Alex

The carriage was plunged into darkness the moment the bomb detonated. There was no flicker or spark; the lights just went out. Alex knew there were people, bodies near him, and he sensed that their lives had ended. In the fuzzy silence he looked around, head whirring as his eyes adjusted and the flesh and metal surrounding him began to appear between the dust and smoke that crept through the air.

Alex had been thrown several feet from where he had been standing beside a set of doors. Now from his sitting position on the floor, he could see that the doors had blown out and were concertinaed against the wall of the tunnel. There was much blood and remains of the several passengers that had filled the carriage minutes before. Alex could see that many of them had been forced through the windows and shreds of clothing and limbs now hung between the service cables that ran along the side of the tunnel.

Alex stood up, and took a moment to re-orientate himself. One side of the tube train had dropped slightly, tilting the floor down to the left as he began to make his way carefully through the carriage. Moments later Alex heard the sounds.
The creaking of the metal panels that had sprung from the ceiling as gravity now pulled at their last remaining rivets. The buzzing, fizz and clicking of an interrupted electric current and the low groans, primal guttural noises of human pain.

Alex climbed over the debris and bent over to avoid the obstructions in the ceiling using outstretched arms to balance himself. He approached the area where he had been standing before the bomb detonated. Being the centre of the blast it was relatively clear but the blood was pooling here and spilling over the edge of the door opening to the lower side of the carriage.

Alex could see more bodies outside the tube train against the tunnel walls. One made sounds but most were silent. As the dust began settling, the tunnel bulkhead lights weakly illuminated the inside of the carriage. Newspapers were scattered over and between the seats and twisted steel tubing of the hand poles and rails, and Alex could see some limbs, fingers, fluttering through the mesh of steel fixtures.

A woman sat on floor in the next section of carriage and Alex moved towards her. At first he couldn’t see her legs but when he approached he saw that the bottom half of her body had fallen through the carriage floor. The woman looked up at Alex and he couldn’t quite compute her response, the distress on her face seemingly overwhelmed by her sensing him making his way towards her.

Alex glanced down at his body and each arm, and saw that most of his clothes had been ripped off in the blast. There was also skin, and his skin which wasn’t there, and the dull smeary reflection may have been the blood.

He knelt down and touched the woman’s arm. She was trembling quite violently and spat fine droplets of bloodied saliva with each of her rapid and shallow breaths. She was visibly confused and staring intently at Alex trying to understand what had happened and the relevance of this stranger now kneeling before her. A knight, her maker, Death.

‘What is your name?’ Alex asked.

The woman’s eyes widened as her concentration intensified and focused solely on Alex’s face. She lifted her chin and moved her tongue slowly, trying to form and shape the words to speak her own name. With an effort she forced some air from her lungs. ‘Hannah’ she breathed quietly.

Alex placed the palm of his hand against one side of her face, which was blackened from the blast. The force had burst the vessels in her eyes and they had bloomed red across the surface bringing her blue eyes into sharp alien relief.

‘Hannah. There has been an accident, an explosion. It’s over now.’

‘Who…..who are you?’ Hannah asked.

‘I am Alex.’

A tear moved down Hannah’s face and slipped across Alex’s hand. He watched it slowly redden as it as it slid over his wrist and down the inside of his arm.

Alex lifted his hand and gently stroked Hannah’s hair away from her face.

‘Hannah, do not be frightened,’ he said.

‘But I don’t know who you are.’ Hannah wept. ‘What have you done? Am I?…..’ Hannah choked and spat out more blood. Am I dying?’

Alex dropped his head in consideration and took Hannah’s hand in his.

‘We have made a decision,’ he began. ’ A decision that your time here must end. Today will be an historic day.’ There was a proud excitement in his voice.

Hannah looked beyond Alex but found it difficult to see anything with any clarity but she was aware of the carnage around them. She knew there were other people; bodies near.

‘My time? What is this?’ Hannah wept. ‘Please, I want you to stop this now.’

Alex smiled. ‘It is over now.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘It is done.’

‘Who are you?’ She said.

‘I am Alex.’

‘Can’t you help me?’ Hannah gently pleaded. She coughed and had to swallow quickly.

‘These people, they need help. What has happened. Have you done this?’

Hannah was pale, her lips becoming an inky bluish colour. Her body had been forced through the floor of the tube train after the explosion, severing both her legs below each knee. Unaware, she continued to roll her ankles beneath the floor attempting to relieve an aggravating sensation in her feet.

Before today, Hannah had not really considered death but she was not surprised that visions of her short life were flashing before her. They say this happens. The serenity, the overwhelming sense of calm; she felt that too. A slow chemical release flooding her central nervous system, the body’s emergency plans in full operation. Sunshine, Hattie the cat, Mum and Dad, Alex.

‘Hannah. Hannah.’ Alex was stroking her hand now.

‘I’m so tired Alex, I’m getting confused. Why are you wearing that mask? Are you hurt? I want to leave here now please. My feet really really ache.’ Hannah was struggling to keep her eyes open.

‘It’s nearly time Hannah. You will soon leave this place for somewhere else. We want you to know that our decision has your, has all human interests at heart.’

‘What were you saying about history, about today?’ Hannah’s eyes were wide open again and she looked down at Alex’s hands. ‘What’s wrong with your hands?’

​​​​​***

Alex didn’t recognise his dying wife, and would not now understand anything before today. Once his mission objective has been initialised and the bomb detonated, all memory of his past life on earth was erased. Travelling with Hannah on the tube train, they had stood together beside a set of sliding doors. The instruction to Alex had come via a concealed receiver implanted deep inside his cranial cavity and without hesitation he had pressed the detonation sequence into his smartphone which contained the equivalent of nine pounds of plastic explosives. The resulting force blew out the doors, stopped the train, and threw them both in opposite directions.

‘You said something about an history… day.’ Hannah was finding it hard to focus.

“Yes Hannah, you are part of this day, you are one of the so very few. We of the tenth wave have completed the work which began over two thousand years ago. Today begins the Succession.”

Hannah was listening and trying to comprehend what was being said. She knew it was important but was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on Alex’s words. He looked and sounded so different but she recognised something, a timbre in his voice.

He was trying to calm her, she thought but didn’t understand quite everything he was saying. Alex didn’t seem to be injured. Had he been on the tube train when it crashed, an explosion? She remembered that they had been standing together talking about what they could do on Saturday. That was just minutes before now, she was sure. Yes, and a man mumbling to himself had got on at Whitechapel and they were rolling eyes and making faces at each other and secretly pointing in his direction. Then Alex had stopped laughing abruptly and taken out his phone.

It was so cold now.

Alex was still talking.

‘…a decision was made to replace every person on the earth but we wanted to ensure that the history of the human race remained intact.’

Hannah spoke, a slight panic in her voice. ‘Alex. Is that you, I think it is.’ She touched his face and felt a sharp coldness tingling through her fingers.

‘Oh God what has happened to you. Please Alex tell me what is going on, your skin. Can’t we just go now. No one is coming for us, I don’t want to talk anymore. Something is wrong with me, it’s so so cold Alex.’

Hannah’s hand slipped from Alex’s face and fell back into her lap. Her entire skin had taken on a yellow pallidness and her breathing was becoming more laboured.

Alex didn’t understand his wife’s condition, but he knew she was dying. His emotional response to her had been disabled and he was now limited to implementing the final stages of the Succession which involved sharing his pride with Hannah, to him a stranger now but one of the very last human beings alive on earth.

‘Hannah, today one hundred and fifty thousand, four hundred and thirty one people on the earth will die and you will be one of them. To be the last of your species is a truly extraordinary thing and a great privilege. Tomorrow a new day will begin on earth and we will reveal ourselves. Life here will finally change.’

Hannah closed her eyes and Alex’s voice drifted away and became a distant mumbling she could no longer capture. There was something wrong with Alex, she needed to help him but her body wasn’t responding to any of her efforts to move.

She remembered Alex was using his phone, then a massive rush of air had forced her off her feet. Newspapers were flying around, and things struck her before she was finally thrown to the floor. An immediate and strong chemical smell pervaded the air and she saw a hot light, fierce but fleeting and now here in the dark, in her quiet peaceful calm she saw the light once again growing from a tiny nebula inside her head. She reached for it and it wove around her outstretched fingers.

‘Alex,” she whispered. ‘Are you there? Please hold me.’

Alex had moved to the centre of the tube train and was climbing down to the side of the tracks. He had completed this stage of his mission and had been instructed to report to Sector 5 headquarters where he would be debriefed and his new identity assigned. He was looking forward to starting his life on this new planet.

After two thousand years they had finally succeeded in removing the entire human race from the earth. The terrorist attacks in recent decades had allowed them to covertly undertake their objectives using the techniques all too familiar to the war ravaged species they had worked so hard to replace. Finally their objective was complete and the earth would be at peace.

Alex paused to look back at the dying woman he had spoken with. Her head had fallen to her chest and he no longer detected any signs of breathing. He felt a sudden and strange sense of loss which he calculated was a sadness for all humans, but ultimately they had not been successful in protecting the planet which had supported all life for three and a half billion years.

As he walked away through the tunnel the final remnant of his skin slipped to the floor. On his back just below the right shoulder, four words were stamped into the iridescent metalloid of his external body casing.

Alternative Life Engine X.

By Darren Seeley