Adam Baker - Impact

‘I suppose.’

‘What if we have to walk out of here? Think about it. We’ve got precious little water. You and Hancock are hobbled by major injuries. We’d struggle to cover ten miles a night. And if we had hostiles dogging our steps? Bastards intent on taking us out one by one? We wouldn’t stand a chance. We’d be easy prey.’

Frost tested the crutch. She walked back and forth. She glanced at Noble. He looked exhausted, strung out.

‘Take a moment. Get your head together. We’re armed. We’ve got plenty of ammunition. We’re badder than anything cat-stepping around those dunes, all right? Just got to watch our backs until daybreak. If anyone is out there, messing with our heads, they won’t try anything after sunrise. Too much exposure.’

Hancock, called from outside:

‘Guys. Better get out here.’

‘My turn to bring bad news.’

Hancock held up his CSEL.

A voice, heard through crackling interference. Male, stern:

‘…cabinet officers… terms of The 1947 Presidential Succession Act, I have assumed that grave respons…’

‘Is this the BBC?’ asked Frost. ‘Is this a live transmission?’

Hancock mimed hush.

‘…unthinkable, only to be countenanced as an absolute last resort. But, I have to tell you now, at five o’clock, eastern standard time, I gave that terrible order. Our courageous armed forces, both at home and abroad, did their duty…’

The voice swamped by static. Hancock held the radio above his head to regain signal.

‘…San Antonio, Dallas and Detroit. And I ask anyone who can hear this broadcast, whether you are a citizen of the United States or not, to pray for their souls…’

‘What’s the guy talking about?’ asked Noble.

‘Evergreen,’ said Hancock. ‘He’s talking about Evergreen. I heard rumours. Didn’t think they’d go through with it.’

‘Evergreen?’

‘OPLAN eight-oh-eight. The final roll of the dice. If they couldn’t stop the virus, if major cities become hot-beds of infection, they could invoke a doomsday option.’

‘Jesus,’ said Frost, catching the obvious implication. ‘You can’t be serious.’

Hancock nodded confirmation.

‘Nuclear strike. Incinerate every substantial metropolitan area.’

‘…both Berlin and Munich… still no world from our French correspondents… lit the northern sky… no further communication from Paris…’

‘Dear God.’

‘Enhanced radiation weapons. Tritium/deuterium nukes. Sandmans. Way more lethal that the tac we’ve got in our hold. The blast itself is pretty low yield, but they pulse intense gamma radiation at the moment of detonation. No hiding place. Cuts through concrete and steel. Any mammal within a ten-mile radius; human, whatever, will sicken and die in hours.

‘The blast itself will spread cobalt-sixty and a bunch of other isotopes over the surrounding area. Lethal contamination. Long half-life. Even if we make it out of here, we will have to keep away from cities. They’ll be dead zones. No cats, no dogs, no birds. Centuries before a person could walk the streets.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

‘What else could they do? Only way to purge the virus. Destroy the world in order to save it.’

‘God in heaven.’

Frost looked towards the starlit horizon.

‘So what do we do? America is a wasteland. Even if we make it out of this desert, where on earth can we go?’

Frost, Hancock and Noble climbed to the top of the ridgeline and watched the sky lighten with the first trace of dawn. They were cotton-mouthed with thirst, each determined not to be the first to break resolve and gulp their morning ration from the canteen.

‘Twenty-four hours since the crash,’ said Noble. Dry cough. ‘Feels like a month.’

‘We need a plan,’ said Frost. ‘An actual plan. We’ve spun our wheels twenty-four hours. Time to face reality. No one is coming for us. So we better decide, here and now, how we intend to get back to the world.’

They sat in the sand and looked out over the crash site. The eastern sky turned fine azure. One by one, stars faded into oncoming day. The sun would break the horizon within the hour. Nightmare light. It would quickly cook the desert like a blowtorch flame, turning the dunes to a heat-rippling hellscape by mid morning.

‘I saw a flash last night,’ said Noble. ‘A pulse of light to the west. Flickering white, like summer lightning. Didn’t pay it any mind.’

‘Must have been Los Angeles going up.’

‘And one to the east, a couple of minutes later.’

‘Evergreen,’ murmured Hancock.

‘I suppose we’re part of it,’ said Noble, gesturing to the saurian hulk of the B-52. ‘We got the last tac nuke in the arsenal. Last one they could lay their hands on, at any rate. Something out in the desert they wanted vaporised with all the rest. Not sure I want to be involved.’

Frost paced the crest of the dune. She kicked at sand. She tried to picture the atomic devastation that lay beyond the horizon.

New York in ruins. The broken skyline of Manhattan. Toppled skyscrapers, avenues clogged with rubble.

Los Angeles. Gridlocked freeways seared by a nuclear firestorm. Automobile bodywork scorched down to base metal, seats reduced to frame-springs, tyres melted to bubbling tar.

Atlanta. Scoured by uncontrolled block-fires, street grid razed, ten kiloton airburst repeating the destruction wrought by the Confederacy before they ceded the city to Sherman.

Had Europeans bombed their major conurbations? The Russians?

Maybe astronauts marooned on the International Space Station were looking down on Europe and the United States at that moment, watching the smoke of burning cities taint the stratosphere, filthy soot plumes carried on prevailing winds.

Nuclear Winter. How long before a radiotoxic haze encircled the earth, and darkened the world to a grey twilight which would last centuries?

Maybe snow would fall on the desert. Flakes grey with ash.

Maybe, as she and her companions trekked across the sand, day would be overtaken by premature dusk. The temperature would plummet. Shimmering heat would give way to a fierce blizzard. They would trudge onwards, leaning into a driving snowstorm, until they succumbed to hypothermia and dropped dead among the dunes, bodies feathered with ice.

‘So,’ said Noble, calling her back from her reverie. ‘Canada or Mexico?’

Frost thought it over. She opened her mouth, intending to say Canada, but Hancock cut her off:

‘We find the nearest functioning military unit and report for duty.’

‘The war is over, sir,’ said Frost. ‘The virus won.’ She lifted the dog tags from around her neck, disentangled them from the code lanyard, and toyed with the tin tabs. ‘Rank. Insignia. Flag. Not sure they mean a great deal any more. Just souvenirs.’ She tossed the dog tags onto the sand beside her. ‘Feel like secession troops after the surrender. Ragged losers. Column of Johnny Rebs trudging home.’

‘Best put a lid on that shit, airman.’

‘We got beat. Time to be realistic. All that’s left is survival.’

‘You are an officer in the United States Air Force. Still bound by oath. Don’t fucking forget it.’

Noble spoke up, aiming to divert the argument.

‘This valley extends a long way south,’ said Noble. ‘Unbroken desert. Certain death. North, east or west: that’s the only real choice we got.

‘If we head west, we’ve got a long walk across dunes, then our troubles really begin. We’d hit the Panamint Range. Barren as the moon. Like crossing the Himalayas with nothing but the clothes on our back. And then we have to repeat the trick. Cross Saline Valley and the Inyo Mountains, and onwards into the Mojave. Miles of impossible terrain between us and Edwards. It’s not an achievable journey. Certain death, unless we got lucky, real lucky. Stumbled across an RV or something.’