End of Gray Skies: An Apocalyptic Thriller

by Brian Spangler

  Isla swiped at the screen, sending the source code into a black abyss. She tapped harder and faster, and Phil could sense her frustrations growing. More screens appeared, showing him that she had navigated further and deeper into what the systems engineers called the operations kernel—a central component to how the core systems functioned. “There it is,” she yelled and then clapped a hand over her mouth. “I have it, and just need to copy that over for safekeeping, and we’ll be able to get in.”

  “Which part?” he asked, distracted by the screen’s amber glow on her beautiful face. “I haven’t seen this part of the system since the original engineers worked it. What part of it are you in?”

  “I’m deep, way deep,” she answered. “You were right about the numbers. These are the location numbers to the machines. And they are also the access codes, letting me get in.”

  “Which ones?”

  “All of them,” she answered, hopping up and down in her chair, carried by the enthusiasm of her quick accomplishment. “I can even navigate to the different terminals.”

  “What?” Phil dropped one of her journals he had been holding and rolled his chair closer to the terminal’s screen. “Very impressive, I thought I knew all the moves. What can you do in there?”

  “I’m not sure about all of the terminal commands, but see this over here?” she asked and pointed at the screen. “That is the machine closest to us. And then this one over here? That is the machine furthest from us. Look at the layouts, they are identical.” Isla went on, tapping at the screen, flying through each machine, establishing a presence on them so that she could easily jump from one to the next with the tip of her finger. Phil sat back continuing to be impressed by her quickness and technical savvy.

  “Isla, what exactly do you do here?” he asked, curious to know more about her. “Isla’s fingers slowed, but she didn’t turn around. Phil saw a look of anxiety in the screen’s reflection. “I mean, you’re not like the others. Not in the least. You must be doing something that is important enough for the machine to bring you back so many times.” He picked up one of her oldest journals, plunking it back down on the table. And while her tapping resumed, he could see the reluctance reflected in her expression.

  “I analyze the ore from the mining, and then recalculate the alignments,” she finally answered. Phil understood the kind of mind she had. She was like him—maybe too much like him. As if to confirm this, she quickly added, “And I’m the best at it. I’m always the best.”

  “It looks like you’re the best at this too,” he suggested, motioning to the screen. “I’ve never been able to get this deep into the system.”

  “I had a pass,” she said jokingly. She smiled at him, trying to make him feel better. “You would have gotten as far I did if you had the numbers, too.” Her hand was on his knee as she spoke and before turning back to the screen, she winked. The flutter he experienced earlier erupted and caused his heart to skip.

  “Try accessing that machine,” he told her and realized he was starting to feel nervous. An urge to jab his leg came to him and he pushed it away, trying to stay focused, stay normal, just for a little while longer.

  “Sure thing,” she said. “Should be as simple as…” And as she touched the screen, a new view surfaced that he immediately correlated to the rooms and corridors around them. It was the master floor plan for their level. The urge to cut came again, but this time there was more pressing the need—much of it from what he had done over the centuries. He traced the outline of a corridor, guiding his finger to one of the rooms. His mouth went dry, the stain of a bad memory still fresh, still a nightmare.

  I wish I didn’t remember everything, he thought and tried to think of anything else.

  “There it is!” Isla’s sweet voice pulled him back.

  “I want to shut it down,” he said firmly. “We’re going to access all the machines and take them down at the same time.”

  “But what about the failsafe…” she began and then paused, thinking, working the complication like a puzzle. “If you stop the mining on all the machines, the failsafe can’t trip. Still, I’m not sure we can do that.”

  “Why?” he asked. “We have access.”

  And as he spoke, Isla continued moving around the labyrinth of the other machines, searching. The amber colors began to blur as she moved in and out and up and down.

  “That’s what I thought. I’m right,” she concluded gravely. “We can’t do it, not alone anyway.”

  And while his heart weighed heavy, there was a light in her eyes he recognized.

  “No problem is unsolvable,” he said. “Is it?”

  Her eyes swung up in a swift roll, enjoying the challenge. “I do have an idea,” she answered. “That is my room. See it?”

  “Yes,” he told her. “I see it.”

  “We agree that we can’t shut all the machines down at the same time,” she continued.

  “Correct. The failsafe will trip,” Phil nodded. “By the time we get to the last machine, it will have detected that the first machine is offline, tripping the workflow to put it back online—”

  “But, what if someone at each machine takes it offline for us… all at the same time,” she interrupted him. Phil considered this, shaking his head. To him, the idea was too simple. Isla furrowed her brow. “Why not? Just think about how the code works.”

  He worked through the failsafe logic, recalling that all of the machines employed the same design; he had insisted on it, proudly. But what he had never considered was the scenario Isla proposed. A slow smile came to him.

  “I knew it,” she yelled and slapped his shoulder. She looked triumphant.

  “But it has to be at exactly the same time,” he warned. He rubbed his shoulder, unaccustomed to being touched, but did not shy away from her.

  Isla rocked back in her chair, her head moving up and down with her finger bouncing against the phosphorous glow.

  “Can you talk to them?” he asked abruptly.

  “Talk to who?” she asked. “You mean the other machine?”

  “Talk to the person in the room—this room,” he answered. Isla glanced at him briefly, but then looked back again, having seen a concern that he tried to hide.

  “I can try,” she answered, her earlier enthusiasm, carrying forward. “How about I start with something simple.”

  Isla tapped on the screen, touching the floor plan and the lab they were sitting in. But this was the floor plan of the machine closest to them. A small rectangle popped, opening a small window. A cursor appeared inside, winking at them, waiting for her to begin typing a message.

  “That was easy enough,” Phil said, surprised by what was on the screen. “Hmmm, interesting. I don’t remember the software engineers building a chat capability.”

  “A what?” Isla asked. Phil realized that he was likely the only person that remembered a world with text messages and chat windows.

  “It’s a small application that lets you talk,” he explained. “You just need to type and the message will show up on their terminal. A chat.”

  “Simple enough,” she said, understanding. “Here goes.”

  H—E—L—L—O.

  They waited. And after a minute when there was nothing, his heart sank. Without somebody at the other machine, synchronizing, the machines would surely stay online.

  “Try the next one,” he instructed impatiently. He read the numbers from the index card and watched as Isla typed them in. Quickly, she accessed the machine and navigated the floor plan, flying through the maze of rooms and corridors until landing on her lab. Again, she typed:

  H—E—L—L—O.

  And again, they waited. But this time, someone typed a response.

  Y—E—S?

  “It worked,” Isla chirped, jumping up in her seat. A notion of relief came to Phil as he embraced her, but kept the congratulatory hug brief.

  “Ask them their name,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  Isla happily typed in the question,
the glow from the terminal looking just a little brighter on her skin as she inched closer in fascination.

  W—H—A—T I—S Y—O—U—R N—A—M—E?

  The cursor blinked on and off as if taking a long breath. But then the first letter of the reply flashed, filling him with immediate dread. The response made perfect sense. She’d said she was the best at what she did. Why wouldn’t the machine take advantage of that?

  Phil put his hands on her shoulder, waiting as each letter of the response appeared. Slowly, the fascination on her face disappeared, replaced by eyes that became grave and lips that trembled. He braced her, knowing that the machine was all about efficiency and that having one of her for each machine was the most efficient thing to do.

  I—S—L—A.

  36

  “KEEP UP,” DECLAN YELLED. Harold threw his hand in the air and gestured at him to shut up. And while he saw the stubbornness Harold fronted, it was also easy for Declan to see how overwhelmed he was by the alien world inside the machine. “Through that door. Just keep up and follow me, don’t bother looking around.”

  “Who are all these people?” Harold asked, nearly breathless as he ran to catch up. “And isn’t that—”

  “Like I said, don’t bother to look,” Declan interrupted. “You’re going to see plenty that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Where are we going, anyway?” Harold asked.

  “Get in front of me,” Declan instructed, trying to swallow the dryness that filled his mouth. They stopped before reaching a set of closed doors. Declan stepped back, nudging Harold forward. “The pouch from Ms. Gilly—I want to see if it’ll work.”

  Harold stared at him, perplexed by his instructions. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head as he approached the closed doors. The doors disappeared into the walls, retreating with a whooshing sound. Harold jumped, startled but then inched forward. He belted a laugh, surprised by the sight and then jumped backward and forward, forcing the doors to open and close.

  “I guess it still works,” Declan said, clutching Sammi’s locket of hair. From the corner of his eye, the lights caught his attention, flickering a message to the dozen zombies approaching them. “Let’s keep moving. For now, we’re invisible.”

  “This makes me invisible?” Harold asked, holding up the pouch and looking inside. “The blood?”

  “Yeah,” Declan answered, placing his hand over the pouch to cover it. “Something like that. Put it away and don’t lose it.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or you’ll get lost in here and there’ll be no way to get out.”

  “Good to know,” Harold told him, and put on a smile that was almost as alien as the machine they were inside. A flicker of rage came to life, but just for a moment as Declan bit down on his lip. He tasted blood on his tongue and relaxed, knowing that a time would come to set things right. Patience.

  “Stay close, the other side of this door is a little crazy,” he warned, peering through the opening to the machine’s hub of activity. “And remember, they’ll leave you alone. We’re invisible.”

  Harold stopped dead after he stepped through the doors. His expression was slack-jawed as he stared upward at the enormity of the room. At once, Harold was bumped and then pushed, causing him to tumble off balance with the Andie-bomb. Declan grabbed hold of his shoulders and held him. But touching Sammi’s murderer made his skin crawl, and he let him go once he was certain that Harold had regained his footing. Declan wiped his hands and shuddered.

  “Forgot to tell you, you have to stay out of their way,” he instructed. “As long as you’re not in their path, they won’t run into you.”

  “Great!” Harold answered, sounding annoyed. “Could have told me that back there.”

  “Well, now you know,” Declan shrugged.

  “Are they awake?” Harold asked. “Wait… wait, I know him.” Harold reached out, taking hold of a young man’s arm. The man spun around, dismissing the attention and looked past them before moving on.

  “Forget what you’re seeing,” Declan reminded him. “There isn’t time to explain what is going on. None of it matters anyway. Just follow me.”

  “But, this can’t be,” Harold continued. “Is it like Sammi? It doesn’t make sense, so many people, all this time?”

  Harold went on talking, but Declan ignored him, choosing to search for the corridor where he had seen his mother and sister enter. Seven, he counted. Seven larger corridors circled the machine’s hub like spokes on a wheel, but they were all familiar—identical.

  “Old,” he mumbled, remembering what he had seen and cringing as the images spilled into his mind. The memory of the machine eating came next, stopping him where they stood.

  “What is it?” Harold asked. But his voice lacked concern. Instead, Declan heard the familiar tone of adolescent annoyance he had grown to loathe.

  “Give me a second,” he answered sharply and tried to focus. To the left, just behind them, he saw a corridor where only the old and dying entered.

  “There!” Declan announced, jumping in the direction of the corridor and pulling on Harold’s arm. “It’s that one.”

  “What do you mean, that one?” Harold asked impatiently. “Where does it go?”

  Declan ignored Harold’s questions as he waded through the flood of zombie activities. Harold’s clopping steps followed him, turning and skidding, but became distant and lost. Declan slowed, wishing that he had tied off a tether strap between them. He turned to find Harold walking aimlessly, mesmerized by the sea of white iridescent coveralls around them. And if not for carrying the Andie-bomb, Declan thought that he would have surely let the zombies take Harold, let the machine see him as an intruder.

  “That corridor! That is where we’ll end this,” he told him, grabbing his arm to lead him away from the hub. Iridescent coveralls filled the corridor. Clouded eyes stared absently—empty and unemotional—waiting to take their turn to die.

  Look straight and concentrate, he demanded of himself, passing the bodies. It’s a death march.

  When Declan and Harold reached the end of the corridor, the faint murmur of mechanical chewing rode up the cavern walls. Harold’s expression grew more amazed by the enormity of the machine’s soul. Below them, the truth of what was going on chewed and swallowed, over and over. The drop-off was immensely deep, causing Declan’s stomach to lurch into his throat. He cringed and at once felt squeamish and sad, remembering his attempts to scale the cavern walls and save his mother and sister. The pain from that attempt woke up, causing his hands to spasm. Light glinted from the moist walls, leaving him to wonder how he would ever be able to hold himself if he tried to climb down.

  There were countless others flowing into the cavern from different corridors. Just how big is the machine? Zombie bodies lined the cavern walls, moving endlessly downward on a spiraled maze of conveyor belts. And there were the death machines and their deadly fingertip stings.

  “Whoa,” Harold yelled, and instinctively stepped back from the edge. “Look at that. Where are they all going? Where do we go?”

  “Down there,” Declan answered, sounding grave. “All the way to the bottom is where we have to take Andie.”

  37

  ISLA’S SCREAMS AND CRIES were the first that Phil had heard since the day of the Gray Rainbows. Over the centuries, the machine could be impossibly quiet. There were times when he stood at the center of the great hall, screaming his loudest, hoping that one of the zombies was aware enough to ask him what was wrong. But none ever asked.

  Before he could say anything, Isla launched herself out of her chair, spinning it backward until it clopped over in a roll. She slapped her hand against the terminal’s screen, leaving behind a handprint of glowing phosphors. But before she could run away, Phil took her in his arms and embraced her. She turned weak from the sobs that erupted. Her heart fell against his, and it was real. He felt the rapid thumping and pulled her closer. He closed his eyes, stealing some of the moment for himself, selfishly enjoyi
ng the embrace of life in his arms. When he opened his eyes, Phil saw that the glow of her handprint had faded and that the other Isla had begun typing.

  “What is this?” Isla pleaded between sobs. “Why is this? Am I losing my mind?”

  “You said you were the best,” he answered her. “That blood vault probably does more with our DNA than we’ll ever know. If they can clone us, they can clone us anywhere.”

  “So now what?” she asked, her words sticking in her throat.

  “Let’s finish it,” he told her and motioned to the monitor. “Declan came back with help. They’re disabling the soul of the machine.”

  “But what will that do?” she asked, taking a step back. And at that moment, Phil realized Isla was the first person that he held since hugging his children goodbye. When he looked at her upturned face, his heart filled, and he gently dried the dampness beneath her eyes. Isla said nothing and then pressed her face into his hand. And that is when it occurred to him. Isla had been alone too. “Tell me what to do next.”

  “I’m not sure,” he confessed, clearing his throat and hoping that maybe she had some of the answers. “But if Declan follows through, it could be just the distraction we need to work with the others, to work with you at all the machines…”

  “As we shut them all down,” she finished for him.

  Phil picked up her chair and placed it in front of the terminal, encouraging her to take a seat. Isla took his hand as he led her to the terminal. She let out a shaky breath, holding his hand a moment longer before letting go. From her desk drawer, she pulled a cloth and began to clean the screen, removing the smudge from her handprint.