Submersion

by Guy A Johnson

  We met up with our usual route at the crossroads at the top of Jessie’s road, turning left from the direction we came and joining the road lined with an endless succession of fir trees, where handcuffs and a blindfold had been traditionally applied for the last three months. The avenue of trees continued without stopping and, the further we rode out, the denser they appeared. The additional impact of nightfall only added to the sense of isolation and inhabitation, as we sailed further and further out.

  ‘It’s just forest,’ I said to Jessie, raising my voice above the noise of the boat’s engine and exaggerating my mouth movements, in case he needed to lip read.

  ‘Yes,’ Jessie agreed, as we approached a natural crossroads in the intense, increasingly claustrophobic river jungle. ‘The perfect location to conduct secret government experiments.’ Some part of my anxiety must have been evident in my face, as he eyed me curiously for a second and then asked: ‘Preferred it with the blindfold on?’

  I laughed dryly, but considered he might have had a point.

  At the crossroads, we took the road that curved right and were sucked deeper into the suffocating uniformity of the damp, evergreen darkness. All the while, Monty and his men followed our trail, the headlights on their boat twinkling at our rear, an indication their distance was acutely calculated: close enough not to lose us, distant enough to claim no association, should the need arise.

  I have no idea how late it was when we finally arrived, but the strength of the night sky had not weakened, and the asphyxiating effect of the environment had not lessened.

  ‘You okay?’ Jessie asked, as he stalled the engine.

  ‘Fine,’ I said, not exactly reassuring him, but it was a sign that indicated, whatever my frame of mind, I would cope. I would not let him down.

  Minutes later, as Jessie moored the boat, securing it to the trunk of a thick, sturdy tree just off the road, Monty’s boat hummed alongside us and the next step in our tense adventure commenced.

  In the dark, it was harder to navigate our way across the marshy path that led us from our boats to the entrance of the old government building. We had the limited beams from two torches to aid us and help us avoid stumbling on the trip-wire roots of the surrounding trees that had made their way through the earth’s surface, like a natural deterrent to intruders. The building itself wasn’t flooded, as it was built on stilts and had a set of steps at the front leading to its main doors. All of the government buildings I had ever encountered were build this way, even though the majority were old, pre-flood in their construction, but future-proofed, all the same. A cynical view would suggest they knew what was coming, had prepared in advance. But maybe the architects just had a penchant for elevation?

  This particular building had suffered flooding at some point, however. The rotting floorboards were a clear indication of that. And, as we ascended the short run of steps in the dark that night with Monty, we were reminded of the extent of that decay when the big man himself felt the wooden treads crumble beneath him.

  ‘Jesus!’ he cried out, as his two henchmen reached out to grab him, pulling him up into the building, one of them dropping his flash-torch and losing it in the marshy jaws of the surrounding swamp.

  ‘Okay boss?’ one asked and I saw a shadow nod from Monty.

  Inside, with just the light from one remaining torch, held by Jessie, we moved gingerly towards the room at the back where we had discovered the bodies earlier that day. As the boards continued to creak beneath us, I sensed a nervousness from Monty and just hoped that this emotion didn’t trigger any further unexpected behaviour from him. This operation required calm and control and clear heads; the decisions we made and the actions we took would have consequences, and we needed to ensure they were the most favourable.

  ‘In here,’ Jessie instructed, as we reached the room at the back of the building. ‘Careful, the floor’s worse in here,’ he added, and all five of us moved into the room inch by inch, darkness and decay fuelling us all with nauseous caution.

  But once inside, the swirl of Jessie’s flashlight around the room revealed a different scene altogether than the one we were expecting. In place of the spongy, sodden flooring we found sturdy, dry boards beneath their feet. They looked aged and dirty, like the rest of the abandoned laboratory. Monty stamped his feet heavily on the floor, as if he didn’t quite believe it, expecting it to give beneath him.

  ‘Rip them up!’ he hissed through his protective mask, which we all kept on in spite of the fact we were indoors, taking no chances at all for once. ‘Rip them up!’

  His two men appeared with crowbars and were quickly splitting the floorboards, as they cracked the floor open. Yet, there was nothing in the chasm below. Moving us towards the room’s exit, they broke nearly every board apart, in a hopeless search that revealed not a single body. Snatching Jessie’s lone torch in frustration, Monty swished it quickly across the foundation’s open wound, slowing the movement eventually, taking in the detail. But there was nothing to be seen. No bodies, no evidence at all.

  He turned and spat viciously in Jessie’s direction.

  ‘What are you playing at boy? Why did you bring me here? There’s nothing here! NOTHING!’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Jessie muttered, and I broke in with: ‘The place was packed with them, Monty. Packed in tight. Over a hundred.’

  The man glared at me, a glare distorted as steam blurred the visor on his face mask. In that moment, we both recognised that this was the first time that I had addressed him.

  ‘Monty, eh?’ he questioned after a second or so, as if addressing him by his first name was the worst of crimes.

  With no clear idea how to handle this man, I decided to go with my instincts.

  ‘Yes, Monty,’ I stressed, innocently enough, suggesting I hadn’t heard the objection in his tone. ‘Maybe even two hundred - or more. That’s why we came to see you immediately. It was your commission after all. So, we aren’t playing at anything, Monty, or Mr Harrison, if you prefer.’

  There was a pause before he laughed – a pause long enough to make me wonder if my bold gamble had failed to pay dividends. Jessie threw me a daggered glare that suggested my move was lethal, suicidal. But when the laugh came, it was hearty and genuine, a bellyful.

  ‘Not used to people being that unafraid!’ he chortled and actually slapped me on the back. ‘Fearless are we?’

  I shrugged. ‘I felt like I had nothing to lose, Monty. Assuming you don’t mind me calling you-.’

  ‘Call me Monty. Tristan, dear lad, you still have everything to lose. We all do. We’re playing a dangerous game here, tonight. And someone is clearly one step ahead. Eh, Jessie?’

  Jessie still had a scowl on his face. No longer cross with me for taking chances with Monty, he now seemed fractious that I’d been successful.

  ‘Something is definitely wrong, Monty. I swear they were here before-.’

  Monty held up a hand.

  ‘This is definitely it, isn’t it?’ The question came from one of Monty’s nameless henchmen who’d accompanied him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jessie answered with his own question.

  ‘Exactly that. This is the same place, right? And it’s dark, too. Sure you went the right way?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jessie replied, confident, certain. ‘I’ve been coming here for months and I could do the trip blindfolded.’

  It would have explained the absence of the bodies, but something in Jessie’s tone told me not to add to the questioning. I could do the trip blindfolded.

  ‘So, what do you want us to do?’ I asked, wanting to move away from the enquiries and take some action.

  Monty thought for a moment longer. He stood in the door of the room where earlier we had uncovered corpse after sterile corpse. Whoever had been here since had worked quickly. They had resources too. And the people that had those resources were split into two camps: gangsters and government. Since we’d come with the gangsters, that left the latter most likely responsible – at ti
mes, they were more shadowy, more fearful than their shifty counterparts.

  ‘Here goes. Check the rest of this place over and then keep following the river road east. Whatever has been moved, can’t have been moved far. I want you to keep looking, Jessie.’

  ‘And what if we are caught? It’s a big enough risk coming out this far, but I know this part of the land. I checked it out for weeks before I took any chances. I don’t know what’s further up river. And now that someone’s been here, and possibly knows what we’ve been up to, I don’t want to.’

  But it only took a small, cold look from Monty for Jessie to fall silent and concede.

  ‘Are you following, Monty?’ I asked.

  ‘Not when I’ve got men like you who’ll do this for me. I’ve got some spare bits in the boat – fuel, bit of food and drink I keep for emergencies. The extra fuel will get you a bit further than you’ve gone before. Dominic will fetch that for you and then we’ll be on our way.’ He nodded at the heavy who had questioned the legitimacy of our location and he disappeared back to the boat, cursing as he went in the darkness, tripping on roots and sinking in marshy pools. ‘Let’s say you travel out for another two days. I’ll see you both in four days with your report. Least you can do for wasting my time tonight. Can’t say fairer than that.’

  You could say a lot fairer, I thought and I saw in Jessie’s face he was thinking the same.

  After we had checked every dark corner of the lab, we stumbled our way back to our boats. Jessie took the supplies Monty had offered us from Dominic and we parted company with the others five minutes later. Monty Harrison backed away in his speedboat, facing us, his cocky gangster’s grin in place, slowly getting smaller and smaller, then vanishing, yet still we felt his eyes on us.

  When he was finally so distant that the spark of his boat lights had all but faded, I asked Jessie a question that had been preying on my mind ever since our new friend Dominic first posed it:

  ‘This isn’t the place we came to, is it?’

  Jessie kept his face still, his emotions in check for a moment or two and then let a small, yet cautious smile curve his mouth. You bugger, I mouthed, in admiration of his ingenuity and in despair of his risk-taking.

  ‘What gave it away?’

  ‘Not much to start with. It looks very much the same, identical almost, especially in the dark. The entrance, the layout, and fact that most rooms are trashed, bare, suggests someone has looted it recently. I didn’t realise at first, until we reached the far room. The damage we caused, Jessie… There’s no way someone got here in time to clear it out and cover it up. Not even some government whizz kids. No way. Plus, you gave it away with what you said.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I could do the trip blindfolded, you said, but it wasn’t you who had – it was me. Only you know exactly where the old lab is. I didn’t pay much attention on our way back earlier, so the route is still a blur to me. And to be honest, you could have driven me anywhere tonight and I wouldn’t have questioned the way.’

  Jessie chuckled dryly and held his hands up. ‘You got it all sussed.’

  ‘Which means it won’t take Monty long to figure that out.’

  ‘Worth taking that chance. Worse that he finds those bodies.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jessie answered, his voice devoid of humour, deathly serious. ‘You don’t want Monty near anything like that. He’s unpredictable and there’s too much I don’t know about him. I don’t know what he’d actually do with those bodies, but it’s best he doesn’t find them. I couldn’t risk telling you that I’d planned to mislead him earlier. Couldn’t risk him seeing it in your face. As it is, you’ve made a good first impression. He likes you, I can tell.’

  A pause fell between us, whilst we both considered our next words or move. I went first.

  ‘So, what is this place?’ I asked, nodding towards the building he had brought us to that night.

  ‘My back-up plan,’ he answered. ‘I always check out a few buildings whenever I take on work like this for Monty. I scoured the area and found this and a couple of others. There are four in all, equally distanced from each other. Clearly all government-owned and abandoned. The one we’ve been raiding is north-east. I directed us south-east to here instead.’

  ‘What do you mean back-up plan?’

  ‘You always have to have a back-up plan and a few secrets when you work for the likes of Monty Harrison. He likes an address, does Monty. Likes to know exactly where I’m working, but there’s another rule you have to follow when working for Monty – you must never trust him. If I told him about the laboratory and its exact whereabouts, there’s every chance he’d raid it himself and I’d have no business left. So, I always have a back-up address – a credible one - just in case he wants to visit. Never had to use it before. This place was the first one I found – there’s a few bits here, but not to make enough money, given the risks. Mind you, some of those floorboards would have been worth taking out – good solid wood.’

  ‘You said there were four similar buildings?’ I asked and he saw what I was thinking even through the darkness.

  ‘All just like this one,’ he answered, putting off where our conversation was inevitably going. I’m not going to show you, was implicit in his tone.

  ‘Apart from the one we raided, which was a graveyard for an extinct, annihilated species.’

  ‘Apart from that one,’ Jessie agreed, his voice flat, committing to no particular emotion.

  ‘So, what’s your back-up for this particular task?’

  Heading north-east, we travelled another thirty minutes before we reached our destination. It was no less shocking the second time round. If anything, coming across the mass open grave of pale, pickled-looking cadavers was worse. In my mind, I was numbed to it, but walking into that rear room, cautious the floor could diminish at any tread, a wave of unexpected nausea rushed up from my stomach. I ripped my face mask off and splashed the nearest corpses disrespectfully with the contents of my stomach.

  Jessie brought the additional supply of fuel Monty had given us – conveniently stored in two large, oblong cans – and we took one each. Starting in the left and right far corners respectively, Jessie and I generously laced the bodies with petrol, until the cans were all but empty. It seemed a criminal waste of a commodity that was rationed and hard to obtain from the black market, but we had to clear the evidence.

  ‘Get the engine going,’ Jessie instructed me and I took careful steps back out towards the boat, where I did as he said.

  As the boat brummed to a start, I heard a sudden whoosh from inside the lab and felt the instant heat rush at the night. I worried for a mere second, but then I saw Jessie come flying out, somehow keeping his balance as he stomped through the trip-hazard marshland to his awaiting escape vehicle.

  We took the boat further up river, a distance safe enough from the lick of the flames and also distant enough for us to be geographically disassociated, although the smell of fuel on us both and Jessie’s sooty appearance exposed us as obvious culprits. Watching, we saw the fire rage for a while, but the overall dampness in the building meant it didn’t rage out of control. Didn’t spread to the forest.

  ‘That was a calculated risk, yes?’ I asked Jessie.

  ‘Of course,’ he responded, uncommitted.

  As flames smote to smoke, Jessie revealed the rest of his plan.

  ‘We haven’t got enough fuel to follow the rest of Monty’s instructions, but two days east there is very little else to see. There’s another of these old labs, but it’s pretty much empty.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we check it out, and the forth one you mentioned?’

  ‘For bodies?’

  I nodded.

  ‘And do what? Start another fire?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With what?’ he asked, indicating we had used up all our spare fuel.

  I didn’t have an answer to that, only a further plea.

  ‘We need to check.’
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br />   ‘No we don’t,’ Jessie said, staring back at the building we had destroyed. ‘We did this out of necessity, but it’s too dangerous. I’m not out to uncover things on purpose. We need to stop looking.’

  ‘Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know what’s going on and who’s behind this?’

  Jessie sighed, deeply, with a hint of exasperation – at himself or me? I wasn’t sure.

  ‘Even if I did, we don’t have the resources for this. We’re in too deep for what we have already. And they were dead, Tristan. There’s some comfort it that.’

  ‘But not long dead,’ I interrupted.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ he insisted, his frustration now clearly directed at me. ‘Does it matter if the bodies were old and preserved – or fresh? Whatever was going on here didn’t succeed - the puppies died, whether recent or long ago. Maybe whatever is in this water did kill them?’

  ‘You don’t believe that.’

  Jessie gave me a momentary grin. ‘No, I don’t, but I’m just not prepared to search further. Not tonight, or tomorrow. It’s too dangerous, Tris. I’d prefer to remain a bit ignorant than take too many risks. Not prepared to let you take them either.’

  We remained quiet for a minute for two. Looking back at the smoldering laboratory we had left behind, I wondered if destroying the evidence had been the right move after all. Maybe we should have simply covered it up and waited for the right opportunity, the right person to report it to. Yet, there were no such persons, as far as I knew. No one you could trust, at least. I also couldn’t help but wonder what else was lurking in these dense, claustrophobic woods. I understood perfectly why our search couldn’t continue – it wasn’t practical or safe in any way – but equally I wondered what evil remained hidden. What further evil lay hidden, awaiting our curiosity or accidental finding, in the laboratories Jessie knew of, and in other places he had yet to explore or discover? I knew we wouldn’t find out, not tonight at least, if ever.

  Jessie exhaled into the night, expelling until his lungs required a great intake of air. This acted as a signal to break our silent thoughts.