Don't Fear The Reaper (25 page)

Surrendering, Jonesy sidled past the woman and made his way towards the
idling van. As he got to the passenger door that Sue left open for him, he
stopped. ‘I hope that things get better and that good will prevail all the bad
that has happened. I love my friends as much as I have loved anyone I have bonded
with. But as far as having faith in the so-called creator of Heaven and Earth?
I can’t say whether He exists or not. What I can say is shame on Him for
turning a blind eye when we needed him most. Shame on Him.’

‘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 had 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.’