Ken McClure - The Lazarus Strain

Although he had been in very good physical condition, the fact that he had been wet through and outdoors in freezing temperatures for some hours was something he could not possibly sustain for much longer. However bad he felt and however great the danger of puncturing his lungs with broken ribs he simply had to start moving and keep moving until he found help or it found him.

He was attempting to stand up for the third time when the moon came out from behind the clouds and lit up the gorge with pale light. The sight did little to gladden his heart as the rock walls on both sides seemed almost vertical and, high above him, he could see the damaged parapet where the MG had come over. Along to his right he could see the wreckage of his car strewn across the river. He reckoned that his best chance — maybe his only one — might be someone seeing the damage to the bridge parapet and reporting it but it was on a minor road and he had no idea of the time or how long he’d been unconscious. It might well be the middle of the night.

His phone! His mobile phone! The thought prompted a frantic search through his pockets with wet hands that resisted entrance and exit to every one of them but then he remembered that it would have been in the hands-free holder in the car. Subsidiary thoughts about the chances of it still working being slim and the unlikelihood of there being a signal at the foot of this gorge were pushed to the back of his mind as he clung instead to the possibility that it had been flung free of the car and had landed in a patch of soft moss somewhere near his feet. A quick look removed this possibility from the equation.

Steven made his way along the narrow, stony river bank to the wreckage and started searching. Glancing up at the sky, he could see that the moonlight was not going to last much longer — a thick bank of cloud was approaching. Doing his best to protect his ribs with one arm folded across his chest, he peered into what was left of the cabin and saw that the phone mounting was still above water — but was empty. ‘Shit,’ he murmured as he felt around the submerged floor pan without finding anything. His search was constantly impeded by the bag of logs he’d bought at the filling station floating around in front of him. He yanked them out of the car angrily and threw them on to the bank before continuing but it seemed clear: the phone was not in the car.

Another quick glance up at the sky told him that he couldn’t have more than three or four minutes of moonlight left. Sheer frustration left him trying to curse everything at the top of his voice although the contractions in his throat and the violent shivering in his body made even that impossible in any satisfactory way.

He was into his third chorus of, ‘Bastard… bastard… bastard,’ accompanied by thumping his fist on the grassy bank when a glint caught his eye. There was something metallic lying on the bank about ten yards away… He crawled along the bank towards it and recognised his phone. He snatched it up and then realised that it was only the front of the phone. The back, comprising the battery, was missing.

Steven slumped down on the ground, feeling the will to live seriously weaken in him. His shivering was subsiding; the pain was fading and he was starting to feel comfortable. For the moment he would get some sleep and someone would come along in the morning…

‘Get up!’ warned the voice inside his head. ‘Get your arse into gear, Dunbar! Move it!’ It was the voice of a drill sergeant from all those years ago. The voice that had driven him on through the hell of an SAS selection course in the mountains of North Wales. ‘Giving up is not an option! You go to sleep now and you’ll never wake up again. Your choice!’

Steven got to his knees and found himself facing the bag of logs he’d flung on to the bank. The irony made him dissolve into maniacal laughter for a few moments. ‘Nice one, God,’ he spluttered but through the anger and pain and frustration and the desire to lie down and sleep his way out of it all, the image of a fire had been kindled. He started crawling up and down the bank as fast as he could in order to keep moving and he concentrated on the idea of a fire. He needed a fire… he wanted a fire… he had a bag of wet logs… the matches he’d bought would be useless too… but he hadn’t bought matches! There had been a box of disposable lighters beside the till in the service station. He’d bought one of these instead!

Once again he searched through his pockets and found the lighter. He flicked the wheel with his thumb and sparks flew into the air. He tried twice more and was rewarded with a flickering flame that seemed suddenly to symbolise for him all hope on Earth.

Steven resumed crawling up and down the bank as he felt his legs go numb again. Keep moving… keep moving… must keep moving. Disjointed thoughts vied with the pain in his knees from crawling over stones. What can I burn?… no paper… the firelighters were at the bottom of the river: he’d seen them lying there… the logs were soaking wet… it would take a furnace to light them, not a bloody cigarette lighter… a furnace… a furnace… if the car’s petrol tank hadn’t ruptured… he had the makings of a furnace!

Steven dragged himself back to the car and unscrewed the filler cap, feeling almost nauseous with relief when petrol vapour reached his nostrils: the tank was intact. It seemed sweeter than any perfume but he needed a way to ignite it and preferably not with his face over the tank at the time.

Using what he recognised might be the last remaining ounce of strength he had left in his body, he ripped the front of his shirt and tore a strip away to dangle it in the tank. Please God it would reach! He pulled the material back out and smelt the end. It was soaked in petrol.

He suspected that he was only going to have one chance at this. He was counting on the tank not exploding because the cap was off and the contents were not confined… but on the other hand it just might. He trailed the shirt material from the cap opening along the body work and prepared to flick the lighter under it. He would do this and then dive immediately for the bank.

Steven flicked the lighter wheel and dived for the bank, doing his best to protect his injured chest by landing on his arm and side. Nothing happened. He looked back and saw the rag dangling there. At that moment, the clouds reached the moon and blackness swallowed everything up. He wanted to scream out his frustration but he steeled himself to feel his way back to the wreckage and find the end of the rag. Once again he flicked the lighter wheel and this time there was a yellow flash as he leapt back to the bank. This was followed by a second, more powerful, eruption of flame from the car as the main tank erupted.

Steven crawled away from the wall of heat that engulfed him, feeling a mixture of euphoria and pain. When the flames had died back a bit he returned and started throwing the wet logs into the cabin space in order to keep the fire going. He had a fire; he had heat. He just might survive. He was careful not to get too close, knowing of the agonising pain that comes with heating up numb limbs too quickly but after ten minutes or so he started to feel comfortable. He felt even better after another ten minutes when, through the darkness up to his left, he saw a number of flashing lights. They were an encouraging shade of blue.

By mid afternoon on the following day, Steven decided to sign himself out of hospital. X-rays had shown that there was no skull fracture and his ‘field’ diagnosis of three broken ribs had proved correct. His cuts and bruises had been cleaned and his chest strapped up. The police had visited and taken details: they had already matched them with the theft of a JCB gritter from a roads department depot about three miles from where the incident occurred. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much these things are worth,’ the Constable had told him.