Mark L Watson [Watson - Where Men Once Walked

Where Men Once Walked

Mark L Watson

Prologue

The tin mug of salty whiskey rattled and slid along the bookshelf and fell from the end and spilled the remainder of its contents onto the bedsheet.

The kid stirred.

An old book, unreadable, its pages bound forever with wet and mould, followed the mug from the shelf onto the saltmarked duvet.

He rolled on to his side and opened his eyes and looked out of the tiny plastic window. The sky faded from deep sapphire in the west to ferocious pink in the east, across the shimmering black and silver water. Yellow clouds struck endlessly along the horizon like rotten claw marks on soft skin.

The kid rubbed his face and stood up without opening his eyes and walked across the small cabin and climbed the metal steps onto the deck and out into the spray. He had been sleeping still wearing his boots.

Everything was drenched and as the boat bounced against the easterly tide, the spray cascaded up over the deck.

The Pole still stood at the wheel, also drenched.

He glanced round at him but didnt respond, his eyes wide and unfocussed and slightly mad and his hair wet and in every direction.

The kid reached down and grabbed the waterproof jacket from where it was blowing on the beam and pulled it on and set out across the edge of the deck, holding the steel railing for support as the boat tipped desperately on the waves.

The air was already hot and the spray from the sea was cooling.

He pulled himself into the drivers cabin at the front of the boat through the open door, hanging on its last hinge, and wiped the water from his face with the back of his hand.

The Pole looked round again, a cigarette only just hanging from his bottom lip.

He nodded at the kid.

Sleep well?

He laughed as he said it.

Hows your arm? the kid said smiling and sarcastic.

The Pole frowned at him and turned away and inhaled the cigarette smoke.

The kid groaned and sat down on the battered wooden chest and wiped the spray from his face again. He let his head fall into his hands and stretched his face with his palms and then gazed back out over the ocean.

Are we much closer?

The Pole looked down at the wheel and the wet map and unstuck the cigarette from his lip and flicked it into the wind. It shot backwards, out of the door and into the oceanic abyss.

I reckon so he said, heaving the wheel against a wave, look

He nodded out of the far side of the cabin through the battered plastic screen.

In the distance, little flecks of black land silhouetted against the pink sky, though they were barely visible without squinting.

Where do you think that is?

The Pole shrugged again.

Greece somewhere?

He spun the wheel round and took the boat into a slow turn towards the islets. The wind was dying down and it had finally stopped raining and the warm early morning was going to turn into another lethally hot day.

The kid said it in his head for the thousandth time.

Saalbach .

The word was etched into his mind like a carving on an old tree in some place where it could never be lost.

Saalbach .

It was salvation and safety and some ideal nearly lost to the world but for the glimmer of hope he held in his heart and nothing more.

He watched the jagged black points on the horizon inch closer.

The thought of dry land was sobering and he sat up and watched out of the front screen though there was nothing more to see and the distant islets were yet featureless in all but their own presence there.

The kid stood up off the chest and flicked the buckle open and took out the radio. He couldnt believe the thing still worked given the water damage and the salt and the sand that had dried into every one of its many cracks.

He smiled and shook his head softly and spun the tuning dial down to the very bottom of its setting. He scrolled up the frequency bar carefully, making sure to listen for any broadcast and leaned into the cabin to shelter from the wind.

A faint crackle of some distant and ancient music of pipes and strings flittered in and out of transmission and he turned further through the static. The articulate voice of the automated recording started to creep through and whisper out from the radio.

Continuer rester dans vos maisons et attendre les instructions. En cas d'urgence s'il vous plat consulter votre bureau de rponse en cas de catastrophe locale

It was the same broadcast from the French gunboat hed heard before.

si vous laissez vous risquez de vous retrouver sans eau ni nourriture suffisante

Other than that it was only static.

He put it down on the chest and walked onto the front of the boat and stepped up onto the beam and held the metal support to his side.

The spray kicked up as the little boat bounced across the waves.

Saalbach.

Chapter One

Lam Nam Nan National Park to Raheng

The kid lay awake in the bed staring at the panelled ceiling. A shiny blue beetle was crawling upsidedown along the crack in the foam tile and it stopped briefly to investigate a dried yellow stain before continuing idly on its way. The partition wall itself didnt go all the way to the ceiling and there was noise pouring in from every direction.

On the end wall of the building, the huge window sat permanently open, allowing the sirens and shouts from the street below to flood the building and allow inside more heat than cool. He squeezed his eyes closed in frustration and could feel the dull and deepening signs of a headache in both temples.

He shook it off and sat up. It was getting hot.

He reached out for the water bottle on the plastic table beside his bunk and knew before he touched it that it would be like everything else.

Hot. Like everything else.

The bottle actually felt warmer than his hands already were and they were so hot they were sweating. He didnt even remove the cap, and tossed it across onto the other plastic sheeted bunk.

He knew it would be hotter outside but he couldnt stay in bed any longer. He needed to contact London again and get out of there while he could.

He pulled himself to his feet, weary from a night of sleeping in humidity on a plastic sheet with no pillow, and grabbed his linen shirt from the hook on the wall and slipped on his boots. He was still adjusting his feet into them as he walked out into the hallway. The thin wooden door creaked and tapped closed behind him.

There was commotion everywhere, even inside the hostel. In the reception room a tiny desk with a tiny television showed the same Thai news broadcasts as every other and it was fizzing with static. He crossed the room and nodded casually to the short woman behind the desk and she watched him blankly and made no effort to return the gesture.

He pushed his way out through the doorway, past two men arguing loudly and both seemingly unaware of his presence there and each unwilling to move as he squeezed between them out onto the pavement and out into the heat.

He had arrived there the previous night long after everything had closed but the small town was a hive of activity and there was a sense of impending panic everywhere he turned. He had travelled all day north to Tak Airport desperate to pay whatever it would take to get a flight back west and a wiry man in a white Datsun had taken him from the train station out to the small airport.

He had eagerly approached the terminal doors with his bag in one hand and credit card in the other but knew he had lost his chance as he approached the terminal door to see it guarded by uniformed police officers. They told him that all flights in and out of the airport were cancelled indefinitely.

There were to be no refunds and no apologies.

He had stood at the front of the building with his bag at his feet staring into the darkness of the surrounding hills and the evening sky that smelled of gasoline. He had paced the building trying to find signal on his mobile phone, cursing under his breath when across the plaza a young local man in a black shirt had stood in the open door of a gold Mercedes watching him.