Geoff North - How the World Ends

“What difference does it make? West, east, north, south. It’s all the same.”

Purple lightning forked through the sky ahead of them. The thunder that followed a moment later shook the car. Caitlan slowed down and turned around in the middle of the highway.

“This lane’s one way only,” Michael said. “You should cross over into the other one at the next exit.”

“I don’t think we’ll be running into much traffic tonight.” Caitlin weaved between an abandoned bus and trashed half-ton. She pressed down on the accelerator when the way was clear and the four sped off into the dark, driving west ahead of the storm.

“Come on, you have to help me out.”

“Give me a fucking break, would you? I just got run over by a car.”

“No, you were sideswiped by the mirror,” Louie said. They’d wasted enough time just getting Roy to stand up. It seemed to take an eternity for him to get back into his underwear. He had helped the giant up through two levels of parkade, but it wasn’t fast enough for Louie’s liking. He had seen the dark mist creeping along the floor towards the hotel manager’s corpse.

How did they escape from the tenth level of the DSC? There aren’t many better sealed off places anywhere on earth.

There was still time, Louie figured. The ticks could travel quickly, but they were microscopic. Louie and his new-found friend could keep ahead of them if they maintained a steady pace.

But it wasn’t just the ticks Louie was worried about. He had seen what they were capable of doing when they’d infested Richard Sheffield’s dead body. Louie had seen it again when the grey swarm crawled over Marie Hodgkin’s corpse as well. Roy hadn’t noticed—he was too busy with his aches and pains to notice the woman’s body when it started to swell. Roy didn’t see her fat fingers start to twitch.

They had to keep ahead of the swarm. They could outrun the ticks, but they would have a difficult time staying clear of the human hosts the ticks inhabited. And there were plenty of hosts to inhabit.

Living and dead.

The ride east had been hard. Small towns that Hayden had driven through on his way to and back from Winnipeg had been made even smaller. Most of the people had packed up what they had left and moved out, heading east for the city, or heading off in all other directions to find something… anything.

“My bum’s sore.”

Hayden rested the tip of his chin on Nicholas’s head. “Mine too, bud. That’s what happens when you sit on a horse and let it do all the walking for three days. Did you want to hop down and give Trixie a break?”

The little boy shook his head. “Heck, no. I’m too tired to walk on my own. I’m hungry and thirsty, too.”

They gave Trixie a rest a few miles on, dismounting in a farm-yard twenty miles west of the city. There was water in the abandoned house that Hayden drew from a stand-up cooler. It wasn’t all that cool—there was no more power available to make things hot and cold—but Nicholas didn’t seem to mind. Hayden filled a few 2-litre plastic pop bottles with what remained and placed it into the saddlebag they’d found on another farm a hundred or so miles behind them.

Nicholas sat down on the steps of the front porch and drank his water. “How come there aren’t no cars on the highway?”

“Because they won’t start anymore.” That wasn’t entirely true. Hayden and Nicholas had seen vehicles on the roads along their way. There hadn’t been many—perhaps a dozen or so in the last hundred and fifty miles—but they had heard the old things rumbling their way from what seemed like provinces away. Since Jake, Hayden wasn’t taking any chances with anyone. He had taken his horse and rode out into the fields, putting at least a quarter mile between the vehicles travelling down the highways and the three of them. Perhaps he’d seen too many post-apocalyptic movies, but Hayden wasn’t going to risk all he had left to strangers roaring down the roads in vehicles manufactured before he had been born. “All the newer cars have computers to help them start and run. All those onboard computers were fried after the bad morning . The cars we’ve seen are a lot older, built back in the nineteen-seventies and earlier. Even most of those don’t start.”

Nicholas shrugged. He either hadn’t understand a word of it, or he had, and just didn’t really care. “I wish we could get a ride in one of them. We could find a new home a whole lot faster if we were driving in a car.”

Hayden replied after a time. “I think it’s best if we stick with Trixie. Besides, hitchhiking isn’t the safest way to get around. Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to talk to strangers?” The boy’s head dropped down and Hayden felt terrible. He sat next to him without saying another word. They watched Trixie munch away from a patch of dead grass next to the house.

The porch door creaked open behind them. “You have what you came for, now get the hell out.” An old man was standing over them with a rifle trained at Hayden’s head. “I’m sick of people pulling up here and taking what they please without a please.”

Hayden held his hands up and turned slowly. The man was so small and feeble-looking he could barely keep the gun pointed their way. It snapped up quickly enough when Hayden stood. “Easy there, guy. We thought the place was empty.”

“You didn’t so much as knock, just barged on in and started helping yourself. You’re the third bunch we’ve had since them goddamn Russians dropped their nukes.”

He was right. They had just walked in and taken what they wanted. Hayden had begun to get used to the idea of a world where private property and no trespassing no longer existed. But the old man standing in front of him hadn’t lost as much as Hayden and Nicholas. His farm was still standing. The nuke—Russian, North Korean, Iranian, or from wherever—had destroyed everything and everyone they knew. Hayden wanted to apologize, and he wanted to tear the rifle out of the gnarled hands and beat the old man into a pulp. He did neither. “We’ve ridden a long way. My boy was tired and thirsty. If I had money, I’d pay for what we took.”

“What the hell good is money now?” He was looking at Nicholas. The gun started to drop. “Is he sick?”

“No… well maybe.” Hayden looked towards the sky. “It’s all this shit in the air. I’m not sure what it’s doing to any of us.”

The gun fell all the way and the man ushered them into his home properly. “Don’t just let him sit there then. Get inside and we’ll get him cleaned up.” He held up one of his gnarled hands and stuck the arthritic fingers towards Hayden. “I’m Elton MacDonald by the way.”

Old MacDonald had a farm , Hayden thought grimly. He shook the hand. “Hayden Gooding. The boy… my son’s name is Nicholas.”

“When the last group came and saw there wasn’t much more to take in the way of food, they started stealing whatever they could lay their hands on.” Elton MacDonald leaned forward in his living room armchair and pointed at a blank wall. “We had a painting hanging there for twenty-eight years. Some awful Japanese piece my wife always loved. They took the thing. A goddamn worthless hunk o’ junk oil in a plastic frame.” He leaned back again, shaking his head back and forth. “What’s the world come to, Hayden… when folks start stealing crap that has no value, no practicality, no meaning… except to the folks they’re stealing from. What’s a painting of a bunch of pink lilies gonna get them?”

“I have no idea,” Hayden replied. He was sitting on the end of a couch with Hayden taking up the rest of the space under an afghan as heavy as him and almost as old as its owner. “At least they left you the furniture.”