How the World Ends (15 page)

I slip. The stone falls. I try to roll sideways out of its path, but the tip of the long knife, the one I pulled from the door at the other end of the tunnel, the one I stuck in my belt, catches in a crack in the floor. Face down, I cover my head with hands and I feel the unforgiving weight of the door press against my left foot.

And then there is nothing but darkness.

…

Herb

We watch in horror as Jonah Truth tries to hold back the weight of the stone door. The people behind Steven and I are screaming as they fall over each other to escape. I am frozen in place about ten feet back. The light blinds me, but I can’t cover my eyes. The pain in my heart is immediate. It’s as if I have seen hope itself killed in front of my eyes as the door smashed to the ground and broke into a hundred smaller pieces.

With glorious daylight shining through the dust, my tear-filled eyes try to make sense of the scene. Steven and I dive forward and start throwing chunks of rock aside.

“He’s here, I’ve got him,” Steven says beside me, sounding oddly calm.

On my knees, wiping my eyes on my sleeve, I raise my head. There before me is a sight I can’t imagine ever forgetting. A long silver cross shines, appearing almost to glow with its own incandescence, in the beams of the light that sweep diagonally down through the dust of the tunnel.

Lying prostate beside the cross, which I can see now is actually a long silver blade driven into the stone floor, is Jonah Truth. He is not moving, although his body seems to rise and fall with the effort of breathing.

“Come on,” says Steven, urging me up. “Grab his legs.”

We pull Jonah out of the pile of smashed rocks and debris that surround and cover him. Two more pairs of hands help, grabbing pant legs and shirt sleeves, as Amy and Susan approach. We get him out of the hulking emptiness of the open doorway and carry him up an earthen ramp-way to ground level. The ground is muddy, and we try not to jostle Jonah too much, slipping several times before we reach the grass of the graveyard that lies outside of the tunnel.

We lay him down gently on the grass. He appears to breathe, and he doesn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere except a slight oozing from the cuts on his hands, but he does not stir. We kneel beside him, Steven, Amy, Susan, and me. We four who do not know what the effect is that this man has had on us, but we don’t seem to be ready to let him go, or to go on without him.

A line of people continue to make their way out of the tunnel. Slowly, almost reverently, they pass in single file before moving on in groups to talk quietly among themselves.

I guess at nearly two-thousand people passing by us before the groups begin to finally disperse. Some stare at the new forest that has appeared to accompany the tall buildings farther off across the river in their loneliness, and even small trees that are growing on this side of the water, only a hundred yards away. Some glance from the tunnel to Jonah’s body and our little tableau beside him a few times before turning away.

Eventually, in small groups, they walk northward out of the graveyard and up towards the main road.

No one speaks, at least not in a voice that I can hear.

Some time later, the four of us rise. We turn as one at the sound of a voice behind us.

“It just doesn’t seem right.” It is the elderly minister, her filthy robes draped over her tiny frame, giving her an odd look of condensed vitality and puissance. “To see such a brave effort wasted.”

She climbs up the slope out of the tunnel with surprising ease, and comes over to us. Pushing me aside almost tenderly with her right hand, she reaches down with her left and shakes Jonah gently by the shoulder.

“Wake up,” she says quietly, as if addressing a child. “Open your eyes.”

For a moment nothing happens. Steven and I look at each other for a second, wondering, and Susan puts her arm around Amy.

And then Jonah Truth opens his eyes.

…

Jonah

The pain. The pain. The pain. There is no feeling... only pain. The needles of it are blunt and splintered sticks driving themselves through my very bones. The realization that I am in pain, and not, in fact, dead, is not a comfort.

The pain only serves to wake me from a peaceful, if somewhat lonely, slumber.

I hear the sound of a low moan grumble from deep within the bowels of my lungs to hiss through the edges of my teeth and sound something like a breath as the air seeps into the outer universe of the world.

A blink of the eye – from somewhat closed to somewhat open – and a dazzle of lights sends my head reeling in a nauseating spin of vertigo. I almost glimpse the leaves of a treetop, swaying over me.

I settle my mind within that image. I imagine those trees, the great, giant oaks growing bigger and taller with roots growing tougher and deeper over months and years and decades. Until they touch the underground fingers of another tree, maybe a maple this time, or a copse of cedars, who spread the message of the oak’s discovery.
The not-dead man lies in a partial shade under my branches. Soon my leaves will spread and he will be completely cloaked by my presence.
The cedars might tell the beach tree, and the beach might have its privacy stolen away by a stand of hemlock, who rub against a straight balsam in the breeze. The sound might carry to a lone pine on a rocky hill, struggling to stay connected to the pattern as it clings to its sparse sustenance with the acidic soil it has learned to appear to thrive on.

And Rachel might see that tree. She might sit on the stump of the dead elm that we cut down last winter and took two months to burn in the fireplace. She might sit on that stump and listen to the breeze blow through those harsh needles and hear the soft message of truth.

I am not quite dead
. And because of the growing half-shadow of a tree-branch over my head, I acknowledge the pain and open my eyes.

I vomit on Steven’s shoes. I know this from the curse that forms his reaction. I don’t see anything, feel anything, know anything, but pain.

And a little bit of hope.

…

Herb

We fashion a kind of a litter for Jonah out of a pair of oak saplings that have managed to sprout on this side of the river and a couple of coats stitched together with Jonah’s shoelaces.

The forest grows as we work, although it appears to have slowed somewhat from its initial frenzy of expansion. It takes Steven a few minutes to get over his cussing spell and for the old lady to pretend she doesn’t hear him. The shadows grow sideways and reach out across the river to touch us before we slide Jonah onto the makeshift stretcher and drag him out of the cemetery and away from this place.

The army squad helps us. It seems it was them who pushed the door open, but it was only by accident that Jonah was trapped under it. They crossed the swollen river on their little raft, says the leader, a Sergeant Thomas, having been lead on by an old black man standing in this graveyard.

Sergeant Thomas shakes his head as he walks past us to take the lead of our little group.

“Normally,” he says to me, motioning to Jonah, “we’d take a man that beat up to a medevac.”

Another of his squad, a big man, moves to take the first turn pulling the litter. Lifting it easily, he turns to me and says, “Normally when they’re this beat up, they’re dead, and we bury them.”

The curtain of twilight drops slowly and I turn around one more time, back to the forest that used to be my city, my prison, my home. I can’t stop the tears from welling up in my eyes. I can’t stop from wondering how I, a simple man, a broken man, a failure, could be so involved in events like this.

The end of the world?

The old lady takes my hand, Herb Wiseman’s filthy hand, and pulls me gently forward with Susan, Amy, Steven and the others. I can’t help but wonder at the gentle power that her touch seems to invoke within me. She seems to have a handle on life, on not stopping or giving up for anything. She is like a living beacon of hope.

“What is your name?” I ask her quietly, curiously.

“Angel,” she says to me, barely more than a whisper. “Angel Black, but you can call me Angie.”

She stops abruptly after walking a few steps, and turning, she says in the same clear voice that she spoke to the people in church with, that she had roused Jonah with, “Come on, honey, you can’t hide in that tunnel any longer.”

Slowly, almost gingerly, a tall, pretty woman pokes her head up through the tunnel. Though I do not recognise her yet, she seems to belong with us. As dirty and hopeless and broken she appears, her eyes are full of defiance and strength.

Angel keeps her hold on my hand when we walk out of that place and onto our aimless journey.

After a while, out of the corner of my eye, I see the woman following us. Her beauty that lies hidden behind her makeup, clothes and demeanour seems to be released by the dirt and the shadow that blanket her in the dwindling light of the evening.

My love for her blooms then and there, as we wonder where we are headed.

Chapter Eighteen – With No Direction

Herb

We walk the deserted road northwards, trying to stay ahead of the forest that seems to shadow us, with growth sprouting forth from any exposed bit of soil, even heaving the very concrete and pavement up and out of the way as nature strives towards a new dominion over the land.

Looking back, all I can see are treetops and the shadow of the woman walking behind us, struggling along in her ruined shoes.

After a while, Sergeant Thomas comes back to walk beside me. He holds out his hand, and I shake it.

“Bill Thomas,” he says to me, with a vague attempt to smile.

“Herb Wiseman,” I reply.

We walk for a few minutes in the relative silence of tree trunks creaking behind us.

“Any idea what’s going on?” I ask, finally.

He continues to walk, looking straight ahead. “Apparently the growth continues for twenty-four hours, eventually slowing down to regular levels.” He turns toward me, this time the grin is unmistakable. “I expect the city will be one heck of a different place tomorrow.”

“It was different yesterday. Now I don’t even recognise it,” I reply, quickly, and a bit perturbed. “How do you explain any of these things, are they some kind of government experiment, or something?”

He resumes the forward-looking walk, and I am beginning to interpret this as him looking for the correct answers within his thoughts.

“They were supposed to be experiments,” he says, finally. “This city was supposed to be de-populated overnight so they could test out the effects of the Truth formula.” Again with the inward grin. “I guess the experiment went ahead without the intended observations.

“You see, it was supposed to be a kind of a plague technology. They were originally going to infest the place with crickets and deerflies. You know, just to see what happened, to see what they could do. They figured most of the people would be out of the way, but enough would be left behind to make the thing a worthwhile experiment.

“Well, the whole thing got called off when they discovered the formula didn’t actually work on anything the way it was described. I think most of the scientists had doubts about the project’s feasibility at this point anyway, all except a few. A few men who had a taste for power, who had just a little too much greed driving them to do just about anything.”

I struggle to take it in, and I can see the others listening closely, too, even the other members of Thomas’ squad. “How do you fit into this? Did you have something to do with that forest out there? Is that the experiment?”

Bill chuckles, a quiet, wry laughter that seems to be another one of his ways to delay the conversation long enough to untangle his thoughts.

“The trees are his doing,” he says, pointing at Jonah, still lying unconscious on the stretcher as it is dragged along the ground.

“I don’t know how he did it, but he must have something to do with the formula. I know he isn’t the guy who invented it, so it can’t be him.”

“How do you know that?” Steven asks from the other side of the group.

“Because the orders were to make sure Ruben Truth wouldn’t talk. And only the dead don’t talk.”

Something goes
click
in the long unused areas of my brain. I stop walking. “Who did you say?”

“Ruben Truth. The Truth formula is named for him. This whole business was started by him, or rather his brother – when he went and published the formula on the internet. It was the desperate hope that this research would help us unlock the potential for our survival beyond the carbon economy. Among other things...” he trails off.

He stops beside me, his eyes dark as he sees the misgivings blossoming in my composure. I point down at the inert form on the palette.

“That’s the brother. That’s Jonah Truth.”

Thomas almost blinks. He turns and continues walking, as do we all. He doesn’t speak beyond the brooding thoughts that have silenced his squad and most of the rest of us this whole time.

“So what are we doing now? Where are you taking us?” I ask, beginning to feel like I should be worried, but something in this man’s behaviour makes me know that I needn’t fear him.

“I don’t know where we’re going,” he says. “I only know we can’t stay around here, because they’re sure to find the body eventually.”

We all stop again, and everyone turns to look at Bill, except for the other squad members, who look sideways at each other.

“The body,” says Susan, when no one does. “Whose body?”

“The scientist,” Bill replies, quickly. “We were supposed to protect him. We followed him all over the city and finally he found what he was looking for.” He looks at the direction of Jonah. “Or whom.

“Anyways, he drew some blood out of the soil and was just about to release the plague when I shot him in the head.”

“No sir, I’m afraid you didn’t,” says the soldier who had been walking up front. “You missed his head and caught him in the shoulder. I took him in the other shoulder to spin him back around and everyone else,” he gestures to the others in the group, “pin-holed him up like he deserved.”