The End of the World Running Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  “How?” he said.

  “On foot,” I said.

  He stared at me, then he buckled his legs and laughed up at the sky. When he had finished, he shook his head. The smile crept from his face.

  “You’re serious?” he said.

  “That’s how we made it from Edinburgh to here,” I said.

  James looked me up and down. “So I understand,” he said. “Not working out so well for you though, is it?”

  He took a step forward, folded his arms.

  “That coast,” he said. “It’s not the same as it used to be. It’s all changed. There’s water where there didn’t used to be water, rock where there never was before. I wouldn’t travel past Padstow. Everything after that, well, it’s just too dangerous.”

  “If you can get us to Padstow, how far is it from Falmouth?”

  “Thirty, forty miles.” James looked at me with his face squinted, as if I was an idiot.

  “I could make that,” I said.

  He laughed. “I very much doubt it. It’s not just the coast that’s changed, it’s the land too. The roads are a mess…”

  “If they can transport all those people down from the gate, then I can get down too. Is it possible? Can you get me to Padstow before tomorrow?”

  “The land is covered with sink-holes and marshes. Whole villages have fallen into the ground, the virus…”

  “Can you get me there?”

  James sighed, scratched his head and looked up at the sky.

  “Wind’s good, picking up,” he said. “So yes, I’d say it’s possible. But then what? Even if you make it to Falmouth, do you think you’ll just be able to jump on board one of those boats without a pass?”

  “Ed,” said Harvey. “You can’t be serious mate. There’s no way you can walk on that ankle.”

  “I don’t think Ed’s talking about walking,” said Bryce from the stern, still looking over the side. “Are you, Ed?”

  I kept my eye on James.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask,” I said. “But my family are down there. I have to try to get to them.”

  I glanced at Martha and then at the girls, still huddled together on the bench. They looked back at me curiously, as if I was some strange form of entertainment that would hopefully disappear soon.

  “You understand?” I said.

  “Jesus, Ed,” said Harvey. “You are serious.”

  James looked back at me with his head cocked and mouth open, frowning in disbelief. Martha turned to her husband.

  “Maggie,” she said.

  James turned his incredulous look toward his wife and cocked his head the other way. Eventually he rolled his eyes and shook his head. He walked to the stern.

  “Maggie!” he shouted.

  A plump woman with grey, straggled hair appeared from the hatch of the neighbouring boat.

  “Yiss?”

  “Can you look after Martha and the girls for a day?”

  The woman craned her neck to look past James.

  “Pleasure,” she said. She smiled and waved.

  James turned back at us. His face was wild and quizzical, still trying to fathom it out. The boat rocked gently on an incoming wave, bumping the fenders against the bow.

  “Right then,” he said at last, tossing his hands up and picking up the rope at his feet. “Padstow it is.”

  “Girls,” said Martha. “Come with me. We’re staying with Aunt Maggie. Daddy will be back tomorrow.”

  Bryce walked across to where Harvey and I were standing by the hatch. “Listen, thanks for getting me this far,” I said. “And I’m sorry we didn’t make it. If I hadn’t fallen, maybe we would have been at the gate sooner. Maybe we’d be on a boat by now. I just need...I need…”

  “I know Ed,” broke in Harvey. “I know.”

  “Where will you go?” I said. “Perhaps you could find somewhere safe around here.”

  James kissed his wife and helped her and his daughters onto the other boat. He emptied his cup over the side and began to loosen the moorings. “Best be going,” he shouted across to us again

  Harvey turned to me and heaved a happy sigh.

  “Nah,” he said. “I don’t think so, mate. Reckon we’re coming with you. Right Bryce?”

  Bryce grumbled nauseously. “If you want me, I’ll be below deck,” he said.

  NEVER THE END

  We waved goodbye to Martha and her daughters and I stood next to James as he navigated out of the cove. The wind was strong and southerly and before long we were scudding along under the power of three bulging sails. I had never been on a yacht before; the only boat I had ever travelled on was a cross-channel ferry and a canoe that had capsized and nearly drowned me once on scout camp. I wondered what to do with the exhilaration of moving freely through water with the fresh, salt spray blowing around me. I was blind in one eye, my fingers were broken and every step I made ended in pain. Yet here I was, soon to face another thirty miles on foot. Once again I felt I was in the grip of a decision that hadn’t entirely been mine. Something was pushing me, forcing me on, and I doubt it cared for eyes or ankles. I wondered whether hope and exhilaration were the right things to feel at this point.

  Bryce was still below deck and Harvey had taken a seat at the bow. I stood next to James at the helm, steadying myself on a post and watching as he gripped and span the wheel against every hurl and nose dive the boat made as it ploughed through the sea.

  “We should make Padstow before nightfall with this wind,” he said. “I’ll get you as close as I can. You might even have an hour or two of light to move in before it’s dark.”

  “Thank you for this,” I said above the wind. “I’m sure you think we’re crazy.”

  “Family’s important,” he said. “I’d be doing the same thing in your boots.” He turned his eye from the horizon, looking at me sideways. “Can’t say for sure I would have made it as far as you have, mind.”

  “At the gate, were you trying to get on the boats?” I said.

  He glanced at the compass and made a quarter turn.

  “Nope,” he said. “We’re alright where we are. Our boat’s strong.” He slapped the wheel. “And there’s plenty of fish. There are quite a few folk like us living on the channel now. We look after each other, there’s a school, a little community. I don’t see the need to head off to a different country.”

  “What about medicine? The virus?” I said.

  He shrugged. “Take your chances, don’t you. There’s danger wherever you go.”

  “So what were you doing at the gate?”

  “Martha was trying to find her sister. We’ve been going down to the gate every day since it was built, searching the crowds.”

  “Did you find her?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Just you find your family.”

  A rough wind whipped the sea and sent a squall across the boat. James turned and squinted through the rigging at the western horizon, where a dark band of cloud was growing.

  “Looks like we might have some weather,” he said.

  I left James at the helm and spent some time walking up and down the deck, putting more and more pressure on my ankle, trying to work through the pain. The wind died a little around noon, although it was still blowing enough to keep us moving. James asked me to hold the wheel while he went below deck. He brought back some mackerel that he had smoked and poured something sweet and alcoholic into two tin mugs that he gave to me and Harvey. Bryce was still below deck, nowhere to be seen. Harvey and I sat at the front of the boat and ate our fish, watching the clouds creep slowly towards us as we rounded a rocky bay. When we had finished, Harvey sat forward and pushed his plate away. He picked up his cup and held it as if it was something warm and comforting.

  “So what happened in the canyon?” he said. “Did you see anything?”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “I mean, did you see anything?” He took a sip. “Anything unusual?”
<
br />   “Lots of mist, rocks, weird shapes…”

  “No, Ed, you know what I mean. Did you see anything?”

  I could feel him watching me across the lip of his cup as I struggled for words. Eventually he swallowed a deep swig and breathed out a great satisfied sigh, wiping his lips on his sleeve.

  “You don’t have to say, mate,” he said. “These things are sometimes personal.” He put down the cup and toyed with it on the deck for a while. “I started seeing spiders somewhere in Victoria. Little ones everywhere, crawling all over the ground and over my feet, running up my legs. I thought they were real at first, I kept swatting at them, trying to get them off. Then I realised they disappeared when I stopped. They only followed me when I ran. And when I did run, they started making noises, little voices calling things up to me.”

  He laughed and placed his cup neatly on his plate. Then he looked at me and tapped his head.

  “Up here, mate, all up here.”

  He sat back against the cabin window and put his hands behind his head.

  “Then one day they all suddenly ran off into a forest. But this big one stayed behind. I could feel him crawling slowly up my back and onto my shoulder.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t a real one?”

  “When I looked at him, he smiled. He had a little face, two big human eyes and buck white teeth where his fangs should’ve been. I ignored him, turned back to the road, but I knew he was there. Every time I looked he turned his head and gave that little goofy smile back. He hopped off a few days later and I never saw him again.”

  “Did he speak?”

  “Nope, just smiled. But I did meet a Chinaman in the desert who told me about the cobalt he was trying to get back from the moon. He was always in front of me, running backwards. He wanted me to help him, started crying when I said I couldn’t fly. There was a girl on Route 1 who told me she was lost. Only little. I’d felt her with me for a while, you know, near me, around me. But then I saw her and heard her. She had a little pinnie and a grey cardigan, I remember it was buttoned up wrong. I thought she was real, I really did. I stopped running and tried to get my head together, find my bearings and work out where the nearest town was so I could get her to safety, you know. I asked her where her mummy was and she looked up at me and stuck out her lip. Then she kind of started drifting off into the wind as if she was made of sand, head to toe, all gone. Her and the little stuffed frog she was clutching. Pretty upsetting, that one.”

  He stared up at the sail billowing above us, lost in his memory. Then he tapped his head again.

  “Anyway, just saying, I’ve seen a few things myself. I know how weird it can get. We’re not really supposed to be on our own Ed, we’re not built for it. Spend too much time running away from reality and that’s exactly where you get.”

  I heard James’s boots on the deck and a rope whizzed behind us. The boom swung slowly across and stopped, shifting the boat starboard. James fastened the sheet tight and returned to the helm.

  “Can we help, mate?” shouted Harvey.

  “No,” called James. “But you might have to go below deck before long.” He nodded west. The dark clouds now covered half the sky, shadowing the sea all the way to the horizon.

  “I felt like I was coming apart,” I said. “Like I was lots of little threads unravelling. I couldn’t tell where I started and where I stopped. I knew my body didn’t want to be running, but I felt like I wasn’t my body any more. I knew my mind didn’t want to be running, but I wasn’t there either. I wasn’t my body or my mind or any of the layers in between.”

  “But you were something, right?”

  “Yes, I was,” I said. “I was there, I was conscious, aware, I just wasn’t any of the things I’d thought I was.”

  Harvey smiled and looked back at James, then at me. He threw a thumb back at the helm.

  “When I was a boy my father told me that life was like being on a boat,” he said. “You can’t control the wind and you sure as hell can’t control the ocean. One day it’s calm and the next it’s a storm and there’s nothing you can do about that. All you get is a tiller and a sail and the weather you find yourself in.”

  He crossed his arms and puffed through his smile.

  “Was he a sailor, your dad?” I asked.

  “Nah, he was a shearer, he’d never been on a boat in his life,” said Harvey. “I lost count of the times he told me that, though. ‘You’re the captain, Harve’, he’d say. ‘Just keep an even keel and watch the wind, you won’t go far wrong.’ Whatever the fuck that means.”

  “What do you think?”

  He rubbed a coarse palm over the fingers of his other hand.

  “I think we like stories,” he said. “ I think we like hearing that we’re just little boats lost at sea, all alone, fragile things at the mercy of some darkness we can’t fathom, but solid nonetheless - enclosed and separate. It makes sense to think of things being out there.” He waved a finger at the clouds rolling towards us and then touched it against his temple. “And things being in here. But just because it feels right, doesn’t make it true.” He glanced at me. “See, I drifted apart as well Ed. I felt it all fall away, just like you. I didn’t feel like I was in charge for a while, like I’d ever been in charge. Maybe we’re not the captain, not the boat, not the crew, not the cook, not the stowaway, not the rats below deck. Maybe we’re…”

  “The sea,” I said.

  “Yeah. Yeah I suppose…”

  “No, look, the sea. It’s moving.”

  A great swell was growing off the bow. The surface of the water tipped in our direction, ripples and weed spilling from it as it rose.

  “Christ,” said Harvey.

  James cried out from the helm and we began to tip. Our empty plates slid slowly across the deck, then suddenly flew off into the sea as the whole boat swung violently over. Harvey fell first, then I followed, both of us landing hard against the rail. I scrabbled up and pulled Harvey to his feet as a heavy spray of seawater hit our faces.

  “Getting choppy!” shouted James. “You’d best get below.”

  “You sure we can’t help?” spluttered Harvey.

  “Best if you don’t,” said James. “I’ll call you if I need you.”

  We clambered down below deck and I fell into one of the benches at the table. A single bulb hung above it, barely throwing enough light to fill the small galley. I heard Bryce groaning from one of the bunks beneath the foredeck. Harvey sat down across the table, wiping his face with a dishtowel.

  “Do you think we’ll make it?” I asked.

  “Probably,” said Harvey. “If he knows what he’s doing.”

  I watched the old man flatten the dishtowel on the table in front of him, then fold it neatly into a square. He boxed it with his hands, then flattened it again and smoothed the surface before setting it to one side. The boat pitched again and the towel slid across the table. I caught it before it fell.

  “I saw you howling,” I said, “That morning in the car park. You stood on the edge and screamed into the sky.”

  Harvey ran a hand over his scalp and smiled.

  “Yeah, that,” he said. “I was wondering when you were going to ask me.”

  “And every morning before, was that you too?”

  “Yeah,” he winced. “I tried to get up before everyone else. Didn’t realise you could hear me.”

  He leaned his elbows on the table and opened his mouth, but before he could speak there was a thump from above and the boat pitched again. Harvey slid back in his chair and I slumped forward over the table. The timber around us seemed to strain as we bumped on the waves.

  “Sheesh,” said Harvey, pulling himself back upright. “Think he’s alright up there?”

  We heard footsteps and the creak of the wheel. The boat’s movement calmed and we returned to a less violent angle.

  “So what is it?” I said.

  “What?”

  “The howl, why do you do it?”

  Harvey flipped hi
s hand dismissively and crossed his arms. “Ah nothing,” he said. “Just something I used to do when I was running.”

  He caught my expression and uncrossed his arms, folding his hands on the table in front.

  “It’s the sun,” he said. “I’m yelling at the sun. I used to do it every day in Australia, just as it came up.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed. “You don’t understand. When you run that far for so long, it’s not just spiders and Chinamen and little girls. It’s everything. Everything looks at you. All day long that bastard up there beat down on me, all day long, every day from the moment it rose to the moment it fell behind that bloody great horizon. It gets hard to ignore it. You start thinking things are out to get you, watching you, bearing down at you, trying to stop you, resist you.”

  His brow furrowed and he chewed his lip. Then he leaned forward again and stared hard into my eyes.

  “We’re all born screaming, Ed. The moment we pop out our throats open and the same scream bursts out that always has done. We see all the lights and faces and the shadows and the strange sounds and we scream. Life screams and we scream back at it. After a bit of time we learn to be quiet, we learn to muffle it. But life doesn’t stop, it just keeps screaming. All. The. Time.” He tapped his finger on the table three times and sat back.

  “I reckon it does you good to remind it that you can still scream back once in a while,” he said. “So that’s what I do. I wake up and tell the sun I’m still here. Still screaming.”

  We looked at each other for a while. He jutted his jaw and worked his lips seriously like a camel chewing.

  “Bet you really think I’m a fruit loop now, don’t you?” he said.

  “Harvey, what really made you run? What happened?” I said.

  He blinked at me slowly. Then something seemed to fall in his face. His mouth stopped working and he looked down at his open palms.

  There was a jolt. Then a crash from above and James’ urgent voice yelling down at us. The boat pitched back and forwards, the hatch flew open and the cabin suddenly filled with wind and water. I pulled myself up and climbed the hatch. James was gripping the wheel as the boat rocked violently on its keel. Behind him, the sky was torn into bright blue across the coast and black, electric clouds bouldering in from the sea, as if the night had come early and was slowly feasting upon the day.