47. George – Tip of the Icebergs

As the backdrop of infinite sky churned beyond the edge of the world, and a background of cracked earth erupted into lines of molten mud and lava, the players of Earth’s final story gaped down at the hole gaping up at them from the center of their cliff face stage.

“Well I’m out of ideas,” George said, turning to let his passenger see. “Got any ideas, grandma?”

Grandma Bobert shook her head.

“Holden?”

“What? Why are you asking me? I put you in charge so I could take time off.”

An array of covert glances bounced across the circle of ashen faces. Only Zeke and Jamie stayed back from the pit, covering the cat box from the grit and dirt whipping through the air.

Rhea kicked a broken plank down the hole. “Well, somebody better think of something. We can’t spend the whole day waiting around for a miracle.”

“Stupid nonexistent god. Hey, you up there,” Holden said, looking up at the city. He then frowned and turned to face the sky, remembering it was on his left. “Or in our current case, South from here. If you’re real, we need saving.”

He was answered by a rumbling deep in the ground, followed by a rain of rock fragments. Grit and pebbles cascaded around them.

“Incoming!” someone yelled.

“George,” Bobert yelled, “keep my grandma safe!”

George leapt to the center of the bridge, facing outward so Grandma Bobert would be shielded between him and the underside of the road.

The falling pebbles were joined by larger stones, followed by boulders and then entire buildings. They crashed into the mountainside and the survivors screamed and huddled into corners, as rooftops and pavement slabs and entire corner offices shredded through the bridge’s road tier. The hardened spike of a lightning rod stabbed through the concrete, impaling the inches of air between the backs of George’s and Grandma Bobert’s heads, but it withdrew without drawing blood and the road shielded them from the worst of the ground level bombardment, if not all of it.

Complexes and duplexes and a familiar condominium smashed into the cliffs, deflating under their own weight and impacts. They rolled downslope and pinwheeled off the mountaintop, followed by the rest of the city.

“Fuckaduck, that was my apartment,” Holden said. “I could have just stayed home and got a free ride here.”

The last vestiges of the city’s architecture collapsed into itself, the mass of it growing and flowing down the wall of the earth’s surface, sweeping over the bridge in a cascade of rock shards and twisted metal. They ground against each other, and the ground itself, into dust and grit and memory. Nothing stayed intact, save for the sports stadium, which was swept virtually untouched by the flow of detritus to rest on the cliff side before them.

“Huh,” George said. “Or we could have stayed in there.”

The flow of stone pulled with it a choking stream of dust, tainting the air a burnt sienna. The city was gone, unable to sustain itself any longer. Where once it had resisted the pull of the earth, it had adapted well to being hung from it. But the strength of architecture lay in its resistance to vertical forces, and they had switched place with the horizontal. Its former denizens cowered in the corners of their last bridge, breathing through their clothes, eyes clammed, blinding them from bearing witness to the death of their home. Only when the wind subsided did they dare crack open their eyes.

Rhea gulped. “Okay, we need to figure out a way of getting down this tunnel right now.”

“What do you want us to do, jump?” George said.

“You’re the engineers. Engineer something.”

George grit his teeth and fell from a squat to his ass. He pounded his head with the balls of his fists, trying to shake loose anything that would give them another chance, a consistent murmur of “C’mon, think, think, you idiot!” streaming in growled tones into his chest, while Grandma Bobert reached around to pat his head for comfort.

Cazz kicked at the stone between the rail planks, hoping it would shatter like the glass it was made from, but the composite silicates held, keeping them from being used as a second ladder. George’s hands and feet throbbed at the thought of another descent via more rungs and he surprised himself with a sigh of relief.

Holden plucked a stray mop that had impaled itself into the cliff on its decent, and poked around the outside of their shelter. When nothing fell loose, he took a chance to shimmy around the road, clinging to the guard rails and the weakened metal of the superstructure. Wendy supervised his shuffling with a watchful eye and no small amount of concern, though he was on the other side barely half a minute before calling back to report his lack of findings. Jamie crawled to look through the tarmac, sticking his head through a square hole where the grate of a storm drain had been wrenched loose.

“Mister Holden,” he said to man pressing himself into a pothole, “what’s that over there?”

Holden kept a weather eye on the horizon. It was framed by his toes, so he kept his heels as far back as they could press into the road. He leaned out with his left hand clutching a beam, hard enough to crack the skin of knuckles, and forced his eyes to change direction, off to where Jamie pointed. They widened as he swore to himself.

“Motherfucking cocksuckers. Hey, kid, tell everybody we got a way out.”

He sidled back to the outer superstructure and scrambled around it as fast as he could, practically falling onto Wendy’s waiting lap.

“Holden, watch where you’re going,” she said, slapping the back if his head.

“The tram tunnel!” he wheezed at her. “We can make it through the tram tunnel. We can walk straight up to the restaurant, and they have to let us in ‘cos I booked two tables.”

George looked up from his cranial abuse and scooted over to peek through the drain hole. He jumped, screamed “Yes!” and fist bumped the air, then landed and fist bumped his best friend’s shoulder.

“You heard the man, folks, we’re headin’ that’a way! By the by, guys, that’s a lot of steps.”

Holden grinned up at him. “I could use the walk.”

“Well first we have to get down there,” Rhea said. “Have either of you got a plan for that?”

Wendy shoved Holden off and held the phone overhead as the countdown hit the ten second mark.

“I think the decision’s being made for us,” she said. “Look.”

All heads turned to the six inch screen and they leaned in as the last five digits ran their course. Fingers found each other, or handholds, while feet poised to react to the next impossibility. The timer hit zero and the alarm sang.

“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and hurt you…”

George bowed his head. “Um, sorry. Sorry about that. I think Cat set that.”

“…Never gonna make you cry. Never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.”

Wendy cut the tune and Rhea glared at him.

“That bitch just found the perfect punchline for our last two weeks,” she said.

“So, uh, what happens now?” Laura said.

Everyone looked around and waited. On their left, the skies were calming. The dusty air stilled. A deafening silence descended across the planet. Then a snap reverberated in every direction, from all directions, and the crackle of static crept through their clothes and into their hair. The skies lit up in a cascade of lightning, in flashes of blue and yellow and pink, followed by a moment’s respite before a gut-wrenching dizziness forced everyone to their knees.

“Oh, crap,” Holden said, “gravity—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence. Without further warning, he was thrown off the cliff face, along with everyone else. They rolled through the air, weightless and helpless, until a second wave of nausea slammed them into the train tracks below.

“—s returning.”

Three people rolled off him and away from the pile up of bodies. George, untangled his limbs from his dad’s and pushed his head out from the throng.

“Thanks for the heads up.”

The survivors pushed themselves up off the ground, the real ground in the direction of down, looking around at the incomprehensible madness of a normal world. The sky was above them, Terra Firma firmly below, and their goal was forward, just as it was meant to be. They took it all in with hopeful understanding, and a rising sense of victory, and promptly collapsed again. Several groans emanated from under several bodies, who were pushed off by the squashed faces and limbs.

“Help, I think I’m having a heart attack,” Zeke yelled. He twisted and turned like a shell-tossed tortoise trying to right itself again.

Jamie sat up and immediately toppled sideways. “I think I’m having a heart attack, too.”

“I’m scared,” the trembling voice of Cazz or Laura said.

“Is this part of the apocalypse?” Laura or Cazz added.

Bobert looked at his grandmother, still strapped to George’s back, half pinned and in pain under the great, flailing oaf. He tore to his feet and kicked George over, pulling her out of the diaper bag to her own wobbling feet, and held her steady as her legs threatened to collapse.

“It’s okay,” he reassured her, “it’s just gravity again. Normal gravity. We don’t weigh any more than we normally do.”

“Tell that to my legs.” Wendy said, trying to stand. “It feels like I loaded up a squat rack without a warm up.”

“You know,” Holden said, his face pressed into the ground, “technically we now all weigh less than we did before. We ought to be able to run faster and jump higher than we ever could.”

“Then why are lying on your head?”

“I was hoping saying it out loud would inspire you all. Then I could shame myself into not being left behind.”

George rolled over and wheezed. “Gyargh, feels like I got kicked in the ribs. I think they’re cracked. Hey, Grandma, you okay?”

Bobert exchanged glances with Alfredo, who quickly helped him walk his grandmother away.

“She’s fine,” Rhea said. “You must have broken her fall. Can you move?”

“Ask me again in fifteen minutes.”

Wendy grabbed his arm and pulled him up, ignoring his scream. “Fifteen minutes is all we have, dumbass. Remember? There’s still one last alarm left before all this is over, and we still have to get inside that damn mountain.”

George wheezed but stood, steadying himself against his sister. The mountain loomed over them, imposing and alien after days beneath the globalized ceiling. Its rocks were naked and jagged, all trace of vegetation or animal life burnt and fallen away. Their final trial waited for their first steps with all the contempt George could impose on its craggy face with his bedraggled mind.

“Remember,” Holden said, “the shape makes it look higher than it really is. We can make it up there in time if we run.”

“You’re still lying on your head.”

Holden jumped to his feet. “Last one up there’s a rotten egg. Which would be a normal egg now, since there’s no refrigerators anymore.”

He hauled himself over the railings, back to the walkway, and held out a hand for Wendy. The others followed and Grandma Bobert was hoisted up through sheer group effort and determination. They then took to the stairs with all the speed they could demand from their exhausted legs, marched across the highway like a pack of drunks, to the footpath.

“I can’t walk straight,” Wendy said, “it feels like the world’s still tilting.”

“I’m using the rocks to keep me steady,” Bobert said, practically climbing sideways along the cut through the stone. “If I don’t, I’m gonna tip backwards.”

Now strapped to his back, Grandma Bobert’s eyes widened in concern, but despite her vertigo at two and a half feet, and the disorientation her grandson shared with the others, they stumbled their way through to the base of the mountain. Holden gave a weary cheer as they rounded the last corner and the bus terminal hazed into view.

Behind it, the tram tunnel lay unobstructed and unmelted, its monorail glinting in the dying light, clean and oiled and none the worse for wear despite the torment it had been through. The group shook off the worst of the dizziness and shook out their heavy limbs, and gathered behind Holden to bask within sight of their final goal. And all that stood between them and its shiny golden streak of hope was the parking lot, a cracked, steaming expanse of flame, steaming tarmac, and erupting fissures of bubbling, molten mud.

“Screw that,” George said, “I’m going back to the bridge and see if there’s a cardboard box we can hide in.”

“Aww, c’mon, it’s not that bad,” Holden said. “We just have to not step on anything hot. It’ll be like that game, y’know The Floor is Lava.”

“The floor is lava!”

“Good. Then we don’t have to use our imaginations. That gives us more brainpower to work our way through.”

“I worry about your brain sometimes,” Wendy said. “Did the doctor drop you on your head when you were born?”

Holden sighed and turned to the others. “What, you want normal, boring ways of doing it. Fine. Let’s head back to the city, gather resources and data to determine the most suitable point of entry into the mountain, train all of you in how to use the gear, grab yourselves diplomas and spend half a decade working up through internships and apprenticeships, all in the space of, how much time, exactly?”

Wendy glanced at the phone. “Nine minutes. No, eight now.”

“Huh. Well, in that case, I think I want to play The Floor is Lava. Anyone who doesn’t want to play with me is officially company I do not care to keep, but then if you don’t join, I won’t have to, and we all win. Now excuse me.”

He turned and jumped before looking where he was going. As soon as his foot landed, the ground crumbled and he was forced to roll out the way of broiling splashes. A hiss of steam hit his crotch and he screamed, jumped another crack and staggered to his feet, patting down the warm, wet patch of denim between his legs.

“I’m okay,” he said, still staggering on sea-legs. “And I didn’t wet myself.”

George looked up, watching a circle of clouds gather at the mountaintop. “It took us over twenty minutes to walk down that pipe last time we were here, and that’s when we could walk straight. If we want to make it up there in time, we’re going to have to run straight. And Fast.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, gagged on the tarmac fumes and coughed. Then, taking a deep breath through his t-shirt, he grabbed Rhea’s hand and pulled her with him. His shoes hit the burning plain and the rubber squelched after six steps. When the flapping sole of his right foot stuck, it didn’t leave again when his foot did.

Behind them, Wendy and Zeke hauled Jamie between their shoulders, and behind them, Alfredo and Bobert did likewise for his grandma. Cazz and Laura danced on tiptoes, squealing in pain as the heat singed their bare soles through growing holes in their boots.

Holden leapt a disintegrating mud hole and scrambled to right himself, yelling as his arm hairs burned away on contact with the ground. He blew on his fingers, repeating a yelp before tripping over a buffer in his path. He rolled on his ass, hissing as he clutched his shin, eyes screwed tight. When he opened them again, the familiar signposts of the tram station blurred into focus. When he blinked, a panting George and Rhea stood over him.

“We made it,” George said. “Holden, we actually made it. Hey, we don’t have time to sit around.”

Holden moaned but forced himself up, using the tram buffer as leverage. He hobbled up the stairs of the tunnel, staring into the darkness as it stretched out to eternity, then steeled for one last burst of effort, he put his first foot forward and slipped on a small device resting in the shadow of the next step. He fell back, rolled past George and Rhea, under Grandma Bobert, who was kindly lifted out of his way by her two supporting boys, and fell flat on his back, head spinning, wondering what happened. An audible hiss from the back of his head hit him a split second before any pain, and he bolted upright with a scream. His head had landed on boiling mud.

Jamie bent to see what Holden had tripped on. “Hey, its one of the drones. Aww, Mister Holden crushed its rotors, Don’t worry, Mister Drone, I’ll carry you.”

He placed in in his cat box, facing up at him. The drone’s remaining rotors died, but its recording light blinked happily.

“I’m alright, thanks for asking,” Holden said from the floor. “Good job not falling in, people. Now let’s go, ladies first.”

He pointed up and Rhea, Wendy, Cazz and Laura went first. Jamie went next, hauling his legs up the steep, double height stairs. Zeke took the cat and drone box from him to free his hands. Alfredo and Bobert helped his grandma up, and Holden and George took one last look at the world. Everything was back where it should be, but it wasn’t a comfort. It was distorted as hell. They turned their backs on the blackened land and red skies, and headed into darkness. They made it a grand two steps in before an explosion from somewhere outside rocked the cavern. Wendy fished in her pocket to check the phone. The final alarm lit up the screen and she hit the volume button to cut the tune before it could play.

“Three-sixteen,” Wendy said. “Everybody run!”

Another thunderclap boomed through the air, an almost solid shockwave that dropped them to their knees. Holden recoiled back to the ground. George spread his body out to protect Wendy.

“Holden, get in here, now,” she cried.

George pushed her forward. “You start running, I’ll get your boyfriend.”

He jumped back down and steadied the dizzy Holden on his feet, just as another sonic wave shredded their already dwindling sense of balance. Through bleeding ears and shaking sight, they held on to each other and waited for the worst. As the growling wind grew to a crescendo and the clouds directly above them were lit from within, the pressure dropped, their ears popped and the Earth quaked harder…

And the erupting fissures stopped.

“Is that it?” Holden said, peeking out through his fingers.

George shook his head. “I really don’t like it when anyone I know says that.”

“Why not?”

A quieter boom made them look up, in time to see the clouds part and an iceberg the size of the city crash into the horizon.

“Because that’s why,” George said. “What goes up must come down.”

As if to add weight to his prediction, another iceberg smashed into the middle of the parking lot. The mangled car inside it, freed by the impact, lit up with a perfectly working security alarm. It was followed by a mist of falling ice crystals, which quickly worked their way up to hailstones. They heralded another incoming splinter, a sword of ice, miles high. It impaled itself through the dome of Center park station.

“That’s a bullseye,” Holden said. “We gotta get the hell outta dodge.”

George darted behind and pushed Holden’s lower back, forcing his legs to run to the tunnel entrance. They didn’t take the stairs, instead opting to scamper either side of the monorail. Their arms screamed with effort, their legs felt like lead, but they pushed through into the darkness.

The darkness was broken by an ice lance through the roof. The boom was a shockwave, more physical than sound. Somewhere above, Wendy dropped the phone. It skidded past them and disappeared out of the tunnel. George grimaced and sidled up the track. A split second after, an arm-sized shard of ice crashed onto the space his palms had just been resting on.

Hail blew in from the holes and Holden and George braced as the shards rained down, smashing on the rail and stairs and their bare heads and slope, the crystal splinters flying in all directions. George ducked, knocking his chin off a monorail support, and cursed as his previous wound reopened.

“What was that?” Rhea’s voice screamed somewhere before him.

“Stay down!” He shouted over the overbearing drumbeat. He couldn’t tell if it was the hail hitting or his heart beating.

They crawled up, dragging each other for several minutes or seconds or hours. Then, while almost too dark to see, George raised his eyes in hope, then dodged the icicles spearing through the flimsy reinforced rock tunnel. They rolled, jumped, and danced between each puncture, grazing their skin, tearing the remains of their clothes, wailing all the way until at last, the top of the tunnel and the tram in its station, came into stark contrast.

Dim lights flicked on and curtains parted as the gang clambered aboard through its rear door. Crushed ice and concrete blocked the sides of the tunnel. Alfredo led them through the carriages instead. Rhea hung back until George was within arm’s reach, and pulled him up. He wrapped his arms around her.

“Reunion later, action now,” Holden said.

“The tram’s blocking the way,” she said, “so we have to run through it.”

They piled into the back carriage, falling over each other. George leapt across the seats to the doorway between the two cars and pulled it open. He fell back when it refused to budge. His dad was lying in front of it.

“Ow,” Zeke said.

“Get up,” George said, pulling him upright without waiting for a response.

Zeke complied and the door was free. George held it open and told Zeke to do likewise on the other side of the gangway.

“Door’s open,” Alfredo said, “everybody go.”

Wendy ran past George and Zeke, and pulled open the front carriage’s doors. The others filed through with Rhea in the lead.

“Everyone, follow me,” she said, “I know the way from here. We have to take the stairs down to the station.”

They followed her through. Cazz and Laura took Bobert’s grandma, and he visibly sagged as her weight was lifted from his shoulders. Holden and Alfredo caught him and dragged him to the door.

George pulled it wider for them and gave Bobert a hi-five. “We made it guys. We’re home free.”

Zeke pulled the door on the opposite side wider as well, and grinned. George caught his eye and gave him a wry smile and a cocked nod.

As Alfredo’s foot neared the connection between the carriages, a fresh burst of flurry blasted them back, and an ice sheet sliced through the gangway. The crystal wall, a half meter thick, carved into the tunnel and crushed the wood door in Zeke’s fingers into splinters. He fell back, unharmed but for the bloody slivers in his hand.

“Dad!” George yelled, standing on shaking legs.

He kicked at the ice wall, and a hailstone the size of a space hopper punched through the carriage roof and embedded itself next to Zeke’s head. Zeke screamed and rolled to his feet as another hit the door. He looked back to see if his escape route was cut off. If anything, it was now bigger.

“Dad, run!”

Zeke turned back and placed a bleeding palm on his side of the ice wall. His mouth moved but George heard nothing. He placed his own hand over his father’s.

Another impact, this one on their side, forced the tram to lurch. Holden, Alfredo and Bobert lay sprawled on the floor, unhurt but entangled. George turned back to his dad and shouted as loudly as he could.

“Get down to the tunnel right now!”

Zeke said something back and George leaned in to hear, but the ice wall had moved away in the crash. He peered closer and saw it retreat from him, taking his father with it. Except it wasn’t retreating. The wall of ice had cut through the weakest link of the tram, the connecting corridor between its two cars, severing the singular vehicle in two. And only the top car had breaks. They were rolling downhill.

“Um, guys” George said, “You know when you get near the end of Chutes and Ladders, and you land on that long one that takes you back to the beginning?”

Alfredo clutched at a handrail as the flickering lights of countless holes flew by. “You have got to be shitting on me.”

Holden and Bobert just looked at each other and clung to the braces of the tram’s seats, as all four men unashamedly wailed as they descended back into hell.

“George?” Bobert said. “I fucking hate you.”

“I think deserve that.”

Holden, eyes clenched, raised his head. “Well, for the record, I love you. My only regret is not loving your sister more often. Y’know, physically.”

George managed to stop feeling afraid for a second. “What? When were you physical with my sister?”

“You were in a coma. I told you but all you did was drool.”

“If we survive this, you better not mess her around.”

The tremors of the train grew into full blown shudders and the light at the end of the tunnel grew brighter. Grinding metal sent sparks across the windows as the hail peppered them through the holes in the roof. George squinted, trying to protect his eyeballs from the strobe attack, and almost missed the last hit to the rear door. It tore from its hinges and the shattered panels flipped through the carriage to smash through the door flapping inches from his face.

Holden looked down through the door-less rear doorway, at the incoming world, and laughed.

“George, my bestest buddy in the whole wide world, I absolutely promise I’ll never do anything to hurt your sister. I’m never gonna give her up, never gonna let her down, never run around or desert her…”

“Do you want those words on your grave or something?”

“I mean it, I’m never gonna make her cry. Never gonna say goodbye. Never gonna tell a lie or hurt heeerrrrrrrrrrrr—!”

The tram leveled out and the nose hit slush. There was a bang and a lurch and a tilt and an impact, and the car rolled into the frosted, iceberg covered parking lot, as Holden’s words devolved into a primal cry and George’s primal cry melded with Alfredo and Bobert’s shrieks.

All around them, ice and objects rained from the sky. A frozen truck winged their roof, skidding the battered carriage through a maze of bergs, banging and bouncing and twisting from each impact, until one last hit against a glacier of pure blue spun them through the slurry to a waiting parking space at the furthest end of the lot. It came to a complete stop with a bang on a rock, against a rumble of thunder and a flash of lightning, before it slumped to the ground as its axels finally gave in. The four men kept screaming.

“Hey, Sanka,” Alfredo said, his voice a screech, “ya dead?”

Bobert’s head rose from a cracked seating plank and frosted shavings. He coughed once, spraying slush across his chest, and nodded. “Yeah, mon. I’m dead. Hey, Holden, George, you guys dead?”

“If I say yes, will it all be over?” George said. He picked himself up and dusted off the frost, and spied Holden’s limp hand protruding from under an upturned floor panel. “Shit, guys, help me.”

He swept away the shards and Bobert joined in, digging out more of the man shaped pile. Alfredo reached in to find the rest of their friend, snagging another arm, and all three heaved. Holden’s body slid up and out, a gash across his jaw and a tooth missing, but he stirred with a weak whimper.

“Holden,” Bobert said. “Holden, wake up. Wake up, buddy.”

Holden’s eyes fluttered, but didn’t open. Bobert slapped his cheek.

“Holden, open your eyes. The sky’s falling on us. We have to get back inside the mountain.”

“Shrrrbrrrrt.”

George chanced a glimpse out of the window, up at the sky. Glowing cracks splintered across it. Pure sunlight seared through the shell. He bit his lip and grabbed Holden’s legs.

“Get him on my shoulder.”

Alfredo and Bobert hoisted him up, then kicked clear path to the door. They jumped out onto solid tarmac and helped George step down. The parking lot was back to normal, albeit twice as potholed as usual. Snow cooled the surface, leaving it solid, walkable and able to take their weight. Unfortunately, it also took the weight of fallen vehicles and icebergs, and other obstacles littering the route back to safety.

Alfredo and Bobert jumped the first hurdle, scouting for safe passage. Before they got halfway past the tram, another titanic iceberg dropped from above. Somewhere beyond the mountains, it sunk through the atmosphere, dissolving to half its size as it fell, leaving jetstream trails, each thicker than the whole of Shipyard Island. The air cushioned its descent, unable to displace itself fast enough, and the berg impacted the world’s surface somewhere over the horizon. The escaping winds blew a tsunami of detritus, an oncoming storm rolling across the mountains to clash with other impact sites and stir the air.

“Our mountain’s not going to survive getting hit by that,” Bobert said, “even if it does have a reinforced core.”

“You’re right,” George said, “but there doesn’t seem to be anything falling around here. Just small stuff, like…”

“Trucks?” Bobert said. “Icebergs the size of houses? What are we standing here for? Let’s go.”

“But that’s what I mean. Everywhere else is getting hit by chunks the size of cities. What’s keeping them from falling here?”

An explosion from the mountainside answered, and a missile blasted into the air. It flew straight up, disappearing into the clouds. A second later, an intense flash burned their eyes. Holden’s eyes flew open.

“That’s the same light as before,” he said. “When the alarm went off.”

George nodded, blinking at the afterimage and ignoring the newest addition to his growing list of pains. “I thought it was the sky falling, but it was missiles launching.”

Another explosion from a distant part of the range signaled another missile shooting up. They shielded their eyes from the next detonation, but it was undeniably clear. The missiles were nuclear. As the clouds grew dark and a fresh peppering of mist and snow descended, and a plane nose-diving into the sports arena, Alfredo swore.

“I only know this from all the action movies Bobert’s grandma watches, but there’s a good chance this stuff on us isn’t snow.”

“Dandruff?” Holden said, still climbing to full consciousness.

“It could be contaminated ash. Nuclear fallout.”

The four looked up at the descending flurry and made an unspoken agreement. They ran.

“I thought the First Event cancelled radioactivity?” Bobert said.

“Well, gravity came back,” George said, panting under the weight of Holden, “maybe everything else did as well.”

A snowball crashed into the ground before him, the shrapnel of crap it held virtually knocked him flat. Alfredo and Bobert caught him before he fell on Holden, but George waved them off.

“I got him. Get inside.”

The duo gave him a nod, then nodded to each other and turned to run. They flipped over boulders and leapt gaps in the ground, Alfredo even trikking a little with each landing. George dragged Holden as fast as he could, grumbling about their athletic skills.

“Huh, guess we found a scenario where parkour is useful, after all. Happy now?”

Holden raised a feeble thumb. “Ecstatic.”

The corpses of a man, a woman, a cat and a dog dropped in front of them. Their frozen flesh shattered into mush on impact. Then, from behind the mountain, another missile exploded skywards. It shot past a falling lance of shell, which was hard and large enough to tear a gash in the rock. Bobert and Alfredo reached the opening of the tunnel just as the resulting rock slide buried it.

“No!” George yelled.

The missile neared the clouds, but unlike its predecessors, erupted into smaller rockets. They spread out and the smaller detonations shattered the falling ice into powder. The powder cascaded down the slopes, towards the two running men.

George dodged the hail and snow and raining corpses as they herded him and Holden sideways, to the footpath back to East Bridge. Holden dropped from George’s shoulder and threw up, then shoved him out the way as a mangled Harley Davidson bounced past. They ran to the corner, away from the danger, and Holden winced as he forced himself to stay steady on his own two feet.

“What the hell,” he said, “are we seriously back where we started?”

George picked himself up. “The train tunnel. We can see if it’s useable now.”

Holden glanced around the bend. The path was raining fish and mud. The parking lot, on the other hand, was filling with snow and burning rocks. The miniature meteor storm showered the mountainside in exploding shrapnel.

“Tunnel it is,” Holden said.

They managed to take a whole two steps before something giant and squelchy belly flopped onto the path behind them. When they turned, the remains of a whale oozed outward in a slow puddle. Then a bowl of petunias smashed by its tail. Holden looked up and grabbed George’s hand, and pulled him back to the bridge as fast as he could.

Rocks, fish, cars and bricks shot around them, grey mush and black slush pelted the bare rocks, covering every surface in cold slime and decaying bio matter. George watched the skies, to warn Holden of incoming fire. Holden watched where they were going, steering George through the craggy vale. Neither one watched their rear until it was too late.

The growing roar and the rumbling earth made them look back, just in time to scream at the avalanche bearing down on them. George and Holden were swept up by a tsunami. Churned ice, practically brown snow, washed over them. Holden kicked and flapped his arms, trying to swim through it. It was all he could do to stay afloat. Behind him, George attempted a panicked backstroke. Yet despite their efforts, they were swept along, pulled further under, until nothing of them could be seen.

Under the snow, Holden held his breath and kicked harder, pushing what he hoped was George in one direction. Together they fought the flow, pushing hard with all their might to reach the stairs of East Bridge. All they needed to do was get back down and into the tunnel. They got nearer, within arms reach and the stairs were still intact, and then Holden and George were swept past them, off the edge of the cliffs.

They sailed through the air, crying and flailing as their icy tombs were scattered by freefall. The battered rocks, a hundred feet below, was all they could see would break their fall. George clutched at Holden. Holden clutched at George, and together they fell through the white and haze, and into a dune of soft snow. It was filled with only enough intact ice shards to cut every inch of their skin.

But they rode the crest of the avalanche. The ice continued to fall and the land continued to churn it into snow, and Holden and George were buried alive.