The End of the World Running Club (25 page)

Gloria had talked about the thing inside of her, the cold voice of something that wasn’t her taking over and giving her strength and will when she had none of her own. I had read once that we were just vehicles for our genes to propagate, nothing more than hosts for a parasite with a much bigger plan than any of our own. Maybe that was true.

In the morning Richard shook me awake and put a cup of black tea on the ground next to me.

“We’re heading off soon,” he said, then knelt to pack his bag.

Harvey was cleaning dishes in the snow. He saw me and nodded, then went back to smearing a cloth around the corners of a blackened saucepan. I sat up and shook off my blanket, stretched my back. Bryce was towering above the embers of the fire in front of me, smoking. The bandage around his head was tattered and dark red.

“Sweet dreams?” he grinned.

“Where’s Grimes?” I said, rubbing my face.

“Inside with Goldilocks,” said Bryce. “Checking her over.”

“And the gun?” I said.

Richard held it up for me to see, then got back to packing his bag. I stood up, stretched some more and looked around. Gloria had been right: there was nothing for miles.

“Three weeks,” I said. “Five hundred miles in three weeks, and we don’t know what’s out there.”

Bryce squeezed his face into a wrinkled smile and nodded, bouncing on his toes and blowing smoke through his nostrils. I turned to Richard.

“How are we going to get that truck?” I said. “What can we possibly trade?”

“If they haven’t used it for six months, then they’re not likely to use it now, are they?” he said. “We have food. Perhaps they’ll take that. Otherwise…”

He glanced at Bryce.

“Otherwise what?” I said.

“We take it,” said Bryce. “Like Dick says, it doesn’t seem like they’re using it anyway.”

“Maybe they just don’t have any fuel,” I said. “What then?”

“Then we’re back to where we were,” shrugged Richard.

“Fucked again, you mean,” I said.

Richard stared at me silently as he stuffed the last of his belongings into his bag and pulled it shut.

“I need a piss,” I said. I threw my tea on the embers and walked off towards the cottage. I heard Grimes and Gloria talking inside and walked around the back to where the farm buildings were. In the yard I stopped and saw the burned-out barn and its fallen door next to a mound of dirt. I walked past it, around the back of another stone building that seemed to be suspended in a state of permanent semi-collapse. I followed its wall through the mud until I reached the end, where I stopped and unzipped my trousers.

As I relieved myself, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. The hill to my left ran down to another road parallel to the one we had been on the day before. The hill was steep and covered in snow, with the occasional patch of mud showing through, but a little way down I saw something else poking through. It looked like a stick or a branch. I zipped myself up and edged carefully down the slope towards it. As I got nearer, I saw more of the branches sticking up through the snow. Some seemed to be broken, their thin ends pointing at right angles.

Little thoughts arrived in my head as I made my way down the slope. My brain didn’t quite allow them to register, but they were there all the same.

What happened to Gloria’s visitors? What did she do?

I stumbled to a halt. I was close enough to see now. They weren’t branches; they were limbs. Human limbs sticking up from a pile of bodies buried beneath the snow and the dirt. For a few moments I was frozen to the spot, wanting to turn back but unable to move as those terrible thoughts made themselves clear in my head.

Here they are. Gloria’s visitors. This is what she did. This is what life made Gloria do.

Finally I turned and made my way up the hill. As I got to the top I rounded the corner and came face to face with Gloria in the yard. Sofia was awake and upright, strapped to her front and looking around with wide eyes. Gloria shook her head at me.

“I told you it wasn’t safe back there,” she said, her face dark and serious.

I faced her for a while, readying myself, convinced she had some weapon concealed in her jacket that she would use to cut me up and send me down into the pit behind me with the rest. But then her face softened and she looked at her feet. She took a step to her left and let me past.

“We need to go,” I said when I got back to the fire. I picked up my bag and strapped it on my back. “We need to go now.”

P
IGS

We knew that Gloria’s gun would have been useful to us but, despite everything, it still felt wrong to take it. We might have felt otherwise had it not been for Sofia. She needed protection, and the only thing she had was her mother, and the only thing her mother had was a gun. It did no good to think too deeply about this, about what sort of world we were allowing Sofia to be raised in. This question is already the burden of every parent, no matter when or where they live.

Gloria showed us where the Hamiltons’ house was, but she wouldn’t walk there with us. Staying out of each other’s way was part of the ‘agreement’ she had with them. This should have concerned us, but with all the strangeness of the previous evening it didn’t seem out of place.

We made a deal with Gloria. We would take the gun with us on the way to the house. When we reached the road, we’d leave it next to the ditch for her to collect, along with some food for her in return for our safe passage. Again, it seemed wrong to leave Sofia with nothing.

We walked carefully down the hill, avoiding Gloria’s burial ground (I had explained what I had seen hastily to the others as we packed) and dropped the gun at the bottom, looking up at Gloria standing silhouetted against the bleak, burned farm. She raised an arm and dropped it. Then we walked for a mile or two in the direction she had pointed us in. The road followed sharp bends down a hill. The trees from the wood next to Gloria’s cottage ran down the hill beside us and another steep hill to the right made a natural, deep valley that seemed to have formed a protection from the fires. I could even see grass sprouting through the snow and a small stream ripened with meltwater ran alongside us. It was the first normal and natural thing I had seen in a while; it felt like we were somewhere that hadn’t been touched by the destruction.

Eventually the road flattened out and we came to an old white house set back into the trees.  Smoke rose from a chimney and one window was lit up with a dim, flickering light. In front of it was a yard and some small, single-storey outhouses. Parked in the yard, facing the gate, was a well-used orange Jeep. Nothing - neither the buildings nor the truck - seemed to bear any marks of damage.

We stopped at the gate and Bryce leaned over.

“Be careful,” whispered Harvey. “We don’t know who they are.”

“Can’t be worse than Bo Peep, can they?” said Bryce, jabbing his thumb back along the road. “Ho!” he shouted. Richard pulled him back.

“Just let me do the talking,” he said.

Bryce stepped back. He raised his hands.

“Alright, Dick,” he said. “Go for your life.”

Richard stepped forward.

“Hello?” he called. “Anyone there?”

We heard a rattle and a wooden door slam shut in the yard. A man appeared from one of the outhouses and stopped, facing us, open-mouthed. He looked in his sixties, well fed with a round face and bald scalp. Thick tufts of white hair sprouted from the sides of his head. He was wearing wellington boots, beige work trousers and a heavy, plaid shirt underneath a tank top. The shirt was untucked and his sleeves were rolled up exposing strong, thick forearms. In one big hand he carried a bucket.

“Sorry to startle you,” said Richard.

“Huh,” he said, looking at each of us in turn. Then he suddenly shook his head and smiled, striding towards us.

“Not at all,” he laughed.
 
His accent was full of Yorkshire warmth. “My apologies!”

He laid a hand on the gate and tapped his nose twice.

“Not that used to visitors,” he whispered, then grinned.

“Now, how can I help?”

It felt as if we were ramblers asking for directions. The white of the house behind even gave the impression of sunlight.

“We were wondering if we might talk to you?” said Richard. “We need some help.”

The man looked us over quietly with a quizzical half-smirk, taking in our bags and clothing. Then he looked at Richard and nodded.

“‘Course,” he said. “Come in.”

He held the gate open as we walked through.

“Go up to the house,” he said. “We’ll have tea.”

We walked to the side of the house and he let us in through a tall oak door. A blast of warmth hit us as we went in.

“Ellie!” he shouted. “Visitors! Put tea on! I’ll just let the boys know,” he said, running around the side of the house. We stood in the hallway and waited. In a minute or two he was back, ushering us through a low archway and into a kitchen, the source of the light and warmth. A single lantern was hanging from an electric light fitting and a wood-burning stove roared in one corner. Next to the stove stood a small woman, who looked back at us with the same expression of shock as the man had worn in the yard. She was younger than him, maybe by twenty years.

“My wife,” he said.

She said nothing.

“Alright, alright,” said the man. “Close your gob, girl, you’ll draw flies.”

The woman looked at her husband, shut her mouth and then looked back at us.
 

“Well don’t just stand there!” snapped the man. “Put the kettle on!”

She jumped, then shook her head and began busying herself with an iron kettle, which she began to fill from a spout in the wall. She pulled on what looked like a beer pump to force water through it.

“Like I say,” said the man quietly, flicking a thumb at his wife and widening his eyes. “We’re not used to visitors. Sit down, sit down.” He pulled some chairs out from the table and motioned to them. We smiled nervously and dropped our packs, took a seat each. The man remained standing by the stove.  I felt warmth begin to flood up my feet and legs from the fire, into my fingers and face.

“I’m Hugh,” said the man, suddenly thrusting a hand in our direction. Harvey took it first.

“Harvey,” said Harvey. “Much obliged mate.”

“Bryce.”

“Richard.”

“Ed. Edgar.”

“Laura,” said Grimes.

We each looked at her in surprise. It was the first time she’d told us her first name.

“And this is Ellie,” said the man.

The woman nodded and smiled nervously as she heaved the iron kettle onto the stove. A slow, tidal roar began to build inside it. She pressed herself back against the sink with her hands behind her back.

“We have two sons as well,” said Hugh. He took a seat for himself and leaned his thick forearms on the table. He shot a dark glance at his wife. I remember this unnerved me, but I shelved the feeling. “They’re out with the pigs, should be back soon.”

“Pigs?” I said. “You have pigs?”

He raised his eyebrows and gave a pleased grin.

“Oh aye,” he said. “Pigs, some hens. Nothing like we had before, but some survived the worst of it.” He smoothed his fingers over the wood of the table and sat back in his chair, hands behind his back.

“We do quite well here,” he said with a wink. “Not too badly at all.”

The kettle started to whistle and he glanced at his wife, who sprang into action again, filling a pot and placing cups in front of us.

“No milk, ‘course,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

I leaned forward to pour the tea. He swatted my hand briskly away from the pot.

“Time,” he said. “Needs time to brew.”

Teapots had always made me nervous. I understand how ridiculous that sounds, but it’s the truth. They seemed to represent something that I was somehow not allowed to attain. There was a ritual to tea-making - the warming, the temperature of the water, the settling, the brewing, the stains maintained within the pot - all part of a delicate care that had just never made it into my life. I made tea by throwing a tea bag into a cup and covering it with water, not leaving it long enough, pouring the milk before removing the bag, then squeezing the bag against the side of the cup with a spoon. The dark tendrils that emerged provided the only flavour in the otherwise pale, tepid mixture. I knew all this was wrong, I knew tea should and could easily be made in a far better way, and every time I was a guest in a place like this I was reminded of this fact. But teapots did not belong in my life. I know, it’s ridiculous, but the truth is sometimes that way. The act for which I had just been admonished - pouring the tea too early - caught me out. It marked me, branded me, weakened me. In that moment, there were two kinds of people: those who knew how to make tea and those who did not. It was clear which side I stood on.

I sat back in my chair.

“Now then,” said Hugh. “What’s all this about help?”

Richard cleared his throat.

“We’re headed south,” he said. “To Cornwall.”

Hugh raised his eyebrows and gave a single laugh that was more like a cough.

“Cornwall?” he said, looking at his wife and then back at Richard. He brought his hands down from his head and folded them across his chest.
 

“Why?”

“There are boats leaving,” said Richard. “I don’t know if you…”

Hugh waved a hand at him.

“I know, I know,” he said. “Big fuss if you ask me. You want to get on them?”

“Yes,” I said. “We have family...”

“I don’t.” I said. My words seemed hard and forced.

Richard ignored me and went on. “The thing is, there’s no way we can get down to Cornwall in time. Gloria told us that…”

Hugh suddenly sat forwards in his seat and laid his hands back on the table. I saw his wife shuffle uncomfortably.

“Gloria?” said Hugh.

Richard paused. We hadn’t yet said anything about our stay at the farm.

“Yes,” he said. “We came from Gloria’s...I mean...from where Gloria was staying.”

“You stayed with Gloria?” said Hugh. He looked around the table, giving each of us the same serious look. “You met her?”