Enter the Apocalypse

by Gondolfi, Thomas

  "Piss off," One of the mums says to him.

  The man just smiles. "You may as well enjoy yourself an' all, Love," he says to her. "We're all gonna die soon anyway. Have a drink. Fuck."

  "Bugger off out of here, drunken sod," someone else says.

  The man shrugs and wanders into the road and a blue car has to stop suddenly because the man doesn't wait for the lollipop-lady to let him cross.

  I turn to Mum. "Why did that man say we were all going to die, Mum?"

  "He's just stupid; don't listen to him."

  "Why did he say it though?"

  "Because he's stupid and likes trying to frighten people."

  "We're not going to die, are we, Mum?"

  Mum drags me through the crowd of other mums; someone's shopping bag brushes across my face, cold—a huge Union Jack. There's bare feet, painted nails, stripy tights and sandals, long skirts, and big platform shoes. Patterns, swirls of white, blue, purple, orange, and yellow.

  "Mum?"

  "Don't be stupid, Jimmy; no one's going to die." She doesn't look at me properly as she says this but hurries me on.

  We're at the door of the demountable building, I can see the other kids inside, through the windows; chasing and running around before the teacher arrives and tells everybody to “settle down.” Mum gives me a hug and hands me my bag. She gives me a wave and waits for me to go up the three bendy steps to the door; it's cooler in the shade. As I turn around, she smiles at me, waves once and walks away.

  For some reason, I want her to stay with me today more than ever.

  Later.

  I'm playing Clackers in the playground. I didn't eat my dinner today; I wasn't hungry—normally the dinner-ladies would tell me off, but they didn't seem to mind today. They seemed more cheerful than usual.

  Nigel Stevens is watching me, he doesn't seem to want to join in with me but he keeps trying to show me his new digital watch. Dad says that they're really expensive and not for little boys, but Nigel Stevens has got one.

  "It was nearly the end of the world yesterday," he says.

  "Don't be stupid—how can the world end. It goes on forever."

  "If the Russians drop bombs on us and the Americans, we'll drop bombs on them and then there'll be so many explosions going off that it'll be the end of the world."

  I don't say anything; I don't want him to see that I'm scared, so I carry on swinging the Clackers. The plastic balls click together at the bottom of the limp string, but that's it—I can never get them to work properly, like you see on the TV advert where the balls are supposed to knock into each other at the bottom of and above your hand.

  "My Dad says that if you look at an atomic bomb go off it's so bright that it'll melt your eyeballs and you'll be blind forever."

  "Don't be stupid," I say.

  "The explosion is so loud that your ear drums will burst and you'll be deaf as well."

  I look up from the swinging Clackers with a horrible picture in my head of not being able to see anything or hear anything.

  Nigel carries on: "Then your skin'll melt off your bones and you'll be a walking skeleton. That's if you're lucky."

  "Lucky? How do you make that out?" I ask. I'm getting fed up with the Clackers now.

  "If you're far enough away to survive all that, then the radiation will get you. You won't notice a thing—houses, roads, cars, shops—it'll all look the same as before, but everyone will get ill—really ill—and drop dead." He chuckles as if he's said something clever; his fat cheeks wobble.

  "Go away if you're going to be silly," I say.

  Nigel laughs; he knows he's starting to scare me. I think of the old man I saw on my way to school.

  "There'll be nothing left alive on earth, just dust and rubble."

  I walk off towards the demountable classroom, leaving Nigel and the Clackers behind. I keep my face away from him so he doesn't see that I'm starting to cry. I can still hear Nigel as I walk away.

  "There'll be so many bombs going off that the world will be knocked off balance. My dad says that time and space will alter..."

  Saturday: 87 degrees Fahrenheit.

  It's so busy today; Mum's taking me round the shops in town and there are people everywhere. I'm clinging on to Mum's hand as she leads me around the grocery store—all the different coloured fruits and vegetables looks fab. People are shoving into each other to get to the produce. I saw a man putting apples and bananas into his bag and then run out of the shop without paying. Nobody seemed to mind, but a big woman with curly hair tutted.

  I want to get out of here. My head feels dizzy but I have to keep holding on to my mum because if I get lost in all this, I'll not find her again. Anyway, it's nearly time for us to go to Woolworth's. I want to see the new Steve Austin: Six Million Dollar Man figure. I've seen the advert on the telly—he has a bionic eye that you can hold up to your eye and look through, and if you pull a lever on his back he lifts up an engine block which comes with the set.

  We're just outside the grocery store; it's bright and hazy in the street and everyone is standing around on the pavement. I ask Mum what's going on so she takes me to the front by the road. There's a metal fence so that people can't walk into the road. Everybody is watching the road like they're waiting for something. Policemen stand on the other side of the railing, guarding it so no one jumps over. On the other side of the road, behind another fence, there are a group of punks with really bright hair—green, red, and orange. One of them, a man, has his hair pushed up really high in the middle—he looks like the cockerel on the cornflakes packets. Even though it's hot, they all wear black jackets, some with loads of badges on them. Some of the punks have written on their clothes in white paint, not neatly though, so I can't read the words. One of them has a big pin going through his nose. I can't keep my eyes off the pin. I wonder how he got it in there. I wonder if he put it in himself. It must have been agony for him. He sees me looking at him, but just before I manage to look away, he wrinkles his nose at me and spits on the floor, letting it ooze from his mouth in a long stream. I don't know why he doesn't like me, just because I looked at him. They're all drinking from cans and a policeman is talking with them, but they're laughing and joking at him when he's not looking at them.

  I look up at my mum and ask her what everyone's waiting for, but before she says anything there's a drum beating down the road. I lean forward as far as I can to see, holding onto the bars with my head on the cold metal. There are people coming slowly along the road, some of them are dressed in white sheets like I did at Halloween when we went trick-or-treating. The two at the front are each beating a drum slowly in time with each other; behind them, others march along holding boards on sticks high above their heads. They're shouting out at the crowds on either side. The cornflake-cockerel and his friends clap and shout out "Oi, oi" and drink from their cans.

  The drummers pass right by me and I gaze up to see that they are wearing white masks which look like skulls, you can see the grinning teeth and the black eye-holes. It must be hot in there. I step back. I'm scared—they might reach over and get at me.

  One of them shakes his arms and shouts something angrily at one of the policemen; the policeman points his finger at the man to warn him as he walks past. One of the punks with black panda eyes and no sleeves in his jean-jacket to show off his tattoos, is arguing with one of the skeleton men on the other side where some of the railing has fallen down. The punk pushes the man in the chest. He falls back onto the road but gets back up quickly and hits the punk. The two men punch and kick at each other like two dogs I once saw in our street, until three policemen separate them and take them away to their car—the punk is limping and holding his head.

  I'm glad that Mum's hand is on my shoulder.

  More skeleton men pass by, some of them walk quietly, holding their boards up high, others shout out nastily or even, I think, cry behind their masks. I wonder what their faces look like underneath. I can only see their eyes.

  "It's not too late,
" one of them says to me as he goes past. "Stop it now, before it's too late," shouts another.

  The huge group gets thinner and thinner and finally just a few of them pass. At the back, one of them is wearing a long black robe with a hood—I can't see his face inside but he carries a long, moon shaped knife on a long pole. He is the scariest of them all and I step back into the crowd again and watch him walk past. I don't want him to notice me.

  When they've all gone by, the policemen open the gates and people start to cross the road and go back into the shops, shaking their heads and mumbling to each other. The road seems quieter than it was before.

  I don't feel like going to Woolworth's to see the Six Million Dollar Man anymore. I wish Davie was here; he'd know what this is all about. He'd tell me.

  I want to go home now.

  Sunday: 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

  I had a dream about Davie last night; it was just like how it actually happened. I remember waking up; there was a screech of tyres then a smashing sound and a tinkling of broken glass. My pushchair was on its side—I was inside. When I looked out, Davie was lying in the middle of the road with his arm at a funny angle and all the traffic had stopped and people were crowding around. Mum said that he had died straight away and wouldn't have felt a thing. She said that my pushchair had rolled down the bank into the road while she was in the newsagents buying Dad's cigarettes and that Davie had run into the road to save me from getting run over. Only in my dream last night we both died and we lay together in the road; but the funny thing was that we could still talk and joke together, invisible, so nobody else could see us.

  I'm lying in bed now. It's so hot that I can't keep still long enough to get to sleep. It's very late because I heard Mum and Dad going to bed—whispering on the landing, brushing teeth, toilet flushing, then their bedroom door closing quietly, and then silence—and they always go to bed really late. Mum and Dad spent all day watching the news on television. They wouldn't even let me see the Muppets tonight.

  Mum had one of her “turns” today. She was shouting at Dad in the kitchen and I watched from the upstairs window as she ran into the back garden pulling on her hair. Dad told me afterwards that everybody was frightened at what's happening on the news with the Russians and the Americans and that I shouldn't worry because we weren't close to any big cities. I don't know what he meant by saying that. What's wrong with living near a big city; and what's that got to do with Mum anyway?

  The house is really quiet now. I heard lots of cars going past and people talking and walking around outside earlier. Something was happening, but I don't know what.

  Now it's just the house creaking and a dog barking in the distance and, every now and then, the drone of big helicopters far, far away.

  Monday: 62 degrees Fahrenheit.

  It's supposed to be the start of the summer holidays today, but it's not sunny anymore. This summer has been a “heat wave” so my teacher Mrs. Lennox was telling us. But today it's just dull and cold. The wind became really strong late last night, rattling the windows and keeping me awake. Mum wasn't here when I woke up; Dad said she'd gone to see Aunty Mable at her house. He said the heat we've been having was starting to get to people and that now it's gone cooler, things will soon get back to normal. I hope they do. He's listening to the radio again; he said the TV's not working. I asked him why he wasn't at work at the railway yard today and he just laughed as if I'd said something funny and said he was off work for a long time now.

  I've got a headache, but I'm still going to go and see Daniel who lives opposite.

  Daniel is wearing his Parker with the hood up, so I went back home to get mine. Dad asked me where I was going and when I said that Daniel and I were going to play on the rope-swing at the park, I thought he was going to stop me, but then he smiled and said that I might as well enjoy myself while I could. He told me to be careful. Dad didn't look very well. He had dark circles around his eyes, which were red and puffy, and he looked pale.

  The streets are empty as we make our way along the pavements of our estate—past trimmed hedges and front lawns—there are a few leaves blowing around in the breeze, blown down from last night's wind. As we walk, I hear a shrill screaming and a moaning sound muffled behind someone's front window. I look at Daniel who gives me an odd look, but we carry on. We stop and look around Mr. Cooper’s brown Datsun 240Z parked in his drive; I like the bucket seats and the big front spoiler. Daniel says that the car will do 125 miles per hour at top speed.

  "I'm going to have a motorbike when I'm older," I tell him. "And I'm gonna do stunts like Evel Knievel."

  Daniel steps back and looks at me with his head on one side. "You might not grow tall enough to be able to ride a bike," he says, looking down at me. "Anyway, I prefer cars; they're safer if you ever have a crash."

  "It didn't stop Evel Knievel," I shout. "He broke his pelvis last year when he tried to jump over thirteen London buses, but he carried on after that and jumped fourteen Greyhound buses in America."

  "That's stupid," snorts Daniel. "He'll end up killing himself."

  I ignore him and walk onwards. Davie, my brother, wouldn't have said that. He would've been on my side.

  "Why's it so quiet, Dan?" I ask when he catches up.

  "Everybody thinks that the Russians are going to go to war and bomb us any time soon. Most people aren't even leaving their homes—I had to sneak out of my bedroom window onto the garage roof to get out—they wouldn't have let me go otherwise. Lots of people have left town—didn't you hear it all in the road last night? Haven't you been listening to the news? They're saying that parts of America were hit last night."

  "I don't like the news. It's boring," I say.

  We round the corner and weave our way through a line of parked cars and then go between the three concrete bollards which lead us into the park—an empty field all to ourselves. Far over to our left is a row of oak trees lining the brook which flows by the side of the field. From one of these trees is where our rope-swing hangs—if it's still there. We head in that direction over the sun-burned yellow grass.

  My tummy flutters as the long rope comes into view; a thick, stubby piece of wood—the seat—hangs at the bottom, dangling from a thick branch high up in the leaves. I start to run, heading for the small bare patch of dusty earth below the swing. I can't wait for the thrill that I remember so well.

  It's quite hard for me to heave myself upon the rope, but I get comfy on the seat. My legs dangle as I spin around—first one way—faster and faster and then the other way. It makes me laugh as Daniel runs up. He pushes me, slowly at first, then higher and higher. The wind pushes on my face, blowing my hair into my eyes as I hug the rope close. This weightless feeling—it's like flying.

  I soar over the brook, with a thrill of danger in knowing that if I was to fall, I'd be head first into the streaming water. I'm so high up at the top, I can see the tops of some of the smaller trees, the narrow tracks me and Davie used to chase along through the woods on the other side of the stream. I spin round and round as I swing and Daniel is standing looking up at me. Every time I twist and turn, I can see him watching me, then I see the brook and then the wood appears in front of me, again and again.

  I love this. This is brilliant!

  "Do you want your turn, Dan?" I ask.

  There's no reply.

  I lean back, holding the rope at arm’s length, to spin around and see what's keeping him from answering. When he comes back into sight, he's not wearing his Parker coat anymore but a brown tank top and blue shirt with the big collar; the long, wavy blond hair and the worn corduroy flares which I remember so well. He stands tall, arms crossed and with a big smile. He seems to be waiting for my reaction. It's not Daniel, but this boy knows me very well.

  "DAVIE!" I yell.

  I'm still swinging high and twisting on the swing, so I can't go to him. "What happened to Dan?" I shout.

  "He went home half an hour ago, Junior. You were too busy enjoying yourself to notice." He
's still staring at me and smiling.

  "Do you remember when you climbed up to tie this rope on—ages ago, when I was little?" I say, my swinging slowing slightly but I'm spinning faster.

  Davie chuckles. "We had some fun. You and me, eh?"

  It hits me that Davie shouldn't be here. "But you died, Davie. How did you come back?"

  He nods his head, still smiling, but this time his eyes look serious. "One minute, I was nowhere and the next moment I was standing at the other side of the field. I saw two figures in the distance, the only people, so I walked over; that's when I recognized you and Dan. I watched you for a while by the trees until Dan went away; that’s when I took his place here."

  "Where were you, Davie, before? I mean, after the accident?"

  "I don't know, Junior. It's as though I were to ask you to remember where you were before you were born."

  Davie looks around into the distance, at the trees and then at the sky. "The light's different, sort of blue-ish, more like twilight. Where is everybody?" His voice sounds serious.

  I'm confused, my head still hurts; I need to get down so I can talk to him properly—to check that he's actually here and not just another dream. "Can you help me down, Davie?"

  He doesn't move but turns back from looking at the sky and stares at me. He nods his head slowly as if he's just realised something new; he's still smiling but his eyes look sad.

  "Davie, I'm sorry if it was my fault that you got hit by that car. I didn't want you to die. I've missed you a lot. It hasn't been the same since..."

  I need to get down. I feel stupid, up in the air trying to talk to him.

  "Please get me down, Davie."

  "There's no time, Junior. I just wanted to have this moment with you. You see, I may have to go away again."

  I lift myself off the seat and stretch a leg towards the ground to try and stop the swinging with my foot, but I can't reach, and anyway, most of what's beneath me is the ditch where the brook flows far below; but I have to get down.