Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  Twenty yards behind, Lisa said: “Look at them. They do know something.”

  “All I know is that we haven’t eaten for a long time,” interrupted Annie. “And we’ve got to get something inside the boy.”

  “Are you hungry?” asked Lisa, looking down at him. The boy continued looking at the sky, unhearing. He clutched Lisa’s hand as if it were a safety line.

  “He needs help,” said Annie.

  “I think he’s in the safest place possible at the moment. He’s keeping the pain away.”

  Smoke was visible ahead, drifting up into the sky. No one believed that it could be a good sign as they skirted around the cliff-edge, heading in its direction.

  It didn’t take them long to find the first dead bodies.

  On the other side of what had once been a main road was a fast-food restaurant: Light ’n’ Heavy Bite. Once it had been a single-storey building, with floor-to-ceiling windows. Now it had simply ceased to exist, the entire construction flattened by the ’quake. Smoke rose from the rubble, and the remains of two cars were visible beneath concrete slabs that had spilled out on to the tarmac like a gigantic pack of cards. The driver of the first car had been squashed up against the cracked windscreen when a slab had fallen over the roof, pulverising it. Somehow the windscreen hadn’t been punched out and the driver’s face remained screwed up against the glass in a hideous, bloody scowl. The stark white flats of his hands, fingers spread, were clearly visible against the cracked glass. Lisa walked the boy away, averting his head, refusing to let him look. The others waited at the roadside, trying not to look at the dead driver, trying not to think about whether there was anyone else inside the car, as Alex went to investigate the ruin. When he returned, white-faced, he couldn’t speak.

  “Anyone…?” began Annie.

  Alex could only shake his head, and no more needed to be said.

  At the bottom of the street, furrowed and cracked by the immense forces that had rippled underground, every single window in a used-car franchise had shattered, covering the parked cars in the forecourt in shrouds of gleaming ice. The glass had spilled out into the street like fine snow. It crackled underfoot as they carefully made their way past. Someone was lying in the office, by the side of an overturned desk. The glass sheets that lay around the figure were wet with blood. Annie called as they passed, but the person—whether male or female—was clearly dead. No one else moved inside the showroom, and it was impossible to get through the fallen avalanche of jagged glass to investigate further.

  The boy began humming to himself as they passed. Lisa pulled him close as they moved.

  There had been an apartment block beyond, sixteen storeys high.

  It no longer existed, and had been replaced by a thirty-foot-high demolition site of twisted steel cable, sundered concrete blocks and rubble, stretching down to the cliff-edge, where the top six floors had vanished into the abyss. The smoke that they had seen earlier was coming from the other side of the mound. They clambered around it and saw what had happened.

  A concrete flyover had come down on the main road. A coach and five vehicles had been passing underneath when the ’quake had severed the concrete supports beneath ground level and the entire structure had collapsed. Petrol had spilled from the ruptured tanks, ignited, and burned through the night. The remains of the coach and two of the demolished cars were still visible, blackened skeletons still smoking in the rubble.

  “Shall we…?” said Annie, waving a hand hopelessly at the carnage.

  “What’s the point?” said Lisa. “No one could have survived that.”

  “Where is everyone?” Candy looked as if she might lose control completely. “Where are the fire brigade, the ambulances, the emergency services? Where are they, for Christ’s sake?”

  No one replied, and they kept moving.

  Everywhere was the same.

  Buildings in ruins. Cars, coaches and lorries overturned, burned or smashed. Concrete and tarmac cracked and rippled in solid waves where the immense underground fractures had sped across Edmonville, uprooting underground water pipes, fracturing gas mains and demolishing most of the buildings. And beyond the cliff-edge the same surreal sights. The plateaus of rock, containing at what had once been ground level the few remaining jigsaw pieces of Edmonville. Beneath and around the ragged plateaus, other pinnacles of rock clustered like gigantic fractured stalagmites; reaching up from the depths of the chasm on all sides, as if striving to reach that tenuous ground level. Some spiralled upwards to sharpened points; others had flattened tops forming bridges as if trying to create some bizarre rival to Monument Valley. Had the entire city of Edmonville been dropped down on to the Grand Canyon?

  Walking ahead again, Alex and Candy suddenly stopped.

  Another scene of carnage? More horror?

  “What is it?” asked Annie. And then Lisa gasped.

  “Someone’s coming!” she exclaimed. “Look! Someone’s coming!”

  Filled with joy and relief, Annie and Lisa ran with the boy to join the others, seeing the figures up ahead who’d emerged from the ruins and were even now running towards them.

  “Thank God,” said Annie, and then she saw the expression on Alex and Candy’s faces. It was a look of despair.

  “It’s them,” said Alex flatly. “It’s Jay and the others.”

  And when Lisa and Annie looked, they saw Wayne and Damon suddenly stagger to a halt; saw their own look of joy crumple and fade as they recognised them.

  “Oh, good Christ,” said Candy, her voice cracking. “We’ve been right around the edge, and there’s no way off.”

  There was a long, motionless silence as they all stood looking at each other.

  Then Jay began yelling something at the sky, punching at the air with his fists.

  Finally, he pulled himself together, shook his head—and walked slowly towards them. Although no one spoke, they all felt the same. It was as if everything in this strangely and horribly changed world was against them. They’d sensed that they were stranded here, and now they had the proof.

  “Why doesn’t someone come?” moaned Candy.

  Wearily, Jay walked past Wayne and Damon, head down. When he was standing in front of the others, he looked up at them.

  “I think we’re stuffed,” he said simply.

  They heard the music before they reached Wady Street.

  “It’s a radio,” said Damon. “Someone’s switched on a radio.”

  But when he turned to the others, all trudging back the way that Jay’s party had come, his fragile expression of hope faded. There had been elation when they thought they’d found others who might help, but the realisation that they’d been right around this bizarre, ruined plateau and discovered no way off had crushed any remaining wishful thinking in the others. There had been too much horror, too much anguish—and the remaining optimism could not be rekindled. They had been walking in hopeless silence.

  “Well, it’s something, isn’t it?” Damon went on desperately.

  They kept walking slowly as the sounds of the yearning harmonica drew them on. The tune it played might be Spanish. A slow, melancholic lament. It seemed somehow to resonate in the silence. Under different circumstances, it might have sounded beautiful. But not here, on this crag in no-man’s-land.

  “It’s Gordon,” said Jay at last.

  When they finally turned into the ruins of Wady Street, they could see the lone figure sitting on the shattered garden wall, next to the ruins of what had once been Gordon’s home. No one spoke or called out to him as they picked their way over the rubble in his direction. And if he heard them coming, Gordon showed no sign of it. He remained hunched there, guitar slung over his shoulder, playing his lament. It was a haunting, mournful sound. He finished as they finally drew level with him, but remained looking steadfastly in the opposite direction.

  “I told you,” Jay said to him. “There’s no way you could dig her out of there…”

  “Did,” said Gordon. “Found.”
/>   “You found your aunt?”

  “Dead,” said Gordon.

  When he turned to look at them, his face was a blank white mask from the plaster dust that had gushed around him as he’d clawed at the rubble. There were two streaks on his cheeks where he’d wiped away tears. Gordon stood, and put the harmonica back in his top pocket.

  “There’s no way off,” Lisa told him. “We’re stuck up here.”

  Gordon nodded. He could not react to the news. He’d tried to play the grief out, but it was still there.

  “So now what?” asked Candy.

  “I suppose we should eat,” said Annie. “The boy needs something. I guess we all do.”

  “I’ll never keep anything down,” said Lisa. “Not after what we’ve seen.”

  “Annie’s right,” said Jay. “We may not have an appetite, but we need to keep up our strength.”

  “I need a drink,” said Candy. “A big drink.”

  Alex looked as if he were going to say something, but Candy glared and he shut up.

  “There’s a mini-mart still standing over there,” said Wayne. They followed his pointing finger, through the ruins of one of Wady Street’s houses to a back street which ran along the eastern edge of the park.

  “Someone will come,” said Alex. “We just have to wait.”

  No one answered as they clambered through the ruins towards the mini-mart.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Taking Stock

  The floor of the mini-mart was littered with tins that had been shaken from their shelves. But the building had remained standing, despite a gigantic crack stretching from floor to ceiling. Even the windows had remained in their frames.

  “Don’t touch any of the refrigerated stuff,” said Alex, as he and Lisa began clearing the tins out of the way. “The power’s only been off a day, but the food might still have turned.”

  Wayne and Damon ignored him, charging past them into the shop, kicking tins out of the way. They reached the refrigerated units and counter at the other end of the store and began foraging.

  “What happens if you get food poisoning?” snapped Alex.

  Jay found what he was after and tossed it across to Alex, who fumbled the catch and nearly dropped it.

  “Tin-opener,” said Jay. “Who’s going to be Mother?”

  Annie had already selected some tins from the floor and took the opener from Alex. Soon, the boy was scooping fingerfuls of minced lamb into his mouth. Wayne and Damon were eating noisily at the far end of the store as the others selected what they wanted and began to eat. Although their appetites had seemed non-existent, the sudden appearance of food made them all realise how ravenous they really were.

  After a long silence, while they satisfied their hunger, Annie said: “Maybe we should light a fire or something? A beacon, to let them know there’s someone alive here.”

  “Can’t do any harm,” said Jay. “And there’s plenty of wood lying around.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” said Alex.

  “Why not?” asked Jay.

  Alex suddenly became aware that Candy was no longer with them.

  “Candy?”

  “What?” snapped her voice from behind the shelving unit in the centre of the littered floor. She swung around the edge, one hand gripping the shelves. There was a bottle of Scotch in her other hand. She stood for a moment, staring at him. Her eyes did not leave his face as she unscrewed the cap and took a deep drink. Alex moaned, rubbing a weary hand over his face.

  “Come on, then,” continued Jay, ignoring the potential conflict between them, “what do you mean? Maybe the rescue services, the others on the outside, believe there’s no one alive here. We have to at least let them know there are some survivors.”

  “Tell them,” said Candy, drinking again.

  “Candy, take it easy with that bottle. You know…”

  “You’ve got to tell them what we saw. What we think we saw.”

  “What the hell’s she talking about?” snapped Wayne.

  “Candy, please. The bottle…”

  “You saw something,” said Jay, remembering the nightmare back at the community centre. “Didn’t you?”

  Alex looked hopelessly at the floor.

  “Tell them!” shouted Candy. The boy crept into Lisa’s lap, burying his head.

  “Last night, before the community centre blew up…” Alex swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. “Candy and I went out…into the street. We saw someone…something…in one of the stores. A man with his eye…Christ, Candy, I can’t…”

  “Come on, Alex. Be a man. Try harder.” Candy drank again.

  “We saw a man who should have been dead. His head was…smashed. But he spoke to us, as if he knew us. But we’d never seen him before. Then this…this…black stuff…exploded out of him. Like black water, or oil, or something. A bloody great black wave. It just exploded out of the store and filled the street. It chased us back to the community centre.”

  “Alex thinks we hallucinated,” slurred Candy. “He thinks that there might have been nerve gas, or something, in the air. Made us see the dead man, and the black stuff.”

  “Two people couldn’t have the same hallucination,” said Annie.

  “Make it three,” said Jay, unscrewing the top from a pop bottle and taking a deep draught.

  “What do you mean?” asked Lisa.

  “I think I saw that black wave, or whatever you want to call it. Just before the community centre blew to hell. I thought I’d imagined it then. Thought I saw something like a black flood exploding through the windows. Just an instant, before the place went up.”

  “Three people seeing the same thing?” said Annie. “You can’t have imagined it.”

  “I’ve read things,” said Alex. “About what they can do these days. Designer bombs that kill people and leave buildings standing. Maybe they could design a gas that makes people see the same things. Good way to start a war, isn’t it? Terrify people out of their wits first, then you could move in and take over. The survivors would be glad to see an invading army then, wouldn’t they? Come to save them from the nightmares.”

  “You think that’s what happened?” asked Jay. “You think this wasn’t an earthquake, but the start of a war, or something?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” replied Alex desperately. “I just know what we saw…what we think we saw.”

  “I think we should light a fire,” said Damon.

  “But maybe we’ve been cut off deliberately,” Alex went on. “Don’t you see? What if there was some kind of missile strike, and some kind of nerve gas dropped here. That could be the reason why no one’s come to rescue us. Maybe this whole area has been deliberately cordoned off. I’ve been thinking about it all. Thinking about nothing else. Maybe we’re quarantined. We could be infectious, or something. That gas…”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Jay. “Infectious nerve gas? I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t you see?” pleaded Alex. “If we light a fire, we might draw attention to ourselves. And maybe…just think about this for a moment…maybe, if there’s some kind of invading army out there… Well, they might see a beacon and decide to just drop another bomb on us or something.” Alex was trembling now, sweat beading on his brow.

  Candy looked down on her husband with contempt, and drank again.

  “I think we should light a beacon,” said Annie at last. “What else can we do? The telephones are dead and it looks like the rescue services just aren’t going to come. Maybe they think everyone is dead here. We’ve got to let them know we’re here.”

  “You’re right,” said Jay. “Nobody knows what the hell is happening, whether it’s an earthquake, a missile strike, or what. But whatever’s happened, we can’t just stay here, living on tinned food for the rest of our lives. We should all start collecting wood for our bonfire. We’re going to set it up in the middle of the park, well away from the houses so the fire doesn’t spread.”

  “L
et’s get started,” said Lisa.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Journal of Jay O’Connor:

  The Remembered

  In the next few minutes, we were all back out there, stomachs full. Nobody spoke much; we all had a rough idea of what was required. I found a door off its hinges, lying just behind the mini-mart; grabbed it and hauled it off across the stunted grassed area that led into the middle of the park. I didn’t look back, but I knew that the others were doing the same; looking for anything that would burn.

  I reckon it took us about two hours to build that mound, right in the middle of the park. Common sense told us that perhaps it should be closer to the edge, giving anyone over there who might be in a position to help us a good view of the beacon we were going to light. But none of us wanted to get any closer to the edge and that bottomless drop beyond. No one could tell how safe it was there. So everyone just trudged backwards and forwards to the nearest line of ruined houses, or in Candy’s case back to the mini-mart, where she kept herself well and truly fuelled up on the booze. It was funny. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. The way that Alex kept looking at her as she’d come staggering back from the mini-mart with some pathetic, tiny piece of broken wood or crumpled newspaper. Like we didn’t know she was just bringing this stuff back as a “cover”; like she wasn’t drinking at all. And it was just as funny the way Alex didn’t say a damn thing to her, even when she started staggering and weaving on her way back to the steadily growing pile in the middle of the park.

  Something else was happening as we worked. It was as if everyone was welcoming this chance to be simply…doing something. Up until now, we’d all been so helpless. Just survivors of this earthquake, or missile strike, or whatever. I suppose we were still all in shock, and not understanding why no one had come to save us. I reckon that Alex’s words about this hallucinating gas, or whatever, had just made everyone’s fears worse. But just for now, while we were all collecting this wood for the fire, the simple physical act of collecting it was like some form of therapy. And I guess we were all thinking our own private thoughts as we worked; trying to get our heads together.