Hill looked down, into the now gaping maw of the massive building. The Ark sat there, looking like a misshapen black egg.
Not a bad metaphor, he thought. An egg to give birth to humanity’s only hope.
If we’re not to go the way of the dinosaur.
Which made him pause. He had to wonder: did anyone raise the idea that maybe they were meant to disappear?
Probably had never even been considered.
It was too late to consider now. The choppers were in position.
The pilot spoke again: “Alpha Two-ready to lower on your go.” Then: “Lowering now.”
And the chain started down, a clanking sound erupting loudly from the rear of the chopper. It was hard to see the Ark now that it was directly under the helicopter, but above the pilot, a monitor showed the progress of the chain and its hook.
Until “Turning five degrees…”
A small twitch to swing the hook into the top of the Ark.
“And- locked,” the pilot said, throwing a switch.
The pilot looked over at Hill.
“Got it, sir.”
“Pull her up,” Hill said.
And together, as if carrying out a carefully practiced ballet move, the two choppers began to rise. After a wobble when the full weight of the Ark hit the two machines-slowing, nearly stopping them-the choppers continued up. The Ark rose out of its birthplace, like dozens of others around the world had already. This was one of the few left to be inserted.
Buried.
Finally, the Ark cleared the top of the building, and the choppers set out on a course to the west. Avoiding towns, highways…
Questions.
Some Arks had been transported inside the belly of big transport carriers. Still others in oversized freight train cars. The goaclass="underline" for nobody to see an Ark.
But here, this late in the game in this part of the West, they would take a course that would give them the least chance of being seen without sacrificing haste.
And for those who did see… what would they say?
Besides-in a few days, everyone would have a lot more to talk about.
The asteroid. The Ark Project concluded-and revealed. Doom on its way. Everyone would know the truth.
They roared over the nearby Colorado hills.
The choppers hovered over the site of the excavation, a giant tapered crater in the middle of the desert. The man-made hole narrowed to a point, a massive shaft where the Ark would be inserted-deep, past the bedrock-before being covered with the piles of rubble and dirt by the waiting tractors.
Would it be enough? Hill wondered. Would there be enough protection in the thousand feet of dirt and sand, the massive chunks of granite and basalt piled on top of the sleeping Ark?
It was anybody’s guess. The only thing the scientists were clear about was that they couldn’t be sure.
“Terra incognita,” one said. Estimates of the level of destruction were given with sheepish looks at handheld computers. The numbers seemed to be changing all the time.
No one fucking knew.
“Lowering the Ark, sir,” the pilot said.
“Carry on,” Hill said. The pilot toggled his radio:
“Lowering Ark station 1138 on my go!” He maneuvered the helicopter, making slight adjustments. “And… go!”
The sound of the winch in the belly of the oversized chopper began groaning, the chains rolling out.
The chains so long that they had been rolled on mammoth wheels, the rolled spools stretching from the floor to the roof of the chopper.
Hill got out of his seat.
He walked back to the winch, where he could look down the opening, watching as the Ark moved smoothly down from the sky-with amazing accuracy-right into the crater that had been made for it.
The Arks were designed so they could burrow in either direction. But in this case, this deep shaft had been made well ahead of time.
The scientists’ preference.
Let’s reduce the chances for a screwup. We’ll place the Ark.
So the next time-the only time-the thing would burrow was over a hundred years from now.
The chain kept playing out, and the Ark slipped deeper into the narrow shaft at the bottom of the crater, sliding into it like a bullet into a chamber. A bullet of humanity being shot into the future.
Could have been me down there, Hill thought for probably the thousandth time.
Except-fate had other plans. And what of Raine-was he the right guy? he wondered.
Raine certainly had nothing tying him to this doomed world. No wife, no kids, his own family long gone. Raine kept quiet about whatever passed as his personal life.
For Raine, it was all about the mission.
And what exactly was that mission?
To survive? Yes, but it was more than that. To emerge and locate some of the caches of supplies-the weapons, tools, and precious seeds that might make food on the planet once more.
And foremost, Raine-and the other soldiers on different Arks-were to keep control and protect the survivors.
In case things didn’t go right.
In case everything is worse than we ever imagined it could be.
Did Raine know that was the real mission? Face the unknown, and-if necessary-lead what’s left of humanity?
The Ark had disappeared.
But the winch kept moving, and the chain clanged its way down into the shaft, link by hefty link. Hill squatted there, peering down, watching its progress.
Until the winch stopped. Then Hill looked up at the machine. There were a few meters of chain left on the spool, but the Ark had hit its final resting place.
Like a strange kind of burial.
He muttered the word to himself. A benediction.
“Amen,” he said.
And then he stood up.
Even as the last meters of chain rolled back onto each chopper’s winch, a team of bulldozers were already at work pushing the mounds of dirt and rock back into the hole, like planting a bulb.
In hours, it would look like any other spot in the desert.
Back in his seat, the pilot looked over at him.
“Want to stay a bit, Captain?”
“No,” Hill said. “I think we’re done here.”
Only after the words passed his lips did he register the irony.
We’re done here.
True fact, he thought. In more ways than one.
“Take us back, Sergeant.”
And together, the choppers banked slightly and flew off into the brilliant blue sky.
SEVEN
General Martin Cross looked over at Colonel James Casey. They stood in the control room for an Ark station.
Except this was unlike any other Ark station.
Even amidst all the secrecy that surrounded the project-and all the madness, the panic, the rioting that surrounded the revelation of the doom heading toward the planet-there were things people had not been told. Even after people learned of the existence and horrifying implications of the Ark Project, there were still secrets.
Like this place.
People, many of them, seemed somehow able to accept the premise of the Arks. Saving those few would guarantee hope for humanity, and deep down-possibly on a genetic level-the biological imperative for the species was kicking in.
But not everyone. One Ark station had been uncovered in northern Oregon and then overrun. It was to be one of the last Arks inserted, and now the place was trashed: computers and monitors smashed, the innards of the Ark ripped out.
Civilians-self-described militia-had shot soldiers and hung their bodies on the fences as if it was their fault. The Ark and its bank of controlling computers had been totally destroyed. Shockingly, even the intended passengers were executed, as if they had done something wrong.
Still, with locations and the selection process secret, the Ark Project remained largely protected.