Helen is alone on the space station having witnessed the world destroyed by an asteroid, trying to come to terms with the realisation that she is the lone survivor.
God’s Bolt: Amazon.co.uk: Forsythe, Ron: 9781092713597: Books
Year 2178 – Impact day plus 1
I was in shock. My brain was not functioning. That hurricane of searing thought had ripped my mind to shreds. It had left me hollow, burnt out. I was empty. The inner storm had reamed me out. I was an empty shell. I simply could not take in what I had just witnessed. It could not possibly be real. It was all gone. In a few seconds everyone I had ever loved, everything I had known was gone. I was left here all alone. I would never see anyone again. I was on my own.
How could that possibly be?
It was not possible. I could not react to it because it could not be happening.
Somehow I wanted to rewind. I wanted it to be like it had been.
My rational mind had watched the spectacle take place. Some more primitive part of me did not believe it. I knew that it was not real. If I activated the communicator I would find the truculent voice of Brad Noone at the other end. I’d share some sweet talk with Happiness Ntobe and swap jibes with Neil and Janice. They were all still sitting in that control centre just like they’d been when I last saw them, just like they always were. My parents were still in our home in Sussex. It was surrounded with green trees. If I called they’d welcome me in and hug me. My brothers and their families were still there in their homes with their families. They would tag me in a minute just to check in. They did that. They liked to rib their little sister and make sure she didn’t get too cocky up there in space. The rainforests were still there. All those animals that had been nurtured so carefully. All those conservation projects. They couldn’t have all disappeared. Everything was just the same. It had to be. How could it possibly be gone?
I was trapped in this unreality, this fantasy that was whirring round in my head on a loop, carefully avoiding the reality of what had happened, not daring to touch the raw ends of the truth. Because if I just touched that, those things too terrible to think about, it would unleash that fury in my head again. It would release that monster and it would eat me up alive. I could not allow that to happen. I could not. I refused to accept it.
It could not possibly have gone. All I had to do was activate the communicator. They would answer just like they always did. It always worked. If I picked up the communicator we would connect and it would be just like it always was.
But I did not activate the communicator.
I don’t know what happened to time. From the moment that first impact had hit, it had all gone weird. The whole world around me had faded away. I was in some kind of bubble. It was a dream. That hurricane of fire in my head was not real either.
I could not think. My mind refused to work.
I kept reliving that impact in my head. It was like I was putting it in a microscope to examine it in detail. The great crimson gouge. The livid orange. The great splash of magma. The huge spume of livid flame that had engulfed the planet. I think I was trying to relive it so that it worked out differently. I wanted those missiles to nullify that menace. I wanted it to be just how they had assured me it would be. But every time I played it through in my head it was always the same. That great shudder. That silent explosion. The roar in the communicator and then nothing. Always the same.
But it had to be different.
I stared for hours at the billowing orange clouds. The Earth used to be green. This couldn’t be the Earth. This could surely not be the Earth. How was it possible? I think I was waiting for those livid clouds of superheated ash to settle and the clouds to part to reveal the Earth as it had been.
A part of me knew that was never going to happen. But I refused to accept it.
I ached. I ached in my arms and my upper body. My guts ached. It was liked I had been punched, used for a punch bag. It was the tension. I was screwing myself up. But I could not relax. My muscles were screwed into knots.
I wanted scream. I could not help prodding the monster in its lair. I could not. I could feel it all building up inside like an inner shriek that had no voice. It was tearing around in my head but could not find the exit, could not get out, whirling like a cyclone. I could not think. It was eating me alive. I was being ripped apart in a cacophony of disbelief, fury and outrage.
WHY ME!!! WHY FUCKING ME!!! Out of 4 billion human beings why was I the only one stuck on this fucking station? All alone. Why did I have to witness that? WHY ME?? All the people I knew – DEAD!! Everything I loved! EVERYTHING!! Why couldn’t I have been consumed in that fire along with all the rest??
The silent shouting in my head was building into a cacophony.
Eunice was prattling on at me. She was chiding me. I was not following my routine. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t drinking. I wasn’t sleeping. My stats were all over the place. But I didn’t really hear her. Her words just washed over me. Stupid machine! I didn’t want any fucking machine!! How did a lump of metal know anything? I wanted Jomo to take me in his arms and tell me it wasn’t real that it had never happened.
Every now and again I would calm down and try to rationalise it.
That first impact had done it. It was too big for anything to survive. I knew that.
The livid orange clouds had already covered the whole face of the planet when the other four huge meteorites had struck. Each one blowing another huge explosion up through the boiling atmosphere, flinging fresh magma skywards from the core of the planet, smashing tectonic plates, gouging out massive craters, unleashing flowing sheets of lava, flinging yet more ash into the seething atmosphere, unleashing vast heat to add to the devastating power.
Each one was probably sufficient to do the job. Five was overkill.
All the time that monster was raging in my head – just out of reach, subdued, held back but threatening to break through again and tear me to shreds. I was using all my strength to hold it back. It would just take one little thing for it to break through again. I was alone. I WAS FUCKING ALONE FOREVER!!