Danny glanced at his map. “They were the Balearic Islands, part of old Spain.”
“People lived up there?” I asked, incredulous.
He smiled. “They were small areas of land, Pierre, surrounded by sea. Islands.”
I shook my head, struggling to envisage such a configuration of land and sea. On the summit of the nearest peak I made out the square shapes of dwellings, the tumbledown walls of others.
We left the stranded islands behind us.
Three hours later the sun went down to our right in a blaze of crimson. Ahead, indigo twilight formed over Africa, the sky untouched by magnetic storms.
Kat called from the lounge, “Food in ten minutes!”
Danny brought the truck to a halt and we moved back to the lounge. He unfolded one of his maps and indicated our position.
Kat served us plates of fried potatoes and greens — rationing the meat. She was carrying a plate across the lounge for our passenger when Skull emerged from his berth and limped to the table.
“Don’t mind if I join you folks tonight? I was getting lonesome back there.”
I returned to my meal without a word. Edvard indicated a chair and Skull dropped into it, wincing.
Danny stubbed a forefinger at the map.
“This is where we are now, and this is where we’re heading — a hundred kilometres north of what was the coast of Africa, off a place called Tangiers.”
Skull stopped chewing. He looked across at Danny, uneasy. “Let me see.” He leaned forward, peering.
He looked up. “I don’t like the sound of it.”
I took a swallow of water, aware of my heartbeat and the sauna heat of the room.
Danny nodded, considering. “And why not?”
“Like I said before, there’s feral bands down there. We’d best avoid them.”
“There specifically, Skull?” Danny asked. “How come you’re so certain?”
Skull chewed, not looking away from Danny’s stare. “I heard stories, rumours.”
Danny lay down his knife and fork in an odd gesture of civility that belied the anger on his face. “Bullshit. Tell us straight — what the hell do you know?”
Skull’s eyes darted from right to left, taking in Danny and Kat, Edvard and myself. He looked uneasy, a rat cornered.
Edvard said quietly, “You didn’t come from Algiers. So where did you come from?”
The silence stretched. Skull used his tongue to work free a strand of fibre from between his teeth. “Okay, okay. I was travelling with some people. Only they weren’t people. Animals more like, monsters. A dozen or so of them. They had a vehicle, a collection of solar arrays lashed together around a failing engine. Anyway, they were heading west, towards Tangiers.”
Danny nodded. “Why?”
Skull shrugged. “They didn’t say. They invited me to stay awhile. They needed an engineer to help out, they said. So I travelled with them a few days, a week.”
“Why did you leave them?” I asked.
“Because I reckoned that soon, once I’d helped out with the arrays, I would’ve outlived my usefulness and they’d kill me rather than have me using up food and water. They were that kind of people.”
He looked around at us, then bolted down the last of the food, stood with difficulty and hoiked himself from the lounge.
“So what do you think?” Danny said. “He telling the truth?”
Edvard voiced what I was thinking. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could spit. Which isn’t far, these days.”
“We’ve come across gangs before,” I said. “We just have to be careful, that’s all.”
Kat nodded. “I second that.”
“What I’d like to know,” Edvard said, “is what’s so important about Tangiers that this mob was heading for it?”
I was in the cab with Edvard the following day when we came across the hovercraft.
It was late afternoon and we were roughly a hundred kilometres north of the trench, our destination. The sea bottom desert stretched ahead for as far as the eye could see, flat and featureless.
I was nodding off in the heat when Edvard slowed the truck. I sat up and looked across at him. He indicated the horizon with a silent nod.
I scanned. Far ahead, coruscating in the merciless afternoon glare, was the domed shape of a vehicle, entirely covered by an armature of solar arrays. At this distance it looked for all the world like a diamond-encrusted beetle.
It was not moving. I guessed its occupants had seen us and halted, wary.
Edvard brought the truck to a stop and called out to Danny.
Seconds later Danny and Kat squeezed into the cab and crouched between us.
“What do you think?” I said.
“Big,” Danny said under his breath. “Impressive arrays. Of course, they might not all be in working order.” He screwed up his eyes. “I don’t see any evidence of a rig. Wonder what they do for water?”
Kat said, “What should we do?”
“Break out the rifles, Pierre. Ed, take us forward, slowly.”
I slipped from the cab and hurried into the lounge. I unlocked the chest where we kept the rifles and hauled out four. I carried them back to the cab and doled them out as the truck crawled forward.
The occupants of the other vehicle were doing the same, advancing carefully across the desert towards us. We slowed even further, and so did the other truck. We must have resembled two circumspect crabs, unsure whether to mate or fight.
“It’s a hovercraft,” Kat said. Despite her years, she had sharp eyes. Only now, with the vehicle perhaps half a kay from us, did I make out the bulbous skirts below the layered solar arrays. As Danny had said, it was big; perhaps half the size again of our truck.
“Okay,” Danny told Edvard. “Bring us to a stop now.”
The truck halted with a hiss of brakes. Edvard kept the engine ticking over.
The hovercraft stopped too, mirroring our caution.
My heart was thudding. I was sweating even more than usual. I gripped the rifle to my chest. Minutes passed. Nothing moved out there. I imagined the hovercraft’s occupants, wondering like us whether we constituted a threat or an opportunity.
“What now?” I asked Danny. I realised I was whispering.
“We sit tight. Let them make the first move.”
This was the first time I’d seen a working vehicle, other than our own, in more than three years.
“What’s that?” Kat said.
Something was moving on the flank of the vehicle. As we watched, a big hatch hinged open and people climbed out. I counted five individuals, tiny at this distance. They paused in the shadow of the craft, staring across at us.
Minutes passed. They made no move to approach.
Edvard said, “Looks like they’re armed.” He paused. “What do we do?”
Danny licked his lips. “They made the first move. Maybe we should match it.”
“I’ll go out,” I said.
“Not alone.” This was Kat, a hand on my arm.
Danny nodded. “I’ll come with you.” To Edvard and Kat he said, “Keep us covered. If they do anything… fire first and ask questions later, okay?”
Kat nodded and slipped the barrel of her rifle through the custom-made slits in the frame of the windscreen. Edvard crouched next to her.
Danny and I left the cab and hurried through the lounge, grabbing sun hats on the way. Danny cracked the door and we stepped out into the blistering heat. I stopped dead in my tracks, drawing in a deep breath of superheated air, thankful for the shade afforded by my hat. This was the first time in months that I’d ventured from the truck in the full heat of day and I felt suddenly dizzy.
I expected the ground to be like the desert, deep sand making each step an effort. Instead it was hard, baked dry. We paused by the truck, staring across at the five figures standing abreast.
“Okay,” Danny said.