The End of the World Running Club (53 page)

It took a month for my ankle to heal. Now I wake before the sun every day and head out along the path around the headland. I run for two or three hours, or as long as I can manage. I found a music player in a kitchen drawer and a stack of batteries that fit it. I don’t recognise half the songs and the display is broken so I can’t see what they’re called, but there’s one I like to listen to when I run. It starts like a long train coming out of a tunnel, then explodes into deep, grinding guitars and distant drums. There’s a male singer who sounds like he’s calling back from some other place, some halfway desert between reality and dream. There’s a part about him searching for something with his good eye closed, which seems appropriate to my condition. Although my own eye has healed, it’s still blind and it doesn’t look great, so I patched it up properly with some black fabric I cut from a coat. Maybe Alice will think I’m a pirate when I moor in Cape Town.

The song ends with the singer howling a long refrain about being on his way. This is appropriate too; I am a man with a boat, after all.
 

It needs fixing and I don’t know what I’m doing, but I guess the couple had been trying to do the same thing before the strike because I found a few books in the house that are helping. The mast is a concern and I have no idea if it floats. I’m trying not to think about how I’ll get it down to the water, or about how far I have to travel on seas and around coasts that may have been crushed beyond recognition. These are all just details.

I feel as if my soul has woken up from a deep, dark sleep and that, as long as I keep moving, as long as I keep running, it won’t go back. I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know what will become of us or where civilisation will end up. But I know where
I’m
going, and that’s good enough.
 

When I’ve caught my fish and worked all I can on the boat, I sometimes set out on another run before sunset. Then I come home and eat and read books from the dead couple’s shelves. Before I go to sleep I whisper words into a tin can etched with five sets of initials.

This isn’t the end. It is never the end. I still live and I still dream of my family. I miss them so much sometimes that the pain of love and the pain of running converge and become a single bright thing clenched in my fist like an atom. This morning as the sun rose I ran up the steep path from the cove and remembered a day on our doomed Cornish camping trip that I had somehow forgotten. The sun had come out and we had driven to Sennen Cove, a beautiful white beach next to Land’s End. We’d been for a walk along the cliffs and had stopped on the sand, running from the tide, dancing and laughing as the sun set. I remember feeling Beth’s growing bump beneath her dress, watching her smile in the orange light as Alice kissed her cheeks. I remember falling in love with her for the hundredth time.

I could feel them behind me as I ran up the path this morning. I felt Beth’s breath on my neck as I pounded my feet into the sand. I swear I caught the scent of my son’s head on the breeze and heard Alice’s laughter twinkling like the light on the tide before disappearing into the morning air. They were there with me. I felt them.

At the top I turned and faced the sun. Then I held out my arms, and into the screaming heat of that distant fireball rising above me, I screamed right back.

From the Author

Thanks for reading
The End of the World Running Club,
I really hope you enjoyed it.
 
If you could spare the time, I’d be very grateful if you could post a review on Amazon or Goodreads.
 
And feel free to let me know what you think in person by dropping me an email at
[email protected]
- I’d be happy to hear from you.

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I’ll send you exclusive short stories, some of which feature characters from this book.
 
You’ll also find out the
second
a new book is published.
 

Speaking of which, would you like to try my first novel,
From the Storm?
 
Take a look at the blurb on the next page.

Thanks again for reading!

"We don’t know what his name is or where he came from, but he is living in my room."
 

In the near future, a young man seeks adventure in the French Alps. Lost, feverish and caught in a freak snowstorm, he finds refuge in a lonely mountain farm where he stumbles upon a young girl’s diary from eighty years before. Claudette tells of farm life disrupted by a blizzard and the arrival of a stranger with a terrible injury. With her father sick, the eight-year-old chronicles her struggle to look after the farm, and its unwanted guest, alone.
 

In present day London, Joseph Martin has screwed up. Once he was a lethal assassin, the best gun-for-hire. Now, in his autumn years, even he has to admit he is losing it. His failing skills have landed him in trouble with a dangerous client. Only the successful completion of an eerily familiar mission can save his skin; a mission which takes him into deepest Asia, where he must face a past he has long tried to forget.
 

He’s not the only one on the road in Asia. London city boy Ashley Gritten is travelling. Shedding the challenges of his privileged life in Kensington, he’s off to ‘find himself’ in the drugs, girls and debauchery of the backpacker trail. But something else finds him. Something much, much worse.
 

Who would have thought that a rich kid and an ageing hit man would have so much in common? And what does all of this have to do with Elmo, a pianist on his death bed in Venice?
 

A dark and humorous story of how selves are lost and lives are found.
 

Out now on
Amazon.com
and
Amazon.co.uk

REVIEWS:
 

"What sets this apart from a standard thriller is the heart beating behind it all." *****
 

"…beautifully written…" *****
 

"Great characters, perfectly paced with a suitably twisting plot." *****
 

"…spins threads of complex, often moving and entirely gripping narrative…" *****
 

"I genuinely feel like I've discovered a huge hit before it's about to take off…" *****
 

"Best book I've read in years" *****

Copyright: Adrian J Walker

Published: 30th June 2014

The right of Adrian J Walker to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people, each of whom helped make this book happen - Dennis Coughlin, Catriona Vernal, John-Paul Shirreffs, Bob Ross and my father, Norrie Walker.

Also, thanks to everyone who supported the Thunderclap, especially Mel Young.
 
Thanks Mel!

This book is dedicated to my wife, Debbie Walker, without whom this book simply would not exist.
 
Thank you, my love and
partner in crime
.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Oh…apart from Jacob (thanks Tobias.)