Infested (5 page)

Nine

The night had been a feat of endurance and the longest of my life, but
eventually the sky began to brighten and a light mist collected on the river.
“Wake up,” I said quietly, giving Lindsey a little shake.

“Oww,” she groaned before rubbing her eyes and slowly uncurling in my
lap. It was her only complaint and I looked at her, thinking her parents would
have been proud. She didn’t say anything else and shuffled back to her seat at
the front of the canoe while I braced my hands against the sides, keeping it
steady.

I was stiff and aching all over from spending the night, to all intents
and purposes, immobile. A long drawn out yawn escaped me before I dipped the
paddle to move us back upstream in search of the channel for the weir. It
wasn’t far; a bank of reeds jutted out from where the river split, extending
upstream, gently swaying as water swirled around them.

I pulled the boat alongside the wire rope which crossed the river,
blocking it from traffic, and held onto it to keep us still. Suspended a foot
or so above the water, I only needed to lift it a little for us to slide underneath.
“Watch your head,” I told Lindsey and she lay down almost flat and I, as best I
could, did the same. The wire rope was heavy but we passed beneath without
difficulty.

On the other side, I began to get butterflies at the thought of
shooting the weir. It was like a different river; there were no motor cruisers
or neatly maintained banks, rather, it was wild and overgrown. Trees leaned
over, almost touching overhead and reeds choked the channel so we had to push
through them. All the time, the dull roar of rushing water was getting
louder. Everything told me I was about to do a stupid thing, but on this
occasion I could see no option.

I approached slowly, with caution, all the time thinking about the best
way to descend the weir. It came into view, visible as a stark line where the
river disappeared over the lip of the concrete ramp. I held us as still as I
possibly could, sitting upright to get a better look at the weir and to figure
out the best line of attack and to see if there were any obstructions such as
rocks, trees or general detritus.

The flow of water caught us and I could feel the canoe accelerating; we
were past the point of no return, where the power of the water was greater than
my ability to paddle against it. Usually, on a natural rapid, I’d steer the
canoe as slowly as possible through the tumultuous water, to give me a chance
of steering out of harm’s way but this time my main concern was to punch
through the stopper wave at the bottom and not let it trap us into a watery
grave.

“Hold on tight,” I shouted and at the same time paddled hard, building
as much speed as I could before making the descent. For a split second the
front of the boat seemed to hang in mid-air over the weir before we tipped
forward and entered the cascade. For the first time, I caught sight of the
wave at the bottom; looming tall and rolling back on itself toward us. All I
could do was hold my nerve and pray as we plummeted, like the log flume at the
fair, and hit the bottom with a splash which drenched Lindsey and sprayed my
bare chest with icy cold droplets.

We were on flat water again and in one piece, although there was an
extra inch of water in the bottom of the canoe. Lindsey spun around on her
seat to face me, giggling. “Can we do it again?” she asked.

I was giggling too, it must have been the combination of adrenaline and
relief. “We might have to,” I replied, uncertain how far it was to the next
lock.

“That was fun,” she stated, water dripping from her nose and hair and
then a curious expression came over her. “What are they?” she asked.

“What are what?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“On you?” She pointed to my chest.

I didn’t need to look down to visualise the scars; round, white-ish
dots which never tanned, crinkled at the edges. There were a lot of those, and
to set them off was a three inch, ugly, jagged scar, not far north-west of my
navel, which was put there with a carving knife of the serrated variety, the
kind with an integral fork at the end.
She’d
been using it to carve roast chicken just before she stuck it in me. I’d only
gone into the kitchen to see if she needed a helping hand but she was in a bad
mood, an empty wine bottle sat on the counter next to her.

I reigned my thoughts back in and I might have even blinked before
answering. “Scars.”

“How’d you get ‘em?”

Under Lindsey’s enquiring gaze, I felt ashamed. “Someone put them
there.”

“Who?”

“It’s not important.”

“A girl at my school had scars like that. I saw in PE.”

I cringed.

“She’s probably dead now isn’t she?” asked Lindsey, swinging the
conversation away from my past to our present situation.

I shrugged, to give myself time to think of an answer, but she spoke
before me. “Just like Mum and Dad.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” I said, “She wasn’t at the pub was she?”

“No.” She said it slowly, giving me a sullen look which said there was
something still on her mind.

I waited for her to speak, processing the thought which I’d been
denying myself to even entertain.

“What about the people at the lock?”

“Well, that was still quite close to the pub, it might be the same
thing?”

“So the spiders aren’t everywhere then?”

I didn’t want to lie, but I needed to reassure myself as much as her. “Probably
not,” I said in as cheerful a voice as I could muster.

She didn’t look convinced but thankfully she changed the subject by
declaring she was hungry in a slightly whining child voice.

“We’ll be in Oxford soon,” I said, although I didn’t really have much
of an idea how close we were.

“And I need a drink.”

“I know.” I needed to drink too. The day was turning out hotter than
the one before and without suntan lotion, we were both starting to go pink.
I’d already been hugging the bank, trying to keep in the shade as much as I
could. We were on a part of the river where the banks were not so steep and
there were fewer trees and I just hoped we reached Oxford quickly.

Ten

It must have been mid-afternoon when we reached the next lock. The
correct channel, under normal circumstances, was marked with an arrow and the
word ‘LOCK’ in bold black letters on a white, battered sheet metal sign. The
thirst of earlier was many-fold worse than it had been; I had to keep trying to
make spit just for something to swallow. And I had a raging headache, forcing
me to half close one eye against the sun’s glare. Drinking from the river was
becoming an ever more tempting thought, but one I was resisting and also
encouraging Lindsey to resist, because of the near certainty that the water
would make us both ill.

I’d been giving serious consideration to turning myself in to the
authorities when we reached Oxford. It wasn’t transpiring to be the relaxing
trip I’d hoped for and after missing a night’s sleep, all I wanted was
somewhere safe to rest my head; even if that place were to be a police cell. I
was thinking I might earn some leniency for rescuing Lindsey. I turned my eyes
forward, to where she was sitting. She’d not spoken in a while, neither of us
had. “Same as last time then, okay?”

“Okay,” she replied without turning and as we reached the wire rope,
she flattened herself to fit underneath.

I’d decided to tackle the weir exactly the same way as the other, but
as the dull roar of ever falling water got louder, my nerves began to fray. We
were, however, committed to the ride and so, just before we pitched over the
edge, I shouted for Lindsey to hold on tight again.

As we tilted forward, two things simultaneously caught my attention.
The first was that the stopper at the bottom was much larger than before, and
the other thing which distracted me was a vast wall of black smoke in the
distance, blotting out a sizeable piece of the sky in that direction. Both of
these things, combined with fatigue, caused in a moment of panic for me to lose
concentration and as we plummeted down with water boiling on either side, the
canoe skewed slightly to the left.

We hit the wave side-on. I was thrown clear so all I knew was water
filling my senses and bearing me away downstream in a rush of bubbles. I was
tumbling underwater and couldn’t tell which way was up and which was down.
Even after I surfaced the current was too powerful for me to fight, and I was
carried along; just another piece of flotsam. By the time the river slackened,
it had jettisoned me a hundred yards downstream. I looked back toward the weir
to see the canoe; half-submerged, bobbing toward me. There was no sign of
Lindsey.

I swam back toward the weir, hugging the margins of the river where the
current was slackest. Half the time I was only pushing my belly through the mud
and even though it would have been quicker to get out and run along the bank,
it wasn’t planning on leaving the water. I had to stand and wade the last bit,
with the churning river battering my legs and trying and steal them away from
under me. It was a losing battle and I was still nowhere near the stopper.

And then I saw her rise to the surface; her limp body rotating as it
came up through the water, red hair wrapped around her face and trailing behind
her. Her body folded when it broke surface, loose, and then she sank once more
beneath the churning water and there was nothing I could do. She was already
dead and I couldn’t take her with me, presuming I managed to retrieve her from
the weir without killing myself.

I turned and let my legs buckle beneath me, the current carrying me back
downstream to where the swamped canoe was lazily spinning in the water. I was
numb, only able to think about the task at hand and nothing else and right now,
the task was to empty the canoe of water. I had nothing to bail it out with,
and made a mental note to fasten something for that purpose to the inside of
the canoe for future trips, before remembering there probably wouldn’t be any
more canoeing holidays for me, ever.

Emptying the canoe meant I had to get it into shallow water so I could
turn it upside down. When I’d waded in the mud to the weir, the spiders hadn’t
been forefront in my mind but now my brain had time to process the situation, I
wondered how close to the bank I could get, whether they could jump, whether
there was a clear route for them onto the reeds and if so, were the plants in
the margins infested?

I was only a foot away from the bank in ankle deep water when I crouched
down on my haunches and peered into the grass and mud, looking for spiders. I
could see no sign of them and breathed a sigh of relief, although I wasn’t
setting foot on dry ground until I’d seen someone else do it first. Still cautiously
eyeing the bank, I dragged the canoe as far onto the mud as I could manage and,
taking hold of one end, flipped it upside-down and lifted it above by head
before twisting it back over and dropping it so it landed right side up. Thick,
sulphurous stinking mud coated one end, but the inside was mostly empty of
water and so I wearily clambered in.

Afternoon sun warmed me on the outside and burned my skin, but nothing
could take away the chill within. I wasn’t hungry anymore, just hollow, and
neither was I thirsty as I must have swallowed half the river as it tumbled me
downstream. With an empty heart, I paddled stolidly forward, meandering across
the countryside but getting ever nearer to the wall of smoke near the horizon.

The surrounding geography steadily began to alter. The banks were less
steep and I was passing more houses; rows of them rather than the isolated
cottages I’d been passing thus far. It didn’t surprise me that I saw no sign
of life. I passed under a bridge carrying a major road, it too, deserted. The
steel on its underside was painted green and the spaces between the girders
were full of cobwebs. I passed silently beneath them, trying to shrink myself
in the seat even though the ceiling was quite high, for a bridge.

Shortly after the bridge, smoke lent a haze to the day and made
breathing unpleasant. I shot another weir, mechanically, without adrenaline or
issue and there was no jubilation afterwards. And then I was in town. It was
dark with smoke, as the banks lost their muddy steepness to become cultivated
things of concrete, brick and manicured verges. Not all the buildings were on
fire but enough were burning to be able to say the town was ablaze.

I was surprised more than anything when my last remaining shred of hope
left me, I thought it was all long gone. I paddled through Oxford without
stopping while on either side, the dull, orange glow of fires burning unchecked
throbbed in the midst of the smoke screen. Apart from the sounds of its fiery
consumption, the city was silent; there were no sirens, no calls for help or
anything else which would betray a single thing left alive. I longed to hear
even a dog barking in the distance.

At the next bridge, of much older construction and with several arches,
a motor cruiser had escaped its moorings and was crumpled around one of the stanchions.
Cocooned remains of its crew lay twisted, half in and half out of the cabin
door. In amongst all the other debris stacked up against the boat I saw two
other bodies, purple and bloated in the water, and a cow, leaking bubbles of
gas from its anus. When I passed, the water around the cow must have been
disturbed as the animal slowly flipped over, revealing a blackened underside
and trailing guts where scavenging fishes had been at work.

And that’s how I left Oxford, paddling steadily onward toward the
unknown, not looking at my surroundings but unable to avoid noticing the white
mummies on either side, wrapped in their shrouds of silk. Before long I was
travelling through fields again and the smoke cleared to reveal the unrelenting
heat of the sun.

A clenching of the throat was my body’s way of telling me I was thirsty
again, but while I had been forced to drink river water at the weir, then it had
been fast moving and at least had the appearance of being clean, while now the
river was sluggish and I’d seen dead things in it. I held out a while longer
but the headache had returned and my lips were dry and cracked. My tongue felt
swollen to double its size.

I dangled my arm over the side and scooped up some water, splashing it
on my face. The relief was exquisite but the urge to drink, now I’d felt how
good its coolness was, was futile to resist. I scooped some to my lips,
slurping it from the palm of my hand. It tasted muddy but refreshing. After
the first sip I figured it didn’t matter anymore how much I drank, I was likely
to get ill anyway, and so I gulped the water down as fast as I could lift it to
my mouth.

When I’d had my fill, I gritted my teeth and set off with a grim
resoluteness to reach London.