Return of the Ancients

Chapter 5 The Wasteland

What happened? Where am I? Arn had assumed there’d been some sort of explosion and the Fermilab facility had collapsed, burying him inside. But now…

He blinked another few times and got slowly to his feet, still cupping his hands over his eyes against the glare. For as far as he could see, there was nothing — no modern facility with its strange, sagging sandwich building, no roads, no metal sculpture, nothing at all.

He turned in a circle. In fact, there were no trees, no grass, not even any hills. It was like a desert, but not quite as hot and dry. He looked at the sun, just up over the horizon — was it morning? A warm breeze blew past him; that was what he had found strange — it smelled like… nothing. The word sterile came to his mind.

There must have been a nuclear explosion, he thought. But when he knelt down and sifted through the sandy dirt, it ran freely through his fingers — no melted or fused glass or rock, no building debris, nothing but grains of bleached rock.

‘But… what was that thing, then? A dog, a deformed dog… or maybe a giant rat.’

But it giggled — it was watching you, following you. It looked like a… He shook his head to clear the argument that was washing back and forth in his mind.

He licked his lips; he’d need something to drink soon.

Maybe he should wait here, otherwise when Dr. Harper or Mr. Beescomb came to look for him, they’d never find him. Arn looked back at the hole he had just climbed out of. It was just an open wound in the flat surface, like a dry sinkhole. He turned again, looking at the ground, and then the landscape — it had a wiped-clean look — like someone had dragged a giant beach towel across the sand, flattening all the features.

There was no one… There will be no one. That scornful voice in his head again, filling him with dread and pessimism:

Stay here and die.

The warm breeze wafted again, and he turned his face into it. He remembered a science class on weather, and the droning teacher telling them that wind usually blew from the coast — if that was true, then that’d be a pretty good place to head towards.

Arn looked back at the hole for a second. There was water down there; maybe he should…

Forget it. The thought of climbing back down into that labyrinth was both frightening and repellant. Instead, he used his foot to make an arrow in the sand.

‘I went this way,’ he said, to no one but the sterile breeze.

I’ll head towards the coast, he thought — see what sort of land this is. And if there are any rivers, that’ll be where they’ll empty. Besides, if this was still home, then the coast was to the east — twenty-five miles; sure, a long way, but he was young and fit. He turned into the breeze and started to walk.

‘Winds always blow from the coast, and the coast is east,’ he repeated automatically.

Unless its winter, then breezes blow towards the coast, not from it — you’re going the wrong way, dummy.

Arn groaned. Heads you win, tails I lose, he thought and kept walking into the breeze.

No one spoke or moved for many minutes after Arn had vanished from the observation screens.

Edward was in shock, but excited — an idea forming in his mind. Becky closed her mouth, and pushed through the crowd of bewildered teenagers, scientists and administrators, to stand before one of the large screens.

‘What happened? Where did he go?’

One of the technicians got to his feet. ‘Vaporised.’

‘Stop that sort of talk.’ Dr. Harper frowned and took a step towards the screen.

Beescomb was still regaining his wits. ‘Where… where’s my student, Harper? What just happened here? Can we get someone down there?’

Harper ignored him and squinted at one screen, then the next. He barked some instructions to his team, and moved to a control panel, quickly ordering a lockdown of the facility. One of the screens began to flash, and Harper said to his senior scientist: ‘All right, Takada, shut it down… All of it.’

Jim Takada nodded, rapidly tapping in the command sequence on his computer, before stopping and frowning, and then repeating his movements again, this time with more care. He swore under his breath and lifted his hands from the keys for a second, and then he tried it again.

Harper, dragging his eyes away from his screen, noticed Takada’s frustration and turned to him. ‘What’s up? What’s wrong?’

Takada shook his head. ‘It’s just…’ He entered an alternative sequence into the computer, then shook his head again. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, ‘It’s just not shutting down. In fact it’s still running as if there’s a high-speed, high-energy collision taking place — but that’s impossible. The energy draw is phenomenal… and it’s building.’

Harper looked back at the screen, and then brought one hand up to his face. ‘Oh no, no, no — where’s our diamond? What the hell happened to the acceleration lens?’

Takada spoke over his shoulder. ‘The kid must have it. Maybe that’s why we can’t shut the track down; he’s done something to the collision acceleration instrumentation.’

The rise and fall of a siren could now be heard in the corridor outside. Further along the room, a female technician in thick spectacles skidded along the floor on the wheels of her chair to a different position at a long wall of electronics. She flicked some switches, then read some numbers off one of the small screens — speaking loudly, trying to be heard over the raised voices, the pulsing beeps now coming from most of the control panels in the room.

‘I’ve got radiation — something is bleeding high gamma down in the pipe room.’

Edward heard Harper swear, and then saw him rub his chin in nervous indecision. That concerned him more than anything he had seen — if Harper was worried, then so should they be.

Edward felt a rising panic, and looked back at the screens that had showed his friend disappearing only moments before. The more he stared, the more the image looked… wrong.

Harper also looked along the bank of screens, shaking his head slowly. He turned back to the bespectacled technician. ‘I don’t see anything. There can’t be a leak… There should be nothing to leak.’ He shook his head again. ‘Doesn’t make sense at all. Regardless, I’ll have a team go in and shut it down manually.’

‘Well, we’d better hurry; we’ve got an enormous power drain going on.’ She turned back to her station; between her and the other technicians, the activity was now furious.

Edward took his glasses off and wiped them. Replacing them, he moved closer to the screen. He frowned, took his glasses off again, and rubbed them even harder on his shirt. This time after he put them back on his nose, he squinted and then spoke softly, ‘Look.’

Even in all the confusion, Harper must have heard him, and turned to stare at Edward for a moment, his eyebrows shooting up in recognition, as though remembering the students were still in the control room.

‘I need everyone cleared from this room — authorised personnel only.’

An electronic voice intoned from a speaker overhead, the phrase repeated in an emotionless repetition: secure lockdown initiated — secure lockdown initiated…

Harper turned to a small black-and-white screen showing sets of enormous doors sliding shut at several exits to the building, and larger, two-foot-thick blast doors moving into place in the deeper areas of the underground facility. Harper swore again and turned to the group, urgency now in his movements.

Edward spoke the word again, ‘Look.’

Harper looked briefly at Edward and made motions to herd the teenagers from the room. ‘Sorry all, but we’re going to have to evacuate you immediately. Looks like we have some sort of, ahh, electronic or magnetic disturbance. Nothing to worry about, no danger. We’ll find your friend. He’s probably just managed to wander off into some section of the tunnel that isn’t under surveillance.’

The school group started to move backwards towards the door. Edward stood his ground, and pointed to the screen that had once shown his friend. This time he yelled it: ‘Look!’

Harper studied the screen, and then turned back to face Edward. ‘There’s nothing to see, son.’

Edward kept on pointing. ‘That’s just it. It’s not what we can see… it’s what we can’t.’ He looked from Harper to Beescomb. Many of the technicians had swivelled in their chairs to listen to him. ‘There’s something missing from the room… other than Arn, I mean. C’mon, look.’ He pointed at the screen to where his friend had been standing.

The entire room had fallen silent, and every eye was following the line of his pointing finger. No one heard the pinging, beeps or sirens anymore.

Edward walked right up to the screen and jabbed his finger at it. ‘Near the collision recording section — see? There’s something missing… like a small bite has been taken out of the machinery and background. But if the device was damaged, you’d know about it, right?’

Harper frowned, and leaned so close to the screen that his nose was almost touching the glass. He spoke over his shoulder. ‘Takada, take a look at this. What do you make of it?’

Takada leapt to his feet and hurried over. He nodded and spoke softly to his boss. ‘There’s an anomaly there, all right. Might be a fault in the film recording, though.’

Harper pressed some buttons, causing the screens to switch to a different angle. The same golf-ball-sized section was missing from every angle, like something oily was masking a section of the room or distorting the air.

Harper rubbed his chin and whispered, ‘I think I know where the boy went… and our diamond.’

Arn stumbled in the sand and fell to his knees. His lips were beginning to crack; when he swallowed, it felt like the dryness in his throat was caught halfway and refused to be pushed down any further unless accompanied by the reward of some water.

He blinked several times, and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand — they felt gritty and dry. In the distance, he could make out a large boulder sticking up from the sand. He felt somewhat elated — at least there were some features other than an endless, baked earth. He could use it for shelter, or climb it to see if there was anything over the horizon. He plodded on, still feeling the breeze on his face.

Shielding his eyes, he looked up at the sun; it was no longer directly overhead. It must have been morning when he set out, and he bet it was some time past midday now.

He wiped his dry face — he had stopped perspiring long ago, and he knew this meant his body was starting to seriously dehydrate. He’d need a drink soon, or his mind would become foggy.

Foggier, the little voice sneered. It was constantly with him now, never letting him be for a second.

Along with the voice, there was the dull pain. His head throbbed — another sign of dehydration.

There’s water inside you.

‘Huh?’

You know what I mean.

‘Oh no, no, no. No way.’

Did you know you could drink your own pee three times before it became toxic?

‘Urk. Now I’m really losing it.’

Drink it — it’ll keep you alive.

Arn laughed dismissively. ‘And do you think that would improve my chances with Becky if she ever found out?’

I wont tell if you don’t.

Arn ignored the voice, and looked up at the huge stone that loomed before him. He had wandered so far in his mind, he hadn’t noticed how close he was to it now.

His dry mouth fell open. This can’t be real…

It wasn’t a boulder at all. It was a skull — gigantic, and bleached by a million sunshines. Just behind it, the tops of waist-thick bones stuck out of the ground for a good forty feet before they gradually sunk below the sand. Huge ribs, Arn thought.

He ran his hand along the skull, perhaps to see if it was real. It was warm and rough to his touch, and tilted slightly onto its side. He could see inside the mouth that it still had a few sharp teeth.

A dinosaur? No. A whale, maybe.

And that’ll be you soon, if you don’t find water.

Arn remembered why he came to the skull, and climbed up onto it. Still facing into the breeze, he squinted. In the distance, something gleamed.