by Jack Ziebell
A few hours must have passed because Brian could feel the sun burning down on him through the kitchen skylight – midday he guessed. Marius was sleeping opposite him; damn he’d been awake for over twenty-four hours before he finally gave in. ‘Let him sleep,’ he thought. He got up and ate a couple of miniature puff-pastries filled with prawn cocktail and then went to light the gas stove. The ignition didn’t work but there was a box of matches next to a set of decorative candles and he managed to get it going. At least something still worked. He looked around and found a large bag of ground coffee, which he poured into a saucepan along with several bottles of water. Even the smell of coffee helped calm his nerves, one small step back to normality. He decanted the coffee through a filter paper into a water jug and grabbed two cups.
“Marius,” he said, proudly holding out a steaming cup, “Marius wake up.”
Marius woke with a start and Brian had to jerk the cup back to stop him knocking it over, burning the hand he was holding it in, making him yelp.
His companion looked sleepy and confused. “What the… ?”
“I made coffee.”
Marius took the cup. “Coffee? Oh, right, thanks.”
Brian sat down again on the floor. It reminded him of waking up in the kitchen at a stranger’s house after staying too late at a party; wanting to leave as soon as possible, but not quite finding the motivation. “What the hell are we going to do? We can’t just keep heading downstream - that will take us all the way to San Francisco, and fuck knows what that’s like by now.”
“I know.” Marius drank his coffee and poured another one from the jug, “Got any bright ideas?”
“There’s Redding airport?”
“The airport?” Marius looked confused. “Do you think any of those planes are going to fly, if every car we passed was dead? Also I don’t know how to fly a plane, do you Brian?”
“No, but I guess we should try all the cars outside at least to make sure.”
“Agreed.”
They walked out to the clubhouse parking lot. There were only two cars; a pickup and a Mercedes M-Class. Both had Arden Country Club written on the number plates but both were locked. “Wait here,” said Marius, who then disappeared inside the clubhouse for a few minutes. He came back with several car keys, “These were in the office, but looks like the Mercedes has an electronic key.” He pointed the black plastic key at the car, pressed it several times but nothing happened. Another key was slightly dirty and had a tag that said ‘Arden Truck’ on it.
“Must have been for ground keeping,” said Marius, as he tried the key in the pickup. The door opened and he tried the ignition; the key fit and turned but nothing happened. He tried several times but the engine was dead. Marius popped the hood of the car and they both looked underneath. There again was the distinct smell of electrical burning, melted wires and metal.
Brian cradled his forehead in his hands. “Shit. We are fucked. We’ll never make it to Colorado without a car - we’re not even out of Redding.”
Marius sat on the bonnet of the Mercedes. “Hmmm, I have two ideas. We could follow the river down towards Sacramento and San Francisco and hope we find a shipyard. There might be a chance we can find a car in a shipping container that was protected from the surge.”
“Marius, are you insane? The chances of us making it down there, finding the one in a million batch of shipping containers that have the new Toyota in it, without the dockyards electronic manifest, and then making it back out of there are fucking crazy!”
“Please calm down. I have another idea, but it is also a long shot. We have to go back to the hospital.”
Brain locked at him with disbelief. “The hospital? What? No. Why? We can’t go back, we barely made it out of there.”
“My bike.”
“What about your bike, it’s going to be fried like everything else, forget your fucking bike.”
“Brian, I might be able to fix it.”
“Fix it? How?”
“Well I’m pretty good with old bikes, the electrics are pretty simple and I think I can get it running - if I can get it to the bike shop out by the Keswick Dam.”
“Keswick? Keswick on the other side of town Keswick? Really? There must be another way. We can’t go back there Marius, you saw those people?”
“We have to. And even then it’s a long shot. Somehow we have to get the bike and get it to the shop. We parked far enough away from any buildings so it should still be in one piece.”
“I can’t fucking believe this. Couldn’t you have thought of this earlier?”
“Sorry Brian, I was too busy running for my fucking life carrying a screaming fucking child, so sorry I didn’t fucking think of it before.”
“We could try more cars? I mean, maybe there’s one that’s OK?”
“You know that’s not true, look you can go around trying every car you find if you want. From what I’ve seen, you are wasting your time.”
“What about the fire?”
“We wait for it to burn out, or at least die down enough for us to get in there and get out without suffocating.”
“And the people?”
“They’re not exactly quick Brian, and we can go in at night, which should give us some cover.”
Brian thought about it. He didn’t like the idea but he couldn’t think of a better one. If Marius said he could get the bike started, he believed at least that much.
“OK,” he said, “we’ll do it, but we should stay here until things calm down.”
“Agreed,” said Marius, who was watching the grey plumes in the distance, “With any luck the smoke will drive them away from the town. Let’s hope it doesn’t drive too many of them this way.”
Chapter 22
The military checkpoint faded into the distance as they drove on.
Asefa gave Tim a disapproving look. “Why did you bring that gun Tim? You’ll get us both killed.”
Tim kept his eyes on the road. “I have a feeling we may need it.”
His mind was still trying to process all that had happened; what was still happening. What could have caused all this? He tried to stop his thoughts and told himself to accept that things really were as they were, no matter how strange, and that he would have to deal with it. The sun had set behind the mountains and the road was dark except for the beam of the headlights. Every few miles they came across another car. Some were crashed into the side of the hill on their left; others, less fortunate, had swerved the other way off the edge of the road and into the ravine on their right. They approached a white-SUV, leaning half into the ditch, its front end crumpled against a tree. Inside the car, he saw, to his horror, the bloody face of a middle-aged white woman at the driver’s window. She was still strapped in and she stared into his eyes as they passed, her mouth gaping open, her bloody hand smearing the window. Neither of them acknowledged her or suggested stopping.
After two more hours on the winding road they pulled over to change drivers, in what seemed like an isolated spot, surrounded by trees and bushes.
“Listen to that,” said Asefa.
Tim listened, it sounded like the animals had it too. The normal sounds of the countryside had been amplified and distorted; the monkeys howled strangely and the bird song was different, somehow more random. Together, in the darkness, it became terrifying.
Asefa stared into the undergrowth. “I do not like this, let us go.”
Tim climbed into the driver’s seat and they were underway again. The Niva’s engine purred with a low reassuring growl. He wanted to drive faster but forced himself to stay at a steady pace, knowing there could be another obstacle around the next bend. Towns were the worst. There were many small towns and villages on the road to Addis Ababa, the kind of places he used to pull over and have a machiatto to break up the drive to Dire Dawa. Now these same towns had been turned into an almost impassable obstacle course. Minivans lay upturned in the street, donkeys wandered aimlessly and people were lying or crawling everywhere he lo
oked. He tried his best to avoid the people but he was not always successful; some of them were just kids. After the first town, he tried to drive around the next one, through the fields, but it had taken them half an hour and they had narrowly missed an irrigation ditch. After that he decided that the road, with its human debris, was the best option.
Four hours later, they crested the last hill and Addis Ababa came into view. The sky above the city flickered orange and smoke obscured the stars that should have been visible behind the mountains on the horizon.
“Do you want to go closer?” he asked Asefa.
“No.” Asefa shook his head and turned away from the burning city. “We will go to Juba, or we will die trying.”
Asefa got behind the wheel and turned the car around. If Addis was like this, what would Juba be like? He didn’t want to think about it.
They drove on, hour after hour, taking it in turns to try and sleep in the passenger seat, but neither being successful. The poorly paved road, like so many things in the country, was in need of repair. Every time the Niva stopped suddenly to avoid another car or pothole, Tim would imagine they were crashing and would jolt awake. They did their best to drive around the outskirts of the largest towns; Bedele and Gori but had to drive through many smaller ones. It was the same everywhere, death and madness.
As dawn broke, they arrived at the edge of Gambella, the last big town on the map. The darkness had retreated but was replaced by slates of grey; the rainy season, long overdue, was beginning and large drops began to splash on the windscreen. They drove carefully down the road that led into to the city and already water was running down the drainage gullies, where the tarmac met the muddy slopes. In the city, dirt flowed from the unmade side streets onto the main route through town; the absence of curbstones made it hard to tell where the blacktop ended and the sidewalk of sodden earth and downtrodden trash began. Pools formed in the potholes where sodden bodies splashed aimlessly.
“Pull over,” said Asefa.
“What here?” Why did he want to stop in such a place? He looked around at the people lying and crawling in the street.
“There,” said Asefa, as they approached an imposing grey concrete structure, which stood out amongst the squat shop fronts, “The Gambella Police Commission.”
Tim stopped the car. “Asefa, hold on a second.” But Asefa had jumped out and run into the police station.
Tim locked both the car doors and peered through the windows at the chaos surrounding him. A woman was lying on her front, in the street ten feet from the car. She was rocking from side to side and through the rain and muck he could just make out her skin; grazed, bloody and grit soaked. The woman locked eyes with him and he looked back at the steering wheel. A bang at the rear window made him jump. He could hear scratching on the tailgate but looking in the rear-view mirror could see nothing. He turned over his shoulder to get a better look, but as he did so the tortured face of a young man appeared at the rear window, grasping for the moving rear windscreen wiper. The man was pulling himself up, using the rungs on the back of the car they used for accessing the roof. The man slipped down out of sight but a few moments later reappeared, again pulling himself slowly up the rungs. The man was too transfixed by his task and the screeching rubber arm to pay attention to the car’s occupant. After several painful tries, the screeching of the wiper stopped; the man was finally upright, leaning against the rear window, with his cheek pressed against the glass, the black rod of the wiper bent cruelly in his right hand. A slap against the driver’s door made Tim spin around, to see the raw face of the woman who had been watching him from the road. She was half kneeling at the car door, one hand hanging from the wing mirror, the other somewhere near the door handle. She smashed her forehead on the bottom of his window, leaving a bloody imprint and fell backwards, writhing into the road, reminding him of the snake he had seen outside Dire Dawa.
He turned to see Asefa at the passenger door. “Open it Tim!”
His hand was shaking as he tried to pull up the lock. “Let go of the handle.”
The door opened and Asefa jumped in, sweating and panting. “Go!”
Tim put the car into gear and drove away, looking in his mirror to see the man who had been at the back of the car topple over, still clutching the wiper, the stump of which now waved impotently behind the glass. He looked at Asefa, who was bandaging his hand with a white police shirt. Blood seeped through the cotton.
Tim felt both angry and concerned. “What happened? Where the hell did you go?”
“I went into the police station, to see if I could find a radio or anything else that might help us. I thought we are close to the Sudanese border, maybe we could get a signal. Nothing. Same as before. But I got these.” He motioned to a police shotgun resting between his legs and the belt of shells slung over his lap. He had clearly had a change of heart about weaponry.
“What happened to your hand?”
“I was in the radio room, I didn’t see the operator behind the desk. He got me.”
“Got you?”
“He bit me Timmy, like a dog! I had to beat him with my fist just to get him loose.”
“Is it bad?”
“It hurts but it’s not that bad, I just don’t want no infection out here. You should have seen him Tim, he came at me like a scared animal, but when I beat him he cowered back like, like a spider into a hole.”
“Look in the glove box,” said Tim.
Asefa opened the glove box and took out an ancient looking first aid kit in a red tin. The instructions, printed on yellowing paper, were in Russian. He took out a small bottle of iodine and a bandage, which he applied to the bite. “Arghh, damn that stings like a bitch,” he said as the iodine sank into the wound.
In his mind Tim could still see the woman’s face at his window, tribal scarification barely visible through her wounds. “That was a crazy risk. Don’t leave me on my own like that again.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t plan to.”
“Did you see the guy on the back of the car?” He looked at Asefa’s hand.
“No, and watch the road.”
Tim was picking his way slowly through the multitude of debris, keeping the car in a low gear. Many of the buildings were still smouldering but the worst of the fires had died out with the rain, which was becoming torrential. The front windscreen wipers were struggling to move the wall of water from his field of vision, he could barely see but he didn’t want to stop. Suddenly a bump brought the car to a halt. They squinted through the windscreen to try and ascertain the obstacle blocking their path. To his unease he could feel the car moving, gently but enough that it could be discerned. Each time the wiper passed a fraction more of the picture became clear. A host of people swarmed around something upturned in a narrow part of the street, their bodies pressed against the front of the car and filling the gap in front of them. Tim could make out the wheels of a cart and just visible above the heads of the crouched figures in front of him were the skinless hooves of several dead cattle.
Asefa starred at the heaving mass. “A butchers cart.”
They were feeding; overcome with hunger their lust for meat made them oblivious to the car. No doubt one or two were already half crushed under their wheels.
Tim began to put the car into reverse.
“No,” said Asefa, “We must go through. There,” he pointed, “On the left.”
Through the rain Tim could see that part of the road was clear of the cart but slithering with filth-soaked people scrambling over each other to reach the foul cargo. Had it come to this so quickly? He had surely hit people already on their journey, but accidentally and he had told himself he couldn’t be sure; that they were just scraped; that they were probably OK. This was different. He looked at the creatures in front of him and tried not to think of them as human. They may have lost their humanity but they were still people, perhaps people that might get better. How would they explain if things got better? Accidents? He doubted from what he had seen so
far, that these people, the fallen people, would be able to say much about what had happened to them if they recovered. But the injured white woman in the car and the raw-faced woman on the road, they had looked at him, not through him – at him? Would they identify him later, at some post-End Times tribunal? No. That would be the least of their concerns when they came to. “Are you sure there is no other way around this, we could go back, find another way?”
“There is no other way Tim, I used to work here. Just beyond there is the bridge, we need to cross it if we are to get to the other side of the river.”
Tim leant on the horn. Some of the people flinched, others turned to momentarily look at the humming lump of metal, before returning to their feast. He tried again but this time it got less reaction.
From the backseat he took the rifle he had taken from the guard booth at the checkpoint.
“Be careful!” shouted Asefa, when the muzzle scrapped close to his cheek as Tim lifted it over the seat, “You do not know how to use that.”
“Show me.”
Asefa took the gun from him, removed the clip then reattached it. “Well it is loaded. Do not wave it at me again. Here, like this. You must take off the safety,” he flicked down a metal leaver on the side of the rifle, “Then pull back the handle – that puts a bullet into the chamber.” Asefa cocked the gun. “Now it is very dangerous; all you must do is pull the trigger.”
Tim took the gun back and got out of the car into the rain.
Asefa got out the other side. “Let me do this.”
“Just scare them.”
Asefa fired the shotgun in the air. The host shuddered and stopped eating, but only for a second. Tim pointed his own gun at the ground and fired. The recoil kicked the gun upwards, nearly hitting him in the face. Still nothing. He ran forward and grabbed a man from behind to pull him out of the way, but slipped in the mud and fell. The man lashed out at him catching him across the face as he fell and giving him quite a jolt, but the man did not follow through with his attack and returned to his meal. Tim got back to his feet and looked at the throng of slippery bodies. There was no way he could move them and he wasn’t going to shoot them, so he turned to Asefa. “Get back in the car.”