Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  “Oh my God,” she said faintly, pointing down at the congealed mess.

  The woman had written a message in her own blood, scrawling with reddened fingers.

  “‘You’re…’” read Jay, sickened, turning his head to get a better look.

  “‘You’re all in Hell’,” finished Annie.

  They stood, looking down in horror. No one seemed able to move.

  Then Jay angrily stooped down again and grabbed one of the corpse’s legs, hauling it away. Moments later, the body was in the back of the truck, together with the other two corpses.

  Jay pretended to dust his hands, his back turned as the others began moving off through the rubble towards the nearest ruined houses. He wanted to vomit, fought to control his gorge. He couldn’t flee away any longer. Taking a deep breath, he turned.

  Alex was still there, looking at him.

  Before anger could flare, Jay saw that he didn’t have a “told you so” look on his face. Instead his face was grim, and he merely nodded.

  “Not easy,” he said.

  “Never said it would be,” replied Jay.

  Alex nodded again, and started after the others.

  Jay followed.

  Gradually, they worked their way east—or what was once east, before the world beyond the outer crags of rock had faded into inpenetrable grey. They moved from house to house, from room to room, catching sight of each other every time they emerged once more into the fractured streets. Their sense of unease was growing steadily and insistently as they each moved on to the next building, the next ruin—and found nothing. No one spoke, but every time they emerged from another shattered doorway or a crumbling building each strained to see if the others had found a body.

  One hour into the search, and not one body had been found yet.

  Could that be possible?

  The search continued in the eerie silence that lay over the ruins.

  And then, another hour later, a call from Alex brought the others scrambling from the ruins. He was standing in the middle of a ploughed-up road; just standing with his hands hanging at his sides, staring off into space. He looked completely exhausted. Jay was the first to reach him, could see no sign of a body, began asking him what was wrong…and then, without speaking, Alex pointed across the street to the wall of a half-demolished house.

  It was the second message; scrawled in blood, dozens of hands working to make the letters three feet high.

  Auschwitz.

  “What does it mean?” asked Damon.

  No one could answer. But it was clear that the vanished dead were still taunting Edmonville’s sole survivors. The sight of the hideous message sapped their strength, but they continued with the search anyway. It didn’t take long before Annie came across the next message, also scrawled in blood in huge letters, on a road sign that had snapped from its supports and fallen across the street.

  Belsen.

  “Belsen?” said Damon at last, when he’d been able to decipher the message. “What the hell is a Belsen?”

  No one answered him.

  The fourth message had been scrawled on the unbroken concrete of a pub carpark.

  Reverend Jim Jones.

  “A cult leader,” said Annie, before anyone asked the question. “He led his disciples to mass suicide in South America.”

  When their search brought them to the rear of Femmes Hardware, the message had become more personalised. There were loading bays there for the other stores. A florist’s van had been crushed by falling masonry, withered flowers lying all around it like some kind of funeral tribute. Annie stood for a moment, shivering; remembering the fissure that had suddenly opened up on the other side of these buildings. Now their own property was standing on a cliff-edge, everything on the other side fallen away into the chasm that surrounded them. As they moved past it, Jay caught sight of the scrawl on the rear door of Annie and Lisa’s store.

  Dyke Bitches.

  Annie paused. She and Lisa had put everything into making their business work. Now the ’quake had ruined it, brought them to the very brink of hell. But even in hell they weren’t free from the hatred they’d come across in their ordinary lives. She felt sorrow and fear combining inside, threatening to overwhelm her.

  Suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder.

  It was Jay.

  “Okay?”

  Annie tried to smile, squeezed his hand—and they continued on past the ruins. She hoped that Lisa and the boy were okay as…

  Lisa shoved open the door of the mini-mart, immediately standing back when a whispering cloud of plaster dust curled down around her head from above. Coughing, she waved it away and stepped inside. The boy kept close, hanging on to her skirt.

  “Candy?”

  There was no reply.

  Lisa stepped inside. The place was pretty much as she remembered it from yesterday. When the boy tugged at her hand and pointed to one of the shelves, she nodded and took down a can of fizzy drink for him. She handed him a packet of biscuits, popped open a tin of pears. The boy ate greedily, and she felt guilty that she hadn’t thought of it earlier. Her stomach was still strained and nauseous, but she also opened a can of drink and took a deep draught.

  They had been gathering wood for a couple of hours, but suddenly there was no sign of Candy. The boy needed to eat, and perhaps Candy had decided on something to “fortify” her during the search; so they’d made their way back to the mini-mart.

  But there was no sign of her in here.

  And then Candy stood up from behind the counter and made a “here I am” gesture with both hands. The sudden appearance made Lisa start. Candy laughed, and then Lisa knew that she was already well and truly plastered. One hand on the bench for balance, Candy made a wobbly descent to pick up the bottle of brandy, clunking it down dramatically, as if evidence of her condition were needed.

  “Anything to say?” she asked.

  Lisa drank again from her can, saying nothing.

  “You sure? No lectures?”

  “What you do with your life has nothing to do with me.”

  “Good. Now that’s good. No holier-than-thou shit.”

  “It’s just that…”

  “I knew it! Here we go. The lecture’s coming, after all.”

  “I was only going to say that we’ve got to help each other until we get out of this mess. Until someone comes.”

  “All for one and one for all, eh?”

  “Look, Candy, none of us wants to be here. You don’t, I don’t. But we’ve got to co-operate, until we can get ourselves out of this mess. We need to pull together.”

  “Here we go again. Somebody else telling me what I need. You been taking lessons from Alex?”

  “We don’t have to like each other. We just have to…”

  “Too fucking right we don’t have to like each other!” Candy whirled to face her. “And I certainly don’t like you or your friend!” Whirling again, she stormed away.

  “We need…”

  “I know what I need!”

  “We need each other. But you can’t help very much if you’re completely pissed all the time.”

  “Is that it? I mean, is that the end of the lecture?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good…good…” Candy drank again.

  Lisa exhaled. It was merely a sigh of stress. But to Candy it was a gesture of contempt. Furiously, she slammed the brandy bottle down hard on the bench. A thin spiral of spirit corkscrewed from the neck and splattered on the wood.

  “Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare look down your nose at me!”

  “Candy, I’m not…”

  “Who the hell are you to tell me what to do? From where I’m standing, you’re the disgusting one! You and that…that…partner of yours!”

  “What are you talking about, Candy?”

  “I mean you and her. You’re lesbians, aren’t you? Don’t bother to deny it, you can tell just by looking at you; particularly the other one. The butch one. Does she wear the tr
ousers, then? Is that how it works?”

  “Calm down, Candy.”

  “It’s…it’s…disgusting. And that boy there. You shouldn’t be anywhere near him. You or the other one.” Candy staggered towards them. “You don’t know what it’s like…can’t know what it’s like…to look after a child. To have one of your own. Be its…his…mother.”

  “I have…” And Lisa bit her lip before she could tell Candy of her own two children. Candy’s eyes were suddenly filled with tears as she fixed on the boy. He was finishing his tin of pears, was suddenly aware of Candy and regarded her with wide, puzzled eyes as she stooped down and tried to smile, wiping the tears from her face.

  “Come here, darling,” she said. “Come to me.”

  The boy moved closer to Lisa, clinging to her legs.

  “Come away from there,” Candy went on, her tone hardening. “You can’t want her. It’s not natural.”

  “Candy, you’re frightening him.”

  “Someone needs to take him away from you both. It’s not right.”

  Candy moved quickly, as if to snatch him away. The boy cried out in alarm, and Lisa pulled him around behind her.

  “Stop it, Candy!”

  Rising in fury, Candy screamed directly into Lisa’s face: “You pervert! You disgusting animal!”

  Lisa stepped forward and smacked her across the face.

  Candy gasped, standing back.

  And then the fury returned, even fiercer than before, raging out of control.

  “Get out! Get out! GET OUT!”

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that…”

  “You…you…lesbian!”

  “You can’t stay here, Candy. It’ll be dark soon. And I need help to build up the fire.”

  “Don’t…call…me…Candy! Only my friends call me that.”

  “That Black Stuff will be back.”

  “Black Stuff! I don’t believe it. Alex was right. It’s not real. We only think we’re seeing all this crap…”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Leave the boy here with me! Go back to your butch friend and do whatever people like you do to each other!”

  “Candy…”

  “Give the boy to me!”

  When Lisa stood her ground, refusing to surrender him, Candy lurched to one of the shelves, seized a bottle and flung it. Her aim was bad. It smashed against the wall, spraying everyone with vinegar. There was nothing Lisa could do. Backing off carefully and keeping the boy well behind her in case Candy should suddenly snap and launch herself forward, Lisa found the door and went out on to the street. Candy lunged forward, kicking the door shut, making another plaster-dust cloud swirl.

  Lisa pulled the boy close, stroking his hair.

  Anger and sorrow fought inside, hurting her throat.

  As Candy moved back for her bottle, Lisa realised that she was out of control. She couldn’t be left alone like this. Clearing her throat, wiping her own tears away, she started back down the street with the boy clinging close as…

  “Christ, I don’t believe this,” said Alex, leaning back against the side of the dump truck, pulling the tab on one of the cans they’d collected from the ruins of another store. Gordon, sitting on the running-board of the truck, bit into a pre-packed sandwich. It tasted like cardboard.

  Annie stood looking off into the vast expanse of grey sky, drinking from a pop bottle. She’d been very quiet since they’d found the bloody message on the back door of the hardware store. The lack of bodies and the blood messages everywhere had shaken them more than actually finding any of the dead.

  “Maybe…” began Damon, and then dried up. He turned away to sulk when no one asked him to develop his views further.

  “Maybe…” Wayne decided to take up the mantle. “Maybe it’s like that guy was saying earlier.” His hand made a dismissive gesture towards Alex. “Nerve gas.”

  “We’ve been through this,” said Jay evenly.

  “No, I mean this latest thing. The fact that we can’t find any dead bodies when they should be lying all over the place.”

  “What has nerve gas got to do with missing bodies?” asked Annie.

  “Well…maybe there are bodies. Lying all around here. Only thing is, we can’t see them.”

  “Yeah.” Damon had emerged from his sulk. “They’re lying around, but because of this gas stuff we can’t see them. Another one of them hallucinations. Like all the other things. The Black Stuff and what them two said they’d seen in the off-licence. Makes sense.”

  “No it doesn’t,” said Annie.

  “What the fuck do you know?” snapped Damon.

  “I’ll tell you what the fuck I know,” said Annie. “It would have to be a pretty specialized and selective nerve gas. First it makes all of us see things, the same things. Then it decides that it’s going to stop us seeing things. Then it makes us see messages written in blood that aren’t really there. Where the hell do we draw the line? No, the nerve gas theory fell apart a long time ago.”

  “Well, we think Alex is right!” asserted Wayne.

  “That’s more than I do,” said Alex wearily. “I wanted to believe all that stuff I said. I don’t any more. Something’s happened here; something’s happening here. But we’re not seeing…and then unseeing…things. That’s not what this is about.”

  “Taw-taw…” Gordon spat out a mouthful of sandwich. “It’s taun-taunting us.”

  “How the fuck are we supposed to understand what he’s talking about?” said Wayne.

  “Like. Last. Night. Black Stuff…tau-taunting…”

  “I still don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Damon.

  “Like last night at the bonfire,” said Jay, nodding at Gordon. “And today those messages were all put there for us to see.”

  “But why?” asked Annie. “Do they all mean something?”

  Jay shrugged.

  “How long have we been searching?” asked Annie.

  “Four, five hours,” replied Alex.

  “We’re never going to find anyone before it gets dark.”

  “We’d better get on with it,” said Jay.

  “Let’s do it, then,” affirmed Alex. “I’ll drive the truck up ahead. Anyone know this part of town?”

  “Yes,” said Annie. “It’s going to be harder from here. There are a lot of houses just over there, between the edge and the park.”

  “Why haven’t we found anybody yet?” asked Wayne.

  “That Black Stuff,” said Jay. “The stuff you think you might or might not have seen…has hidden them away somewhere.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it wants to use them again, doesn’t it? Tonight. Tomorrow. For as long as it can before they start…” Jay refrained from saying falling apart.

  Everyone understood.

  Silently, Alex climbed into the cabin of the dump truck and started it up.

  Silently also, the others began to pick their way down the street.

  Continuing the search.

  Chapter Seven

  The Ordeal of Juliet DeLore

  Juliet recoiled from the brink, arms thrust behind her and grabbing for anything solid. Her eyes remained fixed on the yawning chasm before her.

  She’d fled across the supermarket carpark, swerving around parked cars, her leather-jeaned hip smacking against the hood of one vehicle but the pain meaning nothing at all in her flight. She worked out at a local gym once a week, tried to keep in shape, but never could have believed that she was capable of such speed. She’d been freed from a nightmare; now she was in another kind of dream altogether. Like a low-flying bird she was streaking across the carpark, blond hair streaming behind her.

  Nothing could stop her now.

  In a moment, she’d see people; maybe dazed or disorientated by the earth tremor or the bomb blast, or whatever had happened. In a second, she’d be surrounded by crowds of protective people. Maybe there’d even be a policeman, or a fireman, in the milling crowd. She was free and she wa
s safe and…she staggered to a halt when she saw what lay ahead.

  The carpark had suddenly ended in a ragged cliff-edge.

  She could see the estate agent’s office across the way on Laburnum Street, could see the Chinese takeaway and the telephone kiosk outside. Nothing could have prepared her for the fact that everything from that point to what had once been the middle of this supermarket carpark had vanished for ever into a bottomless pit; including one hundred and twenty square yards of tarmac, the twenty-two vehicles that had been parked there, a main road, a taxi rank and the one hundred and fifty-three men, women and children who had fled the supermarket when the first tremor had hit Edmonville.

  Juliet teetered on the edge, saw the vast space yawning before her—and then fell back, breathless, to the cracked tarmac.

  Disorientated, panicking, she scrabbled back further on elbows and heels.

  This couldn’t be right.

  Now she was on her feet again; crouched and running around the cliff-edge, looking for the point at which she could cross to safety. Okay, something terrible had happened. There’d been an earthquake. Impossible and unheard of in this country. But it had happened. She could handle it. But first, she had to get away from that bloody supermarket and find where the people had gone and…

  There was no one here.

  No one behind her when she whirled to look (and, thank Christ, no sign of Trevor loping across the carpark in her direction), and no one over on the other side of the huge fissure. That couldn’t be right. There had to be people. She just had to keep following this cliff-edge, and she’d see somebody. Fire-fighters, maybe. Or men in bright yellow oversuits, directing people to the nearest emergency station, or…

  Juliet was still running, now in an arc around the supermarket, following the cliff-edge, and looking out over the two-hundred-foot fissure that separated her from the other side, and it was just going on…and on…and on.

  And where, for Christ’s sake, were all the people?

  Now the ragged edge seemed to be taking her back towards the main supermarket building, which was the last place in the world she wanted to see again.