CUBE: Part Four

It’s funny, what hope can do. It can block out all else until it leaves you blind. I think hope must be like love; an eager falling that drops you into a world warmer and kinder than the one you just left.

Hope is what I’m clinging to now, as whatever strange craft I’m in draws closer to the Earth.

#

That autumn we all had hope.

Even the former Prime Minister tried to return; slinking out from whatever luxury rock he’d crawled under. But his plans were leaked by the journalists who were suddenly back in force, and Bianca wasn’t having it.

During that day’s presser she announced she’d instructed security to stop him from entering parliament house, and a day later security did just that. We all got to see the very satisfying vision of him being shuffled back into his car, red faced and eyes bulging in disbelief as the protesters howled like wolves.

We were in a new world, and we loved it. Many became political again, strident in their opinions on how this country should be run as our acting PM announced she’d be completing the full term until the next election.

We didn’t know what was coming, what the scientists were planning.

I was in the supermarket when it happened. I’d found a packet of noodles that had been kicked under the shelves and was on my hands and knees, trying to snag it when I saw Amy’s worn shoes suddenly appear.

‘Rachel, everyone’s on their phones . . .’

And then someone started screaming.

I jumped to my feet, but not until I got those noodles. We skipped the checkout and made straight for the doors as something ugly began building in the air. People were grouped together, heads bowed over their screens. The keening wails were coming from a woman who had dropped to the floor, a handful of groceries scattered around her and quickly being snatched up as she wrapped her arms around a confused-looking toddler and rocked.

‘Not my baby! Not my baby!’ she cried, and my mind seemed to fill with thick, oily fear.

Driving home I had to swerve around cars that had come to a stop in the streets. We saw people wandering around in the traffic, faces slack, and I was suddenly whisked back to the that very first day, trying to get home as I heard sirens over the noise.

‘I don’t want to look at my phone,’ Amy was saying. ‘I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know . . .’

‘Breathe,’ I said, because she was starting to hyperventilate. When we reached our street it was empty apart from one man who was just . . . standing there, right in the middle of it. He was wearing gardening gloves, a pair of secateurs in one hand. He turned his head as we pulled into the driveway and took one shambling step towards us.

It was so much like being in a fucking zombie movie I got the creeping horrors. We ran to the front door like spooked kids.

Dorothy was tucked into a corner of the couch, Marshmallow curled up in her lap. The television screen filled with news readers talking and gesturing, but the sound was muted. She was staring down at her iPad, a glass in her hand. Her face was pale as she looked up.

‘The scientists have gone rogue,’ she said mildly, and sipped her dink.

We crowded around her screen and watched as a digital fire spread across the world. The scientists were live. They’d been communicating in secret - I don’t know for how long - and they’d decided to tell the world the truth. We watched as one wept at her desk, framed photographs of her kids on the wall behind her.

‘I have been ordered not to say anything,’ she was saying. ‘I have been threatened by my own government. Many of us have. So many. But we have come together. They cannot silence us any longer.’

At that point we heard a man moaning and crying in the background, the questioning voice of a child.

‘The chances of the asteroid missing Earth are minute. It has not deviated. And the Americans are lying - there is no weapon being built to drive it off course. Such a thing isn’t possible. We must find peace in truth. God help us.’

It was the same message being spoken by all of them. Stories of governments threating the lives of their families if they didn’t say what they were told to - sprinklings of facts salted with lies to keep people from panicking when they learned there was no hope for us. The balding scientist, we learned, had committed suicide a week ago, his death covered up. People had disappeared.

We watched and listened as the sun lowered in the sky and the room grew cold and grey. At one point I looked up at the television to see the news readers unclipping their mics.

Then they stood up, and left.

After a few hours we put our phones and tablets down. Switched off the television. Amy put on some music. I can’t remember now, what we listened to.

We talked about our lives for a while. There was crying, but not much. We were rapidly running out of patience for our tears. I felt divorced from my body. To have such hope, and then . . .

There was a lapse in conversation, and we heard the first bird break out in song.

‘Time for bed,’ said Dorothy firmly. She pushed herself up from the couch, slowly, as if she’d aged ten years in the last few hours. ‘Don’t you girls stay up all night, making yourselves more miserable. Things always look brighter in the morning.’ And as we stood up, silent and drained, she pulled us close, one by one, and kissed us on the cheek.

Then she shuffled off to her room.

I collapsed into my sheets with gritty eyes, clutching at her words like a talisman.

#

I didn’t mean to sleep, but I must have drifted off, and when my head jerked up that’s when I saw the first one in the distance, purely by chance.

A flash of something, a reflection. I crowded against the window, searching the darkness. And then I saw it; a tiny, round-cornered cube. Grey-coloured and moving.

I searched the blackness until I saw the second one, and the third. My largest count so far has been twelve, but I keep losing sight of them, having to search the darkness and begin my count again. I have no idea how many of us are out there, huddled inside our little spaceships, drawing closer and closer to the planet ahead of us. I wonder if they’re alone too. Or are they with families? Spouses? Have strangers been put together?

They’re too far away for me to make out any detail, much less faces peering out. But I wave anyway. I try to send my thoughts to hem. I see you! I think. Do you see me? Do I know you?

#

The next day there were no pressers, no government, no police to try and control the violence on the streets. We stayed inside, too scared and broken to go out.

And then fucking Pam and fucking David came back.

It was pure luck I saw their car pull into the drive. I ran through the house, yelling at Amy and Dorothy, not bothering to keep my voice quiet because it wouldn’t make any difference.

‘Get Marshmallow!’ I said to Amy, grabbing her and spinning her around, pointing her to the laundry where the cat carrier was. ‘Dorothy . . .’

‘I’ll grab the go-bags,’ she said, and walked away, calm as you like. We kept the bags at the door that opened onto the garage, where the hatchback was.

The garage. Oh fuck. I heard the double doors start to roll up.

‘Dorothy!’

‘What are they going to do? Shoot an old lady?’

I was cramming what I could into plastic bags. Cat food, canned soup, potatoes, a frozen loaf of bread . . . Amy appeared, lugging the cat carrier and a growling Marshmallow. She started to do the same but there was no time. I could already hear raised voices.

‘Let’s go.’ I grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the garage.

David was standing under the roller doors, unrecognisable and screaming.

‘I’m calling the police!’ he screeched at Dorothy, who was throwing our bags into the hatchback. He kept repeating it while Pam shouted, ‘What are you doing here? This is our home!’

They were both wild-haired, their faces red and windblown. Pam tried to grab one our bags. ‘You give me that, that’s ours!’

‘Leave her alone!’ I was yanking Dorothy away. I saw her give Pam a good kick in the shins. Amy was in the driver’s seat, the engine roaring into life.

‘Don’t you go anywhere! I’m calling the . . .’

‘Yeah, yeah, everyone’s calling the police. They don’t come!’ I shouted, shoving a protesting Dorothy into the back seat.

‘But I want to sit next to Amy.’

‘Get in there, you old bag!’

Their kids were staring from a four-wheel drive. It had a huge dent in the rear panel. David latched onto me as I struggled to get to the door.

‘This is a citizens’ arrest! I’m calling the police!’

I pulled away, yanked the door open and threw myself in. ‘Jesus, just go!’

Amy reversed out onto the road. A car swerved around us, then came to a screeching stop. Some guys poured out of it and stared running at us. Amy was shaking so hard she couldn’t get the hatchback into first gear.

‘Clutch!’

She pressed her foot down. I hauled at the gear stick. There was a thump, a crack of glass. Dorothy cried out.

Then we were racing away, with nowhere to go and maybe a quarter of a tank of petrol.

#

As the Earth draws closer I try to see evidence of the destruction Twenty-three left behind; scars and craters. Countries set afire. It’s only been a few days, a week at most, but I’m not close enough to make out anything apart from vast stretches of blue with hints of green and brown.

I am utterly terrified. What’s the plan? To crash me into the planet, or to safely return me? To what? What’s down there? I’m guessing there won’t be any coffee shops. How will I survive? And how many are still down there, living and dying through the aftermath?

I remember all the things that were said about Twenty-three hitting the planet. No sunlight as the vaporised dirt and rock filled the atmosphere, impact fires and a rising heat that would become trapped, damage to our ozone layer, radiation and cancer, extinction . . . people talked about a snowball earth, far into the future when humans would be nothing but a brief blip in the Earth’s memory.

#

Ribbon Bay was a small seaside town. It looked kind of ruined, and all the stores and service stations were closed, but we had no choice. We were running out of petrol, and more than one vehicle had tried to run us off the road. We were exhausted and frightened, and the car smelt like cat pee.

And we had found an abandoned caravan park.

Dorothy pointed out a spot for ourselves among the roving many, and we made camp. Like, literally dug out a hollow and searched for wood and made a campfire, because the night was so cold.

And that’s where we stayed.

As winter approached we spent a lot of time wandering along the grey shoreline during the day. It grew colder, but we just wrapped ourselves in blankets and took turns at holding Marshmallow. It was like holding a disgruntled hot water bottle. Marshmallow had adapted to his life on the road, but he was stringy and of increasingly bad temper. He lived on a leash, always tied up or attached to one of us. We couldn’t lose him. We were all we had left.

It wasn’t all horrible and depressing. Depressing gets old. When you’re with others there’s always someone that needs cheering up and someone to do the cheering. I think we were careful to keep an even keel. By then suicide had become a not uncommon thing in the caravan park. It was catching. People couldn’t take the waiting, for the hammer to fall. There was a lot of it.

But when I look back now, I think of grey sea waves that were always ready to make our footprints disappear, as though we’d never been there to begin with, our blankets whipping in the wind as we kept a lookout for anyone that might want to hurt us.

It wasn’t all bad. It was better than nothing. And the nothing-bringer was bright in the sky now, naked to the visible eye.

#

I’ve seen sunrise on Earth, from space.

I drink it in, pressed close to the glass that isn’t glass, my legs tucked up to my chest as the world gets closer and closer.

I’m not sure how long it’s been since I first felt that slow, heavy jerk that set my little cube into movement. My belly’s complaining, but I can’t leave the window.

I can make out the distinct shape of landmasses now, but nothing looks familiar. Forget seeing my country, I can’t see any country I recognise. Right now I can see one large continent surrounded by smaller ones, like fish swimming around a whale. Mostly its blue.

But I know its Earth, and I think the way it looks has something to do with the way I am now.

#

The end came quicker than we thought. I remember that. But my memory is patchy.

It was midwinter and we had a tent. We didn’t steal it, just so you know. It’s just that its occupants no longer needed it for reasons you can probably guess by now, and we were the ones that grabbed it first.

It meant we could lock what little we had in the hatchback and sleep in relative comfort. We did have a few blankets, but the nights were horribly cold. We’d sleep lined up like logs, greedy for each other’s body warmth as Marshmallow curled up between us.

We’d spent that day scouring the small town for anything we could find. Others were out doing the same thing, but we were leaving each other alone. There was an odd sense of community in that town. People were tired. No-one wanted to fight. We all just wanted to bunker down with whoever we were with and have enough food and water to get by. There were small kindnesses, and some of us even did our best to turn an old nursery into a community garden. It was something to do, a way for people to be together in a non-threatening way. I remember the smell of earth filling my nostrils as I watered seedlings, making small talk with others.

As we walked back to camp Dorothy spotted a group of oldies sharing a fire and passing a bottle around, and promptly ditched us. She returned in the evening, humming tunelessly and dropping her arms around our shoulders as she squeezed in between us.

‘It’s going to be cold one tonight, girls,’ she observed.

‘It’s always cold.’ Amy had her sleeves pulled down over her hands, her collar bones standing out as she hunched over.

I don’t think we said much for the rest of the evening, just held our hands out to the warmth of the flames. I threw in the rest of the wood, and we pulled our blankets out of the tent and lay them on the ground.

‘What about tomorrow?’ Amy fretted.

‘I’ll get some more wood. I always find something,’ I said.

My memory past this point is disjointed. I have a picture of Amy curled up with Marshmallow tucked in her arms, the sound of Dorothy’s snoring. The thinness of my blanket. And I dreamt of a light so bright it was like summer had returned . . .

Then my memory tears at the edges, and the next impression I have is of my face pressed into the dirt, and the pain. Muffled noise. Ringing in my ears. My head . . .

I lifted my face from the dirt. Blood was pouring from my mouth. I put my hand to it and felt the ragged edges of broken teeth. I was making sounds. I coughed as blood ran down my throat, swallowing bits of teeth.

The hatchback was on its side. No campfire but everything was on fire and something was really, really wrong with the sky the tree . . . the tree is on fire . . .

I called out, over and over. I saw Amy through the smoke and red embers that were flying through the air. She was lying on top of our flattened tent, her blanket flung over her, one arm stretched out and fingers splayed. I saw Dorothy’s coat, whirling violently in the throes of some terrible wind, but she wasn’t in it.

I think I saw Amy move. But . . . I’m not sure. Everything was swinging from side to side, and I couldn’t seem to control my body as I tried to sit up. The tree blazing with fire, the embers hitting my skin. I remember the sound of myself screaming, but after this the only other impressions left in my memory are thin and few. A sense of being smothered. A very out of place memory of being a child again and playing hide and seek with Simone Winters in her grandmother’s house when I was seven. I try to remember something, anything after that, but there’s nothing. A long, stretching nothing, seemingly endless. And then I wake, on a grey floor.

#

The Earth is almost all I can see now, the cold blackness just a thin rind around it.

I press my tongue up to the roof of my mouth, let it edge over my teeth. They’re all intact.

That’s not all, but it took me awhile to notice the other things. Every time a new awareness surfaced, I pushed it down again.

It’s not just my unbroken teeth. I’ve also lost my tattoos. No encouraging words scrawled along my wrist. No feather. And I’d bet a block of chocolate there’s no Survivor written on my shoulder blade, which is ironic to say the least.

I let Dorothy cut my hair short that autumn. It was the shortest it had been since my very first job at McDonalds when I was sixteen. It shouldn’t be this long. Long and straight and swinging like a curtain. It hits the small of my back.

I’m still me. My hair’s the same colour. And I know my body. I put my hand to my face and feel my nose, my eyebrows, my cheeks. I mean, you know yourself, don’t you?

Most importantly, I have my memories, though sometimes I wish it was those they’d taken, because they are so painful.

#

I have seriously begun to worry about what will happen when my little craft hits the atmosphere.

I have to assume they, whoever they are, thought about that. And I’m so tired I can’t help dozing off . . .

Noise.

Shaking. The room is shaking. I see a panels slamming down, and suddenly I’m in a small, enclosed room; no window, no bed . . . just blank walls. I think I hear the sound of some great engine, or is it the coldness outside, about to tear apart my little life raft and hurl me out into the abyss? I curl up in the centre of the floor, my hands over my ears. If this is it, at least I’ve had something, in the after.

The noise is endless. It’s getting hotter. I remember the heat and fire of that day, and I start to scream.

#

The feeling I have when I let my body slip into the warm water and hold me, suspended, is something I can’t describe. There isn’t a word perfect enough, large enough.

I’m aware that this peaceful interlude is going to be very brief. It’s probably the only calm time I’ll have for the rest of my life. But that just makes me cherish it more.

That cube did have a fucking door after all.

Panels had locked down as we approached the atmosphere. There had been a sense of passing through a storm as I tried uselessly to grip onto the smooth floor, beginning to slide as the cube tilted. But then the floor seemed to drop out from under me . . .

I was hovering, weightless. My brain started to panic, telling me I was falling, but I’ve had a lot of practice lately, at keeping myself calm. I shut my eyes as the walls around me shuddered, the noise outside rising, and when I opened them again I was simply . . . floating, in mid-air.

I looked down wonderingly at the floor below, and saw a circle of light in its centre, where I had first woken. I can’t really explain it but I think it’s the circle that was holding me, buoyant, as we screamed through the atmosphere.

As the noise subsided and the shaking lessened, there was a rolling sensation that seemed to last forever. Then I felt a sudden halt that made my stomach drop. For a few moments I thought I’d landed, until my cube did just that; dropping with a heavy thud that was audible.

I was lowered to the floor, and quite quickly; landing on my side heavily enough that I have a bruise on my hip now.

The stillness was so shocking I didn’t trust it. I got to my feet slowly, hands splayed, waiting for things to start lurching again. The light in the room flickered, then seemed to stabilize, and I saw it; the panel that had snapped shut over the window held the shape of a handprint, pressed into its centre like an echo.

I walked over to it on legs that were ready to fold under me. When I pressed my palm to the handprint a ring of light encircled it, a mini-copy of the one that had appeared on the floor. It made me jump and snatch my hand back as a series of loud clicks seemed to bounce off the walls around me. Then the panel slid up.

The window was gone. It must have detached, or fallen off. I don’t know. I didn’t build the thing, did I?

Air hit me. Smells . . . so many smells. And colour. The golden sand, the green of the trees, the blue of the sky . . . I tottered out, wanting to take it all in, but instead I crumpled up and had an involuntary nap.

Thankfully nothing came to eat me while I was prostrate on the beach.

My cube rests in a shallow hollow in the sand. I don’t like going far from it. I go to the water and back, and sometimes make little circuits around it, exploring and looking for firewood, but it’s never out of my view.

I still have over half of my supply of food and water. But it won’t last forever. Which is why tomorrow I’m going to stop frolicking about in the ocean like a kid and let go of this peace.

I need to find fresh water.

I need to find food.

I need to make some kind of clothing, because the sand really does get everywhere.

I’m not sure if this is an island, or if it’s attached to the land I can see in the distance. I’m surrounded by ocean. Warm, deep ocean with streaks of green. There are fish here, mostly small. For all I know there are other fish the size of Moby Dick, just waiting to snatch me up. Maybe the air is toxic, the trees poisonous, the flowers carnivorous. There are too many things I don’t know. I’m not sure how long I’ll survive.

All the fish have tiny teeth.

All the land animals I’ve seen so far are enormous.

The ones I see the most are horse-sized and travel in herds. They eat grass. I haven’t seen any predators yet, but I’ve only been here for two days.

The smallest animals are the ones that hop back and forth between the trees. They’re spider-monkey sized, but they’re not monkeys.

The sea birds seem to be normal sized though, just . . . different.

I’m going to have to eat the fruit, even though I have no idea if it’s safe. I’ll start with the one that looks like a starfruit made a bad decision with a banana one night. When I hold it to my nose its smells like sugar, and my mouth waters as tiny insects crawl over my hand.

I thought perhaps all our cubes would land together. A new human tribe. But I haven’t seen any of them, and I haven’t spotted any people. Yesterday I thought I saw a smudge against the blue sky that could have been campfire smoke, but moments later it was gone

I try not to hold out hope for the things that will hurt me if they don’t come true, but they surface in my mind as I float in the water. After all, I was saved. Or at least a version of me was.

Still, I try not to wish too hard as I let the ocean hold me, and think about the tomorrow.