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  *

  ‘It’s getting late.’

  Hank stood outside Cody’s house and squinted up at the sun in the sky above, its path now crossed by rippling blankets of diaphanous cloud drifting in from the north.

  ‘We can make the city before sundown,’ Jake guessed, ‘then get back to the beach before dark. It’ll be a push though.’

  ‘You two seen any bodies laying about recently?’ Hank asked Taylor and Seth.

  Taylor shook his head. ‘Residents must have cleared out before the looting or the disease hit here.’

  ‘Might have got more warning,’ Jake said as he sipped water from a bottle. ‘If they saw the city go up in smoke they could have pulled out for the country. They could even have gone south before the nuclear station went bust.’

  Charlotte looked out to the south-west and finally spoke.

  ‘You get out much past Worcester and there’s nothing but wilderness and small towns all the way down to Connecticut. Out west it’s the Big Indian Wilderness, New York state and Pennsylvania. Plenty of big country to hide in.’

  ‘If you know how,’ Hank pointed out.

  ‘They gonna be much longer in there?’ Bradley asked.

  ‘They’ll be as long as they need,’ Jake cautioned.

  ‘He’ll be okay,’ Charlotte said. ‘Takes a while to process what’s happened and pick yourself up, is all.’

  ‘I’m sure your father didn’t abandon you,’ Jake said. ‘It sounded like he had no choice but to leave right there and then.’

  ‘But to where?’ Charlotte asked. ‘With whom? And how? If they didn’t get out before the storm arrived then how could they have travelled anywhere?’

  ‘The politicians quit several hours before the storm,’ Jake said. ‘Likely they knew it was too big to handle. Air Force One could reach anywhere on the globe.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Bradley agreed, ‘but only within the time frame allowed. If they had, say, six hours’ warning then the farthest they could go would be six hours’ flying time away, right? That’s probably about three thousand miles in any direction, assuming they took off immediately.’

  Hank looked at Charlotte’s letter, which he had picked up off the floor where Cody had dropped it.

  ‘The senator did not e-mail or call his daughter,’ he mused out loud. ‘He could have made a call easily enough without hindering his travels, or sent an e-mail via his cell phone. But he does nothing. Why?’

  ‘That suggests to me that he was prevented from doing so,’ Jake replied, ‘maybe to keep word from getting out.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Hank said. ‘They kept this whole thing air-tight so that they could get out before the panic or the storm set in. Complete media blackout followed by a literal global blackout.’

  ‘Organised exodus,’ Bradley agreed. ‘Fits with your little theory of a safe haven but it doesn’t tell us where the haven is or how to get there.’

  ‘No,’ Sauri said from nearby. ‘But it does tell us something important.’

  ‘What?’ Jake asked.

  Sauri guzzled from his water bottle and then spoke. ‘The storm hit after sundown here in the USA, east coast time, right? The news reports on the Internet said that the politicians had flown for their overseas conference in the early afternoon. At that time of year, it means about five hours’ of time to flee before the storm hit.’

  Hank clicked his fingers.

  ‘Good work. Five hours. Assume an hour to pull in all the officials that the president would want to take with him, close political allies, military heads, plus experts like engineers and doctors that any haven would need. He could get maybe four hundred aboard Air Force One and have select aircraft from around the military do something similar.’

  Jake nodded, seeing the direction the captain was taking.

  ‘They could have saved thousands of lives,’ he agreed, ‘especially the kind of people who agreed with them politically and militarily. They set up a temporary base somewhere within range of all participating aircraft and wait out the storm.’

  ‘And then they come back?’ Sauri asked.

  Hank looked around them and shook his head.

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t reckon they’ll ever be able to get this all going again.’ He gestured at the houses around them. ‘We had nearly four hundred million people in this country before the storm. God only knows how many are left but I’d wager there won’t be enough of them with the skills or manpower to rebuild and replace everything before it all rots.’

  Charlotte clicked her fingers, still thinking about her father.

  ‘They’d need a rally point, somewhere to gather quickly. Probably Logan airport, but my father would have gone via the senate building or the state house in the city. There might be something there, a trail of evidence we could follow.’

  ‘It’s a long shot,’ Jake replied, ‘but it beats heading down to New York. At least here we know there’s one senator who definitely had a chance of getting out.’

  Hank nodded. ‘We’ll do it and then head back to the ship.’

  Jake turned as he saw Cody walk out of the house, Bethany alongside him.

  ‘Any sign?’ he asked.

  Cody shook his head in silence.

  ‘House is empty,’ Bethany answered for Cody. ‘We grabbed a couple of items.’

  ‘Hank reckons that most people would have pulled out before the riots and looting reached here from the city,’ Jake said to Cody. ‘No dead bodies lying about here and with big country to the west they could have disappeared before things got too rough. I’m sure they made it out.’

  Cody nodded but said nothing.

  ‘We’re heading for the city,’ Jake said. ‘You both good with that?’

  Cody turned and looked out to the west. Bethany tugged his arm.

  ‘What if they’re out there, somewhere?’ he asked, his voice sounding small in his own ears.

  ‘Then they’re alive and we can find them later,’ Bethany replied. ‘Let’s get going. I want to check my apartment in the city before it gets dark.’

  Cody sighed and turned with Bethany as they set off. Hank watched them leave, the rest of the team following. A gentle breeze tossed old bits of paper across the sidewalk as he turned to follow them, and as he did so one of them caught his eye.

  Hank shifted his boot and pinned the aged newspaper against the sidewalk. He crouched down and picked it up, scanned the page in silence for a moment. Then he folded the page up tightly and shoved it into his pocket.

  The city was little more than a mile away, the glittering metal and glass of the financial district’s towering skyscrapers grey-blue through the spring haze as they turned onto Beacon Street. Cody walked with Bethany, the once crowded arterial route into Boston now devoid of life. Abandoned red-brick apartment buildings and colonial halls lined one side of the street, the tree lined expanses of Boston Common ahead on the other. American flags hung limp over the sidewalks, the fabric stained and torn, and vehicles sat on deflated tyres in the centre of the street, some of them scorched shells of bare metal.

  Ahead, the street crossed an intersection and climbed up toward Beacon Hill and the state house. The intersection was a wide pool of stagnant water, probably run-off from the hill that had flooded when untended drainage systems had clogged with debris.

  Bradley and Sauri started to circle the pool of water to the left, seeking the cover of the houses as Seth and Taylor went right toward the treeline of Boston Common. Cody smelled the sewage staining the pool, saw clouds of small bugs hovering over it in the sunlight.

  He was almost across the intersection when a gunshot shattered the silence with the force of a thunderclap. The bullet smacked into the house behind them as Bradley bellowed a warning across the street.

  ‘Cover! Enemy east!’

  Cody threw himself behind an abandoned Lincoln as a hail of gunfire swept past him, smacking into tree trunks and the Lincoln and cracking off the weed infested asphalt.

  ***

  27


  Cody ducked down flat behind the wrecked Lincoln as bullets stitched across the other side of the vehicle in a spray of sparks and chips of asphalt. Bethany covered her head as the rounds snapped and cracked across nearby brickwork to echo down the street behind them.

  ‘How many?!’ Hank yelled from where he crouched nearby.

  ‘Too many!’ Bradley shouted back. ‘We need to fall back and get the hell out of here!’

  Cody peered around the Lincoln’s hood and saw that Seth and Taylor were crouched behind trees to the east on Boston Common. On the opposite side of the intersection, Bradley and Sauri sheltered behind houses, both men returning fire with single round bursts, conserving their ammunition. Charlotte, Jake and Hank were just behind the two soldiers. The sheer volume of the gunfire shocked Cody, each round deafeningly loud and causing his vision to blur. Raw fear twisted his guts as he realised that gunfights weren’t like they were in the movies. They were loud, frightening and immobilising in their ferocity.

  Another salvo of rounds pounded the street and the cars, bullets zipping off the bodywork or clanging into the chassis.

  ‘Move, now!’ Bradley yelled.

  Hank and Jake leapt from cover as Bradley and Sauri returned fire down the street, peppering the side of a grey house further up the block and a series of trees opposite on the common. Cody saw figures there, ducking out and firing wild bursts from the flaming muzzles of automatic weapons.

  ‘Cody!’ Bradley yelled. ‘Get over here!’

  ‘No way!’ Cody shouted back. ‘Only takes one bullet to bring us down!’

  Bradley cursed and then yelled across to Seth and Taylor.

  ‘You two! Advance forward, cut them off before they flank us!’

  Seth and Taylor looked at each other. Cody could not tell what they were saying but almost immediately he realised that they were ignoring Bradley.

  ‘Seth!’ Hank bellowed. ‘Do as he says!’

  Seth looked at his captain for a long beat, and then he turned and fired a quick burst up into the common ahead. Then, with Taylor firing alongside him, they began retreating down the street away from the rest of the group, toward the docks.

  ‘Seth!’ Hank bellowed. ‘Get back here or I’ll gut you from bow to stern!’

  Seth flashed Hank a cruel grin, and moments later they turned and fled from the gunfight.

  Bradley and Sauri opened fire again on the figures advancing from cover to cover through the trees. Cody flinched and reeled away from the noise and impacts of the bullets shuddering through the Lincoln behind which he hid. He looked desperately across the street at the rest of the group, but there was no way he and Bethany could cross the intersection without being cut down.

  ‘We’re pinned down!’ Bethany shouted above the gunfire.

  Hank’s voice called back. ‘Cody, that heavy thing in your hand! Try using it!’

  Cody looked down at the ugly black pistol. He turned, carefully switching the weapon’s safety catch to “off” as he peered around the Lincoln’s hood once more.

  Two figures nipped forward from the tree line to hide behind large stone pillars that flanked the entrance to the common. Cody rose up and rested his arms on the hood of the vehicle and aimed at the point where one of the men had vanished. He realised that his hands were shaking, each breath fluttering through his chest as though afraid to leave his body.

  The figure popped his head around the pillar. Cody fired.

  The single shot almost ripped the pistol from his grasp and pain jolted through his wrists as the weapon recoiled violently and a deafening crack rang through his ears. He glimpsed the figure flinch and hide as chunks of stone sprayed off the pillar shielding him.

  ‘Well done!’ Hank shouted. ‘Now do that fourteen more times!’

  Bradley and Sauri were still firing controlled bursts up Beacon Hill, but Cody could see dozens of figures rushing down through the trees to meet them.

  ‘Fall back!’ Bradley yelled.

  Cody looked to make a break for it when rounds rattled off the Lincoln’s bodywork and forced him down onto his knees for cover.

  Suddenly, the gunfire ceased. A ringing silence filled the warm air as Cody crouched with Bethany, the pistol in his grasp woefully inadequate against the automatic weapons ranged against them.

  He looked across at Bradley and Hank, who crouched in the stairwells of two brownstones opposite, dangerously exposed to gunfire from the common and with only a single route of egress behind them, the flooded exit off the intersection.

  Cody peered over the hood of the Lincoln again and saw faces looking back at him.

  ‘You’re surrounded!’ came a shout from the common. ‘You fall back from there we’ll just keep coming until we finish you off! Drop your weapons and come out with your hands in the air!’

  Cody looked at Bethany, who shook her head.

  ‘They attacked us!’ she whispered harshly.

  Cody shouted back without even thinking about it. ‘You fired at us first! We can’t trust you!’

  A long silence followed before a more reasonable sounding voice replied.

  ‘We’re not too keen on asking questions first on account of all the militia in the city! Who are you?’

  Cody glanced across at Hank and Jake, both of whom shook their heads.

  ‘Out of towners,’ Cody yelled back, ‘just passing through!’

  ‘Passing through what? There’s nothin’ left!’

  Cody thought fast. ‘The docks,’ he called. ‘We thought there might be boats or something, some way to head south quicker than walking.’

  Another long pause. ‘Where you headed to?’

  ‘Anywhere but here!’

  Cody peered across the street and glimpsed figures crouching behind trees and watching him. He figured about six gunmen, but could not tell how many more might have been coming in behind to support them. Suddenly he realised why: behind the trees in the common he could see that the ground had been cleared and crops were growing, rows of them stretching away toward the city. The gunmen were defending their land.

  ‘They’ll circle us,’ Bethany whispered. ‘We can’t trust anybody.’

  Cody knew that she was right. He looked across at Bradley and Hank. The captain drew a flat hand across his throat. Cody nodded in response, and pointed down the flooded street as he mimed firing his gun into Boston Common.

  Hank mouthed the words on three back at him.

  ‘We’re leaving,’ Cody said to Bethany. ‘Ready?’

  Bethany revolved on her heel as she crouched, aiming for the opposite side of the intersection.

  Cody saw Hank and Bradley take aim, and then they fired a barrage across the intersection as Cody leaned out over the Lincoln and fired four shots at their assailants before he dashed for the cover of the street.

  Bradley, Jake, Sauri and Hank all fired as they retreated back around the corner of the street, firing past Cody as he ran with Bethany into cover.

  ‘Let’s move, now!’ Bradley shouted.

  As one they ran down the street, their boots splashing through foul water as they cleared the flood and searched desperately for somewhere to hide.

  A crackle of gunfire echoed down the street, rounds zipping off streetlights and walls as Cody changed direction and crouched down behind a row of parked vehicles. He saw Bradley duck into a service alley with Hank and Charlotte as Sauri threw himself over a fence into an abandoned garden.

  ‘We can’t keep this up!’ Bradley yelled. ‘They’ll run us down eventually!’

  Sauri fired a brief burst back up the street at the figures moving down toward them. Cody got a glimpse of shaven heads and muscular arms cradling assault rifles that spat clouds of lethal bullets all around them. Chips of sidewalk and even branches from roadside trees flew through the air around them.

  Then the street fell deathly silent again. Cody waited, but no calls came this time. He was about to look to Hank for inspiration when he realised that they were one short.

  �
��Where’s Jake?’ he asked.

  Hank looked about them, and as if in reply to Cody’s question a voice yelled down the street at them.

  ‘Y’ all come out now, or the old fella gets it!’

  Cody cursed under his breath and peered around the edge of a Taurus to see Jake being held by a huge guy in black jeans and a leather jacket, the muzzle of a pistol jammed up under his throat.

  ‘Don’t listen to them!’ Jake shouted breathlessly back.

  Cody turned away and looked across at Hank and Bradley. Both of them wore uncompromising expressions. Cody heard Jake’s words from months before on the lonely ice plains of Ellesmere Island. We stick together.

  ‘We should shoot him ourselves,’ Bradley said. ‘Remove him from the equation.’

  ‘We’re done anyway,’ Cody snapped in reply. ‘Why waste another life?’

  ‘They’ll kill us all,’ Bradley said. ‘Better one dead than six.’

  Bethany stood up and walked out into the street before anybody could stop her, her hands in the air as she shouted back at their assailants.

  ‘We’re coming out!’ she yelled. ‘Leave him be!’

  Cody pressed the butt of his pistol to his head as he closed his eyes. Bradley sighed and locked his rifle off.

  ‘We should never have brought women with us.’

  Cody slowly stood up and walked out into the street to see a small army of heavily armed men stalking toward them, their eyes filled with hate.

  ‘Drop your weapons and get on the ground!’

  Cody set his pistol down and lowered himself onto his knees as the rest of the team did the same. The armed gang quickly surrounded them and picked up the discarded weapons before producing steel hand cuffs and binding Cody and his companions’ hands behind their backs.

  The biggest and oldest of their captors looked down at them all and smiled, showing two front teeth of solid gold that glinted in the sunlight.

  ‘Welcome to Boston.’