End of Gray Skies: An Apocalyptic Thriller

by Brian Spangler

  From a shallow pocket in his coveralls, Declan revealed the black nub of his only writing stone. He paused; his guessing of cleanings stopped. Huffing out a sigh, he gazed around the room to see if anyone had noticed. He’d been writing again—more than usual—and now he had only enough writing stone to get through the day.

  I can’t ask for more, he thought, but then shook his head and considered borrowing, or maybe trading. But what do I have to trade?

  Declan felt the familiar touch of a hand on his back, and a petite ball of fingers appeared just below his elbow. It was Sammi Tate, and almost at once, his heart swelled. He couldn’t help himself. He leaned into her touch as she opened her other hand to reveal nearly half a piece of writing stone.

  “Here, take some of mine,” she whispered.

  “Thanks. I’ll be more careful—” he started to say, but was cut off by her hushed laugh.

  “No you won’t, but I don’t mind,” she finished, and lifted her open palm. Declan placed his hands around hers to take the writing stone. But rather than turn around, he held her hand. When Sammi closed her fingers on his and squeezed, his heart swelled a little more.

  They were both so young once: innocent and pure, unknowing of the world in which they lived. He still remembered the day that she had first walked into their classroom, clumsy and awkward, like one of the newborn goats from the farming floor. Back then, he supposed that they had both been like that. But in the ten years she’d sat behind him, time had transformed her into a young woman; and to Declan, she was perhaps the most beautiful person in this glum, gray world of theirs. He’d sometimes catch himself staring into her green eyes, stopping only when she’d spill out a nervous laugh, or stick out her tongue to tease him before turning away.

  Sammi Tate was different. Her skin was as white as the chalky writing on the blackboard, almost radiant. Next to the darker complexion of his own hands, her delicate fingers shined bright and beautiful. But it wasn’t just Sammi’s skin that captivated him: it was her hair, too: fire red, like a flame.

  It’s an anomaly, Ms. Gilly once told the class. She spat the words after the children had begun teasing Sammi. Sammi was just six or seven at that time, and the older children had pounced on her with their mockery and cruel words, leaving her to stand in front of the class, crying. Ms. Gilly was quick to scold the class, in an attempt to smother the heckling.

  In their Commune, and in all of the neighboring Communes, nobody had ever seen a person with fair skin or red hair. Virtually everyone shared the same brown hair, brown eyes, and dark skin.

  Amid Sammi’s sniffles, Ms. Gilly explained to the class that after the world had changed—after the accident—people had slowed down. Travel became impossible; people just stopped. Wherever your feet were standing was the land that you would call home forever. Over the years and decades to follow, people found one another and made new families. After dozens of generations, the color of their eyes, hair, and even skin began to take on the same look. But, every now and then, their ancient traits resurfaced.

  Sammi Sunshine, Declan heard in his head. It was the name the school kids used when they teased her. Images of that first day played in his head: Sammi, as a young girl, walking across the front of the class, a large round ball of curly red hair bouncing above her with each step. Her skin seemed to glow as she passed in front of the blackboard. The only thing familiar about her was the gray coveralls she wore—the same gray coveralls that every person in the Commune wore. They came from the repurposing ward in five different sizes, but all of them had the same cut, feel, and color. Yet Sammi’s coveralls were different: she’d taken a lock of her sunny red hair and had made a small bow out of it, pinning it to the front of her coveralls. It was color; and color was different. Declan loved that she had done that.

  As Sammi walked across the classroom toward Ms. Gilly’s desk that first day, the younger children and some of the older kids quieted until the room was nearly silent. The only sound heard was that of her padded coverall shoes skidding across the floorboards. Kids with their heads down on their desks quickly sprang up, curious about the sudden silence, their faces frozen into an expression of awe. When Sammi reached Ms. Gilly and handed her a transfer parchment, Ms. Gilly’s stern expression broke. Her cheeks pushed up into a smile, and she lifted a hand to feel Sammi’s hair. Sammi hadn’t moved, nor backed away, as one might have expected her to. Instead, she returned a brilliant smile to Ms. Gilly. Declan loved that, too: he’d been so impressed that Sammi wasn’t shy, or nervous.

  “Aren’t you a ball of sunshine, Sammi?” Ms. Gilly said, and that’s when the first mention of Sammi Sunshine sounded from the back of the classroom. Then a second Sammi Sunshine stirred the air, turning both Sammi’s and Ms. Gilly’s smiles to shallow frowns. A moment later, more of the class erupted into chants of Sammi Sunshine, and an elbow nudged Declan’s side, inviting him to join in. He’d hesitated, especially when he’d seen Sammi’s trembling lips and chin. Soon after, he’d seen the first tears on her cheeks. But after another elbow nudged him, harder this time, he’d reluctantly started chanting too.

  Years later, Declan still felt a pang of guilt when recalling the hurt look in Sammi’s young eyes. It was a stupid name really, but through the years, it had stuck. Yelled from time to time, the name was always met with a quick-witted volley from Sammi, some of which Declan thought were quite excellent. She’d grown to become something beautiful in this gray world, and Declan was sometimes afraid for her. Different wasn’t always a good thing.

  Sammi pulled her hand free of his, jarring him from his old memories. The warm remains of her touch quickly went with her. Declan whispered a second thank-you in her direction. With more writing stone in hand, Declan would be able to write today. He could write the way he liked to: free of concerns and constraints. With a sullen feeling, he considered what he’d be doing later: cleaning the parchment; erasing all of the new words he’d formed into sentences that day.

  “Why bother writing at all?” he mumbled.

  But again, tonight, his charcoal words would lift from where he’d placed them. They’d mix in a flow of tepid water before running off the parchment’s frayed edges. Like so many times before, the dirtied water would carry his words down the drain and into the Commune’s waste-recycling units. How many of his words were trapped in the filters of the waste recycler? How many stories would forever be hidden away in a mash of recycling pulp and communal waste, never to be seen or read by another set of eyes? He sighed away the loss, for the freedom to write the way he liked was still his, at least for today.

  “Attention,” Ms. Gilly commanded from the front of the classroom. Declan considered the years that the stout woman had been teaching him. There was a time when she’d towered over him and his friends, back when he was younger, and she was thinner. Still, she’d had a presence that had been so large in their young eyes that often he’d feared her, and frequently he’d avoided her.

  It wasn’t until the year that he’d gotten sick and missed over two weeks of school that the fearfulness he’d held for her changed into something else. She’d appeared in his room, bringing with her a handful of parchment and a tiny pouch of sweets. Fever wet his brow, and a heavy rattle tumbled deep in his chest. There was talk that Declan had the flu, which terrified his parents. If word of his sickness spread, his dwelling would come under guard. But Ms. Gilly challenged the Commune floor advisors, telling them that they were overreacting. Unlike others, she hadn’t been afraid to enter his dwelling. She told them that she’d seen the flu firsthand, and that what Declan had wasn’t the flu at all. She’d smiled to his parents, and said that her favorite student would be fine.

  Declan never forgot that. Now when he looked at Ms. Gilly, there was something more… something motherly about her. And she had helped, especially in the last year, when his mother and sister had really gotten sick. They weren’t as lucky as he had been: they’d gotten the flu—and died from it. That was the second time that Ms. Gilly had
visited his home. She’d held him as he cried, and told him that it was okay, and that, in time, the pain would pass.

  But the pain never passed. It stayed with him, and on some days, he was grateful to have it. Some days, though, he struggled to remember the sounds of their voices. His seat creaked as he turned just enough to look down two rows in front of him. He found the empty desk where his sister, Hadley, had sat. Part of him was relieved that her seat remained empty, but at the same time, it was concerning.

  “Hadley sat there,” he whispered just loud enough to be heard. Hearing her name gave him a good feeling, leaving him content for today. Tomorrow might be different, but then again, tomorrow might be different for everybody in the world. After all, today was to be the End of Gray Skies.

  “Attention, class,” Ms. Gilly commanded again. The sound of chairs moving, and the hinged screeching and clunking of school desks, became rushed. The ruckus continued as everyone prepared for the day, and then the noise slowed to a few stragglers before stopping. As Ms. Gilly began to speak, one last clunk of a heavy desktop turned her eyes. As she approached the source, young Rick Toomey went about his business, rummaging inside his desk, preparing a writing parchment. Ms. Gilly stared at the boy, but Rick Toomey continued, unaware that he was holding up the class. With her eyebrows raised, Ms. Gilly waited. It was only when the room had completely quieted that Rick Toomey at last took notice. When his upturned face met Ms. Gilly’s, he blushed and forced a smile while the rest of the class let out a laugh. Ms. Gilly chortled once, raising her hand to her mouth.

  “If you weren’t so darn cute…” she started, and then brushed her thick fingers through his hair before returning to the front of the class.

  “Does anyone know what day today is?” Her voice sang out over the class. The room was silent again.

  “Anyone?” she repeated, rocking up on her toes and then back down.

  “It’s the End of Gray Skies,” the class answered. A few voices trailed off, and then hushed amid giggles and the clapping of a few hands.

  “And can anyone tell me what that means?”

  Declan shrank back into his chair. To his surprise, young Rick Toomey bolted up out of his seat. He wore an anxious toothy grin, and turned to speak directly to the class.

  “The End of Gray Skies is when the five Oceanic-VAC-Machines will change our Earth back to the way it was.” He finished with a stern nod.

  “Thank you, Rick. That is correct,” Ms. Gilly said, motioning for the boy to sit. “Now, who can tell me why? Why is this of interest to us?”

  Ms. Gilly’s eyes crawled across the room, searching for someone. Declan shrank back down, trying to make himself smaller, trying to avoid being called on. Ms. Gilly’s hand lifted, and jabbed at the air, as if counting the number of students in front of her. Declan pushed until the chair creaked, catching her ear. When she turned to the sound, her eyes settled on him, and her finger stopped bouncing. She grinned at him, satisfied with her selection.

  “How about you, Declan? What can you tell the class about the End of Gray Skies? Wait…” she paused with her finger still in the air. “Actually, I want you to first tell the class about Gray Skies. What happened?”

  Silence; Declan hesitated, and didn’t say a word. He felt a tiny jab on his back and heard Sammi laugh teasingly. She punched him again, hard enough this time to bump him forward. Declan straightened his back, and then stood.

  “Come up here, so that everyone can hear you,” Ms. Gilly said, slapping a hand against her hip.

  “Go on, Dicklan, go on, now,” a voice from the back row teased.

  “Don’t mind them,” Sammi comforted. “Go ahead, you’ll do fine. You always do.”

  Nerves played in his belly and made his steps feel wobbly. When his mouth went dry, and his throat turned scratchy, he thought to go back to his seat. Maybe he could complain of a stomachache, or a headache. When he turned back, Sammi shooed him with a wave of her hands. Declan pressed forward until he found himself facing the class.

  The youngest of children sat in the front row, twiddling their fingers and hands. One child stared absently ahead, making lip-smacking noises, clapping his hand against his open mouth. Older children lined up in each row behind the first. And many of the senior students sat in the back rows, including Sammi. Although Declan was ahead of her by one year, he liked that Sammi sat behind him.

  Sammi caught Declan’s eyes, and delivered a wide smile and an encouraging nod. Even from where he stood, he could see the bounce of her red hair as she gestured her support for him. He smiled back, but it quickly faded when another voice teased from the back row. Ms. Gilly fired off a rapid series of claps to silence the hecklers.

  Once everyone settled again, Declan began to tell the tale. He spoke to the class as though he were writing one of his stories. This time, the words wouldn’t end up trapped in the filters of the waste recycler. With his voice, and through his words, he showed the class what had happened. It was a sad, but good, story.

  “Nobody knows exactly what happened. Nobody really knows what happened at all. Hundreds of years have passed since the massive Oceanic-VAC-Machines were built to fix what was broken. Five of the machines were built: one for each of the oceans. Over twenty years, thousands of people from all over the world worked together, communicating, building, and testing. They were going to save the world.

  “Whether the world actually needed saving might never be known. Some speculate that the gigantic machines were built to transform the oceans into a new energy source. Some believe they wanted to fix global warming, while others think the plan was to use the ocean to fix the Earth’s ozone layer.

  “Turning the machines on took months, but within weeks, the converted seawater rose high enough, fixing whatever was broken—or so they thought. But it also made the Earth’s air heavy; too heavy. The machines were left on, and the air continued to grow denser.

  “When they realized that the atmosphere couldn’t adjust to the changes, the scientists had to change the machines. Protection from the sun was better than before; for that, the machines worked. But at the same time, the machines were suffocating the planet.”

  “Why didn’t they just turn the machines off?” asked Stewart, a boy in the third row.

  At some point, Ms. Gilly had taken Declan’s seat in front of Sammi. She was slouched forward with her chin resting on her hands, her head lifted to listen.

  “That is a very excellent question, Stewart. Very good,” she complimented. Stewart smiled, his eyes beaming.

  “Tell us why they didn’t turn off the machines,” Ms. Gilly directed to Declan.

  Declan suddenly felt distracted, unable to remember. He glanced around the class, hoping to land on something that would help him. Ms. Gilly stood up from the chair, blocking Sammi from his view. A moment later, the round top of red hair appeared from behind Ms. Gilly’s bottom.

  Sammi mouthed the words, “They could not…”

  Declan lifted his brow and said, “Because the machines couldn’t be turned off. Well… they could, but since each of them needed months to turn back on, the scientists didn’t want to take the risk, in case they didn’t come back on at all.” Ms. Gilly turned just enough to see Sammi’s head quickly slip back behind her.

  “That’s right. Thank you,” she said, and then added, “Thank you too, Sammi.” The class let out a laugh, but then quieted again when Ms. Gilly raised her hand. She was laughing a little too. Declan was about to continue, when a skinny, pale arm sprouted from the fourth row. Before Ms. Gilly could call on the owner of the arm, Tabby Wetton began to speak.

  “Hi, Declan,” Tabby started to say, and then showed her dimples through a bashful grin. Gently biting her lower lip, she straightened.

  “What happened next? Why didn’t anyone know there was something wrong?” This part Declan remembered from the history class.

  “They did know something was wrong. The scientists said it was a side effect. But it wasn’t something anyone could see
. And, before they could stop it, the accident happened. The clouds fell from the sky, fog formed everywhere. The air had become too dense. By then, it was too late. Turning the machines off wouldn’t make a difference.”

  “But how bad did it get?” Tabby continued. “I mean, how much changed?”

  Declan considered this last part. He only knew what he’d been taught.

  “It changed everything. The fog was new to everyone. And toxic. There were stories that at first, it even killed. It was heavy with salt, choking all the machines. Cars and buses and trucks filled the roads and highways: rusted corpses. All traveling stopped. Even travel by foot became impossible. Families were separated forever. And back then, food came from somewhere else. It wasn’t like it is now, where we grow our own food in the Commune. Food was gone. Medicine was gone. It was chaos and pandemonium. And it wasn’t just the people. The animals suffered too. Birds stopped flying, died off. Thousands of species vanished. It was the end of the world. Murder, and torture, and…”

  Declan was gone. The details he’d struggled to remember were now at the ready; his mind was racing like it sometimes did when he was writing.

  “Declan!” Ms. Gilly yelled, interrupting him.

  Declan jumped. He stopped talking, and focused on Ms. Gilly.

  “Declan, thank you, I think that is enough,” she spoke in a low tone, and motioned with her hand to the front row. The third- and fourth-year students sat with wide eyes and mouths agape. Some had furrowed brows, and their lips were drawn down and trembling. Tabby stared, too. Her hand was to her mouth. Declan realized then what he’d done. He’d scared them. He looked to Sammi. Though her eyes were wide, she motioned for him to talk to them.