And with that she disappeared down the hole, John quick to follow as Bobbie squirmed against the instant shower. “Sorry about this mate,” he whispered.
After a brief descent he splashed onto the ground and heard the spluttering of an engine trying to start. It was total darkness but for the dim glow of Aaron’s torch across the other side of what must have been a large room, and judging by the way the light bounced left and right he was certainly struggling with something.
“Come on you motherfucker…” he could hear Aaron muttering.
“You need a hand or something?” Vanessa’s voice sang somewhere in the dark.
“This generator’s playing games at the wrong damn time…”
John felt his muscles jolt tight as angry shouts echoed down through the waterfall.
“We’ve got visitors and they don’t sound friendly,” he called out urgently.
As if to hammer home his announcement crackles of gunfire began pepper from above, causing him to ready his weapon blindly towards the dark of the manhole. In this light the best he could do was shoot at shadows, and so he eased his finger onto the trigger to prepare for a try of his luck.
“That’s the sound I wanted to hear!” Aaron shouted as the generator rumbled to life. “It’s time to rock and roll…”
Gears connected, chains rattled and above them the roof began to slide open, the electrically charged heavens sending down a glow that edged away the darkness and revealed a stunning silver helicopter wedged between oversized jet skis. Wind and rain swirled down with a deafening vengeance, forcing Aaron to frantically signal with his hands that the time to get on board was right now.
Vanessa jumped into the front cockpit as John quickly pushed Candice up onto the back bench. A high pitched hum joined the wind as the blades began to spin faster and faster. John had one foot on the landing skid when instinct caught him mid step and twisted his body towards the manhole. Dark shapes were moving down the ladder and in an instant he had one hand shielding Bobbie and the other with gun pointed straight. Anxiety slammed his senses. How could he pull the trigger if he couldn’t be sure who the hell he was shooting at?
The answer came not a second later when a red laser flickered through the rain and a deafening shot rang out. John’s hesitation dissolved quicker than a blink and he responded with extreme prejudice, blasting at anything that moved while gripping the outside of the cabin for dear life.
“Hold the fuck on!” Aaron yelled as a bullet cracked one of the side windows.
“Grab my hand!” Candice joined in as she desperately reached for his arm.
John felt the machine begin to rise from the floor and buck in the turbulent drafts, but still he held his arm firm and pressed down on the trigger. A heavy shadow fell from the ladder while another raced back up against the waterfall, and it wasn’t until the roof of the building was below him that he grabbed Candice’s hand to be pulled from the sting of the storm. As soon as the cabin door slammed shut he began to breathe again, gulping in the air like fresh water in the middle of a desert.
“You damn near gave me a heart attack,” Candice cried out as she clasped his helmet in her hands.
“Believe me,” John gasped, “it’s not the way I like to joyride.”
In the front of the cockpit Aaron struggled against the stick with both arms as the rotors lifted them closer to the raging sky that appeared as though orchestrated by the devil himself, with the winds throwing the frame around like a broken kite lost at sea. Rain hit the windows with the force of bullets as engine alarms began to scream from the controls.
“What the hell does that mean?” Vanessa asked with obvious concern as she forced her eyes closed with fear.
“It means we’re taking in water through the air valves,” Aaron replied through clenched teeth, “and that’s not good.”
Barely able to keep from bouncing between Candice and the cabin door, John wiped the condensation from the glass and could see a faint break in the storm where eerie orange sunlight broke through.
“Over there!” he called out at the top of his lungs. “That’s where we need to be.”
“I see it!” Aaron yelled back.
He also saw the terror clutching Vanessa, and released his grip for the briefest second to squeeze her hand. Her eyes half opened as the chopper lurched violently to the left.
“We’ll be okay,” he said, “I promise.”
The blades cut through the thick dark clouds as the engine roared towards the orange zone, alarms still ringing and the ground below nothing more than a distorted wet blur. The eruptions of thunder were still relentless and clapped with a pungent smell of burning iron. John covered Bobbie’s ears as best he could while they rocked and rolled at the mercy of mechanics and engineering, sudden drops in altitude twisting their stomachs inside out until the height was regained inch by inch. Against all odds though, they were making ground.
Miraculously the rain began to ease, the engine found a new surge and the alarms fell quiet. The winds made sure the ride was still bumpy as hell but Aaron’s fight at the stick seemed to settle, and it finally felt as though they were actually flying and not just being thrown around. It was enough reason for Vanessa to open her eyes and take a deep breath, and for John to rub Candice’s cheek and sigh with temporary relief. Nobody bothered to say anything though, for shock had momentarily taken their tongues.
They were almost upon the orange break in the sky, with the misty clouds below them beginning to dissolve and offer a bird’s eye view of the terrain. Vanessa was the first to see traces of the city outline. She grasped her chest with both hands and suddenly knew the true definition of chaos. Eventually finding a way to speak her voice wavered as though on the verge of tears.
“I guess who we are is gone now…”
Aaron kept the altitude high and nose pointed forward as they moved closer and closer. In the back, soaking wet and already exhausted, John looked down upon the unravelling nightmare that shook their very souls. For it wasn’t just remnants of the sun breaking through that turned the inside of the cabin dark orange but also towering columns of flames that spewed from the city buildings below, interlaced with horrific tears in the concrete that exposed deep rising molten lava like blood from Mother Earth herself that flashed beneath the constant lightning.
“Welcome to the apocalypse show,” Aaron announced.
The vision was catastrophic beyond comprehension as they journeyed across what had once been a concrete and glass playground full of activity, hopes and dreams. Countless skyscrapers lay in ruins of smoke, fire and rubble, with the cracked and torn city streets awash with shattered leftovers of the grid locked traffic that had been turned to chaos mid escape with a shower of chemical death.
Vicious impact craters from stellar pebbles pock marked the destruction with dark black circles, some billowing pillars of thick smoke and others with bright red slow bleeds. From their height it was almost impossible to see any sign of survivors, but truth be told they all looked down convinced they were witnessing a city of ghosts.
John pulled Candice close as he tried to wrap his head around the horror, but was it even possible? How could he make sense of death and destruction on a scale that with one foul swoop annihilated any sense of purpose and ripped apart the fabric of a reality that had seemed so permanent? Staring out of the window was now nothing more than staring into the abyss, a gaping chasm swallowing reason and knowledge with an endless hunger. This planet, he suddenly realized, it’s just a rock hurtling straight for a furnace on a highway to hell and we’re just suckers thrown on for the ride. He shifted his eyes to gaze into the heart of the city, and as if to compound his point a thunderous explosion erupted from a cluster of buildings that sent more ghosts to dance amongst the electric clouds.
Candice too felt the shaking in her soul that came from the violating theft of what was left of her grip on reality. Scientific knowledge and biological understandings had no role on this infernal stage, and it seemed the playwright was nothi
ng more than the very essence of blind chaos. Rhyme or reason was an illusion. Life was an illusion. All that was truly real was a cosmic suffering to stretch across eternity, as though God had chosen not to be alone in his or her torture. The only choices, as far as she was concerned while wanting to close her eyes forever, were a farce. Stay alive to be tormented by a new living hell, or suffer a horrible death draped in meaninglessness.
But then, she suddenly thought, wasn’t there love? Surely there was something in longing for another human being, something beyond biological urges or the fear of loneliness, something that can laugh at the idea that nothing makes sense? She diverted her eyes to study John’s face. Perhaps reason or logic never really had a place in any of this. Perhaps love was a cosmic rebellion, a decision to defy the absurd and dance to your own tune regardless of the songs of suffering played.
“Hey.” Candice pulled John’s face away from the window. “Would you have kissed these lips if the world wasn’t ending?”
Caught off guard, John narrowed his eyes and considered his reply as a wind gust slapped the cabin. “The way I see it, not kissing you would’ve been a mistake, a mistake that’d piss me off more than the end of the world.”
“Then just promise me if this thing ever lands you’ll avoid the mistake one more time.”
In the front, Vanessa winced at the pain in her heart for all that she saw. The home she had known for so long now looked like a mutilated corpse without even the dignity of closed eyes, and there was nothing she could do. The streets, the struggles, the memories, they were all on fire now.
She thought of Sammy and his musty, beautiful gym, smiled inside at the way he’d called her Nessy while giving her the tools to fight and stand her ground. A world that didn’t make sense needed more men like him but there was little chance of that now, except maybe for the crazy son of a bitch flying them through the gates of hell. He may have a shit taste in music, Vanessa mused, but damn does he know how to rumble.
“All that hurt down there,” she said, “you really think this little girl can make a difference?”
“Yeah,” Aaron nodded, “I reckon she can, and there’s a whole lotta lost lives behind us that think so too. If we’re gonna rise from these ashes then she needs to rise straight through these clouds, and I intend to make sure it happens. Fuck the apocalypse.”
“You’re speaking my mind.”
They were just past the heart of the city now as the kaleidoscope raged beneath them and the stench of smoke was becoming nauseating. The cabin shook with another gust punching through and then, as if a giant switch had been flicked somewhere, the winds disappeared. It happened so quickly that Aaron over corrected for a force no longer there and nose dived for several quick heartbeats before levelling out to a smooth hover. The clouds above had lifted into a dark dome like a smooth roof over a demented fireplace. There was a final flash of lightning followed by a distant rumble, and then the world became strangely quiet.
“What just happened?” Vanessa asked.
“I don’t know…” Aaron muttered.
“It feels like the air just got sucked away.”
Something fell through the blades with a soft thud, followed by a mist of red that sprinkled across the front windows. Then another one. Vanessa leaned forward and watched as small dark shapes suddenly dropped from the clouds to tumble into the concrete coals below. They looked like stones at first but when one fell straight by Vanessa’s window she saw that they were… birds.
“Do you see what I see?” she asked with a hint of panic.
Candice leaned forward to look through the front glass. “There’s something in the atmosphere up there, something that’s killing them. But why so many like this?”
Something drove them here to die, John thought as an eerie sensation crept across his skin, lifting his eyes to drift across the cityscape towards the distant ocean. Although dark and blanketed with smoke there was something that didn’t seem right, something that drew a squint as he tried to work out what it was. He slid across the seat and edged closer to the window. In the distance, something seemed to be moving the clouds.
“Um, how much further mate?” he asked casually over his shoulder.
“If the wind stays like this another five minutes or so,” Aaron replied while watching another bird drop from the sky.
“I don’t wanna be a backseat driver,” John said with a growing urgency, “but if there’s any way you can shave that down a bit that’d be bloody good, ‘cause there’s a big fucking headache headed our way.”
The sudden statement brought all attention to the cloud drenched horizon where a silent nightmare grew stronger and stronger, ploughing forward with the confidence of an apex predator in a field of crippled prey. It emerged from the heaven stretched shadows dark blue and grey, with an exploding white lip that stretched for miles like a monolithic snarl. From their position in the sky it was impossible to measure the height but John guessed it towered a hundred foot high at least. As far as tsunamis went, this bitch was the mother of them all.
“Oh my god…” Vanessa stammered as the vision unravelled.
“Well folks,” Aaron called out, “our deadline just got shorter.”
He banked the chopper with nose pointed down and raced towards the other side of the city. The wall of water would be breaking land any minute and they still had a house to reach and a rocket to launch. With jaw clenched tight he pushed the engine for all it was worth and tried to ignore the odds.
“…say again...” A desperate voice suddenly filled their helmets. “Please… if you’re out there we gotta…”
“Holy shit!” Aaron cried out. “Is that you Eric?”
“Hell yeah!” Eric shouted. “We didn’t know if you… got a satellite working…”
“Where’s Klementina?”
“Tunnel collapsed… working on it now…watch your back man, there’s…”
“Eric?”
The signal faded to nothing and Aaron slammed a fist into the window. Now that they were on the other side of the city the clouds were reaching down lower, leaving them to fly in and out of mist like pockets that left them blind for seconds at a time. Candice pointed over John’s shoulder off into the distance and, when another mist had cleared, they could just make out terrific explosions of white water as the tsunami breached the dividing line between land and sea. An elemental battle between fire and water was about to begin.
John drew a deep breath and turned his attention to the cockpit.
“Just so you know,” he said, “we’re officially in overtime.”
“Then get ready ‘cause another few seconds and I’m putting her down,” Aaron yelled back.
With a push of the stick they began to drop altitude as another cloud mist turned the cabin silver grey. The engine whined and shuddered, while below them streets and houses came into view. Some still stood tall while others lay with broken foundations, and though cars littered the roads there was no movement or signs of life. It looked, John thought, like some strange abandoned film set.
“Here we go,” Aaron called out as they burst through another blinding cloud to skim along the rooftops.
“Oh shit!” Vanessa yelled with her arm pointed straight ahead. “That ain’t good.”
Candice clutched the edge of her seat while John leaned forward to look down below, and the back of his throat dried up in an instant. At the end of the street sat the house that harboured Klementina and Talitha, the destination they’d fought so hard to reach and had already cost so many lives, and it was under siege. Countless figures darted across the roofs of the main house and neighbouring property with assault weapons firing at the twin blade chopper swirling up the clouds and down at a small swarm of soldiers closing in. Spotting their arrival, the twin blade maintained altitude while shifting its gun metal grey nose so that the two air machines now faced one another from opposite ends of the street.
“I don’t like that at all…” Candice murmured.
“Neither do I,” John said as the sound of gunfire began to fill the cabin.
“Hold on!” Aaron screamed before throwing his weight behind the throttle, sending them straight up into the dark grey at a gut dropping speed that didn’t let up until alarms started to wail and the clouds smothered the windows like thick paint. “Okay,” he said as they hovered in the abyss, “we’ve got about thirty seconds before they get a heat lock on us. Shotgun gets the heads up. Time to put this on Nessy.”
Vanessa felt a rush of blood warm her cheeks. Did he just call me Nessy? Before she could say anything he handed her a helmet from below the seat, this one silver and black with a glass visor that pulled down. Unsure of exactly what was happening she donned the head gear and then felt a cold steel press into her hand. It looked like some sort of remote control but came with only two buttons.
Aaron tapped the top of her head and the visor suddenly came alive with green holographic squares and circles that moved with her eyes. “Okay,” he rushed, “you’re online so time for a crash course in hostilities. Where your eyes go, the guns go. Hold your line of sight on a target and when the green shape turns red it’s firecracker time. Left button for bullets, right button for rockets. You take the ground, I’ll deal with the dodo bird. Got it?”
“Got it.” Vanessa traced the edges of the remote with her thumb. “I always did have anger issues.”
“Then consider this therapy.” He turned to John with a nod. “I’ll get us as close as I can but the second we touch down I want you both kicking dust. We’ll give you cover fire. Get inside at any cost. We’ll join the party when we can.”
John checked that Bobbie was nestled tight and clenched his gun. “Ready when you are.”
On the control board another alarm began to sound, this one loud enough to drown out the others. Aaron snapped to attention and revved up the blades.
“Easy ride’s over,” he snarled. “We’ve got a tail to shake.”
The cabin banked to the left and then they were heading nose first and straight down through the devil’s fairy floss, blood rushing to their heads as a high pitched whistling raced past them. Bobbie yelped and Candice cursed as they hurtled blind with increasing speed until, in a flash of colour and sound, they torpedoed back through to the street with the ground rushing towards them. A second later they were under attack.
The Hallucigenia Project Page 74