World's end taom-1

by Mark Chadbourn

  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 of 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.

  As her father recounted the details, her upbeat, optimistic character took on a sharp poignancy; Church marvelled at how she had managed to remain so unspoilt while living permanently in the shadow of death. And it made his own doubts and fears seem so insignificant; he felt weak and pathetic in comparison.

  The drive to Bristol passed in a flash of recklessly taken corners and jumped red lights. Each time Church glanced at Marianne in the rearview mirror, his heart rattled and his stomach knotted. Her face was impossibly pale. She was still out cold and he couldn't tell if she was suffering. He couldn't believe how acutely he felt for someone he barely knew; perhaps it was just the name creating echoes in his subconscious-maybe this Marianne he could save! — but whatever it was, she had touched him on some deep level. More than anything else in the world, he didn't want this Marianne to die.

  Laura warned the hospital of their approach with the last gasp of life in her mobile phone and when they arrived at Frenchay the staff were waiting for her. As Marianne was rushed on a trolley up to the operating theatre, the farmer paused briefly to offer thanks for their help before chasing after his daughter.

  "Poor girl. I hope there's something they can do," Ruth said softly. Seeing the concern on Church's face, she touched his arm gently and said, "At least we were around to get her here quickly."

  After occasional bouts of drizzle, the gathering storm clouds finally broke in a downpour that hammered against the reception doors. Bursts of lightning crackled overhead. "We should be hitting the road," Laura said as she watched the fading light.

  "I can't go until I know how she's going to be." Church silenced Laura's protests with a shake of the head before wandering slowly to the lift doors through which Marianne had disappeared.

  Like most hospitals, the layout of Frenchay was labyrinthine. Church thought he was following the numerous signs, but he must have missed one at some point, for he found himself in a quiet ward with no sign of any operating theatres. Looking for directions, he stepped inside. Unlike the rest of the hospital, it was so still his footsteps on the creaking, sticky linoleum sounded like he was wearing hobnailed boots. There was the unmistakable smell of antiseptic that he always associated with sickness. Small rooms lay on either side of the corridor at the start, but further on he could see double doors through which he could just glimpse a large, open ward filled with beds. The room to his right had a big viewing window like a storefront. Inside, a sickly boy lay on his bed staring blankly at a TV set which featured US cartoons that were cut so fast it made Church feel nauseous. Numerous tubes snaked from his arms and his nose and there was a bank of monitors to each side of his bed. From the intricate locking system and the red light above the door, Church guessed it was some kind of isolation unit.

  The door on the room to his left was slightly ajar and as he approached it Church could hear voices whispering a mantra over and over again. Through the glass panel he could just see a middle-aged woman in the bed, her arms so thin they looked like sticks. Her eyes were closed and she had on a black wig. A man with grey hair and a face lined by grief sat on one side of her, his hand resting gently on her forearm; his fingers trembled intermittently. On the other side a younger man, in his twenties, his face flushed from crying, held her hand loosely. They were both repeating the words "I love you" in quiet, strained voices.

  "Are you a relative?" The voice made him start. A black nurse, short and dumpy with a pleasant face, was at his side.

  "No. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to intrude. I just …" His eyes returned unbidden to the painful tableau. "What's wrong with her?"

  The nurse smiled, but she wasn't going to give much away. "She hasn't got long. She's been in a coma for the last day. But she can still hear, we think, so they're just sa
ying what they feel, trying to show her she's loved."

  Before the end, Church thought. He looked on to the double doors where he could now see people of all ages lying in the beds. "Them too?"

  "Leukaemia mainly. Some others. The boy in the room behind's just had a bone marrow transplant. We need to keep him isolated because he's susceptible to infection."

  "Looks like some people's worlds are ending ahead of schedule." Laura had walked up unseen and had been watching the two men whispering to their wife and mother. Church rounded on her to berate her for her callousness until he saw her eyes were brimming with tears.

  The nurse glanced at them both, then said questioningly. "Is there someone-?"

  "No," Church apologised. "A friend's just been rushed into an operating theatre. I got lost."

  "Easily done," she smiled. "This place is a rabbit warren. The next floor up."

  "Where's Ruth?" Church asked as he led the way up the stairs.

  "In reception, sulking."

  Church guessed that wasn't the case, but said nothing. When they reached the next floor, he held open the door and said, "I never thought about the repercussions."

  "What do you mean?"

  "How many people rely on technology. That boy in the isolation unit, all those monitors and electronically regulated drips-" He broke off when he saw Marianne's father sitting on a chair with his head in his hands. "How is she?" Church asked cautiously.

  "They're just prepping her now. The op should take about five hours, they reckon. They think we got here in time. If all goes well-" He swallowed, grasped Church's hand again. "Thank God you were there." Church sat next to him, listening to the clinical sounds of the hospital, the rat-chat of swing doors, the measured step of soles on lino, the clink of trolleys, the whir of lifts. "I've spent years preparing myself for this moment and it hasn't done one bloody bit of good," the farmer continued. "I should've just pretended she wasn't ill and dealt with this when it happened." He added bleakly, "I hope I haven't wasted the time I've had with her."

  "No point thinking about the past," Church said calmly but forcefully.

  "Do you believe in God?" The farmer's hands were shaking. He caught his wrist, then buried his hands in the folds of his jacket.

  "I'd like to," Church replied guiltily.

  "And so would I. I used to pray, when we first found out about Marianne. I stopped after a while. I couldn't really see the good of it, you know? It didn't seem like the kind of thing grown-ups should be doing. The wife kept at it, though. Down the church every Sunday. I should have carried on. That was me being selfish." Church politely disagreed, but the farmer waved him quiet. "She's the only one we've got. We never seemed to get round to having any more, but she got lots more love because of it. You couldn't have wanted for a better child. Never been any trouble. Always done her schoolwork, passed her exams. Never been lippy to me or the wife. Helped out around the farm, even when I didn't want her to because she was going through one of her bad periods. She's a bit of a dreamer, I suppose. Used to read books all the time. Not like me. I like to be out there, bloody well doing stuff with my hands. But Marianne, she liked to think." He paused reflectively. "I always hoped she'd take over the farm one day."

  "She still might."

  The farmer nodded, tight-lipped, refusing to tempt fate. For a long period they sat in silence, listening to their thoughts. Laura seemed to grow uncomfortable at the inactivity and after a while muttered something about going off to find the canteen.

  Through the windows at the end of the corridor Church watched the night draw in, wrapping itself around the storm that still buffeted the building. Flashes of lightning flared briefly like the distant fires in the void he had witnessed through the windows of the Watchtower.

  When four hours had elapsed, a nurse emerged from the theatre, her expression closed. The farmer caught her arm as she passed and pleaded for some information.

  "I can't really say. Mr. Persaud will be out as soon as he knows the situation," she began, but looking at his face, she relented a little. "It looks like it's going well," she said with a comforting smile. "Barring anything unforeseen-"

  As if her comment had been heard by the gods, in that instant all the lights went out. The farmer cried out in shock as the darkness swallowed them. "Just a power cut," the nurse said reassuringly, before muttering, "Bloody storm." The lack of illumination through the window suggested it had hit most of the city. "Don't worry. We're well prepared for things like this," she continued. "We've got an emergency generator that will kick in any second."

  Like statues, they waited in the claustrophobic dark, their heavy breath kept tight in their lungs.

  "Any moment now," the nurse repeated. There was an edge in her voice that hadn't been there before.

  It was as if the entire hospital had been held in stasis, but then the dam broke and the cries started far off, rippling towards them in a wave of despair and anxiety. Church heard the rattle of the nurse's feet as she ran from their side and then the bang of the swing door as she disappeared back towards the operating theatre. The cry that squeezed out from the farmer's throat was filled with such devastation that Church felt tears sting his eyes. A man calling out, "They're dying! They're dying!" reverberated up the stairwell, followed by the jarring punch of a woman screaming, "Do something!"

  The movement came out of nowhere; people rushing by in the dark, what could have been a hair's breadth away, or several feet. Church tried to remember where the wall was for safety, but before he could move someone clipped him hard and he slammed against it with such force he lost consciousness.

  When he recovered, the chaos had reached a crescendo. He didn't know how long he had been out, but screams and shouts punctuated the gloom, along with the sound of running feet like machine-gun fire. Church called out for the farmer, but there was no reply. He felt a sudden wave of despair when he realised there was no way the surgeons would be able to finish the operation; Marianne would be dying, if she wasn't already dead.

  Before he could dwell on it, someone came hurrying along the corridor and knocked him over again.

  The intense confusion and claustrophobia left his thoughts in a whirl, but he know he ought to get to the ground floor as soon as possible. He found the stairwell easily enough by scrambling along the wall. Negotiating the descent was trickier; he clung to the railing and felt for each step like a blind man.

  As he reached the next floor, a burst of the purest white light suddenly flared through the glass panel in the door, so bright it lit the entire stairwell. It faded just as quickly, leaving flashes of purple dancing across his retinas. It had been far too dazzling for a torch, and without electricity nothing else could have explained the quality or the intensity of the illumination. He fumbled for the door handle and stepped out into the hall.

  Oddly, the screams and cries on that ward had died away, leaving an incongruous atmosphere of tranquillity. The stillness was broken a second or two later by the sound of a man crying, only the sobbing didn't seem despairing. Then there was laughter, tinged with an obvious note of disbelief, and someone whispering, "Thank God!" over and over again.

  Another flash of the burning white light erupted through the double doors that led to the wider ward and in its glare Church caught a glimpse of a scene he would never forget. The woman the nurse had told him was in a coma and dying of leukaemia stood in the doorway of her room, tubes trailing from her arms and nose like decorations. She was staring at her hands in incomprehension, a smile of amazement drawn across her face. Her husband and son had their arms around her, burying their faces into her neck, their bodies racked with sobs of joy. And then the darkness returned again.

  Desperate to understand, Church propelled himself through the double doors. As he crossed the threshold into the larger ward the power came back on. The patients, many of whom had seemed close to death, were sitting up in their beds, examining themselves with new eyes, smiling, chatting to those around them. Some were clambering ou
t, testing legs that hadn't walked with strength for weeks, pulling out chemotherapy drips with distaste.

  One tall man, his skin sun-browned but his body wasted by the illness, smiled broadly at Church. "What ho! I feel like I could run a marathon!" He pulled back the sheets to reveal a long scar on his lower belly. "Cancer. They said the op hadn't worked." He held out his hands in joyous disbelief.

  Moving through the wave of uplifting emotion, Church looked for some clue to what had happened. Then, when he reached the far wall, he noticed a small figure slumped on the floor like a bundle of dirty clothes. With shock, he realised it was Marianne. Before he had even knelt at her side, he could tell she was dead; she was covered in blood which had poured from the open incision on her shaved head. The wound seemed to have partly sealed itself-there was no evidence of stitching-but it was still impossible to believe she could have made it even a few feet from the operating table. Inexplicably, there was faint charring of the skin around her eyes so that it appeared she was wearing a black mask; despite that, her pale face was composed.

  Church took her hand, marvelling at the softness of her skin as stinging tears sprang to his eyes.

  "She did it." A short, dumpy man with chemo-baldness stood behind him. "At first I thought she was a ghost walking through the ward. After the lights went, I thought it was the end-I was a bit delirious, I think. And then there she was." He raised his hands in awe. "Suddenly she burned with the brightest white light. It was the most amazing thing. I thought, `She's an angel come for me.' And when the light fell on me I suddenly felt better." The tears were streaming down his cheeks at the memory. "She carried on through the ward and did it again. She made everybody better. And then she just fell down here like she'd burned herself out."