He ducked around the side of the pump and kept low and when he peered off the side of the hull he was relieved to see the American standing atop their fishing boat, slowly and silently coasting towards him on the oily black water.
The lights onboard were out and the service hatch was open and within a moment they were alongside him.
He prayed they wouldn’t attract attention from the ship’s crew. The American beckoned with his arm and the kid spun and grabbed the end of the hose and threw it across the water and it fell into the harbour with a great splash. The American’s eyes widened and the two men looked up to the deck waiting for somebody to come but nobody did and the kid turned the winch and reeled the line back up and threw it again with all the strength he could muster, across onto the deck of the fishing boat.
The Dutchman grabbed it and hopped down into the hatch and fed it into the tank. His hand reappeared from beneath deck with a single thumb up and the kid dipped the lever and the tank started pumping.
He kept his eyes glued to the deck as the fuel tank whirred loudly.
The dog barked above.
The American stood by the cabin watching and the whites of his eyes were visible from the ship.
The pump let out a screech from within and not a moment later a figure appeared at the edge of the deck and shouted from the dark.
“Get it out of there” the American screamed into the hatch.
The kid watched the hull where the man stood shouting as two others joined him.
He looked back to the fishing boat and gauged his jump.
He took a deep breath.
He took another.
It wasn’t a short distance.
The Dutchman clambered back out of the hole and pulled the hose behind him, pouring diesel all over the deck.
“Let’s go man” he shouted across the blackness.
Behind the kid, four men were climbing down the ladder to the platform and the dog stood at the top barking relentlessly.
He turned to face the boat and took another breath and started to run and within seconds his leading foot pressed hard against the corner of the metalwork and he catapulted himself, kicking and flailing at the air, across the black water to the boat.
Both legs smashed against the siderail and he toppled forward over it and thudded down onto the deck in the puddle of seawater and leaked diesel.
His eyes flashed white and he just lay where he landed.
From his sideways view he watched the men run to the edge of the ship shouting and he watched as they moved away behind him as the fishing boat roared forward, the hose still spilling fuel as it dragged across the deck and dropped over the side and all that he heard was the American shouting and the roar of the engine and all he smelled was diesel and all he felt was pain and guilt and relief.
They sped the fishing boat out of the harbour at full throttle and careered it north around the perimeter wall through the pounding waves, all the time watching behind them for anyone who may give chase but no boats followed them and after a while there were no boats there at all and they were shrouded in a thick and total darkness.
For two hours they motored onwards in the dark with the lights dipped to the chopping waves. The boat rocked and tipped and the contents of the kitchen exiled themselves from their rightful places and everything that was there smashed across the cabin.
Eventually the coastline gave way again and they followed the pull of the sea into the Gulf of Kutch and allowed themselves to drift to a tiny spit of land where the water shallowed and they dropped the anchor.
They slept lightly and at first light cast out again and resumed their path north along the flooded coastline towards Pakistan and into the Gulf of Oman. It was raining when they departed there but as the orange glow from the east grew into a full morning light beyond the flat ocean horizon, it pushed away the clouds to make way for a warm sundrenched morning.
The American was at the wheel and the Dutchman sat behind him on the drying deck with a map held open. The map was small and showed a vast area with very little detail except for approximate distances between the nations themselves and the sea shaded blue and some cities marked with black dots.
The American glanced down.
“What ya reckonin’?”
The Dutchman bit his bottom lip and shrugged slightly.
“I’m thinking we can cross the gulf”
“Huh?”
“We’re about here” he put his finger onto the map but the American didn’t look down, “if we go east and hold course we bypass Karachi and cross to Oman”
The American nodded and scratched his beard and thought about it for a moment.
Gulls flew noisily overhead and both men watched them pass.
“Open water?”
“Open water. The whole way man”
“You reckon we got the fuel for that?”
“If we take it steady I reckon”
The kid came up the stairs and stepped over the Dutchman where he sat.
“You’re mad” he said as he passed.
He continued walking past them out onto the deck.
The Dutchman watched after him.
“You think we won’t make it across?”
“Do you know how far that is? And there’s pirates on the Gulf”
The men watched him.
“You got an alternative?” the Dutchman asked.
The kid called back from out on the deck.
“I didn’t say you were wrong, I said you were mad”
The Dutchman looked back to the map and the kid reappeared at the door of the cabin and smiled slightly and looked at the men. He stood with one hand on each side of the cabin doorframe.
“There was never a genius without a tincture of madness”
The Dutchman smiled.
“Just don’t burn all that damn diesel” he shouted back into the cabin as he crossed the deck into the rising sun.
The American turned the boat so that the compass needle pointed east and the men watched as the shore behind them faded again into nothingness like their memories of the world as it was and their hopes that it could return that way.
The wind swept in from the south and the waves crashed against the side of the hull and the American gripped the wheel with both hands and his bad arm ached and throbbed and he pushed through the pain to keep them upright.
The sun climbed higher and higher to the east until it hung overbearingly overhead and the sea glowed white like hot steel and sparkled infinitely around them and then it dropped again on its slow descent to the opposing horizon. The men took turns to navigate and to steer and to make coffee until there was no coffee left and they talked about everything there was to talk about until there was nothing more and then they travelled on in silence.
By the time the sun had all but gone from view and the world had been painted black again, the boat seemed to be in the same place entirely for there was no indicator around them that they had moved anywhere at all.
The waves picked up in the night and the men continued to take it in turns to sleep below deck and at one time in the middle of the night when the Dutchman was behind the wheel he saw the rising form of a great sea serpent come out from the depths and it was only when he crashed sideways into the wooden cabin wall that he realised he had indeed fallen asleep standing at the wheel. He called for his replacement and in that manner the men went on until the fuel tank began to run low again and after some time more the glimmering hint of sunrise appeared before them.
There was no food and the men grew sick and weak with hunger and the kid cast the fishing net back out into the waves but they knew it was damaged and would catch very little if anything at all.
When it was drawn back in there was nothing in it but weeds and plastics and a small crab which they boiled in sea water but would not feed one man let alone three.
That afternoon, when they were pushing forward with bleary eyes and turning stomachs and weather beaten faces brought out in
sores from the salt and the wind, the kid called out from the deck.
“Get up here. Look”
The American slowly climbed up the steps from the cabin and went out into the sun and looked to the bow but there was nothing to see other than the nothingness which was already there.
“What?”
“No” the kid called again, “that way”
The kid pointed off the back of the boat.
Two seabirds were following the fishing net as it dragged idly through the waves. The kid turned to him and smiled.
The American looked at the birds and back to the kid. He shook his head.
“You’ve gone mad” he said and started to turn away.
“You’re mad” the kid called after him, “how far do you reckon them birds fly from land?”
The American stopped and looked back and said nothing.
The kid smiled.
“So I don’t know for sure” he said as the Dutchman joined the American on the deck, “I guess probably quite a long way, but they nest on land and they won’t fly at night so I reckon we must be getting close”
The American nodded.
“It’s about goddamned time”
In the late afternoon sun they watched the horizon fade and reappear and rise and fall until its form became clear and they were sure that they were indeed approaching land. They tried to consult their map but there was nothing to distinguish on that horizon or otherwise which could tell them of their location.
The red and yellow and white land took shape and, closer to the shore, they saw the desert of nothingness in all its stark beauty and they knew that to ground there could result in little more than a fast and lonely death. None of them had eaten for some time and they were short of water and weak and needed help which would not be found in open desert.
They debated amongst themselves whether the current of the ocean had dragged them further south or further north than their intended route and they knew that turning their boat in the wrong direction at that point would be fatal. South was to head back towards the open seas and north would eventually bring them into the Gulf basin and, while each man put forward his reasoning, none could be certain and so they reasoned that north was the safer bet.
There wasn’t enough fuel to do either for any extended time.
They coasted slowly along the desert edge for nearly three hours watching the red sand turn to rock and back to sand and to rock again and they saw no life there at all until at last, like the final flicker of a dying flame, they saw the sparkle on the horizon.
Juxtaposed against all else in that world where the deserts were dry and bare and red and the sun was blisteringly relentless, the huge silver yacht stood clean and contemporary and shimmering and very still on the water.
They turned the battered old fishing boat directly for it.
Chapter Fourteen
Somewhere off the coast of Al Hadd to Quriyat Hospital Ward 3
The yacht was a thing of luxury. Its sleek chrome hull glistened in the afternoon sun, emblazoned with the words Sea Whisperer and blacked out windows lined its side. Atop the deck the cabin too was blacked out and from the stern a flag of the United Arab Emirates billowed gently in the wind. They killed the engine and their old fishing boat rocked on the waves a hundred feet or so from the giant.
The Dutchman sounded the boats tiny horn and the American laughed.
A moment passed and two men in shirts appeared, bemused, at the side railings of the deck.
The American called to them and asked them where in the world they were and the man called back that they were a not far south of Al Hadd but that it was flooded and no boat could moor there and the other man laughed and said that in a boat that small they could probably sail straight through it.
The American said he did not know that place and that the name alone meant nothing to him and the man replied that it didn’t matter anyway because the place no longer existed. They laughed and told him that they were less than a day’s sailing south of Muscat but that too was flooded and they didn’t advise going there.
The American thanked them and as they turned to leave he called again and asked them if they could spare food or water but they said they couldn’t and they disappeared back into the boat.
They followed the coastline north and saw what had once been the town of Al Hadd.
The sea blackened on the peninsula where the Gulf turned north west and the remnants of buildings and rooftops rose and dipped from the surf and through the shallow water they could see sunken aircraft and cars and metalwork below. A roadsign floated past them printed in Arabic.
Ahead on the water, other yachts and boats and liners started to speckle the horizon. The arid conditions of the middle eastern terrain had pushed all society to the coasts and the floods had wiped out most of the civilisation there. Anyone with the option of taking to the seas had done exactly that and there existed a new society of floating cities.
The three men were looking for land while those on the land were seemingly looking for the sea.
Less than an hour later their boat started to lose power and the motor squeaked and the needle on the fuel tank hung below the empty mark.
The kid called to the others that they had no choice but to head to the shore where they could or they risked losing power completely and would have no option but to swim and no man wanted that for they were drained of strength as it was.
They got the fishing boat over to the shallows on the last fumes of diesel where the rocks rose into peaks of red and brown and black, cut apart by the flow of the emerald sea. A line of telegraph poles emerged from the water and climbed the incline and disappeared over the ridge to the west. Dead palm leaves gathered against the jagged cliffsides where the water foamed and lapped at the crumbling rockface.
As they sailed into the jaws of the river, the boat started to ground and each man clambered overboard and dropped into the water below.
The sky was white hot and dead and there were no birds or beasts there and no sign of man or machine or other. There was a strikingly raw beauty to it all but they knew that any beauty they saw there belied the danger that place truly posed and they had no idea how far they were from safety.
The men were pulled into the waterway and the tide pushed them to the edges and to the cliffsides where they gripped the smooth rock against the beating waves. They clung on with their fingertips to where the rock had almost eroded completely and there was nowhere for them to climb out to and no way of swimming back out to sea and the empty fishing boat swept across to the side of the inlet and smashed against the cliffs again and again and the wood splintered apart and the water started to gush inside it.
For the very first time on his travels the thought crossed the kid’s mind that that may be the place where their journey would come to an end. He looked out to the sea and its seaming infinity and he looked back up the river where it snaked into the desert with its equal infinity and he looked up to the white sky along the towering cliff walls and he saw no way out from that place. He swallowed mouth after mouth of warm water and coughed and spat. His fingers were turning white and numb from holding on to the flat walls.
“How well can you swim?” the American screamed against the crashing waves.
“Well” the kid called back.
“You better goddamned hope so”
Upriver, the American’s big arms gripped the rock where he had pulled himself up slightly onto the cliff, though he had no way further up from where he was, perched like a great sealion.
“Swim or climb?” he shouted back.
“Climb” the Dutchman shouted from behind them.
The kid thought for a moment though he could barely afford the time to do so.
“Swim” he cried back.
The American looked upriver where the water flowed around the red rocks and away to the west and then looked up the cliffside at the dusty overhang.
“I only got one damn arm” he called back, “we sw
im”
He kicked himself away from the rock into the flow and began to steer himself into the current and within a moment his bobbing head had disappeared into the waves upriver.
The kid took a deep breath and closed his eyes and readied himself and pushed away from the side as far as he could and the Dutchman followed and the two of them went downriver, half swimming an kicking and half jettisoned beyond their control. They crashed through the rapids above and below the water until the flow slowed and the river hairpinned sharply to the south and the cliff stood them off directly ahead. To the north at the bend the water eased and shallowed and the American managed to haul himself across onto the sand bank. The kid missed his opportunity to do so and crashed into the rocks but managed to hold on and pulled himself back to where the water was calmer and he joined the American and then the Dutchman at the edge.
They sat for a long moment catching their breath and coughing up salty riverwater and nursing what injuries they had.
“Up there” the American called eventually, pointing up across the rocks.
To the north a rough dirt track carved through the rockface, lined with dried desert grasses and thornbushes.
The Dutchman shrugged. They had no alternative.
They climbed the loose rock, each man behind the next, and they took it slowly as the rocks beneath their feet fell away and broke into dust and though there was flooding across the planet beyond anything man had known, there had been no water on the land at that height for millennia.
When they set out from the riverbank they were dripping with saltwater but when they arrived at the top of the cliff the water had dried entirely and they were soaked through again with sweat.
They broke over the ridge at the top and looked out across the expanse.
To the east they could see the ocean and in the distance the city of floating ships. To the north and to the west and to the south there was nothing but open land and not town nor tree for as far as they could see and that was a great distance.
They each sat on the rocky ground.
Where Men Once Walked Page 25