LEFT ALONE SO LONG WE GOT SCARED YOU MIGHT HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT US. WE'RE COLD AND HUNGRY AND ARE WONDERING WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH THE CREW AND COMMANDER COOMBS… AND ALSO MY FATHER, FRED COWPER. HE WAS VERY SICK WHEN I SAW HIM LAST. WE HAVE WALKED A LONG WAY AND ARE VERY, VERY TIRED. PLEASE LET US IN. PLEASE HELP.'
Albemarle looked at me approvingly. 'Well, if that don't do it, nothing will.'
We waited a long time, but there was no sign of activity. They directed me to try again, and keep trying every few minutes, but halfway through my second plea, the megaphone died.
'Batteries maybe,' Albemarle said after examining the thing. 'Or maybe the cold. We can try to warm it up a little and see.'
DeLuca erupted. 'Fuck that. I'd like to get noticed before my toes turn black and fall off, if it's okay with you. They obviously can't hear that thing. What I propose to do is scale the wall and have a look-see, maybe signal them by flashlight. Shoulda done that in the first place.' Without waiting for approval, he climbed the roadside embankment and plunged into deep snow, making for the barrier.
Albemarle watched him for a minute, then shrugged, and said to us, 'What are you waitin' for? You heard the man.' We all followed behind.
It was hard going. The snow was tartlike, its icy crust just barely too weak to support a person's full weight, so that every step ended in a plunge and a battle to break free. I kept losing my boots. In the time it took us to slog over, Mr. DeLuca was halfway to the top, working his way up a heap of rubble at the base of the wall. The bottom was steep, imprinted with a bulldozer's curved blade, but it had collapsed in places, and wind-blown snow had formed deep drifts that rose high up the sides. He was using one of these as an awkward ramp.
'Could stand to have… some snowshoes,' he grunted.
'You're okay,' said Albemarle from below. 'You're almost there.' He was heftier and less agile than DeLuca, and was treading the snow as if stomping grapes, trying to beat down a path. Suddenly he struck something underfoot and absently aimed his flashlight there. He stopped moving.
'What?' said Hector.
Albemarle slowly bent down and prized a large crooked object from the snow, holding it before the light.
It was a human arm gripping a.45 automatic pistol.
Rock-solid and perfectly preserved in its stiff glove and fur-lined sleeve, it looked like a limb from a mannequin. As we approached in sickly wonderment, Albemarle handed off the disturbing relic to his stepson and hunkered back down in the glowing scrape, his underlit face ghoulish as a grave robber's. Hector took the arm as a matter of pure reflex, then didn't know what to do with it.
The snow was full of bodies… or rather parts of bodies, tangled and bound together in the ice like freezer leftovers. Crablike hands and hairy heads and torsos and boot soles and pink-boned stumps all glistened underfoot. Everywhere we stepped, there was more. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at how calm we all were, considering how much we'd been through already.
'Gus!' Albemarle called, holding a tiny silver leaf pin up to the light. 'Get down here!'
DeLuca had reached the top and was oblivious to what was happening with us-something on the far side of the berm had his complete attention. 'Sweet Jesus,' he said in awe.
'Gus! Gus, you gotta see this!'
Shaking his head, Deluca said, 'No, Ed, you gotta see this.'
'There's a bunch of dead airmen down here.'
'What?'
'A bunch of dead men under the snow!' He took the arm back from Hector and waved it in the air. 'Look!'
DeLuca switched on his flashlight and shined it down. At that second there was a loud ZAP! and the flashlight tumbled down the slope, its bulb gone red. Other, larger objects were also tumbling, but DeLuca himself was nowhere to be seen. I blinked, not sure what had just happened.
Albemarle flicked his beam up the wall, then immediately turned it off, and shouted, 'Everyone back! Back the way we came, fast! Run!' We all saw what he had seen, what was left of Mr. DeLuca, and we did not hesitate.
Running in that deep snow was exactly the same as trying to run in a dream. You lunge forward as hard as you can, but your feet have no purchase and a maddening, dull force holds you back. It seems as if you are actually going slower than you would by walking. Our short sprint back to the road was such a Sisyphean ordeal, and just as we were reaching its hard-frozen shoulder, we realized it was no use anyway. The fence flew open and a blue school bus rolled out, wheezing to a stop before our frozen noses. They had us.
'Everyone get behind me,' Albemarle said, out of breath.
The door opened on a jolly Inuit waving us in. He was wearing a top hat. There was no one else on board.
'What the fuck, man?' wailed Shawn. 'Why'd you assholes have to kill him? You didn't have to kill him!' The driver's big bronze face was cheerily befuddled, uncomprehending. He seemed to have no idea what was going on.
Albemarle raggedly told us to get on the bus, and what else was there to do? We trooped in like a work gang fresh from the gulag, collapsing into the front rows. I think we were more resigned than horrified. Personally I was grateful for the ride, even if we were just going to be returned to our doomed ghetto. And as the bus began to move, it did take us back the way we had come… for a moment. Then the driver found a wide enough spot in the road to turn around. Shortly, we returned to the gate and passed through with impunity, not that we cared.
In a low, cracked voice, Jake sang, 'Eighty-eight bottles of beer on the wall…' Then trailed off.
Out the windows we could see what Gus DeLuca had seen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was an airplane city, a City of the Planes, so crowded it was more rookery than airport, with hundreds of jumbo and lesser jets making up a dense belt-a great thorny briar of silver fins and fuselages-surrounding a many-lobed dome complex of such incredible size that at first glance I thought it was a glacier.
'Mr. Albemarle,' I said as we hurtled toward it, 'have you ever seen anything like this?'
He spoke as if roused from a trance. 'No. No… I don't know what this is. Whatever it is, it's not what's supposed to be here. It's not like any kind of air base I've ever seen. I don't know what the hell it is.'
'Mr. Cowper said it would be a ghost town.'
'Well… it's a boomtown now.'
'Looks like an aviation junkyard,' said Julian. 'You know, a graveyard, like where elephants go to die.'
'Graveyard my ass,' said Cole. 'These motherfuckers are livin' large.'
He was right-as tangled up as they appeared, all the jets were draped like racehorses, warm and well cared for. We rolled down a boulevard surrounded by pristine aircraft of every type, from hulking 747s to sleek baby Gulfstreams, each one a giant aluminum flower in a precise arrangement. Far from being abandoned to the elements, these aircraft were occupied. Like RVs in a trailer park, they were hooked up to utilities, their bright oval windows aglow with toasty domesticity. Watching us pass from those windows were carefree men in bathrobes!
'Goddamn Happy Acres,' snarled Albemarle.
Amid the cozy fleet was a network of tent workshops and support equipment that was a village unto itself, populated by the breed of men who still had to labor in the cold. This was the essence of civilization, the haves and the have-nots, and it made me realize I'd been such a fool. Such a stupid little girl-what had I been thinking? That we had inherited the world? That we could demand some kind of justice? It was funny, really, my pathetic disappointment at having to accept a smaller role in the scheme of things. I had never seen it coming. Stupid me.
Alongside the trucks and tractors I could see a number of dogsleds, and for some reason this was
