The World's Last Breaths: Final Winter, Animal Kingdom, and The Peeling

by Iain Rob Wright

  Colin smiled at her, but it was clear that he was exasperated. “I’m just suggested that we bite the bullet and talk about those lights in the sky. They must mean something.”

  David rolled his eyes. “They could be a million different things. What’s the point in stressing over them? They haven’t done nothing since they showed up.”

  Colin rolled his eyes back at the other man. “It seems quite apparent to me that they are descending. They are much bigger than they were when they first appeared.”

  “No they ain’t.”

  Gretchen waved a hand. “No, Colin is right. I think they are getting closer to us…to Earth or whatever.”

  David shook his head. “Fuck sake. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m a bit worried,” said Sally. “They have to mean something. What if they’re missiles? Maybe another country doesn’t want The Peeling spreading over to them and they’re going to nuke us off the planet.”

  There was a frightened muttering as the others in the room listened in. The talk of being bombed was a fear many of them had and it had been discussed before.

  Gretchen shook her head. “Missiles don’t take days and days to fall; nor do they advertise their presence with great blinking lights.”

  “What then?” came a voice. “What do you think they are?”

  “Probably just some environmental anomaly caused by all the methane.”

  “The what?” said David.

  “The methane gas…from all of the bodies. There must be millions of dead just rotting in the streets. That amount of damage to the ozone layer…”

  There was a collective sigh. Missiles, people couldn’t deal with, but global warming… They hadn’t cared about global warming before the world crumbled, so they most certainly didn’t care about it now.”

  “She’s right,” said David. “I bet that’s all it is. No need to worry about it.”

  Everybody filtered back to what they were doing. Colin approached Gretchen and spoke quietly. “Do you really believe that? About the methane gas?”

  “Not really, but there’s no point in speculating on anything worse.”

  “I suppose not. If you were to speculate, though; what would your guess be?”

  Gretchen sighed, shrugged her shoulders. “The only thing that worries me is that those lights showing up right after the world’s most devastating plague is too much to be a coincidence.”

  With that Gretchen decided that even the cold silence of her hotel room was better than the tense atmosphere of the restaurant. People were starting to get tetchy, and it would only get worse.

  Back in her room, Gretchen picked up a paperback she had snatched from the hotel’s lounge: Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. She had already read it twice and enjoyed the surreal Discworld and how it reminded her of the petty, care-free world she had once lived in.

  After two pages she was fast asleep.

  She awoke sometime later to what felt and sounded like an earthquake. A glass of water fell off the room’s desk and soaked the carpet. The empty hangers in the closet rattled.

  Gretchen checked her watch: 3:13 AM.

  She leapt off the bed and headed over to the window. She was on the second floor and could see clear across the car park. Pritchett was standing on top of the ambulance, still keeping watch. He had his hands on his head, obviously flustered by something.

  “What the hell was that?” Gretchen asked herself. The rumbling had stopped almost as soon as it had started, but there was an electricity lingering in the air that put her right on edge.

  She slipped out of her room and headed down the corridor. En route she met up with Pendle who was barefoot and hurrying in the same direction.

  “What’s going on, Gretchen?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  The two of them headed down the carpeted staircase into the lobby below. There everybody was gathered. There everybody was demanding an explanation.

  “Was it an earthquake?” Someone asked.

  “In England? All we ever get here is farty little tremors.”

  “Maybe it’s the global warming. Maybe our climate is changing.”

  “Earthquakes have nothing to do with the weather. It’s about fault lines and plate tectonics,” said Colin knowledgably.

  “Let’s just everybody calm down,” said Gretchen. “We don’t know anything yet, so let’s just stay calm until we do.”

  Everybody muttered, but the shouting voices quietened down.

  “So what do we do?” asked Colin.

  “We go and check with Pritchett. He’s the guy on watch. I’m sure he saw whatever happened.”

  “I ain’t going out there,” said David in his dirty boxer shorts.

  “Stay here then,” said Gretchen.

  She started heading for the lobby’s large entrance doors and found that a majority of the group were following her. She had learned weeks ago that people felt safest when they were acting as a herd. That was probably a rational reason for why the ordinary law-abiding citizens of the UK had taken to looting and rioting in the early days.

  Outside in the courtyard, the cold immediately struck Gretchen. Even through her sweater, she felt it biting at her skin and nipples.

  Up ahead, across the car park, was the ambulance they used as a lookout. Pritchett was still standing on top of it. He saw them approaching and waved his arms.

  “You guys aren’t going to believe this,” he said, with both a twinge of excitement and fear in his voice.

  “What is it? Do you see what caused the tremors?”

  Pritchett nodded. “Hell, yes. And if you look up you will all get a great big clue as to what it was.”

  Gretchen, along with everybody else, craned their necks and glanced upwards.

  The blinking green lights were gone. After days of looming over them all, they had disappeared.

  Or maybe the opposite is true.

  Pritchett spoke excitedly. “The lights just suddenly plummeted out of the sky as though somebody flipped a switch. All of them just shot right down to the earth and then…boom!”

  “Did any of them land near us?” someone shouted.

  Pritchett nodded. “One landed right over in the woods across the ring road.”

  People began to panic. “Oh, God. What the hell is it? It’s something bad, isn’t it?”

  “A bomb, I reckon.”

  “Terrorists.”

  “Aliens.”

  Gretchen had to laugh at the last suggestion she heard shouted out. Aliens. It was absurd; yet somehow her laughter contained no mirth.

  “We should check it out,” said Colin. “We should know what we’re up against.”

  “What do you mean?” asked David. “What we’re up against?”

  “I mean we should just take a look. Who knows maybe it could have even been a supply drop from the government.”

  One so heavy that it shook the earth. Somehow I don’t think so, thought Gretchen.

  Without any further consultation, Gretchen headed towards the edge of the car park, over the shrubs that bordered it, and onto the ring road. Cars lay crumpled up against each other in a long line, but it was easy to navigate around them, or even climb up over the bonnets when need be.

  Pendle caught up with her; Pritchett and Colin were not far behind. Everybody else loitered in the car park; their herd mentality only going so far until they felt that it might endanger them.

  “This can’t be anything good, can it?” asked Pendle. “I mean, whatever it was shook me right out of my bed. What can hit the ground with that much force?”

  “Guess we’re going to find out.”

  As they crossed the ring road and headed for the woodland that bordered it on the far side, they passed by decaying bodies in abandoned cars. Most were bony corpses, stricken by The Peeling, but some were the victims of crime. They passed a man stabbed in the heart with a pair of scissors. Who had done it and why would be just another of the countless unknown stories that litte
red the landscape. Every corpse had a story to tell, but no way to tell it.

  Gretchen closed her eyes as she walked past the carnage. Her nose still picked up the stench of old death but at least her eyes could shut off. She shuffled along, letting her feet find the way.

  “Watch your step,” said Pendle, seeming to know that she was walking with her eyes closed.

  Gretchen opened her eyes in time to see the approaching curb and the embankment beyond. She stepped up and over it and began to descend down into the woodland.

  “Where about did it hit?” Pendle asked Pritchett.

  “Over there,” the man pointed.

  They headed east through the woods, following Pritchett’s excited directions.

  Gretchen couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to be brighter up ahead, as if the moonlight were shining on something, or if something was shining by itself. The air also seemed lest crisp and chilly. The atmosphere was becoming muggy.

  “I think I see something up ahead,” said Colin. “Are you sure this is a good idea? Perhaps we should wait until morning.”

  Gretchen carried on walking. “If we’re in danger now, we’ll be in danger tomorrow. If we’ve learned anything these last few months, it’s that waiting around with our heads buried in the sand doesn’t work.”

  “I agree,” said Pendle. “We need to know what the score is.”

  After several more yards, Gretchen became positive that there was light coming from up ahead. It was no brighter than the light from the full moon, but it was blinking and had a greenish hue.

  “What is that?” asked Pritchett, his excitement had waned and he now spoke in a hushed whisper.

  “I don’t know.” Gretchen stepped over a clump of weeds and sidled up beside an old oak tree. She flinched as something landed on her shoulder, but sighed with relief when she realised it was just a crisp autumn leaf falling from the branches above.

  The sound of rustling made her flinch again. This time she looked to her left and saw a movement in the bushes.

  Then an identical rustling spun her around to face the bushes in the opposite direction.

  Pritchett was spinning around on the spot, looking everywhere. “What’s going on?”

  “Something’s moving,” said Colin.

  “Not just one thing,” Gretchen said. “I saw at least two things.”

  “Maybe just deer?”

  “Maybe.”

  More movement in the bushes. This time from all around them.

  “I think we should get out of here,” said Pritchett. “I think we’re surround-” Something seized Pritchett and dragged him back into the bushes. He disappeared so fast that it was as if his body had been attached to a bungee.

  Gretchen shouted. “Run!”

  Nobody argued and they all started sprinting back the way they had come. They leapt over roots and sidestepped tree trunks as they floundered in the darkness. Pritchett’s screams rang out behind them but not for long.

  Behind them the bushes rustled. A deep, ominous growl filled the forest.

  “What the hell is happening?” Pendle shouted between huffs and puffs.

  “I don’t know,” said Colin. “We need to get back to the hotel and put some thought into this.”

  “Let’s just concentrate on not dying first,” said Gretchen.

  They spotted the road between the trees, several yards ahead.

  “There’s the road,” said Pendle. “We can make it.”

  As soon as he said the words, Pendle caught his ankle on a half-buried tree root and went tumbling into the mud. Gretchen stopped to help him. But it was too late.

  Something seized Pendle’s foot and dragged him backwards through the mud. He screamed and reached out for Gretchen, but within a second he had disappeared into the trees.

  Colin grabbed Gretchen by the arm and turned her around. “Come on, we have to get out of here now.”

  The two of them made it out of the trees and up the embankment. As soon as they hit the road they dodged behind cars and tried to mix up their escape route. The bellowing growls continued from within the woods.

  The other survivors were still waiting in the hotel car par, and when they saw only two of the four explorers coming back, they began to panic and shout.

  “Where the hell is Pritchett and Pendle?” David demanded. “Did you up and leave em?”

  “There’s something out there in those woods,” said Colin, almost weeping. “We have to get inside.”

  Everybody panicked and the entire group of survivors began sprinting across the tarmac, heading for the hotel. Gretchen glanced behind at the woods across the road. Nothing seemed to be following them, but the glowing green light she had seen earlier had grown and now bathed the entire area in a putrid glow.

  This is not going to work out well at all.

  I think we may have just been attacked by aliens.

  Inside the hotel’s bar lounge, everyone stood around nervously, glancing out of the windows and jumping at every sound.

  “We all need to just chill the fuck out,” said David.

  “Chill out?” said Colin. “Something abducted two of our members like something out of Close Encounters. We should all be in a very un-chilled out mood. In fact we should all be in quite a flap about things.”

  David smirked. “Perhaps I’m all ‘flapped’ out after what we’ve been through. Everyone here is a survivor. The whole world has ended but we’re still here. I’m not about to panic now after surviving so much.”

  “We haven’t survived whatever is out in those woods.”

  “Look,” said Gretchen, raising a hand and gaining the floor. “Panic or no panic, I am telling you that something pretty damn dangerous is lurking in those woods and I’m pretty sure it came from whatever fell out of the sky. This isn’t an infection or looters; this is something else.”

  “You’re quite right,” said a voice at the back of the room. It was the physics teacher, Logan.

  Gretchen looked at the man. He was holding what looked like a triple scotch in his hand. “What do you know about it? Have you seen something?”

  “Many things, my dear,” replied Logan in a slurry mumble.

  “Then stop being so fucking cryptic and speak,” said David. “It’s about time you did something useful around here.”

  Logan ignored David and kept his drunken focus on Gretchen. “We have visitors. Visitors whom made an appointment many many years ago.”

  “Visitors?”

  Logan nodded. “You think that this is all a coin…coin…coincidence.” The man belched. “There’s hardly any of us left – probably less than one percent of the population. And believe me that it’s this bad everywhere; every country. Every scrap of land.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I kept tabs, my dear. Ever since I stopped working for the Government and started teaching snot-nosed little kids about Hooke’s law, I kept my eyes and ears open. The Peeling hit everywhere and there was no stopping it. The entire world was affected the same as us. We are the last of our kind – the last remnants of the human race.”

  “You’re talking shit,” said David. “There’s still enough of us to get things going again. We’ll have babies and repopulate. Sooner the better if you ask me.”

  “You said that you worked for the Government,” said Gretchen. “In what capacity?”

  “I was a researcher – part of the space program.”

  “Did we even have one? I thought space had become more the realm of private industry.”

  Logan nodded forlornly. “Unfortunately the times of putting boots on the moon were long behind us, but there were still many secrets to learn about the universe. We never stopped tracking the skies with our telescopes or sending up probes.”

  “So what are you saying? What do you know?”

  “I know about the baby.”

  David snickered. “This guy has had a shit-tonne to drink.”

  Logan sneered at the lad, but continued. “De
cades ago, a mysterious baby was found abandoned in the freezing cold hills of Wales. Everyone who came into contact with the child died. Guess how.”

  Gretchen narrowed her eyes. “The Peeling?”

  “Indeed. Their skin rotted off in days, leaving them raving lunatics before their deaths. The child was isolated and kept that way until he was a grown man.”

  “Are you saying that this child was infected with The Peeling but lived like some kind of Typhoid Mary?”

  Logan shook his head. “The child was a weapon – a dirty bomb.

  One thing a human being can’t resist is a baby. They knew that, which is why they used one as their dispersal method. What they didn’t count on was the child being quarantined so effectively. Through a stroke of luck, the child was found by the Army who immediately took it back to base. The infection stayed within the rural outpost and stopped there. Their plan failed.”

  Gretchen shook her head. “Whose plan?”

  “The aliens.”

  Gretchen laughed at that moment, but something about the seriousness in Logan’s eyes – despite his drunkenness – told her to take him seriously.

  “We’d picked up signs of life a few times. On our telescopes we spotted great blinking green lights that would disappear before we could pin them down. We would pick up strange radio chatter and radiation signatures that made no sense. We knew something was out there; we just didn’t know what.

  But when that baby arrived, we knew exactly what it was: a way to wipe us out.”

  Gretchen sighed. She went and poured herself a vodka from the optics. She wasn’t usually a drinker, but right now she needed one.

  “Why wipe us out?” asked Colin. “What would that achieve?”

  Logan shrugged. “I never stayed at the project long enough to find out. When we learned about the child’s make-up – how it was genetically infused with the deadliest virus in existence, I decided I’d seen enough. It was clear that humanity’s days were drawing to an end. I wasn’t about to waste what life I had left in a lab.”

  “So you what? Thought you’d waste time teaching kids stuff that they probably wouldn’t live long enough to use.”

  Logan shrugged again. “Pay was okay and there was lots of holiday time.”