by Jack Ziebell
“Com’on Brian, your brain did not get wiped, think. Where else could people have survived?”
“The military. Some kind of military command centre hardened against this kind of thing?”
“I can’t think of anything else where there would be more than one or two people protected in one place. I think Cheyenne Mountain is our best bet.”
“Cheyenne Mountain?”
“The home of NORAD, the US agency that monitors the skies for missiles, hi-jacked planes, even asteroids. The problem is it’s in Colorado Springs; we’d have to cross Nevada, Utah and half of Colorado. The good news is, I know for sure that it’s hardened against EMP and a bunch of other crap. The whole complex is built on springs and buried deep inside a granite mountain. If anyone is going to be fine, it’s those guys.”
“Colorado? Jesus, that’s well over a thousand miles from here, isn’t there somewhere closer? I mean the military have tons of bases all over this country?”
“Do you have internet Brian? Because I sure as hell don’t. I only know Cheyenne for sure. I had a friend who worked there, doing the space monitoring stuff.”
“A girl right?”
“Well yes, a girl, but I don’t think she’s still mad at me.”
Brian laughed but stopped when he looked up at the shore. The number of bodies had grown and he could make out that people were pushing and clawing at each other to get to the waters edge. Some were inflicting pitiless misery for no apparent reason, others rocking on their sides, crying like babies. “Lets get out of here. Can you sail?”
Marius held up his hand to feel the air. “In this wind, I’m not so sure. But the fire is generating enough of a draft, I think I can get us underway.”
Brian pulled the small anchor into the craft and Marius set the sail. Gradually they started drifting away from the shore and towards the main flow of the river. The crouching masses followed the motion of the craft with their eyes, some reaching out as if they could grab the boat and drag it to them.
Brian stared back at them. “They are like animals.”
“Not like. They are animals. And that’s all they will be until - if, they get their senses back. Red in tooth and claw. Have you read Hobbes?”
“No Marius I can’t say that I have.”
“Bellum omnium contra omnes,”
“What?”
“The war of all against all.”
They sailed on without speaking. Along the western riverbank, Brian could make out slumped flailing figures silhouetted against the flame lit sky. The eastern bank was dark, which seemed to him all the more ominous.
Chapter 20
As Tim got closer to the town, he thought he could hear screams, but they seemed to blend into a continuous wall of pain and suffering. They slowed their bikes to a crawl as they approached the first building on the outskirts. It was a garage. Tim had used it before on previous visits to change tyres and service the fleet of work vehicles they kept parked at the office. The elderly owner had been a friendly and honest man who against expectations had done a good job and charged a fair price. The place seemed deserted.
Tim cautiously got off his bike and laid it quietly on the ground. “Let’s take a look.”
He moved slowly towards the open front of the garage but the gravel drive magnified every step. The sounds emanating from the city made him afraid. He peered around the edge of the garage door; nobody was inside. A car lay in pieces, mid-fix, and a motorbike was parked on the far side with its front wheel removed. Tools lay scattered on the ground. He motioned for Asefa to come over as he walked inside. There was a faint smell of electrical burning but no smoke, a radio was plugged in on one side of the building; perhaps the source was the plug socket, it looked scorched.
Asefa picked up a car alternator on the floor. “See what I mean about the cars?”
The alternator’s copper coils had been fused into a single copper band, as if a large electric current had surged through them generating instantaneous heat.
Asefa kissed his teeth. “Something wicked has happened here. Some kind of juju.”
Things must have been bad for him to talk of juju, the Cameroonian voodoo. He had ridiculed it many times in front of Tim, saying it was only the backward bush people who believed such superstitions. Things were changing. Tim was a staunch atheist but even he had asked God for help when he was trapped in a plane falling from the sky with no undercarriage. Men look for answers and turn to Gods when they find none.
A bang at the back of the shop made Tim spin around and freeze. There was a moan from the storeroom, where the garage owner kept spare parts. Both of them ran to the room to find the owner lying face down. His hands were grasping at the floor, as if he was trying to climb a ladder and one of his feet was kicking aimlessly.
Tim grabbed the man’s arm. “Help me turn him over.”
They put the man on his back; his eyes were open but stared vacantly, then with unexpected fury he gripped Tim’s trouser at the ankle, shaking it repeatedly. Tim pulled away and the man let out a weak cry, slapping the now empty hand against the floor.
Asefa gasped. “He is cursed. I have heard of such things but never have I seen it.”
“He probably just had a bad fall or something, concussion can mess with your head. Give me your water bottle.”
Asefa handed Tim the bottle and he took off the cap and put it to the man’s lips. As soon as the water flowed into his mouth the garage owner grabbed the bottle with both hands and drank like he had not had water for days. When what little water there was had gone he continued to suck on the bottle, still staring into space, kicking his foot.
Asefa shook his head and walked away. “He has lost his mind.”
Leaving the garage owner, Tim went to the dial-up telephone that was hanging on one side of the shop floor. He picked it up and rattled the receiver several times but there was no dial tone. He went back into the office and tentatively reached into the garage owner’s pocket, trying to avoid being kicked as he did so. He managed to retrieve a set of keys and a mobile phone. He tried the mobile but it wouldn’t switch on.
He walked outside and the terrible sounds in the distance became chillingly audible. Behind the garage was a corrugated metal shed. The doors were padlocked and any gaps in the structure were meticulously sealed with a fine mesh of chicken wire, welded to the walls and iron doorframe. Tim figured the mesh was to keep out the birds and mice; the garage owner obviously loved his vehicle to protect it so meticulously. He was intrigued to find out what was inside and against all reason hoped it was something that could replace their bicycles. He tried one of the keys in the padlock, which well-oiled, clicked open. He opened the double doors to reveal an early model, white Soviet Lada Niva. Tim loved this car, a few of his NGO friends had them; all-wheel-drive and built like a Russian tank – not the most fuel efficient or environmentally friendly, but that was not the Russian way. He climbed in and tried the ignition, surprisingly the starter motor turned but the engine didn’t start. He tried it again, nothing. He was about to get out but stopped himself and tried one last time. The Russian engine roared to life, making him jump then laugh out loud. “Asefa, get over here and check this out!”
Asefa looked over the car. “Well I’ll be damned, how in the hell did you do that?”
“I don’t know, it just started, I think the battery was a bit flat from not being driven, but apart from that it seems fine, even has a full tank.”
“Well let us not hang around,” said Asefa, “that terrible wailing is like a knife in my heart, I do not want to go close to it, but you are right, we must go into town to see if anyone there is OK. But we must go carefully.”
“And the old man?”
“I do not want to leave him Tim, but it is better if we do. When we find help we can send people back to help him.”
Asefa got into the car and they drove towards the town. Tim stayed at the wheel, he knew Asefa would be cautious but thought he would take things more slowly tha
n his friend.
The car rounded the last bend bringing the town into full view. Tim could only think of it as biblical. It seemed as though the End Times had come, perhaps they had? People crawling in the streets, some naked, some burned, others lying motionless where they fell, having hit their heads on curb stones as they did so. In some places blood flowed between the cracks in the cobbled streets and pooled in the gutter. He knew the roads but even so it was hard to navigate to the Development Institute through the smoke and vehicles. Fires were burning out of control in buildings. Some of the people reached out to the car as they approached and Tim tried to forget the crack he heard as one wrist stretched too close to their passing tyres.
When they finally arrived at the office he was relieved to see it was still standing, although smoke billowed from the top floor windows. He told Asefa to pull up close to the compound wall so that he was able to hop onto the Niva’s sturdy roof rack, clamber over the wall and open the gate from the inside. Asefa drove in and they closed the gate behind them. Being a Saturday, the office was locked. The guard who should have been outside the gate was nowhere to be seen - no coincidence when both bosses were supposed to be out of town for the weekend. For a fraction of a second Tim felt annoyed and then realised whatever had befallen the poor man was far worse than he deserved, in fact he hoped that the guard had spent Saturday morning in bed with his wife and then had a long family breakfast with his kids.
In the relative safety of the office yard his mind wandered to his own friends and family. Had this spread to Addis Ababa, to Europe, to the UK? Was his mum OK in her bungalow in Dorset, or had she fallen too, like her fall the year before, but worse? Who would check on her, who would help her up and get her to the hospital? Suddenly he was glad he didn’t have kids of his own. For a long time he and Sarah hadn’t tried to have any. She’d wanted to start her career; he’d wanted to create a family home first and enjoy married life as a couple. They’d both come across so many tough international women who seemingly had it all but had nothing. You’d get them drunk and it would all come out; ‘I had a man, he loved me, but I took the job overseas and then left him when he didn’t quit his whole life to follow me to the ends of the earth… I made my choices.’ He’d heard that story a half-dozen times. Now these women were leaders in their field; Gender Experts, Child-Protection Specialists, Regional Directors, but living alone, childless and growing bitter about their successes, knowing it was the successes that had tempted them further and further away from happiness. He and Sarah had kept saying, next year we’ll start, next year; but when they did she was thirty-five and two years later they were still trying.
“Tim,” yelled Asefa, snapping him back, “I don’t know if you noticed, but the top floor of the building is on fire, if you want to get anything out of there you better go now!”
“Asefa, load the car with as much fuel and water as you can, I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.
Tim ran inside. First he checked the office radio; it was dead and he could make out electrical scorching around the dial. He grabbed and tried several of the satellite phones that hung on the wall. Nothing worked. He moved on to his office and took a photo of Sarah on a camping trip that he had pinned to the wall a couple of years before, along with a handful of maps of the region. In the storeroom he filled a large backpack and two bin bags with a case of antibiotics and as many emergency ration packs as he could – the kind he and Asefa used to give out during humanitarian disasters. It struck him as ironic that now he was the needy recipient of the aid he had come to distribute; he knew the stuff tasted like crap – mostly peanut butter mixed with crushed vitamins - but it would keep them going. There was nothing more in the office that was of any use, just broken computers, printers and fax machines. He wondered if any of them would ever be of any use again, or if like the Romans and Greeks, his society had reached its zenith and was now in decline. Penance? He didn’t believe in such things, plus he’d seen enough undeserved starvation and misery in his job to know that punishment and justice were rarely linked, God or no God.
He walked out to the car. Asefa was tying the last jerry can of fuel to the roof.
“Asefa, lets go.”
“Got a full car load,” said Asefa, “even found a shovel in case we get stuck! But where we going, Addis Ababa?”
“Juba.”
“Juba? Juba-Sudan-Juba? Are you crazy?”
“That’s where Sarah is, Asefa, I know you understand.” Bringing up Asefa’s lost sister wasn’t meant as a ploy but after he’d said it he knew the affect it would have on his friend.
“But there isn’t even a road there Tim. We couldn’t get much further than Gambella, if we can even get there. They are just jungle tracks there man.” Asefa sighed and looked to the sky. “Ahh, fuck you Tim, get in.”
Asefa jumped in the driver’s seat and Tim climbed in beside him. “But Timmy we are going via Addis Ababa; it’s on the way and if it’s gone we have to be sure.”
Tim closed his door, dampening the sound from outside. “Just get us away from this noise, it’s driving me crazy.”
Asefa took the quickest route out of town. Again Tim thought he heard the crackle of bones as they drove through thick smoke; it sounded like driving over fallen tree branches and he tried to imagine that’s all they were. They had their shirts pulled up over their mouths but it didn’t stop the choking fumes. Neither of them spoke until they were free of the town and back on the open road.
A few miles up, they stopped at the military checkpoint, which had been permanently established on the road to Addis to check vehicles for weapons and Somali insurgents. A few months before, a British aid worker had been killed when his driver failed to stop. The checkpoint guards, jittery from previous attacks, had opened fire, hitting him in the back of the head. The driver had killed himself a few weeks later. Today the gate was down but the checkpoint appeared deserted. Asefa stopped the car but kept his hands on the wheel. They looked around, it seemed clear.
Tim got out and walked over to the guard booth. An AK47 assault rifle was leaning against the side of the booth, and a belt holding several clips of ammunition was lying on the wooden seat. He wasn’t sure if he should take it; years of NGO training and experience told him ‘no guns in the vehicle’, you were always safer that way, no matter who you came across – government or rebels. Also, if the capital was OK, what would he do with the gun when he got there? Throw it out the window? He certainly wouldn’t be going to the police, who always did more harm than good. But times had changed and Gambella and Sudan were lawless, wild places. During the Sudanese civil war, orphaned children, known as the Lost Boys made their way on foot through those regions, to the relative ‘safety’ of Ethiopia. But their journey was a hard one; tens, maybe hundreds were lost on the way; taken by lions or shot by village militias who did not want foreign dependents on their land. The law of the jungle; whatever happened next, there’d be a lot more of that for a while.
He picked up the gun, although he had no idea how to use it.
Chapter 21
Brian woke with a start. After a few seconds of blinking in the light he remembered where he was and how he got there. The sun had come up and he rubbed his eyes. “How long was I out? How far have we gone?”
Marius was at the back of the boat holding the rudder and tending the sail. “About two hours, and about five miles. The problem is that this river is taking us down, eventually to Sacramento and then on to the Pacific. We don’t want to go that way, at least not that far. And I can’t see the bottom for shit, we already got stuck once and I’m amazed we haven’t run aground.”
Brian scanned the boat for supplies but it was empty except for a faded orange life preserver. “I don’t like the idea of getting off the boat, but I’m hungry and I’m thirsty and I’d rather not drink the river if I don’t have to; getting sick is the last thing we need.”
“Well choose your poison,” said Marius, “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don�
��t. I don’t like the idea of going ashore either but we will need to pick a place sooner or later and risk it.”
“Preferably somewhere relatively isolated,” said Brian, “Just being in that car park back at the hospital was bad enough. The less people around the better.”
“I’ll moor up over there.” Marius pointed at a wooden dock with three large and expensive looking boats tied up. A wooden sign above the mooring read ‘Arden Country Club – Where Luxury Meets Fraternity’. Brian used to steer well clear of such places; not that he would have been welcome should he have showed up. Marius tied the boat up and they jumped ashore. The dock ran up to a manicured lawn and a glass-fronted clubhouse. They walked up to the floor to ceiling windows and looked inside. The clubhouse was empty and the tables had been laid out and dressed for a morning wedding.
“Looks like the wedding’s off,” said Marius.
Brian looked down the length of shimmering glass. “How are we going to get in?” But before he could answer his own question Marius threw an ornate earn full of flowers through the pane, shattering the perfection in front of them.
Brian narrowly dodged the shards as they fell. “Jesus for fucks sake watch out.”
Marius didn’t say anything and walked inside. Immediately taking a tall bottle of sparkling water from the centre of one of the tables and drinking it down in one. Brian did the same and put two smaller bottles in his jacket pockets. Marius walked through to the kitchens, grabbing a bottle of whiskey from the bar as he passed and taking a large drink. Brian followed to find him opening fridges and storage cupboards.
Marius threw a tray of hors d'oeuvres onto the stainless steel counter. “Devilled egg?”
Brian ate until he felt sick and they both eventually slumped down, facing each other across the galley. Marius took another sip of whiskey and handed the bottle to Brian, who noticed that it was now a quarter empty. He drank a few gulps, put the bottle down and felt his eyes growing heavy.