They were about to change the world.
“Look,” someone said, pointing a finger at the tunnels below. “What is that?”
“Is that supposed to happen?”
“No, that is definitely not supposed to happen.”
“Oh no…”
“Out of the way,” said Shepard. “Move!” The lead scientist shook his head in confusion at what he saw. A confused scientist could be good or bad. It could signal the start of a quest of discovery, like Isaac Newton wondering why an insolent apple had fallen on his head. Or it might be a bad omen, like a sudden bump against the Titanic’s hull on its maiden voyage. Scientists yearned to understand and control; a confused scientist was a scientist without control. “Damn it! Halt the experiment. Something has gone wrong.”
Smoke filled the tunnels, destroying the positivity in the observation room. Dreams dead in an instant.
The chief engineer halted the experiment. The mechanical whirring puttered out and the dragon went back to sleep. People slumped against the walls and groaned.
“Okay, people,” said Shepherd, taking off his spectacles and polishing them with the tail of his lab coat. “We’ll assess things and see where we stand, but there is no reason to lose heart. No scientist ever walked a straight path to discovery. Humanity's destiny has always been a meandering zig-zag. Each obstacle in the road gives us a tiny glimpse at the mysteries of our world—and how to overcome them. This is our first obstacle, my friends, and it won’t be our last, but each one will move us closer to victory. We will revisit this day; you have my word.”
The disheartened scientists lifted their heads. Some mumbled agreement. Today was just a bad day soon forgotten.
“I’ll get a team down there to check the damage,” said the chief engineer. “I’ve got the extractors running to get that smoke cleared. Crikey, what a bloody mess.”
Shepherd gave the man a withering stare. “Your job is to keep things running, Cecil. I trust you'll repair anything broken and allow us to correct today's unfortunate misfire. There's no point regretting what has already passed. Tomorrow is a new day.”
The chief engineer nodded his understanding and headed out of the room, unlocking the magnetic locks and leaving the room open. The scientists began shuffling out.
“What’s happened to the floor?” someone asked as Shepherd headed towards the exit himself. The woman pointing was Karen Paul, his Quantum Theorist. He glanced at her feet where she pointed. A frown found its way to his eyebrows.
Something was happening in the tunnels below their feet.
“It’s moving,” somebody said. “It… It looks sticky, like tar.”
Shepherd shoved one of his assistants aside to get a look at the patch of glass floor behind her. Clinging to the surface of the glass, something grey and viscous moved. Grew. The odd stain was growing, creeping along the bottom of the glass, like blood seeping into carpet fibres.
“What the hell is going on?” Shepherd asked to no one in particular. His confusion had reached an apex. Either he turned the corner towards understanding or would careen, screaming, into the gutter.
Crack!
Everyone in the room spread out against the glass walls, as a circle opened between them as they stared at the transparent floor. Shepherd, however, remained in the centre of the room. The smoke cleared in the tunnels as the extractor fans did their work, but the electronic catacomb grew dim as the lights flickered and died.
What was happening?
Crack!
The glass floor shook.
“It’s going to give way,” someone yelled. “We need to get the hell out.”
The grey tar continued spreading, covering the underside of the entire glass floor now. A dull droning sound came from somewhere—or perhaps from everywhere—and a silvery cobweb scratched itself into the patch of glass directly beneath Shepherd’s feet. It was enough to finally make him move back towards the wall with the others.
“Jesus Christ,” came a muted voice belonging to the chief engineer in the tunnels. Shepherd turned. He glanced out of the window and spotted the man struggling on the floor. The lights behind the chief engineer were still lit, but the ones in front of him had blinked out. The grey substance clinging to the underside of the glass floor also seemed to be clinging to the engineer's legs in the tunnels. When the man tried to sit up, Shepherd saw the terrified expression on his face.
“Everybody out!” Shepherd screamed. “Evacuate!”
The room burst to life, screams and yells bouncing off the glass walls. People threw themselves at the exit, but it was only a single-body wide door and people pushed and panicked. Shepherd shouted at them to remain orderly, but fear of the unknown drove them to irrationality. Fear of the unknown was a scientist’s motivator, but it was no longer their muse today. Today that fear terrified them like chickens before a wolf. Even Shepherd struggled to put one shaking foot in front of the other.
Was the facility about to blow up?
What kind of chemical reaction was taking place?
Craaack!
The floor opened in a chasm, the glass shattering into a thousand pieces.
But no one fell to the tunnels below.
The grey substance remained in place, floating where before it had clung to the bottom of the glass. The shards of glass seemed to sink into it, dissolving.
No, Shepherd thought, frowning.
The glass shards transformed into the same tar-like substance that was spreading everywhere. The tar wasn’t growing: everything it touched was adding to it. And Shepherd realised he was standing in it.
His feet rested atop the viscous blanket as though it was a carpeted floor. It was soft.
He tried to lift his foot but couldn't.
The tar held it.
A dozen panicked colleagues were also trapped by the alien substance and Shepherd could taste their fear. His inner caveman broke free and fought furiously to escape. But it was no good. His feet refused to budge. His shoes had gone—turned into tar.
What of his feet inside those shoes? Were they also being consumed?
Shepherd experienced no pain, and neither did anyone else by the sound of it. His colleague's cries were of fear, not agony. He sensed something in his lower extremities, but it was dull and far away—perhaps an itching. What Shepherd felt most was that he felt nothing. He tried to wiggle his toes, but it was if they had never existed.
Shepherd twisted his hips and managed to stare at the tunnels below. Dozens more lights had extinguished and the chief engineer was nowhere to be seen. A creeping river of sludge covered all.
Shepherd glanced down and saw that his shins and knees were no longer part of him. They had become tar. “What have we done?” he whispered.
Shepherd was covered by the black, sticky stuff, and it changed everything it touched. The grey river flowed up his legs toward his groin, and it was then he finally felt something. As his genitalia turned to thick sludge, Shepherd became nauseous. His body burned as his organs ceased operating—or disappeared completely. Others in the room screamed too, so hard that their vocal chords snapped and ruined voice boxes emitted strangled shrieks.
The agony started. A chorus of pain.
The entire team of the OSC was being eaten alive, consumed by a blanket of death.
Shepherd spewed a mouthful of blood against the glass window that was already half-consumed by tar. The room grew dark. The tunnels below were a solid river of choking sludge.
The world closed in.
Shepherd shook his head as his organs liquefied and darkness overtook him. My God. What have we done?
Endings
A stifled cough punctuated the silence. The world was shedding its cancerous skin and you took it with you everywhere. Black dust covered everything. A person could no longer ever be clean.
Finn gazed at the bundle of blankets hiding his dead sister—no one made coffins anymore, so covering her in an old duvet was the best they could do—and winced when he spotte
d a damp patch where her face should be. He’d always thought of a corpse as being a dry thing. The truth was different. Dead things were moist.
His sister was moist.
Rotting.
Finn’s sister had been placed in the living room—where the television used to be—so they could all be together when the end came. The presence of a corpse was no longer morbid, it was mundane. A simple part of life—what little remained of it.
Finn turned from his sister’s resting place and glanced at his ma. The old girl gazed numbly, her face grey and expressionless. She held a frail hand against her mouth as she fought off another cough and seemed satisfied when it went away. In the old world she would have been wailing in a church after the loss of her child, but death was too commonplace now for melodrama. A billion mothers had lost their children. She was not special. Death was coming to claim them all—a withered old man with palm outstretched, ready to give the final handshake. Finn considered his sister might have been lucky to escape humanity’s last choking breaths.
If you can call being brutalised and murdered lucky.
Finn clenched his fists, ignoring the pain of knuckles once broken as a younger man. His mother seemed to sense his anger and moved her gaze towards him. She did not smile, but gave a tiny nod telling him she was still present. A weaker woman would be lost to madness, but his ma was cursed with an unbreakable spirit. No respite of insanity for her.
Or for Finn.
Clive put a hand on Finn’s stiff back and handed him a tumbler full of whiskey. “Enjoy it, brother, because there’s no more left. I’d pop the shop, but it’s not there no more.”
Finn smiled at the joke. The nearby corner shop went up in flames days ago but had dropped its shutters long before. The only way to get anything anymore was to take it, find it, or bargain for it.
Take it, thought Finn grimly. Like someone took my sister.
I should have been here. I should have been looking after her. My little sis.
Finn and Marie had not been close since they were kids—she had moved with the family to London in the early nineties, while Finn stayed behind in Belfast, an eighteen-year-old with a chip on his shoulder (a perfect recruit for the IRA)—but he felt her loss like a blade in his chest. He had always felt like he would have time—time to reconnect with his family later and to settle down when he was ready. He realised now how much of his life he had sacrificed to fighting. Northern Ireland didn't even exist anymore, so it had all been for nothing anyway. His homeland was a blackened, lifeless husk just like the rest of the globe.
All that remained of Finn’s world now were the people inside the cramped living room. It was a home he’d never been part of, yet, looking around at the old heirlooms and ancient photographs, it felt like he belonged. Atop the mantelpiece stood the horse figurine he’d had made at school. It still bore the hairline fracture where a toddling Marie got hold of it and dropped it on the old kitchen tiles back in Belfast.
Back when they had all been together.
This might not have been Finn's home for the past twenty years, but it was his home now. His mother, his brother, and him—a killer and the loving family he turned away from—awaiting the end of the world.
Finn had chosen a life of hate.
And it had cost him so much.
He downed the whiskey despite his brother's warning it would be his last, unwilling to draw out the agony with tentative sips. Whiskey deserved a chance to work, and even now he sensed its warmness spreading through his legs.
Spreading like tar.
“You never were a patient one, were you?” said Clive, his native accent gone after two decades in England—just four years old when he moved here.
Finn patted his younger brother on the shoulder. “I’m an Irishman with a drink in front of him. You having one yourself?”
Clive shook his head. “Knew you would enjoy it more.”
Finn felt a lump in his throat where the whiskey burned. To get back to emotions he could handle, he glanced again at his dead sister. A brief memory of Marie threading daisy-chains while sitting on his lap in the forest flashed through his mind. It hurt like a rusty blade across his ribs. “What happened to her, Clive?”
Clive looked away, hiding his eyes. He rubbed at his left wrist and sighed. “No point thinking about it now. She’s gone. I'm going to bury her in the front garden. It's probably a silly thing to do, but I want her to be at rest when the end comes. She was such a kind soul.”
“I know,” said Finn, heart thudding inside his chest. “What bastard did this to her?”
“I don’t know, Finn, and it doesn’t matter. We’ll all be gone ourselves before the week is through. Danny Stanton said he drove down to Ramsgate last week, and the English Channel was gone. Just… gone. The tar was crawling right up the beach.” He stopped rubbing his wrist for a moment and wiped the dusty sweat from his brow. “It’s stupid, but even after all the news reports, part of me hoped it was all fantasy. I prayed to almighty it wasn’t really happening, but seeing the fear on poor Danny Stanton’s face was all the proof I needed. He reckons it will be up this way before the week ends. We should move north with Ma. They say Newcastle will be last to go. Makes you proud in a way. The last surviving patch of life will be right here in England.”
Finn sneered. “Why would it make you proud? You’re Irish. Ireland is gone.”
“I’ve lived here for twenty years, Finn. I might be Irish, but England is my home. Do you really look back at that place so fondly? It was a battleground. Why did you stay so long?”
Finn stared at his sister’s damp corpse. “This place is no different, Clive. Monsters dwell everywhere. A monster did this to Marie, and I want to know who.”
“Like I said, I don't know.”
Clive went to turn away, but Finn grabbed him by the wrist—harder than he’d intended—and it made Clive cry out.
“You’re lying to me, Clive. I want to know who did this. Who killed our sister? Who killed Marie?”
Clive yanked his arm away and rubbed his wrist as though it were on fire. “What the fuck does it matter? We’re all dead, anyway.”
“It matters because she suffered, alone and afraid.”
“Ha! Don’t act like you give a shit about Marie being alone. She had to get by without you for the last twenty years. I was just a baby when we moved here, but she remembered. She missed you her whole life.”
Finn recoiled. “I was here. I saw her.”
“The odd Christmas or Easter when you weren’t too busy fighting pointless wars?”
“I was a soldier, Clive. I had a duty.”
“You followed in dad’s footsteps and became a mindless terrorist. The IRA has a lot to answer for…” he trailed off, “but there’s no reason to debate it now. There’s no reason to do anything anymore. Don’t you get it, Finn? Marie is dead. She doesn’t care what happened to her, and neither should you. Instead of worrying about it, you should be making peace with God. You more than most.”
Finn clenched his fists. “Careful, little brother.”
Clive’s lower lip trembled, but he stood his ground. His younger brother thought himself a man. At twenty four he should be, but Finn could still teach him a few things.
“Finley!” Both brothers turned to face their ma who chose that moment as one of the few times she spoke as of late. “I will not see you at each other’s throats. We should all be making peace with God, not just Finn. Let’s count ourselves lucky we have any time at all. To be amongst family for our final days is a blessing. Don’t squander what most are nay lucky enough to have. You two are brothers.”
Clive nodded, looked at Finn. “I’m sorry.”
Finn shrugged, but said nothing. His anger had risen. The only thing that could bring him back now was taking a few breaths and remaining silent. His little brother was right, and it was infuriating. It meant that Finn was wrong—and had been wrong most of his life.
Fighting pointless wars against neighbours and ch
ildren.
“Finn, can I speak with you in the kitchen, please?” His ma ordered rather than asked. She moved past the mahogany china cabinet older than she was and disappeared.
Finn followed her. Entering the small kitchen streaked with filth. Earth’s atmosphere was in tatters. The solidification of the oceans had put an end to climatic winds. England was hot, dusty, and still. Not so much as a mild breeze gave relief from the mugginess, and grime coated all. In the last few weeks, trees began to die, choked off from the sun by whatever foulness clung to the air. Some said it was decayed animal and human corpses. Others claimed flecks of the creeping grey tar casually devouring the earth. Finn didn’t care what the dust was, he was just tired of choking on it.
His ma stood in front of the empty fridge, blocking the curled family photo of them at their former home—the one picture that had Dad in it. His callous eyes stared back at Finn. “You’re still angry, Finley?” his ma said. “Even after all these years?”
Finn went to argue but ended up nodding. Anger wasn’t something of which he was ashamed. It was a part of him—the only thing his father had left him with any value. “Yes, I am angry.”
“Good,” his ma said, surprising him.
He raised an eyebrow. “Good?”
His ma took a step towards him and placed her hands on his shoulders while she looked at him. Her eyes had once been green, but now they were grey, set above sunken cheeks. When she spoke, she kept her voice low, as if she didn’t want Clive to hear in the next room. “Marie had a boyfriend, Finn. A real piece of work.”
Finn swallowed, the lump in his throat returning. His eyes kept falling upon that family photo. Next to his dad stood Marie, a tiny three-year-old hanging off her thirteen year old brother. Clearing his throat, Finn urged his ma to continue.
“It was a year ago when she came home with her first black eye,” she went on. “She’d been down a local pub called the Hobby Horse drinking with some new fella. She swore he had nothing to do with her face, but it was as regular as the wind after that. Your brother went down one evening and tried to put a stop to it.”
Hell on Earth Trilogy: The Complete Apocalyptic Saga Page 83