The End of the World Survivors Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  The broken pole disappeared behind us, twiglike against the roiling black clouds with its cables and ropes flung hopelessly behind it. This was it. The engine was jammed and now we had no means to lift a sail. The whirlpool would take us. I closed my eyes, pressed my forehead against the mast and wept. Ed did the same.

  There was a thickening to the sound of roaring water and a dimming to the light which I took as a result of our descent into the basin. I didn’t look up. I didn’t want to see what we were heading into. Just let it take us, I thought, and I hoped something would knock me unconscious before I was subjected to the pain of drowning. My fingers searched for Ed’s again. I thought, At least … at least …

  But Ed’s fingers weren’t there, and when I opened my eyes I saw that that he had turned around with his back to the mast, and that the change in the sound was not due to our descent into the basin at all.

  ‘Beth, look!’

  Something was near us. Something was above us.

  ‘Hold on, we’re going to throw you some ropes.’

  It was Dani’s voice. She was leaning over the guard rail of the Black Buccaneer which, although it was just as caked in sludge and slime as the Elma, had its mainsail up and full. Richard was at the helm, bracing port, and I sensed he was holding the boat on a course from which it wanted to break. It had escaped the basin and was surfing its rim, ready to burst from the maelstrom’s orbit.

  Maggie was at the helm with Richard, holding on, for they were pitching like us, and behind Dani’s urgent face Josh swung a rope as Carmela lashed it to a cleat. With a single glance at his father, he hurled it, but it landed in the water far from us.

  Richard made a noise of frustration and Josh scurried for the rope, slipping as he went.

  Dani leaped to his side. ‘It’s OK,’ she mouthed, followed by something else I didn’t see. Together they gathered the rope and Dani stood back. This time he threw it higher, and it landed just over the Elma’s guard rail. Dani’s face flashed with fierce celebration, and Josh – he couldn’t help himself – looked behind again. But Richard was set upon his own task.

  Ed snatched the rope and pulled until it was taut.

  Dani cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘We can’t pull you in, so you’ll have to tie it around your waist.’

  ‘Then what?’ he called back.

  ‘Jump in. We’ll haul you up.’

  He scanned the water above us. ‘Are you fucking serious?’

  ‘It’s the only way, Ed,’ I said. ‘This boat’s useless now, we have to get off it.’

  He looked at me, rope gripped in both of his hands.

  ‘Hurry up!’ said Josh. ‘We’ve only got one spare rope.’

  ‘Right,’ said Ed. ‘Right. You first.’

  Before I could protest he had looped the rope around my waist and tied it in a crude but tight knot. He turned back to the Buccaneer. ‘We’re ready.’

  He helped me around the mast until we were both at the guard rail, and my gut heaved as I looked down into the swirling mass of rubbish. I swallowed vomit.

  ‘Beth, you have to go. Jump. Now.’

  I looked up. Dani was screaming into her hands. ‘Jump!’

  I glanced at Ed, and there was something about the smile that flickered in his eyes I didn’t like. It was too peaceful.

  ‘I’ll throw it straight back,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘I know you will. Now go.’

  He shoved me, and with a yelp I dived beneath the black foam. My mouth filled instantly with the vile liquid, and I belched up warm vomit that washed around my neck. The water stung my eyes and my body was pounded by object after object, boxes, bottles and scraps trying to find a way around or through me. I felt I was going deeper, but suddenly the rope tightened and I surfaced, finding myself gasping for breath and flat against the Buccaneer’s hull. I vomited again, this particular ejection disappearing down my front, and pushed with my good foot against the side of the boat. I looked up, squinting. Carmela was pulling me up, face set and serious, the sinews in her arms working like machinery beneath the bare skin. Before I knew it my belly was on the guard rail and I was tumbling onto the deck. Josh and Dani helped me up.

  ‘Ed!’ I looked back, noticing with horror that the Elma had moved a little further away. The basin was claiming it.

  Ed stood with both hands on the rail. He still had that smile – too peaceful; it didn’t belong here. I met it with a firm grimace. ‘We’re throwing the rope.’

  ‘It’s too far,’ he said, with a shake of his head. ‘It won’t reach.’

  ‘Yes it will. I’m throwing it now.’

  ‘Beth—’

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Ed. I’m throwing the rope and you’re catching it.’

  ‘Beth, you have to go.’

  The water roared between us, along with a fresh wind, readying itself to carry the Buccaneer to safety.

  I looked back at Ed. For a moment I felt nothing – an emotional vacuum while my mind decided what to fill it with.

  Grief? Love? Gratitude?

  No. As it happens, rage. Furious, white-hot rage.

  ‘Edgar Hill,’ I screamed across the widening void. ‘There’s no way I’m letting you off that easy, do you hear me? No way. So hold out your hands and catch this rope, all right? Do you understand?’

  His smile had fallen. He opened his mouth to say something.

  ‘I said, do you understand?’

  He nodded, and slowly raised a hand, but as I lifted the coiled rope something stopped him. A look of dumb horror took over his face.

  I froze. ‘What is it?’

  But I think I already knew.

  ‘The water,’ said Ed. ‘Most of what we have is on the Elma.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Dani. ‘He’s right. We didn’t move any across before we left last night.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘We’ll manage, we’ll have to. Ed?’

  But Ed had already crawled along the handrail and dropped into the cabin. A second later he emerged with two crates balanced precariously on top of each other.

  ‘Can you carry them across with you?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

  The gap was widening. There was no more time.

  ‘OK, here comes the rope.’

  I hurled it and Ed caught the end with one hand. The crates almost fell but he steadied them on one knee as he wrapped the rope around them and his own waist. After another rough knot, he nodded at me, clutched the water to his belly and, with one last look at the broken boat on which he stood, jumped in.

  The rope snapped tight almost immediately as Ed was submerged. I braced myself against the guard rail and leaned back. Again came that freakish, deep pain in my foot, and the pulpy numbness where my toes should have been.

  The Buccaneer weaved dangerously back towards the lip.

  ‘I can’t hold her much longer,’ said Richard from the helm. ‘She’ll be dragged back in if we don’t head out of the current now.’

  ‘Help me!’ I cried back, and Carmela arrived behind. We both heaved, arm over arm, and eventually Ed appeared, gasping and spluttering through the tumbling froth. His patch had been torn clean off and I caught a glimpse of the empty socket; a dark, puckered place where his other eye had been. Carmela roared as we pulled, and soon Ed’s waist was clear. The water was still there, but it had slipped down so only the lip of the outermost crate was gripped to his belly. Both hands were on the rope, so if they slipped then he wouldn’t catch them. He fumbled for them as he swung out, but by the time his hand found them he had hit the hull. The impact knocked the crates from their fragile harness.

  ‘No!’ he cried, catching one in his left hand. The other hit his boots, where it balanced for a second, then fell and was gone. ‘Shit!’

  Now he was holding on to the remaining crate with one hand and the rope with the other. He was almost at the guard rail.

  ‘Here!’ he yelled, scrambling with his feet against the side and hauling the crate up to
where Josh was standing. Josh grabbed the crate, but it was a little too low and he only managed to hold on to it by puncturing the plastic with two fingers.

  ‘I have to go!’ said Richard. ‘Do you have him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dani, ‘we have him, go.’

  ‘Wait,’ I yelled back, but it was too late. Richard had slammed us to port, and as the Buccaneer was finally allowed to let rip, Ed swung away left, losing his grip upon the crate and the rope. Carmela and I fell backwards with the slack rope flying through the guard rail, but as he fell Ed managed to grip the side of the boat with one hand. There he hung, legs dragging in the foam behind, as Josh hung over the guard rail with two fingers curled tightly through the crate’s plastic cover.

  ‘Don’t let go!’ we all said at once, and while I didn’t know for sure where everyone else’s command was directed, I knew where mine was. I sprang up and reached down for Ed. ‘Give me your hand.’

  He looked up at me, one eye wild and the other in its permanent, mangled squint. ‘I can’t,’ he said, wheezing.

  I glanced to the left, where Josh was still hanging over the side with a string of drool dangling from his mouth as he watched, in wide-eyed horror, the plastic stretch from his fingers like molten wax. The crate was almost in the water. Dani came to his side and reached down to help, but her arms weren’t long enough. Dimly, I heard Richard yelling out commands from the helm, but I looked back to Ed.

  ‘You can.’ I stretched further, shoulder, elbow, wrist and fingers reaching the limits of their length. I found his eyes and looked into them as deeply as I could, even the wreck on the left. My voice trembled, and not just under the strain of my ready-to-pop joints. ‘You can, Ed. You can and you will. Give me your hand.’

  His fingers were bloodless, as white as the hull, and slipping from it, but with a sudden jolt he brought his right hand up and grabbed mine.

  We held each other – not wrist-to-wrist, but hand-to-hand.

  I gripped tight, he gripped tighter, and I pulled with everything I had until he was on the deck. As we tumbled together in a heap, I heard a shriek from Dani and a cry of woe from Josh, and a splash as the crate of water disappeared in the waves behind us.

  ‘Christ, Josh, no!’ shouted Richard, as his son fell back, eyes open and mouth shut in mute horror. Richard hit the wheel, cursing some more. The maelstrom was already disappearing to starboard, and the noise of the water was being replaced by the steady rush of wind and the thrum of the halyard. Josh put his head in his hands.

  I looked at Ed.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said, barely able to breathe.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, examining his head and, when he realised his patch was gone, covering his eye in shame. I pulled it gently away.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, and though my body was howling with pain, my throat burned with recent vomit and everything seemed to swim in and out of focus, I managed a smile. ‘I’m your wife, remember?’

  Chapter 25

  We sailed hard until the wind died, by which time the sun was sliding towards the horizon. The water was clear of debris, though it was still tinged a strange orange that matched the air. Everything was gloopy and hot, and we were nearer than ever to the flashing, black clouds in the west.

  Shaken and silent, we dropped sail and drifted, facing the storm.

  Richard paced the deck, rubbing his stubble with one hand while the other was fixed to his hip, elbow bent like a pair of garden shears. Occasionally he glanced at Josh, who sat at the bow with his hands around his legs, looking away from us all.

  Maggie sat at the stern as Dani changed the dressing on her shoulder. Her face was grim and set, and I could sense that the friction between them had reached a point of no return.

  ‘Is this what you wanted?’ she muttered. ‘Is this the adventure you were after?’

  ‘Shut up, Mother. Sit still.’

  Colin scurried up and down the starboard deck, seemingly searching for a way off the boat.

  Carmela was below deck performing a stock check; a useless exercise, since we already knew exactly how badly we were fucked. But I suspect she was doing it to keep her mind off Bryce’s continued self-confinement.

  Ed had made a new eyepatch out of a red scarf Carmela had given him. He was scanning the chart at the table behind the helm, shaking his head and dragging his finger over imaginary lines spanning thousands of miles.

  And me? There was not much of me left by that point. My head spun, my vision drifted, my throat hurt and my mouth was filled with the taste of my own sick and whatever had been in that water. I felt as gloopy and unreal as the sea, and my shot mind presented me with a continuous loop, an old and scratchy cartoon like Popeye or those first Mickey Mouse shorts. It was of me melting into the ocean like rancid butter in hot oil.

  The boat began to rock. The storm was approaching.

  Ed stood up suddenly. ‘This isn’t right. We’re way off course.’

  ‘What?’ said Richard absently, still pacing and rubbing his chin.

  ‘That whirlpool took us far further south than we should be.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Richard. ‘We’ve been heading west.’

  ‘No, we haven’t.’

  ‘We have.’

  Richard strode to the chart. ‘Let me see.’

  ‘Look –’ Ed pointed ‘– we were here, the storm was there. So we must be here.’

  Richard snorted. ‘How the hell do you work that out?’

  Ed narrowed his eyes for a moment, then snatched back the map and flattened it on the table. ‘Because, the storm was moving south. Fast.’

  ‘No it wasn’t.’

  ‘Yes it was.’

  As they argued, Dani and Maggie continued their own snippy exchange. Josh, mute, kept his eyes on the storm.

  Richard raised his voice. ‘Ed, I’ve been watching that storm all day.’

  ‘Really? Have you been marking our bearing against it? Counting off the miles? Triangulating?’

  Richard scoffed. ‘This isn’t a Scout hike, Ed.’

  ‘That’s a “no”, then. Look, we need to adjust our heading to account for our shift. I’d say 260, or more like 263. If we don’t then we’ll end up in Venezuela.’

  ‘Bullshit, we’ll end up in Florida like we always would – 263 will take us all the way up to –’ he scanned the map ‘– New York. Or even fucking Maine.’

  Carmela crashed around downstairs. I sat with my back to the guard rail, watching the waves lick the hull below with more and more appetite. The haze in which we sat became a fine spray, which I realised was rain, and I closed my eyes, trying to pretend it was a garden hose on a summer’s day. But all I could think of was a burst water main after an inferno.

  ‘I told you,’ said Maggie. ‘We should have stayed. The world isn’t safe, Dani. It’s not now and it wasn’t before. We had everything we needed, but you didn’t listen to me. You never listen to me.’

  With a rasp of exasperation, Dani stood and leaned on the guard rail at the stern.

  ‘Go on,’ said Maggie. ‘Go and sulk.’

  More thumps from downstairs. The deck clanked and rattled as the waves grew ever more ravenous.

  Carmela appeared from the cabin. ‘We have not lots water. Not for every person.’

  ‘No shit,’ spat Richard.

  She pulled back her head and rattled off a few lines of affronted Spanish. Richard ignored her, returning to the chart.

  ‘Ed,’ he said, ‘you’re not thinking straight. The one thing we have to go on is the storm, and the storm—’

  ‘The storm has moved. You’ve not been paying attention.’

  Richard straightened. ‘Paying attention? I’ve been captaining a bigger boat with a larger crew—’

  At this, Dani spun from the stern. ‘Really? Who made you captain?’

  Josh huffed from the bow. ‘He’s always captain.’

  Richard, already derailed by Dani’s retort, turned to his son. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’<
br />
  Josh turned, glowering. ‘Exactly what it says. You always take charge. You’re always telling people what to do.’

  Richard looked around the deck, bemused and insulted. ‘Well, someone had to.’ He strode to the hatch and shouted into the cabin: ‘And it’s not as if I had any fucking help!’

  Carmela barked back, consonants like shrapnel.

  Maggie looked up. ‘You think just because your hairy friend isn’t up here you’ve had no help?’

  He sighed. ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ said Josh.

  ‘Just what is your problem, Joshy?’

  Josh stood, fists clenched, and made his way down to the helm. The boat rocked, stern to bow, but he kept his footing.

  ‘Don’t call me Joshy. And my problem is you. You think you’ve got all the instruction manuals, don’t you? You think you know how the world works better than anyone else. Like this –’ he flicked a hand at the chart ‘– you’re not even prepared to consider the possibility that Ed might be right and you’re wrong. Even when he was right before. That just wouldn’t make sense to you, would it? In what universe could you ever be wrong?’

  ‘Josh, what has got into you?’

  ‘I told you. You have. You never listen. To me, to them, to anybody.’

  ‘That’s not fair. I’m not the one—’

  Richard stopped and closed his mouth.

  ‘Go on,’ said Josh, ‘say it. I’m not the one who dropped the water.’

  ‘Josh, please.’

  Josh gave a snarky fake sneer. ‘That was Joshy. My son, who can’t catch properly, even though he’s supposed to, because he’s a boy, isn’t he? What a fucking embarrassment, eh, Dad? What boy can’t catch? Especially after you spent all those hours in the garden trying to teach me how to play rugby.’ Tears were streaming from his eyes now, fists clenching and unclenching. The rain was no longer just a spray, and fat drops of it formed puddles on the deck. ‘Did it ever occur to you that I never wanted to play rugby? That there were other things I was interested in? Things that I couldn’t tell you about, because you didn’t think they were … appropriate for your son to like?’

  Richard narrowed his eyes, speaking softly. ‘What things, Josh? I don’t understand.’