Dead I Well May Be

by Adrian McKinty

  The whole thing was a fiasco, but I went in after him anyway. I waded up to my waist to see how deep it got and when it was neck height I tried to swim too. It wasn’t quite quicksand, but it was still pretty thick stuff. Swimming was utterly impossible: your legs were so buoyant, your body buckled up and your head kept sinking. Your arms were too weak and coated to help you anyway. Everywhere in suspension were grains of sand and silt and thick muck. The only thing like it I’d experienced was when I’d swum in a quarry sinkhole as a kid, garbage and cars and mud and reeds making it all a potential death trap. But this was worse. Even dog-paddling was impossible; you kept going underneath the surface and bobbing up under the grass, swallowing the thick, grainy water. I tried the crawl and breaststroke, but always the same problem, I would sink rather than swim, my legs coming out of the water and my shoulders and head going underneath it. Again and again, water went into my lungs, and I scrambled for the surface. Finally, I turned round and started clawing my way back to the cell block. There was no way I could get through twenty or thirty yards of this to the wire. I turned slowly and pointed myself towards the prison, but Scotchy saw and stopped me and whispered loudly:

  On your back, on your back, Bruce, on your back.

  I looked over to discover that he was doing a sort of backstroke through the swamp and he was actually making good progress. His head and arms were cutting the mossy surface like an icebreaker and his legs were kicking and giving him momentum. He was evenly buoyant and he wasn’t sinking. I couldn’t quite figure out why this worked and not the breaststroke or the crawl, but it did. I rolled over on my back and began gently moving backwards, following in the trail that Good King Scotchylass was making. The surface was thick and closed in behind us when we got through it, but we were getting through it, slowly, but we were doing it. The spotlight beam was tracking along the swamp, but this time it was going so sluggishly, it was easy for us to duck under when it was a few feet away and then come up again. It probably wouldn’t be back now for a while.

  We swam and pushed our way through and then waded a little backwards until we got to the fence. Thank God, Scotchy had had the patience to get our wrists unchained too; we would have failed otherwise.

  We were utterly exhausted, and we both could hardly believe that we’d made it.

  Scotchy was saying something, but he was so excited it was incoherent.

  Get our breath, I was saying, and Scotchy nodded. We hung there for a long time on the bottom of the fence. We were breathing hard, and our arms and legs ached.

  Can we go under it? I asked.

  Scotchy dived down to see if we could get underneath the fence, but according to him it went a good bit down.

  It can’t go all the way down, do you think they had fucking divers? I said.

  Listen, Bruce, the swamp is probably seasonal, rainy season and all that. I’m telling you it goes all the way down to the mud.

  Aye, well, I’m checking, I said.

  I tried pulling myself down to the very bottom of the wire, and after about four or five feet I did find the bottom. You could maybe squeeze underneath it, under the wire; it was tight, but you could maybe do it.

  I came up gasping for air and told Scotchy what I’d found.

  Look, we’re not going to fucking drown under that thing. We’ll never make it, we’re going over.

  I saw his point. We probably would get stuck under there and die a horrible suffocating death. I nodded. I didn’t want to go over, but under was too hard. When we were rested, there was nothing else for it but to climb.

  We started out, and climbing was a lot easier than the swamp. The fence had big holes that feet could fit into and it was fairly rigid so it didn’t wobble everywhere. We climbed steadily, not wanting to slip or make any noises. Scotchy was to my right. We’d decided to go up together, though it probably would have made more sense to go one at a time.

  When we were near the top of the fence, we took a breather. We were now at the razor wire, and we were both beat.

  What now? Scotchy asked, as we hung there panting.

  We just got to go over it, Scotchy, that’s all. We just got to.

  I grabbed a piece of wire and hauled myself up. There was a sharp, stabbing, terrible pain in my palm; I’d cut myself already, a gash right under my thumb.

  Fuck, I whispered. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

  I pulled myself up halfway onto the first roll of wire. Most of the straw had fallen out of my T-shirt and I was scraped and cut all over my chest and arms. I pulled myself up farther, my right hand and my legs getting a slashing. I knew it would be worse for Scotchy, because at least I had jeans to protect my legs a little and he had only his shorts.

  I tugged, and the razor wire dug into my chest.

  Christ.

  I was in a complete panic now. The pain was awful and the thought of going on was worse. I was in the middle of the front roll of wire and here the coil wasn’t tight or thick, so I was leaning way out backwards over the swamp.

  My bare feet shivered on the edge of the fence and I knew it would be a new horror when I pulled them up onto the first coil of wire. I had to find a spot on the coil at the top of the fence where there were no razors. I stood there for a long while, raised my foot, and placed it on the coil. I took a breath and pulled myself up, placing all my weight on the wire. I’d missed the razors but the whole coil of wire trembled and leaned back, and for a second I thought I was going to fall off backwards into the swamp.

  Shit.

  It was moving like a great writhing serpent. It was impossible to get a steady grip.

  What’s going on? Scotchy whispered.

  I couldn’t reply. I took another breath. Whatever happened, I couldn’t stay in this position, I’d fall in a second or two. I was leaning way back, my hands digging into the wire just to hold on.

  Scotchy was whispering something again, but I couldn’t hear him. I froze for a second, unsure of what exactly I was going to do. I rocked back a little and then pushed forward with all my strength. The coils of wire returned to the vertical.

  I took my foot off the razor wire and put it back on the top of the fence.

  I pushed the razor wire hard and the big curl of wire moved forward to a position where it seemed more rigid.

  Scotchy was still there on the fence. He hadn’t gone near the wire yet. I was glad, for if both of us had been on it when it went backwards we would have gone off for sure. But even so, he couldn’t linger there all night.

  Scotchy, for fucksake, come on, I said.

  Ok, I’m coming, just getting my breath, wanker, he said. It was the last thing I ever heard him say.

  I lifted my leg and planted my foot on the first roll of wire again. I was trying to be delicate, and I did get lucky, my toes finding a safe area. I heaved my body up and leaned forward on the first roll. I put the other foot on and pushed. My hands were cut to shite, but I was nearly halfway over the first roll. If the wire had been put on better, tighter, it would have been easier, but it was so loose it was practically hugging you, slicing at you. Pain and the fear of the pain between breaths.

  I scrambled up another inch. The wire embraced me again, tearing me, ripping me. I convulsed and threw up.

  The wire vibrated horribly, and I could feel Scotchy on it to my right.

  Everything happened at once now.

  The searchlight, which had been scanning to our left in the swamp, suddenly raised itself and went along the wire. There was nothing we could do, we couldn’t drop off now, we just had to hope that it lowered itself at the last moment.

  It didn’t.

  The beam swept straight past us and then came back and stayed there.

  Voices began yelling in Spanish. I scrambled up the second roll, falling up it. The razors cut horribly into my feet and fingers and I hooked one along my face. I heard a shotgun pop and misfire and then another one spray a barrel of shot into the fence to our left. The prison was a big old guard dog, shaking itself and coming
to life. I heard more yelling and then a high-powered automatic rifle, an M16 without a doubt, and I saw Scotchy get hit in the back.

  Scotchy, I yelled, but his body went limp and tumbled downwards almost all the way through the first coil of razor wire. The razors nearly decapitated him, slicing into his neck and hanging him there. His arms shook and, as blood poured grotesquely from his mouth, his jaw moved up and down, as if he was trying to speak.

  Jesus Christ.

  I stared and cried out and then desperately climbed on and reached the top of the second coil through a threshold of screaming nerve endings. The wire swayed and wrapped itself about and in me. It went effortlessly into my flesh and I used the purchase to pull myself on.

  At the top of the second coil, I balanced on my stomach and all the while there were shotguns firing and the whirr of a couple of Armalites. I forward-rolled over the crest of the second coil of wire, my hair and shoulders getting caught and pulled and torn, and then I fell thirty feet into the swamp on the other side. I stayed under the water and swam and briefly surfaced for air and swam again. I did this for two minutes, and I realized I’d gone way to the left but hardly any farther from the fence.

  The whole prison was awake. They were ringing a bell and shining the two big searchlights at the swamp where I’d originally fallen in. Everyone taking potshots at the water. I ducked out of the spotlight beam and moved with my backstroke towards the trees. The shooting was deafening and continuous, but they didn’t shift the spotlight beam at all. Perhaps they think I’ve broken my neck and drowned, I was saying, comforting myself.

  I waded to the trees. The forest was waterlogged and thick with vines that tripped me every few yards. It gave way to solid ground and I ran, my feet shrieking with the hurt, my eyes full of blood. My hands were burning, my thighs, my feet. I’d sliced off two or three toes, gashed a hole under my eye.

  I ran the whole of the night, and when day came I slept under the giant roots of a jungle tree, and when night came I got up and ran again.

  8: SUR DE LA FRONTERA

  O

  ut of the waste and in the prodigal rain nothing animate breathes or moves or lives above the height of man …

  The abyss, emptiness, a scorched and sunken earth. An abandoned quarter. A place out of a nightmare. A slough over a hard ground and an impenetrable sky. Night and day are indistinguishable and become one long dread universe outside of time. The rain is cold and falling with such force and mettle that it makes divots in the clay. The wind with it whips and buries itself into every groove and crevice on the ground. It veers and backs and brings the rain horizontal and slantwise and sometimes, in mock of physical laws, upwards.

  Nature has cast itself as the destroyer, as the scourge, Shiva wiping the slate clean. And here, out here in the wild land, it is being born again of water.

  It’s the hurricane and everything has a burrow.

  Well, nearly everything …

  Above is a vast black cloud out of which comes terrible light and the downpour, which leaches out loam and color and washes everything away. An awful wind that carries seawater, stones, bicycle parts, branches.

  The topography is frozen into fragile inclines and declines and a horizonless perspective. A vast steppe devoid of beings and every living thing. Underneath there are sharp stones and lava rocks and here and there are ghosts of trees and a ruined house, as if from the days of the famine.

  Another Ireland, the far northwest, the Sperrins, the bogland around Slemish Mount.

  A pulverized sheet of ground and a landscape so familiar and yet unfamiliar that there can be naught but an epidemic of memory. Coffins of wet glassy stones and withered alphabets and celestial tracks in the red clay.

  And everything punctuated by wind and rain. Rain, especially that.

  Another mile, another ten, and over this hill ancient pylons are clambering on the terrain like a virus, following a line of steel and wire, clumping together perhaps in the direction of a settlement. In the country that is and can be. Civil and uncivil and metallic. But you’re on the run and that way is barred, if it is the way of people.

  West, then. A green land of slabber, an invisible mesa on the world’s edge. A rise and a valley, hours of movement and a lake that did not exist a week before. There are scrubby bushes and reeds and suffocated trees. The world postdiluvian with water everywhere. No lizard or insect or belly crawler remains above the ground. Their homes are inundated and battle-scarred, gone into the book of insurance agents and loss adjusters. Mars has used his influence and braised the globe closer to the fastness underneath.

  It’s the hurricane and rain is unceasing. Aye, it’s obvious now. Apparent in the signs and portents. The rain is a baptism and a cleansing agent. There is transparency in its coldness. The wind, too, speaks. It casts up euphonies of the dead. They have promises and they make you swear. Their talk is easy and reposed, but such are the words of phantoms, for they have time on their hands and are removed from the pressures of the Earth. They haunt you and urge you on. Pressure you, hint. It isn’t the banshee, there’s no death, at least not yet. Just voices. Their talk is Spanish and Mayan and Olmec and languages that have died here long ago but whose parallel exists somewhere in Kamchatka or Mongolia or the Aleutians. They murmur softly and tug your beard and trip your feet.

  Paddy fields, a river valley, a collapsed stone wall for shelter. A cough and an adjourned heartbeat. Your eyes close and reopen again slowly, with sleep in them. The grass makes a hole for you.

  The rivers rise and the rain and wind come so loud you lose yourself. The trees are less (or more) than dead now, they are stone: fossils, and around them the smell of sage becomes overwhelming. It’s almost enough to make you long for the jungle. But it’ll come again. You’ll see.

  One foot in front of another. Pain that is no longer there. It has ceased to exist, for how can there be pain when there cannot be that intensity of feeling. It is possible to move to a plane beyond pain and beyond hunger. It is possible to exist just barely above the level of the realm about us. To coast on a slender splinter of consciousness. That’s how a shadow moves. A ghost.

  How many days?

  Half a week?

  A skeleton, a specter, sliding across the land.

  A hill, a river, and now a place where humans have been—evidence in the dead wood of telegraph poles. Ancient pines that have been blackened and grooved by weathering and that have numbers on them and strange symbols and the cracks of heat and cold.

  But no birds on the wire or the uprights, for the animal realm entire is disappeared; indeed, only the simpler forms of plants survive: sage and small grasses and shrubs and blue lichen and black mosses that coat themselves thinly over a hard, dark soil and bare rock.

  Where are compassionate stars, where the sequences of people, the friendly cows and horses? It’s the hurricane, and they have all abandoned ship, deserted and left behind only their music and their trace.

  Inclines, rolling valleys.

  Scrub that eventually gives way to high grasses.

  Fields flooded and everywhere the tracks of creatures making for higher ground. A corn crop ruined. Maize. A commonplace field of potatoes. You dig them up, those livid white tubers.

  It’s still night, it’s always night. You can’t see the moon, or Orion, you can’t see where anything is. At least is this still the Earth? Or is it some new place conceived and brought forth by the ocean? These are answers to impossible questions.

  A day of this and the contour lines are narrowing and there are palms, and before it is even announced, the forest is there again like a wall. Dense and vine-covered and resistant a little to the gale and rain. The trees whisper to themselves in a vocabulary that no human will understand. They are talking about water and the brown volcanic earth between their toes and the wind that tears through the upper branches and kills the young and very old.

  You can’t follow it but you are enough now of a jungle creature to get the gist. The trepidation
. The excitement. The waxy creatures with a thousand eyes and ears. The forest thickens and darkens and there is some cover from the weather. Unlit, and there are demons here. Black, coiled snakes. Jaguars, panthers, monkeys, and the beasts of childhood dreams. Great el tigre above you and fantastic beings: griffin and hawkman and things from the last book of Gulliver.

  Run-off golden water, wild fruits, bananas. Half of them are poison. Crouch down on one knee and vomit them up, vomit them and drink off a leaf and get up and go on.

  You’re walking through the submerged and almost disappeared crater, two hundred miles wide, from a cometary impact sixty-five million years ago, a comet that struck the Yucatán with many times the force of every nuclear weapon currently on the planet, a comet that threw millions of tons of dirt and rock into the atmosphere and blackened the sun for months and changed the climate forever. That wiped out the dinosaurs and two thirds of all other living things on the planet. That made space for a little lemurlike creature that evolved through sixty-five million years into you.

  You walk through the crater and you are weak and your wounds are not healing and animals inhabit spaces beneath your pale skin. You limp and the nails have fallen off your toes. You walk and you hallucinate and it occurs to you that perhaps you are already dead. That you are dead and this is hell. That this and all that follows is a rite of passage and a fantasy and you are dead on the wire or mad and in your cell.