“But,” Bower pleaded, “there must be someone down here who has kept their head about them.”
“Oh, there’s a bunch of scientists banding together to represent humanity, only they don’t. They’re the minority, the level heads. Even they are victims of this madness.”
“I don’t understand,” Jameson said.
“Fear spreads like wildfire. We’re like a herd of buffalo spooked by lightning. The thunder breaks and we charge headlong off the cliff, blindly following whoever’s in front of us. Stampedes trample the weak, they bring out the worst in humanity. There’s only so much rational thought when the supermarket shelves are bare. There’s only so much restraint when the gas pump runs empty. There’s only so long we can hold out against our base survival instincts, then we’re just animals fighting to survive. It’s trample or be trampled.”
Leopold put his hands on his head, pulling at his hair in frustration as he turned to one side, making as though he was going to scream.
Jameson took charge. He seemed to understand what was needed. He barked orders at his soldiers, his gruff voice snapping Leopold back to reality.
“Elvis, take Smithy, Brannigan and Phelps, and see what sense you can get out of any refugees coming up from Lilongwe. We need to know if the UN still holds the airport.
“Bosco, I need that goddamn radio fixed. We need to get in touch with the Navy, get them to send in a couple of helos for evac.”
Elvis strutted over, his chest bare, sweat dripping from his muscular frame.
“They ain’t gonna send shit with RPGs lighting up the sky,” he added with his Memphis swagger. He picked up his backpack and his M4 rifle, handling them as though they were weightless.
Jameson considered his words, replying, “Then we get clear of Ksaungu. If we can, we make for Lilongwe and grab the last stagecoach out of Dodge. If we can’t make Lilongwe, we find ourselves some clear ground and call in the cavalry.”
“And if the radio doesn’t work?” Bosco asked.
“Same as usual. We hump over the mountains,” Jameson said.
“Fucking-A,” Elvis replied. He seemed to relish the prospect of marching for hundreds of miles through the jungle. He was already heading out through the restaurant, three other soldiers following hard behind him.
Bower appreciated Jameson’s resolve. He was breaking them out of a slump, not letting his men lose focus.
“You can join us,” Jameson said, reaching out a hand to Leopold. For a second, the older man hesitated, then he reached out and shook the soldier’s hand.
“I appreciate the gesture, but I’m here for the duration.”
Jameson nodded respectfully.
Leopold looked back at the alien craft. Whatever its path, it wasn’t passing directly overhead, its orbit took it from the south-east to the north-west but its passage was further to the west, somewhere out over Zambia.
“I’ll be all right,” Leopold added, looking at Bower, speaking as though she needed to hear reassuring words. Kowalski walked up grinning as though he were on holiday. Between him and Leopold, Bower knew exactly what was happening.
Leopold seemed to be able to switch off his concerns. It was a facade, she’d seen him coming apart at the seams just moments before, but now he was calm and collected. Like all of them, he’d been in Africa too long. He’d learnt to disconnect himself from reality and deal with the harsh cruelty of war, but that meant suspending the normal feelings of empathy one human being felt for another. It wasn’t calloused, she had to do the same thing whenever she operated, to do any less was to jeopardize someone’s life during surgery. But Leopold had extended this front to dealing with the alien. He buried the raw feelings about his family that just moments before had threatened to boil over.
As savage as a war zone was, it was a known quantity. The prospect of a world torn apart on contact with a vastly superior alien species represented too many unknowns. Unknowns unsettled even the bravest souls. As much as Bower wanted to think of herself as coldly logical, she knew there was a bias at play, skewing her perception as much as his. And Kowalski was too calm, making out as though there was nothing exceptional in the sky at all. Jameson might not show it, but he too must have felt the fractured tension.
At that point in time, Bower could have said, ‘I saw a unicorn dancing in a rainbow this morning,’ and no one would have batted an eyelid. It was shock, not the shock of physical trauma, the shock of sensory overload. Bower had seen this once before, during her first parachute jump.
Standing there in the sweltering heat of the courtyard, her mind flashed back to that tandem jump from ten thousand feet. The air had been surprisingly cold when the door to the small Cessna opened. With stainless steel carabiners locking her jumpsuit to the instructor behind her, the two of them had shuffled awkwardly toward the open door. He told her it would be just like their rehearsal sitting on the tarmac. All she had to do was swing her feet around, out of the open door, and rest them on the wheel, but her mind shut down. She could hear people talking to her, reassuring her she’d be fine, but her body felt numb.
Bower remembered nodding. Those few seconds felt like a dream. The instructor positioned himself behind her, his legs straddling her back. She could remember the countdown from three, which seemed a ridiculously small number to start from. Why not five? Or ten? But she’d known it was a token gesture, something to provide a semblance of sanity when jumping out of a perfectly functional aircraft, and then it came, the sensory overload. The instructor pushed forward, tumbling headlong out of the plane with her hanging from his straps.
Apparently, they had 30 seconds of free-fall before the chute opened, but Bower’s mind had overloaded. There was too much coming at her. All she remembered was sitting on the edge of the plane and then the chute opening above her. At the time, she had marveled at how far away the plane was when the parachute opened, her mind jarred by its apparently instantaneous motion. It was only when she reviewed the video from her helmet cam that she realized she’d blacked out. She’d never lost consciousness, her mind had simply refused to process the events that appeared to lead only to her demise. It wasn’t until the chute opened that her subconscious returned control to her.
And here she was, looking in the eyes of a perfectly rational reporter in a war zone, a veteran of too many conflicts, struggling with the implications of a vast alien spacecraft looming overhead. Leopold smiled, as did Kowalski. Bower smiled too. They were three lunatics trying to find whoever was in charge of the asylum.
Chapter 06: Road to Lilongwe
The next morning, Bower was woken by a sharp rap on the door and a soldier’s voice yelling, “Get your shit packed. We roll in fifteen.” At least, she thought that’s what was said.
For a moment, she had to check whether she was dreaming. It was still dark out, but the sky was lightening. Kowalski was already downstairs, she figured, as his bag was gone and he was nowhere to be seen. Fifteen minutes, Bower felt like screaming at the top of her lungs. What sort of world is it where people expect you to get ready for the day in a mere fifteen minutes?
“Barbarians,” she muttered to herself as she wandered into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. If she was going to be ready to go in fifteen minutes she’d have to hustle. By her somewhat admittedly anecdotal reckoning of time she was downstairs within fifteen minutes with her bag over her shoulder, but she was the only one standing there by the Hummer and the truck.
Bower felt cheated.
She could see one of the soldiers on sentry duty on the second floor, watching the vehicles and the back entrance to the hotel, but this was hardly the quick, early start she’d expected.