While Goyo was down in the cave, Lanna died. There was no noticeable moment between her last breath and silence. She simply faded away, going from something to nothing. When Wren announced her death, Dean sighed and Emma leaned on the Stallion. It was as if they’d been waiting for this ever since she had emerged from the cave.
Her death made every moment Goyo was away from them seem to stretch out into an endless held breath.
“He’s been gone a long time,” Alile said.
Bethan glanced at her watch. She’d done so twenty times in the past half an hour. Alile had moved the Discovery closer to the cave, and they stood beside it, taking advantage of the sun. Even with the rise in temperatures, this far north the air was still cold, the breeze adding to the chill. Their thermal jackets kept them warm, but the sun on their exposed skin felt good.
“Almost an hour,” she said. “He’ll be careful. He knows what he’s doing.”
“But do they?”
Dean and his companions had carried Lanna’s body into the shade cast by their huge Stallion and covered her with a blanket. Dean had looked their way a couple of times, but Bethan and Alile kept their distance.
She looked at her watch again. The world continued to hold its breath. Bethan was eager for it to breathe again. A calm exhalation, she hoped. Not a grunt of anger or pain.
Twice the woman who appeared to lead their group—Bethan had heard them call her Emma—had approached the cave, then turned and come back again, looking as if part of her wanted to follow Goyo down, but most of her couldn’t face it. Initially Bethan had feared Emma would go after Goyo, and if that happened she wasn’t sure what she’d have to do. Try to stop her? Hold her back? She wasn’t a fighter, and the woman looked like she could handle herself.
She resented that Goyo had decided to go off on his own. There was no overt hierarchy in their group, but Goyo was the oldest, the wisest, and both she and Alile looked up to him because of everything he’d seen and done. Bethan was too headstrong to feel a real sense of abandonment, but she hated that he had decided to act without discussing the situation with her and Alile. She’d always known that he was along for the ride, but she also knew that they were stronger together. She’d believed that he had known that, too. They had come here together, and they should have remained so.
“She was a good person,” Dean said from where he knelt beside his dead companion. “Sent money home to her parents.”
“I’m really sorry,” Bethan called to Dean. He watched her for a beat, then turned back to Lanna. Something about Dean’s attitude to the dead woman told her that they’d been more than partners on this expedition. She wasn’t sure what she saw—his look, his mannerisms—or whether it was some deep, subconscious hangover from their damaged friendship, a misplaced jealousy about who he might be with. She hadn’t thought she could care anymore, but she would never pretend that her relationship with Dean wasn’t complex.
“What if he finds what he’s looking for down there?” Alile asked, and it was everything that Bethan had been asking herself.
“Quarantine,” Bethan said. “I guess.”
“For us?”
“Probably. Maybe the whole fucking island.”
“But her head’s all bashed up,” Alile said, nodding towards the others. “Skull fracture. Bleed on the brain, that’s all. Seen it before.”
“She still made it out of the cave, seemed to know what was going on.”
“You saw what she was like,” Alile said. “The sudden bleed from her ear, and the way her neck twisted. Head injuries can mess you up.” She exhaled and grabbed Bethan’s arm. “Come on, we should keep busy. Leave them to their grief.” She pushed off from where she’d been leaning against the Discovery, heading for the trunk.
“I still worry. He looked really determined.”
“He’s confused, Bethan. Don’t you think? If he wasn’t he’d have taken me with him. Cave paintings, old bodies, I’d have more idea about them than him.”
“Because you did an anthropology degree a decade ago?”
Alile shrugged. “I read. Keep up with things. Got a good memory. Want something to eat?”
“Really?” Bethan asked. “No, not hungry, not right now. I’m going to check on them.” As she started towards the other group, crossing wet ground churned into mud by their vehicles, Alile said something she didn’t hear. She was probably trying to stop her. Bethan wasn’t sure why she’d decided that now was the time to go and see what was happening with the others.
Maybe because the land’s held breath was becoming uncomfortable.
She heard Alile jogging to catch up with her, and they reached Dean and his group together.
“We’re really so sorry,” Bethan said.
“Yeah, right,” Emma said. “One less bad guy for you to worry about, right?” She looked sad, but her eyes kept flickering back towards the cave.
“It’s not like that at all.”
Emma snorted but said nothing more. Bethan caught Dean’s eye but he looked away again, down at the body covered with a blanket. The big man, Wren, sat with the dead woman’s head in his lap, as if he didn’t want to let her touch the cold damp ground.
“So did you find much of what you were after in there?” Alile asked.
“Yeah. Left it all down there, though.”
“When you ran away from the bodies,” Bethan said.
“We didn’t run away.”
Dean stood and stretched, close to Bethan. He didn’t correct Emma, but the strained silence that hung after her statement spoke volumes.
“How long to get down to the chamber you found and back out?” Alile asked.
“If he went that far, he should be out again soon,” Wren said.
Bethan looked down at the dead woman again. One hand was exposed from beneath the blanket, and one booted foot, and a curl of her hair flickered in the breeze. Bethan imagined contagion with every inhalation. If there was something down there, they had all been exposed. Goyo knew what he was looking for, and his actions and the expression on his face as he’d descended into the mouth of the cave indicated that he had found at least part of it.
Bethan shivered, not only from the cold. She remembered a dozen conversations in hotel rooms, on flights, and around campfires where Goyo had talked about the fears that kept him moving from place to place. It wasn’t only losing his home at a young age that had turned him into a wanderer. It was the things he had seen. He’d told her about a place in Brazil where six prospectors had emerged from a never-before-explored remote ravine, pleading for help from the locals. Two of them had been suffering an illness that caused them to swell until their skin split and burst, and the others had all been showing early signs as well, limbs expanding and hot. The locals had killed them, burned their bodies, and buried their remains beneath piles of rocks. That place had been pronounced out of bounds, and three villages and all their inhabitants put into quarantine for six weeks. No one outside knew. Nothing had spread, not even news of what had happened. Goyo had dug deep to find out about it.
The world has to be lucky every time, Goyo had said when he’d told her this story, sitting beside a campfire in the north of Greenland, and any of these new nasty diseases only has to be lucky once.
Goyo was far from a lone crusader. Governments, health organisations, corporate entities, other groups like theirs: many people knew the potential risks of runaway climate change and permafrost melt exposing something terrible. That was why Goyo was part of their small group. His fear was that illegal activities would circumvent caution. Many people knew of the dangers, but not everyone cared.
“Maybe we should wrap her a bit better,” Bethan said.
“You’re not getting anywhere near her,” Dean said.
“Okay then, not me, but you guys. You know, just make sure she’s—”
“She’s only just fucking died!” Dean said, glaring at Bethan. “She’s not even getting cold yet! She’s our friend, so kindly get lost and let us…” He trailed off a little, his voice lowering, shoulders sagging. “Just let us have a moment, yeah?”
“So how did you find us?” Emma asked. As if that mattered now.
“Frank,” Bethan said. “Old guy back at—”
“I know who he is. None of us told him where we were going.”
“You asked him some advice about the island though, right? His family’s lived here for countless generations. He knows every hill and hole in this place. Even those just being revealed. He pointed us to these caves as the most likely place you’d be.”
Emma didn’t seem convinced, but she looked down at Lanna’s covered corpse and said no more.
“Goyo’s back,” Alile said, her voice still calm and level. Bethan wished she had her friend’s laid-back attitude.
Alile pointed past the front of the Stallion towards the cave. The rope snaking down into the cave mouth was taut, shivering, and moments later Goyo appeared framed in the opening. He squinted against the sun, hand raised to shield his eyes, and Bethan saw him taking in the situation.
She nodded to him, and he nodded back. But his gaze settled on Dean and his group.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Goyo said.
“So did you see them?” Emma asked. “The paintings and those bodies?”
“I did.” Goyo’s voice was low as usual, but Bethan detected an edge. At the same time she noticed that his backpack was missing. She glanced at Alile, saw that she had noticed too.
“And?”
“Like you said, just a few old mummified bodies,” he said. He strolled towards them, casual and calm. “Interesting cave paintings. I took some photos. I know some people who’d love to get in there to see them.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not gonna—” Emma began, and Goyo pulled Emma’s gun and pointed it at the group.
“Goyo,” Bethan said, but she saw his face, and knew that no one could do or say anything to change whatever course he was set on.
Dean and Emma stood facing Goyo. Wren remained seated, Lanna’s head still nursed in his lap.
“She’s definitely dead?” Goyo asked.
“About half an hour ago,” Wren said. “Why are you aiming that gun at us?”
“You need to get away from her,” Goyo said. “She’s dangerous.”
“Humour me,” Goyo said.
“Goyo, what did you find down there?” Bethan asked.
“You’re insane,” Dean said. “She’s dead and gone, and you’re—”
“So you won’t mind if I pop a couple of bullets into her head, just to make sure.”
“Goyo—” Bethan began.
Emma took a few steps towards him.
Goyo looked past her, gun still aimed, his face very calm and set, and Bethan thought, He knows exactly what he’s doing, like he’s waiting for—
“What the hell?” Wren shouted. The blanket was moving. Wren shuffled back, dragging the blanket away from the woman as he went, and they all saw what was happening to her head.
A gunshot blasted the world apart, and the land let out its held breath with a scream.
* * *
The bullet struck the prone woman in the upper leg and she jerked, both arms twitching. It might have been the force of the shot causing that movement. Might have been. Goyo did not let that distract him. He fired two more bullets into her chest. It was the first time he had ever shot anyone. He felt calm, almost serene, but he knew that was the distance of delayed shock, holding his self away from his actions, his body and soul. He hoped he could fend it off a little while longer. There was more he had to do.
“What the fuck, Goyo?” Alile shouted.
Bethan stood beside her, staring at him but silent. She knows what the fuck, Goyo thought. She’s always known.
“Move away,” Goyo said to the dead woman’s friends. Her head was deformed, the skin around the injury on her scalp stretched and pulled taut, as if something inside was trying to get out.
Oh no no no, Goyo thought, and as he aimed at her head, her eyes—half-open, rested and at peace—rolled to look at him. He could see that they were both flushed red with blood.
Goyo blinked, trying to shake the impression that she was staring right at him with her ruined eyes. He fired once more, a bullet in the temple. Her head jerked, then slumped to the side. Still. Silent. She faced him, one eyelid closed in a lazy wink. Her blood-filled eyes were too wet and shiny, as if made from glass.
“Oh, Goyo!” Bethan said, her voice high with shock and fear.
Emma came at him, fast and silent, and he turned the gun her way. He didn’t know if he could shoot her, but he was also determined to finish what he’d started. He was glad when she skidded to a halt, hands up, fury nestled in her eyes.
The big man reached for the side pocket of his cargo pants. Goyo twitched his aim a few degrees towards him and shook his head. He glanced at Dean. Maybe they’re all armed, he thought. And isn’t shooting them all for the best? It was an errant thought, given life by a part of him he was still holding in check. He tried to shove it to one side.
“Don’t, Wren,” Dean said.
“She was already dead,” Goyo said. No one answered. Their shock at what he’d done begged only silence. “You know that. Right?”
“Maybe she just seemed dead!” Dean said.
Wren said nothing. He looked down at Lanna’s corpse then back at Goyo, and Goyo could not read him.
“Everyone stay away from me,” Goyo said. The distance was fading from around him, the buffer of shock at what he had done flittering away, and he felt a quiver starting deep in his chest. When he was younger he’d used to meditate, imagining a deep well of light, wellbeing, peace, expanding from his chest to fill the world. He could not find that light now. Now, there was only darkness and dread.
“What did you find down there?” Bethan asked again.
“Stay away.” He looked down at the dead woman, at Dean and the big man standing beside her, and blinked. I’m sure, he thought. I’m as sure as…
Everything he’d seen down there made him sure, but not certain. He could not afford the time certainty would take. Maybe I’ve been dwelling on this too much, for too long. Maybe it’s stirred my senses, made me see and smell things that aren’t really there.
It was too late now. Whether she’d been dead or not when he opened fire, her brains were on the ground. Her blood was spattered across the short scrubby grass and the churned soil, and whether that blood and brains were infected with a deadly contagion or not—
I’m sure but not certain—
—he had to continue with what he had begun. He could not stop, because if he was right he still had more to do, and if he was wrong then they would see him as a cold-blooded murderer. His life had moved on. He had to flow with it.
The ground pounded with a single hard thud. A few seconds later a rumble growled beneath and around them, and Goyo’s vision blurred for a second or two. The air seemed to shimmer, as if a heat haze had settled over this cool, bright place. A cloud of dust and grit spewed from the cave mouth. He had no idea whether the charges he’d placed had blocked the route down to that cavern. He was no explosives expert, but he’d done his best.
He nodded at Alile. “Keys,” he said. She hesitated for only a beat before lobbing him the Discovery’s key fob. He edged sideways past the Stallion and towards the Discovery. He kept his eye on them, gun aimed at the ground before him.
He aimed at the Stallion’s big front wheel and pulled the trigger. The bullet thwacked! from the thick rubber wall and whined off into the distance without even marking it. He didn’t waste another. He knew what he had to do. To be sure, he thought. To be certain.
“You’re fucking insane,” Dean said.
“I hope he is,” Bethan said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Bethan looked down at the body, the brains and blood, and Goyo knew she was remembering all those conversations they’d had about what really scared him.
“I mean if he’s not insane, then we’re all in a load of trouble.”
Dean reached for the dead woman, not quite touching. He held his hands above her, moving them back and forth as if there were some invisible field preventing him from going any closer.
“You should all keep away from her,” Goyo said.
“Or what, you’ll shoot us too?” Wren asked. His voice was calm, level, and Goyo thought, He knows… he knows she was dead before she started moving. He climbed into the Discovery’s cab and kept the gun in his hand as he pressed the ignition button. He looked out the side window at Bethan and Alile and hated the shock on their faces. They were watching him like he was a stranger. The others were strangers, and they saw only a madman.
“I hope I am insane,” he muttered, but he knew that was not the case. Deep history had come back to bite, and he only hoped he was acting fast enough to ensure it remained history.
He stomped on the accelerator and the automatic gearbox jumped and rattled, the car threatening to stall. He steered in a wide circle, away from the group of friends and strangers huddled around the dead woman, avoiding rocks as he picked up speed. He turned back the way they had come, following their recent tracks compressed into tough grass and soft soil, and he looked in the rearview mirror, watching them watching him go.
Maybe they thought he intended to keep going.
When he reached a relatively flat piece of land he steered right, trying to maintain speed while avoiding any wrinkles in the ground that might damage the vehicle. Bouncing in his seat, the Discovery creaking and groaning around him, Goyo swung around until he was following his own tracks back towards the cave, the people and the Stallion. He pressed down on the gas.
Dean and his group started dragging the dead woman aside, but Bethan and Alile watched as Goyo roared towards them. They knew his intention was not to run them down. Maybe I should, Goyo thought, and for a few seconds he had the chance to twitch the steering wheel to the right and mow down both friends and strangers. But the idea was never real. He could not shoot living flesh, he could not mow down these people, even with everything he thought he knew.
Instead, it was the Stallion that grew in his view. He steered with one hand and reached for the seatbelt with his other, flailing for it but keeping his aim true. He might have no second chance at this. He grasped the belt, felt down until he found the buckle, pushed his arm through and pulled it across his chest, and clipped it home just a few seconds before the speeding Discovery slammed into the Stallion’s side.
Glass smashed, metal crashed and crunched, and as Goyo was flung forward in his seat he was struck in the face, a loud, ear-splitting hiss smothering all other sounds of destruction.
The Discovery’s engine roared, emitting a high whine. Goyo’s body felt as if it had been bent over backwards, muscles spasming. His eyes watered and blood flowed from his injured nose. He tried to move but could not. He was pressed back in his seat, and he feared he was broken and shattered, bleeding out in the ruins of the Discovery, and he could only hope that he had succeeded in crippling the Stallion too. Then he heard a low, gentle whisper of escaping air, and the pressure on his face and shoulders lessened as the emergency airbag began to deflate. He blinked his eyes clear and saw blood spattered across the shrinking bag.
The Discovery’s engine was still grumbling high and loud. Goyo reached for the gears and slipped it into reverse, pressing on the gas as the bag finally slumped enough to give him a view of what he had done. The windscreen was smashed into a haze of cracks and swathes of it were missing, enabling him to see past the vehicle’s crumpled bonnet to the Stallion. The bigger vehicle was dented and scratched around its front end, and its wheel was gashed and deflated. But Goyo thought it could probably still move.
He coughed and blood hazed the air before him. Something stabbed into the right side of his chest, and he guessed he’d bruised or cracked a couple of ribs. He looked through the passenger side window, still somehow whole, and Bethan was approaching. She held something in her hand that might have been a gun. Behind her, Wren knelt on one knee, one hand to his face. Well done Bethan, taking that from him, he thought, and he shook his head at her. But I’m not done yet.
Goyo stopped the reversing Discovery thirty yards from the Stallion and slipped it into drive again, slamming his foot on the accelerator.
The second impact was not as powerful but its results were more violent. With the protective air bag now deployed and deflated, Goyo flipped forward and smashed his already bleeding nose against the steering wheel. He cried out loud, the pain centred in his face spreading with the splash of his blood. The engine grumbled but continued, and the stench of spilled diesel filled the cab, cloying and sweet. The dashboard was cracked in several places, the door pillars deformed. Steam erupted in a hiss, dispersing to the air outside the crunched vehicle and fading away.
Goyo wiped his eyes, groaning at the pain from his ribs and bloodied nose. Most of the shattered windscreen had now fallen away, and through his blood and pain he could see the front of the Discovery buried in the Stallion’s wing. The larger vehicle’s wheel was fully deflated and torn, and the passenger door had caved in.
Not expecting anything to happen, Goyo moved into reverse and eased on the gas, and the Discovery rolled back, engine rattling and screaming but still somehow under his control. Back at Joyce Sound he hadn’t wanted to sound like an old man by saying they didn’t make things as good as they used to, but he thought that now. He even managed a smile as he let the Discovery roll to a stop and dropped it into drive one more time.
“Goyo!” Bethan shouted. “There’s—”
Goyo pushed his foot on the accelerator and aimed the vehicle’s smashed nose towards the damaged Stallion’s front end. The stench of diesel was stronger, and just as they met for the third time he smelled burning.
The collision was not so great, but Goyo was thrown into the steering wheel, his injured ribs screaming, eyes watering, and through the crunched merging of already broken metal he heard the soft, unmistakeable whooph! of igniting fuel.
He unclasped his seatbelt and reached for the door handle. It came off in his hand, the door remaining closed. He clicked off the central locking, but there were no lights on the dashboard now, no sign that any of the Discovery’s electrics were still working. Smoke rose from the wrecked engine, seeping from around the crumpled and cracked bonnet and pouring into the cab through the shattered windscreen.
Goyo tried to move but his left foot was trapped, held fast by a fist formed from the Discovery’s broken body.
“Goyo!” someone shouted, and he wasn’t sure if it was Bethan or Alile, or both of them. He shouldered the door but it didn’t budge. Even unlocked, it would have been wedged in its deformed opening.
“See it through,” Goyo said, not sure who he was talking to. “See it through.”
He felt heat. The flicker of flames caught his eye and he leaned forward, looking out through the smashed windscreen and down into the engine compartment through the crumpled bonnet. The fire spread. He felt heat touch his feet, his legs. He tugged again, but his foot was held fast.
Goyo had been close to death before, but never as close as this. A form of low panic began to take hold. He looked at the Stallion, tried to assess the damage, hoped that it was as crippled and finished as the Discovery was.
As he was.
“See it through!” he shouted this time, looking through the smashed passenger window and catching Bethan’s eye. She was close, but smoke started to billow, carrying the bitter scent of melting plastic, burning fuel, and the promise of death.
Goyo looked for the gun and saw it spilled into the passenger footwell. He reached for it, but flames gushed through from the engine, catching onto the carpet and singeing hairs all along his hand and arm. He flinched back, and as he did so he felt some give around his ankle. He rocked left and right, leaning hard, and then his foot popped free.
“Goyo! I’m going to—”
Something exploded, a heavy thud that gave fuel to the flames.
He felt rather than heard a solid impact against the door, and as he leaned right and left again the door opened and he fell, gasping in a breath that went from cool to hot as everything became fire.