Just over the border from Mexico, early morning shoppers in Tucson, Yuma and San Diego see long black fingers crawling up from the horizon to the south. The fingers reach out for the zenith. And as the shoppers stop to watch, the blue-white fireball too rises over the horizon like a bloated sun, and with it comes the heat. Everything combustible along the line of sight burns; and all living things along the line of sight crisp and shrivel.
And in Wallis’s office, apocalypse stirs.
“Sir, we have a system interrupt on OTH,” says the major. “We’re losing Chesapeake and Rockbank.”
“Roger.”
“Hey Colonel, I’m not getting a signal from the DSPs.” This from Lieutenant Winton, the solitary woman on the team.
“Sir, Ace has just bombed out.”
“What the…?” Wallis says as the images in front of him dissolve once again into snow.
“Sir. We’ve lost Alaska, Thule and Fylingdales. Colonel… we’ve lost all coverage on the Northern Approaches.” Wallis goes cold; he feels as if a coffin lid has suddenly opened.
“Okay, soldier, keep calm. Get the general down here. Major, would you get me Offutt? Pino, interrogate REX, get a decision tree on screen Five.” Wallis issues the orders in a level voice.
“Sir, are we under attack?” The nervous question comes from Fanciulli, a tough, grey-haired sergeant to Wallis’s right.
“Pino, where are the warheads?”
“Yeah but we got some sort of EMP…”
“Nuts; all we got is cable trouble.”
“Negative, sir.” It is Lieutenant Winton again, her small round face unusually pale. “We have tropospheric forward scattering modes up top, and we’ve lost on VHF. There’s some sort of massive ionospheric disturbance.”
“Sunspots?”
“No way, sir.”
“Colonel we have reduced bandwidth on all—”
An alarm cuts into the chamber and a light flashes red. Somebody wails. And Pino, his face wax-like, mutters a string of profanities as he types rapidly on a keyboard.
“Colonel, Screen Three.”
Covering the walls of the office are enormous screens. Mostly these show arcane lists of data — coded refuelling points, the tracks of satellites in orbit, numbers of aircraft aloft — but one of them is instantly comprehensible. It is a map of the USA. And on the map, red lights are beginning to wink.
“The General, sir.” Wallis looks up at the glass-fronted observation room. General Cannon has appeared, flanked by a civilian and a second generaclass="underline" Hooper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Wallis snatches up a telephone, but Cannon, impassive as an Indian chief, ignores the urgent ringing.
One of the screens has changed. There is a blurred, jerky picture. Somebody is pointing a camera from an airplane cockpit. They are flying high over a city and the plane is tilted so that the camera can look down. There are skyscrapers, and long straight roads with cars, and parks. The camera pans and there is an ocean wave. It is almost level with the aircraft, and it covers half the city. Here and there, on the lower slopes of the wave, the tops of the skyscrapers protrude, some of them already slowly tilting over. Wallis stares in utter disbelief. The wave towers high over the remaining buildings; it looks frozen, but white specks are falling off the top and tiny cars are dotted here and there in the broad rising sheet of water. Someone shouts, in a voice edging on panic, That’s San Diego! Wallis kills the alarm.
The camera points backwards. It is unsteady, like an amateur movie. The ocean stretches into the distance and the wave with it. There is a long smoky contrail and a glimpse of wing, and racing up from behind is a churning black wall as tall as the sky, and then the camera shakes and there is a helmet in close-up, and inside a young black face, eyes staring in fright, is shouting silently, and then the screen goes blank.
The major gabbles into the phone. Fanciulli, tears streaming down his cheeks, points to one of the big screens. New red lights are winking on virtually every second. Winton is saying Sir, why doesn’t the General answer. Then:
“Offutt, sir.” Wallis snatches up another telephone, the blue one. But already new messages are flashing; lists of names are tumbling down the screens faster than they can be read. Wallis, his ear still to the telephone, stares at the map of the USA. The red lights, each one a Strategic Air Command base scattered to the winds, have formed a broad front, slowly creeping up from the south.
The decision tree is up. REX is requesting more data.
A voice on the telephone. It speaks in harsh, staccato tones. Wallis forces his attention from the advancing wave and listens. He replies, hearing in astonishment that his own voice is shaking and frightened: “Sir, I agree a threat assessment conference… no sir, we lack dual phenomenology… negative, negative… not if we go by the book… we have no evidence of hostile warheads or hostile intent… agreed… agreed… sir, how the fuck would I know? Some sort of blast coming from Mexico… I urgently advise we do not get Eagle into Kneecap… repeat do not get the Chief aloft… no sir, keep the B-2s on the tarmac, their wings would just tear off… sir?”
The line has gone dead.
There is a stench of fresh vomit. Wallis feels a tug on his sleeve. The major has apparently lost the power of speech; he is staring ahead, as if looking at his own death. Wallis follows the young man’s line of vision. The wave of red lights is now passing in a long arc from California through Kansas to Virginia. Its progress is slow but steady over the map. It has almost reached the Rock.
“Sir, we’re buttoned up. Hatches closed and filtration on. Sir?”
But Wallis is looking helplessly up at the observation room. The civilian and the generals look stonily down.
Then it reaches them.
Abduction
Something.
The young man opened his eyes with a start, some dream fading from memory, and stared into the dark. Unaccountably, his heart was thumping in his chest.
At first he could make out only the flap-flap of the canvas inches from his head, and the Whee! of the wind around the guy ropes. And then it came again, a distant roar, deep and powerful, coming and going over the noises of the storm. Puzzled, he strained his ears.
Then it dawned.
Avalanche!
He shot out of his sleeping bag and tugged frantically at the rope lacing up the front of the hurricane tent. The knot was an impenetrable tangle and the noise was growing in intensity. Desperately he scrabbled in the dark for a bread-knife, found it, cut the rope, hauled back the canvas and pitched head-first into the dark night.
The blizzard hit him with a force which made him gasp.
For a panicky moment he thought to run into the dark but then remembered where he was: on a mountain ridge next to a precipitous drop. And the roar was coming from the gully below.
He dived back to the tent, and felt for the paraffin lamp and a box of matches. The wind blew the match out; and the next and the next. The fourth match worked, and he hooked the glowing lamp up to an aluminium pole. He looked around. Snowflakes like luminous insects were hurtling from the void into a circle of light about ten yards in radius around the tent; he could just make out the edge of the ridge, about twenty yards away.
A cone of bluish-white light rose out of the gully, passing left to right before disappearing from the man’s line of vision.