The End of the World Running Club (44 page)

And yet I felt them near me. I did. I felt them, they were there; they were always there.
 

My legs were bound tightly but I managed to free them. Then I went to work on Grimes and helped her to her feet, then Harvey, Bryce, Richard and finally George. We stood and stretched our limbs and fingers.
 

“So what,” said Henderson. “You’re going to leave me tied up are you? Escape without me? Good luck with that.” That smile had returned, hanging between syllables, invisible white pearls stretched out in tar.

“What do we do now?” whispered Harvey.

“Door’s over here,” said Richard from behind us. “I can feel the lock.”

“How many guards are there?” said Grimes.

“You asking me?” said Henderson. “Why should I tell you?”

Grimes brushed past me, stepping towards Henderson’s chair.

“Just answer me,” she said. “Answer me or I’ll kick your chair over and bite your throat out, I swear.”

“Two,” said Henderson. “Always two. It’s the ones from the gate, I recognise their voices.”

“OK,” said Grimes. “We get their attention, wait by the door, break them over the necks with the chairs, got it? They’ll have already opened the gate out of the estate.”

“Fucking A,” said Bryce.

“What about the dogs?” I said.

“They’ll come in first,” said Richard. “We need something to bait them.”

Silence.

“Forget it,” said Henderson.

We dragged Henderson’s chair so that it was facing the door, as far away from it as we could. He struggled in his ropes as we moved him.

“Don’t worry,” said Richard. “Harvey and Ed will be next to you. They’ll get to the dogs before they get to you.”

“Oh that’s alright then, I’ve got an old man and a fat bastard saving me from two hungry Alsatians. GET ME OUT OF THESE ROPES!”

“Quiet!” hissed Grimes. “Bryce?”

“Aye,” said Bryce. I heard wood snapping. Bryce passed me a broken chair leg, then passed one to Harvey.

“In the throat,” he said. “Hard as you can. Twist it.”

“Right,” said Grimes. “Richard, Bryce, stand with me and George at the door. Are you ready?”

“Are you alright with this?” I whispered to Harvey.

“What do you mean, mate?” he said.

“Killing a dog,” I said.

“Ah yeah, I’ve killed dogs before,” he said. “Nothing to it.”

“What? But…”

“Are you ready?” said Grimes.
 

“No,” said Henderson. “Fuck this, fuck all this…”

“Right, let’s make some noise.”

Bryce began shouting.

“Ho! Ho there ya fannies! Outside! Y’English bastards! Y’English cunts!”

Then Richard began shouting too, stamping his feet on the floor. We all followed, shouting and yelling, banging on the concrete, drowning Henderson’s protests out.
 

“Hey!” I shouted, lost for anything else more meaningful. “Hey.” Louder and louder, watching the black space of the door, hoping that there was some light outside, that we would see it open, see what came through it.

Amongst all the clamour of Bryce roaring, Richard hooting, Grimes’ witch-like screams and Henderson’s muffled dissent, I heard something else, something familiar - a howl rising up behind it, quieter than the rest. It was partway between an animal and a human, fox-like, primal. A howl that had woken me up every day since Carlisle. I felt like nobody else heard it but me. I knew it was coming from Harvey.

Even as I realised that, I felt the shapes in the darkness again. I felt Harvey looking at me, the howl subsiding as the others still raged on. Somehow I heard his voice speaking quietly to me, yet louder than all the other noise, as if through headphones. I felt his face, his brow crumpled and shining eyes impossibly focusing on me.

You getting this yet mate?
he seemed to say.
Are. You. Getting. This. Yet?

I barely had time to register this when we heard barking outside. I swung my head to the door in time to see it burst open and torchlight filling the room. Two dogs ran in, salivating, straight for Henderson. I watched them spring, saw Harvey move forwards with his broken chair leg. The second dog made it past and landed its teeth into Henderson’s kneecap, baring its throat. Henderson screamed. The dog’s red eye rolled towards me and I plunged forwards, catching it in the neck with the sharp wood. I felt it break through fur and skin, heard shouts and crashes from the door, two gunshots, heard the dog yelp as it detached itself from Henderson’s leg, drove the leg in further and twisted it into the dog’s throat as it scratched and scrabbled its paws helplessly against the concrete. It twitched twice, gave a slow whine and finally came to rest with a single, quivering scrape of claw on stone.

There was a thump from the door and I looked over to see Bryce straddling one of the guards, a rope around his neck. The guard lay still on his front and Bryce pushed himself up, wiping back the strands of damp, straggled hair that were pasted across his face.

Richard stood looking down over the other guard, a splintered, bloody chair in his hand.

Harvey had fallen back against the back wall, his dog skewered and whimpering at Henderson’s feet, its jaw still clamped around his shin.

“Get it off me!” Henderson shouted, kicking at the dog’s jaws. “Get this animal off me!”

Bryce pulled the dog away. It growled and renewed its struggle, weakly, as Bryce pushed the chair leg deeper into the animal’s side and twisted it until it too yelped and died.

“Everyone OK?” said Richard.

Henderson howled.

“My knee!”

“Are they dead?” I said. “The guards?”

“Mine is,” said Bryce gloomily.

“Pretty sure mine is too,” said Richard, inspecting the end of his weapon and then letting it fall to the ground. “Jesus, I never…”

“Where’s Grimes?” said Bryce. “Grimes?” He picked up one of the torches dropped by the guards. “Grimes?”

“My knee!” shouted Henderson again.

There was no answer from Grimes. Then a few weak breaths from the corner. We ran across.

“Grimes? Oh no,” said Bryce. “Oh Christ.”

She was lying curled on her side, clutching her belly. Fresh, shining blood moved through her fingertips and was pooling on the floor. Her face was pale and smeared with blood from the cuts made by the can around her mouth.
 

“One of the guards fired,” she said. “Hit me.”

“OK,” said Bryce. “Come on, let’s get you up.”

I helped Bryce lift her up and she rested on his knee. Harvey crawled across.
 

“We’ll get you out, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re going to be OK.”

Henderson was panting through his teeth.

“My knee,” he said. “My knee...I think it’s come off.”

Richard picked up the second torch.

“Quiet,” he said in Henderson’s direction, like a distant father to a mothered child. He strode across to where we were huddled around Grimes and crouched down. The pointed shadows cast by his features were stretched to cartoon-like dimensions in the yellow beam.

“Can you walk?” he said. “Get up?”

Grimes wheezed. The corner of her mouth flickered into a smile and she shook her head. One of the guards’ radios hissed static. Grimes looked in its direction.

“You there, Gav?” a voice crackled. “What’s happening? Over.”

“You need to get going,” said Grimes.

“Gav? Over.”

There was a noise from far away. A door banging. An engine.

“Now,” said Grimes.

Henderson was still seething air back and forwards between his teeth, rocking his chair.

“Get me out of these ropes!” he shouted. “Get me out!”

“You’re coming with us,” I said to Grimes. “We can carry you.”

She frowned at me.

“No you can’t,” she said. “You can barely…”

“We’re carrying you,” said Bryce. He put his hands beneath her arms and hauled her over his shoulders. Outside, a pair of headlights rounded a corner at the far end of the clearing and stopped. The engine revved twice, then the lights began to grow as the truck sped towards us.
 

“They’re coming,” said Richard. “One truck. Jenny’s with them, I can hear her voice. What are we going to do?”

“That woman,” said George. He grabbed a shotgun from one of the dead guards’ hands. “She really must be stopped. Get back.” He motioned to us all. “Back away from the door.”

We moved back into the darkness of the lock-up as the truck pulled up and stopped. Jenny Rae got out, a guard on either side of her, and stopped in the headlights. Her bulk cast a squat shadow in the dirt as she surveyed the scene with growing fury.

“You,” she said, pointing a finger at Henderson. But before she could continue, there was a deafening shot and I saw something spray from her kneecaps. The two guards swung their guns towards the sound of the shotgun, but George Angelbeck had already reloaded. He shot one quickly and then the other. They fell lifeless to the ground as he stepped into the light and walked over to where Jenny Rae was lying, howling in the dirt.

We followed him out, Grimes barely conscious over Bryce’s shoulder. The truck’s engine was still running and gate was open out onto the wasteland.

“I suggest you go,” said George. “Now. Before anyone else turns up.”

“What about you?” said Harvey. “What are you going to do?”

“Don’t worry about me,” said George. “I’ll deal with Miss Rae. We’ll sort something out, won’t we, Jenny?”

Jenny Rae struggled on the ground at his feet. Between whimpers, I thought I could hear a sound of assent. George looked up at us.

“Go, go on.”

Bryce lifted Grimes into the back seat and lay her across his lap, covering her with a dog blanket. Harvey got in beside him and I sat in the passenger seat next to Richard.

“Hey!” shouted Henderson, still strapped to the seat and bleeding amongst a mess of dead dogs. “What about me?”

“Good luck,” said Richard, and drove away through the gate.

Darkness. Still darkness, all around, engulfing everything, amplifying every shuddering breath in our throats, every thundering heartbeat in our chests, making everything close in. I had no sense of where we were, how far we were from the city. I could see nothing but yellow triangles cast by the truck’s headlights on the hopeless, rocky ground as the engine roared.

I could hear Bryce. I felt his dark bulk in the seat behind and to my left. I heard his sniffs, his grunts, his sobs.

There were noises behind us; Jenny’s guards, I guessed, but they weren’t with us for long. The sun came up as we hit the city. For a few short seconds we saw it again, the disc of fire straining to be seen behind the clouds, but it fell away like it had done before, abandoning its blaze to the slow seep.

And then we found buildings. And then we drove through empty streets. And I watched Richard grit his teeth and lean forward over the wheel, willing the truck to continue, willing the roads to carry us safely away. And then we found one that led us south. And I listened to Bryce’s struggles and I pressed down against my own, which is all you can ever do. And then we drove, speeding south out of Manchester as daylight grew around us.

C
HURCH

It was around midday when Bryce announced that Grimes had stopped breathing. I looked in the mirror. He was still cradling her in his lap, stroking her head. His face seemed to belong to someone else; no longer arrogant, no trace of a sneer. We stopped the truck and each made sure. Her eyes and mouth were open. Her pulse was gone. We buried her and carried on. Soon after, the truck ran out of petrol. We let it splutter and stop, then got out without a word. There was a small canvas bag in the back which we filled with the dog blanket and a map we found in the glove compartment. There was half-empty bottle of water as well.

I remember very little else about that day. We never stopped except from to fill our water from a dribbling, dirty stream. We said nothing.
 

I have no idea if what happened had any bearing on this, but that day was the first day that running actually started to mean something for me. I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed it, but I started to feel what enjoying it might feel like. I pressed down the pain and found springs in my muscles I didn’t know existed. At points I had to hold myself back, keep myself from bounding up a hill or taking a few longer strides to catch up with Harvey.
So this is what it is
I thought.
So this is why people do it
. I wish that it hadn’t been that way. I wish I’d found that feeling in some sunny park somewhere, or halfway up a hill in winter, looking out across a bay with a fire and a family waiting for me at home. I wish I’d found it in any number of nameless fantasies that don’t belong to me, rather than scraping across the raw dirt of a burned country, half-starved, blind with thirst and freezing, running from the death of a friend. But that’s where I found it. And yes I felt guilty for it, but yes it felt good.

We noticed that the water was getting nearer on our right. By the time the light began to fade, we were running close to a strange beach of dirt, grass and brick. The new sea was dotted with islands, towers and metal claws reaching up into the skies. A man-made archipelago stretched out as far as we could see towards the smeared horizon. This had once been the North-West of England, the Welsh border, the start of the Midlands - all now drowned in saltwater.

We stopped on a hill. Beyond us we could see flames moving slowly along the shore. They started at a small, dark building and ended at the water’s edge. We left the road and walked closer, heard the waves crashing against broken machinery and concrete, beginning their long grind into sand. Then we heard music - a distant, hollow sound that warbled across the bay from the building. It was a church organ.

We found a grass-covered ridge and sat down to rest. The flames were torches carried by people in a procession from the church to the shore. They all wore white dresses. I could see children, families walking with their heads turned down towards the ground. One woman fell to the earth, threw her head up and screamed, then scrambled to her feet and tried to leave the line but was caught on both arms by two others and brought back, where she eventually stayed, head hung, sobbing.