Doomsday Game, page 7
The storm came rolling over the island just after midmorning, blanketing the town like a dark grey curtain drawn across the sky. The rain continued on through the evening, and Rozalia spent much of the day reading while Nadia busied herself in the kitchen. Lightning flashed and the old wooden house they shared creaked and moaned like an old man with aching limbs.
There had been a storm the night Rozalia and Nadia’s world ended. Rozalia had been aboard a research submersible two kilometres beneath the surface of the Pacific, and six hundred kilometres east of the New Zealand coast. By the time they surfaced, she and the two oceanographers who had also been aboard found themselves in a world changed beyond recognition.
It was a long time before they learned that a white dwarf star a hundred and fifty light-years from Earth, called HR8210, had turned supernova. The burst of radiation generated by the nova had been powerful enough to burn away much of the ozone layer and kill the plankton thriving in the uppermost layers of the ocean in less than a day.
The result was a slow, creeping apocalypse. In the absence of oceanic plankton, the food chain faltered, then began a gradual collapse—much as it had for different reasons on Alternate Alpha Zero. Millions who had escaped radiation poisoning were subsequently killed by the deadly super-storms that erupted worldwide in the weeks following the gamma burster. Then came a series of desperate wars over dwindling food supplies that took care of nearly everyone else.
Somewhere in all of that, Rozalia had managed to track down Nadia, who had been on holiday caving in the Adirondacks at the time the burster struck. One of Nadia’s holiday companions, a biologist, understood better than most the severity of what had happened, and persuaded her and the others with them to remain in the mountains. By the time Rozalia finally returned home to the States, more than two years had passed, and another six months went by before she reached the mountain chalet where she and Nadia had previously spent many summers.
Rozalia had made her way out of the forest and across the glade in which the chalet sat. She ran for cover when someone pushed a shotgun out of a window and shouted a challenge. Another moment passed before Rozalia recognised the voice as Nadia’s.
By then, the biologist had died of a fever, and the others had either been killed raiding the nearby towns or gone in search of their own families and loved ones. None of them ever returned.
Several more years went by before the two women concluded there very well might be no one else left alive in the whole world but them. And before they could even come to terms with that, the Pathfinders had come and taken the pair of them away to a new universe and a whole new life.
* * *
‘Maybe you could stop off at the fishing hut,’ Nadia yelled from the kitchen when Rozalia got dressed early the next morning. ‘I’m pretty sure I left a half-bottle of tequila there.’
Rozalia stopped, one leg halfway into a pair of jeans. Through a window, sunlight glistened on wet grass. ‘Why?’ she shouted through the bedroom door. ‘Don’t we have enough functioning alcoholics on this island already?’
Nadia stepped through, wiping damp hands on her own jeans. ‘No, we definitely don’t,’ she said. ‘A girl needs a hobby.’
Rozalia raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought I was your hobby.’
Nadia laughed and went back through. Rozalia heard the clank of wet dishes. ‘I just don’t want to waste it, is all. It’s not like we’re going to go fishing any time soon.’
Rozalia pulled the jeans the rest of the way over her hips and went through to the kitchen. ‘You’re the one I’m worried about,’ she said. ‘I’m not the one going to some airless ruin with a giant hole in it.’
Nadia grinned, then poured coffee into a thermos before screwing the top on and passing it to Rozalia. ‘Remember that time we were stuck in the middle of the Atlantic, except it was frozen solid? That was worse.’
Rozalia nodded and coughed into her hand, then coughed again.
‘I really wish you’d go and have that cough checked out,’ Nadia said with a look of concern. ‘I swear it’s getting worse.’
Rozalia cleared her throat and unscrewed the thermos, taking a sip of the coffee before screwing it shut again. ‘You’re like a mother hen, woman.’
Nadia grinned and gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Careful as you go. I’d rather be the one taking the bike out for a ride, believe me.’
* * *
Rozalia wheeled her Honda four-stroke out of the garage. The weather was clear and the sky blue and streaked with faint high clouds. The roofs of the neighbouring houses were still shiny from last night’s rain. It seemed the storm was over, but she erred on the side of caution regardless, packing a spare hazmat suit in a pannier.
She straddled the bike, kicked the starter, and felt it grumble into life. Just the purr of the engine was enough to loosen up her insides a little.
She rode down brick roads lined with palm trees and low, one-storey buildings with corrugated iron roofs rusting from long neglect. The storm had scattered debris and bits of palm frond all across the roads and even knocked down a couple of the larger trees, most of which would likely be left where they were.
The fishing hut lay on the south-east coast of the island, less than fifteen minutes drive from town. She decided to take the long route around the island so she could approach the hut from the north.
Easter Island had a roughly triangular shape, with its one small town, Hanga Roa, near the southernmost tip. She followed the coast road as far north as she could. The island was small enough you could drive all the way around it in no more than three or four hours assuming you were taking your time.
The storm had left the air pleasantly cool, although grey clouds still edged the horizon. Out of habit, she counted Moai as she passed them, their long, semi-comical faces gazing down at her with typical disapproval.
On her way back south she felt drops of rain. The sky had grown darker, the wind picking up. She stopped immediately and pulled on her hazmat suit just in time before the clouds opened. She wheeled the bike up next to a palm tree, which offered at least a little shelter. She kept her head down and waited it out.
The rain passed after another twenty minutes. Rozalia kept the hazmat suit on in case it started raining again. Before long she came over a low rise and saw the fishing hut off in the distance. If the rain did come down, she’d at least be able to take shelter there.
She braked suddenly, seeing a crowd of people standing huddled around the door of the hut. She was still far away enough that none of them looked her way. The wind was blowing towards her, so more than likely they wouldn’t be able to hear the Honda’s engine until she got much closer.
Something didn’t feel right. Her heart picked up its pace and she felt a tightness in her chest and shoulders. And if there was one thing Rozalia had learned from visiting more than a hundred post-apocalyptic alternate Earths, it was to trust her instincts.
She turned the engine off and quickly wheeled the Honda back over the low rise in the road. She lowered it carefully on its side before reaching into another of the panniers, digging around until her hand closed around a pair of binoculars.
Rozalia moved towards the side of the road and peered at the hut through the binoculars. They were all men, their clothes ragged as hell. They all had a gaunt, starved look to them.
Whoever they were, they definitely weren’t soldiers, and they sure as hell weren’t part of the Authority’s civilian staff. Her instincts had been right.
She watched as more of the strange men emerged from inside the hut. She soon counted eighteen in all. Must have been pretty crowded if all of them were in there, she thought. Most likely they had taken shelter from the rain. Now she had time to study them, she could see that a number of them were dressed in dark suits beneath heavy mismatched coats and different-coloured rain-slickers, like they’d raided a jumble-sale. Their hair was unkempt, their chins heavy with beard, and most carried a rifle slung over the shoulder. A few looked seriously ill, so incapable of standing their compatriots had to help them stand up.
Chances were the ones who were ill had been caught out in the rain. But there still remained the question of who the hell they all were.
The wind carried their voices towards her. By the sounds of it, several of them were arguing.
She moved away from her bike, crawling through the grass at the side of the road until she got a little bit closer to the hut. When she looked back through the binoculars, she saw that one of them carried a heavy-looking sack filled with what looked to her eye like the components of a portable transfer stage. He was talking to another, slightly older-looking figure who looked strangely familiar. Indeed, he looked not unlike-
Rozalia nearly dropped the binoculars. She held them steady with both hands, the breath rattling in her throat. She had to be mistaken.
Had to.
Years before, back when the Authority had retrieved her and Nadia from their own alternate, they had soon discovered they were not the first Nadia and Rozalia to be so rescued: another Nadia and another Rozalia, from an alternate with a history nearly identical to their own, had lived and died as Pathfinders before them. Their deaths had in part been due to a rogue Authority agent named Harden Greenbrooke.
Jerry had once given them both a thick folder of documents and photographs that told the story of that other Nadia and Rozalia’s lives on this very island. Nothing, Rozalia had quickly discovered, twisted up your head like seeing another version of yourself leading a life you had no memory of. She recalled that a photograph of Greenbrooke had been inside that folder.
One of those strange, gaunt men gathered around the fishing hut bore a remarkable resemblance to Greenbrooke. Except, of course, that Greenbrooke was supposed to be dead.
But then, so were she and Nadia.
The men moved in a huddle away from the road and towards the island’s interior. Small as Easter Island was, it didn’t lack for places to hide.
Before long, they had vanished from sight past the low curve of a hill. From the hurried way they moved and looked around themselves, it was obvious they were afraid of being seen.
Rozalia stood back up and hurried over to the Honda. She wheeled it up next to the hut and took a look inside. It had been trashed; shattered dishes had been swept into a corner. Almost as bad was the awful stink, and she guessed that the men had spent the night crammed together inside the hut to avoid the rain.
She searched through cupboards and on shelves and soon found that all the fishing lines and tackle were gone. They’d even taken Nadia’s tequila, along with anything else that might be remotely usable or edible.
‘Okay,’ she said aloud. ‘Something really, really weird is going on.’
There was still a little drinking water left, though, in a canister. She drained it to slake a sudden thirst, then closed and locked the door of the hut.
Something else drew her attention: bundles of dark rags around the rear of the hut. She hadn’t noticed them before, perhaps, she thought, because they were obscured by shadows.
She stepped closer and stared, seeing milky white skin amidst the rags. They were bodies.
By the looks of things—and no way in Hell was she getting close enough to be certain—five or six of the strange invaders had died and their bodies left piled up next to the hut.
The likeliest explanation she could come up with was that they had succumbed to the worst effects of the toxic rain. It had already killed one of Major Howes’ soldiers, after all, and judging by the half-starved look of the raggedy-men it would hardly be a wonder if their immune systems were ill-equipped to deal with water-borne toxins.
She got back on her bike and drove fast in the direction of town. The air was feeling warmer as the day moved towards afternoon, but something cold and unpleasant had wormed its way deep into her bones.
* * *
Barely twenty minutes later Rozalia pulled up outside the house she shared with Nadia and ran through to the bedroom where an old file cabinet stood in one corner. She dug through prior mission summaries and reports until she found a yellow cardboard folder, flipping rapidly through its pages and feeling her throat grow tight at the numerous photographs of another Rozalia and another Nadia.
At last she came to a set of laminated photographs mounted on card that showed the two women along with the rest of the Pathfinders. They stood in a gaggle before one of the island’s towering Moai. Judging by the camouflage gear they all wore, it had been taken during a training exercise.
She touched the photograph, tracing the long, dimpled scar on that other Rozalia’s cheek. Then she glanced towards the mirror on the bedroom dresser, seeing her own, unblemished cheek.
Harden Greenbrooke stood at the back of the group, talking to Kip back in the days when Kip had still only been second-in-command to then-Director Bramnik. The Greenbrooke in the photograph looked well-fed compared to the man she’d seen, but they were, undoubtedly, the same man.
Or rather, she thought, a different version of the same man…from another alternate.
She pressed one hand against her belly, feeling her guts twist up. She forced herself to breathe steadily, then walked back outside. It had started to rain again. Technically, outside of an emergency or essential duties, she was expected to stay indoors once home until the rain stopped.
This definitely qualified as an emergency. She got her hazmat suit back out and pulled it on before again mounting her bike. As she drove away, she wondered just what Kip would say once he learned they’d been invaded by a parallel universe.
Kip
Alternate Alpha Zero, Government House
‘We still don’t know where Merritt’s disappeared to,’ Major Howes admitted. ‘The only thing we can say with any certainty is that he didn’t transfer back here after the incident on Delta Twenty-Five.’
Kip stared out the window of his office as the Major spoke. The buildings across the road glistened with fresh rain, but at least it had stopped for the moment. A figure strode by—one of Howes’ men, his features obscured by the partly transparent hood of a hazmat suit.
Even now, Kip still found it hard to believe something so entirely innocuous as rain could be life-threatening. He would have preferred that no one venture outside at all, so long as there was any risk whatsoever of contamination, but the bureaucratic and day-to-day functions of the island still had to be carried out.
‘And what does Washington say?’ he asked, turning back to face the Major. Howes also wore a hazmat suit, but with the hood unzipped and tucked under one arm.
‘They deny all knowledge.’
Of course they do, thought Kip. Merritt had by now surely slunk back into the grey murk of the Authority’s intelligence community, especially now that Randall was in a position to testify to what he and Oskar had seen.
Randall sat on a wooden chair near the door and behind the Major, a faraway look on his face as he played with the intricate-looking bracelet on his left wrist. ‘Randall,’ Kip asked him. Did Merritt say anything about where he might be going after he left Delta Twenty-Five?’
No answer. Randall’s lips twitched, the tips of his fingers moving back and forth across the face of the bracelet.
‘Randall,’ Kip said again, stepping up close to the Pathfinder.
Randall blinked and looked around at Kip and the Major as if he’d entirely forgotten they were there. Kip repeated his question.
‘Nope,’ said Randall. ‘He didn’t say anything about that.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘So that’s it? The son of a bitch gets away with what he did?’
Kip smoothed one hand over his face. ‘I don’t like it any more than you do.’
‘He murdered my best friend,’ said Randall, his voice rising. ‘I just want to get my hands on the little fuck and…’ he formed claws out of his hands as he spoke, then squeezed them into fists.
The Major gave Kip a look. ‘I was given to understand you want to send an expedition back to Delta Twenty-Five.’
Randall looked at Kip in surprise. ‘What for?’
‘We still need to explore the rest of those lower chambers,’ Kip said to Randall, ‘and make certain there’s no more Hyperspheres down there.’ Kip indicated the Major with his chin. ‘Just sending you and Oskar last time was a mistake. This time you’re going with the Major and every man he can spare from the island. You’re going to scour those chambers. And if by any chance you do trip across any Hyperspheres, your job is to destroy them on sight.’
‘Yeah.’ Randall nodded, his expression once more sliding off into the distance. ‘Sounds good.’
Howes appeared to hesitate a moment before he next spoke. ‘Is this an official expedition, Director, or…?’
‘I would prefer it remain off the record,’ Kip replied carefully. ‘It’s better that way, don’t you think?’
‘I do, sir,’ Howes replied. ‘And my men? What should I tell them?’
Nothing would have been Kip’s preferred answer. Howes had long since proven himself to be a man Kip could trust, but certain of the soldiers under his command could well be another matter. There was no telling whom some of them might report to back on the Authority’s home alternate, and Kip was rapidly learning that being in a position of power necessitated a somewhat paranoid outlook.
‘Tell them you’re searching for evidence of wrongdoing,’ he said after a pause.
Randall shrugged. ‘Guess it beats sitting around drinking all day,’ he said in a quiet voice.
‘I want to be clear,’ said the Major, ‘that if we run across any other illegal expeditions on that alternate I don’t intend to engage with them.’ He nodded at the modified rifle that now sat on Kip’s desk. ‘Not if they’re going to be armed with something like that. What are we even going to do with it? You can’t just leave it lying around here where anyone could find it.’
