As the World Ends PART 4

by North, Geoff

  AS THE WORLD

  ENDS

  Part 4

  Geoff North

  Copyright © 2015 by Geoff North

  www.geoffnorth.com

  Also by Geoff North

  CRYERS

  Live it Again

  Last Playground

  Children of Extinction

  Hayden

  The ride east had been hard. Small towns that Hayden had driven through on his way to and back from Winnipeg had been made even smaller. Most of the people had packed up what they had left and moved out, heading east for the city, or heading off in all other directions to find something... anything.

  “My bum’s sore.”

  Hayden rested the tip of his chin on Nicholas’s head. “Mine too, bud. That’s what happens when you sit on a horse and let it do all the walking for three days. Did you want to hop down and give Trixie a break?”

  The little boy shook his head. “Heck, no. I’m too tired to walk on my own. I’m hungry and thirsty, too.”

  They gave Trixie a rest a few miles on, dismounting in a farm-yard twenty miles west of the city. There was water in the abandoned house that Hayden drew from a stand-up cooler. It wasn’t all that cool—there was no more power available to make things hot and cold—but Nicholas didn’t seem to mind. Hayden filled a few 2-litre plastic pop bottles with what remained and placed it into the saddlebag they’d found on another farm a hundred or so miles behind them.

  Nicholas sat down on the steps of the front porch and drank his water. “How come there aren’t no cars on the highway?”

  “Because they won’t start anymore.” That wasn’t entirely true. Hayden and Nicholas had seen vehicles on the roads along their way. There hadn’t been many—perhaps a dozen or so in the last hundred and fifty miles—but they had heard the old things rumbling their way from what seemed like provinces away. Since Jake, Hayden wasn’t taking any chances with anyone. He had taken his horse and rode out into the fields, putting at least a quarter mile between the vehicles travelling down the highways and the three of them. Perhaps he’d seen too many post-apocalyptic movies, but Hayden wasn’t going to risk all he had left to strangers roaring down the roads in vehicles manufactured before he had been born. “All the newer cars have computers to help them start and run. All those onboard computers were fried after the bad morning. The cars we’ve seen are a lot older, built back in the nineteen-seventies and earlier. Even most of those don’t start.”

  Nicholas shrugged. He either hadn’t understand a word of it, or he had, and just didn’t really care. “I wish we could get a ride in one of them. We could find a new home a whole lot faster if we were driving in a car.”

  Hayden replied after a time. “I think it’s best if we stick with Trixie. Besides, hitchhiking isn’t the safest way to get around. Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?” The boy’s head dropped down and Hayden felt terrible. He sat next to him without saying another word. They watched Trixie munch away from a patch of dead grass next to the house.

  The porch door creaked open behind them. “You have what you came for, now get the hell out.” An old man was standing over them with a rifle trained at Hayden’s head. “I’m sick of people pulling up here and taking what they please without a please.”

  Hayden held his hands up and turned slowly. The man was so small and feeble-looking he could barely keep the gun pointed their way. It snapped up quickly enough when Hayden stood. “Easy there, guy. We thought the place was empty.”

  “You didn’t so much as knock, just barged on in and started helping yourself. You’re the third bunch we’ve had since them goddamn Russians dropped their nukes.”

  He was right. They had just walked in and taken what they wanted. Hayden had begun to get used to the idea of a world where private property and no trespassing no longer existed. But the old man standing in front of him hadn’t lost as much as Hayden and Nicholas. His farm was still standing. The nuke—Russian, North Korean, Iranian, or from wherever—had destroyed everything and everyone they knew. Hayden wanted to apologize, and he wanted to tear the rifle out of the gnarled hands and beat the old man into a pulp. He did neither. “We’ve ridden a long way. My boy was tired and thirsty. If I had money, I’d pay for what we took.”

  “What the hell good is money now?” He was looking at Nicholas. The gun started to drop. “Is he sick?”

  “No... well maybe.” Hayden looked towards the sky. “It’s all this shit in the air. I’m not sure what it’s doing to any of us.”

  The gun fell all the way and the man ushered them into his home properly. “Don’t just let him sit there then. Get inside and we’ll get him cleaned up.” He held up one of his gnarled hands and stuck the arthritic fingers towards Hayden. “I’m Elton MacDonald by the way.”

  Old MacDonald had a farm, Hayden thought grimly. He shook the hand. “Hayden Gooding. The boy... my son’s name is Nicholas.”

  ***

  “When the last group came and saw there wasn’t much more to take in the way of food, they started stealing whatever they could lay their hands on.” Elton MacDonald leaned forward in his living room armchair and pointed at a blank wall. “We had a painting hanging there for twenty-eight years. Some awful Japanese piece my wife always loved. They took the thing. A goddamn worthless hunk o’ junk oil in a plastic frame.” He leaned back again, shaking his head back and forth. “What’s the world come to, Hayden... when folks start stealing crap that has no value, no practicality, no meaning... except to the folks they’re stealing from. What’s a painting of a bunch of pink lilies gonna get them?”

  “I have no idea,” Hayden replied. He was sitting on the end of a couch with Hayden taking up the rest of the space under an afghan as heavy as him and almost as old as its owner. “At least they left you the furniture.”

  Elton snorted and wiped what came out from his big nose against a shirt sleeve. “That was mighty big of them. They left that stupid thing as well.” He nodded at the old dead television set sitting in front of the coffee table. “For all the good it does me now. As much as I hated that idiot box, I have to admit I miss the company. I have a generator hooked up out back still running the essentials. Lights and so forth. First thing I unplugged was that thing.” He pointed an accusing finger at the television. “All it’s broadcasting now is snow.”

  Hayden had heard the old farmer say we and we’ve two or three times. “How long have you been on your own, Elton?”

  The old man stared at him through hooded eyes. His bottom lip jutted out for the longest time before he answered. “May is still with me... We were sitting together on that very couch watching the news the morning it happened.”

  The morning it happened. Less than two weeks ago. “Where’s your wife now?” He asked softly.

  More long, lip-hanging silence. “Upstairs... She’s sleeping. Does a lot of that now.”

  Hayden nodded. “I see. Well, Mr. Macdonald, I want to thank you for your hospitality, but Nicholas and I have kept you too long. It’s time we were heading on.” He shook the boy awake.

  “Heading on?” The old man said. “Where is it you’re heading to?”

  “The city, to see what’s left.”

  “But there’s a storm coming from that way.”

  “We’ve been through plenty of storms the last few days. We’ll take cover.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, I have room here. At least wait until this one’s passed over.”

  Hayden went to a window and lifted the faded drapes. It was just past noon, but it looked more like full night out to the east. The clouds had that sinister roiling appearance to them that reminded him of the storm Jake had stolen Nicholas out into. “Do you have a cellar?”


  “Of course,” Elton said. “But we won’t need to take cover down there. This house is solid, built it myself over forty years ago.”

  “They didn’t have this kind of weather forty years ago.” He was about to add they didn’t have this kind of weather forty days ago, but something else caught his eye. Below the wall of advancing grey and green Hayden saw a line of vehicles moving down the highway. Seconds later he heard the low rumble of motors. “It looks like the army is on the move.”

  Nicholas pushed up in front of him to see. Elton joined them a few moments later. “There’s a military base not all that far from here. Those boys are probably looking for survivors, helping out those in need. It’s good to see.”

  They watched a few more minutes as the line of vehicles made their way west. MacDonald’s farm was less than a quarter mile off the main highway. The six green transport trucks and the solitary tank following would be out of sight in a few more minutes. Nicholas tugged on Hayden’s shirt. “Are they coming to help us? Are the soldiers gonna find us a new home?”

  Hayden watched as the vehicles slowed. They stopped a hundred yards short of an abandoned car sitting in the ditch between lanes running east and west. “I’m not sure what they’re doing out there.” The big tank rumbled around the trucks and rolled to a halt facing the car. Seconds later the turret swung thirty degrees to the left and a flash of yellow exploded from the gun barrel. The tank rocked back on its tracks, and the abandoned car was destroyed.

  Elton spoke first. “What the hell are those idiots trying to prove?”

  Hayden could see the hatch on top of the tank beginning to open. “Do you have binoculars?”

  “Well yeah,” the farmer said, shuffling off to a closet next to the front door. He reached up and found them on a top shelf the looters before hadn’t thought to explore. “These things have come in handy the last few days. Don’t you go taking them when you leave.”

  Hayden took the binoculars and focused them on the tank. The man climbing out was no soldier, or at least he wasn’t dressed like one. The only thing he was wearing from the waist up was a pair of sunglasses. More men were spilling out from the trucks. They were wearing dirty blue jeans and tee-shirts. They took turns high-fiving the gunner. One of them went to a piece of burning wreckage that had fallen close to the tank and began urinating on it. “Those aren’t soldiers, and I don’t think they’re helping people.”

  Elton had taken the binoculars from him and was peering out over the destruction. “Goddamned animals is what they are. If there’s no army left to give aid... then we’re all in a for a heap of hard times.... harder, that is.”

  “As long as they stay away from here they can blow up and piss on whatever they want.”

  The shirtless gunner returned to his tank as if he’d heard Hayden say the words. The others ran back to their trucks. The big machine lurched forward and back in its tracks. It shot forward again as the inexperienced driver found the proper gear, and the tank rolled into the ditch straight toward Elton MacDonald’s farm.

  “It’s that horse you rode in on—they can see it from the highway.”

  “I think it’s time we went into that cellar of yours.” Hayden could feel Nicholas pressed up to his side. The window had begun to rattle in its frame from the deep rumble of approaching vehicles.

  “We’d be better off upstairs,” Elton said quickly. “The bedroom door locks from the inside.”

  “They have a tank—locked bedroom doors won’t stop them. We need to hole up somewhere dark. Maybe they won’t even bother looking down there if they find the rest of the house deserted.”

  “Please,” MacDonald pleaded. He’d grabbed onto to Hayden’s wide shoulders. “Not the cellar.”

  Hayden took one of the boney wrists and forced it down. “We don’t have time to argue. Where is it?”

  The old man wagged his head to one side, indicating a hallway off from the stairs leading up. Hayden pulled him along quickly and Nicholas ran ahead both of them. “First door on the left,” he said resignedly.

  Nicholas opened the door and an unpleasant smell greeted them from the darkness below. The boy went for the light switch.

  “No,” Hayden said. He reached up towards the ceiling and unscrewed the single light bulb from its socket. “If they can’t see what’s down there, maybe they won’t even bother coming down.”

  Elton crept down the steep steps first, leading the other two into blackness. “Watch the third step. It’s starting to give in the middle.”

  Hayden straddled the stairway, placing each step to the outside. He could feel Nicholas’s fingers dug into the waistband of his pants, using him as a guide. They heard the vehicles pull into the yard—the tank’s rumble, doors slamming shut, men whooping and laughing. Hayden stopped halfway down the stairs and pointed back up at the door. Nicholas scrambled back up in the gloom and pulled it shut. Hayden held his hands out and waited for the boy to find him again.

  Gun shots fired when they reached the dirt floor. Multiple rounds.

  “Trixie!”

  Hayden started up the stairs, but Elton took hold of one of his big shoulders again and spun him around. He was a lot stronger than Hayden suspected. “Don’t be a fool, man. That horse isn’t worth our lives.”

  There were more gunshots. Rapid fire. They were unloading entire machine gun magazines. Hayden stumbled into a corner and held Nicholas tightly to him. He was shaking and crying. “It’s okay,” Hayden whispered into the boy’s ear. “It will stop soon.”

  The shooting ended a few moments later. Hayden prayed they’d murdered each other. The laughing started up again. Heavy boots thumped up the porch steps, and the front door slammed open against the inside wall. They were in the house, thudding about from room to room. Hayden slid his hand over Nicholas’s mouth. A heavy crash sounded directly over their heads. There goes Elton’s television set.

  Something hard tapped Hayden’s shoulder. He reached out, expected to find Elton’s ancient fingers, but his hand wrapped around the barrel of a rifle instead. The old man spoke softly. “Get ready to duck down. As soon as that cellar door opens I’m blowing some fucker’s leg off.”

  “Give me the gun,” Hayden urged.

  MacDonald pulled it away. “I’m old, son, but I’m still a hell of a shot.”

  The cellar door swung in and light flooded down the wooden steps. Hayden saw a long shadow stretch along the wall. Should’ve brought my rifle in the house, he thought. He had seen at least a dozen men surrounding the tank and trucks, and there were probably more judging from all the gunfire they’d heard. At least we could’ve taken a few more of the bastards out along the way.

  The shadow above them called out.“Fucking light doesn’t work!”

  “Forget it,” someone yelled back. “This place is a fucking dump. It’s already been picked over by some other assholes.”

  More laughter. They listened as more commands were yelled out. Something about the approaching storm and getting to the next town before it hit. Boots thumped along the living room floor and thudded down the porch steps. The trucks started up and Hayden heard the tank begin to roll once again.

  Hayden lowered Nicholas to the floor and discovered he was shaking almost as badly the five-year old. “I thought you said you were going to fire as soon as the door opened.”

  “Can’t shoot what you can’t see. I left my glasses upstairs.”

  Nicholas cried out. “Someone’s down here! Their leg’s all cold!”

  Elton found him in a far corner and started dragging him towards the stairs. “Get away from her, boy.”

  Hayden realized he was still clutching onto the light bulb. He ran up the steps and screwed it back into its socket. He threw the light switch up and Nicholas cried out again. “Her face is gone! Her face is gone!”

  It was more than just her face. The top half of the woman’s head was missing. This was why Elton had resisted hiding in the cellar. Her crumpled up body was resting next to a shallow hole in the
dirt floor. Elton shoved Nicholas away and knelt before the corpse. “We were supposed to go together... We’d agreed... I end May’s life, and then take my own.”

  Hayden picked Nicholas up and placed him back down on the stairs. “Go on to the top and wait at the door.” The boy scrambled up the steps on all fours, whimpering. Hayden went to the farmer. There was a shovel resting on a pile of excavated dirt next to the corpse. “You were going to bury her.”

  Elton nodded. “I couldn’t even get that done proper. The ground’s so hard, and I’m old. I figure I’ll get the job done in a few more days.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then I’ll find some balls and join her.”

  “What good is that going to do? We’ve all lost family, people we love.”

  “May was the last for me, son. There’s no one else in the world to care for.”

  Hayden went back to the stairs and joined Nicholas waiting at the door. His eyes were big and round with big patches of pink on the cheeks below. “It’s started to rain again.”

  They went through the living room—stepping around the smashed television set—and peered around the drapes through the window. It was raining hard. A bolt of lightning flashed directly ahead lighting the front yard. Trixie was laying on her side in a growing puddle of water and blood. Her body had been riddled with bullet holes.

  “They killed her,” Nicholas moaned. “They shot her dead like Mr. MacDonald shot his wife.”

  Hayden couldn’t answer him.

  The rain intensified, smashing against the glass. It turned to hail, and the window exploded inwards. Thunder exploded and the house shook. Hayden could smell the electricity in the air. “We have to go back down into the cellar. We can’t stay up here.”

  “I don’t wanna go back down there! I don’t wanna see her dead face again!”

  “You won’t have to for long.”

  ***

  The storm raged on, and Hayden dug. He made the hole wider and longer to accommodate the dead woman’s body. Wind howled in the rooms above them, through the broken windows and open front door. What remained of Elton’s forty-year old home was being thoroughly devastated.