Chapter 21 Marc #3
Riley leads Marc past the five round, smooth skulls, through the lilac and into the dark.
The blossom is sodden with rain and clings to Marc’s face; he’s soaking wet and blinded by leaves and flowers.
It’s like being born. He has been born so many times in this life – as Oliver, as Marc, and lastly with the arrival of his daughter.
He doesn’t know which, or how many parts of him had to die to make room for the new.
There’s no way to tell; change is like that.
The tunnel is smaller than he remembers, the ceiling lower. Marc can only just stand upright. Riley grabs a torch from her pocket. The beam dances on the rocky floor ahead. It’s quiet down here after the raging storm above. There is only the faint sound of water, rushing somewhere behind the walls.
The world cracks and breaks overhead.
‘Was that—’
‘Yes,’ Riley says. ‘I think it was the house falling.’ Her torch beam dances on the cave wall. Her face is ghostly. ‘It will hold,’ she says. ‘Solid mountain stone.’ But Riley doesn’t sound sure. ‘Come on.’
Marc and Riley walk faster, faster and then they run, and somehow he finds that he’s holding her hand. They run down the rocky passage, through the mountain, just as they did all those years ago. The flashlight plays on the glittering walls.
‘I remember this,’ Marc says breathless. ‘It sparkles.’
‘Yes.’ Riley slows and runs a finger down the gleaming wall. She turns to Marc. Her fingertip glistens in the torchlight. ‘Wet,’ she says. ‘Oliver …’ The mountain shakes. The earthquake is moving the world.
‘Run,’ Marc says. ‘Really run, now.’
The rock wall splits and a fissure opens boiling white. More cracks appear with sounds like gunshot, spewing foam and water into the tunnel. The water bursts through, reclaims its ancient path, becomes a river again.
Marc and Riley wade through the water which races about their calves. As it rises to their knees they slip and stagger, panting. He stays close behind Riley, trying to shield her.
Riley cries out and grasps frantically at her neck. ‘My necklace,’ she shouts over the water. ‘It’s not here!’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he shouts.
Riley clings to the rock. She shakes her head and cries.
Marc seizes her. He’s not leaving without Riley – her living body. He pries her hands from the wall and she screams and beats him with her fists. He feels how thin and fragile she is. Marc lifts her above the racing current and carries her on.
The water creeps higher and higher; it’s thigh deep, then at their waists. Marc fights through the frozen torrent. Riley struggles in his arms and twice Marc stumbles and is dashed against the wall. He rights himself, heart pounding.
Marc thinks at first it’s hope or a hallucination, the faint grey light ahead. But it’s there. He shouts and pushes on faster. The way out is still open. Maybe they won’t die here after all, drowned or buried in the rock. If we hurry, he thinks. Maybe.
He shoves Riley hard out of the mouth of the tunnel, forcing her up out of the dark earth. He hoists himself out after, into the forest.
Coming out into the storm is like being beaten. The air screams. Wind batters his ears, rain falls in long freezing needles battering the earth. Lightning makes the world click white, grey, white, black. A roll of thunder shakes everything.
‘We have to go back – my necklace,’ Riley shouts into his ear.
There is the distant crash of rock. The mountain is falling into the valley of Nowhere. Riley lunges back towards the tunnel entrance.
‘No,’ he yells.
‘You don’t understand,’ she says. ‘I have to …’
‘It’s too late.’ Marc takes Riley by the waist and drags her down through the trees. The hillside is flooding; water flows around them, calf deep, yellow and brown with topsoil. Lilac blossom floats past on the racing current. Lightning flickers.
Riley claws at him, ‘I need their bones to see the children. Noon told me, she told me …’
‘She told you that while she was torturing you,’ Marc spits in Riley’s ear. ‘While you were high.’
She shakes her head, mouth crushed with sadness.
Marc gestures around at the black and white world. Rain falls thick and hard, the trees whip back and forth like grass in the wind. He is so cold he has to lock his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering. Marc looks at Riley, pleading.
After a moment, Riley closes her eyes and nods. Marc puts his arm around her and half lifts, half pushes her on. They will both get out of here alive. There is no other answer.
A dark shape rears out of the undergrowth to their left and leaps away, racing the hurtling current. Marc glimpses antlers, slender legs. More deer flee down the mountain, ghosts in the rain, legs flying.
Marc peers through the thick grey air. He has studied the maps of this place until he knows every peak, every gully.
But the storm is a pelting veil, they can hardly see a foot in front of them.
A fresh wave of silty water hits their ankles like a blow.
Riley staggers. Marc decides that any direction will do.
Riley says something he can’t hear over the crashing of rock and earth and water.
The storm is rising. Thunder shakes everything.
‘What?’
Riley shouts, gesturing at the torrent that rushes down through the scrub. He leans in, trying to catch her words, but they are drowned out. It sounds like, ‘Did you see the inky hell?’ Marc shakes his head, pointing to his ear.
Together they slide and stumble downwards, blinded and gasping with cold.
Every so often the world goes white and crackling and thunder rolls through, shaking their very bones.
They are in the heart of the storm. Plants are uprooted as the water gathers force; rivulets from across the incline join together and feed into the torrent, strengthening the current.
Riley slips and he lunges for her, catches her hand.
Her weight pulls him earthwards – they both roll and slide down the slick incline into a narrow gully where the water rushes fast through its deep channel.
Marc fights his way to his feet, spitting frozen mud.
He pulls Riley up. The sides of the gully are steep and almost liquid.
Even as Marc watches, the earth lip dissolves and slides down towards them.
They can’t get out without bringing the slope down too.
Riley points downstream and Marc nods. They turn and wade, panting. Above them, the solid banks dissolve and crash down into the racing current. The water level rises above their knees, the torrent pushes them forward, harder and harder.
Maybe they will drown like this, Marc thinks. If not they’ll die of exposure on the mountain. He doesn’t know how far the road is, or if they’re going in the right direction. Maybe the road is gone. Maybe the van got washed away and Kimble is dead.
At last the gully grows shallower and begins to level out. Around them, the trees are thinning. The thunder falls behind. When Marc shouts, ‘Are you ok?’ he can hear Riley when she yells, ‘Yes!’
A scree of boulders looms to their left.
‘Climb out that way,’ Marc shouts. ‘You first.’
Riley nods. He lifts her out of the water onto the rock. Marc reaches, searching for purchase. He’s trying to pull himself up when he hears it. ‘What’s that?’ he shouts at Riley.
‘What’s what?’ she shouts back.
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he yells. ‘A kind of squeak.’
Riley’s eyes widen and she lunges down, grabbing for his arm, trying to pull him up. His wet flesh slips through her fingers.
It hits Marc like an avalanche, the vast thing in the water.
He glimpses hooked teeth, a yellow hooded eye.
The crack of its old jaws is horrifying as they close on his leg like a vice.
The crocodile yanks and drags with terrible strength.
Marc is plunged into the brown icy roar, face up to the pelting sky.
He splutters as earthy water fills his mouth and nose.
Marc doesn’t know how long the crocodile pulls him through the water. Eventually it slows. It drags Marc into the shallows, hauls him up in jerks, tussles him onto the mudshore.
Now or never, Marc thinks. He reaches for his prosthetic leg and pulls down hard.
His limb comes out of the socket. Marc flips over and crawls away down the current, leaving the prosthetic behind.
Water batters his face and body. He looks over his shoulder for an instant.
The crocodile stands on the muddy spit like a stone, titanium protruding from its jaws.
Marc scrambles up the shallow bank on the other side and crawls fast across the forest floor.
When he looks behind again he sees the prosthetic in the mud, abandoned in the rain.
It is warped and bent, marked by great teeth. The crocodile is gone.
Marc gasps and crawls to the base of a pine tree.
He grasps the lower branches and pulls himself upright.
Maybe he can support himself on branches, pass from tree to tree.
He makes it two steps before the next branch is just out of reach.
His fingertips graze its leaves as he falls.
Marc’s face hits the mulch. The sound of the storm and the water in the gully roar in his ears.
Marc turns his head.
The crocodile is fifteen feet away. His yellow eye glows in the downpour. The slit pupil is fixed on Marc. It holds the memory of millennia. The crocodile is like the mountains. Marc is a tiny speck meaning nothing.
I’ve been waiting for you, Marc thinks. He knows the crocodile can hear him. I just didn’t realise it.
‘All right,’ he says, spitting rain. He hopes he did what he could with his life.
Maybe he was a good man at times. He hopes Silvie will forgive him.
He hopes that they will meet as gnats or planets or meteor dust one day, out there in the black expanse.
Marc doesn’t mind dying so much. But he wanted his daughter to live.