The Tankermen

by Margo Lanagan

  As soon as it was loosened, the grating sank without a sound and slid sideways out of sight. ‘Phew, lucky we weren’t standing on it,’ Jed said sensibly to cover up his surprise. ‘There’s something not very nice down there,’ he added, sniffing. ‘It’ll be their garbage disposal unit, what do you reckon? Shit, that wasn’t very sensitive.’ He glanced at Finn’s light-bleached face. ‘Sorry, mate.’

  Nothing was visible in the cavity but more whiteness. Finn lay down and stuck his head into the hole.

  The smell assailed him, of rotten meat and raw sewage: pestilential air, edged with a ghastly sweetness. Finn shook his eyes clear of the dizziness it produced, glanced around quickly and brought his head up with a jerk.

  ‘What do you see?’ said Jed.

  Finn rolled away from the hole, gasping for breath. ‘Don’t look,’ he said. ‘It’s horrible.’

  Jed looked anyway. ‘Faugh!’ he exclaimed at first, retreating. Then he took a deep breath and hung his head over the edge for as long as it lasted. He sat up panting, to find Finn staring at him, his lower lip clamped white between his teeth.

  ‘Your dad might not be one of them,’ said Jed flatly. ‘Let’s go down and see.’

  Finn nodded, still stunned.

  ‘There’s a little ladder,’ said Jed. He waited for Finn to nod again before continuing, slowly and clearly. ‘It’s white, so it’s hard to see. I’ll show you. Try to breathe through your mouth, okay? That way you won’t feel so much like chucking.’

  They lowered themselves through the opening into a low-ceilinged corridor, only about two metres high and perhaps six wide, but endlessly long. A narrow walkway, raised a few centimetres above the floor, ran down one side of it, off into infinity, and the remaining space was taken up by a row of large, open cages with walls and roofs of rough metal scaffolding, encrusted, inside and out, with bodies.

  It reminded Finn of the cockroach traps Janet used in the kitchen, light cardboard frameworks with glue-coated floors. A week behind the fridge and they’d be a mass of shiny brown bodies, some expired, many still alive, sitting over the black beads of their own excrement with their antennae waving, trying to wrench their legs free. But these were not cockroaches. These were his own species, real live humans.

  His brain reeled under the shock. The people were concentration-camp thin and hairless, their clothes sagging around them, their closed eyes sunk into blackened circles. They all looked the same, like anatomical diagrams, the workings of every joint exposed under the dulled skin. Around them, pressed up against them, were animals of all kinds. Mostly cats, dogs and birds, some were too wasted to identify.

  The worst thing was the life that still held on to many of them, the merest trickle of it. Things moved: a wing gave a residual flap, a face buried itself deeper into hands, a mouth unstuck itself. From these minimal movements and subdued sounds Finn only wanted to flee.

  He made himself step on to the walkway and move past the first few cages. Jed was right beside him, holding and partly supporting him by his upper arms. ‘It’s better here,’ Jed said hollowly. ‘At least everything’s dead.’

  Where they were standing, the dead things could be distinguished from each other—they still had more or less the forms they’d lived in. Further on they became less like separate creatures and more like massed carrion, until beyond a series of frames from which Finn heard a single soft sound of something falling, there were cages adorned only with bones.

  ‘I can’t look any more,’ he said wretchedly, turning to Jed’s chest.

  ‘Your dad,’ Jed reminded him. ‘Is he in this one?’ He turned Finn back and shook him.

  ‘I can’t tell!’ Finn’s voice was skating up towards hysteria. ‘They all look like skeletons!’ In horror he watched a pair of eyes opening in the mess, then rolling closed again. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to find him here.’

  ‘If you don’t find him, we can’t get him out,’ Jed said patiently. ‘Clothes. Don’t look at faces. Look at clothes. Do you recognise anything they’re wearing?’

  That was easier, but still horrific. Among the bodies in the third cage Finn saw a policeman’s uniform, blackened and tattered across the chest. There was a soft floral dress, some once-natty business suits, a school uniform or two. When Finn spied a small pair of striped kid’s overalls he bent over and noisily brought up the diluted remains of his dinner.

  Jed was there with his crumpled handkerchief. ‘Get angry at the bastards,’ he insisted through his teeth as Finn mopped his face. Finn would hardly have recognised him, meeting him like this. The blue sparks in his eyes took away all his Santa Claus quality. ‘Keep looking,’ he said harshly.

  Finn’s father was on the outside of the second cage. Finn had walked past him twice before he noticed the silver tiepin, with its little ruby, that Janet had given his dad the first Christmas after they married. His dad was fixed sideways on the framework, almost at floor level. Something with a small, pointed, red-furred face had been pressed up against his ear—after an appalled second or two Finn recognised it as a fox. His father’s clothes were spattered with the same filth that coated the floor.

  Finn knelt down on the walkway and slowly wiped his father’s face clean with Jed’s hanky. ‘Dad, can you hear me?’ he said.

  There was something wrong with his father’s face. In twenty-four hours it had been sucked dry, hollowed out. The skin was grey, and the greyness was leaking up into his father’s dark hair through the temples. Finn’s vision began to crowd with flying black specks, and he realised he had stopped breathing. He took in a gasp of the foul, hot air, and heard himself begging, in a still, hopeless voice that expected no response, ‘Open your eyes. Say something.’

  Finally, the grey lips moved a little, and Finn felt himself wilt with relief. He hunched closer to his father’s face, scrutinising it for further signs of life. The tingling throughout his body accelerated slightly. He thought his father whispered his name, then ‘War . . . war . . .’

  ‘Water!’

  His father gave the slightest of nods.

  Putting a hand to his father’s cheek, Finn felt the tiny hairs on the back of his index finger catch against the scaffolding. They stuck to it, and the pins and needles were at once amplified into a beating ache. As he cried out, he snatched his hand away, leaving the hairs behind on the frame.

  ‘These cages!’ he said fearfully to Jed. ‘There’s something—don’t touch them, whatever you do! They’re like flypaper, and if you get stuck they do this to you—drain your life away . . .’ His voice faltered, looking down at his father.

  Jed took one of Dr Finley’s arms and tugged it gently. ‘Dunno what they use to hold them on, but it’s pretty powerful stuff. You’d tear the skin off if you just pulled.’ He frowned.

  ‘. . . still . . . war . . .’ Finn’s father whispered across a swollen tongue.

  ‘We’ve got to get him some water,’ said Finn. ‘Even if we can’t get him off the cage, we can maybe stop it eating away at him so fast.’

  ‘Yeah, and we should get some for these other people, the ones who are still alive. I’ll see if I can count how many.’ Jed slowly walked off, watching for movement, feeling for pulses. Finn heard him murmuring to people, promising water, heard their answering moans.

  And he heard something else—a low thud like a distant, heavy door slamming shut. He jumped up, and backed down the walkway. ‘Jed? I think they’re coming. They must be on to us.’

  Jed pulled him inside a cage, and they both stood utterly still and listened. The tanker above them started up. ‘Oh no, they’ll flatten my bike!’ whispered Jed, but the engine’s roar stayed neutral. Through it Finn thought he heard scratchy tankerman talk. ‘They must have spotted the trapdoor,’ he whispered, and clutched Jed’s arm. They waited, straining their ears.

  A crash of metal close by made them both jump. Jed tried to see through the bodies, but they were packed too tightly together. They put their heads cautiously out the cage door and peered back
along the walkway. Jed whispered a lengthy curse: his bike had been tossed down through the trapdoor, and as they watched, his jacket and the two crash helmets were flung on top of it.

  They ducked back into the cage as a tankerman’s boot appeared on the top step of the ladder. ‘What’ll we do now?’ mouthed Finn in terror.

  ‘Try and blend in with the scenery,’ Jed muttered grimly. He backed up close to a cage wall, closed his eyes and dropped his head. His red beard stood out like a flashing beacon. Finn edged towards the far wall, checking that there was no animal there that might bite him, no bare metal he might stick to, and hunched over, trying to look as sick and defeated as the other victims. He faced the door and looked out between half-closed eyelids.

  Two tankermen moved down the walkway, emitting bursts of speech. One came to the door of their cage, but his glance inside was so perfunctory that Finn thought he couldn’t possibly be searching for intruders. Then they left by the trapdoor, and Finn and Jed almost tripped over each other on to the walkway, where they watched in horror as the door slid shut. They heard the pincers screw it into place.

  ‘Great,’ said Jed, ‘great. Now we can all cark it together. What fun.’

  Finn went to his father’s side. ‘I’m still here, Dad. If we can get out of here I’ll get you some water, but right now it doesn’t look good.’

  Finn’s father said nothing. Above them the noise of the tanker faded.

  Jed heaved his bike up on to its stand. He assessed the damage quickly, then glanced up at Finn. ‘No way will we get this out of that hole.’

  Finn climbed the ladder and began to feel all around the trapdoor’s edges while Jed went back to the cages to continue his body count.

  ‘Jed!’ Finn didn’t know what he’d touched, but he could hear the screws scraping in their sockets, and there were no tankermen visible through the grating. He jumped off the ladder and watched as the door dropped out of the ceiling and slid to the side as before.

  Jed came back around the corner of the cages. ‘Hallelujah. Let’s go and get some help for these people. I counted seven alive. Better make it eight, just in case—’ His upper arm brushed the metal framework and stuck fast to it.

  ‘Jed!’ Finn heard himself cry out.

  Jed struggled, getting his knee stuck and then his leg from knee to ankle. ‘Better make that nine, mate,’ he said softly.

  ‘Oh, Jed, you dork,’ said Finn piteously.

  ‘Crikey, it hurts.’ Jed’s voice was strained and he bowed his head. ‘Goes right through you. Go and get help, mate. I don’t know who—someone who can switch off the power in this thing.’

  ‘But Jed,’ Finn almost shouted, ‘it’s the same problem as before! Without you, no-one’ll believe me!’

  But Jed had enough to deal with, it seemed. Terrified, Finn scrambled up the ladder, then stuck his head down through the hole. ‘I’ll close this so they don’t come down again.’

  Jed lifted his head and gave a painful nod. ‘See you soon, hey, Finn?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Finn. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ He ran his hand along the side of the trapdoor, triggering the closing mechanism. He tightened the screws. Then he was running, expecting to smash into some kind of glass wall at the entrance to the cutting. But he felt as he ran the tickle of cool evening air on his face, and as he burst out, a fantastic freedom from the blinding light and the hideous tingling. He heard the rock snap shut behind him, and he was pelting down the road under the street-lamps, his mind racing ahead of his feet.

  8

  Home Help

  Finn walked fast, to keep a dreadful shivering from taking him over. He looked desperately at the faces of the Thursday night crowds, trying to hold their beaming good health and happy drunken laughter steady in his mind so that his memories wouldn’t unhinge him. Still, little flashes got through—his loose hair carried the rotten-meat smell, which made him gag, and the voices of the trapped creatures—soft flappings, tiny moans—sounded through all the gaiety around him. He felt old, older than anyone he saw.

  He found himself at Wynyard Station, staring at the ticket he’d bought. Strathfield. He hadn’t thought about it, just asked for it and tendered the right fare. Okay, Strathfield it was.

  He only had to wait five minutes, and then he was on a train rumbling underground out of the city centre. He would just touch down for a few minutes, tell Janet there was hope, grab some water and food and get going again. He couldn’t bear to think of leaving Jed and his dad stuck down there a second longer than was necessary. Maybe Janet could give him a lift back into town—no, that would mean getting Alex up. Maybe she wouldn’t mind, just this once, if he explained it to her? How much should he tell her, though? How much would she believe? Finn fidgeted on the seat, willing the suburban stations past one by one.

  Then he was stepping off the train into air so fresh and clean he felt guilty being allowed to breathe it. To be out here in the coolness, lungs full of spring air—what a luxury that must seem, to those people down in the tankermen’s cellar! Freshened by his rest, he hurried down the exit stairs and ran through the quiet streets.

  His home street was shadowy with trees, a leafy tunnel. Low brick and sandstone walls contained gardens that displayed their owners’ years of care in the deep plush of the lawns, the sharp corners of the clipped hedges, the flowerbeds solid with blooms. The houses sat low on their blocks with an unmistakable air of belonging, their curtained windows showing rims of warm light. Finn remembered running away from all this, the smugness of it, the way it never changed. Now his eyes took it in anew, eyes that were used to the narrow, thickly-peopled Kings Cross streets, eyes that had witnessed the tankermen’s cellar. He wanted to bury himself in this neat grid of wide streets, lose himself in their comfort and safety.

  His dad’s house was the same as the rest, its screened front porch bathed in gold light. Janet was ironing, and another woman sat in a lounge chair with a newspaper in her lap, staring into space. As Finn walked up the path she looked down at him, and he recognised her slimness, her brown-ness, her cropped head, and the energetic way she started out of her chair.

  ‘Don!’

  ‘Mum! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh!’ Janet put the iron on its stand and came to the screen door behind Finn’s mother.

  ‘Janet called me in Bangkok—I came home a few days early.’ His mum put her arms around him. He realised with the usual surprise how much littler she was than he, and lifted her off the ground so that she wouldn’t say anything, just laugh and struggle. When he put her down again she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘How did you get so filthy? And smelly, too,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Spend the night in an abattoir or something?’

  ‘I’ve found Dad.’ He turned to Janet. Her eyes were fixed on him, and he could tell she was hoping against hope he had some news for her. The bad warred with the good, and he hugged her as he waited for one or the other to spill out. She too seemed small and slight in his arms.

  ‘Is he alive?’ she managed to say into his ear.

  He drew back. ‘He was, when I left him—just. I have to get back to him with some water.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s trapped. There’s a whole bunch of them, nine or ten, plus a lot of dead people, and animals . . .’ A memory of the cage wall he had pressed up against to avoid detection dropped across his eyes with dreadful clarity, making him gulp and pause.

  ‘We need the police, then, and ambulances—the Police Rescue Squad?’ His mother was halfway to the phone already.

  ‘Wait, Mum. Wait till you hear the whole story.’ Finn found himself staring at a bottle beside Janet’s iron. ‘STILLED WATER’ Finn read on its side. He picked it up and turned back to the two women.

  ‘Have we got time?’ said Janet. ‘Come into the kitchen and get a proper drink, Don,’ she added distractedly, taking hold of the water bottle.

  ‘No, I’m not going to drink it. I just need . . .’ Finn scowled do
wn at the label: DISTILLED WATER. I just need time to think about it, he thought. He pulled it from Janet’s grasp and took it into the kitchen.

  She clicked her tongue impatiently and followed him. ‘Can you tell us where Richard is? Please. I mean, we’ve been worrying ourselves sick over here. Please don’t play games with me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, Janet. I’m just scared you won’t believe me, either of you. I was just going to let you know I’d found him and then get straight back with some water.’ He glanced from one mother to the other, across the gulf his knowledge had opened up between them and him. ‘I have to sneak in, you see. If we bring in a whole bunch of policemen and stuff, they’ll just blast away at them and it’ll be a bloodbath. They don’t like cops. They might be dim, but they know cops are their enemies.’

  ‘Who are these people? How did you get mixed up with them?’ His mother stood in the kitchen doorway, looking appalled.

  ‘They . . . they’re . . . I guess they’re criminals. They dump poison into the drains. They’ve got a hideout in The Rocks. That’s where they’ve got Dad. And Jed, my friend. He’s stuck down there too, now, on these cage things. Oh, God . . .’ Finn brought the plastic bottle down on the kitchen table with a frustrated thwack. It all sounded so ridiculous, so melodramatic.

  ‘The Rocks. Okay. Whereabouts in The Rocks?’ said Janet firmly, pouring soda water into a tall glass and handing it to Finn.

  ‘In that cutting down by the—’

  ‘The Argyle Cut? That’s hardly a hide-out.’ His mother looked deeply sceptical. ‘Every tourist and his dog goes past there, day and night.’

  ‘Let him finish, Stella,’ said Janet evenly.

  ‘Not the Argyle Cut. That big cutting, down by the piers. You know, the big one with the bridges over it—’ Finn started gulping the soda water, turning away from their unbelieving faces.

  ‘In the cutting? What do you mean? In the road?’ His mother frowned.

  ‘In the wall. There’s a kind of doorway.’

  ‘A secret panel or something?’