Keene had landed near Tom, who was holding a blood-drenched handkerchief to Denise’s head. Together they leaned over to shelter her. Keene pressed his face down into the coarse sand of the ravine bed, pulled his hood close over his cap, and covered his head with his arms. The boom came maybe twenty seconds later, like something solid hitting his head, jarring his teeth and numbing his ears. How many miles away did that put it? He couldn’t think. “Stay down!” Mitch’s voice called from a thousand miles away through the ringing in his ears. They waited, unmoving. Denise was twitching and moaning. And then earth and rocks rained down out of the sky in a torrent. Keene felt it peppering his arms and landing in drumming waves along his back. It was like being in a grave with the dirt being shoveled in. He convulsed suddenly, slapping at his leg as something hot seared through the calf of his trousers. From beyond the ravine the sound of rocks hitting the plane came like hail on a tin roof.
The rain eased gradually to become just a waning spatter of lighter particles. Keene waited, then moved to look up, feeling rivers of sand running off his neck and shoulders. The other mounds of dust around him were stirring, shaking themselves, starting to sit up. . . .
And the next impact came five seconds later.
* * *
He lost all track of how long they lay there, clawing and scraping as if trying to burrow into the earth, while detonation after detonation shook the ground and pounded at their senses. The large bolides came over with a noise that sounded like freight trains crossing the sky; others made sighing moans mixed with jet-engine-like whines. The concussions grew so frequent that it was impossible to say which blast wave was associated with which flash, and the rain of ejected debris became continuous. In a temporary lull, four of the soldiers ran to the plane to get folding entrenching spades, hard helmets, and flak jackets. One was hit on the way back and had to be dragged by the others. Keene’s mind went into a numbed, suspended state, rejecting the sensory overload, ceasing to register the passage of time. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the fuel from the Rustler’s punctured tanks ignited.
It was another hour, maybe two, before the infall eased and the dazed survivors finally began emerging.
* * *
Thirty-four were left. Charlie Hu had come around at last, and was miraculously okay except for head-to-toe bruising down one side of his body that would keep him wincing for weeks—assuming they lasted that long. Cavan was bearing up well, and Colby and Alicia had nothing worse than bruises and cuts. Three soldiers had died in the crash, two more in the impact storm, and six were hurt badly enough to be nonfunctional. Of the party taken on at Vandenberg, Denise had scalp cuts, not as bad as had at first been feared; the man with the severed thigh had died from blood loss, which was probably merciful; the woman in a coma had succumbed; one of the two men with head injuries had been thrown loose in the landing, breaking several bones, and was not looking good. Joan was rallying and showing astonishing strength. Most remarkable of all was Jed, the blinded youth, who seemed the most resilient of all and was trying bravely to crack jokes. Maybe it was delirium. Keene saw tears on Alicia’s face as she changed his dressing.
It was mid afternoon, although the sky was too dark to give any hint. They had flown for a little under an hour after leaving Vandenberg early in the morning, which put them just short of Phoenix. The broken starboard wing and nose of the plane had burned out, but the fractured center section and tail were not completely gutted. Some usable items, including most of the food packs and water containers, were retrieved. The port wing, remarkably, while looking as if it had been shotgunned, was still in one piece. All electronics were dead, and the mobile radios unusable with the static.
Twenty-two unscathed or with minor injuries; twelve unable to walk. There were two choices. The twenty-two could divide into two groups, one to stay with the injured while the other went to find help; alternatively, the twenty-two could simply press on together, promising only to send help if they found any. In normal circumstances, the latter would have been unthinkable. But as things were, it had an undeniable element of realism. Keene expected that Mitch, if anyone, would take the lead in stating the unmentionable but obvious: that huge numbers had already died, and more would yet, by far; that leaving the fit behind if there was no help to be found would just be condemning them along with the unfit; that any potential help they might find would be already overwhelmed and unlikely to be swayed much by the thought of a dozen more one way or the other. Alicia was waiting to hear it too; Keene could see the anticipation on her face. Maybe Mitch saw it too, and perhaps that was why he refrained. Or could it have been that even in Mitch’s eyes everyone had become “ours” already?