by Mark Lingane
She blinked. Her mind was struggling with something. The sun was heading down toward the horizon and the light was reflecting off different objects, but something about the horizon struck her as very odd. She closed her eyes.
“Chambers, what’s that building?” She pointed toward a hazy image.
“What building?”
“The black one, about eight stories tall. It’s in pretty bad shape. I’m having trouble remembering what it was.”
“I can’t see it.”
She sighed. “Sit behind me and look down my arm.”
Hanson wiggled forward on the car hood and slipped in behind her. He craned forward and looked at where she was pointing.
“Can you see …” She turned to look at him, the receding sun catching his chiseled features. Chamber’s strong musk hit her. Her breath caught as she stared into his eyes.
He glanced at her before peering along her arm. “Oh, yeah, I see it now. That’s the old … er, you know, the old …” He paused, struggling to recall. “This is ridiculous. I’ve walked past it heaps of times.”
He slipped off the hood, keeping his eyes on the building. He pursed his lips and stared at the distant structure. The image was difficult to maintain with the sun falling behind it.
“I’d make a crack about you being old if I wasn’t getting the same feeling.”
He gave her a smile. “Let’s check it out.”
Scrambling through the ruins took them the best part of an hour before they reached the base of the building. Closer, it looked worse. Great chunks of it were missing, but it had defied the odds and remained erect, while all around had collapsed.
“One lucky building,” Chambers said.
The sun’s rays were reflecting off the broken windows and exposed steel beams. They forced their way through the twisted doors into a cavernous entrance two stories high. Expansive black marble floors stretched out before them, holding nothing but fallen debris. Three shiny elevators on the left stood open.
“One empty building,” Chambers said. He made his way over to the elevators and looked inside. There were no buttons. They were steel vaults. He quickly stepped away from the eerie structures.
“Are they any good?” Hanson called out.
Chambers shook his head. “I wouldn’t trust them. Take the stairs.”
Hanson groaned. “I didn’t bring my stair-climbing legs.”
“Come on,” he said, heading toward the fire escape. “The quicker we do this, the quicker we’re out of here.”
The ugly concrete stairs were dark and dusty, and showed one set of footprints. A heavy vegetable musk emanated from the walls. Several steps up, a thick green moss grew on the walls. As Hanson moved toward them, the air seemed to thicken. The moss writhed and slithered, as though insects were crawling through it. She reached out, feeling a strange draw from the bizarre material. Her eyes swirled and she could have sworn the moss reached out for her.
The fire door slammed closed below them, snapping her out of the hypnotic draw, leaving them in relative darkness. She continued up the stairwell.
“I’m getting a weird feeling,” she said. “I feel dizzy. Every time I take a step it’s like I’m stepping up onto nothing; my stomach really doesn’t like it.”
“Yeah, I feel it, too. Maybe there’s something in the air that’s giving us a kind of vertigo. It smells like new paint.”
“We’d better keep close,” she said.
They scrambled up the stairs, feeling their way in the dark.
“Keeping close doesn’t mean you need to keep touching me, especially there.”
“Sorry,” he said. “You’re the biggest thing in front of me. Ow!”
“Have we learned anything?”
“Yes. You have a surprising and nasty kick.”
“Another piece of advice,” she said. “The moss on the walls looks bad. Best not to touch it.”
As they slowly rounded each corner, each successive stairwell became darker. The air thickened and breathing became difficult. In the gloom, Hanson’s feet began to stick to each step, and each leg-lift took increased effort. Sweat formed on her brow and started to drip. Her lungs hurt. Step by step, corner by corner, she made her way up, lost in the simple task and oblivious to everything around her.
The walls creaked. Hanson took another step up and her fear became reality. The floor shifted and fell away. She screamed as she fell forward. Her hands flailed desperately in front of her, catching the crumbling concrete. A steel rod extended out of the formwork and she snatched it with one hand, finding herself hanging precariously over an unknown depth below. She swung wildly, trying to grab on with her other hand. Chambers called out for her.
The walls above her cracked and slid down. Fragments fell and landed on her hands, and she cried out in pain as the rubble cascaded over her. One hand slipped free. Her remaining hand held tightly to the bar, which began to bend. She could feel the blood draining away, leaving her fingers numb.
“Reggie, help! I can’t hold on,” she screamed.
“I can barely see you,” he cried.
“We need some light, quick,” she shrieked, as the bar bent further. Her fingers began to slip free of the rusty metal.
“Wait.” He pulled out his phone and switched on the flash. The strong light punched into the darkness, but still felt constricted. He blinked in disbelief as he thought he saw the moss on the walls shift out of the bright light.
Assessing the distance, he leaped over the gap. He reached down, clasped Hanson’s wrists, and heaved her up. He pulled her into his arms and they fell back onto the rising stairs. They came face to face, with Hanson lying on top of Chambers and his arms around her. They stared into each other’s eyes. Time stood still.
“You had a light,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I forgot.”
“You could’ve remembered earlier.”
He sat up and she rolled off him, feeling strangely disappointed.
“This place confuses things,” he said. “I knew I had a flashlight, but I couldn’t think about anything other than the next step. I couldn’t guess how long we’ve been here.” He grabbed Hanson’s hand and pulled her up.
The air began to clear and after one more turn within the stairwell they burst out onto the rooftop and looked out over the familiar London cityscape. They both gulped in the fresh air. There was a low groan from the building. They glanced at each other.
“We’d better be quick,” Hanson said.
“Are you all right? You have some blood on your clothes.”
“I’m fine.” It occurred to her that no one had asked her that in a long time. No one had ever been concerned. He was the first.
“Are you crying?”
“It’s the dust.”
The building let out another long groan. They looked back at the stairwell. The light metal door had closed in the gentle wind. Neither of them was enchanted by the idea of descending through the disturbing building again.
“How are we going to get down?”
“How about the elevators?” Hanson said.
“You don’t want to go into those,” Chambers replied darkly. “Let’s sort it out when we need to.”
The top of the building was covered in a smooth black water-resistant resin that stretched from side to side. No barriers surrounded the perimeter, meaning they could walk off the edge if they weren’t paying attention. Satellite dishes festooned the western side of the roof, clustered around the stairwell entrance. Large steel structures containing communications or maintenance equipment were positioned on the corners. There were no labels. There was no dust or rust, but oddly, rubble was scattered across the expanse. Chambers examined the air-conditioning units. They had never been used.
“How far back can you remember this building being here?” Hanson asked.
“It’s always been here. I remember walking past it as a youngster.”
“Then why does it look so new? No one’s been in the foyer,” she said
. "You can sense that. Why has this building always been empty?”
“This place is doing my head in,” Chambers said.
“Focus. We won’t have long before the light’s gone, and who knows what will come out to play when it’s dark.”
They scoured the top of the building. Chambers found the remains of gunpowder soot on the eastern side, barely visible in the fading light, just outside an area outlined in chalk. They swept their hands over the area, searching out in wider circles.
Hanson sat back, unable to locate anything. The sun slipped below the horizon. She turned to her back to it. As the last of the light disappeared, she caught a flash of something metallic under a small steel bench. She opened her eyes wide and lunged toward the location as the object disappeared. She furiously scooped all the debris and rubbish out into the open. She shouted over her shoulder to Chambers and plunged her hands into the waste. Her fingers grazed over the familiar texture, and she smiled.
She held up the small, hard objects. Bullets.
“The parents were killed, shot from here,” she said. “And only this one building survived. Why? You can barely see the car. Who was the marksman? Why the parents?”
“What are the chances of picking the right building?”
“I’m guessing it’s statistically impossible. The marksman was either the luckiest person in the world … or knew this building wasn’t going to collapse.”
“Which is more impossible?”
“Notice anything about these bullets?”
Chambers shook his head. “Long with a red band. I don’t know what that means.”
“They’re military,” she said, “sniper bullets. Designed for range. Same as the one Chelsea showed me. A military sniper sat on this rooftop and killed two civilians at maximum range in the middle of a disaster.” She held one up to the light and twisted it in her hands, feeling the oil rub between her fingertips.
“It’s a long shot with too many variables. Surely, it’s impossible,” Chambers said.
“As impossible as a plane falling straight out of the sky?”
He shrugged. “Pretty much the same.”
She clasped her fingers around the bullet and thoughtfully stared out toward the darkening eastern sky. “Impossible things, yet they happened,” she muttered.
“So we’re wrapped up in many impossible things, and it’s not even breakfast yet.”
“What?”
“No need to worry, Alice. How do we find someone who was here?”
She glanced over at Chambers, whose eyes were shining brightly in the twilight. “Witnesses.”
They scanned the nearby buildings in the last of the evening light, all reduced to piles of rubble.
“Probably none,” Hanson said.
“Can we trace the bullets?”
“Maybe. They’re specialized and tracked as general orders. Each has a number. At least it’s something.”
“You know anyone in the military who could help us track this down?”
“Yeah, I knew people. Some may still be alive.”
Chambers traced his foot over the faint chalk line. “One is.”
The ground beneath them started to shake. A long and low groan commenced and didn’t stop, morphing into a growl as the steel began to rip apart. A crack appeared across the roof, the membrane ripping apart to reveal glowing moss underneath. The moss stretched as the crack widened, forming into long tendrils that looked like teeth. At the far end, the moss snapped with a loud crack and splattered up onto the membrane.
They looked at each other. “Run!” they both screamed.
20
THE WHOLE BUILDING was shaking. They ran to the stairwell. The metal door was closed.
“Where’s the freaking handle?” Hanson cried.
Chambers spun around and kicked heavily into the door. It shook. He kicked repeatedly, the door slowly flexing and twisting under the mighty blows. It bent.
Hanson rammed her fingers into the gap and wrenched open the door. “What the f—” Her mouth hung open. The entire stairwell was covered in moss, walls, ceiling, and floor. “It wasn’t like that before.”
The rooftop twisted and dropped fractionally, making Hanson reach out for Chambers. He grabbed her hands and pulled her close. Her terrified eyes looked up into his, defiant and strong.
“We’re going to make it,” he said.
She held him close. “Close your eyes,” she whispered.
“What was that?” Chambers said, as he stared into the dark stairwell.
“Nothing. Just something I say to myself.”
She clasped his hand, and together they ran down the stairs, the strange material snapping at them as they ran. The stairwell filled with an eerie purple light that hurt their eyes and made it impossible to judge distances. They crashed into the walls, and the moss sank into their clothes. They tried to wrench free, but the intensely adhesive plant made it difficult.
Hanson rolled along the wall, feeling the moss rip away from her. It grabbed at her skin and she felt a burning sensation. She turned and screamed as she saw a pale face coming out of the vegetation. Chambers grabbed her and yanked her free, then pulled her down the stairs. The moss clung onto her, stretching as they ran, snapping away as they rounded the next corner.
Each step down felt as insubstantial as a breath. The air became solid, burning their lungs with each desperate gasp, clouding their minds and leaving them with a solitary thought: the next step.
Chambers shouted, “Wait, something dangerous ahead. What was it?”
He stopped and grabbed at Hanson, but she slipped through his fingers. Something landed on the back of his jacket. He felt himself being pulled backward and down onto the stairs. The moss crawled up and over his shoulders onto his face. It closed over his mouth as his hands frantically searched for something to defend himself with.
Hanson’s head spun as she fought against feelings of disorientation. Fear jolted her memory. There had been something bad, but what was it? She ran on down the steps as fast as she dared, keeping clear of the moss that snapped out at her. Something was missing, and her mind tried to tell her what. She ran, step after step, corner after corner.
Steps. Something bad. Something missing. How could she have come in alone? She had to run. Run. Had to run.
One. Zero. One.
And the ground was gone. She slipped and plunged into the darkness below.
Zero.
Clinging onto a bent steel bar with grim terror, she howled with horror as faces crawled out of the wall next to her. She felt the moss reaching out, questing for her like a hungry animal.
The terror gripped her. Her mind filled with images of intense pain and she lost her bearings. In a moment of deluded decision, the future no longer held a place for her, not with her current level of pain. She let go. Her mind went blank. The walls peeled away and she felt herself suspended, afloat in a great inky pool with her arm still reaching up. The blackness above shifted and filled with tiny pinpoints of light. Stars.
Tall blue creatures, humanoid in shape, charged at her, their mouths ripped open wide, exposing razor-sharp metal teeth. Fire burned at her wrist, a pain so intense it seared through as though her arm had been severed. Tears streamed down her face.
Down below lay a wasteland, a war zone so destroyed that nothing grew. Hunched creatures scavenged among the dead world. Directly below her swirled a pool, a great black circle in the earth, sucking in everything around it, a black hole snatching the life from the universe. It twisted and grew, a living black hole.
Blue creatures hacked at her body, ripping it apart, biting with their metallic teeth, filling her with such agony she wished she were dead. She screamed and screamed. Her body was shaking uncontrollably. And she was falling again.
Then a bright white light filled her eyes. Her surroundings faded in.
Chambers was shaking her. “Tracy, come out of it.” He shone the light in her eyes. She focused and the abject terror faded. She leaped fo
rward and clutched at him, shaking in his arms.
The building shook. Chambers swung the light around, keeping the moss at bay and revealing a door to one side. He kicked at it until it swung open. They charged out onto a large empty floor. The windows were cracking and falling away from the building, and the floor shook unrelentingly as sections of roof smashed down. Blue-white faces came screaming out of the air and swirled around them. A chunk of the ceiling landed directly in their way, forcing them toward the elevators. One stood open, waiting, shining in the gloom.
Chambers pulled up and took off in a new direction, but another piece of ceiling fell, forcing them back again. Thin green smoke filled the floor, making them cough. Only one exit remained. They backed into the elevator. The doors slammed shut. Hanson turned to the controls. There were none, just an empty metal sheet.
The elevator shook and went black. Hanson sniffed. The air began to smell heavily of the sickly sweet vegetation from the stairwell. Chambers fumbled with his phone. The light shone over the doors, and the moss crawling in through the cracks receded. The light started to dim and flicker. The moss started to crawl back in. The light faded to a soft glow.
Hanson glanced up. A trapdoor. They exchanged a wordless look. Chambers dropped his phone and clasped his hands together. He lifted her up. She smashed up at the trapdoor, and it pinwheeled up and out. She clasped the edges and clambered up onto the top of the elevator.
“Give me your hand.” She reached down toward him.
He jumped up and grabbed her arm, but she didn’t have the strength to pull him up. He let go and waved her away.
“Reggie, what are you doing?”
“You go.”
“I’m not leaving you behind.”
The phone’s light went out, leaving them in darkness. The sucking and slithering of the crawling moss filled the elevator shaft.
Hanson stood up, feeling for the cables. Her hands wrapped around the thick, oily strands. “I don’t know what your game is, building,” she called out, “but you’re not taking him. Not from me.” She found the release and snapped the lever up. The elevator plummeted.
