How the World Ends Read Online Free PDF

that had been the day’s events, quietly descends the staircase towards his waiting assassin. He fumbles with the cellphone in his pocket, which is vibrating with an incoming text message.
    - THE DEAL IS OFF. REPLACE WHAT YOU STOLE OR SUFFER THE CONSQUENCES. -
    Swearing at the inconvenience of dealing with extremists, yet feeling smug and powerful with the new funds in his offshore accounts, James Hadly steps out into the darkness of his brother’s waiting knife. He feels no pain as the blade finds its target within his ribcage. Shock overcomes all of his senses as his life, now reduced to a hot, wet, sticky mess, pours out over the cement steps and down to the pavement.
    Phillip holds his brother’s twitching body for a few moments before he starts to pull the knife out. James is mumbling something through the blood that is coming out of his mouth, making his speech sound somewhere between a whisper and a child’s gurgle. “You... Phil... I can’t leave it like this... the city,” Phillip was able to discern. “They’ll destroy everything.”
    “It’s over, James,” Phillip grunts as he pulls the blade from his brother’s ribcage. “It’s finally over. She’s mine now. Lucia is mine.” His voice is little more than a whisper over the falling rain – and it seems to Phillip that this, which ought to be a moment of great triumph over his brother, is a sign of his continuing weakness.
    He feels wet and cold, and his brother’s body is a slippery mess of blood and rainwater. He drops the knife as he tries to grab James around the armpits to drag him to the river. James falls to the ground on the hard cement at the water’s edge and, with his last breath spraying bloody mist from his mouth and nostrils. In one final motion he grabs the knife and jabs it into his brother’s neck as he bends over to pick him up.
    The eyes on the bridge turn from the brothers’ embrace of death to look high in another tower, where a few lights continue to shine bleakly out into the downpour. The lights flick out; there is nothing else to see.
    The rain continues to fall and the darkness is not penetrated by any further disturbances. The few moments of earlier desperation are diluted from red vitality to an insipid puddle of uselessness. This rain does not cleanse the ground of blood, but rather it is a living death that slowly dissolves the force of life that binds us together, until eventually we are drained of our will to be whole, and we are no longer ourselves.
    The darkness and the rain consume James and Phillip as Lucia walks home. She avoids the dull glow of the street lights and the waking eyes of the traffic cameras. She seethes in expectation of the enormous fortune she will be able to share with her new acquaintances.

Chapter Six – A Day for Death to Reign
    Jonah
    For a few moments before the day begins, and this seems to happen every day, if I can manage to get up early enough, there is a silence where even the silence is quietened from its usual clamour within the conscious mind.
    Evil deeds are wrought daily. They happen whether we see them or not – whether we acknowledge them or not. Yet, even so, the rains of yesterday are dried by the harsh winds of tomorrow, as it becomes today. It has always been thus, and, I can only imagine, it will only ever be so.
    The pre-dawn day is still grey and dark when I arise to see what has become of the world after the rain. I immediately break with any normal workday routines; after all, this isn’t a workday at any rate. I walk downstairs in my underwear and eat a breakfast of fruit and toast while watching the news. I am shocked by what I see, worried about what it will mean for my family. I wonder if I what I am about to do today is wise. Most people will not be staying home, I figure, and the greater danger will most likely be in the city itself, not out here in the suburbs.
    To recap our breaking news this morning: the mayor and his brother have been found dead.