How the World Ends by Joel Varty Page B

high-moisture weeds that tend to get tangled in and plug up a normal, modern combine grain harvester. So instead we used a swather that would cut the grain and weeds off together. They would both be left to dry in the sun, allowing the weeds to be easily filtered out of the grain using the screens on an old fashioned threshing machine. When the grain was dried out on the field, we’d pick it up using an old blower attached to a modified baler pickup. Neighbours would come over to watch the “bastardized” equipment that they had given to my dad as junk perform tasks that ended up producing the cleanest grain in the county.
    Nobody paid much attention to the two little brown-tanned boys with pitchforks taller than themselves. They would be madly feeding the grain from the wagon into the thresher, trying to keep up with the machine so that they could be done early enough to make it down to the river for a swim before dark. That was me and my brother.
    My parents gave up the dream in the summer when I was about twelve years old; a rabid cat attacked my dad in the barn while he was milking. After killing the wretched animal and taking it to the vet to for an autopsy, we weren’t allowed to sell milk for the rest of the year. Even though we never had very much money, we hadn’t felt really poor until then. The color went out of my childhood after that, or perhaps it turned from a hallowed kind of sepia into a sharp, high contrast color that burns the eyes until you learn to look away.
    It seems a black and white world to me now, here in the city, as the quiet of the sudden silence on the street dissipates into the shuffling of feet and murmuring of tongues. The crowd around me stands for a moment, some looking at me, most looking at their feet, and then begins to move again, a slow, directionless pace that seems to trend sometimes south towards the lake and now north towards city hall. I feel well and truly trapped here now. I hear the rush of the river nearby, and I know that our efforts to escape this place will be made more difficult by our ignorance of nature and our lack of understanding about the things which we cannot see.
    I fear a plague, or something worse. I fear my fault in it. I fear my powerlessness in a crowd. I fear the stoppage of the rain when I shouted “Stop.”
    Suddenly, the world is color again as the streetlamps come back on to combat the creeping gloom of night. As electricity flows through the city the atmosphere immediately becomes gleeful as one and all remember the things that we can rely on. Instantly the basics like electricity and fuel seem to be something that we can take for granted. I struggle to believe it, but I feel the pull of its seductive easiness.
    I pull my sopping coat tightly around me and feel water trickle down my back. The cold drips of water are like icy fingers, signalling to me that I should be mindful – of what I do not know. I begin to walk south to the station to see if any trains are running. I am tired, but the adrenaline of the last little while has yet to wear off.
    There are large signs posted outside the train station. Armed guards with machine guns and helmets with opaque masks are posted beside the doors. The signs say that a state of emergency has been declared and, for our own safety, all traffic into and out of the city has been cut off.
    As if we could go anywhere without any fuel, I think to myself. As if we don’t need to get out of this place to find our families, to find safety.
    My heart, in these few moments as I contemplate the danger that we are facing, yearns for my wife and children. For Rachel and her brave composure when facing danger. For the innocence of Jewel and Gwyn – the innocence that is threatened by the events that are unfolding.
    A loudspeaker begins to blare out from the public address system of the train station. “Please return to your homes or places of work. You are not permitted to leave the city until clearance has been