The End of the World. Maybe

by Jo Nesbo

  The king could hardly see him anymore in the snowstorm of feathers. But he could see the open window next to the bunk beds. Åke had stopped stabbing and roared a furious “Where are they, those human cowards?”

  In the silence that followed, the king heard the voice of the red-haired one: “Three, two, one.”

  Butler Åke stormed over to the window.

  “There you are!”

  “Zero.”

  “I’m going to make carpacci—”

  There was a boom. The cabin shook.

  “Wh-wh-what was that?” the king stammered.

  Åke slowly turned to face the king. His face was covered with a layer of white powdery snow. “That,” he said, as the snow tumbled out of his mouth, “was the rebels getting away. But you’re not going to.”

  “Your Royal Highness,” the king reminded.

  “What?” Åke asked, more snow falling off his face.

  “You forgot to say Your Royal . . .” The king was staring at Åke’s face. It was completely unrecognisable. It was black with grey hair, a prominent chin and an open mouth with sharp, shiny teeth.

  “PHEW, THAT WAS a close call,” Doctor Proctor said, pulling off his nightcap, putting on his swimming goggles and steering the hang glider around one small, solitary cumulus cloud. “Is everyone here?”

  “I’m here,” said Mrs Strobe.

  “I’m here,” Lisa said.

  “And I’m here,” Nilly said.

  Nilly stuck his head out of the sleeping bag and looked down. South Trøndelag was disappearing behind them and below them the moonlight was glittering on snow-covered peaks and iced-over lakes. It had all happened so fast he wasn’t truly awake yet. He had just barely managed to pull on his pants and one shoe, the other was in his jacket pocket. Nilly felt for it to make sure. He found his mittens and his scarf. And . . .

  “Perry!”

  “What was that, Nilly?”

  “I forgot Perry! He’s still back at the cabin!”

  “Whoops,” Doctor Proctor said. “It’s too late to go back now. But if I know Perry, I’m sure he managed to hide.”

  Nilly tore at his hair and wailed, “But what will he do without us?”

  “Catch flies and steer clear of that baboon until this is all over,” Lisa said. “I promise that we’ll go back and get him, Nilly.”

  “Lisa’s right,” Doctor Proctor said. “What we need to do now is get back to Oslo. Save Gregory. And the world. And then – if we haven’t been eaten for breakfast yet by that point – Perry.”

  “Poor Perry,” Mrs Strobe said. “And poor, poor Nilly.”

  Nilly pulled his head back into the sleeping bag and moped the whole way, until Lisa yelled, “Look, it’s Elverum! We’re getting there!” and he stuck his head out again and looked down at the small town they were soaring over. A red stripe had appeared under all the blackness in the east. A new day was dawning. Nilly decided to stop moping. After all, there wasn’t anything they could do. You always lose something in war, but life goes on. It must go on. And the scene around them was so beautiful that there was no time to lose for those who loved life.

  AS THE SUN rose over South Trøndelag, the king lay on his back on the bunk bed, staring at a cobweb on the ceiling. And since he was a king who was dying for some company and who was completely alone, regrettably confined behind locked window shutters and a locked door with no one else to talk to, he figured he might as well talk to the spider who was sitting in the middle of the web.

  “A baboon . . . who would’ve thought? Would you believe my butler is a villainous, talking baboon.”

  “Hiccup!” the spider said.

  “Exactly,” the king said. “Maybe I’m crazy, because I just thought I heard a spider hiccup.”

  “Hiccup!” the spider said.

  “Thanks,” the king said. “You look pretty alone and forsaken yourself. Did you hear what that baboon said? That he’d been tricking me the whole time, that he was a spy assigned to keep an eye on what I was doing and who came to visit me. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

  “Hiccup-hiccup.”

  “What do you think that baboon is going to do to us now?”

  But apparently the spider didn’t have an answer for this question. At least, it didn’t hiccup.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the king said, and stretched. He thought that if you just looked at things the right way there was always a bright side. At least no one could scold him for lounging around in bed, and there was nothing he liked better than lounging around in bed. Well, apart from doing crossword puzzles, of course. And now he wouldn’t have to write those speeches either. Boy, he was a lazy king. Not much you could do about that, though. The king closed his eyes, already feeling a little more at ease now that he’d had these thoughts. He tried not to think about the sword Åke had poked under his nose, and about the sound of the key rotating in the keyhole as he had been locked in. The rest of the night he had heard Åke tapping away on that Morse code machine he kept at the end of the hall. Clack, clack, stop. Clackety clack, stop, clack. But when he’d tried to peek out through the keyhole to see what was going on, he saw that the key had been left in the hole on the other side of the door and was blocking his view. He sniffed. What was that smell? Waffles? No, not waffles, the smell of grease on a waffle iron that was heating up. Well, well, at least there would be waffles for breakfast.

  This thought made the king feel a little better, and he started to fall asleep.

  “Ouch!”

  His eyes snapped open. The spider was sitting on his nose, staring at him with its eight black eyes.

  “D-d-did you just bite me?”

  “Hiccup!”

  “What do you mean?”

  Without hiccuping in response, the spider darted across the duvet, down the bedpost, across the floor, up the door and vanished through the keyhole.

  “Strange animal,” the king mumbled, closing his eyes. And then he heard it again. The sound of a key twisting around in the keyhole. Breakfast! He waited for the door to open, but nothing happened. Instead, the spider appeared in the keyhole again. It was pulling a glossy strand of cobweb behind it.

  “Hiccup!”

  “Hiccup this and hiccup that,” the king said, rolling over to face the wall. He yawned, closed his eyes and felt a nice dream about chocolate éclairs and cream-filled buns coming on. But was that really the sound of a key turning in the lock? The king opened his eyes again. And what did that have to do with the spider? That strand of cobweb . . . that couldn’t be. The king got out of bed and tiptoed over to the door. Cautiously pressed down the handle. And pushed the door . . . open! The door was open! He looked at the key, which was on the outside, and at the cobwebs that had been spun around the end of the key. Had that spider really managed to turn this large key using cobweb?

  From the door that was ajar at the end of the hall came the sounds of Morse code. Clack, clack, stop. And the king realised that this was his chance, his chance to escape! He pulled on his shoes and tied the laces. But then it occurred to him: Escape from what? From waffles for breakfast? He needed to think about this. He didn’t quite see the point in escaping. Still, there was something bugging him about what that redheaded boy had said. About his being king. And he couldn’t actually smell any waffle batter, just the waffle iron. He tiptoed over to the front door of the cabin but stopped suddenly. His shoes were making shockingly loud clacking sounds. He listened, but the Morse code from the next room was still going. He concentrated on making his footsteps coincide with the clacking sounds from the Morse code machine. This wasn’t easy. Clack, clack, stop. Clickety clack, stop, clack. It turned into a bizarre dance, but finally he reached the door. He grabbed his car keys, which were hanging on the key holder on the wall, grabbed his ermine coat, which was hanging from the coat rack, and was about to sneak out when he felt something poke him on the back of the neck. He froze until he realised that it wasn’t Åke’s sword, it was the spider! It had climbed up onto him and wa
s now seated on his white ermine collar.

  “You’re hired, buddy,” the king whispered. “And Butler Åke is fired.”

  And with that he trundled off as quickly as he could down the path towards the old black Rolls Royce that had been given to his great-grandfather as a gift from the king of England and the British Empire. He slid in behind the wheel and put the key in the ignition. Suddenly he wished he had one of those reliable little Japanese cars that always started, but they would just have to cross their fingers. He pulled out the choke, pumped the accelerator and twisted the key in the ignition.

  The starter complained. Oink, oink, oink.

  Just then there was a loud cry from the cabin. “Hey! Stop! Your Royalness!”

  The king tried again. Oink, oink, double oink.

  “Into the waffle iron with you! I need my breakfast!”

  The king stomped desperately on the accelerator, because in the rearview mirror he saw an enormous and buck naked baboon rapidly approaching.

  “Start already, you lousy British lemon!” the king frantically exclaimed.

  The baboon filled his rearview mirror as the engine finally started. The king let out the clutch, lurched down the driveway and skidded out onto the main road.

  “Phew! That was close, buddy,” the king said, looking in his rearview mirror. All he saw was the cabin, no baboon.

  “Hiccup!” said the spider, which had climbed up onto the dashboard.

  “What is it, buddy?” The king checked his mirror again. And swore quietly and regally. Just barely visible over the trunk he saw two pointy, hairy ears and some gray bangs. That baboon was on his rear bumper. Didn’t that ape know that South Trøndelag traffic rules strictly forbade anyone from riding like that? The king looked ahead again. And he spotted something up there and felt a hopeful smile spread over his face. Then he rolled down his window, floored the gas pedal and screamed at the top of his lungs: “Time for you to hit the road, Åke!”

  There was a bang as the speed bump smashed up into the undercarriage of the Rolls Royce, whipping the back end of the car up into the air, kind of like a horse kicking its hind legs. They heard the shriek of a crazed ape, which quickly faded into the distance.

  The king looked in his mirror and laughed. He asked the spider, “Hey, buddy, want to see a flying baboon?”

  And there – somewhere between South Trøndelag and the sky – a grey baboon hung in the air for a short moment before it started its journey back down.

  “Let’s get ourselves to Norway,” the king said, accelerating.

  FOR THE LAST half hour the four Vincibles had pretty much just seen forest below them. A couple of lakes, occasionally a road, but almost no houses. They’d been gradually losing altitude, and now the hang glider was starting to fly dangerously low over the treetops.

  “I’m afraid we’re not going to make it to Oslo,” Doctor Proctor said.

  “There’s a clearing just ahead!” Nilly shouted.

  And sure enough, the blackness of the trees suddenly ended, and below them was a frozen lake. Doctor Proctor steered in for a landing and swung his long legs out of his sleeping bag.

  “Tighten your seat belts!” he yelled.

  And then they were down. The professor dug his heels into the ice, but the family-size hang glider was so loaded down that he wasn’t able to stop it. The vessel tipped over forwards, and a second later they were all lying in a heap on the ice.

  “Is everyone okay?” Doctor Proctor yelled, helping Mrs Strobe to her feet.

  “One casualty,” Nilly said. He was eyeing the hang glider’s smashed nose section with distress.

  “What are we going to do now?” Lisa asked once she had managed to brush off her clothes and look at the gloomy forest that was hemming them in, surrounding the frozen lake on all sides.

  “We’ll use the world’s best travel invention,” Doctor Proctor said.

  “What’s that?” Nilly asked, excited.

  “Legs,” Doctor Proctor said, and started walking.

  They walked into the woods, wading through the snow until they got in under the trees where the snow wasn’t as deep. And kept walking.

  After a while they took a breather on a hillside.

  “Not that I’m whining or anything,” said Mrs Strobe, who had sat down on a stump. “But I lost a shoe in the landing. And I don’t know if I can walk much farther.”

  She hadn’t said a word about her sore foot, but now – with the sock pulled down – they saw that it was bloody and swollen.

  Just then they heard a familiar noise.

  A car.

  Then the noise disappeared again.

  Nilly ran in the direction the noise had come from and then back again immediately.

  “There’s a road right up ahead,” he said.

  They helped Mrs Strobe along and soon reached a narrow gravel road.

  “If one car came by, there’s bound to be others,” Doctor Proctor said.

  And so they started waiting. And then they waited some more. Then they continued waiting.

  “No one’s coming,” Lisa sighed after a good deal more waiting.

  “Nonsense,” Nilly said. “This is exactly like how a watched pot won’t boil. You have to stop watching it, then it’ll start boiling right away. Come on, let’s go back into the woods.”

  The others hesitantly followed Nilly. And the very moment they reached the edge of the woods, they heard the hum of an engine approaching on the road.

  “What did I tell you?” Nilly yelled, racing back to the road.

  And, sure enough, there was a car coming.

  “We’ll hitchhike, then,” Doctor Proctor said, sticking out his thumb.

  “Well, there’s hitchhiking and then there’s hitchhiking,” Nilly said, positioning himself in the middle of the narrow road and waving both his arms.

  And ten seconds later, they were sitting in a warm car.

  “This was so nice of you,” Mrs Strobe said, and then sneezed.

  “No trouble at all,” the driver said. “So what takes you to Oslo?”

  “We’re going to rescue Gregory Galvanius,” Nilly said. “And Norway. And the rest of the world, for that matter. How about you?”

  “Me? I got a letter from the army telling me to report to the Royal Palace. They’re going to give us uniforms and rifles and send us to Denmark.”

  “Are you sure that’s a . . . good idea?” Lisa asked from where she sat squeezed into the backseat.

  The driver looked at her in the mirror. “It’s a great idea. If vee don’t conquer them, they’ll come conquer us. Haven’t you been listening to the president?”

  “Ah, now that you mention that,” Doctor Proctor said, “would it be all right if we turned on the radio?”

  “Of course,” the man said, flipping on the radio. Choral singing poured from the speakers. Doctor Proctor turned to the next radio station. Choral singing. And to the next. More choral singing. Doctor Proctor kept flipping through, but it didn’t do any good. There was choral singing on every station.

  “Whish station did you want to listen to?” the driver asked.

  “We want to hear the king’s speech,” Doctor Proctor said.

  The driver gave the professor a weird look. “What king?”

  “The king.”

  “I don’t know about any king.”

  The other passengers in the car froze.

  Doctor Proctor cleared his throat. “I’m sure you would recognise the king’s voice if you heard it. And understand that what he says about not listening to Hallvard Tenorsen is sensible.”

  The professor practically slammed his forehead against the windshield as the driver slammed on the brakes. They had pulled to a sudden stop in the middle of the road.

  “I think this is where you get out,” the driver said, leaning over Doctor Proctor to open the door.

  “But . . .”

  “Out! I won’t have traitors in my car.”

  “WELL, WELL,” SIGHED Doctor Pro
ctor as he and the other three Vincibles watched the car disappear in the heavy snowfall. Then they started trudging down the road. But around each bend they just saw more trees, more snow, more bends.

  They walked. And shivered. And walked. And shivered. They tried walking away from the road into the woods a couple of times, but no cars came. So they walked more. And shivered more.

  “Won’t there be a bus soon?” Lisa sighed.

  “Won’t there be breakfast soon?” Nilly asked, spitting out the pine needles he’d been chewing on.

  “W-w-w-” – the teeth in Mrs Strobe’s mouth chattered – “won’t it be summer soon?”

  And then – at long last – they finally heard a noise. Then a little more noise. Then really a lot of noise.

  “Wh-wh-what could that be?” Mrs Strobe asked, and then sneezed.

  “Hm,” Doctor Proctor said and looked up at the sky. “A squadron of bombers might sound like that. Maybe they’re already on their way to Denmark.”

  Lisa moaned in despair: “Oh no! We’re not going to manage to save anything at all.”

  The noise came closer and closer.

  “Get out of the open!” Doctor Proctor said. “Into the trees!”

  “Wait,” Nilly said. “That’s not bombers. It’s an A major. A perfect A major, in fact.”

  They stopped and stared back at the last bend in the road.

  And then it came into view. A roaring motorcycle with the biggest sidecar anyone has ever seen. A whole theatre box with room to seat a whole little orchestra, actually.

  And sitting behind the wheel was a man they recognised. Despite the outdated red jacket with the white fur collar he was wearing.

  “Y-y-your Royal Highness!” Mrs Strobe cried out, her teeth chattering.

  Even from quite a distance they could see the man behind the steering wheel light up and start braking. The motorcycle slid sideways, then a little back wards, then kind of sideways, and then definitely forwards, before it finally came to a stop right in front of them.

  “Perry!” Nilly cried when he spotted his seven-legged friend on the man’s white collar.