by E. J. Swift
Listening, waiting, she doesn’t know how much time passes. The sweat runs off her, collecting in body hollows: crook of elbow, small of back. Soaking through her clothes. Her bladder is painfully full, pressing against her abdomen.
Only now does she switch on the torch.
Flash of light, skipping over the interior of a metal cube, blinking as her eyes adjust. Boxes of papaver tea piled high above and around her. She sees the cut-out of the hatch.
After what feels like hours, she hears the dull thud of approaching footsteps. She tenses, backing up against the papaver boxes, readying herself, crouched with the gun in one hand. She flicks off the torch.
The footsteps pause. She hears the sound of something scraping over the hatch of the crate. Gently, she releases the safety catch on the handgun. Her breath is shallow and every gulp of air is like swallowing soup.
There is a clunk as the hatch opens and dim light floods the crate.
Framed in the hatch is a Boreal man in a functional ship’s uniform. His gaze falls upon Ramona, and for a moment she sees herself as he must see her, a desperate, terrified southerner in tank top and shorts with a gun clutched in her hand, ready to shoot at a second’s notice. But the crewman’s face remains impassive. He must be used to border hoppers. He points to Ramona, and speaks in strongly accented Spanish.
‘Bring your things. Don’t talk.’
She jams the gun into her waistband, grabs her pack and squeezes out into a narrow corridor between two towering walls of crates. The Boreal crewman waits for her, then closes the hatch. From the exterior, she can see the minuscule air vent and marvels that she could have been so reckless with her life.
But she’s here.
Made it.
For now.
Glancing up, she sees the crates are stacked in rows ten high. A ribbon of sky is visible high above, shocking in its blueness. She can see the glint of refracted sunlight and from its direction she guesses it is midway through the morning.
The crewman is already moving down the line of crates, checking each one. She realizes they must be marked: there is a system at work here. The crewman pauses. Ramona keeps her distance as he opens up a second crate, and a wild-eyed man crawls out from the hatch, babbling in Spanish. He seems to fall forwards, clutching at the crewman, but the Boreal steps away, out of reach. He repeats the same instruction he gave to Ramona.
‘Bring your things. Don’t talk.’
The Boreal continues to the end of the corridor, the second stowaway hurrying closely behind, Ramona following, maintaining a gap between herself and the others. The Boreal does not check any other crates. He opens a door leading out of the container cell, and stops, listening to ascertain there is no one nearby. Ramona can’t hear anything except the faint groan of the superstructure, and a level humming noise – a motor or engine.
The other stowaway begins to talk. Where are the others? There is one more crate. Are they going there now? What about his family?
The Boreal sailor shuts the exit door abruptly.
‘I said don’t talk.’
‘But what about—’
‘I have two numbers. You see? Two crates. Her.’ He jerks his head towards Ramona. ‘You.’
‘There’s another! You’re mistaken! You have to get them out!’
The man is frantic. Ramona glances back at the cell of containers and her heart sinks. What chance is there of identifying another crate?
The stowaway turns desperately to Ramona.
‘Help me!’
‘He says there’s another crate,’ she says.
The Boreal crewman regards them coldly.
‘You want to come with me, or go back in your boxes?’
The man attempts a few more words of protest, then subsides.
The Boreal indicates they should follow. He leads them down into the ship, moving with ease through the constricted spaces, the other stowaway struggling to emulate his movements, Ramona following silently behind. The gun is a snug pressure against her lower back. A reassurance, but also a last resort. Unlike the soundless Boreal tech used by the raiders, hers is a weapon that will draw attention if used.
The crewman switches on a torch and brings them down into the unlit hold of the ship, below the water line, where smaller crates and boxes are stowed. He shows them a stash of basic provisions. Packs of bottled water. A bucket with a lid.
‘You piss here. Stay out of sight. At Scotia, I will come for you. By then you are over the border. A boat collects. You understand?’
Ramona nods.
‘You keep quiet.’
The Boreal makes to leave but the other stowaway protests once again.
‘What about the others?’
‘I have two numbers,’ says the Boreal. He jabs a finger. ‘You. Her.’
‘No, no, there’s another crate.’ The man fumbles in his pocket. He pulls out a crumpled piece of paper and holds it up. ‘Here!’
The Boreal looks at it.
‘I don’t have that number.’
Once again he turns to leave. The stowaway grabs his arm. The Boreal lashes out, pushing the stowaway off balance. He staggers back a couple of paces and trips over the bucket. The Boreal has a gun pointing at him.
‘No trouble,’ says the Boreal.
When the Boreal has gone, the stowaway turns to Ramona.
‘Please, you have to help me. My family!’
‘Why were you in a different crate?’ she asks.
‘I was meant to go first across the belt – they should have taken the next ship, they came early to Panama. It was all a rush but we got on board. The driver promised, he promised me there would be spaces. Please!’
‘I’ve got my own people to find,’ she says.
‘Please!’
He looks desperate enough to do something dangerous, she thinks.
‘All right. Let’s wait a few minutes, make sure the Boreal’s gone. And don’t piss him off, all right? You anger him, that makes trouble for me too.’
They make their way cautiously back to the cells containing the crates. As she passes the crate of her own transportation, now closed, Ramona notes its strategic placement at the front and bottom of the stack, so that the hatch faces outwards. It would only have taken a mishandling, a word awry in the immigration chain, for the crate to be facing the other way, sealing her in her own tomb. She pushes back nausea. She’s out. She’s alive.
She helps the man check the numbers on each of the crates they can reach, but none of them match. He starts to call for his family by name, low-voiced at first, but becoming more and more agitated as he fails to locate the crate. Ramona is worried now. He’s going to compromise her.
‘Keep it down,’ she warns him. ‘You’re going to bring him back.’
They move into the next cell, but have no more luck.
‘I’m sorry,’ she tells the man. ‘You’re on your own from here. Maybe they’re on another ship? Come and get me if you find them.’
Alone, she begins the search. Below the water line there is no light except for the brief, occasional flicker of the torch; time is slippery, uncatchable. Someone has her mother. Who are you? Do you know I’m coming? Do you know I’m going to find you? The mantra keeps her moving. Gradually the ship makes itself familiar. Ramona is always one step ahead or behind, perpetually alert to the footfall of a crew member, the possibility of discovery. Watching them, sometimes from afar, sometimes very close, close enough to spit. She makes herself like the dust again. Hating and learning, but exerting herself to put her hate aside, because it gets in the way of learning. There will be time enough to reclaim it later.
She grows accustomed to catching a hatch in the moment before it closes. Clambering from compartment to compartment, watching and listening, committing every exit and cubby and ladder to memory. All her life she has made maps. Now the humid belly of the ship becomes a three-dimensional labyrinth in her mind.
It is strangely devoid of life. At the stern, the large shipping c
ontainers sit snugly within their cells. Aft, the ship’s solar sails tilt towards the sun, tracking its passage across the sky as the ship creeps up the coast. She knows it is night when the ship powers down and sometimes she thinks she can hear the pummelling of the sea around them.
The crew are quartered below deck. Each time she sees a new face, Ramona commits it to memory. She counts seventeen faces. Once or twice she spies the Boreal crewman who opened up the crates, but she always keeps herself out of sight. The crewman does not come to check on her and the other stowaway, or if he has, she wasn’t there, and he has left no sign of a visit.
It is not until the second day that she finds evidence of the kidnapped Patagonians.
She observes a woman who is clearly not a member of the crew going to the upper decks. Unlike the others, the woman goes barefoot, and is not in uniform. She wears camouflage trousers and a tank top and a flashlight on a string around her neck, and she is armed: a handgun clearly visible at her hip. The woman passes several crew members, but not one of them acknowledges her, or even meets her eye. They act as if they haven’t seen her.
Ramona has no doubt that this is her woman.
She waits for the woman to come back from the upper levels. When she returns, her hair is wet and she smells of soap. Ramona follows. The woman leads her down a flight of steps, along a corridor, and through one of the below-deck holds, packed with smaller crates, situated on the opposite side of the ship to where Ramona and the stowaway were taken. The woman climbs backwards down a ladder to reach another level, switching on the flashlight to guide her. No one else is down here. It’s dark and hideously hot. They are still in a storage area, a long and narrow compartment, but the engine room must be nearby because the noise is louder.
Loud enough to mask any upsetting sounds.
The woman stops abruptly. Ramona drops to a crouch and freezes. The woman waves her torch around what appears to be a makeshift living area, with storage shelves and a slung hammock. She selects things from the shelves, cans of food and bottles of water, and loads them onto a tray, humming to herself. She picks up the tray and continues for another twenty paces, until she reaches a hatch at the end of the storage compartment. Then she sets down the tray, takes hold of her gun, and slowly rotates the wheel of the hatch.
In the few moments while the hatch is open Ramona can see the compartment on the other side is small, perhaps three metres square, and dimly lit. She glimpses figures huddled against the walls. The woman – the handler, she thinks – slides the food inside.
‘Lunch,’ she says.
Hands reach for the food.
Ramona creeps closer.
To the left of the compartment is a familiar figure, small and shrunken. A figure hunched over on herself, back to the wall, rocking with the gentle rhythm of vacancy.
Ma.
The relief and anger together are almost too much. Her first instinct is to shout out, I’m here! She wants to rush into the room, scoop her mother up in her arms and run. But there is nowhere to run. They are stuck on this ship, together, but not together. The crew, up there, the prisoners, down here, the two layers of the ship a dual consciousness that is never acknowledged, and if it is never acknowledged, it cannot exist. These people have already been vanished.
The handler closes and locks the hatch, cutting off Ramona’s view. She ambles back to the storage area and pulls on a kind of robotic headset, with goggles and earpieces and wires. Then she settles herself in the hammock.
Ramona remains where she is, trying to control her breathing, the shaking in her hands. The impulse to act without thought.
The handler fiddles with the headset and lets out a long, satisfied sigh. Minutes pass. From time to time the handler makes noises – a grunt of satisfaction, or a shout of annoyance, which seems to correspond with a blinking light on the headset. Her hands clench and relax at her sides.
Ramona watches. She weighs up the options. She could kill the handler. The opportunity is before her: the handler is exposed, her bare neck offering a tempting target, and Nazca keep us Ramona would find it easy to end this woman’s life. But where does that leave her? With a room full of prisoners and no way of getting them off the ship without being seen. Even if she could, they’re advancing up the coast of the northern uninhabitable zone. There’s nowhere to go between here and Alaska. To get her mother out, she needs help. She needs the co-operation of the handler.
She thinks about the handler’s movements. This woman never interacts with the crew. They don’t look at her. They don’t speak to her. If asked, could any one of them describe her?
Slowly and very quietly, Ramona retreats back the way she came. She needs to think, and prepare.
For the next twenty-four hours she follows the handler’s movements, memorizing her routine. The handler feeds the prisoners three times a day. She takes their waste up on deck and returns with an empty bucket. She goes to the crew’s quarters and returns with wet hair, smelling of soap. But Ramona never once observes her speak or interact with a single member of the crew.
Ramona returns to the stowaway compartment and raids her pack for the things she will need. She chooses her location: a small hold near to the engine room. The confined space is dark and claustrophobic, there are pipes, and most importantly it’s never visited by the crew.
The next time the handler takes food to the prisoners, Ramona waits for her to close the hatch, and wheel it locked. Now the handler will proceed up on deck to take some air before going to the crew’s facilities to wash. Only this time she won’t make it as far as that. Ramona follows silently, gun in hand. As the handler reaches for the ladder she makes her move.
She leaps forwards and strikes the back of the handler’s head with the barrel of her gun. The woman staggers, but does not fall. She turns. She’s taller than Ramona, and stronger too by the look of it, but she’s temporarily disorientated. Ramona clouts her again, hard across the temples, putting all of her strength into the blow. The handler slumps and Ramona lowers her to the floor.
She resists the desire to beat the handler’s head to a pulp.
Now Ramona works quickly. She drags the handler backwards. The woman is muscled and heavy. Her bare feet slither along the floor. When she reaches the holding place, Ramona strips her of her trousers, leaving the woman in the tank top and her underwear. She takes the nylon rope from around her waist and trusses the handler to the pipes, drawing the bonds tight and finally fixing in place a gag torn from her own clothes. She can’t risk any screaming.
She fights the urge to go and check on the prisoners straight away. She has to be here when this one wakes.
While the handler remains unconscious, Ramona runs the torch over her, checking the woman’s body for any identifying marks and the pockets and linings of the clothing she removed. She removes a knife and a pair of handcuffs, which she puts to use to shackle the handler’s ankles. Like the Boreal kidnapper in the highlands, this woman has no birthmarks, tattoos or other identifying markings. She carries no identity papers. Her body is honed for action, with strength in the arms and thighs, and her hair is cut short, out of the way of her eyes.
Ramona sits and waits. Her entire body is sticky with sweat; it’s been over seventy-two hours since she was able to wash and she probably stinks. She wonders how far up the coast they are now. She wonders how the hell she is going to get her mother off the ship and back to safety. For the first time since boarding she allows herself to think of Félix, who she left in a papaver-induced slumber, Félix’s horror on waking up and finding her gone, Félix’s worry, Félix’s anger that she’s undertaken this mission without him. From childhood friends to intermittent lovers, they’ve always led their own nomadic paths, but put herself in his position and she knows she would feel the same worry, the same anger. She hopes he hasn’t done anything stupid, like try and follow her. Ramona’s life is hers to gamble with; he shouldn’t be dragged into her mess. Félix has to understand that, even if he doesn’t agree.
<
br /> Despite their long history, there are instances in her life that she has never shared with him, and doubtless he with her – things they have seen or done, acts too strange or shameful to speak of. Observing the handler’s shallow breathing, it occurs to her that this trip is likely to be one of them.
When the handler begins to stir, Ramona speaks softly.
‘You’re in a part of the ship where no one will come looking for you. There is no point in shouting or trying to scream. If you do, I’ll kill you here. I’ll cut your throat.’
She draws the edge of her knife gently along the handler’s bare leg, not hard enough to cut, but enough for her to feel the blade.
She hears the handler’s breathing, shallow and ragged. She switches on the torch. The handler’s eyes squint in the sudden brightness before settling on Ramona with a clear, steady hate.
‘Do you understand me?’ Ramona asks. ‘You speak Spanish?’
The handler nods.
Ramona sets the torch upright on the floor and loosens the gag, taking care to avoid the handler’s teeth.
‘Now you’re going to talk. Who are those people you’re guarding?’
The handler stares at her contemptuously. Ramona considers her for a moment. She has met people like her before, people so inured to violence you could shoot their best friend in front of them without them flinching. But most people will fight for their life when it comes down to it. The handler has to feel the thread her life is dangling on.
Ramona backhands her, and a thin line of blood trickles from the corner of the handler’s mouth.
‘Who are those people?’
‘Scum,’ says the handler. ‘Lizards. They’re nobodies.’
‘Where are you taking them?’
The handler spits. Ramona strikes her a second time, and feels a crunch in the soft tissues of the nose.
‘I said, where are you taking them?’
‘North.’
‘Where north?’
‘To a place where they can be useful.’