Conscious Decisions of the Heart

by John Wiltshire

  All the water in the lagoon was draining away toward the ocean. The men had stopped firing at them and were scrambling to their feet on the exposed white sand, their boat just marooned as if they’d pulled it up on a beach. Ben tore his eyes off the little drama playing out below him through the trees, and stared up toward the horizon. A vast wall of water was coming toward them. He made a small noise, turned and wrapped his legs around the trunk of the nearest tree, grabbed Nikolas’s arm above the cuff with both hands, and then the wall hit them. He was crushed to the tree, utterly unable to breathe, the water just roaring over them. The arm he was desperately holding began to slip, skin tearing as he dug his nails in to stop the slide, and then there was only handcuffs holding them together, and he knew they couldn’t hold and that this would be a final, irrevocable separation, but then the whole tree came loose and everything tore and plummeted, and they were twisting and spinning. His lungs were burning. He felt for the steel cuff, found the arm it was attached to, and pulled himself closer, felt Nikolas doing the same, and then they were clasped as one, rolling and turning, no air, just water and debris.

  Ben climbed higher over Nikolas and wrapped himself around Nikolas’s head, protecting it. Something slammed hard into Ben’s back; they were tumbled again, and then they were on the surface, moving so fast it was dizzying, but they both gasped and spat and coughed, and something else slammed into them, Ben taking the hit once more, keeping Nikolas’s head wrapped in his powerful arms. They were being spun so fast it was impossible to focus, but Ben lashed out his hand and caught some debris, a piece of thatch, perhaps a roof, and he held on, pulling himself up, Nikolas doing the same, until they were both lying on it, hands plunged into the material to find purchase. It slammed into something and went spinning wildly. Ben was thrown off; held by the handcuffs, Nikolas was able to pull him back on. The small raft then hit something directly in its path; the front end went down, under the tumult, and the back end flipped, sending them flying over into the water once more. They churned around and around; they hit something. Ben on one side of it, Nikolas the other, and then the drag of the water was holding them under. Ben reached back and pulled himself toward the obstruction, every muscle in his incredibly powerful arms and shoulders coming into play. He made it, freed them, and they were tumbling again.

  After what seemed like hours, he felt the power of the water lessen. They bumped once more into something, and this time he held on, lifting his face above the water. Nikolas was gasping, too. Debris was washing thick around them, unrecognisable, just ripped and torn and broken remains. The water was oily and black and foul and just kept coming, until Ben thought he could bear it no more. He closed his eyes, tried to keep his face above water and shield Nikolas from the worst of the destructive force.

  At last, the force of the wave tapered off. It stilled. The silence was terrible after the roar. Ben was about to try and speak, but, incredibly, it began again. But, this time, they were being sucked back the way they’d come. It was like being in a vacuum; a powerful draining of the land, with them, like the rest of the debris, unable to resist. He could hear cries now and screams over the awful draining sound that was more horrible than the roar of the surge. They were sucked helplessly along. They hit bodies, people and animals. Ben knew he was at the end of his strength. He felt himself sinking under a helpless lethargy. Strong legs came around his waist, arms around his chest, and he knew no more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  They woke to a world made entirely of mud. Creatures of mud now themselves, birthed from mud, they opened their eyes. They were lying in an apocalyptic world of destruction and dissolution. Ben lifted his head from the sludge. Nikolas was on his hands and knees, retching, spitting mud and water from his mouth. Ben had never heard such a wonderful sound. He made a noise. Nikolas looked over, and then their fingers joined, clasped, enough touch to survive on until they could drag themselves closer, arms tight, faces pressed together. Ben could feel Nikolas’s heart pounding in his chest, supposed his was too. They were both naked, all clothing torn off in the tumult of the water. They were so coated with mud there was no telling if they were injured; all he could see were Nikolas’s eyes. Suddenly, sound returned, senses returned. He could hear wailing and crying and barking. His body came alive to pain. Everything hurt. He eased apart from Nikolas and began to examine him as best as he could through the muck. Nikolas pushed his hand off and climbed to his feet, a surer indication he was blessedly fine than Ben’s examination. He put his free hand out and pulled Ben up, too.

  Everything was gone. There were no buildings, no trees, no roads, no crops or fields, just mud with strange shapes embedded and coated in its deceptively smooth hold. They were the only things standing in a wasteland. It was as if a nuclear explosion had hit, but instead of dust, its deadly fallout was mud. Nikolas then seemed to come back to himself. He turned to Ben and began a swift examination until Ben complained testily, “I’m fine.” His voice was almost gone, ragged, hoarse. It came out as no more than a whisper.

  Nikolas croaked through equally strained vocal chords, “I think we were shouting there for a while.”

  Ben didn’t remember. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was still full of mud. He spat. “We need water.”

  The ludicrousness of what he’d just said suddenly hit them both. They began to laugh, but couldn’t, and found themselves just holding each other, squashing mud, tasting it as they kissed, both ignoring the other’s tears. Ben reckoned they were owed some. Nikolas pulled off Ben’s mouth and tried to wipe the mud from Ben’s face, but it only got worse from the filth on his hand. “Come. We must…do something.”

  Ben agreed, but neither of them could think what to do. Finding something to wear seemed like a good first objective, and they began to scavenge, carefully picking their way between the deceptively mud-soft debris. The mud hid broken, twisted metal and shards of glass, twisted cars and metal roofs. Nikolas tried once or twice to find a piece of metal he could use to pick the lock off the cuffs, but to no avail. Very quickly, their feet and hands became cut, but they did find some clothes. Pressed under a piece of corrugated roofing were three men. They were from their hotel, businessmen on a weekend conference. One was only a torso, head and one arm, the rest having been ripped away; but the other two looked as if they were merely asleep in the mud. They were still wearing their suits. Ben and Nikolas stripped them of their trousers, not speaking, not commenting on what they did. Nikolas found a sharp edge of the roof, ignoring the blood he could see on it, and ripped at the legs until he’d formed two pairs of shorts. They pulled them on. They took the shirts and bundled them up to keep until they could remove the handcuffs and wear them. They pulled off black leather shoes, but they were too small to fit either of them. Nikolas searched the pockets and found the men’s wallets, extracting what identification he could find and stashing it carefully in his pocket. They rested for a moment, thinking their own thoughts, then one after the other they briefly touched the bodies, making promises, and left them in the mud.

  They didn’t know which way to head. By the angle of the sun, they thought the beach was behind them, and as they reckoned the destruction would be worse there, they headed away from it, inland, they hoped. It was incredibly slow, moving through and around the obstacles. They didn’t say much. Both of them had begun to shake badly from the shock, but they ignored it, knowing it would pass with activity and purpose.

  They gained some very real purpose when they came across the shape of a car half-buried in the mud, for inside they could hear the sound of crying. They waded over and peered inside. Two dead adults were in the front seats, but in the back sat a child strapped into a booster seat. She appeared entirely unhurt and didn’t even have any mud on her. They freed her and lifted her out. She put out her arms and clung to Nikolas with a child’s unfettered desire for the safety of an adult’s arms, even a total stranger covered in mud. He perched her on one hip, absentmindedly stroking her hair as he looked around. Ben
was searching the car with his free hand. With a sound of triumph he came up with two bottles of water. Water had never tasted so good. They rinsed and spat and then drank deeply. The girl shook her head when offered some and began to cry again, helpless wails of the truly bereft. They took the water with them and continued. It was more difficult for Nikolas to negotiate the obstacle-strewn landscape now as he had to hold the child with one arm, his other still attached at the wrist to Ben, but after a while, and with some sign language, he persuaded her to ride on his shoulders where she clung to his forehead and hair, freeing his other arm.

  Gradually, they picked up a ragtag group of survivors. First was the young woman they’d joked about what seemed like years ago, not just a few hours when everything had been normal. She too was naked. Ben stripped off the shirt he’d tied around his waist and helped her into it. She wasn’t speaking at all, even to tell them if she was hurt. Ben offered her some water, and she drank gratefully, then began to cry, suddenly and shockingly. That set Nikolas’s little charge off again. Nikolas swung her down and handed her to the young woman. Unexpectedly having to take the little bundle of dress and tears, the young woman stopped crying and sat down with the baby, shushing her, rocking. Nikolas glanced at Ben. Ben was about to speak, but they heard someone else crying for help. They waded over and found another survivor from the hotel, the young man who’d rented them their jeep. He was trapped under some crushed debris, a concrete wall having collapsed on his leg, trapping it between the rebar. They tried to bend the bars, but they were steel and wouldn’t give, even to their combined strength. The man was crying out in agony as they ground his ankle with the metal in their attempts to free him. They tried to pull him and bend the metal at the same time but his screams were terrible to hear. There was nothing they could do. Promising to come back, send someone, just promising anything they could think of, they left him with the remains of the bottles of water and walked away. They could hear his pitiful cries for what seemed like hours as they walked the woman and the little girl away through the mud. Nikolas swung the child onto his shoulders once more, and they carried on.

  They found two more children within the space of a few minutes. Both were just sitting in the mud, staring. They were naked too. Nikolas gave one his shirt. The other one had to stay naked until they came across more bodies, which didn’t take long. They took a shirt off an old man and dressed the boy in it.

  By the time they reached the edge of the debris field, they had fifteen survivors with them. Some were tourists, some locals, most of them children, as if their more flexible bodies and buoyant optimism had kept them alive when the adults had failed and gone under the water. Perhaps adults had put them first, saving them. The children weren’t saying. No one was saying much at all.

  Suddenly, the apocalyptic landscape became one of a normal, Philippine day. Roads appeared. Fields had crops. People milled everywhere, roads blocked with vehicles and bicycles and military jeeps. Overhead, helicopters were buzzing. It seemed as if they’d walked into a strange world and where they’d come from was normal. It was as great a shock as the initial stepping off the plane to the beauty and heat. And it was incredibly hot. The mud had baked on their skin and was cracking off. They were the survivors of the mud, and they stood out like a strange alien species from the clean-clothed people rushing toward them. They were herded to a makeshift set of tents around a central building, which looked as if it was a school. They were led into a tent and then given bottles of water, which they accepted gratefully. Someone came to take the girl off Nikolas’s shoulders, and as the young man was speaking her language, she allowed herself to be detached and carried away.

  Finally, they were alone. They were too shocked and tired to speak. They sat on the ground, holding their water. Ben hung his head, slumped, staring at his cut feet. Nikolas shifted his cuffed hand and held Ben’s fingers. For the first time in public, they were holding hands, and nothing had ever felt more intimate or more right. They entwined fingers, pressing, speaking with this private, silent language and knew they’d been favoured that day by God. They still had each other. Dressed in dead men’s clothes with only borrowed water to their names, they had everything they could ever need or want.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Nikolas finally took it upon himself to free them from the handcuffs. He took a paperclip off a desk and went to work on the lock. He had it open fairly easily after that. They shook their wrists free and rubbed them for a while. It was something to do they could concentrate on and achieve. All around them was utter chaos. The noise was incredible…a bedlam of screaming and shouting and vehicles blaring horns and helicopters overhead. Freed, they wandered around corridors in the school. They joined a progression of ghostly people, the mud people, wandering, looking. At first they thought the rooms were full of the injured until the unnatural stillness told them they were bodies. Bodies everywhere—on the stairs, in corridors, filling the classrooms. Most of them seemed to be entirely uninjured. Some of their fellow ghosts would occasionally fall to a body, silently grasping it, not crying, too shocked to make a sound.

  Finally, they found what they were searching for, the bathrooms. There were other tourists there, men, women, and families, all trying to bring a little normality back into the chaos. When their turn came, the water was clear and sweet from the taps, and they began to wash the mud off. It took a very long time, as every time they filled a sink full of clean water it was filthy within moments. They persevered, until, other than their hair, which was too caked to attempt cleaning, they were recognisable again. They stood regarding themselves in the mirror. Nikolas put his hand out and touched Ben’s arm. Despite the other people milling around them, Ben took the gesture the way he wanted to and came into Nikolas’s arms, hugging him tightly. Nikolas hugged back. They stood for a very long time, just reassuring themselves they were alive and together. Nikolas finally held Ben away and began to inspect him. He was black and blue from shoulder to knees, and his hands and feet were torn and bleeding. The worst bruise was apparently across his shoulders, where Nikolas told him it looked as if he’d been hit by a car, which, Ben reflected, he might have been.

  Ben then examined Nikolas’s scalp, but he couldn’t see through the mud. “Did you get hit?”

  Nikolas shook his head. “Thanks to you.”

  “How did you know? If we’d been in the boat—” Ben couldn’t finish that sentence. The thought of that wall of water catching them down on the exposed sand actually made him feel sick, so he stopped thinking about it, but repeated, “How did you know?”

  Nikolas took his arm again and pulled him through the throng of people now crowding the bathroom. He tried to find them a quiet place in a corridor. They sat down alongside the bodies of some children. Staring at them seemed to free Nikolas’s tongue. “It was Nika. I saw him, and he told me to climb.” He glanced over at Ben. “I think he’s forgiven me.”

  Ben didn’t know what to say. He stared at Nikolas’s drawn face and simply nodded, accepting. What did he know? The whole world had turned to mud and death around them, but here they were—alive, vital, and together. He couldn’t explain it any better.

  They went into the makeshift medical facility and got treated for the cuts to their hands and feet. They weren’t unaware of the dangers of open wounds in such a hostile environment. When that was done, they were at something of a loss what to do next. There was such chaos all around them they could, in theory, have done anything. No one was paying them any attention at all. Finally, Nikolas glanced at Ben. Ben returned the look. They were clearly both thinking the same thing. Neither wanted to do it.

  Still, they stole an army jeep. They wanted to borrow boots, but being six foot four was a disadvantage in a country where people, by and large, were so much smaller. So, barefoot, still in only their makeshift shorts, they headed back to the disaster area to find the man they’d left behind. Special Forces don’t leave anyone behind.

  They couldn’t find him. They wouldn
’t have been able to find anyone or anything in the vast area of destruction they returned to. They had no idea where they’d been or which way to go, but they didn’t really have time to worry, for as soon as they climbed out of the jeep at the edge of the disaster area there was someone who needed help, then someone else, and then a body to be dug out, a child still alive buried in another car, an old woman sitting down in shock to be carried to a rescue vehicle, and another body, and another, and then it was only bodies, more and more to be pulled from the mud and carried to shelters and laid down, again and again until the light began to fade. They came across a bus. It was upside down on the roof of a building. It was utterly surreal but utterly normal for this place, where the insane had become the sane. The bus had been packed with people. It was now full of bodies just crumpled in a pile against the roof. They looked as if they’d been going to market, for they all had bags and purses and best shoes. It took them hours to pull them out and carry them down off the building. They worked on into the night until at one point Ben almost fell asleep on his feet. He just crashed, still standing, but no longer aware.

  They had to stop. They climbed into one of the buses they’d found and emptied, and curled up together on the backseat, too exhausted to find it uncomfortable.

  § § §

  When they woke a few hours later, it was to a world that had become rapidly more terrifying during the night. The smell hit them first. It was unbearable. They tore shirts to make face scarves and emerged into blistering sun and swarms of flies. Dogs had appeared overnight, terrified, disturbed and feral, attacking the bodies still trapped. When they pulled at a collapsed roof, snakes poured from it. In one street, a live electrical cable was still sparking and arcing in the mud. Around it were half-a-dozen people, electrocuted, but they couldn’t reach them. The buzzing of the flies was getting worse. They swarmed into their eyes and noses. If it hadn’t been for the people they found still alive, they would’ve given up. But every so often a body moved, eyes focused on them and arms lifted for help.