Tide of souls, p.23
Tide of Souls, page 23
Aim and fire. Aim and fire. They keep falling. But they keep coming too.
This is it. No matter how hard we hit them, they won't fall back this time.
Then they burst into a jerky, scrambling run. They're not coming direct for me. They're focusing in, closing on specific points, choosing their targets.
They're going for the machine guns.
Faces leap out, rotten. Aim and fire. Aim and fire.
Not one of you yet, you bastards, not one of you yet.
The answer is a furious wave that crashes on a sea wall. Their voices are screaming in rage. All the different voices, blending in and out. Now and again one voice leaps out. But it's a whole. An organ note. Sounding together. One voice. I stop shooting as I realise that. One voice blended out of many -
"Sarge!"
And if I listen to it closely I can hear what it's trying to say.
"Sarge!"
What?
"Robert!"
Katja's voice. Maybe the only one that could snap me out of this. As the wave of the dead crashes against the gate.
Firing. Bodies dropping. A nightmare trying to climb over, then jerking, falling past me, its skull shattered. They stumble back, bracing against the tidal force of the multitudes behind them. Hurling themselves forward again.
Screaming from further down, on either side. They've reached the machine guns, grabbing the barrels and dragging them down, leaping over the walls to fall upon the gunners. The other defenders firing into them, but it's not enough, never enough.
"Robert!"
Firing out the SA80, letting it fall -
"Back!"
They crash against the gate. I can hear it cracking, buckling.
"Back!" Mleczko, running. They're all running.
Except me. Me and Ged. Back a few paces to stand our ground.
Katja wrenching at my arm. "Robert! Robert!"
"No." My voice sounds thick and slurred. "Go. Go." I don't look at her. Can't. What must my face look like now? So sick, so sick. I'm full of it now, the sickness. The infection. All I can hear in my ears is the ocean's pounding roar. I can barely hear her voice.
Holy Mary mother of God, pray for us poor sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Ha. Funny, an old bluenose coming out with that at the last.
"Go on, lass," I heard Ged say.
"Go," I tell her. "We'll cover you."
I can't hear her reply, if she has one. But I feel the touch of her lips, a last kiss, on my cheek.
And then me and Ged are alone and the gate's giving way. They burst through and I raise the gun and aim on the first one and I pull the trigger and its head snaps back. And I aim again and...
We back away as they swarm through and over the gate, Ged still thumbing the last few shells into the SPAS-12, then firing, firing, firing.
Raising the Sig-Sauer, shoot - a nightmare close in - I swing at it, smash its skull with the hatchet taped to my wrist, shoot again.
Shoot and strike, shoot and strike.
The axe gone, buried in another nightmare's head, the bone locking round the blade, pulling me off-balance, the haft breaking. A nightmare diving on me; firing upwards, into its gaping mouth. Somehow I manage to stand.
The shotgun empty; Ged using it as a club, smashing skull after skull.
But there are so many of them. Too many. And then they're on him. He goes down, thrashing and fighting, and I hear a scream torn from his lips.
I aim and fire on him, hitting him in the head. He falls and I'm screaming now, firing into the face of another nightmare, and then another, and -
The P226's slide locks back. Empty.
Fuck.
They stop and stare, facing me.
I throw the gun aside. Can still fight. I grab at the ground. Fumble for a chunk of rock as they shamble towards me.
But my legs give way and I collapse as they gather round me with their burning eyes.
I grip the rock, somehow manage to lift it a few inches off the ground with an arm as weak as an old man's.
"Come on, then," I say, then shout up at them. "Come on!"
Ged rises, torn and ravaged, missing chunks of flesh and his eyes glowing, but still - just about - recognisable. And stumbles off after the rest.
A wave of sickness and shivering, a terrible weakness. I feel my bowels and bladder fail. A rush of shame, and then -
Screaming after them, but I can't even hear my own voice now it's so fucking loud, the sea, the voices
flesh and blood, flesh and bone -
make us whole
again
let us live don't want to die let us live
rage rage rage against the dying of the light, against those still drawing
unearned breath on land
leaving us down here in the darkness
down here in the darkness cold and alone
alone
ALONE
- drowning me out, eclipsing me, eclipsing -
Who? What's my name?
WHAT'S MY FUCKING NAME?
I scream - soundlessly to my own ears --and fall back to the earth. Too weak now. And they just keep coming on, stepping over or around me,
me,
me,
Me, Robbie McTarn
ROBBIE MCTARN MY NAME IS ROBBIE MCTARN
And I realise why as the sickness rises one last time like a wave and the pain washes through my body.
My heart is hammering hammering hammering, fastfastfaster, and I'm burning up, oh god I'm burning up.
And then the thundering jackhammer rhythm of my heart is all I can hear, even the ocean is gone and I hear the rhythm thunder thunder thunder
And skip,
falter,
Stutter erratically
and then,
finally,
it stops.
And I can't move my eyes, can't look beyond what's in front of me as I lie dying, dying, DEAD upon the dull earth, as dead men and women stagger past me, mind screaming, beating the bone walls of its cage as it dies from lack of oxygen, the lights going out for good.
Things slipping away from me. My dad, something about my dad... did I love or hate him? Can't remember now.
I want to scream out in rage at it. Scream out in the fear I feel. But can't.
All I can hear are the screams I can't utter.
The screams others are uttering for me.
rage rage rage
oh god no not me not like this
And I'm falling, crashing down, plunging through a deep dark endless ocean, glowing green eyes and rotting hands and faces reaching out for me.
Screams and voices all around me. And they're all my own.
I can't remember my name anymore.
Vaguely I realise my limbs are moving but it's not me moving them, that this is the last awareness of my body I shall have. I can't remember can't remember anything I'm just the tiniest little spark of consciousness and all that is left is my rage and my terror to swell the waters of this ocean and I feel myself fading and when this is done I will not exist at all anym
PART THREE
Storm Surge - Fathom Five
...how is it
That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else
In the dark and backward abysm of time?
Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene ii
Chapter Nineteen
Stiles
My air hose. That was where it started. I was exploring a wreck off the north-west Scottish coast, and I snagged it on a sharp edge of some kind. I didn't see what.
The hose snapped.
Bubbles everywhere. Silt billowing in the water as I scrabbled for a way out of the wreck. Banging into walls, practically blinded.
My life didn't flash before my eyes. Instead I thought about the life I wasn't going to live. I was thirty-one, with a PhD, and I spent my time, one way or the other, immersed in the sea. Pun intended. But I had a shopping list of other plans: marriage, kids, a house -
All going now in this storm of bubbles and silt. This stupid death. Stupid accident. Stupid. A pratfall, almost.
Not like this. Not like this.
Trying to grab the air-hose, feeling it flail away, pushed out by the jet of air. Bruising and slashing my arms and legs on the rusted, barnacled hull...
And then I was in open water.
It's blurred here, but I remember:
Holding breath. Lungs bursting. The air-hose, couldn't find the air-hose, hands scrabbling at the water for the FUCKING AIR-HOSE -
Blue water
Rocks and sand, the sandy bottoms of the ocean
Up above
above, light,
coming down through the water
Long away above.
No time,
no time
striking up for it.
too deep, too deep - must decompress, acclimatise
But no time.
Swimming up towards the light.
And -
Look at a bottle of Pepsi, Coke, Irn Bru if you like. Whatever you prefer. An unopened bottle. It's not fizzy, is it? Not until you break the seal and release the pressure. At high pressures, gas dissolves in liquid. When you dive, when you go deep and stay there, the nitrogen in the air you breathe dissolves in your blood.
Clear so far?
When you surface, you release that pressure. Remember the bottle of Pepsi? Imagine that happening in your blood, lungs, brain, eyes.
Divers working at depth are supposed to resurface slowly. That way the nitrogen is released gradually and without causing any harm. If you surface too fast, the bubbles of nitrogen form inside your body. They can form in the brain, in the jelly of the eye. Most commonly, they form in your bone joints.
Doctors call this condition decompression sickness or barotrauma, sometimes caisson sickness. Divers call it the bends.
But if you're forced to surface at speed, most ships equipped for diving carry a hyperbaric chamber. This is a sealed structure where gas can be pumped in or released to increase or reduce the pressure. Turn the pressure up, the nitrogen dissolves again. Then release it - slowly this time - and it's released gradually, like it should've been in the first place.
Do this, and all should be fine.
But this wasn't a diving ship, just a fishing boat I'd chartered for the day. I was on holiday. I hadn't dived in weeks, and I'd been impatient to get out there. I'd dived before, dozens of times.
Overconfidence. I forgot one tiny, massive detail. The sea is an alien world; we only exist in it on sufferance. One slip can be fatal. And almost was.
Sometimes, even now, I wish it had been.
The pain began as I ascended, and the gas bubbles expanded in my joints. Imagine your wrist trying to push your hand off; imagine your elbow trying to push your forearm down and away. The skin and muscle stops that happening. But the pain...
Lying on the deck of the ship. The agony was beyond anything I'd ever known. The boat turning coastwards - the reek of petrol fumes, the deck vibrating. My nose and mouth full of blood. Frothing. A taste of bitter iron.
"How are you feeling?"
The doctor went by the rather wonderful name of Naomi Scrimgeour. The first sounded very pretty and very gentle - which she was - while the second brought to mind a Viking raider come to remove vital organs with an axe. Are you on the NHS, sir, or would you like an anaesthetic? Old joke. Less funny than ever now.
"Fucking awful," I said. She looked down. I felt like a prize arsehole. "Sorry."
But, in truth, the pain was constant. Which she should have known. She was the doctor, after all.
There'd been damage to the nervous system. A common side-effect. Intermittent numbness, shooting pains, weakness down the left side of my body.
"What's the prognosis?" I finally asked.
They'd moved me into a private room, thankfully. The hospital was near the coast. I was never sure where. Outside, I could hear the cry of gulls.
She still wasn't meeting my eyes; her face was flushed. She shuffled the papers in front of her. "Um - well -"
Bad news she wasn't sure how to break. I'd pretty much guessed it already.
"Doctor. I'm sorry. But please tell me." My voice was a gravelly croak. I wondered if that was permanent too. "I respect honesty and directness. I try to deal with others on that basis, and I like the same in return."
If I'd felt like an arsehole before, I felt a prize ponce after delivering that one, but she looked up and smiled. Not an entirely comfortable smile, but a smile nonetheless. "Alright, Dr Stiles -"
"Ben."
"Ben." I'd tried to get her to call me by my first name on the half-dozen times we'd previously spoken. Success at last.
Dr Naomi Scrimgeour's glasses were small and neat. So was she, generally. Five or six years younger than me. Minus the glasses, her eyes were blue and tilted up at the corners. Short brown hair with subtle blonde highlights. A face made up of small, neat angles. Tiny bones. A rosebud mouth. Peaches and cream skin. A pimple just above her left eyebrow, a tiny mole above her right cheekbone; tiny flaws that made the rest more real.
Her voice was soft, gentle and low, but the content, as she'd promised, was blunt and to the point. "You've some nerve damage which will impair your dexterity, and will cause random shooting pains. The gas bubbles are trapped in your joints, and there's nothing we can do about them. The pain from them will be constant."
"Permanent?"
She looked back down at the papers in her lap and gave them a meaningless shuffle. "Permanent. There's medication to help you manage the pain. We'll probably prescribe DHC - dihydrocodeine - but there are other options available, up to and including morphine."
"Life expectancy?"
"Reduced."
"By how much?"
"Dr Stiles -"
"Ben."
"It's hard to be exact."
"You must have some idea."
She touched her hair. "A lot depends on how closely you follow the prescribed regime."
"If I do?"
"You'll live longer than you would otherwise."
"How much longer?"
She looked up at me, took a deep breath. Never easy, a job like this. "With luck and good pain management, you could reasonably expect to reach your fifties. Possibly even your sixties."
"My sixties."
"Or longer. It's hard to be exact."
"Appreciated."
"You asked me to be honest."
"I know. And I'm glad you were." I made myself smile, to sweeten the pill. "Just wish the news were better."
"If it's any consolation, so do I."
She was the kind of lady I would have asked out in a moment - attractive, intelligent, not too much confidence. Which hardly paints me in a good light, but I'm afraid it's true. Sara, my last girlfriend, told me that despite the whole 'New Man' act, what I still wanted was a traditional WIFE - Wash, Iron, Fuck, Etcetera. That was why I never lasted with women - I was after someone I could talk with as an intellectual equal, but who'd still be happy to spend her life either in the kitchen or popping out babies. I'd begun thinking I needed to change my ways, if I was to settle down and start a family as I wanted to. But there was still time, another six months, just to sow some wild oats -
But tomorrow, as my old mother used to say, is too late.
"Of course," she said, "they're making new advances in medical technology all the time."
"When they tell you that," I said, "you know you're fucked."
"All I'm saying is, you don't know what might be around the corner in terms of new treatments."
"I know. Just trying to cope with it. Humour, you know?"
She puckered her mouth and pretended to glower. "Is that what you call it?"
She sounded like my dad talking about my taste in 'music' - always in inverted commas as far as he was concerned - so I chuckled. Then silence. She looked down at her notes again.
I glanced at the bedside mirror, as I kept doing out of morbid fascination. I'd been considered good-looking, before. There'd been no serious relationship since Sara left, but no lack of one-night stands or month-long flings.
But the face looking back at me now was lined and creased like an old handkerchief. Gaunt, as well. I'd lost nearly two stone. Sunken, bloodshot eyes. And my hair, once a proud glossy black, was a greasy, tangled mess, at least half of it gone grey or white.
The girls would not come running anymore.
And never mind the pain.
There was something else. I knew the answer, but needed to hear it. "Dr Scrimgeour?"
She smiled at me. "I think you can call me Naomi now, if you want to."
"Thanks. Will I... I mean, is there any prospect... any chance... could, maybe, in the future..." She nodded, eyebrows raised, egging me on. That small, sweet, bright smile in place. Her lips, so red. I was staving off the inevitable here. Just do it, Stiles. "Will I ever be able to dive again?"
Her smile faded. Again, she struggled to meet my eyes. If I hadn't known her answer already, that would've told me. "As a result of the accident, your blood's ability to dissolve nitrogen has been massively reduced. If you dive again, surfacing would kill you. So the answer is no, you won't. I'm sorry."
I felt my hands come up to cover my face. She spoke, but I didn't hear it. She must have realised that, because after a while, her hand touched my shoulder and squeezed lightly. Then she left.
A piece of rusty iron. A moment's panic. And everything changes. Go into the water with one life, come out with another.
"I've loved the sea since I was a kid. Whenever we went to the beach, my parents could never get me out of the water. I might still be able to swim, at least. If I'm careful. There's that at least."
"Well, that's good anyway."
Dr Whittaker shifted in his chair, an ageing teddy-bear in smart casuals. His office was like him - likeably cluttered, lived-in.
A clock ticked quietly on the wall. I lay back on the couch. Faint sounds of birdsong and distant traffic came from outside. It was early October, but the light filtering through the windows was still warm.
