Evolution of Fear (19 page)

He grabbed the pistol, pulled himself up and ran towards the barn.

The heat hit him like a blast wave from a Cuban rocket, sucking the air from his lungs, searing his face. Doubled over, he moved towards the barn’s door. Long tentacles of flame reached out from under the door, searched their way up the planking. Clay raised the Glock and fired at the outline of the chain lock. The metal housing blew apart. He dropped the gun, pulled off his jacket, wrapped it around his hand and yanked the chain from the door. Then he stepped back, filled his lungs, the air thick and hot in his throat, grabbed one half of the door, pulled it open, and plunged into the flames.

Everything was burning.

Smoke and flame enveloped him. He fell to the ground, crawled forward, eyes streaming, blind, feeling with his stump. He hadn’t gone far, a few metres only, when his knee bumped something soft. He reached out with his hand. It was one of the villagers, lying on the ground near the door. Clay grabbed what felt like the man’s collar, staggered to his feet, started dragging him back towards the open doorway. The man was heavy, unconscious. Clay leant his left side towards the doorway, reached out into the burning air with his stump, jerked the body across the ground. His lungs screamed. He would have to breathe soon, flood his lungs with smoke. He pumped his legs, drove forward. A temperature gradient, the slightest cooling. A few more steps. He could sense an opening, feel a counter-current of air, oxygen being sucked in to fuel the fire. The doorway was close. His nervous system demanded: breathe. He groaned, let go of the man and with his last strength dove forward.

The smoke caught in his lungs as he hit the ground, an acid wail. He crawled forward, sucking in cooler night air, vaguely aware now of Hope and the old man dragging the villager free of the barn, the crash as more of the roof caved in, a burning village of embers pouring from the open doorway, scattering the ground around him, a haemorrhaging carpet of glowing cinders. He staggered to his feet, breathed deep and quickly, hyperventilating, preparing for a deep dive. Then he turned and ran back inside the barn.

This time he got further in, stuck to the same wall where he’d found the first villager, figured they’d huddle together for protection.
He moved forward in a crouch, sweeping the ground ahead with his stump, like a blind man with a cane. Still nothing. He moved right, towards the wall. He had maybe another thirty seconds left. The heat was intensifying. He could feel it raw on his face, searing his skin, see it bright-red through his eyelids, smell it everywhere, the char of wood, the singe of hair, burning rubber and boiling metal. Nothing. Shit. He pushed ahead. Still no one. The heat boiled around him, a living turbulence that threw him back. He could go no further. He spun around, aimed for where he thought the doorway was. As he did, his left foot hit something, the unmistakeable give of living flesh. Clay swung back around, reached out with his hand. It was another of the villagers, unconscious. Clay crouched low, started pulling the man free. This one was smaller, lighter than the first. In a matter of seconds Clay had him clear of the barn.

He collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath.

Hope was there, crouching beside him, her hand on the back of his head. Clay retched, spluttered, the pain already starting to cut through the adrenaline. He twisted, pushed himself to his feet, tried to open his eyes. Through narrowed, streaming slits, he could see the barn engulfed in flame, the doorway like the maw of a roaring furnace. Three men were still inside. Clay took a step forward, started breathing.

Hope grabbed him by the arm. ‘Don’t,’ she said over the din. ‘It’s over.’

Clay took another step.

‘Please, Clay. You’ve done all you can.’

He hung his head. She was right.

They stood a moment watching the fire. Then, still holding his arm, she walked him over to the shot-ridden car where the old man had laid out the two villagers.

The old man looked Clay over. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘How are they?’

‘Breathing,’ he said. ‘Thanks to you and Hope.’

Clay looked back at the barn. ‘I’m sorry, I…’

The old man nodded and handed Clay the Glock. ‘You must leave. The police will be here very soon.’

‘What will you do?’

‘I will tell them the truth. I was here meeting with my friends. Strangers came and…’ He glanced over to the courtyard wall. ‘Come.’

Clay and Hope followed the man across the courtyard, the fire throwing quivering shadows across the ground. They stood and stared at the wall. Scrawled in blue paint over the whitewashed surface, Clay could just make out the words: ‘
Remember Guenyeli
.’ The Cyrillic characters were strong, almost exaggerated. Beneath the words was the symbol omega enveloping the letters N and E: the mark of Neo-Enosis.

Sirens pulsed in the distance. Clay shook the old man’s hand and wished him luck.

Hope kissed the old man on both cheeks, held him a moment. Tears streaked her face. ‘Come with us,’ she pleaded. ‘They will never know.’

‘These are my friends. Someone must help them.’

‘How will you explain the bodies?’

‘I will say the perpetrators argued amongst themselves.’

‘You will go to jail.’

‘Perhaps. But I think not. How can they know? Perhaps I will be a hero.’

They could see flashing red-and-blue lights now, coming down from the village, the hum of engines.

Hope kissed him again. Clay took her by the hand and pulled her away. They started off across the empty field at a run.

They kept running through the night, the pyre’s orange glow chasing them, finally retreating as they neared the dunes, quiet returning like a salve, a cure. It was just gone three-thirty. A half-moon had risen,
throwing silver shadows across the land. They found the dinghy, rowed out across the polished surface, the water tapping at the inflatable’s stretched skin like impatient fingers. Hope clambered aboard. Clay followed, hauled up the dinghy and lashed it to the foredeck. He fired up the diesel, left it idling in neutral, went forward and started bringing up the anchor. But it wouldn’t come. Clay reached over the side and tugged on the chain with his hand. It was taut, vertical.

Clay clambered back to the cockpit.

Hope was busy with the medical kit. She looked up. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Anchor’s caught. Fouled on something. I’ll use the engine.’ Clay took the wheel, put the engine in gear and motored forward slowly.
Flame
started ahead, then abruptly swung head-around as the anchor held. Clay tried again, this time moving parallel to shore. Same result. With the sandy bottom, there was no way the Danforth should foul like this. They were wasting valuable time. Clay throttled back to idle, put the engine in neutral, stripped down to his shorts and jumped over the side.

The water was cold, numbing the pain in his shoulder, the burns on his face, the cuts around his eyes. It felt good. He followed the hull around to the bow, noted with admiration where Gonzales had neatly repaired the bowsprit. He grabbed the chain, filled his lungs, slipped his head below the surface and followed the chain down. He opened his eyes, letting the cold brine flood over his cornea. The water wasn’t deep here, only about four metres. He looked up.
Flame
’s shadow hung above him, a dark shape against the silvery firmament of the surface. The anchor was clearly visible against the moon-pale sand. It hung half a metre above the sea floor, its flukes open like wings, snared on something.

Clay dived and reached the sea bottom. The anchor was fouled on a cable, about an inch in diameter, smooth, newish, sheathed in some sort of plastic. The anchor had pulled it up from the seabed in a loop. Both ends of the cable disappeared under the sand. It appeared
to run parallel to shore, buried perhaps twenty or thirty centimetres into the sand. The cable was wedged between the blunt end of the flukes and the hinge of the anchor’s stem. Pulling against it only wedged it in tighter. He would have to go back aboard, let out chain, then come back down and work the cable free. That would take time. If the police had sensed a wider involvement in the incident at the farm, patrol vessels might be on their way. They had to make miles as quickly as they could. He would have to leave the anchor behind. He pinched the anchor’s shackle screw between his thumb and forefinger and turned.

A moment later he burst to the surface and clambered aboard, the chain hanging slack now in the water, the boat drifting. He went forward and brought in the remaining chain. Shivering, he returned to the cockpit and started
Flame
out to sea. Hope threw a blanket over his shoulders and began to tend his wounds, picking bits of car window from his forehead and arms, two heavily deformed pieces of lead shot from his shoulder. They hadn’t penetrated far, most of their energy dissipated by the car’s metal sheet and glass. It looked worse than it was. She doused the holes in antiseptic, bandaged him as best she could. She was very gentle in this, he thought, very serious.

Soon they were sipping hot coffee, the compass showing southeast, and somewhere out there, Syria.

A few hours later they watched the sun come up in an overcast winter sky, burn red on the horizon then cool to yellow, softening away to a flat grey daylight. They motored on in calm seas, clear now of TRNC waters, Hope silent, brooding. A fishing boat appeared, chugging away on the horizon, and then was gone, melted into the sea, Cyprus just a smudge in the distance. After a while Clay killed the engine, tore off the bandages Hope had applied, pulled a coil of line from the port locker, cleated one end, and threw the line into the water. Before she could react he was over the side, Glock in hand.

For a long time, until he was numb, Clay floated on his back in the cold, flat sea, letting the brine lick his wounds like a dog’s tongue. He let the gun slip from his hand.

Later, they struck south, and then southwest, back towards Larnaca.

Hope again dressed his wounds. ‘Do you want to look in a mirror?’ she said. ‘You look like a stray without a home.’

Clay trimmed up the main, patted the cockpit scupper. ‘This is my home.’

Hope sat with her back against the cabin bulkhead, watching him as he trimmed sail, corrected course. After a long while she looked him in the eyes. Her face was set hard. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’ve always been taught that death is a good thing.’

Clay locked her gaze. ‘So was I.’

‘Do you think it is, Clay?’

‘In the way I was taught? No.’

‘The war.’

Clay nodded. ‘It’s not good or bad, Hope. You can’t think that way. It’s inevitable, that’s all.’

She paused, hung on this a moment. ‘It’s inevitable because evolution demands it. Death keeps the genetic code fresh. Therefore it must be good.’

‘QED?’

She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around herself. The breeze wisped her long hair about her face. ‘Our chromosomes are capped by repetitive strands of DNA that protect them from fraying. Telomeres they’re called. As we age, these telomeres gradually burn out, like fuses. And when they do, we start to die. Death is programmed into us from the start.’

Clay traced the horizon with his eyes. ‘Those men didn’t die of old age.’

‘No, they didn’t,’ she said in a whisper, barely audible over the wind. ‘It was evolution’s other imperative.’

He eased the main sheet, trimmed up the Genoa. ‘Don’t
overanalyse, Hope.’ Not now. Later you will have time. More than you could ever want.

‘The killing gene,’ she said. ‘A throwback to our days as hunters. We’re programmed to kill.’

Clay said nothing.

‘More than that, Clay. To enjoy killing.’

Clay looked out to sea, pushed this away. ‘Don’t, Hope.’

‘It’s part of you, Clay.’

He considered a reply, abandoned it. After a while he said: ‘I can tell you, theory doesn’t help.’

They lapsed into silence again, the breeze fluking across the flat grey sea. A couple of gulls sideslipped over them, wingtip close, then disappeared towards Syria.

‘You saw what they painted on the wall,’ Clay said, breaking the quiet. ‘Neo-Enosis.’

She frowned, nodded. ‘Chrisostomedes has been warning for months that they would take action.’

‘What is
Guenyeli
?’ he said.

Hope curled up against the forward cockpit bulkhead. ‘On Christmas Eve 1958, Turkish Cypriot militia across the island attacked Greek Cypriots in their homes. Hundreds were killed, including women, children and old people. The village of Guenyeli was one of the worst. Thirty people, mostly children, were locked inside a schoolhouse and burned alive.’

‘1958. Jesus Christ.’

‘Revenge has no statute of limitations. Here especially.’