How the World Ends (20 page)

“Hello?” Rachel picks up the phone. She always sounds so suspicious when the incoming number is listed with my name. She should be.

I don’t have time to be polite. “I need Jonah right away, Rachel.” There is a crackle of static as she passes the phone over.

“Jonah,” I say – looking at the computer screen while I speak – fifty percent of my data now overwritten with random ones and zeroes. There are footsteps and voices in the hallway outside. “I can’t talk long. Go check your email right now and then unplug your Ethernet cable.”

“Huh?” He replies. Seventy percent overwritten – I need about another minute to completely clear it off before nobody will be able to recover it.

“Just do it now, you’ll know why soon.” I hit the “end” button on the phone and immediately toss it on the floor and turn my little butane torch on it.

The door bursts open, and I get one last glimpse of the laptop - only seventy-five percent complete.
Not enough to find it
, I think to myself in the everlasting moments of my impending doom.
Only enough to guess.

And that is my last thought as the men break down the door. Oddly enough, I do not hear the sound of their weapons as the bullets tear through my limbs, or the hiss of the liquid nitrogen as my laptop is quickly frozen so that all moving parts will seize up and any data still in memory might be forensically retrieved. It will provide a nice challenge for them. But I don’t really think about any of that.

Rather, I am perplexed by the sound of the wind as it whistles through the trees, as if I am not in a high-rise building in this grey city, but in a dense forest of trees that block out all other structures and dominate the landscape.

As my blood drains out and, by the grace of God, is ignored, my last thought is of the three acorns I lost last week. And of the small boy who stole them from me, along with a sample of the formula. He now has the last of it...

I hope.

…

Jonah

The wounds seem to cling to me like parasites – sucking at my will with their tenacity. Rachel stares hard into my eyes as she holds my shoulders – trying to stop me from turning back to the re-assembling crowd of farmers, neighbours and assorted strangers. I give her a wink that is meant to tell her that I am okay, but with blood stinging my eyes, it just makes me look more pathetic.

“I’m alright,” I say to her softly, trying to make it sound believable. “I just need to get some things straightened out right now.”

With that she releases my shoulders and reaches down to usher the kids back indoors.

The crowd is gathered tightly around me at this point, all with wide eyes and searching glares. Among them is Aeron with his arm around Herb’s shoulders, helping the older man struggle to his feet.

“I thought we had a bit more time, but it looks like we have to act now.” A slight pause while they digest the fact that an assassination attempt has just been thwarted, and moreover that I have been expecting such an event. But why had I expected there to be more time? That is the question they should be asking, only they aren’t – they are silent in their fear, or their fury, or both.

“Don,” I call out. “You and Ted have the biggest operations around here, but I have the largest fuel stockpile. The diesel tanks are around behind the barn where the silos used to be. There’s seventy-five hundred litres in there, so you should have enough to do at least part of this year’s harvest, if not all of it. Use the no-till seed drill and get what you can of the fuel while it lasts. Oh, and it’s an underground tank, so you’ll have to use a hand-pump. Sorry.”

Still no reaction, from anyone. Just stares. I can feel the blood hardening into a crust in my hair and down my shirt. I feel faint.
Just a few more minutes – they won’t argue with me now.

“We have to distribute the fuel and harvest from everyone evenly through the best storage facilities in the area, but it can’t be all in one place.” I point at Herb, “My friend Herb here is a top-rate accountant and he will be organizing the cataloguing, storage and distribution of all livestock, crops and other resources in the area.

“This is the one chance we have to get a head-start on the hard times to come. There is no more fuel to be had from this point on. There is no more electricity – none. All the things we have relied on in the past are gone.”

“What the hell happened?” Aeron is the speaker – and I can tell that his question is meant more for the other’s ears as for his. He knows something. “Why is this happening?”

I take a break and pick tenderly at the flap of skin on my scalp, which is starting to itch more than hurt. “I don’t know, exactly. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.” I trail off, continuing to repeat myself.

One more thing to say. Another deep breath.

“Ted – I need my dad’s horses back from you.”

That shakes his tongue loose.

“Why? Those are my horses – I’ve been feeding them!”

“I don’t care.” I have no more patience left for explanations. I keep seeing an old black man standing just beyond my vision and I wonder if I really have run out of time. “Just bring them over. Go now.”

I don’t wait for an answer. I don’t look at the body on the ground. I don’t even look at Herb, who has now been placed in charge here. I can feel Aeron’s eyes on the back of my head as I turn around, I can feel him saying to me
: Wherever you’re going, I’m coming too.

…

The next morning, the sun shines down on the little valley with a farmhouse and barns and its hidden fuel tanks. I wonder, as I step outside into the light, whether the day will come when the sunshine, too, will fail.

Seven horses that I haven’t seen in too long a time make their way through the yard, led by a Ted’s daughter Courteney, herself riding a nice-looking bay gelding. She pulls her mount to a stop in front of me. Gwyn holds tightly to my hand whilst trying not to show his fear at the stamping of so many hooves.

“Are those the horses, Daddy?”

“I think so, Gwyn.”

“Are you gonna ride them?”

“Maybe just a couple of them.”

“A couple? What’s a couple?”

Aeron stomps out of the house and loudly onto the porch. The horses don’t spook at the noise, but the big grey stallion tosses his head and rolls his eyes. I pick up Gwyn and hold him onto my hip with one hand while I approach the grey.

“Hi, Mr Truth,” says Courtenay. “Dad says I’m supposed to leave these here on one condition only.”

Gwyn and I both reach out our hands slowly to the grey. He stands his ground and doesn’t acknowledge us, his eyes rolling over to the porch where Aeron is sulking as conspicuously as possible.

“And what sort of condition should I need to comply with in order to have my stolen animals returned to me?”

“You need to let me come with you,” she says. “Wherever you’re going. And Dad says to tell you that they weren’t stolen, merely looked after, and that you owed him one year’s boarding fee.”

“You’re making this up,” I reply, not completely un-amused by all of this. “Your daddy wouldn’t let his little girl get that far out of his sight.”

She doesn’t respond right away, her eyes downcast slightly.

“That’s why I have to go.”

I look back at Aeron, who has perked up noticeably on the porch throughout this conversation.

“Aeron,” I call back towards him. “Could you and Courteney take these horses out to the paddock? Make sure you stay with them for a while so they don’t try to run off.”

Aeron comes up beside me and looks several times from me, to the horses, and the young girl who has caught his wandering eye.

I lower my voice, “Aeron,” I say, in little more than a whisper. “I need you to look after things around here for a little while. Herb is in charge of the overall running of things, but I need you to get our animals sorted out and the barn repaired. Can you do that?”

He tries desperately not to slide his gaze back to Courteney. “Alright,” he says, eventually. “I suppose you’re right. I haven’t ridden that much in a while, so I’d probably slow you down anyways.”

With that admission comes my own realization that I haven’t spent significant time in the saddle for the last few years myself – and the next few days will probably bring the worst case of boils and saddle-sores imaginable. I push those thoughts from my mind, the plans for the farm still foremost in my mind.

I go inside the house where Angie is supervising the cracking of eggs by Jewel over a bowl of flour. They are making bread. The smell of the old woodstove takes me back to my early childhood when we used to move the stove to the back kitchen every summer so that the house didn’t get too hot.

Angie gives me what I have come to know as “her look.” Jewel, taking advantage of the lapse in concentration by her overseer, manages to get her egg to sluice down her arms to the elbows before dripping slowly into the mixing bowl. Angie doesn’t let her eyes cease their appraisement (and most definite disapproval) of me. “You look like hell,” she says, at last.

I don’t really have an answer for that, so I just try not to smile too broadly. I can’t imagine a better role model for my daughter. I wish we still had my parents around; I could use some advice right now. I know that I am being hunted, indeed that my entire family – Ruben’s family – is being tracked down to get the final ingredient in this biological cocktail that could... what? What was this formula capable of?

I know what it did back in the city – or rather what used to be the city. I think to myself that oak trees make a vast improvement to a grey world of cement and glass. Was I any different from whoever had driven us all from there? Or had we been driven? Hadn’t we actually been trapped there? How did everyone else get out? Where could they have gone? Surely only a few made it through the tunnel, and the rest would have been left behind to wander or drown in the great blasted ditches that surround the area.

“You need to mask your thoughts better, cowboy. I can read you like a book.”

The voice is Rachel’s, directly behind me. I turn, but not before noticing the twinkling in Angie’s eye as she turns her own attention back to the bread mix.

“They’re coming for us,” I say to Rachel. “I need to get out of here, take the focus away from here for a while.”

“You say that, but you’re really going back there to try and save everyone, like you think you’re responsible for those people.”

I can’t manage an answer to that one too quickly, so I take breath.

“If I stay here and do nothing, we’ll be fighting them all on our own.”

“So,” she says. “We can look after ourselves.”

“You know that’s not going to be enough – they’ll keep coming. We were lucky once. Ask Lucia about the kind of people that are after us.”

“She won’t talk to me.”

“Then ask Herb.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No you aren’t.”

“Angie said she would look after the kids while we’re gone – it should only be a few days on horseback to go get this Bill Thomas fellow and bring him back here. He can protect us.”

I take a breath to try and slow the conversation down. Rachel has a way of coming through my arguments and making them seem meaningless. She knows me too well.

“There’s more than that going on here,” I say after a moment. “I promised Bill Thomas and a few others that I would come back for them – not so they could come and protect us, but so that we could find whoever’s out that needs our help.”

I can feel Angie’s eyebrows rising from across the room. She doesn’t speak though.

Neither does Rachel. They both just wait patiently for me to venture forth into their territory with more information. But I am not about to take the bait; I know that too much knowledge in this case is not a good thing for them. And there is no way I am taking Rachel with me and leaving the kids by themselves. I make a quick decision.

“Alright, you can come,” I say, trying to hold my face straight through the course of the lie. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning, and we’ll travel light, so don’t pack any clothes or niceties like that.”

“Just some ointment for your sore backside, huh?”

“You know me too well, sweetheart,” I say, taking her in my arms, hating myself for being able to deceive her so easily. Angie, from across the room, is still silent.

She knows.

…

I throw the saddle on my old horse and the memories come flooding back. He’s a thoroughbred-draft cross and can go all day riding or pulling logs out of the woods. My dad bought him as a yearling and he was the first horse I ever trained on my own. It would have broken my dad’s heart to know that I had given him to the neighbour to be used for pleasure riding. The fact of the matter was that without my dad around I just couldn’t bear to be around the place much.

That’s all changed now.

I ride on over to Don’s place a mile up the road. He’s is out in the field with his ATV, running circles around his herd of dairy cattle. He acknowledges my wave with a nod and drives over to the fence-line at the side of the road.

“G’day Jonah,” he calls over. “What can I do for you?”

“You can stop driving that gas guzzler around for a start,” I say. “What happened to those dogs you used to run with?”

“Since when should I be taking advice from a city slicker like you that hasn’t been around these parts in years?”

“Since right now, when the fuel for that thing is in shorter supply than the diesel in your tractor,” I retort. “So stop being lazy and get your dogs in shape. The cows will be quieter anyways, and give you more milk.”

He grunts in the agreement of man who knows what is right in his head, but his aging body doesn’t want to admit it. “Fine,” he says after a minute. “But don’t expect me to go riding around on one of those four-legged terrors.”

Everyone knows the story of Don’s famous fear of horses. When he was a little boy, his dad brought home a pony that someone had given him. Don, about ten years old at the time, climbs up on this thing and it won’t move. He kicks it and slaps it then kicks it again. Finally his dad gives it a giant swat with the flat of his shovel. The poor pony takes off down the road and dumps little Donnie-boy in the ditch before launching itself across the creek and breaking a leg. I don’t know whether it was out of fear or remorse, but the young man’s dislike of horses had shaped his life in many ways, and it was mirrored strangely by his affinity for cattle and their unique form of complacent, flatulent happiness.