Last Gasp

filled the corridors as Chase and the guards tried to halt or at least delay the inexorable progress of the eighteen-inch-high white tide.

Retreating before it, Chase followed the others up to Level 1. In the operations room he came upon the duty officer, holding his post when the rest had fled.

'Where are they?'

'Level Two.'

'What in God's name are they after?'

'Food.'

'Us?'

'Yes.'

'Then we abandon?'

'Unless you can come up with the brain wave of the century in the next two minutes. Are the charges primed?'

'They prime automatically during an alert.'

'Is everybody out?'

The duty officer looked at him, gray in the face. 'Do you expect me to check?'

'All right. Set the timer and let's go.'

The duty officer lifted the circular stainless-steel plate to reveal a red stirrup handle. Quickly he unscrewed two chromium-plated bolts, turned the stirrup through 180 degrees, and pressed it fully down until it locked. A timing device whirred and began to tick away the seconds. There were ninety of them before the Tomb erupted.

After ten the operations room was empty.

28

Sixty feet above the jungle the black gunship banked left and aligned on the Strip, taking its bearings from the crumbling overgrown tower with the ornate lettering just visible through dense foliage and twining mossy creepers: The Dunes.

Powered by chemical fuel and liquid oxygen, the gunship clattered over the swampy hollow formed by the convergence of roads and side streets between Flamingo Road and Sahara Avenue. Circus-Circus went by on the left, smothered in greenery; directly ahead was Las

Vegas Boulevard South in the downtown casino section. The only gambling that took place now had to do with survival. Odds were laid on adaptation versus extinction: the chance of eating something smaller against the risk of being eaten by something bigger.

Encroaching steadily northward, the tropical belt, fed by heat and the abundance of carbon dioxide, had taken possession of a wide swathe of desert. Farther south the swampland was too hot and stagnant even for amphibians. Deep down in the sludge new formations of molecules simmered and thrived, stirred into activity by the bombardment of radiation, creating forms of life that had yet to evolve and emerge into the light. Further south still lay the bubbling toxic ocean, a seething caldron of chemical soup.

Safe behind tinted thermo plastic, breathing cool oxygen, the pilot eased back on the control column and ascended to two hundred feet. The steel-and-concrete blocks, the broken windows, and tilting neon signs merged and were lost in the close-packed growth, as effectively hidden as the remains of a long-lost civilization. Only the reflected gleam of the sun, picking out the shallow muddy strip like the trail of a slug with an unerring sense of direction, gave any hint of man's erstwhile intrusion.

Dan shaded his eyes and watched the speck of the gunship disappear into the hazy distance. His face and neck were caked with yellow cream. He slipped the dark goggles into place and moved slowly, measuring each breath, along the squelchy bank to where the others were stretched out under the giant ferns.

He couldn't help remembering Miami Beach 2008. In thirteen years he hadn't progressed very far--as far as Las Vegas with the dismal prospect of not seeing his thirtieth birthday. At least here the air was just about breathable--2 or 3 percent lower and they would have been floundering about like beached fish.

He stepped over something squirming in the mud and gained the higher, firmer ground. Once out of the direct sunlight he stripped off his goggles and dropped down, chest heaving, by his father's side. Chase tried to smile through his yellow mask. He was nearing sixty and Dan was afraid that his respiratory system would no longer be able to cope with the thin atmosphere. During the last six days people younger than he had collapsed, frothing, blue-lipped. He tore his mind away from the stark possibility.

'Couldn't you make out any markings?' Ruth asked.

'There weren't any. But it was armed. Rockets. Guns.'

'Against whom?' Chase said angrily. His eyeballs were crazed with broken blood vessels. 'Why kill when we're dying anyway?' He shook his head, dumbfounded.

'The mutes aren't dying, they're flourishing,' Jo said. Her fine-spun hair spilled out from underneath her forage cap. 'And those things back in the Tomb'--her throat muscles worked--'those white grubs or whatever they were. The conditions seem to suit them.'

'No, they suit the conditions,' Chase said. 'Nature always fills a niche.'

Large brown opaque bubbles formed in the swampy hollow, burst with an explosive farting sound, and belched yellowy-brown steam that drifted slowly through the hot turgid air. It smelled of sulfur and methane laced with various oxides and nitrites. Back to the Precambrian, Chase thought with a sense of almost macabre relish. Theo had seen it coming thirty years ago. Perhaps even then it had been too late to change anything: The balance was already upset. Factors beyond anyone's control had conspired to bring the earth to its knees and now the count had reached nine, the referee's hand was raised, and there wasn't going to be a bell to save it.

Or them. There was nowhere to go from here.

After evacuating the Tomb they had made for Interstate 15, intending to travel north, but the highway was impassable. From the experience of the reconnaissance parties they knew it was too dangerous to cross the border into Nevada, and all the evidence indicated that the tribal fighting among the prims, mutes, and other groups had spread across northern Utah, which meant the route was closed to them. So the raggle-taggle column had turned south, splintering into smaller groups and losing people on the way as they encountered the damp fingers of swampland reaching out from Lake Mead.

Other travelers on the road had told them of conditions elsewhere. Arizona was a jungle as dense and impenetrable as any in darkest Africa. In California huge concentration camps covered half the state. Most of the travelers were hoping to find a way north, prepared to risk the tribal wars in getting to Idaho and Oregon. The jungle, so it was said, was advancing at the rate of four miles every month, but surely, surely, it had to stop somewhere; it had to, hadn't it?

'Is it still painful?' Ruth asked, examining Jo's leg. The wound in her thigh was superficial, but she was afraid that with the humidity and insects it might turn gangrenous.

'Not anymore. It's kind of numb. Doesn't bother me.'

Ruth tightened her lips. 'Well, that's good,' she said, taking a fresh dressing from the medical pack. 'I'll give you a shot to stop the infection spreading. Not much point in telling you to rest it, I guess. Not until we find somewhere safe.' She glanced at Chase, her eyes clouded.

Nick and two other men appeared through the greenish gloom cast by the tall rubbery plants and swaying ferns. On the far side of the clearing what at first sight was a sheer ro.ck face was in fact the wall of a ten-story motel. Thick green lichen had gained a purchase in the pitted concrete, partly obscuring a signboard that read in faded Day-Glow: video gambling in every room plus 9-channel 3-d porno¹.

'Did you hear it?' Nick squatted down, the breath rasping in his throat. 'I think it was a chopper.'

'We saw it,' Dan nodded. 'It came in very low and flew straight down the river.'

Nick's eyes brightened. 'Did they see you? Any signal?'

'We kept out of sight.'

'You . . .' Nick stared at Dan, then looked slowly around at the others. 'What the hell for? Don't you know it means there's some kind of civilization around here--somewhere!' His shoulders sagged.

'That was a gunship with enough firepower to wipe out a city,' Chase said. 'I want to know who they are and what they're doing here. It's too late to ask questions when you've been napalmed--'

'You're talking as if we had a choice. Look around, Gav, open your eyes for Christ's