Free The Apocalypse Club by Craig McLay Page B

relations with their southern neighbour, Sudan, deteriorated to the point where neither side started paying much attention to where the bombs were falling. She was three.
    On the plane, her parents decided that a new life required new names, so Muhammad Bakar al-Atash became Moe Greensleeves after his favourite Stooge and the baize-coloured uniforms of the flight crew, which he greatly admired. His wife, who had been born Faruz Amir Hafez, became Bridget Hermione, a name she took from two of her favourite fictional characters. Their daughter was a trickier proposition. Although she was only three, she was as stubborn and bullheaded as a goat with an ear infection. It didn’t seem appropriate to just assign her a new identity based on their likes and dislikes. Their trip to the new world was for her. They had left almost everything behind except for two small suitcases. She was too young to understand. How did you tell a three-year-old that her future school had been destroyed by artillery?
    “Our new home will decide,” the newly monikered Mr. Greensleeves said as he munched a small bag of complimentary peanuts over the north Atlantic and eyed his sleeping daughter uneasily. She had only just fallen asleep after five uncomfortable and temperamental trips to an extremely cramped and noisy bathroom, and he very much hoped that she would not wake up anytime soon and demand a sixth. “It will give us a sign.”
    It was foggy and the sun was coming up over Pearson International Airport as their plane circled in line for landing, so Fatima Hafez al-Atash became Violet Haze.
    It was the first of many decisions with which she would violently disagree.
    Their first few years in their adoptive land were almost impossible. Moe, a fully qualified pharmacist, worked as a doorman at the Royal York hotel while he waited for the OCP to certify his credentials. Bridget, who had been a line producer for an Egyptian news program, went to work cleaning houses. They lived in a tiny, windowless apartment under a fish market. Every morning at four A.M. , the ice maker would finish its cycle and drop three hundred pounds of cubes into a hopper with a crash that would wake everyone on the block. Their landlord was a small, fat, Greek man named Stavros. The fact that Stavros had himself once been a powerless immigrant in no way changed his view that immigrants were easy pickings for the unscrupulous and, as a bonus, the least likely to complain when swindled.
    The apartment had no second exit in the event a fire blocked the first, which meant that it could not legally be called an apartment because people were not legally allowed to live down there. In Stavros’s view, that just meant that the Landlord & Tenant Act did not apply, meaning he could charge whatever the hell he wanted, raise the rent whenever he felt like it, fail to fix the plumbing, heating or electrical when they malfunctioned (frequently), and allow the unit’s insect and rodent populations to live in peace without fear of extermination.
    They couldn’t afford a phone. Violet remembered walking with her father to a rusty and vandalized payphone on the corner, where he would place one of his stammering and terrified calls to their landlord after fishy-smelling water had started pouring through the ceiling or rats had been discovered burrowing through the basmati.
    “Yes, please. Mister Stavros, sir. It is Moe Greensleeves.” Pause. There were always pauses in the conversation during which Violet could hear the muffled yells of the small, fat, Greek man who was the bane of their existence. “Yes. Sorry to be bothering you.” Pause. “Yes, I know you are a very busy and important man.” Pause. “We are very happy and grateful to be staying in your excellent apartment unit, which is well-maintained in every respect, sir.” Pause. “It is just that the heating unit does not appear to be functioning as it should be.” Pause. “Which is to say that it is not working at