After Tomorrow: A CHBB Anthology

by Samantha Ketteman

  As I lay dying on the cold stone floor, I have one last thought. Only one thing is certain now… I failed, they won, and the Alphas will have their Population Zero.

  Last of His Kind

  Sherwin Matthews

  *This story is written in UK English*

  I. First Steps into Oblivion

  The Aftermath in the Ruined City, Date Unknown

  The wind whipped around the taut cable supports of the bridge, making eerie whistling noises. Below him, Nolan could hear the tide gently ebbing, the water cascading in waves that brushed against the piers. Each time they struck, tiny jets of green foamy water leapt upwards, tendrils reaching towards him from the depths. He couldn’t quite shake the image from his head of tiny hands trying to ensnare him and drag him out to sea. He hurried on, and didn’t look over the edge of the bridge again.

  A few short steps took him over the threshold and into the city, which had been fast growing into a dark and foreboding silhouette on the horizon in the failing light. It was a ruin in part, indiscriminate burnt out buildings and cars with smashed windows sitting next to their surprisingly pristine neighbours. Debris laid strewn over the pavements and roads, lumps of fallen masonry from some of the older buildings and toppled statues, human waste, and old garbage bags split to reveal their rotting contents inside.

  A sense of stillness pervaded everything, in a forgotten place.

  The wind had picked up slightly as he had travelled across the river, dried autumnal leaves making scratching noises as they trailed over the pavement, the leaves still attached to the trees rustling on the branches. Somewhere to the left of him, something that sounded like a loose tin can was making a metallic clapping noise as it rolled over and over. They were about the only sounds.

  Nolan’s mind compensated for the oppressive silence with its own noises. When confronted with so much absence of sound, the world seemed deafening as his ears strained. He imagined a mournful violin playing over the scene, a lament for the fallen and the decay of the city both.

  He knew he couldn’t waste any time as the sun fell from its perch in the sky. Already it was a murky orange, dipping behind the tallest buildings. The long shadows it cast promised of the darkness in the night to come. In his time, Nolan had thought of himself as many things, and had been called many names. Indecisive was not one of them. He strode off purposefully down the central avenue towards the heart of the city, the girl with him.

  

  The name of the bar shone brightly, cutting through the early evening night in a flickering neon light, a radiant artificial blue with an equally garish red line around it. Nolan stared in fascination at the sign for what could have been an eternity. The lighting was something from the past, from before, an impossible concept that could not surely be.

  Electricity did not exist in the world anymore.

  With a trembling left hand he reached up, placing his palm on the door, and pushed firmly. It slowly swung open a fraction, quite without resistance and weightless on well-oiled hinges. Immediately the scent of tobacco and alcohol assailed him, a familiar smell from his youth, and a near forgotten memory from a time gone by. It only added to the fascination he felt at the discovery, an enigmatic relic still vibrantly part of the present.

  His companion didn’t want to enter the building. She pleaded with him, but he could not be swayed from investigating whatever hallucination it surely had to be. Nolan left her behind outside. He knew she would wait for him, in any case. She always did.

  Inside was as dark and low lit as any number of night spots he recalled living his teenage years in. Distorted music played at a quiet volume from somewhere within the murky gloom, and permeated throughout the space. It sounded like it might once have been a recording by an underground grunge band, poorly mixed in a dingy basement somewhere. The snare missed its time or seemed to hit sporadically and the guitars were tuned too low and played drastically different parts to each other. The vocals either whispered or shouted, at times too fast like an LP, at the wrong speed setting, at others sluggish, an old cassette that had been chewed up. If the few patrons present cared for it or even noticed the music, it did not show. Their backs were slumped over where they sat at the bar or in seats at the walls.

  Cautiously, Nolan crept past empty booths and pillars with posters and flyers spread across them. Even in his growing trepidation, he marveled at the lights set on the walls, a constant warm, yellow-white, inviting hue. He wondered how something once so commonplace before would be so remarkable to him.

  Only the bartender seemed to acknowledge his presence. The rest kept their places, nursing drinks, faces down behind hunched shoulders. As Nolan approached the bar, the man set aside the cloth with which he polished the glasses, and moved to stand in front of Nolan, just the bar top between them. Barely older than Nolan, he wore a messy mop of sandy blond, shoulder length hair, and stubble that suggested he hadn’t shaved for a week, his expression uninterested, bored even. One eyebrow was raised as if he waited for Nolan to speak.

  “What is this place?” After not speaking out loud for such a long time, so many days and weeks, Nolan’s voice came out rough when he did, an unfamiliar rasp to his ears. It surprised him how severely his voice had changed with disuse.

  Is that really how I sound now?

  The bartender just looked blankly at him, unreadable brown eyes staring straight through him entirely without acknowledgement.

  “Well?” Nolan swiped his hand in front of the bartender’s face from side to side, eyebrows lifting questioningly. As before, his words fell on deaf ears, the only change in the room when a different track began to play over the PA as the previous one ended, the replacement just as warped.

  “Who are you? Any of you?” Nolan tried again, pivoting around on the spot and trying to encompass another person sitting at the bar into the conversation. It was hopeless, not one of them reacting at all. By the time he had returned back to face the bartender, the man had gone about his business, the dirty cloth polishing shot glasses and silver beer taps.

  “Going to get me a beer?” Nolan asked in exasperation more than any real desire for the alcohol. He’d never liked the taste. Unsurprisingly, his request was met by no response. He might as well have said nothing at all.

  “You are not supposed to be here.” The voice came from one of the booths behind him. It was rich and textured, thickly accented with a drawl that Nolan couldn’t place.

  Nolan turned his back to the bar, relieved that someone in the building had directly interacted with him. He saw the new arrival sitting quite casually in one of the chairs he had passed as he came in, feet propped up on the table edge, and leaning back heavily into the leather cushioning.

  “I’m not?”

  “Not especially. Come and join me, before one of them realises that you are in their midst. Such a thing would be... regrettable.” The stranger’s voice was unusually compelling, despite the inherent warning within his words.

  Nolan sat down across the table from the man, the leather upholstery creaking beneath his weight. Up closely he could see the stranger better, a low light shining between them from a table lamp. Arms crossed across his chest, the man wore a long, grey coloured jacket with a black shirt underneath, and a pinstripe waistcoat that was difficult to make out. His black leather shoes were polished to a shine, reflecting a yellow spot on their toes. His attire was far too formal for the setting, more at home in a hammy detective drama set in the 1950’s.

  Cold eyes stared out from underneath a pinstriped floppy hat, obscuring most of the stranger’s face. They might have been threatening, inquisitive, or merely benign for all that Nolan could tell. Like all icy blue eyes, they looked aggressively outwards and revealed nothing.

  He was prevented from further scrutiny when the table lamp suddenly blinked into darkness as the bulb burnt out, the pair of them swallowed up in the shadows of the seating.

  “Do not be alarmed.” The man pre-empted Nolan’s unease. “The
y will not notice you so easily when you are not under the lights. If ever you want to hide from them, abandon the light and do so in the darkness. You would do well to take note of that, if there is a next time.” That same, unknown accent, elongating the end of the words and shortening their middle, was unlike any other Nolan was familiar with.

  “What is this place?” Nolan was bored of wasting his time with pleasantries and riddles.

  “Here? You are in the forgotten city.” His answer came from the darkened area within the booth that seemed to draw in all of the light around it. Nolan could see the faint outlines of the stranger moving as he spoke, but that was all.

  “That much I know. What is this place, the bar?” Nolan gestured a hand around him for emphasis.

  “This place is an echo. A temporary island only. You helped create this Nolan, but you are not welcome here.”

  “How do you know my name? What do you mean, I created this?”

  “Your questions do not need answers, at least until you ask the pertinent ones.” The enigmatic reply was infuriating, but before Nolan could bite back with a retort, the stranger was already talking again. “Look now around you. This place is not safe. Each of them is a dangerous predator, and you are yet weak prey.”

  “I’m sure that may be.” Nolan was fast despairing at finding out anything during his line of questioning. “But I am not leaving the city. Not until I can return her to where she is leading me.”

  “I know.” This time, Nolan could sense a definite palpable amusement from the man, with no possible mistake.

  “Can you help me?” Nolan leaned forward as he asked.

  “No. Beyond to tell you again that you must leave this place before too long. With every moment you spend here, the city will permeate your being, make a blemish upon your soul. The more that it does so, the more that they will be attracted to your presence, and you will become part of the city.”

  “And then?”

  “And then you will simply belong here, inseparable. It is an unenviable existence. At least it will be, assuming that one of them doesn’t consume your essence before too long.”

  “Bullshit. I’ve had enough of your ridicule and baseless threats.” Even as he protested, Nolan did not feel confident in his words.

  “Look around you then.” The stranger’s voice was a whisper. Nolan slowly turned his head left to look over his shoulder as discreetly as was possible, without obviously staring.

  Every single figure in the bar stared back, directly at him. The bartender’s mouth worked, silently repeating Nolan’s words from earlier.

  Well? Who are you?

  Nolan turned back to the stranger, but found himself sitting in an empty booth. Alone, he could feel an unsuppressed fear overtaking any prior frustration.

  “Leave. Now.” Another quiet whisper from the stranger somehow found its way to Nolan’s ears. He was not inclined to disagree.

  As quietly and calmly as he could, he stood and walked away from the bar, through the vestibule, and out of the door. He dared not look back. Behind him, their eyes intently followed his every movement, faces still expressionless.

  Outside, Nolan and the girl hurried onwards, deeper into the city.

  

  In the shadowy bar fading behind them, the patrons all rose to their feet in unison, facing the door by which Nolan had fled. The music skipped once, twice, and then began to fade into white noise, decreasing in volume but fluctuating as it did so, spiking and lurching back and forth. The overhead lights and table lamps flickered erratically, emitting little electrical buzzing sounds.

  Slowly, the figures began to move, walking the way that Nolan had left, following him. As they moved, the exposed skin of their faces began to peel and blister, the flesh beneath liquidising, bubbling away from the bone to leave leering, grinning skeletal visages in its stead. Their limbs expanded, stretched and bent at unnatural angles. Their smiles spread, teeth forcing the remnants of their lips to split as they were pushed beyond the limits of the dead flesh.

  Before too long, only monstrous devils remained.

  In a disorganised line, they streamed out into the crisp, cold air of the night, rushing past one another to seek the path that Nolan had taken, as if they might hope to see his footsteps burnt into the pavement. As the last of them, a wicked creature now only vaguely resembling the bartenders image, passed under the sign with the gaudy neon colours, the lights failed completely.

  Most of the bulbs in the lights just ceased to be, their glass shattering and the filaments snapping, others dimming as the glow in them dissipated. The blue and red that once lit the name were the last to die, resisting unto the end as they faded into lifeless grey tubes. Without them, the building fell back into ruin alongside the others.

  II. The Beginning of the End

  The Apartments, the Night of the Great Sundering

  They were awoken in their bed with a start by heavy crashing noises outside of their bedroom window. Hard rain pattered on the windowpane, and overhead a rumbling signified the presence of a raging storm. As Mellissa shuffled across the bed towards the window in the evening gloom, a brilliant shock of lightning illuminated the room for a few seconds through the thin curtains.

  Nolan rolled back over in the bed, shielding his eyes, the bright flash already leaving glowing colours under his eyelids. He doubted the sound was anything other than thunder, and his sleepy head refused to let him care enough to think of an alternative. If it was anything serious, Mellissa would tell him.

  “Oh my god.” Her voice was not as he had expected it. Opening his eyes, he wondered where the red cast on the room was coming from. Perhaps it was a new lamp he hadn’t noticed.

  Half awake, he thought that the colour reminded him of a particular bedroom window back at his university halls of residence, the one that he’d stared at whenever he came home drunk. Something about it had appealed to some primal urges deep within that always left him wondering. Try as he might, Nolan had never managed to meet the person that lived there to find out if she were indeed the girl his imagination had cast in the role.

  “Oh my god.” There it was again, already a rare phrase for Mellissa, now twice in a row. As his eyes finally focused, he saw that she had pulled open the curtains.

  The sky was crimson, the clouds a dark and foreboding red. From somewhere behind them some sort of illumination crept, creating strange shapes inside their forms. Even as Nolan watched, dumbfounded, the shapes appeared to writhe and distort. It almost looked as though something flew inside of the thunderclouds, ducking and wheeling, whatever they were trying to tear their way into the world from some sort of captivity. The rain impacting on the window was a violent scarlet hue, leaving streaks as it ran down the windowpane. The drops looked like blood to Nolan’s eyes, the same vital colour from a fresh wound. Where it struck the concrete four levels below their apartment, the rain seemed to smoke in tiny, misty clouds of its own.

  Below, the loud noises had come from a motley group of people, five in number, hammering away at the main entrance to the building as they tried to break in. They all looked terrified. One of them, a teenage girl, sat away from the others under a streetlight, cradling her head and crying. The others, three older men and a woman, all wielded a variety of objects: long metal pipes, tire irons, bricks, anything that they could carry. They smashed the makeshift weapons into the door, the double-paned glass already broken on both sides, cutting their skin as they reached arms through to try and tear the metal mesh that blocked them from opening the latch and gaining access.

  Nolan reached across to his phone, already about to type in the emergency services’ number. He stopped when he saw Mellissa pointing silently at the shapes coalescing further up the pathway leading to the building, just behind the trees. Open mouthed, they both watched in silent terror as the creatures were born into reality before their eyes. The phone fell forgotten through Nolan’s fingers.

  Oily and uniformly black, they seemed to pull thems
elves out from the cracks in the paving, slithering forth into the world as independent shadows that didn’t need a source, shapes fast becoming solid, corporeal. Initially, where they had first been almost transparent, the rain had passed through them, that in itself strangely horrific. As they slowly solidified, the drops impacting upon their hides seemed to swell their proportions immensely. None looked even vaguely human. One of the men below saw the creatures. Pointing as Mellissa was far above, he stood transfixed as his companions behind him redoubled their efforts, throwing their bodies at the door and shouting.

  One bolted, the woman. Clearly running as fast as she could, she sprinted along the front of the apartments, towards the side alley. She reached as far as the gate before lithe arms snaked out through the wooden slats and dragged her into the shadows she had been fleeing towards. Nolan heard her screams, faint and indistinct over the other sounds.

  The remaining pair had managed to get access, one man somehow prying the wire apart enough to force a hand through and unlatch the door. He pushed it open as the pointing man snapped out of his daze at last and went back for the girl, reaching her and throwing a protective arm around her shoulders. Their final companion was inside of the entrance hall, trying to help the man who had managed to get his hand through the glass of the main door as he struggled in vain to pull it free again.