The Tank Man

by William Oday

  He looked across the intersection and, like every other street he’d taken to get here, didn’t see any people or traffic. He leaned out and peeked around the corner. Three blocks away, a long column of dull green tanks were leaving Tiananmen Square and rolling down the center of Chang’an Avenue in his direction.

  Was one of the soldiers inside them the one that had killed Han?

  Did it matter?

  If it wasn’t one of them, it was someone just like them. Men with guns that shot the protestors. Men with tanks that ran over them.

  The square in the capital city had long been revered for important historical events like the founding of the People’s Republic of China. But after the events of last night, it now also held a darker significance.

  One that the blood of thousands made certain would not be easily wiped away.

  Zhang spat on the pavement and then quickly looked around wondering if anyone had witnessed the seditious act. Perfectly manicured oak trees lined the wide boulevard on each side. The lush canopy of each reflected the same proportion and appearance of all of the others. Order was, above all, imperative in a nation of over one billion potential deviants.

  The success of the apparent homogeneity, in both the trees and the humans, bore testament to the immense effort expended to maintain it. But perfect order never lasted.

  No matter how tightly clipped or meticulously groomed.

  Even at a distance of three blocks, the rumble from the great machines echoed through the soles of his shoes and trembled in his belly. He glanced down at the scuffs marring the otherwise polished leather of his borrowed shoes. The deep wrinkles and lack of ornamentation betrayed their advanced age and likewise that of their true owner. He wiggled his toes in the cavernous room created by being three sizes too large. He flexed his foot and his heel slipped free.

  Would they be a help or a hindrance if he had to run?

  There didn’t seem to be any point in getting closer to the square. From what he could see, the millions of protestors that had occupied the square over the past many weeks were gone. None had returned after the carnage of the previous night.

  He had fulfilled his sense of moral obligation. He should return to the old man’s house and report what he’d seen. Lingering here wasn’t helping anything and the government had already proven it had no qualms with killing first and not bothering with questions.

  Zhang pressed his lips into a tight line. He had a wife and a baby on the way to consider. Every decision affected more than just him now. Although he had never been a big risk-taker, his growing family made that inclination stronger than ever.

  So why wasn’t he gone already?

  The faint stench of diesel drifted by. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as the savagery of the massacre washed over him. His stomach clenched tight as terror and fury mixed in equal measure.

  Zhang’s mouth opened as the fury temporarily surged and an enraged roar sliced through the air. It cut off an instant later as the terror regained majority. He snapped his mouth shut, chewing on the inside of his lower lip so hard that he soon tasted the metallic tang of his own blood.

  What was he thinking?

  Did he expect to get even with them?

  How?

  Was he going to punch a hole in the thick armor of each tank and then drag out every last one of the soldiers to face their guilt?

  No.

  It was ridiculous on the face of it.

  What would happen instead was that he would get run over. His bones crushed into dust and his son born without a father in a world that had suddenly become far more dangerous.

  Zhang ducked back behind the brick building trying to catch his breath, trying to swallow the burning bile in his throat. He spat blood onto the pavement and stared at it as his jaws tightened. The edges of the red circle shifted as they found tiny cracks in the concrete.

  That single drop was the only blood he’d spilled when so many others had spilled so much more.

  More than their bodies could survive.

  More than a mind left to remember could endure.

  The nightmare played through his mind, the vision more real than anything his eyes perceived. The shock on Han’s face as the soldier shoved him down and raised his rifle. The shudder of his chest as bullet after bullet tore through him.

  Zhang grabbed the bags and strode to the nearest tree lining the avenue. He watched the approaching tanks with rage burning in his gut and a snarl on his face.

  They were trying to leave like nothing had happened. Did they think they could get away so easily?

  Before he could stop himself, he left the cover of the trees behind. He marched to the double yellow lines in the center of the avenue and stopped, still too angry to truly understand what he’d just done.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The tanks continued rolling forward. The deep, grumbling of their engines played counterpoint to the clacking of their tracks hitting the pavement.

  The first tank kept coming, now a hundred feet away and not slowing down.

  The ground trembled under his feet. The air rumbled with the deep warbling of their engines. Zhang’s insides turned to ice. He would be crushed. Crushed like so many others had been.

  He wanted to turn and run. Flee as fast and as far as his wobbly legs could take him. But if he ran, they would win again. It would be as if all the blood shed and lives lost were already forgotten.

  No!

  He would not let them.

  The murderers would not win on this day.

  Zhang tried to swallow but couldn’t. His throat had gone bone dry and his mouth numb. He looked down and traced the double yellow line to the tank striding it less than fifty feet away. It drove right down the middle like it didn’t have to obey the laws that supposedly governed them all.

  And still the tanks approached.

  Zhang gritted his teeth and clenched the bags so tight his fingernails cut into his palms.

  Now twenty feet away.

  He closed his eyes and waited for what must come.

  The deep rumbling rolled forward.

  His breath caught in his chest. Now, neither his throat nor lungs worked. He choked down a breath and the stench of diesel seared his chest and coated his mouth with an oily taste. The booming tracks crashing against the pavement dug painfully into his ears. The ground shook beneath his feet.

  Any second now and it would all be over.

  Brakes screeched nearly making him jump in terror.

  Zhang opened his eyes.

  The lead tank slowed and stopped ten feet away. The roaring engine subsided into a low growl that carried the promise of violence.

  It stopped!

  It stopped!

  He’d done it!

  What exactly, he didn’t know. But the tank had stopped!

  With death no longer imminent, a rising outrage swept away the terror. It burned through any lingering reason.

  He waved his arm and shouted. “Murderers! You can’t run away and hide now!”

  The tanks behind the lead tank each slowed and stopped to avoid colliding with the one in front of it.

  Zhang stared at the mechanical monster with the huge barrel angled up into the sky. If that lowered and fired, he would be obliterated. Transformed into pink mist in an instant.

  The engine roared and the tank lurched forward. It cut to Zhang’s left and tried to drive around.

  The bags of baby clothes whipped around as Zhang jumped over to again block its path. He shook a hand at the tank. “What? Are you going to kill me, too? Do it then! Do it!”

  The tank rotated to his right and he sidestepped over to keep it from escaping. It cut left again trying to break free.

  No!

  Zhang jumped over and stopped with his arms close to his sides. Almost like a soldier at attention. “You can’t go! You think you can slink away after what was done?”

  The tank was now three feet away. Diesel fumes wavered in the air burning his eyes and
lungs. His entire body vibrated with the growl of the engine. He saw the rivets in the drab green metal. The long barrel extended over his head. An array of elaborate sensor gear covered the plates along the front edge.

  Maybe it was a trick of the light, but the area beneath the tank was pitch black. It looked dark enough to swallow him forever.

  Zhang waited for the inevitable. For death to claim him.

  Instead, the strangest thing happened. The tank’s engine cut off. The rumbling receded to the low echoes of the tanks behind.

  Seizing the initiative, he climbed up the front of the tank and knelt down trying to see inside. He scrambled to the top and shouted, knowing they could hear. “Are you the murderers who killed my friends? Your hands are bloody with the lives of innocent people! Come out!”

  He leaned over the barrel trying to see inside. “Come out and admit your guilt! You killed your own people!” Zhang walked around the domed top banging on the hard metal skin.

  A hatch creaked and then popped open.

  “Get the fuck off my tank!”

  Zhang jumped down to the street. “Come down! Talk to me face to face like a man!”

  The soldier cursed him another minute and then dropped back down into the hatch, closing it as he went.

  The engine started and the tank darted forward to his left.

  Zhang raced over to again block its path. He shook his hand. “No! You’re cowards!”

  A couple of voices screaming from behind made Zhang turn.

  “Hey man! Get the hell outta there!”

  “They’re going to run you over!”

  Zhang waved them off before returning his attention to the tank. “Hear them? Everyone sees you for the murderers you are! We know what happened!”

  Two hatches opened and a couple of soldiers popped up. The original one shouted, “I’ve tried to play nice, but I’m moving this tank forward in ten seconds!”

  “Let’s run his dumb ass over, Captain,” the other soldier said.

  “Ten. Nine.”

  “Look at you two!” Zhang screamed. “You’re supposed to protect us! Not murder us!”

  A man on a bike screeched to a stop next to him. “Listen, these guys are serious. They’ll flatten you.”

  More voices joined from behind as a couple of other people ran up waving their arms. “Don’t hurt him! Please!”

  “Six. Five.”

  The newcomers grabbed Zhang’s arms. “They’ll kill you!”

  Zhang resisted. “These cowards? They’re nothing without their uniforms!”

  “Three. Two. One. Private Feng, run—”

  Another person sprinted in and grabbed Zhang’s arms. The three students dragged him away. The group kept moving toward the tree line. They hurried through the trees and around the corner of Zhengyi Road before stopping.

  The oldest one looked at Zhang and shook his head. “I admire what you did back there. But you’re a marked man now. You have to get out of the country.”

  Zhang’s eyes widened in disbelief.

  His rescuers looked between each other, nodded, and then the first one spoke again. “We may know some people who can help.”

  Leave the only home he’d ever known?

  It was supposed to end there. One way or the other.

  “I have a wife and an unborn son! We have to get them first!”

  The oldest shook his head. “There’s no time. They’ll already have people en route to capture you. Tell me her name and where to find her and we’ll do what we can to help her, too. You can rendezvous once you’re both safely outside the country.”

  A stab of regret pierced Zhang’s heart. Li would be devastated to leave her family. She and her mother had been planning every last detail of the coming birth. Little Zhou would be the first grandchild.

  But there was no time for regret.

  One had to stay alive to be regretful.

  He gave the location to the old man’s house and the information needed to find his wife. One of the students turned to leave and Zhang grabbed his wrist.

  “Tell her I’m sorry. And that I love her forever and more.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Nineteen Years Later

  The irony of Zhang Yong’s name was that it meant brave. Through some strange twist of fate and photography, he had become the enduring symbol of bravery in the face of China’s oppressive communist regime.

  But he was not brave.

  Where so many in the movement had bled and died fighting for justice, he had simply let his anger get the better of him.

  And his supposed bravery had cost him his wife and son.

  The curse of irony reflected in his name extended to his wife. While her name meant quick, she had not been quick enough to escape that day. She’d gone to her parents’ house to say goodbye and the authorities had captured her there. He hadn’t discovered their fate until days later as he waited in a safe house in Hong Kong. He’d eventually arrived in America and been granted asylum. Alone.

  Li Min was now forty. Their son now nineteen. Little Zhou was little no more.

  Nineteen long years without them.

  The image of him standing down the column of tanks had become iconic and yet no one knew he was that person. When he’d defected to America, he hadn’t volunteered the information out of fear of reprisals to his family.

  That fear was fully justified when an unfamiliar Chinese man dropped a note into his hand on a busy San Francisco street corner a few weeks after his arrival in America. The note warned him to keep quiet and to be ready if he was ever called upon. The lives of his wife and newly born son depended on his cooperation. A tiny photo of his wife holding an infant swaddled in a sky blue blanket accompanied the note.

  And so the fate of The Tank Man, as he’d come to be known, remained a mystery. And for the safety of a wife he hadn’t seen in nineteen years and a son he’d never met, he intended to keep it that way.

  Without thinking, Zhang slid his hand into a secret coat pocket and rubbed the letter hidden there. He’d received it on Zhou’s birthday, as he did every year. The letter always addressed him as uncle from his nephew. Far from an endearing note from a devoted son, it was most likely written by a security service analyst.

  He had no way of knowing whether Zhou truly played on his school’s soccer team and had scored the most goals last season. He could verify none of the information relayed in the letters. And so he chose to believe them.

  Because they were the only connection he had with his son.

  The letter and an updated picture were an annual reminder that, should the call ever come, he would obey or his wife and son would suffer.

  Zhang had come close to revealing his predicament so many times. And always a look at the pictures would still his tongue.

  He leaned back in his chair and stared at the lines of blurring text on the screen in front of him. He’d skipped breakfast—was it breakfast?—to work on notes that his mentor, Dr. Ganesh, needed ready for the upcoming particle collision test. Being forced to enter all data electronically made every step a little more tedious, but Dr. Ganesh insisted on recording every thought, every possibility.

  His stance was that it was impossible to know in the present what might reveal itself as vital in the future.

  And so the exhaustive recording of every last detail.

  Zhang grabbed the nearest cup on his cluttered desk and took a sip. He nearly spit out the cold, bitter brew. He set the cup down next to a dozen other half-full, forgotten cups.

  Had he grabbed the wrong one?

  Or had breakfast passed hours ago?

  He pinched his eyes shut and rubbed them until stars, galaxies, and nebulas floated through the unseen void. He exhaled slowly sliding his tongue over the thick layer of algae that had apparently colonized his teeth. He drew in a breath and an odor wrinkled his nose.

  His odor.

  When was the last time he’d showered?

  When was he supposed to shower when he barely foun
d time to sleep? He hadn’t slept in two, maybe three, days. And not more than a handful of hours each night for weeks before that.

  All because of the big test tomorrow.

  Living in a secret government installation hundreds of feet below Barometer Mountain just outside of Kodiak, Alaska had any number of downsides. But the one biggest upside that outweighed them all was happening tomorrow.

  The single moment of truth that years of work and toil made possible.

  Zhang leaned his head back on the mesh chair and stared at the carved rock ceiling. Dr. Ganesh warned him about working too hard, but Zhang wasn’t about to let down the man that had opened every door in his academic and later professional career.

  Would Li Min and Zhou be proud of his work? Would they forgive him for settling into a life far away? Would they care at all about what could become the greatest scientific discovery of all time? Especially considering they’d sacrificed a husband and a father for the world to obtain it.

  The smooth surface of the dark rock above seemed to recede into the distance leaving him adrift.

  And alone.

  Always alone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Dr. Han?”

  A hand with thick fingers covered with calluses waved over his face.

  “Dr. Han?”

  Zhang shook his head to clear it. He’d taken his best friend’s name as his surname upon arriving in America. Keeping his real last name hadn’t sounded like a wise idea and choosing Han had felt like a tribute honoring his fallen friend, even if it didn’t bring him back to life. After nineteen years going by Zhang Han, it should’ve felt more natural. It’s not that it felt fake. It just felt like a surface layer that the world saw while his roots reached deep into his past.

  To his true last name. To his wife and son that shared it.

  Zhang glanced over to find a janitor staring at him with a concerned look on his face. A green coded ID tag on his chest read Robert Garcia in block letters.