Strange to think only a few short years had passed since Queensland’s summer of sorrow, when a series of devastating floods were capped off by a category five cyclone. A few months later the disaster virus had spread across the Pacific when an earthquake crippled Christchurch and another massive quake unleashed a devastating tsunami in Japan.
Who could have known these were but a curtain raiser, a ripple ahead of the hellish waves to come. Dual sucker punches, the twisting of the knife. Because one event had immediately followed another most people assumed at first they were connected. A foolish misjudgement that now seemed so obvious in hindsight. A solar coronal mass ejection, no matter how devastating to global infrastructure, could never on its own have triggered the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
The Flood had been a deliberate act. A terrifying act of terrorism, or a state-sanctioned act of global genocide for which China and America were blaming each other. In a world crippled by the sudden five-metre rise in sea levels, in which human beings were suddenly an endangered species, there was actually talk of war. As if a million cubic kilometres of ice plunging into the Southern Ocean with the force of 100 atomic bombs wasn’t destruction enough.
Below the chopper, the pulse of the ocean was steady. It was low tide, which revealed more of the carnage. Waves gently broke against the shells of structures that lined what had once been the beachfront. The old roads and footpaths were already buried in sand as if the ocean was trying to wipe away the mess.
After the tsunami, the twisted detritus of civilisation left swirling in the surging tide had taken a week to come to rest. It had killed anything in its path still clinging to life. Most of the Gold Coast’s beachfront flora and fauna was torn up, washed away, or ripped to shreds. All that was left were patches of deadened pine trees still doggedly rooted to ground the ocean had claimed and were still visible above the waterline. From Main Beach to Coolangatta, hundreds of tree stumps pointed bleakly skyward like monuments to what had forever been taken away.
The salt water had already killed most of them. But their branches had become a haven for bewildered sea birds, spiders, snakes and countless other creatures.
As if in homage to the pines, great islands of torn concrete and twisted metal likewise reached out for the heavens. The city had become one huge demolition site, a playground for the rich and famous with its guts ripped open, glamourous facades washed away like last night’s cheap make-up. Many of the towers had collapsed with the impact of the first wave. However, dotted among their shattered skeletons, some had remained intact. It was inside these that Luckman and Bell had discovered scores of survivors – with their memories intact.
After the Flood, most countries across the world imposed martial law. It was quickly deemed essential when the awful truth about so many of the survivors became apparent.
Luckman knew their work here was near its end. Their two most recent rescues had been people who had slipped into madness. They weren’t Blanks – they had simply become consumed by the horror, slipping into delusion in a desperate bid to cling to a past that no longer existed. In a town where image was once everything, the sudden submersion of their world simply left them cut adrift from sanity’s safe mooring.
The chopper banked over Broadbeach to retrace its path. Once more he scanned the deserted ruins for signs of life. Bell threaded the chopper slowly along the line of buildings. From Broadbeach to Surfers Paradise, the towers were packed together like Ionic columns. With so many now toppled over, Luckman found himself likening what remained to the ruins of ancient Greece. He examined balconies, windows, probed the shadows for anything alive.
There. Eight floors down from the roof. A face.
“Focal.”
Bell turned to him and nodded. “Fuck all is about right.”
Luckman grinned. “No, I said ‘focal’. The Focal building.”
“Nasty storm coming our way, Captain.”
Luckman smiled apologetically. “I saw him again.”
Bell sighed but said nothing. Luckman didn’t blame him. Whatever this was – spirit man, vision, hallucination – had led Luckman to almost 30 survivors in the past two weeks. But the supernatural was simply not on Eddie Bell’s radar.
“That building’s red listed,” Bell pointed out.
“Ahh, man up will you?” Luckman chided.
“You’ve been lucky so far,” the pilot warned. “Your luck’s gonna start running out soon. And I’m not waiting around ’til that storm hits. I’m almost out of fuel.”
Luckman shrugged. He scanned their status list for notes on the Focal building. It was condemned. The engineers expected it to topple any day.
“Just get me on the roof and I’ll see what I can see.”
The chopper closed to within a metre of the rooftop.
“Billy, don’t be a hero,” said Bell. “Come back to me.”
It was their ritual. Quoting maudlin pop lyrics somehow helped to keep grim reality at arm’s length.
“The road is long, with many a winding turn,” Luckman replied.
“Yeah, well, keep your pretty head low,” Bell muttered.
Luckman gave his pilot a sage nod and removed his headphones. He opened the cockpit door, threw out his ropes and leapt onto the roof. The chopper rose and circled for a moment before heading north-west towards Amberley Air Base.
As the sound of the Black Hawk’s twin engines faded, Luckman was left in a silence punctuated only by the wind. It blew hard at this altitude, all but obliterating the gentle thrum of the ocean far below. To the south-west, storm clouds were rolling in quickly. Gazing out to sea, he could almost imagine the world was as it used to be.
Billy, don’t be a hero…
He was going to have that lousy song in his head all night.
Three
At precisely 5.10am, two black Great Wall SUVs departed the confines of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China and began heading north toward Commonwealth Avenue.
The roads were devoid of traffic, making any covert attempt at tailing the vehicles a waste of time. Both cars crossed Lake Burley Griffin, seemingly en route to Parliament House, but then parted company, one veering east the other west along Parkes Way.
Tracking them both via satellite simultaneously would prove challenging, although it must be assumed such a task remained within America’s operational capacity given that movement of any nature by Chinese officials was unusual and therefore immediately suspicious.
This was precisely what the Defence Attaché was relying upon as his battered white Toyota Corolla left the embassy gates five minutes later. Yang Hongbo was not behind the wheel. He was instead huddled in the backseat under a blanket, admittedly feeling somewhat foolish, though happy to accept the humiliation if it meant beating the Americans at their own game.
The Corolla likewise headed north over the bridge and turned west along Parkes Way, but slowed down once safely inside the traffic tunnel. Yang leapt out from under the blanket and opened the rear door of the car before his startled driver (a female staffer whose name escaped him) had time to stop.
“Keep moving,” he hissed at her. “Return to me in 10 minutes.”
She looked at him in confusion.
“On the other side,” he snapped.
She nodded and nervously hit the accelerator. Yang barely had a chance to shut the car door. She was out of her competence zone, but would reveal nothing if questioned for the simple reason that she didn’t know anything and had no direct connection with his office.