Rising

I remember it well. The families torn from each other. The once great spires and buildings crumbled into nothing but rubble and sand, or swallowed into the gaping cracks that crisscrossed their way around the globe. The fires that raged through the ravaged cities and acres of forest that surrounded them. But worst of all were the screams of the injured or dying. They were filled with a hopelessness that seemed to suck you in and pull the last dregs of happiness away from you. It would begin at 13:13 on Friday 13th, March 2313. I guess you could say it’s ironic, or maybe cliché, that the thing everyone secretly dreaded started at that particular time, on that particular day, of that particular year. Some say that the people who thought thirteen was the unluckiest number had some sort of premonition of what was to happen. Others say that by making thirteen unlucky they somehow changed the fate of the entire earth. Either way, that was when my reasonably idealistic life would be torn to wind scattered shreds. I cannot show you what happened, or what the landscape looks like now, but I can tell you. I can tell you how the world finally broke. I was sat on the side of a towering hill on the outskirts of London, letting the gentle breeze ruffle my coppery hair. London’s white spires and apartment buildings speared up towards the lapis sky, where not a single cloud marred its clear span. A family of red kites circled high above, their whistling cries almost lost in the steady thrum of a life filled city. I closed my eyes, letting the aura of peace and contentedness wrap me in its arms, not wanting to leave yet. ‘Just a few more minutes won’t do any harm’ I thought lazily to myself, opening my eyes at the sound of a single Elec Car meandering it’s smooth, hovering way along the road that ran along the base of the hill. I tracked it until its shiny silver body merged with the distant stream of traffic snaking through and around London, ever moving. I glanced up, a flash of light catching my eye. It had been reflected of the perfect glass surface of one of the buildings, and more came after it. Watching these small flashes of light reflecting of window panes and sinking into an almost trance like state, I lost myself in thought once more. I liked to think, which is probably why I didn’t have many friends, and the ones I did have never really called at my house or asked if I wanted to do something that weekend, because they knew I would decline with some lame excuse about needing to do homework or something like that. What I really did was come and sit out here, as this was the only place where I could be truly alone and not constantly harassed by my family. I didn’t mind them fussing over me occasionally, since all parents did that, but having them jump on every minor, completely un-important happening at school and being over protective 24/7 just wasn’t on. Everyone needs private time once in a while. An annoying beeping sound interrupted my train of thought. When I tried to ignore it, it only got louder as my mother had programmed it to do if it sensed I didn’t want to answer. I rolled my eyes to the heavens and said to the robin in the tree above me, “I wonder who that could be?” I could easily guess, and when I looked down at the caller ID being projected from my wrist watch it only confirmed my suspicions. Sighing, I full sized the screen and answered the call. Immediately my mother’s anxiety riddled face popped up in front of me, along with the rest of the front room. It was just a projection, but it always surprised me how real it looked. “Where are you Jade dear? I’ve been worried. You should have called me; didn’t I tell her to call me, Michael?” This last part she addressed over her shoulder to my father, who had curled his skinny frame into an arm chair and had his nose buried in a book as usual. He mumbled something incomprehensible, which caused my mother to turn back to me in exasperation. Pushing a lock of hair from her face she said, “You need to come home now sweetheart.”  “Mum, I’m seventeen. Can’t I just stay out a little longer and buy something to eat on the way home?” I asked, knowing the answer even as I asked the question. My mother’s posture became stern as she replied, “No, Jade. Dinner is cooking and if you’re not back by one twenty we’ll eat it without you, so make sure you hurry up.” Finishing the sentence, she promptly cut of the link before I could protest. I frowned unhappily. She always did that whenever I asked her that. I glanced at the time display in the corner. It read 13:10. I hummed, irritated, before sliding the blank screen back into my wrist watch/mobile.

Standing up from my place on the side of the enormous hill, I stretched until my spine gave a pleasurable crack and my muscles felt less cramped, then picked up my bag and swung it across my shoulders. Stuffing my hands into the pockets of my favourite top, I began down the gentle slope, starting off at a slow jog but ending up sprinting down the hill’s side and taking my hands from my pockets to help keep my balance, the world blurring. When I reached the bottom of the hill I carried on for another twenty metres or so before managing to slow down to a stop. Huffing slightly, I turned to my bag and unzipped it. I had to hunt around for a moment before I found what I was looking for. The most prized possession I owned. My gravity skates. They looked like the soles of shoes except for the fact that they glowed plasma blue. When clipped on to the bottom of someone’s shoes, they used some extremely complicated method I couldn’t understand that allowed the user to hover a few inches above the ground, defying gravity. They also allowed you to skate along faster than any ordinary rollerblades would. I sat down and hooked mine on to my shoes, then stood up. Even though I had had them for over a year, the sense of flying over the ground never got old. I glanced at my wrist watch again. 13:11.

I was racing along the winding road leading towards London, my hair whipping behind me, when a sudden shuddering of the earth almost sent me flying. As it was I slid to a panicked stop, wondering what had just happened. I glanced at my wrist watch. 13:13. Looking down, I watched the ground to see if it would happen again. It didn’t, at least, not on the same scale. Just a faint rumble shook through the ground this time, so I assumed it was over, as you would. I was wrong.

As I started forward again, another tremor thundered under me, and this time I did fall over, my skates slipping from under me and toppling me on to my back. I lay there gasping for breath, stunned and winded from the impact, whilst the ripple fled into London and forced the pristine spires and apartment buildings to sway over it. After another few moments of sucking uselessly at the air like a fish I finally managed to take in a breath, my starved lungs thanking me.

I sat up slowly to avoid making my head spin and looked towards the city. Shattered panes of glass tumbled down to the ground in a riot of prismatic colours. The constant stream of traffic that made up most of the noise of the city had stopped, and an eerie silence swamped London, adding to the ominous air that began to drape itself over the damaged buildings. Slowly pushing myself from the ground, I dusted myself of and stretched everything to make sure I had no broken bones. I winced as a muscle in my back twinged. ‘I’ll definitely have a bruise there tomorrow’ I thought as I resumed my journey towards London, albeit a bit slower than before as I didn’t want to fall again.

Five minutes and a few more minor trembling’s later I arrived at the southern edge of the city. Everything was still quiet, and the ominous air I had felt before seemed stronger the further I went into the city. The cars and other vehicles had stopped so close to each other that I had to step over their bumpers, weaving my way around the various people who had stepped from their cars when the tremors had started. They, like me, were glancing nervously up at the buildings surrounding us, probably praying that they wouldn’t fall. I looked from the buildings to the people, reading each of their expressions for any sign of knowing what was going on, but all I could see as my eyes wandered from face to face was curiosity, confusion and worry. The last reminded me of why I had started back in the first place; my mum and my dinner. I scowled with annoyance and turned towards the alley way opposite me that headed in my homes direction, intending to forget about the small earthquakes and get back on time. The people around me began to disperse, the minor commotion unable to disrupt their routine, and I smiled slightly, knowing that London would go back to the way it had been. How mistaken I was.

As I entered the narrow alley way another tremor began, but this one didn’t just stop like all the others. It gradually got stronger, the noise building up into a crescendo that vibrated through the ground and up into my body. Then the shaking exploded into feverent action, ripping through the towering buildings as if they were toys blocks and the earthquake was a toddler running towards them. The people who hadn’t got back into their cars screamed in absolute terror, and I added my own voice to the discordant melody. My scream rose to a shriek as a chunk of marble thudded into the entrance of the alley ahead of me. I scarpered back the way I had come, hoping I would escape from the alley’s confines before I was crushed. As I sprinted towards the entrance, open space just two metres in front of me, something smacked into my head, knocking me almost completely out. The last thought I had as I crashed to the ground, the shadows of unconsciousness dragging me down, was that I had missed dinner, which would make mum mad.

I blinked. Then again, as my eyes seemed to be covered in black dirt. I reached a hand to my face and rubbed hard, trying to rid the dirt that almost completely blocked out the light apart from a few chinks. As my hand brushed my eyes I froze, as all I could feel were my dirt free eyelids. That could only mean one thing; I was stuck in some sort of underground room where only a few rays of orangey sunlight could reach. Question was, how had I gotten here? I rolled over and pushed myself into a crouch, then almost fell face first back on to the hard, unyielding floor as my head gave out a throb of protest where something had hit it, hard. Breathing and moving slowly to avoid irritating my bump again, I crawled forward until I reached what looked to be a wall, as far as I could tell in the poor light. I settled back onto my knees and placed my hand over one of the holes in the wall. The rock or metal around it gave slightly so I leaned my weight against it until, with a groan, it gave way and pitched me forward. The bright glare blinded me for a moment, but when I was able to see again I found out what had made the light orange. Fire, everywhere. As I looked around in horror everything came back to me in one terrifying rush.

Where proud buildings had once stood there now lay piles of forlorn looking rubble, and the ones that were still standing leaned sideways drunkenly. The once smooth tar of the road was now cracked and raised; some pieces had risen almost taller than me, whilst other pieces had disappeared down veined cracks that zigzagged into the hazy smoke. Elec cars and people alike lay scattered and broken throughout the ruined city, twisted around each other in a death embrace.

Something dripped onto my shoulder from my cheek, and I reached up a hand. It came away sticky with blood. ‘I must have gotten a good few cuts when that rubble covered the alley’s top’ I mused to myself. I stumbled away from the alley way that had saved my life, wanting to find somewhere safe in this hell. As I did so I realised that my gravity skates were no longer working, but I didn’t have time to dwell on that loss as I needed to find my parents soon, because I could see the faint orangey glow of what could only be magma through the cracks. ‘The mantle must be rising’ I thought, surprising myself with my certainty. I quickened my pace and turned left down the ruined street. I wove my way through the bodies and cars, hardening my heart against the pleas of the mortally wounded for assistance, knowing that I could do nothing to ease their suffering.

Black, greasy smoke wafted over me, making me cough and retch, the sickly smell of burning flesh assaulting my nose. As I waved my hand through a particularly thick bit of smoke to try and get some clear air I felt something bump into me. I wobbled, and would have fallen had the young man, revealed by the clear patch in the smoke, not caught me. “Are… are you alright?” he stammered, setting me back on my feet. He was slim and athletically built, with the slight bulge of muscles on his arms that showed he must have worked out before. I looked up, as he was taller than me, and examined the scratched face of the only other almost completely unharmed person I had seen. He had chin length black hair that lengthened towards the back until it brushed his shoulders, framing a handsomely featured face with high cheekbones, a perfect nose and lips. Eyes the colour of autumn ochre filled with disbelief gazed down at me. Despite the circumstances I blushed slightly and nodded. He frowned and said “Are you sure? No wounds that you don’t know about that could kill you?” Again I shook my head. He gave me a quick once over, making his own assessment. After a moment his eyes rose to meet mine, then without warning he enfolded me in his arms and hugged me tightly. Not sure what to do, I cautiously wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him back. After a moment more of silence he pulled back and looked into my face, tears tracing their way down his. I must have looked confused, because he said in a slightly choked voice, “I thought I was the only one left alive. Everyone else has been killed.” “Everywhere?” I asked my fear from earlier reawakening with a vengeance. “Yes” he replied. He gave a cough and stepped back as a tendril of smoke drifted between us. I took my arms from around his neck and questioned, “Have you been over to Fern Street to see if anyone there is still alive?” He shook his head. “No. In fact I don’t think you can, as a split in the earth that could put the Grand Canyon to shame has opened up nearby and- Hey! Where are you going?” I ignored him and carried on running towards where I prayed my home still stood, leaving him standing with his arms outstretched.

I was stumbling over the broken road, trying not to fall over the rubble littering it, when I heard running footsteps behind me. Turning, I found the young man from before jogging towards me and holding what must have been a stich in his side, calling, “Wait” as he went. I paused on top of a fallen building, wondering why he had followed me and not just left the city before anything more happened. When he had reached me he stopped and said in a slightly breathless voice, “We need to leave, now.” A rumbling and shuddering of the earth followed the end of the sentence, adding weight to what he said. I shook my head. “I’m not leaving without my parents. If you want to leave then leave, but I’m staying until I get my family or die trying.” “If we don’t leave now we probably won’t… ah just forget it. I can see you’re going to completely disregard what I say, so I may as well come along with you to increase our survival chances.” I looked at him for a long moment before beckoning for him to follow and sliding down the rounded side of the fallen spire. Even though I didn’t want to show it, I was glad of his company. “I’m Seth by the way” he called to me from the top of the building. I smiled in a pained way at this, remembering when names really had mattered.

As my street came into view in the distance, behind which was the welcome sight of land that had barely broken from ours, so did something else. The split was almost exactly as Seth had described, apart from the fact that it now had an orangey glow casting itself up the sides. I gaped at the sheer size of it and walked cautiously closer, avoiding the widening cracks and standing on a piece of ground that looked stable enough. “Be careful” Seth called, then completely contradicted what he’d just said by walking over to stand by my side.

I felt his hand brush mine lightly and took it. His fingers twined through mine and he gave my hand a gentle squeeze. I gave him a slight smile then turned to peer down into the split’s depths. I gaze at the broken pipes hanging like ruptured veins from the earths insides, the pieces of land falling from the edges, and at the magma rising steadily from below. A faint hissing was coming from the sluggishly moving liquid, as if it were a living mass of poisonous snakes, writhing as one.

I shielded my eyes against the glare and the sweltering heat, which was beginning to dry out my skin. “We need to go, now” I said, backing up from the edge. Seth stepped back with me, still holding my hand in his warm one, when a sudden “BOOM!” that rattled through our bones and pulled us to a halt. “What was that?” Seth asked in a voice shaken from the noise. I turned to him, my head still filled with the aftershock, when another shudder of noise cut me off. It rippled from the air into the ground, widening the already arm thick cracks that ran under our feet. “MOVE!” Seth yelled, dragging me by the hand away from the edge. I stumbled behind him as the ground began to buck and heave underneath us, yelling, “MY PARENTS, WE NEED TO GET MY PARENTS?!” “WE CAN’T! THE LANDS TOO UNSTABLE. WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE NOW!” Seth pulled hard on my hand, swerving sharply to avoid a chunk of steel that smashed into the ground where we had just been with bone shattering force, the buildings that had just survived the first earthquake yielding to this next onslaught.

As we ran towards my street, desperate to reach what seemed to be the only place close enough to the opposite side to jump, more cracks chased along behind us and the ground began to tip towards the sky ahead of us, forcing us to lean forward to avoid tumbling backwards into the magma. I felt the beginnings of tears well up in my eyes and start down my cheeks as we ran, only to evaporate as quickly as they had formed from the now unbearable heat emanating from the crack to our sides.

We leapt my garden fence, Seth almost carrying me past my house as I struggled to get through the broken door, but before we could reach the edge and leap easily across to safety the cracks overtook us and merged. The piece of ground we were stood on began to slide forward, heading down towards the waiting maw of the earth and the fire from its insides, with us at the now nearly skyward facing end. “JUUUUMP!” I screeched, letting go of Seth’s hand and springing into the air as the land collapsed beneath me, pulling my childhood home and my parents down with it. As I arced through the air away from the destruction, I tucked my head into my chest and prayed harder than I had ever done before, for both me and Seth, wanting to get away from here unharmed. I felt a rush of heat and pressure propel me forward, and assumed that that must be the last shard of my home hitting the nearing magma. Gravity tugged insistently at me and I crashed into the solid earth, bright lights exploding in my vision as my head cracked backwards. With my momentum went the last of my breath as I was winded yet again.

I lay there for a long time, how long I don’t know, as gas from the gas mains was ignited by the flames flickering like tall pillars from the nearing magma, my head spinning and distorting Seth’s voice as he called to me to stand up.  Not happening I thought sluggishly, my sense of balance completely off even though I was lying down. Finally, as it didn’t seem I would be standing any time soon, he slung me over his shoulders in a fireman’s lift and staggered forward under my weight, aiming for what seemed to be the hill I had seen as I had jumped over the crack. I closed my eyes as a wave of burning hot air washed over me, accompanied by a sense of nausea caused by the two bumps on my head throbbing in unison.

After what seemed to be a pain filled eternity I was set down gently on top of the hill. Seth’s hand came to rest on my forehead and I gave a smile that must have looked more like a grimace in thanks. I set about gathering my wits about me, which would take some time considering they had been scattered to the furthest corners of my mind from the second blow to my head.

When that feat had been accomplished, Seth seemed to notice and stood, offering me a hand. I sat slowly and took the outstretched hand, hauling myself up and trying to ignore the pain that radiated from my head outwards. He looked at me, then glanced over my head, a look of shock and horror etching itself across his handsome features. The smile I had had on my face began to fade as I saw this, and when I turned around to see what had made him like this I felt the same look appear on my face. As far as the eye could see there was a thick black smoke drifting through the air, rising from fires that fed from the lava that had now hauled itself from the cracks that scarred the ruined landscape, slowly splitting pieces of land from the rest. Little towns and villages that I had known well and loved like a second home had disappeared under the orange blanket of lava, only their chimneys poking forlornly through. I spun slowly on the spot and saw that we seemed to be on the only piece of unspoiled land left. The sudden thought that it could be like this all around the globe frightened me. I turned to Seth, whose mouth hung slightly open in disbelief, walked back over to him and buried my head in his chest, letting the grief I had held back for so long rack through me. He wrapped his arms around me and began to stroke my hair softly, trying to comfort me. “Wh-why did this ha-have to ha-happen?” I asked, my voice broken with hiccupping sobs. “I don’t know” Seth said in a slightly choked voice. “I don’t know”

1 week earlier.......

“Reactor numbers one and two are going into meltdown sir, we can’t stop it!” The panicked voice bleated from the monitor screen in the headquarters of Operation Core Review, situated several miles from the actual operation site in Lake Baikal, Siberia. A tall man in a smart and expensive Italian silk suit stepped forward and said in a loud voice, “Pull out. We can’t have the reactors blowing up when were half way into the mantle.” When the small scientist in view of the camera stared at him, bewildered by what his boss thought he could do in such a short time, the man said again in a firm tone, “Pull out!” A group of other scientists, illuminated by the intermittent red flash of the alarms, scurried behind him as the scientist started to twiddle his thumbs nervously and stammered, “Bu-but sir, we can’t just instantly pu-pull the reactors that power the drill up, i-it takes time, and we don’t have ti-ti-time anymore.” “PULL OUT!” the man bellowed his apprehension increasing. The scientist flinched and muttered, “Y-yes sir” before hurrying of to try and save the botched operation.

The man stood stiffly, in complete silence, his hands folded behind him as he tried to hide his fear from his peers who stood in the shadows around him. After a few more moments of heavy silence broken only by the blaring of the alarms in the control room, the scientist hurried back into the cameras view fear and said in a petrified voice, “Reactors three and four have also gone into meltdown! What should we do sir?! What should w-” but his last words were cut off as an explosion worse than any ever recorded ripped through the secret base and out into the surrounding mantle, shaking the headquarters with immense force even though they were far from the blast site. When the quaking and trembling had stopped the man regained his balance, looked at the blank screen, and turned to his colleges. They were staring at him with wide-eyed horror, and all seemed to be thinking the same thing.

What have you done?