End of Gray Skies: An Apocalyptic Thriller

by Brian Spangler

  “I’ll always carry it,” he reminded himself.

  Bodies, bodies, bodies, he thought, trying to hide from the empty gazes of flat, stony eyes. Their occasional glances raised his suspicions. The corridor was busy with people traveling the long stretch of doors, all wearing the same white coveralls, which made them indistinguishable from one another. He thought of how similar the scene was to his Commune, save for the dead eyes. Some of the faces he knew, but they moved along without acknowledging him. Declan had also known them to be dead—or at least he’d thought they’d died.

  As Declan watched the stream of white coveralls passing him, he thought of Sammi and was struck by what had been missing. Declan gripped her lock of hair, opening his hand briefly to look at it, and thought of the last time she’d worn it.

  He’d undressed her that day, so that she could be cleaned and passed to the farming floor. It was Ms. Gilly who’d raised the concern about the missing lock of hair. He had held it tightly in his hand, much as he was doing now. Sammi had given it to him; she’d always worn it, and Ms. Gilly knew that about her. But now, wearing a red lock of hair didn’t seem to matter to her anymore. But why didn’t it matter? Glinting iridescence in the passing light, Sammi’s coveralls were the same as any others: expressionless, like the faces in the corridor.

  Marching bodies churned forward—step after step, passing him in a mindless shuffle. He saw no children, no old people, and no crippled or maimed. Instead, he saw an army: a young army. What could they all be working on? Were they a part of the End of Gray Skies? Or was it something else, something that Sammi hadn’t shared with him?

  Everyone was going someplace, needing to be somewhere, but he’d not seen a one of them offer a word, or a smile, or a nod of their head. Even the few he’d accidentally brushed against had only fixed him a cursory look, their eyes level yet indefinable, taking in his image before moving on. Occasionally, he’d seen a set of eyes jut upward toward the lights before being pulled back into place.

  He’d seen how the light had affected Sammi, too. He’d watched her go about her day, responding without question to the flashes and colors. She’d never obeyed anyone before—not like that—and never would he have believed a machine would be able to control her.

  It was Sammi’s behavior, more than anything, that most strengthened his suspicions. This place was not what it seemed. The VAC Machine couldn’t be the oasis that Sammi thought it was. And while she was blinded by what the lights told her, he couldn’t share in her blindness; he knew that the sights he’d been shown were false. It was all a façade: the machine was deceiving them, taking their sight, and twisting it into what it wanted them to see.

  Declan jumped, startled by the sudden shift in color sequences. At once, marching bodies changed direction, reacting immediately to the new instructions. And, as in their room, Declan didn’t understand what the lights were saying. He didn’t understand what Sammi was seeing, what everyone else was seeing.

  “This is Sammi now,” he mumbled, and then dropped his chin, continuing to the end of the corridor before closing his eyes. He imagined Sammi walking among the army of bodies, aimlessly following directions.

  The corridor opened into a round area that was hundreds of times the size of the lobby in their building. Bodies passed him; some brushed his shoulders, some jostled him, but all the while, he kept his gaze fixed in front of him. He remembered what he had seen on the shore of the black sand beach: the impressive size of the VAC Machine from the outside. And he understood that the corridor leading away from his room was just a vein—a small one, and likely one of hundreds—designed to empty bodies into, and return them from, this lobby.

  The heart. Is this the heart? he questioned, and then remembered how deep into the ocean the machine went. A heart would be deeper, somewhere safe; where he stood was just an exchange. Like the glassy orb on Andie’s head, it was both his eye and a window. That was what this place was: the top of the machine. He wondered if this was the only such room, or if there were more. On the beach, he’d only seen one face of the VAC Machine. Just how far did it extend on the other side?

  Thousands of white coveralls marched in every direction, seeming to know exactly where to step, and where they were going. The white coveralls connected, blurring together into paths, snaking all around him. There was some level of order being followed within the mass.

  When someone bumped into him, he almost fell back. The bump was hard, and noticeable enough to turn him, but the offending body was already lost in a white iridescent tide that was receding into the corridor. When his other shoulder was hit, the same thing happened, and he soon realized that he was in the way. The paths being walked were predetermined, like the morse lines, and he was standing on one of them. Without thinking about it, Declan turned, apologizing, but the passer only slowed a moment before disappearing behind him.

  The lights had absolute control over these people—down to the very paths they took from one place to the next. Declan moved to the left, shuffling until he felt that he was clear of the unmarked lines the bodies traveled on.

  Declan stretched to see the other side of the lobby. He was going to have to go in farther, deeper toward the center. Stepping forward, he struggled to stay out of the way. After one faulted step, a young woman walked into him, her breasts bouncing against him. He felt a bashful rise of embarrassment and readied himself to apologize, but without a word she moved around him and continued on. Declan wanted to laugh, but when he considered that his family and Sammi were under the same influence, the levity quickly turned somber, sad.

  As he traveled farther, the white iridescence began to sparkle and dance above those passing. He saw more colors than he had before, dancing lights from far above the lobby floor. He followed the sparkling colors upward where the ceiling was all glass. He could see through the machine, pushing past the fallen clouds, breaking the gray ceiling he’d known his entire life. The glass was a magnificent window, peeking into the rich blue that had stayed hidden from him equally as long. His knees went weak when he saw the cusp of the sun’s edge winking back at him, as if to say “you missed me this time, but come back tomorrow.” Just a sliver was all that he saw, peeking in from the shoals of the lobby’s edge, but it was sunlight, and it was beautiful.

  The sky remained blue when the sun passed out of sight, leaving behind what he thought might be the twinkle of an early star. When he came to understand that the sun was going to pass above the lobby every day at precisely the same time, he nodded an absent thank-you to Ms. Gilly, remembering their class about calendars being born from the stars. Until this moment, what he’d learned had just been ghosts trapped in a history lesson.

  “You were right, Ms. Gilly.”

  What Declan saw next turned the heat from the sun into something cold. Across the lobby, not thirty hands from him, stood his sister, Hadley. Her face was expressionless and pale, with stony smudges cradling her eyes; the luster in her beautiful brown hair was gone, replaced by graying; her skin had turned to the same shade as the fallen clouds. Hadley was a ghost, a mere shadow that walked with an absent stare.

  When he called out, she turned without seeing him, and continued forward. He immediately chased after her, knowing that if he didn’t reach her, then he’d lose her to one of the surrounding corridors. He pushed past the bodies around him, shoving one man nearly to the ground. His heart was racing, thumping hard. Bodies were suddenly in front of him, pawing at his arms and holding him. He didn’t let himself believe it was intentional at first, thinking instead that what was happening was just a coincidence. But when someone’s fingers wrapped around his arm, and then another set of hands clamped onto his shoulders, he realized that he was in fact being held.

  Declan struggled against the grip of many, and tried to keep in sight of his sister, knowing he might never see her again. He screamed for her, his voice hoarse, breaking against the strain in his throat. Sweat rose on his neck, and he found himself cursing the hands that held h
im, but he finally managed to slip free of their grasp. The flashes of lights from the nearest wall told him all that he needed to know: he was being held so that Hadley could get away.

  Before the mass of hands and bodies could regain its hold on him, he bulled through the crowd—his knees high, his steps quick, bodies being pushed around him—and ran to Hadley. Declan felt the crush of fingers under his feet as he stepped on the hands of those who had fallen yet still flailed to grab hold of him. The crunch of someone’s bones sickened him, but he didn’t stop—he just cursed the lights, blaming them for everything that was happening.

  He was closer to Hadley now. She was continuing toward one of the corridors, but had been slowed by approaching bodies. All of them had the same ashen skin, and their hair was colorless and faded. How had he missed that until now?

  Hadley joined one of the lines waiting to enter a corridor, which allowed Declan the chance to catch up. As he came up behind her, he reached out, placed his hand on her shoulder, and turned her.

  The woman who turned back to face him wasn’t Hadley; it was his mother. At once, his heart halted, his breathing stopped. His mother’s beautiful skin had become as pale as his sister’s. Creases stretched around her eyes, etching grooves in her leathery skin. She looked at him then, and for a moment, he thought she was going to say something. But she didn’t see him. She didn’t seem to see anything, but just stared ahead absently, without expression. He reached up to touch her hair, feeling for the soft comfort he’d known when he was growing up. But all he found was a brittle coarseness—an offense to life—dying.

  “What happened to you?” The question was not just for his mother, but for the other corpses that trudged by.

  Surprisingly, his mother spoke. “I’m ready now,” she said as she touched his face. Declan reached up to grab hold of her hand, to pull her into his arms and take her from this place—but he was too slow, he’d waited too long. A sudden rush of arms came at him like a raging current, drowning the unsuspecting. Hands came down on him, smothering him; their sheer weight ripped him away from his mother. Disbelief flooded his mind.

  This can’t be happening, he thought, and he considered how docile the others had been until now. Above him, the ceiling spewed reflections of the lights, lively and unforgiving, throwing a storm of flashing colors around him. The machine wanted his mother and sister, and it somehow knew that he was going to try to stop them. He screamed at the hands holding him down, while his mother turned away from him.

  This is just a dream, he told himself. A nightmare. But he knew it wasn’t. Hadley was next to him then, meeting his eyes, but seeing past him as he struggled to stand. And then she was gone, following their mother. He kept his eyes on their path, watching them move deeper into the corridor, but more bodies filled the growing space between them, obscuring his view. All wore the same deathly look.

  Declan pushed against the grip of fingers, struggling, yelling. The nightmare of restraint held firm, until his only recourse was to begin swinging. He threw his arms in a wide arc, air casting over his skin as he tried to connect with anything near him. A jolt of pain bolted up his arm when a mouthful of teeth cut into his knuckles, suspending his fingers in numbness. His fist had hit the mouth of an older woman, and immediately her grip on him vanished as she lost her balance and pinwheeled backward. He watched as she stumbled and then rolled, crashing to the floor; he heard the thump of her head as it bounced on the hard ground. Even as he watched her, his other hand connected with a man’s ear, splitting the long lobe of dangling skin and leaving a trail of blood to spill onto his white coveralls. And like the woman, the man let go of Declan, falling to his knees. When Declan’s fist landed twice more, he’d freed himself of enough restraints to stand. By then, his mother and sister were far ahead of him.

  He thought to call to them; whirled around to see if there was anything he could stand on. He moved his eyes in full swings, dizzying himself in the process. And then his eyes landed on Sammi. She was walking along the other side of the great lobby, toward another corridor. Instinctively, his hands were up in the air, waving as if they were back in their Commune’s courtyard and he was trying to catch her attention as they readied for their morning walk to class.

  Sammi did turn to him, smiled briefly, and even attempted to wave with a subtle raise of her hand, before the lights nearest to her caught her eyes and turned her back around. But in the brief moment that she’d faced him, Declan had seen that something was wrong. Sammi was sick, although not in the same way as his mother and sister. Her face was pale, but not ashen; and thankfully, her hair had stayed the same bouncy red. But still, her eyes were darker, tired.

  Declan stepped forward, moving past a few bodies, trying to get closer to Sammi so that he could call out again. He glanced back over his shoulder at the corridor that his mother and sister had taken. Declan didn’t know which way to go. Another body thumped into his shoulder, causing him to reel back and fall to his knees. Thinking that the lights were instructing the bodies to hold him down again, he quickly jumped up, preparing to fend off the onslaught. But nothing came at him.

  Another morse line, he thought, and stepped to get out of the path of moving bodies.

  When he turned back, Sammi was already gone. Disappointed, Declan spat at the floor and wondered if the lights were smiling, satisfied with his loss. He cursed the flickering colors and spun around to follow his mother and sister.

  The corridor passed under his feet with fleeting steps. Running felt awkward to him—cumbersome and strange—after all, how often in his life had he ever been able to run? His heart beat hard and his knees and feet were punished by the unfamiliar gait. He was pushing past the graying bodies lining up to enter another room, when suddenly the floor jerked beneath him, causing him to stumble and fall. From his vantage point, he could see that nobody was moving; they’d all stopped. But the floor itself moved them along: a conveyor, passing them from the lobby to the next room. Declan jumped back up, trying to see over the line of bodies ahead of him, then sprinted to the end of the corridor. He continued to push bodies aside, gaining speed, until he was in the other room. Before he knew what was happening, the floor was gone from beneath his feet, and he was falling.

  He crashed onto a grated floor, and pain thundered in his legs, vaulting him forward. Declan caught himself against a narrow rail, his middle having hit the metal tubing hard enough to push the air from his lungs. Pin-lights darted across his eyes, and he reeled back, planting his feet firmly until he was still. He thought a bone was broken in his foot; he could feel the ache increasing, his big toe growing deaf to his commands.

  He rested then, waited until his breath came to him, before looking up to see where he was. Gasping, he choked on the air; it was filled with salt and a putrid decay that tasted acidic in his mouth. He spat once, trying to clear his mouth, but the powerful acrid taste stayed deep within his throat.

  A quick look around told him that he was standing at the railing of a thousand-hand drop. He’d fallen from the moving conveyor, dropping him on the other side of the corridor. Had he missed the small metal landing, he’d surely be dead; it was all that prevented him from tumbling to the bottom of a deep cavern. His hands rested on the metal railing, absorbing the cold touch as a necessary safety against falling.

  Looking over the edge, his heart went into his throat, lifting his stomach until he felt sick. He turned away. His knees knocked together until he dropped. He was terrified.

  In his lifetime, he’d never experienced height like this. Before now, the executive floor—where he’d walked with his mother once, on her first day of work—was the highest that he’d ever been. He remembered that his mother had pulled him back from the ledge as he had looked down at their courtyard. She’d embarrassed him, calling out that it was too dangerous to be so close. But this was ten times that height. Above him, he could see that the cavern was dome-shaped, and as tall as the lobby he’d just left. Gripping the cold metal, he forced himself to l
ean over and look below.

  “That’s where the heart is,” he mumbled. “It’s deep inside the earth.”

  Declan pushed to stand, a distant heartbeat throbbing in his foot. He ignored the pain, and began his search for his mother and sister. The moving floor he’d fallen from was above him, turning inward toward the black walls that made up the sides of the cavern. With his eyes he followed its path, winding downward into a long, drawn-out spiral that stretched away from him and to the other side. The distance was great, and if not for the line of white coveralls standing against the dark walls, he thought he would have lost sight of it.

  Across the vast cavern, he saw other landings like the one he was standing on: jutting square pockets of metal affixed to the cavern wall. He could see that for each of the moving conveyers entering the cavern, there was a metal landing beneath.

  Maybe these are for maintenance, he thought. But none of them were connected. The only way on or off of the landing was to use the moving platforms above each of them. Or maybe they were used for building the cavern and then forgotten?

  Turning around, he pressed his hand against the rocky wall, which was wet, moist with a salty smell that reminded him of the ocean. But that wasn’t the source of the foulness, the putrid smell aching in the back of his mouth. That decay came from somewhere else. He leaned forward against the rail, looking down into what he couldn’t see.

  “They are mining something,” his voice echoed, recalling a conversation between his mother and father. The VAC Machines had drilled deep into the earth, mining for compounds to use with the ocean’s water. What kind of machine could drill a hole so big?

  Below him, more conveyors moved across the open expanse, crisscrossing back and forth like the streams of white iridescent coveralls from the lobby. But some of the lines of bodies were naked, free of coveralls, standing one behind the other, following in what looked like a motionless march down into the cavern.