Ascent

by Walker, Luke

  Dead hands, he thought, and found he didn’t really care. If the dead people from the ground floor had found their way up, or if the ghosts of Rod, Dao and Alex were here, eager to tear him free from his bubble, then so be it.

  Simon shifted as more of the roof gave way, not hearing the crash of raining pipework and snapping metal. Near its edge, Kelly was still running, her small feet kicking through pebbles and sending them high as she neared the end of the roof and the light. Black pulsed in the corners of his vision; a monstrous face filled the air to his right and there was nothing human left in it. All he saw was a broken mess, smashed into a bloody pulp by its speeding impact into the ground. It fell away and something pushed in towards his head. Then at his sides. Then grew darker.

  Kill you, Simon. Eat you. Burn you.

  They were almost through his bubble.

  Simon laughed, fear of being swallowed by the monster lost, if only for a moment. It felt like blood drowned every inch of his face and body. He bathed in it and took in its rich scent with every gasping breath.

  He gazed down into the tunnel. While he couldn’t be sure, it looked as something right at the bottom might be on its way up, eager to meet him finally. All the years of his life with nothing to show for it, all that time spent wasted on surface things and now here he was, the tips of his shoes half an inch from the edge of the tunnel and the smooth ride all the way down.

  It would take a long time to get there. A very long time. But then, Simon figured he had some time to kill. Time to wonder if regret really had a point.

  I don’t forgive you, Mum. I wish I did but I don’t. But I know…

  He knew what? Why she’d done those things to him? No. Never that. Diseased or not, damaged inside or not, nothing justified those nights when he’d been a little boy. But maybe he didn’t need to think about that now. Maybe that could stay here in the bright chill of the light from the two suns. Maybe that time could cook in the fire and be taken away from the world, from him.

  Maybe.

  He took one last look at Kelly, a second away from the edge and her jump. He took a tight hold of the memory of her dry kiss and the salty aroma of her sweat, relishing both, feeling as if the kiss was happening this very second. And, with a bit of luck, he could hold on to the touch of Kelly’s lips and the tang of her sweat for a time much longer than this lone second.

  With a bit of luck.

  Simon dropped into the ever-opening mouth.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Kelly existed in two states side by side. Her body raced on, feet powering through millions of pebbles, kicking them to the side. Her mouth became a snarl of strain and effort; her loose hair flew beside her head and the air parted at her racing assault. At the same time, she was a petrified mouse, cowering in a hole while a storm crashed above, and that storm had a voice, hellish voices full of disgust and judgement. It closed in while she tried to cover her eyes and ears. It shrieked its disgust, its hate, and turned her into a sobbing child.

  In front and zooming closer, the white ball grew to fill the world. Seeing it was agony in her eyes; looking away was impossible. It cooked her vision and sank shining fire into her head. Still, Kelly ran, not looking back. She ran, crying out her apology. She ran, yelling her sister’s name to the blinding radiance covering every inch of the world.

  She ran and everything from her feet to the storm in the centre of her face was a sickening ache.

  A single thought chased itself around her head in a senseless blur.

  I don’t want to die don’t want to die don’t want to die.

  Behind, a creature that might have looked like a lizard sped after her, its mouth a cavern, a stench from outside the world gusting from its throat. Its wings flapped once, launching the thing twenty feet over the roof in an instant before it barreled down on Kelly, its shadow blotting out the light from the two suns.

  The stain swallowed the top of Greenham Place, turned day to night and the struggling warmth of the day into a glacial freeze of a planet lost in the far reaches of the galaxy. Or the underside of the earth, where entities dozed in their uneasy sleep and dreamed their dreams of food in the world of sunlight.

  Shadow raced for Kelly’s back and a screech of triumph shook the empty world.

  Kelly reached the edge of the roof.

  oh god alex i'm sorry but i don’t want to die

  White light bloomed.

  The silence turned her to ash, and seared that ash into nothing as it had done to the county and city and its people in less than a second.

  Kelly’s nothing fell forever through a searing light, aware of every beam, every mote and fire. She was no flesh, no skin or bone; she was burned a thousand times and she was all the screaming in the world thrown from one throat and out of one mouth.

  She was the sun.

  She was the centre of the sun.

  She was all the fire.

  And she was forever.

  Chapter Sixty

  Soft light.

  Warmth.

  Coming down like a floating feather.

  Green spreading, growing, becoming clearer, more detailed. A billion blades of grass, waving gently in a soft breeze. A narrow pathway emerging from a copse of tall trees to snake its way through the green.

  Cool, refreshing wind.

  Everything—light, the ease of the air, green of the grass growing more distinct—merged into one sense and that sense was sight.

  Kelly fell to the ground, striking it as if the earth was a bed. For a time that could have been a few seconds or hours, she kept her eyes closed, thinking of nothing, letting no images or memories come in too close, because those memories were all the grief she would ever know.

  More seconds and minutes drifted by. More time of no-thought. And that was fine. That was what she could handle; she—

  Open your eyes, Kel.

  No. She would not.

  Yes, you will. Right now.

  No. Never.

  Open your eyes and stand up.

  Yes. She needed to do both. Even if the terrible white filling the world remained, she had to stand and face it.

  Kelly rose, legs shaking, breath full of the salty tang of her own blood and the rotten stink of drying sweat. She spat red flecks and felt her ruined nose as gently as she could manage. It was a broken chunk of rock and, while it hurt, she could take that pain. Take it. Own it.

  What was next? Her eyes? Opening them? Yeah. That sounded like a plan.

  Kelly opened her eyes.

  She stood on a massive field. Woodland grew about a quarter of a mile away. The land rolled and dipped in places; the crowded trees stood on a higher section of grass. She scanned the roof of the wood before looking higher. Several clouds, light and fluffy, floated in the thick blue. The day wasn’t as warm as she’d first thought. As it’d been for the last couple of weeks, this was late autumn, when the threat of winter whispered it was coming closer with each passing day.

  “Alex.”

  Kelly shivered at the sound of her own voice. The name had come before she’d realised she’d thought it. Now it was out and she couldn’t take it back.

  “You here, Ali?”

  Of course she wasn’t. Alex was dead, and that was purely down to her own selfish, stupid self and her even more stupid actions.

  A few tears fell. Kelly let them come, too exhausted to fight. She’d made it out; Alex hadn’t. The others hadn’t, either. Their fears had won.

  Except for Simon. The guy—awkward and irritating at first—had beaten his fear and, in doing so, had saved her. He’d taken the thing desperate to ruin them and he’d given her another chance. They all had, in their own way. And that thing pretending to be his mother… that thing from somewhere as awful as the monster controlling the building.

  That thing come too late to save Alex. And all she could do now was try and live with that, just as she had to live with what she’d done.

  Without much thought, Kelly walked. She stayed with the grass,
ignoring the pathway. Her route took her towards the sun, the warmth matching her step for step. Despite her ruined nose and dry throat, she talked to her sister as she moved.

  “I’m so sorry, Alex. You wouldn’t believe how sorry. I fucked it all up. I ruined it all and I can’t do a thing to change that. I can’t fix a thing. All I can do is say sorry. All I can do is say it over and over.”

  Without realising she was going to do so, Kelly stopped and tilted her head to peer at the sky. One sun. No white ball full of fire and no white light caught in the breath before its roar obliterated everything.

  “Simon. You there?”

  He was not. Simon remained on the other side of the white. If there was anything kind in the world, then maybe his actions had undone the torture and horrors of Greenham Place. Maybe hoping the others were free from it wasn’t too much to ask.

  Kelly wept a little. She had no idea if her hope was pointless, like wishing for the events of her eighteenth birthday to be changed. All she could do was ask the world to let the others go. They hadn’t deserved the shit of Greenham Place. Not one little bit.

  Not bothering to wipe her eyes, Kelly walked on. After another few minutes, she stopped. A little way over the grass, a building site stood. New houses were beside buildings formed only from a frame. A high wire fence shielded the development from the open land, and dozens of diggers, vans, and earth movers covered the road that cut its way through the area.

  She was looking at the early stages of a new development of homes for families, a place where kids could play in the surrounding countryside, where they could explore woods and people could walk their dogs alongside a man-made lake. An area ready for a fresh start.

  It hit Kelly with a weak punch.

  She had to be at least forty or fifty miles from Willington. This was the outskirts of one of the county’s smaller towns.

  This was RAF Lakenheath.

  This was not RAF Lakenheath. Not anymore. The world of that base and that Willington was back on the other side of the forever white, and maybe that was okay. Maybe that was the best place for it.

  You are not Kelly Brown. Not here. Be someone else. Be anyone you want to be.

  Yes, she could do that. She could start again. And if she met a woman with a couple of kids, a woman who might look a bit like her and who’d be a good person, a person who deserved a good life, she would be that woman’s friend.

  She would start again.

  “Alex,” Kelly whispered to the quiet.

  Not here. Alex was not here. But someone was. All Kelly had to do was find her.

  Her heart thudded painfully and again she could take that hurt.

  Own it because it was all for her.

  Alex, not here. Maybe… maybe…

  Maybe, if the world was kind, she’d be friends with a woman she did not yet know. Or three men who had never met each other. Or her. Whoever she was on this side of the explosion.

  Weeping, the sun at her side and blood drying all over her clothing and face, Kelly staggered towards the new development and the new morning.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I owe a huge debt to the writers Laura Mauro and Julia Knight for all their advice, opinions and help during various drafts of Ascent. As always, it is deeply appreciated. Also, thanks to Adam and the Crowded Quarantine team for publishing my tale, for the sterling editing work and for not telling me to trim a scene even I thought might be a bit much. And once more, thank you to my wife Rebecca, without whom, there would be no words.

  www.crowdedquarantine.co.uk

  * * *

  [L1]Not sure if this is best as the end of the scene and the next line is a new scene or if they work as one section.

  [L2]Is something needed at the end of this to signify a scene break?