White and Other Tales of Ruin (30 page)

I listened for the clicking of the pursuing demons, but such clean sounds would have been so out of place here. They were gone.
Where
they had gone I had no idea. Where
we
had arrived at was equally bemusing, but thinking about it would be of no help. Survival was my main concern.

That, and Laura.

I’d rescued her from one hell and taken her into another, and now there she was rolling in the mud, thrashing herself lower and lower, sinking, sinking …

“
Laura!” I yelled, and it must have been a mumble to her mud-cloaked ears.

“
Dad!” A bubble formed at her mouth and burst her plea into the air.

“
Keep still! Don’t struggle, you’ll go deeper!” Saying that, I trusted my arms and tried to swim to Laura. She was closer to the wall than me, the parts of her that did show above the surface quickly being swamped by the tonnes of mud gushing through the broken window. And in thrashing my arms and kicking my legs, the mud’s hold on me was tightening. I slipped deeper, feeling the cold kiss of filth on my chin and earlobes.

What sort of God…? I thought, remembering my recent conversation with Black Teeth so far away. What sort of God would rescue my daughter from such a fate, only to drown her in mud and shit? One angry at my disbelief, perhaps? I tried to say sorry but it came out like hate.

“
Don’t move, dammit!” Chele shouted, her voice clotted and wet. I managed to turn my head slightly, looking from the corner of my eye, and there she was. She’d made it to the corner of the room and she must have found a piece of heavy furniture to stand on, because it looked as if she was balancing on the surface of the mud itself. She was a wet black sculpture, her clothes so heavy that her sleeves had doubled in length and the hem of her heavy sweater was kissing her knees. I was shocked to see her small breasts bared and lathered in mud. I was even more surprised at my reaction — embarrassment at first, but then a definite stirring, an unbelievable hardening as my daughter struggled her last and we all faced a slow, dreadful death.

“
Chele…” I said. More than anything it was a plea.

She was looking around desperately, first at me, then Laura — who by now was little more than a hump shifting below the surface of the mud — and then around her, repeating the process, looking for something to do … and I realised with sad resignation that she was frantic with helplessness. She was not in control at all. She had no idea of how to save us.

I started trying to swim to Laura. The mud was amazingly heavy, and it took what felt like minutes for me to sweep handfuls of it behind me, try to step forward, kicking through the rising mess like a moonwalker in slow motion.

“
Keep still!” Chele said.

“
She’ll be dead,” I said, not turning my head, keeping all my attention on the few signs I could see of my daughter. Muck still gushed through the window but it seemed to be slowing now, finding its own level. Outside the room — whether we were in a house, a hotel, whatever — there was the steady roar of millions of tons of mud flowing past solid buildings. A thousand years of erosion in minutes. Even as I moved I heard the rumble of what could only have been a structure collapsing.

“
Nolan —”

“
Unless you’ve thought of any way out,” I said, “there’s nothing else to do.” I started to cry, the tears washing clean streaks down my face. A glob of mud spilled into my mouth and it tasted of nothing I’d ever tasted in my life before.

“
Here!” Chele shouted. “Catch this!”

Something heavy slapped the side of my face. I flinched away, images of what gruesome fish could live in something like this crowding in. What would they look like? What would they
eat
?

“
Grab it!” Chele screamed. Another crash came from somewhere far away, as if to emphasise her urgency.

I turned my head slowly and lifted a hand clear. I was too heavy to move and the muscles in my shoulder and back screamed at me to stop. But if my body had already given up the ghost, my mind had not.
Could
not, not while Laura may still be there, still alive, holding her breath as her world turned black and the mud probed at her nose and mouth with its cool, grainy fingers.

I grabbed the sleeve of Chele’s sweater and turned my hand so that it was twisted around my wrist. “Do you think you can — ?” I asked.

“
Shut up and let me try.” She sat on whatever piece of furniture she’d found and began to pull. She was a black and brown statue, her arms and shoulders flexing slowly, so slowly as she heaved back on her sweater. She was topless now, but I was glad that I no longer found that exciting. If I had … it would have been sick.
I
would have been sick. We’d probably all die in here, whether Chele thought she could pull me in or not.

I moved my legs slowly, trying to climb up so that my body lay across the surface. The less of me in the mud, the easier it would be for Chele to pull me out. I looked across at the window. It had ceased flowing in now, but outside I could see and hear a great river of muck flowing past our building. Things scraped against the walls, dragged along. Vehicles, perhaps. Uprooted trees. Bodies.

“
Come on!” Chele hissed. I was moving, but so slowly …

Laura was still there. She’d stopped struggling, and at first I thought she was dead, floating there just below the surface and presenting little more than a hump in the mud. But then she moved; a hand broke through, fingers splayed, twisting slowly, slowly as they opened a shallow pocket in the surface. Shallow, but deep enough to meet her nose and let her grab in a breath.

“
She’s there!” I said, and I was ready to go to her, swim through the filth and hold her up and clear her nose and mouth so that she could breathe again, clean her up like a newborn baby, give her another chance of life.

“
Look at me, concentrate on
me
,” Chele said, and I knew that she was right. I would not serve Laura by dying.

Chele pulled, I pushed and in a couple of minutes she was able to reach over and grab one of my hands in both of hers. She strained again, and I could see where some of the mud was being diluted and washed from her body by sweat. It was drying as well, fading to a lighter colour as her own heat bled the moisture from it, cracking as soon as it dried where her muscles worked to pull me to her.

I felt something solid beneath my knee, and with a huge burst of effort I lifted a foot, let Chele give one more pull and then I was up there with her.

I felt drained. Totally, completely exhausted, like a battery flickering on the last dregs of its power. Not long until I ran out. And I couldn’t allow that yet.

“
The demons,” Chele said, but it was a question that I did not have the strength to answer. I looked up at the solid ceiling through which I assumed we’d fallen, and there was still no sign of any pursuit.

“
Laura.” I saw Laura’s hands still circling, still moving around each other to maintain a dip in the thick mud, at the bottom of which I could just see her nose. Perhaps she was standing on tiptoes, just high enough to be able to breathe … if she could keep the mud at a slightly lower level. If it became more fluid, or if another surge came through the window now, she’d be finished.

“
They can’t let this happen,” I said, “not after what we’ve been through to save her. They can’t.”

“‘
They’ are probably trying their damndest to get you out of here or kill you,” Chele said. She had her arms crossed over her chest. Her sweater was rolled into a sodden ball, resting by her feet.

“
We’ll need that again,” I said, picking it up. “Is that alright?”

She lowered her arms. Dried mud came away from her chest with a crackle. She looked as if she had leprosy, but I felt that interest again, the unconscious stirring at the sight of her nudity. “Not as if I need it,” she said, but she was joking. She even smiled.

I nodded my thanks. “You’re lighter than me. You lay out straight and throw this to Laura. Once she’s got it, I’ll haul you in.” Chele nodded. I looked away.

She threw the sweater out before her and then splashed herself down across the thick mud. I knelt on the furniture — bookcase, dresser, whatever — and kept hold of her ankles. It took three more throws until the sweater landed across Laura’s twirling fingers, and I realised that we were cutting off her meagre air supply.

I could only hope that she realised what was happening … and hung on.

She did. I pulled, finding a reserve of strength I would never have believed in before, desperation tightening my muscles, excitement kicking in when I saw Laura emerge head-first from the mud like a child birthed from the earth. She was gasping and coughing up great clots of muck, her eyes still squeezed shut, and I only wanted to bring her to me so that I could hold her and help her. I hauled, pulled, strained until I could reach down and grasp Chele under the arms and lift her up with me. As she came so did Laura, and then the three of us were hunkered down on the furniture, the mud sloshing around our ankles but we were out, free,
alive
.

“
I must…” Laura gasped, fingering mud from her ears and nose. I wiped it from her eyes, “I must … have done something really bad … in a previous life.”

I could only cry. Chele touched my shoulder and left her hand there long enough for it to matter.

We were still there, wherever there was. And they were probably still after us, whoever they were. And the only thing I wanted to do was to move, get out and away from this building and see what awaited us outside.

I held Laura for ten minutes, cleaning mud from her face, finding her again. Chele wrung out the sweater as much as she could and slipped it back over her head and arms. She stood and leaned against the wall as Laura and I loved each other and wished that none of this had ever happened.

“
What do we do now?” Laura asked at last, ending the silence we adults had not been able to break.

As if lured by Laura’s voice there was a loud thumping, crackling sound outside, clear above the roar and grind of the moving mud.

“
Oh no,” I said. They were here. They’d followed us, found us and now they were coming, and what fate could we expect from those demons? No slow death, of that at least I was sure. They’d hold us down and shoot us. After some of what I’d seen today, that may almost be a blessing.

“
Wait,” Chele said, bending down so that she could see through the window and across the surface of the mud-river. “It’s not the same sound.”

“
Then what —”

“
Gunfire,” Laura said. “That’s gunfire, yes, but it’s pad-rifles. I heard them a couple of days ago when …” She trailed off. It must have been bad if she didn’t even want to tell her father about it. It wasn’t the usual crack of gunfire, more like a whiplash ending with a heavy thud. I’d heard about pad-rifles. They weren’t nice things. They fired super-heated composite which spread out in the air to something the size of a fist. By the time it struck its target it was solid again. Being shot with a pad-rifle was like being hit by a medicine ball at fifteen hundred miles per hour.

More reports, closer this time, and then we heard the familiar crackle of machinegun fire joining in.

“
There’s a battle going on out there,” Chele said, looking around our room as if contemplating staying.

The mud river seemed to be flowing faster, and even though inside the room was relatively calm, the sounds of scraping and rumbling from outside was becoming more violent. Another gunfire exchange, another heavy grumble of a building collapsing into the muck, and that made up my mind.

“
We can’t stay here,” I said. “This place isn’t designed for that.”

“
What do you mean, ‘this place’? You don’t even know where or when we are.”

“
We’re in Hell,” I said. “We’re in a place designed to make observers feel happy with their lot. Bad things are
meant
to happen here, people are meant to see, and sitting tight will only draw it to us.” I looked around, suddenly having a clear and dreadful sense of being spied upon.

“
Are they watching now?” Laura asked.

“
I don’t think bad enough stuff is happening to us yet.” I smiled grimly at my daughter and felt so powerless when I saw the fear in her eyes.

“
I just want to go home,” she said. “I want Mum back.” I hadn’t heard that from her in a long time.

“
Then let’s go,” Chele said, standing and edging her way to the window. “I think whatever we’re standing on goes as far as the window.”

“
Then what?”

She shrugged. “Through. Outside. You and I are aliens here, Nolan. We get to the action, maybe we’ll have an idea of how to find our way out.”

We left the room through the shattered window, moving from the sunken furniture and balancing on the sill, before stepping across to the head of a wall protruding above the mud river. And once outside, we were able to turn around and see where we’d come into this particular Hell.

“
Where are the caves?” Chele said. “Where are the tunnels? Why didn’t they follow us through?”

Looking up at the two-storey house, I could only shake my head and wonder. The dislocation … the sense of wrongness … it was terrifying.