Chapter Twelve

The Edge

They spent the night where they were, beside the blazing pyre of the community centre. Despite the horror of what had happened close by and the knowledge that forty or fifty people had burned to death in there (or had they been dead before the fire erupted?); despite knowing that those bodies were still burning somewhere within that inferno, they remained at a safe distance throughout the long night. It was an instinctive refusal to leave the fire: a primal instinct that told them perhaps the flames were keeping the terror that had descended on the city at bay. Drawn to the flames of the community centre by their primal need for protection, they were simultaneously repelled by what those hellish flames had done—were still doing. When sleep came, it was the sleep of utter exhaustion; an aftermath of the shock that each had endured. For each, it was a troubled sleep, filled with stark playback nightmares. When the roof of the community centre finally collapsed in a roaring cloud of sparks, each of the survivors woke in alarm, but quickly returned to their fear-drugged sleep.

Lisa woke to find the boy cradled in her arms. The sloping bank on which they lay was grassed and relatively comfortable, but her joints ached badly. Her neck was cricked, but—worse—there was a wretched hollowness inside that gave her no false comfort that everything might have resolved itself during the night and that everything they’d experienced was no more than a bad dream. She shifted, sitting upright. The boy moaned and clung tight. Not far away, she could see the sole survivors of last night’s horror, also lying on the grass and still sleeping: a young man with a guitar gripped tightly across his waist, just as protectively as Lisa was holding the boy. Behind and above him, a man and a woman, lying—curiously—back to back. Down below, two teenagers, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old; one of them curled up in a foetal position. And the young man who had broken open the rear exit and saved them all.

The community centre had all but burned to the ground. Now there was only a pile of black-and-white timbers, almost burned to nothing but still with glowing orange embers; a skeletal tangle in mounds of grey ash and fused debris. Clouds of grey-black smoke plumed up from the wreckage. Lisa followed the smoke up into the immensity of a blank grey sky.

And then she realised that the undulating cloud barrier that had hemmed them in was gone.

She snapped alert, the boy moaning again and clinging tighter. When she looked around, she could see the terraced houses ahead with their cracked walls and shattered windows, great patches of slate missing from the roofs of houses that were still standing. On either side, a ragged outline of buildings and tilted trees. But no smoke barrier, if smoke was what it had been. Could this mean that the nightmare was over? Even now, were ambulances and fire crew on their way at last? She turned to Annie…and saw that she wasn’t lying at her side, as she’d imagined.

“Annie…”

Fear stabbed in her stomach. The boy must have felt it, because he started to wake, groaning but keeping his face buried against her chest. Had something happened to Annie in the night? The sound of Lisa’s anxious voice was waking the others now. But when she twisted around to look behind her, she saw with vast relief that Annie was still alive. She was about fifty feet away, walking slowly back towards them, head down. Had she woken and gone for a walk? Strange that she hadn’t woken her. And now the relief was tinged with anxiety again. There was something about the way Annie was walking. Too slow, head down as if preoccupied with bad thoughts.

“Annie!”

This time when she called the others were well awake. But Annie still didn’t look up as she walked on. When she was still ten feet away, she lifted her head.

“What is it, Annie? What’s wrong?”

“I think…” Annie looked slowly behind her, as if still trying to work something out in her mind. Something that was troubling her badly. “I think everyone had better come and see for themselves.”

“The smoke,” said Candy, standing up and looking around. “The clouds, the smoke. Whatever it was. It’s gone.”

“Thank Christ,” said Alex.

“I wouldn’t thank anyone for anything,” said Annie. “Until you’ve seen what I’ve seen.”

Lisa stood up creakily. The boy clung tight to her hand, and when they walked up to Annie he also took Annie’s hand when she proffered it.

“So what’s the big mystery?” shouted Wayne.

Annie didn’t answer.

“What?”

She turned back to look at Wayne and Damon, seemed about to say something; but it was as if she couldn’t find the words.

“Just come,” she said simply. “You’ll see.”

Candy and Alex were already following. Gordon slung the guitar over his shoulder but seemed unsure.

“If that smoke-thing’s gone,” said Wayne, “then it means we can get home again. My folks’ll be going spare.”

“And mine,” said Damon. “Look…I’m getting back. I’ve got to see if they’re all right. My sister and her kids…”

Annie didn’t turn back.

Wayne and Damon turned and headed in the opposite direction. They gave the smouldering ruin of the community centre a wide berth as they made their way through an alley between the crumbling terraced houses that led back to the main street.

Gordon tried to say: “My aunt. The ceiling came down. I’ve got to find out if she’s all right…” But nothing would come out of his mouth. Even as he struggled to find the words, he knew that he was only fooling himself. He had clawed through those ruins before giving up hopelessly. His aunt could never have survived that fall of rubble. But he had nowhere else to go. It wasn’t right that her body should be buried under there, and no one knew about it. Someone had to come and dig her out. He watched Damon and Wayne heading off, and took a step in their direction. Then he saw that the other guy was standing up at last and dusting himself down. They exchanged a look, and then Jay began to follow Annie and the others.

“My…” Only one word would come. Enough to make Jay look back at him. But when nothing else came out, he ignored him and followed the others across the parkland. Gordon hung his head, fury and grief smouldering inside. And then he realised what seemed so strange about this new morning. Not that the sky was a dull grey with no sign of clouds, not the smouldering ruins. But surely someone else would be out on the streets this morning? Now that the smoke barrier had gone, surely the emergency services should already be there. Where were the people from the surrounding houses? Were they all really still crouched inside their ruined homes, too frightened to come out? Where were the siren sounds of fire engines and ambulances? It seemed as if they were the only people left in this part of the city. He looked again at the smouldering ruins of the community centre and seemed to see something like a ribcage underneath a smoking timber. Quickly, he looked away…and then strode angrily after the others. When he looked back for the two other youths, they were gone.

They’d covered about half of the grassed parkland when Jay suddenly stopped. The others ahead of him kept walking. When Gordon drew level with him, he stopped and saw the look of puzzlement on Jay’s face.

“There’s something wrong,” said Jay, without turning to look at him. “I know this park. Played here lots of times when I was a kid. Walked here every other weekend when I wanted to get my head together. Place hasn’t changed in years.”

“What?” Gordon wanted to say, but could only grunt.

Jay looked at him, trying to weigh him up; then said: “Don’t you live round here, then? Haven’t you been to this park before?”

Gordon looked around and saw nothing out of place.

“Up ahead,” said Jay, pointing. “Where they’re all going.”

Gordon looked at the group.

“The park should be bigger than this.”

And now Gordon knew what Jay meant, wondered why he hadn’t noticed it for himself.

The others were walking towards the place where the smoke barrier had once been. There was a mound there now. A churned-up ridge of soil, stretching right across the park as far as he could see. The ragged barrier went right up to the corner of a crumbled pub on the left, cut right across the park’s playing field in an erratic gash to disappear into trees to the right. Some of the trees had toppled and were hanging at weird angles over the edge of the gash. It was as if an army of bulldozers and earth-moving machines had been at work, ploughing up the ground just ahead on all sides and ramming the earth up into this irregular barrier. But there was no man-made straightness of line here. The mound of soil and grass was jagged and cracked on all sides.

“That pile of soil and stuff,” continued Jay. “It cuts across the mid-point of the field. But it’s like…like there’s nothing beyond that ridge. There were houses there. Kinwright Street, and the Hotspur bar at the end. You should be able to see them all from here. That ridge isn’t big enough to hide them. Christ, don’t tell me everything’s been flattened past that point. You should be able to see for miles and miles…”

Jay continued on, Gordon close behind. He began to run to catch the others, and Gordon began to trot along too. There was only one thought in Jay’s mind now.

What has that woman seen beyond the ridge? What’s over there that’s so bad?

Then Jay saw a familiar sight that slowed him down. When he saw it, he breathed out an almighty sigh of relief, then bent to put his hands on his thighs and suck in good air. Gordon drew level again, and waited.

“It’s okay,” said Jay. “Okay. Thought I was freaking out there for a minute. But it’s all right now.”

“What?” asked Gordon, and was surprised at how easily the word had slipped out this time. Sometimes it happened like that.

“See that?” Jay pointed to the church spire which had suddenly appeared over the mound. “That’s St. Michael’s. My mate got married there. Me and my pals stood in the back row and coughed when the vicar asked the usual question, ‘If anyone knows why these two shouldn’t be joined together’. Church is still there, though. Means everything’s still where it’s supposed to be.” Jay laughed. “The vicar must have put a word in with God. Everything else has fallen to bits, but the church is still in one piece.” He carried on. Following behind, Gordon watched more details of the church spire reveal themselves as they drew nearer to the mound. It began to rise before them like a rocket heading for the heavens in slow motion. The effect was heightened by the absence of clouds. Just that dense, grey backdrop of the sky, with that great black needle rising before them.

Annie had forged on ahead but now paused before reaching the mound, turning to wait until the others caught up. Even from a distance, Jay could see the look of confusion on her face. Clearly there was something over there that made her anxious. She began to speak while they were still drawing near.

“I don’t know why I went for…a walk,” she said hesitantly. “When I woke up, I mean. I had a dream. Nothing that’ll make sense to you. Just that something was…different. I had to go and see what it was, before I woke you up, Lisa. When I saw the smoke barrier was gone, I nearly woke you. But I didn’t feel right. I wanted to make sure that what I was seeing was really there. Or rather, not there.”

“Annie?” Lisa was concerned. She had never seen her reacting like this before. She touched her arm and Annie continued.

“I came here. I don’t know why. The dream, you see.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” said Alex. “But you’re not making any sense. Why have you brought us out here? What is it?”

“Look for yourself,” said Annie, stepping cautiously up the mound. “But be careful.”

Jay pushed past and climbed the mound.

“Be careful!” warned Annie again.

Jay reached the top of the mound, and could see St. Michael’s church a hundred yards away.

But there was nothing else between him and the church.

Nothing.

Just a yawning gap, with the church apparently sitting on a crag of rock, only slightly wider than the building itself. A cliff-face dropped away from the church on all sides, into nothingness. Jay stumbled on the mound, arms waving, and saw a mind-reeling drop of sheer rock faces and impenetrable darkness below. His mind reeled before the immense depths. He staggered, then felt something grab him from behind. Stumbling, he realised that the kid with the guitar had pulled him back.

“You see?” said Annie. “You see what I mean?” She sounded as if she wanted to hear him say: No, you’re wrong. You’re seeing things. That’s all.

Uttering a sound of exasperation, Alex pushed on past them all to the mound and peered over the rim. What he saw left him speechless.

“What is it?” Candy was spooked, but didn’t want the others to see how much. When Alex motioned to her without turning from the rim of the mound, she nervously began to climb. The others followed, carefully reaching the raised edge to look on their new world.

No one spoke. No one could speak.

The playing field had been severed by the ’quake at its mid-point.

The raised mound was cracked earth pushed back by the immense collapse of land, to form the ragged cliff-edge on which they stood. Different colours of soil and clay were revealed in descending layers in the facing side of the pinnacle. It was like a cross-section view of some surreal geologist’s underground survey from what had once been ground level to the unfathomable depths below, testimony to the passing of the ages. Behind the church on its stone pedestal and off to the right was another pillar of clay, soil and stone. This was larger, perhaps four hundred yards square in ragged dimensions. There were four ruined houses there, and the remains of a road vanished over the edge of its precipice.

To the left were several more of these impossible towers. There was nothing on them but meaningless rubble, but on one was a solitary tree. Where the cliff-edge mound curled away to their left past a row of crumbled terraced houses practically perched on the edge, there had once been a bus depot. That too had been replaced by another stone tower, this one perhaps bigger than the others, although it was impossible to see around the bend of the cliff-edge. But most of the nearside of the depot had fallen away into the chasm. There was a double-decker bus parked on the ragged edge of the tower, its left front wheel in space. At any moment, it seemed, the vehicle must topple over the edge. To the right of the church, perhaps two hundred feet lower, was another stone tower with a flattened top, like a miniature plateau. Whatever had previously been at ground level, which would have brought this tower up to the same height as the church, had shattered and collapsed, leaving only this lower crag of ragged soil and stone, like a flattened building site. Behind the church and the shorn-away tower on the right stretched another cliff-edge, on which were perched the remains of a collapsed frozen-food factory and other industrial buildings.

Even more bizarre, beyond the peaks and crags which were all that was apparently left of this part of Edmonville—was nothing. There was only a blank expanse of greyness that must somehow be an all-enveloping mist or fog, hiding what lay beyond from sight. But surely even mist had “substance”? It was possible to feel, even sense, the moist dense barrier of a real mist or fog. So why were there no wisping curls, no shifting cloud banks? Why only this utter, blank greyness?

They all felt it then, when they looked out into the void; the unnerving sense that they were looking past these surreal towers and crags of crumbling stone into an awful and empty nothingness. It was as if the world beyond, and on either side of the cliff-edge on which they stood, had simply ceased to exist.

“You see,” said Annie at last, and she had to clear her throat before she was able to continue. “At first, I thought that I was seeing things. It can’t really be like that, can it? I mean, not like that. It’s just not possible. Is it?”

“Come back from the edge!” shouted Candy, and everyone reeled back to see that she had quietly scrambled back from the awesome sight. She began to shake her head, staring at her feet, as if by simply refusing to look, everything would return to the way it was before. “Alex! Come back from the edge. We’ll fall. If we get too close, we’ll fall.”

“We should do what those other two did,” said Alex, scrambling back to her. “Go find help.”

“But where is everybody?” asked Lisa. “It’s like…like we’re the only ones left. Do you think…” She stopped then when the boy crushed hard against her, burying his face once more.

“What?” asked Jay. “Go on…say it.”

“What if the only ones left were those in the community centre? I mean, those two men in the ambulance had gone around looking for survivors and were bringing them back there. What if everyone else was…burned up…in there?”

“In a whole city?” said Alex. “No, there’ll be help. I’m going back.”

“What about the man?” said Candy. She was still looking at her feet. “What about the man in the off-licence shop? And the…black water?”

“What are you talking about?” asked Jay.

He remembered the strange darkness that had erupted through the windows of the community centre. Something that might have been black water, or oil, but couldn’t possibly have been either—not when the entire community centre had burst into flame only moments later.

“Nothing,” replied Alex. He reached for Candy’s hand as he moved off. “It was nothing. Come on, Candy…” Candy pulled away from him, but also moved off.

“Wait a minute,” said Jay. “You were running away from something back there at the community centre. It was you…and the woman…who came pelting back into the place, just before…before the place blew apart. What the hell was after you?”

“Leave us alone,” said Alex. “We’re going for help.”

“What the hell was it?”

“You want some aggro, sonny?” Alex whirled around, fists bunched. Candy shied away from him, and walked on past, head down. “’Cause I’ve just about had it!” His eyes were wild now, the pressure of everything he had seen and experienced, and the horrifying and inexplicable events after the encounter with the Dead Man, coming to bear at last. Jay stopped himself moving forward to meet him; the old instincts again, anger flaring in any confrontation. The man was perhaps twenty years his senior, but looked in bad shape. And even if Jay’s head was still swimming, even if he still felt weak from his ordeal in the school ruins, he reckoned he could take him on if he had to. But he held himself in check as the wild grimace faded from the man’s face. Now Alex looked as if he was going to apologise for his outburst. Instead, shaking his head, he turned and marched after his wife.

“What do we do now?” began Lisa. “I suppose that man’s right. We’ll have to…”

“Wait,” said Gordon, forcing the word out. When they all looked at him, he knew he wouldn’t be able to get the rest of it out. Instead, he pointed ahead, past Alex and Candy—and what they hadn’t yet seen as they plodded on, heads down.

Two figures were running across the park towards them.

It was Wayne and Damon.

At last, Candy and Alex saw them coming. Candy shied away again from their headlong dash. Alex stood his ground, as if this time he really was ready for a fight, with whoever or whatever. But both kids staggered to a halt before they reached him, gasping for breath and trying to speak, now pointing back the way they’d come.

“Oh Christ,” said Annie, as if she knew.

“Back there…” Wayne managed to get out at last. “There’s…God…there’s…”

“What?” yelled Alex, unprepared for more confusion. He wanted this nightmare to be over.

“Just past the school!” gasped Damon. “Down Davion Street and up to the shopping centre. Where the smoke and stuff was. Where they said no one could get through…”

“What?” yelled Jay.

“It’s all gone!” continued Damon. “Oh Christ, it’s all fallen away into a great fucking hole or something. There’s just…like…a big cliff-edge. Everything past that has fallen into this big…deep…” He couldn’t find the words to describe it, but with sickness in their souls, everyone knew what he was talking about. “My folks,” babbled Damon. “My brother and his wife. The street where they lived. It’s just…gone!”

“There’s bits and pieces of houses and buildings and factories and things,” Wayne cut in. “All balanced on these big, thin mountains…or something. They go down so deep, you can’t see what’s at the bottom…”

We’re cut off, Gordon tried to say. It’s the same all around us. Behind, ahead. And on both sides, where those houses are over on the left. And where the trees are on the right. It’s a half-square mile of land, stranded and separated from the rest. But when he looked at everyone else’s shocked and white faces, he knew that they were all thinking the same thing.

The earthquake had done more than demolish their city.

It had changed their world.

For ever.

From behind, beyond the cliff-edge, came the sounds of a distant and grumbling thunder. They turned in alarm as the sound changed, becoming a crackling and shivering that filled the air with ratcheting echoes.

“Oh God,” said Lisa. “Look…”

The church spire was disintegrating.

Slowly, far too slowly, it seemed, the tower fell apart before their eyes. As if it had somehow been detonated at the base like a redundant factory tower. The lower half disappeared in a gushing cloud of dust and whirling bricks, the spire coming apart like some massive brick jigsaw as it toppled and began to fall out across the chasm. The bell in the tower clanged. It was a hollow, booming death knell. Wayne moaned and sank to his knees, hugging himself. It was just like the bell in the school tower, and the horror of the similarity overwhelmed him. The disintegrating spire vanished in its roaring shroud of dust, an avalanche of shattered brick, cement and stone vanishing into the depths of the chasm.

Candy shrank back when the bus balanced precariously on the crag of rock that had once been a bus station suddenly juddered forward as if it were alive; pushing forward until both wheels were over the edge, as if watching the church spire vanish into the darkness. And then the tarmac edge crumbled and the bus lurched forward over the rim.

“Christ…” said Annie.

The bus showed its undercarriage and suspension as it turned over lazily in the air. There was nothing for the vehicle to hit on its way down. Silently, looking like a toy in that immense gulf, it fell…and fell…and fell…until it was gone into the darkness below. There was no sound of impact. Just the muted hush of the vanished church spire as its disintegrating rain of brick and stone swept down the jagged, sheer face of the stone tower on which it had stood. Only a faint whispering of dying echoes from the chasm below, like the waves of some vast and bottomless underground sea.

They stood and listened, until there was nothing else to hear.