The End of the World Running Club (50 page)

We had travelled about four miles by the time the storm hit the coast properly. The wind bore down upon us with whips of rain, blustering and snapping, trying to herd us back inland. We made it another two miles before looking for shelter. The light had fallen dramatically, but Bryce pointed out a lonely house sitting in the mist on a rocky outcrop and led us towards it.

As we fought through the wind, Harvey pointed out that all of my injuries were on the right side of my body, because I led with this side. Every stride was right foot first, with the left acting as support. He wagered that, if I tripped, I would always put my right hand down to break my fall. Hence the broken fingers. I was thinking about whether I could look at a crow more with my right eye than with my left when the ground beside me seemed to shudder and shift. I felt my foot slide on gravel. When I looked, Harvey was gone, replaced by a hole in the ground.

“Bryce!” I fell down to the ground and looked in. Harvey was lying face down and still, about ten feet beneath. The wind blew clods of wet earth onto his back.

“What happened?” yelled Bryce as he scrambled down beside me.

“I don’t know, the ground just opened up.”

“A sinkhole?”

“James said the land wasn’t safe.”

“We have to get him out,” said Bryce. “Can you get down?”

“I’ll try.”

Bryce held my arm as I lowered myself in. Harvey was out cold. I turned him over and wiped the dirt from his face. He opened his eyes and blinked at me. There was a long cut across his forehead.

“Hello,” he murmured. He touched a finger to the wound and scored its length, wincing as he reached a deep gouge thickening with blood near the top. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure, but you had a fall. Can you move?”

“I think so.” I helped Harvey to his feet and shouted up to Bryce.

“He’s hurt. Can you lift him out?”

“Pass me his arms,” said Bryce. He held down a hand and hauled Harvey up the side, then turned and pulled me out too. Harvey stood groggily in the deafening rain, holding a hand to his head. He looked at us sheepishly.

“Sorry fellas,” he said.

“Not your fault,” said Bryce. “Let’s get out of this rain.”

We each put an arm around Harvey and helped him the rest of the way to the house. With every other step he’d mumble another apology.
Sorry, sorry fellas, dunno what happened, sorry fellas
.

The house was a small, pebble-dashed cottage with a yard and a garage that backed onto a field and, beyond, the edge of a cliff. There were no lights on inside, no sound of a generator, no candles. Water streamed down in a waterfall from a broken gutter. We hammered on the door, the windows too, but there was no answer. We went round the back and found an open door banging against its frame.
 
White paint peeled from its wood and most of its glass panels were smashed through. We pulled Harvey inside and closed the door.
 
We were in a utility room. Crumpled and faded clothes hung on a stand in the corner and the stone floor was puddled with rain.

“Hello?” I called.

“He’s bleeding,” said Bryce. “Let’s get him inside.”

“I’m alright, just need a sit down, sorry fellas, sorry.”

We pushed a door through into a kitchen. The stench hit us like lead. A man and a woman sat at the table, slumped forwards, long dead. The top of the man’s scalp was turning green and crumpling like a cabbage. His arms were stretched out before him and I could see blistering pustules up and down his wrists.

“Christ,” said Bryce, holding his free hand to his mouth. “Do you think it’s the virus?”

“Looks that way,” I replied.

We stood in the doorway, covering our faces, Harvey still hanging between us. He gave a groan.

“Do you think it’s safe in here? Can we catch it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we already have,” said Bryce.

“The garage,” I said. “Let’s take him there.”

We slammed the door on the kitchen and found a set of keys hanging on a hook in the utility room. Harvey gave a groan as we crossed the yard and his feet stumbled in the mud, trying to get a hold on the loosening ground. The third key fitted the metal door and Bryce pulled it open. We fell inside and I pulled Harvey’s legs out of the rain, sitting him up against a brick wall. Bryce began to search the square room. There was hardly any light and most of the space was taken up by a small, battered boat on a trailer.

“Any blankets? Sheets?” I said.

“Sorry fellas, sorry.”

“I can’t see,” Bryce growled. A tin can rattled on the floor. Something made of glass broke as Bryce swept the shelves.

“He’s really bleeding,” I said.

“Found a torch,” said Bryce. “Shit.” He began scanning the room with the watery light. “OK. Wait…here.” He threw over a pile of dust sheets. I tore off a strip and held it against Harvey’s brow. His head lolled and he began to mumble something.

“Safe now, Harvey,” I whispered. I wrapped two of the sheets around him and laid his head against the wall. Then I tied a longer strip around his head. The dirty grey fabric darkened with blood but it seemed to staunch the flow. Harvey sighed and smiled at me.

“Thanks mate, sorry fellas.”

Bryce began throwing other things down to me from the shelves - a couple of candles, matches, a dog blanket. Then he stopped and crouched next to me.

“Found these too,” he said. In his hands were two tins of baked beans. He gave one to me and we opened them. I held mine out to Harvey.

“Eat some, Harvey,” I said.

Harvey frowned and waved away the can.

“Nah, I’m not hungry, thanks,” he said. “You go ahead. Think I just need to rest a bit. Sorry fellas.”

 
The storm screamed and hammered the garage door as if the sea itself, filled with some nameless, unshakeable grievance, had risen up over the cliffs and hunted us down. We ate our beans nervously, watching Harvey swim down through his unconsciousness, his face flickering with whatever cruel dreams lay beneath the surface.

We saved some of our beans for him. I lit a candle and we sat beneath the remaining sheets, huddled next to Harvey on either side. Bryce struggled for a while with a roll-up, pushing his last wisps of tobacco into a soaking paper and trying to ignite it over the flame. Eventually he cursed and threw the whole mess on the floor, sticking the match between his teeth instead.

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess,” I said.

He didn’t answer for a while. “We choose our own mess,” he said at last. “Besides, I wasn’t doing anything. It’s not like I had family of my own to look after.”

“Do you think you ever will?” I asked, surprising myself at the question.

He snorted. “Not after seeing what you’ve put yourself through,” he said. “Too much fucking trouble for me. No thanks.”

“We choose our own mess,” I said.

Bryce smiled. “Aye,” he said. Then he turned to me, his face softening. “And your mess isn’t so bad Edgar. Remember that.”

“I know,” I said.

Bryce’s eyes glistened for a while in the struggling light. Then he blinked back the weakness and the moment was gone.

“Anyway,” he yawned. He flicked the match away and lay down with his back to me on the cold floor. “I’ve not yet met the woman who can handle my shite.”
 

“I saw you at Bartonmouth,” I said.
 

I knew I was taking a risk. I don’t know why I wanted to push Bryce into talking about it. Maybe - sitting in the cold with the storm outside and Harvey injured between us - maybe I just didn’t want another conversation masked in bravado. Maybe I wanted to talk about something honest, and maybe something told me that we wouldn’t have another chance to do so.
 

“With Grimes. With Laura, I mean. You went into her room that night.”

Bryce was silent for a moment.

“I know you did, arsehole. I saw you looking,” he said. I heard his head turn. “What did you think, I was in there after a shag?”

I didn’t answer. Bryce wheezed a laugh.

“You think I fancied my chances?” he said. “Picking up where that dickhead left off?”

“I didn’t say that,” I began.

He laughed again. “That’s funny. Christ, Ed, what do you take me for?”

“I didn’t mean anything. Sorry.”

“I mean I wasnae exactly her type, was I?” he said, suddenly angry. “She was after Richard. I knew that, even in the barracks I knew that.” He settled his head down and shuffled under the blanket.

“So what happened?”

“I just wanted to tell her, that’s all. I saw how she looked after she made that pass at him. I just wanted her to know.”

“Know what?”
 

“Just know.”

I slid down the wall and made a pillow from a bunched up blanket. I lay in silence for a while until I heard Bryce’s rumbling snores. Then I closed my eyes.

When I awoke the metal door was still banging, but less violently. The storm seemed to have moved further away. The candle was almost out but I could still see Harvey’s face. The bandage was completely red now. His eyes were twitching and small sounds whistled from his cracked lips.

Hey? Wha… Hornsby? Too far. Not my run, mate, you tell…tell Rosie. Give it to her, she’ll stamp it for ya…yeah nice and dusty.

I raised myself up on one elbow, trying to listen.

Real hot one today, gotta watch…wha…? No, no, no, mate that’s not what…wha..? I said tell Rosie…she’ll stamp it for…I gotta get going, mate…letters won’t post themselves…all nice and dusty…Annie? Agnes?
 

I watched him wrestle with the tangle of memories in his head. They were his and his alone. They were inside him, trapped and bound inescapably to him. No amount of storytelling could release them. None of them could truly be shared. In the end, I thought, this is how we all end up; running alone through our own wilderness, the landscape of disjointed events that form our lives, with nobody to make sense of it but ourselves. The road is ours, and ours alone.

I still had no way of telling how much of what Harvey had told Bryce and I about Australia was true. I didn’t know if he had been a postman in the bush, if he had fought forest fires, if he had run his routes with his dogs in the New South Wales sun.

Gotta go…can’t stay here…all dark and dead…can’t…can’t

If he had run because his dogs had died.

Losing dogs
, Bryce had said, next to that roadside fire. The taste of rat had still been on my tongue.
Hardest fucking thing.
Harder than losing a person.

I remember Harvey suddenly seeming to flinch, to close a little. I remember feeling something, a brief glimmer of sadness, as if a small trap had shut. Some of the memory he was coaxing into the world had pulled back. It didn’t want to fly, it wanted to stay inside.

Well,
Harvey had said.
I don’t really know about that.
 

All dark and dead…that road…bright and living…Agnes?

Everything here was dark and dead,
he had said
.
Everything out there was bright and living.

Agnes? Where’s Annie? Bring her in love, it’s too hot out there. She got sunscreen on? OK darling, I gotta go now…I’ll see ya later, love you too.
 

His words became faint whimpers and his eyes became still. Then he coughed and shifted his head against the wall. I watched his chest moving in the dying candlelight until the flame burned out.

The road is ours, and ours alone.

When I woke again the storm had gone and the small window at the back of the garage was brightening into a square of blue. Bryce was still asleep and Harvey’s head was still resting on the back wall. His jaw hung open and his eyes were empty pools turned up towards the ceiling. His hands lay face up on the blanket, fingers curling loosely into his palms. A thin trickle of blood had dried to one side of his face and neck. His chest was still.

Something seemed to contract inside me, like a cord drawn tight around my stomach. I got up, shook off the blanket and staggered back to the door. I stood there for a while, looking down on him with horror. Then I felt my stomach clench again and opened the door, stumbling out into the early morning and vomiting into the dirt.

I wiped my face and steadied myself against a wall that ran next to the garage, looking across the field of mud and the sea below it. The water was calm now and the dark horizon was clear of cloud. The sun was rising behind me, reclaiming the sky with light after the storm’s assault. The air was still, only traces of the wind from the night before still whispered about.

I heard a noise from far away. At first I thought it was a voice calling. I left the yard and stood in the road, feeling the warm sun on my face, the cold air on my fingertips. Then it came again. Not a voice, not a human; an animal calling. Again, two this time. Cows. Cattle braying.

I followed the sound for about half a mile. The road and every field along it was thick with mud from the rain. As I walked, the sun rose higher and offered me a view further inland. The mud stretched as far as I could see, caking everything. Eventually I came to a gate to a field. There was a farm at the top and midway up was a small pen containing five emaciated cows. The farmhouse door was wide open. Between it and the pen, lying face down in the dirt, was a body. I walked up to the pen and stood before the cows. They turned on shaking legs, manoeuvring themselves awkwardly about each other to face me. Their eyes rolled and bulged, their jawbones stretched up to the sky in hoarse bellows.

I opened the pen and stood back. One by one they stumbled out, moving past me in a mass of warmth. They kept close together as they made their way across to a corner of the field. A sparse patch of pale grass was still growing there. They stopped and bowed their heads down and ate it.

I heard footsteps in the wet ground behind me.

“Harvey’s dead,” said Bryce.

“I know,” I replied.

We found a spade in the garage and buried Harvey in the field behind the house. The ground was soft and not difficult to dig. We lashed two sticks together and stuck it in the ground, then stood before it, eating the beans we had left for him the night before.