by Larry Bond
Mara had wondered why she hadn’t seen any automobiles on the way up; she had assumed that it was because the area was so poor. Now she saw that the authorities were seizing all motor vehicles—cars, trucks, and motorbikes—at the checkpoint. Once stripped of their vehicle, the refugees were then literally pushed onto the road, told to go south. The entire area had apparently been ordered evacuated shortly after Mara set out from Hanoi.
Her truck was the only vehicle heading north, and at first as she drove up Mara thought she would just get right through, without even being stopped—the soldiers were focused on the cars and the refugees. But as she passed into the bright glow of the spotlight illuminating the checkpoint area, an officer turned from the other lane and put up his hand.
Mara thought of ignoring him and simply driving on. But when she saw two soldiers step from the shadows ahead and shoulder their rifles, she downshifted and stopped.
“I have medicine for the orphanage at Nam Det,” she told the captain when he strode over. She used English, deciding that what she needed to say was too complicated for her Vietnamese. “I am with the Sisters of Charity. We have to get the children out safely.”
The captain either didn’t understand her English or didn’t care to soil his tongue with it.
“Why are you driving an army truck?” he asked in Vietnamese.
“General Tho gave it to us,” Mara said, switching to Vietnamese as well. “The soldiers who were supposed to guard me would go only as far as Vinh Yen. They left me on my own. They had to join the fighting. Maybe you could have some of your men assist me. There are many people who need help with the evacuation there. The little children—”
“Out of the truck!”
When Mara hesitated, the captain took out his pistol and pointed it at her. His two soldiers did the same with their rifles.
“I can get out,” said Mara, raising her hands and reaching for the door handle.
The captain pulled the door open.
“I’m a nun,” she said, holding up the cross.
The captain yanked her from the truck, throwing her on the ground.
If it had been just he and she, even with the gun, even with her cover story of being a nun, she would have jumped from the ground and thrown herself into his chest. He was a little rooster of a man, probably fifty pounds lighter than she was, and no match for her, especially if caught off guard.
He had a rooster face as well as body, a sharp nose that jutted prominently from his face—a target just waiting to be kicked in.
But he had the two soldiers nearby, and there were many others close by. Even if she escaped at first, she’d stand out in the city, and beyond.
What would a real nun do?
Pray to God to strike the bastard down.
And maybe cry, depending on the nun.
Mara had never been the weepy sort, but she forced herself to simper now, protesting about “God’s little children” who needed to be saved. The captain ignored her, ordering his men to search the truck.
Pushed aside, Mara tried calculating an escape route. There were too many soldiers around to give her good odds, though.
She could grab Rooster Face’s pistol and use him as a hostage.
Satisfying, but ultimately counterproductive. Best to keep with the cover story, play it through. Worst case they were going to send her south with the refugees. She might miss tonight’s drop, but that could be rescheduled.
No, worst case she could be arrested. That was a possibility, but probably a complication Rooster Face wouldn’t want to deal with.
Worst case was even worse than that. But she kept such possibilities locked off in a different part of her brain. No need to examine them now.
“Where are your orders?” the captain demanded as his men finished searching the cab, signaling with their hands that they had not found anything.
“Orders?”
“The general who gave you permission. Where are his orders?”
Mara had some trouble with the words and his accent. She thought at first that he simply meant her papers; she gave him her “safe” EU passport, which identified her as an Irish citizen. Mara had already rehearsed an excuse about why the passport didn’t call her “sister”—she was a prenovice, a special category of nuns in training who had not yet joined the novitiate.
“My passport,” she said, pushing it into the captain’s hands.
“Where are your orders?” repeated the captain, throwing the passport on the ground.
“The general did not give me orders. He gave me guards,” said Mara. “Soldiers.”
“And where are they?”
“They left me. I didn’t think it was my place to question them. I am a nun, not a soldier.”
“You are a foreign bloodsucker.”
Among the many sisters Mara had known growing up, one in particular had been stubborn and strong. A strict disciplinarian, Sister Jean Marie had been the scourge of the parochial school Mara attended until sixth grade. Mara imagined she was her now—a massive, if necessary, leap of imagination, but one that gave her a map to follow.
“I suck no blood,” she said, raising her head as she stiffened her spine, both literally and figuratively. “I am doing God’s work for the least fortunate.”
“God is a fairy tale,” answered the captain, adding several words that would probably have made Sister Jean Marie blush.
“The orphans are not fairy tales, and they do not care who feeds them. God or fairy tale,” said Mara. The Vietnamese words sprang into her head as she played the role, her confidence gaining. “These are poor children who must be saved from the Chinese devils.”
While the captain was not impressed by Mara’s religious claims, much less her pose as a nun, his two soldiers were clearly uncomfortable, shifting back and forth behind him. One of them looked particularly embarrassed, frowning and looking down at the ground whenever she glanced in his direction.
“We will repel the Chinese scum,” said the captain.
“I pray that you will.” Mara made a point of looking at his soldiers. “I thank God that you have such fine men in your command.”
This only made the captain more angry. He spun back to his men. “Have you searched the back of the truck? Get your lazy asses in there. Find out what this she-bitch has. Probably poison for the children.”
The soldiers rushed to comply. They opened the tailgate, then hauled the motorbike down. It slipped from their hands and bounced on the ground.
“And what does a nun do with a motorcycle!” thundered the captain.
“I needed a way to get to the general’s camp,” said Mara easily. She pushed her chin up, just as she imagined Sister Jean Marie would do. “One of our parishioners, a very humble and kind man, took pity on me when I said I would walk, and—”
“Silence! Every word you utter is a lie.”
The captain walked over to examine the motorbike. He picked it up, frowned at it, then let it drop back into the dirt. He ordered the soldiers to confiscate it.
Mara sensed a compromise was in the works—he was going to take the bike but let her go. The swap was okay with her—she’d make it up to its owner somehow.
The worst thing to do, though, would be to admit that the unspoken deal was a good one.
“Where are you going with the motorcycle?!” she shouted.
“Nuns have no need for such things,” answered the captain.
“It’s not ours. It is our parishioner’s. It is his only possession.”
“Then he should have been more careful with it.”
The captain walked away, striding toward a knot of other soldiers, who were interrogating the refugees. Mara waited for a second, then scooped up her passport and jumped in the truck, happy to have gotten off so cheaply.
~ * ~
9
Northwestern Vietnam
By dusk, Josh had walked another five or six kilometers, still roughly paralleling the road. There was a lot of activity on the highwa
y, with trucks passing by at a furious rate. The few glimpses he’d caught convinced him they were all Chinese.
There were aircraft as well—jets high overhead and helicopters in the distance.
He was being followed. He knew it had to be the little girl he’d seen earlier, though she was very careful now about not getting close enough to let him see her. He heard noises in the brush, noises unlike those a deer or other animal would make, or a frog, or even the wind.
Pale green, with overly large black eyes, the frogs sat on the rocks and low plants, looking as if they were trying to decide which insect to pull out of the air next. Their color made them blur into the surroundings, and Josh didn’t notice them until one leaped almost into his face as he walked, spooked by the human’s approach. After that, the scientist realized the amphibians were all around him, occasionally scattering as he walked, but most often just sitting still, clacking in a low, guttural call, and staring.
It wasn’t until night began to fall that he realized he could eat the things.
The first frog he tried to catch hopped away into the brush, escaping easily. The second, which he tried to scoop off the ground in front of him a moment later, leaped up toward his hand, smacked against his open palm, and rebounded down against his leg. The live feel of the thing surprised him. It felt like a wet human biceps slapping against his hand. The webbed feet scratched gently at his flesh, the legs flailing awkwardly as he grabbed for them. The sensation was so odd that Josh stared at his hand as the frog went free.
It should have been easy, considering what he had done to the man whose rifle he had, and yet it was hard, very hard.
He was thrust back into his precollege days, biology class in high school, dissecting a frog. They’d tried injecting adrenaline into the thing to see what it would do to its heart.
One of the girls had complained that they were being cruel to animals. The teacher agreed.
If I think like that, I might just as well lie down and die right now. I’m not a scientist, I’m a survivor.
A few meters farther on, he saw two frogs sitting within two feet of each other at the side of the trail, separated by a pair of leaves from one of the plants. Singling out the frog on the right, Josh lowered himself in front of it.
I’m a survivor.
He raised his hand, then began to extend it. When he was about ten inches from the frog, it leapt to the left, escaping easily. Instead of swatting after it, he turned to catch the other one, spotted it in midair, and swung his hand. Much to his surprise, he grabbed the animal. It started to squirm, pushing its head out of his fist until he held it by only one leg.
Josh tightened his grip, clamping his hand against the squirmy skin. Then he swung his hand down, hammerlike, dashing the frog’s head against the ground.
He hadn’t meant to kill it, just get it to stop squirming. The blow split the creature’s skull. Blood and the gray ooze of brains spilled out.
Josh felt like he was going to get sick—like he had to get sick. He twisted around and put his hands on his knees, ready to retch. But nothing came out.
I have to survive, he told himself. I’m going to survive.
The next one was easier, and the one after that easier still. He caught ten frogs in all, dashing their brains out and piling them at the end of a small clearing about a hundred meters from the road. He brought some twigs together to make a fire, then decided he was too close to the road. He pulled up his shirt, put the dead frogs in it as if he were a kangaroo, and walked through the jungle until he found another clearing, this one with several clumps of dried grass, which he used to start the fire. With sturdy sticks he roasted the frogs on spits, something he had seen in a movie.
Or thought he’d seen. The boundaries between experience and dream seemed to have eroded.
And nightmare.
The fire threw up sparks as the frogs roasted. He picked at the skin of the first frog’s leg, burning the tips of his fingers. He managed to pull the flesh out, then lost it as it slipped to the ground.
He used his teeth on the second leg. The meat was tender, not really like chicken as some people said, unique.
He ate two more, quickly. Then a third and fourth.
He took his time with the fifth, hunger nearly satiated. Josh savored the bites, trying to work out the taste—not really fishlike, yet it seemed closer to that than chicken.
Something rustled in the brush. Two eyes looked at him from the dark shadows, their whites glowing with the reflection of the fire.
The girl.
“Here,” said Josh, lifting the half-eaten frog toward her. “I can cook some for you.”
She didn’t move.
“I’ll make a fresh one. Here.”
He leaned over and took another frog, holding it away from her as he poked the stick through its mouth and then out its body. Then he put it over the fire.
“They’re good,” he told the girl. “You have to eat. You need to eat.”
She was still staring at him. A good sign. He tried to remember the Vietnamese word for hello, but stress had drained his vocabulary away.
“How old are you?” Josh asked, still speaking English. “Five? Seven? I have a cousin who’s eight. I think he’s eight. I lose track. Maybe he’s ten. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
He reached and turned the stick, roasting the other side of the frog.
“My name is Josh. I’m a scientist. I study weather. It’s a good thing to study these days. A lot of call for it. Because it’s changing, you know. And, um, everything changes with it. These frogs, probably. I’ll guess they’re higher than they used to be. I mean their range. Probably it wasn’t up this high. They’re adapting, or they will adapt. They’re following their food source. I don’t know a lot about frogs, but that’s not exactly a radical guess. They are frogs.”
He stopped speaking and looked down at the animal on the skewer. “I think they’re frogs, not toads. Fauna’s not my thing.”
The girl took a step forward, parting the brush. She wore traditional Vietnamese pajamalike clothes, but her shoes were Western-style sneakers, cheap knockoffs that you could get in most Asian cities. Josh crouched down to her level, trying to make himself look less threatening.
“You can eat,” he said.
She launched herself forward, streaking toward him so quickly that his only reaction was to flinch, thinking she was going to bowl into him. Instead, she grabbed the frog and continued past him, escaping into the woods beyond.
“Hey!” he shouted, but she didn’t stop.
He jumped up just in time to see her disappear into the jungle. Josh stood for a second, unsure what to do. Then he grabbed his rifle and started after her, worried that she would go all the way out to the highway.
He had lost sight of her, but he could hear her running through the brush’. He followed along for thirty or forty meters, falling farther and farther behind. He could see only a few meters through the shadows and the trees; with every step the light seemed to fade further, until at last he could barely see to the tips of his extended hands.
Josh stopped and listened, quieting his breath as best he could so he could hear. She was somewhere ahead, not too far, maybe only a few yards, moving slower than before.
Did it really make sense to try and catch her? It wasn’t like he could talk to her. The only reason to grab her was to keep her from telling the Chinese about him if she was captured.
That was the only logical reason. He’d followed her—why?
Because he wanted her to be his friend. He wanted her to realize he was on her side, he was one of the good guys.
A poor reason to risk his life. Yet he felt compelled to continue after her.
Six or seven steps farther on, Josh heard the sound of heavy vehicles moving in the distance—Chinese troop trucks, no doubt, coming down the highway. He moved a little faster, threading his way through the thick brush and trees.
Something swiped his face. He rebounded, thinking it was
a snake and then realizing it was just a tree frond he hadn’t seen. But his reaction threw him off balance; he stumbled to his left, crashed against a tree, and fell over.
Josh lay facedown in the brush, not thinking, not encouraging himself, not despairing. He got to his knees slowly, listening, in full survival mode, listening and only listening.
There were other sounds ahead, something else moving through the jungle.
Voices.
Chinese.
He focused his eyes on the jungle before him. The brush parted— the girl, running to his left.