by P. J. Fox
At that announcement, one or two heads turned. Without waiting for further signs of cooperation, Kisten hauled Aros to his feet. If he was well enough to complain, he was well enough to walk. “Put your arm around my shoulders,” he instructed.
“Not…unless you buy me dinner first.”
“See?” said Kisten, with more confidence than he felt. “You’re fine.”
He half-carried, half-dragged Aros across the enclosure. For so long, nothing had happened at all—and now, on the eve of their escape, everything was happening at once. He felt overwhelmed. Aros, beside him, mumbled something about how Kisten needed to leave him alone.
“You’ll thank me later,” said Kisten.
Roll call took twice as long as usual, allowing Kisten plenty of time to convince his fellow inmates—and, better yet, the guards—that he and Aros had been stricken with typhoid. The good news was that Aros really didn’t need to act; he stared dully about and said nothing, which convinced their audience more thoroughly than anything else that he and Kisten were about to die. The symptoms of typhoid were actually quite similar to the symptoms of living in Palawan: fever, headache, weakness and fatigue, dry cough, loss of appetite, abdominal pain, diarrhea—or constipation, sometimes—and rash. As the poor unfortunate grew sicker, he developed an extremely distended stomach. He became delirious and, finally, laid about and did nothing until he died.
Conveniently, these were also the symptoms of starvation. Kisten propped Aros up while the rations were passed out, describing the progress of his illness in lurid detail to all and sundry. Some other poor bastard had been deputized to distribute their group’s rations, as Aros was clearly too sick.
Kisten brought Aros back to their little campsite and, after wrapping him in their moth-bitten blanket, went to the spring for fresh water. He filled one cup after another, gave them both to Aros, and then went back for more. Aros, at least, showed marked enthusiasm for the water and drank it down thirstily while Kisten propped him up. Then, exhausted, he decided to rest. Kisten, too tired to do anything else, laid down next to him and thought about escape, and home, and all the men he knew who’d died, both here and elsewhere, and how best to go about playing dead.
One of the points he’d make to the war crimes tribunal about evaluating the proof of prisoners’ claims about their living conditions was that Captain Taschen’s own records were what doomed him. Being a great one for numbers, he’d kept a careful tally of how many men died on each day. The day before the spring broke, 306 men had died. The day after the spring broke, only ten had died. So much, he’d said dryly, for the captain’s pure water.
This pure water seemed to have a reviving effect on Aros, because a little later on he spoke. “When should I start playing dead?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Kisten replied honestly. “Tomorrow morning, I suppose.”
“Is this really going to work?”
Kisten didn’t respond.
TWENTY-NINE
“He’s dead,” said a voice.
“What about the other one?”
A hard-soled boot kicked Kisten in the ribs. It took all of his not inconsiderable self-control not to cry out. His ribs throbbed. Since first light, he’d been forcing himself to breathe very shallowly. He was lying on his stomach, his head turned to the side, and didn’t appear to be breathing at all. He hoped that Aros wasn’t actually dead, but wasn’t exactly in a position to check. Whether Aros was dead or not, he told himself, there was nothing to be done about it now.
The boot prodded him again, more gingerly this time. “Yeah,” said a voice that Kisten was fairly certain belonged to one of the rebel sergeants, “I guess so.”
“Alright, better load them up.”
Kisten dared to hope that his plan was working, but now more than ever he had to remain still.
“Aren’t we going to strip them?”
“Hell no.” There was a scratch and a hiss as the sergeant struck a match on his boot sole, followed a minute later by the sound of a slow, satisfied inhale. Sour-smelling smoke tickled Kisten’s nose. Back when he’d smoked, he’d only smoked the best and most expensive cigarettes. This thing smelled like it had been wrapped with improperly cured tobacco.
There was a wet exhale. “Not if they’ve got plague.”
“You sure they’re dead? Maybe we ought to give each of them a quick stab. You know, to make sure, like.” The man who wasn’t the sergeant laughed, clearly drawn to the idea. Kisten tried to think of something, anything else: the sound of rain on the roof, the secret, mineral smell of the marble caves at Mirzapur, the velvet-soft ears of his first horse, Princess. Princess had been more of a wicked queen, biting the head groom when he tried to feed her sugar cubes, but Kisten had loved her all the same with the whole-hearted enthusiasm that only a child can muster.
“Leave off it, Ed.” The sergeant flicked his cigarette stub to the ground. “Round up the burial detail. We have a few this morning, some in the next camp over and one or two at the pickets.”
The burning stub rolled dangerously close to Kisten’s face, stopping an inch from his left eye. He said a silent prayer of thanksgiving; he wasn’t sure if he had it in him to stay still while a cigarette burned out against his skin, not after what he’d been through before.
Still joking about slat-eyed sons of whores running into the dead line, the two men strolled off. Kisten was desperately curious about Aros, but didn’t dare move. He had no way of knowing who, if anyone, was watching them. So he tried to pull himself down into the deepest, most hidden recesses of his mind and lose himself within his own thoughts.
A pair of rough hands pulled him upright, and another pair swung his ankles into the air. He wanted to cry out in shock, the change was so unexpected. Instead he let his head loll out of the blanket. His body was pressed against Aros’ like so much cordwood, and Aros felt cold. They were carried like that across the compound, one set of hands at the head of the blanket and one at the foot, using it like a sort of sling for the bodies inside. This suited Kisten just fine, as he ran no risk of someone feeling him breathe.
His back struck the ground with such force that the wind was knocked out of him entirely. He lay perfectly still perforce, unable to breathe. Above him, someone let forth a string of curses.
“It’s your fault, you witless nod!”
“No it isn’t,” said the other voice, injured. “You walk too fast.”
“You two,” interjected a third voice, “shut up.” Tomas, Kisten realized.
“He started it.”
There was a crack as the stock of Tomas’ carbine hit flesh. “I said, shut up.”
Kisten felt himself lifted into the air again. The cocoon-like blanket swayed back and forth nauseatingly. He hung suspended like that, pressed up against what might very well be his friend’s corpse, for what seemed an eternity. Crossing the enclosure probably took all of ten minutes, but Kisten relived his entire life as he journeyed ever closer to the dead pile. He was so close! Only a few more minutes, and the worst of the hurdles would be passed.
He thudded against the ground again, this time landing in a patch of foul-smelling mud. Someone shrieked; a high, womanish sound that split his skull like a pickaxe. One of the prisoners, he realized: the man who’d been supporting his shoulders.
“What now?” growled Tomas, making no secret of the fact that he considered this detail to be a waste of his precious time. He clearly thought he had somewhere better to be; probably off in the woods bribing some poor son of a bitch to suck his cock, Kisten thought unkindly.
“That one moved!”
“No he did not.” The scuffle of boots as Tomas moved closer. “He’s dead.”
“I don’t care!”
“Well I do. Pick them up and let’s get going.”
“No.”
At some point during transit, Kisten’s arm had fallen free of the blanket and now lay at an angle on the ground. Kneeling, Tomas grabbed his wrist. “Hello!” he said, in a ludic
rous falsetto. He moved Kisten’s arm back and forth, as though he were waving. Kisten’s hand flopped uselessly at the wrist in an obscene parody of life. “I’m a ghoul, and as soon as the sun goes down I’m going to eat you!” He cackled.
“It’s not funny,” said the prisoner, in a sulky tone.
“Yes it is,” said his mate.
“I’m coming to get you!” crooned Tomas.
“Listen, just knock it off, will you? I’m sorry.”
“You’ll be a whole lot sorrier,” advised Tomas warningly, “when you get typhoid from hanging around messing with a corpse.” Never mind that he’d been the one actually playing with Kisten. “And if I get typhoid, you’ll wish you had. After I bugger you with my gun, I’ll shoot you both.” Kisten knew the words for an idle threat, but the other men didn’t. Tomas might dearly love to bugger anything that presented itself, with anything that presented itself, but he lacked the courage. Or the stamina.
And, once again, Kisten was airborne.
The sergeant who’d examined him that morning reappeared. Kisten could tell by the acrid, sour smell of his cigarettes. Tomas, somewhat self-importantly, told him about the prisoner’s fancy that Kisten—or Aros, Kisten wasn’t sure which—had moved. “He shouldn’t be allowed on burial detail again,” said Tomas. “He’s a little girl.”
“Actually,” said the sergeant, falling into place beside the little group as it moved through the enclosure, “bodies do move after death.” He lit another cigarette. “And do you really want someone who isn’t observant enough to notice movement doing this job? We don’t want to start sending the sons of whores out of here when they’re still alive.”
Tomas mumbled something, and the sergeant laughed unkindly.
Oh, God, thought Kisten.
A corpse, he learned from the sergeant’s ensuing lecture, sometimes moved due to air coming out of the lungs, or the movement of gas in the intestinal tract. Or sometimes, the last few pulses of electrical current from the heart. Once rigor mortis began to set in, usually about six hours after death, the corpse began to stiffen and that process, too, was capable of mimicking intentional movement.
“I’ve even,” finished the sergeant, “seen a case where the poor fellow’s lip twitched and it looked like he was smiling.” He flicked the stub of his cigarette away and spit. “Probably where the vampire myth comes from, don’t you doubt it.”
The gate creaked open and Kisten breathed free air for the first time in a year. It smelled less rancid, even a few feet removed from the enclosure. He felt himself tossed onto the pile, and something—he tried not to think about what—tossed down on top of him. And then, horrifyingly, the ground underneath him jolted and he started to move. Not ground, he corrected himself; wagon bed. He hadn’t joined the jumbled pile of dead bodies outside the gate, as he thought; he’d been dumped on the burial wagon. Which could only mean one thing: he and Aros were about to be buried.
The sergeant hit the side of the cart with the flat of his palm. “Have fun, boys.”
As the cart jostled down the rutted path, Kisten thought. A hand, shaken free by the movement, hit him in the face. He ignored it. He’d considered this possibility, when he’d come up with his plan. Although people died on a fairly regular schedule, the burial detail was a bit more haphazardly organized. It might go out three days in three, or one in five. There was no rhyme or reason to the schedule, if schedule it could be called, and thus no point in attempting to outsmart it. He and Aros would just have to take their chances and hope for the best. It was a calculated risk, to be sure, but even the most fractional possibility of success was better than the certainty of death attendant on remaining in the enclosure.
Moreover, Kisten had volunteered for the burial detail often enough to know that most of the graves were slipshod: bare depressions in the ground topped with, at best, a shovelful or two of loose dirt. Kisten had always been as conscientious as his weakened physical condition would allow, but most of the men were so inured to death that they no longer cared. Kisten had sometimes wondered if they’d volunteered in order to become more familiar with the notion of death. He’d done it, himself: stare down into the grave and think, next time, this might be me.
The cart rumbled to a stop.
“Come on,” said a voice. Tomas again.
“But what about the—the bodies?” asked the prisoner in a plaintive tone.
“They’ll wait.”
“We won’t have enough time,” protested the same prisoner. It wasn’t a voice that Kisten recognized. The other prisoner stayed notably silent—if, indeed he was here at all. Intriguing. “It takes a long time to dig all those holes, and then….” He trailed off, at loose ends.
“Dump them in the woods for all I care,” said Tomas. “You can do it after we’re done.”
“Alright,” the prisoner agreed reluctantly.
A minute or so later, Kisten heard the hiss of a match lighting and smelled smoke. The same ghastly, near raw tobacco that all the rebels seemed to smoke, and that made him feel like his throat was on fire. Even a child could have figured out what was going on, here: Tomas and one of the prisoners—the vocal one—had gone a little ways off into the swaying grasses, and Tomas had given the second prisoner a few cigarettes to keep him quiet. Not that he would have needed much inducement; just lazing around outside and smelling the fresh air was an unheard-of luxury.
Kisten wondered vaguely what the first prisoner was getting in exchange for his time with Tomas.
Or at least thought he was getting.
The good news was that, provided his lover was adequately exciting, Tomas would have to keep his word and dump the bodies in the woods. Unlike the Alliance, which tolerated bisexuality if not outright homosexuality—or had, until Karan’s reign of fundamentalism began some years ago—both the Rebel Coalition and the three major religions on Charon II condemned it as unnatural. The unlovely Captain Taschen had the reputation of being a zealot, and Tomas could hardly advertise his activities.
Kisten would have breathed a sigh of relief, if he’d been able to. When he was a child, he’d read an article in the newspaper about a man who’d undergone an operation and had a terrible adverse reaction to the anesthesia. He’d been completely paralyzed and, while aware, was unable to move—at all. Ever since, the image of what that man’s life must have been like had haunted Kisten’s dreams. He imagined that it must have been something like this; only in his case, to move meant certain death.
He had no way to know if the second prisoner was watching him, but he was sure nevertheless that he was. He could feel the man’s eyes on him, somehow. He tried not to think about it, and tried not to think about the corpses pressing in around him. Heads and hands and torsos and feet, under and over and everywhere. He’d seen enough corpses in his lifetime, he remonstrated with himself; he’d been responsible for creating more than his fair share. This should not bother him. He fought down the urge to bolt, and damn the consequences. Anything to free himself from this, this—
A faint, musty smell invaded his nostrils and coated the back of his throat. It was almost sweet, and it reminded him of finding a dead mouse under one of the gratings as a child. The library had begun to smell and for the longest time no one in the house had been able to locate the source of the smell. The slaves had looked; Kisten’s mother had looked. Finally, when Kisten had found it, its sad little body had been stewing in a pool of its own juices.
He hoped that one of the corpses next to him wasn’t Aros.
He forced himself to think about something else. He had to, or he’d go insane.
A cadet at Imperial Naval Academy at Mirzapur was required to spend more time on campus than the typical civilian university student. From the first day of his first year, a cadet was a serving member of the navy with all the privileges and duties that his new status implied. Between the athletic requirements, extracurricular requirements, training to achieve his commission and completing the grueling requirements of a much large
r course load than his civilian friends ever saw, Kisten came to regard sleep as a luxury. His pay, like his rank, had been minimal: about one thousand darics per month, out of which the fees for laundry, barber, cobbler, activities, yearbook and God knew what else were deducted. Even if he’d had sufficient off-campus leave, which he didn’t, or time to use it, which he didn’t, the hundred darics or so that constituted a cadet’s actual pay were hardly enough to carouse with.
By his third and final year, his actual pay had risen to something fantastic like two hundred darics: enough for a large amount of cheap beer, a decent haul of interesting looking novels that he didn’t have time to read, two potentially diseased prostitutes or, for his more romantically inclined friends, a moonlit picnic and perhaps a little cuddling with whatever girls deigned to acknowledge their existence.
He’d been infuriated when his class was graduated early, not because he harbored any qualms about going to war but because of concerns over the status of his degree. He might not have sufficient academic credentials to sit for the exam and thus become an actual licensed engineer—which was important to him. Having real academic credentials mattered. He had to prove, if only to himself, that he was capable. And that his success was due to more than the accident of his birth.
Having demonstrated that he was a significantly more capable mathematician than most of his professors and, further, having gained a measure of on the job experience through exciting endeavors like repairing the Defiant’s propulsion systems and preventing a core breach that would have destroyed the ship and all hands aboard her, he’d been allowed to sit for both exams and had passed with flying colors. Which made him, he thought, the first man in his family for some generations capable of doing something other than being a prince.
Discounting, of course, the ever-popular occupation of killing people. But even when practiced within acceptable, legal channels, the skills involved were translatable to a limited range of careers—all of which involved political intrigue. Moreover, they made for distressing conversation at cocktail parties. No woman thrilled to the clever means by which you dispatched your rival with a fork. At least, not the sort of woman that he was expected to court.