Armageddon Heights (a thriller) (7 page)

‘Best of luck with that,’ said the businessman. ‘It’s too bloody hot. You’ll fry out there. I say if the guy abandoned us then we take the bus and turn back.’

‘Turn back?’ said Wade. ‘Have you seen back? It’s the same as forward.’

‘Well we sure as hell can’t hang around here waiting for the goddamn bus driver to show his face. The best thing we can do is find some kind of town, get someone to come and find him when we’re all safe and well and out of this mess the guy put us in. Can you drive the bus?’

‘So now you’re blaming the bus driver?’ said Bolan.

‘Sure, who else?’

Wade shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not going to abandon him. I’m going to find him,’ he said.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Bolan. ‘Two sets of eyes are better than one.’

‘Three are better,’ said the Country Life Woman from behind them. ‘I’ll help you.’ She reached into a small bag she carried. ‘I have a full half-litre bottle of spring water, too. That might prove useful.’ She held it out hopefully.

‘You’re not exactly dressed for the terrain,’ said Wade. ‘We’ll be fine.’

‘Are you?’ she observed. ‘Is this man?’ she added, looking Bolan up and down. ‘I’m tougher than I look, you know.’

‘It’s up to you,’ Wade shrugged. ‘I don’t intend going too far. I’ve just got a feeling he’s out there, that’s all.’

‘Well you’re crazy,’ said the businessman. ‘All of you. You can see for miles – I can’t see the man, can you? I’m going to see if anyone else can get a signal on their phone, get us some help.’

‘I doubt they’ll work,’ Wade said. ‘I noticed a few people trying and giving up. Seems we’re cut off from the outside world for now. The only man that might be able to shed some light on this is the bus driver. And he’s out there somewhere.’

‘Whatever,’ said the businessman walking away back to the coach, holding his phone up in the air and twirling it around as if he could snatch a stray bit of signal that happened to be flying by. He grunted in disdain.

‘Not a happy fellow,’ said the Country Life Woman.

‘Hardly surprising,’ Bolan mused. ‘Sorry, I don’t know your name…’

‘Amanda Tyler,’ she offered.

‘Martin Bolan,’ he returned politely. ‘I’m an engineering rep…’ He trailed off into silence.

‘And this is?’ she said, looking at Wade who turned around and stepped off the road onto the soft desert soil. He ignored her and trudged away, his attention on the ground.

‘Looks like he’s the private kind,’ said Bolan.

They set off after Wade.

The tracks were relatively easy to follow. There had been no wind or rain to erase them. Samuel Wade noticed how they’d started out wide and confident, a man in a hurry, but pretty soon they tightened up as the man slowed down. Where was he headed? There wasn’t anything up ahead except desert. What had he hoped to gain? He could only put it down to sheer panic. Wade had no idea how long the bus driver had been out here, but in this heat, without cover or water he would soon have gotten exhausted and dehydrated. His two companions were soon feeling the effects. He stopped, brought them up short.

‘Look, it’s fine if you turn back now,’ he said as they stood gasping in front of him. It hadn’t been very long into the search before Amanda Tyler had taken off her Aran sweater. She was using it as a makeshift fan. Over their shoulders he could make out the shape of the bus some distance away, small on the horizon and looking like it sat in a pool of shimmering mercury. ‘It’s hotter than I thought. You shouldn’t stay outside too long,’ he advised.

‘You seem more immune to it than we do,’ said Martin Bolan, his face aglow and his skin wet with sweat. He gladly took a sip out of the water bottle Amanda Tyler handed him.

‘I’ve had practice,’ Wade said vacantly, studying the horizon for any sign of the bus driver. ‘I’ll be fine on my own.’

‘We’re good for a while yet,’ said Amanda.

‘We can’t stay out much longer,’ Wade observed. ‘If we don’t see him soon we’re going to have to call the search off anyway.’

They began to move off again, walking in a line about twelve feet apart from each other.

‘So where do you reckon we are?’ said Amanda. ‘I mean, this is simply bizarre.’

‘No idea,’ Wade replied.

‘Aren’t you the least bit frightened?’

He glanced at her. ‘I’m trying not to think too much about it.’ In fact he knew why he was out here searching for the bus driver, and why his two companions had offered to help. It gave them all a focus, helped redirect their fears into something useful, an action – any action – that put a lid on them having to face the incredible truth. It was evident from the way no one had mentioned their situation till now, each keeping their turbulent thoughts to themselves.

‘Rains of fish,’ Martin Bolan called as they trudged along.

‘Fish?’ said Amanda.

‘Sure, you know, you hear about such things, don’t you? All manner of things falling down from the sky in rainstorms. Fish, frogs – I even heard tell of dogs and cats. That’s where we get the phrase from: raining cats and dogs. Some experts say that things which live in the sea are scooped up into the atmosphere by storms and deposited on land many hundreds of miles away.’

‘And dogs and cats?’ said Amanda. ‘They don’t live in the sea.’

‘They don’t know everything, of course,’ said Bolan. ‘Some things remain a mystery.’

‘What has falls of fishes to do with us?’ Amanda said.

Wade listened idly to their conversation, but his attention was elsewhere. His mind playing back the day of the doomed patrol...

‘We were driving through a storm last night. The worst I’ve seen in a long time,’ said Bolan. ‘I don’t know, maybe we were somehow picked up and dropped here by a freak of nature.’

‘An entire bus?’ said Amanda smiling.

Wade remembered entering the mud-brick house, how cool it felt compared to the heat outside, but inside his uniform he was sweating like mad, his nerves balanced on a knife edge.

John Travers was first in, checking all was clear. Wade hot on his heels, covering his back. Something felt wrong. Something that lingered just under the natural trepidation.

‘I’m just speculating, that’s all,’ said Bolan.

‘We’d have known about it, surely,’ Amanda said. ‘Being taken up in the sky. And that would have been some fall to earth!’ She smiled broadly, but realised by Bolan’s crestfallen expression that he’d taken it to mean he was being ridiculous.

‘It’s as good an explanation as any,’ he said quietly, his eyes on the horizon.

‘Of course it is,’ she replied.

Their voices were fading as Wade’s memories began to intrude fully.

Peterson was at the entrance to the house, covering the alley. Wade remembered how Peterson always looked cool, even under extremes like this. Nothing seemed to faze him, but he guessed that most of it was a front he put up to shield his true feelings. Whatever, he was a good guy to have covering his back. Travers was signalling silently at wade, indicating a blanket-covered doorway to another smaller room. Wade nodded.

‘Some kind of black hole, then…’ Bolan suggested. ‘There has to be some way we ended up here. A time-space-continuum-kind-of-thing. Maybe it’s to do with quantum physics. I read about such things, how weird stuff like that is. How the universe behaves strangely, far crazier than we’d ever thought. Maybe the explanation’s in there somewhere.’

‘Maybe it is,’ Amanda said encouragingly.

‘I once tried to read A Brief History of Time but had to give up halfway through. That’s how weird and hard to understand the universe is, even when someone tries to explain it in a simple way.’

Wade’s breathing was becoming shallower. His mouth drying out, and it wasn’t simply the effects of the heat bearing down on him. It was the memory of Travers’ eyes as he glanced back at him once before approaching the blanket-covered doorway. Completely trusting in Wade to cover him.

Wade stepped smartly to the exit that led onto an alleyway outside.

Completely trusting.

Travers slowly put the tip of his gun’s barrel to the edge of the blanket, stood to one side and signalled to Wade and Peterson he was going through…

‘What’s this?’ said Amanda.

Her urgent voice struck through Wade’s memories and brought him back to the present.

He looked across at her. She was bending down to look at something on the ground in front of her. Both Wade and Bolan strode across.

‘Are they tracks?’ asked Bolan.

Wade nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘But not the bus driver’s.’ Amanda said. ‘Because his tracks are over there, the ones you’re following.’

On his haunches, Wade scanned the indentations in the sandy soil.

‘So someone else has been out here?’ Bolan asked. His breathing was becoming increasingly laboured.

‘They look like animal tracks,’ Wade observed.

Amanda said, ‘What kind of animal?’

‘It looks like the prints of a very large dog or wolf.’

She stepped back. ‘But wolves don’t live in this kind of landscape, so it has to be a feral dog, right?’ she said, her nerves nibbling away at the edge of her voice. She looked around her.

Wade rose to his feet, followed the tracks in and amongst the harsh, low-lying shrubs. ‘That’s weird…’ he mumbled.

‘What’s weird?’ asked Bolan. ‘This is already too weird without more weird piled on top.’ He stroked his head. The sun had turned his thinly-thatched pate bright pink.

‘It doesn’t look like a four-legged animal. Whatever was following the bus driver moved largely on two legs, every now and again putting its front ones down.’

‘A kangaroo?’ said Amanda hopefully.

Bolan picked up quickly on what Wade had said. ‘What do you mean following the bus driver?’

‘That’s what it looks like,’ said Wade. ‘And there’s another set of tracks here,’ he pointed. ‘There were at least two or more animals keeping close to his tracks.’

‘A kangaroo?’ Amanda repeated. ‘They live in the outback of Australia. Perhaps this is Australia…’

‘Perhaps,’ said Wade absently. He began to follow the bus driver’s tracks again. He quickly came to a spot where there was an area of disturbed ground, and then the man’s footprints heading off at a sharp angle. Only this time they were spaced out.

The man had started to run, thought Wade.

‘So what does all that mean?’ asked Bolan. ‘Are there wild animals out here? Is that what you’re saying?’

But Wade wasn’t listening. He was following the bus driver’s tracks at a pace, every now and again losing them. The bus driver had been weaving, suddenly changing direction, making the tracks difficult to trace. It was clear that the animals – whatever they were – had been either keeping close tabs on the bus driver, or were deliberately hunting him down. Wade reckoned it was the latter.

‘Does that mean it’s not safe out here?’ Bolan called, unable to keep up with Wade. Both he and Amanda stopped trying and let Wade take the lead. Bolan stopped and looked back at the bus. ‘Maybe we ought to head on back. We’re running out of water anyway…’ He turned to Amanda. ‘What do you reckon? Turn back, try again later?’

‘He’s found something,’ she said, pointing at Wade who had dropped to his haunches again. They ran to catch him up. ‘What is it? What have you found?’

Poking his fingers into the red sandy soil he lifted it up for them to see.

‘What is that?’ Bolan asked, panting.

‘Blood,’ said Wade.

‘Was one of the kangaroos hurt?’ Amanda put forward tentatively.

‘We’re not talking kangaroos here,’ Wade said, wiping his finger down his trousers. ‘And I reckon this isn’t an animal’s blood.’

Bolan grew visibly agitated. ‘You mean the bus driver’s wounded? You think he’s been attacked by whatever was following him?’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ Wade said, rising. ‘There’s a small trail of blood going off in that direction.’ He pointed out a piece of ground that appeared to be a dried-up river gully. ‘That’s where the tracks are headed. The man looks to have been running for his life.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that…’ said Bolan. ‘I think it’s time we headed back to the bus…’

But Wade was off again, striding towards the edge of the gully from where the land shelved steeply down. He came to an abrupt halt and held up his hand. Bolan and Amanda stopped short.

‘What is it?’ Bolan asked tentatively.

‘I think we’ve found our bus driver. What’s left of him.’

Amanda came forward, slowly peered around Wade’s arm. ‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh my God!’ She put a hand to her mouth and turned her head away.

‘What is it?’ Bolan called, not really wanting to come any closer.

‘He’s dead,’ Amanda called.

Bolan replied. ‘The bus driver?’

‘Of course, the bus driver!’ She rolled her eyes.

‘Are you sure he’s dead? I mean, he could be sleeping.’

‘Then he’s sleeping in three different parts of the gully,’ said Wade.

It was Bolan’s turn. ‘Oh my God!’ he said.

‘Stay here, I’ll take a look,’ Wade ordered. They didn’t need much persuading, he thought as he scrambled down the rocky slope, his shoes kicking up a flurry of pebbles and dust. He heard a drone, like a distant helicopter; it was a cloud of flies swarming around the bloodied remains of the bus driver.

His torso had been ripped apart, his stomach torn open and the intestines strewn out across the rocky ground. In place of a face there was a gaping red hole, parts of the skull that formed the forehead, nose and cheeks completely vanished. One arm was intact, but the other lay among a thicket of scrubby shrubs as if tossed there. A leg had been bitten off at the thigh, the other leg missing.

Wade put a hand to his mouth. He’d witnessed death many times before, seen corpses mangled by IEDs and shells, hardly recognisable as human, but this was different. This was the results of an animal savagery he could only imagine. He stood over the dead body, wafted away the cloud of irritating flies that peppered the decomposing flesh, and gingerly reached into the man’s coat pocket – or what remained of it. He took out a bloodstained wallet. Inside was a photo of a woman and two children, both girls. The ID said he was one Paul Jubb.

Well he was a dead Paul Jubb now, thought Wade. He scanned the area. Nothing to be seen. No sign of the creatures that did this, but he was getting nervous by the minute. He put the wallet back into the coat pocket and searched the driver’s other pockets, finally taking out a set of ignition keys to the bus. He scrabbled back up the side of the gully.

‘Was it the animals that did it to him? The wild dogs?’ Bolan asked shakily.

Wade nodded. ‘It was animals alright, and something I don’t want to meet, so we’d best be getting out of here.’

‘But the bus driver…’ Amanda said.

‘What about him?’ Wade returned.

‘We can’t leave him out here.’

‘We can’t take him with us,’ he said shortly.

‘Then we’ll have to bury him at least,’ said Bolan. ‘It’s the only decent thing to do.’

‘We’re not hanging around,’ Wade insisted. ‘Something incredibly huge, powerful and vicious did that to him and I don’t want to be out here in the open when it gets hungry again.’

‘But that’s not Christian!’ he said.

‘Tough. He’s not in a position to know the Christian thing. You can either come back with me or face whatever’s out there, but I’d advise the former.’

Amanda and Bolan glanced at each other, turned silently about and left the scene in a hurry. Wade put a hand to the comforting feel of the handgun in his pocket, taking one last look around him before setting off after them.