Authors: Chris Keith
“Trev, we want to ask you something.”
“Yeah?”
“You told us you came down to the White Room because you needed to use the toilet, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“And you said that you didn’t know anything about what had happened to the country?”
“Yeah, I didn’t know there’d been a nuclear war.”
“You must have been on the toilet for a hell of a long time. You see, when we were on the balloon, Mike tried to warn us of the situation thirty or forty minutes before the first bomb went off in Britain.”
Townsend’s words appeared in Sutcliffe’s mind.
Something’s happening
.
Gable shrugged. He had no reason to trust the Fable
-
1 crew. He didn’t even have to like them. Just because they were co
-
survivors, it didn’t make them his friends. All he had to do was ensure his replies were always said with caution. He stuttered his reply. “I was…I had chronic diarrhoea.”
“Well, it looks like it spread to your mouth because you’re talking bullshit.” Matthews shook his head. “We know why you were down here. You were stealing.”
Silence, then gasping and all eyes were on Gable.
“I don’t know what you’re going on about.”
“Yes, you do. You were in here stealing when the bombs went off. That’s how our wallets and phones and jewellery ended up in each other’s pockets. You stole them and then you heard what you thought was an earthquake or something. But you didn’t know much about it because you were down here. Maybe you tried to leave, but the elevator doors were stuck because there was no power and you were trapped. You thought someone would eventually come down here and rescue you, so you decided you would have to put the valuables back so you wouldn’t get caught, only you forgot whose was whose. That’s what happened, right?”
Gable denied it. He was not a thief. From now on, silence was his statement and whatever they interpreted from that was their prerogative.
“And how about the video camera? Did you steal that from my son?” asked Sutcliffe.
Gable refused to speak.
Matthews drew back his fist to frighten him and it worked. Gable flinched, deciding against weaving a web of lies because he was worried that he might lose track of them and say something contradictory.
“Martin left the camera down here by mistake. I came back to get it for him, that’s all. I was doing him a favour.”
Matthews took over. “And while you were here you decided to collect a few things for yourself.” He grabbed Gable by the collar and lifted him off the bench. “What gives you the right?”
“I wasn’t and you can’t prove it.”
“I don’t want to have to throw you out of here.”
Something in Matthews’ tone suggested he was concerned even though he had just threatened him in a manner that just seemed to be the way he spoke to people. Gable felt as though he was being victimised again. Everyone was staring at him with baleful eyes.
“I had serious money problems,” he said, avoiding eye contact with anyone. “I got heavily into debt and I needed money. My credit card was wiped clean a few years ago and I haven’t been able to pay it off. I just wanted to get my money back. I’m sorry. All I can do is say sorry.”
Matthews could relate to stories of debt. Debt was a difficult noose to untie. Debt made a man desperate and hasty. Debt pushed away friends and family and caused hardships in all departments. And besides, it seemed so trivial after all that had happened so he released the young man, shoved him in the chest and Gable fell back onto the bench.
It had come to light that past mistakes no longer mattered. Gone was society. They realised they would never be the same people again. Fretting over the present, carefully avoiding all memories of the past and gingerly fingering the idea of any future made it impossible to predetermine the direction of their lives. They had no need and no desire for possessions or ideology. They had survived death at its prime evil, they no longer feared it.
The two wooden crosses at the top of the hill made silhouettes on the snow
-
ridden ground against a dark cloud
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interrupted sky. The crosses spoke of suffering and of death, but also of peace and afterlife. The two men buried beneath them were in a better place and the symbols that marked their graves stood to ensure the prolongation of their existence.
The first streaks of a mournful, pallid daylight began to filter through the cloudy sky. The sun appeared on the horizon in its full but warped form obscured only by a silvery snow mist. Hennessey could see Sutcliffe’s handsome features profiled in the natural light as he stared at the hazy orb of the sun.
“Isn’t it beautiful,” said Hennessey.
Sutcliffe’s gaze was one hundred percent focussed on it. “I had forgotten just how beautiful.”
Stocked up with food and water and abundant candlelight, the crew of Fable
-
1 had hibernated for twelve long months while the world decomposed all around them and the weather deteriorated night by day. They re
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emerged into the world – a world of sheer terror – with murky sunlight touching their faces and a great sense of freedom. Nevertheless, what they saw confronted and unsettled them – the leafless trees outstretching blackened fingers and the murderous skies above threatening further unabated destruction to the planet. The noticeable absence of human life and the two make-shift crosses on the hill was a harrowing sight. Persistent snow and ice had settled everywhere. It covered the skeletons of cars, decayed bodies and the ruins of cities, suburbs, towns and villages. Roads and fields and parks and forests all lay trapped underneath the unmerciful snowfall. Snow dunes and coiling meringues stretched off as far as the eye could see, as if a giant sheet had been pulled over the dead land to hide its wounded and disfigured appearance.
Like the land, the Fable
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1 crew had changed in appearance in various ways – untamed hair, jagged nails on toes and fingers, yellowing teeth. Such minor imperfections meant little to them in a world hostile and inhuman. They were still a crew related through the aspirations of space ballooning. Yet, when the bond between them should have been strong, after all they had been through in all the time they had spent together, Sutcliffe felt as though he had nothing in common with his co
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adventurers and no bond existed. It annoyed him when they argued amongst one another because they weren’t adhering to the unwritten rule of sticking together in tragic times. It made him miserable. Hennessey was also embittered by the unwarranted tension, but thought things could have been worse, relieved that her stomach had not swelled with a life a world could not foster.
She turned and took Sutcliffe’s hand. “We should get moving.”
“Okay.”
Hennessey talked as she walked, anything to take her mind off the surroundings. They had reached no more than a mile from the gravesites when they saw a skull on top of the snow, its empty eye sockets staring freakishly at them, envying the survivors in their expensive tailor
-
made spacesuits, hating them.
“Don’t look at it,” Sutcliffe said.
She had already turned away and was continuing on forward.
“A year ago, we were at the top of the sky and were the envy of the world,” Sutcliffe said, following a few paces behind Hennessey. “And now there is no fucking world. Where did we go wrong? I mean, why have we been put on the brink of self
-
extinction?”
“Testosterone,” she replied. “Testosterone and foolish minds.”
He nodded agreeably. How could anyone grasp the magnitude of nuclear war? The power of politics run by thickheads. Which was more lethal, thought Sutcliffe, the nuclear weapons or the people who decided when to use them? Nuclear weapons were meant for deterrence, not for mass execution. They had caused inestimable mental and physical suffering.
They hammered on through the snow, every step a process. Three times along the way Sutcliffe had to give Hennessey an assisting arm. She was getting tired and she often felt faint. She walked slowly, carefully picking her way forward. She stared up at the grey sky. The sun had disappeared, perhaps for another year, or for evermore. Still looking up, she wondered what had become of Faraday’s solar
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wing camera in the stratosphere. As for the Akroid payload, it had to be in a million pieces, buried somewhere beneath the fallout of ash and snow.
The further inland they went, the thicker the snow and the mist enshrouding them became. They waded along anonymous trails and provisional snow
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paths, with Hennessey determining the way. They skirted ruined buildings in their search for food, their hearts sinking with every step. They had been walking for a few hours. Sutcliffe watched Hennessey as he trailed behind her, tracking her footprints and the elegance she put into her stride. She had the kind of stylish walk that drew male interest her way. He wished he could have got to know her in a conventional manner. He was a more likeable person when playing at courting. Perhaps things could have been different between them. Things could have been great.
Sutcliffe’s attention was drawn to a blinking smudge of red light in the mist coming from the right of their forward path.
Hennessey concentrated while she walked. The ground and sky had merged into one creating a white
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grey wall in front of her. She imagined it was heaven. Then she stumbled over something hard and the snow tumbled away exposing the body of a child, the eyes dark and astonished, the open mouth filled with snow, and she quickly realised it was anywhere but heaven and more like hell. She turned round to Sutcliffe. He wasn’t there. She stared into the snowy drizzle dusting wet snowflakes off of her visor. She realised she hadn’t seen him for a few minutes and, in the morning blizzard, how easy it was to become lost.
“Brad?”
She waited anxiously to hear his voice through her headset, panicking when he didn’t reply.
“Brad, where are you?”
She glanced over her shoulder and found him running into the misty horizon. What was he running from? She also started to run, knowing that if he disappeared she might lose him altogether. Then she saw the red light. He wasn’t running away from anything, he was running
to
something. Was it the emergency services? A rescue helicopter? The Red Cross finally? It seemed so improbable after so many months and she struggled to believe that they were about to be rescued. Drawing nearer to the flashing red light, she watched Sutcliffe slow into a jog, then a walk. Then he stopped.
Then she saw it.
Sutcliffe had his hands raised to his helmet.
Hennessey sighed, staring at the Fable-1gondola half-buried in snow with parachute canopies hanging off it flapping in the wind. The triple parachute system had deployed after all bringing Fable
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1 safely back to Earth. The gondola was cracked and buckled and had landed hard on its side. The sight of five red bucket seats gave Hennessey a chill, her mind returning to their daring achievement in the stratosphere, memories that had shrunk into a small collection of Polaroid snapshots, making her question if it had happened at all. Amazingly, the GPS tracking beacon at the base of the gondola was still working, the red light beating like a heart. She detected the anguish that Sutcliffe’s was feeling at that moment. The flight to the edge of space had meant a lot more to him than it had to her.
“So much for a rescue helicopter.”
The Black Hawk helicopter took off, skimming the decrepit rooftops of the old abandoned airport. The helicopter carved a belligerent path over the Nevada Desert and, as it soared to a thousand feet, Hennessey immediately trained her eyes on the barren land below.
“Now I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Miss Hennessey,” Major Helens of the Civil Air Patrol said, expressionless. “Even if we do manage to locate your parents’ plane, the chances are still slim, especially in this heat.”
The Major’s pessimism annoyed Hennessey. “Two years ago, my father was flying over California and the plane’s navigational aids and communications became unserviceable due to a sudden malfunction. He lost pretty much everything except the altimeter and the engines and still managed to land safely. My father is an excellent pilot so the chances are he made an emergency landing and he’s just waiting to be found. It
has
only been a few hours since they disappeared off radar.”
“I’m just saying, I have worked in this region for the last fifteen years and I can tell you there are hundreds of plane wreckages in these parts. Sometimes, if the pilots do survive the crash, they die from heat exhaustion. It could take weeks to find your parents. We might never find them. I’m just trying to prepare you, that’s all.”
As the Black Hawk headed west, she began to see what Major Helens had meant. Scattered over a large area she saw the remains of an aircraft. She pointed to it. “Down there!”
Major Helens shook her head. “We already have a record. That was an Atec Zephyr jet. It crashed in 2004.”
Five minutes later, she saw another. “There!”
“Crashed two years ago. Engine malfunction.”
In the distance she saw what looked like a white cabin and no wings. “Over there!”