by Clive Barker
Sean looked over his shoulder at the man behind him. The man’s nose was enormous, like a hatchet buried in the front of his narrow, aquiline face. His eyes were a pale slate-gray, and his hair had thinned almost to nonexistence on his dark, weathered skull. He wore a fashionable sport coat and trousers with a light gray T-shirt, Italian leather shoes. His golden watch gleamed in the ruddy light.
He sat down at a table across the aisle, about five feet from the drunken policeman, keeping his gaze fixed on them. “Americans?”
Phil pointed. “He is. I’m Canadian.”
“Parlez-vous français?” the man said.
“Je parle français comme une vache espagnole,” Phil said.
The man’s mouth twitched almost into a smile. Sean thought that mouth had not seen a smile in quite some time. His teeth were like an ill-kept picket fence painted tobacco-stain yellow. The man reeled off more French. Phil squinted, listening, as if he was trying to decide if he had heard correctly. The Frenchman’s tone wormed under Sean’s skin.
The Frenchman put his feet up on a chair, and his gaze flicked back and forth between them as he lit up a slender brown cigarette.
“What did you say to him?” Sean said to Phil.
“I said, ‘I speak French like a Spanish cow.’”
A nimbus of blue smoke surrounded the Frenchman’s head.
Finally Sean tried to be friendly. “You going to Nha Trang?”
The Frenchman nodded slowly, a mere tipping of the head.
“Business or pleasure?”
“My business, heh.” His monosyllabic laugh held no mirth. “My business is pleasure. I do have business in Nha Trang, and from there over the border into Cambodia.”
“Cambodia, eh? You been to Angkor Wat?” Inside, Sean kicked himself. Could he sound more like an ignorant tourist? Well, even though he was, he didn’t want to sound like one.
The mirthless smirk on the man’s lips did not change as he nodded. “Of course.”
“So,” Phil said, “what’s the most ‘pleasurable’ country?”
The Frenchman tapped his cigarette. “Cambodia is a wonderful country. Vietnamese authorities are so uptight, you know? In Vietnam, one can deal only with the police and the military. In Cambodia, there is the police, the military, and the mob. The third option makes my business easier.” The Frenchman’s dead gray eyes looked past them, toward something within his mind.
Phil and Sean glanced at each other, then at the Vietnamese cop sitting five feet from him.
The Frenchman saw their glances, and that smirk crossed his lips again. “South-east Asia is delightfully corrupt. But the Communists can be… shall we say, touchy.” Then his gaze suddenly fixed on Sean, pierced him, and Sean felt like a naked kid at the public swimming pool. “You boys like Asian girls, yes?”
Boys? Both Sean and Phil were thirty.
Phil smiled. “Yeah, Vietnamese girls are hot, man. Curvy, gorgeous.”
Sean’s mind hearkened back to the night before. Ngao had been like a tall, slim goddess. The first girl he had touched since Angie. So lovely, with such pretty eyes, and an ass that could have sold a million jeans. This morning he had woken up with her scent still thick in his nose; jasmine, coconut, and spices. He imagined American G.I.s going crazy for girls like that. And Phil had had two of them fawning and giggling, one on each knee. A twinge of guilt shot through him that the night had ended so badly.
The Frenchman said, “Did you fuck them?”
“Nah, man,” Phil said, “They were hookers. No fuckee fuckee no hookers.”
Sean’s gaze flicked away.
Another presence loomed behind him, and the hairs on the nape of his neck stood up. Over his shoulder he saw an enormous Caucasian man with a thick, red braid that twined from the back of his head halfway down his chest. His sleeveless shirt revealed barb-wire tattoos encircling his corded biceps. Another tattoo looked like a military insignia. “Légion étrangère.” Strange symbols tattooed the callused knuckles on his enormous hands. His face was broad and blunt and looked like it had been smashed flat with a two-by-four. He moved with a precise, purposeful propulsion. The image of an ancient Scots warrior with an axe in his hand flashed in Sean’s mind.
The warrior passed them as if they did not exist, then leaned down and whispered in the Frenchman’s ear.
The Frenchman got up with a single fluid motion, stubbed out his cigarette. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Business calls. Enjoy your trip.” They departed together without another word.
“Jesus Christ,” Sean said, “Creepy.”
“Scary fucking Europeans, man. You get a load of Braveheart there? French Foreign Legion.”
“Yeah.” Sean laughed a little too loudly. Was this how sheep felt when they sensed a wolf nearby? He slurped down the rest of his noodles, which had almost grown cold, while Phil turned his attention to the other foreigners across the car.
They all erupted into a rousing chorus of James Brown, “I Feel Good.” The two dancers were now seated on a stool, with the woman straddling the man’s leg, their hungry lips devouring one another’s faces.
Sean looked at one of the girls, caught her eye, and gave her a smile. Her blonde hair was tied into a loose ponytail, wisps of hair grazing her cheeks, with big wide-set eyes and broad cheekbones. She smiled back.
“We’re in, dude,” Sean said.
“Gosh, you work fast. How ever can I keep up? You got your condoms?”
“Condoms shmondoms.”
“Not a good attitude in the Third World, my friend. All those girls last night were triple baggers.”
“Not mine. She was as pure as the driven snow.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“No, man, I’m serious.”
“What happened with her anyway? Where’d you go?”
“Hotel.”
Phil’s eyes bulged. “I didn’t know you fucked her! I thought you were just going to make out or something.”
“The wacky European girls are waiting. Come on.”
Phil’s humor and natural charisma kept everyone entertained, but the girls’ eyes were on Sean’s tall, athletic build. The girls were Israeli, and spoke perfect English.
The blond girl, Sarah, had moved to sit beside him, edging closer, until he could feel the heat of her breasts on his arm. He should have been interested, but that strange feeling in his belly was getting worse. And somehow he could not get the sickly taste of the sandwich completely out of his mouth. He drank beer, swished it around inside his mouth, but to no avail. That sandwich. Just what he needed was a case of food poisoning in a B.Y.O.T.P. country with squat toilets.
He excused himself and went to the bathroom. The lavatory in the dining car was the victim of numerous drunken attempts at pissing whilst riding in a moving train. The floor was slick and sticky with urine, and the smell hung heavy in the warm, moist air. Scraps of toilet paper clung like diaphanous ghosts to the moist steel floor. He looked down through the hole in the floor, just able to see the tracks moving below in the darkness. He wasn’t drunk, but squatting and maneuvering himself above the hole was a challenge in the best of conditions. Suddenly his bowels released a torrent of watery excrement. The train lurched, and warmth splashed his naked ankles.
“Motherf—!”
The expletive died on his lips as he looked down between his legs. His ankles, sandals, and the area around the hole were splattered with bright red blood and small chunks of semi-solid, meaty-looking matter.
“Oh. My. God.”
Another abdominal spasm expelled another deluge of hot gore. He groaned, and his hands clenched the steel support handle on the wall. God, it hurt. It hurt. His eyes misted with tears. The stench of putrefaction roiled around him, filling his nostrils, gagging him.
More agonizing surges, eyes squeezed shut, afraid to look at the awful mess his body was spewing, until the spasms subsided, leaving him gasping and weak, his face against the cold smooth steel of the handle. His legs shuddered. He stood and atte
mpted to clean himself up, but he needed a hose, not a meager roll of flimsy white paper. The floor of the lavatory looked as if someone had just blown his brains out with a shotgun.
He cleaned himself up enough to pull up his pants, swabbed off his legs and feet, and by that time, his supply of toilet paper was gone and his hands were as red and sticky as his feet. The hand towel dispenser was empty.
He couldn’t just leave the lavatory like this.
He carefully opened the door, praying for no one to be nearby, trying to be discreet.
Sarah’s pretty face looked up at him, right outside, biting her lip. She was squirming and fidgeting. “About time! I’m doing the Pee-Pee Dance.”
His face grew hot, and he interposed himself in the doorway. “Um, you don’t want to go in there. Not yet. Uh, someone was in there before me, and it’s absolutely awful.”
“Oh, come on. How bad can it be?” A strange expression emerged. Her eyes narrowed.
“I’m serious. Please, go to a different car.”
She sighed. “Okay, okay.” As she walked away, she gave him another peculiar expression.
As soon as she was out of sight, he stepped over to the counter. The man with the plastic smile smiled at him. Agonizing moments later, he had convinced Plastic Smile to loan him a towel, and he quickly returned to the rest room to clean up the mess.
He opened up the door. A chill up the back of his neck stopped him dead in the open doorway.
The blood was gone.
For a long time, he stood there, just staring, until he noticed that his hand hurt. His hand clenched the towel ferociously. He switched hands and flexed his fingers. His abdomen spasmed again, and he groaned.
A hand on his shoulder brought him around. “Everything come out okay, man— What the hell? You look like shit!” Phil’s eyes bulged.
“I… I… don’t know. I do?”
“Yeah, you’re fucking pale, eh. Let’s go back to our compartment. Maybe you should lie down.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel so good.”
Sean let Phil guide him back toward the sleeping car. His mind was a fog, and he struggled to maintain his balance as the train clattered and lurched.
As they passed through the dim coach full of seated passengers, Sean tried not to meet the glance of any other passengers. The stench of rotting meat, decomposition, putrefaction was so intense here that it brought a wave of nausea over him.
He whispered toward Phil. “Don’t you smell that?”
“Smell what?”
He noticed a man’s arm moving quickly, rhythmically in a dark corner seat. The man’s eyes were squeezed shut, his teeth clenched, his hand clutching his exposed penis, his arm jerking with furious speed. The old woman across from him appeared to be asleep.
Sean snatched his gaze away, shaking his head. “Holy shit.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Go. Go.”
Back in their berth, they found that the two lower bunks were now occupied by dark, motionless figures. Two pairs of shoes and a worn duffel-bag rested on the floor beside the bunks.
Phil’s voice was low. “Do you remember the train stopping for more passengers?”
Sean shook his head. “No.” His brain was swimming, and another wave of dizziness washed through him.
Heavy breathing emanated from the figures in the lower bunks. Outside, moonlight glistened on jungle treetops, striking silvery highlights on the dense black forest, sliding inexorably past. A lone pair of dim headlights meandered down a narrow road, blurring together as his vision swam.
Sean clung to the handholds as he climbed into his bunk and flopped down. The ancient mattress ground against his skin. “God, I feel like shit.”
“Try to get some sleep, man. We’ll be in Nha Trang in the morning.”
“Morning… Yeah…” His voice trailed off, leading him into blackness.
* * *
He was awake, shambling through the harsh white light of the corridor toward the bathroom. His skin crawled and felt caked with something slimy that had dried against his back. He must have removed his sandals; the stiff carpet rubbed his bare soles like cheap Astroturf. He stepped into the lavatory. The floor was sticky with half-dried urine, and at each step his skin pulled away from the metal with a wet slurp.
He knuckled his burning eyes, then flinched as he glanced at the unfamiliar face in the mirror. His skin was a pasty yellowish-white. The whites of his eyes were blotched with red, with dark purple circles sagging below them.
“God, need a doctor.” His voice was a croak.
How much time had passed since he went to sleep? It felt like hours. The darkness still rolled by outside, relentless. The hallways were deserted and quiet. The sleeping compartment doors were closed. It must be getting close to morning, but he could see no sign of imminent dawn.
Then a stab of pain in his belly, stronger than ever, doubled him over, ripping out a visceral cry of agony. A stream of bright red vomit exploded out of his mouth and nose into the small steel sink, tasting and smelling of bile and blood.
His heart thundered, and his body began to shake. A doctor. He stumbled out of the lavatory, down the hallway toward the rear of the train, clutching his belly, the hot vomit cooling on his lips and chin.
“Need a doctor!” His voice sounded so feeble.
Another sleeper car, just like the last, empty hallway and closed doors, desolate and deserted. But at the rear of this one, something different. He saw another car through the window in the door, but the interior was dark.
The door opened at his push into what looked like a baggage coach. There were no seats, no compartments, just a long open space divided by partitions of dark cargo netting, crates and boxes. Most of the windows had been painted over and were covered by bars on the inside. The only light spilled through the door behind him and two dingy windows, casting his shadow long on the steel floor. Pale moonlight congealed in a puddle before him, and he stepped into it, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
Something moved in the darkness, breathing, something alive. A few more steps into the darkness. Beyond a stack of crates. Weeping. A heavy, shuddering sigh.
There, bathed in moonlight, were several pale figures. Long black hair hung from their bowed heads, obscuring their faces, cascading around their naked shoulders, their naked backs, their naked buttocks resting on naked feet. Their hands were bound behind their backs. Five of the women knelt on the hard steel floor, and two lay on their sides like limp rags. The stench of rotting flesh made Sean’s eyes water.
“Oh, my God.” His knees quivered and he grabbed a handful of cargo netting nearby for support.
Until he realized that it did not feel like ‘netting’ at all. He released the substance with a cry.
An enormous shape lunged out of the darkness. A hand like hardened steel clamped around his throat and drove him back against a stack of crates. Rough wooden angles gouged into his back, and the hand squeezed his throat like a hangman’s noose. A quiet deadly voice spoke in a thick French accent. “You shouldn’t be here, my friend.”
A surge of strength went through Sean’s body. His younger days of football and bar-hopping had led him into a few fist fights, but that powerful hand squeezed the strength right back out of him.
The warrior leaned closer, examining him. “You don’t look so good, my friend.” He sounded vaguely amused. “You sick?”
Sean fought his breath into a gurgle to make the words. “Looking for a doctor.”
The warrior leaned his head back and laughed.
Suddenly Sean was flying through the air. His already dizzy head pounded once against the steel floor as he skidded down the central aisle past the cowering women.
As he sprawled like a rag doll, stars dancing in his vision, in that one moment, he saw her. He could never forget that face, peering at him from behind her hair.
“Ngao?”
Her glistening eyes widened.
Then narrowed.
Vehement Vietnamese spewed like acid from her lips. She lunged toward Sean, eyes blazing, but her bonds held her in place. She strained against them, shouting and sobbing.
“My, my, my, isn’t this interesting,” another voice said. The Frenchman stepped into the pool of light. The orange cherry of his cigarette gleamed in his cold eye. He looked toward the furious girl and spoke in Vietnamese.
She answered with a torrent of invective.
“She says she knows you. Is this true?”
Sean did not have the strength to lie. “Yeah. I met her in a bar last night. Me and my friend, we were just playing pool.”
The girl flew into another stream of speech.
“She says you took her to a hotel. She was supposed to have sex with you. It was to be her first time.”
“I didn’t know she was a hooker!”
“Come now, don’t be such a prude. Of course, you did.” The Frenchman knelt beside him. “Language is such a curious thing, yes? You call her a ‘hooker,’ an unabashedly derogatory American term, but the sex industry in this part of the world is so much more… complicated than that, yes? Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, girls here often have sex for money, with foreigners, with rich men. They are simply helping their families with money. Some of them even do it for fun.”
“She said she wanted to come with me. She was so sweet. And she said she liked me.”
Ngao was still talking, her fury subsiding into sobs, trying to get the words out.
“Of course, she did. Humph, she says she really did like you. You’re so ‘handsome and nice.’” The Frenchman clucked his tongue. “But you wouldn’t pay her.”
“If I paid her, it wouldn’t be real…”
“My young friend, you’re looking for love?” The Frenchman’s laugh was harsh and sharp. “You are in the wrong part of the world for such nonsense!”
“She said she liked me! She wanted to go with me!”
Ngao’s shoulders slumped, and her beautiful breasts with such delicate pink nipples disappeared behind the curtain of dark hair.
“She was waiting for someone she liked to be her first. She was waiting for you. And then when you refused to pay her, she left.”