White and Other Tales of Ruin (12 page)

“
Where do they come from?” I ask the policeman who stands at the bottom of the gangway. He glances over his shoulder at the bodies, as if surprised that I even deigned mention them.

“
No worries,” he grins through black and missing teeth. “Dead trouble, rioters. Normal, all is normal.” He grabs my arm and helps me onto the mole, nodding and never, for one instant, relinquishing eye contact until I tip him.

“
Rioters, eh?”

The little man forces a mock expression of disgust, and I actually believe he wants me to smile at his display. “Rioters, wasters, trouble. No more worries.” He performs an exaggerated salute, then turns and makes sure my tip is safe in his pocket before helping down the passenger behind me.

I stroll quickly along the dock, sweat already tickling my sides and plastering my wispy hair to my forehead. I try not to look at the pile of corpses, but as I approach the gulls let out a raucous cry and take flight in one frantic cloud. Three young boys run to the corpses and begin levering at them with broom handles, lifting limbs so that they can scour the fingers and wrists of those beneath for signs of jewellery. Evidently they have already been picked clean, because by the time I reach the harbour and hurry by with my breath held, the kids have fled, and the gulls are settling once more.

ii

“
There’s a guy called String,” Della said, handing me another bottle of beer and lobbing a log onto the fire. “He may be able to help.” So casual. So matter-of-fact. It was as if she were talking about the weather, rather than my fading life.

“
String?” The name intrigued me, and repeating it gave me time to think. He’d been all over the news a few months ago, but then I’d thought nothing of it. At the time I’d had no need of a cure.

Della stared over at me, the light from the fire casting shadows that hid her expression. Calm, I guessed. Content. That was Della all over. She had short hair, which she cut herself, and her clothes consisted of innumerable lengths of thin coloured cloth, twisted decoratively around her body and giving her the appearance of an old, psychedelic mummy.

She had no legs. They had been ripped off in a road accident, just at the beginning of the Ruin. She was too stubborn to wear prosthetics.

“
Lives in Greece. On one of the islands. Can’t remember which.” She frowned into the fire, but I did not believe her faulty memory for a moment.

“
So what could he do? What does he know?”

Della shrugged, sipping her beer. “Just rumours, that’s all I’ve heard.”

I almost cried then. I felt the lump in my throat and my eyes burning and blurring; a mixture of anger and resentment, both at my fellow humans for tearing the world apart, and at Della for her nonchalant approach to my fatal condition.

“
I’m pretty fucking far past rumours, now. Look.” I lifted my shirt and showed her my chest. The growths were becoming visible, patterns of innocent-looking bumps beneath my skin that spelled death. “Just tell me, Della. I need to know anything.”

She looked at my chest with feigned detachment. It was because she hated displays of self-pity rather than because she didn’t care. She did care. I knew that.

“
His name’s String — rumour. He’s a witch-doctor, of sorts — rumour. Rumour has it he’s come up with all kinds of impossible cures. I’ve not met anyone who’s gone to him, but there are lots of stories.”

“
Like?”

She shrugged, and for the first time I realised what a long shot this was. I was way beyond saving — me and a billion others — but she was giving me this hope to grab onto, clasp to my rotting chest and pray it may give me a cause for the few months left to me.

“
A woman with the Sickness eating at her womb. She crawls to him. Five days later, she turns up back home, cured.”

“
Where was home?”

“
London Suburbs. Not the healthiest, wealthiest of places since the Ruin, as I’m sure you know. But String, so they say, doesn’t distinguish.” Della poked the fire angrily with a long stick. I could see she wanted to give this up, but she was the one who’d started it.

“
Which island, Della?”

She did not answer me, nor look at me.

“
I’ll know if you lie.”

She smiled. “No you won’t.” From the tone of her voice I knew she was going to tell me, so I let her take her own time. She looked up at the corrugated iron roof, the rusted nail-holes that let acidic water in, the hungry spread of spider’s webs hanging like festive decorations.

“
Malakki,” she said. “Malakki Town, on the island of Malakki. He’s got some sort of a commune in the hills. So rumour has it.”

“
Thanks, Della. You know I’ve got to go?” I wondered why she had not mentioned it before. Was it because it was a hopeless long shot? Or perhaps she just did not want to lose me? Maybe she relied on me a lot more than she let me think.

She nodded. I left a week later, but I did not see her again after that night. It was as if we’d said goodbye already, and any further communication would make it all the more painful.

iii

There is a good chance that I will never return from this trip. The lumps on my chest have opened up and are weeping foul-smelling fluid; the first sign of the end. I wear two T-shirts beneath my shirt to soak up the mess.

And if my disease does not kill me, Malakki is always there in the background to complete the job.

The island is awash with a deluge of refugees from the Greek mainland, fleeing the out-of-control rioting that has periodically torn the old country apart since the Ruin. From the harbour I can see the shantytowns covering the hillsides, scatterings of huts and tents and sheets that resemble a rash of boils across the bare slopes. All hint of vegetation has been swept away, stripped by the first few thousand settlers and used for food or fuel for their constant fires. Soil erosion prevents any sort of replanting, if there were those left to consider it. There is a continuous movement of people across the hillsides; from this distance they resemble an intermingling carpet of ants, several lines heading down towards the outskirts of the city.

In the city itself, faceless gangs ebb and flow through the streets, moving aimlessly from one plaza to the next or sitting at the roadside and begging for food. There are hundreds of people in uniform or regulation dress, most of them carrying firearms, many of them obviously not of standard issue. Whether these are regular army and police it is impossible to tell, but the relevance is negligible. The fact is, they seem to be keeping some form of radical order; I can see thin shapes hanging from balconies and streetlamps, heads swollen in the fierce heat, necks squeezed impossibly narrow by the ropes. A seagull lands on one of the shapes and sets it swaying, as if instilling life into the bloated corpse. Retribution may be harsh, but there seems to be little trouble in the streets. The fight has gone from these people.

I reach the edge of the harbour and look around, trying to find a place to sit. The boat journey has taken eight days, and in my already weakened state the stress on my body has been immense. Inside I am still fighting. I cannot imagine myself passing away, slipping through the fingers of life like so much sand. I can barely come to terms with the certainty of my bleeding chest, the knowledge of what is inside me, eating away at my future with thoughtless, soulless tenacity. The Sickness is a result of the Ruin, perhaps the cause of it, but for me it is a personal affront. I hate the fact that my destiny is being eroded by a microscopic horror created by someone else.

Over the course of the journey, I have decided not to sit back and accept it. I wonder whether this is what Della intended — that her vague mention of a rumoured cure would instil within me a final burst of optimism. Something to keep me buoyant as death circles closer and closer. And that is why I am here, chasing a witch-doctor in the withering remains of Europe’s paradise.

I see a vacant seat, an old bench looking out over the once-luxurious harbour. I make my way through the jostling crowd and sit down, realising only then that this position gives me a perfect view of the long heap of corpses against the wall. I wonder if they are there waiting to be shipped out, perhaps dumped into the sea. I muse upon the twisted morals behind their slaughter, try to remember what reason the policeman had been trying to impart to me. Trouble, he had said. Poor bastards.

“
You ill?” I had not even noticed the woman sitting beside me until she spoke. I glare at her. She is the picture of health, or as healthy as anyone can be in today’s world. Her face is tanned and smooth, her hair long and naturally curled. As for the rest of her, her robustness sets her aside. She is trim, short, athletic looking, but still curved pleasingly around the hips and chest. Her bright expression, however, is one of arrogance. I take an immediate dislike to her.

Apart from anything, it is presumptuous to assume I even want to talk.

“
And is it your business?” I ask.

“
Might be.”

The relevance of the answer eludes me. Thoughts of String are still long-term; in the short term, I have to decide what to do now that I have arrived.

My thoughts are interrupted, however, by the sound that has become so familiar over the years. A swarm of angry bees, amplified a million times; a continuous explosion, ripping the air asunder and filling the gaps with fear; pounding, pulsing, throbbing through the air like sentient lightning. A Lord Ship.

Around me, along the mole and in the plaza facing the harbour, people fall to their knees. The act effectively identifies those who have come to the island recently, for they remain standing, glancing around with a mixture of shock and bewilderment.

“
What the hell are they doing?” I gasp in disgust.

There are two men huddled at my feet, their eyes cast downwards and their hands clasped in front of their faces in an attitude of prayer. They are mumbling, and I can hear the fear in their voices even over the rumble from the sky. I nudge the nearest with my foot, and he glances up at me.

“
What are you doing? Don’t you know what they are? Why don’t you try to live for yourself?” The man merely looks at me for a second or two — even then, I’m unsure whether he understands — before remembering what he had been doing. He hits his forehead on the ground, such is his keenness to prostrate himself once more. His voice raises an octave and becomes louder; he is sweating freely, shirt plastered to his back; two ruby drops hit the pavement from his clasped hands where his nails have pierced the skin.

I stand, dumbfounded. “They must be fools! Don’t they know?”

“
Leave it!” the short woman says.

“
What?”

“
Leave it! Leave them be! Don’t say anymore!” She stands next to me and stares into my eyes, and what I see there convinces me that she knows what she is talking about.

My pride, however, tries one more time: “But don’t they know —?”

She grabs my elbow and begins to lead me through the kneeling crowds. The dirigible has drifted past the edge of the town, pumping out its voiceless message, and now it appears to be heading inland. The hillsides have stilled, the dry ground hidden beneath a carpet of procumbent humanity. I try to resist, but she walks faster, surprising me with her strength. She seems to know where she is going. Within a minute we have scampered into a shaded alleyway and she has dragged me into the shadows, hushing me with a hand over my mouth as I go to protest.

“
Watch,” she whispers. “Things can get a bit weird around here.”

Like a snapshot of life, the entrance to the alley affords us a framed view of what is happening in the streets. As we slump down into the heat, the sound of the airship gradually disappears into the distance. The people begin to rise, gaze cast downward at first, then glancing up, then staring forcefully at the sky as movement becomes the prime motive once more. Voices call out, shouts and songs and screams. Some of the people remain subdued, but these seem to bleed away from the streets immediately. Others seem possessed of a frantic activity, running quietly at first, leaping into the air, rolling across the pitted tarmac, bumping into each other, exchanging silent blows. Within seconds their voices have returned; they scream, curse, fight their neighbour, their friend, their family. Less than three minutes after the first people have risen from their subdued pose, the street is a mass of flailing limbs and struggling bodies. It is repulsive.

“
You’d better come with me,” the woman says. “Maybe you’ll be safe if you do. Maybe you won’t.”

“
Makes no real difference,” I say, feeling the warm reminder of imminent death in my chest.

“
Didn’t to me when I came here, either,” she says. “Does now. Believe me, you want to live.”

The declaration provokes a stupefied silence from me. I follow the woman further along the alley, soon finding myself creeping through dusty backstreets where old women huddle under black shawls in doorways like sleeping bats. I can smell the mouth-watering aroma of genuine Greek cooking.

As if identity is an afterthought, the woman turns several minutes later. “I’m Jade, by the way.”

“
Gabe.”

From far away, we hear the first sounds of gunfire. The steady roar of the rioting crowd escalates with the effects of fear and fury, and the crackling of rifle fire continues.