There were birds in the air. The thunder was louder now.
It did sound like guns.
‘It’s over the next ridge . . .‘ said Judd.
‘I don’t think we should go any further.’
‘I have to see.’
‘I don’t. We’re not supposed to be here.’
‘I don’t see any signs.’
‘They’ll cart us away; deport us – I don’t know – I just think -,
Boom.
‘I’ve got to see.’
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the screaming started.
Podujevo was screaming: a death-cry. Someone buried in the weak flank had died of the strain, and had begun a chain of decay in the system. One man loosed his neighbour
and that neighbour loosed his, spreading a cancer of chaos through the body of the city. The coherence of the towering structure deteriorated with terrifying rapidity as the failure of one part of the anatomy put unendurable pressure on the other.
The masterpiece that the good citizens of Podujevo had constructed of their own flesh and blood tottered and then
—a dynamited skyscraper, it began to fall.
The broken flank spewed citizens like a slashed artery spitting blood. Then, with a graceful sloth that made the agonies of the citizens all the more horrible, it bowed towards the earth, all its limbs dissembling as it fell.
The huge head, that had brushed the clouds so recently, was flung back on its thick neck. Ten thousand mouths spoke a single scream for its vast mouth, a wordless, infinitely pitiable appeal to the sky. A howl of loss, a howl of anticipation, a howl of puzzlement. How, that scream demanded, could the day of days end like this, in a welter of falling bodies?
‘Did you hear that?’
It was unmistakably human, though almost deafeningly loud. Judd’s stomach convulsed. He looked across at Mick, who was as white as a sheet.
Judd stopped the car.
‘No,’ said Mick.
‘Listen — for Christ’s sake —, The din of dying moans, appeals and imprecations flooded the air. It was very close.
‘We’ve got to go on now,’ Mick implored.
Judd shook his head. He was prepared for some military
spectacle — all the Russian army massed over the next hill
— but that noise in his ears was the noise of human flesh
— too human for words. It reminded him of his childhood
imaginings of Hell; the endless, unspeakable torments his
mother had threatened him with if he failed to embrace Christ. It was a terror he’d forgotten for twenty years. But suddenly, here it was again, fresh-faced. Maybe the pit itself gaped just over the next horizon, with his mother standing at its lip, inviting him to taste its punishments.
‘If you won’t drive, I will.’
Mick got out of the car and crossed in front of it, glancing up the track as he did so. There was a moment’s hesitation, no more than a moment’s, when his eyes flickered with disbelief, before he turned towards the windscreen, his face even paler than it had been previously and said:
‘Jesus Christ. . .‘ in a voice that was thick with suppressed nausea.
His lover was still sitting behind the wheel, his head in his hands, trying to blot out memories.
‘Judd.. .‘
Judd looked up, slowly. Mick was staring at him like a wildman, his face shining with a sudden, icy sweat. Judd looked past him. A few metres ahead the track had mysteriously darkened, as a tide edged towards the car, a thick, deep tide of blood. Judd’s reason twisted and turned to make any other sense of the sight than that inevitable conclusion. But there was no saner explanation. It was blood, in unendurable abundance, blood without end —And now, in the breeze, there was the flavour of freshly – opened carcasses: the smell out of the depths of the human body, part sweet, part savoury.
Mick stumbled back to the passenger’s side of the VW and fumbled weakly at the handle. The door opened suddenly and he lurched inside, his eyes glazed.
‘Back up,’ he said.
Judd reached for the ignition. The tide of blood was already sloshing against the front wheels. Ahead, the world had been painted red.