Tim Wynne-Jones - Rex Zero and the End of the World

Also by Tim Wynne-Jones
FICTION
A Thief in the House of Memory
Ned Mouse Breaks Away
(with pictures by Dusan Petricic)
The Boy in the Burning House
Stephen Fair
The Maestro
The Lord of the Fries and Other Stories
The Book of Changes
Some of the Kinder Planets
PICTURE BOOKS
The Last Piece of Sky
illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay
Mischief City
illustrated by Victor Gad
The Hour of the Frog
illustrated by Catharine ONeill
Architect of the Moon
illustrated by Ian Wallace
Ill Make You Small
illustrated by Maryann Kovalski
Zoom Upstream
illustrated by Eric Beddows
Zoom Away
illustrated by Eric Beddows
Zoom at Sea
illustrated by Eric Beddows

REX ZERO and the End of the World

TIM WYNNE-JONES

Copyright 2006 bzy Tim Wynne-Jones

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press
110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801, Toronto, Ontario M5V 2K4
Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West
1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the

Ontario Arts Council.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloging in Publication
Wynne-Jones, Tim
Rex Zero and the end of the world / by Tim Wynne-Jones
ISBN-13: 978-0-88899-759-3
ISBN-10: 0-88899-759-0
I. Title.
PS8595.Y59R49 2006 jC813.54 C2006-902291-7

Cover illustration by Simon Ng
Design by Michael Solomon
Printed and bound in Canada

This book is for Mum
1916-2005

I HEAR THE BICYCLE before I see it. I swing around to see a boy racing down the wide gravel path through the park towards me. Theres an awful squawking coming from a horn bolted onto his handlebars. Hes got his finger down hard on the button and people are jumping out of his way, grabbing up toddlers, steering prams onto the grass.

Seeing him coming straight for me, I go all wobbly on my own bike and end up falling over just as he whooshes past with his head low over the handlebars and his tail up in the air. I want to yell something at him but the kid looks scared. Really scared. I get myself up, unruffle my feathers and take a look back in the direction he came from. I dont know what Im expecting to see. A stampede of longhorns? Killer bees? King Kong?

Then I notice the old man. The old man with the sign.

Its the summer of 1962 and there is a man in the park with a sign that says the end of the world is coming. He even knows the date October 23. Except he has trouble with his bs and ds, so the sign says OCTODER. The words and numbers are printed in black ink on bright yellow bristol board stapled to a stick. In even bigger words printed in red ink the sign says, PREPARE TO MEET THY GOB.

Is that what the kid on the bike is afraid of?

The sign doesnt say how the world is going to come to an end, but the placard man looks as if hes expecting a flood. Hes wearing galoshes and a mack, except I know thats not what you call them in this country. The only people around here who use words like galoshes and mack are my family. These are the kind of words you find in the Eagle Annual, which my grandparents send me from England every Christmas. But whatever you want to call what the placard man is wearing, its rain gear: big black boots, a yellow raincoat as bright as his sign, and one of those clear plastic emergency rain caps that you can fold up to the size of a package of Wrigleys Juicy Fruit gum. My mother has one of those caps in her purse, or she used to. One day when I had nothing to do and I never have anything to do these days I folded it up to half the size of a pack of gum and then, to make sure it stayed folded, I ironed it.

The clear plastic emergency cap has bands you can tie under your chin. The placard man has his tied on tight, but you cant see the bow because of his thick grizzled beard. His hair, under the clear plastic hat, looks like a nest of snakes. His skin is yellow. Not as yellow as his sign, but yellow anyway, in a sort of greyish, greenish kind of way. His face is pretty grimy, too, and his eyes are sad like a basset hounds.

Who wouldnt be sad if the world was going to end?

The scared boy leaps off his bike at the west-end steps and manhandles it up to Lyon Street. Then hes gone.

I look back at the end-of-the-world man. Hes dressed for rain but there isnt a cloud in the sky. And if his prediction is right, the world isnt going to end for more than three months.

In three months Ill be in a new school. If school doesnt work out and if the old man is right at least I wont be there for long! We just moved to Ottawa and I dont know anyone. Every day I ride down to Adams Park on my trusty steed, Diablo, named after the Cisco Kids speedy pinto. Except my Diablo is green.

Vous mcroyez fou? shouts the end-of-the-world man, tapping his plastic-covered skull. Regardez autour de vous!

He looks as if hes asking me if I think hes crazy.

I shake my head, which is a lie, but my mother always says that a person should be polite, especially to crazy people. I shake my head again. He growls. Even his growl sounds French.

Nobody spoke French back in Vancouver. Ill have to take French when I start at my new school. Everyone in my class will be able to speak French and all I will be able to say is Merci bon Dieu, which is from a song on the new Harry Belafonte album my mum got from the Capitol Record Club. Im learning all the words from Merci Bon Dieu so Ill be able to talk to kids in my new class when they are speaking French.

Get away from me! shouts the end-of-the-world man. You children...eh? You children drive me crazy!

Hes talking to a squirrel now. In English. He must be bilingual. The squirrel skitters away. Maybe the squirrel only speaks English.

We follow the man, Diablo and I, just for something to do, but cautiously, like Harry Lime in The Third Man trailing his elusive quarry. I make sure I hang way back. He smells pretty ripe. A couple of lovers strolling up the path have to stop holding hands as he walks right between them. They hold their noses instead.

A little kid playing catch with his mother misses the ball and it rolls right up to the mans big black boots. He stares down at the red, white and blue ball and growls at it, making the little kid cry and run to his mother.

She collects the ball, giving the old guy the evil eye. Why dont you take your end of the world someplace else? she says.

The end-of-the-world man looks back at me and I shrug. Then he looks down at where the ball was and his sign droops a bit.

He glances at me again and I wave. Leave me alone! he shouts. Vous pensez que jignore ce que vous complotez?

Merci bon Dieu.

As I watch him walk away, his clothes remind me of something. I do have something to do today. A new paint-by-numbers set. Its called Toilers of the Sea, and the men in it are dressed like the man with the placard, except they have souwesters on their heads, not cute little clear plastic emergency rain caps.