Divinity Road Read Online Free

ordeal. On the way, weaving between luggage and unidentifiable wreckage, he has to circumnavigate more corpses, more body parts.
    He notes that this section was part of the storage hold, and that a fair amount of the luggage seems to have come down to earth intact. He glances at the topsy-turvy pile of suitcases, backpacks and holdalls – a mountain of leather, plastic and canvas, floral, striped and tartan – and shrugs.
    He needs to rest, so heads back to the shady spot under the tree, lowers himself onto the dusty soil, drinks another bottle of water and tries to formulate some coherent thoughts. Without him noticing, the pain in his head has altered from a pounding rhythm to a needling drill.
    What next?
    Some fucking paracetamol wouldn’t go amiss.
    Focus on the bigger picture.
    My head hurts.
    My heart bleeds. Take a look around you, you ponce.
    And all at once it hits him that the scattered bodies parts about him recently belonged to living creatures, that the bodies had names and identities and, with a flush of guilty shame, that some of those bodies may still be alive, that he has been so wrapped up in slaking his thirst that he hasn’t even bothered to go round and check them for signs of life.
    After all, you survived. Why couldn’t one of them have too?
    He hauls himself to his feet, makes his way unsteadily to the nearest corpse, changes his mind, decides to make a systematic sweep starting to his far left, make sure he misses no one, gives everybody a fair chance. It’s like a pact between the living and the dead. Only they’re not dead yet, he reflects. They remain in some floating limbo, waiting to have their status confirmed.
    His legs are stiff and bruised, scratched in a hundred places, his ribs raw and angry. As he stumbles towards the furthest corpse, he becomes aware that the stink of decay in the air is growing more pronounced.
    The first body is that of a young woman, perhaps twenty-five, an African with espresso skin and horsey features. Her lips are drawn back, her teeth exposed in a grimace, her eyes wide open but empty. He reaches down, touches her face and closes her eyes. There’s an airline blanket lying next to her which he picks up and places gently over her head.
    He can remember the next two bodies. The first, an elderly white, an outdoor man to judge from his ruddy features, has clearly broken his neck. The second, the mixed race air hostess, has had her skirt and blouse ripped from her in the crash, is dressed only in panties and bra, looks as if she is sleeping. It is only when he lifts her head that he sees that the back of her skull is missing, that grey, oozing brain matter is exposed. He lays her back on the ground and fetches a blanket to cover her face, another for her bare body.
    After that his sweep of bodies becomes a blur, this one missing a leg, that one’s features unrecognisable, the next almost decapitated. For each casualty, he makes sure the body is covered up, its eyes closed, its modesty preserved.
    An hour later, sweating, nauseous, shaking from his exertions, he returns to the shade.
    He is the only survivor.
    On his travels, he has picked up another bottle of water and he sips from this as he recovers from his ordeal. The heat is stifling, the stench worsening. He takes off the floppy hat he’s been wearing and douses his hair with water. It provides a few moments of relief.
    So what’s the plot? When do the cavalry arrive?
    Depends where we are. Depends whether they know.
    ‘Course they know. Black boxes, flight transmitters, all that stuff.
    Yeah, well, maybe. Might not be so easy to get here. It’s not exactly Henley-on-Thames, is it?
    So where are we then, smartarse?
    Dunno. Think about how long we were in the air. Think about the flight path.
    He closes his eyes, tries to visualise a map of Africa, to trace a line from South Africa northwards, to calculate time in the air and translate that figure into distances.
    Congo. Or maybe the bottom half of