Where Men Once Walked

by Mark L Watson

  The world began to die that 27th May.

  His attention snapped back to the man entering the bar dressed in black trousers and a black vest and his head full of blonde dreadlocks tied up into a cap. The waitress slid him a whiskey before he sat down and he nodded back to her and th e man’s eyes caught his for a second and caused him to look away. He was short but muscular with a tan that belied his blonde hair and stubble. He had a tattoo on the back of each hand and a tattoo across his back, only hinted at through the open sleeves of his vest.

  The news presenter on the screen was reporting live from some flooded harbour, shouting down her microphone as the water behind her crashed against the buildings.

  “This is no time to be at sea” the man called behind him.

  The kid didn’t take his eyes from the screen. He sounded Dutch but the kid couldn’t be sure.

  He looked round and caught the man’s gaze again.

  “No time to be anywhere by the look of things”

  The man took the whole shot of whiskey down and breathed air in through his teeth. He flicked his burned out cigarette into the jar of sand on the bar.

  He could feel the man eyeing him through the back of his head.

  “You have some way of gettin’ where you need to be?” he called.

  The question threw him slightly.

  “Yeah I’m good” he managed, “heading back south tonight”

  “All them planes are down now, eh?”

  He looked at the kid with his eyebrows raised and cocked his head and motioned to the barmaid for another drink.

  “Yeah I can’t believe that. I’ve travelled three days to get here and now they’ve closed the damn airport. There’s a lot of people out there with no way of getting anywhere”

  He finished his beer and put the bottle down.

  “Anyway, I’m taking the bus down to Bangkok tonight”

  He glanced down at his leather watch. The train was due to depart at 21:10 and would arrive into Bangkok about twelve hours later and he would pay whatever it took to get there and to get home. That was what his credit card was for.

  “You’re not catching a flight out of Bangkok now friend” the man replied.

  The words hung in the sticky night air like flies on a paper.

  The kid turned slowly to look at the man. A sweat came over him.

  “Why?” he felt himself ask.

  He didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “Flights are grounded now friend. No reason to go to Bangkok, you wanna head north not south”

  “To everywhere?”

  He hoped the man was confused.

  “To everywhere”

  The man slammed down his empty glass and flicked it towards the barmaid with his middle finger. It stopped just short of falling off the bar. He made a quick gesture with his finger and she started pouring him another one.

  The kid was sweating and his mind raced.

  “So what are my options?”

  The Dutchman smiled. His weathered face wrinkled and the sweat on his brow beaded.

  He rose to his feet and stood there looking at him. He said nothing.

  He had been just about to leave for the train station and he had no intention of spending another night in that place.

  He thought of his conversation with his mother earlier that morning. London was flooded, there was a good chance that most, if not all, the British airports were closed too.

  He had to find a phone.

  He thanked the man, hoisted up his bag on to his shoulder and went for the door.

  He had no idea which direction to walk though he guessed west along the dusty street. Before long he stopped at an old payphone bricked into the front of a bank which had been boarded over. There was plenty of loose change weighing down his pockets and he was happy to pump it into the machine.

  The kid dialled the country code and then his mother’s number. He glanced at his watch and did the calculation in his head to see what time it was back at home and was relieved it was still midafternoon.

  It was Tuesday but he knew his father hadn’t been at work for the past few days.

  Nobody had.

  There was silence on the line. He looked at the little display on the phone terminal. It was counting up the seconds of the call. The line clicked and an automatic recording spoke to him in Thai.

  He hung up the receiver and put the returned coins back into the slot.

  There was again a long pause and then the same recorded message, taunting him with words he couldn’t understand. He tried Abi’s number and the same recording spoke to him and he tried the London office but it was the same.

  The lines were down.

  He sat down on the little white wall, dusty and old and crumbling under his weight, his backpack leaning against it in on the dried brown grass. A dog trotted down the centre of the road and glanced its head at him only slightly as it passed and did not break stride.

  A man in a sweat-drenched blue linen shirt hurried past with arms full of luggage laden down like a packmule, a weary woman falling some paces behind dragging a suitcase and bags of her own. His eyes met the kid’s for a split-second and he looked panicked and then they were gone.

  He was a short walk away from the centre of the town and there weren’t many people on those streets.

  He closed his eyes.

  His mind started to go through the possibilities.

  He needed to find somewhere with a decent transport network that could offer travel to Europe, though as his mind turned over it didn’t take him long to reach the disappointing conclusion that there was indeed no option at all.

  He was in possibly the worst corner of the world for this to happen and it made him angry inside and he regretted ever being there.

  He knew that with the exception of Malaysia, which was at the opposite end of the country, Thailand bordered Laos and Cambodia and Myanmar and not one of those offered him any reasonable chance of getting west.

  He was shaken from his thoughts by a thundering noise. Four helicopters rattled overhead leaving their rumble echoing far behind them in the dim sky.

  For a moment after there was ringing in his ears.

  He looked at his watch. The train to Bangkok was due to leave in the next ten minutes and he knew he would have to leave for the station at that very moment if he wanted to catch a flight out of Bangkok. The Dutchman could have been wrong though he doubted it. He wasn’t prepared to travel twelve hours south to the capital city to learn that fate and then turn around and travel twelve hours back again to restart.

  With a deep sigh he gave up on the idea and resigned himself to travelling north by road to the border and into a neighbouring country to find a way home.

  It was late at that time and he was angry at himself for having wasted a day and he knew he would have to find somewhere to stay for the night and could make an early start at his travels tomorrow.

  With no idea of where to start looking he went back in to the bar to seek help. He thought that maybe the waitresses would be able to recommend somewhere or at the very least serve him something strong in the interim.

  Inside, the Dutchman was still sitting up at the bar, joined there by a friend.

  The second man was a little younger than the other but much bigger. He wore baggy brown combat trousers and a black shirt rolled up at the sleeves and his hair shaved short. They were both drinking whiskey shorts with bottles of lager on the side and both were smoking.

  The kid walked through their cigarette smoke and into the bar.

  Other than the three of them and the same two waitresses there was still nobody else there.

  “Do you know somewhere I can stay from the night?” he called to them over the bar

  The girls looked over to him but neither replied.

  “Hotel?” he tried again

  One of the girls leaned in slightly as though trying to hear him better but she moved no closer.

  “I’m looking for a hotel, or a hos
tel. Somewhere to stay”

  It was the Dutchman who spoke first.

  “You need somewhere, try the Panda House”

  His friend looked on.

  He wasn’t sure if he was the butt of a joke that he didn’t understand.

  “Sorry?”

  “Yeah, not far from here. We’ve been in there, it’s ok. Don’t eat the breakfast”

  The younger guy laughed and muttered his agreement.

  “Thanks, appreciate it. You staying there tonight?”

  The younger guy drained the end of his bottle and skimmed it gently along the bar and it rocked but didn’t fall.

  “No we’re ridin’ outta here tonight”

  He spoke with a soft American accent, low and slow with a rumbling quality that owed to a life of smoking too many cigars.

  Against the back wall of the bar were a couple of black holdalls.

  “We were fixin’ on getting a ride outta here in the morning but we been stood up”

  The kid nodded.

  He hopped up on to the bar stool next to the two guys and pulled his shirt away from his back to allow the air to flow.

  Even inside the bar at night the air was humid.

  “Where you headin?”

  The Dutchman spoke.

  “We’ve got ourselves an off-roader, we’re leaving tonight for the border. Call it the long way home”

  He cracked a wry smile.

  “So can you get flights out of Laos? Or Cambodia? I need to get out too”

  The American finished his whiskey and shook his head.

  “Doubt it. You ain’t gettin a flight nowhere now, it’s all grounded man”

  “We’re Air Force” the Dutchman added, “you can believe what he says”

  “China’s your only bet, that’s where we’re heading”

  They sat for a moment.

  The kid didn’t know what to say and his mind pulsed until his head hurt.

  “You can come with us I guess” the American said to him, “I haven’t the darnedest what the flights are doing in Laos or in any other place, but there sure as hell ain’t no other way out of this damned country right now”

  The kid looked up to him and he smiled slightly.

  “I don’t care if we make for China, it’s better than sitting here”

  Chapter Two

  Raheng to Mekong River Boundary

  Two hours later the sun was completely down and only a faint glow of deep red hung over the silhouetted hilltops and distant trees and the rooftops of the town.

  The American was sitting on the bonnet of the black Jeep smoking and tightening the spare tyre onto the metalwork and inhaling the white smoke and billowing it out through his nostrils as he worked. The convertible roof was down and folded into the back seat and the two black holdalls which the airmen carried, along with the kid’s rucksack, had been loaded onto the open back.

  The Dutchman came out of the darkness with a small case of beers and a plastic bag with some foodstuffs and he threw the bag into the back and carefully slid the box of beers under the passenger seat.

  “We good to go?”

  He kicked the beers further under the seat with the heel of his boot.

  “Yessir” barked the American as he bounced down from the bonnet and climbed up into the driving seat. He adjusted the mirrors and started up the engine and it clicked twice before kicking into life with a growl and he pushed the accelerator down a few times coughing black smoke from the exhaust. It lingered in the taillights and clouded the hot air before slowly dissipating into the night.

  Mosquitoes flickered everywhere.

  “Come on English or you’re here on your own” the American called.

  The Dutchman smiled.

  “And without your pack” he added.

  Across the yard the kid was sitting in the red dust watching his mobile phone fail to find signal and thumbing idly at the screen.

  He motioned to them with his hand and stood and dusted himself down.

  There were no safety belts in the back and he braced himself in against the door with the folded material of the roof tucked in next to him and he took a quick glance back to check that his pack was in the vehicle and then settled in.

  The American pushed the thin metal gear lever up into first gear and the wheels span in the dust for a second before finding the ground and propelling them into motion.

  An explosion of fine red and gold dust filled the night behind them as they moved off the yard and onto the road.

  The border to Laos was a couple of hours north and they could travel faster at night. The route through Lampang would take them into Chiang Rai where the road forked east and west. The road west led straight into Tachileik and the crossing into Myanmar but the border there would be guarded and they knew there was nothing to be achieved trying to get in without the paperwork which they did not have.

  The road east would cross through the Thoeng and into Laos at Chiang Khong. From there the highway cut straight through the country to the north and into China and their aim was to be in the Chinese town of Mengla before they would sleep again.

  They drove alone on the open road dotted with black palms and eucalyptus. The power lines ran by the roadside for mile after mile and the horizon on either side of them was flat as though of some great black and eternal desert. It was lined at the sides with lampposts but they were not lit and the rounded headlights of the 4x4 flew alone through the dark like lightning and the engine roared against silence.

  To the west the river flowed with the road, black and silent and on occasion when the road approached it at the correct angle the kid could see the blurred headlights flickering off the water and the almost undetectable flutter of birds moving at the edge in the dark and then the river would career away again and into the fields to rejoin miles further on and this way it continued.

  The Dutchman sat in the passenger seat of the car smoking cigarettes and flicking each one up over his head into the night when it was done.

  Some distance further on up the road the fields turned into hills and the air grew cooler and the kid stretched out behind the driver’s seat as the night air tore across the open top.

  He always welcomed the cold.

  The ground dropped away to the west and rose to the east as the road traversed the side of a range and the tops of trees appeared by them at ground level, flicking by in a blur as they raced for the border.

  On the dashboard the simple LED clock showed 22:34.

  As they passed through Lampang the streetlights were working at the roadside. The American hadn’t let his foot off the accelerator for a moment since leaving Raheng and he slowed to let the car breathe and they cruised steadily through the town centre. Great shadows of superstores and factories stood in the dark and trucks buzzed alongside them and a fleet of army vehicles passed in the opposite direction. The Dutchman sat with one foot resting out of the open passenger window against the wingmirror picking at the broken stitching on his knee and within a few moments they were back out of the town and back into farmland and back into darkness.

  As the first fingers of pink light reached and poked into the morning sky they crossed over the River Ing and into Wan Si.

  The town was silent but for some dogs in the road which held their ground as the car approached and did little more than watch silently and motionless as they passed, before returning to whatever business they were previously attending to.

  A short distance further along the road the American threw them into a right-hand turn along a newly constructed roadway which had been neatly tarmacked and well lit with bright electric lights even though the sun was fully clear of the horizon and had turned the sky a bright cloudless blue.

  The kid sat slumped across the back seat leaning uncomfortably on his bag with both feet up on the cushioning. The American took the steering wheel between his knees and lit a cigarette with the gas lighter from his top pocket and blew a thin wisp of smoke from each nostril and returned the p
ack and the lighter to his pocket and opened the window all before returning either hand to the wheel.

  His Dutch compatriot sat slumped on one elbow and didn’t look around.

  The river crossing came into view and the road fed them down to the left as the Mekong stood flowing ahead of them, huge and deep brown and eternal.

  They were not the only travellers there at that time waiting for the bridge to open and the road into the Laos countryside to become passable. Four big silver coaches sat parked on the tarmac, their occupants standing and sitting around smoking and sleeping and waiting and cars and bikes had started to form a queue at the barrier.

  The LED clock on the dashboard read 05:16 and the sign on the side of the security shack showed that the border opened at 08:00.

  The American eased the Jeep back into gear and let it roll slowly forward to the back of the queue and he flicked the car back out of gear again and pulled up the handbrake. He stepped out of the door into the heat. Without speaking he walked across from their vehicle towards the front of the queue and the security building with its tin roof shining white in the glare from the east above the Laotian hills on the far side of the river.

  The Dutchman opened his door slightly and reached his leg to the ground, holding the open door and peering over the car in front of them to get a better view. A moment later the American returned and shook his head.

  His lips pursed and his eyebrows raised slightly as he swung back up into the driving seat.

  “Nah, no way, it ain’t worth it for two and some hours”

  “Are they in there?” asked the Dutchman.

  “Yeah there’s three of them up in there”

  The kid shuffled on the back seat.

  “Am I missing something?”

  The Dutchman glanced back at him over his shoulder.

  “We were thinking we may queue-jump a little” he smiled, “escort ourselves across”