The World's Last Breaths: Final Winter, Animal Kingdom, and The Peeling

by Iain Rob Wright

  26

  “What are we going to do?” Bill asked Joe. They were standing over in the corner of the room where Danny was playing with some toy animals from the warehouse.

  “I don’t know yet,” Joe said, “but Randall has no right to behave the way he is. We should just play it safe for now.”

  Bill nodded. “Or else we’ll have that psycho, Victor, on our asses.”

  “Exactly. That man is dangerous. I don’t think he’s ‘all there’, you know?”

  “I hear ya. What should we do about Grace, though? We can’t just leave her locked up.”

  Joe bit at his lip as he thought about her. “No, we really can’t. We have to get her out.”

  “Okay,” said Bill. “How?”

  “Appeal to Randall’s decency?”

  “Don’t think the man has any.”

  “Me either, but I don’t know what else to do.”

  Bill shrugged. “Okay. Give it a shot.”

  The timing was perfect because Randall had just re-entered the seminar room and seemed to be in a good mood about something. Joe approached him over by the window. It was still deserted outside, the animals gone.

  “Hey, Randall,” he said, trying to sound calm and reasonable. “You think maybe you should let Grace out? She’s probably calmed down by now.”

  Randall faced Joe, smug grin attached to his face. “I’m afraid not.”

  Joe threw his head back, already frustrated by talking to the man. He gave it another shot, though. “It’s not safe for her to be alone. Last time she got attacked and bitten.”

  Randall nodded, as though he was taking Joe’s concerns on board, but what came out of the man’s mouth said different. “Victor has safeguarded the room sufficiently. He’s even added a padlock to the door. There’s no need to worry about anything.”

  “Well, how long do you plan on keeping her locked up? You have no goddamn right! It’s kidnap.”

  Randall folded his arms across his chest. “Don’t be so dramatic. She was hysterical and had to be removed for the safety of the group.”

  Joe saw an opening. “And now she’s not, so she should be released.”

  Randall shook his head solemnly. “I thought just the same thing earlier, but I’m afraid that she attacked me as soon as I entered the room.”

  Joe looked at Randall’s neck as the man turned his head to one side. Sure enough there were red finger marks against the podgy flesh.

  So Grace really did attack you? Good for her.

  “That’s unfortunate,” said Joe, “but I promise to keep her under control if you let her out.”

  Randall leant closer to Joe, eyeball to eyeball. “Let’s just dispense with the bullshit, Joe. This whole ‘reasonable’ act isn’t fooling anyone. If I release Grace then it will just add another person to conspire against me along with you and Bill. I’m afraid for now I need to protect the interests of the group. Until I feel I can trust you, that means keeping Grace out of harm’s way.”

  Joe’s fists clenched involuntarily. “So, what? You’re just going to leave her locked up indefinitely?”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m a fair man. She’ll be released at some point. I suggest you just relax until then, my friend.”

  Joe walked away before he lost control of himself. Every cell in his body was tensing up with the urge to rip Randall’s pig head from his flabby neck. He had to find a way to get Grace out of there before…

  Before her illness becomes too much for her to take and she starts cutting herself.

  Bill was waiting for Joe in the corner of the room, keeping an eye on Danny. “Any joy?”

  Joe shook his head and sat down beside his son. “How you doing, Danny?”

  Danny put down a small plastic elephant that he was playing with and looked up at his father. “I want Grace to play with me.”

  “I know you do. I want Grace, too, but she’s busy at the moment.”

  “That nasty man locked her up.”

  “He just took her to calm down. She’s fine now.”

  “You’re fibbing.”

  Joe didn’t know what to say. His son was smart enough to know that things weren’t okay, but was he old enough to know the full truth? “We’re going to help her, Danny, and then we’re going to get out of here.”

  Bill frowned at him. “What you talking about?”

  Joe looked around the room and motioned for Bill to do the same. Victor and Randall were in discussion by the window and Shirley had joined them. “How much longer do you think things are going to remain civil? Randall is obviously an egomaniacal bully and Victor is happy as long as he gets to stab things. Then there’s Shirley; she’s a whole other level of messed up. You, me, and Grace are the only ones in this place that see the big picture here, but I have a feeling that our voices are about to get lost beneath the din of ‘Team Randall’. We need to leave.”

  “What about Mason?”

  Joe shrugged. “After what he did, I really don’t know where we stand with him. He’s obviously happy to go along with Randall’s circus, so I say we let him.”

  “I think you’re crazy to even consider it. We’ll get ripped apart out there.”

  Joe put a hand on Bill’s shoulder. “Eventually, we’ll get ripped apart in here. We’re not safe, you know that. You’re injured. Grace is injured. The animals are chipping away at us one scrap of flesh at a time.”

  “The animals have gone.”

  “They’ll be back,” said Joe. “I’m certain of it. They’re just regrouping. Planning their next move.”

  “Animals don’t plan,” Bill scoffed. “They don’t think – at least not in the way you’re suggesting.”

  “These ones do. You may not have seen the way they worked together to surround Grace, but you witnessed them ambush us downstairs.”

  Bill obviously didn’t want to buy into any of it and he shook his head adamantly. “Just a coincidence.”

  Joe sighed. He needed to get through to the man. He could make nothing happen otherwise. “Bill, you know that’s not true. Whatever caused all this has made the animals act differently, smarter. We need to find help and we won’t find it here.”

  Bill’s shoulders slumped and he seemed to deflate. “Where would we even go?”

  “That’s the part I’m not clear on, but there must be other people somewhere. The army or something. I still have my car keys. We could just drive out of here.”

  “Well, I’m not on board until you give me something better than that. I ain’t going nowhere till I at least have a destination.”

  “Fair enough,” Joe conceded. “Let me think on it. Right now, I’m going to go see Grace.”

  Bill raised both of his grey-black eyebrows. “How you gonna do that? She’s locked in that office. You try to break her out you’ll have Victor breathing down your neck – Martha, too.”

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t talk to her through the door. She needs to hear that things will be alright.”

  “You gonna tell her the plan?”

  “I thought you said I didn’t have a plan?”

  Bill laughed. “Well you have an intention. You could tell her that.”

  “We’ll see,” said Joe. “You good to look after Danny?”

  “As always. He’ll be safe with me.”

  “I know.” Joe looked down at his son and smiled. “You okay to stay with Bill for a few minutes, Danny?”

  Danny looked up from his toy animals and smiled. “Yeah, he’s big and strong like Kamala, the Ugandan Giant.”

  Joe cringed. “Danny! That’s…a little bit racist.”

  Bill patted Joe on the back and laughed merrily. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone’s a little bit racist sometimes.”

  Joe didn’t quite know how to take Bill’s comment, but the man seemed happy enough so he departed into the corridor. It was getting dark again and the corridor was shrouded in an opaque cloak of greyness. When Joe stood in front of Randall’s office, butterflies spawned inside his stomach. Th
e padlock on the door only increased their fluttering.

  What if she’s already hurt herself? What if she begs me to help her and I can’t do anything? While she bleeds to death…

  Joe went to knock on the door, but instead placed his palm against the wood. He didn’t want to startle her. “Grace,” he said softly. “Grace, are you there?”

  Of course she’s there, you idiot.

  A voice came back, weak and trembling. Joe was sure she’d been crying. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Joe. Are you okay?”

  For a while there was no reply, then: “No. No, I’m not.”

  Of course you’re not. Another stupid question for me to ask.

  Joe put his forehead against the door, wishing it wasn’t there between them. “Is there anything…dangerous in there?”

  Grace knew what he meant. “No. At least I don’t think so. Randall would have removed anything I could use against him.”

  Joe sighed. “Good, then you’ll be okay.”

  “No. I already told you!” She sounded desperate. “I’ll find a way to hurt myself, even if it means biting. I need to get out of here. The urges are already getting stronger, gnawing away at me. I have to get OUT!” She banged at the door and the impact knocked Joe away from the wood. The padlock rattled.

  “I’m going to find a way, Grace. Then we’re gonna get out of here.”

  “Thank God!”

  Joe was surprised. “You think it’s a good idea?”

  “What? Getting me out of this room or getting me out of this wretched zoo?”

  Joe smiled, but realised that Grace wouldn’t see it. “The latter,” he said.

  “I think it’s a great idea. I’d rather take my chances with the animals outside than the animals in here.”

  “What Victor did to you was--”

  “I’m not talking about Victor,” she said. “I’m talking about Randall.”

  The butterflies in Joe’s stomach flapped their wings again. “What did he do to you?”

  A pause. Then: “Not much…yet. But if you don’t get me out of this room soon I think he’s gonna hurt me a lot more than I could ever hurt myself.”

  Joe heard Grace begin to sob quietly and a rage started to bloom inside of him.

  I’ll kill him. That sick, twisted bastard is a dead man. I’ll feed him to the lions before he ever lays another finger on Grace.

  “Joe?”

  Joe broke away from his thoughts. “What?”

  “I can tell you want to do something, but don’t, okay?”

  “He needs to pay.”

  “Damn straight he does, but I don’t want you to go off half-cocked and end up locked in here with me.”

  Doesn’t sound all that bad to me…

  But where would that leave Bill and Danny?

  Joe took a hold of himself and let out a long breath. “What, then? I just keep my head down until he tries to hurt you again?”

  “No,” said Grace. “You need to go away and figure out what to do. Then you come rescue me like a hero on a white horse. We’ll leave Randall to his play school prime minister act and find ourselves someplace safe.”

  “I’m glad you’re so confident. I don’t even know where we can go to.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” she said. “Now go.”

  Joe put his hand against the door again, wishing he could feel the warmth of her cheek instead of the lifelessness of the wood. “Okay. I’ll go figure something out.”

  He walked away. Before he got far, Grace called out to him. “Joe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Please don’t take too long, or there may not be much of me left to save.”

  The thought filled Joe with dread. He walked away without any idea what to do.

  27

  Night had fallen and Joe still had little idea what to do about Grace – or where to go afterwards. For now, he decided to let things lie in his mind, hoping that inspiration would strike unprompted.

  Since the day’s earlier events, two camps had clearly divided. Over by the window sat Randall and his cohorts, lit by flickering candlelight, while on the opposite side of the room, in near total darkness, sat Joe, Bill, and Danny. Mason sat midway between both parties, obscured by piles of open books that lay around him. The thing that Joe noticed most of all was that all of the food supplies were on Randall’s side of the room and that each of his group had weapons. They were laughing amongst themselves, snacking on crisps while Joe’s group starved.

  They’re the elite and we’re the proletariat, but I think there’s a revolution in the cards for the near future, so just enjoy your cosy little throne for now, Randall. Enjoy it because I’m gonna make you eat it.

  Bill whispered beside him. “I’ve been trying to work Mason out all evening. He hasn’t spoken to either you or me since he stabbed you in the back, but he isn’t sitting with Randall either. What you think his game is?”

  Joe considered things for a moment. “I don’t think he has a game. Despite what happened, I don’t think Mason is looking to cause any trouble. I think he just wants a quiet life, which is why whatever Randall said to him was so effective.”

  “You think that’s what happened? That Randall said something? He could have just genuinely thought that you weren’t the man for the job.”

  Joe laughed quietly. “I’m not the man, but neither is Randall, that’s for sure. I don’t know what happened, but I know Mason wouldn’t have wanted this.”

  “It’s pretty fucked up. You figured out what to do yet?”

  “No, but I’m working on it. I’ll try to come up with something by tomorrow. We need to act soon.”

  “Shit, man, are we really gonna do this then? I mean, we’ll probably die.”

  “I know, but at least by doing this we’ll have the chance to live. Grace isn’t going to last long if we don’t do something.”

  Bill studied Joe’s expression. “You gonna tell me what the deal is with her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I just get the impression that there’s something you’re not telling me. Like why she needs pills.”

  Joe sighed. “I don’t think it would be right to tell you, but I can say that she has a serious condition and that leaving her alone is dangerous.”

  “Okay.”

  Joe frowned in the dark. “Really? You don’t need to know anything more?”

  “Would you tell me?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Exactly, but if you say that she needs our help then I believe you. I’ve got your back.”

  “I didn’t know Black people actually said that.”

  “Word, dawg, for real.”

  Joe renewed his laughter and punched Bill on his arm. “You crazy fool!”

  Bill joined in the laughter. “Now I know why your son’s a little bit racist.”

  The two men eventually settled into silence and Joe was left alone with his thoughts. For some reason he found his mind wandering off and retrieving memories of his ex-wife, Jane – Danny’s mother. The regret of losing her was still embedded deep within Joe’s soul, and not a day went past that he didn’t rue the day he had betrayed her with another woman. Yet, in some twisted way, his weakness was the only reason he and Danny were alive right now.

  If we hadn’t separated then I wouldn’t have taken Danny to the zoo for my custody weekend. Who knows where I would have been instead, but the chances of surviving this thing were a million to one in the first place, and if things were different I don’t think I would have been so lucky.

  None of it made Joe feel any better. He still regretted the past. If he could take back the night he allowed his neighbour’s wife to throw herself at him, he would. He would take back the entire last year if it meant he could feel the warmth of Jane’s arms around him one more time.

  But that will never happen. I have to think about the present. About Grace…

  Suddenly it was Grace’s arms that he longed to feel around him and he
became resolute that he would rescue her. He was going to break her out tomorrow.

  28

  Randall could not sleep – too much adrenaline in his system to even consider it. He was finally in charge, free to do as he wished, and it tasted good. Soon he would look towards bringing in other survivors to add to his empire. He considered the methods he could employ, such as lighting signal fires. It would be difficult and dangerous, but he would find a way. That’s why he was the one in charge.

  That’s why he would be the hero when all this was over.

  Or if there is no end to this situation, I will remain in power and help rebuild humanity on this very spot.

  Randall got up in the darkness and shuffled across the room. He stopped when he came in line with Joe and his group. There was no light in that part of the room, but he could hear each of them snoring, the boy the loudest. The last thing Randall needed now was another inane discussion, which was why it was such a blessing that none of them had woken as he padded out into the corridor and switched on his torch.

  Joe is turning out to be quite the problem. I may be forced to deal with him. I know he’s plotting something. Him and that bloody queer.

  Randall approached the door to his office. Slowly, he inserted the key into the padlock. Despite his efforts to remain quiet as he opened the door, he found Grace awake. She was sitting at the desk and staring at the back of her arm in some sort of dazed confusion. A heavy layer of sweat covered the girl’s forehead and clothing and made her glisten under the shafts of moonlight coming from the barricaded window.

  “What are you doing awake?” he asked her.

  She flinched at the sound of his voice as though she hadn’t noticed him enter the room.

  “I said what are you doing?”

  Grace still didn’t answer. Randall was just about to lose his temper when he noticed the blood. “Jesus, girl, what did you do to yourself?”

  Grace stared up at him, still struck by some bizarre fugue.

  Randall grabbed her by the wrist and stretched out her arm. Embedded into the flesh of her wrist was a ragged splinter of wood. Blood ran down its length and pooled on the surface of the desk. “What’s your goddamn deal? You crazy-”