The Book of Strange New Things(162)

‘The lightning must have blown something,’ said Peter.

‘Impossible,’ said Grainger. ‘No way.’

‘Grainger, it’s amazing enough that we survived.’

She was having none of it. ‘A car’s the safest place to be in a thunderstorm,’ she insisted. ‘The metal shell acts as a Faraday cage.’ Observing the incomprehension on his face, she added: ‘Grade-school science.’

‘I must have been away from school that day,’ he said, as she examined, prodded and tickled controls and gauges that were clearly dead. The odour of fried circuitry began to seep into the cabin. The downpour clattered against the windows, which fogged up until Peter and Grainger were confined inside an opaque casket.

‘I cannot believe this,’ said Grainger. ‘All of our vehicles are designed to take punishment. They’re built like cars used to be, before people started to load them full of dumb-ass technology that breaks down all the damn time.’ She pulled the headscarf off. Her face was flushed, her neck wet with sweat.

‘We need to think,’ said Peter gently, ‘about what to do.’

She leaned her head back against the seat, stared up at the roof. The patter of the rain beat out a military rhythm, like soldiers from a long-past millennium walking into battle with their snare drums slung on their hips.

‘We’ve only been driving for a few minutes,’ Grainger said. ‘The base may still be in sight.’ Reluctant to step outside the vehicle and get soaked, she twisted round in her seat and tried to look out the back window. There was nothing to see except fogged glass and the bed. She swung open the door, letting in a gleeful swarm of humid air, and hove herself into the rain. She stood next to the car for twenty seconds or more, her clothing trembling and flapping as it got pelted. Then she took her seat again and shut the door.

‘No sign,’ she said. Her tunic was drenched, transparent. Peter could see the delineation of her bra, the points of her nipples. ‘And no sign of C-1, either. We must be exactly halfway.’ She stroked the steering wheel in frustration.

The rain passed over. The sky brightened up, casting pearly light on their bodies. Tendrils of air nudged under Grainger’s sleeves, visibly lifting the sodden fabric, travelling underneath like swollen veins. They penetrated Peter’s clothing, too, slipping inside his T-shirt, up his trouser-cuffs, tickling the hollows of his knees. They were especially keen to get past the tight ruck of denim around his genitals.

‘Walking back would take us an hour,’ said Grainger. ‘Two hours, max.’

‘Have the tyres left tracks in the dirt?’

She went out again to check. ‘Yes,’ she said, on her return. ‘Straight and clear.’ One last time she turned the ignition, casually and without looking at it, as if hoping to trick the engine into performing despite itself.

‘Looks like Tartaglione made a deal with God,’ she said.

They packed carefully for the journey. Grainger filled a tote bag with first-aid provisions. Peter found a mildewed old briefcase of Kurtzberg’s, removed a New Testament which had fused into a solid block, and replaced it with a couple of plastic two-litre bottles of water.

‘I wish there was a shoulder-strap for this,’ he said, testing the briefcase in his grip. ‘These bottles are heavy.’

‘They’ll be lighter as we drink them,’ said Grainger.

‘It’ll rain again, twice, before we’re at the base,’ prophesied Peter.

‘What good will that do us?’

‘You just lift your head and open your mouth,’ he said. ‘That’s how the ????? – the natives – do it.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Grainger, ‘I’d rather not do it the way the natives do it.’

The outside of the vehicle, they noted, was disfigured with scorch-marks. A web of damage tattooed the hubcabs, and all four tyres had deflated. The vehicle had ceased to be a vehicle and begun its metamorphosis into something else.

Peter and Grainger followed the tyre-tracks back towards the USIC compound. Grainger was a good walker, shorter-legged than her companion but with a brisk enough pace for him not to need to hobble his speed. They covered a decent distance in a short time, and despite the flatness of the land the vehicle grew rapidly smaller in retrospect and then vanished altogether. As they walked on, the tracks became more difficult to discern in the rain-smoothed soil; there was ambiguity between man-made and naturally occurring patterns. The sky’s ominous pall evaporated and the sun shone bright and constant. Grainger took swigs from one of the water bottles; Peter was OK to wait. He was more hungry than thirsty. In fact, the gnaw of appetite distracted him as he walked.

The ground was not the best terrain for progress on foot, but they must have covered two miles at least in the first hour. In the second hour perhaps the same. The USIC base obstinately refused to manifest on the horizon. All traces of their outward journey were by now erased from the soil. They were, of course, hopelessly lost.

‘If we retrace our steps to the car, USIC may send someone to check it out,’ suggested Peter, ‘eventually.’

‘Yeah,’ said Grainger. ‘Eventually. When we’re dead.’

They were both taken aback to hear the word spoken so prematurely. Even though the mistake they’d made hung obvious in the air, there was an etiquette of optimism to be observed.