Vaporized

by Simon Rosser

  Amber walked to the side of the cottage, past the wheelbarrow and went through the side gate, making her way around to the back of the cottage to the rear garden.

  Two sun loungers were positioned next to each other on the decking that overlooked a well-maintained garden. She walked over to the decking and patio doors behind. As she did, a gentle breeze whipped up and rustled some dead leaves that had become trapped inside the branches and twigs of the once thick, green, boundary hedge that ran along the left side of the garden. Amber turned around at the sound. She could now see through the hedge, into the neighbouring field, but all appeared deserted.

  Amber reached the French doors, cupped her hands against the glass, and looked into the lounge. She could see a newspaper open on the sofa and her dad’s slippers on the carpeted floor, close to where he would normally sit. There were no signs that anything, or anybody, was lurking inside the cottage. She tried the patio doors to see if they had been left unlocked, but they were secure.

  Amber took a few deep breaths to calm her nerves, turned, and headed back around to the front of the cottage to let herself in.

  Amber twisted the mortise key in the front door lock and it clunked open. She pushed the door open and entered into the hall. Everything looked fine, as expected, just as if her parents had gone to bed last Friday night, blissfully ignorant as to what was coming in the early hours of Saturday morning.

  Off to the right of the hall was the lounge, and she headed in. As she entered, she heard a Tick-Tick-Tick-Ticking sound. The sound was coming from a small clockwork pendulum carriage clock, sitting on the mantle-piece above the fire.

  The strange blue light Amber had glimpsed, that had preceded the Event, had seemingly only frazzled electronic equipment, which possibly accounted for 99% of the equipment relied upon by everyone on Earth. All non-electrical equipment had remained unaffected. Not that it mattered, as there was no one left to use whatever equipment was unaffected, anyway.

  Amber looked over to where the family cat, Buttons, normally slept and, sure enough, there was a small pile of ash and a leather collar on the armchair cushion.

  “I'm sorry, puss,” Amber whispered, affectionately, remembering the 17 year old tabby moggy.

  Amber took a deep breath, summoning up the courage to go upstairs and check in her parents’ room. She knew the sight would upset her immensely, but she had to see them, collect their ashes, and scatter them in the garden, at least.

  Amber headed back out into the hall and upstairs, to the dormer conversion, to her parents’ bedroom.

  She reached the carpeted landing, just ahead was her parents’ bedroom door, almost closed - apart from a three inch gap. Amber could just see the corner of her parents’ oak double bed, through the narrow space.

  Hanging on the wall, to her left, was a family picture taken of the three of them in the garden. Amber had only been ten years old when her late grandmother had taken the photograph. Amber was holding the end of a garden hose, her dad standing behind her with his shirt off, and her mum sitting in a deckchair behind. All three of them had large grins on their faces.

  Amber momentarily thought back to that carefree, joyous, summer’s day, more than two decades earlier.

  Amber passed the picture and crossed the small landing, past the closed bathroom door, and entered her parents’ room. The drawn curtains blocked the early evening light out, making it eerily dark inside the bedroom. She tried the light switch but, as expected, there was no power.

  Amber moved towards the window, preventing herself from looking at the bed as she walked past. She grabbed the curtains and pulled them open, pushing the window open at the same time, to let some air into the stuffy room.

  Amber closed her eyes, turned to the bed, and then slowly opened them. She pulled back the summer quilt, and stared at the surface of the white sheet covering the mattress momentarily, before gasping in confusion at the sight before her.

  On the side of the bed where her mum usually slept, was a body-shaped layer of ash and bone fragments. It almost looked comical, like the chalk outline, to mark where a body had been found, in one of the many crime-scene investigation programmes that used to be on the television.

  What was confusing however was the fact that there was nothing on her father’s side of the bed. No indication he’d been lying next to her mum when the vaporization had taken place.

  Amber doubled-back out of the bedroom and went into the small bathroom on the landing, expecting to see the remains of her dad on the bathroom mat by the toilet. To her surprise, there was nothing there either, just the white mat, perfectly clean and free of ash. The toilet was also empty.

  Amber shook her head. “This doesn’t make any sense,” she muttered. As she did, she caught sight of her own reflection in the bathroom mirror, and stepped back in shock as she saw herself. Her olive skin now looked pale and patchy, her eyes sallow, with dark half-moons under them. Her eyes were also bloodshot and puffy and she had scratches on her left cheek and dried matted blood on her temple and forehead.

  She looked nothing like herself. “Jesus,” she whispered, horrified at what the last few days had done to her.

  She bent over the sink and turned on the tap to wash, but nothing came out. “Damn it,” she muttered, forgetting that there was no water. She’d have to go to the beach, wash in the sea. She looked terrible, and smelled equally as bad.

  Amber hurried back down stairs to search the rest of the cottage. Dad had to be here somewhere. Perhaps he’d gotten up early to make a cup of tea or something?

  Amber walked into the cottage’s country-style kitchen. The work surfaces were clean, just two empty mugs next to the sink, perhaps left by her parents the evening before they went to bed. Two dinner plates stood upright in the sink drainer, evidence they’d also eaten together. But where the hell were dad’s ashes?

  She walked over to the farmhouse-style Aga Range Cooker. It was powered by oil, and was still producing heat. At least she could now heat up some food, even have a cup of tea or coffee, albeit without milk, two drinks she craved.

  Amber hunted around the rest of the cottage, but found no evidence of her father’s remains. Completely perplexed, she walked into the lounge and sank back onto the sofa. The clock on the mantelpiece showed it was now 6.40 p.m. She needed to collect her mum’s ashes, and those of Buttons, and spread them over her mum’s favourite rockery in the back garden.

  She didn’t fancy sleeping in the cottage until her mum’s remains had been removed, from the bed upstairs. She picked up a crystal cut-glass bowl, from the coffee table by her side, and headed back upstairs to undertake the grim task.

  With her mum’s ashes now laid to rest, over the flower bed outside, Amber was seated at the kitchen table. Her meagre rations of water placed in front of her, just one and a half bottles of Evian left. She’d emptied her backpack, and its contents were now spread out over the kitchen table.

  Amber stared at her clothes, the kitchen knife that she’d taken from her uncle’s apartment, map and diary, which she’d not even had time to open, and two bags of flour. It seemed ridiculous to think that the other bags of flour had, earlier, saved her life.

  The water-based intelligence, or whatever it was, had tried to lure and kill her on a number of occasions, before she’d managed to get out of London, and the flour had saved her. It just seemed crazy that something so simple, as basic as flour, had been able to defeat the alien entities. As she sat there, she postulated that, perhaps, the initial entities she’d encountered weren’t actually alien life-forms, but just water under their intelligent control, which is why it had been relatively easy to escape.

  Amber opened a tin of baked-beans, found a pot and heated them, before gulping them down. She noticed the battery powered clock on the kitchen wall had stopped at 03.48, the precise time of the Event.

  The BBQ could wait until tomorrow, she thought. She felt exhausted, from the drive and general lack of sleep.

  The night she’d spent
in the museum now felt like an age away, and she tried to block out the memories of the terrifying ordeal, telling herself it had been a bad dream instead. She didn’t want to scare herself to death before going to bed tonight.

  Tomorrow, she’d make a trip to the beach, perhaps wash in the sea, and try and figure out where to get more water from. Unless she could find some fresh water streams, she was in trouble. She didn’t want to think about the possibility of not being able to find any more drinkable water right now. She’d leave that problem for tomorrow.

  She also needed to start searching for the radio transmission she’d heard, on the way down, as soon as possible. She figured she’d set up a table and chairs out the front and then listen to the radio, while the Porsche’s engine was running. She could sit there all day and hopefully locate the message again, then perhaps she’d find out where it was being transmitted from.

  Amber’s eyelids started feeling heavy. She stood up, picked up the two bags of flour for her protection, and took them to her old bedroom on the ground floor, just off the lounge. She felt reasonably safe, having locked all the doors and windows earlier.

  She lay back on her bed, wondering where her father had been, when the Event had struck, and why he hadn’t been at home with her mum.

  As she lay there, she felt comforted by the familiar surroundings, her old books and toys, and board games that her parents had kept on the shelves in her room, and slowly drifted off into a deep, peaceful sleep.

  CHAPTER 29

  Post Event – Day 4

  AMBER AWOKE, COVERED in a cold sweat, her mouth as dry as sandpaper. She rolled over, almost falling off the bed. What time was it?

  She could see that it was light outside. She swung her legs off the end of the bed, stood up, and walked quietly into the lounge. Everything was as she’d left it.

  Apart from the Tick…Tick…Tick, of the clock on the mantelpiece, the cottage was silent. The time was 06.50 a.m., and she realised she’d been asleep for over twelve hours. She’d obviously needed it.

  Amber stretched, yawned and headed into the downstairs bathroom. She picked up her toothbrush, and squeezed a bit of toothpaste onto it. Her teeth felt dirty and furry, and she had to clean them before drinking anything. She poured a small amount of water into a glass from her remaining Evian, and she used it to swill her mouth.

  Feeling a little bit fresher, she headed into the kitchen. If there was one thing she needed, it was a cup of hot coffee. She needed some more water first, however, so gulped down the last few mouthfuls of the precious liquid from the last but one remaining bottle.

  She grabbed the copper kettle, emptied a small amount of water from the last bottle of Evian into it, and walked over to the Aga stove. She placed her palm over the hotplate. It was still hot. She set the kettle down on the hotplate, to boil, and spooned some coffee into a cup.

  Through the kitchen window, she could see the morning sky still had a crimson hue to it, but the unusual colour appeared to be slowly disappearing, being replaced by a cloudless, deep blue, sky. It looked beautiful. Amber was painfully aware, however, that she now only had just less than one full bottle of Evian left. She needed to go out this morning and find a stream to collect more water. In the back of her mind however, she realised that the odds, of finding any fresh water, were against her.

  After a short while, the water started to boil, and Amber walked back over to the Aga, pulled the kettle off, and filled her coffee cup. She breathed in deeply through her nose, taking in the aroma of black Columbian coffee that now filled the kitchen.

  As she waited for the coffee to cool enough to drink, she went out the front and over to the Porsche, and started the engine. She couldn’t wait to set up a table and chair outside, so drove the car as close to the front of the house as she could. She turned the radio on, making sure it was tuned to FM band, and then hit the seek button, leaving the radio to scan through all the FM channels, in order to search for the broadcast she’d heard whilst driving yesterday.

  Amber went back inside the cottage, closed and locked the front door, and opened the dining room window. She then went to fetch her coffee and sat at the dining room table, where she could easily listen to the Porsche’s radio, from the relative safety of the cottage. If the message she’d heard yesterday was still being broadcast she’d quickly find it again, she was certain.

  Amber slowly drank the coffee whilst listening to the static coming from the car’s radio. Minutes passed as she continued to listen for anything resembling the message she heard the day before.

  Her coffee cup had been empty now for at least forty minutes, and she got up wearily from her chair, feeling despondent and horribly alone once again, as she realised that she may be unable, for whatever reason, to find the broadcast again.

  Perhaps she’d imagined it? It was possible, as she’d been so tired by the time she’d arrived yesterday, she considered.

  Amber headed back outside and tuned the radio to MW Band. She was certain the radio had been on FM when she’d heard the message, but she had to give it a try.

  She headed back into the house, the sound of static drifting from the Porsche’s speakers following her inside.

  Amber had been sitting at the dining table, head resting on her arm for over an hour listening to the static, but had heard no sign of the broadcast she thought she had heard yesterday. She now seriously doubted that she’d ever heard it, and the depression she’d been feeling returned, with an even greater sense of foreboding washing over her.

  The thought that she was truly alone, with those things hatching outside, filled her with dread. She forced herself to get up, and headed back into the kitchen. She picked up the sharp knife she’d taken from her uncle’s apartment, two empty plastic water bottles and her sunglasses, fetched a towel and headed outside to the car.

  The Porsche’s engine was still running and the trip computer confirmed she still had 65 miles left in the tank, more than enough for the journey to the beach, which was only three miles away.

  Amber edged the Porsche out of the drive, the gravel crunching noisily under the car’s tyres. She scanned the road, left and right, looked at the leafless bushes that lined the roadside, and saw nothing sinister. She pushed the gearstick into first and accelerated along the country road, in the direction of Manorbier Beach.

  Whilst there were plenty of streams and small brooks in the area, she knew there was a small stream that ran down the steeper land beyond the bay, towards the sea, and that was the stream she’d hunt for first. She’d never encountered it dry.

  Amber drove through the country lanes towards the sea, crossed over a main ‘A’ road, which connected the towns of Pembroke and Haverfordwest, in the west, with the coastal town of Tenby further along the coast to the east, and headed down towards the small bay and Manorbier Beach.

  As she meandered down the narrow lanes, towards the bay, she caught glimpses of the huge, strange, wedge-shaped object, which appeared to be suspended over the ocean, a few miles off the coast. What the hell was that thing?

  Amber reached the weathered limestone walls of Manorbier Castle, built by the Normans in the Eleventh Century. She considered the history of the castle and time scales, for a brief second. At that point in time, the world still had another thousand years before it was invaded by an alien species from somewhere else in the cosmos. Who could have imagined?

  Amber reached the small car park, a short distance from the beach, and killed the Porsche’s engine. Everything appeared oddly normal. Amber could hear the ocean below her, breakers crashing along the shoreline. But the one thing that was missing, which made everything feel strange, was the lack of screams from the, usually ever present, seagulls.

  The small stream Amber was looking for travelled down the hillside behind the beach, from its source inland alongside the castle somewhere, and out toward the sea. She walked along the wood-decked walkway towards the beach, where she knew the stream meandered to the sea from the direction of the castle.<
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  She reached the point where, she was certain, the stream emerged from the limestone rocks before continuing down the beach, but there was nothing there. Amber dropped to her knees, in desperation, and started to cry. The Event had vaporized all of Earth’s fresh water and, from the look of the alien object hovering over the ocean just off the coast, she guessed that the same thing was about to happen to Earth’s oceans.

  Amber could already feel the sun’s warmth on her shoulders and it was still only 8 a.m. She looked up at the cloudless sky. Could it be that there were no clouds because there was little or no water vapour left in the atmosphere? It felt incredibly dry, and her throat felt parched. Was the Earth doomed to becoming a world without water? Perhaps eventually becoming like its nearest neighbour, Mars? Had the same fate even befallen Mars sometime in the dim and distant past, Amber wondered, as she became momentarily lost in her crazy thoughts.

  She stood up, wiped away her tears and continued towards the beach, and the ocean.

  She strained to look out to the horizon and the object suspended over the ocean, in the distance. It was huge, like an oil platform, but wedge-shaped. She thought she could see smaller objects, like birds, moving around the larger object, but she couldn’t really see properly. It could just be the floaters she had in the vitreous humour of her eyes. Tiny annoying black dots that became noticeable if she looked at something white or, in this case, the light blue sky on the horizon.

  Amber marched on over the pebbles towards the shore and the waves, breaking with a familiar and comforting regularity as they always had done.

  She reached the ocean, removed her trainers and jeans and waded in. The sea was cold, as was usual in this part of the world, and Amber gasped for breath. Being in the ocean felt good though, and she experienced a sense of freedom that she’d not felt in a long time. Being tied to a nine to five job, the office, her materialistic life in London, were all now well and truly behind her.