Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  She was panicking now. She knew it.

  She stopped. Bent double, hands on thighs, she drew deep, sobbing breaths.

  This didn’t make sense. She had to get control. Had to sort herself out.

  Looking back again, she saw at last what had happened to the supermarket.

  It really had been shorn in half.

  The missing half had fallen away over the cliff-edge into the chasm. She tried to think what had been there. A furniture franchise. An electricals section. A music department. All gone over the edge into that terrible rift. She could see now where the roof had slumped and torn, ragged brickwork and shattered timbers marking the split. Rubble and detritus marking the interior of the supermarket and the irregular cliff-edge on which it now stood.

  And now, picking his way over the broken glass that had once been the front windows of the supermarket, she could see a familiar figure with a mask of blood for a face.

  She froze as he spotted her and put one hand up over his empty eye socket as if this could somehow focus the vision in his one remaining eye.

  Could she see him grinning, even from this distance?

  “Juli-ettttttttt!” he called. “I’m…coming!”

  Ducking behind a ruined wall, Juliet ran frantically along the cliff-edge, looking for a way across. Deep inside, some hopeless and lost part of her was weeping; telling her that the supermarket and the surrounding buildings were stranded on this one pinnacle of rock less than four hundred yards square and with a bottomless pit on all sides.

  No, that was impossible.

  She must find somebody who could help.

  …somebody…

  “Juli-ettt!”

  Trevor’s voice seemed somehow to be echoing from all around.

  “You can’t run, my darling! I’m coming to find YOOOOOOOUUU!”

  Chapter Eight

  The Journal of Jay O’Connor:

  Graffiti

  We’d covered maybe half of the outside edge of the plateau that we were stranded on; at least the buildings that were still standing, or were only partly in ruins. But even I could tell that there were places in the rubble where the Black Stuff could have hidden bodies and we’d never be able to get to them. I kept telling myself that if we couldn’t reach them, then surely that meant they couldn’t get out to get to us—if that makes sense. But time was creeping by, and it looked as if the job I’d bullied everyone into was hopeless. All the time we searched, I kept asking myself whether I was really up to what I’d told everyone we should do.

  And all through our search, we were constantly being taunted by the Black Stuff, using the dead people as its messengers. There were other messages for us; splashed on alley walls, daubed on clear patches of street, free from rubble.

  On the remains of a store wall: Charles Manson.

  Daubed on a cobwebbed store window: Fritz Haarmann.

  On a clear patch of pavement: Gilles de Rais.

  On the side of a car: Peter Kurten.

  On the roof of an overturned bus: Ed Gein.

  Most of the names meant nothing to anyone. But we were pretty sure that they wouldn’t be the first names on any garden party invitations. We knew that it wanted to scare us badly; wanted to taunt us. And maybe there were supposed to be clues in the names to what was going on. But we remained none the wiser as we continued the search and came across more and more of the names splashed about the ruins. The dear, dead departed of Edmonville had certainly been busy after they left us last night.

  From time to time, when I’d finished searching a ruin, I’d step back out on to the street and see one of the others. And each time, they were doing what I did too—searching the sky, looking for some sign up there in that great blank greyness that someone was searching for us. But there were no planes, no sounds of distant engines. Just the great empty quiet that lay over everything on this isolated chunk of rock.

  Then, when I saw Alex and Annie sitting on the roadside, I knew that we were reaching the end of our tether. Slowly, I picked my way over fallen masonry until I’d reached them. Alex had parked the dump truck on the remains of someone’s front garden.

  “We’re never going to be able to cover all the buildings before it gets dark,” said Annie.

  “I know.”

  “We haven’t done half of the houses and the stores on the outside edge,” said Alex. “Any idea how many other buildings there are in the centre?”

  “All right…all right. We’d better get back to the others at the fire. Make sure we’ve got plenty of wood to keep it burning all night again.”

  “Maybe nothing will happen,” said Alex. “Maybe the Black Stuff…and the others…won’t come back again.”

  “I hope so too,” I said. “But I’m not going to bank on it.”

  “What the hell is it?” Alex wasn’t talking to us. He was talking to the empty street. “What the hell does it want from us?”

  “I think it just wants us dead,” said Annie, flatly. “Like the others.”

  “You think it’s like this all over the world?” asked Alex.

  No one had an answer for him.

  Gordon suddenly emerged from around the shattered frontage of a pub. The inn sign hung crookedly overhead: The Fallen Oak. No one seemed able to appreciate the joke. Head down, he walked over to us. When he realised that we were all waiting for some kind of response, he held his hands wide in a “Nothing at all” gesture.

  “How long does everyone reckon we’ve got?” I asked. “Before it gets dark again. We don’t want to be stuck out here when it does.”

  The three of them just looked at me uncomfortably.

  I waited for someone to say something.

  No one did.

  And then I got it. Now I knew how the situation had turned around. They didn’t want to hear me asking questions like that. They wanted me to be giving them answers.

  “Now wait a minute,” I said. “Don’t look to me for all the answers. Don’t wait for me to tell everyone what they should be doing.”

  Still no one spoke. They all just looked at me.

  “What is this? I’m not your leader.”

  “You’ve been doing a good job so far,” said Annie.

  “No, no, no. Look…that’s not the way it is.”

  “Someone has to lead…” began Alex.

  “What the hell are you talking about? No one voted for anyone. You’re the oldest, Alex. You should be taking charge.”

  “No, you’re the one,” said Alex.

  I stared at them.

  Then Gordon said simply “You,” and pointed his finger at me.

  As if the conversation were over, Alex said: “I’ll drive the truck around to…”

  And then Annie exclaimed: “Lisa!”

  The others turned quickly to see Annie’s partner and the boy approaching down the ruined street they’d just covered on the latest “leg” of their search. Annie hurried to meet her, but it was Alex who got there first, vaulting over a wonky garden fence in his hurry. I hadn’t realised he was so fit, but I knew why he was worried.

  “Where’s Candy? What’s happened?”

  “Someone had better come,” said Lisa breathlessly. I watched the boy skip across to Annie, take her hand and begin to pull. “I can’t do anything with her.”

  “What’s wrong?” Alex’s face had turned the same colour as the sky. Drab grey.

  “She’s in the mini-mart, drinking.”

  “She’s supposed to be helping gather wood,” said Alex through gritted teeth.

  “Look…” I began.

  And that’s when Wayne and Damon came scrambling around the corner, waving their arms and yelling like hell. Damon tripped on a brick and fell full length. Wayne didn’t stop to help; he just came straight on, eyes wide. When he reached us, he couldn’t speak. Chest heaving, he tried to draw breath and speak at the same time.

  “Slow down,” said Annie. “Slow down…”

  And then Damon came up behind, with a look on his face
that was partly bewilderment, mostly fear.

  “Found them,” he said—and then he was sick.

  “The dead people,” said Wayne, finding his breath. “Jesus. God. The dead people. I think it’s…it’s all of them.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  Whatever they’d found, it was so bad that the pair of them hadn’t got the words to explain. I could see it in Wayne’s eyes, like he was still seeing it himself; now in Damon’s, when he staggered around to the front again, wiping his mouth.

  Was it just me? Or was the grey blankness of the sky much darker than it had been before? How much time did we have?

  “Right,” I said. “Come on.”

  “What about the dump truck?” said Alex. “Can I get it through?”

  Wayne and Damon just looked at him as if he’d arrived from the moon and was speaking a foreign language.

  “Can he drive it to where you’ve found them?” I snapped.

  Damon nodded. “Yeah, down that side street there. And around to the right.”

  “No rubble on the road?” asked Alex. “I can drive it through?”

  “Yeah.” Damon nodded again, eyes far away. “Drive it through. Yeah.”

  “Okay, take us there,” I said. The pair of them looked at me hard, like they were having trouble understanding. Then Damon said “Yeah” again and they started off down the side street beside The Fallen Oak. Behind us, I heard the snorting of the dump truck and turned to see the vehicle rounding the corner after us. Alex seemed to be handling it well.

  At the next main street, Wayne and Damon paused and looked at each other, as if they didn’t really want to go on. Then, heads down, they turned left and we followed. I’d already covered some of the terraced properties along this street. A few of them were right on the edge of the cliff, some of them had crumbled apart and fallen over. Beyond was the usual blank grey, but I could see two towers of rock through a gap in the houses, both of them about two hundred feet away. There were houses on one, most of them ruined and collapsed. On the other was a grassed space and some tarmac. I still couldn’t get my head around how bizarre it all looked.

  Wayne and Damon were heading for the houses at the end of the terrace. I hadn’t been in any of those.

  At the end of the terraced street was a semi-demolished building with white walls. I was sure I had been in this neck of the woods some time in the past, but I was damned if I could remember what that building had been. There was a sign hanging up there, but something had smashed across it, maybe a section of the roof from next door, and obliterated everything except “…AT MA…” Even before we got there, I knew this was where Wayne and Damon were taking us.

  They kept turning to look at us as we hurried on, as if somehow there might be a change of plan and we could all walk away and make everything okay again. I knew they were terrified about what they’d found or seen. My own guts were churning with fear. But I knew that we had to go on.

  To whatever horror lay ahead in the white-walled building.

  Chapter Nine

  The Ordeal of Juliet DeLore

  Juliet seized a chunk of ripped piping from the ground as she moved; and turned to look back. It felt solid in her hand, a good eighteen inches long. But then she remembered what she’d done with the crowbar, and the memory of it turned her stomach and threatened to rob her of her will.

  There was no sign of Trevor.

  She clamped her jaw shut to stop her teeth from chattering together and moved from side to side, trying to see if she could flag where Trevor’s voice had been coming from.

  “Frightened, Juliet?” His voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. “You should be…you should be…”

  “Trevor, you bastard! Keep away from me or…”

  “I’ve only got one eye…but it’s…ALL THE BETTER TO SEE YOU WITH!”

  The Citroën, over there beside the shopping trolley rank. He must be hiding behind it. Juliet took a short three-step run and hurled the piping at the car. The back window imploded in a shower of glittering shards, glass hissing to the tarmac. But now Trevor was laughing; he seemed to be way over to her left, somewhere in the bushes. Juliet ran on along the cliff-edge, swerving as she followed its ragged line, back towards the supermarket. On her right, she could see other chunks of rock like bizarre mountains jutting upwards from empty space, some as near as a hundred feet or so, others half a mile away, isolated against a blank grey backdrop.

  “Over here!” she yelled as she ran. “Someone! Over here!”

  But there was no movement on any of the bizarre crags, and it seemed that her own voice was flat and hollow compared to the unnerving echo of Trevor’s taunts.

  “Yes!” laughed Trevor. “Come on over here, someone. We’re waiting for you, aren’t we, Juliet? The thing is, my love, there’s no one over there to COME! Now, isn’t that a funny thing? Just you and me stuck on our own little love island. Having a great party time.”

  The cliff-edge furrowed away from the supermarket building and Juliet felt a wave of renewed hope. Her instincts were wrong. She wasn’t stranded. Behind the supermarket was solid land, and beyond that there would be help. She knew that there was a shopping precinct beyond. Surely there’d be rescue services.

  But why no sirens? Why is everything so quiet?

  She silenced the small, terrified voice inside. Now she could see the building that stood behind the supermarket. She saw the sign, Radio Edmonville, and then the communications mast, covered in aerials and discs, standing three hundred feet tall. There must be someone in there. Someone who knew what had happened; someone who, even now, would be broadcasting details of the disaster and what people should do. The cliff-edge curved directly up to the side of the local radio building and for a moment it seemed to Juliet that this building, like the supermarket, was also balanced on the edge of the crevasse—and that perhaps there was nothing beyond these two buildings after all.

  “No, I don’t believe that!”

  She jumped over a low wall, staggered on fallen rubble, and then headed directly towards the radio station’s main entrance. There was a small drive, with a low wall all around. Up ahead, a reception door; another swing-door like the supermarket’s. She set her sights on the door and ran hard.

  Somewhere behind her, something clattered.

  But she wasn’t going to turn and look.

  She was going to reach that door, and find someone.

  Suddenly Juliet knew that Trevor had broken cover; had emerged from his hiding place back in the carpark, and was racing after her. She could not hear his footsteps, couldn’t hear any frenzied ruffling of clothing, any displacement of air, but she knew that he was hurtling down upon her as she raced for the entrance. Fear was upon her again, threatening to slow her down, sap her strength.

  At any moment, his hand would be on her shoulder.

  His fingers would tangle in her hair.

  She’d be yanked backwards to the ground.

  And then her worst torment would begin as…

  “No, this can’t be happening.”

  Up ahead, Juliet could see that the radio station was perched on the edge of a cliff. The same cliff-edge that ran from here to the supermarket building.

  “It’s not…it’s just not possible.”

  Which meant that there was nothing beyond the broadcasting building and that she was stranded on this small chunk of a devastated Edmonville. A supermarket, a carpark, a local radio broadcasting company and its three-hundred-foot mast, a ruined warehouse and tumbled outbuildings. Beyond the radio station and the supermarket was a bottomless chasm, separating this plateau from the rest of the city beyond. Behind her and beyond the carpark, nothing but ragged peaks of stone and rock, like some alien landscape. And no survivors.

  Other than herself.

  And Trevor.

  “Juliettttt!” came his mocking voice, echoing in the stillness. “I’m coming to find youuuuuu…”

  Chapter Ten

  The Journal of Jay O�
�Connor:

  Abattoir

  Damon and Wayne stood in front of the white-walled building, and clearly didn’t want to go any further. No one seemed inclined to do anything but stare at the building, me included. Now I could see what the place was. That damaged sign on the front, “…AT MA…”, made sense at last, because there was a complete version on the side of the building, in big stenciled letters: “WHOLESALE MEAT MART”. Something told me that the Black Stuff was laughing at us again.

  The dump truck snorted around the corner and made everyone jump.

  Alex brought it to a halt and slid out of the cab, dusting his hands. He looked different somehow. Like everyone else, he was struggling to come to terms with everything that had happened since this nightmare began. But now he looked worse. I knew that he was as worried as hell about his wife, but he wasn’t making any attempt to leave. He was going to stay around a while and see what happened. Right about then, I realised just how much I had been underestimating him.

  “Right,” I said, and marched straight on into the ruins of the entrance yard ahead. The others followed me. When I saw that Lisa and the boy were also following, I turned back. “Maybe…you know…maybe not the kid.”

  Lisa nodded and held back as I crossed the yard.

  Let’s get this part straight. I wasn’t being the leader, wasn’t playing the hard man, or the hero. Frankly, I was scared shitless.

  Ever since that first tremor, when I’d been trapped underground with Wayne and Damon, something had happened to me. Something I thought I’d put behind me a long time ago. Ever since I was a kid, I’d been bothered by the fact that, at heart, I was a coward. My dad used to yell it at me when I’d hold back on the playing field, or when I wouldn’t stick up for myself in a school-yard fight. And it was knowing this fact that sometimes made me do the things I’d done. Sometimes I’d be so ashamed of my fear, of knowing how shit-scared I was, I’d deliberately put myself into situations that my friends would admire me for. Someone once called me a brave bastard because I’d abseiled down from a railway bridge on a frayed piece of rope. I was ten years old, and it was four hundred and seventy feet. But what they didn’t know was that I was terrified. More terrified than any one of them would have been. But…and this was the important thing…I was more terrified of how I’d feel about myself if I didn’t take up the dare of dropping down that fraying rope in the first place. Always been the same.