Then the fin went under.
With every kick he imagined plunging his foot right into its mouth, having his feet taken, the sharp white bone at the ankle, bleeding to death. He passed through a cold current and thought he was being swallowed whole. His guts moved inside him and he thought, Don’t piss. God, don’t shit. As he gained on the land, he fixed on the dunes, thinking about the solidness of it for his feet, and about running up into them and rolling naked in the dry yellow sand.
Paddling hard, he came into the shallows, but it didn’t leave him alone. When he could touch the bottom with his flat foot, it darted at him, sending bow waves at his chest, coming for him and veering away at the last second, chasing him, herding. When he stood, he could see the back of it, and it made him fall over, get up again and fall over and get up. It was bigger than he’d thought, as long as he was, but worse were the dark streaks across the pale fish, the boxed head of a tiger shark. He ran in the water, falling every second step, choking on salt; his hand was speared by a sharp shell or point of coral, but it didn’t put a beat in his progress. He ran out of the water and didn’t stop until he was far up the beach, a hooting noise coming from his chest. Turning and flopping on to the ground, he watched the fin torpedo up the bay and out into the open sea.
‘Fuck me,’ he said, wiping his face over and over with his hands, standing up naked and bleeding with a sandy bottom.
‘Fucking well fuck me.’
20
The gravelled road leading into the village was long and black and straight, and the only saving grace was that it was too dark to see to the end of it. The clouds hid the moon and there was no light from the village, nothing to see, no way of knowing if your eyes were open or closed, and Leon was alone.
They were expecting baddies. Most likely they would come up the road, not guessing that they had got there first. Unless they’d been warned. The rest of the section were dotted about the place, with orders not to smoke, though he suspected these would be ignored. He wished he had some left to pass the time, a tiny light might give some perspective to the black. Might ward off the mosquitoes, might take his mind off the thing that sat next to him in the dark. He held up his camera and took a shot into the black. It had been fine when they were all together, when you could see other people and think about other people, but here, alone, he thought about those three heartbeats, holding the gaze of that first boy he had killed. The feel of the thing crawling up inside him. The hole his gun had dug between his legs, the sick feeling when the barrel jammed. The dead.
The Vietnamese believed in ghosts. He did not, but he was in their country now and you couldn’t help but feel it, alone in the black. He touched his eyes to make sure that they were open. The skin round his sockets was hot and dry, and the coolness from his fingertips was good. It would have been wonderful to lie down. He thought about the yellow print on Lena Cray’s dress, how it snagged over her belly.
In an instant something changed. He stayed deadly still, trying to locate what it was. When he realised he felt all of hell flatten him and horror tightened his throat. He had been asleep and something had woken him. He’d let the buggers in, they’d walked right past him, they were in there now slitting throats. He didn’t move. He barely breathed. He was sure at that moment in the black that someone held a gun to his face. He felt breath on his cheek, he would hear the click of a barrel. Then calmness. Go on then, he thought, go on then. But nothing. The breath on his cheek was gone. Perhaps it had never been there. His eyebrows arched high, he watched for the first wash of light as it turned the sky. He saw the sun rise and wondered if it would make him cry. The grass was wet from dew and between his tripod and gun a spider had strung a web, and water caught the sun as he breathed the dawn deeply.
Tramping off towards the jungle again with no one murdered in the dark, no baddies showing up, he felt heavy and sick as though he’d been drinking hard the night before.
‘Jeeze, you look crook,’ Cray said, wiping repellant on to his neck. ‘Didn’t you get any sleep?’
Leon looked at him. ‘I was watching the road all night.’
‘Well, what did you watch? Was so dark out there, you wouldn’t have seen the bugger come up and kiss you on the lips. We all bedded down, thought to hell with it.’
The corners of his eyes stung. He felt crook. He really did.
A few hundred yards into the trees the creek had come close in to the village. He heard it running from a way off. A couple of planks made a thin bridge and he was glad not to have to wade through — his boots were still stewy from the last crossing. Before they reached the bank, there it was again, the back of Cray’s neck tensed and he felt his fingers numb on his gun. But Cray’s neck relaxed and he turned round to face the others. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head and walked on.
There were bodies. The creek was stuffed with them. Women and men and children and babies, adrift. They’d taken on water, become soft like rotten potatoes. Their faces were dark holes pushed in soft fruit. A baby, swaddled still in its shawl, floated alone and he thought of the family he’d pointed the gun at. The moon-faced boy. He thought about the line of tracers he’d sent out over the trees after he’d undone the jam in his gun.
Daniel shook his head. ‘Why would you get your family along? They always get shot.’
The section crossed the bridge and no one talked, there was just the clump of boots on the planks, one by one, until only Rod was left on the other side. They waited for him, no one told him to hurry up, they just watched him, tired, as he stood and continued to stand on the wrong side of the creek, with one hand over his eyes.
You had to breathe with your mouth open.
21
There was no sleep for Frank that night and none the next either. His ears were blocked, his sinuses pulsed. He had water on the ear, that was the problem. It was in there rolling about against his eardrum and no amount of head shaking, no amount of fingers in earholes made the slightest difference. His head ached. It looked like the cut on his palm had got infected, small seawater boils had formed round the opening and it throbbed in time with his sinuses. Everything was muffled and hot. He tried to eat some pilchards for breakfast but they turned his stomach and he left them for the hens to pick apart, making their beaks red with tomato juice. His beard itched, felt lumpy round the throat with whorls and clumps of hair, and he couldn’t leave it alone, but the idea of shaving it floored him. He’d have to scissor it first, then the tearing grind of his blunt razor. There’d be blood drawn for sure.
Frank’s eyes felt salty, the rims of them were tender and he could feel tingles on his lips that might be cold sores coming. He wanted to peel his face off and clean it from the inside. Instead he opened a beer. It was early morning, but what difference did the morning make to a man who hadn’t slept? He stayed on his bed, the dark inside the shack was better on his eyes. The shark two days before was like a story he’d overheard. Every time he thought about it he heard the ticking noise all those crabs had made, their hairy legs scrabbling around in the bottom of the surf ski. They’d eaten blue swimmers for four days solid, then they had started to smell and the last ones had to be chucked, dead, back to the sea. He thought about Pokey’s niece with the red drinking straw, and Joyce Mackelly’s jawbone. He thought about Johno with his black hair and the way he’d disappeared into the long sharp grass. The smell of smoke was still on his skin and so was Vicky’s coat. He thought of Bob, who smiled too often too widely, Linus who watched everything and knew something secret, Stuart and his kids and his fish. It was all sad and lost already, and on top of it sat Lucy and he knew what she would have said. The thought of having her nearby seemed like the most perfect thing. A body that was his to touch and to fit in front of his like a piece of interlocking shell.