Vaporized

by Simon Rosser

  Amber flicked over to the satellite channels, and using a different remote, brought the main menu up on the screen and scrolled up to the BBC News station.

  She breathed a sigh of relief; it was working, and she sank onto the sofa to listen to what the newsreader was saying;

  “…We repeat, an object of unknown origin appears to have impacted, or descended, for want of a better description owing to the lack of scientific data suggesting a forceful impact, in Antarctica. The impact zone is just south of the UK’s Sky Blu Research Station, and scientists are already calling this “an unprecedented celestial event,” which mirrors the event that took place, last Thursday, in the Arctic.”

  Amber’s stomach did somersaults, as she listened to the story, and a mounting fear gripped her.

  The newsreader continued speaking;

  “A team of climatologists, currently based at the Sky Blu Research Station, have been given the task of investigating this incident. Meanwhile there has still been no contact with the US/Canadian team sent to the location of the first impact site, in Alaska, on Friday, and efforts are continuing to ascertain the team’s status and whereabouts…”

  The newsreader then put his hand up to his ear piece and frowned, before speaking again.

  “We are just getting news of…”

  The screen then went fuzzy, the picture fast-forwarding for a few seconds, before looping back to the start of the broadcast.

  “We repeat, an object of unknown origin…”

  “Shit!” Amber cursed, as she noted the time on the screen – 03.48 the previous morning. It meant the broadcast wasn’t a live one, but a recording. Panicking, she flicked through the rest of the channels – some satellite channels appeared to be functioning, old movies, that sort of thing, but CNN and SKY News all appeared to be recordings. There was no live news being broadcast.

  Amber reached for the telephone and tapped in the number for her parents’ home, in West Wales. She was greeted by a heavy amount of static on the line, but the dialling tone finally sounded. The phone rang for eight rings before the answering machine picked up, with her father’s hearty Welsh accent greeting her;

  “Hello, you have reached the household of Mr and Mrs Lee. Please leave a message and one of us will get back to you as soon as we can.”

  “Mum…Dad? This is Amber, please pick up if you’re there.” Amber waited for a few moments – silence. “Something weird is going on and I’m a little freaked out. I’ll try calling you both on your mobiles,” she said, before putting the receiver down.

  Amber grabbed her iPhone from the shelf in the lounge where it was charging and called her mum, but the line was dead; there appeared to be no mobile signal. The same with her dad’s number. She then dialled Lucy’s land line, but she only got her answering service. Ben and James weren’t picking up their phones either.

  “Christ, where is everyone?” Amber said, trying to remain calm. She picked up her iPhone again and scrolled through her contacts list to find her uncle’s number in Saudi Arabia. She did a quick calculation of the time there and guessed he should still be up. She pressed the green call button and waited. She got an international dialling tone, but the number simply rang and rang. She let it ring for five minutes before ending the call. “Shit, what do I do now?” she cursed.

  She stood and walked over to the large lounge window and looked out over the bridge and the Thames, and studied the scene below. Amber’s jaw dropped open as it slowly dawned on her that the line of stationary traffic on the bridge was exactly the same one that had been there the night before.

  CHAPTER 7

  AS AMBER STUDIED the bridge, and surrounding roads, from the apartment window, she realised that all of them were littered with stationary vehicles, some of which had collided, others appeared to have veered off the road and onto the pavement. Some were just abandoned with their doors open.

  Fear caused her stomach to cramp up as she realised she couldn’t see anyone on the streets, not a single person, either walking around, or driving.

  “Ok, Amber, stay calm,” she said aloud. Calling on all her analytical and legal skills, she realised there must be a logical explanation for all this. Perhaps a bomb scare had resulted in the inner London roads being sealed off?

  She reached for her iPhone and called Lucy again, but it was clear the mobile phone networks were still down.

  There has to be someone else inside the apartment block, she realised but, unfortunately, she didn’t know any of her neighbours. People pretty much kept themselves to themselves here, she had discovered. She knew there was a very posh elderly lady, Margaret, living next to her, and the apartment at the end of the corridor, was occupied by a wealthy Indian family.

  Amber grabbed her keys, left the apartment, and went next door to number 21. She knocked on the door and waited – there was no answer. Amber put her ear against the door and listened. She could make out the faint sound of static, as if a TV or radio had been left on. She knocked on the door again and called out. “Excuse me, are you in there? It’s Amber from number 19.”

  There was no response.

  Amber tried the door handle, but it was locked. She turned and headed along to the Indian family’s apartment, at the other end of the corridor, and knocked but, again, there was no answer. She placed her ear against the door, but couldn’t hear anything.

  “Damn,” she cursed, as she headed back to her apartment.

  Back inside, she located a small screwdriver and a chisel from the utility drawer, and headed back to the elderly lady’s apartment door. She was about to try and start unscrewing the door handle to gain entry, when she realised that Bernie the security guard, must surely keep a master key for all the apartments, in order to get entry if there was an emergency or something.

  She set the tools down on the floor, and jogged to the elevator and hit the button for the foyer.

  The doors pinged open and Amber stepped out into the marble-floored foyer. There was still no sign of Bernie. She opened the door by the side of the reception desk, which accessed the security guard’s small office. The office was empty, apart from Bernie’s jacket and plastic lunch container, which looked like it still contained Bernie’s sandwiches.

  There was a telephone on the desk, with some red lights flashing on the base unit. She picked it up and pressed the message button. There were two messages on it; the first was from an elevator maintenance company, left yesterday at 5 p.m., calling to arrange an inspection of the complex’s elevators.

  The second message was from a lady in apartment 6, asking Bernie to check out a problem she was having with her shower; which had been left at 11 p.m. last night.

  Amber tried calling her parents again. She managed to get a ringtone, but again, only got her father’s answering machine message. She replaced the receiver and headed over to the reception desk where Bernie normally sat. The security screens were still on; one showing the foyer, the other two the sports complex, gym and pool areas, and the other screens the corridors on each of the six floors of the apartment building.

  Amber started rifling through the top drawer of the small set of drawers beneath the desk. She found some diaries, a clipboard, and a box of rubber bands, paperclips and a key ring with a set of small keys on it.

  The bottom of the three drawers was locked and she tried one of the small keys in the lock, and was relieved when it worked. The drawer slid open. The first thing she saw was a picture of a naked woman, on the front cover of a soft porn magazine; Fiesta.

  “You pervert, Bernie,” Amber muttered, as she checked under the magazine. She found a larger bunch of keys which had a plastic tag on the key ring with the word Master-keys printed on it.

  “Bingo,” she said, grabbing them.

  As she stood up, she accidently brushed her shoulder against the control panel, which sat on the desk in front of the monitors. Set into the panel was a small knob and numerous buttons. Under one set of buttons was printed the words Toggle Forward and Toggle Ba
ck.

  Amber pulled Bernie’s chair towards her, sat down and studied the console in front of her. One of the buttons was labelled Camera 1-Foyer. She pressed the button and a green light started flashing on the monitor currently showing surveillance of the foyer area. She pressed the Toggle Back button and the footage started rewinding, as did the time on the screen, from the current, correct time of 15.15, back to 12.00, then 10.00, 08.00 and 06.00. Amber didn’t see any sign of anyone entering or leaving the apartment building – no one.

  She continued rewinding the footage to the time the apartment clock had stopped – 03.48, when she noticed a blue flash on the screen. Perhaps the security camera had captured the lightning she’d seen herself early the previous morning?

  She toggled further back, and at 03.44 saw Bernie suddenly appear on the screen, enter the foyer area, and disappear again. She stopped the recording and pressed the Play button.

  With the video playing at normal speed, she watched as Bernie exited the door from the security office, then walk across the foyer, and into the restrooms opposite. She toggled the footage forward at double speed for 25 minutes of real time. Bernie it seemed had entered the gents, but had never left.

  She rewound the video, pausing it on a screenshot of Bernie’s chubby face.

  Amber was puzzled, and very confused. She left the reception area, walked back through the office clutching the apartment master keys, and headed over to the gents’ restrooms.

  She pushed the door, which creaked open and she cautiously headed inside. The lights clicked on automatically as the sensor picked up her presence. “Bernie?” she called out. “Are you in here?”

  There was no response.

  There were three cubicles on the right hand side of the restrooms, which were smartly decorated with large beige-coloured tiles. Opposite the cubicles were three large white porcelain sinks and two urinals at the far end.

  Amber continued in, her trainers squeaking on the clean floor. All the doors to the cubicles were closed. She knocked on the first door, waited a few seconds and then opened it. It creaked on its hinges as it swung inwards – empty. The second cubicle was also empty.

  She reached the third door and tried it. It was locked. Amber’s pulse quickened as she called out Bernie’s name.

  Silence.

  Amber knelt down and looked under the cubicle door. She recoiled in surprise as she saw Bernie’s spectacles, shoes and security pass, surrounded by what appeared to be a ring of grey ash, in a small pile on the tiled floor.

  “What the hell?” Amber whispered, as she stood up. She took a step back from the door, raised her right leg, and gave the door a hefty kick.

  The toilet door flew inwards, bouncing back towards her as it hit the side wall of the cubicle. Amber put her left hand out to stop it, and then looked inside.

  The scene that confronted her was totally bewildering. The toilet seat was covered in dust, and the pan was filled with grey sludge, and pieces of what appeared to be bone fragments. The dust had also fallen around the base of the toilet, forming a ring that encircled Bernie’s security pass, shoes and spectacles, which looked as good as new.

  It was as if Bernie had simply spontaneously combusted. She’d read about such things, but this was just unbelievable.

  As she stared in horror at the unnatural sight, an alarm sounded somewhere in the basement.

  Shit, what now? she wondered.

  Amber backed out of the restrooms, leaving what was left of Bernie in the cubicle, and headed back out to the foyer. She could see a red light flashing on the security console and leant over the desk to see what the problem was. Beneath the flashing red light was written Swimming Pool.

  The monitor next to the one that still had Bernie’s paused image on it, showed the view from the camera overlooking the swimming pool area. Amber was stunned to see that all the water had emptied from the pool. The alarm was sounding to indicate the pool’s pump and filter were overheating.

  “Jesus!” she screamed, just as an ominous creaking sound came from the suspended ceiling above her. Amber glanced up briefly but saw nothing unusual. She then ran for the stairway and down to the gym/pool complex area.

  Amber burst through the door that led to the pool area and immediately smelled smoke. An alarm was sounding from the sauna room. She headed over to it and was drawn to a door marked Maintenance, which she’d not noticed before.

  She yanked the door open and, as she did, was confronted by a wall of whitish smoke, which billowed out into the sauna area. Amber squinted and covered her mouth as she felt for a light switch on the wall by the side of the door frame. She found one, and flicked it on.

  The smoke was coming from a large generator, or pump, in the far corner of the room. Worried that the thing might explode, or catch fire at any moment, she headed over to it, whilst searching for a switch to turn it off, or something she could use to cover it, but the smoke limited her visibility.

  The pump sounded like a washing machine on a super-fast spin cycle, about to jump off its mountings. By the side of the apparatus, hanging on some pipes, was a large dirty cloth. On the side of the machine were two large levers, one labelled Mode, the other Power. Amber wrapped the cloth around her hand, grabbed the Power lever, and yanked it upwards.

  The pump, or whatever it was, let out a huge hiss of steam followed by smoke, which billowed from a vent on its side. Then the vibration rapidly started to subside, and the amount of smoke coming from the vent eased. Confident she’d resolved the problem, Amber backed out of the small room. As she did, the alarm stopped.

  Outside, Amber took a few deep breaths and wiped away the perspiration that was now streaming down her forehead. She remained where she was for thirty seconds or so, trying to gather her thoughts. What the hell had happened to all the water in the pool?

  Amber walked through to the pool room and stared at the now empty swimming pool. Her eyes widened as she saw something moving in the far corner. She watched in amazement as the last couple of inches of water from the bottom of the pool, gathered into a surreal, solid-looking, tube of water. The tube of water then defied gravity, and rose into a column in the far corner of the pool, where it snaked across the tiled pool surround, before rising up the wall and disappearing, as before, into the vent in the ceiling.

  A chill ran down Amber’s spine as she tried to process what she’d just witnessed. A feeling that someone, or something, was watching her then washed over her, and she ran from the pool room and out through the complex door as fast as she could, without looking back.

  She wanted to get back into her apartment, and quickly.

  In the foyer, the vent above the reception desk gave way from the weight of the object above it. Slowly, as if testing and analysing its environment, a transparent probing cylinder of water, held together in solid form by an unseen force, descended toward the counter and settled on the floor behind the security desk. Its tail end was still connected to a long shaft of water which rippled slightly over its surface, as it swayed gently in the space between the floor and the vent, where it continued up into the roof space.

  The large body of solid water, almost like ice, but clear and undulating, then rose up towards the monitors and hovered in front of them. One monitor still displayed the paused image of the security guard. Then, in sudden multiple transformations, like faces being formed by a computer program, the gravity defying solid tube of water began to take on a recognisable form, altering its light content and reflectivity to take on colour and texture, as it absorbed the information, pixel by pixel, from the monitor in front of it.

  CHAPTER 8

  AMBER BOLTED THE apartment door behind her and stood there, shaking uncontrollably. What in the world is going on?

  Was she the only one left in the apartment block? She appeared to be, but that was ridiculous. Where the hell was everyone else? She turned and walked into the lounge, heading over to the large window that looked out over the Thames. The scene outside was the same as it ha
d been earlier; stationary, seemingly abandoned vehicles, in the same positions as before, and the streets empty, devoid of life. Come to think of it, Amber couldn’t see any birds either. Normally there were gulls lining the banks of the Thames. Even the river looked odd, darker than usual, and its level lower, much lower.

  Amber felt her stomach clench, even as her analytical brain began to process all the information she had collected. But a distant explosion brought her back to the present. She scanned the river and streets outside, but could see no cause, or evidence, of where the sound may have originated from. It appeared that some form of disaster had occurred and that central London had either been evacuated or…the worst case scenario began to form. She pushed the crazy thoughts to the back of her mind, and instead thought about what her next steps should be.

  She remembered the keys she’d grabbed from the security guard’s desk and pulled them from her pocket. She ran down the hallway and opened her apartment door. The corridor outside was deathly quiet. She walked out and made her way to apartment 21 where Margaret, the elderly lady, lived and put her ear to the door. All she could hear was the sound of static, as before, perhaps from a TV, or radio, that had been left on.

  Amber inserted the master key into the lock and twisted. The heavy mortise lock clunked open. Amber inserted the smaller Yale key that was on the key ring into the second lock, and turned it. She tried the door handle and the solid white door quietly opened.

  Amber poked her head in through the open apartment door, and called out Margaret’s name. There was no answer, just the sound of white noise, which appeared to be coming from the kitchen, and a faint, drip…drip…drip, coming from the bathroom a short way along the corridor.