The End of the World Survivors Club

by Adrian J. Walker

  ‘Brand new,’ said Bryce.

  ‘Then Maggie and I, if you don’t mind, Maggie?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘Ed and Beth next, then Josh and Dani. OK, kids?’

  Josh smiled at Dani, who rolled her eyes.

  ‘Where do we sleep when we’re not on watch?’ she said.

  ‘I’d, er, say use the front room, darlin’,’ said Bryce, ‘but I wouldn’t recommend it.’

  ‘There are two bunks in the back.’ Richard turned to me. ‘And Beth’s with Ed in his boat. Right, Beth?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  Of course.

  That night we tried to huddle in the single bunk below deck on Ed’s boat. We tangled and untangled, trying various combinations of limbs and awkward spoons. Ed’s touches were hesitant and hovering, each with a tacit request for permission. Eventually we gave up.

  ‘You take the bunk,’ he said. ‘I’ll sleep up on deck.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s my leg. It still hurts when I lie down.’

  ‘I know. Good night.’

  ‘Ed.’

  He stopped at the cabin door. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I’m sorry I hit you.’

  He shrugged. ‘I deserved it. Night.’

  When he was gone I tucked my chin into my neck and closed my eyes.

  There were thumps and mumbles from the other boat. Bryce and Carmela had started their watch and were talking, each in their own language, and laughing at small things. I remembered how easy it was at the beginning of relationships, how much you forgave the other for the trips and stumbles in what they did and said, and how your touches were delicate for different reasons.

  Ed whispered from outside. ‘We’ll find them, Beth. We’ll get there, I promise.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  I know.

  I know because that’s what I’m doing.

  Chapter 20

  When I woke, Richard and Maggie were just finishing their watch. Richard handed Ed and I cups of coffee across the guard rail, one of Maggie’s roll-ups hanging from his lip.

  ‘I’m going to stay up,’ he said, blowing smoke into the cold morning air. ‘Get things moving on the Black Buc. Wind’s still in our favour so we should use it while we can. I’ll take the helm, Josh and Dani can take sheets, right Joshy?’

  He turned as Josh emerged onto deck, rubbing his eyes and nodding.

  ‘You two OK on the –’ he arched his back to see the stern ‘– what’s your boat called, Ed? I can’t read the name.’

  ‘I changed it,’ said Ed. ‘She’s called the Elma.’

  He took a sip of coffee, avoiding my eyes.

  Richard paused. ‘Elma. Nice. So, are you two OK on the Elma?’

  I looked back at Richard. ‘Yes, but we don’t know where we’re going.’

  Richard smiled. ‘I plotted a rough course last night. Want to see?’

  We followed Richard below the Black Buc’s deck, where he had spread out a map of the Atlantic.

  ‘We’re dealing with somewhat limited technology,’ he said. ‘We have a compass, of course, but nothing like a sextant. There’s a Raymarine, but obviously that’s no use to us.’

  ‘What’s a Raymarine?’ I said.

  ‘A charting tablet,’ said Ed. ‘Kind of like an iPad for a boat. It uses GPS, so—’

  ‘No satellites,’ I finished.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Richard. ‘Useless. Plus it’s out of charge. But anyway, who doesn’t like a good old-fashioned map, eh?’

  He grinned and leaned over the crumpled chart. A curve of twine stretched across it, tacked with pins.

  ‘Pretty simple,’ said Richard, smoothing the paper. ‘We left the gulley here, and maintained roughly eight knots for four hours on the same heading, which puts us about here.’ He tapped a spot somewhere beneath Portugal. ‘Which means …’

  Ed leaned across. ‘That’s not where the gulley was.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The gulley was here.’ Ed tapped a spot a centimetre or so north of Richard’s marker. Richard frowned, inspecting the map.

  ‘No. No, it was definitely here. That’s the only thing that looks remotely like the landscape we passed through yesterday.’

  Ed gave an awkward laugh, and I sensed Richard bristle. ‘That’s because the landscape you passed through looks nothing like the map any more. The whole coastline’s different. Believe me, it’s there.’

  Richard hesitated, scanning the map. ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Because I’ve been following it for days. I have my charts as well.’

  ‘What does the course look like if we move the starting point?’ I said. ‘Just to see.’

  Reluctantly, Richard reached for a new pin and drove it into the sea where Ed had pointed. Ed corrected it, placing it a half centimetre to the right and attaching a new piece of twine to show the new heading. Richard’s jaw clenched.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘That doesn’t seem to make much difference.’

  Richard huffed. ‘Not on the map, but on the sea it would make the difference of a thousand nautical miles. If we take the wrong heading now we could end up in South America.’

  ‘Can’t we adjust as we go?’ I said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Richard, ‘if we were on land. We’d have something to take readings with and from; landmarks, hills, forests, etc., but we’re at sea. We have no GPS and the only other way to navigate would be to use a sextant, which we don’t have, and even if we did I’m fairly sure nobody would know how to use it.’

  ‘So we’re sailing by instinct,’ I said.

  I turned to Ed. ‘How did you make it down here?’

  ‘I had the coast to guide me.’ He gestured at the map. ‘I’m positive that’s where we are.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘It’s just …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you don’t exactly have an A1 track record in navigation.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That holiday we went on to Cornwall, when you didn’t want to take phones or a sat nav or anything. Remember that day trip to Land’s End?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Ed, we ended up in Devon.’

  ‘That was different.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because I was different.’

  He looked about awkwardly.

  ‘The point is,’ said Richard, a little gruffness entering his tone, ‘we need to be sure now. Every mile we cover on the wrong heading is one more mile that takes us away from where we want to go.’

  My eyes drifted along the twine. ‘What are these things?’

  I touched a series of marks some distance into the ocean. Richard peered at them.

  ‘The Azores,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re between the two twines. How long will it take to reach them?’

  He shrugged. ‘Five days, six, depending on the wind.’

  ‘Would they be visible from either route?’

  ‘Well, theoretically, I suppose …’

  ‘Then we’ll know. If we pass to the north of them then Ed’s guess is correct, if we pass to the south then it’s Richard’s. Once we know we can adjust our course.’

  Richard sniffed, straightened and folded his arms. After a deep breath, he nodded.

  ‘All right with you, Ed?’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’

  ‘Good. Then we’ll start with your route. Let’s go.’

  As Ed and I prepared the Elma for sail, I asked him about the name.

  ‘Elma, then. Where did that come from?’

  He gave me an encrypted look. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  He shrugged and tossed the dregs of his coffee overboard. ‘I’ll tell you one day.’

  I dropped the rope I was coiling. ‘Tell me now.’

  He winked as he passed, making for the mainsail. ‘One day. You’re on the helm, all right?’

  Following Ed’s bearing, we set out, the two boats side by side
with their sails inflated proudly. The sky was clear and bright, the sea sparkling, and a strong, steady breeze blew us south-west. I could almost feel the depth of the water drop beneath us. The waves seemed bigger somehow, darker, wilder, their faces like shark fins worrying our bows.

  I kept to the Elma’s helm while Ed worked the sheets on the foredeck. He moved nimbly, moving around the sail on all fours with his trousers rolled up and his shirt hanging loose. You might have said he looked healthy, were it not for the darkness beneath his eyes, or the way the only one left darted this way and that as if tracing invisible bullets. There was a wildness to him, but whenever I thought of what experiences might have led him to this state, I found my distance growing. Strange. I just couldn’t latch on to him, no matter how hard I tried.

  But we buzzed along, each of us performing the duties of our role with the occasional shout or nod.

  I learned about the Elma, about how she worked and fitted together, drawing the same pleasure as I did whenever I examined a piece of software. That bit fits there, connects to that, which, when pulled, does that …

  Same principle.

  Her sail and rudder: those were her interfaces; the sea and the wind were her data. The only task was to position them so that her software – her shape and weight – processed the information in such a way that you got the intended result: velocity.

  But her helm felt loose and plasticky in comparison to the Black Buccaneer’s, and occasionally I looked up from my task to watch the bigger boat’s progress. Dani and Josh worked the sails while Richard manned the helm, and Maggie kept watch at the bow with Carmela, somehow managing to keep her black roll-ups dry in the way that only a seasoned smoker can. Bryce was, once again, nowhere to be seen. I felt a longing to be back on that deck, behind its grander helm and beneath its towering mast, even though I had only been on it for a day.

  We like things. Other things, new things; it doesn’t take long. It’s a wonder we stick with anything.

  Maggie shouted something back at Richard, and he raised his head in laughter I couldn’t hear.

  ‘Are you OK?’ shouted Ed from the bow.

  ‘Aha,’ I said, with a nod.

  Squinting, he looked out to sea.

  Days passed. The wind stayed strong and the sky remained clear; providence, they would have called it once. We made the most of the conditions and sailed for as long as the light permitted; though we were doing well, none of us felt comfortable navigating in the dark. A routine developed and each boat had its own responsibilities. The Buccaneer was where we sat and ate in the evening, and where we kept most of the food. The crates of water – we had discovered to our dismay that the Bucaneer’s tank was almost dry – stayed on the Elma, where it was cooler. We kept our nightly watches, and if it was our shift when the sun rose, whoever else was waking would offer to take over the Elma for us. But I always said no. I didn’t crave sleep, and whenever it took me it was rarely for more than a few minutes.

  One night, during one of these half-sleeps I woke to see Ed’s face near mine.

  ‘What is it?’ I mumbled, blinking.

  He kissed me. A long, soft touch of our lips. He stroked my hair. There was a hunger in his eye.

  ‘Ed, I can’t … my leg.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, standing. ‘I love you, that’s all.’

  My leg was fine.

  Sometimes I would wake up at night and sit at the bow while Ed slept at the stern. There was a carton of cigarettes on the Elma; seventeen faded packs of Dunhill into which I dipped on these occasions and smoked, facing east, scanning the water through the blue haze.

  There was no sign of Staines, though my neck ached from turning to check. I told Ed about him, and about how I had gone down to ask for his help. He said I was brave and foolish, but that he hoped he would have done the same. There were others like him, now, he went on to tell me. Others who had crawled out of the woodwork after the strike, like cockroaches claiming their new lawless world.

  We had to be careful, he told me. And I told him I planned never to be careful again, at least not until I saw our children.

  One night, as Dani and Josh took watch on the Black Buccaneer, I crept up for my midnight smoke. This time Ed woke and found me.

  ‘Didn’t know you smoked,’ he said, sitting beside me.

  ‘Normal rules no longer apply.’

  ‘Can I have one?’

  I tossed him the pack. He lit one and nodded across at the other boat.

  ‘What do you think those two are talking about?’

  I looked over at two starlit figures huddled together near the helm.

  ‘Josh and Dani? Don’t know. I didn’t even think they were talking.’

  ‘Do you think they’re … you know.’

  ‘No, but I’m sure Richard would like it if they were.’ I turned to him. ‘He was telling me he’s found it hard, with Josh, you know, after his wife died.’

  Ed nodded slowly. ‘I can imagine. Especially being Richard.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, you know. He’s fairly old-fashioned, isn’t he? Men are men, women are women, all that. Must be a shock to the system having to take that responsibility, right?’

  I put my cigarette out and turned to face him fully.

  ‘And I suppose you’d know all about that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Fatherhood. Responsibility. That’s something you have some experience in, is it?’

  I think I had some expectation of him trying to defend himself, stammering, trying to form excuses, but instead his expression seemed to close in, like a machine returning to a default state. He blinked, the cigarette still trailing smoke beneath him.

  ‘You’re entitled to say that, but don’t for a second think I’ve not been poking that wound ever since Edinburgh. I know I let you down and I know my faults, and believe me when I tell you I’ve had many long nights to think about them. But I’m not going to spend the rest of my life telling you I’m a born-again father. I have changed, Beth, it’s true, I really have, but that doesn’t mean I’m perfect. I’m still going to make mistakes, just like you.’

  My hackles rose.

  ‘Me? What mistakes did I make?’

  He looked away, rolled his tongue around his teeth, looked back.

  ‘I was miserable, Beth. In Edinburgh, that’s the truth of it. I hated my job, hated the world, hated my responsibilities and drowned it all in a lifestyle that only made things worse. I was a miserable, self-absorbed wanker who didn’t know when he had a good thing, and it took what happened to make me see otherwise. But when I look back on that time …’

  He trailed off.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s like you disappeared. As soon as Alice was born, you went inside of yourself—’

  ‘Ed, don’t you dare.’

  ‘It’s true. I couldn’t find you. You were ahead of me, you knew what you were doing, what had to be done, and I didn’t. I just didn’t, and when I tried to help, stumbling about trying to find nappies and pass you muslin sheets when you were breastfeeding, I made mistakes. And every mistake I made just put me one more step behind. You never told me what you needed.’

  I shuffled away from him. ‘You should have known what I needed.’

  ‘How could I? I had no manual.’

  ‘Neither did I! How do you think I managed? You have no idea how hard it was back then.’

  He stood, abruptly.

  ‘No. I don’t. Because you never talked to me. And by the time Arthur came along you had everything locked down. You had your own routines, your own methods, even your own way to talk to them. It was as if you didn’t need me any more. Everything I did was wrong.’

  ‘That’s a fucking cop-out.’

  ‘It’s the truth, Beth. I felt redundant.’ He turned and leaned on the guard rail. ‘So I drifted too.’

  I stood. ‘You’ve always been drifting, Ed.’

  He nodded. ‘True. But I thought I
’d stopped when I met you.’

  He turned to meet my eyes, but I looked away and went to bed.

  Chapter 21

  The next day, our seventh since leaving the coast, I woke from my imposter of sleep to more activity than usual. There were shouts from the other boat and Ed’s footsteps rattling on the deck above. Rain was battering the Elma’s windows, and the little boat swayed and bobbed in the unsettled water.

  ‘Morning,’ said Ed, as I poked my head out. He didn’t look up from his reorganisation of the water crates.

  ‘Hi.’

  I looked at the Black Buccaneer, where Richard and Maggie were unfurling the mainsail as Dani and Josh went about their now usual morning chores at the foredeck.

  ‘Top of the morning!’ called Richard. ‘Look at this, eh? Proper weather!’

  The blue sky had filled with oily black cloud and the wind had lifted, abandoning its calm breaths for furious gusts. The two boats concertinaed on the swilling sea.

  ‘We’re going to try to make the most of it today. Push ahead. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll catch up.’

  ‘We won’t need to,’ Ed called across. ‘You’ve not seen the Elma in action yet.’

  Richard laughed. ‘Good luck!’

  ‘No sign of Bryce, I suppose?’ said Ed.

  ‘Nope, but Carmela’s in the kitchen. Oh, speaking of which, only fair to feed you first. Here –’ he tossed two paper packages across ‘– bacon sandwiches.’

  I caught the hot greasy wrapper. ‘How the hell did you get bacon sandwiches out here?’

  ‘Bacon’s actually jerky, and Carmela made bread if you can believe that. It’s a bit doughy, but bloody lovely. Come on, eat up, you’ve got a race ahead.’

  Ed took a seat by the helm, and we worked our way silently through the dry, salty paste.

  ‘I’ve had worse,’ said Ed.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Rat. Dog food.’ He adjusted his eyepatch. ‘Crow.’

  I nodded, pursing my lips. ‘I ate something I was told was cheese in the camp. It wasn’t cheese. I can still taste it.’

  Ed swallowed. ‘I’m sorry. About last night.’