The End of the World Running Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  “Hang on a minute there,” said Harvey. “Give the guy a break, won’t you? Alright, he might not have been the most engaged of fathers…”

  “Jesus, Harvey!” I shouted.

  “...but being a parent’s hard you know, especially after, you know, what happened.”

  “Oh aye,” said Bryce. “And what would you know about it? Have you invented a family as well as your career running around continents?”

  Henderson’s smile, I felt it, I felt it opening up as my own gut swam with guilt. Wide, white, disembodied teeth.

  “Leave him alone, Bryce,” said Richard. “You’re a fat, stinking drunk and you’ve no right to talk to…”

  “That’s it, you wanker,” said Bryce. “Soon as I’m free I’m kicking the living shit out of you.”

  The air filled with jabbering, angry, stabbing words, chair legs rubbing against the concrete and skin rasping against rope. And all the time Henderson’s Cheshire Cat smile stretched across the darkness, beyond my blindfold, out of sight, somehow as loud as the noise itself.

  “I know I’m a bad father!” I said, from nowhere. “It’s true. I know it.”

  The voices fell away.

  “I never wanted kids,” I said. I kicked at the floor with my bound foot. “I know how that sounds. I know what that makes me. I know how that makes people think of me. I was terrified when Beth went into labour, I know, everyone is, but I was terrified because I knew I was supposed to feel something. When I held Alice for the first time, I was supposed to feel this lightning bolt. Nothing’ll prepare you for it, they all said, all the other dads. Your life changes, right there, when you see them for the first time, it changes everything, it’s like a kick in the balls, your heart just melts, all your priorities change. All that bullshit, all that grinning, saccharine bullshit. I was terrified because I knew it was bullshit, I knew it wouldn’t happen for me.”

  The room was in utter silence. I felt eyes all around me, searching through rags in the dark, following the ears that led them to seek out my voice.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I did all the things you’re supposed to do. I held Beth tight when she told me she was pregnant, smiled, told her how happy I was, told her how excited I was, how perfect our lives were going to be...and I wasn’t lying, not exactly. I felt all those things, I did, I just...they just didn’t...when Alice came out, when they handed her to me, with all that blood and shit and sweat everywhere, Beth still howling, still trying to hold onto my hand, when I took Alice I looked down at her. Her eyes were rolling all over the place, trying to focus, trying to lock onto something, and then they locked onto me and I knew that that was the moment, that was the moment I was supposed to go weak at the knees and start crying. That was when I was supposed to change, to move up a level, transcend from my childhood, become the man, the father. I knew it but I didn’t feel it.”

  I moved my head around in the dark, moving my ears to try and pick up a sound.

  “That’s not entirely true,” I said. “I did feel it. I fell in love with her, I felt all that terrible love flood through me, but it was like an undercurrent to something else. Something...something old. Something that had been around too long. It was like...when those big, wet, unseeing eyes found mine and locked on for a second, it felt like something was saying is this it? Again? We’re doing this again are we? Another child? Another life? Another turn of the wheel? Another struggle?”

  I breathed a while into the still, cold silence.

  “Look,” I said at last. “I know I’m not a great father. I don’t...I didn’t spend enough time with them, put as much effort in...but that doesn’t mean I don’t love my family. It doesn’t mean I don’t miss them.

  “For Christ’s sake, I carry these two tin cans around my neck every day and whisper into one of them at night, because I believe that Alice might hear me.”

  Silence. I felt a strange space around me, no sense of other bodies near me, no feeling of movement or breath, Henderson’s smile no longer hanging in the darkness.

  “I’m done,” I said, listening. “You can carry on arguing now.”

  Not a sound. No movement. Transparent darkness all around me.

  “Hello?”

  “These cans,” said Grimes from the floor at last. The room became full again at the sound of her voice, like warm air suddenly filling a cold room.

  “What about them?” I said.

  “You said these cans,” she said.

  “Yes, I did, so what?”

  “As in, still hanging around your neck.”

  I managed to wriggle my shoulders so that the cans fell into my lap, then rocked the chair enough for them to fall onto the floor.

  “They’re blunt,” I said. “Remember? You took all the sharp edges from them on the first night in the barracks.”

  “I remember,” said Grimes. “You’ll have to break them. Crush them with your boots so that they split.”

  I hesitated.

  “But…”

  “Just do it,” said Henderson.

  “It’s our only chance, Ed,” said Richard. “Alice will understand.”

  I shifted my chair around until my left toe hit the metal, then lifted my heel up till it was almost on top of the metal. The can spun out and hit the other.

  “I can’t lift my boot high enough,” I said. “The rope’s too tight.”

  “Lift your chair leg then,” said Grimes. “Use your weight.”

  I shuffled across the floor in the direction of the sound the two cans had made until I found them. Then I positioned my front left chair leg next to one of them and rocked slightly to one side. I pushed myself along on the two legs, almost fell and then came down on the other side of the can.

  “Shit,” I hissed.

  “Try again,” said Grimes. I heard her chair scraping nearer to mine.

  I pushed myself up again, rocked too far again, corrected myself, then fell back with a crunch on the can.

  “That’s it,” said Grimes. “Now get off it.”

  I rocked off the can and heard Grimes scrabbling on the floor with muffled grunts and metallic scrapes

  “Good,” she said. “You broke it. It’s sharp.”

  She grunted some more.

  “MMK,” she said. “MBryssse. Mift me ump.”

  “Whit?” said Bryce.

  “MIFT ME UMP.”

  “Lift her up,” said Richard. “She wants you to lift her up behind Edgar so she can cut through his rope.”

  “MMPH!” said Grimes.

  “Oh,” said Bryce. “Right.”

  Bryce dragged himself across to where Grimes was lying. I heard scuffles and more grunts and then Bryce spluttering, and then felt Grimes’ head against my hands.

  “HLMD ME,” she said.

  “What?”

  “HLMD ME!”

  “Hold her head, Ed!” shouted Richard.

  I grasped back with my fingers and gripped her chin. It was slippery with sweat and I felt the bird-like bones of her jaw moving in my palm as she worked the can. We balanced like this, Bryce somehow supporting her, me grasping her face, Grimes holding herself up on her elbow trying every conceivable position of the can in her mouth in order to locate the rope with its sharp edge. I lost count of the times she dropped it and we had to start all over again, or cut my wrist or yelled as she cut her own lips. For what must have been an hour we kept going until I suddenly felt a pressure against my outer wrist and a twang as the rope was snagged. Then again, and again, as the metal found its first fray and dug in. I felt the gurn of Grimes’ sore face harden into a solid, muscled clench and begin to saw, heard the sound of the rope breaking once, then twice and then felt my hands slip free as Grimes fell to the floor exhausted.

  The can clattered onto the concrete.

  “Are you free?” she mumbled.

  “Yes,” I said, wincing as I brought my hands slowly round from behind my back, flexing my fingers. Grimes let out a low whimper. I heard Bryce whisper something t
o her, Harvey chuckle, Richard letting out a sigh of relief. I’m sure I even heard Henderson whistle. I took off my blindfold but it made no difference to my vision. There was no light, not even a chink through a crack or keyhole. We were sealed in full dark: a black room in a black, starless night. I could see nothing.

  And yet I felt them near me. I did. I felt them, they were there; they were always there.

  My legs were bound tightly but I managed to free them. Then I went to work on Grimes and helped her to her feet, then Harvey, Bryce, Richard and finally George. We stood and stretched our limbs and fingers.

  “So what,” said Henderson. “You’re going to leave me tied up are you? Escape without me? Good luck with that.” That smile had returned, hanging between syllables, invisible white pearls stretched out in tar.

  “What do we do now?” whispered Harvey.

  “Door’s over here,” said Richard from behind us. “I can feel the lock.”

  “How many guards are there?” said Grimes.

  “You asking me?” said Henderson. “Why should I tell you?”

  Grimes brushed past me, stepping towards Henderson’s chair.

  “Just answer me,” she said. “Answer me or I’ll kick your chair over and bite your throat out, I swear.”

  “Two,” said Henderson. “Always two. It’s the ones from the gate, I recognise their voices.”

  “OK,” said Grimes. “We get their attention, wait by the door, break them over the necks with the chairs, got it? They’ll have already opened the gate out of the estate.”

  “Fucking A,” said Bryce.

  “What about the dogs?” I said.

  “They’ll come in first,” said Richard. “We need something to bait them.”

  Silence.

  “Forget it,” said Henderson.

  We dragged Henderson’s chair so that it was facing the door, as far away from it as we could. He struggled in his ropes as we moved him.

  “Don’t worry,” said Richard. “Harvey and Ed will be next to you. They’ll get to the dogs before they get to you.”

  “Oh that’s alright then, I’ve got an old man and a fat bastard saving me from two hungry Alsatians. GET ME OUT OF THESE ROPES!”

  “Quiet!” hissed Grimes. “Bryce?”

  “Aye,” said Bryce. I heard wood snapping. Bryce passed me a broken chair leg, then passed one to Harvey.

  “In the throat,” he said. “Hard as you can. Twist it.”

  “Right,” said Grimes. “Richard, Bryce, stand with me and George at the door. Are you ready?”

  “Are you alright with this?” I whispered to Harvey.

  “What do you mean, mate?” he said.

  “Killing a dog,” I said.

  “Ah yeah, I’ve killed dogs before,” he said. “Nothing to it.”

  “What? But…”

  “Are you ready?” said Grimes.

  “No,” said Henderson. “Fuck this, fuck all this…”

  “Right, let’s make some noise.”

  Bryce began shouting.

  “Ho! Ho there ya fannies! Outside! Y’English bastards! Y’English cunts!”

  Then Richard began shouting too, stamping his feet on the floor. We all followed, shouting and yelling, banging on the concrete, drowning Henderson’s protests out.

  “Hey!” I shouted, lost for anything else more meaningful. “Hey.” Louder and louder, watching the black space of the door, hoping that there was some light outside, that we would see it open, see what came through it.

  Amongst all the clamour of Bryce roaring, Richard hooting, Grimes’ witch-like screams and Henderson’s muffled dissent, I heard something else, something familiar - a howl rising up behind it, quieter than the rest. It was partway between an animal and a human, fox-like, primal. A howl that had woken me up every day since Carlisle. I felt like nobody else heard it but me. I knew it was coming from Harvey.

  Even as I realised that, I felt the shapes in the darkness again. I felt Harvey looking at me, the howl subsiding as the others still raged on. Somehow I heard his voice speaking quietly to me, yet louder than all the other noise, as if through headphones. I felt his face, his brow crumpled and shining eyes impossibly focusing on me.

  You getting this yet mate? he seemed to say. Are. You. Getting. This. Yet?

  I barely had time to register this when we heard barking outside. I swung my head to the door in time to see it burst open and torchlight filling the room. Two dogs ran in, salivating, straight for Henderson. I watched them spring, saw Harvey move forwards with his broken chair leg. The second dog made it past and landed its teeth into Henderson’s kneecap, baring its throat. Henderson screamed. The dog’s red eye rolled towards me and I plunged forwards, catching it in the neck with the sharp wood. I felt it break through fur and skin, heard shouts and crashes from the door, two gunshots, heard the dog yelp as it detached itself from Henderson’s leg, drove the leg in further and twisted it into the dog’s throat as it scratched and scrabbled its paws helplessly against the concrete. It twitched twice, gave a slow whine and finally came to rest with a single, quivering scrape of claw on stone.

  There was a thump from the door and I looked over to see Bryce straddling one of the guards, a rope around his neck. The guard lay still on his front and Bryce pushed himself up, wiping back the strands of damp, straggled hair that were pasted across his face.

  Richard stood looking down over the other guard, a splintered, bloody chair in his hand.

  Harvey had fallen back against the back wall, his dog skewered and whimpering at Henderson’s feet, its jaw still clamped around his shin.

  “Get it off me!” Henderson shouted, kicking at the dog’s jaws. “Get this animal off me!”

  Bryce pulled the dog away. It growled and renewed its struggle, weakly, as Bryce pushed the chair leg deeper into the animal’s side and twisted it until it too yelped and died.

  “Everyone OK?” said Richard.

  Henderson howled.

  “My knee!”

  “Are they dead?” I said. “The guards?”

  “Mine is,” said Bryce gloomily.

  “Pretty sure mine is too,” said Richard, inspecting the end of his weapon and then letting it fall to the ground. “Jesus, I never…”

  “Where’s Grimes?” said Bryce. “Grimes?” He picked up one of the torches dropped by the guards. “Grimes?”

  “My knee!” shouted Henderson again.

  There was no answer from Grimes. Then a few weak breaths from the corner. We ran across.

  “Grimes? Oh no,” said Bryce. “Oh Christ.”

  She was lying curled on her side, clutching her belly. Fresh, shining blood moved through her fingertips and was pooling on the floor. Her face was pale and smeared with blood from the cuts made by the can around her mouth.

  “One of the guards fired,” she said. “Hit me.”

  “OK,” said Bryce. “Come on, let’s get you up.”

  I helped Bryce lift her up and she rested on his knee. Harvey crawled across.

  “We’ll get you out, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re going to be OK.”

  Henderson was panting through his teeth.

  “My knee,” he said. “My knee...I think it’s come off.”

  Richard picked up the second torch.

  “Quiet,” he said in Henderson’s direction, like a distant father to a mothered child. He strode across to where we were huddled around Grimes and crouched down. The pointed shadows cast by his features were stretched to cartoon-like dimensions in the yellow beam.

  “Can you walk?” he said. “Get up?”

  Grimes wheezed. The corner of her mouth flickered into a smile and she shook her head. One of the guards’ radios hissed static. Grimes looked in its direction.

  “You there, Gav?” a voice crackled. “What’s happening? Over.”

  “You need to get going,” said Grimes.

  “Gav? Over.”

  There was a noise from far away. A door banging. An engine.

 
; “Now,” said Grimes.

  Henderson was still seething air back and forwards between his teeth, rocking his chair.

  “Get me out of these ropes!” he shouted. “Get me out!”

  “You’re coming with us,” I said to Grimes. “We can carry you.”

  She frowned at me.

  “No you can’t,” she said. “You can barely…”

  “We’re carrying you,” said Bryce. He put his hands beneath her arms and hauled her over his shoulders. Outside, a pair of headlights rounded a corner at the far end of the clearing and stopped. The engine revved twice, then the lights began to grow as the truck sped towards us.

  “They’re coming,” said Richard. “One truck. Jenny’s with them, I can hear her voice. What are we going to do?”

  “That woman,” said George. He grabbed a shotgun from one of the dead guards’ hands. “She really must be stopped. Get back.” He motioned to us all. “Back away from the door.”

  We moved back into the darkness of the lock-up as the truck pulled up and stopped. Jenny Rae got out, a guard on either side of her, and stopped in the headlights. Her bulk cast a squat shadow in the dirt as she surveyed the scene with growing fury.

  “You,” she said, pointing a finger at Henderson. But before she could continue, there was a deafening shot and I saw something spray from her kneecaps. The two guards swung their guns towards the sound of the shotgun, but George Angelbeck had already reloaded. He shot one quickly and then the other. They fell lifeless to the ground as he stepped into the light and walked over to where Jenny Rae was lying, howling in the dirt.

  We followed him out, Grimes barely conscious over Bryce’s shoulder. The truck’s engine was still running and gate was open out onto the wasteland.

  “I suggest you go,” said George. “Now. Before anyone else turns up.”

  “What about you?” said Harvey. “What are you going to do?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said George. “I’ll deal with Miss Rae. We’ll sort something out, won’t we, Jenny?”

  Jenny Rae struggled on the ground at his feet. Between whimpers, I thought I could hear a sound of assent. George looked up at us.