The End of the World Running Club (43 page)

“Henderson,” I said. “We need to get out of here. Tell us what’s happening. Why are you here, what happened? ”

Grimes’ chair - it was moving.

“Huh,” said Henderson. “Work it out for yourself. I’m not...what the…..aaaaaaaaggghhhh!”

Henderson’s deep voice skipped four registers and became a falsetto scream. Grimes’ voice was next to his too, a tight, wavering drone of rage but with something else - a slavering sound, wet, as though her teeth were bared.

“Gemmerov! Gemmerov! Gemmerov….aaahhh…gemmerovgemmerov...gemmavuckingbitchovmyface!”

With a final yell, Grimes broke free and fell back, crying out as her chair fell onto the floor. She struggled about for a bit and was still, panting.
 

“Crazy bitch! She bit my fucking cheek off!” said Henderson between rasps of air and spittle.

Bryce began to laugh and didn’t stop for some time.

“Better tell us what you know, arsehole,” he said at last. “Or I’ll work out a way to get her back on her feet, I swear to God.”

“Alright, alright,” said Henderson between grunts of pain. “Jesus Christ you fucking maniacs, alright.”

He spat, snorted, spat again, cursed, coughed and spat. He continued this, then took three deep, unsteady breaths.

“Take it you met Jenny, then?” he said. His voice was different now, higher, darker, quicker, no trace of a smile. “She’s the one who runs this place, you might have guessed. She’s crazy though.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, we know all about her,” said Bryce. “Just tell us where we are.”

“Lock-up,” said Henderson. He spat again. “Near the gate.”

“Near the garage?” said Richard.

“Yeah that’s right.”

“There’s got to be something sharp in this room to cut these ropes,” said Bryce.

“Don’t waste your energy,” said Henderson. “I’ve been all over this room, corner to corner. There’s nothing here.”

Bryce cursed and stamped his feet.

“What happened to you? To Yuill?” I said.

I sensed another sneer on Henderson’s face. He spat a few times more. “We had to stop the Land Rover, go on foot. The road was all messed up, couldn’t drive on it.”

“We know,” I said. “We found it. We came here on foot too.”

“Shut up,” said Henderson. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you like,” I said. “What happened to Yuill?”

“Whatever. We went too far west. It got wet, boggy; had to turn back. He started whining, saying we should never have left you lot, that we should go back. He was slowing me down.”

“So you killed him?” I said.

“Nah,” said Henderson. “We were crossing this bog, trying to find a road. He was moving too slowly, kept getting stuck. Then I heard him crying like a baby way behind me, yelling for my help. I turned round and he was sunk up to his waist, couldn’t move. So I left him.”

“You killed him. You left him to die.”

“Whatever way you want to look at it,” said Henderson. “I don’t care, he was slowing me down. I made it to Manchester, met Jenny and her mob, put up a fight and ended up blindfolded and locked up in here. Then you lot turned up. I don’t know what you did but you were all stone cold when you came in. I tried talking to you but none of you has moved until now.”

Grimes seethed and kicked on the floor. “When were we brought here?” she said through her teeth.

“Some time last night,” said Henderson.

“Last night? What time is it now?” I said.

“How should I know?” said Henderson. “Late though, it’s already starting to get dark.”

“Shit,” I said. “That means we’ve been here four days.”

“Seriously though?” said Henderson. “You made it here on foot in that time?”

I ignored him. He puffed. “Nah you didn’t,” he said.

Nobody said anything for a minute. All I could hear was Grimes breathing on the floor.

“Do you think she killed her?” I said into the darkness.

“Who?” said Henderson.

“Mrs Angelbeck,” said Grimes. “I don’t know. She was limp when they took her off.”

“No,” came a voice from a far corner of the room. “She’s not dead.”

“Mr Angelbeck?” I said. “George? What are you doing here?”

“She’s very badly hurt,” he said. His voice was low and flat. “You saw what that monster did to her. They took her to the medical centre, it’s just a hut really, but I know the doctor. He looked after her. She was unconscious for a while, but she’s not dead. Abi’s there too. She went into shock.”

“Why are you here, George?” asked Richard.

“I went to find her. That woman.” I sensed George’s face crumple as he spoke. “I took a scalpel from the medical centre and I went to find her. I was going to kill her, kill her for what she did to my Susan. But I couldn’t get close to her. I swiped at her a few times and then those big bloody APES OF HERS KNOCKED ME DOWN AGAIN!” He started to grunt and struggle. His chair began to rattle and bang. He screamed and then suddenly stopped, panting in frustration.

“I’m an idiot,” he said. “A stupid idiot. Now I’m locked up here. What will Abi do now?”

“You did what any husband and father would have done,” I said. “I would have done the same.”

I heard a few puffs of air depart from various noses - Grimes, Richard, Bryce. It made me think of eyebrows twitching.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

“What?” said Grimes.
 

“I heard you. You all puffed. What did you mean?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Richard.

“I know what I heard, what…”

“Ed,” interrupted Bryce. “It’s just…no offence, but you’re not exactly father of the year, are you?”

“What?” I said, derailed from everything else that was going through my head. “What does that even
mean
?”

I knew exactly what it meant.

“Just what he said,” said Grimes. “I watched you, in the barracks, everyone did. Other dads, other parents, they were always with their kids, looking after them, spending time with them. You...you were just...you seemed to just skirt around the outside. You only went on the salvage runs to get away from your kids.”

“Hang on a minute there,” said Harvey. “Give the guy a break, won’t you? Alright, he might not have been the most engaged of fathers…”

“Jesus, Harvey!” I shouted.

“...but being a parent’s hard you know, especially after, you know, what happened.”

“Oh aye,” said Bryce. “And what would you know about it? Have you invented a family as well as your career running around continents?”

Henderson’s smile, I felt it, I felt it opening up as my own gut swam with guilt. Wide, white, disembodied teeth.

“Leave him alone, Bryce,” said Richard. “You’re a fat, stinking drunk and you’ve no right to talk to…”

“That’s it, you wanker,” said Bryce. “Soon as I’m free I’m kicking the living shit out of you.”

The air filled with jabbering, angry, stabbing words, chair legs rubbing against the concrete and skin rasping against rope. And all the time Henderson’s Cheshire Cat smile stretched across the darkness, beyond my blindfold, out of sight, somehow as loud as the noise itself.

“I know I’m a bad father!” I said, from nowhere. “It’s true. I know it.”

The voices fell away.

“I never wanted kids,” I said. I kicked at the floor with my bound foot. “I know how that sounds. I know what that makes me. I know how that makes people
think
of me. I was terrified when Beth went into labour, I know, everyone is, but I was terrified because I knew I was supposed to feel something. When I held Alice for the first time, I was supposed to feel this lightning bolt.
Nothing’ll prepare you for it
, they all said, all the other dads.
Your life changes, right there, when you see them for the first time, it changes everything, it’s like a kick in the balls, your heart just melts, all your priorities change
.  All that bullshit, all that grinning, saccharine bullshit. I was terrified because I knew it was bullshit, I knew it wouldn’t happen for me.”

The room was in utter silence. I felt eyes all around me, searching through rags in the dark, following the ears that led them to seek out my voice.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I did all the things you’re supposed to do. I held Beth tight when she told me she was pregnant, smiled, told her how happy I was, told her how excited I was, how perfect our lives were going to be...and I wasn’t lying, not exactly. I felt all those things, I did, I just...they just didn’t...when Alice came out, when they handed her to me, with all that blood and shit and sweat everywhere, Beth still howling, still trying to hold onto my hand, when I took Alice I looked down at her. Her eyes were rolling all over the place, trying to focus, trying to lock onto something, and then they locked onto me and I knew that that was the moment, that was the moment I was supposed to go weak at the knees and start crying. That was when I was supposed to change, to move up a level, transcend from my childhood, become the man, the father. I knew it but I didn’t feel it.”

I moved my head around in the dark, moving my ears to try and pick up a sound.

“That’s not entirely true,” I said. “I did feel it. I fell in love with her, I felt all that terrible love flood through me, but it was like an undercurrent to something else. Something...something old. Something that had been around too long. It was like...when those big, wet, unseeing eyes found mine and locked on for a second, it felt like something was saying
is this it? Again? We’re doing this again are we?
Another child? Another life? Another turn of the wheel? Another struggle?
”

I breathed a while into the still, cold silence.

“Look,” I said at last. “I know I’m not a great father. I don’t...I didn’t spend enough time with them, put as much effort in...but that doesn’t mean I don’t love my family. It doesn’t mean I don’t miss them.

“For Christ’s sake, I carry these two tin cans around my neck every day and whisper into one of them at night, because I believe that Alice might hear me.”

Silence. I felt a strange space around me, no sense of other bodies near me, no feeling of movement or breath, Henderson’s smile no longer hanging in the darkness.

“I’m done,” I said, listening. “You can carry on arguing now.”

Not a sound. No movement. Transparent darkness all around me.

“Hello?”

“These cans,” said Grimes from the floor at last. The room became full again at the sound of her voice, like warm air suddenly filling a cold room.

“What about them?” I said.

“You said
these
cans,” she said.

“Yes, I did, so what?”

“As in, still hanging around your neck.”

I managed to wriggle my shoulders so that the cans fell into my lap, then rocked the chair enough for them to fall onto the floor.

“They’re blunt,” I said. “Remember? You took all the sharp edges from them on the first night in the barracks.”

“I remember,” said Grimes. “You’ll have to break them. Crush them with your boots so that they split.”

I hesitated.

“But…”

“Just do it,” said Henderson.

“It’s our only chance, Ed,” said Richard. “Alice will understand.”

I shifted my chair around until my left toe hit the metal, then lifted my heel up till it was almost on top of the metal. The can spun out and hit the other.

“I can’t lift my boot high enough,” I said. “The rope’s too tight.”

“Lift your chair leg then,” said Grimes. “Use your weight.”

I shuffled across the floor in the direction of the sound the two cans had made until I found them. Then I positioned my front left chair leg next to one of them and rocked slightly to one side. I pushed myself along on the two legs, almost fell and then came down on the other side of the can.

“Shit,” I hissed.

“Try again,” said Grimes. I heard her chair scraping nearer to mine.

I pushed myself up again, rocked too far again, corrected myself, then fell back with a crunch on the can.

“That’s it,” said Grimes. “Now get off it.”

I rocked off the can and heard Grimes scrabbling on the floor with muffled grunts and metallic scrapes

“Good,” she said. “You broke it. It’s sharp.”

She grunted some more.

“MMK,” she said. “MBryssse. Mift me ump.”

“Whit?” said Bryce.

“MIFT ME UMP.”

“Lift her up,” said Richard. “She wants you to lift her up behind Edgar so she can cut through his rope.”

“MMPH!” said Grimes.

“Oh,” said Bryce. “Right.”

Bryce dragged himself across to where Grimes was lying. I heard scuffles and more grunts and then Bryce spluttering, and then felt Grimes’ head against my hands.

“HLMD ME,” she said.

“What?”

“HLMD ME!”

“Hold her head, Ed!” shouted Richard.

I grasped back with my fingers and gripped her chin. It was slippery with sweat and I felt the bird-like bones of her jaw moving in my palm as she worked the can. We balanced like this, Bryce somehow supporting her, me grasping her face, Grimes holding herself up on her elbow trying every conceivable position of the can in her mouth in order to locate the rope with its sharp edge. I lost count of the times she dropped it and we had to start all over again, or cut my wrist or yelled as she cut her own lips. For what must have been an hour we kept going until I suddenly felt a pressure against my outer wrist and a twang as the rope was snagged. Then again, and again, as the metal found its first fray and dug in. I felt the gurn of Grimes’ sore face harden into a solid, muscled clench and begin to saw, heard the sound of the rope breaking once, then twice and then felt my hands slip free as Grimes fell to the floor exhausted.

The can clattered onto the concrete.

“Are you free?” she mumbled.

“Yes,” I said, wincing as I brought my hands slowly round from behind my back, flexing my fingers. Grimes let out a low whimper. I heard Bryce whisper something to her, Harvey chuckle, Richard letting out a sigh of relief. I’m sure I even heard Henderson whistle. I took off my blindfold but it made no difference to my vision. There was no light, not even a chink through a crack or keyhole. We were sealed in full dark: a black room in a black, starless night. I could see nothing.