World's End

by Mark Chadbourn

  “Maybe they’re planning a first strike that will wipe us off the board in one fell swoop,” Laura noted.

  “Whatever they’re planning, it’s something so important they can’t risk us messing it up.”

  Ruth looked out into the encroaching dark. “They could be all over the country, just mixing with people, and nobody any the wiser. That funny-looking bloke you always think is a bit odd at the bus stop. The weirdo staring at you in the supermarket. Everywhere.”

  “That’s a good recipe for paranoia.” Laura lay back so she could see the moon coming up through the trees. “There’s going to be the war to end all wars and nobody knows.”

  After dinner, Laura handed out the beers she had bought and they discussed what lay ahead. Church was surprised how optimistic the other two seemed, despite everything, although he knew his view had been coloured by his vision of his own death in the Watchtower. Laura had been entrusted with the stone, although they had never discussed it; it just seemed natural as she had been the one to find it. As their conversation turned to the possible locations of the other talismans, she pulled the stone out from the small rucksack where she had decided to keep it.

  “It’s a weird thing,” she said. “I still can’t get over the feel of it. It’s kind of creepy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll know if you touch it. Here, cop a feel.”

  She handed it over to Church for the first time. But as his fingers brushed it, an ear-splitting shriek burst from the stone and he dropped it like a hot coal. “What the hell was that?” he asked in shock.

  They all looked at it for a moment before Laura picked it up. “Care to try that again?” Laura held it out to him again.

  Church hesitated, then gingerly brushed his fingers over the stone’s surface. The shriek erupted immediately.

  “Jesus, why don’t you set off a flare so everyone knows where we are!” Ruth protested.

  “What does it mean?” Church said curiously. “You try it,” he said to Ruth.

  She took it from Laura, passed it from hand to hand, then gave it back. “Looks like it doesn’t like men,” Laura said to Church. “Or maybe you’ve just got clammy palms.”

  Church felt suddenly cold. “The woman in the Watchtower said it had the power to recognise the true king of the land.”

  Laura burst out laughing. “King Church the First! That’s a good one!”

  Church shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You can’t get away from the fact it only reacts to you,” Ruth said.

  “I don’t want to think about that. With this kind of stuff we can spend forever guessing. Who knows what any of it means?”

  Laura was still laughing coarsely. “The king! With his royal carriage, the Nissan Bluebird!”

  Her mockery was so sharp they couldn’t help joining in the laughter. It eased some of the tension which had been collecting around them.

  They spent the next couple of hours drinking beer, talking quietly and feeding the fire from the rapidly diminishing woodpile; a cold wind threatened a storm. The conversation never strayed far from their mission, as they called it (ironically at first, but with increasing seriousness); even Laura’s attempts to keep the chat superficial failed.

  Shortly after 9 p.m., Ruth felt a change come over her. It started as a simple shiver that reached from deep within her, followed by a prickling of the skin that suggested the onset of some virus; a moment or two later she heard, or thought she did, her name whispered somewhere among the trees. Church and Laura continued to talk in hushed voices, oblivious to whatever had alerted her. Yet despite their situation, she didn’t feel frightened. The pull was too strong to resist; she told the others she was going to stretch her legs and slipped off into the trees.

  As she walked, she realised she couldn’t turn back, even though some distant part of her was warning of the dangers of straying too far from the fire; obliquely, she recognised something was in her head, dragging her on and calming her at the same time.

  She had wandered barely a few yards when she regretted it. The light from the fire faded quickly, as if it were being leached by the dark which quickly enfolded her. The noises seemed unnatural and disturbing; the creak of the branches above her head too loud, out of time with the gusts of the wind, as if they had a life of their own, the arms of living tree-gods reaching down to her; crunches in the undergrowth, near then far, which could have been small animals but sounded like footsteps circling her; whispers scarcely reaching her ears, dispossessed words fading out before she could make sense of them. Within moments she felt Church, Laura and all of civilisation were lost to her; she was in a dark, elemental world that considered her an interloper.

  The flap of large wings made her jump and a second later an owl swooped close to her head, its face ghostly white against the dark. The owl shrieked once, sounding more human than bird, and a second later the trees were alive with light. Tiny white flames flickered as if myriad candles had been placed among the branches and for an instant Ruth had a breathtaking vision, as if the stars had been brought down to earth.

  A figure stood next to an ancient, twisted hawthorn bush, its shape distorting amongst the shadows. As Ruth drew closer, she saw it was the young girl she had seen in the park in Salisbury-although she knew in her heart it was neither young nor girl-a cloak of what appeared to be thousands of interlocking leaves billowing in the wind around her.

  Ruth felt drawn to the apparition as if she were in some hypnotic state, yet at the same time she was consumed by fear and awe: the figure was so alien. She knew, on some level she couldn’t understand, that the girl had some specific interest in her; she could feel the subtle strands of manipulation in her head, the sense that the girl was trying to communicate something important.

  “He is missing. The night to my day, the winter to my summer.” The words came out without her mouth moving; it was the same thing she had said in the park in Salisbury.

  Who is missing? Ruth thought. And what has it got to do with me?

  As if in answer, the quality of the light changed and Ruth could see something large crashing and stumbling among the undergrowth behind the girl. It was a vision, not reality, primal and terrifying. Ruth caught a glimpse of powerful muscles, and a shape slightly larger than a man, but with antlers curving wickedly from his head. Beyond him the small grove of trees went on forever.

  Whatever moved through the trees made snorting noises and began to circle closer, but still beyond the circle of light thrown by the flames in the branches, so it was impossible to see it fully. As the vision disappeared, the girl’s flowing dress seemed to fade beneath her cloak, leaving her naked. Her skin was almost translucent, milky like the moon, her breasts small, her belly rounded, hips shapely. Ruth felt an incipient sexuality in the air, as if it were electricity and the girl a generator.

  “Find him and then you must join us. Become our daughter. Our champion.”

  Ruth stared into her mesmerising eyes, trying to comprehend. The girl reached out to Ruth, but the thought of touching those alien hands filled her with such dread, the spell was broken. She started to back away.

  The owl that had startled her earlier suddenly swept down into the space between them and stared at Ruth with eyes that were unnervingly intelligent; it made her shudder.

  “A companion,” the girl continued, “a familiar, to guide you through the dark. When you see him, remember me.”

  She began to say something else, but Ruth couldn’t bear to stay any longer. And then she was running wildly through the trees, terrified by the knowledge that she had been recognised by something unknowable, and filled with the awful belief that she would never be allowed to return to the life she once knew.

  “Are you making any sense of this?” Laura lounged back against the twisted trunk of an old ash tree, supping on the last of the beers. In her eyes, Church saw a sharp wit, incisive, and dark things moved beneath it.

  “I try not to make se
nse of anything any more. If you thought about all the things happening to us in any kind of rational way, you’d go mad. The only way is to just deal with it as it happens.”

  She shrugged, looked away into the dark. Since Ruth had gone for her walk, she seemed to have sloughed off some of the superficiality and mocking humour; for the first time Church felt a glimmer of the real Laura. “Sort of screws up the belief system, doesn’t it?”

  “Belief,” Church said with surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, God and all that. Not much in the Bible about this.”

  “You believe the Bible then?” Church asked cautiously.

  “I’ve got no time for any religious dickheads,” she said brutally. In that simple sentence, Church sensed dark currents running, but she made it clear it was something she wasn’t going to discuss further.

  “When you get into the historical truth of that whole Bible thing, it’s hard to keep any faith,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know, how the Bible was put together by a council of the religious establishment from all the various texts lying around. Some got put in, some got left out-the Apocrypha-so it presented a simple, uncomplicated teaching guide for the masses, and a unifying cosmology. Politics. So even if the Bible is God’s word, it was edited by men. How reliable does that make it?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe it’s just like all these legends you keep pontificating about-some truth, lots of crazy stories trying to explain it.” She drained her can, carefully slipping it into the rubbish sack. “Or maybe there’s nothing out there at all. The No-Point Law-the perfect justification for staying in bed every day until we finally fade out.”

  “That sounds a little bleak.”

  “You think there’s a meaning to it all? To all this we’re going through?” Church was surprised; she sounded almost desperate.

  “I don’t know. A few weeks back, I thought there was no meaning to anything. Now I’m not so sure. We’re suddenly living in a world where anything can happen. These days it’s impossible to be sure, full stop.” He paused thoughtfully. “Maybe we just think too much.”

  The hoot of an owl made them both jump and they laughed nervously. Although he knew Laura irritated the hell out of Ruth, he felt remarkably comfortable with her. He enjoyed the spikiness of her character, and there was something oddly moving about the vulnerability he sensed beneath the patina of hardness; he was surprised Ruth couldn’t see it too.

  Laura cracked her knuckles, then seemed to become aware of the night’s cold. With a shiver she moved closer to the fire, sitting crosslegged next to Church. “So tell me,” she said, the faint mocking smile returning once more, “have you and Miss Goody Two-Shoes done the monkey dance yet?”

  Church looked at her in bafflement at the sudden switch in conversation. “It’s not like that. We’re friends.”

  “Come on! Don’t tell me you don’t realise she’s desperate to get into your Calvins?”

  Church shook his head forcibly. “She’s never shown any sign-“

  “What do you expect? A big, flashing neon heart? Believe me, she’s yearning to get to your loins, boy. So what are you going to do about it?”

  Church shifted uncomfortably. “There are things you don’t know-“

  “Well, tell me then.”

  It was obvious she wasn’t going to back down, so he reluctantly told her about Marianne. Yet as he spoke he became aware that something had changed; the rawness he felt inside whenever he discussed Marianne was gone. He felt sad, but not devastated-for the first time since her death. His hand went to the Black Rose in his pocket, gently caressing the petals, closing around the stem. Had the rose freed him from the despair, or was it because he knew some part of Marianne still existed in whatever place the dead dwelled? A sign that the new Dark Age was not all bad.

  “So you haven’t had sex for two years?” Laura said insensitively when he’d finished. “What’s the matter? You’ve got a phobia about it now?”

  He felt his cheeks redden, with irritation rather than embarrassment. “When you’ve been in love you don’t automatically jump to someone new once a vacancy arises.”

  “Look, I’m sure she was a nice girl and all that, but she’s dead. Get over it. What are you going to do? Spend the rest of your days living in the past while life passes you by? I’m sure all this moping around was touching and romantic in the first few months after she died. But let’s face it, it’s pretty pathetic at this stage. And not a very attractive quality for the chicks.”

  He snorted in exasperation.

  “Ooh. Have I touched a nerve?” Her triumphant grin made him fume, but it was instantly tempered and once again he caught a glimpse of some honest emotion moving behind. “You don’t want to cut yourself off too much. In these days, with everything falling apart, you need to have someone close to you, know what I mean?”

  “Yes. I know.” He looked her in the eye. She didn’t smile, but there was a faint shift of something in her face that suggested they both recognised the subtext of their conversation.

  Ruth saw it too. She was standing in the shadows amongst the trees after trying to find her way back to the camp. She had been desperate to tell them of her unsettling experience, but her emotions had diffused after hearing Church speak about her in terms that suggested little more than acquaintanceship and seeing Laura’s obvious-at least to her-attempt at seduction. She felt more excluded than ever as she watched them looking deep into each other’s eyes, locked in their own world. She hovered, undecided, for a moment, then hugged her arms around her and turned to walk back into the night.

  She halted when a distant whirring sound broke through the stillness, and when she glanced back she noticed Church and Laura had seen her as they searched the sky for the origin of the noise.

  “Sounds like helicopters,” Church called to her. “Several of them.”

  They walked to the edge of the glade, where they had a better view. Four searchlights played across the fields and hills as the choppers circled, searching the landscape.

  “What are they looking for?” Ruth asked.

  “Some crook on the run,” Laura said.

  “You won’t find many forces with the resources for four ‘copters,” Church noted. They watched the lights for ten minutes more until they eventually drifted away. There was no evidence, but they all felt, instinctively, that it had something to do with the growing shadow that was falling across the country.

  The morning was chill and grey, with heavy clouds banked up to the horizon, and there was rain in the wind. They waited patiently for Marianne to arrive with the milk, as she had promised, but when she didn’t turn up, Church rekindled the fire and cooked bacon and eggs for him and Ruth while Laura simply had some black coffee. They were keen to move on as soon as possible. Church visited the garage the moment it opened, but the mechanic had made no progress and told him to come back after lunch. The breakdowns seemed to be continuing at an unaccountable pace; cars were starting to back up on the forecourt waiting for repair and the phone in the cluttered, nicotine-smelling office rang continuously.

  The rain started to fall heavily by midmorning and Church, Laura and Ruth huddled morosely in their tents, one of them continuously watching the landscape for signs of movement. The conversation was muted and at times fell to silence as they struggled with their own thoughts. Church feared the worst when he returned to the garage, but the Nissan was waiting for him. The mechanic was apologetic; all the diagnostic tests on his equipment had found nothing wrong; it had started mysteriously an hour earlier as if it had suddenly decided the time was right. Church drove quickly back to the campsite where Laura had organised a methodical clean-up, insisting nothing was left behind which would damage the environment.

  As they loaded their tents and bags into the boot, they were disturbed by the sound of crying caught on the wind, fearful and despairing, lost then as the gusts twisted among the trees. Soon after they caught sight o
f a red-cheeked man, his face distorted by grief, running wildly along the road nearby. Church’s first thought was to ignore the distraught passer-by, but some instinct had him pounding through the trees to hurdle a fence and intercept the sobbing man further along the road.

  “What’s wrong?” Church asked, catching at his arm.

  The man, who was in his late forties, grey hair plastered over his balding head by the rain, was startled by Church’s intervention and for a second he seemed to be in such a state of shock he didn’t know where he was. Then he said, “My daughter-” before he was wracked by a juddering sob that crumpled his body. He came to his senses and roughly grabbed Church’s shoulders. “Have you got a car? I need a car!” Church nodded and hurriedly led him to where the Nissan was parked. “My daughter’s sick. Dying. Bloody car won’t start. Only had it serviced the other week. Too far for an ambulance to get here and back to Bristol-” Another sob engulfed him.

  Ruth and Laura wanted to know what was wrong, but the man made it plain there was no time to talk. They piled in the back and Church followed the man’s directions up a long, winding lane to a neatly tended farmhouse. He scrambled out of the car and ran inside and before Church could follow he was out again carrying a young girl, with his hysterical wife close behind. It was Marianne.

  Suddenly all her questions about death made sense. For nearly three years she had been living with a blood clot in her brain after a fall at the farm. It was in a position which made it too dangerous to operate, unless it moved or spread to become life-threatening, which, the doctors had warned her parents, it could at any time, without warning. When that happened, there was so little to lose that an operation became feasible. And the clot had chosen that day to strike her down.

  “Her mother found her out cold on the kitchen floor with a bottle of milk smashed beside her,” her father said.

  The one she’d been on her way to bring to us, Church thought.