Books of Blood (22 page)

     
‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’

      ‘I forgot to pack it.’

      They were beginning to climb now, as the track wound its way up into the hills. The forest closed over them, blotting out the sky, so a shifting patchwork of light and shadow scooted over the bonnet as they drove. There was birdsong suddenly, vacuous and optimistic, and a smell of new pine and undug earth. A fox crossed the track, up ahead, and watched a long moment as the car grumbled up towards it. Then, with the leisurely stride of a fearless prince, it sauntered away into the trees.

      Wherever they were going, Mick thought, this was better than the road they’d left. Soon maybe they’d stop, and walk a while, to find a promontory from which they could see the valley, even Novi Pazar, nestled behind them.

      The two men were still an hour’s drive from Popolac when the head of the contingent at last marched out of the Town Square and took up its position with the main body.

      This last exit left the city completely deserted. Not even the sick or the old were neglected on this day; no-one was to be denied the spectacle and the triumph of the contest. Every single citizen, however young or infirm, the blind, the crippled, babes in arms, pregnant women — all made their way up from their proud city to the stamping ground. It was the law that they should attend: but it needed no enforcing. No citizen of either city would have missed the chance to see that sight — to experience the thrill of that contest.

      The confrontation had to be total, city against city. This was the way it had always been.

      So the cities went up into the hills. By noon they were gathered, the citizens of Popolac and Podujevo, in the secret well of the hills, hidden from civilized eyes, to do ancient and ceremonial battle.

     
Tens of thousands of hearts beat faster. Tens of thousands of bodies stretched and strained and sweated as the twin cities took their positions. The shadows of the bodies darkened tracts of land the size of small towns; the weight of their feet trampled the grass to a green milk; their movement killed animals, crushed bushes and threw down trees. The earth literally reverberated with their passage, the hills echoing with the booming din of their steps.

      In the towering body of Podujevo, a few technical hitches were becoming apparent. A slight flaw in the knitting of the left flank had resulted in a weakness there: and there were consequent problems in the swivelling mechanism of the hips. It was stiffer than it should be, and the movements were not smooth. As a result there was considerable strain being put upon that region of the city. It was being dealt with bravely; after all, the contest was intended to press the contestants to their limits. But breaking point was closer than anyone would have dared to admit. The citizens were not as resilient as they had been in previous contests. A bad decade for crops had produced bodies less well-nourished, spines less supple, wills less resolute. The badly knitted flank might not have caused an accident in itself, but further weakened by the frailty of the competitors it set a scene for death on an unprecedented scale.

      They stopped the car.

      ‘Hear that?’

      Mick shook his head. His hearing hadn’t been good since he was an adolescent. Too many rock shows had blown his eardrums to hell.

      Judd got out of the car.

      The birds were quieter now. The noise he’d heard as they drove came again. It wasn’t simply a noise: it was

almost a motion in the earth, a roar that seemed seated in the substance of the hills.

      Thunder, was it?

      No, too rhythmical. It came again, through the soles of the feet —Boom.

      Mick heard it this time. He leaned out of the car window.

      ‘It’s up ahead somewhere. I hear it now.’ Judd nodded.

      Boom.

      The earth-thunder sounded again. ‘What the hell is it?’ said Mick. ‘Whatever it is, I want to see it —, Judd got back into the Volkswagen, smiling.

      ‘Sounds almost like guns,’ he said, starting the car. ‘Big guns.’

      Through his Russian-made binoculars Vaslav Jelovsek watched the starting-official raise his pistol. He saw the feather of white smoke rise from the barrel, and a second later heard the sound of the shot across the valley.

      The contest had begun.

      He looked up at twin towers of Popolac and Podujevo. Heads in the clouds — well almost. They practically stretched to touch the sky. It was an awesome sight, a breath-stopping, sleep-stabbing sight. Two cities swaying and writhing and preparing to take their first steps towards each other in this ritual battle.

      Of the two, Podujevo seemed the less stable. There was a slight hesitation as the city raised its left leg to begin its march. Nothing serious, just a little difficulty in co-ordinating hip and thigh muscles. A couple of steps and the city would find its rhythm; a couple more and its inhabitants would be moving as one creature, one perfect

giant set to match its grace and power against its mirror-image.

      The gunshot had sent flurries of birds up from the trees that banked the hidden valley. They rose up in celebration of the great contest, chattering their excitement as they swooped over the stamping-ground.

      ‘Did you hear a shot?’ asked Judd.

      Mick nodded.

      ‘Military exercises . . .?‘ Judd’s smile had broadened. He could see the headlines already — exclusive reports of secret manoeuvres in the depths of the Yugoslavian countryside. Russian tanks perhaps, tactical exercises being held out of the West’s prying sight. With luck, he would be the carrier of this news.

      Boom.

      Boom.

      There were birds in the air. The thunder was louder now.

      It did sound like guns.

      ‘It’s over the next ridge . . .‘ said Judd.

      ‘I don’t think we should go any further.’

      ‘I have to see.’

      ‘I don’t. We’re not supposed to be here.’

      ‘I don’t see any signs.’

      ‘They’ll cart us away; deport us - I don’t know - I just think -,

Boom.

      ‘I’ve got to see.’

      The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the screaming started.

      Podujevo was screaming: a death-cry. Someone buried in the weak flank had died of the strain, and had begun a chain of decay in the system. One man loosed his neighbour

and that neighbour loosed his, spreading a cancer of chaos through the body of the city. The coherence of the towering structure deteriorated with terrifying rapidity as the failure of one part of the anatomy put unendurable pressure on the other.

      The masterpiece that the good citizens of Podujevo had constructed of their own flesh and blood tottered and then

      —a dynamited skyscraper, it began to fall.

      The broken flank spewed citizens like a slashed artery spitting blood. Then, with a graceful sloth that made the agonies of the citizens all the more horrible, it bowed towards the earth, all its limbs dissembling as it fell.

      The huge head, that had brushed the clouds so recently, was flung back on its thick neck. Ten thousand mouths spoke a single scream for its vast mouth, a wordless, infinitely pitiable appeal to the sky. A howl of loss, a howl of anticipation, a howl of puzzlement. How, that scream demanded, could the day of days end like this, in a welter of falling bodies?

      ‘Did you hear that?’

      It was unmistakably human, though almost deafeningly loud. Judd’s stomach convulsed. He looked across at Mick, who was as white as a sheet.

      Judd stopped the car.

      ‘No,’ said Mick.

      ‘Listen — for Christ’s sake —, The din of dying moans, appeals and imprecations flooded the air. It was very close.

      ‘We’ve got to go on now,’ Mick implored.

      Judd shook his head. He was prepared for some military

spectacle — all the Russian army massed over the next hill

      —   but that noise in his ears was the noise of human flesh

      —   too human for words. It reminded him of his childhood

      imaginings of Hell; the endless, unspeakable torments his

mother had threatened him with if he failed to embrace Christ. It was a terror he’d forgotten for twenty years. But suddenly, here it was again, fresh-faced. Maybe the pit itself gaped just over the next horizon, with his mother standing at its lip, inviting him to taste its punishments.

      ‘If you won’t drive, I will.’

      Mick got out of the car and crossed in front of it, glancing up the track as he did so. There was a moment’s hesitation, no more than a moment’s, when his eyes flickered with disbelief, before he turned towards the windscreen, his face even paler than it had been previously and said:

      ‘Jesus Christ. . .‘ in a voice that was thick with suppressed nausea.

      His lover was still sitting behind the wheel, his head in his hands, trying to blot out memories.

      ‘Judd.. .‘

      Judd looked up, slowly. Mick was staring at him like a wildman, his face shining with a sudden, icy sweat. Judd looked past him. A few metres ahead the track had mysteriously darkened, as a tide edged towards the car, a thick, deep tide of blood. Judd’s reason twisted and turned to make any other sense of the sight than that inevitable conclusion. But there was no saner explanation. It was blood, in unendurable abundance, blood without end —And now, in the breeze, there was the flavour of freshly - opened carcasses: the smell out of the depths of the human body, part sweet, part savoury.

      Mick stumbled back to the passenger’s side of the VW and fumbled weakly at the handle. The door opened suddenly and he lurched inside, his eyes glazed.

      ‘Back up,’ he said.

      Judd reached for the ignition. The tide of blood was already sloshing against the front wheels. Ahead, the world had been painted red.

      ‘Drive, for fuck’s sake, drive!’

     
Judd was making no attempt to start the car.

      ‘We must look,’ he said, without conviction, ‘we have to.’

      ‘We don’t have to do anything,’ said Mick, ‘but get the hell out of here. It’s not our business . . .‘

      ‘Plane-crash —, ‘There’s no smoke.’ ‘Those are human voices.’

      Mick’s instinct was to leave well alone. He could read about the tragedy in a newspaper — he could see the pictures tomorrow when they were grey and grainy. Today it was too fresh, too unpredictable —Anything could be at the end of that track, bleeding —‘We must —‘

      Judd started the car, while beside him Mick began to moan quietly. The VW began to edge forward, nosing through the river of blood, its wheels spinning in the queasy, foaming tide.

      ‘No,’ said Mick, very quietly, ‘please, no . . ‘We must,’ was Judd’s reply. ‘We must. We must.’

      Only a few yards away the surviving city of Popolac was recovering from its first convulsions. It stared, with a thousand eyes, at the ruins of its ritual enemy, now spread in a tangle of rope and bodies over the impacted ground, shattered forever. Popolac staggered back from the sight, its vast legs flattening the forest that bounded the stamping-ground, its arms flailing the air. But it kept its balance, even as a common insanity, woken by the horror at its feet, surged through its sinews and curdled its brain. The order went out: the body thrashed and twisted and turned from the grisly carpet of Podujevo, and fled into the hills.

      As it headed into oblivion, its towering form passed between the car and the sun, throwing its cold shadow

over the bloody road. Mick saw nothing through his tears, and Judd, his eyes narrowed against the sight he feared seeing around the next bend, only dimly registered that something had blotted the light for a minute. A cloud, perhaps. A flock of birds.

      Had he looked up at that moment, just stolen a glance out towards the north-east, he would have seen Popolac’s head, the vast, swarming head of a maddened city, disappearing below his line of vision, as it marched into the hills. He would have known that this territory was beyond his comprehension; and that there was no healing to be done in this corner of Hell. But he didn’t see the city, and he and Mick’s last turning-point had passed. From now on, like Popolac and its dead twin, they were lost to sanity, and to all hope of life.

      They rounded the bend, and the ruins of Podujevo came into sight.

Their domesticated imaginations had never conceived of a sight so unspeakably brutal.

      Perhaps in the battlefields of Europe as many corpses had been heaped together: but had so many of them been women and children, locked together with the corpses of men? There had been piles of dead as high, but ever so many so recently abundant with life? There had been cities laid waste as quickly, but ever an entire city lost to the simple dictate of gravity?

      It was a sight beyond sickness. In the face of it the mind slowed to a snail’s pace, the forces of reason picked over the evidence with meticulous hands, searching for a flaw in it, a place where it could say:

      This is not happening. This is a dream of death, not death itself.

      But reason could find no weakness in the wall. This was true. It was death indeed.

     
Podujevo had fallen.

      Thirty-eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty-five citizens were spread on the ground, or rather flung in ungainly, seeping piles. Those who had not died of the fall, or of suffocation, were dying. There would be no survivors from that city except that bundle of onlookers that had traipsed out of their homes to watch the contest. Those few Podujevians, the crippled, the sick, the ancient few, were now staring, like Mick and Judd, at the carnage, trying not to believe.

      Judd was first out of the car. The ground beneath his suedes was sticky with coagulating gore. He surveyed the carnage. There was no wreckage: no sign of a plane crash, no fire, no smell of fuel. Just tens of thousands of fresh bodies, all either naked or dressed in an identical grey serge, men, women and children alike. Some of them, he could see, wore leather harnesses, tightly buckled around their upper chests, and snaking out from these contraptions were lengths of rope, miles and miles of it. The closer he looked, the more he saw of the extraordinary system of knots and lashings that still held the bodies together. For some reason these people had been tied together, side by side. Some were yoked on their neighbours’ shoulders, straddling them like boys playing at horse back riding. Others were locked arm in arm, knitted together with threads of rope in a wall of muscle and bone. Yet others were trussed in a ball, with their heads tucked between their knees. All were in some way connected up with their fellows, tied together as though in some insane collective bondage game.

      Another shot.

      Mick looked up.

      Across the field a solitary man, dressed in a drab overcoat, was walking amongst the bodies with a revolver, dispatching the dying. It was a pitifully inadequate act