The End of the World Running Club (12 page)

There was always a radio, there was always a radio station. There was always a place where the strike had not happened, there was always a time when things got back to normal. There was always a boundary to the devastation.

“So, what’s left?” asked someone.

Grimes shook her head. “We don’t know,” she said. “Aside from the signal we picked up two days ago, we’ve had no contact with anyone. We don’t know anything beyond what we’ve seen in Edinburgh. Luckily one of our helicopters survived the fires. We used that to search for survivors at first, but fuel is scarce.”

I tried various ways of fitting the information in my brain. I imagined myself flying over a life-size relief map of the UK, place names etched on the landscape, a wide grid superimposed over its contours. I tried to imagine a thousand asteroids slowly making impacts as I passed each city, but your brain is smaller than you think, as it turns out. Try to imagine a thousand of anything, let alone a thousand spinning asteroids. I had barely counted ten explosions before the map began to fold and distort and lose its scale.

I tried to focus on a single city. I imagined a face-down view of London from the air, thirty bright pulses erupting around the curled blue snake of the Thames. I tried to imagine sixty million people swept up in a thousand firestorms, attempted a dreadful calculation, dividing lives equally between eruptions, applying some cold and bizarre weighting algorithm between cities, guessing at the space between them.

However I tried it the result was the same. Instead of accepting, my brain rejected. Instead of an emotional response, I became detached. The event was intangible; a cold, numb thing that barely made sense. It was only later, when I saw it all for myself, that I was able to slowly absorb the extent of it. For now, all I had was numbers.

After more silence, the Polish girl raised a quivering hand.

“Yes,” said Grimes.

“We have fuel, helicopter, must be some cars. Why not we leave? Why not we go somewhere safe?”

Grimes stepped forwards. She traced the pointer down through the hills beneath Edinburgh and Glasgow. “We have flown reconnaissance missions across Midlothian and as far south as the border with England.” She tapped the A74, the A76, A7, the A1, every line that ran south from Scotland. “These roads have been brought to a standstill by traffic.”

“What do you mean?” said a voice from near the front. Everybody turned to a small man on the second row.

“A traffic jam? It’s been weeks, surely they must have been able to move it by now? Redirect it or something?”

Grimes looked back at him.

“The traffic is no longer moving,” she said.

“But…” said the voice. “But surely…”

“They’re all fuckin’ dead, y’eejit,” said Bryce, still facing forwards.

The room was silent.

“But…but…”

Grimes touched the pointer back at the map. “There was massive damage to this part of the country,” she said.  “Like I said, the impacts were everywhere, not just in the cities.”

Grimes waited for another round of gasps to fade.

“Basically, from what we can tell, we’re cut off from the south of the country.”

A hand shot up from the back row.

“Yes,” said Grimes.

“What about Glasgow?” said a trembling voice.

“As I say,” said Grimes, “we have had no radio contact with any other base. Reports from our trips across to the west coast suggest that Glasgow was hit even harder than us. We believe that a large Atlantic tsunami spread across most of the city. The roads are crippled, the buildings...the buildings all but demolished, everything flooded.”

More cries, more gasps and urgent conversations. A woman began to weep...
My sister...oh God my sister…

“Come on,” roared Bryce. “Weegies’ll be alright. They already live in a shithole, a couple of deep impacts won’t make a difference.” He turned and grinned at the now silent crowd.
 

“They probably woke up and thought someone had redecorated,” he continued.

There were a few tuts of disapproval, a few heads shaken.

“Just trying to be positive,” he said, turning back. “Christ.”

Harvey chuckled and leaned towards me.

“Different rays, mate,” he whispered. “Different rays.”

I frowned. For the short period I knew Harvey I never really understood most of the things he said. Most of his words were caught somewhere between a riddle and a rant. But I would understand them later. I’ve watched countless nights pass by, lying awake and thinking about his
different rays
and
muffled screams
since then.
Different rays
was his way of saying that everyone was different; horses for courses, live and let live, that kind of thing. “We’re all born under the same sun,” he told me once, as we pawed through the wreckage of a National Express coach somewhere near Lancaster. “Just different rays.”

But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Striding on
, as Harvey would say.

“So what’s our plan, then?” said the small man panicking near the front of the room. “What the hell are we going to do?”

Grimes stepped back and turned to the other soldier standing behind Yuill.

“Lance Corporal Henderson?”

The soldier stood forward. He was well over six foot tall, square-soldiered, iron jawed, chest like a truck. He kept his hands behind his back as he spoke. His accent was London English; the West Indian street twang barely restrained behind his clipped, military bark.

“Short term: we source supplies. Long term, we maintain our distress beacon and wait for the evac. rescue teams.”
 

Henderson stepped back and Yuill took his place at the front.

“To do this,” said Yuill, “we need to make salvage missions into the city. We believe there are a number of locations where fuel and food can be found. These missions will be made on foot.”

“What about the air?” somebody said. “Is it safe outside?”

“We’ve conducted a few tests,” said Yuill. “We believe the air is safe to breathe, but we’re taking precautions with biosuits and masks all the same.”

“You said that the soldiers in this room were
some
of the ones who were left behind,” said Richard. He was still standing up, one hand resting on his son’s shoulder.

Grimes nodded.

“Then where are the rest?”

Yuill stepped forwards and nodded at Grimes.

“As Private Grimes mentioned,” he said, “Edinburgh was hit very hard. The blasts and shockwaves caused damage far into the Central Belt. Redford and Dreghorn were destroyed. Castlelaw sits behind a hill, so we had some protection...but we were severely damaged just like everything else. Many of the soldiers in the barracks died either in the blasts themselves or putting out the fires that had started. Only a fraction of the buildings are still standing. We managed to secure the east wing and a couple of the store-houses. These are our living quarters now. This is where we live.

Yuill flicked his eyes between us.

“Because our numbers are somewhat…” - he glanced behind him - “…depleted.”

A snort from Bryce. Yuill kept his eyes looking straight ahead.

“Because of this, we need to ensure that we maximise our human resources…”

“Human resources?” said Bryce “What is this, the fucking
Apprentice
?”

Yuill turned to him.

“Because of this,” he repeated, holding Bryce’s stare, “we need to ensure that every one of you is trained. That every one of you is fit, healthy and able to defend yourself.”

A ripple of unrest moved around the room.

“Defend ourselves?” someone shouted. “Defend ourselves against what? I thought we were stuck here alone?”

“Training starts tomorrow,” Yuill continued over the shouts of concern.

“Men and boys over fourteen and women over the age of sixteen who are not nursing will begin basic military training under the supervision of Corporal Henderson, Lance Corporal Guthrie and Private Grimes.”

Bryce threw back his head and began laughing as shouts of disapproval broke out.
 

“Tomorrow morning. 6am in the gym,” said Yuill. He picked up some papers and walked out, the rest of the soldiers following him.

Most people were off their seats, some trying to follow Yuill and being placated by Grimes. I sat in my seat and watched Bryce’s huge, hairy head roar with laughter. Beth laid a hand on mine and squeezed it.

“Different rays, mate,” said Harvey quietly in my ear. “Different rays.”

Those deemed eligible for training were separated into three groups of ten or eleven. They made no bones about how they split us up; those who were deemed already fit and strong were put with Guthrie. Grimes took the women and boys. The rest - my group, the overweight and undertrained - got Corporal Henderson. At 6am, just after the sound of boots on gravel had disappeared from outside our window, there was a light knock on our door. I had been awake for an hour beforehand anyway, lying beneath my blanket and staring at the blank ceiling, not moving for fear of waking Beth, Alice and Arthur. I slipped out and followed the rest of the group through to a small gymnasium that had been cleared of equipment.

Training did not have the effect you might have expected. This was no cinematic montage; we weren’t transformed from soft civilians into hardened soldiers overnight, or even after the ten or so weeks that we spent trying to follow Henderson’s increasingly disgusted orders.  There were no moments of triumph, no tears, no hidden wells of determination suddenly plunged. There was no electricity to waste on treadmills or exercise bikes so our workouts involved push-ups, star-jumps, sit-ups and short sprints between lines. We performed badly. It was dark, hot and uncomfortable; the room was too small, the ceiling too low. Nobody spoke and we all left in silence for breakfast.

Just like any form of exercise I had encountered before, there seemed little point to what we were doing. The world was in smithereens and we were spluttering beneath the ground like fat moles. I hated every moment of it, but I wasn’t the worst in my group. One morning in the second week, a doughy man named Alan failed a fifth attempt at a sit-up and rolled onto his side, curled his legs up and wept as an outraged Henderson screamed obscenities down at him. He was told to leave and joined Grimes’ group the next day.

The average is low. Very low.

I had been a squat, overweight child until the age of fifteen, when a sudden growth spurt had stretched out my body to average height and created an illusion of leanness. My face, once round, now appeared gaunt. My limbs, once plump with puppy fat, now appeared lithe. You may have been forgiven for believing that my torso, beneath clothes, was taut and muscled. Lift the shirt, though, remove the trousers, put me by the swimming pool and my hunched shoulders and folded arms hid a very different story. My body had stretched, but there was no definition. I had a concave chest upon which sat two soft, pudding-like breasts with pale nipples. Beneath them was a shapeless stomach surrounded by doughy flanks that spilled out over my trunks. Wide, freckled mounds of flesh clung to my lower back, hovering above my buttocks like unhappy clouds.

In the years since puberty, my body had eventually settled for a slightly more ordered version of this strange shape. Excess had added a pot belly, some lines and wrinkles, more hair, tougher skin. The training sessions didn’t transform the soft body I had abused and ignored into a hardened slab. What I did see was a rough shaving of its outer fat, like a tree stump run once beneath a blunt lathe: not exactly sculpted, just less than what it had been. I also found it harder to sit still. My legs were uncomfortable when I lay down. I felt unused muscles ache. I discovered that I could climb stairs with ease.

I began to fidget more and more. Arthur had started teething, wailing late into the night. I took to walking the corridors with him, stretching my shoulders and thighs, pulling my neck. I felt the need to twitch my muscles as strongly as I felt the need to stop Arthur’s cries. Frustration in my head, frustration in my body; the need to explode from all corners of your being - a feeling I was already used to.

It was one of these evenings, just after midnight, and a wild storm had flared up outside that battered the windows of the barracks. I had just settled Arthur and was about to return to our room when I heard a gruff cackle and the sound of glass from somewhere above. I climbed the darkened stairwell to the canteen with Arthur asleep and burrowed into my neck. The canteen was in darkness too, but I could see a small light coming from the kitchen. I opened the door to see Harvey and Richard sat around a wooden table, a bottle and three glasses surrounding a single candle. Bryce was there too. He and Richard were in Guthrie’s group and Harvey was spared the training on account of his age. I hadn’t spoken to any of them in the weeks since our sessions had begun.

Bryce looked up as I opened the door. He was leaning on the table, still chuckling and cradling a glass in one hand. Richard was leaning back in his chair, one long leg crossed casually across the other. He looked back over his shoulder while Harvey refilled his glass.

“Hello,” whispered Harvey. His eyes twinkled in the candlelight as he looked at Arthur sleeping on my shoulder.
 

“Wee boy asleep?” said Bryce out loud.

I nodded. “Yes,” I whispered. “Finally.”

“What’s his name?”

“Arthur,” whispered Harvey loudly. “His name’s Arthur.”

Bryce laughed and offered his glass for Harvey to refill.
 

“A king no less,” he said. “An English king,” the word deliberately stressed for my benefit. His voice filled the room and I thought the noise would wake Arthur, but he didn’t flinch. The bear drained his glass and I resisted the urge to reward his joke with an unconvincing laugh. Beth had always said that Arthur’s name might be difficult for him in Scotland.

Harvey had pulled another glass from the cupboard behind him. He unfolded another chair from the corner and motioned for me to sit.

“Ignore him,” he said. “Come and have a drink.”