I considered what Skull had said about her, and contrasted his words with what I had experienced. How could she be the evil woman that he claimed she was, when she gave herself like that, and parted with such words? It was her farewell which convinced me.
“Thank you,” she had whispered.
I was woken in the early hours by a shout.
I sat up, listening. I heard the sound of a scuffle in the lounge, loud footsteps and something crashing to the floor. I pulled on my clothes and pushed open the door. I made out movement along the narrow corridor to the lounge.
In the dim light I saw half a dozen figures, and someone struggling in their midst.
I hurried along the corridor, regretting having stowed away my rifle in the locker.
I stopped dead when I came to the lounge.
Three individuals had Skull bound and gagged, and another three stood guard, armed with rifles. They faced Danny and Kat, who had just emerged from their room. Seconds later Edvard appeared.
One of the men saw me and gestured with his rifle. “Move. Join the others.”
The point of his weapon tracked me as I rounded the group and joined my friends. From this angle I could see more of Skull. He was on his knees, arms tied behind his back. A gag obscured the lower half of his face, but above it his eyes blazed with the anger of betrayal.
Kat clutched Danny’s arm, and I understood her fear. Too late, I knew we should have listened to Skull.
Calmly, Danny said, “What do you want?”
I looked around the faces of the men. Many I did not recognise from our meeting the day before; so evidently Samara had been lying when she claimed a crew of half a dozen.
One of the men, bigger and meaner looking than the others, nodded down to Skull. “We’ve got what we came for.”
I felt an almost incredulous relief — then checked myself. He must be lying, surely? They could kill us and ransack the truck, taking our water and provisions and laying claim to the vehicle itself.
A scrawny African looked around the lounge with evident disgust. “We’d as soon kill you all.” There were mutters of assent from those around him. “But she doesn’t want that. She said just take the bastard.” He grinned. “It’s your lucky day.”
Skull struggled, tried to say something. Someone cuffed him around the head. Their leader grunted in their language and they kicked open the hatch and left the lounge, dragging Skull with them.
As soon as they were gone, Kat hurried across the room and closed the door. The lock was smashed. “Don’t worry about it, Kat,” Edvard said. “I’ll fix it.”
We sat down around the table in silence. I think each of us felt pretty much the same mix of emotions: relief that we were still alive, a kind of retrospective dread of what might have become of us, and guilt as we thought back to the reassurances we had given Skull.
Eventually, Kat said, “So… what do we do?”
“We leave right now,” Danny said. “Head for the trench as first planned. Lose them. We were lucky, just now. Let’s not push that luck. Yes?”
He looked around at each of us. Edvard and Kat nodded their agreement.
“Pierre?”
I thought of Samara, the ecstasy I had experienced with her just hours ago. At last I nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said.
Danny drove, Kat in the cab beside him. Edvard retired to his bunk in an attempt to catch some sleep. I tried to sleep, but visions of Samara’s body, and the look of terror in Skull’s eyes as he was dragged away, kept me awake.
I moved to the rear of the truck and looked out through the observation screen. The sun was coming up ahead of us, casting our long shadow far behind. As I stared, I made out the glinting, glimmering shape of Samara’s hovercraft, following steadily in our wake.
My stomach lurched with a sensation that was not wholly dread.
We made steady progress during the day, south-west towards the trench. The hovercraft tracked us all the way, a constant presence. I moved to the cab in the early afternoon. Danny glanced at me. “Still there?”
I nodded.
He eased the throttle forward gently and we accelerated. Kat slipped from the passenger seat and moved to the lounge. I sat beside Danny as we crawled over the sea-bed. Ahead, the sun was a blinding white explosion high above the horizon. All around us the sea-bed was barren, utterly lifeless.
Kat returned. “They’re still there, keeping pace.”
“What the hell do they want?” Danny muttered. “I mean, they could have taken everything we had back there.”
“Perhaps Samara was being truthful,” I said. “She wants us to travel together, for safety. And she just wanted Skull back, for her own reasons.” It sounded lame, even as I spoke the words.
Danny shook his head. “I don’t buy it. They want something.”
Two hours later, as the sun sank and ignited the horizon as if it were touch-paper, Danny signalled ahead. I made out, perhaps a kilometre before us, a dark irregularity in the sea-bed, a mere line widening as it ran away from us.
We had arrived at the eastern end of the sea-bottom trench. Danny slowed and veered so that we were travelling parallel to the widening rift.
“I reckon Tangiers is around a hundred kays south-west of here,” he said. “I’m going to stop here… and just pray that the bastards keep on going.”
He eased the truck to a halt beside the lip of the ridge. After the drone of the engine, the silence rang with its own eerie volume. We sat quietly as the truck ticked and cracked around us, and minutes later saw what we were secretly fearing.
To our left, the hovercraft moved into view, slowed and settled a couple of hundred metres from us.
Danny said, almost in a whisper, “I just hope Skull didn’t tell them about the rig.”
The idea filled me with dread. I stared out at the hovercraft’s array-encrusted carapace, expecting at any second a hatch to crack and Samara’s men to come pouring out.
After ten minutes, with no discernible movement from the vehicle, I began to breathe a little easier.
We ate the evening meal in silence: potatoes and spinach. As I ate, I wondered if Kat and Edvard had been unable to bring themselves to prepare Skull’s gift of meat. We hardly exchanged a word, and afterwards I moved to the hatch and peered through the window.
The hovercraft was a huge, domed shape in the darkness. Samara’s crew were partying again. They had lit a fire on the far side of the vehicle, and the flickering crimson illumination danced above the uneven crenellation of the solar-arrays.
I made a decision. I turned to where my friends were still seated. “I’m going over there. I want to talk to Samara, find out why they took Skull.”
Kat looked shocked. “I can’t let you go–”
“I… Samara won’t harm me,” I said. “I’ll try to get a promise from her, that her men won’t attack us.”
Kat made to protest further, but Danny laid a quick hand on hers, and nodded at me silently. Something in his gaze told me he was aware of what had passed between me and Samara the night before.
Edvard said, “If you’re going, then for God’s sake take this.” He moved to the weapon’s locker and withdrew a small pistol.
I hesitated, then nodded and tucked it into the band of my shorts.
I nodded and slipped from the truck. I stared across the dark expanse of sand to the hovercraft, my heart pounding. I was about to set off towards the vehicle when a door hinged open in its flank and a figure stepped out.
She stopped when she saw me, a hand still on the door.
I crossed the cooling sea-bed towards her.
I came within range of her heady scent and my senses reeled. She stroked my cheek. “I hoped you’d be out, Pierre. I was going to invite you over… It’ll be more comfortable here, yes?”