FORECAST

CHRIS KEITH

Kindle Edition

Copyright © 2008 Chris Keith

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means; electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Author: Chris Keith

Title: Forecast

Edition: 1st ed.

ISBN: 978-1-921578-10-6 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

4/28 Boyland Avenue

Coopers Plains Q 4108, Australia.

www.bookpal.com.au

Acknowledgements

Novels are not often the work of one, but many. A number of people deserve credit for their input, their insight and their inspiration. My deepest thanks to Maja Draganic, Richard Smith, Blair Puata, Tim Squire, Joe Alizzi, Katie Keith, Hugh Keith, Stephanie Keith and my wife Momoko Keith. An extended thank you goes to Susan Rintoul at Seaview Press. Also thanks to Betty Flowers and Bill Stepp at NASA for their helpful assistance. Finally, all those on the Bookpal team for bringing this novel to publication.

FACTS

A new US altitude record was set in 1927 by Hawthorne Gray on his first balloon flight when he reached 29,000 feet. Despite attaining 42,000 feet on his second flight, it did not count as an official record because he had to parachute out of the balloon as it descended in order to save his life. He reached 42,000 feet again on his third flight, but ran out of oxygen on the descent, passed out with hypoxia and was found dead in a tree.

In 1934, Americans William Kepner, Albert Stevens and Orvil Anderson reached 60,000 feet. They were the first human beings to report seeing the curvature of the Earth with their own eyes. They parachuted home when their hydrogen balloon exploded.

In 1956, Lieutenant Commanders Malcolm Ross and Lee Lewis of the US Navy flew to 76,000 feet, claiming the new record. In October, 1957, they went even higher to a staggering 85,700 feet.

1960 was the year Joe Kittinger set a new record for the highest parachute jump ever. At 102,800 feet, this record has never been beaten.

1961, Lieutenant Commander Malcolm Ross was back in a space balloon, this time with Lieutenant Commander Vic Prather, launching from the deck of an American air- craft carrier to achieve a record height of 113,740 feet, another achievement that has never been beaten.

Prologue

He worked for the Research Department for External Intelligence, the primary agency responsible for foreign intelligence collection and analysis in North Korea. His agency shared information with government leaders and the Central Committee. The world occurred for him on the cusp of threat and suspicion. But for all that he thought he knew, he did not know that he would soon play a key role in the deaths of millions and millions of people.

On the night of the 14th June, sleep-deprived insomniac Cho Sop sat at his tracking monitor with a mug of hot water tight in his hands and observed the Missile Early Warning System. The forty-nine- year-old intelligence officer felt a shiver in the room’s cold as he stared at his console inlaid with maps of his country, which made his peripheral vision distort like a piece of watercolour artwork. His warm, kind eyes were punctuated with wrinkles and the inevitable grooves of time, his skin pale and deprived of natural light from all the long shifts inside the bunker. Fourteen hours straight he’d been on duty, reviewing data from the Missile Early Warning System, unable to spare time for supper. He would have done anything for a bowl of Kalbitang or Samgyetang, even just a rice ball, for he was starving.

Deep underground amongst a riddle of secret tunnels, the elite research department monitored national security and played a lead role in North Korea’s nuclear preparedness. It served as the eyes and ears of North Korea, protecting twenty-two nuclear facilities in eighteen locations, including the Soviet-supplied twenty-five mega-watt reactor at Yongbyon – the centre of their atomic science. The ultra-secret facility accommodated high-tech computer equipment and high-definition projection screens on the concrete walls, sharing space with two large portraits of the Supreme Commander. The reinforced concrete ceiling was veiled by a web of overhead piping that groaned with the pressure put through them.

North Korea was the most militarised country in the world with a million-man army dedicated to maintaining national security at all costs. But the Korean People’s Army was in short supply of modern military equipment and combat experience. Soldiers were malnourished and short of ammunition. And most soldiers were too occupied defending the Demilitarised Zone and coastal approaches for North Korea to go to war anyway. The only country to withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty now stood alone in its struggle with the world as China and Russia traded openly with the nicer of the twins, South Korea.

Having visited the toilet, Cho Sop returned to the Tactical Operations Room. “Heard it’s another cold one out there tonight,” he said. “Uncommon for this time of year.”

“This drought will be over soon and then it will be flooding season,” commented Personnel Officer Min-Ki, pecking away at his keyboard and barely lifting his eyes away from his preparation of personnel support for contingency operations.

“Droughts, floods, it is still too cold.”

From the hot water boiler Cho Sop topped up his mug. A slice of lemon would go nicely with it, he pondered. Cho Sop took a sip of his drink and observed his colleagues. Unlike its usual plethora of noise, the Tactical Operations Room was dead quiet, just the sound of dedicated men concentrating on various aspects of military intelligence, each officer working through tired eyes to serve their country to the best of their ability, as duly expected.

Cho Sop was returning to his desk when a single alarm from the Missile Early Warning System penetrated the silence. A knot formed in his empty stomach. A single nuclear launch event had occurred. And the alarm signified that North Korea was the target. Cho Sop bolted towards the warning system and stared into the screen, noting the attack was the instigation of the United States.

“There must be a mistake!” Cho Sop yelled over the deafening alarm.

Min-Ki joined him, hands pressed against the edge of the desk, his back arched. “Our satellite system is very reliable. It never tells a lie!” he yelled back.

“No, perhaps not, but it has been known to play tricks!”

“A dangerous trick! Do we call it in?”

Cho Sop thought for a moment, every beat of his heart another crucial second ticking by. Hesitant and under immense pressure, he worried that the wrong response might begin a nuclear war. Every officer in the room had stopped working and had formed a circle around the Missile Early Warning System. Some had cupped their hands over their ears to block out the noise of the alarm. Cho Sop considered that if the United States was to fire the first shots of World War III, the attack would undoubtedly comprise a far greater array of weapons and not just a single nuclear warhead. Besides, the Americans knew nothing of the North Korean nuclear strategy. As for the production, deployment and exportation of missiles to Iran and Pakistan, it certainly did not constitute a nuclear response, and current US policy had not effectively addressed the threat posed by North Korean weapons of mass destruction, nor their proliferation. Moreover, a nuclear strike was a breach of the peace, something the Americans so adamantly strived to maintain. So why were they firing a nuclear missile at North Korea? It didn’t make sense.

“Sir, we must retaliate,” Min-Ki pressed.

“Say again?”

“I said we must do something! The Supreme Commander has to know!”

Without a hint of panic, only a camouflage of nerves, Cho Sop lowered his eyes in thought. Despite invaluable years of training and experience, he remained hesitant, his mind doing somersaults. Early Warning Systems did malfunction. Since the Cuban missile crisis, at least four incidents had put the US and Russian leaders in a predicament when misinterpretations from their nuclear warning systems had occurred. It had happened earlier that year in North Korea. A computer failure had deactivated their brand new spy satellites, leaving the country vulnerable and blind as their entire intelligence system had become hi-tech satellite-dependent. It had taken the Intelligence Bureau several hours to rectify the problem and bring the satellites back online.

A second alarm went off, followed by a third. Soon, there were multiple alarms going, indicating that a number of intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched from countries in Europe. The intelligence officers exchanged opinions and speculation, each man agreeing that North Koreans were seen through western eyes as war-hungry and evil, making North Korea a target for combat. For the first time in his long career, Cho Sop was honestly frightened. US artillery far exceeded that of North Korea and ordering a nuclear retaliation was dangerous. But so was inactivity.

“I will inform the National Defence Commission,” Cho Sop announced, lifting the phone to his ear and charging away from the noise of the alarm.

Min-Ki nodded agreeably, his superior acting in accord with protocol, as his automated systems were commanding him to do. Aware that disobeying general orders was tantamount to treason, and having assessed all the evidence to conclude the attacks were genuine, Cho Sop went ahead with the call.

Part 1

Chapter 1

Geostationary satellites positioned high above Great Britain had detected a large band of dark fuzz over England and Wales. News radio told of how the tempestuous weather was affecting traffic up and down the country.

Brad Sutcliffe lowered the volume on his car stereo as he sat in slow-moving traffic mounting with agitation, the car wipers wailing with exertion to clear away the thrashing rain. In front, the hazy outline of a Transit van stopped, bringing the traffic boot to bonnet for the best part of a mile. He’d left the house early to compensate for traffic jams. Still, he didn’t want to waste any time in one as he had to be at the Moorland Links Hotel in Plymouth by three. That was in four hours and he wanted to be early.

“Now, are you sure you want to come?” Sutcliffe said to the fourteen-year-old sitting beside him in the passenger seat. “There’ll be a lot of waiting around you know.”

Martin barely lifted his head from his portable computer game. “Will other boys be there?”

“I doubt it, but there might be.”

“I don’t want to play with them.”

“Well, like I said, I doubt there’ll be any boys there.”

“Why?”

“It’s not a place for children, it’s an important conference.”

“Can I watch?”

“We’ll see.”

“But I wanna play computer.”

Sutcliffe rolled his eyes. “You can if you want.”

Sutcliffe glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard and then punched in an alternative route on the GPS Navigation Path Finder. The system consulted its database before instructing him to take a left at the next set of traffic lights. He continued straight for a few miles, crossing an old bridge, and like the good citizen he obeyed the speed limit. He leaned forward on the steering wheel, hitting his head on the rear-view mirror as he pulled to a stop at a busy inter-section. As he readjusted the mirror, he saw in its reflection the left pocket of his son’s jacket. The innocuous eye of a small JVC video camera was staring back at him. He straightened the mirror and massaged his head. “Where did you get that camera?”

“What camera?”

“The one in your pocket.”

“It’s mine.”

“Where did you get it?”

“It’s mine.”

Sutcliffe fell quiet as a thought churned through his mind. “Did you take it from a shop without paying again?”

“Did I do a bad thing?”

“You can’t go helping yourself to things in shops without paying, Martin. It’s illegal.”

The rain intensified the further west they tracked and the whole time Sutcliffe laid into his son about his criminal behaviour. Coming off the motorway, they sailed down country roads passing through remote villages with hardly another car in sight in the downpour. Surrounding fields and meadows were empty, apart from a single farmer braving the rain in his tractor, ploughing up a segment of his land.

Sutcliffe’s stomach felt hideously alive with nerves as he drew into the Moorland Links Hotel car park. He located a parking space close to the entrance, disengaged the engine and turned to his son. “Wait here, don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything, don’t touch any-thing, just sit and wait.”

“How long will you be?”

“An hour, two at the most.”

He climbed out of his car and popped open his umbrella. His left leg was stiff and always was after a long drive, but he had other things on his mind as he limped towards the hotel, glancing briefly at the spectacular view of Tamar Valley as the rain spattered on his umbrella.

Inside the hotel, he headed off to the bathroom to freshen up. He rinsed out his mouth, washed his hands and smoothed his short hair. He straightened his necktie and perfected his professional smile. In forty minutes, he would be addressing the world. He told himself he was a professional and that feeling sick with nerves was all part of being human. Then he marched towards the conference room and stopped when he reached the door, his eyes transfixed on the gold placard – Chandelier Ballroom.

It was at a ballroom dancing class at the Islington Arts Factory in London where Sutcliffe had met Jacqueline Green. The first time he set eyes on her she was wearing a tight, black leotard and a mini-skirt that stopped at her crotch. Her hair then was short and curled at her shoulders. She sensed Sutcliffe was having difficulty, so she assisted him through the subtle fall and rise motions of foxtrot. Sutcliffe struggled to master the twinkles and chasses, whereas Jacqueline made it look easy, demonstrating sophistication and elegance through her movements.

After a week of tutoring, Sutcliffe invited her out to a movie. Afterwards he impressed her with an expensive meal at the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly. They drank wine, they talked, they laughed and the night ended in a doorstep kiss, very clichéd. That night, he found out that Jacqueline remained untouched by the feral world of men and relationships and had only been with one man before she met Sutcliffe.

“Well, how did it go?” his mother asked the next morning over breakfast. She’d heard him arrive home late.

“Great, really great.” He reached for a box of cornflakes from the shelf. “I think she might be the one.”

“Well, don’t rush into anything,” she said, her eyes on the newspaper she was reading. “People have many colours to their personalities and so far you’ve only seen the nice ones.”

He grinned. “Yeah, and they were like a rainbow.”

Now she was looking at him. “Rainbows fade, don’t you forget that.”

Six months later, Sutcliffe moved into a tidy studio apartment in Surrey with Jacqueline. It wasn’t until four years later that she fell pregnant. It was a complicated birth. Jacqueline was dangerously overdue, but eventually gave birth to a healthy boy. Sutcliffe fell immediately in love. They named him Martin after Jacqueline’s late brother, who’d died four years earlier of mysterious heart failure. Not long after the birth, the mystifying combination of genes, environment and explosive brain growth went to work and Martin developed autism. It began with a lack of interest in toys and games and progressed to unprovoked outbursts and tantrums. It became even more serious when he started crying inconsolably if his bed-room light was switched on at night or at the flash of a camera, or brightness from a television set.

By the time Martin was six, Jacqueline had left Sutcliffe and only ever saw him during the courtroom showdowns over custody, though Sutcliffe believed Jacqueline only wanted sole guardianship of Martin to spite him; he wasn’t even sure she loved their son. It left him bitterly angry with her. Anger didn’t suit Sutcliffe one bit and he always felt uncomfortable when he did lose his temper. Sutcliffe wanted nothing more than to keep his son and with the help of very unaffordable and articulate lawyers, he claimed victory.

At Headcorn Airfield in Faversham, Sutcliffe and his best friend Mike Townsend were preparing their hot-air balloon for a routine flight when they realised something wasn’t right.

“What the hell is that noise?” Townsend had heard a strange popping sound coming from the balloon. The crew were stationed inside the wicker-woven gondola when they all heard the noise.

“Sounds like the wicker is cracking,” said Camilla, Mike’s girl-friend.

“Wicker doesn’t crack that easily. I think…I think it’s coming from the propane tanks.”

All of a sudden, a large flash of fire appeared above their heads causing the tethers to snap and the balloon began to shift. Everyone managed to abandon the balloon, all except Sutcliffe. His foot had become entangled in one of the ropes as he dived out and as the balloon skipped away it dragged him on his back across the field. The crew chased after Sutcliffe and the runaway balloon in the hope of freeing him before it gained altitude, but they couldn’t keep up.

Sutcliffe stared up at the massive bulk of trapped air as it played with his life. Fear gripped him, but the thoughts he had at that point were anything but fear-induced. He wondered how high up the balloon would take him and what the view would be like. He imagined the balloon whisking him off into space – the tranquillity and the simplicity of such a place. His strange, morbid thoughts fascinated him. What if the balloon took him far away from the world? The voice in his head was calm and he had made peace with the world. But then, with a swift change of heart, he could feel a pressure mounting around his ears and reality struck him. The gondola was on fire and the balloon was rising towards the trees. Suspended upside down in midair, he reached up for the rope strangling his foot. He inched his way up the rope until he reached the gondola and managed to hook his fingers over the rim. Freeing up one hand, he tried to untie his foot, hoping to fall into the approaching tree-tops. Within minutes, though, the gondola was a ball of fire and heat began to nibble at his fingertips. He yelled in agony, struggling to keep hold as he battled to free his foot. Then the balloon changed direction in a surge of wind and drifted towards a meadow. It struck a live power line and severed the gondola, which plummeted from the sky and crashed into the meadow below. Sutcliffe dragged himself away from the smouldering gondola, his whole frame numb, painfully aware that if both legs weren’t broken, one definitely was.

“Help!” he managed, barely.

Rushed to hospital with multiple breaks in his left leg, sprains to both wrists and burns to his right hand, he was unconscious when the ambulance pulled into the hospital and he was still unconscious when allocated a bed. When he did wake up, a doctor told him he was being taken to surgery to have an operation on his shattered leg. When he awoke the second time, he was in bed and it was day again and his leg was in traction. Plaster cast encased his leg from thigh to foot supported by balanced suspension using slings and both his wrists were bandaged. Mike Townsend was standing over him holding a card and a box of chocolates.

“How many times do I have to tell you that humans don’t fly?” he said. “That’s why we use balloons.”

Sutcliffe afforded a gentle smile. With a weak turn of the head, he watched Townsend draw up a chair. “How many times have I told you I don’t like chocolate?”

Their smiles hardened into a look more serious.

“Brad, I’m so sorry about what happened. I should’ve checked the tanks beforehand. I feel terrible.”

“Don’t. It wasn’t your fault.”

The National Transportation Safety Board later concluded that a leaky propane tank had exploded. The Board also stated that Sutcliffe had been extremely lucky that the other three canisters of propane hadn’t ignited.

Sutcliffe spent a few months in hospital. It gave him plenty of time to reflect on his life, where it was all heading. The dreadful events of that day had given him astounding clarity and purpose. All he could think about was piloting a balloon into space. Those he shared the wacky idea with failed to take him seriously, blaming the crash for his dementia. He allowed them to ridicule him, even made jokes at his own expense. But his actions would be his words. He hadn’t achieved much in his life and now was an opportunity to change that.

Using his laptop, he executed exhaustive research from his bed. He made enquiries by mobile phone and he decided to use the money from his compensation to fund the project. Soon, though, he realised he couldn’t manage the space flight alone. Not only did he need a crew, he needed investors. Costs were mounting, more than he’d first anticipated. But he would see it through, even if it killed him.

Outside the Chandelier Ballroom, Sutcliffe saw a hot drinks machine and for a pound he got a strong coffee. It would help sharpen his mind and settle his nerves. Strangely enough, he felt more anxious about the imminent conference with the media than he did about the balloon flight into space. British journalists could be malignant at times, even when they were covering stories filled with superlatives. Essentially, the space flight would make him a celebrity with success or a gallant hero with failure.

He took his coffee into the theatre-style conference room and stared at the stage in awe of the table arrangements, which met with his approval, before he headed backstage to get ready.

Chapter 2

The classic duck-egg blue campervan with patches of grey filler and Greenpeace and Save the Whale stickers glued all over the windows received admiration and reverence wherever it went because it symbolised the dying icon of hippy adventurers. Although long unpainted and suffering with arthritic joints, the van was very much alive and loyal to the Volkswagen bloodline.

The aging machine was making some unusual clattering noises, but that wasn’t the reason Keith Burch pulled up onto the gravel embankment. He had lost his way to the Moorland Links Hotel in Plymouth. He didn’t have a map and his portable GPS system was broken. The day’s rain was only making things worse. Ignoring the sound of flints and pebbles careening up into the undercarriage, he stopped the van and popped it into neutral. Unable to figure out his bearings, he concluded that he would have to guess which way to go. The road seemed completely devoid of road signs and there didn’t seem to be a local about anywhere to give him directions. Judging by the duration of his travel, he thought he had to be close. Then again, he’d forgotten his watch, just another mistake he’d made that morning. And the clock in the van had stopped years ago.

With a shaking hand, he pinched an anxiety pill from its sachet, dropped it into his mouth and chased it down with some water. He wanted a cigarette, desperately. The van reeked of tobacco smoke, courtesy of an over-flowing ashtray, which he shook. Buried among the cinders he found the leftovers of a half-smoked cigarette. He sparked the end and drew in a deep lungful, immediately feeling better, though he was still lost and every chance he was running late. Flustered and full of apprehension, it induced Burch into a melancholic state.

“They’re gonna kill me,” he whined.

In the rear-view mirror, he caught sight of his forty-year-old eyes, black with fatigue. He thought about the state of his life, but it left his mind as quickly as it had entered and he felt a sudden surge of determination. Punching the gear lever into first, he trundled along the road, foot heavy to the floor, the engine howling in protest. The hotel had to be around there somewhere. There had to be other cars going the same way. A full house, Brad Sutcliffe had mentioned on the phone. To the west, he saw a wooded area and decided that it could easily hide a large hotel complex. Instead, it hid a golf course. Sutcliffe had mentioned a golf course. Yelverton Golf Club, something like that, was near the Moorland Links Hotel. He turned off at the next left and there, right in front of him, was a sign for the Moorland Links Hotel, blurred by the rain on his wind-shield. As the van lurched into the grounds of the country-style hotel, he saw the car park bursting with several media vehicles – a full house.

“Full house,” the prison warden gloated. “You get the last bed on the wing, Mr Burch.”

At twenty-two years of age, Keith Burch had been caught for tax evasion and was given a three-month prison sentence. Felix Dunmore, his cellmate for the next twelve weeks, had tattoos all the way up to his neck with an intimidating one which rose out of his collar like small flames trailing to beneath his left ear. No sooner had Burch set his belongings down on the bottom bunk than Dunmore, who lay on the top bunk reading, said, “Man, your head’s big.”

Burch had heard it all his life and shrugged off the remark. “You know what they say about people with big heads?” he replied.

Dunmore frowned. “I’m listening.”

“Big head, strong skull, head-butt like a bull.”

Cringing as he slid onto his bed, he waited with unbearable dread for Dunmore to react. He’d been in the room not forty five seconds and he was about to be torn to shreds. He felt the top bunk rock and two black boots swung down from the mattress close to his head, followed by something quite unexpected. Dunmore threw his head back and laughed. It made Burch laugh too, though he wasn’t quite sure why he was laughing. Dunmore stopped, resuming in brief bursts, before hopping down off his bed, where he crouched down beside Burch. “Get up!”

Burch stopped laughing. The fear returned. “Why?”

“Get up!”

“What if I say no?”

“Get up, man, I wanna show you something.”

Reluctantly, Burch got off his bed and saw Dunmore pointing at photographs on the wall above his pillows. “They’re me babies.”

Burch expected to see photographs of children smiling for their imprisoned father with little messages scribbled on the back in the messy handwriting of infants. Instead, as he moved closer, he saw a dozen hot-air balloons in a variety of unique designs.

“What d’ya think?”

“They’re…balloons.”

“No, they’re escape.”

Burch frowned. “You’re going to break out of prison in a hot-air balloon?”

Dunmore slapped the back of his head. “I ain’t gonna get far in a fucking balloon, am I? Nah, escape of the mind. On bad days, I imagine I’m on a balloon. It’s quiet, nobody around, jus’ me and nature. It helps.”

Burch saw a sensitive side to his cellmate and that put him at ease. Dunmore looked like a bad character, but he had been proved wrong. Dunmore was a simple man with a simple obsession, which provided him with focus and inspiration. It gave his life purpose and every man needed purpose. At that point, Burch had no real purpose, both on the inside and the outside. Ballooning. It sounded so exotic. And one thing Burch loved more than anything else was nature. He had turned to vegetarianism at a young age, had visited every wildlife park in Britain and had even taken part in a practical conservation project for CSV Action Earth as part of his community service after he’d been arrested for drink driving. He looked back at the pictures of balloons, his eye trained on one balloon in particular shaped as a Marlboro cigarette; a standard one-hundred-and-twenty -thousand cubic feet. The beige butt of the Marlboro sat at the top with the tip at the bottom. Large flames coming from the propane tanks created the impression the cigarette was being lit. Burch craved a smoke. He craved to be taken far away in a hot-air balloon out into the countryside.

A few days before his release, Burch lay reading his book on his bunk when Dunmore returned to the room in a grump. No sooner had he climbed up onto his bed than he flew into a rage. “Where’s me fucking balloon?” he yelled, his voice so loud it made Burch jump. The bed rumbled and Dunmore climbed down. “What the fuck have you done with it big head?”

Burch could not find the words to defend himself. “I…what? Sorry, I don’t…”

Dunmore hauled Burch to his feet by the scruff of his collar and forced his head round to the clean rectangle patch of wall where a photograph had spent years collecting dust and a Marlboro balloon missing.

“Where is it?” he yelled.

Unable to get a word in, Burch realised he’d never been so frightened in all his life.

Bruised and cut, two black eyes and a broken nose, Burch walked out of prison with stooped shoulders and his head held high. He never looked back. His mother had come to collect him. She needn’t have bothered. She lectured him all the way home about sorting his life out. He didn’t listen much, too absorbed with his souvenir – the photograph of a Marlboro balloon. All he could think about was his first packet of smokes and his first flight in a hot-air balloon, unable to wait for either.

His first ballooning experience was one to remember but not one to cherish. After a turbulent liftoff in a ninety-thousand-cubic-foot balloon, they drifted into an invisible wind current and, under the duress of the strong breeze, were swept across the countryside of Great Britain. Despite the settling words of the pilot – she’d observed the frightened look on her passenger’s face – Burch couldn’t relax. It had nothing to do with the dreadful roar of the propane tanks or the fear of bad weather or the inability to control the balloon’s direction and speed or the idea of crashing. It had taken him forty years to realise that he had an unrestrained fear of heights.

Instead, he started designing hot-air balloons, his inspiration coming from the Marlboro photograph, which he’d had enlarged and framed on the wall of his basement, which served as a studio for his work. He lived with his mother in the decaying neighbour-hood of Stanhope. In between working in his basement at night and sleeping at intervals during the day, he attended to his mother because she got ill all the time and demanded a lot of his time. It was one thing after another; hip replacement, pneumonia, bowel cancer op, flu. For years she had been onto him about finding a real job, complaining that his balloon doodles were a waste of time. Then she developed Alzheimer’s and forgot to remember to nag him. The news came as a shock to Burch. But it meant he could concentrate on his career without the party of a moaning mother.

After his first success with a balloon called Agatha, a unique marrow-shaped balloon, he began to network as his reputation preceded him and he started to get in with the right people. Then, something magical happened. Never had he been headhunted for a special project before, not until a smartly dressed man came knocking at his door claiming to be in need of his skills. The man said he would pay handsomely and that Burch’s work would be marvelled over in the aviation world for decades to come. His name was Brad Sutcliffe. Burch needed the project. It would ignite his career. But he worried Sutcliffe would find out about his shady past and change his mind at the last minute. He had no idea that Sutcliffe was an articulate, prudent man and had already done his home-work. He had studied Burch’s resume a hundred times over before approaching him in person. Burch possessed the knowledge, the experience, the drive, though something about his brief time in prison left Sutcliffe suspicious. To be certain, he’d ordered a police reference check on Burch where he learnt about his time in prison. However, that had been a long time ago, enough time for a person to change their ways, Sutcliffe felt. Everyone did something illegal when they were young, he appreciated that. Burch was uneducated. He was unmarried. But he lived with his sick mother and took care of her single-handedly and that said a lot about a man.

“Well, you think you’re up to the challenge?” asked Sutcliffe.

“You want me to build the biggest ever zero-pressure helium balloon that is resistant to the extreme cold and can withstand the conditions of the stratosphere?”

“That’s right.”

“I have to say, that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in all my life.” Burch laughed, a nervous laugh, while he considered the offer. “On one condition,” he said.

Sutcliffe was expecting the designer to ask for more money, to have the balloon named after him in his honour, to be present at interviews, something that would give him worldwide recognition for his involvement.

“I want to fly with you, up there,” he said. “I want to be part of your crew. You agree to that and you’ve got yourself a balloon.”

As soon as he said it, he wondered why. Heights frightened him and he hated ballooning. And Sutcliffe had explained that they would be flying into the stratosphere, some twenty five miles high. Then again, throughout his life Burch had always been a nobody. Flying a balloon into space would make him a somebody.

‘I will need to discuss it with Simon Matthews, my business partner. I’ll be in touch.’

Sutcliffe called the next day and said that he and Matthews had agreed, but there would be extensive training and several seminars to attend, and his payment for designing the balloon would need to be scaled down, though he added that the financial repercussions of success would surpass that of his initial fees. Burch agreed and put his nose to the grind immediately, working tirelessly day and night. Designing a space balloon was no easy enterprise. It took him a few years to come up with a super-thin, one-of-its-kind helium balloon put together with a transparent polyethylene material, making it more manoeuvrable and less susceptible to bad weather.

Outside the Moorland Links Hotel, Burch found an empty space in the far corner of the car park and filled it with his old van. Ignoring the rain, he darted between the parked media vehicles and ran across the lawn to the hotel entrance, fixing his necktie over a crumpled white shirt. A beautiful woman wearing a business suit with long, black hair and tanned skin caught his eye. She was wearing large sunglasses and was leaning against a pillar in a slight pose. He smiled at her. She didn’t see him. Never mind. He had no time for women anyway. He entered the hotel foyer and hurried straight to the Chandelier Ballroom.

Chapter 3

The swell of the English Channel was making Claris Faraday feel boat-sick. The Wight-Link ferry from Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, which crossed the Solent to Lymington on the mainland, was only a thirty-minute crossing, but she couldn’t take much more. The sea was ferociously alive, the rain coming down like sharp arrows and several people on the observation deck had fallen prey to the spiteful venom of seasickness. When the boat finally docked at the Ferry Terminal Marina in Lymington Harbour, Faraday was pale and lightheaded, though she had managed to prevent herself from throwing up by the pure force of will. Now she was on country road A358 heading towards the Moorland Links Hotel. Just ten miles to Plymouth, the sign stated.

Tears were streaking down Faraday’s face like the heavy rain down her windshield, obscuring her vision, and she was driving at a dangerous sixty miles per hour. The roads were narrow but luckily not busy. Body numb, she felt as though she was floating across the asphalt of the A358. Lime Regis, Exeter and Dartmoor had become a single stretch of blurry land and memories as she headed further west. Dead ahead, a sheep casually walked into the road having escaped from a meadow via a snapped chain-link fence. It stood innocently in the path of Faraday’s hurtling Aston Martin. Only at the last moment did she see it and instinctively turned the wheel in a last-ditch effort to save the animal’s life. The sports car flew into an aggressive spin, adding to her giddiness. She heard a thud against the frame of her sports car. Then she stopped. She opened the door and vomited in the passenger foot well.

“Oh God!” she yelled, banging her fists on the steering wheel.

Realising that the sports car had stopped sideways in the road blocking lanes in both directions, she restarted the engine and drove slowly up the embankment. As soon as she stopped, something on her windshield appeared; a trickle of dark red fluid diluting in the rain followed by a little black foot. Then the whole sheep rolled down the windshield, leaving a smear of wet blood as it slipped onto the bonnet and off the side.

“Oh my God, oh my God!” she shrieked, putting a hand over her mouth.

She opened her window and vomited again. Not far off, sheep made cackles behind a hedged fence and she couldn’t help thinking they were meant at her. A cursory inspection of the car revealed a dent on the left side and a cracked taillight. Since nobody came forward to claim responsibility for the sheep, she climbed back into the car. Her clothes were soaked to the bone and the smattering of eyeliner she wore made lines across her pale cheeks. The last thing on her mind at that point was the damn press conference and the approaching balloon flight.

Balloon flights were great opportunities to get some thinking done whilst watching the world roll by. The adventurist had spent her whole adult life ballooning for recreation, viewing landscapes from the equanimity of the sky, setting new world records and unsettling rivals.

The opportunity to join the Fable-1 balloon team, however, was her first offer of employment in that field. At the interview, Brad Sutcliffe had been able to sense Faraday’s genuine passion for flying. Coupled with her experience, knowledge and grit determination, Sutcliffe was confident he had found the perfect crew member. Piloting a giant manned balloon to the edge of space was just the type of adventure she craved. Additionally, she was a wizard with cameras and technology and had been asked, by Sutcliffe, to be responsible for documenting the experience. The fact that she was the cousin of Simon Matthews, co-founder of the project, didn’t factor in whatsoever. She was keener than most at training sessions, always first in the gym and often last out, and was super fit and athletic. She had run the London Marathon twelve times and had finished second in the Paris version.

Claris Faraday boasted an impressive resume of ballooning experience with headlining exploits that included tightrope walking between two balloons at fifteen-thousand feet and ballooning right around the world. The ballooning connoisseur attended at least one hot-air balloon festival each year to participate in races and the exhibition of evening balloon glows where she would wave at the earthbound spectators. The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the largest hot-air balloon festival in the world, was her favourite of them all, mingling with over seven-hundred balloonists representing some twenty-two countries.

But her most dangerous expedition had seen her streak across the Himalayas with her old friend John Rhodes, barely clearing the peaks before losing altitude and crashing unexpectedly into the mountainside. The balloon was a write-off and Rhodes was killed instantly from head injuries. A climber named Nick Parsons spotted the balloon and the pilots, one lying flat in the snow unmoving, the other walking away from the wreckage. The climber reached the stranded balloonist as quickly as he could. He offered her his Gortex jacket. “Everything’s gonna be alright,” he shouted over the brewing storm. “I’ll get you down to Base Camp.”

He worried that she’d gone into shock because she was so calm, but soon she was crying because he felt her body shuddering at his side. Faraday was scared, but Parsons was amazed that her face didn’t carry the fearful, defeated look of a mountain victim. Not far from Base Camp, roles reversed and Faraday had to assist Parsons along when he began to slip in and out of consciousness. She shouldered him all the way to Base Camp, a bustling tent city full of pioneering climbers and with little energy he directed her to his tent. A trained medic was staying at Base Camp acclimatising like the rest of the mountaineers, and with his mobile medical kit he examined Parsons and confirmed that fatigue had overcome him, insisting that he rest. Faraday spent the night with Parsons relaxing in the warmth of his tent, eating dal bhat lentils with rice and sleeping away the night.

The next morning, after breakfast, they waited for a helicopter to transport them off the mountain.

“Some daring flight you were making,” Parsons commented, his sleeping bag pulled up over his chin. “Do you always fly into mountains or just the most dangerous mountains in the world?”

Faraday frowned. “Do you always pass out on mountains or just the most dangerous mountains in the world?” she retaliated.

Parsons sniggered and shrugged. “Fair enough. I guess we’re both as reckless as each other. Anyway, I guess I’m glad you chose yesterday to crash.” He smiled at her and took her hand, rubbed it in his, appreciating how much she was hurting, having lost a dear friend.

“Well, I guess I’m glad you’re a lightweight, a fairly handsome one at that.”

Back in the UK, a week after John Rhodes had been cremated, they were dating as often as they could spare the time for each other and three years later they got engaged.

One morning, Parsons found Faraday sitting in the study. “You’re up early.”

She looked up with a pencil clamped between her teeth and saw Parsons looking down at her with tired eyes.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“That’s not like you.”

“I’ve got a million things on my mind.”

“The flight into space?”

“Among other things. Are you making coffee?”

Breath escaped his mouth in a sort of laugh. “Whatever you say, angel.”

Flying to an altitude of twenty-five miles was not her primary concern. Something else overshadowed her thoughts. It had grown into an evanescent idea that had begun to torment her. Like a powerfully thrown spear, the notion stuck in her and it plagued her mind, affecting her relationship. Faraday looked out of her window at a pair of magpies fluttering on a tree branch, thinking. While Parsons clattered about in the kitchen, she picked up the phone and dialled a number she had memorised over time.

“It’s Claris.”

She paused. “I need to see you as soon as possible. I’m going out of my mind.”

She listened.

“Okay,” she said, her head flopping back on her shoulders. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

At Sandown Medical Centre, Faraday approached the reception desk. The receptionist peered over the rim of her spectacles. “Do you have an appointment, love?”

Faraday shook her head. “No, but Geoff, I mean Doctor Casper, is expecting me.”

“I’ll have to double-check that, hold on.” She pressed a button on her phone pad and looked at Faraday as she confirmed the appointment with the doctor. She lifted the phone away from her mouth. “Second door on the left, my love.”

Faraday nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

High upon the cliffs of Alum Bay overlooking the Isle of Wight, Faraday sat cross-legged, thinking about Doctor Casper and their meeting a few hours before. Seagulls pecked at a washed-up fishing trawler down at the beach and in the distance a P&O ferry chugged towards France. Behind the ferry, the coast of Britain sat flat and disguised itself as low cloud. Faraday loved the ocean. If ever a place brought her clarity and peace it was anywhere with a view of the sea. She had chosen to live on the Isle of Wight as no matter where she lived on the island she was within close proximity of the water and could always be alone when she wanted.

Overhead, a fleet of hot-air balloons whooshed by. Fifteen, perhaps twenty, drifted peacefully above her in a range of shapes and colours, each one breathing fire intermittently with a roar like dragons. Each balloon streaked across the rays of the breaking sun and threw shadows on the wind-blown grass of the Alum cliffs. Faraday stared at them, her gaze going beyond into the endless sky. She really wanted to feel the excitement of flying the world’s largest balloon to the edge of space while the world watched in admiration, but she couldn’t get in the spirit. She had issues and now she had the impossible task of telling her fiancé. There was no easy way to explain it. She dug out her mobile phone from her overcoat, pulled her hood back and dialled Parsons’ number. He would have scores of questions, none of which she had a good answer for. He would be in denial. She would leave him hanging on the end of the line, wondering. He might even blame himself.

“I can’t do it,” she whispered and hung up, pressing the phone to her forehead.

Less than twenty seconds later it rang and it was Parsons.

“Hello you,” she said softly.

He asked her if she’d called him.

Faraday said yes.

He asked why.

She made a quick excuse. “Can you meet me at the airfield in an hour? We can have a picnic. And I have something I want to talk to you about.”

Parsons said alright.

Faraday phoned her old friend, Terence, who still worked at the Isle of Wight Airport, which had been decommissioned in recent years for private and domestic planes but remained operational for gilders and balloons.

“Terence, it’s me, can you prepare Froggy and a chaser vehicle for the mainland? I’ll be there shortly.”

“Already puffing,” he replied.

By the time she arrived, Terence hadn’t let her down. Froggy stood erect and rocking in the wind and was tied to several pickets in the ground. The bottle-green balloon was one-hundred-and-five-thousand cubic feet, officially categorised as an AX-8. Propped up against the reinforced wicker with his broad back tilted, Parsons smiled as Faraday walked slowly to greet him.

She tried her best to hide her anguish, but her eyes betrayed her. “You ready then?”

“Yep. Why this all of a sudden?”

“Just fancied some fresh air.”

Faraday fired up the burner and the pilot light ignited the propane. Terence unpegged the pickets and the balloon took off. Faraday gave the burners more thrust and the balloon shot along with more urgency. Within minutes, the wind was carrying them towards the mainland of Britain. “Sunrise is the best time to fly a balloon, you know, not afternoons,” she said. “Sunrise is typically heralded by the day’s calmest winds.”

Parsons scowled at his fiancée. She had been acting strange all morning.

“A balloon seems to make a counterintuitive statement about gravity. There is just something magical about it, don’t you agree?”

“You haven’t brought me up here to teach me about hot-air ballooning. We’ve flown several times together. Claris, what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

Parsons grinned, but he was not smiling. “Come on, strange behaviour, a picnic without food. There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?”

Faraday looked into his green eyes. She brushed her fringe off her face. “Waiting for the right weather can be a bit like a skier’s quest for the perfect slope, if you see what I mean. It can also be compared to finding your soul mate, someone you’re compatible with, both physically and mentally. We’re certainly compatible mentally.”

“What exactly are you trying to say to me, Claris?”

“It’s all coming out wrong. I…I’m sorry.”

“What’s coming out wrong?”

Faraday looked him in the eye. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

The whir of a siren sounded, startling Faraday from her memories. She looked in her side mirror. A police car; they must have seen the dead sheep. She stayed seated as the policemen circled the Aston Martin with curiosity. One of the officers appeared at her window and banged his knuckles on the glass. Faraday slipped the window down.

“Are you alright, Miss?”

She dried her eyes. “Yeah. It appeared from nowhere, there was nothing I could do.”

The officer looked at the flanking meadows. “It happens. Do you have any idea how fast you were travelling?”

“I was doing the speed limit.”

“Which is?”

“Thirty. I’m in a bit of rush, officer, I have to be at an important conference.”

“I won’t keep you. Can I see your driving licence?”

Faraday shakily retrieved it from her glove box. “Here you go.”

The second officer was checking the expiry date on her tax disc, then went back to his car to run a number plate search. She watched him speak into his radio.

“Thank you Miss…Faraday,” he said, glancing at her licence. With slow, meticulous strokes of his pen, as though he was painting the words, he copied the details to his pad. Double-checking what he’d recorded, he passed the licence back to her. “Can I just get a contact phone number in case we need to call you?”

She sighed inconspicuously. “Give me your pad and pen.”

He passed them to her and she scribbled down her number.

“Cheers. You drive carefully now.”

“I will.”

“And get that taillight fixed.”

“I will.”

When she arrived at the Moorland Links Hotel, she claimed one of the last spaces in the car park and cut the engine, allowing herself a couple of minutes to fix herself up. She put the car blowers on full in an attempt to dry out her clothes and shoulder-length hair. She applied fresh makeup – a touch of dark green eye shadow, blush and a little eyeliner, though it did nothing to conceal her red eyes. She thought about Parsons, then tried to force him from her mind altogether. Feeling more presentable, she made for the hotel foyer. She asked the receptionist the way to the Chandelier Ballroom, said thank you, and walked briskly to get there.

Chapter 4

The 747 from Chicago O’Hare International Airport touched down at London Gatwick at two fifteen in the afternoon. By five, Jen Hennessey was at Plymouth City Airport, one of two commercial airports serving Devon. By six she had checked into the Moorland Links Hotel in Plymouth. Strolling along the corridor, her case trailing on wheels behind her, she arrived at her room and leaned down to pick up a complimentary newspaper outside her door before going in. Automatically she made her customary inspection of the bathroom, the bedroom and the facilities, all of which met with her approval.

Peruvian by birth, American by naturalisation, English by language, Hennessey felt drained from the long international flight, but still managed to remain polite and civil to those assisting her through the processes of temporary migration. Those she had met and had engaged in conversation with were surprised to learn that she flew aircraft for NASA. She didn’t look like a NASA pilot, nor a pilot of any sort. She was the picture of beauty with long, black hair, toffee-coloured skin and a curvaceous body.

Later that evening she filled the bathtub with piping hot water and dimmed the overhead lights to set a mood. Slipping off her clothes, she dabbed a bare foot into the steaming water, recoiling at the torrid heat, before sliding elegantly in. No sooner had she got comfortable than the phone rang, but she ignored it.

After towelling off, she meandered to the balcony and stared out at the black emptiness. Lightning scratched the sky illuminating the hard rain and thunder rumbled thereafter. She closed up the balcony doors and plopped herself down on the hardwood floor of her room, where she meticulously painted the nails on both feet, skilfully applying two coats of red enamel on nails separated by white cotton balls. Then she got into bed with her airport magazine, resolved to do nothing else that evening.

Sporadic jetlag prevented much sleep, so she was up early the next morning, her body on American time, which was approaching midnight if she had calculated correctly. She decided to call her boss in America to let him know she’d arrived safely. They talked for an hour. Following that, she slowly got ready for the conference taking place later that afternoon in one of the large rooms at the back of the hotel. She turned the television on. Her President was addressing the country. “Eyewitness accounts from Spanish naval ships and a US submarine conclusively confirm that the uranium onboard the North Korean naval ship heading for Yemen was bomb-grade, enriched uranium, despite denials from both the military and the government.”

“North Korean politicians,” Hennessey muttered as she clicked the television off. “Everyone knows they’re lying because they’re speaking.”

At half past two, she made her way downstairs and ducked outside for some fresh air. Reporters and journalists carrying huge expensive camera equipment were arriving. Nobody seemed to recognise her, probably because she was a late addition to the balloon team. Anyhow, anonymity suited her right now because in about thirty minutes the whole world would know her.

“How would you like to be famous worldwide?”

Samuel Doe, Director of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Centre, tilted back in his chair spinning a biro in his fingers. His phone was ringing but he ignored it. “I have a special assignment for you in Britain, if you’re interested?”

She’d always dreamed of working for NASA, even as a child. She had first studied for a Bachelor of Science degree in Physical Science, then went on to do her Masters. Next came the training, which was dynamic, challenging and time-consuming, pushing her beyond the limits of her own capability. Each learning domain was integrated; cognitive strategies, verbal information and intellectual skills; assessing and challenging the pilot through computer-based training, distance and data knowledge, theory-based instruction and aircraft simulation. She passed, passed, passed consistently.

Her only regret was that her father didn’t approve of her career at NASA. He couldn’t understand why she would want to risk her life testing aircraft when she should have been settling down with a nice family of her own. Aside from their old-fashioned prejudices on love, family and commitments, both of her parents were devout Catholics attending mass every morning, talking about and trusting in the afterlife.

“You know, the fear of God is the foundation of wisdom,” her father said repeatedly. It was his life-long phrase.

Hennessey would sigh, losing count of how many times he had said that to her over the years, even though in some recess of her mind she understood his point.

“Every time I test-fly new aircraft, Pop, I’m closer to God than anyone in the world and trust me, I always fear him.”

Hennessey’s world was turned upside down a week after her birthday. She had been going over flight statistics with a colleague when an urgent call had been put through to her office. Within an hour of the call, she’d been excused from work and was being taken in a specially assigned helicopter to an abandoned airfield in the western part of the Nevada Desert. A dozen light aircraft filled with search and rescue volunteers were preparing to take off, lined up one behind another in an unplanned formation. In addition, two Kiowa and two Black Hawk helicopters from the Nevada National Guard were there. The heat and humidity of the afternoon was unpleasant and with the pervasive smell of hot, electrical equipment inside the helicopter, which was not air-conditioned, Hennessey felt like throwing up. She leapt off the helicopter platform and walked hurriedly towards a cluster of people mulling over a large map strewn across the wing of a private airplane. The map had been divided into grids and showed the desert in light brown, the rugged mountain range in a slightly darker shade.

“Have they been found yet?” Hennessey interrupted, her eyes shifting from one person to the next.

One man pointing at the map craned his neck and eyed her before turning to face her. “Not yet. Sorry, you are?”

“Jen Hennessey, it’s my parents who are missing. Can you tell me what happened?”

“We believe their aircraft went down somewhere to the west about three hours ago. Unfortunately, they chose not to file a flight plan, although they were tracked some of the way. We have an extensive aerial search looking as we speak, so…”

He explained that the plane had taken off from an airport in Illinois and had climbed into the air flying to the southwest, crossing Iowa and Nebraska. Over the state of Colorado the plane had turned northwest, flying at low altitude over Utah following a path towards California before disappearing somewhere in the Nevada Desert. There had been no report of distress and no eyewitnesses, only radio silence to base judgment.

“I want to go up in one of those helicopters and help with the search.”

The man who appeared to be in charge shook his head. “I’m sorry, I ca–”

“I wasn’t asking,” she said calmly. “I’m a NASA research pilot and I know I could be of some use.”

The man’s bottom lip jutted forward and he folded his arms. “Fair enough. You can join the BH crew.”

From his belt he fished out a handheld radio and paced slowly away from the group, muttering something indistinct to someone he seemed to know. He spun sharply, returning the radio to his belt. “Over there,” he told her, motioning with a finger to one of the Black Hawks.

Jogging towards the whooping noise of the giant helicopter sitting amid a stir of sand and dust, Hennessey faintly spotted a door slide open and an arm reach out to assist her. As she climbed up, she thought of her father. “The fear of God is the foundation of wisdom.”

After the funeral, a large gathering of people turned up at her parents’ house to pay their final respects. They’d spent their whole lives in Naperville, a mid-sized town spread across thirteen acres just thirty miles west of Chicago in Illinois. The place contained the smell of toast and black coffee, recent. Hennessey left everyone to mourn downstairs and went off on her own to mournfully explore the house, going from room to room to encourage memories.

“Thought I might find you here,” Uncle Hubert said, startling her, his arms held open. “Come here.”

She went to him and welcomed his warm hug. She didn’t cry. It hadn’t yet sunk in.

“You gonna be alright?” he asked.

“Yeah. Just give me a bit more time on my own. I’ll be down shortly.”

“Anything you say, my darling. You know, your mother and father always talked about you. They were so proud of you and they loved you dearly.”

“Yeah, I know.”

All of a sudden, like switching off a light, Hennessey felt in-tolerably lonely. Only one man had shared her life because she didn’t have time for men. Dennis Thatcher was his name and they’d shared a common interest – piloting technically advanced aircraft for their country. While Hennessey committed all her time and effort to NASA, Thatcher was doing the same to become part of the United States Air Force, one of the largest air forces in the world with over six thousand manned aircraft in service. But piloting as a career had never really happened for Thatcher after he’d been asked unceremoniously to leave USAF because of his blatant disregard for military discipline and excessive drinking. After that setback came the jealousy. Hennessey’s career was blossoming and night after night she would return to their house in San Diego to find Thatcher drunk on the couch. At first, she thought it was his way of coping with rejection. But with his drunken behaviour came unconcealed honesty. He’d developed an unshakable conviction that Hennessey had succeeded in her career because of her good looks. It led to accusations of infidelity and that made him even more obnoxious. It boiled down to the fact that Thatcher resented her because she was professionally deft and devoted to her work.

Much of research piloting was concentration, on and off the job, and to Hennessey that meant dealing with fear and anxiety in a solitary manner, which explained why she had always lived alone. Nevertheless, Hennessey had been attracted to Thatcher because his methods were old-fashioned and romantic. Those attributes had long since faded. Now, sitting next to him on the sofa, they talked some but she soon found she was reaching the uncomfortable stage in the evening when the small talk began to run dry and, as an effect of the alcohol Thatcher was consuming, truth began to leak out.

“I’ve been thinking. I’d like you to…I think you should be a housewife. It’d do us both good, I think. That’s just my opinion.”

“Who’s gonna pay the bills? You’re unemployed.”

“I’ll find something. You should be here, taking care of things, and you know, maybe we should think about children.”

Hennessey’s lips tightened around her teeth. “I think we should go our own ways,” she said.

“Why? Who are you sleeping with now?”

“It’s comments like those that are pushing me away. I need time alone right now.”

Thatcher put down his glass. He tried hard to act sober. “If it’s something I’ve done, I can change. I can give up the drink.”

She shook her head silently.

“I see.” He picked up his gin bottle and gulped a load of it down. “I knew your career would come before me.”

“Actually, it’s got nothing to do with my work at NASA.”

“Ah, save it, Jen.”

Staggering out of the house, closing the door forcefully behind him, he shouted something outside in the street but Hennessey didn’t catch it. With her parents deceased and her relationship with Thatcher over, Hennessey immersed herself in her work, putting in overtime, proving she was dedicated to the cause and establishing herself as one of the best, most reliable research pilots at NASA. Samuel Doe had noticed it and she fitted the profile for the mission he had in mind. She had US citizenship, a pass result for the NASA space physical similar to a military or civilian flight physical and the minimum of one-thousand hours of flight time in a jet aircraft as the pilot in command, a target she had far exceeded.

The Dryden Flight Research Centre in California was NASA’s centre for aeronautical flight research and atmospheric operations. Inside DFRC, standing in Samuel Doe’s office, Hennessey listened as the details of her assignment became clear. “In a nutshell, Jen, your mission will involve launching Chandra II into the stratosphere. Will Thorndike has gone to Britain to meet with the project manager of Fable-1 and should be calling me some time tonight. So I will brief you in full in the morning when I have all the details. Come to my office first thing and we’ll discuss it. I realise that flying a balloon is a little different to what you are used to, well, a lot different, but if you’re interested, you’ll be sent to Britain to meet with Brad Sutcliffe and his crew.”

“Okay, I’m intrigued.”

They parted ways. Doe glanced back over his shoulder. “One other thing, Jen. You’ll need to have training in specially modified simulators for every type of emergency or contingency imaginable.”

Hennessey grinned. “Piece of cake.”

“I thought you might say that.”

The mission to the edge of space presented the pilots with a catalogue of dangers. The vacuum of space was an extremely hostile environment. In the stratosphere, breathable air and atmospheric pressures that prevented haemorrhaging were absent. Familiar with such harsh altitudes and changes in environment, Hennessey knew that her experience was going to prove invaluable to the Fable-1 crew and was already looking forward to it.

For Hennessey, standing outside the Moorland Links Hotel, nothing about the day had been right so far. She hadn’t slept well and she was too tired. Her morning coffee had been too weak. The weather outside was far too miserable, the rain too heavy. Right now, the hotel was far too crowded. Nobody from Fable-1 had introduced themselves yet or come to her room to greet her that morning. Nobody had prepared her for the press conference. And now, through her dark sunglasses, she saw a man with a rather big head sprinting towards her fixing his necktie over a crumpled white shirt. The strange man gave her a seedy grin, but she pretended she hadn’t seen it.

Entering the hotel foyer, she made her way to the Chandelier Ballroom as it was where everyone else seemed to be heading and went straight backstage.

Chapter 5

He had the air of someone powerful, someone composed and self- assured. He sat astride his GSX1300R, the engine ticking over slowly, like his pulse. The Suzuki sports bike had not a single sticker on it; the colour was black. He wore a black helmet and a black leather outfit with black boots. His watch was a Rolex. Feeling good about himself as he stared out at the towering wave-lashed cliffs, bays and fishing alcoves, he lifted his visor and sucked in the sea air. For a brief moment the rain stopped, allowing a burst of insipid sunlight to bounce off the local ancient fishing village. Two and a half thousand miles west across the Atlantic Ocean was America and he wondered if he might get the chance to see it from the stratosphere in the space balloon.

Simon Matthews was Brad Sutcliffe’s business partner. He was also Claris Faraday’s older cousin at thirty seven, and today was a crucial turning point in the space flight expedition after the failed attempts of the past few years.

He read his watch, deciding it was time to go and started his engine.

The clock struck right on three when Matthews rocked up at the Moorland Links Hotel, entering the complex with a long wheelie all the way up the driveway to the entrance. Every space in the car park was full, so Matthews parked on a segment of lawn, kicked down the stand on his motorbike, took off his leatherwear and locked them inside the bike’s panniers. Dressed in his suit, he strolled confidently into the hotel to find that everyone had taken their seats in the Chandelier Ballroom. Plenty of time, he thought, as he strolled into the bathroom. He doused his face with cold water and in the mirror saw a short man glide into the bathroom with a cool, smooth rhythm. The small man gave him a polite nod. “Awful day,” he said, slipping down the zip on his jeans at the urinal.

“Yeah,” Matthews replied bluntly.

Shaking water off his hands, he moved to the dryer and was feeding his palms beneath it when he felt someone tap his hip. Turning sharply, he saw the small man standing close by, too close, with an unreadable expression on his face and his hand lingering at the inside pocket of his leather jacket.

“Simon Matthews, right?”

Matthews froze with terror, his heart pumping so hard it felt as though it might put a hole in his chest, conscious to the fact that his life was about to end.

“I don’t want it…to end,” shouted Naomi Millington.

Trousers at his ankles and underpants at his knees, Matthews smiled as he continued to screw this girl over the dishwasher in his kitchen, loving every minute.

“Don’t stop!” she was screaming.

Matthews had enjoyed his fair share of flings with hundreds of women, had even been accused of being a sex addict, but no one quite touched his heart like Naomi. In spite of that, she only went for men with money, serious money, and it had him financially worried. He had already wiped out his savings account and his credit card was in serious trouble. The bank had been leaving him messages.

After sex, Naomi talked about going away for the weekend, but Matthews told her that he couldn’t afford it.

“I understand, we had a good run though, didn’t we?” she said cold-heartedly.

Two days later, the bank approved a thirty-thousand-pound bank loan in his name. Affording the monthly repayments on an Aerodynamics Data Engineering salary would be easy. But from there on his debt only increased; it was the only way he could keep up with Naomi’s expensive lifestyle and ensure that she stayed loyal to him.

Matthews started sleeping with other women to try and get her out of his mind. She was no good for him and he couldn’t go on living so lavishly just to keep her satisfied. But all the other women were nothing compared with Naomi. She was his addiction, his purpose, his queen. Killing her crossed his mind, just to force her out of his life. But he knew he didn’t have it in him. He could pay someone? No, it was getting out of control. She was costing him enough. Maybe he needed help. Murder? What was he thinking?

Determined to put an end to their relationship, Matthews went to visit Naomi, and he arrived just as a man was leaving her house. Before she could close the door, Mathews went straight up to her, honked up a hunk of phlegm and launched it in her face, the venom of his saliva stinging her eyes, like vinegar. Blinded, she tried to slap him but he arched back, turned and hurriedly left fitting his helmet to his head, crossing the road to his motorbike. A brick rebounded off his plastic windshield, splitting it down the middle, while Naomi screamed abuse at him from the road. With a menacing wheel spin, he sped away, shouting profanities into his helmet.

Matthews was invited to give a brief talk on aerodynamics to a class of college students because his old supervisor had turned lecturer and thought it would be inspirational for his students to meet an aerodynamic expert who could give them a firsthand insight into the industry. The class consisted of twelve learners seated in an arc.

“Now, the wonderful thing about aerodynamics is that it’s an engineering science. There are several applications,” Matthews said with his hands dipped into his trouser pockets. “Anyone know what they are?”

“What do you mean, exactly?” A student seated in the centre had his hand up.

“Well, think about it,” he said, standing in the corner of the room. “The diversity of bodies and the atmosphere is huge. For example, aerodynamic decelerators such as parachutes and thrust reversal devices. And how about spacecraft? Micro air vehicles to hypersonic wave riders.”

A man on the end had his hand raised. He was a fairly hand-some chap, a little older than Matthews. “Can you tell us about lighter than air vehicles, such as balloons?”

“Mm-hmm, a good example. Sorry, what is your name?”

“Brad, Brad Sutcliffe.”

“Well, Brad, to name airships, blimps, balloons and aerostats is to name just a few. A cubic foot of air weighs roughly an ounce. Heat that by about thirty seven degrees Centigrade and it weighs about seven grams less. You do the maths. A single cubic foot of air contained in a hot-air balloon can lift seven grams, which isn’t a great deal. That’s why hot-air balloons are so large. The more heated air, the more weight they can lift.”

“That explains why my gran wears such large underpants,” one of the students joked.

A few laughed, others concentrated on taking down notes in their pads.

“Is there a scientific limit on, say, height and size of a balloon?” Sutcliffe asked.

“Most balloons are about one hundred thousand cubic feet, but they have been known to go six times that. That said, as long as the material is strong enough, you can go bigger. Ripstop nylon and polyethylene terephthalate are the most common materials used in modern ballooning.”

After class, Matthews saw Sutcliffe limping on crutches to his car and ran to catch him up. “Interested in ballooning then?”

Sutcliffe threw the crutches into his car and slammed the boot down. “You could say that.”

“My expertise is more paperwork based, more on the analysing of data and the scientific aspect of aerodynamics, but if you want to get into ballooning as a hobby, I have a mate who runs his own ballooning business.”

“Actually, I used to go often.”

“Oh, right. What brings you here to study?”

“Well, to be honest, I’m planning an expedition which I’m hoping will change the way people see the world.”

The wheels in Matthews’ brain started turning. Intrigued, he invited Sutcliffe out for a drink and listened all night long to his idea. The only thing delaying the project was a lack of finance and a crew, Sutcliffe said. Matthews was an opportunist, someone who thought in terms of achievement and self-interest, and by the end of the night he had decided he wanted to be part of the team. The royalties from interviews, chat shows, books, documentaries, would never end.

The following day, he called Sutcliffe and told him not to worry about the money, he had it and would fund the project, provided he could join the balloon crew. Sutcliffe, short on options, agreed.

Matthews paid a visit to his bank manager in town, explaining that he was planning to invest money in a unique project and that he needed a large sum of money to do so. The bank manager led him through a series of routine questions to determine his eligibility. “I regret to inform you that your application for a bank loan has been declined,” he said.

“What?” Matthews thumped his fist down hard on the desk, dislodging some paperwork from an in-tray. “Why?”

The manager was shocked. “Um, I’m sorry, but you’ve been blacklisted for failing to make repayments on your loan.”

Matthews shook his head. “I don’t care what your computer says. I need that money.”

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”

He harangued the bank manager for the best part of thirty minutes, eventually shouting abuse and storming out in front of a queue of baffled customers. He went straight to a rogue lender, knowing that although they would extort large sums of interest from him, they would give him what he needed. “You want us to help you,” said Kate Cornish, proprietor of Cornish Financial Services in the heart of London. She locked her fingers together in a ball and rested her chin on top, leaning forward. “Tell me why.”

“You’ll be investing in me as I’ll be investing in a project,” he began with confidence. “The project will be televised around the world and I’ll become famous overnight. Have you ever dated anyone famous?”

She didn’t look impressed.

Matthews explained the space balloon project to her and went through each stage of the operation. “Through publicity, we will make an absolute fortune and making the repayments will be a cinch.”

“So, what you’re saying is that our investment will make you a wealthy man?” With a face like stone, she made calculations and made a decision. “Alright, a sum of your choice at sixty percent interest.”

Matthews shook on it, then signed on it.

The date was set. The setting St. Ives in Cornwall. In the meantime, Matthews ensured that he made consistent monthly payments on time while Sutcliffe put the money into effect. He had hired a man named Keith Burch to design the balloon and Matthews was none too happy that the designer was joining them on the space flight. He lacked flight experience and had no need to be there. Burch had blackmailed his way in, refusing to build the balloon unless he joined the crew. Sutcliffe said he was looking for a fourth crew member and was going to advertise for someone fit, experienced in ballooning and proficient with cameras and technology.

“Don’t bother, I have just the person,” said Matthews. He introduced his cousin, Claris Faraday, and then they were four.

In June, as the handpicked crew of Fable-1 prepared to write a new chapter in aviation history, the small launch window waned when bad weather prevented the launch. High winds had ruptured the polyethylene material and forced them to postpone. They had to wait another year. The second time round, the weather had been ideal; glorious sunshine and no wind. As the final few hours to liftoff counted down, with the Fable-1 helium balloon set up and partly inflated, more disappointment rocked the crew. The balloon was leaking. At first, Matthews and Sutcliffe thought the main valve had come open by mistake. Perhaps someone had tripped it. As it turned out, the balloon had torn at the seam. The following year, the weather had been peculiar and unfavourable cloud cover posed the risk of tons of ice forming on the balloon, jeopardising their safety, delaying them day after day until the weather window vanished altogether.

Matthews had been failing to make repayments on his loan as of late and Kate Cornish was sending collectors to remind him of his mounting debt, making threats as a tool for intimidation. Matthews turned to drugs; amphetamines during the day and strong sleeping pills at night, only feeling right when under their angelic spells. It took away all the stress and all the problems associated with debt. That day, when two collectors turned up at his home and forced their way in, he’d just stepped out of the shower and had put on a t-shirt when a tight hand whipped around his neck and shoved him into the wall.

“The money?” the thug growled, his lips drawn back revealing his sharp teeth.

“I need a little more…time,” he managed. “We…we launch the balloon next month. Gimme four weeks, I’ll have it…for you.”

While one of the hooligans smashed up his house, the other reached inside his pocket and Matthews looked down at a Bowie knife with an eight-inch broad blade pointing at his belly.

In the bathroom at the Moorland Links Hotel, as he stood opposite the short man whose hand was poised at his pocket, Matthews realised his life was in danger. His face turned to a veil of horror. Never had he seen the man before, he would have remembered him. But he surely represented Cornish Financial Services. Was there a blade in his pocket? A pistol?

“No, I’m not Simon Matthews,” he lied in a desperate attempt to spare his life. “You must have me mixed up with someone else.”

Matthews reached into his own jacket pocket where he had a concealed weapon of his own, an antique Black Prince dagger. If he could just reach it in time, he could defend himself.

The man persisted. “It’s you.”

“Look, I said I would get you the fucking money.”

Matthews watched the man pull out a silver weapon, realising that he had hold of a dictaphone. The reporter stood confused. “I just wanna ask you a few questions about the flight.”

Matthews went from panic to surprise, then relief to anger. “Get out of here, man.”

As the reporter walked out, cursing under his breath, Matthews waited for his pulse to settle, his entire body trembling. Once calm, he made his way to the Chandelier Ballroom where Brad Sutcliffe, Claris Faraday, Keith Burch and Jen Hennessey awaited his late arrival.

Chapter 6

The lights in the Chandelier Ballroom dimmed smoothly while rolling cameras followed the crew of Fable-1 out onto the stage, TV lights illuminating their profiles. Loud, unsettling applause and the whir of cameras erupted from the surplus of over one hundred journalists.

On the soundproofed wall behind the stage was a large screen dissolving a collection of images into one another at five-second intervals. Images included the NASA Insignia, Fable-1 printed in white letters set against a burgundy rectangle of background and an artist’s sketch of the balloon at target altitude with a background of black infinite space. When the crew took their seats, the Fable-1 logo filled the screen and there it stayed. Taking the centre chair, Brad Sutcliffe looked into the audience at a number of faceless human silhouettes while Simon Matthews and Keith Burch claimed seats on his right, Jen Hennessey and Claris Faraday to his left.

“Good afternoon,” Sutcliffe began, adjusting the table-mounted microphone to reach his mouth.

Sutcliffe and Matthews had jointly decided against a litany of presentations with follow-up discussions because they’d taken that approach for the past three years and the media was becoming increasingly bored with it.

Not one to dither, Sutcliffe got straight into it. “I’m sure you’re all hoping for a story this year. Believe me, you’re not the only ones.”

When the laughter faded, he touched on a more serious note. “Things are quite different this year. As you may have heard, NASA is involved with the project. A lot more time and money has been invested and, all things considered, we’re in much better shape than in previous years.”

A reporter chewing on a wad of gum rose slowly to his feet and aimed a finger at Hennessey. “Who’s the new pretty addition and what’s her phone number?”

There were a few sordid whistles from the crowd. Hennessey’s comely figure had attracted a lot of attention. Sutcliffe glanced at the American, expecting her to blush. She didn’t and her face was a picture of concentration. The reporter, despite his impertinence, had posed a good question. Who was she? Sutcliffe had only found out about her ten months earlier and he had only met her ten minutes ago. Although she represented the company that had salvaged the project from early retirement, it had occurred to him that the highly acclaimed research institute she worked for was planning to steal the limelight.

Ten months ago, Will Thorndike had contacted Sutcliffe to inform him that NASA Headquarters had agreed to subsidise the balloon mission into space to promote space projects and to encourage people around the world, not just within the US, to take part in science and astronomy projects. Prolonged failure had dulled their determination to fulfil the flight, but NASA had changed that. Then Sutcliffe and his crew had been persuaded – Sutcliffe would call it blackmailed – to launch a scientific experiment on NASA’s behalf while in the stratosphere. Clearly NASA was looking to share the headlines in the news.

Sutcliffe had arrived at F1 Mission Control Base to meet with Thorndike, a broad-shouldered man with tidy, greyish hair and a square jaw. He was dressed in a grey suit and was brandishing a gold cigarette.

Sutcliffe approached from behind. “Mr Thorndike?”

Thorndike swivelled, exhaling a breath of smoke that curved around his face and disintegrated in the breeze.

“Ah, Brad,” the American responded in a broad, Texan accent. He shook Sutcliffe’s hand with a firm grip. “I’m a very busy man, so let’s get straight down to business, shall we?”

“Okay, why don’t we–”

“Let’s talk inside,” Thorndike interrupted. “Goddamn freezing out here, last thing I need is pneumonia, or frigging frostbite.”

Sutcliffe’s smile was humourless. NASA had poured a stack of US dollars into the project and he wanted the money to stay there. He showed the Texan into the workshop below the Flight Control Room where the balloon was kept and where they would not be interrupted.

“You know, our aim is to expand opportunities for Americans, and the British of course, and whoever else for that matter, to learn about and participate in NASA’s aeronautics and space programs by supporting and enhancing science, engineering, and assisting in research,” Thorndike explained. “We aim to integrate research with education to help build a diverse, scientifically literate workforce that isn’t only citizenry, but well-organised science and technology.”

Thorndike walked a few paces, bent down and picked up a discarded ratchet, tossed it up in the air and caught it by the handle. Then did it again.

“Fair enough,” Sutcliffe replied, flapping his hand across his face to clear the smoke Thorndike had trailed. “We have every int–”

“My point is…” he interrupted, “this mission of yours to the edge of space must succeed. And I emphasise the word must. Failure is bad for our reputation. Do you catch my drift?”

“I do, but I assure you that we have no intention of failing.”

Sutcliffe noticed his words coming out quickly, determined not to be cut short again. “We’ve put a lot of time and effort into this project, have faith in us. We won’t let NASA down, I promise you that.”

With his hands behind his back now, Thorndike strode a few paces and turned sharply, the cigarette clamped in his lips, smoke fogging over his face. “I don’t think you’re quite catching my drift, Brad. What do you know of Chandra?”

“Chandra? I have no idea what Chand–”

“Chandra is a telescope that we have been using in astronomy. It reads different regions of the X-ray spectrum. The first Chandra revolutionised low-energy X-ray observation and we’re hoping to do that once again in the high energy region. But Chandra is very expensive to run. The new prototype is fifty times more sensitive than previous versions, much smaller and less costly than the first Chandra and it will fill in the blanks where Chandra missed. We call it Chandra II, or Chandra Junior.”

Mixed with articulated opinions, Sutcliffe went to voice one of them, but stopped himself.

Speaking slowly, Thorndike went on. “When the balloon carrying the X-ray telescope is released into the stratosphere, an aluminium master cylinder polished very smooth and electroplated with shiny nickel will start the collection process. When the rod cools, the nickel pops off as an extremely thin, perfectly smooth mirror shell. Their extremely smooth inner surfaces reflect X-rays at shallow angles and focus the rays onto a teeny detector. The most focussed high-energy X-ray images ever seen before are the final result. In a nutshell, Brad, Chandra II is a telescope that will study the spectrum of space. This telescope will be released from your balloon when you reach your target altitude and it’s vital to NASA’s research. So you see, now, why this mission cannot fail.”

Sutcliffe didn’t have the first idea about astronomy and being suddenly accountable for an expensive telescope without experience disgruntled him. “Like I said, we have no intention of failing.”

Thorndike bounced his head in acknowledgment. “That’s very pleasing to hear.”

“Of course, we’ll need training with Chandra II so we know exactly how to handle it. The gondola on the balloon may need to be modified to accommodate it. We’ll need to assess its size and weight and work out exactly how we are going to administer the tool.”

“Firstly, it’s not a tool, Brad. It is a highly advanced X-ray observatory worth multi-millions of dollars.” Thorndike looked irritated. “Secondly, nobody from your crew will be responsible for Chandra II. One of our top NASA research pilots will accompany you on your mission.”

“Meaning no disrespect, Mr Thorndike, he may be a successful NASA pilot, but how many balloons has he–”

“She, not he, has over one thousand hours of flight experience. She is well-trained and vastly skilled. I assure you, she comes highly recommended.”

A camera flash seared Sutcliffe’s eyes and left a white smudge on his vision. When it passed, he gestured the question to the American. “I will let Miss Hennessey explain who she is. Jen?”

“I’m here to oversee the successful launch of Chandra II.”

The same reporter shrugged. “Sorry, love, I don’t know what Chandra II is.”

She went into details of her role and responsibility, explaining that part of the mission centred on the launch of NASA’s X-ray telescope, Chandra II. As a condition of investment, NASA had requested use of the balloon to release the new telescope as part of a new experiment in monitoring the heated beams licking at black holes and supernova remnants. When she finished speaking, several hands shot into the air. The press wanted to know more about Chandra II. They wanted to know how much it was costing NASA and why they hadn’t manufactured a helium balloon of their own. Why NASA were supporting a project of that kind, given the fact that the company liked to do things alone. Back to the Fable-1 project, reporters particularly speculated on the failure two years ago when, just hours before the launch, the seam tore open. They noted that if the balloon couldn’t withstand the placidness of land, it wouldn’t cope with the hostile regions of the upper atmosphere.

Matthews pointed to a bald man sitting near the front of the stage. “This is your fourth attempt in as many years. What makes you so sure you will be successful this time?”

“We’re not. But we have learnt from our mistakes. Two years ago, everything had been going to plan but, as you know, we had to cancel at the last minute because of a twist in the envelope. As a result, the seam split because the helium came under immense pressure. Although we managed to fix it, we had problems getting more helium and consequently we lost the opportunity because of low pressure in the atmosphere. And that really pissed me off.”

Some of the crowd found Matthews funny. Others attacked him with hardhearted questions. “What about three years ago?” another reporter called out, somewhere to the right. “Explain that.”

“Again, we had technical difficulties,” he replied.

“You mean the balloon material split again?”

Matthews shuffled his feet in agitation. “There was a rupture, not in the seam, but in the envelope itself and the balloon deflated. I think it’s fair to say that we’ve been pretty unlucky. Last year, we were on the verge of giving up altogether when NASA contacted us with this sponsorship proposal. With NASA’s financial help and professional input, we’re ready for the challenge, more than we’ve ever been. All we need now is a good weather forecast.”

“What will the environment up there be like and are you prepared if something goes wrong?” another reporter yelled from the back of the room.

Sutcliffe took that one. “We’ll be approximately twenty five miles above the Earth’s surface, above ninety nine percent of the Earth’s atmosphere where pressure is one hundred and fifty times less than at sea level, literally on top of the sky,” he explained. “The stratosphere air temperatures remain relatively constant until we reach the target altitude where it gradually increases to reach a maximum temperature of around minus four or five degrees Centigrade in a virtually airless atmosphere. The low air pressure is enough to make blood boil instantly. Four years ago, the Russians supplied us with pressurised spacesuits and kindly assisted us with our training. NASA has injected money, which has gone into building a stronger, safer balloon. If there’s a problem with the balloon after launch, we’ll detach the gondola from the envelope and parachute back to Earth. We’ll also be equipped with reserve parachutes attached to our spacesuits in the unlikely event we need to abandon the gondola. Otherwise, we’re prepared for every eventuality we may encounter, as we have been in previous years.”

“What happens if the helium in the balloon expands too much when you’re high up in space? Won’t the balloon pop?”

“The balloon is designed to leak so it maintains equilibrium with the outside air. Otherwise, yes, the pressure build-up would explode the balloon.”

Both Claris Faraday and Keith Burch were infinitely more com-fortable speaking publicly with only a handful of media. Before a large crowd, they equally succumbed to nervousness and were worried about saying the wrong thing. That was why they’d both been relieved when Sutcliffe and Matthews had offered to do all the talking. Faraday had avoided any discussion about her involvement so far, but she knew it was only a matter of time before that changed. Sutcliffe and Matthews were co-captains communicating progress to Ground Control and Matthews was the flight expert. Burch would monitor navigation and GPS tracking and he was the balloon’s craftsman and Hennessey was NASA’s responsibility.

“Miss Faraday,” a reporter called out. Camera lights blasted on her and the heat made her sweat. Slowing her breathing to slow her thumping heart, she braced herself while the man stood up. “Is your role to be the same as last year, with the cameras?”

Throat dry, she coughed to clear it, her fist covering her mouth, then pulled up her cardigan sleeves. “It is, yes, although…when we reach an altitude of about fifty to sixty thousand feet, where we can’t be seen from the ground, I’ll be setting off black smoke bombs to indicate our position.”

Faraday’s mind went blank for a second, forgetting the initial question, before she remembered and was able to continue. “Once we’ve settled at float altitude and the balloon has expanded to full size, I’ll release a camera and microwave transmitter. NASA has supplied us with a miniature version of the solar-wing similar to the Helios, which will carry the camera. The images will be broadcast live to F1 Mission Control Base in St. Ives, Cornwall, and live across the world.”

“How do you feel about this year’s launch?”

“I’m quite confident, actually. We have a qualified crew and having a NASA research pilot with us can only be beneficial.”

Sutcliffe thanked the media for coming and asked if anyone had any more questions. Most asked legitimate, relevant questions. A few were cynics who wanted to stir the pot a little and get reactions. Regardless, Sutcliffe, always the total professional, answered all the questions with respect. His replies never wavered and he never lost his composure, always dictating the momentum and attitude of the discussion.

After the press conference, the Fable-1 crew congregated in the small function room at the back of the Chandelier Ballroom where refreshments had been provided.

“That went pretty well,” said Matthews.

Sutcliffe pushed open a window to allow fresh air in. Engines wailed as media vans tussled for an exit from the car park amid a maze of congestion.

“You think?” said Hennessey. “Sounds to me like they think it will fail again, if you want my opinion.”

Faraday stretched, surprised how tense she had been during the conference. “They would love nothing more than to see us fail again.”

Staring out of the window, Sutcliffe picked out his car sitting lonesome now that the car park had almost emptied. He saw Martin was napping with his forehead pressed against the glass. Outside, it continued to drizzle and the heat inside the room had put a smear of condensation on the windows. Gazing out at the gloomy day, lost in thought, he suddenly realised that everyone in the room was looking at him.

“I’m sorry, what?”

Matthews huffed. “I asked you how you thought the conference went.”

Obviously most journalists felt they were being overconfident, overambitious and very unrealistic. Nevertheless, public criticism, Sutcliffe thought, might just benefit them. Pessimism drew public attention, especially something as daring as flying a balloon to the top of the sky. In fact, the more people expected failure, the more famous the flight would become with success. The only downside was if NASA thought the expedition would tarnish the research institute with a bad name and withdrew the sponsorship money.

“Okay,” Sutcliffe replied. And that was all he said.

Chapter 7

St. Ives in Cornwall was known for its cobblestoned streets, quaint cottages and artistic traditions. Tourists flocked in their thousands to indulge in romance and adventure, sapping up clean air, spotless beaches and coastal walks, not to mention the old galleries, gardens, craft shops and exhibitions. With a population of six thousand, give or take, St. Ives was popular, but not famous. After next month’s balloon launch, however, the seaside town would be popular and famous.

The clouds had run out of rain, the storm had moved elsewhere and the F1 Mission Control Base was being baked in a glorious, tangerine-coloured sunset. Located on the cliff-top less than half a mile from St. Ives bay, the base was built to be a model of gracefully responsible design, but the building Jen Hennessey was staring at didn’t seem like a place that represented air travel whatsoever. It looked more like a cross between a fairytale palace and a waste recycling centre.

Sitting in the passenger seat of Sutcliffe’s car, Hennessey was feeling dizzy. The heaters were on full punch and the car was a stew of heat. She wound down the window and took a deep breath of air. Sutcliffe’s son, a little strange and none too graced with civility, fidgeted on the back seat, one hand yanking on the seatbelt draped over his shoulder, the other toying with a small JVC video camera. Hennessey didn’t pay much attention to him, but stared at the pointed roof and the enormous smoked windows lining the granite walls of the Mission Control Base, which was built into a steep hill. Perfectly manicured lawns surrounded the slate walkway and the entire area was fenced off from the public with security systems monitoring the joint.

In the forty five minutes it had taken to drive from the Moorland Links Hotel in Plymouth to the F1 Mission Control Base in St. Ives, Sutcliffe had learnt a lot about Jen Hennessey. She had never smoked, drank little and didn’t like to pollute her body with anything detrimental to her health. She lived alone at her parents’ house in Illinois but rarely spent any time there because of her commitments to NASA. She was unmarried, still single and career-driven. Orphaned, she said. Happy, she lied.

“It looks more like Disneyland,” Hennessey commented.

“You’re not the first to say that,” Sutcliffe said, laughing softly. “Come on, I’ll show you inside.”

She nodded to Sutcliffe, who turned to speak to his son on the back seat. “Martin, wait here, we won’t be long.”

Martin didn’t take his eyes off his camera and acknowledged with a single nod.

As they neared the small building, Hennessey observed the environment and was reasonably impressed with the location. They passed through a metal gate and arrived at the building entrance. A frosted glass door slid open, obeying Sutcliffe’s electronic key-card. A second sliding door revealed a small foyer. When it opened, Hennessey noted that, as peculiarly unique as the building’s exterior was, its interior was equally as extraordinary. The main foyer was elliptical with grey carpets and black leather sofas pressed up against the wall, very sleek. At a high desk sat the receptionist. A message had been left for Sutcliffe, she mentioned, holding up a post-it-note with a phone number he should call and a name he didn’t know. “Andy…? Andy…?”

“The plumber?” she reminded. “You asked him to come and check the leak in the men’s toilet yesterday, remember?”

“Yes, right, thanks. Any other messages?”

“No, none.”

Hennessey learnt that the small building had been built in the shape of a T, though its exterior shape didn’t seem to reveal that. The narrow corridor passed doors on either side and at the end was the Flight Control Room. Inside, Sutcliffe saw Mission Commander, Mike Townsend, sitting alone at a computer. When he saw them enter the room, Townsend wheeled his chair back from his terminal, peeled off his headset and walked over. “You must be the American everyone’s been talking so much about?”

Townsend took Hennessey’s hand in his and softly kissed it. He seemed down-to-earth and she could tell by his firm grasp that he was no stranger to hard manual work. His medium-length hair was stuck down with spray and his moustache, like his hair, had been meticulously clipped and shaped.

“Jen Hennessey, and I hope it’s all been good.”

“Naturally. I’ll be supervising all the operations and decisions regarding safety and flight conduct. I guess the role here is much like NASA Mission Control in Houston, only on a much smaller scale. In fact, we have only got four employees working here, myself included. We also have a team of skilled technicians who are responsible for setting up the balloon and retrieving it when it returns. Welcome to F1 Mission Control Base.”

“Thank you.”

“How’s the wife?” Sutcliffe asked.

“Bending the ear, as usual.”

“And how’s the little one?”

“Bending the other ear. She has one healthy set of lungs. And we both know who she gets that from.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, mate.”

Townsend laughed and put his fists up into a boxing posture. “Don’t listen to this one, Jen. He’s a menace to society.”

Back in the corridor, Sutcliffe took Hennessey to the beginning of a deep, spiral staircase that led to the ground floor beneath the Flight Control Room. The graceful curves of the staircase drew the eye downward.

“What’s down there?” asked Hennessey.

“That’s the workshop. It’s where we store the balloon. I’ll show you.”

Located on the ground level, etched into the hill, the workshop seemed like any other with its open plan, open rafters and the smell of motor oil and creosote strong in the air. It was full of complex tools, balloon spare parts and tons of polyethylene material. The main doors ran on state-of-the-art electric rollers that went upwards in curving metal tracks.

“So, what do you think so far?”

Whatever she had been expecting, the atmosphere at the F1 Mission Control Base was eminently civilised. Opinions contrasting, her first impression that it was too modern and a little eccentric for her taste; all glass, angles and fancy architecture that didn’t appear to fit at all with its function. Otherwise, the location, organisation, and preparedness all met with her approval. “It probably takes a bit of getting used to.” She looked at an enormous trailer with a tarpaulin dressed over it, a V-shaped tow bar poking out. “Is the gondola beneath that?”

“Yes. On launch day, it will be towed by truck out of the workshop and set up on the cliff where the envelope will be injected with helium.”

Nailed to the wall above the balloon trailer, Hennessey spotted the Fable-1 logo, the same one she’d seen at the conference on the projector screen. “What does Fable-1 stand for?”

“First Aeronautic Balloon Launch Expedition, that’s the name we gave to the balloon.”

“Hmmm, interesting. Just one thing concerns me though,” she said, turning to face Sutcliffe. “The press talked a lot this afternoon about your past failures.”

“They always do.”

“Right. So where do we stand this year?”

“Well, there were some deficiencies found in the balloon when we did tests in February, but they have all been rectified. We’re still waiting for the helium we ordered weeks ago from an independent supplier, but we’ll have that before the launch. The only thing that will delay or prevent the flight is bad weather and forecasters are predicting a hot summer, so we should be alright. Why don’t I show you the White Room, if that doesn’t impress you, nothing will.”

In the far corner of the workshop, they came to a large elevator with a keypad embedded in the metal panel. Sutcliffe stuck in a code and watched the doors pull apart. The bottom half of the elevator featured zinc-coated steel with baked enamel, whereas the top half dazzled with shiny mirrors and Hennessey observed the lines under her tired eyes in the reflection. Under the spell of jetlag, her mind was trying to put her body to sleep.

The elevator descended a single level thirty feet beneath the workshop. When the doors opened, they were in a small lobby facing a large, steel door with a thick handle. It opened a foreboding, unlit room. Sutcliffe flicked a switch and fluorescent lights sputtered into life. The room, longer than it was wide, was the size of a squash court with white tiled flooring, a white ceiling and brick walls that were unpainted. A stepladder was set up over two cans of white paint.

“As you can see, the room is still being redecorated. It should be done by launch day, if the decorator gets his arse in gear. Feel free to have a look around.”

The White Room was no ordinary room, but there was nothing extraordinary about it either. No electronic gadgets, the furniture sparse and the tone of decoration bland. A place for changing, for discussing strategy, for privacy and for preparation, much like a sports changing room with its polished, wooden benches bordering the wall on the left and the wall at the back. There were two toilets annexed to the wall on the right. The ceiling was vaulted, the walls a prison of thick cinderblock and there were no windows, making the room impregnable. In the far corner was a large utility cupboard stocked with forty pressurised and capped oxygen tanks on racks. The cupboard was climate-controlled to prevent the tanks from over -heating. An enormous glass display cabinet pushed against the wall stored six Russian spacesuits.

“Very impressive. You know how to make an impact on a girl.”

“Tell that to my ex-wife. She left me for an animal doctor.”

Hennessey laughed, though she didn’t mean to. “I’m sorry. It’s just…nothing.”

“What?”

“She obviously likes a caring man.” She continued to snigger.

“I’m caring. See, I care that you’re laughing at me.”

“I’m only joking. I can tell you’re a very sensitive man, deep down.”

Sutcliffe smiled, but he got to thinking. The mission to the edge of space was the only thing he really cared about. After a bad marriage and an even worse divorce, Sutcliffe had lost his appetite for relationships, immersing himself in a project that was time-consuming and mind-distracting. Nothing else had any real importance in his life, not even his son, if he was honest. His obsession with ballooning was like a drug addiction. Every penny he had went into it, he neglected his friends and family, he didn’t sleep enough and he often looked tired and withdrawn. Snapping out of thought, he killed the lights, closed the door to the White Room and they returned to the workshop via the elevator, crossed the workshop to where the staircase began, climbed to the top, walked the length of the corridor and stopped in a room furnished as a small kitchen.

“Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee, thanks. Better make it a strong one.”

He pointed to a door on the opposite side of the corridor. “Take a seat in my office. We can talk more there.”

The desk in Sutcliffe’s small but cosy office dated back to the days of Queen Victoria. The furniture was a far cry from the eccentric architecture of the F1 Mission Control Base with all its twirls and curls. Hennessey presumed the modest office design correlated with Sutcliffe’s modest personality. He had managed to personalise the office with a few oil paintings and some photographs of his son. He spent much of his time installed behind his Macintosh conducting hours upon hours of research, writing emails and doing general admin duties. Friends criticised him for being antisocial, but he didn’t see it that way.

Sutcliffe entered the room carefully juggling two cups of boiling coffee, set them down on his desk, pulling his red hot fingers away, then sat opposite Hennessey.

“I must apologise for not meeting you before the conference. Things have been a bit hectic these last few weeks.”

“That’s okay,” she replied calmly. “But someone should have at least acknowledged me beforehand.”

“I did try to call you at the hotel and I left a message with the receptionist for you to contact me. I assume you didn’t get it.”

Hennessey remembered the phone had rung when she’d been in the bath, but she had been disinclined to answer it. “Let’s just forget about it, shall we?”

Sutcliffe nodded. “So, where exactly are you from in the States?”

She blew at the wisps of steam curling from her cup before taking a sip. “Born in Sullana in Peru, but lived my youth in Illinois with my parents. These days I spend most of my time at the base in California, not too far from L.A.”

“Quite a change for you, isn’t it? Going from high-speed jets to balloonist?”

“Not really. My objective is to carry out research on the stratosphere, something I can’t do from an X-43A scramjet.”

“Do you have any questions?”

Sutcliffe’s voice was sincere and she found herself studying him, liking him, respecting him. “I haven’t given it too much thought, to be honest.”

There was a brief silence, just the sound of coffee being slurped, until Hennessey broke it when she decided to talk to Sutcliffe about her mission. Engrossed by the American, her way, her voice, her mannerism, her peculiar but soothing accent, something in her eyes hit him right in the gut. He hadn’t thought about it until now, just how beautiful she was.

“Tell me about your training,” she insisted.

The training? Where to start? Sutcliffe, Matthews, Burch and Faraday had all flown to Moscow to join the ATLAS Aerospace company to train as ‘Space Tourists’ a while back. The intensive course specialised in space training, final countdown preparations and ground-based, complex space simulators. The crew had been fortunate enough to spend two days at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre thirty seven miles northeast of Moscow using the same simulators used by cosmonauts to prepare for space travel. They had also performed a work session in the Hydrolab under-water facility used to prepare cosmonauts for spacewalks.

“We enrolled at the ATLAS Aerospace company in Moscow four years ago.”

“Four years ago? Have you done any refresher courses since then?”

“No, we just haven’t had the funds to go again. We’ve done several parachute jumps, you know, just in case we need to abandon the balloon and most of us have hundreds of flights under our belts. Plus we keep ourselves physically fit with regular exercise and what have you.”

“How about your spacesuits? Have you trained in them?”

“A little, not much.”

“Listen, Brad, have you ever tried tying your shoelace while wearing boxing gloves?”

He frowned. “No.”

“Well, that’s what wearing a spacesuit is like. You’ll be working inside a body-shaped pressurised balloon. A long, inflexible balloon at that. I suggest you practice working in one and encourage your crew to do the same over the next couple of weeks. I’ve trained in zero-gravity conditions, practiced high angle-of-attack manoeuvring, difficult landing flare techniques, and also flying under adverse environmental conditions. But I still have difficulty performing basic tasks in a spacesuit.”

After all his doubts, all his prejudices, Sutcliffe felt reassured having Hennessey on the mission. In the unlikely event of adversity, the research pilot would be a valuable asset to the team.

Part 2

Chapter 8

A sunrise so eloquent and absorbing took on a surreal brilliance, flirting with the Atlantic Ocean on the desolate horizon. Not a breath of wind in the air, the sea calm, just as the weather experts had forecasted.

More than five thousand people had already congregated on the cliffs of St. Ives to watch the historical event. Some spectators had arrived in the early hours of Sunday morning to snag a prime viewing position. People were camped down on the beach and out to sea was a colony of sailboats, fishing trawlers and speedboats. Boat owners had anchored their machines and were out on deck ready to wave and cheer the Fable-1 team on. On land, fathers attended to their children and mobile vendors tempted tourists with muffins, baps and hot drinks. Meanwhile, police officers in lime yellow jackets watched over the excited masses and everybody was out in good spirits.

Two enormous TV monitors were being fed with live images from cameras scattered about the cliff-top where cameramen had judged the perfect spot to snap footage of the event, giving the spectators an alternative view. At various sections of the gondola, technicians were checking and rechecking the weather instruments onboard Fable-1. The helium balloon had been brought out to a marked area long before sunrise prior to the arrival of spectators. Every inch of the balloon’s fabric had been examined for tears and holes. The enormous, red gondola, which had retractable wheels, had also been thoroughly checked for wear. Larger than most cars, it had been designed to accommodate five seats which encircled the perimeter. In the centre, an enormous chest with access points on all four sides accommodated the solar-wing camera equipment, ten pressurised oxygen tanks and NASA’s new project: a cosmic dust collection device attached to a large, deflated balloon. All apparatus were tied down firmly with straps. Despite its size and sturdiness, the gondola was lightweight and could survive in both air and water, if necessary. The ultra-thin polyethylene envelope attached to the enormous gondola was secured to the ground by steel frames mounted in the earth. Manually activated squibs joined the gondola to the frame.

The momentous cliff-top event ran on a live feed into Sutcliffe’s laptop computer connected to satellite internet. Inside the White Room sitting beside Sutcliffe on the bench were Claris Faraday and Jen Hennessey watching the screen in a pensive silence. The launch was not for another hour, but time was moving fast. The time told seven already, the launch scheduled for eight. The tension in the room was visible.

“It doesn’t look like the world’s largest balloon,” Hennessey commented.

Sutcliffe nodded. “When a story this big is represented through the reductive lens of a camera, the image is always translated less effectively.”

Much to Sutcliffe’s disappointment, the White Room had not been painted in time, as promised, and the presence of paint and a stepladder in the middle of their preparation made the expedition seem a touch unready. That was not the only thing that disgruntled him that morning. Just three weeks earlier, NASA had announced a change of plan in the Chandra project. There was to be no Chandra project. The observatory telescope had ‘malfunctioned’ according to Hennessey, passing on the information from her superiors at NASA. Instead, a new project had been approved. The payload: a cosmic dust collector nicknamed Akroid. Akroid, which would be attached to another balloon, would capture cosmic meteoroids whipping about in the stratosphere. It included several xerogel samples strategically placed to capture microscopic meteoroid particles and would be remote controlled through radio frequencies by operators from NASA. That was all Sutcliffe knew about it. Hennessey and Thorndike and just about everyone else he’d spoken to at NASA were being very secretive about the details.

The sudden, inconvenient change had left him peeved. He had been resentful of the Chandra project but had prudently bitten his tongue. Then his opinion changed when he learnt what Chandra II had to offer and after he’d learnt that Hennessey was as nice as she was good-looking. Now his opinion had changed again because the NASA-Hennessey package was causing more trouble than it was worth and last minute modifications to the gondola to accommodate the new project had caused unnecessary stress and cost.

Sutcliffe shut down the power on his computer, folded down the top, picked up his morning newspaper and read the front page. The headlines were about foreign immigrants in Great Britain, as usual, though the words were not registering in his brain. Just letters in combinations. He was thinking what it would be like as soon as they made their way to the balloon outside. Restless, he discarded the paper on the bench. So much was at stake. They were under a lot of pressure. A lot of pressure.

Around the room, the crew used their own rituals to combat nerves. Matthews sat with his back against the wall tapping his foot on the floor in a rhythm. He looked calm and prepared because he relished the celebrity spotlight. Sutcliffe, on the other hand, hated being recognised; the unsought gazes in the street, the finger-pointing, the nitpicking. He disliked people chatting to him as if they knew about every department of his life when they knew nothing at all. While he appreciated the support of strangers, he didn’t feel comfortable with the constant attention. Beside him, Hennessey and Faraday made conversation. They were discussing the cost of domestic flights and fuel tax, comparing prices in their respective countries. Hennessey was nervous about the launch. She had spent most of her career risking her life for the evolution of flight. That did not shake off the images of the three astronauts who perished in a fire that consumed their Apollo 1 spacecraft while it sat atop its launch pad in 1967, the seven crew of the space shuttle Challenger who died in 1986 when it blew up just seventy three seconds after liftoff, the seven STS-107 shuttle astronauts lost in the 2003 Columbia accident when it broke apart during re-entry. Then there were the research pilots who’d died during flight experiments. They were the unsung American heroes killed by the unpredictable forces of nature and because science failed them. Keith Burch was out in the lobby by the elevator chain-smoking cigarettes like no tomorrow, still insisting that he wasn’t nervous when everyone knew that he was. He lit his third cigarette that morning, telling himself that he would wait until it had been smoked, as a further time-wasting device, before going back in.

“Anyone got the time?” Faraday asked.

Matthews glanced at his Rolex watch. “Quarter past seven.”

Sutcliffe had been partnered with Matthews for almost six years now, but still there were times when he considered the man an enigma. An individual, very quiet about his personal life and he seemed to be a man of layers. On the top layer was a man confident, outspoken and indecorous. The lower layers were comprised of anxiety and paranoia and suspicion.

“Does anyone have any headache tablets?” Hennessey asked.

“In the toilet on the left. You will find all sorts in the cupboard,” said Sutcliffe.

“Thanks.”

Hennessey shut the door and opened the toiletry cupboard where she found an assortment of pills for basic ailments, a box of plasters and something for heartburn. She popped two painkillers in her mouth and sunk them with water from the sink. Closing the cupboard door, she saw tucked into the corner of the mirror a picture of Fable-1 inflated during tests. It greatly impressed her. She sat on the toilet and put her head in her hands thinking about her parents. They had always been proud of her. Would they be proud now? She felt uncommonly on edge and scared and cursed herself for succumbing to nerves. After all, she’d flown in countless aircraft at death-defying speeds. What was a balloon flight in comparison? Perhaps that she didn’t have control over the vessel. Yeah, that was it. Fear God and he will take care of you, she told herself.

Burch stepped back into the room, but only for a moment. He stood anxiously, not knowing what to do with his hands, so he popped another cigarette in his mouth and began patting his pockets for his lighter. An arm came over his shoulder holding one and he dipped the cigarette into the fire, turning to see Matthews the person holding it.

“Cheers,” said Burch. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t,” Matthews said, and walked away.

“Haven’t you smoked enough of those this morning?” Faraday complained. “I hate to imagine the state of your lungs.”

Burch shrugged, brushed off the comment and left the room. Sutcliffe was admiring the Russian-made spacesuits hanging in the glass display cabinet. Six suits, made to the specific measurements of the five balloonists, one serving as a spare. The suits comprised several layers, which included polyester structural restraint layers with folded and pleated joints and an anti-abrasion outer layer. Worn beneath the suit was a liquid-cooling and ventilation garment – a one-piece mesh suit made of spandex and zippered for front entry. The garment had water-cooling tubes running through it to keep the wearer comfortable during the flight. The extravehicular communicator attached to the upper portion of the primary life support system at the back of the hard upper torso allowed the crew to talk amongst one another.

Burch and Hennessey returned to the White Room at the same time and Sutcliffe instructed the crew to start getting ready. Nobody spoke as they undressed and hung their clothes on the hooks. The first stage involved putting on the one-piece spandex mesh suit, followed by a unit for the lower part of their bodies containing pants, knee and ankle joints, and lower waist. The boots went on before the metal connect ring joined the upper half of the unit. Upon reaching space, the suits would be pressurised at 4.3 pounds per square inch and the gas in the suit would be one hundred percent oxygen, which was twenty percent more than ground level. The suit was also equipped with an in-suit drink bag filled with 1.9 litres of water with a small tube near the mouth. Around their crotches sat an absorbent diaper designed to collect urine and faeces while the crew worked in the stratosphere. The last piece of equipment fitted to the torso was the primary life support system, which included two primary tanks of oxygen pressurised to 850psi and a secondary oxygen tank for backup, giving the crew a total of fifteen hours of oxygen. Also in the primary life support systems were carbon dioxide scrubbers and filters, four and a half kilos of cooling water, a radio, electrical power, ventilating fans and warning systems. Emergency parachute packs overlapped their life support systems. The helmets, with two mounted EVA headlamps on either side for extreme dark places, completed the spacesuit. Before they fitted their helmets on, visors were rubbed with an anti-fog compound to prevent the build-up of condensation.

The door to the White Room opened and one of the technicians, who had finished preparing the balloon, entered to run a check on their spacesuits. He wished the crew a private good luck, shaking their hands individually and then left again. As soon as he was gone the crew double-checked their equipment and that of the person next to them.

Riding the elevator to ground level, the crew exchanged swift handshakes and wishful words before the workshop door opened upward on its runners and exposed the St. Ives cliff-top overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The early morning sun beat down on their faces through their visors as they walked out onto a red carpet leading all the way to the balloon two hundred feet away. Tight security monitored their route along the carpet cordoned off by chain-wire fencing, keeping the audience back. The first thing they saw as they came up the crest of the hill was the enormous envelope of the balloon swaying in a soft breeze, taller than the Eiffel Tower. The blob of helium pumped into the envelope had floated to the top, pulling the balloon tall and thin, making the Fable-1 logo and NASA’s Insignia plastered across the middle indecipherable.

“There she is,” said Sutcliffe, feeling emotional.

There was an impressive turnout. Fears of failure were allayed by the encouraging cheers of the crowd. Throngs of spectators packed either side of the red carpet applauding their daring heroes. Matthews pegged the attendance at somewhere between seven and eight thousand, thereabout. The balloon itself was cordoned off with rope and a handful of officers who strictly marshalled the area. An inundation of media snapping shots from every conceivable angle provided the large TV monitors with live images. A convoy of satellite vans facing the towering balloon was a further indication of just how much of the world’s attention was upon them.

At eight o’clock, the noise from the crowd dissolved into a mumble of individual conversations. The air was pregnant with anticipation, thousands of eyes locked on the five balloonists strapped into seats on the gondola. Onlookers didn’t know a great deal about the five individuals. They were not celebrities. They were five people who had attracted the world’s attention with a wacky idea. Yet, they had style and assurance and were admirably calm. Sutcliffe watched a light breeze make bends in the balloon. Faraday was also staring up at the giant bulk looming over their heads, approximately thirteen hundred feet tall. 1.7 tons of super-thin polyethylene, only twenty microns thick and thinner than a freezer bag, would allow the helium to expand in altitude. The Russian spacesuits kept their bodies warm in the cool morning air. Five hours later the same spacesuits would keep them safe from bombarding cosmic radiation at the fringe of space.

“Mike, can you hear me?” Sutcliffe spoke with a slow, raised voice through his mouthpiece to F1 Mission Control Base.

There was a sputter in the headset. “Loud and clear. Systems all good, weather is great. Whenever you’re ready. Say hello to God for me.”

“I’ll give him your regards.”

The technicians orchestrated the launch by firing the squibs, which separated the gondola from the frames. At the last moment, Sutcliffe caught a glimpse of his son, Martin, near the front of the crowd pointing a camera at the balloon. He’d forgotten all about the stolen camera. He would deal with that later. In the meantime, he gave his son a friendly farewell wave.

The crew held their breaths as the helium balloon jolted off the cliff-top and whisked them into the air as if a force had just picked them off the land. Within a few seconds, the spectators shrank as the balloon rose at a staggering eight hundred feet per minute. From the gondola, they saw that the crowds extended to nearby roads and right across St. Ives Beach. Traffic around the town appeared to be at a standstill. There were thousands of spectators staring up at the cucumber-shaped silhouette shrinking in the sky. Not far away was an oil tanker passing a few miles out from shore.

Before long, the altimeter read thirty thousand feet, the balloon close to crossing the flight path of commercial jumbos. Faraday surmised that they had reached an altitude close to that of Everest in the Himalayas and briefly thought back to the day she’d met Nick Parsons. She wondered what he was doing right now, if he was thinking about her. Was he watching his TV?

Great Britain had become a land of quadrilateral shapes in the greens and browns of farmland and field, dissected only by snaking roads and narrow country lanes.

“It’s incredible,” Faraday remarked.

Matthews nodded. “It’s moments like this that make you realise why you’re alive.”

At sixty thousand feet, a portion of Britain’s coast could be mapped – the outline of southern Wales, the sharp corner of Lands End, the jagged edge of England’s southern coastline and the Isle of Wight, Faraday’s home. Lakes and rivers and streams and ocean glistened under the sun. Then Mike Townsend’s booming voice exploded from their headsets, interrupting the moment. “You’re faring fine, Fable-1. Remember, there may be strong wind currents in the stratosphere. Be cautious. I will contact you again when you reach float altitude.”

“I’m going to release the black smoke identifiers,” said Faraday. At that stage the balloon would look like a mere black mark in an endless blue sky. She located the remote for the smoke cylinders and pressed the button.

Spectators patiently staring up at the sky began pointing at a speck of expanding black shadow. The crew had just released the smoke from their balloon to pinpoint their location. The live images sent waves of admiration and respect across the globe to more than one hundred countries and those not near a television set were able to witness the live transmission over the Internet.

Chapter 9

“Can I pinch a cigarette?” Trev Gable held out his hand, waiting.

Adam Fraser, the Navigation and Controls Systems Engineer, pulled his earphones off his head and laid them on the desk. “Again? One of these days you’ll buy your own.” He sighed and it seemed to border on a moan. “Suppose you want me to make you tea as well?”

“Cheers, two sugars.”

Gable scuttled out of the Flight Control Room to get some fresh air and some circulation. He’d been working hard analysing data systems. No lunch hour today, just a quick fag break. Lighting the end, he sucked in five consecutive drags, blowing the smoke high into the air. Chatter and noise emanated from the spectators still flooding the cliff-top in their thousands and a youngish couple right in front of him kissed and held hands against the gate to the F1 Mission Control Base. Lucky man, he thought, feeling the downbeat of single life. He’d been single now for way too long. Women just didn’t fancy him. It might have been the unyielding acne on his face or the geeky way he walked. Perhaps his personality didn’t appeal to the modern woman.

Finishing his cigarette, he flicked away the butt and watched it roll through the air and extinguish with a fizz in a puddle.

Returning to the building foyer he saw a fifty-pound note in front of the reception desk. Looking up at the receptionist, who had her head buried in a drawer searching for a stapler, he bent down and picked up the note.

“Finders keepers,” he muttered. Fifty pounds was small change to his fellow colleagues, whoever had been unfortunate enough to drop it. To Gable, it was a small fortune.

Unfortunately, a lack of foresight and discipline had led Gable to debt and he only had best friend, Dell, to blame for it. Dell was his Dimension L600CX computer. Every night he would go home and socialise with his best friend. They would interact for hours, playing games, musing over naked girls, ordering takeaways and leisurely communicating with the world. The computer maestro regarded the Internet as his treasure trove, a tool to make a person more sociable, more knowledgeable, more likeable. His relationship with Dell engulfed every aspect of his life, giving him untold pleasures. And, if used correctly, it would make him rich.

In his mid-teens, Gable had begun to hang out with a crowd at skateboard parks. Everyone in the area was into skateboarding and he soon mastered competent board-slides, kick-turns and ollies, hoping one day to make it his career, even fooling himself into believing it possible. Skateboarding, however, led to unrewarding pay or no pay at all, unless he reached championship level. So he chose a career in computers instead. A degree or a diploma in computing, he realised, was a magical door-opening piece of paper. To be a wizard on a computer, he required the knowledge and the patience, the hallmark of professionalism. Explosive internet growth was dramatically affecting the evolution of computer networking, meaning computer errors were inevitable.

Gable wanted nothing more than to work from home with Dell. He lived alone in a ground floor bedsit in outer London. The place was small and gloomy, but he was happy living alone. Besides, he was not alone, for he had Dell and rows and rows of shelving that displayed his superhero action figure collectables. Items included Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker and an ARC Heavy Gunner Trooper from Star Wars, seven-inch Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless figures, three editions of Indiana Jones, a rare edition of the villain Sweeny Todd and many more. They were his friends, his family. Then there was big sister, Camilla, wife of Mike Townsend, now his brother-in-law. His parents had long since immigrated to New Zealand and only Camilla he’d turn to if he had a problem.

Just one month after he had bought into the cyber world of computers, he had received an anonymous email offering to help individuals start their own medical billing service from home. The email explained that he had been specifically handpicked from a shortlist of a thousand people. It sounded intriguing and relatively straight-forward. All the company required was a one-off payment of three hundred and fifty pounds, which could be paid over the internet via a credit card. In addition, he had to supply his name, address, date of birth and contact phone number.

He received state-of-the-art medical billing software through the post and a list of potential clients in his area. The information pack explained things clearly and he got to work straightaway, organising his clients into a logical system within the software supplied. Before long, he discovered that the list of potential clients was out-of-date. Also, that most medical clinics processed their own bills or got other companies to do it for them, never an individual. He had been cheated. And, unsurprisingly, he couldn’t get a refund. Disappointed, he decided he could find other ways to retrieve the money. Luckily, three hundred and fifty pounds only put a small dent in his credit card with a ten grand limit. Besides, the Internet was a goldmine, his fingers like shovels digging at his keyboard, mining away.

Several days later, he inserted his credit card into an ATM machine and made a request for two hundred pounds to pay some bills. The machine took longer than usual, making enquiries into his account funds and verifying his secret numbers, then spat out his card and a rude little note. No Funds, it read. Thinking there to be a mistake, he typed in a lesser amount. The card slipped out, but no money, and another little note. No Funds. He went into the branch for some human assistance. The bank staff would clear up the misunderstanding. Sitting opposite the bank clerk, he explained the problem and demanded a reason. According to the clerk, not a single penny remained on his credit card. It had all been withdrawn at ATMs or spent over counters paying for things.

“No, it’s a mistake,” he said, his face reddening. “Check again.”

“I assure you, there’s no mistake. Think carefully. Does anyone know your pin number?”

“I’ve never shared it with anyone.”

“Did you have it written down somewhere?”

“No. I have it memorised.”

“Have you given your card details out to anyone recently?”

The blood drained from his face with a shiver of horror. The medical billing company had requested his credit card details for the billing software. The clerk explained that, most likely, his credit card had been cloned. But how had they managed to get his pin number? He hadn’t supplied it, they hadn’t asked for it. He filed a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Centre, a partnership between the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Centre, and they were able to inform him that his pin number had been discovered by guesswork. His pin number was his date of birth, which had been requested on the application form. The criminals had known exactly what they were doing. By obtaining the credit card details of thousands of people, the minority of idiots who had used personal details as a secret pin had lost their credit card funds, the money removed from several ATMs around the country, making the thieves impossible to track. He’d committed a careless act in cyberspace and those responsible had acted quickly and had covered their tracks, like the professionals they’d trained to be.

From that point on, things went from bad to worse. He was fired from his job as a computer technician because he got caught with his hand in the petty cash tin by the company executive. When he lost his job, no-one was surprised, except Gable. He couldn’t understand how stealing twenty quid warranted the sack when he’d proved himself valuable in all other regards. Luckily, he’d talked his way out of police involvement, although it did nothing to prevent the humiliation. Next came the bills: electricity, phone and council tax, followed by the bill reminders. Three letters chasing him for two missed rental payments from the real estate agent leasing his bedsit arrived. It was followed by a court injunction. To complete his list of expanding debt, a friend called in an eighty-pound loan he’d lent Gable a few weeks back for a pair of black military boots he could not afford.

Fortune changed for Gable a couple of years later when Mike Townsend offered him a temporary job at F1 Mission Control. Working in the Flight Control Room monitoring an event being televised around the world seemed like the ultimate job. Townsend knew all about Gable’s computer capabilities and had employed him to oversee any technical anomalies. Data Processing System Engineer had been given to him as a title because he was responsible for processing data. Analysing the data processing systems was calculated to keep him out of mischief. Townsend suggested that if he did a good job and proved himself employable, there might be something more permanent in the near future as both Sutcliffe and Matthews were looking to explore a commercial avenue involving civilian space flights if the mission proved successful and they would need competent, experienced staff working from the ground.

“What are you doing on the ground?” The receptionist was glaring at him from her desk.

Gable slipped the fifty-pound note into his boot. “Just tying my shoelace. I can tie yours while I’m down here, if you want?”

“I’m wearing high heels.”

“How about a polish?”

She frowned upon him.

“I’d better get back.”

Grinning, he walked along the corridor to the Flight Control Room passing the men’s toilets where he felt his feet sink into the carpet. He looked down to see his boots deep in water, the flood coming from the toilets, gushing out from beneath the door. Peering inside, he noticed one of the pipes beneath the sink had split and water shooting up at the wall. “You’re jofting.”

In the Flight Control Room, Mike Townsend was busy monitoring the balloon’s flight path with Adam Fraser. Everything had been running according to schedule. Fable-1 had long since cleared the altitude used by commercial airliners. The nearest Boeing had been eighty miles southeast and had departed Paris on a northwest bearing. There had been a lot of flight activity further east – the congested traffic of Gatwick and Heathrow, and several over the Atlantic Ocean heading for the American continent. An hour ago, Fable-1 had passed through the tropopause and into the stable air of the stratosphere, nearing float altitude.

Adam Fraser had just recorded vital readings from the crew. Their respiration rates, heart rates and temperatures had all been satisfactory, except for Burch, whose heart rate had been slightly faster than the others. What concerned both Fraser and Townsend, though, was that the balloon had just lost GPS tracking and they had only an approximation of the balloon’s present position. To make matters worse, they had temporarily lost communication with the crew and the added source of stress had Townsend in a stir.

Then Gable burst into the room in a sweat. “Um…there’s like a huge leak in the toilets.”

Townsend barely took his eyes off the monitor. “You’re the engineer, Trev, you sort it out. I’m busy right now.”

Gable froze.

“You heard me, Trev. Go!”

You’re jofting, he thought.

There was nothing in his job description about mending broken toilet pipes. He was the Data Processing System Engineer for God’s sake, not the plumber. Appreciating that Townsend was a busy man with a lot of responsibility, he turned and skulked out of the Flight Control Room.

Chapter 10

The spinning figures on the altimeter, which had slowed down dramatically, had just struck 128,000 feet, physics playing its part with the heaviness of the helium beginning to outweigh the thinness of the air as the balloon crept towards float altitude. Due to the drop in pressure, the helium inside the balloon had expanded to more than four hundred times its volume at sea level to a staggering forty two million cubic feet.

Burch, studying the navigation monitor in front of him, had a prime view of the sky as uplinks from a weather beacon affixed to the gondola fed his monitor. It also presented him with the balloon’s geographic coordinates. As he stared at his navigation screen, cramp nibbled at his calf muscle and his leg instinctively jolted.

“Everything alright, Keith?” asked Hennessey.

“I’m fine, just a little stiff.”

Hennessey eyed the Atlantic stretching off to the west, thinking about her country at the other end. She couldn’t see America, just the endless spread of ocean, but it did make her think of Dennis Thatcher. He hadn’t gone with her to Chicago O’Hare International Airport. He hadn’t even called to wish her good luck. But he had spent the night with her two days before her departure and they had explored each other in the bedroom all night long. He said he had missed her and when she thought about it, she had missed him too. They’d been a college couple, though it wasn’t until later, when he had applied for a career in the United States Air Force and she had started extensive training with NASA, that their relationship had become more serious. Since then, they had separated so many times Hennessey had lost count. When he’d come to the house to resolve their relationship problems and she’d announced, after sex, that she was joining a space balloon expedition in Great Britain a few days later, she didn’t expect him to walk out on her. Obviously, he would never accept her for who she was so she decided she was never going to accept him back.

“Earth to Jen,” said Matthews.

She snapped out of her daze. “Sorry, in another world.”

“Claris is going to prepare the camera wing in a moment. Perhaps you should unleash that dust buster thing first before we start documenting.”

Faraday was rummaging through the chest for the solar-wing. Hennessey thought she was being heavy-handed. “Careful, Claris. Akroid is a very expensive collection device.”

“I’m sorry. It seems to be caught on…no, got it. ”

Five hours and thirteen minutes since takeoff, the balloon had reached a little over 132,000 feet – float altitude. They hovered in a supernatural silence, free of wind and noise, the only sound their breathing. Twenty five miles high, almost four times the height of commercial airliners, the sky was an intense indigo blue. To block out the glaring afternoon sunlight, the crew further adjusted the blinders on their visors, each taking a private moment to reflect on their experience. They had achieved the unthinkable, setting a new world record for the highest altitude ever reached by a manned balloon, breaking the one previously set in 1961 by Commander Malcolm Ross and Lieutenant Commander Vic Prather after they’d launched from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Mexico.

Matthews interrupted the silence with a moan. “Ah…that’s better.”

“Just took a slash?” asked Sutcliffe.

“Yeah, enough to fill a petrol tank twice over.”

“Thanks, that’s a lovely image,” commented Faraday.

Sutcliffe wasted no time and got down to business. “Keith, can you report to Mission Control, tell them we’ve reached float altitude and that we’re all doing okay. Confirm our position with Mike.” He paused in thought, his excited eyes hidden behind the metallic-gold- plated extravehicular visor. “Claris, get this camera up and running as soon as possible, please.”

“Jen is going to release the Akroid payload first so that NASA can see it successfully launched from the images of the solar-wing, if that’s alright with you?”

“That’s fine.”

Burch felt a pang of worry. Double-checking, he alerted the crew. “The navigation system isn’t working. Mission Control Base isn’t receiving our GPS coordinates.”

“You mean they’ve lost our position?”

“Temporarily, yes.”

“Call Mike and let him know.”

“I can’t, the communication system is out too.”

“How long has it been out?”

“I don’t know, I’ve only just noticed it. As for navigation, if we can’t get it back online, we can trigger the emergency tracking beacon so that ground crew will be able to triangulate our position from the beacon’s transmitting signal.”

“Do it anyway. What do you think caused the fault?”

“Maybe a failure of the diplexer or the antenna.”

“Alright, keep me informed. Jen, how is Akroid coming along?”

“Fine.”

Hennessey had employed the brawn of Matthews to help lift Akroid from the chest. They stood on the platform with a harness attaching them to bars in the centre of the gondola. Attached to Akroid was a self-inflating balloon with a high-pressured helium gas cylinder. Hennessey looked a little unsettled and confused as faffed around with Akroid and the balloon. Matthews believed that she didn’t really know what she was doing. It made him wonder if she had received adequate training. He watched her with growing suspicion. From day one, something bothered him about her, he felt. He couldn’t put his finger on it. Maybe it was that he’d always been confident of his own professional ability, but had doubts when it came to the professionalism of others, even when their status and skill far exceeded that of his own. Still, it bothered him. And from now on, things could get sticky. A single mistake could cost them their mission, their credibility, their careers or their lives. Matthews took an unsteady step forward and caught his shin on the corner of the chest, which tugged at his suit. For a moment, he was still, his heart in a flurry. In Moscow, the Russian space coordinators had warned the crew during their training that if the spacesuit fabric tore at an altitude greater than fifty thousand feet, the oxygen would escape and the wearer would have no more than seven seconds until their blood boiled. Luckily, the suit hadn’t been penetrated and Matthews breathed a sigh of relief.

“What exactly will this box thing do?” Faraday asked.

“More than ten thousand tons of micrometeorites fall to Earth each year. Akroid will simply collect the meteoroid particles in the stratosphere on xerogel samples, which will be sent back to the NASA Marshall Space Flight Centre to be analysed.”

“How long will the balloon stay afloat for?”

“That’s up to NASA. By radio command, the payload will be detached from the balloon and parachute back to Earth where it’ll be retrieved.”

“What happened to the telescope, Sandra?”

“Chandra? It developed a technical fault and had to go into repair.”

Hennessey flicked the valve on the helium canister and the gas began to fill the Akroid balloon. Using a long rope, Hennessey and Matthews lowered the heavy payload over the edge as the helium slowly inflated the balloon. Reaching the end of the rope, Hennessey leaned over to see if the balloon had almost inflated. It had, and she released the rope, watching as Akroid descended to its float altitude, dropping roughly a thousand feet beneath Fable-1 before reaching equilibrium where they could make out the small rounded crown of the balloon with Akroid suspended beneath it. “It’s still inflating so it should rise further in the next ten minutes or so,” said Hennessey.

Sutcliffe looked across the gondola at Faraday. “How’s the solar-wing coming along?”

“I’m sending it out now.”

Faraday released the seal from the rectangular case keeping the solar-powered camera secure. The rocket motors, fuelled by sun-light, powered four propellers navigated by remote control. The flying wing operated on solar panels linked to a regenerative fuel cell so powerful that the solar-wing could produce enough power during the day to remain in flight well into the night. The sensitive, low-light camera attached to the solar-wing had a video-audio micro -wave transmitting device with a remote controlled one hundred and eighty degree pan-tilt video camera attached to a thirty-five- millimetre still camera with remote triggering. The camera had been installed into a custom-made cradle and was mechanically attached to two Futaba servos allowing the camera to pan and tilt freely.

With Matthews’ help, Faraday launched the solar-wing camera away from the gondola. It swooped off, immediately powering into life from the solar rays of the sun, its seven-foot structure gently flexing and bending as it dived. Using her remote control with its split screen monitor, she toggled with the controls and sent the contraption to a range of eight hundred feet before looping back and homing in on the crew, hoping to get a full image of Fable-1, the type of image the papers would salivate over.

Meanwhile, Burch focussed his full attention on the balloon’s geographic position and the communication malfunction, hoping to identify the problem and restore power, distracting himself now and again to look up at the solar-wing camera gliding around the Fable-1 balloon like a hungry vulture identifying its prey. Sutcliffe also marvelled over the solar-wing making circles around the balloon. At the same time, he worried about the sudden loss of communication with Mission Control. The solar-wing camera had been launched successfully, but Faraday didn’t know if the pictures were beaming back to Mission Control. Not until Mike Townsend’s voice emerged over the radio.

“Thought we’d lost you,” he said, and they could tell by his voice that he was quite relieved. “I don’t know what happened but, anyway, the balloon images are coming through very clear. How’s the view up there?”

“I’ve seen better,” Matthews joked.

“Wish I’d brought my Kodak,” Sutcliffe added.

“There are people down here who’d pay through the nose to experience the kind of view you lot are looking at so enjoy it while it lasts.”

“Are the crowds still there?” asked Faraday.

“I don’t think I’ve seen one person leave. You put on a great show.”

“Born entertainers,” she replied.

“Absolutely. Hey, I just had that idiot, Thorndike, on the phone. He’s watching live from Houston. He wanted to know what was taking so long and why there were no images of Fable-1 or the Akroid balloon yet.”

“What did you say?” asked Hennessey.

“As soon as he asked me, the communication and tracking system came back on and the image of Fable-1 appeared on our screen. I just told him to look at his monitor.”

“Good. Akroid is nearby. I’ll get Claris to put the camera on it.”

“You do that. It’ll make NASA very happy. Out.”

Faraday put the solar-wing into a nose-dive and trained the eye of the camera on the Akroid balloon, watching on her own screen for the images being transmitted back to F1 Mission Control Base and indeed the entire watching world.

The breathtaking heights they’d reached gave Sutcliffe an astonishing sense of physical and mental weightlessness. Overcome with overwhelming sovereignty, he could see, smell, touch, feel and hear the magical empire of space. On either side of the balloon, he observed the extreme intensity of the planet contrasting with the extreme black of space, while the extreme cold of the stratosphere surrounded them. No words could describe how he felt at that moment. He was not a religious man and his worldly perspectives originated from his understanding of science, but he suddenly felt a strange connection with God. The creation of the world plagued him with a series of unanswerable questions which, until now, had never crossed his mind. Was the universe a scientific design or something far greater? At that exact moment, he caught sight of a bright flare far off in the distance.

Hennessey had seen it too and she detected Sutcliffe’s wonder. “Meteoroids can be large pieces of space debris or the size of a pebble, but are quite often the size of a grain of sand. They travel at speeds of approximately forty five miles per second. I hope you made a wish?”

Sutcliffe smiled, the first time since setting off from St. Ives, though no one saw it. “I think my wish has already come true.”

Matthews was listening to their conversation. “I hope none of those meteoroids hit the balloon.”

With the experiments in motion, the Fable-1 crew relaxed. From their viewpoint, the world appeared silent and peaceful, motionless and uninhabited. The sun-lit terrain of Europe was spread out like an enlarged map, France the easiest to distinguish from the familiar contours of its northern coastline. They stared reflectively at the curvature of the Earth and the breathtaking view of the planet; the most beautiful sight any of them had ever seen.

Chapter 11

Stacks of paperwork, files and post-it-notes were cluttering Mike Townsend’s desk in his small office. The long morning was evident in the collection of coffee cups, full ashtrays and takeaway breakfast wrappers laden on his desk.

The day had been problem after problem, one after another. The Fable-1’s GPS tracking device had failed. Communication with the crew had ceased for a nerve-racking forty five minutes. Then the men’s toilets had flooded. But at least the solar-wing camera was projecting immaculate images of the Fable-1 balloon and the crew was safe.

Putting down his pen, he reached his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair to stretch. Tiredness welled up to vent itself and he let out a loud yawn, his eyes filling with water. Shaking his head to wake himself up, he looked at the framed photograph of his wife Camilla on the wall. He thought about her early that morning when he had left her laying there, her shoulders unveiled, her long wavy hair against the satin pillows. In the photograph, her body was nicely tanned, burned in patches and at some point during the holiday her skin had peeled, he recalled. The photograph revealed a background of old architecture and narrow streets. It had been a day of sangria and slapping mosquitoes and had finished off in style when a Moroccan waiter had serenaded them at their table in a restaurant, much to her embarrassment. Morocco had been their last holiday before the birth. Having a daughter in the family had changed their marriage and their lives. Camilla was proving to be a great mother and he had every confidence in his own fathering abilities. In fact, he couldn’t wait to get home to his family that evening. Which reminded him? Where was that wally, Trev Gable? Over the past few years, Gable had been getting into all sorts of mischief involving scams and poor decision-making. Reluctantly, he had given his brother-in-law a job in the Flight Control Room under the plead of Camilla and had lied to Sutcliffe when he’d told him Trev Gable was a diligent, reliable man who’d be a great asset to the Ground Control team. So where was he? Townsend hadn’t seen him in over an hour. The rascal had neglected his duties and…

Something happened.

Something was happening outside.

Screaming, shouting, car horns blaring, the patter of running feet. Townsend’s heart pounded. It crossed his mind that Gable was out there upsetting the crowd, but he thought again, concluding that they were not the screams of aggravation or pain; they were the screams of panic. He went to the window and stood in disbelief, shocked by what he was seeing. People were scurrying this way and that, incessantly yelling and howling. Mothers and fathers were scooping up their children and abandoning their belongings. Others were falling over each other in the mass exodus of moving bodies. What had spooked them? His eyes passed across the cliff half- expecting to see a madman with a machine gun, or a dangerous animal roaming about. Or was it a tsunami? Could it be that Fable-1 was falling out of the sky? He felt his stomach drop as he ran to the Flight Control Room and looked up at the large TV screen on the wall. No, Fable-1 was still buoyant in the stratosphere, the crew still waving to the solar-wing camera.

Townsend hurried outside and saw that many people were gazing up at the huge TV monitors amid the chaos. Not wanting to open the gate, fearing for his safety, he tried to observe the screen. What were they watching? Why weren’t they running like everyone else? Why was everyone else running? Bright sunlight obscured the picture on the screen, but his gut feeling told him it had something to do with whatever was being broadcasted. Townsend spotted Fraser in the crowd staring up at the monitor. Now he was on his way back, skipping in and out of the charging people, his face white.

“Turn on the television,” he said, shutting the gate.

Wordlessly, Townsend followed Fraser to the Flight Control Room and picked up the TV controller. “What channel?”

Fraser looked pale and worried. “All of them.”

A lump formed in Townsend’s throat, as though he had dry- swallowed a powdery pill that had lodged in his airway.

Flicking off the Fable-1 crew, he tuned the channel into BBC1: “…at this stage it is not yet known what triggered the attack. What is known is that a few minutes ago the North Korean People’s Army released several nuclear war-heads targeted at various cities across the American continent.”

He flicked to BBC2: “…confirm that more than thirty nuclear warheads have been launched from the northern provinces of Pyongyang Namdo, Yanggang Do, Chagang Do and Pyongyang Bukto in North Korea, just under twenty minutes ago. Sources say the unprovoked attack was not…”

ITV: “…just in. North Korea has released several warheads against the West. The targets in America have not yet been confirmed, but…just a moment…we have just been informed that several more missiles are heading towards countries in Europe. I can now confirm that Europe has been targeted. At this stage, we are unable to say where exactly. What we can tell you is that more than two dozen confirmed missiles are bound for Europe as we speak. This is quite unbelievable…”

Channel 4: “…ask the question what kind of response will the US and its allies take and, more importantly, is there enough time to stop these bombs from detonating. Let’s go across to Sally Davies outside Number Ten in London. Sally, has there been any word from the Prime Minister?”

“Not yet. I assume he has only just heard the news himself and is speaking with his security advisors. What is being discussed is anyone’s guess. They could be going over protocols to destroy the nuclear warheads in midair to prevent them detonating in populated areas. At the moment, we don’t even know if the missiles are heading for Great Britain. As for retaliation, well, I think we would have to assume that retaliation is something that would come later when the outcome of this is clearer…”

Townsend switched the news back to the Fable-1 transmission, the crew relaxed and oblivious in the stratosphere. The phones had started to ring. There were six phones within the building. They were all ringing. Too shocked to answer any of them, Townsend put his hands to his temples. I can’t believe this, he thought. His mobile vibrated in his pocket. It made him jump. He took it out. Camilla was the one calling him. He couldn’t speak to her right now. He dropped the phone on the table and then looked about the room. “Where’s my brother-in-law?”

He turned to Fraser, also starched with terror, and grabbed him firmly by the forearm. “Where’s Trev?” he barked.

“I haven’t seen him for over an hour.”

Townsend thundered out of the Flight Control Room to look for him. Ten minutes later, he came back, without Gable. His mobile phone was vibrating across the table displaying several missed calls on the face. He answered it. “Camilla.”

“Have you heard the news?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Are you coming home?”

He looked at the image of Fable-1 as the solar-wing camera continued to circle their balloon. The crew had no idea what was going on and now their lives were in great danger. He had to warn them. “I can’t. Not yet. I have responsibilities here.”

She was sobbing. “They’re saying that many of the nuclear bombs are heading for Britain.”

Townsend bowed his head and closed his eyes. “I’ll be right there.”

On the other side of the Pacific, the US President’s security advisors were in disarray as several nuclear warheads sped towards cities across the American continent. The entire Cabinet Room in the West Wing of the White House was like an all-in dispute on a football field, uncontrolled tempers flying from one side of the table to the other. The decade-long feud between the North Koreans and the superpower nations had always been a temperamental issue. Closed off North Korea had developed short and medium-range missiles and chemical weapons. Suspicion over the creation of biological weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, however, raised alarm in countries all over the world that still bore the wrath of North Korea’s hatred, countries such as the US, South Korea, Japan and China. The year before, US satellite imagery had detected signs that North Korea could be preparing to conduct yet another nuclear test, although the location for the test was unknown. North Korea sought self-reliance and having acquired immense prestige around the world, the Koreans had avowed not to yield to western pressure. Was the nuclear attack a testament to their military power?

One of the security advisors charged into the Cabinet Room and interrupted the dispute. “The Koreans have fired a dozen more missiles,” he yelled. “Intelligence confirmed that the missiles are heading for Israel and India. They’re trying to destroy the fucking world!”

Chapter 12

The GPS receiver and navigational computer, the radio transmitter, the wireless networking technologies, and all the other sensors collecting temperature and pressure information fizzled out, leaving Fable-1 in the dark.

It alarmed Burch. “What was that?”

Sutcliffe tilted his head back in frustration. “Not the duplexer again?”

Tapping the monitor with his palm, Burch shook his head. “No, this is different. We’ve completely lost all power systems. I just can’t understand.”

“What’s that over there?” Faraday was pointing to the horizon.

Something was appearing over France. A large column of dark mass reaching into the sky. Dark cloud curled outwardly from the top of the column and a large head began to materialise.

“What…?” said Sutcliffe.

“Look!” shouted Hennessey. “Over there!”

Following her finger to another spot on the European continent, the crew saw a swelling ball of cloud. The speed in which it rose astounded them all, but not nearly as much as the immense glare of light that appeared further away to the east. The crack of light from a magnitude so powerful seemed to light up the whole continent for several long seconds and a mound of cloud climbed in the updraft in a rapid wave of transformation.

“Don’t tell me that was one of those meteoroids you were talking about, Jen?” Matthews said.

Hennessey, based on her understanding, had a much scarier thought. “I think Europe has just been hit with nuclear bombs.”

A dreadful silence ensued.

Sutcliffe felt his stomach muscles tense up. For a moment, he thought he’d misheard the American, at least he hoped he had. Then again, it did explain one thing. Forty five minutes earlier, Mike Townsend had radioed through with an urgent message: You need to abort the mission and get back here right away. Something’s happening… That was it. Townsend had been cut off before he could finish the sentence. Now it made some sense. Townsend’s words hung in the air. Something’s happening.

“Impossible,” Matthews retorted. “It’s probably just the French doing nuclear tests like they did back in 1996. They’d be controlled explosions.”

The first explosion had created an enormous ball of dust and cloud, which had grown to a staggering height and had stabilised, although it did appear to continue spreading laterally. Further south on the European continent, another searing glare of chemical light appeared. Out of the light, a thick trunk emerged, broad sheets of fire blazing from it as it rose, splitting into branches at the top. It was followed by four more similar explosions.

Burch, too shocked by the immensity of what was happening, urinated in his diaper collection device. “Europe is under attack?”

Faraday’s voice quivered. “Who though?”

“The Russians maybe?” Sutcliffe suggested. “I don’t know.”

The same assumption had occurred to Hennessey. Just the year before, the Russian President had threatened to aim nuclear missiles at European cities for the first time since the Cold War and the former Soviet Union possessed more than four thousand nuclear warheads at some six hundred and sixty launch installations. True though that might have been, finger pointing did not alter the fact that Europe was being attacked.

“But why would the Russians want to bomb Europe?” asked Burch.

“No idea,” Matthews replied.

“Perhaps it was a mistake.”

“Yeah, somebody accidentally pushed a button and set off a load of nuclear missiles. Get a life, Keith.”

Sutcliffe vehemently cut in. “Whether it was an accident or deliberate, it’s happening.” Something’s happening. “You heard what Mike said. Our priority right now is to abort this mission and get home. God only knows how the wind currents will be affected by this.”

Faraday was stunned. Matthews and Sutcliffe were debating over what to do, but she couldn’t hear their jabber. She had lost touch with the moment. Confusion and panic seemed to vibrate all around her, right through her. She couldn’t take her eyes off the swelling clouds where more blinding white flashes materialised, marking the spot of unimaginable carnage.

Britain hadn’t been hit. No, it had. Brownish yellow smoke rose from their country in two separate locations. Both canopies were red and the country gradually disappeared under spreading plumes of thick colourful smoke.

A few nerve-racking minutes passed whilst Sutcliffe tried continuously to re-establish radio contact with Mission Control. “Mike, pick up.”

Nothing.

“Mike, this is Brad. Pick up. Fuck!”

In the distance, the Akroid balloon drifted further and further away and the neglected solar-wing camera had flown out of radio controlled range and out of sight. The screen on her controller showed black and white scraggily lines and she let it slip out of her hand onto the platform. She had been watching all of it unfold. She couldn’t take any more. She closed her eyes in an attempt to dis-connect her thoughts, though that only made her breathing more rapid and a grey fog engulfed the edge of her vision. She drew in a deep lungful of oxygen to combat the panic attack she realised she was having.

“You alright, Claris?” Sutcliffe said.

“Yeah,” she replied. She took in deep breaths to pep her up. “I’ll be okay.”

“You sure?”

“I just can’t believe this is happening.”

As though contagion passed through sound, Burch started to have respiratory problems. His lungs began to constrict and some inarticulate words came from his mouth, interrupted by his laboured breathing. It sounded as though he was having a seizure. He mentioned that he was seeing aurora lights, though Hennessey was quick to point out that it was a sign of severe, atmospheric stress.

Like firecrackers, more white lights glared through the dense smoke and more giant spheres of fire rose majestically over Europe and Britain. Hennessey estimated the canopy of the first two mush-room clouds at somewhere between two hundred to three hundred miles across and the height to which they’d reached seemed on par with their space balloon. Now she feared for the safety of her own country. America’s involvement was inevitable.

“Do you think someone is trying to wipe out the human race?” she suggested.

Something’s happening, Sutcliffe heard the words in his head again. “I just…I don’t know.”

It was becoming increasingly difficult to make out Europe amongst the featureless radioactive clouds. Below them, also, the toroid-shaped canopies of the bombs on Britain had risen to within a few thousand feet of the gondola. Swirling masses of smoke and dust from millions of tons of excavated earth seemed to torment them. Far off, the Akroid balloon was being twirled around by the whooshing smoke and disturbed air. Then it ripped the balloon apart and the mushroom clouds devoured the cosmic dust collector.

Sutcliffe fell morbidly silent, his mind generating gruesome images of their world. He imagined the devastation at the epicentre of the astronomical explosions, picturing buildings flying apart as though they were made of paper, like wind passing through dead leaves. Those who survived the blasts, he dwelled, now faced the excruciating heat, the radiation, the starvation, the suffering to come. He remembered the books he had read about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Contemporary atom bombs were a thousand times more powerful and destructive than those used on Japan.

A tear formed in the corner of his eye. Martin, his only son…

Trying to remain strong, unconvinced that it was the end of humankind, the destruction of his country and the people he loved, Sutcliffe tried to make some decisions. “If we return now, the chances are we’ll be caught up in the crossfire. And you saw what just happened to the Akroid balloon.”

Matthews disagreed. “What do you suggest? That we just stay here, floating about in space until the dust settles?”

“If we descend now, the balloon will be torn apart and we’ll all die.”

Matthews peered over the edge of the gondola. Britain had disappeared beneath the atomic cloud. “How long?”

Sutcliffe looked at his oxygen gauge. Eighty percent of his first tank had been consumed. Radioactive fission particles from the bombs would have already contaminated the skies below. “We all have roughly twenty percent oxygen remaining, right? That buys us about an hour, maybe a bit more, on this tank. Plus we have the second tank in our life support backpacks and the secondary emergency tank with an additional thirty minutes. That’s about another nine hours in total. And don’t forget we have two spare oxygen tanks each onboard. So we still have approximately twenty three hours of oxygen remaining.”

“You’re joking right?” Matthews said back. “We can’t stay up here for twenty three hours.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. We have enough oxygen for the time being. I think we should wait for a few hours and see what happens. It’s the safest option.”

“See what happens? Europe’s been bombed. That’s what has fucking happened!”

Conflicted, Sutcliffe snapped. “Simon, listen to me. All I’m saying is the prudent thing to do right now is wait. Then we can start making some coherent decisions. Get off my back, will you?”

Burch managed to pull himself together, overcoming his breathing deficiency. He began hitting his navigation monitor again and again in an attempt to restore power, anything to keep his mind off the explosions below. Rage and self-reproach took control of him and he felt responsible for getting the electrics back up, beating the computer with his fists to a pulp.

“You’re wasting your time, Keith,” Hennessey said. “It won’t work. That was an electromagnetic pulse from the nuclear bombs we experienced. The EMP would have frazzled anything with a circuit board, basically anything electrical. The equipment is useless now.”

She paused for a moment before continuing. “Listen, everyone, Brad is right. We shouldn’t return yet. From the mushroom clouds, the larger bits of matter fall back to Earth within a few minutes. The smaller bits of fallout borne downwind by the bomb clouds fall within several hours. But the deadly microscopic particles and invisible radioactive particles stay aloft for months or years and circle the world, some even for eternity. That means the radioactive particles may fall all over the world, contaminating farm crops and oceans. In a few hours, the mushroom clouds will thin out and we may be able to descend safely. But whatever happens, the air down there is unbreathable right now.”

“How do you know so much about nuclear fallout?” Matthews questioned.

“NASA is pretty thorough.”

Matthews didn’t say anything. Nothing could have prepared the crew for such a sense of violation. Their hearts sank knowing that everything they had dared and seen and risked and achieved had been worthless, though the deaths of the millions of people caught up in the explosions took precedence over all else. Sutcliffe let out a disheartened sigh. The day which had begun with such promise had ended in the worst imaginable disaster.

Chapter 13

“What’s happening?” Faraday yelled.

The balloon had suddenly dropped several feet. When it finally stabilised, it went into a violent spin.

“It must be disturbed zonal and meridional wind currents from the bombs,” said Hennessey, holding onto the bar.

Sutcliffe nervously looked up at the large ropes attached to the envelope. If they split, the gondola would fall like deadweight and the gondola’s emergency parachutes might become entangled with the severed ropes. Unsure whether or not the alkaline batteries had been affected by the EMP shockwaves, he prayed the emergency locator beacon at the base of the gondola still worked. If they were to fall, the beacon could be tracked by ground technicians, if they were still available. With water pouches low and no food, Mission Control no longer in contact and oxygen continuing to drain, he felt they had no choice but to descend back to Earth. The explosions had ceased and the mass of smoke beneath them had discoloured and scattered somewhat.

“I don’t think the envelope will hold much longer,” he told the crew. “Let’s go back.”

“Finally,” Matthews remarked.

“How long will the descent take?” said Hennessey.

“About the same time it took to get up here, five to six hours.”

“Do you think it will hold that long?”

“I don’t know. Simon, can you valve off the helium?”

“Sure.”

Matthews opened the balloon vents and dispelled the helium. It took a few minutes for the balloon to respond, though without their instruments they couldn’t confirm how fast they were descending, if at all, until the hurricane-like clouds began to grow nearer. The gondola had stopped revolving, but the balloon hit more turbulence. The crew took hold of the bars until the balloon stabilised again. Burch had designed the balloon using a translucent, polyethylene material with special additives aimed at strengthening performance in high altitude temperatures. High turbulent winds hadn’t been factored into the design because the entire flight had been based on a calm weather forecast. Had the weather been windy, the flight would have been postponed. It had him deeply concerned.

The balloon continued downward and the first real definitions of the radioactive clouds became apparent. Ash and nuclear mud swirled about in the wind and Sutcliffe further doubted the might of the envelope. Around them, it’d turned eerily dark and volcanic-like ash bombarded the balloon, showering the crew with disintegrated homeland.

The torment dragged on and on.

The balloon pitched so violently they could feel the force in their stomachs. The platform swung left and right, banking sharply with each lethal shudder, rattling and shaking. It wouldn’t hold much longer.

“I can’t bear this!” screamed Faraday.

Sutcliffe realised that if they didn’t get out of the destructive cloud soon, they would be gobbled up in the alien atmosphere. “Simon, close the helium valves and drop ballast, right away.”

Matthews opened the ballast tanks and several kilos of sand gushed from the gondola. It didn’t seem to have much of an effect. Sutcliffe unscrewed the reserve batteries weighing fourteen kilos and dropped them over the side, followed by the altimeter. Burch disconnected the navigational computer and threw that overboard. Finally, the balloon began to slowly rise, the helium pulling them skyward again. Eventually, the balloon popped out of the cloud and rose away from it.

“What now?” asked Burch.

Sutcliffe’s heart sank. “We have no choice but to detach from the envelope. I will separate the gondola and we will freefall to about sixteen thousand feet where the chutes will deploy. It’s our only hope.”

No one argued.

The crew braced themselves, nobody comfortable with the idea of falling out of the sky, nobody in objection either. Sutcliffe looked at each of his crew as he floated his finger over the button to initiate the separation from the envelope. The crew would have to depend on a series of stabilising parachutes that, once deployed, would be discarded to allow a second batch of parachutes to open and slow their final descent.

He pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

He pressed it again.

Something was wrong.

“Fuck!” he bellowed.

“What’s the problem?” said Hennessey.

“No power. I forgot about that.”

“What does that mean?”

The crew waited for his decision. When Sutcliffe made up his mind, he knew without doubt he’d made the right choice, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. “I’m sorry,” he said, putting his fist to his visor. “I wish there was another way.”

“We have to jump?” said Hennessey.

“Yes. I’m afr –”

“Are you out of your mind?” Matthews reacted so fast that his words overlapped Sutcliffe’s.

“The gondola can’t be detached.”

“Brad, we don’t know where we are,” said Burch. “We could be over the Atlantic for all we know. If we land in the ocean, we’ll drown in our –”

“I’m aware of the danger, Keith. Does anyone have a better suggestion?”

“No. Jumping is our safest option,” Hennessey said boldly.

“But we’re so high,” Burch complained.

“We’ll be okay,” said Hennessey. “It has been done before.”

She started unbuckling herself. She stood and took two spare oxygen tanks from the balloon chest and sealed them in both pockets on the lower legs of her spacesuit. Her bold courage inspired her crewmates and one by one they unstrapped themselves and collected their reserve oxygen tanks. Burch and Faraday peered over the edge looking for the way home. The idea of jumping into mushroom clouds was lunacy, but more appealing than staying in the stratosphere on a temperamental gondola, thought Faraday.

Matthews pointed to his partner. “If we’re going to do this, I think you should go first, Brad. Then Claris, Jen, Keith and I’ll go last.”

“Fine,” said Sutcliffe. “It is vital that we jump immediately one after another. That way when we land, we will all be in close proximity.”

Sutcliffe knew it was a moment of his captaincy where he had to lead by example and show himself worthy of trust. He couldn’t show his fear. He couldn’t hesitate. He couldn’t talk his way out of it. He could only do it. The parachutes had been the idea of Mike Townsend in a case of extreme emergency. Not once had it crossed his mind that they would actually use them. He wished now that they’d had more skydiving lessons. Below him, dark, menacing cloud hid the Earth. What lay beneath those clouds he did not know and it deeply worried him. If they were over the Atlantic or the Channel, they were in big trouble. They would plunge into the deep ocean and would be untraceable. They would tread water until their oxygen ran out. Opening their visors to breathe in radioactive air would allow water to seep into their heavy suits, making them lead weights. That weight would pull them hundreds of feet below the surface. During that time, their last thoughts would be their airless lungs and should they not have jumped, dying in a sea of regret, lost forever.

Staring up at the entangled ropes high above the gondola, then dead ahead, admiring one last time the beautiful curvature of the Earth, he touched his helmet and chest in the form of the cross for the first time in his life, then stepped off the gondola.

For a few nerve-rattling seconds, Faraday peered over the edge and watched her captain disappear into the dark cloud below. On any other day, she would have been determined to set a new record- breaking altitude jump. Not on that day. She was overcome with the sense that those were the last precious minutes of her life and she couldn’t even savour them.

Hennessey put her hand on Faraday’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine, Claris,” she said softly.

Faraday gently shrugged her shoulders, closed her eyes and jumped.

The faces of her parents appeared in Hennessey’s mind. She could feel their presence, there watching over her, with her. She had parachuted from high altitude time after time, but jumping into the unknown was different. A number of questions danced in her mind. How were Sutcliffe and Faraday faring? What was the world like down there? Was she about to die? She tried to rid her mind of dispiriting thoughts, twisted her head back at Matthews and Burch to give them a supportive nod, took one large stride forward and dropped over the edge.

Burch was next. He inched his way forward, his whole body shaking and his heart pounding. At the edge of both the gondola and undoubtedly his life, he stopped, paralysed with the thought of what he was about to do. Even if he wanted to take another step, his legs refused and he just stood there incapacitated. It was just too high, he couldn’t make the jump and that was that, he decided.

“Keith, come on, move it!” Matthews shouted.

“You go, I’ll go last.”

The last thing Matthews needed right now was a debate on who went first or last. If Burch didn’t want to jump, then Matthews wasn’t going to waste his time trying to persuade him to, therefore jeopardising his own life. Striding three paces, Matthews folded his arms across his chest and plunged into the atmosphere and was gone. Now Burch was alone. By the time he did gather the courage to shimmy his way forward to the edge of the gondola, the crew of Fable-1 had long since jumped. Quivering, he just stood there. Sutcliffe, Faraday, Hennessey and Matthews were surely dead by now. Feeling unbearably lonely, his body clammed up with vertigo and instead of jumping he closed his eyes.

“Your mother has Alzheimer’s disease,” said the nurse, and Burch closed his eyes, concerning himself with yet more nursing duties that would inevitably continue to put his own life on hold. “And not just the early stages either,” the nurse continued. “We think she may have had it for a few years now.”

Burch opened his eyes, his hands deep in his tracksuit top. He brought one of his hands to his chin and stroked it. The news was a lot to take in. William Harvey Hospital had become like a second home. As a matter of fact, he could not recall a single month that year when he’d not been at the hospital. His mother was a walking health hazard. She was annoying. Not a single day passed when she wasn’t sick or moaning.

“What does this mean? Will she lose her memory completely?”

“Eventually, yes, I’m afraid.”

The nurse explained her developing symptoms, explaining that one day she might not even remember her own son. It shocked him and he thought it over as they exited the hospital. Installed behind his mother’s wheelchair, pushing her to his van, he assisted her into the passenger side where he strapped her in.

“Everything is gonna be alright, Mum, I will take good care of you.”

Overwhelmed by all the probing, tests and inundation of drugs, she didn’t respond and just stared blankly out of the window. When he got her home, he took her to her armchair and made her a cup of herbal tea. When he set her cup down on the table, she clasped the back of his hand. “I’m so proud of you, Keith. You’ve always been there for me, even when your father left. I know I moan too much, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think the world of you. Don’t you forget that?”

Burch had to leave the room with a sudden crushing sense of guilt overcoming him. The old bat drove him up the wall, but he loved her deeply. In a few words she had made him feel important and appreciated and loved. For all those years he had thought she despised him because she had always done her best to make him feel worthless. But he enjoyed her presence and he never felt lonely. She was there for him and he was there for her. And that worked. Unlocking and entering the studio beneath his house, he sat with his back against the wall where he closed his eyes.

Burch opened his eyes. The crew of Fable-1 was gone, undoubtedly dead. He would be safe on the platform for a while longer. He wanted to mirror their bravery, but he couldn’t get his head around jumping to certain death or staying there, running out of oxygen and dying. Staying gave him a longer life, or an elongated death. He wondered which was worse. He looked up at the ropes attached to the envelope, admiring for the last time his exceptional design. Sutcliffe had presumed right when he had said the envelope would not hold much longer.

The gondola suddenly became the victim of a strong wind and pitched sharply. Burch struggled to keep his balance and lost his footing altogether. As his reflexes snapped to stabilise his centre of gravity, he slipped and fell off the gondola. Plummeting towards the Earth back first, he stared up at the balloon pulling away from him, an indication of how fast he was travelling. The red tracking beacon fitted to the base of the gondola was blinking intermittently, it had worked after all. His limp body fell from the void of space at over six hundred miles per hour and his heart rate fluctuated wildly. In less than thirty seconds, he hit the roof of the dying mushroom clouds. With zero visibility and a visor fogged up with grit, he lost all sense of downward motion.

As soon as he deployed his parachute, his dust-covered vision turned into the heavenly white light of unconsciousness that blanketed the insides of his eyelids, followed by a darkness that washed away all his haunting fears.

Chapter 14

When his parachute opened, the rushing wind faded and it turned disturbingly quiet. The hellish cloud appeared to be endless, though it had started to turn slightly orange, which gradually intensified. Sutcliffe had been free-falling for around fifteen or sixteen minutes. It felt like an eternity. When would it end? More worryingly, where would it end?

There was a break in the cloud and the bright orange light came to life, though he could not be sure of what he had seen. What had he seen? The land below lay indistinct and his primary concern was if the ocean lurked beneath him. Flashbacks of his life appeared in a slideshow of happy memories; the day he met Jacqueline at the ballroom dance class, their first date, their marriage, the birth of Martin, the successful launch of Fable-1.

Suddenly, the cloud rolled back and a huge fireball jumped up to get him. He tried to scream out, except a surge of panic held back any voice. Seconds later, as the fireball receded, he saw land. It all happened so quickly. The landing was so hard it jolted his bad leg, but he did manage to turn it into a competent roll. The canopy fell around him, immersing him beneath it. Trying to battle his way out, he eventually emerged from the canopy only to be confronted with a scene of devastation that deeply shocked him.

God help us, he thought.

Wherever he was, everything was engulfed by fire. Here and there were blackened corpses, which blended into one with the scorched environment. Some looked purposefully prearranged for a drama, others a more obvious sculpture of death. The afternoon sun had vanished behind a dark ceiling of cloud from which hard black rain fell. Out of the menacing cloud a white shape appeared, falling vertically, and whoever it was made a perfect two-footed landing. Faraday had made it back safely.

Relieved to see her, Sutcliffe hobbled over and put a hand on her back. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah…I think so.” She studied the dark burning landscape. She looked down at the clock on her spacesuit and made note that although it was quarter to five on Sunday afternoon, the skies were comparable to that of late dusk. “Do you know where we are?”

“Not the faintest idea. We could be in Britain. We could be in Europe. It’s impossible to tell.”

Not far away, two more parachutes burst from the low cloud. Faraday and Sutcliffe charged over. One of the parachutists made a professional landing, skipping on both feet before stopping still. It was Hennessey. Matthews landed a few feet away from her, his landing not nearly as graceful as the American’s. His body tumbled head over heels before coming to a sprawled stop.

Hennessey hauled him to his feet. “You okay?”

Matthews brushed his suit down. “Of course I am.” He looked up at the burning fires and damaged vehicles. It was then that he spotted the dead bodies. Then he saw Faraday and Sutcliffe running towards them.

“You two alright?” asked Sutcliffe.

“We’re fine,” said Hennessey.

Matthews brushed himself down again. “So, what now?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Sutcliffe, looking up at the sky. “Where’s Keith?”

“He went last. I think he got stage fright.”

“Did he jump?”

“He went last, how the hell do I know?”

“How did he seem? Was he panicking?”

“I don’t know. He just said he would jump after me.”

“We have to look for him.”

A large explosion sent shockwaves through the air and the Fable-1 crew instinctively threw themselves to the ground as small fireballs rained down like fireworks. Had another nuclear bomb just exploded? Flat on their stomachs, they turned their heads to see a coach with huge tongues of fire coming from the windows. The fire glared at them, cursing their survival, burning the coach as if it carried a threatening message.

Sutcliffe climbed to his feet and tried to patch himself through to Burch, but had no luck getting connected. He tried again and again. ”We need to find Keith. Let’s head in opposite directions and return to the coach in say…ten minutes. If he jumped after you, Simon, he’ll be somewhere nearby. He might be injured. We can keep in radio contact so if you have any problems, let us know.”

“Keep an eye out for other survivors,” Hennessey added.

“Wait, is it wise to separate?” said Faraday. “It’s a battlefield out there. Why don’t we keep trying to radio him?”

“Surely he would be trying to radio us if he could,” Sutcliffe stated. “So he must be having difficulty.”

Matthews shook his head. “He can’t radio us, he didn’t jump. If we go looking for him, we risk losing more of us. I reckon we stay together.”

“You just said you didn’t know if he jumped or not.”

“Obviously he didn’t or he’d be here with us.”

Sutcliffe put his hands on his hips. “All I’m asking is that we look. Ten minutes, that’s all, and if we don’t find him then we have no choice but to go on without him.” He paused until he was sure they appreciated what he’d just said. “Right, see you in ten.”

The extent of the damage inflicted upon the land became more apparent as they headed off in opposite directions. Not one building had remained intact. Wherever they were, it hadn’t been a very populated area; a village or small town. Still, the infrastructure of the place had been reduced to rubble and was still burning. Ruined cars with blown out windows lined the roads, some on their sides, some on their roofs, some without sides and roofs. Poor visibility merely decreased the chances of finding Burch.

As planned, the crew reunited at the burning coach ten minutes later, wearisome and worried, and no one had seen Burch. They concluded that he could have jumped much later than everyone else and could be a hundred miles away, if he’d jumped at all. If he had jumped and landed safely, he would be on his own from now on.

“We’ve got less than twenty hours of oxygen left,” mentioned Sutcliffe. “So let’s get moving.”

“To where?” Faraday asked.

“Well, we can’t stay here.”

“Let’s go,” said Hennessey, getting the group going. “And keep your eyes peeled for Keith.”

Leaving the ruined town, nobody thought to question Sutcliffe as he led the way, each of them yielding to the impulses of bodies too long constrained by terror. Staggering, and sometimes falling, their mud-laden feet heavy with each step, they trekked across the landscape, crossing a small dilapidated bridge before moving on through country lanes and heading forward. The road they were following flanked burning fields and dead trees blowing miserably in the wind. Matthews looked out across the barren, black fields. His exhaustion made everything seem more surreal. Nine hours earlier they’d been the focus of the country. Where was everyone now? Who had been responsible? Were there multiple players or just one?

The loose footing in the ground slowed the crew to a steady crawl, sometimes diverging, choosing different lines to follow. They were forced to stop frequently, one because they’d been going at it for a while and two, moving in a spacesuit was physically tough. Sutcliffe’s stomach heaved in revulsion and the only reason he wasn’t vomiting was that he was too fatigued. He had never been subjected to such horror and the dreadfulness of it all was too much to bear.

“Where exactly are we heading, Brad?” Matthews asked.

“I’m hoping we might come across a landmark or something that might give us an indication of where we are. Once we know that, we can make a decision about what to do.”

Like police detectives, they investigated the scorned landscape looking for the ultimate clue that would tell them where in the northern hemisphere they had landed. On the way, Matthews spotted something in an upturned car, just off the road. The vehicle, camouflaged by a mantle of soot and ash, looked as though it had been picked up and thrown by a tornado. Inside, on the roof next to the rear-view mirror, he’d seen a thermos flask. He dropped to his stomach and squeezed through the front window. As his fingers clasped the edge of the flask, he saw, to his sheer horror, the gruesome features of a human face; the flesh burned off the bone and the eyes boiled in the skull, the lips and gums fried off exposing a set of burned teeth that seemed to accentuate a sneer of contempt. With his hand wrapped around the flask, he scrambled away from the car with a shuddering squeal.

“What is it?” asked Faraday.

He pointed to the rear of the vehicle. “In there, Jesus fucking Christ.”

She wondered what could have spooked a man as masculine and as nonchalant as Matthews. Sutcliffe got on his knees and saw the charred body of a human adult. The wristwatch on the arm had stopped at 1.56 in the afternoon. It gave him a chill. Picking up a shard of glass from the dashboard, he got to his feet and walked to the front of the vehicle where he started to prod around the grill area using the piece of glass. He had the crew bewildered.

“What are you doing?” asked Hennessey.

“I think we’re still in Britain,” he said.

“How can you be sure?”

“This car is right-hand drive. Most other European cars are driven from the left. And the number plate looks like a UK one.” He got up and started to walk. “Come on. We should keep moving.”

Gruelling and most of the time shocking, a few hours passed when Faraday stopped in her tracks, her gaze fixated on a finger of stone at the top of a steep hill ahead of them in the dying light. Without saying a word, she took off up the hill.

“What’s up with her?” Sutcliffe wondered.

Matthews shrugged his shoulders. The hill looked familiar. He consulted his memories and managed to identify the location. And when he did it dawned on him why his cousin had bolted for the summit. He pondered over how different the place looked. The hill leading up to the famous landmark at the top was scarred with the history of Iron Age huts, now scarred with the history of Nuclear Age burns. The stone at the top of the hill had been destroyed, but the base and part of the vertical section of the monument remained unscathed.

“I know where we are,” said Matthews.

Sutcliffe hadn’t heard. He was too busy watching Hennessey running up the hill after Faraday.

Reaching the crumbled monument, Faraday dropped to her knees and began raking at the ground, burrowing away at the soil, digging a hole.

Hennessey came up behind her out of breath and grabbed her by the arm, her eyes bearing into her. “What the hell are you doing, Claris?”

Faraday picked away at the dirt, splitting a fingernail. “Look what I’ve found.” She handed something to her father.

“You know what this is, don’t you Claris?” he said, running the smooth, pointed flint through his fingers.

“No, what?”

“It could be part of a very old arrowhead used as weaponry,” he began, taking her around the topography of the famous hill. “It is believed that many tribes fought over this site during the Neolithic settlement.”

Faraday was distracted by her mother meandering off down the hill pretending to show an interest in the countryside, a view she’d seen a million times before. She sensed the tension between her parents, more than usual, but tried to ignore it.

“I’m boring you, aren’t I?” her father said.

“No. It’s really interesting. Shall we catch up with Mum?”

He sighed. “Yeah, come on. I’ll race you.”

“You’re on,” and before he had composed himself to race her, Faraday shot off, rapidly gathering momentum on the downward slope. She moved with the swift forward motion of a greyhound, every muscle in her body propelling her forward. When she reached the bottom of the hill she put her hands on her hips and walked in a wide arc, catching her breath. She looked back at the hill. Her father had collapsed and her mother was standing over him with both hands clasped around her mouth. Faraday ran back up the steep hill. Upon reaching them, her mother shouted, “Run into town and get someone to call an ambulance, quickly!”

She turned and once again was sprinting downhill. Redruth, the nearest town, was about a mile away, but St. Euny Church was nestled at the bottom of the hill and it was Sunday, and Sunday meant church service. Sprinting through the small graveyard, she entered the church where a service was taking place and shouted, “Somebody help me! My father has collapsed on the hill!”

The kind church people organised an ambulance and fifteen minutes later the paramedics arrived, only to find the dead body of a fifty-nine-year-old man being cradled by his hysterical wife.

Faraday had attended the inquest to hear the coroner’s verdict. He had suffered a massive heart attack. A week later she attended his cremation, before his ashes were taken to the hill on which he had died. Faraday had never heard a silence so eloquent than the tribute given to her father at Carn Brea, the site of his death, with more than one hundred friends and family in attendance. In a hand- carved wooden box crafted by her father as a gift to Faraday, his ashes were collected, among them the arrow-shaped flint he’d been holding in death and a small grave was made in the hill where the box was buried. A few mournful prayers were said and Faraday, her heart sad and empty, gave her father one last farewell. Then she cried nonstop.

“Stop that, Claris, what are you doing?” Hennessey asked again.

“My father is buried somewhere around here.”

“Don’t do it. This is his final resting place. Don’t deprive him of that.”

She stopped digging.

Hennessey offered her hand. “Come on.”

“You’re right. What am I thinking?” she said, hauling herself to her feet.

Hennessey hugged her.

The daylight had disappeared, but fires scattered all over the land provided abundant light. Matthews arrived at the monument and turned on his EVA headlamps. He found an inscription on the broken wall and read it to the group as Sutcliffe came up behind him. “The county of Cornwall, to the memory of Francis Lord de Dunstanville and Basset A.D. 1836.” He turned to the group. “So that confirms it then. This is definitely Britain.”

Something started to bleep. It was Matthews’ oxygen monitor. “I need to change my oxygen tanks over. Anyone else?”

Hennessey raised her hand. “Real soon.”

“Me too,” said Sutcliffe.

“That gives us about fourteen hours to find shelter,” Matthews announced. “Otherwise, the next inscription on this wall will be in memory of us.”

Standing on the crest of the hill gave the Fable-1 crew a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama of Cornwall, a rather bleak, foreboding sight dotted with the glow of hundreds of fires, which gave the sky an orange glow trapped by the dark, menacing clouds. Observing the spread of undulating land that sloped away in a very gradual curve, as he switched his oxygen tanks over, Sutcliffe tried to establish his bearings. “Which way is west?”

Faraday swept her eyes across the landscape and pointed to the horizon. “That way, I think. Why?”

Sutcliffe thought the same. Sucking on his water, it gurgled with air and he realised he had just finished his only lifeline. From now on, things would get tricky and he began marching away from the monument, descending the hill with his trademark limp, leaving the group a little perplexed.

Matthews frowned. He didn’t like to base decisions on guess-work as it got you so far until it made you careless. “Wait, why west?”

But Sutcliffe had walked off in radio silence.

Night had fallen. They had been travelling along the dark coast for hours and hours following the light from their EVA headlamps and the fires burning across the land, the ocean always on their right. At one stage, they had all heard two loud explosions in the sky. It sounded as though someone had fired a shotgun. There had been more than twenty small explosions since they had started walking. Petrol tanks blowing up, gas pipes igniting, burning power lines cackling. The land looked as though it had been struck by hurricane, earthquake and fire all in one hit. Now and again they crossed paths with the wreckage of vehicles or the remains of dilapidated cottages, or stumbled upon a corpse. Black rain from a black sky came down so hard on their helmets it sounded like a million spoons being tapped on their heads simultaneously.

Hours later, the ash-rain hadn’t eased off much, but the sky had brightened a little. A new day was beginning. Sutcliffe, way ahead of the others, was vaguely aware of words being spoken behind him through his headset but, in no mood to speak, had switched off his mouthpiece. A mixture of thoughts raced back and forth in his mind and got stuck whenever someone tried to speak to him. His feet drove him forward, a consistent momentum with an awkward stride. He didn’t think about it, he just walked and periodically looked behind him to ensure the crew was keeping up.

“We have been walking all night long,” said Hennessey, her legs aching. “Does he know where he’s going?”

“I really hope so,” said Matthews. “Otherwise we are wasting precious time.”

“He knows the southwest better than all of us put together,” Faraday commented.

Hours later, they arrived at the top of a small hill. It overlooked a charcoal-coloured bay. There in front of them, through a veil of dark haze where the midday sun was being blocked out by the sterile, dark sky they saw it. Sutcliffe paused to take in what had more or less been his home for the past few years.

“It’s gone,” he said.

Faraday held open her arms and shrugged. “Sorry, what is gone?”

Gradually, the land started to form identity and one by one they recognised it. They were back in St. Ives and at the Fable-1 launch site. Sutcliffe descended the hill and, following behind him, the crew saw the T-shaped foundations of the ruined F1 Mission Control Base with rubble scattered everywhere. They skirted along the derelict ruins of the base, circled the site a few times, taking it in, investigating, while Sutcliffe sauntered along the wall, touching it, recollecting. He followed it to the side of the main building where he had a view of where the workshop had been. At the bottom of the hill, he peered into a square shaft. The shaft marked the precise spot where the elevator to the White Room had once operated. Hennessey and Matthews looked over in time to see him leap into it and disappear.

“Please be okay, please be okay,” Hennessey said.

Matthews looked at her and grunted. “I’m sure he’s fine, Jen.”

She shook her head. “I was talking about the White Room.”

At the elevator site, the crew peered down and saw their captain standing on a mountain of rubble filling the deep shaft. Sutcliffe expelled a long, defeated breath as the voice of his heart no longer spoke to him. The White Room, deep underground, their only hope for safety, was unreachable.

Matthews glanced at his oxygen gauge and got a shock. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but my oxy-gen is almost out.”

Keith Burch attempted to force his eyes open, but the effort went unheeded by his body. On his second awakening, he returned to consciousness to find himself lying on his front on concrete with multicoloured shards of glass scattered all about him. Something felt odd. He moved his head slightly, his arms, his legs, then slowly picked himself up, discovering that he was trapped inside the ruins of a burning building – an old, dilapidated church. He was standing amongst broken benches, statues and fallen support columns. Still dazed, he looked up and saw the roof was missing. The broken steeple pierced a night sky bathed in an orange glow. He looked down. His parachute was on fire. He traced the length of the burning parachute still hooked up to his back and, to his horror, realised that the lower half of his spacesuit was also on fire. He screamed. He started beating his legs in an effort to extinguish the flames engulfing his invaluable spacesuit. When the fire went out, he hobbled to an opening and succeeded in getting away from the building.

Now, standing outside the church, he saw the landscape was overcast with a dark, moving sky. An entire forest was ablaze and dense, black smoke could be seen billowing into the sky. His suit was still smoking. He didn’t know where he was and everywhere looked the same; black and ruined and smoke all around. Where was the Fable-1 crew? He tried to radio them but his communicator failed him. Alone and frightened, he knew it was juvenile for a son to crave his mother, but he desperately wanted to be with her. In her lucid days, she would have known what to do and she would have kept him safe. At that moment, all he had left was a little water, ever-depleting oxygen and his own ingenuity.

Part 3

Chapter 15

The taste of metal and gun oil didn’t matter because the monster barely noticed it. The hunching creature’s teeth clunked along the metal as the pistol slid further down its throat, tears bleeding from its eyes; eyes that did not hide the coldness, the emptiness, as if it had no soul. It tried to grasp at the fading adumbrations of its life. Over and over it tried to wrest a meaning from its numbed and transition-fogged mind. It knew the world was living in an age of environmental uncertainty, but what had happened? It wished it had died, for survival had embroiled it in what could only be described as a burning hell. The monster stared at the hostile world, allowed itself one last thought, then waited to hear the last sound of its life – the blast.

The blast shook the land. The charge set off a column of explosives creating the first of fifteen bore holes in the ground, initiating the task of building the underground tunnel. Fred Farrell, a geotechnical engineer specialising in underground construction, slopes, rock mechanics and excavations had given the construction of a new drainage tunnel the go-ahead after determining the geology of the Gloucestershire region was ideal. The new tunnel would have the capacity to hold two million litres of rain floodwater.

Farrell raised his yellow hard hat and saw that a colleague was walking alongside a man he thought he knew. “Fred, this is Benny Samways,” the colleague said. “He’s the new geologist and he’ll be working on the project with us.”

Farrell shook hands with him. “Actually, we’ve met. You went to the School of Geography and Geosciences.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“We attended the same lectures.”

“Yeah, I remember you.”

Farrell paused a moment. “The last I heard, you were arrested for possession of a firearm.”

Samways barely smiled. “I remember hearing the same rumour myself.”

“Well, I never believed it, just to let you know. So, how did you wind up here?”

“Long story.”

“Well, it looks as though we are going to be working on this project together for a while, so I guess we’ll be seeing more of each other.”

“I guess so.”

Samways started to walk away, turned and pointed at Farrell in one smooth movement. “What time do you knock off?”

“About sixish, why?”

“Wanna join me at the pub later to discuss the project?”

“Sure, why not.”

Farrell arrived at the pub on time and ordered a pint. He sat at a table in the window with his arms folded. A little boy running from his parents along the pavement outside tripped and went down hard on his knee. His father scooped him up and cradled him in his arms to silence his cries. The image made him think about his own childless life. He was painfully aware that the only thing missing in his life was a baby, feeling that when his marriage was difficult, the proximity of a sympathetic son or daughter would help resolve their conflicts and perhaps fix their train-wreck relationship. The main issue was money, or lack thereof. And because of his overwhelming debts, he and his wife lived in squalor. It was no place for bringing up a child. Farrell looked around the pub. Samways wasn’t there yet. Then he was.

“Hey.”

Farrell turned. “Benny, have a seat.”

The pair exchanged basics about themselves and their families, their careers, good times, bad times, the hardships of life and then back to the topic of work. They had reached the limit of ritual small talk and they were both drunk when Samways said, “Ever dreamed of being rich?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“I’m not talking hypothetically.”

“I don’t follow.”

“What if becoming rich was not just a dream but a possibility, Fred. What lengths would you go to in order to become a wealthy man?”

“To be honest, I would kill right now for some serious dosh. You see, a few years ago, I had a gambling addiction and–“

“Yeah, yeah,” Samways interrupted. “Listen, can you meet me tomorrow at the Hayle tunnel site in Cornwall?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Good, see you there at about midday.”

Farrell awoke early and wrestled with his demons, the taste of ale still tart in his mouth. He rarely drank alcohol and whenever he did he always regretted it the next day. Sonia, is wife, had already left for the hospital to do the day shift, so Farrell sat at the breakfast table alone with a plate of toast and a strong coffee.

According to the little clock on the television set, it was eight o’clock already. The Fable-1 balloon launch was being televised live around the world. Five balloonists were flying an enormous helium balloon to the stratosphere to set a new world record and undertake scientific experiments. Cameras from helicopters swept across the St. Ives cliff-top illustrating the sheer number of people in attendance with the helium balloon standing in the centre of the crowds. The balloon was the biggest Farrell had ever seen. He watched as the balloon jumped off the cliff-top into the sky while a commentator gave details about their mission and the dangers they faced.

Farrell arrived at the tunnel site in Hayle at midday. The tunnel was being widened to facilitate an increase in the storage of rain-water and his main responsibility was to provide a design outline, which included excavation methods and cost estimates as well as an engineering risk analysis. Samways had yet to arrive, so he waited at the tunnel entrance. He sat on the bonnet and stared up at the sky, thinking about the Fable-1 mission, trying to imagine what it was like up there. At that moment, an expanding dark blob appeared in the sky. The balloonists had just set off their smoke identifiers.

Samways arrived an hour late and apologised for not being there sooner. Into the tunnel they went, the entrance leading to a warren of smaller tunnels that merged into one. Samways followed Farrell along a narrow passageway that formed a bottleneck at the end providing enough room for one person to fit through at a time. They descended a metal ladder welded to the wall which dropped down onto a ledge that was raised above a river of muddy drain water running through the long tunnel. Lamps mounted on the wall provided dim light.

Farrell thought Samways was acting strangely. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to talk to you somewhere quiet and private. I have a proposition for you.”

“What sort of proposition?”

“Last night you told me how desperate you were for money, that you would kill for some serious dosh.”

Farrell did not like the sound of this conversation. “Yeah, but I didn’t mean I would actually kill someone.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting that you do.”

“That’s a relief.”

“There is a jewellery shop that me and a few others have been sizing up for the past few months. I’ve done some research on the geology of the area and the land beneath the jeweller’s is easily penetrable. There isn’t a great deal of cohesion or cement and the rock is extremely porous. Excavating will be easy, and I even have a mate with the equipment for the job. I have managed to get my hands on the original architectural designs for the jeweller’s shop and the building next door, a betting shop.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Why do you think?”

“Alright, but why do you need plans for the betting shop?”

“My mate is the owner and he will give me his keys for a cut of the money. From there, we will dig a tunnel all the way into the jeweller’s shop. Too easy.”

“Won’t the police find the tunnel and link it back to the betting shop owner?”

“We’ll make it look like a break-in. There are no cameras inside the betting shop so there’s no way it can be proved.”

Farrell would have been lying if he had said the idea didn’t appeal to him. Money would indeed change his life. And more than anything he wanted his life to change. In view of his standing as a respected citizen, Farrell presumed he would never be suspected. “What exactly is my role?”

“I need two excavators for the job. You have the experience and the knowledge.”

“It’s been five years since I last did any manual work. It’s no longer my field.”

“Are you serious? It’s like riding I bicycle. Fucking not my field. You never forget. And just think, you won’t have to do inspections in grubby sewage tunnels anymore. You won’t have to stay with your wife. You won’t even have to live in this country, if you don’t want to. Put the consequences to the back of your mind, they will only cloud your judgment.”

“The consequences? You mean prison?”

Samways shrugged.

Farrell knew this was an opportunity. He also knew that he was never going to say yes to such an absurd plan. Samways obviously knew nothing about him, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked. Farrell was about to refuse the offer when Samways pulled out a Kimber Elite Compact .45 pistol, spinning it around his index finger like a weapon specialist.

“This is yours,” he said.

Farrell accepted the pistol reluctantly, marvelling over how much it weighed and how uneasy it made him feel. It was the first time he had ever held a pistol and just the thought of it in his possession made his stomach turn.

Just then, a tremor in the tunnel shook dust from the roof.

“What was that?” Farrell said.

The tunnel was shaking with violent shocks. It startled a cluster of rats. It sounded like the entire passageway was caving in around them. A flare at the entrance to the main tunnel above them turned into a tornado of flames, appearing with invasive menace. Even the thick stone couldn’t protect them from the roar of giant rolling fireballs. Farrell lost his footing and fell into the murky water, hitting his head on the bottom. He was under for a while and when he came up for air, Samways was screaming and writhing, his whole frame incandescent with flames, dancing hysterically as fire ravaged across his body. Farrell watched with a feeling of detachment.

Gradually, the screams faded and the flames on his body were extinguished by the water in which he fell. Farrell watched his smoking corpse float off along the tunnel, now a furnace of heat. Hauling himself out of the water, he sat on the ledge, rocking back and forth, delirious.

Hours and hours passed. Eventually, Farrell found the strength to start moving. With his skin prickling and his clothes cemented to his body, and with enormous pain across his back and shoulders, he clambered out of the tunnel. As he re-emerged into the world, he saw that the sky was dark but there were fires burning everywhere and the entire township of Hayle was gone.

Farrell put some pressure on the trigger. In unspeakable pain, the freakish relic of a man knew he otherwise faced an agonising death. The Kimber Elite Compact .45 pistol was the cure. About to close his eyes, he suddenly saw four figures dressed in white suits and white helmets far off on top of a large hill. He thought they had to be paramedics looking for survivors. They could treat him. Scrambling to his feet, he clasped his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice but no sound came out. He pointed the pistol lazily into the air and fired it twice, the shots reverberating in the smoke-filled sky. He believed that the paramedics had heard it, but they continued over the hill where they disappeared. Howling into the night sky like some ghastly monster, he sauntered along the base of the hill, his head bent and arms limp, his body trembling with terror. Skin hung from his fingers and face like hot cheese. He hobbled parallel with a narrow stream. Scattered body parts could be seen everywhere; legs, arms, whole torsos. Some of the bodies remained in full form and looked like burnt mannequins. The smell of charred leaves and smouldering corpses assaulted the air. Farrell could hear his blood thrumming in his ears. He soldiered on, the pistol hanging loosely in his grasp. The air was thick with smoke and black rain fell like heavy snowflakes. He whimpered as he made his way across the charcoaled land to where he had seen the paramedics. If he could just catch up with them, they could fix him.

Reaching the top of the hill, he saw a barren, colourless terrain of destruction and death and the paramedics were nowhere to be seen. Then he vomited.

Chapter 16

The rubble filling the elevator shaft that led to the subterranean White Room was comprised of broken bricks, broken glass, even the remains of a swivel chair. Cast iron posts, wooden planks and pipes protruded from the mass of rubble, all garnished with dark brown ash from the contaminated skies above.

Oxygen in their tanks had fallen dangerously low and the four balloonists were aware of the countdown to certain death. The oxygen would soon run out, like their options. Sutcliffe, standing in the shaft, looked up at his crew. They were staring down at him with the ignorance of hope. He felt like mentioning that they’d spent more hours talking over the possibility of failure than he cared to remember and that somehow it had done nothing to help them in their present situation, but decided not to say anything, figuring that morale could do without any more cynicism. His head dropped in despair and the crew could tell by his body language that any hopes of surviving were rapidly fading.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and that was all he could manage.

“That’s it then,” said Matthews. “We’re fucking dead.”

“There must be something we can do,” said Hennessey.

It crossed Sutcliffe’s mind that if their lives were about to end, they were in a position to choose how to end it. There were several options. They could contaminate their lungs with radioactive air. They could suffocate in their spacesuits. They could wade out to sea and drown. They could cremate themselves in one of the many fires. They could throw themselves off the cliff-top. About to put those obscene and disturbing ideas to the group, he looked down at the rubble and something caught his eye. It got him thinking.

Hennessey and Matthews were arguing. She was angry because Matthews was trying to lay the blame on Sutcliffe for bringing them there and she was defending him. Faraday stood dumbfounded with her arms by her side staring at the burning horizon. Sutcliffe paid little attention to them. He could see something protruding from the rubble. It looked like severed cables. Elevator cables? If they were elevator cables, there could be an elevator, he decided. He began sifting through the wreckage, burrowing a hole in the centre of the rubble hoping that, by some miracle, he would come across the elevator’s roof. Despite extreme fatigue, he found a renewed energy and the speed of his labour got faster and faster.

“What is it, Brad?” said Hennessey.

“I think the elevator’s down here. Someone give me a hand.”

Matthews jumped into the pit, bending his knees as he landed. Helping his partner clear the rubble, lobbing bricks and great hunks of steel into piles in the corners of the shaft, they’d made a hole three feet deep in no time at all. This might work, Matthews thought. He was quite impressed with Sutcliffe’s ability to find a solution to a problem, to manipulate even the most difficult of situations. He had to admit, as much as he preferred to take control of things, that Sutcliffe’s actions were not without merit.

“Can we help?” said Faraday.

“If there is too much weight, it may cause the rubble to topple,” said Matthews, barely looking up. “Just wait there a minute.”

Faraday turned to Hennessey, shaking her head. “What he means is that it’s no place for a woman.”

“I heard that,” he said. “If we are on top of the elevator, the excessive weight might cause the roof to collapse. Then we’ll never get into the White Room.”

“Point taken.”

At twenty feet, there was still no sign of the elevator. Sutcliffe wondered if Matthews had a point. Maybe the weight of the rubble had crushed the elevator.

“Are you sure the elevator’s even still here?” said Matthews.

“No. Just keep digging.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were still digging through the rubble and their hope was diminishing with every breath. Hennessey and Faraday were growing restless, drawing on the last of their oxygen. Sutcliffe lifted a large piece of concrete and it revealed a flat metal surface. He got on his knees and knocked on the metal with the flat of his hand. An echo.

“It’s hollow.”

They hurried to clear a space and came across a square hatch. Peeling back the hatch, they peered into its black void. It was just about big enough for a human to fit through. Matthews went in first. Dropping inside, he found it hard to move his legs, as though he’d jumped into a swamp. He switched on his EVA headlamps and steered the light with his head, investigating the elevator, noticing that he was standing in two feet of water. The elevator doors were sealed shut. He worried that, without electricity, they wouldn’t open.

Sutcliffe told Faraday and Hennessey to be careful on their way down the funnel-shaped hole because the rubble was unstable. With vigilant footsteps, picking their way, they descended and some concrete dislodged and rattled down the slope. At the base of the shaft, Faraday planted her boots on either side of the square hatch. Moving light could be seen coming from inside the elevator with what she presumed was the ripple of water. Matthews appeared beneath the hatch with his arms stretched out in front of him.

“I’ve got you, Claris. Just let yourself fall through.”

“I can manage,” she said.

She dropped into the elevator with ease and landed with a big splash. Hennessey came after Faraday. Sutcliffe last. Huddled inside the elevator, the crew observed the conditions as Matthews put his fingers in the vertical line where the elevator doors met, but his gloves were too thick and he couldn’t establish a grip.

“I’m going to have to take my gloves off,” he said.

Detaching the aluminium couplings, he pulled off his gloves and, like a pianist, flexed his fingers, enjoying the movement. He gained a firm grip on the doors and forced them apart. The doors began to open fractionally and the water slowly started to recede. One final thrust and the doors cracked open a few inches, enough to push an arm through. The water gushed out around them, flooding the lobby outside the White Room. While Matthews pushed one door, Hennessey pushed the other, all the while thinking that Matthews was not such a bad guy after all, even admitting that she was beginning to like him.

Following the light of the headlamps, they stepped into the lobby through the water, now six inches deep. The large steel door of the White Room opened via a steel handle, but when Sutcliffe tried it, the door wouldn’t budge.

“It’s stuck,” he said.

“Let me try,” said Matthews. “I should be able to grip it better.” He pulled on the door handle as hard as he could, then kicked it in frustration. “Fuck!”

“The frame might have buckled in the explosions,” Sutcliffe said.

Faraday made a gasping sound. “My oxygen!”

Sutcliffe frantically tried the handle again. Matthews bolted into the elevator and reached his arm up through the hatch and retrieved a steel bar jutting out from the wreckage, six feet long. He’d spotted it on the way in. Pulling back his arm, he whipped the hatch down and ran back to the door. He lodged the bar between the door’s edge and the metal frame.

“You all pull, I’ll push,” he instructed.

In unison, they gripped and worked the handle, the steel bar slowly prising the door away from its frame and it opened with a snap. They stood staring inside the black hollow room in nervous silence. The darkness was imposing, as if something dreadful would suddenly jump out and attack them. Sutcliffe closed the White Room door, went to the elevator and pulled the doors shut. He began doffing his helmet and gloves and urged everyone else to do the same. He explained that their spacesuits were contaminated with invisible radiation particles and they didn’t want to transfer the contamination to the one place free of it. Faraday had already taken her helmet off and she was sucking in large breaths when everyone began to shed their suits. Hennessey further added that it would be wise to rinse the suits off in the water at their feet even though it wouldn’t fully rid the garments of radiation. In doing so, they could use items from the spacesuits inside the White Room such as the helmet’s EVA headlamps, the diaper collection device and the backpack with the communication equipment in case Burch tried to make contact with them.

Hennessey peeled out of her spacesuit and allowed it to fall into the water. Matthews observed her lean body and calculated that it was exactly as he’d imagined. He stared fixedly at the shape of her hips, her thighs and her small breasts hidden beneath the one-piece spandex mesh suit. She went to unzip the front entry but stopped when she saw him looking over her with invading eyes. “Do you mind?” she said.

He smiled. “Not if you don’t.”

“Well, I do.”

Faraday, still in shock from her encounter with suffocation, felt frightened to enter the White Room. Into that false sense of security, she sensed something not right, that if the White Room was going to be unliveable, they would have nowhere else to go.

Standing on the threshold of darkness, they entered the White Room, their antler-like headlamps guiding the way. Sutcliffe ran his lights about the dark room. They had been there twenty eight hours earlier, but it felt like an entirely different place. The room no longer had an air of possibility about it. It looked to have come through the bombing unscathed, though he couldn’t see everything inside yet and therefore couldn’t be certain. Aside from its isolated position, the thick, impenetrable walls prevented the radiation from seeping in, except for the tiny traces clinging to their clothes, like bacteria. And apart from a few fractures in the wall and some dust on the floor from vibrations in the ceiling, the White Room had survived the blasts.

The tired Fable-1 crew sat down on the benches while Sutcliffe finished his inspection of the place, accidentally bumping into the stepladder in the middle of the room and knocking over a can of paint with his foot. On a hook on the wall, his freshly pressed suit hung like a piece of museum art. He studied the room in a quest for useful resources. Already, he had discovered a few important facts. The security bolt at the top of the White Room door had broken away from its mount. He would fix that later. One of the toilet doors had jammed tightly shut, probably the frame had buckled in the blast, like the main door, so only one toilet operated for now. He hadn’t tried the flush because he knew it might work a few times while the water pressure was still good, but because the pumps wouldn’t be powered with electricity, the toilet wouldn’t refill the cistern with water. A mop and bucket was tucked behind the toilet and that meant the cistern could be filled manually with seawater using the bucket down at the beach.

Matthews opened the flask he had found in the wrecked car. Inside was a dark liquid that smelt much like tea, about two-thirds full, a cup for everyone. He drank some, then gestured with it to Hennessey, who turned it down.

“I’m not sure I want to risk it. It could be contaminated,” she said.

“Impossible. It’s an insulation flask,” Matthews replied.

“I don’t want to risk it.”

“Fine, I’ll drink yours.”

Sutcliffe and Faraday shared the tea. It made Sutcliffe realise how hungry and thirsty he was and why he was feeling so under the weather. A glass of orange juice, two cups of coffee, the contents of his in-suit drink bag and a splash of cold tea were all that he had consumed since Sunday. Scrambled egg on brown toast and grilled tomatoes was the last meal he had eaten. That had been almost thirty hours ago. Where would his next meal come from? Being somewhere safe, somewhere they could relax, lifted a huge weight off their shoulders, but from now on things would get tougher. He thought of his family, the first time he’d dared to. Everyone he knew and loved was probably dead. His father. Old friends. Good friends. Ground crew. His old friend Mike Townsend, his remains dispersed somewhere above the White Room. And his son. Martin had had his problems growing up. But he’d been a good child to father. Sutcliffe couldn’t help being filled with a thousand regrets. He fought back the overwhelming urge to cry. Anger was what he felt, a deep sense of hatred for the people responsible for killing his family, his friends, his countrymen and his world. Conceivably, the instigators of the nuclear attack had died in the same despicable way, but that did not serve as justice or retribution.

Faraday went over to her bag and retrieved her mobile phone. She knew it wouldn’t be working because the walls were reinforced concrete, eight inches thick and she was thirty feet beneath the ground. Besides, the network had probably been destroyed, but that didn’t stop her trying redial. The last number she’d called belonged to Nick Parsons. Her heart sank when the dial tone flat-lined. It was so loud that Matthews on the other side of the room could hear it. From the glow of the mobile screen, he could also make out the disappointed expression on her face.

At his own bag, Matthews fished out his last two amphetamine pills, the ones he’d been saving for the grand celebration after their ballooning triumph. When no one was looking, he popped them in his mouth and swallowed, hoping that this nightmare would all go away and that he would wake up in a few days and find it had all been a bad drug experience. With his wallet in his hand, he sat on the bench and played catch with it for a while. He opened it up to have a look inside, each compartment, one by one. He took out all his bank cards and credentials. He raked through the contents and peeped inside the note compartment. No money. Strange, he thought, convinced there had been two twenties in there the day before. He tipped the change into his palm, added it up in his head, then in a rage tossed the coins to the floor, as though feeding a fleet of pigeons. The bouncing coins twinkled and made a tune as they rolled in pointless circles. Then he tossed the whole wallet on the floor.

“What now?” he moaned.

“We just wait,” said Hennessey.

“Wait for what? To be rescued? To die?”

“The air outside is thick with tiny particles of radiation that will eat away at your immune system. Gamma ray radiation is fatal within the first hour of exposure, but after about eight or nine hours it weakens to about one-tenth. After a couple of days, it weakens even further to about one-hundredth, which is still lethal. Right now, we wait it out. In a few days, we can figure out a survival plan. In the meantime, we just wait. And we have to be patient.”

“I apologise. It’s just…never mind.”

Sutcliffe walked across the room and sat beside his worn-out crewmates, allowing his head to fall back against the wall. He didn’t care about the success of the space flight, or that Fable-1 had been destroyed – not now, maybe not ever. He could not understand why he was thinking so much about the people he had seen that morning when he had made his way to the F1 Mission Control Base; the annoying neighbour running his car engine twenty minutes before he’d climbed into it to drive to work, the man starting his dayshift at the petrol station with a piece of bloody tissue stuck to a shaving cut, the mother pushing her son in a pushchair at an intersection in St. Ives, the couple kissing up against the gate of the Mission Control Base as families arrived at the launch site. Then his mind switched back to his dead son and he inconspicuously started to cry.

The crew switched off the EVA headlamps on their helmets to conserve battery power, condemning them to the cold, dark interior of the White Room. Exhausted and in shock, they sat in silence. Nobody dared to utter another word and nothing more was said that day.

Chapter 17

It had been a very long, cold night. But the Fable-1 crew had slept surprisingly well. Dressed in their spandex suits, they had made pillows from their shoes and bags and had used items of clothing as blankets.

Sutcliffe awoke to an uncommon darkness. Impenetrable. It hid every detail of the room. The images of Sunday’s tragedy reformed in his head and he felt the shock of it all over again. He wondered whether it had been a cruel dream. The darkness around him served to remind otherwise. He quickly became aware of his aching joints, his feet frozen to the bone and a sharp band of pain across his chest. His spine hurt too from the unsympathetic tiles on the floor. He stretched each limb individually, giving extra care to his left leg, folding it in half, gripping the knee with both hands and pulling it to his chest, then kicking it out straight to loosen the knots. He had been exercising it everyday since the accident. It was no longer a discipline, more a necessity. Everyday it ached. That day it ached more than usual.

It was Tuesday morning and he could imagine people leaving their houses to go to work, morning rush-hour traffic, the transport system overrun with business people, children in uniform mucking around on their way to school, truck drivers doing their deliveries, construction and tearing down of buildings, the chugging of large machinery and the ringing of telephones. A regular day in a regular month with people doing things in their regular lives.

“What’s for breakfast?” said Matthews, coming awake slowly, stretching and yawning.

The room was too dark to see so he flicked on his headlamps and the far corner of the room came to life. He trained the helmet’s light around the room to find his friends. Sutcliffe was performing leg exercises. Faraday had dropped back off to sleep as quickly as she had woken up. She looked at peace. Hennessey had her eyes closed, but she was awake lying on the bench. That first night, she had woken up in a panic, falling to sleep and waking again all night long, reliving the nightmare of Sunday through her dreams.

“How’s everyone feeling this morning?” asked Sutcliffe.

“Hungry, but otherwise not too bad,” said Hennessey.

“Yeah, I could eat a horse,” Matthews added.

Sutcliffe finished his exercises and turned to his crew. “I think we should pool all our resources together and see what we’ve got between us, when we’re all up.”

Outside in the lobby, Sutcliffe checked on their spacesuits, which hung out of the water on the flat metal bar they had used to force open the main door and now functioned as a clothes support rail suspended between the lengths of the walls. Several cigarette butts littered the surface of the water. They belonged to Keith Burch. He had smoked three or four on Sunday morning alone. He wondered about his missing crewmate and hoped he was still alive. Idiot, he should have jumped at the same time as everyone else. Maybe he had.

It wasn’t until he was back in the White Room that something began to bother him. The atmosphere had started to press down on him filling him with subdued depression. Or was it something else? The thought that they were all going to die down there. If they were to avoid that likely fate, they would have to be smarter, stronger, more resourceful and optimistic, he thought. The ingredients for survival.

Over by the bench, the crew was emptying the pockets of their coats, trousers and bags, retrieving their personal belongings and Sutcliffe joined them, locating his suit jacket.

“That’s not mine,” he said pulling a metallic blue mobile phone from his pocket.

“That’s mine!” Matthews barked. “Why’ve you got it?” There was accusation in his voice.

“I don’t know, but my wallet is missing,” he replied.

“Is this it?” said Hennessey, holding up a leather wallet, which she’d retrieved from her trouser pocket.

“Yeah, how strange.”

“Tell me about it,” said Faraday. “I can’t find my rings.”

While the crew claimed their scattered belongings, pondering over how they could have become so muddled up, Sutcliffe took his possessions to the middle of the room and made a small pile where the crew joined him, adding items to it. Sitting, they circled the pile, like some kind of meditative ritual. Included in the collection was a packet of cigarettes, two lighters, a newspaper, a laptop computer, a variety of basic medicines from the cabinet in the toilet, a Jane Austin novel, a health bar snack, an inhaler stick, a bottle of water, four sets of keys, four mobile phones, sunglasses, chewing gum, an opened roll of peppermints, a bottle of sleeping pills, a flick-knife and a handkerchief.

“Not much to get excited about,” said Matthews.

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Sutcliffe. “The mobile phones will give us extra light for a while and we can share the health bar and the water. If anyone fancies a smoke, go for your life. Cigarettes lessen appetites. We have two sources of reading material. We have some medicine and if anyone has trouble sleeping, we have pills. It’s better than nothing I suppose.”

Hennessey considered having a cigarette, but thought better of it. Things were not quite that desperate. Instead, she divided up the health bar into equal pieces and handed them out while Sutcliffe took his laptop equipped with two-way satellite broadband over to the bench. If the autonomous space stations in orbit equipped with specialised wireless transceivers could make a connection through the congested sky, it might still work. He waited for the computer to load, concerned to see the battery display icon only a fifth full of colour. The screen was bright enough to light up most of the room, so Matthews killed the EVA headlamps to preserve power. Sutcliffe moved the mouse and double-clicked on an icon he wanted to open. The words Page Expired appeared above a list of plausible reasons on his screen.

Sutcliffe sighed. “So the myth about the Internet surviving a nuclear war was just that, a bloody myth.”

Faraday came over and shook her head. “Maybe you just can’t get a signal from a satellite transmitter yet.”

“Which suggests the electromagnetic pulse reached them.”

“I doubt it. Broadband satellites orbit hundreds of miles above the Earth. Just give it time. It might still pick up a frequency.”

They waited anxiously, the computer searching for the satellite space stations through eight-inch walls and radioactive clouds until, eventually, it found one.

“Alright, we’re in.”

Everyone had crowded around the laptop’s rectangular light as Sutcliffe clicked on the search bar and typed in NUCLEAR ATTACK ON EUROPE and hit enter. Thousands of search results appeared. Scrolling through the assortment of headings supplying brief snaps of information, they were able to grasp immediately that the nuclear bombs had been at the instigation of North Korea. Apparently, they had been launched from various sites, Pyongyang the capital being the main launch site. He attempted to open the first publication. It had been published two days ago by the Washington Post. Access denied. He clicked back to the search results. He tried the second heading, the publishers CNN. Access denied. He tried others, one after another. Access denied. Frustrated, he browsed through the search results, determining what he could from the titles and the little snippets of information featured beneath those titles. They all seemed to proclaim the same thing. North Korea had released over four hundred intercontinental three-stage ballistic missiles at targets in Europe, Russia, the United States of America and their close allies, also launching weapon strikes against South Korean forces and the US forces based around the world. Russia and the United States had retaliated. A title at the bottom of the search results page displayed a fraction of the American President’s response.

“…international tragedy is occurring. Approximately two hundred and twenty nuclear weapons have been launched from mainland North Korea. Several of those missiles are heading to our…”

Sutcliffe attempted to open the full article. Access denied.

According to a government source on another search result, the US had retaliated with intercontinental ballistic missiles against North Korea from underground facilities in Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado. Other sources mentioned China, though unclear as to why. There were publications from various world news sources – all the respected broadcasting corporations and national newspapers, several government entries and some independent blogs. Some were the prophecies of nuclear experts, obsolete and had nothing to do with the current news.

Apart from the prophesiers, they all had one thing in common. They had all been published two days earlier.

A frightening question came to Sutcliffe. The expression on his face was grim when he shared his thoughts with his crew. “If no articles have been published since the bombs went off, does that mean nobody is alive to write them?”

“What are you saying?”

“Has the entire world population been killed?”

“That is total mush,” Hennessey said. “I dare say the Internet is down and nobody has been able to publish anything since.”

Sutcliffe had a bad feeling, convinced that what the crew had witnessed so far was only the tip of the iceberg. He wondered if, from the safety of their balloon, they had witnessed the brutality and horror of a world nuclear holocaust. All the superpower nations had been involved: China, Russia and the United States. And media sources had specifically stated that North Korea had fired nuclear missiles at the United States and its close allies, which included Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Additionally, American forces consisting of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps positioned all over the world, including the Arabian Gulf, South America, the Western Pacific islands, Uganda and Djibouti in Africa, may also have been targeted. What could several thousands of fission megatons do to the world? They had seen what a handful of nuclear missiles had done to the corner of Europe and Sutcliffe worried that it barely hinted at the scale.

“You don’t think what we saw was the beginning of a nuclear world war, do you Brad?” said Faraday.

“To be honest, I don’t know what to think. But it does look like countries from all over the world were involved. And, I’m sorry to say, Jen, it looks like America took the brunt of it.”

Hennessey found it hard to react to information so intense. She knew her physical discomfort ranked second behind the mental torture of it all. Physical pain went away in time, mental pain stayed forever. Right now, she didn’t know how to deal with the idea that her country and her people had been eliminated.

“This is all just assumption,” she said. “We still don’t know the full story yet.”

Sutcliffe could see through her façade. She wasn’t as tough as she liked to make out. He studied his comrades circling the laptop, their downturned mouths and grim faces, their mind lasering over the myriad of problems they faced. He wanted to remain positive, say something profound and inspiring, look on the bright side and keep spirits high, but he didn’t want to lie.

“Look, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. But if we all pull together, we can get through this.”

“How can it get any worse?” said Faraday.

Sutcliffe was about to speak when Hennessey stepped in. “Brad is referring to the weather. We could be on the brink of a nuclear winter.”

“What do you mean by nuclear winter?” Faraday asked.

Hennessey gestured the explanation to Sutcliffe.

“Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of sanitary problems, shortages of food and water, being confined to this room for God knows how long. I’m not entirely clued up on the after-effects of a nuclear disaster.”

“A nuclear winter is where all the particles of excavated dust and soil and crap go up into the atmosphere and block out the rays of the sun,” Hennessey explained. “Because the sun can’t penetrate through the clouds, the temperature drops dramatically and the result is a world of ice and extreme cold. You were right on the money, Brad, when you said things were going to get a lot worse because they really will.”

“Isn’t that all just scientific speculation?” said Matthews, lifting his shoulders and eyes widened to strengthen his point. “Nobody has ever experienced a nuclear war before so, for all we know, the weather might not change at all.”

Hennessey shrugged her shoulders. “All I’m saying is that with all this radiation about, conditions will become insupportable.”

“If people survived on minimal resources during the Stone Age and Ice Age, I’m sure we can do it too,” Matthews said.

Faraday lifted her head. “I don’t recall the Stone Age and Ice Age eras having radioactive food and water to contend with. I think the Nuclear Age is far more challenging than previous ages, don’t you?”

“At least we’re still alive.”

“Great,” she replied. “Lucky us.”

She began to cry and although it was good that she gave vent to it, Sutcliffe thought it could further harm spirits. Or perhaps not. Perhaps her tears would influence others to cry, and that might clear the way for positive thinking. Sitting beside Faraday, he put his arm around her shoulder, encouraging her to bury her head into his large chest. She did and it seemed to amplify her crying, her head jerking as she sobbed, softly at first, then more animatedly.

“Let it out,” he said in a soft voice, rubbing and patting her back. He turned to his crew. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

Chapter 18

Through sheer strength of will and physical prowess, Sutcliffe had been able to find a temporary solution to a permanent problem. He had played a pivotal role in bringing them safely to the White Room. Matthews could admit that. But now the room was filled with mixed tensions. Everyone felt inadequate to the task of prolonging their survival because the grim truth was that survival was beyond their control.

Matthews, however, thought differently. “I don’t want to be the one to state the obvious, but if we stay here without food or water, we’ll be dead by next week. And I don’t intend to die.”

“We talked about this,” Sutcliffe reminded. “We need to wait at least a few more days before we do anything, just until the worst of the radiation has receded. We have a little water and that can keep us going for at least ten days.”

“Fuck!” he groaned as he paced the room. He kicked the wall. More than usual, his behaviour was strange, aggressive. His hands were constantly shaking and a continuous sweat broke and face. His temper was short and he was agitated. Turning, he all but shoved Sutcliffe aside as he moved to the middle of the room, spotlighted by the headlamps. He obviously had something important to say and Sutcliffe saw the wisdom in letting him get it out uninterrupted.

“We have spare oxygen tanks in the utility room, right?”

Sutcliffe nodded.

“Right, we go outside in our spacesuits and make a large help sign in the ground near the entrance to the shaft. We use the rubble to make letters.” He saw the cans of paint on the floor beside the stepladder. “Better still, we paint letters on the ground. That way, when a helicopter or search plane passes over, they’ll know where to look for survivors. They could be looking for us now and we’re wasting precious time.”

Sutcliffe didn’t express his own feelings, that the chances of an aerial rescue were slim with cloud cover obscuring the sight of land. Dust that thick would clog the workings of engines anyway. And considering many countries in Europe had been hit with nuclear bombs, the chances of an international search when there were survivors in their own countries to consider were even slimmer. He also knew that you didn’t change minds by arguing. By not arguing, it showed dignity and a semblance of control. Besides, he was too tired to be argumentative and he simply shrugged and said nothing.

Hennessey was going out of her mind. She kind of agreed with Matthews, because right now the prospect of spending time down there in the White Room with people from backgrounds massively different from hers was beginning to perturb her. Living in a room full of hungry, depressed individuals while factions and animosity prevented them from pulling together had all the makings of conflict. She felt something she had sensed many times throughout her career, that the presence of death was as near as the air she breathed. She walked to the other side of the room where she collected a can of paint and handed it to Matthews.

“Do it,” she said to him.

Matthews felt as though he’d stepped into the earliest beginnings of the Earth. Seeing the bleak, barren land confirmed the horror of what they had survived. At the same time, the country seemed at peace, free of clutter and of noise.

Squatting, he scooped a pile of ash into his gloved hand. He could see every individual grain, each one representing a human, each a mark of death. The ash of an identity. A strong puff of wind dissolved the pile into the air, erasing its existence. Standing up, he brushed the ash aside with his feet to make a space on the ground. With the white paint, he began crafting HELP in the ground and he made the letters large for anyone piloting an aircraft to see. He marvelled over his work, positive it would attract the attention of aid workers, but his confidence quickly waned as soon as he looked into the dark sky, understanding that the chances of an aerial rescue were very slim.

Matthews spent some time that afternoon exploring the ruins of F1 Mission Control Base. A restless man at the best of times, he found himself growing bored and impatient; with waiting around in the White Room, the people he was imprisoned with, everything. His fuse was shortening and he put it down to the fact that he’d run out of drugs. He would have done anything for a hit at that point. He felt as though he was suffering a prolonged comedown, unable to stop his hands shaking, and felt that at any moment he would shatter into a million pieces. Indeed, the thought of going back to the White Room was worse than the thought of why he was there at all.

Matthews stopped still. What was that? Was that fresh smoke? Thick smoke, twirling into the air. A new fire? He wondered what was burning so fiercely. He decided to investigate and was about half a mile away from the White Room when he saw the first body of a female, twisted and broken. Near her corpse he saw the thriving fire filling the air with motes of black smoke and dust. Matthews proved himself, once again, able to be shocked. The enormous fire was burning dozens and dozens of bodies. They had been purposely stacked in a deep ditch and were being cremated. Another dead body appeared. It was being dragged on its back across the ground. The hooded woman dragging the body was a shabby thing with broad shoulders and thick arms, wide at the hips and late forties in age. Her clothes were formless and draped across her shoulders was a dirty blanket. Seeing the woman informed him that there had to be other survivors living in the midst of a torn society with food and water absent and hunger and death always present. She barely noticed Matthews standing there and continued dragging the body towards the immense fire by the heels, its gender indeterminable by the vast degree of burn. At the edge of the ditch, she stopped to catch her breath. Matthews watched her pick up the body and flop it over her shoulder like a sack of firewood. Then she threw the corpse into the ditch and onto the pile.

Approaching cautiously, he raised his visor a fraction. “You alright there, lady?”

The hooded woman paid no attention to him.

“Who are you?”

The woman stalked off and disappeared over a hill. Matthews stared at the fire, the flesh of men, women and children popping and hissing in the burning heat. The woman was returning with another body, that of a young boy slung over her shoulder. The boy was no older than ten, still with the backpack he had been wearing at the time of the explosions, now burnt to his back. The strong woman used two hands to swing the child’s body onto the mass grave.

“Hey, anyone home?”

She took large steps back from the edge of the ditch. For most of a minute, she stood staring down at the ground. Then she drew back her hood, unveiling her head, and acknowledged Matthews with a wraith-like stare. And at that moment, as he caught sight of her, he saw something that made his blood run cold. One side of her face was missing and he could see the definitions of her skull. With her head low, she spoke to him softly. “We were all supposed to burn.”

It only took her three strides to reach the edge of the ditch where she leapt into the fire, cackling like a burning witch as the flames engulfed her human form, eating away at her life. Soon she was as dead as the pyramid of people below her.

Matthews’ heart lurched. “Fucking hell!”

The image of burning bodies and the anonymous cremator might have been the reason why Matthews forgot to close the elevator hatch on his return to the White Room. He didn’t know it yet, but that little slip of the mind was about to prove disastrous.

Inside the White Room, he refused to talk about what he’d seen, said nothing was wrong and that was the end of it, but everyone knew he had been affected by it. He was aware of the value of keeping the details of the mystery woman to himself. But for now, all was quiet. Faraday had her head buried between her knees. Sutcliffe and Hennessey sat beside each other on the bench, just thinking. Everyone was quiet with the same thoughts playing in their minds. Silence, no conversation, only thinking and Sutcliffe realised there had not been a single sound from outside in all the time they’d been in the White Room. He realised it because there was a sound now.

Thud…thud…thud.

Sutcliffe and Hennessey both shot looks at the door. Faraday pulled her head out of her knees, convinced she’d heard something, and Matthews froze. Someone was out there, knocking. Who? A survivor? There were other sounds. Scratching on the metal door and a deep moan. There it was again.

Thud…thud…thud.

“Keith!” said Faraday, jumping to her feet. “Thank God.”

The crew had unintentionally neglected to think about Keith Burch, mainly because there were so many other things to think about. But Sutcliffe and Matthews were vigilant, conscious to the fact that Burch’s oxygen supply would have expired over fourteen hours ago and he would have had to have taken off his helmet to breathe. That being the case, he would have inhaled radiation from the contaminated air. Though radiation sickness was not contagious or infectious, caring for someone with radiation sickness would be extremely difficult without the appropriate medicine or professional capability. The men approached the door with caution, as if the entire area was primed to explode. Sutcliffe released the lock at the top of the door, which he had fixed not thirty minutes earlier, and slowly pushed it open. The area in the lobby was too dark to see.

“Hello?”

He pushed the door open further.

“Hello, is anyone there? Keith, is that you?”

“Someone get the helmet,” Matthews ordered.

Faraday went to the corner of the room, collected the helmet and passed it to Sutcliffe, who lifted it up and steered the headlamps into the lobby. No one there. They had all heard it, the unmistakable sound of someone knocking on the door. He was about to step out of the White Room when, all of a sudden, a ghastly, malformed face appeared in the light, the black eyes of a genderless creature with blistered skin staring back at them, frightening the life out of both Sutcliffe and Matthews, whose reaction was to scoot a few steps back. Sutcliffe almost lost the helmet and just about managed to keep the headlamps on the monster’s face, which looked like an unfinished sculpture of clay with deep impressions and ridges in its melted skin. It snorted through its nose and mouth like a wild animal. Its clothing, ripped and burnt, hung off its injured frame in tatters. Sutcliffe looked down and saw a pistol in its hand. Reacting on impulse, he slammed the door in a startled flash of panic and bolted the lock. He went to the back of the room where Hennessey had pulled Faraday into a fearful crouch.

“What was that?” Matthews growled.

“I hate to imagine,” Sutcliffe replied.

Haunting, spine-chilling, the tapping on the door continued like that for several hours.

Thud…thud…thud.

Thud…thud…thud.

Thud…thud…thud.

Chapter 19

“Do you think he’s gone?” Faraday asked.

Sutcliffe pulled his head away from the cold steel door. “I can’t hear anything, but I don’t think he’s got the strength to climb out of the elevator. Did you see the state of him?”

“Who do you think he was?” she said, joining him at the door. “You don’t think it was Keith by any chance?”

“No, I would’ve been able to tell if it was. I would go out and speak to him, but I’m worried he might shoot me.”

“Don’t, stay here. It’s too risky.”

Once again, the room fell spookily silent. Hennessey, Faraday, Sutcliffe and Matthews listened for the sound of movement, a moan, anything to indicate if the man was still out there. The silence was unbearable. Sutcliffe didn’t dare open the door and check. He didn’t feel that the man was out to hurt anyone, but he couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t.

Then…boom…and a reverberating after-sound from outside.

Even from inside the room, they sensed the full force of the discharge. The man had fired his pistol. What at? It occurred to Sutcliffe that he’d probably taken his own life.

“I think he’s just killed himself,” said Hennessey, eyes wide with worry.

In the next minute, Sutcliffe was going for the door, a pressure building as he slowly pushed down on the handle. He stopped. “Simon,” he said, flicking his head towards the door.

Faraday and Hennessey stayed near the back of the room in agitated fear as the men opened the door a fraction. Using the headlamps, they illuminated the lobby and searched it. Nothing. Sutcliffe lowered the headlamps half-expecting to find the man face down in the water, polluting it with blood. Nothing. He pulled the headlamps round, observing Matthews briefly, seeing his attention shift and his eyes widen. Matthews had spotted something in the elevator. A pair of legs, the light revealed. On closer inspection, they found the dead body slumped to the floor beneath the stepladder Matthews had set up earlier to exit the hatch. The pistol was loose in the man’s palm. Blood splashed everywhere, as though someone had thrown a bucket of red paint up the elevator wall. The man’s wilting head had a smouldering dark hole marking the spot where he’d chosen to end his life. Blood streaked across his face and chest. Sutcliffe couldn’t imagine what he’d been through. The image of his son appeared in his head. He hoped death had come quickly and painlessly for Martin and a solitary tear descended his cheek.

“What do we do with him?” asked Sutcliffe.

“Get him out of the elevator for starters,” said Matthews. “We can leave him in the corner of the lobby so the girls don’t see him.”

With Sutcliffe at the man’s feet and Matthews with the man’s arms, they set him down in the lobby, his legs and waist submerged beneath the water and his head flopped against the wall. Sutcliffe found the man’s wallet in his pocket. It had burnt severely and most of the cards inside were damaged, except for a MasterCard. The name on the card read Fred Farrell. Matthews went back into the elevator and retrieved the pistol. He took out the cartridge. There were eight bullet bays, but only five bullets.

When they returned to the White Room, Hennessey was still cradling Faraday. “Is he dead?”

“Yes, he is.”

Hennessey felt guilty for feeling relieved.

Matthews pulled out the souvenir pistol. “But he left us a gift.”

Faraday watched him twirl the pistol in his hand like a toy, making her uncomfortable. “Be careful with that, Simon.”

“I’m always careful.” He pressed his ear to the White Room door feeling more in control of things and less vulnerable now that he was armed. “There’ll be more of them out there, suffering. They don’t stand a chance without food or shelter.”

“Or spacesuits,” said Faraday.

“True, true.”

Hennessey watched Sutcliffe sit down and his head drop onto his lap. Clearly, the death of the man had affected him in ways it had not affected Matthews. Perhaps he didn’t know how to deal with it. She considered him a good man. She had only known him for four weeks but he had many human qualities that appealed to her. Matthews was more handsome and had style, but Sutcliffe was the type of man you could count on in bad times. He was simple and kind and gentle. He was articulate and sensible. He was…rising to his feet in a hurry. Without saying a word, he stomped to the end of the White Room, opened the glass display cabinet and retrieved the spare helmet. Then a moment of rage, or madness. He raised the visor and slammed it into the bench.

“What are you doing?” asked Faraday.

“I can’t just sit around and do nothing.”

“So you’ll just vandalise our equipment instead?”

“We don’t need this helmet, it’s only a spare.”

The visor came away with a crack and banged to the floor. He disappeared into the toilet with it. When he returned to the room, he was holding the mop. The air was pregnant with anticipation with everyone watching the day’s drama in confusion. Sutcliffe began tugging at the mop’s absorbent white strips, yanking the head until it came away in his hand.

“Great, now the mop,” Faraday moaned. “How are we supposed to clean the floor?”

Sutcliffe wasn’t listening.

“Are you going to tell us what it is you’re doing exactly?” asked Hennessey.

“I’m making a spade.”

He explained, as he worked, that he couldn’t relax knowing there was a dead body outside the White Room and that, in light of the fact they hadn’t made the effort to nurse the man when he had come looking for help, the least they could do was give him a respectful burial. Hennessey tried to talk him out of it. She put her hand on his shoulder and tried to point out the dangers and that he shouldn’t go out in case others were out there. He clasped her by the forearm and explained it was the honourable thing to do. There was a moment between them, Matthews and Faraday saw it. No one had mentioned it, but everyone knew their relationship was friendlier than either of them cared to admit.

Sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, Sutcliffe spent some time attaching the mop handle to the visor. The metal jaw at the end of the mop was difficult to open because the spring clip had snapped off. Still, with a little persistence, Sutcliffe managed to feed the visor into the metal jaw, which worked as a strong clamp. Using a handful of the absorbent strips, he tied knots around the joint until the tool was sturdy enough to do the job he had in mind. In the meantime, Matthews prepared himself for the environment outside, dressing in his spacesuit, because he felt compelled to help Sutcliffe, knowing his friend couldn’t manage on his own. Ten minutes later, they were dressed in both hemispheres of their spacesuits feeling the oxygen flowing from behind their heads. For a moment, they endured the odours of bodies long unwashed until the bad air entered a charcoal cartridge, filtering out the body smell. Then they left the White Room, closing the door behind them.

Matthews had trained in the British Army before deciding that the army was not for him. During three years of intense training, he’d learnt to survive in hostile conditions, environments such as the ocean, the desert and the jungle. Camping and cooking over a fire. Techniques for crossing fast-flowing rivers. He had also learnt first-aid and CPR. But they hadn’t taught him how to survive a nuclear holocaust in the army, or how to get a heavy body through an elevator hatch and up a thirty-foot shaft.

Agreeing on a method, they decided the best way to get the intruder out of the elevator was to have Sutcliffe standing on the roof pulling him up with Matthews on the stepladder supporting the weight. With the efforts of pull and push, they hauled the gruesome corpse out through the hatch and set him down on the rubble to catch their breaths. Dragging the body up the inverted pyramid of rubble proved much harder than either of them had expected and it took the best part of fifteen minutes to get the job done.

Soft black rain drizzled from the sky and the wind on the cliff was like some invisible demonic force. Scattered fires still marred the land and the sky had not cleared but a fraction. Like the sky, the land looked colourless and miserable. Where to bury the body? That was the next challenge. At the top of the hill seemed like a suitable place to conceal the man, they discussed. Most shrines for unique and revered individuals were set on hills or great mountains. And Fred Farrell had certainly been unique. Matthews went back to the shaft and retrieved two arm-sized pieces of wood from the rubble and some loose cable and he fashioned a cross by tying the two bars of wood together.

Rejoining Sutcliffe at the top of the hill, he watched his partner kick the spade to turn it the right way round before he dug it into the ground and the solemn work of burial began. The hole they made was not deep and it accommodated the body to its precise measurements. They positioned him facing skyward, arms resting on his pelvis, legs pushed together. They spread the excavated soil evenly around the body, covering him up. Matthews dug the bottom of the cross deep into the ground and stamped on the soil to tighten its poise. A few blocks of broken concrete were positioned at the base of the cross to support the structure and to make the grave look more authentic and Farrell’s name was scratched into the wood using a bent nail.

“What’s that?” said Sutcliffe, staring out into the grey blizzard. “Over there.”

They tracked a single figure swaggering across the hill and, as it got closer, they saw it was a half-naked human.

They had spotted another survivor.

Chapter 20

The White Room defined time. Time passed quickly. Time passed slowly. Sometimes, it felt like it didn’t pass at all, as though they were stuck in some time warp. Often it seemed to slip away from them, relentlessly moving them closer to the end. Without the two boys, the dark and frigid room felt incomplete. Sutcliffe and Matthews had only been gone for about an hour, though it seemed much, much longer.

Hennessey and Faraday sat quietly on the bench. They were hungry and emotionally drained and they wondered what it was like outside now. They wondered if the skies had cleared at all and if the sun had come out. They wondered if the fires had stopped. They wondered if more survivors were out there.

They both heard a sound.

Something had scuffed against the cinderblock. A faint sound, like a pencil being drawn on a wall. It was almost impossible to tell where the sound had come from as the light from the headlamps only splashed around them. Beyond that was just a fog of black. But they had definitely heard something.

They heard it again.

“Did you hear that?”

Faraday nodded. “What do you think it is?”

“Maybe one of the spare oxygen tanks has fallen against the wall.”

Hennessey had been fiddling with one of the lighters, flicking the ignition cog, spinning the device in her fingers and now she was taking it to the utility room. It was inside that room that she saw eleven oxygen canisters stowed away in their racks, all vertical, nothing abnormal about them. In the dim, sputtering light, when she saw the handheld video camera on the shelf, she hadn’t expected it and it gave her a surprise. Strange place to keep a camera, she thought. She wondered what she could do with it. She could film the crew, make a documentary or something, if the batteries still had power. She could use it to keep a record of their health. Pushed into the back corner of the utility room, she also discovered a crate of champagne. There were six bottles in total. There was something tied to the crate. A white balloon. Someone had written FABLE-1 across it with a black marker. Next to the crate she saw a large tub of margarine. That further surprised her. “Claris, you won’t believe what I’ve found,” she said.

“What?”

She took a bottle from the crate and held it up to the lighter. “Fancy a drink?”

Obviously, staff from Mission Control had been planning a celebration for the crew on their return. Someone had placed the champagne in the White Room’s utility cupboard to keep it cool. The party would have been huge, she presumed, and would have probably continued into the early hours of Monday.

“Is there anything to eat?”

“There’s a tub of margarine, for some reason.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Hennessey popped the cork on the champagne and plugged the hole with her mouth, the contents spewing down her throat. She passed the bottle to Faraday who glugged four mouthfuls. The champagne bottle, inept in her grasp, felt like a lead weight, the first indication of her diminishing strength. All of a sudden, she had a terrible thought and the satisfaction was gone from her face. While so many countries around the world were burning and suffering from the mass destruction of North Korean fury, she thought, they sat drinking champagne in the basement of a building unaffected by the blasts of bombs – a sick irony.

“This feels so wrong.”

Hennessey nodded. “But what is right anymore?”

“I suppose.” She took another sip. “You know, celebrating a successful balloon flight with champagne is a tradition that began in the early days of ballooning in France. Apparently, one of the first balloon flights ended in tragedy and peasant farmers believed the aerostats were Martians. So the peasants decided that French wine or, to be more precise, champagne, would be a good way to appease the farmers. And so the tradition still stands today, for commercial ballooning that is.”

Hennessey opened the margarine and used the small flick-knife to scrape a slab out. Her face grimaced as she licked the margarine from the knife, the taste sickly but still a taste and she didn’t know where the next one would come from, if at all. She passed the tub and the flick-knife to Faraday.

“Actually, I’m glad we’re alone,” Hennessey said, bringing a more serious mood to the moment. “I want to talk to you about something.”

“What is it?”

“I missed my period.”

Hennessey had polished off more champagne than Faraday. It didn’t seem to be affecting the American much, even though the small amount Faraday had consumed was making her own head feel light. She nodded understandingly. “That could just be the stress you’re under.”

“It could be. But six weeks ago, a few days before we attended that conference at the Moorland Links Hotel, I slept with my ex back in the States. And we never used any protection. I’m really worried that I might be pregnant.”

Faraday felt her body clam up. Right now, she didn’t want to have that conversation and the moment became awkward. “Well, don’t go jumping to conclusions, Jen. Anyway, what do you think of this champagne? It’s not the best I’ve ever drunk, but I do like it.”

Hennessey was surprised by her response. “Did you hear what I said? I think I’m pregnant and I’m really scared. Never in my…”

Faraday had completely stopped listening. Hennessey’s lips were moving, but no sound passed through her vocal cords, just a mumble of noise. She stared through the champagne bottle in her hand, engrossed by its curvy shape and ocean green shade.

The majestic bottle-green balloon, Froggy, drifted across the south coast of Great Britain. The Isle of Wight had shrunk and all that could be made of the island was the famous cliffs. Nick Parsons had braced himself for bad news. He was so charming and so vulnerable and she was about to break his heart. Though she hadn’t said it to him, she had inferred that they were mentally compatible but not physically and Parsons interpreted that as criticism. He’d assumed that their sex life was good, not amazing, but good. She obviously thought differently.

“I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” she said.

Her choice of words, her tone of voice, had him worried. He stared into her eyes, bewildered, listening.

“I went to see Geoff Casper last week.”

“Geoff Casper? As in doctor?”

“Yes.” Her head slouched.

“I went to see him because…oh, why is this so hard? Okay. I went to see him because…it turns out that my reproductive system doesn’t work properly.”

“You can’t have children?”

“No, Nick, we can’t have children.”

Parsons took it quite well. After an unbearable five minutes of silence between them, as the balloon passed over the harbour of Portsmouth, he finally said something. “Then we’ll adopt.”

Faraday’s eyes erupted with joyous tears and she flung her arms around him.

Three weeks later, on the morning of the conference at the Moorland Links Hotel, she returned home from the shops to find Parsons packing his bags. He said he didn’t feel as though things were working out between them and that he was heading up to Sheffield to stay with his brother for a few days to think things through. She never heard from him again.

Hennessey was still talking, Faraday couldn’t hear her. She hadn’t caught a word in the last few minutes. What was she rambling on about? She had to interrupt. “I’m sorry, Jen, I…can we talk about something else?”

“What’s your problem, Claris?”

Faraday exhaled a sharp breath. “If I tell you, please don’t tell the guys?”

Hennessey put her lips together and nodded.

Faraday hesitated. At last, she spoke. “I went to see my doctor about two months ago and he said I had severe endometriosis. I was having extremely painful periods and I had lesions in my fallopian tubes, which caused infertility. So, basically, I can never have kids.” Her head sank on her shoulders. “Anyway, I have accepted that. It’s just, I just don’t feel comfortable talking about pregnancies and babies and happy families. I’m sorry, I know it’s selfish. But talking about babies makes me sick.”

“Fair enough. I had no idea.”

She hesitated again. “I always pictured myself being married with three kids running about the house, making noise, making mess. All growing up and all growing old together. Family, it’s what we live for, to create a sense of purpose in our lives, to live for someone and to live because of someone. I never thought I’d end up alone.”

Hennessey shuffled along the bench closer to her. “For starters, you’re not alone, okay? And you haven’t ended up. This is not the end.”

“I guess time will tell.”

Hennessey put a hand on her stomach. “I guess so.”

Feeling guilty, Faraday took Hennessey’s hand in hers. “Listen, whatever happens, I’ll be there for you and we’ll get through it together.”

Having support put Hennessey’s mind slightly at ease, but she couldn’t help thinking she was heading into a solitary nightmare.

“Do you want to say something to the camera?” Hennessy said, holding it up.

“I don’t know. I have never felt that comfortable speaking into cameras.”

“You did it in front of over a hundred reporters last month at the conference. You’re a pro. I’m sure you can do it in front of me.”

“I knew what to say then. It’s different when there’s nothing in particular to talk about and you have to be spontaneous.”

“Okay, tell me about the balloon flight. How you felt it went, what you enjoyed most. Summarise the experience.”

Faraday started speaking. Hennessey interrupted her. “Just a moment. The tape has finished. I need to rewind it.” She smirked. “That’ll give you a moment to think about what you want to say.”

She hit the rewind button, listening as the cogs spun the plastic film round and round. When the tape clicked stop, she peeled open the small screen and tapped her finger on play to check what she was about to record over. To her surprise, the screen filled with the Fable-1 balloon. “Hey, look at this. Someone recorded our flight. We’re about to launch.”

Faraday leaned over. The sound was tinny, but the picture was perfect. The pickets were being pulled by ground technicians. There was no commentary on it, just lots of crowd noise. She saw one of the balloonists give a wave to the camera moments before the balloon confidently lumbered up into the sky. The camera stayed on the balloon for a while until it disappeared in a haze of blue. Then the screen went dark.

“Okay, ready?”

“No, but…”

Hennessey was about to press the record button when a fresh image appeared. The cameraman was walking through the crowd and the screen filled with hundreds of different coloured shoes and random bare feet. It was still rolling when the cameraman entered the F1 Mission Control Base, using an electronic key-card to enter the gate and again for the two sliding doors at the main entrance. They heard the cameraman say hello to the receptionist. She said hello back. Another pair of feet came into the lens wearing big, black boots, like those worn by soldiers, and they were deep in water. “You can’t go in there,” the anonymous voice of a young man said. “The bathroom’s flooded.”

“Can I go in?” the cameraman said with the voice of a young boy.

The man in the black boots got angry. “No, I just said no!”

“But I’m busting.”

There was a moment of no conversation, just a phone going in the background.

“Alright, follow me.”

The camera continued to roll, capturing the steps of the stair-case leading into the workshop. The pair crossed the workshop and stepped into the elevator, where they dropped one floor. The shaky camera was now pointing at the unmistakable floor tiles in the White Room. “Straight ahead,” the man in the black boots said, followed by, “I’ll leave you to it, just shut the main door behind you when you’re done.”

Inside the White Room, the young boy realised the camera was still filming. The picture shuddered as he twisted the camera round and shut it down and that was the end of that. As soon as the screen went black, Faraday and Hennessey heard that scraping sound again. It was coming from the toilet; the one with the jammed door. The two women looked at each other, puzzled and frightened. There was someone in there.

Chapter 21

Standing in the middle of the White Room, looking at the toilet door, trying to remain calm to figure out what was happening, wishing Sutcliffe and Matthews were there, Hennessey cringed as she heard another sound, that one coming from the entrance to the White Room. Someone had knocked on the front door. Someone kept knocking on the front door. There were noises from all directions now; the toilet, the entrance, Faraday behind her shrilling in despair. “Don’t answer it,” she was saying.

Hennessey was not flustered by the noise, rather headstrong and defiant. But it did occur to her that if Sutcliffe and Matthews had returned, they should have no trouble letting themselves in the main door. So who the hell was knocking on it?

She crept towards the entrance and put her ear to the door. “Who is it?”

No reply.

She raised her voice. “Who’s there?”

And then there came the sound of multiple fists banging on the door, followed by a muffled voice.

“It’s us, open up.”

Finally, finally the boys had come back. She pushed open the door and stepped back. Matthews and Sutcliffe were carrying Keith Burch between them. His large forehead glistened with perspiration and he was shaking fiercely. Hennessey had seen her fair share of colleagues ill at the merciless routines of flight training. They always looked pale, sweaty, disorientated or had escaped the ill-effects altogether and had passed out. But none of them looked as ill as Keith Burch.

Wearing only a black T-shirt and socks, Sutcliffe and Matthews all but dragged him into the room and set him down on the floor. Sutcliffe explained that Burch had abandoned his spacesuit when his oxygen ran out because of its weight and because it had been burnt severely around the legs creating holes.

“Where did you find him?” Hennessey asked.

“Actually, he found us.”

“Did he say anything about where he’s been?”

“From what we gather, he fell off the balloon and blacked out after his parachute opened. He mumbled something about going to church, but we think he is delusional. He’s very dehydrated and suffering from extreme exhaustion. God knows how he managed to make his way here.”

“I’ll get him some champagne.”

The comment threw him. “What?”

“I found a crate in the utility room.”

He smirked. “Mike. I should’ve known.”

She handed an opened bottle to Sutcliffe. He took a large swig first before tilting the bottle for Burch to drink. He quietly uttered a thank you and glanced down at his half-naked body, surprised to find only a few scratches on his legs and a small discoloration on his shin where he’d knocked it on a piece of metal protruding from the ground.

“Brad, we have another problem,” Hennessey said. She was removing Burch’s socks while she spoke.

“What’s up?” asked Sutcliffe.

“The toilet, I think –”

Burch flinched, his whole body jolting, and when Hennessey looked at his left foot, she saw why. His foot was dangerously inflamed and maroon around a rather deep score on his sole. Burch complained about the pain and tried to explain that he’d trodden on something sharp.

Sutcliffe was concerned. “Keith, that doesn’t look good.”

He was panting heavily. “I just…rest.”

“Get him some painkillers,” said Sutcliffe. “While you’re there, get him a sleeping pill.”

Hennessey marched off and returned with a handful of pills. Sutcliffe popped two painkillers and one sleeping pill in Burch’s mouth and gave him some champagne to help sink them. Burch coughed. “I’ll get you some herbal tea, Mum,” he said. Then his eyes closed.

Clearly Burch needed rest, needing all the energy he could muster to mend his broken body, so Sutcliffe made him comfortable, placing a bag under his head, dressing him in his jeans and his black hand-knit jumper to keep him warm.

There was an almighty pop. It sounded like another gunshot. With their hearts up in their mouths, they turned to see Matthews gripping the throat of a champagne bottle. “Anyone for a glass of Perrier?”

“Yeah,” said Sutcliffe. “But go easy, that’s all we have.”

Blatantly ignoring Sutcliffe, Matthews necked the champagne. It went straight to his head and straight to his mouth. “God bless the first man who trod on a fucking grape.” He said it with an air of drunken bravado.

Sutcliffe snatched the bottle out of his hand and held it up to the headlamps. “You’ve polished off half the bottle.”

“Yeah,” he replied, grinning. “Tastes pretty shit though.”

“Anything that is consumable must be rationed. Right now, Simon, this is all we have to drink. Have some consideration.”

“Have a drink.” His tone was disdainful. “Lighten up.”

Sutcliffe let that one pass. Everyone was emotional right now. Tempers were volatile. He passed the bottle to Hennessey, noticing a small video camera on the bench. “Where did you get that?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “I think whoever owns this camera is in that toilet over there. In fact, I’m certain of it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Someone filmed our flight into space and… maybe you should just watch the video for yourself and see what you think. Me and Claris are convinced we have been hearing noises coming from the toilet, the one that’s jammed shut.”

He looked at her disbelievingly.

“Just watch it, Brad.”

He rewound the tape a fraction and then pressed play, instantly recognising the staircase at Mission Control Base, the workshop, the elevator, the lobby and the White Room. He heard a voice on the recording and recognised that too. I’ll leave you to it, just shut the main door behind you when you’re done, Trev Gable said. And, belatedly, he recognised the brand of camera; a JVC, the same model his son had stolen five weeks earlier. Dropping the camera onto the bench, he ran to the toilet. The crew couldn’t see him in the shadows of the room, but they could hear him beating mercilessly on the toilet door.

“Martin!”

Matthews twisted the helmet and pointed the EVA headlamps towards the toilet where Sutcliffe continued to pound on the door. “Martin!”

He beat it so hard and so relentlessly that the hinge buckled and the door burst open. But something was blocking it – a leg. It moved.

Then followed a faint gruff voice, “…a moment.”

“Martin!” Sutcliffe turned to the crew. “My son, he’s inside.” He tried to force the door open. “Martin, open up the door! Martin! Martin, open up, it’s your Dad!”

Slowly, the door opened and a silhouette appeared framed in the door. Hennessey and Faraday had been right and now the thought that someone had been there the whole time freaked them out. Sutcliffe sidestepped out of the light to get a better look at his son. He saw a puffy-eyed boy with dark pupils squinting into the bright light, his elbow moving up to his eyes to block it out. He had a well-tended head of blond hair and was incongruously dressed in black trousers and a white shirt with the top buttons undone. The twenty-three-year-old was Trev Gable.

“Trev?”

“Huh,” he replied absently.

Stomach cramping up, Sutcliffe made a sighing sound cut with disappointment. “Trev! What…do you know what’s happened? Do you know what happened to my son, Martin?”

Gable brushed his hand through his hair. He didn’t have the answers to such foreign questions.

Sutcliffe’s mood was irritated and madly impatient. He grabbed a fistful of Gable’s shirt and shook him aggressively. “Where’s my son?”

Matthews was about to intervene when Sutcliffe released the young man and apologised, but his voice remained raised. “Think, Trev. You brought him here to use the toilet before the bombs went off. Where did he go?”

Gable tried to think back to the moment…what had happened? All those faces were looking at him, their mouths asking difficult questions. He thought, Where am I? What is this room and who are these people? Everywhere was so dark except for two glaring lights burning his pupils like blowtorches. “Bombs?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

Sutcliffe saw a large bruise on Gable’s temple and a spot of dry blood. “Trev, listen to me…” His words trailed off, aware now that he was wasting breath. “Alright, alright. We’ll talk later.”

Trev Gable slept for exactly thirteen hours, during which time he didn’t wake once. Finally, his eyes opened. His arms were pinioned behind his back where he’d rolled on them in the night and dribble stuck to his cheek. Sutcliffe realised a few things he already knew. Gable’s presence explained why the elevator had survived the nuclear bombs – it had been underground at the time of the explosions. It explained why the toilet door had been jammed – Gable had locked it from the inside, which also explained why the main door had been jammed on their arrival and why the bolt was oddly broken. Furthermore, it explained the noises Faraday and Hennessey said they’d heard, because on their first night in the White Room, now that he thought about it, he’d heard them too, waking him up once or twice. At the time, he had put it down to creaking walls, bad weather, or both.

Everyone had questions for Trev Gable, but none more so than Sutcliffe. The boy had hardly got to his feet when he was asked the first one. “Remember anything yet?”

Gable took ages to respond, scratching his head, to his surprise locating a large lump on his temple. “I…all I remember is coming down here to use the toilet. The one upstairs had flooded. I heard a really loud rumble, like an earthquake or something. From…it was coming from outside, while I was in the toilet…and I must have slipped and hit my head. That’s all I remember.”

Gable saw Faraday drinking some champagne. “You found the champagne, then?”

No one answered, they just stared at Gable.

“The toilets flooded the corridor and the kitchen so I had to turn off the fridge. I brought the champagne down here and put it in the utility room to keep it cool for you. I brought the margarine as well. It was the only thing in the fridge. Did you see the balloon I attached to the champagne?”

Sutcliffe tapped Gable on the shoulder to regain his attention. Gable turned.

“What about my son, Trev?”

He seemed confused, though more lucid than the last round of questioning. “Something bad happened, didn’t it?”

“There’s been a nuclear war.”

Gable put his hands over his mouth. “You’re jofting.”

“Would we be down here living like this if we were joking?” said Matthews, sitting down on the bench to calm his irritation. “Who is this idiot?”

“Go easy, Simon,” said Hennessey. “The boy’s been through a lot.”

Matthews pointed to Gable’s feet. “What’s that sticking out of your boot?”

Gable glanced down and saw coloured paper spilling out of his heel. He pulled it out and lifted it to his face. “A fifty-pound note.”

“What’s it doing in your boot?”

“I don’t own a wallet.”

Sutcliffe returned the focus to the war and his missing son. He was divulging the hazy details of what they had learnt so far when Matthews jumped to his feet. He’d been distracted by something he thought he’d heard coming from the lobby. The sound was weak, so weak he doubted there had been any sound at all. He put his ear to the door a moment, then pushed down on the handle. No sooner had the door opened than he slammed it shut, startling everyone in the room. The rim of the door crashed into the metal frame so hard it sent an echoing shockwave through the White Room, interrupting the conversation Sutcliffe and Gable were having.

“What did you do that for?” asked Faraday.

“Rats,” he said. “Millions of them.”

Chapter 22

The water in the lobby was alive. Big rat bodies jumping about chaotically, ugly heads scarcely above the water in a competitive struggle for space. A colony of them spreading disease and misery. Furthermore, they had bathed in the water and had polluted it. Removing the impurities would be impossible. As for removing the rats, the route they’d taken to get there was one-way.

It struck a deep chord in Sutcliffe’s mind. Closing the door, he put the palm of his hand to his forehead, tapping it repeatedly. “We forgot to close the hatch when we brought Keith back with us.”

Gable, in the corner of the room, shrieked, then jumped up onto the bench. “There’s one in here,” he yelled.

The last thing they needed at that moment was a rat invasion, Sutcliffe thought. He played the headlamp beam across the floor, doing a sideways sweep of the room. A dark shadow burst across the light, but it was too quick for him to catch. Swinging the light round, he stopped it on Burch where he saw a rat the size of a shoe, its nose and eyes shuddering in its quest for food.

“Shit, it’s on Keith.”

Faraday screamed. “There’s another one back here.”

“Don’t touch them.”

“What are we supposed to do?” she hollered.

Sutcliffe held the helmet close to his side, cutting out the light momentarily. Darkness enclosed the room and a solemn quiet partnered it. Sutcliffe cast the light over the floor, passing over various items in the room; a scattered cardigan, a can of paint, the broken mop head, two empty champagne bottles, Keith Burch.

“Maybe we could explode an oxygen tank over them,” Gable suggested.

Matthews grunted. “And how do you propose we do that?”

“I’ve seen it before in movies.”

“This ain’t a fucking movie. Jesus Christ.”

Sutcliffe expressed his own opinion. “We can’t risk damaging the shaft. The rubble above the elevator is unstable enough as it is.”

Matthews snarled at Gable. “Does anyone have any practical suggestions?”

Faraday retrieved a lighter from the bench and lit the flame. “Why don’t we burn them?”

“Jesus! Are you lot on something? The last thing we need is a fire when we don’t have the means to put one out,” said Matthews. “Think carefully people.”

“And quickly,” added Hennessey. “Rats can carry typhoid and leptospirosis. Whatever you do, don’t touch them.”

Sutcliffe pulled the lights back on Burch and the rat nibbling the air. With a theatrical kick, hurting his bad leg, Sutcliffe scared the rat away. Luckily, Burch was sleeping. It did occur to him that Burch couldn’t be any more infected with death than he already was. And that thought led him to an idea. They had given Burch a sleeping pill to help him relax. They didn’t necessarily need to kill the rats. They just had to make them still so they could be expelled from the White Room and lobby. He bolted to the bathroom, returning with the bottle of sleeping pills in his hand and was unscrewing the cap when Matthews asked him what he was doing.

“If we can get them sleeping, we can use the bucket to get rid of them.”

“Is it wise to waste them? They are the only sleeping pills we have.”

“What is more important?” Sutcliffe said in a snappy tone.

“What makes you think they’ll take the bait?” said Hennessey. “They’re pretty smart, you know. They’ll take one sniff and they’ll know the pills are inedible.”

“Perhaps. But remember they’re probably just as starved as we are. Right now, they’re at their most vulnerable.”

Headlamps skimming the floor once more, Sutcliffe found a rat retreating to the corner of the room standing defensively on its hind legs. Sutcliffe made slow steps so as not to startle the creature, put a sleeping pill on the floor and watched to see if it would take it. Immediately drawn to the white pill, the rat sniffed and its little tongue pecked at it. Turning up its nose, it scuttled back to the corner of the room. “I told you,” said Hennessey. “They’re the most intellectual beings on this planet, except for humans.”

“The only beings more like,” said Matthews.

“Look!” said Gable, becoming excited. “It’s checking out the pill again.”

Indeed, the rat had coiled its nose around the pill and that time it experimented, flicking it up into its mouth, chewing on it.

“He ate it,” said Gable. “He ate it.”

“Where’s the other one?” asked Sutcliffe, swinging the head-lamps back round, checking the toilets and the utility cupboard.

“Over there, near the door,” Faraday shouted from the bench, where she stood frightened with Hennessey close by her.

Sutcliffe laid down another sleeping pill and they all watched in anticipation. The rat went about the same practice, looking before smelling, smelling before tasting, tasting before eating. When it swallowed the pill whole, Sutcliffe decided to use the entire bottle on the rats outside in the lobby. He carried the bucket to the door. He opened the door to the width of the bucket, filling the gap with it to prevent an unwanted raid. He hurriedly lined the sleeping pills along the step, snatching back his hand now and again to avoid a deadly bite. Once he’d laid out all the pills, he closed the door and went to check on his two subjects, now lying on their sides with stiff, outstretched legs. “That should do it,” he said.

“What about the water outside?” Hennessey mentioned. “We can’t walk through it anymore. It’s disgusting and dangerous.”

A good point. They needed a bypass. They needed a bridge. “Simon,” said Sutcliffe, looking over at the utility room. “Help me unhinge that door. We can place it over the water.”

“How? We don’t have any tools?”

“We’ll have to force it off. I’ll go and get the steel bar from the lobby.”

Before Sutcliffe was even halfway across the room, Matthews pulled out the pistol from his belt and aimed it at the top hinge. He fired off a shot. The noise upset everyone in the room and woke Burch.

“What did you do that for?” Sutcliffe growled. “We may need those bullets.”

“Have you seen the size of the screws on the hinges?”

Sutcliffe, dumbfounded, watched as Matthews turned to shoot off the second hinge and everyone covered their ears, except Burch, confused by all the noise in the room. At the last second, Matthews put the pistol down and performed a step-kick on the bottom hinge and the door broke away, chipping the wooden frame.

“What’s going on?” Burch moaned.

“Nothing, Keith, just trying to fix a little problem,” Sutcliffe said.

“Was that a gunshot?”

“Everything’s alright. Just try to go back to sleep.”

Sutcliffe turned and saw Matthews carrying the utility room door to the entrance of the White Room.

“Here goes. Let’s hope the little bastards are dead.”

He opened the door to find some of the rats had fallen asleep in the water where they had drowned, though many of them were still capering about and more than two dozen sleeping pills remained untouched. He exited the White Room, closing the door behind him, and instinctively held his breath as the rats danced at his feet. He set down the utility door over the water and returned to the White Room to give the bad news.

“Um, we still have a rat problem.”

“How many?”

“Like, most of them.”

Hennessey stepped down from the bench. “What happens is the alpha rats are the ones who try the food while the others wait for the verdict. They’ll never feed on them now. That’s just the way rats work.”

“So what can we do?” asked Sutcliffe, because he was out of ideas.

“They’re in water, right?” said Hennessey, looking around the room, thinking. “Why don’t we try polluting the water with some kind of chemical?”

“Such as?”

“How about the paint?”

Sutcliffe collected a can of paint and held it up to the head-lamps to study the ingredients. The black-yellow hazard symbol of a skull set above crossed bones brought a smile to his face. The paint was solvent-based, contained lead and was therefore toxic. The warning label also advised users to keep the hazardous substance out of the reach of children and pets, meaning the paint would most certainly be perilous to rats.

Sutcliffe went out into the lobby, crossed the makeshift bridge and entered the elevator. Pulling the elevator doors to either side of the bucket, leaving a gap, he peeled the lid off the can and through the narrow gap he tossed the paint into the water. The area turned a pale grey as the white paint blended with the floodwater. The creatures flew into a rage, squealing, their fur matted by the lethal paint. Gradually their protests faded and soon all that remained was a swamp of dead rats. Sutcliffe started collecting the bodies in the bucket. Wearing his spacesuit glove as he pinched their tails and dropped them inside the bucket, his mind was filled with dread. There had been drama after drama and yet, deep down, he still sensed a lot worse to come.

Chapter 23

Wednesday became Thursday and Thursday became Friday. Now it was Saturday and the crew had not eaten for six days and were weakening with stress and straightforward exhaustion.

Time had taken on a new dimension. In the White Room, there were no windows, which meant no morning, no afternoon, no evening and no night, just time. Time was the precursor to boredom, which was conducive to mindless conversation about trivial stuff, sentences with little meaning, with little to get the mind working. The flight into the stratosphere seemed a lifetime ago and they strictly avoided the subject of Fable-1 and the war. Instead, they told old stories and made jokes, laughing but not entertained, smiling but not happy, calm but always on edge. There was always the unshakable sense looming at the back of their minds that before long something else would invade their new home and present them with a problem.

Matthews was popping gum and annoying everyone in the room with it. Unlike the others, he looked quite well. His face was full of colour and the dark fuzz around his chin resembling a sparse goatee appeared neat. All morning he’d been thinking about the rats and he roused the group from a monotonous quiet. “When rats screw, do they enjoy it?”

Faraday laughed, an unwomanly laugh that no one had ever heard before, not even Matthews, and soon the crew responded to her candid and infectious cackle with laughter of their own.

“What sort of question is that?” she said.

“I’m just curious. Is it like a process, like a chore, or do they suddenly feel the urge to give it to one another?”

“I don’t know. Why are we talking about this? Most animals are probably extinct anyway, except for those horrible rats.”

Sutcliffe considered her point. Millions of years of meticulous and engineered evolution had been eliminated in a single day. Evolution had its own way of adapting to change and correcting interventions. But how would it cope with nuclear extinction?

“If that is the case, Claris, and everything is dead,” Matthews said with a cunning smirk on his face, “it might be up to the likes of us to repopulate the world.”

Had Faraday’s intoxicated mind not been muddied by the effects of champagne and fatigue, Matthews’ comment might have offended her. But the cogs in her brain were delayed, so much so that she was still comprehending the first half of his sentence when he spoke the second half. “Whenever you’re ready, just give me the nod.”

She retaliated. “You know, wit at the expense of others is the lowest form of comedy.”

“Yeah, I know, I read it on a coffee mug once.”

She grunted, sensing it wasn’t a battle she was going to win. He was always far too crass and didn’t know where to draw the line. So she made a face at him and extended her swearing finger, provoking him to laugh more. He got a big charge out of winding up his cousin because she always took the bait and entertained him with her reactions. He picked up the newspaper Sutcliffe had left behind on launch day and skim read the headlines in a quest for something appealing to read, still chuckling at his cousin’s sensitivity. The front page headline spread above a picture of politicians in parliament read: BRITAIN CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE IMMIGRANTS.

“It can now,” Matthews said to himself.

Faraday scowled at her cousin. “You what?”

“Nothing.”

On the next page, Matthews read the weather forecast. Sixteen major cities worldwide with little weather icons next to them. He checked on the cities that interested him. Hanoi – hot. Johannesburg – mild. London – sunny. New York – sunny. Sydney – rain. Tokyo – humid. Toronto – cool but dry. There was no mention of enormous dark clouds of dust and the permanent absence of sunshine, cold in winter, cold in summer – the new fucking Ice Age. The bikini-clad female on page three was every man’s idea of a beautiful woman. Tearing it out of the newspaper, he spat out his gum and pressed it into the wall, pinning the picture to the gum. Automatically, he honed in on Hennessey and Faraday who were watching him with disapproving eyes.

“What? Just trying to make the place more homely.”

Skipping page six, he came to an article on page seven that interested him. The headline: ROCK GOD SUFFERING BROKEN HAND. Intrigued, he read the brief article. “I don’t believe it. It says here, Lewis Chambers had a motorbike accident last Saturday night and shattered several bones in his right hand. Hmmm, it says he’d been drinking.”

“Who is Lewis Chambers?” asked Hennessey.

“You’ve never heard of Lewis Chambers? Piss off!”

Hennessey exhaled in irritation.

Matthews shook his head slightly. “If it’s not American, it’s not interesting, right?”

“You’re talking out of your butt,” Hennessey snarled.

Matthews soon lost his appetite for reading and discarded the paper on the floor. He sighed. “Anyone for a game of I spy? I’ll go first. Something beginning with H, one go each.”

Sutcliffe was not in the mood for games, but he had little else to do so he joined in. “Helmet?”

“Nope.”

“My name, Hennessey?”

“Nope.”

Faraday also joined in. “Humans?”

“Help? We all need help,” said Gable.

“You’re all wrong. Keith?”

“I don’t know,” he whimpered from the floor on which he lay.

“The answer you’re all looking for is Hell.”

Hennessey shook her head. “You’re such a moron sometimes.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to lighten the mood in here.”

Another uneventful day passed. Waiting for the radioactive particles in the air to dissipate. Waiting for the danger outside to settle. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. The depression had hit them all and the magnitude of their involuntary survival made them numb and bitter and they had nowhere to channel it but to each other.

The Fable-1 crew slept often because there wasn’t much else to do. Sutcliffe often dreamt of his home in London and the people he knew. His mind always drifted to happy places and happy times. Then he would reawaken to his nightmare and find it hard to distinguish which was real and which was not. Everything had become a blur and he had no recollection of time. He was using Brad Sutcliffe’s body and going by that name, but it wasn’t him. He was nobody and nothing was real.

Sleep should have been easy in the pitch dark. Indeed, for most of the crew sleeping did come easy, but not for Hennessey. Each time she drifted off, images she saw and voices she heard crudely awoke her. She figured that the rats and the melting man at the door had contributed to that, as if their earlier presence had corrupted the wires in her brain and the pressing dark of the room brought up those images. She switched on the headlamps and sat staring at Sutcliffe spread out on the bench with his eyes closed, half-asleep. She watched Matthews squash out a cigarette from the pack and light it. As he drew in smoke, he picked up the champagne he’d more or less consumed and alternated between the cigarette and the alcohol on his way out of the room, leaving discharged smoke behind him. Five minutes later, he came back in and swaggered over to Sutcliffe and tapped him on the knee. Sutcliffe opened his eyes and could immediately tell his friend was smashed. Not only could Sutcliffe smell it, his eyes were half-cut and he was unsteady on his feet.

“What the hell are we gonna do?” he slurred.

Sutcliffe was becoming sick of people asking him that question and replying with what everyone wanted to hear. They were all adults. They didn’t need consoling and they didn’t need to rely on him. Keeping up the spirits of the crew had sapped his own and a dark mood clung over him. Something moved in the helmet’s light and Sutcliffe caught sight of it. The little white balloon. The helium inside it had reduced and it was falling from the ceiling, spinning in slow circles, the word FABLE-1 appearing and disappearing. It reminded him of their descent from the stratosphere. It hadn’t been anywhere near as smooth. How they had survived the freefall he would never really understand. Burch hadn’t been so fortunate and his physical state was in the danger zone. It made him wonder how many of his crew needed medical attention. How about his own health? He knew that from now on it would only deteriorate, though in his mind showing symptoms of ill-health and admitting to them was a sign of weakness and he still held onto the childish fantasy of being immortal.

With that very thought in mind, he rolled off the bench and walked to the other side of the room and started to dress himself in his spacesuit, concluding that a man could sulk in self-pity or he could pick himself up and get on with things. They could all wait there to die. Or someone could do something about it. For a reserved, private man he felt he was extending himself way beyond his limits. At the same time, his crew responded to his leadership and inadvertently expected it.

“Where are you going?” asked Hennessey.

“I need a break from this, so…”

“You’re going outside? It’s too dangerous.”

“I see no choice.”

She hesitated, then added, “In that case, I’m coming with you.” As she went to get up from the floor, she felt a cramp in her stomach and doubled over. The cramps seemed to be getting worse day by day.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Sutcliffe. “You know why you’re getting those stomach pains.”

Was that a question or a statement, she wondered. Her throat tightened. Did he know? Had Faraday told him she might be pregnant? Or had he guessed? She heard the blood thumping through her veins, making her face turn red. On the other side of the room, she saw Faraday, her guilty face giving her away.

“You’re famished,” Sutcliffe added, finishing the sentence.

With a discreet sigh of relief, Hennessey nodded, shunning the real reason why she believed she was having the cramps. If she had to tell them, she would wait until a swell in her tummy provided the proof.

“We need food now,” Sutcliffe continued. “You said yourself that the air will be contaminated for months, so I hardly see the difference in waiting a few more days.”

“Actually, I’m more concerned about other survivors and God knows what else. At this stage, if there are survivors, they’ll be desperate and dangerous.”

“Someone’s got to do something. We’re all starving and getting weaker by the hour.”

Hennessey nodded understandingly and stood up. “Where will you go?”

“Inland, south probably.”

A silence descended on the room. They each worried for his safety, but they wanted him to go. They wanted him to come back with food. And they trusted that he would. Drinking champagne had exacerbated their hunger and had upset their digestive process, causing heartburn, wind and dehydration. In any case, Sutcliffe felt he had to get out of there before he lost his mind.

“I’ll have the chicken supreme on a thick crust,” Matthews joked in between hiccups.

Sutcliffe smiled, his first in a while. He zipped up his spandex suit. “Any volunteers?”

“Volunteers?” said Faraday.

“Yeah, volunteers. The chances of finding food will increase if two of us go. Trev? How about you?”

It wasn’t really a question, but Gable had an answer. “Well, to be honest –”

“Good, borrow a helmet from someone, get the spare spacesuit from the display cabinet and let’s go.”

Before Gable could air his protest, Matthews was securing an oxygen tank to the torso section on the spacesuit and strapping on the communication equipment. He gave Gable a lecture on how the basic functions of the suit worked and practically forced him into it, fitting his boots, gloves and helmet and tightening all the airlocks until he looked the part.

Sutcliffe collected a can of white paint and took it outside and nobody thought to ask him why. In the lobby, the water had evaporated, the paint had congealed and small cracks had appeared on the surface, like a parched riverbed. It forced him to think what the environment outside was going to be like as he hefted his heavy helmet, then slipped it on over his head.

Gable appeared in the lobby and joined Sutcliffe in the elevator. Sutcliffe stared at the young man for a full minute. A few days before, he had thought his son was alive in that toilet, giving him hope, putting some value back into his life. Instead, it’d been Gable and the first sight of him had broken Sutcliffe’s heart. Things were awfully grim. Keith Burch had a high temperature, nausea and vomiting because his central nervous system was being destroyed by radiation poisoning. Claris Faraday had sunken into a sombre mood and was suffering with extreme fatigue. Simon Matthews was drunk and pissing everyone off. Jen Hennessey had bad stomach cramps. And Martin Sutcliffe was dead.

Chapter 24

On the dark horizon, fiery orange light lit up the cyclonic skies; fires that had been going for over a week. What was left to burn? The ghostlike landscape, quaint and desolate, filled Trev Gable with a horrible sense of dread, forcing him to fear what the next few hours held in store for him.

Behind him, ascending the shaft, Sutcliffe found the carcass of a dead rat. Leaning over, he saw its little paw clamped between blocks of concrete. Obviously, it had charged down the shaft with its friends and hadn’t made it into the elevator with the others. He pinched the rat’s tail and pulled it into the air, its foot detaching from its leg.

At the top of the shaft, Gable waited for him. “What’s that?” he asked.

“What does it look like?”

“What will you do with it?”

“What do you think? I’m going to dispose of it, of course.”

Gable nodded, thinking he should try harder not to ask any more stupid questions, though he knew how difficult it was to break habits.

In Sutcliffe’s other hand was the paint he had taken from the White Room and he held it out for Gable. “Here, take this.”

“What for?” asked Gable.

“You’re going to head west. So you don’t lose your way, you’re going to paint the ground, the trees, walls, whatever. Don’t use too much, just enough to keep track of the route you take. You have approximately seven hours of oxygen. Don’t give up too soon and don’t stay out longer than necessary. Remember, it’s essential that we find something to eat and drink and bring it back to the White Room, otherwise we’ll all be dead by next week.”

“You mean…we’re not going together?”

“What would be the point? If we separate, we increase our chances.”

“Which way are you going?”

“East. Now listen, don’t forget we can communicate at any time so if you run into trouble, let me know. Oh, and if you see any survivors, stay clear of them. Desperation can make humans do very bad things.”

“Wait, that’s it?”

“Why, what were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. I’m not good at this sort of thing. I’ve had no training.”

“Nobody’s been trained for this, Trev. Just use your brain, be careful and you’ll be fine.”

Gable put his hands on his hips. Why he had been chosen to go searching for food and nobody else was left only to his speculation. He felt as though he was being victimised. For what? Surviving? Wordlessly, he toddled away, sulking, but Sutcliffe had no spare sympathy for him. Everyone would have to pull their weight sooner or later.

Waiting until Gable disappeared over the crest of the hill, Sutcliffe walked down to the edge of the cliff to dispose of the dead rat. Down at the beach, all the other rats he’d evicted from the White Room were strewn across the dark sand. The coast was infested with burnt vehicles stuck in the sand and the shoreline was littered with the bones of boats. With a delicate underarm throw, the rat cart-wheeled airborne and landed on a section of grey beach next to its kind.

Images of how the bay once looked came into his mind; the rolling dunes descending to a few miles of sandy, tourist-inhabited beach, caravan parks on the cliffs with stunning ocean views and the surfers playing in the breaking shores. Vivid images of sunny days, clean air and life at an easy pace. His mind snapped back to the present, his eyes on the great Atlantic, now a dark grey, its colour the reflection of the sky. The once sandy shores were glazed over with the fallout of debris and dust. What was once a sound of seagulls crying in the sky and fishing boats chugging in and out of the bay was now just an eerie quiet, the whistle of the cold wind and the ocean slapping the shore the only noise.

About to turn his back on the ruined bay and head inland, suddenly, through the bad light, a shape formed out to sea. He squinted for a better look but his sight failed him. So he followed a pathway down to the beach. At the water’s edge, in the poor light, he saw it was a ship about half a mile out. The stricken vessel had run aground and was listing to one side. The shape of the bow looked like a monument to its own passing, but what could be said of its interior? He had to get out there. Stomping about the sand, head down, he searched for a boat or a raft, eventually finding a barely water-worthy skiff overturned on the black beach. Digging it out of the sand, flipping it over, he pushed it to the shoreline. Behind him, he found two large pieces of flat wood scattered about the debris that would serve as oars.

Dragging the skiff into the water, he rolled awkwardly onboard and with his back to the ship he made steady strokes. He glided the skiff through the water staring at the bare-fringed coastline of Britain as it fell away from him and faded. Now and again, he looked over his shoulder to verify his target, the ship gaining size. On the surface of the water, he saw dead fish in their hundreds, in death remaining together in shoals as they had in life.

Forty feet from the ship.

The ship was not a commercial liner but a cruise ship, he was able to determine from its shape and size. Large sections of the monstrous vessel had been pounded with supersonic waves and the scars were apparent.

The skiff was moving sluggishly through the ocean and when Sutcliffe looked down he saw why. At his feet, dark water sloshed around his ankles. The skiff had sprung a leak and was sinking, fast.

Twenty five feet.

As he got closer to the stranded ship, he saw the bulbous bow was riding very low in the water, like the skiff, falling further into the sea.

“Come on you queen bitch!” he muttered.

Sixteen feet.

The skiff inched closer to the bow, inching further beneath the waves pulling it under. I’m not going to make it, he realised. The skiff slowed even more and brushing the oars through the water was having little effect. And there he was again, back fearing death by drowning as he done during the parachute descent.

Twelve feet.

He willed the skiff on, encouraging it, even being polite to it as he spoke in his head, like it was a friend and that politeness would keep it buoyant. The ship didn’t seem to be drawing any nearer and he thought the skiff had stopped altogether. Sutcliffe buried the oars deeper into the water, working harder to keep himself afloat and keep himself alive.

Nine feet.

An outbound wave picked the skiff up a notch, injecting some momentum, but by now he was shin deep in water and the skiff had only seconds left in the world before it sank to the seabed and got to decaying along with the rest of the planet.

Five feet.

The skiff had stopped. Dispirited, angry at himself for letting down his crew, he lifted a foot out of the water and set it down on the edge of the skiff, preparing to jump. The ship was still a good few feet away. Forcing the skiff under with his weight, he sprung forward landing belly first in the water, his hand reaching out for a niche in the ship’s bow. Establishing a grip in the niche, he hauled his tired body out of the water and up onto the bow, turning onto his back. With huge relief, he looked back at his country, worrying how he would ever get back. All that mattered now, though, was the secrets the ship kept. He climbed up the sloped bow to the side of the ship, paced along the wall of the nondescript superstructure and carefully stepped around cabin windows to avoid falling through.

He called Gable. “Trev, how are you going?”

A nervous voice filtered back. “I haven’t found anything. I’m scared.”

“You’ll be fine. Keep looking.”

“I’m trying.”

“Alright, good lad.”

Almost every cabin Sutcliffe passed was empty, but some of the windows revealed the bodies of dead passengers. Some looked at peace, their bodies shaped in a sleeping position, whereas others were folded in half or twisted like an abandoned ragdoll. At the back of the ship a long, rectangular window provided a view of the restaurant. Sutcliffe got to his knees and peered down through the glass. Half of the restaurant was drowned underwater. Broken chairs and tables, driftwood, equipment and human bodies polluted the floodwater. Chandeliers sat askew by the force of gravity. To the right of the restaurant, high above the water, he saw a horizontal door in the wall, the only door in sight. To the left, the restaurant neighboured an enormous terrace accessible through a row of large doors. Making his way back along the side of the ship, he found a row of trenches where he found inflatable life-rafts. On the wall hung a laminated poster with clear step-by-step instructions for the rafts.

Making two trips, he carried two life-rafts in their stowage position to the front of the ship sloping down to the water’s edge, detached the operating cord and threw the first life-raft into the water. A mechanical CO2 system inflated the compressed raft in an impressive ten seconds, growing into a boat. It reminded him of Fable-1, how it had grown into a balloon at each stage of its altitude climb. The eight-man life-raft shaped as a chambered tetrahedron included a single flotation tube with a non-inflatable floor. Ballast bags with a retaining line and pocket, a weather shield, a sea anchor and life jackets were also included with the raft. He donned two of the jackets, then tied the securing line to the niche in the ship.

With the second life-raft, he repeated the steps and another boat grew out of the water. At the forward and aft portions of the life-rafts, exterior handles made tying the rafts together easy using the securing line from the second raft. The fabric deck of the life-raft was equipped with an inflatable centre float for additional flotation support. For the extra flotation, he used the hand pump. Then he stepped from the second raft back onto the first raft and untied the securing line from the niche on the ship. Needing equipment to propel the rafts forward, he checked the compartments in the walls. That was where he discovered a large accessory case stocked with sponges, paddles, a first-aid kit a safety-knife, a torch, a tin opener, flares, barley sugar, seasickness tablets and fishing gear. There had to be a second accessory case in the second life-raft also. In addition, he discovered eight insulation blankets packaged in translucent plastic. That made sixteen in total.

Sutcliffe looked up and saw that he’d been set adrift by ocean currents and it presented him with a full view of the ship’s outer hull where he saw a large scar approximately ten feet long. Bent over the water using the paddles like ski poles he rowed the rafts slowly towards the opposite end of the ship, circling around the stern, coming to the row of doors leading into the restaurant. Some doors had broken window panes, others were missing altogether. Guiding the rafts into the restaurant, ducking to avoid the frame, he observed his surroundings. The rafts parted the debris of ruined furniture and dead bloated humans and he stopped at a horizontal support beam blocking his forward path.

He tied the securing line around the support beam and made a knot. Hopping out of the raft onto the support beam, looking up at that horizontal door in the wall twenty feet high, he tried to figure out how to get up there. The raft’s anchor, a tapered sleeve made of porous mesh, came away from the attachment point and stretched as far as Sutcliffe wanted it to go. Swinging the claw-like anchor back and forth to gain momentum, he let go and it ricocheted off the door frame. The second attempt was also unsuccessful. The third attempt almost worked. On the fourth go, the anchor smashed into the door and wrestled through a gap, dropping over the frame. Pulling the chain back until it went taut, he took his weight off the support beam and his body thumped against the wall, his feet scratching the surface of the water. Inching his way up the chain, his weak muscles objecting, he climbed to the top and reached his hand to the frame, pulling himself up.

Side-saddled on the length of the frame, with the door pressing into his side, Sutcliffe stared into a gloomy room wondering what the darkness hid. He flicked on his EVA headlamps and a kitchen emerged. It had every distinguishing feature of a modern fast-paced galley: giant hobs and storage facilities, multifunctional equipment, impingement ovens, sandwich and salad counters, cocktail stations, pallets, racks, prep tables, ware-wash tables, sinks. The galley was a maze of compact stations. It had been a cramped place to work. Nevertheless, the closest work station, a death-defying leap of six feet, put the frighteners on him. A jump he considered too far. The bloody door, he thought, it getting in his way. He elbowed it and the door nudged away from the frame. One of the hinges was loose. Four screws stood out of their holes. He thought about the utility door used to bypass the water in the lobby outside the White Room. It gave him an idea. While he pulled the screws on the hinge, he thought of Jen Hennessey during her induction of Mission Control Base. Have you ever tried tying a shoelace with boxing gloves? He’d taken her advice and had practiced simple and complex tasks in the workshop to learn the spacesuit better – changing light bulbs, tying knots in ropes and, thanks to Hennessey, unscrewing screws.

All four screws on the second hinge were buried into their respective holes. Physical force overcame that. Twisting the door, putting pressure on the hinge, it broke off the frame completely and Sutcliffe struggled to keep hold of it as he swung it round to the first work station, assembling the bridge. One width of the door slotted into a groove in the station while the other rested on the doorframe upon which he sat. Like walking the plank, he carefully stepped down the sloped door, peering over the edge. It was quite a drop to the ominous darkness below and one wrong step could spell death. The sound of the capsized ship creaking under the pressure of the ocean sent a chill running up his spine.

Reaching the first station, he picked a path to suit him, making his way down, descending with large, strategic strides, heading deeper and deeper into the bowels of the galley. Closer to the water now, he opened drawers, ovens, grills, then searched for the fridges and freezers, finding neither. He searched lockers and hoods and cupboards but found only equipment. He worried that he’d come all that way for nothing, wasting precious time and oxygen when he could least afford either. Nothing else was left to check. No, there was – a large door on the other side of the galley. His final hope. Beside it, another support beam cutting through the heart of the kitchen supporting the roof provided a walkway all the way across. He climbed up onto the thin beam and stepped carefully, arms outstretched and both legs perfecting his balance. At the end of the support beam, he pulled the door open and stepped inside. The headlamps lit up a pantry with shelves that were disappointingly empty.

“Shit!” he yelled. “Shit!”

Turning to leave, he stepped on something and his feet went from under him. Landing hard on his side, his bad leg jarred and he wailed in agony. Several minutes passed. Sutcliffe hadn’t moved, unable to resist the temptation to rest, as good a place as any to curl into a ball and die. He doubted he had the strength to get back to the White Room anyway. More time passed. Around him, the ship moaned in pain and sufferance. Then everything went blissfully dark and quiet.

On his awakening, he didn’t know where he was, only that he had been sleeping. How long? An hour? Two? More? His oxygen had decreased dramatically. His headlamps pointed at the wall lined with shelves directly above his head. Gradually, shapes and outlines began to appear as his sight adjusted to his surroundings. Slowly, very slowly, he rolled onto his front. He was far too hungry to move and was on the verge of giving up altogether when something drew his attention. The pantry, he noticed, was L-shaped. Indeed, at the back of the pantry was another section that he hadn’t checked. He shuffled forward on his front and peered around the corner. A vast, unsteady pyramid of food tins stared back at him. He looked again. He kept looking. So many tins, many labelled in a language foreign to him. Conservas Alguazas. Cecoa. What the hell was that? They all displayed pictures. Sliced, red fire roasted pepper. Sliced artichoke hearts in brine. Seedless grapes in syrup. Pear balls in syrup and lemon juice. Gherkins in vinegar. Olives stuffed with natural lemon. Soup, a lot of soup. Minestrone. Pumpkin. Vegetable. Chicken broth. Mushroom. Whole tomatoes in juice. Mini corn kernels. And tuna. It didn’t matter. They weren’t real. Were they real? He slowly rose to his feet and sculptured himself into a crouch, studying the food, doubting his lucidity. Only one way to prove it. Reaching out, he picked one of the tins up and shook it. It seemed real and hard to the touch. To the left of the pile he saw crates of various soft drinks: lemonade and fizzy orange and a few crates of water too. There was a stash of unused dinner candles buried beneath two large boxes labelled serviettes. Sutcliffe shook his head in disbelief. Not only did they now have blankets and medical kits, they’d scored food, drink, light and toilet paper.

He laughed. “…unbelievable.”

When his laughter faded, a question struck him. How could he get the provisions into the life-raft and back to the White Room? He tried to collect his thoughts, create a rough plan to get him through the challenging next few hours of his life. While he pondered over the task, he opened a bottle of water, opened his visor wide enough to fit the bottle through and guzzled the whole lot down. He drank another. He lifted a tin of food out of the pile. Most of the tins, he noticed, had lids firmly sealed, but others opened with a pull-tab. He cracked open a tin of pear balls, guzzled the juice and filled his mouth with the fruit, barely chewing them and swallowing whole. He feasted on another tin of pear balls and a tin of tuna. He could have eaten a lot more at that moment, but he chose to save it for the crew. Instantly, the food rehabilitated his energy and now he was ready to go to work.

Outside the room, Sutcliffe had seen a large, stainless steel pot tucked into the corner of a work station and one of the prep tables. He collected it, brought it back and began stuffing the pot full of tins with as many as he could manage. He carted a fair amount that first trip, going from station to station, ascending the door bridge where he put the pot down and, on his knees, peered through the entrance with the missing door for a view of the restaurant and two life-rafts knocking into each other in the ocean currents. Picking out a tin, he threw underarm and the tin somersaulted through the air, hitting the life-raft, the airless floor cushioning the impact. And that was how he built his collection, launching one after another into the raft, losing some, gaining most. It was an exhaustive process and by the time he had drained the pantry and filled the life-raft, he’d made almost fifty trips.

Outside, darkness encompassed the ship. Exhausted after the long day’s labour, Sutcliffe descended the anchor chain, but his body gave in and he lost his concentration, then lost his grip, falling into the dark water. He twitched and thrashed, the life-jackets yanking him back to the surface in a rush of bubbles and he swung his arms frantically through the water towards the life-rafts.

Hauling himself into the front life-raft, he rested a few minutes to recuperate his burning muscles. He could have stayed there all night, but the thought of his crew starving and worrying about him kept him going. He disconnected the anchor from the life-raft and cut the securing line from the support beam with the safety-knife.

Rowing the rafts out of the ship, the food trailing behind, he headed out of the restaurant. The second raft was extremely heavy in the water as he backed the rafts away from the ship and turned out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Into his mouthpiece he spoke. “Trev, you alright?”

But that time, Gable didn’t respond.

“Trev, this is Brad. Everything alright?”

Again, no response.

Using the nose of the cruise ship as a compass to direct him home, he rowed with all his power towards the dark horizon where glowing fire light guided him in. Finally, when he could faintly make out the beach, he rolled out of the life-raft and waded the last few feet to shore. Hauling the rafts up onto the beach as the crashing waves broke into them, he flopped to the sand, switched off his headlamps and on his back stared up at the black sky. It had taken him almost half a day, but now the crew had enough food and drink for a year.

Part 4

Chapter 25

The weather had turned unseasonably cold. A thick frost smothered the scalded land. The sky was growing darker and Trev Gable didn’t feel that he could be more frightened than he was right then. Panic-stricken, skirting the edge of tears, a sweat broke on his face and ran down his pockmarked skin. He had punched a fair distance inland and thought that from now on it was all about survival and the tiniest mistake would cost him his life.

“Oh God!” He swore over and over as if verbalising his fear made the situation less lonesome, as if voicing the sound of his pixie-conscience helped in finding a solution for the pickle he was in. In the depths of his mind, however, he knew the likelihood of getting back to the White Room alive was slim. He wondered if there was a God looking out for him, even though he felt there probably wasn’t a God as he came from a long line of agnostics.

Gable plunged to his knees and started raking away the frost, looking for the way home. Like a baby exploring its surroundings, he crawled on his hands and knees searching for the markings of white paint he had trailed on his way. It was such a long way back to the White Room and the oxygen on his back would not keep him alive for much longer. Running used more oxygen. Panicking too. Getting up off the ground, he walked, putting a bit of pace in his stride, but before long he was jogging and then running. On his way he passed a dead tree. He hadn’t painted it so he hadn’t passed it. Or maybe he had. He couldn’t remember. Which way? His feet and the backs of his legs were aching, the pain spreading up to his waist and moving upward, and his attention was drawn to his laboured breathing.

“Why me?” he grumbled in objection. “Why me?”

Don’t come back without something to eat or drink, Sutcliffe had more or less enforced upon him. In his eyes, that made him a victim of bullying. He had been bullied into searching for food. He had been bullied all his life and he was still being bullied. He hated bullies, unable to grasp their moral values and life choices. And, frankly, he was sick of being told what to do. If he made it back to the White Room alive and empty-handed, the crew would have scores of questions for him and they would be angry with his replies. But what more could he do? It was hard enough trying to see his environment without the assistance of artificial light. In the day’s half-light, everything appeared in different shades of grey. With his oxygen low, his legs could barely carry him another step. Just like his job at F1 Mission Control Base, he was undervalued, underpaid and overworked.

He spoke into his helmet mouthpiece again. “Brad? Anyone?”

They were ignoring him.

He sat on the hard ground in a morose sulk and started to lie down when he saw a faint white mark beside him. There, a faint line trailing off to his right. The paint! He looked left at the same white line. One way led to safety, the other to certain death, but which was which? He started off left, turned, and went right, stopping again, thinking, and his final decision was left, his pace quickening with each step as the last traces of light continued to weaken. A cluster of dead trees stood in his path. Had he gone through them on his way? He couldn’t remember, but something told him that he had. Wading in and out of the trees, a breeze rustled the branches and he was convinced he had heard a noise. A second or two later, he heard it again, the growl of a wolf or maybe a large dog. The snarl spoke of something evil and spooked the life out of him. He started to run through the trees, blind and full of dread. Low hanging branches scratched at his arms like talons, impeding his escape and tall trees now appeared as angry sentinels blocking his every twist and turn. He heard the growl again and craned his head in the direction from which it came. That was when he saw it; a giant black bear rising up on its back legs, stretching to full height. He back-pedalled across a ground of twigs and brushwood that popped beneath his feet under his weight. The giant four-hundred-kilo monster raised its paw and attempted to slap him, but missed. Gable fell into a seated position as the bear kept at him, swiping the air with its sharp blades protruding from large, meaty paws. Gable scurried backwards to avoid the irate bear, his feet and hands slipping and sliding. The bear thundered after him, the ground shuddering with each footstep. Then it disappeared in the dimness and Gable thought he’d escaped with his life. But it reappeared, bigger and angrier than before, and he was about to be torn apart. He collapsed to the ground and closed his eyes with his arms pulled over his head and just laid waiting for the bear to attack, pulling limbs from his body one by one, like an insect. The ground stopped shuddering. The growling faded and when Gable opened his eyes, the bear had disappeared again. Gaining back his breath, he got up, turned and legged it out of the trees.

Reaching the other side of the woods, he bent over to catch his breath again, hoping to slow his thumping heart and, in turn, his diminishing oxygen. Staring back at the dark woods, waiting, he had a lightning-bolt moment. There hadn’t been a bear at all. He hadn’t eaten for days and, factoring in the emotional stress and fatigue, he knew his mind was beginning to play tricks on him. Contemplating his sanity, he surveyed his surroundings. The paint line had unified again with the frost, if it was there at all, and now he had no clue where he was or which way to go and night had almost settled in.

An hour passed and, in the unrelenting dark of night, he came to the top of a hill. In any direction, thick darkness clung to him, except for the glowing light from his EVA headlamps. Descending the hill, he kept moving, feeling his way with his feet. He was looking over his shoulder when he slammed into a ruined wall. One of his headlamps smashed. But he could still see that the wall belonged to the ruins of the Mission Control Base. Against the odds, he’d arrived back in St. Ives, feeling enormous relief. But his suit was beeping at him, his oxygen tank drying up. Time ticking by, he paced about the ruins looking for the shaft, tripped and went into a somersault. He landed face first, sprawled on his front in pain. The second headlamp broke and he was blinded. He realised that his legs hung over a ledge and presumed that below him was the elevator shaft, though he felt the descent would be insurmountable as he couldn’t move another muscle, he couldn’t see and his oxygen had just about expired. Desperate and panicking, he threw himself down the shaft, his body bending and twisting, hitting the bottom with a terrible bone-crunching thud. It was a miracle that his spacesuit didn’t tear open or that a bone never broke.

Pulling himself heavily to his feet, he limped towards the door and exploded into the room clutching at the straps on his helmet. Inside, he felt his throat constrict and he couldn’t even gasp. Never had there been a more frightening moment in his life. He battled with the helmet, trying to pull it off, the end of his life seconds away, his eyes popping from their sockets, tugging on the tendons. The catches sealed the helmet to his head until he located them and flipped them up, pulling his head out. He made a loud, gasping noise as he sucked in a large breath, saturating his blood with air. An unpleasant smell was choking the room, compounded of stale urine and something undeterminable. The air was dense and fusty, as if an acrid breeze had blown in from a nearby dumpsite some time before and had never found a way out. He breathed through his mouth and pinched his nose, calling out to the crew. Feeling his way blindly along the wall, he collided with something at his feet – empty tins judging by the sound they made. Locating a second door, he pushed through it, entering another dark room and the scent in the air changed to that of blown out candle wick. The smoke was fresh.

“Brad? Simon?”

“Welcome.”

Gable almost leapt out of his skin. The circular beam of a torch poked at his eyes, the sharp light jarring him like an electric shock. That was not what frightened him. The voice that had spoken to him he did not recognise.

Chapter 26

The Fable-1 crew spent the best part of two hours loading the food provisions into the elevator outside the White Room and in the lobby where they were stacked to the roof. Six hundred and twelve tins of food, one hundred and fifty five cans of drink, sixty bottles of water. Hennessey, Matthews and Sutcliffe had made several return trips to the beach to collect them from the raft, along with sixteen life jackets, sixteen insulation blankets and two accessory cases. A human chain from the top of the shaft to the elevator completed the transfer. Keith Burch had stayed back to rest while Faraday took care of him. Otherwise, everyone had helped. Everyone except Trev Gable.

“Maybe he got lost,” said Hennessey, closing the White Room door behind her as Faraday lit a candle.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have sent him,” Matthews added. There was hostility in his voice. Sutcliffe sensed tension in the air and Hennessey confirmed it with a disapproving shake of the head.

“I sent him because everyone else was either ill or drunk. If everyone had been well enough, I would have suggested we all go.”

Matthews glanced over his shoulder. “You obviously didn’t need our help.”

“What’s your problem, Simon? Why are you such a defeatist?”

“What’s that supposed to mean, hero?” Matthews replied with unconcealed spite and provocation.

Sutcliffe vented his irritation by throwing his arms up into the air, sensing an argument brewing, one he didn’t want to have. Spirits were low and so was patience. For everyone. Nevertheless, he knew how important it was to remain calm. So he ignored Matthews, because he was acting like an idiot, but also because his idiocy was coming from a mind and body affected by a number of detrimental factors.

“Just forget it,” he said, walking away.

For a while no one spoke, the only sound chewing jaws and satisfied grunts as the crew tucked into food long-awaited. While Faraday, Hennessey and Matthews ate, Sutcliffe drank some water and sat on the bench where he put his hands behind his neck. A sharp, throbbing pain filled his head, extinguishing his immediate hunger. No sooner had he closed his eyes than someone nudged him and sprang him awake.

“Sorry,” whispered Hennessey. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s about Keith.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Come and take a look.”

Burch was deep in sleep. Several insulation blankets had been placed over him and a life jacket cushioned his head. Something was wrong. His face was ghostly pale and racked with sweat. Sutcliffe peeled off his sock. All five toes were discoloured, his entire left foot pooled with blood, double in size, black as month-old marrow. It looked as though it might explode.

“The cut on the sole of his foot has become infected. I think it’s gangrene.”

Hennessey agreed.

For hours, Burch moaned, twisting beneath the blankets in despair. They had been unable to feed him and he had been sick because painkillers had upset his empty stomach. He was a victim of his own paranoia as he kept the crew awake during much of the night. Around the room were half a dozen candles casting human shadows on the wall. Faraday believed they held a spiritual air and that the warm light might help Burch to relax. It didn’t seem to be working and Matthews was becoming increasingly annoyed. There they were, confined in one room and they had to listen to that. Burch wasn’t the only one hurting. His groaning only gave Matthews a new topic to complain about. He bemoaned the harmful effect Burch was bringing to their spirits and suggested that they lock him up in one of the toilet cubicles.

Nobody agreed.

Now Matthews was wide awake and he was determined to keep everyone else awake. “You know, there were people in the world that chose to have healthy limbs amputated you know, just because.”

Faraday looked up. “That’s absurd, where did you hear that?”

“I saw it on a documentary a long time ago. Some people went through life wanting to lose a leg or an arm. Many of them were filled with guilt from a young age after knowing an amputee. They said they wouldn’t feel like themselves without an amputation. Absolutely obsessed.”

Hennessey had been unable to get Burch and his terrible injury out of her head all night, knowing where it was leading him and she’d heard enough on the topic of amputations. She didn’t think she could listen to it any longer, so she went to the other side of the room to escape the zone of conversation. Matthews detected her acrimony and watched as she turned her back on the group. There was still something about her bothering him. A few times he had thought about it, but the opportunity to air his suspicions hadn’t arisen. Now, he felt, was an opportunity.

“You know, something about you Jen doesn’t add up,” he called out across the room.

“What are you talking about?” she shouted back.

“Why were you really assigned to Fable-1?”

Hennessey was quiet. Everyone thought Matthews was out of line, but they were interested to see where the conversation was heading.

“To launch Chandra II, originally, why else?”

“I don’t buy it. Chandra II could have easily been launched from the ground. NASA has done space balloons before. You didn’t need to be on our balloon to launch it.”

His words got the group thinking. Now they were all listening alertly as he continued. “Here’s what I think. NASA wanted a research pilot, i.e. you, not just to launch experiments, but to do research on our balloon and the flight into space in the hope of obtaining information for its own commercial space ballooning venture. NASA knew we were considering tourist flights and didn’t want us to be the first in the world to make space tourism a reality. It’s the old Russia-versus-America space race all over again. Am I right?”

She shook her head. “Think what you like, Simon, I don’t give a damn.”

“Just what I thought,” he said.

“If it helps you sleep at night.”

Oh, she was good, he thought. She was quite outstanding. She had everyone in the room fooled. Everyone but him. He had sussed her out a long time ago. The ever-present accretion of suspicion had hardened into fact.

“I knew it. She’s a fucking spy.”

Sutcliffe looked quizzically at Hennessey, hoping Matthews’ accusation held no truth. At the same time, he knew how important keeping the peace was because sometimes conflicts that were not resolved quickly were not resolved at all. Everyone was quiet, including Burch, at last. Whether or not that was a good thing could only be determined by slapping two fingers on his pulse, which Faraday did every so often. The peace in the room was bliss. The night had been long and distressing and all anyone wanted to do was sleep on fed stomachs beneath warm blankets. Now that Burch was sleeping, it was possible.

“At first light, I’m going out to look for Trev,” announced Faraday. With all the attention on Burch and his misery, she got the impression nobody had given Gable a second thought.

“I’ll come with you,” said Matthews. “I don’t feel like sharing this room with a spy right now.”

Faraday went around the room blowing out the candles. She paused on the last one, confirming the bearings of her bed before blowing out the flame, the light gone in an instant. Stepping carefully towards her bed, she nestled herself beneath her insulation blankets and pressed her head into the life jacket, the closest thing to a bed in ages.

It was about ten seconds later when they heard the disturbing scream, a sickening human noise. The blood-curdling shrieks were coming from Burch, as though he was trying to exorcise every morsel of evil from within his body. Matthews shakily retrieved his lighter and relit one of the candles. The room grew lighter and, steadily, the screams faded. What had just happened to him? They were all hesitant to attend to him, all except Faraday who was already kneeling by his side. “What is it, Keith?”

He didn’t respond. He stared absently at the ceiling. Not all dark places hid a monster, Burch thought. But some did.

The lights went out and the corridors fell dark. Some of the inmates piped up, making noises to annoy the wardens, clanking objects on their window bars. Usually, Burch didn’t get to hear them because his brain switched off in unison with the lights. That week he had heard them every night. Felix Dunmore, a monster and a bully, blamed him for the missing Marlboro balloon photograph and had given him a severe warning in a fear-provoking whisper. “Watch out for the bogeyman, he’s gonna make ya life a fucking misery every night.”

Burch took the threat seriously and in the early hours of the morning, having finally fallen off to sleep, he awoke screaming in absolute agony. His nose felt as though it’d been ripped off his face. His eyes spewed tears, his nose oozing blood. Dunmore had turned his fingers into claws and had fish hooked them deep within his nostrils, pulling upwards with such force it had lifted his head off the pillow. On the second night, just as he nodded off to sleep, Dunmore arranged a piece of tissue doused with lighter fluid in and out of his toes and set the tissue on fire. Burch awoke writhing in pain, patting his right foot with his pillow to put out the flames. With toes covered in black ash and bulging blisters that hurt like hell, he registered a complaint with the wardens, but to little effect. He doubted they even made the complaint official.

The newfound fear of night-time and darkness was affecting his ability to function as a normal human being, making his life even more difficult in prison. Now, for Burch, his need for sight was as essential as his need for air. Nights meant torture and torture led to mental disturbance. Then it happened again, on the third night. He’d kept himself awake until late, fighting sleep, jerking awake every so often in a rush of panic. When he did start sleeping, something touched his face. It woke him, but he could not open his eye. Dunmore had squirted glue all over his eyelids and started to punch him all over his body, smashing the life out of him while Dunmore’s scary voice penetrated his ears. “The bogeyman don’t like thieves.”

“Stop, please. I didn’t take your photo. I didn’t take it.”

Dunmore persisted with the punches, raining them down on him, destroying him.

The next day, Dunmore was taken away to serve punishment elsewhere, but he didn’t go quietly. “Every night, for the rest of ya life, I’ll be there.”

From that day on, he slept with the light on.

The dim light outlined a human shape moving in front of him. Felix Dunmore! The thug put his hand around his throat to strangle him. Burch couldn’t even muster up the energy to fight back. Then the features of the silhouette began to materialise in sharp gradations of grey. The monster was not Felix Dunmore, but Claris Faraday. She had her hand on his neck, feeling his glands and checking his pulse. Disappointed with himself for succumbing to the insidious torment of the past, he tried to disconnect his waking thoughts and, weak from the turbulence of his own emotional vulnerability, started to cry.

With an impatient gesture, Matthews banished his insulation blanket and stomped about the room in a huff. “Can we please put this hypochondriac in the toilet? I can’t sleep with him in here.”

Sutcliffe slammed his fist down on the bench in anger. Sensing his big mouth had overstepped the mark, Matthews stepped back in surprise. Then he reacted as though he was under attack, quick to administer a defensive reflex. “Can’t you see what he’s doing to the group? You know what, fuck this shit!”

Sutcliffe held out his palms. “What is wrong with you?”

“I’m sick of this shit! I’m sick of you.”

Matthews made no attempt to hide his feelings, his solitude more than just a matter of frustration, but also the belligerence of resentment. And it all came out in explosive bursts. He flat out told Sutcliffe how much he hated him making sole decisions when it had come to Fable-1, and even now, in the White Room. He hated the fact that Hennessey had warmed to him, the hero, he put it. Not because he had feelings for her of his own, but because she was a traitor and she didn’t belong there. A look of something bordering on disbelief appeared on Sutcliffe’s face. So shocked was he by Matthews’ outburst, he didn’t know what to say in reply. Matthews stared through Sutcliffe, on the point of saying something else, then turned his back and walked away, aware that he had said too much and, feeling a pang of regret, went to the other side of the room where he buried himself under his blankets and pretended to go to sleep.

Hennessey waited until he was out of earshot, then turned to Sutcliffe. “He’s losing it.”

Sutcliffe was aware of Matthews’ building irritation and knew he was an irritable person from time to time, but what else could he do? “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be alright.”

“He’d better be.”

“People deal with traumatic stress in different ways.”

“Not like that they don’t.”

Hennessey walked away and left Sutcliffe to chew over her concerns. It got him thinking. If that was a simulation of grief, then Matthews was undoubtedly a man to fear. His instincts told him that, although Matthews was strong and capable of violence, he was not by all accounts a violent man. Then again, if he really thought about it, did he really know the man that well? He hadn’t socialised with him unless it had concerned the balloon. He knew business Matthews. Did he know private Matthews? No, he didn’t believe he did and that made him wary.

Chapter 27

Matthews passed the helmet to his cousin. He helped her strap it on. He took her by the hand to the shaft and assisted her across the door bridge and up the stepladder in the elevator. Following behind, he emerged beneath a pale grey sky where his eyes were drawn to the decaying cliffs of St. Ives and he marvelled as he always had done at the view.

Faraday hadn’t been out since arriving back at the White Room and the sight of the land profoundly shocked her. She stared dis-believingly at the colourless ocean and a background of unending smoke where little white explosions gave the sky a defining shape. A storm was approaching and a sturdy wind was blowing.

“My God,” Faraday remarked, rotating her head to observe the ruined country she had once called her home.

“Not anymore he’s not.”

“Look at it,” she said. “It’s all gone.”

Matthews looked over at the grave at the top of the hill where the mystery intruder, Fred Farrell, had been laid to rest. The frail wooden cross rattled in the wind. Beyond the gravesite was nothing but a featureless plane of frost-covered land. Nothing had survived the explosions. Nothing. The force at the epicentres must have been incredible, Matthews thought. He looked down at the area where he had crafted the HELP sign and he felt his heart sink. Sheets of ice camouflaged his message. He looked towards the gully where he had been witness to the horrific bonfire of human bodies. Smoke no longer reached for the sky and he presumed the acidic rain had extinguished the fire.

“It’s good to get out of the White Room,” he said. “Brad is driving me crazy down there.”

“So that’s why you volunteered to look for Trev?”

“Of course. I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about the little rascal. I just couldn’t stand another minute of listening to Moses. What’s your excuse?”

“I want to look for Trev.”

“Yeah, right, you care as much as I do.”

“I’m not as heartless as you,” she rebelled. “I actually have feelings.”

Sutcliffe had mentioned that Gable had headed west, so that’s the way they went. The ground, hardened with frost and ice, was slippery and they battled constantly with the hard wind as it buffeted against their suits. The horror of the land confronted them – the twisted bodies, the levelled buildings, the gloom of death on an exorbitant scale. Thunder boomed in the distance, the storm worsening and soon there would be rain.

Precariously they moved forward. The further they trekked, the darker the sky became. They tacked left and right across the land, passing through flattened townships and villages, soon coming to a river and a bridge that had snapped at its middle. The river water was murky and fetid. A corpse sailed down-current on its front. They didn’t try to cross the bridge and stayed on the one side of the river in their hunt for Gable, searching under ruins, behind hills, on every horizon. Faraday felt that being out and being active was doing wonders for her body. Her headache had abated and her circulation had improved. In contrast, the more attention Matthews gave to finding Gable, the more impatient he was becoming, but he couldn’t convince Faraday that they were wasting time.

“I reckon he ran away, to be honest.”

“Why would he run away?”

“Why would he stay? Brad was obviously bitter at him for being in that toilet when he thought his son was in there. And he practically bullied the boy to go looking for food. I reckon he found some in a good place and decided not to share it. I don’t blame him either.”

“He’s scared. We’re the only people he knows. We’re the only people full stop. I bet he’s out there looking for the White Room, lost somewhere. So, stop your whining and keep looking.”

Matthews heaved a large sigh. He wouldn’t have gone at all if Faraday hadn’t volunteered. Because, truthfully, she was the only person he felt comfortable around. She had an easy personality and was genuine, never dictatorial. Sutcliffe was bossy and bigheaded, Burch a hypochondriac and a nuisance and Hennessey a liar and a cheat. He stared at his cousin as she walked. He figured it was the closest they had ever been, even as young kids exploring childhood. She was the only person left in his world and he held a newfound respect for her.

After a while, they came across a collection of burnt trees wilting in the wind. One of the trees had a faint stroke of paint on it. Gable had been there. On the other side of the woods, they found a cottage with a collapsed roof, the front door wide open. Matthews entered first with Faraday close behind him. The fallen roof had dislodged walls, knocking them askew. Burnt tiles and guttering littered the floor and the walls were cloaked with black smoke stains and damp growing fingers. They entered what they presumed was the kitchen partly barricaded by fallen beams and offering a low awkward clearance. Ducking beneath it, they entered the kitchen and found an old-fashioned fridge-freezer on its side beneath a mound of bricks. Clearing the bricks, they opened the heavy door with a handle that operated much like a large stapler. Empty, except for an old block of cooking lard. At the other end of the kitchen, a cupboard nailed to a section of wall that had collapsed was also empty, apart from a pepper pot and a box of old toothpicks.

“Either nobody lived here before the bombs, or…” Matthews paused, looking around.

“Or what?”

“The place has been looted.”

“Looted? By who?”

“Good question.”

“Come on, Simon, let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

“No argument there. Watch that fallen beam, it doesn’t look stable.”

No sooner had Faraday ducked beneath it than an emphatic gust of wind brought the beam down with the weight of the roof. The force of it pummelled Faraday into the floor and covered her from the waist down. She screamed. Matthews turned to see his cousin buried, her legs trapped out of sight beneath the ceramic roof slabs. He didn’t remove them for fear that the roof would collapse further. “Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll have to go and get help.”

“No, don’t leave me.”

“I have to.”

“Please!”

Matthews paused and reassessed the situation. “Do you think you’ve broken anything?”

“I don’t think so. I’m just bruised, I think.”

“Alright, I’ll be right back.”

Squeezing through a narrow passage, he entered what had once been the lounge. Justifying his presumption of looters, he found the room completely devoid of furniture. All except a table constructed of maple, immensely heavy, explaining why it hadn’t been taken. Dragging the table through to the kitchen where Faraday lay pinned beneath the roof, he positioned it by her side, then lifted one end over her head and set it down so that the centre of the table sheltered her body from the damaged struts and support beams.

Matthews ducked under the table and embarked on removing the large, ceramic slabs. The damaged roof above them shuddered. When most of the slabs had been taken away, he shifted the beam crushing her right thigh, but the entire roof came crashing down onto the table. Dust and ceramic debris showered around them. Matthews stared up through the gaping roof where he saw black clouds opening up for rain.

“You alright?”

“I’m okay.”

Pulling her out, she threw her arms around his neck, butting visors. For a brief moment, he forgot they were related by blood and wrongful images appeared in his mind. She drew back and brushed herself down.

“Let’s head back to the White Room,” Matthews said, looking for the way out.

“But we haven’t found Trev yet.”

“You want to continue looking for him? Why?”

“That’s what we came here for. He might be stuck under a fallen roof as well.”

“He might be back already.”

“He might not. While we still have oxygen, I want to keep looking.”

They had penetrated a good few miles inland when they saw people emerge from a spot in the hill that was scattered with building ruins. Two men moved across the hillside and a third hurried to catch them up. Faraday was about to wave when Matthews blocked her rising arm and pulled her to the ground.

“What?” she asked.

“See what they were carrying?”

“No.” She raised her head up over the hill. “Weapons. Guns?”

“I don’t think so. Baseball bats, maybe metal bars.”

“Who do you think they are?”

“Vigilant survivors. Or violent ones.”

“Let’s go another way.”

“No, I want to see where they go.”

“Why? Let’s just get out of here.”

“I want to see where they go because I want to find out where they came from.”

As the men cut across the hillside, Matthews studied them. They were all wearing green parkas with the hoods pulled up over their heads and he couldn’t see their faces. They walked hurriedly and Matthews presumed they knew where they were going.

When they disappeared on the horizon, Matthews stood up. “You coming?”

“Where?”

“To take a look.”

“Are you mad? Those men had weapons.”

“What harm will a couple of sticks do to a spacesuit? I think we’re pretty safe. Besides, they are probably just scared and being cautious. If we speak to them, they’ll see we’re not a threat. They might have seen Trev. Better still, they might have food and water.”

“I’m going to stay here. Be quick, okay?”

She watched as he trudged off down the hill, breaking into a forced jog. A few minutes later, he vanished into the ground.

Matthews had located a set of rickety steps leading to a darkened area with a door. Large access hatches were missing, he determined, noticing four giant hinges on either side of the shaft. He entered a steel door and found himself in a dark room, so he flicked the switch on his headlamps. He saw, on a metal gurney, blood and torn flesh and the remains of a rib cage, that of an animal – a deer or fox maybe. A single metal cabinet was the only other furniture inside the room and even that was bare apart from a pair of bloodstained scissors. A large drum plonked in the corner with a nozzle at the bottom contained several litres of water. Scattered across the floor were hundreds of empty food tins. He spotted a second metal door, streaked towards it and pushed through.

The second room was dark and sombre, save for the elegance of furniture arranged efficiently around it. Three fold up beds lined the back wall. A long shelf bore a collection of dusty photographs in silver frames. Each photograph featured an oldish man and woman and a second woman, younger, very pretty, no doubt the daughter. Three old wooden chairs were set around a circular table with an oil lamp on it. Next to the oil lamp was a radio. He wanted to take it. The radio may not provide communication, he thought, but it could provide hope. Faraday would probably be able to do something with it. The solid brick walls were decorated with large paintings; landscapes, portraits, abstracts. An innocuous piece seemed quite undeserving of its location – a frail old man walking through a bird sanctuary surrounded by dozens of pelicans so well depicted it had museum potential written all over it. He studied it for a moment, admiring the technical skill involved. In the far corner of the room was an old piano in average condition and next to the piano was a dysfunctional fireplace, the mouth bricked up and protected by a cast-iron grate and a tripod of fire tools. The luxurious room contained an air of classical elegance, homely and welcoming with all the furnishings in wood. The furniture itself had not a sign of wear and tear and although a little old-fashioned, it all seemed to be in pristine condition.

Something in the room moved. Flinging his head to where he saw it, the headlamps picked out a cage which seemed to be moving with a mass of intertwining shadows. Moving closer to it, the light revealed several people encased in a large floor-to-ceiling impound constructed of welded wire mesh. Jammed inside the cage were at least ten people, all very frightened. As he shuffled closer to them, they put their hands up to the light to protect their faces and most screamed.

Crouched down on the hill staring absently at the lurid landscape, Faraday wondered what was taking her cousin so long and now she found herself worrying. Then she saw a man in a spacesuit trekking over the hill. It had to be Trev Gable. He wasn’t wearing his helmet. His oxygen had expired ages ago so that explained why. She stood and waved her arms hysterically at him. He didn’t see her. She ran down to him and he still hadn’t spotted her until she tapped his shoulder. He turned sharply and the face she saw did not belong to Trev Gable. The dark, warped features of the face, which seemed out of sync to the rest of his body, gave her a huge fright, until she realised that he was wearing a gasmask. Still, she knew it wasn’t Gable because she could see dark, beady eyes staring back at her through the glass. When she looked down, she saw he was tapping in his hand a metal pipe for a weapon. Then he pulled out a gun.

Chapter 28

It came to him, he thought about it, and he realised that he would have to do something he had never done before. Something he had never dreamt he would ever have to do. Something so horrific and strength-depleting it would conceivably scar him for the rest of his life.

Sutcliffe closed his eyes as he spoke. “We’re going to have to amputate it.” He prodded softly around the inflamed foot. “If we don’t, he’ll die.”

Burch was asleep and Hennessey was cupping her hand over her mouth in anguish. The gangrene had spread with alarming speed into dangerous territory.

“How?” she said. “We don’t have the right equipment.”

“We will have to make do with what we’ve got. We have two first-aid kits. There are plenty of bandages inside and antiseptic creams.”

“What are we supposed to cut it off with?”

He pulled out the safety-knife, the one from the life-raft that he’d used for cutting the securing line.

“That isn’t going to work, Brad.”

“It’s all we have.”

“Wait a minute.”

Hennessey walked quickly to the far wall where all the clothes hung on hooks and dug her fingers into her cardigan pocket looking for her handkerchief. She found it and turned, clipping Matthews’ jacket with her elbow. It fell off the hook and dropped to the bench. She picked it up and out fell a sharp dagger. An inscription on the handle read Black Prince. She brought it over to Sutcliffe. “Look what I found.”

“Where did you get that?”

“It fell out of Simon’s jacket.”

“It’ll do the job.”

Burch awoke from an uneasy sleep and felt the skin on his scalp tighten with some nameless terror. Sweat poured down his face.

“Keith, listen to me, carefully,” said Sutcliffe, putting a hand to his shoulder. “You have gangrene in your left foot and it’s quite advanced. It’s spreading now to your leg. We’re going to have to amputate it. I’m so sorry.”

“Leave it,” he slurred. “There is…no…”

“Keith, if the infection were to permeate into the bone, there would be more complications and you will die. You just can’t risk it.”

Burch passed out.

“It’s now or never,” said Sutcliffe.

He asked Hennessey to hold Burch’s leg up so that some of the blood would drain out of the foot while he gathered the materials he needed. He took a bandage from the first-aid kit and tied it as tight as he could around the bottom of the shin to cut off circulation. He prepared two pairs of disposable gloves for him and Hennessey, all the bandages he could find, the sponges, antiseptic spray, adhesive tape and the last of the painkillers. Using the pills first, he lifted Burch’s head, opened his mouth and rinsed three down his throat with water.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Hennessey asked.

“If you’re asking me if I’ve ever done this before, then no.”

“Are you able?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“I suppose not.”

“Well, then, put his leg down and hold it still. If he wakes up and screams, stuff something in his mouth so he has something to bite on.”

She held up the handkerchief and flapped it until he saw it.

“Put your gloves on. It’s about to get messy.”

Sutcliffe slapped on his gloves and gripped the dagger firmly in his more agile right hand. He took a few deep breaths. He was trained in first-aid, but he was not trained for amputations and feeling sick with nerves he aligned the blade beneath the bandage. Hennessey looked away. Sutcliffe quailed at the idea of cutting into Keith Burch, however necessary. He wrenched himself into some semblance of control, drew back the dagger and slashed into the skin, quickly and convincingly. Burch stirred, then yelled, and he didn’t stop, not until Hennessey filled his mouth with the hand-kerchief and even then it only muffled the sound. She glimpsed Sutcliffe sawing the limb and the blood gushing out. She turned away, but her ears could not avoid Burch’s screams.

“He’s going to need another fix,” said Hennessey. “Give him more painkillers.”

“I don’t think they’ll make much difference.”

Sutcliffe hacked through the bone and was almost through the last hunk of flesh when he gave the foot a sharp tug, detaching it from the leg. The moment it happened, he knew it had made a monumental mark on his entire life. While Hennessey struggled to keep Burch still, Sutcliffe dabbed the excessive blood using the sponges and spouted the wound with antiseptic spray, dressing it with several bandages that soaked up the remaining blood. Tying another bandage around the severing to pinch the arteries shut, he applied a final layer around the stump.

Outside the subterranean hideout, cheating the cold in his spacesuit, Sutcliffe walked to the edge of the cliff with the severed foot wrapped up in a bandage in his hand. Standing motionless on the sheer cliff staring out at the littered beach, he could scarcely make out the ruined appearance of the listing cruise ship. Repulsed and deeply ashamed of himself, having committed a barbaric act against humankind, he took one last look at Burch’s amputated foot.

“We will have to amputate, I’m sorry.” The doctor held the X-ray of his leg up to the light box on the wall.

“Surely there’s something that could be done,” said Sutcliffe, pushing back his short fringe with a nervous hand.

The doctor shook his head and Sutcliffe felt the colour ebb from his face and the beat of his heart surge with a rush of blood.

“As you can see here,” the doctor began, “the limb has been extensively traumatised from the fall and, if you look carefully, you will see that the breaks in the tibia have punctured the soft tissue. I can’t see any other option.”

Sutcliffe leaned forward. “I want a second opinion.”

“I can arrange that for you, but you should be prepared for the same analysis.”

The doctor left and Sutcliffe was overwhelmed with self-pity. An immediate flash of scenarios appeared in his head. How he would get about on one leg. How he would care for Martin. How he would ever love or be loved again. Life in a wheelchair. No life. He stared absently at the window. He’d been staring at it for so long he hadn’t noticed the arrival of night. All night it rained and all night he gazed at the rain making smudges out of the distant night lights.

That was the moment it came to him.

The sight of it could have been a twist of fate or it could have been a sign. For whatever reason, the small red balloon had floated past his window with the words Brave Boy written all over it. And he had seen it and it had given him inspiration. Having been to the casualty ward a few times for injuries Martin had sustained as a child, he knew that balloons were a reward given to help indignant children keep calm in hospital. A child leaving the casualty ward had let go of the balloon by mistake. The human blunder would change his life in ways he could never have imagined, for he had just set his heart on flying a balloon into the darkness of space.

The next day, Sutcliffe received good news from an orthopaedic trauma specialist.

“You’re looking at several operations, including reconstruction below the knee and a long spell in hospital but, yeah, I believe the leg can be saved.”

With disquiet, Sutcliffe threw the dismembered foot down to the beach. It landed among the dead rats with an explosion of black sand and dust. He’d been strong, as strong as everyone else, but now, after days of dread and defeat, it had caught up with him and he was beginning to have desperate thoughts. Suicidal thoughts. It could be over in an instant, he thought. One short step off the cliff. He began to detach the fastenings on his helmet. When it came off, he inhaled a sharp breath, the air sweet and polluted, refreshing and deadly. But in a few seconds it wouldn’t matter. It would all be over. He would be with his son in a far better place. Final thoughts went out to his crew. For his part, he had done all he could and they no longer needed him. With him gone, it meant one less mouth to feed. He took a step forward on the cliff, his toes flirting with the edge and a spout of gravel dislodged and tumbled down the cliff face. He sat down with his legs hanging over the edge, his knees apart, his body pitched slightly forward. He was thinking about God and that terrible uncertainty about what would be revealed on the other side. He was lurching forward when he suddenly remembered the pistol. Hennessey had made him bring it with him because she thought he might be faced with dangers. Who knew what horrors roamed the landscape. From his thigh pocket, he took it out and stuck it in his mouth. Slowly, he squeezed on the trigger. At the last second, he changed his mind and lodged it at his temple.

Goodbye world and good riddance.

He shut his eyes and pressed the trigger.

Then his eyes flung open. Something in his mind had snapped. What am I doing? he thought. There was still a lot to do and still a chance they could be rescued. Angry at himself, he put away the pistol and reattached his helmet. He stood up and hurried back to the shaft, wondering how Matthews and Faraday were going in their search for Gable. They’d been gone for ages.

He tried to patch through to them. “Simon.”

He waited. “Claris, you there?”

He tried them again. “Simon? Claris?”

Why were they not responding? Then he remembered that his extravehicular communicator had been exposed to water when he had fallen into the water on the cruise ship. Perhaps water had seeped into the electrics. That would explain why he hadn’t been able to get through to Gable the second time and why he couldn’t get through to Faraday and Matthews right then. He worried about them all, especially with the weather worsening. The frost had melted because of the rain, but there were flashes of lightning in the sky, indicating more storms on the way. Then, close to the Mission Control Base, Sutcliffe saw something that he decided to follow.

Chapter 29

Understanding that the scene before him was not at all normal, that something was very badly wrong, Matthews pulled off his helmet and stared at the caged humans. It was not the normal mechanics of a hostage situation. A grave apprehension rose within him. Though the people locked in the cage hardly constituted danger, it was who had locked them up that had him worrying. Behind the wire mesh squares, among the frightened faces, appeared a face he recognised. The beetle-browed face of Trev Gable.

“Trev!”

He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, agitated. He looked this way and that, down at the ground for a second or two, then to each and every face around him with a blank stare.

“Trev!”

Matthews said his name again and again, but Gable did not respond. His face was a picture of panic. Matthews called his name again and finally he got a reaction.

Gable wheedled his way to the front of the cage and gripped the bars. “Get me out!” he shrieked.

“What’s going on here?”

“Get me out!”

“What is all this?”

“The Tanners,” said a voice from the back of the cage. The tone was female.

“The who?”

“Family from up the road.”

A woman slowly edged her way forward, her dirty long fingers piercing through the cage. “They’ve been terrorising the neighbour-hood for years and they’re still doing it.”

“What do they want?”

“Father and three sons. Crazy, the lot of ’em.” The woman appeared surprisingly calm and Matthews realised she was the one in all the photographs. “They want food and they don’t want to share it.”

“Get me out of here!” Gable shrieked again.

Matthews tried to open the gate to the cage and saw that a brass padlock firmly sealed it and there was no sign of a key. He asked the woman who had it and she replied one of the Tanner brothers. He skirted the room for a tool to penetrate the padlock. Beside the fireplace he spotted a pair of brass ball andirons. He collected one. It was as heavy as a hand-sized rock. Back at the cage, the prisoners stepped away from the gate watching as Matthews smashed the andiron ball down on the brass padlock.

In the meantime, Matthews had more questions. “So, what is this place?”

The woman sighed. “We are all neighbours. My house used to be above this bunker. My husband built it in the back garden years ago. He was convinced something like this would happen one day. This cage we’re in used to be stocked full of food and water, enough to last me and my family a year. Or so we thought. Our bunker was famous in the village for all the wrong reasons. Everyone used to poke fun at it. Kids used to break in and vandalise it. We were the laughing stock of the community. When the news announcement came, everyone piled down here to escape the nuclear bombs. The food went within four days. I guess nobody is poking fun at us anymore.”

Matthews digested the information, not liking what he was hearing. But it did explain how the people had survived the war and who the men with weapons were. He knew now that the men in parkas outside were foes, not friends. As he thought about her account of things, he kept at it even though his arms were growing tired. Sparks jumped off the padlock, but it showed no sign of breaking.

Then Matthews stopped trying altogether. He backed away from the cage, thinking. His eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. One man behind the gate thought Matthews had completed the job and tried to open it, rattling the thin bars impatiently. Banging his clenched fists on the cage in a fit of anger, he swore several times, but Matthews paid no attention to him. Gable could see the wheels turning in Matthews’ head, something he had seen a few times. The vacant stare. The secretive silence while he churned things over in his mind. It gravely concerned Gable, for in the few days he had known Matthews he had been able to sum up that he was selfish and untrustworthy and dealt ruthlessly with problems.

“Why have you stopped?” Gable asked.

It had occurred to Matthews, in a moment of clarity, that the people in the cage were desperate and deprived and had wiped out the bunker’s resources, leaving the original occupants without food. If they were released, they might track him and Faraday back to the White Room and wade through the supplies Sutcliffe had acquired from the cruise ship. He weighed up the pros and cons of letting the people out and, concluding that there were no pros, decided not to take the risk. Suddenly, the Tanner brothers didn’t appear to be so villainous. Perhaps they’d been the wisest of everyone and had put an end to individual selfishness and greed. Their system was harsh and inhumane, but if it prolonged life and brought about social order in a disorderly environment, were they such bad people?

“I’m sorry.”

Gable rattled the door. “You’ve got to let us out.”

“No can do, mate.”

Gasping and snivelling emanated from the small crowd and someone got angry.

Gable’s voice rattled with terror. “Why not?”

“That’s just the world we live in now.”

Matthews heard something from the next room, voices and someone clunking about. He moved quickly to the corner of the bunker, ducked down behind the old piano and switched off his headlamps.

Standing in a room lit by the beam of a flashlight, with a bloodied carcass of something on the gurney before her, Faraday was ordered to undress. The man held a gun to her ribs and pulled his gasmask down around his neck revealing a rough face blemished with old acne scars and a squashy flat nose. He was in his late twenties, no older, Faraday surmised. The constant gun prodding was starting to frighten her. “I have friends out looking for me.”

He shoved her in the shoulder.

“Please don’t do anything to me.”

The man grunted and snatched away her spacesuit and the spandex garment, reducing her to a single t-shirt that stopped at the middle of her thighs. Faraday folded her arms against the cold and watched as the man slung her spacesuit over a wall rail. Seeing him in possession of another spacesuit made her bitter and angry and it made her worry about Gable.

“Where’s my friend?”

“Move,” he said bluntly, pointing to a second door he wanted her to go through. He switched the flashlight off reducing them to darkness, took her by the arm and she felt the gun spear into her ribs again. She heard the clatter of metal and the mewling breaths of other people. Then an oil lamp was lit and the room came into colour. The cage imprisoning her held other people, the smell of their deteriorating hygiene overpowering, their withdrawn faces frightening her. The young man settled into a chair he’d pulled up and sat looking over his prisoners, face dead calm and serious. He licked his palette with his tongue and kept at it. People in the cage started to cry.

Matthews was cowering in the corner of the room, squatting low, and the weight of his body was hurting his knees, legs and lower back. The detainees were becoming more and more restless too. There was something very odd about the whole situation. Confinement in small spaces made people bitter and rebellious. That wasn’t the case there. The prisoners were petrified.

Faraday fought her way to the front of the cage. “At least tell us how long we have to stay here like this?”

“Not for much longer sweetheart.”

Faraday rattled the cage bars, then turned round and filed through the array of faces in search of her cousin. But he wasn’t there and she didn’t know where he was. Then she recognised Trev Gable, though he showed no signs of knowing her.

“Trev…you okay?”

A small graze across his chin and his hair thick with blood said otherwise. He had taken a blow to the head, his second in a week.

“Trev, it’s me, Claris.”

“They beat him,” said an old woman at the back of the cage.

“Why?”

“For information.”

“About what? What exactly is going on here?”

“They wanted to know where he came from and where he got the spacesuit.”

“How long have you been in here?” asked Faraday.

“Three days, maybe four.”

Faraday glared at the young man rocking in the chair tapping the gun in his hand. “Why are we locked in this bloody cage?”

“He’s just doing as he’s told, waiting until the others return.”

“Why, what happens then?”

“Dinner.”

“What’s so special about dinner?”

There was tension in the woman’s voice. “We’re it.”

Chapter 30

Matthews had overheard the old woman and he didn’t like what he was hearing. The implication was much darker than he had first imagined. He didn’t want to believe it, though it did make some sense. Now everything fell into place. The people in the cage were petrified because they were being preserved for food. It dawned on him that the blood and bones strewn across the gurney in the room next door were not animal – they were human.

Seated in front of the prisoners, tormenting them by pulling faces, the young man’s presence made it difficult for Matthews to get to the cage. He was in the way. Then Matthews realised that all he had to do was overpower him and obtain the keys clipped to his belt. The andiron ball was at his feet. Gradually, very discreetly, he rose and moved forward, taking with him the andiron ball. Clearing the fireplace, spiralling around the beds, he suddenly tore through the bunker but caught his boot on a low table and a vase toppled, exploding on the floor. The man swivelled towards the distraction at the precise moment Matthews cracked him over the head with the andiron ball. The man fell off his chair clutching his skull and blood oozed out. Determinedly, one hand over his head, the man wobbled back to his feet, blood bursting through his fingers. Matthews lifted the andiron ball aiming a second strike. Lethargically, the man lifted his gun and pointed it at Matthews head. He froze, knowing that one hasty move would cost him his life. From his temple, the gun was moved down to his cheek and was pressed so hard into the hollow flesh between his teeth he thought it might pierce through into his mouth. But he stubbornly refused to be killed there and used as food. He sensed the man trying to summon the strength to force the trigger and Matthews pulled back his head as the chamber was emptied. Bullets glided into wood, metal and furniture. The gunshots spooked the prisoners. The man reeled back and, realising he was out of bullets, threw the gun at Matthews, who ducked and it missed his face by a fraction. He lifted the andiron ball and the man put his hands up over his head to protect himself, tripped on his own feet, fell and crawled into a ball on the floor, his hands still raised over his head. Matthews cracked the ball over his ankle and knew by the horrifying scream that it had shattered a bone. Both his hands reached for his foot, exposing his head. Matthews applied the andiron ball to his skull again, a brutal ping sounded on impact. Ping, ping, ping, Matthews bashed the head until the shape altered and the man stopped screaming.

Faraday stared at him with cold eyes. She was shaking her head, appalled. “What have you done?”

“I’m not letting this fucker eat me.”

Unclipping the keys from the dead man’s belt, he tried to unlock the cage, but the mechanism inside the padlock had buckled and it failed to unlatch. He picked up the bloody andiron ball and bashed the padlock repeatedly. He must have hit it over thirty times before it broke apart. Only wanting to let Faraday out but unable to prevent the stampede as the cage burst open, Matthews moved out of the way, panic resonating throughout the bunker as people ran for the door and ran for their lives. One of them was Gable, until Faraday grabbed him by the arm.

“Let him leave,” said Matthews.

“No, he’s coming with us.”

She whisked him over to the dead man, peeled the gasmask off of from around his neck up over his disfigured head and gave it to Gable. “Here, you’ll need this.”

The gasmask, smattered with blood, had a broken strap and she helped him place it over his face, then tied a tight knot with the straps at the back of his head.

Matthews retrieved his helmet from behind the fireplace, fitted it, and they all made their way quickly to the other room where Faraday was reunited with her spacesuit and spandex garment. She threw it on with the assistance of her cousin, fitted the helmet, the gloves and the boots and got the oxygen going. She held Gable’s hand and took him out of the bunker where heavy rain fell from the sky.

“Wait here one second,” said Matthews. He ducked back into the bunker. Down and down he went, heading deeper and deeper into the mysterious dungeon, into deprivation and misery.

Outside, Faraday and Gable waited impatiently for him. What was taking him so long? All the other prisoners had scarpered from the bunker. But now they were returning, screaming and shouting.

“Why are they coming back?” Gable shrilled.

“The Tanners!” said Matthews.

Faraday turned to see him holding a radio in one hand and a drum of water in the other.

“Who?”

“I’ll explain later,” said Matthews. “We need to go.”

Three hooded men wearing gasmasks appeared at the top of the hill. One of them was firing his gun and the prisoners were dropping like flies, clutching their wounds. Matthews heard a gun-shot and a bullet exploded in the turf in front of them. A spot of mud detonated near Gable’s toe. A loud noise and another puff of exploding mud. The sound of a gun going off and a pain in Gable’s calf. He screamed. Another bullet grazed Matthews’ suit at the back of his thigh. They weren’t trying to kill them, he thought. They were trying to immobilise them.

“Keep going,” Matthews urged.

They cleared the hill and charged down the embankment, but Gable’s injury slowed them down. He was crying and hobbling and only Faraday was keeping him moving with the firm grip she had of his bicep.

Matthews worried the men would appear at the top of the hill in a prime hunting position and execute them. He struggled with the water drum with it being so heavy and awkward to carry.

“Keep going,” he encouraged. “We have to outrun them.”

A bullet lashed by and struck the bark of a dead tree. Matthews glanced back, the men were descending the hill, stopping only to make shots and to track them with a pair of binoculars. The bullets continued. One whipped off Matthews’ helmet, leaving a scar but not a hole. God, the men were shooting off rounds like nothing on Earth, going through some heavy supply of ammunition. One struck the drum in its middle and water leaked out.

“Shit!”

“If they follow us to the White Room, it’ll be compromised and we’ll never be safe,” said Faraday.

The White Room! Matthews had neglected to consider that. By revealing their secret hideout, they would jeopardise all that they had. Furthermore, the distance between them and the White Room was far, seven or eight miles, and Matthews hadn’t factored in the distance when he’d taken the drum. With the men gaining on them, he realised it could be their final demise. More alarmingly, where was the White Room? He couldn’t remember which way they had come. Then Gable pointed to a faint white line painted in the ground smudged and diluted by the rain. “My line,” he shouted.

Matthews lifted his visor a fraction. “Your what?”

Gable was panting, his words muffled by the filter in the gas- mask. “This trail leads…to the White Room. I made it…using paint so I wouldn’t…get lost.”

“It worked well,” Matthews replied sarcastically, shutting his visor.

Following the line was dangerous, Matthews thought, because if the men detected the trail they would have a route all the way to the White Room. He surmised that they’d traversed two miles from the bunker, that they were all exhausted and out of breath and that outrunning the men would take the stamina of an athlete, leaving him with little choice but to ditch the radio and water drum. While he weighed up the options, he listened to his legs and kept on the move. It struck him that the men would only stop once they had hunted and killed. The water continued to spew out of the drum, shedding weight.

“We need to deviate from the line,” Matthews suggested to Faraday.

“I can’t go on,” said Gable.

He stopped running, put his hands on his thighs and bent over, holding down vomit. The glass on his gasmask had steamed up and he could barely see the way. Plus his leg wound, his breathlessness, his shock and just about everything.

Matthews lifted his visor. “Then stay here and get eaten, I don’t give a shit!”

Gable stood up straight, ran a few more steps, then collapsed and could go no further. It occurred to him that he would die of a heart attack before his pursuers got to him.

Faraday knelt beside him and lifted her visor. “Stand up, Trev. It’s not far. You can make it.”

“I can’t, I can’t.”

“If you can’t run, we’ll have to leave you and they’ll get you.”

“Don’t leave me.”

Matthews leaned over him. “You either come with us or you stay here alone. We won’t die for you.”

A bullet erupted at the back of Faraday’s boot.

“Trev!”

“I can’t.”

Faraday turned to Matthews. “I can’t leave him.”

“Screw him. I won’t let you die because of this fool.”

“Simon, I can’t.”

Matthews was caught up in two minds, whether to run or not, when one prevailed over the other and he put down the drum and radio. “I’ll come back for you, I promise.”

“Stop there!” shouted a voice.

Matthews turned to see the men were still closing a large gap between them, walking now, but their weapons claimed all the authority. Instinct persuaded him that attack was the best form of defence. Anyhow, they couldn’t go on and he could fight back or get killed, although he didn’t fancy their chances. He could try small talk or blackmail, that might work. Impossible. He had killed one of their family, had stolen their water and radio and had rousted their abundant supply of food.

Gable wobbled to his feet. He could hardly see through his fogged-up mask, but he didn’t need to see to know that the outlaws were standing right in front of them with guns. One of the men stepped forward. He was the father of the boys, dressed in rumpled, dirty clothes and a gasmask, aiming his rifle forward. He snatched back the water drum and radio.

“On your knees, all of you. Close your eyes,” he ordered.

Matthews realised that only the father had a deadly weapon, a hunting rifle. The two young sons were holding batons and metal pipes. One of the boys was so small he looked as though he would have trouble swinging a cricket bat.

“Fuck you!” Matthews bellowed.

Faraday saw the wisdom in doing as she was told, but it didn’t look as though her cousin would see the same wisdom. Thinking about Sutcliffe and Hennessey as she fell to her knees for execution, a blazing fear came over her and now her body was shaking so violently she thought she might die of panic. Urine filled her diaper. Next to her, Gable was sobbing. Matthews, defiantly refusing to kneel, was asking for trouble. One of the sons casually walked up to Matthews tapping the baton on his thigh and whacked him across the knee, forcing him down.

“Helmet off,” the father ordered.

Matthews held out his palms and shrugged. “If you’re gonna shoot me, just shoot me.”

The man rotated the rifle towards Faraday, keeping his eyes on Matthews. “Take it off and she’ll live.”

Matthews shot a desperate look at his cousin, surrendering to the fact that either both of them got it or just him and neither alternative kept him alive. His minutes were numbered, but if he couldn’t save his own life, he could do the noble thing and save the life of Faraday. Then again, he couldn’t trust them to be true to their word.

The man clicked a bullet into position and positioned his finger on the trigger. A range of thoughts raced through Faraday’s mind. She wondered if a bullet to the brain would hurt. She wondered what would become of her body after she was dead. What would Sutcliffe and Hennessey say about it? Would they even find out?

Matthews disobediently stood up. He was in a testy mood. The rifle swung back at him.

“Hey, let’s just talk,” Matthews said. “We’ve got plenty of food and drink. Maybe we can share it.”

Faraday closed her eyes in despair. She couldn’t believe her cousin had just given up their only supply of food, endangering the White Room and the lives of Sutcliffe and Hennessey. Then she heard three successive gunshots and heard his body crash to the floor, and the stark reality that her cousin was dead immediately struck home.

Chapter 31

Pacing the room, Hennessey was going out of her mind. She wanted to go out looking for Sutcliffe, but knew she couldn’t leave Burch by himself. What was taking him so long anyway? There were dangers outside. She had said it, over and over. Sutcliffe had told her that he was taking the amputated foot away to dispose of it and that he would be straight back. That had been over two hours ago. A worrying thought entered her head. Amputating Burch’s foot had clearly affected his mental state, now that she gave it thought, and he had acted strange thereafter. Despondent and distant. Before he had left the room, he had kissed her head and pulled her into his arms. “You’ll be fine, stay strong,” he’d said. Now she worried his words secretly meant goodbye.

In the time that Sutcliffe been gone, Burch’s condition had deteriorated. His breathing was shallow and she thought he was going into shock. It taught her just how quick a human condition could go from being stable to the door of death. Life was seeping out of him by the hour and his face was alabaster white.

Simultaneously sweating and shivering, Burch was deeply aware that his fear of heights and his indecision on the balloon had brought him to his current condition, and it would bring him to a miserable end. He let out a soft moan.

Hennessey felt his forehead and offered him a weak smile. “What is it, Keith?”

“My foot, it’s itchy.”

“I’ll scratch it for you.”

She peeled off his sock and ran her long fingernails over the crest of his foot. The skin around his toes was crumpled with burn scars and she avoided touching it.

“Just tell me where exactly.”

“Not that foot.”

The comment puzzled her. “You mean your left foot, the one we amputated, remember?”

“Yeah, it’s itchy.”

“No, Keith, that’s impossible.”

“Scratch it. Please.”

Hennessey didn’t know what to do. Where was everybody?

Faraday could not understand what had just happened. She’d heard the body collapse to the ground, knowing that Matthews had just taken three bullets to the head. Seconds later, when she opened her eyes, she saw before her the father face down on the ground, his leg shuddering with spasms and a dark hole in his temple. Standing either side of him were his two sons. One had a bullet hole in the eye of his blood-smattered gasmask. She watched him slowly topple to the floor. The other man dropped to his knees and was clutching his throat where he had a dark hole in his neck with blood spilling through his fingers. Someone had shot them all. Who? Faraday turned to see Sutcliffe holding the pistol that had put all three men down. “Brad!” Faraday flew to her feet and ran to him, flinging her arms around his shoulders. She had never been so pleased to see someone. She drew back. “Thank God you came.”

Gable was in a terrible state. His leg was bleeding from a bullet wound and he could hardly stand. He was sobbing quietly to himself.

Matthews said nothing. He just stood dumbfounded, unsure how to feel or what to think.

Sutcliffe opened his visor. “Who are these people?”

Faraday, almost in tears, raised her visor, understanding that Sutcliffe’s communication system wasn’t working properly. “I’ll tell you about it when we get back.”

Matthews reclaimed the precious radio and water drum and lagged behind as Sutcliffe and Faraday supported Gable along the way.

Nightfall approached. Another day was drawing to a close.

It had been thirty five hours since Hennessey had last seen Gable. Seeing him now gave her a shock. His eyes were bloodshot red, his face drained of colour, the bags under his eyes swollen and dark. He had a bullet wound in his thigh, though on closer inspection she determined that it wasn’t life-threatening, just a flesh graze. She was beginning to feel like a nurse as she dressed his bloody wound, her second of the day.

Faraday explained that Gable had been under enormous stress, what with being lost and then being held prisoner. And he hadn’t eaten for days.

“Get him some food and water,” Hennessey said.

Faraday nipped out to the elevator, grabbed a tin of vegetable soup from the top of the pile and picked out a bottle of water. Using the tin opener, she cut the metal lid off the tin and opened the water for him. Gable waded through the soup and drank the water and colour came back to his face almost immediately.

“So, the survivors are still out there?” asked Sutcliffe.

“Not for much longer,” Matthews commented.

He gave them a rundown about the bunker and the cannibals. Although the prisoners were free, they had no food or shelter and they would soon die because their lungs had been fully exposed to the radiation. Faraday elaborated on what she had observed while Hennessey put Gable to bed. Sutcliffe joined in and explained to Hennessey how he had stumbled upon Gable’s paint trail on the cliff top and had followed it for a good five or six miles, sharing details about how he had arrived to find Gable, Matthews and Faraday in a vulnerable, very frightening position after escaping from the bunker – Matthews cut in and laid the blame on Gable for that – and Sutcliffe had prevented their execution by shooting the men with the pistol he had with him. Hennessey had nothing but sympathy for Sutcliffe because she knew how difficult it must have been for him to amputate Burch’s foot, but killing three men must have been equally as hard.

Matthews watched in absolute disgust when Hennessey put her arms around Sutcliffe, so he went out to the elevator to retrieve some food and escape the room. He didn’t notice Faraday following him out.

“Thanks for…you know.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, commending him for his single-handed rescue at the bunker. The moment was awkward, because the inappropriate feelings that Matthews had earlier discarded were back and stronger than before.

Back inside the White Room, Matthews crouched beside Burch who was mumbling some words and shaking unendingly beneath the insulation blankets. “What’s wrong with him now?”

Sutcliffe motioned with a finger for Matthews to follow him to the other side of the room. “Please try and show a little respect. I had to amputate his foot a few hours ago because of gangrene. He might die.”

“Well, with ‘respect’ Brad,” Matthews said, “Perhaps his death will be a blessing to us all.”

Sutcliffe had swallowed more than enough of his partner’s blustering comments. He had endured several of his conversations twisted and discarded by cheap mind-playing language and was sick of his constant expletive-ridden tirades. For the first time, he realised the only thing they shared in common was that blood ran through their veins.

Matthews saw his dagger on the bench with a smear of blood down the blade. “You didn’t use my dagger to amputate his foot, did you?”

“I had no choice. We needed something sharp.”

Matthews’ body stiffened and Sutcliffe anticipated an outburst.

“You could’ve fucking asked me.”

“You weren’t here.”

“It’s mine. It’s valuable.”

“Where did it come from?”

“It’s a collector’s item.”

That’s not what Sutcliffe meant. He was about to rephrase the question when Burch let out an inarticulate moan. Sutcliffe crouched at his side and asked him what he could do. Burch didn’t reply. Hennessey explained that he’d been complaining his dismembered foot was causing him an uncomfortable itch.

“That’s quite normal,” Sutcliffe told her. “The severed nerves are still sending messages to his brain telling him about the itch. I had a friend whose father had his leg amputated from the knee down after he had been involved in a car accident. He complained for weeks of an unbearable pain in his shins.”

He squatted beside Burch. “Keith, you’re going to have to get through this, I’m afraid. The itch isn’t real. It’s all in your mind. Try not to think about it.”

Using spare parts from the damaged extravehicular communicator in the upper portion of Sutcliffe’s life support system, Faraday played with the broken radio, repairing the circuits, and closed the seal on the back of the device hoping she’d done enough to get it operating. Engineering and Technology was the title of her degree and she was considered an expert in her field, though it had been years since she’d had her fingers in the guts of an electronic appliance.

Crouched in the corner of the elevator beside the pyramid of tinned food, with the headlamps from her helmet shining by her side, she stretched the aerial to full height. The crew were relaxing in the next room and were only a shout away if she needed them, yet being out there alone made her uneasy. The walls, ceiling and floor of the elevator had their own pulse and the compact space was thick with the smell of death. Every so often she glanced up through the open hatch to ensure no one was coming. If it hadn’t been for the need to find a signal to bring the radio to life, she would’ve closed it in an instant. Looking up at a rectangle segment of black sky racing by in a whirlwind of smog and dust, she wondered who else was out there. The rivulets of rainwater dripping beside her and the sight of the huge bloodstain on the elevator wall made the space seem even more hellish. A sudden vision of rescue workers milling about the country emphasised her need to make contact with the outside world.

She switched on the two-way radio and a loud, whirring sound hummed through the speaker on the ultra-high frequency. One by one, she jumped between the stations. There were sixteen in total. Each station produced a crackly whistle in varied tones. Patiently, she gave each one a good thirty seconds to allow for interference. After the first round of station-hopping, she adjusted the range transponder system and went through them again, to no reward. She decided to record a message and set it on a designated channel. Considering what she was going to say before speaking, she pressed record.

“We are six survivors of the war and are living in a basement near the coast in St. Ives. Food and water are limited and we are waiting to be found. If anyone hears this message, please pass it on to the appropriate people.”

As soon as she transmitted the message, she wondered if she’d missed something, if the message could have been better, had she spoken loud enough and had it been too short. Resuming the search, she listened again, hoping that someone had heard her message and would respond. All she got was the deafening shrill of disturbed radio waves.

Sutcliffe came out of the White Room. “Any luck?”

Faraday jumped. “You scared me,” she said, putting her hand to her chest. “It’s working at least. But I keep getting this irritating whistle.”

“I know. That’s why I came out.”

“I recorded a message and sent it out on a high frequency, so fingers crossed.”

Sutcliffe nodded and smiled. “Yeah, fingers crossed,” and he went back inside.

Faraday tried the stations once again. She stood up and lifted the radio high above her head to the hatch and toggled with the receiver. Station one – static. Station two – static. Station three – whistling. Station four – whistling and static. Station five – static. Station six – static. Station seven – a voice. Faraday almost dropped the radio. She tried to lift the volume, but saw it had already been raised to full. She put her ear close to the speaker. The voice she heard had a Welsh accent and belonged to a man. Whistling and sputtering obscured the voice, but she could faintly make out what he was saying.

“…in London. There is nothing left here. I repeat I am a survivor in London. The bombs destroyed everything. There must be someone out there. I can be found in the Knightsbridge region. I have no water and no food. I have been walking around for days and I have not seen a single person. God help me. Anyone?”

Faraday’s eyes widened with surprise. “Hello, I can hear you. Hello?”

Sutcliffe came running out of the White Room to join her in the elevator. Matthews and Hennessey were right behind him. Faraday waited for a reply. Out of the unbearable silence came the looped message again drowned out by static and, disheartened, she realised it had been pre-recorded and the man was probably dead already.

Chapter 32

As time progressed and the hours became increasingly challenging and difficult, the mood in the White Room became intolerably tense. All their annoying habits started to surface and their incarceration had honed their senses to superhuman pitch.

Sutcliffe wished there were other rooms where they could go off for some time alone because sometimes he needed to escape the endless demands on time and energy that confinement entailed. He had developed several mouth ulcers and it was affecting the way he spoke. Everyone had them. Ulcers were just another discomfort to contend with. Then there were the daily complaints of things like toothache, stomach cramps, migraines, headaches, nausea, vomiting and outright boredom. With food strictly rationed to two tins between six per day, livers were being deprived of vitamin reserves and bones of precious minerals. And God it was cold. The room got so cold at night that he figured it was only a matter of time before someone caught hypothermia.

“Listen, everyone,” Hennessey made sure she had everyone’s attention before she continued. “It’s imperative that we exercise. We need to keep a healthy circulation going.”

“What exactly do you suggest, Jen? Laps around the block?” Matthews said.

“Actually, it would be a good idea to go out for a short walk now and again. We have enough oxygen.”

“Sorry, I disagree,” said Sutcliffe. “We may need that oxygen later when it comes to looking for food. I think we should preserve it for essential activity only.”

“Fair enough. But we can still do stretches, running on the spot, push-ups, sit-ups, squats, whatever you feel comfortable doing.”

Matthews disagreed with her second suggestion too. “We don’t have the energy for doing exercises. Exercising burns a lot of energy. Energy comes from food and water. We barely have either. I don’t want to make myself hungrier and thirstier than I already am.”

“You’ll get used to the hunger,” she stated. “Millions of people all around the world lived a lifetime of famine and they survived. If you’re not active, you’ll be more susceptible to disease and blood complications. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”

The White Room, unventilated and dark, had taken on a tentative squatter’s home. The room was chilly and Sutcliffe stared at his hot, dissolving breath. Everyone else in the room was sleeping or just doing their best to relax. Faraday had been throwing up all day. She had finally fallen asleep; an exhausted and pale form curled up on the floor. Sutcliffe scanned his eyes across the White Room to where Hennessey sat reading the Jane Austin novel. After a while, she put it down and began staring at the wall. Sutcliffe sat watching her for the best part of an hour, completely absorbed by her beauty. He watched as she returned to her novel and Sutcliffe daydreamed for a while. He thought of Jacqueline, wondering at which point in their relationship his love had ended, whether it even had. Undoubtedly, she had died but Sutcliffe thought little of it. He stared back Hennessey’s way and watched her put down the book again and go around the room clearing up a mounting collection of empty tins. She folded up blankets to make more space for her roommates. She innocently observed her beautiful face in her hand mirror. That was when he realised something. He was very much in love with Hennessey. If he hadn’t known about his feelings before, he certainly did now, the revelation like an injection to the heart and he smiled gaily. He was smiling so distantly that he didn’t notice Hennessey striding towards him.

“What are you grinning about?” she asked.

“Nothing, are you okay?”

“I’m hanging in there. By the way, I never got a chance to thank you.”

“For what?”

“The food. Thanks to you, we’re all alive right now.”

“Well, I’m still trying to decide if that’s a good thing.”

“Maybe not, but dying of hunger is not a pleasant way to go.”

“No, I guess not.”

Hennessey nestled into his arms. There was no message in her actions, just she felt cold and wanted to be close to someone to keep warm. They fell asleep together.

On the other side of the room, Matthews awoke and stretched. He could see his cousin’s face awash with anguish as she slept. He had never before considered himself close to Faraday because they were different in so many ways, though they did share genes. They both liked to live life on the edge, like their fathers. And the edge came no closer than scarcely surviving a fucking nuclear war. Matthews thought about the Cornish rogues. They had been killed, vaporised maybe, like his mounting debt, and he was pleased about that. He could see in Faraday’s face, however, her pain and suffering and he was her only family now.

Faraday was in a deep sleep when she felt something crawling across her scalp. Her eyes flew open. Matthews was crouching over her, combing her hair with his fingers.

“Hello, sleepy head.”

“What are you doing?” She sat up with urgency, her heart in a flutter.

“I saw you sleeping. You just looked so peaceful, so beautiful.”

He was quiet, observing her beautiful, green eyes. “You know, many years ago, family intermarriage didn’t have the problem it has today. Harmful mutations took several generations to reach the stage where intermarriage would be dangerous for the offspring.”

Faraday wasn’t sure how to take that. She was never really sure how to take anything Matthews said, even when they’d been kids. “Seriously, what?”

“Polygamy. It was helpful in populating the world. I mean, shit, one man can create many children through multiple female partners, but there are no multiple females down here. Just you and that bitch over there.” He pointed at Hennessey, who had her head on Sutcliffe’s chest, both of whom were sleeping. “And a woman doesn’t bear more than a handful of children, does she?”

“Right, so you’re saying that it’s up to us to repopulate the world? Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying that perhaps it is our duty, our responsibility to mankind, even if it is risky. Don’t you agree?”

Two seconds, maybe three, passed before Faraday answered. “I haven’t thought about it, to be honest. But, thinking about it now, how could we possibly bring children into this world? I mean, there are no hospitals, there’s no food, no water, no future. What kind of life would a baby be born into? I think having children would be a huge mistake.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I really don’t want to talk about children, Simon. We are cousins and this is not a real conversation.”

“Children were being born into this world thousands of years before hospitals were built.”

“Can we just drop the subject, please?”

Matthews said nothing more. They both went to sleep.

Trev Gable was being sick in the toilet. Faraday realised his belching had awoken her. She heard him snort up as much phlegm as he could manage and spit it back out into the toilet. Disgusting, she thought. Low voices brushed over the room. Matthews was chatting privately to Sutcliffe in the corner, but she had no idea of its regard. As they spoke, Sutcliffe exercised his leg, his face a picture of concentration. Meanwhile, Hennessey was chewing corn kernels and slurping the juice from the tin. Faraday lay back down, eyes wide open, staring at the dark ceiling, the new day destined to be another uneventful one. She got to thinking about how long things could go on like that, but Gable distracted her when he exited the toilet. His hair was ruffled and he yawned, adding noise. His face was bed sheet white and vomit clung to his thin scribble of beard. He sat down opposite Faraday and looked at the old newspaper with such attention to detail it was obvious that he was trying to distract his mind from the reality of his life.

Sutcliffe and Matthews joined Gable over on the bench, both towering over him, both with arms folded, both with irate scowls. Sutcliffe couldn’t help feeling bitter towards the young man. His son should have been in that toilet, not Gable. Increasingly, something had been bothering him about Gable and now, after discussing it in detail with Matthews, he realised what.

“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.

Part 5

Chapter 33

The two wooden crosses at the top of the hill made silhouettes on the snow-ridden ground against a dark cloud-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-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-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-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-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-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-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-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!”

“That’s an abandoned pick up. It’s been there for about six years. Please, let us do our job.”

When night descended on the desert, with optimism and hope sliding away, Hennessey was dropped off at the airport and the Black Hawk disappeared into the night to continue with the search, limited to its hi-tech aerial searchlights and special thermal-imaging equipment.

At first light, Hennessey was back up in the sky looking for her parents. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that they spotted the wreckage of a private plane not on record. The Black Hawk began to lose height before banking sharply to the west where it circled twice. It hovered above the plane ruins as the crew observed it thoroughly. The helicopter descended with predatory determination. Hennessey skipped out of the cabin as soon as it landed and ran towards the plane. She could tell immediately by the model that it belonged to her father – a Six Cessna 140. One of the wings had snapped off and the nose had grated the hard ground leaving a long scar in the soil. She peered through the window expecting to see her parents inside sheltering from the sun. Investigating, she circled the plane a few times but found the cabin was empty. She gazed at the endless steep canyons and rugged mountains and exhaled a sharp breath.

Hennessey sighed as she stared around at the endless snowy hills, deciding that there was nothing contemptible about giving up. The chances of finding food in such thick snow bordered on impossible. She teetered for a moment, then dropped to her knees and tucked her feet under her bottom with her fingers clasped together in the approach of prayer.

“What is it?” Sutcliffe asked her.

She faced him. “You know, the fear of God is the foundation of wisdom.”

Chapter 34

Sutcliffe and Hennessey had been gone for a few hours in their quest to find food. Burch had been dead for a year and was buried next to the mysterious intruder, Fred Farrell, outside on the hill. As for Matthews, he finally had the privacy he craved, having waited a year to be alone with his cousin, Claris Faraday.

Faraday was sleeping, her breathing soft and attractive. The insulation blankets outlined her lovely body. Matthews wondered if the physique beneath her clothes was as lean as he’d imagined all those months. She was very thin, all skin and bone in fact, but he still found her easy on the eye. He stroked her hair, ran his hand over her bony shoulder and down her arm, stopping at the hard beginning of her breast. Beneath the blankets, he lifted the hem of her knee-length skirt and, very slowly, slow enough to amplify his stimulation, pushed his hand towards her warm thighs. Faraday moved and gave a soft congenial moan, enjoying it and his arousal increased. Acting on his animal instinct, his hand edged a little further, exploratory, stroking her inner thigh.

Then Trev Gable burst into the room and spoilt the moment. He’d been in the toilet cubicle all night because Matthews had been snoring again and it always prevented him getting his own sleep.

“Morning,” he said sleepily.

Matthews whipped his hand out of Faraday’s skirt and grunted in annoyance, caught up by two consistent urges that both bore the same result. He wanted to be alone with Faraday so they could spend quality time together and he wanted Gable gone because Gable was in the way and because he was eating precious food, food that was diminishing so quickly it would last but a few more months. Who was Trev Gable anyway? He didn’t deserve to be a survivor, he hadn’t earned it. The only reason he was there, alive, was because he’d been stealing from the crew. He’d done nothing along the scale of flying a balloon to the edge of space. And Gable had almost cost him his life last year when he went missing. If he and Faraday hadn’t rescued him from the human cannibals, an action he had come to regret, he would have been killed. Matthews walked about the room in agitation, his presence as he stalked up and down scaring Gable because of all the people there, Matthews he trusted least.

Gable popped out to the elevator to collect a tin of tomatoes. He took a few deep breaths before going back in, sensing the tension in the air. Back inside, he skewered the lid off the tin and with his fingers began spooning the plump tomatoes into his mouth. Some spilt down his front so he set the tomatoes on the floor, pulled his shirt up to his mouth and sucked off the juice. A pair of feet shuffled up to his tin, one of them tapping the floor. He looked up and saw Matthews standing over him, fists clenched.

“What did you do to the toilet?” Matthews barked, his head twitching more than usual, as if a bug had found a way inside his head and was looking for a way out.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie. I just went in there and saw it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right, follow me.”

Reluctantly, Gable abandoned his tomatoes tin and sheepishly followed Matthews to the other side of the room wondering what was going to happen. Matthews opened the door to the cubicle and pointed at the toilet half-filled with water.

“Look, just look!”

Gable stepped into the cubicle and peered over the rim of the toilet. “What?”

“Look closer,” said Matthews.

Gable saw nothing out of the ordinary, except for the water level, which was much higher than usual and…

Gable’s head was rammed headlong into the water. He hit his temple on the rim on his way down and struggled for air as the cold water turned pink with blood. His weak arms thrashed ineffectually against his attacker’s impressive strength. Matthews never imagined such a naked growl of terror could emerge from a human throat, though Gable’s scream for help was softened by the sound of the bubbles rushing through the water. Matthews closed the door, not wanting Faraday to wake up.

Suffocating, Gable realised that debt and his thieving ways had brought him there, right now, to his end. He had survived a nuclear war inside the toilet cubicle. Now he would die inside it. Matthews calmly closed his eyes and tilted his head back waiting for the sound of Gable’s whimper to disappear, until the young man gave up and succumbed to his fate.

A few seconds later, he was dead.

Faraday awoke to a dark and silent room that was absolute, sensing she was alone.

She took her time to stir, the comfort of sleep still with her. Yet another night had passed and she hadn’t dreamt. No images. No thoughts. Nothing. Memories of her past seemed to be disappearing altogether, she feared. Incapable of finding the energy to stretch her legs, she just stayed there, empty. Her back felt numb from sleeping on the floor for so long, the blood in her body felt as though it had coagulated. She blinked away sleep before focussing again on her surroundings. Lighting a candle, she looked about the White Room to find it empty. Where was everyone else? Insulation blankets were strewn all over the floor but nobody was sleeping beneath them. One of the toilet doors was closed. Her watch said twelve, but she had no idea whether that meant midday or midnight, if the time was correct at all. She dragged herself to the toilet bringing the candle. She relieved herself and tried the flush, unsurprised when it failed. The cistern hadn’t been refilled. Someone must have gone to collect more seawater, she surmised, critically observing herself in the bath-room mirror. She studied her teeth; blemished and brown. Her skin; pale and arid. Her hair; ratty and split. Her eyes; dark pupils, but still lovely. She heard the main door open and returned to the room to see who had come back. Matthews walked in carrying a bucket of seawater in one hand and a tin of soup with the lid removed in the other.

Matthews took the bucket into the toilet to fill the cistern. When he came back, he gave the soup to Faraday.

“Where’s everyone else?” she asked.

“Brad and Jen went looking for food.”

“Where’s Trev? Asleep in the toilet again?”

“He went out for a bit.”

Faraday looked down and saw red specks in the tiled floor. She dragged a champagne bottle with a candle stabbed into it close to the marks and noticed more droplets. “Is that blood?” she asked.

With the hem of his trousers, Matthews quickly rubbed out the red marks. “No, Trev had tomatoes for breakfast.”

Matthews was acting strange, guarded and not quite himself. She didn’t like to be alone with him. If anyone had the faintest idea what was going on in Matthews’ world, it was Faraday. But over the last few months he’d become increasingly estranged. She observed his handsome features in the candlelight. He took after his mother in appearance, but had the temperament of his father who had been loud-mouthed, sometimes violent and always narrow-minded. His obnoxiousness and impatience towards others were authentically his own. At times, she was frightened of her cousin as she had been of her uncle. Both were ill-tempered and anything could ignite that fragile temper. She had seen it several times during their childhood: brawls, arguments, tantrums, outbursts. But she trusted her instincts in that she believed he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, bring harm to her.

“Just me and you,” Matthews said.

Faraday nodded but did not smile.

“I like it. I wish it was always like this, just the two of us.” He wanted to seem gentlemanly and approachable. He wanted her to think of him as just an average guy she might have met in a bar or through a network of friends.

“When will Jen and Brad be back, do you know?”

“Who cares? Let’s just enjoy the freedom while it lasts. How’s the soup?”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

Lighting another candle in order to generate a romantic mood, Matthews began chatting about their childhood, how they hadn’t been the best of friends growing up and how that had changed. He talked about his ex-girlfriends, one in particular. Naomi Millington. He ex-pressed his hatred for her, how she had screwed him about and got him heavily into debt and almost ruined his life. He talked about how most women were users, selfish, liars, only out to extort money. Hennessey was a liar and she was selfish, but he didn’t know her agenda on money. He hated women, but not Faraday. She was different to the others, he said. Genuine, kind and accepted men for what they stood for. He said he respected that in a woman.

“I think I might go out and look for Brad and Jen,” Faraday said. “I could do with the exercise.”

“You can’t.” A large scowl appeared on his face. “There are no more oxygen tanks left.”

“I might go anyway. A few minutes outside won’t kill me.”

Faraday didn’t see Matthews clench his fist. “Don’t you want to be here, with me?”

She had been listening to his bullshit patiently and attentively. She wanted to respond, to follow her heart and walk out on him, to tell him to just leave her alone. Her spirit was willing but her body refused. Now she had to try and stall for time. As soon as Sutcliffe and Hennessey got back, she would be safe. Having endured all the ups and downs of such a hellish ordeal for the past one year, she believed that simple survival logic wouldn’t apply right then.

“I’m always here with you. I just feel like some fresh air, that’s all.”

Matthews stopped moving with faucet abruptness. A predatory glint appeared in his eyes. He put a hand on Faraday’s shoulder and began to inch his way closer to her and she could smell his rancid breath burning her face. His lips brushed against hers and a heart beat later she responded.

“What are you doing?”

“I want you.”

She snapped at him. “I’m your cousin for Christ’s sake.”

“You’re a female with needs. I’m a male with needs.”

“Well, I need you to back the hell away.”

Matthews stood like a man poised to do battle and stared down his nose at Faraday. For a moment, she saw a genuine hatred in his eyes. No one was able to frighten her the way he did. As if from nowhere, he pulled out a large dagger and held it taut in his grip, his eyes red with fury and filled with an emotion Faraday couldn’t understand. He indicated with a finger to his lips that she be quiet and closed the gap between them. A mental block and a lack of words failed her. She didn’t have a blade. She didn’t even look around the room for a weapon. Her choice of words, her tone of voice, her body language, those were her weapons and she was intensely aware that she had to find the right combination because the next few seconds were crucial.

Chapter 35

In life, people didn’t remember days, they remembered moments, thought Sutcliffe. Finding the Fable-1 gondola had been one of those memorable moments. It signified their successful return to Earth. For him, seeing Fable-1 safely back in Britain seemed to complete the journey. It lifted his spirits and he accepted that the impossible hope he had been living with was wrong and dangerous.

Hennessey’s thoughts at that moment were in stark contrast.

With the last of their oxygen tanks on the brink of depletion, she felt that the failed food hunt had been an experience of collective impotency. Food rationing would need to be governed much more stringently if they were to survive the eighteen month timeframe they had set as an achievable target. A year had passed by and all the resources in the White Room were being stretched to their limits. They were down to the last few hours in their oxygen tanks and that meant no more outside explorations. The laptop and mobile phones had all died within a week of the bombs. The torches from the accessory cases had both run dry of batteries. Two of the four life support systems had run out of power also. Eleven unused candles remained in the box, the light from which had been reduced to an hour each morning when food was selected and the room was tidied. She wondered how the crew would take the news of their spectacular failure. Morale was low and so too was food and water. Would it be the final determiner? Hennessey was particularly worried about Faraday. She hadn’t been herself for a long time and was sleeping away the days and nights. She had become a victim to lethargy and her mood was mostly despondent. It weighed down on the moods of others. She wasn’t the only one hurting. They were all victims. All of them had lost their parents, sweethearts, siblings and associates.

Back in the familiar territory of St. Ives, having been gone for several hours, they both felt a sense of homecoming as they came abreast of the elevator shaft.

The first time around, Sutcliffe didn’t notice it.

The second time around, they both noticed it.

Upon the hill, there were three crosses marking three graves. A third grave? Who else had died? The new grave either belonged to Faraday, Matthews or Gable. Hennessey prayed the grave didn’t entomb Faraday. They had become inherently close over the past year and she couldn’t face losing her only female companion in the world. They hurried to the top of the hill. At the graves, they read the names carved into the wooden crosses. The first grave belonged to Fred Farrell who had taken his own life using his pistol. The second grave belonged to Keith Burch when the gangrene in his foot had spread through his leg and shut down his heart. With radiation sickness followed by pneumonia, Burch hadn’t stood a chance. The third grave, according to the name on the cross, belonged to Trev Gable.

“He seemed alright last night before we slept,” said Hennessey.

“Nobody’s alright, Jen. We don’t know what state our bodies are in.”

“I know but…it just doesn’t fit.”

Instinct, he had learnt, was one of Hennessey’s most reliable virtues.

“I have a really bad feeling,” she added.

“Yeah, me too.”

They climbed down the rubble of the shaft and Sutcliffe helped Hennessey down through the hatch until she had two feet firmly on the stepladder. Then he followed, treading wearily down the steps rung by rung. Inside the elevator, he took her by the hand. “Listen, before we go in, Jen, I just want to say thank you.”

“For what?”

“I feel like you’re the only one I can count on to get us through this.”

“You’re the one keeping this all together.”

Sutcliffe smiled.

They crossed the door bridge and veered off into the corner of the lobby to drape their spacesuits over the steel bar. Hennessey, although happy to be back, felt the tension she had earlier discarded rebuilding, the prodding of her conscience warning her to remain vigilant.

They both swung around, hearing a strange noise from inside the White Room.

A gasp, a shriek and a woman’s voice.

Faraday screaming.

Hennessey charged through the door, Sutcliffe close behind. What they saw shocked and appalled them. The room was candlelit and Matthews was wrestling with Faraday on the floor. They were quick to notice her underwear down at her ankles and Matthews pinning her down by the shoulders.

When he realised Sutcliffe and Hennessey were back in the room, Matthews released his cousin and scrambled to his feet with his hands raised, his belt undone and trouser zip lowered. Faraday frantically redressed herself, stood up and faced him. The slap she dished out was forceful. The second one, the one that left a burning handprint on his cheek, was struck sweetly, though not quite as perfect as the one that followed.

Chapter 36

“What’s going on?” Hennessey was looking at Faraday when she asked the question.

“None of your business!” shouted Matthews.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Then talk to me and I’ll tell you it’s none of your business.”

Hennessey persisted. “Claris?”

Faraday sat down and pulled her knees to her chest. She was shaking. She shook her head.

“Did he rape you, Claris?”

Matthews exhaled sharply in irritation.

“Claris, did he rape you?”

The humiliation and fury inside Matthews activated a button and he clicked. Approaching Hennessey, he took her by the throat with a machine-like grip and pinned her to the wall by her neck. “You fucking traitor!”

Sutcliffe staunchly defended her and pulled Matthews away. “Hey!” he yelled. “You’re out of line.”

Hennessey bent over to catch her breath, but quickly pulled herself upright and endeavoured to regain her self-control.

“What are you gonna do about it?”

Sutcliffe hesitated.

“Well?” Matthews persisted.

Sutcliffe needed to think quickly. He could have strong words with Matthews and hope to get through to him. Better still, he could punch him in the face; that would make everyone happy. All his senses were on high alert. Everything seemed to be falling apart and Matthews had broken laws already. He wouldn’t hesitate to break a couple more. So shocked was he that he didn’t see Matthews’ hand had reached to his belt for a weapon he had concealed. His hand moved slowly and nobody in the room noticed.

“Who the fuck do you think you are, Simon?”

Matthews was hearing but not listening. Anger besieged him, a ticking bomb with a self-destruct button. With his hand behind his back, he fished out his Black Prince dagger and began slicing the air with it, stopping and pointing it at Sutcliffe’s belly. “I said what are you gonna do about it?”

One of the debt collectors held a Bowie knife at his belly while the other one ransacked his house. They had broken in and they weren’t leaving until they were paid. The man with the knife was a good few inches shorter than Matthews, but more than made up for it in breadth. His arms, neck and chest were all muscle. Matthews kept his eyes on the Bowie knife.

“Take your t-shirt off,” the man said.

Matthews hardly moved a muscle.

“You heard me, take it off before I show you what your guts smell like.”

“You take it off for me.”

“I’ll take it off your corpse, sweetheart.”

Matthews pinched the bottom of his T-shirt and lifted it up to his chin, trembling with fear and fury. Once the T-shirt was up over his face, he would be blind and vulnerable, bearing a fleshy target of meat. The sound of breaking furniture had subsided and everything that could break had been broken. Now, two angry debt collectors stood before him, teasing him with sharp Bowie knives. Tightening the muscles in his stomach, hoping it might limit the amount of damage inflicted by a knife, Matthews pulled his T-shirt over his head obscuring his vision for a microsecond and an awful pain tore threw his stomach.

“Last warning,” one of the collectors said in a calm voice. “We would like our fucking money, please. Either give us what we want or we give you a coffin, we clear?”

Matthews, coughing and breathless, looked at his stomach and got a shock. No blood. They hadn’t stabbed him, they had punched him. The men left and Matthews observed the state of his house. The floor was littered with everything he owned, his collections and his valuables. Amongst the debris he found the Black Prince Dagger, a medieval dagger with a double edge and a small pointed tip used by Middle Age soldiers for personal protection during warfare. The glass box encasing it had been knocked off its nail and had smashed to the floor. He picked it up and slashed the air with it. He pocketed it. There it would stay. Next time, if anyone approached him, he would be ready. He would be armed and he would kill anyone who threatened his life again, especially the thugs from Cornish Financial Services. Who did they think they were anyway? Fuck them.

“Fuck you.”

Matthews spun the dagger with a rehearsed flip of the fingers and caught it in midair. He had an unnerving skill with it. His eyes were hard to look into, Sutcliffe thought. Cold, dark spheres with no hint of the light of his soul, like a man besieged by an evil spirit. And the cavalcade of abuse that followed from his mouth disgusted everyone in the room.

“Put it down, Simon. Don’t be stupid.”

Matthews said nothing and moved closer.

“Simon, think about what you’re doing for just a second.”

Matthews stepped further forward with the dagger poised in his grip.

They eyed each other, hatefully. Sutcliffe cautiously stood his ground, thinking about how he could disarm him. He had to get the weapon out of his hand. Then Matthews attacked him, swearing as he jabbed the dagger at his chest, but Sutcliffe swivelled and then pressed his back into his opponent’s stomach. He took his arm in a tight embrace. They fought for the weapon. Sutcliffe attempted to uncurl Matthews’ fingers and managed to force him to drop the dagger. It fell to the floor and Sutcliffe kicked it away. It skittered under the bench. Matthews ducked and ploughed into Sutcliffe’s midsection, upending him with brute force. Sutcliffe fell back and felt the full force of Matthews on top, pinning him down. Matthews threw the first of several punches and Sutcliffe tried to defend himself. One nailed him above the eye causing his brow to split open. One punch cracked him in the jaw and burst his lip. A tooth in blood spilt from his mouth to the floor.

Hennessey screamed at them to stop while Faraday moved to the other side of the room where she sat crying.

Sutcliffe yelled out as another blow struck him in the face, his whole complexion throbbing. He rolled Matthews over and used the weight of his knees to pin him to the floor by his upper arms. But Matthews kneed his opponent in the testicles, shrugged him off and on the other side of the room opened the display cabinet, pulling out another weapon from the shelf. In his clutch he had the pistol. It had one more bullet left. One shot. It was all he needed. He walked to within a few feet of Sutcliffe and, pointing the pistol in his face, pressed the trigger. Sutcliffe instinctively closed his eyes.

The pistol clicked, nothing came out.

“I took the bullet out months ago,” bellowed Hennessey. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted with it.”

The mockery only angered Matthews further. He went looking for another weapon, stumbling all over the place like a drunk. He swaggered into the display cabinet, in turn rocking the burning candle wedged into an empty champagne bottle. Sutcliffe could only watch as the candle and the bottle toppled and green glass scattered across the floor when it struck. In an instant, an insulation blanket caught fire and the flames began to crawl up the wall. Matthews ignored the fire. He’d found another weapon, a triangular shard of glass from the champagne bottle, which he picked up and slotted into his clenched fist. His rage and his hatred would end someone’s life that day. And if not Sutcliffe’s, then it would be his own end and it would be a blessing.

“Come on,” he said, beckoning Sutcliffe to him.

Hennessey flew across the room to deal with the fire while Matthews made steady strides towards Sutcliffe. As they crossed paths, Hennessey stretched out her foot and tripped him. He fell forward into Sutcliffe’s instinctive skyward punch. Matthews’ head wrenched back sharply on his shoulders, the blow so forceful the skin on Sutcliffe’s knuckles punctured. Matthews fell hard and hit his skull on the floor. He fought unconsciousness with stubborn determination, then went still.

Sutcliffe’s mind clouded up and for several seconds sharpness and clarity left him. When it passed, he looked at the lifeless body on the floor. Matthews would be unconscious for a bit, he thought. It would do him no harm. Perhaps a collision with a hard floor would knock some sense into him. He was out cold, but Sutcliffe didn’t feel victorious or satisfied. There were no winners. On his awakening, Sutcliffe decided he would try and talk to him with authority and rationality. Then he changed his mind and thought it would be best for everyone, especially Faraday, if Matthews was evicted from the White Room to fend for himself. Some food and drink would be given to him and he could take a couple of insulation blankets. But he couldn’t stay.

In the meantime, Sutcliffe turned to the fire. Inside the smoke, Hennessey had dropped to her knees coughing out her lungs. He thought he saw her vomit, but she had choked. He grabbed another blanket and beat the flames until they went out. Then he opened the door to the White Room and watched as the smoke whisked out like a ghost. He assisted Hennessey to her feet. “Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yeah, the guy’s a frigging moron,” she said between coughs. “How about you? That cut looks nasty.”

Sutcliffe’s face was smattered with blood from various cuts. His tongue mechanically touched on the gap in his teeth oozing blood. “I’ll be fine.” He checked on Claris. “Are you alright?”

She didn’t respond immediately.

“Claris?”

Her head twitched. Shock had left her speechless.

Hennessey handed Sutcliffe a small bandage to hold against the gash on his brow, then assisted Faraday on the other side of the room. She wrapped her up in an insulation blanket and whispered words of consolation to her. Matthews had been sexually assaulting Faraday and Hennessey felt guilty for not detecting the signs earlier. She shouldn’t have left them alone together.

Matthews lay spread-eagled on his back and Sutcliffe pondered over what to do with him as he dabbed the bandage at his bleeding face. Hoisting Matthews up onto the bench, he set his head back against the wall. It wasn’t until his head lolled forward that Sutcliffe noticed a dark smear of blood on the wall. On closer inspection, he saw a large piece of glass embedded in the back of Matthews’ head. Sutcliffe fingered his wrist for a pulse, which was weak and seemed to stop as soon as he touched it. And Simon Matthews was dead.

Chapter 37

Claris Faraday had been bullied as a child. School kids had heckled her because she eschewed the normal explorations of teenage-hood. She never tried makeup, never wore jewellery, her two best friends were boys and she liked most sports. In her free time she wore tracksuits and sportswear. She never told her parents about the bullying because she knew from the silences at the dinner table and her father’s long absences that they had their own problems. At fourteen, she started doing naughty teenage things: painting graffiti on walls and intercity trains, street drinking and low classification drugs.

When her parents moved to Somerset to start a new life, Faraday went to university and lived on campus. She vowed to be just like her parents when she had children of her own because they were good people and because they had put up with a lot during her turbulent youth. After she lost her father, she got into the whole dating thing and had several partners, but never fell pregnant. She appreciated the fact that pregnancy was a mutation of two sparks coming together at a special moment so she didn’t really give it a second thought. Several years of disappointment finally led her to seek professional help, only to learn of the malfunctions in her reproductive system.

In the White Room, Faraday was playing with her engagement ring, spinning it mindlessly around her finger, lost in thought. She had her back pressed up against the wall with her head stooped and her arms draped over her folded knees. An odd calm had settled over her, as if her mind had pulled all the plugs that connected her emotions. Everything had weaned its way out of focus, not just from her past but her present too. As for the future, it was just a blur that she believed she would crawl into without reason or meaning. It went unsaid, but they all knew that barely enough food and drink remained for them to survive for the next six months.

Hennessey turned to Sutcliffe, whose hand she was holding. “I’m worried about her,” she whispered.

Faraday was sitting on the other side of the room and there was little doubt as to what her mind was trying to evade. But what was she thinking? Sutcliffe felt it his duty to say something motivating, but found himself hesitant, wanting to be spared from the torment of yet another one-way conversation. Faraday had turned him away time and time again.

“Simon had a valid point, you know.” Finally, Faraday was speaking and Sutcliffe and Hennessey joined her.

“A valid point?” asked Hennessey.

“As survivors, we are ultimately responsible for repopulating the world. That is why we are still alive. It is our duty to ensure that human life continues, don’t you agree?”

“I do agree, if we are indeed the last people in the world, which I doubt. Simon tried to rape you. Regardless of the circumstances, rape is still unethical and still against the law.”

“What about murder? Is that still unethical?”

Sutcliffe received the remark with little reflex. Never had he intended to kill Matthews. But now that he had, he wondered why he didn’t feel bad about it. He had seen enough devastation to last a lifetime. Amid the circumstances, his death had no real meaning.

“What’s your point, Claris?” he asked.

“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m glad he’s dead. He killed Trev and he would have killed you too. I’m simply saying that he had a valid point.”

An act of unfair fate had confined her to the White Room, she felt. She hated Matthews for what he had done to her and what he had done to Trev Gable and although she was pleased he was dead, she did miss him. He was the last member of her family. Now she had never felt more alone in her whole life. It made her miserable. Sutcliffe and Hennessey were emotionally attached. Lucky them. They had each other. Who did she have?

“There’s not enough food left to last the three of us. One of us should leave.” She said flatly. They were all quiet before she spoke again. “I think it should be me.”

“No.” Sutcliffe shook his head.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hennessey said. “We stay together. We can make the food last.”

“I agree with Jen. We’ve got about one hundred and fifty tins of food left. We can cut the rations to five tins a week. We care about you, we won’t let you leave. What Simon said about repopulating the world was out of order. He wasn’t trying to have sex with you so you could have babies. He just wanted to have sex.”

“I know what he wanted, but if it comes down to it you’re both capable of having children. I can never get pregnant. And the fact still remains that if we all stay here, we’ll all die hungry.”

That night, as Hennessey and Sutcliffe slept together beneath the insulation blankets, Faraday pulled herself up off the floor and lit a candle. Her back and neck were sore. Dressed in her spandex suit, she was still cold so she put on her cardigan, not bothering with anything else. The old newspaper lay folded on the floor. She picked it up and studied it, thinking about something, then tore a piece out and feasted on the words.

She opened the White Room door and into the room leapt cold air, extinguishing the candle. She felt something brush by her, as if an invisible presence had just entered from outside. She knew nobody had come in, knew she hadn’t seen anyone outside, but she looked back into the dark room as her friends slept, just in case. Just the wind, she told herself, despite the image of her dead cousin that sprang to her mind like an evocative presence. The vision, Faraday assumed, was that the queer lights and shadows of the White Room had deceived her. She wondered if she was perhaps at the beginning of some kind of breakdown, hallucinations perhaps the first sign of madness.

She could not stay in the White Room any longer. There were just too many bad memories and she couldn’t live in an atmosphere in which she felt on constant guard. A newfound connection with God came over her. He wouldn’t let her down. She silently prayed, having faith in Him and, as her old teacher had always insisted she do, she loved Him. She could feel Him deep within her soul where she also felt her parents, there, with her. Not being able to conceive a baby, her heartbreak over Parsons and her longing to be wanted had made her intolerably lonely and loneliness would bring her to her end. Suddenly, passionately, she really hated the White Room. And so, sticking the newspaper clip to the door using candle wax, she glanced back at her home one last time and sealed the door shut.

Chapter 38

Hennessey stayed still once she grasped that Sutcliffe, still sound asleep, had snuggled up tightly behind her. His hand was resting on her breast and his other arm cradled her neck. She realised that she liked it and made no effort to alter their positions, despite the fact that her body felt uncomfortable. Even if she did want to extricate herself there would be no graceful way of doing it without waking him and bringing the situation to his attention. When he finally did wake up, she pretended to be asleep and slowed her breathing. She listened to him mutter something under his breath. He untangled himself and paced to the other end of the room where he sat down and the room fell quiet.

She heard him lighting a candle. Moments later, she heard him walking to the door where he remained quiet for a second. “No!” she heard him say.

She rolled over and saw him holding a piece of newspaper. “What is it?”

“Claris, she’s gone.”

The days long and lonely, the inhabitants of the White Room had dropped from six to two. Insulation blankets, scattered belongings and four dirty spacesuits hanging on the steel bar in the lobby all served as painful reminders to fallen associates. It deeply saddened Hennessey. Her best friend Faraday had been gone for five days, she wasn’t coming back.

Sutcliffe busied himself in the bathroom, trimming his wiry beard in the mirror with a pair of surgical scissors. Hennessey could hear the scissors snapping away as she thought about Faraday. She twirled the newspaper headline in her hand over and over. She had read it a thousand times, the words imprinted in her mind: CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE. Faraday had torn it from the front page of the newspaper, which had read: BRITAIN CAN’T TAKE ANY MORE IMMIGRANTS. She started to cry, the first time in a while. Sutcliffe could hear her sobbing. He came back into the room and sat beside her on the bench, putting his hand on her shoulder. For a while she cried so hard she couldn’t get any words out. Eventually, she said, “Look at me, I’m being a fool.”

“There’s nothing foolish about crying.”

“Oh yeah,” she said to him, wiping her eyes dry. “Then how come you never do it.”

“I’ve cried,” he replied. “I just didn’t let anyone see it. When people look to you for resolution and leadership, you have to appear strong, even when you’re not.”

She smiled and laughed softly. “You must think I’m a right idiot.”

“No, I think you’ve kept it together more than all of us, you just don’t realise it.”

That morning, tiredness and her longing for Faraday had made her weep. Her sleep had been plagued with dreadful dreams and thoughts, trying hard to forget all about Simon Matthews, but he had an aggravating habit of wheedling his way back into her mind now and again. Although dead, she blamed Matthews for Faraday’s departure.

“Claris was depressed about not being able to have children. She didn’t show it, but I think it bothered her every single day of her life.”

“I had no idea.”

“She didn’t like to talk about it.”

Neither of them had fully understood her turmoil. Apart from Keith Burch and his horrific injuries, she had suffered the most with the torturous knowledge of her infertility, which was followed by sexual assault by a member of her own family.

“I tried hard to keep everyone safe and content,” Sutcliffe said glumly.

“You did the best you could in an impossible situation. Without you, we’d all be dead.”

Sutcliffe had been a rock, especially for her. Without him, she believed she would have given up a long time ago and she told him just that. She touched his bearded face, her hands cold, yet warm with the gesture of a friend. In those few sweet seconds, he realised that his whole purpose for wanting to live was for her. They hugged and he felt an almost boyish pleasure from being in the arms of a woman. When he drew back, she kissed him, a long kiss, and he ran his hand through her hair.

She gazed into his eyes. “I haven’t been with many men.”

Sutcliffe’s face was hard to read. She looked at him carefully, his eyes wide and friendly. As she tried to decode them, she could feel herself being drawn to his lips and they kissed again.

Later that afternoon, Sutcliffe thought about the way his mother had passed away almost two years back, felled from a string of old age illnesses, which included a heavy bout of pneumonia, a collapsed lung and a bladder infection. She had died after more than a month of suffering. Sutcliffe wished his mother had held on for another ten months because she would have seen her son fulfil his historic voyage into space. But that was not why he wished she had stayed alive. Had she still been around, she would have died quickly in the explosions without pain or suffering with her devoted husband by her side and her last thoughts would have been proud ones.

Sensing Sutcliffe’s sorrow, Hennessey crossed the room and sat beside him smiling. “What’s on your mind?”

He smiled back. “Nothing, just thinking about my family.”

Her smile faded. “Tell me about your son.”

“Martin? Where do I start?”

“Start from the beginning. I have a bit of time on my hands.”

“Alright, well, he was very ugly as a baby. A few months after his birth he had this snarl on his face like little a Yorkshire terrier. Jacqueline, my wife, always joked he got it from me. Looking back, I’m not so sure she was joking. Anyway, by the time he was three he was diagnosed with autism. It put a huge strain on our relationship because he was very difficult to manage. As he got older, Jacqueline gave him less and less attention, I mean love, affection, that kind of attention. She talked to him as if he was someone else’s child, like she was just babysitting him or something. Martin wasn’t good at expressing his feelings. It didn’t really affect me the way it affected Jacqueline. It pushed us apart. And I think, in the end, she resented him and felt that he’d come between us. Maybe she was right. But, like a parent is expected to do, I stuck by him and gave him my all and Jacqueline, well, as you know, she left me and married a vet.”

“Yes, the caring man,” Hennessey joked.

“How about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you were orphaned, but you have never talked about your family before. Either they weren’t good people, or…something else.”

Hennessey exhaled sharply. She was looking at her lap when she spoke. “My parents died in a plane accident out in the Nevada Desert. Their bodies were never found.”

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t speak for a moment and her body stiffened. “Do you know what it’s like to pay your final respects to an empty coffin? Crying over an empty box? It’s a horrible feeling, not knowing what happened to them, not having closure. They are dead, no question, but I wish I knew how. I wish someone would sit me down and say, Jen, they died in each other’s arms in peace. They were happy and they suffered no pain.”

“I know how you feel.”

“Of course, your son. I’m sorry.”

Hennessey considered Sutcliffe very cute when he pouted. She observed his lower lip as it jutted forward very slightly and his dark but thin eyebrows lowered over his eyes, eyes that held mystery. She leaned forward and gently pushed him to the floor, crouching over him. Twelve long months had passed by and they had become companionably at ease with each other. On his back, his pleasure intensified when she put her arms around him and pressed herself to him, close enough to feel the hardness of his arousal on her thigh. She let him pass his fingers through her hair, enjoying his touch as it moved over her face, her cheek and her soft lips. Then he kissed her and she kissed back. Their tongues met and small mewling sounds came from her throat as they became more intimate.

Sutcliffe suddenly pulled away. “This hasn’t got anything to do with repopulating the world, has it?”

She grinned. “No, this is two passionate people requiring each other’s love and company in a dire situation. Whatever happens, happens.”

“I’m cool with that.”

Casually, they got undressed and Hennessey lifted her arms for him to remove her shirt. Moments later, they were naked beneath several insulation blankets and fully embraced. Hennessey voiced her satisfaction as Sutcliffe penetrated her, slowly at first, gaining depth and momentum. She began moving her hips, her joy driven so far to the edge of bliss that she forgot for a moment where she was. She smiled into the darkness of the room, their relationship young and fresh, making some sense of their lives. By the end of it, he was grinning, she was moaning, then panting, then laughing. Colour had flourished back into her cheeks and she felt his body shudder in the last moments of pleasure.

Chapter 39

“What are you thinking?” Hennessey asked.

Eighteen months, maybe more, had passed and Sutcliffe was standing next to the door of the White Room, ear pressed to the cold steel, listening. Before then he’d been staring at the wall for almost four hours straight. He had something on his mind. He looked over towards Hennessey huddled beneath the insulation blankets. The last candle had burnt down to a mere inch in length, but its special flame stood at almost two inches tall, providing abundant light on the contours of her beautiful face.

“I think it’s time for us to leave,” he said.

“Okay,” she said without a second thought.

After a while they got busy packing for the journey ahead of them. Hennessey wriggled into her spandex mesh garment and looked at Sutcliffe building a survival kit from the resources in the White Room, watching the bones beneath his shirt move back and forth. Sutcliffe was aware that Hennessey was watching him with a certain wariness and continued to pack a case with items for their need; the safety-knife, a lighter, the last five tins of food, a couple of handheld flares. He also packed surgical scissors, the last bandage and a few plasters from the first-aid kit. He asked Hennessey to roll up four insulation blankets and pack them into Burch’s old back-pack. He came across the JVC camera and decided to take it with him, even though it no longer worked. He also collected the picture of the Fable-1 balloon from the bathroom cupboard as a souvenir and stood staring at it.

“Thinking about the balloon expedition?”

The flight to the edge of space seemed so insignificant. It was such a long time ago that talking about it required effort, one he didn’t feel like making.

“I was thinking about my son. He was quite into photography. That’s why he stole the camera.”

“He stole it?”

“Yeah, the rascal. But it kept him entertained.” He pocketed the photo. “Ready to go?”

“I suppose.”

Both Sutcliffe and Hennessey had that feeling, one that could not be put into words. The time had come to leave the White Room – a place of belonging and of misery. The room looked sorry for itself with its sagging ceilings and dirty floor, the black smoke stains up the wall from the fire, the blood stain on the other wall, a missing utility door, a broken toilet door, scattered insulation blankets and life jackets, two abandoned first-aid kits, the space helmets and the life support systems, a radio, a dead laptop, an empty water drum, the champagne bottles with melted candle wax stuck to the glass, the empty tins, flattened boxes, a bucket with a mop head inside, many scattered shoes, the crew’s old clothes and bags suspended on the hooks and, next to the clothes, a gasmask. The room bore all the signs of a refugee settlement.

Sutcliffe ran over the emotions of his time living underground. The man coming out of the White Room that day was not the same man who had gone in. He had lost something of his soul, he felt. He had seen and done enough terrible things in the past year and a half to have all the evil engraved on his brain, embodied in his memory forever. The strained relationships had enveloped his entire life at a multitude of levels. They both brooded over their former lives – the crew, the discoveries, the conflicts, the deaths. The events down there had become nothing but a hazy procession of mental pictures and it was a moment to reflect, but that was all. Considering that he had slept only an hour or two, Sutcliffe felt quite alert that morning, dressed in his business suit. He still managed to retain the elegance of a businessman, despite the crumples and excessive filth and his shirt missing buttons. It would be in his suit that he would leave the White Room, his departure replicating his arrival with his head still held high.

Hennessey took him by the hand to stop him. “Before we leave here, I want to confess something to you. What Simon said, about me joining the Fable-1 team to gather information for NASA, it was partly true. My superiors wanted the historic balloon flight to be synonymous with NASA. Chandra II and the Akroid balloon were just an excuse to get me onboard.” She waited for his reaction. He was about to speak when she got in before him. “I just want you to know that if I’d known you beforehand I wouldn’t have done it. It’s just…it’s important, to me, that you understand I wasn’t out to hurt anyone.”

“I appreciate your honesty, Jen. I’m a little disappointed. At the same time, with all that’s happened, it seems so insignificant.”

“You’re not angry?”

“What would be the point?”

She tightened her hand around his and smiled.

They departed the White Room in a fug of musty air. Sutcliffe stepped out into the lobby to leave for good, but his hands couldn’t complete the job of closing the door because to him it meant closing a door on a fortress of protection and leaving it behind felt wrong. As if by magic, the door swung shut and he saw the American’s fingers on the handle.

“It’s the right thing to do,” she said.

They crossed the door bridge and stepped into the elevator. The carpet in the elevator had rotted away somewhat. The dry blood of Fred Farrell still marred the elevator wall, morbidly presenting them with the image of a man desperate to end his life. Hanging from the hatch in the roof hung enormous icicles, blocking their exit. Sutcliffe stood on the second rung of the stepladder and snapped them off, dropping them to ground where they shattered into shrapnel

Wearing the backpack with four insulation blankets stuffed inside, Hennessey climbed the stepladder and out of her home, while Sutcliffe looked back one last time before leaving. At the foot of the pit, he closed the hatch and emitted a large breath. He put down the accessory case and fitted on his thermal gloves. Hennessey had made it halfway up the snow-laden rubble already leaving footprints. When Sutcliffe reached the top, she was getting on her gloves. He clambered out of the shaft feeling weak and weary, taking note of his hot breath making clouds in the bitterly cold air. The colour ebbed from their faces immediately and they narrowed their eyes in the dim daylight, straining their vision. When the searing light faded and the world appeared before them, they saw the physical features of the landscape had changed again with much thicker snow and ice and a pale sky that still hid the sun. The land looked like a moonscape, a lifeless black and white world with an infinite shadow cast down.

The cold buried beneath their skin. The morning breeze tossed Sutcliffe’s thick hair. He had to admit that it was a pleasing change of sensation. Replenishing their lungs with an indefinable scent, the first sentiment they felt was the exposure, which gave them a sense of vulnerability. Without their space helmets they felt naked to the bone. What they felt was not fear, more the feeling of adjusting to change. The coming days would present them with their futures or their deaths. And after so many months of uncertainty, they would finally learn their fate. Sutcliffe gave it three days, four tops, before the starvation, dehydration or cold killed them. Since the bombs had changed the world, they had taken each emotional setback, one after another, yet they still moved on with the determination of survivors.

Chapter 40

A snow-entombed body appeared at the edge of the cliff. Only the head and right shoulder were protruding from the snow. The head was cocked to one side and was facing the icy Atlantic. Hennessey charged off towards it and Sutcliffe tried to stop her.

“Jen, wait!”

Reaching the body, Hennessey got to her knees and started brushing away the snow. The dead eyes were slightly open, the lips bloodless and parted, the hair crystallised and some decomposition had formed around the face.

Sutcliffe arrived with outstretched arms. “She’s dead, Jen.”

Hennessey stood up and went into his clasp. “It’s not fair,” she said. “It’s just not fair.”

“I know.”

Her throat tight with emotion, Hennessey fought the urge to cry, forcing her lips together to silence her whimpering. When she was certain she could speak without sobbing, she said, “Claris loved the ocean. She told me she always used to sit and watch the ships go by in her hometown. I guess she died in a good place.”

“Yeah, she did.”

Sutcliffe was thinking he was going to have to build another grave. It would be his fourth. It would be the fifth. It would be his last, he decided. Although he insisted she didn’t have to, Hennessey helped carry Faraday’s body to the top of the hill to the gravesite that seemed to be continually expanding. The tips of four crosses were poking out of the snow, clinging to existence. The handle of the makeshift spade also protruded from the snow beside the graves where it had been for eighteen months, always on standby, waiting for the next customer.

First they shovelled away the snow to clear the graves. Then they dug a hole in the hard ground and it took them close to an hour. From the shaft, they unburied some wood from the snow and constructed a cross to complete the grave. The sight of five wooden crosses filled them both with a surfeit of emotions. Paying their final respects to the crew of Fable-1, Fred Farrell and Trev Gable, they left and resumed their steady march along the coast. Each step equalled the cost of two on ordinary soil in ordinary clothes on an ordinary day.

Miles passed and they each felt the overwhelming sensation of homesickness, with the atmosphere outside just as bleak as the land-scape itself. Sutcliffe felt as though he’d give his right arm to walk into a pub for a pint or sit down in a fire-heated restaurant where he could order a hot meal and some home baked bread. The idea of taking a hot bath or sleeping in a comfortable bed flirted with his mind. Simple things that he had once taken for granted were merely fading memories.

After a while, they passed alongside a river frozen solid, no bridge in any foreseeable direction, though crossing the iron-like ice required no bridge. Soon, they arrived at a clearing where the snow thinned and jutting out of the white ground they saw fragments of bark. So far there’d been no promise in their search and Hennessey stopped, slipped off her backpack and dropped it.

“Let’s camp here for the night. I’m pooped.”

“Alright,” he agreed. “I’ll make us a fire.”

As the light from the day began to fade, they made a great fire using the debris of trees pulled out from the snow and they shaved them down using the safety-knife. They sat in silence, warming their hands on the flames, the shapes of the fire fascinating and hot on their faces with the cold of night pressing against their backs. They both soaked up the warmth, the indulgence new and unfamiliar to them. They wrapped themselves in the insulation blankets and took out all the food, choosing between soup and artichokes. There were only five tins left; a number corresponding with the crew of Fable-1 and the number of graves upon the hill. For the first time in eighteen months, they heated the food in the fire and warmed their cold stomachs.

“December? January?” asked Sutcliffe.

“What?”

“The month?”

“I’d say early January.”

“In that case, it’s my birthday soon.”

Hennessey smiled. “Is there anything in particular you want?”

“Wouldn’t mind a bar of soap, or a toothbrush.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a new sports car or a cruise around the Pacific Islands, but if it’s a bar of soap you want, I’ll see what I can do.”

They talked more, sharing thoughts on the time they had spent in the White Room, gossiping about each member of the crew and what the next day might bring. They dwelled particularly on their old lives in Britain and America. And when the long day of burial, trekking and big change finally caught up with them, they cuddled up close, shivering nonstop beneath their blankets while the dying fire cracked and hissed, offering inadequate heat and light on their bodies. Sutcliffe closed his eyes and reopened them with a thought. If he slept, he might not wake up. He had no fear of death. Being there with Hennessey made it all easier to bear even with the bitter wind soughing over them and the surrounding gloom of darkness. If he died, there, on that night, he would die with dignity and self- pride and he would die beside a woman he had grown to love. At peace, he allowed his eyes to close.

At first light, in a dense morning mist, the unexpected blare of a trombone-like horn echoed throughout the land. The first time it sounded, they awoke, remembering suddenly where they were with absolutely no idea why they had awoken. The dying embers of the fire popped and smouldered at their side and a mist impenetrable to the eye had settled around them. Then they heard it again and the booming one-tone horn made them twist out of their blankets and rise to their feet on high alert. It sounded as though it’d come from a prehistoric mammal. Sutcliffe did not know what he expected to see, but what he saw he was not expecting at all.

Chapter 41

Whorls and spirals of ghostlike mist formed around the forthcoming shapes. There were three in total, they were human form and they were disappearing away from Sutcliffe and Hennessey’s temporary camp. Stunned and unsure what to do, what to think, and trembling with exaltation, Sutcliffe put his fingers to his lips and whistled. He whistled again and again but they did not return.

“The flares!” Hennessey said. “Fire the flares.”

Unfastening the locks on the case, Sutcliffe pulled out two flares and gave one to Hennessey. In unison, they removed the caps at both ends, held them by the base and struck the bottom of the flares on the hard shell of the case. They held them away from their faces as hot, sparking ash oozed from the flares and a bright red light accompanied a large volume of smoke. After a few frantic minutes of waving and shouting, the flares faded and they stared into the mist where they had seen the human figures.

They waited.

And waited.

Nobody came.

“No more flares?”

“I only brought two. There wasn’t enough room in the case for any more.”

Hennessey began shouting for help, her voice frail and hoarse. Sutcliffe joined in. After several minutes, they stopped shouting.

“We should go looking for them,” Hennessey suggested.

“Who do you think they were?”

“I don’t know. Survivors?”

“If they were survivors, what was that horn sound we heard?”

“Maybe they found a horn and they are using it to locate other survivors,” she said. “Whatever the noise…”

Sutcliffe wondered why she had stopped speaking. When he followed her gaze, he saw two men and a woman running towards them and he almost stopped breathing. They were wearing the same uniform – a navy blue jacket covered in shiny buttons and badges with trousers to match and a concealed white shirt. In the next instant, his bewilderment turned to enormous relief.

“My name is Clive Barker,” one of them said. “I’m Chaplain in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. This is Terry McPherson and Annabel Davis. They are medical officers.”

Sutcliffe and Hennessey froze. It took a while for the news to sink in and they turned to hug each other in tears.

The officers gave them a moment. Barker looked over at their temporary camp and spotted four insulation blankets spread by a smoking mound of ash. “Are there any more of you?”

Sutcliffe wiped his eyes. “No, just us.”

“What are you doing here?” asked Hennessey.

“Long story,” said Barker. “I’ll explain on the way. We have to leave at once. I’m afraid there’s nothing left for you here. Are you both alright to walk?”

“Absolutely.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Leaving their bags, blankets and their smoking fire, Hennessey and Sutcliffe followed the officers off into the mist.

“A few months after the war,” Barker began, “we carried out coastal searches from our submarines around Europe to look for survivors, but we had little luck. About three weeks ago, we picked up a weak signal coming from the southwest of Britain. We assumed that survivors had figured out a way to communicate and so we travelled here, but found the signal was coming from the beacon of a large gondola. I don’t know if you remember the day the bombs went off, but a balloon team went high up into the sky to perform weather experi–”

“I remember it well,” Sutcliffe cut in with a straight face. “That was us.”

Barker saw it now, recognising the strangers all of a sudden. The pair looked so different. They were both skinny and fragile with dark, sunken eyes. The man had a scraggily beard and dishevelled hair. The woman was dangerously malnourished.

“Brad Sutcliffe?”

“Just about.”

“And you must be the American, Jen Hennessey?”

“Yes.”

He laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. Then he put his hand on his heart. “I’m honoured to meet you both. When we saw the state of the gondola, we assumed you had fallen out of the sky after the explosions.”

“That’s a pretty close assumption.”

Barker gazed at his colleagues walking closely behind. “Can you believe it?” he said to them.

They both shook their heads, smiling.

Barker glimpsed at his watch. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”

“Where are we going?” asked Hennessey.

“Greenland.”

They arrived at a cove where the mist had weakened somewhat. On the shore was an inflatable dinghy with an officer stationed beside it, waving at them. A good mile out to sea they could just make out the top section of a submarine sitting in the water like a sea monster. A horn sounded.

Down at the beach, Barker and his colleagues dragged the red dinghy into the water. “Jump in.”

Sutcliffe assisted Hennessey onboard and then followed her on. Barker cast them off, skipping into the dinghy as the officers rowed them out to sea. It bobbed towards the submarine carving its way through the clearing mist. The submarine began to take on a more distinctive shape the closer they got and more officers congregated on the top deck, cheering and applauding the survivors. The dinghy drew up alongside the submarine and a rope ladder rolled down the wall. Hennessey went first followed by Sutcliffe, and they ascended the ladder. An officer at the top pulled them up onto the watchtower where a small gathering of seamen clapped and offered their hands to be shaken, congratulating their remarkable survival.

Standing on the observation deck, staring back at his country, Sutcliffe turned to Barker. “How did you all survive?”

“I’m not sure if you know, but North Korea started the war. On that day, there were hundreds of submarines sailing deep beneath the ocean which survived the bombs. I don’t know if you’re aware, but every major power was directly hit with nuclear bombs. It’s all a little hazy, even now. Intelligence sources believe that North Korean satellites were fooled into thinking reflected sunlight had been the inferno from a group of ICBMs.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“It means that their Missile Early Warning System would have detected a false nuclear strike on their country. The North Koreans believed they were retaliating when really they were instigating the war and therefore were retaliated against. Whatever the story, the fact remains the world has suffered irreparable ecological damage. Temperatures around the world dropped dramatically because the sun’s rays couldn’t get through all the smoke and crap in the sky and, consequently, freshwater lakes froze over in less than a month. The reduction in sunlight affected photosynthesis. Hydrographic, meteorological and oceanographic specialists aboard our submarine have spent months monitoring and analysing the weather and ocean conditions. According to their analysis, massive firestorms polluted the air so severely for several months after the explosions that they believe the ozone layer has depleted enormously. And I’m not lying when I tell you that we travelled around Europe for almost a year and not once did we see the sun. We’ve been communicating with other submarines in the world doing similar searches in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Baltic, Arctic, South China Sea and the Southern Ocean and the feedback we’re getting is always the same. They believe that more people have died and are dying because of famine and the decline in global temperatures than those people who perished initially when the nuclear bombs went off. Some of our weather experts believe that this could last as long as a decade, maybe longer. You could say the world is pretty screwed up right now.”

Chapter 42

The four-hundred-and-ninety-foot submarine was a Vanguard-class SSBN and notorious for its American-made Trident II submarine- launched ballistic missiles, shared by both the United States and Great Britain. Weighing approximately sixteen thousand tons, the Vanguard-class SSBN was one of the most advanced submarines in the world, specialising in strikes against surface and underwater targets. Hennessey and Sutcliffe were given a tour of the submarine. The messes in the Vanguard submarine were well-appointed and boasted a comfortable lounge, dining room, lecture hall, games area, library for seamen to study for a degree and even a venue for church services. Able to accommodate over two hundred people, a search party of forty five officers had been despatched from the north coast of Greenland.

The submarine lurched forward and smoothly dipped into the Atlantic waters. With fuel so scarce and being strictly conserved, the submarine ran at a lethargic five knots per hour on battery-operated electric motors. Sutcliffe and Hennessey were taken to the Mission Control Centre where they met more naval officers and they were both treated with the greatest respect. The officers had hundreds of questions for the balloonists, many on their daring flight into space, most about their survival and how they had coped. In fragments, they shared their stories, telling their side, fitting the pieces together. Hearing their own words, they struggled to comprehend how they had come through it alive. Being around people, seeing a multitude of faces and personalities, hearing more than one conversation at a time, overwhelmed them.

Half an hour later, the Chaplain brought them to a room where Terry McPherson and Annabel Davis took samples of their blood and urine, checked their temperatures and blood pressure. The results would be given to them later before they reached Greenland, though their initial conclusion was narrowed down to extreme fatigue and malnutrition. Following the examination, the Chaplain led them to the lounge area and presented them with comfortable sofas arranged in front of a television screen. Food and water would be brought out to them, they were told. On the table were some board games and a few word puzzles. Games and puzzles would have helped pass the time in the White Room, Sutcliffe thought. As they waited, the muffled voices of the officers communicating, the patter of busy feet running around the narrow corridors and the clunking of metal on metal resonated through the submarine. One of the stewards brought them out on a tray a jug of fresh water with two glasses and a small platter of seafood and boiled potatoes. Having managed to exist on very little food and fluid, the sight of fresh fish, potatoes and water caught them by surprise. Manners and gracefulness aside, they stuffed the food into their hungry mouths.

The steward lingered by the door. “I watched your flight into space. Can I just say, it’s an absolute honour to meet you both and if there’s anything I can do for you, just let me know.”

“Actually,” Sutcliffe coughed to clear his throat. “Do you think you might be able to find some batteries for this video camera?” he said, pulling out the JVC from his inside jacket pocket. “And a lead that will plug from the camera into the television?”

“I’ll see what I can find.”

“Thank you.”

Ten minutes later, the steward returned with both batteries and a lead. Sutcliffe fitted the batteries and the steward connected the lead from the camera to the plugs at the back of the television. They thanked the young man for his help and when he left the room, Sutcliffe rewound the tape and pressed play. They proudly watched five balloonists in immaculate spacesuits preparing for their launch into space like international heroes. Many people in the world had been able to witness it and for many of them it would have been the last thing they saw. The moment before the launch, Sutcliffe put it on freeze-frame and they studied the balloon before selecting the slow-motion function, watching the remarkable moment unfold in brief bursts. Although he couldn’t see it through their helmets, he knew each of his crew had a look on their faces that spoke of fear and of excitement. His son had done him proud with the quality of the recording and when the space flight ended he stopped the video, having seen enough.

“And six hours later, there was a nuclear war,” Sutcliffe said, speculatively.

“I still can’t believe it,” said Hennessey. “I have to admit, I had almost lost hope altogether.”

He nodded. “Just imagine if we hadn’t left the White Room when we did…”

The Commanding Officer entered the lounge and introduced himself. He was a large man with a bushy silver moustache and he told Sutcliffe and Hennessey just how impressed he was with their mission into space and how it was such evolutionary people that changed the way the world worked. He also apologised for the way military forces around the world had handled the nuclear crisis.

“Where exactly are we heading?” Sutcliffe asked.

“Greenland, as you may know, is eighty percent ice. Before the nuclear war, fifty seven thousand people lived in Greenland. We estimate that a third of the population living in the south died from the radiation. Other Arctic countries such as Siberia and some of the upper-most northern regions of Canada and Alaska also harbour survivors.”

He took a deep breath. “Anyway, to answer your question, we are heading to a town called Qasigiannguit in the southeast part of Disko Bay. It has a very small population of about three thousand inhabitants. It’s a very beautiful place, I’m sure you’ll agree. In 1984, the town celebrated their two hundred and fifty years anniversary. And there’ll be many more to come.”

“Have you picked up many survivors since the war?”

“Yes. And other submarines from other countries have too. It’s been a major rescue operation, the biggest the world has ever seen. The European survivors have been brought to various locations in northern Greenland. There’s a constant supply of food there. It’s hard to grow fruit and vegetables in extreme cold conditions. So I hope you like fish because it’s the main source of diet. Around fifty tons of Greenland halibut is caught every week. There are also fields of prawns in the waters as well as potato farms. And the hospitable people of Qasigiannguit have recently mastered the art of catching seagulls. They don’t taste great but we are hardly in a position to complain.”

Hennessey had an important question she needed answering. “What happened to America?”

The Commanding Officer looked at her sympathetically. “I’m afraid most major cities were hit with the bombs. We heard reports that the country suffered many losses long after that, you know, with starvation, crime, sickness. Submarines were operating coastal searches, but they just didn’t have the resources to head inland. Any survivors who were found were either taken to Alaska or Baffin Island in the northeast of Canada.”

He paused momentarily and his voice intensified. “There has always been war. War on this, war on that, but I get the feeling that this one has put an end to all war for a very long time. You’ll like it in Greenland, I’m sure of that. You’ll find that everyone is your friend. With such a declined population across the planet, any issues that once belonged in the world are now gone. There is a newfound respect between people and just a strong desire for peace. There’s no trouble, only a strong will to survive.”

“After the way we’ve been living, anywhere else in the world seems like a good place to go,” Sutcliffe commented.

“I appreciate that. Now, let me show you to your beds. I’m sure you’re both exhausted.”

The Commanding Officer led them to the sleeping quarters and assigned two single beds to them. He gave them a change of clothes, pointed out where the showers were and left them to get settled. As the engines purred silently through the cold North Atlantic waters, Sutcliffe placed the JVC camera, his trophy and his souvenir, on a shelf and got undressed. He hung his filthy suit inside a narrow cupboard. After a long, hot shower they dressed themselves in clean shorts and vests. Then they tucked themselves into warm, clean beds and within seconds of their heads hitting the pillows they were both sleeping.