Arkady

by Patrick Langley

  Frank is at Jackson’s ankles now. He scrabbles at the beach with both hands. He’s still wearing the hoodie Jackson stole for him months ago, his favourite. Black, it has a white 7 on the breast pocket: Frank’s lucky number. The sand grows darker the deeper he goes. His fingernails dig up coal-black sand, white chunks of plastic, dead crustaceans’ severed legs.

  ‘We have to put him back on the boat,’ says Jackson. ‘Sail out over the water there, miles out. Bury him at sea.’

  He realised it just now, watching his brother dig.

  ‘But it’s working,’ says Frank. ‘Look.’ He points at the hole he has made. Water weeps off the sides and gathers at the bottom. ‘We can do it with our hands,’ says Frank. The water’s surface dimly shimmers with reflected sky.

  ‘I know we can,’ Jackson snaps. ‘That’s not the issue.’

  ‘We can do it, here – trust me, it’ll work.’

  Looking down at his brother, Jackson catches sight of his own chest through the gap in his raincoat. The fabric of his T-shirt is crusted with mud and engine-oil. Another shade is mixed up among the blackish brown: a congealed stain leaking crimson tendrils as the rain flows down the fabric. Instinctively he zips the raincoat closed, hiding the blood from view.

  ‘No,’ says Frank, shaking his head. ‘Look at this place. No one will find him. Let’s do it now. Quick.’

  Jackson’s mind goes blank. He twists his neck to glance upriver, where a ship just sounded its foghorn, filling the sky with noise. A chunk is missing from his memory. The man was upright, then he wasn’t; he was standing, then flat on the boat. Alive. Then half-alive. And now, it seems, dead.

  Last night, after they left the Citadel, the barge swung heavily into the darkness and down the waters of the canal. The Citadel was burning behind them, its roof alive with fire, black smoke rising in a vertical column into the blurred amber sky. Fumes of burning plastic swam through the wind. Shadows stretched and shifted as the asters’ searchlights swung, searching out protestors who’d fled.

  How many had been arrested by then?

  As Arkady floated down kinked canals and through the city’s amber grid, Jackson felt certain they’d be caught. Their boat would turn white as the searchlights’ beams converged. A policeman on the creek’s bank would spot them sliding past and jump aboard.

  But neither of those things happened – and soon the brothers reached the river. The water’s surface was patterned with sinuous currents that reflected the glare of the flames. They were out in the open, aimless, drifting with the flow.

  Frank was calm. Too calm. He stood on the boat’s deck, wind in his hair, watching the lights of the riverbank as if they belonged to a fairground. Jackson steered where his instincts pulled him: away from the city, towards the darkness of the widening estuary.

  ‘You know what this means,’ says Jackson, coming back to his senses. He reminds himself to be practical, focus on tasks, not get sunk into quagmires of memory.

  Frank smears his fingers on his jeans to clean them. He opens his mouth but says nothing.

  ‘We’re never coming back,’ says Jackson. ‘Never. Understand? From now on we’re different people. Different names. They’ll be looking for us already – they’ll have our names, photos. Keep going. Never stop.’

  Frank nods. ‘I thought that was always the plan.’

  ‘It was a stupid plan,’ says Jackson, filled with spite at his former self, the one who believed the plan might work. Drifting where the waters guided them, unwatched, directionless, free, he and Frank would live, for once, on their own terms, together and free. It was as simple and as naïve as that: a bid for freedom, independence, and a fuck-you to a city that scorned them.

  When did the idea begin, exactly? When he saw the boat, or sooner?

  He has been planning this journey for years – maybe decades, if you count the first time he felt that yearning to get out, lying in his bed in the bedsit, staring at the wall – and this is where it ends: a dead beach at the end of the world.

  Jackson bends at the waist, strange lights pulsing in his eyes.

  ‘The plan was good,’ says Frank. ‘It just went… wonky, that’s all.’

  A gust thumps off the crashing waves. The weeds’ canes hiss.

  They shovel handfuls of clammy, compacted sand, digging like dogs. Jackson pulls his hood up, shielding his face from the rain: a damp cave of sound. Wind flows over the marshes, scouring the shore. The mad gulls scream as they wheel overhead.

  Digging rhythmically, automatically, he is overcome, for the second time since they came ashore, by the feeling of dislocation or floating. His mind, slipping loose of his skull, haunts the air behind him like a ghost. This is not his body any more. He is watching a film about something that happened, or might have happened, to someone else, years ago, on a different continent, a made-up world. The feeling surges, fades, surges again, rhythmic as the waves that lurch and suck behind him.

  A tarmac path traces the curve of the shore. It runs along the outer wall of a factory: a sprawl of low buildings assembled from metal sheets and breezeblocks, and crowned with silver tubes. The tubes leak thick white clouds that stretch into giant eels before deforming and dissolving, faded and vague in the rain. Red lights burn at the towers’ tips but he can see no signs of life.

  He looks at the hole they have dug: a foot deep at its deepest point, steadily filling with water.

  ‘It’s not working,’ he says.

  ‘It is,’ says Frank, his fingers claggy with sand, ‘it’s working fine. Look,’ he says, digging faster, ‘look.’

  ‘I’m looking.’

  The path stretches off past a clump of thorny bushes. Near the jetty it veers sharply inland, the turning marked by a rusted post. Dull heat pushes at the rear of his skull.

  ‘Stop,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’ Frank replies, irritated. ‘We’ve only just—’

  ‘Look,’ he says, pointing. ‘There – past the bushes.’

  He hadn’t seen them before. Their shell-pale colours camouflaged them in the marshes, their crouching, flat-roofed structures merging with the scrub. But there is no mistaking the brick-like shape of them. People live here, within a few hundred feet of the body. A red towel swings on a clothesline strung between two bungalows.

  ‘We can’t, not here,’ he says, crouching. ‘Look – someone will see him. A dog-walker, anyone – they’ll find the body and run the tests and—’

  ‘I’m not touching him again,’ says Frank.

  ‘We have to. Haven’t you ever watched TV?’

  ‘What’s this got to do with—’

  ‘Tests. DNA, fingerprints. One of those white tents – we’re all over this place. We might as well hand ourselves in. You want that?’

  ‘We could…’ Frank pauses, thinks. ‘We could wait until someone else came along. Explain what happened – tell the truth.’

  Jackson shakes his head.

  ‘Why not?’ says Frank.

  ‘Who would believe us?’

  Jackson slips his hands under the man’s armpits and round, hooking the shoulders. The skull rests against his chest, slack cheeks shaking with every step. Frank waddles backwards, lurching with the weight. How long since he slept, since he ate?

  The tide is higher than it was before, lapping at their knees. Jackson’s clothes are soaked already. He hardly feels the cold.

  Frank loosens his grip when they near the boat. The man’s legs lollop into the water. Without a word, Frank clambers up the boat’s angled side: a swift, smooth leap, tugging buoys and railings as he climbs.

  Even now, even here, there is wonder in the world. Jackson marvels at his brother’s swiftness, the liquid grace with which he moves.

  Frank steps into the wheelhouse, leaving Jackson alone with the body. He drags it to a bank of dry sand and lays it down.

  From this angle, he cannot see the wound itself, just the dark and reddish blurs of blood that stain the skull.

  Staring at his face, its wa
xy cast, Jackson feels almost sorry for the man. He wants to wash the blood from his skull, clean the sand from his skin, heal the leaking wound, fix him. The man’s eyes are closed now. But earlier, in the darkness, in the rain, he saw them staring into his. Gently, he places his boot on the lifter’s throat. He pushes lightly; then harder, harder still. The oesophagus yields beneath his weight, like a rubber tube. The muscles tighten.

  ‘What you doing?’

  Frank is on the boat’s roof, a length of thick nylon rope wrapped round his shoulder, a puzzled look on his face.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Jackson, lifting his boot. ‘Get down here.’

  They set about tying the body, looping the rope around the feet and the legs to bind them, folding the arms across the man’s chest and binding the torso too, threading the rope from ankle to shoulder, under and through the loops, knotting the ends and pulling them tight, leaving two lengths trailing at feet and head. They grab a loop at either end, squat down, and straighten their spines.

  ‘Ready?’ says Jackson.

  Frank nods. They lift.

  ‘Will it hold?’ Frank asks.

  ‘Has to,’ Jackson replies.

  Frank leaps up the boat’s side once again. Jackson chucks up one of the lengths; Frank grabs it, ties it to the railing; and they repeat the process for the feet. The body hangs against the boat’s side, bent at the waist – a buoy.

  ‘I need a hand,’ says Jackson. Frank leans over to help him up, and he is surprised by how easily he climbs. He feels almost weightless, scooped hollow, his bones as light as balsa wood. On the boat, Jackson pauses, leans forward, and breathes. Tiny fireworks dance across his eyes.

  ‘You alright?’ says Frank.

  ‘Just need a second.’

  ‘You’re fine. You’re fine. Right?’

  He watches the estuary, its dancing light. A raincloud like a tectonic plate imposes itself on the distance.

  ‘Shut up,’ he says.

  Boats have appeared upriver: ferries and cruisers, chunky tugs and hulking ships criss-crossing the water’s breadth. The river will only get worse, grow more crowded, as the morning progresses.

  ‘Alright,’ says Jackson. ‘Let’s go.’

  They loop the rain-soaked rope around their forearms, feet squashed hard against the edge of the boat, leaning back with all their weight. Inch by inch, hand by hand, they lift the body. Frank lets the rope slip a couple of times and stands breathless, groaning, staring at his bleeding palms. Soon the man is high enough for Jackson to lean across and grip the loops. The body wobbles, slips, and slips again, never quite leaning far enough to clear the rim. Muscles burning, tendons stretch at ankle and neck.

  The body dumps onto the roof with a reverberant clang.

  ‘Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck,’ Frank hisses, blowing on his rope-burnt hands.

  Jackson slides to his knees, sucking ragged gulps of air. The man’s head is turned away, face in the gutter. His scalp is capped with matted hair and blood.

  ‘Can it stop now?’ Jackson says, staring at a patch of rust.

  ‘What?’ Frank gasps; he spits into the sea. ‘I think I’m about to—’

  Hands on thighs, knees on metal, Jackson thumps his head against the wheelhouse. Frank is at the front. Gripping the railing, he retches overboard.

  ‘You okay?’ Jackson asks a moment later.

  Frank turns to face his brother, bloodless face tinged green.

  ‘You mean apart from the fact we just lifted a dead guy onto a boat and it almost killed me and then I was sick?’ he shouts. ‘Oh yeah. I’m fine, totally fine. Thrilled. Ecstatic. Thanks.’

  They haul the body to the bedroom at the back of the boat and lay the man onto the floor. His head leans at an awkward angle. His hands are folded in his lap like nesting birds. His legs are straight, the shoeless foot swollen by seawater. The blue ropes, loosened now around his shoulders and legs, cradle him like a fishing net.

  ‘Wait…’ says Frank.

  ‘What?’

  Jackson looks at Frank; Frank looks at the man. ‘I just…’ A dark thought swims across the edge of his awareness, like an eel sliding through shadowy weeds; a moment later, it is gone.

  ‘What?’ Jackson barks.

  ‘Something’s not right.’

  ‘You just noticed?’

  Jackson watches the beach through the rain-dappled windows. White churn edges the breakers. The tide is rising, washing the brothers’ footprints away and sucking the boat’s black sides. Purple has faded to pink: light distils itself through clouds. It gleams on the metal dashboard, the cracked varnish of the wooden wheel. An aura warms the edges of the gearstick.

  ‘Get outside,’ says Jackson. ‘Boat might be stuck.’

  He twists the key. The engine rumbles in the bowels of the boat. Slowly, the barge throbs to life. Vibrations rise through the floor into the bones of Jackson’s feet, shins, thighs, and spine. When he hears it in his skull – that barely audible hum in the bones of his ears – he knows the engine is ready.

  The gears grumble. Something’s wrong.

  Jackson feels it in the pinioned rocking of the boat, the engine thrashing in the shallows: the barge’s nose is lodged in the sand. He had been in such a panic, the boat lumbering headlong through choppy surf, his head so crammed with thoughts, asters in the sky, black-vests with truncheons and tasers, cramped cold cells in unlisted facilities, that he forgot to kill the engine. The boat thumped headfirst into the beach. Pans and plates and glasses tumbled crashing to the floor. Jackson slammed into the wheel, which smacked the air from his lungs.

  ‘It’s not moving,’ Frank yells again, louder.

  ‘Push it.’

  ‘I am, it’s not—’

  ‘Just push it,’ Jackson screams.

  Frantic, he tugs the lever back and forth to rev the engine. The boat lurches and churns, creaking as it tugs against its socket of molten sand. Frank yells out – then Jackson feels it. A lingering, sliding movement, a sudden wrench.

  The barge is floating.

  He rolls the wheel to the right. The room floods with petrol fumes and the iodine smell of the water. Frank flops over the railing, soaked.

  ‘You were leaving without me,’ he pants, slouching into the wheelhouse doorway.

  Land falls away in the windows. Details blur and merge. Soon the beach is a dark line trimmed with greenery. He turns the wheel, swings the boat around until it faces the bright horizon, and shifts the gearstick forward.

  Arkady floats without shelter or camouflage, as exposed as an ant on a page. Jackson tilts his head, drums his fingers on the wheel. He follows the darting arcs of gulls.

  ‘There,’ he says, pointing. ‘They’re looking for us.’

  Shipping containers. Silt mines. Nothing.

  ‘Who?’ says Frank.

  Only a trace of the strangeness of dawn remains: a ripple of lavender, skirted with rose, hangs banner-like over the northern shore.

  ‘That thing?’ he asks.

  Jackson jabs again, once, at the window.

  All Frank can see is the land.

  The marshes here are overgrown with tentacles of industry, tubes, pipes, tunnels, and wires that infiltrate the tidal territories. Factories mine the salt-stiffened earth for minerals, fuel to feed the server farms. Smokestacks leak vapours into the breeze. Chemicals flaring to life as they react with the open air.

  ‘There,’ says Jackson, ‘right there – look.’

  It flashes: a circular blur. Another. A swarm of fly-black asters high above the city.

  ‘They’ve seen us,’ says Jackson, ‘followed us to the boat and – you said there weren’t any cameras—’

  ‘There weren’t.’

  ‘—and that no one saw you and—’

  ‘They didn’t.’

  ‘—you said, you said—’

  ‘There’s no way anyone saw us,’ says Frank.

  The canal was empty. Darkness shot through with slivers of rain, the buildings blank. The brothers were al
one with the lifter.

  ‘Explain that, then,’ Jackson says.

  The asters strafe across the northeast edge of the motorway. The city’s buried rivers resurface there, unspooling through outer suburbs.

  Settlements have grown across treacherous land. Droves of people have left the city centre and built improvised villages. Tents, huts, mossy caravans have begun to spring up there, on the sliding earth.

  ‘Someone must have seen us,’ says Jackson, ‘one of the others told the police, gave them a description – they’ll have dozens of them—’

  ‘It’s not for us,’ says Frank. ‘Why would they bother with us?’

  ‘Are you kidding? They think we killed someone,’ says Jackson. ‘One of their own.’

  The asters lift and veer. They fly southwest in a smooth and windblown curve. Paused again on the skyline, they hang like a chandelier.

  ‘We did kill someone though,’ says Frank.

  ‘Well yeah, I know that, I just mean… We can’t do it,’ says Jackson, watching the asters shrink to black specks. ‘Not here. Anyone could see us.’

  ‘There’s no one for miles,’ says Frank.

  ‘I don’t mean the water, idiot. The skies.’

  The skies, if anything, are even emptier. There is only the shrouded sun, its muffled light; the asters in the middle distance, far enough away the brothers can’t hear their wings; and the planes rising and falling, as though on conveyor belts of air, into and out of the offshore airport.

  ‘Where, then?’ says Frank.

  ‘Somewhere else.’

  ‘There is nowhere else.’

  Frank scans the northern shore. Floating cities have docked at port. Cranes and robot arms are busy scanning, winching, lifting, and unloading the bright containers off the hulking ships. The port runs like a wind-up toy. No living creatures in sight. But the shore is watched by cameras, patrolled by guards.

  Tidal islands dot the waters beyond the port. Dull grey, they merge with the waves that bathe them.

  Frank remembers the map. The blank patch, the dotted red line. Months ago, when they were refurbishing the boat, he researched the canal network, the ports, and the estuary, scoping out places to moor.

  ‘We’ll drop him there,’ says Frank, ‘out by that orange buoy. If he washes up, no one will find him.’