“Two days. Tops.” Tom concluded casually.
Bad news had become so much part and parcel of their situation, it was barely noteworthy. They continued to drift. The sea festered like a burst septic tank. The cries of the dead plucking away at sanity, or whatever was left of it. Here and there, one of the survivors jerked and shifted position as a scorched dead hand reached over the side, only to slide back down, leaving behind a slimy trail.
Mama Samaki was barely conscious now. Her face puffy and eyes red, the fever had begun to send her into convulsions. The coast was much more visible now, yet no longer familiar. The high rises which had stood like monoliths over the low architecture of the historic city were no more. Turned into a skyline like broken, jagged, and discoloured teeth, it grinned back at them somewhere between beckon and warning. The sludge was thickening by the hour, and Tom figured it was not long before they would reach the tidal zone, or at least got close enough for the next tide to pull them in even closer. What would happen at low tide? He hardly dared think about it. Chances were they would have to traverse a good mile of undead covered mire, only to run into the arms of thousands more, or at least as many as the airstrikes had left standing. Chances of getting Anna off the continent, perhaps reaching the WHO or anyone not living in the pocket of Big Pharma and still able to produce an antidote, were dwindling by the minute.
The moans were growing louder, more pronounced, like a swarm of insects or a Mexican wave it moved hither and yon as the hordes ashore were drawn into different directions by the slightest attraction. Another hour or so and the boat would be close enough to provide the stimulus needed for them to congregate and push forward into the receding ocean, chained to one another by pure rapacity for flesh.
“We need to start paddling.” Tom turned towards Amadou. “If we let the tide take us in, we’re done.”
The two leaned overboard and began looking for any kind of suitable implement in the debris, careful to avoid the many reaching hands that extended skyward as soon as the remains detected a nearby living presence. It didn’t take them long. The fact that Mombasa had been a tourist destination had always been belied by its inherent abject poverty. Its tin huts and shanty suburbs barely able to withstand coastal storms had been much less of a match for jetfighters dropping their ample load. Now the ocean was as rife with broken planks, cheap imported plastic sheeting, and other floating debris previously part of poor people’s homes.
“I see your point. But where exactly are we heading?” Amadou said, sweating profusely, the afternoon sun and the salt stinging his eyes.
“If I knew, I’d tell you.” Tom smiled tiredly, digging deep as he pushed on.
It was hard to get any bearings at all, but for now away from the coast or at least parallel to it was as good a plan as he could come up with. They took infrequent breaks, with Nadia as reliever, and huddled under the tarp next to Anna until the setting sun started to lose its sting. Gathering around Mama Samaki, they each took a swig from one of the remaining water bottles, a cup each, Tom had figured optimistically. But that was before the hard labour they had endured for most of the day. After the exertion of paddling in the punishing heat, there was little left. Their work done for the day, their mission, no matter how futile it may prove to be, accomplished, they held hands and watched the sun dip low behind Mombasa city. They raised their chins and closed their eyes, delighting in the first breaths of the cooler evening breeze brushing past, bringing much-needed relief.
“What will happen to us?” Somewhere deep inside, Anna suspected that for once, her dad did not know the answer.”
“Eat up, sweetheart. It’s Mac ‘n’ Cheese.” Tom handed her one of the last MREs.
She frowned at the reheated mush inside the bag.
“I wish I could give you an answer. But for now, all we can hope for is for the current to carry us anywhere but towards the coast.”
He tried to hug her, but she withdrew and instead turned and angrily looked out over the sea. He wanted to say something, anything to make her understand, to apologize, to make things right somehow. But here, in the middle of hell’s own effluence, any message of hope proved elusive. Far above them, an echelon of seabirds passed on its way south, or wherever their instincts told them they needed to go.
“What’s that?” Anna pointed at the sky.
“Just gulls or something, sweetheart,” Tom barely looked up, preoccupied with his meal and memories of Julie.
She paused and cocked her head slightly, her gaze firmly fixed on the horizon.
“No, not those. That lone big one over there.”
Three sets of eyes followed hers. Reflecting the setting sun’s orange rays, high above one minute and skating low along the fringes of the slick the next, a heavy object glid effortlessly through the fiery sky.
“Blackhawk!” Tom shouted, dropping his MRE overboard and getting low onto the air deck.
The others followed and pressed themselves against the rubber. They carefully peered over the side, watching the helicopter as it approached, first zigzagging between coast and open water, but soon honing in on their position.
Tom slid over to Anna and covered her with his arm. They had been discovered. He closed his eyes. At least death would be quick and painless. A fiery flash and then, nothing. There were worse ways to go. Amadou and Nadia cringed and covered their ears. The dead wailed, but the rotors now dominated the soundscape.
It was close. So close that its downwash displaced the sludge around the Zodiac, pressing the boat hard into the water. Then, perhaps 50 yards away, the helicopter hovered. What were they waiting for? Tom kept his head down, still, shielding Anna as best as he could, waiting for that split-second swish of a hellfire or the infernal rattle of its M134 Minigun, whatever the pilot would choose as the means of their annihilation. He bit his lip. The world around him stood still. His mind was racing.
A loud pop. The sizzle of static. A high pitched electronic squeal jarred. Metallic cussing. Someone fumbling with a microphone.
“Hello.” Crackle. “Shit. Damnit.”
A screech like fingernails on blackboard.
“Hello?! Ah, that’s better.”
Pause.
“Keep that sumbitch steady, willya?”
A familiar voice.
Tom lifted his head. His eyes went as wide as the sea itself.
“Jimmy?”
And with that, the others, too, stared up and into the narrow eyes of the Blackhawk, its swaying nose sniffing out the rubber craft in front of it.
“Ya’ll comfy down there, or would you like a ride?”
The speaker again crackled into action, Jimmy’s drawl now unmistakable.
Tom shielded his face against the tornado whipped up by the rotors. Displacing the slick along with the dead in concentric circles, the large machine hovered, the pilot trying hard to balance its pitch between the coastal breeze and thermals rising from the black carpet below. Pieces of debris skidded across the water, bounced off the inflatable. A piece of metal sheeting sliced through the air above their heads. The cabin door slid back, revealing the door gunner’s black helmet. A Jacob’s ladder dropped, its end bobbing and twisting, dipping into the ocean and rising in tune with the helicopter’s movements. It edged forward, dragging the ladder until it bumped against the Zodiac’s hull. Dead hands reached from beneath the surface. Lacerated fingers grasping, fumbling for a piece of the action.
The v-keel heaved as the survivors scrambled to their knees. Nadia was yelling something, but her voice was drowned out by the all-consuming turbulence. Black foam splattered across the deck. A decaying hand landed in Amadou’s lap. They would not last much longer. Whipping and twisting uncontrollably, the end of the ladder bucked like a wild horse. Getting onto one knee, Tom leaned forward and extended as far as he could. The ladder danced, inches away from his fingers. Amadou desperately waved into the dark eye of the Cyclops above them, and the pilot understood. Inching forward with uncanny precision, the ladder follow
ed. Reluctantly at first, it finally shot forward and into Tom’s arms, nearly knocking him out in the process.
Hanging on for dear life, he nodded at Nadia and Anna. Clambering over his back, trying to get a foothold on the Zodiac’s side, Nadia froze and pointed. Tom watched in horror as the material beneath her foot, suddenly soft as a sofa cushion caved in and the inflatable’s sides started to fold inward and onto themselves.
“Now!” He yelled into the wind, shaking the ladder, willing them on board.
Nadia grabbed Anna, who struggled at first, but yielded when her father precariously freed up one hand and pushed her up the first few links. Nadia jumped up and grabbed a hold just beneath her, their weight finally adding some stability to the ladder. A gush of water rushed through the indent in the boat’s side where Nadia had stood. The chamber, quickly losing air now, looked more like a ruffled painter’s tarp than a boat. Amadou hesitated for a split second as Tom urged him to go next, but then reluctantly followed his instruction. He had made his peace a little while earlier, plus the man holding the ladder had far more to lose. But if the past weeks had taught him anything, it was that Tom’s stubbornness was only outdone by his tenacity and so he nodded and grabbed hold. His foot pushed off, and the swell gushed over the flattened side, weighing down the sinking boat even more. He looked back.
Tom faked a smile and nodded, then turned to Mama Samaki just in time to see her grey, crusty eyes open. She reached out and tried to say something, but her dead gaze told Tom everything he needed to know. Another gust of helicopter downwash forced a large wave of sludge into what was left of the boat. A charred figure slipped across the rubber like by-catch from a dragnet, its arms flapping about in search of prey. Submerged up to his waist now, Tom pulled himself up, his legs barely clearing the reaching hands below.
Dangling off the last link of the ladder he could feel a slight lift. Below him, Mama Samaki’s mouth fell open in what otherwise would have been an expression of surprise. Putting his arm through the link and around the ladder’s side, Tom steadied himself and retrieved the pistol from his belt.
‘I am thankful for all you have done for us. May God be with you.’
The bullet penetrated her forehead and Mama Samaki closed her eyes in peaceful consolation. Her body slid back into the boat, its sides closing over her like a curtain and together with the former inflatable she descended into her watery grave.
The sliding door closed no sooner than the last bit of ladder had been retrieved. Tom lay flat on his back, breathing hard from the climb. Over on the other side of the cabin, Nadia was draping a blanket over Anna’s shivering shoulders while Amadou was already forward, leaning into the cockpit, trying to familiarize himself.
“We gotta stop meeting like this!” Jimmy extended a hand and helped Tom into a seated position.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Tom replied.
It was one person he had never thought to see again, let alone expect to snatch them from death’s clutches for a second time.
“I know, right?” Jimmy exclaimed with the excitement of a child on Christmas morning. “I mean, who would’ve thunk?” He slapped his thigh. “One minute we’re cruisin’ along, not a care in the world…Well, discounting the dead, that is…and then next: Shazam! There you are, floatin’ in the not-so-deep-blue-anymore yonder!”
Tom couldn’t help but smile. The man’s optimism had always been infectious.
“Oh, pardon my manners,” Jimmy nodded at the crew members wearing coveralls and helmets. “The big fella over there is Mike. He’s the ladder guy. Mike, say hello!”
The big man nodded and waved, the material cutting into his flexing biceps as he raised his arm.
“And up the front, we have Sonny and Cher, would you believe it?!” Jimmy spoke into the microphone of a helmet dangling from a hook nearby.
“Fuck you, Jimmy!” Squawked an instant reply from the speakers as the co-pilot turned around and grinned.
A Hispanic woman in her late twenties, she had the chiselled look of a cage fighter. Strands of thick black hair protruded from beneath a navy ball cap, and an oversized headset and her piercing green eyes competed with the azure beyond the windshield.
“I got you babe.” The man next to her began to sing off-tune, and with an accent, Tom found hard to pinpoint.
“Meet Samson”, Jimmy yelled over the engines, slapping the pilot’s shoulder. “He’s not much of a singer, but he’s one helluva flyboy!”
He pointed to another helmet behind Tom, indicating for him to put it on.
“Easier to talk when you’re not yelling over this old thing,” Jimmy imitated the rotor with his index finger, and his voice crackled over the headset.
“Whatever happened to you?” Tom was as curious as he was thankful for their rescue.
Amadou, seeing the conversation, quickly put on one of the many headsets.
“Let’s just say when the Hummer got torched, I had to go for Plan C. Remember the guys in charge of the distraction back at the receiving centre? Their plan was to go AWOL for a bit. With a rough idea about what would eventually go down, taking in some of the sights seemed like the right thing to do. I mean, while the sights were still there and all.” He shrugged and dropped back into one of the cloth-covered metal frame seats.
“You went on Safari?” Tom cast an incredulous look.
“Damn right!” Jimmy shot back with pride. “Best trip ever. Well, almost.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Jimmy? There were eight of us back then.” The co-pilot turned, her face twisted in a contemptuous frown.
“Yeah, my bad. I’m sorry.” He shrugged.
“Always is,” she replied and inspected the instrument panel.
“Where are we heading?” It was Amadou’s turn to join the conversation.
“Kismayo.” Her reply crackled through the headphones.
“Kismayo?” Amadou’s eyebrows raised.
“Kismayo,” Jimmy replied.
“Somalia?” Tom jogged his memory for the Horn’s geographic layout.
“It’s about as far as a full tank of gas will get us. If we’re lucky. And they have an airport”, Jimmy explained, the forlorn look in eyes telling Tom that this was the extent of the plan.
He knew from reports that Kismayo was a virtual hotbed for local warlords in their effort to control one of the most significant entry points to East Africa north of Kenya, namely its port. Turmoil had engulfed the city for decades and the infamous Battle of Kismayo, where Somali National Forces, together with their AMSIOM allies ousted Al-Shabab from one of its last bastions in the country, had received more than its share of international news. Now that the insurgent group had managed to make significant in-roads into Kenya itself, Tom wondered what situation they were about to fly into on the group’s virtual home turf.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Tom thought to himself and relaxed a little.
At least, for now, they were safe in this flying cage and out of immediate danger. Kismayo, with its seaport and an international airport, provided it had not yet been overrun, would offer about as many options for escape as they could wish for under the circumstances. He felt hope brush away the despair he had felt but minutes earlier trapped in nothing but an air-filled bubble among a sea of the dead.
His mind travelled below the surface of that unholy carpet, and he imagined Mama Samaki, now resting in peace far beneath in clearer waters. The ocean had provided her livelihood and now her final resting place. Among the tragedy, at least this part seemed strangely appropriate. He said a quiet thanks to her and wished her soul well. She had saved Anna in more than one way, and for that, he would be eternally grateful. Tom promised himself at that moment that he would keep her memory alive somehow. In lieu of a tombstone, it was the least he could do.
“Chowtime!” Jimmy’s squawky voice over the headset snapped him back into the present.
Tom shuffled over to Anna and took her into his arms. Nadia placed a hand on his
shoulder and gave him a warm-hearted smile. She looked out the window at the slowly clearing coastal waters ahead and retreated into her own thoughts. Jimmy unwrapped a large smoked piece of meat from a piece of cloth. It smelled delicious.
“Gazelle, anyone?” He tried to fake a French accent and bowed like a pompous fine dining waiter.
“Don’t mind if I do!” Amadou wasted no time, taking a large slice from the tip of Jimmy’s knife.
Tom smiled as Anna, joined in, chewing the meat with obvious delight. Jimmy unscrewed a cleanskin bottle and poured shots of amber liquid into a handful of plastic cups.
“A little something to wash it down with!” Jimmy grinned the way only he could.
“To Faith. To Papillon. To David. To Gautier. To Justus. And to Mama Samaki. May they rest in peace, never to be forgotten!” Tom held up his cup, and the others joined him in the toast.
“Things are looking up!” Amadou emptied his drink in one gulp and beamed.
Tom held Anna and hoped he was right.
EPILOGUE
Somewhere in the pockmarked honeycomb of bullet-riddled buildings, atop the last remaining floor of a now crumbling luxury resort, mulishly having withered both the onslaught of the dead below and the bombs from above, two white-clad figures stood in silence. In the shadow of a surviving support beam, a broken finger pointing at the sky, they watched over the formerly manicured gardens along the waterfront, now filled with remnants of war and panicked abandonment of soldiers and civilians alike. Trunks of palm trees protruded from the scorched earth like broken toothpicks, decapitated and blackened by the shockwaves of the incendiary bombs. A tapestry of body parts and rubble sprawled out where pristine beach had invited tourists for a swim. Among it, the undead, in bits or whole, swarmed into the brackish waters in an endless stream.
The older of the two men scowled. Their success tasted bitter, the only sweet smell the rotting flesh around them.
The Virophage Chronicles (Book 2): Dead Hemisphere [Keres Rising] Page 34
