10: Chloe – Sunburn

When he was sure I wasn’t looking, Reece snuck out of the toilet, edging against the wall like an espionage cliché before disappearing around the corner. He didn’t come back that day, or the next. When he did return, it was to see if I needed anything, skirting around half mumbled apologies and passing memos I didn’t bother to read. Apparently they would have told me about the team of technicians coming to refurbish the ward I was in, and let me know I wasn’t in a ward, but an observation deck. Still, watching them set up new walls and install curtains gave me something to watch until they fitted in the TV. The only sights I had the rest of the time was of the Southeast Arcade, but after a whole mess of people spending money there at the beginning of the week, the fairgrounds and rides had gone quiet.

The last day I saw that view was the day it changed forever. At first I thought my curtains had been left open, that the dawn light was just the sun rising. I squeezed my eyes tighter and flailed for the pull cord, but when I pulled it, the curtains opened instead, and the light grew more intense. I leapt out of bed and ducked behind a wall, calling out “Nuclear attack!” at the top of my lungs, but when the orderly came to check, he just joined me at the window with a sad smile.

“Don’t worry about us,” he said. “The glass can handle it.”

He nodded at the balcony outside. It blocked our view of most of the ground and even the glass safety barrier was tinted with a reflective coating, muting the light of sunrise most mornings. When an identically textured sunscreen dropped down from above, sealing itself to the barrier, the heat and light dropped noticeably. It really was just the sun rising, only this time, the dawn light flooded the city in a literal heatwave.

The orderly propped his tablet to the foot of my bed and showed me the security footage from outside. Discarded trash from the previous week’s looting smoked in piles. On the street, puddles steamed and flashes of static arced between cars and the ground. Another channel showed the beaches, where the surface of the sea boiled and mussels roasted in their shells until they popped open on the side of the pier. Between it all, people gathered in the streets and screamed. Their flesh tanned and burned and peeled in seconds, noses spurted blood and they dropped before reaching the nearest door or shadow. At least the audio was off.

“What’s going on?” I said.

The orderly didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Second Event, Miss.”

Was that supposed to mean anything to me? On the screen, the old, the young, the children who followed their parents outside, they covered their eyes and ran for shade. The lucky few made it, perhaps not as fortunate as those who didn’t. Their clothes and hair combusted, boiling them in their skins. They cried blinded by the horror, a mercy when the immolation of their loved ones was just feet away. I could only guess at the smell. The survivors collapsed into darkened doorways, most with third degree burns. Fourth and charred bones for the thin skinned, and all in scant seconds.

I tore down the tablet and clutched my chest. Why were they broadcasting this? Why weren’t the people filming it helping?

My heart was hammering, hard enough to roar through my ears. When a hand offered a glass of water, I found it was loud enough to drown out Mayor Tellus checking on me. 

“…ake this.” she said. “And you should turn off your device and store it out of reach of solar rays. This building’s shielded from the Events, but the Foundation won’t take responsibility for loss of personal belongings.”

When I didn’t move, she switched the tablet off for me and the orderly put it in my bedside cabinet.

“You’re alright here.” She said. “Just don’t open a window or the balcony doors. You don’t have epilepsy do you?”

I shook my head.

“Well, if you feel faint or you don’t want to see outside, there’s a communal lounge at the center of this floor.”

A crash of thunder rocked the building.

“Now what?” I said.

Spray, blown in from the coast fizzled into vapor and the former mayor let out a yell as a flock of gulls smacked into the balcony sunscreen. Half hit hard enough to die on impact, one even crashed through, still alive. The Mayor shrieked.

The gull collapsed on the floor of the balcony, cawing for its friends. The orderly ran to the balcony door and unlocked it.

That bird’s gonna get us killed!” He said, and ran out.

Smoke poured in through the break in the glass. When he neared the bird, it hobbled back into the beam of sun and the orderly jumped at it, holding it still. But trapped in the light, it squawked and pecked and scratched and then combusted. The orderly dropped it, a miniature phoenix flapping and hopping, screaming on the ground. Then it flew. Straight into his chest. Pain flashed across his face as the fire spread to his clothes, shredding his face with burning feathers as he dropped and rolled and tried to push it off. It stuck to him, melted into the fabric, and stopped screaming. He didn’t. He tore the bird off and ran back to the door, but his face fell when he grabbed its handle. The door didn’t open.

“Fucking auto locks!”

Mayor Tellus pulled at our side of the door, banged until they opened. It set off an alarm but she yanked the orderly in. Raw, unfiltered sunlight streamed through the crack and singed the side of my head. I screamed as my hair melted in an instant, the stink stinging my nostrils.

The Mayor kicked the door shut and lay gasping with the orderly. His skin was scorched. A guard called for medics, telling the Mayor to tend to me while an engineer tended to the locks. Electricity sparked around the metal frame and he cursed, backing away.

The Mayor gulped down half my glass of water and threw the rest at my head, prying my hand away to inspect for damage.

“You’re fine.” She said. “Your hair took the brunt of the damage. You just need some cooling gel.”

She ushered me to a seat by the window and went to fetch it. Two streets down, a roof garden combusted. The world was an inferno. The Mayor returned with the gel, shaking, tears running down her face.

“I put over thirty years into this city.” She said, unscrewing the cap. “And it’s going to be destroyed in less than a day. Rome, all over again.”

“What’s going on?” I said.

She tilted my head to the side and rubbed the gel in.

“Didn’t they tell you? The magnetic fields around planet have weakened. We’re safe in here, but anything outside is exposed to the sun.”

“What?”

“Don’t you remember? From the induction, dear?”

“Remember? I wasn’t told anything to remember. I woke up from a quasi-coma about five minutes before you and O’Toole sprang Holden on me.”

The Mayor mouthed a silent “Oh” and closed the tube of salve. “Ah, then this must be very confusing for you.”

“Yeah, just a bit.”

She nodded at the window. “Your adventure at Tel Megiddo counted down to the First of four periodic subduings of the fundamental universal forces. Gravity, magnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces, all that. We’ve been calling them the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason you of all people were chosen, dear. You’re a herald. Tel Megiddo was chosen because that’s where Armageddon was foretold to begin, so in keeping with the theme, four cataclysms, four horsemen.”

She wrapped a bandage around my head. She wasn’t very good at it. I looked like the Invisible Man

“My name’s Heralds,” I said, hissing the S. “And nobody believes in prophecies.”

“Nor does Kinsley.” She said. “He just thought it was a fitting place, given its title.”

“And these Horsemen? What was I reporting if it wasn’t a global nuclear strike?”

She finished the bandage roll and stood back to admire her handiwork. My hair was completely sealed in and two strips formed a mask across my eyes. People would assume I’d had major head surgery rather than a flash burn.

“The Horsemen,” she continued without acknowledging her wrongdoing. “The Events themselves, are the end of the world. What you brought attention to was the quelling of the strong nuclear forces. For one thousand seconds, the stronger a nuclear force was, the stronger the cancellation influence, and the one you were chained to was as strong as it got.”

“So the bomb actually did explode? With me right next to it?”

“Precisely, but it did so during the quelling, which is why it did nothing more to you than cause a fit. Now the same’s happening again, this time ten times longer. The pendulum of events swung to the opposite end of the spectrum, which I believe is magnetism. With a weakened magnetic influence around the earth, there’s no ozone layer. We’re getting the full brunt of the sun’s light rather than the one percent we’re used to. Raw, unfiltered electromagnetic radiation.”

“But Holden’s out there! My friends!”

“I’m sorry, dear. I truly am. Dick is out there, too.”

The lesson trailed off. We watched the razing of Shipyard City from above, safe and ashamed of it. Only when a guard called for the mayor to help organise another floor did I move.

“Why don’t you help, dear?” she said. “Keep yourself occupied. You might learn something.”

I agreed. It was either that or sit in my bed, staring at my crispy roasted former home.

“Sure, Mayor Tellus.” I said. “That’s probably a good Idea.”

“It’s Mrs O’Toole now. I’m not the Mayor anymore. I finally gave in and got married. Seems my mother was right. Marriage really does kill one’s career.”

We took the elevator down to a section labeled Habitats, sixty floors dedicated to housing the occupants of the building. The lowest was labelled Crèche.

“I thought having children was what killed careers.” I said.

The doors opened and we were greeted by the screams of uncountable kids.

“Seems I have children. My career’s at its end and it all started with my marriage last week. Oh, and did you notice the men who put us in this situation have skedaddled? I’ve been left to raise this lot all alone.”

“Guess your husband’s a Dick.”

She almost laughed, and flashed her ID at a waiting woman struggling to keep two kids from running into the elevator.

“Hey,” the woman said, looking up from a mess of hair the same shade as mine. “You O’Toole?”

The new Mrs O’Toole nodded and shook the woman’s hand.

“I’m Lilly, welcome to Overspill.”

“Overspill?”

Lilly smiled at me. It didn’t quite turn into a frown when she saw the bandages. “Overspill is what all us married-in folk become. We get tasked with all the unskilled labor. Excuse me for asking but should you be out of Medical?”

“It’s just some plastic surgery.” I said. “I always wanted to be a woman.”

Lilly reinforced her smile. “Oh. Okay. And are you Overspill?”

“No, just volunteering. You married into this?”

“Some soldier down on the guard levels. Bill or Bob or Bert or something.”

“You don’t know your husband’s name?”

“Eh. It starts with a B. He’s my son’s boyfriend, so they’re shacked up in his suite. It’s a paper marriage.”

“Right… So where do you want us?”

Lilly handed over a register. “If you don’t mind, Mrs O’Toole, can you take names?”

“Call me Nina, dear. Mrs. O’Toole is my mother-in-law.”

Nice to have you aboard, Nina.” Lilly said. “And what’s your—oh, excuse me.”

Lilly turned to catch a running child before we finished talking, chasing after him with strained patience. Mrs. O’Toole, or Nina, whistled through her fingers and promptly set about mining order from the chaos. The woman was no longer mayor, but she was still a natural leader.

She stepped into the center of the room. Chamber was a better description. Like the rest of the building, it suffered from the rounded, moulded organic forms of blobitecture. Unlike the rest of the building, this place was bright and cheerful, not muted cream beige.

“Hello.” A little girl said, tugging on my shirt. “Are you one of our teachers?”

I crouched down beside her and shook my head. “No, just visiting.”

“Miss Lilly says we can’t go out for two hours and forty minutes. My daddy says it’s because we aren’t old enough to see what’s happening. Is it bad? Did it happen to your face?”

I pulled at the bandage. “Yeah, but it’s only a tiny burn. Seems the sun’s being silly and got too hot. Then my nurse was silly and used too many bandages. Is your daddy down in security?”

“No, he’s the piloting supervisor. I think that means he has executive control over all aspects of flight and piloting duties. Our family was headhunted by the Foundation because we fit the criteria for preservation.”

I frowned behind my mask. “That’s a helluva lot of big words for a girl your age.”

“I know. Daddy says I should use shorter ones when talking to others, but I find sometimes the nuance gets lost. Don’t you?”

“What are you, some kind of genius?”

She cocked her head. “I was outside, but in here I’m kind of average.”

Average? In two sentences, the kid made me feel like I was talking to a college professor. I almost suspected she was a tiny adult pretending to be a six year old.

Mrs O’Toole, or Nina, called the girl’s name. “Kim Yao? Hey, are you Kim Yao?”

Kim Yao raised her hand and hurried away with a “It was nice to meet you and I hope your face gets better!”

Nina checked her off the register and Lilly called me to the elevator.

“Sorry,” she said. “Security’s asked only the registered staff stay with the kids. Gonna have to kick you out.”

“No probs.” I said. “Don’t think I’d be much help here anyway.”

“Oh, hey, I didn’t get you name?”

The elevator opened and I pressed my floor. “Chloe. Chloe Heralds. Nice meeting you.”

Lilly’s jaw dropped as the doors closed. I’d never got that kind of reaction before. Maybe she recognized me from Tel Megiddo. Maybe I finally had a fan. It explained her hair.

…

Back on the eightieth, Reece was waiting.

“I got my orders.” He said. “Gotta report to a helicopter hanger on, get this, floor minus twenty.”

“Minus twenty?” I said. “Wouldn’t that be twenty levels below ground?”

“That’s what it says.”

“You sure it doesn’t say twenty?”

“Y’know, twenty’s still low for a chopper hanger. Maybe I should ask someone.”

“Maybe you should, yeah.”

Reece left to confirm his orders. I went back to my room and fetched the tablet, purposefully ignoring everything outside the window. Unfortunately, that had the effect of making me notice everything inside them. Outside my room, the windows were lined with benches. They faced in instead of out, although given the wide balcony they wouldn’t have much of a view anyway. But what was stranger were the seatbelts. Seatbelts on public benches, indoors, on the eightieth floor of a skyscraper that looked like it had been inflated at a funfair. Either the architect was insane, or I was missing more puzzle pieces than I realized.

“Maybe an underground aircraft hanger wasn’t so farfetched after all.”

A clock on a wall timed the inferno. What had the girl said? Two hours and forty minutes? Over a third of that had passed now.

I sat on one of the benches, waiting for it to end, wondering about what I’d seen and heard from everyone so far. Clearly I needed to find someone to give me an orientation or at least find a manual of some sort. Reece had left me memos. Once this current horseman had put down his ride, I was going to get me some answers.

Two hours later, a PA announcement pulled me from my musings, informing us all it was safe to switch on our devices. I expected to see clear skies, but there was no indication the Event had stopped at all. The stormed raged on. The only difference now was the absence of electric arcs and fires. There was nothing left to burn.