Don't Fear The Reaper (24 page)

‘But where are these so called “wonderful folks” now? Huh?’ Number 1
swept his hand out around them, indicating the innumerable carcasses on these
interconnecting streets in downtown London alone.

‘I hope you weren’t one of those naïve fools who listened to our Prime
Minister saying bollocks such as “We’re in this together”, when he referred to
the recession pending. That’s why he and a lot of other brown noses got killed
in Downing Street. As long as they are all right, and their associates and
friends in the hierarchy are doing well it’s “pull the ladder up, Jack, and sod
the rest”.

Number 1 became quiet and averted his gaze, sighing. ‘Now it’s our turn.
Big deal, our faces are changing. They were changing anyway. It’s called
getting old if you’re a human. But we’re neither old nor young. We lived half a
life, perhaps more, as human beings. The Reaper saw us for what we are, not
what society considers us to be. The Reaper saw us, studied us and made a
decision. The Reaper decided to give us a second chance when no one else would.

‘It’s up to you two. Although you kinda left it a bit late to go back
now, if you ask me. You can either join your race and rot away like some
additional piece of leftover or you can do as the Reaper asks of you.

‘Up to you. I know what I’m gonna do though.’

Number 2 moved away from the store window and faced his compatriots. He’d
listened intently to what Number 1 said. It made perfect sense when you altered
your perception to that way of thinking.

Number 1’s unnatural eyes bored into his and Number 2 understood what he
was doing. He was doing the same.

Number 2 recalled his poor childhood home. His parents worked at a
building firm merchant. They came home later than their duty ended. Not because
of heavy traffic, but because they went straight to a pub. Then they came home
drunk and when he complained he was starving hungry and there hadn’t been any
snack food to help himself so his father gave him the back of his hand. His
mother smoked self-made cigarettes which smelled peculiar. They also gave her
the giggles. She’d make him something she could nuke in the microwave.
Something quick and easy. Then she returned to the living room and smoked some
more.

Sometimes if he needed to go to the toilet, which was located downstairs
outside, adjoining the shed, he’d often have to walk past Mummy and Daddy while
they were wrestling in the nude. That said it wasn’t anything like the
wrestling he’d seen on the WWE.

None of it seemed odd until he got older and he became aware of how he’d
been treated was not only inappropriate but also abusive.  

Hindsight was a wonderful part of wisdom. Recollecting these pivotal
events in his life made Number 2 realise how he’d been a victim from the start.
He’d barely had enough money to eat at school. At home the fridge was always
empty. Or worse it was full of liquor and just enough milk for his parents to
make themselves a tea or coffee. Near starvation and lack of nutrition had
affected his growth. All the other boys he had grown up with from infant school
to high school grew to over six feet. Their bodies filled out. Most were lithe
and possessed prominent muscles. But not him. Even the bullies understood how
serious a matter it was. The headmaster had made enquiries to his parents, but
they were always unavailable. In the end they sent social services to his home
one random day, and they had a shock.

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.

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 Jonesy’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?’