2040 Revelations (21 page)

Moving back to the shaft, she looked up to see the small silhouettes of Trish and Jason above. ‘I’m here,’ she said, as she picked up the torch and hooked herself onto the waiting rope, ‘lift me up, already!’

Once Sarah was safely back up top, the three friends turned their attention to their discoveries. To Sarah, the ancient metallic relic looked smaller than the previous one from the Turkish plains;
in fact
, she thought,
that’s probably why I was able to lug it about so easily
.

‘This is friggin’ unbelievable,’ Jason said, tentatively touching the canister. ‘This might be one of the oldest objects ever unearthed; we could sell this for hundreds of thousands, maybe even hundreds of millions!’

Trish snorted. ‘And who’s going to buy it, the British Museum? Gimme a break, they wouldn’t believe us when we told them where we found it, or our theories behind it. Besides, those bastards who mugged us before would probably do so again, but this time they’d make sure we didn’t find anything else.
We’d
end up being buried, to be unearthed thousands of years later, I can hear it now
“—three mysterious bodies were found today; according to archaeologists, they are a twenty-first century people who met with a brutal and violent end.”
’

Jason looked crestfallen as his dreams of riches turned to dust. ‘It’s a nice colour, though,’ he said somewhat lamely to Sarah. ‘Wasn’t the other one silver?’

‘Yeah, this one is a little smaller too.’

‘I like it,’ Jason said, perking himself up again, ‘it looks like a giant Easter egg.’

Trish looked at Sarah and rolled her eyes heavenward. Sarah smiled at her friend’s expression, and then, remembering she had something else to show them, pulled off her backpack and removed a couple of the bones.

‘Seriously, I can’t believe this,’ Trish said after Sarah had explained her new find to them. ‘More bones, incredible.’

‘It’s a shame we can’t dig about further down there,’ Jason said.

Sarah packed the bones away again. ‘I don’t think we’d find too much. Besides, let’s not get greedy, we’ve got a haul better than we could have wished for. Not as good as back in Turkey, but a very close second, don’t you think?’

‘It’s certainly paid off,’ Trish said, giving Sarah a congratulatory hug.

‘Group hug!’ Jason said, joining in by squeezing them both together.

Trish struggled against his grasp. ‘Ow, geroff, you big oaf!’

After some more banter and the patting of backs they made their way out into the fresh air. Sarah checked her phone. Six days left until impact. She looked anxiously up at the sky;
perhaps this is how an ant feels
, she thought,
when a human’s foot slowly descends on it from above
. A tiny speck about to be obliterated; it wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ Trish said as she saw ‘six days’ displayed on Sarah’s phone.

‘Hell, yes,’ Jason agreed fervently, also looking skyward.

Packing everything up as best they could, Sarah was torn as to whether to leave the ultrasonic excavation machine behind. It was very expensive to just dump, but time was now of the absolute essence and the struggle they’d face to get it back to the vehicle was not worth risking their lives for. Also, it would be hard to sell or cost a ridiculous amount to ship with them out of Gabon.
No, it’s dead weight
, she told herself.
It’s done the job and we have our reward
.
It’s getting left behind, end of
.

In short order they leapt in the pickup and drove, bumping and skidding across the bush, heading back to the abandoned landing strip they had come in on. Having dropped off all their gear, Sarah and Jason then went to return the pickup to its owner, leaving Trish behind to guard their possessions. As they pulled up the man came out to meet them.

‘That was bad timing,’ he said as they got out.

‘How so?’ Jason asked him.

‘Your plane’s been and gone.’

‘What?!’ Sarah said in shocked disbelief. ‘What are you talking about? It’s supposed to be coming in and waiting until tomorrow!’

‘Well, they came and they went. I told them you hadn’t got back yet and they didn’t seem to care. I’m sorry.’

Sarah felt physically sick. They had to catch that plane. They had to get out of the country or they’d be killed in the blast. She doubted a car could escape the devastation zone in time, especially considering fuel pumps would be dry and one tank would not get them far enough away.

‘Oh, my God.’ Jason held his head in despair. ‘We’re fucked, we are truly fucked!’

‘You’re welcome to stay with me,’ the man said, trying to comfort them.

‘What, to wait to die?’ Jason said. ‘Thanks, but no thanks, old timer.’

Sarah slumped to the floor. ‘What are we going to do?’

The old man, seeing her discomfort, disappeared inside and came back out with a glass of water, which she accepted numbly without a word.

A minute of silence passed before he said, ‘I might be able to help you.’

Sarah and Jason looked up at him with a fearful expectancy.

‘I was only staying as I’ve lived in this house all my life. I’m old and if I’m going to die I wanted it to be here, but seeing as you folks are in trouble I can probably help you get to safety.’

‘How?’ Sarah said. ‘You won’t have enough fuel in your car and the distance is too great.’

‘I didn’t say I’d drive you out of here, did I?’ he said with a smile.

They looked at him in confusion.

‘We’ll fly out,’ he said.

‘You can fly?’ Jason asked him.

‘Of course, I’ve been flying since before you’d even drawn breath as a babe.’

‘You’re forgetting one thing,’ said Sarah, ‘a plane?’

‘Ah.’ The man tapped the side of his nose and disappeared back into his house.

‘What does that mean?’ Jason asked Sarah, who shrugged. ‘I think he’s lost the plot, the silly old—’

Jason clammed up as the man came back with a coat and small bag in hand.

‘Shall we get going, then?’ he said with a grin.

♦

‘What’s going on?’ Trish asked when they arrived back with the old man in tow.

‘Change of plan,’ Sarah said.

‘What? Why?’

‘Looks like we missed our flight,’ Jason said. ‘Those idiots came on the wrong day or got cold feet or something.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Frank here told us. Frank, Trish. Trish, Frank,’ Sarah said by way of introduction

‘So what are we going to do?’ Trish said, looking terrified.

‘Don’t worry, miss,’ Frank told her. ‘Old Frank’s here to save the day. Or your bacon,’ he added jovially, his chuckles quickly turning to wheezing, followed by uncontrollable coughing.

Trish didn’t look reassured and looked to Sarah, pleadingly.

‘He knows a place where they left some planes before the evacuation. We should be able to fuel them up and get the hell out of Dodge.’

‘Should!?’

‘Will,’ Sarah said quickly. She and Jason had thought they were as good as dead, but this lifeline had buoyed them considerably. Trish, however, was going from thinking they were getting picked up safely to
may
be getting flown out, a big difference in perspective. Jason took her to one side, speaking to her in low comforting tones while Sarah helped Frank put their kit back into the pickup.

It took them half a day to get to the small private airfield Frank had told them about. When they arrived it was deserted, much like everywhere else they had passed on the way. They entered a hangar and Frank selected one of the planes. Sarah and Jason then went about siphoning out fuel from the other aircraft, after getting instructions from Frank, while Trish helped the old man get their kit on board.

A few hours later they’d managed to fill up the plane’s tanks. It wasn’t a jet, but a small twin-engined propeller passenger plane used for excursions and parachute diving. Supposedly they needed to stop off once to refuel and then they could make it to Gabon and meet up with their taxi driver on schedule. The plan seemed okay, apart from the refuelling, which sounded more than a little dodgy to Sarah. There were no guarantees they’d find extra fuel on the way up. Still, what other choice did they have? None.

As the plane taxied out of the hangar, Sarah looked up out of the cockpit window. A bright object too big to be a star or planet flickered in the sky high above. The meteor had finally arrived and they were leaving in the nick of time.
We cut this way too close
, she thought, but then remembered their prizes, nestling at the back of the plane, and knew it had been worth it.

♦

They slept fitfully during the first leg of the flight. Touching down in the south of Angola, they refuelled, thankfully with little problem, once again siphoning out gasoline from abandoned light aircraft. During the next leg, Sarah decided it was an opportune time to investigate the red casket, which turned out to be harder to lever open than the one she’d found on the Turkish plains, as she didn’t have the finer chisels to hand; however, after some pounding and brute force from Jason they managed to prise off the lid. Once again a handle presented itself inside and it pulled out smoothly with the same satisfying suction release.

Anticipation building, they peered inside.

A single piece of folded parchment rested tantalisingly at the bottom.

More than a little disappointed at the lack of other objects contained within, Sarah carefully removed the solitary item. Unlike the others, this had no map or text on it. It was blank apart from the usual indented disc at the top. As before, Sarah put her finger on the circle and Trish and Jason held her arm, boosting the bio electricity needed to power the digital paper display.

This time an image materialised on the page. Sarah zoomed in on it after the appearance of the familiar control symbols down one side. It appeared to be some kind of super-detailed schematic or blueprint. She couldn’t easily make out what she was seeing as the sheer amount of data embedded in the graphic was immense.

A mass of symbols flowed over the page as she rotated the view and moved in and out.

‘Go back a second,’ Jason said.

She zoomed out a bit to the previous location.

He motioned with a finger. ‘Rotate thirty degrees.’

She moved the view to roughly thirty degrees from the previous location.

‘And now zoom in.’

She did so.

‘More,’ he told her, ‘more. Keep going.’

The ancient display flashed and the schematic melted away to be replaced with a vista that took their breath away. Golden trees surrounded a lush meadow as light shone down from the sky above. In the distance what looked like poles jutted up out of the ground. She zoomed in further and they skimmed across the surface of the grasses. The view shifted again and they were rising up higher and higher. The poles transformed before their eyes. They were not poles at all, but spires, hundreds of spires. The image rose higher still until they floated over a spectacle that was awe inspiring. A city; no, a super city! It was astounding, mesmerising.

They soaked up what they saw, but as suddenly as it had appeared, the screen dimmed and faded. They cried out in protest but couldn’t retrieve the image. Again and again they tried, but only the original schematic presented itself, along with its streams of unintelligible data. Frustrating was not the word, it was perhaps comparable to glimpsing nirvana and then being sucked back out into drab mundania.

‘Did you see that place?’ Trish murmured, wiping a tear from her eye. ‘It was beautiful – so beautiful.’

‘I can’t believe how big it was,’ Jason said. ‘Those towers … do you think it existed?’

Sarah glanced at him before returning her attention to the parchment. ‘I don’t know. It was magnificent. I haven’t seen anything like it – ever. It makes even our biggest cities look crude, small and dirty in comparison.’

Jason sighed. ‘I don’t think I’ve wanted to see anything again so much in my whole life.’

‘Why can’t we get the image back?’ Trish said, sounding cross.

‘I’m not sure. Perhaps it needed an outside power source to run it,’ Sarah said. ‘It was such vibrant footage, compared to the graphical nature of all the other parchment images we’ve looked at so far. And I agree with you, Jas, I wanna see it again so badly it hurts.’

‘If that city did exist, then where did it go?’ Jason looked from Trish to Sarah. ‘Something that large would have been found by now.’

‘It might be under the Antarctic ice sheet,’ Sarah said. ‘Although with the new satellite system sent up specifically for archaeological surveys, it surely would have shown up on the scans, something that big?’

‘Unless it was destroyed somehow and only its remains are left,’ Trish said, ‘or it’s on a sea or lake bed somewhere.’

Sarah thought for a moment. ‘Or it never existed at all and it was a simulation or just a plan that never reached fruition.’

Trish frowned. ‘That’s a depressing thought.’

‘Or it’s on another planet,’ Jason said seriously.

Sarah laughed. ‘Ha, and I’m the Queen of Sheba and my uncle’s E.T..’

‘E.T.?’ said Trish.

‘A little brown alien with big eyes and a glowing finger,’ Sarah told her.

‘Man, you really haven’t watched any films, have you?’ Jason said, laughing.

‘Not rubbish ones, I haven’t,’ Trish said, riled.

Sarah smiled. ‘I kinda liked it, he was cute, too, in a wrinkly, brown, hairless way,’

‘It sounds delightful,’ Trish said. ‘Give me a romcom and I’m there, but smelly small aliens? Leave me out.’

Sarah and Jason screwed up their faces in a sign of disgust and this time Trish laughed.

Jason grunted and leaned over to Sarah, who pulled back as he reached his hand out to her neck. ‘What are you doing?’ she said, feeling uncomfortable and putting her hand to her neck protectively.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just noticed your new pendant and I recognise a symbol on it. It was on the first map we looked at and now that I think about, it also cropped up on the new parchment from our red friend here.’ He patted the open metal casket next to him. ‘Can I have a closer look?’