Paint Over the Stars (This Filtered Sky Book 1) Read online

  Paint Over the Stars

  By Letitia Glade

  This Filtered Sky –1

  Text copyright © 2016 Letitia Glade

  All Rights Reserved

  Zeke’s hands were itching. Disgusted, he dumped the plate he was holding into the murky sink water. A tuneful crunch followed. He huffed and left the kitchen.

  “Finish the dishes, Ezzy,” his mother called.

  “That new washing up liquid’s toxic!” He started climbing the stairs.

  “It’s the same one we’ve always used.” She had appeared at the door to her study, half-chewed biro in hand.

  “Something’s up with the water then.” He didn’t even pause on reaching the landing, instead continuing to his room.

  “Ezzy, please.”

  “Later!” He hated that disappointed whine in her voice.

  Into his bedroom he went, slamming the door behind him. A moment of calm. He opened the door a crack.

  “Careful, there’s a smashed glass or something in the sink,” he shouted.

  There was an exaggerated sigh from downstairs. He was surprised she’d heard him with all those televisions she kept on to ‘stay on top of the news’. Not only that, she didn’t insist he ‘star jump that frown away’. Maybe she’s finally accepted the fact I’m not a kid anymore.

  With the door closed and the lights off, Zeke tried to soak in the quiet darkness. His mind was far too active to let that happen, so he settled on his large floor cushion and dug his phone out of his pocket. The homemade wi-fi camera perched on his bookshelf was currently filming his window. He slipped on the prescription safety goggles hanging from his neck (no point hunting for his actual glasses) and used his phone to tap into the camera’s feed. Darkness. He switched over to night vision and surveyed the mess of clothes, technology books, sci-fi movies, and electronics strewn about his room. Mum… Always going on at me to tidy and decorate... ‘Put some life in here!’ she says…Why? All I need is more space. Taking over the garage is a quick fix not a solution. Definitely moving out after sixth form. If I get that uni scholarship I won’t even have to pay for it. Just a few more months.

  He set his phone aside and stared into the void, an illusion created by his black painted walls. Think up something awesome, brain. Neurons fired and he was presented with a split mountain. Wan blue light spilled from its exposed core and played along the liquid mercury bleeding from its sides. Amber-scarlet ribbons danced above; an aurora tugged from the sky, seeking to knit the wound closed. Zeke wanted to steal those ribbons for himself. He wanted—needed to get inside the mountain, to find the source of its light—its power. He came to the foot of the giant, looked up and saw…glow-in-the-dark stars. They were stuck to his ceiling. Illusion ruined. Groaning, Zeke draped his arm over his eyes and tried to summon the mountain back. Nope. It was gone.

  He almost painted over those stars once, thinking to match the ceiling to the walls, but then he’d remembered his Dad sticking them there one by one, and how eager he’d been to help. There’s still a pot of black paint in the shed. The stars go tomorrow.

  A manic yipping began outside. Sure, the wind was really picking up, but did that warrant a full-scale alert? No. And the dog wouldn’t stop.

  “Shut up!” Zeke growled.

  He levered himself up, stalked over to the window and raised the blinds. Light from his neighbour’s window played across the fur of the little Yorkshire terrier, turning it into some kind of skittish bronze gremlin. Zeke opened the window and yelled, “Shut up, idiot!”

  The dog howled into the night. That plaintive note slid right under Zeke’s skin making him shiver. Something wasn’t right. He grabbed the wi-fi camera from his shelf and returned to the window. Ignoring the dog, he looked out across the back gardens, using the camera’s night vision to augment his sight. No dubious shadows lurked in the darkness. The wind-whipped trees held nothing that couldn’t be identified. The dog was back to growling and yipping. Really? Zeke sighed, rolled his eyes to the sky and froze. It was a clear night, no clouds, but the darkness of the sky seemed a little…close. He frowned. Where are the stars?

  “Ezzy!” his mum shouted.

  He was about to yell back when the floor opened up and he found himself falling through the splintering bones of the house. He landed hard on kitchen tiles. Winded. He coughed in an effort to refill his lungs.

  “Ezzy?” his mother shrieked.

  “What?” he snapped on impulse.

  She burst into the wrecked kitchen covered in dust.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Not waiting for a response, she strode across the room and dragged him to his feet. She seemed overjoyed that he could stand on his own. A niggling pain in his chest made it hard for him to join the celebration.

  “What’s going on?” he gasped out.

  “Get your shoes on. We’re leaving.”

  “What the hell is—”

  “I’ll explain in the car. Move it, Ezekiel!”

  Still holding his arm, she fairly threw him towards the door. He staggered, righted himself and stared at her open-mouthed. His bubble-delicate mother had become a woman on a mission, raiding every cupboard not blocked with debris and shoving dry foods and cans into a washing up bowl. All the while she muttered things like, ‘They’re early.’, ‘Should’ve prepared better.’, ‘Where’d I put the spare batteries?’, ‘Army knife? Swear it was in this drawer’, ‘So early…’

  Zeke backed out of the room, his mind struggling to process the situation, but it was hard with the sound of car alarms and screaming neighbours and that wind. Hurricane? Surprise tornado? There hadn’t been any weather warnings and they were in London, not their house in Illinois. That sort of unannounced stuff didn’t happen in the UK! He turned to find his trainers, only to be stabbed in the sole of his right foot. Glass. Colourful shards of what had been the winning features of an ugly chandelier were scattered across the floor. His trainers were in the midst of it all, but he managed to retrieve them safely. Knocking each one against the stair bannister a few times removed any lingering hazards before he wiggled them on.

  The laces were a challenge. His fingers kept getting tangled, but eventually he managed to tie them. Next came his jacket. It was a struggle to pull it on over his hoody. His arm wouldn’t go through the first sleeve. He looked down to see his phone still clutched in his trembling hand. The camera was on the floor having fallen from his grasp. Staring at its cracked lens woke something in Zeke and he started heading for his room, intent on getting his tools.

  “Don’t!” his mother shouted. “Help me get all this to the car.”

  Her hand against his face gave him pause, warm and gentle, despite the harsh resilience in her eyes.

  “Please, Ezzy.”

  He pulled his gaze away. This isn’t a dream. Something seriously bad is happening and Mum’s stuck until I can get my head in gear. We’re in danger and I’m making it worse by standing here like my brain’s in space. Trust Mum. She knows something. Plus...she’s Mum.

  Some of the canned goods hadn’t made it into her washing bowl. He drew a steadying breath, pocketed his phone, finished getting his jacket on and gathered up the stray cans. The messenger bag he used for college was at the foot of the stairs. The cans went inside, along with the camera, padded by a wodge of clothes and anything else that had fallen from his room that could fit inside. Finished, he slung the bag across his back, took the washing bowl from his mother and gave her a firm nod.

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  She surprised him with a fierce hug. His ribs complained, but he made no move to stop her.

  They sp
rung apart as what sounded like a mass of microphone feedback underpinned by the scrape of fistfuls of cutlery against a thousand plates pealed out around them. It reverberated through Zeke’s gut and sent urgent signals to his bladder. He held on, barely, even as his mother grabbed a couple of overflowing shopping bags and pulled him outside to her little, tomato-red car. Zeke yanked the backseat door open and dived in, washing bowl first. His mum was already in the driver’s seat revving the engine.

  “Seatbelt,” she said, voice clipped.

  For once he didn’t protest as he fastened himself in. He only had a moment to look back at his house—the half still standing—before his mum had them speeding down the road.

  “What the hell was that sound?” he yelled.

  “I don’t know.” Her calm voice was a crutch for Zeke’s failing sanity. “Jesus, help us get there.”

  “Where?”

  “Your father’s.”

  There was no humour in it—the running joke that the lab at Ridtech was his father’s actual home. Resentment clawed its way up Zeke’s throat and made him say something he’d only ever voiced in his head. His mother’s knuckles paled on the steering wheel.

  “Don’t ever say that,” she said coolly, “not about him, understand?”

  “Just stating facts,” he mumbled.

  “Ezekiel!” She took a breath, visibly calming herself. “Ignoring the reasons behind those facts makes life harder, more painful. Your father’s been working harder than everyone to prepare for all this, prevent it if possible—working harder than everyone.”

  “What do you mean? What is all this?”

  “The end.”

  “Being cryptic just freaks me out.”

  She offered no comfort, only glanced at him, the rear-view and the side mirrors before returning her focus to the windshield and the road ahead. Traffic was building; other people hurrying to get clear of…something. Zeke needed to find out what.

  The suburban roads had odd dips and lumps that weren’t supposed to be there and in some places, water was springing from broken pipes, eager to claim the land. Most of the streetlights had stopped working. Car lights cut through the night picking out damaged houses and people: a girl in a muddy nightdress crying on the pavement; a set of terraced houses looking like some sort of giant bull had rammed into them, flattening the first two; a man wandering around shirtless with a red-stained tea towel pressed to his head; a block of flats missing its second floor as if removed with surgical precision, leaving the third and top floors perfectly suspended on nothing. Some houses were missing entirely as if uprooted by a giant trowel, or simply tucked out of sight. Zeke’s brain, unable to make sense of what he was seeing, appealed for help.

  “What’s happening?” he whispered.

  “We’re under attack.” His mother’s firm voice grounded him a little.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “It’s a hostile takeover.”

  “And the hostiles are?” he urged.

  “Ask your father when we get there.”

  She kept repeating her mirror-checking ritual while mumbling prayers under her breath, making his panic level inch dangerously close to hysteria. Here they were in an obnoxious red car, trying to get from point A to B without drawing the attention of clearly very powerful enemies. Zeke shook his head then gave a cry of alarm. A minivan was barrelling towards them on the passenger’s side, driverless and out of control. His mother bit back a curse and accelerated. The minivan’s headlights flooded the car, painting in stark relief the look of grim determination on her face. A breath. Impact. The two ton minivan slammed into their shoebox of a vehicle.

  Inhaling was agony. Exhaling triggered coughing that racked his body with pain and made him taste metal. In the peace between each tortured breath was a sound, thready and insistent. Zeke couldn’t quite catch its meaning, but with every motion of his lungs he hurt a little less. He started to piece together the scraps of memory replaying behind his closed lids. We crashed. The thready sound was petering out. Is that Mum calling me? Zeke moaned a response, but all he heard back was rushing water. Water…in the car? His eyes flew open to see gallons of liquid death flooding in. I’m going to drown. He yelled this revelation even as he realised the car was resting on the driver’s side and he was dangling safely out of harm’s way.

  “Mum?” Fear sharpened his voice.

  Silence. He started wrestling with his seatbelt. He called to her again. No reply. Something gave and he tumbled towards her. A grunt of pain was forced from his chest on impact. No time. He clawed his way up the driver’s backrest and into the front of the car. His mother was so still; no rise and fall of her chest as she coloured the water red. He tugged her seatbelt loose and eased her up, just enough to press trembling fingers to her neck, then her wrist, then her neck again, urgently searching. No pulse. No! There wasn’t enough room to perform CPR.

  “Mum!” What do I do? What do I do! “You’re not dead. You’re not dead!”

  He splashed about, hunting for a solution. There! A red object, the car’s emergency hammer, was fixed to the dashboard. He wrenched it free and started hacking at the windscreen. With a muted crunch, the glass spider-webbed and Zeke was able to kick and shoulder his way outside. He turned back to pull his mother out, but she wasn’t there, neither was her car. What the— His bag clattered to the ground nearby, startling him. Where did that come from? He looked up and saw the tomato-red car being meticulously separated into its component parts; everything slithering apart regardless of how it was originally fixed together. His mother was up there too, laid flat and so pale, surrounded by floating red pearls.

  With a shout of rage Zeke launched himself into the air, trying to snatch her back, but his hands grasped at nothing and he landed heavily on jagged asphalt. She’s too far away! The earth heaved forcing him onto his back and he watched in nauseated horror as his mother and the dismantled car slid away into nothing as if the night itself placed everything in a drawer and pushed it quietly shut.

  “Mum!” he screamed.

  She was gone.

  Zeke laid there, thoughts disconnected, as he tried and failed to see beyond the swallowing darkness. A light rain started. Blue light flashed against rising plumes of smoke; the emergency services trying to respond to the hell unfolding. As their sirens joined the wail of the wind and people, something moved deep within Zeke, a burning atlas stone, larger than he could contain grinding its way up into his throat. He clenched his teeth, refusing to join the mourning masses. He couldn’t afford to be disabled by grief, not while under attack by unseen enemies. I will not become a victim. He staggered to his feet.

  The mental strain of keeping himself functional didn’t leave space for much else, so his brain defaulted to the last instruction that made sense: go to his father’s. He fished his bag out of dingy water and slung it across his back. Something glinted in the space where it had been, the metal ring of a seatbelt buckle. Was it from the car? Maybe it was his. Maybe it was his mother’s. He put it in his pocket. The rain became heavier. He zipped up his jacket, put on his hood, and blocking out everything around him for fear of failing, trudged the rest of the way to the lab that sat on a hill.

  Ridtech’s backlit sign was flickering intermittently and a small crowd was storming the facility’s main gate. Zeke guessed they were like him; family and friends of those who worked there, also equipped with some vague notion of sanctuary. None of them knew the place like he did apparently, or they would also be swarming the small, squat structure some distance away. He called out to them as his feet carried him on, but no one heard his weary voice. Never mind. His last dregs of energy were needed for what came next.

  Inside the shed-like building was a hidden ladder leading down. Rung by rung as Zeke descended, he could almost see the bob and sway of his dad’s torchlight below. He was seven and they were brave explorers, venturing into an alien base on some distant moon, ready to ‘Ooh’ and ‘Ahh’ at all the wonders inside. It was so importan
t to keep these trips a secret. He didn’t realise how important until the day, he was working with his dad on a solderless breadboard and a man in a black suit stormed into the lab and shouted at them. His mum did a lot of shouting too when they got home. Only his dad was allowed to return to the lab after that, which he did with increasing frequency, staying for longer and longer periods of time. “It’s not your fault, Ezzy,” his mother assured him daily, “Daddy has important work to do which he shouldn’t be doing with you.” She always caught Zeke when he tried to sneak out, but he kept trying anyway for a good few years, whether they were in London or Illinois. His dad needed his help for his research, he’d said so more than once, or was it simply a workaholic’s way of escaping the guilt of failing his son?

  Zeke’s feet hit the ground. He turned to face a sturdy metal door, different from the one he expected; newer, thicker. There was also some kind of high-tech, multimodal biometric scanner fixed to the wall, no doubt the key to gaining entry. Of course it flashed red when he used it, a definite ‘no’. This is where I have to be. I will get inside. Zeke balled his fists and hit the door. The dull thud was somehow satisfying, so he did it again and again, pounding and kicking his hurt and rage into the door until his fists flailed at nothing and his feet met air. The door was open.

  Zeke stared at the scrawny, unshaven man who opened it. The man stared back with bloodshot eyes lit with recognition. With a snarl, Zeke readied his fists again, but before he could strike, the man lunged at him, trapping Zeke in his bony arms.

  “Ezzy!” the man said. “I’m so glad you’re safe!”

  Zeke’s mind went through the usual muddle of emotions when meeting his father: anger, concern, admiration (a dwindling amount), the smidgen of love he couldn’t shake and a seething tubful of hate.

  “Get off, Stuart!” he growled, wrenching himself free.

  Stuart stiffened then let his shoulders drop.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “You’re drenched! Where’s your mother?”