Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  Jay and Gordon burst out of the meat mart, staggering on the concrete ramp.

  There was a howling behind them. It was the same insane gibbering sound they had heard the Black Stuff make when it had burst out of the dead the previous night by the bonfire. It was exploding out of the burning dead now, but some of them were still staggering after them like blazing marionettes, hungry to take them in their hellish embrace.

  Back inside, the factory was lit up like Hell. Mad shadows writhed and flailed against the flames. Ahead of them, beyond the yard, utter darkness had fallen on the remains of Edmonville.

  Gordon made to dash on ahead. Jay held him back.

  “I don’t think we’ll get far out there. We don’t know whether that Black Stuff has come back from down below.”

  “Jay!” Gordon looked back at the flailing torches in the factory. Another figure, utterly consumed in crackling yellow flame, pitched forward on to the concrete floor. Sparks showered on impact. Feebly, it groped and crawled on towards them. Something deep inside the corpse cracked, and the next moment the “life” went out of it. Black tar spattered from the flames, pooled all around the burning mass, and then swarmed hissing into the darkness like glistening black snakes. Gibbering and howling, other figures stepped over the fallen body, groping forward with arms of flame. They would soon be upon them.

  “The truck!” snapped Jay. “We can get a straight run to the park from here. I know we can.”

  “Jay?”

  “Get in the fucking truck, Gordon.”

  There was no time to argue. Gordon jumped on the running-board on the passenger side and yanked the door open. When there was a flurry of motion at the rear of the truck, he jerked back to see that Jay had seized one of the remaining petrol cans that had been stacked there by the missing Wayne and Damon.

  “Get in!” yelled Jay again. Twisting off the cap, he ran at the ramp and flung the can two-handed at the entrance. The can clanged against a wall, spraying petrol and rattling to the ground. It was a hell of a shot. The petrol instantly erupted in a cloud of fire, filling the entrance. Tongues of liquid blue fire began to lick down the ramp towards the truck. Whirling, Jay ran to the vehicle and flung himself into the driving seat.

  The engine turned over straight away.

  “Thank God for that,” he muttered grimly, and stepped on the gas.

  Just as the first of the figures erupted through the flames at the top of the ramp and began tottering down after them. The burning petrol had spread down the ramp to the remaining cans. Gordon flinched, waiting for the explosion as the cans were engulfed in the fire. Jay headed straight for the opened gates, realised that he was driving too wide, swung the wheel around hard—and stalled the engine.

  Just as one of the blazing marionettes staggered through the flames and tottered straight towards the dump truck, arms held wide.

  Jay saw it coming for the driver’s side. No more than ten feet now; a man-shaped, roaring mass of flame and smoke, intent on yanking the door open and dragging him into its embrace. The air was filled with a mad gobbling, hissing sound as Jay twisted the key. The engine coughed and juddered as if it were going to stall again.

  Fire filled the side window beside him, blackening the glass.

  A shriveled hand closed on the door handle.

  A hideously burning face, flesh crisping away from the skull, leered inches from his own.

  And then the dump truck roared forward.

  The burning shape was left behind, its smouldering hand yanked from the thing’s arm and still clutching the door handle. In his rear-view mirror, Jay saw the body stagger and fall to the ground in a flaming mass. Other shapes were staggering and weaving out of the flames, trying to locate them. Somewhere within the flaming chaos, another corpse burst apart. Black ichor splattered high in the air; jet-black droplets pattering to the concrete, swarming together again and snaking away from the fire into the night.

  Something bumped on the back of the truck as they roared out of the meat mart. The vehicle hit fallen rubble and Jay fought to regain control of the wheel as it spun in his hands. The headlights picked out great chunks of disintegrated wall directly ahead. Jay swerved, tyres screeching. Behind them, the remaining superheated petrol cans exploded. A cloud of oily flame erupted into the night, reflected in their rear-view mirror, sending gigantic shadows leaping amidst the ruins.

  Again, something bumped and shuffled from the rear of the vehicle.

  “On the back!” shouted Gordon, turning in his seat to look through the rear window. He couldn’t see anything, since the dumper was lowered, but he knew that some of the burning monstrosities must somehow have clambered into the back as they left the yard. “Jay! Some…some…”

  “I know!” yelled Jay, and swerved around the corner of the street, heading for where he thought the “flat” route might be between the ruined houses, leading them back to the bonfire. The truck hit a fractured pavement hard, jolting them in their seats and throwing Gordon hard against the windscreen. The guitar on his back gave a teeth-jarring, ragged chord. As Gordon scrambled around to face the front, rubbing his head, Jay looked in the rear-view mirror again, to see that they’d left the meat mart behind and none of the dead had been able to follow. Had they been consumed in that last explosion? They surely couldn’t get any further before the animating Black Stuff was driven out of them.

  Something bumped on the cab roof above them.

  Twisting furiously at the wheel, Jay strained to look up through the side window.

  “Jay!” Wide-eyed, Gordon pointed ahead.

  The side of a house loomed large in the headlights.

  “Shit!” Jay twisted again, and this time they just missed crashing. No matter what other passengers they’d picked up, he’d have to concentrate on driving, and getting them to the others as quickly as he could. There was no time to stop.

  A burning arm smacked down across the windscreen.

  One of their passengers had managed to climb from the dumper to the cab roof.

  Jay slammed on the brakes.

  A burning shape catapulted down over the hood and flapped out of sight in front of the truck. Smoke wafted over the hood and obscured the screen. Jay put his foot down again, and the truck jolted forward. Straight over the body. Now he could see which way they were headed and remembered clearly the route he had in mind. It couldn’t be far now.

  There were more scrabbling noises from the dumper behind.

  Gordon’s hands began exploring the floor, frantically searching.

  “What the hell are you doing?” snapped Jay.

  Gordon couldn’t speak, quickly smacked Jay’s shoulder as a way of telling him to shut the hell up, and continued searching. Jay slapped out at him.

  “Gordon, stop pissing about!”

  And then he’d found it. A lever and handle by the side of Jay’s seat.

  Gordon yanked it back.

  “Gordon!”

  The dumper began to lift behind them, the mechanism cranking as they raced on through the night. Jay looked anxiously around, not knowing in their panicked flight just what the hell was going on. When he saw in the rear-view mirror that two burning bundles were bouncing around on the road in the darkness behind them, he realised at last what had happened. Now the figures were lying still and smouldering as the truck raced on ahead.

  “You clever bastard,” he breathed. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  The dump truck screeched around the gable of another ruined building, the headlights picking up the park ahead.

  The bonfire was three hundred yards away, blazing in the darkness.

  Moments before, the fire had been their enemy.

  Now it was their beacon to a fragile safety.

  Jay put his foot down again, and the truck lurched on ahead over the grass.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Ordeal of Juliet DeLore

  Juliet could not believe that she had slept again.

  She snapped awake, still c
lutching the cold iron rails on the inspection platform. Crying out, she jerked around to look down the ladder, certain that Trevor must have taken the opportunity to climb up after her. It had grown dark again, but there was no sign of him. The dark shape of the Land Rover was still below, but no sign of her tormentor. Was he inside, sitting behind the wheel? Quickly, she looked all around, but there was no other way that Trevor could get up here. The darkness was now hiding the terrifying drop into the chasm on which the broadcasting mast stood, but she could still feel it; could feel its power, like invisible waves of energy drawing her to the edge. She remembered feeling like that when she was a child; when her parents had taken her up to the top of Greys Monument. Her father had held her close to the railed barrier; she had seen the immensity of the city below, and felt the horrendous drop pulling at her. Just as the chasm was pulling at her now.

  How could she have fallen asleep? It had to be the stress and the shock, ambushing her. She looked out into the growing night, searching the sky. There were no searchlights, no sounds of aircraft or helicopter engines; no evidence that anyone was searching for survivors. Despair choked her. There was a bitter taste in her mouth.

  Something splashed, somewhere below.

  Juliet looked down anxiously, through the steel lattice of the platform on which she crouched. Only darkness. Was Trevor up to something? She shuffled forward again and looked back down at the Land Rover. There was no movement. She heard it again. A soft lapping, like a wave on a beach. Was something leaking down the mast? She looked up, but again there was no sign of anything. But there was definitely a continuous liquid sound now, difficult to pinpoint—a sighing, gentle sound. Now much closer, no longer as gentle, dribbling and splashing. As she listened, it became the sound of hot water in a pan, hissing and bubbling on the stove. Juliet reluctantly pulled herself to her feet, listening to the sounds coming nearer. She looked all around in the darkness, down the ladder in case Trevor was coming up. But there was no sign of him.

  “Trevor!” she hissed. “Don’t come near me, you bastard. I’m warning you. It’s a long way down for both of us…”

  Something moved beneath the steel lattice of the observation platform.

  Juliet’s heart leaped. In an instant, she grabbed the railings of the platform and pulled her feet up into the air, bracing them on a lower rail. There was something directly below, but she could make no sense of it. Trevor? No, this movement wasn’t being made by any human form. It was where the liquid sound had been coming from. Now she couldn’t see down through the lattice. It was as if there was a pool of black oil or tar, rising up through the grille even as she looked. Swirling and bubbling beneath her, it suddenly stopped. Juliet looked out into the night. This didn’t make sense. How could a black pool rise up the centre of the broadcasting mast like that? Again there was the lapping, splashing sound—and Juliet recoiled when she saw that the black liquid was somehow flowing up the platform railings.

  For a moment, she couldn’t move. Now her vertigo was being made even worse by the impossibility of what was happening below her. Black water, or oil, or tar—whatever this stuff was—didn’t move like that. Liquid flowed down, not up. And for a moment, it was literally as if her world had been turned upside down. Was she the wrong way round? Was the liquid flowing down over those rails towards her? Juliet screwed her eyes shut, and willed her world the right way round. But when she opened them again, the black stuff was still running up the rails the wrong way. Worse, some of the liquid was dripping up from a lower rail to a higher rail.

  Juliet grabbed at an overhead rail and stepped up higher as the black liquid funneled and dripped along the rail on which she had just been standing.

  This isn’t happening. You’re just not seeing this right. You’re on a maintenance platform. So this has to be oil. Maybe stuff the engineers use for equipment up here or something…

  Where there had once been a steel platform was now a glinting black pool of bubbling tar. It began to rise.

  This CAN’T be happening! The rails around the platform are open on all four sides! It should be running out through them, down to the ground!

  But the black pool continued to rise towards her in a steady column.

  She knew then.

  It wanted to engulf her.

  It wanted to fasten on to her legs, swarm up around her body, suck her down into its horrifying blackness. Swallow her body and soul. Drag her back down to the chasm. Devour and digest her alive, revel and delight in her screaming.

  Something flared in the darkness.

  Even though her attention was fixed in terror on the ascending black horror, the sudden light made her snap her head away to look for it. It was way off, on the other side of the chasm. Somewhere on the other plateau. Now there was only darkness, and Juliet looked down again in terror, expecting the black liquid to be lapping at her boots.

  It had stopped.

  Inches below her feet, it bubbled and swarmed and churned, as if on a slow boil.

  But there was no doubt that it had ceased for the moment to climb towards her.

  The flare of light came again, and this time it stayed.

  Juliet had no idea how far away it could be. But she could see the outlines of a factory wall and ruined buildings. As if someone were building a fire in there. And now there was another light; this one much bigger than the first and growing larger all the time, revealing outlines of trees against the steadily growing flame. It stood out brilliantly against the utter darkness of the night. And despite the terror that Juliet had endured, the light meant that there was someone out there after all. She and Trevor weren’t the only people left in this new and horrifying world. And that meant there was hope of rescue after all. There could be many other reasons for the fires. A short circuit in one of the many ruins. A petrol leak, suddenly igniting. But Juliet would not allow head-room to these thoughts.

  She was not alone.

  For the first time there was hope.

  Beneath her, the black liquid hissed and spat as if hot coals had been dropped into the pool.

  Juliet braced herself to climb.

  And then the liquid began to drop away.

  Clinging tight, Juliet watched in growing relief as it descended to the steel-lattice base of the maintenance platform; saw the criss-cross metalwork appear as the black pool sank away beneath it. Now that liquid on the railings beneath her was behaving as liquid should behave, running and dripping away after the descending pool as if gravity had suddenly remembered the way it should be working. Ribbons of oil spattered and twisted away down into the darkness; spattering globules of tar burst and fell like black rain into the void.

  It left nothing of itself behind.

  No smear on the railings.

  Not a drop on the maintenance deck.

  No spatterings on the mast or the metalwork.

  Nothing dripping from the rails.

  Slowly, hesitantly, Juliet descended to the platform. First, one careful foot. Then another. But nothing swarmed out of the darkness to engulf her. The metalwork all around her was bone dry, as if it had never been wet at all.

  “Didn’t like it, did you?” Juliet spat down through the platform, to wherever the black stuff had gone. Instantly, she wondered why she had spoken to it as if it were alive. And almost immediately, another thought came to her. Something that didn’t make sense, but the truth of which seemed undeniable.

  Because that liquid stuff WAS alive.

  And it didn’t like what was happening over there.

  Juliet hunched up against the rails, staring out across the void to the rapidly growing light of the bonfire. There were still flarings of light off to the right, somewhere in the ruins. But these were sporadic, and not as frequent as before. No, the bonfire beyond the trees (perhaps half a mile away?) was where hope lay. In this world of utter darkness, it brought the possibility of salvation.

  Juliet looked down.

  She could see the Land Rover. No sign of Trevor. And abs
olutely no sign of the moving black liquid. Perhaps she’d never seen it at all? Perhaps it was the product of her ordeal and all the terrors she’d been forced to endure? For now, she didn’t want to think about that.

  She just wanted to concentrate on the light.

  When morning came, and there was more light, she would be able to see the people who had made the fire.

  They would save her from this living hell.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Night Riders

  “Dead?” said Damon, his face white in the light of the bonfire.

  He stood there, his hands hanging at his sides, a piece of wood in one of them. He had been in the act of throwing it into the flames when Alex and Candy had told them what had happened in the mini-mart. He’d said nothing throughout.

  “Wayne’s dead,” he said again in a flat voice. He was standing as if someone had taken him by the inside label of his shirt collar and hung him on the peg of an invisible door. The label snapped and he sagged to his knees. “Wayne’s dead.” He was running the two words over and over as if repetition would make sense of them.

  The dump truck was parked close to the flames. Gordon had wanted to tell everyone what had happened back at the meat mart but couldn’t, as usual, find his voice; not even for one-word descriptions. He couldn’t understand why Jay wasn’t regaling them with all the details of their nightmare encounter. He seemed content merely to tell them that what needed to be done had been done.

  Between them, Alex and Candy had recounted their tale of the feral children and of Wayne’s gruesome death. When they’d finished, Jay said: “Tell it again.”

  Alex drew breath, and squatted down beside the fire, looking off into the night. Carefully, he told the story again.

  “It was him,” said Candy, after a long pause when the only sound was the crackling flames; the only movement the dancing and twisting of long shadows. “It was Ricky.”

  The boy cuddled up close to Lisa, taking an obvious pleasure in the nearby warmth of the fire. “I don’t hear anyone talking about drugs,” she said. “Or nerve gas, or hallucinations. I take it we’re all agreed that whatever’s happening here is really happening to us?”