DRIVE

©2005 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)

Daria and associated characters are ©2005 MTV Networks

Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com

Synopsis: Investigative show hosts Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane take their “Good Mornings with Daria and Jane Show” to a Pacific island that houses a secret government research base—and are caught up in a nightmare that leads them farther from home than they can imagine in this near-future science-fiction adventure based on MTV’s Daria.

Author’s Notes and Acknowledgements: To avoid giving away the plot at the start, these sections are at the end of the tale. This tale originally appeared in serialized form on PPMB and SFMB, from February to March 2005.

*

Chapter One

23:41:00 Universal Time

(11:41 A.M. Baker Island Time)

Monday, 19 July, A.D. 2027

And this was really the way that my whole road experience began, and the things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell.

—Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Here it is, world: the Pentagon’s secret money pit!” Jane Lane cried, raising her voice over the roar of the surf and the screech of seabirds. The wind snapped at her bright blue blouse as she stepped away from the white-winged SeaShadow resting on the island’s beach. In a conversational tone she added, “So, Daria, should we get something to eat first or check our luggage at the front desk?”

“We’re tourists,” said Daria Morgendorffer, playing along. “Let’s take pictures.” Clad in a fluorescent orange top, white shorts, and brown hiking boots, the under-tall Daria had been the first one out of the tiny plane moments earlier, her nerves shot from the long flight from Hawaii and an unexpectedly rough sea landing. Despite the crisp breeze, she was already sweating rivers under the scorching equatorial sun. Pulling her long brown hair back in a ponytail had helped only a little. The amber goggles (sized to fit over her archaic glasses) cut most of the glare so she could scan the broad, sandy beach before her without squinting or suffering ultraviolet-B retinal damage. Everywhere she looked were white and gray seabirds, hundreds of them, crowding the beach and the sandy hill toward the low plateau above. She turned around, looking to the west, and saw wave after wave approaching on a dark blue ocean, the clouded horizon beyond.

“Welcome to Baker Island, U.S.A.,” said Daria, finishing her full-circle inspection of their surroundings with a glance at their trusty SeaShadow. “I trust our satellite uplink is intact and everyone is receiving our special three-dee livecast in the comforts of their own home, wherever you may be.”

A tiny beep in her right ear confirmed that the uplink was secure. Someone back at the main studio in Manhattan had thoughtfully given her an electronic thumbs-up.

“Over there is that concrete road we saw from the air, running from the sea ramp at the docks right up to the top of the plateau,” Jane observed, walking around the plane. “You can see the two piers from here, too. Can’t see any of the other buildings, though.” Like Daria, Jane wore amber UV goggles. The rest of her tall, wiry frame was decked out in white shorts, a red silk neck kerchief, a blue cloth backpack, and black hiking boots. She let her black, shoulder-length bangs blow free in the sea winds.

Daria walked over to make sure the stereo nanowebcams on her goggles had a good view of the features Jane had pointed out. “This is quite interesting,” said Daria, who wasn’t really talking to Jane just as Jane wasn’t really talking to her. “Fifteen point three billion American dollars in a deep-black Pentagon project with no name have been funneled to this uninhabited—as far as we know—island that hasn’t had a significant use since it was an airbase in World War Two. What was once a National Wildlife Refuge under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for goonies, frigate birds, and boobies—yes, boobies, they’re like albatrosses, so get over it—this island’s status was changed ten years ago to become a deep-black Department of Defense research site. What’s it for? No one knows. Stranger still, after enormous amounts of time, money, and effort were spent on fixing Baker Island up for, quote, research, end quote, it was completely abandoned to the elements only three months ago, according to our inside sources.” She wiped her forehead with the back of a hand, careful not to bump the nanowebcams. “There must be a perfectly good reason for it—and that’s why we’re here, to find out what it is.”

“I’m sort of wondering why no one’s come down to the beach greet us,” said Jane, still looking around.

“Or arrest us,” said Daria glumly.

“Or shoot us.”

“Thanks, Jane.”

Jane grinned. “In case you just clicked in on our three-dee livecast, this is Jane Lane and Daria Morgendorffer with a special late edition of ‘The Good Mornings with Daria and Jane Show,’ following the pre-recorded ‘Daria and Jane’s Wildest Livecasts’ show you saw earlier today. We’re now as far from twenty-twenty civilization as we can get without leaving Earth. I think. We’re livecasting from Baker Island, one of the smallest and least known territories of the United States of America. We’re way out in the Pacific Ocean almost halfway between Hawaii and Australia, thirty-one hundred kilometers southwest of Honolulu, a gorgeous city that we left late last night after filing a somewhat disordered but not really inaccurate flight plan. Fear not, our legal department says we’re covered by the reporter-protection laws passed by Congress last year, but the legals also said I could double-park in D.C., so . . . we’ll just have to see, won’t we?” She gestured to Daria to pick up the chat.

Daria wished she had smeared more SPF-50 sunscreen over her face and body before leaving the SeaShadow. With the ozone layer breaking up, she was deathly afraid of skin cancer. “Baker Island has had a long and strange history since it was claimed by America in the mid-nineteenth century for the huge local deposits of high-phosphorus guano,” she began. “American and British companies mined the guano, if mining is what you call it, and they shipped it away for sale until the eighteen-nineties.”

“Guano is bird doo,” Jane interrupted.

“Uh, yes, that’s the technical term. Thank you.”

“It comes from boobies.”

“You’re not helping.”

“So, amiga, what did those brave nineteenth-century sailors do with all that smelly guano once they dug it up and hauled it aboard their ships?”

“That’s the exciting part, Jane, but it is so exciting, I’m not going to tell you about it. You at home, just click on the link that says ‘guano.’ You’ll learn more about the wild and wacky uses of avian excrement than you ever imagined, enough to entertain your whole family for weeks and weeks. By the way, kids, don’t eat this stuff if you find it.”

“Oh, go ahead, let ‘em eat it.”

“As much as I’d like to say, ‘Sure, kids, go ahead and eat bird guano, see if I care,’ the ‘Good Mornings’ legal department says I’d better not, or else I’ll have my own special mountain of guano for breakfast tomorrow when we get home. Getting back to the story, though, once people stopping mucking around in search of bird doo, not much happened here until World War Two, when a mile-long landing strip was laid down for American bombers fighting in the Pacific. Those were Baker Island’s glory days, alas, and it was all downhill after that, until recently. As a side note, Howland Island, the only other spot of land near here, was supposed to have been a stopover for Amelia Earhart’s last flight across the Pacific, ninety years ago this month . . . a stopover she never made.”

Daria looked pained. After years of walking danger’s edge on some of her news assignments, she had become a tad superstitious and feared she had just jinxed their mission with this detail. “Sorry to bring you down,” she added, “but that’s history as it really happens.”

“Moving right along,” said Jane, still scanning their surroundings, “with the climate changes we’ve been going through, particularly the recent warming trend, National Wildlife Refuges are close to sacred for their roles in preserving endangered species. Why remove these protections for an entire island? Why was that so important? And what did we put here in return? At the moment, I can’t see a thing here worth fifteen point three billion dollars, but I’m just a common ordinary taxpayer with a nose for trouble. What’s possibly here that’s worth fifteen billion?”

Daria managed to look offended as she said, “Me.”

“Oh, right. Okay, Daria says she’s worth fifteen bill, but—” Jane stepped back, looking away as she raised a hand to cover her right ear. “Excuse me, everyone, but the studio says it’s gotten a call from the Department of the Interior. Someone wants to talk with us. Can I take it live? No? Huh. Okay, I’ll take the call offline while my Billion-Dollar Amiga shows the rest of you around Baker Island. Maybe she’ll undo another button on her top, too, so get your naughty little eyes ready.”

“Thanks ever so much,” Daria growled. She started walking toward the broad concrete road leading upward to the elevated central part of the island. The wind remained brisk, but the wireless microphones on her goggles were not affected. “Baker Island, as I hope our network’s cartography staff is showing you with a side map while I speak, is a tiny, potato-shaped spot about one and a half square kilometers in size, or about four hundred acres. Nearly this entire island is a low plateau of land measuring one point six kilometers east to west, and just over one kilometer at its widest. That’s about the size of the subdivision where I lived where I graduated from high school, although I have to add that, so far, Baker Island is less interesting than either of my old home towns were, which is saying something. Sorry, Highland and Lawndale. This island’s highest natural point is only eight meters above sea level. The nearest land is that other little bitty island, Howland, about fifty-eight kilometers north-by-northwest of here. After that . . . not much. No offense intended to any sovereign island nations in this area, of course.”

Keep your head up. Don’t look at the ground. Millions of people are seeing exactly what you see. Daria blew out her breath as she trudged on. Walking up the fractured concrete road was easier on her feet than hoofing it over sand and rock. Thank God Jane talked me into going to her exercise classes last year, she thought. I like everything about growing older except having my body wear out. I’m not even fifty yet, damn it, my joints shouldn’t hurt this much. I should’ve refilled the prescription on those energy pills before we left, or at least brought caffeine. All those carefree years spent sitting on my butt in front of a TV or a computer monitor, and now I pay the penalty. How can Mom stay so active? She’s in her seventies, for crying out loud, what’s she got that I don’t? I’m active, too! I’ve got drive, I run my butt off for this show. We’re hanging on to our position in the top twenty webshows for a ninth straight season, and she’s in better shape than I am! My own mother! I don’t get it. I wonder if she and Kali are watching this in Lawndale, like she said they would. Hmm, better keep up the patter. . . .

“I should be at the top of the plateau in just a moment,” she continued aloud. “Just to save something for later, I’ll stop short of the top and turn seaward, looking west, and you should have a nice, clear, full-color view of Jane, standing on the untidy little beach where we landed . . . she seems to be having quite a conversation there with the Interior Department . . . plus our little SeaShadow, which got us here from Hawaii practically hugging the waves, and over there are the professionally designed, monolithic, now-abandoned docks and piers and seafront road leading up to me on the hill, and those guano-making birds, of course.” She looked down around her feet. “As you see, nothing grows higher than my knees anywhere within sight. Lots of—”

She stifled a gasp and froze in place. The decayed body of a large sea bird was only three meters away, its feathered skeleton entangled in a large clump of dead grass.

Chapter Two

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

—Barry LePatner

“—yukky things,” Daria finished, her heart rate returning to normal. She looked away from the long-dead bird. “Mostly dead yukky things but sometimes live yukky things, too, I hope. Please do not e-mail me with complaints about what I just said. It wasn’t meant to be scientific or gender-biased. It was just a joke. Get over it.

“So, there you have it. We’ve arrived at Baker Island, my watch says it’s . . . eleven fifty-one a.m., local time, which is four hours behind those of you in lovely Seattle and San Diego who are preparing to head home from work about now. It’s also forty degrees Celsius, which is why I’ve got huge pit stains on my top already, and we’re Daria and Jane as always, hanging out on a tiny coral atoll that’s secretly consumed a big pile of public money for at least the last decade. Why are we here, you ask. I’m asking myself this same question, but the answer is, we’re here because we’re just a teensy bit curious as to where all that nice money went—aren’t you? I don’t see any hotels, beach houses, condos, missile silos, UFO landing fields, not even a souvenir stand with T-shirts, and I’m . . . Jane seems to be signaling. Just a moment.”

Forty meters away, down the slope on the beach, Jane made a quick hand motion as if snatching something away from Daria.

“Back to you, Jane,” Daria finished.

“Yes, this is Jane Lane again, and my original conversation with a Ms. Leona Wyatt in the Department of the Interior, who was rather put out that we would want to visit a fragile and legally protected habitat without asking first, although we did ask and the legal department can back me up on this—anyway, that call seems to have been pre-empted by another call. The studio says I should take the new call immediately, so we are going to be talking with . . . who is this again?”

Daria heard a masculine voice in her ears and realized she had been patched into the conversation as well. “My name is Lieutenant Commander Philip Ono, United States Coast Guard, Office of the Fourteenth District Command, Honolulu, Hawaii. Who am I speaking to?”

Uh-oh. Daria knew their little stunt would not go unnoticed by the government for long, even if the island had been abandoned. She put on a smile she didn’t feel, in case Jane looked in her direction. Goddamn legal people had better be right that we’ve got the edge here. Screwing with the military in the backwash of Korea Two could turn out bad in the worst sorts of ways. Please, Jane, don’t make fun of his name.

“Jane Lane, and you’re on the ‘Good Mornings with Daria and Jane Show,’ live from Baker Island. Did you have a question, Mister Ono?”

“That’s Lieutenant Commander Ono,” said the male voice. “Just a moment.” Background voices and noise could be heard. “Are you the woman in blue or the one in orange?”

Daria stood so that Jane was in the center of her vision, centering her partner in her vision.

Jane grinned. “I’m the woman in blue, if you’re watching the Daria’s Eye view of our livecast. I’m the one waving at you. Hello, sailor!”

“Okay, ah, very funny. Is that your aircraft behind you? The Ultra Industries SeaShadow?”

Jane turned and looked at the sleek, narrow-bodied plane behind her. “It’s a SeaShadow Dyad, a two-seater with extended-range fuel tanks and solar backup. I love it. It tends to overcorrect, but if you stay on it, it’s a joy to fly.”

Daria made a pained face. Jane’s idea of a “joy to fly” had forced Daria to nearly overdose on anti-nausea medication before they were an hour out from Honolulu.

“That’s your aircraft?” said the male voice.

“Technically, no. We rented it for our livecast using our network account credit card from Sick Sad News. Listen, as long as we have you online, maybe you could answer a few—”

“Sick Sad News,” said the male voice with distaste. “Ma’am, would you enter your aircraft and activate both the emergency locator transmitter and GPS beacon, for about three minutes?”

Jane looked around, puzzled. “We’re not in distress, though.”

“Yes, ma’am, I understand, but we can confirm your position by satellite if you do that.”

Jane grinned in Daria’s direction, knowing she would be seen doing it. “Are you saying you don’t believe we’re actually on Baker Island, Lieutenant Commander Ono?”

“We need confirmation, ma’am. This is very important, as violations of federal law are involved.”

Jane smirked and said, “Oh, no!” (On the hill above, Daria winced.) “Very well,” Jane continued, “I’ll do that. And call me Jane, please. Don’t be standoffish. I’m single again, and so’s my partner in crime.” Jane gave Daria a shrug and a wave before walking back to the plane.

“Well,” said Daria, wishing Jane would stop fishing for dates while on the air, “if you don’t mind, Lieutenant Commander Ono, I’m going to continue our walking tour, seeing as I’m almost at the top of the hill. Lots of things left to see before we go.” She turned and gave a panoramic view of the slope up.

“Ma’am? Um—” The male voice pulled away, then returned after a quick exchange with someone else “—Miss Morgendorffer, did I pronounce your name correctly?”

“Yes, you did. Thank you.” Daria continued walking up the hill, almost on eye level with the main plateau of the island.

“Miss Morgendorffer, I’d like for you to stop where you are and return to the aircraft with Miss Lane. If you would, please.”

“Oh?” Daria hesitated for a moment—then continued on up. “Why is that?” She spotted something just over the rise, on the road ahead: a long lump of debris that looked like a—

“Is it confirmed that they’re there?” said the Coast Guard officer in a distant voice, obviously talking to someone else. He then returned at normal volume. “Miss Morgendorffer, please, it is very important that you return to your aircraft. You and Miss Lane entered restricted military airspace when you approached Baker Island today, and you—”

Daria stopped, staring at the lump of debris five meters away. Was that a hand?

“—are trespassing on a restricted military installation that is the property of the United States government. Miss Morgendorffer?”

The longish lump, she now noticed, had mottled, sun-bleached clothing, a hair-covered skull, and bone fingers on its exposed hand. Swallowing, Daria looked beyond it and noticed a second, similar lump near the first. The second one had boots at the end of sprawled legs.

“Miss Morgendorffer, please return to your aircraft. Do so now.”

“Jane?” Daria knew her voice was coming out all wrong, too high and shaky and soft. The microphones would transmit it anyway, but still . . . She cleared her throat and reached up to adjust her goggles and nanowebcams with trembling fingers. Is everyone seeing what I’m seeing right now? “Jane, where are you?”

“I just got out of the SeaShadow, and I’m on the beach again. I just—”

“Jane, there are bodies up here. Human bodies. I’m not kidding.”

A second passed, then Daria heard someone running up the slope behind her. “Daria!” Jane shouted. “Wait! Don’t move! Stay where you are until I get there!”

“Miss Morgendorffer and Miss Lane!” cried the Coast Guard officer. “For your own safety, please return to your aircraft! You are trespassing on a restricted military installa—”

The officer’s voice was cut off, and a new voice broke into Daria’s consciousness from the transmitter around her right ear. “Daria and Jane, this is Betty Ganguly, executive vice president for Sick Sad News. Are you certain those are human bodies?”

Jane reached the top of the slope beside Daria. “Oh, Jesus Christ!” she gasped. “Two of them. Three. There’s one over there, another fifteen meters on.”

“Ohmigod,” said Betty. She’d clearly seen the scene on her own monitors in New York. “Forget about the livecast. The mission is over. This is an order. We didn’t ask you to go in there just to get killed. Go back to the plane and get out of there.”

Abort the mission? Abort the freaking mission? rang the words in Daria’s head. Why the hell did we decide to come out here to begin with? We knew getting killed was a possibility, for God’s sake! This might have been a joke for you when we planned this, Betts, but—this is real news! God only knows what we’ve just found!

“The bodies are extremely decayed, fully skeletal,” said Daria, recovering. She did not address Betty’s order. Mom and Kali might be watching. Make them proud. She pointed. “Jane, can you check the other one? I’m looking at what appears to be the body of an adult, exposed to the elements for several months at least. He seems to be wearing a uniform that was probably camouflage color at once time. He might have been military, perhaps Army or Marines. We’re in the Pacific, so I’d guess . . .” She stopped by his feet. “Marines. I can see a nametag now: McDowell. He has Marine Corps uniform markings, with sewn-on black bars—a captain, I think. No evidence of weapons. Soft cap, boots—”

“Daria, Jane, abort your mission!” Betty shouted.

“Are we still livecasting?” Jane called, calmly walking around the second body at a distance of three meters.

“Yes, you’re livecasting, but I’m offline!” said the executive VP. “The public can’t hear me. Now, go! Move! We’ll sort this out when you get back!”

Jane took off her backpack and set it on the ground. “Daria, I’ve got gloves if you need them.”

“I don’t plan to touch this one.”

“This one’s got like a leather pouch or satchel. He’s lying on it.”

“Check for weapons or wildlife, like snakes.”

“Daria, Jane!” shouted Betty in their ears. “Damn it, are you listening to me?”

“No,” said Daria aloud. She found herself looking down at what had been the body’s face: two empty eye sockets and the ugly grin of bare teeth in a bone jaw. She swallowed.

“Negative on predators, Daria,” Jane called. “I’m getting that satchel.”

Daria looked up to see Jane pulling on plastic work gloves. With a last glance at the uniformed body, Daria made her way over to see what Jane was doing. Gritting her teeth, Jane reached down and carefully tugged on the satchel. The body moved, little more than a skeleton with clothes. Making a face, Jane put a hand against the corpse’s backbone and tugged again on the satchel, which slid free. She immediately got up and backed away from the remains with a violent shiver.

“Changed my mind,” said Daria, quickly moving to the backpack. “I’m getting gloves, too.”

“I can’t get this damn thing open,” said Jane. “The lock is messed up.”

Daria found a pair of gloves for herself and swiftly pulled them on. “Smash it with a rock. We don’t have to be subtle.”

“Lemme find one.” Jane began walking around, searching the ground intently. She reached down, picked up a fist-sized rock, laid the satchel flat, and carefully began pounding on it. After her sixth strike, she said, “I think that did it,” and put the rock aside.

“The wind’s up,” said Daria, walking over. “Don’t let anything blow away.” How can I be so calm with dead people on the ground right next to us? How did they die? Shouldn’t we do something about them? Is it wrong just to leave them there for the moment? And why isn’t Betts yelling at us anymore?

Jane stood, and she held the stained, sun-weathered satchel open so both women could look in at once. Inside were wrinkled papers and a yellow plastic binder.

“May I?” Daria said, one hand extended.

“Be my guest,” said Jane.

Daria removed the yellow binder and held it up, reading the blurred, printed label on the cover.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

PROJECT PHAETON

DOD PPLM-21D v 4.7

NUCLEAR PLANT INSPECTION RECORDS

“Phaeton,” said Daria, pronouncing it FAY uh thon. She carefully opened the folder and began leafing through it. She stopped and read a page. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh?”

Daria skimmed the page, top to bottom. She knew millions of people were reading the page with her. “There’s a Navy-built fusion reactor somewhere on the island. A big one.” She studied the next page. “Almost ten terawatts. My God, that’s just . . .” She let her voice die away.

“I’ve got supply requisition forms,” said Jane in a subdued tone. “Someone was laying in a big store of food and drinking water, enough for several months for a small group of people. Makes sense, since the island has no natural resources to speak of—nothing that you’d want to eat, anyway.”

Daria continued to flip through the folder, then closed it and gave it back to Jane. She raised her head and looked around. “Let’s get to the top of the island and see what else is here. We saw buildings from the air when we circled.”

“And we’ll see who else is here,” said Jane, putting the papers and folder in her backpack. She tossed the ruined satchel aside.

“No, just what, I think,” said Daria. “No one’s here but us. No one alive, anyway, or they would’ve cleaned this up ages ago. And no one’s ever coming back to clean it up, either.”

Jane pondered this, then said, “Yeah. You’re right.”

“These people have been dead for months, but no one’s come back for them. And they were Americans on an American island with a valuable nuclear reactor and probably other expensive stuff that was funded from a limitless deep-black account. Someone knew exactly when these people died and possibly how, and they had all the resources in the world at their disposal—but they didn’t come back.”

“Because it was too dangerous,” Jane said slowly.

“Yup.”

“And here we are.”

Daria’s voice grew softer. “Yup.”

They looked at each other.

“I feel okay,” said Jane in a small voice. “I’m scared spitless, but I feel okay. Not sick or anything.”

“We could run for the plane.”

“We could, I guess.”

They didn’t move. The moment passed.

I didn’t come all the way out here for nothing, Daria thought. Her drive was back.

“Hey, amiga,” said Jane, blue eyes softening. “Freaking friends to the end, right?”

Daria gave a wan smile. “Yeah.” She drew a deep breath and looked nervously around. “It’s a pretty day. Kinda hot, but pretty. I’d hate to waste it running.”

“Me, too. Go for a walk?”

Daria nodded. “A little longer wouldn’t hurt now.”

“I think we should say something to the audience,” said Jane, “only I can’t think of what.”

“I’m drawing a blank, too.”

“Daria? Look at me.”

Daria turned and regarded her closest friend.

“Trent?” said Jane, looking Daria in the face. “Keep an eye on Bran and Arwen for me, would you? I might be a little late coming home, but . . . see you before too long, okay? You kids be good for me! See you, and you, too, Trent!”

It hit Daria like a ton of bricks. She just said goodbye to her twins and her brother, everyone left in her family.

“That’s all,” said Jane. “Oh! And I love you! All of you! Remember that!”

Daria took a deep breath, looking at Jane’s goggles—and their nanowebcams. “And I love you, Kali. Do what Grandma tells you, okay? Love you, too, Mom. And Quinn, I love you and your family, too. I’ll be home soon.”

After a moment, they looked away from each other, blinking through tears.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

We could run for the plane.

But not right now. We’ll look around, first. Run later.

Jane lifted and shouldered the backpack. She looked down for a long moment at the bodies near them. “Rest in peace,” she said in a choked voice, then turned to Daria. “Let’s get going and find out what happened.”

“I’m on it,” said Daria, and they set off up the slope together, the wind pushing at their backs.

Chapter Three

Let the next guy know what killed you.

—David Brin, Earth

When they crossed the top of the rise, walking up the middle of the cracked concrete road with the sea wind at their backs, the whole of the island was laid out before them. The island’s small plateau had a surface shaped like a shallow irregular bowl. The boundaries of the land were quite clearly defined by far-away edges, beyond which were the Pacific Ocean and the horizon. The distance to the edge in front of the two women was clearly farther than the distance to the edges on the left or right, as they were looking up the long east-west axis of the island.

The most obvious element in view was a group of structures about midway across the island, which Daria knew would be about three-quarters of a kilometer off. What seemed to be a wide, round-walled fort dominated the grouping, looking like the upper half of a thin gray doughnut set down as a giant flat ring. Daria remembered seeing the ring from the air, circling the island before landing, and guessed the ring’s diameter at a hundred meters, with a width of about ten meters and a height of four or five. Squat, blocky towers interrupted the ring at regular intervals; six of them in a hexagonal pattern. A metal catwalk ran around the top of the fortress’s walls from tower top to tower top, supported by a framework of girders running along the top of the ring. The concrete road ran directly to a cluster of four small, one-story buildings immediately adjacent to the ring’s western side. Halfway between these structures and Daria, attached to the road by a short side road, was a large paved circle on which white markings had been painted. A vehicle was parked there on the side that Daria recognized as a small, open-cab electric truck and trailer, of the sort commonly seen around American air bases. A body lay on the ground next to it.

“Helipad,” said Jane, pointing to the paved circle. She slowed, eyeing the third body just ahead of them in the middle of the road. “Maybe we shouldn’t stay too long, you know? I want to check out that weird round building first, though, take a walk around. Then maybe think about going.”

“Sure,” said Daria, inclined to think that Jane had a point despite their earlier conversation. The body they approached was another one in a standard camouflage uniform. It was curled up in a near fetal position, head down and knees drawn up. Like the other bodies, this one was almost skeletal now. An arm lay several feet from the rest of the body.

I wonder if our looking around is going to do any good, she thought. She felt her gorge rise as she caught a whiff of decay, but fought her nausea down and looked away from the corpse. If we get killed, at least someone will know what got us. Maybe. I’d like my death to be worth something. On the whole, though, I’d rather not be dead. Why didn’t I just take off for the plane when Jane suggested it? ‘Cause I just didn’t feel like it, that’s why. I didn’t. I’ve gone through too much crap in my life. This is nothing. We can do this and go home later. I’m not scared. She rubbed her upper arms and shivered as if she were cold. I’m not scared, but I don’t like feeling this alone up here.

“Scavengers?” said Jane aloud, looking at the arm. She walked around the body while Daria merely walked past it and stopped five meters away. Jane moved away after a quick look, shaking her head. “Nothing I can see that’s unusual,” she said. “Except a dead person, I mean.”

“New York’s not talking to us,” Daria said as Jane rejoined her and they walked on toward the helipad.

“Oh. Yeah, you’re right.” Jane stopped and raised her right hand to cover her ear to cut out external sounds. “Hello, New York. Are you still with us? This is Jane Lane, talk to me. New York? Fritzi? Ashwin? Klaus? Dori? New York, say something, okay? L.A., are you there?” Jane and Daria both spoke several times over the next minute, trying to raise someone at one of the various network studios, but without effect.

“I don’t like that,” said Daria. “They’ve always been good about getting back to us.” She took a last look back at the skeletal body and frowned. “Must be a tractor here.”

“What?”

“The tracks on the side of the road by the body. They’re like tank treads. See? Where that dried mud is? Must have a tractor or mini-bulldozer or something around somewhere.”

“Oh, it’s probably that thing on the helipad,” said Jane, who then turned and squinted into the distance. “No, wait, that has tires, not treads. Well, maybe they’ve got one in the garage. Who cares? It’s not like we’re going drag-racing with them.”

Daria shrugged and they continued on. More of the ugly, desolate little island became visible as they walked. To Daria’s disquiet, there was little live vegetation, though a vast amount of dead shrubs and grass.

“I feel like we’re walking toward the bloody Emerald City on the Yellow Brick Road,” muttered Jane, staring at the fortress-like structure ahead. “The Wizard better have some damn good answers for my questions, I’m telling you. Fifteen billion dollars for an island full of dead people. This is bloody freaking insane.”

“Mmm,” said Daria, still scanning their surroundings. The helipad was coming up on their left. A curious-looking patch of ground at one edge of the pad was slowly resolving itself into a large, wadded canvas stretched over rough ground. She pointed. “Let’s check out the pad. I can’t tell what that’s supposed to be.”

“I think I can drive one of those little wheeled thingers, if it’s still got a charge. And if no one’s using it.”

“Sure. Be careful.”

They split up as they approached the pad. As Jane continued down the road, Daria began walking overland, crossing rocky soil to get to the large canvas more quickly. She noticed the decayed bodies of a number of dead birds as she went, much like the one she’d seen coming up the slope from the beach. Some of the birds had their wings outstretched, while others appeared to have simply fallen over dead while standing on the ground. All were nearly skeletal, their feathers scattered randomly about. The dead vegetation made it worse. True, there were spots of live, green plants, but they were rare and looked young. Daria wondered if everything on the island had died at once, then plant life returned from the seeds in bird droppings.

“I don’t like this at all,” she mumbled, watching her feet to avoid stepping on anything revolting. “Is anyone back in the States receiving this livecast? Anyone at all?” She felt for the transmitter/receiver wrapped around her right ear. “If so, Jane and I are fine so far, physically. It’s starting to look like men and birds here just dropped in their tracks several months ago. Nothing at all to indicate what happened. I’m on the helipad now, heading for that big sheet.” She turned her head and saw Jane examining the body on the ground by the electric vehicle. “Jane, got anything?”

“This is weird,” Jane replied, her voice clear in the little receiver. “This guy’s shirt is pulled out, like someone was dragging him.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I mean, I think someone grabbed this guy on the ground by his collar and was pulling him away from the little truck-thing here. He almost pulled this guy’s shirt off of him over his head. At least, I think that’s what happened.”

“That doesn’t make sense. That would mean someone was running around here after . . . oh. Huh. Jane?”

“What?”

“This is a parachute.”

“Coming.”

Jane trotted over from the electric truck and stood beside Daria, looking down at the huge canvas plastered flat by wind and rain against the raised ground at the helipad’s perimeter. Numerous long cords were attached around the canvas’s edges, all leading to a large knotted clump. The two walked around the ‘chute, kicking it and toeing the cords.

“Look,” said Jane, pointing to markings on the chute. “‘USMC.’ The Marines have landed.”

“The lines were attached to something, but they snapped free,” said Daria. “See the release mechanism? Whoever came down dropped the parachute right after landing, probably on the helipad.”

“I don’t think it was a who,” said Jane.

Daria looked at her. Jane frowned down at the parachute, then began searching the ground around them. “Look for tread tracks,” she said. “I should have thought of this earlier when you showed me those marks.”

The light dawned. “You’re talking about a robot?” said Daria.

“Yeah, one of those military ones, the gunbots. When I went over to Korea two years ago for that special postwar report, when you were in court getting your divorce finalized, I was party . . . I was talking to some Marines there, and they showed me one of their recon gunbots. They could just about make it dance. It had a big square base, about two, two-and-a-half meters across, with big tank treads that could almost climb over a parked car. The treads were as wide as the ones you pointed out earlier. It was black, had a four-meter grabbing arm, cameras all over, and two guns, a sixty-cal all-in-one and a silenced sniper thing. That was one evil little demon. They painted it dead black. Quiet, too. You could barely hear it coming, and it really moved.”

Daria was incredulous. “There’s a Marine gunbot on the island with us?”

“They land ‘em with chutes just like that,” said Jane, still scanning the ground. “I remember seeing one stretched out.” She cleared her throat. “In Korea, they were using it as a big sleeping hammock. It was kinda comfy, if you were drunk enough.”

“Too much information, Jane, even for our audience.”

“Yeah, well, I like Marines. They’re fun, you know? They don’t care if I’m a few years beyond twenty, like a lot of jerkwad guys do.”

Daria sighed and rolled her eyes, a gesture she knew the cameras would not catch. Jane’s exuberant lifestyle had precipitated all three of her divorces. She was a loving parent and best friend, and a gifted reporter and show host, but blithely unreliable as a marriage partner. Even the tabloids, most of them, had stopped following her around.

Daria’s ex-husband, on the other hand, had been very faithful. He just hadn’t been faithful to her. Daria tensed, remembering the tall, thin, twenty-something blonde who sat behind her ex in the courtroom as the divorce was swiftly finalized; remembered her cool glance in Daria’s direction, looking over her older rival without a trace of feeling; remembered the way the blonde and the ex left the courtroom together, perfectly in step, a small but painful portion of Daria’s life savings walking out with them as per their pre-nup agreement. He had never earned as much as she had. He never showed up in her life again after the divorce, either.

Last month, Kali finally stopped asking if her dad was ever coming to see her. Daria’s felt her hands ball up into fists, filling with helpless rage—

“There,” said Jane. Her voice startled Daria out of her dark reverie. “Tread tracks.”

She was right. A patch of dried mud on the helipad was crossed by a double set of tracks, each about half a meter wide and separated by about two meters of space.

“I get it,” said Daria, glad for the interruption. She tried to calm down. “They must have dropped it after whatever happened happened, and it’s been running around the island since then. Maybe it’s the local guard against foreign spies like us.” She winced. “Wish I hadn’t said that. Guess we’ll meet it sooner or later, if it’s still active.”

“They were battery powered,” said Jane. “They had a running life of about three days, then they had to be recharged. If we see this one, it’ll probably be out of juice.”

“Unless it re-juiced itself.” Daria nervously hunted for signs of movement on the island around them. Nothing was visible but the seabirds, which seemed to be avoiding them.

“Let’s get on that truck and see what there is to see,” said Jane, motioning for Daria to follow her. “It’s got some power left.”

“Sure. Don’t try to do a wheelie or anything.”

“Don’t worry. There’s no one around to impress, anyway.”

“Well, the viewers.”

“Oh, forgot.” Jane became more animated. “Hey, however many million of you are watching, listen up! Don’t try any of this at home! We’re trained professionals. We do this kind of thing on top-secret deserted islands all the time.”

“Jane’s right,” Daria continued, startled she was falling into the black humor of the moment so quickly. “We’re about to go look at a fusion reactor now, and after we go swimming in the cooling tank, we’re going to lie out under the sun and glow for a while.”

“Legal’s going to kick your butt if the government doesn’t,” said Jane with a smile.

“They can bring it on,” said Daria with surprising heat. “Just have the lawyers and the bureaucrats meet me right here on this little resort spot at high noon, and we’ll settle it mano-a-mano. I’ll kick their blubbery asses.”

“You’re cute when you’re mean.”

“I’m never cute.”

Jane laughed. They reached the electric truck, skirting the body beside it and losing their sense of humor at the same time. As Jane had noted earlier, the corpse’s camouflage shirt was pulled out of his pants and halfway up his ribcage, forcing his arms up and almost coming off over the skull. Daria wondered if a robot had done that. Jane unslung her backpack and dropped it in the cargo space behind the front seats.

“Got a question, amiga,” she said as she climbed up and sat in the driver’s seat.

“Shoot,” said Daria, climbing up beside her.

“Was Phaeton one of those Greek or Roman gods? The name’s familiar but I can’t place it. I hate to look stupid on a livecast, but I thought—”

“He was Greek,” said Daria. “He was a human kid, the son of Apollo, the sun god. One day he dropped by Olympus and said he wanted to drive his dad’s chariot across the heavens, the chariot being the sun itself, and Apollo blew it and said yes. But Phaeton couldn’t control the horses, and the chariot ran amok all over the sky. It came too low and was going to burn up the Earth, but Zeus killed the kid with a lightning bolt and the horses went back to their stables. The end. Classic mythological tragedy.”

Jane stared at Daria, her elbows resting on her knees with her arms out. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean, with regards to all this crap on the island? Project Phaeton, or whatever it is?”

“I dunno. There’s a fusion reactor here, and fusion powers the sun, but it still doesn’t make any sense. You can’t drive a reactor. I keep thinking there’s someone around here who has a sense of humor even worse than ours.”

Jane shook her head and punched a button on the simple dashboard before her. Daria felt the truck vibrate under her, and she grabbed for the handhold by her seat.

“Let’s take our chariot for a spin,” said Jane, turning the wheel as her feet manipulate the floor pedals. The truck rolled forward in near silence, and she turned it around and drove back toward the main road at thirty kilometers an hour. “Maybe we’ll find someone who can explain the joke about burning up the world.”

Chapter Four

“Oh, yeah—ooo, ahhh, that’s how it always starts, but then later there’s running, and then screaming.”

—Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World

Nothing interrupted their swift, bumpy journey to the gray metal fortress, which Daria found herself thinking of as Castle Doughnut. Jane slowed and stopped the truck ten meters away from the nearest structure, which appeared to be a garage or equipment shed with three broad roll-down doors and a side door for human entry. Beside it was a windowless building with “MAIN OFFICE” printed on the only visible door. A small satellite dish looked skyward from the office building’s rooftop. Thin steel cables ran from the corners of each low roof down to heavy posts set in concrete in the ground, like the support ropes on a pup tent. Daria guessed it was to keep the roofs and the rest of the buildings from blowing away in Pacific typhoons, which like Atlantic hurricanes were appearing more frequently and increasing in power as the world’s climate continued its warming trend.

“Nobody around,” muttered Jane. “So much for valet parking. No tip for them.” She punched the dashboard button, and the vibrations under Daria’s seat ceased. Jane swung her legs off the truck and got down, dusting herself off. She reached for the backpack, then changed her mind and left it in the cargo bed.

Daria hopped down and looked around. A number of dead seabirds were visible around them, on the ground near the buildings, but no human remains. It did not lower her anxiety. “I keep expecting a zombie to walk around a corner at any moment with someone’s leg in its mouth,” she said.

“You’re such an optimist.” Jane studied the two buildings before them. “I say the main office first. I’ve got some complaints I’d like to register at the front desk.”

“If you think that anyone will listen,” Daria said, “then you’re the optimist.”

A peculiar, unpleasant odor was noticeable as they approached the office. Jane paused to kick aside a dead bird in front of the door. “I hope they turned the security alarm off,” she said, then hesitated as she reached for the doorknob. “What the hell. Look at this.”

Daria looked. The brass doorknob had been crushed, top to bottom, so that its original round shape was now a scratched, flattened oval. They studied the door, but no other anomalies were visible.

“Cheap parts,” said Daria.

“It’s not like the government to blow billions of dollars on a reactor and then get the doorknobs from a junkyard,” said Jane. “Whatever.” She gritted her teeth, then seized the doorknob and turned it. The door pulled open—and the foul smell of long-rotted flesh rolled out on the wind. Jane recoiled at once, violently waving a hand in front of her face. “I knew it,” she said, shuddering. “See if there’s a back door you can open so we can get this place aired out.”

Daria had smelled corpses before as a reporter, too many to count in too many wars, plagues, and famines, but she had never gotten used to it. Stomach churning, she walked around the corner of the building and along its side, eyeing the gray Castle Doughnut on her right. She couldn’t imagine what it was supposed to be. The fusion reactor? Giant cyclotron? Fuel storage tank?

There was a door at the rear, as Jane had thought. To Daria’s amusement, someone had painted “USE FRONT DOOR” across it in block letters. A key lock was visible below the knob, just as on the front door. Only one way to find out if it’s locked. She reached for the undamaged doorknob and turned it, pulling hard.

The door swung open. Something leaning against the door on the inside fell out in front of her and came apart. A round hairy object the size of a small soccer ball struck her on her bare thigh and rolled off, coming to rest with its empty eye sockets looking back at Daria’s boots. The jaw fell off at her feet.

She shrieked and danced away, an arm covering her mouth. The wind swung the door back on its hinges; it hit the camouflage-clothed skeleton and cracked the ribcage, knocking fragments of bone over the ground.

“Amiga?” called Jane. “Was that you?”

Daria slapped at her leg where the skull had struck her, trying to get rid of the feel of it on her skin. Contaminated! shrieked a voice in her mind. Filthy! It touched you! She then shut her eyes and turned her head, backing up. Any moment now, she knew she was going to throw up.

“Hey, amiga?” She heard someone running. “Daria?” Jane came up and stopped beside her, taking everything in, then put her arms around her and pulled her away to lead her back toward the front of the house. Moments later, Daria’s stomach lurched. She stopped, bent over, and vomited repeatedly by the side of the building.

“You want to get out of here?” Jane asked when she was finished.

“No!” Daria coughed and spat, then spat again and pushed away from the building. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” She straightened and began to walk, letting Jane pull her close with one arm as they headed for the front of the building. “God, I hated doing that live. Sorry, folks. I’m really sorry. I just—”

“Forget it, jeez, it doesn’t matter,” said Jane. She pulled Daria closer. “I don’t know what the hell happened here. This is just crazy. It’s a ghost town—a freaking ghost island!” Her voice became a shout. “Hey, New York! Anyone watching or listening? New York, damn you, talk to us! Are you catching all of this bull crap? We’re not talking about tax dollars anymore! We’re talking the bloody Twilight Zone now, do you hear me? Do you hear me?”

Daria took off her plastic gloves, ran both hands through her hair, and wiped her mouth on her arm. Jane gave her a final squeeze as they reached the front of the building, then let go. “Let’s stop at the truck a moment,” said Jane. “Gotta let the building air out. Could be a while. There’s gotta be something in there we can use to figure all this out.”

“Whatever happened killed everyone at once,” Daria said, still walking. She coughed. “It killed everyone and everything on the whole island, down to the freaking plants, and it did it really fast, within seconds. No one had a chance. A disease vector couldn’t do it that fast, even if you sprayed it from the air.” She coughed again and spat, trying to get the sour taste out of her mouth. “Can I have one of those water bottles in the backpack?”

“Sure.” Jane changed direction to go to the cargo bed to retrieve the pack. As she walked, Daria turned to look back at the main office. Something about the three-door garage caught her eye instead.

One of the doors, the nearest one, was rolled up, fully open. Something inside the garage moved.

“Jane!” She dropped her gloves and reached for her friend.

There was a momentary stirring of air, like the sound of an arrow in flight. Jane jerked and staggered forward. She jerked again and cried out in agony, her face twisted in pain, then her knees gave out and she toppled flat on the ground, limp and still.

A short black bolt stuck up from her back, to the right of spine below the ribcage.

Daria heard a noise and turned. The black gunbot rocked to a stop halfway out of the garage, black treads throwing up dust. She saw a camera and gun barrels and cables running everywhere up and down a black central post.

Then she ran. It was instinct, reacting without thought. The thing would shoot her if she let it. She didn’t think about Jane. Not yet.

The electric truck was ahead, facing her. She dodged to the left to run around to the back, and there was a whisper of air and something banged off the front of the truck as she ran around the side. She looked back and the gunbot was already halfway from the garage to her, treads spinning as it rounded the vehicle, a cloud of dust and debris flying behind it.

She threw herself to the ground and scrambled on elbows and knees to get under the low truck. Rocks cut into her bare arms and legs, got into her blouse. She banged her head on something and saw stars but lowered her head, squeezed under an axle, and kept going. When she could, she looked back and saw the gunbot’s treads at the rear of the electric truck where she had been just seconds before, less than a meter from her toes. She curled her legs up as far as she could and coughed on the dust in her lungs.

The gunbot backed up. Jane was right—it was very quiet except for the rumble of its treads on the packed ground. Something black lowered into view and came under the truck at her: a thick clawed hand opening wide to grab a foot and drag her out. She shrieked and pulled herself away toward the front of the truck, her back pressed up against the steel bottom of the vehicle.

The robot’s arm, coming for her at an angle, banged into the bottom edge of the vehicle. It couldn’t lower any farther. The claw snapped shut and withdrew. The gunbot was then off like a shot to the front of the truck. It spun around, and the clawed black hand came down and reached under the truck for her again. It closed on nothing; Daria had crawled back out of reach once more.

“Go away!” she screamed at it. “Go the hell away!”

It took off again, stopped by the right side of the vehicle, and grabbed again under the truck.

“Go away, God damn you!” she howled, on the other side of the vehicle now. “Get away from me!”

Treads spitting dust, it took off around the vehicle again. She scrambled away—then realized it had double-backed to its former spot on the right side. She screamed and barely moved out of the way when the claw came under for her.

“I hate you, you goddamned piece of crap!” she screamed. “I hate you!”

The claw withdrew and the gunbot rolled back several meters. Daria realized she was crying hard, her fingers clutching at the dirt. A different object lowered into view by the side of the treads: a small camera on a small arm. She screamed curses at it. The gunbot sat and waited and watched.

She risked a glance at Jane. Her best friend, her only friend, was still there on the ground, five meters away, face down, shot in the back.

Dead.

She looked back at the gunbot through dusty goggles.

I hate you. I hate you so much, I’m going to freaking kill you. I hate you, you evil bastard. I hate you.

She wiped off her goggles with the back of her hand, then looked around. The left front wheel was by her left elbow. She glanced at it, saw the axle was smeared with filthy black grease by the wheel base.

An idea came to her. She didn’t think about her life. Life without Jane wasn’t worth living. All that was left was revenge.

Watching the gunbot, she reached up with her left hand and felt for the axle. The grease was very warm, but not too hot. She got a huge gob of it on her hand, then brought it around and smeared some of the grease on her other hand. She did this three times until both her hands were coated with it.

I’m going to kill you, you miserable rotten son of a bitch.

The backpack was on top of the vehicle. It was the only thing she could get her hands on in a matter of seconds to complete her plan. It would have to do. She watched the gunbot.

I’m going to kill you.

She slowly pushed back toward the left side of the electric truck. The gunbot watched her and did nothing. It was very smart. All good robots learned from their mistakes in the twenty-twenties.

But your last mistake was killing my friend.

She tensed, watching the robot. It watched her in return.

Then she scrambled out from under the vehicle’s left side, trying not to lose the grease on her hands, and got up. The gunbot took off and raced around to her side of the truck, a long thin rifle barrel swinging around as it tracked her. She grabbed the backpack and thrust it out in front of her at the rifle barrel, charging the gunbot. The pack jolted in her hands, hit by a shot, then the backpack slammed into the gun barrel and blocked it and was knocked out of her hands.

Daria jumped over the treads past the gun and was on the gunbot, scrambling up to central post on the main base. As she snagged the central post with one arm, the gunbot took off, banging her head into the post and almost throwing her off. She pulled herself as close as she could to the central post, wrapping one leg around it, then reached up and slapped a grease-smeared hand over the dual lenses on the main camera, wiping everything she could onto the glass. A blast of air struck her fingers—a high-pressure hose was mounted by the camera’s front to blow the lenses clear of rain and dust.

The gunbot gyrated wildly to dislodge her. She clutched the post and pulled on the hose nozzle, twisted it away from the lenses. She then grabbed for the lenses again, smearing them a second time, then saw the secondary camera on its own arm, watching her from half a meter away. She reached for it, entwining her left forearm in the cable going into the back of the little camera, and at that moment the gunbot’s black clawed hand grabbed her by the upper left arm and threw her off the gunbot. The claw jerked her shoulder out of its socket; the pain was so intense she screamed, but then she hit the ground, felt the joint pop back into place, and she screamed in pain again. She thought her left hand had been torn off as well, but it was still there, reddened and bleeding.

Get up, moron! Get on your feet! Hurry! She got up, staggering, and saw the gunbot come to a stop not fifteen meters away. The cable had been ripped out of the back of the gunbot’s secondary camera, the loose end wagging in the wind. The gunbot’s big arm came up and reached back for the post-mounted camera.

The truck! Daria leaned forward and threw herself into a run for the electric truck. The gunbot did not try to stop her. The clawed hand was feeling blindly for the air nozzle that Daria had twisted aside, meaning to twist it back into place.

She reached the truck and jumped up into the driver’s seat. Though she had never driven a little truck before, she remembered the button Jane had pushed, and she smacked it and the seat vibrated under her. She trod down on one of the floor pedals at random. The vehicle lurched forward—directly at Jane’s body. Panicked, she spun the wheel and the truck rolled past Jane’s head, missing by a foot, then turned in a tight circle that took it entirely around the stalled gunbot. Daria straightened the wheels, then turned hard again. As the truck came back around, she leaned forward, gripping the steering wheel and mashing down on the accelerator, and aimed at the gunbot.

It’s payback time, you lousy motherfu—

The gunbot’s arm pulled back. An air blast blew at the camera lenses, then the camera whirled about and saw her—too late. The truck slammed into the rear of the gunbot, almost upending it and driving it forward toward one of the closed doors of the garage. The big arm of the robot came around at her like a baseball bat. She got her right arm up to protect herself, but the robot arm struck her in her armpit and knocked her out of the left side of the truck. She hit the ground and rolled, arms and legs flying, pain exploding through the right side of her chest.

There was a crash, then a hot giant thing breathed over Daria’s body. She felt as if she were flying, then she woke up on the ground again. Her clothes were burning. There was no air in her lungs with which to scream, so she slapped at the flames and rolled without making a sound. Everything was burning around her. The air stank of jet fuel. She got up, hardly knowing where she was or what had just happened.

The entire garage was on fire from one end to the other. The back of the electric truck stuck out from a wall of orange flames roaring from a fallen garage door. Nothing could be seen of the gunbot. Coughing and choking on the stench of burning fuel, she ran for Jane’s body, untouched by the scattered flames. She grabbed Jane by the wrists and dragged her away from the inferno, feeling impossibly strong.

When they were far enough from the scorching heat, she stopped, got down on her knees, and looked at the black arrow in Jane’s back. A knockdown bolt: it had shocked Jane into unconsciousness like a Taser as it pumped a powerful sedative into her to keep her down for a few minutes longer. She grabbed the knockdown bolt by the shaft, jerked its metal prongs free of Jane’s flesh, and then threw it aside. Jane would be up again in about ten minutes, groggy but alive.

Alive.

Daria started to cry again. She sat down on the ground and put Jane’s head in her lap, wiping the dust from her protective goggles with a collar flap. Something exploded where the front of the electric truck went into the flames, and she looked up. Through the one open door in the garage, when the flames fanned aside for an instant, she saw a fuel truck in front of the electric vehicle, the pull-down garage door fallen across its burning rear tank. Invisible in the flames, the gunbot would be pinned between them, helpless to escape.

“I told you I’d kill you,” Daria said. “I told you I would.” She looked down and stroked Jane’s hair, waiting for her to wake up, as the jet fuel burned and burned.

Chapter Five

Things are always darkest right before they go completely black.

—Anonymous

Forty minutes later, Daria sat in the shade by the front door of the main office building, while Jane held a damp cloth over her mouth and ransacked every file drawer and stack of paper she could find inside. Jane had dragged a folding chair out from the main office so Daria could sit with the backpack and the surviving bottles of water on the ground next to her, but true rest was impossible. Aside from suffering from the stench of burning jet fuel, she had a headache, an enormous bruise across the right side of her chest that guaranteed every breath she took was like breathing knife blades, and a left arm aching from shoulder to wrist where the gunbot had grabbed her while her hand was snagged in the camera cable. A half-dozen other bruises and scrapes added to the chorus of misery. At least her scorched clothes were still serviceable.

Sitting, though, was better than doing anything else at the moment. And as bad as burning jet fuel smelled, it was better than the odor of death lingering inside the office. Daria didn’t see how Jane could stand it. She made a yuk face and shrugged. They would be leaving shortly, anyway. Jane agreed to abandon the island after a check of the office’s paperwork for any clues as to what had happened to destroy all life there.

I still can’t believe I fought that gunbot. She watched flames crackle in the ruins of the garage, feeding a thick black column of smoke that rolled into the heavens. I couldn’t do that a second time, I bet. The Pentagon will probably make me pay for the damage, too. Probably do jail time on top of that for trespassing. Well, screw it, we gave the viewers a good show. It was worth it. At least I hope it was. Maybe I’ll see Kali and Mom and Quinn on visitation days in the Big House. Hope they don’t throw Jane in jail, too. She could plead insanity, maybe. She’d have to be insane to hang out with me.

A brief abdominal cramp came and went. Time to find a bathroom, she knew, and she wrinkled her nose thinking about the possible local offerings. Better to just go behind a building, perhaps. It wasn’t as if anyone was watching, once she took off her camera goggles, and being a world-ranging reporter and show host had inured her to minor hardships. She remembered twice having to use the bathroom in the woods as a teenager, once while on a road trip with Jane and her brother, and once when out with her family on a campout that ended with her family suffering hallucinations after eating poisonous berries. Those were the good old days, she thought. At least we had toilet paper.

Something still niggled at the edge of Daria’s consciousness. She knew she had missed something, something logical and important. A check of her watch showed that they had been on Baker Island for an hour and fifteen minutes. A naval carrier task force was probably not far away. If the government wished, jets could be flying over the island by the dozens right now, photographing everything. Instead—nothing. Spy drones could have been sent, perhaps, but Daria knew she’d never see them if they had. Certainly there were no jets, no contrails in the sky, and no new parachutes or gunbots. Perhaps orbiting spysats were sufficient to keep tabs on them, but . . .

Why hasn’t anyone yet come out to get us? She and Jane had trespassed on a top-secret American military installation—a feat they had performed several times in the past on a smaller scale—and they had broadcast their findings live to the world. The Pentagon would have arrested them by this point had any military police been nearby, or at least should be chewing on them by audio, as the Coast Guard officer had begun doing before the company exec cut him off. Instead . . . nothing.

Even in the discussions that had gone on with management about this particular stunt, everyone knew the military might get very touchy about the appearance of nosy reporters, and a confrontation was not only possible but likely. However, the military had a strict policy of hailing and challenging intruders first, following an unfortunate incident some years ago in which the governor of Wyoming and his staff were accidentally shot down when their plane crossed into restricted military airspace. A defective transponder on the aircraft prevented early identification, and an air-to-air missile ended the matter. Shoot-downs were now last alternatives. Daria and Jane had been convinced they were 95% safe in coming here, despite the chance that they’d be incarcerated briefly. They’d also face the usual charges afterward, which they felt they could beat with the network’s help. The network’s legal department had been confident about that, anyway.

However, Daria feared her earlier assessment of the situation had been entirely correct: no one had returned to the island because it was too dangerous to come back, and no one would return, even now. Coming here had been a big mistake, perhaps a fatal one. What, then, was the problem? What had gone wrong here?

She looked upward, squinting through her goggles because of the sun. An airburst enhanced-radiation weapon like a neutron bomb? Possible, but there was no sign of ground damage whatsoever. And why would anyone do that? One bomb wouldn’t keep people out of the area afterward, too. She’d already ruled out disease vectors. Scattering plutonium on the island would kill everything, but it would take a while to do it, and this disaster had occurred quite quickly.

Her gaze drifted down to the ground, to some of the dead birds on the ground around her. One of the birds looked back with an open, cloudy eye. She was missing something, perhaps something obvious. . . .

A tiny electronic chirp sounded in her right ear. Frowning, she raised a hand and cupped it over her ear to hear better. “Hello? Is this someone from the network?”

After a moment, another beep.

“Oh, good. Can you talk?”

A pause, then two beeps.

“Oh, uh, one beep for yes, two for no, right?”

Beep.

“Great. Thank God you’re getting this. Are you still receiving our livecast?”

Beep.

“So, we’re still going out over the ‘net live?”

A delay, then a beep.

“Visual and audio both?”

Beep.

“Well, that’s good. Hope our audience is enjoying all of this. I could use a raise. You say you can’t talk to me directly, right?”

Beep.

She sighed. “Why can’t you . . . wait, let me rephrase that. Is there a problem at the studio that prevents you from talking to me directly?”

Beep.

“Technical? Hardware?”

Beep beep.

“Programming code?”

Beep beep.

“Oh.” She made a face, thinking. “Executives said no?”

Beep beep.

“Well, someone else said no, then?”

Beep.

“What the hell. Government?”

Beep.

“Oh, that’s great. Military or FBI, maybe?”

Beep.

“So, is Big Brother at the studio watching things?”

Beep.

She made a pained face again. This trip was backfiring badly. A government invasion of a broadcasting studio was rare but not unheard of. The visit to Baker Island had ticked off someone high up. She wondered if worse was to come. “I can’t believe they’d still let this go out over the ‘net,” she said. “Is the studio or the government responsible for the livecast continuing?”

Beep beep.

She frowned, then her face cleared in realization. It had to be that someone was either intercepting their signal from the island or had electronically tricked the communications satellite into broadcasting the signal to other ground receivers. It wasn’t unheard of. Any number of hackers could also have pirated the signal through illegal cable jacks or other means. The show was going out live, but not over the network’s netchannels. For once, Daria realized she was grateful to the obnoxious hackers who stole advertising revenue from the show by running the transmission ad-free on their own netchannels. Had her mother and daughter seen everything that had happened so far? How many people were watching this?

“Is our show going out illegally, then, on non-network channels?” she asked.

Beep.

Figures. If the government’s mad enough, they might even blow up the transmitting satellite. That wasn’t unheard of, either. “Listen,” she went on, “couldn’t you be in trouble yourself, just communicating with me like this?”

A pause, then a beep.

“Well, look, don’t endanger yourself on our account. Cut this off and come back later, if you can, okay? Save yourself for later.”

A pause, then a beep.

“Thanks for the information, and good luck. Keep listening in. We’re going to leave soon. We’ve had enough of this place for a lifetime.” She hesitated. “Tell our families we’ll be home before long. I hope.”

Beep.

“Bye.” Nothing came back. Daria dropped her hand. She knew the FBI would have heard every word of what she’d said and would now be searching for whoever had been transmitting to her. Well, bless her correspondent anyway. Any news from home was good news right now, even if it was bad news.

She stood up—and felt a strange wave of dizziness pass through her. Damn, I really am tired. I bet I sleep all the way back to Honolulu. “Jane?” she called to the open door. “Find anything yet?”

“Yeah,” Jane called back. “Got slowed down a little, sorry. Stomach upset.”

“I don’t blame you.” She gritted her teeth through another abdominal pang. “Want me to come in and help?”

“Nah, I’m coming out. I don’t know what it is that I found, though.”

Daria heard footsteps, then Jane appeared in the doorway. Her face was pale, her lips almost bloodless. “Here you go,” she said, handing Daria some sheets of paper. “I printed this off from one of the monitors. It’s part of a table of something called ‘events,’ with their times and intensities. I don’t know if it’s earthquakes, solar flares, or what. It looks like it’s still recording.”

“Are you okay?” Daria asked, squinted up at Jane’s face as she took the papers.

“Huh? Oh, tired. Kinda run down. I think it’s an aftereffect of that stun dart or whatever. Man, that thing had a punch. Oh, there’s a bathroom inside. It’s not perfect, but it’s useable, if you want it.”

Another painful pang in the gut decided the issue. Daria handed the papers back to Jane, then took off her goggles and webcams and handed those over as well. She then took the wet cloth from her friend and covered her mouth. “Be right back,” she muttered, and went past Jane into the office building.

She was back fifteen minutes later, empty from both ends. The odor of decay gave her a bad case of nausea on top of the runs she had, which she figured was caused by stress. Once outside, she put on her goggles and sat down on the ground by the chair where Jane sat. “Pooped,” she said. “And I mean pooped, in every sense of the word.”

“I think the audience got it the first time,” said Jane, thumbing through the papers. “I thought I heard you talking to yourself out here a while ago, before you went in. Got an invisible friend?”

“Oh.” Daria related the conversation she’d had with the beeper-person back at the studio. “I didn’t know if you heard the beeps, too. He or she must have been talking to me only. Guess we’re on our own with this one.”

“We should get off with time served, for being in this madhouse.” Jane handed over a page. “See what you can make of that. It’s the most recent.”

Daria took it. As Jane had said, it appeared to be a table listing things called events, which were given numbers. The page gave dates, times, and numbers showing intensities (with no forms of measurement) for each event. Daria looked at the bottom of the page. “This last event was . . . that was today. This is in Universal Time, and we’re twelve hours behind it, so that was—” She checked her watch again “—that was just over four hours ago. What the hell.” Her gaze ran back up the list. “The event times look kind of random. The event before that one was two hours, then one for, um, six and a half . . . can I see the rest of the papers?”

Jane handed them over. “What’s wrong with your hands?” she asked.

“What?” Daria looked at her hands. The palms were red, as were parts of her bare arms, particular the left one. “I dunno. Feels a little funny, hot and itchy. Must have been from wrestling the gunbot, sort of a friction burn. I’ve got a little something on my legs, too.” After a moment, she lifted the papers and flipped through them, going back to the first. “This only goes back a month. Was there anything else on the monitor?”

Jane got to her feet. “I think I can get it to cough up the beginning of the list. Here, sit down again. You’ve saved my life enough today, but I want you to rest so you can do it again later.”

Daria let Jane help her to the chair, and she sat down in relief. “Don’t be in there too long.”

“You think you know what’s up around here?”

“Not a clue. Just hurry.”

Jane nodded and left. Daria wiped her mouth. Bruises everywhere, exhaustion, nausea, diarrhea, burns on her hands . . . this wasn’t a good day at all. She found herself looking at the large dead seabird again, the one that appeared to be looking back at her with its cloudy eye, and then it hit her.

If that bird died when everything else did on this island, it shouldn’t even have eyes now. It should be a skeleton with feathers.

She forced herself to get up and walk over to the bird. Fighting down her nausea, she pushed on the bird with her boot to roll it over. It was intact and starting to stiffen up. It had not been dead longer than a day.

“Oh, no,” she gasped. She turned and ran back for the main office door. “Jane!”

“I found something!” Jane yelled back. “Give me a second to print it off!”

“We don’t have a second!” Daria yelled. “We have to get out of here now! Something’s still—” The smell from inside got to her then and she began to cough.

“Here I come!” shouted Jane. She ran for the door and moved Daria out of the way so she could get out. She held another handful of papers. “The monitor was recording radiation outbursts,” she said hurriedly. “Big ones, way into the lethal range for humans. They started back in mid-April and have been going on at a rate of several times a day. It doesn’t list the source.”

“The reactor,” said Daria. Another wave of dizziness passed through her. “Maybe the reactor’s leaking.”

“It can’t be a leak,” said Jane. “Look—these are bursts of radiation, not a constant steady background radiation.”

Daria looked down at her red hands. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “I understand it now.”

“Understand what?”

“Radiation poisoning!” Daria cried. “I’ve got it! Acute radiation syndrome! The whole lousy island is radioactive! That’s why no one’s coming here!” She held up her hands. “The robot . . . was radioactive! It burned me when I grabbed it!”

“You don’t have radiation poisoning!” Jane shouted, looking panicked. “You’d have to have—”

“I’ve got it, Jane! Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, no energy, worn out—I’ve got it! Something on the island’s spewing radiation like mad every few hours, and it’s going to go off again at anytime now! The secret military project malfunctioned and killed everyone here, and it’s still killing everything that comes here! Metal picks up radiation better than other stuff, and the gunbot’s probably been bathing in it for weeks! These things on my arms are radiation burns! We have to get out of here now!”

Jane swore. She grabbed for the backpack and Daria’s hand, and they fled west along the road for the beach and the SeaShadow.

They hadn’t gone thirty meters before Daria stumbled and fell down, scraping up her arms and knees.

“Get out of here!” she gasped, too dizzy to get up. “Leave me and get out of here!”

“Forget it! You’re going with me!”

“Run, please!”

Jane hauled Daria to her feet and threw the smaller woman’s arm over her back to support her. They were about to start off again when an extraordinary thing happened.

All the birds in view suddenly took off. Hundreds of seabirds opened their wings and thrashed their way into the sky in huge flocks from every spot on the island. Their mewling cries filled the air as they made their escape, heading to the north.

“It’s starting,” Daria whispered. “Something’s already starting. The radiation burst. We’re not going to make it.”

“Birds can’t sense radiation!” Jane yelled. “And, damn it, we are going to make it!” She looked back. “There’s an emergency shelter of some kind back there. It’s closer than the beach. A poster on the wall in the office showed where it was. Come on! It’s over by that big round gray building!”

“Save yourself!” Daria gasped. “Just leave me!”

“Shut the hell up, would you?” Jane manhandled Daria around and began to run again, heading back to the cluster of buildings.

Chapter Six

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.

—Jane Wagner

At the main office, Jane put Daria back in the folding chair as she ran into the office. Daria leaned back, breathing heavily and sweat ran down her face. Her chest ached as if broken glass filled her lungs. This is not the way I want to go, she thought. This is not the way. Give me one more chance, God. I want to hold my daughter, I want to see my mom and my sister, I want to hear Jane laughing. I want to die in bed eating fatty food, watching bad ‘net TV. Please let me live just a little longer. I swear I’ll do anything You want of me, anything. I’ll even—

Jane came out, clutching a large paper poster that had been torn from a wall and what looked like a photo ID badge on a chain, as well as the backpack. “What are you mumbling about out here?” she said, pulling Daria to her feet. “Come on!”

They started off toward Castle Doughnut, Jane supporting Daria as they ran. “See that building with the door on it, by that big round wall?” Jane shouted. “That’s where we’re going! It leads to an underground emergency shelter!”

Breathless, Daria eyed the small, blocklike building Jane indicated. It was hardly bigger than a single room in a house. Was it an elevator? Her gaze dropped to the bouncing ID necklace Jane held with the torn poster. Where did she get that? Did that come off one of the bodies inside the main office? Why did she take it?

When they reached the small building, Jane stopped and placed Daria so her back was against the wall by the double door. Daria stood and painfully gasped for air while Jane held up the poster and read rapidly. Jane then put the chain around her neck, then took the ID card and held it against a dark, palm-sized square mounted beside the door. After a moment, a click sounded from the square, and a low rumbling began behind Daria’s back.

“Looks like an elevator,” said Jane. She stepped back, scanning the sky. “The birds must have flown off to Howland Island. I can’t believe radiation would scare them off like that. It must have been us running, or maybe machinery starting up somewhere. I can’t hear—”

The double doors pulled apart. Jane started through them, then backed out again, swearing violently. The sudden odor of death and decay was overwhelming. Cupping a hand over her mouth and nose, Jane dodged back through the doors, then came out moment later dragging something behind her. Daria looked down at it, then shut her eyes and looked away. Coughing, Jane went back through the doors, kicked out a few more things, then came out and grabbed Daria by the left arm. Daria cried out involuntarily as pain shot out from her shoulder.

“Hold your breath!” Jane ordered. “Pinch your nose shut!”

Daria took a deep lungful of air as Jane pulled her through the doors. They were in a single room that could only have been an elevator. Covering her mouth and nose, Jane punched two buttons and moved back beside Daria, pulling her close. Daria saw a broad discolored spot on the floor by the control panel—and a boot with part of a leg bone sticking out from the top. She shut her eyes again. The doors closed.

The elevator started down. Jane started to cough hard. Daria’s lungs began to ache worse than before; she pulled up her orange blouse and held it over her face, struggling not to breathe in. Count! One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four—this isn’t working! Think of something! Anything! Don’t breathe! Don’t breathe! Kali! Kali, I am so sorry I brought you into the world with a man who should never have been your father, I am so sorry I couldn’t be enough for you, and you had to stay with—have to breathe! Have to breathe! Breathe! BREA—

The elevator stopped. After an infinite delay, the doors pulled apart. Daria lurched away from Jane and staggered out of the elevator, coughing and choking, with her friend right behind her. They were in a white circular lobby with a low ceiling and wide corridors branching off in three directions. Little of it registered as the two women sank to the floor, hacking and trying not to throw up again. The elevator doors closed.

Daria rolled over on her back and pulled off her goggles with her right hand. No one can get our signal through all this rock and steel, and I’m sick of showing the world disgusting things, anyway. I should have cut this livecast off a long time ago. Mom and Kali didn’t need to see any of this.

“You okay?” Jane shouted between coughs.

“I’m not dead yet. Almost wish I was.”

“I might have to think