The Fallen (11 page)

In his mind Tim could still see the woman’s face at his window, tribal scarification barely visible through her wounds.  “That was a crazy risk. Don’t leave me on my own like that again.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t plan to.”

“Did you see the guy on the back of the car?” He looked at Asefa’s hand.

“No, and watch the road.”

Tim was picking his way slowly through the multitude of debris, keeping the car in a low gear.  Many of the buildings were still smouldering but the worst of the fires had died out with the rain, which was becoming torrential.   The front windscreen wipers were struggling to move the wall of water from his field of vision, he could barely see but he didn’t want to stop.  Suddenly a bump brought the car to a halt.  They squinted through the windscreen to try and ascertain the obstacle blocking their path.  To his unease he could feel the car moving, gently but enough that it could be discerned.  Each time the wiper passed a fraction more of the picture became clear.  A host of people swarmed around something upturned in a narrow part of the street, their bodies pressed against the front of the car and filling the gap in front of them.  Tim could make out the wheels of a cart and just visible above the heads of the crouched figures in front of him were the skinless hooves of several dead cattle.

Asefa starred at the heaving mass.  “A butchers cart.”

They were feeding; overcome with hunger their lust for meat made them oblivious to the car.  No doubt one or two were already half crushed under their wheels.

Tim began to put the car into reverse.

“No,” said Asefa, “We must go through. There,” he pointed, “On the left.”

Through the rain Tim could see that part of the road was clear of the cart but slithering with filth-soaked people scrambling over each other to reach the foul cargo.  Had it come to this so quickly?  He had surely hit people already on their journey, but accidentally and he had told himself he couldn’t be sure; that they were just scraped; that they were probably OK.  This was different.  He looked at the creatures in front of him and tried not to think of them as human.  They may have lost their humanity but they were still people, perhaps people that might get better.  How would they explain if things got better?  Accidents?  He doubted from what he had seen so far, that these people, the fallen people, would be able to say much about what had happened to them if they recovered.  But the injured white woman in the car and the raw-faced woman on the road, they had looked at him, not through him – at him?  Would they identify him later, at some post-End Times tribunal?  No.  That would be the least of their concerns when they came to. “Are you sure there is no other way around this, we could go back, find another way?”

 “There is no other way Tim, I used to work here. Just beyond there is the bridge, we need to cross it if we are to get to the other side of the river.”

Tim leant on the horn.  Some of the people flinched, others turned to momentarily look at the humming lump of metal, before returning to their feast.  He tried again but this time it got less reaction.

From the backseat he took the rifle he had taken from the guard booth at the checkpoint.

“Be careful!” shouted Asefa, when the muzzle scrapped close to his cheek as Tim lifted it over the seat, “You do not know how to use that.”

“Show me.”

Asefa took the gun from him, removed the clip then reattached it.  “Well it
is
loaded.  Do not wave it at me again.  Here, like this. You must take off the safety,” he flicked down a metal leaver on the side of the rifle, “Then pull back the handle – that puts a bullet into the chamber.” Asefa cocked the gun.  “Now it is very dangerous; all you must do is pull the trigger.”

Tim took the gun back and got out of the car into the rain. 

Asefa got out the other side. “Let me do this.”

“Just scare them.”

Asefa fired the shotgun in the air.  The host shuddered and stopped eating, but only for a second.  Tim pointed his own gun at the ground and fired.  The recoil kicked the gun upwards, nearly hitting him in the face.  Still nothing.  He ran forward and grabbed a man from behind to pull him out of the way, but slipped in the mud and fell.  The man lashed out at him catching him across the face as he fell and giving him quite a jolt, but the man did not follow through with his attack and returned to his meal.  Tim got back to his feet and looked at the throng of slippery bodies.  There was no way he could move them and he wasn’t going to shoot them, so he turned to Asefa.  “Get back in the car.”

They got in and shut the doors, but as he did, Tim noticed a twitching arm stretching from beneath the wheels. 

He banged his hands on the steering wheel.  “Fuck.  Maybe we can wait, maybe they’ll disperse.”

“Tim,” said Asefa, “Look at these people.  Now think of Sarah.”

Tim closed his eyes and pressed the accelerator pedal.  As the car moved forward, he told himself the crowd would part with the force of the vehicle and let him through, but the Niva lurched upwards as they traversed the moving mound of flesh.  The worst was hearing the tires spin, tearing skin and cutting into god knows what.  Then the car crashed down on the other side.

“Look out!” yelled Asefa.

Tim slammed his foot on the brake and the car stalled.  He opened his eyes.  They had slipped sideways and the car was facing a clay wall under a rusty corrugated metal awning.  He had stopped just in time; the front wheels almost tipping into an open sewer that ran like a deep gutter along the edge of the road.  Out of Asefa’s window he could see the bridge over the river, leading out of the town.  He looked out of his own window but immediately wished he hadn’t.  Blood mixed with the mud and some people in the mound lay motionless, others broken but moving.  Then he saw what scared him most.  Three men who had been trying to get to the animal cart had instead turned their attention to nearer and warmer flesh, some of it still fighting back limply.

His jaw dropped and his mouth went dry. “They are eating each other.”

“Do not look Tim and do not judge; they have lost their minds, drive over the bridge.”

Tim did a three-point turn, but could not take his eyes off the horror in his rear view mirror as they drove over the river.  The mass of people grew smaller in the distance until it was nothing but a heaving brown spot, then they turned a corner and it was gone. 

“They were eating each other,” he said again.  He was shaking and sweating and could feel himself slipping as Asefa told him to pull over. 

“Let me drive now.”  

They got out and switched seats, Tim moving on autopilot, the rain pouring down his face and over his unblinking eyes.  Once in the driver’s seat, Asefa reached back and took out a Coke, opened it and gave it to him. “Drink this, the sugar will help you.”

Tim drank it down in gulps and continued trying to pour the drink down his throat once the can was empty. 

Asefa held him by the wrist, took the can from him and placed his hand down on the dash.  “Think about Sarah – think about your wife.”

Tim could see her.  She was in trouble, in a mass of bodies, screaming out for help.  In his vision she was not like all the others they had seen on the road; somehow she was herself and she was in pain, calling out for him.  “Drive,” he said and they pressed on, dovetailing in the wet as they pulled away and headed down the last desolate stretch of blacktop.

After driving for two hours without seeing another living thing, the paved road came to a sudden end.  Asefa stopped the car and put it into four-wheel-drive, “Now the real driving begins; with this weather these roads are going to be hard Tim, we must drive at speed or we will sink into the mud and never get out.”

Tim nodded.  He had seen drivers stranded by the side of the road in similar conditions before; if you were timid, if you didn’t commit, you wouldn’t make it.  You had to plough on through.  Asefa attacked the road, his decades of off-road experience evident in his control; over-steer, under-steer, over-steer.  The car skidded sideways into the turns, always straightening out before it was too late.  Streams were forded at speed, sending sheets of water up the sides.   They drove for several miles up a long steady hill and the higher they went, the denser and darker the foliage became around them, until they reached the top of a ridge, where the jungle opened out to reveal breaking clouds.  The rain had stopped and Asefa said it was as good a place as any for a break.  Tim took some of the ration packs from the back of the car and they ate them in their seats.  “You better take some of these,” he said, handing Asefa a pack of antibiotics. 

The food and open sky lifted his spirits, helping to wash away the mud and chaos of Gambella and the bridge.  He got out of the car, climbed the roof rack and stood atop of it.  From the ridge he could see what lay before them; leagues of jungle, steaming from the heat and the wet.  He could just make out the track they were on as an indentation in the canopy, snaking its way to the Sudanese border.  Sarah was somewhere far beyond the horizon and the thought of her there alone stopped him from enjoying the view beyond surveying the road ahead.  A renewed sense of urgency gripped him and he swung down, taking again the driver’s seat. 

Asefa looked concerned.  “You sure Timmy? You done much driving on these roads?”

He had done his share of off-roading but he knew he couldn’t match the skills of his companion.  He could also sense in Asefa’s tone a suspicion that his urgency may blind him to the care required for such paths.  He switched back to passenger, feeling like a chastised child, but knowing Asefa was right.  Asefa filled the tank with gasoline from two of the jerry cans that had been tied on the roof and they set off again, down into the next valley.

The jungle was getting thicker and thicker and Tim could hear the wild cries of animals not far from the water-logged track.  The tire-tracks of previous vehicles had cut deep grooves in either side of the road and several times they nearly bottomed out on the muddy central ridge between their wheels.  The animals seemed to have lost their natural fear of man and several times monkeys ran across their path, narrowly missing their tires but not adjusting their speed or direction as he would have expected in such close encounters. 

After driving at a steady pace for some hours, they came around a bend to see an old long-wheel based Toyota Land Cruiser ahead, stopped dead and facing them in a small stream.  The windscreen was bloody but they could see movement within through the smears.  There was no way past without moving it.  

“It is a ranger’s car,” said Asefa, “We will have to get it off the road to pass.”

Tim knew the park rangers patrolled the area, supposedly looking for poachers, but generally they smuggled people, guns or whatever else between the two countries. 

“Careful Asefa,” he said as they stepped out, both with their guns at the ready.  They approached the shaking vehicle.  Inside a large man with the dark complexion of the South Sudanese was thrashing about.  He was dressed in a green uniform and holding what looked like a sharp edged folding spade, which he was using to wildly slash at the interior.  Two of the side windows were already caved out.  Behind the steering wheel a second ranger lay motionless, his throat slit so deeply that his head tipped back over the seat. 

“They must have been about to dig their way out when it happened to them,” said Asefa, “Let’s do this quickly; that car likely won’t start anyway so it’s best we leave him in there and tow it out.”  

Tim nodded.  The front of the Niva had a winch with a heavy steel tow wire wrapped around it but he was unsure if they had enough power to move such a heavy vehicle.  Asefa disengaged the winch gear, unravelled the wire and attached it to the front of the ranger’s car.  The man inside seemed agitated by his actions and his thrashing became more violent. 

Asefa walked back to the winch, and re-engaged the gear.  “Get back in, put the handbrake on and start the engine, we don’t need a dead battery.”

Tim did as he was told.  Asefa switched on the winch and the cable became taut, the car ahead rocked slightly, then Tim felt the Niva begin to slide forward towards it.  “Whoa!”

“Put her in reverse,” said Asefa. 

Tim put the car in reverse and revved the engine.  The wheels spun in the soft ground and again the Niva was pulled closer to the dead vehicle.

Asefa looked at the static wheels.  “He must have the handbrake on, I will take it off.”

Asefa took his shotgun and returned to the ranger’s car.  The man inside paused for a moment, looking at him, and then without warning shattered the windscreen with a heavy blow.  The glass, still intact in its frame, was now a million fragments; red liquid running between the myriad of tiny cracks.  Tim could see Asefa take a step back then continue his advance towards the passenger door on the far side of the Land Cruiser, obscuring him partially from view.  He could make out Asefa raising his shotgun to silence the madness contained inside their obstacle.  Then Asefa let out a cry as he was dragged from view behind the car.  A shotgun blast was followed by a horrific scream, then silence.

In a panic Tim scrambled for his gun, then realised he must have left it on the roof during the failed winching.  He cursed and opened the door, reaching onto the roof without getting out; his hand trembling as he grabbed for his weapon.  It wasn’t there; it must have fallen when he was trying to reverse.  Terrified, he frantically checked his mirrors; there was nothing but jungle behind him.  He opened the door a little wider and peered through the crack at the ground beneath, he couldn’t see the gun.  He opened the door fully to get out but catching his foot in the footwell, he fell into the mud and lay on the ground. 

“Asefa!” he called out, but there was no reply, only the sounds of the jungle and the thrashing metallic clanging from the other vehicle, the doors of which still appeared closed.  He looked under his own vehicle, to see if some threat was lurking on the other side and to his relief saw only his rifle between the wheels.  He grabbed it and held it to his chest.  He looked at the gun and tried to remember what Asefa had done earlier, pushing the safety lever, down?  He clicked the lever down hoping it was right and quickly refocused on the car ahead.  “Asefa!” he cried twice more. Nothing.  Monkeys howled an eerie retort in the distance.  The madman inside the car furiously continued to attack his confines.