by Lex Sinclair
His wife, Belinda, had shopped a couple of days in advance. She predicted that when the realisation that this was not a hoax hit home there would be a mad rush for food and drink. So the Watts’ family managed to avoid that debacle through prudence. With the assistance of their thirteen-year-old son, Tobe, the Watts’ clan had prepared assiduously. The caravan was linked to the Volkswagen, full of clothes, bedding, food and drink and all types of multivitamins, Cod Liver Oil, toothbrushes, toothpaste, concentrated orange juice… you name it.
Then five days before impact was scheduled they took the short ride to the Brecon Beacons and veered off the main road and into the forest amidst the acres of firs and pines.
Tom found the days that ensued most bizarre, to say the least.
His emotions conflicted with one another from many different perceptions. First he and his family had no idea what to expect. Neither did the so-called experts he’d listened to and watched on the news channels. The asteroids could miss the nation altogether and hit other parts of the world. The asteroids may disintegrate upon entering the earth’s atmosphere. Or they could hit the U.K. as well as other nations and either wipe them all out or diminish them to such an extent that no one knew anyone else’s fate.
And yet in spite of – or rather, due to – the pending asteroid attack, Tom became aware of something he’d always wanted to try but never got the chance as a child. To go camping in the woods with his family.
Between listening to any forthcoming “Breaking News”, Tom and his wife and son sat on the deck chairs, inhaling the natural pine fragrance. He read a James M. Cain mystery novel while Belinda and Tobe duelled in a game of chess. And all the while he kept thinking to himself, We should’ve done this years ago.
The world’s dilemma seemed to take place in another realm to theirs. However, on the day that was celebrated as Christmas 2006 the Watts’ family felt a shuddering tremor that lasted approximately thirty minutes.
China plates and cups had rattled noisily in their cupboards. The caravan rocked and swayed. They’d hidden under the half-square sofa and dinette table thinking the worst. Then everything ceased. The silence thereafter flooded their ears and pounded their hearts.
Years of wilderness and eating canned foods and the occasional visit to one of the nearby supermarkets had brought the Watts family absolute solitude. What had been a refreshing notion at first now rapidly became tedious and worrisome.
Frost had settled in and covered the woods and surrounding hills in a layer of white. They got their water from the lake and sometimes caught dead fish to take back with them and cook.
Belinda was excellent at making a fire. They’d purchased countless lighters and boxes of matches. Yet Belinda had started a fire by rubbing sticks together.
Tonight after they finished their meal of baked beans and fish the Watts family held a discussion. Tobe had become more and more agitated with the pent-up environment. He’d gone through his early teenage years without a glimmer of hope. Teenage years were most arduous at the best of times. Nevertheless, Tobe had no acne or growing pains. He had no school exams to fret over. However, an average day consisted of taking a stroll through the pine and firs out to the lake or riding shotgun in the Volkswagen to a supermarket.
‘There’s gotta be others out there like us,’ Tobe said.
Tom nodded concurrence. ‘There very well might be, son. But we don’t know for certain. And we have no idea where these survivors are.’ He took a sip of his Heineken before resuming. ‘Still no radio connection, and until there is some kinda announcement it mightn’t be safe for us to leave here. As bored as you are, at least you can go outside and stretch your legs. The air is mostly foggy, but at least you can inhale it and not cough on fumes.’
Tobe shook his head. ‘The power may still be out, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there in groups wondering if there’re others out there like them. Also, we can’t live like this forever. We used the generator till it gave out, living off microwave dinners. Now we are going back in time to cavemen. Before you know it we’ll all have great big beards and I’ll start calling Mum “Dad” by mistaken identity.’
They all chuckled at that.
‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ Tom said, still chuckling. ‘Your mum and I shave, and you haven’t even started growing armpit hair yet so…’
Belinda rested her hand on top of Tobe’s. ‘In all the times we’ve gone to different supermarkets to get food – those we can get to – not once have we come across a living person or animal for that matter. What we have seen numerous times though are thousands and thousands of bodies, abandoned. They haven’t even been given the proper burial everyone deserves.’
Tom sighed. He knew how his son felt. He felt the same way too. How could he not? It wasn’t even proper camping when he deliberated. The only fish they came across in the first couple of years were dead. There were some squirrels and crows. He thought he heard the braying of sheep and neighing of horses in the dead of night, but couldn’t be certain. For all he knew his mind had committed the dulcet countryside sounds from memory and played them to him out of sympathy.
‘Tell you what,’ Tom said. ‘Tomorrow what d’you say me and you go and hike up to the top of the highest mountain where that sheer crag is? We’ll take the binoculars and we’ll see what we can. That’s a good few hours of outdoor activity and you can see right down into the valleys. Never know, we might catch some glimpse of life elsewhere. And if we don’t, we did something productive, if nothing else. How’s that sound?’
Tobe understood that venturing out in the Volkswagen and driving aimlessly might get them stranded and lost. Also, he recalled vividly the last time he’d gone to the chain store with his dad and seen all the crispy cadavers of so many humans and animals. His dad had to drive on the hard shoulder just to keep the car in motion. Then when they did eventually arrive at the Morrison’s superstore they had to clamber over the pile of bodies jammed between the automatic doors. At the bottom of the heap a small, delicate hand jutted out. The skeleton hand of an infant. Tobe remembered he had to rush back outside and vomit. His oesophagus convulsed. His chest heaved and his eyes burned with acid tears. His dad followed him outside and put a reassuring arm around his shoulders as he wept.
‘This isn’t living, Dad,’ he’d said.
Tom had agreed. Then advised Tobe to take his arm and cover his eyes as they tried for a second time to enter the store.
Tom gazed at him now wearing a forced smile. ‘This isn’t living,’ Tom said, as though he and Tobe had shared a telepathic moment. ‘But for now it beats dying.’
‘Let’s do what you suggest tomorrow,’ Tobe said. Then he rested his chin on his hand and stared out the window. The opaque darkness offered no outside view, only his forlorn expression staring back at him.
*
As foretold by the Grim Reaper, through the body of Roland Goldsmith, the sacred amphitheatre remained untouched by the onslaught that had burned the world asunder.
Death had visited the cataleptic Roland and the obedient Vince Lawton on several occasions throughout the ensuing years. It had brought with it the finest fresh fruit, bread, milk, water and meat that were worth more than money.
Unlike the survivors in East London and the folk in the village of Skewen or the Watts family, Vince hadn’t a clue how to make fire. Yet on the first visit where Vince still feared the Reaper, in spite of it being pleased with him for his mass killing spree in Tesco supermarket, Death had bestowed the young, muscular man with a piece of grimy parchment.
On it were three scrawled words written in black ink that had run down the page. The words were foreign, Vince could tell. However, that was as far as his limited knowledge took him. The language wasn’t anything he was familiar with, although his initial assumption was it could have been Italian.
He’d looked up at the Grim Reaper, doing his utmost not to quiver from the Goosebumps that pebbled his flesh every time they met each other’s
gaze. ‘Italian! Is it Italian?’
The Reaper had shaken its head once.
‘It isn’t French. What about Arabic?’
Again the Reaper shook its head.
Vince proffered the piece of parchment back to the Reaper. ‘I give up then. I can’t tell you what it is. Languages was never my strong point in school, I’m afraid.’
The Reaper didn’t make a move for a minute.
Vince gulped, dreading the notion that by giving up he’d disappointed Death.
Then Death’s emaciated X-ray hand protruded the sleeve of his robe. Its index finger extended by the impossibly long jagged nail made contact with the parchment.
The mass murderer watched, mesmerised. For a second he thought Death would rip the parchment to pieces. There wasn’t much of anything left of it anyway. Then he saw how delicately its triangle-shaped nail coursed across the thick sheet. When it finished doing whatever it had intended the Reaper proffered the parchment to Vince again.
Tentatively, Vince reached out and took it. He turned it over and the first thing he saw was the fresh ink trickling down the page and dripping onto his lap. He made an involuntary shudder of revulsion. Then refocused and saw the new word that was the answer he’d sought in big black lettering at the bottom of the parchment.
LATIN
‘Latin,’ Vince said under his breath. Then he regarded the three words scrawled at the top of the parchment, now knowing what language they derived from.
VENI, VIDI, VICI
He said the words out loud. But still they meant nothing to him. He shrugged. ‘What does Veni, vidi, vici mean in English?’
The Reaper showed no impatience or vexation that Vince could see. However, he still felt obtuse for not being able to decipher three Latin words. Yet it wasn’t something he’d been taught in school, even if he had made more effort to attend and pay attention.
Death used its staggeringly long jagged fingernail again to etch out the answer. Then it gave the parchment back to Vince.
Beneath the three Latin words were six English words.
I CAME, I SAW, I CONQUERED
Vince read the sentence three times, absorbing and trying to grasp their meaning. Then he raised his head with more confidence than before to meet the Reaper’s crimson neon pupils beneath the baggy hood.
‘This is referring to you, isn’t it?’
The Reaper nodded once, displaying no emotion.
The young man frowned then. ‘But I still don’t get what this has to do with being able to make fire and cook the food you have brought us.’
The Reaper pointed to the supine figure that had once been Roland Goldsmith. Now he was a human shell with an incandescent glow shining from somewhere deep inside him. Then it indicated the Latin words on the parchment. It repeated this motion three times.
‘You want me to speak these words to him – or it?’
The Reaper nodded once.
‘And that’ll be the code to make a fire to prevent us from starving?’
Again the Reaper nodded.
Vince’s bowling ball shoulders slumped. He offered the Reaper a smile of appreciation. ‘Thank you. For everything…’
*
The sun was but a hazy glimmer through the grey skies. Tom Watts sat outside sipping bottled water, squinting overhead. If you looked carefully for a lengthy amount of time there was the hint of blue sky beyond the cloudy dust. Or it could have been his imagination relenting to his deepest desires.
Belinda cooked them all sausages and baked beans for breakfast. Tom’s stomach grumbled, as though sensing that he was going on a hike shortly thereafter. Prudently, he opted to let his food settle and sipped water.
In the first few months and couple of years they’d struggled to adapt to their new living arrangements and environment. They scoured the stores for bread and lived off sandwiches and all other fruits and junk food. Not to mention the heavy consumption of alcohol on a daily basis. It was Tom’s sedative, his narcotic, to dull his senses and the brusque reality of what had befallen civilisation.
Now spring 2012 was fast approaching. The sun was still obscured but the temperature had risen palpably. Tom’s podgy belly that he’d developed in the first couple of years had all but disappeared. If he lifted up his long-sleeve shirt and flexed his abdomen he could see the six-pack that was more defined than when he was Tobe’s age. It was the only aspect that this catastrophe had been good for, he surmised. He was overly glad as well. Otherwise making an arduous trek in his previous physical condition would have been unthinkable. He’d probably keel over from a sudden coronary.
‘Ready, Dad?’ Tobe said, breaking Tom’s reverie.
‘Oh, yeah.’ He consulted his watch. ‘An hour is ample time to let the food settle. I got plenty of bottled water and a bottle of squash in my backpack.’ With that he hefted himself out of the deckchair and crossed the patch of grass that they’d known as their front garden to the backpack.
‘I got some cans of Coke and some Mars bars to keep us going.’
Tom smiled. ‘Ah, good boy.’ He got the backpack fastened around his slender waist. ‘Well, we better get a move on I’m not as young as I used to be and it’s been a while since I had some proper exercise.’
Tom and his son bade Belinda goodbye and then ambled out of the copse of pines and firs. From there they crossed the deserted highway and only then appreciated the sheer size of the mountain and the magnitude of the ascension.
Already Tom felt the biting cold through his fleece all the way into his marrow. He gritted his teeth and kept his head low against the indiscernible squalls.
From the picture window in their cosy caravan the mountain appeared to be steep but no more than an hour of endeavour. Up close and at the foot of the marshy terrain Tom felt small and inadequate.
In the midst of his deliberations, Tom hadn’t paid heed to the two golf clubs Tobe carried. And he wouldn’t have noticed them at all if Tobe hadn’t placed a hand on his shoulder and proffered him one.
Tom flicked his head to the right, glimpsing an imaginary audience and then back to his son. ‘Do you want to climb this mountain or d’you want to go back and play golf?’
Tobe doubled over immediately, guffawing. He slapped his knees and tears induced by the cold and howling laughter chased each other down his rosy red cheeks. ‘They’re not for playing golf, you knob. I brought them for us to use as walking sticks.’
Tom shrugged, embarrassed. Then he said, incredulously, ‘You called me a knob.’
‘Well, be fair, what you said was a bit retarded.’
‘Oh great, now I’m a retard. Thanks.’
Tobe threw his hands up in the air, mocking vexation. ‘Will you come on?’
They ambled abreast until they reached a rickety sty. Then Tom clambered over first and into the sloping pasture. His feet crunched through the frost.
Tobe dropped down beside him and exhaled. Cold air billowed from his gaping mouth. ‘That took us about half an hour, and that’s the easy bit,’ he pointed out.
‘Still got plenty of daylight,’ Tom said. He sighed inwardly at the absence of sheep and other cattle. A second later he stopped Tobe going any farther with a hand to his chest and unfastened his backpack. Then he removed ear muffs and drained half a bottle of water.
Following his father’s common sense, Tobe did the same.
After five minutes of catching their breath and taking in their surroundings from this new vantage point, father and son continued on their quest to reach the summit.
Twenty minutes on Tom winced and clutched his sides.
‘You all right, Dad?’ Tom called out over the shrieking wind.
‘Nodding,’ Tom said, ‘Just got a bit of cramp, is all.’ He gazed ahead. ‘Not much to go now. Then the ground levels off. See.’ He pointed to the hilltop reaching another plateau a hundred or so yards directly in front.
‘Take a break,’ Tobe said. ‘If you fuck yourself up now it’ll be even harder to get back down
later.’
Tom laughed at his son’s profanity, but realised what he’d advised was sensible. He nodded acquiescence and lowered himself from his bent over posture and winced again.
Tobe sat next to him and exhaled. ‘Not only is it much bigger when you’re actually climbing it but the wind is constantly blowing in our faces. You almost slipped on the frost a few minutes ago. Gotta be more careful. Take your time. Make sure where you’re putting your feet isn’t slippery and is safe.’
Tom regarded his son with a raised eyebrow. ‘You an experienced mountain hiker or somethin’?’
Tobe shook his head and sipped from his bottle. ‘No, man. I been following you the last hour and watching you. Where you nearly lost your balance I avoided it and paced myself instead of rushing ahead.’
The ear muffs helped stop the wind freeze his ears numb. Nevertheless, his back sang in chorus with the squalls. He closed his eyes and did his utmost to block out the discomfort shooting up his spine.
‘Sit up straight and gently stretch,’ Tobe’s voice told him.
Instead of arguing like a lot of fathers would have done, Tom did just that. He stood up and leaned back, stretching, coaxing the lactic acid and sores out his back muscles.
When they resumed their climb after five minutes Tom raised his hand and performed stretches. His hunched over posture could cause him problems later in life if he didn’t take precaution now.
Soon after, the climb became much easier. The constant intake of water and the food from breakfast assisted him well indeed. Then before they knew it they’d reached the path that led directly to the crag.
They exchanged looks of bewilderment.
