by Martin Dukes
“In your dreams,” scoffed Alex. “It’s not my fault, all this… er…” his voice tailed off. “Stuff,” he finished lamely.
“Yeah, well. We’re going to blame you anyway,” sniffed Henry. “It’s a tough old world. Come on, let’s go and find something to eat. There’s got to be some kind of shop round here.”
“Why has there?” asked Kelly reasonably enough, but she followed him nevertheless, and after a moment Alex went too, brushing sand and dried mud painfully from his sore arms.
It was cooler now and the sun was settling below the treeline to the west. They made their way east along the beaten track, which here approached quite close to the verge of the pool. Flocks of distant flamingos could be made out on the far shore, flashes of brilliant pink sparking as the low sunlight picked out fluttering wings. There were numerous signs that people had once lived here – shattered single storied buildings with beaten down doors and charred rafters, fallen crazily amongst rampant weeds. There was no sign of a main street, or of factories or shops, or any of the usual indications of civilised life. Broken fences and low walls indicated paddocks where animals might once have been kept. There was something decidedly eerie about the place, an impression reinforced when Henry emerged wide-eyed from a low barn-like structure he had been exploring.
“Whoa!” he said, his voice somewhat unsteady. “You might want to take a look at this.”
Glancing at each other, Kelly and Alex followed him, ducking to pass under the low threshold. There was no roof, only a few blackened rafters, but deep shadows were gathering within and it took a few moments for their eyes to adjust.
With a shrill shriek, Kelly clapped a hand over her mouth and ran outside. It required a significant exertion of self-control on Alex’s part to avoid doing likewise.
A human skeleton gleamed pale within the darkness beneath a broken table. There was a skull, with its jawbone missing and a mess of bones, scattered by animals, Alex supposed. He recognised most of the spine, a pelvis, a couple of femurs.
“Something seriously bad’s happened here,” said Henry grimly. “This whole place gives me the creeps.”
They went outside to where Kelly was morosely kicking at a fallen log.
“It looks like there was a big fire and some folks got caught inside,” proffered Alex.
“I’m thinking foul play,” said Henry. “I’m thinking people have been through here burning and murdering. What if it’s some kind of African civil war we’re in the middle of? I saw something on telly…”
“There’s no electricity,” said Alex, thinking hard. “None of the houses have got sockets or running water, or anything like that. I never saw anywhere so primitive.”
“And there’s no proper toilets either,” said Kelly, practically. “Just holes in the ground. What kind of dump is this? I never saw a proper dead person’s skeleton before; leastwise, outside of the Biology lab. They’ve got a little miniature one in there. Plastic though. Not real, not like that one.” She sniffed, suddenly aware that Alex and Henry were regarding her critically. “Yeugh! I’m rambling, aren’t I? Thanks for that, Henry.”
“It’ll be dark soon,” said Alex, glancing at the ruddy horizon beyond the trees and ruined buildings. “I guess we should find somewhere to settle down.”
“Somewhere well away from that,” said Kelly with a shudder.
As darkness fell, and this with bewildering rapidity, the temperature fell with it. The searing heat of day was replaced with a penetrating chill. They took refuge within a cottage that still had most of its roof intact, at least over one room, and huddled in a corner, leaning against each other for warmth. The moon rose, shining through a few holes in the thatch of the roof and the tiny irregular slits that passed for windows.
“We have got to get something to eat, or I swear I’m going to gnaw my arm off,” muttered Kelly, nestling closer into Alex, the soft weight of her head pressing agreeably on his shoulder and neck. He stroked away a strand of her hair that was tickling his nose. The weight of Henry’s knee was crushing his thigh. He squirmed to make himself comfortable, provoking a groan from Henry, who had somehow managed to get himself off to sleep.
“We’ll find something tomorrow,” he said, with a confidence he did not feel. “There must be something we can eat round here.”
The oasis appeared to be bounded on all sides by desert, the extent of which could only be guessed. It would more than likely amount to suicide to head off along the trail that led away east or west into territories that might be entirely without water. They had found a few bowls and bottles that might be used to carry a little, but hardly enough to see them through a wilderness that might reach away for scores of miles. And something else was troubling Alex, quite apart from the aching hunger in his belly. There was absolutely nothing here to hint at any familiarity with the civilisation of the last century or so. There were no discarded Coca-Cola bottles, no labelled bottles of any kind, no corrugated iron, no printed materials, nothing at all made of plastic. Simple remoteness was insufficient explanation. Alex preferred not to dwell on the likeliest explanation for this situation.
A breath of night wind brought with it a whiff of mould mixed in with the fragrance of the exotic blooms around the pool. Amongst the trees down there a bird of some kind got on with an irritating, repetitive whirring noise.
“It gives me the creeps, does that,” said Kelly, as though reading his mind.
“Yeah,” said Alex, thoughts moving on to Kelly herself.
“How do you feel about….?” He found himself unable to complete the question. “About…?”
“About Paulo, do you mean?” she asked, looking up at him. A little reflected gleam of moonlight sparked in the wetness of her eyes, a wetness that grew as he watched. A long moment passed during which she swallowed hard and looked away.
“I saw him dead,” she said haltingly. “Through the windscreen. All bloody it was… All bloody.” She brought a hand up suddenly to her mouth.
“I saw it too,” he said, reaching for her other hand and giving it a squeeze.
“I knew it was important to me,” she said. “I knew it mattered more than it should have done. I mean, alright, I was bound to be shook up after nearly being knocked down. But it was more than that. I felt like I’d been… stabbed in the heart. I didn’t know him but I did know him, if you get what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Alex softly, stroking her hair.
“Paulo died to save my life,” she said with a discernible catch in her voice. “Didn’t he?”
“I know, I know,” he said soothingly, thinking nevertheless that Paulo’s fate was a direct consequence of his own stupidity, even if he had faced up to his responsibilities in the end.
“You hated him, didn’t you?” she said, her body tensing somewhat, twitching her hand away from his.
“He wasn’t my absolute favourite human being,” conceded Alex, thinking there was no point in denying it.
“Yes, well you didn’t know him,” countered Kelly. “Not like I did.”
“No,” said Alex slowly. “Perhaps I didn’t.”
This seemed to mollify her. With a wistful sigh she settled into his arms again.
“Missed you,” he said.
“Missed you, too.”
They slept.
An appalling cacophony of bird, insect and possibly amphibian origin signalled the coming of dawn. Stretching aching limbs and rubbing gritty eyes they emerged blinking to face the new day, stomachs knotted and cramped with hunger. A visit to the pool took care of thirst, but breakfast remained no more than an aspiration. Alex told himself that the human body could survive for weeks and weeks without food, providing it got water, but the prospect of wasting away gradually was not one he cared to dwell on.
“You’ve got to be able to eat some of this stuff,” said Henry, speculatively fingering some of the lush vegetation by the shallows.
“Yes, but which ones?” asked Alex. “It could be
poisonous for all we know.”
“Alex’s right,” said Kelly, sitting on a fallen log to pull her boots back on.
“Well, we’ve got to do something,” said Henry. “I mean, we’ve tried fishing and that didn’t work out.”
Alex considered their earlier episode of floundering about knee deep in water as they tried to chase some kind of flatfish into a bowl. Chasing ducks had been a dead loss, too. A frantic dash through the reed beds had resulted in a covey of startled fowl taking refuge in flight and Alex falling flat on his face in the mud; mud from which they were able to extricate him only with some difficulty.
“What about insects?” suggested Henry desperately. “You know, like on telly.”
“If you think I’m going to start munching bugs,” scoffed Kelly, “you’ve got to be joking.”
“I am today,” said Henry, wagging a finger. “Tomorrow may be a different story.”
Just then, a distinctive sound carried through the trees and the undergrowth, the whinnying of horses. The three of them exchanged wondering glances.
“Horse,” said Alex.
“Come on! Where there’re horses, there’re people!” Henry was already away, lurching through a stand of dwarfish thorn trees, swiping branches aside as he ran.
The sound was from the track, where it wound amongst the ruined dwellings. Kelly and Alex emerged with Henry into the path of a group of African-looking men on horses. It was hard to say who was most surprised.
Horses reared and snorted. A black rider, swathed in black cloth, shouted unintelligibly, fighting to control his mount. More came trotting up. There were shouts, glints of steel and Alex found himself with a glittering spear point poised worryingly close to his throat. The man brandishing it regarded him stonily from high in his saddle, controlling his jittery mount with his knees. Other riders had Kelly and Henry covered likewise. One of the riders wore chainmail, another a spiked steel helmet crammed on top of a bulky black turban. A third carried an ornate, long-barrelled rifle of the sort Alex had only seen in museums.
“Whoa!” said Henry, and then, out of the side of his mouth, “I’m guessing this isn’t some kind of historical re-enactment society.”
One of the riders had dismounted and was giving them a rough pat down, presumably in search of weapons.
“Hey!” said Kelly resentfully, slapping a questing hand away.
Another rider had turned and spurred his horse back along the trail. Questions were being shouted at them, enquiries that could only be dealt with by waving their arms and making dumb shows of incomprehension. The fellow in the spiky helmet jumped down from his horse and seized Henry by the throat, thrusting him back against the fibrous trunk of a palm. He was barking questions at Henry, teeth bared in his dark face, eyes bulging alarmingly.
“What’s he on about?” squealed Henry, his face a mask of anguish.
“How should I know?” demanded Alex, moving towards Henry but halting with the cool pressure of steel against his throat. He backed off. The spear point withdrew, its owner narrowing his eyes meaningfully. Alex suddenly remembered the small earpieces that Malcolm had pressed into his hand before their parting. Groping in his pockets he found the familiar small, hard shapes and crammed one into each ear. There was a curious sensation of squirming, and during the course of a few seconds the voices of their captors became intelligible.
“It’s no good,” the man with the gun was shouting at spiky head. “They clearly don’t understand you. Can’t you tell they’re foreigners?”
“Yes, but what the hell are they doing here?” demanded Spiky, glancing over his shoulder and at the same time pushing Henry hard back against the tree. Henry rebounded and flopped to the floor, panting. There were tears rimming in his eyes, but somehow he held it together. He looked helplessly at Alex, who shrugged. What could he do? His mind was racing, his heart pounding in his throat.
“Where’s Selim?” demanded Alex’s captor.
“Gone back for the Boss,” said Rifle. “He’ll be back in a minute.”
“I never saw white people before,” said a fourth man, the one who was now looking in vain for edged weapons on Alex’s person. He clearly didn’t understand about pockets, being a robe wearer himself, because he left Alex’s unsearched.
Spiky spat at the ground close to where Henry was sitting resentfully and unsheathed a large curved knife.
“Nor me,” he said, laughing nastily. “Let’s see if they’ve got red blood like the rest of us. I reckon they’re not as ignorant as they’re making out.”
“Are you crazy?” said Rifle with a harsh laugh. “Omar’s going to want to see this little lot intact.”
“Alex!” yelped Kelly, flinching and screwing up her eyes as Spiky turned his attention to her, waving his knife under her ear.
“Hey! Leave her alone!” cried Alex, suddenly finding his voice. “What’s your problem?”
There was a brief silence during which all eyes swivelled to focus on Alex, who wondered whether he had adopted a tone appropriate to the circumstances. The sound of approaching hoof beats moved things on, as three further riders pulled up on the edge of the group. One of them, an especially large chap, was mounted on a white horse that looked like it might be a cut above the average. Certainly it was rearing a bit, whinnying and rolling its eyes in an ostentatious kind of way. The rider was equally impressive, a face as black as night peering from blood-red robes. A kind of chest-mounted bandolier arrangement supported a couple of holstered pistols and there was a huge curved scimitar swinging at his side. This had to be the Boss.
“What’s going on?” he barked in a voice like thunder. “Who are these milkskins?”
“I can answer that,” said Alex, raising a finger, before Spiky could more than open his mouth.
The man swept a leg easily over his horse’s saddle bow and jumped down with cat-like grace to stand before Alex. Rifle moved in to take the reins. The Boss was even bigger than he had looked on his horse. Alex found himself looking up past wide flaring nostrils to eyes that didn’t look like they had a lot of laughter in them.
“You better had,” he said, “because I’ve got a very suspicious mind. Some people might say you were spies.”
“Well they’d be wrong,” said Alex, trying to sound confident and at ease, holding the big man’s gaze despite a strong inclination to back off and look away. “We’re just travellers. We got lost out in the desert and we pitched up here. We have no idea where we are,” he added. “And we’re starving hungry.”
“Spies, Excellency,” said Spiky with a grunt. “They would say that, wouldn’t they?” He indicated Alex with his knife. “Want me to sharpen him up a bit? I bet he’s got a lot more to say.”
“What kind of idiot would use milkskins as spies?” scoffed Rifle. “An idiot like you, perhaps. They really blend in, don’t they? Never spot ‘em in a crowd, would you? Hah!”
This good sense caused a few guffaws at Spiky’s expense. He scowled nastily as the Boss grunted for him to sheath his blade.
The sound of more horses broke into this stimulating discussion, that and a curious shuffling and clinking. There were shouts and curses too, with the occasional crack of a whip. A thrill of horror traversed Alex’s scalp as a dusty column of prisoners hove into view. There must have been at least a hundred of them, chained together in two long files, hands bound behind them. A dozen or so men on horses were urging them onwards with oaths and imprecations, occasional laying on the lash to encourage the reluctant.
“Carry on,” called the Boss to one of the better dressed horsemen. “We’ll catch you up presently.”
The prisoners were a mixture of Arab and African racial types but united in the grim despondency of their features. Some wept, some cursed, staggering onward as the dust swirled around them. It struck Alex and Kelly at the same time.
“Slaves,” she gasped. “They’re slaves, Alex.”
The likelihood of being added to the slavers’ stock seemed suddenly a very rea
l one.
“We come from the far North,” tried Alex, improvising desperately. “We are explorers from England. Our queen has commanded us to seek out new friends in these lands. She has really big farms, see?” he said, mind working furiously. “Big estates, like, and there are never enough slaves to work them, see? Yes, that’s right. We’re here on a slave buying mission, but we got lost.” He glanced around at Kelly and Henry. Kelly frowned, baffled by Alex’s sudden apparent ability to speak Arabic. The expression in Henry’s eyes said, “I’ve no idea what you’re saying, mate, but he’s never going to buy it.”
“Is that right?” asked the Boss with a suddenly sly grin. “You don’t look like any kind of embassy to me. Your queen lacks adults for such a mission, does she? No, I’ll tell you what you look like to me.” He leant suddenly forward so that the stench of his breath was in Alex’s face. “You look like slaves,” he roared, this with such violence that with a little muscular twitch in his nether reasons, Alex came close to wetting himself. “And you know what? You are slaves. Consider yourselves lucky I don’t think you’re spies.”
He turned to Rifle. “Bind them and put them over your saddle bows for now. Milkskins should fetch a pretty penny at the stump in Kimba. Quite a novelty, eh lads?”
The Boss was evidently accustomed to being thought a witty fellow. Certainly his underlings laughed ostentatiously as they set about trussing up the unfortunate travellers. Alex first had his legs kicked out from under him and was then thrown on his face in the dust whilst his wrists were tightly bound behind him.
“What’s goin’ on? Get off me! Alexxxxx!” cried Henry as the same treatment was applied to him. “I blame you for this.”
Kelly was weeping quietly but said nothing as she was picked up by a couple of slavers and draped unceremoniously in front of a horse’s saddle like a sack. The leering rider gave her rear a hearty slap for good measure, prompting an impressive stream of curses. Alex was able to spare his friends only a fragment of his attention, occupied as he was with being slung likewise, the breath knocked out of him, his face dangling against the stiff hairs of the horse’s sweating flank. Already the blood was rushing to his head. The saddle bow was pressing painfully into his side.