In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater

by J Alex McCarthy

  The screeching stops. The ships start to move towards London. Echoes erupt from the city as artillery lights up the sky. Yellow streaks head up towards the Eliites, courtesy of the Majesty’s army.

  It seems like they knew they were coming. The Eliites light up as they are hit, shining a bright yellow as the rounds disappear into nothing. The ships don’t even falter, the speed and inertia fade into the light.

  The faires return fire, red lasers beam out of them and rips into London. Tracing the ground, through the AA guns on the rooftops, explosions tear through wherever the beams land. Jet’s boom over Wilker and head for the Eliites. Wilker snaps out of his trance. He has to hurry before it’s too late.

  The Vanquishes hot tires squeal on the cobblestone sidewalk. Wilker swerves past people; his reflexes have greatly improved. The car is a part of him, like another limb. The people are just small negligible obstacles he can easily avoid.

  They’re running away from where he’s going. The sky blackens with smoke. Wilker slides the car onto the street and turns onto the West Minister Bridge.

  “Shit!” Wilker slams on the brakes. His car skids to a halt.

  He only came inches from smashing into the car in front of him. He lays on the horn.

  “Come on you dolt!” he yells. He doesn’t have time for this shit. He steps out of the car. The bridge is in grid lock, bumper to bumper traffic.

  Nobody is beeping or yelling at each other. It’s out of their power Wilker realizes. They all just stand outside their cars and stare up into the sky. Wilker looks up; the Eliites float in the sky without a care in the world, not moving; waiting for something.

  A single light breaks through the clouds. Wilker looks up. The others stare up with him. This is the perfect time to run. But if that’s what he thinks it is, it won’t matter how far he gets. The Eliites spark to life. They all join into a circle and point up.

  The light quickly approaches. It’s close enough to get a good look. A metal pointed cylinder. A nuke. Wilker’s heart drops. It’s only been twenty minutes since the invasion began. Why in the bloody hell have they unleashed such a last resort so soon? Wilker looks at his hands. He doubts Jahum’s powers can save him.

  One of the Eliites flies towards the bomb.

  “What is it doing?” the man next to Wilker asks. The Eliites flies right into the bomb. Wilker shields his eyes as the bomb explodes out as the heat evaporates the clouds.

  The people on the bridge below fall as the shockwave hits them and every building in a five-mile radius. With his eyes slammed shut Wilker is the only one to hear the windows shattering and the screams.

  People’s screams echo out into the air.

  Why can he hear still them? The blast should’ve killed him by now.

  He opens his eyes and looks around. Everyone on the bridge is on the ground, blood gushing from their ears but alive. All the windows in the surrounding windows are blown out. He raises his hands to his ears.

  Nothing. No blood.

  Jahum.

  Because of him he is stronger. That scares him. He looks back up.

  “What?”

  A giant ball of heat hovers where the bomb went off. About 100 feet in diameter. Suddenly it shudders, and shrinks smaller and smaller until the Eliite ship is outlined in light.

  It explodes out. The clear blue sky is suddenly filled with billowy clouds as if the bleak London clouds never burnt away. Wilker looks back on the ground at everyone else.

  He doesn’t know why, but he feels suddenly calm, sane, and…accepting in a way he hasn’t felt in a long time. The others must feel it too, one of them starts to cry as they stare up. They all stare up at the marvel above.

  None of them run. Fools. Wilker chuckles at himself. He’s a fool too because he stares at the clouds.

  It starts to snow over London, it coats the charred remains of the buildings around the bridge. Flakes benevolently float down onto the bridge and the people around him. Wilker looks around. This doesn’t feel right.

  The man beside him opens up his hand to catch a flake.

  “Wait! Don’t!” Wilker yells. The man catches one as more flakes fall on him. He screams out.

  He flays his arms around wildly, coating it with more ‘snow’. The flakes stick onto his hand and eats into his skin, through the meat and right through the bone. It’s corrosive. His hand melts off his arm like an ice cube in a hot skillet. Twirling around as the flakes engulf him.

  His horrific screaming is the worst thing Wilker’s heard, apart from the sizzling of his skin. Wilker thinks fast, it’s too late for the man but not himself. He sprints and maneuvers through the flakes and skids under a truck only two cars in front of him.

  He moved just in time. The down-pour becomes intense. Wails erupt around him as if the doors of hell has just opened. Footsteps run toward him.

  A woman falls down beside the truck. She writhes, screaming. She was beautiful woman. Tears well up in her eyes as she screams amidst the torrent coming down. Now the flakes devour her face.

  “Give me your hand!!” Wilker yells as he reached out for her. She reaches for him. Her arm bloodied and eaten down to the bone. Wilker grabs and pulls. She’s way lighter than he thought, maybe it’s his new found strength.

  Her arm snaps and pulls off in the middle. The corrosion already made it through. The snow eats through her at a just too slow pace.

  After it’s done, all that’s left of her is a puddle of guts and mess. Wilker vomits on the other side, his body painfully dry heaves from his empty belly.

  Her remains, it still sizzles. It starts to melt through the tarmac.

  He was too distracted to notice everything around him is melting. It goes through everything, just at a slower pace. Outside the truck, cars and concrete disintegrate. It goes so slow they all seem like they’re sweating. It goes through human flesh faster.

  He’s still a mile from the hospital.

  “Shit, think Wilker.” He doesn’t have much time, the hospital could be destroyed already. He tries to push back that thought. He thinks back to his meeting with Jahum.

  He said Wilker would be enhanced. Stronger. Able to do the impossible. If he’s supposed to be able to fight these things, then maybe just maybe…

  He stretched out his hand from under the truck. A flake gently lands on his hand. It sticks. He yelps as it singes him. He pulls his hand back under. The flake falls off his hand as a snowflake would normally do if he had ice cold hands.

  His hand stops hurting, he looks at it. The flake ate into his hand but only as if he grabbed a hot piece of metal, a second degree burn. He can run it, they don’t stick to him. As soon as he gets the idea to run, his hand seamlessly heals in a matter of seconds. He clutches his hand. It’s as if nothing happened.

  He rolls out from under the truck and gets to his feet. He surveys his area. The city is coated in a sheet of ‘snow’ and larges piles of red from melted bodies, like an abnormal winter day.

  A smell smacks him across his face, he reels back. The stench of old corpses and hot sulfur rocks the air and sizzles in his nostrils. The snow floats down gently. The Eliites continue their siege, lasers light up the sky as more cries yell out below. He dashes down the street.

  Flakes brushing him. The small tingles of irritation don’t stop him. They won’t stop him from saving Isabel.

  …

  He sees it in the distance: the hospital, standing in smoking misplaced glory. A gaping hole is in its side. Wilker halts, his bloodied jacket flopping in the wind.

  He doesn’t know where her room is from the outside. He thinks it’s close to the opening. Wilker sprints forward.

  …

  Isabel’s room is silent, the only thing that stirs is the wind blowing on Isabel’s cream and baby blue sheets as Wilker burst through the door. He pauses and surveys the room. There is no outside wall, just a giant hole letting in a rotten smell, to his left is a part of what caused it.

  A piece of wing from a jet pierces the wall
next to him. The top halves of a nurse and Isabel’s doctor lie motionless on top of it. Under the wing are their slumping lower halves, they had no chance.

  He could see into the other rooms as the jet decided to take out all the other walls. But Isabel lies as if nothing has happened. The wall behind her bed still stands.

  Thank God. He pauses, he notices that her chest isn’t moving.

  “No.”

  The word comes out softly, as if he doesn’t believe it, as if he says it any louder then what he believes has happened will come true. He takes two steps forward. She is definitely not moving, no sign of life. He finds courage to reach her side.

  The tubes and wires are pulled towards the hole in the wall. The machine that was keeping her alive fell out. She was unplugged. His heart drops, a crushing feeling hits his lungs.

  “No. NO. NO!!” Wilker screams. He shakes her. Nothing. He’s too late.

  He’s the one who’s supposed to die.

  Not her.

  Not anymore. He pulls out the crystal Jahum gave to him. It sparks to life, radiating a warm heat. He thrust it against her chest. The bruising doesn’t matter if she lives.

  Jahum didn’t teach him how to use it but… the thing pulsates in his hand. It has to work, it can’t happen this way. Something hits him. He knows what to do. He closes his eyes and calms his heart. He focuses on the blue emerald in his hand. He feels it heat up, he losses strength in his arms.

  He opens his eyes and looks down. His arms are lit up blue, streaking down his arm into her body. The light melts away into her like a wave but she still doesn’t move.

  “Come on!” Wilker yells. He pushes harder, the light illuminating what’s left of the room. Still nothing. Her skin grows whiter.

  “Please! Don’t die on me! Please!” he begs. He can feel the heat, the power rushing into her, but it fades into nothing, just the coldness and stillness of death. He pushes harder and harder until—

  Snap! He hears a crack. He stops and pulls off his hands. The emerald snapped in half, its light fading into darkness.

  “No.”

  Isabel.

  He thought he was prepared for this, after her being sick for all these years, but the hope he was given and quickly taken away was that she would survive. The hope was his mistake, believing in faith, in miracles, that’s the thing that hurt him the most.

  Wilker screams at the top of his lungs and burst into tears.

  “Isabel!!” he sobs.

  His large frame collapses, he falls to his knees and sobs on her cold body.

  The battle outside heats up. There are no more screams, no more yells, for the people who have the ability to are gone, for the snow has melted them away.

  The Eliites lay waste to the buildings of London. Wilker doesn’t care. He just wants to be alone with Isabel, forever, even if the only way to do that is death…

  An immediate calmness washes over him. As if suddenly everything in this cruel world would be okay. He stops crying and wipes away his tears. He accepts her death now.

  This isn’t right, he glances up. An Eliite right outside the hole, peeking in like a small child. All of his problems, all of Wilker’s worries seem to evaporate. He stands. The Eliite just floats there. Wilker stands up and walks around the bed and looks at Isabel.

  Farewell.

  Isabel.

  He places a hand on her leg and repeats those very words in his head.

  Acceptance.

  This is strange. He walks towards the hole. The Eliite stares back at him. Wilker walks to the edge. He understands now.

  It’s him, that’s doing this.

  A white line runs up the middle of the Eliite. It slowly splits in half, a bright white light erupts out of it. Wilker bores into it. It fully opens, straight down the middle, in the middle of it a small ball of light shines out like a star.

  Wilker understands what the being is. It’s a Serephin, an Eliite, who was converted into almost pure energy to control their ships. Their complex ships called faires. But in return their minds have turned childlike, they have a new born wonderment to them.

  The two halves float back and away from the star. It shrinks morphing into a humanoid figure which controls the faire. Wilker puts out his hand. The being floats towards him, reaching out.

  As the being approaches, Wilker feels a rush of emotion wash through him, hate, anger, sadness, despair, happiness, loneness, but ultimately understanding. As the being gets closer, the feelings gets stronger, but so does the understanding.

  The beings powers fatal flaw is for people like Wilker, people who have been given power by Jahum. They have the power to alter emotions, when they go into battle they calm their enemies, so either themselves or their comrades can easily slaughter them. But for a mind like Wilker’s and with the powers of the Astrons, it has the opposite effect.

  It pushes back inhibitions.

  The being gets closer, hands reaching out as it they were friends, as if they weren’t trying to hurt him. Wilker amazes the being because he’s different from the rest. Wilker can see through it. He knows how it work; he can see the veins of energy pulsing through it and the energy sources that it comes from.

  Which is everywhere.

  The being’s hand is only inches from his. If he can see how the being is assembled.

  Then he can dissemble it. Their hands touch, the being screams a hellish howl. It explodes in a cloud of light. The rest of the faire explode in a similar light.

  Wilker blinks the residue from his eyes as he lets down his arm. He sees London, or what’s left of it. The buildings lay in waste. Black smoke replaces the clouds. There are no more screams, no more yells as London finally sleeps.

  London is lost.

  He looks into the distance, the Eliite’s faires spread out heading beyond the fields of London. He turns and heads toward the door. He can destroy them.

  “Stop,” Jahum says. Wilker turns to see Jahum standing in the opening.

  “Why?” Wilker asks. Jahum has a confused look on his alien face.

  “Why? You are needed to save Earth,” Jahum says.

  “Don’t bloody fuck with me! You know what I am asking!” Wilker yells. Wilker shakes, he rubs his arms to calm himself down.

  “Why did you make go through all of this…If you knew she couldn’t be saved?” Wilker says. “I felt the power seeping out of her, your power didn’t click. Even if she was alive I know my efforts would’ve met the same fate. You made me believe I could’ve saved her!”

  Jahum looks down. Contemplating something. “She could have always been saved.”

  “What?”

  “I gave you your powers when we first met. I can see the future, the futures of many possibilities, it’s a curse for the powers I have as a god. Yet here on Earth there is a man, a simple human being named Cole, whose future is clouded, unpredictable, who’s affecting everyone around him. You are one of those people,” Jahum says.

  “I have never met a Cole before, and that doesn’t answer my question,” Wilker replies.

  “You will. At the beginning of time I was born with this universe. I saw the past, the present, and the future. I lived in time itself. The closer I got to this invasion, the less of the future I could see, a dark black cloud shadowing Earth and the future. All those years ago, I saw the future of Isabel, had I chosen her and you were left behind.”

  …

  Isabell watches from a window as she leaves Earth, the blood-red oceans and cloudless colorless skies, create an Earth she will never forget. A blood-red crystal covers most of the Earth’s atmosphere.

  “At first, she was strong, willing and excited at the wonder of a new world. The curiosity of finally having the answers and peeking into the heavens and understanding the universe. But-“

  Isabel sits in a different room in a chair. A large window takes up most of the wall, through it there is nothing. She stares at the blackness, her eyes damn-near lifeless. In the blackness, three brown humanoids float alon
e in tandem, only a speck to her.

  “She couldn’t handle it, your death and the implications of it. The nihilism of the universe. The emptiness consumed her, she didn’t have the drive to live anymore. You were her anchor that she clung onto, her drive, her reason to live. She killed herself before we arrived at our new home world.”

  Isabel’s lifeless body lies on the floor of the ship. Her eyes glow bright white as her arms are splayed out. A wisp of smoke comes out of her gaped mouth.

  …

  “Earth is a very special place,” Jahum says. “So much uncertainty surrounds it. So when I came here, I chose you, because of Cole and because your future and this planets is unclear to me. Maybe in the uncertainty your world won’t end, maybe in the uncertainty the universe won’t end, in blackness, emptiness and death with no chance of a new beginning. Isabel’s path was always set, in the many possibilities of the future, but yours is not. I should have told you when we first met but I did not create the universe, but I myself created the stars, the very stars that gave life. And I’ve seen a future where the universe has come to a premature end without hope of starting anew. Every path of the future I saw was the same,” Jahum says. A small ship hovers down over the opening.

  “There’s a possibility that we will not win, there’s a possibility that Earth will die out, and there’s a possibility that you will die a meaningless death and the universe will spark out. But there is a chance that none of these things will happen. Because of you and a few choice others. I had to have you make closure, so you wouldn’t fear these last few weeks and live life to the fullest, for what to come will not be an easy path. I’m sorry I betrayed your trust.”