“Do not speak loudly,” he whispers.
“I am scared.”
Dae Nam hugs her, and she sobs into his chest. “There, there,” he says. “It will be all fine. Somewhere there is a plan, and you should know more than anyone that your ancestors watch over everything, protecting you as best they can.”
“What will you do?” she asks.
“I will do nothing. You will help me pack my things because it’s time for me to report to the Eastern Command in Shenyang and brief them on what we learned. They have to know about this threat as soon as possible—to make sure Beijing begins conjuring a counter-demon.”
Hae Jung pulls away and her hands tremble so she pushes them into her pockets. “You said that if I try to guide the dying, it will destroy me.”
“It will devour you; there is a difference. Hopefully I will return with information that will help us deal with this, Hae Jung, but there’s something you should know.”
The bombs have stopped. Hae Jung isn’t sure if they just ceased this second or if she’s been so scared that the air raid ended long ago and she never noticed, but now that Dae Nam is silent the quiet soaks into everything.
He grabs a rucksack and tosses it onto a cot. “All of us have had to deal with something like this; it’s part of the process, because in a way learning never stops. There is always something new and dangerous, something that threatens the world in a horrifyingly different way, and for some reason it came here and into your hospital ward.”
“What are you saying?”
“This task may already be assigned to you, Hae Jung; fate sent it to your patient. Meditate. Recall everything you learned in training and then determine your actions based on what we know of the past. And don’t be stupid, because if you are meant to face this one alone it means you already have the way to destroy it.”
Hae Jung almost faints at the words. She backs toward the curtain and Dae Nam watches without speaking, filling his bag with spare uniforms and shirts. She has to get back to the ward. The implication of his words is too much and Hae Jung ignores it in favor of a false idea that she shouldn’t have left Mi Yae alone; thinking of something else, anything else, helps her avoid the crushing mental weight. She needs Mi Yae.
“You expect the impossible,” Hae Jung says.
“I’m not the one who’s asking for this, child, but those who watch over us are, and they think you can handle it or this wouldn’t have happened; the empty thing would have tracked one of us to another hospital. Fate has involved you.”
Hae Jung shakes her head and ducks through the curtain, breaking into a sprint as soon as she makes it into the corridor. Someone asks What’s wrong, Hae Jung, why are you crying, but she ignores the man and pushes past, hoping that Mi Yae is safe.
A new batch of wounded streams in just as Hae Jung arrives; she can’t find Mi Yae. She stares at the river of soldiers in brown uniforms that flows into the ward as doctors shout for orderlies to push existing cases into as tight a space as possible to make room for the new ones, some of which scream for help as their comrades drag them out of the cold. Hae Jung can’t move. A nurse in charge grabs her and pulls her toward an operating table and then forces a dirty gown on her front, tying it off in the back before she realizes that any of it happened, and then a doctor shouts that she should apply pressure to a leg wound and Wake up, Hae Jung, we need you to be on top of all this, but she can’t; the air itself smells like burning cinnamon. Hae Jung holds the leg, from which blood spurts so she knows that this one might not make it because the wound is to an artery, but she squeezes anyway and while the surgeon prepares his tools Hae Jung looks around—searching for any sign of it, anything visible on which she can focus.
At first there is nothing. A metallic smell of blood overpowers the cinnamon and Hae Jung looks down to see the surgeon at work and she now holds a handful of gauze near the wound, trying to soak up blood. There is so much. It has stopped spraying, but now it flows over her hands, making them hot, and Hae Jung feels the room start to spin until it’s there again and she senses the thing as if an electrical charge fills the air to make it sparkle and crackle around her.
“Do you see that?”
“Hold the gauze closer,” the doctor says. “See what?”
Hae Jung steps away. “The air; the colors.”
“Get back to the patient!”
Then the soldier on the table opens his eyes and mutters something to the doctor, who adjusts his lantern to get more light, his hands so fast they almost blur. She wants to tell him not to bother. The look on the dying soldier’s face is one they should all recognize, and although she can’t see the demon, she knows it’s wrapping itself around him, waiting for the moment of death. A second later Hae Jung thinks she hears the thing speak with the voice of a little boy: “So many of them.”
“I am not a coward,” Hae Jung whispers. But she’s shaking and deep down knows that she won’t act because maybe as long as she hides her power the thing can’t reach her soul and Hae Jung pretends to be a normal nurse, looking on with concern.
The doctor throws his clamps to the table and drops a cloth over the dead soldier’s face before motioning to the orderly. “Next one.”
“Have you seen Mi Yae?” Hae Jung asks.
“No, not since yesterday.”
“Where are all these wounded coming from?”
The doctor shakes his head and dunks his arms into a bucket of alcohol next to the table. It is pink with blood. He shakes his hands off and then does it again while the orderlies collect the corpse.
“A Turkish unit moved into this sector yesterday, taking the place of the American Marines. They are fierce. Our Chinese boys are having a tough time keeping up with them, and the Turks snuck into their trenches early this morning to massacre almost an entire battalion.”
Hae Jung shivers. The uniforms bring another wounded soldier to the table, heaving him up and then dumping him in place where she sees the man’s charred chest, a nightmare of burned uniform and cloth that merge to form something surreal. The surgeon doesn’t pause. Get over here! he shouts at Hae Jung but she shakes her head and backs away, nearly knocking over a nurse at the table next to them; the wounded have surrounded her. This is a feeding ground and every death will make the thing bigger, stronger, and soon none of them will be safe because she suspects that it might recognize the souls of the living if allowed to grow.
“I have to find Mi Yae,” she says.
The surgeon yells at her again but Hae Jung is deaf from terror and she dives into the wall of brown uniforms around her, imagining that Mi Yae is just on the other side of it.
When she reaches the main tunnel exit, Hae Jung thinks the bombers have returned but then realizes that these blasts come from artillery—American naval shells that hit Chinese positions a few kilometers south of Hamhung. The shells explode, and cover the Hungnam factory in smoke. Their factory is already gone. Hae Jung doesn’t understand why the Americans have to hit it so many times, over and over again, and she marvels at the amount of equipment they have, wondering if it explains their willingness to summon a spirit so powerful and beyond control; they seem to worship destruction.
“Has anyone seen Mi Yae?” she asks.
The walking Chinese wounded crowd against each other on the cold rock, sitting with knees pulled up to their chests and with blank eyes that stare as if they’ve all been shocked into a kind of waking coma. She asks again, this time in Chinese. A few of them look at her and shake their heads but most seem gone and one starts screaming before he heads up the slanting tunnel, toward the sunlight and artillery shells, which are now close enough that they vibrate the rock. The man disappears through the opening and Hae Jung turns back toward the ward—not wanting to see if he returns.
She picks her way through the sitting soldiers. It reminds Hae Jung of moving through a swamp, maybe the one outside her school in Songbo where the mud and grass grabs at her bare feet and lock themselves around her ankles; Mi Yae
and her other friends laugh on either side, all of them locked in a filthy race to see who can cross the fastest. But there isn’t any laughter here and in the early morning the men don’t resemble swamp grass at all. And there’s a new smell. At first she thinks it’s the demon because it makes her hold her nose, but then Hae Jung realizes that the tunnel is warm enough that the soldiers’ feet and hands thaw to send the odor of gangrene everywhere; they are warming up, and the warmth will rot them all to death.
She screams Mi Yae’s name now. Part of her wants the words to hurt the silent Chinese men and she would be happy if they clamped their hands over their ears or yelled for her to shut up, but they do nothing, and none of them seem to notice her, even when she steps on their dead feet in an effort to get through—to get away from the odor and sadness.
Before she knows it she’s returned to the main ward and operating chamber. Something is wrong though because the room is silent and the doctors and nurses have backed everyone up as far as they can, opening an empty circle in their midst.
“Hae Jung!” Mi Yae shouts.
Hae Jung is about to run forward when someone grabs her arm and holds her back. She can’t grasp what’s happening. A haze of smoke fills the area and mixed with the scent of cinnamon is the smell of cordite and there are several people on the ground, all of them dressed in dirty medical gowns, all of them dead. Hae Jung knows that something is wrong with her friend but the horror of it prevents her from believing that Mi Yae is almost certainly gone. She laughs; it’s absurd that a human being can survive like this, legless and on the ground crying, reaching out for help.
Hae Jung pulls against a doctor’s grip, but he refuses to let go. “The rocks overhead,” he says, pointing. “A patient came in with unexploded ordinance lodged in his gut; it detonated when they began operating. Now the rocks are coming loose and your friend is beyond our help. We have to evacuate.”
“Let me go,” says Hae Jung. The artillery comes closer and a boulder falls, smashing into the floor near them and sending shards against Hae Jung’s legs. Despite the danger, she pulls again. “Let go!”
“Suit yourself.”
The doctor releases her and follows the rest of the crowd, helping to wheel patients out of the large chamber and deeper into the tunnel complex, deeper into the mountain. He calls out to Hae Jung, telling her You’re an idiot; wait for the engineers to come and then you can collect the body, but instead Hae Jung kneels beside her friend and hugs her; the girl’s skin feels wet and cold.
“I have you,” says Hae Jung. “I am here.”
“I am very thirsty.”
She nods. “You lost your legs above the knees and there is much blood.”
Hae Jung ties tourniquets and then begins arranging her friend so she can carry her and Mi Yae laughs. “What are you doing?”
“There is a smell of burned cinnamon here,” says Hae Jung. “Can’t you tell? I want to get away from it, and we need to move quickly.”
Mi Yae shakes her head and looks down. “I can’t smell anything. My legs are gone; do you think your brother will still marry me?”
Hae Jung grunts as she lifts Mi Yae and there is a wash of warmth as blood covers both arms so that Hae Jung begins crying. “He will marry you; you are still the prettiest girl in Hamhung.”
“Don’t be sad, Hae Jung. I smell the cinnamon now so things must be getting better; my nose is working again.”
Hae Jung knows that it is close. The air turns heavy and once more begins to spark so that Mi Yae mumbles . . .The colors are so pretty, Hae Jung, I wish you could see this . . . and Hae Jung wants to scream at the nothingness to go away but it knows too much and is moving in. The thing must sense her, she figures; as she stumbles through the tunnels, barely able to carry Mi Yae, she hears its footsteps and then starts to pray—opening the way for her friend to pass.
“I see you,” it says.
Mi Yae rests her head on Hae Jung’s shoulder. “There is a little boy following us and I think it is my brother but how can this be? He died when we were very young. He wants us to stop and talk.”
“It is not a boy or your brother,” Hae Jung says. The tunnel brightens and she can see the rocks in front of her, and the glow from her hands resembles the one she saw when Dae Nam worked on the boots, a soft blue that helps light the way. Smells of rot and cinnamon push up the tunnel from behind. Hae Jung can sense Mi Yae’s willingness to make the journey and there is a fuzzy sense of warmth that makes her think it will be fine, a familiar feeling because it means the path is opening and that Mi Yae’s ancestors are waiting—happy to welcome her home. But juxtaposed against it is horror. Hae Jung’s back feels cold and now the spirit is close enough that she hears its wheezing breath.
“There is nothing,” it whispers.
The tunnel exits aren’t far. Hae Jung ducks into a side passage, one empty of wounded and staff, but it takes her closer to the city, and the artillery blasts are so near that they vibrate her jaw.
“I’m tired,” Mi Yae says.
“You have lost blood.”
“Am I dying?”
Hae Jung nods and a tear falls from her cheek. “Yes.”
The pathway opens with a jolt. It is strong, and the will of Mi Yae’s ancestors almost overpowers her own subconscious, threatening to make Hae Jung blind with their desire to see through her eyes and look at their daughter, their granddaughter and their sister, and they can feel Mi Yae through Hae Jung’s hands and they want more, but they worry because they sense the presence of something horrible.
Hae Jung wills them back.
“Slow down,” the spirit says but it’s laughing and Hae Jung glances over her shoulder to see the little boy break into a sprint, his speed impossible.
She struggles to remember what Dae Nam taught her—that some spirits can’t resist the offered soul of a Pathfinder. But to offer it is forbidden. In this case she counts on the thing’s hunger and hears the little boy sing as it closes the distance, so Hae Jung feels a sudden sense of relief when the tunnel fills with sunlight and she decides that for Mi Yae it is fine to break the rules, that for Mi Yae she will be forgiven if her plan fails.
“Is it time?” Mi Yae asks.
Hae Jung nods, trying to keep from sobbing. “Yes.”
“My mother says you are very special, and that you have a secret but that it’s a good one and it’s one that you use to help the dying, but that you are risking a lot for me. She says to say Thank you.”
“Tell her that you are my sister.”
A moment later, Hae Jung breaks into the morning light. She is low on the mountainside, but high enough that Hamhung spreads out below her in a panorama of ruin, within which American bombs and artillery have ripped buildings off their foundations. Naval shells scream in. The projectiles are slow enough that Hae Jung watches in fascination as they arc into the ruined factory and then detonate in silence, sending geysers of black and gray smoke upward before the sound hits a second later. She shivers. But the sun feels warm on her face and there is nothing to worry about because she knows what will happen next and can tell from the thing’s laughter that it has forgotten the old dangers and can only focus on her soul.
It has forgotten about sunlight.
“Tell them to say hello to my grandmother,” Hae Jung says, but it’s too late; Mi Yae hears nothing. The pathway closes and Hae Jung feels the warmth of her friend’s passage and almost laughs at the sense of happiness that her ancestors managed to radiate from the other side. She turns to the tunnel entrance then and waits.
The little boy springs from the exit and at first grins to show blackened teeth, but then a scowl forms on his face and Hae Jung looks away, not wanting to see any more. A cloud of dust hits her. Hae Jung feels like throwing up at the smell, and she coughs as it fills her lungs and nostrils, but when she opens her eyes the last remnants of the spirit float off the mountainside, clouds of ash that formed under sunlight and soon disappear into nothingness.
She puts the
remains of Mi Yae down on the pathway by the tunnel exit and says one more prayer before sighing and moving into the mountain. Part of her thinks it’s too soon to return. The night and morning sucked most of her strength and with Dae Nam gone all of the special missions will fall to her, but then she wraps both arms around herself, hurrying away from the artillery and the winter with a smile, and remembers something else Dae Nam once told her.
“Without war, we wouldn’t be needed.”
“Someday I will see you again, Mi Yae,” she whispers. Then Hae Jung picks up the pace because somewhere, deep in the mountain, there are dying soldiers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T.C. McCarthy is an award-winning and critically-acclaimed Southern author whose short fiction has appeared in Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas, Story Quarterly, and Nature. His debut novel, Germline, and its sequel, Exogene, are available worldwide, and the final book of the trilogy, Chimera, was released in August 2012. In addition to being an author, T.C. is a PhD scientist, a Fulbright Fellow, a Howard Hughes Biomedical Research Scholar, and a winner of the prestigious University of Virginia’s Award for Undergraduate Research.
Bone Eaters
The Black Company On the Long Run
Glen Cook
Whittle and Fall Woo led the trigger gang: four unreliable brothers with a decrepit, covered goat cart, two broke-down mules, a moth-eaten burro dragging an open cart, plus some refugee slatterns and associated brats.
Out of sight behind, the Company stretched for miles along a track locals called a road, crossing stony hills whiskered with brush and scraggly young pines. Wildfire had passed through, years back. Charred adult tree corpses still tilted drunkenly.
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