ASH MISTRY AND THE CITY OF DEATH

by Sarwat Chadda

  But Ash had decided not to write any of that.

  When Ash had heard he’d be going on the sleeper train, he had entertained ideas of oak-panelled Pullman carriages, white-gloved attendants and small, exquisitely furnished compartments with their own porcelain washbasins. Basically the Orient Express. Instead they approached a carriage that turned out to be nothing more than a big steel crate with bars on the windows. John checked the tickets. “This is us,” he said.

  “You’re joking. This is for cattle, not people.”

  “I only had enough money for third class.”

  Ash sighed and climbed in. The carriage comprised of open compartments along one side of a narrow corridor. Each compartment had a pair of triple-decked bunk beds facing each other. During the day, everyone sat on the lowest bunk, with the upper two folded up against the wall. The attendant came round in the evening to unfold the top bunks, with a sheet and pillow for each passenger, and then it was lights-out.

  Old women in fine saris sat while moustachioed businessmen shouted into their mobile phones and mothers wrestled with screaming kids and squalling babies. One boy, forefinger firmly fixed in his left nostril, watched Ash and John settle in.

  Ash peered out of the window as the train pulled out of the station. Passengers dashed across the tracks to climb in through the open doors, helped on board by the other commuters. The train ran through grand avenues of steel track lined with the pastel-coloured government buildings. It weaved through gleaming new towers and raced along through the shanty towns that encircled the city.

  Then they were running smoothly on raised tracks along endless paddy fields, and Kolkata disappeared behind the wall of swaying palm trees.

  That night, everyone slept except Ash. The carriage rumbled and the wheels screeched and rattled endlessly. The fans above him droned like a squadron of mosquitoes. Couldn’t they afford to oil them? The noise put Ash’s teeth on edge.

  He thought about Ujba and what he’d said about Ash’s past lives. He thought about all those people he’d seen, faces going back thousands of years from all over the world. Ashoka had been somewhere in that crowd, and Ash wanted to find him and learn more about the Koh-i-noor, especially now that Savage had it. So, with the train rattling along, the fans buzzing and the other passengers snoring, Ash closed his eyes.

  He began to blank out the world around him. He let the rocking of the carriage pass through him so he felt as if he was floating, rather than resting on a shaking bunk. The noises around him faded and he lost touch with himself as he sank further inward.

  He passed by grey-bearded men and women dressed in thick robes and wearing heavy jewels from ancient times. Ahead and around him there were others, some with swords or spears, some with scrolls and books or pots and quills, and he wondered what their lives had been like. Had they won their battles or lost? Parvati had told him once that the Eternal Warrior could fight for either side, for good or evil, but now as Ash looked further into his past lives he realised it wasn’t so simple. You could be hero and villain, often simultaneously. He’d been Brutus, the Roman who’d murdered Julius Caesar to save the Republic, but instead only brought about the reign of the emperors. By attempting good, his legacy had been tyranny and the era of Caligula and Nero.

  Ash had ridden with the Mongols, slaughtering their way from the steppes to the very heart of Europe. But from the bones they’d built the first global empire and allowed the exchange of science, technology and new ideas between the East and West. Such great evil leading to good.

  What part would he play? Would he be a hero or a villain? He had no idea. But right now he needed one man, a conqueror who, more than most, had been both.

  Ashoka. Where are you?

  shoka looks down at the bodies of his dead soldiers. He raises the burning diamond high and the beams burst from the many facets of crystal, pushing back the darkness. The pure white light shines upon pale, bloodless limbs, on blank, empty eyes, on drawn, pale lips. Their bodies are scored with wounds and their clothes rent and encrusted with dried patches of blood. Limbs have been hacked off and others crushed under the blows of maces and clubs.

  “Rise, brothers, rise,” he urges them, thrusting the Koh-i-noor ahead of him.

  Behind him he hears the uneasy shuffling of his bodyguards, the sibilant hiss of warning from Parvati as she sees how much greater he is than her father.

  “Rise!”

  The diamond burns within his fist and shakes with power. A dull, deep drone vibrates from the rock and the light increases to a blinding intensity. Ashoka shields his eyes.

  A harsh, desperate cry pierces the night. First one, then others. The diamond is almost unbearable now, but even as his skin burns, Ashoka holds fast.

  He stares as the dead move. Groaning, they flex their limbs and drag themselves up from the bloodied earth of their graves. Then, one by one, they stand. Their eyes are dull and carry the light of Yama, and their mouths twist into savage, hungry leers. A deep, inhuman snarl rattles from the throat of the nearest and he extends his arms, reaching out for Ashoka. His guards form a wall of spears between him and the risen dead.

  “No,” whispers Parvati. The four blades of her urumi, her serpent sword, rattle free. She steps towards the men as they shuffle on ungainly, stiff limbs. A few, their legs broken or missing, crawl forward, clambering over each other with eager, monstrous bloodlust. One guard rams his spear through the torso of one, but the man, the creature, continues despite the injury, grabbing him and dragging him away from the line. The guard screams as they surround him, sinking their nails and teeth into his flesh. They pull and tear and devour.

  More and more of his bodyguards fall beneath the relentless mass until they can take no more and flee. Ashoka remains, the diamond still glowing in his hand. Parvati strikes, her urumi flickering, slicing and ripping. But there are too many.

  The living dead turn their hungry gaze towards him.

  “No!” cries Ashoka.

  “No,” cried Ash, wiping the sweat off his face. He grabbed his water bottle and drained it in four gulps. Water spilled over him as he tried to stop his hand from shaking.

  That was horrible, a nightmare. Ashoka had used the Brahma-aastra, but something had gone seriously wrong. By trying to do good, he had only created a greater evil.

  The ones who come back are never the ones who left. That’s what Khan said. If Savage used the diamond the same way, he was likely to kick off a zombie apocalypse. Ash wouldn’t need a punch dagger to face down the undead, he’d need a chainsaw. If this was what would happen if anyone used the diamond then Gemma was better dead and at peace.

  Resurrecting Gemma. It was, always had been, a foolish hope. With that hope gone, all he had was despair. He’d go home and have to face the fact he’d failed. Josh and his other mates were afraid of him, and what about Lucky? She’d more or less said he’d become a monster.

  Some hero.

  He got up and walked to the end of the carriage. The door was wide open – no health and safety concerns here – and he watched the midnight landscape roll by.

  The journey time was twenty-six hours, but John had told him that in India, that could mean thirty hours, or thirty-six. He’d checked the map at the station to get an idea of the route they were taking. Madras was way down south, almost at the tip of the subcontinent, a stone’s throw from the island of Sri Lanka. The train followed the eastern coastline along the Bay of Bengal, and wove through mangrove swamps and jungle. Palm leaves brushed the tops of the carriages and the scent of lush vegetation, softly decaying in the damp heat, mixed with the smoky exhaust of the old diesel engine up front.

  Occasionally the jungle fell away and Ash gazed out across the still sea. The sky, dazzling with diamond light, shone upon the deep blues and greens of the water, stretching all the way to the horizon. Small black silhouettes – uninhabited islands – dotted the otherwise featureless ocean.

  Stations came and went. At the bigger ones, tea sellers and porters sleep
ing on their carts stirred into languid life from under their threadbare blankets as the train clattered in. Hawkers sold drinks, ran errands and handed snacks wrapped in palm leaves through the bars to yawning passengers.

  John joined him as the night rolled on. “View’s better up top,” he said. He leaned out of the door, stood on tiptoe, grabbed the top of the door frame and lifted himself out in a single, nimble move, as sprightly as a monkey.

  The train was picking up speed and rocking from side to side. Getting up on the roof, at night, with low branches, sounded pretty damn stupid. Ash couldn’t climb like John. The boy was small and light; Ash wasn’t.

  John leaned over the edge, his upside-down face quizzical. “Well?” he asked.

  “What if I slip?”

  “Make sure you don’t.”

  “But what if I do?”

  John frowned. “Then, I think, you’ll be crushed to death under the wheels? Probably.”

  “Sod it,” said Ash. “You only live once.”

  John smirked. “We both know that’s not true.”

  Ash pulled himself up, fingers scrabbling for a second before John grabbed his arm and helped him on to the roof.

  They weren’t alone. A man lay asleep, his head resting on a small tucked-up package. Further down, a trio of labourers passed round a steel dish and a bottle.

  “I love trains,” said Ash. “The feeling that you can go on and on, the world changing all around you, but you’re just sitting still.”

  “Sounds lazy.”

  “Laziness is a vastly underrated quality. I used to be an expert in lazy.”

  “You and your decadent Western ways.” John took a packet of Indian pastries from inside his shirt. “I lifted these at the last stop. Best while they’re still warm.”

  More samosas? Fine by him. Ash nibbled at the corner of the deep-fried meal, wanting to make it last. “Where do you think you’ll go, after this is over?”

  “Get my mother and move. Go somewhere nice and quiet, like Kashmir. We’ve relatives up there.” John held his hand under the pastry, trying to catch even the smallest of crumbs as the wind blew around them. He didn’t waste anything. “Kashmir’s very beautiful. There are lakes of pure blue and they’re as still as mirrors so the sky shines above and below. And you have beautiful boats, like floating palaces really. I had a postcard of one once. That’s where I’d work.”

  “I’ll make sure that happens. This time.”

  “Your father a rich man?”

  “No. He’s an engineer. Mum’s an accountant. We get by, but we’re not rich.”

  “That what you’re going to be? Follow in your dad’s footsteps?”

  Ash shrugged. “Never thought much about it. I really wanted to be a computer-game programmer. Trouble is, all that fantasy stuff doesn’t feel quite the same now.”

  “Now you’ve seen real monsters?”

  “Something like that. Found out they’re not that easy to beat.”

  “You’re lucky you have a choice.”

  “Yes, I suppose.” Parvati and Ujba didn’t seem to think so. As far as they were concerned, he was the Kali-aastra, and that was that. “You know, I always wondered why Superman even bothered being Clark Kent.”

  “What?”

  “Think about it. Why be a normal person? All that time he’s working at the Daily Planet, there’s an earthquake happening or volcano exploding somewhere in the world and he’s not there to save people. He’s in the office, watching dancing cats on YouTube like everyone else.”

  “Is there a point to this conversation, or are you just rambling?”

  “He doesn’t want the responsibility. Simple as that. He doesn’t need a secret identity; he could be Superman twenty-four-seven, but he isn’t. He has to be Clark or he’d go mad. You understand?”

  “No. Not even a tiny bit.” John looked worried. “Are you all right?”

  “Forget it.”

  The two of them sat up on the roof as the train slowed down to a small station, alone in the middle of the jungle. There was a single small building and a long crumbling platform. Huge flowers grew along the borders of the station, and the air was thick with musty pollen. A few small storerooms lined up behind the main building, such as it was, and there were several fenced-off vegetable gardens.

  Ash pointed at one. “What happened there?”

  The fence was broken, ripped out of the earth, and the entire vegetable patch trampled to paste. The trees beyond and the long grass had been just as thoroughly flattened.

  “Elephants,” said John. “Pain in the arse. Looks like a big herd got a taste of the station master’s tomatoes.”

  “Yes, where is the station master?” There was usually a man with a lantern waving the train through, even in the smallest stations like this one.

  “Ash?”

  “What?”

  “You’re scratching your thumb.”

  He hadn’t even noticed, but he was. He glanced at John. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  Ash slid down the side of the carriage, using the window bars as footholds, and stepped on to the empty platform. After a few seconds John came down and joined him.

  “Ash?” he asked, close behind.

  Ash sniffed the air. His thumb was seriously itchy. He walked up to the flowerbed.

  It wasn’t just the vegetables that had been trampled. Lying in amongst the broken tomatoes and clumps of coriander was a body. It had been a man – the station master, most likely – but now it was a pulped, red-and-pink smear.

  John let out a small gasp as he saw the body. Ash continued searching. It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the night gloom, but then he made out a shape in the mud – a deep imprint depressed about ten centimetres into the black soil. Whatever had made it had been incredibly heavy and large.

  It was a footprint, but a size bigger than any human’s.

  Now he’d seen one, he saw others. Some human, some animal, some who-knew-what, but all heavy and sunk deep. All heading into the jungle.

  “Not elephants,” he said. “Loha-mukhas.”

  few minutes later, the train was gone and the two of them stood on the empty platform. The only sound was the tick-tock of the old station clock.

  “What’s out there?” asked Ash. As far as he could tell, there was just jungle. Why had Savage bailed out here?

  “No idea. I’ve never been this far south.”

  The loha-mukhas had trampled a path through the foliage wide enough for a bus. Ash swatted at clouds of insects as they descended to feast on his blood. The high-pitched whine of mosquitoes echoed around his ears, and as they ploughed through the swampy terrain, he was soon soaked from head to toe.

  “Why are they picking on me?” He slapped the back of his neck as another mosquito took a quick snack. “They’re eating me alive.”

  “It’s your bland English blood,” John answered. “Ours is too spicy.”

  Ash splashed waist deep in the murky water. Maybe if he put his head under? He took a deep breath and was about to sink under when John gasped.

  “What?”

  John pointed at a knobby log floating nearby.

  The log blinked.

  A pair of yellow crocodile eyes gazed from just above the surface.

  “What should I do?” asked Ash.

  “Just punch its nose,” suggested John. “Isn’t that, you know, a thing you do?”

  “I thought that was sharks.”

  The crocodile swished its tail and floated closer. Ash thought about his katar, but it was stuffed deep in his backpack. He made a fist, ready to punch.

  This is going to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve done plenty.

  “Just think of it as a handbag waiting to happen,” said John from high up in a tree.

  How did he get up there? Ash wondered. The guy was half monkey. “Utterly unhelpful.”

  The crocodile stared at Ash, its ancient, yellow eyes seeming to look deep into him. Then the giant reptile turne
d, and with a slow, languid swish, disappeared into the swamp.

  Ash drained his third bottle of water. He must have lost half his body weight in sweat in just the last two hours. His clothes clung to him, and the air was so thick and heavy that breathing was like pulling air through a wet flannel. The insects obviously had a taste for him and had told all their friends.

  The trees were also full of monkeys. The creatures watched them from their shrouded perches. Big eyes in black furred faces, their long tails hooked round branches, some with wide-eyed babies hanging off them, others grooming each other or just sitting there, watching. The further they went, the larger their audience grew. An army of monkeys.

  John peered along the trampled path. “Can you smell it?”

  Mixed in with the slimy odour of rot and damp decay was a crisper, cleaner scent. The air felt fresher than it had earlier. “The sea?”

  On they marched. Despite the flattened foliage, the path they were following was slow going. The terrain rolled and dipped and dived through mangrove swamps, across deep streams and ravines of broken rocks. Ash’s legs and back ached and John was falling further behind.

  They stopped, exhausted and hungry. Ash lay down on a slab of stone. Moss served as a thin, mushy mattress and the stone was flat. They’d rest for a while, get some strength back, then continue. He swallowed the last of the water. His super strength and stamina were fading. The trek through the jungle had taken more out of him than he’d expected. He felt – almost – human.

  He slid his fingertips over the edge of the stone. “Funny, these are chisel marks.” He peeled off a patch of dark moss. The rock was scratched and grooved, but so heavily weathered the marks looked natural. Still, the dimensions of the slab were perfectly rectangular. No natural force would shape rock into a rectangle that neatly.

  John inspected his own perch. “Look here.” The boulder he’d been sitting on was actually three of the same slabs, stacked one upon the other.