by Simon Rosser
Amber slid to a stop, slightly inverting her damaged ankle, causing her to try to stifle a shriek of pain. The tendril must have been almost seven feet in height, and was the width of a London bus. The huge monstrosity had completely blocked her route forward, and it stretched all the way back to the collapsed hospital, now engulfed in flames in the distance.
Some of the tendril was still underground, but the chasm that had opened up in the road was far too wide for her to cross. In front of her, the tendril had smashed through the buildings lining the left side of Cromwell Road, disappearing into them. The entire alien tube was pulsating, like it had its own heartbeat.
It was both disgusting, and awe inspiring at the same time.
The thing hadn’t yet attempted to attack her. Perhaps it was too large, or didn't even know she was there? The tendril was a milky-white colour and, through its semi-translucent exterior, Amber thought she detected movement. Liquid and other stuff appeared to be flowing through it. The thing reminded her of a huge tree root, sucking up nutrients from deep inside the earth. It was disgusting.
Amber stepped back from the thing, trying to take stock of her options. The alien life form didn’t appear to know she was there, and wasn’t showing any signs of aggression, but she felt very uneasy being so close to it.
“Shit,” she whispered, realising her way forward was well and truly blocked. She turned and looked along the Cromwell Road behind, which was utterly destroyed. A gaping crevasse had opened up, exposing the bedrock below, together with sewage and water pipes, which had all been severed. A putrid stench began to waft up from the deep void and, the buildings, on both sides of the road, had subsided, and were now leaning in towards the road. Flames and smoke rose idly into the sky from the hospital, half a mile back.
Amber took a few deep breaths to calm down. She looked around. A few cars back, parked on the side of the road, was a white electrician’s van; now precariously close to the edge of the crevasse which bisected the street. She’d noticed the van when she’d sprinted past. The aluminium ladder, tethered to its roof, caught her attention.
She looked back at it, and an idea came to her. She quickly processed her plan, coming to the conclusion that it might just work. It had to! If not, she was trapped.
Amber hurried over to the van, removed her backpack, and rested it on the pavement close by. She then walked around the back of the van, careful not to get too close to the huge crack that had opened in the road, and pulled at the rope tying the rear of the aluminium ladder to the roof rack. She moved around to the front and repeated the process. She pulled at the loose rope, freeing the ladder from the rack.
Amber gripped the ladder, which was reasonably light, pulled it from the roof and lowered it to the pavement. The ladder, she could see, was an extendable type. She knelt down, removed the latches, and pushed the sections out. It was around 10 feet fully extended, plenty long enough.
Amber picked the end of the ladder up, and dragged it back over to the monstrous tendril that blocked her route to Earls Court. She stood there, taking in some deep breaths of air. “Ok, here goes,” she whispered, carefully placing the extended ladder up against the curved side of the tendril.
Amber jumped back as soon as she’d done it, in case the thing reacted.
Nothing happened.
The ladder moved up and down slightly, in rhythm to the liquid, now pulsating through the huge, thick, gelatinous tube.
Amber ran back to the van, grabbed her backpack, secured it tightly over her shoulders, and headed back to the ladder.
Very cautiously, she placed her uninjured right foot on the first rung of the ladder, and applied some weight. She then brought her injured left foot up, and stood on the bottom rung, gripping both sides of the ladder tightly. She could feel the ladder moving, ever so slightly, up and down, as if the thing were breathing.
Amber climbed up, holding her breath as she did so. It didn’t take long for her shoulders to reach the top of the tendril. She looked over, and could see the Porsche, thirty feet away.
Thankfully, the section of road it was sitting on was still intact.
Amber looked down at the tendril and could see that it was constructed from circular sections of cartilage-like material, much like a human oesophagus. The cartilage meant the tendril was strong, but also flexible. The gelatinous membrane on its exterior was very odd. It was semi-translucent, jelly like, but also tough. Amber could see the edges of the ladder sinking into it, under her weight, as she ascended.
The top of the tendril was about fifteen feet across, and curved like a giant sewage pipe. This was going to be the hard part, Amber realised. Getting off the ladder, traversing the top of the tendril, and then managing to drop down to the ground on the other side, without injuring herself, or prompting a reaction from the alien horror.
Amber’s plan was a simple one. She’d try and scuttle across the top of the thing, turn around, and just try and slide down, feet first, to the ground. She hoped the curve of the tendril, and it’s relatively soft surface, would slow her descent enough to ensure she didn’t land on the ground too quickly.
She tentatively stepped off the ladder and placed her right knee down on the surface of the tendril. It sank into the gelatinous surface by at least an inch. She was petrified the thing might not hold her weight, and imagined falling into the huge cylindrical tube, and being carried away with whatever else was being pumped through it.
Suddenly the thing undulated, and shuddered a bit, as if it had become blocked somewhere along its length. Amber decided that she needed to go for it, before it was too late.
She bent forward to place both her hands onto the structure, and as she did, she hesitated, as some long, dark-looking objects drifted into view, passing through the tendril beneath her. One of the objects became momentarily trapped against one of the sections of what, she assumed, was cartilage.
Amber reeled back in horror, as she recognised that the sagging, rotting flesh belonged to a human cadaver. The skin and flesh was missing from half of its head, exposing a white, almost clean, skull. A black eye socket looked up vacantly from inside the tendril, for a second, before the cadaver became dislodged by another object and was propelled forward by the moving liquid inside the tube.
Amber lost her footing on the ladder, which then slid to the left, clanking onto the road below. “Oh, no!” Amber screamed, as she just managed to grip the soft mass beneath her, her arms and legs splayed, in order to prevent herself from falling off.
Ok, get a grip, Amber told herself, as she prayed that the thing hadn’t detected her presence. She could feel the tendril pulsating under her body but, apart from that, there was no sign of any change in its behaviour. She gritted her teeth, and carefully moved her legs around in a clockwise direction, until they were pointing towards Earls Court; her head now pointing east, along what was left of the Cromwell Road, and the hospital in the distance. She then edged her body over the top of the tendril, until she felt her legs dropping over the curve of the large alien tube.
With one last manoeuvre, she felt gravity take over, and she started to slide off, the gelatinous surface stopping her from falling too quickly. She then dropped to the road, falling around six feet to the ground. She hit the road with a thud, her feet taking the impact. The pain wasn’t as bad as she’d been expecting, and the fact that she allowed her legs to collapse underneath her, as soon as she hit the concrete, helped absorb some of the energy.
Amber forced herself to stand, and half ran, half stumbled, towards the Porsche, thirty feet in front of her. As she got closer, she heard the engine quietly ticking over. She closed her eyes. “Thank you, God, thank you!” she said. The Porsche’s air-cooled engine was still running, the car not yet having spent all its fuel.
As she reached the driver’s side, from behind her, she heard what sounded like an eruption of liquid, followed by a loud gurgling, much like a blocked kitchen sink suddenly unblocking.
She turned to look, and opened
her eyes wide in confusion. Something wasn’t right. She then realised the huge tendril had split open, close to where she’d climbed over it, spilling gelatinous debris-filled liquid all over the road, which was washing towards her.
She yanked the Porsche’s door handle, and pulled it open, quickly swiped the grey pile of ash - remnants of the previous owner - from the seat, threw her backpack onto the passenger seat, and jumped in after it.
She grabbed the gearstick and jammed the 6 speed box into first gear. In the rear view mirror, she saw two tendrils, each the thickness of rainwater pipes, shoot out from the main tendril towards the car.
Amber screamed as the Porsche’s wheels spun, just as one of the tendrils wrapped itself around the passenger side wing mirror. Amber frantically turned the steering wheel, as she slammed her foot down on the accelerator. The Porsche surged forward, its rear wheels spinning momentarily on the tarmac.
The tendril was stuck fast to the wing mirror, but as Amber accelerated off, the mirror was ripped clean off the side of the car.
Amber had to almost immediately slam on the brakes, to avoid a stationary SUV on the road in front of her. She swerved around it, just as another tendril smashed through the SUV’s rear windscreen.
Amber’s body was tingling with adrenaline and shock, as she accelerated along the street, swerving around stationary vehicles that had been left by their vaporized owners. She glanced in the rear view mirror, and was relieved to see that she’d managed to outrun the tendrils, still thrashing about on the road, fifty feet behind.
“Yes!” she screamed, as she changed into third gear, banging the steering wheel with the palms of her hands in joy.
As she did, an orange light flashed on the dashboard, confirming the Porsche’s fuel tank was almost empty.
CHAPTER 23
“OH, CHRIST!” AMBER shouted, as she eased her foot off the accelerator. The orange fuel light remained on. Amber fiddled with the end of the right indicator stalk, and found the trip computer, which confirmed the tank had forty miles left in it. Not much, but enough to get her away from the horror behind her and to a petrol station, she hoped.
As Amber slowed down to a crawl, in order to negotiate around another vehicle pile-up, her stomach sank as she realised that, if she managed to get to a petrol station, the fuel pumps probably wouldn’t be operative, especially if there was no electricity. Never mind that now, she told herself, just get out of here!
Amber drove past numerous large hotels, now just full of the ash and bones of their guests, before reaching a junction, bisected by Earls Court Road. She drove around a line of stationary vehicles, and along West Cromwell Road, towards the Chiswick Flyover. Had the Event not occurred around 4 a.m., things could have been a lot worse. At least there weren't that many abandoned vehicles on the road. It would have been almost impossible to have driven anywhere, if the Event had occurred during the daytime. Completely impossible- if it had happened during rush hour, she knew.
As Amber reached the main Earls Court junction, she calculated she was almost out of London. A huge Tesco store on her right was encased by numerous alien tendrils, like surreal air conditioning ducts, pumping God knows what to, or from, the large store.
The orange glow from the petrol light reminded her she needed to find a garage, and soon. The trip computer confirmed she only had 28 miles left in the tank. She buttoned down her window to get some fresh air, but quickly put it back up. The smell of burning rubber, combined with the stench of ammonia outside, was too strong, and irritated her nostrils. Directly ahead, towards the west, black smoke rose above the horizon, mixing with the low crimson clouds in the sky above.
Amber saw a red TEXACO sign up ahead and let out a sigh of relief. At least she now had a chance of refuelling the Porsche. Two minutes later, she pulled off the Talgarth Road, into the station forecourt, and up alongside a petrol pump.
Amber’s relief was short lived, as she looked at the pumps, devoid of any visual indication that they were still functioning. She got out the car, pulled the first nozzle from the pump and put pressure on the trigger. No fuel came out, the pump was dead.
“Shit,” Amber cursed, ramming the nozzle back into the slot on the pump. She tried another. It was also dead.
Amber looked around the forecourt. There was a grey BMW 5 series parked alongside one of the pumps. She opened the door. There was no ash on the seat, suggesting its owner had either been in the fuel station shop, or refuelling the vehicle when the event occurred, their ash remains perhaps carried away in the breeze days ago.
The keys were still in the ignition, suggesting the latter possibility. She reached in and turned the engine over. It spluttered to life, but the coolant light immediately started blinking red on the dashboard. Then, the engine automatically shut down, probably one of the BMW’s protection systems kicking in, to prevent any serious damage being caused, to the engine, from the lack of water in the radiator.
Amber twisted the key back to the Off position, and slammed the door closed. She looked around the station forecourt, and then spotted the back of another car, just out of sight, behind the garage shop, possibly belonging to one of the garage employees. She walked over to it, listening carefully for any strange sounds that might signal danger.
It was an Audi, about ten years old. Amber tried the door, but it was locked. She doubled-back, walked to the garage shop, and peered in through the glass door. All appeared normal. She pushed on the door and it opened. Amber quietly entered the shop and walked up to the till area. There was no sign of life of any kind. She entered the door to the left of the till, which took her into a small back room, and the area behind the till. As suspected, there was a small pile of ash on the chair where the unlucky individual, who been sitting there at three in the morning working their nightshift, had been vaporized.
Behind the counter, just below where the cigarettes were stored, were a set of keys and key ring, hanging from a hook. The key-ring design had the Audi interlocking rings.
She grabbed the keys, and headed back out into the shop area. She searched the shop, and found some plastic tubing and a red, plastic, spare fuel container. She took both outside and over to the Audi and pressed the key fob. The doors clicked open, together with the Audi’s fuel cap. She yanked it open and undid the black fuel cap and carefully inserted the plastic tube.
A handy trick she’d learnt from her dad once, when her mum had run out of fuel in the country lanes back home. Dad had showed her how to siphon the petrol out of his car, to put into her mum’s Mini, in order to drive it to the garage.
Amber knelt down, positioned the fuel container on the floor, by the rear wheel, placed the free end of the tube into her mouth, and sucked hard.
It didn’t take much effort to start the fuel flowing, under the assistance of gravity, into the container. Amber was certain that both the Porsche, and Audi, used unleaded fuel, due to the relative age of the vehicles. She hoped she was right.
It took Amber twelve trips back and forth to the Audi to siphon all the fuel out, but it meant she probably had enough fuel now to get all the way back to West Wales.
She went back into the garage shop, stocked up on chocolate, and a dozen or so tins of soup and beans, and, on the way out, grabbed a container of vehicle oil, and a few boxes of tissues, just in case.
As she left the shop, she noticed a stack of The Sun newspapers, bundled together on the floor, close to the door. The headline read;
HAVE UFO’s LANDED AT THE POLES?
IS THIS AN ALIEN INVASION, OR JUST AN UNUSUAL METEORITE STRIKE?
Had Amber seen the headline a few days ago, she’d have laughed. But now, as she left the shop, a chill shot up her spine, as she was reminded that she was now living in a very different world to the one of a few days ago.
Amber placed everything she’d taken from the garage shop in the front passenger foot-well, jumped in the car, and turned the key. The Porsche’s air-cooled engine roared to life, and the orange petrol light blinke
d out, the trip computer now indicating 280 miles in the tank, just enough to get her home.
Thank God for the Germans, Amber thought, as she screeched out of the garage forecourt, and accelerated along the Talgarth Road, towards the Hammersmith Flyover.
CHAPTER 24
AS AMBER SPED along the A4, leaving London behind, it suddenly dawned on her where the thick, dark, plumes of smoke were coming from; Heathrow Airport.
She thought back to the first morning, following the Event, and the distant explosions she’d heard, and recalled seeing smoke rising from the western side of the city from The Shard’s Observation platform. She now realised what had caused the smoke. For twelve hours or so, after the Event, she’d heard the distant explosions, which she now feared had been caused by aircraft, crash-landing, at London Heathrow. Flying in from other parts of the world, the passengers and pilots of the destroyed aircraft, vaporized in mid-air.
She assumed the aircraft’s autopilots had guided the aircraft in, and landed them, but perhaps in view of other aircraft being on the runway, the planes had simply collided, and then exploded on impact. She wondered if the same situation had occurred throughout the world’s airports.
The main road ahead looked fairly clear, although she was having to make frequent, and sudden manoeuvres, slowing the Porsche to get around stationary vehicles, or trucks, but always effortlessly accelerating off again in the performance car. She would soon be joining the M4 Motorway, which would take her the 240 miles or so, back to West Wales.
Up ahead, Amber noticed something odd; something stretching across the road. Was it a fallen tree?
She slammed her foot on the brakes, bringing the Porsche to a halt, approximately fifteen feet from the obstacle. Amber had a bad feeling, as she got out of the car to take a closer look.
It wasn’t a tree trunk, but a dark-coloured tendril, or at least the liquid inside it was dark.