The World's Last Breaths: Final Winter, Animal Kingdom, and The Peeling

by Iain Rob Wright

As a child, Jess had loved winter and wished for snow every Christmas – her favourite time of year – but this worldwide inclement weather made her nervous. There was a sense of foreboding in the howling wind that made Jess wonder if it would ever stop snowing at all. She’d heard on the radio that people had already begun to perish from the crushing cold, and it had only become worse since then. Now that her mobile phone wasn’t working, it left Jess even more uncertain.

  Of course her phone could have been faulty. “Yeah, that’s it,” she said to herself, hoping it would calm her nerves to hear a voice, even if it was just her own. “It’s just faulty.”

  Somehow, she didn’t believe it.

  It was almost thirty minutes before Peter had finished. Kath heard his footsteps coming from the BOOZE & SPIRITS aisle. “Is everything secure?” she asked him.

  “Yes, Ms Hollister.”

  “Let’s get going then.”

  “Where is Jess?”

  Kath grunted. “She’s responsible for her own well-being. I can’t afford to wait around any longer. If you’re so concerned, you go wandering around in the snow for her yourself.”

  “Thank you, Ms Hollister. I go now.”

  “Peter, wait!” she shouted after him. “Perhaps, you’re right. We shouldn’t just leave Jess to her own devices.”

  Peter’s footsteps halted. “Okay, Ms Hollister. Please, hurry!”

  The fact that she was being given orders by a staff member made Kath furious, but the increasing howl of the wind made her feel uncharacteristically subdued. “Coming,” she said.

  6

  Harry shivered as he started his next beer. It was getting colder and the scar on the back of his hand started to ache in response. He swigged deeply from his beer bottle and tried not to think.

  The Irishman, Lucas, turned his attention to Old Graham at the end of the bar. “So, Father Time, you must have been around a fair few turns of the world? You ever see snow like this before?”

  “Well,” Old Graham began, visibly delighted at being the centre of attention. “There was a time in the sixties where things got a little chilly as I recall; and me old man told tales of winter in the Ardennes that sounded a might more hellish than this.”

  “That’s the Ardennes,” said Nigel. “It’s normal to have snow there. The amount we’ve had here the past couple days isn’t natural. Not to mention it’s snowing everywhere. All over the world. In every country. Maybe it’s because of the ozone layer or something?”

  Lucas chuckled. “Give over, man! You think a couple of cow farts has the ability to change the weather?”

  Harry smirked. “What do you put the snow down to then, Lucas? I mean I haven’t known it to snow like this before. It certainly seems like something has narked Mother Nature.”

  “The world is a gazillion years old,” said Lucas, putting his beer bottle down on the bar as if to make a point. “I bet there’s been weather like this before, just not in your lifetime. It’s a tad unusual, no doubt, but I don’t buy all that ozone layer nonsense.”

  Nigel bristled in the light of his candle, maybe even turning angry. “That’s just your opinion,” he said. “Don’t mean I’m not right. We’ve been abusing this planet for decades and it can’t go on forever.”

  Lucas put up his hands. “Calm down there, fella, no need to get your hackles up. It’s just the beer talking, you know? Makes me feel a thousand times older and wiser than I should ever admit to. You’re probably right, though, humanity has been abusing the earth, and it can’t go on forever. Right now, my only concern is having a good time with a tipple to keep me warm.” He looked at Steph and winked. “And maybe a good woman wouldn’t go amiss either.”

  “You’re a letch,” said Nigel, but the candlelight lit a good-natured smile on his face.

  “Again, I’ve come to the right place, then.” Lucas laughed out loud, hoisted his bottle up into the air and said “cheers!” The others joined him in the toast.

  Harry took another swig from his bottle and sighed at the burning satisfaction it left in his chest. When he pulled it away from his lips it was two-thirds empty. It seemed he’d been taking larger and larger swigs lately.

  “So what’s your story, fella?” Lucas asked Harry. “What’s the meaning of your life?”

  Harry swigged the last of his beer then pushed the bottle toward Steph, who was already on the case with a replacement. “My life,” he said, “has no meaning. Not anymore.”

  Lucas frowned. “Come now, everybody’s life has meaning. We all have a purpose.”

  “Really? Then why don’t you tell me what mine is, because I sure as hell don’t know.”

  “I can’t tell you that.” Lucas smiled. “Every man has to find his own path and his own destination. Who knows though, maybe you’ll find yours tonight.”

  Harry started on his next beer with a hearty swig, gasping for breath afterwards. He looked Lucas square in the face. He knew he was getting drunk, but couldn’t stop himself, as usual. “Sorry, but I find that hard to believe.”

  Lucas stared back, his face unflinching, like a slab of sculpted granite. He patted Harry on the back. “Well, Harry boy, perhaps what you need is a little more faith.”

  “Faith? You think I should believe that there’s some almighty-being up there responsible for everything that happens?”

  Lucas shook his head. “Like hell I do! Everything that happens down here is because of us. The good Lord’s not here to babysit us. We can only blame ourselves for the things that happen in our lives. Well, we can blame ourselves or other people. Seems most people prefer to do the latter before they even consider introspection.”

  Harry felt his blood heat up, fighting back against the chill in his veins. He took offence to a stranger offering him life advice. No one could understand what he’d been through. Harry looked down at the star shaped scar on his hand and thought about the events which had led to it. Julie and Toby twisted and shattered in the remains of his bright red Mercedes, the car he’d been so proud to buy. That night Harry discovered cars, houses, and material possessions meant nothing at all, as the only truly important things in his life slowly bled away from him onto the asphalt. So much damage that Harry couldn’t even tell where his wife and child’s broken bodies began and the crumpled metal of the Mercedes ended. It looked like some abominable piece of modern art.

  Harry had emerged from the crash with nothing more than a deep gash on his forehead. He was completely lucid as he watched his family die in front of him, one laboured breath at a time. Where had the justice been in that?

  “Whoever is to blame for my life,” Harry told Lucas, “can go fuck themselves.”

  Lucas moved a half-step back from Harry. “Easy fella, not looking for an argument. You just seem like a bit of a lost soul, and I like to take an interest.”

  “An interest in lost souls?”

  “Absolutely. There’s an endless wisdom in the agonies of man. Sometimes we don’t understand what humanity really is until we have our hearts and flesh torn.”

  Harry put down his beer. “Sorry to let you down, but I don’t feel anything. Not anymore.”

  Lucas continued smiling, as though he had the secrets of the world in his back pocket and was about to share them. “You can lie to me, Harry boy, but it would be a tragedy to lie to yourself. Men who say they feel nothing, usually feel the most. Denial only leads to trouble. That, my friend, I can promise you.”

  Harry sighed and moved away from Lucas before he said something he regretted.

  The Trumpet was an old pub with a long history. A baby boy had once been born in its claustrophobic toilets; the England Cricket team had once rented the place after a win at nearby Edgbaston; and even a murder had once occurred on its oak floors. It was a place with both history and colour. A proud relic of working men’s pubs, full of ‘proper blokes’ clocking off from a hard day’s graft for a fag and a pint. But, like all relics, its day had come and gone. Now, the fag smoking was ostracised, the over-taxed b
eer was expensive and weak, and the colour had all faded along with the bleak wallpaper. All the pub had left now was its history.

  Things hadn’t turned out the way Damien’s father had led him to expect. The golden years of smoke-filled boozers, loose women, and high-grade drugs had been extinguished. Drugs were getting harder and harder to push and women were getting harder and harder to fuck – feminist shows like Sex and the City convincing them to have self-respect. It had taken all the fun out of being a gangster.

  Screw it! He’d been born in the wrong time. There was no tradition anymore. Damien’s father and Grandfather had drunk in The Trumpet and had pretty much run the place in their days. Now you had people like this fuckface Irishman waltzing in and acting like they owned the joint after just five minutes. He needed to be taught a lesson about respect.

  Damien stood from the sofa and turned towards the bar. He had enough to deal with tonight without loud-mouthed strangers giving him a headache.

  When Harry saw Damien rise up from the sofa and start making his way toward the bar, he cringed.

  “Shit, incoming.” Harry whispered in Steph’s direction, hopeful that her authority behind the bar would be enough to stem any bad behaviour. He’d seen Damien’s lack of hospitality towards strangers before and it was something he could go without seeing again.

  Damien stomped towards the middle of the bar, halting half-a-foot away from Lucas. Lucas behaved as if he hadn’t noticed, facing forward and sipping from his bottle calmly. Damien glared at him, eyeballs bulged like two squids.

  Lucas leant over the bar towards Steph and spoke in a very clear voice. “Darling, you want to tell this young fella to wind his neck in before his peepers fall out on my shoes?”

  Everyone at the bar sucked in their lungs.

  Lucas turned his head to Damien, who looked like he was about to go off like a firework. “Listen, lad, I’m not a work of art, so take your beady little eyes off me and find something better to do.”

  Damien’s features contorted like a broken whiskey bottle, full of crags and sharp edges. One wiry arm drew back as his young body tensed up, ready to attack.

  In a move that seemed both casual and urgent at the same time, Lucas stepped back from the bar and slinked past his stool. At the precise moment Damien’s fist began its arcing descent towards him, Lucas threw a punch of his own. It was quick, it was vicious, and it connected perfectly with Damien’s incoming fist. There was a loud crack as the two men’s knuckles collided at full force.

  “Fuck!” Damien howled, clutching his withered hand against his abdomen. “Jesus-goddamn-Christ!”

  Lucas, who was also clutching his own injured hand, began to laugh in what seemed like genuine amusement. “Not quite, but I’ll send you to go see him if you try that bollocks again, you little shithead.”

  Damien glared. “You’re dead!”

  “Wrong again, lad. Unless you mean dead bored, which if I’m honest, I’m starting to get a wee bit. You’re keeping a man from his drink.”

  Damien was about to respond, no doubt to make more threats, but Steph cut him off first – not with her voice, but with the landlord’s bell pulled out from under the bar. She rang it vigorously in the faces of the two arguing men.

  “Pack this shit in!” she hollered. “I’m in no mood for child’s play. Especially from you!” She scowled at Damien. “It’s freezing cold, we’re all stuck here, and we’re in the bloody dark. Do you two not think things are bad enough without fisticuffs? Because you know something? If one of you gets hurt, I doubt there’s an ambulance in the world that can get here tonight.”

  Or even this week, Harry thought.

  Damien allowed his glare to turn into a grimace, before finally settling on a look of irritation. Lucas got back on his stool and quickly finished off his beer. He slid the empty toward Steph and said, “Two more, please. One for me and one for my new friend here with the broken hand.”

  Damien hissed. “It isn’t broken, and I’m not your pissing friend.”

  “Well,” said Lucas, offering a bottle of beer to Damien. “Perhaps you should be. It would make life easier.”

  “Come on, Damien,” said Nigel from the far end of the bar. “If we’re all stuck here, we may as well have a drink together. Could even be a laugh.”

  Damien turned his animalistic stare to the large, sweaty man at the end of the bar. “You think I want to waste a minute hanging around with a bunch of losers like you?”

  Harry took offence. Being called a loser by a piece of scum like Damien did not sit well with him at all. “We don’t want to be stuck with you either,” he said, “but shit happens.”

  Damien turned his glare to Harry, his body coiled and trembling like a pissed off panther. A panther ready to attack, thought Harry, regretting his comment already.

  Before further words were exchanged though, Lucas pushed the bottle of beer towards Damien. “How bouts I buy your beers all night if you sit down and join in? Be an amicable chappy!”

  Damien smirked. “I don’t need you to buy my drinks. I have enough money to buy your whole fucking family.”

  Lucas smiled his cheeky grin. “I very much doubt that, lad, but why don’t we say I’m doing it to show my respect. I’m the new boy here and I obviously don’t know how things work now, do I? So accept my offer as an apology.”

  Damien scrutinised the man’s suggestion, but it seemed obvious that it had settled down his need for bravado. Harry admired Lucas’s savvy. The man had swallowed his own sense of pride and manipulated Damien into behaving. The young thug thought he’d won, but it was apparent to everyone else at the bar that Lucas had just used a modicum of intelligence to control the situation.

  “Okay,” Damien finally said, snatching the bottle from Lucas. “Guess I can lower myself for one night and share a few beers with the peasants.”

  Everyone was happy to ignore the insult, ready to play along with Lucas’s charade if it meant having peace. They raised their beers in the air and mumbled agreement.

  Lucas put his hand on the bar; it was swollen and red in the candle light. “Don’t suppose you could get me some ice, luv?”

  Steph sighed and nodded. “Sure.”

  Damien suddenly slammed down his own fist on the bar and made the rest of them jump. Like Lucas, his hand was also swollen. “Yeah, I think I could do with some too.”

  There was a brief silence before Damien began laughing. It was the least hostile Harry had ever seen the lad and, before long, the entire bar was sipping their drinks and laughing right along with him. The tension seemed to float away.

  But Harry had a feeling it wouldn’t last.

  7

  “Dude, I’m starting to get totally frost-bitten. It’s like The Day After Tomorrow in here.”

  Ben sighed. For some reason, Jerry had to speak almost entirely in film references. The fact that Ben’s father owned a video store didn’t help matters at all. Yet, despite his annoyance, Ben had to agree. It was getting uncomfortably cold.

  “Can you hear me, B-dog?” Jerry shouted from the shop floor. “I said it’s like The Day aft-“

  “Yes, I heard you. Hopefully the power will come back on soon, but there’s not a lot I can do about it in the meantime.”

  “What? You saw those fuses! The lights ain’t coming on any time soon. You should just call your dad so we can get out of here.”

  Ben fumbled his way through the dark from the office back to the shop floor, bumping into various shelving units along the way. “I tried already! My phone’s playing up. The display is all screwed.”

  “No shit? My phone is like that, too.”

  Ben paused. What were the odds that both their phones would be playing up? “Really? You think it’s the weather?”

  “I dunno,” Jerry said. “Can the weather do stuff like that?”

  “Something’s responsible, not just for the phones but the power blowing out as well.”

  Ben crossed the shop floor over to the thick glass door a
t the front of the shop. It was still snowing outside; heavy round flakes that seemed to sizzle as they hit the ground. He and Jerry had been clearing the entranceway throughout the day, keeping the place as accessible as possible. Of course, in such bad weather, barely a soul came by all day anyway. To make best use of the time, Ben had decided to do a stock count, which had been spot-on bar two missing copies of The Pianist and a copy of Brain Dead that Jerry had swiped over six months ago.

  Ben turned around to face the gloom of the shop floor and a thought crossed his mind. “Hey, Jerry, when did you go to the supermarket last?”

  Jerry’s response came from somewhere near the cash register. Ben hoped he wasn’t messing around with anything. “Couple hours ago, why?”

  “Did they say what time they were closing?”

  “Nah, Cruella was serving me. I bought a Beano and left.”

  “You mean the manageress? Yeah, she’s always so rude. I don’t get her.”

  “I hope she gets eaten alive by zombies,” said Jerry. “And not the slow kind – the shit-crazy running kind from Dawn of the Dead 2004.”

  Ben sighed at yet another film reference. “Maybe we should go across and see how the supermarket staff are getting home. Might be safer if we all go together.”

  “Dude!” Jerry cried out triumphantly. “That blonde girl over there is smoking hot. This could be the opening I’ve been waiting for.”

  “I’m sure she’ll appreciate you getting her home safely. Just let me lock-up and we’ll get going”

  But before Ben could finish locking up, something hit the door.

  8

  The temperature had gradually swan-dived so low that Harry and the others shivered constantly. Steph’s teeth also begun to chatter, leading everyone to giggle at her, which she didn’t seem to appreciate at all. Eventually they’d all been forced to gather in front of the fire to try and keep warm.