How the World Ends (17 page)

…

Rachel

They take refuge in an abandoned farmhouse – probably another day’s walk from the one she wants to get to.

The light of day fails and the darkness of night threatens to consume the waking world. The sound of the wind through the trees brings Rachel to the window of the kitchen to listen. The children sleep on blankets in front of the banked coals in the fireplace. The draughty room is just beginning to get warm. She slides a chair beside the window so she can keep an eye on the driveway, though it is overgrown with weeds.

The place has the musty smell of age and misuse, yet the wood box beside the fireplace has been stacked with dry maple and some kindling wood from old cedar fence rails. In the relative warmth, Rachel wraps her jacket around her shoulders and drifts halfway between waking and sleep. She is reminded of the times when Gwyn would stay awake late into the night with a fever. She remembers sharing the burden of worry about it with Jonah.

Where is he?

Later in the night, Rachel awakens to a rumbling stomach and a reminder that she hasn’t eaten supper. She rises to poke the fire awake and boils some water in an old tin pot. She puts in tiny dandelion and nettle leaves, leaving the raw tea to brew for a few minutes before drinking it down piping hot, right from the pot. She tries not to make a sound as she burns the top of her mouth with the hot, bitter liquid and squishy leaves. It takes the edge off of her weariness and helps her to stay awake.

Back at the window, she alternates watching the darkness outside and the sleeping children on the floor.

Just before dawn, when the light is starting to grow from not-quite-black to almost-grey, a movement catches her eye. It is an old rooster, scratching and picking at the gravel. She cracks an inward smile at the thought of the old bird trying to get the best bugs and worms from the driveway before the hens are awake. Her eyes perk up at the thought: hens!

Leaving the children sleeping, Rachel slips out the door of the back kitchen and walks softly to the small shed, where she can now hear the low clucking of the birds as they awaken from their roosts to lay their eggs. Sure enough, once inside the old, stinking structure, she finds three ancient chickens clucking their pleasure at having each laid an egg.

Once the eggs are retrieved and safely in her hands, she makes her way back to the house. She can’t help but think of the times she did the same thing at Jonah’s parents’ place. It seems like a lifetime ago. So much has happened since those simple times – when the biggest concern was how to spend the time. And now both of their parents are gone, Ruben murdered, Lucia estranged and the world turned upside down.

From behind her, the cock gives a magnificent crow. Rachel can’t decide whether it is to welcome the day, or to scold her for taking the eggs.

For a while at least, it doesn’t matter which. At least they won’t be hungry again for a few hours.

After their breakfast, the children having thoroughly enjoyed their eggs boiled in nettle-water, they pick up their meagre belongings and walk back out to the road. Rachel and the children look back once or twice as they walk away, wondering what happened to the people who used to live there. Wondering why they might have left those chickens behind.

When they reach the road, Jewel turns to her mother and says “Mummy, will Grandma and Grandpa still have chickens when we get to their farm?”

Rachel smiles, torn between the happiness of warm spring days at the farm and the all-too-near grief of seeing Jonah digging the grave for his brother not far from those he and Ruben had dug for his parents. “We’ll just have to see when we get there, sweetie. We should be able to make it there today.”

…

Jonah

The morning is wet and cold. It has not rained, but the dew makes it feel as if it has. Blankets that were warm last night feel wet and hard against my bruised body. The sound of animals stirring in the undergrowth and birds flitting in the trees awakens me fully.

Squatting by the remains of the fire, I poke down below the ashes to where a few coals still smoulder. Pulling dry wood from the bottom of the small pile of wood that had been gathered last night, I manage to get a cheery blaze going that seems to have a rousing effect on the rest of the group. Their collective lethargy weighs on me, for I am about to add to their burdens, I fear, and not lift them.

While folks are going about their morning routines, I walk down the long slope away from the road, hoping to find something to eat that hasn’t been vacuum packed into a military rations bag. I take one of the plastic canteens with me.

I follow the slope of the woods away from the road until I come to a small run-off creek that still has a little water flowing in it. I fill the canteen and take a long drink. The place is quiet, almost serene.

I catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. Being careful not to move quickly, I turn my head slowly to see a doe and her two tiny fawns approaching the creek upwind of me. They drink in short gulps while they glance this way and that, cautiously. They quickly move on and leave me alone with my thoughts.

The people from the city have spread to the four winds. I feel as if I have failed before I began. Did I doubt too much what I was supposed to do? Did I wait too long to act? How would we find anyone, now? I need a sign, I think to myself. I need God to tell me what to do – or someone.

“Michael!” I call out in a whisper. “Where are you?”

Nothing.

“Gabe?” A bit louder this time, but still a whisper – I don’t know why. “Gabe!”

A rustle in the bushes off to my left, up the creek about fifty feet, makes me freeze. For a few seconds I really wonder whether an angel will walk up to me in this forest and tell me what to do.

Footsteps, and the sound of heavy breathing – a low huffing noise. I’ve heard it before, but I can’t pinpoint it.

And then I head the slap of a large paw swatting through the water. I turn downwind, down the creek. There, not more than thirty feet away, is the largest grizzly bear I have ever seen. Its head is lowered down to the water, drinking, and it is slapping at the water with its left paw, as if lazily pondering what to do with this tasty morsel that has appeared for him to devour.

It raises its head to look directly at me, that left paw still swing lazily in the water.

Unable to move, my mind slices through the possible outcomes of the situation and I mentally cross over between the symbol of this inaction and my past failures. I iterate through all of the bear stories I can think of. I only come with only a few anecdotes that outline what one should do when one encounters a grizzly bear in late spring.

It was my uncle’s best friend: he had come across any angry bear whilst burning garbage at his fishing camp, up north. He had frozen stiff with fear, and then fallen down in the mud in his attempt to get away. The bear chased him until he eventual gained, slipping and sliding, the safety of the woodshed just outside of the camp. The bear spent the next hour digging through the garbage before leaving. The bear hadn’t really done anything except scare him away from the tasty garbage.

What should I do? Three, maybe four seconds have passed. The bear is wondering, too: am I worth the bother? Am I a threat?

Screw it
.

I stand up to my full height and, turning upward along the stream, I walk slowly but steadily through the thick brush. Branches tug at my pants and scrape my eyes, but I don’t allow them to slow me down. When I have gone a hundred steps, I turn. The bear is there now, at my spot beside the creek, sniffing at my footprints.

With no questions answered, I turn back to the camp.

Everyone is sitting around in much the same fashion as last night, except all the blankets and gear are packed and ready for travel. The weariness has not faded from their faces. Herb and Lucia are beside each other, and I give them my best attempt at a smile. Everyone looks at me, waiting for me to speak.

“Has everyone decided where they are going to go?” I ask.

Steven speaks first. “I want to find my family,” he says. “They live out in the ‘burbs west of here. I’ll tell anyone I see about what you have planned, but I don’t think anyone will come.”

Bill Thomas comes over to me and takes a drink out of his canteen, which I have just filled up.

“My unit will split up. I’ll head west with Privates Lewis and Chapin to spread the word.” He looks to Steven, “You’re welcome to travel with us, son.”

Steven remains silent, but is visibly relieved by this information.

“Corporal Rogers will take Jones and Dyer and head to the east along the lakeshore,” Bill continues.

Susan stands and points to Amy sitting across the fire. “We’re going that way too,” she says. “But I don’t know what to tell anyone about what to do.”

“Nobody knows what’s going on,” I say with conviction, knowing it to be true. “The most important thing we can do is give people a choice about what to do.

“We can set up a place where there’s a sustainable food supply and band together. I know some of the farmers up north, and my mom and dad have a pretty big place. I think if we’re smart we can set up a community that can hold its own.”

“What do you mean by that, exactly,” says Herb. “’Hold its own?’”

“It means that anarchy is coming.” I pause, letting the words sink in – even to my own ears. “It means that we took several major steps backwards in terms of the available modes of machinery, travel, communication. We need to fend for ourselves and fend off trouble.” I take the canteen back from Bill and take a long swig. “Because trouble will certainly come looking soon.”

Nobody speaks for a moment, everyone looking at each other.

“I think I’d like to see this farm of yours,” says Angie, from behind me. “I’d like to see some people getting a fresh start for a change.”

I see Lucia blush out of the corner of my eye. Herb takes her hand and they look at me. I had always figured he would come with me.

“Alright.” I take a breath. “I guess this is it, then. I’ll take Angie, Herb and Lucia north to meet up with my family and get things prepared. I will wait for two weeks at the farm before I come back to get you. If you get lost, try to make it back to main road just north of the city. I will ride by there two weeks and two days from now. If I can’t make it myself, I’ll send someone else, but someone will be there to lead you north.

“Let’s head out, and see what kind of world we’re living in now.”

Chapter Twenty – The World We’re Living In

Jonah

The day is calm and bright. The green of the grass is disturbed only by the shadows of wispy clouds drifting slowly through the sky. It’s not too hot and not too cold. We are forced to share the road with no other travellers.

It feels as if it’s peaceful, this world having ended.

I wonder, as we walk slowly but purposefully along the pavement, what has happened elsewhere. Now that we are forced to walk, and there are no cellphones to answer or make calls with, no radio stations to tune into, it makes the world seem broad and expansive. At the same time though, we have had our world shrunken down to the place in front of our next footstep as we plod on towards our destination.

Angie finds it hard to keep the pace, and I wonder how she has made it even this far – probably through pure determination. She holds tightly to my hand and I feel more of her weight lean into me as the morning wears on. We stop for breaks every half hour or so, and the grimace on her face, as we rise to continue on, is tighter and more stretched every time.

Herb and Lucia walk a ways behind us, and I can hear their quiet murmurings to each other. It seems somehow fitting that such an unlikely couple can have ended up paired together; Herb having spent the last months looking for his next meal and bed on the streets, whilst Lucia was... who knows where Lucia was, or what she has been up to. She seems to have taken James’ death quite well – or perhaps that marriage was over long before his passing.

I can’t remember the last time I have seen Lucia smile. Looking back at her and Herb, she is smiling now.

I feel myself becoming increasingly watchful, and a feeling of dread seems to weigh more heavily on me than Angie’s frail weight. Despite the promise of spring and its resplendent growth, the world has changed for us. Rachel is out there with Gwyn and Jewel.

Somewhere.

My eyes rake the horizon from side to side and front to back at regular intervals. Angie notices my anxiety and squeezes my hand more tightly. In spite of such trepidation, the feeling that I should be somewhere else, or doing something else, or moving in a different direction, have faded. They have been replaced with the knowledge, deep down, that this is my purpose. I feel the call pulling me forward, somehow homeward.

A rocky fence-line catches my eye. It is a row of large stones dragged and piled there in years past as the fields were cleared of the debris that rises with each defrosting of the cold earth. Thin green shoots pierce the shadow of those dark rocks: asparagus! I leave the others at the side of the road and stride off to the fence as they look at me with weary curiosity.

“I’ll be right back,” I call out over my shoulder.

“Whatever,” Herb says back. “If you want to go running through the green grass it doesn’t bother me. Just don’t ask me to follow you.”

“Herb, come on over here!” I yell out from about fifty yards away. The patch is immense, with the tender sweet shoots just waiting for us. Herb ambles over and I show him how to gather the long stems in a large bundle. We save a few for eating right now, but most of them we bunch together and tie with a makeshift rope made out of last-year’s grapevine that we find laying in the fence-line. We both sling a large bundle of asparagus on top of our packs and continue on, all four of us now chomping liberally like so many lonely cattle wandering home.

…

Herb

Jonah begins to pick up the pace as he finds more and more fresh produce at what seems to me like completely random spots. After our midday meal of asparagus and some sort of nettle tea, he leaves us ambling along the road carrying and dragging an ever-growing stack of his gatherings. At one point he mumbles something about being able to collect more things if we would just continue on the road where he can see us.