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

by Saul Tanpepper

  Angel obliged, hurrying to Jamie's ward, and the girl didn't stop her. She breathed a sigh of relief when she found a different nurse working the floor. The woman looked up just long enough to register Angel's presence, then turned back to the bed she was making. Angel turned right and hurried down the aisle.

  But the bed Jamie had been in yesterday was now empty, and the bag of clothing in the side table was gone.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Angel made her way over to Jamie's bed, numb with disbelief. It was freshly made up, the sheets clean, though worn. The edges were tucked in tight beneath the lumpy mattress, ready for the next patient. The trashcan stood empty.

  She spun around and quickly scanned the other beds, scurrying down the aisle with growing alarm. She didn't see the young woman in any of them, although curtains had been drawn around three, so it was possible that she might still be here, just relocated to another bed.

  Angel went to one and the nurse gave her a puzzled look and asked her something in Chinese. Hoping to avoid another scene, Angel gave her head a quick shake and moved to pass her. Behind her was a young boy wearing a monk's saCghti. He stepped lightly out of the way, bowing to Angel as she stumbled past.

  "English?" she asked. "Do you speak English? Français?"

  The nurse shrugged and shook her head.

  "There was a girl— a woman, I mean. American?"

  The nurse said something, again shaking her head, a look of helplessness on her face. "Duc— uh, duc tore?" she said.

  "No, not a doctor! I'm looking for a woman, a patient!" Angel pointed at the empty bed. "There was a woman. She was here yesterday. Badly hurt. Cuts?" She poked at her thigh with a rigid finger.

  The nurse turned to the boy and said something. He replied. Then they both turned to her and smiled. The boy pointed to the chair beside the nurse's tiny work station and invited her to sit.

  Instead, Angel hurried back down the aisle to the bed, gesturing for the nurse to follow. The young monk trailed them both. Angel patted the mattress with her palm, then pointed her finger at the pillow, and at last the nurse finally seemed to make the connection. A wide grin took over her face. She nodded vigorously and started jabbering away.

  "Did she leave?" Angel asked, holding up her hands in a gesture of confusion. "The girl— woman, I mean. Is she still here? Hospital?"

  She didn't know if the nurse understood any of it or not, but by the way she was nodding and gesturing at the door, it seemed she had finally guessed that Angel was here to see someone. She pointed toward the door.

  "She left? When? When did she leave? Was it with a—"

  dark

  "—man? Did she leave on her own?"

  The poor woman could do nothing but just stand there and shrug and smile at Angel. Worry had begun to crease her brow, concern over Angel's growing agitation. Her eyes flicked to the side, taking in the nearby patients. Angel noticed that a couple of them were now sitting up, their faces turned toward them. Some were scowling at the ruckus, probably recognizing her from the day before. They started to mutter.

  "Does anyone in this place speak English?"

  There was no response.

  Angel was at her wit's end what to do. She needed to know for sure if Jamie had left on her own or was taken. It seemed unlikely she'd just walk out, not in her state. And Angel didn't know what kind of sedative she'd received the day before, or the amount, though she thought it unlikely that the young woman would have regained consciousness before nightfall. She'd probably be groggy for several more hours afterward, too. But could she have snuck away in the early morning hours?

  The nurse didn't seem to be acting as if that were the case.

  She touched Angel's elbow, drawing her attention back, and indicated the door once again. Reflexively, Angel began to step toward it. First Jian, she thought. Now Jamie. How could she have been so cavalier about everything? If she had just forced Jian to stay yesterday, then Jamie would have been safe with her. She could easily picture the woman dead somewhere, probably by strangulation or a broken neck, her body dumped into a shallow grave where it would never be found.

  And Jian would still be alive, too.

  They reached the door, and the nurse pointed down the hallway toward the back of the building, crooking her finger to the left. Angel frowned. Was she telling her to leave out the back way? She didn't see a door there. But just then, a patient in a thin gown and her attendant appeared from that direction, and Angel realized that there was another room back there.

  "She was moved? She's in another ward?"

  Again, the nurse gestured, pointing directly at the pair of women walking toward them.

  The two were slowly making their way up the hall. The patient leaned heavily on the arm of her attendant, who wore a hospital smock over her clothes. The former's short, dark hair hung lifelessly over her face, hiding it. Her feet were clad in tattered slippers turned gray by repeated washings. Her arms and legs were clear of injuries.

  "That's not her," Angel said. "That's not the woman I'm looking for."

  The boy took her by the arm and guided her toward them.

  "I'm telling you, that's not her! Where are you taking me?" she demanded. "Parlez vous français?"

  But he didn't answer.

  They reached the pair and the boy bowed in deference to them, then they continued on. His gentle hold of her wrist never faltered.

  Finally, they reached the end of the hall, and Angel saw that it wasn't a room but an alcove. The space was stuffed with laundry bins and canisters of trash. The air smelled strongly of chlorine. The boy pointed at a windowless door on the far side of the space, and only then did Angel realize what he and the nurse had been telling her. "She's in there?"

  Of course, the boy didn't reply, so she nodded and stepped forward and laid a hand on the door handle. But still she didn't go inside. She didn't know why, but she felt afraid all of a sudden of what she might find. Would Jamie start screaming at her again? Would she start talking about being possessed by bad spirits? Angel turned around and looked at the young monk. With one hand, he gestured for her to open the door. With the other he waved her on.

  The steam hit her first. The room was filled with it, condensing on the walls and ceiling and dripping down. The harsh sounds of running showers and flushing toilets and distorted voices assaulted her ears.

  "Jamie?" she called. The door shut behind her, reverberating past her.

  The tiled floor beneath her feet was slick with water. Many of the small white squares were missing or cracked; the grout between them was stained dark gray. Pale green tiles coated the walls; runners of mold colored the cracks and seams near the ceiling and floor. There were numerous stalls, half of which were in use, their occupants hidden by plastic curtains drawn shut.

  Angel strained her ears for Jamie's voice, but none sounded like the young American's, nor did she recognize any of the words being spoken.

  "Jamie Peters?" she called. "It's Angelique de 'lEnfantine. I visited you yesterday." She walked deeper into the room and passed an open stall where an elderly lady sat slumped on a toilet, her head fallen forward. She appeared to have been forgotten. "Jamie?"

  She bumped her thigh on the rim of an unused tub and let out a pained grunt. More stalls opened up past it, but they appeared empty.

  "Jamie? Are you—"

  "You left me."

  Angel spun around, her breath hitching in her throat, both in relief and surprise. "Oh, mon dieu! Thank God you're still here."

  "You left me. I told you not to leave me. I begged you to take me with you." The woman grabbed Angel's arm and once again there was that unnaturally strong grip. Angel could see something in the girl's eyes, and she thought back again to what Jian had said about her being crazy.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

  The girl let go, flinging her away. Only then did Angel realize she was naked. She gawked at the dripping body in the inadequate light and shuddered at the collection of cuts and b
ruises. She couldn't tell if they were significantly diminished since yesterday, but she was less alarmed by their severity. The wound on her upper thigh had scabbed over, covering a web of new sutures. The skin around it was pink and healthy looking.

  "You see it, too."

  "What?" Angel asked, tearing her eyes back to the girl's face.

  "It's not natural."

  Angel opened her mouth to reply. But she didn't know what to say? She didn't even know what the girl was talking about.

  Jamie turned and limped back to an open stall and reached inside for her towel.

  "Where are your clothes? I checked in the room, by your bed and—"

  "Thrown away. Today's trash day." She thrust a thumb behind her and laughed hollowly. "Once a week, whether it needs it or not."

  "You need clothes, Jamie. I'm going to take you out of here."

  "You should have taken me yesterday. It's too late now."

  "I-I'm sorry. I know. But I promise, I won't leave you behind again. You— I believe you now."

  The girl rolled her eyes at her. "You believe? And what exactly is it that you believe?" There was a hard, unforgiving edge to her voice.

  "Everything. I mean, I don't understand any of it, but I do know that something's very wrong here. I'm going to get to the bottom of it. Are you well enough to walk?"

  "Why?"

  "Because we need to leave."

  "No, I mean, why did you come back?"

  "Because I need your help in figuring it all out."

  Jamie chuffed and turned away. She stepped inside the stall and dropped the towel, not caring that she was naked once again and fully exposed. Water still spotted her shoulders and arms. It dripped out of her hair and down her face and neck. Her skin was a sickly shade of green, due to the wan light reflected off the tiles. She reached for the clean gown that had been set there for her and pulled it open.

  "You need street clothes. You can't leave in that."

  "It doesn't matter anymore," Jamie said.

  "Don't say that."

  "No? Look at me!" Jamie spun around, sending a spray of water from her hair. "Look at me! Look at what they've done to me! Don't you see?" She pointed at her leg.

  "It's healing," Angel said, resisting the demand and instead kept her eyes locked on Jamie's. "You're getting better."

  "Better?" she shrieked. "You just don't get it! I'll never be better!"

  "Listen, Jamie, I didn't want to say it before. I didn't want to scare you. But there are some very bad people out there looking for us, and they might come here."

  "Here?" The girl barked out a laugh. She turned to face Angel, and there was something dark and dangerous in her eyes. "Here or there or anywhere. It doesn't matter where I go. The dark man will find me. He told me. Don't you see? I'll never be able to escape!"

  "Yes, you can. We'll go to the French Embassy. We'll leave the country."

  "You're not listening! He'll find me. I'm like a candle to a moth now."

  She's hysterical.

  But the look in the woman's eyes wasn't madness. If anything, they seemed to possess a fierce clarity, an absolute certainty of what was real. It sent a shiver down Angel's back.

  "Just stay here," Angel told her. She stepped toward the door. "I'll go find you some clothes. We're leaving."

  "They'll kill you, too." She didn't move to stop her, just watched her go. "As long as you're with me, you're in danger. The dark man will get you, too."

  Angel pulled the curtain closed on her and hurried for the door. I already am in danger, she thought.

  The cooler air in the hallway felt like a refreshing slap, and she welcomed it into her lungs. She hadn't realized how tight her chest had been. Then she stepped toward the trash containers.

  "How am I going to find anything useful in this mess?"

  She grabbed a bag and squinted through the partially transparent plastic, then tossed it aside. She repeated this until she reached the bottom of the can, then moved onto the next. It was all just useless trash.

  From out in the hallway, she heard someone speaking Chinese in a loud male voice. She peeked past the edge of the wall and gasped when she saw two men standing at the front. Both were wearing jeans and dark windbreakers. No guns were in sight, but the bulge beneath their jackets told her they were carrying.

  "Peters," she heard one of the men say, along with a few words in Chinese. "American. Jamie Claire Peters."

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Angel snatched a pair of hospital smocks hanging on the hook on the wall, along with a laboratory coat, then stepped back into the shower room. She found Jamie just inside the door, her gown wrapped around her and her hair dripping. "They're here!" she whispered.

  "Who?"

  "Americans. At the front looking for you. We need to go now! They have guns!"

  Jamie's face blanched. All of the earlier bluff and bluster was gone, as if she'd only half-believed the things she'd been saying just moments before. Now she looked like a scared little girl. "You brought them here!"

  "Not now, Jamie! Those men are in the hallway right now, and in another minute or two they're going to find out you're not in your bed and— Vite! Vite! What are you waiting for? Hurry up and put this on!"

  But Jamie just stood there with a stunned look on her face. The smock fell to the wet floor and began to soak up water.

  Angel snatched it up again and began to pull it over Jamie's head. "Is there another way out?"

  After a moment's struggle, the girl began to dress herself. Angel could see her trying to think. "I don't know! The front—"

  "Too risky! Can't just walk right past them. There has to be another way!" Angel thrust her arms through the sleeves of the laboratory coat, then drew her hair into a bun behind her head before tying it with a strip torn from a towel pulled from the laundry hamper. It might be enough to fool a person for a moment or two, long enough to buy them a few seconds before they realized she wasn't Chinese.

  But Jamie shook her head. "It won't work." She stopped getting dressed.

  Angel saw that she was right; her smock was too small, and it was stained with something dark that might have been tea or wound exudate. And with the hospital gown hanging out the bottom, she'd draw more attention than deflect it.

  "I've got an idea." She pulled Jamie out the door into the alcove. "Get into a hamper. You can hide. I'll push it out."

  Jamie shook her head. "And what about you? They'll see you, stop you. You don't speak Mandarin. They'll know right away you don't belong in this place. Give me the lab coat."

  "I don't have time to—"

  "You're right. You don't. Now climb inside the hamper. At least I look a little Asian."

  She turned to an attendant who had come out of the showers and was staring at them, a young girl of maybe fourteen with large brown eyes and a port wine stain mark on her neck. Jamie told her something which Angel couldn't understand. The words came out in a tumble, tripping over each other and sounding almost as if she were scolding the girl. But the girl nodded and pointed further down the hallway.

  "Get in the hamper!" Jamie whispered. "She says there's a door to the outside back there, where they take the trash."

  Angel stepped over the side of the hamper and transferred her weight inside. The flimsy fabric bag stretched beneath her feet, but it didn't tear. She crouched down as low as she could, and Jamie covered her in wet towels, soiled sheets, and dirty gowns. The smell was horrendous.

  Once more, Jamie spoke in Chinese. Several seconds passed, and Angel began to worry that she had left without her when she heard her ask if she was ready. "I sent one of the girls out to check. One of the men is still at the front. The other just went into the ward. We need to go now!"

  The hamper tilted on its uneven wheels and began to roll. One squeaked; another rattled. Jamie grunted as she pushed it out of the alcove and into the hall.

  Somewhere nearby Angel could hear a man shouting, his voice growing louder and more terse. It was joined i
n alarm by a second male voice. Then a woman tried to answer, but she was shouted down. The cart rattled along, and the voices grew further away.

  "What's happening?"

  "Shh!"

  Then came the sound of running feet and the squeal of rubber soles on the wet floor. The door to the showers slammed open somewhere behind her. The men's voices turned into hollow echoes.

  As soon as the door shut, Jamie began to run, grunting against the effort of pushing the hamper. Angel felt it start to turn, then slam into the wall. Jamie let out a pained cry.

  "Jamie?" Angel whispered as loud as she dared.

  A hand reached down between the dirty laundry and grabbed Angel's arm and pulled. "Hurry!" Jamie grunted. "We don't have much time!"

  Angel nearly fell climbing over the side of the cart. They were in another alcove at the very end of the hall. Opposite them was a metal door, which had been propped open. Beyond it stood a sort of storage space. The walls were gray-green and grimy, stained with rivulets of lime and rust. The floor was covered in soggy garbage. Full trash and laundry bins lined both sides.

  "Back door," Jamie said, pointing. A sign warned them to stop.

  "The alarm—"

  "I doubt there is one. More likely the door will be chained from the outside. That is, if we're lucky."

  "If we're lucky?"

  "The building's old, the hinges rotten. Together, we should be able to break through. We better hope so anyway." She started to head over to it. Angel noticed that she was wincing and holding her side.

  "You're hurt."

  "Just pulled a muscle. Nothing I won't recover from. Come on!" But a spot of blood began to bloom beneath her fingers as she clutched at her side. She was tearing holes in her own skin with her fingernails again.