The London Eye is meant to take around half and hour, gradually climbing four hundred and fifty feet above the River Thames to allow the passengers to gaze around central London until the capsule aligns with the ground base once more. It's done the same routine since 1999 with no signs of change until one lone employee made their last stand and tried to save what would remain the last of humanity in England until night fell once more.
The date was June 5th 2017 and pod 12 was almost at full capacity despite it being a Monday evening, then again tourists come and go whenever they please or so it seems. Aside from murmurs among the many residents of London that dead strays had been found stuffed into alley corners and birds were falling from the skies more than normal, everything was proceeding as always.
The children pressed their faces against the glass, noticing with distant interest that there was some kind of black cloud coming in and down like a fog video fast-forwarded. They asked their parents what it was only to hear vague answers about London smog. Soon everyone's attention was turned to the gradual miasma seeping its way through the streets.
Then came the faint sound of screaming. Of course being over three hundred feet up and counting made it harder to hear but when the wind changed directions it was all they could hear, even over the radio music playing in the pod. The black fog blocked their view of the streets but huge crowds of people were running away from it.
The Eye began to speed up, the employees at the base were trying to rush everyone off and to safety, evacuating as many pods as fast as possible. In their panic several people and a pram slipped right off the platform and into the Thames, being swept slowly towards the incoming darkness with screams and splashes in equal measure.
Just as pod 12 drifted past the peak by mere inches the Eye stopped entirely. Unbeknownst to them the last remaining employee (Sandra, aged 31 and staring at a cloud made of screams and teeth) had sabotaged the controls, setting them to remain fixed in place, realising that the only way to keep the people safe was to keep them elevated and hope they stay safe until this passed. She died surrounded by crowds of people all unable or unwilling to run.
To either side of the passengers were pods 11 and 13, one full to the brim, the other half empty and both full of terrified people wondering why they had stopped moving and why they weren't being evacuated like everyone else. Arguments started up quickly in pod 11 while pod 12 tried to remain calm (for the children's sake, she's only five and let's not scare her any more than she is please). It was mere minutes before a punch was thrown and the children were turned away as blood and bodies began to splatter against the glass, cracking and eventually breaking it. Their screams joined the chorus below as the survivors of pod 11 clung to the far rails, weeping and nursing injuries.
As morning began to creep across the sky the black fog retreated to the outskirts of London and the carnage it left behind had stained everything up to twenty feet high in blood. The Eye began to descend, much to the passengers horror and before they knew it they were standing in ankle-deep blood. They kept together all day, calling out for survivors and being met with the deafening silence of a city killed in its sleep.
Spying the gruesome tidal mark they decided to head to the closest skyscraper and keep to the top floor, hoping that they would be kept safe but all wondering the same thing.
Now that it's fed, will it grow and by how much?
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