Girl Punches Out

by Jacques Antoine

  Emily gestured to the walkway. Ba We heaved her up and scrambled up after her. A few feet away Miss Park stood over the General, staring at them like a lioness with her cub. Emily could see the confidence of command slipping out of her eyes. She clearly wanted to stay and protect the General. But all of her subordinates were either dead or fled. Emily suddenly stepped toward her and watched her flinch, and then bolt through the door.

  At first, her only thought was to find Anthony and Li Li. But another thought intruded itself. The voice she heard calling her “sister,” it wasn’t just one voice. There were more of them. Perhaps a chorus of children. But how many? She couldn’t tell. Whatever happened, whoever they were, she couldn’t leave them here.

  The General lay at her feet, his jacket drenched in blood, his sweet life ebbing away. He looked at her and tried to speak. She crouched next to his head and put her ear next to his lips. He had no breath. His words were practically inaudible, just a faint whisper. She thought she heard a word, or a name, “Soon-ee,” and knew what it meant. He must be her father, General Park. She watched his eyes contract to focus on her, as the pathos of an infinite distance pulled him away. There was nothing more to learn from the dying man, certainly nothing about the children.

  Emily and Ba We burst through the doorway into another large room. It looked like it occupied the rest of the main floor of the building. The corrugated metal roof meant there were no other floors above this one. Crude barracks furniture was scattered about, a filthy kitchen at one end. No soldiers anywhere. Had they killed them all? She didn’t have time to worry about it. Through the door at the far end she could see a smaller outbuilding. Her heart pounded in her throat as she ran toward it.

  -back to top-

  Chapter 22

  Behind the Red Door

  Outside Emily found a brisk spring day, sun and fog. The cold dirt felt good against her bare feet. Finally she could see the extent of the compound. A high wall enclosed a small yard, the main building she just left and a smaller dingy building resembling a Quonset hut with a rusty red door. It sat across the yard some sixty or seventy feet away. It was large enough to be a barracks, a dormitory, perhaps housing fifteen or twenty people. If there was a lab in the compound it had to be in there. Several small trucks were scattered around the yard in various states of disrepair. Parked next to what must be the main gate she noticed two vehicles that looked like they might run. If the children were here at all, they must be in the Quonset hut.

  “You’ll never make it that far,” she heard Miss Park say from behind her.

  She was holding a pistol. One last guard stood next to her with an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder and hanging at a casually contemptuous angle.

  “I’d rather not shoot you. You’re worth rather more to me alive. But I will if I have to.”

  “How many more like him did you make?” Emily snarled.

  “Like Ba We? Oh, dozens. They all died. The cloning process is devilishly tricky to get right.”

  “You’re lying. They aren’t all dead, are they?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I’m taking them with me.”

  “That’s rich,” Miss Park sneered. “Even if any were still alive, they wouldn’t survive more than a few weeks. You couldn’t save them even if I let you.”

  “At least with me, they’ll die with someone who loves them.”

  ~~~~~~~

  Something about that last remark enraged Miss Park. She knew Emily had formed some sort of bond with the clone. But how? She’d always thought of them as barely controllable savages. But Emily won this one over in the middle of a fight, and now it threatened to destroy everything she had worked for. Love them? Ridiculous. He clearly loved her, though she couldn’t imagine why. It hadn’t ever occurred to her that the clones were capable of any sort of attachment. Their alliance was far too dangerous to tolerate. That it was Emily who had turned him made it even worse. It was all too much.

  She shrieked a command at the guard, who raised his gun. She wanted him to kill this infuriating girl before her eyes. Her face was distorted with the mad anticipation of it. Ba We burst out of the main building with sudden speed. In the time it took the guard to recover from his surprise, Ba We had already closed the distance. He threw himself forward and crushed him beneath his chest. The noise of the gun was partially smothered, but Emily still winced from the searing pain of the wounds. The guard was dead in an instant, but Ba We was hurt. Several shots hit him in the chest. He struggled to pick himself up off the ground. When he looked up at Miss Park, she knew there was no way to control him, no command he would obey any longer. She stepped backed and fired twice as Emily wrestled the gun out of her hand. She squirmed away and ran to the red door.

  ~~~~~~~

  Ba We lay on the ground at her feet. Emily knelt down and held her hand to his cheek. It wasn’t a frightened child looking back at her this time. His eyes, clear and focused, revealed a placid, shimmering spirit. Perhaps he was even happy for the first time in his life, though she hardly knew what happiness might consist of for him. He had protected her, saved her, even died for her. A smile played across his lips. And then she felt him slip away like sand between her fingers. She wanted to stay with him, though she didn’t entirely know why. But other concerns pushed her forward. She ran to the outbuilding, not knowing what she’d find there.

  She slipped through the red door. The low light made it difficult to see at first, but she had no difficulty hearing the children. A little girl’s shrieks, Li Li, the blustering bravado of a frightened, brave boy, Anthony. She could just make out Miss Park at the other end of a long room, trying to pull the children out of what looked like a cage. Running at first, then walking more deliberately, her eyes adjusted to the low light and she saw a long row of cages with small bunks, enough to house a dozen or more children at a time. But she didn’t see any other children. A row of storage lockers lined the other side of the room, as well as a long counter with several computer terminals and what looked like a makeshift surgical table.

  Anthony was struggling to keep Miss Park from opening the door to the last cage as Li Li clawed at her fingers through the bars. It wasn’t clear how much longer they could hold out.

  “I’m here, Anthony,” she said.

  The three of them turned as one and looked at her, each with a different expression. Miss Park was aghast, Anthony beamed with renewed confidence, Li Li giggled and shrieked. She was terrified of Miss Park and naturally rejoiced at anything that caused her discomfort.

  “You ruined everything,” Miss Park yelled at her. “You killed him!”

  “The General was your father then?” Emily replied calmly. “I lost my father to people like you, people on the same disgusting, misguided mission as you.”

  She could see the determined, even desperate gleam in Miss Park’s eyes.

  “You’ll never get out of here alive,” she growled.

  “Neither will you, if you get in our way.”

  By this time, she was standing only a few inches away. She placed her hand on Miss Park’s chest and pushed her back, clearing the space in front of the cage door. It was a peculiarly sedate gesture between people otherwise disposed to deadly violence.

  “Anthony, take Li Li outside,” she said as she shielded them with her body. “Wait for me there.”

  They squeezed past, Anthony pulling Li Li along toward the red door, both urgent to get away from Miss Park.

  “She killed him, Emily,” Anthony cried over his shoulder. “She shot Jesse by the plane!”

  The words didn’t register immediately, and when they did, she froze for an instant. Her heart was suddenly heavy, as if it would fall straight through her body. Her fists clenched involuntarily and then her chest. It was hard to breathe. Jesse! So sweet and beautiful. The dark cave behind the waterfall glowed red. She imagined jamming fingers between Miss Park’s ribs, seizing her still beating heart and tearing it out of her chest. The hideousness of the ima
ge shocked her out of this volcanic reverie. She waited for the children to clear the red door. More importantly, she needed to find her breath again.

  They stared at each other for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few seconds. Emily’s heart was divided. The loudest noise in her head demanded that she kill this woman, tear her life away. The notion that it might be the only way to end the threat she posed to her family and friends was not a part of this calculus, true as it probably was. A single strike to her throat would suffice. She found the prospect repugnant, even viscerally nauseating. Ba We would have struck her down in an instant, without any hesitation. Why couldn’t she?

  As her breath moved in the familiar pattern, Emily could feel the hatred in Miss Park’s heart. She tasted her fear, as well as her resentment. But what did Miss Park resent her for? “She sought me out,” Emily thought. “She attacked my family, destroyed my life.” There was nothing to account for it. But deep down, without exactly knowing what it could mean, she felt how her apparent serenity galled this woman. Fear and resentment were not a stable combination. Emily waited for the attack she knew must come. She remembered Connie’s warning about her skills.

  She saw her shoulder dip. It was a feint, she felt certain of it. But she had by then what looked like a steel rod in her hand. She had to block it. Miss Park used the feint to cover a front kick to the knee. Emily was able to evade the first kick, but not the second. The force of the blow to her chest drove her back and to her knees. The only defensible option was to continue rolling out of the fall, to try to get some distance in the confined space. Miss Park anticipated this and surged forward, swinging the back of her heel toward the place she expected Emily’s head to be after the roll. It was a narrow miss. Emily pushed her leg back across her body hoping to close her off from any more kicks.

  Her legs were limber and strong. Her moves were indeed suggestive of taekwondo, but more graceful, almost like a dance. Her hips swiveled, snake-like, with each step. The fluidity of her movements made it difficult to anticipate a feint or a kick. She was lanky and perhaps even a little taller than Emily. Her foot struck out toward Emily’s knee again, this time with no feint. She connected, hard. Emily felt her knee buckle and hoped it wasn’t broken. The pain was sharp. She tried to follow with a second kick to the chest. This time Emily managed to step just inside her raised leg and deliver a sharp reverse punch to her solar plexus. She tried to shake off the pain in her left knee while Miss Park staggered back struggling to catch her breath.

  “You’re good, just like they said.”

  Miss Park sneered at hearing this, perhaps feeling a rush of optimism about her chances. In that tiny opening, Emily lunged a jab at her head, but prepared her right leg to block. She managed to jam her knee into Miss Park’s raised thigh and blocked the hand swinging the iron bar. It clattered off into a corner. Once inside her defenses, Emily hit her with several hard blows to the chest and face. It was a series of spinning, flowing strikes, each one leading into the next and camouflaged by the one before. Once it started there was practically no way to stop it short of running away. But there was no room to run in that tight space. The final blow, a downward palm-heel strike to her face looked like it broke her nose. She bled profusely and stumbled back out of reach disoriented. That definitely wasn’t what she expected from a shotokan practitioner.

  Emily figured she had never been hit in the face before. She had a distinct advantage over her in that department, she thought, with some little satisfaction. But why was she weighing little advantages? Why was finishing this woman proving so difficult? She had, after all, defeated Ba We just a little while earlier. And he was perhaps the most violent, dangerous individual she had ever encountered. Maybe she had gotten lucky, but when opportunity presented itself, she was able to seize it. The children were depending on her. She couldn’t fail them now. As she breathed out her puzzlement she visualized Miss Park’s style: quick, low kicks, difficult to defend, and often followed by higher, longer kicks. Above all, a flowing movement, one kick blocking and setting up the next one. That was how her mind worked, she could see. The pattern was palpable to her, as was the conclusion. She needed to control the first kick.

  But her first kick was so damned fast. Emily blocked it with her foot, pushing it out to the side. Miss Park grabbed her wrist and twisted as hard as she could. Emily was just quick enough to punch the bicep of the arm holding her wrist and seize the elbow. Miss Park barely twisted free and grabbed across her opposite wrist. They dueled each other like this, hardly moving more than a few inches from each other, staring eye to eye, probing, striking, twisting, wrenching. Each seeking the tiniest advantage to control the other with a joint lock. All the while trying to sneak a kick in below, or block one. They fought to a standstill, arms tangled and feet poised.

  Emily knew what was coming next, felt it with near certainty. She sensed the sudden tension in Miss Park’s neck and shoulder muscles. She leaned away and then snapped her head forward, meaning to smash Emily’s face with the hard bone just below the hairline. It was a devastating blow… if only it connected. Emily freed her right hand and thrust it over Miss Park’s left shoulder as she jammed her left just under the ribs. She used the momentum of the head butt to pull her into a flip, grabbing and lifting with her left hand as she pulled her head forward. She grabbed her long blond hair, felt its coarseness, not fine like natural blond hair. As Miss Park tumbled past, a sharp tug on her hair might snap her neck. Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The hair slipped through her fingers as Miss Park crashed upside down into a storage locker a few feet away.

  Both women were wounded. Emily was limping to keep the weight off her left leg. She wasn’t sure how badly her knee was hurt, but she didn’t want to test it just yet. Miss Park was bloodied and having trouble breathing. She may have suffered a broken rib. She was shaken by the last couple of exchanges, hadn’t expected the girl to be able to hit that hard, or to be that strong. Her despair grew.

  Emily felt it all, breathed it all in. She knew with near certainty that Miss Park would try to finish her with a single, ferocious kick combination. A quick kick to her injured knee would allow her to swing the other leg around to kick through her head. When she hit the floor, Miss Park would bring her heel down through her face. She pictured the horror of it as if it had already happened. Once she finished her, she would dispose of the children. Then she could bury her father and salvage what she could here before returning to Chongjin to rebuild the operation.

  But the first kick didn’t contact her knee. Emily kicked her foot, then caught it in the crook of her ankle, trapping it and pulling her forward. She was never able to lift the other leg for the second kick. Falling forward, she tried to keep her guard up, but just couldn’t resist spreading her arms to try to regain balance. Emily punched her sharply in the throat as she fell. She released her foot and kicked through the knee, thrusting an elbow into her ribs and twisting her wrist down sharply. Miss Park’s head struck the bars of the cage as she fell to the side, struggling to breathe. Her head ended up wedged between the bars. She gulped for air.

  Emily lifted her head out and helped her find a coherent position on the floor. Her leg was broken, her elbow smashed, her shoulder dislocated. A bloody foam oozed out of her mouth as her breath faded.

  “Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?” she asked in a mixture of anger and sympathy. Miss Park’s eyes blinked up at her. Emily watched as her spirit fluttered like a bird unable to find the window. Disoriented by the dim light, unable to feel the familiar air currents, it smacks against walls and fixtures until it accidentally finds the opening, and then it’s gone. Miss Park was unable to form words.

  “You were good, as good as anyone I’ve faced, as good as Tang Tian.” She saw a tiny glimmer of satisfaction at those words, maybe even a hint of embarrassment. “You, of all people, you should have known better. There are no shortcuts. There is only training.”

  She said these last words as
much to reassure herself as to help Miss Park understand something. The fear and hate seemed to fade away. All that remained was a child’s innocent surprise at the sudden finitude of her life. It danced around the edges of her eyes. And then she was gone. Emily sighed.

  “I’m sorry about this,” she said to the dead woman, “but I’m gonna need your clothes.”

  After she removed the jacket, sweater, shoes and pants she looked down at her. Bruised and broken, the body was strangely somehow still beautiful. “What a waste,” she thought. Her conditioning was excellent. “At least as good as mine.” Lithe and strong, lean as a snake, nothing wasted on her body. Soldiers train for battle, perfecting their skills and shaping their bodies, only to see themselves destroyed. That is their destiny. War makes the body beautiful only to consume it whole.

  Sensei never tired of quoting to her from the writings of an ancient Buddhist monk, a sort of sword mystic, teacher of the great samurai. One remark came to her just then: “…the true master wields the sword to give life. When he must kill, he kills. When he should give life, he gives life….” So many had died there, but not by her hand. She had not killed when it was not necessary. Nor had she hesitated to kill when it was: the Russian in the cell, the General outside the ring, finally even Miss Park, though in each case she sought to avoid it. She looked into the eyes of many of them as they passed away, like some sort of angel of death. Some were frightened, some relieved, most just confused. She served as the arbiter of their passage, an earthly Charon. Or perhaps a Valkyrie, carrying fallen heroes to Valhalla. But she’d seen no heroes, no one worthy of Valhalla. No one like Jesse, who died at the hands of the treacherous Miss Park. She hadn’t been there to see him off.