by Jack Vantage
The universe was taking it back. David realised nothing was certain, nothing was fated. People followed time like a piper, unaware that they had no control over their lives. The universe was one big free for all, an ice-cold place, and he prayed for his wife. For the first time in his life he hoped, and touched faith, with the idea that a God watched over her, would help her. And he resented God for his secrecy.
Why challenge people when they have no idea you exist? What is the reason behind you’re doing? If you do exist, are you doing the right thing?
Chapter 28
Acid Drops
“Dylan, just to run this past you guys again, in case anything happens, and we get split up. Eight p.m. tonight, galactic port nine. It’s about ten miles south of here, sky-way 112266777, all the way out of the city. When you get there go to space elevator seven. It’ll take you to station five. There you dock with the ship named Migration. There are three leaving the station within an hour of each other, so it’s going to be busy. I’m just checking to be sure our names are there.” Leon said from the back of the sky-mobile.
“Thank you Leon, for everything.” Lecodia said from the passenger seat.
Leon had explained, back at Elysees, what he’d successfully done; he may have saved every one of his friends. They all met—everyone but Hammed, who’d got himself trapped in his part time jobs office. All the crew turned up with their families. Leon had hacked the frequency the military were using, which hid the lottery names, the lucky people who had a chance. It had all the information he needed, docking stations, times, and names. Leon had plucked names from the hexagon safe and switched them with theirs, people who had obviously died in the Earthquake that destroyed the outer edge of the western city. If they hadn’t died there, they were dead now.
“Lecodia, are you sure you want us to stop and get Hammed. I don’t know what condition the building is in where he is,” Dylan said.
“I agree with Dylan, this could be risky,” Leon said.
“If it only takes minutes to get him then we should. What would you want?” Lecodia replied.
“Before I got cut off from him, he said he was trapped. It may take a while to get to him. But we do pass it to get to Lecodia's place,” Leon said.
“Okay. If it's too hard to get to him, we leave. We give it five mins to assess the building. We must get you to your parents. Time is fading,” Dylan said.
“What about your parents Leon?” Lecodia said.
“I‘m meeting them aboard the ship. They know I'm coming,” he said.
“We’re almost there Lecodia,” Dylan said.
The skyway moved like a swarm of wasps in the height of summer, and Dylan focused through the sky-mobile’s windscreen. He frantically swerved through the frenzy of chaos that had transformed the sky. They skyways were lit, as usual through the tinted screen, via the spherical beacon lights that formed the lanes at each level. But all were misused as vehicles flew in a dangerous, random panic through the heart of the city.
“I gotta turn the lane destination screen off. I can’t see anything.”
The air tinted to its natural colour through the windscreen. The skyway was pandemonium. He banked a hard left and dipped the front end, narrowly missing a collision with a beaming red sky-bus that spewed people as it leant to its right. A hole was gouged into it. Some passengers dropped from the bus, arms flailing the five-hundred-meter height. Some dangled from windows, as the bus veered and swerved uncontrollably. Screams doppler past.
Nothing was sane, and nothing had equilibrium, just a hard disorder energized the planet. The high-rise skyscrapers sped buy, most crumbling from the earthquake that had shaken the city like a disturbed child would its doll. Many buildings remained standing but scarred, like cracked skulls. Jagged chunks were bitten from them, like a giant monster had gnawed them carnivorously, and their damaged bodies rained rubble.
The glossy city that shone like a rainbow was gone. What was left was a broken mass on the verge of disaster. The city was disintegrating before his eyes.
Monorails zoomed from inside buildings, then disconnected from damaged rails and dropped the long height to destruction like they were tinker toys. Block after block of towering buildings reached ahead with injured presence.
“I would still like to know what that flash was back there Dylan.” Leon said from behind.
For the first time in his life, Leon’s lavishly flamboyant persona had vanished. He was just another scared teenager.
“I don’t know, Leon. I don’t know anything,” he replied.
A luxurious sky-mobile, elegant in its design, black and executive, careened out of control after clipping a smaller mobile. It smashed into a glossy glass building. It exploded and threw more devastation into the air.
Behind Dylan, Leon tapped a small keyboard on his glass tablet. Three holograms lifted out, one leftward, centre, and rightward. Each holographic image was that of a cubed transparent hexagon that rotated slowly with deep red and violet wireframe lines. The cubic centre of each contained an endless scroll of digitally changing names, like a trillion were crammed into the hexagons. Leon’s fingers blazed over the keyboard and Dylan’s name stretched out of the centre hexagon, held by what looked like a digital thread.
Dylan placed his concentration back on the sky, skilfully manoeuvring left and right of any vehicles.
“So, Leon what did you tell the Authoritarians when we left on your ride?” Dylan asked.
“I said you were a pair of crazies to run like you had but you were innocent of what they’d accused you of. I gave them the names and location of who and where you said. They said they’d investigate it. Then they detained me until the president made his announcement. I thought I was going away for a while.”
“Hang on guys, I need to get higher,” Dylan said, stunned. “Look!”
In front of Dylan a skyscraper had collapsed and fallen into the facing structure with diagonal lean. Its glass and stone body had ripped apart like a bomb had detonated inside. It had collapsed and wedged itself solidity across the path Dylan had to take. Its sky-blue glass reflected the soft red environment.
The building had snapped like a twig two hundred feet down its body, and dangerously rested on its solid base below. Shards of glass and debris sprinkled the underside of the building as it groaned under its weight and gravity. It would succumb to the tug of gravity sooner rather than later.
Dylan lifted the mobile up and over the diagonal obstruction.
He said, “Can you believe this is happening?”
Leon said, “I don’t. How can this be happening?”
“I keep expecting to wake up,” Lecodia said. “Look Leon, there's people inside that leaning building below. Their trying to escape.”
Dylan said, “What’s going to happen? How are we going to recover from this?” He watched the bruised city and realised the scale of the situation. Within hours it would all be gone. A millennium of development would end within a few hours, like this place was only a test of some kind. Could it be that time and space was never ending, an infinite jar of matter that’s shaken hard by the hand of the unknown and let to settle like a snow globe at Christmas. “Leon check it out,” Dylan said, nodding to the windscreens.
Snow began to fall in large flakes, and the sight was dreamy and beautiful. He and his Intake friends had looked at images from Earth of white landscapes, landscapes dressed and painted by nature. Its serenity almost subdued the sense of panic. The snow was a blanket of sweetness, a dance of nature. Among the natural destruction the universe had decided to surprise, lay a moment of beauty and lust.
“Man, I hope we see more of this if we get to Earth,” Leon said. “Remember when we made it in Intake?”
That was when everything changed again. In the distance, at the end of the long-mirrored row of building blocks, past the snow and panicked paths of sky-mobiles, a massive eruption lifted high. The thud of power and thunder of force walloped the sky-mobile. The orange heat of magma an
d flame filled the void between the buildings from miles away, as a volcanic eye erupted and exploded with exponential anger. The boom that followed was Leviathan.
The sky-mobile shook hard as a cloud of pitch-black pyroclastic flow bellowed towards them fast, higher than the buildings they were travelling between. It was like the devil stood over them, laughing at their pathetic size. He was ready to claim them with sadistic intent.
“Dylan, do something!” Lecodia pleaded.
“Hold on.”
Dylan dipped the nose of the sky-mobile and descended with increasing power, swerving and weaving through the hundreds of various sky mobiles that criss-crossed his path. He prayed for a little luck, prayed to make it to the ground without a collision. Various sky-mobiles, bikes, trucks, busses, and monorails whizzed by inches from his nosedive. His heart raced, thumped. He had to reach the ground, find shelter from the pyroclastic flow that was heading their way.
“Hold tight! I need to pull up,” Dylan yelled.
As the pavement approached, he levelled off, skimming above the ground, which moved and teemed with people. Terror was alive in the city. People scrambled for cover around the smoking carcasses of sky-mobiles and sky-busses. Hysteria and chaos riotously controlled the streets of Quazar, like death was a viral outbreak that had turned people into raving mad beings, all threatened and snapped by the end.
Dylan slowed the vehicle, banked it sideward like a skier would to brake, and turned into a side alley.
“Everyone quick, follow me to the nearest building,” he said, as he unfastened the safety straps. “If we get inside, the pyroclastic flow might pass us.”
The three jumped from the sky-mobile and stepped out into the falling snow that was blanketing the ground. The building to their left was a solid stone golden oldie, a grand Georgian-styled vernacular structure. There was no door alley side of the building. They would need to get to the front.
Lecodia grabbed Dylan’s hand and they ran fast into the main street of the city. People screamed all around. The social breakdown was astronomical, a craze of panic. Looters scattered everywhere, and they dropped their stolen goods to run for their life. The flowing cloud of hell sped the city street in the distance. It engulfed buildings like they were match sticks, swallowed them like they were food. The panicked did not attempt to move out of its way but tried to outrun with futile speed. The black wall of death was ominous, it was angry, and it folded onward with no intent of stopping for anyone.
Everything seemed to move slowly through Dylan’s eyes, like the moment had paused. He looked around and watched humanity poisoned by madness. Life was ending like a movie with no happy resolution. His eyes caught a woman’s, dirty from the fight for life, holding a child. She clutched her tight and ran from the cloud with tears streaming and the sanity of consciousness missing from her face. A sense of lost hope and terror possessed the crowds of people in the city’s arms. Dylan was overcome by the fear that was drowning them. Lecodia snapped him out from the horror that had taken him.
“Dylan come on,” she screamed.
A shock wave blasted everyone, a thumping ring of pressure that lifted parked and crashed sky-mobiles into the air like they were leaves on a breezy day. Some crushed people, some smashed to the ground. Dylan blew backward a few feet, as did all the thousands of people that rushed the streets. The slick glass buildings that surrounded shattered what was left of their shells, and a deadly glass shower fell over everyone. Some people were sliced to pieces by the large shards that hit them. Dylan watched one man run and sheer in two from a meter-wide piece of glass that shattered into pieces as his body split vertically.
The horrific events that followed would never leave Dylan or anyone who’d survived the ordeal. Acid drops began raining, goblets of lava and magma striking the floor like lethargic rain. They splashed and splurged all around with heavy splatter. People ducked and moved, but some were caught by a fiery blobs path. A burning goblet patted on a woman’s head, the screams were painful, and she began melting as she ran, glopping shorter. People were struck on the legs which dismembered as they melted, sending bodies to the ground. People reached forward with more pain in their eyes than anyone should experience. The goblets hit buildings all around and began smoking the area. Dylan watched a middle-aged man, black hair and chunky body, hold his stumpy arm in the air. Shock beamed his eyes as the lava melted his arm slowly upward, gunking it. It was like an army was catapulting the goblets into their territory with a bombardment of frightening accuracy.
Dylan lifted himself quickly, pulling Lecodia and Leon to their feet. He could see a door at the foot of the Georgian building and made for it with athletic speed. The pyroclastic flow covered the various styled buildings, and neared fast with unstoppable power, folding onward like it was a charging bull that butted its head. It was ten blocks away.
They dodged, and tip toed the raining heat. The goblets splashed their bright orange splurge on the ground and people. Shoulder first, Dylan hit and crashed the glass doors of Georgian building open. His momentum crashed him through and to the ground inside. Lecodia flew in next and Leon after them.
Dylan looked around the shop floor. Glaring, white, marble tiles staged an enormous clothes store. There were rails and rails of contemporary fashion. The roof was a cool collection of silver gridded square blocks. Dylan could see the credit stalls at the back end of the shop.
“Get to the back of the shop, now!” Many people shared the space, hiding and looting.
The building shook violently, and screams echoed around the shop floor.
“Everybody get down,” Dylan shouted as he turned and viewed the black cloud shoot past the shops front windows.
The building shock violently and the doors and windows blew out. Smoke and dust oozed into the shop floor a distance away. Dylan watched looters get engulfed by it, vanishing into its thick bubbling clutches.
Leon pointed and yelled, “Dylan, there’s a door to the basement. An underground parking bay!”
“Run for it!” He dragged Lecodia by the hand and looked behind at the chasing smog. It was thick and suffocating.
They reached the door and tugged it open. Dylan entered last and turned to close the door. The smoke reached for him meters away, a pressure breeze blew at him, and his eyes widened at the death nearing him. Slam! A faint wisp of smoke trickled under the door as emergency lights ignited red.
“What do we do?” Lecodia asked, out of breath and distressed. “How are we going to get to Hammed, let alone the stations?”
“We have to try, we have to. I am not beat yet,” Dylan replied, with hands on hips.
Leon said, “Let’s find the exit. We can move on when the pyroclastic flow has passed. Hammed’s building is only a few more down if my geography is right.”
“Let’s hope the area isn’t covered in dust and smoke. Come on,” Dylan said.
He hugged Lecodia with relief and kissed her head. The stairway they stood in was a thin white marble, and it was filling with smoke from beneath the door they had escaped through. Lecodia gave out a little cough as they made their way down.
“Everyone be careful, people aren’t the same anymore. If someone approaches us, we be ready for a fight,” Dylan said.
“The whole planet is a residence of evil, a bunch of loons who’d kill their own mum for chance of survival,” Leon said. “If one of those vampires come near me, I’ll crack their heads open, steak their fucking hearts.”
“Let’s just stay alive,” Lecodia said.
They reached the door to the underground parking bay, then pushed the bulky emergency door open. They entered the urban concrete of an underground parking bay. The ceiling was that of large concrete beams, a collection of neatly arranged girders ribbed by metre gaps. The grey floor was hard and damp, with a few dozen sky-mobiles scattered about its large underground space. Their footsteps echoed in the arena.
Leon said, “Dylan, if I am correct, this parking bay will connect with the next and t
he next. It should take us right under Hammed’s building.”
The three looked its length and were unable to view the parking bays end. Its ceiling gave an illusion of infinity. Numerous, square, pillar support beams stood over the arena, and Dylan spotted a security box midway down. The box was a hundred metres away, a small area where an officer could monitor the parking bay from a computer system. Its top half was windowed. Dim lighting flickered with unrest across the bay’s floor.
“Leon, parking bay box. Check it out. There could be something of use in there,” Dylan wanted a moment with Lecodia.
“On it.” Leon headed for the box.
Dylan held Lecodia’s hand and walked with her down the centre of the parking bay.
“Thank you for saving my life,” she said quietly. Her face and body was dirtier every time he looked to her. Still her beauty shone through it.
“Don’t mention it. And thank you too. I think I would have lost the drive to live if it weren’t for you.”
“Not the start to a relationship I expected, it’s hardly been a disco since the club.”
“Well we might have died if things hadn’t happened the way they did. Can I ask you something? Did he touch you? Nexus?”
“You saved me before he could. I am forever grateful to you for that.” She stopped, turned to him, and kissed his full lips. Under all the stress and terror, her lips still electrified him with lust and love as they moved with strawberry sweetness. When they parted, she said, “I suppose you are my hero, but I would like to see my parents, so I think we need to get a move on.” Then she kissed him again. “I think I’m in love with you, Dylan Ajax.”
It was the greatest moment he’d ever experienced.
Her emerald green eyes beamed with delight. Dylan could see the truth behind them. What she had said raised all the stakes, and he cherished it.
“I’m in love with you to,” he replied. “I don’t know how. I just know I do. God you’re beautiful.”