The End of the World Survivors Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  Alice tore open her gift of a seashell necklace and clutched it with joy.

  ‘Like a big girl,’ she said, as I fastened it around her neck.

  Later, when sleep crept over every word I said, the ship suddenly lurched and the lights went off. Then, after a few seconds of still darkness, they came on again and the ship powered away.

  Nobody said anything, but a few quiet looks were shared.

  What was that?

  Afterwards we were herded to our berths. Our corridor had three toilets. We joined the queue at the end, four deep.

  ‘Mummy, I need a wee.’ Alice looked up, knees bent. ‘And I’m thirsty.’

  ‘One out, one in, eh, sweetheart? OK, well let’s deal with the code yellow first. Excuse me?’ I tapped the shoulder of the man in front. ‘Sorry, do you think we could jump ahead?’

  The man turned. His face was like a walrus, if the walrus in question worked for an insurance company, enjoyed port and had made a series of shrewd investments over the years.

  ‘No, I do not,’ he said. It was Gerald and his wife. ‘We’ve been waiting here for twenty bloody minutes.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that my daughter needs a pee, and I just thought—’

  ‘Well, you thought wrong, didn’t you?’ Gerald shuffled his great backside as if in some primal claim to bathroom territory. ‘We all have needs, and just because you have children, doesn’t mean you get to be first at everything.’

  ‘Mummy, really need a wee.’

  ‘But she’s only three,’ I said. ‘We won’t be long.’

  ‘It’s just like on that cruise, Mildred,’ said Gerald to his wife. ‘They were all at it then too, all those bloody parents.’

  ‘Now wait a minute—’

  ‘Hey.’

  The voice came from the next queue along, at the front of which was a woman. She was younger than me and wore her hair in a black bob. ‘You can go before me, if you like.’

  The words, and the smile that accompanied them, were like a child’s.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ushering Alice over.

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ she said, holding the door open for us. Gerald mumbled something in the background, which our new friend ignored. She grinned down at Alice and whispered: ‘He should be kinder to other people, don’t you think, princess?’

  ‘It’s not his fault,’ said Alice. ‘He’s a wanker —’

  ‘Alice, Christ!’

  The woman smirked and there were some sniggers from the queue behind.

  ‘And I’m not a princess,’ Alice went on, ‘I’m a pirate, like my daddy.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the woman. Her accent sounded English, north-east, I thought. ‘Is that right, pet?’

  ‘Yes, he’s coming after us on another boat. He’s going to meet us at – at Kip Town.’

  I shared a brief encoded look with the woman, whose smile never faltered.

  ‘Well, lucky you.’

  ‘Thanks again,’ I said, squeezing inside the toilet. ‘I really appreciate it.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. Oh, and here.’ She held out an unopened bottle of water. ‘For afterwards.’

  ‘Oh, God, thanks, I mean it. I’ll get you another one.’

  She puckered and shook her head, then nodded at Arthur, arms out.

  ‘Want me to take him while you do your business?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said, cramming into the small room. ‘I can manage.’

  The door shut and I plonked Arthur in the sink while I saw to Alice. He gurgled at the cracked mirror.

  ‘Please don’t use that word, Alice.’

  ‘What word?’

  ‘The one you just used.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because some people don’t like hearing it, and little girls definitely shouldn’t say it. It’s a bad word.’

  Her eyes glazed while her urine hit the water below. She searched her teeth with her tongue, waiting.

  ‘But the world is bad, Mummy,’ she said when it was finished.

  My heart stalled.

  ‘Not all of it, darling. Now come on, let’s get to bed.’

  The bed in question was a double bunk that shared the small cabin with a bolted-down table and chair. Arthur was already asleep, so I laid him with Alice in the bottom bunk and took the top for myself.

  Soon I heard whispers, and I peered over the side. Alice had the stringy-phone to her mouth.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said.

  She looked up with bright, watery eyes. ‘Talking to Daddy.’

  I froze, feeling as if I had suddenly caught something fragile.

  ‘Good night, sweetheart. Go to sleep.’

  ‘Night, Mummy.’

  I lay back, my heart turning wounded somersaults.

  Chapter 3

  Before it all happened – back in that world of parties, aeroplanes and Kate Winslets – being a parent meant living in a world where your worst nightmare could come true at any moment. It was a daily walk upon a crooked line. You’d be smiling, waving, having fun in a park or on a beach, but all the time you knew that the nightmare was just a slip, trip or bump away. It lurked in every misjudged step your child took, every distraction that took your attention from them, every germ in every breath. Death, disease and misadventure – and if one of those didn’t get your little cherub then the hedgerows and alleyways were just brimming with eager hands waiting to grab them. And they didn’t just inhabit the dark places, but the bright ones too. Teachers, priests, politicians, celebrities – seems everyone wanted to have it off with kids in those final days.

  I don’t know how you’re supposed to deal with that. I mean, I used to love Jim’ll Fix It. I lost count of the number of times I wrote in asking if I could have a private tour of the London Science Museum – that’s right, private – but I never heard back. I even enclosed a picture of myself once.

  Maybe he just didn’t fancy me.

  You knew the nightmare was there because you saw it every day. You knew that when you tucked your children in at night there was some poor soul out there who wasn’t, but had been the night before. And you thanked the stars for it. You thanked the stars every night that someone else had fallen into the nightmare and not you.

  Those stars, of course, weren’t interested in your gratitude. They were busy making plans of their own, and before we knew it a hundred thousand asteroids had smashed the northern hemisphere into smithereens, killing almost everything in its path. And yet my babies and I were still in one piece. We had side-stepped yet another nightmare. So my relief must have been palpable that morning as I sat upon the upper deck watching Alice and Arthur play in a children’s recreation area the crew had erected – a sunken pit of slides, bricks, cushions and toys surrounded by a high gated fence. Nothing could happen to them now. We were saved, and they were literally locked in a padded cage.

  ‘I’ll have three or four pints of what you’re having.’

  I looked up to see a black bob haloed by sunlight. Our saviour from the toilet queues the night before.

  ‘Oh, hello. Er, I’m not … drinking anything?’

  She laughed. ’You look like you’re on cloud number nine, that’s all.’

  ‘Right. Sorry. I’m probably just a wee bit frazzled from yesterday.’

  She shrugged. ‘You just look happy, that’s all. Mind if I sit with you?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I had chosen the only bench left on the deck, which unfortunately happened to be three away from Gerald. There was no sign of his wife. He had already given me one withering look when I sat down and was giving me a second as I shimmied along for Mary. She noticed.

  ‘Made friends there, I see,’ she said, and before I could speak she’d turned in his direction. ‘You all right, Gerald pet?’ she bellowed across, in the tone of a nurse over a dribbling geriatric. ‘Happy? Do you have everything you need? I said, do you have EVERYTHING YOU NEED?’

  Gerald’s face puckered with affront, and he grumbled back into the
battered paperback he was reading. I stifled a laugh.

  ‘He’s a flippin’ old goose, that one,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Aye. My husband and I had the pleasure of Mr and Mrs Shavington’s company for two months in Whitby.’ She turned to me. ‘An abandoned holiday camp. Buttlins, we used to call it. As in your bum.’

  I hesitated, as I had already learned to at the mention of relatives who weren’t visible. ‘Husband?’

  She smiled, understanding. ‘Nathan. He’s down below deck, gave him a lie-in.’

  ‘Is that where you lived then, Whitby?’

  Mary laughed. ‘Christ, no, we lived in South Shields. We had to come south after the thing happened. A big one hit Northumberland, you know? Smack bang in the heart of it. Boom. Nathan said it tore the whole coast apart, and then all those floods …’ Her eyes drifted with the words, as if she had suddenly tired of them.

  ‘Good to see the kids having fun, I bet,’ she said, nodding at the play area. Alice had struck up a friendship with a boy, huddled beneath the roof of a climbing frame. ‘That camp was no fun. But they’re outside now, and in the sun, too.’

  ‘Yeah, what’s that all about? It’s Boxing Day but it feels like spring.’

  ‘Nathan says it’s because of what happened.’ She unfolded her palms to stress the nature of cause and effect. ‘It’s the atmosphere, you see, it’s all skew-whiff now. That cloud that hung around, all the dust and that. We’re still in the tail end of those things, did you know that? There’s little baby ones coming down all the time, not like before, you know, but big enough to do some damage. That’s why we still can’t fly. And then there’s all the shifting tides.’ She turned to me, twin hair curtains swinging. ‘Did you know most of southern Europe’s under water now?’

  There was something about her – the way her eyes wandered your face when you spoke, the way her sentences seemed cobbled together, as if by some extraterrestrial who had quickly absorbed a dictionary in order to fit in. She wasn’t like other people. She seemed untethered, free, like a sail from a mast. I liked her.

  ‘Do you and Nathan have kids?’

  ‘Nope.’ She drummed her knees. ‘Just me and my man. I mean, I want some, one day, but I’m not sure about Nate. Too much going on his career.’

  I looked at her, eyebrow cocked.

  ‘Career? Really?’

  She slapped a hand to her mouth and laughed. ‘Sorry, you must think I’m a loon. Hard though, isn’t it? You still think of things carrying on the way they were before, don’t you?’

  When I made no reply, she looked at me and cocked her head.

  ‘Or maybe not?’

  I searched for Arthur and Alice, aware that I’d taken my eye off them for a full five seconds. ‘You can tell your man that there’s never a right time for kids. If you want them, have them.’

  ‘I shall tell him that, indeed, thank you. I’m Mary, by the way. Mary Higgs.’

  ‘Beth. Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  We sat for a while watching the children play. A squabble of gulls that had been following the ship began to make tentative swoops for non-existent food, at which three deckhands launched a counter-attack with brooms. The crowd tittered and cheered at their efforts. All apart from Gerald, who remained disgruntled behind his book.

  Mary sniffed. ‘I’ve always thought it was a shame about seagulls.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, look at them. Big beaks, huge wingspans, expert dive-bombers. They’re perfect hunting machines, and what have they become? Scavengers. They’d rather pick through bin bags than do what they were designed to do.’

  ‘Maybe they didn’t like doing what they were designed to do.’

  ‘We all like doing what we’re designed to do.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘Of course, otherwise we wouldn’t do it. We’re all put here for a reason.’

  I looked away, preparing for that terrible silence that opens up between two people who have just realised they’re from different planets. But Mary closed it before it began.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not a God-botherer.’

  ‘I don’t mind if you are.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. What I mean is that I believe there’s a purpose to everything, and we all have our own one to find – the thing we’re designed for.’

  ‘And what is it you think you’re designed for?’

  A strange look flitted across her face, like a bird taking flight. ‘I haven’t found it yet, but I can see you have. You only have to look at the way you are with your kids.’

  I gave a dry laugh. ‘Is that my purpose, Mary? To be a mother?’

  She dipped her head like a scolded child. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …’

  I realised I had crossed my arms. I uncrossed them, feeling bad.

  ‘It’s all right. I know what you meant. But I think you’re wrong. The only thing we’re designed to do is survive.’ I nodded at the last remaining gull, which was hovering, open-beaked, above the three broom-wielding deckhands. ‘That’s all that bird’s doing, surviving. Hunting or scavenging, doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It must be hard, just you and the kids,’ said Mary.

  ‘We do just fine.’

  ‘What happened to their daddy?’

  ‘He’s still alive.’

  ‘Then your daughter was telling the truth last night? He’s really coming?’

  I hesitated. ‘That’s his plan.’

  ‘Right. Sounds like it’s complicated.’

  Suddenly there was a tremendous groan and the ship lurched. Cries of alarm shattered the silence left by the stopped engines. ‘Christ, not again. Alice? Arthur?’ I stood and made for the play area.

  Mary’s hand was still on my arm.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘They’re fine, look, over there.’

  Mary pointed to where Alice had safely rolled against the netting. Arthur was on his side, giggling.

  ‘Just like last night. What’s going on?’

  The deck vibrated as the engines restarted. Those who had stood sat down again, and the deck filled with disgruntled mutters.

  ‘Bloody disgrace,’ I heard Gerald mutter. ‘Ought not to be afloat at all.’

  Mary rolled her eyes at me. Then she frowned, remembering something.

  ‘Your husband – is he the one who tried to get on at the gangplank?’

  ‘That’s him. Did you see?’

  ‘No, but I heard someone talking about him last night.’

  ‘Who?’

  Just then there was a commotion of boots and voices from the deck above. In unison we looked up to see two men surrounded by three uniformed guards and Captain Ulrich. The sun was low and behind them, so I couldn’t make out their faces, but I heard the larger of the two protesting. He had been placed in handcuffs.

  Mary raised her eyebrows. ‘It was him, as it happens.’

  I stood up and shielded my eyes from the sun’s glare. The man’s hair shook as he struggled in the grip of two guards.

  ‘Holy shit –’

  ‘Get your hands off me you seal-fucking nob-jockeys!’

  ‘– that’s Bryce.’

  ‘Hey! That was my arse, you bloody pervert! Get your hands off my arse! This is molestation! Are you bastards seeing this down there? I’m being fucking molested here! You’re all witnesses! All o’ yous!’

  ‘Do you know him?’ said Mary.

  ‘I do. Both of them.’

  ‘Bryce,’ said the other man, just as tall but slimmer in every way. ‘Calm down, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘That’s Richard.’

  ‘Look, officer,’ said Richard, attempting to take Ulrich to the side. ‘I can vouch for this man, all right? He wasn’t even in the camp and we weren’t anywhere near Falmouth for longer than a day. He was with me all the time and I have the correct papers. There’s no way he could have contracted the virus.’

  There were gasps f
rom the deck at this word. Gerald slammed his paperback shut and stood.

  ‘Virus?’ he said. ‘I demand you get that man off this deck at once!’

  Some other passengers shouted in agreement and the captain approached the railing, palms out.

  ‘Ladies, gentlemen, please do not panic.’ His words were like ripples in Scandinavian cream.

  ‘Panic?’ Gerald again, pudgy fists now pressed firmly against handles which I hoped, for Mildred’s sake, had not been used for love in a long time. ‘That bloody hippy shouldn’t be aboard this ship! He could infect us all!’

  ‘Hippy?’ Bryce swung his head, finding Gerald beneath. ‘Who are you calling “hippy”, cobweb cock? Come up here and say that to my face you lardy old mmph, mmph!’

  He disappeared as a third guard slapped a hand over his mouth, pulling him back.

  ‘Well I never.’ Gerald shook his head glumly. ‘Bloody disgrace. Should throw the blaggard overboard right now if you ask me.’

  There were more people on their feet now, each adding their own tuts of disapproval. A woman with huge sunken eyes and two missing teeth spoke. ‘’Ere, I thought this was supposed to be an evacuation, not a bleedin’ plague ship!’

  ‘Madam,’ said the captain, ‘I can assure you we have the situation under control, if you could just settle down and try not to panic.’

  But the crowd had decided, and Ulrich withered beneath the might of a hundred badly formed British arguments.

  ‘I can vouch for him too,’ I said, above the din. The noise abated and all heads swung to me. Richard peered down over the railing. ‘Beth? Is that you?’

  ‘I said get off me!’ Bryce wrestled free of the guards and looked over too. He grinned. ‘Beth. Lovely to see you, doll. Where’s Ed?’

  ‘You … know this man?’ said the officer.

  ‘I do. He arrived with my husband only yesterday. They were nowhere near the camp, I promise you.’

  The officer looked between me, Bryce and the crowd. ‘Could you come up here, please, madam?’