In this little extract Helen, alone on the space station is witnessing the end of the Earth with the realisation that she is completely alone – the last human being.
I wanted to write a novel that started at the end and only had one character. This was the scenario I conceived. It was a challenge.
God’s Bolt: Amazon.co.uk: Forsythe, Ron: 9781092713597: Books
Extract
I forced myself not to give in to hysteria. Once I’d started down that road there was no telling where it would end. But once those thoughts were born they could not be unborn. I kept feeling what it was like for a wall of searing heat to vaporise a human being. That is what had happened 4 billion times.
Despite the logic of my own eyes I kept imagining that somewhere down there, perhaps in a submarine at depth, someone would have survived. But I knew that was impossible. The thin crust of the world had been fractured into a million pieces. The tectonic plates would have been ripped apart. I knew the science. I’d seen the magnitude of the impact. The magma was flowing freely, the oceans boiled. Nothing could have survived – at least no life of any sophisticated nature. I had no doubt that the extremophiles, the bacteria and algae adapted to extreme temperatures of volcanoes and underwater vents, would survive. In a billion years or so perhaps the planet would be green again and a new range of organisms would call the planet home. But what good was that to me?
Strangely I did not feel like screaming like they do in the tridee movies, though I thought that maybe I should. No tears came to my eyes, no swearwords to my lips. It was beyond all that. I was completely numb.
I think I spent hours, days, in a stupor just staring down at the raging planet and not registering a single thought. I did not eat or drink and not even Eunice’s chiding registered with me. My universe had been blown apart. Everything I loved was gone. I could not take it in. Somehow, despite the obviousness of the possibilities, I had not prepared myself for this. It was too big, too enormous. I still refused to believe it. Perhaps it would all settle down and be OK?
I was outwardly calm, though the inside of my head was raging as it futilely tried to absorb the facts. It was gone. The whole Earth was gone. They were all gone. I would never see anyone again – not anybody. I would never see green fields or blue skies ever again. I was on my own. I would spend the rest of my days in this Space Station, this cage, this hell. I would never see Mum and Dad, or Joe and Richard. They had been burnt alive, seared to a crisp. Everything was just ash. My friends and lovers were gone. They were seared with fire. Seared to cinders. Everything was destroyed, smashed, broken, burnt, consumed, swamped with magma, broken apart. There was nothing to heal. I was on my own. I was on my own. I was on my own. For the rest of my days I was stuck in this prison. I would never breathe proper air. I would never walk on the Earth’s soil. The silly thought came into my head and tore at me – my dog was gone. All dogs were gone. All animals were gone. They were flecks of heated ash in a hurricane of fire. Nothing could have survived. I was on my own.
My head was roaring like the atmosphere on Earth. My mind was raging like that hurricane on Earth. It was eating me up.
I think I was trying to shock myself into reacting, to feeling something. But the feelings would not come.
I stood mindlessly staring out at the ball of fire below me and that ball of fire was in my head. What it was doing to the planet it was doing to me – eating me alive. That naked molten lava was in my head burning my brains. It was agony. Those hurricanes of fire were burning up my thoughts, whirling them into raging whirlwinds of scattered meaningless thoughts. My sanity was whirling, spinning, tearing itself apart. It was a monster. It was something out of my worst nightmare but thousands of times worse!
It was all pointless, all hopeless. I could not face it. I could not face the future. I did not want to be alive. They were all gone. Why me?? WHY ME!!! I FUCKING DID NOT WANT TO BE ALIVE!! I WANTED TO BE WITH THEM!!!! I WANTED TO BE WITH JOMO!!!!