Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF

by Mike Ashley

  Mike knocked her hand away. "I'm not deaf and I'm not blind!" he shouted. "I can see what's going on—"

  "But you can't feel it," she said softly.

  "No. No you're right. I can't feel it. I can't." His hands clenched into fists. He closed his eyes as anguish flooded his mind. "Why me, Holly? Why am I the only one who can't believe—?"

  A far-away rumble cut off his lament. The sound resembled the thunder of a distant jet, summoning a memory of childhood when he'd lain awake at night listening to the passage of an anomalous craft far overhead, imagining that what he heard was no commercial airliner on an unusual route; that instead the nightfarer was a B-52, armed with nuclear missiles bound for a hardened target in Siberia. The overflight that presaged the end of the world.

  His childhood fears had faded with the cold war, had dulled with maturity. Now they were back, haunting him, as the end of the world loomed in unexpected reality.

  He looked out across the ocean, where he counted three twisting wires of brilliant golden light. They were thin, like cracks in the sky letting in the light of heaven. But vast, appearing to extend far beyond the brilliant blue bowl of the sky, disappearing into some nebulous distance that seemed somehow utterly different from the sky Mike had known all his life. Light bleeding from some other place. Some other world. Hungry light that preyed on hope and faith.

  The distant jet-roar faded to silence as the wires of light approached across the water. They swayed as they moved, not behaving at all like ordinary light, but instead bending and floating like extremely low-density matter. Once again, Mike felt himself astounded at their thinness. The first one swept across the shallows toward the children playing in the waves. At this distance it was easy to see that it was no thicker than the mooring lines once used to tie cruise ships to the docks.

  The children had spotted the rope. Their joyous cries could be heard from the ridge as they scrambled and dove toward the light. Mike wanted to scream at them to stop, to run away. But they believed...

  A young girl just short of puberty reached the rope first. She grabbed it with her right hand and was immediately yanked off her feet. She rose skyward. At the same time she seemed to shrink so that she was drawn into the column of light. Mike watched as she became a tiny silhouette within the golden glow, a dark figure receding at fabulous speed across a vast dimension that did not exist in this world. He watched until she became a black point on the visual horizon. And then he watched her disappear.

  Other children followed her, six, then seven of them before the rope left the now-empty water and swept ashore, zig-zagging across the newly-laid beach as it offered itself to the eager, waiting parents.

  Mike fell to his knees, sickened. He bent over, holding his stomach. He wanted to puke. Holly crouched beside him. "It's all right, Mike," she soothed. "It's all right. God has come for us. You don't have to be afraid."

  Her words made his hackles rise. Was a rope finally out to lure the two of them? After weeks of watching everyone they'd ever known disappear up the ropes, was this their time? His fingers clawed at the ground. Why couldn't he feel the grace the others felt? Why couldn't he believe?

  A deep electric hum assaulted his ears. He felt his hair lift slightly, as if a field of static electricity had suddenly swept around him. Looking up, he saw a second golden rope racing in from the ocean towards the ridge. "iVo!" he shouted.

  He dove at Holly, knocking her to the ground. He held her there with his weight, pinning her arms against her sides. "I won't let you go to it!" he screamed at her. "I won't let you go."

  The rope was dancing, swaying up the jagged slope of the ridge. Holly's eyes filled with tears. A trace of blood netted her lip. Her jaw trembled. "Please Mike. Let me go. It's my time. It's our time. I don't know why you can't feel it. But I do know you love me. You have to trust me. You have to let me believe for you—"

  He kissed her to stop the flow of words. His lips pressed against hers, his tongue probed her mouth, he tasted the sweet salt of her blood. It crossed the membranes of his mouth like a drug. Her love flowed into him, her trust, her faith. He felt a warm, golden glow fill him. He let go of her arms, to cradle her beautiful face in his hands. And then they were sitting up, spooning, her arms tight around the small of his back. And somehow after that he found himself on his feet. She stood facing him, holding both his hands. A column of gold rose behind her. Her warm dark eyes were locked on his. She nodded encouragement. Moving backward, she led him first one step, then another. Letting his left hand go, she half-turned to seize the rope. "Faith," she whispered.

  Her body arched in sudden ecstasy as she was yanked up the rope. The gasp that escaped her lips was a knife that cut through Mike's consciousness. He stiffened, as a dirty old awareness flooded his mind. "Holly, no!" he roared.

  She was receding up the rope, her right side shrinking, darkening into a silhouette as she was swept into the narrow chasm of golden light, her left side yet in the flooded world. "HollyV

  He found that he still held her left hand. Now he seized it with both his hands and pulled. Her body continued to shrink, to recede into impossible distance. Her arm stretched in a long black ribbon. Then her hand turned palm up in his grip, and vanished. He found himself grasping at empty air.

  A scream of utter rage ripped from his throat. Tears flooded his face.

  The golden light hummed and shifted, awaiting him.

  "Not me," he choked. "I won't go with you. Murderer! Murderer!" He turned and fled into the forest.

  The island was empty, all the people finally gone.

  Mike climbed the hill and sat at the base of the cross. Cool air washed over his face, while scudding clouds played with the sun's light. The remaining land mass was no more than a quarter mile across now. Uninterrupted ocean surrounded him on all sides, the water appearing to rise up like a shallow bowl, with himself trapped in the bottom. How high would the waters rise? High enough to drown even continental mountains?

  There is not that much water in the world!

  Movement caught his eye. A sparkle of white against the cloud-shadowed sea. A bird, he realized. And as it drew nearer he recognized the wandering albatross, gliding on its white wings just above the crest of the swell. A solitary creature.

  He watched it in gratitude, and not a little wonder, realizing only then how much he'd missed the non-human life of the island. For the cats and dogs, birds and cattle had disappeared with their masters. Even the fish had vanished from the ocean. He wondered if this bird could be as hungry as he.

  It stayed with him, flying a restless circuit around the shrinking island as the flood waters continued to rise. By noon, when hunger and thirst and utter isolation began to play upon his mind, it became the focus of his delirium. He found himself flying on long wings around and around the white wooden cross as if he flew on the end of a chain. He wanted to turn tail to it. He wanted to glide across the open ocean into the blue promise of homogenous vistas: just a little farther now, and you will find land, life.

  But the bird refused to leave.

  The afternoon passed. Mike felt his skin burn in the intermittent sun. Thirst seemed to swell his tongue into a dry, dusty sponge. Hunger knotted his belly. He watched the waves roll in, from all sides now, higher and higher until by late afternoon they met at the bottom of the cross.

  He climbed the monument to escape the churning tumult of water that consumed the last bit of land. He hauled himself up on the crossbar, then hugged the post while the waters roiled below him, slowly yet inevitability rising. Soon he would drown. Were there fish left in the water to eat him? Were there still microbes that might break down his flesh? Perhaps he would sink to the bottom and become covered with sediment and be converted to a fossil, the only evidence left of the original animal life of this world. For he sensed that the world was being cleansed, prepared for an entirely separate history to follow.

  Tears filled his eyes as he looked out across the watery wasteland. He couldn't imagine worshipping
any deity capable of creating this murderous scene.

  All Gone.

  The vast and empty ocean seemed to resound with that statement of finality.

  All Gone.

  When the last creatures were flushed out by the flood, the world would be clean, ready to be remade, renewed.

  Mike held on. By evening the ocean was nearly calm. The golden colors of sunset played across the uninterrupted horizon. He gazed at the sight, feeling the burnished colors enter his soul and warm him. Last day.

  He started, as the albatross swept past. It had been drawing nearer all day, perhaps emboldened by the retreat of the land. Now it floated by, scarcely an arm's length away, the wind abuzz in its feathers, a slight noise that seemed to grow in volume as the bird receded until the buzz became the ominous rumble of distant thunder, distant jets.

  Mike looked up, to see a golden rope dancing on the horizon. A single rope. It was the first time he'd ever seen just one. His heart began to hammer as the old fury returned. He clung to the cross and screamed at the usurper, his voice rolling across the calm waters. "Liarl Murder er!"

  A cold swell rose up to touch his dangling feet, bringing with it a sudden darkness. Fury flowed away, leaving behind the painful vacuum of despair. He bowed his head against the post and cried until the thunder faded and the hum of the rope filled his ears, until the deceiver's golden glow burned through his closed eyes.

  He still didn't believe in the beneficence of God. He knew the flood was an act of genocide and the rope was a con game. Knew it by the anguish in his soul. But it didn't matter anymore. He was human, and he must follow his people, be it to hell or oblivion. He opened his eyes. The rope danced before him, an inexplicable gold cable let down at the end of the world. The albatross floated on a breeze, seemingly watching, waiting for his lead.

  He grasped the rope in both hands, and was gone.

  THE END OF THE WORLD SHOW

  David Barnett

  David Barnett is a Lancashire-born journalist and editor, currently Assistant Editor at the Bradford Telegraph & Argus. He is the author of the novels Hinterland (2005), about the hidden worlds around us, and Angelglass (2007), where strands of history merge, and the story collection The Janus House and Other Two-Faced Tales (2009). When I was planning this anthology

  I vowed not to include any stories of "zombie apocalypse", but there's always an exception and rules are there to be broken, for a very good reason.

  * * *

  ON THE SEVENTH day before the end, the aliens said goodbye. "It's all true," said a tired-looking man from the Government, being interviewed on the teatime news. "Non-Earth Originated Intelligences have been among us since 1947. They have contributed a great deal to our development over the past sixty years. It's highly doubtful we would have been able to make the strides in space exploration that we have without their help. And the work they have done with us on researching treatments for cancer and other conditions has been phenomenal. It's just a shame that they have to leave now, with so much yet to do."

  "Why exactly are they leaving?" asked the reporter.

  The man from the Government tugged at his collar and looked off-camera. "Uh, no more questions at this time, please," he said.

  The general consensus was that it was all a big hoax. There were special news reports on all the channels devoted to the announcement.

  They even cancelled the episode of EastEnders on the TV. Katy would not have approved.

  It was with Katy that I really wanted to talk about all this, but she'd gone a long time ago. I sat in my cramped terraced house, cruising through the digital channels, every one with some expert or other talking animatedly about the aliens. They came from a planet circling a star that we didn't even have a name for, just a string of numbers. There was a lot of talk about the impossibility of interstellar travel, and someone asked a scientist if travel between stars was possible, why had the aliens only shown us how to get as far as the Moon?

  Katy would be talking about it with Steve, about what it all meant for the future, for their future, their cosy little, middle-class, Volkswagen Touran-driving, holidays-in-Tuscany future. I went to the pub.

  "It's a hoax," said Bob with authority. "Has to be, hasn't it? Can't possibly be true."

  "Where are they, then, if they're here? Where's their space rocket?" said Alan.

  There was a boom of voices as the barmaid turned up the volume on the television in the corner. The studio discussions on the BBC special news programme had cut to some shaky camerawork in a field somewhere in Cornwall, according to the caption. A reporter in a raincoat ducked into shot. "And here we are at the scene of the extra-terrestrials actually leaving the earth..."

  The camera angle changed abruptly and focused on a cigar-shaped silver rocket standing in the dark, rain-soaked field. God knows where they'd been hiding it and how they'd suddenly got it there.

  "I bet it's been there all the time, invisible," said Alan.

  "It's a hoax," said Bob, lighting a cigarette, apparently satisfied. "I mean, look at it. It's like something out of Flash Gordon."

  Alan's mobile phone buzzed on the table. While he fumbled with the buttons, the camera panned to three of the aliens standing on a platform near the rocket. They looked a bit like Stan Ogden, only with a slightly greenish tinge. They were wearing three-button black suits with Nehru collars. FIRST PICTURES OF THE ALIENS flashed across the bottom of the screen.

  "Why are you leaving?" shouted someone from the huddle of press reporters.

  One of the aliens looked at the other two. He coughed, and then said in perfect English: "We are very sorry. We have to go now. It's beyond our control."

  "That was Margery," said Alan, putting the phone back into his jacket pocket. "The lads have taken the Focus and set off for Cornwall. They want to go with the aliens."

  Bob stubbed out his cigarette and laughed. "Your lads? Wayne and Stu? What makes them think the aliens'll want to take them back to Pluto? Unless they're short of work-shy layabouts up there."

  "I'd tell them not to bother," I said, pointing at the telly. "They're off."

  They were indeed. The aliens had got inside their rocket and the army were herding the press pack and the rubberneckers away. A green glow erupted from the base of the silver spaceship and the camera shook and wobbled. Then it was gone, soaring up into the night sky. The camera tracked it until it was swallowed by the black clouds.

  There was a hush over the pub, and the field in Cornwall, until the reporter said in reverent tones: "And there we have it: an historic, epoch-making event. I have been proud and honoured to witness the first open contact between humanity and extra-terrestrial intelligences ..."

  "Proud and honoured to witness them buggering off," said Bob, lighting up again.

  "I wonder why they've gone, really?" said Alan.

  "I wonder whose round it is, really?" said Bob.

  Later, pissed, I phoned Katy, against my better judgment.

  "Did you see the aliens?" I burbled.

  "Of course I did," she said flatly. "I'd imagine everyone on earth saw them. Why are you calling me?"

  "I still love you," I whispered.

  The phone went dead.

  I lay in bed for a bit but couldn't sleep. I tried to have a wank but could only summon up images of flabby green aliens in black suits, so gave up and went to sit by the window, staring up at the night sky and wondering what it was all about, until Wayne and Stu drove past in their dad's Ford Focus, beeping their horn all along the road. They'd painted TAKE US WITH U on the roof of the car. Alan wasn't going to be best pleased.

  On the sixth day before the end, we found out why the aliens had left. There was an asteroid the size of Milton Keynes heading towards earth. It was due to hit in a little under a week. The breakfast news was full of it. Someone at the Government had leaked the information. The authorities had known about it for months. The aliens had been trying to help us find a solution but, given the size of the rock, there wasn't much th
ey could suggest. That was why they had gone.

  I didn't go into work. Didn't really see the point. I did phone, though. The secretary said: "Are you ill?"

  "Haven't you seen the news this morning?"

  She paused. "No. Why?"

  "Nothing," I said. Anne was a skittish sort and I didn't want to panic her unduly. "I've got a touch of flu."

  I turned back to the telly. The asteroid was somewhere out past Venus at the moment, but it was going at a fair lick. The experts said it would probably break up a little in the atmosphere. There was apparently a big plan to fly a load of nuclear bombs up into orbit in the space shuttle and blow the rock to smithereens, or at least knock it off course. Failing that - and the scientist being interviewed assured us it would work - the asteroid would probably hit Australia some time on Sunday.

  "At least it's only Australia," said Alan when I went round to his to return the hedge trimmer I'd borrowed off him five months previously.

  He gazed at the trimmer with a curious look in his eye, probably wondering whether it was worth cutting back his leylandii before the weekend, as I said: "Well, according to the telly, the size and speed of the thing means it'll probably wipe out all life on earth anyway."

  Alan sniffed, just as Margery pulled up on to the drive in the Focus. They'd tried to rub the TAKE US WITH U message off the roof without much success. Margery, a handsome woman if a little highly-strung, struggled out of the car weighed down with Sains-bury's carrier bags. She looked a little harassed.

  "It's chaos out there!" she trilled. "I nearly had to fight my way out of the supermarket. There were people punching each other at the checkout."

  "Did you get any of that pate I like?" asked Alan mildly as Margery elbowed her way past me.

  "No I did not!" she squeaked. "I got bottles of water and tins of beans. You can get the other bags out of the car. And why haven't you barricaded the windows yet?"

  Alan looked at me and gave a tiny, what-can-you-do? shrug. "I thought I'd trim the hedge, first," he said.