The End of the World Survivors Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  Chapter 13

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Ernest in a Spanish hiss. There was a strained quality to his voice, like an old man struggling with shopping bags. ‘Did Maggie send you?’

  I limped after him with the broom lodged painfully in my armpit. It was darker out here on the furthest edged of the floating network, and the noise of the bar was behind us. We passed boat after boat until we reached a hut of some kind, where Ernest stopped and fiddled with a set of keys. A guard patrolled the walkway. Ernest grinned as he passed, but the guard dismissed him with a sneer.

  ‘You’re the one she told me about,’ I said, once the guard was gone. ‘The one who came down to try and reason with Staines.’

  He huffed and muttered, rattling his key in the hut’s lock.

  ‘Reason, that’s a joke. There is no reasoning with Tony Staines. Why did she send you?’

  ‘She didn’t. I came down of my own accord.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To ask for help, like I said.’

  ‘That story about your children, it was true?’

  ‘Yes. Why would I lie about—’

  ‘So you really came to ask Tony for his help?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The door opened into a small, dark room. ‘Then I’m afraid you made a terrible mistake. Get inside, please.’

  Reluctantly, I stepped through the door. My head grazed the rough wood of the ceiling.

  ‘What is this place? How long do I have to stay here?’

  ‘That is not up to me.’

  ‘What happened to you? Why did you come down here?’

  ‘Because someone had to. It was madness staying up there in that Rock, watching our supplies dwindle and our casualties mount up while he sat down here having parties every night, biding his time. There was no chance of us winning, no chance at all. I begged her to see sense, to go down and broker some kind of a deal, give him what he wanted so that we could get off that place. But she was too proud, and too naive. She had never left that Rock of hers, she didn’t know men like Tony Staines. I did. So I came down instead, I slipped past our guards one night and swam the flooded tunnels to the shoreline. Tony’s men picked me up and took me to him, just like they did with you, and he paraded me in front of his audience, just like he did with you, and he listened to what I had to say, just like he did with you.’

  He looked bitterly at the sodden floorboards. The room swayed with the tide.

  ‘What did you ask him?’

  ‘I asked him to let the people in the Rock go free. In return he could have the place, so long as he gave them safe passage to the mainland. He told me that his terms were the same as they had always been. The people of the Rock were free whenever they felt like surrendering, but that there would be no need for their safe passage. He would take care of them once Maggie had given over control. Then he gave me a choice …’

  He broke off, fiddling with his keys.

  ‘What kind of a choice?’

  ‘I could either go back to the Rock and tell Maggie the terms that she already knew or stay with him. Be a part of his tribe. Trust him. I chose the latter. I couldn’t stand to go back to that place again. And now I’m stuck here.’ He kicked the frame of the door. ‘Doing his chores, laughed at by his men. I’m a prisoner.’ He glanced up. ‘And now you are too.’

  ‘I have to believe there’s a chance he’ll be true to his word. It’s the only hope I have right now.’

  Ernest’s eyes caught a fierce glint. ‘You need to listen to me. There is no hope. You cannot believe a word that comes out of Tony Staines’ mouth. All that stuff about trust? It’s horseshit. He’s a narcissist who only cares about the size of his pile and how many people he has under his control. He wants that Rock as a base, a place he can rule and store his loot. I’m sorry, I wish I could tell you otherwise, but there’s no way he’ll take you to your children. He’s a power-mad lunatic.’ He sighed and rubbed his brow. ‘And Maggie cannot beat him.’

  I looked out at the twin shadows of the Rock and the cruise ship.

  ‘Why doesn’t she fire directly on his base?’ I asked. ‘She has the upper hand, being so high.’

  ‘Why? Because of that bloody great cruise ship out there. It’s a human shield. He keeps all those poor bastards locked inside and Maggie knows it.’

  ‘Ernest, is there anything you know about his set-up? Anything at all that might help Maggie?’

  He shrugged. ‘I know the layout, the patterns of the sentry shifts at Eurotowers. But—’

  He froze as the guard passed the hut.

  ‘You have to stay here,’ Ernest said in a deliberate tone, watching the guard’s progress, ‘until Mr Staines decides what will happen to you. There’s a bed in the corner, I’ll bring you water, and some …’

  He turned back, the guard gone, and leaned close.

  ‘Why? What good is my knowledge here?’

  ‘There’s a transmitter underneath the chair I was sitting on in the bar. Maggie is listening to it.’

  Ernest’s eyes widened, two terrified moons.

  ‘What … how?’

  ‘They gave it to me when I left. If you can find a way of speaking nearby then maybe the information could help her. Ernest?’

  But Ernest was backing away. ‘No … no, you’ve made a terrible mistake.’

  He closed the door and snapped the padlock shut. I looked out through the small rectangular window. ‘Ernest, please, you have to try.’

  ‘No. A terrible mistake. Terrible.’

  He made off down the walkway, keys jangling.

  I sat on the cot bed in the dark, trying to ignore the rowdy jeers and slurred murmurs coming from in the bar. It was late – after midnight, I guessed – but the party was showing no signs of stopping. Tony’s atrocious music blared from the speakers and his voice rose over everything as he regaled the crowd with stories. And that laugh of his – Maggie had been right; it was a foul thing, like the cries of some prehistoric birdlike beast drowning in oil.

  It was cold and the blanket they had given me was thin, but I pulled it to my chin and turned to look east through the hut’s slatted walls. The sea churned beneath a low moon. It had never seemed so dark and terrifying, but all I could think of was plunging into it. I knew exactly where my children were. I could feel them pulling at me like a pole at a compass. The distance would be nothing, the pain inconsequential compared to what I felt now, trapped and useless in this cell.

  These are the times when people pray, and this is the kind of place in which they do it; this dark cell with a figure in its corner, out of luck and options. But I’ve never got the hang of prayer – mine ends up sounding like awkward, apologetic poetry – and besides, it always feels like a lottery to me. For every prayer that’s answered, after all, a million more are tossed aside. Just like Jim’ll Fix It.

  I tried that night. I tried to pray.

  God, I need my children back. God, what, why, who and however you are, I need my children back or I’m going to suffocate. My heart is going to crumble into dust and I’m going to …

  But I couldn’t finish it. I couldn’t enter the safety of my children into a lottery that guaranteed more heartbreak and disappointment than it did joy and relief.

  So I hoped instead.

  I hoped that Ernest was wrong; I hoped that Tony Staines was nothing more than a scoundrel who would find it in his heart to be true to his word, and that he wouldn’t ask too much in return. I hoped that I would be out of this cell and across the sea before I knew it. I hoped that Mary was just a desperate mother who had lost her child and made a bad decision, but that she would care for my children nonetheless. I hoped that Alice and Arthur were safe, even if they were upset, and I hoped they wouldn’t be angry with me when I found them.

  I hoped I would see Ed again.

  That one was a surprise.

  What was he doing right now? Was he moving, getting to where he needed to be? Or was he stuck somewhere in the dark like me?


  I remember watching him flounder in that cellar (another dark place in which I had failed to pray), trying to be the husband and father who looked after his family, who knew how to survive. It had reminded me of that camping trip he’d insisted on us taking, the one where it rained constantly and nothing worked. He had tried to cook sausages in the pouring rain and I wanted so badly to tell him that sausages didn’t matter, that I didn’t need a hunter for a husband or even a man who knew how to work a camping stove. All I needed was for him to be near us. To be present.

  But I didn’t, because I thought it might make things worse. That’s how fragile I thought him; that he might shatter under the weight of a single kind word.

  The moment I realised I was smiling about sausages, there was a commotion from the bar. The music had stopped abruptly, replaced by the sound of sharp voices and scuffling boots. I hopped to the door and peered through its slot. Shadows moved quickly. It was a struggle of some kind, but I couldn’t see who or what it was between. The guard on my walkway had stopped and was looking in the same direction.

  I called to him.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  In the distance Tony Staines spoke in calm, measured tones.

  ‘Never you mind,’ replied the guard, ambling off to get a closer look.

  Tony had stopped talking. After more scuffling and a terrified cry there was an eerie silence in which a flame was lit.

  Then Ernest began to shriek.

  I staggered away from the door and sat on the crib.

  So that was hope.

  Chapter 14

  Sometime later, once Ernest’s howls had finally ceased, there were footsteps on the walkway. I sat up. The guard mumbled something, to which a familiar voice responded with a knowing laugh. The padlock shook, the door opened, and in walked Tony Staines.

  His silhouette filled the frame.

  ‘I am sorry to disturb you,’ he said. He sounded drunk, his voice swaying with the brig. ‘Really I am.’

  I gripped the crib’s frame. ‘What did you do?’

  He raised his arms in a half-hearted flap.

  ‘This must all seem very … barbaric to you, I suppose.’ He huffed a sad little laugh and sat down beside me. I shuffled away, knuckles tightening. ‘But believe me, I don’t want to be here any more than you do. I’d much rather be out there at sea, moving on, getting stuff done, know what I mean? Out there, where there isn’t anything to get in your way. Best thing about the sea, in my opinion. No borders, no walls, no rules. Just you and the horizon.’

  He gave a deep, satisfied smile and turned to me, teeth flashing in the moonlight. Wood smoke now overpowered the stench of rum and cheap aftershave. The smile drained.

  ‘I wasn’t always so enamoured with it. Sea that is. I was a City boy through and through back in the day. Worked in finance. Yup. Big cheese. Made a lot of dough, and I mean a lot, know what I mean?’ He wagged a finger. ‘Not just for me though, no, for other people too. Other people with money, that is.’

  He gave a deafening bray of that terrible laughter and squeezed my left knee. I felt sick.

  ‘No, no, honestly I loved my job, loved it. And do you know the thing I loved most? Every single thing I did had an immediate consequence which you either paid for or profited from. Simple as that. I loved the City, loved the life, the clubs, the cars, the lunches, the suits, the free tickets, girls, all that bollocks. Thieves, they used to call us, yup, s’true. And you know what? They were right. We were thieves, thieves and scoundrels through and through and we knew it. I knew it.’

  He turned to me as if his neck was a spring.

  ‘But what I didn’t realise then was how much honesty there is in theft. Understand? No. You don’t. See, I loved money. I did. Then one evening – forget what it was, some charity fundraiser, PR stunt for the firm – this woman talking to me – pretty little thing in her twenties, some sort of writer I think – asked me: “What is money?” I laughed and told her: “Money’s the meaning of life, sweetheart, haven’t you heard?” But she smiled sweetly and asked me again: “Seriously, how would you describe money to an alien?” Stupid girl, I thought, and I laughed her off and went to talk to somebody else.

  ‘But it stuck with me, that question. It stuck with me for weeks, like gristle in a molar. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, kept me awake every night. I mean, I knew what the accepted definition of money was – I’d done a bloody masters at the LSE, for Christ’s sake – but somehow I couldn’t get my head around what it actually was. Right proper puzzle.

  ‘Then one morning I was paying for a coffee, and I looked at the tenner in my hand and I saw it. That little sentence: “I promise to pay the bearer on demand”, and I realised, that’s what money was; a promise. It was one of those –’ he mimed a cranial explosion ‘– moments, you know? Road to Damascus kind of things. Suddenly I realised that all those little bits of paper and metal that used to make our little world go round, before those wonderful great things fell down and levelled everything for us, they were all just promises, Beth. Promises we had no intention of keeping. When you give a man a fiver for some of his spuds, all it means is that he doesn’t trust you to do him a favour in return. That’s all money is, Beth, a measure of our lack of trust in one another.’

  He slumped forward with his elbows on his knees.

  ‘So that’s when I realised that straight-out theft was more honest than monetary trading. If all money represented was how little trust we placed in each other, then why not just cut to the chase? You have something I want, I take it, and you do the same. Simple. The most watertight contract there is. That’s why you can always, always trust a thief.’

  He took a long breath, after which he seemed steadier, as if sobered by the oxygen.

  ‘Do you trust me, Beth?’

  I faltered. The muscles in my neck tensed. ‘You’re a stranger. The last stranger I trusted took my children.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Quite true. Should have trusted your instincts, am I right? Hmm.’ He stood, no longer swaying, and put his hands in his pockets. ‘Do you know what my instincts told me this evening? They told me that our friend Ernest was acting a little strangely after he returned from locking you up in here. Clearing things away that didn’t need clearing away. Glasses, stools. Chairs.’

  My chest tightened. Tony removed his right hand from his pocket and held it up. Between his finger and thumb was a silver disc.

  ‘Maggie’s idea, I presume?’

  I let my heart deal with itself, breaths pumping furiously. I could lie, I thought, say I’d never seen it before, but at this stage I doubted it would matter.

  ‘What did you do to him?’ I said at last.

  He shrugged, examining the disc in the moonlight. ‘Roasting, they call it. It involves a sack. I believe the Native Americans used to be quite fond of it. I generally prefer to keep out of these things, but I got involved this time, thought it was important to, you know –’ his eyes flashed ‘– send a message. Wonder if Maggie saw it? We’ll know soon enough, I suppose; my boys are heading up there now.’

  I shook my head. ‘You’re insane.’

  He snapped his fist tight around the transmitter.

  ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘That is precisely what my ex-wife said right before she took my son away. And you know what? Maybe she was right. But sanity’s overrated, Beth. Highly overrated.’

  He tossed the transmitter through the window, where it plopped in the water outside.

  Just then there was a flash from beyond the bar, and a sharp report of gunfire. Tony turned, as if he’d merely heard the chime of a doorbell.

  ‘Hey up, there we go, looks like things are happening. I’ll leave you now, Beth. I’m sure you have a lot of things to mull over. Bye-bye.’

  He skipped out onto the walkway.

  ‘Lock that door,’ he barked at the guard, ‘and keep an eye on her.’

  He disappeared back along the walkway, leaving the guard to secure my door.

  ‘Tell me wh
at’s happening,’ I said, rattling the doorframe. ‘Let me out of here!’

  The guard turned his back, blocking my view. ‘Shut up, you Jock whore.’

  I peered through the triangle of space between his lumbering arms. Dot-dash flashes traced the darkness between the ship and the sky, making the clouds pulse like veiny wombs. The Rock was in darkness, unprepared for Tony’s attack. They would be taken. And then what? Did Ernest’s grisly fate await me too?

  Suddenly the ocean behind me seemed more inviting than ever.

  I scanned the floor for boards I could pull up, but they were all bolted tight. The walls were the same, and lashed with chicken wire outside.

  ‘Stop it,’ said the guard. He poked the barrel of his gun through the slit. ‘Unless you want an early checkout.’

  Maybe I did.

  ‘Maybe I—’

  But before I could finish there was a tremendous explosion. The guard ducked and ran to the other side of the walkway. In the distance, a cloud of flame and black smoke billowed high above the walkways. It was a building; the only one left standing between here and the town. Eurotowers.

  The guard gripped the railing, giving little roars of disbelief at each new explosion and puff of smoke. I staggered back, found the bed, picked up my broom. If he came for me, I’d be ready.

  ‘Hey.’

  I looked about. The whispered voice seemed to have come from beneath me.

  ‘Here.’

  In the far corner, through a gap in the wood, I saw a pair of eyes in the water.

  ‘It’s me.’

  Using my broom for support, I got down on one knee and peered at the apparition floating beyond the wall.

  ‘Richard?’

  He put a finger to his lips. His head was clear of the water and there were others behind him floating like beach balls in ink. The flames from the fallen tower cast shadows on their faces.