“Good morning, Emily,” MacAlister greeted her when he saw her coming through the door. His eyes were bloodshot, dark rings of puffy flesh below them. He did not seem his normal nonchalant self. Understandable, after all, he had lost one of his men on his watch, and she was sure he was taking it very personally.
“Hi,” she replied. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
MacAlister shook his head. “We’re going to push into the area where we think Collins was taken. The captain and his group are going to reconnoiter the buildings on our side of the fence. Probably best if you stay here in camp.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, going out there?”
“We have a missing man. We have to at least try and bring his body back… assuming we can find it.”
“Okay, let’s get a move on,” the captain said, leading the way through the door. “Team A with me. Team B, fall in behind Sergeant MacAlister.”
Emily followed MacAlister and his men as far as the gate on the west side of the camp. The fog was already burning off, she noted, as she stopped at the security-fence line, lacing her fingers through the links of the chain.
MacAlister took his men and moved off around the perimeter, heading in the direction of where they had seen the wave of lights disappear the previous night. Overnight, the red jungle had taken on a new menacing overtone. Not that it had changed in any way, of course, it was just that now they all knew something lurked in that thick mess of leaves and vines, roots and trunks. Something new to this planet.
MacAlister and his team edged their way cautiously through the thick fronds and plants of the jungle’s perimeter just beyond the security fence, using the barrels of their automatic rifles to push back the leaves. In seconds they had disappeared from her view, with only the occasional movement of one of the tall fronds to mark where they were heading.
Emily felt a pang of worry stab at her gut. What if that thing was waiting for them in there? What if it knew they were coming? She was surprised at just how concerned she was for the Scotsman. She had not realized until now how attached she had grown to him. Her affection for the man was all the more surprising considering the circumstances of their predicament. With the human race on the brink of extinction, affairs of the heart were still as distracting as they had ever been. Life had been so much easier before the end of the world, she decided.
Okay, this is getting ridiculous, she thought. What am I going to do? Stand here all day pining? No, there had to be something she could turn her hands to while they were out looking for signs of their fallen comrade. She needed to keep occupied, to keep moving. Idle hands are the devil’s tools and all that.
Reluctantly, she released her hold on the fence and headed back to Building One.
Emily occupied her mind by helping the remaining sailors chop through the plants still covering the space between Building One and the surrounding offices. They had managed to remove a good-size swath of the weeds between them when there was a yell from the sentry stationed at the main gate.
Emily looked up and saw MacAlister and his men stepping back into the base. She let out a long sigh of relief at sight of him and then mentally kicked herself for allowing him to get under her skin so damn easily. Sneaky bastard, she thought. She had always been a sucker for a man in a uniform, and when you threw in the accent… well, she guessed she could be forgiven for caring.
Emily dropped her machete and began walking over to meet them.
“No sign of Collins,” MacAlister was telling Captain Constantine as she drew closer to them. “The vegetation is so dense in there it might just as well be the jungles of Borneo. We could have walked right by him and never known it.”
“We are going to need to push that forest back if we want to maintain any kind of security around the perimeter,” the captain said, his hand methodically stroking his beard as he spoke. “Suggestions?”
“It’s going to take forever to chop that stuff down, it’s just far too dense and I wouldn’t be able to guarantee anyone’s safety while they were beyond the fence. Hell, I can’t even guarantee their safety this side of the wire, but I don’t see we have much in the way of a choice. I’ll start organizing teams once we’re done with clearing inside the perimeter.”
“Why don’t we just burn it?” Emily suggested.
“If we had access to flamethrowers, or some napalm even, that might work but we don’t carry anything like that onboard the sub,” said MacAlister.
“But there’s a fuel depot on the other side of the compound,” said Emily, pointing to the aboveground fuel tank she had recognized when they’d first arrived. “Couldn’t we just siphon it off and burn the vegetation line back?”
Both men looked in the direction she was pointing.
“It’s risky,” said the captain. “Keeping it under control is going to be difficult. All it’s going to take is a stray ember on one of these roofs and we could have a major problem on our hand. And fuel is going to be at a premium from this point onward, who knows if we’ll find more anytime soon.”
“If we put bodies on every roof we should be able to cover any risk of fire, so long as we choose the right time,” Emily explained. “And there’s a pretty consistent breeze coming in off the ocean that should push the fire and smoke away from us… probably.”
MacAlister and the captain stared wordlessly at each other as they silently thought over Emily’s suggestion.
“What do you think?” Constantine asked MacAlister.
“It’d have the added advantage of potentially driving back anything…” MacAlister paused as he searched for the right word “…undesirable that’s shacked up in there too, skipper. It could certainly take care of two problems.
“The vegetation isn’t dry,” he continued, “so that should go a long way to helping keep the chance of the fire spreading down to a manageable level. If we concentrate on small areas at a time, and have a crew ready to catch it before it spreads, we should be okay.” He shrugged and nodded, “Yeah. I think it could work.”
Captain Constantine considered the options. His hand was stroking his beard again in what had become an obvious tell of concentration to Emily.
“Alright, I’m convinced. Let’s give it a shot, shall we?”
“Good thinking, Emily,” said MacAlister as they walked across the newly cleared area of the camp. He smiled and gave her elbow a light squeeze.
Emily felt herself flush bright red. “Goddamn it,” she muttered under her breath, but enjoyed the warm tingle she felt anyway.
Two crews, most of them bare-chested and soaked in sweat by what had become an afternoon that hit the high seventies, cut a six-foot-deep firebreak around the edge of the west fence. One crew chopped away at the stubborn trunks and branches, another made sure the debris was moved clear of the slowly forming firebreak.
Emily helped cart off the debris and stacked it in piles along the beach. Rhiannon busied herself bringing water to the men.
The gap between the fence and the new edge of the jungle would give them enough space to keep the fire from leaping to any of the closer buildings. Captain Constantine ordered sailors onto each roof with at least two handheld fire extinguishers apiece that they collected from the buildings. Two “floating” pairs of sailors would be on standby, ready to mop up any stray fires that might flare-up around the camp.
If the worst happened, and the fire managed to get a toehold within the camp, they were all under orders to retreat to the beach and the safety of the sea.