THE FLENSE: China: (Part 2 of THE FLENSE serial)

by Saul Tanpepper

  "What'd she say?"

  "She . . . ." He blinked a few times at his screen as the two video files finished downloading. "She sent me a couple clips. One is from the crash site. She says that it's being sterilized . . . by the Americans."

  The other man gave his head a troubled shake. "So, they got there first. I told you it was a possibility. The guy at the Ministry was acting all dodgy."

  Cheong nodded and sighed. "You did."

  "And the other video?"

  Cheong thumbed it open.

  "It's yours."

  The man whom Angel knew as photographer P. Mark DeBryan, who had supposedly been murdered in Shanghai, nodded. "Good. It means she trusts you now."

  Chapter Nineteen

  The hospital was housed in a nondescript building of sand-colored brick located in an older part of town. The structure stood maybe three stories tall, though it was hard to tell, as it possessed only a single row of windows near the roofline. Long and narrow, it was indistinguishable from the surrounding structures, save for the small plaque beside the main entrance. To Angel, it could just as easily have been a warehouse, or perhaps a factory. In fact, from what she'd seen, most of the buildings in the city shared the same boxy industrial style characteristic of the 1940s and 50s, although she doubted these structures were built much before 1970. China's growth boom hadn't really begun until the very late 60s.

  If such a boom had happened here, then it seemed that many of the city's residents had subsequently left. A good portion of the buildings stood empty and unused. Even the automobiles parked on the streets looked old and abandoned.

  Given all this, it seemed a minor miracle that they'd been able to find an internet cafe soon after confirming that the cellular service wouldn't allow Angel to connect to the Internet. But luck was a fickle mistress, for while the country's firewall prevented her from uploading the video to social media and forced her to resort to asking Cheong to do it, it was while they were at the cafe that they learned of the possible crash survivor.

  On a whim, she'd had Jian ask the cafe's owner if anyone in town had heard about a train crash up north. The man nodded and said something, and when Jian followed up for more information, he became quite animated.

  Jian relayed his replies to Angel as best he could. Apparently, there had been rumors of something happening, either a terrorist attack or explosion, though nobody could provide verifiable evidence or firsthand accounts. It was somewhere way out in some remote area, and nobody cared enough to make the long trek out there to check.

  "He say many American men pass through about same time," Jian told her. "Maybe one, two day later— he not remember exactly . They tell him they not know anything about explosion."

  Remarkably, when they were asked where they were going, they refused to say.

  "Doesn't that seem rather suspicious?" she asked.

  The old man shrugged and muttered something. "He say men not like to talk," Jian relayed. "Sometime see businessmen come, go to factory at Wenbai. But these men not like other businessmen, not wearing fancy suits."

  "What were they wearing?"

  "Dirty clothes. Not drive expensive shiny car. Come with big machines and trucks."

  "The demolition crew. They were heading out to the crash site already to clean it up."

  The man said something else to Jian. They exchanged a few words, and Jian shook his head.

  "What did he say?"

  "He ask if we here to see woman at Buddhist hospital. Come in couple day ago, after men. Badly hurt, many cuts and burns. Bleeding a lot."

  "A factory worker from the train? All the way here? That seems unlikely."

  Jian shrugged. "He say she not Chinese, but speak Mandarin. I tell him she probably not from Goh Li Xhia factory. Maybe teacher kidnap from Chifeng and escape. Sometime happen to Westerner, especially women. Gangs sometime bad around there. Nobody know for sure because she not speaking."

  Angel thought about this for a moment. It seemed impossible that this woman was linked to the factory or the crash, but the timing did seem a bit suspect. Jian could guess what she was thinking because he shook his head and reminded her that she promised to get him back.

  "I know," she told him. "But we're already here."

  "Is too late already, Missus Angel," he said, tapping the watch on his wrist.

  "It'll only take a few minutes. Then we'll head straight back."

  She pushed until he finally relented, though it did cause him to become angry with her again.

  She parked up the street from the hospital's entrance, slotting the car into a space barely large enough to accommodate it with an ease that surprised even herself. And when she caught Jian eying the job from the sidewalk, she knew he'd been impressed, too.

  They found what passed for a reception desk and asked about the woman. The attendant gave Angel a guarded look. She and Jian exchanged a few words and Angel feared that he might be telling her to deny them so that he could get back into the car and drive back to Baoyang. But the woman finally referred to a sheaf of papers. After a minute or so, she nodded, said something and pointed down the hallway.

  "She say woman with many cuts and burns come three or four day. She not know name. Nobody know name. Not know what happen or how get hurt."

  They arrived at the door to a long and narrow room with a very high ceiling. A dirty yellow light filtered in through the windows, supplementing the paltry light given off by the dangling fluorescent fixtures. Jian nodded to indicate that it was the one the woman had noted, and they went in.

  Beds lined either side of a central aisle, their white enameled frames yellowed with age and badly chipped and scuffed. Garbage cans overflowed with paper, bandages with deep brown and yellow stains draped over the rims. The rank tang of infection hung in the air, mixed with the weaker scent of disinfectant and antibiotics. There were maybe three dozen beds in all, separated with movable curtain dividers; less than a third were occupied, most by coughing or wheezing bodies.

  A monk slowly walked down the aisle toward them from the right. A nurse in a white outfit stood beside a bed off to their left. She looked up at them, then returned her attention to the patient she was with.

  Angel turned to the right.

  In the last bed was a woman covered in bandages, her coal black hair cropped short. It appeared to have been cut without any consideration for style, and Angel realized with a start that it was because much of it had been burnt off. She did not look Chinese, though there was a hint of Asian in her features. She was very young.

  "Allo?" she asked, stepping over to the side of the bed.

  The woman — not much older than a girl, really — didn't respond. Her eyes remained shut. Her breathing maintained its slow, deep, steady rhythm. But something about it felt fake to Angel. It was like she was pretending to sleep.

  "I don't know if you can understand me, but I'm an investigative reporter looking into a . . . an incident about a hundred kilometers from here."

  The woman's eyes fluttered open.

  "Can you understand me?" And then, when she didn't respond, "Were you in an accident? Did someone kidnap you?"

  The woman shut her eyes.

  Angel turned to Jian. "Ask her if she was on a train."

  The woman's eyes immediately flew open, and her face went from gray to white. Something passed over her visage, a darkness, like a curtain being drawn over a window, and her lips moved, forming words.

  She's terrified, Angel thought. "Were you on the train?"

  Her lips moved again, but not a sound came out of her mouth.

  Angel turned to Jian. He shrugged. "I think she say méiyÒu," he told her. "It mean no."

  "She knows English. She understood me when I mentioned the train."

  "MéiyÒu!" the woman said, this time louder and with greater urgency. She tried to shake her head, but winced in pain. "MéiyÒu!"

  "We leave," Jian whispered nervously. The nurse looked up at them, a flicker of annoyance in her eyes. "I
tell you, she not from factory. She not on train."

  A clear plastic bag was tucked into a space in the bedside table. Angel pulled it out and opened it. The clothes reeked of diesel fuel and smoke. She reached in and extracted a pair of jeans, caked stiff with blood and mud. One leg had been cut off with scissors. There was also a jacket, sky blue. This was likewise in tatters.

  Angel removed the scrap of fabric from her pocket and held the two together. Jian gasped when they matched perfectly. Seeing this, the woman's eyes grew even wider.

  Angel leaned down, and the woman cringed and tried to pull away. "It's okay! It's okay," she whispered, placing a gentle hand on the woman's arm. Her heart was pounding hard and fast at the significance of the girl's presence. With the crash site gone, she was the key to understanding what had happened! "I'm here to help."

  But her assurances weren't calming the woman down any. She was clearly terrified beyond reason, perhaps still in shock.

  "Listen, you're safe now. The doctors here—"

  "No! Leave me!"

  Her shouts rang through the ward and, for a few seconds, everything was silent.

  "If you were on that train, then I really need to talk with you. Were you an employee at the factory? Are you American?"

  Angel turned to Jian. "Did you hear about any Americans at the factory?"

  He shook his head, shrugged. "Some time ago, I hear about American come and live with woman name Nur Zetian. She live alone in one of new brick house on outside of Baoyang Village, no children or husband." He shrugged. "Sometime I hear about American woman working at factory as interpreter, but I never meet her when I come back."

  "I think you just have."

  His eyes turned to the woman in the bed.

  "My name is Angelique de l'Enfantine." Angel kept her voice low and soothing as she spoke. "I'm a journalist. You've been in a train accident. Do you remember that?"

  The woman's shaking only grew worse. Tears slipped from her eyes. "MéiyÒu," she moaned.

  "Shh," Angel urged. "It's okay. Do you remember what happened? Do you remember your name?"

  "She in shock," Jian said. "She scare."

  But Angel didn't think it was shock, not entirely. She thought about the men at the crash site and wondered, Is she hiding from them?

  "Please, I'm trying to help. Can you tell me your name?"

  "J-jamie," she finally answered. "Jamie P-peters."

  "Okay, Jamie. Do you remember the accident?"

  She gave a tentative nod. "I-I was the only—" Her voice broke into a sob.

  "How did you get here? Did someone bring you?"

  The girl turned away for a moment. The lump in her throat bobbed up and down several times before she spoke again. "I should be dead. The old man, he was supposed to touch me, but he didn't. They were touching each other, but they skipped me."

  Angel frowned. "What?"

  "I th-thought it was a game." Tears ran down her face.

  "Game? I don't understand."

  "I c-can't tell you! If they find out, I think they'll kill me. He told me not to tell anyone." She moaned and turned away. "But I think— I think it's already too late!"

  "Who told you this?"

  "The dark man. He said he was saving me, but he lied."

  "Dark skin? African? Is that how you got here?"

  "No! Not his skin! Dark inside!"

  Angel shook her head. "How did he lie?"

  The trembling had gotten so bad that for several seconds Jamie was unable to speak. Angel waited, then asked again.

  "He said he was saving me from something terrible, but he was wrong. He's saving me for something terrible!"

  She sat bolt upright in the bed, causing Angel and Jian to flinch back. The movement slammed the headboard against the wall. "No," she whimpered. "No! Go away! He said they'll kill me if they find out. They'll kill me!"

  "Who will? Tell me! I need to know."

  "Please!" She turned to Jian and started to babble. At first he frowned, then he backed away, his own eyes widening.

  "What'd she say?" Angel asked.

  The nurse called over at them in alarm, but remained at the other end of the ward.

  "MéiyÒu!" Jamie screamed. "MéiyÒu!"

  Now the nurse was hurrying over, whispering loudly and gesturing with her free hand for Angel and Jian to leave. Jian went over and cut her off, speaking to her quickly in Mandarin.

  Angel felt her arm being grabbed and she looked down. "Don't tell them about me!" Jamie pleaded. "They can't know! Please!"

  "Why not? Who?"

  "They don't want anyone to know the truth! They'll kill me! And they'll kill you, too! The dark man told me!"

  The nurse was arguing with Jian, getting angry.

  "What truth?" Angel hissed. "What do you know?"

  Jamie's eyes flicked fearfully over toward Jian and the nurse. They widened, and Angel's heart skipped a beat as she realized why. "Jian!" she yelled. "Don't tell her anything!"

  He turned and blinked uncomprehendingly at her.

  "Don't tell the nurse her name. Don't tell her anything about the crash!"

  "But—"

  "Please," Jamie begged, pulling Angel's arm and squeezing it. "You have to protect me. He's going to come for me!"

  "I can't do that," Angel said. "You're injured. You need care."

  "You don't understand! It's inside of me!"

  "What is?"

  "I know what they did to those people," Jamie growled. "They put it in them, but not me! That's why they skipped me!"

  "The other people on the train? Who? I don't—"

  The girl screamed then, and the sound of it curdled Angel's blood. The scream faded, and Jamie started to babble, sending the bed skittering away from the wall with her paroxysms. Angel had to hold her down to keep her from falling out.

  Then, just as suddenly as it had started, her body went rigid. A hand snaked out from beneath the sheet and latched onto Angel's wrist and squeezed it so hard that the bones ground against each other. Angel cried out in pain and tried to pull away.

  "They're inside of me!" Jamie groaned. "I told them to take it out, but they didn't do it fast enough! They were too late!"

  "Take what out?"

  "DOWN THERE!"

  Jamie kicked off the blankets, reached down and pulled up her gown. She was naked underneath. "Here!" And she tore away the bandage from her thigh, exposing an ugly gash. The edges were blackened and peeling away, exposing new flesh underneath, bright pink with healing. Angel tried to cover her back up.

  The nurse was pushing on Jian, appealing to him in a voice that was getting louder and louder. But in his shock he blocked her way, which only made her angrier.

  "The bone! They took out the bone and threw it away! But they got inside of me! Doing things to me! Get them out! Get them out of me NOW!"

  She clawed at the wound with her fingernails, digging them into the muscle until the delicate new skin tore and fresh blood bubbled out and ran down her leg, soaking into the sheets.

  The nurse tugged at Angel. "Líki!" she shouted, pointing toward the door. "Líki!"

  Angel felt Jian dragging her, pulling her away from the bedside. "She want us to leave now!" he said.

  So she let him take her, leaving the screaming, shaking, terrified—

  insane

  —girl behind.

  Chapter Twenty

  Angel couldn't seem to shake the intense dread that had fallen over her since leaving the hospital. Even now, more than an hour later and the city of Bairin Zouqi far behind, the encounter with the accident survivor affected her deeply. It had clearly left Jian shaken as well.

  He was driving now, had not even offered her the option of taking the wheel, and she was grateful to just sit in the passenger seat and let him deal with the mechanics of getting them back to the village.

  Anyway, she had too much to sort through in her mind to focus on the road. For example, had the video been posted? Was it going viral? Was Cheong sending som
eone out to investigate the cover-up? But despite all that, her mind kept drifting back to the girl in that bed and the way she'd acted. Had it been insanity or terror?

  Was there really a difference?

  A couple of times the uncertainty nearly prompted her to tell Jian to turn around. Twice, she got as far as opening her mouth and saying his name, but she stopped herself before going any further. It was unfair to ask him to sacrifice more than he already had. And she doubted he'd listen anyway. There was no way he was going to drive her all the way back now and miss the final part of the burial ceremony.

  But she also felt horrible about leaving Jamie there, and in such an emotionally fragile state, even though she really had no choice in the matter. The hospital wasn't going to allow them to stay. In fact, the nurse herself had told Jian that she was going to call the police unless they left immediately. The last thing Angel wanted was to attract anyone's attention, much less the wrong people's, to the fact that Jamie was there.

  You could have brought her with you.

  Not in her condition. Not with that nasty leg wound bleeding all over the place and all those other cuts and bruises. It was obvious that the one on her upper thigh had gotten infected at some point. Though the skin around it had a healthy shine to it, there were darker lines radiating away, up toward her abdomen and down toward her feet.

  Angel hadn't seen any IV, so she wasn't sure how she was getting antibiotics, but she had to be. The wound would also require continued therapy, including debridement to remove the dead and burned tissue, removal of the drain, suture removal . . . .

  The other injuries, individually, did not appear to be nearly as bad, but cumulatively, they suggested the girl had suffered a great amount of trauma. She needed rest, liquids, and food to recover. Most of all, she needed a stable environment with some form of psychological help. It was doubtful she'd receive the latter, but perhaps as her body mended, her mind might also find its own way out of whatever dark labyrinth she seemed to be lost in. Some of the things she had been spouting just sounded—

  "Crazy," Jian muttered to himself, almost as if he'd been aware of Angel's thoughts. "She crazy." They sped along the empty road, skidding slightly over a drift of fine sand carried there by the wind. Dust rose into the air behind them. "She say thing not make sense."