ABHORS A VACUUM

ABHORS A VACUUM

by Jeff Somers

In the middle of the day, there usually wasn’t much drama on Franklin Court. It was a cul-de-sac, removed from the traffic of nearby Route 23, shielded by trees and the dead-end nature of its street. Kids played street hockey with a bright orange ball. The sound of sprinklers and lawnmowers gelled into a droning, hypnotic sound.

The houses were all ranch-style, and were similar in proportion and roof line. They varied slightly, following a regular pattern of variations that gave a superficial illusion of uniqueness. They were no longer new, and were showing their age with missing roof shingles, cracked siding, and broken driveway asphalt.

At eleven thirty-four in the morning, a Jeep Wagoneer turned off the main road, tires squealing, and sped down Franklin Lane towards the cul-de-sac. It picked up speed as it went, horn honking rhythmically to warn children and au pairs out of the way. People shouted and cursed. A few neighbors called the police—or tried to, encountering a busy signal.

The vehicle nearly clipped a tree as it barreled halfway onto the lawn of #34 Franklin Court and skidded to a halt. Dr. Ransom Hilary emerged from the driver’s seat, sweaty and wild-eyed. Ignoring the shouts of his angry neighbors, he ran into the house.

“Loraine!” he shouted. “Loraine!

Dr. Hilary was forty-seven but looked younger. His hair was slightly disreputable, owing to a general reluctance to engage in regular grooming. He wore thick-framed glasses that did yoeman’s work pulling his features into the general realm of handsome. His neighbors did not understand what he did for a living at Doylan Labs, or, in fact, most of his conversation. But in general he was liked.

Loraine Hilary ran down the stairs. She was ten years his junior, a slender, cheerful woman who could not adequately explain the affection and passion she had for her thoughtful, serious husband. Her dark hair was pulled back in a businesslike bun, and she still carried a can of furniture polish in her hand.

“What the—Ran, why are you home? What’s wrong?”

Dr. Hilary charged at her and took her by the shoulders. “The kids! Where are Elle and Lila?”

Loraine blinked, feeling real fear for the first time, she realized, in her entire life. She’d felt anxiety before. Discomfort. But never fear, feral and awful. “Out back, playing—”

“Get them,” Ransom ordered, spinning away. “Don’t pack anything. Don’t hesitate. Get the girls and bring them out front. Now. Something happened at the lab, and we have to go now.

He turned and ran towards the garage. For a moment, Loraine stood there, eyes wide, brow furrowed. She looked like she might burst into tears. Then she shook herself, dropped the can of polish, and ran in the opposite direction.

“Elle! Lila! Come this instant!” she shouted.

In the garage, Ransom went directly to a plastic cabinet and extracted a five-gallon container of gasoline and a red and white emergency pack. They’d purchased the pack online a few years before; it contained a basic first aid kit, water purification tablets, food for five people for seven days, bottled water, flares, and some basic equipment.

He carried both to the Wagoneer and put them in the back. Then he got in and started the truck again, ignoring the calls from neighbors. He sat with his hands white-knuckled on the wheel. A few seconds later Loraine burst from the front door, trailed by five-year old Elle and six-year old Lila, both dressed in muddy overalls. They looked on the verge of tears.

“In!” Ransom shouted.

“Ran—”

In!

She pushed the girls into the back seat, ordered them to buckle up, and climbed into the front. Ransom started the truck moving before she’d even managed to close the door. He spun the wheel and hit the gas, and the vehicle smacked into the house with a jarring thud that started the girls crying. Then he gunned it, sending a fountain of muddy grass against the walls of the house, and accelerated back onto the street. Neighbors came out to watch the truck speed off, eventually disappearing into the distance.

Small gatherings formed as homeowners came out to gossip, report what they’d seen, and speculate on the drama’s underlying details. The Hilarys were considered stable folks, nice enough, a bit weird. Ransom was well known for boring everyone with his impromptu science lectures, and Loraine was famous for acting as if her children were in constant mortal danger, chasing after them sing-songing Baby! Baby, be careful! She was so well known for this all of their neighbors had a Loraine Hilary impression, lilting baby! be careful!

Twenty-six minutes after the Hilarys’ sudden departure, the groups of people standing around chatting became aware of a low rumbling sound, a vibration in the ground under their feet.

A moment later, the Emergency Broadcast System alarm blared from every television and radio that was switched on. A moment after that, the power died and everything went quiet. People reached for each other, touching shoulders, moving closer. The rumbling noise grew louder, the light dimmed.

And on the horizon, a wall of dark gray foam appeared, moving slowly but inexorably.

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“It was a reaction!” Ransom shouted, hunched forward over the steering wheel.

“Slow down!” Loraine sobbed. “Jesus, Ran, slow down!”

The traffic was jammed up. The radio had become chaotic, stations disappearing without warning. Ransom steered the Wagoneer along the shoulder, popping up onto the greenway whenever he was blocked.

“Not slow down,” he said through gritted teeth. “We’re gonna hit a wall of cars soon and we have to get as much distance as we can. Something got in. An impurity, something breached the protocols and it reacted. The vault was supposed to hold it, but the tertiary locks failed. Then the secondary. That’s when I ran. We don’t have much of a lead!”

“You’re frightening me!”

“Good.”

+++

Back at the cul-de-sac, people began to scream.

It was as if cliffs had begun sliding towards them, or an immense mudslide. The gray foam churned and  bubbled, expanding in every direction. blocking the sky and invading or crushing everything in its path. As they watched, stunned, trees and power lines snapped under it. Houses first filled with the churning, foamy substance, then splintered as it expanded inside them.

People turned and ran.

At first the foam appeared to be moving quite slowly—a majestic approach of Armageddon. As it neared, however, it became clear that it was moving fast, a tidal wave of gray foam that looked like a massive, monolithic storm cloud, swallowing up everything in its path.

No one could run fast enough.

It smacked into the cul-de-sac with the force of an avalanche, shattering windows and making the houses groan on their foundations. People were crushed by the impact. Those who’d sheltered in place had a few more seconds before the foam, viscous and invasive, filled every void, expanding until the air was pushed out, until people were crushed, or suffocated, or, most commonly, both.

+++

“Where are we going?”

Ransom had managed to steer the Wagoneer off the road, and was now pushing it uphill, bouncing on rocks and logs that would inevitably destroy the suspension or blow a tire. He didn’t care. All he cared about was getting as far and as high as he possibly could with his family. He had the slimmest, smallest of advantages over everyone else. He’d had twenty minutes to work with. But now everything had leveled out—he didn’t have much more advantage on the people around them. Except possibly a slight advantage in knowing what was coming for them.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Higher. Further. As high and far as we can.”

Loraine twisted her fingers around each other, staring straight ahead. “What is it?”

Ransom blinked sweat from his eyes as he navigated between trees. The landscape was getting too wild; within a few minutes they would have to abandon the truck and start running. “I don’t know, precisely. A new state of matter, maybe. Or simply a runaway quantum reaction, altering matter it comes in contact with. Alternate dimensional particulate, maybe, or a teleported resting state re-arranging particles. I don’t know.” He blinked again. “Foam,” he finally said. “It’s like a thick, expanding foam. Like the stuff we used when we installed the new windows, remember?”

“I remember!” Lila shouted from the back seat.

Loraine glanced back at the girls. They were not afraid, or panicked. They were calm. They were strapped into the back seat and daddy was driving and if the destination was different and their parents’ mood a bad one, it wasn’t so different from a hundred other days.

“Foam,” Ransom said, nodding. “It expands … and expands. I don’t … I don’t know if it will ever stop expanding. Ever.”

Loraine turned to look at her husband, eyes red. “So—higher and further.”

Ransom nodded. “Maybe.”

A few minutes later he stopped the truck and put it in park. “Everyone out,” he said, pushing open the door. “We walk from here.”

He pulled the backpack on, then picked up Lila while Loraine picked up Elle, and they began hiking up.

“Higher,” Ransom wheezed. “As high as we can.”

Sweating and staggering, they climbed and climbed. Both girls began to cry. Ransom resisted the urge to look over his shoulder every few seconds. Loraine questioned herself each step of the way. What if her husband had gone crazy? What if nothing had happened? She reviewed the evidence, the dropping radio stations, her faith in her husband, who could be hilariously obtuse sometimes when it came to social niceties, but who had a remarkably clear-eyed view of the universe. He was, she thought, the one person in the world who could tell her the world was ending not in fire or ice but in some sort of quantum foam and not be met by incredulity.

“A cabin,” he grunted, gesturing with his free arm.

She looked. An old hunting cabin, dilapidated and rarely used, stood a few hundred feet up the mountain. She looked at her husband. “We need to rest,” she said. She wasn’t sure she would be able to go much further.

Ransom nodded and said nothing. They pushed themselves to the cabin, let the girls slide off of them. Ransom tried the door, found it locked, and located a key semi-hidden on top of the lintel.

The interior was dusty and cold, dark and quiet. The cabin was one large room, with a kitchen on one end and a fireplace on the other. Three small beds and a card table was the only furniture. The Hilary family slumped to the floor.

“It’s so quiet,” Loraine said. “Maybe we’re above it.”

Ransom shook his head, but said nothing. He could feel the vibration in the old floorboards, like a steady earthquake.

“Not long now,” he said.

Loraine thought the peaceful moment was a gift. Even when she became aware of the vibration, the deep, disturbing rumbling in the distance, she looked around the dusty, abandoned space and thought it wasn’t such a bad place to die. Here she was, with her family. They were together, not crowded in with other people, having tried their level best to survive. God, she thought, could not expect anything more from them.

She smiled at her girls and then at Ransom, but her husband just stared back at her, his eyes hollow.

The noise level rose, and the whole cabin began to shake.

“Close your eyes!” Ransom shouted. “Don’t hold your breath!”

Loraine’s smile faded. She studied her husband’s face, and her feelings of peace curdled. He stared at her, and his expression was grim and terrified. This will be bad, she realized. This wouldn’t be a sudden, possibly even exhilarating transition. This will be bad.

She looked at Lila and Elle. They were crying, clutching each other. She crawled to them and gathered them up in her arms. She reached out a hand blindly and felt Ransom take it, and then they were pushed against each other as the cabin shook and the roar became deafening.

Don’t hold your breath, she thought dumbly. Don’t hold your

The foam crashed into the cabin. The old, weak windows and door collapsed, and this kept the cabin from being pushed off its foundation. The foam surged into the room, smashing the furniture and pushing the Hilarys up against the far wall. Loraine felt incredible pressure, unbearable weight, and her breath being squeezed out of her. And then she opened her mouth in agony, and the foam pushed in.

When the cabin had been filled and buried, for a moment there were only a few small, interior spaces left. And then the foam filled those as well.

 

Fiction © Copyright Jeff Somers
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.+++

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