The Reckoning

by Jeff Long

  From this height, the faces carved on distant spires seemed to be lowering their eyes before the tower. She peered down from the edge for the others. She could hear their voices in the forest; they were speaking her name. But the plaza was empty. Her gain, she reckoned. For a few minutes more, the tower room belonged to her.

  She stepped across the stone doorsill, and the room was richly lighted inside. The roof had a rectangular opening so large she thought it must have been built as an observatory. There were no sun or stars to see now, only the green jacket of the canopy. Leaves formed a thick, moldering carpet from one wall to the other. It smelled, not unpleasantly, like a compost pile.

  Buddhas lined the far wall, or what was left of them. Side by side, each sat tucked within his own niche. She counted them: thirteen. The skylight had been built to illuminate them. At one time, the display must have been awesome.

  The centuries had not been kind, however. The far end of the statue wall had collapsed into rubble. The faces were chewed down to raw stone. At least their lower bodies had been spared the ravages of time. Their long, elegant fingers twisted in ritual shapes, like gang members’ hand signals. She imagined princes and monks meditating here, issuing prayers up through the aperture, to the heavens. Long ago, this must have been a transit station to the sacred.

  After a minute, she pulled her eyes from the Buddhas, and remnants of the Eleventh Cavalry lay all around her in the shadows to the sides and rear. She turned in place, discovering a tangle of green web gear with worn grommets, and a rotting boot, and a snaking length of unspent machine-gun bullets. Mounds and heaps of things lined the wall. The soldiers—some of them, anyway—had retreated to this room.

  She treated it like a crime scene, touching nothing, documenting everything with her camera, memorizing the line of her motions. She planted her feet as meticulously as a tai chi artist.

  Using her telephoto, she reached across the leaves to a heap of emptied metal ammunition boxes with hinged lids. Two lay on their sides, one stood upright, half filled with old water. A black-and-white dragonfly hovered there, and that was a photo.

  She found—but did not touch—a toothbrush with the bristles mashed wide from overuse. Some boy’s mother had taught him well. Dental hygiene right up to cause of death.

  Stacked boxes had rotted and collapsed, avalanching their contents out from the walls. There was a flashlight with a red lens, like something out of Dick Tracy. A flak jacket was propped up and empty. A broken M-16 rifle lay to one side. A tendril had grown up the barrel and out through the jammed chamber. A small white flower hung like a shell in mid-ejection.

  It was as if the soldiers had shed themselves here.

  As her eyes adjusted to the light, the room became more defined. The Buddhas had been defaced, not by the elements, but by gunfire. The collapsed section had been dynamited or hit by a rocket.

  Bullets—hundreds of them—scarred the statue wall in long, slashing bursts. She tried to piece together their desperate firefight. Had the enemy dropped down through the roof? Or had they come running through the door and sprayed the Americans crouching beneath the Buddhas?

  The place should have been heaped with bones. But there were none that she could see. Had they been scattered by animals, or had the victors carted them out and pitched them off the tower? Had she passed bits and pieces of them on her ascent without knowing it? Part of her didn’t want to find them. She fastened on the idea of them rising up through the hole in the roof, body and spirit, rescued on their Judgment Day.

  She passed over the hands twice before recognizing them.

  There were two of them beneath a scorch mark in one corner, the bones gloved in dried black skin.

  She pulled the image closer with her telephoto, not willing to cross over to them. To the side, were those more bones? Sticks, she saw, charred firewood. A cremation? But the pyre was too small. This was no bigger than Samnang’s cool fire.

  The hands had mummified over the years. Or been smoked by the fire. Someone had lopped them off at the wrists.

  It came to her.

  Cannibalism.

  Trapped, battered by fear, out of food, they must have taken to eating their comrades.

  A laugh—a yap—cracked through the room. It fell upon her, Luke’s animal laugh. But it wasn’t Luke up there. Molly looked, and there were three of them this time, like the one she’d seen in the ACAV turret. While she prowled through the room, the gibbons had stolen up and perched along the skylight rim. They had black masks and gray arms. Her pulse slowed. She took a picture of them, just to regain control.

  “Hey,” she said. “Just looking.”

  One leaned forward. He opened his mouth. He bared his teeth. Were they going to attack? But his eyes stayed fixed on hers, and he seemed to be trying out her language. That made her more afraid than the bared teeth.

  They were studying her, and she was alone.

  Careful not to turn her back to them, Molly began retreating from the center of the room. Something gave a muffled crunch beneath the carpet of leaves. Nut shells within the mast? She moved her foot and whatever it was shifted under there. Bones, she thought. What did anthropologists call it? The midden. She was walking across the cannibals’ scattered garbage.

  The monkeys suddenly bolted away.

  “What are you doing here, Molly?” It was Kleat’s voice at the doorway. “Sam said you’d wait.”

  She exhaled softly. “I knew you were coming. I heard your voices.”

  “Our voices? I don’t think so. The old cripple had us running to save you. We were too busy catching our breath to talk.”

  Then she’d heard birdsong, or trees creaking. Or monkeys discussing. No matter.

  “We located another gateway,” Kleat said. “With clay warriors, and rooms with pottery and jars. And a tunnel blocked with barbed wire. That makes three entrances, including the one Samnang said you found.”

  He stood in the doorway. Something about the room troubled him. It disrupted his bravado. He wouldn’t come in.

  “Where’s Duncan?” she asked.

  “Halfway up the stairs. Crawling. I’ve never seen such a fear of heights.” Kleat would not cross the threshold. “You shouldn’t have come here alone. You could have destroyed evidence.”

  Duncan appeared, and there was indeed dirt on his knees. The two men stood there, blocking the light. Did they need an invitation?

  “They were here,” she said.

  Samnang arrived last. Edging between the two Americans, he caught sight of the ruined Buddhas, and his palms clapped together like magnets. He bowed his head solemnly.

  Samnang’s entrance seemed to break the spell. The other two stepped inside. Molly imagined Kleat would set upon the room like a wolf, but he moved tentatively, scarcely nibbling at the relics.

  She watched what drew them. Kleat went for the rifle with the broken stock. Samnang gravitated to the wall holding the statues. Duncan vacillated. He moved along the edges. He lifted the web gear and dropped it, and ran his fingers along the foot of one damaged Buddha, and shook his head sadly. Then he found the husk of a radio set propped against one wall, and that occupied him.

  Molly remained near the center, surrounded by their motion, shooting them making their discoveries, waiting.

  The radio was partially disassembled. Duncan flipped switches on and off and the thing was dead, of course.

  “There are two hands,” she said, pointing at the fire ring.

  “Hands?” said Kleat. He took the pieces of rifle with him to the corner. He nudged aside the sticks of firewood and laid one of the dried hands along his outstretched palm. It was small. Too small, she realized.

  “Monkeys,” Kleat said.

  “Monkeys?”

  “The men ran out of food.”

  Kleat glanced from the hand to her. “Did you think they were human? Don’t tell me. Ghouls in camouflage.”

  “No.”

  Duncan returned to his tinkering. “Huh,” he said an
d pulled out a transistor tube. He held it up to the light. “Look at that.”

  Duncan brought it over to Molly, and Kleat joined them. He heard the crunching sound underfoot. “What’s that?” He pressed at the leaves with his boot.

  Duncan held out his find. “It’s a condom,” he said. “And there’s something inside.”

  It was in fact a condom stretched long over a short tube and knotted at the end. He tore off the knot and peeled down the sheath, baring a roll of papers torn from a pocket-size notebook. The pages were brittle, and he didn’t try to force them open.

  “It must have been a journal. Or a will.” He studied the outside of the roll. “But the rain got in. The ink’s run. It’s spoiled.”

  “There are still some words,” said Molly. “Maybe with better light—”

  “What is this?” Kleat said again, rocking his weight over the leaves.

  Bones breaking, she thought. Monkey or squirrel or parrot bones, whatever hungry men might take from the forest. Kleat worked his fingers under the carpet of leaves.

  He lifted a long fragment to expose the red stone of the floor. They weren’t bones, but cartridge shells. Duncan pocketed the papers, and Molly helped clear more of the floor. Brass shells littered the floor.

  “Now we know where the side guns on the ACAV went,” Kleat said. “These are shells from an M-60. They must have pulled the big guns out of the tracks and brought them up here. Look at it all, like Armageddon in here.”

  Molly picked one of the cartridges from the floor, and a beetle crawled out. She dropped it.

  “There’s something more here,” Duncan said. He ran his fingers along a wide black stripe.

  The three of them rolled back more of the thick mat. A big serpentine line emerged, painted onto the floor with engine grease. To its side, another line appeared.

  “It’s an SOS,” Duncan said. They didn’t need to unpeel the whole thing. Stretching thirty-feet from end to end, it lay directly beneath the skylight. They looked up at the forest ceiling.

  “They must have chopped a hole in the canopy, or burned it open with fuel,” Kleat said. “They were trying to signal for help.”

  “But who would see it?” said Molly.

  “A passing helicopter. Spotter planes. Our pilot.”

  Like a child’s prayer, Molly thought. The soldiers had died making wishes to the sky.

  “It’s coming together,” said Kleat. “They made their last stand in the tower. You couldn’t ask for a better field of fire. The enemy would have had to come up the stairs one at a time. But how long could nine men hold out? It must have been hand-to-hand combat in the end.”

  “I thought of that, too,” said Duncan. “But then there should be bones all over the place.”

  “This is quite odd,” Samnang said behind them. He had moved from the Buddhas to the doorway and was running his hands along the back wall. He walked over to them.

  He stirred the shells with a stick, and a whole colony of beetles began scuttling around their feet.

  “All of these come from American guns,” Samnang said. “M-60, here, M-16, this one, and this.”

  Molly felt Kleat’s eyes on her, and knew what he was thinking: KR. The old guerrilla was exposing himself.

  “This is detonation cord for plastic explosive.” Samnang held up a coil. “That explains the damage at the far end. C4 plastique. And these I dug from the wall.”

  Samnang opened his hand to show a half dozen lead slugs. “All from American guns. Also, you would think their fire would be directed at the door, yes? But the walls are smooth and untouched, you see. Only the wall of statues is scarred. They alone were targeted.”

  “What are you getting at?” Kleat said.

  “I have looked,” said Samnang, “and there is no sign of an enemy.”

  Kleat’s voice dropped to a growl. “They were fighting for their lives.”

  “Perhaps,” said Samnang. “But against whom?”

  “Okay.” Kleat mocked him. “Whom?”

  Samnang let the mashed slugs fall from his palm. “me damnée,” he said. His French sounded like a song.

  Kleat jerked. “What?” His voice thinned to a whisper. His hard-boiled expression crumpled. He stepped back as if the slugs were poisoned. Molly saw he was retreating from Samnang. Eyes round behind his thick lenses, he looked stricken.

  Not certain what to make of Kleat’s sudden affliction, Molly said, “Damned men?”

  “Fallen from grace,” Samnang said. He acted oblivious to Kleat’s recoil. “It is only my conjecture. But what if the men turned against one another?”

  “Bullshit,” Kleat said. Molly wasn’t sure what he was denouncing though, the guesswork or its author. Or something else. He was staring at Samnang.

  “How then to interpret the knife?” Samnang asked.

  Kleat blinked. “What knife?”

  They followed Samnang to the wall of Buddhas. Molly had not spied it through her telephoto. You had to see it from the side, jammed to the hilt in a seam between the stone blocks, the handle protruding.

  Samnang let them consider the knife. Up close, the Buddhas looked eaten by disease. The knife’s presence was deliberate, like a judgment rendered, or a desecration.

  “A K-Bar knife,” Kleat said, his certainty returning. “That’s how I interpret it.”

  “But why would anyone stab it into a stone wall?” said Molly. “Here of all places, this wall.”

  “How would I know?”

  “It looks so angry. Like adding insult to injury.”

  “We’re talking about a piece of stone,” said Kleat. “A dead city.”

  “Molly’s right,” Duncan said. “It does look…excessive.”

  “Excessive,” Kleat scoffed. “They were fighting for their lives.”

  “Samnang’s got a point, though. The only damaged wall is this one. And see how the faces of the Buddhas were targeted? This knife didn’t end up here by accident. Someone found a joint in the stone and hammered it in with all his strength. This looks less like a battle than a signature.”

  “What does it matter?” Kleat said. “A bunch of old statues.”

  He grabbed at the handle. He was arming himself, Molly realized. Let him have it. The knife would be a rusty old thing.

  He pulled, but the wall held on. He braced his other hand against the stone to pull again. Just then a clap of thunder exploded directly above the canopy.

  It was so close, Molly’s knees buckled. She smelled ozone, a whiff of the upper stratosphere. The men’s eyes went wide and white. They looked at each other.

  The seconds passed, her ears ringing. More thunder rippled in the far distance. The sense of nature returned.

  The knife and the sky had nothing to do with each other. It had been thundering since morning. Just the same, Kleat released the stubborn handle with disgust.

  In the silence that followed, another sound descended to them, the hushing sound leaves make when they tremble. But it wasn’t the leaves.

  After a minute, water began dripping through the canopy.

  The rain had finally come.

  25.

  They fled the tower slowly. Rain fell in rivulets from the canopy. Water raced down the furrow in the winding staircase, forcing them to the edge. Molly had the advantage with her climber’s balance and her youth. Twice she caught Kleat when he slipped. For a few minutes, the dangers unified them.

  The forest grew darker by ounces. The rain diminished. Samnang guided them through the city to the stairs that led to camp.

  The brothers had already returned from the gate. The thatch hut and campfire waited below like a lighthouse in a deep harbor. By the time they reached ground level, Molly’s cold sweat had returned.

  It couldn’t be malaria, she thought. She was on proquanil. Then again, she was on proquanil because the Cambodian strain of malaria had grown resistant to chloroquine. Maybe the bug had morphed again.

  The brothers, by the fire, were in high spirits, their go
ld teeth flickering like sparks in the darkness, their tattoos glistening from the canopy’s slow drip. Molly arrived at the hut to find two dry green ponchos spread as a floor. Vin bustled over with a cup of steaming black tea loaded with so much sugar it made her teeth ache. She thanked him.

  Kleat arrived, his bronze skull as slick as a muscle car. He was wearing the flak jacket from the tower room. Now he could pretend to be bulletproof like the brothers. The superstitions were layering over them. He didn’t bother to remove his boots. Molly scooted deeper into the hut to make room for him.

  He thumped her knee. “We’re saved,” he said.

  Molly tried to evade his good cheer. But it was hard not to feel some camaraderie. Two nights ago they’d been licking their wounds in a restaurant, banished and irrelevant. All that was changed. Fame and wealth and great dreams were almost within their grasp. It did feel like salvation. She had her camera in her lap. The display screen flickered with images of the strange, beautiful city.

  Duncan came in from the darkness. “Have you looked in the truck? There must be ten heads in there. You’ve got to get a photo of it,” he said to Molly. “It’s like they’ve decapitated the city. The heads are always the first things to be plundered. They’re portable. Collectors go wild for them. They move like lightning on the art market.”

  Samnang entered from the night, wordless, and crossed his legs. Raindrops clung to his white burr cut. Cutting a glance at him, Kleat looked confused and at the same time annoyed, like a man who has misplaced his keys.

  “They must not do this,” Samnang said. “Taking the heads like barbarians.”

  “It’s a small price to pay,” said Kleat. “Play it through with them. You’ll get what you want. We all will.”

  “You don’t understand?” Samnang asked Kleat.