by Lex Sinclair
‘Do you believe in God?’
‘No.’
‘Do you think God only protects those who believe in Him?’
Jonesy shrugged. ‘I dunno. Probably. Everyone in power I met always liked the bum-lickers. God’s probably no different. I wouldn’t worship him now though, even if he paid me.’
‘Do you believe in yourself?’
Jonesy thumped his fist on the bonnet and gritted his teeth. ‘I believe I do the right thing almost all the time no matter what the result. Now, if you don’t mind. We’re running kinda late.’
‘Believe in yourself, Jonesy. Believe in yourself, Sue. Believe in yourself, reverend.’
Startled again by how the stranger knew their names as though she were a close friend or an acquaintance, Jonesy spat, ‘What difference does it make anyhow?’
The lunatic woman who evidently did possess second sight, at least to a certain degree, smiled broadly. ‘Because God believes in you.’
*
The van moved at a steady pace. Perkins fought the steering wheel as he cornered a hairpin. To his right grey tufts of grass sprouted out of the earth. He blinked tears back remembering the fresh virgin hue of the field. Scattered bones sprinkled the soil. Bones of belonging to a sheep and goats and horses. The wire-mesh fencing had been blown over and lay forlornly. The timber posts snapped in half, protruded like snapped calves. The stone farmhouse that was set back a ways overlooking the train track fifty below had no roof. The timber-slatted joists had toppled and rotted. Cracked tiles decorated the property.
However, worse than all of those sights was the husk folded at the waist by the entrance gate. Perkins forgot the man’s name. Yet he occasionally attended his sermons, especially around the Christmas holidays. An amicable, humble fellow. Often they discussed the weather (a universal topic). Then they’d bid each other farewell.
Anyway, the husk donning denim dungarees and a plaid shirt sat with his back propped up. His right hand, Perkins noticed, was lying palm-up and only his middle finger stood upright. He smiled at that. The farmer, who might have been Joe, had given the world “the finger”, finally facing his untimely demise.
‘My sentiments exactly,’ Jane, the woman with second sight said.
No one said anything.
Perkins glimpsed his wing mirror and saw Jonesy walking briskly up the steep gradient in their wake. He’d relinquished his seat in the transit to the lunatic woman, who had relaxed considerably since bursting from the foliage.
Sue didn’t approve of Jane’s arrival. She became defensive. The woman’s nonsensical rambling may have subsided to a placated demeanour but no one as of yet trusted Jane entirely. Yet it would be inhumane to leave her outside, alone, to perish.
‘So, what’s your story?’ Sue asked.
‘Not much to tell that’s any different than you guys,’ Jane said with an indifferent shrug. ‘Been living off scraps and package food. Raided the liquor store of chewing gum, crisps, biscuits and other junk food. My boyfriend went all crazy like a lotta folk. Jus’ couldn’t cope with the entire new world we live in, I guess. One night two years ago, I was asleep and he’d got up. Couldn’t sleep. Stress and what have you. He put both barrels of a shotgun in his mouth and went to see his friend Jesus.
‘After that my mind was scrambled egg. I didn’t eat for a coupla days. Didn’t bother taking care of myself. That’s when my gums started bleeding and my dentures fell out. Didn’t care or nothing. Not like me. Not like I used to be anyway. Used to be all for looking after myself. Brushing my teeth with the most expensive brand of toothpaste. Comb my hair religiously – no pun-intended, reverend,’ she added, regarding Perkins who laughed. ‘Not so long ago I had no wrinkles, beautiful full lips and not a worry in the world, ’cept a broken nail once in a while.
‘Drank all the booze I could get from that liquor store. But I’d still be alive the next morning, breathing this polluted, cloudy air. No more than a coughing fit every now ’n then to bring me face-to-face with mortality.
‘I tried doing what my husband did. But I didn’t have his balls – not literally. Couldn’t bring myself to point the loaded weapon to my face, never mind swallow the whole damn barrel. It stank of cordite and was covered in blood, teeth and gums. Even found half his nose lying on the carpet. His brains attracted the last few flies through the skirting boards. They scoffed the jelly wetness from the wall. I jus’ sat there both envious of what he did and revolted.
‘I went to the town library and took books and read avidly. Kept my mind busy looking for scraps of food and using my battery-powered Rampart Rabbit vibrator as my luxuries.’
Sue raised her eyebrows at Perkins who suppressed his mirth at the mention of Jane’s vibrator.
‘I was rotating my hips, going all cow-girl on my joystick one afternoon earlier this year when I started hearing the voice.’ Jane either didn’t notice the shocked expressions of her rescuers or she didn’t care. ‘At first I thought the voice in my head was my own. But then came the vivid dreams that were more like precognitions prophesising the image of Death and the man in black that followed…’
Perkins almost lost control of the wheel altogether at the mention of the dreams. Initially, he didn’t want to say aloud, but he thought Jane was still rambling, albeit in a much calmer monotone. Yet still delirious. After all, it had only been twenty minutes tops since the incident when they first discovered her. Now, he realised, she was telling the God’s honest truth. Yet what caused his heart to thud against his ribcage was how uncanny they all seemed to be having dreams/premonitions of the Grim Reaper and the man in black.
Jane whipped her head to and fro, wondering why Sue and Perkins’ faces had morphed into crestfallen horror. ‘What’s wrong? If it’s about the Rampart Rabbit vibrator, you don’t have to worry, I haven’t brought it with me. I won’t be impaling myself in your domain. I didn’t mean to be explicit either, but it was relevant to the point I was making, is all.’
Perkins’ throat undulated from the rolling Adam’s apple.
‘It’s not that,’ Sue said at last. ‘Although that’s good that you won’t be masturbating, ’cause we’ve got a little one with us. And we’ve all been through a heck of an ordeal. Images that shouldn’t been seen by naked eyes have scarred us permanently as it is. We could do without any more.’ Sue then looked over to Perkins who had resumed full control again. ‘Shall you tell her or shall I?’
‘I better keep my concentration on the road. We can’t afford to crash.’
Sue explained as best she could how Perkins and the late John Hayes had dreams that were actually premonitions.
Jane shook her head slowly, absorbing the compelling information. She didn’t know where to look or what to do with her grubby hands and yellowy fingernails. ‘What were your visions, Anthony?’
Perkins cleared his throat and slowed the transit when they reached the footbridge. ‘Same as you by the sound of it,’ he said, glancing in his rear view mirror for Jonesy to appear. ‘But I also had one of the nuclear holocaust caused by the asteroids.’
‘What I can’t get my head around – and what probably drove me to the brink of madness – is if this towering figure clad in black is a symbol of dark times or dark days ahead or something that actually exists, like us.’
Sue didn’t know what to say to Jane’s comment. She was glad that they arrived at the gate that led down the concrete path into St John the Baptist Cemetery.
‘Whether or not this grim Reaper as you say is an actual entity or a phantom makes no difference,’ Perkins said at last. ‘It is as real and as dangerous as anything else that could cause us harm and fatality. Everything my sister wrote in her letter was true, and she knew this because the Grim Reaper visited her. Everything I saw in my visions is coming true. Look around you,’ he said, sweeping his hand out across the vista visible over the train track at the smouldering town below. ‘If that’s not real then what is? Because it sure is real to me.’
The man who ha
d lost his best friend and sister (the only two people he’d bonded with all his life) directly before the earth-quaking impact sighed wearily. He brought the van to a halt then dropped the gearshift into reverse. The van backed onto the driveway of the vicarage and down the slight slope onto the gravel stones. In all the time he’d resided at the vicarage the sound of gravel stones popping and exploding under the rolling tyres for some reason comforted him – but not anymore.
Perkins applied the handbrake but left the motor running. ‘I dunno what anything means any more,’ he said in a faraway voice, emanating not from his mouth but his soul. ‘Perhaps everything that transpires is all coincidence. Perhaps the big bang that created the universe and life on earth that evolved into the here and now was all by chance. It’s not what I used to believe. On the contrary. After listening to my friend, John, I began to believe that all the imperative stuff that happens – happens for a reason. Just ’cause we may not know what the reason is doesn’t mean it’s not for a reason…’
Jane could feel the profound melancholy more so than Perkins’ exhalations. ‘What ’bout now?’
Perkins shook his head, forlornly. ‘John once told me that suffering purifies the soul. But I can’t help but wonder how much suffering we need to endure before we’re pure.’ Tears brimmed in his eyes. His eyes quivered transparently. ‘I’m all for being punished for doing something wrong that’s important, but this…’
Sue and Jane knew what he meant. Their silence wasn’t out of lack of support but due to complete empathy.
‘No human being that’s ever graced the world is perfect. I used to believe God made us that way for a reason. There are those words again. I believed that he wanted to give us free will to see if we could reach as close to perfection as humanly possible before our time was up. Or if we’d let the incidents and evil ways of the world turn us into evil minded creatures filled with hate and bitterness.
‘Now my dead sister – who isn’t really my sister – wants me to protect her son’s life and keep him from the Grim Reaper and its sinister disciples.’ Perkins stopped talking and rubbed his stubble. ‘On the eve of the world coming to an end, or as close as, I threw my crucifix away. I only retrieved it again as it was the only thing I had that reminded me of Bishop John Hayes; not because of any disrespect to God.
‘I found Sapphire and brought him back here. And this young boy – who’s merely a toddler right now – is supposed to be the world’s saviour. I am the only thing he’s got that resembles a family. I’m an orphan myself. A part of me wants to believe that this happened for a reason. But there’s another side to me that whispers to me upon waking in the morning in almost a mocking manner, Don’t be so naïve.
‘You see my subconscious wants me to believe in there being a greater power that will one day end all suffering and grant those that endured and were good eternal happiness. But that’s not gonna happen friends and neighbours. It’s a nice dream, I admit. But it’s the dream of a boy.’
Sue watched, stunned, as Perkins blinked his tears away.
‘Now, lemme ask you two something. What am I supposed to tell Sapphire when he comes of age and I tell him – or rather show him – the letter his mum wrote about knowing intuitively that she was gonna die during labour, and how her son was a gift from God. And this son was the world’s only hope for salvation? Because if today was the day he’d come of age I’d either tell him to ignore it (say it was just the ramblings of frightened woman, who died of her own fright). Or worse still, burn the letter and never mention to having any knowledge of it. And you can understand why, can’t you?’
Sue and Jane couldn’t speak even if they found their voices. What Perkins said was resoundingly what they all felt. Not even corrupt governments or hostile nations had induced the desecrated remains that they’d once been proud to call home. The blame this time was not the humans’ fault. Instead forces, far more powerful and potent than they could ever create decided what would be left and who out of the six billion would survive.
Jonesy came ambling around the front garden wall holding his hips. He rolled his eyes at them, pretending to be vexed at having to walk the last quarter mile up an almost vertical gradient. It would have been humorous had they not listened to the emotions of a tormented soul.
‘I dunno if anything happens for a reason, reverend,’ Jane said, courageously breaking the quiet. ‘All I know is that I’m grateful for you three for doing something beyond kind and generous and offering me a home. I dunno what lies ahead for us exactly. I know there will be many dark days ahead some, sooner than we think and more farther down the line. But what I do know is those dark days, both now and in the foreseeable future, are much better spent in the company of good folk like you.
‘As for what you tell, or don’t tell, this little Sapphire kid…’ Jane contemplated her next words carefully. ‘I choose to believe that when the time comes you’ll do the right thing; just like you did today.’
Sue placed her hand on Jane’s shoulder and gave her a smile. ‘You’re welcome.’
Perkins couldn’t quite muster the strength to smile just yet. However, he turned in his seat and faced the unkempt woman. ‘Thank you, Jane. Thank you for your kind words.’
‘Not just kind,’ Jane pointed out. ‘But true…’
Jonesy stood outside half-jokingly throwing his hands up in the air, wondering why they were taking so long. ‘Oh, by all means stay in the van with the heat on while I stand out here freezing my balls off, why don’t ya.’
This time they all laughed heartily.
25.
THE M4 that led from London to the small town in Wales where Sapphire currently resided was chock-a-block with vehicles of all kinds. Many years had passed without as much as a breeze. The dilapidated vehicles weren’t lined neatly in the six lanes segregated by a single barrier. Rather, vehicles were left askew, jutting from all angles. In the pandemonium citizens had attempted to overtake slow-moving traffic as panic kicked in. Collisions of all manners went on endlessly.
The meadows on either side were charcoal carpets. Yet sprouting sporadically were fresh roots of grass. The six-lane road was beginning to turn green. Concrete and asphalt yielding to nature once more. Hedges and trees had overgrown and craned over the motorway like colourful sentinels. But the worst aspect of this incredible, apocalyptic scenario was the innumerable husks. Their heads looked more like abandoned wasps’ nests than skulls. Their entire anatomies were ash-grey and crusty. They were no more than hollow shapes, sprawled across the motorway and hanging out of their cars and buses, heads craned back seeing their doom plummeting out of the sky peeling away the surface and ending their existence in a blink of an eye.
The Reaper had traversed as far as it was going to by horse and carriage. It now emerged from the carriage and floated across the smouldering ruins that had once been the meadows where crops had grown and sheep and other cattle enjoyed life. The sight of the massive conflagration excited it immensely. Its hideous row of arcing teeth widened. This is what it dreamed of since the dawn of mankind and the centuries of evolution. It dreamed of veiling the green and blue life globe in absolute darkness. So dark it wasn’t even black, but nothingness.
Its own existence superseded these mortals. These mortals that believed they had all the power and influence. Men in power had induced nothing more than global destruction in favour of their greed. And as generations gave way to new generations, nothing changed. Technology improved vastly, of course.
Now these souls were in the palm of the Reaper’s mighty hand. It could crush them to cinders or permit them to cross the bridge into the ever after.
It reached the stretch of road and made a sweeping motion of its left hand. The rusted orange and black bulks skated across the asphalt. Sparks spat out from the dismembering bodywork. Then they all toppled down the trench, smashing into each other, crashing through the barbed wire fencing and into the wasteland that the Reaper had just crossed.
Some of the cars an
d buses stayed upended while others righted themselves. Others teeter-tottered on top of each other. The din would have been deafening had anyone been alive in the environing land to hear it. But to the Reaper it was the highest most pertinent and exquisite note in a classical piece of music.
Clouds of dust and ash billowed up into the overcast atmosphere. Had anyone alive been present they would have choked on the fumes – but not the Reaper. It glided over the slow-moving lane and repeated this process, clearing the M4 of obstruction for its followers to travel without delay.
The blackened terrain where crops had once grown lay beneath the miles of destruction. Had anyone been alive and witnessed such an event it wouldn’t have registered as tangible it was so outlandish and far-fetched. Yet there it was in plain view for all remaining survivors to see if they ever came this way.
Before the asteroids had entered the planet’s atmosphere and rendered the majority of the land to scorched vestiges of existence, the Reaper’s work had been miniscule. Now it was undeniable and soon-to-be-complete with utter devastation.
*
The air was a lot clearer and breathable in the mountains of Brecon, Wales. Of course, other mountainous terrain around the U.K. and the world would also fair better than other areas. Unless of course the mountain in question had been directly struck by the falling asteroids. Then of course the mountain would cease to exist altogether. But in this quiet, serene part of the world the dune-shaped hilltops remained undisturbed.
Tom Watts and his family resided in Rhigos. But two weeks prior to the end of the world prediction (which this time was at least accurate) Tom and his family had gathered all the provisions they could find. He made sure he bought three full cans of fuel and loaded them in the boot of his Volkswagen. The boot also contained three four-litre bottles of natural spring water.