The Sky Beneath Us (on hold)

SIX

Day 1. 17:19.

___________

Eve had been walking non-stop for well over an hour at least. Her cell phone was dead - just her luck - and she could only guess that it was anywhere between 4pm and 6pm. The monorail track had proved to be a faithful form of travel, as long as she kept her balance.

As she got closer to the city's centre, she passed multi-story office blocks and car parks. Some cars hung over the edge precariously, others were crushed under heavier vehicles or broken concrete. Behind one windshield, Eve could see a person's arm - bent unnaturally and inanimate. She sped up, almost losing her balance in the process. She had seen bodies before, but not like this. Never like this.

The world was a messed up place, anybody could see that just by switching on the evening news. But no matter how bad things got, life went on and the earth continued to function. But with this? With this, the world had literally been tossed upside down. With this, the world had entered its darkest day in history. The day where the laws of physics were turned on their head, along with everything they applied to. This was the day the world as we know it ended.

As she lost herself in thought, an old office block collapsed in the city a few miles away. Was there people there too? Or had they got out in time? How many times would this happen, and how many more lives would be lost?

She sped up again.

Keeping pace, Eve noticed a shimmer of blue to her left. She stopped to investigate and found herself looking through the gap between a half constructed apartment block and a disused factory. The shimmer was some distance away, rippling. Intrigued, but at the same time frightened, Eve forced her eyes to focus and could hardly believe what she saw.

It was a massive swirling ball hanging just below the concrete 'roof' above her. It was made from water, a lot of water, pulled together to form the gigantic sapphire sphere. Eve stared at it with her mouth wide open and it was only after a few seconds that she finally made sense of the spectacle.

The ball of water was the city's main reservoir, refusing to obey the sky's pull but yet somehow hanging there with no support or cause.

Eve blinked a few times in quick succession, just to ensure she was genuinely witnessing this reversal of nature. Once satisfied that she was not completely insane, she began to fully take in the situation happening all around her.

She started with clouds, there was none in sight, yet Eve remembered the day being overcast a few hours previous. Next, she felt for wind currents - there wasn't any. Finally, she sought out the sun.

It was nowhere to be found, despite the sky looking as if it was basked in midday light. It was October, the sun should have begun setting by now, surely. Instead it was peak-light with no sun present.

That complicated things two-fold.

Was this Hell?

Eve shook her head, failing to comprehend this new reality. She could give up, jump. Die. Join her parents, her brother and her fallen comrades - assuming she wasn't already dead of course. But death would be easiest, the quickest end to her suffering...

"Just jump Eve", she heard herself murmur.

As soon as the words left her mouth, Eve pulled herself together and pushed the thought out of her mind. No, she was strong, a fighter. She would not let this be the end of her. She would not give in as long as there was hope. And for Eve Thompson, there was hella hope.

If war had thought her one value, it was hope.

She put her shoulders back, lifted her head high, carried on towards her destination. The track was beginning to rise, and Eve was forced to clamber up the slope that brought her closer and closer to the ground above.

She found herself at a station, evidently out of use for many years. The windows were grimy and shattered, the roof was broken all over. Even as she observed it, a tile fell off into the blue abyss. An old sign hung on a hinge, allowing Eve to read its neatly lettered 'Next tram will be at'. This place was destroyed long before the crisis.

Eve could only imagine what it was like in its heyday.

She continued forward, but stopped herself abruptly. Where the metal bridge crossed the road ahead, there was a fissure between her stretch of track and the next. Eve cursed the truck or bus that must have smashed into it. Then she took the curse back, remembering that lives may have been lost in the process.

She needed to find another way. Turning back towards the station, she noticed a man-hole lid directly above her - a service tunnel entrance.

Balancing on her tiptoes, she managed to get a grip on its rusty handle and tugged hard until it opened with a force that almost sent her over the edge. She dropped the lid into the sky and pulled herself into the gloomy opening. She rooted through her backpack, pulling out a torch and searching through the weak light for the fuse box.

It was just ahead of the hole, and Eve's face lit up like the bulbs around her. She was safe in here, inside the earth itself, and she could follow this tunnel all the way to the city centre. Hopefully there would be others there, others that had a better solution than she did. Others that knew what the heck was happening.