouth.

  Unlike on the old westerns, people didn’t die straight away with a single bullet; nothing so neat. Then he noticed Brian running down the grassy slope to his left on an intercept course with the remaining man, referred to as Scumbag. Ryder shouted at Brian, even though he wondered why his own weapon wasn’t working properly, and the woman busied herself looking for more weaponry.

  “Brian, stop where you are and shoot him!”

  Ryder remained lying on his stomach while he tried to remember the little training he’d had on unjamming his rifle. He looked up to see the woman slump over the bag with part of her head missing.

  “I’ve got him—her, whatever,” Vlad said, in his earpiece. “I’m helping Abdul find the other army bloke.”

  Ryder had no choice but to stand and look down the steep grassy incline for Brian. He could see the stream in the valley floor and hoped the two of them hadn’t crossed it into the forest of conifers up the other slope. He saw a flash of reflected sunlight near a jumble of boulders and feared the worst.

  “Brian, talk to me.”

  “I’m a bit busy,” Brian said, adding grunts. Ryder stood on a boulder to see better and staggered as he picked up a whiff of cordite and burnt flesh that had drifted from the first grenade blast. He regained his footing on the lane and caught a glimpse from his right of Abdul making his way down the slope towards him but with his automatic Bren gun trained to the north.

  “He’s over here,” Vlad said, “about two hundred metres from me. I’m waiting for a clear body shot.”

  Ryder heard two rapid shots and ricochet, but with the mountains around couldn’t be sure whether it came from Vlad, Abdul, or Brian. “Who shot who then?”

  Abdul spoke, “We both shot the other army bloke. Do you want to go assist Brian while I return up the bluff to be with Vlad while we guard the lane approach and the north off-road track? Others might be attracted by the gunfire.”

  “Good thinking,” Ryder said. “And good work. I can’t actually see Brian and he isn’t saying much. I don’t suppose either of you can see down into the valley floor from your position.”

  “No. Do you want me to climb higher up? I can see anyone down there from the ridge,” Abdul said.

  “No, stick to your plan. I’ll edge over from the lane and see what I can.”

  “Ryder, this is Derek, you receiving?”

  “Hello, Derek, you want an update?”

  “No, we’ve heard everything and seen much through the cameras. Speaking of which, we have the mobile cam on the drone-airplane over the valley approaching you. I’m sorry to tell you that Brian has been in hand-to-hand combat. He’s lying wounded in the stream. The other man called Andrew or Scumbag isn’t moving, about five metres from him.”

  “Bugger.”

  “Too right, Ryder. Worse. We couldn’t stop her. Bronwyn’s on her way in the pickup. She’s suited up in a biohazard suit and has her first-aid kit and more suits.”

  “Yeah, I forgot about those, didn’t I?” Ryder said, though it was only partially true. He was no expert but worried that the breathing apparatus in the biohazard suits might not be effective against ARIA unless they also wore the medical air tanks, and they only had one of those. The space suits, though more cumbersome, offered far more protection but were custom-fitted.

  He fought the urge to go down the slope to help Brian until Bronwyn and Laurette arrived with the suits and first-aid kit.

  He spoke again to Derek. “While it’s already in this area, Derek, send that drone to follow the lane to the village and back. It would be useful to see if there are people. Here comes the pickup. See you later.”

  A distraught Bronwyn leapt out of the pickup. “You haven’t shot him yet, have you? Please, Ryder, don’t kill my Brian!”

  “No, Bronwyn. I’m not a monster. We still have a bit of the mine entrance we can use as an isolation unit.”

  He clambered into the plastic-smelling suit and before hooding up, called Vlad. “Any signs of activity? I’m about to suit up and help get Brian patched and taken to the mine entrance.”

  “We see a line of smoke several miles away on t
he coast but nothing appears to be moving here. We’ll stop until you’ve finished.”

  Derek also reported no movement spotted by the plane so Ryder pulled up his hood and was pleasantly surprised to find a medic-air supply unit tubed into it with a miniature compressed air unit at the waist. A digital output showed twenty minutes’ worth of air with a simple switch. He followed the two women down the slope. Brian sat up against a rock, holding large dock leaves to his left side. His trousers were bloody but it could have been from his assailant who lay face down in the stream a few metres away. Bronwyn was persuading him to move his hand so she could open his shirt and apply her nursing skills.

  Laurette squatted nearby with a large green first-aid bag.

  Brian lifted his desperate eyes. “Sorry, Ryder. He surprised me with a knife, the bastard.”

  “No need to apologise, Brian, you stopped him getting past us. Concentrate on living.”

  They patched him up as best they could and placed him in the back of the pickup, packed in by bags and boxes. Before they left for the mine, Laurette spoke to Ryder. Normally, he’d relax to her soft French accent. “Brian has a deep laceration just below the left lowest rib.”

  “Kidneys?”

  “Brian has a doughnut buffer zone. But he might have internal haemorrhaging. In hospital, he’d have a scan, but all we can do is antibiotics…”

  “You’re implying that you could do an exploratory operation to find and stitch up internal damage. But…”

  “We have precious little facilities for that—as in anaesthetic, compressed air for everyone operating so we don’t breathe his air. À propos, that was a superb idea to give Brian the sealed head hood and air supply with output bag so we didn’t have to wear one.”

  “It might not be foolproof. How’s Bronwyn?”

  A small smile. “Once she had some work to do on him, she calmed down. Something will need to be done with the bodies, you know. Besides flies and vermin, dogs will find them and look for more.”

  Ryder had been thinking about that. “Laurette, in your medical experience and being the highest-qualified biotechnician, ever…”