The Apocalypse Club (34 page)

Violet joined us at the rail. “The sonar and radar advanced early warning systems are both turned off,” she said. “So is the sat tracking. As far as I can tell, nobody’s watching the store.”

“That’s good,” Tristan said. “This will make it a great deal easier for us to make our way in unnoticed.”

“That may be,” Violet said. “But I wouldn’t say it’s good. Truth is, I’d feel a lot more comfortable about it if the place was full of response teams that were armed to the teeth and doing everything in their power to find us.”

“Me too,” said Max. “This is weird.”

“You think this is a trap?” I asked.

“Well, if it isn’t, I don’t know what one
does
look like,” Max said. “About the only thing they haven’t done is put an ‘open house’ sign on the front lawn.”

“All right, then,” I said. “Is there another landing point we might try?”

Tristan shook his head. “If memory serves, the next nearest access point from the sea is six hundred fifty miles or so to the north of our current position.”

I looked at Violet. “Is that true?”

She nodded.

“Maybe they pulled everybody out because the boss was coming,” I suggested. “Maybe they’re all up at the Weather Station. Or maybe there was a reactor leak or something.”

“Maybe,” Max said, unconvincingly.

“So what do we do, then?” I asked. “Just bob around out here for a day or so and see if anything happens?”

“I’m afraid that isn’t really an option at this point,” Tristan said. “We shall simply have to go ashore and face the music.”

“Never understood that expression,” I said.

“The popular theory posits that it refers to disgraced officers being drummed out of their regiments,” Tristan said. “But I like to believe that it references the position of the peasantry – so-called, of course – in the west galleries of English churches. You see –”

“Let’s save that discussion for a time other than now,” Violet said.

“Oh, right,” Tristan said. “Of course.”

“I agree with Tristan,” Violet said. “We go ashore and take our chances. Can’t stay out here forever. Besides, I’m tired of being stuck on this tub.”

Max chewed on his upper lip. I could tell he loved this – feeling like the battle-hardened commander plotting his career-defining invasion.

“Okay, we go,” he said. “Violet, see if you can bring us in just to the south of dock number five there. It looks like the most remote spot and it’s furthest from the base. Might be fewer potential booby traps and what have you set up over there.”

“Will do,” Violet said, disappearing back into the pilot house.

“You two come with me,” Max said, motioning for us to follow him below deck. Tristan and I jogged after him to the supply lockers. Max pulled the first one open, rooted around for a moment, and then pulled out a GDI survival suit. He held it up next to me to check the fit and then tossed it into my arms.

“Here,” he said. “It’s not a combat suit, so there’s no armour plating, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

I held up the suit. It looked like something you might go snorkelling in. “Are you serious?”

“It’ll keep you alive if we get stranded out there,” he said.

“What about bullets?” I asked. “Would it stop one of those if they try to convert me from alive to dead?”

Max laughed. “No. But it will repel any barracuda or piranha that may try to take a bite out of your ass.”

“Those aren’t really uppermost in my mind at the moment.”

“It will be if you fall into a crevasse.”

“Barracuda? I doubt it. I’ll probably be thinking something like: ‘Oh hey, I didn’t know my legs could bend that way. That’s a nice thing to be looking at as I expire.’”

“It’s a survival suit.”

“Oh, good. So it’ll take me even longer to die, you mean?”

“Just put on the damn suit.”

Max found another, larger suit and tossed it to Tristan, who looked at it for a moment before putting it down.

“Thank you, my boy, but I don’t believe I will be needing one of those,” he said. “I have already survived longer than I care to without benefit of such a thing. No matter what we may be walking into out there, I believe I would prefer to do it in the suit my father bought for me on the day of my graduation.”

Max looked like he was going to protest – this was, after all, the first minor mutiny to his newfound sense of command authority – but decided against it.

“Fair enough,” he said.

“I kinda like what I’m wearing too.”

“Shut up and put on the suit, numbnuts.”

I muttered under my breath and started putting on the suit, feeling all the while like a kid getting dressed up for Halloween who is really much too old to be going out trick-or-treating. Max rummaged around and found a helmet, some gloves and boots. “These too.”

I continued to mutter. Max went to one of the other cabinets and removed a nasty-looking automatic rifle and a small handgun. He checked both and then handed me the latter.

“Why do you get the big one and I get the little dinky thing?” I protested.

“Because if you shoot yourself with this,” he said, indicating the handgun. “You might not actually die. Well, at least, not right away.”

He went to hand one of the handguns to Tristan, but this was also waved away.

“Thanks all the same,” Tristan said, grabbing his backpack and pulling out the spear gun. “But I believe I will stick with the familiar on this point as well.”

“What about Violet?” I asked.

“She doesn’t need one,” Max said.

“What do you mean?”

“Point of principle,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself if we get out of this?”

“Dammit, man! I’m an analyst, not an amphibious assault specialist.”

“So put it in a memo,” Max said. “Let’s go.”

We went back on deck just as the boat was sliding in next to the dock. The fog had almost completely cleared and I could see the size of the port operation. Up close, its emptiness was somehow even more eerie than it was from far away. I tried to find a holster to tuck the handgun into, but my suit didn’t appear to have one. I settled for holding it with the barrel pointed straight up into the air. This served a dual purpose: it made me look (except for the helmet, which didn’t really fit, and the suit, which fit a little too snugly) cool by giving the impression that I did this all the time and therefore knew what I was doing (the rocking of the boat did a decent job of disguising my trembling knees); and would reduce my chances of killing anyone by accident in the event the damn thing went off unexpectedly.

We crouched on the deck and watched as the dock got closer. Even though I couldn’t see any sign of a living soul, my heart was thumping strongly enough to make my vision blur. I hoped that I didn’t pass out. I had never passed out before, but I knew a kid in high school who used to do it all the time on account of low blood pressure. He got excused from gym because he might lose consciousness in the middle of trying to catch a baseball or complete a running long jump. He wasn’t allowed to drive a car, either. His parents had to take him everywhere, poor bastard. Can’t remember his name, though. Garnett something. He fell asleep writing an Ancient Civilizations exam once. We joked that it was because he had gotten a boner staring at the way Lisa Queenan’s thong underwear strap stuck up out of the back of her jeans and his brain couldn’t cope with the sudden diversion of all that blood. This resulted in his being given the nickname of “Sad Boner,” which unfortunately stuck with him for the rest of his high school tenure.

“Mark! Pay attention!”

“Sorry,” I said, snapping back into the present. Why was I thinking about high school? Was my life starting to flash before my eyes? Was I about to die? “For some reason, I got thinking about Sad Boner.”

Max thought for a moment. “Garnett Jolikowski? Why in the hell are you thinking about Garnett Jolikowski?”

“Dunno.”

“Pardon me for asking,” said Tristan. “But how does one go about acquiring the name ‘Sad Boner’? Am I saying that correctly? I didn’t mishear you?”

Max groaned. “Let’s try to focus, here. If anything happens out there, just try not to shoot one of us.”

“That’s a bit rich coming from a guy who has shot me twice,” I said.

“He does have a point,” Tristan said.

“I may add to that tally if he doesn’t shut up,” Max grumbled.

“Wait a minute,” I said, looking around. “Where’s Violet?”

“She’s going to stay with the boat just in case we need to make a rapid getaway,” Max said.

“What?” I said. “Who the hell decided that?”

“She did,” Max said. “You know Violet. She’s inscrutable.”

I stood up. “Inscrutable, my ass. I’ve gotta go talk to her.”

Max grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back down. “She asked me to tell you that she’s not going anywhere. She said to tell Mark I promise I’ll see him again.”

The boat bumped up against the side of the dock. Max nodded to me and then jumped over the side. I looked back at the pilot house, but it appeared to be empty. Violet must have gone back below deck when I wasn’t looking. What the hell was she doing? This was exactly like the last time we had gone after a Weather Station, when Max and I walked right into the middle of trouble while Violet stayed behind and avoided the whole mess. Were we being set up again? Had she been playing me the whole time? Not just for the last two days but the last ten years?

“Come on!” Max yelled, waving for me to follow. Tristan had already scrambled up onto the dock and was well ahead of me, running like the gangly scarecrow he so closely resembled.

“Fuck it,” I muttered, then jumped onto the dock after them. It was a concrete dock with ridged metal tracks running the entire length, presumably for the vehicles that were used to load and unload cargo from the various ships that came and went. Vehicles that were nowhere to be seen today. This dock was much smaller than the two loading docks nearest the base, both of which were almost wide and long enough to build a stadium on.

We reached the point where the dock connected to the land and stopped in what I thought was a slightly ridiculous action hero crouch, with each of us pointing weapons in a slightly different direction. Like it or not, our storming of the beachhead was underway.

“Which way?” I said, breathing hard not so much from exertion as sheer terror. I was so keyed up that I almost squeezed off a round on a gull that dropped a little too close overhead. The operation was barely ten seconds old and I had already turned into Patton, blasting away at unhittable objects in the sky.

“Let’s head toward that gate,” Max said, pointing at a large steel access gate about 300 yards away between the base and the warehouses. “My guess is that the Weather Station is connected to the base. This part might be unguarded, but I’m sure it won’t be once we get through there.”

“Okay,” I said. “After you, Commander.”

Max jumped up and started running toward the gate. He only made it about ten steps before he appeared to trip over something and went sprawling out on the rocky ground, dropping his rifle in the process. I was about to help him up when something hit me in the crotch with surprising force. I made a small woofing sound as my legs folded under me and I hit the ground next to him. I rolled around for several seconds in extreme and familiar pain before I heard a most unusual sound.

Laughter.

I rolled in the direction of the sound and opened my eyes, which were watering profusely. A human head suddenly appeared about five feet off the ground that, as far as I could tell, was not in any way attached to a body. The features were blurry and it took my eyes a moment to clear so that I could see who or what I was looking at. Short dark hair. Long nose. Flinty green eyes.

Ida.

“You should have seen the look on your face!” she wheezed, hovering in the air. I was sure I was seeing things. Where the hell was the rest of her body? I had dropped my gun. I rolled around to try to find it and was surprised to see it rise up off the ground all by itself and point itself at me.

“Like this?” she said, looking down at where her body was supposed to be but was not. “It’s Ghost Armour. Little more advanced than anything your buddy Private Pencildick there ever got to use.”

I looked over at Max, who was being pulled to his feet by invisible hands like some demented marionette. The same thing was happening to Tristan. I could see his spear gun floating in the air next to him as well.

“I knew you’d come here,” Ida said. “Where else you gonna go? All we had to do was shut everything down and wait.”

Her face hadn’t changed much. The only difference I could see was a semicircular burn mark on her left cheek. I thought about asking how she got it, but decided against it.

“Get him up.”

I felt somebody grab me by the elbows and pull me up to my feet. It was a strange sensation.

“So where’s your friend?” Ida asked leaning in close to my face. It was all I could do not to swipe at the air below her like a magician. Even this close I couldn’t see anything else.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about!” Max said. “It’s just us!”

Ida ignored him. “Search the boat!” she barked.

I heard running footsteps make their way down the dock and the boat bounce in the water as one or more of her invisible soldiers jumped aboard. I heard a click and an electronic hiss and suddenly Ida’s body was visible. She was wearing some sort of matte black suit covered in armour plates. I could see what looked like a knife strapped to one leg and a miniature assault rifle held on by what appeared to be nothing at all on her back. Magnets?

One by one, the others became visible as well, although they were still wearing helmets, so we couldn’t see their faces. I could see six of them, although there could have been more who were still cloaked. There could have been hundreds of them, for all we knew. It’s very discombobulating to be surrounded by invisible people. It’s like being forced to attend a meeting while blindfolded. For all you know, you could be the only one in the room wearing clown shoes. It puts you at a distinct disadvantage.

Three soldiers hopped off the boat and removed their helmets. All three of them were women. All with blonde brush cuts and identical faces. Triplets?