Page 3 of Out of the Blue
I’ve seen scenes like this on TV dozens of times, but it’s different this close up. I’d imagined fear on their faces, panic in the air. The members slither a little as they creep over the wet tiles, but most of them don’t look scared. Beneath the dirt, their expressions are cold and blank.
‘Jaya!’ Rani grips the edge of the bunk bed. ‘They havekidswith them!’
My mouth goes dry. She’s right: there’s boy of around thirteen up there, and a younger girl, maybe seven or eight. Unlike the adults, they’re obviously terrified. The girl has her eyes squeezed tight shut, as if making a wish, while the boy stares at the crowd gathering seven storeys below. His legs are shaking so much I’m sure he’ll slip. A small woman holds one of their hands in each of hers, but she doesn’t comfort them. She doesn’t even look at them.
‘I’m going to get Dad.’ Rani slides down and runs out of the room. The man by the chimneys switches his loudspeaker on. It gives a sickening squeal, but he doesn’t flinch.
‘Sinners.’ His voice is loud but calm, more a statement than an accusation. ‘For nearly eight months, angels have fallen from the skies. Not for millennia has the Creator sent so clear a sign of his wrath – but does Man repent? Does he scrub his soul of spite and greed, devote himself to a higher cause? No. He picks like a vulture at the bodies of angels, hungry for naught but blood and gold.’
I tell myself to turn away, just like I do when they come on TV, but my body won’t comply. Though their displays make my stomach churn and my head spin, there’s something about the Standing Fallen that forces me to keep looking. I’ve watched and rewatched the videos. I know the speeches off by heart.
The man on the rooftop pauses for effect, just like all the leaders do. It’s hard to tell how old he is. His beard hides one half of his face, and the other is coated in a thick layer of grime.
‘We represent no one church, no one religion,’ he says. ‘We are only a reminder: a reminder of the evils of greed and godlessness, the unwavering arrogance of the human race. We are a reminder of yoursin. No good awaits man on Earth now. Our only chance at redemption is to eschew earthly pleasures, to degrade our bodies as we have degraded this planet, to sacrifice our lives as so many have been sacrificed in the ruthless race for so-called progress . . . to repent and prove ourselves worthy of the freedom of the afterlife.’
Somewhere in the distance, a siren begins to wail. Someone on the street below is screaming. Tears are running down the little girl’s face; the boy tries to talk to her, but the woman snaps at him and he shrinks back. The speaker carries on, seemingly unfazed by the ruckus he’s creating.
‘We are the Standing Fallen.’ His voice swells with pride, though I’m sure it’s not supposed to. ‘As the Beings tumble, we take to the rooftops. We climb to remind you of the precipice upon which you teeter. We stand to remind you of how far you, too, could fall.’
In perfect unison, the followers place one foot on the rain gutter. My head spins. They won’t go through with it. The Standing Fallen have put on displays like this on Seoul skyscrapers and Caracas tower blocks; they even made it to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower back in April. They’ve tiptoed over cliffs and swung from scaffolding. They’ve threatened to jump countless times – but so far, they haven’t actually done it.
I know all that, but it doesn’t stop the sinking feeling in my stomach, or the pulse pounding in my ears –
The weightlessness in my legs –
The storm spinning in my head –
The last thing I see, before my eyes close and I hit the floor, is the boy on the roof bow his head and begin to pray.
THREE
It was our 9/11, our Princess Diana, our JFK. You’d always remember where you were when you heard about Being No. 1.
He landed on a street corner in Shanghai, 10.46 p.m., 7th December. An Italian tourist caught the whole thing on camera. He’d only meant to take a photo of his wife, but he pressed the wrong button and ended up creating the most-watched video on the internet. (Forty-six billion views, according to Rani’s latest update.) Though I’ve tried to avoid it, I’ve seen the clip so many times I can close my eyes and replay it in my mind, frame by frame.
First, a spot of silver appears in the smog orange sky. It hovers for a moment then quickly grows bigger, plummeting earthwards faster than the eyes can follow. Voices start to shout in Mandarin, Italian, English: it’s a shooting star, a meteor, a tumbling sun come to crush us all! But then the light twists and elongates, and two streaks of silver spread across the sky. Wings.
Broken wings.
If you pause the video at two minutes, thirty-one seconds, you can see the man’s face. There’s none of the noble peace you’d expect from an angel: he looks young and frantic and scared to death. He spins towards the skyscrapers, wings beating hopelessly. Even when he’s only a heartbeat from the ground, you’re sure he’ll somehow take off, back towards the heavens and to safety – but then, with an earth-shattering blast, he smashes face-first into the pavement.
Tyres squeal, horns blast, a cloud of dust mushrooms into the air. The chaos begins.
For days, it was all anyone could talk about. We swapped stories like football stickers, each hoping to find the shiniest. Sam and Marek were playing Xbox when one of Sam’s gamer buddies sent him a link. Emma’s Mormon cousins in the States posted a rapturous status on Facebook about it. Dad was watching the eight o’clock news, no doubt washed down with his fifth G&T of the evening.
Mum didn’t see it. She’d been dead for ten days by then.
I was at Leah’s house. She was cutting off my hair.
That’s what I remember most about that day. Not her mum hammering on the bathroom door, shouting about something we absolutely had to see, or watching that first blurry clip on her phone – I was sure it was a hoax, anyway, so I wasn’t paying that much attention. What I remember best is Leah’s fingers trembling as she picked up the scissors, and the quiver in her voice as she asked me for the hundredth time if I wassureI wanted to do this.
‘Oh my God, Leah –yes.’ I tugged on the hem of her T-shirt. ‘Come on! It’s just hair. It grows back.’
‘I don’t know, Jaya.’ Leah sighed. ‘I’ve never cut anyone’s hair before. I don’t think the Princess Jasmine doll I had when I was seven counts.’
‘Fine.’ I spun her mum’s kitchen scissors around my finger. ‘If you don’t do it, I will, and then you’ll have to shave my head to cover up the mess I’ve made.’
‘All right, all right!’ She snatched the scissors back. ‘Fine, I’ll do it. Just don’t blame me if you’re handing over eighty quid in Toni and Guy tomorrow, OK?’
