The End of it All

It was Billy who first mentioned it, one evening by the campfire. It was warm, the rhododendrons were coming into bloom, the smell around the clearing was sweet. Our camp of two hundred or so tents was well-established, life was good. Billy came back from playing in the woods, red-faced and puffing. “They’re saying it could come soon, ” he said later, as he swigged tea from his mug, playing the grown-up.

“Aye?” we said, humouring him. He was thirteen, desperate to be older. Martha sat down and took his hand.

“Aye. Next week. Over yonder.”

“Well, over yonder’s fine. As long as it isn’t coming here.”

It did come, suddenly and fiercely, through the night. It stole around a couple of small neighbouring encampments when no-one was expecting it, no-one except the children, and by morning they had been swept away. They were mostly loners who shunned the group, though some of us knew a couple of them and felt a momentary ache, but there was work to be done, potatoes to be dug. We muttered our sorrows and got on with living.

It hit the Wolin camp a week later, unheralded. It began at dawn and kept on until three hours after dusk, by which time a quarter of the camp was paralysed. No-one died, repairs were made and the camp was back to normal within two days. “A wake-up call,” droned the elders. Billy and his friends went over one afternoon. We gave them a hiding for their stupidity, but not before making them explain what they’d seen: evidence was ammunition and we didn’t have much of that. We had no idea what we were fighting.

“It comes out of the sky,” said Billy. “With no warning or anything.”

“It creeps across the ground,” said Steely. “Hides behind cover.”

“It comes up from underneath,” said Musca. “Swallows you whole while you’re lying in your tent.”

In the silent twilight before bedtime people fretted: that was evident from their expressions, though no-one spoke of it. Everyone knew Wolin folks who had been affected. It had never felt so close.

“Will it come here?” Billy asked as he settled into bed. Martha and I exchanged looks. He was an adventurous lad and sometimes a little fear was a useful thing.

“Aye,” I said. “It might at that. Though we have to be good and hope it will leave us alone.” Billy was tearful as he turned to sleep. I had an uneasy feeling.

It came on the Friday and didn’t stop until the following night. Most of the camp was overwhelmed. Afterwards, despite it having lasted two days, no-one could quite identify what had happened. Those in the worst-affected area said it had seemed like an eternity of waiting, as they could sense it pressing closer and closer, and then, in an instant, they were subsumed. It shook through the air and over the ground and up from the depths in a single, matte force. It was absent and then it was present. And then it was absent again, but its force remained, festooned on the trees and grass and tents and belongings, hanging as though it would never disappear.

In the higher, less affected ground, we sat in our tent and watched for two days as it pulsed around us. We could feel it coming closer, pushing and withdrawing, pushing and withdrawing. Billy was strong to begin with, speaking in his adult voice, trying to share what little he knew from his trip to the Wolin, but the waiting weighed on him. By the Saturday night Martha was singing him the old songs, cradling him in her lap and stroking his face as I sat and watched. At its height, I could feel it whisper against my face but it was an impotent brush, the tail of the beast, vicious but harmless.

“Will we be okay?” asked Martha when the boy was asleep.

“Just,” I said, because I sensed it was receding. “I think we’re safe.”

The next day was one of reckoning. The Wolin had been ravaged again, worse than before. Ten were lost, the missing. Our own camp was far more badly affected than I had realised. I’d presumed everyone had escaped with the light attack that Martha, Billy and I had, but the southern edge of the camp was overrun. “The pressure built all day,” an old one said, “then it just erupted.” Someone was taken, a young woman, but I didn’t know her. We walked around it afterwards, Billy and I. Martha didn’t want to see.

The feeling of pain and loss was almost as strong in the air as the residue which hung over every living thing. These people – my people – were wretched. Their bravery shone in their actions, but it couldn’t conceal what they were thinking as they stood and stared. There was no distinction between clearing and woods, only a tangled, mottled mess Tents were destroyed –flattened and torn and broken, paths had been ripped up, trees torn down. Belongings – tents, clothes, cooking tins – were scattered and smashed into the ground. People were treading on them without thought: what was once precious had been made worthless.

Everyone had a tale about the hours spent fighting their invisible, unbeatable enemy, the momentary triumphs, the overwhelming disasters. All these faces I recognised, people I saw every day but never spoke to, they all had their story, each more harrowing than the last. Places I knew – the store, the granary, the latrines – had seen extraordinary events, had been transformed in the turmoil. They were gone. It was as though the place I knew had been made a stranger to me.

Billy, staying close and holding my hand, was quiet throughout. As we trailed uphill to our tent, he squeezed me. “But it must have been exciting,” he said. I looked at our tent, frayed and bent but unharmed, I looked at Martha, who was frowning and smiling simultaneously, and shook my head.

“Sometimes you can live without excitement,” I said.

The following days passed in a haze of uncertainty. The southsiders began rebuilding while the elders rehearsed the tales for their histories. Billy and the children relived the moments of the attack. I listened and watched, did minor repairs to our tent. After a while, I stopped listening to the others because I had nothing to contribute. I felt hollow in those days, like I had almost been a part of something terrible, but not quite. In time, shock gave way to acceptance and, finally, to something like resentment.

Five days later the rumours began. At first it was from the children again but then, more insistently, from the elders. It’s coming back, they said. Worse this time.

“It’s going to be Monday,” Billy said. “Musca’s dad said so.”

“Tuesday will be the worst,” said Martha. I looked at her and she shrugged. “All the women are saying it. We have to protect ourselves, John.”

How can you protect yourself from something you can’t see? Nonetheless, we built fences, erected barriers. We threw an extra skin over the tent, a double shell under which to shelter. We gathered food and water, prepared ourselves.

It began on Monday lunchtime, gently. Without the previous experience, we wouldn’t have given it a thought, but we knew, now, that this was only the start. It grew throughout the afternoon, spiralling and whirling around us, rifling across the ground, beneath the tent. The southsiders who had succumbed before were quickly taken again but this time news spread throughout the camp almost as it was happening. Three were lost, maybe four. Then five, six, seven, missing.

Still it came, growing more ferocious through the night, reaching deeper into the camp. Our tent shook against its pegs, the double skins rattling against one another, the floor rising a foot or more. The air howled. We lay flat, holding on to each other and singing to keep ourselves calm. It was cold, then hot, then cold again, the air seeming to shift against us as though it was missing a beat. In the early morning, at its bleakest, I thought we would surely die. Once, I wondered if we already had.

At dawn, as it seemed to subside, I went outside into a world that was black and torn. All around, tents were dishevelled and broken, paths were churned and impassable. People stood, staring, shaking their heads. Others were digging with their bare hands, shouting for help, screaming.

“Daddy,” said, Billy, pressing close against me. “Why does this happen?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” I said and walked away down the hill towards the centre of the devastation. Tents had vaporised, gone with only their shadows remaining. All lives inside them, too, men, women and children, young and old, hopeful and spiteful, were gone. There would be hundreds lost. This was the end. We would never recover. I looked overhead and saw the sky throbbing. The ground quivered like a fevered pulse. What trees remained were bent double, springing backwards and forwards. In every direction there was nothing but the brown and black and silvered trail of the end of it all. Only above us, in our last remaining tents, was there any vestige of life.

“Is it over yet?”

Billy’s hand was hot and wet in mine. He looked younger than thirteen, a child drained.

“Yes, lad,” I said. “It’s over.”

I turned away and in that moment the ground shook, a single heave like the gods were turning in their bed. The air sizzled all around, whistling like the instant of death and a wind blew hot around me, sending me spinning, knocking me flat. I looked round for Billy but there was no sign. “Billy,” I shouted, “Billy!” And it seemed to me there was the shell of his voice in the wind, faint and frightened, shouting for his daddy. I’ve heard that cry every waking moment and every sleeping moment since. I snatched at the air as though I could catch him and bring him back, even though I knew it was too late, that he was gone, that all hope was gone with him and that all that was left was the waiting.

I wonder, sometimes, if the waiting will ever end.