Empty Planet

by Lynette Sloane

  “I forgot to tell you,” he said, standing back and admiring the little tree. “Mark’s father rang earlier. They’ve started a swimming club at the new pool. Mark’s joining and wondered if you’d like to go with him.”

  I smiled for the first time in ages; swimming was even better than playing ‘footie’ on the town square or climbing on roofs.

  “I guess that’s a yes then,” said Dad, glad that something had finally broken through my teenage sulk.

  Mark and I started going to the baths most evenings, which was good because it gave me something else to think about. We got friendly with another boy, Mike, whom we hadn’t met before. He was a year older than us and went to a private school a few miles away.

  A month later I was alone in the house when the phone rang. It was Graham. Gemma had given him my number.

  “Hi dude,” He began, “did you future jump last night?”

  “No, not unless I slept through it.”

  “Well it only lasted a couple of hours so maybe you did. Gemma said she woke up just before everything got back to normal. She was quite shaken. The roof of her bungalow had collapsed and when she got off her bed the floorboards gave way. She pushed the window frame out and climbed out onto the pathway. Then everything got back to normal. It’s a good thing she’d hidden a spare key in the garden ’cause she was locked out.”

  “Is she ok now?” I asked, the concern showing in my voice.

  “Yea, don’t worry.” He paused, “I went to the meeting place but the roof had caved in so I took a short cut back over the fields. Some wild dogs had been feeding off the sheep. The dogs could be a problem for us in the future. Their numbers seem to have grown considerably.”

  “I’m not looking forward to the next jump then,” I said.

  “I also have some good news,” continued Graham, “I was fed up of having to sleep in my day clothes, so I’ve been conducting an experiment. I’ve slept in my underwear for the last few months and kept my day clothes right next to me on the bed. These didn’t age so I was able to get dressed when I went on the jump.

  “So I don’t have to sleep in my clothes anymore.”

  “Not if you keep them next to you.”

  “Great, Mum kept catching me fully clothed and thought I was sneaking out of the house again.”

  “If you’re ever up this way during a jump meet Gemma and I at the quarry. The blasting has uncovered a small cave on the third terrace down, so I’ve ordered lots of Perspex sheeting, three centimetres thick. I’ll fix it across the opening on the next jump and make a closable doorway. It will be our new meeting place. We might need shelter and somewhere safe to go if the dogs become a problem.”

  “I’ll have to do something similar here,” I said, wondering how I could afford Perspex sheeting with my pocket money. Then the obvious came to mind; the next time I jumped I would go to the local hardware store and help myself to whatever I needed for my shelter.

  Graham added, “I met another guy during the jump. He was a bit older than me but agreed that the Perspex sheets were a great idea. He said that plastic doesn’t photo degrade.”

  “I have some news too,” I said. Last week I was drawn into a jump while I was swimming at the pool. The building became derelict: the doors and part of the roof were missing and the pool was empty. I got a few bruises ’cause I landed on the bottom when the water disappeared; it’s good thing I wasn’t diving. Another Jumper wasn’t so fortunate. A friend of mine, Mike, was dive-bombing in the deep end and landed in the bottom on the pool and broke his ankle. I managed to help him to the shallow end and lift him out in case he drowned when the water returned after the jump, but couldn’t do anything else to help. He was in agony so I kept talking to him ’til normality returned about an hour later.

  “He said he’d found the same as us. Each time he jumps houses and belongings seem to have aged more and more. Oh, and we’ve both noticed that houses are unstable and in danger of collapsing, so we can’t rely on them for shelter from now on. The dogs are hunting in packs here too. Mike said a girl he knew had to climb a tree to avoid getting attacked on the last jump. I’ll get him to help me with the shelter when his ankle’s better.”

  Graham didn’t comment on my long monologue but got back to the reason for his call.

  “Steve, we really need to find a way of defending ourselves. I keep a handgun with me at all times and sleep with it under my pillow. I know teenagers can’t buy firearms, but maybe you could join a gun club to learn how to use a one. Also, start collecting anything you think would be useful on the jumps and find a good hiding place for it. Metal rusts so anything made of metal won’t be of any use. Everything will have to be made out of plastic.”

  Chapter 6

  By aged seventeen my jumps had become more infrequent and I hadn’t seen Gemma for more than two years. I considered myself grown up, but was still excited when Dad told me he’d bought himself, Charlie and me tickets to watch Chelsea play Manchester United at Old Trafford.

  “It goes against everything I believe in, but it’s not everyday my eldest son hits twenty-one,” he said, adding, “You’ll have to lend me a ‘Man U’, scarf. I don’t think it would be ethical to wear my Liverpool scarf.”

  Wearing our new Manchester United strips, we made our way into the city, parked in one of the large car parks, and joined the thousands of other fans walking towards the ground. The air was tense with excitement and expectation. A win today would give us three points and for the second time in football history winning the treble—the League, the FA Cup and European Cup—would be back within our team’s grasp. Chelsea was going to be a hard team to beat but we wouldn’t admit that today.

  We took our place in the home-supporters’ stand about half way up the huge stadium. The teams seemed pretty well matched with the play well distributed around the pitch. Chelsea nearly scored a couple of times, but each time our defence managed to send the ball away from our goal and back up the pitch.

  With only ten minutes of play left in the second half, one of our star players took the ball up the right wing. He passed it across the box to another player, but the Chelsea defence intercepted it and kicked it over the back line. It was a corner. Our striker kicked the ball from the corner bending it around in front of the Chelsea goal. Another of our strikers ran towards the ball, reaching it half a second before the Chelsea defence. The Manchester United player jumped up and headed the ball into the top right corner of the net. The crowd went absolutely wild, and disappeared—the thunderous roar of supporters cut off mid-shout. An equally deafening silence now filled the stadium.

  “NOT NOW!” I yelled. All around me red plastic seats were suddenly empty, except for chunks and smaller particles of weathered concrete fallen from the crumbling stadium. Vegetation and young saplings grew in the gangways, where, from my perspective, the fans had crowded only half an hour before, eagerly pushing their way to their seats.

  I ran down to the overgrown pitch. Shrubs, long grasses, plants and trees, some over nine metres high, covered the once revered turf. The football ground was now a small forest, home to birds and scurrying animals.

  Unexpectedly, a voice called out to me, “Hey, wait there!”

  It belonged to a young woman, probably in her mid-twenties. She was making her way towards me through the undergrowth.

  Tall, and in my opinion rather underweight, she wore a Chelsea supporter’s T-shirt, a black jacket and matching corduroy jeans. Her dark shoulder length hair blew across her face and she brushed it out of the way with her fingers as she spoke.

  “Hi, I’m Carla, who are you?”

  “My name’s Steve, and I have better taste in football teams,” I replied cheekily.

  “If you say so.” She smiled. “Does this happen to you often?”

  “Now and again. How about you?”

  “Same here. Do you mind if we walk as we talk?” Carla asked.

  “Sure, Ok,” I said, taking off my hat, scarf and jacket, as this day, whe
never it was, was far too warm to warrant wearing them.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I want to see what it’s like outside the grounds.”

  We talked for a while, each asking the other their theory about why these future jumps kept happening to us. Like everyone else I’d met on my empty planet, Carla first jumped when she was six years old, the experience only lasting a few minutes. She felt that each successive jump took her further into an uncertain future, and a headache and nauseous feeling always accompanied her return to normality.

  Remembering what Graham had told me to find out, I asked her, “Have you ever been ill?”

  “No, never, how about you?”

  “No. I have one more question. Did your Mum receive IVF treatment before she had you?”

  “Yes, I know what you’re getting at, but I know someone else whose mother had that treatment and it doesn’t happen to her. I was with her when everyone disappeared and she disappeared too.”

  I told Carla about Graham and how he was trying to work out what all this future jumping was about.

  “Graham said it’s not the IVF that makes it happen. He thinks we might have been genetically altered.”

  We arrived at the main gates. Carla looked through a hole in the rusty door.

  “They’re starting to arrive,” she said, opening one of the gates.

  I was very surprised to see over twenty people walking towards us, ranging in age from about twelve to their mid twenties. “This is the safest place to stay for however long it takes the world to return to normal,” she added.

  “Is it dangerous because of wild dogs?” I asked.

  “Partly, but also because after everyone disappeared some animals escaped from Zoos and Safari Parks. There have been big cats sighted around here. You know, lions and pumas.” She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a handgun.

  “How did you get that through security?” I asked.

  “Easy,” she replied, smiling. “It’s made of some sort of new, compact, carbon-fibre compound, and doesn’t set off metal detectors. We’ll all need to be armed from now on. Come on, let’s have a look at the city.” I felt a little apprehensive, expecting a lion to pounce on me any moment. “Don’t worry, I’m an excellent shot,” she reassured me.

  We walked across the road to a large building with broken pull-down shutters. “It’s in here,” she said, carefully stepping inside over some fallen masonry. I followed her past the broken shutters, through a garage workshop and into a back room where metal shutters still covered the only window. Carla stepped forward and pulled a tarpaulin sheet to one side revealing a Harley Davison motorbike, which looked to be in good condition.

  “The petrol will have evaporated by now,” she said, walking to the back of the dark room, and pulling another tarpaulin sheet off some more objects, “so I’ve arranged for more fuel to be stored in these barrels. I’ve done my homework. It should be fine.”

  Carla was amazing. She poured some petrol into the petrol tank and soon got the bike running. I helped her push it outside.

  “Fancy coming for a spin?” she asked. “This is the best and safest way to see the city. She mounted the bike inviting me to climb on behind her. I’d never ridden pillion before, so, a little nervous and excited, I climbed on behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist and held on tightly. We set off, Carla expertly avoiding trees, shrubs and large weeds growing though every crack in the road.

  Rapidly deteriorating offices, shops and tower blocks stood all around us. With no one to paint and preserve them, water and moisture had permeated the concrete structures. Succeeding winters had brought freezing conditions that turned the moisture into ice, expanding and cracking the walls and ceilings. Seeds had blown into these cracks each spring and summertime allowing plants, shrubs, and trees to grow in the most obscure places. Vegetation had pried brickwork and plaster apart as it crawled up and over the buildings. Without man’s intervention the roots grew unchecked, pushing further into the structures and widening the cracks, thus causing more damage and speeding up the destruction of the host buildings.

  As we rode further afield I noticed several buildings that had burned to the ground, whole streets in some cases. The city had reached the point of no return. It stood no more than an eerie ghost town, home to owls, birds, mice, rats and wild cats.

  Carla stopped the bike every so often so we could take a closer look.

  She told me, “Many of these buildings are unsafe to go inside. Tree roots will have destroyed the foundations making the structures unstable. In years to come they will just collapse.”

  “I hope I won’t be anywhere near them when they do,” I said, noticing a tower block with rotten window frames and no windowpanes. We rode past an overgrown, rusty railway line and up an embankment, carefully avoiding a pile of rubble where a bridge had collapsed.

  Carla turned the bike sharply to the right shouting back to me, “That building on the left was the Arndale Centre.”

  The degree of deterioration seemed consistent everywhere: ivy had grown three or four floors up the office blocks and through any open or missing windows.

  Carla stopped the bike on Deansgate: the street that previously boasted many of the most expensive shopping places in the city. We dismounted and looked inside a few of the shops. Clothing still hung on hangers and a few shop dummies defiantly stood in the ruined precinct, but everything was damp and covered in mould. It was clear that nature had retaken the city and the wildlife had moved in.

  Outside, rusted and lichen covered cars littered the streets, standing useless, covered with dust and vegetation.

  Suddenly, I heard something move behind me and turned to see a pack of dogs edging towards us, probably with the view of having a meal.

  Carla quietly warned me, “We should get out of here. These are feral dogs; they’ve never known humans. There could be thousands of them in the city by now.”

  We carefully edged our way back to the bike trying not to incite the dogs into attacking us, but within seconds several started charging towards us, barking. I’d never been so scared. Carla drew her handgun from a holder at the back of her jeans and fired several shots at the dogs in quick succession. Three fell to the floor. The smell of their blood drove the other dogs wild and they pounced on them, viciously tearing them apart before they were even dead.

  We hastily mounted the bike and rode off at top speed. When we were far away from the dogs, and it seemed safe to do so, Carla stopped the bike.

  “Do you have a mobile on you?” she asked.

  “Yea, why?” I was still shaking.

  “I want to do an experiment. Can you take photos of the buildings and roadways as we ride back to the stadium?”

  “Sure.” I said, wondering why I’d never thought of doing that before. I took loads of pictures until my memory card was full.

  As we approached the stadium one of the huge doors opened. We rode through it straight into the building. A lean man, around Carla’s age, closed the door behind us. We got off the bike.

  “Hi, I’m Geoff,” he said in a well-to-do, Oxford accent, then walked over to Carla and kissed her full on the lips.

  “I guess you two know each other,” I commented.

  “You could say that,” Carla smiled at me. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the others.”

  A thickset man with ginger hair and a paunch beer belly pushed the bike away through a doorway to store it in a safe place where it could be retrieved on a future jump. He wore biker leathers and had a tattoo on his neck and hands—I thought he should have been the one riding the bike!

  Carla and Geoff led the way through the turnstiles and into the main stadium where a couple of men were cooking on a makeshift barbeque and a teenage girl, who introduced herself as Jenny, was handing out burgers and hot dogs. Twenty or thirty others were standing or sitting around talking and eating. Carla and Geoff seemed to be in charge. Geoff told us all to sit down on the stadium steps, or on large p
ieces of fallen concrete instead of on the seats, as these were all full at the time of the jump and the people could return at any time.

  When we were all seated and munching our food Carla told everyone what she had discovered on our bike ride and of our adventure with the wild dogs.

  “Is there anyone new here?” she asked, looking around the eager faces. Two young lads put their hands up.

  “Tell us who you are and a little about yourselves. You’re obviously twins.” The boy’s cheeky faces and cropped, dark brown hair made them appear identical, but they were dressed differently: one wore a black tracksuit, and the other, jeans and a blue turtleneck sweater.

  The lad in the tracksuit spoke first, “I’m Tom, and this is Phil.”

  Phil nodded in agreement adding, “It’s our birthday, we’re twelve and live near here. What’s happening?”

  Tom continued, “Why did everyone disappear again and what’s happened to the houses and everything else?”

  Geoff answered him while Carla tried to calm several of the younger teenagers who were looking anxious and confused.

  “From what we understand, we keep getting transported further and further into a future where most of mankind has disappeared. We call this temporal jumping.”

  “Why does it happen?” asked Jenny.

  Carla answered, “That’s what we all want to know. You have to bear in mind that normality could be restored at any time, but whenever you find yourself on a temporal jump make your way here, or to the nearest football stadium for safety. I’ve set up meeting places in many cities.” She looked around us all, took a swig from a water bottle, and continued speaking. “I’ve also set up a social website specifically for Temporal Jumpers—that’s what we call ourselves. You won’t find it using any search engine and it’s very well hidden, so you’ll have to memorise the web address carefully.

  “You mustn’t save this address or any information from the site to any computer and must never show it to anyone. You can use the site to stay in touch with each other and to pool any information you think could help us all. Feel free to contact me and to post your experiences on the wall. I already have people searching for other Temporal Jumpers so we can link up with them. If you meet any Jumpers whilst on a temporal jump, take their personal information and email it to me. I believe there are Jumpers on every continent. Most importantly, remember that you’re not alone; we’re here for you.”