Earthbound

by Joe Haldeman

  Lanny was incredulous. “The Oregon border?”

  “All of it, they said. Hellbombs, all along the state’s borders.”

  Hellbombs gave off intense radiation for years, without causing any other damage.

  “ ‘California for Californians,’ ” Lanny quoted. “Are they far enough away not to harm us?”

  “You could detect it, sir, but just barely. We measured one or two milligrays. Ten times that wouldn’t hurt.”

  “He threatened this during the last election,” Alba said, “but we thought it was just isolationist rhetoric.”

  “Could he have enough bombs to actually do it?” Justin asked. “He’d need to drop one every five miles or so.”

  “Their standard radius of effectiveness is about five miles,” Namir said, “so one every ten miles would do it.”

  “You can fly above them?” Rico asked.

  “No problem,” Paul said. “Hell, you could drive past one in a car, a mile or two away, if you were going fast enough.”

  “And didn’t want to have children,” Namir said. “You’d get quite a sunburn, a mile away.”

  “Nobody’s going to walk across the border,” Paul said, “or settle near it. I assume Fruit Farm is far enough away.”

  “Unless he tossed one our way,” Rico said.

  “Not likely,” Roz said. “He’s crazy, but he’s sort of our crazy. Back to basics and all.”

  “With his mansion in Malibu,” Rico said. “I wonder if he bombed the border with the Pacific.”

  “He didn’t, sir,” the soldier said. “Just the borders with other states and Mexico.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “If the plane doesn’t work, we can hijack a boat.”

  Paul was shaking his head. “Shit. What do we have? Roz, how badly do you guys want to go back?”

  “You could make a good case for going anywhere else,” she admitted, “but no; it’s our home.” She looked at the other three and got dour nods. “I guess we’re at your mercy.”

  “Oh, I’ll give you a ride. But what do the rest of us do? Stay stuck in California for years, or get out while we can?”

  “Will the hellbombs still work after Wednesday?” I asked.

  “Nothing electrical in them,” Namir said.

  There was an awkward pause. “You couldn’t stay here,” Lanny said. “You’d more than double our population.”

  “Funny Farm would probably be the best place for you,” Roz said, and pointed to the center of the diagram. “Food, water, and shelter.”

  I felt a rising choking panic. Stuck on a few acres of farmland? After having two worlds and parsecs of space to roam in?

  Paul gave me a look that I couldn’t read. What did he want—a life of kids and crops and chores?

  “I think we ought to go,” he said slowly. “Let’s get these books on the ground, on the other side. Then decide whether to stay or go . . . someplace.”

  My mind was spinning, or rather rattling around like a pebble in a can. Even if it was my choice, I wouldn’t know what to do. Return to the farm, stay in Eugene, head for the sea, the hills? Funny Farm was a haven and a trap. Hiding place and target.

  Well, we did have to go there, Step One. Maybe then take off and head back east? Rather than stay locked up in a radioactive lunatic asylum.

  Lanny helped us pack the books into cloth and plastic bags, with the store’s logo, RESERVED FOR VOLUME CUSTOMERS. We turned on the cube and saw the governor’s ranting speech while we loaded the truck and rolled off to the field.

  The watching crowd was bigger. Some of them shouted at us as we slowed to go through the gate. But they weren’t armed, or at least weren’t shooting.

  I couldn’t blame them for being resentful. But we weren’t actually escaping. Just hopping from one part of the frying pan into another.

  We stacked the bags of books evenly into the overhead racks. The cargo area was pretty full with the weapons, ammunition, food, and water we’d brought. Even if we had carried it from the Farm and back for nothing, it had been reassuring.

  When the door eased shut and cut off the crowd noise, I relaxed. The rush of the jet exhaust was comforting. We bumped along the soft ground for half a minute and then floated up into the air.

  “Need to get some altitude,” Paul said over the intercom. “Like to be a few miles up when you go over the bombs.” He’d mentioned that on the way out. Hellbombs fall in such a way that their radiation isn’t wasted on the sky; most of it’s reflected to fan out horizontally. But it was still significant a mile or so up; besides, a bomb could land on a slant or tip over.

  The plane didn’t have a radiation detector. If our skins started to blister, we’d know something was wrong.

  Paul said we were at fifteen thousand feet, over four kilometers, when we approached the California border.

  It was easy to see where the hellbombs had been dropped. A black spot that lightened to a brown circle, then yellow, fading into green.

  The governor had given his citizens one hour of warning. Plenty of time to get away at a fast walk, unencumbered by possessions.

  A couple of minutes after we crossed the border, the flatscreens on the chair backs blinked into life. Spy appeared, smiling wanly.

  “The Others have decided that this phase of the experiment is over. You might start looking for a place to land.” It went blank, and at the same time, the jet’s engine stuttered and stopped.

  Paul looked back down the aisle. “Belt in tight. Be ready to assume the crash position before we hit. I mean ‘land.’ ”

  “ ‘Crash position’?” Rico said.

  “Feet together, knees together.” He turned back to the controls and shouted, “Hands on your knees! Get your head down!”

  “And kiss your ass goodbye,” Dustin said.

  12

  The plane went into a sickening bank, dropping at a steep angle, and then bobbed up with a lurch and glided on the level for a while. Not really level; I could see individual trees growing larger by the minute. The air shriek grew louder and deeper in pitch. I couldn’t see what Paul might be aiming for. It was all forest and rolling hills underneath me.

  We later learned that Paul was aiming for the town of Holstock, which was the only urban area visible when Spy told us they were pulling the plug. It was a couple of miles too far away, though.

  There was still no road visible when I saw the plane’s shadow rushing up to meet us, and obediently assumed the proper position, bent over with hands and eyes and anus clenched tight. He was aiming for a short bit of country road that ran straight for a fraction of a mile.

  We hit the gravel road hard, with an explosion as both tires blew. Looking at the path later, you could see that we skidded spraying gravel for less than a hundred yards, and were still going pretty fast when the left wingtip hit a tree. We spun half around and the other wing dug into the ground, and the plane cartwheeled twice and crashed into a pine forest.

  All I remember is my face hitting the viewscreen, which didn’t break. I think I was only unconscious for a minute or so. Woke up aching all over, blood trickling off my chin from a cut over the cheekbone. My mouth was full of blood; upper and lower incisors had ripped into my lips. My left eye was swollen shut, and blood trickled down from my left knee. I smelled pine. The plane ticked and squeaked.

  Shoulders felt bad, but my hands worked. I opened the seat-belt clasp and tried to stand. The plane was canted over at about a thirty-degree angle. Behind me, I could see that a thick branch or small tree had punched through a window. That was Alba’s seat, and she was obviously dead. So was the man across from her, one of the Funny Farm volunteers, his head at a drastic angle, chin torn off.

  I picked my way forward, bracing myself to find Paul dead. There was very little light up there, the windshield and side windows buried in green.

  Paul was hanging from his straps, his face a mask of blood. But when I touched him he groaned.

  “Paul? Paul, can you hear me?”

&
nbsp; One eye blinked open, startling white against the red. He rubbed both hands over his face and stared at the blood. “What the fuck . . . Do we have casualties?”

  “I don’t know—yes. Two, at least.”

  “Help me here.” He was trying to undo the clasps on his harness, fingers slippery with blood. When they clicked open, he rolled half onto me.

  He felt his head gingerly. “Where the fuck is my flight helmet?”

  It was down by his feet. I handed it to him, and he twisted the microphone around. “Mayday. Mayday.” Then he shook his head, hard, and threw it away.

  I helped him to his feet. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said, “not enough road.” We looked back down the aisle.

  In the back, Namir was crunched over Dustin, giving him mouth-to-mouth. Roz lay unconscious or dead across the aisle. Card had a cut on the top of his head; Elza was dabbing at it with a tissue, her other arm hanging limp at her side.

  “Where’s Rico?” Paul said.

  “Under the seat up here,” Elza said. “He slid.”

  “Tobogganed,” Paul muttered. I followed him up there and saw the body. He either hadn’t fastened in properly or the belt failed. His body had slid under the seat in front of him, but his chin caught on the bottom of the chair, and his head stayed behind.

  He didn’t look real, and neither did the other man, Stack, his jaw taken away. His eyes were open but there was no life in them.

  Paul was kneeling over Roz, his ear to her chest. “Heart’s beating. Find some water?” He crawled up to Namir and Dustin. I found a water bottle and broke the seal.

  Tried to pour some into Roz’s mouth, but it just dribbled out. When I splashed some on her face, though, she reacted, wincing a little.

  “Are you okay?” Brilliant question.

  She opened one eye. “Yeah, but you look like shit.” She coughed and propped herself up on her elbow. “Think I broke a rib.” She coughed into her hand and looked at it. “Not too serious. How is Rico?”

  “Dead. He’s dead.”

  She shook her head. “God, Rico. Anybody else?”

  “Stack, Alba, maybe Dustin.”

  “Do we want to get out of this damn thing before it explodes?”

  “Not a problem,” Paul said, not looking back. “Runs on helium.”

  It was all Martian magic, of course; it could probably run on mushrooms. I made my way back to the cockpit area and hit the red door button several times. My knuckles were raw and bleeding on both hands. “The door doesn’t work.”

  “See if you can pull the rubber strip off one of the windows. The one over the wing there.” Roz had longer fingernails, so she was able to pick it away. There was a red ribbon along the bottom that said PULL AND KICK in various languages. We both pulled on the ribbon and it made a click sound. I punched the window out with a single kick, and it whacked my shin on the way down.

  “Get out there with a weapon,” Namir said, gasping. He’d just stopped giving Dustin mouth-to-mouth. “We’ll have company.”

  “Is Dustin?” I said.

  “He’s breathing,” Namir said, and slid an assault rifle down the aisle. I picked it up and painfully got my head and one shoulder through its strap. Got both legs through the window, dropped onto the broken wing, and slid to the ground. Managed not to poke the rifle barrel into the dirt.

  Some bird chirped in a long, monotone scold, but otherwise there was only a sigh of wind in the pines and the wreck’s small metallic noises. Hot-metal smell and newly turned earth.

  I stepped away a few paces and could see our path of destruction. Saplings snapped off, pointing this way. Three deep gouges in the forest loam. From this low angle, I couldn’t see the road Paul had aimed for.

  Rico and Stack dead, maybe Dustin. Probably no medical help any closer than Funny Farm. More than fifty miles away, in some direction.

  “Don’t shoot?” It was a woman’s voice, not far away.

  “I won’t,” I said. “Where are you?”

  A gray-haired woman in a brown shift stepped out from behind a dense bramble. “You have a plane wreck?”

  No, this is the way we like to land. “The power went out. The Others turned it off a couple of days early.”

  She looked at a watch on her wrist and nodded. “First the god damned governor and now the god damned aliens. Be an earthquake next. You from NASA?”

  I still had the coveralls on, though they wouldn’t pass inspection, blood and all. “No. I was their guest.” That was inane, or at least inadequate.

  “Other survivors on the plane?”

  I nodded. “Some injured. Is there a hospital?”

  “Town’s six, seven miles. Come up to the place, though. We have a cabin down the road here, get you cleaned up.” She stepped forward and offered her hand. “Germaine Lerner.”

  I shook her hand and was relieved that she didn’t recognize my name. “Others who need more than just cleaning up. Help me with them?”

  “See what we can do.” She was about my age—thirties, not eighties—and stout and muscular.

  When we got back to the plane, Roz was resting at the base of the tree, and Namir was on the ground, helping Paul lower Dustin down the wing. Dustin was awake but pale.

  “We think broken ribs and collarbone,” Namir said. “Hello?”

  Germaine introduced herself. “We can make him a pallet on the floor. I’m afraid my husband has dibs on the bed. He’s doing poorly.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “He was coming back from town on a motorcycle when the bombs dropped. He didn’t wipe out, but he got burned by it.”

  “How close was he?” Namir said. “To where it went off.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not like they make an explosion. Close enough he felt the heat inside his body.”

  He winced. “There might be some radiation medicine in the plane’s first-aid kit. He ought to go to a hospital, though.”

  “Urgent care center’s closer. I suspect there’ll be a lot of people there.” She stepped up and put her arm around Dustin, guiding his arm around her shoulder. “Come on, now.”

  Paul slid down the wing, pretty spry and looking a little better, most of the blood wiped off his face. Elza backed clumsily out of the window, her left arm in a sling improvised from a shirt.

  “Card will be all right,” she said to me. “He’s dizzy, and I told him to rest for a bit.”

  “I’ll come back for him,” I said. “Let’s follow Germaine to her place and take stock.”

  “I’ll wait here,” Namir said, easing down against the wing, propping his machine gun in easy reach. “We’ll need a shovel if you have one.”

  “Got two,” Germaine said. “Take care of the living first.” She walked off, easily supporting Dustin, following an invisible trail.

  Their cabin was only a few minutes’ walk. It blended in well with the woods. Up close, you could see that the rough-hewn logs were fading plastic. Two three-wheeled motorcycles were parked in front, giving off an odd smell I remembered from childhood. “Those run on gasoline?”

  “When we can find it. There’s a place in Yreka sometimes has it. Let me go in first.” I took Dustin from her. She pounded on the door three times and then opened it slightly. “Don’t shoot, it’s me. We got company.”

  The man inside said something unintelligible. “That was a plane crash we heard.” She opened the door and stood in the doorway. “Some people hurt.”

  He came out of the darkness and stood next to her, peering out, holding a shotgun. “You in the plane that dropped them bombs.”

  “That wasn’t us,” Paul said.

  “It was somebody, sure as hell.” The muzzle of the gun moved to point in our general direction.

  “I’m a doctor,” Elza said. “I should look at those burns.”

  “What burns?”

  “The left side of your face. Germaine says you passed close to a hellbomb.”

  “Nothing you can do about that.”

  “
Maybe I can.” She walked toward him, and he put the gun down inside the door. She held his hair aside and studied his skin. Put the back of her hand against his cheek. “Does this hurt?”

  “No. A little.”

  “Sick to your stomach?”

  “A little.”

  “You ought to lie down and rest.” To Germaine: “The care center should have oral marrow stimulant. Just to be on the safe side. Tell them he got close enough for a sunburn.”

  She nodded. “God damn governor.”

  The man muttered something about him being a good man anyhow, and she rolled her eyes. “Go lie down.”

  “We’d better get to that care center ourselves,” Elza said. “Is that in Yreka?”

  “No, just down the road in Holstock. I guess a couple hours, walking, though. Six or seven miles. Come in and get a drink first.”

  We followed her in through the door. The cabin was a neat single room with two beds, two chairs, and a table. Boxes of food and dry goods, and a case of ammunition, opened.

  “My grandfolks bought this place back in ’79, when the Martians first came.” She crossed to a sink and pumped a handle vigorously several times, and water gushed out. She filled the four glasses that were on the sink.

  “So you were on NASA business in that plane?”

  “We were trying to get to Funny Farm,” Roz said. “You know where that is?”

  “Kind of. Never been there. Now that’s gonna be a walk.” She handed out the glasses.

  “You know which way we go?” Paul took a sip and passed me his glass.

  “I’ve been up that way,” the man said. “Give me the map.”

  She got a plastic map from the table drawer and he unfolded it. He rubbed it for magnification, but, of course, nothing happened.

  “Lucky it has a picture at all,” he muttered, and put a thick finger down in the middle of nowhere. “You follow the gravel road about three mile, where it makes a T with a two-lane. Go to the right, and it takes you into Holstock. Urgent care is there on the main street. Don’t know what you gonna pay with.”

  “We’ll sort that out with them,” Roz said. “From there we go south?”