And then the rains made up for lost time.
Within seconds the visibility was down to a matter of feet. Shaw, in his all-too-brief years at sea, had been in the cold Atlantic storms, and he had seen the African rains over Freetown, sheeting down and lashing at the waters of the bay to send them into a million holes like a gigantic sponge. Recently he had seen the start of the wet season here in Nogolia itself. But in all his experience he had never seen anything to equal this. It was a vertical, solid curtain of water, slashing water which was bringing up the very earth in liquid mud so that the whole surface of the clearing appeared to lift bodily as the rain bounced. In those first few minutes the whole village was inches deep, as though the heavens had kept back their deluge until this day, while the rushing water sought its outlet through the cleared track to the road. That water was filled with the bodies of the ants, caught as they scurried away, and it washed them over the huddled corpses at the entrance to the track, the corpses which they had begun to lay bare to the bone before they were interrupted. The rain ripped into Shaw and Gillian Ross, held shivering in his arms.
Shaw said, “All clear now. We’ll get into one of the huts for a while — just till the worst is over. We wouldn’t make much headway in this, but it’ll ease soon and if my information’s right,” he added, remembering what Stephen Geisler had told him about the time element in target-selection, “we may have up to twelve hours left. They’ll have to wait for Bluebolt to be in the right position again.”
He bent and picked the girl up, held her waist-high as he waded through the rushing floodwater, making for the nearest of the huts. He carried her through the open door, heard the pounding on the roof, wondered how long the mud walls could stand up to this. The floor of the hut was awash with scummy water, and his feet stirred up soft mud already. He waded across to a raised platform probably used by the former inhabitants for sleeping, and laid the girl gently down on it. His quick eye noted the unexpected cleanliness of the hut, the complete absence of anything edible or of any kind of refuse. There was a curious feeling of utter sterility… the ants had been through here, of course, had left nothing behind them at all.
He said, “Look, Gillian, we can’t do better than to get some rest while we can — be all the fitter when the rains let up. Then we’ll see what’s the best thing to do.”
She looked up at him and tried to smile. But her face was stiff with anxiety, cold, and hopelessness again now, and the smile didn’t come off very well. Shaw turned away and hunted round, found a rug which some one must have brought in from Jinda or Manalati, and he wrapped this round her body. Then, to give her all the warmth he could, he lay down beside her and put his arms tightly round her. He was in the grip of a terrible and consuming impatience. God alone knew what was happening now at the control-station. Even though he might have that twelve hours in hand, he didn’t know how far Zambi really was from the station — Wiley’s “not far” didn’t necessarily mean much and he’d doubtless been thinking in terms of transport anyway. Shaw wondered if he was right to hold on here, wondered if he should get out and press on as fast as possible through that solid water, but he knew inside himself that they could never get far at present, that they would undoubtedly get fatally bogged down, and that they needed to fortify their strength.
They were utterly exhausted — physically, emotionally, and mentally.
They slept for close on a couple of hours, a heavy, drugged sleep, like twin logs on that hard, primitive bed. Then Shaw, conscious even through that deep sleep of a change, a lessening, in the thunder of the rain on the roof, woke up. He had to fight through layers of semiconsciousness, through a near-coma of weariness; and then, after a couple of minutes, he forced his body to a sitting position, slid off into the slimy mud left behind by the decreasing water, glanced at the sleeping girl, and then slopped across to the door and looked out.
They could get on the move now.
By English standards the rain was very heavy still, but it had lost its bite and its flood-potential. The compound was relatively clear. They must get away now and push on while they could, before the big rains came back, as they would on and off now for the next six months.
He went back and shook Gillian.
He said urgently, “Wake up… time to be moving.”
She gave a slight movement of her body and then a small cry, a muffled sound from the depths of a nightmare. Shaw felt a stab of pity, but he tightened his grip on her shoulder.
“Come along. We’ve got to get cracking now.”
She opened her eyes, rolled over, looked up at him. She flinched away, and there was no recognition in her face, only fear. He realized then, if he hadn’t before, just what she must have gone through all the time she was in Wiley’s hands. After a while she seemed to focus, and then she relaxed and drew the scanty coverings over her breasts. She said, “All right. But — where?”
“Follow the track out of the village till we hit the road, the one we came along yesterday in the truck. If we head east from there we’re bound to make Manalati sooner or later, if not the naval station itself. Once I get to Manalati I can get things moving. We may even have a bit of luck and get a lift, if there’s anyone on the roads.” He looked down at her anxiously. “Feel fit for a long trek if we don’t?”
“I–I think so.” She sat up, holding the covering to her throat. “I’ll just have to be, won’t I?”
Searching through the other huts, they found not only Shaw’s Webley still in its holster but also the remainder of the girl’s own clothing, though there was no sign of Shaw’s identity card. Gillian’s clothes were wet through and muddy but that didn’t matter; in any case, she would have been soaked within minutes once she went outside. When she was dressed they started off through the rain and entered the path leading up to the road. It was a morass, a sea of oozy, clinging mud into which their feet sank deep, and they had to go past the remnants of the men who had fallen before the ants. Soggily, slowly, painfully they pushed along the jungle trail, water soaking into them from every dripping branch, every leaf and frond that the ants, interrupted by the rains, had left intact. In here, in this lush green tunnel which had been only just wide enough to let the truck pass and which was crisscrossed with small branches which flipped stingingly at exposed flesh, it was hot, fetid, greenhouse-like, with a humidity which Shaw had never met before. They ran with sweat as they struggled along. Every now and then they were forced to rest aching, mud-heavy legs and arms and backs, and during these rests they picked away from each other the foul, clinging bodies of leeches who had hidden themselves from the ants in the stagnant pools, leeches that were now bloating with their blood.
It took them almost an hour of hard going before they hit the road and turned to the right, eastward for Manalati and — Shaw hoped — the general direction of the control-station. They would have to head right along the south side of the valley and then across the Naka Hills in order to reach Manalati. It could mean hours of walking, slogging along — if ever they made it at all. And by that time it could so easily be much too late.