Death of East

by Michael John Grist

"Then leave," replied Maokai flatly. "You said the village is dead anyway. Go ride your bus."

  The man ambled away. A few others gathered in his place, faces he'd last seen happy and bright at the launch of the spa. They were thinner and sadder now. They did not come to welcome him, only silently watched him work.

  A while later the old man returned, pushing a rusty wheelbarrow filled with tools. In front of Maokai he held up an old buzz-saw, then displayed it for the distant camera.

  Maokai recognized it. It had been his father's.

  "Salvaged from the spa, before they put up that god-ugly egg," said the old man. "Thought you might find a use for it."

  He held it out, and Maokai took it. In his hands it seemed something from another life, used last when he was carving limestone for the baths.

  "Plug it in over there," said the old man, nodding at the security booth. "He won't mind."

  Maokai looked around, at the worried faces all around. This was what he'd imagined, only now it was really happening. On video, he was risking them all.

  "You should go," he said to the gathered villagers. "He's right, I am mad. You should all go."

  The old man chuckled, spat seeds. "It's the mad ones I like." From the barrow he pulled a butane torch, with tube and tank. He held up the nozzle, sparked the trigger, and the cutting jet hissed out blue. "We'll make short work of it together."

  He walked to the tank and held the torch to one of its support struts, shooting sparks. Maokai watched for a moment, then plugged in the buzz-saw, set it roaring to life. In moments it cut the pipe clean in two. Water surged down the hill-road like the Yellow River itself.

  * * *

  The sun climbed in the sky, and one by one other villagers took tools from the barrow. Some of them stopped by Maokai, to shake his hand, tell him his father would be proud. Others walked over to the blog-reporter with the camera, asked him their questions and answered his.

  And together they worked. Through the morning they drilled into the egg's concrete foundations, cutting and peeling back its skin inch by inch. At lunch-time old ladies served preserved eggs on rice. They invited the blog-reporter to join them. He came nervously. They even fed the security guard, though he ranted between mouthfuls.

  When the alert call came through on the booth's phone, they turned it off. By now the supply of water in the city would have showed the loss. The pipes were empty. They knew, and would be coming.

  By mid-afternoon they had carved out half of the water tank's wall. They laughed and joked with each other. Old men took bets on whose neck would be the last to crack when they were hung, and the blog-reporter filmed it all, moving amongst them.

  As evening fell they tied ropes to the last sheets of metal hanging from the tank's concrete pilings, cinched them to an old tractor, and tore them off the spa.

  The mud underneath stank and bubbled with yellow scum. Maokai waded into it, amongst the jagged pilings that were too deeply anchored to uproot. They rose around him like the ribs of a butchered animal.

  "Qor!" he called.

  She wasn't there. He stood thigh-deep in the mud, until wrinkled arms led him away.

  "Come on," said old faces, people he'd known since he was a child. "Come with us, now."

  They lit a fire in the street, and the last members of the village joined together around it. Bottles of rice wine were passed around, and somebody brought out an old fiddle, the others sang along to old folk songs. Together they would hang, and it had been coming so long that they were not afraid. Maokai wondered that this was the true spa launch, the only one that mattered.

  * * *

  The Party came in the morning.

  Maokai woke round the embers of a fire, surrounded by familiar faces. They pointed towards the city, where four bitter-green troop carriers and a loudspeaker van were winding down the valley road in a dusty convoy. Maokai wondered if these were the same men who had come for his father.

  The blog-reporter was already filming from his rooftop. Maokai waved, he waved back.

  With the villagers, he walked to the old spa grounds. The stench was gone now. The yellow scum had dissipated overnight, leaving only healthy peat-brown mud.

  Maokai voiced a silent prayer, to Qor, to the beautiful god who had kissed him by the sauna. Then he turned to the coming soldiers, and linked arms with his neighbors, a human chain about a patch of mud.

  The convoy stopped at the bottom of the hill and black-clad soldiers disgorged into the village, advancing up through the alleyways like a dark tide, rifles raised.

  "I'm here, Qor," Maokai whispered, not caring that it made him the fool his brother had always called him.

  The loudspeaker van rolled in front of the troops, halfway up the hill. The hatch cover opened, and a head and shoulders rose through the rood, holding a radio transceiver to its mouth. Shun Foy.

  "Disperse to your homes," came his amplified voice, echoing about the village. "Disperse or be dispersed."

  The old man plucked a plastic loudspeaker cone from his cart, climbed painstakingly atop the heap of twisted water tank rubble, and put it to his lips.

  "I know you, little Shun Foy," he called. "You were a little bully then, and you're a little bully now. Go back to your city, before I bend you over my knee and spank you raw, like your father used to. This is not your home anymore, and we're not afraid."

  Shun Foy gave a signal. There was a loud crack, and the old man pitched to the ground, half his head torn away.

  Maokai watched him fall through a kind of haze. Dead, so quickly. Blood sank into the tufted grass. The villagers cried out in horror.

  "Disperse or you will be dispersed," Shun Foy continued blankly, as though a man had not just died.

  Maokai stepped forward. He took up the loudspeaker from the old man's hand and held it to his lips. It didn't matter that he might die at any moment. For the last four years he had stood at the edge of the mudcrete roof, waiting to jump, and now he finally had.

  "Stop, Shun," he shouted. "This is wrong."

  There was a pause as Shun Foy squinted over his transceiver.

  "Maokai?"

  "It's me."

  Another pause. "I should have let them take your leg."

  "I'd still be here," said Maokai. "You'll have to kill me."

  "Then I'll kill you," came Shun Foy's voice, impassive. He gave another signal, and the van rumbled forwards.

  Maokai watched as the soldiers crested the hill, their faces hidden behind dark mirrored visors. Ten yards away they came to a halt. None of the villagers budged.

  "This is your last warning," said Shun Foy, "go back to your homes."

  "This is our home," Maokai answered. "Where's yours?"

  Shun Foy sighed into his loudspeaker. "Aim."

  The soldiers raised their rifles to their shoulders, fingers clamped on triggers.

  "Father died because of you," Maokai shouted into their barrels. "Because you abandoned us."

  Shun Foy laughed. "He died because he was weak, Maokai. Like you. Fire."

  At that, the world changed.

  The earth before Maokai burst open and a torrential rush of black mud surged upwards, wide and fast as the flow of the Yellow River. It swallowed Shun Foy's black-clad men like toy soldiers in the wind, belching them up into the sky, battering the rifles from their hands.

  Maokai staggered backwards as the ground rocked under the eruption. The force of it was overwhelming, thunderous, impossible. The day faded to twilight grey as mud painted the sky, blocking out the sun.

  This was what he'd hoped for, what he'd dreamed of for all those years, and finally it was real.

  "Qor!" he shouted into the crashing geyser of black and sound. He spun disoriented, then started staggering back towards the spa as the onslaught intensified behind him. The first thick clods of mud falling from the eruption smacked off his back, drenching him, filling up the air like a solid rain. Maokai lunged through it towards the line of villagers, calling Qor's name.

  Th
en a gunshot rang out, muffled through the fall of mud. Maokai's left shoulder jerked forwards, spilling him to his knees. He turned and glimpsed Shun Foy through a gap in the downpour, breaking from the shelter of his van and running through the storm, a pistol in his hand.

  The geyser pulled away from Shun Foy, drawing back into a densely packed column. Maokai tracked it upwards, and saw the flow of mud twisting into a massive shape. It was an arm, with a clenched fist at the top, churning black and dense.

  "Qor," he breathed.

  Then Shun Foy was before him, dark eyes blazing like holes in a black mask of mud. He raised the pistol to Maokai's face.

  "Brother," said Maokai.

  Then the fist of mud fell, smashing into Shun Foy like a hammer-blow, burying him beneath a landslide of mud, grinding him into the earth. The impact shook the earth and hurled Maokai backwards, carrying him on a tidal flood of mud back to the line of villagers, who caught him and lifted him to his feet.

  The storm was over. His ears were ringing, his shoulder throbbed, but no more mud surged into the sky. Maokai rubbed wet grit from his eyes, and looked out at a scene of devastation, as the great mud arm washed down the hill-road, melting into the earth, carrying the odd rifle and helmet with it, down towards the battered carapace of the loudspeaker van. He scanned the village, as the last black clods slapped to earth.

  There was no sign of Shun Foy. A few of his soldiers were fleeing through the paddies in the distance, their troop-vehicles forgotten.

  Maokai turned to the villagers holding him. They were staring back at him wide-eyed, some with tears in their eyes. His shoulder ached, and he saw blood mingling with mud down his side.

  "We did it," he said.

  Someone squeezed his hand. Someone else clapped him on the shoulder. Then the cheering began.

  His neighbors spread out into the muddy street, gathering up rifles and helmets, holding them aloft for the camera to see. They thumped Maokai on the back, and embraced him, and cheered for the old gods, and the mud girl, and the water.

  Maokai did not join them. He had eyes for only one thing, lying at the heart of the spa, surrounded by the ribs of broken metal pilings. Qor.

  He stepped out into the spa's settling mud, his left arm swinging uselessly beside him. Qor was there, lying atop the mud's surface, pale white and trembling, barely breathing, already sinking.

  He raced to her side, wading through the mud. Her cheeks were sunken and hollow, her hair ragged and clumped, her green eyes faded and grey.

  "Qor," he said, taking her hand, but she didn't respond. He jerked his mud-splattered jacket from his back and wrapped it about her, but she didn't notice. As her breathing grew halting, he tried to tug her from the mud, but its grip was too firm.

  "Don't leave," he urged, holding her head just above the sucking mud. "Please."

  At that, her grey-green eyes focused on him. "Maokai," she said, her voice barely a whisper. The mud was almost up to her lips, but her green eyes were on his, some kind of joy alight inside. "Come with me, Maokai."

  "I will," he said, as tears raced down his cheeks. "I will."

  "I should have done it before," she whispered, as the mud slid up over her cheeks. "For your father."

  Then her eyes closed, her breathing stopped, and a moment later, she was gone.

  * * *

  Time passed.

  Maokai weaved in place, looking out over the village. Before him spread the mud-blasted hill-road, drying in the sun.

  "We have to go, Maokai."

  Hands were at his sides. The blog-reporter. Maokai turned, looked up at him. His face was flecked with mud, but his eyes danced with excitement, then dismay when he saw Maokai's shoulder. "You've been shot!"

  "She's gone," Maokai murmured.

  "We have to go too," urged the young man. "Get up, come on! They'll send more troops, and I don't think there'll be a geyser like that again."

  Maokai looked at him numbly. "Is that all you saw? A geyser?"

  "I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it," the young man gabbled, barely listening. "It'll tear the Party in two, trying to explain it. Come on."

  Maokai looked past him, down through the village and across to where the city still hung like dirty grey teeth amongst the karsts, waiting to bite down. He saw the dust trail of another convoy, coming already, racing down the valley roads. He hoped all the villagers would escape.

  "Come on, they'll kill you for sure," urged the young man.

  Maokai smiled. "I'm not afraid."

  The young man started to argue, but something in Maokai's face made him stop. "You're really not, are you? Gods, I should've filmed this too. I swear, I'll let them know. I'll tell the whole world how you died."

  Maokai nodded, as the young man sped away through the mud.

  * * *

  Calm filled him. He was alone.

  Slowly, the second convoy blared closer. Loudspeakers rang out, ordering him to raise his hands, lie down on the ground. He lifted himself from the mud. The few water-tank pilings still towered above him like giant ribs, and slowly, his left hand trailing by his side, he began to climb.

  Warning shots rang out, but he ignored them. Party-men and soldiers gathered at the outskirts of the old spa, arguing about whether there were landmines buried in the mud. From the piling-top, they all seemed very small, almost as if they weren't even real.

  Down below was the dark mud patch where Qor had sunk. Come with me, she'd said. He thought of his father, of his dream and all the good things he'd done for the village. He thought of Qor, of her blazing green eyes and her loam-smell of the river. Somewhere beyond, she was waiting.

  He released his hold of the piling and let himself fall, head first, down to the mud.

  5. FLATLAND

  At the center of Flatland there was a skyscraper thirty stories high, and on every floor were offices, filled with workers who spent their days typing at their ledgers, recording all the business of Flatland that they could see out of their windows.

  After their work was finished every day, they left the skyscraper and went to their homes. They lived in houses and farms spread around the skyscraper, the only one in Flatland.

  Flatland was not very big, perhaps as large as six football fields.

  A man named Fotheringay was the CEO of the skyscraper, and he lived on the thirtieth floor. He alone remained in the skyscraper when the workers went home, walking in and out of the offices and checking the ledgers, adding a note here, revising there.

  There was very little business in Flatland. There were only a few hundred people, so what goods they had they bartered for. But the skyscraper was there, and so were the ledgers, so Fotheringay brought the workers in and they filled the ledgers with what business there was. Some of them watched the farmers at work and wrote about their tilling, the clothes they wore, the crops they had planted, and which were sprouting tubers.

  Others watched the school, where the young people were at study, and made notes of the things the teachers wrote on the blackboards, and about which children giggled, and which passed notes, and which made paper airplanes from their textbooks' pages.

  Of course, they all used telescopes.

  Fotheringay was a thick-set man in his 50s. He wore a monacle and carried a cane. He dressed in black suits with white shirts and black cravats. He never smiled, to keep the workers in line. He often began sentences with the phrases, "In life as in business," and, "In business as in life."

  He made the rules for the skyscraper, and he made the rules for the town. A set of his rules was written on signs on every floor, and stamped on the side of every telescope, and on the side of every typewriter.

  All the rules were about the edge of Flatland.

  1. Do not look at the edge.

  2. Do not look near the edge.

  3. Do not look at things that are near to the edge.

  4. Do not look at people that are near things that are close to the edge.

  To match this rule, all of th
e telescopes were mounted with chains so that they could not be raised to a high enough angle to even see the edge. So of course, nobody looked, and of course nobody ever went near the edge. They knew they needed Fotheringay, even if he didn't pay them much, and even if his ledger books held no real meaning. They needed him, at least, until the children started disappearing.

  * * *

  It began with Johnny Applecart, son of the town butcher. He had been out with friends playing manhunt in the tiny fields and forests at the edge of the town, and somehow fallen off the edge.

  As soon as he heard Fotheringay immediately locked the doors of the skyscraper, keeping almost all of the inhabitants of Flatland inside. He then got into his chauffeur-driven limousine, and ordered the driver with unusual alacrity to make for the edge.

  The town police officer Barnaby Roy was already there, as were the butchers, Mr. Applecart and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Mills, and the crazy couple with eleven children who worked in the windmill, and Sgt. Trunk the general of the army barracks, and Vicar Heath who presided over the church, and Old Man Charlie who lived in a shack down by the lake.

  They all stood at the top of the edge of the embankment behind a rope-line Barnaby Roy had set up. It read:

  POLICE LINE - DO NOT CROSS

  They all stood and they stared out to the edge.

  None of them dared go too close. None of them dared to look over. Instead they looked at each other, and they looked out into space, and Johnny's mother began to weep.

  "We must build a wall," Fotheringay declared. "Four fathoms high and all the way around, so that this might never happen again."

  "What about rescue?" asked Sgt. Trunk, his bushy moustache standing to attention over his top lip as he spoke with military precision.

  Fotheringay cast a steely eye upon him.

  "We'll tie ropes around the top of the skyscraper," said crazy Mr. Mills, "and we'll go spelunking off the edge to rescue little Johnny."

  "Spelunking!" cried Old Man Charlie, "are you mad? We ought to freeze the river somehow, and use its frozen waterfall to climb down and off the edge, and see if we can find poor Johnny that way"

  "Freeze the river?" guffawed the vicar. "Not without an act of God. We should all retire to the church, and ring the church bells, and pray for a sign."