The Shift

One of the Fallen lay splayed across the tiled floor on its back. Its eyes looked ready to pop out of their sockets and its body, if you could call it that, looked about as broken and unrecognizable as he had come to expect. It began dragging itself by its only remaining limb along the floor. Every move was strained with the pop of broken bones, and the path behind it was stained with congealed gore. Neil almost felt pity for it, watching as it panted with excitement while writhing along the ground towards him.

Pushing away some of the floating debris in his path, Neil gathered up the coils of his safety line, released his hold on the grocery aisle shelves and gently propelled himself higher into the air away from the creature.

“Creature,” He thought, “so that’s the word we’re using now.”

Holding his breath as he floated through a viscous mass of perished food items, he considered how similar he was to the once human thing below him. Both hungry, both desperate to survive. It had been many months since the Shift. Neil was one of the lucky ones on the day when the sky had its fill. He shuddered at the memory of bodies rising upwards, his wife flailing desperately as she floated away from him into nothing. Clutching at his chest as if to ensure it was still there, his fingers closed around the necklace his wife had given him. A heart-shaped locket with her picture inside. He had teased her for buying such a corny gift, but now it was the only picture he had left.

He twisted in the air as he approached the ceiling, using his feet to slow his ascent. He spotted a bottle of water among the debris and unzipped his backpack. The Fallen beneath him gurgled and made feeble swiping motions at the air. They were the worst part of this whole mess. Some of the poor souls that had floated away had come back. For days after the Shift, he remembered hearing the periodic crunching impacts of bodies hitting the ground, seemingly no longer affected by the gravitic anomaly. Neil felt sick to his stomach, at the morbid thought that one of them might have been his wife. He had soon realized that the people that came down weren’t the same as the ones who had gone up. When the fallen bodies began moving, he kept his distance. When he saw one pull down the floating body of a chained-up dog and eat its flesh, he began carrying an ice-pick on his supply runs.

He stuffed the water bottle into his backpack and zipped it closed. Finding good drinking water was one of his biggest challenges. When things began to float away, the water went with them. He imagined that people along the coast might have seen the entire ocean rise up into the sky.

A whizzing noise from outside snapped him back to attention. Someone was using the cable he had run to the front door. He unclipped his ice pick and pushed off the ceiling to find cover behind one of the aisles. The zipping sound was punctuated by the thud of boots impacting the glass exterior of the building. Two large men floated in through the entrance. The survival instinct that had served Neil well so far told him they look like trouble. Much to his dismay, the Fallen on the ground, having been enlivened by his descent behind the aisle, had inched its way beneath him and begun making awful gurgling sounds.

“One of them fuckin’ things are in here,” said one of the men with a tone of disgust.

Realizing his chances of remaining hidden were low, Neil floated up and revealed himself. Both men froze.

“It’s okay. I was just leaving,” Neil reassured them.

The men remained silent, glancing around furtively. Neil noticed one of them was brandishing a crowbar. Hoping to defuse the tension, He clipped his ice pick back to his belt and showed his hands as a gesture of good faith. The favor was not returned.

“Anyone else hiding in here we should know about?” The crowbar man eventually asked.

Neil shook his head.

“No, just me,” he replied.

He immediately regretted offering that information. The two men shared a silent nod, pushing off from the entrance and propelling themselves slowly in his direction. One veered to the left towards the back of the store. The one with the crowbar floated directly at him.

“Good haul? Find any water?” The approaching man questioned innocently.

“No, not this time,” Neil lied, edging back down the aisle.

His mind started racing to come up with a plan. He could attempt to launch himself at the entrance, but it was more than likely he would be stopped by the crowbar guy. The other man had circled around to the back of his aisle now, hedging him in. He unclipped his ice pick hoping he might deter them, but they kept advancing towards him. Neil wasn’t about to give up his supplies. The water was too precious.

He gripped his ice pick tightly and sprung into action. He kicked off hard, using the aisle shelf to propel himself towards the entrance. Anticipating this move, the two men were ready, propelling themselves to cut him off. At the last second, Neil twisted in the air and hooked his ice pick into the shelf, completely halting his momentum. The men could not change direction in time, colliding into one another in a tangled heap. Neil quickly flipped around using the time he had bought and relaunched himself towards the entrance while his assailants were occupied. He thought he was far clear of them when he felt a terrible jolt that sent him spinning uncontrollably back the way he came. During his fancy maneuver, his safety line had come loose, unfurling behind him. Crowbar guy had one hand on Neil’s line and one hand on an aisle shelf, reeling him in like a fish. He saw the tip of the crowbar rise up as the man wound up a strike. Neil kicked out his legs and covered his head, attempting to protect his face from the inevitable blow. The crowbar arched downwards, its curved tip sinking deep into Neil’s thigh. Dark globules of blood rose up from the wound like crimson bubbles. He let out an involuntary cry of pain and felt a shot of rage invigorate his next move. As his feet contacted the crowbar guy, he allowed the inertia to carry his upper body forward, bending at the waist. With a whip like motion, he swung his ice pick around in a wide curve aiming for the side of crowbar guy’s head. The man tried violently rocking his head back to avoid the blow, but he wasn’t quick enough. Neil’s pick sank into the flesh of crowbar guy’s cheek, and the man’s rapid backwards jerk caused the pick to tear through his cheek and lip like butter. The crowbar guy howled in agony shoving Neil away and wrenching the bar from his thigh. Neil choked and spluttered as he accidentally inhaled one of the newly erupted blood globules in another involuntary cry of pain. Crowbar guy’s accomplice, who had been slightly dissuaded by the ice pick, saw an opportunity, and launched towards Neil’s outstretched weapon. The man collided with Neil, firmly grasping his wrist while sending them into a spiral towards the windowpanes at the front of the store. Still coughing, Neil desperately fought for control of the ice pick as they pivoted around it, gaining more and more momentum. His precious locket slipped out from under his shirt, catching the sunlight beaming through the fast-approaching window. Neil felt a brutal thump to the right side of his head, causing a stinging sensation in his ear. Little shards of glass drifted past his face, glinting in the sunlight now heating his skin. He felt warm and fuzzy.

“It’s actually a really beautiful day today,” was the last thought he had before his vision went black.

Neil dreamed of swimming through a sea of bodies, fighting to make it to the top. Every time he got close to breaking the surface for a breath, more bodies fell from the sky to cover him. He was drowning, drowning in a sea of Fallen.

With a gasp so hoarse it made his eyes water, Neil jolted awake. His eyes were blurry and struggled to adjust, and his body was cold and stiff.

“Where am I?” He thought, “why is it so hard to breathe?”

As his vision became clearer, his heart leapt into his throat. It was night-time, and Neil stood hovering upside down about thirty feet off the ground. His heart-shaped locket had managed to tentatively snag onto the telephone pole below him, nearly choking him to death. With a gasp, he shot out clammy hands to grab hold of the top crossbar section of the telephone pole. The sharp movement caused the locket to dislodge just as he secured his grip on the pole. It must have been the last straw for the necklace because the chain seemed to disintegrate in front of him. It was almost as if the locket had been holding out just for Neil to wake up. The open locket and fragments of chain floated up past his head giving him one last glimpse of his wife. He dared not reach for them. The adrenaline coursing through him made his grip feeble and shaky. He watched with tears in his eyes as the locket slowly drifted out of reach. He pulled his chest to the crossbar and hugged it with his arms, gulping air furiously and willing his chest to stop hammering. Neil heard familiar faint gurgling noises coming from below him. Looking down he could make out one of the Fallen clawing at the base of the pole. It wasn’t the same Fallen from inside the store though. Neil recognized this one. It was the man who had burst through the window with him, now broken and disfigured from the fall. A glimpse at Neil’s fate if not for the heart-shaped locket.