Stark (48 page)

238: A VICTORY FOR HUMANITY

M
oments after CD had thrown down the binoculars, Sly and Rachel arrived at the door of the final transport. Durf was in an agony to be off.

‘Come on, Mr Moorcock,’ he protested.

‘Get in,’ said Sly brandishing the gun.

‘No! Never!’ said Rachel. ‘It’s horrible, I won’t go!’

‘Please, Rachel,’ said Sly quietly.

‘Look if the girl won’t go voluntarily, knock the silly bitch out,’ said a sweating Durf. ‘You shut your foul mouth, Durf,’ shouted Sly, waving the gun, ‘or it’ll be you that won’t be going.’

‘But we have to leave now,’ pleaded Durf. ‘We are only sixteen minutes from ignition…’

‘Rachel, I’ll give you the moon!’ Sly shouted, turning her towards him, feeling tears start in his eyes — his first tears in decades. ‘No girl was ever offered that, please, for God’s sake come, I love you.’

‘Then stay here with me,’ said Rachel quietly, whilst Durf hopped from foot to foot on the step of the transport, desperate to hurry things along, but recognizing also that Sly was armed and in a highly volatile state. Sly no longer even knew Durf was there.

‘I can’t stay here,’ he said, ‘everyone’s going to die here. A whole race of losers, I can’t be a loser…‘ They stared at each other for a moment. Sly thought of pleading again, but he knew it would be useless. Perhaps that was the reason he loved her, she was strong.

‘Mr Moorcock,’ shouted Durf, ‘we’ve got to go! Either get this girl on the transport or I’ll drag the silly bitch on!’

Durf made to grab Rachel and Sly grabbed him, banging his head against the door of the transport.

‘I told you to keep out of it you bastard, and you’d better or I’ll kill you, understand? I’m going to get her on!’

‘Then you’d better start running,’ said a triumphant Durf.

Rachel had grabbed her chance. She was running for the car. The control bunker was only a minute away, she’d be safe in there — obviously it had been built to withstand the blast. She was presuming that Sly would not shoot her in the back. She was hoping that he would follow her. He did neither.

‘Rachel!!’ he screamed, raising his gun, but what was the point…

‘Wait here,’ he snapped at Durf.

‘If you go after her we will have to leave without you,’ said Durf icily, his hand on his gun, blood trickling from his injured head, ‘The count-down is irreversible, we have no choice.’

Nor did Sly, he couldn’t make himself a loser for a girl, he just couldn’t do it.

‘Rachel,’ he shouted to her as she jumped into the car, ‘come back you stupid bitch! You’ll all be dead in a year…You stupid bitch…’

But she drove away and Sly and Durf boarded the transport.

‘You should have dragged her on,’ said Durf, as they tore towards the rockets. ‘Now you’ll be alone, you will have to wait for one of the frozen embryos to grow up.’

‘Just one more word, Durf,’ hissed Sly. ‘One more fucking word, and I’ll snap your scrawny neck in two.’ Everybody seemed to be threatening Durf that day, he wished people would not be so emotional.

Rachel had not a moment to lose. She raced the car back to the control area, screeched it down the ramp into the underground loading area, jumped out and rushed into the central control room, slamming the lead and concrete doors behind her.

The voice informed her that there were thirteen minutes to go. She considered trying to carry out her plan of destroying the controls, but she had no weapon — where was all the modern furniture? Rachel had presumed the place would be full of glistening steel chairs. The sort of chairs that Sunday supplements inform you are the way furniture is going for the next decade — chairs that ought to come with their own osteopath.

But there were no chairs, just rank upon rank of glistening console going bleep bleep bleep. Rachel would probably not have tried to destroy the place anyway, they were all aboard, she might kill them. Sly was aboard. Rachel collapsed in an orgy of self-recrimination. Because of her lies, Sly would have to face life alone, perhaps for ever more, without a woman. If she had not plotted against him, he would have taken someone, now he was alone. Then again, they were all alone, everyone in the world, just waiting to die.

239: CHASE

S
omething in Walter Culboon’s instincts urged her to obey Zimmerman. There was such genuine anguish in his tone as he jumped upon her back that she felt able to take courage and head back towards the scene of her previous terrors.

‘Shit man, he won’t get half-way there, and then man, bang! Poof! CD is part of the greenhouse effect,’ Zimm had shouted as he ran towards Walter Culboon.

They charged off together, heading towards Stark in CD’s wake, and nearly ran smack into a little jeep picking its way along in the opposite direction. It was driven by a stunning looking girl and had the name ‘Suki’ written across the sunstrip.

‘Don’t worry, Walter Culboon,’ said Zimmerman, ‘it’s only another ‘woman driving across desert in car’ hallucination. I’m having a lot of those today.’ Luckily the camel did not think it was a hallucination and swerved to avoid it.

They pressed on after CD. Zimm was armed and ready to fire should the security cordon have tried to stop him, but they had clearly decided that events had got bigger than their brief. Some were staring at the rockets; some were heading towards Bullens in terror. Either way, Zimmerman sailed right through them, as CD had done moments before.

Zimm reckoned he had a chance, CD was not making fantastic headway. The desert floor was extremely uneven and it was not possible to drive quickly, on the other hand he did have a start and Zimm was chasing him on a tired camel.

Over the harsh scrub he thundered in the wake of CD’s dust cloud, every step taking them closer to being engulfed in a mega-cloud of burning rocket fuel and white hot fall-out.

CD didn’t care, he was hunched manically over the wheel, conscious of only one thing — the need to rescue Rachel.

As the minutes ticked away, Walter Culboon pushed herself to the limit whilst Zimmerman sat astride roaring at CD to stop. ‘Why don’t you listen you stupid bastard,’ he screamed.

The terrible voice of the count-down boomed again across the desert, drowning Zimm’s puny efforts, informing all and sundry that they were now eight minutes from ignition, seven…now five.

Five minutes to a sextuplet rocket launch and CD was trying to drive into it! Zimm knew that he himself was crazy but he thanked heaven that he wasn’t that crazy.

‘Stop, you insane arsehole,’ he screamed over Walter Culboon’s head, as they careered towards oblivion…

‘Four minutes and fifty seconds,’ said the voice.

Then Zimm saw his chance. There was a little hillock ahead, only about ten feet at its peak, but it was the top of a long sand wave that CD would certainly have to traverse if he wanted to head on in.

‘I hope the bastard smashes straight into it,’ thought Zimm…But no, CD’s brain was still clear, except of course for the part that was telling him to commit a pointless and suicidal act.

CD turned the car to travel along parallel to the ridge of sand, this gave Zimm his one chance to get ahead.

As the voice informed him that he now had four minutes and forty seconds left to live, Zimm spurred Walter Culboon up to the top of the hillock. He unslung the shoulder-held launcher and attempted to judge the distance between himself and CD, the speed CD was travelling and any likely changes of direction. What he wanted to do was to put a shell in the ground about twenty metres ahead of CD’s car. This, Zimm hoped, would stop the car without killing CD, although why he was bothering with the stupid bastard was a mystery to Zimm. His own years of acting like a maniac had not made him any more sympathetic to when other people tried it. There was so little time, Zimm had to force himself to take aim carefully, he knew he would only get the one shot.

Before the smoke had cleared, Zimm had urged Walter Culboon down into it, where, amidst the dust and fumes, they found CD crawling out of the shattered car.

‘Dig you stupid dumb pommie bastard,’ shouted Zimmerman. And the voice said, ‘four minutes and twenty seconds to ignition.’

‘Dig?’ asked a dazed CD.

‘Dig!’ shouted Zimmerman. CD was confused.

‘Yeah, uhm, right Zimm, I dig,’ he said.

‘Dig the ground,’ said Zimm, grabbing CD by the neck.

‘OK, OK,’ spluttered CD, ‘I dig the ground, although I don’t see what’s so great about it.’

‘I mean, really dig, actual digging, not the hip word, dig?’ shouted Zimm and he frantically started attacking the ground.

‘Oh dig,’ said CD understanding at last.

‘Dig,’ said Zimm.

Luckily the Culboons’ station wagon was equipped with spades, as indeed are many outback station wagons. Zimmerman grabbed a couple. ‘I mean man, what is it with you? And what’s more, what is the point!’ moaned Zimm thrusting a spade into CD’s hand. ‘Like can I just relax and watch the blast? No, not me, not old Zimm, I have to be fucking in it!!’

‘I’m sorry, Zimm,’ said CD.

‘Not as sorry as you’re going to be if we can’t make some cover. You dig a trench for yourself and me, I’ll look after Walter Culboon! We stop at minus twenty seconds!!’

CD realized that with the car gone Rachel was now definitely beyond reach and so for three minutes, as the voice counted them towards near certain oblivion, they dug.

Zimmerman was a wild man, he needed to be, trying to make a hole big enough for a camel. But they were at least in a natural hollow with the ridge CD had been trying to drive around between them and the blast. With forty-five seconds to go Zimm stood Walter Culboon, who was wondering what the excitement was about, at the edge of his shallow little trench.

‘Sorry, Walter Culboon, but you’ll thank me for this…’

He chopped the camel in the neck and Walter Culboon fell neatly unconscious into the hole. Even in this moment of extremis, CD could not help noting that being able to lay out a camel with a single blow, really was pretty mega-cool.

Walter Culboon collapsed and in a blur of energy, Zimmerman scraped down debris from the side of the incline on top of her.

‘Ignition minus twenty-five seconds and counting,’ said the voice.

‘OK, get in,’ shouted Zimm, and keep your head down, man. It’s a shame, we’re going to miss the whole scene…but I suppose really it’s the sort of thing you ought to see stoned anyway.’

They lay down together in the little shallow grave that CD had dug and desperately tried to pull earth in on top of them.

‘Leastways they won’t have to bury us,’ said CD in triumph — he had finally managed to crack a gag during a moment of extreme tension. ‘Minus five,’ boomed the voice.

‘Cover your face, arsehole,’ said Zimm.

And as the world seemed to erupt in heat and shuddering noise around him, CD’s last thought was to wonder why Zimm should want him to cover his face and arsehole.

240: A HELL OF AN EXIT

B
ack on the perimeter, as they listened to the final countdown, Mrs Culboon and Chrissy took shelter behind some rocks. They could see across their former battleground that those security personnel who had remained were doing likewise.

It was a hell of an exit.

Six old style space rockets blasting off in close succession. No sooner had one great tidal wave of burning atmosphere rolled across the desert towards them, when another would start, and then another. And out of this thick, bubbling carpet of shimmering orange heat and black black smoke the rockets rose slowly, almost seeming to hang in the air, reminding Mrs Culboon of the helicopter that CD had brought down, making her half expect these rockets to suddenly lose their fragile momentum and come crashing back down to the ground. But they did not, of course. Stark had been preparing for too long to make any mistakes.

And so Stark flew away. Slowly the rumbling died down, the streaks of flame began to fade in the sky and they were gone.

241: HELL ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN

A
nd so it came to pass that the Stark consortium left the earth in their Star Arks. Escaping just in time as the storm of ecological disintegration gathered to become a catastrophic deluge; a great flood of dust, disease, heat and filthy, poisonous water, rising to engulf the billions who had created it.

As had been predicted, the horrifying legacy of all the years of thoughtless vandalism turned in upon its creators, and upon all other forms of life on earth, for whom ignorance was no defence. Wave after wave of pollution washed across the dead and dying dirt. Warm, thick, heavy toxic rain fell from the muddied, burning skies, the acid in every drop bursting out upon what life remained, sad useless weeds, clinging to the shifting sands of the barren, infertile, salty ground.

The seas, swollen and bloated by waters which had remained frozen since before the birth of humankind, rose up to reclaim the earth that had been theirs before the cold had bound them.

The deserts that for so long had been chained and guarded by the great forests leapt forward claiming all the land that the seas did not seem to want. And everywhere along the changing shorelines of our retreating world, was washed up, with every tide, the filth and waste disgorged by the teeming billions day by day. Sand and pebbles became a memory as the shrinking coast grew mountainous, piled high with the live and festering muck which nobody knew where to put any more. All these things came to be, just as the scientists who served Stark had said they would. Indeed, all these things had already come to haunt the earth long before the rich and powerful finally took their leave. The seas have been rising, the deserts spreading, the stinking piles of rubbish growing, the poison rain falling and the land drying, since before the members of the Stark Conspiracy were born.

242: THE TRUTH DAWNS

A
fter the Stark blast off, the world very quickly learned the facts of what had happened. At first there had been mystification as the news of the launches swept around the world. Then some bright spark at a local Perth TV studio realized that they had a scoop. Suddenly the Daft Dingo became the hottest news on earth. The tape (with the interviewer’s derisive comments edited out) was beamed around the globe.

Chrissy’s voice was heard everywhere. ‘They have a research team called the Domesday Group, who have proved that the world is dying…’

‘…I’ve seen the evidence, it’s true…there doesn’t seem to be any hope any more…but there must be, I mean we’re not dead yet, are we…’

For those who still doubted, the final proof came the next day with the first broadcast from the Stark fleet; a sombre message, explaining the situation, and almost apologizing for leaving.

‘We are sorry,’ Durf’s voice and image bounced off the world’s myriad communication satellites, ‘but we knew the truth, the Domesday Group had proved it for us. There is no hope. The Stark Consortium is now the human race. We will do our best to make it work this time.’

Panic and fear swept the earth as daily reports of the departed renegades dominated the media. The world’s richest and most powerful producers had gone and left the consumers to their fate. Strangely there was little bitterness, or anger, it was all too hot and hopeless for that. People knew that they were all to blame, not one single person was without guilt. The least anyone had done was to stand idly by. The best that could be said of a person was that they had done no more than close their eyes to the cost of the great global party.

People felt that the cynicism of the Stark departure was no greater than the cynicism with which the riches of the earth had been squandered. The world was dying and the world deserved it. This was the shocked fatalistic attitude of the final generation. If those bastards had bought their way out, it didn’t matter any more anyway.