The End of the World Running Club (37 page)

“Fucking noodles!”
 

He rolled away from us onto his side and crossed his arms, slamming his head against his pack and grumbling.

“I need meat!” he said.

In the morning, I was surprised to find myself awake before anyone else. It was not yet light but I could see the effects of the sunrise going on behind the cloud. A thin band of light was glowing on the wet horizon. I sat up, stood up, stretched and breathed in the fetid air. We had grown used to the stale smell around us all the time, but it seemed to be getting much stronger now that we were close to a city and the pressure of the cloud above did nothing to help. We knew what it was.
 

I felt alright, better than I had felt the night before. The tight strain in my legs and back and the sharp pain in my knees and hips were there constantly, but it was as though the all-encompassing tourniquet in which my body was gripped was being slowly released. A small release each morning, but enough to allow me to walk more freely, feel gravity just that little bit less than the day before. I felt a surge of hope with every dim sunrise.

I scraped some snow from the ridge with a pan and lit the stove. I sat and watched the small, fierce flame burn, enjoying being the only one awake for a change. The stove radiated warmth and promised me warm liquid. I tried not to think about it, afraid that my good mood was too fragile and might vanish like a butterfly under too much scrutiny.

The water boiled and daylight found the ridge. I made tea and poured it into mugs for the others. Grimes woke up first.

“Morning,” I said. She pushed herself up painfully from the hard ground and pulled up the hat that had been covering her face. She looked across at me, confused. Her skin was pale and her eyes puffy with sleep, the corners of her mouth downturned.

“Good morning,” she said at last. I handed her a mug.

The others woke. We drank our tea and headed off, Bryce still miserable and talking only in grunts. Richard studied his route again and led us back onto the road and into the city. I ran with Harvey as usual. After a mile, he looked me up and down.

“What’s got into you?” he said.

“Nothing much,” I said. “Maybe today’s just a good day.”

The northern suburbs of the city were mostly burnt-out industrial estates. We checked them for supplies and found a supermarket that had been stripped entirely of its stock. Even the store and warehouse had been picked clean. This was not the work of opportunistic looters; there was nothing left, no mess on the floor, no dropped bottles to salvage. Even the tills were open and empty. The whole building had been meticulously emptied by humans who knew what they were doing.

Every place that still stood was the same. We had not seen anyone yet, but the feeling of a human presence, non-chaotic and focused, was everywhere.

The smell became stronger as we ran deeper into the built-up streets. In less than three hours we hit the centre. We crossed the river - now a deep gully with barely a trickle of water flowing in its bed - then stopped when we came to a square.

“We need water,” said Richard. We looked around in surprise as his voice echoed around from the walls of the empty, silent buildings. “We should take a look in these offices,” he said. “Maybe there’s some still left in the pipes, vending machines or something.

“Why are you whispering?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked about the square. The buildings were heavily damaged and burned, whole sections torn away exposing needle-like struts and piranha tooth beams. Windows were mostly broken, doors open, glass shopfronts missing and the contents they had once protected now gone. Nothing left. There were no cars on the road. No rubbish strewn on the streets. I thought of locusts.

“Seems odd, don’t you think?” said Richard. “I feel like...like we’re…”

“Exposed,” said Grimes. “Look up there.” She pointed up to the third floor of what had been a department store, now open to the world. We looked up in time to see movement, something darting quickly behind a wall.

“We’re being watched,” she said. “Come on.”

Grimes led us closer to one of the walls of the square and we jogged along it towards the southern edge, where a small road led away from the open space. We heard a scrape above us.

“Watch out!” said Grimes. A clump of brickwork fell and shattered in a cloud of red dust before us. We looked up and saw the silhouette of a face looking down on us. It disappeared back through a window.

“Come on,” said Grimes. “We have to move faster.” We heard more scuffles and scrapes above us. “Now!”

We started to run. As we did we heard voices, whoops and yelps coming from across the street. Then we saw them, six of them, young men leaning out over the edge of a second-storey room, hanging on to broken walls and calling across to the building opposite.

We had crossed a side street to a building that looked like it had once been a department store. The glass doors and windows were gone and it was empty inside. Shouts came from inside, and footsteps clattering on metal. Deep in the darkness I saw escalators scurrying with shadows.

“Cross the square!” I shouted, pulling Harvey out into the open with me. We sprinted across the concrete, a pedestrian area of statues that were now splintered and stained with blasts of soot, and benches that were now iron frames with no trace left of their wooden seats.

I glanced back at the department store and saw three boys standing still at the doors. There were hoots and shouts coming from all around us, movement almost everywhere we looked.  The boys behind us shouted something and we saw five more shin down from the first floor of the building we were heading for. They ran towards us a little and we stopped, edged back.

“Fucking Rabbits,” said Bryce through gritted teeth.

“Down here,” said Grimes. We followed her down a street that widened out into a strip of disintegrated Georgian shopfronts. The clamour seemed to follow us, growing louder as we ran. Pipes clanged inside the buildings and shrieks echoed up and down the long street. A large group of whoever was making them seemed to spill out of a collapsed wall and blocked the street ahead. We turned back, took a left and found ourselves blocked again. The line of youths remained still, not advancing on us, just preventing us from going further.

“We have to find somewhere longer and wider,” said Richard as we backed out again. “Somewhere we can try to lose them.” He nodded up a steep side street. “Here,” he said. “I think this leads to a main road.”

We ran up the curved hill and came out on a long, paved road. A group of boys were waiting for us, walking slowly from the right. Two of the groups behind had merged and were following us up the hill.

“Now,” said Richard. “Left. Run.”

We ran at pace, Grimes far ahead, but we couldn’t keep up a sprint. The group behind us was now fifteen strong at least. They were a long way behind, a silent crowd of menace, keeping their distance and jogging slowly.

“Why aren’t they catching us up? They look like they could easily outrun us.”

“Shit,” said Grimes, raising her head to the sky and suddenly slowing down. “Because we’re not being chased.”

“What?” said Richard as we caught Grimes up. “Why are you stopping, come on!”

“We’re not being chased,” said Grimes. We stopped at her side. “We’re being escorted. They want us to go this way.” She put her hands on her knees, catching her breath. Behind us, the group had slowed to walking pace. They were no longer making a noise.

“Look,” said Grimes, nodding to our left and right. I saw a few others hiding in the shadowy hollows of the empty shops and banks that had once made up the street. They peered back at us. Grimes looked back at the group behind, who had now stopped and formed a straight line across the street. One of them, tall and gaunt with a red hoody, stood out in front, legs apart and hands by his side. Grimes turned and took a few steps towards him, but the red-hooded boy held up a finger in warning. He shook his head twice, then jabbed his finger ahead of us.

Grimes exhaled and put her hands on her hips. She turned back to us.

“Keep walking,” she said.

“Fuck that,” said Bryce, reaching for the cricket bat he had found in the lorry cab. “Let’s fight.”

“There’s too many,” said Richard, bending over to catch his breath. “What’s the point?”

“At least we can take a few out,” said Bryce, but Grimes had reached up and laid her hand gently on his arm. He stopped, looked down at her. Another small shake of her head. He replaced the bat.

We walked silently across the city for two hours, heads down, our herds behind us. Occasionally another cluster of them would appear to our left or right and we would turn obediently down an opposite street. They gave us no directions, said nothing.

Eventually the city gave way to suburbs again. Salt and vegetation began to mingle with the smell of decay.

“They’re taking us towards the sea,” said Richard.

We passed through a long stretch of streets which gradually eroded into miles of black wasteland, flattened and burned and littered with plastic, broken bicycles and piles of rubble. We saw some fires burning on this ground. A family sat around one. The father looked back at me through haunted eyes as he warmed his hands on the flame. His wife sat across from him, holding her daughter as she played with some broken relic of a toy.

Our herds nudged us gently across towards some buildings in the distance. It was starting to get dark as we approached them and I felt the pang of another day gone, wasted without progress. Suddenly I felt the urge to bolt. I must have bristled or twitched or maybe Harvey just knew what I was thinking, because he reached out and grabbed my arm to steady me.

“Easy, mate,” he said. “Be alright. We’ll get out of this, you’ll see.”

We came to the other side of the wasteland and found ourselves on what looked like a housing estate. The houses were in bad repair and what little plant life had survived in the small, patchy front lawns and between the rusted gates was untended and wild. I saw faces at windows. Some skinny children in oversized winter coats and hats looked up from a game as we passed them on the pavement. Our escorts were close behind us now. They led us down a narrow street and onto another, where some older adolescents skulked in covens along the pavements. One caught sight of us and pushed himself away from the wall he was leaning against. He had a shaven head and a clean face, with a tattoo under one of his eyes. He slunk towards us, eyeballing me. I held his glare as he approached, then he threw out a hand and shoved my left shoulder. I wasn’t ready for it and I swallowed a cry of pain as the tendons jerked under the sudden pressure. I continued walking, the boy’s frowning face in mine as he walked with his chest up against me.

We huddled into a group and walked slowly down the middle of the road. A girl from the other side of the street strutted out. Her face was thick with make-up and her bare, fat legs showed beneath a long, blue trench coat. She sneered and swung a hand wildly up at Richard’s head, plastic bangles rattling as it struck his outstretched arm.

“Jeeesus,” said Harvey. “Hold on a minute.”

I could feel Bryce rattling behind me. My guy was still in my face and the fat girl was walking backwards in front of us, grinning, her hands out above her head, beckoning us on. Jeers and whistles broke out and two boys, maybe sixteen years old, strode out in front of us with their hands in their pockets. They chewed their lips and cocked their heads at Grimes, looking her up and down and grabbing themselves between their legs. One brushed up against her and started smelling her hair. I heard a rumble in Bryce’s throat.

“Out of my way!” he yelled, pushing between Richard and me, shoving his palm into the face of the one next to me and making for the boy in mid-leer over Grimes. The boy yelped as he felt a thick hand around his neck and another by his trousers. Bryce hauled him up and tossed him into the gutter, then made for his friend who was already running away down the street. He fell at the feet of four older, skinny comrades, who pulled him to his feet and started making towards Bryce, their shoulders rotating, glaring him down. Jeers and cackles broke out across the gathering crowd as they prepared to see what happened.

A piercing whistle sounded from the top of the street and the men who were advancing on Bryce suddenly stopped and turned. A large woman with cropped black hair stood by the door of one of the houses, feet astride and gloved fists on her sizeable hips. She was at least six feet tall and wore five or six huge cardigans one on top of the other, a long, purple dress and black boots as high as her chubby knees.  Sitting patiently at her feet was a small Jack Russell dog and behind her stood five men smoking. One stood forward. He had the toothless face of an old man, although something told me he wasn’t much older than me. He wore a denim jacket cut off at the shoulders to revealing long, sinewy arms. The woman beamed down at the commotion around us and clapped her hands twice above her head as if she was calling back a pack of hounds.

“Enough boys,” she said. “Enough.” She started walking down towards us, shooting a dark glare at the girl who had attacked Richard as she passed her. The girl skulked back across to the pavement.

“That’s no way to treat guests,” warned the woman as she came between Bryce and the five boys. She gave them a look too, and they retreated slowly, eyes still fixed on Bryce. Bryce smiled sweetly and gave them a wave with his fingers.

The woman turned to Bryce and looked him once up and down.

“I do apologise,” she said, thrusting a great hand towards him. Deep, hollow Lancashire vowels boomed around the street. Bryce looked warily down at the hand before him, and at the trunk of arm to which it was attached. “Name’s Jenny,” she said, her jaw jutting out from her grinning face. “Jenny Rae.”

Bryce slowly folded his hand around hers.

“Charmed,” he said, squinting.

The woman held Bryce’s hand firmly without shaking it. She nodded once and looked around his face, searching for something, then released his hand and turned to us. I felt like a child returning home covered in mud.