Don't Fear The Reaper

by Lex Sinclair

  Number 2 was taken to an orphanage in Plymouth. He hadn’t done very well academically and ended up with no further education. When he came of age the council offered him a job as a litter picker and he lived in a one-bedroom flat on the ninth floor. The government paid what bills he came short on. However, Number 2 could afford a bowl of cereal in the morning, a pastry lunch from the local baker’s and a microwave meal at dinner. Sometimes if he saved money he could afford to buy a bunch of bananas or a pack of biscuits or a chocolate bar.

  He couldn’t afford to buy a TV never mind the license or electricity bills that came with it. Instead he spent his evenings listening to the portable radio and reading one of the many books he’d borrowed from the library downtown. If he wanted to find out about the news he’d sit on a bus stop and eavesdrop on others’ conversations. Failing that he went to the library and asked permission to use the internet.

  That had been his life up until he began hearing the voices in his head. Initially he thought it was his head that had created and manifested the voices. However, the myriad of voices from men, women, children whom he’d never meant emanated from one source. That source had appeared to him in his dreams as clear as he’d witnessed today. The source came as the image of the Grim Reaper.

  Everything Number 1 had said was accurate. Not just the gist either, but everything in its entirety. Life had been cruel to him for no plausible or justifiable reason. It had chosen to kick him into the dirt. Or rather, as Number 1 said, the catacombs where folk who were thought highly of didn’t have to see him or address him.

  Now all those folks were dead. Long gone. Now he survived, along with two others who’d been given a second chance. Their existence also had a purpose. A meaning that was unequivocally profound.

  True, the dramatic transformation had unsettled him and induced panic. But the more he thought about it, the more he realised it was similar to being born all over again. Resurrected from the lowest depths of society to the top where he and his compatriots would reign supreme.

  ‘Guess I just freaked out there for a moment,’ Number 2 said.

  Number 3 was still tracing his features that moved of their own accord. He offered them both a quivering smile that appeared both nervous and menacing with the fluxing of his face. ‘You’re not the only one,’ he said.

  All of them laughed at that.

  Then Number 2 said in a serious tone, ‘I guess hell froze over.’

  ‘The powers that be all around the globe weren’t too powerful and high almighty as they believed they were,’ Number 1 said. ‘The governments couldn’t care less about leadership. They had the power and used it for their own means and benefits.’ He paused. ‘They had their turn and look what happened.’

  ‘Now it’s our turn,’ Number 3 interjected.

  Number 1 nodded. ‘Precisely.’ He faced Number 2. ‘Your doubt is understandable. After all the heartache and abuse you endured since you were born. Your parents fucked without using protection. Your mum became pregnant with you. They resented you for their mistake. How does that work? Then they made your life not only a misery, but nigh on impossible. They gave you the shittiest job they could find, picking up other folks’ crap. No pun intended. The squalor I was talking about was how you lived. Did you or any of us complain? No. You just got on with it the best you could

  ‘We’ll all die someday, Number 2. But we’ve been born again. Born to be wild. Now are you with me or not?’

  Number 2 strode to the nearest vehicle that was still on its wheels, focused on the skeleton head protruding where the driver’s window used to be and swung a hefty punch. His gnarled fist struck the cranium with such velocity the head exploded in a shower of bone fragments.

  ‘How long will it take for us to get there?’

  Number 1 shrugged. ‘Quite a while with all this mess.’ He swept his arm out wide, speaking of the massive indentations in the earth and the mile high rubble heaped around them. ‘But the Reaper shall guide us. Then we’ll wreak havoc.’

  ‘Let’s ride!’ Number 2 exclaimed.

  Together, in unison, the three mounted their motorbikes and sped away from the devastation that was once Buckingham Palace. They made animal howls and punched the air as they rode through the never-ending carnage building up around them.

  Darkness was slinking over the grey ash. Nevertheless, their beaming red eyes pierced the dusk and they rode on into the night.

  24.

  JONESY sat next to the passenger seat window in the transit. After they spent nearly an hour loading the van of equipment and provisions they caught their breath. Then Sue and Jonesy stood on either side of the van and motioned Perkins to manoeuvre the vehicle back without colliding into anything. The worst was when Jonesy raised the palm of his hand flat in a stop gesture. Perkins hit the brake and leaned out the window.

  On the earthen terrain there lay a decomposed cadaver of an adult and a child curled up in a foetal ball. They were now ash anatomies, flaking away with every breeze and gust. They’d all ceased the task and stared despondently at the sight that was both beautiful and macabre but most of all unnerving.

  With as much care and consideration, all three of them lifted the cadavers off the road amidst the rubble and carried them to an undisturbed spot on the pavement. However, as they did this the ash cadavers started crumbling. Their limbs broke away callously and broke into a million pieces. The pieces dissipated before the breeze could sweep them away.

  By the time they’d reached the pavement all that was left of the infant were a set of shoulders, a neck and the eyeless skull. The adult cadaver lost both legs. They bent backwards and came apart at the knee, struck the rubble and dissolved. All that remained of the body was one arm, the torso and head.

  Jonesy wailed in anger as he rammed his fist into the bodywork of a car. He didn’t even wince, although it must have hurt like hell. Then he and Sue continued to instruct Perkins to safely manoeuvre the transit van around so it faced the roundabout, not the blocked off street.

  Pallid and perspiring at the temples, Jonesy motioned for Sue to get in and he took the seat next to the window and rolled it down halfway.

  ‘Hey, c’mon guys,’ Perkins said, wanting to sound optimistic. ‘We did the best we could. Had we not even moved them we’d have crushed them flat. Or someone else would’ve.’

  Jonesy and Sue glowered at him.

  ‘All right. All right. It’s not the point. I know.’

  Jonesy leaned over to face the window and closed his eyes when he saw the bedlam of stationary traffic that prevented access onto the bridge. On Windsor Road, Perkins had no choice but to mount the kerb in some places when traffic wouldn’t permit him to pass. Jonesy opened his eyes long enough to create eternal nightmares. The van crushed more ash cadavers beneath its wheels. Perkins clutched the wheel in a white-knuckle grip as he mounted rubble and they were all flung to and fro across the seat and onto the dashboard.

  ‘Sorry,’ Perkins said.

  Bile rose into Jonesy’s oesophagus making his eyes water. Shoulda stayed at home. Anything’s better than this, he thought, struggling to swallow.

  They took a side street and Jonesy clapped a hand over his mouth at the peeling cadaver Perkins told him about in accurate detail. The man hung upside down, arms hanging uselessly, withering away to mere sticks. His cavernous eyeholes seemed to stare at him. Then the opaque darkness of a small road bridge concealed any further inspection.

  The gun shop owner pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He hiccupped and lowered his head into his lap. He knew why then the real reason he didn’t want to leave his home. Now that he was a mile from home it came to him with full clarity. The moment he departed his comfort zone would be the moment his eyes saw the magnitude of the carnage and mayhem. His mind would be filled with horrific images he couldn’t erase through willpower. His soul would be scarred, as it had been when as a boy his mother sold his dog so she could pay for a new car. Basically, it was something he’d never
recover from. Not even if he lived to be a thousand.

  The pain pulsing in his chest was an undying cancer, growing and spreading its disease. There was nothing Jonesy could do to prevent it, either. He just had to sit here and take the full brunt of it and suffer the consequences.

  It felt like drowning…

  *

  The ambience in the van on the way back to the vicarage weighed a ton. Perkins stared fixedly ahead, doing his utmost to block out everything other than the road ahead. He kept telling his mind that the charred skeletons and corroded vehicles were nothing more than props in a mega-budget movie. However, the gruesome images danced in his retinas, displaying the carnage over and over again. His palms dripped with sweat to the point he had to wipe them on his Levi’s.

  As he drove the transit van off the Dual-Carriageway and past a set of dead traffic lights, he, Sue and Jonesy winced simultaneously at the sight of a body protruding from a cracked windscreen. Its head was bent at a disjointed angle, almost decapitated. Perkins assumed that it had been held in place by cartilage and muscle until that decomposed.

  Everything in the environing district appeared sandblasted. If the accidents and pandemonium of citizens rushing around to and fro searching for a safe haven hadn’t killed them the falling asteroids that ripped the sky did.

  Perkins used the gearshift to second enabling the motor to ascend the incline. He mounted the kerb where he could and gently nudged the shells of destroyed vehicles out of the way when he couldn’t. In his wing mirror all he could see was ash and chalk cloud billowing in the van’s wake.

  When he passed the Tesco supermarket where John Hayes and many other members of the British public lost their lives to madman, Vince Lawton, Perkins took a steep off-road. The engine protested, but he kept his foot firmly pressed on the accelerator. The road was scarcely used as it was both very steep and winding.

  Perkins sighed at the sight of a fallen chestnut tree in the road. With assiduous care, he pulled into a space that was vacant by whoever had fled their cottage. He killed the motor.

  ‘I’ll move that aside,’ Jonesy said, unfastening his seat belt and hopping it before anyone could stop him. The branches had all but withered away and the trunk was bald and flaky. Jonesy stooped down, keeping his back straight and knees bent. He lifted the chestnut with relative ease and dropped it into the culvert that was dry as a bone. Then as he was about to head back to the van a shape burst from the blackened foliage and seized him by his sweater.

  The woman’s posture was crooked to say the least. Her blue-grey eyes under her straggly grey hair shone with lunacy and zeal. Her face was charcoal and disfigured. Even from the driver’s seat Perkins could see the burned flesh, like frozen waves, peeling back from her shallow cheeks and hollow eye sockets.

  Sue leapt out and stood between the front of the van and the mad-as-a-bat woman. The woman’s curls obscured her face momentarily. Perkins remained where he was for the time being. He studied the situation as though he were a policeman watching through a camera lens. Also, unlike Sue, he noticed Jonesy had a loaded .45 aimed at the woman’s abdomen in case she tried anything.

  He rolled down his window to listen to the conversation. Sue glanced back at him, perplexed as to why he hadn’t moved. Perkins beckoned her to return to the van. Reluctantly she did as he asked.

  ‘Why aren’t you helping Jonesy?’

  ‘He’s got the situation under control,’ Perkins said, nodding to the .45. ‘And if he doesn’t someone needs to stay here and protect what we’ve got. I know how that sounds, but it’s the only way. We need Jonesy. And Jonesy needs us. But I’m not willing to give up everything for him. There’s too much at stake for that.’

  Sue didn’t agree or disagree. She sat on edge looking at Jonesy and the woman.

  Outside the woman’s long, russet-tarnished fingernails threatened to rip the fabric of Jonesy’s sweater. Crust was embedded into the corners of her eyes. Her unwashed face might have once been considered pretty, but not anymore. The rolls of burned flesh gave the impression she was made out of dough. Dried snot had gone crisp from her nostrils to her charred lips. She gasped instead of breathing normally.

  ‘Where’d you come from?’ Jonesy asked. He wasn’t particularly interested in her origins, but the sound of his own voice was better than the gasping exhalations of the lunatic. ‘Are you alone? Do you need help? Can we help you? If not, please, I ask you nicely, please, lemme go.’

  Ten seconds passed with more unnerving silence. Then the woman released her grip and staggered back. Jonesy reached out to steady her. The woman’s hand snapped his head to the right, stunning him.

  When the shock of being slapped – and not even seeing it coming ebbed – Jonesy watched the woman sway unsteadily on brittle ankles. Her lips unglued themselves and her mouth opened.

  Years of neglect had dissolved the enamel and turned her teeth into mini onyx stones. Wrinkles that were as woven as tramlines folded her visage. Her tousled long mane appeared stark white, but Jonesy knew the ash cloud and dust had done that. Although he still considered her mad, the more he contemplated this the more it made perfect sense. After all, had he not had the food and gun shop on the ground floor beneath his apartment he would have been the same. The woman wasn’t mad, as such. She was delirious. And who could blame her?

  High up on the hill Jonesy could scarcely see the landscape. Even with the ash having dissipated it was still discernible to see the familiar landmarks. Then the sudden realisation hit him with an invisible bowling ball. He couldn’t see the familiar landmarks because there weren’t any. The dust and ash that billowed in the sky had risen from the folded earth, not descended with the asteroids.

  Sure, the asteroids ripped ignited fireworks in the sky, but it was the hellish impact that had induced the massive ravines and craters where motorways and mountains had once been long before humans walked the earth.

  He shook his head of this notion and returned his thoughts to the woman in front of him. He gulped and almost choked in doing so. When he ceased coughing Jonesy regarded the woman again. ‘Please answer. Just tell me who you are and that you are not going to do me any harm. We’ll give you shelter, then.’

  The woman gave no indication she had heard him or understood his proposition. ‘Where life was breathed there is only death,’ she said in a croaky voice. ‘The Light has gone, possibly forever. No darkness reigns supreme. Death walks the earth selecting its followers to end all surviving civilians. Then the antichrist shall have the Lord in the palm of his hands. Then the fires shall rage eternally, burning holes in the earth until there is no earth.

  ‘The fire has started… but some of us have survived.

  ‘Death doesn’t like this one bit. It now seeks us out, seeking to end all of humankind. Be it king or street sweeper, soon everyone shall dance with the Grim Reaper.’

  Jonesy had to wilfully tell himself to restrain the quivering coursing through him. ‘Look lady, I dunno what the hell you’re going on about. I’m just offering to help you out here, that’s all. I mean, no offence, but you kinda look like you need it. But quite frankly, I could do without the spooky prophesies.’

  ‘God has given me second sight, Jonesy,’ she went on.

  A lethal injection of ice froze Jonesy’s heartbeat.

  ‘He has given me this gift – or curse – to give you a message. They are coming. They are not human anymore. They’ve been touched by the hand of Death and been granted gifts unbeknownst to humankind. Gifts that belong to gods, not men. You must prepare for them, if that is at all possible. The one – our saviour – must be protected at all costs. Otherwise what dwindling hope we have will be erased.’

  Jonesy shook his head frantically. ‘Look, I dunno what the hell you’re talkin’ about. I’m just trying to help you. I understand you’re upset; so am I. But quit this nonsense and either piss off back where you came or behave and come with us.’

  ‘Hope is a good thing,’ the woman continued, oblivious of J
onesy’s words. ‘Hope is like faith. Faith is a kind of love you know. Love of what is unseen but certain. Love makes us strong and brave.’

  Jonesy turned away, not knowing how to proceed. ‘Look lady, I’m not disputing your beliefs. They sound good to me whether they’re true or not, but just answer me this: are you coming with us or not?’

  ‘You must have hope. You must have faith. For in the time of darkness ahead in order to see the Light you must walk through the shadows of darkness and face all kinds of evil. If the saviour dies at the hands of the followers or Death itself then there shall be no resurrection. There shall be no life beyond mortality. All will be lost. Death will be an eternal void of emotion and love. Death will be an eternal nothingness.’

  The gun shop proprietor caught the gist of what the woman was rambling on about. However, he couldn’t tell what having hope, faith and love had to do with dying. As far as he could see, the moment one was given life they began the process of dying. From the first breath one took it became their only first breath. As soon as one was born they began to grow. Then when they had completed the growing process the ageing process began. After that inevitably the process of slowing down and then dying followed. It wasn’t very pleasant to mull over. Nevertheless, those were the proven facts. He assumed that whatever happened thereafter was out of his and everyone else’s hands.

  If God did exist (Jonesy didn’t think so, especially during the years called The Aftermath) then He would decide one’s fate. All one could do was their best, using their conscience and thinking of others besides themselves, lest they were bad people who never changed their colours.

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Do you have hope? Faith? Love?’

  Surrendering, Jonesy sidled past the woman and made his way towards the idling van. As he got to the passenger door that Sue left open for him, he stopped. ‘I hope that things get better and that good will prevail all the bad that has happened. I love my friends as much as I have loved anyone I have bonded with. But as far as having faith in the so-called creator of Heaven and Earth? I can’t say whether He exists or not. What I can say is shame on Him for turning a blind eye when we needed him most. Shame on Him.’