by David Moody
There were thousands of people on that road, and they were all wiped out in a heartbeat. As if they hadn’t suffered enough, as they were each assimilated by the toxic sludge, their component parts combined and spliced and twisted and re-spliced. All those individuals fused together into a new whole. The vehicles and their passengers and the last of the kangaroos formed a snaking, serpent-like thing, many miles long. It rose up from the deep and bloody slurry that now covered this part of the earth, then dove back into the depths and swam away to feed.
Those people who’d been on the new perimeter of the orb when its size had been suddenly reduced fared little better. The new dimensions of the forcefield were decided at speed by the god-tech. Many people were saved. Many more were lost. Some were stuck in-between.
Where the new battle line had been drawn, people were killed indiscriminately. Anyone unfortunate enough to in the wrong spot when the forcefield was rebuilt bore the full brunt of its power. Around its entire circumference, wherever it struck land, people were literally sliced in two by the invisible wall. There was no warning about where it would appear, just a sudden and instantaneous materialization.
An arc sliced through the heavily populated northern districts of Brisbane, and there, more than anywhere else, the impact of the orb’s repositioning were felt. Not far from the state school in Strathpine, Valerie Henderson had just stepped out into the street to try to see why the shockwaves had stopped when the forcefield drove a transparent wall through the middle of her yard. Now she was on the outside and her kids were inside. They stood on the front porch and yelled for their mummy to come back into the house, but she couldn’t, and she never would again. Val was meters away from her kids. It might as well have been hundreds of miles.
Where the Bleed had been held back by the orb, the pressure had built to astonishing levels. And when that pressure was released by the repositioning of the forcefield, the blood gushed.
Great floods of gore were released right around the circumference of the orb, the waves destroying everything in their path. And this time, there was nothing to stop them other than a small and relatively insignificant bubble with a circumference of only four hundred miles. Everything else was dead. Everything else was absorbed by the Bleed.
The force of the waves was such that even when they reached the orb, this time they didn’t stop. Given its perfectly spherical structure and the fact that half of it was buried underground, the forcefield’s height had been reduced by exactly the same amount as its width. The waves crashed over it as well as around it, and the orb was almost completely submerged. Blood lapped against its glass-like sides. Everything was plunged into ruddy darkness when waves crashed over the top, but the god-tech had anticipated that, and the clockwork room provided illumination. Even that light was now tinged with mutating reds and oranges, like a never-ending sunset, the dying of the last ever day.
Inside the orb, it was clearer than ever that its source was the random hotel in Surfers Paradise. Desperate to stay alive, people fought with each other again to get closer to it. Riots broke out and then took hold. Chaos ensued. Order collapsed. The last vestiges of civilization began to fall apart.
The world belonged to the Bleed.
Maddie and Jenny stood side-by-side and tried to come to terms with what they’d just done. They hadn’t had any choice, of course, and neither of them regretted taking action, but the cost had been far higher than either of them had expected.
“Every decision has consequences,” Jenny said.
“You’re right.”
“Doing nothing is never an option.”
“Correct again. We’ve lost a lot of people, but if we hadn’t done it, they’d all be dead now.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better. Jesus, Maddie, there’s so much pressure on everything we do now.”
“Yeah, and it’ll be that way for a while longer. This is far from over.”
“I know. We’ve got to be ready for what comes next.”
“The good thing about the Bleed—the only good thing as far as I can see—is that it’s predictable. It likes to put on a gruesome show and try to intimidate us, but when it comes down to it, it’s only ever going to try and kill. Far as I can see, our options are now down to one.”
“We need to get ourselves and everyone else left alive away from here and somewhere safe.”
“Your planet’s dead, Jen. We have to let it go. Shit got ugly fast and we’ve got to deal with it.”
“I agree. We have to leave.”
15
SURFERS PARADISE, AUSTRALIA
Whether they had responsibility for less than four million souls or more than twenty million, it was all academic. The same problems remained: what the hell were they going to do with so many bodies? Where could they take them, and could the clockwork room even do it?
Jenny and Maddie worked hard to unlock the final secrets of the god-tech, combining their skills and abilities, riffing off each other to fill the individual gaps in their collective knowledge of the machine. Maddie knew the nuts and bolts (and cogs and levers) of how the thing worked and what it was capable of, but it was Jenny, the half-god, who truly had control. Individually, both struggled with the scale of the crisis and their responsibilities. Together, though, they had to believe they could do it.
Whether it was a hive-mind or collective, or if there was some central control somewhere, the Bleed appeared to sense the impact it was having on the remainder of the human race trapped in their bubble, and it fed off their fear. “It knows how to get to us,” Jenny said, watching the malevolent entity’s actions on the portals presented by the clockwork room. “It knows that the more it drives us apart, the easier it is to exploit the gaps and take us down.”
Outside, the Bleed was constantly mutating. Its shape, form and consistency was changing all the time…evolving. Tendrils and arms grew from out of nowhere and battered the outside of the orb, engorged and elongated fingers bursting from bloody stumps, trying to dig into the energy field, trying to rip and tear and smash and crush…anything to breach the human race’s last layer of defense.
“We saw what happened to Indonesia,” Maddie said, watching the displays with mounting concern. “The barrier is stronger now, but it’s only going to take a single break and that’ll be it.”
“I know. I get that. Once it finds a way in, it’ll flood this place in seconds.” Jenny looked at the invisible wall protecting the last humans. They were all held captive here. All of the people who’d survived so far would be drowned in blood. That was if they hadn’t already torn each other apart. Outside the clockwork room, the streets ran red with violence and fear. “If we don’t move fast,” she said, “there won’t be anyone left alive to take with us.”
“It’s always the same,” Maddie said. “When word got out that the moon was going to be colonized, there was a rush to escape like you wouldn’t believe. Folks trying to buy their way onto transports, figuring that net wealth somehow made them suitable candidates for re-starting the human race. Others were killing to survive.”
“Shit always floats,” Jenny sighed.
“Actually, only shit consisting mostly of fat, but, yeah, you can say that again.”
“It sickens me that people can be so entitled and so fucking selfish. Every last person out there, their lives are worth just as much as the people next to them. They’re here because they’re lucky, not because they have some god given right.”
“No pun intended.”
“I’m serious. It’s not for us to decide who lives or who dies. We just have to do the best for everyone left.”
“I know. I get that. Thing is, right now I think saving any of them will be a miracle. There’s a potential problem, and I don’t know if you’ve picked up on it yet.”
Jenny just looked at her. “Why am I not surprised? There’s always a potential problem. What is it now?”
Maddie showed her an image on the display. “The dome goes sixty miles down as well
as up, but we don’t want to move anything other than the people on the surface. More to the point, we can’t. The room won’t be able to cope. We can’t risk trying to move all that ground and all these buildings, we can only move the people.”
“So how do we separate them from everything else without letting in the Bleed?”
“Exactly. That’s the problem. One drop of that thing gets inside this dome, the tiniest bit of contamination, and we’re all toast.”
“There must be a way.”
“If there is, I’m struggling to figure it out. I can’t see a way of getting this orb and those people to safety without compromising the forcefield.”
“Can we create a second orb inside the first? A bubble within a bubble?”
Maddie shook her head. “No. I already thought of that. It won’t work. We can’t risk diverting energy away from keeping the Bleed out. Any reduction in the strength of the forcefield to set up another one will leave us vulnerable.”
“Great.”
“On the other hand, if we leave it too long, the dipshits out there will kill themselves. There won’t be anyone left to save.”
“I wish this really was the Rapture,” Jenny mused. “We could do with finding a way of getting people to float up to heaven, or wherever it is they think they’re going to end up.”
“I guess it is, in a way. No floating, though.”
“There’s no way we can get people off the ground and scoop them up?”
Maddie shook her head. “I don’t think so, not without diverting energy from our shield. And the people who are inside would be screwed. They’d just float up to the ceiling.”
She laughed. Jenny didn’t.
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are, but you have to admit, this is getting seriously weird now.”
Jenny ignored her and walked around the console, scanning the various images being presented by the room and desperately trying to find a solution to the impossible. Maybe Maddie was right. Were these people even worth saving? Outside—or inside, depending on your perspective—within the protective confines of the forcefield, people were battling with each other. They were at breaking point. They were terrified. They knew that all was lost. In the dull red glow of the Bleed, their impending deaths now seemed inevitable.
“Wait,” Jenny said, looking at the view from directly above the hotel. “I think I might have a solution.”
16
SURFERS PARADISE, AUSTRALIA
“Shut up and listen.”
Jenny waited for the people to respond, and it didn’t take long. The views the clockwork room showed her of the inside of the dome left her in little doubt they were listening. Fights temporarily paused. Panicking people froze with surprise as her echoing voice boomed across the sky. Some lifted their arms skyward, as if she was some kind of god who demanded their adoration. She didn’t have time for any of that bullshit. She just wanted them to shut the fuck up so she could tell them what to do if they wanted to survive.
“I’ve got a simple message for you. It won’t take long, and it won’t be difficult to understand. What you do with what I’m about to tell you is up to you, but it will mean the difference between you dying or staying alive. Bottom line is, listen to me if you don’t want to die.
“We can’t hold the Bleed back much longer. Our planet is lost; that much is already clear, so we’ve had to find a way of getting all of you to safety. We think we’ve got it, but in order for it to work you’re going to have to do what I say and do it without question.
“First, for fuck’s sake, stop fighting. We can only do this if we work together. All this killing and rioting…that’s the kind of bullshit the Bleed wants from us. Those are the kind of behaviors it encourages and feeds on. And that, believe it or not, is why we’re all in this shitty situation right now. It’s time to wise up and grow up. It’s time to cooperate.
“I also need you to have a little faith.” She paused, waiting to gauge the reaction of the people. “I know that sounds corny as hell, but it happens to be true. I need you to have faith in me and in what I’m telling you. Please. You and me, we’re all that’s left of the human race. We’ve made it this far, when so many millions of other people have died, so I guess we’ve done something right. I need you to believe in what we’re doing here. I need you to take one last leap of faith with me.”
Another brief hesitation. Jenny wondered how much of what she was saying they could accept, when their faith in everything else had been shattered. Maddie could see the concern in her face. “You can’t worry about it, Jen,” she whispered. “They either do it or they don’t.”
Jenny knew she was trying to help, but she wasn’t. She turned away from Maddie and continued.
“There’s a reason I was brought here to the Gold Coast. When I turned up in Surfers Paradise, I couldn’t understand it. I assumed it was because I’d been sent as far away from the London and the centre of the Bleed as was possible at the time, but today I’ve started to understand things a little better. There was always a plan!
“The protective shield we’ve managed to put around us has saved millions of lives, but right now it’s only half filled with people. Because we’re right on the east coast of the country, everything on one side of us is water. There’s a reason for that, and it’s only now become clear.
“For the human race to survive, we have to get away from this planet, and we have to do it fast. We don’t have long before either the strength of the Bleed outside or the fear and fighting inside bring what little is left of our world crashing down in pieces around us. If you want to survive, listen to me and do as I say.
“You have less than two hours to get as far as you can from land. Get into the ocean somewhere no further north than Russell Island and no further south than Kingscliff. Don’t worry about the riptides and currents and sharks and whatever…the world’s not like it was. We’ll look after you. No boats, just swim. The more you help each other, the more of us will get through this. The more you fight, the closer the human race will be to extinction.
“I know how crazy this sounds, honestly I do, but I say again, I’ve managed to keep you all alive so far against the odds. I need you to forget everything you used to know and just swim!”
17
SURFERS PARADISE, AUSTRALIA
The exodus had begun.
Many did exactly as Jenny had instructed although, at first, there was mass hesitation from one side of the orb to the other; tens of thousands of people waited for tens of thousands more to make the first move. It seemed to alien to do what she’d said, so counterintuitive. Ultimately it was, as she’d told them, a leap of faith. But once the stampede finally began, it was unstoppable.
The coast from Russell Island right the way down to Kingscliff to the south was a mass of chaotic movement as people rushed to get into the water. Many were initially reluctant because, normally, logic and fear got in the way of belief for many people. But today was about as far from normal as was possible, and swimming for your life to escape a world-devouring demonic entity was just par for the course in these strangest of days. Once the first few hundred had entered the water, followed by the first few thousand more, most of the remaining masses weren’t far behind. Some, of course, still refused to believe anything the disembodied woman’s voice had told them, even after all they’d seen of the Bleed. It broke Jenny’s heart to see them: those people still stubbornly refusing to move, people who’d lived here before the Bleed and who weren’t prepared to abandon their homes and possessions, and others who’d taken up residence in bars and similar places, clinging on to memories to get them through their final hours. She had to accept she couldn’t do anything for people like that. Her job was to make them aware and give them a chance. What they did with those opportunities was up to them. The future—if anyone had one—looked bleak. She knew there was something to be said for kicking back with a beer and watching the fireworks.
The ocean was more like a lake
than the open sea now, the gently cupping wall of the orb having long since silenced the tides. The only disturbances came when the Bleed became frustrated and began trying to beat its way through the forcefield. It constantly formed grotesque, lumpy appendages which approximated simple hands trying to pick and smash their way through.
The water was warmer and more welcoming than expected, though its depth continued to present problems to many of those escaping the land. Where they were no longer able to feel the sand beneath their feet, some of them began to form human islands—linking arms and legs and doing what they could to help each other stay afloat. Parents carried kids on their shoulders or on their backs. The elderly were supported by the young. Those who were weaker were held up by the strong. A sixty-mile-long area of surf was steadily filling with people.
And yet, for all those who worked cooperatively, and those who chose to stay behind, there were many more who were prepared to do anything to survive, at the expense of everyone else. The odds were stacked against those who had found themselves farthest from the coast. Many people, believing they had a God given right to be among the chosen few, charged east as fast and as hard as they could, trying to punch and smash their way through traffic- and body-clogged streets, failing to realize that they were getting nowhere fast. Major routes became impossibly clogged, and minor roads fared little better.