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

by Saul Tanpepper

  Angel looked over at him, frowning. "She's been through a lot."

  "She say crazy thing, say bad spirit inside her body, come through her leg."

  "I think she meant shrapnel. From the accident."

  "She not say that, she say bad spirit inside, all over now, growing."

  Angel sighed. "She's in shock."

  He turned his disappointed stare at her, but didn't answer. He wasn't ready to forgive her yet. And, frankly, Angel knew she didn't deserve it. But if they hadn't gone into the city, they never would have learned about her.

  The situation at the hospital had, unfortunately, gotten much worse before they left, and Angel knew she was partly to blame. Jian had dragged her nearly out of the ward when she stopped and pulled away from him and stepped back inside. She hadn't wanted to leave the girl. Something inside of her told her not to.

  She spoke Jamie's name, but at the sight of Angel standing there, the girl immediately resumed her screaming, forcing the nurse to come over to calm her again. And then, when she didn't settle down, to resort to sedating her.

  Jian had tugged at Angel, begging her to just leave, but in her horror, her feet had seemed nailed to the floor. She didn't know what was worse— the screams that gushed out of Jamie's mouth or the incomprehensible babbling and accusatory finger being pointed at them.

  The screaming, now joined by the frantic cries of the nurse, had triggered some of the other patients to begin shouting out as well, raising a cacophony that still rung in Angel's ears. Then, suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, Jamie's body went slack and she fell back to the bed as she succumbed to the sedative. Almost as quickly, the ward likewise quieted. The nurse, now red-faced and disheveled, told them once and for all to leave.

  The sun was now straight ahead of them, blinding them with the glare off the car's faded and dirty hood and the surface of the road ahead. To Angel, the diffuse white orb seemed to be slipping out of the sky with alarming speed. Jian was affected by it, too, as with each passing minute his mood grew more dour. Judging by their speed and the distance left to cover, Angel guessed that they would make it back to Baoyang Village in time, but only just, and that was assuming nothing slowed them down.

  The memory of Jamie lying comatose in her bed came to Angel's mind, her head lolled to the side. Instead of looking peaceful, she'd looked dead. Angel shuddered at the memory as another wave of impending doom swept over her. What would happen once Jamie woke? Would the nightmares and the screaming resume? Would she try to flee from—

  the dark man

  —the hospital?

  There is no dark man, Angel.

  If not, then how had she come to be there, well over a hundred kilometers away from the crash site?

  Even more troubling was the sudden certainty that she would never see the girl alive again.

  "You told the nurse nothing, right?" she reconfirmed with Jian. "Not her name or anything about the crash."

  He scowled out through the hazy windshield and nodded. "I don't say those thing. You tell Jian not to, I listen. I listen to Missus Angel. Missus Angel not listen to Jian."

  By now, the sun's bottom arc was hovering a finger's width above the horizon, and they still had an hour left to go.

  Angel reached over and laid a hand gently on his arm. "I'm sorry," she told him. "You're right."

  He gripped the steering wheel tighter, but didn't reply.

  "Everything will be okay. I promise. We'll get there in time."

  She hoped she was right on both accounts.

  Chapter Twenty One

  The sun had already set when they arrived at the village, though daylight had not yet fled entirely from the sky. As Jian feared, the yurts were empty and dark inside. He quickly lit a lamp, his movements conveying the bitter anger inside of him.

  "I'm sorry," Angel apologized yet again. "They probably only just left." She pointed to the glowing heap of charcoal in the pit in the middle of the floor. Smoke curled from the embers, and the water inside the clay pot next to it was still warm. "I'm sure you can catch them if you leave now. Just drive—"

  "I not drive to burial ceremony!" he snapped.

  He stomped around the yurt, managing to look deeply affronted by the suggestion, and gathered up his parka and a handful of flatbread.

  "I didn't think we'd be so late."

  He grumbled something, then pushed out through the door without a warning for her to stay inside the yurt. At this point, she thought, he probably figured it'd be a waste of breath. But even without it, she had absolutely no intention of going anywhere. Out here in the darkness, without street signs or other markers, she'd likely get hopelessly lost. And besides, where was she going to go?

  In the deepening gloom, she watched him jog a hundred meters or so down the road, then cut off between yurts in the direction of the hills. After a few minutes, she thought she caught his shape out past the edge of the village, a slightly darker form bobbing away across the gradually sloping plains. She strained her eyes, but the distance and poor light eventually forced her to give up.

  "It's not your fault," she told herself in her native French, and went back inside the hut. While she knew it to be true — even believed that Jian didn't blame her for the delay, either — it didn't stop her from feeling a pang of guilt. She had pushed her luck once again and lost.

  Their way had been blocked by a logjam of sheep nearly twenty kilometers up the road. If anyone might have predicted such an unlikely event, it should have been Jian. Maybe he had; it would explain the depth of his anger with her, as he'd already resigned himself to the fact that it would be too late by the time they arrived. The herd must have numbered close to a thousand, and the shepherd had been in no hurry to move them off the road, despite Jian's impatient honks.

  "Not my fault," she muttered to herself again.

  She spent the next ten minutes or so restacking the wood in the fire pit and getting it burning again, as well as igniting another pair of oil lamps. She hung one on the central pole and took the other to situate by the door.

  Nearly all of the light had fled from the sky by then, though a thin smear of orange and blue streaked over the distant hills, illuminating an approaching bank of clouds. She noticed that the wind had picked up, coming from the north, and it was bitingly cold. She hoped Jian got to the burial grounds in time, and she wondered how long the ceremony would take. She feared it might begin to snow before they returned.

  * * *

  It was sometime later when a rumbling sound filled the yurt and shook the ground beneath her, rousing Angel from a deep sleep. It quickly passed, so that in her state of mental and physical fatigue, the disturbance slipped out of her mind as quickly as it had intruded. Just thunder, she thought as the noise faded away, and she drifted off again.

  She'd been dreaming of her childhood. The memories this time were of a happier period in her life than the more typical dark days of her teenage years. In those days, her father's security firm was still growing at a manageable pace. The money had been good and steady. Their lives had still been happy, as it was before he'd taken on the major government contracts that would eventually drive him into the ground from the stress, creating a monster along the way that preyed on the soul of the family.

  They had taken holiday in Marseille, renting a villa right on the Mediterranean coast for nearly the entire summer. Her father, Gaétan, was flying back and forth to Paris and the United States, working on several new projects, and his comings and goings became welcome disruptions to the blissful but otherwise unrelentingly repetitive routine of lazy days filled with sunshine, rich food, and bathing in la mer. That was the summer Angel turned so brown that the tan remained with her all through the following cold and dreary winter, so that it almost seemed as if her skin had permanently assumed the darker hue. She was eleven, which made Jacques four and still in his socially outgoing and lovable phase. He was the apple of everyone's eye. Or, as the French prefer to say, the plum.

  In the drea
m they were on the beach with their mother, all of them seated in the shade of a lime green umbrella and eating watermelon soaked in lemonade from a crystal bowl. Her mother had had those cats-eye sunglasses, the ones that had been ever so fashionable back when her grandparents were kids; the style was staging a major comeback. White-rimmed and studded with plastic rhinestones that gathered then scattered the light into a million prisms. Angel could remember thinking how she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and that she was the luckiest girl alive to be her daughter.

  She watched Jacques waddle down to the water's edge with a plastic pail half his height banging against his heels. He was still sporting the majority of his baby fat, which he wouldn't lose until he was a year shy of finishing école at seventeen, when he did nothing but grow, both vertically and intellectually, as well as emotionally, from the linear boy he had earlier been.

  From their vantage point up the slope of the beach, the waves appeared to tower over him. In fact, the waves in this memory were even higher, the sea colder and grayer than they had ever been in real life.

  Pourquoi es-tu inquiet, ma cherie? her mother asked.

  She was reading a book. In her mind, Angel could see the cover, a Simone de Beauvoir, though in truth she couldn't recall if her mother had ever read anything more profound than Sylvie Lainé.

  I'm not worried, mama.

  But she was, at least in the dream. She watched Jacques as he built his sandcastle, hoping that it was far enough above the waterline to avoid a rogue wave which might come and wash his masterpiece away. A kind of anxiety roiled just below the surface of her mind, as if she knew something bad was about to happen, yet was resigned to the truth that there was little she could do to prevent it.

  The castle grew higher and more elaborate, with turrets and ramparts and a thick sand barrier protecting Jacques from the marauding sea. Protecting him from everything. The walls circled around and enclosed him, and the day wore lazily on.

  Eventually, the sun went down and night came, and the heat seeped away from the beach and left her shivering. Yet they all remained, her mother's nose buried inside the pages of that scandalous book. Jacques piled the sand higher and higher. Angel could no longer see him at all. The stars were out and the sea beyond the castle glowed with a cold green fire. And out on la mer was a massive black shadow, silent and still upon the waters, just sitting there as if it were waiting for morning to come before it showed its true form.

  The sudden pop! of a piece of wood in the fire yanked her once more out of the dream, and she lay there for a moment panting in the darkness. The yurt had grown cold, and both lanterns had burned through their supplies of oil. The distant drone of the wind filled the night.

  Angel stood up and checked her phone for the time. It was close to midnight. Surely the mourners would return soon. She was frankly surprised that they hadn't already.

  Aware of the mess she'd made from her impromptu meal of boiled potato, yak cheese, and mutton jerky, she added wood to the fire in preparation for tidying up. She gathered her belongings and placed them into her pack, pausing to check her phone again on the off chance that a signal had mysteriously appeared. But of course there was no connection, and she regretted once more not having remembered to check in with Cheong before they left Bairin Zouqi. She had to trust that he had done as she'd asked and that the video she had sent him was now spreading throughout the Internet. By morning, there would be no way for the Americans to deny the accident or the cover up.

  Noting how little of her battery remained, she turned the phone off and stuffed it into her pocket. When she was finished cleaning, she settled down again onto the sleeping mat to wait.

  Over the drone of the wind, she noticed a new sound, a bit like the wind, yet different. It grew louder. Something about it felt artificial.

  Pourquoi es-tu inquiet, ma cherie? whispered the memory of her mother's voice.

  The constant tension inside of her once more flared. Something wasn't right. Unable to sit still, Angel rose and shuffled over to the door and pulled it open. Darkness and cold swept in, pressing the fire down against the ground. Wood shifted, sending a cloud of sparks spiraling toward the ceiling and out through the vent.

  Before her, the village lay as silent and still as always. She stepped out and turned her gaze toward the hills to the west. They would be invisible, of course. Except they weren't; their tips were tinged with the orange of morning light. Puzzled, she wondered if the time on her phone had been incorrect, or if she'd accidentally fallen asleep without realizing it since checking.

  For several seconds more, she stared at the horizon without comprehending, but then the droning sound grew suddenly louder and the ground began to shake. Behind her in the yurt, objects rattled and fell to the ground. A giant, dark shape suddenly appeared above the yurt, blanking out the stars. It screamed toward the hills. Angel ducked instinctively and watched as the airplane passed over the village.

  A half minute later, a tiny thread of light appeared, a bridge between the glowing orange hills and the now distant object in the sky. The light began to expand and pour down the slopes like lava.

  Angel cried out in horror as she realized the truth before her: The burial ceremony and all the villagers were being incinerated.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Angel stumbled back into the yurt, hitting the center post with her body and falling to her knees and scattering the fire. A thousand thoughts entered her mind, a thousand accusations, a thousand questions. How could they do this? How could they just go and kill hundreds of innocent people? Why would they?

  It's your fault.

  She pushed herself off the ground with a strangled cry, as if the act would distance her from that terrible thought. No no no . . . . She didn't want to believe she'd brought this upon these people.

  The glow from the distant burning now filled enough of the sky that it leaked in through the door, a wan flickering sheen which flared briefly before falling away again. The plane had circled and dumped another spray of napalm. She scanned around her, though she wasn't sure why or what she was hoping to see inside the yurt. Nothing would change what was happening out there or reverse the horrible truth that the people of the village were all dead.

  The reality of her own danger slammed into her with the shock of ice water. They weren't going to stop, those men out there. They would come here and burn the village, too, knowing that there might be witnesses. She needed to run, to save herself.

  The droning sound grew fuller, and she ran once more to the door and fell against it as her heart slammed into her throat and her breath hitched in her chest. The plane was curving off to the right, still quite a distance from the village. She watched it circle around, then disappear out of view behind her. It reappeared several moments later around the other side, flying low along the fringe of the community where the outermost structures stood. She thought it might return to the hill, when a streak of fire arrowed to the ground two hundred meters away, spewing from beneath the airplane. Even from this distance, she could feel the heat as the flaming chemical hit the ground and incinerated everything it touched.

  Yurts and pens, everything went up in a blaze, popping from the heat, exploding. Fences caught fire, and the flames raced along the dry wood as if they were fuses. Animals, already panicked by the high whine of the engines, broke through their cages and stampeded away. Some of them carried the fire on their bodies as they streaked across the grassland, spreading the destruction.

  Angel grabbed her pack and ran. She weaved her way through the scattered yurts, quickly losing her orientation. The plane circled around for another go, and she cowered in the shadows as it passed, hoping to not be seen. Hoping she weren't caught in the middle of the plane's next drop zone.

  The car! Get to the car!

  But which way was it? She couldn't seem to remember where the road was anymore, or where Jian had parked it. Had they driven in from the right? The left? She spun around, whimpering. The droning gre
w louder again. And then she saw the vehicle, parked beside a rack of drying yak pelts at the edge of the village, and suddenly everything fell back into place again.

  She started to sprint toward it, but the smoke was burning her throat and eyes and she tripped. The backpack flew from her grip. Stumbling back to her feet, she held her arms out before her and tried to run again, then tripped over her pack. She grabbed it, scrambled once again, stood.

  Which way!

  She'd gotten turned around. She couldn't see!

  There! Go!

  The smoke thinned and there it was. She'd get in and drive away, that's what she'd do. No lights and no brakes, just a dark shape on the ground. Drive and hope they didn't see her or the dust she kicked up. There was already enough black smoke that she stood a chance of getting away.

  And yet, at the same time, she knew that there was no chance of that at all.

  Another load of napalm was dropped, closer by a hundred meters. The smell of it burned her lungs, nearly doubled her over with pain. She staggered the last several meters to the car.

  She wrenched the door open and threw her bag in and followed it with her body. "Keys!" she shrieked in terror. She'd forgotten to look for them! Her heart exploded in her chest, and yet it felt as if she was being crushed at the same time. The car was useless without the—

  In the glow of the burning yurts, she saw Jian's keys glinting in the ignition. Crying out, she twisted them and pumped the accelerator. The engine roared to life, coughed, and very nearly died.

  Smoke was pouring through the village now. In a moment it would blind her. Without bothering to shut the door, she shifted into gear and the car lurched forward. The smoke thinned again, pulled up in a cyclone, and she had a momentary glimpse of the plane in the windshield as it loomed right above her. With a bone-shaking roar, it passed overhead. Had it seen her?