Chapter Seven: The Evening
ELIZA: Nine hours later, I found myself sitting on the couch in my brother's living room, being forced to watch High School Musical late into the night.
It could have been worse.
My niece had wanted to have a Saw marathon. She had claimed that this was what she would have been watching if she had been allowed to have a sleepover at her friends instead of having to stay with me. Somehow I doubted it.
The evening had started well. I had watched as my sister-in-law and brother whirled around the house in a panicked frenzy, before leaping into the taxi taking them to JFK. From then on, it went downhill.
Within the space of an hour, I had managed to:
One; insult Norma-Jean's favourite boy band.
Two; order the wrong pizza toppings.
Three; somehow convince Norma Jean that I was a lesbian (which was in no way an insult; I had gone through a phase in my late teens).
Four; weather a tantrum about bed time from said niece.
And five; earn the title of Worst Aunt Ever 2009.
It was a formidable list, coming from a precocious nine-year old. Even so, I was able to let it wash over me.
At least looking after my niece was normal. Looking after my niece largely involved not thinking about Sec, not thinking about where I had been that morning, and not thinking about transgenic experiments being performed on human subjects.
"So, do you think she's hot?" Norma Jean was asking. I had been staring at the screen, not really paying attention, and realised that my niece was pointing at the shrieking blonde teen frolicking in a pool a shade too blue.
"Nah, not my type." I answered, as a form of appeasement.
"What is your type then?"
I considered.
"Beyoncé."
"Seriously? That's way out of your league. Aim lower."
We were both leaning back into the cushions, an empty pizza box between us, and Norma Jean pouting at the screen. This evening, it was almost unbearably hot. My niece was savvy beyond her years, and it frightened me to think of the future if kids like her were to inherit the Earth. Any stranger would have described her as a charming young lady, recalling her bright brown eyes, her bushy hair pushed back by a cute pink hair ribbon, and her natural energy, love of sports and vivaciousness. I would have too, if I had not known her. It was unfortunate that I did.
When I thought about Norma Jean, I tended to recall the back chat, the unashamed insensitivity, her unrelenting sense of entitlement, and worst of all, the apple juice incident from a picnic two summers ago.
We'd met in Central Park for the day, me, Mom, Malcolm and family, and is wife's sisters. Half way through lunch, Norma Jean had thought it would be funny to place a juice box under the cushion I'd brought to sit on. You can imagine what happened next. I became the laughing stock of the picnic. I would have found it funny too. But then Norma Jean kept going on about it for the next five hours, and later sprayed a well-aimed jet of water from a toy gun at my pants.
At some point, we began a game of soccer. A ball I threw went awry and had collided with my niece's head, knocking her out. She was only out for a few seconds, but she cried a lot. I had a hard time convincing Odette, her mother, that it had been an accident.
It quite clearly explained why she wasn't so keen on me babysitting her this weekend.
I had totally got over it though.
Really.
Well, she was only a kid. It was stupid to bear a grudge against someone so many years your junior. Swallowing my prejudice, I decided to use the weekend ahead to zone out from my current anxieties, and try to get on with my youngest relative. I was coping well.
"Auntie, can I ask you a question?"
I nodded.
"Go ahead."
"Why did you get shot last year?"
My chest clenched. I looked at her in surprise. Of course, after Sec and I narrowly escaped the horrors of Skaro and that bullet was planted in my chest, all of my family was informed. Once I had been moved out into a regular hospital ward, Norma Jean had come to visit with her parents. It was pretty obvious that I was in a bad way. Even so I didn't think that she would have been told the actual details of my hospitalisation. It was not exactly the kind of thing you would tell a child.
"It was a protester. Someone brought a gun into the university where I was working that day, and I was just unlucky."
Norma raised an eyebrow.
"Did it hurt a lot?"
"No, it sort of tickled."
"Really? I would've thought that it would have really hurt."
"It did. Of course it did. But I'm a lot better now."
We were silent for a long time. I tried to watch as Zack Efron fell into swimming pools and played golf, but I came to notice that Norma Jean no longer seemed interested. She was watching me.
"There must have been a lot of blood and stuff." She remarked.
"When?"
"When you were shot."
"Really Norma? This isn't really a nice subject, is it? Why don't you watch the film?"
My niece folded her arms with a superior air.
"I don't see why we can't talk about it. I like talking about that kind of stuff. I think it's cool. My best friend Lauren, me and her write stories about zombies and guts all the time. We're not at all wussy. You might like them."
"Oh? And you also like High School Musical?" I added dryly, as a musical basket-ball game began on screen.
"Yeah. But just because… Zack is cute." I watched as she paused, a look of embarrassment crossing her face. I became curious.
"Just how much did your Dad say about my accident anyway?"
"Oh. I asked, and he told me. Mom and Dad tell me everything. He said it's because Granny and Grandpa didn't tell him a lot when you and him were little. He gives me anything I want. He says I'm his special little girl, and I deserve to know things."
"Uh-huh…"
"I want to write stories about death when I grow up…" Norma added thoughtfully. "Everyone thinks I'm wussy because I'm a girl, so I'm going to prove them wrong. You nearly died Auntie. That must have been so cool."
There was a chilling smugness in the way my niece spoke. She was staring at me with her pretty, but challenging eyes. It was as if she expected to get her own way. It was enfuriating.
"Why are you thinking about that? You're only nine!"
"So?"
"I think…" I held back my words. My chest was hurting again, and I could feel a lump rising in my throat. I let out a breath. Temper. "Never mind."
I glanced at the clock, glad to see that it was a little past my niece's allotted bed time. I gave her a bop on the knee.
"Right Trouble, off to bed."
Norma Jean scowled.
"What? But we haven't finished! At the end of this scene?"
"This scene has only just started."
"But it's a really funny bit! You'll really like it! It's actually hilarious! Please let me watch it, please?"
Beyond caring, I let my niece watch the next scene, and did not send her to bed until the end of the film, by which point she had fallen asleep anyway. I coaxed her awake enough so that she could climb the stairs, brush her teeth, and climb under her very pink sheet, and then made my way back downstairs to sit in front of the TV. I was deathly tired, but wide awake at the same time. Too much had happened for me to sleep easily. Besides, I feared that my usual night terrors might have followed me over the Brooklyn Bridge and would be waiting for me once my eyes had closed.
I took my files down with me and laid them on my lap. But it was no good.
Why, why in the world had a nine-year old asked me about being shot and nearly dying? She shouldn't even have known, and now the pain in my chest was filling my mind, the ragged thoughts that had come with the day followed it. They rushed through my head like clouds caught on the summit of a ravaged peak, only to be torn apart and become distorted, menacing.
Everything had become such a mess.
Why did I trust Sec? I had known all along that he was a killer, and I had kidded myself that it was in self-defence, or through a war. But now I knew for certain that he had done worse. He had tortured hundreds of people, he and his cult. He had twisted bodies into unnatural forms. He and his comrades had violated both flesh and minds. I had known. I must have. Part of me had.
So, what had I done? I had sympathised with him. I had rationalised what he had done, glossed over the ugly doubts in my head.
Worst of all, I liked the Hybrid. He was my friend, and now that I was disgraced in the eyes of Melanie, potentially the only friend I could speak to. What did that say about me?
My note taking had diminished to little more than me tapping the empty page with my biro. I was so tired. The weather was still so hot. I could hear the sound of a siren, somewhere close, whistling into the stifling night. The curtains filled with air, flowing spectre like into the room. The clock ticked on the mantel piece. My page was still empty. My pen became slippery in my hand…
At some point I must have fallen asleep, because all at once, I had jolted awake. I had slipped onto my side, and found myself lying on my arm, which had become stiff. I blinked, and noticed that I felt tremendously alert. What had woken me up? Another nightmare? No; I would have remembered it. I would have still been scared.
I sat up.
The lights were off in the kitchen. Norma Jean had not come down stairs for anything. So what had changed?
The glasses on the table were ringing.
I leaned forward, puzzled. Earlier they had been filled with coke, and they had long since emptied. Now, placed as I had left them, touching rims, they were trembling against one another, creating a high pitched, eerie note.
Only seconds after I had registered the sound, I noticed something else. I looked up. The light fitting was swaying, casing rolling shadows across the room.
This is the east coast, I told myself. We can't get earthquakes here.
But even as the thoughts left my mind I became aware of a quiet, but deep rumbling that seemed to come from below. It resonated through the air, through the walls, and for miles around. Something was very, very wrong.
A vase rolled off the mantelpiece and crashed to the floor, and that was what spurred me to my senses. I ran out of the room, and hurtled up the stairs, which even as I climbed them, began to sway underneath me. From the street outside, there began the howling of a car alarm, which was joined by another, then another, until a cacophony that could be heard from hell joined the crashing rumble that filled the air. I stumbled into my niece's bedroom.
"Norma, Norma baby. We've got to get out."
But Norma Jean was already awake, and she gazed confusedly around the room. The oval mirror on her vanity tilted, knocking her toys and childish cosmetic brands onto the carpet. Soft toys tumbled from her shelves, and bounced as they hit the floor, followed by the smashing of a china ballerina.
"What's going on?" She begged, but I had already wrenched her out of bed, and now we were running down the stairs as the pictures tumbled from the wall and smashed one by one. Bits of plaster were raining from the ceiling. I threw open the front door, and Norma Jean shrieked as I tripped on the steps, and we both fell clumsily out into the night.
All around us, I could hear bewildered screams, the breaking of glass, and underneath it all the terrible snarl of the earth.
Vaguely, I remembered seeing a documentary on how to survive in an earthquake, and so I pulled us both into the middle of the sidewalk, and dropped to the ground, covering my head, hugging Norma to me as I did so. The houses up and down my brother's street were beginning to empty. I could hear a baby crying.
"We're all going to die, aren't we?!" My niece moaned through the collar of her pyjama top. Every atom of my being agreed with her, screamed for mercy, but I told her:
"No, we're not going to die. Just lie down, stay like this. Hold on; everything will be fine."
In all of the confusion, nobody was looking up. How could they, when the earth was the apparent enemy? And yet, for a moment, I became aware of a flash, a sudden brightness that lit up the shuddering buildings around us with the light of a final sunset, and then everything became dark once more. It was too sudden, too inexplicable to register. And slowly, slowly, the trembling began to cease. The stony tiles that swayed inches away from my nose began to fall still, like the deck of a ship entering calmer water. The whole thing couldn't have lasted much more than fifteen seconds.
The car sirens still howled. The tremor had stopped, but now it had been replaced with a terror which filled the air. It was electric; a fear that I could almost taste seemed to lie over the whole city, and, as I was later to learn, the entire globe.
Barely daring to believe it was over, I unfurled myself, Norma Jean still curled on the ground, and looked around. I could smell burning. Next to my head, the break light of a car blinked on and off, and across the street the winking lights stretched like danger signals. Nearly every house was awake. The nightmare in the wake of the freak disaster could only have just begun.
"Norma," I nudged at the little figure who trembled next to me, feeling a natural sense of relief to see that she was okay. "Norma, it's alright. It's stopped. You're not hurt. It's over."
It was far from over and I knew it, but even so, Norma jean gingerly sat up, glancing around.
"I'm scared." She whined. Then she added: "Not that scared. But what happened."
"It's okay; I'm scared too." I admitted. "But I think we'll be alright. We'd better stay outside though. There may be an aftershock."
I looked over at her.
Norma Jean was staring at the sky. I doubted that she'd heard a word I'd just said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Auntie…" Norma Jean whispered, her eyes wide.
It was only then that I became aware of a fresh sense of fear, and I followed her gaze and looked up.
"Fucking hell…" I murmured.
Half an hour later, we crept back into the shelter of the house. The threat of aftershocks was still a possibility, but it had largely been diminished by the transformation in which the night sky had taken. Besides the previously sweltering night had become bitterly cold.
Norma Jean crept into the sitting room and curled up on the sofa. The two glasses lay in pieces which glittered on the carpet. My brother's books were strewn across the floor as if the room had been ransacked, but apart from that and the dust which coated every surface, there had been very little damage caused by the quake.
I had pulled out my phone and began pacing around the room.
The first person I called was my father. I had to tell him that we were alright. The quake would have been on the news.
My call was answered almost immediately.
"Eliza? It's all right, we're both fine-"
"Dad," I broke in with a voice that trembled, "there was an earthquake. Here, in New York. I'm with Norma Jean in Brooklyn. It was just a small one, so everything is okay-"
"Eliza, listen. It happened here too in Chicago. You haven't seen the news, have you?"
I stopped pacing. Norma Jean was crying silently behind me, with her knees drawn up to her chest. All of her cunning and grim satisfaction had gone.
"It wasn't just us. It wasn't just the U.S that was hit. Everybody in the world felt that quake."
Shakily, I lowered myself onto the couch.
"How is that possible?" I asked.
"You must have seen the sky outside. You tell me."
"How can I? I don't understand. We can see other planets in the sky. Dad, is this the apocalypse?"
Norma Jean threw me a look of fresh horror. I had forgotten that she could hear every word that I said. I knew that I had to be strong, for her sake, but it was extremely difficult.
"I don't know. I don't think so; I've never believed in such things. But there are many people who do. Eliza, in a time like this, if anything else it will be the people around you who become the most dangerous. You're at Malcolm's? And how's Norma Jean; is she safe?"
"She is. We both are."
"Wonderful. Keep things that way. Your brother and your sister-in-law will still be airborne so they should be fine. Tell her that."
"I will." My mind was racing. A world-wide quake.
"Listen, Dad," I began, "there's someone I know who might know what's happening. I need to talk to him."
"I'm not sure anybody knows what's happening, but whatever you do, make sure everybody knows that you're safe."
"Yes Dad. But he-"
I was interrupted by the sound of the back door imploding. Norma Jean jumped, letting out a small shriek and grabbing my arm hard enough to make me yelp. A burning smell was floating in from the kitchen.
"What was that?" My Dad asked through the phone.
I peered around the door.
"No worries. That's probably him now. Talk to Norma-Jean. She's pretty upset."
"Eliza, what-"
I tossed the phone in my bewildered niece's direction, ran into the kitchen, just in time to see Sec running over the smouldering remains of the back door. He looked lost in the domestic setting. There was no question about how he knew where my brother's home was. He had every GPS setting stored in that domed mind of his. I was not even a bit surprised.
"Alright then." I shouted. "Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?"
The Dalek struggled over the glass and wood, and rolled onto the tiles.
"ELIZA, WE ARE IN GRAVE DANGER-"
"Yes, yes, alright, I might have guessed that part. What sort of danger? What has happened? Was this the terrible disaster you predicted?"
Sec paused, as if out of breath.
"YES."
Before he could go on, Norma Jean appeared around the door. She had never seen Sec before, the fact that he was a robot, threateningly tank-like, and the fact that the sky outside had an apocalyptic hue did a lot to unsettle her. She screamed.
"What is it?" She demanded, as her eyes bulged like dinner plates and pointing. She was still holding the phone I noticed, meaning that her Grandfather had probably been deafened. Sec recoiled, apparently equally as frightened as her.
"It's alright," I tried to soothe, "he's a friend! He won't hurt you."
"THIS IS THE SPAWN OF YOUR BROTHER?" Sec remarked. Norma Jean burst into tears. Smooth.
"It's an alien! It's in my house!" She moaned, my Dad hearing every word. "Auntie's gone mad and is talking to it!"
"Both of you, please! SHUT UP!" I bellowed.
Both Dalek and spawn fell quiet. Norma Jean bit her lip. Her wide eyes were streaming. I could easily forgive her for thinking I'd lost it. Taking in a deep breath, I turned back to Sec.
"For the last time, what's going on?"
Sec made no sound. His blue eye-stalk revolved, looking between me and Norma-Jean. I waited for an answer.
I was frustrated when, instead, the Dalek advanced towards us.
"FORGIVE ME." He said "THERE IS NO TIME TO EXPLAIN."
And with that, a blue glow began to spread across his casing. Strands of light spilled across the machine, apparently generated from within, as quick and as strange as lightning.
"What are you doing?" I began to ask, but then a stinging sensation spread up my arms, across my chest, down my legs and across my scalp, and I began to understand.
Behind me, Norma Jean let out a gasp of fear.
"Don't you dare!" I tried to shout, but it was already too late. My brother's kitchen was vanishing, as it was torn apart in microseconds by the outlandish angular lights.
Only, it was me being torn apart, atom by atom. I had done this before. We were teleporting.
Suddenly I was sand, dust. My heart screamed, a million beats per second, giving out, unable to survive the impossible state of being. I could not be alive. Everything was a thunder cloud of blue. I was going to die.
Then, the next thing I knew, something slammed into my stomach, knocking me breathless, and I tumbled, with a thud, against a wall.
Or was it a wall?
No, it was carpet. The air smelled of burning, electricity, and, more notably, of men's deodorant.
I looked up to see that Norma Jean had landed on top of me. She gazed woozily around. She was still in her dressing gown. So she had come too. She had to endure the agony and the confusion, at a time where nothing made sense anymore. No matter how big a pain she could be, that was in just.
"I think we're dead." She informed me with a dull certainty.
Raged rushed through me.
"You can't do that!" I cried. Wherever we were, Sec, our mode of transport, could not have been that far away. "You can't just beam us away like that! Where have you taken us?"
I had known that Sec could teleport. Forget that; he could even travel through time. It was the reason why his glorious hybrid self had ended up reverted to spending half it's time locked inside a travel machine once more. But I also knew that this took a lot of power. Power which took a long time to reclaim. Whatever the reason for moving us was, it must have been important.
I spotted him across the room, from a worm's-eye perspective. The Dalek was searching the space, like an obscure animate lighthouse, shouting piercingly.
"LEWIS? LEWIS, WHERE ARE YOU?"
Lewis?
"Sit up a sec." I told Norma-Jean, and struggled to my feet. My head felt as though it was full of mercury. Lights burned through my vision, a migraine.
I saw very little of the flat. I took in the hundreds books in upset piles about the floor. The album covers, some disturbed by the quake, carefully displayed about the walls. The enormous sound system. Several guitars. The upright piano and the pages of paper that had been thrown from it.
And through an open window, out on the fire escape, stood a red-headed figure. The figure was already turning, and spotting me first the look of confusion on his face became more intense. He was wearing glasses. I had never seen him wearing glasses before. For a moment, despite the madness of our predicament, I thought about how well they suited him.
"Sec?! Eliza?!" Lewis Coleman demanded. "How are you in my apartment?!"
I ran to the window as he climbed nimbly back through. I grabbed his long-fingered hand, feeling how cold it was.
"It's hard to explain. I think he teleported us. But listen, something crazy big is about to happen and – no, not again! Don't you dare!"
I stared at my hand, and Lewis's, as the blue light burned across them both. It was as if they were one. The stinging began once again to spread rapidly through my body.
"HOLD ON!" Sec's mechanical roar instructed us from somewhere, although we had little choice.
I felt like ash caught by a hurricane, as if I was being swept miles and miles, faster than possible across a rushing, blinding blue torrent of lightning. It was how thunder must feel before it strikes the ground, how protons feel as they are pulsed through a wire. When I had been transported to another planet, the Rift had burned, like the sun, like plasma. But this was a waterfall. We were moving.
Then, darkness.
Softness, as my body struck the ground, a ground with crunched, rustled, and flew about on impact.
The smell. Mulch, earth, grainy yet sweet, and the sting of cold air as it hit my nostrils. It took me a moment to realise that my eyes were already open, and I spotted the torch-like eye of our transporter glowing out of the night like a blue firefly.
Around me, the darkness stirred. I heard Lewis's voice cursing next to me, felt the warmth of his body. Apart from that, silence. No rush of traffic. No blaring of car horns. Only the occasional rustle of a bird's wings, and a waiting, living quietness.
Wherever we were, we were certainly no longer in the City.
I stood up, plunging my hands into the papery mass which had cushioned me. They were leaves. I was too dazed to speak, and instead, let my eyes adjust to the darkness.
We could only have been in a forest. Every sound was cushioned by trees and decades of litter. But everything was bathed in a slight, eerie light, a greenish glow. I gazed upwards to see a canopy stretched high above me. Leaves crisscrossed and stretched above, like fingers, framing the sky, which glowed brighter than it had in the city. It looked at once more terrible, and more beautiful than anything I could possibly have imagined.
I tore my gaze away from the cursed sky, blew a leaf out of my face, and ran over to help as the sprawled form of my niece tried to raise herself from the ground.
"Is everyone okay? All in one piece?" I asked.
Lewis stood up, reaching his full six feet of height, spitting out a mouthful of crumbled litter. We were illuminated by Sec, who was watching us, making no offer of consolidation or for help. It was as if he feared us, what we might say.
But he had done too much for me to take a long time ago.
I hid my fear with my fury.
"A forest." I spat. "A fucking forest! The world's about to end and we could be fucking anywhere! Who knows; the cold or wolves might kill us before the fire rains from the sky!"
I marched towards him, watching as his light flicked, as if considering escape, which I half expected he would.
"That reminds me," I went on, livid. "You never did tell me what was going to happen did you? The end of the world? Is that what that fucking writing was telling you? Well, we deserve an explanation. Fast."
"The world's ending?"
There was the crashing of feet behind me as Lewis and my shivering niece came up behind me. In the shadows, I saw that Lewis was dressed in a shirt and a pair of braces, like an old jazz player. Perhaps he would have been performing tonight, before all sense and sanity had shattered.
"Sec, is that why you've brought us here?" He asked, quietly. I could hear the fear in his words. "To be safe?"
"This won't be safe!" Norma Jean chimed, now more grumpily than afraid. She had had too much of it tonight too. "Not if the whole world is going to end! We're in a forest! That's where the zombies will appear first."
She paused, looking up at me.
"We are still on the world, right? Like, planet Earth? Has he taken us to his planet?"
"Earth is his planet." Said Lewis grimly. "One of them, anyway. Part of him is from Earth. His other planet's not a particularly nice place, I've heard."
"Don't tell me, I've been there." I added. "You'd love it Norma. Lots of killing, plenty of horror."
I could feel my niece's scowl.
"LISTEN." Sec barked. His voice was dampened by the woods. "I APOLOGISE TO ALL OF YOU. YOU WISH FOR AN EXPLAINATION, AND I SHALL GIVE IT TO YOU. PLEASE…"
We waited. I folded my arms over my chest, mostly to shut out the cold.
Sec drew back, addressing us all.
"LOOK AT THE SKY," Sec commanded, and we looked, not that we needed to ask why.
"WE ARE STILL ON EARTH. BUT EARTH IS NO LONGER IN ITS SOLAR SYSTEM."
It was impossible, but none of us tried to deny it. What we saw when we looked up was evidence enough for my Dalek's words.
"Then where are we?" I asked. I was not sure that I wanted to know
"WE ARE IN A PLACE THAT TIME CANNOT REACH." Sec said.
Somewhere in the forest ahead, the ground was glowing. I realised that it was water, reflecting the sky. A lake.
"ELIZA. LEWIS."
There came a warm rush of air, a hiss, and the clanking of metal. He was opening his casing. I stood back, and Lewis did too, pulling in a sharp inhale of air. Norma Jean grabbed my arm, eyes wide.
"Motherfucker." I think I heard her whisper.
Sec stepped out of his casing, shakily, fully in his hybrid form. He used the sides of his shell to pull himself upright, and stumbled out into the leaves. He must have morphed inside his casing, and appeared to have clothed himself in a flowing makeshift garment, like a rough black toga. He must have been stowing it in there for a while.
He gazed at us sadly, and I saw the terror in his writhing face.
"You are both," he began, his voice quiet, "the two beings I care about most in existence. I've brought you both here to be safe, but the Spawn is right. Nowhere is safe anymore."
"Sec…" Lewis murmured, and I realised that this could only have been the first time that he had seen him in his true form.
"Nowhere is safe…" I echoed. "The world really is ending, isn't it?"
Sec nodded, and gazed towards the lake.
"Not now. But it will, very soon. And it is my fault. Every part of it was engineered by me, intentionally and unintentionally. I am so sorry."
The shivering I felt was no longer from the cold. Mournfully, Sec and I looked back at the sky.
What was going to happen? I had already guessed. I shook my head.
"But they're gone. We saw the last of them die. We killed them."
"One survived." Sec said, his voice as expressionless as stone. "The only one terrible enough to replace me."
We stared at the sky.
