Adam Baker - Impact

‘Let you in on a secret,’ said Hancock, contemplating the dunes. ‘Truth is, I love it out here in the desert. I want to be awake every awful minute. Yeah, the situation is desperate. I want to get home same as you guys. But this is why I joined the military. Didn’t want to stare at the world through an office window. Wanted a mission. Clarity of purpose. Something real. Something fundamental.’

‘A true believer.’

‘You’re goddam right.’

Noble loaded the battery onto the deck plate.

‘Hold on,’ said Hancock. ‘I got to fetch something from inside.’

He struggled to his feet, climbed into the tight crawlspace and retrieved a ballistic Peli case from behind the battery rack.

Noble helped drag the Peli case from the tail.

‘What’s in this thing?’ asked Noble as he stacked it on the sled.

‘Something that might save our collective ass.’

A star shell to the south. Frost. A flare to guide them home.

They gripped the tow rope and began to haul the battery across the sand.

The nose.

Noble reached up and brushed dust from the hull of the plane. He flipped latches and unhinged a panel beneath the cockpit window.

A seven-pin power receptacle: four pos/negs, two grounds and a redundancy.

Frost dumped the battery in the sand beneath the open power panel. She ran jump leads from the battery pack to the terminals, clamped them with heavy alligator clips. Crack and spark as she applied the second clip. She snatched her hand away.

‘Better watch out,’ said Noble. ‘Whole fuselage is soaked in fuel.’

Frost sat in the pilot seat. Noble stood behind her.

He held a flashlight trained on the AC switch panel.

‘Here goes.’

Frost cranked the selector from AUX to EXT.

Spark-shower from the overhead air refuel panel. They ducked and shielded their eyes.

Power up hum. Winking console indicators. Cabin lights fluttered and glowed steady.

Faces lit harsh white. Each shocked by the deterioration they saw in their companion’s condition. Exhaustion and thirst. Stubble, sunburn, peeling skin.

They laughed. High-fives.

‘About time we caught a break,’ said Noble.

‘Well, let’s not waste precious volts,’ said Frost. ‘Pass me the headset.’

He handed her the pilot helmet. Brim stencil: PINBACK.

She hesitated for a moment, then pulled on the helmet, creeped to be sharing skullspace with a dead man.

She plugged the interphone jack into the side-console, switched on the command panel above her head and began to flip through pre-programmed frequencies.

She switched from INTER to VOX. Speaker hiss filled the cabin.

She keyed the radio.

‘Mayday, Mayday, anyone copy, over? This is B-52 Liberty Bell , tail MT66 requesting aid, please respond.’

White noise.

‘Mayday, Mayday, this is B-52 Liberty Bell . We have crashed in the desert north-east of the Panamint Range, we require urgent assistance, over.’

The unbroken susurration of empty wavebands.

She flicked toggles, turned dials.

‘No good?’ queried Noble.

‘Quick II is giving me nothing on Guard. DAMA and AFSAT are returning No Comms. Line-of-sight is no fucking good with these mountains boxing us in. Best bet is the ARC one-ninety. Sooner or later, someone ought to respond. Don’t want to believe we’re the only folks broadcasting in the entire western hemisphere.’

Frost turned to Noble.

‘No point waiting around. Might take a while to raise anyone. Best if we take half-hour shifts. This could be a long night.’

Frost, alone on the flight deck, feet propped on the avionics in front of her. She had removed the pilot’s helmet. She toyed with the CSEL in her lap.

She’d managed to pick up fragments of BBC World Service. A news update which was, she suspected, days old, cycling from a console in an abandoned studio somewhere in central London.

British voice:

‘…extent of the pandemic… research centres across the world… no firm hope of a cure…’

The transmission momentarily overwhelmed by a strange tocking sound, an electronic pulse that rose and fell as it washed across the wavebands.

‘…refuge centres overrun… advise extreme caution… place of safety… away from major cities…’

Feedback whine. She tweaked Acquisition.

‘…asting from the United Sta… taken command of the continuity government… ecretary of State… sworn in at NORAD headquarters… continued state of emergency… executive posi… recall of overseas forces… concluded with a prayer… their trust in God…’

She shut off the CSEL and threw it aside.

America’s slow death evidently playing out like the final hours of Hitler’s entourage sealed in their Reichstag bunker. Guys awarding themselves meaningless titles. Studying maps, debating strategy, issuing futile orders. Pathologically competitive alpha males jostling for status even as the power failed, the lights and air con died, and they were left in choking darkness. Bad fucking joke.

She reached above her head and powered the ARC-190. She held the oxygen mask to her mouth and keyed the mask-mike.

‘Mayday, Mayday, this is the crew of B-52 Liberty Bell requesting urgent assistance. Can any military personnel copy this transmission?’

She scanned wavebands.

‘Anyone out there, over? Anyone at all?’

A ghost-murmur behind interference. She sat still, held her breath.

Could be an auditory hallucination. Maybe she was creating syllables out of static, brain-shaping patterns from chaos.

She upped the volume.

‘Say again, please. Say again your last.’

A voice. Male. Distant, desperate.

‘…For the love of God, can anyone hear me? Please, tell me I’m not alone…’

‘Hey. I’m listening.’

‘…Tired. Dog tired. Don’t know how long I’ve been…’

‘…I’m right here, I’m right here, brother. Talk to me…’

‘…can’t be the last. Have to be others…’

The plane’s UHF transmitter too weak to make contact. No way to boost the signal.

She sat back and listened to the phantom voice.

Frost and her distant companion. Two lost souls, pleading with the airwaves, voices shot with hopeless resignation, overwhelmed by the pathetic message-in-a-bottle futility of committing Maydays to the ether.

She stepped outside.

She leant against the fuselage and listened to the silence.

She glanced down. Pinback, shrouded in the stars and stripes, dusted in sand, slowly claimed by the desert.

The upper cabin.

They sat cross-legged on the deck and contemplated their remaining water.

Frost spoke what they could already see:

‘Six pouches. Two canteens: one full, one pretty much drained.’

‘Won’t last long,’ said Noble. He picked up one of the canteens and shook it. It sloshed near-empty. ‘Two or three days, at most. Shit, I could drink the whole lot right now. Would barely touch my thirst.’

‘Gallon a day. That’s what they recommend for deep desert. Plenty of water, rest, and shade. We’re so fucked it’s almost funny.’

‘Ought to check out the plane. Might be able to drain some liquid from the sub-systems. Won’t taste too pretty, but who cares, right?’

‘Best limit perspiration,’ said Hancock. ‘Sleep by day. Stay out the sun.’

‘Someone ought to carry the water pouches in their pocket. Body heat. If the temperature drops much further they could freeze and burst.’