The Refugee Sentinel

by Hayes, Harrison

  Li-Mei looked up at a sky perforated by steel wire. Her mind raced. This must be an exercise, she thought, Jenli was home. Jenli had a higher calling for her and a better destiny. Better than being slaughtered under a steel trap like an animal.

  The Purple Servant squatted by her head. As hurt as she was, she couldn’t hide a smile, seeing the bruise where her foot had kicked his face. Go ahead and explain that to your buddies tonight, she thought. How a six-year-old kicked your butt… and your face. The Purple Servant grabbed her hair through the wire and lifted. She closed her eyes as the net sunk into her neck then his kinjal flew at her again. This was it, she thought, but his blade cut the net surrounding her head. When the knife was done cutting, Li-Mei was wearing a gown made of steel wire. She had been right – they weren’t planning to kill her in Jenli. But then she looked at the Purple Servant’s eyes, as lifeless as roadkill, and her hope sank. And the first haircut in her life began.

  The long black hair fell around her, severing the last link to a life she would never remember. Tears followed then rage and she shook like a racing horse that had galloped to exhaustion and her heart would have burst and killed her on the spot, if she were fifty years older. If loving fathers, she thought, like the one from the book existed, then why didn’t they help? Instead, her severed hair fell in the mud and the Purple Servant’s feet stomped on it as he circled around, again and again, careful not to miss a spot. With eyes brimming with rain, Li-Mei looked at the window of her room. Taxi was still trying to break through.

  In a parallel universe, the Purple Servant had stopped cutting. He wiped his kinjal on her shoulder and helped her untangle from the net. The sky above had turned as black as the girl’s murdered hair on the ground below.

  eleven days till defiance day (31

  Natt’s mouth gaped in a silent scream for oxygen. No sound, despite the effort of every cell in his body. His lungs craved air, both to breathe and scream, and dark stains of sweat pooled around his neck and armpits. For some reason, he felt self-conscious about the stains, as he watched his reflection, in front of the reflection of the woman, in the wall-to-wall mirror. He could swear the mirror somehow magnified his sweat.

  The woman’s hands crushed his throat like roots of a blackberry forest, ripping his trachea away from the esophagus. Natt swung as far behind as he could reach, but only peddled air. His jaw opened and closed, and his nostrils bloomed, seeking oxygen that wasn’t there.

  “Stick your tongue out,” she said with the same tone as one would order a latte, “it will help you breathe.” Natt obliged, but no oxygen followed. His face turned purple and he felt freezing cold despite the sweat raining from his pores. The woman must have lied. She wasn’t interested in helping him, she was waiting for the end.

  When she had attacked him at first, in the men’s restroom of the Seattle Public Library, he was certain he could overpower someone with her physique. He had just finished taking a leak, and was washing his hands along a row of sinks in front of the restroom mirror, and thought she was a downtown prostitute looking for work in all the right places. Protocol mandated he wait until the last second before issuing the arrest, for the solicitation charge would stick. And Natt had waited until she touched his back, to offer a blowjob or whatever her repertoire was. An attractive guy like him had been propositioned before, what could he do?

  Instead, the woman grabbed his throat with both hands, her steel-cage abdomen refusing to budge against Natt’s elbow punches. She absorbed his prepared blows then returned the favor with rapid undercuts to his kidneys. Always a step or two ahead, she chop-blocked his hand reaching for his holstered gun. Then she spun around and clung onto him, like a child playing piggyback with her father. Natt’s fists flailed above his head then he lunged back, at the opposing wall, to shed her from him, but she remained out of reach. In the interim, her fingers were unpeeling Natt’s life, one breath at a time. With the last spark of his fading consciousness, the cop mouthed a plea – his final Hail Mary, and a poor one at that.

  His brain entered a shutdown mode, sending spams along his body… then the woman’s fingers parted. Air ushered down his mangled throat with the noise of a freight train whistle. She dismounted from him.

  The Chief of the Seattle PD fell to his knees, his face pouring tears.

  “I’m the Seattle PD Chief and my Police Department will do anything you wish,” he said again, this time with audio.

  She stared at him for a moment, going over some unknown options in her mind. She tossed an old Nokia phone at him and he caught it before it hit his face. “We’ll meet twice a week,” she said. “You’ll receive texts with the location and the time before each meeting.”

  Natt sensed an impending inevitability about this woman, as if he was thrust into a Discovery Channel special where a tiger was licking the forehead of a captured gazelle in the African savannah, the two looking like best friends. Then, without warning, the tiger’s jaws mangled the gazelle’s neck and she accepted her death with everyday banality. If this woman wanted him dead then Natt guessed dying would work. And in the interim, he would play with her for as long as she wanted.

  “Deliver me Victor Saretto and Colton Parker. Alive,” she said. “Otherwise, I’ll finish what I started.”

  Natt’s head nodded like a metronome. She walked out of the men’s restroom. Not a single other library patron had walked in.

  ten days till defiance day (32

  Colton’s mind swam up, underneath the surface of reality and the blue walls around him. Then the agony of torn up flesh, as if his hand was caught inside a meat-grinder, pulled him down again. His brain took several tries to start and grasp the good news: there was no meat-grinder; then the bad news: he didn’t have a right hand.

  Colton didn’t know why, but the blue walls gave him comfort. They were a sign that the world was still going on and he was fighting, with the final bell at least a few rounds away. “Where am I?” he said.

  Mitko leaned over. “You tell me, kid. You’ve been out for a day.” Unlike the meat-grinder pain, Mitko’s voice was a welcome chaperone into reality.

  “Have they been looking for me?” Colton said and bit his tongue to muffle a groan.

  “Were you expecting anyone?”

  “My passport is no longer connected. Give them another day and they’ll come knocking.” Colton attempted a smile, until the pain in his right stump wiped it from his face. “You’ve done more for me than anyone else but my mother. It says a lot about the quality of my other relationships, I guess.”

  “You judge yourself harsh, kid.”

  Colton ran a dry tongue over his chapped lips. “My cut-off hand. Did you save it like I asked?”

  “Next to the beef tongue and the chicken hearts, in my freezer.” Mitko laughed.

  “When the scans from my dead passport lead them to you, tell them I forced you to keep it.”

  “And why should I do that?”

  “I don’t know... because you didn’t save my life to throw it away with a “Return to Sender” sticker on top. And because you’ll go to Heaven as—” Colton grunted and kicked the wall at the fresh onslaught of pain in his severed limb. If this was a boxing match, pain was ahead in technical points and he was running out of rounds to catch up. Now he had to tell Sarah, too, and somehow, telling her he had voted Sacrifice, made him feel more uncomfortable than taking on her rage that he wouldn’t. He sat up, despite the blue walls pirouetting in front of his eyes then called her number.

  “Colton,” Sarah sounded like a rattlesnake, “now is not a good time. Work’s in the toilet.” The algae were refusing to lie down without a fight. “I’m restarting Project Atlas, but I’m sure you don’t care. You only want to talk about Yana without wanting to save her. What about her, Yana-boy? This morning, she threw a fit over some purple jeans I destroyed in the laundry. And she has the mumps. So, whatever you called to fight about, can you call later, or better yet, next year?”

  “I did it,” he said.
>
  “You did what, Colton? Jacked off in the shower this morning? Hired a prostitute? Let me guess, you got your unemployed ass off welfare?” Sarah’s screams echoed like she had put him on speakerphone. “Why the hell should I care about what you did?”

  He imagined she had been swimming in an ocean of pain for years, alone and without a lifeline, his Sarah, who had served him marshmallows in bed and given birth to the most special girl in the world.

  “I did it, baby.” He wondered how she must feel having achieved her innermost wish. What would he do in her shoes? If his most sincere dream had come true? What would he do if Yana gave him a hug and called him Dad? Would he take her to the Point Defiance Zoo and get her chocolate ice cream? Would they laugh at the penguins until their faces hurt and ice cream came out of her nose? Colton smiled… it felt good being alive.

  Sarah’s voice pulled him back into the blue kitchen. “I don’t know what to say. Is there…” a pause, “anything I can do for you?”

  “As a matter of fact there is,” he said. “I’m asking you for it after I’ve given you what you wanted, which makes me a terrible negotiator, but I’d like both of you to visit me in Seattle… before Defiance Day. It would mean a lot.”

  “I don’t know.” She seemed incapable of saying more than a couple of words at a go. She was also hyperventilating. He had shut her up, for once. “The ULE Ministry of Science is collapsing,” she said, “the project, too. But I’ll see if we can come see you.”

  Colton looked outside. The city was falling asleep under cloud-infested skies. “I should go,” he said.

  “We’ll talk soon, yes?”

  He had to tell her now or he never would. “And, Sarah...”

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry it took me this long.”

  “You’re fine, Colton,” she said then added, “Goodbye,” before hanging up.

  “Goodbye… my love,” he said to the disconnected cell phone.

  During the call, Mitko had been scrubbing the kitchen of Colton’s blood from a day earlier. “Being around you is an education, son,” Mitko said. “Life is a sketch drawn with a stick in the wet sand. But it’s all we have anyway. Go hide. I’ll help you how I can. Saving lunatics like you beats playing the hotel piano.”

  “Wherever heaven may be, old man, I hope I see you there, before the devil knows I’m dead.”

  “You’ll be dead in a couple of days, unless I take you to a hospital,” Mitko said. “I’ve cauterized your wound, but you’ll need stitches and professional treatment.”

  “I didn’t plan this cutting business as well as I should have, did I?” Colton said. “If you could have seen her face you’d understand.” He rose like a drunken man, his feet somehow absorbing the weight of his body. “You’ve done enough. Hide my passport and I will deal with the rest of me.” He put a foot forward then the other, waddled towards the blind man, and gave him a one-arm embrace. Then he left the apartment without saying goodbye, ashamed he had nothing else to give to Mitko other than more empty words of gratitude. Outside, it was about to rain.

  twenty-one years and two hundred seven days till defiance day (33

  It was a late Monday. The setting sun warmed Li-Mei’s face, adding to her satisfaction of feeling tired after a day of solid progress. She had spent the last ten hours conjugating grammar drills in Korean, her worst language, but had done well.

  Jenli’s young night felt clingy and humid. Carrying her reading tablet and Taxi’s leash, Li-Mei headed to the river. Ever since she had discovered the river two years ago, she loved spending time there. She had followed the currents and run upstream, along the bank, until reaching the electricity wall and the Servant guard-tower marking the brink of Jenli. That was it, as far as she could go, but it also meant the river kept going, which made her happy. She had read about rivers starting as fountainheads, growing stronger along the way, and joining the ocean in the end. But the textbooks failed to capture the liquid rush and the sounds and smells, and the force she hadn’t seen anywhere else. She could stare at the rapids for hours, chin planted on the grassy banks, eyes low and as close to the water as possible.

  Minutes of sunshine still remained, plenty of time to read and walk. After Korean, she needed a good change-of-pace book: “The Ultimate Guide to Professional Poker” would do. She ran for the river and into the surrounding forest. Taxi ran in front, turning for an occasional glance, to check if she kept up. He was growing strong. She wouldn’t have it otherwise, not on nights like tonight. And, in return, he had become her proud Shiba Inu, the color of cocoa and with a face stretching in a grin whenever she was around.

  The forest glowed in a jacket of dimming yellow light. Li-Mei heard the water rumble in the distance and picked up her step, with Taxi happy to oblige. She hummed a song, “Live and Learn,” in rhythm with her running footsteps. “Live and Learn” felt like her middle name these days: first getting a dog, then the Servant cutting her hair, though she had to admit a boy’s cut felt more comfortable. She had read in a meditation book, once, that the best way to deal with change was let go of the past. Maybe she would meditate for the first time tonight… after it got too dark to read.

  She had forty pages left in the poker book, bobbing in front of her eyes as she walked. Her nose, planted in the tablet, joined the earlier counsel of her ears and smelled the river drawing near. At last, the water emerged like flowing glass, cutting the Jenli forest from end to end and as far as the eyes could see. Li-Mei let the misty spray greet her face then turned for the hollowed trunk of a Japanese Red Oak she had been using as an observation spot for a while. The departing day squeezed the light out of the air making it almost impossible to read. She focused on the last few sentences, as the white space at the bottom of the page where the chapter ended, beckoned her peripheral vision.

  Taxi was out of sight again but guaranteed to reappear soon. The poker chapter clung to its last sentence of life in unison with the dying Monday sun. Her nostrils tickled with the expectation of putting the tablet away, crawling inside the oak’s embrace and meditating while stroking Taxi’s ears. Just a few more steps and she would have Monday beat, like she always did.

  She finished the chapter and pressed the tablet’s power down button. Her body went into a free-fall and her ankle exploded with the pain of being turned or broken. She realized she had forgotten to change from sneakers in Jenli to hiking boots for the forest. Left unattended by a brain too busy reading, she must have stepped on a pinecone or the mossy riverbank. Li-Mei lost her balance, her face hit the ground, and she skidded down the slope. Stones, dirt and branches threw punches at her body. Couldn’t be that bad, she thought, she’d plop in the water then swim back to shore; a pity the sneakers would be ruined. Then blinding pain tore up her left foot.

  A passerby would have witnessed the six-year-old tumble down the riverbank in a pile of arms and legs and flashing white sneakers. He would have winced, seeing the girl’s foot catch on a tree root jutting out of the ground, like the arthritic fingers of a buried giant. The root refused to let go and, for a moment, the girl’s body hung in mid-air. Then gravity took over and broke Li-Mei’s left leg.

  She fell through the humid air then hit the river, frigid despite the month of June. Pain, more consuming than Li-Mei had experienced before, arrested her breathing and hammered at her brain while water rushed into her throat. All she could think of was that somewhere above, Taxi would look for her. And that as much as she’d want to respond to him, she wouldn’t.

  ten days till defiance day (34

  Eaton lay on the floor, slaying holographic aliens on his PlayStation portable. On the couch, Natt was relaxing with a fresh glass of scotch. Funny how progress had a way of crushing even the most ambitious. No matter how strong Natt felt, someone stronger, younger and hungrier was bound to come along. His stepson was the future and Natt was thrilled as a parent, but as a man, he was jealous. Eaton, at eight years old, was already smarter than his stepfather and the realization bothered
Natt like a stone in the shoe. Of course, he would never admit to it, at a confessional or on his deathbed. He shuddered at the unstoppable force of the kid’s future. What heights would Eaton achieve at twenty? How about thirty? And Natt… He’d drool, head bobbing up and down, in front of a retirement home TV, with his dentures soaking in a mouthwash by his bedside.

  Eaton looked up at his stepdad and smiled with his whole face. The sheer presence of this smile assured Natt that everything would end well: Seattle would survive the floods and Defiance Day wouldn’t be as bad as everyone thought. Natt had a hunch other fathers loved their sons with similar intensity, but also knew Eaton was different. Eaton’s math and programming skills were untouched. Last month, he was invited to the ULE Presidential Palace in Mexico City to consult on how humankind could colonize other planets in the Milky Way. Eaton had made it through several rounds for the privilege and crushed at each stage to the point of demoralizing his opponents. Eaton’s method of pulse combustion was both brilliant and simple. While the rest of the field fell over each other researching solar and renewables, he looked to the past, reverse-engineering the twenty-first century NASA shuttles. He replaced their primitive fuel-thrust sequences with nanotech algorithms and their steel engines with quantum alloys. The stunning aircraft, called “The Razgrad,” could, in theory, cover light-years worth of distance at acceptable velocity and unparalleled fuel efficiency. President Sanchez had made time to meet Eaton and commissioned a North Dakota ULE lab of four thousand engineers to translate the boy’s approach into a working prototype.