Mortal Skies Omnibus

by Rebecca Fernfield

  Barbara stares at the rising mist as it coils into the air and glows with a soft sheen. It twists and rises then spreads as tendrils.

  “Should it be doing that?”

  “Well, it’ll be hot. It’s just come from outer space.”

  “They usually burn up when they hit the atmosphere.”

  “Could be from Russia ... with love!”

  Laughter and a snort of derision.

  “It’s glowing.”

  The crowd steps back as the tendrils reach the edge of the crater.

  “They’re like fucking great fingers.”

  The tendrils of mist continue to twist along the crater’s side. A boy kicks at a white finger as it reaches the grass. Particles scatter, then regroup. He gasps as the finger reforms.

  “If it’s hot, shouldn’t it rise up into the air?”

  “It stinks like rotten eggs!”

  “Sulphur.”

  The tendril of smoke curls to the boy’s foot, over his shoes, and moves up his leg.

  “Ben! Stand back. The smoke’s on your legs.”

  As Ben stares at the crawling mist stretching to his knees, other tendrils spread among the group; rising up trouser legs, moving along thighs, and disappearing between buttocks, or stroking bellies, breasts, and throats, before disappearing into nostrils and mouths. A long finger of white slides unnoticed over Barbara’s calf, then rises to her thigh. Microscopic particles pass effortlessly through the stretch-cotton of her sweatpants and industrial-strength, tummy-controlling knickers, to her messy crop of black pubic hair, before sliding between warm labia, and then burrowing into her clitoris to the network of capillaries, and then veins, that feed her body.

  A tingle of desire shoots from Barbara’s clitoris with a force she hasn’t experienced since 1979 when Tommy Renshaw had worked her lady garden into such a frenzy with his deft fingers that she’d begged him to mount her to stop the ache. The resulting vaginal contractions had ripped through her body with explosive ecstasy and she’d bucked beneath him, drawing out every drop of his seed, begging him to do it again until he’d buried his face between her legs and brought her off to grunts of primal satisfaction. They’d curled together in his bed, both silent, both soaking in the delirium of ecstasy, oblivious to the lowering sun, until his mum had come in from her shift at the local corner-shop and Barbara had snuck, legs still trembling, out of the back door.

  A collective groan fills the air as the particles find their hosts whilst camouflaged in the fog, something slithers unnoticed from the crater.

  THE BLAST HAD KNOCKED Louise from the toilet seat, and she’d smacked her head against the wall of the narrow space, slipping to the floor unconscious. Coming to, the buzzing in her ears was intense, and she’d crawled across the floor, pulling herself up by the door handle before staggering through to what remained of her living room. The scene that met her was one of devastation. Her flat-screen TV, only paid off last week, dangled from a bracket on the wall above her flame-effect electric fire, its screen cracked. Glass was strewn across the floor, and she’d picked her way across the now ruined carpet to the empty window.

  Ragged curtains, shredded by shards of glass and stone, flutter in the breeze. A large area of carpet is hidden beneath a layer of earth, piled up against the walls as though washed there by a wave. A huge hole, thick with a white and trailing smoke, has appeared in the middle of Jim Croxley’s prissily kept lawn, the young tree planted over his wife – another ill-kept secret – broken in half and horizontal. Jim Croxley himself lays half sprawled out of the hole, his neck skewed at an awkward angle. Barbara ‘Fat Babs’ Fitch staggers across the road, backside rolling beneath overstretched grey sweatpants, and disappears into the dark.

  As Louise leans against the window frame, avoiding the shattered glass, Layla Sheikh, her quiet, overly polite neighbour, smashes a huge rock against Olive Reynold’s cheek. Louise recoils as Olive staggers then lunges at Layla, and watches in horror as her usually friendly neighbours attempt to tear each other apart. Only feet away, Mick Tremayne grabs his wife’s arm and staggers from the grass, shouting words that the sirens and screams drown out.

  Olive continues to punch back at Layla, as Henry Coxton grabs Simon Wells, clutching thick fingers through his hair. Louise pulls back as Henry smashes Simon’s head against the wall beside her broken window.

  Screaming, thudding, and grunts add to the cacophony of wailing sirens.

  Louise backs away from the horror show as Alexis Coxton, Henry’s pregnant wife, locks on to her movements, and steps forward. The woman is grinning, but her smile is far from friendly. Taking more steps back, she turns to run as Alexis sprints forward, her eyes shining bright and red in the light. If Louise can just get to her bedroom, she can lock the door. As she turns, her bare feet twisting into shards of glass, Alexis vaults through the empty window, and bone-hard fingertips dig into Louise’s shoulder.

  AS ALEXIS THROWS HER weight against Louise, forcing her to crash against the arm of her sofa, Mick Tremayne takes another stride up the stairs, his heavy thighs already burning from the strain, his ageing heart thudding painfully fast. Sandra’s dimpled buttocks stretch and plump beneath her leggings as she climbs the steps before him. The flowered pattern of her knickers becomes visible with each stretch of the fabric, the dark seam at the centre of the leggings following the line of her arse crack. For once, the sight holds no yearning. After thirty years of marriage, Mick’s ardour for his wife hasn’t waned, and he considers himself a fortunate man. Workmates may complain about their lack of conjugal activity, or that their wives have let themselves go, but for Mick, his wife’s voluptuous curves are a delight, and his passion is regularly reciprocated.

  His breath rasps in his throat. Sweat beads at his forehead as the clatter on the stairs behind them gets closer. “Go on, love. Quick.” Only one more flight to go and then they’d be safe. Sandra huffs as she heaves at the bannister, he pushes at her buttocks, heaving her forward, taking the strain, making the next steps easier. “You can do it, love. Just keep going.” A shriek pierces the stairwell. Sandra squeals.

  “Just go! Go! Go! Go!”

  She lurches to the landing, he strides behind her, sure that he’ll feel the clawing of a hand on his shoulder. His flesh creeps as the door to the corridor swings open and they run through. Keys in hand, Mick sprints past Sandra to their apartment. He grabs the door handle, and jabs the key at the lock. Hands shaking, he misses. Another shriek, and then the landing door opens. Glancing back, Lewis Sprocklesby from Westcott Tower, lurches into view. Typical that a scrote like Lewis ‘Drug-Pusher’ Sprocklesby would survive! Mick wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t Sprocklesby’s fault – not the meteor of course, blaming him for that would be ludicrous – but the catastrophic collapse of the tower blocks’ residents into howling, screeching, murderous monsters had to be someone’s fault. It has to be drugs.

  The key drops from his hands as he fumbles at the lock, his palms greasy. “Shit!”

  Sandra stoops, grabs the key, and thrusts it into the lock. As she twists it to unlock, he pulls down the handle and they jump inside the door, slamming it behind them. He reaches for the top bolt as she slams the bottom one into place. Sandra runs into their small kitchen as Mick holds the door fast, flicking the latch to locked. She returns with a chair. Mick wedges it beneath the door’s handle.

  Thud!

  The door vibrates in its frame. Sandra squeals and steps back down the corridor.

  “He won’t get in. Don’t worry.”

  “Of course I’ll worry! They’re all mental. They’re killing everyone.”

  Thud!

  “I’ve got me tools, Sandra. I’ve got a chainsaw in there.” He nods towards the cupboard door. “And a hammer. There’s knives in the kitchen. If he gets through the door, it’ll be him whose dead, not us.”

  Thud!

  Sandra disappears into the kitchen. Drawers rattle. She reappears with a large carving knife—the one Mick makes sure is especi
ally sharp for carving their Sunday roasts. “Steady on with that, love; it’s butcher’s shop sharp.”

  “It’d bloody better be. I’ll chop his head off with it, if he comes near me.”

  The slow thudding continues as Mick waits, ready to start the chainsaw if the monster breaks in. After five minutes, the thudding stops, and after ten, Mick lays his chainsaw on the kitchen table. This is a nightmare. It can’t be real. Wake the hell up!

  He and Sandra had been some of the first on the scene once they’d recovered from the shock of the blasts. He’d seen the news about meteors hitting cities and even a clip or two about the riots that had ensued, although the news had quickly dried up and it was back to the current shenanigans of toxic MPs, the latest scandal to hit the seemingly sex-crazed celebrities, and yet more media witch hunts. He was seriously tiring of the news these day—it was stuffed to the gunnels with propaganda. Gone were the days when he trusted the BBC, the past couple of years had opened his eyes to their biased news coverage, and when it had come to light that they were funded by the EU and another unsavoury organisation with extremist middle-eastern links, then he’d seriously considered getting rid of the telly and refusing to pay the licence fee, but Sandra liked her Holby City, and the other soaps, and he didn’t want to deny her that pleasure, not when she gave him so much.

  Sandra’s arm slides across his back, and she leans her head against his shoulder. Tears soak through his shirt, damp and warm against his skin. He turns and slides his own arm across her back, hugging her until a low growl vibrates against his chest. He checks the dog’s bed next to the radiator. Spencer, their black Labrador is still curled up, the old dog, deaf in his dotage, oblivious to the carnage outside. Mick’s bowels loosen as pointed fingernails press into his back. He grabs Sandra’s shoulders and pushes her to arm’s length. A pattern of black and scrolling lines is tracked across her lips, her eyes flicker red, the usually shining hazel irises, dulled to cataract-blue.

  Her stare is maniacal, and a crazed, ugly grin is locked across her face. Spencer whines. Mick holds Sandra’s arms against her sides as she forces them up, the knife gripped and ready to stab.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Josh swings the bike around the corner as blue lights flash in the distance. Catching sight of the meteor had been more luck than ability, it had appeared on his screen as soon as he had the telescope set up and connected to his laptop. He’d watched its entry, and gasped in disbelief as the co-ordinates were plotted by the software. It was heading straight for them, its trajectory aimed at his own town! Jumping from the desk in the corner of the living room, he’d run out into the street to watch, realising that its final descent meant it would impact close to a residential area of the city. The blast was enormous, felt throughout his body, and made the glass in Katy’s windows rattle.

  Katy had begged him not to go, ordered him back inside the house with a voice rising in frustration, but the draw of seeing the impact site when the second meteor had hit with more explosive force than the first, had been irresistible. He had to see, even if that meant getting ‘killed’ by his dad as Katy had put it. As he’d set off, the shock of realisation had hit him hard, his body shaking; he had mates that lived in that area, and Tina, his friend for the past three years, his secret and overwhelming crush, lived in one of the towers. She could be seriously hurt, perhaps even – he barely dared to consider it – dead!

  Peddling the pushbike harder, he pulls to the side of the road, and mounts the kerb, as two fire engines, and then a police car, speed up behind him. In the distance, dark clouds rise into the air, dramatic in their contrast against the brightness of the moon. The sirens, a cacophony of anxiety hurtling towards the shattered tower blocks, pierce his eardrums. He can see the harsh outlines of four high-rise towers in the distance. Ugly and brutalist, they rise above the Victorian redbrick church and blocky modern office blocks that sit as a buffer between the town’s industrial estates, its ageing shopping centre, and rows of terraced, back-to-back housing. Two are intact. Of the other two, one is no longer a study of minimalist symmetry, its top corner being sheared and jagged, and the other stands as a stubby finger cropped to the first knuckle.

  Just one more hill and then he can freewheel to the main road and the damaged towers. Please, please let Tina be alive! As he pedals, his focus flitting between the path ahead and the broken tower, a rumble fills the air. He watches in fascinated horror as another portion of the building judders then slides towards the ground. The impact of the debris vibrates through the bike to his feet and hands, and dust rises in irritated, shard-filled clouds. He pushes harder, his thighs burning with the effort.

  As he turns the corner, more emergency vehicles swarm behind him. He pulls off the path and into the front yard of a short stack of office blocks and porta cabins, and leans the bike up against the wall before sneaking forward, hugging the shadows. Ahead is a chaos of blue flashing lights, ambulances, police cars, fire engines, and the distinctive figures of men in uniform. Running along a stack of mobile offices, the windows grilled and dark, he steps into the narrow gap between a bathroom and a DIY store. Only twenty feet lie between himself and the first ambulance, beyond that is an expanse of road and grass surrounding the first intact high-rise; Tina’s home. He coughs as dust-filled air irritates his throat, and then gags as the first waft of a sulphuric stench filters into his nose, clinging to its hairs.

  People stream from the doors at the base of the tower blocks, forcing their way through, running across the grass, and then road, before swarming around the emergency vehicles. The furthest tower block sits in a garden of its own debris, the front doors blocked. Men run to its doors, pulling at the rubble, making a clearing for the survivors to escape. In the floors above, faces appear at windows. Josh swallows, his heart beating a steady, painful tattoo. He’s seen disasters on the television, watched the news and the sensational programmes filled with amateur video of horrifying events, but seeing the carnage for real jars his senses. Screams of pain rise above the angry shouts of residents and commands from the police and firemen. He gags down the urge to vomit as a pair of paramedics wheel a trolley to the waiting ambulance. On the bed, an ash-covered resident, clothes seeped with blood, groans in pain. Among the chaos, oddly still, and gathered on the grass, is a throng of people standing in a wide ring.

  A voice bellows ‘everybody back’ but they take no notice, oblivious to the danger, intent on looking down at the ground. Intrigued by the static men and women, Josh makes his way to the back of the crowd. Tendrils of smoke lick around their feet, its bright particles dancing in shining headlights. The sulphuric stench intensifies, mingling with a shitty, stagnant reek that Josh realises, with disgust, must be coming from sewage pipes shattered with the meteor’s impact. He checks the surrounding grass for offending lumps of shit, before taking a tentative step forward; it had taken a titanic effort to convince his dad to buy his new trainers, and there is no way the filthy shit of people, or dogs for that matter, will ruin them. A shrill, inhuman shriek fills the air. The gathered crowd sways.

  An intense light shines down onto the crowd and the distinctive chop, chop of a helicopter thrums. At the blocked double doors of the broken tower block, a fireman with an axe steps through the empty frames, and makes his way across the pile of rubble. Reaching a colleague, he gesticulates, then points back to the doors. Josh watches the unheard exchange as they congregate and work their way back across the rubble. The helicopter trains its light on the swaying crowd gathered around the pit as another shriek splits the air. A figure breaks loose from the huddle of men and women, and darts across the grass to the firemen. The figure hurtles forward, knocking into the man, and grabbing his axe as he staggers under the impact. Josh clasps hands to ears as a hideous shriek rises from the crowd.

  The axe rises.

  “No!” Josh’s words disappear into the cacophony of noise as the fireman’s head knocks against the broken slabs of concrete. The axe arcs. “No!” Josh stumbles forwar
d, trying to make sense of the scene. How can they be attacking the people who have come to help them? The axe swings down, slamming hard onto the man’s forehead. Josh staggers to a stop as the axe rises again. He stumbles, then jerks to a stand and turns from the bloody horror. Shrieks vibrate against his eardrums, sending waves of pain through his inner ear, and the dense huddle of the crowd breaks. As Josh backs away from the scene, agitated smoke sparkles in the helicopter’s spotlight, and writhes in tendrils along the ground. A finger of smoke strokes at Josh’s trainer, and the crowd comes alive with movement. Figures dart and sprint from the huddle and, within seconds, the scene is a writhing mass of punching fists and kicking feet as the crowd erupts with violence, pouncing on the emergency personnel and residents making their way to safety. As Josh creeps back between two ambulances, heart pounding, slipping back into the shadows, the fingering trail of smoke follows him.

  In the sky, the helicopter lifts, then turns, pulling away from the scene, its light illuminating the office blocks and low canopy of the petrol station, before disappearing into the night.

  Tina forgotten, Josh watches from the shadows as a grotesquely violent scene of rampaging silhouettes lit by blue and pulsing lights, plays out. Tendrils of smoke wrap themselves around his leg, sink through the fabric, slide into orifices, and burrow through the delicate skin to his blood stream.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mesmerized by the violence, Colonel Frank Littleton watches as a slender, overly-tall man lunges towards a squat woman, the dark skin of her flabby belly visible beneath her ripped t-shirt, and a length of jagged pipe gripped in her hands. The man knocks her to the ground, and straddles her before plunging thumbs ... Littleton breaks his gaze from the screen. One of the men behind him coughs. The jarring movements on the large screen, placed at central stage in the room, continue as Littleton pushes up from his seat and turns to the men, and woman, sat watching.