Matt Eaton - Blank

He opened the front door to find Major Brogan flanked by four soldiers, two of them with weapons in hand ready to fire.

Luckman’s heart sank. “What’s going on Major?”

“Captain Luckman, you’re under arrest. Restrain him,” Brogan told his soldiers. One of them flipped Luckman roughly against the interior wall of the front landing and bound his wrists behind his back.

Luckman heard Mel scream in fear and two more soldiers appeared from inside the house as they marched a struggling Warrington toward the front door. One of them purposefully grabbed her broken arm and she cried out in pain.

“Both of you under the one roof. That wasn’t very smart, was it?” Brogan hissed in Luckman’s ear.

“You need to call General Neil Shearer. He’ll sort this out,” Luckman told him.

“I doubt that,” said Brogan. “Shearer was arrested half an hour ago.”

Luckman had lost track of whether it was day or night. His interrogators had asked the same questions so many times they were like a mantra. They had begun to mix up the order, presumably in the hope of catching him out. His answers had remained the same. He didn’t need to worry about being caught out because he had been telling them the truth, albeit with one slight historical adjustment. This in itself was not a lie, merely a reassessment. The readjustment had become his truth so that in this regard his answers had been as unwavering as the disbelief with which they had been greeted.

“There had been no communication with anyone on the ground at Pine Gap since the Sunburst. I had been tasked with destroying the base in order to save the town. A town of some 25,000 people, all living and breathing – all of them in full charge of their mental faculties. Upon determining the base was deserted I carried out the order to destroy the base because I was concerned for the welfare of the people in the town.”

Colonel Pat Maygar thumped the table so hard it made Luckman jump. He was dressed simply and elegantly in a white shirt and grey checked trousers. A man who still valued fashion as the world crumbled around him was not to be trusted. He was the third and the highest ranking of Luckman’s interrogators, most likely the man left in charge of Army Intelligence since Shearer’s sudden fall from grace.

Maygar’s voice was calm when he finally spoke. “You couldn’t have known of the existence of survivors before you landed. They were not the reason you destroyed the base.”

Luckman lifted his head slowly and stared back at his accuser with the untrammelled conviction of a man who knew he had done the right thing.

“Now you listen to me Colonel – those people were the only reason I destroyed the base. The Chinese were about to do it any day if I hadn’t beat them to it.”

“What nonsense,” countered Maygar.

“I’m not making it up. That was General Shearer’s assessment, based on all the intelligence at his disposal.”

“I’ve seen the intelligence. Shearer was guessing. Hasn’t it penetrated that thick skull of yours yet that standing by Neil Shearer won’t do you any good? He and Warrington have hung you out to dry. They say blowing up the base was all your idea.”

“Of course they do. That was their plan all along – to make me the sacrificial lamb. Answer me this – where’s the evidence I stole Shearer’s plane? Brigadier Martin hates my guts. He’d have wasted no time alerting Canberra if he thought I’d gone rogue. But he didn’t do that, did he?”

“So tell me again because I really want to know – how did you save the people of Alice Springs by destroying Pine Gap?”

“Are you really going to sit there and deny that China has been regarding this continent with envious eyes? That whole town had a big target painted on it because of that base.”

Maygar didn’t trouble himself with responding. He merely changed tack completely. “Why were you and Warrington holed up in the home of the murdered priest?”

“I’d been investigating his murder. It was linked to what went down near the base with the Alternates.”

“These are the people I understand you also refer to as ‘the Others’. You claim they killed Clarence Paulson.”

Luckman nodded slowly. He knew where this line of questioning ended up. Maygar shifted in his seat and regathered the papers that had scattered across the table in his earlier rage. He spoke calmly and quietly. “Captain, do you have any notion of how ludicrous that sounds?”

“You have the video.”

“The video is proof of nothing. It shows you driving through the desert and then the picture dissolves into static. All the video proves is that you yourself didn’t fire the rocket launchers that destroyed the base. We will find the men responsible, by the way.”

An apparition appeared alongside Maygar, who seemed not to notice. It stared intently at Luckman as if awaiting his next move. He didn’t know whether it was real or a figment of his weary imagination. But he had long since passed the point where he required reason to define reality. She was here. She needed him to know.

“What about Mel?” Luckman asked.

“What about her? She’s still in a coma. Another of your casualties.”

Mel’s apparition shook her head at the assertion.

“What do you mean another one?”

“You killed Clarence Paulson.”

Mel turned, walked toward the door and disappeared.

“Do me a favour and check on Mel. Something’s happened to her.”

“So you don’t deny killing Paulson?”

Luckman sighed. “I didn’t kill anyone. But why would you care if I had?”

“More evidence your mind slipped a gear out there.”

“Is that the line you’ve been peddling to the Americans?”

Maygar feigned a look of disappointment. “I see we can add delusions of grandeur to the list. What makes you think the Americans care about you? You have ceased to exist.”

“If that were true Colonel it would make me a figment of your imagination.”

Maygar might have smiled if he possessed anything resembling a sense of humour. “There’s one thing you can take credit for – the US Pacific Fleet is about to start bombing western China. Shearer’s wild claim that America wouldn’t come to our aid was dead wrong. You didn’t stop the war, Captain Luckman, you escalated it.”

Mel opened her eyes and tears immediately ran down her cheeks. The bright light was blinding and she blinked several times before the room came gradually into focus. It was a hospital room. A clear tube ran from her arm to a saline intravenous drip and a heart monitor was clipped to her index finger.

She had no idea how she had come to be here except that it had something to do with the fact that she had been in a coma. But whether the coma had come about as the natural result of her physical condition or whether it was the consequence of her desire to avoid ending up in some hellish Blank holding pen, she couldn’t recall.

She sat up, immediately catching the attention of a young male nurse.

“Hello there. You’re awake,” he noted, as if in saying it he was removing any doubt.

Mel forced a smile and nodded, disappointed and yet resigned to the fact that her return to the world had been greeted with such ignorance of the battle she had fought to do so. The white gold had been slow to do its work, because she had been administered but one small dose before the Army’s intervention. It had left her stranded for a time between the two worlds. Both were visible to her and yet for days she had existed in neither. It had taken all of her determination and willpower to avoid being dragged back into the horrible nightmare realm those poor damned souls had spun around themselves.