The End of the World Running Club (10 page)

We landed on the only flat piece of tarmac left. The helicopter powered down and we re-fitted our masks, following the girl outside again. She led the dark-eyed woman and her son away from the helicopter, beckoning for us to follow. We ran across the buckled ground and into the building. Two armed guards in masks pointed ahead and we headed down some stairs. The doors closed behind us and after another flight of stairs we were in the sudden quiet of a long corridor. The ceiling was low and the dim electric lights seemed to throb. The girl walked briskly ahead of us. I followed, carrying Alice and trying to steady Beth as she tripped over the feet of her oversized radiation suit.

My mind was still catching up. Part of it was still absorbing the detail from the helicopter. Part of it was still in the cellar. A very thin shard of present consciousness was guiding me as I stumbled through the corridor. I tried to get my bearings and work out what direction we were facing.

“Excuse me,” I said. My voice was hoarse. The girl glanced back, not slowing her pace.

“Officer?” I tried.

“Private,” said the girl over her shoulder. “Private Grimes.”
 

“Are we underground?” I said.

“Yes, I’m taking you to the medical ward.”

“My son,” croaked the dark-eyed woman. She sounded younger than she looked. A foreign accent; Polish perhaps. “My son needs water, please.”

“It’s not far now,” said the Private.

“We had no time,” the woman whimpered. She looked round at us, eyes blinking with horror, shaking her head. “There was no time, no time at all.”

There were doors every few metres on either side of the corridor. Some were closed. Those that weren’t opened into small rooms. I glanced into one and saw a man sitting on a bed frame, both hands clutching the top of his head. In another a woman sat sleeping with two children on her lap.

We turned left at the end of the corridor and came to a set of double doors. Behind these was a small, makeshift hospital ward. I shielded my eyes as we entered. Bright halos of light spread out from the standing spotlights lighting up a stone floor.   Fifty or sixty patients lay in as many beds. Hacking coughs, wheezes and complaint filled the air as men and women in combat fatigues circulated the room with water, pills, bandages and drips.
 

One of them, a girl younger than Private Grimes, took Beth and Arthur to a bed near the corner. Alice and I followed. My legs felt weak and my head was spinning.

“Daddy?”

Beth was almost out, her head lolling to one side.

“Just one second,” stammered the girl. She ran to the bed next to Beth’s where a man lay staring up at the ceiling breathing short, fast breaths. His face was shining bright pink and his arms and chest were in bandages. The girl bent down over his arm, a syringe shaking in her hand. She muttered something to herself, seemed to struggle with it. I squinted, trying to make out what was going on through my blurred vision. I heard Alice’s voice.

“Daddy?”
 

Private Grimes appeared again and laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder. I heard a barely audible whisper.

“It’s OK, don’t panic.” She took the needle gently from her, but I could tell she was shaking too. “It’s like this...like this I think...there.”

The girl’s head sank down and shoulders shook a little, one hand to her face.

“Fifteen needs some water,” said Private Grimes. “It’s OK, go on.”

The girl took a deep breath, straightened her jacket and marched down the ward.

Private Grimes turned to us. She must have seen the look on my face.

“We’re all learning,” she said. “Not many of us have much more than first aid...are...are you OK?”

“Daddeeee!”

“Not now, sweetheart,” I said. My voice seemed groggy, far away.

“Doctors...nurses...were there no doctors here?”

“Sir, are you OK?”

“Daddeeeeee!”

I looked around. A man looked back at me in the bed opposite. He was old, in his seventies perhaps. His wide brown face broke into a dry smile as he caught my eye.

“Different rays, mate,” he said in a cracked, Australian drawl. I frowned, felt myself losing consciousness. “Different rays.”

I looked down at Alice, her mouth buried in one of the cans, the rest of her face all hazy and twisted into a frown of embarrassment, her legs tightly squeezed together. I saw a puddle growing on the floor beneath her legs. Everything was moving, the walls seemed to disappear.

“Need a wee.”

“Sir? Sir? Can you hear me? Sir?”

S
TRINGYPHONE

Alice never let the two tin cans from her sight. She called it our ‘stringyphone’. From the day we arrived in Castlelaw it was the only way she would speak to me and the only way I could speak to her. She talked to her mother in whispers I couldn’t hear and to nobody else. Any question was answered with a nod or a shake of the head.

We were moved to our own room on the main corridor. It was smaller than our cellar had been with a single bed in the corner, a small table and a chair. Beth and Alice took the bed while I slept on the floor on a pile of blankets. Arthur, suffering from severe dehydration, was moved into a recovery room, so Beth spent most of the days in there with him, soothing him, talking to him, stroking his head. One morning, about a week after we had arrived, I woke to find her gone from the bed and Alice standing over me, holding out a can. I took it and placed it over my ear.

“Mummy’s gone,” she whispered into her can.

“I can see that,” I said. I sat up on the floor. The room was dark at the best of times, but there was a little light seeping down through the glass bricks in our ceiling. I guessed it was dawn.

“Do you know where she’s gone?”

Alice shook her head.

“Come on, then,” I said. I stood and took her hand. “Let’s go and find her.”

There was nobody else up. Each door we passed was shut. I led Alice into the ward, where a few people still lay sleeping. As we reached the door into the recovery room, the old Australian man at the end of the ward raised his head.

“How’s your boy?” he whispered.

“Don’t know,” I said. “Just going to find out.”

There was no sound behind the door. Something made me pause. Then I pushed it open.

There was nobody inside. The light was switched off, the bed had been stripped and remade and the machine had been unplugged, the thin wires that had been attached to Arthur’s chest neatly coiled up and tied with rubber bands. The chair the Beth usually sat on had been moved into a corner. I looked around the dark, empty room and felt my stomach heave.

Alice looked up at me expectantly.

What’s next, Daddy?

I took a breath and pulled Alice through the room and out of the back door that led onto another dark corridor full of closed doors. My head was swimming.

“Hello?” I shouted. “Can anyone help me?”

I strode to the end, banging on each door as I went. Alice watched me from the doorway, gripping the stringyphone to her chest.

“Hello? Please? Anyone? I’m looking for my son. Where’s my son? Hello?”

There was no sound from the rooms. I led Alice back through the recovery room and into the ward.

“Has anybody seen my son?” I shouted.

Most of the people in the beds were awake now. One middle-aged woman looked at us, shook her head and whimpered, holding her hand to her mouth.

“Oh no,” growled the old man in the corner, closing his eyes. “Oh no.”

I ran from the ward, back up our corridor, pulling Alice along behind me with her feet barely touching the floor. I banged on each door as I went.

“Where’s my son? Where’s my wife? Beth! Beth!”

People began to emerge from the rooms, rubbing their eyes and protesting. Then, one by one, they seemed to realise what was going on and shake their heads. Some walked towards me with careful, outstretched arms.
 

“Get away,” I said as they approached. “Don’t touch me! Where’s my son? Beth!”

I ran back up the corridor and up to the next level where the soldiers’ quarters were. Alice yelled behind me as I dragged her up the steps.

“Beth!”

At the top of the steps I tripped and stumbled, catching Alice as she almost did the same. My heart pounded as I crossed the landing.

I gibbered some nonsense as I fell through the doors of the canteen.

“Where’s Arthur?”

Alice let go of my hand and stood rooted to the spot in front of the swinging doors.
 

“No, Daddy!”

I tripped again and sprawled on the floor, my face smacking against the cold tiles. Stunned a little, I got to my feet and looked up. There, at the other end of the canteen, Beth sat in a chair beneath a small, high window.  Grey morning light trickled down onto her, making dusty patterns in her hair and across her pale face. In her arms was Arthur, feeding from her right breast, kicking his legs and making little contented squawks.

Beth looked up in surprise.

“Ed,” she said. “What are you doing?”

I let my head fall back onto the floor, took a breath and waited for my heartbeat to settle. I may have said
thank God
. I may have said that.

Eventually I stood and walked across to Beth, took her head in my arms and kissed her long on her forehead.

“I thought…” I began.

Beth looked up at me. Her eyes were wide, calm, filled with light. Her face was full and strong and passive. She always looked like this when she fed our children. It was as if the best part of her was in action. Some pure and primal thing had stirred to the surface and was shining through everything else.

“What did you think?” she said.

Alice joined us at my side, looking up at me reproachfully but taking my hand nonetheless.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Doesn’t matter what I thought.”

Beth smiled.

“I haven’t said thank you yet,” she said.

“Thank you for what?”

“For saving us,” she said. “For making sure we were safe. For being ready.”

She turned back to concentrate on Arthur’s feeding.

“It doesn’t seem like many people were,” she said.

I shuddered. The truth was I had nothing to do with this. The truth was that Arthur wouldn’t have been sick at all if I hadn’t been finishing my second bottle of wine when I should have been gathering supplies. The truth was that I had narrowly avoided condemning my entire family to death because I was drunk. The only reason we survived at all was because Arthur was an early riser.

I stroked my son’s warm brow. The truth was: Arthur saved us.

We had no idea what was happening in those first few weeks. We were given numbers. Ours was 18. Groups of us were called out every day for food; five or six families or individuals at a time traipsing quietly up the steps to the canteen and eating in silence. Most were still in shock.

It seemed as if we were well stocked. There was bottled water, dried pasta, rice, canned fruit and vegetables, cereals, oats, chocolate and UHT milk. Meals were good and served three times a day. As far as we knew, we were in a fully functioning military barracks. The soldiers seemed organised but they largely kept to their own quarters. We saw little of them. When we did, they were moving quickly from room to room, avoiding eye contact. Answers to questions were short.

We knew that electricity was running from a generator. Its noise woke us when it was started in the morning and stayed with us throughout the day until the lights went off in the early evening. There was not much daylight in the barracks and no views of outside through the frosted glass of the windows. We lived under low ceilings with nothing to see and only the deep thrum of an engine reverberating through the walls. We felt like we were on a small cargo ship travelling cautiously through a calm sea.
 

We assumed that fuel was low.  Every morning of the first week I heard a helicopter leave and return some hours later. A few more people were brought in from these rescue missions. Then the sound of the chopper stopped. Instead, we began to hear the crunch of boots on gravel outside our window every morning. Troops left on foot and returned in the late evening.

Then our meals began to be served only twice a day. Portions became smaller.

One day, at breakfast, I sat with a cup of bitter, hot instant coffee and tried to post milk-soaked corn flakes into Arthur’s mouth. Alice and Beth ate porridge, Beth stroking her hair. The room was filled with low murmurs and cold, grey light. Although the windows were frosted, we could make out the shapes of the hills behind them and the colour of the sky. It had never been blue and it had never been as light as it should have been for the time of year. Every hour of daylight felt like very early morning on a foggy autumn day.

Two soldiers entered the room. I recognised the first as the girl from the helicopter, Private Grimes. Next to her stood an officer. He must have been in his twenties. He had fair, cropped hair and nervous eyes that flicked around the room as Grimes spoke.

“9am in the mess room,” she said, motioning to the man beside her.
 

 
“Second Lieutenant Yuill would like to speak with you all,” she said. The young man raised his hand and offered the room a curt smile. I watched Grimes scan the tables as they rippled with a series of shrugs and grumbles. “Please don’t be late,” she said, as they turned to leave.

The mess was a long room that once been a breakout area for the troops. A redundant television stood unplugged in one corner. Notice boards and photo collages lined the walls: a sea of group hugs, rock horns, beers held aloft and simulated sex positions in bars, most of the pictures’ subjects now being dead, of course. Lines of red and blue plastic chairs now faced the front. In one corner was a pile of empty plastic tubs, bottles and cartons that had been taken out from the kitchens for the younger children to play with. Fifteen other families had been found by the salvage parties; around thirty children under the age of ten with no toys, no books, no television, no DVDs, most of their parents secretly dreading the moment when their offspring would snap out of the shock and require entertaining again. Arthur didn’t mind. At nine months old he was more interested in old milk cartons than cartoons.