The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [192]
"Like Danny said," I murmured, not looking at him, "we can look after ourselves."
Skull spat viciously. "Fools, the lot of you!"
I considered what Danny had said last night. Into the following silence, I said, "What are you frightened of, Skull? What are you running away from?"
He looked at me, then grinned. "No ... you're no fool, are you?"
"Well?"
I didn't expect him to tell me, so I was surprised when he said, "People so fucking evil, so purely bad, you cannot imagine, Pierre."
And he left it at that, as if challenging me to enquire further.
I was at the wheel of the truck the following day when we came to the escarpment overlooking what had once been the Mediterranean sea.
Danny said, "Would you look at that?"
Kat and Edvard squeezed into the cab.
The land before us fell away suddenly to form a vast, scooped-out crater bigger than the eye could encompass. The dried-up sea bottom was cracked and fissured, as steely grey as the pictures I'd seen of the lunar landscape. The horizon shimmered, corrugated with heat haze.
I glanced at Danny. He was staring, speechless. I realized that before him was the goal he'd set his heart on months back, when he first had the idea to journey south.
"We'll drive on another four, five hours, then stop for the night," he said. "Over dinner we'll look at the map, plan the next leg of the journey."
Edvard and Kat moved back to the lounge. I was pleased that Skull had not bothered to show himself.
I mopped the sweat from my face. It was sweltering in the cab: the thermometer read almost thirty-five Celsius. Next to that dial was the outside temperature: fifty-five, hot enough to bake a man in less than an hour.
Danny took the wheel and drove along the coast, parallel to the escarpment, looking for a shallow entry down into what had been the sea. Five kilometres further on we came to a section of the coast which shelved gradually, and Danny eased us over the edge, moving at a snail's pace. Baked soil as fine as cement crumbled under the truck's balloon tyres. We lurched and Danny eased back the throttle, slowing our descent.
At last the land flattened out and we accelerated, the headwind blowing the dust behind us. A great plain stretched before us, rilled with expansion cracks and dotted with objects I couldn't at first make out. As we drew nearer I saw that they were the rusted hulks and skeletons of ships, fixed at angles in the sea bottom. We passed into the shadow of one, a great liner red with rust, its panels holed but the sleek lines of its remaining superstructure telling of prouder times. I found it hard to imagine that so great a vessel could actually float on water: it seemed beyond the laws of physics.
Danny pointed. In the lee of the ship's rearing hull I made out a pile of white spars, like bleached wood. We drew closer and I saw that they were bones. Domed orbs contrasted with the geometric precision of femur and tibia: skulls.
I shook my head. "I don't see..."
"My guess is that there was a colony on the ship, ages ago," Danny said. "As they died, one by one, the survivors pitched the bodies over the side."
"You think there's anyone left?" I asked, knowing the answer even before Danny shook his head.
"This was probably thirty years ago, at a guess. Back when the drought was getting bad and nations collapsed. Tribes formed, the rule of law broke down. It was every man for himself. Colonies formed on ships, while the oceans still existed - away from the wars on dry land."
I shook my head, thinking of the horrors that must have overtaken the shipboard colonies in their last, desperate days.
We drove on, heading south.
A couple of hours later, to our right, the sea-bed rose to form a series of pinnacles, five in all. They towered above the seared landscape for hundreds of metres, their needle peaks silhouetted against a sky as