The End of the World Running Club Read Online Free PDF

turned on her.
    “NOW, Beth!”
    Arthur stopped crying. It was all quiet apart from the wail of the siren outside. Then a door banged, a man shouted, a woman crying, a loud screech of car’s tyres as it sped away.
    “How...how long?” Beth said. She was making calculations. The same ones she used to pack up the mountain of kids’ equipment into the car when we went away for the weekend.
    I shook my head. I don’t know .
    Beth carefully placed Alice down and ran upstairs.
    I pulled out the bottom drawer and emptied the lot into the second box. Bits of string, crumpled photographs, bulldog clips, screwdrivers, dead batteries, candles, takeaway menus, spare keys, cigarettes, lighters; all the detritus of kitchen life fell into the box.
    Alice was now twirling with her hands in the air and singing.
    “Look after your brother, sweetheart,” I said.
    Alice sighed and slumped her shoulders, her ‘teenager’s sigh’ we called it, though she was only three. She trudged over to Arthur as if I’d asked her to do her homework.
    “Daddy, I want my milk,” she grumbled.
    I found a first aid kit and threw it in the box along with some plasters. I could hear Beth thumping about above me, pulling things out of drawers and cupboards. Two large boxes of nappies landed heavily at the bottom of the stairs.
    “Daddeee...”
    How much time do we have? Hours? Minutes?
    I guessed minutes.
    “Daddeeeeee...”
    Think . What next?  
    Water.
    I once saw a film about a girl who survives an apocalyptic event. It was some unnamed worldwide cataclysm; we weren’t told the details. She lives on this farm in middle America and when it all starts happening the first thing her father does is turn on all the taps in the house. She says what’s happening Daddy and he replies I don’t know honey, I don’t know and starts pelting round the rooms filling baths and sinks.
    I shouted up the stairs.
    “Fill the bath, Beth!”
    “Znot basstime Daddeee!” shouted Alice, twirling in the sunlight that was still streaming through the kitchen window.
    There were more thumps from above. Beth screamed something unintelligible.
    “Keep the taps on!”  
    “Silleeee Daddeeeee woo woo wooo!”
    I had a sudden vision of our house destroyed. Brown air, heavy cloud, nothing but dust, brick and bent iron. Perched on top of the rubble is our bath. It’s a dry, scorched husk. The taps are stretched, black liquorish strings melting over the sides like a Salvador Dal í painting.
    Water.
    You want to know how long it takes for the fabric of society to break down? I’ll tell you. The same time it takes to kick a door down. There are Japanese veterans alive today who remember the darkness of the Second World War. They seem like old men with happy families at peace with the world, but they can still recall the hunger that drove them to kill and eat Chinese women. More often than not they would rape them first. Ask anyone who has been in a crowd that becomes too strong, where bodies begin to crush you. Is your first instinct to lift others up, or to trample them down? That beast inside you, the one you think is tethered tightly to the post, the one you’ve tamed with art, love, prayer, meditation: it’s barely muzzled. The knot is weak. The post is brittle. All it takes is two words and a siren to cut it loose.
    “Stay here with Mummy, darling,” I said.
    “Daddy, where are you going?”
    I ran back to Jabbar’s shop. There were people gathered there banging on the shutters and shouting for him to open up. Others were gathered around the stack of papers.
    I stopped short of the pavement and ran around the back. A few from the front saw me and started to follow.
    “Jabbar!” I shouted through the letterbox in the back door. “All I need is some batteries and water! You’ve got more than enough in there!”
    “Go! Away!” shouted Jabbar from inside.
    There was another sudden great gust of wind. The tall trees down the hill creaked painfully as their