Rage

SIX

Hill stood at the door of the Ark, gazing around the vessel with a strange look in his eyes.

The computer spoke in its muted voice. Designed to be soothing, it was anything but.

“Full cryo procedures successfully concluded. Ark 38 is now ready for hibernation.”

Then a pause.

“Hibernation procedure to begin in 120 seconds.”

The head scientist came over to Hill. “Captain, it’s time to leave.”

Hill took a last look and walked down the steps out of the Ark.

“Sixty seconds to hibernation… fifty seconds…”

He joined the full team of scientists ringed around the Ark. The guards-while remaining in position, guns held tight-all now stared at the amazing machine in the center of the room. Hill slipped on an earpiece, his radio link connected to the base’s communication network. Totally secure. No one would be able to eavesdrop, to hear the chatter and wonder what the hell the government was so secretly burying in the ground.

“Thirty seconds… twenty seconds…”

The entire room counted along silently, lips moving.

“Ten… nine… eight… seven…”

Hill looked around the room. Did some of these people look at this and think, There goes the only way to survive the coming cataclysm? Wishing that they were inside? Watching all this happen with such torturous, mixed feelings.

Including him.

He had been ready to go. But sometimes nature played tricks. What was the line?

We make plans. So do fools. The gods… laugh.

Zero…

The speakers filled the room with the soft vocal tones of the computer. Then the stairway folded smoothly into the Ark. The door-specially designed to resist extreme pressure from the outside-slid into place and locked tight with a whoosh.

The computer grew silent.

The Ark was now sealed tight.

Hill turned away and called out to the guards by the large hangar-sized doors to the side.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Hill sat in the front passenger seat of the Huey Workhorse chopper. A matching chopper flew beside it.

Attached beneath the choppers were two massive chains with giant links strong enough to hold a liner’s anchor, or a house, or a stack of cargo containers.

Morning in the Rockies. A beautiful clear sky. A gorgeous blue sky.

Couldn’t be more beautiful.

He looked ahead and saw the Ark building. As he watched, the roof of the building began to move. Even over the sound of the helicopters’ blades, Hill could hear the sound of metal grinding as the roof panels slid back on their tracks.

His chopper pilot spoke quietly to his counterpart.

“Ready to deploy, Alpha Two.”

Hill couldn’t hear the other pilot, but he could guess the man said “Roger,” because the two choppers-the biggest anywhere in the world-banked to position themselves over the opening.

Hill looked down, into the now gaping maw of the massive building. The Ark sat there, looking like a misshapen black egg.

Not a bad metaphor, he thought. An egg to give birth to humanity’s only hope.

If we’re not to go the way of the dinosaur.

Which made him pause. He had to wonder: did anyone raise the idea that maybe they were meant to disappear?

Probably had never even been considered.

It was too late to consider now. The choppers were in position.

The pilot spoke again: “Alpha Two-ready to lower on your go.” Then: “Lowering now.”

And the chain started down, a clanking sound erupting loudly from the rear of the chopper. It was hard to see the Ark now that it was directly under the helicopter, but above the pilot, a monitor showed the progress of the chain and its hook.

Until “Turning five degrees…”

A small twitch to swing the hook into the top of the Ark.

“And- locked,” the pilot said, throwing a switch.

The pilot looked over at Hill.

“Got it, sir.”

“Pull her up,” Hill said.

And together, as if carrying out a carefully practiced ballet move, the two choppers began to rise. After a wobble when the full weight of the Ark hit the two machines-slowing, nearly stopping them-the choppers continued up. The Ark rose out of its birthplace, like dozens of others around the world had already. This was one of the few left to be inserted.

Buried.

Finally, the Ark cleared the top of the building, and the choppers set out on a course to the west. Avoiding towns, highways…

Questions.

Some Arks had been transported inside the belly of big transport carriers. Still others in oversized freight train cars. The goal: for nobody to see an Ark.

But here, this late in the game in this part of the West, they would take a course that would give them the least chance of being seen without sacrificing haste.

And for those who did see… what would they say?

Besides-in a few days, everyone would have a lot more to talk about.

The asteroid. The Ark Project concluded-and revealed. Doom on its way. Everyone would know the truth.

They roared over the nearby Colorado hills.

The choppers hovered over the site of the excavation, a giant tapered crater in the middle of the desert. The man-made hole narrowed to a point, a massive shaft where the Ark would be inserted-deep, past the bedrock-before being covered with the piles of rubble and dirt by the waiting tractors.

Would it be enough? Hill wondered. Would there be enough protection in the thousand feet of dirt and sand, the massive chunks of granite and basalt piled on top of the sleeping Ark?

It was anybody’s guess. The only thing the scientists were clear about was that they couldn’t be sure.

“Terra incognita,” one said. Estimates of the level of destruction were given with sheepish looks at handheld computers. The numbers seemed to be changing all the time.

No one fucking knew.

“Lowering the Ark, sir,” the pilot said.

“Carry on,” Hill said. The pilot toggled his radio:

“Lowering Ark station 1138 on my go!” He maneuvered the helicopter, making slight adjustments. “And… go!”

The sound of the winch in the belly of the oversized chopper began groaning, the chains rolling out.

The chains so long that they had been rolled on mammoth wheels, the rolled spools stretching from the floor to the roof of the chopper.

Hill got out of his seat.

He walked back to the winch, where he could look down the opening, watching as the Ark moved smoothly down from the sky-with amazing accuracy-right into the crater that had been made for it.

The Arks were designed so they could burrow in either direction. But in this case, this deep shaft had been made well ahead of time.

The scientists’ preference.

Let’s reduce the chances for a screwup. We’ll place the Ark.

So the next time-the only time-the thing would burrow was over a hundred years from now.

The chain kept playing out, and the Ark slipped deeper into the narrow shaft at the bottom of the crater, sliding into it like a bullet into a chamber. A bullet of humanity being shot into the future.

Could have been me down there, Hill thought for probably the thousandth time.

Except-fate had other plans. And what of Raine-was he the right guy? he wondered.

Raine certainly had nothing tying him to this doomed world. No wife, no kids, his own family long gone. Raine kept quiet about whatever passed as his personal life.

For Raine, it was all about the mission.

And what exactly was that mission?

To survive? Yes, but it was more than that. To emerge and locate some of the caches of supplies-the weapons, tools, and precious seeds that might make food on the planet once more.

And foremost, Raine-and the other soldiers on different Arks-were to keep control and protect the survivors.

In case things didn’t go right.

In case everything is worse than we ever imagined it could be.

Did Raine know that was the real mission? Face the unknown, and-if necessary-lead what’s left of humanity?

The Ark had disappeared.

But the winch kept moving, and the chain clanged its way down into the shaft, link by hefty link. Hill squatted there, peering down, watching its progress.

Until the winch stopped. Then Hill looked up at the machine. There were a few meters of chain left on the spool, but the Ark had hit its final resting place.

Like a strange kind of burial.

He muttered the word to himself. A benediction.

“Amen,” he said.

And then he stood up.

Even as the last meters of chain rolled back onto each chopper’s winch, a team of bulldozers were already at work pushing the mounds of dirt and rock back into the hole, like planting a bulb.

In hours, it would look like any other spot in the desert.

Back in his seat, the pilot looked over at him.

“Want to stay a bit, Captain?”

“No,” Hill said. “I think we’re done here.”

Only after the words passed his lips did he register the irony.

We’re done here.

True fact, he thought. In more ways than one.

“Take us back, Sergeant.”

And together, the choppers banked slightly and flew off into the brilliant blue sky.