Skyquakers

by Conway, A. J.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Name ten alien apocalypse movies in ten seconds.’

  ‘Okay, so perhaps we wouldn’t welcome them so openly, but it depends how they come and what for. If they want to destroy us, then yes, there’ll be nuclear war, but perhaps they want other things, simpler things. I’ve seen enough Discovery Channel docos to be prepared for any possible eventuality.’

  She arched an eyebrow at him. ‘Really? You’re prepared? We’ve never even seen these guys properly. You’d probably wet yourself.’

  He laughed. ‘Probably! Can’t wait!’

  She pushed aside her chair and grabbed her bag. As she turned to leave, Psycho asked, ‘If you knew… if you knew they were coming, what would you do?’

  ‘Is this one of those, ‘what would you do if you had a day to live’ scenarios?’

  ‘Do you think you’d have a day to live? Interesting.’

  ‘Okay, so what would you do? Tell your family and friends you loved them? Call the Federal Police? Start screaming up and down the highways in your underwear about some sort of end being some degree of nigh?’

  Psycho leant forward and cheekily answered, ‘I’d do nothing. And I’ll enjoy doing nothing.’

  INSTRUCTIONS

  She gave him thirty seconds to explain himself.

  Psycho was angry, excited, nervous, all at once. He was upset that she had taken sleeping pills, thus missing this crucial dream, and he feared for her as though this one slip-up was going to cost her her life. He was excited and anxious about everything else.

  Between the walls of the cramped stationary cupboard, he described where he had been last night. Well, at least where his subconscious had been last night. He dreamt of a black-tiled room, very dark and without walls, where he was standing amongst dozens of other people, all ages, all walks of life, focussing in one direction like an attentive army. A voice was talking at them from above; he was not entirely sure if there was a physical being there of if it was just a voice from a loudspeaker. The voice spoke in more than one language, among them the language of the mrauu, which appeared to have been universally taught. The voice gave them what Psycho called the final instructions.

  ‘I met them. At last I met them and I saw them and…’ He was too overwhelmed with joy. He clenched his fists in victory. ‘Oh god, I’m not crazy!’

  Lara was still not catching on. ‘Okay, you had a dream. We both have dreams every night. Why was this one different?’

  Psycho laughed, as though to be on the border of sanity. With all his excitement and glee, he was very pleased to announce: ‘They’re coming.’

  Lara stared at him for a while. All she was able to stutter was, ‘The… aliens?’

  ‘No, the fucking Whos down in Whoville – of course, the aliens! I was there! Last night! I was there and they told me. They told all of us. They gave us the last instructions, their last messages, and they—’

  ‘Instructions?’

  ‘Yes, to prepare for—’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘This is real, Lo!’

  ‘Don’t call me Lo!’ She barged out. She needed air, desperately. She weaved through the cubicles, abandoning her papers on a nearby table, and, ignoring the wayward calls of concerned co-workers, she burst out of the community centre into its rear quadrangle, where the fresh air and the sight of the uniformly blue sky allowed her to breathe once more.

  On a bench alongside the gardens, she sat herself down and began tapping her foot. Her hands had become clammy. She took a few deep breaths, but it didn’t help to ease the crushing sense of suffocation in her lungs. Eventually, Psycho found her. He walked over calmly and joined her on the bench. He looked up and admired the day. The sky was a beautiful, clear blue. The air was warm and sweet in the spring. Around them, a couple of distant social workers were taking a cigarette break, while another with sipping tea and reading a gossip magazine. There was no imminent threat to these people; they were blissfully unaware of what may be their final hours.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you, but this is a good thing. Aren’t you excited? Isn’t this what we both wanted?’

  ‘Why would I want to have my nightmares come alive?’

  He smiled and said, ‘To meet your Baba.’

  She held his stare. ‘What? No. I mean… This is a joke, right?’

  ‘I don’t joke.’

  Lara kept her eyes locked on his, but he didn’t flinch: he wasn’t making this up. She felt the courtyard begin to spin a little. Psycho waited for her. He watched her mind tick away, balancing out reasoning with this gut feeling inside her that something big and ferocious was coming her way. He saw her push back the growing headache. It was too much at once. After three more minutes of silence, Lara muttered, ‘It can’t be true.’

  ‘It is. Do you get it now?’

  ‘No.’

  He sighed and turned to her. He curled up his legs on the park bench and sat like a schoolboy. ‘Lo, we’re special. When we were both very young, we experienced something not many others would ever experience, and we spent our whole lives either trying to deny it or trying to prove to ourselves that it couldn’t be true, but the fact is, we have met beings from another planet.’

  Hesitantly, she nodded. That part was true. ‘And these dreams? What am I meant to make of them?’

  ‘Those dreams were to help us remember our training; that was their purpose. We were trained, long ago, to be prepared for them. We learnt their language, their colours and numbers and we played with figurines and trucks and Barbies with them so that they could learn from us. And it goes far beyond just you and me: I have a feeling this has been in motion for decades.’

  ‘Training? What for?’

  ‘To be their ambassadors,’ he said. ‘You can’t come to a new planet without a guide, right?’

  She blinked. ‘But why are they here? What’s the point?’

  Psycho sat back and bit his lip. ‘I don’t know that yet, which is what upsets me. It’s like they still don’t trust us enough to tell us their full plans. But I suppose we’ll soon find out.’

  ‘How soon?’ she asked cautiously.

  He smiled and stared up at the sky. ‘Tomorrow.’

  She collapsed into her hands again. ‘No, no, no, no, no…’

  She sat there for a long time, staring at the pavement, her eyes darting back and forth. She looked to the sky, to the blue, limitless void hanging over her. Somewhere up there, something was looking down at them from an immeasurable distance. It terrified her. But not Psycho. He smiled at the sky. He relished the warmth on the face, the soft breeze ruffling his hair. He was so calm, completely unmoved by what may become a global event, one which neither of them, nor any existing institution on Earth, had any ability to stop. Psycho was like a child, eager for Christmas to come early, despite everyone who had told him all his life that Santa didn’t exist. Lara did not share his pleasure in knowing what others could not foresee; she was still powerless, and had never been given a choice in the matter. If she could erase these memories, she would, but it was too late now: Baba was coming for her again. Perhaps things would make more sense once she was back in his arms.

  She asked Psycho, though with great caution, ‘What do they look like?’

  He looked back down and replied, ‘Not like us.’

  PARADE

  The Veteran’s Day parade took place on a sunny November morning and tens of thousands were expected to flock to the streets of Melbourne. It began with a dawn ceremony at the Shrine of Remembrance, where hundreds stood to salute to the sound of a lowly trumpet calling out to the rising sun. It followed with a series of commemorating events: medals being presented to veterans and their families, a new statue erected to memorialise the Unknown Soldiers lost in battle, and the celebration of Australian art, poetry, and war stories which were inspired by that era long passed but not forgotten. Being a significant anniversary, the city made quite a spectacle of the day, preparing marching bands through
the streets, lathering the lampposts and Flinders Street station with enormous patriotic flags, and even calling upon jets to paint the sky with streaks of green and gold. The media were all over the ground and in the skies. Children with cotton candy waved little flags and grandparents wore their badges proud and true. Food stalls in Federation Square were selling carnival foods, and street performers showed off their magic to the masses.

  Lara watched a replay of the dawn service on TV. Dylan was cooking scrambled eggs in the kitchen. Being a public holiday, they both had the day to spend together for once.

  Lara asked, ‘Can we go to the parade?’

  ‘Weren’t we going to watch Game of Thrones today in our onesies?’

  ‘We can do that… another time. Please?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s just down the road.’

  Dylan came by with a plate of eggs and toast and joined her on the couch. ‘After breakie.’

  She didn’t have a dream last night. She slept well, Dylan said. This made her nervous. Last night was the last dream… Psycho’s words resonated in her head and for the rest of the day, she was horribly distracted. She sat all morning on her laptop on the VVEE website, waiting to see the little green light where his icon would pop up, but the prophetic boy was absent. There were no recently uploaded pictures on Instagram of sunsets, no more Snapchats, nothing from any corner of the extensive social media network. He had abandoned them all. He was out somewhere, out living, or calling his family to tell them goodbye, or shouting at people from the rooftops, ‘I told you so!’

  Actually, no. Psycho would only be doing what he claimed he’d do: absolutely nothing. Right now, he would be sitting in a park somewhere, dressed nice, showered and clean-shaven, and he would simply be doing and saying nothing. He’d wait there all day, all week if he had to, although he was adamant there would be no next week, no tomorrow at all; everything was going to happen today, and none of these stupid, boring, normal people knew except him.

  She had to be at the parade today, even if it was nothing but a hoax. If beings in the sky were planning and waiting for a perfect day to strike, they’d choose a day when everyone was out in the open, packing the streets in dense crowds, and blissfully celebrating. All the soldiers were gone from their stations to be in marches. The air force men were doing colourful loops in the clouds. The navy had their ships docked and their guards down. It was so, so perfect.

  And then Psycho texted her, ‘Come outside and watch, Lo.’

  She heard Baba’s voice in her head.

  ‘Baba, do you love me?’

  ‘Yes, Lo.’

  ‘Will I see you soon?’

  ‘Very soon, Lo.’

  She weaved through the crowds as though to be searching for something. Dylan was following by her hand, asking what she was rushing for. She inched through children and old people as, in the centre of the fairway, the parade went on through the streets of Melbourne. The beautiful spring day brought warmth and sunshine. People covered their hand from the glare of the sun and were all dressed in floral dresses and denim shorts. Music was playing triumphantly as they marched. TV broadcasters had their cameras poised at all angles and the Channel 9 chopper hovered in the sky directly overhead for an aerial view.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Dylan asked. ‘Why are we even here?’

  She spun to him. ‘Would you believe me if I knew something bad was going to happen today?’

  Dylan blinked. ‘Like… a bomb… or something?’

  He didn’t get it. It wasn’t worth explaining.

  Her search turned up with nothing: no sign of trouble brewing, nothing to suggest things were out of place; not even Psycho could be found, although in tens of thousands, that was hard to determine. Then she noticed the weather change. Most people did. Clouds rolled in from the bay which weren’t there before. A cold wind picked up. The sun was blocked out, bringing a shadow over the sky, turning it from a sunny, bright celebration into a dark, miserable day. Odd, the people must have thought: there was no such weather predicted on this beautiful morning. Should have brought an umbrella, perhaps.

  But the parade went on. The wind picked up more, enough to become a hassle to those in dresses and skirts, and then papers began to blow, people lost hold of their flags, and signs outside of cafés began to topple over. Parade-watchers suggested it may be time to find shelter, while the chopper in the sky appeared to be searching for a way to get out of the sudden cold front.

  Beside her, Dylan made the dumbest comment possible: ‘It’s getting a bit windy.’

  Lara felt a rock drop in her stomach. She looked up and saw a strange cloud formation begin to take shape overhead: a swirling mass of grey, spiralling, forming a pore through its vapour. Around this hollow there was the sound of thunder, but no lightning, and the fluttering leaves in the air appeared to be drawing upwards into the cloud, other than away.

  She swore, and a moment later, the first beam struck.

  It hit the ground like a bomb, and at first, that was what they all thought it was. The force of the beam as it landed rocked the ground and blinded them all with its column of dazzling pink light. It thundered down from high within the clouds with the force of rockets. It struck a dense part of the city, vaporising everyone, and leaving nothing behind but some inanimate objects which they may have been holding: a coffee cup, a newspaper, or the leash of a dog’s collar. The dog was gone too.

  It was pointless to simply scream and run, but that was what came to mind first. The beams struck one after another in twenty – thirty – places, blasting their energy down in a condensed tunnel of light, through which nothing living and breathing could escape. Within minutes, it was utter chaos. The city was depleted of its inhabitants, street by street. Lara and Dylan were two deer in headlights: they could do nothing but feel the living current of people push and move around them while in every direction, beams cast from the storm clouds struck the Earth in rapid succession. It was horrific and mesmerising, both at once, and too far from reality for either of them to comprehend. One beam hit the Eureka Tower, encapsulating the whole thing in a single pillar, and when it vanished, the tower simply continued to stand, now completely unoccupied, without a speck of structural damage. This trend continued, beam by beam, block by block.

  Cars served and crashed as their occupants were taken. Some distance away, an enormous explosion underground rocked the city. The trains, she thought. Lara felt the vibrations through her legs and saw smoke and fire begin to gush from Flinders Street.

  Jesus Christ.

  No police, no sirens, and no army could stop this. Jets turned and seemed to instantaneously switch to battle mode by some order over the airwaves. They turned upon the clouds, but were vaporised just as easily when they flew into the inanimate light. An unpiloted jet fell, nose-first out of the sky, somewhere on the other side of the Yarra. A second went head-on into the clouds themselves, fearless of a little water vapour, but the jet exploded into a fireball on impact, as thought it had struck an invisible concrete wall.

  Those aren’t clouds, she realised. It’s them. She wondered, why clouds? Why not just show them all the big, thunderous machine they were hovering in?

  ‘Come on!’ Dylan pulled her away.

  ‘We need to get higher.’ Lara searched. She saw a car, abandoned in the middle of the street as a river of people desperately ran. She pushed through the masses to the sedan and leapt up onto the roof in two swift bounds.

  ‘Lara, we need to get inside!’

  ‘It’s not going to make a difference!’ she cried, and she dragged him up with her. Then she hugged him. He hugged her back, but then pulled away.

  ‘What the hell is happening?’

  At their feet, Melbournians were fleeing to every conceivable corner of the city. Beams shot out from the astronomical super-cell, sucking them up as glittery specks. Fires were burning. Children were crying, alone and afraid. People were injured, lost, frightened, or simply frozen. Some idiots w
ere trying to capture the event on their mobiles or cameras. The chopper still hovered, aiming its lenses at the event, but suddenly it was struck by the light, and, like the jet, it no longer contained anyone within to keep it airborne. The chopper crashed into the side of a building, scraping all the way down the glass walls, tearing a hole and showering debris everywhere.

  ‘Holy fucking Jesus,’ Dylan gaped. ‘We need to go!’

  But Lara held his hand and didn’t budge. ‘No.’

  ‘You have to be kidding me! Let’s go, now!’

  ‘I… can’t go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m meant to be here!’

  The bulk of the storm was drawing near, swirling like a whirlpool as it slowly devoured mankind. From their post, Lara and Dylan saw the light slowly nearing them. It blasted the street, engulfed some, switched off, then blasted again a short way down. It went on and off like a flickering light switch, controlled by the clouds as though it was a sentient thing.

  They’re sweeping the place clean.

  ‘What the hell is it?’ He asked her seriously, as though this was her doing somehow.

  Lara didn’t respond because she honestly did not know. She was just as terrified as he was, just as awestruck and confused and desperately hoping this was just extreme global warming, the Chinese, nuclear war – anything other than the resounding thought in her head telling her there could only be one logical answer.

  Defeated, she clasped hands with Dylan and they both stood together. The people were running, panicking, and around them the city burned, but they both stayed put on the car roof and watched as the vortex opened up over them. They vanished.

  CONSCIOUSNESS

  Psycho was the first to regain consciousness. He was lying flat on his back. Some sort of gas mask was over his mouth and nose, but it was removed when it was apparent that he had come to.

  He woke with a big, deep gasp. His head went fuzzy and he felt sleepy again. The gas mask, attached to a hose and some sort of tank, was placed back over his face, and with another few breaths, his eyes once again opened. He felt his left eyelid be pried open and a blue pinprick of a light was waved back and forth across his iris. The ones over him observed his signs and motions: they watched his pupils retract and snapped their fingers near his ears, to see if he responded. Something poked him in the calf and his toes twitched.