Paul Jones - Towards Yesterday

When the black powder initiator detonated, it created a shockwave that traveled through the Haywire explosive gel at approximately the speed of sound, breaking down the plastic explosive into its constituent molecular parts. The fuel and oxidizer that, until a millisecond earlier had been chemically bonded into an inert material, was set free and instantly recombined to form a gas. The gas rapidly expanded within the enclosed space of the camera housing until, finally, it exploded outward in a massive burst of heat and light, sending millions of fractured shards of metal and plastic into the air, ripping through everything in their path.

The dull crump of the explosion in the laboratory wing was inaudible over the screams of those sacrificing themselves against the electrified fence, and the yelling of the horrified security personnel as they shouted for the remaining protestors to get back .

In the unattended security booth, a red light suddenly glowed brightly and began flashing insistently on the fire-alarm monitoring board, complemented by the trilling of an audible alarm.

It was all lost to the commotion outside.

Jim could not remember how he ended up flat on his back in the corridor. The tiled floor was cold against his cheek and he could smell the piney odor of the cleanser the janitor used to clean it.

His head hurt.

There was a deafening ringing in his head, and he could taste the metallic tang of blood in his mouth.

Had he fallen?

His last memory was of heading back to the transmitter room, his hand had been on the handle of the door and then… here he was.

Maybe if he opened his eyes?

The door he had been about to open now lay on its side, blown from all but one of its hinges. It looked like a broken tooth dangling from a crooked mouth. No—wait—it looked like a broken tooth dangling from the mouth of a dragon, because a white acrid smoke was pouring through the open doorway.

The pallid white fingers of smoke crept towards him from the open gash of the doorway. Alarm bells rang somewhere, too. They became louder as the noise in his head subsided.

Jim’s senses and memory suddenly came flooding back. He felt himself abruptly become aware of what was happening, almost like the reverse action of a drain where the dirty water of his memory and senses rushed back up the pipe to fill his mind instead of emptying away.

“Oh Christ!” he said, as he tried to stand. The corridor twisted and contorted as he struggled to his feet, and he threw out a steadying hand to the wall, falling against it while he gathered himself, waiting for his dazed senses to stabilize.

Something wet ran down over his forehead and dripped into his left eye; he felt its warmth as it trickled down his shock-numbed cheek. Jim wiped it away with his forearm and saw that the shirt that had been crisp and white when he threw it on that morning was now torn and ripped. A brown singe mark extended up the full extent of the shirt’s right arm, turning the polyester into brittle brown strands. Bits of melted polyester crumbled under his fingers as he ran his hands over the damaged material. There was a fair amount of blood splattered down the front of his shirt too, but he knew most of it wasn’t his. He was quite sure the blood belonged to whoever had originally owned the severed arm that lay in a congealing pool of gore next to where he had fallen.

He stared at the limb. It was thin and pale, it looked almost feminine in its delicacy but the tufts of hair on the upper arm and the large metallic watch denoted it as having once been attached to a man.

Jim staggered away from the wall and took two tentative, stumbling steps toward the opposite one before edging his way to the ruined doorway.

The doorframe was broken and smashed, and long splinters of wood jutted out from the frame exposing the yellowy-white wood beneath the paint. Jim was careful to avoid impaling himself on any of them as he propped himself in the doorway and tried to see into the smoke—filled room that had, until moments earlier, contained the sole hope for the future of humanity.

It was a charnel house now. An abattoir.

A naked body lay crumpled against the wall just inside the room. Jim thought it was probably once a man but now it was just a pile of broken bones, held together by a bloodied sack of charred skin. The right arm was missing just below the shoulder and a rag of flesh hung limply against a sharp piece of fractured bone jutting out from the body’s collarbone.

“Is there anybody in here,” Jim called out. His voice was husky from the smoke he was inhaling with every breath. His throat felt like someone had taken an electric sander to it and his breathing had an odd whistle each time he inhaled. Lifting his fingers to his mouth, he felt gaps where two of his front teeth should have been.

There was no reply from the room. He took a tentative step inside, careful not to let go of the doorjamb. The room was so full of smoke he could barely make out anything.

He called out again, “Anybody in here?” His voice was quickly overcome by a succession of coughing that wracked his badly damaged body with pain, doubling Jim over as nausea washed over him.

There was a second body laying a few feet further into the room, its outline blackened by a halo of debris and torn clothing. Its size and bulk meant it could only have been one person: Horatio Mabry. The big man’s face was completely gone, now nothing more than a bloody sea of exposed muscle and gristle. His lips had been torn from his face in the explosion, exposing his remaining teeth in a lurid grin.

Everybody was dead in here. He could sense it… he could smell it; that odd burned—chicken smell cops and firefighters would sometimes talk about after a particularly bad fire. Jim backed his way out of the room until his spine hit the furthest wall of the corridor.

It was over.

Whoever had committed this atrocity had destroyed humanity’s only chance at a future. Jim’s eyes clouded over and a tear made its way over his cinder-encrusted cheek. His legs folded beneath him and he slid down the wall and into unconsciousness.

A shelf of books crashed to the ground, as the three startled occupants of the receiver—room steadied themselves against the table that held the Tach-Comm equipment.

“What was that?” Simone demanded, staring wide-eyed at Rebecca. “An earthquake?”

Rebecca ignored the question. She glanced at Adrianna, her own fear reflecting back at her from the girl’s eyes. “Stay here,” she said, clasping the woman-child’s hand, “I’ll go check.”

Rebecca cautiously eased open the door of the receiver room and stepped out into the corridor. It looked normal, but up ahead, where hallway she stood in bisected the corridor leading to the transmission room, a milky cloud of dust was swirling and falling in the light of the overhead fluorescents. Alarms were clamoring and the emergency exit direction signs were glowing red as she made her way to the intersection and turned to face the source of the smoke floating toward her.

She could see the door to the transmission lab hanging from its hinges, debris lay strewn across the opening and smoke billowed out from it. The opposite wall was black and singed; the paint was covered in blisters and flaking from the wall. As Rebecca stood silent and stunned at the devastation, she saw an indistinct figure emerge wraith-like from the smoke, stagger across the corridor and collapse against the far wall.

She was running then, covering the fifty-feet separating them in seconds that felt like minutes. The man had collapsed to the floor but as she drew near, she knew who it was.