Decay Inevitable

“Scotland way,” Flint replied, finally tracking down his elusive Trebors. He offered one to Will. “I want to get up to the Old Man of Storr, eventually. Always fancied that, though I’ve never done a stack climb before.”

“Well, we’re heading up to Warrington, if it’s convenient.”

“Nothing’s convenient, the way these roads are being systematically buggered.”

“We’ve been out of the loop,” Will said, conscious again of the state of his clothes. He wondered if he was starting to smell, but judging by the state of Flint’s Camper, he didn’t think it was something that would be noticeable here. “We’ve not heard any news.”

Flint coughed and spat out of the window. “Since the first wave of bombs, on the motorway, there’ve been daily attacks. Single explosions on A roads, B roads, bridges. Nobody has a clue why. Al-Qaeda have gone out of their way to dissociate themselves with it all.”

Off the motorways, progress was still frustratingly slow. The mountaineer had picked them up outside Nuneaton. They had followed the A5 around Birmingham to Shrewsbury, where they joined the A49 going north. Flint told them that this road, if it was safe, would take them straight into Warrington. So far, it had been ignored by the terrorists, but it was a main road that ought to be a target, if the roads that had been attacked over the past few weeks were any indication.

Flint was from a tiny village outside Wrexham. His father had died in a lead mine and he had been forced to bring up his brother and look after his mother, who had lung cancer, without any outside help. He said it had toughened him and made him feel able to deal with any situation. Climbing, Flint explained, was the only pastime that helped him feel alive, gave him back the youth that had been lost to endless days of cleaning and feeding and being the role model to his younger siblings.

“Have you ever fallen?” Will asked, feeling faintly stupid once the question was out, but enjoying the ebb and flow of the older man’s voice.

“Never,” Flint replied, sucking carefully on his mint. “I’ve seen plenty accidents, mind. I’ve seen a man fall twenty-five feet into the Bergschrund on the Hotlum/Bolam ridge, Mount Shasta, this is. California. A fourteen K peak. No injury. Not even a split lip. But I’ve seen death on the rock from the slightest fall. I was with a guy called Errol about five years ago. We were climbing some top-quality granite out at Oak Flats, in Arizona. Errol was this close to topping out when a flake came off and did for him. I was in the roof crack and was pulling slack up to clip when the rock came away in his hands. Nasty wet noise on the slab. I heard it forty feet away.

“He was lucky. There was a doctor, an orthopaedic guy climbing in the area. He heard me screaming my tits off for help and he helped stabilise Errol while someone drove to the rescue camp for help.

“Errol was out cold the entire time. He was splinted, back-boarded, insulated, intubated, the lot. They probably put a bandage on his dick so it didn’t feel left out. Helicopter short-hauled him out in a Bauman Bag. Turned him over to Eagle Air Med who flew him to Phoenix, seventy miles west of the Flats.

“He was mightily shagged, I tell you. Skull fractured like a slab of treacle toffee, left arm radial, ulnar and wrist fractures, left hip fracture and left leg tib/fib and ankle fucked to Shreddies. He was unable to speak. No shit. He was three weeks in Surgical Intensive Care. And for what? A bit of loose rock.

“The worst deaths I dealt with were never anywhere near the face. The worst deaths happen in beds, let me tell you.”

“I can’t agree with you,” Will said, his throat constricting slightly.

“Errol went in bed. This six foot fuck-off meat hill. Strong. The mountain made an old man of him. All that medical care and he goes and necks a big bottle of paracetamol, first thing he does when he gets home. No way he was able to climb again, so he checked out.”

Flint went quiet, concentrating on pushing the tired blue Campervan through the south Cheshire countryside. At Tarporley, he told them that their destination was maybe a quarter of an hour away. Then he said, matter-of-factly: “Police.”

At the moment of his saying the word, Will saw the spastic blue lights pulse and skitter around the interior of the van. Elisabeth knocked twice on the separating wall.

Will said, “Look...”

Flint was smiling. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

“What can you–”

“Well,” Flint said, “I can’t outrun them.”

“Somewhere in the back. We could hide?”

Flint laughed as he applied the brakes. “In a Camper? Piss off.”

“Then we’ve had it.”

“What did you do?” Flint said.

“They think I killed my wife.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“I believe you,” Flint said, simply. “Where is it you’re heading, exactly?”

“Sloe Heath,” Will replied, tensing in his seat as the police Rover pulled into the side of the road behind them. “The hospital there.”