How the World Ends (35 page)

Why? Why, oh why did you go back?

But so many people…

Look at all the people you brought back...

“I’m so sorry, Rachel,” says the one calling himself Bill, now. “I tried to stop him…”

“But I’m glad you didn’t,” Angie says quickly from behind me. She is standing tall and has that tougher-than-nails look she sometimes gets when she is absolutely convinced of something. I find it oddly comforting. “He did what he had to do to bring you all here safely.”

“Is that what we’re going to tell everyone, Angie?” asks a younger man, obviously distraught; probably the one called Steven. “We’re going to tell them we’re all safe now? That we should just sit in a field and eat grass or something? We haven’t even thought of eating properly for days. These people are staving.”

Herb, who has quietly walked up and placed himself in our little circle, says in his most reassuring voice, “We have plenty of food, Steven. We’ve been stocking up and doing everything we can to make sure whoever finds their way here will have food and shelter. People from all around the area have been writing down what they’re willing to share, and we should able to help you look after everyone with you.”

Lucia comes up beside me and puts her arm around my waist. It is a gesture she has never done before, at least in recent memory, and it isn’t lost on Herb, who, after speaking, peaks over at us and raises an eyebrow. “It’s everyone from the tunnel,” she says. “I think the ones who walked through that tunnel are the only ones left.”

“And us,” I hear myself say. “Everyone who came here is still here.”

Except him. He never walked out. He was carried out. That’s what they told me.

“I think he meant to save us,” says the woman standing beside Bill. “He told me that ‘everyone who made it out can get back in again.’” Then she looks at me, “What do you think he meant by that?”

“I don’t know,” I answer, but for a moment, seeing a few of the lives that he gave his up for, losing him doesn’t feel as bad as it might.

I turn away from the group and back to the kids, Jewel and Gwyn, and take them in my arms, struggling a bit with the weight. They’ve grown so much even in the last little while. I look right at Gwyn and try to keep my face straight, for his eyes are a complete mirror of Jonah’s and he’s got that funny look on his face that always made Jonah laugh. For a moment, he’s right there with us.

…

Aeron

I lose track of all the people coming in. Neighbours show up and people are divided up between all the various houses and farms around. It still leaves a pretty large group who don’t have anywhere to go, and a bunch of teenaged kids who have decided to sleep in the barn, like me and Courteney have started doing.

They are all pretty wide-eyed and wondrous at this new place they’ve found themselves in, but they love the horses and we sit around the paddocks and eat fresh-baked bread with honey on it. They eat like they haven’t tasted real food before. Then they all start talking about where they’re from, and how they’ve never been on a farm before, and how it’s not too bad and doesn’t smell as bad as they thought it might.

I feel bad for Uncle Jonah. It doesn’t seem right that he should have to give up everything just for these people to come back – and they don’t even know what he did, and nobody’s saying anything about it. They all seem to know
something
about it – but nobody really knows
why
.

Courteney and I steal glances at each other, and I think she knows what I’m thinking:
the end of the world isn’t so bad when you have someone to love.

She’s a different sort of girl than the kind I imagined I would meet. She knows more about horses than anyone has a right to – and she makes sure I know it. She looks me in the eye and tells me I’m wrong when even I know that I am, and still I don’t get mad. In fact, I’ve stopped being angry since she’s started telling me, almost indifferently, how wrong my perspective has been.

I wonder if this is what a soul-mate feels like. I wonder if it even matters, really, or if it’s only her and me that need to think so. We go about our work, and Herb seems to arrange it so that we’re always working together with the animals. Courteney has been giving me glances today, though, and I can tell she feels uncomfortable with something.

“What is it, what’s the matter?” I ask when we are both out pulling long-rooted pig-weeds out of the garden. We carry the prickly plant, root and all, in baskets back to our little cart that we have hooked onto Merry to pull back to the barn.

She waits a long time before answering. We get a whole load of the stuff. Apparently it’s actually from a family of plants called
Amaranth
, and can be threshed like any grain and ground into flour. We’ve been eating it mixed into our oatmeal and our bread-flour, since at this time of year we aren’t harvesting anything else.

Others, the new kids who’ve just arrived, see us working and join in, fussing over the mare and asking about “that big horse” in the barn.

“Let’s get out of here for a bit,” Courteney says finally, as we get the massive pile of weeds stacked to finish drying out in the old corn bin. She gestures to Merry and we unhook the horse from the cart. Then she jumps on bareback, surprising me.

“We can’t ride like that!”

“Don’t be a chicken,” she calls out, laughing, holding on with her knees, and the mare lets out a shrill whinny, taking off with Courteney struggling to stay on.

“Damn it,” I whisper under my breath as they fly off across the fields towards the woods – not knowing whether to be afraid for her or the horse. I turn to go down to the stables to get another horse tacked up, but the big stallion Ernest is already bursting through the door, having broken out of his stall.

Suddenly, everything feels wrong, strange somehow, and the light is different. The horse stands there in the doorway looking at me, almost as if he knows what he needs to do and where he needs to go. He doesn’t like me, though, and I’ve never liked riding him, so I try to push him back through into the stable and get him back in his stall where he is supposed to be resting. He pushes back at me with his head and starts trotting across the yard where Merry has just taken Courteney.

I shake my head.
Horses and women, they belong together!

Without thinking about it, I run after the big horse and he lets me grab him by the mane and fling myself up. And then it’s a ride the likes of which I have never known. He runs with a heavy pounding of hooves, but for a big horse he seems to fly over the ground, throwing up chunks of dirt and turf as he twists and turns through the yard. Then it’s over the fences and across the field after Merry, who has already disappeared into the woods with Courteney.

It’s nice weather, and at any other time I would be enjoying the ride, provided I had a saddle and reins and a quieter mount, but I can’t quite pin down the weirdness of the day. And with all the things that have happened in the last while, that’s saying a lot.

We break through the line of trees at the edge of the woods and follow the paths that Aunt Rachel took me through last week when she was telling me about my dad and my grandparents. There are branches sticking out everywhere and slapping me in the face, so I stop trying to find Merry and Courteney and just bury my head in Ernest’s mane for a bit, trying to get into the rhythm of his running. Eventually, whether by my urging or not, he slows up and stops. I slide down to the ground.

Courteney is there, standing and petting Merry with a little boy who looks like he has been crying. He must have wandered back here on his own and gotten lost. I don’t think that a horse could have a sense of smell enough to follow a child all this way, but they’ve surprised me before. I walk over to join them, and the two horses nicker at each other in their odd little way of displaying companionship.

And then I notice where exactly we are, standing under a great old oak tree with letters carved into it:

Here lie Bruce and Cybil Truth.

Beloved to each other and to all of us.

Courteney looks at me and smiles. “He says his name is Gabriel, isn’t that a nice name?”

I smile back and look at the kid for a minute. “He must have come in with everyone yesterday. Someone’s probably missing him. We should get back.” I look at the tree for a second. “Those are my grandparents, you know. And my mom and dad are buried not far from here. I guess Uncle Jonah will get his own tree, too.”

“Not yet, he shouldn’t, though,” says a voice just out of sight. It sounds like an old man, and a chill runs down my spine. This is where all the feelings of strangeness have come from: this place, right now. “He ain’t dead yet.”

Courteney looks at me then with wide eyes, and the little boy plants a big kiss on Merry’s nose, and I can’t help but laugh out loud. He calls out in a strident, little boy voice, “I missed you, Merry!”

And then I see something that changes me, way down deep inside where the sun seldom shines. It humbles me and makes me wonder how I could have ever thought that I know anything about this world, when it is all such a mystery. There, in the presence of ghosts and God, I see an old black man feel his way through the trees and take the little boy Gabriel by the hand. Then he turns and walks back into the underbrush. I can’t tell if the branches swing back to hide him, or if he just dissolves into thin air, but I know I hear the old man say to me just before I lose sight of him, “He ain’t dead and he ain’t here. You might’s well go look for him someplace else.”

Chapter Nine – To Linger a Little Longer in this Place

Jonah

I awaken with the chill of cold water running over my hands outstretched above my head. I roll off my back and onto my side. It’s still as dark as the blackest night, but the sounds of birds chirping make it seem like early morning. There is a warm breeze tickling my cheek that feels nice, almost like the soft breath of a baby. I stretch out my face towards to the water and take a long drink. The water is good and cold; mountain water usually is. Instantly, I know just where I am – or at least I know which mountain’s foothills I am in – for I have been wandering up here since I was a small child and the water always tastes the same.

I scramble to my hands and knees. It’s blacker than I have ever known it to be up here at night. Usually there is some sort of starlight, or moonlight, but this blackness is complete, and utterly lightless. My left hand bumps into something – it feels like an animal. It is cold. I feel around a bit more and discover claws and toes and a huge paw. I know what it is then, but I keep on feeling around, touching the dead animal all over and trying to hold in my emotions. I feel the tears drop down from my eyes and onto my hands as I kneel there over the body of the bear.

I know, in my mind, that it is indeed my friend, whom I must have killed.

But how, how could I have done this? The knife was pressed over
my
heart and I fell on it – I am the one who ought to be dead, and though this blackness feels awful, it is certainly not death – I am most definitely alive and this bear is most definitely dead by my hand.

By my hand!

“No Jonah,” says a familiar voice from behind me. “Not by your hand did the bear die, but by mine.”

Lucifer!

I turn around blindly, “But how can you say that! You
are
the bear! If it’s dead than you must be, too!”

“No, not quite,” he says calmly, with relief. “And that has made a great deal of difference, then and now.”

I feel a pair of hands pull me off the bear and set me on my feet.

“And yet I fear you are not without injury, my friend, and for that there is no turning back. You are alive and yet you are as blind as all my best friends seem to turn out becoming.”

I don’t respond for a moment.
Blind!

I can’t even catch my breath for a moment; it is caught in my throat as I try to process the grief, the fear, the
everything
of this moment. I try to bring my wits to bear on it, but just then I hear a sound. It is faint but distinctive, something familiar:

Click click PONG click click PONG click click PONG…

It is the sound of the pump that I took down to get repaired just before Aeron came back. I don’t remember fixing it, but someone must have, because that’s the sound it makes when it’s working properly. I haven’t heard the noise since I was a boy, but it is unmistakable.

“Lucifer, I have to get back, surely my family thinks that I am dead.”

There is no answer.

“Lucifer? Michael? Gabe?”

Silence, and the sound of the wind in a warm breath of sunshine against my face and through my fingers.

I stand up straight and turn downhill towards what I feel is the direction of the farm. I take a step. It feels funny, like being in the darkest of night where you can’t tell if your eyes are open or closed. I take another, and trip over a stick, which whips around and catches me in the ear as I fall flat on my face. I feel a trickle of blood down my neck. I know what Rachel will say, and I almost smile at the thought:
he can’t take two steps without bleeding all over himself.

I get to my feet shakily and continue downward.

The day is warm and fresh, as it ought to be.

Eventually, I hear voices, children and grown-ups, calling out in the darkness for me.

It is sweet music to my ears.

About the author

Joel Varty was born on a farm in Ontario.

He works in Toronto and lives in Cobourg.

He writes during his long train commute to and from work.

How the world ends
is his first novel.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Part One

Chapter One – Sunrise

Chapter Two – A Meeting