John Lanchester - The Wall

‘I have to,’ said James. I think, looking back, he was wanting us to say something or do something that would either change his mind or give him a different idea. I didn’t know what to say. I was thinking: Hughes might know what to say or do. The Captain might know. Kellan or Mara might know. But Hughes was unconscious and the others were dead, and I didn’t know what to do. James reached inside his clothes and wriggled around under them and took out the grenade. I realised that the explosion would be unpredictable and dangerous for the rafts so I began moving people down towards the back of the community and told them to get into shelter where they could find it, and keep their heads down. I went over to Hughes. He was out cold but breathing regularly; the cut on his head was bleeding but it would clot and he was probably going to be OK. He was too heavy to drag away and in any case there was some cover from a nearby shelter so I put him in the recovery position and left him there. I would have covered him with a space blanket if the pirates hadn’t taken them all.

James walked slowly across to the pirate ship. There was a gap between our rafts and their vessel. They had taken the inflatable back but their ladder was still down. There was nobody standing guard or looking over at us. The pirates had clearly decided we were no threat to them. He lowered his legs over the side of the raft, then got into the water, holding the grenade in his left arm, above the water. He side-stroked over to the ship, got his right arm on the ladder and stayed there for a few moments. He was gathering his strength or making sure he was certain, or both. Then he started to climb.

Everyone in the community who could move had gone to shelter. Five people apart from the two of us. Before the pirates came we had been fifteen strong. Most of them didn’t know exactly what was happening but they had done what Hifa and I told them to do.

‘We need to get to cover,’ I said to her. She nodded and we both crossed to our lifeboat. A gust of wind came and the rafts rocked and we stumbled into each other. That was how we got into the lifeboat, holding onto each other. We sat on the floor of the boat, the back of our heads against the side. For the first time since the pirates had come I was conscious of the movement of the sea, still unquiet after the storm.

‘How long?’ she said.

‘Not long. He’ll run towards them. The fuse time is five seconds, yes? He’ll probably climb up then prime it, pull the pin, then run at them. They’ll kill him as soon as they can but they probably aren’t carrying their guns any more, so …’

‘The girls might be at the other end of the ship. We’ll have a chance to rescue them. We wait for the bang then we go and see.’

‘Yes,’ I said, knowing that was unlikely, and that even if we could make it work, the surviving pirates would kill us. But with James having done what he was about to do, we would have to do our part as well. Our odds were so bad without food and water that almost nothing we could do would make them worse. I started counting to ten, then realised there was no point, that it would happen when it happened. The silence – I mean apart from the noise of the wind and water and the creaking rafts – went on for longer than I had thought possible. Maybe James had given up and was coming back towards us. I felt a cowardly twinge of relief at the idea. That was when there was an explosion, a reverberating concussive pulse through the air. I felt my breath catch and could see the same look on Hifa’s face. A few seconds later, there was another, much bigger explosion. This was truly huge, a physical sensation more than a noise. It couldn’t be the grenade, it was a far bigger bang. I felt the whole structure of the community give a violent jolt, an energy that went through all the rafts and hit our lifeboat in the side. I started to put my head up but Hifa grabbed me and I knew she was in the right: if we’d had our heads above deck when the second bang happened we could easily have been killed. There could be more to come. I kept my head down and waited. I could hear things, but I wasn’t sure what: noises which were neither human nor aquatic, not the wind, not the sea. Tearing noises and hissing noises. I waited and waited and eventually said, ‘Yes?’ Hifa nodded. We both put our heads over the side of the lifeboat.

The rafts had broken up and were on fire. Acrid smoke was pouring up from the tar-soaked ropes that had bound the community together. The pirate ship was on fire too, what was left of it, but the top half of the ship had disappeared. The grenade must have ignited a big supply of either fuel or ammunition or both. The first explosion was the grenade, the second was whatever the first one had set off. There could be no survivors on the ship and not many on the rafts either and the fire was coming towards our lifeboat. The section of raft nearest us had detached from the rest of the community. We were already five or ten metres away from the other rafts, which had broken into three big pieces. ‘Our’ raft, the one we were tied to, was on fire. The fire was getting closer. I could see no survivors on the other boats, but it was getting dark and in the fire and smoke I might not have been able to see them even if they had been there.

I thought: Hughes. He would still be unconscious, still lying in the recovery position. If the fire hadn’t got to him yet. But there was nothing I could do – no way to help my shift twin. The rafts were already torn apart. If I tried to swim to them I would never make it back. There was no choice.

‘We have to cut loose,’ I said to Hifa, ‘or we’ll burn.’ She looked around and I could see her running the same calculations that I had. Then she nodded and began untying the set of ropes at the stern of the boat while I went to the bow and did the same. The toxic smoke stank and stung. We worked as fast as we could but the soaked, cold, thickly interwoven ropes were almost impossible to untie. It occurred to me that Kellan had tied them like that on purpose, to stop us making a secret getaway. As we struggled with the ropes we drifted further away from the flaming rafts, which we could now see only through the light of their own fire. I realised that the other rafts were anchored, whereas we weren’t. We would drift away and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I tried harder to undo the knots but my fingers were tired and numb and shaking with cold. I could see that Hifa was doing no better. The fire on our raft was coming closer and within minutes was going to be at our boat.

Finally, with the bitter, reeking smoke from the fire stinging our eyes and choking our lungs, I worked my rope down to its last threads and was able to tear them apart. I threw the far end of the rope away and went to Hifa and helped her do the same thing. By now we were both frantic. We were starting to feel gusts of heat from the flames and the smoke was suffocating. We picked and tore the rope and, coughing and gasping, threw it over the side. I pushed at the side of the burning, sinking raft to get it away from us. Our lifeboat swung in the current as we moved away from it. The fire and smoke had blocked our view and I now looked for the other rafts. We might have turned around as we floated free, so they could now be behind us; I scanned the sea in all directions, then turned and did it again. I grew more desperate as I realised I couldn’t see them. We had drifted too far away. Night had fallen and we were alone on the sea.

That night we did nothing except hold each other and let the boat drift. Both of us had inhaled smoke and we both had racking coughs. We were too tired and distraught even to feel frightened. The Captain and Kellan and Mara all dead, James and the girls blown to pieces, the rafts broken up and on fire, the burning hulk of what was left of the pirate ship – they cycled through my mind, one image after the other. I kept thinking about Hughes and how we had left him unconscious. I slept for a little, woke to replay the previous day, then slept again.