Posts
BABEL
By Wayne Webb
CHAPTER 10
He had a car shut away and a stash of
petrol to power it, it was in the barn attached to the farmhouse near
the road, and it was untouched. Whatever had compelled the Babel to
leave it had not been a logical or reasonable force, it was obviously
something compelling them not convincing them to act of their own
free will. Anne would had taken the car, she would have offered a
bunch of other Babel a lift, with sign language or pictures, but she
would have driven the distance to Auckland.
He assumed it was Auckland of course,
that was the main city, the nearest and the biggest in country, but
this was an Alien invasion wasn't it? Alien by definition meant
strange and unused to local custom. Perhaps they had picked a spot in
the middle of nowhere and sent people there.
The four of them remaining, the Few
that represented Fire, Tree, Mountain and Water walked calmly down to
the farm house and took some supplies. They had a couple of handguns,
foraged for or brought by Babel who had joined with them and
contributed what they could. George took the shotgun, it's heft felt
comforting thought the thought of unloading it anywhere but into the
air terrified him.
They drove in silence, used to not
conversing that much with their own people and in each others company
not willing to point out how different they really were. It was not
long before they caught up with the first few of the Babel walking
the road, and it certainly did look like they were headed to the
city. They drove past them, as they did not belong to the Community,
they must have come from other groups or homesteads in the country
and were treading the same path. When they caught up with the first
person they recognised they stopped and though Fire had told them
that there was nothing that they could do, Mountain and Tree had to
figure it out for themselves.
Water waited in the car with Fire.
“George?” She waited while the
others were prodding and trying to get through to their Babel before
she spoke to the Fire-village leader, nominally the leader of them
all.
“Barbara?”
“What do you think they want?” She
was genuinely curious, and the wide eyed innocence she felt at being
reached out to by an Alien species was replaced now with B-Movie
sensibility filled with clichés of Hollywood, and decades or
mistrusting aliens. Xenophobia was ingrained in humanity, even when
it was fully equalised by disease like this, the strange the
unfamiliar was instantly feared and attributed motivation.
“I.” George could not even finish
the sentence. He had so little in mind that even saying 'no idea' was
too much to bear.
“I want them to come in peace. I do.”
Water's tone implied that she hoped one thing, but believed another
altogether.
“I know.” They sat in the car,
looking everywhere but at each other. Eventually the other two gave
up and stood aside and let their friend continue on his programmed
path ahead. They sat in the back of the car heavily, knowing that it
had been a waste of time, as George had suggested at first but had
not argued the point that much.
George started the car up again and
they drove on and overtook more and more people as they got further
along the road, eventually finding State Highway 1 and heading south
to the City. Within a few kilometres driving became very difficult
and they had to stop. There were thousands of people now, all walking
the road together, not so many to be shoulder to shoulder, but enough
that they could not drive safely without potentially running someone
over every twenty or thirty metres.
George nosed the car through the crowd
carefully, picking his way through them and finding an exit to drive
parallel with the highway. It was a painful process of finding roads
or tracks to drive along and shadow the main highway, a thickening
sea of people, thousands potentially all walking at a consistent pace
towards the city.
When they got within visual distance of
Auckland a sight awaited them that made them stop and get out of the
car to look, just look in amazement. There were two ships, both in
the air suspended at either side of Auckland city, one above the
Hauraki Gulf, hovering above Rangitoto impressively and the other
over Manukau Harbour side, hard to pinpoint exactly compared to the
geographic precision of the major landmark island giving it a
location. George assumed it to be Onehunga area, maybe Mangere
Bridge.
Either way there was a shocking vision
two giant flying saucers bookending the country's largest city,
marking each end of the narrowest points of Auckland as well. It was
too far away to see anything in any great detail and even with
binoculars there was too much distance to see any people or actions
being taken.
The ships had no death rays or teleport
beams visible, they just hung there and still the Babel headed
towards them. They could tell there was going to be a problem getting
to the city, even from here they had to figure that the Babel coming
down the shore would be heading over the bridge, probably up all
lanes on both sides, clogging it up and that would make them either
walk through them abandoning the car. They would surrender the
advantage of speed and velocity at that point.
George looked at the Few from Mountain
and Tree and then looked back at the road, a line of people snaking
away from them, parallel to the side road criss-crossing the country
side.
“We can drop you two in Takapuna,
maybe go all the way down to North Head? You should be able to see
from there.” He indicated generally. “We'll walk the rest of the
way, or try and get through the crowd to see if Greenhithe Bridge is
clear.”
“I don't understand. What are we
watching for? What good will that do?” Mountain was still staring
at the ships, stunned but listening.
“Tree is pregnant. And it's going to
be a long walk, a long walk into ...” George didn't finish the
sentence, and he did not need to. Tree had to stay out of harms way,
Mountain had to protect her. That left George and Barbara, to go the
distance and walk into … the trap?
It took them more than an hour to get
to where they said they would, Babel were blocking the major roads,
and a couple were still in the suburbs heading towards the pack, but
finding their way to where they wanted to go was harder than they
realised. There was no map in the car and no GPS device. They all
knew the way vaguely, by motorway, but that was not an option here.
Finally the four of them stood on the
docks at the Devonport ferry terminal looking across the harbour at
the massive ship impassively blocking the sky and casting a shadow
over the Mountain and sea below it. The windows of the terminal were
all smashed and there was no power or any boats nearby to take
command of, except the Naval vessels, still in port and looking as
immobile and alien as the giant spaceship out to sea. The chances of
them being able to start let alone drive a Navy Frigate was next to
impossible.
Mountain and Tree were setting up a few
chairs on the deck, looking back at the city but with a line of sight
to the saucer when a distant popping sound echoed to them across the
water.
George turned towards the sound in time
to see a ball of fire in the struts of the Auckland Harbour Bridge,
and then a second later a repeat of that popping sound, followed by
huge chunks of metal breaking away and falling without a splash into
the harbour. Delayed a few seconds as the sound travelled afterwards
the splash was loud and flat as sections of road fell to slap the
surface.
“Oh my god no.” Barbara was
standing, staring and her hands clapped over her mouth as she saw
that there were a few thousand people on the bridge, like ants at
this distance and the dropped like gravel into the water, numerous
and indistinctly anonymous. She started to cry as she saw bodies
dropping into the water. They were walking off the ragged edge caused
by the explosions, the sabotage, and just walked of the edge in the
same pace that had got them there in the first place.
George felt the mosquito like buzzing
in his ears again, so loud this time he tried to bat it away or
shield his head. Noticing as he moved that the other three were
suffering a similar reaction. Then as suddenly as it started, it
stopped.
“What the fuck?” Mountain was
shaking his head, even from this distance they could see that every
single Babel had stopped moving. They lined the edge of the chasm
left in the bridge, but they to a man had stopped walking. As far as
the eye could see in all directions that they could see Babel lined
up a few metres apart and on the main roads, they were just standing.
Unmoving
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to leave any comments about the project - but be aware I won't be taking suggestions, requests or feedback on the content or style of writing - I want to write what I want free of any one else's issues.