Skyquakers

by Conway, A. J.

  Eventually the shadows caught up. Dust blanketed everything, until eventually they were running blind. Neither Ned nor Psycho saw the thing which eventually crashed down in front of them, only that it was impenetrable. The force it unleashed as it struck the Earth blew them off their feet. The dust buried them.

  It was some time later when Ned woke, gasping. He was still on Earth. He was buried, but not crushed; his frail body had mostly been shielded by a roof of fallen metal debris, while scattered around him lay a field of glass, steel poles, and chunks of things. He pushed them away and wriggled free. He crawled on his stomach until he found a pocket of air where he could sit upright. Everything was on fire. Electrical cables sparked overhead. There was the strong stench of petrol in the air. Ned’s skin was burnt, cut, and bleeding, particularly his leg, which had suffered a deep laceration from his knee to his ankle. He shook glass shards from his hair. His bare feet looked to have been pulled from a shredder, but at this time he felt nothing.

  Ned was not the only one who had survived. He could hear moaning and crying. It sounded desperate, like the last pants of a dying animal. Ned tried to see through the dust, following the sound. He managed to limp through the mess. His ears were still ringing, but he recognised a human voice. It could only belong to one other.

  When Ned found Psycho, he didn’t know what to make of him. Not all of him was there. Part of his leg was missing, leaving only a bloody stump and torn silver pants. His face was covered in such gruesome burns that he was hardly recognisable as a human; he looked more like a partially-melted plastic mannequin, a fake model of what was once a living, breathing, rational human being. All that was left of him was a twisted mess. The stump of a body was still alive. He made these gurgling, wailing noises, choking on blood as it dripped from his mouth.

  Ned stood there for a while and watched him. Psycho tried to reach out a hand. Many fingers were broken and twisted in different directions. He cried for help. Ned could not think of any way he could help. In fact, he considered doing very much the opposite and leaving him to rot. It would be a distasteful justice, but he deserved little more. Ned wanted to sit here and watch him until he too collapsed dead from exhaustion. He wanted this coward to live and breathe and feel pain for as long as Ned had. There was no way in hell he would extend a hand to him. After a few desperate reaches, Psycho realised that too, and began trying to move himself instead. He tried to drag his body. Ned felt sick watching.

  There was a black gun lying amongst the rubble, left beside a Quaker’s hand, crushed under ten thousand tonnes of steel. Ned did a very kind thing that day. He went over and took the handgun from the dead alien. He put his finger on what appeared to be the trigger and aimed it down.

  Psycho gargled, ‘Wait—’

  Ned shot him in the head. It was quick. He then dropped the gun and walked away.

  15

  STRANGERS

  It took hours, but Lara did eventually find Ned again. Under the blaring hot sun, he was found wandering along a dirt highway somewhere south-east of Darwin, limping, bleeding, bare-chested and bare-footed. She was following her compass as she drove, when she suddenly saw the back of his head. That shaggy hair was all too familiar. She started screaming in joy. She honked her horn. Ned stopped, staggered a bit, and turned to look over his shoulder. A car drove towards him before skidding to a halt.

  Lara called his name. She leapt from the ute and ran into his arms. He collapsed into her embrace. Lara was in tears, overwhelmed with joy to see him still alive, still with her on this Earth together. He smiled and hugged her, and told her he was sorry for leaving her alone out here.

  Immediately she tried to get him into the ute and take him back to the hospital, but Ned refused. Despite his condition – the blood, the fever, the way his lungs struggled for air – he only had two things to say:

  First, they were all dead. Baba, Psycho, all of them. That, she had to accept.

  Second, he had to tell her what Lily wrote.

  It was unsurprising to learn that Lonely Lily was not a real person. Lily was an idea, a collection of people, a tool. She was invented by the Navy and her sole purpose was to combat the alien invasion.

  The note was written and left by an anonymous woman, whose innocent and alluring voice masked the military beacon which had been set up at Charles Darwin University within a few days of the first storm. She had a finite set of tapes to play over and over, constantly beckoning in between meaningless chatter to be sought out by any surviving humans, only so that they could find her letter, read it, and know the truth.

  Very few citizens ever found her. A handful were lucky enough to avoid the storm, and only a fraction were within her broadcasting range. Lily congratulated Ned on his achievement, and told him from here on, everything would be alright.

  It perhaps only occurred to Ned whilst reading that every submarine on the planet was immune to the beams. Thus portions of every nation’s military were well and truly operational and had been in action since day one. Australia’s remaining vessels were continuously circling the shores, looking for people like Ned. They had set up two ‘Lilies’ in two other ports, Perth and Sydney, hoping to cover the most ground. Unfortunately the Sydney beacon was found and bombed. The Perth one was still in operation, but it had been so long since anyone had been found; they were beginning to give up hope.

  Rescue submarines emerged infrequently and on odd days, in order to keep from establishing a predictable pattern. For Sydney, it was every 23 days, every 39 for Perth, and every 17 days for Darwin. Calendars left in Lily’s studio and the drug addict’s room showed circles once or twice a month on the exact same days, tracking the next scheduled rescue attempt.

  But the search would end when Lily’s voice finally cut out. Without her, it would be impossible to further relay the Navy’s message to any survivors and so there was no point in pursuing a dead cause. In their eyes, the country was already lost. Their only hope was to find refuge elsewhere. Ned was the last to find Lily in Darwin; he may be the last human to ever find her. As a reward, he would be taken to a new home where tens of thousands were awaiting him.

  Lily told Ned where to be and when. This he relayed to Lara, thus upholding the promise he had made to ensure she would be safe.

  She drove north, back along that same highway. The hot wind blew through the open windows and tangled her hair, hiding the tears that she shed over Baba and the enormous sacrifice he had made. To have witnessed that thing fall from the sky… Ned had seen something no one had ever seen, or may ever see again. He didn’t have the strength to explain what it was like; he was so sick and injured that he could no longer walk. Lara used the carpet rolls in the rear tray to construct a bed and nestled him in. She left him with water and promised to get him help. Ned refused to go to a hospital; he instructed her to take her back to the cabin on the cliff. That was what Lily wanted, apparently.

  She followed his instructions and drove back along those same roads to the northern beach. The neglected outback around her was still as dry and as barren as it always was, and yet the absence of the cloud made it feel so much emptier. She passed the orange farm where she met that strange girl. It was suddenly abandoned; neither the girl nor the Quaker farmers could be seen playing amongst the trees. It seemed as though word of the cloud’s ruin had spread quickly. She kept looking up, expecting to see another storm take its fallen comrade’s place, but the sky was blue and filled with only flying mutant bird hybrids. It was a beautiful day.

  It was nearing sunset by the time she made it back to the surfer’s cabin. She halted the ute at the edge of the cliff, looking down onto a mess of mangroves and thick bushland, enveloping pristine blue waters and little rock pools. A wooden boardwalk, build into the side of rocks and shrubbery, led down to the ocean. Mutant seagulls flew overhead and the crickets were out in the last hours of sunlight, making their erratic calls. The place was just as she had left it, but there was something new. At first, she thought it was a whale:
a slender, black blob sitting idly a few hundred metres from the shore, but it soon became apparent that it was not a living thing.

  Lara started crying and laughing at the same time. In excitement, she flashed her headlights ten times in rapid succession. Out on the water, a light flashed back at her. Contact was established.

  She leapt out of the ute and slammed the door. ‘Ned! You were right! They’re here!’ She skipped to the rear of the trailer and clambered up onto the piles of rugs. She slapped Ned on the leg and laughed again, ‘They’re really out there! Look!’

  Ned didn’t respond. Lara stopped and nudged him gently. She crawled closer to him and knelt down. ‘Wake up,’ she demanded. ‘Ned, wake up.’

  She shook him again. The smile on her lips faded.

  ‘Ned, wake up. Hey!’

  She stared at the boy. His head was turned to the side, his mattered hair strewn across his pale face. An arm hung limp over the edge of the tray, cold and rigid.

  ‘No, get up. Get up.’ She shook him again, but nothing changed. ‘Get up, Ned. Get up, you idiot!’

  She lurched back and covered her mouth with her hand. She gasped, drawing in short, desperate breaths. She yelled at him, ‘Stop it! Stop it right now!’ She shook him and she yelled at him, again and again. He didn’t answer.

  She collapsed to her knees, sobbing over him. She wept and cried and began screaming, but not even the crickets were moved by her voice. She tugged on his clothes and wept, calling his name over and over. She pointed to the sea. ‘We’re here! We made it! It’s right there! It’s right there! Look! Look at me!’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘I hate you, I hate you… Get up! Don’t do this to me! Don’t do this to me! Please, Ned, just look out there! Just…’

  But as the moments slipped by, it became conclusive that the life inside had departed from the body, and all attempts to wish it back were meaningless. She stared and could not speak. She looked around for help and pleaded for it out loud, but no one could hear her and no one would come. Ned had died somewhere along the way, perhaps as soon as he laid his head down. A soft breeze blew over him and a fragment of his hair whipped up, only to reveal the pale skin of his cheek, dry lips slightly ajar, and those weary eyes at rest at last. He was a frozen image in time of a boy who had fought for all and won nothing, whose struggles had been an empty pursuit of companionship, of answers which he never received. To have come this far and lost was painfully unfair; she felt the sting in her chest, a vacuum that sucked the life out of her. She was undeserving of his sacrifice, knowing the fault was entirely hers: her actions had been the most damaging of all, and yet his last agonising breaths had been for her. She was a stranger to him; strangers were not meant to be this kind to one another.

  It was not right to leave him here so undignified, but the boats were coming now and she had only a brief and fleeting opportunity to be taken aboard. Between glances of the haven of the beach and her hero, she almost considered staying. Ned needed her, right here and now. She had to be with him. She had to hold him and nurse him back to health, or else what kind of human would she be?

  But to refuse his sacrifice would be an insult to his death, and so she said her last goodbyes, left his body where it lay, and hastily made for the shore. She scaled the boardwalk down to the base of the cliff, skidded down the muddy hills and tripped over mangroves. She took one last glance back up to that cliff, in hopes that the nightmare was all in her mind, but the ute sat there unmoved at the rocky edge, an unmarked tombstone basking in the warm sun. And upon that lonely grave sat a little alien dog with black and white fur.

  Oh Moonboy, come with me!

  But Moonboy had chosen his allegiance and was far more loyal to his friends than she. The dog stayed with him, his little nose nestled in the comfort of a dearly loved boy, as though he was merely sleeping. He was there to protect him. The love was so painful to admire that she had to turn away and leave.

  When at last she reached the water, she collapsed under the weight of an overwhelming storm of emotion. She fell to her knees and screamed into her hands. When the boats arrived, a woman in uniform ran to collect her while two others with guns stood guard. She was taken by her arms and lifted, but she collapsed again. She began screaming that she couldn't leave. She yelled that he was dead, but they were too hurried to care. All they wanted to know was if she was alone, if there were any others. A shake of the head gave them their answer, and so they proceeded to carry the last of Lily's responders onto their boat. After this, there would be no more.

  She kept resisting, pulling against their helping hands as though she did not want to be rescued. They could only take her hysteria as a natural reaction; she could never muster the words to tell them otherwise, and so, oblivious to her loss, they proceeded to forcefully drag the last survivor onto their boat.

  THE END