“Is that safe?” the kid asked.
The doctor cocked his head to one side.
“Well, no. But he isn’t going to die. I do need you to rest tonight so that I can check your progress and you can choose to leave in the morning should you wish. You all need to rest. The hardest part is now done”. He looked at the Dutchman, “you will not die, sir. Well not today at least”
The kid and the American took a bed each in the Dutchman’s room and they kicked off their boots and washed in stale water and laid together talking for the remainder of the afternoon and into the night.
The doctor inspected the Dutchman’s scarred arm very briefly and shook his head and when they told him what had caused it he merely shook his head more and said nothing.
When he was done, he asked the American to remove his shirt and he inspected the gunshot wound and he cleaned it and dressed it in white wrappings and a gauze and said that the bullet should not have been removed at all.
“Why?”
“A bullet will enter the flesh so quickly and at such heat that it will not take infection in with it. It is vital though that the wound is dressed properly”
“Well it was dressed with kid’s shirts soaked in toilet bleach” the American said over his shoulder.
The doctor stopped and looked at him and then looked away and shook his head again.
The doctor left and returned some time later with water for them and apologised that he had no food to offer but passed a small white tray to the American which contained vitamin pills and he said for them to take these as it was the best he could provide.
“Do you have internet here?”
The doctor nodded.
“It is very very poor sir, it is for emergency government contact, but sometimes we have it. I would imagine the satellites are still active, but there are power failures across the country so it is, you know, hit and miss. There is something you need?”
The kid asked him if he could try to access his emails from the computer as it had been many weeks since he had last had the opportunity to do so and he prayed for some message from Abi or from his family. The doctor was reluctant and when the kid pressed him further he relented and told him to be as quick as he could and he showed him to the small, hot office, cluttered with papers.
The kid sat at the screen and opened the browser and though it didn’t connect straight away, he saw that the blue progress bar was slowly moving and there was a very weak connection. Eventually it clicked into life and he typed his account details into the box and it slowly opened line by line and, when it eventually showed the full screen he saw over two hundred new mails. He used the mouse to move the little curser on the screen and passed his eyes across them and the most recent message was from nearly three weeks ago and there had been nothing since.
There were messages from his office and from his boss’ personal account and a mail titled Evacuation Protocol and three more like it and seven from his father and one from his cousin, amongst the many others.
He opened the most recent mail from his father.
Son
I so hope this gets to you. I don’t know if you’re even getting these but I want to keep sending them anyway.
Today is our last day. They will be moving us out this afternoon, apparently there are coaches coming but I don’t know how they’ll take everyone. They’ve said we can’t take the dog but I’m taking him in a holdall, he’ll stay quiet, he’s good like that. The rabbit will have to stay and your mum is upset.
If I can email when we get there I will but I don’t know what the internet is like in France or whether they’ll let us use it, our mobile phones have been down for days now. Your mother’s worried but we’re safe. Abi was round here last week, she’s going away with her dad, she said she’d sent you the address, Austria I think. I think it’s the right thing to do.
We miss you lad, and we love you very much.
Reply if you can.
Dad x
He took in a deep breath and refused himself the chance to get emotional.
The screen flickered and he scrolled down looking for Abi’s message and found it and clicked it and waited without breathing.
Darling
I’m sending this from dad’s work, we’re leaving now, I have to go. I didn’t want to go without you but I don’t know where you are and we are being forced to leave anyway, so I’m better off with dad.
We’ll be at my uncles in Saalbach, dad’s got us a plane to Salzburg. Please find me.
I have to go. I love you xxx
He took another deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment and as they began to well with tears he shook his head to rid them and he clicked the little cross in the corner of the screen and stood.
Saalbach.
Chapter Fifteen
Quriyat Hospital across the black hills to Muscat
They slept long into the morning.
When they woke, the doctor returned to them and inspected the Dutchman and passed him a little plastic bottle of tablets in a white bag and wished them luck and peace. They thanked him and he waved it away and said to them that he was a doctor and that that was what doctors did.
The three men left on foot from the hospital and turned south along the treelined road. There was no traffic and the buildings were dark and it seemed that there was no power to the place other than to the traffic lights which continued their sequences without pause though there was nobody there to see them and no cars on the road. The town proper was north from where they walked and had flooded completely and had been deserted for some time and the place was as it had been left, under a thick coating of red dust.
“You think we can catch a bus from here?” the American joked.
They walked.
The Dutchman stopped and vomited at the roadside.
“Drink that water” the kid called.
“It’s already empty” the Dutchman called back.
A seabird passed overhead and squawked to them or at them or just to itself, for there was nothing else around to have prompted its call and no other birds in sight.
“Hey, I think we can get that bus” the kid called after a few minutes.
The men smiled and continued to walk.
“I mean it” he called again from behind them, “look”
The men stopped in the road and turned.
On their right, the pale stone high school stood behind a row of dead palms and broken fencing, the white rendering on the façade breaking away and the windows along its front smashed and dark.
Parked along the side of the building was an old brown and white schoolbus, turned bronze under the thick layer of sand. Its windows were smashed inwards from the storms.
The American looked at the kid and his eyes lit up and he looked back at the school and at the bus and crossed the empty road towards it.
The door was hanging open and the floor was littered with broken glass and the entire thing, inside and out, was covered in sand but otherwise it was just a bus.
The American climbed into the driving seat and looked around the cab for the keys.
“You reckon they could be inside the school?”
The kid shrugged
“Probably”
The American lurched backwards in the chair and ripped the plastic casing away from the steering wheel.
He smiled to the kid and tossed it out of the smashed window onto the dusty ground below.
“You can just go ahead and break it if you want” the kid said flatly, walking backwards along the bus aisle.
The Dutchman was already sitting with his head hung backwards over the metal seat.
“You ok?” the kid asked as he passed and the Dutchman groaned and nodded just slightly.
The American pulled the clump of wires from beneath the steering wheel and studied them.
“Is the battery red or yellow?”
The Dutchman levelled his head and looked down the bus to him.
“Red” he cough
ed.
He coughed again and nearly vomited and held himself and took a breath and his head again fell backwards over the top of the seat.
The American nodded and pulled the red wire from the fixing and twisted the ends and then pulled the yellow wire out too and held one in each hand. He raised his eyebrows and held his head back from his hands and tapped the wires together.
Nothing happened.
He nodded and tied the two wires together and, as he did, the lights on the dashboard flashed on and the radio played loud static.
The Dutchman sat up and vomited.
He pulled the brown wire from the fitting and held his head back again and tapped it to the other wires.
It sparked in his hands.
He held the wires together again and sparks exploded from them and he revved at the engine and in a cough of black smoke and a roar of diesel the bus engine started rumbling. Sand cascaded from the roof as the bus shook.
The kid nodded.
“Where are you taking us driver?” he called.
The American revved at the engine and after a moment the sound softened and it settled into a constant purr and he flicked the headlights on.
“Well boys we’re about an hour outside of Muscat, yeah? Well there I reckon”
The kid was sitting half way down the bus with his feet up across the aisle.
“That guy on the yacht said Muscat was flooded” he called down the bus.
The American nodded and pulled the bus out onto the road.
“I’m sure it is”
The sky was black and clear and every star in the universe twinkled together over the open desert. At al Mahj their way was blocked by orange roadcones and black and white barriers and a single orange light spinning on its pole.
The sign simply read closed and the same in Arabic and the yellow arrow pointed them to the east around the sliproad and straight up into the black mountains.
The road was well tarmacked but there were no cars or trucks driving it and it wasn’t lit and they were unsure for a long time if it was the correct route at all until eventually it broke out from the rocks at the top of the hill and hairpinned down to the expressway below.
Beyond that, the devastated ruins of Muscat lay smoking before them.
Flames flickered and spat and reflected off the black oily water of the flooded streets and the air was filled with smoke which, though they couldn’t see against the night, seeped in through the smashed windows of the old schoolbus.
They sat for a moment at the top of the winding road and watched, and they looked at each other and the kid shrugged because there was nothing else they could do.
“You wanna sleep in the bus?” the kid asked.
“Whatever man” the American shrugged “but we need food and water. Especially for him”
The Dutchman looked asleep in his seat, slumped sideways against the broken glass.
The kid threw his hands up and waved them forward and the American put the bus back into gear.
They wound down the mountainside to the ruined city in its nest of black rock where the water flowed down the avenues and the power lines danced and sparked where they fell. They crossed over the expressway and took the road downhill towards the water’s edge and parked the bus in the middle of the street where it stopped and climbed out into the hot night. The Dutchman was weak and dazed and didn’t speak and walked behind them with his head drooping but, when questioned on his health by the others, he maintained that he was fine and for them both to stop asking.
He vomited again and when they turned to him he frowned and waved them away.
The road led through the underpass at the Grand Mall where the bridges had been spraypainted and a gang of bandits stood around the burning shell of a car. Men called to them in the dark as they passed under the bridge and on the other side, the huge shopping centre towered over them, smashed and looted and torched with the car park still full of vehicles, though they were smashed and burning too.
A man came running at pace from the broken glass doors of the mall and hurdled onto a car bonnet and onto the roof and leaped from car to car and behind him three men emerged from the smoke and fired rifles at him and they watched him duck the shells and stumble as he jumped and one round hit him and he fell down between the parked cars and didn’t resurface and the men went back through the smoke into the mall.
The black oily water was lapping at the edges of the raised highway where it turned south and the concrete sank away from view into the dark depths. They walked the banked road for a while, just high enough to keep the water away from its surface, until they reached the hypermarket and the Avenues Mall with its blue domed roof glimmering in the clear moonlight like an untouched mosque.
They rounded the front of the building and were met head on by armed military, standing guard with automatic rifles and trucks and floodlights.
The guards paid little attention to them as they approached and when they were but a few yards away the guard simply put his hand onto his rifle and nothing more.
The guard spoke to them in Arabic and the men couldn’t reply.
He realised they weren’t locals.
“Identification” he asked them again.
“We have no identification” the American answered, “we have nothing. We need some food and water”
The guard shook his head.
“You need identification”
“To get food?” the kid asked.
The guard nodded.
“We’re not from here. We have no ID”
“You have passport?” the other guard asked.
The kid was unsure what to say. He knew they should have their passports in order to be there.
“We lost everything”
The two guards looked at each other for a moment.
“Where you from?”
“London”
He passed his hand through the air.
“All?”
“US and the Netherlands”
The guard nodded.
“This place is for national citizens. UK military will help you better than here”
The kid shrugged.
“Well that isn’t an option is it, can we at least get water?”
“Yes is option. They have food and water for you, not us. For national citizens only here”
The kid looked to the others and then back to the guards.
“Can we get some water, my friend is very sick?”
The guard raised his voice only slightly and maintained his composure.
“No. Go to UK military base, they will help you”
The kid stopped.
He looked over his shoulder and the American was frowning. The Dutchman, whose head had been falling from side to side like a ragdoll and who had been white and dazed, was now standing absolutely upright and both men stared at the guard.
“What?” the American asked stepping forward.
The guard didn’t know what he had said and said nothing more.
“A UK base? Where?” the kid asked.
“At the airport” the guard said, confused slightly and raising his arm to point to the west.
They didn’t believe what they had heard.
“There is a UK base here?” the American asked again..
The guard shrugged and spoke in Arabic to his colleague who shrugged and muttered something back.
“They bring aid here. They have command post at the airport but no authority in this country and they operate under bin Tariq. You will see their cars in town here sometimes”
“Where’s the airport?” the Dutchman asked with an energy that belied entirely his physical state.
“Here” the guard pointed again, “ten kilometre maybe. Is not big city”
They stood for a moment looking at each other in bewilderment.
They didn’t know whether or not the guard was correct but they doubted he would fabricate such a pointless lie but for his own amusement.
At the end
of the road where the intersection with the highway ran east to west and the water flowed up the concrete, a tall white sign rose up above the road and on the left of the board the black arrow pointed west to the airport.
All three of them were desperate to believe the guard’s story but there were many political reasons for what he said to be an untruth, though they were also aware that the global political landscape had most likely changed beyond recognition in these past months and they had been absent from its progress while they travelled the backroads of that continent.
Each man had his doubts but they walked quickly and excitedly regardless.
They followed the road west along the ridge of the city, walking in line along the centre of the four lane road for there were few cars being driven on it, and when rarely one did pass, it would beep its horn and they would simply move aside. The low white roofs of the adobe buildings submerged into the glistening blackness and faded away down to the lost shoreline. Beyond that in the open gulf, the white lights of yachts and liners flickered in the smoky air like an extension of the stars themselves.
As the sprawling white stonework of the Grand Mosque appeared next to them the wind picked up from the mountains and great clouds of dust and sand blew across the overgrown lawns and out over the highway to the sea. Four uniformed guards huddled together in the driveway of the mosque smoking and watching them as they passed with their hands up to shelter their eyes from the sand.
A motorcycle gang screamed past them shouting and the guards watched them with little interest and they passed out of view in an instant into the darkened city and somewhere in the wet wreckage there was gunfire and a man shouting and more gunfire and then silence again.
Not half a mile further the road bent south and a supermarket came into view at the roadside, dark and ransacked and silent. It was not guarded and they stopped in the car park and watched in through the smashed doors.
Where Men Once Walked Page 27