Black Feathers

67

What Gordon found that day was a crack in the world.

He didn’t see it until the moment before he fell in. The soil in front of him, now featureless for miles to either side, began to rise gradually. The gradient slowed his already laboured progress. Something about the slope seemed unnatural, but so did everything around him now. The earth near the top of the slope began to fall away from him and he slid after it, seeming to defy gravity. Instinct seizing him, he dropped to the ground, turning and crawling back down the slope.

As he scrambled, he felt the earth falling away beneath his legs. He paddled at the earth to get away from the landslide but the weight of his pack pushed his hands deep into the claggy soil, slowing him. He felt his legs sucked down and away behind him, and made one final frog hop, away from the falling ground. He gained the air for barely a moment, not showing the strength he’d hoped for, landing with his face in the mud.

Around him everything had stopped. His feet hung in space, the weight of the mud on them bending his knees unpleasantly against their natural range. He pulled himself forwards through the mud, hauling his feet back onto what he hoped was solid ground, and crawled a few feet farther just to be sure. He stood carefully and turned to face the precipice.

He stood at the very edge of a rift about a hundred yards wide. On its opposite side, the world continued but in between was a black chasm he couldn’t measure the depth of without putting himself back in danger. The other side of the rift was lower by a hundred feet or so. Gordon couldn’t decide whether his side had been thrust upwards or the other side had sheared off and fallen down. It didn’t matter much – crossing the gap was impossible.

One heartening fact was clear. The other side had not been destroyed the way his side had. He could see buildings and roads and people and even animals. The trees were particularly laden with birds. There was damage: buildings leaned or were toppled; some houses had cracked in half; roofs had collapsed; the nearest road was buckled and split, no longer passable by any kind of vehicle; unmoving people lay half covered by rubble; others walked without purpose, wailing at the destruction; some sat with their heads in their hands and rocked on their haunches in shock. Bloodied cows and sheep stood among the damage, skittering away from movement when they were approached, otherwise staring forwards in their own post-traumatic fugues. Wounded people and animals wandered everywhere, their cries mingling.

This must have been the outskirts of a town, Gordon decided. Near enough to the fields that the animals trapped by fences and hedges had broken through in their terror and made for the relative safety of the community.

There was no sign of emergency vehicles. The town extended into the distance, reminding Gordon of old footage from the blitz. Most of the buildings were ruined and grey with dust. Smoke rose in grey and black streamers from a hundred fires, creating dirty smog in the sluggish, windless air above the town.

Gordon tried to gauge how far the rift extended. He could see no end to it. To his right, though, it did appear to narrow. That was the direction he ran in.