The End of the World is Nigh

by Tony Moyle

  “I can see why. I hate to sound like a moaning child, but are we there yet?”

  “Almost. This is the last one,” said Antoine, taking a left and then right turn before leading her up a steep, uncovered flight of stairs that had been carved through a row of buildings.

  After ten minutes of climbing they emerged in a densely suburban area at the top of the hill. Behind them the sprawling centre of Lyon, pitted with the marks of human progression, lay open like an amphitheatre. The Basilique was still visible in the middle of it all like a candle on top of a birthday cake. The two rivers chased each other through the myriad of buildings to be first to reach the horizon.

  “Now what?” said Ally.

  “We keep walking. We’re on the north side of the city so I suggest we get out into the countryside and try to pick up some transport. It’ll need to be something conspicuous. I don’t trust public transport, too many cameras.”

  “I think you’re being a little more suspicious than you need to be.”

  “I’m not taking any chances. Since supper last night unknown persons have burgled and bombed me, or possibly you. I have no enemies that I’m aware of and the item they targeted ostensibly doesn’t exist. So how do you think they found out about it? The surveillance culture that we live under might well provide the answers.”

  They walked slowly along the main street, casually watching the unusually frenetic activities of other people’s lives. Everyone was in a rush today. It was quite unsuitable behaviour for French people at twelve-thirty in the afternoon. It was lunchtime and nothing got in the way of that here. It was deeply engrained in the Gallic DNA that at twelve everyone stopped, sat and ate. Two hours of conversation, hot cuisine and a glass or two of wine. Only the end of the world would stop it.

  All the restaurants in the road were closed. Shades had been pulled down in front of large, glass frontages, chairs and tables stacked chaotically down side alleys. Parents were rushing to the schools to collect their children early, wrestling each other to be the first through the gates. Down the pavement a mother hurtled towards them driving a pram like an erratically thrown bowling ball trying to pick up a spare.

  “Madam?” asked Antoine, stopping her as she tried to fly past them. “Why is everyone in a rush?”

  “Haven’t you heard?” she spluttered, not stopping to finish her answer. “They’re shutting the whole area down. Everyone’s trying to get out before the deadline.”

  “Deadline?” said Ally. “Who’s ever heard of a city being shut down?”

  “Hasn’t happened for five hundred years,” said Antoine.

  At the end of the street a large squadron of police cars were setting up a cordon to restrict other vehicles from entering or exiting the city centre. If this was replicated at every access point around its perimeter two hundred thousand people were being locked into Lyon.

  “It’s a good job we came through the traboules,” said Antoine as he watched with curiosity as the disgruntled police squadrons lifted colourful plastic bollards into place.

  “It makes no sense,” said Ally.

  “Doesn’t it? You’re a clever woman, Dr. Oldfield. I’m sure you can work it out?” replied Antoine who already had. “Let’s walk on, we must find somewhere safe and secret for the night.”

  “Look, I’m not walking another inch. My feet are in tatters, I haven’t had coffee for several hours and I’m getting irritated by the futility of running from some phantom menace. Do you even know where you’re taking us?”

  “There’s a small town not far from here where I have a friend whom we can trust. I only hope he’s at home. If he is, tomorrow my plan is to borrow his car and drive to Mâcon. That way we might be able to solve our mystery and put an end to this one,” he said, referring to the cordon. “Bernard may hold the key to the prophecy and our own predicament.”

  *****

  Gabriel rotated the dial, never waiting more than a couple of seconds before impatiently moving it again. She was mystified as to why anyone would put up with such an irritating system. Imagine having to physically search for a radio station rather than simply telling Siri to find it for you. And what was the crackling noise all about? A band of unexpected analogue muggers were interrupting the broadcast every time she got close to finding the right frequency. Radio wasn’t supposed to sound like this. It was always crisp and clear whenever she listened to it on her smartphone. But this particular radio was built in a time when people thought a silicon chip was a type of diet.

  The ancient beige Renault had been in her possession since the day she passed her driving test eight years ago. According to the service booklet she was the ninth owner and none of the previous eight were described as careful. It had suffered and survived every known automotive procedure in the manual and was still soldiering on like a wounded veteran. It had been a last resort, the only option that was under the four figure insurance bracket and affordable to her less than affluent parents. And how did Gabriel react to their financial sacrifice?

  She complained.

  She hated it. All her friends were zooming around in sporty little hatchbacks with colourful paint jobs and crisp digital radios. But neither they nor her parents appreciated her suffering. It was embarrassing. When she started dating boys more seriously she made them drive to create the illusion around the town that the car was theirs. Which also backfired because then people thought she was dating losers. Image is important when you’re in your early twenties. Your entire life prospects depended on it.

  This was the Instagram age, after all. How you looked, what you wore, what you ate, who you followed, could all make or break you. Owning the car had resulted in her tumbling down the highly complex and invisible social rankings, without any explanation or confirmation. That’s how it was for people her age. Judgement was fast if you made the slightest social mistake, and no one gave you a rule book. Now that the rusty heap of junk was parked between two ash trees a few hundred metres from the main road at least it reduced the chance of her slipping further down the league table.

  Finally she stopped twiddling the dials. It wasn’t a clear signal by any standards, but at least it was audible enough for her to hear what the man had to say. News had never been of much interest to Gabriel, unless it concerned Taylor Swift or a new product for halting the development of acne. What was the point in the news? Boring politicians squabbling about farm subsidies or experts debating what should be done about the crisis in Ukraine. Where the hell was Ukraine anyway? The only news she wanted to hear was news that affected her world, not other people’s. But today’s news affected everyone.

  The virus had reached Europe.

  Almost simultaneously from Britain to Albania and Portugal to Norway people had started showing the symptoms of N1G13. If the pattern continued, as it had done in other regions of the world, people would be dropping like flies in a matter of days. And France wouldn’t escape the impending catastrophe: how could it? It was smack bang in the middle of Europe and on every border the populations of infected countries were coughing collectively in her direction.

  It had already begun.

  Today they announced the first cases in Lyon.

  Lyon!

  That was only fifteen kilometres away. According to the news, being simultaneously broadcast on every station to the detriment of Taylor Swift’s popularity, special measures were being implemented to curtail the spread of the virus. The authorities in Europe were determined not to suffer the way that China had, driven by an unspoken racism in the West that when non-white people died it wasn’t quite such a tragedy. China had been hit hard. The numbers were unsubstantiated, but the projections had suggested anywhere in the region of tens of thousands plus had already died.

  The co-ordinated measures taken unanimously by the European Union included the restriction of flights for non-essential travel, the quarantining of areas with known cases of the infection, and a mandatory government takeover of all private healthcare companies so their resour
ces could be used in the search to discover an effective vaccine. On radio talk shows people were reporting that roadblocks had already been placed around some sections of Lyon. But these government measures didn’t really concern Gabriel. After all, she’d made her own.

  But prepping wasn’t as easy as it first appeared. Preppers were given that name because they were experts in preparing for long periods of existence outside the bosom of normal society. A seasoned prepper could last for years if they had to. They’d carefully considered their food supply, energy needs, security to protect against multiple threats, and the necessary communications systems needed to locate other survivors in order to maintain the human race. These were the four pillars of the prepper mantra.

  In terms of food provision, Gabriel had nineteen ready meals and no microwave in which to cook them, forty tins of food that spanned the essential food groups of baked beans, rice pudding and sandwich spread, and a single pint of milk. The milk had lumps in it. On the energy front she had a car battery, a USB adaptor cable, and not the slightest idea that leaving the headlamps on all night would detrimentally affect both of them.

  Security involved a can of deodorant, a nine-iron golf club she’d found in the back of the caravan, and a sign hastily written in graffiti on the side of a tree in lipstick kindly asking people to ‘STAY OUT, please’. Other than the radio she had no way of connecting to the outside world. She’d left her phone at home under the false assumption that what she was embarking on was a challenge of survival rather than actually trying to. What she’d give now to have it back. Her thumbs were developing early arthritis from a lack of swiping.

  Prepping might have been a reasonably astute move given the circumstances, but boy was it dull. A week had passed already and the heavy rain had forced her to inhabit the front seat of the car, playing ‘spot the bunny’, or retreating to the plastic upholstery of the nineteen seventies caravan. The nearby stream provided a healthy supply of water to boil the kettle for a mug of coffee, although she was constantly perplexed as to where the gas was coming from to light the stove. There were a couple of board games, which she understood was how people entertained themselves in the eighteenth century. It had taken her an hour to realise that Monopoly wasn’t a one-player game and that was only after she managed to go bankrupt.

  The caravan would have been the most appropriate place to sleep if it had felt even remotely safe. Whereas the lock on the door had long been broken, at least the car protected her from the late-night loonies and potential animal attacks. Given her close proximity to suburbia, any animal attacks were most likely to involve the same bunnies she’d spent most of the day trying to spot.

  In her opinion the worst time to be a prepper was at night. When the lights from distant houses were extinguished and only the trees in front of her were illuminated by the failing light from the car’s headlamps, that was when the real anxieties crept inside her soul. She wasn’t used to living by herself or relying on her own support. Until recently she’d had a burly yet insensitive boyfriend to protect her. Even after he left she’d often invited Claire over for company and safety.

  The night-time noises might well have been natural but that didn’t stop them sounding alien to her ears. The orchestra of evil auditioning on her window played a concerto of unimaginable notes that limited her sleep to less than twenty-minute stints. On this particular night the horrifying noises were accompanied by the gentle rocking of the car. Something was out there.

  - Chapter 16 -

  Every Claude Has a Silver Lining

  Sleep had never been easy here. Its acquisition was restricted by a lack of comfort. The hard, cold surface of the floor was only insulated by a thin layer of straw, and a few lice-infested blankets were the only aids to slumber. The walls offered no deterrent to the external elements either. The rain lashed through the open window and the bitter wind swirled round the room like a cyclone. Eerie whispers of panic clung in the air from the murmurs of other inmates in adjacent cells, or from the mind transforming innocent sounds into more sinister threats through a filter of darkness and anxiety.

  If you could sleep through all of that, then the activity within your own head did its best to disrupt you. Fear doesn’t need daytime or a conscious mind to thrive. It needs the electricity provided by thousands of pent-up synapses that flashed through the body in search of reassurance. None existed. Instead these impulses magnified the broken dreams that sent a bizarre concoction of vivid scenes back to the brain in a further attempt to break any serenity. Sleep would not help you escape prison. It was as much in your mind as it was around you.

  Phil woke to the sound of his own name. The cell was still in gloom and it would be several hours until it cleared, such was the early hour of the morning. He’d not been woken by his jailor, who didn’t tend to call any of them by name, partly as he didn’t have the mental fortitude to remember them and partly because his job was generally to be mean. It was hard to be mean and courteous at the same time.

  It was possible he’d been woken by his own imagination as his internal thoughts collided together to play out their own dreamscape of fantasies: desired and unwanted. Yet as he’d returned to consciousness he only remembered one thing about his now fading dream. He’d been chasing a duck across a frozen lake. The bird had moved unfeasibly quickly, always just out of reach, before it finally morphed into a puff of smoke and disappeared into the atmosphere. He wondered what the significance of the dream might be? Was the duck representing the freedom that was narrowly out of reach? Did the smoke mean freedom wasn’t real? Or was he just subconsciously pissed off with ducks? Whatever it meant, Phil was certain that the duck hadn’t said a word and had definitely not called out his name.

  Another suspect was soon removed from suspicion. It wasn’t Michel who’d woken him. It couldn’t be, because he was gone. There was no sign of his oak coffer, his little stool or the embroidered linen that he’d had the advantage of sleeping on. No trace at all. Just an empty cell containing Phil and not much hope.

  “Pssst…Phil.”

  Philibert rubbed his eyes and took another look around to see if any mice or rats had got in and were trying to mess with his senses by making oddly familiar beckoning noises.

  “PHIL!”

  There it was again. It was coming from outside the cell but not from within the prison because all was quiet in the corridors on the other side of the metal bars. Phil made his way to the window and managed to pull himself up high enough to see through the bars and down to the ground several metres below.

  “Chambard? Is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing?” asked Phil.

  “I don’t know,” said Chambard in a whisper.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I came to rescue you, but in truth I haven’t come up with a meaningful way of doing it yet.”

  “Right. What’s this, then? A courtesy call.”

  “No. Everything is moving faster than I anticipated,” said Chambard nervously.

  “What do you mean?” whispered Phil in response.

  “They are coming for you today.”

  “To release me.”

  “Not quite. Unless you mean release your head from the rest of your body.”

  “But I’m not ready.”

  “No one is ready for death, Phil.”

  “I don’t mean death. I mean I’ve got a plan, but it’s not finished yet. How do you know they’re coming today?”

  “I got friendly with one of the young squires and have been paying him for information. Apparently as they can’t verify whether you are Philibert Montmorency or not, they feel killing you is easier and quicker than pursuing the answer.”

  “Christ. I bet Jacques is behind this.”

  “All I know is that Claude de Savoie is coming to break the news to you personally.”

  “Why is he coming?”

  “Not sure. You know what the rich are like, any excuse to humiliate a p
easant. What’s your plan?”

  The plan was best described as loose. Michel was gone and presumably it wasn’t to make a quick trip to the garderobe. His training was over. From here on in he had to use what he had. What he needed was a convincing prophecy which had half a chance of demonstrating that he was actually a genius and not a total chancer.

  “I’m going to write a prophecy,” said Phil.

  “Umm, shouldn’t you think about a plan?” said Chambard.

  “That is the plan!”

  “How is it?”

  Chambard was no fool. What he’d missed in formal education he’d more than made up for in ‘on the job’ training. But as an aging senior citizen from a different era to Phil, his speed of thought was not as sharp as it once was. Although even the great renaissance philosopher Machiavelli would have struggled to make a clear link between what’s was coming out of Phil’s mouth and the plan that followed.

  “I’m going to convince Claude that I’m a talented prophet.”

  “Ok, and that helps how?” replied Chambard, genuinely concerned for his young protégé. “You haven’t been eating mouse droppings while you’ve been in there, have you? I heard an old wives’ tale that they can make you hallucinate.”

  “No, I haven’t. Breakfast is bad enough. It’s going to help because I’m going to write a prophecy about him.”

  “Struggling to keep up here, Phil.”

  “I’m going to predict his future. Then he’ll think I’m a talent seer who can provide valuable insight to the future.”

  “But you’re not a talented seer?”

  “I’m not a doctor or a priest or a noble but it hasn’t stopped me in the past, has it?”

  “Fair point. But what if you do write him a prophecy? He’s soon going to realise that you don’t know what you’re doing when it doesn’t come true.”