The End of the World Survivors Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  But I did. I definitely did. And the Union Jacks plastered over the bar did nothing to help.

  And as I hobbled from table to table, I noticed women too, more and more of them, and darker skins, though in lesser number.

  Each table’s conversation ceased as I passed it, the men’s expressions ranging from glowers to leers, the women displaying only bored menace. The guard led me to the middle of the bar, where a group was gathered around a tall man with his back turned. He wore a blue linen shirt, shorts and sandals, and was talking animatedly about something to the group, who looked on, rapt. One saw me approach and nudged his elbow.

  He turned.

  Blue wolflike eyes, tanned skin and a shock of white hair greeted me. He was in his sixties, I guessed, and a small paunch pulled at the otherwise taut and leathery torso dusted with soft, white hair. His face was frozen in the half-smile of his story, hands in mid-gesticulation.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, with a baffled tremor of his head.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  He glanced at the tall, dark-eyed girl standing on his right, who sauntered to the speakers near the end. A moment later the music had stopped. The whole bar watched us in silence.

  Tony turned fully to face me, face frozen in an overly worried frown.

  ‘Is this her, Julia?’ he said to the guard, almost a whisper. ‘The one from the radio missive?’

  Julia nodded. ‘Apparently so.’

  ‘Right, right, and I suppose you’ve done all the, you know, necessary checks and what have you?’

  His accent was hard to place. Definitely the plummy end of English, but softened by a West Country roll.

  Julia looked at me. ‘She’s clean, I’ve searched her.’

  ‘OK.’ He looked at me, bringing his hands together. ‘OK, well that’s good.’

  He glanced around the group, then back at me.

  ‘Never can be too careful these days. What’s your name, my darling?’

  ‘Beth.’

  ‘Beth.’ He looked around again, hands still together. ‘Just Beth?’

  ‘Beth’s fine.’

  ‘Right, well, I’m Tony.’ He bowed his neck towards me, speaking quietly. ‘But you knew that, didn’t you?’

  I nodded. The words he spoke, though dressed up in kindness, came out as cold and measured, a razor blade concealed in every consonant. I could feel myself trembling with nerves. If only they didn’t make it to my lips.

  ‘Thank you for … for …’

  He shook his head and tutted.

  ‘You’re absolutely soaked,’ he said. ‘You must be freezing.’

  ‘I’m fine, really …’

  ‘No, honestly, you’ll catch your death! Ernest?’ He snapped his fingers and blew an incredibly loud and well-practiced whistle, looking about. ‘Ernest, where are you?’

  From behind the bar came a man in a faded yellow polo neck. He was younger than Tony, with thinning black hair and wide, hound dog eyes.

  ‘Ernest, there you are. Get this young lady a towel, will you?’

  The man gave me a wary glance.

  ‘Ernest.’

  Ernest snapped to attention.

  ‘Yes. Anything else?’

  ‘And something to drink. Would you like something to drink, Beth? What’s your poison? Beer, spirits? Me, I’m a rum drinker – never to excess, you understand, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, two in the evening. That’s my rule. One of them, anyway. You have to live by rules, don’t you think?’

  I was fighting to stop the tremble rising through my body.

  ‘I …’ was all I could muster.

  Tony shook his head again, frustrated with himself. ‘I’m babbling,’ he said with a laugh, ‘please, ignore me. Now, what would you like?’

  ‘Just water, thank you.’

  Tony turned to Ernest. ‘Water for Beth, please, Ernest.’

  Ernest nodded, gave me another glance and hurried away, tripping on the same stool. A second later he returned with a tea towel and an unopened bottle, which he handed to me with shaking hands. Sweat lined his stubbled upper lip.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Tony. He smiled and put his hands in his pockets, watching me. I noticed that the rest of the bar was watching me too. Tony cocked his head. ‘Don’t wait on our account, Beth.’

  I patted my neck and hair with the towel as Tony and the rest of the bar watched in silence. I felt exposed, as if I was undressing in front of them. Then I opened the bottle and drank from it. Once I had started, I found I couldn’t stop, and when I came up for air the water was finished. Tony broadened his smile and beckoned for the empty bottle.

  I gave it to him.

  ‘Did Maggie send you?’ he asked.

  I went to reply but he held up a hand.

  ‘Before you answer, you should know that I place a huge amount of value in the truth. So please, don’t lie to me.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to. Maggie didn’t send me. In fact she didn’t want me to come at all.’

  Tony looked up.

  ‘Really?’ He glanced at one of his cohorts at the bar. ‘Why do you think that was?’

  The pain in my right leg was becoming a distraction, and my left leg was starting to quiver with the additional weight. The transmitter beneath my belt felt five times its size, and I was convinced everyone in the room knew about it.

  ‘She thought it was too …’

  ‘Too what?’

  ‘Too dangerous.’

  He tutted and rolled his eyes, waggling the bottle.

  ‘Dangerous. Charming. I’ve only ever been open and honest with that woman, and she calls me “dangerous”. Can you believe that?’

  I realised he had directed the question at me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve only just met her.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I was on the raft that came in twelve weeks ago.’

  Tony’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I was on an evacuation boat that sunk in a tsunami. My children—’

  ‘You were one of the poor souls who washed up in that terrible storm?’ He turned to the group around him. ‘Do you remember that storm, Danny? Cheryl?’

  Danny and Cheryl nodded without a word.

  ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘You poor thing. We tried to get to you, we really did. But those waves, atrocious, weren’t they, Cheryl? Our harbour was almost washed away, and then I saw that woman and her bandits dragging you in and I thought poor things. Poor, poor things, if only we’d got to you first. You could have been safe here with us, rather than in that godforsaken Rock up there.’ He cast a dark look up at the hulking shadow beyond the cruise ship. ‘What were there, eighteen, nineteen of you?’

  ‘I don’t know, I was unconscious. I broke my leg, went into a coma. I’ve only just woken up.’

  He pulled his head back, startled.

  ‘Only just woken up?’ He looked around for support. ‘Only just woken up? And the first thing you do is wander down into a war zone. You’ve got balls of steel, Beth! Balls of steel.’

  There was laughter at this, I presume because women don’t have balls. Tony’s face lit up.

  ‘Please …’ I began. My hand had travelled to my belt without me noticing, and I let it fall quickly. Tony, still enjoying his laughter, didn’t notice, but I thought I saw the tall girl’s eyes narrow at the movement. Tony finally quelled the room with a downturned palm.

  ‘Apologies, apologies, they’re an excitable bunch. What was it you wanted to say?’

  ‘My children were taken from me. When the boat went down, somebody took my children.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A stranger. She knew I was alive but she took them anyway.’

  ‘What kind of monster would do such a thing?’

  ‘And now –’ my heart did its stunned bird routine ‘– now they’re on the other side of the Atlantic, and they must … they must think I’m dead. I need to get to them. I need to find
a way across …’

  A sudden wave of dizziness overcame me and I stumbled forward. There were gasps as Tony caught me.

  ‘Easy there, I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Cheryl, get a chair, love, would you?’

  Though my vision was a mess of moving parts, my mind was still alert and as Tony fought to keep me upright, I slipped my finger beneath my belt and retrieved the transmitter. A chair leg scraped on wood, and I found myself being manoeuvred into a low seat. Blood thumped as my vision steadied. Tony was now crouching before me.

  ‘This has been a most upsetting time for you, hasn’t it, Beth?’

  I nodded, overwhelmed by the sour reek of cheap aftershave and cigar smoke.

  ‘Well, I’m here to tell you I understand.’ He placed a hand on the knee of my good leg and patted it. It was an inch from my own hand, in which the transmitter was still clasped. ‘I understand what upsetting times can be like, and I understand what losing your children is like.’

  ‘You do?’

  He nodded, face a parody of concern. ‘I do, because it happened to me too.’

  His hand was still on my knee. He noticed me looking at it, but he didn’t snatch it way. He left it there for one second, two seconds, three, before finally retracting it and standing.

  ‘I’m a father, Beth. Still am, as far as I’m aware.’ He took a long, deep sigh. ‘Worst day of my life when she took them from me. My wife, you understand, not a stranger like in your case. Mind you, it’s almost worse when you do know the person, isn’t it?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘I mean, I know I deserved it.’ He made a boyish smirk of guilt. ‘Playing away from home and all that, not very clever. But all the same, it was a dreadful feeling having my son taken from me. What right does anyone have to do that? Not just to me, but to the boy as well? She was robbing him of his father.’ He shook his head wanly. ‘Stupid bitch.’

  He lost himself in the middle distance for a few moments before snapping back to attention. He shrugged.

  ‘Anyway, dreadful feeling, like I say. I felt like my heart had been ripped out, you know? Do you feel that, Beth? Like your heart’s been ripped out?’

  I nodded. ‘That’s why I need to—’

  But he had already started to pace, and his eyes were following the trajectory of his own thoughts, not mine.

  ‘For a while I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was a child’s father, after all. I had a job to do. And fair enough, maybe I didn’t get to spend as much time with him as I would have liked, and maybe I travelled a lot, and yes –’ he made an irk face ‘– the whole thing with the affairs and what have you, guilty, but that didn’t change the fact that I was his father, did it? I still had to be there for him, tell him how to be a man and all that. But now that had been taken away from me. It was like I’d been sacked. Anyway, I did all the usual things, you know, pleading, begging, crying, then screaming, shouting, making threats, other things …’ he trailed off. ‘But then I stopped. I stopped because I realised something. These feelings I had, they were for me, not my son. They didn’t help him. My boy would go on living without me, that was the truth. They’re adaptable things, children, even at five years old, and I knew he’d be just fine. He might be sad at first, but in time he’d get over it. So I stopped. I stopped feeling those selfish things and I got on with life. I let him go. And that was the greatest gift I could give us both. I returned to my instincts, the things that made me me, not those pressures we feel as a parent. Me. And by Christ it worked. Overnight I was a different person. I was free.’

  He stopped pacing and crouched down before me. The transmitter felt as if it was burning a hole in my palm.

  ‘What I’m trying to say, Beth, is that you shouldn’t let these feelings you’re having right now –’ he tapped my ribs just above my right breast ‘– in here cloud your vision. You need to let go.’

  I stared at him, hairs on the back of my neck standing on end, and shook my head.

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Of course you can’t,’ he said with a smile. ‘You’re a mother. Your children have been taken from you. You feel an unbearable pull, Beth, don’t you, you’re on a mission. A quest!’

  He grinned at me. A cold wind from the sea sent a shiver down my neck. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to drop the transmitter and run.

  ‘I just need some help.’

  ‘Help? And how can I help you, Beth?’

  I glanced around at the expectant faces.

  ‘I–I need a boat.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Tony blinked, and from the far end of the floating platform a woman released a single, stifled hoot. Tony stood and turned to the tables.

  ‘A boat,’ he said. ‘She wants a boat.’

  The place erupted with laughter, jeers and stamping feet. I took my chance and felt beneath the chair, where I found a gap between the wood and the seat. Squeezing the transmitter to turn it on, I pressed it between the gap and returned my hand as quickly as I could.

  Tony quelled the baying crowd.

  ‘Quiet!’ he roared, and gradually the noise abated. ‘Bloody animals, the lot of you. This poor, brave woman has been through hell and you’re laughing at her. Would any one of you do what she’s doing in her position? Fresh from a coma, broken leg, come and face a stranger on the other side of a battlefield and ask for help? Well, would you? No, didn’t think so, you bunch of scruffy cowards.’

  He stood before my chair, appraising me.

  ‘This woman has come asking for our help, and I for one am touched by that, I really am.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I know you’re … busy with all that up there. But there’s nowhere else I can go. You appear to have all the boats.’

  He nodded. ‘That I do, Beth, that I do. And tell me, what were you, er, hoping to offer in return for one of them?’

  My gaze dropped. ‘I–I don’t have any money.’

  ‘Money?’ He pulled a face. ‘I don’t want money. It’s worthless. Always was.’

  He crouched at my feet again, gripping the chair just inches from the transmitter.

  ‘So I’ll ask again, what can you offer me in return for one of my boats?’

  I looked directly at him. There really is nothing I wouldn’t do for my children.

  ‘I’ll do anything you want me to, if you can get me where I need to go.’

  The crowd erupted again with filthy jeers and hammered tables, like rampant chimps. Tony silenced them with a deafening whistle.

  ‘Quiet!’ He was serious this time. ‘Shut the fuck up, the lot of you.’

  His expression had darkened.

  ‘I may be a lot of things, my darling, but I’m not that.’ He stood and turned to the floor, raising his voice. ‘Nobody here is. Understand?’

  There was silence. He went on.

  ‘No, I don’t want money, and I don’t want that. What I want, Beth, is trust. Pure and simple. I want you to put your trust in me, just like all these … enlightened men and women have.’

  The wood squeaked as he walked between the tables, placing a hand on every shoulder he passed. ‘These have been some fairly bleak and desperate times, and you’re not the only one with a sob story, Beth. Each and every one in this little haven of mine has a tale that would make your hair stand on end. Myself included. But we’ve survived, haven’t we? We’ve come through it, and we’ve done it by trusting each other. Not by payment, not by false promises, but through trust and loyalty. That’s what makes the world go round now, that’s the currency in which we trade. And we’re all fucking millionaires.’

  Whistles, cheers and claps filled the air as he returned to my seat.

  He beamed and opened his arms like a preacher to his congregation.

  ‘Friends,’ he said. ‘We’re nothing without our friends, Beth. Wouldn’t you agree? So. If you want a boat, if you want help to get to your children, then that’s my price. Trust and loyalty. Friendship. Can you give me that?’

  For the first
time since the Unity my heart found its rhythm; a flutter of hope.

  ‘I already told you, I’ll give you anything if you help me find my children.’

  He smiled with wonder. ‘A mother’s love. Indestructible. Now, I’m going to make you a promise, Beth: you put your trust in me and I’ll give you a boat. I’ll even sail it across that ruddy ocean myself if I—’

  He stopped. His eyes had landed on the crucifix around my neck. He reached for it, and it took all my effort not to flinch.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said, lifting it.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said, taking care not to rush my words. ‘It was a gift.’

  ‘You’re religious?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. Not really.’

  He nodded, then removed it from my neck and placed it around his own. I noticed that there were three or four other necklaces there too.

  ‘Then I’ll take this,’ he said. ‘As a symbol of your promise.’

  He stood and turned his head to the Rock. His expression darkened. ‘As I was saying: you’ll get your boat. All I ask is for a little patience while Maggie and I sort out our differences.’

  ‘How long will that be?’ I blurted out. ‘I can’t wait, and I don’t need your help to sail it. If you had something small, something you wouldn’t miss, even just a dinghy, I could leave now.’

  A flicker of annoyance crossed his face. ‘You wouldn’t make it out of the Straits. It’s not just ocean between here and America, you know. Scoundrels roam these waters now; outlaws, pirates, people who would kill you as soon as look at you. You need a crew and safe passage, Beth. Without that, you’re dead in the water. Patience, as I said. Patience. Now.’

  He brought his hands together with a gentle clap.

  ‘Ernest, take our guest to her quarters, would you? There’s a good chap.’ Ernest resurfaced from the shadows. ‘It’s late and I’m sure she’s tired.’

  Ernest hesitated. ‘Quarters?’

  ‘The eastern brig is empty,’ muttered Tony. ‘See she’s secure. Oh –’ he grabbed a broom that was propped against the bar ‘– and take this. It’s not quite a crutch but it should help. Must be terribly uncomfortable, hmm?’

  I remained in my seat, the silence of the bar broken only by the relentless slap of seawater beneath us. Ernest hovered nearby as Tony looked around, awkwardly. ‘It’s late, Beth. Good night.’