Liz Jensen - The Rapture

In a single movement, Ned has slung it in. It skids on its side, then slams against a crate and stops. Flattened against the shuddering floor of the aircraft, I watch its wheels spinning and spinning and in that moment, as I weep with relief, I feel I could watch them for ever.

The aircraft shifts and from outside a woman screams: ‘No! Wait for me!’ There’s a wide lurch and then we are rising jerkily, as though pulled roughly from above. I see the woman’s face — plain and round as a ball — and see her terror and her baby and know they are imprinted on me for ever. Then another upward tug and the strangely angled ground is dropping away beneath us. We’ve taken off, but everything is lopsided and the engine is straining. The face of the woman shrinks to nothing, her openmouthed scream inaudible against the snarling rev.

With a surge of vertigo, the stadium and the pebble-shaped concession booths on the outer concourse shift in scale, then spin and tip, tipping as the aircraft executes a sharp turn over the flashing water of the canal and river system below.

Then I see a tauntened rope on the floor and a pair of rough, square hands gripping the open side, scrabbling for purchase. Somehow, someone is hanging from the edge. An elbow appears. Two men sitting near me shout at one another, then shuffle across, grab the arm and the rope, and heave a body in. Exhausted, the man lies sprawled, groaning with the pain of a dislocated arm. Then comes an explosion of yells and shouts: impossibly, there are more hands grappling at the edge. The helicopter is veering off balance. Three more men, all hanging from the same rope, are hauled in. Others lose their grip and fall. There’s a single appalled scream as the last one is lost.

In the belly of the aircraft there are people everywhere: on benches, or squatting on the floor amid sacks and trunks. Kristin is sitting with Bethany’s head in her lap, her face so pale and rigid with concentration she seems cast in wax. Behind them is a tiny, frail figure who I don’t recognise at first. And then with an inner pop of shock, I do. Harish Modak clutches his open jar of ashes, a dribble of grey saliva emerging from the corner of his mouth. He’s making swallowing movements. I try to catch his eye but he doesn’t see me. His whole body is shaking with sobs. Awkwardly, I shunt towards Kristin, heaving my legs behind me. She’s yelling something I can’t hear, eyes wide. The helicopter’s engine is still straining, a wild metallic shriek. A man next to me vomits. Kristin is pointing outside. I freeze. The sky has marbled and darkened.

Then comes a deafening, unworldly boom.

Its sound vibrates across the horizon, spreading in a languid, reverberating crescendo. As if it has all the time in the world. From deep beneath the sea floor, something has spoken. With sudden, colossal force, a series of jolts buffets the helicopter from side to side, then up and down. We’re being rammed from all directions. There are screams as people grab at one another for support. Somehow, the pilot manages to right the aircraft. But the engine is labouring.

I look across to the open mouth of the aircraft. Beyond the lit crescent of the stadium, the sea is pulling back in a ferocious sucking rush of spume, exposing hectares of glittering sand and rock and flipping silver creatures that must be dolphins or whales, stranded by the giant drag of water. Then on the horizon, a wide orange flare flickers and pulsates beneath the dome of the sky. As we struggle to rise higher into the air, the flare swells and changes shape, flattening itself to meet the sea.

At first it looks like a glassy mountain ridge has shot up from the exposed sand of the re-cast shoreline. But it’s a sheer wall of water. It blots out the clouds. Its base is dark, almost black. It’s topped by plumes of dancing, spritzing white.

The giant wave, more beautiful and more terrifying in its grandeur than anything I could dream, is hurtling towards us.

Then all around, there are new shouts and screams. With a lurch I understand why. We’re flying too low. Even if the wave doesn’t reach us, the air currents it will generate will suck us down.

‘Try and get some more height!’ Ned yells to the pilot. The helicopter whines and balks, battered from side to side by the residue of the shock. The pilot yells something back. ‘Tip out one of the crates!’ Ned shouts across the stewing cavern. The word goes round, and ten men — Ned and Frazer Melville among them — stagger to their feet and strain to shove the largest wooden box to the edge. Kristin joins them, leaving Bethany’s head propped on a sack. There’s a wild, animal scuffle as everyone else presses against the walls of the helicopter. I have to get to Bethany. I begin to haul myself in her direction.

Like a giant wheel, the future rolls in with all its murderous force.

I’ve nearly reached Bethany now. She blinks rapidly and musters a pained mouth-twitch of recognition. Shuffling myself up, I rest my head next to hers on the vibrating floor of the helicopter. I can feel her breath hot on my face. It smells faintly of bubblegum. With a jerky movement, she reaches over and places her hand, bony as a bird’s claw, on my belly. As long as I can keep her anger going, that Bethany rage, she will be OK. And so long as she can, I can too. I put my mouth to her ear.

‘I thought we didn’t do touching. Bethany,’ I whisper into it.

‘It’s not you I’m touching, Wheels.’ Her voice is strangled, as if she can barely breathe.

‘What do you mean, not me?’

‘It. I just felt it. Inside you. Our little friend. How’s that for bad timing?’ She laughs and splutters.

I don’t get it. I glance across at Frazer Melville, straining against the crate, his face drained of all colour. And in that moment I realise what Bethany has said. The truth of it. Of course. How could I not know what the things we have done have led to? How could I not?

Oh Christ. Not now. My heart free-falls.

And then, for no good reason on Earth, lifts.

‘You know where you’re going with that baby?’ Bethany whispers hoarsely. I nod. In that tiny glimmer of time, I feel that I have known all along. Her mouth is straining. Behind the distortion of pain, there’s something that you could mistake for ecstasy. She’s looking out into the bleached-bone nothingness of the air outside, a throb of dizzying white.

‘Get back, everyone!’ yells a voice. The men are pushing rhythmically at the crate, inching it closer to the edge, until, with a final concerted heave, the giant rectangle, now shunted halfway out, hesitates, then tips and plummets. Then it’s lost to view and there’s a sickening sideways swing as the helicopter struggles to right itself. It seems to be failing. We’re jolted sideways again. I grip Bethany’s shoulder and close my eyes.

When I open them again, I see Harish, Frazer Melville and Kristin clutching one another and swaying near the far wall of the helicopter in a strange triptych, staring out at the wall of water — filthy, frothing, black, heaving with cars and trees and rubble and human bodies — that’s rushing at us with the speed of a jet-plane. With a vicious mechanical jerk, the helicopter lifts vertically, the pilot slamming at the controls as the wash below ignites. The fire spreads greedily as though devouring pure oil, yellow flames bursting from the crest of the liquid swell, triggering star-burst gas explosions above. With a deep-throated bellow the wave gushes across the landscape, turning buildings and trees to matchwood in an upward rush of spume. As the force catapults us upward, the scene shrinks to brutal eloquence: a vast carpet of glass unrolling, incandescent, with powdery plumes of rubble shooting from its edges, part solid, part liquid, and part gas — a monstrous concoction of elements from the pit of the Earth’s stomach. There’s a gentle pliant crunching and far below buildings buckle, ploughed under, then vanish in the suck. Only a few skyscrapers stand proud of the burning waterscape as the land is relentlessly and efficiently erased. The heat is unbearable, as though the sun itself has plunged into the water and is irradiating us from below. It’s almost impossible to breathe. There’s a stench of burnt wood, melted plastic, of meat and seafood boiled to the bone. Tiny rainbows dance across the open side of the helicopter above the pulsing floodwater. It is the most terrible thing I have ever seen.