Where Men Once Walked

by Mark L Watson

  The road seemed endless as it stretched through hours and hours of jungleland and traversed around the mountainsides and they passed two felled trees with one laying crossways on the other and when they passed the same again a few hours later they stopped in confusion that they had somehow got turned around and were repeating their course over. The sun passed overhead as they moved into another sweltering afternoon and each man sweated heavily and they finished their supply of water early and they didn’t want to run the air conditioning for fear of it draining their fuel. They stopped at every water source they passed to cool themselves and refill their bottles and the car radiator too and they sat in rivers fully clothed and returned to their vehicle wet so that they should stay cooler for longer.

  By some time that afternoon the road started heading downhill and they passed a field of dead poppies with a short wooden fence and then a gate and a broken livestock barn signalling the start of some civilisation once more.

  The road levelled out and passed along the dry valley floor through scrubland and passed through the town of Cikha where the people watched as the Toyota arrived and left again. The car they had bought those days earlier in Mogok was not in much of a condition at all and the paintwork was scratched and dented and it looked a different car entirely to that which they drove out of the mountains. The chassis, once white, was now black with dust and mudded from top to bottom and black fumes poured from it and the paintwork was scored deeply along each side and one door was bent inwards where they had slipped sideways into a tree and no mechanic could have fixed its state.

  At midafternoon they passed through the village of Khenman and crossed over the Gamgi river. The kid had been studying the map and tracing their progress.

  “I think, gentlemen, we may have just crossed the border”

  They all looked about but there were still only trees and the mud track and nothing on the landscape discernibly different from anywhere else.

  “When?” asked the Dutchman, “is there a checkpoint?”

  The map showed little more than a yellow line north crossing a black dotted line from east to west at the border.

  The kid shrugged.

  “It doesn’t seem so”

  They each felt an excitement and a pride and a relief but none would allow himself to show it yet for fear of cursing their passage for they knew the map could be wrong and so could they and they knew there could still be a border patrol ahead of them somewhere and they kept driving.

  They passed by a group of little buildings, seemingly deserted, and parked by them a military 4x4.

  “Here we go” said the American expectantly.

  None spoke as the road bent round to the east.

  On the south side of the road a military compound rose up out of the browning trees, a hanger with a tin roof glaring in the sunlight and a dotting of smaller stone outbuildings and a water tower and a chain link fence around its perimeter.

  Two men in plain clothes stood at the side of the road talking to one another and they looked up as the Toyota neared.

  They didn’t move from where they stood and the American didn’t slow down for them, though he wasn’t driving fast, and they neared the two men and then they passed them and nobody in their car spoke.

  The American watched the men in his mirror. The two men watched the Toyota pass and then they turned back to each other and continued their conversation and before any of them could say anything the men had disappeared from view completely.

  They watched in the car’s mirrors for another mile or more expecting a military truck or the 4x4 to round the bend after them and it was only when the road snaked up the hill and they could see the compound down below and the entire road leading to it that they were sure that nobody had come after them and that nobody cared that they had passed there.

  A few miles further they slowed into Behiang and took the track down to the river and undressed to their underwear and sat in the cool water and though the sun was burning their skin they laughed and congratulated themselves. A farmhand stood on the far side of the river with a wide brimmed hat and a crook and watched the three men in their underwear splashing in the river like children and the Toyota with parts of its bodywork missing and clouded in dust and dirt and he stood there for a long time for he had not ever witnessed a scene like it and most likely would not again.

  There was a chaos in the town.

  The townsfolk moved with urgency and cars and bikes sped along the road with no regard for pedestrians and people everywhere pushed each other in the streets and dogs barked and car horns sounded in the distance and the whole place smelled of fire and as the sun disappeared completely behind the hills and the last drops of light seeped away, the town was engulfed in an utter and complete darkness. The lights in the houses and shopfronts were out entirely and the only glow at all came from the headlamps of cars and motorscooters and fires that burned. They were stoked in metal dustbins on the roadsides and on the bare ground as people tried to light the town without electricity.

  The three of them slept that night in the Toyota though none slept much at all for they were seated nearly upright and around them people bustled and crashed until the sun finally rose again.

  At sunrise they went into the town proper and took a table in a café and the owner came over and offered them tea. He prepared the pot in the kitchen at the back of the room and asked if they would eat and they said they would. He said that there was a massive food shortage and he had very little to offer and brought them rice and a clear broth that tasted of fermented fish and each tried it but none could eat it and they filled up on the rice and drank the watery tea.

  The proprietor told them that the summer rice crop had failed when the paddies dried up and, though they still had the winter crop, this would deplete soon and there was no way to plant more with the ground so dry. He said he bought bananas and cabbage and coriander and pumpkin and carrot from the markets that came down from the north and he said that the traders had first come with more infrequency and then stopped coming to their town entirely and now they had nothing.

  When they offered him their condolences he smiled dryly and said that at least he still had plenty of tea and would bring them another pot.

  He sat with them and they told him about their trek across Myanmar and he gave them news of the state of their world from what he had heard from those passing through from the north. He said this was the only source of information he had as the power grid had been damaged by an earthquake and so he had not seen televised news for some time. He told them of extensive flooding in that country and beyond and he said he had heard that nearly a billion people had died already across the planet and the kid shook his head and doubted this could be true but the man said he believed it to be very true indeed. He said that the rising heat and the water shortages and the damage to the roads from flooding and earthquakes and landslides had caused the deaths of so many cattle and goat in India and Bangladesh that there was no longer a trade in these meats and he had stopped receiving any dairy products at all. He told them that in cities people had turned to drinking stagnant and diseased water and that there had been outbreaks of cholera and typhoid and that with the heat it was killing hundreds of people daily and that the number was increasing.

  He said that the medical facilities were overcrowded and unsanitary already, and were by that time rendered almost entirely useless and he said in the cities to the west there were people dead in the street.

  He held the side of his finger to his mouth and closed his eyes and when he opened them he was looking upwards and he shook his head and sighed.

  At Imphal they passed buildings and offices and shops which had been smashed and looted in the cover of night and one store was missing the entire front wall though exactly how was unclear. An electrical store on a corner of the street was on fire and though the flames towered high above it there was only a single fire engine in attendance and it wasn’t doing much good at all. All the traffic lights
were out of use in the town and there were car horns blaring in every direction as motorists fought to keep from crashing into each other. The sun bore down on every surface and the glass reflected white and blinding and the road smelled of bitumen.

  Their roadmap only showed them to the border and a little beyond but didn’t detail anything further north or west from where they were and they knew nothing of what lay ahead. They found a refuelling station on the north side of the town and pulled the Toyota into the forecourt. Two men argued and pushed each other outside the kiosk and one held a can of fuel that was splashing onto the dry ground and running away down to the road. At the edge of the building a group of young men watched keenly, smoking cigarettes with little regard.

  “Let’s make this quick” called the kid from the back seat.

  The American hopped out and pumped diesel into the Toyota and the pump whistled and scraped as it ran dry and the little numbers ticked slowly and stopped turning completely. He lifted the hose to take the last of the fuel from it and banged the pump on the side of the car to get every drop. The Dutchman was already outside and walked through the arguing men who didn’t look at him as he passed and he paid for the fuel and came back to them.

  “We need highway one” he said as he swung back in to the car, “to Dimapur. Apparently there’s trains running west”

  The American pursed his lips and raised his brow.

  “Well that’s something I guess, I’ll believe it when I see it with my own eyes though”

  “Well we’re not getting the whole way across India in this damn thing” the Dutchman laughed, tapping his palm against the plastic dashboard.

  One of the men arguing at the kiosk pushed the other and he staggered backwards and dropped the can of fuel and it slowly glugged out onto the ground. The group of young men who had been watching from the side joined him and the situation began to escalate.

  The American turned the key in the ignition and fired the engine up and it coughed black smoke into the forecourt.

  “That’s our cue” he said, pulling out on to the road and back into the blistering midday sun.

  The highway was two lanes wide, such was the volume of traffic that would frequent it from the town on a regular day but it was nearly empty as they passed. At the intersections the lights were all down and they slowed and weaved their way through crossing vehicles and at one junction there had been a crash and three cars lay in the middle of the tarmac in pieces. A group were gathered and a young woman was being pulled from the wreck and there was glass and twisted metal across the road and blood on the asphalt. Other motorists sounded their horns as they passed to move her rescuers from the road. One more dead was of no significance.

  They found the AH1 and headed north out of Imphal past the roadside markets which had all but closed down and which had been ransacked and they passed the temple in the woodlands and the river running brown and shallow alongside them. The road turned north and ran straight with the spine of the mountains to the west with townships built up the sides of the foothills and when the highway forked they turned north to Dimapur. When they arrived there in the late afternoon they ground to a halt in traffic on the highway as it entered into the town proper and sat for some time without moving. Around them motorists were standing out of their cars trying to gauge what problem lay ahead.

  The Dutchman climbed up onto the roof of the car to get a better look over the vehicles but the road turned away around the buildings and he was unable to see anything and after some time sitting there with the engine off they grew hungry and thirsty and impatient.

  “You wanna leave the car here?” asked the American, who was picking stones from the road surface and flicking them with his finger and thumb at a road sign in the central reservation.

  The other two thought about this.

  “What if there aren’t any trains?” asked the kid.

  The American hit the sign and the pebble pinged off it.

  “We can come back for it” he laughed.

  They sat for a moment and the Dutchman laughed to himself.

  “I can imagine us coming back for this thing in a few hours and it just sitting here in the fast lane on its own”

  “They’ll have towed it” said the kid, “or stolen it. Or burned it”

  A man passed their car on foot walking back against the traffic.

  The American called to him and the man slowed and looked over.

  “What’s going on up there?” he asked.

  The man shrugged.

  “Road block”

  “The road’s blocked, or a roadblock?”

  “Road block. For the army” he said and continued on his way.

  The American tossed the handful of pebbles out of the door.

  “Screw it, let’s get outta here, this piece of shit won’t make it a mile further anyways”

  They agreed and took their packs and got out of the car and closed the doors though there was no reason to do so and they set out along the highway through the traffic.

  The air was thick with fumes and they held their hands over their mouths as they walked and when eventually it was too much for them they crossed out of the traffic and into the shadowy sidestreets.

  The river had mostly dried up and they crossed the bridge past the monolithic ruins of the Kacharis and followed the road west to the station. On the front wall of the supermarket a line of payphones were bolted to the stonework, and though they looked ruined, there was a small queue of people waiting at the end one.

  “Are their phone lines up?” asked the kid in disbelief.

  The airmen shrugged and nodded and they headed over to join the queue and to see if there may be some way of contacting their homes. As they stood at the back of the line they realised that they held no rupees and only Burmese kyat. The Dutchman offered all the Burmese notes he had to the lady in the queue ahead of them for some coins and though at first she refused with a shake of her head she eventually replaced them with a handful of change and though he knew the coins could not be nearly the value of the notes, there was no place to exchange them and he didn’t know the exchange rate regardless. They thanked her and when they had reached the front of the queue the Dutchman dropped some of the coins into the machine and got the dial tone and dialled the number.

  He stood for a moment listening to static and nothing more and eventually the line dropped and the coins fell back from the bottom. He tried again with the same number with the same result and then tried again dialling his brother’s number. The line connected and he heard an Indian recorded message though he couldn’t understand it.

  He slammed the receiver into its cradle.

  The kid stepped up and put the coins in and dialled and again and there was no response and again the coins fell back out of the machine. He turned and looked to the Dutchman standing next to him watching.

  “Nothing?”

  The kid shook his head.

  Behind them the American was standing in the sun smoking and made no effort to come over to them for he had nobody to call.

  They pocketed the coins and continued their way as the woman with the handful of kyat disappeared around the corner smiling broadly.

  Chapter Eight

  Dimapur to Patna by railway

  The blue arched façade of the railway terminal appeared at the end of the road and in front of it a sea of taxis and rickshaws and motorbikes hummed like a swarm of insects on a carcass and each blocked the next where it parked. They passed through the crowds and past the drivers calling to them for their business and pulling and pushing them and they held their line until they reached the terminal building. It was in sheer disrepair and the masonry was crumbling and the metalwork was hot and rusty and bent. At the little kiosk inside, two men sat in blue uniforms sweating and stressing as the crowds around them shouted at them over the counter. They had again withdrawn the maximum amount which they could from the bank machine on the main road and each man held his money and pushed his way,
independently from the others, into the horde.

  After some time the kid noticed across the sea of heads to his right the American, a foot taller than anyone else and a moment later his arm went into the air holding the train tickets and he nodded the kid over. The man next to him reached to snatch the tickets from him but the American was both taller and stronger and butted the man away.

  The kid looked around the sea of heads and eventually spotted the blonde dreadlocks of the Dutchman in the sea of brown and black and yelled to him that they had the tickets and each man turned and tried to fight his way back out of the crowds again.

  At the platform the three men reconvened and the American handed each of them their ticket and they congratulated him on a successful fight to the counter and laughed at how close he was to having them snatched from him, though the American contested it with a roll of his eyes and said there had been no risk at all.

  The tickets were for New Delhi and, though none of the men knew how far that was or how long it would take to get there, they knew that they stood a better chance of making it back to continental Europe from such a city and at the very least they were heading in the right direction.

  The platform was crowded with people spilling onto the tracks, standing with luggage and children and one man led two mules along the track with him. There was no board displaying the train times and no indication of whether they needed the first or the second platform and they moved to the edge of the crowd and the kid sat on the side of the platform next to an old man carrying a leather satchel and he nodded at him and the man smiled and nodded back.

  “When does the train arrive? he asked eventually.

  The man smiled and nodded to him.

  He waited a moment before repeating his question.