How the World Ends Read online

  how the world ends

  a novel by Joel Varty

  Copyright © 2011 Joel Varty

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published in Canada

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter One – Sunrise

  Chapter Two – A Meeting

  Chapter Three – Another Meeting

  Chapter Four – Rations

  Chapter Five – My Family is Safe

  Chapter Six – A Day for Death to Reign

  Chapter Seven – The Basement of the Church

  Chapter Eight – What the End Might Be

  Chapter Nine – Getting Home

  Chapter Ten – The Fight on the Tracks

  Chapter Eleven – Awakening

  Chapter Twelve – Finding

  Chapter Thirteen – Serving

  Chapter Fourteen – Another Way Out

  Chapter Fifteen – A Breath of Thunder

  Chapter Sixteen – Trees

  Chapter Seventeen – The Journey Begins

  Chapter Eighteen – With No Direction

  Chapter Nineteen – Blood Brothers

  Chapter Twenty – The World We’re Living In

  Chapter Twenty-One – The Family Farm

  Chapter Twenty-Two – Visitations

  Chapter Twenty Three – Urgency

  Part Two

  Chapter One – Darkness

  Chapter Two – Voices in the Night, Strangers in the Morning

  Chapter Three – The Lighthouse

  Chapter Four – The Truth about Evil

  Chapter Five – Why They Follow

  Chapter Six – Pain of Truth

  Chapter Seven – Capture at Dawn

  Chapter Eight – Prisoner

  Chapter Nine – A Journey into Darkness

  Part Three

  Chapter One – How the Dream Ends

  Chapter Two – The Love of Friends and Children

  Chapter Three – The Duty of Angels

  Chapter Four – To Kill an Idea

  Chapter Five – Jonah is Freed

  Chapter Six – The Long Walk Through Fire

  Chapter Seven – The End in Ashes

  Chapter Eight – The Ones Left Behind

  Chapter Nine – To Linger a Little Longer in this Place

  About the author

  Part One

  The sun rises over the sleepy suburban vista. Row upon row of houses sit silently as the shadows creep from their faces. Some houses are the same as their neighbours; some are as different as can be. Beautifully architected and landscaped masterpieces rest stately beside tiny wartime cottages, which seem to tremble with weariness as the sun takes longer to pull the darkness away from them.

  There is a pond at the bottom of the street, and the geese have just felt the goslings begin to fret within their eggs. The swan couple are accompanied by their new cygnet as they glide back and forth in search of food around the rusted metal of a shopping cart that has rested where it fell since the ice froze around it last fall. The muskrat throws itself onto the mud with a slap as it begins its daily slide down to the reeds near the culvert grate where it usually spends its days.

  Halfway up the street, the shadows have not yet receded from the blue house with the two apple trees out front. They have recently blossomed, but it was a little early, and the temperature had not yet risen high enough for the bees to pollinate them. The trees will probably be bare when the first frost should be ripening their fruit. The crocus bulbs don’t need to look that far ahead, though, having emerged from the ground as green shoots a month before, and they have simply wilted back where they came from.

  Chapter One – Sunrise

  Jonah

  I awaken to sounds of the radio tuned halfway between classic rock and new country. Blindly groping for the switch, I accidentally increase the volume before clicking it off, drawing a tired moan from my wife, who rolls over. I hold my breath, listening for the impending cries of my son, two years old, in the next room - nothing. Straining my ears, I can just make out the kitten-soft snore of my five-year-old daughter across the hall beyond the nearly closed door of her room. With a groan, I flip my feet off the bed and start the day.

  The same black socks, white boxers, white undershirt, brown pants, white button-down. The same cereal for breakfast, the same orange juice – it is nearly tasteless to me so early in the morning. I grab my laptop and jacket and head into the hallway, switching off the lights as I do. Shoes, jacket, keys, cellphone: ready to go.

  Out the door, into the world as it slowly awakens. I stop for a moment, feeling the same weariness as I always do at the chill that crept in last November and hasn’t yet departed.

  Back inside – forgot money for the bus – now I need to hurry. Coins in my pocket, I make one last check of the hallway to see if I’m missing anything else. As I turn my head back to the door I notice a twenty dollar bill on the ledge, with a round, grey stone on top of it.

  That doesn’t seem right for a Tuesday. We are a single income family, and we almost never have cash lying around, lest it be snapped up to pay for something non-essential. Cash is a weekend luxury for a bottle of wine to share with dinner or, more rarely, for a baby sitter. And since my wife almost never goes to the bank with two small children, all cash in the house usually passes through my hands. I rub my eyes and stuff both the rock and the twenty into my pocket. Have to talk to Rachel about that one later. Now I really have to hurry. Out the door, don’t bother locking it, coat not zipped yet, sunglasses crooked and covered with Gwyn’s fingerprints – something about the oil on a two-year-old’s skin that won’t rub off without serious effort – and backpack over one shoulder. A fast walk turns into a jog as the bus pulls up to the stop at the end of the street before I get there. Luckily, there is another person getting on at the stop, and the driver sees me. But that doesn’t stop her from taking off. The jog becomes a sprint; I know I can catch the bus if there is someone at the next stop. Why the hell can’t she wait ten seconds? I was only fifty feet from the stop.

  My shadow makes a caricature of my six-foot-three-inch frame as I extend my stride, running as fast as I can from my street onto the sidewalk parallel to the main road. I shrug my backpack off from my shoulder and into my hand. The rusty red flash of a cardinal in the trees at the side of the street distracts me for a second and I stumble, nearly falling. One hand down on the cement keeps me upright. There are three people at the next stop, but it’s a good hundred and fifty yards off. How long since I last sprinted that far? I am a regular jogger, and always end my runs with a decent kick, but that is usually forty yards at most, and not pushing it as fast as I can go.

  I have to think all the way back to my university days to recall full-out sprints, with laps of the football field and all the wide receivers chasing each other in turns. It seemed so effortless back then, even with sleepless nights on top of a full class load. The running had always come naturally back then. Was it ten years ago already? I dig in harder, wanting to feel the wind in my face, wanting to know that I can still run as fast as I needed to.

  The bus is just starting to move forward as I catch up to it, panting, but not completely out of breath. I slap on the door a couple of times and the driver jams on the breaks. The doors open and I climb in, clinking my coins into the receptacle. The driver presses the counter button as my change drops into the bottom compartment with a metallic clinking sound, and stares straight forward as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. The passengers, too, gaze absently out of their respective windows, unwilling to acknowledge my
victory over time and distance.

  It doesn’t matter to them because it wasn’t on TV.

  The bus takes us to the train station, where we all rush to get our free daily newspapers and line up on the platform, each planting ourselves at the precise spot where we hope the train’s doors will stop. I hang back, as usual, somehow embarrassed to be part of the crowd, think that even though I have been doing this for seven years, that I don’t really belong here. Some folks I recognize, and one or two I know by name, but in a crowd like this they seem more like cattle than people. Stupid, dumb cattle, herded by invisible border-collies who know just where to nip without doing any real damage, keeping every animal inescapably on the right path toward their destinations.

  The crowd is dense and people shift to avoid inadvertent touching. Me being taller than most, I feel even further detached from those whom I might share a human touch with. I step on something slippery, a discarded food wrapper, and quickly catch my balance on the shoulder of the person beside me. “I’m sorry,” we both say under our breath. She keeps moving forwards and shyly shrugs off my hand, leaving me to look at the ground and pretend I don’t feel foolish. I imagine the invisible dogs slowly circling, crouching, and waiting to ensure the incident doesn’t become inflamed, or otherwise noticed. The cattle must not get out of line.

  The train pulls up with the door directly in front of me, yet somehow I am next to last getting in. My indifference allows the scrum of office workers, lawyers, secretaries, and accountants to nudge me sideways. At least when I don’t get a seat, I don’t have to wonder whether the fat lady standing beside me is pregnant or just fat. On one hand, after I offer my seat to the future mother, I’m the hero who still thinks of others before himself, and on the other, after telling the fat woman to sit down, I’m judgmental and a sexist bigot who shouldn’t see women like that anymore. I don’t even think about the consequences of not giving up my seat – too complicated.

  It turns out there is a seat left empty on the upper floor. I ease into it, and through the window I can see the lake as it steams in the cool morning air. But as we pick up speed, the sky becomes gloomy and the steam, which holds such splendour as the sun beams through it, is reduced to a smoky analogue of its former majesty. It is left to blend in with the suburban automobile pollution caused by weather inversion. Cool and warm air combine so that the smog is created in a yellowish haze that is barely discernible now, but by midsummer it will be like the world has been left in the oven overnight. Perhaps it is like us after we have been aged prematurely from spending too much time indoors – pale, washed out, and unhealthy. That’s how I feel now, and I try to fight it back as the train rocks everyone else to sleep. It wants us inert and docile, not alert enough to realize where we are going. It wants us to be as blind to the insidious squalor of this routine as newborn mice under a red lamp in a laboratory.

  I keep my eyes open – I will not let myself lose sight of where I am going. I think of the sleeping family relying on my pay check, their sleeping forms drifting away into the distance behind me. I think, as well, of my dead brother and his son, now my responsibility. I try to keep from shuddering with some unseen premonition of danger as we descend upon the valley of the city and prepare to do battle with the day.

  Chapter Two – A Meeting

  Jonah

  My workdays are broken up clearly into several sections: get out the door, get on the bus, get on the train, get off the train, walk to the office, sit in the office, leave the office, walk to the train, get on the train, get off the train, get on the bus, get off the bus, walk in the door.

  Lather, rinse. Repeat as necessary.

  I step off the train and feel the crunch of the leftover salt from winter under my feet. They keep these platforms layered until June in a thick blanket of crystalline nodules to preclude any liability for injuries due to ice underfoot. While I appreciate the preventative measure, I can’t help but look down at my black leather brogues. I have to walk just over a mile to get to the office, and the salt will no doubt work itself into the leather and rot these shoes out before I can save enough to buy a new pair. Everything is an expense, a line item to be tallied and kept track of.

  The crowd looks like a sea of heads that I am floating six inches above. I see a few faces at the same level as mine – other tall men and some women wearing heels. I try not to get jostled too much for not hurrying. Why should I hurry when it’ll just wear out my shoes faster? I keep my head raised, trying not looking at my feet as if I have been defeated. I attempt to retain some semblance of my individuality, but it’s no use: we’re all just a bunch of cattle, anxious to make it out into the field and chew on yesterday’s grass.

  Out the door of the station, and I immediately speed up to my normal walking pace (to hell with the shoes, I’ll use the credit card) cutting perpendicular to the stream of people heading across the road and make for a small staircase that leads to an alleyway and eventually opens onto an old parking lot, cutting out nearly two blocks of walking in the crowd. I run up the stairs, an old habit from sports training on hills, and keep my eyes peeled for urine puddles. The holes in my footwear seem a lot larger as I hold my breath against the foul stench and walk on the sides of my feet to avoid getting wet. I don’t know why drunken idiots like to pee here; personally, I would much rather do it where I didn’t have to stand in a pool of someone else’s piss as well.

  I reach the top of the stairs and force myself to exhale a bit before breathing in. Then it’s across the parking lot, over the street, and through a courtyard with the wind whipping through it. I shiver and pull on my gloves, trying not to bow too much to the wind, telling myself that it's way colder in January, when you feel naked against the repressive blowing. In those days, I walked with numb fingers and toes even with a quick pace to try and stay warm. The least I can do is walk straight and tall in the relative warmth of late spring.

  There’s a line-up of people at the corner coffee shop that runs out the door down the sidewalk. A couple of beggars jingle change in empty cups as they intercept people as they are coming outside. It’s a good strategy, really, since many people have a few coins left over from their purchase and appreciate a way to assuage their inner guilt at sharing the planet with those less fortunate. Or is that simply my guilt? It’s hard for me to tell, since I almost never have change in my pocket, and when I do I always remember the urine in the alley by the stairs and wonder if it’s the guy in front of me now who pissed it out.

  I reach into my pocket and feel the twenty dollars in there – the Tuesday rarity – and think about how good a coffee and doughnut would be. I hesitate for a second before I join the line, which will probably require a good ten minutes of standing in before I get served. I put my hand further down and notice the round, smooth stone. I don’t move for a moment, and just then everything seems still, there at the edge of the sidewalk between two office buildings and the street.

  There seems to be a slight flicker of movement at the edge of my vision and it seems like the light of the morning has suddenly winked out, as if a storm is approaching. The crowd grows quieter, but the people are still standing as they were before, talking with each other and shuffling slowly towards the door. The jingle of coins from the cups is momentarily gone, as though they have been emptied without the beggars knowing it. It only lasts a second, and then it’s gone, and time resumes.

  I hear a voice from behind me say, “Did you bring my twenty bucks?”

  I turn around to see a filthy black man with a long beard, standing there, wearing an old grey coat. He has his hands at his sides, not outstretched like a beggar’s, but more like a soldier, standing at attention. His, blind, milky white eyes bore into me with a clarity that is almost other-worldly.

  “Excuse me?” I reply, taken aback by this intrusion into my self-induced routine of seclusion from the crowd around me.

  “You can keep the money, but I’ll be needing that rock back.”

  I don’t know what to s
ay, so I reach into my pocket and pull out the small stone, holding it on my palm towards him.

  “It looks like a regular stone,” he says, looking straight at me. “But it contains the rarest of gems.”

  “How did you know I had this stone in my pocket?” I ask. “Have you been following me?”

  The man, who seems less shabby now, even somewhat noble in his worn clothes, lowers his head slightly, as if to exam the stone in my outstretched hand.

  “No, Jonah,” he says quietly. “I been waiting for you to come back to me, and I can’t wait no longer. All them others have failed and there’s only this one itty bitty chance to get back what we gonna lose.”

  “Huh?” I say as I squint in reaction to this calm, yet strange proclamation. “One chance for what? Who are you? How do you know my name? Why are you following me?”

  “My name’s Michael,” he replies, slowly. “And I ain’t been following you. I been waiting here for you and you came to me. I just had to put myself in your path, so to speak. And today you got to do exactly what I says, no matter what it sounds like.”

  He raises his hand before I can speak. “Don’t go to work today, it won’t be worth your while. Go to the top of that building over there,” he says, pointing at a church across the street, “and meet my friend. He needs your help, today, I am afraid.”

  And with that he lifts up his face with a solemn look in his empty eyes, saying, “Don’t you be scared of what you gonna lose, Jonah. Be strong for them as gotta be saved before it’s too late.”

  I don’t reply. I don’t know what to say to this man who seems to know things that he shouldn’t. I want to say that he’s a lunatic, or that I pity his blindness. I want to believe he’s just a crazy old man, but for some strange reason, I don’t; I feel somehow that he pities me.

  “I have to go to work,” I say, lacking anything better. “Here's your rock, now leave me alone.”

  I shake the stone a little on my open hand.

  “I don’t want that thing back yet,” he answers quietly, wrapping my fingers around it with his own. “It belongs in the hilt of a powerful blade. Powerful! Don’t you see? But I ain’t got it done yet. You see, today I’m a travellin’ blacksmith, forging my tools.”