by Seth Rain
‘The thought of living so long scares me.’
‘Hell, no! But you can choose the life you want. I’d do it. In a heartbeat.’
Scott smiled weakly and looked out of his window. ‘How old are you, Luke?’
‘Eighteen. How ’bout you?’
‘I feel like I’ve lived an eternity already. Thirty-three.’
Luke nodded.
‘Did you lose anyone to the Rapture?’ Scott asked.
‘Mum, Dad, my sisters…’
‘I’m sorry.’
Luke shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s me you should be sorry for. They made it to Heaven. I don’t know what’ll happen to me.’ He pointed at the empty road.
‘No,’ Scott said. ‘Me neither.’
‘What about you? Do you have family?’
‘My parents died a long time ago. I have no family left. My girlfriend died on the twenty-second along with everyone else.’
They drove in silence for a while.
‘So, do you think they’re all there?’ Luke asked, breaking the sound of the tyres rumbling on tarmac. ‘In Heaven?’
Scott stared out of the window again. He could tell Luke what he really thought, explain all the things he’d thought during the years since Mathew had released the dates. He could tell Luke that it made no sense to believe there was a God, a Heaven or a Hell.
‘Maybe, Luke. Maybe.’
Twenty-Four
Dawn kicked and wriggled against the straps holding her to the bed.
‘Please,’ Blake said, ‘don’t struggle.’
‘Let me go!’
Blake’s eyes widened, his head tilting in sympathy. ‘It’s a painless procedure. You won’t feel a thing.’
‘You can’t do this.’
‘Yes, we can. You will help repopulate the country and the world. It’s an honour for you.’
‘No!’ Dawn said.
‘You’ll leave behind a future,’ Blake said. ‘And I will compensate you.’
‘Compensate?’
‘You’ll live out the rest of your life in a Heaven of your own making. We know how to give you this.’
‘But I don’t want it,’ she said.
Blake was clearly losing patience. ‘We’ll look after your baby. You have my word.’
Dawn stopped and scanned the hospital room. The room and hall outside echoed with footsteps and movement of people she couldn’t see. The hospital was huge, yet she’d seen only a handful of people.
Blake moved closer to the bed. ‘I wish I could make you see that this is necessary. I wish it wasn’t like this. But we have such little time. You, me, humanity – we have so little time. Unless we do something.’
‘Unless you take unborn children from their mothers?’
Blake took a step backwards, shaking his head. ‘The AI,’ he said, ‘has destroyed everything. In less than two years, we have lost it all. There is no Heaven, there is no Second Coming, there is only oblivion.’
Dawn sobbed. ‘You can’t! Please!’
Blake’s eyes were glassy with what might have been tears.
‘Mathew,’ Blake said, ‘is evil.’
‘And so are you,’ Dawn snapped, grimacing, her sobs turning to anger.
Blake sighed. ‘I know it might appear that way. But in time, if this works, we will see this as when humanity slipped through a bottleneck of evolution. Your DNA will be part of a new future.’
Dawn closed her eyes and arched her back, pushing against the restraints. ‘How does any of this stop what Mathew is doing?’
‘We’re buying time.’
‘My baby will have her death predicted by the AI too. She will become a part of the system – under Mathew’s control.’
‘We’ll keep her date away from your child. She will not know her date. And we will stop Mathew. Stop the AI.’
‘How?’
For the first time, Blake looked unsure. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘it would be better to do this with your approval.’
‘No,’ Dawn said.
Blake rubbed the centre of his forehead. ‘I’m sorry. Truly.’
As Blake left the room, another man appeared, dressed in white, wearing a paper mask.
‘What are you doing?’ Dawn asked.
The man ignored her and arranged something she couldn’t see clearly on a metal plate beside her bed.
‘Wait,’ Dawn said.
The man paused, then said, ‘We will care for you for the remaining days of your life. This drug, Eternity, will give you centuries of happiness.’
‘Wait,’ Dawn said again. ‘No, I don’t want it. I want to stay here.’
The man frowned. ‘But you have only days left.’
‘I know, but it’s what I want,’ Dawn said.
The man took something from the metal plate. ‘Believe me, it’s the wrong choice.’
The needle pierced her skin.
‘No!’ she shouted. ‘You can’t!’
The ceiling began to spin and her eyesight started to collapse in on itself. She remembered her mother, her brother, and then it was impossible to keep her eyes open.
Twenty-Five
Scott had not been to London since Mathew had released the dates. Now London at night was an eerie place. The huge expanse of city was still there, made all the bigger and sprawling because of the absence of people, of movement.
Luke pulled up and pointed to a road sign illuminated by the car headlights. ‘We don’t want to get too close. But she’ll be in there. I remember Saul talking about it.’
Scott leaned forward in his seat. ‘Great Ormond Street Hospital.’
Luke nodded.
‘And where will Mathew be?’
‘There were these men in Glasgow, Saul took us to see. They said he was on the other side of the river sometimes. He meets people at some theatre, I heard.’
‘We’ll leave the car here,’ Scott said.
The streets were empty except for a flock of pigeons that swooped down from the roofs to the ground and back up again. Scott grabbed his rucksack from the car and swung it over his shoulder. He checked his revolver was loaded and pushed it into his coat pocket.
Luke checked his rifle.
Scott looked along the street both ways before following the sign towards the hospital.
‘So, you really think you can stop the AI?’ Luke asked.
‘With Mathew’s password. Yes.’
‘I think it’s too late,’ Luke said, his face upturned to the tall buildings surrounding them.
Scott followed his line of sight. ‘It’s not.’
‘How long does she have? The girl?’
‘Not long.’
Luke rubbed and then pinched his bottom lip. ‘Sorry. I didn’t know.’
Scott ignored him.
‘The people Saul is taking her to,’ Luke said, ‘they want to stop Mathew too.’
‘If their way means taking young women, the way Saul has taken Dawn, it’s wrong.’
Luke didn’t look convinced. ‘When we get Dawn back,’ he asked, ‘what happens then? How do we get Mathew’s password?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘There’s no way he’ll give it to you. And without all three, you can’t stop the AI.’
‘Luke, I know.’
Luke’s footsteps quickened as he caught up with Scott. ‘And that won’t help Dawn, anyway.’
‘Please,’ Scott said, stopping. ‘I know all this. It’s not helping. We need to find Dawn – that’s the first thing. Let’s do that.’
‘You said she doesn’t have long.’
‘So?’ Scott said. ‘I just leave her there?’
Luke looked hurt. He shrugged.
‘What about the baby?’ Scott asked. ‘Do you think we should just leave Dawn and the baby?’
‘They’ll look after it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Like I said – they want to stop Mathew too. The more babies there are, the more chance we have of surviving.’
Scott tugged at the straps o
f his rucksack and carried on along the street. ‘I can’t leave her there. I need to know what they’re doing to her.’
‘I can tell you what they’ll do. They’ll give her Eternity then take the baby to look after and Dawn will live in Heaven for what feels like thousands of years. It sounds good to me, considering.’
At that moment, Scott saw the rationality of Luke’s logic. But it was devoid of emotion or understanding. He tried to pinpoint where the logic gave way to feeling. It was that Dawn would be oblivious to it all – to the birth of her baby, to its life and the lives of her descendants, taken from her without her consent.
They walked for almost twenty minutes without seeing anyone. Scott led the way, taking his time to check the way ahead was clear. Finally, they could see the children’s hospital he remembered seeing on TV years before.
Scott pointed. ‘There it is.’
Luke reached for his rifle.
‘No,’ Scott said. ‘We’re not going to shoot anyone.’
Luke nodded with what looked like relief and loosened his grip on the rifle.
‘We need to wait, find a safe way in,’ Scott said. ‘Hopefully we can find Dawn, rescue her and leave with her before they know what’s happened.’
When Luke was thinking, it was obvious; he stayed still, his whole body, even his expression, frozen. ‘The longer we wait,’ he said, ‘the longer Dawn spends in eternity.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’ Scott asked.
Again, Luke was still. ‘I don’t know. But won’t it make it more difficult to wake her?’
Scott went to speak, but struggled to make sense of it all. He pushed open the door to an old building that appeared to contain offices, close to the hospital. Inside, they walked up three flights of stairs, their footsteps echoing around the bare stairwell. They walked along a dark corridor, Scott checking for a door that was unlocked. Finally, they found one. They went inside, closing the door behind them. Scott went to the window to check they could see the hospital. They could. It looked as desolate as the rest of London.
‘Are you sure they’re in there?’ Scott asked.
Luke took off his rucksack and leaned his rifle against the chair near the window. ‘That’s what Saul said.’
Scott stood to one side of the window and peered through a narrow gap in the curtains. The tattoo on his hand caught his eye. He knew he wouldn’t die this year. Ever since he’d been given his date, he had suffered through that day, not knowing whether it might be his last. It also meant he couldn’t see past it. But now, he could make plans. He had just over a year – and that, compared to Dawn, or Juliet, or Luke, was a long time. He was fortunate. That was another emotion he’d not experienced for a long time. He had another collection of seasons to watch come and go. But then there was the flip-side: he knew the day he would die. For how long before his date would he dwell on that? Maybe he’d make peace with it. Maybe he’d live the way he’d always wanted to live: with gratitude. But that wasn’t him and he knew it. Outside, a dog walked down the middle of the street, its tail between its legs, its head low, as if making its way through a battlefield.
Twenty-Six
The walls closed in more and more each day. The only window looked out onto the distant London skyline. When he closed his eyes, Scott saw Jack and his men collapsing, one by one, falling, their limbs splayed, their bodies lifeless before they even hit the ground. How had Mathew done that? Scott’s throat was sore from shouting, demanding they let him out, demanding to see Freya. But it was no use. Living out the last of his days in this place, waiting for the Rapture, was too painful. Every minute the anger rose in him at being kept a prisoner here. The world was right there on the other side of the wall – yet he couldn’t experience it. Freya was in the same building, although he’d not seen her for weeks.
A flap at the bottom of the door opened and a tray of food was pushed through it.
Scott stared at the tray. He thought back to the room he and Freya had found in Wolverhampton, opposite the cemetery. They’d felt like prisoners there, hiding from Mathew and his Watchers. But at the time they hadn’t understood. He’d have given anything to be back there now, with Freya.
He walked across the small room, picked up the tray and placed it on the table. He’d kept track of the days and figured it was close to the middle of July. If Mathew got his way, it would be humanity’s last summer.
He lost track of the weeks. The light through the window had changed. Now it was dark reds and oranges.
Scott lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
Next to him was the only book he had: The New Testament. He’d read it several times.
Jesus had been a carpenter like him.
Revelations was different: discordant, bitter. But Scott saw how Jesus would have made people believe. There were people like that in the world: filled with positive energy, charisma, power.
He drifted in and out of sleep. He found it easier, or better, to sleep through the day. Being awake was too cruel. In the darkness he could pretend he was somewhere else, with Freya.
Jesus must have been around thirty when he died.
Trays of food were regularly pushed through the slot in the door. He’d given up trying to speak with whoever was on the other side.
Snow fell, covering the window so Scott could no longer see outside.
He couldn’t be sure, but he figured it was December.
Lying on the bed, he shivered, hugging himself to keep warm, his arms wrapped around his torso.
Regret.
He and Freya should have stayed away, beneath the smog and darkness of the Black Country skies.
He recalled Rebecca, in that man’s arms, swept away and into the oncoming train.
There was Dearil’s gun, pressed to the young boy’s head.
Scott’s revolver pushed against the side of his own head. Pulling the trigger. The hollow click.
Freya kissing him.
Kissing Freya.
Freya.
Freya.
Each time he woke was the cruellest because then he had to come to terms with where he was, where Freya must be, and what had happened, over and over and over again.
Outside, the light had changed to pinks and light blues.
Anger was pointless. Anger gave hope. Anger meant a rejection of the world as it was and a desire to change it. But Scott had no way of doing that. Anger was cruel. So he wasn’t angry; he chose not to be.
It was easier to close his eyes and sleep.
There was a knock on the door.
‘Scott?’
He’d not heard his name spoken for a long time.
‘Scott? Are you in there?’
The voice was familiar.
‘Hello?’ Scott asked.
The voice sounded eager. ‘It’s Noah.’
Twenty-Seven
Scott, his back against the wall, shuffled towards the rear entrance of the hospital. It was early morning and the sky was its darkest.
‘This way,’ Luke whispered, opening a fire door.
They were inside a dark, cold corridor.
‘Where will they be?’ Scott asked.
Luke shrugged.
Scott took the lead, opening another door to a stairwell. After a moment’s thought, he decided to head upstairs.
On the first floor, Scott edged through double doors. The hinges creaked, but the corridor on the other side was as empty and dark as the one downstairs. Scott held the door open for Luke and motioned for him to take care closing it. Again, the door creaked.
They crept through one corridor after the next, with no sign of anyone living – there were only the dead, still in their beds or collapsed on the floor.
Scott took another flight of stairs up. The stairwell echoed, no matter how lightly he tried to tread.
The corridor on the next floor was colourful, decorated with paintings of cartoon characters. Scott continued through two sets of double doors. There was a different feeling on this floor: a warmth
or presence in the air. Scott glanced back to Luke, signalling to be wary. They passed two wards before reaching another set of doors. Hunched over, Scott pushed open the door enough to edge through. Luke followed. Scott waited and closed his eyes, listening.
He could hear breathing.
Moonlight shone through the large windows at the end of the ward.
He looked around the corner into the ward at the end of the corridor. Rows of beds, with a person lying in each one. Scott squeezed Luke’s shoulder, then raised a finger to his own lips. They waited. There was no movement, only the sound of deep breathing. Finally, Scott stood and tiptoed quickly into the ward. Rows of sleeping women. At the end of the row were two men, one of them Luke’s friend – the old man, Saul. Luke stood over him. Scott walked along the beds. Each held a young woman, some of them heavily pregnant. He found Dawn – still pregnant. Next to her bed was a metal pole holding a bag of clear solution, a tube threaded into her arm.
Luke held Dawn’s arm, about to take out the needle.
‘Wait,’ Scott whispered.
Dawn looked peaceful, content.
‘We need to think,’ Scott said. ‘We’re waking her up, bringing her out of it?’ He examined Dawn’s features, her eyes flickering behind her eyelids. ‘What if they gave her the other drug and she’s in hell?’
Luke stared at her. ‘She looks happy.’
Scott nodded. ‘She does.’ He looked for clues in the faces of the other sleeping women in the room.
‘We have to wake her,’ Luke said.
Scott shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He held Dawn’s forearm and turned it to show the needle threaded beneath her skin. He followed the tube, up to the plastic bag hanging from the drip stand.
‘What about the rest of them?’ Luke asked.
‘We can’t do anything for them,’ he said, looking at each one in turn. ‘Not yet.’
Luke crept closer to the bed.
Scott held the tape that secured the cannula needle against Dawn’s arm and peeled it from her skin.
‘God forgive us,’ Luke said.
Scott waited, his finger and thumb holding the tube above the needle. Gently, he pulled the cannula out of her arm. A speck of blood bloomed from her skin, rising into a bead that fell onto the white sheet.
