Grants Pass (21 page)

The
Sirocco
wind roared
around the corner of
Calle Lapa
, bringing with it the floating, blinding
dust that the islanders called
Calima
. The sandstorm had originated in
the Sahara; had travelled over one hundred kilometers of ocean to block out the
island’s sun in a violent haze. But that was not the worst of it. The
Sirocco
carried with it a cargo so dreadful that the warning of its approach was akin
to that of the worst kind of hurricane: prompting boarded windows, nailed
shutters and breathless empty streets.

There was no such warning afforded
to Louise now. All she could do was follow the lead of the disappeared lizard.
Turning on her heel, she sped for her old villa, fishing the keys from her
pocket as she ran. The folded square of journal suddenly flew from the same
pocket. Buffeted by the rising hot air, it danced out of her reach.

Sanctuary forgotten, a reedy scream
escaped her lips, and she careered towards the apartments and their awful
stench, the sobs stinging her throat as hot sand rushed in.

“
Don’t leave
me! Kayley, no! Come back!”

She tripped over a body — this one
spread-eagled upon the tiled surround of the apartment pool: stained khaki
shorts below a pitted grey-white back half trailing in stagnant water — and
picked herself up with another scream. She lunged for the fluttering paper even
as the locusts found her in their swarming, clacking hundreds, dropping her to
the ground. Her fingers closed around the sharp edges of the paper, and she
drew it tight to her chest in reflex.

She crawled back to the villa — now
unable to breathe much less scream or sob. It took too long. By the time she
made it back to the gate, the locusts had swarmed over her back and legs, and
had tangled in her hair. Their beating hind wings were the amplified thrum of
Mediterranean cicadas and crickets; their sharp legs scratched and pulled at
her in mindless, endless hunger.

There was no time to make it inside
the villa. Sprinting around the pool, Louise stumbled down the steps of the
pump room, batting insects from her face and hair in frenzied shrieks.

The dark was cool and quiet and
empty. She crouched within it, rocking herself too quickly; now paying little
attention to the frantic insects that still tangled in her hair and beat
against her clammy flesh. She thought of green and trees and river and cool. As
the
Sirocco
roared overhead, its cargo thrumming hard against the roof,
the tiles, and the plastic covering over the swimming pool in horrible mimicry
of torrential rain, Louise thought of green and trees and river and cool. And
Kayley.

****

By the time she awoke, all was
silent again. Louise stood on too shaky legs, brushing dead and dying insects
from her body with revived and disgusted slaps. She mounted the steps back into
the world above quickly, terrified that night might have already taken hold —
she had intended to be back in the hills far above the resort well before
nightfall — but she had evidently not been asleep as long as her aching body
suggested. The relentless sun probed long fingers inside the upper reaches of
the passageway, so much so that Louise had to shield her eyes before she had
even made it as far as the top steps.

The pool area was covered in a
twitching pale carpet. Swallowing bile, Louise picked her way through the
Sirocco’s
debris: the sound of dry, cracking limbs and wings swiftly assuming the same connotation
as that of twigs snapping deep in a creeping forest. As she drew closer to the
stone arch that led back into the road, she winced at every too loud footstep,
the pads of her fingers stabbing at the hard edges of the rescued square of
paper in her pocket over and over. Long after they grew numb.

But the street was still deserted.
By the time she made it out of her cul-de-sac and onto the main road that
climbed down into the resort proper, Louise had almost gotten used to the
prickly carpet under her feet; the hideous crunching noise that every footstep
precipitated; the otherwise utterly breathless silence. And the emptiness: the
total absence of any life at all, except the flies and bluebottles collected in
ugly restless patterns inside passing apartment windows and screen doors.

Somewhere during her hundred yard
descent into the
Terrazza
complex ahead of the promenade and beach, the
cool urge to flee returned to whisper at her neck. And this time within it
there was something — some horrible little niggle inside her brain — whose
warning she couldn’t quite yet catch. That niggle was like waking up from a bad
dream unable to remember, yet still suffering the hangover of its dread.

The long faceless rear of the
supermercado
heralded the beginning of the complex. Louise crunched her way past grey brick
and thick chained emergency exits. The goods entrance, where the Spanish kids —
most often the children of the
supermercado’s
employees — had always
played tag or musical statues before growing bored and terrorizing sunburnt
drunken tourists, was empty except for scattered litter and discarded cardboard
boxes.

When Louise turned the corner into a
car park still full of cars, she saw that the front of the shop was in a far
worse state than before. Its entire Plexiglas face had been knocked out, the
displays inside overturned and ripped apart, bright cut-price banners hanging
limply in the stagnant air. Louise only fleetingly thought about venturing
inside. Its cavernous shadows were far from inviting, and she was too readily
discouraged by the reminder of her last visit.

Then, the
Terrazza
had been
far from empty
or
quiet. The
Avenida de las
Playas
had been alive with angry horns and
whining mopeds: the daily grind of holiday rentals and beleaguered white taxis
replaced by a panicked mass exodus east,
towards
Arrecife and its closed airport.

The fighting had already begun,
although at that stage it had been confined to squabbles over rights of way and
the spoils of looting. The violence had been at its worst inside the
supermercado
.
Louise had made only as far as the first checkout before losing her nerve and
turning back.

She had not returned. Locking every
steel gate and shutter in her villa, Louise had stayed indoors, enduring day
after day of noise and rattle and fury, until those days had grown quiet and
empty. Until the snatched view from her balcony had become only merciless sun
and fiery savage nights; the stench of the dead carried
inland. Until she had, quite literally, run for the hills.

****

As she ventured further westwards
through the
Terrazza
complex, she tried to forget by remembering happier
days spent there with Patrick. Close to Paddy’s Karaoke Bar within the main
courtyard, she glimpsed the old tapas bar that had played live Jota and Mariachi
every night in high season. Under the shade thrown by the metal stairways
leading up to a now battered and graffiti-scored Moonlight Lounge, various
narrow shops stood shuttered and silent. Their wooden stands — before weighed
heavy with inflated lilos, fringed T-shirts, sarongs, imitation watches, belts
and handbags — now stood empty. Where they still stood at all.

Perhaps that accounted for the still
enduring niggle. And the dread crawling inside her belly. It was too quiet. Too
empty. The lack of wind she had gotten used to. Even the desertion of the gulls
and gannets that had plagued seafront restaurants and bars no longer struck her
as unusual. Or frightening.

It was something else. Something
that was somehow far worse.

Suck it up
, the Kayley in her pocket stoically advised — and not without some
measure of irritation.
You’re here to find water, supplies. So find them.

Louise doubted that there would be
anything close to an REI anywhere in the resort. For perhaps the first time
since leaving her sanctuary in the hills, she wondered exactly what she thought
she was doing. Yes, she needed the water, that was a given. But it didn’t
explain the vice around her chest; it didn’t explain the Kayley in her pocket —
in her head
— or the frenzied sense of urgency that suddenly saw her
leave the
Terrazza
complex at too fast a run, in spite of the heat, in
spite of the danger. In spite of the dropping sun, and the memory of those
screaming, whooping, fiery nights.

The smell was somewhat diluted on
the
Avenida.
Louise
stopped running only because her own body betrayed her. The heat was
incredible: it seemed to scorch even her lungs, forcing her to a wheezing,
breathless standstill close to a deserted crazy-golf enclosure on the old beach
road.

There were very few bodies here —
although Louise was not fooled for an instant. People were, by and large,
creatures of habit. Those unable or unwilling to flee the resort would have
sought familiar refuge. The barricaded villas and apartments were evidence
enough of that, even ignoring the mottled, moving curtains of insects inside
them. In the oppressive heat, Louise shivered to her feet and back again.

Still she kept going. Playa Grande gave
way to
Playa Fariones
. Its empty deckchairs and sun-loungers had fallen foul of the
rising Atlantic. Many swept relentlessly back and forth in the high tide; many
more were stuck low in the shallows, thrusting stranded arms and legs upward in
silent and unanswered cries for help.

Louise drew close to the main
crossroads to the Old Town. Climbing over a crude barricade of overturned
barrels and traffic bollards interspersed with charred oil drums; she wondered
again what she thought she was doing. The sweat ran in sticky rivulets down her
back and thighs, though the sun had all but disappeared behind the high cliffs
in the west.

She still needed water — that much
was now truer than ever. And there was the rest of Kayley’s checklist. Fuel,
food — maybe even weapons. But Louise had already passed a great many shops and
restaurants — barred or no — and not once had she stopped. That queer crawling
started up in her belly again, almost nullifying whatever urge still kept her
going; kept her moving further from
Calle Lapa
. Or her better sanctuary
in the hills.

She suddenly thought of the friends
that Kayley had arranged to meet in Grants Pass. She fingered the hard corners
of paper again. Louise had had no-one for a very long time. Only now that the
world had turned on its head — only now that she found herself shuffling alone
through what should have been the busiest thoroughfare in the whole of
Lanzarote — did she suffer such isolation so acutely.

It was perhaps fitting that she
should then come across the round white lanterns and dark-stained balconies of
Casa
Siam
. Here she had spent many an evening in the long months before the
divorce: its obsequious Thai owner sequestering her in the darkest, quietest
corner, commiserating with superb prawn curries and free shots of Maekhong
whisky.

But it was not the eerie, empty
desolation of
Casa Siam
that made Louise stop. It was the sheer number
of bodies inside its entrance. There were dozens littering the space between
bar and tables: a tangle of grey limbs and pulpy flesh spread liberally over a
dark red floor that once had been black and white checkered tiles. The door to
the kitchen had been ripped almost off its hinges, and there were bloodied
handprints smeared across both it and the nailed wooden beams that now hung
uselessly from its frame.

These men and women — and God help
them, children — had fallen prey to perhaps the worst plague of them all.
Louise backed up, her fingers splayed across lips that tasted of her own blood.
The battered remains of Kam Pramoj sprawled close to the neighboring
Perspex-fronted amusement arcade — the left side of his head horribly concave
and writhing white above a deflated, bloody eye socket.

Her sob echoed too long in the hot,
deserted vacuum — and when she started to run again, she hardly cared that the
sun had sunk so far beyond the cliffs in the west that its reflection had
turned much of the breakwater blood red.

It is better to travel in groups,
I think
, Kayley reminded from the damp corner of
Louise’s shorts pocket. Louise gave that pocket an angry, frightened squeeze
before looking away from the road and back out towards the choppy Atlantic.

Where were they?
Where were the riotous mobs; the perpetrators of such mindless
horror? The shouting, jeering engineers of every barricade and fire these past
endless weeks?
Where were they?

Keep going, Kayley admonished.
Having a plan can make the difference between life and death.

 “
Shut up.
Shut the fucking hell up.” Louise snatched her hand out of her pocket. She was
beginning to dislike that earnest, pitiless whisper in her ear. She was
beginning to loathe it. Daydreams of Evergreens and pines, summer’s night
concerts and Christmas carnivals —
of green and trees and river and cool
— were all very well when there was no whisper in your ear. No righteous
purpose. No diaphanous promise of a plan.