by Alex Garland
‘Well neither do I, so belt up! You’ll get me killed too!’
‘But…’
Resisting the urge to shout at him, I grabbed him by the lapels of his combat jacket and put my mouth right up against his ear. ‘For the last time, shut the fuck up!’
Mister Duck covered his face with his hands and the guards began dragging their terrified captives away.
Cheap Shots
The cries and howls were gradually replaced by jungle noises. Commonplace sounds I’d never normally have registered, but which now seemed unnatural. Worse, obscurely facetious; twittering birdsong like twittering bad jokes, jangling my nerves and my temper. I stood up without a word to Mister Duck and set off on my way back up to the pass. It wasn’t an easy trek. My head ached with a fading adrenalin rush, my legs felt unsteady, and I was giving far too little thought to stealth. Twice I tripped and more than twice I pushed through a thicket without pausing to see who might be on the other side.
Looking back, it seems obvious that I was shaken by what I’d seen and in a hurry to leave an area which still felt heavy with screams. But that wasn’t how I saw it at the time. I only thought about the importance of getting back to camp and filling in Sal on the morning’s developments. I was also furious with Mister Duck. From the moment we’d started tracking the rafters, his wires seemed to have got severely crossed. Not only had he apparently asked me to intercept Zeph and Sammy before the plateau, his blathering had put me in jeopardy. As far as I was concerned, that was a serious offence. The DMZ was way too dangerous a place if you couldn’t rely on your company.
I think Mister Duck sensed this anger because, unusually, he made no attempt at conversation. Until we reached the pass. Then he stopped me with a firm shove and said, ‘We need to talk.’
‘Fuck you,’ I replied, shoving him back. ‘You could have got me killed.’
‘The rafters probably are being killed!’
‘You don’t know that. And I didn’t want that beating shit to happen any more than you, so don’t get on some fucking moral high horse. We knew they might be caught. That was understood when we made the decision to make no contact with them unless they got to the waterfall, so what do you want from me?’
‘Decisions? I didn’t make any decisions! I wanted you to help them!’
‘Steaming in like Rambo, waving an M16 that doesn’t even exist?’
‘You could have done something!’
‘Like what? You live in a dream world! There was nothing I could have done!’
‘You could have warned them before they got to the plateau!’
‘I had clear orders not to warn them!’
‘You could have broken the orders!’
‘I didn’t want to fucking break them!’
‘You… didn’t?’
‘Not for one second!’
Mister Duck frowned and opened his mouth to reply, then appeared to check himself.
‘What?’ I snapped.
He shook his head, his features calming. When eventually he spoke I knew he wasn’t saying what was on his mind. ‘That was a cheap shot, Richard,’ he said quietly. ‘About me living in a dream world.’
‘You could have got me killed, but I hurt your feelings. God forgive me. I’m a monster.’
‘It’s your world I live in.’
‘That must be a comfort, considering you were the one who pointed out I’m…’
I cut myself off. While I’d been talking, I’d heard a sharp crack from somewhere in the DMZ.
‘… Did you hear that?’
Mister Duck hesitated, his eyes narrowing, and suddenly he looked extremely worried. ‘Yes. I heard something.’
‘You sure?’
‘Definite.’
We both waited.
Within five or six seconds the silence was exploded by a burst of gunfire. It was entirely unambiguous, somehow managing to ripple through the trees like a quick breeze and tear through them with shocking loudness. A single burst, but a long one. Long enough for me to blink and hunch my shoulders, and then be aware that the shooting was still going on.
When it finally did stop, the next thing I heard was Mister Duck, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly.
‘Jesus…’ I muttered. ‘Jesus Christ… It’s happened. They’ve actually…’
‘Been shot,’ he finished vacantly.
To my surprise, I nearly threw up. Out of nowhere, my stomach knotted and my throat tensed up. An image jumped into my head, the rafters’ bodies, their shirts scattered with spreading stains, limbs twisted. Swallowing hard, I turned to the DMZ . I suppose I was looking for a corroborating sign, maybe some vague blue smoke in the distance. But there was nothing.
‘Been shot,’ I heard once more, and then, very faintly, ‘Damn.’
A moment later I turned back to Mister Duck. He had gone.
Mama-San
It had all gone wrong or it had all gone right. I couldn’t decide which.
On the one hand, just like on the plateau, when it had come down to it I’d lost my nerve. I hadn’t been alert but calm, I’d been alert but queasy. But on the other hand, maybe that was how it should be. Right to panic on the plateau, right to feel sick when I heard the gunshots. I’ve read about it enough times, seen it in enough films: the first day on your first tour, you’re supposed to lose your shit in a contact. Later, more experienced, jaded, you are caught unawares one day that death still has the capacity to appal you. It is something you dwell on, and through it you gain strength.
I ran this second interpretation over and over as I made my way down to the waterfall. I also tried to look on other bright sides. Mainly that our problem with the new arrivals was over, and my part in compromising the beach’s secrecy was irreversibly closed. But they didn’t make a dent in the way I was feeling. Still battling with my contracting stomach, struggling to focus on the terrain ahead of me, trying to work through my urge to yell. I wanted to yell a lot. Not an Iron John, exorcizing kind of yell. More this kind: running down a road at top speed to catch a bus, and bashing your knee straight into a concrete bollard. Just like you’d done it deliberately, as hard as you possibly could. It isn’t a yell born from pain, because at that moment nothing hurts. It’s a yell that comes from a brain on overload, refusing to concede what has just happened, and refusing to try.
*
Sal was waiting for me beneath the waterfall. ‘What the hell happened?’ she said, more angry than anxious, before I’d even finished swimming to the shore. ‘Why did I hear gunshots?’
I didn’t answer until I’d reached the shallows and was wading towards her. ‘The rafters,’ I puffed. The impact on hitting the water always knocked the air out of me, and this time it had been worse than usual.
‘They’ve been killed?’
‘Yes. I saw them get caught by the guards and then later I heard the firing.’
‘You didn’t see it?’
‘No.’
‘What happened when they were caught?’
‘They were beaten.’
‘Badly?’
‘Yes.’
‘Badly enough to scare them? Maybe just a message?’
‘Worse.’
‘Then?’
‘They got taken away somewhere. Dragged.’
‘Dragged… You didn’t follow.’
‘No.’
‘What next?’
‘The shooting… when I reached the pass.’
‘I see…’ Sal’s eyes bored holes into my head. ‘Badly beaten, you say…’
‘Very badly.’
‘You feel responsible for their deaths.’
I thought about this before replying, not wanting to give away my connection to Zeph and Sammy at this late stage. ‘It was their decision to come here,’ I said eventually, shifting my weight from my left foot to my right. I was still standing knee-deep in the pool and my feet were sinking slightly into the mud. ‘They made a lot of noise in the jungle. It was their fault.’
Sal nodded. ‘Others may have heard the shooting. What will you tell them?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I think Étienne might know about Christo. He’s being difficult again…’
‘I won’t tell Étienne,’ I interrupted. ‘I won’t tell Françoise or Keaty or anyone… Except Jed… You know I’ll tell Jed.’
‘Of course I do, Richard,’ she said crisply. ‘But it’s nice of you to ask permission.’ Then she spun on her heel and began walking away. She didn’t even wait for me to climb out of the pool, or to hear me whisper, ‘I wasn’t asking your fucking permission.’
Reanimator
I didn’t follow Sal back to the camp because I didn’t want to see everyone yet. In fact, I didn’t want to do anything much. Except maybe sleep. It was the idea of oblivion that appealed; nothing to do with tiredness. I wanted to get away from the brain that was still making me want to yell. The problem was, of the various benefits sleep might provide, oblivion wasn’t on the cards. If I slept I’d dream, and I knew dreams were not the place to avoid these things.
I ended up talking to myself. Walking around the pool, treating my mind as if it were a separate but reasonable entity, I asked it to leave me alone for a while. Or at least turn down the volume.
This wasn’t the deranged caricature if might sound, full of expressive gestures and wild looks. It was an earnest attempt for some peace and quiet that happened not to work. My mind deflected reason like Superman deflecting bullets, chest puffed out, completely unfazed. So I tried a few different tacks, like attempting to get interested in a pretty flower or the bark patterns on the carved tree. But all these techniques failed equally. If they achieved anything, it was that my failure compounded my frustration and made me feel worse.
My last attempt was to dive back into the pool. Underwater had always had the qualities of a refuge for me. Calming, blinding, deafening; a perfect escape. It worked too, enveloping me in anonymous coolness, but in an unavoidably temporary way. Without gills I had to keep surfacing, and as soon as I surfaced my mind resumed its circular debates.
No place to avoid these things. I realized this eventually, hammered into breathless submission. I climbed out of the pool and headed straight into the jungle. I didn’t follow the gardeners’ path. I followed the network of carpentry paths, which I could use to reach the beach without crossing the clearing.
I’ll keep this brief. Absolutely limited to what I remember, with no filling in the blanks. Not that I’ve been filling in the blanks up until now; it just so happens that my memory of the next few minutes is patchy. No doubt a result of the traumatic morning, and the previously described frame of mind.
‘The rafters are dead,’ I said. ‘Christo will be dead within forty-eight hours. All our problems are over except one. It’s time you got sane.’
Karl looked at me through his waxy eyes. Or he looked through me, or he wasn’t looking at anything at all. Whatever. I didn’t really care. I took a step towards him, and as I did so he lashed out viciously at my legs. Maybe revenge for having kicked down his shelter. The blow hurt, so I hit him back.
I sat on his chest, my knees against his upper arms, trying to push a handful of rice into his mouth. His skin reminded me a lot of the dead Freak on Ko Pha-Ngan, slack to the touch, moving loosely over the muscle. Touching it wasn’t a pleasant sensation at all. Especially when he began to writhe.
He made sounds, probably words. ‘That’s the boy!’ I shouted. ‘Guess I’m curing you now!’ His fingers clawed at my neck. I pushed them away. I think I may have lost the rice in the struggle. I think I may have been holding sand.
I assume I closed my eyes. Instead of Karl’s face with bugging eyes, I have a mental picture of a reddy-brown blanket. Nothingness, so closed eyes seem like a logical explanation. They would also explain the next image I have in my memory slide-show – a blue blanket, re-opening my eyes for a split second as I fell backwards and glimpsed a cloudless sky. And the next image, returning to the reddy-brown blanket again.
*
I sat up. Karl was twenty or more metres down the beach, running like crazy. Amazed that he could still have so much strength after days of virtual starvation, I leapt to my feet and sprinted after him.
Reasonable Doubt
Down the beach, through the tree-line, up the path, into the clearing. I’d nearly caught him. I was just about to get a hand to his hair. Then I tripped over a guy line from one of the tents and went flying, and Karl made a beeline for the Khyber Pass.
I scrambled up. Several people were standing directly in his way. ‘Catch him!’ I shouted. ‘Jesse, Greg, for fuck’s sake! Bring him down!’ But they were too shocked to react, and Karl whizzed by. ‘You idiots! He’s getting away!’ A few seconds later he’d reached the pass. In the baffled quiet that followed we listened to him crashing through the undergrowth, and then the silence was complete.
‘Fuck!’ I shouted, sinking to my knees, and started banging my fist on the ground.
A light hand touched my shoulder. I looked round to see Françoise leaning over me, and behind her a semicircle of curious people. ‘Richard?’ she said anxiously.
Another hand, Jesse’s, reached under my arms and hauled me up. ‘You OK, mate?’
‘Yes,’ I began, and then stopped, trying to remember what had happened. ‘… I think Karl’s out of his coma thing.’
‘So I saw. What happened?’
‘… He attacked me,’ I said doubtfully, and everyone gasped.
‘You are hurt?’ said Françoise, peering at my face to check for damage.
‘… I managed to fight him off. I’m fine…’
‘Why did he do it?’
‘I… I really don’t know…’ I shook my head in desperation. I didn’t feel at all ready to cope with these questions. ‘Maybe… Maybe he thought I was a fish. He was a fisher and… he’s mad…’
Sal saved me from the shit I was coming out with. The crowd parted and she came striding through.
‘Karl attacked you, Richard?’
‘Just now. On the beach.’
The second confirmation of Karl’s assault brought a second gasp from the crowd, and they all started to talk at once.
‘It should have been me to catch him!’ said Unhygienix furiously. ‘He ran so close!’
‘I saw the look in his eye!’ added Cassie. ‘He looked right at me! It was terrifying!’
‘And the foam in his mouth!’ said someone else. ‘Like rabies! We should catch him and tie him up!’
Only one voice went against the flow: Étienne’s. ‘This is impossible,’ he shouted above the racket. ‘I do not believe Karl would attack Richard! I do not believe it! I was with him this morning!’
The din began to die down.
‘This morning I was with him for one hour! One hour, and he ate rice with me! He was getting better! I know he would not attack anyone!’
I got myself together enough to frown in disbelief. ‘Are you saying I’m a liar?’
Étienne hesitated, then turned away from me, addressing the others. ‘For one hour I was with him! He said my name! For the first time in a week he talked! I know he was getting better!’
Quickly I began to backtrack, not caring about this argument, just wanting to get away. ‘Yes.Étienne’s right. It may have been my fault. I could have frightened him…’
‘No!’ Sal interrupted sharply. ‘I’m afraid that Karl has become dangerous. This morning I also went to see him, and he made a lunge at me too.’
Startled, but not about to contradict her, I studied her expression hard and wished I had her capacity for sniffing out a lie. She was acting like she was telling the truth, but I knew that meant fuck all.
‘Luckily Bugs was there to pull him off. We were down on the beach, just before he left for Ko Pha-Ngan with Keaty. I should have warned you all already, but I was trying to work out the best way to deal with him…’ She sighed with apparent and entirely uncharacteristic regret. ‘I was stupid. I didn’t want to b
ring down the Tet celebration with more bad news. It was irresponsible, but things had been going so well… I didn’t want to ruin morale.’
Jesse shook his head. ‘Tet’s all very well, Sal, but we can’t have someone that dangerous just roaming around.’
Everyone nodded, and for some strange reason, I felt they were all nodding at me.
‘Something will have to be done.’
‘I know, Jesse. You’re quite right. Richard, I hope you can accept my apologies. You shouldn’t have been put in that situation.’
‘No need for that, Sal,’ I replied immediately. Even in the context of a lie – and by now I was sure she was lying – I felt extremely uncomfortable having her apologize to me. ‘I understand.’
‘But I do not!’ said Étienne desperately. ‘Please! Please, everybody must listen! Karl is not dangerous! He needs help! I think maybe we could take him to Ko Pha…’
This time it was Françoise who cut him off, by doing nothing more than walking away. His voice failed him as he watched her march across the clearing. Then he started after her, still not able to speak, holding his arms ahead of him, paralysed in mid-plea.
Up-ended
Almost as soon as Étienne and Françoise walked off, the rest of us began to wander across the clearing. There was no further discussion about Karl. As far as the others were concerned, I think they were all aware that the calm since Sten’s funeral was in jeopardy, and a huge exercise in denial was underway. Instant, informal, an intuitive consensus so that talking about anything remotely contentious was out of bounds. No problem for me. It meant that no one asked me to elaborate on Karl or brought up the topic of the gunshots. The only downside was having to labour through a few contrived conversations, which seemed a fair trade-off.
The strangest of these exchanges was with Jean, not least because he almost never spoke to me. He came over with a shy smile and asked the kind of stupid question that can only come from uneasiness. ‘You are working, Richard?’ he said.