The End of the World Survivors Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  Passing the helm, Bryce felt beneath a wooden shelf.

  ‘Keys,’ he said, dropping a set into Richard’s hand.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Richard, looking at the keys in surprise. ‘Bryce, you need to lift anchor.’

  ‘Whit?’

  ‘You need to pull the anchor up, the winch is on the starboard bow.’

  ‘The what’s on the what now? Speak fucking English!’

  ‘The big windy metal thing at the front of the floaty thing on the right-hand side! Turn it!’

  ‘Thank you!’

  Bryce marched off up the deck. Richard began sorting through the keys.

  I heard a furious, strangled voice from the end of the harbour.

  ‘Staines is coming,’ I said. ‘Richard?’

  ‘I hear you,’ he said, fumbling through the keys. ‘Going as fast as I can. Bryce, are we up?’

  ‘How am I supposed to fucking know?’

  ‘Is it still winding?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then keep winding and tell me when it’s stopped. Ah, bingo.’

  Richard inserted the key into the ignition and turned it. He gritted his teeth. ‘Please be fuelled.’

  The engine spluttered. ‘Fuck.’ He turned it again. This time it caught and the deck rumbled. ‘Yes! Bryce, how are we doing?’

  ‘The windy thing’s no longer winding.’

  ‘Good, lock it and we’re set. How are we doing back there?’

  Josh pulled the last mooring rope aboard. ‘All done, Dad.’

  Maggie picked up two of the guns we’d just taken and turned to me. ‘This is where we leave you. We’ll deal with Tony.’

  ‘Thank you, Maggie, for everything.’

  ‘Good luck, Beth, I hope you find your children. Now go, before he gets here.’

  She smiled, but as she did there was a whistling sound followed by a dull thump. Maggie twitched, as if she’d been jostled in a crowd. Colin jumped, nearly falling from her shoulder. Her eyes widened and she gave a tight gasp.

  ‘Mother?’ said Dani, steadying her. Maggie looked down at her chest, where a patch of blood was already appearing below her right shoulder. The ape inspected it, reaching a paw, but jumped clear just as she toppled forward onto the deck.

  ‘Mother,’ cried Dani, falling to her knees and cradling Maggie’s head. ‘She’s been shot!’

  Colin scrabbled from the mayhem and beneath a seat. Maggie’s eyes were open, and her expression had hardened into a serious frown. She drew long breaths in and out of her nose. ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Richard. ‘What do we do? Beth?’

  Tony’s voice was drawing ever closer, his sharp footsteps audible on the planks.

  ‘We need to go,’ I said. ‘We need to go now. Maggie?’

  Maggie looked up at me, eyes bulging. ‘Go,’ she mouthed. ‘Go.’

  I turned to Richard. ‘Do it. Now.’

  Richard pushed the throttle and we pulled away. The sudden movement sent another shockwave of hope through my chest; the bird beneath the window had fluttered to its feet.

  ‘It’s all right, child,’ said Maggie, wheezing, with one hand trembling on her daughter’s cheek. ‘I’m all right.’

  We were passing the end of the harbour when her eyes flashed to me. ‘What happened to Ernest?’

  I looked up at the platform upon which a small fire still burned. Hanging from a rope above it was an egg-shaped bundle of sackcloth, charred and slowly turning.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said. ‘Tony murdered him. I’m sorry.’

  Maggie blinked.

  ‘Is he there? Does he see us?’

  I looked back at the expanse of burning harbour, shrinking now beneath the shadow of the Rock. Silhouetted against the flames stood Tony, looking back with his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He sees us.’

  Maggie looked away. ‘Then you’d better find a way of making this boat go as fast as it can. Because he’ll be coming, mark my words.’

  A breath of cold wind swept over my face. I don’t care, I thought. Let him come.

  I was moving again, and so was my heart.

  Chapter 16

  Of the long list of tortures for which you’re told to the prepare when you have children, sleep deprivation ranks top. Awaiting you on the other side of labour, you are told, is a four-walled hell of permanent consciousness from which the only respite is those fraught periods during which your infant sleeps and you end up cleaning the house anyway.

  What they don’t tell you is that once you’ve survived this ordeal, sleep is never the same again. It’s never as deep, never as restful, never as fulfilling. It becomes a baggier and more neurotic version of itself. Just like you.

  Sleep used to be a bottomless pool into which I would nightly plunge. Now I only ever dabble my toe.

  That’s how it is for me anyway, and that’s how it was on the boat when, as Gibraltar became a distant smear of smoke on the eastern horizon, and Dani and Carmela had carefully lifted Maggie below deck, I curled up on one of the deck’s benches and closed my eyes. When I opened them it was light, and I could smell coffee. I was beneath a blanket.

  Richard came into focus, leaning at the helm with a mug in his hand. He seemed to be shrouded in steam, which I realised was actually mist.

  ‘Morning,’ he said, and gestured to a battered metal mug on the floor. ‘I made you a coffee.’

  I sat up and put a hesitant hand to my leg; the pain was not as bad as I had expected, so I explored it further, kneading the flesh as I straightened my knee and gradually eased my way into the discomfort.

  When I was done, I picked up the mug and took a sip. It was a hot tangle of tastes.

  ‘Thanks.’ I pulled the blanket around my shoulders. ‘And for this.’

  I picked up my broom, which I’d left on the floor, and got shakily to my feet. Richard watched me, uncrossing his legs in a signal that help was there if needed.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I said, crossing to the helm.

  He nodded at the coffee. ‘Didn’t know how you took it.’

  ‘Black’s fine,’ I said.

  ‘Good, because there’s no milk. Or sugar.’

  I took a bigger sip. This time my taste buds unravelled the mystery.

  ‘There’s rum, though, I gather?’

  He smiled. ‘Thought it might help, under the circumstances.’

  I looked at the flat water behind us. Fragile mist hung over it like pale blue tissue paper. I scanned it for ripples, disruption, any sign of a boat. ‘And what exactly are the circumstances?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Richard, draining his cup. ‘I’ve been watching for him. There’s nothing.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘A little after 6 a.m. We’ve been motoring for three hours.’

  ‘We’re drifting. Why is the engine off?’

  ‘Because I wanted to conserve fuel. Besides, there’s a little wind, so I thought we’d try a sail. Want to help?’

  ‘Bow, stern, starboard, port.’ Richard pointed around the boat. ‘Helm.’ He tapped the wheel and jumped up onto the deck. He offered me his hand and pulled me up too.

  ‘Mainsail.’ He tapped the tight, blue roll of sail above the cabin and pointed ahead. ‘Jib. Some vessels have a third, but we just have the two. Keeps things simple. Oh, and these are lines.’ He rubbed a palm along a taut rope and looked up. ‘Mast, obviously. Winches, boom, cabin, deck. That’s it, basically.’

  I looked around the deck. I had been on boats before; the Unity of course, and the canoe I’d capsized on a school trip to the Lake District which had required me to be dragged, half drowning to shore. Then there were the overnight ferries to Orkney for our annual family holiday, full of sliding, seasick drunks.

  But yachts were part of a different world; one of cashmere jumpers, white teeth and bulging bank balances. It was a world in which the act of raising a sheet of canvas and expecting the wind to carry you safely in the ri
ght direction was no more presumptuous than, say, taking over a company or buying a third Range Rover for your child’s nanny. It was a world which I knew existed, but in which I could never hope to exist.

  I looked up at the towering mast.

  ‘So … you just raise the sail and it goes?’

  ‘That’s the idea. Fairly simple principle, apart from when you put it into practice.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It’s like everything. Sometimes you have to improvise.’

  He looked around as if he’d suddenly forgotten where he was.

  ‘Right, gentle south-easterly, calm seas, let’s try the jib.’

  I looked at him. ‘Sure. My thoughts exactly.’

  Standing with my shoulder against a cable, I helped Richard unroll the jib’s heavy canvas cover.

  ‘How’s Josh?’ I asked.

  He took some moments to answer. I already knew this about Richard – he took time to consider his words before answering, like a Scrabble player shifting tiles. It made what he said seem more robust, as if stamped with a mark of quality assurance.

  ‘He’s coping,’ he said at last. ‘And with everything that’s happened it would be wrong to expect more of him.’

  ‘How old is he, fifteen?’

  ‘Almost sixteen.’

  I paused and tried his trick of thought before speech.

  ‘And how is his father?’

  He tugged at a fastening and shot me a conspiratorial smile.

  ‘That’s a different matter.’

  ‘You lost your wife, didn’t you?’ The words came too quickly and he turned his attention back to his fastening. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘It’s all right. Yes, Gaby died in the strike.’ He paused, staring at the knot. ‘Christ, it seems like such a long time ago now, but it’s not even a year.’

  ‘You must miss her.’

  Stop.

  I have to explain something to you.

  I woke up on a boat I’d helped steal from a maniac’s blazing harbour after my children had been taken from me when my ship went down – a ship on which we had been bound for a foreign country because the planet had been pulverised by asteroids. All of that: it happened.

  So it must seem strange that I’m leaning casually on this stolen boat, having a gentle chat with a handsome man about grief and loss and feelings.

  But that’s how it goes. The world is a nightmare, it always has been, and we crave safety. That’s why we snuck to the caves and built fires. We seek comfort in anything: the taste of instant coffee laced with rum, or the pallor of a sea mist, or a simple conversation. When the nightmare comes for you, you don’t want to become it. You want to sneak from it.

  But don’t think for a second that this conversation existed in a vacuum. Despite the mist’s cocoon and the untroubled sea and our quiet voices, my insides were shifting like molten lava, and my stomach heaved with that same repeated reality: I had been separated from my children, and the best I could hope for was that it was only by a mere ocean.

  ‘Of course I miss her,’ said Richard. ‘Every day. I never even got to say goodbye to her. But … I feel terrible about this, but do you know what the hardest part is? She did most of the work with Josh. She always had done, from baby to boy, but now it’s up to me. And I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.’

  ‘Parenthood’s never easy. Anyone will tell you that.’

  ‘Maybe, but perhaps if I’d spent more time with him in the early years then I’d be more capable now. I didn’t, though. I was always at work. I thought that was my duty, you know? Bring in the money, get us a big house, keep us financially secure. Gabs ended up taking on the rest. The feeds, the nappies, cleaning …’

  He broke off, aware of the sudden intensity with which I was tugging at a knot.

  ‘Just a few nappies, eh?’

  ‘I didn’t mean …’

  I stopped and looked up.

  ‘You’re raising a child, Richard, not just keeping it fed and watered. You’re teaching it how to live, how to be around other people, how to be happy. All it takes is a bit of time. A bit of presence. You just need to be in the room.’

  ‘I know.’ He harshened his tone, the words bitten off. ‘That’s what I’m trying to say. I wish I had invested the time more than I did the money. I wish I had been more present.’

  I returned to my knot,.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why that made me angry. My head’s all over the place.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  Neither of us spoke for a while, and we concentrated on the last few knots.

  ‘All I’m trying to say,’ he said at last, ‘is that it’s even harder now. I don’t just have to teach him how to be a child, I have to teach him how to be an adult. A man. In a world like this.’

  I released the last knot and found my makeshift crutch, standing back from the cable.

  ‘There’s no manual for parenthood,’ I said. ‘Sometimes you have to improvise.’

  Smiling, Richard pulled away the cover.

  ‘Speaking of which,’ he said, ‘shall we?’

  I stood at the helm as Richard fed a rope through a winch.

  ‘What do I do?’ I asked.

  He pointed up at the mast. ‘See the weather vane at the top? That tells you the wind direction. You want to point the boat into the wind, so go hard to port.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Turn left.’

  ‘Right.’ I turned the wheel. The boat obeyed, and its hull slapped with little waves of encouragement.

  ‘We’re moving,’ I said, excitedly. ‘The boat’s moving.’

  ‘Indeed, now watch the vane and stop when it’s pointing straight ahead.’

  I peered up at the wavering black arrow, turning the wheel back as it found its centre.

  ‘Good. Now tell me you’re ready.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I’m skipper, you’re crew.’

  I gave him a stony look. ‘Is that right.’

  ‘So you have to tell me you’re ready.’

  ‘Fine, I’m ready.’

  ‘Good. Hoist the jib!’

  He grinned and wound the winch. The wheel began to knock as the wind explored the lifting canvas, but I held it tight. Richard tied off the line.

  ‘OK, try a little starboard.’

  ‘That’s right, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  I turned the wheel. The sail flapped violently as the wind finally found it.

  ‘Christ,’ I said, freezing.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Richard, ‘keep going.’

  I turned slowly, allowing the wind in, and gradually we began to move.

  ‘Holy shit, it’s working.’

  Richard shrugged. ‘Told you it was simple.’

  We were away. We weren’t moving at speed – perhaps not even as fast as we had been under the engine – but the experience was incalculably different. I felt the tug of the wind in everything, as if the boat had suddenly woken up. It had merely been an object before, but now it was alive and happily surrendering itself to its master. It was moving us, closing the distance, and I loved it.

  I felt a pressure in the wheel.

  ‘Steady,’ said Richard. ‘Watch for lee helm.’

  ‘Who’s Lee Helm?’

  He laughed. ‘Lee means away from the wind. The helm’s going leeward. Keep it steady by turning into it.’

  I did as he said and the pressure relented.

  ‘Excellent. You’ll make a fine helmsman.’

  I blinked in the fine spray rising from the hull. The mist was rising, and to the right I could make out the dull outline of a coast. Richard folded his arms and raised his chin, closing his eyes.

  ‘I’ve missed this,’ he said. It was to himself, I think.

  Suddenly there was a piercing scream from below deck. Richard jumped and opened his eyes. We looked at each other.

  ‘If that was Bryce,’ he said, ‘then we’re in troub
le.’

  ‘Take the helm,’ I said. ‘I’m going to see.’

  We swapped positions awkwardly, and I poked my head inside the hatch. Josh was in the galley – the small kitchen at the front of the cabin – attempting to cook something in a skillet while shooing Colin from the shelf above. Bryce was nowhere to be seen, but Carmela was with Dani and her mother, who lay on the table with her mouth open and her eyes rolling. I stared down in horror. Carmela loomed over the mess of gore that was her shoulder holding a pair of bloody tongs, in which something hard was pincered.

  She inspected it grimly, saw me and grinned.

  ‘La bala,’ she declared, and dropped the bullet in a bowl beside her.

  ‘Is she all right?’ I said to Dani.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We think it just hit her shoulder.’

  Carmela, who had threaded a needle, took a deep, business-like breath.

  ‘Listo?’

  Dani gripped her mother’s hand and nodded. Carmela dove in, point first.

  As Maggie arched her back and howled, the door beside the kitchen opened and out staggered Bryce. His hair had regained a little of its wildness, his face was pale and dark circles hung beneath his eyes. He froze as he spotted the DIY operation in the corner.

  Colin screeched. Josh shook the skillet. ‘Who wants eggs?’ he said.

  I slammed the hatch as Bryce heaved.

  ‘What’s going on down there?’ said Richard from the helm.

  ‘You don’t want to know. It’s better up here.’

  He nodded to the coast. Though mist still covered the millpond sea, we could see details on the land. What appeared to be a floating town rose from the gloom with stained white turrets glinting in the sun.

  ‘Where are we?’ I said.

  ‘Looks like Cadiz.’

  ‘They might have better communication there, someone who can contact Sauver and tell them what happened.’

  ‘Worth a shot. Let’s take a closer look. Here.’

  He gave me the helm and adjusted some lines as I took us starboard. Soon we were cruising towards the coast, but the mist thickened as we drew closer, and a boglike smell hung in the air.

  ‘Ease up,’ said Richard. ‘Don’t get too close, we don’t know what’s beneath this water.’