How the World Ends (10 page)

The truck is fairly easy to push out of the garage, but it takes me several turns to get it swung around and lined up with the driveway. I am about to start the long push down the driveway to get it started when I stop for a second. Gas. Cursing under my breath, I pop open the cap on the side of the vehicle and peer down inside. Nothing. I pull back and forth and the rear end to shake the truck and listen for the sound of sloshing liquid. Nothing.

I start looking around. Nothing in the garage. I smash a window and break into the house. Nothing there either, nor any food. Somehow I have become more urgent in my actions. The hunger is starting to wear through my limited stamina and a lingering worry about the situation in the city is weighing on me heavily.

I walk to the house next door. It has no garage, and the house is virtually empty, but there is a tiny garden shed around the back with a lawn mower in it and a small fuel can – full.

“Yes!” I yell out. Finally something is working out.

I jog back over to the Rover and pour the gas into it. Without stopping to worry about anything else, I start pushing. Holding the door ajar in front of me, I jump in when I get a little speed up. The engine coughs as I throw it into gear and release the clutch. It stalls.
Damn it – almost out of hill.
I give it another long push and throw it into gear without getting inside. The transmission immediately grabs and tries to stop the forward motion but I dig in and keep pushing with all my strength. Two steps – the engine grinds with a dry, grumbling sound – three steps, four steps – a little smoother now, easier to push – five six seven eight-nine-ten – the engine grabs! And I fall flat on my face as the truck nearly stalls again. I jump back up and hop foot first into the cab, jabbing my foot on the accelerator. The Rover roars to life and speeds up.

Without stopping, I cross over the railway track and head down the dirt road that, hopefully, connects these houses to the main road. It winds this way and that through thick undergrowth and grows increasingly muddy. Wheels spinning, I keep it moving forward until we begin to rise more and more away from the lake.

The road I cross first is actually a smaller side road that I haven’t been on before, but I take it, hoping that it isn’t blasted like the tracks.

But even that won’t help me get across the river if the bridges are gone.

I concentrate on keeping the Rover going in a straight line. The bumpy ride is probably the only thing keeping me awake at this point. I can tell there is a blast hole coming up when the road starts to bump with the waves in the pavement created by the shock of the explosions. I try to slow down a bit but I don’t see the crater in the road soon enough. I swing the wheel to the right and careen wildly on two wheels into the ditch and am quickly spinning the wheels in an attempt to get through the long grass.

I counter-steer against the skidding motion, pulling on the steering wheel with all my strength, a task made much more difficult due to the lack of power steering. The truck rights itself and swerves back onto the pavement, only to drop straight down into the crater of the blast-hole.

I struggle not to close my eyes, jockeying my foot on the brakes as I jam the transmission into low gear. I feel the wheels start to catch and the bottom of the ditch quickly approaches. I wait until the last possible second before impact to try and slow down as much as possible. As I kick the door open, I turn the wheel with my right hand hard to the right. The sideways motion of the Rover tosses me out of the vehicle and sliding down the side of the enormous hole. I continue to slide directly into the remnants of the bridge and into the river that it used to span.

The water rushes over my head just before I can get a breath and I suck murky, gritty coldness into my nose. I struggle for a moment just to overcome the momentum from the slide and start to kick my way upwards. There is a moment, when I am caught in the water, that seems to last an eternity, and I wonder if this hole will be my watery tomb. I don’t stop kicking though, and when my face breaks the surface I immediately cough and splutter out enough water to clear my lungs and gasp a few breaths in. Wet, cold and utterly exhausted, I manage to swim to the far side of the river and climb up to the bottom of the equally steep crater-hill on the far side.

Muttering to myself miserably about how commuting to the city had never had it so tough, I take a look over my shoulder to see what has become of the ancient Land Rover. Miraculously, it has rolled to a stop and stalled about halfway up the far side of the crater, with its rear-end pointing back down to the water.

For a fleeting moment I feel the urge to swim back over to it, just to see if I can jump start it in reverse and make it back up the way I came, but I pull myself away from minor miracles and lucky landings and continue to climb out of the pit. As I do, I hear a rush of water, and I turn just in time to see a huge crest of water smashing through from the other blast holes further down the river as the lake-water rushes backwards towards me. I just manage to reach a hand up onto solid ground and haul myself out as the wall of water crashes down behind me.

Chapter Twelve – Finding

Rachel

The sun of the morning touches the uniform rows of houses in the suburbs. It touches the grand houses first and eventually makes its way to the smaller ones in the shadow of the monsters. It touches the pond at the end of street, and the muskrat blinks with glassy eyes before it slips through the reeds in search of darker shadows and more certain safety.

The blue house with the apple trees out front is particularly splendid, Rachel thinks as she stands with her hands on her hips on the step of the front porch; the blossoms have appeared with fervour, and the bees will soon be transferring pollen from one tree to another with restless abandon. Like a threesome, she thinks, wondering, not for the first time, at the mysteries and vagaries of nature that confound us regularly.

Her companions, little Jewel and Gwyn rush past her feet, having consumed the last of the milk and juice in the warm refrigerator. The power is still off and the water did not turn on this morning either, so the worry about food and other basic necessities is a strong one. She thinks briefly about the car and its dwindling quarter-tank of fuel; it wouldn’t take her far, but would it take her to wherever Jonah was? Her worries about her family include her husband
out there
and the abhorrent thought that he might have abandoned them at this difficult time.

He had been acting strangely, though, and it is yet another cause for concern that furrows her brow. She cannot stop the smile from creeping onto her face, however, as she is infected by the glee and wonder that the children feel and radiate outwards as they dance and play, chasing each other, in the warm spring sunshine that seems to have a life all its own. For Rachel it is a reassurance, if only a small, imagined one, that the world is connected and held together by particles stronger than any normal force. She does not think beyond the need to wait for Jonah, to give him a chance to return.

Then
, she thinks,
he’ll have some explaining to do.
She smiles inwardly as she walks over to check on the family next door, who also have small children.
But he probably won’t even try; he doesn’t have to.

I’ll know.

…

Lucia

One of the beautiful things about being alive,
Lucia Hadly thinks to herself, ruminating,
is wondering why. Why why why why I am I still alive? Where is that death that I was promised, that I was doomed to? How is this possible when so many things were just pieces of a puzzle that fit rather neatly together?

She tries to smooth out her hair and clothes as she steps into the sunlight of early morning. Some who had shared the stairwell with her last night also blink their way into the daylight, while others choose the safety and uncertainty of darkness to the possibility of daylight. Lucia thinks only of escape. She knows it is just a matter of time before the terrible reality, which is euphemised by “depopulation,” begins.

The small crowd is joined by others from buildings nearby, and they walk slowly, almost aimlessly together down the street. The size of the crowd grows as others seek the safety of numbers, and the anonymity that only the throng can provide. The silence is hushed, breathy, and full of tension. All seem somewhat stooped, or at least awkward in their motions. Hunger is evident, and the flow of the footsteps is marred by the shuffling of tired, dragging feet.

They are beaten before they even have a foe,
thinks Lucia as she walks with them.
We haven’t even seen any opposition, no enemy at all, and already we are defeated.
The mental shift from “
they”
to “
we”
does not escape her notice, even immersed as she is in her own thoughts. She wonders at the weakness she has allowed to creep into her consciousness. Despicable, really, to find oneself so alone, so powerless, so aimless that wandering has become her only alternative to despair – unless the admission of the thing itself could be construed as despairing.

Lucia feels the energy drain out of her as the mental gymnastics capture all of her awareness. She drifts with the crowd, listing and directionless.

…

Jonah

I feel the eyes upon me immediately as I gain the surface of the road from the climb up the side of the blast hole. I must have attracted some attention, and I hope it isn’t someone who wants to shoot me or blow me up. I try not to wince as I straighten up, picking out several sets of eyes watching from the shadows of the outlying buildings of the city as I do so.

I wait there for a moment, at the edge of that great blast-hole by the river, on the perimeter of the city that was meant, I believe, to die at the hands of evil men, and I wonder what I should do. I can’t think of where to begin – I can’t even imagine what I am trying to achieve by being here. I only know that I am meant to be here, that I have been called here.

And then it comes to me, and without another moment’s thought, I begin.

…

Herb

My name is Herb Wiseman. It is a struggle to remember that sometimes.

A crowd of us formed this morning out of the basic safety that numbers provide, but several folks have drifted off while others join us. With somewhat feral eyes we stare at each other, or worse, avoid one another’s faces. The fear that we share is universal – we are all afraid. Even me – a homeless, hopeless beggar, by all accounts, although it never used to be that way. I was one of these once, just like they are one of me now. I almost smile – a wry gesture with my ragged beard changing the angles on my face as my nose tries to influence my eyes to crinkle up a bit. The irony, the sadness, the pain of this life is my mine to share – not to escape from, as once I may have hoped.

When we hear the crash, a group of us run to the area where the noise came from. We see the hand reach over the edge of the hole. We watch the man crawl out of where the bridge used to be. The sun rises behind him and a corona seems to form around him as he rises slowly to his feet. He sees us. He seems to see right through us; indeed his very being seems to shine with purpose and determination: everything we do not have. He knows. Those eyes seem to latch right onto mine and hold me there, transfixed until he is ready to proceed towards us. We all freeze as one – too frightened, or perhaps too mesmerized, to move.

He walks directly past us, turning his head when he goes by and smiling with a white, toothy grin, like he knows something and wants to tell us. I want to hear it – we all want to, it seems – as we move slowly but surely behind him as he walks. I wonder at it – I am filled with questions – I am filled with awe that someone, one of us, by all accounts, would have such a direction, a purpose, a choice to make in this forsaken place where we are trapped. I need to know that purpose – I need to share in it.

We follow in silence.

As we walk, we don’t take much notice of the numbers as they grow from a few, to ten, to twenty and thirty. By the time we have gone more than a few blocks there are nearly a hundred people following this strange, bedraggled, harried and wet looking fellow, who nevertheless looks precisely like someone I desperately want to follow. I can’t explain why, but it seems to have affected us all.

We form a ragged gaggle behind him as we try not to look like we are following, and we must look quite a sight to the many hundreds who linger behind tinted windows, or nearly-open doors, in fear of the soldiers who most certainly are gone. I hope.

The man we follow stops eventually in front of a plain brick building a few blocks from the train station. I remember when I used to ride those trains, when I used to work at the stock market. I was nearly a millionaire once.
My successes still outnumber my failures
, I think to myself with a certain pride.
The failures just happened to have occurred most recently
. One day, the train brought me to this city, and it would not take me home again – no matter how hard I tried to make it on, they kept throwing me back. It didn’t matter that my wife had moved in with her mother; that our house was gone and the neighbours had shut their doors to me months before. That train was supposed to take me home.

After a night in a cell, and a good many more in a homeless shelter, I had claimed my corner of a shanty-town. My box: my new castle. Even that sturdy container – once made to keep a five thousand dollar television safe from harm – could not withstand the pressure of a forty-storey apartment building. A bargain in the low three hundreds, the advertisements had read. That’s when it got really tough. That’s when the streets really meant the streets. That’s when frostbite numbs your fingers and the cold eats the wits from your very skull. How did I make it through the winter? How do I keep going? I still have to ask myself, since nobody else does.