The cadet opened the door and, as they entered, the kid looked back at the American. He was standing alone by the trucks smoking and looking into the distance as the last of the soldiers moved away.
The serviceman led them through the open lobby area of the college past the huge paintings on the wall and the flag draped across the disused reception desk. Soldiers and airmen and medics and cadets and men in shirts and some in full camouflage and engineers in overalls and reflective vests all darted around the place in all directions and nobody paid the visitors any attention at all.
“We have nearly two thousand men here from all branches of the military and also from paramilitary”
He cocked his head and smiled.
“We are well over capacity”
He held the door open as the guests passed through.
“For more than forty years we have trained in logistics and command and defence. Now all these men are being trained in is how to handle national unrest and the savage pestilence that has been forced on our land”
Only the kid and the Dutchman and the German man were listening to him as they walked through the lobby
“We are in survival mode now gentlemen”
They walked down a short hallway and through another set of doors and eventually reached the bottom of a tall carpeted staircase.
“You will be staying in the dormitory here” the cadet said to them extending his hand to the stairs.
They climbed the steps and the German picked up his son and carried him under his arm and at the top they pushed open the door into the dormitory.
There were eight beds down each side of the long room with a single folded sheet and a pillow and a small towel sitting neatly on each and a high window at the end of the room which looked down across the gravelled roof below and across to the dead brown gardens beyond.
“There is the bathroom. You have a towel on your bed. We do not always have hot water, especially not in the mornings”
The German put his son onto one of the beds and the child pulled the pillow to him and kept hold of his father’s hand and the lion.
“Unfortunately, due to the safety of our operations here you will not be able to go walking about this place, this door will remain locked, I hope you understand. Food will be here at eight”
They muttered their thanks and said that they understood and the man nodded and left through the door and locked it behind him.
The two girls sat on one of the beds together opposite the German and the man in the suit walked along a few beds and sat down too.
The kid and the Dutchman walked to the end and took the two beds under the window and they pulled off their boots and the kid laid back on the soft mattress.
“I hope you do not mind but I am going to be the first to use the bathroom, it is a long time since I have used a shower” the man in the suit said, taking off his old leather shoes and placing them neatly by his bed as though they had value, and indeed they did to him as they were his only shoes.
Nobody objected and the man took the towel from his bed and entered the bathroom and after a moment they heard the shower start.
“So we’re locked in here” the Dutchman called across to the kid.
The kid smiled dryly.
“Guess so”, he looked across out of the window, “I could think of worse”
The Dutchman nodded.
“Amen brother”
A while later when they had all showered, some hot and some cold, they were sitting on their beds talking. They kid told them all the story of how he came to be there and the events that had led to that moment and the Dutchman joined him in recounting memories of the river crossing into Myanmar and their sinking of the ferry and the ruby trucks and the night spent in the trainshed. The others listened and the girls laughed at their stories and asked how the Dutchman had got the scar on his arm which was healed in a fold of skin and the young German boy slept curled on the bed next to his father.
The German told his story next and when he spoke of his wife he shuddered from the pain of his memories. He told them about the helicopter ride and seeing flashes of white when it crashed into woodlands and all he smelled was fuel and burning metal and he said that for a long time he was sure he was dead until he heard his son crying and he said that he was entirely sure that only the divine hand of his deceased wife could have reached from the heavens to protect his son that day and as he spoke he stroked the boy’s hair and the boy slept and the man smiled at him and was nearly crying and nobody else spoke.
The key sounded in the door and it pushed open and the American walked in and nodded to them sternly.
The Dutchman shook his head at him.
He had not ever doubted the American’s eventual return to them as there was no other place for him to go and it was for that reason that he had made no effort to convince him to stay and had gone inside without him.
“You’re a total ass sometimes” he said to him and the American ignored him and sat up on the bed next to the kid with his boots still on.
The room was quiet and they watched him and he looked about and stood and took the towel and went to the bathroom and locked the door behind him without a word.
The girls told their stories next and they were shy and held each other as they spoke. They said that they were cousins and one of them said that her father worked for the government in Nagpur and that he had paid for their safe escort to Ahmedabad and that they had secured air transport to the north to a safe place and the men asked them where that was but they said they did not know and that it did not matter. They told their story together and finished each other’s sentences the way twins may do and when they spoke of their family they were saddened and they held each other’s hands and their eyes welled with tears.
The man in the suit sat on the bed and said very little as they all spoke.
The Dutchman looked across to him.
“And you?”
The man looked back to him but said nothing.
“What happened to bring you here?”
The man shrugged and moved about where he sat. He was by that time barefoot in his suit trousers and vest.
“I am simply a traveller” he said.
The people in the room all watched him and he looked uneasy.
“Not in those shoes you’re not” the kid called from his bed.
The man looked down to his shoes and then back to the kid.
“I have nothing to share with you people” he said in a sharper tone, “why must I be questioned?”
The Dutchman shrugged.
The kid kept watching him.
“What you hiding?” he asked.
The man met his gaze, his eyes widened but his brow creased and he didn’t speak.
The bathroom door clicked and the American stepped out still wet from the shower.
“He’s on the run” he said as he walked across the dormitory without looking at the man.
The man frowned and shrugged and looked between the people.
“Why don’t ya tell ‘em what you did man” the American said as he reached his bed.
The man looked at him.
“I did nothing” the man stuttered.
The American scoffed and dropped his boots to the floor with a thud.
“They’re on to you out there man, and so am I”
The man said nothing.
The American turned to the Dutchman.
“He burned down a his office block”
They looked at him and the man had frozen with a wide-eyed look on his face.
“Tell ‘em how many people died” the American said flatly as he rubbed the towel over his hair
“Who do you think you are?” the man asked.
The American looked to the Dutchman.
“Forty six that they know of” he said looking at the Dutchman, “and you call me an asshole”
The man shuffled on the spot and eventually his resilience cracked.
“You do not know any
thing about me American, you know nothing about anything and you have no right to comment on me or my life or these” his voice cracked with emotion, “crazy accusations that you lay on me.”
He looked between the people in the room.
“None of you can say anything about me, I do not have to sit here and be accused of such things. What happened was an accident”
The American nodded.
“He’s a con man. He robbed the place blind in the panic”
He stood and for a moment looked like he would approach the American but thought better of it. He picked up his shoes and his shirt and his suit jacket and his carrycase and walked to the door and rattled the handle though he knew it was locked and he hit the door with the side of his fist and called for it to be opened.
Eventually the door opened and two guards stood in the doorway and the man pushed into them to leave and they pushed him back and, when he persisted, one of them hit him on the head with the side of his hand and the man buckled and the two guards took hold of him by the shoulders and dragged him from the doorway and closed the door again behind them.
A silence hung in the room and the travellers each sat on their beds and watched the closed door.
The kid spoke first.
“That’s one less for the shower”
The following morning the cloud had set in above the land there and it was dark and thick and hung low and there was a stillness and a closeness in the air that was foreboding and though they had all slept well and cleaned and eaten, each person felt uneasy. The soldiers loaded their equipment onto the trucks and the passengers climbed aboard and sat among the boxes and crates and the convoy pulled away.
They had just reached the highway when the first thunder crack sounded and it shook the truck and the very road on which they drove. It boomed overhead and rumbled away into the distance and a moment later it sounded again and then a third time. There was a stillness after that when all that could be heard was the engine and the wheels on the road and then the rain came. It started softly for the very briefest of moments then built and within only a few seconds they could feel it pushing the covering of the truck inwards and echoing all around them and the sound was deafening. The sky was black and yellow and lighting forked across the world like immense skeletal hands clawing at the clouds.
While hell opened around them they felt a calm inside the truck and the air cooled and they sat and talked to each other as Neeraj and his men pushed them onwards to the west.
“How did you know about that guy and the fire?” the Dutchman asked.
“When y’all went inside I was sitting for a while smoking, one of them guards came over for a light and he sat with me. He asked me ‘bout where we’d been and how we knew ‘bout their convoy and I told him and asked how them other folk knew. He said them girls have some contacts somewhere high up and the German and his boy was rescued from a helicopter crash some place east”
They listened.
“When we’d finished he said they only offered help to good men who were worthy of it, and though they charge a good buck for doing it, it’s under the table”
The rain was shaking the truck.
“That’s how he got to telling me. He said that someone, he didn’t know who, knew the guy and had helped him escape from police custody in Nagpur and move him out of there. Money talks man, and that guy has it”
The Dutchman shook his head.
“Did you see him this morning?” the kid asked.
The American shook his head.
“They were itchin’ to get him outta here anyways, but someone’s pulling the strings for ‘em. Maybe that damn outburst last night got him taken off the list”
The Dutchman and the kid thought about this and agreed and the American shrugged and smiled and the rain continued to thunder against the truck.
They stopped only once on their route at some outpost for the trucks to refuel and the rain was so full that no man left his truck. For seven hours the rain poured and the thunder cracked and the sky shook and shifted from black to yellow to purple to black again and the lighting didn’t cease once.
The convoy stopped next outside Ahmedabad at the roadside and they sat for some time without explanation.
When the cab door creaked open and the driver rounded the truck and unbuckled the material the water was flowing along the road and by the time he had opened the truck fully he was already completely drenched. He leaned inside the hold to shelter pointlessly from the rain and he wiped the water from his face and spoke to the men.
“We have a problem, the river here has burst its banks and the city is flooded”, he wiped the water from his eyes again, “and in Gandhinagar the Sabarmati has burst too, the military area there is being evacuated”
The water was dripping from the tips of his moustache.
“We will be going back around to meet at a controlled rendezvous to the north”
The American narrowed his eyes.
“How, man? It’s only been raining since this morning?”
The driver shook his head.
“Not here, there has been flooding at the coast for some time, since the day after impact in fact, big waves, a tsunami, and the river was running full here for weeks, it was a matter of time. Most of Gujarat state is flooded”
“We’re headed for the coast” the Dutchman said, “can we get there from here?”
The driver looked behind him into the road. There was no traffic and the water bounced high into the air and the fields to either side of them were in a haze and everything was grey.
Lightning forked across the entire sky and the world shook.
“We will go back to Nadiad and take the highway, I can drop you there if you wish, you can get to the coast easily. I would imagine there are no boats for you though, you know that?”
The men nodded and the American said this wasn’t of any concern and they thanked him and he rebuckled the covers.
In Nadiad, theirs was the only truck to stop and they quickly climbed out into the torrential rain. The driver waved and shouted something and the truck sped off into the torrent to catch its convoy and the men hurried to the cover of the nearest canopy and stood huddled together with nothing but what they wore.
The place was in no state at all to cope with the vast amount of water which had been thrust upon it and despite what precautions could be taken for the annual monsoon, the area could absolutely not cope. Men huddled under trees holding above them fabrics and plastic sheeting and dustbin lids and other items and the children stooped in doorways or ran in the road naked.
They pushed through the rain and headed blindly into the town with no destination in mind other than east and their boots overflowed with water and their vision blurred and they walked senselessly until a man in a tiny orange farm truck offered to drive them for money. They told him they needed to get to the coast and he laughed and said that the coast had come to them and so why did they need to travel anywhere at all.
He warned them that the flooding was moving northwards and that he was unsure how far along the road he could get them but they filled his hand with wet paper money and he nodded and told them to climb in.
They crammed themselves inside the farm truck that was filled with cigarette smoke and littered with all the detritus of the man’s life. He laughed loudly to them as they pulled out of town and told them that they had seats with a great view of the end of the world and they smelled alcohol on his breath but they didn’t care. He sounded the booming horn of the truck and called to those hiding from the rain and, while the truck couldn’t achieve any real speed, he crashed it through the puddles as though it were built for offroading.
The further south they drove, the more apparent the destruction became.
The fields either side of the road were swamped and in the villages the people had barricaded their doorways with sand and dirt and all manner of other household things. The road became increasingly flooded and the truck skidded through huge poo
ls of water and the men told him to slow down and be careful but he laughed them away and said he had owned his truck for forty years and that they were welcome to walk.
By the time they reached the outskirts of Petlad even the man himself conceded defeat and the wheels of his truck were nearly underwater.
They climbed out into the black rain and thanked him and he spun the truck around and laughed out of the window to them and shot back up the road as fast as he had arrived with the back of the truck creating a foaming wake as he went.
The men were drenched already and their clothes were dripping within a few seconds and their boots were full of water. They walked into the town and by the time they arrived they had long stopped trying to shield themselves from the downpour. The water raised above their knees and they found higher ground on a ruined bridge and sat on the warm wet concrete for there was no alternative.
“What the hell we gonna do now?” the American called against the driving rain.
The Dutchman looked back to him and wiped the water from his eyes. His blonde hair was pressed flat against his head and his beard was clumped together and dripping.
He shrugged and laughed at the situation and the kid laughed and after a while the American did too.
They sat on the edge of the concrete bridge with their legs dangling down from the crumbling stonework and watched the chaos below them. A man rowed past in a tiny wooden rowboat full of children all huddled together under a sodden sheet. A little white Daihatsu floated past on its side with the windows smashed out from it and it bobbed along on the current and crashed into their bridge and the concrete shook and they jumped up but it continued on its way before wedging itself into the front wall of the little goodstore.
“Look” the kid laughed, pointing down to the water.
A television moved, smooth and upright, along the top of the water and as it came closer they saw the little hands holding each side of it and then, as it passed below them, they saw the small wet head of the boy holding it above the water as he and the television were both carried along by the current. They stood and laughed at the boy’s tenacity in keeping the television above the water, though the rain pelted against it, but they laughed only until the floating white schoolbus appeared bobbing below them and smashed into the boy and pushed him and the television under the filthy black water.
Where Men Once Walked Page 20