Rites of Passage

Guardians of the Phoenix

It was dawn when we set off from beneath the twisted skeleton of the Eiffel Tower and crossed the desert to Tangiers.

We travelled by day through a blasted landscape devoid of life, and at night we stopped and tried to sleep. I’d lie in my berth and stare through the canopy at the magnetic storms lacerating the troposphere. The heat was insufferable, even in the marginally cooler early hours. When I slept I dreamed of the women I had seen in old magazines, and when I woke in the searing heat of morning and Danny started the truck on the next leg of the journey, I was silent and sullen with melancholy longing.

Two days out of Paris, heading through what Edvard informed us had once been the Auvergne, we picked up the fifth member of our party.

Around sunset, as the horizon burned and a magnetic storm played out in a frenzy overhead, the truck stuttered and came to a halt. Danny hit the steering wheel. “Christ! It’s one of the main capacitors.”

“Not again?” Fear lodged in my throat. This was the third time in as many weeks that the truck had failed, and every time Danny’s desperation had communicated itself to me. He tried to disguise it, but I could see the dread in his eyes, in the shake of his hands. Without the truck, without the means to cross the ravaged land in search of water, we were dead.

Danny was our leader by dint of the fact that he owned the truck and the drilling rig, and because he was an engineer. He was in his fifties, small and lean, and despite what he’d been through he was still optimistic.

I’d never heard that word till I met Danny, four years ago.

I stared through the windscreen. We were on the edge of a city: its jagged skyline of ruined buildings rose stark against the dying light. Over the decades sand had drifted through the parks and esplanades, softening the harsh angles of the buildings, creating beautifully parabolic curves between the shattered streets and vertical walls.

“Edvard!” Danny called. “Kat!”

Edvard’s balding head appeared through the hatch. A little later, on account of her limp, Kat joined us. Her lined face wrinkled even more as she peered through the windscreen.

Danny indicated the scene before us. “Do you know what happened here?”

Edvard looked at the map on the seat between Danny and me. “Clermont-Ferrand. It wasn’t a nuclear strike. I know that much. Too small a place to be a target, nuclear or biological.”

Danny looked at him, scratching his greying beard. “So you reckon it’s safe?”

Edvard thought about it, then nodded.

Kat said, “I just hope there’s no one out there.”

Stalled like this, we’d be easy pickings for marauders — not that we’d come across any of those for years.

“Okay,” Danny said, “come on, Pierre. Let’s see what the damage is.”

I took my rifle from the locker, hung it over my shoulder, and followed Danny from the truck. Even though the sun was on its way down, the heat was ferocious: it was as if we’d stepped into an industrial oven. We walked down the length of the truck, pausing at the foot of the ladder welded onto the flank, and Danny gingerly picked open a small hatch. He pulled out a toolbox and two pairs of gloves and passed one pair to me. The rungs of the ladder would take the skin clean off our palms if we ascended unprotected.

Danny nodded, and I followed him up the side of the truck and across the top. The heat radiating from the solar arrays and the steel surface of the truck hit me in a blast. I picked my way carefully after Danny, wary of allowing the exposed flesh of my legs to get anywhere near the hot steel.

Danny stopped at the apex, hauled open an inspection cover and passed it back to me. For the next ten minutes he rooted around inside, grunting and cursing as he checked each capacitor in turn.

I unslung my rifle and scanned the darkening city, wondering what this place might have been like fifty or sixty years ago, when the streets and buildings had been full of people going about their everyday business — before the nuclear and biological wars, before the governments collapsed under the strain of trying to hold together a dying world.

I heard the hatch open below and saw Edvard limp out of the truck and across the sand to the nearest building. He paused before it, looking ragged and frail, staring up at the ruin before stepping inside

I scanned the horizon, looking for signs of life. A part of me knew it was a futile exercise. I hadn’t seen a live animal for months, or other human beings for three years now. Even so, I searched the ruins with hope, and a little dread — for if we did happen upon humans out there, then chances were that they’d be as hostile as the last lot.

“Pierre!”

I started. “Sorry, I–”

“Just pass me the cover.”

He took it from me and slipped it back into place. “Fixed?” I asked.

“For now. Don’t know how long it’ll last.” He shook his head. “But we’re lucky. If it’d been something major…”

I nodded. Danny laughed, trying to make light of his own relief. I backed down to the ground and, as Danny slipped into the truck to tell Kat not to worry herself sick, I waded through the sand towards the shattered buildings.

Edvard had moved into the shadowy interior of the nearest shell. I followed his dimpled prints in the drift and leaned in the doorway, watching him.

Edvard was Norwegian, and he’d had to explain to me what that meant, now that nations no longer existed. He’d been a doctor in Oslo before the colony died out. He was slow and wise, and as ghostly-pale as the rest of us. It was Edvard who had taught me how to read and write.

He had aged quickly in the four years I’d known him. He’d slowed down, and the flesh had fallen from his bones, and when I’d asked him if he was okay he’d just smiled and said he was fine, for an old man. I reckoned he was in his late forties.

The room was empty, but for drifts of sand, scattered paper, and a skeleton in the far corner. The bones had collapsed, and the skull had rolled onto the floor and come to rest on its right cheek; in the half-light of the room, the empty eyes seemed to be staring at us.

“Ed,” I said. “The truck’s okay. A blown capacitor. Danny fixed it.”

He turned and smiled. “Excellent.” He seemed distant, lost in thought.

“What?” I said.

He pointed at the skeleton. “I remember when I would have taken those bones, Pierre. Can you believe that? Nutrients, you see. The marrow in the bones. Boil them up, make a soup. Pretty thin, but nourishing…” He shrugged. “No good now, of course. All dried out, desiccated.”

He knelt slowly, and I could almost hear the creak of his joints. He reached out and picked up a scrap of paper. He rose and joined me in the doorway, where the light was better, and held out the old newspaper.

“Christ, Pierre. 2040. What, fifty years ago? Look, a headline about the peace pact with China. Lot of good that did!”

He’d told me about what had happened to China. The military had taken over in a bloody coup, overturning a government they accused of not doing all they could to feed the people. And then the people had overthrown the junta, when the military had proved as useless as the government.

Not long after that, China invaded India, and Europe came to the aid of the subcontinent, and a world war broke out. It lasted five days, according to Edvard. And after that the world was never the same again.

That was the beginning of the end, Edvard said. After that, there was no hope. What humankind had begun with wars, the planet finished off with accelerated global warming.

He stared at the scrap of newspaper. In his clawed hand, the paper crumbled.

I took his arm. “C’mon, Ed. Let’s get something to eat.”

We sat around the fold-down table in the truck and ate spinach and potatoes grown in the hydroponics trailer, washed down with the daily ration of water. Danny talked enthusiastically about the maps he’d found in Paris.

Kat’s smile was like a mother’s watching a favourite child. She was sixty, grey and thin and twisted like a length of wire. There was something shattered in her pale eyes which spoke of tragedy in her past, or knowledge of the future, and Danny loved her with a tender, touching concern.

He jabbed a finger at the map. “There’s the trench, right there, just north of the African coast. I’m sure if we drill deep enough…”

“We could use some fresh stuff,” I said. “I’m tired of drinking recycled piss.”

Danny smiled. Edvard raised his glass and examined the murky liquid, smacking his lips. “I don’t know. As victuals go, this is a fine drop. Good body, a hint of mustard.”

I watched Kat as she ate, which she did sparingly. She’d given herself a small portion, and didn’t eat all of that. Before the rest of us had finished, she pushed her plate away and left the table, limping to the door of the berth she shared with Danny. He watched her go, then followed her. I looked at Edvard, as if for explanation, but his eyes were on his food.

After the meal I moved outside, taking my rifle with me, and in the spill of light from the truck I had a bath. I sat naked in the sand, taking handfuls of the fine grains and rubbing them over my body. I felt the grease and sweat fall away, leaving a fine covering of sandy powder. I dug deeper, finding the cooler sand, and poured it over my belly and thighs.

I thought about Kat, and told myself she’d be fine. Minutes later, as if to confirm that hope, the truck began rocking as Danny and Kat made love. I found myself thinking how Kat must have been good looking, way back — like the naked women in the old magazines. But I stopped those thoughts as soon as they began, stood up and pulled on my shorts.

I was about to go inside when a door opened along the flank of the truck and Edvard looked out. “Pierre?”

He stepped from the truck and climbed down. We sat in silence for a time and stared into the night sky. The storms were starting high above the far horizon, great actinic sheets of white fire.

At last I said, “Is Kat okay?”

He flashed a glance at me. “She’s ill, Pierre. We all are.”

“But Kat–?”

He sighed. “Cancer. I don’t know how advanced it is. There’s nothing I can do about it, apart from give her the odd pain-killer. And I’m running low on those.” He paused, then said, “I’m sorry.”

I said, “How long?”

He shook his head. “Maybe a year, two if she’s lucky.”

I nodded, staring through the darkness at the dim buildings. I wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come.

“You think Danny’s right about the Med?” I asked at last.

Edvard shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.” He was silent for a time. “I do recall when there was sea there, Pierre, and magnificent towns and cities. The rich flocked there.”

Not for the first time I tried to imagine the great bodies of water Edvard had described, water that filled areas as vast as deserts, and heaved and rolled… I shook my head. All I saw was a desert the colour of drinking water, flat and still.

He looked into the heavens as the night sky split with a crack of white light. It was Edvard who’d explained to me why, despite all the storms that raged, we never experienced rainfall: the little rain that did fall evaporated in the superheated lower atmosphere before it reached the earth. I thought of the storms, now, as mocking us with their futile promise.

I stared around at the buildings. “You think we can rebuild? I mean, make things like they were, before?”

Edvard smiled. “I like to think that with time, and hard work… Like Danny, I’m an optimist. I really think that people, at heart, are good. Call me a fool, if you like, but that’s what I think. So, if we could band together, always assuming there were enough people to feasibly propagate the race… then perhaps there would be hope.”

“But to get back to where things were… civilised?” I finished.

“That’s a big call, Pierre. We’ve lost so much, so much learning, culture. We’ve lost so much expertise. So much of what we knew, of what we learned over centuries of scientific investigation and understanding… all that is gone, and can never be rediscovered. Or if it can, then it’ll take centuries… even assuming the planet isn’t too far gone, even assuming that humanity can reform.”

I thought about that for a time, then said, “But with no more oceans, no more seas…”

He smiled at me. “I live in hope, Pierre. There might be small seas, underground reserves. I heard there are still small seas where the Pacific ocean was–”

“Couldn’t we…?” I began.

He was smiling.

“What?” I said.

“The Pacific is half a world away, Pierre. This thing might get us to the Med, if we’re lucky. But not the Pacific.”

I considered his words, the barren vastness of the world, and the little I knew of it. At last I said, “If we’re the last… I mean, I haven’t seen another human for years.”

“We aren’t alone, Pierre. There are others, small bands. There must be.” He was silent awhile, and then said, “And anyway, even if life on Earth is doomed…”

After a few seconds I prompted him, “Yes?”

“Well,” he said, “there’s always Project Phoenix.”

He’d told me all about Project Phoenix, the last hope. Forty years ago, when the world governments had known things were bad and getting worse, they pooled resources and constructed a starship, full of five thousand hopeful citizens, and sent it to the stars.

Towards the east, where the sky was blackest, I made out a dozen faint glimmering points of distant stars. I thought of the starship, still on its journey, or having reached its destination and the colonists settled on a new, Earthlike planet.

“What do you think happened to the starship?” I asked.

“I like to think they’re sitting up there now, enjoying paradise, and wondering what they left behind on Earth–”

He stopped and looked up into the night sky, then fitted his hand above his eyes to cut out the glare of the magnetic storm. “Dammit, Pierre.” He scrambled to his feet.

I joined him, my heart thumping. “What?” Then, as I scanned the sky, I heard it — the faint drone of a distant engine.

Edvard pointed, and at last I made out what he’d seen.

High in the air, and heading towards us, was the dark shape of a small plane.

I reached out for my rifle, propped against the side of the truck, and shouted at Danny and Kat to get out here.

“It’s in trouble,” Edvard said.

The engine was stuttering as the plane angled steeply over the distant buildings, a dark shape against the flaring storm. We watched it pass quickly overhead and come down in the desert perhaps half a kilometre beyond the truck.

Danny and Kat were out by now. “What was it?”

I said, “I’ll go and check it out.”

Edvard’s hand gripped my arm. “It’s no coincidence. A flyer doesn’t just drop out of the sky so close. They knew we were here. They want something.”

We all looked to Danny. He nodded. “Okay, I’ll go with you. Edvard, Kat, stay here.”

Kat nodded, moved to Edvard’s side. Danny entered the truck and came back holding a rifle. We set off across the sands, towards where the flyer had come down.

“Jesus Christ,” I said, bubbling with excitement. “Wonder who it is?”

Danny flashed me a look. “Whoever it is, chances are they’re dangerous.” He raised his rifle.

I could see he was thinking more about the flyer, and what might be salvaged from it, than who the pilot might be.

My mind was in turmoil. What if the pilot were a woman? I recalled the images of models in the magazines I’d hoarded over the years, their flawless, immaculate beauty, their haughty you’re-not-good-enough gazes.

My heart was thudding by the time we crested a slipping dune.

In the stuttering white light of the magnetic storm we could see that the flyer had pitched nose-first into the desert. Its near wing was crumpled, snapped into flapping sections.

I thought of the irony of finding a beautiful woman sitting in the cockpit… dead.

I took a step forward. Danny said, “Remember, careful.”

I nodded and led the way.

We approached slowly, as if the crumpled machine were a wounded animal.

“A glider,” Danny said, “jerry-rigged with an old turbo.”

I lifted my rifle and we stepped cautiously towards the shattered windshield of the cockpit.

“Oh,” I said, as I made out the figure slumped against the controls.

It was a man, an old, wizened man, thin and bald and stinking. Even from a distance of two metres I could smell his adenoid-pinching body odour.

Danny cracked the cockpit’s latch with the butt of his rifle. He hauled back the canopy, checked the pilot for weapons, then felt for his pulse.

“Alive,” he said, but his gaze was ranging over the craft and the supplies packed tight around the cockpit.

I reached out and gently eased the pilot back into his seat, his head lolling. I looked for injuries; his torso seemed fine, but his left leg was snapped at the shin and bleeding.

Danny thought about it. I guessed he was calculating the worth of the glider and the supplies against the long-term cost of giving refuge to another needy stray. “Okay, go back to the truck and tell Kat to get it over here. Tell Ed to have his equipment ready.”

I took off at a run.

Five minutes later Kat braked the truck beside the glider and we jumped out. Edvard limped through the sand and knelt in the cockpit’s hatch. After examining the pilot he did something to the leg, binding the shattered limb, then nodded to Danny and me. We eased the pilot from the glider, trying to ignore his sour body odour, and carried him over to the truck.

On the way I realised that he wasn’t as old as I’d first thought. He was in his forties, perhaps, though his skeletal frame and bald head made him look older. He wore tattered shorts and a ripped t-shirt and nothing else.

We installed him in the lounge and Edvard got to work on the leg, aided by Kat. Danny fetched the toolkit and for the next couple of hours we took the glider apart and stowed it in the cargo hold. We ferried the supplies, packed in three silver hold-alls, to the galley.

“Water,” Danny grinned as he passed me the canisters. “And dried meat, for chrissake!”

“Where the hell did he get meat from?” I wondered aloud.

Danny shook his head. “We’ll find that out when we question him. If he lives.”

I looked across at Danny. “You hope he dies?”

He weighed the question. “He dies, and that’s one less mouth… He lives, and what he knows might be valuable. Take your pick.”

It was late when we returned to the lounge. The pilot was still unconscious, his leg swaddled in bandages. “Broken in a couple of places,” Edvard reported. “He’ll pull through. I’ll stay here with him. You get some sleep.”

In my berth, I stared through the canopy at the flaring night sky, too excited at the prospect of questioning the pilot to sleep.

The rocking of the truck brought me awake. Outside, the desert was on fire. I pulled on my shorts and lurched into the lounge. Kat must have been driving because Danny was sitting in his armchair, leaning forward and staring at the pilot.

“You don’t know how grateful…” the invalid said in heavily accented English between sips of water — a half ration, I saw. He indicated his leg with the beaker. “You could have left me there.”

Guarded, Danny said, “We reckoned it was a fair trade, the wreckage of your plane, the supplies. We’ll feed you, keep you alive. But you’ll have to work if you want to be part of the team.”

Edvard sat on the battered sofa against the far wall. He said, “What can you do?”

The man’s thin lips hitched in an uneasy smile. “This and that, a bit of tinkering, engineering. I worked on solar arrays, years ago.”

I said, “What’s your name?”

He stared back at me, and I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Hostile. “What’s yours?”

“Pierre,” I said, returning his glare.

He nodded, increasing the width of his smile. “Call me Skull,” he said.

It was obviously not his given name, but considering the fleshless condition of his head, and his rictus grin, it was appropriate. Skull.

Danny took over. “The meat you had in the glider. Where’d you get that?”

“Down south. Still some game surviving. Shot it myself.”

“South?” Danny sat up, hope in his eyes. “There’s water down there, sea?”

Skull looked at Danny for a second before shaking his head. “No sea. The place is almost dead.”

Edvard said, “Where did you come from? With supplies like those, a plane? My guess is a colony somewhere.”

I didn’t like the way Skull paused after each question, as if calculating the right answer to give. “I was with a gang of no-hopers holed up in what was Algiers. Conditions were bad. The only hope was to get out, move north. But they didn’t want to risk it.”

“So you stole the supplies and the plane and got the hell out,” Danny finished.

That sly pause, again. A shrug. “A man has to look after himself, these days.”

I thought of the failing colony in Algiers, confirmation that there were others still out there.

“You’re one lucky bastard you spotted us,” Danny said.

Skull made a quick pout of his lips, as if to debate the point, then said, “Where you heading?”

“The Mediterranean,” Danny said, and left it at that.

The stranger had this way of trying not to show any reaction, as if to do so would give something away. I wondered at the company he’d kept, where he’d had to hide his emotions like this, wary and mistrustful. At last he said, “You’re joking, right?”

Danny shook his head, serious. “We’ve crossed Europe I don’t know how many times, drilling for water. I think it’s just about all dried up. My reckoning is, at the bottom of the Med, or where the sea used to be, there’ll be a better chance of striking water.”

“Salt water. Undrinkable sea water.”

Danny smiled and played his trump. “So what? I have a desalination rig all ready if that’s the case.”

“But south… the Med?” Skull shook his head. “You’re mad, you know that? You heard about the scum down there? The feral bands? They’d kill you for what you got, no questions asked.”

Danny shrugged. “We can look after ourselves,” he said, and the confidence in his voice made me feel proud.

Skull licked his lips. “Madness.”

Edvard said, from the couch, “Well, we could always leave you here, if you don’t wish to accompany us.”

Skull lay his head back, staring at the ceiling. “I’ll take my chances with you people,” he said.

The following day the desert gave way to high bare hills, and then a range of mountains. I sat with Danny in the cab as we drove along what might have been a highway, years ago; now it was little better than an eroded track. According to the map, we were travelling through a range of mountains called the Cevennes. We passed remnants of what had been forests, stunted trunks that covered hillsides like so many barren pegs, dead now like everything else.

This was as far south as we’d ever been, and it seemed brighter out there than I’d ever experienced. This high up, we had a perfect view of the plains to the south, a drift of golden sand that stretched all the way to what had been the Mediterranean sea.

The sun was going down when I said, “What Skull said about feral bands…”

Danny snorted. “His sort — the kind of bastard who runs out on a colony and takes their supplies… his sort are cowards. Anyway, he’s a liar.”

I looked at him. “He is?”

“There’s no colony in Algiers. I heard they died out way back, twenty years ago or more.”

“But he must have run from somewhere?”

“Yeah, but not Algiers. He didn’t want to tell us where he came from.”

“Why? What’s he hiding?”

“We’ll find out in time, Pierre, believe me.”

For the next hour he concentrated on driving, as we wound down the crumbling highway and left the hills behind us. As darkness fell, Danny braked and the truck came to a halt. After the drone of the engine, the silence was resounding.

We left the cab and moved to the lounge.

Last night Danny had allocated Skull a tiny berth at the rear of the truck, and served him his meals there. This cheered me — I wasn’t alone in not wanting mealtimes spoilt by Skull’s presence.

“Meat’s on the menu tonight,” Edvard said. He carried a steaming pot and set it down before us.

He ladled broth into our bowls and the smell sent my head reeling. For a second, I almost welcomed the arrival of the mysterious stranger.

“You okay, Kat?” I asked.

She smiled at me. I was encouraged by the way she was spooning the broth; she seemed to be enjoying the meal. I glanced at Edvard. He was chewing with his eyes closed, as if savouring not only the meat but the memories of past times it conjured.

After the meal, for the first time in months, my belly felt full.

Later I excused myself, wanting to be alone with my thoughts. I left the truck, dug myself a little hollow of cool sand, and settled down.

The night was silent, the sky unusually still. No storms ripped the heavens, for once. The air was heavy and hot, oppressive. I controlled my breathing, enjoying the cooling sand, and considered the journey south.

A sound made me jump. I thought it was Edvard, come to join me. But the skeletal figure that came hobbling out on crutches, fashioned from lengths of metal cannibalised from the wreck of the glider, was the pilot.

He eased himself down onto the sand beside me and nodded. “It’s cooler out here.” The little light spilling from the truck made his face seem even more skull-like. I took shallow breaths, not wanting to inhale his acid stink.

“That’s why I’m here,” I said.

A pause. Then, “Maybe you’ll listen to sense, Pierre. I’ve tried the others. They’re too old, set in their ways.”

“They’re my friends,” I said, and then as if to make it clearer, “my family. We’re in this together.”

I looked at him. His sly eyes appeared calculating. “Listen to me, Pierre. You’re no fool. If we head south, to the Med…”

“Yes?”

A pause. He licked his lips. “There’s dangers down there, things you haven’t encountered in Europe.”

“You said. Feral bands–”

“Worse!”

“Worse than feral bands?”

“Much worse. Feral means animal. You can deal with animals, outwit ’em. These people… these people are no fools. They’re evil, and calculating.” I wondered, for a second, if he were describing himself. “You ever seen what human beings can do when they’re desperate?”

I thought back to the ruins of Paris, before the desert engulfed the city. I considered the people I’d lived with, and why I left. Yes, I almost told him, I’ve experienced desperate people, and survived. But I said nothing, reluctant to share with Skull what I’d never told anyone else, not even Danny or Kat or Edvard.

“Like Danny said,” I murmured, not looking at him, “we can look after ourselves.”

Skull spat viciously. “Fools, the lot of you!”

I considered what Danny had said last night. Into the following silence, I said, “What are you frightened of, Skull? What are you running away from?”

He looked at me, then grinned. “No, you’re no fool, are you?”

“Well?”

I didn’t expect him to tell me, so I was surprised when he said, “People so fucking evil, so purely bad, you cannot imagine, Pierre.”

And he left it at that, as if challenging me to enquire further.

I was at the wheel of the truck the following day when we came to the escarpment overlooking what had once been the Mediterranean sea.

Danny said, “Would you look at that.”

Kat and Edvard squeezed into the cab.

The land before us fell away suddenly to form a vast, scooped-out crater bigger than the eye could encompass. The dried-up sea bottom was cracked and fissured, as steely grey as the pictures I’d seen of the lunar landscape. The horizon shimmered, corrugated with heat haze.

I glanced at Danny. He was staring, speechless. I realised that before him was the goal he’d set his heart on months back, when he first had the idea to journey south.

“We’ll drive on another four, five hours, then stop for the night,” he said. “Over dinner we’ll look at the map, plan the next leg of the journey.”

Edvard and Kat moved back to the lounge. I was pleased that Skull had not bothered to show himself.

I mopped the sweat from my face. It was sweltering in the cab: the thermometer read almost thirty-five Celsius. Next to that dial was the outside temperature: fifty-five, hot enough to bake a man in less than an hour.

Danny took the wheel and drove along the coast, parallel to the escarpment, looking for a shallow entry down into what had been the sea. Five kilometres further on we came to a section of the coast which shelved gradually, and Danny eased us over the edge, moving at a snail’s pace. Baked soil as fine as cement crumbled under the truck’s balloon tyres. We lurched and Danny eased back the throttle, slowing our descent.

At last the land flattened out and we accelerated, the headwind blowing the dust behind us. A great plain stretched ahead, rilled with expansion cracks and dotted with objects I couldn’t at first make out. As we drew nearer I saw that they were the rusted hulks and skeletons of ships, fixed at angles in the sea bottom. We passed into the shadow of one, a great liner red with rust, its panels holed but the sleek lines of its remaining superstructure telling of prouder times. I found it hard to imagine that so great a vessel could actually float on water: it seemed beyond the laws of physics.

Danny pointed. In the lee of the ship’s rearing hull I made out a pile of white spars, like bleached wood. We drew closer and I saw that they were bones. The domed orbs of skulls sat amid a scatter of ribcages and other bones.

I shook my head. “I don’t see…”

“My guess is that there was a colony on the ship, ages ago,” Danny said. “As they died, one by one, the survivors pitched the bodies over the side.”

“You think there’s anyone left?” I asked, knowing the answer even before Danny shook his head.

“This was probably thirty years ago, at a guess. Back when the drought was getting bad and nations collapsed. Tribes formed, the rule of law broke down. It was every man for himself. People gathered on ships, while the oceans still existed — away from the wars on dry land.”

I shook my head, thinking of the horrors that must have overtaken the shipboard colonies in their last, desperate days.

We drove on, heading south.

A couple of hours later, to our right, the sea-bed rose to form a series of pinnacles, five in all. They towered above the seared landscape for hundreds of metres, their needle peaks silhouetted against a sky as bright as aluminium.

Danny glanced at his map. “They were the Balearic Islands, part of old Spain.”

“People lived up there?” I asked, incredulous.

He smiled. “They were small areas of land, Pierre, surrounded by sea. Islands.”

I shook my head, struggling to envisage such a configuration of land and sea. On the summit of the nearest peak I made out the square shapes of dwellings, the tumbledown walls of others.

We left the stranded islands behind us.

Three hours later the sun went down to our right in a blaze of crimson. Ahead, indigo twilight formed over Africa, the sky untouched by magnetic storms.

Kat called from the lounge, “Food in ten minutes!”

Danny brought the truck to a halt and we moved back to the lounge. He unfolded one of his maps and indicated our position.

Kat served us plates of fried potatoes and greens — rationing the meat. She was carrying a plate across the lounge for our passenger when Skull emerged from his berth and limped to the table.

“Don’t mind if I join you folks tonight? I was getting lonesome back there.”

I returned to my meal without a word. Edvard indicated a chair and Skull dropped into it, wincing.

Danny stubbed a forefinger at the map.

“This is where we are now, and this is where we’re heading — a hundred kilometres north of what was the coast of Africa, off a place called Tangiers.”

Skull stopped chewing. He looked across at Danny, uneasy. “Let me see.” He leaned forward, peering.

He looked up. “I don’t like the sound of it.”

I took a swallow of water, aware of my heartbeat and the sauna heat of the room.

Danny nodded, considering. “And why not?”

“Like I said before, there’s feral bands down there. We’d best avoid them.”

“There specifically, Skull?” Danny asked. “How come you’re so certain?”

Skull chewed, not looking away from Danny’s stare. “I heard stories, rumours.”

Danny lay down his knife and fork in an odd gesture of civility that belied the anger on his face. “Bullshit. Tell us straight — what the hell do you know?”

Skull’s eyes darted from right to left, taking in Danny and Kat, Edvard and myself. He looked uneasy, a rat cornered.

Edvard said quietly, “You didn’t come from Algiers. So where did you come from?”

The silence stretched. Skull used his tongue to work free a strand of fibre from between his teeth. “Okay, okay. I was travelling with some people. Only they weren’t people. Animals more like, monsters. A dozen or so of them. They had a vehicle, a collection of solar arrays lashed together around a failing engine. Anyway, they were heading west, towards Tangiers.”

Danny nodded. “Why?”

Skull shrugged. “They didn’t say. They invited me to stay awhile. They needed an engineer to help out, they said. So I travelled with them a few days, a week.”

“Why did you leave them?” I asked.

“Because I reckoned that soon, once I’d helped out with the arrays, I would’ve outlived my usefulness and they’d kill me rather than have me using up food and water. They were that kind of people.”

He looked around at us, then bolted down the last of the food, stood with difficulty and hoiked himself from the lounge.

“So what do you think?” Danny said. “He telling the truth?”

Edvard voiced what I was thinking. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could spit. Which isn’t far, these days.”

“We’ve come across gangs before,” I said. “We just have to be careful, that’s all.”

Kat nodded. “I second that.”

“What I’d like to know,” Edvard said, “is what’s so important about Tangiers that this mob was heading for it?”

I was in the cab with Edvard the following day when we came across the hovercraft.

It was late afternoon and we were roughly a hundred kilometres north of the trench, our destination. The sea bottom desert stretched ahead for as far as the eye could see, flat and featureless.

I was nodding off in the heat when Edvard slowed the truck. I sat up and looked across at him. He indicated the horizon with a silent nod.

I scanned. Far ahead, coruscating in the merciless afternoon glare, was the domed shape of a vehicle, entirely covered by an armature of solar arrays. At this distance it looked for all the world like a diamond-encrusted beetle.

It was not moving. I guessed its occupants had seen us and halted, wary.

Edvard brought the truck to a stop and called out to Danny.

Seconds later Danny and Kat squeezed into the cab and crouched between us.

“What do you think?” I said.

“Big,” Danny said under his breath. “Impressive arrays. Of course, they might not all be in working order.” He screwed up his eyes. “I don’t see any evidence of a rig. Wonder what they do for water?”

Kat said, “What should we do?”

“Break out the rifles, Pierre. Ed, take us forward, slowly.”

I slipped from the cab and hurried into the lounge. I unlocked the chest where we kept the rifles and hauled out four. I carried them back to the cab and doled them out as the truck crawled forward.

The occupants of the other vehicle were doing the same, advancing carefully across the desert towards us. We slowed even further, and so did the other truck. We must have resembled two circumspect crabs, unsure whether to mate or fight.

“It’s a hovercraft,” Kat said. Despite her years, she had sharp eyes. Only now, with the vehicle perhaps half a kay from us, did I make out the bulbous skirts below the layered solar arrays. As Danny had said, it was big; perhaps half the size again of our truck.

“Okay,” Danny told Edvard. “Bring us to a stop now.”

The truck halted with a hiss of brakes. Edvard kept the engine ticking over.

The hovercraft stopped too, mirroring our caution.

My heart was thudding. I was sweating even more than usual. I gripped the rifle to my chest. Minutes passed. Nothing moved out there. I imagined the hovercraft’s occupants, wondering like us whether we constituted a threat or an opportunity.

“What now?” I asked Danny. I realised I was whispering.

“We sit tight. Let them make the first move.”

This was the first time I’d seen a working vehicle, other than our own, in more than three years.

“What’s that?” Kat said.

Something was moving on the flank of the vehicle. As we watched, a big hatch hinged open and people climbed out. I counted five individuals, tiny at this distance. They paused in the shadow of the craft, staring across at us.

Minutes passed. They made no move to approach.

Edvard said, “Looks like they’re armed.” He paused. “What do we do?”

Danny licked his lips. “They made the first move. Maybe we should match it.”

“I’ll go out,” I said.

“Not alone.” This was Kat, a hand on my arm.

Danny nodded. “I’ll come with you.” To Edvard and Kat he said, “Keep us covered. If they do anything… fire first and ask questions later, okay?”

Kat nodded and slipped the barrel of her rifle through the custom-made slits in the frame of the windscreen. Edvard crouched next to her.

Danny and I left the cab and hurried through the lounge, grabbing sun hats on the way. Danny cracked the door and we stepped out into the blistering heat. I stopped dead in my tracks, drawing in a deep breath of superheated air, thankful for the shade afforded by my hat. This was the first time in months that I’d ventured from the truck in the full heat of day and I felt suddenly dizzy.

I expected the ground to be like the desert, deep sand making each step an effort. Instead it was hard, baked dry. We paused by the truck, staring across at the five figures standing abreast.

“Okay,” Danny said.

We left the truck at a stroll, our rifles slung barrels down in the crooks of our arms. Ahead, there was movement in the group. One of the figures ducked back into the hatch and emerged with something. At first I assumed it was some kind of weapon; evidently so did Danny. He reached out a hand, staying my progress.

As we watched, four of the figures erected a frame over the fifth. It was some kind of sun-shade. Only when it was fully erected, and the central figure suitably shaded, did the entourage move forward.

“Christ,” I said. We were a hundred metres from the group now, and I saw that the central figure was a woman.

She was tall, statuesque, like one of the models in the old magazines. She was bare legged and bare armed, wearing only shorts and a tight shirt which emphasised the swelling of her chest. As we drew within ten metres of the group, I saw that her face was long, severe, her mouth hard and her nose hooked. But I wasn’t looking at her face.

Something turned over in my gut, the same heavy lust I experienced when looking at pictures of long-dead women.

Danny said, “Do you speak English, French?”

“I speak English,” the woman said in an accent I couldn’t place. She looked middle-eastern to my inexperienced eye.

Her henchmen were a feeble mob. They looked starved, emaciated, and a couple were scabbed with ugly melanomas which covered their faces like masks.

“We’re from the north,” Danny said.

“Old Egypt.” The woman inclined her head. “My name is Samara.”

“I’m Danny. This is Pierre.”

I glanced at the hovercraft. I saw the barrel of a rifle directed at us from an open vent. I nudged Danny, who nodded minimally and said under his breath, “I’ve seen it.”

The woman said, “Do you trade?”

“That depends what you want.”

Samara inclined her head again. “Do you have water?”

Beside me, Danny seemed to relax. We were in a position of power in this stand-off. He said, “What do you have to trade?”

The woman licked her lips. I found the gesture sensuous. I gazed at her shape, the curve of her torso from breast to hip.

She said, “Solar arrays.”

I sensed Danny’s interest. “In good working order?”

“Of course. You can check them before the trade.”

“How many are you talking about?”

She pointed to a panel which overhung the flank of her craft. “Four, like that.”

Danny calculated. “I can give you… four litres of water in return.”

“Ten,” she said.

“Six,” Danny said with admirable force, “or no deal.”

I stared at the woman. She needed water more than we needed the arrays. I saw her look me up and down, and I felt suddenly, oddly, vulnerable.

She nodded, then spoke rapidly to one of her guards in a language I didn’t recognise. Two of her men returned to their craft, the weight of the sun-shade taken up by the two who remained.

I was reminded, by her regal stance beneath the shade, and her henchmen’s’ quick attention to duty, of an illustration I had seen in a magazine of an Ancient Egyptian Queen.

Her big, dark eyes regarded me again. She smiled. I found myself looking away, flushing.

Her men returned, hauling the solar arrays. They laid them on the sand and backed off. Samara gestured, and Danny stepped forward to examine the arrays while I covered him.

He looked back at me and nodded.

“They look okay,” he told the woman. “We’ll take them.”

“I’ll have them placed between our vehicles,” she said. “If you bring out the water, we will meet halfway.”

Danny stood and rejoined me. To Samara he said, “What have you been doing for water?”

She paused before replying. “There is a settlement with a rig about two hundred kilometres east of here, along the old coast. They have a deep bore. We trade with them every so often. You?”

Danny said, “We trade with a colony up in old Spain.”

The woman nodded, and I wondered if she’d seen through the lie. She said, “And how many of you live in the truck?”

“Five,” he said. He nodded at the hovercraft. “And you?”

“Just six,” she said.

“We’ll fetch the water,” Danny said.

We turned our backs on the woman and her men and began the slow walk back to the truck. I felt uneasy, presenting such an easy target like that, but I knew I was being irrational. They wanted water, after all; they would gain nothing by shooting us now.

“You hear that?” Danny said. “A mob has a deep bore, east of here. So there is water.”

He unlocked the hatch on the side of the truck where we stored the water. We hauled out two plastic canisters and carried them back to where the woman’s lackeys had placed the arrays. She stood over the shimmering rectangles, watching us as we placed the canisters on the ground.

She snapped something to one of the men, who opened the canister and tipped a teaspoonful of water into his palm. He lifted it to his cracked lip and tasted the water. After a second he nodded to Samara and said something in their language.

I could not keep my eyes off the woman. Her legs were bare, long and brown, and I could see the cleavage of her breasts between the fabric of her bleached blouse. She saw me looking and stared at me, her expression unreadable. I looked away quickly.

She said, “Where are you heading?”

Danny waved vaguely. “South.”

She looked surprised. “Tangiers?”

“In that direction, yes.”

She calculated. “Then we should travel together, no? There are bandits in the area. Together we are stronger.”

Danny looked at me, and I found myself nodding.

“Very well, we’ll do that. We stop at sunset, set off at dawn.”

Samara smiled. “To Tangiers, then.”

She said something to her men and two of them took the canisters. She turned and walked towards the hovercraft, flanked by her sun-shade toting lackeys.

I watched her go.

Danny laughed and said, “Put your tongue away and help me with these.”

We hauled the arrays across the sea-bed and stowed them in the truck.

We stepped into the lounge to find an altercation in progress.

Skull was standing at one end of the room, Kat and Edvard at the other. Skull’s face was livid with rage, his lips contorted, eyes wide with accusation.

“You told her!” he yelled across at us as we entered. “You contacted her and told her I was here!”

I looked across at Edvard, who explained, “He came flying from his berth, shouting insane accusations.”

“That’s because you bastards told her!”

I was glad he had a broken leg; able-bodied, he would undoubtedly have attacked us.

Danny said, “Calm down. We told no one. Listen to me — we don’t have a radio, okay? How could we have contacted her if we don’t possess a damned radio? And anyway, why the hell would we tell her we’d picked you up?”

Skull let go of his crutch to gesture beyond the truck. “So how come she’s found me?”

I moved into the lounge and sat down, watching Skull. Danny joined me, gesturing Skull to a seat opposite. Glaring at us, he stumped across the lounge and sat down. Kat and Edvard joined us.

Danny said, reasonably, “Are you sure it’s the same mob?”

“How many hovercraft you think are out there?” Skull snorted. “And you think I wouldn’t recognise the queen bitch herself?”

Kat said, “It’s a coincidence. They saw us from a distance. They needed water.”

Skull shook his head. “Some coincidence! Do you know how big this desert is? The chances of two tiny vehicles meeting like this…”

Edvard said, “We didn’t contact them, Skull. So it has to be coincidence, no? What other explanation is there?”

“The plane,” Danny said. “You took it from them, right? What about this: that she had it tagged with some kind of tracking device? It’d make sense, a valuable piece of kit like that.”

Skull held his head in his hands and sobbed.

I said, “What have you got to fear?”

He looked up, staring through his tears. “She’s evil. They all are. I ran out on her because I didn’t like what she was doing. She won’t rest till I’m dead. And now she’s found you, she won’t stop at just killing me.”

“You make her sound like a monster,” I said.

He nodded. “Oh, she is. She might have traded solar arrays now, but she’ll be scheming to get them back — and more. Right now they’ll be working out how to kill us and take the truck.”

Danny shook his head. “I don’t think so. There’s only six of them — and we’re well armed. The truck’s armoured. We can defend ourselves.”

Skull brayed a laugh. “Six! Is that what she told you? She’s lying. There were a dozen of the bastards with her when I left.”

I looked across at Danny, who said, “Like I said, we can look after ourselves.”

“Okay, but the best defence is distance. Let’s get the hell away from her before she attacks us, okay?”

Danny considered. We had agreed with Samara that we would travel south together; it would be hard to shake her, especially if Skull was correct and she had come for him.

Danny nodded and said to Kat, “Okay, start us up. Let’s move on.”

Kat and Edvard moved to the cab. Skull nodded, gratefully. “Thank Christ,” was all he said before hiking himself upright on his crutches and hobbling back to his berth. I watched him go, wondering what his reaction might be when he discovered that Samara was following us.

I sat with Danny. The silence was broken by the drone of the engine as Kat kicked the truck into life.

I said, “What do you think?”

Danny rubbed his beard. “I think we trust no-one but ourselves, Pierre. We keep Samara at arm’s length, and as for Skull…”

“Yes?”

“As Edvard said yesterday, I don’t trust him as far as I can spit.”

I moved to the rear of the truck and sat before an observation screen, staring out across the sea-bed. Through the sandy spindrift of our wake I made out the scintillating shape of the hovercraft. It was perhaps half a kilometre behind us, and keeping pace.

For the next couple of hours before sunset, my thoughts slipped between Skull’s warning and fantasies involving Samara. I interpreted the way she looked at me as indicating desire on her part, and told myself that her henchmen were less than prime physical specimens.

The sun went down, replaced by the deep blue of night shot through with the raging flares of magnetic storms. Kat brought the truck to a standstill and Edvard fixed a meal.

The hovercraft slowed and came alongside, sinking to the sand a hundred metres from us with a curtsey of rubber skirts.

I moved to the lounge and joined Danny and Kat. Edvard ferried plates from the galley and slid them onto the table. The heady scent of braised meat filled the air.

We ate quietly, subdued. Danny had told Edvard and Kat about the travel pact with Samara, and from time to time I saw Kat glance through the hatch at the settled hovercraft across the sand.

I said, “What do we do when we get to the trench?”

Danny chewed on a mouthful of tough meat. “We stop.”

“But we don’t set up the rig, right?”

“Of course not. I don’t want her knowing anything about the rig. We stop the night and in the morning feign a mechanical fault. And if she doesn’t go on without us, then we know she wants something.”

“Skull?” Kat said.

“And maybe the rest of us,” Danny said in a low voice.

Five minutes later Skull emerged from his berth. I was waiting for his reaction when he saw the hovercraft, but evidently he was already aware of its presence. He said, “You see, she’s following us. She knows I’m here. Tonight, they’ll come across…” He seemed resigned to his fate, no longer angry.

Danny said, “You don’t know that. Anyway, the truck’s secure.”

Skull considered a reply, but merely nodded his acknowledgement of Danny’s words, grabbed his bowl of food and returned to his berth.

We finished the meal in uneasy silence.

Later I took my rifle outside, broke up the surface crust, and scooped myself a hollow in the sand beneath.

The hovercraft squatted a hundred metres away, an ugly beetle armoured in a patchwork of solar arrays. Evidently the crew had exited and were having a party on the far side of the vehicle. I heard the sound of drunken voices, raised in revelry.

I undressed and rubbed myself with sand, ridding myself of the day’s sweat and grime. I lay back and closed my eyes.

Minutes later a sound startled me. I opened my eyes. Someone had cracked a hatch on the flank of the hovercraft and was crossing the sand towards the truck. I judged I had no time to get dressed before they arrived, so instead reached out and grabbed the rifle.

Then I paddled a heap of sand onto my groin, covering myself.

I stared into the darkness, making out the figure as it emerged into the light falling from the lounge behind me, and I set aside the rifle.

Samara halted about three metres away, smiling down at me. She had discarded her shorts and blouse of earlier. Now she wore a thin white dress which hugged her chest, flanks and belly and flowed around her bare legs.

And there was something else about her, something I had not noticed on our first meeting. She smelled of flowers.

My heart banged like a faulty engine.

She moved closer and knelt, tossing a strand of dark hair from her face. Her scent almost overwhelmed me. “I saw someone out here. I thought it was you.”

I opened my mouth. I wanted to ask what she wanted, but no words came. I was very aware of how ridiculous I looked, torso and legs emerging from the hollow I’d dug in the sand.

She sat before me, cross-legged. “So I thought I’d come over, say hello.”

It struck me then that, unless she was a consummate actress, she was as nervous as I was. A catch in her voice, a hesitation in her gaze as it flicked from the sand to my upper torso.

The dress was low-cut, and I could not keep my eyes from the swelling of her breasts.

“You know, I get lonely, surrounded by…” she gestured over her shoulder with a long-fingered hand, “those animals.”

I said, “It must be…” I shrugged, “difficult to control them.”

She smiled. “Oh, I have my ways.” She wasn’t beautiful, nor really pretty, but when she smiled her face changed, became suddenly attractive. She shrugged, and the way her breasts moved…

I responded. The sand at my groin stirred, disturbed.

She saw it, reached out and took me.

I surged upright with a moan, and she lifted her dress, pushed me back onto the sand and straddled me. I closed my eyes as she eased herself around me, impossibly warm and fluid. I reached out, dug my fingers into her bottom as she rocked, leaning forward and pressing her breasts into my face.

Then it was over. I spasmed in ecstasy and cried aloud, then lay back in the cool sand as she gripped me and shook, her teeth biting the flesh of my shoulder.

I was near to tears. I thought back over the long, lonely years, the years of thwarted desire, of wondering if I would ever experience such intimacy.

She whispered something to me, then rolled off and pulled her dress down over her nakedness. Before I could protest, she stood and padded back to the hovercraft.

I stared into the storm ripped night sky. Beyond the hovercraft, her crew was still partying. A hot wind blew. It was like a hundred other nights, a thousand, I had experienced in the hell that was my world, and yet tonight I felt an elation beyond description.

I considered what Skull had said about her, and contrasted his words with what I had experienced. How could she be the evil woman that he claimed she was, when she gave herself like that, and parted with such words? It was her farewell which convinced me.

“Thank you,” she had whispered.

I was woken in the early hours by a shout.

I sat up, listening. I heard the sound of a scuffle in the lounge, loud footsteps and something crashing to the floor. I pulled on my clothes and pushed open the door. I made out movement along the narrow corridor to the lounge.

In the dim light I saw half a dozen figures, and someone struggling in their midst.

I hurried along the corridor, regretting having stowed away my rifle in the locker.

I stopped dead when I came to the lounge.

Three individuals had Skull bound and gagged, and another three stood guard, armed with rifles. They faced Danny and Kat, who had just emerged from their room. Seconds later Edvard appeared.

One of the men saw me and gestured with his rifle. “Move. Join the others.”

The point of his weapon tracked me as I rounded the group and joined my friends. From this angle I could see more of Skull. He was on his knees, arms tied behind his back. A gag obscured the lower half of his face, but above it his eyes blazed with the anger of betrayal.

Kat clutched Danny’s arm, and I understood her fear. Too late, I knew we should have listened to Skull.

Calmly, Danny said, “What do you want?”

I looked around the faces of the men. Many I did not recognise from our meeting the day before; so evidently Samara had been lying when she claimed a crew of half a dozen.

One of the men, bigger and meaner looking than the others, nodded down to Skull. “We’ve got what we came for.”

I felt an almost incredulous relief — then checked myself. He must be lying, surely? They could kill us and ransack the truck, taking our water and provisions and laying claim to the vehicle itself.

A scrawny African looked around the lounge with evident disgust. “We’d as soon kill you all.” There were mutters of assent from those around him. “But she doesn’t want that. She said just take the bastard.” He grinned. “It’s your lucky day.”

Skull struggled, tried to say something. Someone cuffed him around the head. Their leader grunted in their language and they kicked open the hatch and left the lounge, dragging Skull with them.

As soon as they were gone, Kat hurried across the room and closed the door. The lock was smashed. “Don’t worry about it, Kat,” Edvard said. “I’ll fix it.”

We sat down around the table in silence. I think each of us felt pretty much the same mix of emotions: relief that we were still alive, a kind of retrospective dread of what might have become of us, and guilt as we thought back to the reassurances we had given Skull.

Eventually, Kat said, “So… what do we do?”

“We leave right now,” Danny said. “Head for the trench as first planned. Lose them. We were lucky, just now. Let’s not push that luck. Yes?”

He looked around at each of us. Edvard and Kat nodded their agreement.

“Pierre?”

I thought of Samara, the ecstasy I had experienced with her just hours ago. At last I nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.

Danny drove, Kat in the cab beside him. Edvard retired to his bunk in an attempt to catch some sleep. I tried to sleep, but visions of Samara’s body, and the look of terror in Skull’s eyes as he was dragged away, kept me awake.

I moved to the rear of the truck and looked out through the observation screen. The sun was coming up ahead of us, casting our long shadow far behind. As I stared, I made out the glinting, glimmering shape of Samara’s hovercraft, following steadily in our wake.

My stomach lurched with a sensation that was not wholly dread.

We made steady progress during the day, south-west towards the trench. The hovercraft tracked us all the way, a constant presence. I moved to the cab in the early afternoon. Danny glanced at me. “Still there?”

I nodded.

He eased the throttle forward gently and we accelerated. Kat slipped from the passenger seat and moved to the lounge. I sat beside Danny as we crawled over the sea-bed. Ahead, the sun was a blinding white explosion high above the horizon. All around us the sea-bed was barren, utterly lifeless.

Kat returned. “They’re still there, keeping pace.”

“What the hell do they want?” Danny muttered. “I mean, they could have taken everything we had back there.”

“Perhaps Samara was being truthful,” I said. “She wants us to travel together, for safety. And she just wanted Skull back, for her own reasons.” It sounded lame, even as I spoke the words.

Danny shook his head. “I don’t buy it. They want something.”

Two hours later, as the sun sank and ignited the horizon as if it were touch-paper, Danny signalled ahead. I made out, perhaps a kilometre before us, a dark irregularity in the sea-bed, a mere line widening as it ran away from us.

We had arrived at the eastern end of the sea-bottom trench. Danny slowed and veered so that we were travelling parallel to the widening rift.

“I reckon Tangiers is around a hundred kays south-west of here,” he said. “I’m going to stop here… and just pray that the bastards keep on going.”

He eased the truck to a halt beside the lip of the ridge. After the drone of the engine, the silence rang with its own eerie volume. We sat quietly as the truck ticked and cracked around us, and minutes later saw what we were secretly fearing.

To our left, the hovercraft moved into view, slowed and settled a couple of hundred metres from us.

Danny said, almost in a whisper, “I just hope Skull didn’t tell them about the rig.”

The idea filled me with dread. I stared out at the hovercraft’s array-encrusted carapace, expecting at any second a hatch to crack and Samara’s men to come pouring out.

After ten minutes, with no discernible movement from the vehicle, I began to breathe a little easier.

We ate the evening meal in silence: potatoes and spinach. As I ate, I wondered if Kat and Edvard had been unable to bring themselves to prepare Skull’s gift of meat. We hardly exchanged a word, and afterwards I moved to the hatch and peered through the window.

The hovercraft was a huge, domed shape in the darkness. Samara’s crew were partying again. They had lit a fire on the far side of the vehicle, and the flickering crimson illumination danced above the uneven crenellation of the solar-arrays.

I made a decision. I turned to where my friends were still seated. “I’m going over there. I want to talk to Samara, find out why they took Skull.”

Kat looked shocked. “I can’t let you go–”

“I… Samara won’t harm me,” I said. “I’ll try to get a promise from her, that her men won’t attack us.”

Kat made to protest further, but Danny laid a quick hand on hers, and nodded at me silently. Something in his gaze told me he was aware of what had passed between me and Samara the night before.

Edvard said, “If you’re going, then for God’s sake take this.” He moved to the weapon’s locker and withdrew a small pistol.

I hesitated, then nodded and tucked it into the band of my shorts.

I nodded and slipped from the truck. I stared across the dark expanse of sand to the hovercraft, my heart pounding. I was about to set off towards the vehicle when a door hinged open in its flank and a figure stepped out.

She stopped when she saw me, a hand still on the door.

I crossed the cooling sea-bed towards her.

I came within range of her heady scent and my senses reeled. She stroked my cheek. “I hoped you’d be out, Pierre. I was going to invite you over… It’ll be more comfortable here, yes?”

“What about…?” I gestured to the far side of the vehicle.

She smiled. “They’re having their fun, Pierre. We won’t be disturbed, okay?”

I could only nod, all thoughts of asking what had become of Skull forgotten.

She took me by the hand and led me into the hovercraft. We moved down a warren of tight corridors, past tiny stinking cubicles where her crew slept, and a rack containing the canisters of water we had traded with her. We ducked through a hatch into a larger chamber — evidently the engine room where the dangling leads of the solar arrays were coupled to banked generators.

Samara’s room was beyond this.

I stopped on the threshold and stared.

The room was twice the size of the lounge back at the truck, and sumptuous. A vast bed occupied the centre of the room. To the left was a small window, looking out onto the sea-bed. Through thin curtains I made out the flare of the fire and the sound of voices, loud and drunk.

Then I saw, in the far corner of the chamber, a clear perspex kiosk. I crossed to it, then turned to Samara with a question.

“A shower,” she said.

I repeated the word.

She smiled. “It’s a water shower,” she said.

I looked at her. “But how can you…?”

“I make sure we’re well supplied, Pierre. And of course it’s recycled after I’ve used it.”

I could hardly conceive of the luxury of having sufficient water to use for bathing.

She took my hand and pulled me towards the bed. We kissed. She reached behind her, unbuttoned her dress and let it fall. I stared like a fool as she rolled onto the bed and smiled up at me.

I pulled off my shirt and dropped my shorts. Samara laughed.

I reddened. “What?”

“I see that you have more than one weapon in there, Pierre.”

I struggled to explain the presence of the pistol. “Ed… he said I might need it.”

“A wise move in these times.” She reached out and pulled me onto the bed.

We made love, Samara urging me to slow down, take my time, as she opened herself to me.

Time was obliterated. I had no idea how long might have passed. I lost, too, all sense of self. It was as if I were an animal, indulging in primal appetites, oblivious of anything else but the pleasures of the flesh. Samara was ferocious, biting me, scratching. I felt a heady sense of accomplishment, almost of power, that I could instil in her such a display of passion.

Later we lay in each other’s arms, slick with sweat and exhausted. She sat up, left the bed and padded to the shower. I watched her, overcome with the sight of her nakedness. She gestured for me to join her.

We stepped into the cubicle and stood together, belly to belly. She touched the controls and I gasped. Cool water cascaded over our heads, and I experienced both a sense of pleasure at the silken warmth of the water, and guilt at the profligate use of such a resource.

She passed me something, a small white block. “Soap,” she explained. “Rub me with it.”

I did so, surprised by the resulting foam, and we made love again.

We dried ourselves and lay on the bed, facing each other. I stroked her cheek. Even then I knew that this was a passing pleasure, unexpected and delightful but hedged with danger.

Then, as if reading my thoughts, Samara traced a finger across my ribs and said, “You can stay here, if you wish. Leave the others, travel with me. The life is hard, but I have my comforts.”

I stared at her, at her hard eyes, her cruel mouth. Even then I had wits enough to wonder if she harboured ulterior motives.

I said, “And leave my family?”

“You’d have me, Pierre,” she said. “We’d want for nothing. We’d eat well.”

I wondered if she had a hydroponics expert aboard. I’d seen no evidence of things growing in my brief passage through the hovercraft.

She leaned on one elbow, staring down at me. “And things will get better, believe me.”

I shook my head. “How?” I asked, wondering suddenly if she had information about a thriving colony somewhere.

“We’re heading to Tangiers,” she said.

“There’s a colony there?”

She smiled. “There was once a successful colony at Tangiers, Pierre. It died out, I’ve heard, a few years ago.”

“Then…” I shrugged. “Why go there?”

She paused, stroking my chest. “The colony was religious — one of those insane cults that flourished as civilisation died. They called themselves the Guardians of the Phoenix.”

I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of them.”

She looked at me. “But you’ve heard of Project Phoenix?”

“Edvard told me about it,” I said. “A ship was sent to the stars, hoping to find a new Earth.”

She was smiling. “That was the plan, anyway.”

“The plan? You mean…?”

“I mean the ship was almost built, in orbit, before the end — but the funding ran out, and governments lost control. The project became just another dead hope–”

“How do you know this?”

She rolled from the bed, crossed the room to a small wooden table and returned with a sheaf of papers.

“A read-out,” she said, curling next to me. “I obtained it years ago from a trader. It’s an official report about the winding up of the Project, and the resources that remained.”

I leafed through the papers. They were covered in a flowing script that made no sense to me.

Samara said, “It’s an Arabic translation.”

I laid the papers to one side. “And?”

“And it contains information about the spaceport at Tangiers. It’s a copy of the so-called sacred papers on which the Guardians founded their cult.”

“I don’t see…”

“Pierre, the Tangiers spaceport was where the supply ships would be launched from, before the departure from orbit of the Phoenix itself.”

“Supply ships,” I said, suddenly understanding. “You reckon they’re still there, the supply ships, full of everything the colonists would need for the journey — food, water.”

She laughed suddenly, disconcerting me. “Oh, I’m sorry, Pierre! You are so naïve. No, the colonists would not need such supplies as food and water.”

“They wouldn’t?” I said, puzzled.

“The supply ships at Tangiers, some dozen or so, were full of the colonists. But they were frozen in suspended animation, and would be for the duration of their trip to the stars. Five thousand of them.”

I stared at her. “Five thousand? That’s… that’s a city,” I said. “Christ, yes… With so many, we could start again, rebuild civilisation.”

Samara brought me up short. “Pierre, you’ve got it wrong. We couldn’t sustain a colony of five thousand. How would we feed them? What about water? Pierre, face it — the Earth is almost dead. It’s every man for himself, now.”

“Then…?” I gestured at the print-out. “What do you mean? You said there were colonists?”

She stroked my jaw, almost pityingly. “Of course there are, but we couldn’t just revive them to… to this. That would be… cruel.”

“Then what?” I began.

She jumped from the bed and crossed the room, kneeling beside a curtained window and gesturing for me to join her.

Bewildered, I did.

She eased the curtain aside and inclined her head towards the revelry outside. A dozen men stood around a blazing fire, singing drunkenly. They were swigging from plastic bottles and eating something.

I turned to Samara. “What?”

Her hand, on my shoulder, was gentle. “The fire,” was all she said.

I looked again at the fire, at the spit that stretched across the leaping flames, and at what was skewered upon the spit.

I felt suddenly sick, and in terrible danger. My vision misted.

I said, “Skull?”

Samara murmured, “He was a traitor. He was against our plans. He stole supplies, water.”

“But…” I said, gesturing to what was going on out there.

“Pierre, Pierre. Life is hard. The Earth is dying. There is no hope. We must do what we must do to survive. If that means…”

I said, “The colonists.”

She did not say the world, but her smile was eloquent enough.

Meat.

She led me back to the bed and pulled me down, facing me and gently stroking my face. “Pierre, come with me. Life will be good. We will rule the Mediterranean.”

Despite myself, I felt my body respond. She laughed, and we made love again — violently now, like animals attempting to prove superiority. This time, I did not lose my sense of self. I was all too conscious of Skull’s words, his warnings. I was in control enough to know that, however much I revelled in the pleasures of the flesh with Samara, this had to be the last time.

She gasped and closed her eyes. Fighting back my tears, I rolled over and reached down beside the bed.

“Pierre?” she said. She sat up, but she had no time to stop me. She merely registered sudden alarm with a widening of her eyes.

I shot her through the forehead, sobbing as I did so, and only in retrospect hoping that the sound of the gunshot would go unheard amid the noise of the party outside.

I stood and dressed quickly, then moved to the door. On the way I stopped, returned to the bed and picked up the print-out.

At the door I paused, and forced myself to take one last glance. Samara was sprawled across the bed, the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life.

I fled the room. I passed through the chamber housing the solar arrays. Despite the desire to get away, I knew what I must do. I spent a long minute looking over the couples and leads, then judiciously snapped a bunch of connections and removed a capacitor. The hovercraft would be going nowhere for a long, long time, if ever.

I hurried along the corridor until I came to the water canisters. I grabbed as many as I could carry, then made it to the hatch and stumbled into the night, gasping air and hauling the canisters towards the truck. I imagined some drunken reveller finding Samara and chasing me, catching me before I reached safety.

I barged into the lounge, startling Edvard, Danny and Kat. They stared wide-eyed as I staggered towards them.

“Pierre?” Kat said.

“Start up! We’ve got to get out of here!”

Kat, closest to the cab, needed no second telling. She scrambled through the hatch, slipped into the driving seat and kicked the engine into life. The truck surged, heading west.

Sobbing, I dropped the canisters and collapsed into a chair.

Danny and Edvard knelt before me. “Pierre…?” Danny reached out and touched my shoulder.

I passed the print-out to Edvard and told them about Samara and her men.

Kat took my hand.

For the next four hours, as the truck headed along the ridge of the crest, I was paranoid lest the cannibals repair their vehicle and follow us, crazed with the desire to avenge their dead queen. I sat at the rear of the truck, staring through the dust of our wake. I thought of Samara, and what she had given me, and I relived again and again raising the gun to her head and pulling the trigger, and through my tears I told myself that I had done the right thing.

An hour or two before dawn, Danny turned the truck and we headed nose-down into the trench. We bucked down the incline, then straightened out and accelerated. A little later he judged that we had put enough distance between ourselves and the hovercraft: he slowed the truck and stopped with the sloping wall of the trench to our left.

I joined Danny and Kat, and together we set up the rig and dropped the longest bore through the crazed surface of the old sea-bed.

“Where’s Edvard?” I asked as I locked the final length of drill column into place.

Kat nodded back to the truck. “In there, trying to translate the print-out.”

Danny stabbed the controls that dropped the drill-head, then stood back mopping the sweat from his brow. It was still dark, but the sky in the east was turning magnesium bright with the approach of dawn and already the temperature was in the high thirties.

Dog tired, I returned to the truck to catch some sleep.

An hour later I was awakened by a cry from outside. I surged upright, thinking we were under attack. I launched myself from the truck, into the heat of the day, and stared around in panic.

Kat and Danny were standing in the shadow of the rig, holding hands and staring at the bore.

As I watched, the trickle of water bubbling from around the drill column became a surge, then a fountain-head. I ran to join them and we embraced as the water showered down around us.

I opened my mouth and drank, expecting to taste salt. “It’s fresh!” I shouted. “My God, it’s fresh.” I held Kat’s thin body to me, looking into her eyes and crying with more than just the joy of finding water.

We dismantled the rig and stowed it aboard the truck. Danny marked the position of the bore on the map, and the three of us sat in the cab as we accelerated up the incline of the trench.

Later, Edvard joined us. I glanced at him as I drove.

Kat said, “What is it?”

Edvard seemed subdued. He sat between us, staring down at the print-out in his lap.

Danny said, “Ed? You okay?”

He lifted the sheaf of papers. “The colonists,” he said in barely a whisper, “number some five thousand five hundred, and they were selected to found a new world on some far star. Among them are…” his voice caught “…are doctors and scientists and engineers, specialists in every field you can imagine.”

He looked around at us.

“We could revive them in groups,” he said, with tears in his eyes, “start a colony, small at first, but in time, with the water we’ve found…”

We drove on in silence, into the blazing sun.