The Fallen (8 page)

He redoubled his effort with the pedals.  “We must go quickly Asefa.”

Before the snake, they had seen two more bodies of armed tribesmen lying by the side of the road, but this time they did not stop to help.  They had probably gone forty miles by that point, far enough away that toxic gas shouldn’t have been an issue? He had to find out how far this thing had spread. 

Sarah.  He hadn’t been there for her once before.  Well, he hadn’t been there in a sense that did any good.  Five years earlier, their postings had briefly overlapped in Nairobi; Nai-robbery she had jokingly called it before that night.  She had insisted they went out for dinner at some cute Tunisian place on the other side of the city.  He’d tried to talk her out of it, suggesting they went to the Nando’s in one of the safely gated shopping malls.  She’d said, ‘Don’t be a pussy, Nando’s is SO boring and we’ve been there ten times already!’  He should have protested more, or come up with a better option, there had to be a better place than Nando’s?  But that’s what he’d suggested, hoping she’d take the hint and make a counter offer.  An hour later they were in a run-down taxi driving to a run-down part of town.  Tim was as concerned that they might both go down with dysentery as he was of the risk of crime.  Crime in Nairobi was high, stories of muggings were a daily occurrence and up to this point they’d both been lucky.  The muggings there were also particularly violent, the kind of robbery where without hesitation they would chop your arm off with a machete, then ask you to pick it up and give them your watch.  He wasn’t just being paranoid, there were good reasons to be cautious and was Nando’s really that bad anyway as an alternative? 

To top it off, Sarah didn’t really know where the place was and nor did the taxi driver who spoke little English.  Tim had tried to make her give up and go back, but by this point it had become a point of principle and she was being stubborn, as she often could be.  ‘No we’re getting out here – I know it’s around here somewhere; they said just-past-the-old-colonial-bit before you get to the Umoja district,’ she’d said, and before he could stop her she’d jumped out and flung the taxi driver some money.  He had gotten out to reason with her and the taxi driver had taken off, maybe realising he’d just been overpaid, or maybe knowing the risks of hanging around in that area better than they did.  Then they were alone on a dark corner and Sarah had suddenly snapped back into reality, asking sheepishly ‘which way is Umoja from here?’  He’d lost his temper and told her she was an idiot, which she wasn’t, but the sense of danger he felt made for the kind of loose talk he immediately regretted.  They’d walked down several deserted streets not speaking, before she’d said, ‘If you didn’t want to come you should have just stayed at home.’  That’s when he saw them.  Three men, faces concealed by the shadow of a doorway across the road.  As they passed he heard them cross over and start walking behind them, whispering to each other.   That was the last thing he remembered before coming to in a Nairobi hospital bed, his head aching and bandaged.  Sarah was beside him.  She’d told him that he’d been hit over the head and knocked out and the men had taken his wallet and her bag and run off.  But something in her eyes told him there was more to the story and a few days later back at their flat he had found an empty bottle of anti-retroviral drugs; the kind you take if you think you’ve just been infected with HIV.  She’d said they belonged to one of the girls on her team, he knew she was lying but he’d let her lie; he didn’t want to hear the truth.  They went out to Nando’s once more after that but hardly spoke.  Two weeks later she was redeployed to Cairo and he’d returned to London.   He felt that they were lucky to be alive but also that he somehow should have done more.  Could he have turned around and challenged the men sooner?  Should he have yelled at her to run?  Should he have been more forceful in stopping her from getting out of the taxi?  He felt like he’d failed at his task of husband and protector, but what was worse was that he got the feeling she felt the same.  He’d wanted to talk about it but could never find the right time; either things were going too well and he didn’t want to ruin the moment, or they were already too sour.  He was afraid that emotions would get the better of them and a talk would turn into a screaming match, which would finish with her saying, ‘I know what you want to say, ‘I told you so!’, so why don’t you just say it?’  But what he wanted to say was that he loved her, so that’s all he had said and the rest was left buried.

He wanted to keep her safe but with the type of work she did that wasn’t an option.  He told her he loved her for who she was, not what she did for a living but she had said they were the same thing.  He had suggested that she take a job in London and she had told him a story about a teenage boy whose mother had kept him from going on a school skiing trip, because she was worried about him.  While the boy’s classmates had been away in Switzerland, he’d been hit by a car and killed in his hometown.  ‘You never know what’s going to get you and when your time is up, it’s up,’ she would say.  He didn’t believe that and neither, he thought, did she.  When you go on field missions, you assess the danger and you take calculated risks, you don’t live your life like an Indian fatalist, driving your tuk-tuk at sixty in the wrong lane along a cliff-edge highway, abdicating all personal responsibility for your life to some God’s busy hands.  So what could he do?  He couldn’t stop her and he couldn’t protect her, so he just tried to put it to the back of his mind and not think about it.  Worry does not sap tomorrow of its sorrow but saps today of its strength is what his mother would have said.  But he did worry and felt all the more emasculated by it.

They cycled on.  The sun was hot and they had nearly finished the water they had brought with them.  On the horizon, where Dire Dawa should be, they could see smoke.  They stopped, feet either side of their bikes, panting from the heat.

“Looks bad,” said Asefa, “You want to go on? I feel I’ve seen enough death for one day.”

“We have to, where the hell else are we going to go?  Maybe the people are OK there, we have to look.  At least we should be able to find a phone or radio to call HQ in Addis or London.”

Asefa nodded.  “Yeah, HQ.  I’m not comfortable about going to the authorities here either; for all we know they caused this somehow.”

They set off towards the town, but they weren’t peddling as fast as they had been. 

Chapter 19

The shrieks, groans and violent coughing coming out of the smoke were getting closer.  Marius looked concerned.  “Brian, wait here, I’m going to see if I can find a boat.”

Despite the past few minutes of crying and self-pitying gibberish, Brian had pulled himself back together.  “Fuck that, I’m coming with you.”

They jogged along the riverbank, until they came to a shallow inlet.  Floating a short way out was a small fifteen-foot knockabout, the kind a kid learns to sail in. 

“Come on,” said Marius as he dived in.  Brian followed and swam head down towards the boat.  When he thought he’d made it close to the boat he paused to look up and get his bearings.  Marius was already hanging on the side of the craft and struggling with a deranged looking teenage boy who must have been lying inside.  The boy had a maniacal grin and vacant stare and flailed wildly at Marius who was trying to pull himself into the boat whilst defending his face and trying not to capsize them both.  The boy must have lost his balance because he flew over Marius head first into the water.  He did not come back up.  Marius managed to clamber over the side and held his hand out to Brian.

Brian splashed over to the small craft and was just about to kick himself up when he felt something grab his ankle and hold him under.  The boy must have sunk to the bottom, but the water was not too deep.  He kicked but the hand did not let go.  Suddenly the grip loosened and he was free.  Spluttering to the surface he grabbed for Marius who pulled him aboard.

On the shore three more people had crawled, snake like on their stomachs, to the waters edge.  Two were drinking, with their heads down to the river, the third was looking straight at them screaming. 

They floated in the boat for some time, just staring at the shore.

“Did you see those people, did you see those fucking people.” said Brian, “They’ve lost their fucking minds.”

Marius began inspecting the rigging.  “Who knows what the swathe did to them; given them dementia; lobotomised their humanity; wiped their memory banks like a credit card on a magnet?  I’d love we take a closer look but I think they might rip my face off like a fucking chimpanzee, yah?”

“What now?”

“Now I think we need to get somewhere pretty fucking safe, before,”

“Before what?”

“Before they become more
awake
.  Look at the people on the shore.”

More people had started to appear including some who were badly burned.  They could smell the water and howled for it, crawling closer.

“They are not walking, not standing,” said Brian

“Not yet anyway.  That boy in the boat, he didn’t know what he was doing, he was just grabbing at me.  He was a big lad, he could have pried my hands off the boat or hit me in the face with the ore, but he just couldn’t figure that out.  Those people burning in the city, they could feel pain but they just couldn’t figure out what was causing it or how to stop it.  That mean’s their nerves aren’t shot but their minds are.  For now.”

“You mean they could get better?”

“Who knows? People recover from amnesia, well some don’t, but some do.  But dementia, nobody recovers from that, it’s a one-way trip.  And we have no way of knowing what the hell has happened to them.  In the meantime they are dangerous and could get more dangerous if they figure out a little more how their bodies work.”

“Like how?”

“Like, think of a man with all his strength and desires, but without the civilizing affects of society, reason and knowledge.  Not a child’s mind in a man’s body; a savage mind in a man’s body.  A man like that would act without forethought or regret.  I would prefer to get as far away from that man as I could before he figures out he can do more than just crawl.” 

“But if everywhere is like this, where can we go?  Run off and hide in the mountains somewhere?” said Brian

“Com’on Brian, your brain did not get wiped, think.  Where else could people have survived?”

“The military.  Some kind of military command centre hardened against this kind of thing?”

“I can’t think of anything else where there would be more than one or two people protected in one place.  I think Cheyenne Mountain is our best bet.”

“Cheyenne Mountain?”

“The home of NORAD, the US agency that monitors the skies for missiles, hi-jacked planes, even asteroids.  The problem is it’s in Colorado Springs; we’d have to cross Nevada, Utah and half of Colorado.  The good news is, I know for sure that it’s hardened against EMP and a bunch of other crap.  The whole complex is built on springs and buried deep inside a granite mountain.  If anyone is going to be fine, it’s those guys.”

“Colorado?  Jesus, that’s well over a thousand miles from here, isn’t there somewhere closer?  I mean the military have tons of bases all over this country?”

“Do you have internet Brian?  Because I sure as hell don’t.  I only know Cheyenne for sure.  I had a friend who worked there, doing the space monitoring stuff.”

“A girl right?”

“Well yes, a girl, but I don’t think she’s still mad at me.”

Brian laughed but stopped when he looked up at the shore.  The number of bodies had grown and he could make out that people were pushing and clawing at each other to get to the waters edge.  Some were inflicting pitiless misery for no apparent reason, others rocking on their sides, crying like babies.  “Lets get out of here.  Can you sail?”

Marius held up his hand to feel the air.  “In this wind, I’m not so sure.  But the fire is generating enough of a draft, I think I can get us underway.”

Brian pulled the small anchor into the craft and Marius set the sail.  Gradually they started drifting away from the shore and towards the main flow of the river.  The crouching masses followed the motion of the craft with their eyes, some reaching out as if they could grab the boat and drag it to them.

Brian stared back at them.  “They are like animals.”

“Not like.  They are animals.  And that’s all they will be until - if, they get their senses back.  Red in tooth and claw.  Have you read Hobbes?”

“No Marius I can’t say that I have.”

“Bellum omnium contra omnes,”

“What?”

“The war of all against all.”

They sailed on without speaking.  Along the western riverbank, Brian could make out slumped flailing figures silhouetted against the flame lit sky.  The eastern bank was dark, which seemed to him all the more ominous. 

Chapter 20

As Tim got closer to the town, he thought he could hear screams, but they seemed to blend into a continuous wall of pain and suffering.  They slowed their bikes to a crawl as they approached the first building on the outskirts.  It was a garage.  Tim had used it before on previous visits to change tyres and service the fleet of work vehicles they kept parked at the office.  The elderly owner had been a friendly and honest man who against expectations had done a good job and charged a fair price.  The place seemed deserted. 

Tim cautiously got off his bike and laid it quietly on the ground.  “Let’s take a look.”

He moved slowly towards the open front of the garage but the gravel drive magnified every step.  The sounds emanating from the city made him afraid.  He peered around the edge of the garage door; nobody was inside.  A car lay in pieces, mid-fix, and a motorbike was parked on the far side with its front wheel removed.  Tools lay scattered on the ground.  He motioned for Asefa to come over as he walked inside.  There was a faint smell of electrical burning but no smoke, a radio was plugged in on one side of the building; perhaps the source was the plug socket, it looked scorched.