Wasteland

By Christopher J. Smith

The man lay face down and quiet on the snow for what seemed an eternity. If anybody was watching they might have thought he was already dead. The section of snow where he lay, disturbed by his presence, moved off down the slope and carried him over the edge and into the water. A gurgling splash shattered the perfect silence and sent out a wave across the mirror calm water. The wave moved on, growing smaller and smaller until it became a ripple, then a thought... and then it finally disappeared as if it had never been... just like the man.
Jeremy Gibbs is a successful businessman whose last few deals have established his company as a leader in its field. With success comes the freedom to indulge a lifelong love of travel. When Jeremy and his wife Sophie set off on an extended European holiday, they have no way of knowing that a death on the ice in Greenland, seven hundred years before, had ignited events that would ultimately overtake them... and ravage the world.
The story begins in the cold, deep trenches of the Arctic Ocean, and takes the reader around the world, as Gibbs struggles to maintain his grip on reality. Readers travel from the wide open spaces of northern Ontario through the crowded streets of New York City and on to the renaissance cities of Florence and Venice, as the plot twists and turns and the mystery deepens. From the tepid waters of the Greek Islands, to the calm chill of the Baltic Sea, the reader is drawn into a plot that touches down briefly but tragically on a cast of characters that engender either sympathy or disgust. Finally, at a tiny church on a hill in Sweden, Jeremy Gibbs is forced to confront the truth. But what is the truth?
Donʼt sleep, donʼt dream... donʼt dare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher J. Smith
• Release date: Feb 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9780987463340

Christopher J. Smith

An Australian by birth, Chris is a nomad by nature. His writing career spans over thirty years and has included time as a journalist, editor and corporate communications consultant. He has founded and managed a number of successful strategic marketing companies and advertising agencies and a global trading corporation. He has also managed a parallel career as a singer/songwriter, with a catalogue of over 200 songs to his credit. While he describes himself as having a chronic aversion to airports, Chris considers himself fortunate to have travelled extensively over the past forty years for both business and pleasure. The northern prefectures of Honshu, Japan, The French Languedoc and the northern Italian lakes district are favourite stamping grounds. "Travel has provided me with the raw materials upon which I build both my songs and stories. The characters I meet along the way often find their way into my writing and of course the world provides me with diverse locations as backdrops." He describes himself not as a musician or a novelist, but as a storyteller. In 2009 he made the decision to turn to writing full time. He is married with two adult children.

Book preview

Author’s Note

Wasteland is set globally, but is centred mainly in Europe. Many locations are real and based on geographical accuracy… many are not. For example, the little village of Lugnthav in Sweden is entirely fictitious. The name ‘Lugnthav’ was contrived by the author from the Swedish words for ‘calm’ and ‘sea’. As stated elsewhere in this book, all characters are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The sciences and pathology present in this book are not necessarily anchored in fact. This is a work of fiction. No human beings, birds or animals were harmed during the writing of this book.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to the following people for the parts they have played in the creation of this book. It is fitting that I should start by mentioning all of those people who provided such generous praise in their reviews of my last book, ‘Ghosts of Tokyo’. We write only that our stories be told… our voices heard, and to know that someone is listening is what drives us to keep writing. I thank Quinton and Zane whose support and encouragement have been invaluable. And finally, the greatest thanks of all must go to Lynn, my long suffering editor and partner. Her absolute and unquestioning dedication is matched only by her conviction that one can always do better.

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

PROLOGUE

1. THE DEEP

2. SAN REMO

3. EXPEDITION

4. THE COLD CHANNELS

5. FLORENCE

6. HOMEWARD BOUND

7. BREEDING

8. LEAVING FOR VENICE

9. OVERLAND

10. MOOSONEE

11. THE LIDO

12. A LAST MEAL

13. LANDING THE CATCH

14. WAKE IN FRIGHT

15. THE BIG APPLE

16. WELCOME TO THE HOTEL EXCELSIOR

17. ERIC FINDS A NEW FRIEND

18. A CHANGE OF SCENERY

19. A FISH TO SMYGEHUK

20. JUST A LITTLE NAP

21. TO MARKET, TO MARKET

22. FJORDKROEN

23. NEW YORK BASS

24. SMYGEHUK

25. A FISH TO THE ANTIPODES

26. A SWEDISH HOLIDAY

27. TRELLEBORG

28. A CRY FOR HELP

29. ELINA

30. TRAVEL PLANS

31. THE MAN IN THE MIRROR

32. NEWS FROM HOME

33. COPENHAGEN

34. PICNIC AT SJORUP

35. NICE ONE MR. BOND

36. DEPARTURE

37. A CALL TO ARMS

38. KYTHNOS

39. BLOCKADE

40. SAFE HARBOUR

41. ADRIFT IN CYCLADES

42. THE RAGGED MAN

43. AWAKENING

44. A LIGHT IN THE HILLS

45. I DREAMED I WASN’T THERE

46. THE MORNING AFTER

47. THE TROUBLE WITH AIRIN

48. HUNTED

49. THE HUNTERS

50. THE LITTLE SHIP

51. BOUND FOR THE NORTH SEA

52. LONDON CALLING

53. TILBURY DOCKS

54. WANTED ON VOYAGE

55. TRAVELLING SOUTH

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

The 14th Century.

The man lay face down and quiet on the snow for what seemed an eternity. If anybody was watching they might have thought he was already dead. The deafening silence was broken only by the sound of dripping water and the occasional muted plink, as tiny fragments of snow, surrendering to the inevitable, released their grip on the lip of the steep snowbank and dropped two or three feet into the bay.

The man’s feet were clad in roughly sewn sealskin boots, and the rest of his garments were made from various skins and furs of indeterminate origin. Normally, they would have kept him warm enough but now, as the life ebbed from him, the chill crept up his legs and into his thighs. He knew that his time was close. He emptied his bladder, and immediately felt the luxuriant warmth around his groin and stomach. Of course he knew that this was only going to delay things, but the survival instinct is powerful and unreasoning, and every extra minute gained brought at least some kind of victory. His left cheek was frozen against the snow and now, as he tried to open his eyes, the pain shot through his left eye like a jab from a marlin spike. His brain shifted to concentrate on his right eye, and this now flickered slightly… the first sign that he was alive since he had fallen to his knees somewhere far up the steep slope an eternity before.

His eyelid was frozen closed, and the lashes snapped quietly off until he was able to force the eye open further. From where he lay he could see back up the slope, and he could see the gouging scar he had left through the snow as he fought to arrest his descent towards the freezing water. He was unable to move his head, but could swivel his eye far enough down to make out the water. He could estimate that he was maybe a single body length from the edge, and he wondered why he had fought so hard to prevent that scrambling flight down to a quick death. It would be all over now. One frozen blast to drive the last breath from his crippled lungs and replace it with a sudden end. All over in a few seconds. But now, now he would lie here and endure an agonising end, as the flame withered and died like a guttering oil lamp. He couldn’t struggle. He could just die a painful death as the wetness around his groin turned solid and sucked the last tiny bit of warmth from his core.

Five or ten minutes later the man lay unmoving, maybe dead maybe alive, as a small bluish fracture appeared in the snow above and beside him. The section of snow where he lay, disturbed by his presence, moved off down the slope and carried him over the edge and into the water. A gurgling splash shattered the perfect silence and sent out a small wave across the mirror calm water. The wave moved on, growing smaller and smaller until it became a ripple, then a thought and then it finally disappeared as if it had never been. Just like the man.

1. THE DEEP

Almost three and a half miles below the ice at the North Pole, a tiny trail of bubbles broke free from the yawning mouth of a black trench and rushed upwards toward the thick ice crust. Once there, the bubbles went their individual ways and cast about seeking new homes in the tiny depressions and brine channels on the underside of the ice. Up there in the network of channels, the biggest being only the diameter of a man’s thumb, teemed an amazing variety of life. Bacteria, fungi, viruses and algae battled for sunlight to survive and in turn, provide a food source for tiny worms and crab-like creatures that rushed about busily, but briefly, surviving.

Down on the ocean bed and at the mouth of the trench, a shimmering haze marked a rising stream of warmer water, and yet at this place the water was cold enough to freeze a man’s face off. Here at the top of the world, two giant ocean basins were separated by an undersea mountain range over one hundred and twenty miles wide and two miles high. On the slopes of this silent world of swaying forests and caverns there lived stranger creatures still than the bizarre jellyfish that strobed its way among the sponges. A weird thing, half crab half shell, scuttled across a ledge pursued by a purple squid and was snapped up by a passing fish, quick, final, cyclic. The fish swam deeper down into the Benthic Realm, and darted in to take shelter among the giant sponges, pipe worms and anemones. Nearby, in a small dark ravine, some odd creature spread its formless limbs and detected a deep pulsing beat. A beat so big as to displace water, almost a sound, but regular. The creature glowed a warning in some pathetic phosphorescence and slid back deeper, away from the nightmare presence. Down there in that hidden battleground, the war wages on as ever, but that day something was different.

In the seemingly endless depths of the trench, hypothermic vents released crystal streams of super heated water, where tiny creatures and minute organisms formed colonies and lived short lives. From the unimaginable realm of the trench came a slow moving shockwave. Warm brackish water pushed upward from the depths, dislodging rocks and all manner of crazy life from in the shaft and around its rim. These things fluttered slowly downward into the trench where, hundreds of feet below, they stopped and danced, held suspended in the hot flow of water from the hypothermic vent. Living things boiled and cooked, rocks calcified. Thirty feet above this pantomime, a cleft entrance reached in from the side of the trench and opened out into a chamber of cavernous proportions. Small phosphorescent creatures spewed out of the cave entrance, driven by the shockwave of some larger movement. The pulsing percussive beat grew louder. It was the beating heart of a great fish.

The fish, when it came, emerged from the cave mouth into the trench, and paused as if to feel the warmth of the vent. Its eyes were the size of a man’s spread hand and were set almost vertical, high in its large head, separated by a bony ridge. The head was huge and dominated by a massive mouth that sported just a sparse selection of thin, angry fangs both top and bottom. Further back in the mouth were rows of low serrated grinding teeth. The head seemed to be made up of several interlocking, bony plates. The body was thin and sleek, and tapered back in a long, eel-like shape to an indistinct tail. Close behind the head, large, almost wing-like fins swept in and out like an elephant’s ears on a hot day. The great fish looked like a giant nightmarish tadpole and was a pinkish white colour, almost transparent as it drew its whole body out into the trench. It moved easily upwards, its fins sending more life downwards into the trench. It paused at the rim. From under its body, between the great fins, two tiny legs gripped the wall.

After a minute or so it moved off across that dark hidden prairie, already seeming bigger and more flesh coloured. One lazy stroke of that long tail took it fifty feet, where it settled again on the bottom, harvesting what oxygen it could in the sparse environment. It lay perfectly still like that, adapting and gathering strength. Ever so slowly life returned to normal around it. Deep dwelling crabs scuttled by, and fish, eels, jellyfish and squid all switched back into their normal mode, the giant pink thing so big as to be almost invisible, almost forgotten. When it finally moved off again in the direction of the undersea mountain it was well fed, its belly expanded to accommodate more than it had eaten for the past six months.

The fish came to the lower slopes of the mountain and hung almost motionless there, unwilling yet to ascend. It could feel its body adjusting to the change, the lessening of pressure. It felt bigger somehow and more buoyant. As it hung there it sensed the slight tug of a current across its right side and tail fins. As if finally deciding, the thing made a lazy turn and allowed itself to be drifted slowly along in the current that flowed to the southwest.

As the great fish travelled south it sensed the rise and fall of pressure and in places, needed to search about for a deeper channel to allow its passing. On occasion it came unavoidably into more shallow waters and it sensed its body expanding and bloating. At these times, it gripped onto the floor of the ocean with its tiny legs and waited. Following the cold currents that themselves followed the deeper channel off the coast, the fish travelled south for over three months. Where possible it adapted, exploring deeper bays and fjords, endlessly foraging and feeding, its diet altering slowly with each passing day. Every day it ascended further and further until it could finally come close to the surface along the sloping ocean floor. Its great eyes learned to deal with the huge amount of light and the irises closed down to tiny points when necessary. Close to shore, it needed only to sit motionless on the bottom and wait, its great mouth yawning open, until a baby seal came exploring. This way it fed, this way it grew.

The fish was in tune with its surroundings. It learnt to recognise the sound of quarry, a distressed fish or seal. It could determine the sounds of an attack and move in to snatch the prize from a surprised predator, usually a seal or walrus. It sat and listened for these sounds, these sounds caused by a hunter entering the water from the shore or an ice floe, or an attack coming on the surface. The great fish hung now on the sea bed close to the surface in the shallow water. Its eyes barely open against the glare of the sun on the still water. Its great fins moved lazily back and forth, steadying it against the current, and giant gills came and went as slow, pink slashes in its sides. It heard the splash and waited patiently for further sounds of motion, but there were none. Feeling its way along the bottom with those comical little feet, the great fish came closer to the shore than it had ever been. As its eyes adjusted to the light, it made out a dark shape languishing on the sea bed. The fish moved forward and sat quietly just a few feet away from the thing… watching.

2. SAN REMO

He woke before the dawn and lay there quietly listening. It took him some time to figure out where he was. That happens when you travel a lot. The pre-dawn shadows around the room, slowly matched with the memory of his arrival the previous night. He was in the Grande Hotel Del Mare in Bordighera, Italy. He knew the area well and often stayed in this hotel, which was superbly situated right on the edge of the water just outside San Remo. But this time, something seemed different. It was quieter, that’s it he thought, it was so very very quiet. Normally, even at this hour, you could hear the gentle but persistent hum of traffic as it snaked along the Via Arziglia, or the pop, pop, pop of the little sardine boats offshore. He lay there a while longer, then turned to face his wife. The other side of the bed was empty. He turned toward the bathroom expecting to see a strip of light under the door, but there was none. He called her name.

Sophie, Soph. You okay?

No reply.

He stayed perfectly still, shut his eyes tight and listened just as hard as he could.

Sophie? he called again.

He reached out fumbling for the bedside light switch. It flicked on and bathed the room in soft yellow light. ‘Shit!’ Her side of the bed seemed undisturbed. ‘What the hell?’

He jumped out of bed and checked the room. There was no sign of her. Then he realised there was only one bag in the room, his old brown leather overnighter. He went to the bathroom. The first thing Sophie did when she arrived in any hotel, was spread stuff all over the vanity and pilfer the freebies. There was nothing of hers in the bathroom and the little tray of goodies was undisturbed. He grabbed the door frame for support and staggered out to the window. He pulled open the big sliding door and stepped out onto the balcony. The moon cast a thin silvery light from somewhere overhead. He could just make out the animal sculptures in the garden below, but he could see no motor vehicle lights moving along the coast road beside the hotel, nor around the bay at Ospedaletti. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrored wall of the balcony… rough! He ducked back inside and pulled on a pair of jeans, a tee shirt and his loafers. He grabbed his car keys, wallet, cell phone and room key and slipped quietly into the corridor.

Where the hell was Sophie? He took the lift down to the lobby level and found it completely deserted. There was a soft glow coming from the office behind the reception desk. He banged on the bell and waited.

Hello, anyone there? he called. Mi scusi… mi potete aiutare?

Nothing. He went around the desk and into the office and found it empty. He ran out to the lift that descended to the entrance and car park level, but it was so slow arriving that he took the stairs down two at a time. He bounded out through the front door into the circular car park, and headed straight for the black Peugeot, popping the locks as he ran. He hauled open the passenger door and pawed through the stuff on the seats. He opened the back hatch and went through the luggage… nothing! There was nothing of his wife’s in the car. There was no trace of her ever being in the car. He slid down and sat on the cold concrete with his back against the bumper, trying to make some sense of it all.

They had checked in yesterday at around 3.00 in the afternoon, and enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine on the balcony overlooking the mediterranean as the sun went down. At around 8.30, they had headed down to the bar for a few drinks and something to eat. The bar was open twenty four hours and the bar food was extraordinary. ‘Twenty four hours… the bar was open twenty four hours!’

Jeremy leapt up and raced back upstairs to the lobby level. Again it was deserted. He ran around into the cocktail bar, expecting to see the slick bartender in the red vest tending a few night owls, but it was empty. There was a rank smell there… unidentifiable, sweet, unpleasant. He stood in the lobby and screamed at the top of his lungs, but the only reply was the sound of his own voice bouncing off the tall marble columns. ‘Where the hell was everybody?’ He stood there for a minute or two, deflated, unsure what to do. His car keys dropped from his limp fingers onto the polished limestone floor. He looked down at them, then made a decision. He snatched up the keys, then walked briskly back down to his car and climbed in.

He circled round the car park, then drove down the narrow winding concrete tunnel that exited at ground level. The lights hit the wall in front, but he steered hard into the curve of the ramp. Without warning, the car bucked, almost snatching the wheel from his hands. He jammed the brakes on and looked in the rear view mirror. In the soft red glow of the brake lights, he could make out a shape on the road behind the car. He jumped out and went back to investigate. On the ramp lay the bartender in the red vest. He lay on his back, and his legs were twisted at impossible angles where the car had run over them. But Jeremy could see something else. There were great raised lumps or welts on his neck, and his skin had turned a deep pink colour. Dried blood ran uphill from the man’s ears. Clearly he had been lying face down and dead on the ramp when Jeremy had run over him. He grabbed the guy’s legs and hauled him up against the wall, then climbed back in the car and drove towards Bordighera.

He started to see the first bodies on the road opposite the Marina d’Italia. There was a mini bus skewed across the right lane, with its nose jammed hard into the vegetation that flowed down the rock wall beside the road.

He eased the car past the bus, and there they were, six or seven bodies strewn across the road. He flipped open the glovebox and located his torch. He leaned across the passenger seat and aimed the beam out onto the road. He was met by a macabre scene of sunken eyes and great gouts of blood and vomit. These people had suffered horribly. His torch beam picked out the neck of one man whose right leg was still caught on the bottom step of the bus. Jeremy imagined the scene. The man must have staggered from the bus retching, and catching his foot, pitched head first onto the roadway. The man’s head was shattered on the black asphalt. Jeremy shivered violently, and his torch picked out a great angry welt on the man’s neck. He played the light off to the left, where a young woman lay on her back with her legs splayed and her dress rucked up above her waist. He moved the beam away, then something caught his eye, and he shone the light directly on the young woman’s legs. She wore skimpy red panties and they matched almost perfectly with the angry raised welts on the inside of her upper thighs. Jeremy flicked off the torch and sat there in the dark for an interminable time. Finally he seemed to jerk back to life. He now knew what to expect, but he went anyway, into that village of death. He manoeuvred around cars, scooters, buses and hundreds of bodies until finally he came to the Via Giacomo Matteotti, where the road split into two one-way sections to pick its way through the town. Here, he could go no further. The roads were jammed in both directions with cars, trucks and scooters. A trolleybus had carried on across the corner, come loose from its overhead lifeline and crashed through a small garden, slicing off two large palm trees. The bus had carried on into a small gas station, and stopped just inches from the pumps. It didn’t matter, everybody was dead anyway. Jeremy could see bodies. On the bus, on the ground… everywhere. He reversed back far enough to turn the car, and drove slowly back up the road. As he drove, the realisation hit him. Everyone was dead, he would die. He realised he was crying.

He had no plan, no thought. He was numb. Making his way back to the hotel where he had last seen his wife, he climbed the stairs to the lobby. He wandered like a zombie around into the cocktail bar and, ignoring the foul smell, went behind the bar and took a bottle of single malt whisky from the shelf. The lift opened on his floor and he strode along the passageway to his room, banging on doors as he went, but there was nothing, nobody. In his room he went to the sideboard and took a glass. He went to the television and flicked through a dozen channels. CNN, BBC, French channels, Italian channels, German channels, nothing but snow and error messages. He stepped out onto the balcony, the sky over the ocean seemed lighter. Jeremy dropped into a chair and unscrewed the top off the whisky bottle. He sat there lost, as if in a trance, staring out to sea, and drank half the bottle. A great shudder went through his body and jolted him back to reality. He reached for the empty glass then changed his mind and took a great swig straight from the bottle. He flicked the metal screw top off the balcony then got up and went inside. He was cold, he was shivering.

Jeremy Gibbs took another drag on the bottle, then lay down on the bed. He reached over and smoothed the bedclothes in the space where his wife should have been, then he closed his eyes and prepared to die like everybody else.

3. EXPEDITION

The man lay warm in his bed of fur and skins. Outside, the sky was lightening around the edges, and the sounds of the village waking up reached his ears. He knew it was time to leave this place. Life in Ammassalik was hard. Harder now that the European whalers had all but wiped out the great beasts that provided his town with its vital daily needs of food, shelter and warmth. He heard the laughter of a child echo out across the calm bay, and this strengthened his resolve to act. ‘We could starve here,’ he thought, ‘our children with us.’ Even the seals were getting sparse, and they required a lot more energy in the hunting. Fish could provide food, but not oil and blubber, and certainly not skins of any worth. He climbed from his bed, crossed to the doorway and looked out across the bay.

The jagged sawtooth hills on the other side of the bay were streaked with sheets of snow and ice, and the grey dawn light now picked out the many small flows and bergs seemingly at rest in the bay. As he watched, a block of ice the size of his house rolled over and growled low like a contented dog looking for a rub on its belly.

He turned back into the house to look at his sleeping wife. This was normally his favourite time of the day. But the village was even quieter now because there were less people. They had discussed moving to the settlements around the cape. His brother-in-law had left last summer to prepare the way, and word had reached them that they should come. He decided that now it was time for him to go and see for himself, to make that final decision. He had waited for the warmer weather, but it was late coming, and the snow and ice remained impossibly thick. The return journey by kayak would take three months if he travelled light, but he must leave now or he might not make it back. His kayak lay ready near the door of his house, and he now collected the small bundles that he had readied the day before, and carried them the short distance to the water’s edge. As he turned back to the house, his wife stood in the doorway, not smiling not frowning,