The End: Surviving the Apocalypse

by Palmer, Richard

  Q considered joining Hannah’s game, but decided on a solo round of Mad Scientist instead. She began assembling her horde. “It’s cool,” she said. “I’ll Bueller the day off.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure. I heard an old person say it once. I think it means I find adventure and you get a sub.”

  Hannah sniffed and ripped out the ribbon she’d tied in Glitz Girl’s hair.

  “I have to go to this camp with Rabbit,” Q said. “It’s destiny, bumping into each other like that.”

  “Isn’t it because you cyberstalked him, staked out his office and then went to those weird meetings looking for him?”

  “Nope. Definitely destiny. I can smell it.”

  Hannah wrinkled her nose. “That’s Sandy,” she said, indicating a small boy dozing near the back of the class. “He doesn’t always make it.”

  Q ignored this remark in case it led to some of the less glamorous work of a kindergarten teacher. She concentrated on jamming the head of an alien space doll onto the body of a small plastic pig. Satisfied, she added the results to her mutant army.

  “What are the other kids like?” Hannah asked.

  “What other kids?”

  “The kids you’re going on camp with.”

  Q considered. She hadn’t thought about anyone else on the retreat. All her thoughts had been about Rabbit. She smiled as she played out her fantasy once more. They would sit by the fire in their cosy log cabin. He would gaze at her, firelight flickering across his face, and say something beautiful and sad, like, “I never thought it would be like this.” She would place a hand on his cheek and lean in and kiss him, letting her hands play across his—

  “Are they nice?”

  Q flushed. “What?”

  “The other kids?” Hannah said again. “Are they nice? You’re spending a whole weekend with them. What if you don’t like them? What if they don’t like you? What if the food’s weird and they don’t let you have top bunk and everyone wants to watch a different channel?”

  “They’ll be great,” Q said. “I meet them tonight.”

  “Wow, Q. You’re really brave.”

  Chapter Nine

  Q walked the walk of a woman condemned to spending a whole evening with a bunch of hippies. It was a slow and ponderous walk that involved a great deal of chewing: she was stocking up on real food ahead of three days of enforced veganism. She discarded the evidence of her meal (fried chickeny goodness with a side of dairy-whip sparkle icee) and entered the community center.

  There were about thirty people in the small room. Most of them were female. She tried to smile and remember names as Rabbit introduced her, but found her mind drifting, as it always did in new environments, to the location of the exits and which pieces of furniture would make the best weapons in an emergency. As usual, she found herself forming two separate plans, one for Nazi terrorists and the other for sewer monsters. She sat down next to a heavy woman in her forties with short blond hair and an easy smile who introduced herself as Angela.

  A slender woman with long red hair, sharp features and a large wooden pendant hanging around her neck stood up at the front of the room and spoke in a clipped voice.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said. “I’m Kate, for anyone who doesn’t know me.” She paused, as if to indicate that in the unlikely event that there was someone in the audience who didn’t know her, the fault lay with them. “We have a full agenda, so I’ll get started straight away. Why are we here?”

  A lifetime of sexual bliss?

  “To stop the slaughter and save the world,” twenty-nine voices recited.

  Oh God. Rabbit was in a cult!

  “That’s right,” Kate said. She read over the sheet of paper in her hand. “William, have you got an update on the newsletter?”

  William was a thin, bearded man in his forties. “I’m starting a new contest called— wait for it— ‘Name My Fungus!’” he said.

  Kate didn’t even raise an eyebrow. “And how will that work?”

  “People send in pictures of field mushrooms and have them identified as edible or not.”

  “Right,” said Kate. “What’s the prize?”

  “Non-paralysis!”

  The meeting moved on. Kate’s tone turned to honey as she called on Rabbit for an update about the weekend retreat. Q drifted away on a mattress of his words.

  After the meeting, she chatted to Angela as she waited for Rabbit to emerge from a circle of women. It turned out that, despite being vegan, the older woman was quite nice and barely strange at all.

  “Life changed when I had kids,” Angela said. “I got scared about the world. You worry about the future they’re gonna have. I started getting nightmares about where it was all headed. Everything spiraling down into decay.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Q said. “Hordes of the demonic undead?”

  “No, climate change, but that sounds bad too. You should chat to Michelle. She’s passionate about eco apocalypse and global warming.”

  “Me too. I hate winter. Which one’s Michelle?”

  Angela pointed to a woman with hair the color of flames at midnight.

  “You mean the Scarlet Terror?”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m bad at remembering names,” Q said. “But I’m great at picking out what someone would call their avatar.”

  “We’re very different, you and I,” said Angela. “Let’s join the line for food.”

  Q grimaced. “I hate queues.”

  “That’s ironic and self-loathing,” said Angela. “Are your parents British?” She chuckled.

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” Angela served them both a mug full of steaming stew from a vat at the back of the room. Q fiddled with the goo as her new friend told her about the difficulty of raising a family without relying on the industrial food chain. “You should try it,” Angela said.

  Q startled. “I’m twenty-two! I don’t even have a boyfriend! Why does everyone want me to have kids already?”

  Angela grinned. “The stew,” she said. “It tastes better than it looks.”

  “It would have to.” Q ate a mouthful. “Not bad,” she said. She ate more. “What’s in it?”

  “Everything good,” Angela said. “You are what you eat.”

  “So zombies are the only real people.” Q giggled, then realized she was alone in the joke. She tried to pass it off lightly as some yogic vocalization she’d seen on TV once, and while she wasn’t sure she got away with it, this did at least make Angela laugh.

  “You, Q, are a very strange kindergarten teacher.”

  “So they keep telling me. What are the folk here like?”

  Angela gave her a rundown on the other vegans, including Pious Kate, who had herded the meeting.

  “Why do you call her that?” Q asked, pleased that her new friend gave out secret nicknames too.

  “She’s always greener than thou. Thous. You’re a teacher, what’s the plural of ‘thou’?”

  “I dunno, but I have a whole lesson plan based on collective nouns for a clone world.”

  Angela ate more stew. “She and Rabbit used to date.”

  “Oh.”

  “But she dumped him because he didn’t aspire to be fabulous enough. I think she’s trying to get him back. Probably decided it’s easier to work with what she’s got than find someone as good as him.”

  “Oh.” Q watched Rabbit break away from a mob of women and head toward the pot of stew. She bolted hers down, hoping to get a top-up and accidentally bump into Rabbit in the line. She made it to the table at the perfect time, but her scorched throat prevented her from speaking. Rabbit served himself and walked away.

  “Besides,” Angela said, when Q had returned with more stew, stewing. “The real fun in kids is making them. You got a thing for Rabbit, huh?”

  Q choked. “No! What? How can you tell?”

  Angela grinned. “He’s a good-looking man. Pretty dense though. Ther
e’s no way he’s noticed.”

  Q relaxed.

  “You know why they call him Rabbit?” Angela asked.

  “I’ve thought about that,” Q said. “It’s because he’s a hippy and he eats a lot of carrots.”

  “Nope,” Angela said.

  Q waited for the punchline.

  “It's more of an aspirational nickname bestowed by a crowd of hopefuls. I don't think he gets it himself.”

  “Oh?”

  “Half the girls in here had an ethical epiphany after meeting him,” Angela said.

  “Oh.”

  “He’s a one-man recruitment machine.”

  “Oh.”

  “And he’s single.”

  “Oh?”

  Angela let Q enjoy the sight of Rabbit walking, then grabbed her hand and dragged her over to talk to him. Q was halfway through a witty tale about Hannah’s younger brother when, like a case of acid reflux, Pious Kate showed up.

  The vinegar ginger placed a hand on Rabbit’s arm and smiled. “Qwinston, isn’t it?” Pious Kate said. “The kindergarten assistant.”

  “That’s kindergarten teacher, thanks,” Q said. “Almost.”

  “How sweet,” said Pious Kate. “I’m an animal rights lawyer. Rabbit and I work in the same firm.” She fingered the pendant around her neck. It was a carved snake biting its own tail. The detail was incredible. Q could see individual scales and two eyes made from red beads. “You like it?” Pious Kate said.

  “It would look better if you wore it shorter,” Q said. About eight inches shorter should do it. It’d cut off her windpipe nicely. “Is it made of bone?”

  Pious Kate inhaled sharply. “I wouldn’t wear a dead animal like a trophy,” she said. “It’s wood. Rabbit made it for me from a fallen branch so he didn’t have to hurt the tree.” She placed a hand on Rabbit’s shoulder. “You must be new to the vegetarian cause.”

  Q blustered. “No, I’ve always stuck up for potatoes—”

  Angela cut in. “Kate, can I talk to you about the follow-up actions for item seven?”

  “Of course,” Pious Kate said. “All three of us should discuss them. Here.” Pious Kate handed Q a heavy hemp bag. “This is the beginner’s kit. It’s more advanced than Spot Goes to the Park but you might enjoy the pictures.” She led Rabbit and Angela away.

  Q contemplated the bag in her hand. It was the same hand that had so recently been resting on Rabbit’s arm. Such an unfair exchange. She opened the bag and regarded a pile of books. “Oh goody,” she said. “Now there’s homework, too.”

  *

  While reading the next evening, Q did something so outlandish that she wouldn’t have believed it of herself a week earlier. She stopped chewing a pork crisp, spat it into her hand and then threw it out with the rest of the packet. “So that’s what verse three was about.”

  *

  Q was speed packing for the retreat but this time, the stopwatch was winning. She switched it off at an all-time worst: thirty-three minutes and fifty-two seconds. Packing for vegan seduction was way harder than packing to survive the undead.

  She considered her progress. Jeans, fleece, T-shirt, undies, camo pants. Good. Serrated bush knife, Swiss army knife, multitool and machete. Fine, but maybe too heavy on the blades for a bunch of hippies. She discarded the Swiss army knife. CamelBak, head torch, cordage, mess kit, SAS survival tabs, protein bars, survival tin, crowbar. All essential items, but her bag was almost full and she hadn’t even started on the pretty things yet. Did Rabbit even like pretty things? Or was he into a natural look? Or, worse, did he like to think he was into a natural look but expect women to look good and smell fresh regardless of air temperature and chosen activity?

  Q was outside her zone, that was the problem. Crawling through the jungle after demons at three a.m.? Easy. Surviving a week in the bush with nothing but her own brute will? Simple. Winning over the boy she loved from his evil ex? Doomed. She needed help.

  What did Apocalypse Z say?

  Q flicked through the contents and paused on Chapter Thirteen – Choose Your Weapons with Care. She considered her cutest pair of boy-leg pajamas, a rarely used make-up bag and a can of Ocean Flowers body spray that could double as a blinding weapon in a pinch. There was no way she’d fit everything in. She had some tough decisions to make.

  Q sighed, removed the crowbar and packed the body spray in its place. It wasn’t like she’d need a crowbar.

  *

  She was having a difficult Thursday. She was exhausted and her throat was sore from all the coughing she’d faked whenever another teacher checked on her class. She hoped that she wouldn’t get sick pretending to be sick. This weekend was too important.

  There was also an undercurrent in the class. Five kids were away, which should have left Q with the elusive prize Mrs Mason always dreamt about – the perfect class size. But this was no perfect class. Tania cried. Ben and Bry-Bry got into a fight. Greg ate a whole yellow crayon, which was bizarre, because he usually stuck to the green ones.

  “It’s like they sense something coming,” Q said. “Their primitive instincts are picking up on signs we can’t detect.”

  “You do know they’re kids, right?” Hannah said.

  “What’s your point?”

  Hannah drew jagged red lightning bolts onto her picture. “They’re probably annoyed because you’re skipping school tomorrow,” she said.

  Q burst into another fit of fake coughing to drown out her young friend’s words. With her cough-roughened throat, it turned into a real fit of coughing. Almost breathless, she hissed at Hannah. “Who have you told?”

  Hannah switched to markers and colored in the sky. “No one. What kind of friend do you think I am?” The sky grew black. It wasn’t her usual cheery scene at all.

  “Lighten up, Hannah Banana,” Q said. “At least you’re only a Kindy Koala. If you were a real koala, you’d have to worry about death by cow.”

  Hannah did not laugh. She played with her half of the Best Friends necklace hanging around her throat. “And you canceled Lethal Littlies this week,” she said.

  “I’ve had stuff on,” Q said. “Important stuff.” Hannah remained impassive. “Next Monday I’ll let you put Tina in a headlock,” Q said.

  Hannah gave a half-smile. “Really?”

  “Sure.” Q pulled a package out of her bag. “And I got you a present.”

  Hannah took it, delighted, then hesitated. “This doesn’t mean you get to skip out whenever you want,” she said.

  “Open it.”

  Hannah unwrapped the parcel with care, peeling off the sticky tape gently and carefully folding the paper as she went. Inside was a slim gray box.

  “Wow!” said Hannah. “A new phone! Is it the Gwendolyn III from TV?” She opened the box and took out a large black phone. Her face fell.

  Q grabbed it. “It’s a satellite hotphone!” she said. “It’s got this wind-up recharger, see, so you’ll never be out of batteries. It gets coverage anywhere in the world, even under water! It’s like having a walkie-talkie, but cooler.”

  “What’s a walkie-talkie?”

  Q pondered. “An old-fashioned way of making calls. Like using strings and cans.” She pulled a matching phone from her cargo pants pocket and held the twin models together. “They can only call each other. They’re best friends, just like us.”

  Hannah took the phone and examined it. “I can’t call anyone else?” she said.

  “Who else would you want to talk to?” Q had saved the best for last. “And I decorated them, see? Tiger ninjas. Yours are pink.”

  Hannah ran her fingers over the stickers and grinned.

  “So we’re okay?” Q said.

  “Sure,” said Hannah, inspecting the phone’s features. “I guess I can call you tomorrow if I need you.”

  “Exactly,” Q said. “Besides, I’ll only be gone for three days. What could go wrong?”

  *

  Don’t be weird, don’t be weird, don’t be weird.

  Q’s
father was giving her a lift to the station to meet the no-meat retreat. She was using her last few minutes of relative solitude to psych herself up. She had a window of opportunity in which to charm the pants off Rabbit before he got to know her and found out she was a paranoid, aggressive, kindergarten teacher’s assistant who could throw six men twice her size in a brawl.

  Don’t be weird.

  Granted, it was a small window of opportunity, more of a siege castle slit that would spew boiling oil the moment Q said something she was thinking, possibly about spewing boiling oil, but it was a window and it was open and she was going to make the most of it.

  Don’t be weird.

  “Here we are, Quinny,” said her dad, pulling into the car park. “I can’t see your friends, though.”

  What if they weren’t coming? What if they’d googled her and found pictures of the spit roast at her twenty-first birthday?

  “We might be early,” he said. “You said they were meeting at five?”

  Calm down. They’re vegans. They don’t know about the internet.

  Q got out of the car and waited beneath a tree. Her father retrieved her pack from the boot and put it on the path by her feet. She was shocked to hear him wheeze from this brief bout of exercise. They needed to have a talk.

  “Is that them over there?” her father asked, pointing to a Kombi van pulling in to the other end of the car park. It was painted with rainbows and bunnies and clouds. Sprawling above the windows in large pink letters was the You are What You Eat logo.

  Q shuddered. “Oh God. I have to ride in a hippy van.”

  “Q! Good to see you!” Angela said. “What were you saying?”

  Q startled. She hadn’t seen the woman approach from the train station behind her. “I said, oh good. I get to ride in a minivan,” Q said. “This is my dad.”

  “Hello, Mr Q.” Angela shook hands with Q’s father and grabbed Q’s pack. “Wow, this thing’s pretty light. Plus, if you drop it in on a pile of leaves, it’ll disappear.”

  “What?”

  “Because it’s made of camouflage fabric,” Angela said.

  Q considered Angela’s blue-wheeled suitcase and had sudden doubts about her own. “I got it at an army outlet store,” she said. “Is it weird?”