The Last Twilight

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Rikki stared at him. “Where did Larry find you?”

  His eyes warmed—that singular warmth that made her gut twist, hot and unsettled. “You will have to ask him that yourself after we leave this place.”

  “Optimistic.”

  “As are you. I suspect your job requires it.”

  She shook her head. “Are you sure you’re a bodyguard?”

  “I never said that. Only that I had been sent to protect you. The two, I assure you, are quite different.”

  “Huh.” She lay on her side, cushioning her head on her arms. “But here you are.”

  “Indeed,” he said, and for a moment it was easy for Rikki to forget where she was, what had happened.

  But not for long. She fell asleep again, and dreamed.

  Her old coach was with her, a shouting man made of muscle turned to lard, stout and pockmarked and a genius at his craft: Markovic, former Olympic gymnastics champion. He was yelling, chasing her. Rikki did not know why he was angry, but it frightened her and she tried to run. Not far, though. She tripped. All grace gone, no strength left. Drained into the earth, like blood. Blood, on her hands. Blood, everywhere, from so many dead. Dead, all at once. All at once.

  Bad dream. Rikki woke with a question on her lips, a nagging sense that something was wrong. Her fault. She had missed something obvious.

  The lights in the tent were off. It was very dark. That was also wrong. She began to sit up and a hand caught her shoulder. Amiri. He was sitting on her cot, shadows gathered around his body. She imagined, once again, a faint glow in his eyes.

  “What?” she whispered, but as soon as she spoke she heard shouts in French outside the tent. Hoarse voices, full of fear. Sweat beaded against her skin, and it was suddenly hard to breathe. Hot, suffocating. The air-conditioning had gone with the lights.

  Gunfire made her jump. The rat-tat-tat of automatic weapons. Shouts became screams and Amiri dragged her off the cot and pressed her to the ground.

  “Rebels,” he murmured. And just like that, things got worse.

  Western media loved the entire African continent like some good crack, but only the parts that were hurting. It was what had surprised Rikki the most during her first six months on the job. She had seen the images, read the newspapers with their sad doomed stories—people starving, women raped, poverty and corruption and destruction—but the reality was stark, different, dusty and full of sunlight and laughter and enterprise—kindness, music, intellectualism; a rambling babble of diversity and uncommon languages and culture, mingling and scrabbling and making joy. Fifty-four countries, nine hundred million people. Modern to rural, rich to poor. Folks working hard for a living. Just like home.

  Except for the rebels and wandering militias, scattered throughout the Congo and adjoining countries. Except for the politics that backed those men, and the genocide that accompanied them. That much was true. Rikki had the scars to prove it. A lot of women did, in this region, though she had been hurt less in some ways, than others. No rape. But what had happened was almost as bad.

  She squeezed shut her eyes. Her scars ached. Like some storm-burn in an old woman’s joints, more frightening than bad weather. She wanted to run. She wanted to hide. She wanted to pick up a gun and start blasting into the night: heartless, efficient, effortlessly brutal. Better than the alternative.

  Screams cut the night. Amiri’s arm tightened. Rikki’s heart pounded so hard she felt sick.

  “This area’s been quiet,” she muttered tightly, trying not to vomit. “But I heard rumors in Brazzaville that the rebels and militias have been moving east out of Kivu. It’s why this camp was established. To take care of the folks running from their homes.”

  “It makes no sense,” Amiri murmured, but he stopped, squeezing her closer as the rough shouts got louder, accompanied by wet sobs and desperate pleading. Rikki did not recognize the voices, but she wanted to run to them. Faces flashed—old friends, dead—and she shuddered as she remembered, with perfect clarity, her body dragged through dirt and stone. Hands holding her down. Those damn knives.

  Bodies hit the ground outside the tent. Rikki bit her bottom lip, fighting like hell to keep from shuddering, but that was a joke and she felt Amiri’s mouth touch her ear. He whispered something she did not understand, again and again, but just as the words took shape inside her dull ears, gunfire exploded. Bullets ripped open the plastic sheeting, razing the cots and monitors, kicking metal into cutting shards. Amiri wrapped himself so tight over her body he felt like a second skin. The fingers of his right hand dug into the floor like claws.

  The hail of bullets did not last; in its wake came deafening silence. Amiri slithered off her body. His hand caught her wrist. She moved with him, breathless, straining to listen. Men spoke. She heard a patois of French, Lingalese, some other Bantu language. She imagined she heard her name.

  Amiri did not stop moving. He pulled her to one of the plastic tubs that had been scored and knocked over by bullets. Scrubs had spilled out. Amiri pointed, then pushed down on Rikki’s shoulders. She resisted. There was no place for him to hide. She tried to tell him that, but he covered her mouth and shook his head. He forced her to crawl inside the plastic tub. She was just small enough. Amiri pushed the clothing around her body.

  “Stay,” he breathed, and then he was gone: melting out of sight, utterly silent. Rikki wiggled forward, trying to see. It was too dark. She could hear, though—and after several breathless moments the low murmur of voices drifted from the entrance of the tent. Not many, but enough. Rikki took three quick breaths, forcing herself to focus. Trying to decide how long she could rely on Amiri before one of them was killed, or worse.

  The voices got louder. The quarantine barrier rattled. Rikki heard uneasy laughter, a low crooning call. She tried to judge numbers, but it was impossible. Stacked odds, either way. Amiri was unarmed. She took another deep breath and nudged forward, just slightly. Looking for a weapon, anything. She found syringes. Spilled on the floor, just out of reach.

  The quarantine sheet pushed inward. Rikki froze. Her hearing dimmed to nothing but heartbeats, the roar of blood. She was dimly aware of distant wailing screams, gunshots. People dying. None of it mattered. Only that plastic wall and the men behind it.

  Then, not even that. Amiri exploded upward from the floor.

  Rikki knew he was fast, but what she saw in that moment verged on inhuman—a blur, too quick to follow. He plowed through the quarantine wall and her ears could hardly keep up with the answering crack of bones, grunts, muffled cries. Furious, unrelenting. She slithered out of the container, reaching for a syringe. Her hand closed around plastic.

  A gun fired inside the tent. Rikki tore off the syringe’s protective cap just as a large figure fell hard through the quarantine sheet. It was too dark to see his face, but the body was all wrong, too thick and hulking to be Amiri. She smelled blood.

  The man saw Rikki. He lifted his gun. She lunged. Small, fast, desperate; she hit him hard in the chest and jabbed the needle into his face. Aimed for his eye, but his cheek was good enough. He screamed. Rikki tried to knock aside his weapon.

  Amiri appeared. He grabbed the man’s head and twisted. Rikki heard a sound like cracking knuckles, then silence. The gun dropped. She snatched it up, safety off, grip sticky with blood. She did not give the dead man another look.

  Movement flickered at the corner of her eye, just beyond the torn plastic barrier. She aimed, adrenaline high and wild, but kept her finger off the trigger. Focusing. Listening. Amiri stepped in front of her, facing the flimsy wall. She heard the sounds of a brief struggle, a distinctive pop—one loud shot—followed by a sharp intake of breath, a muffled curse that was suspiciously American. Rikki forced herself to breathe. The gun was slick in her hands. She heard distant screams and thought of Mack, the nurses, everyone who had come here to help. This could not be happening.

  Amiri said, “Eddie. Over here.”

  Rikki gave him a sharp look. “A friend?”

  �
��Yes.”

  The plastic sheeting to the quarantine section rattled. She felt light-headed, out of her mind. “He can’t. He can’t come in here. We’re contagious.”

  “Doctor Kinn—”

  Rikki took a step toward the barrier. “Stop, Eddie, whoever you are. Don’t move.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said a young male voice, far too close for comfort. “Contagious or not, you don’t have much of a choice. You have to leave. Now.”

  Amiri took hold of her arm and for a moment she forgot herself. Training took over. She fought, using all her strength. He lost his grip, grunting with what sounded like surprise, but he was faster than her and his arms clamped down. She tried kicking him and he only squeezed harder, pressing his mouth against her ear. He smelled like blood. His hands were slick.

  “We must,” he whispered harshly.

  Yes, she thought, finally gazing down at the dead man beside her, neck twisted, syringe jutting from his cheek. Hell, yes.

  But she could not say those words. She turned her head, peering up into Amiri’s eyes. “If we contracted the disease, we are contagious. We will kill innocent people everywhere we go, anyone we come in contact with. I won’t do that.” Even if she was prepared to use the gun in her hand to defend her life. No conflict there. Shooting men intent on murder did not, in her opinion, count.

  Amiri’s hands tightened; he shook her, just slightly, and in a voice so low it was almost a growl said, “Eddie, are the peacekeepers evacuating?”

  “Trying to,” said the young man, still out of sight. “They were taken off guard. Some are trying to find the medical personnel, but it’s chaos out there. That’s why we have to hurry. I don’t know how much longer the planes will stay grounded before someone panics.”

  “Indeed,” Amiri murmured, and then louder: “Go and find us some biohazard suits. Make certain yours is secure.”

  Eddie pushed back through the barriers. Rikki began to protest, but Amiri covered her mouth with his hand.

  “I am not ready to die,” he said in a hard voice. “And while I live, so shall you. We are leaving here, and you are coming with us, even if I have to carry you.”

  Rikki pushed away his hand. “And if we hurt others in the process? Can you live with that?”

  Amiri said nothing. He shoved Rikki across the isolation ward, and though she put up a fight, he was the strongest man she had ever encountered, and nothing she did broke his stride.

  She could have played dirty. Part of her wanted to. But there was another part, ruthless and fierce, that wanted to run with him. Run fast, run long, and never mind the consequences. High ideals be damned. Because she also wanted to live. She wanted to fight for every breath, even if it killed. Even if all she had left was a day or an hour.

  Go, whispered a tiny voice. Don’t look back.

  She went.

  Chapter Five

  It had been a long time. Too long, to discover how much of Amiri’s father still lived within him. He was glad it was dark inside the tent, that Rikki Kinn had human eyes and nothing more; that she did not look down at the bodies so still on the floor of the tent as he guided her out and away into the shrill hot night. The first kill was always the hardest, and sometimes the second, but there was a taste that a man could become accustomed to, and it was not the blood or the fear or even the death itself, but the power that belonged solely to a good hard murder.

  Beneath his latex gloves, Amiri’s hands were sticky with blood. He could taste it in his mouth. He had taken liberties, in the heat of the moment; had wanted a sense of the enemy, to take them into his body and listen to the nuances of the flesh: roots and blood honey and the stone of bones.

  But he had learned nothing. Only, that he was an animal beneath his human skin—and that his human heart could not abide what that drove him to do.

  Outside, bodies sprawled everywhere, covered in blue tarps: transitional corpses, awaiting transport to a secure burial site. Some of the deceased, however, were more recent; they wore protective gear instead of plastic sheets, the white fabric of the suits torn with bullet holes and covered in blood so fresh he could feel the warmth of it through his clothing.

  Rikki made a sound. He found her staring at two bodies sprawled against the isolation tent. A woman and a man. Their masks had been torn off, chests nothing more than red pulp. Amiri looked close at their faces and placed them as the nurse and the doctor, the angry man who smelled like cigarettes and a splash of whisky. Mack. Ruth.

  Amiri squeezed Rikki’s shoulder, forcing her attention from her dead colleagues. He was afraid she would fight him, but her eyes held no tears, no grief—just something so hard and glittering she might have killed with a look, cut and burned and buried. He had never seen such eyes in a woman—not in anyone—and he had to look away, quick. She was so different from the photograph. Better. Still shining, but with a harder edge.

  And her scent … her scent was sweaty, anxious, angry; and beneath it all, sweet and spice, vanilla and pepper. Rolling, warm. Safe. Dangerous. He was too aware of her. Even now he could hear her heartbeat, and it felt too much like his own.

  Amiri grabbed her hand, flicked Eddie on the shoulder, and guided them both away from the tent into the ramshackle maze of the shadowed camp; away from the structured heart of UN tents, large and billowing and white; farther out to the torn edges, where the shelters became rougher, put together with blue plastic tarps and sticks and string. Crude, but decorated with flaps of brightly colored cloth and clothes that had been left to dry; stiff in the still night air, holding the shapes of ghosts, lives lost, the evidence of which stretched as far as his eyes could see. The ground was treacherous with corpses.

  Amiri kept Rikki close, careful not to let her fall, though she was agile enough on her own. Fast and small, good at keeping low to the ground. They both wore biohazard suits. The material felt like a coffin rubbing his skin, or the bars of a cage. He could not stand the sensation, the confinement—the target it made of their bodies. He could still taste the river in his mouth, mixed with the metal of blood. Dead, dying, hunted: it was all the same now.

  He pushed up hard against a tattered tent, Rikki tucked into his side. At their feet were cracked plastic bowls and canisters of water, piles of clothing, sticks and cloth fashioned into dolls. Articles of life, adrift with the dead. Eddie stepped on one of the toys as he slithered close; he flinched as the wood snapped. Beneath the goggles, his eyes were strained, bloodshot, the rest of his face hidden by a surgical mask. The biohazard suit made him look like a ghost.

  The wind shifted. Amiri smelled gasoline. Sloshing sounds drifted on the hot night air; closer still, shouts in English and French were punctuated by the crack of automatic gunfire. Peacekeepers, trying to round up survivors. Fighting for their lives. Somewhere nearby a man screamed—bloodcurdling, so high-pitched as to be freakish, inhuman. The sound cracked Amiri’s skull, flashing him back into that old tight cage, the lab in Russia. Screams for help echoing off the tile walls. The dying, always unseen, but rich in terror.

  Circle come round. He was back again.

  “Eddie,” he murmured, and instantly regretted it.

  “I can’t,” said the young man, flashing him an uncertain look. “Not from here. If I could get close enough to see them …”

  You would set their weapons on fire, thought Amiri. You would choke them with smoke and heat. You would be forced to kill, again and again.

  And there would be killing enough, before this was over.

  Rikki stared at both men. “You want to help? Search for survivors?”

  Eddie said nothing. He looked at Amiri, waiting. Rikki also looked at him, but her eyes narrowed and she held up her stolen gun. “I’m willing,” she told them, but her voice was breathless, and he remembered her body in his arms, shaking so hard he thought she would fly apart. Amiri did not think he would ever forget that moment: overcome, hunted by a visceral, overwhelming desire to protect, to make her part of him so that he could hide h
er in his skin. Keep her safe from harm.

  He had never felt that before. Never anything so strong.

  “Willingness is not the issue.” Amiri forced his attention from her, as uneasy with her presence as he was the danger around them. Somewhere, the man had stopped screaming. Death, capture, or escape. He met Eddie’s gaze and shook his head.

  Your eyes are old enough, he wanted to say, and though Eddie was no telepath, he met Amiri’s gaze as though he heard every word.

  The young man cleared his throat. “We need to hurry.”

  Amiri touched Rikki’s shoulder. “Are you ready?”

  She shook her head. “What about the others?”

  “If we find anyone on the way out, we will take them with us. I promise nothing else, not if it means compromising you.”

  “I’ve already been compromised. If I do have what killed these people, bullets aren’t going to mean much.”

  It means everything, Amiri thought, and from the conflict on her face, he sensed she felt the same—even if she were unwilling to admit it. So stubborn. He reached out and took her hand. She glanced at him, startled; her eyelids fluttered, her expression hardened.

  Voices cut the night. Low, conversational. Unnatural in their calm. Coming close, fast.

  There was no time to run. Amiri yanked Rikki down and pushed her through the opening of the tent behind them. Grabbed Eddie and did the same. They tumbled inside and the air was tight and hot with death.

  The three of them huddled on their stomachs. Amiri felt something uneven and yielding beneath him. A body not yet wrapped in plastic. His hand touched cold stiff fingers. His skin crawled right off his body.

  “Shit,” Eddie breathed, flinching. Amiri saw Rikki poke his shoulder and the young man’s mouth snapped shut. Outside, the voices were close. Amiri listened hard. The language was unfamiliar. Not Bantu or Lingalese, nothing he could place, though the curl of the words felt familiar. Sharp tones, angry. He heard a clicking sound, like a fingernail clipper.

  Amiri exhaled slowly and pressed his eye against a slit in the tent flap. He felt Rikki do the same, peering through a small hole.