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After A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story

BY KITT MOSS

The first meteor hits in the middle of the day. I look up from my desk just

in time to see something streaking across the sky. It disappears from my

view, and a second later the whole building rattles. There's a crash of

breaking porcelain as a mug topples from someone's desk, assorted

curses, one short and surprised yelp. The next moment every light,

every computer, every printer and piece of hardware in sight abruptly

goes dead.

Briefly, for a fraction of a heartbeat, there is utter silence. Nobody

speaking. Nobody moving. Not even the hum of our machines to keep

us company. Then the spell breaks and everyone starts talking at once.

I'm on my feet. I don't even remember standing up. My heart is beating

like crazy. What the hell did I just see?

Around me, everyone is forming into little groups, muttering darkly about

power cuts. "Bloody nuisance," I hear someone say. "What's the number

for maintenance?"

Quickly, stiffly, I walk to the window. Just to check, I tell myself, just to

make sure everything's fine.

2

But everything's not fine. As I approach the window it comes into view:

not a mile away, a great black tower of smoke and dust is rearing from

the city, looking like a tornado in slow motion. The sight of it hits me like

a fist, and for a moment it's all I can do to stand there and stare. I've

never seen anything so utterly strange and terrifying in my entire life.

"David?" someone says from behind me. "David, are you okay?" I

recognise the voice as one of the receptionists. She comes up behind

me and puts a hand on my shoulder, but then she sees it too and I hear

her gasp in horror.

And then, very quickly, I'm surrounded by people. Everyone is crowding

over to the window to see, pressing themselves against the glass. I see

one woman push her way back through the crowd, hand over mouth,

looking like she's about to cry. A couple of the guys are trying to make

calls on their mobiles, jabbing helplessly at buttons, tapping dead

screens.

I take a step back, then another. I feel almost sick. This can't be real.

And then I think of Sharon. I wonder if she can see this where she is, if

she's doing the same thing, gazing out through the window of her studio

at the destruction. Even though I know it will be useless, I pull my mobile

out of my pocket and try to switch it on. Nothing. Not even a flicker.

"Look!" cries someone. And I do look, expecting them to be pointing to

some new feature of the devastation across town. But they're pointing

up, up into the sky. And I move forward to the window again and follow

their pointing finger and I see it. I see the shape in the sky, the moving

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speck growing larger and larger and larger. Not just one speck, in fact,

but a dozen, a hundred. The sky is scattered with them, like dark stars.

And one of them is getting bigger, is getting huge. And then it's not just a

speck anymore, but a thing, a huge mass plummeting from the sky so

fast it's almost impossible to follow, coming straight down towards us.

Coming so fast that it's falling, that there's fire all around it as it falls. As

one everyone recoils from the window, and there is screaming, and I

turn and start to run, not knowing where I'm going, not knowing if there's

any escape, but running all the same. And everyone around me is

running too. And I swear the thing is so close I can hear the scream of it

tearing through the air like a firework. And...

And the second meteor hits, and everything goes to hell.

The impact is so close that I'm thrown bodily to the floor. Everything

lurches. Computers topple from desks, glass breaks, filing cabinets slam

to the floor. Someone else falls on top of me and rolls away. The air is

thick with screams and shouts. For a moment I don't dare move, sure

that the floor is about to give way, that the whole building is about to

collapse around me. But it doesn't. After a second the shaking stops and

I climb cautiously to my feet.

The office is wrecked. Most of the windows along the south side are

broken, littering the carpet with bright cubes of safety glass. The air is

full of dust, thick and hard to breathe. Desks are overturned, chairs

fallen, tiles dangling from the ceiling. But worse than all that are the

people. The receptionist who came to me when I stood at the window

not two minutes ago is huddled back against the wall, covered in dust,

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her head buried in her hands, shuddering with sobs. All around the

office, men and women in suits are picking themselves up, gazing

around at the damage, looks of horror on their faces.

Then the screaming starts. It's close, but not anywhere on this floor. And

it's different from the kind of screams that I've heard already today. This

sound is long and sustained and piercing: a scream of pain.

That noise, more than anything else, jolts me. I wheel around and run for

the door to the stairwell. I have to get out of here, quickly, before the

next one hits. I pause at the door and look back into the office. Everyone

is still picking themselves up from the devastation. The receptionist is

still crying against the wall. Nobody's moving, nobody's running away.

Don't they understand? I think of all those little specks I saw in the sky.

Little specks growing bigger.

"Come on!" I yell, as loud as I can. "Come on, quick! We have to get out

of here." People turn and just stare at me, as though they don't

understand what I'm saying. Shock. It must be shock. "We have to go,

now!" I yell. But nobody moves, and so I turn and plunge on down the

stairwell alone.

I run. I run so fast that I'm afraid any second I might fall, leaping four

steps at a time down and down and down. By the time I reach the

second floor a few others are starting to enter the stairwell. I pass a man

with a wide, bright bloodstain down the front of his shirt. I pass a couple

of frightened-looking interns still trying to coax a response from the

mobiles.

5

My thoughts go to Sharon again. She must be worried. I wonder, are

things any better off on the other side of the river? A surge of fear

passes through my body, making me feel cold and jittery inside.

I reach the lobby. As I'm crossing towards the main doors the building

shakes again. I stumble but keep my feet. The security guard's at the

door, yelling and directing people outside. He looks as lost and scared

as the rest. As I pass through the doors and into the outside world the

tang of smoke reaches me, hot and bitter.

The street outside is thronged with people. They're pouring from every

doorway of every building, a tide pulling in a hundred different directions.

People are bloodied and dust-covered. People are screaming. People

are calling out each other's names. A couple of cars are stranded in the

middle of the road, doors flung open, the mass of people flowing around

them.

Without hesitation I throw myself into the crowd and turn towards the

river.

Something streaks past overhead, so close I'm certain I feel the heat of

it. The next second there's an explosive boom, a fresh wave of screams,

another horrifying lurch of the ground beneath my feet. I keep running,

shoved and buffeted by the panicking crowd. I pass a police van,

abandoned like so many other vehicles in the middle of the road, the

police themselves nowhere in sight. That's when I realise something: I

can't hear a single siren, a single alarm. Nothing but the babble and roar

of the crowd.

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I glance down a side street as I pass, and see an inferno blazing at the

end. Whatever used to stand there is now no more than a few teetering

piles of brick and fallen girders, engulfed by wild yellow flame. The

smoke is pumping up into the sky like a signal and people are fleeing

crazily from it, their eyes wide and their faces stained with soot and

blood. One terrified woman almost runs straight into me. I grab her just

before we collide and for a second our eyes meet, and it looks as though

she's trying to say something, her lips moving, eyes pleading. And then

she's gone, wrenching herself from me and stumbling off into the chaos.

For a moment I stare after her, feeling unpleasantly helpless in the face

of all this. Then the ground shudders again, and the noise of an

explosion echoes through the streets again, and I remember Sharon,

and I start once more to run.

It's not far to the river, but it seems to take an age. When I finally get to

the waterfront it is as crowded with people as the streets before it. The

nearest bridge is heaving with people crossing in both directions. It's a

crush, a stampede. There are even people in the water, looking as

though they're trying to swim from one bank to the other. I watch as a

speedboat passes under the bridge and then swerves to avoid a couple

of the swimmers, throwing up a bow wave that almost submerges them.

If she was coming to find me, then this is the bridge that Sharon would

use. The next nearest one is almost twenty minutes away. But has she

made it across already? Or would she stay in the studio and wait for me

to come to her? If only my phone was still working...

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I fight my way over to the barrier and grab hold, anchoring myself

against the crowd. I watch the bridge, watch the heaving mass of people

surging across it. I don't have a choice. I have to find her. However bad it

might be, being without Sharon in the middle of all this is worse. Grimly, I

start to make my way along the barrier towards the bridge.

At first I don't hear the voice calling my name. There's so much noise

and confusion all around that I just tune it out. But it comes again, and

again, and I whip my head up to look, to search the hundred faces that

surround me.

"David! David, it's me." And it's a voice I recognise, and after a moment I

spot her, on the other side of the waterfront road, pushing her way

towards me, waving and yelling my name. My heart fills up: it's Sharon.

It's really her. I feel as though I'm about to cry with relief and happiness. I

let go of the barrier and start pushing towards her, fighting the flow of the

crowd.

And then, quite suddenly, I'm face to face with her. She's right there in

front of me, alive and uninjured and so, so beautiful. I grab her and pull

her against me, and we're both saying each other's name over and over.

She smells of sweat and fear. She's shaking.

"Oh, God, David," she says. "I thought I'd never see you again."

"It's okay," I say. "It's okay. We're going to get out of this."

Her hand finds mine, and now--now that we're together--I feel a hundred

times stronger. I never want to let her go again.

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"How did you--" I begin.

She's sobbing, but holding me still. "I came as soon as I knew what was

happening. I thought... Oh, David, I thought you might be dead."

I hug her again. We're right in the middle of the street, and the people

are knocking into us as they pass. We're an island in a stream.

"Come on," I say. "Let's move." And holding hands as tight as we can we

turn and start to make our way out of the crush, pushing towards a

narrow alley between two buildings that leads away from the waterfront.

We're almost there when I hear that noise again. The screeching, tearing

sound of something huge and burning plummeting from the sky. Except

this time there's no explosion at the end, but instead a giant, deafening

crash of water. I turn to look, but I can't see a thing over the heads of the

crowd, and then the crash turns to the loudest, most tortured hiss I've

ever heard, and I realise what has happened. One of those things, those

falling rocks has hit the river. And in that split-second I realise what's

going to happen and I push Sharon ahead of me into that narrow alley

and we run like all the demons of hell are after us.

The screams are like nothing I've ever heard in my life: the screams of

people being burned alive, cooked up like lobsters in a pot as the

superheated water of the river slops up over its banks, spewing steam,

scalding and burning and drowning. It's terrible, terrible, and I know that

it's only good fortune that separates us from that suffering mass. I'm sure

that I can almost feel the billowing cloud of steam on my back.

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The alley widens out briefly then narrows again. At the far it appears to

open out onto a main road: I can see people running back and forth. We

burst out into the chaos, still hand in hand.

"This way," says Sharon, and we turn to the left and start running up the

street. The screams of all those poor burned people on the riverbank are

still echoing inside my head. How long can we keep running? How long

before something like that happens to us?

"Wait," I say. I pull on Sharon's hand and she stops running. I drag her

over to the side of the street and we huddle against a wall there. Another

impact shakes the ground, somewhere close. Fresh screams tear

through the air. "We have to get somewhere safe," I say.

"But where?" Sharon's almost crying, her face a mask of fear and horror.

"Somewhere below ground," I say. "Somewhere sheltered."

Sharon bites her lip and nods. She's so beautiful in that moment, so

precious that I can't stop myself from kissing her. I never knew before

how much she matters to me. The kiss is hurried, clumsy. I squeeze her

and then let her go.

"The underground," she says. "If we can get to a station..."

"Okay," I say. I crane my neck and look around, searching for something

which I recognise. Across the street is a shop that I remember passing

sometimes on my way back from work. I know where we are. The

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nearest station is only two blocks away. "This way." Grabbing Sharon's

hand once again, I set off towards it.

The impacts seem to be coming quicker now. I hear three before we're

anywhere even near the station, and when I glance upwards the sky is

dark with smoke and streaks of yellow fire. We pass a group of men and

women covered in blood, looking dazed and helpless as they try to get

their bearings. We pass an unconscious man lying on the pavement,

ignored by the crowd. Perhaps he's dead, I think with a shiver. Even if

he's not, what can we do to help?

The underground station comes into view. Me and Sharon head for it,

weaving our way between stopped cars. The two sets of stairs leading

down into the station are choked with people. A solid mass of them that's

not moving an inch, and that's growing every second. The faces of the

people on the stairs are white and terrified. I can see at least some of

them struggling to get out, trapped by the press of those behind them. A

policeman stands at the entrance, bellowing orders and waving

directions, ignored by everyone.

Me and Sharon stop short of the crowd. "We can't go in there," says

Sharon. "David, we can't."

She's right, of course. It makes me feel almost sick with fear to have to

stay out in the open, but the underground is a death-trap. I picture what

it must be like further down. Stifling, airless, dark. I've heard all too often

on the news about people being crushed to death during a panic. We

can't risk it.

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"We'll have to find somewhere else," I say, hearing the weakness in my

voice. Another earth-shaking impact.

Oh, God, I think, don't let me die out here.

"Let's go that way," says Sharon, pointing over towards a smaller street

that leads off from this one. I know what she's getting at: we have to

escape the crowds. Have to find some kind of shelter that's not going to

be overwhelmed. We cross to the mouth of the side street and head

down it. It's less crowded here: several scared-looking groups of people

are scattered about, huddled against the walls as if hiding from all the

chaos. They watch us with pleading eyes.

The further we go down the street the more quiet it becomes. There's

still people fleeing in every direction, still men and women cowering in

doorways and corners, but it's nothing like the brutal surging mass of

people to be found out on the main road. The shudders still come at

regular intervals, some stronger than others. Every so often the sound of

an explosion will rumble through the air like thunder.

"There!" cries Sharon. She's pointing towards the ground floor of one of

the buildings. It takes me a moment to figure out why, but then I see it.

What I took at first to be a loading bay is actually a ramp leading down

into the earth. It's an underground car park.

We run to it and down the ramp, passing in a couple of seconds from the

noisy smoke-choked world of outside to somewhere cold and quiet,

almost remote. There's no light to see by, and so we only have what little

illumination filters in from the entrance with which to find our way. We

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slow down at once and feel our way along, ducking under the entrance

barrier when we come to it. A little further in, our footfalls start to echo,

and I know that we're in the main space of the car park.

"Wait a minute," I say. "Let our eyes adjust." And so we stand there,

quite still, alone with our breathing as we wait to be able to see. A

minute passes, then two. The floor shudders once and then is still, and

the booming roll of an explosion reaches us, muffled and distant. I start

to be able to make out shapes in the darkness: the space is bigger than I

thought it was, and full of row upon row of cars. It looks like there might

be another level below this one too, with a ramp leading down to it in the

opposite wall. Lining the walls all around the great space are people,

individuals and little groups, some sitting, some lying, some standing. I

can only really make them out when they move, and even then they

seem shadowy, little more than ghosts.

As soon as we can see, we start to move again. We make our way over

to the far wall and find a space among the people there. Then, gratefully,

we sink down onto the floor.

"Do you think we'll be safe here?" whispers Sharon.

"Of course we will," I say. "We'll be fine. We've just got to wait it out."

And then as soon as I've said that I start to cry. It comes out of nowhere,

out of shock, a delayed reaction to all the horrendous things that have

happened today. I hold Sharon tightly against me and I cry into her

shoulder, and I'm thinking of all those poor people out there in the

streets, all my colleagues at the office who--for all I know--are dead

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already. All my friends and family who must be watching this on TV, not

knowing if I'm alive or dead. My own mother not even knowing if her son

is okay.

The earth shakes again, and I hold Sharon tight, as if I can somehow

save her from this. As if I can save anyone.

#

We wait. We wait for hours, huddled there in that cold subterranean

dark, cringing each time a fresh explosion shudders through the ground.

They keep coming fast and regular, at least one every few minutes. One

of the closest, an hour after we arrive, causes a few of the dead light

fittings to fall from the ceiling with a crash that, in the enclosed space, is

absolutely deafening. A while after that, the smell of smoke pervades the

car park, lingers for almost an hour, then disappears.

I can't even imagine what's happening up above ground. The destruction

that is taking place must be absolute. How many hundred have died

already? How many thousands? And how many years is this all going to

take to rebuild?

New people keep trickling into the car park. I watch the first few to arrive

as they pause just inside the darkness to let their eyes adjust, as me and

Sharon did, before moving forward to find a place for themselves. Some

of them are injured: one man is limping as he descends into the car

park. Another is clearly having trouble staying conscious, weaving back

and forth as he walks. Nobody goes forward to help. Everyone is alone

in their little, personal bubbles of shock.

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The space in the middle of the car park starts to fill up. It's not full, by

any means, but there's less space than there was. I see a couple of

people heading down the ramp to the next level, and I wonder if maybe it

might be a good idea to join them. But I know I couldn't face that kind of

darkness.

A few hours after we arrive, a baby starts to cry somewhere nearby, the

wails echoing around the cavernous space, rising and falling. I feel

Sharon grip my arm a little bit tighter. Around me, some of the people stir

uncomfortably, but nobody moves. The crying goes on for an hour

before quietening, then dying out altogether.

Time passes like that, marked out by small happenings. The thunder of

explosions becomes so regular and so normal that I find myself almost

falling into a doze. If it wasn't so cold down here, and I wasn't so jittery

and afraid, I would be long-since asleep.

I have no way of telling the time, but it must be getting towards nightfall

by the time the meteor impacts finally stop. I don't notice at first. It's like

being on a plane and getting used to the noise of the engines. When

they finally cut out you know that something's changed, but you don't

know what. I'm aware of a sudden sense of stillness all around me.

People are freezing where they sit, hushing whispered conversations,

listening for something. And as soon as I realise that I realise that the

steady pounding of the meteor impacts has finally, finally ceased.

For a minute, then five, then ten there is an absolute well of silence in

the underground car park. A hundred people all poised, just waiting for

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that next explosion, holding their breaths, hoping. And as time passes

and no explosion comes something seems to well up in that space.

There's this tension in the air, this question just kind of hovering there: is

it over? Have we survived?

Someone on our left gets to their feet and takes a few tentative steps

towards the entranceway. His movement is mirrored all around the car

park. Even me and Sharon scramble upright. Conversations, whispered

at first, start to fill the air. And all the while the stillness of the earth is

continuing. No more explosions, no more ground-shuddering impacts.

I can feel relief blossoming inside me. I fight it, but it's there. Even

though I know this is far from over, even though I know the days to

follow this are going to be the hardest we've ever faced, we are alive.

That's got to be enough for now.

"Is that..." begins Sharon. But she never gets to finish her sentence. At

that moment a noise echoes through the still air of our underground

refuge. It's a low sound, loud but sinuous. A rough, venomous, croaking

hiss. It's a noise that makes the hairs on the back of my neck raise on

end. It's a noise that's not even slightly human.

As the last echo dies the car park is frozen, silent, nobody moving a

muscle. There's a cold, squirmy feeling of unease in my gut, just the

same as there was before, an age ago, when I looked up from my desk

and saw the first meteor streak across the sky. Some malicious voice in

the back of my brain is whispering: it's not over yet, David, not by a long

way. And another part of me almost wants to cry at the unfairness of it.

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Surely there can't be anything else. Not another thing. Not after

everything we've been through already today.

Minutes pass, and nobody moves. The tension's smothering. I can taste

it. A kind of metallic expectation tainting the very air. Slowly, whispers

begin. Slowly, people start to move. And it's then, just as I'm thinking that

the moment might come to nothing, that the noise comes again.

This time, however, it's much, much louder. The closeness of it, the way

it echoes: I know at once that whatever's making that unearthly sound is

on the ramp leading down to the car park.

"Oh, no, no, no..." murmurs Sharon. She's gripping my arm so tight it's

painful. The weird, rising croaking hiss reverberates around the car park.

And then, all at once, as if the sound were a signal, everyone explodes

into action.

The car park is so dark that I can't see much of what's going on. Some

people are running towards the entrance ramp, and some away from it.

Some are simply trying to hide, pressing themselves into the walls, or

crouching behind parked cars. Shadowy figures blunder into us in their

haste, almost knocking me and Sharon off our feet. I glimpse several

people dashing away down the ramp to the lower level, their outlines lost

quickly in the darkness.

"We're trapped," says Sharon, her voice a whimper. "Oh, David, we're

trapped here."

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There's a scream. A sound so long and pained and desperate that it

sends shivers through my chest.

What was confusion before, now turns to full-fledged panic. I can see it

in the way people move, in the way they try to hide. They're not thinking

any more, just operating on pure terror. Close by a man is sitting with his

back to a corner, feet kicking as he tries to disappear into it. A woman

stumbles straight into us and falls flat, then crawls away between two

parked cars. It's chaos. But the worst of it is the noise coming from the

direction of the entrance ramp. The scream is cut short, replaced by a

brutal crunching, tearing sound.

That's what does it for me. That's what finally gets me to move. I tighten

my grip on Sharon's hand and turn and pull her towards the down ramp.

Suddenly the darkness doesn't seem so bad. Anything to get away from

whatever's happening by the entrance. And I mean anything. Fear is a

powerful thing, a merciless thing, rigid as a vice. Me and Sharon sprint

past a half-dozen people who appear frozen in fear, their backs to the

wall, eyes wide as they squint into the dark. Let them die, I think, let

whatever it is kill them instead of me.

We reach the ramp. More and more people are disappearing down it,

choosing the dark and the unknown over whatever awful thing awaits

them at the entrance. I hesitate for only a second, then me and Sharon

plunge forward into the dark, the sounds of screams and breaking flesh

echoing after us.

Whereas before I was at least able to make out the shapes of cars and

people in the dark, now I can see nothing. Not a thing. Even the hand I

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hold out in front of me to feel my way is invisible. If I was to let go of

Sharon's hand I don't know if I would be able to find it again.

We slow to a walk as we reach the bottom of the ramp. I can sense

people moving in the darkness around me, all of them stumbling blind

and without a clue. There's the sound of someone crying, someone else

calling out for help. And underneath it all the sounds from the level

above keep drifting down to us: the screams and the awful meaty

sounds of butchery.

"Just keep walking straight," I whisper to Sharon. "We'll find a wall

eventually."

That's what we do. It's unnerving, walking into the dark like that. I keep

one hand wrapped up tight in Sharon's, and the other raised in front of

me, feeling my way like a blind man. My imagination is working in

overtime, imagining me walking over the edge of a pit, into the arms of a

waiting maniac. But I carry on walking anyway: anything to get away

from what's happening up there.

My hand touches something cold and metallic, and for a second the

shock of it makes me catch my breath. But then I realise it's just a car.

One of hundreds that must be parked down here in the blackness. I take

Sharon's arm and we skirt around it, then carry on in the same direction

we were walking before. A minute later and we reach a wall.

"What now?" says Sharon. We put our backs to the wall and look in the

direction we came. No matter how much I strain my eyes I cannot see a

19

single thing. There's only the noises to keep us company. Sharon's

shivering. Whether with fear or cold or shock I cannot tell.

"Now we hide," I say. "We hide and wait until it's safe."

We crouch down against the wall. I wish I could block my ears against

the sounds that are still filtering down to us from above, but to do so

would mean letting go of Sharon, and I'm not about to do that. So we

hold each other tightly, and endure it together.

I find my mind wandering, my imagination making more unwelcome

suggestions. I picture escaped zoo animals running wild in the broken

city, lions and tigers and wolves preying freely on whatever helpless

pockets of humanity they find. I picture gangs of escaped criminals,

driven inexplicably mad, slaughtering just for the fun of it. I picture the

foot soldiers of an invading army, sent in to clear out any survivors with

guns and knives and fists. Even thinking these things makes my gut feel

cold and shrivelled. I hold Sharon tighter.

Please, I think, please let us live through this.

Just then I become aware of something. There's a soft, slight breeze

playing down the side of my body. The source of it feels close. I reach

out and run my hand along the concrete wall against which I'm sitting.

Sure enough, not an arms-length away from me, my hand encounters

wood, smooth and cool and not quite flush with the wall. It's a door. A

fire exit.

20

"Quick," I say to Sharon. We scramble to our feet and I feel my way

along so that I'm standing in front of the door. After a few fumbling

seconds my hands find a wide metal lever. I push down, there's a creak,

and I feel the door swing open towards us. I grab Sharon and pull her

through. The door slams shut behind us, mercifully cutting off some of

the noise.

We're still submerged in darkness, but the space feels smaller. Our

footsteps don't echo like they did in the main car park.

"What's going on, David," whispers Sharon. "Where are we?"

"It's a fire exit," I say. "It must be. Listen, Shar, I felt a breeze. That must

mean this leads outside. We just have to find the stairs..." I'm moving as

I talk, feeling my way around the small space in which we find ourselves.

Sure enough, at that very moment I stumble on something hard, and the

sharp edge of a stair smacks into my calf. Relief accompanies the pain.

"Over here," I say. "Come towards my voice."

Within a minute me and Sharon are making our way slowly upstairs in

the dark, clinging to the handrail all the way. One flight, then two, our

breath becoming laboured as we climb. And then there are no more

stairs, and we're facing a door. I can just about make it out in what dim

light there is now. A green fire exit sign is tacked to the wall beside it.

I reach forward, grab the handle and push down. The door swings open.

Fresh air rushes in to greet us, heavy with the stink of smoke. We step

out into the bitter night. The sight that greets us is far, far worse than

anything I could have imagined.

21

"Oh, God," says Sharon. "I don't believe it."

The world has turned to dust and smoke. The stuff's so thick I can barely

see across the street. The ground is layered with it, like artificial snow.

Just visible in the murk is the outline of a car, half-buried under a

covering of ash and dirt. We just stand in the doorway and stare. The

stuff drifts about us like the heaviest, darkest fog I've ever seen. I can

feel it landing on my skin, gritty and dry. I can feel it roiling into my lungs

every time I breathe, scouring my throat, filling my mouth with the taste

of smoke. It's all I can do not to cough.

I turn and look around. The door we've emerged from is set into a brick

wall, and rearing up above us is the broken facade of a building. The

glass of the windows is all but gone, leaving behind a complex skeleton

of metal and concrete. I can see the edge of a desk hanging out over the

void. The ground is scattered with snowed-over lumps that, on closer

inspection, I realise are computers and desk chairs and pieces of

furniture.

I hear Sharon gasp, and turn to see what she's noticed. At first I think

she's staring at a lump like any other, but then I see a hand, sticking out

at an angle from the layered dust. A strange, twisted feeling rises up my

throat. I grab Sharon's arm.

"Come on," I say. "Let's get away from here."

And so we start to walk. It's difficult, like moving through a heavy snow.

Each footstep is a struggle, made worse by the dust that fills our lungs

22

every time we breathe. It's only a minute before both of us are coughing

painfully.

Not far up the street we come to a place where a huge piece of rubble

has fallen across the road. It looks like a chunk of building, complete

with windows, girders sticking out of it at odd angles. We clamber over

and continue, only to be brought up short a minute later when we come

to a massive crack in the road, at least a metre wide that runs in either

direction as far as we can see.

The air is so filthy that neither of us can speak, and so without words I

tug Sharon's arm and we set off following the course of the crack. It

narrows towards one side of the road, and we're able to step across. We

pass more cars, more bodies. We pass the tortured wreck of what was

once a building, now little more than a smoking, twisted ruin.

I look at Sharon. She's walking hunched over, her hair grey with dust,

looking like a refugee. Her face is pale and frightened. I don't know how

much distance we've put between ourselves and the car park, but I know

we can't go on much further. The dust is suffocating us, slowly but

surely, clogging our lungs and bloodying our throats.

I pull Sharon over to the side of the road, and we huddle there in a shop

doorway.

"What do we do?" asks Sharon, her voice made rough by the dust she's

inhaled. I hold her, tight.

"I don't know," I say. "I honestly don't."

23

Just then I hear a distant popping sound. With a shiver, I realise that

what I'm hearing are gunshots. There's fighting going on in the wreckage

of the city. No doubt about it, we have to get away, get out of the danger

zone, out of the smoke, away from whatever it was that came prowling

around the car park. But which way should we go? I'm more lost than

I've ever been in my life.

"Maybe..." says Sharon, her voice shaking, "maybe we should just stay

here. Wait for help to come."

And I realise then that she's scared. As scared as I am: just barely

holding herself together. And I know that I'm all she has right now, and

the knowledge makes me love her more than I ever have. I squeeze her

against me, bury her head in my shoulder, whisper to her that it's all

going to be okay. If I can only save her...

We stay that way for a long, long time. Sharon's hands are wrapped

around my chest. I can feel her breath on my neck. I don't ever want to

let her go.

At last she pulls back from me, a frown on her face. "Listen..." she says.

And just at that moment the noise, the croaking, screeching hiss of a

noise comes again, and this time it's right there beside us in the smog,

so close it's deafening, so close I could reach out into the mist and touch

whatever it is that's calling.

24

Sharon screams, and then the thing is upon us before I can even react.

It comes lunging from the smoke, and all I get is the impression of

something huge and bizarre, bleach-white, armour plated, some kind of

troll or golem: human-shaped, but out of all proportion, its head nothing

more than a smooth fan of bone-coloured shell, six blood red eyes

staring out from recessed slits. It rears up and strikes out with one

massive limb, and the great curved claw passes so close to me that I

feel the wind of it, catch a sharp scent of something rotten. And then

Sharon is ripped from my grasp like a toy from the hand of a child. For

one brief second I see the monster's great claw wrapped around her

middle, and then it's gone, loping off into the fog, Sharon screaming in its

arms.

I don't move. I can't. My legs have turned to empty air. There's a pit

yawning in my gut. It's all happened so suddenly that I can't take it in.

That thing, it can't possibly be real. No. There's no way. But even as

these thoughts flash through me head Sharon is still screaming, still

crying out for help, still being carried away from me by that impossible

creature.

I find that my back is pressed against the wall. I stand up, sway a little,

but catch myself. "Sharon," I say, my voice a tiny whimper. I'm still

staring fixedly at the patch of smog into which she was carried.

Move, you idiot, my brain is screaming at me. Do something, go rescue

her before it's too late. But I know that there's nothing I can do. Not me.

Not me, David, the accountant, twenty-five year old David who's lost and

scared and helpless and just wants to go home. Not David the coward,

who left his colleagues to die while he ran to save his own skin. Not

25

David who ran again when he heard the noises in the car park, who has

done nothing but run since this whole awful thing began.

I just can't do it.

"Sharon!" This time it's a shout. A wild yell into the obscuring smoke. I

can still hear her screams, more desperate than ever, and more distant.

The sound of them is like glass in my throat. I take a hesitant step out

into the street, and then another.

And then I'm running again. Not away. Not towards safety, but towards

those screams. Towards Sharon. I dodge around an overturned car,

jump over buried lumps that might be rubble or might be bodies. I

clamber over a massive pile of bricks and concrete, pass shattered

storefronts, skirt around a place where the road has broken up into thick,

jagged plates.

Sharon is louder now. I'm close. My heart is thundering, and I feel

lightheaded with adrenaline. I can hear the croaking hiss that I know now

must be the call of those monstrous things. It's close now. So close. I put

my back to a wall and crouch low to the ground, creeping forward

through the fog like an animal. At the end of the road an overturned car

lies across my path. I kneel and peer over it into the dark. What I see

there makes my heart stop cold.

The creature stands not fifteen metres away, just visible through the

drifts of ash and dust. It's huge, eight or nine foot tall, its whole body

covered in thick, bony plates. And there's Sharon, gripped like a child

against its body. She's struggling, kicking at it wildly, her tiny pale hands

26

scrabbling against the thick trunk of its arm. Her screams are growing

weaker, more hopeless. She's crying, and the sound of it feels like

something twisting painfully in my chest.

As I watch the thing throws back its head, opens an absurdly tiny mouth

and howls towards the sky. The sound is exactly the noise I heard

before: a croaking, hissing kind of ululation that sends a squirm through

my spine. It makes me want to cover my ears, to find a hole in the

ground and hide. It's a primeval noise, a predator's noise. The sound of

death.

No sooner has the howl faded than it's answered, from close by. I watch

as another of the monsters--identical to the first--comes striding into

view, walking with a weird, gorilla-like gait, almost on all fours. Then

another appears from the other direction, and this one is carrying

something. I have to squint for a moment before I realise that it's a

person. Clasped against the creature's chest is a man in a torn and dust-

covered suit. He looks limp, unconscious. Maybe dead, whispers a voice

in my head.

The creatures converge. For a moment they stand there, each of them

grumbling and growling in their weird mangled voices, for all the world as

if they're having a conversation. Looking at them with their armour and

their size and their power makes me feel so small and weak, nothing

more than an insect, a bug for them to crush without even a second

thought. Sharon still struggles, but she's gone quiet, perhaps afraid of

drawing too much attention. I wish I could reach out to her. I wish I could

just let her know that I am here, watching, waiting for a chance to save

27

her. But there's no way I can draw her attention without the creatures

seeing me. Oh God, she must be so scared.

The things finish their bizarre conversation, then move apart, turning

their backs on me. For a second, everything is still, and I get the

impression that they're waiting for something. Then, as one, they all start

to howl. The sound is hideous: it hits me with a physical force, makes my

insides turn to water. Makes me cower in my hiding place like a child.

And then, beyond the Creatures, the ground itself starts to move.

A shadow that I had taken to be nothing more than a large piece of

rubble comes to life. It rises up off the ground, moving in sections,

unfolding to a terrifying size. The thing is like a snake, folding over on its

self, the blunt head probing towards the line of armoured creatures that

stands with their backs to me. Its body is as wide around as a truck, and

probably longer, its skin covered in the same bone-white armour of the

creatures. I have never seen anything so completely alien in all my life.

I'm frozen where I crouch. My muscles have locked. I couldn't move if I

wanted to, even though my brain is screaming at me to run. It feels like

the snake is looking right at me, but even from this distance I can tell

that it doesn't have any eyes. In fact its face is nothing but a gaping split,

a mouth lined with teeth the size of my arm.

Sickness sweeps through me. I know what's going to happen even

before it does, and yet I'm powerless to stop it. All I can do is hide there

and watch and pray that I'm wrong.

28

The creature that holds the unconscious man steps forward and holds

up its victim. With a stomach-churning shock I see that the man is not

unconscious at all: he is moving, but only barely. He's shivering,

clutching weakly at the stump where his arm used to be. That's almost

too much for me. I almost look away, but I stop myself, make myself

watch. It's the very least you can do for him, I think, to not turn away.

The worm turns its gargantuan head, looking for a moment as though it's

smelling the man. Then it rears back and opens wide its mouth. The

cavity inside is black as a pit, lined on every side with lethal bone-white

teeth. The teeth are moving, multiple jaws flexing and grinding like the

gears of some horrific machine. Even from a distance I catch a stink of

sweetish rot.

And then it happens. The creature flicks the man forward into the worm's

jaw, and the mouth closes around him. It's so fast, so brutal that I have

to clamp my hands over my mouth to stop myself from crying out. The

sounds of ripping and tearing and chewing fill the air. Abattoir noises.

Blunt, punching, grinding, popping noises, with Sharon's sharp screams

of horror on top.

And it's over quickly, and the worm opens its mouth again and this time

there's blood hanging from the teeth. The creature holding Sharon steps

forward. It's happening too fast, way too fast. There's a voice in my head

screaming over and over, no, no, no. But I'm silent as I watch. I don't

dare cry out, and my feet are like dead weights pinning me to the spot.

It's holding her up to the mouth of the worm. And this is it, now is the

moment, now is when I have to act. If I was any kind of hero...

29

Sharon's screams are renewed. She's struggling and kicking frantically,

trying to break free from that powerful grip. She looks so small, so pale.

Sharon. My Sharon.

And the creature lets her fall.

Sharon falls straight down, into the open jaw of the worm. It closes on

her, cutting off her final desperate cry.

My mind goes blank. I fall back into the ash and I don't get back up

again. I squeeze my eyes tight shut, clamp my hands over my ears. And

even then I can still hear her final scream, like it's there inside my head,

echoing around. Like it's going to echo forever.

And she's dead. Oh, God, she's dead. I've just seen her die. I've

watched her be killed while I hid in fear and did nothing.

Something inside me explodes. Before I know it I'm up on my feet and

running, each footfall throwing up a spray of dust. I tear away from the

creatures and the worm, away into the smoke. I trip and fall, scramble to

my feet, run again. I clamber over piles of rubble, almost twisting my

ankle. I slither and slide in the grey snowfall of ash. There's a rock in my

throat. She can't be dead. She can't be. But she is.

Heat washes over me, smoke invades my throat. The road surface on

which I'm running is buckled and broken, scattered with immense

chunks of rubble, broken girders, overturned cars. On my left and my

right great towers of broken concrete and metal rear up into the mist.

30

There's fire there too, intense and blood-coloured, smouldering away

inside those ruins like a furnace.

My head tells me that I'm running into danger. But I don't care. Nothing

matters, not now. Coward, my brain tells me. Couldn't even save her.

Couldn't even try. Couldn't even die like a man.

I stop running just in time. Ahead of me the street just stops, falls away

like the edge of a cliff. Down there I see broken pipes jetting steam, the

crushed shells of cars. The broken ground itself is smoking, radiating

heat. Jump, says my brain. Do it. End it. Burn up. It's what you deserve.

You'll be with Sharon.

I stand on the edge. I'm shivering. In my head I'm watching it happen all

over again. How she struggled...the worm unfolding from the

shadows...the creatures calling towards the sky...the sky speckled with

meteors...fire...

Sharon.

I turn and hurl myself into the smoke, away from that cliff-edge drop. I

run. I run until my breath feels like glass in my throat. Ahead of me is

something that was once a building. Now nothing more than an unstable

mass of concrete, a twisted, slumping wreck. I pick my way over piles of

bricks, duck under twisted steel girders, crawl when I have to, burrow my

way into the wreck like a rabbit into earth. I squeeze myself into the

smallest space I can find and only then--only when I am hidden way

from the world outside--do I finally allow myself to stop.

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Shivers come. Wracking and heavy, as if I'm ill. I lie there, shaking.

Alone. For the first time in years, truly alone.

Slowly, the darkness closes in.

32

You've just read part one (chapters 1-13) of Kitt Moss's online novel

"After".

After is published online in regular instalments.

Want to find out what happens next? Read the rest of the story for

free at:

http://afternovel.blogspot.com/

In the meantime, please feel free to share these chapters with

anyone you think might be interested!