Been coming for years. Mother Earth gonna eat us all back up. Nom-nom.
@GaiaZombie, Twitter, Friday, 18 November 2016
I felt much better after leaving the house and walking through the village to the bus stop. I met Lucy in the usual place, and we exchanged hellos. Lucy didn’t mention anything about the news. By the time the bus came, I’d tried to forget about it too.
But those images stuck with me.
“TFIF,” Rob signed as I jumped off the bus in the school grounds. Thank fuck it’s Friday.
“You doing anything this weekend?” I asked.
“We’re going to north Wales to visit my uncle.”
“Nice,” I said. “Mountains. Lakes. Cold. Grey.”
“My uncle’s cool, he takes me mountain biking and hiking.” Rob was cool, too, and his coolness wasn’t a pretence or a mask. Good-looking and smart, he had a manner about him that compelled me to watch the way he moved, the way he was. I knew I wasn’t the only girl who felt that way. In fact, I was pretty sure plenty of boys felt that way too. Girls wanted to go out with Rob, boys wanted to be him, and the fact that his charisma was unforced and unconscious made him even more attractive. There were the Beautiful People in school, so taken with their own appearance that the outside world existed purely as a mirror for that vanity. Rob was beautiful without being a Beautiful Person.
“He does sound cool,” I said, smiling. My dad would be home late that evening, Mum had said, and I was glad. I always missed him. I knew that he worried about me, but in truth I worried about him more. I hated him being away working. I’d lost my hearing, but he’d lost his parents in the crash. Sometimes he had a look of restrained panic about him, as if he was always waiting for something worse to happen. I wanted to tell him it was all right, I was fine, I was there. But I suspected that nothing would be all right for Dad ever again. The world had shrugged at him and revealed its indifference.
“What do you think about the news?” I asked.
Rob frowned briefly, then realised what I was talking about. “Oh, that! Weird, pretty sick. Bet the movie rights are sold already.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“Nah. It’s a long way away.” He gave me a friendly punch on the arm and left for his form class.
I walked through the crowded, raucous school, surrounded by silence. I’d managed my deafness amazingly well, not letting it hinder me any more than it had to. I’d been brave and clever, determined and unrelenting in my attempts to live a normal life.
That’s what I was told, anyway.
In reality, I felt just like a normal girl, and all I’d done was survive. So many people had helped, and were still helping, that I actually found the word “brave” a little offensive, as it threw a shroud over everyone else in my life. My parents, teachers, the guys at the school for the deaf where I went once a month, my friends, Lynne. Even Jude, the little shit. They were brave for adapting to accommodate the awkwardness some of them must have felt, or perhaps still felt now. As for me, I’d just got on with things. I had been the lucky one in that car crash, and living in silence was just another aspect to my new life post-accident.
Sometimes, however, I felt smothered. Walking through the corridors and hallways towards my form room I could see and sense so much laughing and banter, so much noise—I could even feel it as vibrations against the fine hairs on my skin and transmitted through my feet—that the silence was like a weight crushing me down. I felt one step removed from the world I did my best to be a part of. That’s why I loved Lucy so much. My friend always stayed with me during the more chaotic school moments, and although I’d never spoken to her about it, I knew that she sensed my occasional unease.
My form tutor, Miss Hughes, was already at her desk, sitting back casually as she chatted with the pupils already there. She waved and smiled at me, then stood and told the class to calm down. Chairs scraped, desks were bumped, everyone sat.
This was the time when I settled in for the day. We read for ten minutes each morning while Miss Hughes took register, and that quiet time was comforting. I sat next to Lucy and we took out our books. Lucy was reading a Twilight novel; I read one of Ranulph Fiennes’s memoirs. For girls so similar, the gulf in our reading tastes was huge.
My first lesson was geography. I always enjoyed the lesson, and liked even more that I got to sit next to Rob. But as soon as I saw him I knew that something was wrong.
“What is it?” I signed. Sometimes I liked the fact that Rob and I could have secret conversations in the midst of a crowd.
“That news,” he replied. “The cave. Those weird things that came out of it. They’ve spread. It’s all over the TV. And my cousin is in the army, based in Malta. He sent a text to his mum, she sent it to Dad, and he just forwarded it to me.” He took out his phone and held it out to me. We weren’t supposed to bring phones into the classrooms, but everyone did.
I read the text on the screen:
Been mobilised. Thing in Moldova bigger than they’re saying.
“Bloody hell,” I said.
Rob nodded. He was not his usual casual self. The frown did not suit him.
“Sir?” I asked, hand raised.
Mr Bellamy pointed to me and nodded. He was one of those who found it awkward, even uncomfortable, communicating with me. He was also a mumbler. I could barely see his lips moving, let alone read them, and he could not sign.
“Can we talk about that thing in Moldova today?”
Mr Bellamy smiled and spread his arms wide, said something, and most of the class turned to look at me. I glanced sidelong at Rob.
“He said that’s exactly what he was going to do anyway.”
I smiled at the teacher. He clapped his hands once and the class faced front again. He spoke to some of them, blinds were drawn, and one of the girls went to sit at the front of the class to work the computer. Mr Bellamy fussed with the remote control for the ceiling projector, then a square of flickering light appeared on the whiteboard.
I prepared myself for another incomplete lesson. The teachers were great, and if they knew I wouldn’t be able to follow a lesson completely—if, for instance, they were talking about a lot of stuff instead of displaying it all on whiteboards—they’d have a printout ready at the end of the period. I’d come to terms with the fact that my schooling took up about twenty per cent more time than my fellow pupils’, because I spent an hour or two after coming home every evening reading printouts. If there was anything I didn’t understand, the teachers were usually available during free lessons to help. Some were better than others, and Mr Bellamy was one of the few who found dealing with me problematic.
The first image appeared on the whiteboard. It showed a cutaway section through a cave system, and I wondered if I was the first to notice what made it unique—there seemed to be no entrance.
I could see Mr Bellamy starting to talk, and Rob tapped my arm. He started signing for me.
“Let’s start with a different cave to the one we saw on the news yesterday. Movile Cave in Romania was discovered by construction workers in 1986. They were drilling to assess whether the remote area was suitable for a new power station, broke through into an underground passage, and immediately sealed it up again. What scientists discovered when they ventured down was a cave system that had been cut off from the outside world for millions of years. What surprised them more was the unique ecosystem that existed down there. Apparently, it’s an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare.” The class laughed. I focused on Rob’s hands, his mouth, his facial expressions. I liked it when he signed for me; he became mine.
“There are no stalactites in the cave, so no evidence of water ingress. The atmosphere is only ten per cent oxygen. And there’s no evidence of radioactive isotopes from the Chernobyl disaster. That convinced scientists that what they’d found was a genuinely isolated ecosystem, completely enclosed from the outside world. Some of what they found down there… remarkable.” Rob nodded forward and I looked.
The projections changed every few seconds. Images of strange spiders, scorpion-like creatures, snails, spring-tailed insects, millipedes and worms, all of them ghostly white and eyeless. Some of them seemed almost transparent, their insides visible.
Rob touched my hand as Mr Bellamy continued.
“Only a handful of scientists have been down into the cave. It’s such a difficult environment to work in, with oxygen levels so low your kidneys will fail within a couple of hours, and the heat is almost unbearable. Quite an amazing place.”
A cross-section of the cave appeared on the screen and he used a light pen to point at particular features.
“It’s estimated that the caverns had been cut off from the outside world for over five million years. In that time the species within have evolved and become quite unique. It’s a perfect example of Darwinian evolution, actually. There were plants and creatures that were found nowhere else on the planet. Many were familiar, but some necessitated whole new classifications.”
The picture showed a milky-white spider, bloated and moist, mandibles dark-tipped and seemingly ready to snap from the screen.
“Eww,” I said, and I saw other pupils laughing in equal disgust.
Mr Bellamy fell silent as the slideshow of images continued, one picture fading out as the next faded in.
A fern-like plant, the edges of its pale leaves glimmering with moisture or mineral deposits. A small beetle, its shell a soft-looking pale yellow. Several types of fungi.
“It’s just one of several such sites around the world,” Mr Bellamy said. “That we’ve discovered, at least. And the system in Moldova is the latest.” He fell silent again as the screen turned to white. He seemed to be staring at the wall, lost for words. The pupils glanced around at each other, a few of them smiling, most a little worried.
“Sir?” I saw one of them say.
Mr Bellamy used the remote to turn off the projector. He turned to face us, and I’d never seen him looking so old. His face was grey, eyes dark. It was as if he’d returned from seeing something terrible without ever having left the classroom.
“I’ve always worried about things like this,” he said. “When I was your age it was the idea of space exploration that troubled me. But as I learned more, it became obvious that there were countless places still on Earth that were yet to be discovered. Ecosystems are just that—systems. Whole, complete, sometimes in turmoil, yet usually, eventually, balanced. Introduce one unique ecosystem to another and the result is unknown. And as the world becomes smaller with advances in communication and travel, so remote dangers come closer.”
One of the kids put their hand up and spoke, and Rob signed for me.
“Like with Aids?”
Mr Bellamy nodded. “Just like with Aids. Some of what are known as the hot viruses, too. Ebola, Marburg. Roads were built deep into the wilds of Africa; lifelines for many, but routes along which diseases and contagion could travel much, much faster than nature itself could spread them. Isolated valleys were explored and plundered.” He stopped again, trying to smile to see away his seriousness. But the smile only made it worse. “I always worried,” he said again.
“So what do you think has happened?” I asked.
Mr Bellamy looked at me, and this time he spoke clearly, for me, so that I saw the answer on his own lips. “We’ll find out soon.”
* * *
My second lesson was art, and Lucy and I were in the school’s art department experimenting with materials. Rob had gone off to ICT. Halfway through the lesson the door opened and the teacher was called out. She left in a hurry, giving instructions for the pupils to continue cutting and preparing material for the masks we were working on.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Mr Rosen came in and said, ‘Sue, you should come and see this’,” Lucy said.
I looked around at the small group. Most of them were already working again; a couple sat back and looked around, vaguely disinterested.
“We should, too,” I said. “Come on.”
As I stood, Lucy grabbed my arm. “What are you doing?”
“Seeing what’s happening.” I walked to the door, not looking back because I didn’t want to glimpse Lucy’s disapproving look.
I opened the door and sensed Lucy behind me. I smiled. I knew that my friend could not resist a mystery.
In the corridor we moved quickly towards the central staircase, passing art displays, noticeboards, and a couple of closed classroom doors. I walked like I was meant to be there. Sneak along, crouch down, and we were sure to be seen.
At the staircase I paused and turned to Lucy, shrugging. Lucy listened, then pointed down. We descended, and several stairs up from the ground floor we saw three teachers hurrying across the vestibule and through a pair of double doors. Lucy and I froze, waiting to be caught. But the teachers either didn’t see us, or didn’t register our presence.
“What’s going on?” I whispered.
Lucy shrugged. “Come on. I think they’re all going to the staffroom.”
“Well we won’t be able to get in,” I said.
Lucy only smiled and waved me on. We crossed the vestibule and passed through the same double doors as the teachers, entering the administration wing of the school. Pupils were not ordinarily allowed in there, but that gave us an implied authority—if we were seen, whoever saw us would more than likely assume that we had permission to be there.
Lucy led the way past the staffroom, then she glanced back and forth along the short corridor and opened a door. “Cleaning cupboard,” she signed. “Come on.”
“How do you know about—?” I asked, but Lucy quickly put her finger to her lips, frowning. I must have been talking louder than I’d intended.
“Izzy told me about it,” she mouthed. She ushered me inside the cupboard and closed the door.
In the darkness, I felt closed in. I couldn’t see my friend, couldn’t sign to her. Isolation smothered us both. I hated the dark, but not for the reasons that most people disliked it.
My friend moved, then a soft light bathed the room. Lucy was standing on a fixed shelving unit, and in the wall before her a plastic air vent spilled light into the cramped cupboard. She beckoned me to climb up next to her, pressed her face close to the vent… and froze.
Lucy’s mouth fell open.
What’s she seeing? I wondered. And for just a few seconds, I didn’t want to know.
I climbed up carefully next to her and, heads pressed together, we looked through the vent into the staffroom.
There was a big TV in there, fixed to the wall. The room itself was quite small, and it was filled with teachers. Standing room only. They were all watching the screen.
“Bucharest Burns” said the caption below the shocking, flame-filled, unbelievable image. The view was from a handheld camera somewhere high in the city, a hillside or more likely the rooftop of a tall building. The image juddered a little, but whoever held the camera knew what they were doing. They panned slowly left and right. Flames flickered all across the city. There were many smaller fires, conflagrations consuming single buildings or roofs, sending leaning columns of smoke to the sky. Two larger fires were prominent, one quite close to the observer and the other much further away. The way the flames boiled and rolled was testament to their fury, and black oily smoke billowed skyward. The closer fire was centred in a tall, blocky structure—a hotel or a shopping centre, perhaps—and every opening was a window into hell. Blazing shapes tumbled. A wall collapsed, seeming to splash flames across the street and out of sight against another building. The fire had tides and swells, pulsing away from its source and seeding itself elsewhere.
Cars screamed along streets. People ran.
The camera suddenly shifted, blurring the picture and making me dizzy. What the hell’s going on? I thought, closing my eyes as I gathered myself. When I looked again the camera had steadied, but now it followed a haze of smoke across the Bucharest rooftops. It was a distant cloud, huge, and where it passed it seemed to steal colour and shape from the buildings and landscape around it.
Lucy’s hand closed on my arm, nails digging in.
“What is it?” I asked. Lucy could hear something—a voice on the TV, newscaster or perhaps the person doing the filming.
An explosion bloomed in the distance, so slow-moving that it must have been huge, monstrous. But the camera still followed the strange cloud as it shifted left… and right… drifting against the breeze that drove the smoke of Bucharest’s destruction at an angle to the sky.
Lucy looked panicked. Her eyes were wide, mouth open, and she didn’t seem to notice how tightly she was clasping my arm.
I prised her fingers away and jumped down from the shelf. Lucy didn’t move. She just kept staring at the terrible images, and listening to something worse.
I stumbled over a box as I went for the door, reaching out and clasping at shelving to prevent myself from falling. I banged my shin and groaned, then glanced back at Lucy. My friend had turned to look at me, but bathed in weak light from the air vent, her face still looked the same.
“What is it?” I asked, louder than before and more desperate, not caring whether they were heard or not.
“Ally,” Lucy mouthed. I found the door and tugged it open, dashing into the corridor, running to the staffroom door and pushing it open.
It was horrible. There were at least thirty teachers in there, and only a few glanced at me. They seemed to not register my presence, quickly turning to the TV again. Miss Hughes motioned me in, held my hand, and we turned towards the screen. She wants me to see, I thought. We’re not teachers and pupils any more. The disconcerting idea came from nowhere.
I could only see what I’d seen before, but in more detail. The burning buildings, the chaos in the streets. The continuing massive explosions in the distance—a fuel plant or power station, perhaps. And that vast cloud followed by the camera as it passed back and forth above the burning city, as if it had a strange, unknowable consciousness of its own.
Miss Hughes picked up the TV remote control. Another teacher seemed to argue with her, words that I could not see. Then my form teacher turned on the subtitles.
I started to understand just how terrible everything was.