‘Initiate jump.’ And the world went white.
And stayed white. What? It was foggy. It was bloody foggy! God Almighty, does nothing ever go right? This meant the eight fizzers were useless. Ditto a fire – the smoke would be invisible in all this murk. Could the universe never cut me a break? I had a think and then started rummaging through the lockers. There was bound to be something somewhere. There was. I found four or five discs including Sergeant Pepper – an omen if ever I saw one. Now all I had to do was switch from internal to external speakers and even I could do that.
Five minutes later I was ready to rock and roll. Literally. I’d checked the proximity readings and nothing was moving anywhere. But I reckoned it was only just past dawn which gave me all day. At night, if the fog had cleared then I could use the fizzers. Or light a fire. Of course, all this sound and light would attract the attention of everything within a five-mile radius, but that was OK. So long as my guys knew I was here, we could work out how to dodge the wildlife later. The important thing was them knowing I was here. If they were still alive. Eleven days was a lifetime. I threw that thought out of my head and cautiously opened the door. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Everything was strangely silent. Well, I’d soon put a stop to that.
I de-activated the camouflage device because I wanted to be highly visible and muttering, ‘Balls to the wall, guys,’ flipped a switch and a second later The Beatles were asking a startled prehistoric world to picture themselves in a boat on a river. With tangerine trees and marmalade skies. I shut the door and fortified myself with some fruit drink.
There’s a protocol for this sort of thing. Certain information should be broadcast calmly and clearly, giving location, routes, warnings, number and disposition of rescuers – all that sort of thing. I’d done it scores of times in simulations and now, now that it really mattered, now that lives depended on it, I couldn’t remember a bloody word.
Worried that my voice would let me down as badly as my memory, I switched off the music and opened my mouth.
‘Gooooooood morning, St Mary’s! This is your early morning wake-up call.
‘Will all passengers returning to St Mary’s today please immediately make their way to approximately one hundred yards south of Ground Zero, just under the tree line.
‘Please have your boarding cards ready for inspection and your passports open at the photograph page.
‘Please be aware that anyone pissing off the pilot will not be allowed to board and since the pilot’s already both pissed and pissed off, there’s a very good chance some of you won’t make the cut.
‘All passengers for the red-eye to Rushford please make your way to the boarding gate immediately. Hands off cocks and on with socks, boys, you’re going home.’
I shut down the mike, glugged a little more slivovitz, and checked outside again. As the sun rose, the fog lifted. The good news was that I was almost exactly where I wanted to be. The bad news was that it was a scene of total devastation. Trees and branches were snapped off and strewn around at crazy angles. Tangled and twisted debris lay everywhere in piles. Presumably the result of the blast; or maybe stampeding dinosaurs. Across the badly churned up ground, not far away, I saw that old cliché, the smoking crater. This was the site of the big bang, obviously. A pall of greasy smoke still hung over everything, even after all this time. It had to have been one hell of an explosion. Worst of all, reptilian bones and body parts were everywhere. These were the remains of the animals (and maybe people) who hadn’t made it through that night. I’d try and have a closer look later on.
I picked up the big blaster and the heavy-duty pepper spray. Climbing up onto the roof, I fired off my first fizzer. It wobbled a bit but went screaming up into the bright sky where it hung, a big, red, fizzing ball and a beacon for miles around. I had enough for eight hours – one an hour. After that I’d have to light a fire. After that I’d stay until the food ran out. After that – I had no plans.