Gary Gibson - Final Days

A moment later, he heard a sound like a pop followed by a hiss. Something slammed into the drone, as it passed into the next street, engulfing it in flames. It spun wildly, its gyros obviously damaged.

A second rocket struck the drone, shattering it this time, and sent shards of metal spinning across the rubble-strewn roadway. There were shouts of jubilation and, a few moments later, more armed men came running towards Saul along the street.

He crouched low, hoping to stay invisible, but one of the resistance fighters, brandishing a meat cleaver, spotted him and yelled something that Saul’s contacts translated as a promise to kill him if he didn’t hurry the fuck up out of his hiding place.

Then things got really bad.

First, there was a bright eruption of light, and a deafening bass boom that Saul felt more than heard. The façade of the building opposite came tumbling down, burying most of the men now gathered triumphantly around the remains of the drone.

Saul closed his eyes, his ears still singing from the explosion, and when he opened them once more, the man threatening him had disappeared.

He crawled out from under the bus just as a Black Dog came pounding around the corner, bigger than any other he’d ever seen before, and with heavy cannons mounted between its metallic shoulders. Half a dozen armed Consortium troopers followed on foot, their outlines rendered indistinct by their active chameleon armour.

‘Hey, is your name Saul Dumont?’ one of them yelled, lowering his weapon to his side, as the rest of the squad moved past Saul towards the other end of the street. ‘We got word from one of our operators, so who you with?’

Saul shook his head. ‘I’m not with anyone.’ He stared down at his torn and filthy jacket, his skin now caked with dust, and realized he had no idea where the Agnessa had disappeared.

‘Right.’ The trooper looked around, his armour reflecting the smoking rubble, making it hard to focus on him. ‘You need transport?’

‘I’m trying to get back to Florida,’ said Saul, wondering if he was in shock.

The trooper turned around, in an indistinct motion, lines of colour streaking as he looked back in the direction from which he’d appeared. ‘Well, we’re about to head back that way, because we need to recharge the Dog. Just try not to attract any more attention, will you? I think you just lost us a drone.’

‘Right.’ Saul nodded, feeling actually sorry.

The trooper turned back to his men, who were recovering the weapons dropped by the insurgents. Saul followed after them, dazed, his head filled with visions of monolithic structures under starless skies.

TWENTY-TWO

Arizona, 5 February 2235

Olivia woke with a start.

At first she thought someone must be in the bathroom next door, and had just swept the soap dish and toothbrushes off their shelf and sent them clattering to the floor. But then she saw the window rattle in its casement, the mattress beneath her also trembling slightly.

There was the sound of glass breaking, somewhere outside, followed by the frenzied barking of a dog some way off in the distance. Fingers clenched around the quilt, she waited for the tremor to abate, while adrenalin sent spikes of fear racing up and down her spine.

As the tremors began to abate, Olivia closed her eyes and remained entirely still for a few moments, waiting for her heart to stop beating like a jackhammer. Finally she slid off the bed and peered inside the bathroom; a glass had fallen to the floor and smashed, leaving a pair of cheap plastic toothbrushes among the shards. She grabbed a wad of paper towels and started sweeping it all into a pile.

Suddenly she stopped. What was the point? The owners of this motel had already fled. People were clearly going to ground, or returning to their families, or else rioting in the streets when they failed to get answers from their governments and realized they had been abandoned. She stood up again, leaving the broken glass on the floor. It would be easier to move to another motel room instead.

A few minutes later Olivia stepped out on to the veranda fronting the adjacent room, squinting up into the bright Arizona morning as she continued brushing her teeth. A single car whipped along the highway, doing at least a hundred. They had otherwise seen very little traffic since pulling into the motel, though there were reports on the news feeds of a sharp hike in road banditry and improvised roadblocks along Mexical’s disputed border.

Olivia heard voices, and looked down to see Jeff and Mitch standing next to the truck they’d stolen. Jeff smiled up at her and waved.

She waved back, as she thought about their reunion a few nights before, and the things she had learned since. A wave of grief and despair washed over her, and she stepped back from the railing before he could see her tears.

When Jeff had phoned her from out of the blue the day before, it had almost seemed like hearing from a ghost. To her surprise, the first emotion she’d felt was anger that he had left her in the dark for so long without anything like a real explanation. He’d then told her that he was with Mitchell Stone, and asked her to join them both in Arizona.

Arizona ? She had been sitting in her kitchen when she received the call, her knuckles white where they gripped the table. ‘Why Arizona?’

Jeff’s voice had wavered slightly as he replied. ‘I’d rather explain in person.’

She caught sight of her own face reflected in the kitchen window, eyes wide and angry. ‘Why not just tell me now?’

‘It’s the kind of thing you really have to hear face-to-face, Olivia.’

She swallowed hard. ‘Does this have anything to do with those things growing in the ocean?’

‘Well, yeah, as a matter of fact,’ he replied, a note of surprise in his voice. ‘It has a lot to do with them. You’ll be coming, right?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Jesus, Olivia.’ Jeff’s tone was quietly persistent. ‘You need to come. I didn’t pick on Arizona for the hell of it. Our lives are in danger and I’m trying to keep us both alive. Can you leave right away?’

‘But why Arizona?’

‘Remember the Roses?’

She thought for a moment. ‘You mean Lester and Amy?’

‘Them, yes. We’re heading for their space-port.’

‘And you’re not going to tell me why, is that it?’

‘Olivia,’ he said, ‘we’re going to the Moon, on board one of their ships.’

She started to ask why they couldn’t just go through the Array, then decided she didn’t actually want to know – at least not yet.

‘Did you see the news last night?’ she asked him instead.

‘No. Why?’

‘There was a press conference . . . the heads of all three republics, including Mexical. Tey said there was no way to stop the growths. They said that they didn’t know what might happen next.’

She heard the sound of an engine revving, over the link, a voice muttering in the background. Mitchell , she guessed.

‘They’re lying. They know exactly what’s going to happen.’

‘How could you possibly know that?’

‘Well,’ she heard him reply, from a thousand kilometres away, ‘it’s kind of complicated. But you know how the Array allows for a certain kind of time travel?’

Olivia had felt like a passenger inside her own body as she got into a car, less than twenty minutes later. The surrounding streets had been quiet, with hardly any traffic at all. Somehow she hadn’t expected that, given the recent news. Most people, she guessed, were just staying at home. Where else, after all, could they go?

The car whisked her out of Jacksonville and on to a highway heading west. Half an hour later it pulled in at a regional airport and she boarded an otherwise empty hopper, spending most of the flight scanning through feeds that were all reporting on exactly the same events – the growths and the million and more people currently camped outside the Florida Array.