Acid Air E-Book

Ross Richdale

• Herausgeber: Ross Richdale
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Acid Air

Leseprobe

ACID AIR

Ross Richdale

ISBN 978-1-877438-90-5

67800 Words

When Greg awakes in decommissioned Russian nuclear submarine K264's decompression chamber, he finds himself alone. All the crew are just piles of ash. Also, the computer produces a hologram of a young woman called Nedda. More sinister is that the air on the surface has become poisoned, there is no contact with anyone and it seems that he is alone in the world .

Shontel is stranded in a deep cave on Vancouver Island. On finding her way out she discovers that everyone is dead and encircling thunderclouds never go away. Contact is made with her and she is rescued, just before the clouds disperse and acid air surrounds her.

Nedda admits that she is more than just a computer hologram but an advanced life-form who can metamorphose into human form from her natural amoeba state. She arrived on the submarine to help Greg but was followed aboard by another of her species, a terrorist who believed that humans were a sub-species who should be exterminated. It attacks her but Greg and Shontel save her. She becomes a trusted friend as they travel through the ocean trying to find other human survivors and surface air that is not poisonous.

Later, they surface in the eye of a hurricane-type storm where the air is breathable and find a massive computer controlled tower but nothing alive. An elevator is discovered and they travel down to a vast underground cave of stalagmites. Here, they are met by a pony and small dog who led them to a wounded human named Lilad. He comes from an underground village of Cavair. A breakaway group, The Moss had attempted to kill him. Lilad tells them that is the youngest person in Cavair for no women have given birth for a generation. The Moss find their way to the surface and attempt to destroy the base. Their computer warns them and they escape in K264 before the base is blown up.

There are similar islands with access to Lilad's world. One has modern facilities that are not available in pre-industrial Cavair. Why is this so? There are two main buildings but one has been destroyed. Under it, they find an undamaged basement that contains a master computer that provides the fresh water and air to Cavair. However, thedesalinised plant that feds in fresh water also has a sinister additive, a birth control chemical, hence the reason for no births for a generation. There are no records about who built the structure nor any reasons why births were being prevented but they disconnect it, anyway.

Problems are encountered in the cave when, on their way to Cavair they encounter a curtain of complete darkness where all light is neutralised. Apart from not being able to see, their progress through is not hindered. On the far side they make checks before heading out. This caution proves a lifesaver for they find themselves looking through a line of a hundred or more humans, including parents and children who are surrounded by a group of hostile men.

How is it that they arrive in exactly the right place and time to rescue these humans who are from Lilad's village? After rescuing the group, they are told that it is two years, not just weeks since Lilad disappeared. They had moved ahead in time! With the birth controlled water turned off, nearly all the women of child bearing years in the village are now pregnant or have children.

Opposing forces are striving to help or hinder them. Nedda suggests it is her kind responsible but since metamorphoses she has forgotten everything since meeting Greg.

In a final twist, they discover Nedda and Lilad's relation is the only person who can get them back to twenty-first century Earth but how is this possible?

*

CHAPTER 1

Greg was annoyed with himself. After all it wasn't that he was an amateur, not after ten years in the Royal Australian Navy, five years on submarines and an advanced degree in deep sea diving. He had become careless and this was the price; six hours in the decompression chamber after getting the bends. He sighed and rolled over so that he could see out the double glazed window. It was strange! The room outside was empty while the smooth vibration indicated that the submarine was submerged. This was typical for the Russians; casual as hell but still thinking they were involved in the cold war of a generation before. That would be why nobody was monitoring the chamber and also why the submarine was submerged so close to American waters around Hawaii.

He checked the dials. Even though the signs were in Russian it was easy enough to read the numbers. He must have dropped asleep for a couple of hours and had reached the time to be able to leave. The gauge also showed that pressure inside and outside his chamber was the same. Good, he was hungry and could do with a shower. After there was no response to the buzzer that he sounded, he spun the wheel to unlock the hatch and pushed it open. The nuclear engine was far quieter than one in the conventional submarines he was used to but the steady hum of the air-conditioning seemed normal. However the lack of other sounds was unusual. He waited but still nobody arrived so he slung himself up and out of the chamber. At least he felt fine now with no after-effects.

"Anyone there?" he called out in English and repeated his words in halting Russian that the thirty-four skeleton crew of the K264 understood.

This nuclear submarine was one of the ballistic missile carriers of the Soviet Union but was now decommissioned and taking its final journey to be sunk in one of the Pacific Ocean deep troughs east of Hawaii. He never liked the idea of sinking a nuclear device there but at least the missiles had been removed and the engine was encased in double insulation that, in his opinion was as good as, if not better than that used by the Americans or British submarines. The hull could withstand pressures far deeper than the ocean floor so the chances of leaks were infinitesimal. International agreements on the disposal of nuclear rods were still being ignored but that didn't worry the Russians. His company had won the lucrative contract to sink two submarines in the depths and he was back to supervise the second sinking.

The scuttling of K213 two months earlier had been moderately successful. It had been sunk in a deep trough north-east of Hawaii but it appeared that his data on the ocean depth was incorrect for they had lost contact with K213 after it dropped below the two thousand five hundred metre shelf it should have landed on. However, after rigorous tests on the surface and at a hundred metre depths, no trace of radioactivity had been found. It was safe to assume, therefore that the nuclear rods in the submarine had survived the extreme water pressure on the ocean floor. Even if the submarine itself had been crushed; as long as the nuclear fuel was intact the ocean remained unpolluted.

Back in Vladivostok, the Russian authorities seemed to be more worried about the Americans tracing the sunken submarine that any natural catastrophe cause by a nuclear leakage. After Russian trawlers that were in reality spy ships, used more sophisticated equipment than his own to check the water around the site, it was declared that he had successfully scuttled K213 and the go ahead to sink the second submarine, this one in another branch of the trough about twenty kilometres north of the first sinking.

Greg frowned as he dressed in casual clothes and noticed something else out of order; the air smelt wrong with a faint aroma like burnt toast. He shrugged as he wandered out into the companionway and up a ladder to the deck above where the smell was stronger. It was empty, as was the next deck and everywhere he searched. Now concerned, he moved onto the control room that was more like that of a large aircraft than a ship. There were usually at least five officers there including a pilot who sat behind a wheel with a myriad of instruments and monitors before him. Now, though, everything was operating but the deck was empty.

No, not quite!

Six cone shaped piles of white ash, each only a few centimetres high, sat on seats and another was on the floor. He walked up to the pilot's seat and touched the cone there. It felt warm and collapsed when he applied pressure. That whiff of that burnt toast hit his nose as the ash collapsed. Oh my God, could these be the incinerated remains of the crew?

He swallowed his panic and just stood there for several moments gazing around and thinking. Obviously, something terrible had happened. He needed to check the life support systems. Again, the readings were in Russian but underneath many of the English translations had been written on yellow cardboard. He checked and found that everything appeared okay, oxygen content, air pressure, humidity and other life support data registered as normal. There was no build up of carbon dioxide and the temperature was the usual twenty degrees Celsius. Further checks showed that the nuclear reactor and two engines were working perfectly and the submarine was travelling at normal cruising speed. He tapped a keyboard to bring up a map that showed their original destination right down the bottom of the screen. They were travelling northeast away from it. He frowned and added a request to show the submarine's destination.

A map appeared to show that they were on a circular course with a hundred-kilometre radius.

It appeared that somebody had had time to submerge and set a course before they disappeared or more likely were vaporised or incinerated. He searched further and entered a small alcove where the navigator sat. Here the ash cone was sort of tipped sideways across a console. A computer lit up when he touched a keyboard and words appeared in the Russian script.

He hit some keys to convert the alphabet and had a translation made. Acid Air. Submerge. Another sentence followed but it only translated as There was no time! Without…

That was it! Whoever it was must have succeeded in making an emergency dive, set a new destination and switch on the autopilot before they themselves died. Without their bravery, he probably would not be alive now.

"Thanks my friend," he said as he lifted the ash in his hands and placed it gently in a small paper mug on the console.

He gulped and decided to do the same with the other piles of ash. He found a pile of paper mugs and spent almost an hour methodically placing each pile of ash in a mug, noted on the outside where it was found and afterwards placed them all in a storeroom container. If he survived, the ashes could be returned to Vladivostok, the crews' home port. Now slightly overwhelmed by the events, he counted them and whispered a brief goodbye for each one. There were thirty-two! He alone had survived whatever had happened on the surface.

He needed to contact somebody and head for the closest port in Hawaii to the southwest. However, there must be navy or civilian ships closer. This part of the Pacific was a busy shipping lane between North America and Asia. To establish contact he would have to go within twenty metres of the surface to use Gertrude, a VLF underwater system. The Russian ZEVS system used to communicate with their operational submarines in the North Western Pacific was out of range. Anyway, along with all armaments, sophisticated communication equipment had been removed when the submarine was decommissioned.

He thought about the situation and decided to try to listen for any incoming signals. Even if they were encrypted it could show that the system was in operation. For an hour he sat before the radio and tried every frequency available. However, nothing came from the speakers, the onboard computer showed nothing except previous recorded signals in a sixty-four symbol code. These had abruptly stopped two hours after he had entered the decompression chamber.

He switched his tactics and fed in questions to the onboard computer. Luckily before their journey, software had been added to the Russian computer that converted it to show English as well as Russian alphabets and languages. In theory, the submarine could stay beneath the surface for months with recycled air and water. The only limiting feature was the food on board. With enough stored to feed the skeleton crew for a month, by himself he had enough for months, if necessary.

He shuddered at the idea and requested information about the ocean. The report was hopeful. It appeared that the ocean conditions were normal with fish and other underwater creatures still there. However, when he fed in questions about the surface conditions he received nothing in reply. Also, his own tablet and satellite phone that he had brought aboard made no contact with The Silver Rose, the surface ship that was meant to be at the rendezvous point where the K264 was going to be sunk.

"Okay Greg," he muttered to himself. "Let's take the sub up in periscope range and have a peep at the surface above." One thing he did like about the Russians was that they still had inbuilt manual systems that had long been discarded by the western nations.

"I wouldn't advice that Commander Freymore, not after all my efforts to keep you alive. Poisonous air from the surface will contaminate the air supply and your survival would be forfeited," said a slightly accented female voice in English.

Greg's jerked in alarm before his military training seized him. He swung around to see a young woman dressed in a modest yellow dress and grey cardigan standing across the control room. He swallowed as thoughts of defence rushed through his mind. Who was she? How did she get aboard for there were no women in the crew? On second thoughts, she appeared to have no weapons and being quite petite, could probably be physically overwhelmed easily, if it was necessary.

"Who are you?"

She smiled. "Part of the original top secret equipment the Russians had installed in this vessel the year before they ran out of money and decided to mothball most of their Pacific fleet. K264 was one of their most advanced submarines but was unproven and therefore decommissioned along with earlier submarines such as K213 that never had this upgrade." She shrugged. "Typical Russian attitude."

"So you had some sort of chamber like myself and survived whatever the catastrophe was?"

"No I was always here."

Greg raised his eyebrows.

"Not physically though, Greg, can I call you that?"

"Why not? I'm a civilian now. And your name?"

"The last Russian Navy crew called me Nedda Solnechniy, my surname that means little sun. I guess it helped them to remember their wives, partners and girlfriends back home. Three month journeys under the ocean can become monotonous."

"Go on," Greg hissed. He was becoming annoyed at this woman almost taunting him.

"What you see is a hologram. Come and test me, if you like."

Greg nodded and with extreme caution, stepped forward to stop a couple of metres before her. She was shorter than himself, weighed fifty or so kilograms, had that slight Russian face with high cheekbones, tanned Caucasian skin and brunette hair. Her eyes looked alive and he could see nothing that indicated that she was anything but an attractive woman in her mid-twenties.

That was until he reached for her outstretched hand. When he went to clasp it, his own hand went right through her one with the only sensation being a slight tingle like a slight electrical shock.

In spite of himself, he jerked back in alarm.

"I did tell you," Nedda whispered.

Greg stared into her eyes. "Point taken. So you're a hologram produced by the inboard computer but why have you shown your capabilities now and not earlier?"

She grinned, walked across to a swivel chair and sat down without actually moving the chair. Greg took the hint and sat in an adjacent chair.

"I am not really the inboard computer but a subsidiary one that was removed along with all the military hardware when K264 was decommissioned. Your first submarine, K213 never had the operating system the computer I am associated with has to run this vessel."

"But you're here!"

"Yes. I mutated into the main computer. They removed my main drive but they couldn't take the main computer out as it is needed to keep the submarine operational for its final journey. By the time I was disconnected, my software had already upgraded the main computer."

"Okay but why was there a delay before you made yourself known to me?"

"Several reasons. One is that I needed to learn the English language and alphabet. This took a while as the original translation software stopped working when the emergency occurred. Being by yourself, you didn't need to speak a lot but your goodbyes to the crew ashes helped me refine my language capabilities."

Greg ran a hand over his face. This was one sophisticated computer. "So my decision to go to periscope depth motivated you to contact me?"

"Yes. I could merely override any manoeuvres you made to take the submarine to periscope depth and save your life. This could be frustrating and you could decide to manually blow ballast tanks and take K264 up, anyway. As you now know, you cannot touch me. The opposite is also true. I cannot physically touch anything for I am but an image. If you manually blew the ballast tanks I could only incapacitate you in one way."

"How?"

"I could give you an electric shock to knock you out but chose to reveal my presence to you instead."

"So what did happen on the surface?"

"I don't know how or why it happened but know that the air is toxic with oxygen levels far below that needed to sustain life and the atmosphere also contains potassium cyanide. That's the poisonous gas the Americans used in their gas chambers for execution of criminals a generation ago and the one that killed this vessel's crew."

"But their bodies also disappeared."

Nedda gave a slight smile. "That was my doing. I could not help anybody except you. When I realised you would survive, I needed to keep the keep the submarine healthy for you. Decomposing bodies and they were in that state when I reacted, needed removing. I used high-powered laser beams to incinerate them. Those small cones of ash were the aftermath."

"After only a few hours?"

"No. To keep you alive, I placed you in a coma for a week. I managed to operate robots to give you water and a small amount of food in liquid form."

"Why was this necessary?"

"The poisonous air aboard had to be pumped out and replaced. Even the onboard emergency oxygen supplies were contaminated."

"Thank you," Greg replied. "But how did you get fresh air to replace it?"

"Luckily, the atmosphere hasn't penetrated the ocean more than fifteen metres, round about the periscope depth you intended to go up to, actually. Below, that the ocean has not changed and my equipment can extract breathable air from seawater in much the same way that fish use their gills to breath."

Greg frowned. "New technology?"

"Yes. Our scientists designed it but the Americans probably have similar equipment in their submarines. The western military still keep their secrets and little top-secret information is shared with us even though we have been allies for a generation now."

This was true. Even the Australian Navy had trouble getting modern hardware from the Americans and tended to rely on British or European companies for their most sophisticated military equipment.

Nedda continued. "Only after I was sure the air was fresh that I let you awaken." She shrugged. "The rest you know."

"So what happens now?"

Nedda stared at him. "Why should I know?"

"Okay, let me rephrase that. Do you have any suggestions about what we should do next?"

"No."

Greg grimaced and stared at the girl. Of course she was really just a computer. He would have to ask for something that she could answer. "I would like the surface above us searched for signs of human life."

Immediately a monitor that had been unused lit up on the console and showed a rotating pulse-like beam. "There are no living creatures above the surface for a hundred kilometres in every direction." Nedda reported. "Do you wish to extend the search?"

"What range can the search go?"

"It is accurate for five hundred kilometres but beyond that, the atmospheric conditions make readings inaccurate."

"Okay extend the search out five hundred kilometres. That should reach Hawaii."

The monitor data zoomed out but the rotating beam never fluctuated.

"There is no indication of any life," Nedda added.

"Can you find bodies?"

"No. The body heat of living creatures is measured. A cold body does not register."

"Can you search for metal objects such as boats?"

"There are none," Nedda replied.

"None?"

Greg gasped. "Not even empty hulks with nobody alive on them."

"There are no surface ships within range within the five hundred kilometre range."

"What else can you search for?"

"We can continue a search for electronic signals. There are none at the moment but if any become available I can record them and note where they come from."

"And you can still test the air above us?"

"Yes. It is still poisonous. Any fluctuations will be recorded and I will notify you if it becomes suitable to support human life."

"So we'll head east towards Hawaii. There must be some survivors there somewhere."

"I would suggest travelling west. We could enter a different weather pattern. Perhaps the air five hundred kilometres away hasn't been contaminated."

"You say perhaps?"

Nedda frowned. "The chances of this are ten to one against."

*

By evening using Hawaiian Standard Time, Greg was worried about almost everything that had happened. Nedda had discretely disappeared and he sat eating an evening meal as thoughts churned over in his mind.

For most of the afternoon she had searched the conditions outside K264. The only positive sign was of the ocean itself. Below twenty metres, it was normal with fish life abundant but the marine mammals had gone. He guessed that this was because dolphins or whales would have been asphyxiated when they surfaced. There were no other submarines around. Being close to the Hawaiian navel base this was unexpected.

This concern was reflected in the continuous surface search. No ships or crashed aircraft showed. According to Nedda, the surface within the five hundred kilometre radius that they monitored was empty. Monitors on the console supported her reports. On the electronic front, again nothing was registered, undersea navigation transmitters were silent and satellite transmissions couldn't reach them. His own tablet and satellite phone registered nothing.

Nedda could offer no opinion without more input of information but he had not mentioned a theory he had built up. What if the submarine was surrounded by a natural cloud or electronic forcefield that was so dense that no signals could pass through it? Everything beyond could be normal. And what of the girl herself? It helped to think of her as a person. If she was as sophisticated as she seemed, couldn't she be withholding information from him? Perhaps the submarines monitors were purposely changed to register nothing. Could he trust her?

He shrugged and decided he needed to. The counter argument was that if she was some sort of enemy, why had she bothered to save his life in the first place? It would have been easy to just let the poisoned air kill him along with everyone else aboard.

"Greg!"

He glanced up and noted that Nedda was now wearing a white top and jeans. Why would a hologram bother to change in appearance? He shrugged for it wasn't important. More so was the expression on her face. She looked excited!

"What is it, Nedda?"

"I have picked up an incoming signal. Somebody is trying to contact us."

*

CHAPTER 2

Shontel hadn't even wanted to come down into this wretched cave. Now she was stuck all by herself a hundred or more metres below the surface barely able to breathe. This outdoor education paper was really her last choice but a necessary ingredient for her Bachelor of Science degree. What it had to do with science was, in her opinion, practically nothing. She would rather be in the lab back at The University of British Columbia or using her tablet or laptop in her quaint little apartment in Gastown, Vancouver.

"Bruce!" she called up the vertical shaft above. "Are you there?"

There was no reply, not that she really expected one. It was almost an hour since she had fallen down the steep slope off the side of the main grotto. She grimaced. Knowing Bruce and the other instructors, this situation had probably been set up to test how she would cope being alone in the dark. She could, of course, radio for help, fail this section of the paper and have the indignity of being hauled up on a rope chair where the guys would be lined up grinning sarcastically at her. It was bad enough in the lab when she received the only A in the practical paper. Damn them all; she'd find another way out. There was a choice; otherwise she would not have been dropped down in the first place.

God, the air was bad! She took another sniff from the oxygen mask and checked the supply tank. There another two hours supply and probably double that if she used it carefully.

"Have it your way!" she shouted up the shaft. "I'll find my own way out."

She did have an electronic map of the cave on her iPad that showed her position and where the various routes went. It was quite good and showed how difficult the various climbs were. Oh well, as long as she stuck to the ones marked in green or yellow and avoided the red ones it shouldn't be too bad. She slid the backpack around her shoulders and compared the way ahead with that shown on the tablet. The route was longer than she would have liked and circled around before coming to a zigzag section that ended up at the main cave above. A shorter direct route she had originally come down was marked in red and would be avoided. She was annoyed with everyone else but not foolish enough to attempt this section that even experienced spelunkers marked as difficult.

The cave narrowed and at one point she had to crawl through, gasping and spluttering enough to place her mask on and suck in fresh air. The top of the mask included glasses and the circulating air relieved her stinging eyes. There was certainly something wrong with the air in the cave. She lifted her eyes to view the row of dots above her eyebrow. The left one that recorded the outside temperature and humidity, showed a pleasant twenty-two degrees Celsius and normal humidity but the right-eye lights flickered yellow. This meant that there was a build up of foul air. She could press a button to get more details but didn't bother.

Once through the low part, she stood up in a massive cavern where her torch beam didn't even show the ceiling. The floor sloped upwards but wasn't too steep. Also, there were no side tunnels so she didn't need to consult her iPad map. She frowned when the air lights remained yellow and actually increased in intensity as she climbed higher. There were now eight yellow ones, two more than earlier. Shouldn't the air become better as she went closer to the surface?

Perhaps the gauge was faulty. She decided to risk it and slipped the mask off. Immediately the stink like rotting eggs hit her nose, she gasped as her lungs sucked in foul air and she became disorientated. As soon as she slapped the mask back in place and sucked in fresh air her blurred vision cleared and spasms of pain across her forehead ceased. Worse though, two yellow warning lights changed to red. The air was becoming worse!

This was now more serious than just failing a paper. She took the DER, deep earth radio, out of her pocket and spoke. "Shontel speaking. I'm in trouble, Guys. Can you help?"

Normally this would trigger an immediate reply. This time though, there was no answer, not even the faint static normally present this far under the surface. She frowned, noted that a blue line showed it was on and in contact so tried again.

"Okay, I know you're there. It's no joke, you know. The air down here is bad and I need assistance."

Nobody replied.

For another forty minutes she climbed and followed the passageway around. There were now a few side passages but at least these showed on the map and the main way became marked with small fluorescent markers attached to the wall every fifty metres. She reached the zigzag section and found a wire rope dangling down. Without it, the climb would have been tricky.

Another twenty minutes went by before, sweating and tired she reached the rear of the main grotto. According to the map it was now only sixty metres to where her misadventures had begun. Her relief was tempered though by the air indicator that showed a row of red lights. Why was it still poisonous this close to the surface?

A few moments later she arrived and gasped. There, on the floor were the seven other members of the party. None wore their breathing masks and they lay in grotesque angles across the floor bathed in shadows between the beams of dropped torches. Almost in a state of panic, Shontel rushed over to Bruce, the closest person. His eyes were open but blank, lips and cheeks a ghastly blue and spittle hung from a partly opened mouth. It took mere seconds to confirm that he was dead.

"No!" she howled as she ran across to the second body, the third ... fourth! Everyone there was dead!

*

She stood back shaking as tears streamed down her cheeks beneath her mask and onto her jacket. Not willing to go back to the bodies she walked around to gather up equipment that could be useful. Her own oxygen supply was getting lower but the other tanks that lay on the ground had not even been used. It appeared that the catastrophe had happened suddenly, so quickly that the party had not even had time to put them on. There must have been a bubble of poisonous gas that burst out a crack in the rock and killed them. It was still around, too for her mask registered only flashing red lights. She swallowed bile and attempted to call out on the DER as well as on an ordinary mobile phone. Both instruments made no contact and an attempt to send a text message failed.

She would have to get to the surface. It had taken them an hour to get this far in and would take longer to go out, as it was a steady climb. She gulped and turned off all the torches except her own. There was nothing else she could do here and the darkness at least showed a little respect for the others. With a new supply of oxygen connected and carrying another cylinder in a second backpack she began her lonely journey to the surface.

*

The sound of howling wind reached Shontel's ears before she reached the cave mouth. She moved on but stopped with a gasp at the entrance. Almost everything outside was different! Whereas she expected to see the parking area where their mini-bus had been parked, the small hikers' hut and the neatly mowed grass, now there were just pine trees. She gulped! Beyond the trees were inky black clouds. She jumped in fright as forked lightning lit up the sky beyond the trees and seconds later, thunder boomed. The treetops were bent over in a howling gale she had heard but where she stood it was eerily still.

She stepped out several metres and saw the harbour inlet below with the steep forested hills rising above the ocean. She frowned. This was different, too! When they arrived in the mini-bus she remembered one of the others mentioning how delightful the view of the tiny fishing village where they had stayed in a motel was. Now there was nothing except trees that grew down to the water edge with the sound itself looking dark and almost ominous under the dark sky.

"So I took the wrong turn somewhere inside," she muttered to herself. "The bus will probably be around the next bend."

She stepped back as torrential rain arrived and sat down on a dry rock in the cave entrance. With the others all dead, she guessed the urgency of the situation had diminished. There was no value in getting soaking wet so she might as well wait until the storm had gone. She glanced up and the first positive item came to her eyes. Her mask showed a row of green lights. With a little caution she lifted her mask off and the smell of pines and salty air filled the air. She stood there sucking in fresh air and didn't even mind the second streak of lightning and clap of nearby thunder as she lifted the mask off her face and placed in a backpack.

There was a mobile tower in the village but her phone made no connection. Probably the twisting sound blocked the signal. She guessed that the local transmission tower was only designed for the village anyway. Perhaps the DER would work. It was different in that the signal travelled through the ground and had a range of several hundred kilometres to a ground station that converted the signal and sent it out to a satellite. In theory, it could reach similar radios just about anywhere.

However like the mobile phone, it showed that a search could find no receiving station. She switched it to the emergency channel and recorded a small message that would be transmitted if the radio found a transmission site. She studied it and remembered that the instructor said it was also capable of direct contact with a satellite when they were outside. Perhaps that was the trouble, she was too close to the surface for the earth signals to work and the storm prevented signals from reaching the satellite. At home, storms often stopped the signal on her satellite television. She would try again later!

*

Over the next week, every day became worse and more futile than the one before. After spending the first night in the cave mouth Shontel had spent the second day moving down to the inlet through trackless pine forest. She found nothing familiar and the eerie conditions made her drift from being terrified to a sort of dumb acceptance. The thunderclouds and lightning never retreated and by the third day she could predict that the violent thunderstorm would come during the mid-afternoon with a variation of less than an hour. Afterwards the lightning would stop but the clouds remained, as did the howling wind in the distance. She worked out that this blew in a circle with the southern side blowing east and the north, west. She remained in an eye of still air with the temperature similar to that in the cave.

The foreshore of the inlet consisted of smooth rocks that were easy to walk along and even at high tide there was enough room to be able to stay on them. Beyond this, the pine forest grew up the steep hillside with an identical opposite shore about three hundred metres away. The nights were the worst with total darkness and the only sound being the lap of water nearby. She heard no animal or bird sounds but did see an occasional fish swimming near the rocks in the deep water.

By the third day she was annoyed because she had not bothered to take everyone's food packs. Her own food had now almost gone with only a packet of emergency food and two apples left. She had rationed herself and supplemented her diet with berries that grew along the edge of the stones but hadn't counted on being so long by herself. They were similar to blackberries but didn't have prickly stems. There were bees and sandflies but not as many as normal in the area in summer and the sight of bumble bees flying around the berries and forest flowers offered her that little company that the forest lacked.

Now the seventh day was coming to an end. She had walked ten to fifteen kilometres down the inlet with no real change in the scenery; the storm still hung above the hills, the wind still blew constantly and she was still in calm air in quite warm conditions. She found a sheltered area beneath a small bank facing west and munched a handful of berries. Her flask had been filled from a nearby stream so she had water. However, with no matches she couldn't light a fire and had to make do with cold food, not that the berries would have tasted different if they were hot, anyway.

She reached for her mobile phone and attempted with diminishing hope, to reach someone. Nothing! She grimaced and reached for the DER, watched as the green light came on to show the batteries were still charged, pressed the emergency send button and put the instrument to her ear. Her heart leaped! Instead of the faint hum she heard a ring tone. This had not happened before!

There was a faint click and heard a female voice.

"Hello. This is Nedda from Submarine K264 sailing submerged north east of Hawaii speaking. We are operating under emergency conditions. Please respond if you hear me. I will repeat this message in Russian, Chinese Mandarin, Spanish and Japanese followed by a homing signal every hour on the hour for ten minutes throughout the night. I repeat…."

"I hear you," Shontel almost screamed. "This is Shontel Kemp speaking. I am lost on the west coast of Vancouver Island British Columbia in the Clayoquot Sound near the village of Tofino." Emotions seized her and she burst into tears. "Please help. My companions are all dead and I've been alone for a week."

The voice sounded calm but also excited. "Hello Shontel. Nedda here. Can you give me more details of your situation, please?"

With her hand trembling so much she almost dropped the radio, Shontel gave an account of everything that had happened.

"So the air in the cave poisoned your friends?" Nedda asked. "You are still alive because you have a breathing mask to supply oxygen and have been alone for seven days. Correct?"

"Yes," Shontel still had trouble restraining her sobs.

"Your voice is clear. Do you have a inbuilt radio in your mask?"

"No, I'm not wearing my mask"

"Why?" came the abrupt reply.

"I don't need it now."

"You can breath the air?" Nedda sounded astonished.

"I can."