Eschaton - Season One

by Kieran Marcus

  “Mrs. Morgan?” he called towards the shed, carefully taking one step after another towards the door. “Mrs. Morgan, are you in there?”

  As expected, there was no reply.

  When he reached the shed, Nathan took one hand off his machine gun and slowly pushed the door open with a creak. Through the whirled-up dust, bright sunlight fell on the pale face of Shiva Morgan who was standing in the middle of the shed, the gun in her hand pointing at her head.

  “Don’t come closer,” she said.

  Nathan had been a soldier for only eight months, but his lack of experience—he’d never had to deal with someone brandishing a firearm before—was made up for by the fact that he still had a very clear recollection of his training. Rule number one when dealing with an armed opponent was that you didn’t take any chances. No matter if that gun was pointed at the floor, at the sky, or at the other person’s head, and no matter if that other person was a thug, a toddler, or a frail old woman, every little moment of hesitation, every little sign of insecurity could be the one you wouldn’t have time to regret. Rule number two was that no matter who your opponent was, you had to make it clear beyond any reasonable doubt that you were the one in charge and that you would shoot to kill if you had to, even if you were just a scrawny nineteen-year-old who had never fired a gun at a living thing before.

  His finger on the trigger, Nathan raised his machine gun to his face and pointed it at Shiva’s head.

  “Drop your weapon!” he shouted in the loudest, manliest no-bullshit voice he could muster. “Drop your weapon now or I will shoot you!”

  Shiva sneered. “Really? Is that supposed to scare me? I mean, look at me, for God’s sake, I’m pointing a gun at my own head. Do you really think I’m afraid of a bullet? Go on then, shoot me already, so I don’t have to do it myself.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Nathan said, still loud and assertive but in a tone he hoped was less aggressive and intimidating. “I’m here to help you, but I need you to drop your weapon!”

  Shiva slowly shook her head as her eyes glazed over and she looked at the floor. “You can’t help me, dear. No one can.”

  Behind him, Nathan heard Hengst cry. He couldn’t risk taking his eyes off Shiva, but he hoped Lyra would keep her distance. Shiva was clearly distressed and in a very fragile mental state. Nathan wasn’t sure if a freaked out daughter and a crying grandchild could do anything to improve the situation.

  “Ma’am,” he said calmly, “we don’t have much time. We have to evacuate you because in a few hours there will be fire raining from the sky. We have to get you to safety. I’m not sure if you understand this, but the world as we know it ends today, and however much will be left of your problems after the firestorm, I’m sure there will be a solution. Things will look very, very different on the other side of tonight.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?” Shiva said. Some of the tension left her body, but she kept the gun pointed at her head. “You don’t know anything.”

  “Then help me. Help me understand. You have a daughter. You have a grandson. They both need you. Tomorrow they will need you more than ever before. How could you abandon them?”

  “I killed him,” Shiva said in a low voice.

  Nathan needed a moment to process that information. She killed him? Whom? The only person that was obviously missing from the Morgan family picture the way it presented itself to Nathan was …

  “Your husband?”

  “I killed his dream,” Shiva said. “I withdrew our application from the Exodus Lottery because I didn’t want us to go. Then he killed himself.”

  “Your daughter said it was an accident.”

  “Bless her,” Shiva said. “She doesn’t know. And she must never know. It would kill her, too. My husband had to make it look like an accident or his life insurance wouldn’t have paid us a penny. He never would have been so stupid to accidentally blast himself into space.”

  Little of what Shiva said made any sense to Nathan. Blast himself into space? Had her husband been an astronaut then? Apparently. Nathan knew there had been fatal accidents during the construction of the Project Exodus ark-ships, about two dozen of them. Could one of them have been a suicide that had been made to look like an accident? Possibly, and it would have been nearly impossible to find out. The ark-ships had been built under extreme pressure, and nobody would have had an interest to waste precious time and money on a lengthy investigation into a potential suicide. And now it was too late. The ark-ships had departed almost two years ago and were on their way to the stars while the people left behind on Earth were dealing with problems of their own—which reminded Nathan why he was here. His job was to evacuate the people living in this house, and he was running out of time. If he couldn’t convince Shiva to come with him now, he would have to leave her behind, but that would prompt Lyra to stay behind with Hengst as well. Forcing them at gunpoint to evacuate was a direct violation of Nathan’s orders. Space was limited at the emergency shelter, and so were food and water going to be after the impact. Citizens had the right to be evacuated, but not the obligation. Everyone who decided to fend for themselves without straining the limited government resources for Project Nidus was welcome to do so. If Nathan wanted to convince Shiva to go with him, he needed a better argument than his machine gun.

  “Ma’am,” Nathan said, reverting to his no-bullshit voice, “we don’t have time for this. If you want to keep your secret, you will drop your weapon now and come with me. If you shoot yourself, I will tell your daughter about your secret. If you point that gun at me, I will shoot you and tell your daughter about your secret. It’s your choice, and you have to make it now!”

  Shiva frowned and tilted her head to the side like a dog wondering what that silly human was talking about. Then she said, “Fuck you! Who do you little turd think you are that you can come into my house and get involved in my family business? Get the fuck out!”

  “Ma’am, I’m Private First Class Nathan James. I’m with the National Guard of the state of Massachusetts, and I’m here to evacuate you in preparation of the impact of the Fat Boy meteor. I will now take your gun, and then I’ll take you, your daughter, and your grandson to the emergency shelter.”

  He took a small step forward. That’s when Shiva pulled the trigger.

  Nathan’s perception of what happened slowed down to a near halt. Reality around him warped into a mind-field of images so disturbing in their clarity, so terrifying in their impact that they would remain etched into his memory for the rest of his life. Later, during his psychological debriefing, he would recall how he saw the bullet leave the barrel of Shiva’s gun. He’d remember how it glistened in the morning sun as it traveled the short distance between the muzzle and Shiva’s head. He’d recall how he heard the sound of Shiva’s skull splinter as the bullet bored its way into it, how Shiva’s eyes remained fixed on his as the bullet made its way through her brain, how it reemerged on the other side, bursting her skull wide open. Her blood and brain tissue seemed to sparkle in the bright sunlight like fireworks before they splattered the grimy window pane, and the painful, deafening ringing in his ear that he thought had been caused by the sound of the gunshot turned out to be the agonizing, high-pitched wail of Lyra as she realized what had just happened.

  As Shiva’s lifeless body collapsed and slumped to the dirty floor of the shed, Nathan turned his head to look at Lyra. She was still standing by the back door of the house, clutching on to Hengst in her arms who was crying in fear at the unprecedented, terrifying distress of his mother. Her eyes shut and full of tears, her mouth wide open as she released her pain in agonizing screams towards the heavens, she swayed as if she were desperately trying to regain her footing on the floor that had just been pulled from under her feet. Slowly, having let go of his machine gun that was now dangling at his side, hanging from the strap around his neck, Nathan walked towards her. She didn’t resist as he took the crying boy from her. Instead, she leaned in to him, her shaking body lookin
g for support and comfort. Nathan put his arm around her reluctantly and with a guilt-ridden conscience, but the moment he touched her, she gave in to his awkward embrace, pressing her face against his chest, sobbing and crying.

  “All right,” Nathan said in a low voice. “It’s time to go before the sky starts falling.”

  Tightening his grip around her shoulder ever so slightly, he slowly led her back into the house.

  1.9 Tetra

  NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, ENGLAND – APRIL 29, 2137

  The power going out for good was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. Not that Tetra had ever seen a camel—not in real life anyway. He had seen photos and videos of camels, and in biology class he had learned that if they were really thirsty, camels could drink two hundred liters of water in three minutes. But he had never seen a camel with a broken back, and he wondered if anybody had actually ever put so much straw on a poor camel’s back that it broke, or if this was just one of those proverbs that tried to convey a certain meaning without actually having any truth to them. Like ‘All roads lead to Rome’. That couldn’t be true, could it? Tetra knew plenty of roads that didn’t lead anywhere near Rome. Stamford Road, for example, led from Stanion to Geddington and then on to Kettering. The M1 led from Leeds all the way down to London, where it ended. So, all roads clearly didn’t lead to Rome, and even the ones that still used to lead to the eternal city a week ago now only led to her ruins. Tetra shuddered as he remembered the TV footage of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica blown to smithereens in a three-hundred-and-eighty-kilometer-per-hour air blast caused by the impact of the Fat Boy meteor in the North African desert. He shook his head once again at the cynical name. Fat Boy, like the synergy of the two nuclear bombs deployed in World War II—Little Boy and Fat Man—the greatest destructive force man had ever unleashed upon his fellow men, yet nothing compared to what the universe could do to a whole planet in the blink of an eye.

  Tetra tried the radio one more time. He switched it on, off, and on again, but the device’s display remained dark, its speakers silent. His feelings about this were ambiguous. Up until now, he had listened to the radio only for a couple of minutes every morning and evening, because it was too depressing to listen to the radio all day. There was no music and nothing you’d call entertainment. All there was were endless news bulletins, and those were not terribly edifying, nor did the situation seem to be going anywhere. The main news that the BBC kept repeating over and over was that human civilization had been dealt a major blow, and that once you removed all the basic frameworks people used to build their daily lives around, it took very little for society to slip back into pre-civilized savagery. It seemed that once the sky had fallen, nobody had the discipline to keep calm and carry on. But while Tetra hadn’t thought he’d miss the BBC’s daily updates of mankind’s descent into the abyss, he now realized how much comfort he had found in listening to the same human voices day in and day out. They may have been the harbingers of doom, but at least they had reminded him that he wasn’t the only person left alive. How else could he have known for sure?

  When Tetra sat up straight and swung his legs out of his bed, he found his worst fear confirmed: it was the power that had died, not just the radio. Otherwise, the motion sensors in his bedroom should have detected his movements and switched on the lights—unless he had turned the automatic off. He couldn’t remember having turned it off, nor could he think of a compelling reason why he would have done so, but almost a week into his martyrdom, Tetra found a lapsing brain much less of a daunting prospect than having to deal without electricity. His heart started beating faster, fueled by the hope that maybe it was just the radio that had died after all. It was quite an old device anyway. His dad had bought it when he’d been Tetra’s age—thirteen—at a time when dedicated radio receivers had long since gone out of fashion. Radio as an institution was alive and well, but nobody bothered with clunky radio receivers anymore. If people wanted to listen to the radio, they would use the built-in apps that came with their mobile devices or their home entertainment systems. So maybe the radio had died. And maybe Tetra couldn’t remember switching off the automatic lights because he hadn’t done it. Maybe someone else had done it for him while he was asleep. Maybe his dad had finally come home in the middle of the night. You’d think that after having gone missing for a week he’d woken Tetra up to let him know he was back and that everything was all right. But maybe he had opened the door to Tetra’s bedroom and found the sight of the boy sleeping peacefully while the world outside was descending into chaos so endearing that he had decided to leave him be and to surprise him with breakfast in the morning. Maybe his dad was downstairs in the kitchen right now, making him eggs and bacon and hot chocolate. Tetra’s stomach growled at the thought. It had been quite a while since he’d had bacon for breakfast. In joyful anticipation of a delicious breakfast and a welcoming hug from his dad he stalked barefoot across the cold floor of his bedroom to the door. He flipped the light switch—but the room remained dark. He flipped the switch again, and again, four, five, six times, but to no avail. Full of anger and disappointment, he slapped the console with his hand and uttered, “Bloody bastard!”

  Feeling bad about having used swear words, Tetra quickly reassured himself that he had meant the light switch, not his dad. He knew there probably was a good reason why his dad hadn’t come home yet. He never would have abandoned Tetra. Rather, the fact that his dad would never abandon any of his children was the very reason why he had left Tetra behind in the first place. Of course he’d come back. If he was still alive, he’d come back for him eventually.

  * * *

  “Dad! You have to come and get me! Mom has gone insane! She refuses to go to the emergency shelter! She’s with these cult people, I don’t know where! I’m all alone! I don’t know what to do! You have to come and get me! I don’t want to die!”

  Tetra had to hold the phone away from his ear. Olivia’s voice was so high-pitched and loud that it was physically painful to listen to.

  “It’s not dad,” he said. “It’s me, Tetra. Calm down a bit, will you?”

  “Get dad on the phone!” she shouted back at him. “He has to come and get me! Mom has gone insane! She’s with these cult people …”

  “All right, all right!” Tetra said as he walked down the stairs to their makeshift emergency shelter in the basement of their house. “I’m getting dad on the phone, but for heaven’s sake, stop shouting. You’re gonna get an aneurysm.”

  “… all alone! I don’t know what to do! I don’t want to die”

  Tetra sighed. Whoever was in charge of wherever it was that people went when they died, they’d probably send Olivia right back to where she came from. Nobody needed a hysterical goose stirring things up in the afterlife. He didn’t tell her that, though, because aggravating her even more in her current state of mind probably wasn’t going to help anyone. When Tetra reached the basement, his dad was busy stacking cases of bottled water in the pantry that was already filled with cans of baked beans, boxes of cereals, and other staple foods.

  “It’s Olivia,” Tetra said as he handed over the phone. “Something’s the matter, I think.”

  His dad gave him a look that was half ‘girls, eh?’ and half worried as he put the phone to his ear and said, “Olivia, sweetie, what’s …”

  Tetra looked on as his dad listened to Olivia’s incoherent rant with the phone a foot away from his ear. Eventually, he managed to get a few questions in. Questions like, ‘What did she say?’, ‘When did you last see her?’, and ‘Where are you now?’. As he listened to Olivia’s replies, he walked up the stairs and motioned Tetra to follow him. When they reached the front door and his dad grabbed his coat off the coat rack, Tetra got slightly worried. In less than twelve hours, a meteor five times the size of Kettering was scheduled to hit the Earth and put an end to civilization as they knew it. Leaving the safety of their own home at this stage had never been a part of their meticulously thought-out survival strategy, n
or should it have been. Make a plan and stick to it, and provide for all contingencies. That’s what his dad had taught him. Alas, Olivia stirring things up as the world was about to go down had never been part of any contingency plans.

  When his dad finally put the phone down, he looked at Tetra and said, “That’s it. Your mother has finally lost the last of her marbles.”

  “What happened?”

  “She joined a doomsday cult happened. Apparently she’s on her way down to Stonehenge with a bunch of nutcases to usher in the end of the Anthropocene.” Tetra wasn’t sure what that meant. “Anyway, I have to go and get your sister. She’s freaking out.”

  “Why?” Tetra asked. “They have public shelters in Kettering. Why doesn’t she just go there and we can go and pick her up when Fat Boy is over?”

  “Look, buddy.” His father put his hand on Tetra’s shoulder. “Your sister may be older than you, but she’s not very … independent. Right now she’s alone and very, very scared. Now try to put yourself in her shoes. Would you like to spend the next twenty-four hours all by yourself among thousands of strangers, or would you rather I came and picked you up?”

  Tetra sighed. “I’d rather you picked me up, I guess.”

  “There you go.”

  “I’m gonna get my coat,” Tetra said and started for the stairs, but his dad held him back.

  “No, Oliver. You stay here. I need you to go through our checklist and make sure we have everything in place. Can you do that for me?”

  He wanted to say no. He wanted to insist on not being left alone on the day the world came to an end, but he knew that whenever his dad addressed him with his real name any protest was futile. “I guess,” he said reluctantly.

  “That’s my boy. Also, I want you to grab an extra chair from the kitchen and carry it down to the shelter. And there’s a spare mattress and linens in my bedroom. Bring those down as well, unless you want to share yours with your sister tonight.”