The Raft: A Novel

by Fred Strydom

  I lifted my foot and rested it on another knobby protrusion, and pushed up to the next branch, and the next. I looked down over my shoulder. Gideon was climbing up behind me, one careful branch at a time.

  We were far from the ground, and for an instant my fear of heights took hold of me, challenging my determination. I paused and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and expelled it gently. I counted backwards from ten, filtering away my doubt, and then I opened my eyes and continued up, promising myself I would not look down. It was all behind me, and I would not fall back. Not this time.

  Finally, I was at the top.

  I stopped and watched as Gideon made his way to where I was crouching: near the mouth of the entrance into the high side of the vessel. I inched along the large branch that bridged the gap to the entrance and slid onto its iron grate. The wind lashed across us, one cold wave after the other. Gideon followed closely behind me.

  We walked along the clanging iron grate until we reached a black wall. In the centre of the wall was a door standing slightly ajar, a faint glimmer of light shining through the gap. I reached for the handle and pulled it slowly open.

  A room. A familiar room.

  There was a grey box, rumbling a familiar sound, innumerable white wires extending to a chair in the centre of the room. The chair was turned away from us, but I could make out the shape of someone sitting in it, white wires attached to a shadowy head. Beyond the chair was a long empty table, hidden in the shadows.

  I walked forward slowly, careful not to alarm the motionless figure in the chair.

  “Andy,” I said softly. I took another step forward. No response. I turned to inspect the grey box that groaned on the side of the room. It was similar to the one we’d had on the beach—the mind reader that had drained us of our thoughts. I ran my hand over the box and saw a number of buttons: Start. Cancel. a4. a3. a2. Multiple copies.

  I lifted the thin plastic lid that covered the top of the box. Sheets of paper sat in a tray to the side. I grabbed a sheet and read: fx443—XEROX PRINT TEST (0076). fx443—XEROX PRINT TEST (0077). fx443—XEROX PRINT TEST (0078).

  I dropped the pages and edged towards the chair, then circled until I was facing the person. Light brown hair. Darkly tanned skin. One missing red shoe.

  It was him. Andy. My son. My boy. My boy.

  I slid hurriedly down on my knees in front of him and laid my hand on his thin, cold hands. He looked through me, gazing into nothingness.

  I took him by the shoulders and shook him gently.

  Nothing.

  I stroked his face, tapped him on the cheeks. “Andy? Wake up, big guy. Jesus, what did they do to you?”

  Sluggishly and without blinking, Andy turned his head to face me.

  “That’s right,” I said. “That’s right, kiddo. It’s me. Your father. Blink. Blink your eyes.”

  Andy did as I told him. He blinked once, mechanically, and paused before blinking once more.

  “It’s me,” I said reassuringly. “It’s me. I’m here. I’ve come to get you.”

  Gideon approached the chair and Andy turned his gaze on him, studied him. His eyes widened. He would not turn back to me, no matter how much I coaxed him, no matter how tightly I held his hand.

  “Dad?” Andy murmured.

  Gideon said nothing. He did not move.

  Andy began to breathe deeply, emotion finally welling up within.

  I didn’t understand.

  Andy grabbed the wires attached to his head and plucked them from their plugs. His eyes did not stray from the tall man with the long dreadlocks—the friend who had come all the way with me. The friend I had encountered in the abandoned town—an exceedingly improbable coincidence—I squashed the thought.

  I released Andy’s hand as the young man grabbed the side of the chair and got to his feet.

  “You came,” Andy said to Gideon. “You came for me.” He threw himself into Gideon, wrapping his arms around him, clutching him firmly.

  I rose from my knees.

  And as Gideon’s arms tentatively lifted from their sides and wrapped around Andy, I knew … I knew an excruciating truth. My heart clenched and I struggled to breathe.

  It can’t be. No, it cannot be …

  I waited for something to confirm that Andy was muddled, projecting on Gideon in some way, but the confirmation didn’t come.

  And Gideon—his expression was changing too. The look of bafflement was lessening, replaced by something else. Painful awareness. Relief. Joy.

  I edged back, away from the chair—away from Gideon and Andy, embracing each other as I had hoped to be embraced. I tried to accept what I was witnessing. The longer they held each other the more obvious it all became.

  The room began to spin. Everything blurred. My face was hot, my arms and legs were numb, and then there was a heaviness—an aching heaviness I had felt only once before, a long time ago, in another place, as another person.

  A wave of memories washed over me like the water in the room in my dream.

  Jack Turning

  Jack Turning did not appreciate his little meetings with the representatives from Huang Enterprises. They always sent some weedy, humourless man in a creaseless suit who never knew more than the information he had been sent to give. Jack had met one earlier that day, in an empty hotel conference room. The man was like all the others, dressed as if he was about to climb in his coffin, with a disposition just as cold and bloodless.

  Jack had joined The Borrowed Gun with a belief in the cause—a powerful statement to the world that third-world countries would no longer tolerate the rape of their land and their dignity—but somewhere along the way, things had become complicated. Suddenly it was a non-profit movement backed by the most profit-hungry corporation on the planet. But they needed the corporation. Its intelligence. The weaponry. The money. They were consorting with the devil to buy a ticket into heaven, he knew. But the pressure from his Borrowed Gun comrades was growing too. It needed to be done, he was told. The Borrowed Gun was now larger than ever, with factions arising in cities across the world. The price they had to pay to save the rest of the world would have to be their few souls.

  The meeting was short, thankfully. The representative from Huang Enterprises expressed his appreciation of The Borrowed Gun’s compliance. He’d heard about the raid on the Gausen Tower, and said it was an unfortunate business, but there was a saying about omelettes and broken eggs.

  Jack didn’t feel the same way. A protest outside the telecommunication tower had been planned, but things had gone wrong, badly wrong, and now people were dead. Too many bloody people. It was a tragic mess, and they were all accountable.

  The man in the suit nodded.

  A tragic, tragic mess, indeed.

  The plan had been to cut the power to the tower and raid the offices, not to murder people, but tensions had risen, violence had erupted, and more than sixty people had met the grisly end of their lives. Jack Turning hadn’t been there himself, but he’d heard about it from his friend Charles, and he’d seen it on the news. No. It had been a disaster, and now the nation would overturn every table and crash through every door to find anyone in the region associated with The Borrowed Gun.

  The man in the suit said not to worry.

  There was a place they could go to, to stay low.

  “There’s an island,” the man in the suit said, sitting in that conference room in front of Jack. “A floating island, perfect for your needs. And for ours.”

  Jack Turning sat in his parked car and explained the outcome of the meeting to Charles. Charles was a comrade, someone whom Jack could trust. Charles had been there when it happened. He’d tried his best to calm the crowd, temper the increasing agitation, but in the end he had been powerless to stop the horde. He’d even been injured in the process. A long red laceration ran from his forehead to his ear. His eye was blue and swollen. His clothes, ripped.

  Jack grabbed a box of cigarettes from his top pocket. The lighter shook in his hand as he
lit up. “The island’s a few weeks away by ship. It’s ours if we want it. He promised. You, me, your family, friends. We can take it. Make a new home for ourselves.”

  Charles sighed and closed his eyes. It had been a long day. A long and terrible day.

  “Why? Why would Huang give us an island?”

  Jack dragged on his cigarette. “It’s owned by a former Huang employee. The guy’s a geneticist gone rogue. Had the island built. Stole equipment for himself and is now sailing the ocean at Huang’s expense. He’s dangerous, they said, needs to be stopped. So that’s the deal. We take him out, and we take the island.”

  “I don’t know,” Charles said. “I don’t know.”

  “Look. Today was bad, and it’s not going to end. They’re going to hunt us down for what happened. We’re not safe here anymore. But we can be—you, Jane, Anubis. I guarantee that, Charles.”

  Charles stared out the window into the night. “How we gonna get there?” he asked.

  “A ship. There’ll be a ship in two weeks. That’s a lot of time to hang around here. We’ll have to lay low.”

  “Jesus. This wasn’t what we wanted, Jack.”

  “I know.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were supposed to help this world.”

  “And we will, we will. Once we’ve helped ourselves. We’ll make it what it’s meant to be, do what we have to do, but for now …” He didn’t finish his sentence. He’d said enough. Charles was hurting and exhausted. They were parked outside Charles’s house, a pretty little single-storey on a quiet street that offered no hint of the madness and mayhem that had occurred only a few hours earlier, less than twenty kilometres away.

  “I’m going in. I need to see Jane, and Anubis,” Charles said, and unlocked the door.

  “Okay, my friend,” Jack said, his hand hovering over the blue console beside his wheel.

  “Come in,” Charles said. “Come say hi to Jane.”

  “No, I—”

  “Come on, Jack. Have a coffee. You need to come down from this. You’ve got a long drive back.”

  “Okay, just a quick cup, then I need to get going.” The two men walked up to the house. Jane opened the door and Charles hobbled in. Concerned and confused, she led him to the bathroom to clean his cuts and find out what had happened.

  Jack stood in the living room by himself. He looked at the framed pictures on the walls. Charles, Jane and their young son Anubis.

  “What happened to my duh-duh-dad?”

  Jack turned and saw a boy standing in the doorway, wearing a yellow nightshirt and blue shorts. The boy was no older than eleven, perhaps twelve. Anubis. Jack once asked Charles why they’d named their son after a jackal-headed god and Charles said his wife simply liked the sound of it. She thought it was strong. Jack wasn’t so sure; he thought it was weird. A weird name and a weird kid, but then what did Jack know about kids?

  “Your dad was a hero today.”

  “Bed, Anubis. Now!” Jack smiled awkwardly as Jane rushed into the living room to usher her son out of the room. He sat on the sofa, grabbed a magazine from the coffee table, flipped through it, and then stood back up. He could still hear Charles and his wife in the bathroom. She was crying and he was saying, over and over again, “It’s okay, I’m okay.”

  Jack walked to the bathroom. The door was open and he could see Charles sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Jane was dabbing his cuts with cotton wool.

  “Charles,” Jack said. “I’m going. You get some rest.”

  “Okay, Jack.”

  “And remember what we talked about. Think about it. It’s the smart thing to do.”

  “Okay.”

  “Goodnight, Jane,” Jack said. “Everything will be all right.” She bit her lip and nodded.

  Jack closed the front door behind him and walked quickly down the path. The moment he was in his car he lit another cigarette. He inhaled deeply, filling the car with smoke. Then he flicked the butt out the window and started the engine. The car hummed to life and Jack pulled out of the quiet street. Before long he was on the highway that would take him back to Beaufort West where he’d been staying for a few weeks, in a tacky dive called the Blue Caribou.

  As he drove through the dark night the rain began to fall, lightly at first, and then harder, heavy sheets pouring down. Jack thought about his meeting with the Huang representative, the man’s thin white skin, his unflinching eyes. The way his hands sat on the table, as if he had imprisoned some small powerless creature under his cupped palms. The man was unnerving. Zombie-like. Jack smiled wryly. Fanciful, maybe, but the bottom line was he didn’t want to have anything further to do with them, much as they wanted him to maintain contact. The Gausen incident had gone too far. Too bloody far.

  He hoped the representative had meant what he’d said about the island. He didn’t trust the man, but in Jack’s experience they didn’t ever lie. Not outwardly at any rate. Outward lying was for amateurs. No, there was an island, and they could probably have it, as discussed, but Jack would be a fool if he didn’t think Huang Enterprises had reserved the best part of the deal for themselves, whatever that best part might be. He didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to go back to the motel and pour a tall glass of rum and coke, forget about it all—get a good night’s sleep. If he wasn’t awoken by a squad of police vans outside the motel in the morning, he’d figure the rest later.

  The rain kept coming.

  Jack passed wind-battered farm stalls and rolling open lands, all blurred shadows in the stormy night. He instructed the car to increase the temperature and demist the windows. At least another hour to go before he reached the motel that sat on the edge of the desert. It was nothing special—his room had only a bed and a bathroom—but at least nobody asked too many questions. The place was run by an elderly man who dozed behind the counter and his elderly wife who made sure there were always fresh flowers in the hallways. The only other tenants were businessmen and their mistresses and a few loud-mouthed families who reserved their holiday budget for booze and petrol. He rarely saw the same face twice. They came and went, and he sat by the piss-filled pool and observed them from behind his sunglasses over a warm beer. He’d been in Beaufort West a while already and people-watching was about as much entertainment as he could wring from the rags of that town.

  After a few minutes, the rain stopped. The road curved and walls of trees flashed past on either side of him. He was driving along a mountainside now, weaving around corners, dipping and rolling. In the distance, further below, he could see the bright lights of a recharge station.

  His receptanode rang.

  “Private call,” Jack said.

  “It’s me.” It was Charles.

  “How are you, my friend?”

  “Fine, fine. I’ll be okay. The family’s shaken up, but we’re all fine.”

  “What can I do for you?” Jack asked.

  They both knew it was best not to use names and specifics. There was no such thing as secure communication, not in this world.

  “I want more information on the proposal,” Charles said. “The vacation we were chatting about earlier.”

  “Okay. I can arrange that. You’ve spoken to your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s sure?”

  “Nobody’s sure,” Charles said, and no wonder. There wasn’t a sure thing left. “But for all intents and purposes, we’re in.”

  “Good. I’ll send details to your palm-plate. We’ll need to make moves. I’ll book with the travel agent.”

  Book with the travel agent: dance with the devil.

  He’d picked up speed as they were talking and the AV was swinging around the mountain, screeching on the corners. The night ran on ahead, barely illuminated by the glowing headlights of his car.

  “And Charles,” Jack said, then stopped. He’d used his friend’s name when he hadn’t intended to. “I mean—”

  The recharge station was just ahead of him now, bright and empty beside tw
o big rigs and one lone autovehicle.

  “Thanks again for everything. Goodnight. Sleep well. We’ll chat later,” Charles said.

  “Right. Absolutely—”

  Thump. A small sound.

  Jack shuddered as his car struck something in the road. His heart jumped, but then he realised he was still on the road. Whatever it had been had taken the worst of the collision. He looked in the rear-view mirror but saw nothing behind him. Nothing but darkness.

  “Everything okay?” Charles said.

  “I—” Jack looked in the mirror again. “I hit something.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Ja, ja, I’m fine. It’s just …” He turned his head back over his seat. The recharge station was disappearing behind him, the lights dwindling in the distance. “It must have been an animal or something.”

  “Did you stop?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “No,” Jack said, “I probably should, but it’s pretty far back already.”

  “Maybe it was a dog,” Charles said.

  “Ja, a dog. Maybe. Dammit.”

  “Well, take it easy on the road. Get home in one piece.”

  “I will. Thanks.” He looked back again. It was too late to see anything now. Charles was right. Probably a dog. A baboon, maybe. Or the branch of a tree. I should stop. Turn around, go back. But the car sped on and Jack could think of nothing better than getting back to the Blue Caribou and pouring himself a nice tall, stiff rum and coke.

  What a bloody day.

  The next morning he woke up in his drab room and looked out the window. No squad cars. No sirens. Nothing but dust and desert. He took a shower and ordered bacon and eggs from the elderly lady in the empty dining hall. As he sat and sipped his coffee, the morning news flashed up on the television against the far wall.

  “Volume,” Jack said. “Louder.”