Combustion (12 page)

‘No, not the bus,
that!’

Thirty metres away Corey sees an old Mercedes pull out of a parking station. Its exhaust is dark purple,
very
dark purple. ‘Almost.’

Judd veers towards the car, shouts at the top of his lungs: ‘Turn it off! Turn off the car!’ The young blond guy behind the wheel takes in the destruction on the street, stunned, then sees a shouting man run towards him, clunks the car into reverse and backs up.

‘No, no! Don’t do
that!’

The Merc’s engine note shifts to a sound that resembles gravel in a cement mixer and its exhaust turns black.

‘Turn! It! Off!’

Boom.
The explosion is even bigger than the police cruiser. The parking station protects the street from the full brunt of the blast but the gush of hot air slaps Judd and Corey to the ground.

A moment passes. Dazed, they pull themselves up. Judd looks at Corey unhappily. ‘He didn’t turn it off.’

The Australian turns, sees his dog lying on the road. ‘Spike!’ He scrambles over to the animal, kneels beside him, heart in throat. The dog’s eyes are closed. ‘Mate, you okay?’

There’s no response.

‘Oh God.’ Terrified, Corey puts a hand on Spike’s chest, feels for a heartbeat, looks for an injury. The heartbeat is there - and there’s no sign of an injury. Corey leans closer, confused. ‘You all right?’

The dog’s eyes blink open and he lets out a sharp bark.

‘You’re having a
rest?’

Another bark.

‘I don’t care if you told me you were tired. Get up!’

Judd focuses on the bus as it scrapes between the two burning cars. ‘We have to go.’ He takes off after it. He’s a little unsteady at first but quickly finds his balance. Corey and Spike follow.

They close in on the vehicle. Judd can see its exhaust is darker. Three kids, two girls and a boy, no older than ten, look out the back window. Too scared to cry, they stare out in horror at the destruction on the street - and the two strange men with a dog who follows them.

The bus turns sharply onto another street and heads east. This road is not as congested as the last, only a few burning vehicles which don’t block the way. The bus picks up speed.

So do Judd and Corey. Judd’s chest is tight from inhaling smoke but he ignores it, keeps moving.

The bus rides up onto the sidewalk, knocks over two garbage bins and takes a sharp turn to the left.

The boys follow it, cross a parking lot, reach another street. It’s untouched by explosions, save the burning motorcycle flopped over in a driveway next to the remains of an unlucky dude in a helmet.

They glimpse a flash of yellow in the distance, run on, duck down an alleyway, overgrown with brush, pass a row of single-storey houses, then emerge onto a narrow street.

Directly below is the Hollywood Freeway. Its eight lanes are peppered with burning vehicles but it’s not impassable. Cars, trucks and motorcycles zip past, swerve around anything that’s stationary.

‘They’re all purple.’

Judd looks closer. Corey’s right. Every vehicle’s exhaust is a shade of purple. He turns, takes in an overpass that crosses the eight lanes, scans the freeway. He can’t see the bus -

Corey points. ‘There!’

It heads down an on-ramp towards the freeway, takes to the grass verge to avoid a burning van, then drives directly towards them. Judd can see its exhaust is dark purple.

‘Come on!’ He moves fast, reaches an embankment, looks over the railing at the freeway below. There’s a steep, fifty-foot slope of dirt and gravel that runs down to the shoulder of the roadway. Corey arrives beside him. ‘So what are we going to do - oh Jesuschweppes!’

Judd vaults the guardrail, plummets to the embankment five metres below and roll-thumps to the bottom. He finds his feet beside the freeway and swings around to stop the approaching bus.

Honk!
A Mack truck fills his world and careers straight towards him as pitch-black exhaust blasts from its stack. It’s barely thirty metres away when the sound of its thundering engine mutates into that horrible noise Judd now knows too well -

Boom,
The truck’s cab vaporises in a vivid fireball and its tanker jack-knifes, flips over - and rolls directly towards him.

‘Oh faark!’ He turns and sprints, the giant flaming rolling pin right behind him and closing fast. To the right a burning vehicle blocks his path so he veers left, towards the metre-high cement divider that separates the left and right lanes of traffic. He vaults it and lands in the middle of the next lane -

Honk.
A Corvette roars towards him from the opposite direction. Judd pivots left and it brushes past with an inch to spare - then ploughs into the rolling tanker as it crashes over the cement divider -

Boom.
The explosion is huge. The shockwave throws Judd to the bitumen. His eyes flutter open and he staggers to his feet, shields his face from the wall of fire that dissects the road, and searches for the school bus.

It punches through the flames just thirty metres away. Judd sprints towards it. Its engine sound changes and his eyes flick to the exhaust. It’s pitch black. He yells at the top of his lungs:
‘Stop the bus!’

Ka-boom.
It explodes and the fireball is enormous. The blast catapults Judd back over the cement divider and into a pylon. He crumples to the ground, his ears ringing, his face numb.

He failed, and all he can think about are those three children, staring out the back window, too scared to cry.

A distant voice floats to him:’ —andy—’

Andy? Who’s Andy?

‘Mandy!’

Oh! Mandy. That’s right, it’s my nickname.

Judd’s eyes blink open as Corey kneels in front of him. ‘You okay?’

Judd takes a deep breath, nods dully.

‘Mate, when you hit that pylon I thought it was curtains. It looked
really
painful.’

‘I didn’t get to the bus in time —’

‘No, you didn’t.’ Corey jabs a thumb to the left. Judd follows it to the unharmed group of schoolchildren and their elderly bus driver, who climb an emergency stairwell beneath the overpass. ‘But I did.’

A profound sense of relief sweeps over Judd. ‘Well done, son.’

Corey grins his crooked grin. ‘I only told them to get off. You did the hard bit.’

That’s true, and Judd couldn’t be happier the children are safe, but still, he can’t help thinking that, once again, at the critical moment, he didn’t rise to the occasion, he didn’t save them, he wasn’t the man the world thought him to be.

A siren blares and an engine strains. Judd and Corey turn to the sound, see an ambulance speed along the freeway’s far lane. It’s the first emergency vehicle they’ve seen since the explosions began. Their eyes flick to its exhaust.

It’s pitch black.

Corey shoots Judd a concerned look. ‘That’s never good —’

Boom.
The explosion flips the ambulance onto its side and it skids along the freeway for fifty metres. Golden sparks spray as fast steel meets stationary bitumen, then it clips the cement retaining wall, flips over it and disappears into the brush on the other side.

~ * ~

17

Alvy Blash comes to with a gasp.

He lies on the ceiling of the ambulance, the vehicle upside down and tilted at a steep angle. He can see thick brush out the shattered front windscreen. From the panicked comments of the paramedics as they raced him to hospital, he knows the Swarm is to blame for his current predicament. Bunsen sure didn’t waste any time with his ‘urban deployment’.

Alvy feels woozy, not from the accident so much as his twin gunshot wounds, which the paramedics tried to patch as best as they could. Alvy turns, looks at the medic who was in the back with him. Blood trickles from his ears and nose, evidence of a traumatic head injury. The guy is dead, no doubt about it. Alvy shifts his eyes and takes in the driver. The poor schmuck’s been impaled by the branch that shattered the windscreen.

Alvy is horrified. This is
his
fault. He created the Swarm. Even if he never intended it to be used this way it is still his responsibility to put right. He must tell the authorities what is going on and give them a sample of the counteragent. He’s the only one who can do it. But first he must get out of this ambulance before Kilroy finds him. The old man is nothing if not thorough and will not stop until he knows Alvy is dead.

Alvy turns towards the rear doors and the ambulance shudders, slides down the incline, then stops. Alvy looks out the shattered front windscreen. What’s left of the vehicle’s nose pokes through the brush that blocked his view a moment ago.

Directly in front of the vehicle is a bracingly steep twenty-metre incline to a wall, then a sheer drop to a car park that is, at best guess, ten metres below that, a fall that would either be fatal or never-walk-again-bad if he were to make it in this upside-down ambulance.

He turns to the rear doors again and the ambulance slides towards the drop once more - then stops.

A noise in the distance. Someone crunches through the brush towards the ambulance.

Kilroy.

Damn it.

The sound grows louder, draws closer quickly, then stops. Alvy waits, heart in mouth, for a volley of bullets to strafe the vehicle, or for it to be simply kicked down the incline and over the edge.

‘Anyone in there?’

That’s not Kilroy’s voice. It doesn’t have the ponytailed bastard’s flat southern twang.

‘Yes - yeah! I’m okay, but the paramedics are dead.’

‘Need some help, mate?’

That’s a second voice. He’s pretty sure the accent is Australian.

‘Yes! Every time I move, it slides down —’

The ambulance slides down the incline.

‘Grab it!’

Alvy hears bushes thrash, then thumps on the side of the vehicle - then the ambulance stops.

‘I didn’t even move that time!’

‘Christ!’ The American voice is strained.

‘Jeez Louise!’ The Australian voice is little more than a grunt. ‘Okay, mate, get out.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘She’ll be right.’

‘I don’t know what that means!’

‘It means get moving ‘cause we can’t hold this bloody thing all day!’

‘Oh. Okay!’ Alvy starts towards the rear hatch and the ambulance slides again.

The Australian voice rings out. ‘Crikey! You got it?’

The American answers. ‘Yeah, but the ground - it’s collapsing under my feet! I can’t get a foothold.’

A dog barks.

‘Unless you just grew a pair of hands, no, you can’t help! Now get out of the bloody way!’

What’s a dog doing there? Alvy pushes the thought from his mind and continues towards the rear doors. It’s slow going. His head swims and the gunshot wounds throb but he ignores it all because he can feel the ambulance pick up speed.

He pushes the rear doors open and sees two men trying their best to slow the ambulance as it skis down the incline. Alvy is momentarily stunned to realise they look just like the astronaut and chopper pilot from the
Atlantis
4.

The Australian barks at him: ‘You waiting on an invitation, mate?!’

And the American doubles down: ‘Get out now!’

Alvy leaps out - and the men let go of the ambulance. Sprawled on the ground, the scientist watches the vehicle slide noiselessly down the incline, reach the bottom, flip over the edge and crash into the parking lot below. He lets out a deep sigh of relief - then everything fades to black.

~ * ~

Corey and Judd carry the unconscious bloke to the freeway’s cement retaining wall, not far from where the ambulance flipped into the brush, and lay him down. Corey studies his blanched face. ‘He doesn’t look so hot.’

Judd feels his pulse. ‘He’s alive but he needs a doc.’

The man’s eyes flutter open and he takes in Judd and Corey. ‘It
is
you.’ He grins weakly.

Corey knows that smile, has seen it many times before. The guy is a fan of the
Atlantis
4 and, in spite of everything that’s happened to him, is excited to be in their presence.

‘You saved me - that is so cool. You’re my biggest fan - I mean I’m your biggest - you know what I mean.’ He forces another smile then realises he doesn’t have the energy for that. ‘Oh boy, I’m not feeling so great.’

‘I’m gonna call for help.’ Corey instinctively pulls out Bowen’s iPhone and dials 911, then immediately realises that it’s a useless gesture. Even if he managed to have an ambulance sent here, wouldn’t it just explode on the way? It’s a moot point anyway as the line is engaged. ‘It’s busy.’

The man nods resignedly, his voice a low rasp. ‘I deserve it - it’s - this is all my fault.’

Judd checks the dressing on his wounds. ‘What’s your fault?’

‘This.’ He raises a finger skyward. ‘What’s happening to the city.’

Judd glances at Corey, then turns to the man. ‘You’re saying - what are you saying, exactly?’