The End of the World Running Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  We began crawling along the roof on our elbows.

  “Get your face out of my arse,” said Bryce to Richard.

  “Believe me, it doesn’t want to be there,” said Richard.

  “Quiet!” said Grimes.

  “Move faster you fat…”

  We heard barking from the fence, a rattling metal noise and then a scrabbling in the dirt.

  “Oh shit,” said Richard. “Shit shit shit.”

  The sound of dogs grew louder, snorts, pants and two deep and angry barks, the business-like clattering of paws on tarmac, then on brick as the barks stopped and aimed themselves directly up the wall beneath us.

  Here here here here here they’re here

  I saw beams on the wall behind us.

  “Stand up,” said one of the guards below. “Hands above your heads.”

  We stood up slowly, blinded by the beams in our faces.

  “Jones,” said one of the guards. “Go and wake Jenny.”

  We stood for minutes under the glare of the second guard’s torchlight. Eventually we heard footsteps and voices and then the hideous, unmistakable caterwaul of Jenny Rae’s laugh. She stopped beneath us, though we could not see her. She sighed the sigh of a patient headmistress holding an empty can of spray paint.

  “Right then,” she said. “What’s to be done with you lot, eh?”

  “Just let us go,” said Richard. “We just want to leave and be on our way.”

  “Yeah...yeah…” she said distractedly, a disembodied voice in the dark. I heard a foot tapping. “...yeah…what time is it?”

  “Just after midnight,” replied the guard.

  “Right, right,” said Jenny Rae. More foot tapping. “Mark, get some men and bring two trucks to the square. Jones, you come with me and this lot. Bind ‘em first.”

  They tied our hands behind our backs and marched us along the road, blinded by torchlight, the smell and sound of large dogs close by. We reached what sounded like a gate and they led us through, then up an alley. Then I saw where we were. In a few more steps we were stood behind Jenny Rae as she hammered on the Angelbecks’ front door.

  “Mr Angelbeck,” she shouted. “Mr Angelbeck, I know you’re in there. Come down, please.”

  The door opened and George squinted out at us, fumbling with his glasses.

  “What’s the matter?” he said “What’s going on? What are you…”

  “Want to explain this, George?” said Jenny Rae. “Want to explain how five people got past my guards?”

  George Angelbeck shone with horror in the white torchlight. He looked between us and Jenny Rae. Susan appeared in the darkness behind him. I saw Abigail’s face by her mother’s side. She looked back at me, her brow already creasing in panic.

  “George?” said Susan. “What? Oh…”

  “I’m waiting, George,” said Jenny Rae. “How did these people get out? Eh? I put two guards on the front door, two on the back. None of them saw a thing. What happened? Tunnel out, did they? Fly off the roof? Unless…”

  It took a split second for Susan Angelbeck to follow Jenny Rae’s eyes down to her daughter, perform a horrifying mental backflip and then step forward.

  “It was me,” she said. “I let them out onto the back roof. From Abigail’s room, while she was in the toilet. It was me, I did it.”

  She lay a firm, gentle hand on her daughter’s shoulder and stared resolutely down at Jenny Rae. George was still stuttering in confusion.

  “Really,” said Jenny Rae, meeting the woman’s eyes. “Is that so?” She tapped her foot and puffed. “Fair enough, have it your way, come with me.” Jenny Rae lunged forward and grabbed Susan by the arm, yanking her out onto the path. Susan stumbled down the steps and shrieked.

  “George! Oh heavens! George! Help me!”

  Jenny Rae met my eyes as she hauled Susan past us, her dressing gown open and billowing behind her. “Follow me,” she said. “I want to show you something.” The guards pushed at us to follow up the street.

  “Mummy!” cried Abigail. “Daddy! Stop them!”

  “What the…? Susan!” George seemed to snap out of his confusion and ran after us. “Good God, get your hands off my wife!”

  One of the guards grabbed him by the arm. Another led Abigail, now wailing and sobbing, onto the pavement.

  “It’s OK darling!” cried Susan from up the street. “Mummy’s OK! Don’t cry!”

  “Wake up!” bellowed Jenny Rae as we past the houses. “Everybody up!”

  Then that laugh, that horrible laugh again. The guards swept their torches around the windows and doors. People were emerging from their houses now, blinking in the flicks of light. We reached the tunnel and walked through it into the square. Two trucks were parked with their engines running, their headlights illuminating the pole in the centre.

  “Take that off her. Tie her to it,” said Jenny Rae. “Face forwards.”

  Susan whooped in terror as two of the guards pulled her dressing gown from her, then dragged her across the road and began lashing her to the stake with her arms high above her head. Jenny Rae walked to one of the trucks, yelling around the square.

  “Wake up!”

  “What the hell are you doing?” said Richard.

  “Shut up and watch,” said a guard. He smashed Richard in the face with the butt of his rifle, knocking him to his knees. Bryce struggled forwards to help him. A dog growled and another guard knocked Bryce down with his own gun so that he was sprawled with his face on the stone. The guard slammed a boot against his neck.

  “Watch!”

  Grimes, Harvey and I were nudged forwards to the edge of the pavement. Doors were opening, people coming out of their houses. A crowd formed around the perimeter of the square. Susan hung, blinking, from the pole with her feet trailing on the ground. She searched the crowd and found us. I heard Abigail sobbing behind me. A puzzled smile flickered across Susan’s face as she saw her daughter.

  “No!” shouted George, struggling in the guard’s grip. “Christ no! Susan! Let her go you abominable woman!” I heard another crack and George began to cough.

  Jenny Rae searched in the back of one of the trucks and marched back to the pole.

  “This is what happens when you betray me!” she shouted, brandishing a plank to the crowd. “When you go behind my back!” The mumbling crowd became quiet as Jenny Rae nodded around the square, her fierce jaw jutting out in a snarl. “This is what happens.” She turned her face down to Susan Angelbeck’s trembling cotton-clad back. “This is what happens.”

  “God no,” croaked George Angelbeck, above his daughter’s tears.

  Jenny Rae swung the plank high above her head and brought it down against Susan’s back-side. Susan’s face crumpled in silent pain. Her eyes bulged in horror and she let out a terrible squeal. The plank came down again, harder this time, and Susan screamed as the full agony of the blow hit her rump and thighs. Then again, and again, and again. Each impact caused a louder scream until Susan became silent, squeaking, writhing against the post, scrabbling pathetically in the dirt with her feet, her body trying in vain to escape each blow.

  “Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?” shouted Jenny Rae across at us.

  “Funny.” Another wallop. “How.” And another. “Things.” And another. “Turn.” Another. “Out.” Another…

  I can’t tell you exactly what happened next. I was aware of Bryce struggling under the guard’s boot, of Richard holding his head, of Grimes gritting her teeth and Harvey shaking his head at the ground. Susan’s feet were beginning to stop moving quite so desperately and there were murmurs of dissent from the crowd. The blows stopped for a second as Jenny Rae faced the quiet protests. Her face was gleeful and fierce, like a hound interrupted from its feeding. I felt a twitch in my gut, a wave of sickness, a desire to move. Then she grimaced, took a step back and brought the wood down with a sickening crack on Susan’s still back. And I ran. I ran towards her, wailing, dizzy with rage. Halfway across the road to the pole Jenny R
ae spotted me and glanced over my shoulder. Soon after I felt an explosion of pain in my temple. I don’t remember hitting the ground.

  Barely conscious. I heard her voice. “Check his ropes.”

  Some struggling and grunts from the middle of the room.

  “Get off me man,” said another voice. Male.

  “Secure.” A guard.

  “Go on then,” said Jenny Rae. “Let’s get going.”

  Oblivion.

  I met consciousness again, this time feeling that I had just made an endless climb through thick fog and found myself on a summit I had no desire to be on. It was completely dark, completely still, completely silent. The chair was hard, the ropes cut my wrists and ankles. The blindfold was tight around my eyes and the fabric smelled of other people. The air was still freezing. I coughed. Pain flooded my head.

  “Who’s there?” said a deep voice opposite me.

  “Bryce?” I said.

  “No,” said the voice. “Oh fuck.” I could hear a smile stretching behind the words. “It’s you.”

  Then, once again, oblivion.

  The dark does strange things to you. When you’re blind, your other senses fill in the gaps. Even in unconsciousness, I felt I had been aware of the others, the noises they made as they struggled against their new bindings, wriggling in their seats, testing the tension on the ropes cutting their skin, trying to crane their necks to rub their blindfolds away with their shoulders. The sounds turned into pictures - Grimes’ serious, small mouth, Bryce’s cheeks taut and snarling, Richard’s crowish frown, Harvey’s perpetual smile even as he fought to free himself.

  When I came to again, I knew they were there in the room with me, awake. And somebody else too.

  “It really is you, isn’t it?” said the voice again.

  The noises stopped. The faces froze.

  “Henderson,” I said.

  A puff of air and a gap of silence opening up like a smile told me I was right. The air bristled around me. Different noises now, renewed frustration, now focused on the sixth chair in the room. I swear I remember Grimes’ face, though I couldn’t see it. I remember it pinching into a point of rage, eyes straining to bulge against her blindfold, lips twisted like a tiny fist.

  She was next to me, her breathing becoming faster and deeper, trembling with anger.

  “You,” breathed Bryce. “I’m going to kill you.”

  Henderson was definitely grinning. I can’t say how I knew; perhaps it was the noises his mouth was making, although he wasn’t yet speaking.

  “You deserted us,” I said. “Where’s Yuill?”

  Another puff of air, still smiling. Now he spoke, the words moving slowly from left to right as he shook his head.

  “How the fuck did you make it this far?” he said.

  Grimes was still trembling next to me, exhaling fast, furious breaths and shaking her limbs so much I felt they might break. Her chair legs scraped and rattled against the concrete. Bryce was still yelling curses across the room, running out of ways to insult the man who had left us for dead.

  “You must have got a lift right?” said Henderson calmly. He was talking to me, ignoring the noise of abuse and rage building around the room “You had to yeah? No fucking way you got here without one. Ahhh man, was it a chopper? Did one of them choppers stop? Don’t tell me don’t tell me don’t tell me...it crashed right?”

  He began laughing, deep and barrel-like. The noise of it seemed to rise up, as if his head was thrown back. Grimes now sounded like an exorcism in full flow.

  “Where’s Yuill?” said Richard. “What is going on here? Who are all these people?”

  “It did right, it crashed didn’t it?” said Henderson, still to me. I had a sense of teeth flashing white in the darkness. Grimes had stopped shaking and started grunting, her chair no longer rattling, but banging repeatedly against the concrete.

  “Henderson,” I said. “We need to get out of here. Tell us what’s happening. Why are you here, what happened? ”

  Grimes’ chair - it was moving.

  “Huh,” said Henderson. “Work it out for yourself. I’m not...what the…..aaaaaaaaggghhhh!”

  Henderson’s deep voice skipped four registers and became a falsetto scream. Grimes’ voice was next to his too, a tight, wavering drone of rage but with something else - a slavering sound, wet, as though her teeth were bared.

  “Gemmerov! Gemmerov! Gemmerov….aaahhh…gemmerovgemmerov...gemmavuckingbitchovmyface!”

  With a final yell, Grimes broke free and fell back, crying out as her chair fell onto the floor. She struggled about for a bit and was still, panting.

  “Crazy bitch! She bit my fucking cheek off!” said Henderson between rasps of air and spittle.

  Bryce began to laugh and didn’t stop for some time.

  “Better tell us what you know, arsehole,” he said at last. “Or I’ll work out a way to get her back on her feet, I swear to God.”

  “Alright, alright,” said Henderson between grunts of pain. “Jesus Christ you fucking maniacs, alright.”

  He spat, snorted, spat again, cursed, coughed and spat. He continued this, then took three deep, unsteady breaths.

  “Take it you met Jenny, then?” he said. His voice was different now, higher, darker, quicker, no trace of a smile. “She’s the one who runs this place, you might have guessed. She’s crazy though.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah, we know all about her,” said Bryce. “Just tell us where we are.”

  “Lock-up,” said Henderson. He spat again. “Near the gate.”

  “Near the garage?” said Richard.

  “Yeah that’s right.”

  “There’s got to be something sharp in this room to cut these ropes,” said Bryce.

  “Don’t waste your energy,” said Henderson. “I’ve been all over this room, corner to corner. There’s nothing here.”

  Bryce cursed and stamped his feet.

  “What happened to you? To Yuill?” I said.

  I sensed another sneer on Henderson’s face. He spat a few times more. “We had to stop the Land Rover, go on foot. The road was all messed up, couldn’t drive on it.”

  “We know,” I said. “We found it. We came here on foot too.”

  “Shut up,” said Henderson. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you like,” I said. “What happened to Yuill?”

  “Whatever. We went too far west. It got wet, boggy; had to turn back. He started whining, saying we should never have left you lot, that we should go back. He was slowing me down.”

  “So you killed him?” I said.

  “Nah,” said Henderson. “We were crossing this bog, trying to find a road. He was moving too slowly, kept getting stuck. Then I heard him crying like a baby way behind me, yelling for my help. I turned round and he was sunk up to his waist, couldn’t move. So I left him.”

  “You killed him. You left him to die.”

  “Whatever way you want to look at it,” said Henderson. “I don’t care, he was slowing me down. I made it to Manchester, met Jenny and her mob, put up a fight and ended up blindfolded and locked up in here. Then you lot turned up. I don’t know what you did but you were all stone cold when you came in. I tried talking to you but none of you has moved until now.”

  Grimes seethed and kicked on the floor. “When were we brought here?” she said through her teeth.

  “Some time last night,” said Henderson.

  “Last night? What time is it now?” I said.

  “How should I know?” said Henderson. “Late though, it’s already starting to get dark.”

  “Shit,” I said. “That means we’ve been here four days.”

  “Seriously though?” said Henderson. “You made it here on foot in that time?”

  I ignored him. He puffed. “Nah you didn’t,” he said.

  Nobody said anything for a minute. All I could hear was Grimes breathing on the floor.

  “Do you think she killed her?” I said into the darkness.

&nbs
p; “Who?” said Henderson.

  “Mrs Angelbeck,” said Grimes. “I don’t know. She was limp when they took her off.”

  “No,” came a voice from a far corner of the room. “She’s not dead.”

  “Mr Angelbeck?” I said. “George? What are you doing here?”

  “She’s very badly hurt,” he said. His voice was low and flat. “You saw what that monster did to her. They took her to the medical centre, it’s just a hut really, but I know the doctor. He looked after her. She was unconscious for a while, but she’s not dead. Abi’s there too. She went into shock.”

  “Why are you here, George?” asked Richard.

  “I went to find her. That woman.” I sensed George’s face crumple as he spoke. “I took a scalpel from the medical centre and I went to find her. I was going to kill her, kill her for what she did to my Susan. But I couldn’t get close to her. I swiped at her a few times and then those big bloody APES OF HERS KNOCKED ME DOWN AGAIN!” He started to grunt and struggle. His chair began to rattle and bang. He screamed and then suddenly stopped, panting in frustration.

  “I’m an idiot,” he said. “A stupid idiot. Now I’m locked up here. What will Abi do now?”

  “You did what any husband and father would have done,” I said. “I would have done the same.”

  I heard a few puffs of air depart from various noses - Grimes, Richard, Bryce. It made me think of eyebrows twitching.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

  “What?” said Grimes.

  “I heard you. You all puffed. What did you mean?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Richard.

  “I know what I heard, what…”

  “Ed,” interrupted Bryce. “It’s just…no offence, but you’re not exactly father of the year, are you?”

  “What?” I said, derailed from everything else that was going through my head. “What does that even mean?”

  I knew exactly what it meant.

  “Just what he said,” said Grimes. “I watched you, in the barracks, everyone did. Other dads, other parents, they were always with their kids, looking after them, spending time with them. You...you were just...you seemed to just skirt around the outside. You only went on the salvage runs to get away from your kids.”