Reload

by David McCaleb

  Of course. He’d spent two years around Detention block. He started to turn his head, then thought better of it. “Yes.”

  “Cage thirteen. Remember it. One guard will leave to use the bathroom. The other will be sick, sleeping on the floor. You’ll have four minutes to get her out.”

  “Where to then?”

  “In a troop transport. Take the ZIL-130. The same blue one you came in on.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. 0130.”

  “Tonight? But, I haven’t even been here a day.”

  “Shut up!” came through the snow-encrusted wood. “Drive to Songpyong harbor.”

  Ko frowned. “That’s almost a five-hour drive.”

  “Be there by 0600. The harbor is small. There’s a new warehouse there, bright red roof, shaped like an L. Park in the closest spot facing east. Stick a piece of white paper in your window, no more than ten centimeters square.”

  Ko shifted his weight, pretending to tighten strings on the other boot. A prisoner—a foreman—trotted by carrying a sewing machine. Once the man was past, the voice continued hoarsely, “Your truck will be full of fuel, enough to drive there. Men will get into the back. One will sit next to you. Do what they say. Ask no questions. Present no resistance.”

  “Can we wait a day or two?”

  “If you wait, you will disappear. You and your daughter. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Many prisoners disappeared from Hwasong. Years ago, Ko had helped dig a grave one night on the far side of the western hill for a prisoner seamstress who became pregnant with a fellow guard’s baby. They’d had to dig an additional grave when another prisoner stumbled upon them. Before Ko could say anything, his friend had raised a shovel and slammed it across the prisoner’s head. He could never clean the dirt of that grave from his boots. The same could happen to guards. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. I’ll be watching.”

  Chapter 24 – From Darkness into Night

  Hwasong, North Korea

  “Can you not sleep, Abeoji?” Eun Hee’s voice came from the dark. “You are restless.”

  Ko sat on his cot in the black concrete bedroom and pulled his woolen cap over cold, tingly ears. The platform abutted Eun Hee’s, right above the coal furnace flue that ran beneath the floor. Coal was one commodity of which Hwasong was not short, though you would never know it by their frozen cell of a new home. The vinyl window glowed faintly. Low moonlight would provide excellent concealment.

  “I’m going to use the bathroom,” he lied. A good excuse since all were ordered to use central latrines so the sewage could be collected for fertilizer. “You get dressed, too. Do not ask why. Wear your warmest things, like when we camped near the river a few years back. Make no noise. Do not light a lamp. I’ll return in fifteen minutes; then you’ll come with me for a walk.”

  Ko waited till he heard the wooden chest open, then slipped out the door. Frost bit his lips. A light glowed in a window from headquarters, but no guards were in sight. He closed his eyes and heard only a low hiss, like static in a speaker, in the direction of the iron works. No stars shone through the low December sky. He started toward headquarters, intending to pass in the shadows to the south. An icy drift’s crust cracked beneath his feet, but he didn’t fall through.

  He paused to lay a hand on the yellow concrete building and listened again.

  Only the same hiss, though it seemed to resonate from the air. Must be the frost dropping.

  As he scurried across an open court, he tripped on an icy rut and fell, smacking his lip on a chunk of frozen brown sludge fallen from a truck’s mudguard. His hands had punched through the drift and ice seeped cold around his wrists. He stood, spat, then resumed his trot, careful to lift his knees to avoid another fall. It would’ve been better to bring Eun Hee with me and get her to the truck ahead of time. And if she was caught, she could at least claim she didn’t know about an escape. That would do nothing to satisfy her torturers, of course. The only mercy she could hope for would be death by firing squad.

  He reached the tunnel entrance and paused in front of the door. Why was his heart pounding so? He hadn’t done anything wrong...yet. Just out on a surprise inspection, if anyone asked. He felt for the reassuring outline of the holstered Makarov 9mm pistol on his belt. He gripped a metal entry handle with the other, the cotton glove sticking to it. The door shrieked on its hinges as he pulled it open a crack. Inside, he walked past the cargo elevator, stepped lightly upon the stairs, and headed down. Four flights later, the air was heavy and warm—fifteen and a half degrees Centigrade all year long, due to its underground location. The door to the cage block room was wedged open.

  Rank sewage burned his nostrils, so he breathed through his mouth. Even so, he could taste the noxious mixture of oozing infection, ammonia, and fecal matter. The prisoners had pots and cans for eliminating, but sanitation was not cage detention’s concern. Nothing a fire hose once a week can’t wash away, they’d always said.

  He slipped inside and pressed close to one wall. A mouse scurried along its base, then shot across the walkway toward the center of the room. Half the size of a hockey rink, the expanse seemed less crowded than he remembered. Waist-high cages were no longer stacked one atop another. Each one a little over a meter long, they cramped their unlucky occupants for months at a time.

  Moans, coughs, and sobs ebbed as he stepped along slowly. A figure in one metal crate shifted, eyes downcast.

  Ko straightened, reminding himself he wasn’t doing anything wrong. Prisoners were conditioned to snitch on one another, but never on a guard. He rested a hand on the butt of his pistol and scowled in feigned belligerence.

  Green numbers on the far wall evidenced the order of the cages had changed. They ran backward of what he expected, putting cage thirteen near the guard post. When he peered around a corner, dim light shone through an office window, silhouetting a single soldier in its frame. His head was down as he turned pages of some government magazine. The only other light glowed from a lone bulb hung from a wire in the center of the cage room. No clocks, so prisoners lost track of the days. The guards would often change shift timing, to further confuse them.

  Ko stretched his forearm and twisted his wrist to reveal a flat-faced, yellowed dial. 0120. Ten minutes before the guard would get up to relieve himself. Ko leaned against the wall again and his heel sank into something that squelched like mud. Across the aisle, an arm extended from one of the cages, fingers slack. A door slammed and the fingers shuddered.

  Ko peered around the corner again. The guard was gone. He stepped out into the aisle and walked toward the glowing room. His watch now said 0122. He hoped the guard’s timepiece was fast, and that he wasn’t just stepping out for a cup of water. Ko reached the first aisle and counted to cage thirteen. Prisoners withdrew from the sides of their pens as he strode by. He stooped and gazed through thin steel bars at what he’d been told would be his sister. A figure lay inside in a fetal position, facing away.

  He stepped around the crate, covered all but a narrow slice of a flashlight lens with his palm, and switched it on. The body didn’t move, but the stomach expanded slowly, in short jerks. He stooped to study the face more closely. Surely this couldn’t be Soo Jin. The hair was cut so short, the cheeks hollow. A mole the size of a mouse track below her earlobe. He gasped. It was her. Purple shadowed her eyes near the nose. The tip of an ear was missing.

  He snapped open the latch and lowered the side. Her left knee twitched, dirty skin protruding through holes in filthy cotton pants. Her eyes opened and she screamed. Ko slapped a palm over her mouth and raised his head to look around. No movement from the guard post or the side door where the soldier had left. Only a hoarse cough from across the room, followed by the clank of a pan as it hit the sides of a crate.

  He bent to her ear. Lice crawled between his fingers. Her abdomen squeezed tight as she tried to scream again. H
e nearly smiled. Still a fighter, even in hell. “Quiet, sister. It’s me, Chung Ho. Do you understand?”

  Sweat washed through the dirt across her nose. Her eyes were filled with fright.

  “I am taking you out. Not for torture, but somewhere safe. Do you understand?”

  She nodded in short shudders.

  Ko removed the hand and lifted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She groaned as her abdomen sank around the back of his neck. The seat of her trousers were worn through in two small holes. He stepped toward the stairwell, turned back and closed the cage, then ran up the stairs. She weighed almost nothing. Probably less than thirty-five kilograms, he thought.

  At the top, he paused by the stairwell door he’d left cracked. He pressed one ear to the opening. All was silent, but the faint scent of cigarette smoke implied someone was close. A throat cleared. Someone spat. Ko gripped his pistol and retreated inside the stairway, beside the entry, ready to club whoever might step through.

  A shadow flickered across the dim wedge of light cast upon the floor. The freight-elevator motor hummed. He holstered the pistol and peered out into the cold night. Only marginally brighter now, but there was no sign of activity in the courtyard.

  He stepped out into the snow. Each boot sank through the crust with a loud crunch. Trucks were parked outside the motor pool, a quarter mile down the main drive. It’d be shorter to get Eun Hee now, he reasoned. But too risky, carrying his sister at the same time.

  Soo Jin began to shiver. The sooner he got her stowed, the less the risk for all.

  “You see this finger?” his father had once asked, holding up the middle one with its missing tip. Of course he had. He’d seen it often, each time his father chided him to take his time scaling fish. “That was me pulling in a gill net, trying to beat a thunderstorm. Do the job right. The storm got me anyway.”

  * * * *

  Rust pocked the faded baby-blue tailgate of the ZIL-130. Though he lowered it with glacial speed, the tailgate hinge gave a grating cry that echoed off the motor pool yard. Limit chains pulled tight, and Ko laid Soo Jin on the metal surface. He hopped up, carried her underneath the tented canvas, and placed her gently upon a bench. He turned around, but finding nothing to cover her, unbuttoned his jacket and stretched it over her torso up to her shoulders, tucking the collar edges under her neck. She glanced at him, then up to the canvas as she shivered.

  His hand stroked her cropped, bristly scalp. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Going to get Eun Hee, then we’re leaving. Don’t make any noise.”

  “She’s...she’s...” Soo Jin shivered.

  “Don’t talk. Stay here, sister. I’m not leaving you.” He jumped down and stood silent on frozen ground for a few seconds. An owl cried from the west, high up the slope, but no human sounds. It wasn’t time for a shift change, and no posts were near the motor pool. He raised the gate, neck tensing at the hinge’s vocal resistance.

  A cough from inside the repair building. Damn it! The yard was well trampled, so there was no clear evidence of his passage to point to Soo Jin lying in the back. The farther he got from the truck, the better.

  He trotted out the yard and back up the hill. The night was cold, quiet, and most importantly, empty. No guards in sight, even near headquarters. Sweat beaded on his cheeks by the time he slipped through his own front door into damp, stale air. Eun Hee was in the bedroom, sitting on her cot, thin knees together with hands pressed between.

  Ko dragged a small trunk from beneath his bed. It was stuffed with a couple of blankets, a two-kilo bag of rice, and a photo of Un Jong, his wife. The state had failed her, too. She’d lain on a mattress, struggling for breath as the ulcerated breast cancer ate her from within. A doctor had given pills for pain, but they did little to quiet the terrible nights.

  “Come.”

  Eun Hee stood and, without a word, followed him to the front door. Placing his hand on the knob, he considered his daughter’s fate if caught. He glanced down at the trunk under his arm. How would he explain that? Without it, he could just say they couldn’t sleep and were out for a walk. He set it on the cot, removed the photo from its frame, and slid it into the inside pocket of a frayed work jacket. He slipped his arms into its too-short sleeves and zipped up.

  “We’re taking a walk. That’s all. Hold my arm. If anyone asks, I couldn’t sleep and insisted on a night stroll.” He placed her hand upon his elbow but she pulled away. He slapped her across the cheek. “You may see some things you don’t understand. But keep quiet. Do as I say. It is for our family.”

  Her woolen cap bobbed. “Yes, Abeoji.”

  The walk behind headquarters was again uneventful. Down the hill, they passed the holes where, a few minutes earlier, he’d punched through the snow crust, even as light as his sister had been upon his back. Around a corner of spruce, the motor pool fence was the last barricade between them and Soo Jin. Ko’s pace quickened.

  A figure stepped from the far side of the gate into the opening and unslung a rifle from his back to port arms. “Halt! Who is there?”

  Ko stopped and forced a smile, though the guard wouldn’t be able to see it in such dark. “Sangsa Ko.”

  “Approach one.”

  Ko huffed quietly. Why’d we have to get the one guard who obeyed as trained? And why is he even at motor pool? Is this a setup?

  He glanced toward the truck just forty meters away that held Soo Jin shivering in its bed. He pulled Eun Hee’s hand from his elbow and stepped toward the guard. He was very young. A full trench-style coat drooped on thin shoulders, dragging in the snow.

  He glanced at Ko’s collar, obviously looking for insignia, but his uniform jacket was in the back of the truck. “Papers,” he demanded.

  Ko reached into the inner pocket, pulled out frayed tan pages along with his wife’s photo. He held the papers out to the guard and slipped the photo back into his pocket. A flashlight lit the documents. Ko squinted when the guard shone it up into his face, then Eun Hee’s. Again, to his dazzled eyes, the night was black as death.

  “Why are you out, Sangsa?”

  Ko swung his head toward Eun Hee, several meters back. “Just on a walk with my daughter.”

  “After curfew?”

  “Curfew? There’s never been a curfew.”

  The guard raised an eyebrow. “How long have you been in camp?”

  Ko’s neck itched. “You realize I’m the new camp guard, don’t you?”

  Without a change in his dull expression, the guard handed back his papers. “Which is why I’m following protocol. But I was told you aren’t filling that position till next week.”

  “Right, but—”

  “There’s been a curfew for a couple months, Sangsa. Camp commander made it after a guard froze to death. Near the foundry, of all places. He slipped and hit his head.”

  “Since when do we post a guard at motor pool?”

  “About the same time. A captain found some truck headlights on the black market, stolen from one of ours.”

  Ko chuckled. “So now we’re tending pigs and keeping an eye on the farmer.” He slipped his right hand into his belt near the small of his back, next to a knife sheath, feigning a relaxed pose.

  “I may have seen someone tonight,” the guard continued, flashlight beam on Ko’s chest. “I heard some noises in the yard and came out to see what it was. Someone was running up the hill.” He flashed the beam toward the motor pool. “I just finished looking around and was about to go inside and report it. Please come with me.”

  Ko glanced to Eun Hee. Almost any other guard would just let them go now. Why’d they have to run into this idiot? “I’ll take my daughter back to our house. You’ve done a good job. I’ll remember that. Thank you for telling me about curfew.” He stepped away.

  The guard smiled widely and wagged an admonitory finger. “Ah! You’re trying to test me. I am sorry, Sa
ngsa, but I must report both of you to the relief commander. Once he says you can go, then you can.” He swung an arm toward the building. “I’ve got hot tea inside. Have some while I call.”

  Ko frowned. “Your radio?”

  The guard pulled a black plastic brick from his belt. “Dead. Batteries quit charging right. Only last a couple hours, so they’re gone by now.”

  Once again, Ko turned to Eun Hee. He inhaled the resinous scent of crisp spruce from the near woods. All was silent and dark, except for a low glow up the hill from headquarters. His eyes locked with hers and he mouthed Shhhh. He wished there was some way to avoid what he was about to do. If the guard spoke with the relief commander, they’d have to return home. Soo Jin might freeze before they could sneak back out. Even so, how would they deal with this nosy guard? If he gagged and tied him, shift changed in an hour. His replacement would find him. Not enough of a head start for their escape. So, one life for another. Was that fair? Would he turn on a fellow soldier in arms to save his sister? The guard had started away, his weapon slung over one shoulder.

  Yes, Ko reasoned. For my sister, my wife, and my daughter’s maimed hand. The state failed us all, and it will fail us again. Famine will return because of poor management. Family must be protected. His father hadn’t been well off or politically connected, so the family hadn’t enjoyed the privileges of upper class. But the fisherman’s family had never gone hungry for long.

  Inside the gate, once in the shadow of a large transport, Ko slipped his combat knife from its sheath with a quivering hand.

  He lunged and gripped the guard across the mouth from behind. The man turned instantly, surprising him. Ko’s knife caught his throat, but the young guard had jerked back, so the gash didn’t penetrate deep enough. He dropped his rifle and held his neck, then turned to run. A scream bubbled from his lips in muted gurgles. Ko launched himself again and landed at the man’s feet, tripping him. Like a mountain climber setting an ice pick to scale a glacier, Ko drove his knife into the man’s leg. Stab, pull, stab, pull. He worked his way up the torso, across the chest. More gurgles, now hissing from holes around the ribs. He plunged it into the guard’s neck a second time. The man’s legs shuddered then went limp.