The End of Everything (Book 7): The End of Everything

by Artinian, Christopher

  Mila’s eyes suddenly pooled with tears, and she swallowed hard. “I … I’m sorry, Robyn.”

  The anger vanished immediately. This was not what Robyn expected. If anything, she thought she would get into a full-blown row but not for Mila to cry. “It … it’s okay. I just—”

  The dam broke, and the tears began to flood from Mila’s eyes as she leaned back against a tree and slumped to the ground. “I’m sorry,” she said again, cupping both her hands around her face in a pathetic attempt to cover her frailty.

  “Whoa, don’t cry.” Robyn knelt beside her and placed an arm around her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to make you cry, I just wanted us to, y’know, talk about stuff before we did it. Please don’t cry.”

  Her words fell on deaf ears as Mila continued to weep uncontrollably. “I … I have been so used to being by myself, doing things my own way. I have forgotten how to be with someone else. And now you will find your sister and leave me,” she said as still more tears fell from her cheeks onto her leather trousers.

  “What? No, that’s not going to happen. Mila…” Robyn clutched both of her friend’s wrists and pulled her hands away from her face. “Where is all this coming from? I’m not going to leave you. Look, people have arguments, they have disagreements, it doesn’t mean that they walk out on each other. Hell, I’d have walked out on Wren a million times if that was the case.”

  “You say this, but you are angry with me, and what if I make you angry again?”

  “I can almost guarantee that you’ll make me angry again. What can I tell you? I’m a real grumpy bitch, but that doesn’t mean I’ll walk out on you. You saved my life. You’re my friend. I owe you everything.”

  Mila wiped the tears from her eyes. “It is you who saved my life.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That night, the night I found you. I was going to kill myself.”

  chapter 9

  Robyn’s jaw dropped as she heard the words come out of Mila’s mouth. The night I found you. I was going to kill myself. She still struggled to believe them as they played over and over in her head. “What do you mean you were going to kill yourself?”

  “I had had enough. I was completely alone. I had been thinking about it for days, I had found a bottle of Oxycontin tablets on one of my scavenger trips, and I went down to the river. My plan was to take the tablets with lots of vodka, cut my wrists, climb into the water and let it just take me away, take me away to anywhere but there.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was sitting on a rock. I had the tablets in my hand then I noticed something in the shadows. At first, I thought it was just a trick of the light, but then I realised that it was a person. It was you.”

  “So how did I save your life?”

  “You are very lucky. You do not know what it is to be lonely, to be completely alone, for nobody to need you. Suddenly, as I was about to take my life, somebody needed me. It was a sign. It was a sign that I was meant to continue. Your illness, it was like a test. Many nights I sat up in the chair, watching you, scared that it was all part of a cruel game and you were not going to make it, and then I would be back to where I started. As you got better, though, I realised that you were the miracle I wanted you to be. You were the one who was sent to save me.”

  Robyn took hold of one of Mila’s hands. “Look, I don’t know about being sent to save you, but if you hadn’t been there that night, I wouldn’t be here now. You’re with me now, and when we find Wren and Georgie, you’ll be with us. We’ll face whatever the future holds together.”

  Mila wiped the rest of the tears away from her face with her free hand and hugged Robyn tightly. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t need to thank me,” Robyn said, pulling back. “We’re friends. This is how it is. Listen, I understand why you got so sad, and I understand why you got so upset just now, but like I said, Mila, people have arguments, it doesn’t mean they don’t care for each other.” At that moment, the strong, independent, forthright woman who had nursed then trained Robyn was gone. There was just a slightly bewildered little orphan girl sitting at the base of the tree, and Robyn realised that they each needed the other.

  Mila let out a shuddering breath and slowly climbed to her feet. The two women looked at each other for a moment longer then embraced once more. “We shall go now.”

  Robyn smiled a little. If Mila was back to giving orders, then some normality was returning at least. They resumed their journey through the dead, black forest. They came across more infected but in smaller groupings and they ended their suffering quickly and brutally. They had been walking for some time when Robyn placed a hand out in front of her friend to stop her.

  “Shh!”

  “What?” Mila asked.

  “You hear that?”

  Mila raised her head, and now she could hear something. “It sounds like metal clinking.”

  “Yeah, like chains.”

  “Chains? This is what you were talking about. The drug dealers.”

  “Yeah.”

  The pair continued; their eyes wide open scouring the treescape looking for the source of the noise. Then they saw them, two beasts, so badly burnt, so horrifically deformed that it was a wonder they possessed the strength to move at all. They were little more than skeletons with a painted coat of charred tissue. The eyeballs had exploded from the sockets, leaving rigid burnt flaps of skin covering the holes. Instinctively, they raised their heads to sniff at the air, but they no longer had noses. Their ears were indistinguishable from the rest of the blackened skin on their heads. The two girls could have crashed cymbals right in front of the monsters’ faces, and the beasts would not have known they were there.

  Robyn put them out of their torment once and for all. They continued to the next set of two creatures and this time it was Mila who did the honours. “Quite a defence mechanism.”

  “Yeah. I’m not great with directions, but I’m guessing this is the opposite side of the forest to the way we used to come in, so keep your eyes peeled, I don’t know if Stuart would have laid any other booby traps around here.” Mila nodded, and they carried on but with a little more trepidation as they checked the path ahead of them.

  They finally reached the next clearing, and it suddenly became obvious what had started the inferno. The concrete foundation where Cynthia and Stuart’s hut once resided looked like a launchpad for a rocket. The wooden construction itself had vanished in its entirety. “This was the place?” Mila asked, walking down to the embankment.

  “Was being the operative word. I mean it’s all gone, everything.”

  “Not quite everything.” Mila pushed aside some ash to reveal blackened glass from the windows. “I think maybe your drug dealers made a miscalculation with their recipe.”

  “Not those two. More likely those guys I was telling you about that were here when me and Wren made a return trip. God, I hope Wren wasn’t around when this happened.”

  “I doubt it. No sign of anyth—”

  “What is it?” Robyn asked, looking across to her friend.

  Mila headed further down the embankment, and Robyn started after her. “Stay there.”

  Panic suddenly hit Robyn. “What is it?” she asked again, more urgently, this time.

  “Just stay there, give me a minute.” Mila withdrew one of her swords and used it to prod and explore some shapes on the ground that Robyn couldn’t quite make out.

  “Mila, what is it?”

  “Just wait, Robyn.”

  Robyn couldn’t wait. She marched down the hill. “Oh God!” she cried as she saw the partial remains scattered over the ground. She looked towards Mila, who was still carefully examining the evidence like a crime scene investigator.

  “It is not your sister.”

  “How do you know? How can you be sure?”

  “There are three bodies here. All men.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Robyn, I have studied the human form enough to know th
e difference between a man and a woman. The hips, the facial structure, these were men.”

  “So, they came here, started messing in the lab and boom?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “I wonder what happened to Cynthia and Stuart.”

  “Maybe they have gone with Wren and your friend. Who knows? The most important thing is your sister does not appear to have been present when this happened.”

  “Doesn’t really narrow it down much though, does it?”

  “We will go on to the house now,” Mila said, placing her sword back in its sheath.

  They crossed the stream and headed up the embankment. This time, they stayed clear of the pathetic creatures unable to do anything but growl. Robyn took the lead; her minimal sense of direction was enough to steer them towards the farm. She turned to her companion. “It’s just up ahead.”

  “Would you like me to go first?”

  “No.”

  The two women stepped out into the open together. Like everything else, the farm had not escaped the inferno. The old rusted tractor was nothing more than a thin black rickety sculpture, a child’s crudely assembled interpretation of what a farm vehicle should look like. The outbuildings had been reduced to burnt-out husks, and the house itself had become just a black shell. The once beautiful oak beams did nothing for the structure’s integrity, they merely provided kindling.

  Mila climbed onto the small mountain of debris. She removed her sword and poked around, but without a full excavation there were no clues as to who was or wasn’t in the house at the time it went up. “Now we know where and how the fire started, we know that your sister and Georgie, in all likelihood, got out of here.”

  “We can’t be sure of that.”

  “No, we can’t be sure, but have you ever heard the roar of a fire? A big fire? It is very loud, and I would be surprised if the explosion at the meth lab wasn’t heard here too. This house is next to the road. Your sister and friend would have had plenty of time to make their escape. So now we must ask where would they escape to?”

  “Inverness,” Robyn whispered.

  “Huh?”

  “Inverness. It’s where we always said we would head. Grandad’s place.”

  Mila whistled. “That is some distance.”

  “I know,” Robyn replied, making eye contact with Mila for just a fraction of a second before turning her head. She knew how it sounded. She knew how much of a long shot it was, but she also knew she had to do it.

  “So, we will head back home now.”

  “Why?”

  “A journey like this one will need some planning.” Mila smiled.

  Robyn smiled back. “Yeah, I suppose it will.”

  chapter 10

  The trek back to Mila’s house was a quiet one. Both women were lost in their thoughts. When they finally reached home, Mila went straight to her room, only to re-emerge a moment later with two fishing rods. “Come, we will go fishing.”

  “Err … I thought we were going to plan.”

  “We are, but fishing relaxes me, this will help me put my mind in order. Plus, I sleep better when I have a full belly.”

  As much as Robyn did not want to go fishing, the fact that Mila was prepared to leave her comfortable home to go on this insane mission with her was too big a gesture for her not to acquiesce to her friend’s wishes. “Fishing it is then.”

  They headed down to the river in the same state of silence in which they had made the return journey from Pear Tree Farm. It was ten minutes after casting the first line that Mila spoke. “We will need a car. We will need supplies. It will not be straightforward. If what you say about those men is true, we will need to give Loch Uig a wide berth. That could be hard because the smaller roads could be blocked. We will need—”

  “Okay, slow down. One thing at a time. A car. If we can get a car or even fuel for the car we left on the road, we can try to get proper supplies together.”

  “That car is no good. It is falling apart. We need something more reliable … German perhaps,” Mila said, smiling.

  “Okay, whatever. So, we get that, then supplies, we need to look at small places, far off the beaten track. Those guys were really organised. They were sweeping huge areas, armies of them. We’ll be lucky to find anywhere around here that has anything left for us to scavenge.”

  “We will be lucky to find a car with fuel … but we will find one. Tomorrow we will pack our rucksacks with enough food to last us for a few days. We will head east across farmland and through the woods. Less big farms, more small crofts. On foot, it will take us longer, but we may find places that these men have missed. Then, when we have found transport, we will come back, pack the rest of our food, clothes and supplies and then head north.” Mila returned her concentration to the fishing line.

  “Are you okay with this?”

  “With what?”

  “Leaving your home.”

  “It’s not like I’m giving the keys away. We are going to find your sister, then who knows what? If we can’t find a place up there, maybe we come back here.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. I’m German,” she said, smiling.

  Robyn smiled too. “Thank you for this.”

  “Let us not start this again. Now, be silent and fish.”

  Robyn chuckled to herself and turned her gaze back towards her rod and line.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The following morning, they ate fish for breakfast too. They checked and rechecked their rucksacks, made sure their blades were gleaming, then headed out into the morning. They both looked back at the cottage before they took the bend. Neither of them was ignorant to the dangerous journey that lay ahead. They were leaving a place that was well hidden, had a fresh water supply and ample food in the surrounding woodlands, rivers and lochs, for a path that would certainly lead them into peril.

  They headed through the village, and both of them shuddered as a pair of rats just a little smaller than Jack Russell dogs tore at the flesh of one of the decaying corpses. Robyn and Mila looked on, their stomachs churning as they passed by. The rats were not interested in them but, more worryingly, were not fearful of them. The balance of nature’s hierarchy was shifting more each day.

  They got through the village and stopped at a wooden sign pointing towards a nature trail. “This is our turn.”

  Robyn reached into her rucksack and pulled out a small aerosol, which she sprayed over her face and hands. “Well, it’s one thing if the zombies get to eat me, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let the midges take a turn too.”

  Mila took the spray after and did the same thing, then both girls headed along the small track and into the woodland. The day had only just begun, and neither was really in the mood for talking. The woods gave way to fields, and they followed hedgerows and climbed over walls until eventually stopping for a drink break. Mila looked at her watch. “We have been walking for three hours already.”

  “How much further before we get anywhere?”

  “I have been to most places within four hours of here. There are a lot of properties just out by themselves, not even near small villages. I emptied them all of anything useful.”

  “None of them had cars?”

  “A couple, but they were big, heavy on the fuel, and they hardly had any diesel left in them. They would not have got more than a few miles.”

  “Great.”

  “Fuel is in short supply. There is no one to impress anymore by driving around in a big gas guzzler.”

  “I suppose.”

  She pulled the map from inside her jacket and laid it out flat. A small circle had been drawn with Mila’s cottage at the centre. “When we get outside of here, that is all unchartered territory for me. That is when we may find something.” She folded the map away, placed the top back on her bottle, and the two of them set off once more. From their vantage point, as they walked along a seemingly never-ending dry-stone wall, the landscape around them seemed unt
ouched by the ravages of the apocalypse. The grass was green, the trees and flowers were in full blossom, it was as though this part of the world had a huge invisible forcefield around it.

  The wall finally ended. A barbed-wire fence crossed it and beyond was an area of woodland. Robyn and Mila carefully negotiated the fence, making sure they didn’t get caught on the wire, then started through the woods. “If I never see another forest, I’ll die happy,” Robyn said, slapping her neck as an unidentified insect nipped her. She reached into the rucksack and sprayed more repellent on.

  “You are in the Scottish Highlands. It is made up almost entirely of mountains, fields and forests. I suggest you would be happier down in Birmingham or London.”

  “Err … maybe not.”

  “Then you will be more grateful that we are surrounded by trees rather than monsters, yes?”

  Robyn let out a long sigh. “You are going to get on with my sister so well.”

  “Ah, she is young, beautiful and intelligent just like me?”

  “Yeah … as well as a know-it-all and a colossal pain in my arse.”

  “Aha. Perhaps your arse would be less painful if you moved the stick from it, yes?”

  Robyn burst out laughing, and Mila laughed too. “That was pretty quick actually.”

  “Yes, I have been saving that one for a special occasion.” They both laughed again. The pair carried on walking for less than five minutes when they came to the edge of the woods. More fields surrounded them, but beyond the fields, they could see a big corrugated steel barn next to a house and some other smaller buildings.

  “Oh man, at last, signs of life … or not.”

  They walked with more purpose now, ever vigilant of their surroundings, until they finally reached the perimeter of the property. Judging by the state of the exterior of the barn, it was relatively new. “Remember, there is always the possibility that the rightful owners are still here. We don’t want to get shot for trespassing, so keep watchful,” Mila said in a low, hushed voice.

  The two women crept along the side of the barn, their heads constantly turning, looking for movement or anything that could pose a danger. They reached the end, crouched down and peered out over the yard. There was a box van parked at a ninety-degree angle in front of the house. Beyond it lay more buildings and to the right was the wide entrance to the farm and the narrow track leading to the road.