End of Gray Skies: An Apocalyptic Thriller

by Brian Spangler

  He spotted his mother and sister in one of these lines. Bodies naked, they moved obediently forward and stared ahead without expression. He screamed their names, but they were already too far from him to notice. He considered, then, that maybe they could hear him, but were just ignoring him. But, if that were so, he knew it was not because they had chosen to.

  At the end of their moving conveyor, there stood a robotic machine: a type of android, but bigger than Andie from their classroom. Its articulating arm swung in wide arcs, bringing a mechanical hand with rubber-tipped fingers to rest on the face of each person. He could hear the faint whirring sound of the arm as it swung around from one conveyor belt to another, alternating back and forth.

  Declan watched as a woman reached the swinging arm. As the arm swung around to touch her, he brought his hand to his cheek, remembering how his mother had touched him there. The mechanical arm stretched a rubber finger, pressing it against her skin. The graying of the woman’s skin began to quicken, starting at her temple and spiraling downward, like the moving conveyors around the cavern. When the woman’s skin had lost all color, Declan watched her body collapse in a jumble of legs and arms. Declan jumped when the floor beneath her suddenly opened and she disappeared into the cavern’s black depths.

  Declan forgot all about his fear of the cavern’s height as he counted the number of people between the machine and his mother and sister. Twenty, maybe a few more, giving him only minutes to pull them to safety. He ran from one side of the metal landing to the other, looking for anything that he could use to reach them. He found nothing. He looked back to the machine: eighteen people. Urgency spread over him like sweat as he desperately sought a way off the platform. He swung a leg over the front railing, hoisting himself up, only to drop back down undecided. The whirring sound of the machine and the collapsing of bodies thrummed in his ears. And with each swing and deathly touch, he kept a count, visualizing his family in the line. Declan realized how fast the conveyors were moving. He was losing time. Sixteen people.

  Climb the wall, he thought. It’s the only way down.

  Holding his breath, he climbed atop the railing, perching himself above the cavern’s depths. He rested all his weight on his good foot, leaving the other to help him balance on the railing. Fourteen people. He reached and grabbed for the wall, his hand slipping almost immediately. The walls were slick with moisture, and he struggled to hold himself. Thirteen people. He tried digging his fingertips into a fissure, attempted to grip its stony edge and shift his weight to his arms.

  Declan found a small lip in the rock face and took hold, shuffling a few hands away from the platform; he was climbing, attached to the cavern wall like the metal landings. Eleven people. The rocky wall gave little for him to hold on to. He found another fissure below his knee, and shoved his broken foot into the space. Sweat pestered his eyes, and he fought the urge to wipe them. The threat of falling brought on an overwhelming nausea that wetted his mouth and closed his throat. A jagged shard stabbed into the tops of his fingers, splitting one of them open and prying up a fingernail until it broke away. Nine people.

  He’d rested too much of his weight on his fingers, and his hold on the wall broke. Declan sucked in a breath, and lost most of his grip. All of his weight fell to his injured foot, with only three fingers clutching the rocky lip. His body swung outward, opening up to face the depths below. Shutting his eyes to squeeze the sweat from them, Declan pushed his broken foot around, resting his heel in the opening. When the fissure held, he shifted more of his weight to his heel.

  Looking to the conveyer closest to him, he judged the distance and wondered if he could jump. Seven people. His arms and legs were shaking, violently trembling beneath his coveralls. He wasn’t going to make it. He tried to ignore his quivering muscles as he looked again at the closest conveyer. If he jumped, he’d fall off, he was sure of it. He might land on the conveyor, but he’d tumble over into the chasm below. Six people.

  I can make it, he thought desperately, and then looked over to the metal landing, apprehension eroding his hopes.

  Declan made his way back, dropping down onto the landing. The crisp sound of ringing metal echoed off the cavern’s far wall. He searched past the floor’s metal grating, through the mesh of raised steel triangles. Choking on his breath, and knowing that he couldn’t save them, he counted anyway. Four people. Surrendering, he felt insignificant, lacking and small, like a salt-gnat in the massive cavern. Three people. Declan collapsed onto his belly, pressing his face into the metal as he poked his fingers through the grated holes. Tears came to his eyes, giving in to gravity, just as he had given in moments before. Two people remained in front of his mother and sister. He held onto the grate, calling out their names, telling them that he loved them, apologizing in sorrowful heaves for having abandoned his attempts to save them. One person.

  Declan’s mother and sister stood quietly, never looking up to see who had been calling out to them. Instead, they calmly followed the last remaining person in front of them.

  Declan was winded from his attempts to get off the platform, and his breathing remained heavy, leaving warm drops on the metal floor, like the moisture that blanketed the walls. The cavern is breathing, too, he thought wildly. He wanted to turn away, to hide his eyes, but he didn’t.

  Hadley was first. She advanced on the moving floor, stopping at the machine. Declan fixed his eyes on his sister while the articulating arm swung around, welcoming her with a whirring whisper. It extended a finger and touched her temple—and as he’d seen happen with the others, all the remaining color in her body drained away, until finally she collapsed, lifeless. Declan cried, hating the sound of his helpless whimper. His crying turned to sobbing when it was his mother’s turn. Again, he forced himself to watch, owing it to her, owing it to the both of them, for having failed to save them. Only when his mother’s body fell from the conveyor did he finally shut his eyes. He wasn’t blind to this, not the deeper insides of the VAC Machine.

  When he finally brought himself to face the nightmare he’d witnessed, he saw for the first time how many bodies there were. There wasn’t just the single corridor from the lobby: every floor had a similar corridor feeding the cavern, just as their room’s corridor fed the great lobby. It was a labyrinth of moving conveyors twenty or more levels deep, each separated by hundreds of hands. Rolling onto his back, he closed his eyes and felt an errant tear race down the side of his face. He stayed there for a while, listening to the mechanical arms swinging back and forth, delivering their deadly touch. He listened to the crumbling of fallen arms and legs, and then to the sickening sound of flesh sliding off the conveyor belts toward the black depths. In his mind, he saw a tangle of bodies piling up at the bottom of the cavern, like a fleshy hillside of blank faces and empty eyes jutting out in every direction. He hoped to hear a scream, just once, but he never did.

  The dead don’t scream, he thought, and felt hysteria rising in him.

  He pushed the madness down when, somewhere in the distance, he heard another mechanical sound. It was a churning, and a thump thump thump: a machine-driven grind that repeated without pause. As he focused, listening to the new sound, it became louder and clearer, overpowering the whooshing and whirring of the death-touch arms. The sound began in the blackness, where the bodies had fallen to, crept up the muggy walls, and reverberated over the moving conveyers. Declan swallowed hard, beginning to understand what the cavern was, what it was for; what it did.

  The VAC Machine was eating.

  19

  ISLA HAD TO STOP and rest. Panting, she sat back onto her heels and leaned against a panel of sheet metal. She pressed her cheek to the cool steel as beads of sweat fell into her eyes, stinging them. She was already exhausted; her heart pounded and she gulped at the air, wishing she’d brought some water with her. She’d never been an active person—her days were filled with simple lab work—and crawling on her hands and knees through an air duct definitely wasn’t lab work.

  H
ave I gone far enough? As she rested, her arms and legs stayed eerily busy: trembling, as if repulsed by what she was doing.

  She wanted to laugh at the crazy idea that she’d come up with. But of course, it wasn’t crazy—not at first, anyway. For months, she’d worked in her lab, synthesizing rare earth compounds, listening to the mechanical churn going on behind the mysterious steel door. From time to time, she’d hitch up onto her toes, looking inside to see the mechanized orchestra of swinging arms and dancing blood vials. Not once had she seen a drop or slip: only order and perfection.

  But then one day, while watching, she’d seen something new for the first time. It was small, and tucked away in the shadows of the blood vault’s corner. Isla widened her eyes, stretching high onto the tips of her toes. She’d found a clue. And that clue had led to an idea: a crazy idea.

  At once she recognized what was in the corner: a vent cover. And where there was one vent cover, there were more. Isla studied the walls and the ceiling, imagining ductwork passages hidden behind them. Ventilation systems had been a favorite for her and Nolan. They’d explored most of the aging ductwork in their Commune’s building. Pitted white from the salty air, the vent covers appeared seemingly out of nowhere—once they knew to look for them, that is. But when word had gotten out, the ductwork had become a playground for other kids, too: a dangerous playground. Soon, deafening thunder rumbled through their building, brought on by untethered hands and knees racing through the tunnels, like rats in a maze.

  Isla wondered if the same were true here: did ductwork connect the blood vault to her lab? She’d set her eyes through the small portal window, following from the rear corner, across the far wall, and into her lab. Within minutes, she’d found another vent cover under a lab table. The cover was outfitted with simple spring clips, and had easily popped off the wall. At one point she’d ducked out from under the table, glancing up at the lights: the glass bulbs stayed dark and empty, uninterested. She’d peered into the vent shaft: the hope was that she could make her way across her lab, through the wall, and into the blood vault. What she’d do once inside, she wasn’t sure about. Maybe she’d read what was written on the vials? Or maybe she’d take one, and analyze it?

  An explosion echoed inside the vent, startling Isla from her resting spot in the warren of ductwork. She must have started to fall asleep, because the sheet metal was humid from her breath. Isla looked at the condensation and used her finger to draw a circle, poking two dots for eyes. She finished the artwork with an upturned curve for a smile. She grinned back at the face, but soon the moisture dripped a crooked path, cutting through the smile. And as she moved to wipe the face away, another explosion echoed. When she realized the source of these “explosions,” she began to laugh, and had to cup her hand over her mouth. She was the source: she was buckling the sheet of metal beneath her whenever she shifted her weight.

  “I guess that means I’d better get a move on,” she told the smiley face. Isla waited for a reply, then gave the face a quick swipe with her palm. Turning, she spied the soft light at the end of the ventilation shaft. Long yellow fingers stretched through the room’s vent cover, casting light from the blood vault into the ductwork. She crawled toward it, following the familiar hum of the mechanical arms. As she listened to them singing, she could imagine the jointed tubular limbs racing across the room, picking up and putting down the blood vials. When her hand broke the first beam of light, Isla stopped. She waited: for an alarm to sound, for an objection to be voiced. When she heard nothing, and a mechanical arm swung across the face of the cover, all hesitation went away, and curiosity won her over.

  Isla could see farther into the blood vault than she ever had through the small window—and now she could smell it, too. It was sterile: utterly absent of all traces of… anything. Her heart beat hard, and she rushed to remove the vent cover, only to find that it was stuck. She gave the cover a firm shove, pushing on the backside of the louvers. They bowed, groaning against her hand. An anxious feeling came to her and she began to wonder if her travels through the ventilation had been for naught. What if the vent cover doesn’t come loose?

  Isla balled her fist, frustrated. She punched at one of the corners. Nothing. She punched the cover again and heard a spring clip popping free. Relieved, a smile crept onto her cheeks. With one corner loose, she wedged her fingers in, and wriggled them along the edge. The cover jarred open, but its metal edge had a sharp lip which assaulted her for her impropriety. At once, she reeled back, staring at the cut on her hand. Had she grown so tolerant of sharp things that she hadn’t even noticed?

  “How careless.” She let out a laugh that sounded tinny in the ventilation shaft.

  She studied the wounds: four slits spread across the meaty part of her fingers. One of the cuts was a deep gash, and had begun to bleed over, spattering onto the vent, a dull tick echoing with each drop. A sudden wave of nausea caught her breath, and she had to turn away. She huffed out the air in her lungs and began looking around, finding nothing to wrap her hand with. Shaking her head, she tore a piece of her coveralls, quickly tying off a tattered knot around the cut. Isla was quiet then, breathing more steadily. A cool sweat beaded above her lip, and across the back of her neck.

  Turning her attention back to the blood vault, she freed the vent cover and worked to bring it into the airshaft. Her makeshift bandage had become sopping wet, causing the cover to slip from her hand. It tumbled onto its corner, then landed with a heavy metal-on-metal clang. She cringed as the sound reverberated in the airshaft for anyone to hear. Isla froze in place, gripping the cover, feeling the vibration ride up into her hands.

  She listened, waiting to hear the approach of footsteps. She waited for an alarm to scream out, or maybe the holler of voices. But there was only silence, and the subtle push of air coming through the vent. The gentle flow washed over her, cooling the nervous sweat. Closing her eyes, she listened to the hum and whir of motors driving the mechanical arms. When she was ready, Isla stretched her arms through the opening, and then carefully pulled her middle and legs through.

  Blood oozed around the makeshift bandage, and her thoughts went to the first-aid box hanging on the wall in her lab. She turned toward the blood vault door, seeing it for the first time from the inside. The bleeding continued, but had slowed some.

  The cut’s not going to stay closed, she conceded. She was disappointed. Her trip to the blood vault was going to have to be cut short.

  Another whoosh of air circled around her as a suspended mechanical arm rode by on a narrow track in the ceiling. The arm turned on its knobby elbows, picked up a vial and then placed it back down. Isla tilted her head, impressed. She turned again, growing curious, and approached the shelves that she’d been staring at for months.

  These are filled with blood, she told herself as she nudged one of the vials. The crimson liquid in the vial shimmered from her touch, and then settled.

  But there was more: each vial was marked. She thought of the green and black terminal next to her desk, and the phosphor glyphs displaying the lab’s inventory. Everything—every material she’d ever used in the lab—was listed. Could she use the terminal to decipher the numbers on the vial?

  Isla turned the vial and found a name. It was just the first initial, though, followed by a last name. But it was a clue. This vial belonged to M. Stephens. Below the name, she found a staggered set of lines, stretching across the label. She shook her head, unable to understand the bottom part of the label. Nothing in her lab resembled these symbols—she knew just numbers and names, like sodium and peroxide and sulfates.

  Isla picked up the vial, wanting to see more. She needed to study it—to learn. The glass was colder than she’d expected. The blood was dark and seemed less alive somehow, looking nothing like the fresh blood seeping through her bandage.

  “It’s the base,” she mumbled, and then looked to the vial’s rack. “The base of the rack keeps the blood cold, preserving it.” A rush of air lifted her hair, startling her, and
, without even needing to turn, Isla knew that one of the mechanical arms had come to her side. Another rush of air came from behind her, along with a mechanical whistle of motors that grew loud, and then quieted to a purr, waiting.

  Isla didn’t know what to do. Her heart was racing again, and her skin grew clammy. The mechanical arms were waiting for her. But waiting for what? She turned towards the ventilation shaft, only to be blocked by one of the arms. If they wanted her to leave, then why wouldn’t they let her go? She let out a small gasp when seeing that the walls and ceiling were bare. No lights to watch her.

  A true silence, she thought and wondered if there were more rooms like this one.

  The mechanical arms continued to surround her, swinging from her side, to her front, and then back again. They moved close enough for her to smell their greasy lubricants and hear chunky metal gears spinning. Isla jumped again, letting out a shallow yelp, when one of the arms swung in front of her face. It extended its rubber tips, and then snapped its jaws closed. The jaw opened, and she could see a long syringe that was used to extract the blood from the vials.

  “Don’t you stab me with that!” she yelled. And as if it had heard her, the hand collapsed shut, slapping its rubber tips together—but then opened them again. Isla felt warm tears filling her eyes. She shook her head, trying to hold them back. A tear fell, dropping to her cheek, and she pleaded to be let go. The arms swung around her again, opening and snapping shut their rubber fingertips. She became certain that the last thing she’d see was the long needle piercing her eye.

  Then all at once, the mechanical hands began clapping, swaying up and down in a nightmarish dance. She shut her eyes, squeezing until her face hurt, afraid of what was coming.

  When something nudged her hand, she peered down. What she saw surprised her. The arm closest to her had moved to the vial that she was holding. When the fingers nudged her hand again, she understood. Images of the farming floor came to her mind then. Nolan loved eggs, and nothing was better than the freshest browns the farming floor had to offer. “Fresh from the hen’s bottom,” he’d say; but, on occasion, the hens didn’t agree. Reaching beneath their feathered hold, he’d pulled out one or two eggs, kissing them with a hungry smile. She’d always thought that kissing them was a bit gross. Most times, the hens didn’t care, but on occasion, there were the one or two that would fret and peck at Nolan’s hand, even jumping up to take chase.