Vaporized

by Simon Rosser

  As she glanced into the rear view mirror, to see if the creature was following, she lost control of the BMW, mounted the pavement and hit a red post box. The collision set off the vehicle’s front airbags, but not before the force of the impact jolted her head sideways, into the side window.

  Amber heard an ear piercing pop, saw a flash of white before everything went black, and then…silence.

  CHAPTER 17

  AMBER SLOWLY OPENED her eyes and felt an immediate throbbing pain in the right side of her forehead. Where am I? What the hell happened?

  As her confusion slowly cleared, she suddenly remembered driving the car, and the crash. A wave of panic then washed over her, as she realised that the late afternoon sun had now given way to evening twilight. How long have I been unconscious?

  Amber wriggled her arms and legs. At least nothing seemed to be broken. A hissing noise startled her, until she realised it was the airbag automatically deflating, her movement possibly triggering the process.

  “Thank God,” she muttered, moving her head away from the window. As she did, she noticed a smear of her own blood in the top right corner of the side window. She realised she’d received quite a blow and must have knocked herself out. She touched her head and, apart from a small tender spot, she realised she’d been lucky not to have killed herself.

  She looked through the shattered windscreen, scanning the street and buildings, looking for any signs of the alien life-form that had attacked her, but the immediate area appeared deserted. She had no doubt that the damn thing was out there somewhere, possibly lying in wait for her to come out.

  Could it be that the thing had no real interest in killing her, and gone back to doing whatever it had come here to do? From what she had seen, taking Earth’s water was the primary goal.

  Amber mulled over the question, as she pulled the sun visor down to check her injury. She looked a mess, but the cut to her temple didn’t look too bad. She licked her finger and wiped away the dried blood.

  She sat there, considering her predicament. It wasn’t good. The time was approaching 7.50 p.m. and the light was fading fast. What a bank holiday weekend, she thought; shaking her head in disbelief at the situation she was in.

  She reached over to her backpack and pulled out a fresh bottle of water, unscrewed the top, and took a few large gulps. She returned the bottle to her backpack and pulled out the map of London, unfolding it across the steering wheel.

  She found Fulham Road and the junction she’d just crossed, then traced her finger north, along the map over into Onslow Gardens and up to the Cromwell Road.

  She found the Natural History Museum, which was almost directly north of her current position. To get onto the M4 however, and the direction of home, she needed to get over to Earls Court, in the west. She considered her options, and assessed the route along Old Brompton Road, which was a lot more residential, might be riskier, simply because there were less places to run, if cornered.

  Cromwell Road, on the other hand, was much wider, and had many larger buildings and hotels along it, perhaps making it easier to see anything that might try and attack her. There was, perhaps, less likelihood of being ambushed along the wider and less property-condensed route. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to get much further tonight, not in the dark. She’d have to find somewhere safe to stay for the night, then try and find a vehicle in the morning to continue her journey.

  Finding a vehicle with the keys still in it would be easy. Most of the cars in the road still contained the ash remains of their owners, together with the vehicle’s keys. The problem was going to be the lack of water inside the vehicle’s radiators, which had been vaporised by the Event.

  She guessed that the BMW’s engine had blown up for this very reason; lack of water in the radiator. This could present the biggest problem, but she had an idea. She’d have to wait until the morning, however, to see if it would work.

  She folded the map up and placed it back in her backpack. She then slowly opened the driver’s door, listening for any unusual sounds. Apart from a light breeze, the streets were silent.

  Amber eased herself out of the car, looked up and down the street, but she didn’t see or hear anything unusual. She leaned back into the car, grabbed her backpack and pulled it on. She glanced up at the darkening, red-brown skies, before taking one last look at the wrecked convertible. Thankful that the German car had saved her life, she patted the bonnet in gratitude, before hurrying up the street, heading north.

  The windows of the properties lining the street still all had their curtains drawn. That fact, together with the dead, creepy-looking trees that lined the pavements, heightened the feeling of unease she had. She jogged quietly past Onslow Gardens on her left, keeping to the opposite pavement. She passed beautiful columned-front porches of multi-million pound properties, now all vacant, save for the accumulated material belongings of the wealthy people that had once lived inside them.

  After a twenty minute brisk walk along Queen’s Gate, without incident, Amber found herself at the junction with Cromwell Road. The Natural History Museum was just visible on the right, through the bare branches of dead trees that lined the far side of the street. Oddly, light spilled out into the darkening night from some of the museum’s windows.

  Amber’s spirits lifted, as she considered the possibility that there may be other survivors inside the museum.

  Some of the street lamps in the area were also working. She thought that perhaps the lighting inside the museum, and the street lamps, were utilising the same power source, perhaps a generator that somehow hadn’t been destroyed by the event.

  The junction in front of her was a jumble of smashed up vehicles. The Event had happened in an instant, it had seemed, leaving the suddenly driver-less vehicles free to smash into one another, as they crossed the junction. Vehicles had careered off both sides of the road and onto the pavement, smashing into the frontages of the buildings that lined the wide road, and into the black wrought iron railings that surrounded the green areas in front of the museum.

  As Amber surveyed the scene of devastation in front of her, a watery, slithering sound, coming from one of the buildings on her left, startled her. She ducked down behind a blue Audi she was standing beside and crouched to the ground, her heart rate rapidly accelerating as fear enveloped her.

  The whooshing noise continued, followed by what sounded like items of furniture falling, glass smashing, and then…silence.

  Amber remained motionless, hiding behind the Audi. Just as she decided to stand up, a sound, like a front door being unlocked on one of the buildings just over to her left, caused her to freeze.

  “Hello, over there! It’s ok, you can come out. We won’t hurt you,” a voice said.

  Amber opened her eyes wide in shock upon hearing the voice, which sounded, human.

  She slowly rose up, just enough to look through the Audi’s driver’s window, and in the direction of the voice on the opposite side of the street.

  Standing there, just in front of the building on the street corner, were two London policemen.

  Both policemen were standing approximately twenty-five feet away from her, on the pavement, just outside a large hotel. They were dressed in standard blue police uniforms, minus the hats.

  Were they genuine? They certainly appeared to be. Amber couldn't see any evidence of the large tendril of liquid that the other entities had relied upon, in order to support the human forms they were imitating. She let out a sigh of relief. Finally, she had found some other survivors, two police officers at that.

  Amber stood up from behind the Audi and shouted across to the two officers. “Thank God, I've found you guys,” she said. “Are there anymore survivors? What the hell has happened?” she shouted.

  “Good evening, ma’am,” the officer on the right said, rather matter-of-factly, as if nothing was wrong. “Are you ok?”

  “Er...yes, just about. Do you know what the hell is going on?” Amber asked, slightly perplexed.

>   “We have no idea what’s going on,” the officer said, shrugging his shoulders.

  Amber stood looking at the two police officers, suddenly sensing something wasn’t quite right. She stared down at their feet, and the space beyond where they were standing, back toward the open door of the hotel. She couldn’t see any evidence that they were being supported by one of the liquid-based tendrils.

  “Come out from behind the vehicle please, ma’am. We need you to come to the station with us.”

  “Police station? What? Why would I need to do that?” Amber asked, now beginning to feel frightened.

  “Please come with us,” the other officer repeated, who had, until now, remained silent.

  A wave of panic washed over Amber. “I...I’m trying to get home. I need to find my parents,” she said, her voice breaking.

  The two police officers just stood there, staring at her. “Where is home?” the officer on the right, finally asked.

  Amber knew something was wrong, and lied. “Reading,” she said.

  “R-e-a-d-i-n-g?” the officer on the left said, in a familiar, mechanical-sounding voice.

  A cold chill raced up Amber’s spine. She had heard and seen enough. There was something very wrong about how the police officers were speaking, and acting. She had to make a run for it, but she couldn’t go left, the way she needed to go, as it meant passing the police or, more likely, what was imitating them. Ahead, was the junction, blocked with smashed-up vehicles. To her right, there was room to run along the pavement, it was the opposite direction she intended heading, but she had no choice.

  “Where is home?” the officer, again, asked.

  Amber suddenly launched herself from behind the Audi, running across the road in the opposite direction, and over to the pavement, which took her east, along Cromwell Road.

  As she reached the pavement, she glanced back to see the two policemen rise into the air, supported by a thin translucent tendril which had erupted from a concealed manhole the entities had been standing over. The supporting tendril or body of liquid, whatever the hell it was, had been under the ground!

  Amber ran as fast as she could, without looking back. Fifty feet ahead, a red Mini had careered off the main road and crashed into a shop front, blocking her way. She turned sharp left, running out onto the road and squeezed between the bonnet and bumper of two cars, that had almost collided. As she manoeuvred through the narrow gap, her jeans became caught on a sharp piece of metal, cutting into her thigh.

  “Shit!” she screamed, grimacing in pain.

  She turned to see the tendril, now much thicker than before, snaking along the pavement towards her. The tip of it was still formed into the two police officers, it had been mimicking, but they were now becoming deformed versions of what they had been, as the thing bumped along the pavement.

  With her thigh throbbing and bleeding, Amber scrambled over the bonnet of a Jaguar to reach an open space in the road beyond. Behind her, the thing crashed onto the roof of the Mini that was blocking the pavement, hesitated momentarily, and then slithered between the smashed vehicles towards her.

  Amber sprinted across to the opposite pavement, running alongside the black wrought iron railings that lined the grounds of the Natural History Museum. She jumped over a motorbike, which had skidded onto its side on the pavement, and continued on towards the open gates that led to the museum’s entrance.

  Behind her, she heard the thing smash into the motorbike as it slid along the pavement after her. Amber grabbed the railings, pivoting her body around towards the museum’s main entrance, now just thirty feet or so in front of her.

  The double entrance doors, to the iconic Nineteenth Century building, lay just ahead. She could make it – had to make it, she told herself, as she ran as fast as her legs would carry her, up the museum steps, and towards the left arched doorway.

  The right door, used as an exit she assumed, was closed. She flew up the last few steps into the dark entrance of the museum, sliding across the smooth terrazzo floor, her ankle screaming pain at her.

  Amber slipped, stumbling to her left, just as the hideously deformed shape of the two London police officers, forming the end of the tendril, thrust through the entrance door, and into the museum’s main hallway.

  Amber cowered in horror as the thing thrashed about momentarily in front of the Diplodocus skeleton, seemingly studying it. It then quickly retreated and disappeared back outside. As it did, Amber raced back to the sturdy wood and glass entrance door, and pushed it closed.

  She unclipped a large steel beam, held in a vertical position to the right of the door, and let it fall horizontally across the doorway, locking it place.

  Amber jumped clear of the door, just as the tendril rammed into it from outside. The translucent tube smashed into the door again, but was barely able to move the solid structure.

  Then, as quickly as it appeared, the alien tendril vanished, and an eerie silence descended.

  Amber stood a short way back from the door, her legs shaking uncontrollably beneath her, and the silence, within the vast dark Romanesque Exhibition Hall, freaking her out.

  The huge skeleton of a Diplodocus dinosaur soared above her, reminding her that it too once roamed the Earth, in the dim and distant, prehistoric past.

  CHAPTER 18

  AMBER’S LEGS WERE still shaking as she slowly turned around in the dim light, her eyes slowly adjusting to the shapes and shadows inside the dark hall. Above the stairway, on the opposite side of the hall, faint yellow light filtered through into the space from wall-mounted lights, providing some dim illumination.

  The huge Diplodocus dinosaur skeleton loomed up in front of her. Once terrifying to her as a child, the skeleton now felt strangely comforting, almost friendly, as she realised that the huge bones belonged to a creature that had actually evolved upon the Earth, and had once roamed the planet, just as humans do today, or perhaps did, she corrected herself.

  The dinosaurs, in the past, would have been entitled to call Earth their home. The things outside, on the other hand, were totally alien and had invaded the planet, from God only knew where, and seemed intent on destroying every life-form on it. Dinosaurs suddenly seemed less terrifying than they had once been.

  Amber loosened the straps of her backpack, strangely comforted by the presence of the dinosaur skeleton, and let the pack fall off her back. She then slumped to the floor, and inspected the nasty, horizontal, gash in her right thigh. It was a large cut, around four inches long and quite deep, but thankfully the blood was now only, slowly, oozing out of it.

  She rummaged around in her backpack, pulling out the half-empty bottle of water, and a handkerchief from the side pocket. She pulled out the small bottle of TCP antiseptic she’d stashed in the toiletry bag, before pouring a small amount of water onto the handkerchief and cleaning the wound. She dabbed a generous helping of the antiseptic onto the hanky, and pressed it against the cut. She had to grit her teeth against the stinging pain, as the antiseptic soaked into the wound. She repeated the procedure, before pulling out two of the largest plasters she could find and, pulling the edges of the cut together, stuck them over the wound.

  That should do the trick, she thought.

  Amber drank the rest of the water. She now only had three bottles left, and needed to find more drinkable liquid from somewhere soon, but where? She hoped that when she got home, she’d find some water supplies, maybe from the local streams and rivers, if they still existed.

  She felt shaky and remembered from something she had read that it was possible to get hypoglycaemia from shock, so she pulled out a chocolate bar from her backpack, and wolfed it down. God, it tasted good.

  The sugar rush would give her a little energy to explore her new surroundings, hopefully finding a safe place to sleep for the night.

  A noise from somewhere inside the building, a bit like pipes creaking, sent a fresh wave of panic over her. What the hell was that? She listened intently. Thirty seconds later, she heard it again; v
ibrations, but a little fainter this time. The sound was familiar, similar to the noise the old hot water pipes at home used to make.

  Amber looked around the vast hall, empty, apart from the Diplodocus skeleton. There were no tell-tail mounds of ash, presumably because no one had been in the museum, in the early hours, when the Event, had occurred.

  Numerous Romanesque stone archways led off from the hall to various other parts of the museum. To her right was the museum’s shop, glass cabinets; containing various gifts and souvenirs to purchase, were positioned in front of the entrance.

  Above the main entrance doors, was a large clock, displaying the time; 3.48 a.m. The clock had stopped at the exact same time as all the other time pieces Amber had seen. The exact time she’d noticed the bright blue flashes of lightning, three nights ago.

  Amber stood up and found a light switch on one of the brick support columns. She flicked it on. As she expected, nothing happened. As Amber’s eyes continued adjusting to the dim light, the dark recesses along both sides of the hall and shadows cast by the huge skeleton that loomed above her, made her feel increasingly uncomfortable.

  She looked beyond the skeleton to the wide stairway, on the opposite side of the hall, which led up to the museum’s upper levels, and figured that if she was going to find somewhere to sleep, she’d be safer on the upper level.

  She picked up her backpack, and headed silently past the thick glass safety barrier that protected the Diplodocus skeleton, and across the terrazzo floor, over to the wide stairway.

  Two arched passages, on either side of the stairway, sent a shiver down her spine- as she peered into the darkness. She hurried up the stone stairs. A statue of Richard Owen, the museum’s first director, had pride of place on the landing, looking out over the main hall in front. Above the statue, two lanterns, fixed to the wall, were still working - emitting a dim yellow light, which fanned out vertically up the wall and across either side, casting light over some decorative, stained glass windows fitted into the wall.