The End of the World Running Club (26 page)

“Yes,” said Grimes. “We met her last night. We asked her if she knew anyone with a vehicle and she said that we might try here.”

Hugh sat slowly back in his chair and folded his arms again. He nodded lightly, appraising something.

“It’s been very hard for her,” he said. “Very hard. We’ve tried to, er, speak to her, you know, make sure she’s alright up there on her own, what with her condition and all. I’ve been up a few times myself, but we’ve not always…” He broke off. “Let’s just say she doesn’t like company.”

“We got that,” said Bryce, tapping his bandage.

“She told us you had an agreement,” said Richard.

 
A smile twitched on Hugh’s face. “Agreement,” he said, clearing his throat. “Aye, ‘could call it that.”

“Did you know that she’d given birth?” said Grimes.

Hugh suddenly gave a frown of concern. “No, no, we didn’t, did we, love?” he said, looking back at his wife, who shook her head and smoothed her apron. “Is she alright?” he said.

“She seems to be, given the circumstances.”

“Good,” he said. “That’s good.” He looked at his watch. “Where are them boys?” he grumbled. He leaned forwards and poured the tea, allowing me a small look of superiority which I met with a thin smile.
 

“So, er,” said Richard. “We were wondering…”

“You want my truck,” said Hugh. He kept his eyes on the cups as he pushed them towards us.

“We know it’s a lot to ask,” said Richard. “And we don’t have a lot to give you in return, some food and blankets perhaps...”

Hugh nodded and tipped his chair back on its legs. He sipped hot tea from his mug and seemed to bask in the warmth from the stove behind him. He glanced at his watch again.

Richard went on. “It’s just that…” He slumped his shoulders a little, shook his head, shrugged. He searched Hugh’s face. “I’m sorry to ask, but we have no other choice.”

Hugh frowned and nodded slowly, running a hand around his stubbled chin.

“Like I say,” he said. “We do alright here. We live on what we have, just like we did before, you know? We don’t go anywhere, don’t have much need to travel, certainly got no need for
boats
.” He spat the last word. Then he looked at his watch again.

“I just want to find my son,” said Richard.

“I have family too,” I said. “My wife, a daughter and a son.”

Hugh looked me up and down.

“Family’s important,” he said. Suddenly there was a click behind us and the creak of a door opening. Hugh looked over our heads.

“Ah,” he said, grinning. “Speak of the devil.”

I spun round. Standing behind us were two identical young men, eighteen at most, wearing farm overalls and long boots covered in manure. They had wide faces with small, glittering eyes and cropped brown hair. They were tall and broad with thick arms, like their father, in which they held two shotguns pointing directly at us. The stench of animal shit filled the kitchen. We each reeled back in our chairs, Bryce nearly taking out the table with his weight. My cup shattered on the tiles and I stumbled back, slipping in the hot tea. Hugh was on his feet, laughing. He grabbed me and gave me an almighty shove that sent me sprawling on the floor at the feet of his sons. The one I was closest to moved his boot and I fell face-first in the stain of excrement it had left on the floor.

“What the fuck is this now?” I heard Bryce say, as I struggled to my feet, wiping my cheek.

“Boys!” shouted Hugh. “Take our guests here outside. Give ‘em a tour.”

“Wait a minute!” said Richard, standing forwards. “What…”

The son furthest from me swung his gun around and caught Richard in the chin with its butt. Richard’s head snapped back and he staggered back into Bryce, who caught him and held him upright. Harvey stepped forwards to speak, but was held back by Grimes. Richard touched a finger to his bleeding mouth and looked back at Hugh.

“Want my fucking truck do you?” His laughter boomed around the room. “Come on,” said Hugh. “Out.”

The son nearest me grabbed my collar and hurled me effortlessly through the archway into the hall. My legs spun in a cartoon cartwheel behind me but I managed to stay upright before crashing into the front door. He opened it and pushed me outside. The rest fell out behind me and we stood in a huddle, the two teenagers bearing down on us silently from the steps. Their father stood between them on the step above. Ellie appeared at his shoulder and looked around at us like a child from the safety of its parent’s leg.

“Put the guns down,” said Grimes. “You don’t need to do this, we’ll leave now, be on our way.”

“Huh?” said Hugh. “You’ve only just arrived. How very rude.”

He slapped one of his sons roughly on the shoulder.

“Show them the pigs,” he said.

“Hands on your heads,” mumbled one of the twins. His voice had barely broken. “Now,” he said. He jabbed the end of his gun at us. “Turn around. Move.”

It had started to snow again. Soft flakes fell slowly around us as we were bundled across the yard, past the truck, stumbling in the drifts as we approached the main outbuilding.

“Stop,” said the talking twin in a rehearsed monotone. “Face the doors. Keep your hands on your head.”

The other twin pulled the doors open and the air was suddenly filled with squeals. Inside the building was a bare enclosure separated from the main doors by a metal railing and a strip of chicken wire. Four large pigs waddled frantically across the muddy floor and began snuffling at the air and rubbing their glistening snouts up and down the sharp wire. Hugh strolled up to the gate and leaned across it. He dangled one hand down and clicked his teeth. The smallest pig ran up to meet him.

“Aye,” he said, casually, as if he was leading a tour for a school trip. He scratched the pig’s ear. “Of course we had a lot more. We were more protected down here when it happened. I don’t think we got it anywhere near as bad as some other places we heard about.” He looked over his shoulder at his sons, who were now standing on either side of us. “Still scared the shit out of us though, didn’t it?” he said. He winked at them. One of them smirked. Hugh looked back at the pigs. “We did get a few fires, lost a few of these buggers.”

He gave the young pig an affectionate slap around its chops and turned around to face us with his arms along the rail behind him.

“The strong survive though,” he said. He turned to his sons. “Don’t they? Eh?” The twins murmured a response as their mother walked quietly around them and stood next to her husband. Hugh put an arm around her shoulder. “Like Gloria,” he said, and spat in the dirt. “Maybe it’s time to pay her another visit Ellie, see how she’s doing with the baby, eh? I’ve heard it’s quite hard in the first weeks, leaves you quite weak.” He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe that’s how you got past her.” He nodded to himself. “Aye, maybe time for another visit. Maybe time to teach her a lesson for this.” He hissed and pointed to the scar on his face.

After a moment, he laughed and relaxed back against the railing.

“Strong always survive,” he said. He cocked his head and watched us for a while, looking between our faces and chewing his cheek. The pigs squealed and snuffled hungrily behind him.

“Pigs need fed though,” he said at last. “To keep ‘em strong.”

Something bounced in my stomach. I felt panic rise up in the other four too. Bryce shifted his weight anxiously between his boots. Grimes and Richard exchanged looks. Harvey suddenly dropped his hands and stepped forwards, holding out his palms to Hugh.

“Now look,” he said, his voice cracked and wavering. “Just hold on a…”

Hugh glanced at one of his sons, who drove the butt of his gun hard into Harvey’s belly. Harvey’s lungs emptied themselves with a high
guuuuh
and he fell to his knees in the muddy snow. I went to help him up, but was dragged back to my place by the other twin. Harvey knelt with his hands in the snow before him, gasping.

Hugh pushed himself up from the rail and walked towards Harvey. He held out a hand to him. Harvey grimaced up at it, then knocked it away. He fixed Hugh in the eye and got himself to his feet, spat in the snow to his side. Hugh rolled his eyes and motioned to his sons, twirling his finger around in the air.

“Turn around,” one of them said. “Move along from the shed.”

They ushered us around so that we were standing in a line facing back towards the road.  I was at the end, the other four to my left. My heart, which had been racing since we had been in the kitchen, picked up the pace. The pigs were next to us, still squealing urgently and straining against the clattering chicken wire. The family stood before us, the sons on either side of the parents. Hugh’s left hand curled around the small shoulders of his wife and his other was a tight fist against his hip. Smoke trailed from the chimney of the white house behind them and up into the snow-heavy pines.
 

One of the twins turned to his father, who nodded. The two boys raised the butts of their shotguns against their shoulders.
 

I felt my knees weaken, my bladder too, felt the uncontrollable and ridiculous urge to turn my head from the blast. My heart was now struggling against my chest like a crow trapped in a bucket. I felt like my neck and eyes might burst with blood, had a last hopeful thought that there might be some chance of me passing out before the end.
 

I heard Bryce groan, looked sideways and saw Richard staring straight ahead, trembling. Grimes dropped her hands and lifted her chin. Her lip flickered once and tightened. Next to her, Harvey dropped his hands and looked down at the floor, shaking his head.

Different rays…
he seemed to say
Different rays…

I have no idea if there are common human responses to circumstances like this. Perhaps it is predictable, perhaps everyone facing sudden death like this - particularly execution - goes through the same mundane series of states as their brain searches in vain for the right tools to counter the inevitable. Perhaps it is all logged somewhere in a psychiatric journal, I don’t know. All I can say is that, in my case, it was not quite what I might have hoped for: strength, peace, dignity, that kind of thing. I think I wet myself a bit. Then I lost control of my facial muscles. My mouth seemed to spasm and gurn as if it was chewing something too big for it. My eyes lost the ability to focus.  Strange things happened around my knee area. My throat dried up completely so that a huge portion of what was set to be the last few moments of my life was dedicated to trying different methods of swallowing. While all this was going on, some frantic part of my cranium was having a last-ditch attempt to find some meaning to a life that was about to end, flitting through ideas and abandoning half-finished philosophies like an accountant shredding incriminating paperwork to the sound of police sirens. Nothing flashed before my eyes. I had no sudden feeling of inner calm, no feeling that I was going to be OK, that everything was for the best. I just felt the same mixture of confusion and inability to cope as I always had done, only this time compressed into microseconds. I thought about Beth and Alice and Arthur, wondered if there was any possible way they would find out that this had happened, felt dutifully bad that I would not see them grow up, then pitiful about the fact that I might not want to know what the world had left for them anyway. Then I felt disappointment. Then I probably wet myself again. Then I heard two loud shots.

I opened my eyes to see the two twins lying face down in the dirt. Hugh was kneeling behind them in the snow and looking at them. His face was confused, as if he was searching for a word. Blood appeared at his shoulder. He looked down and watched it spread through his shirt. Behind him stood Ellie. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was clamped shut. There was a fine spray of blood across her pale face. She held her arms diagonally out from her sides, her fingers stiff and open so that the skin stretched tight around their bones. She stared down at her sons and her husband and breathed a few shuddering breaths. Then, with her arms still held out, she spun around on her heels and faced Gloria, who was stood by the house, looking back at her down the barrel of her still smoking gun. Sofia was upright in the sling around her mother’s chest with her arms and legs sticking out in a star. She was looking at the pigs, still squealing and snuffling in their pen. I swear she gave a chuckle.

Ellie seemed to tense up even more so that she was nothing but a taut string of bone and muscle. A low noise rumbled in her throat and she began to run across the yard towards Gloria, arms outstretched into pincers. The noise rose into a piercing howl of rage that was silenced instantly by a third blast from Gloria’s gun. Ellie’s head snapped back, as if by some invisible leash around her throat that had reached its limit.  She lay still as the snow grew red around her. The pigs seemed to quieten at this. Hugh had held his hand to his wound. He turned, still wobbling in confusion on his knees, squinting as he looked back over his shoulder. Gloria walked past Ellie and stood over him.

“Hello Gloria,” he said. Sofia gurgled at the snowflakes gently parachuting around her. “And hello…”

“Don’t look at her,” said Gloria. She planted a boot in Hugh’s side, knocking him to the ground.
 

“Easy there,” he laughed. He reeled on his back, then steadily pushed himself up to a sitting position. He sighed and smiled. She raised the gun and looked back at him down the barrel. Hugh looked across at us, still standing dumbly in our line.

“Made a friend, did you?” he said. “That’s interesting.” He coughed and gripped his shoulder tighter. Blood was streaming faster through his fingers and making a red river of his forearm. “Very interesting.” He looked back at us as if he’d suddenly thought of a joke. “Strong survive, eh?” he said, nodding at Gloria. He laughed again, then coughed again, then became quiet.

“So what now,” he said. “What now Gloria? Shoot me and take my truck?”

“I don’t need your truck,” said Gloria.

“Let them have it then?” he said. He looked back at us. “You really did make friends, didn’t you?” This seemed to amuse him and he started to chuckle. Gloria put her boot on his shoulder and pushed him back into the snow. His laughter became a coughing fit as he struggled against her weight. She pressed her heel down on him until he gave up, rested back, looked up at her with cold eyes. He began to sing softly.