Ctrlaltdel Earth

A novella by Mica

1. No Time For Hide & Seek

I was leaning back in my chair drinking a coffee reading the online news. It seems that there are massive algae blooms in the sea due to over use of fertiliser to grow crops to make bread to feed to people. Reading further I saw that it was in the Pacific Ocean and my interest waned and I turned to the Sports Pages. My phone rang.

Well, actually, it doesn't ring. It trills. It has the same ring tone as the old Trim Phones, very cool, it had taken me ages to find a wav file and download it to the phone server.

"Yup?" I answered, and I knew who it was as the phone has built in video, so I could see it was Mike, the telephone engineer, so no need for the very polite way we used to answer phones when we had no idea who was at the other end.

"Can you nip down to the Vault for me?"

The office building that we use is rather old and has basement and sub basement and sub sub... You get the picture. At the very lowest level is an old Bunker we nick named the vault. In days of old it was a Nuclear Bunker, but now it is just used to store a few archives. However it has an old style telephone that, according to our Health & Safety regulations, has to be tested twice a year. Today was the day for one of those tests, and because it was old analogue style, it needed someone at each end. It was my turn to go down, Mike had done the last test.

"On my way." I grabbed my cardboard cup of coffee and headed down. I could go down most of the way by lift, but the last 30 or so feet were by an old staircase housed in a concrete tube. Old style phone, old style elevation transfer route to go with.

It takes an age to get down there, so many doors to unlock on the way, but eventually I got there and dialled Mike's number. Nothing.

The phone was working, I had ringing tone, but Mike didn't answer. I tried Jock, he sits in the same office as Mike, he didn't answer either. I grumbled about what a funny gag to play as I turned the lights out, locked doors behind me and climbed the stairs to the Lift Lobby. As I got out of the lift I couldn't help but notice how quiet it was.

'Oh great' I thought, 'Obviously a fire alarm. Have to report that you can't hear the fire alarm in the Vault. There was no one in the office, totally empty. All the computer screens were on, not even a screen saver in sight. That was against company rules, and as far as I could tell, everyone was in trouble. No one in sight, not even the fire Marshalls with their fluorescent jackets that hang around to make sure everyone is out.

"Crikey" I said aloud, "Is it the real thing?" And headed as quick as I could to the fire escape and down to the car park to join everyone else.

Only there was no one there. There was no security on the gates either. There was a car that looked like it had driven off the road into the shrubbery, but there was no one in it.

I walked around site, there was absolutely no one. I then noticed that I couldn't hear the usual thrumming of traffic on the main roads. Nothing. This was getting weird and I was a little spooked.

"Sod this for a game of soldiers" I said to no one, "I am going home. If World War 3 has started I want to be a long way from here." My car and house keys are always in my pocket so I simply walked to my parking space and drove away. The barriers on the exit are automatic, but the entrance ones are manned and you have to show your pass to get in. There was no one manning the entrances as I left. There were no cars queuing to get in either, so no problem.

This was getting a little scary. If nothing else, the armed police should still be there, manning the gates. Their car was, but they were nowhere in sight. Driving home proved a slow and tedious business. There were abandoned cars all over the roads. Some seemed to have just stopped where they were, others seemed to have driven onto the pavements or into the back of the car in front. I had to do a fair bit of manoeuvring between cars to get through. Eventually I got home and turned the TV on, expecting a public service announcement about the war.

Perhaps, I would be better off in the Vault at work, after all it was a Nuclear Bunker. Nothing. No TV programmes on any channel, not even on Satellite, not even the foreign ones.

I picked up the phone and dialled 999. Nothing. No answer. I went out to the car and checked the radio, even long wave. Nothing. Just static. Down the road from home were a couple of abandoned cars that I squeezed past as I came home. I walked down to them to see if I could get a clue. The door was locked, no way to get in from outside, as if the anti car jacking setting was still on. The key in the ignition, but there was no one inside. The second car was exactly the same. Door locked, key in ignition, no driver. I walked back home. Puzzling.

I sat at home looking out down the valley. There was no movement. I looked in the sky, no planes, no birds, nothing. I listened, no sounds except a slight rustling of the leaves in shrubs and trees nearby, light wind.

At some point the power died, I wasn't sure exactly when. I was prepared. Living in a rural location I experienced frequent power cuts and had invested in a generator. I flicked the switch to turn the thing on, pulled at the toggle and it burst into life. It wasn't exactly quiet, but I didn't seem to have anyone to disturb.

I could not work out where everyone had gone. I remember seeing an old Science Fiction film where a group of people had shifted out phase with the rest of the world, but, even if that were a possible thing, then the cars would still be moving, I just wouldn't be able to interact with them. No, if anything, every other living animal on the world would have had to shift out of phase, and leave me and the cars behind in this phase. No, that was a ridiculous thought and I chided myself for it.

It had to be some kind of prank being played on me, but I could not for the life of me work it out. It did occur to me that perhaps I was injured, laying in a coma on a hospital bed, but if that was the case, I had no idea of how to snap myself back into the living world. I decided to go with prank, but the prank had been cleverly timed to take effect the moment I entered the vault. But How?

I decided to grab a stiff drink and go to bed and see what a new day would bring. Bloody good prank this.

2. No One No Where

I awoke, after a restless few hours, to an eerie silence, no sounds of traffic moving, no birds singing or tweeting, just nothing. And then there was a small tink noise, and then another, and another. It sounded like tin tacks falling on a kitchen floor, I decided it must be hail, I could think of nothing else that would make that sound. I grabbed my torch and went to the back door. I shone the torch out into the darkness. The sky was full of shooting stars, streaks of light in all directions and before me was a rain of small white objects falling from the meteor strewn sky. I shone the torch down to the ground in front of me, the ground was covered in small white shards, differing sizes and shapes, but all looking like fragments of bones. It was too horrible to contemplate and I stumbled back to bed.

When I got up at some unearthly hour with the sun shining through the windows where I had forgotten to draw the curtains, I remembered the dreams of the previous night and flicked at the light switch. No power, so perhaps my nightmare was true after all. I re-started the generator and I turned the TV on, but still no channels, nothing at all. I stood at the back door as the bread browned in the toaster and looked at a vista of white. I bent down to look more closely and my nightmare fears were realised. Strewn before me where millions of fragments of bone, scorched as if they had been through a fire, any flesh stripped leaving the bones to burn in the fires of an atmosphere. I was convinced that the meteor storm I had witnessed last night was the remains of humanity coming back to Earth, piece by shattered piece.

3. Gathering Provisions

As I sucked on my toast and drank my coffee my generator spluttered and died. The fuel had run out and now I was without power. If I was the only living thing left on Earth then there was no one to stop me stocking up. I threw a few tools, hammers, crow bar, chisels etc., in to the back of the car and headed off. Weaving through cars it occurred to me that there was nothing to stop me getting a more suitable car, something that would do anything and go anywhere. On the outskirts of town as I weaved between the abandoned cars I decided on a pick up, a twin cab. That would give me plenty of load capacity, but should also give me some towing capacity. I was convinced that I would get punctures from the bone shards, but my luck held, the shards just seemed to crumble under the tyres.

The local Mitsubishi dealer was near and I headed towards there. I assumed that the place would probably be unlocked, and that the keys would all be on a board in the salesman's office. I was not wrong. There were a number of suitable pickups on the road as I drove there, but as I had discovered earlier, they all had keys inside but were locked. I did not want to smash the windows, no, I would try a new one.

I grabbed all the keys and trying several I selected one that looked as if it had been prepped for a new customer, fully fuelled. Perfect. I transferred my tools and various belongings and then took all the spare wheels I could find from the other pickups and threw them into the back. Better have too many spares than not enough I decided. I then went looking for my next requirement, a car trailer. I found one at a repair garage, already hooked up to a battered Toyota. It didn't take long to unhook it and put it behind the Mitsubishi.

On the other side of town there is a fuel dealer with varying size tankers. I examined each of the small and medium tankers, I wasn't sure if I would be able to drive one of the larger tankers. I was sure that I would technically be able to, but there were so many abandoned vehicles that I wasn't sure that I would be able to get a large vehicle through. There were two tankers pretty full of what I was sure was diesel. I hooked my car trailer up to one, drove my new pick up on to it and secured the pickup with the lashings that had been looped and hanging off the trailer's winch. Right. I could drive the fuel tanker home, my nice new car on the trailer behind. That would give me some weeks worth of fuel to enable me to set myself up, and run my generator giving me hot coffee and toast. Well, the King of the World had to start setting some standards.

The next thing on my priority list was somewhere to live. Probably a farm. I wanted running water, so a largish stream. Some barns to hide my provisions; more from the elements than people or animals. I was quite sure I was the only living thing on the planet apart from some bacteria. I wanted to be a long way from any industrial areas, I don't want to be down stream or down wind from any pollutions. I would try and find somewhere that had solar panels or even a wind mill that generated electricity, at least then, I wouldn't have to rely on the generator all the time. If push came to shove I could probably go and find a solar farm and 'rescue' it and relocate it to my new home, but finding one already in place would be my safest and easiest option.

I spent several days driving around exploring and eventually found what seemed to be the perfect place. An old water mill that had been refurbished. The roof had solar cells and there was also a small water turbine in the mill race. The mill wheel itself seemed to be connected to a full mill wheel inside, and probably would be able to mill, although I had no idea how to mill, but, with time, you never know, I could learn a new skill. There were a lot of outbuildings and stores, and a number of interesting farm vehicles and tools. The land on the far side of the mill race was much lower, and so the Mill looked quite safe from flooding. This looked perfect. Well, it would have been if I hadn't been the only person around. As a bonus the Mill was attached to a village of fifty odd houses, so if I got bored, I could move.

I spent a few days moving everything to the Mill and making it my new home. I made several trips to local shops and gathered as much tinned, jarred and dried food as I could. Hopefully enough to last me my lifetime, I didn't fancy ending up having to eat plants, and that seemed the only alternative. I also kitted myself in a full array of clothes, clothes that would suit the coldest nights, the wettest days and the warmest times. I had plenty of empty houses to store the food in; storage was unlikely to be an issue, boredom probably more so.

4. Surviving alone

Each time I drove out I took a hammer with me. Every time I came to a car still in the road I had decided to move it to the side. Those cars that were unlocked I simply got in, turned the key and drove to the side. Those, typically higher end vehicles, that were locked received the business end of the hammer to the drivers side window. Then I got in, started it and drove it to the side. My mission was to clear all the roads that I usually drove on. I didn't know quite why, but I just wanted to ensure that I had a clear run on the roads, just in case I needed it one day.

I had come across a shop that sold Radio Equipment and helped myself to an array of radios and aerials, and a couple of books that explained how it all went together. I strung up a couple of Long Wire aerials at home, at 90 degrees to each other and connected up a short-wave scanner. Nothing, absolutely nothing on any frequency. This set up, according to the books, should have been able to pick up something anywhere in the world if it was being transmitted. Nothing heard, so my conclusion is that nothing was being transmitted. I put out a few calls on various frequencies. I was not really surprised to get no responses.

Twice a day I drove to the top of a nearby hill with good views in all directions. Nothing, no smoke during the day, no light visible at night. I started to build a bonfire at the top, taking wood in the pick up with me each time I went. After a week I had a quite sizeable bonfire, a beacon if you will. I decided that it would probably burn for a couple of hours, so, if I lit it just before dusk, then I would catch any daytime seekers as well as night time lookers.

I lit the beacon and stood back and watched it take hold. I find fire fascinating to watch, but I am no lover of fire, it scares me if I am honest. I kept myself at a good safe distance. As the night began to take hold I turned my back to the flames and started scanning the land below using the 10x50 binoculars I had rescued from an unmanned and deserted shop. Nothing.

I waited about three hours as the beacon burned down to a simple red glow of ash, scanning in all directions, seeing nothing. I left a small box containing some tins of food, in case someone was too scared to show themselves. I hoped that the food would be viewed as a peace offering rather than bait.

I drove back to the mill. As I drove back it started to rain. I was a bit surprised, I don't know why, but it hadn't actually rained since the day everyone died and disappeared, D Day as I called it, and so I had just got used to dry weather and good visibility. As I drove home I was trying to remember if I had left anything outside that would spoil in the rain. The box with the tins in by the fire would fall apart, but the tins would be okay. A few flashes of lightening streaked across the sky to my right followed shortly after by the booms of thunder. I laughed as I drove, this was the first sounds I had heard since D Day and the first light that hadn't come from the sun or moon or my generator. As the rain got heavier my mood got lighter. Nature, it seemed, had a way of cheering me up.

It rained non-stop for three days. The Mill stream filled and over flowed its banks, but only on the side away from the buildings, nothing important was flooded. The clouds must have been deep as the daylight was gloomy at best and the rain drops large and noisy. My good mood stayed and on the fourth day I noticed the skies getting lighter and the rain drops smaller. "Well that probably cleared a lot of muck out of the atmosphere" I said to the tractor. Yes, I had started talking to inanimate objects. Well, there was no one to object.

5. Visitor

I went outside, the silence was, after the recent thunderstorms, oppressive. A little rustling of the leaves in the trees and that was about it. No sounds made by humans, no animal sounds, no bird sounds, not even the buzz of insects. Just quiet.

I looked up at the sky, blue interspersed with white cloud. Not much chance of more rain I concluded. Something caught my attention and I turned to the west. A shape in the distance getting rapidly larger. I was unsure whether to run or stand and watch.

Aliens. Obviously.

Aliens had abducted everyone whilst I was in the vault. Obviously.

Aliens had come back to mop up what they had missed. Perhaps.

I had no vault or bunker here to run and hide in, and a quick death by stealthy hand was possibly a better alternative to being the last living human on an empty world with only plants to eat, supplemented with tinned foods recovered from otherwise empty supermarkets. On my last visit the rotting non-tinned food had created quite a stench and I had decided to fabricate some kind of face-mask for my next visit.

The alien craft was huge, I mean, really huge. It pretty much filled the sky above me, casting quite a darkening shadow on the ground. I could make out very few features, possibly as there were few to see, or possibly because it was high in the sky with the sun behind it. I had no reference to help me.

The alien ship made no noise, there had been no rush of air as it approached, it just seemed to loom ever larger until the sky was filled. As I looked down from the ship I was aware of a figure walking towards me, clothed in grey, two legs, two arms, a head, but obviously not human. It stopped about 10 feet in front of me and I judged it to be around 7 feet tall. Yeah. Humanoid, not human.

"What do you want from me?" I asked, not afraid, but neither excited or even interested. I was still so numbed by the recent events that had seemingly left me as the last living thing on Earth, that even a close encounter with an alien had little effect on me.

There was a sort of noise from the alien, but I could make no sense of it. Advanced it undoubtedly was, but not advanced enough, it seems, to learn English. "Look" I said, "Even the French bothered to learn English."

I walked towards it as if to greet it in the old fashioned way but it held its arms out, hands flat upwards. I understood that.

"Stop? You want me to stop?" I asked and stood still, I was perhaps now only 8 feet away. I could see a lot more detail, gloomy as the light was in the shadow of the huge craft. The darkness reminded me of a solar eclipse from when I was a child.

The alien had more or less the same features as me, just different. It had eyes, but they were not like eyes, more a milky dark orb behind lids that seemed to blink up rather than down. There was a nose, but it was more like a protruding vent that opened and closed. Mouth, well, again, yes there was a mouth in roughly the same place as a human, but it seemed triangular rather than the two lipped mouth I was used to.

Two arms with hands, but hands that seemed to have what looked like two thumbs, one on each side, and arms that were longer in proportion than mine. The clothes were, well, clothes. Nothing remarkable about them, especially to anyone that had watched any of the myriad Science Fiction films before civilization ended.