Where Men Once Walked

by Mark L Watson

  They checked more houses as they walked and one homed a pack of dogs that were scrawny and scarred and matted and they growled and bayed as the men entered and they closed the door on them slowly.

  The Dutchman and the kid were in one of the houses and the Dutchman was checking the kitchen cupboards and the kid was standing in the doorway looking solemnly at a family portrait that hung over the diningtable. There were bulletholes in the wall and a black circle on the living space floor where a small fire had once been made. The man with the moustache was searching the house across the road and as they went through the cupboards they heard the American shout from outside.

  They rushed to the door and saw him looking up the road and when they followed his gaze they saw the two military vehicles advancing towards them through the dust and smoke.

  “Get back” the Dutchman called to him from the doorway of the house.

  The moustachioed man was already cowered behind the wall.

  The American stood still in the road.

  The cars neared and the soldiers saw him in the road with the rifle and they stopped and three men in gas masks jumped from the vehicles with their guns aimed and shouted to him. He stood in the road and raised his hands gently into the air by his head.

  “I’m not a threat to you” he called to them, “lower your weapons”

  The men did not lower their weapons and a fourth soldier joined them and they shouted to him together but the American didn’t move.

  “I’m with the US Air Force” he called, “I am a friend”

  The men moved slowly towards him with their rifles aimed and when they reached him they circled him at the length of their guns. His rifle was on the ground behind him and one of the soldiers kicked it to one side and grabbed his arm and wrenched it behind his back and the American let him. The others kept him at riflepoint and he didn’t struggle. The American glanced over to the Dutchman and the kid in the doorway of the house and the Dutchman stepped out of the doorway holding the rifle and the kid followed. When the soldiers saw them they spun around and aimed their rifles at them and the American stood calmly among them watching.

  They shouted to the Dutchman and the kid, their voices muffled from behind their masks.

  “We are military” called the Dutchman, raising the rifle above his head with one hand calmly, “we’re servicemen, like you”

  The soldiers were unsure what to do and looked uneasy in their position and shuffled around where they stood and eyed each other. The Dutchman and the kid walked slowly towards them and the kid put his rifle on to the ground.

  When they were a few feet from the men the Dutchman spoke again, slowly and calmly.

  “My friend, we are military like you are, we are no threat to you”, he tapped the tattoo on his arm, “We are friends”

  The soldiers spoke between them and the man in charge nodded and gave a command and they lowered the rifles slightly though not entirely.

  “We need your help” the Dutchman said to the man in charge, “we are trying to get to the coast”

  The man in charge studied him and studied the American and then studied the kid.

  “Put down your gun” he said to the Dutchman.

  He placed the AK-103 down on the ground and pushed it slowly away from himself with the toe of his boot, “now you do the same”

  The man told his men to lower their weapons and they did so uneasily.

  The man pulled his gas mask down so that it hung around his neck.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  The American replied.

  “We’re crossing the country from Burma to Europe. We were on a train til yesterday when we were locked up by your paramilitary. Now we’re here and we don’t know where the hell we’re going”

  “The railway does not stop in Patna now” the man replies, his eyes firmly on the American.

  “Well it didn’t stop in Patna this time either”

  “The railway is under strict instruction to pass directly through this place to the east”

  The American shrugged.

  “You are prisoners?” the man asked.

  “Yeah for one night we was, locked in some trainshed by your guards”

  “Assam Rifles” the kid added.

  The man thought about this.

  “Why?” he asked, finally.

  The American shook his head.

  “You tell me”

  The soldier thought more. He inhaled loudly through his nostrils and looked along the road.

  “This city is under quarantine, nobody is allowed to be here now. You must go from here immediately, it is not safe”

  The man with the moustache stepped forward from where he was hiding with his hands up and the soldiers rounded their rifles to him and the American told the soldiers he was travelling with them and that he was unarmed.

  “This man is with you?”

  The moustachioed man stood nervously in the road with his hands up. The soldier in charge waved his hand across and his men dropped their guns from him and he walked across and joined them.

  “Do you have a radio we can use?” the Dutchman asked, “we are travelling on foot and we have a long way to go”

  The soldier in charge spoke to his men and one unbuckled the radio from his belt and held it out to the Dutchman.

  He nodded.

  “Thank you, but we need to try and make radio contact with a command post, something longwave, this won’t reach from here. Do you have a long frequency radio somewhere we can use, friend?”

  The man thought about this for a long time.

  He first shook his head to them and then rubbed his head and wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked down at his feet and then up at the sky and then at each of the men. Finally he blinked slowly and cocked his head to the side and told them to stay where they were.

  He stepped away from them and spoke to somebody on his radio and they spoke back and eventually he nodded and clipped the radio back to his belt. He moved back to the group.

  He nodded to the American.

  “Come. Bring the food”

  The two cars travelled quickly and closely through the city streets with each soldier perched on the side of the chassis with their rifles readied at the hip. The Dutchman and the kid travelled in one car and the American and the man with the moustache in the other.

  The soldiers pointed out where there had been a great earthquake some weeks earlier and there were entire parts of the city levelled and crumbled to the ground and concrete and metalwork rose up into the hot sky and much of it still burned and none of it was tended to. At the intersection, a group of rogues were collecting debris and items and foodstuffs from the wreckage and, as the cars passed, the soldier fired some rounds into the air and shouted to them to leave the city and they scattered like birds, leaving their haul on the road wrapped in old sheets.

  “Nearly two million people lived in this city” the soldier called to them from behind the wheel, “Now look. Everybody left here will be dead very soon”

  Over the tops of the buildings to the south, the white shimmering tails of passenger jets poked up out of the horizon like shark fins in a shallow ocean, the downed aircraft motionless in the misty sun, taunting them with a means of homeward travel that could not be accessed.

  At the river they took the road east through the parkland and the smoke in the air thinned and then vanished entirely and they approached a checkpoint built on the road from wire and sandbags and broken timber and guarded by soldiers in khaki trousers and sunhats.

  The cars slowed at the opening and the soldiers nodded to them and they spoke a few words to each other and they waved them past into the compound. The road was straight and empty and lined with trees which were browning and there was a calm which they hadn’t experienced for some time and which had been almost forgotten.

  “This is your base?” the kid called up to the soldier sitting on the chassis next to him.

  The man looked down to
him and shook his head.

  “This is Danapur” he called back against the sound of the engine.

  The kid looked around him at the cricket pitch and the bank and the sign for the school.

  The soldier watched him.

  “This is the cantonment” he called again and the kid squinted at him against the sun and said nothing.

  The man smiled slightly to him.

  “This is where we live”

  They passed through the pocket of placidity within that monstrous and destroyed city and passed the checkpoint at the other end and snaked the road to the east along the banks of the Ganges. Crop fields stretched out across the web of dried waterways and tributaries drawn from the river and they lay empty and dry and brown and untended entirely.

  “This was rice paddy and sugarcane” the soldier said looking north to the water, “this one watermelon”

  “What happened here?” the kid asked.

  The soldier shook his head.

  “Water is not clean, so crop is not clean. First the heat came and water began to dry from here but people survived. Then god brought here earthquake to us and these rivers became toxic and then was disease and disease reached the river too. If a man drinks water here he will surely die before he can do much else”

  The kid looked out at the endless despair.

  There were fields as far as his eye could see and the land there had been plentiful and the economy strong and the people there had made great livings from farming crops, but there were no crops there and no people to farm them and their world was left behind and they were themselves in some other place or simply dead.

  By the time the blue metallic rooftops of Bihta Airport appeared shimmering in the distance the heat had become unbearable and, though the fans in the military car blew at full power and the air was rushing by them, the sun burned their skin. They turned south along the delta and sped through the roadside villages in a streaming cloud of diesel fumes and red dust.

  They could not tell whether the villages there had been evacuated too or whether the people who lived there had died or left or whether they were simply hiding from the heat but they were devoid of all life. Cars were parked and abandoned and doors swung open on rusty hinges. There was no breeze there and debris that had once been left in the road was still there, rotting and putrid. A small herd of cattle lay clumped dead in the corner of a field with the fencing crushed under them, one laying on top of the next where desperation had caused them to attempt some impossible and doomed escape from their compound.

  At the turning from the road onto the main airport driveway another checkpoint was positioned in their path and was guarded by a group of sleepy looking soldiers who were sitting in their stationbox and who only stood from it when they heard the approaching cars. They waved them through and each watched them pass, surely wondering why four more men had returned than had set out.

  At the main gate they slowed at the huge chainlink ringfence while a guard pulled it to one side and they passed through and he pulled it close again behind them.

  “This was a commercial airport for some time” the driver called back to them and they nodded and looked about them at the expansive compound.

  They drove around the main terminal and followed the road south through the airport to the hangers and outbuildings at the far end. Two commercial airliners were left abandoned on the tarmac and to the south was a military Hawker and three 228s. There were three trucks and a few 4x4s and a Stallion with a water tank on the back and a fire truck and nothing more.

  The soldiers there watched them from the shade as they parked at the main offices.

  A Flying Officer in a cap came over and greeted the car and the men saluted each other informally and they spoke a few words and the man in charge motioned to the guests and the Flying Officer scuttled away into the building.

  The man in charge turned to them.

  “Come. We will get you something to drink”

  Inside the building the air conditioning was turned to the maximum and the kid and the Dutchman and the American and the man with the moustache each stood there for a long moment basking in the cool and each smiling at the next.

  The man returned to them a moment later with the Captain.

  “Gentlemen” he said smiling, “you are friends from the United States I am to understand?”

  The American put his hand out and the Captain shook it firmly.

  “I am. I was with the four ninety seventh Fighter Squadron out of Fort Worth Texas, I was leading training drills at Paya Lebar Singapore. My comrade here is seventh Pacific out of South Korea”

  The Dutchman shook the Captain’s hand.

  He turned to the man with the moustache.

  “And you are Air Force also?”

  The man shook his head.

  “I am Rashim Choudhari, these men saved my life”

  The Captain looked to the American and the Dutchman and nodded.

  “And you?” he said turning to the kid.

  The kid smiled and shook his hand.

  “I save elephants”

  The Captain laughed.

  “This is also a good thing to do my friend, though I fear your work is most likely now concentrated around saving yourself. And these good people”

  The kid nodded.

  “Yes sir it is”

  The Captain smiled.

  He walked them through the hallway and into the mess and sat them at a table and a young officer brought them water and smiled and waited to be told and then left again.

  “This is Indian National Air Force base, but these people here are not all Air Force” the Captain said, sitting himself down on to the metal bench at the table.

  He passed his hand across the room.

  “We have allowed all of this country’s servicemen to come to this base for joint effort which we must put forward to protect the integrity and safety of our great nation. I have men here from Punjab and from the thirtyninth Garhwal, I have sixteen men in these barracks right now from a mountain strike corp protecting our borders in the north. We all have to come together in this time to utilise what provisions and equipment we have to the very best of our abilities”, he smiled to the Dutchman, “but I am in charge here still”

  They smiled with him.

  “Tell me, visitors, what wrong steps have you taken on your journey that have led you to be in Patna at this time? The gods have forgotten this place but still you are here?”

  They told him of what had happened to them and the series of events which had led them there and the Captain listened and shook his head and when they were finished he commended them all for their perseverance.

  “I am very sorry for all that has befallen you, but I fear there is nothing here for you now”

  The American shrugged.

  “We need to find some way of communicating with US ground forces, or with somebody who can exfil”

  The Captain shook his head slowly.

  “I am sorry but I do not think that you quite understand the scope of the situation my friend, you have been in the wild for too long”, he laughed, “You are very welcome to use our frequencies and I can have somebody show you to it right away, but I do not think that your people will be in a position to come here to this place and get you”

  The American and the Dutchman looked at each other but didn’t speak.

  “We are looking now at global Armageddon sirs. Most of this planet is under military control but the civilians outnumber the militaries a million to one, there is no way we can go back from this. The focus is now on preservation, salvation. We must try to continue life when all else is lost, human, animal, plant seeds, clean water. It has become about containment”

  The Captain waved his hand and the young officer came to their table and stood upright and the Captain spoke to him and told him to show them to the control room and allow them to try to establish contact with the United States Air Force and he nodded and saluted.

  The Ame
rican and the Dutchman stood and both shook hands with the Captain and thanked him and followed the officer away from the table and out of the door. The kid and Rashim sat at the table. The Captain nodded his chin and a second officer arrived dressed smartly in uniform.

  “Get these men some coffee”

  The officer nodded and disappeared.

  “Now, gentlemen, I will have to leave you here for there are pressing matters at hand. My men will see that you are looked after. I wish you the very best of luck and may god by with you on your travels”

  They thanked him again and he left.

  The officer returned with a tray with a little tin pot of hot black coffee and two enamel mugs and placed them on the table.

  “Where are you heading?” the kid asked, pouring coffee into the mugs.

  Rashim sat forward and leaned on his elbows on the table.

  “I was going to my brother in Jaipur but it is many hundreds of miles away. My answer is that I do not know. How can I know whether there are other cities like this one where I will not be able to pass?”

  The kid nodded and sipped the hot coffee.

  “Do you think the train runs to the east of here?”

  Rashim shrugged.

  “I think it most likely does, but where will I go to find it? The next station on this line is, I think, Mughal, and that place is by all accounts three hundred miles from here”

  The kid watched him and drank the coffee and thought of what to say but he could think of nothing worth saying and so he just sat.

  “I will be honest with you dear sir”, the man continued, “This is the reason I am with you and your friends. I saw that you and the wrestler are able to look after yourselves and you are very astute and this is vital to survive now. For all my confidence myself, I dare not leave that trainyard alone that night. I am sure that many of those people who were there with us will soon perish if they have not already”

  He took a drink of the coffee and put the cup down on the table in front and stared into it blankly.