The End of Everything | Book 8 | The End of Everything

by Artinian, Christopher

  Height’s good, going to be a tight squeeze. She held her breath as her body flew through the air. She could almost feel the reaching hands behind her. She rode the wall of stink like a surfer on a bomb, keeping her nerve when every fibre of her being wanted to cry out in desperation.

  An errant shard jutting from the frame sliced her upper arm as she flew through the gap. She winced, but she knew worse was to come as the room beyond the broken window came rushing to meet her.

  The world closed around her as her body sailed further into the small washroom. Fingers hopelessly grasped at her ankle before she finally crossed over the threshold from outside to in, light to dark.

  Nowhere near big enough for a rolling stop. Nowhere near big enough for anything but a crash landing. Crap! Wren did everything she could to bring her legs down, to try to land on her feet before smashing into the wall, but she would need at least another couple of metres to make that work. Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap! Better my shoulder than my head, she thought as she desperately tried to turn in midair. But the impact came before she had the chance to carry the plan out fully.

  “Aaaggghhh!” Her shoulder crunched, but then the plasterboard crunched louder as it crumbled. So many spasms of pain shot through Wren that she didn’t know which part of her was damaged the most. She collapsed to the ground like a bird that had flown full speed into a closed window. Her head bounced off the tiled surface of the floor, making the pain of the gunshot from earlier feel like a soothing massage. Then—darkness.

  chapter 22

  Robyn and Mila came to a stop before the next junction. They had navigated the streets of Inverness by ear, moving forever closer to the sound that most would run away from rather than to. Now, though, the noise was so loud that they knew contact would be imminent and one wrong turn could be their last.

  “What now?” Mila asked.

  “They’re close wherever they are,” Robyn replied.

  “Maybe we just peek around the corner and look, yes?”

  “No. If just a few of those things see us, we’re going to be running for our lives, and if Wren needs us, we’ll be of no use to her.”

  “So, what then?”

  “So … we need to be smart.”

  “Robyn. If Wren does need us, we don’t have all day to think of something.”

  “I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”

  “So what do we do?”

  Robyn looked around. The noise seemed to be getting louder by the second, almost as if the creatures were taunting her, laughing at her inability to help her sister, to think of something that would give them the advantage. Then it came to her, and an excited smile swept over Robyn’s face. “We follow Wren’s lead.”

  “What are you talking about? You just said—”

  “I don’t mean we follow her down the street, we follow her idea,” she said, pointing upwards.

  They both walked across to the charity shop on the corner. The windows were encrusted with dirt, but they could see into the small stockroom in the back.

  “You do know that not all ground floor shops will have access to the roofs? There could be one door at the other end of the street that leads to the second and third floors. We have no way of knowing.”

  “Duh. Really?” Robyn replied, stepping back and looking at the next floor of the old building. “Wait a minute.”

  “Wait a minute for what?”

  Robyn walked across to the drainpipe leading all the way up to the gutter on the roof. She tapped hard against it, it was solid. “It’s pot or something.”

  Mila walked across to join her. “Some older buildings in my country too had pipes made of clay. I think that is what this is,” she said, rapping against it with her knuckles. She breathed out heavily through her nose, reading Robyn’s thoughts and looking up towards the guttering on the roof. “All this because you don’t want to look around the corner.”

  “You know I’m right.”

  Mila did know. The sound was unmistakable, and Robyn was right, they didn’t have time to get chased down by those things. “So what, we do eeny, miny, meeny?”

  Robyn couldn’t help but smile. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe? No. I’ll go first … that way, if I fall, I’ll have a soft landing.”

  “Ah, yes. Very funny.”

  They both looked back to the drainpipe, and Robyn took a deep breath before fixing both her hands around it. “Wish me luck.”

  Mila put her hand out and grabbed Robyn’s arm. “Be careful, Robyn.”

  Robyn let go of the pipe, and the pair hugged tightly. “You too, and thank you for this.”

  “You do not need to thank me. We are family now. This is what we do.” The pair hugged a little tighter before Robyn broke the embrace and returned her attention to the thick terracotta pipe.

  She looked it up and down, placed her hands around it once more, and slowly began to climb.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Wren opened her eyes. Her cheek was pressed against the cold tile floor, and it took her a few seconds to remember how she had ended up there. Shadows danced in the periphery of her vision, and it was only when she turned her head that she saw two pallid arms reaching into the dim interior of the small room. She climbed to her knees and then her feet before resting her back against the wall for a moment in order to gather herself.

  She had shot into the plasterboard like a cannonball leaving a Wren-shaped crater in her wake. It looked like something straight out of a cartoon, but the pain in her shoulder, head and hip reminded her that there was nothing comedic about the situation she was in. The noise of the creatures outside was constant, but, for the time being at least, they presented no immediate threat to her. The small aperture she had flown through was too high for them to climb into and, thankfully for her, the beasts had no reasoning powers. They would not look for an alternate way in. They would not look for some kind of step to allow them to get through the gap. They would simply hold a vigil until she reappeared or something else caught their attention.

  Hopefully, by that time, Wren would have found another way out and would be well on the way to reuniting with her sister. She straightened up, stretched and heard several joints pop. Always a good sign.

  She limped across to the toilet door and opened it, revealing a dark, narrow corridor. She reached around for the torch in her rucksack only to remember she had sacrificed it to get through the narrow opening. Crap! Wren propped the door open with the metal waste bin and stepped out into the hallway. It felt cold and smelled of damp and … Oh no! Please no! … rodent droppings. She carried on further down the hall, further away from the light. There was a door to her left with a small nameplate attached. She could just make out the word “Cleaner.” She tried the handle, but it was locked.

  She carried on further to find a second door, also locked. By the time she reached the entrance to the shop floor, she could barely see her hands in front of her. The door swung open; she stepped through and immediately closed it behind her, not silencing but muting the noise of the horde.

  There was plenty of light for her to see exactly what this place was, and just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse they suddenly plummeted to new depths.

  “Shit!”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The key was not to look down. This whole thing was ill thought out. In fact, ill thought out suggested some thought had gone into it in the first place. Robyn estimated she was about three metres off the ground. Nowhere near high enough to die if she fell, but plenty high enough to break an ankle. She took a deep breath and carried on climbing. Given a choice, there was no way she would be doing this. Up until this point she hadn’t even considered the fact that this was some kind of listed building, all original features, which probably meant a steep sloping roof to negotiate when she got to the top.

  “You are doing gut. Sehr gut.” Mila could sense her friend’s nerves, and she kept muttering words of encouragement.

  “It feels like it’s going to come away from
the wall any second,” Robyn replied as she continued to climb.

  “Nein, nein, nein. They built things to last back then. These pipes will still be here when you and I are long gone.”

  “Err … given the current situation, that doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

  “Relax. It will be—ROBYN!” Mila screamed the last word as she watched her friend lose her grip on the pipe.

  It was nothing but Robyn’s lightning-fast reactions that saved her as she clenched her feet and knees as tightly as possible, giving her the valuable second she needed to grasp it firmly once again. She pressed her face against the cold clay, hugging it briefly, desperately trying to get her heartbeat to return to something approaching normal speed. “Jesus.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh yeah. Having the time of my life.”

  “Maybe we should think of another way.”

  “No time.”

  “You say that, but—”

  Robyn was about to continue climbing when Mila breaking off in mid-sentence gave her reason to pause. “What is it?”

  “Err… Nothing. Just keep on climbing.”

  Robyn felt movement, she heard knocking against the thick clay and against all her better instincts she looked down to see Mila frantically scaling the drainpipe. “What the hell are you doing? This won’t hold both our weights.”

  “We will have to hope it does,” she called back. “Schneller, Robyn … climb faster.”

  Robyn was still baffled, and it wasn’t until she heard pounding feet that she understood. The infected had found them, probably drawn by Mila’s earlier scream. There were about twenty-five at a guess, but more would come. More always came. Robyn felt sick. She looked up the drainpipe and saw she still had a good distance to cover. She looked down again to see the creatures beginning to mass beneath them. They reached up frantically trying to grab onto Mila’s foot, but her speedy ascent had saved her from the initial danger. She now hugged the drainpipe and closed her eyes just as Robyn had done earlier.

  The feverish growls of the beasts soared up to meet them both, and a new terror cloaked them as they both came to terms with the fact that choice had been taken out of the equation.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Wren was in what had once been a thriving betting shop. She was behind the counter, looking out through reinforced Perspex at the slot machines. Beyond them were once vibrant, now sun-bleached window displays and beyond those was what had doused the last flame of hope within her. Sturdy white concertina security grills blocked both entry and exit via the windows and main entrance door. Even from where she was standing, she could see the padlocks securing them in place were beyond substantial.

  She made her way out from behind the counter and walked up to the door. She placed her hand around the padlock and then realised that was not the only thing she had to consider. The padlock was a secondary security measure; the grills had their own built-in locks too. Crap! It was fast becoming Wren’s word of the day.

  Pain continued to shudder through Wren with every move she made, but she had been injured plenty of times before and resting was not an option for her so she would just have to keep on going. She removed the Glock from her jeans and took a step back. She brought it up to aim at the lock. Nothing about this was good. If there were any creatures out on the street, the gunshot would alert them as to her whereabouts, but she was out of options. She had to get out of here as quickly as she could and find her way back to Robyn. She took a deep breath and fired.

  chapter 23

  Robyn did her best to push all the anxiety down deep inside, but it was hard. She continued to climb the thick clay pipe, and every time one of the creatures below smashed against it, the vibrations sent a fresh wave of alarm through her. Just another couple of metres and she would be there. Good idea, bad idea, it wouldn’t matter then, the immediate danger of falling from the pipe and being swallowed up by the growing mass of beasts below would be averted. The sound of another gunshot, as muffled as it was, told her that Wren was still alive, and despite whatever else she was feeling, that gave her a little hope at least.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The boom made Wren reflexively close her eyes, and she staggered a little. There was the sound of breaking glass, and when she opened her eyes again, panic consumed her.

  She had missed the target at point-blank range. The bullet had shattered the glass panel on the door and, worse still, the gun had locked open. One of the few things she remembered Lucy telling her was when that happened, it meant you were out of bullets.

  Wren stood there unable to believe the catalogue of catastrophes that was continuing to plague her. What am I going to do now? It had all seemed so simple, so straightforward in her head when she had decided to lure the infected away from the lorry. She looked out to the street beyond her self-made prison, and that’s when she realised there was nothing to be done. Several creatures shambled across her field of vision, searching out the source of the loud noise that had erupted just moments before. They did not see her, they did not understand the significance of the broken glass on the pavement, but they would not stop searching. They would never stop searching. Even if she found a way to open the security grille, there was nowhere to go now. This place would become her tomb.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Are you okay?” Robyn shouted to Mila.

  Her voice was shaky and unconvincing in reply. “Yes.”

  Robyn finally reached the summit. This would be the biggest leap of faith. The drainpipe was one thing; the guttering looked flimsy in comparison.

  “I’m scared. I’m scared that I’ll grab hold of it in the wrong place and everything will just collapse.”

  “Robyn, that could have happened at any point since we started to climb. It has held so far.”

  “Yeah, but this stuff is like half the thickness. What if it doesn’t have the strength to hold us?”

  “I understand … trust me, but these thoughts do us no good now. We have no options.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Oh well. Here goes nothing.” Robyn reached up and took a firm hold of the guttering. It was the same material as the drainpipe, but the more weight she applied the more it felt like it would give. She removed her hand again and wrapped it around the downpipe once more. “It’s no good. It’s not going to hold.”

  “Robyn—”

  “It’s not going to hold.”

  “Robyn, we have to do this. Listen to my voice. Look at the brackets holding the pipe. They are wrought iron. I have sculpted with wrought iron. It is strong, it is sturdy. Trust me.”

  Robyn took a deep breath. It was those two words that drove her. Trust me. There were two people in the world that Robyn trusted. One she was stuck on a drainpipe with, the other she was trying to get to. “Okay.” She reached up again and took a firm hold of the guttering. Keeping her left hand around the drainpipe for the time being, she gradually hoisted herself upwards. She could feel her heart racing. One wrong move and she would fall into the waiting hands below. She brought her head up and for the first time saw the sloping roof—the first piece of good luck. It was nowhere near as steep as she had feared. While still gripping the guttering with her right hand, she deftly brought her left hand around and slapped it down against the slate tile, doing her best to form suction. She brought her right hand and knee up and over at the same time. Her knee rested momentarily on the peak of the drainpipe before she heaved one last time and flopped down hard on the roof. She slapped her other hand down then used her feet to shuffle further away from the edge.

  She lay on her stomach for just a second to grab a quick breath before flipping over onto her buttocks and looking towards the roof’s edge.

  “Robyn, are you okay?” There was still heightened anxiety in Mila’s voice, but she was doing her best to hide it.

  “Yeah … yeah. Listen, it’s not as bad as I thought. The slope of the roof isn’t too steep.”

  “Okay. I am coming.”

 
; Mila tried four times to lift herself, but each time, she couldn’t. Her hand could not get any kind of suction against the slate, and each time she failed a slightly more desperate cry left her lips.

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to help,” Robyn shouted, against all better judgement. She nervously edged back down a little and, this time, as Mila’s hand appeared, she leaned forward and grabbed it, digging the soles of her feet hard against the tiles to create as much friction as possible. “That’s it, I’ve got you. Just keep coming.”

  Mila continued; her tear-stained eyes emerged over the edge of the roof, then her chest, then the rest of her body. When her feet finally rested against the slate, they both shuffled up the slope a few feet then sat there, only half believing that they were still alive. “Thank you,” Mila said, extending her hand and taking a firm hold of Robyn’s.

  “Don’t mention it,” Robyn replied, wide eyed. The creatures were out of sight now, but their sounds could still be heard, and each time one of them battered against the clay pipe, it reminded both women how close to a grisly death they had been.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  A steady stream of infected continued to shuffle past the doorway. Wren was convinced that one of them stared directly at her. It even stopped in its tracks for a moment, but eventually it moved off once again. She watched them for several minutes. It was rare that she saw them like this. Most of the ones she came into contact with were chasing her down like hungry animals, so to see them in search mode made a change.

  Eventually, she turned and headed back behind the counter, bending down to see if there was anything under the cash drawers that might be of use to her. No … no … no … wait a minute. Beneath the fourth till was a full-sized Maglite torch. She pressed the rubber button and the bulb came on. It was quite dim, and she knew it wouldn’t last long, but it might give her enough light to check out the other rooms.