The lock on the door clicked and Sophie sat up expecting the General. The bright light from the hallway hurt her eyes and she saw a dark figure standing in the doorway. She couldn’t tell who it was. A stack of clothing hit her chest, tossed by the person in the doorway.
The person said something in Chinese. A male voice she didn’t recognize as the general. She looked at the clothes and figured out she was to wear them.
Once she was dressed the soldier in the doorway escorted her out of the room and down the hall.
“Where am I going?” she asked.
The soldier didn’t reply. On the deck of the ship she felt the cool ocean air against her skin. The smell of spring was in the air. Had she been locked in the ship all winter? There were more ships on the docks and trucks loaded with lumber being moved into the cargo containers. The harbor was in full working order.
The soldier walked next to Sophie, pulling her along by the arm to a Humvee. He placed her in the passenger seat and started the truck.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked. It was more like thinking out loud than actually speaking to the soldier.
The soldier continued to stare straight ahead and she watched the city pass by as they drove down the street. She didn’t recognize it anymore. The coffee shops and clothing stores had been replaced as tea shops and places for soldiers to play mahjong. Former office buildings now had officers and Chinese businessmen leaving the double doorways making deals on how to split the spoils of a war she must have missed.
The soldier drove up to a checkpoint where two guards talked to the soldier for a few seconds, looked over Sophie and waved them through. By now she was wondering if she was being taken to a concentration camp.
The school they drove up to was not familiar to her. The building still had the words high school posted on the sign. A piece of painted press board was nailed over the old school name and replace with Chinese hanzi. The parking lot had several Chinese military vehicles parked by the front doors. The soldier pulled up to an empty spot and pulled Sophie from the passenger seat. He didn’t say anything. He let his rough demeanor do the talking. They walked through the front doors and saw more guards standing in the entrance.
A cart was being pushed down the hallway towards them. A man in a green uniform was looking blankly as he passed by. On the cart the outline of a body could be seen. Where the head should be there was blood that had absorbed through the white sheet. Sophie could tell by the hills on the chest the body belonged to a woman. This was not how it was going to end. She had plans and somehow those plans would happen.
“No,” Sophie said starting to struggle. “No. Let me go.” She turned around and tried to run back to the doors. Maybe she could escape and get away from this place. If she could get outside and run there was a chance that she could be free.
Her knees dropped to the floor and she used her weight to try and break the hold the soldier had on her. He was yelling now and she could tell he was angry. She fought and needing to break the hold while her hands were cuffed behind her she turned and bit the soldier on the arm. He let go and she ran. For a split second she had won. Rising to her feet she turned towards the door. The sunlight she had not seen for months drew her to the exit. She made it three steps before the butt of a rifle smacked into her face and she collapsed to the floor.
The room was still spinning when she came to. Drool ran down her cheeks, drying at the end. A pair of hands held her head. They were gentle and soft unlike the men that had handled her for months. The room was foggy and she had a difficult time focusing on anything. She could hear voices but couldn’t understand what they were saying.
Sophie tried to talk but the words wouldn’t come out. When she did speak it was incoherent. The mumbled mess of words brought attention to her and she could tell she was surrounded by people.
“She’s waking up,” a woman’s voice said.
Sophie was able to focus now and there were four people standing above her plus the woman holding her head in her hands.
“Where am I?” Sophie asked. “Who are you?”
Some of the answers she already had. These people spoke English. She tried to sit up but the pressure in her head made her lay back down.
“They gave you a nice bump to the head,” the woman sitting with her said.
Sophie raised her hand and felt the tender lump on her forehead.
“Ow,” she said lowering her hand to her side.
“How long until she can move?” a man said. He was handsome in some regards. Dark hair and blue eyes on a tall frame. She couldn’t tell if he really was tall or not. From this angle everyone was tall.
“Give her a few hours,” the woman said.
Looking around Sophie could tell she was in an old gymnasium. Basketball hoops still hung overhead with the nets removed. Bleachers were pulled out for people to sit on. A row of wheeled carts came in through the locked double doors. They looked like food carts being pushed by Chinese people. Sophie slowly sat up and saw that she was still dressed. The sensation of clothing on her skin was foreign to her now.
“What is this place?” Sophie looked around.
“The Chinese refer to it as a refugee camp,” the woman behind her answered. “We call it a prison.”
The people lined up in front of the carts and were handed paper plates with a ladle worth of food.
“Are you able to eat?” the woman asked.
“I don’t think so.” Sophie wasn’t sure if she should eat anything, still feeling dizzy.
The people in the gym started to filter outside with their food. A set of double doors went out into a courtyard. Sophie walked outside and saw rows of tents set up surrounded by fencing and barb wire run across the top. The sad thing was that the fence was there before to keep children safe. Now the fence was there to keep people inside. Guards walked along the outside of the fence holding machine guns and smoking cigarettes. Sophie felt like she was in another world.
“So where have you been?” a man asked Sophie.
“What do you mean?”
“Most of us were picked up before winter.”
Sophie wasn’t sure if she should tell the truth or not. If she said where she had really been they might think she was a willing prostitute of the General. These people might not understand the nightmare she had been living through. Sophie thought for a second.
“I was in a cabin next to a preserve,” she explained. “my family had it for a while and there was food stored up there.”
“So you just hid in a cabin?” the man didn’t sound convinced.
“I was picked up while picking dandelion leaves. Food was running low and I had to forage for food.”
The man nodded. She could tell he was thinking things over.
“The dandelions disappeared in this yard a long time ago,” he said. “Once people figured out you could eat them they were adding it to food because of the slop they feed us. My name is Greg.”
“Sophie,” she put her hand in his and felt more secure having met somebody.
The woman that had been holding Sophie’s head walked up behind them.
“My name is Candice,” the woman put her hand out to greet Sophie. “Glad to see you are feeling better. That is a nasty bump on your head.”
“I guess they don’t like people trying to escape,” Sophie said trying to touch the lump again.
“They frown upon things like that,” Greg said looking around. “Stick with us Sophie. We can help you out.”
A curious look came to Sophie’s face. She didn’t understand what Greg was saying but knew that sticking with them was her best bet for figuring out how this place worked.
Chapter 12
Unscrewing the cap to the fuel tank was quick and methodical. Placed next to the opening, it sat face down ready to be put back on. A funnel was placed into the opening where large handfuls of sand were poured in until the bucket was empty. The cap was screwed back on before Clive and Kelly moved on to the next truck in t
he convoy. Across the camp, River showed Dallas how to run a line from the ignition switch to the gas tanks of vehicles that ran on gasoline. The task was difficult since the cap would not screw onto the top with a wire in the opening. A hole had to be drilled large enough for the wire to fit, but small enough not to be noticed. River would smear clay like mud over the spot to hide the wire. On older vehicles the wires to distributors caps were removed. Tail pipes were filled with anything they could stuff into them.
As the group left the logging site they took turns driving large iron spikes into the trunks of trees. The spikes were taken from local railroad tracks. Over time, the tree’s bark would grow over the spike, hiding it. When the loggers did get their equipment running, the spike would destroy their chains, creating a high cost for gathering the trees, on top of the other sabotage taking place. While most of the men took their job as a form of resistance Budd enjoyed the activity and would tell stories about his childhood.
“And then there was that time that Tommy Collins had to climb to the top of the water tower because I spray painted his sister’s phone number on it with a list of her favorite activities. It took him two days to cover up all the paint. At first he only covered the numbers and letters, but that left the outline of what I wrote. So then he had to cover the whole water tower.” Budd laughed the entire time he told the story, the only person in the group that thought it was funny.
“Why would you advertise what the girl was doing if you were banging her?” Kelly asked, not understanding the story.
“I never banged her. That was the point.” Budd shook his head. “Jesus man, that’s the joke.”
“You think that helped you with the other girls in town?” Clive asked, picking up a sledgehammer and driving a spike into a tree.
“Hell no. She was friends with most of them.” Budd didn’t understand what he was saying.
“So you piss off all the girls in town because one of them turns you down?” Kelly pointed out.
“So what?” Now Budd realized how stupid his story was. “They weren’t going to fuck me anyway. What do I care?”
Kelly and Clive shared a glance and continued on with their jobs. In the distance Dallas raced back to the group. His face was excited, but urgent.
“Grab your things, we have to go.” Dallas raced past the group.
Clive dropped the sledgehammer and followed behind. The rest of the men went to the rendezvous point. They made sure to have a backup plan in case they were surprised during their missions and were separated while trying to escape.
The side of the mountain curved around to face the opposite side where the logging crew had their equipment set up. The crews would take a day or two off to go back to town for rest and relaxation then come back and continue where they left off. Older crews were likely to find things that River had done to their equipment, simple things like slashed tires, or stolen equipment. Lately, the crews had been rotating back to China and new groups of men were being sent in. They had not experienced the sabotage that happens when tree hugging hippies are around, or angry Rangers.
An old pickup truck drove up the two track dirt road to the logging site with the bed full of men. The diesel motor rumbled as the truck came to a stop. The driver, also a Chinese man, tells the men to get out in a gruff voice. The men jump out of the back exchanging insults with the driver.
“You call me a dirty duck fucker again and I’ll leave your ass up here,” the driver warned.
“You do that and you don’t get paid,” a young man said smiling and giving the driver a wink.
“Son of a bitch,” the driver watched the last of the men jumped out and shifted the truck into reverse.
The truck disappeared down the road with no intention of coming back for another two weeks.
A dozen men stood around the logging site babying their hangovers while they looked at their equipment. Two men picked up their chainsaws and carried them down the hill. Another man waited for the crane to be needed before stepping into the contraption. The design was simple. A wire was run down the hill with a motorized pulley that dragged the logs up the hill where they would be stacked for pickup. Until there were trees to be dragged up he had little to do.
One of the men decided to get a head start on his job and hopped in his truck to prepare for loading. He never noticed the sand on his fuel tank when he climbed into the cab. The truck started right away, considering the amount of time it sat while he was gone. Three days ago he left the vehicle, now it started like a faithful servant. The driver shifted the truck into gear and drove towards the crane where it would be loaded. As the truck turned around it stalled out and wouldn’t turn over as he turned the ignition switch.
Down the hill the two men worked on a tree. Their chainsaws roared as they sliced the blade into the trunk of a young pine tree. The tree fell with a soft thud. The second man hopped on the trunk cutting the branches off. The first man hollered up the hill for the crane operator to get to work.
Reluctantly, the operator rose to his feet and climbed into the cabin of the crane. The driver of the truck was cussing up a storm as the hood of the truck was open and the man was inside trying to find what was causing the motor to stall.
Down the hill the two loggers attached the chain to the trunk of the tree and moved to the next victim. The second logger started his chainsaw and sliced it into the trunk of the next tree. Halfway through, the chain snapped, hitting an iron spike that had been buried deep inside. The chain whipped off and flew at the second logger standing by. The poor guy didn’t have a chance as the teeth of the chainsaw bit into his face and wrapped around him. The heat of the metal and the teeth of the chain burned his flesh while cutting. The man with the broken saw turned in surprise trying to figure out what happened only to see his friend wearing the chain on his face and screaming as he tried to cover an eye that had been bitten into. The logger hollered from down the hill, but wasn’t heard by the rest of the crew.
The crane operator relaxed in his seat and finally turned the key in the ignition. The first click did nothing so he turned it again. The side of the crane exploded as the gasoline ignited and blew the metal out towards the truck parked next to it. The driver of the truck was thrown out of the cab and into the camp; the crane operator couldn’t see anything while he was engulfed in flames. Panicking to put out the flames he threw his arms around and somehow, maybe through muscle memory, opened the door of the cabin and fell onto the ground. The hollers and screams of the operator traveled through the mountains.
On the side of the mountain, the logger struggled to remove the toothed chain from his friend’s face. Not knowing where to start, he yelled up the hill only to see smoke rising up where the crane should have been. A dried out pine tree burst into flames and the sudden threat of a forest fire became very real.
On the ground, the injured logger breathed heavy and hollered out for his mother in Mandarin. He would move back and forth between touching the chain embedded in his flesh and throwing his hands around looking for help.
Back at the crane the fire expanded to across the camp, reaching the fuel cans that were stored only fifty feet from the crane. The crews didn’t want to haul them across the camp to refuel the crane.
As the logger climbed the side of the mountain to find help for his friend, an explosion roared above him with pieces of machinery and wood flying overhead. The logger dropped to his chest as the rumble traveled down the mountain and he realized whoever was above him on the ridge was likely dead.
Across the valley, on the opposite side of the mountain, the Rangers watched as their sabotage worked perfectly. First they could see the explosion from the crane, a second later the sound of that event reached them. Budd let out a small laugh, enjoying the chaos they had started. A few minutes later the second, more powerful explosion, took place and the men had smiles on their faces.
“What if these guys are just contractors?” Clive asked.
“They knew the risk,” Budd responded imm
ediately.
No one could argue with that logic. Regardless of who destroyed Washington D.C. or turned the power off, the fact remained these men were traveling across the Pacific Ocean to profit from the downfall of America. That was an unforgivable sin these men could not allow without repercussion. Dallas sat back and took out a bag of food. He was going to enjoy the show like he was watching a movie.
The smoke climbed in the distance and a pine tree was lit up like a pyrotechnic Christmas tree. Satisfied with their work the Rangers picked up their gear and moved out of the area in search of more logging sites.
Chapter 13
A long-awaited misty rain fell onto the forest. The trees collected the water, dropping it in larger globs to the forest floor. The mist wasn’t hard to deal with, the large drops from the trees were annoying and needed to stop.
Choi was placed in charge of finding out why the shipments of timber stopped coming from the mountains. The locations closer to shore worked like clockwork, but the big money was from further inland. An old Jeep took Choi, his driver, and two other soldiers up the two track road to one of the logging sites. An area had been cleared out a few hundred feet, but it was not from the crew. Instead a fire had broken out and bodies in various stages of decomposition were laid out all over the site.
The driver stopped the Jeep, giving Choi the opportunity to step out. Large drops of dew fell onto his green officer’s hat causing him to look up as more water dropped into his face. He wiped away the rain with a disapproving scowl on his face. Any water that didn’t come from a shower or sink was disgusting and could go away never to return as far as he was concerned.
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