The End of the World Running Club (42 page)

She looked around at us. “Follow me,” she whispered. “And be quiet.”

We followed her up the stairs, keeping our eyes on the small circle of light hovering above us. When we reached the landing she pointed at an open door into a small dark room and waited whilst we all walked in. She followed us, holding the candle near to the window whilst we opened it. Grimes started to say goodbye, but Abigail’s finger once again touched her lips.

Getting through the small window was difficult, especially for Bryce, who fell out last with a loud thump onto the bitumen surface below. He grabbed his ankle and held his head down between his legs, stifling the pain. I helped him to his feet and we followed the others down onto the tunnel.

“Was that the same ankle?” I whispered. “Can you walk?”

“Aye,” he said. “Shut up.” He shook off my arm and reached into his pocket. I heard a chink as he pulled out a miniature. He tore off the cap and poured it down his throat.

Richard turned back.

“Can’t you keep sober for one fucking second?” he snarled.

“Quiet!” hissed Grimes. “The guards will hear you!”

Bryce raised his middle finger at Richard and put the empty bottle back in his pocket. I looked up at the window and saw Abigail’s curtain fall back into place. I raised a hand to the window, seeing nothing behind the glass.

We walked on down the roof, almost blind in the near complete dark. The only light came from the distant fires burning on the wasteland and whatever trickles of moon had made it through the clouds.

“Now what?” said Richard when we reached the end. We heard a noise, footsteps rounding the corner and coming to a stop beyond a fence. A beam of torchlight appeared on the ground and scanned the road inside.

“Down!” said Grimes. We fell to the rooftop, hiding behind the red-bricked lip just as the beam swept harmlessly over the top of us. It returned, hovered around us, then swooped away and blinked out. The footsteps began again and disappeared as the guard continued his patrol.

“That was too close,” I said. I moved to get up but Grimes grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“Wait,” she said. “Stay down.”

I peered over the rim of the wall. Footsteps sounded again, this time two sets. They stopped and two flashlight beams span around the walls of the houses beneath us. One blinded my eyes and I ducked my head down.

“Shit,” I said. “I think they saw me.”

I heard a guard’s voice. A sentence ending in ‘dogs’.

“Christ,” said Richard. “Back. Back the way we came. Keep down.”

We began crawling along the roof on our elbows.

“Get your face out of my arse,” said Bryce to Richard.

“Believe me, it doesn’t want to be there,” said Richard.
 

“Quiet!” said Grimes.

“Move faster you fat…”

We heard barking from the fence, a rattling metal noise and then a scrabbling in the dirt.

“Oh shit,” said Richard. “Shit shit shit.”

The sound of dogs grew louder, snorts, pants and two deep and angry barks, the business-like clattering of paws on tarmac, then on brick as the barks stopped and aimed themselves directly up the wall beneath us.
 

Here here here here here they’re here

I saw beams on the wall behind us.

“Stand up,” said one of the guards below. “Hands above your heads.”

We stood up slowly, blinded by the beams in our faces.

“Jones,” said one of the guards. “Go and wake Jenny.”

We stood for minutes under the glare of the second guard’s torchlight. Eventually we heard footsteps and voices and then the hideous, unmistakable caterwaul of Jenny Rae’s laugh. She stopped beneath us, though we could not see her. She sighed the sigh of a patient headmistress holding an empty can of spray paint.

“Right then,” she said. “What’s to be done with you lot, eh?”

“Just let us go,” said Richard. “We just want to leave and be on our way.”

“Yeah...yeah…” she said distractedly, a disembodied voice in the dark. I heard a foot tapping. “...yeah…what time is it?”

“Just after midnight,” replied the guard.

“Right, right,” said Jenny Rae. More foot tapping. “Mark, get some men and bring two trucks to the square. Jones, you come with me and this lot. Bind ‘em first.”

They tied our hands behind our backs and marched us along the road, blinded by torchlight, the smell and sound of large dogs close by. We reached what sounded like a gate and they led us through, then up an alley. Then I saw where we were. In a few more steps we were stood behind Jenny Rae as she hammered on the Angelbecks’ front door.

“Mr Angelbeck,” she shouted. “Mr Angelbeck, I know you’re in there. Come down, please.”

The door opened and George squinted out at us, fumbling with his glasses.

“What’s the matter?” he said “What’s going on? What are you…”

“Want to explain this, George?” said Jenny Rae. “Want to explain how five people got past my guards?”

George Angelbeck shone with horror in the white torchlight. He looked between us and Jenny Rae. Susan appeared in the darkness behind him. I saw Abigail’s face by her mother’s side. She looked back at me, her brow already creasing in panic.

“George?” said Susan. “What? Oh…”

“I’m waiting, George,” said Jenny Rae. “How did these people get out? Eh? I put two guards on the front door, two on the back. None of them saw a thing. What happened? Tunnel out, did they? Fly off the roof? Unless…”

It took a split second for Susan Angelbeck to follow Jenny Rae’s eyes down to her daughter, perform a horrifying mental backflip and then step forward.

“It was me,” she said. “I let them out onto the back roof. From Abigail’s room, while she was in the toilet. It was me, I did it.”

She lay a firm, gentle hand on her daughter’s shoulder and stared resolutely down at Jenny Rae. George was still stuttering in confusion.

“Really,” said Jenny Rae, meeting the woman’s eyes. “Is that so?” She tapped her foot and puffed. “Fair enough, have it your way, come with me.” Jenny Rae lunged forward and grabbed Susan by the arm, yanking her out onto the path. Susan stumbled down the steps and shrieked.

“George! Oh heavens! George! Help me!”

Jenny Rae met my eyes as she hauled Susan past us, her dressing gown open and billowing behind her. “Follow me,” she said. “I want to show you something.” The guards pushed at us to follow up the street.

“Mummy!” cried Abigail. “Daddy! Stop them!”

“What the…? Susan!” George seemed to snap out of his confusion and ran after us. “Good God, get your hands off my wife!”

One of the guards grabbed him by the arm. Another led Abigail, now wailing and sobbing, onto the pavement.

“It’s OK darling!” cried Susan from up the street. “Mummy’s OK! Don’t cry!”

“Wake up!” bellowed Jenny Rae as we past the houses. “Everybody up!”

Then that laugh, that horrible laugh again. The guards swept their torches around the windows and doors. People were emerging from their houses now, blinking in the flicks of light. We reached the tunnel and walked through it into the square. Two trucks were parked with their engines running, their headlights illuminating the pole in the centre.

“Take that off her. Tie her to it,” said Jenny Rae. “Face forwards.”

Susan whooped in terror as two of the guards pulled her dressing gown from her, then dragged her across the road and began lashing her to the stake with her arms high above her head. Jenny Rae walked to one of the trucks, yelling around the square.

“Wake up!”

“What the hell are you doing?” said Richard.
 

“Shut up and watch,” said a guard. He smashed Richard in the face with the butt of his rifle, knocking him to his knees. Bryce struggled forwards to help him. A dog growled and another guard knocked Bryce down with his own gun so that he was sprawled with his face on the stone. The guard slammed a boot against his neck.

“Watch!”

Grimes, Harvey and I were nudged forwards to the edge of the pavement. Doors were opening, people coming out of their houses. A crowd formed around the perimeter of the square. Susan hung, blinking, from the pole with her feet trailing on the ground. She searched the crowd and found us. I heard Abigail sobbing behind me. A puzzled smile flickered across Susan’s face as she saw her daughter.

“No!” shouted George, struggling in the guard’s grip. “Christ no! Susan! Let her go you abominable woman!” I heard another crack and George began to cough.

Jenny Rae searched in the back of one of the trucks and marched back to the pole.

“This is what happens when you betray me!” she shouted, brandishing a plank to the crowd. “When you go behind my back!” The mumbling crowd became quiet as Jenny Rae nodded around the square, her fierce jaw jutting out in a snarl. “This is what happens.” She turned her face down to Susan Angelbeck’s trembling cotton-clad back. “This is what happens.”

“God no,” croaked George Angelbeck, above his daughter’s tears.

Jenny Rae swung the plank high above her head and brought it down against Susan’s back-side. Susan’s face crumpled in silent pain. Her eyes bulged in horror and she let out a terrible squeal. The plank came down again, harder this time, and Susan screamed as the full agony of the blow hit her rump and thighs. Then again, and again, and again. Each impact caused a louder scream until Susan became silent, squeaking, writhing against the post, scrabbling pathetically in the dirt with her feet, her body trying in vain to escape each blow.

“Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?” shouted Jenny Rae across at us.

“Funny.” Another wallop. “How.” And another. “Things.” And another. “Turn.” Another. “Out.” Another…

I can’t tell you exactly what happened next. I was aware of Bryce struggling under the guard’s boot, of Richard holding his head, of Grimes gritting her teeth and Harvey shaking his head at the ground. Susan’s feet were beginning to stop moving quite so desperately and there were murmurs of dissent from the crowd. The blows stopped for a second as Jenny Rae faced the quiet protests. Her face was gleeful and fierce, like a hound interrupted from its feeding.
 
I felt a twitch in my gut, a wave of sickness, a desire to move. Then she grimaced, took a step back and brought the wood down with a sickening crack on Susan’s still back. And I ran. I ran towards her, wailing, dizzy with rage. Halfway across the road to the pole Jenny Rae spotted me and glanced over my shoulder. Soon after I felt an explosion of pain in my temple. I don’t remember hitting the ground.
 

Barely conscious. I heard her voice. “Check his ropes.”

Some struggling and grunts from the middle of the room.

“Get off me man,” said another voice. Male.

“Secure.” A guard.

“Go on then,” said Jenny Rae. “Let’s get going.”

Oblivion.

I met consciousness again, this time feeling that I had just made an endless climb through thick fog and found myself on a summit I had no desire to be on. It was completely dark, completely still, completely silent. The chair was hard, the ropes cut my wrists and ankles. The blindfold was tight around my eyes and the fabric smelled of other people. The air was still freezing. I coughed. Pain flooded my head.

“Who’s there?” said a deep voice opposite me.

“Bryce?” I said.

“No,” said the voice. “Oh fuck.” I could hear a smile stretching behind the words. “It’s you.”

Then, once again, oblivion.

The dark does strange things to you. When you’re blind, your other senses fill in the gaps. Even in unconsciousness, I felt I had been aware of the others, the noises they made as they struggled against their new bindings, wriggling in their seats, testing the tension on the ropes cutting their skin, trying to crane their necks to rub their blindfolds away with their shoulders. The sounds turned into pictures - Grimes’ serious, small mouth, Bryce’s cheeks taut and snarling, Richard’s crowish frown, Harvey’s perpetual smile even as he fought to free himself.

When I came to again, I knew they were there in the room with me, awake. And somebody else too.

“It really is you, isn’t it?” said the voice again.

The noises stopped. The faces froze.

“Henderson,” I said.

A puff of air and a gap of silence opening up like a smile told me I was right. The air bristled around me. Different noises now, renewed frustration, now focused on the sixth chair in the room. I swear I remember Grimes’ face, though I couldn’t see it. I remember it pinching into a point of rage, eyes straining to bulge against her blindfold, lips twisted like a tiny fist.

She was next to me, her breathing becoming faster and deeper, trembling with anger.
 

“You,” breathed Bryce. “I’m going to kill you.”

Henderson was definitely grinning. I can’t say how I knew; perhaps it was the noises his mouth was making, although he wasn’t yet speaking.

“You deserted us,” I said. “Where’s Yuill?”

Another puff of air, still smiling. Now he spoke, the words moving slowly from left to right as he shook his head.

“How the fuck did you make it this far?” he said.

Grimes was still trembling next to me, exhaling fast, furious breaths and shaking her limbs so much I felt they might break. Her chair legs scraped and rattled against the concrete. Bryce was still yelling curses across the room, running out of ways to insult the man who had left us for dead.

“You must have got a lift right?” said Henderson calmly. He was talking to me, ignoring the noise of abuse and rage building around the room “You had to yeah? No fucking way you got here without one. Ahhh man, was it a chopper? Did one of them choppers stop? Don’t tell me don’t tell me don’t tell me...it crashed right?”

He began laughing, deep and barrel-like. The noise of it seemed to rise up, as if his head was thrown back. Grimes now sounded like an exorcism in full flow.

“Where’s Yuill?” said Richard. “What is going on here? Who are all these people?”

“It did right, it crashed didn’t it?” said Henderson, still to me. I had a sense of teeth flashing white in the darkness. Grimes had stopped shaking and started grunting, her chair no longer rattling, but banging repeatedly against the concrete.