by Natasha West
Meet You at the End of the World
By
Natasha West
Copyright © 2018 by Natasha West
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
One
Rachel
‘Stop. Not a muscle. Not a fucking muscle, I’m serious.’
I sighed and put my hands in the air, feeling stupid for getting caught. I should have known there were too many places for people to hide in the thick trees that lined this road, people waiting for an unsuspecting traveller to drop their guard, just long enough to get the jump. And now here I was, being held up because at the end of a tiring day, I’d taken my eye off the ball.
But I wasn’t worried. No, that’s a lie. I should say that I wasn’t too worried. When they talk a lot, that’s usually all they do. If this guy had wanted to kill me, he’d have done it already.
‘Can I sit down? My feet are killing me’ I asked the guy behind me, with his steel implement - maybe a gun, maybe just a metal pipe - pressed into the base of my spine. But I wasn’t kidding, I’d been on my feet all day. Hours of walking, like every day. But still, you get tired. Whether I was going to die or not today, I wanted a sit down. In fact, if this guy did decide to kill me, all the more reason to enjoy my last moments, such as they were.
The guy paused. ‘Take ten steps forward and turn around. You can sit down after I get your stuff.’
What a sweetie pie. He was going to let me take the weight off my feet while he robbed me.
I did as he asked, walking away from the man and his metal, turning around, hands in the air. I looked at the man and realised he wasn’t much more than a boy. Scraggly beard, skinny, about eighteen. Old enough to remember the old time, young enough to adapt to the new one. The only difference between us was his weapon, which was indeed a real gun, an old pistol. Other than that, we were in the same boat. But his boat was about to float a little lighter while mine might sink. Because the prick was about to take my stuff, including but not limited to the shelter of my tent, as well as water and food. Most people would say it the other way around, Food and Water. But I rank those things in opposition because I know which one has more immediate value. You can go without food for weeks if you have to. Clean water? Three days.
‘Toss it across’ said Straggly Beard, nodding at my backpack and I could hear now that he wasn’t really that certain about whether this was going to be a successful robbery. There was just the slightest pinch of fear in him. But I obliged him slowly, slipping my arms out of the straps. The last thing I needed was a bullet in the stomach because this bastard got jumpy and his finger slipped.
Once I had the pack in my hands, I held it out to him. ‘I’m gonna throw it now, OK?’
He nodded, but he still had the gun on me.
‘Maybe just point the gun down while I throw it, like at the floor.’
He looked a little peeved at that suggestion. ‘You’re not in charge here’ he told me snippily.
‘I realise that. But you don’t want to lose a bullet trying to catch this thing. It’s heavy. Up to you.’
He thought about it and seemed to concede. He pointed his gun at the floor, holding his other hand out for the pack. I threw it overhand, in a clean arc. He could have caught it, should have caught it by the strap. But he was using his left to catch, his right holding the gun, and as it turned out, he wasn’t a southpaw. He botched the catch, grabbing it badly by the one strap in a weak hold and his other hand reacted as he tried to correct his poor catch. But his other hand seemed to forget he had a gun in it. He squeezed the trigger.
Click.
No bang, just an empty chamber. He was a man with a gun with no bullets and now I knew it. And he knew I knew it.
Now we found ourselves in a tricky position. He had the bag but was far less dangerous than previously thought and trying to figure out my next move. What if I was crazy and ran at him?
Me, I was doing the same, trying to anticipate his thoughts. Might he panic and run at me with the pistol? It was still a weapon, albeit a far less effective one. Still, he could crack my head open with the thing if he got a good swing.
I didn’t give him the chance to reach the wrong decision. I slipped a hand into my pocket, feeling for the expandable baton I keep deep in there. I grabbed the rubber grip and withdrew the weapon, holding it at my side and pushing the button on the top, five inches of metal becoming twenty. A hard weapon, intended to bludgeon, in my hand. I looked at Scraggly Beard whose eyes were now fixed on my baton. ‘Can we call this a draw, then?’ I asked cheerily.
He looked from me, to the baton, to his pistol, to the bag at his feet. I braced myself. Was this going to be a fight to the death?
‘I…’ he started and then turned quickly and ran for the horizon, leaving my bag behind.
I shook my head, almost disappointed in Scraggly Beard. I’m five feet and four inches, early thirties, with shoulder length honey blonde hair and large eyes, which people used to tell me made me look like a manga cartoon. Not that scary on the face of it. Yet all I had to do was whip out a bigger stick than my highwayman and he’d turned to jelly. But that was the patriarchy for you, or what was left of it. Only now, it all came down to actual strength, not the symbolic kind. And if you didn’t have that, you had to compensate with fighting skills or a decent weapon. I never learnt to fight before everything happened, and I had yet to find a sensei on my travels to teach me martial arts, hence my extendable metal friend.
‘Run, Forest’ I yelled at the vanishing figure, running crazily up the thin, tree lined road. He probably wouldn’t get the reference, it was an old film and Netflix wasn’t a thing anymore. But you had to get your kicks where you could.
Once I was sure he was gone, I heaved a tired sigh, picked up my backpack and slipped the straps over my shoulder. The sun had an hour left in the sky and I wanted to get a camp set up before I lost light altogether. I can move around in the dark if I need to but it’s a lot easier to get your tent pegged up with the sun in the sky.
I headed into the woods, picking through the trees until I found a good clearing. I got a fire going in a few minutes. Sat next to the golden warmth, I took off one shoe and checked for blisters. I had one coming up, a big bastard, and I got my med kit out and punctured it, drained it, cleaned it, dressed it. It’s important to deal with these things quickly. There’s no antibiotics around, and I’ve seen how quickly a little thing turns into a hasty amputation.
Once that was done, I could finally relax a little and I ate the squirrel I killed earlier, roasted over the fire. I was sorry to do it but I’d made it very quick. And now I had a full belly, and I was warm.
What more could I ask for?
Two
Alice
I could have been taking it easy. My chores for the day were done. The chickens were fed, their enclosure cleaned out. I’d checked over the vegetable patch and taken out the carrots, leaving the potatoes for a few days yet. The small wheat field we had was thriving, but the next harvest would be tomorrow to really reap an optimal crop. I’d cleaned the solar panels on our roof, so they’d keep supplying just enough electri
c to keep the lights on. I’d done the clothes wash, my least favourite job. Putting your hands in cold water for twenty minutes of scrubbing and dunking is a mild form of torture. But I’d gotten through it, and I’d rung it all out and pegged it on the line. Hard but necessary work.
I was now supposed to be putting my feet up in our shabby but comfortable living room, maybe pick up a book, pass an hour in a different world, thinking about warming some water on the log fire for an evening bath. Instead, I was sat at our old oak kitchen table, watching Emma pretend not to worry and doing it badly.
I should have ignored it. If Emma wanted to worry, there’s not much I could do about it. But her son, my nephew, Jude was out on his own. So Emma was being loudly anxious. Me, I worried too. But I was doing it a lot more subtly. No hand wringing, no pacing, no checking the sun’s position for the time. Just waiting and hoping. Jude had been gone a day. He was due back several hours ago, before the sun set. But it’s not like back in the day. He can’t catch a train to the next town. He’d have to walk the whole way.
Finally, the door banged open and Jude ran in, looking less than calm. Emma ran to him. ‘Are you alright, what happened?’
‘Drink?’ he asked quietly, collapsing on a chair.
I got up first and went straight out to the well, lowering the bucket and bringing it back up, filling a bowl and taking it indoors. Jude snatched the bowl and drained the whole thing in one messy gulp, dribbles running down his throat. Emma watched him carefully and I could see she was trying to let him get his breath. But she wanted information and patience wasn’t one of her virtues. Jude was barely finished with his monster drink and she was on him again. ‘What did you find out?’
Jude hesitated, looking fretful. He rubbed nervously at his scraggly beard. He was a young guy without regular access to razors, so he was going to have to see these patchy beard years through and wait for manhood to fill in the blanks. We, on the other hand, didn’t have time to wait. ‘What happened?’ I asked him. ‘Did you find the guy?’
‘I found him. He didn’t know anything.’
Emma shook her head. ‘That can’t be true. I was told by that woman at the farm over the hill that he saw your Dad. He told her so.’
‘And he did see him. But that was all. He didn’t know where he went or…’
Emma wouldn’t let up. ‘What if he was lying?’
Jude shrugged. ‘Then what was I supposed to do?’
Emma’s nostrils flared and I knew what she was going to say before she said it. ‘You’ve got the gun, haven’t you? You could have, you know…’
‘No, he couldn’t have’ I said flatly. ‘He asked the man a question and he didn’t know the answer. Waving guns around wouldn’t have made a difference.’
Emma gave me a hard look and I wondered if we were going to have the row again. My sister-in-law and I had some very different views on how the way things had turned out should affect our actions. She believed we should fight tooth and claw to get on and never mind what it did to our souls. Me, I wasn’t ready to concede my humanity. Not yet. My brother had agreed with me, but he wasn’t here to back me up anymore. Life was hard now but if we all behaved like animals, it could only get harder. Emma thought that a deeply naïve point of view and one likely to get us killed. Maybe she’s right.
Still.
I looked over at Jude and I saw a peculiar look on his face. ‘Jude, you didn’t point your gun at him, did you?’
‘No’ he answered flatly. I thought he was telling the truth. But I saw something else at the back of his eyes. Something wrong. ‘I talked to him for ages, though’ he went on defensively. ‘And then… He wouldn’t give me any water or let me sleep in his barn. I had to walk through the night and I, I dropped my canteen on the way there. It broke’ he said, fishing the knackered water bottle out of his bag to show us.
‘The mean bastard. Christ, no wonder you were thirsty!’ I exclaimed. The poor little sod must have been on death’s doorstep and these days, that’s not a hyperbolic phrase to use.
I hadn’t wanted him to go on this trip. But once his mother had gleaned that scrap of intel from the woman at the neighbouring farm fifteen miles away, that she’d heard that my brother Olly had been spotted a few weeks ago by the man who had the horse, Jude couldn’t get it out of his head. He thought he could find his dad. I thought it was pointless and I hadn’t wanted him to go. But Emma had allowed it and she was his mother. Final say.
It’s not that I don’t want to find Olly. If I thought he was somewhere to find, I’d have gone myself. In fact, I’d have walked ten times that distance on the thinnest hope. But that’s the problem, I don’t hold out any hope.
Olly went to find a part for his van, his passion project. According to Emma, the only one to see him leave, he’d heard of a broken-down truck like his own a few miles away. But he shouldn’t have been gone longer than a day. That was seven weeks ago.
We panicked for days, weeks, trying to figure out what had happened. But there were no answers to be had. After a month of waiting for the door to open, for Olly to walk through with a crazy story, we began to stop looking at the door.
When you broke it down, what was the most logical conclusion? That he was alive but that he decided to leave us? That would make sense, but only if you didn’t know Olly. He was my big brother and a husband and a father. Those things mattered to him. He couldn’t have simply walked away from those roles. We needed him and he needed us. So I didn’t think that he was just out there, living it up. It was far more likely to me that he was dead. But I went back and forth on it. We all did.
One theory that Emma posited was that he banged his head and couldn’t remember who he was. That he was alive and well somewhere but without his name, memories of his family. I didn’t give that one much consideration. Emma had clearly grabbed that idea from when we used to have TV.
But the only realistic answer was that he got hurt or someone hurt him and that was that. My only wish was that it had been quick.
‘You must be starving’ Emma said, and she went to the stove, warming up the stew we’d been eating for the last couple of days. It was tasteless, but it kept our strength up. God, I missed salt. There’d been supplies of it at one time but the last of it had gone a few years ago.
I watched my nephew eat, glad he was home, that we didn’t have to mourn anyone else’s loss. My brother was more than enough grief for one year. But as I watched the kid eating voraciously, I kept wondering about that look in his eye when his mother had mentioned the gun.
Three
Rachel
Dawn woke me, like it always does. No solid roof means you’re prey to the light. That works for me in summer but in winter, if you’re not careful, you can sleep too long, which makes you vulnerable to passing animals or people. Unless you’ve got someone to wake you up, which I haven’t had in a long time. I know the buddy system has its strengths, but I’ve made a different choice, with different risks. Other people are valuable, right up until they’re not. But that’s a different story.
I took down the tent as I listened out for the stream, around half a mile away. That was one of the reasons I’d picked this spot, access to clean water. I could hear it last night as I walked through the woods but then it had gotten too dark to find. That was OK, I still had the water that the kid had failed to steal, so I wasn’t too thirsty.
I packed my stuff and headed towards the sound, wondering if it would be long enough to follow far south. It’s better to travel near a water source, for obvious reasons. If you can tick that worry off your list, you can focus on the other things you need. Food, safety, warmth, shelter. I had warmth last night with my tent and the fire. And the protein provided by the squirrel dinner would see me for a day or two. So that left safety. Scraggly Beard had taken a pop at that and although it hadn’t worked out for him, the incident had still left me on edge. I kept thinking about how differently it could have gone. If he’d had even one bullet. I’d be dead or dying now,
lying on a dirt road.
Actually, that image seemed unlikely. In retrospect, he was just a scared kid in need of something he thought I had. But things like that, you don’t just shake them off. It’s a reminder of what the world has turned into.
Only nine years ago, it had been a different place altogether. There was mass transport, factory produced food, medical services, government, water that came out of a tap, phones, enforced laws, electricity, the damn internet. When all that infrastructure went, what it took with it was safety, comfort, ease of life, low mortality rates. Everything I took for granted. In fact, it was everything I thought I had a right to. Not even a decade had gone by, just over the time it takes for a person’s cells to regenerate, top to bottom. Yet the world fell apart that quickly. I guess that only proves that it was all a lot more fragile than any one given human body. Actually, I guess it was just a little stronger than most of the human population. That’s what we lost with that fucking flu, all but around five percent last I heard. Yep, a simple flu.
No one took it too seriously at first. It was something happening somewhere else, in South America. The reports said it was an epidemic, but we didn’t really care, it wasn’t our problem. Then the death toll began to get rather big. Then it got enormous. That’s when people here, on our little island of England, began to wonder what might happen if the pandemic found its way over.
And then it did.
They shut the borders pretty quick, but it made no difference. It was almost as if it was already everywhere by the times symptoms showed, like some secret spy cell, in place, among us, waiting to announce itself to the world, a world that was stupid enough to think it could fight this off; that it wasn’t the end. People all over the planet, dying in droves. They couldn’t clear the bodies quick enough. From the first report to the waves of death, it took a few months. But it was a flu, right? That meant that someone would come up with a cure, eventually. And then we’d all be saved. Right?
