Where Men Once Walked

by Mark L Watson

  Where Men Once Walked

  Mark L Watson

  Prologue

  The tin mug of salty whiskey rattled and slid along the bookshelf and fell from the end and spilled the remainder of its contents onto the bedsheet.

  The kid stirred.

  An old book, unreadable, its pages bound forever with wet and mould, followed the mug from the shelf onto the saltmarked duvet.

  He rolled on to his side and opened his eyes and looked out of the tiny plastic window. The sky faded from deep sapphire in the west to ferocious pink in the east, across the shimmering black and silver water. Yellow clouds struck endlessly along the horizon like rotten claw marks on soft skin.

  The kid rubbed his face and stood up without opening his eyes and walked across the small cabin and climbed the metal steps onto the deck and out into the spray. He had been sleeping still wearing his boots.

  Everything was drenched and as the boat bounced against the easterly tide, the spray cascaded up over the deck.

  The Pole still stood at the wheel, also drenched.

  He glanced round at him but didn’t respond, his eyes wide and unfocussed and slightly mad and his hair wet and in every direction.

  The kid reached down and grabbed the waterproof jacket from where it was blowing on the beam and pulled it on and set out across the edge of the deck, holding the steel railing for support as the boat tipped desperately on the waves.

  The air was already hot and the spray from the sea was cooling.

  He pulled himself into the driver’s cabin at the front of the boat through the open door, hanging on its last hinge, and wiped the water from his face with the back of his hand.

  The Pole looked round again, a cigarette only just hanging from his bottom lip.

  He nodded at the kid.

  “Sleep well?”

  He laughed as he said it.

  “How’s your arm?” the kid said smiling and sarcastic.

  The Pole frowned at him and turned away and inhaled the cigarette smoke.

  The kid groaned and sat down on the battered wooden chest and wiped the spray from his face again. He let his head fall into his hands and stretched his face with his palms and then gazed back out over the ocean.

  “Are we much closer?”

  The Pole looked down at the wheel and the wet map and unstuck the cigarette from his lip and flicked it into the wind. It shot backwards, out of the door and into the oceanic abyss.

  “I reckon so” he said, heaving the wheel against a wave, “look”

  He nodded out of the far side of the cabin through the battered plastic screen.

  In the distance, little flecks of black land silhouetted against the pink sky, though they were barely visible without squinting.

  “Where do you think that is?”

  The Pole shrugged again.

  “Greece somewhere?”

  He spun the wheel round and took the boat into a slow turn towards the islets. The wind was dying down and it had finally stopped raining and the warm early morning was going to turn into another lethally hot day.

  The kid said it in his head for the thousandth time.

  Saalbach.

  The word was etched into his mind like a carving on an old tree in some place where it could never be lost.

  Saalbach.

  It was salvation and safety and some ideal nearly lost to the world but for the glimmer of hope he held in his heart and nothing more.

  He watched the jagged black points on the horizon inch closer.

  The thought of dry land was sobering and he sat up and watched out of the front screen though there was nothing more to see and the distant islets were yet featureless in all but their own presence there.

  The kid stood up off the chest and flicked the buckle open and took out the radio. He couldn’t believe the thing still worked given the water damage and the salt and the sand that had dried into every one of its many cracks.

  He smiled and shook his head softly and spun the tuning dial down to the very bottom of its setting. He scrolled up the frequency bar carefully, making sure to listen for any broadcast and leaned into the cabin to shelter from the wind.

  A faint crackle of some distant and ancient music of pipes and strings flittered in and out of transmission and he turned further through the static. The articulate voice of the automated recording started to creep through and whisper out from the radio.

  “Continuer à rester dans vos maisons et attendre les instructions. En cas d'urgence s'il vous plaît consulter votre bureau de réponse en cas de catastrophe locale”

  It was the same broadcast from the French gunboat he’d heard before.

  “si vous laissez vous risquez de vous retrouver sans eau ni nourriture suffisante”

  Other than that it was only static.

  He put it down on the chest and walked onto the front of the boat and stepped up onto the beam and held the metal support to his side.

  The spray kicked up as the little boat bounced across the waves.

  Saalbach.

  Chapter One

  Lam Nam Nan National Park to Raheng

  The kid lay awake in the bed staring at the panelled ceiling. A shiny blue beetle was crawling upsidedown along the crack in the foam tile and it stopped briefly to investigate a dried yellow stain before continuing idly on its way. The partition wall itself didn’t go all the way to the ceiling and there was noise pouring in from every direction.

  On the end wall of the building, the huge window sat permanently open, allowing the sirens and shouts from the street below to flood the building and allow inside more heat than cool. He squeezed his eyes closed in frustration and could feel the dull and deepening signs of a headache in both temples.

  He shook it off and sat up. It was getting hot.

  He reached out for the water bottle on the plastic table beside his bunk and knew before he touched it that it would be like everything else.

  Hot. Like everything else.

  The bottle actually felt warmer than his hands already were and they were so hot they were sweating. He didn’t even remove the cap, and tossed it across onto the other plastic sheeted bunk.

  He knew it would be hotter outside but he couldn’t stay in bed any longer. He needed to contact London again and get out of there while he could.

  He pulled himself to his feet, weary from a night of sleeping in humidity on a plastic sheet with no pillow, and grabbed his linen shirt from the hook on the wall and slipped on his boots. He was still adjusting his feet into them as he walked out into the hallway. The thin wooden door creaked and tapped closed behind him.

  There was commotion everywhere, even inside the hostel. In the reception room a tiny desk with a tiny television showed the same Thai news broadcasts as every other and it was fizzing with static. He crossed the room and nodded casually to the short woman behind the desk and she watched him blankly and made no effort to return the gesture.

  He pushed his way out through the doorway, past two men arguing loudly and both seemingly unaware of his presence there and each unwilling to move as he squeezed between them out onto the pavement and out into the heat.

  He had arrived there the previous night long after everything had closed but the small town was a hive of activity and there was a sense of impending panic everywhere he turned. He had travelled all day north to Tak Airport desperate to pay whatever it would take to get a flight back west and a wiry man in a white Datsun had taken him from the train station out to the small airport.

  He had eagerly approached the terminal doors with his bag in one hand and credit card in the other but knew he had lost his chance as he approached the terminal door to see it guarded by uniformed police officers. They told him that all flights in
and out of the airport were cancelled indefinitely.

  There were to be no refunds and no apologies.

  He had stood at the front of the building with his bag at his feet staring into the darkness of the surrounding hills and the evening sky that smelled of gasoline. He had paced the building trying to find signal on his mobile phone, cursing under his breath when across the plaza a young local man in a black shirt had stood in the open door of a gold Mercedes watching him.

  The man had shouted something across to him a couple of times but the kid had chosen not to listen and eventually, when his pacing took him close enough to the car he had realised that it was a private taxi and the man was offering to help, and he gave up on the phone and climbed inside.

  The driver took him back into Raheng to find somewhere to spend the night.

  He certainly wasn’t catching a flight.

  He had found the first place he could to sleep, knowing that the next morning he would head back south to Bangkok and catch a flight out from there instead.

  The small town of Raheng had been awake since before dawn.

  The kid crossed the road away from the hostel door and ducked through the sidestreet opposite and down to the river. A slight breeze fluttered through the alleyway making him slow his steps to enjoy it and at the far end of the walkway on the east bank of the Mae Nam Ping, the market was an explosion of noise and colour. Men bustled through the crowds with crates of water and fruit and rice, making way for no other, and people shouted at one another as women pulled children along by the wrists and scooters sped by and police ran from left to right and back again and the sky was empty and blue and hot.

  Everyone was rushing.

  Four military vans came screaming through the crowds, dangerously close to everyone they passed and soldiers hung from the sides with rifles. Nobody cared enough to look up at them.

  The kid found a stall selling small bottles of cold water and he bought two. He tore the top off one and threw it back, savouring every icy drop before dropping the other bottle into the pocket of his rucksack and heading off along the roadside to find a working telephone.

  Above the glass door, the sign proudly misspelled Wattana Intternet Caffe.

  On the left side of the café were four booths, each equipped with a coin-operated telephone and on the right were six desktop computer terminals, each with a mouse and a stool and people gathered around them.

  It was heaving.

  The proprietor of the shop sat at a simple wooden table next to the front door, wearing matching beige shirt and trousers and a blank expression as he surveyed his customers.

  The kid motioned to the phones and the man nodded and the kid showed him the hundred Baht note in his hand and the man nodded again and took it and threw a handful of coins down onto the table.

  The kid swept them into his other hand and muttered his thanks and took the end booth and sat down on the wooden stool and popped a few coins into the machine. He listened for the tone and then dialled the number.

  It took a couple of moments to connect and then the dial tones caught up with themselves and the line started ringing and he waited after the receiver clicked and spoke into the silence and his mother’s voice croaked back to him across the static. He was relieved that she was still awake.

  He told her of his delays and he told her of the airport closing and the cancelled flights and he told her that he was heading back to the capital and he told her he would fly home from there and should be no more than a few days.

  She told him that back at home they were already evacuating people in the coastal areas due to the flooding and that the Thames had burst its banks on that very morning and that his father’s work had been cancelled indefinitely. She said she didn’t want to have to leave their home and that she loved him and that if he would wait on the line she would get his father to come to the phone, but he said he would be with them soon and that he had to go. They both told the other not to worry and he hung up the phone onto the cradle and stood for a moment there staring at nothing.

  A line had started to form beside the phone booth and a man’s head peered round the partition wall and the kid glanced round at him and motioned with a finger that he’d only be a moment.

  The phone was ringing again at his ear. The man frowned and retreated back to the queue.

  There were thousands of foreign nationals travelling around Thailand, even that far inland, and most were in the same position as him, desperately trying to reach loved ones at home somewhere many miles away.

  It clicked onto the answering machine and her sweet voice lit up the place as it told him to leave a message after the tone.

  He told her that he missed her and that he would be with her soon and that he was sorry it had been longer than he had thought but that he had achieved so much great work there and was happy with the way he had progressed. He promised her he would be back in London before the week was out and that he would take her for the most expensive dinner they could find and that they would walk together through the countryside for hours with the dog and stay up all night talking. He asked her to email him any updates on the evacuations and he told her that he loved her so much and then he hung up.

  The sky was dimming and the sun had dropped behind the high treeline and the clouds were pink when the kid walked through the little wooden arch into the dusty old bar.

  Inside, the little stonebuilt tavern was dead but for the two young waitresses standing at the end of the bar chatting loudly to each other. They looked slowly up at him and watched as he entered and one moved towards him at the bar and stood facing him but said nothing. Her colleague was still chatting to her from the end of the bar.

  He swung his bag down off his shoulder onto a wicker stool and let out a deep sigh. It was cool inside and he welcomed it. He always welcomed the cold. His work had taken him across the world and he always seemed to end up in the heat.

  The girl at the bar didn’t say anything and her expression did not change for him.

  He asked for a beer and held up a single finger and leaned forward onto both elbows and glanced along the rough wooden bartop to the other waitress who looked away when his eyes met hers.

  The waitress pulled a bottle of lager from the fridge and popped the top off it and let it fall straight to the floor with a rattle. He thumbed some coins over the counter and watched her slide them off into a tray. She owed him some change but she didn’t care and nor did he. Everyone’s shoulders were burdened at that time and none more than his and to spare thought for some small change was a waste of thought.

  The tiny television screen in the corner was tuned silently to the news. From what he could see, every station was tuned to the news.

  The waitress pulled at a thread of her black hair and went back to her friend at the end of the bar and the two resumed their loud conversation.

  He sat down into one of the low wooden chairs and pulled the thin cushion up to support his head, took a mouthful of the strong beer and sank back.

  He thought of his family and of Abi and of the last time they were together. He had held her at the airport with little tears in her eyes when he promised he’d be only a month. His leaving was nothing new to their relationship or to his family and their parting was a regular thing.

  “The time will go quickly. I’ll call every day I can”

  Such stupid promises.

  She stood and wept gently as he pushed his luggage trolley through the gateway into passport control and she lost him in the crowd and she kept standing there long after he had gone, as she always did, and she walked slowly back out into that cold early morning to start again a temporary life without him.

  He had flown out to Kuala Lumpur and caught a connection north into Bangkok and a tiny man in a blue suit with a slicked sideparting was waiting at the airport for him, and drove him into the city centre and straight up to the front doors of the hotel where his bag was swept away from him and he was ushered to his room.

  �
�Mr John will call you here nine oclock”

  For eighteen days he had camped out across the rainforests and monitored closely the Wildlife Alliance’s anti-poaching measures. He had tracked and tagged two different families of Asian elephants, including three young born only the year before, and had the pleasure and surprise of successfully placing a satellite tag on the first and only clouded leopard he had ever seen. He knew the team in London would be ecstatic at the news and he had been desperate to tell them.

  He had a flight booked from Tak to Bangkok and a connection back through Kuala Lumpur into London. He would have two days to spare before the projected date of impact in New Mexico and there was to be no major effects to air travel outside of North and South America.

  Then, the morning they were breaking down their camp, his driver was bitten on the hand by a pit viper and had to be airlifted to the hospital, leaving the rest of the team to hike more than a day out of the Lam Nam Nan and causing him to miss his connection, and the one missed connection had led to another as he raced across the country to Tak airport.

  On the second day he had stopped to eat on the banks of the river near a cluster of homes and the whole village had gathered around the only television they had there.

  He had run out of time.

  It was about to hit.

  Nobody knew at all what to expect.

  The U.N had announced that there would be a blast radius of over six hundred miles but it may have effects from Los Angeles to Little Rock.

  He sat and watched the news anchor presenting the coverage from a Bangkok studio.

  He sat and watched the pictures switch between satellite imagery and the newsroom.

  He sat and watched as the screen went black.

  Before that day was through, reports started coming in of the actual destruction.

  It was beyond comprehension.

  The blast had reached both US coastlines in a little over six minutes and there were projections of over 30 million dead by the time the sun went down. The International Maritime Organisation and all international naval fleets were put on black alert as shock waves from the blast caused tsunamis to pulse out into both the Atlantic and Pacific.