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“You’re not drivin’ into the city,” I said. “You said yourself we’ve got twenty minutes.” That wasn’t enough time to get there and back, and god only knew what condition the roads would be in, if there were power lines down, or if he could get through at all.
He pulled at his hair and stared at the console. “Think, think, think.”
“What about the battery from the Jeep,” I suggested. “Could we rig that up to this console somehow?”
He was staring at the one radar that was still working. It stood to fucking reason that the one instrument still working was as old as time itself. Granted, nothing in here was very new. But this radar wasold.
“Christ. Noah’s Ark had newer technology.” I sighed. “And people can still see this radar? This one and only image is the only thing communicating out of this office?” I looked closer at it. “I mean, they know it’s us because it says Darwin in the corner.”
Jeremiah, who was still staring at the screen, began to smile and grabbed my arm. “Tully, you’re a genius.”
Well, I absolutely wasn’t, because I had no clue what he was talkin’ about. But he was frantically searchin’ for something on the shelves. “Can you shine a light here please,” he asked.
“Uh, sure.” I held my phone up for him.
He snatched up the user manual that he’d read, tryin’ to learn how all the old equipment worked, and he began flippin’ through pages. “Here,” he said, flattening the booklet. “Light, please.”
I shone my light for him and he began reading, draggin’ his finger down each page faster than I could keep up. “There’s a key,” he said. “A master key.” He looked back at the door. “Doreen? I need you! There’s a master key for this console to change the settings. Where is it?”
She came back in, looking confused. “A key?”
He turned to me. “That old keyboard that was here, please tell me you didn’t throw it out.”
“No, I packed it up,” I mumbled, goin’ to the shelf I’d put it on. To be honest, I’d nearly tossed it out—it was prehistoric and obsolete, or so I thought—but for some unknown reason, I hadn’t.
After a quick search, I held up the keyboard. It was that beige colour old computers used to be, heavy as a brick, and the keys were huge and clunky. The cord attached had an old phone jack on the end of it, for Christ’s sake. “This thing?”
Jeremiah grinned. “Yes.”
Doreen was now going through the old lockbox, rifling through old keys and whatnot. She held up a key that didn’t look like a key at all. The metal key part was small and circular, but Jeremiah grinned when he saw it.
“Yes, that’s it!” He grabbed it and dropped to the floor. “I need a light, please.”
I shone the light up under the dash and he shoved the key in and turned it, then with a strength I didn’t know he had, he ripped off the under section of the panel.
“What the hell are you doing?” Doreen asked.
“The only way to change the official site ID text in the top righthand corner of the screen,” he said, “is to do it manually with a keyboard. They would have entered in this information when they installed it.”
He plugged the keyboard in, getting on his knees to check the radar screen. And lo and behold...
A cursor began to blink on the screen.
Doreen gave him a solid shake. “Jeremiah, you smart sonofabitch.”
He backspaced through the four lines of authentication information where it stated Darwin Bureau details, and he began to type.
Darwin Bureau no comms.
Hazer tracking sharp east.
Eye less than twenty mins.
Seek shelter now.
And then we stood there, watching and waiting. The only sound in the room was our breathing.
We had no way of knowing if the message was received. No way of knowing if anyone in Darwin had anyway to see the message at all. It wasn’t likely, given everything and everyone was so high tech these days, and this was so old.
