The End of the World Running Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  “Shit,” said Bryce. He checked the indicator on his magazine. “Shit,” he said again, training the gun back onto the exit of the tunnel.

  “Great,” I said. “That’s just great, Bryce. Now they know where we are.”

  We heard the other four runners catch up and stop before the end of the tunnel. Some muffled voices and shouts came from the darkness.

  “You’ve had your fun,” I said. “Now will you please stop fucking about and COME ON!”

  “You go if you like,” said Bryce. “I’m finishing what I started.”

  Suddenly a pistol appeared from the tunnel and shot three times up at the stair. Two bullets flew by above us, but the third ricocheted off the metal girder beneath my leg. I sprang up the stair and huddled into a ball.

  “Jesus Christ, Bryce! You’re going to get us fucking killed!”

  “Run on,” he said. He hadn’t moved a muscle. “I’ll catch you up.”

  The pistol appeared again, this time further out into the light. I could see a pale and hollow face looking up at us from the end of the outstretched arm.

  This time Bryce fired first, a single shot that slammed straight into the gunner’s shoulder.

  “Fucking up ya!” shouted Bryce. “Right fucking up ya!”

  He let out a deep laugh as shouts and howls echoed from the tunnel.

  “Did you hit him?” I said.

  “Aye,” said Bryce, still chuckling to himself. “Oh aye.”

  He rested his rifle down on the step as if he had just hit a deer on a hunt. He turned to me, grinning. I stared back, not quite believing what had just happened.

  Bryce smacked his lips.

  “OK,” he said. “Time to go.”

  We clattered down the steps and sprinted across the platform onto the opposite tracks. Bryce sped away laughing. I followed with my head swimming, trying to keep pace. We were clear of the station and on our way south-west by the time we heard them following again. Bryce’s stunt had managed to give us a rest, slow one of them up and put an extra few hundred metres between them and us.

  After about a mile on the tracks, the runners seemed to be closing in again. We came to the bridge at Slateford and Bryce swung left, climbing the steps onto the main road that crossed the railway.

  “Where are you going?” I yelled.

  “Canal,” Bryce called back.

  As we hit the road, Bryce tripped on the kerb and fell, letting out a great oof as he hit the torn, blackened tarmac. He flinched as I helped him up and I noticed a dark patch on the left arm of his coat.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  Bryce inspected it gingerly.

  “Must’ve hit me too,” he said. “I’m alright.”

  He looked pale, not the same laughing maniac that had sped out of the station.

  I peered over the wall at our pursuers, who were almost at the bridge. Further back, I could see the one that Bryce had hit crouching down on the tracks, clutching his shoulder, another one of them stopped next to him. Five now almost on us.

  The canal was the quickest way home. It ran parallel to the tracks, but the road that ran towards it was long and wide with no cover. We would be sitting ducks.

  Bryce gulped and took a few trembling breaths.

  “Come on,” I said. “This way.”

  I led us across the main road and up a cobbled side street that had once been lined with Victorian tenements. It was the last in a row of eight similar streets, all of which had blown backwards and were now leaning against each other like gigantic dominoes. Being the last, it had suffered the least. One end of the street had collapsed in a flattened sandwich of charred stone, metal and furniture. Home upon home upon home. The rest of the street still stood upright, a husk of brick with holes where the windows and doors had been. A wind had picked up and was starting to whistle through the empty rooms.

  I pulled Bryce into one doorway and around a corner, into the remains of a ground floor flat where we crouched against the wall.

  There was silence for a while, just the sounds of our breathing and Bryce’s occasional grunts of pain. I guessed that a family had lived here. The shell of an upright piano stood against one wall. A gust of wind sent a blackened pile of sheet music rustling across the floor beneath it. A black crust of a satchel hung from one corner, thrown there the evening before the strike, one small shoe poking out of it.

  Bryce was beginning to bleed heavily now. I glanced back around the corner, crossed to the piano and grabbed the satchel. The strap was still in one piece. I took it off and tied it around the top of Bryce’s arm, above where I guessed the wound to be. He winced a little as I pulled it tight.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  I held a finger to my lips. I had heard something outside, a bang, something kicked.

  “Ho!”

  We both froze.

  I tapped the magazine in Bryce’s gun. How many rounds?

  Bryce slowly held up a single finger.

  I sank slowly down to the ground.

  “Ho there ya fucks!”

  They sounded like they were two doors down, banging walls, kicking things over. Their voices echoed off the ancient tiles in the stairwell as they clattered up and down, checking the flats. One of them was making sucky kissing noises and whining in a fake, nasal American accent.

  “Here kitty kitty...here kitty kitty kitty...”

  Bryce bristled and fidgeted. He tapped his magazine again and jabbed his thumb back at the door, miming a quick shot to the head. I held my palms down at him and shook my head slowly. Bryce gripped his gun to his chest and glared back at me.

  “‘Mon cunts!”

  The voices reappeared on the street and then disappeared again into the stair next door. Hoots and shouts and screams like kids trying to scare other kids.

  Bryce was sucking long streams of air in and out of his nostrils. He was going to go for them as soon as they found us, if not before. I looked around the flat. We only had one choice.

  “Come on,” I said. “Quick. Up.”

  I pulled Bryce to his feet and led him through to a living room that was now just a dirty, frozen cave. Amongst the junk and clutter was a long sofa, charred like everything else but still with its cushions intact. I pulled them away and took a knife from my belt. This was my one weapon. I didn’t share Bryce’s need for a gun. I ran it around the fabric underneath and tore it away.

  Voices and footsteps were out on the street again. I looked up at Bryce, who frowned.

  “Ladies first,” I whispered, directing him to the exposed cavity.

  Bryce went to protest, but I could hear them coming into the stair now. I pulled Bryce forwards and bundled him into the sofa. He fought a yelp as he landed heavily on his arm and I jumped in behind him, pulling the cushions on top of us.

  I didn’t know if we were fully covered and had no time to check.

  “Mon ya cunts,” said a voice quietly as one of them entered the room. I could hear the others running up the stairwell. Bryce’s giant, wet face was pressed up against mine, breathing heavy, hot, stinking breaths across my mouth. I fought to control myself, not to move. I was sure we would be heard.

  “...gonnae fuck’n kill ye when ah find ye...”

  He was moving slowly around the flat, inspecting the debris. A sudden discordant clang rang out as he kicked the piano. He kicked it three more times in quick succession, laughing wildly in the half-broken voice of an adolescent.

  Haw haw haw haw....

  A death chord rang out on the piano strings. He came into the living room and shuffled around, picking up objects and dropping them or throwing them against the walls. I could smell him. Even through the wet, mouldy fabric of the cushion and Bryce’s stale breath, I could smell him. The smell of sweat, smoke, piss, grease and old wet dust.

  Suddenly the cushion pressed hard against my face. I gulped back a cry of protest as my cheek squashed harder against Bryce’s. He was sitting right on top of us.

  I heard the metallic
chink and scratch of a Zippo. There was a crackle and a long suck, then the smell of marijuana.

  Then a loud, deep fart pushed its way through the cushion above us.

  He sat there above us, smoking his joint and farting into my face until I thought we would have to take our chances with him, push the cushion up and overpower him before he could call the others down from the stairs. I was edging my hand down towards my knife, ready to make a move, when we heard the others descending the stairs.

  “Anyhn?” shouted our boy.

  “Nah,” came the reply. “Mon.”

  He took one last suck of his joint and then bounced up from the sofa. “Where now?” he said.

  “Back ’n’ report a couple of soldiers shot Danny,” said the voice from the corridor.

  “Soldiers?” said ours.

  “Aye. Tellin’ ya, that was a squaddie gun, definitely. Not like these fuckin’ Polis pea shooters.”

  I heard two harsh metallic taps against a wall.

  “Aye, fuckin’ barrack boys alright,” he said. “I reckon it’s time we paid a trip up to the hills likesay?”

  They haw-hawed out of the block with the rest of their pack. When we were sure they had gone, I pushed up the cushions and we both scrambled out, spluttering, pushing away from each other. We stood in the centre of the room, bent over double and catching our breaths. Bryce still looked white, but the makeshift tourniquet had stopped the bleeding.

  “Fuck,” I said. “Now they know where we live.”

  “Come on,” said Bryce, “Let’s get back before they find us.” Then he smiled as something caught his eye on the floor.

  “Wee fucker left half his joint,” he said.

  We followed the canal out of town and turned onto the Water of Leith where it slunk beneath the bouldered rubble of the A70. The river had once joined the Pentland Hills to the Shore. Dirt tracks, iron railings and asphalt paths had lined its banks as it meandered and frothed and waterfalled beneath stone bridges and tree canopies. It had been a quiet place. The water had allowed nature to flow through the city. Now it was a dry ditch. Weed, metal and rotten matter sprung from the mud. It had always smelled wet and pungent, the cycle of life and death in constant motion. Now it just smelled of death.

  It began to rain as we reached Colinton Dell, rounding the corner onto the hill that led up to Bonaly. This had once been my home. Now it was just a dangerous mound of loose mud and mortar. Every few steps we would sink or stumble. Fallen trees made climbing even more difficult. Roots, stumps and trunks stacked across each other like giant matchsticks. Occasionally we would see human remains. Blackened skulls, torsos smeared against concrete, the occasional tiny clawed hand. We had quickly learned to let our eyes slide away from these horrors, swallowing the sickness fast and moving on. Even Bryce now quickened his pace when he saw them. We knew the best routes. We knew the places to avoid.

  We reached the top and the ground flattened out. Bryce stopped at a set of rusted swings, the remains of a playground I had once taken Alice to. He sat on the swing and lit the remains of the joint he had found, watching me struggle through the last few metres of mud with thin lines of smoke trailing from his nose and through his thick hair. The brittle chain squeaked as he rocked slowly back and forth on the swing. I caught him up and bent over double, spitting.

  “You need to get more exercise,” he said, handing me the wet stub. I puffed the last few hot drags and squashed it into the earth. I hadn’t smoked cannabis since university. Now any chance of escape was welcome. Something hard scraped beneath my boot. I cleared the mud and dug out a piece of metal - half a sign, white with black letters.

  aly Store

  Bonaly Store.

  “This was near our house,” I said.

  Bryce nodded and looked around. The black wreckage of the bypass lay ahead of us, dotted with the crumbling remains of burned cars. Behind and beneath us lay Edinburgh.

  “Nice neighbourhood,” he said. “Lovely outlook.”

  I saw movement behind Bryce. He turned his head back across his shoulder.

  “Here come the boys,” he said, getting to his feet. Yuill, Henderson and Richard were walking down from the bypass to meet us. They stopped and we exchanged nods. Bryce coughed. I could see he was struggling, but he kept his eyes fixed on Yuill.

  Yuill was expressionless, hands behind his back. He eyed Bryce’s shoulder.

  “Well,” he said. “What happened?”

  WHAT HAPPENED

  The barracks were a mess. The survivors - the families and individuals who had been rescued from the devastation six months before - now outnumbered their saviours. The fifty or so troops that had remained in the barracks on the day of the strike were now down to eighteen. The rest had died on the salvage runs.

  My first run was a couple of weeks after Grimes had called for volunteers. Beth wasn’t happy about it. Despite the assurances that it was safe, she thought that it was insane to go into a city full of buildings that might collapse at any moment. I did too of course, but I was more concerned with getting out of the stifling atmosphere of the barracks than surviving whatever was outside of it. My fidgeting was becoming unbearable. My legs twitched and ached so much I could hardly sleep. I still walked the corridors at night despite the fact that Arthur was no longer teething.

  “Why do we need to keep gathering supplies?” she had asked. “We’ll be rescued soon. Why can’t we just wait and survive on what we have?”

  “We don’t know when they’ll be here,” I had told her. “We need to make sure we have enough for the winter, in case we need to survive for longer. We can only carry so much in one run.”

  I spoke like a hunter before the great hunt. The truth was I just wanted to get outside.

  Four of us joined the soldiers on that first run; Bryce, Richard, his son and me. We wore heavy coats, a pair of thick trousers, boots, a helmet and a gas mask. On top of this, we were each given a large empty pack to carry. We carried a smaller one filled with our own food and water across our chests. We marched behind and within the six armed troops. We were mules.

  There had been a briefing the night before on what to expect outside. Most of it we had already imagined. There were rules to follow. Do not touch anything unless told to. Do not eat or drink anything that does not come from your own pack. Do not stray from the path. Do not take any shortcuts. Do not run. Do not jump. Do not lean on anything. Toilet breaks are at allotted times and at allotted places.

  At dawn the following day, the four of us stood sweating behind the main doors like deep space astronauts preparing to set foot on an alien shore. Through the condensation in my mask I watched Richard lean in and say something in his son’s ear. The boy nodded and Richard reached his hand around and gripped his shoulder, pulling him into his chest. Bryce stood beside me staring straight ahead, fists clenched at his sides; fuming after his first request for a gun had been denied.

  Corporal Henderson was leading the run. I saw him raise a hand and the plastic sheets that surrounded the main doors were pulled back for us to walk through. We followed the soldiers into the dawn light.

  Despite the confines of our kit and masks, there was a sense of a weight being lifted, of tension relieved, like removing a hat that you’ve been wearing too long. Cold air hit my face and the world opened up around us. The sun was not yet up, but it was still brighter than inside the barracks. The sky was heavy with thick, low cloud, but still higher than any ceiling.

  We followed the troops across the yard to the main gates. My mask had cleared and I looked around at the buildings for the first time. Most had been flattened and were now just scorch marks and broken struts. The tarmac itself was ruptured and torn into high bumps and deep potholes. Large fragments of slate, brick and steel had been cleared from the yard and piled neatly by the broken wire fence.

  Beyond the perimeter the Pentland Hills lay covered in dense fog. The light was lifting but we could barely see more than fifty metres ahead of us. We walked close to the
soldiers as they marched us through the gates and along the stone path that led to the north face of Allermuir Hill. I felt relief in my legs and back as I walked, unrestricted, with nothing above or below me. Never in my life had I felt the need to move like this.

  It could have been any other dark winter’s morning in Edinburgh. The fog and low cloud stretched out towards the Forth and beyond, obscuring what was usually a panoramic view stretching well into Fife. Even as we hiked the long track down towards the foot of the hills, we couldn’t see any detail of the wreckage we knew to be ahead. That day we were spared the view that would soon become familiar, the one I had seen glimpses of from the helicopter: an ancient city blown away like dust.

  As we reached the bypass that separated the hills from the suburbs, Henderson raised a hand and we stopped. He turned to face us. I heard breathing all around, from the soldiers, from us. Richard patted his son on the back. Bryce lifted his mask and coughed up a round of phlegm into the mud.

  “The footbridges across the main road aren’t safe,” said Henderson. “We have to cross the road itself. The surface is sound but there are obstacles. Keep close to the group and try to avoid looking into vehicles.”

  Henderson turned and raised his hand again. We followed him down the last mile to the main road. I began to see objects by the side of the road. Car parts. At first they were small - mirrors, bulbs, hubcaps - then larger - a wheel, broken glass, bonnets, hunks of torn metal. I smelled oil, the thick stench of scrap yards. Then entire cars started appearing. They were burnt out, flattened, twisted and spread across the mud like dead birds.

  “Eyes front,” said Henderson suddenly.

  There was a body. Through the front window of a Volvo lay the charred figure of a man. It looked as if he had been crawling, with one hand outstretched and the other beneath him. He was on his knees with his buttocks raised the way babies sometimes sleep. His head was turned to face us with his cheek against the metal of the car bonnet. There were no features, just gaping black holes of ash.