Gary Gibson - Final Days

Disembarking eventually in a part of town where he knew he could find a family-run hotel that he’d used before, he headed past a variety of small coffee shops clustered around one of the massive pillars that supported the city’s roof. Choosing a café, he ordered coffee and sweet pastries, and when the coffee arrived it proved so thick and bitter as to be almost undrinkable. But he persevered, and before long the caffeine began to work its magic, filling him with a temporary but nonetheless welcome sense of well-being. By the time he moved on, brushing through softly glowing adverts for baklava or Turkish tea, he was feeling a little more alert.

It didn’t take long for Saul to realize he was being followed, even though the streets were still busy with both pedestrians and road traffic. He stopped from time to time, as if to watch the sun slipping behind the gas-giant, and when he glanced back the way he’d come he spotted a couple of faces familiar from the café, but now mingling in with the crowds. He kept his eyes fixed on them, until it became clear they were trying just a bit too hard not to look his way.

Saul started to walk more quickly, while trying to figure out his next move. But before he reached a decision, someone approaching him lunged sideways, propelling him through a dark shop doorway.

He felt hands reach out for him, noticed faces barely distinguishable in the gloom. As he lashed out with his fist, he felt it make satisfying contact with yielding flesh. Someone groaned, but more bodies piled on top of him before he could take another swing.

They were yelling in what might have been Turkish, his contacts struggling to run a translation, but there were too many talking all at once for the software to come up with anything meaningful.

He kicked and struggled, but they had him down, with his face against the floor. One yanked his head back while another thrust a wad of cloth between his jaws, before pulling a bag over his head and securing it tight around his face.

Hands grabbed the back of his coat and dragged him further into the interior of the shop. A boot struck him hard in the ribs and Saul groaned in pain, just before he felt the prick of a needle in his neck. Immediately, dark tendrils of fatigue spread all the way through him, utterly irresistible, dragging him down into a warm and comforting darkness devoid of dreams.

TWENTY

Florida Keys, 5 February 2235

Disappearing turned out to be even easier than either of them might have hoped.

A few days before, Thomas Fowler had procured a set of contacts reple with fake UPs, for both himself and Amanda, from the ASI’s own evidence lockers, along with a substantial amount of black-market cash. They took off together one morning for his beach house down in the Keys, the ocean stretching out on either side of the highway, throughout the whole drive down from the airport at Marathon.

They had spent the next few days making love to the sound of the ocean crashing against the wharf near the house, often waking in the early hours when minor tremors sent plates crashing to the kitchen floor. Ashes from the recent eruptions of Soufrière and Mombacho were carried north on the wind, plastering rooftops and lawns, and turning them all a dull, leaden grey.

They often heard cars whipping by on the highway, as local residents fled, and one morning just before dawn they also heard gunshots, followed by the screech of rubber on tarmac. Fowler had got up and walked out on to the veranda, without turning the lights on, peering either way down the long road that ran parallel to the shore, but he saw nothing.

He dreamed of a faceless figure hunting him through the darkened rooms of the beach house, and when he woke knew he wouldn’t need a psychiatrist to figure out that he feared Donohue being sent after them. But Fowler had gambled that, with the end so very close, they would be safe – or as safe as it was possible to be, given the end of the world was approaching – so long as they didn’t make any attempt to pass through the Array.

The worst of the tremors occurred on their last night in the Keys. The house rocked on its foundations, as if a giant had lifted it up and was shaking it to see if anything might fall out. In the morning they found that dozens of roof shingles had come crashing down on to the patio. Also one of the exterior walls had buckled, sending plaster raining down, while the wind had whipped ashes mixed with salt water through the shattered windows and across the furniture.

They picked their way across broken glass as they packed the few belongings they needed, and climbed into Amanda’s car. Fowler didn’t look back as they drove away, even though he was leaving the beach house for ever.

There were few signs of life as they drove the short distance north to Key Largo. Palm trees and royal poinciana, whose branches had once blazed red, now bowed under the accumulated weight of volcanic ash. The streets were deserted, making Fowler wonder where his neighbours could possibly have fled. It wasn’t like there was anywhere they could possibly go that was safer.

He thought about it a while longer, then decided that the impulse driving the two of them to fly to the Far East wasn’t really so very different.

They had barely started out on their journey before they came across a van lying on its side, so that it straddled the divider. An open-topped sports car was parked haphazardly nearby, one of its doors left wide open as if its owner might return at any moment. A recorded voice emerged faintly from the dashboard, warning that the vehicle was low on power.

Amanda guided their own car around and past the second obstruction. Only once they were past did they see the bodies of a young woman and a man lying side by side, darkening pools of blood stthe tarmac around what was left of their heads.

After that encounter, they drove the rest of the way in silence. The Keys had become suddenly menacing in a way they hadn’t been before, even with the constant tremors and volcanic ashes.

In lieu of conversation, Thomas brought a news feed up on the dashboard. There were now up to half a dozen volcanoes reactivated along the spine of South America, all the way from Chile to Nicaragua. Yellowstone, too, was showing ominous signs of seismic activity, while yet more growths had been sighted emerging from the waters off the coast of Ecuador. Thermal-imaging satellites had verified several others, blossoming all along the mid-Atlantic ridge, like a cancer metastasizing throughout a living body.

They dodged several more abandoned cars, and at one point two men stepped out into the middle of the road and tried to flag them down. Having chosen to keep the car on manual, Amanda hit the accelerator and drove straight towards them, until they were finally forced to jump out of the way. Shouted invectives trailed in their wake as they sped on along the highway connecting the chain of islands.

By the time they reached Key Largo, it was clear that plenty of other people had fled north, yet there were still some signs of life continuing the same as ever. Dozens of businesses were tightly shuttered, while others were cheerfully open for business.

Somehow, thought Fowler, this was the strangest thing of all. But, then, there were few people privileged to know just how little time was left to them all.

They drove along the south road, following the natural curve of the key, until they reached the first of several artificial islands floating on platforms just above the waves and supported by spar buoys, each such island linked to the land by a pontoon bridge that extended out into the ocean. The platforms themselves were built from some kind of extremely flexible but tough polymer composite that could survive the worst of the local hurricanes.