The Dying of the Light: Interval (38 page)

Well, except for when he looked at Morena, that is. Just goes to show, having a kid can soften even the hardest of hearts
.

My radio blared as Graves contacted me one final time. “Tell the captain I said thanks, Mr. Blake. And from all of us, safe journey.”

“You as well, Commander. Stay in touch, when you can.”

“Aye, aye.
Texas
out.”

He disappeared from the sail, and I thought I heard a hatch slam as the submarine began to slip beneath the ice. It took only a moment for it to sink below, and I could see the ice was already starting to refreeze in its place.

Good luck to all of us
.

It had taken nearly four days to get everyone ready for departure, and as I climbed into the Jeep and headed back to the station, I marveled at the speed with which we’d been able to accomplish everything. Of course, it had helped that the McMurdo survivors had been prepared for our arrival for some time, but there was still an inventory of useful equipment to go through, and see just how many people we could fit on the planes. I was dismayed at the amount of useful material we had to leave behind, but now that both planes were toting more than four hundred people, there was no question of bringing it back.
Not with our fuel concerns
, I thought.
I just hope Mahoney’s able to pull off a miracle back at Christchurch.
We’d been able to top up the tanks on both planes, and had some in reserve aboard, just in case, but the pilots—
all
of them—flatly refused to fly with any more.

Can’t blame them, really. I wouldn’t want to fly a bomb, either
.

I pulled up in front of the small shed that had held Jennifer Shaw for three years, and now had a new prisoner. As I got out, I noticed one of Sergeant Denson’s men guarding the door.

“I thought all you boys were on the planes?” I asked.

“Captain’s orders, sir. We’re to secure the prisoner until the final loading is complete.”

I nodded. “Gotcha. Thanks.”

“Yes, sir.” He opened the door for me, and I stepped inside, moving to stand next to Anderson, who was looking into the cell as its occupant yelled at him.

“You can’t do this! It’s inhuman! It’s against the Geneva Convention! It’s—”

“Shut up, Warner,” said Anderson. “You’re lucky I don’t just shoot you where you stand.”

“But you can’t! I’m supposed to be on that plane!”

“After what you did? I don’t think so.”

Warner shifted his attention to me. “You! You understand, don’t you? I was only doing what had to be done. I
cared
about those people. It wasn’t like they suffered—”

“What about the people they left behind?” I responded. “You even left notes that were supposed to be from them, making it so much worse.”

“I thought that would be better than nothing at all. I was trying to help. I
saved
these people!”

“The ends justify the means, don’t they?”

“Yes! That’s it, exactly.”

I turned to Anderson. “Does he really think
I’m
going to be more receptive to this crap?”

Anderson growled at Warner. “I’ve heard that exact same speech before,
Doctor
. From someone I thought was truly
evil
. His name was Henry Gardner. But he was just a pompous, arrogant asshole who thought he could get away with anything, because he didn’t give a shit who he hurt. You, on the other hand, you’re actually
worse
than Gardner was. You
knew
these people, and cared about them, and yet you managed to rationalize this. That makes you more of a monster than Gardner could ever have hoped to be.”

He glanced at me, and I knew he was thinking of the same thing I was: Eric. I found that dark place in my heart, and brought it to the fore, using it, reveling in it for a moment. Gardner had been bad, but this guy was just plain
evil
, as Anderson had said. “Can I have your sidearm, Frank?”

Frank took one look at my face, and handed me his pistol, then turned and walked out of the shed, closing the outer door behind him without even a backward glance.

Somewhat later, I left the Jeep off to the side of the runway, then jogged over to
Rescue Two
, climbing through the side door with a hand from Myers. I took one last look around, then secured the hatch. There wasn’t much room in the cargo bay, as I saw when I turned around.
More than four hundred people sure take up a lot of room
. They were sitting, standing, or lying down wherever they could, and I marveled at the sheer number of people we’d been able to cram in the plane. I turned to Myers and whispered, “Are we going to be able to take off?”

He shrugged. “We took out everything we could. Good thing these folks are skinny.”

We headed up to the flight deck through the rear compartment, and I noticed the people were jam-packed in here, too. It looked like we were all going to be tight on space on the way back.

As I moved onto the flight deck, the pilots were busy going through their pre-flight checklists. Shaw had taken the first pilot’s seat for this part of the flight, with Archer assisting. Anderson was heading up
Rescue One
.

“We’re all ready whenever you are, sir,” said Myers, taking his station.

“Well, then, let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Amen to
that
,” Archer mumbled under his breath.

“
Rescue One
,
Rescue Two
Actual,” said Shaw.

“Anderson here, go ahead,” came over the radio.

“I’m ready to get out of here, sir. What about you?”

“Fine with me. We’ll take the lead, if you don’t mind.”

“Last in, first out, sir. Have at it.”

“Roger that.”

I couldn’t hear the other plane’s engines over our own, but it seemed like forever before we saw the other C-5 begin creeping forward, inch by inch gaining speed as her jets clawed at the near-frozen air. Soon enough, she was speeding down the runway, and I could hear both Shaw and Archer chanting in whispers, urging her up. Moments later, we were all joining in, and we cheered as her nose finally came up, just before the end of the runway and certain doom.

“I guess it’s your turn now, boys. Good luck.
Rescue One
out,” said Anderson over the radio.

“No time like the present,” said Shaw, as he and Archer threw the throttles forward to their stops. The engines outside began screaming even louder, and we all leaned forward, practically
willing
the plane to take off. Slowly, oh so slowly, we began to inch forward, just like our sister aircraft, and again, soon enough, we were racing down the frozen runway.

Atkins entered the flight deck, holding onto various handholds as he moved forward.

I looked at him, and he just shrugged. “Humans have been on this continent since 1904. I wanted to be one of the last ones to see it… who knows, we might never come back. For the first time in over a hundred years, there’s no one alive on the ice.”

As we finally made it into the air and began our initial banking to turn northward toward freedom and the rest of the world, I looked down at McMurdo Station one final time. I strained to find the shed, but it went by too quickly, and I thought of Atkins’s words.

Unfortunately for Warner, Atkins was wrong.

Warner sat in his cell, holding a cold pistol in his hands.

The plan, or so David Blake had told him, had been to kill him quickly, and keep him from suffering—as he hadn’t done with his own victims. At least, that’s what he and Anderson had told everyone else who was in on it. Apparently, the rest were going to think he’d committed suicide.

As if I’d ever do something so gauche
, he’d said.
Kill me, or leave me here, if you must. Just make up your mind
. He’d been beyond apologies at that point, knowing they wouldn’t have done any good. Besides, the look in that man’s eyes… something had told him nothing he could say would have made a difference.

But I’ve decided I can’t kill you,
Blake had said.
I won’t do that, not again. So I’ll leave the choice to you
.

Blake had then ejected the magazine from the pistol, removing all the bullets and pocketing them, save one, and then reinserted the magazine, racking the slide and readying the gun to fire.

Now, I’m going to leave, but I’m going to give you this gun before I do. I suggest you use it wisely
.

He’d opened the outer door, then turned back, swinging the gun a few times as he judged the distance. Then, with a single toss, he’d landed the gun right at the base of the cell bars, and by the time Warner had looked back up, the door was shut and he was gone.

He’d picked up the gun and looked at it for a little while, when he heard the screaming engines of the C-5s, even from this distance. Once they were gone, it hit him that he was truly alone.

“Marooned,” he whispered, the idea conjuring thoughts of pirates and sandy beaches and the creak of sails and rigging. He looked out at the frozen landscape through the cracks in the patchwork cover they’d erected over the hole Duncan had made with his dramatic exit, and Warner suddenly realized he might not be alone, after all. Surely Duncan had—.

No. Surely Duncan escaped on one of the planes, or the sub
, he thought.
No way he’d stay behind, no way at all
.

That was it, then. No choice now but to break out of here, or take the easy way out. Even as he thought it, he realized how foolish it would be to think they’d left any food behind, or even any seeds to use in the aeroponics bay. The more he thought, the more he hated them, wished he’d never bothered saving any of them. His hate fueled his rage, and he railed about his tiny cell, smashing his fists over and over again into the plywood walls, until they ran with the blood from his broken skin and he collapsed, sobbing, onto the cot.

It took just two days for him to reach the end. Oh, he’d tried the walls, even the ceiling, hoping he could break through, but as hard as he’d hit them, as much as he’d pried, he couldn’t make it out. Not surprising given the effort he’d put into creating the shed.
Well
,
at least this part of it
.

But he’d forgotten that one staple that humans needed, that one bit of ephemeral substance that the human body just couldn’t live without: water. The irony, of course, being that he was literally surrounded by ice, though he had no way to get to it.

He picked up the gun once more, deciding that a quick death, however trite and unseemly, was better than a slow death from dehydration, or even worse, a slower death from starvation, should he manage to break out and at least get some water.

The gun tasted horrible, the bitter tang of metal and the nauseating flavor of gun oil combining to make him gag. He fought down the urge to pull the gun from his mouth, making sure it was tilted correctly so that he wouldn’t accidentally shoot out his cheek or some other such idiocy. He was a scientist, after all.

The least he could do was kill himself correctly.

He took a deep breath, reviewing the choices that he’d made in his life, wondering how things might have turned out if he’d been a little different, been a better man, or just in general not made such a mess of things.

Not that it matters now
, he thought.
But I do have a few regrets. Maybe, if there is another life after this one, I’ll get another chance. I can do better. I know it
.

He closed his eyes, holding the gun tight with both hands, and said a short prayer to a God he hadn’t prayed to in what felt like forever. Then it was time, and he pulled the trigger.

It was only when he realized the gun was irreparably jammed that he
really
began to scream.

Chapter Seventeen

Christchurch International Airport
New Zealand

We were following
Rescue One
in for a landing, all of us ready to be back in the relative warmth. I’d watched the other plane touch down safely, and as it was taxiing to the same place as before, I could hear Anderson on the radio. He wasn’t having much luck reaching the guys we’d left here working on the fuel supply.

“Repeat,
AEGIS Rescue One
calling any available AEGIS personnel. Please respond.” After having known him for as long as I had, I could hear the strain in Anderson’s voice. He was worried for his men.

Truth be told, so was I.

Suddenly, there was a flare of static from the radio, and I heard a most welcome voice. “Gaines here, Captain. Sorry about that. We’re in the terminal and the radios don’t work great in here.”

I sighed with relief, as did Myers and Archer.

“What’s your situation, Gunny?” asked Anderson.

“We’re fine, sir. We’ve stayed out of sight for the most part, quiet and hiding. We had some bad luck a few days ago—we lost Markinson—but everything’s settled down now. We’re packing up to come out to you now.”

“Roger that. Don’t leave anything behind; hopefully, we won’t be here that long.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few minutes later, we had also landed and taxied over to the other plane. I had made my first landing, with Archer and Shaw watching, and they grinned. “Well done, Mr. Blake. We might make a pilot out of you yet,” said Archer.

I nodded, but didn’t smile. “Yeah, just when we’re never going to need these things again.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said. “These things carry a shit-ton of cargo, and we might need that. It’ll be good to have at least a couple working, just in case.”

“I suppose you’re right. I just hope they stay that way. Things are… bad… up in Washington.” I’d talked with him briefly about what was going on back home, and I think he saw the look in my eyes as I worried about Kim and the others.

“Look, I’m sure they’re OK, man. Just focus on getting the job done, and getting back to them. That’s what they’d want, right?”