Jubilee Year: A Science Fiction Thriller (Erelong Book 1)

by Gerard O'Neill

  “Are you sure?” Storm asked. “What about work?”

  “I need a break. I’ll pull a sickie. I haven’t had one this year. They owe me a few days off.”

  “That would be great, I guess if you can do it,” Storm told him. At least he would be with Penny soon, he thought.

  “A car is more comfortable than the bus,” Alistair said. “And the conversation will be stimulating,” Alistair prompted.

  “I’ll pay for gas,” Storm told him.

  He was going to sleep for most of the journey if Alistair would let him.

  “Whatever you can afford is fine,” Alistair replied. “The more I think about it the more I look forward to it. You know, Coonabarabran is almost down the road from Canberra as the crow flies, yet I’ve never seen the place.”

  “How long do you think it will take us?” Storm asked.

  “Allowing for a few stops—ah, about twelve hours,” Alistair replied.

  “Ouch, that’s a while.”

  “No problem,” Alistair said with a grin. “There’s plenty to talk about.”

  Children

  They had not long left Alistair’s house when he told Storm there was something he wanted to show him. On the outskirts of the city, he turned off the highway.

  “We need to be discreet. The place is run an international company contracted by the government to set up and service emergency shelters. An outfit called Wagonshaks Incorporated. That’s as much as the government tells us. The history of the organization and the background of the operators is apparently of little interest to the Australian people.”

  “Internment camps is more appropriate,” Alistair quipped dryly. “They’ve been popping up along main trunk lines the last couple of years. In the beginning, they used old brick storehouses built early last century. Workers on the trains might see the signs warning of razor wire. Eventually, they might notice that all the security cameras point inside. Not what you would expect if they were built to keep people outside the wire, is it? The new camps are built outside the cities. Away from the public eye.”

  They drove by empty truck yards, derelict factories, and burned out warehouses. Entire sections of land lay strewn with charred, broken, and twisted wreckage. Laid to waste by man and nature alike.

  Alistair turned off onto a side road. “Look over there,” he pointed.

  On a large area of open ground rows of white tents stretched into the far distance. The camp was vast and surrounded by a high wire fence with towers at regular intervals. Men and women were walking between the tents.

  “Try not to stare,” Alistair told him. “We have to be discreet or otherwise the guards will take an interest in us.”

  “Who are all those people?”

  “You, me, our neighbors. Almost anyone they don’t want walking around free outside the wires. All of those they labeled dissenters.”

  Storm thought he saw a child run between the blocks of tents and prefabs, but it was just a brief glimpse. He didn’t see the small figure again.

  “They are like holding pens. When they get full, they’ll shift the inmates out to the camps they’ve built in remote areas. Concrete fortresses surrounded by arid desert, kangaroos, mongrel dogs, and dingoes. They’ve even built them in the wetlands and on the coast.”

  “They’ve built them in croc country?” Storm asked in surprise. “How come you know so much about them?”

  “It’s best to keep up with what’s happening in times like these,” Alistair said, glancing at Storm. “I try to get out and about whenever I can, and people tell me things. After a while, you find the stories intersect, and then you know it isn’t fantasy.”

  “What they have done to end up inside a place like that? Did they go to protest marches?”

  “Most of them haven’t enough money for rent and food.” Alistair glanced into the rear vision mirror, checking to see if they had been raised the interest of a security detail. It was risky to take Storm out here, but in truth, he wanted to see the place for himself and it was best to have a kid in the cab with him. He felt bad about having done it but Storm was the rare kind of young individual who actually seemed like he could look after himself pretty damn well. Alistair had high hopes for Storm. He had been impressed by the youth when he first met him. After hearing the story he was doubly impressed.

  “In Sydney, they’ve fitted out the stadiums so they can contain large numbers of people in a secure environment. The government likes to refer to them as temporary emergency shelters. Only once inside you don’t get to leave of your own accord.”

  Alistair turned back onto the motorway. Later they drove through the electronic checkpoint into the state of New South Wales. The simple toll collection software had been massively updated by satellite more than a year before state lines became secured borders. The device sent Alistair’s details to the state security forces automatically: his address, personal details including health records, his employment situation, bank account, the names and addresses of his family members, and his overall legal status. All of it was recorded in a distant mainframe along with his movements across the land.

  “You wouldn’t hear so much about the remote camps, I suppose?” Alistair asked. “They’re almost never featured on the news. Not unless it’s a story about how the camps provide a solution to a problem needing to be fixed.”

  “People are not going to buy the idea that camps in croc country are necessary,” Storm replied.

  “You don’t think so? People have been buying whatever the corporate owned media spun them for years. They concoct a threat by blowing the action of a desperate and unbalanced mind out of all proportion. Suddenly it’s a terrorist act. They get the viewer to react, with fear, horror, and anger, so they accept a new law pushed through in the dead of the night. A solution to a threat the government created. They tell the country the new law is a temporary anti-terrorist measure, but it’s never revoked and after a while it becomes permanent.”

  “A permanent solution,” Storm said, remembering history class at school.

  “You know what’s really weird?” Alistair asked. “They run the camps as a private business in the cities, but in the outback, it’s most often the military.”

  “So—what do you think about me enlisting?” Storm asked. “You never said. They train me and pay me. I come out and walk straight into a job. I want to be a commercial pilot.”

  Alistair reached grabbed Storm’s forearm and held it front of his eyes. “You see that?”

  Storm stared at the tiny black barcode.

  “This is not going to work in your favor,” Alistair said.

  “There must be hundreds of others wearing a bloody barcode who want to enlist!” Storm said, turning sullen.

  “Sure,” Alistair nodded in agreement. “And they will take them, but just what kind of training do you think they are going to get? Nothing high level. You would get bored out of your brain as a grunt.”

  Storm turned away to stare out the side window at nothing.

  “Those camps are filled with people who wear your tattoo,” Alistair muttered.

  The car radio was tuned to the government news channel, and they listened to a report on the police investigation of what was now considered a criminal case of arson and mass murder. Police stated their investigation focused on a single individual. The radio talked about multiple homicides at Siding Spring. Almost all had suffered gunshot wounds. One of the bodies had been pulled from a cottage only partially damaged by fire with a wound that appeared to be self-inflicted.

  “Sounds like a lone gunman,” Alistair said. “And a lot of smart people dead.”

  “Without any of them sounding the alarm,” Storm added.

  “It’s hard to believe all right,” Alistair said. “I’m not sure what to make of that.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Storm said angrily. “It makes me wonder what they are covering up.”

  Alistair didn’t answer. The distant hills had attracted his attention, or to be m
ore precise it was the dark sky over them. For it was cut through with tiny lines that even as he watched were lengthening like chemtrails.

  Storm followed Alistair’s gaze and saw that there was a scattering of lights like glitter thrown in the air by children.

  “Meteors,” he said.

  It was early afternoon when they reached Molong town. The fuel gauge showed less than a quarter tank of gas remained and Alistair pulled into the first gas station they saw.

  Storm had scrambled onto the back seat, throwing a blanket over himself to hide his long body. He lay still until they were once more on the open road.

  “Were there cops around?”

  “Nah,” Alistair said. “Very quiet.”

  Storm stayed in the back. The journey was painfully monotonous, and any change was good. What he really needed was a run.

  “I hate long road trips!” Storm announced with sudden vehemence.

  “How about we swap over at the next truck stop,” Alistair suggested.

  “You want me to drive?” Storm asked surprised Alistair would allow him to drive the car.

  “Mate, I’m tired! It’s hard work squinting at the road continuously even wearing these sunglasses. It’s like bloody snow glare on a ski field!”

  “Old age, maybe?” Storm chuckled from the back seat.

  Alistair didn’t reply.

  “So which direction are we going in?”

  “Coonabarabran, you idiot! What makes you think I’d take you anywhere different?”

  Storm stared up at the sky. He couldn’t make out the outline of a single cloud. It was all a solid iridescent metallic gray. He blinked several times and saw that indeed the hues were changing from metallic gray to a yellowish white.

  Alistair pointed over the steering wheel. “There’s something on the road ahead of us.”

  Storm peered over the front seat, catching the glint of metal. A thin column of smoke was rising into the air. Caught in a cross wind it drifted across the dry plain.

  “That does not look good,” Alistair muttered.

  “It looks like a car crash,” Storm said trying to make out the detail.

  “The road’s dead straight,” Alistair observed. “Maybe the driver fell asleep and crossed over.”

  “Where’s the other car then?” Storm asked as they approached a smoking station wagon parked on a diagonal across the centerline.

  There was an elderly couple standing on the verge beside their car. As they pulled over, the man turned. He was wide-eyed and mouthing words as yet unheard.

  Alistair pulled over and jumped out.

  “Are you okay? You’re not hurt?”

  The man turned to Alistair as the white-haired woman standing beside him staring blankly at the wrecked car.

  “Our son Shane graduated from the police academy last week. We were following him and Candice to Dubbo on his first placement. To help him set up his apartment.”

  “Candice is such a sweetheart,” the woman said in a thin voice looked at Storm as he walked toward the car. “Can you get them out, please?”

  Storm felt the heat on his face. The sharp smell of burning oil and hot metal stung his nostrils. He could hear the engine block ticking as it cooled. Beneath the car, the surface of the road looked to be buckled and cracked. The chassis had been lowered so that it would hug the road. Perhaps it was simply stuck on a rise, Storm thought. He had seen road surfaces cracked by the recent earthquakes, he thought. Shit! If he was a cop, he’d be embarrassed to hop out of his street racer after stalling it in the center of the road. He dropped to one knee and took a look underneath and was surprised to see a large pear shaped hole in the bitumen, the edges running molten tar.

  The car smelled of a barbecue. He stood up and peered through the window at Candice who sat in the front passenger seat. The women wore a pretty white cotton dress pulled at by a light breeze. She allowed her blond hair to cover her face, refusing to turn his way. Must be embarrassed, he thought as he walked up to her door. He tapped on the glass and when she didn’t move he moved closer. He pulled back too late, the image of the cab interior as fresh as a photo to his mind’s eye.

  Candice’s right leg was missing. He had seen more of Shane. The driver’s entire left side was one charred wound seared closed; a mess of red burned flesh and seat melted together that might, in a different setting, have been a macabre work of art. The metal floor of the car disappeared into the road between the two bodies. He stumbled to the side of the road, doubling over and vomited onto his sneakers.

  The approaching headlights on high beam almost blinded Alistair and as the police car hurtled past with its siren screaming, flashes of red and blue lit up the two of them.

  “Did you hear what the old man said?” Alistair asked.

  Storm shook his head.

  “The meteor hit them with no warning. It was just one. One, all by itself!”

  The two occupants of the lone car gazed up at the luminescence of the evening sky. The emerald green lights with long shining tails streaked like so many matches flicked across the firmament. On occasion, some of them penetrated through the cloud cover and ended their journey on the desert floor.

  People Power

  “Do you still want to hide behind the seat?” Alistair asked with a yawn. “We’ll be in Coonabarabran anytime now.”

  “I think I don’t need to do that,” Storm replied.

  He had given up trying to make sense of his conversation with Martyn after running it back and forth several times in his head. Why had Martyn not mentioned the fire? The giant was either insane or a cruel tormentor. Storm could not decide which it was. He had turned his thoughts instead to Davenport and the fact he never mentioned the fire either.

  “I don’t understand why he never said a word,” Storm said.

  “Do you really believe they would have pushed you out of the plane once you were over the outback? That makes no kind of sense at all. Why would Martyn expend the energy telling you all he did if he was going to have you killed hours later?”

  “Makes no sense to me either,” Storm replied.

  “Mate, the way I see it—you either trust Martyn or you don’t,” Alistair told him. “Maybe Davenport didn’t care so much about the fire. Could be he cared more about his orders to get you on a flight home without any complications.”

  Storm saw Coonabarabran’s welcome sign ahead of them. They were on the slight descent to the bridge, and beyond it he could see the town.

  “People like Davenport just follow orders,” Alistair continued. “So where are we going?”

  “My dad’s house,” Storm said quietly. What Alistair was saying made sense, he thought. “Hey! You’re not thinking about driving back to Canberra tonight, are you?”

  “Not really,” Alistair replied. “I am planning to pull off the road after dropping you off and catching a few hours’ sleep. I’ve done that plenty of times before on long road trips.”

  “Why not stay the night at Pete’s—I mean my dad’s place? He’s got a spare bed.”

  “You know what?” Alistair said, glancing across at Storm with a tired smile on his face. “That sounds like a really good idea. I’m totally knackered.”

  “Do you mind driving past my girlfriend’s house first?” Storm asked.

  Franchette’s house was in total darkness when they pulled up at the front, but they saw the curtains were not yet closed.

  Storm got out and rang the buzzer. He tried several times, but no one came to the door, and he had not really expected anyone would. If Franchette and Penny had been home, they must have left before darkness fell. When he got back into the car, a heaviness had settled over him.

  They found Pete on his back porch enjoying the cool evening air.

  Pete was only too happy to share his evening with a friend of Storm’s. The fact Alistair had driven his son all the way from Canberra really impressed Pete. He took a flashlight out to the garden and dug up fresh potatoes and carrots for dinner.

&nb
sp; He found a loaf of sliced bread and a plate of cooked steak and sausages in the refrigerator and prepared a meal for his guests. Within an hour they were sitting down to what Pete called his simple fare.

  Alistair swore he had not enjoyed a meal so much for ages.

  After he finished eating, Storm left them to collapse in exhaustion on Pete’s old settee. Pete and Alistair settled into a deep conversation that lasted into the small hours of the morning with many cups of tea along the way.

  Things You Should Know

  “When did you plan on telling me you enlisted?” Pete asked, his disappointment in Storm clear in his voice. “Stella told me the other day. And your friend Alistair mentioned it before he left this morning. Weren’t you going to ask me about my thoughts?”

  “I tried,” Storm said, turning his head from his father’s gaze. “The last time I mentioned it to you, you thumped me!” I should have told him, he thought.

  “I said to Alistair that I want to see you live a long life,” Pete said. “I said to him it isn’t a good idea to invite yourself into someone else’s fight. Not unless there’s no way to avoid it.”

  “You were in the Army yourself,” Storm said. “Just like Mum.”

  “Son—listen to what I am saying!”

  “It’s a job, Dad.”

  “It’s blood money!” Pete roared. Then he remembered Penny’s father was one of those missing in the fire, and he felt ashamed of his outburst.

  “You know how I listen to the radio when I’m working on the car? Pete asked.

  Storm nodded his head.

  “They’ve been talking about police raids up and down the country? Hundreds of people have been rounded up for questioning over possible terrorist links and anti-Australian activities. That’s what they are saying. God knows where they are keeping them all. The cells you were in must be already overflowing with protesters.”

  Storm didn’t say anything. He was wondering where Pete was heading with his story.