When they could not walk any more the men collapsed into the ruined shell of some building which had once been a store of some kind. They stepped through the debris and the broken fixings and the smashed glass and found a place where they could sit and then lay and they slept there on the floor just as they were. They slept deep and dreamless despite there being no bed and no pillow and no cover.
The kid woke first as the first long shafts of flittering orange light danced across the rubble and the cracked walls like bony fingers. A dog was barking close by and a truck passed leaving its fumes hanging in the air, billowing slowly in circles of dust. The muscles in his neck ached from laying on the hard ground and he was bitten by insects and he pulled himself up and looked at the wall, empty headed and dehydrated.
“Come on then” he called, his voice hoarse.
He kicked at the Dutchman’s foot and he murmured in his sleep and he kicked him again and he woke.
“Up man, we can’t miss this convoy”
The Dutchman lifted his head from the floor and looked around, confused for a moment as to where he was and why he was laying in a bed of ruin.
“What time is it?” he croaked.
“No idea. Early. But we have no idea where we’re going or how far it is” the kid replied, batting dust out of his hair and craning his neck to stretch the muscles.
When they called to the American he woke with a jolt and he too looked confused and his face and beard were grey from the dusty floor. The men stood up and didn’t collect their things for they had no things to collect and they dusted themselves down and stepped back across the debris to the road outside.
The American spat.
“My mouth is drier than that hotel minibar”
At the river they turned east along the ring road and the city had woken and there were morningbirds in the sky and children played on the crumbling road in Mankapur Square. They asked for time and directions and a man pointed them north over the river and told them they were more than five kilometres from their destination and that it was just after eight.
They tried every bank machine they passed with the American’s bankcard and the kid’s bankcard as the Dutchman’s had been in his pack that was taken in Patna. Just over the river the central bank was open and guarded at the door by state police with rifles. They entered the building and at the cashiers counter they were able to withdraw money and they took everything they could get and stuffed the folded notes into their pockets and boots and set out again in the heat.
They stopped at a roadside stall and bought water and spiced nuts and dried fruit and little plates of a potato dish that none of them knew and they spent the next kilometre or so reminiscing about foods they had loved and the American said he would kill for a t-bone and the Dutchman his mother’s baking.
There were no buses on the roads and the occasional car or van passed, loaded with people and goods, heading north away from the city and they walked with their arms outstretched in the hope that somebody would stop for them.
As the land around them became agricultural and the city sank away to the horizon behind them, a convoy of military trucks passed on the road and they stopped and waved to them frantically but they sped by without stopping.
“Was that them?” the kid cried, staring wide-eyed as they disappeared into the haze.
“Dammit I hope not” the American snapped, “is it ten already?”
They had no idea and for all they knew the convoy had left early but they quickened their pace along the roadside and waved more frantically at passing traffic and eventually a flatbed truck pulled in ahead of them and they ran to meet it.
The Dutchman crouched to the open passenger window.
The man inside was wearing an open brown shirt and had his thinning hair pulled to one side. A tiny fan on the dashboard was plugged into the cigarette lighter.
“Where are you going?” he called.
“North” the Dutchman replied, “I don’t know where, a few kilometres”
The man frowned.
“To the power reserve colony?” said the kid, leaning in.
The man nodded once.
“The CPRI?”
The Dutchman shrugged.
“Is that north?”
“Yes”
The Dutchman opened the passenger door.
“Then that’s good enough for us”
He climbed into the front and the kid and the American climbed onto the open back.
The analogue clock on the dashboard showed just before ten.
“Shit”, the kid snapped, pointing to the clock through the little glass window, “look”
“Is that time correct” he shouted as the truck pulled away.
The man glanced down at it.
“Yes sir”
“Then if we can gun it, that would be great”
The Dutchman fed a few notes into the man’s hand.
The man looked at them and looked back at him.
“You are late?” he asked.
The Dutchman said that they were and the man nodded and slipped down a gear and the truck engine screamed and he accelerated onwards.
A few minutes later they spotted the electrical tower and the two giant satellite dishes to the east.
“This is CPRI colony” the man said, slowing.
They looked about.
“We are looking for a statue, a shrine” the Dutchman said looking out of the windows.
They passed the second electricity tower.
“I do not know” the driver said shrugging.
He drove onwards.
“There” the American called, banging on the window, “that sure had to be it, behind the trees there”
The man pulled over and they thanked him and hopped out and paid him more money and he gladly accepted it and wished them well despite the confusion still on his face.
They hurried back down the road to where the American had spotted the statue behind the trees and found it and caught their breath and looked to the south.
“What do you think?” the Dutchman asked.
Nobody answered.
“You think that was them before? You think we missed it?”
The men shrugged.
They stood in the heat by the statue and the kid stood at the roadside looking south until some time later from the haze the shadows of the trucks appeared in the distance.
He focussed his gaze until he was sure it was them.
“We’re in” he called and the men stood.
“Really?”
They moved towards the road.
“What are we supposed to do, flag em down?” asked the American.
The Dutchman shook his head.
“I would say this is pretty under the table, I wouldn’t go out there waving, come here” he said moving backwards away from the road.
The first truck sped past them in a cloud of dust and they watched it go and then the second and third came and went.
“Should we wave now?” the kid asked, looking to his compatriots, wide eyed.
A fourth truck passed them and then there was quiet and they stepped out from the trees and looked to the north as the trucks disappeared into the dust.
The American looked back to the Dutchman with an angry glare and was about to berate him for the critically bad advice when the kid spoke again.
“Hey”
The men turned to look.
Behind the convoy a fifth truck appeared and pulled into the side of the road. A serviceman hopped out from the open cab.
He nodded once to them and they hurried over to him.
“Neeraj?” the kid asked.
The man nodded.
“Hurry” he said leading them quickly to the back of the truck where he opened the fabric cover for them to climb inside.
They sat on the floor of the truck with boxes and crates and positioned themselves with their backs against the sides.
“Your company don’t know we’re here?” the Dutchman
called.
Neeraj shook his head.
“They know, it is simply a way to help and to also make money. Operation Command disapprove but it is commonplace here now” he replied buckling the fabric back together, “there are others with us too”
“Other passengers, in the other trucks?” the kid asked.
He nodded.
“Everyone has somebody they need to help. It is money which is doing the talking”
He tied the material covering the truck to the chassis and they heard him jump back in the cab with the driver and the engine revved and fumes poured out into the hot morning as the truck pulled away on to the road.
Chapter Eleven
Nagpur to the flooded coastline of Gujurat
The big tyres coasted smoothly along the well tarmacked road and, though the hold of the truck was swelteringly hot and hard to lay down on, the three men were soon dozing.
The kid again dreamed of Abi and he was worried for her but he knew then inside his soul that whatever lay ahead of him and wherever fate had led her, they would be together again, however long it took. He worried for his dog even though he knew that she would undoubtedly be with Abi. She would not contemplate for a moment anything other. He thought of his parents. He imagined his Dad refusing to leave their land and his mum crying and in his head he saw them being taken away by the army to somewhere and his mind turned over and over as to where that would be. He drifted awake and the thoughts flooded over him and he felt sick but he pushed it away knowing no good could come from his worrying and he would continue his journey west and one day he would be with them all again and that was that.
The truck stopped a few hours later at a refuelling point outside Betul and Neeraj opened the covering and the bright sun poured in.
“Five minutes” he called to them.
They slid on their backsides out of the truck onto the dry open ground and squinted in the light.
The trucks were being refuelled at the pumps and the soldiers were gathered together talking and smoking and drinking tea.
The Dutchman and the American and the kid went into the tiny kiosk and bought water and came outside and sat on the ground in the shade and drank. The back of one of the other trucks was open and inside they saw feet. The kid rose and walked over to the truck and looked inside. A young blonde man with a beard was sitting in the truck with a young boy of no more than three or four cuddled into his lap. His eyes widened when he saw the kid.
“Hi” the kid said, smiling to them.
“Hello” he said back in an accent the kid thought to be German.
He didn’t know what to say next.
“Are you going to the coast?”
The man nodded.
He was unsettled and confused at the presence of a young western man appearing at this reststop in the middle of nowhere in the centre of India.
“We are too, me and my friends there”
The man’s eyes looked to the side though he was too far inside the truck to see them and he made no effort to move further out.
He nodded.
“Don’t be worried” the kid said, “we’re in the same situation as you, we are friends, and so are those people out there”
The man nodded.
“I must take care of my boy, I do not want anyone to know I am here or they may not allow me to travel”
The kid smiled.
“There’s nobody here that will give you up, these soldiers are helping us”
The man nodded and appeared to relax, though only slightly and he seemed small sitting there in the truck and was illuminated green from the light passing through the fabric.
“I am trying to get home”
The kid nodded.
“Where’s home, why are you out here?”
“Ludwigsburg, outside Stuttgart. I was travelling in Hong Kong, my wife was from there, this is our son. There is flooding there, beyond what I’ve ever seen. My wife was killed two weeks ago there when our building came down”
He held the boy to him.
“I paid a lot of money to a man to get us out of there using his helicopter and the fucking helicopter crashed”
“What?”
“Yes, to the east of here. Two days ago”, he looked down at his son and held the boy’s head against his chest and the young boy looked up at him, “I don’t know how we survived. He is still very scared”
The kid watched him. Eventually the boy smiled very slightly.
The man said nothing.
“We’ll all help each other. My friends here are military, they’ve helped me cross overland from Thailand”
The man leaned out around the back of the truck and looked over to where the Dutchman and the American were sitting in the shade with each other.
“To here?” he asked.
The kid laughed.
“Yep. My feet are sore”
The German smiled slightly.
“OK let’s go” one of the soldiers called and the men flicked away their cigarettes and threw down their paper cups to the ground and started the engines of the trucks.
Neeraj stood by the back of their truck.
“We are soon to be having a conversation about your payment”
The cadet hadn’t mentioned that there would be payment though they were fully expecting that their passage would not be without cost.
“What are we talking?” the American asked.
“Half now sir"
“What is that? Half of what?”
“Ten thousand per man. Five now and the remainder when we are arriving. Or if you want to leave now, here, then you are free to leave without payment”
The kid shook his head.
“Ten thousand is good”
“Very good. We will be staying tonight in the cantonment at Mhow. You can pay then and we will get you food and shelter for the night”
They agreed and handed him some money and he didn’t count it and put it into his pocket and waved them inside the truck. He buckled the fabric behind them and they started out again into the relentless dead heat of the vast Indian countryside.
The white sun dropped to the west and the orange afterglow seeped gently through the cracks in the fabric of the truck and jumped around inside like a band of fireflies as they drove. The convoy pulled away from the highway and the men were thrown from side to side as the trucks weaved around the city of Indore and turned south on the road to Mhow. They slowed at the once-majestic gardens of the central hall where the flowers were dead and the trees browned and scorched and the lawns arid and dusty and nearly gone entirely and where dogs prowled in the shadows. Women and children stood on the roadsides in old clothing waving to the trucks as they passed and they could hear the deep horns sounding in reply.
The trucks turned onto a long open driveway lined with the skeletons of trees and parked in a line and they could hear the voices of men and women and the shouts of children around them and a moment later the driver opened the back of the truck and they climbed out with numb legs and backsides and bruised elbows and knees. Servicemen who had not travelled with them came to the trucks, some in uniform and some not, and they greeted them and the officers in charge of their convoy handed over paperwork and the cadets unloaded the boxes.
Further back along the line, the German climbed out of a truck holding his son by the hand and the son held tightly to his stuffed toy lion and the man held tightly to his rucksack.
Neeraj appeared next to them.
“We will settle payment now and somebody will show you to your quarters. We leave in the morning at eight for Gandhinagar”
“We’re not paying you all the money now” the American said calmly, “you can have the rest tomorrow when we reach our destination”
Neeraj looked him in the eye and for a moment nobody spoke.
“Good sir this is the arrangement. If this is not something you are happy with then you are free to go” he said, extending his arm up to the road and the land beyond.
Birds swooped slowly on the horizon.
“We’re paying now” the kid said stepping forward.
“No we ain’t” the American interrupted.
The kid turned to him and put his hand up on his chest and felt dwarfed by him.
“What’s wrong with you?”
He looked up into his steely eyes.
“You’re not interested in going in there and getting some food and sleeping in a bed?”
“Not for five thousand rupees I ain’t” he said, batting the kids hand away from his chest.
“You wanna walk home then asshole?” the Dutchman called.
The American looked at him.
“I’ll pay, just when we get there. I don’t trust nobody nor should I. Nor should you”
The kid shrugged.
“Do whatever you want”
He handed his money to Neeraj and looked to the Dutchman and the Dutchman shook his head in resignation.
“Grow up man”
He handed his money to Neeraj and he took it and smiled and nodded to them both.
“Very good sirs. Welcome to the War College”
A young serviceman came over to them and greeted them and told them to follow him and they set out across the tarmac and the German and his son joined them too. The kid smiled to the boy but he didn’t smile back and only clung on to the bottom of his father’s shirt and clutched his toy lion.
Their party was joined by two young Indian girls holding each other and carrying satchels and a middle aged man of Arabian descent with a moustache and a carrycase and a suit that was dusty and torn on one side and shoes of expensive leather now battered beyond repair.
Where Men Once Walked Page 19