The Tomorrow Code (38 page)

“Crowe, this is Lucy. The evacuation is nearly complete, but we’ve lost all contact with the easternmost sections of the line.”

“My God!” Manderson said for the second time that night, only this time it sounded like a prayer.

S
ILENCE IN THE
M
IST

Ramirez pulled up and watched
below him as the last of his air-to-ground missiles impacted on the grassy strip, not even a hundred yards from where the troops cowered in their foxholes on the other side of the highway.

Now that was precision flying and precision targeting.

The crop dusters had left now, having exhausted their tanks. His aircraft were also out of bombs and missiles and were already heading back to the carrier to re-arm.

Ramirez alone remained over the battleground, circling, to feed information back to the carrier and to the troops on the ground.

The line was holding here at Albany, he saw, and also out to the west. But the east coast suburb of Mairangi Bay had been long swallowed by the dense white cloud, which had outskirted the defensive line, floating slowly out to sea and back in again behind it.

The frigates
Te Mana
and
Te Kaha
had been positioned in the bay, against just such an eventuality, he knew, but the
Te Mana
was now resting, listing over, on the sands of Mairangi Bay beach, and the
Te Kaha
was slowly grinding itself to pieces on the rocks of the head land. There was no movement on board either vessel.

The fog, apart from the holdup at Albany and farther west, was pouring down the east coast of the North Shore, spreading out behind the defense force at Albany and chewing its way across the affluent suburbs of Castor Bay, Campbells Bay, Milford, and on to Takapuna and Devonport.

He risked a low pass over the highway, trying to see the troops on the ground, but the mist was too dense.

Rebecca pulled up off the sand onto the grassy verge alongside Cheltenham Beach and thought she was lucky to have made it.

Some of the rocky promontories between the bays had been almost impassable. If it were not for the low tide, it would have been impossible.

She gunned the engine up past the navy training center and around onto the main road. Glancing to her right at the intersection, she realized with horror that the mist was barely a few hundred yards away and crawling rapidly forward along the road.

Only a few cars blocked the road here, and she swung from side to side, weaving in and out of them, the fog, omnipresent in her rearview mirror.

The final stretch, alongside the Devonport Golf Club, was clear.

Xena had woken now, if she had actually been asleep and not just resting. She was quiet, though, watching Rebecca drive with wise eyes.

Rebecca skirted the base of Mount Victoria on the long looping road and accelerated down the deserted main street of Devonport.

At the wharf, she turned right, heading along the breakwater toward the naval base.

The barriers were down at the entrance to the base, which didn’t surprise her. What did surprise her, and perhaps shouldn’t have, was the armed guard who stepped out of the security booth and waved her to a halt, the pistol held ready for use in his right hand.

“No admittance,” the guard said, not at all calmly. “This is a military area.”

Another guard stepped out of the booth then, and he had an automatic rifle held at the ready.

“I have to get through,” Rebecca said urgently. “I have orders from Doctor Crowe and Doctor Lucy Southwell.”

“No admittance,” the guard repeated.

“Get out of here,” the other guard growled.

Xena screeched, alarming the guards, who had not noticed her until then.

“What the hell?” the first guard said, looking at Xena.

“Oh hell!” The second guard said, looking where Xena and Rebecca were looking.

The fog was rolling rapidly down the slope toward the sea, swallowing building after building as it came.

Two more of the nightmarish white creatures hurled themselves out of the ever-thickening fog. Crowe cut a diagonal slash across them with the jet from his water blaster and they fell.

The crop dusters were gone now. So, too, were the fighter-bombers. The girl had been right. She had been right about the salt and the water, and everything else she had advised or suggested.

Another snowman reared up in front of them, but Manderson cut it open at the neck before Crowe could pull the trigger on his weapon.

Was it possible that she was right about the creatures?

The twin fire hoses next to them were silent now, and Crowe glanced across to see why. Had the water run out?

Where the crew had been, two men to a hose, four of the white sluglike creatures stood silently. Absorbing. Digesting.

“Stony,” Manderson said urgently, looking behind them.

Crowe turned. The fog had come up behind them. It was closing in on their position as he watched. The front of the cloud was alive with antibodies, and behind them moved the dense shapes of the macrophages.

“Stony, we did it,” Manderson began, with a quiet resignation in his voice. “We held out long enough…” But there was a hissing noise from the front, and Mandy disappeared, replaced by one of
them.
The white-lidded eyes stared unblinkingly at Crowe from where Manderson had crouched.

Crowe screamed and turned his water blaster onto the macrophage. It tore a jagged line across the creature, and the remains of Manderson’s suit spilled out, hanging loosely out of the torn white flesh.

The fog was thickening all around them now. He looked to the left and right, but if any of his men were left, they were invisible in the fog. He tapped his microphone and called his team, but got only silence in return.

An antibody struck the faceplate of his helmet, covering his eyes. Crowe screamed again and slapped it away. He strode forward into the mist, shaking his head violently, erratically, from side to side. The hose of the water blaster pulled him back, tried to stop him, and he wrenched at it, felt something give, then strode forward again.

The barrel of the device, disconnected and useless in his hands, swung around as he aimed the empty weapon at the whiter-than-white shapes that appeared around him.

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”

His voice filled the suit, and he unsealed and flipped up his face mask to let the words out into the fog.

“Glory, glory! Hallelujah!”

And then there was silence in the mist.

T
HE
G
OD FROM THE
M
ACHINE

It was faster going down
the ladders, but there were still a lot of rungs. The staircases, too, were faster; they bounded down them in the dim light of the emergency lamps, two, three, even four steps at a time.

But it still seemed to take them a long time to get down to the main observation deck.

Tane found the entrance to the many flights of stairs leading down the main shaft of the Skytower, but Fatboy said, “Wait.”

He checked himself and backed up to where Fatboy was staring out of the huge toughened glass windows of the observation deck.

His heart began to pound and blood rushed to his ears with a thrumming sound. His legs felt unsteady and he leaned against a handrail for support. The world around them had turned to white.

Auckland was awash in a sea of mist. The entire city had disappeared. All they could see in the cold glow of moonlight was the top of a cotton wool cloud. Way below them, the fog flashed on and off, a dim red color, and Tane remembered the fire engine parked in the middle of the road.

“Did we give them enough time?” he asked, looking to the south.

“I think we did,” Fatboy said.

“What about us?” Tane asked in a small, quivering voice.

“We’re too late,” Fatboy said steadily. “There’s no way out. It’s over for us now.” He turned and looked at Tane. “But not for Rebecca. If she made it to the submarine, then she can still make it to the underwater cave. She can still send the messages.”

“Not for Rebecca.” Tane’s voice was a distant echo. Rebecca alone would endure life in the submarine as the rest of the world disappeared above her. Rebecca alone would send the messages back to the past.

The messages!

“The messages were signed ‘TR,’” Tane protested feebly. “‘Tane and Rebecca.’ Not just ‘R’!”

Fatboy was quiet for a moment, staring out at the cloud. “If you were Rebecca, alone in a submarine, sending messages to the past, to herself and to you,” he said slowly, “how would you sign them off?”

Tane realized with a cold heart that he was right. He looked at his brother and said nothing. He just looked, and Fatboy looked back at him without awkwardness. How wrong he had been, Tane thought, not to trust him from the beginning.

Fatboy said, “You and Rebecca—”

“Good mates,” Tane said quickly.

Fatboy laughed. “She likes you, Tane. She really likes you. More than just good mates.”

“No, really. We’re just…what did she say?”

“Nothing,” Fatboy said. “I doubt she would. But I could tell.”

“You’re wrong,” Tane said.

“No, I’m right.” Fatboy shook his head. “But it would have been wrong for me not to tell you now. Now that…” His voice trailed off, and his eyes drifted back to the rising fog around them.

“You always looked out for me,” Tane said. “I should have—”

“You shouldn’t have done anything different,” Fatboy said. “I knew where you were coming from.”

But this time Fatboy wouldn’t be able to look out for him. Nor would he be able to look out for Fatboy. There was nothing anyone could do.

Tane looked at his brother and held out his hand. It was strange, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Fatboy took it and shook it, but then pulled him closer and pressed his nose and forehead to Tane’s. Three times he pressed in the traditional
hongi.
Once for the person, once for the ancestors, and once for life in the world.

The
hongi
was a greeting, but this, they knew, was a goodbye.

They descended into the stairwell, into the shaft of the tower.

“Get out of the way!” Rebecca screamed, and jammed the Jeep into gear.

It smashed into the barrier pole with a crunch and the sound of broken glass.

“Stop!” the first guard shouted, but he seemed uncertain, and his pistol wavered between Rebecca and the oncoming fog.

The barrier pole didn’t break; it was metal and just bent a little.

Rebecca thrust the car into reverse and backed off a few yards.

“Stop!” the other guard shouted now, raising his weapon.

She ignored him and stomped on the accelerator. The Jeep rammed forward and the metal bar bent a little more. She kept her foot down hard and the tires began to smoke, the end of the Jeep sliding around as the bar prevented her progress.