Whatever Gods May Be Part 22

The next time the scorpion appeared, Jamie warily let it be. It wasn't interested in her; instead it chased-and caught-a two-inch c.o.c.kroach. After that, Jamie decided to catch c.o.c.kroaches but couldn't.

Her hands didn't work well enough to catch c.o.c.kroaches, not even the ones she encountered in her food bowl.

Finally, she squished one with her heel, deposited it near the scorpion's crevice, and waited. "Hey," she said when the scorpion appeared. "Got something for you." But the scorpion rejected her c.o.c.kroach and soon found one of its own. "Oh. So you like 'em live.

You'd be up the creek without those pincers of yours, huh?" Jamie stared at her own aching, nearly useless hands and shook her head. She continued to place them beneath her when she peed, which helped. She did other things she remembered from the c.o.c.k, too: Drain the pus from the wounds and clear away the dead tissue, enlist the aid of maggots if necessary.

It was, indeed, necessary.

She didn't even have to attract flies with morsels of food. The flies preferred her hands. Three times, she let maggots grow and feed on her wounds, watching them devour the rotting flesh, waiting for the blood to flow, for those brighter slices of pain, sign the maggots had reached live tissue. Then she brushed the maggots off her hands into * 184 *

a wriggling clump near the scorpion's crevice and put her hands in a flow of urine.

Bit by bit, the appalling wounds improved enough that she could use her fingers to explore every centimeter of the dark cell, learning the texture of the concrete blocks and the crumbly mortar between them.

No microphones, no pinhole cameras that she could discern, but she discovered thick tie-downs embedded deep into each of the corners near the cell's low ceiling. Tie-downs to which the Zhong could chain her whenever they wanted.

How long did she have before they wanted?

"Gotta get stronger," she explained to the scorpion the first time she lay on her back, arms across her chest, knees pointing upward.

"Whaddaya think? Twenty crunches? Fifty?"

Once she could weakly wiggle her fingers, she practiced picking up the bowls not with the heels of her hands but with fingers that actually moved some. When at last she could fully bend her wrists, she tried pushups. It was a close fit; her feet crowded into one corner and her head nearly touched the walls at the diagonal corner, but she defied the pain in her hands and eked out one, two, six, ten. Each time she did them, she did a few more. Because each one might be the last one. They could come anytime with their shackles. Anytime...

Jamie worried a lot about time. All efforts to measure it proved fruitless. The minimal light never varied. Beyond a low, remorseless buzzing and the intermittent whine of mosquitoes, she heard nothing except when someone slid the scanty ration of food through the door hatch. Nor were the scorpion's irregular visits any help.

Using her accelerating exercise regimen, she attempted to test the tempo of mealtimes. Sometimes food and water arrived only several hundred carefully paced crunches and pushups later than the last time. But often the span was much longer and she felt the effects of dehydration.

"At least they're still bothering to screw with me," she told the scorpion as it sucked the innards out of a c.o.c.kroach. "Guess maybe I didn't say much."

v "Guess maybe I didn't say much."

* 185 *

Scorpion had been gone for a while, but upon her return the conversation picked right up where Jamie left off. "Why dump me in here all this time-unless they've already got what they wanted? But if they got what they wanted, why keep f.u.c.king with me?" Ignoring Jamie, Scorpion scurried after a spider. Yellow and black, like the poisonous ones in the mountain forests. Scorpion took no chances and stung the spider with its tail.

"Mmm. Nice work."

Scorpion settled in for a leisurely meal and Jamie tried to remember. "Dee lee-yee. Shoo Juh kept saying something like that. I used to know what it means. If I could just re- Hey, that's it: Means 'the inside scoop.' Right, and they kept calling me 'gwun mo garn' like it's some kind of insult. You were probably there, huh? Watching while they pounded on me 'til I said what they wanted. But G.o.d, I don't know what it was. What'd I tell 'em, Scorpion?" v Okay, try it. Jamie opened her eyes, surveyed the cell, closed her eyes again, and sighed. "You're not coming back anymore, huh?" She was sure now: Scorpion had disappeared for good.

"C'mon, time for pushups." But she didn't move from her corner.

Without Scorpion, it was tougher to talk herself out of believing the ceiling was sinking, slowly claiming the sepulchral compartment until at last its vast weight would crush her. When she glanced up, she saw glowing red droplets form above her on the descending blackness.

Finally the moment arrived when she couldn't look at the ceiling at all, because doing so provoked in her an intractable dread. If she looked up, she'd see blood showering down upon her. And then she'd scream, she was quite sure of it. And once she started screaming, she'd never stop. I will die screaming.

Without Scorpion, this thought began to rule her. It acquired a life of its own and found ways to embellish itself, making her say it all out loud, in bits and pieces, until it crescendoed.

"Everyone else has been freed, and they're home now, safe with people who love them. But not me, because n.o.body on this whole f.u.c.king planet knows I exist. Not even Marty Rhys. Oh G.o.d, not even Marty. Only person who gives a s.h.i.+t about me is that interrogator.

* 186 *

And the only reason she gives a s.h.i.+t is because she wants me to die screaming. She's keeping me here even though the G.o.dd.a.m.n war's over so she can gloat and laugh while she watches me die screaming and squirming and-and-"

Tightening into a fetal clench, eyes squeezed shut, Jamie rocked herself back and forth, half humming, half grunting. To push away the implacable sameness. To keep from screaming. Then she heard- What's that?

Adrenaline gus.h.i.+ng, she listened for her only human contact-the sc.r.a.pe of bowls of food and water nudged by a Zhong soldier through the door hatch. But no-there was only the menacing black and its relentless blood threat-an immutable h.e.l.l made just for her. Not that quick snap of a death-no, no, never the relief of a bullet bursting in to her brain, a final, exuberant blast of light and sound and then the everlasting relief of nothing.

"Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, I'm the only one still here."

"No, you're not."

Jamie sprang to her feet so fast she smacked her head on the low ceiling but didn't notice as she whirled in a full circle searching for the owner of the voice.

The cell was empty, of course. "Great." She slumped back to the floor. "Now I'm hallucinating."

"Oh, you've been doing that for a while."

Her head swung around once more to catch the woman whose voice nuzzled in her ear. But she found no one.

"It's only your fear, you know."

Jamie didn't respond. But something- someone-was waiting.

Palpably waiting. "Okay, I'll bite," she grumbled finally. "What's only my fear?"

"Getting you to believe that all the others have been freed. They haven't. They're still here. They're worried about you."

"How the f.u.c.k would you know?"

"You won't die if you scream."

"Leave me alone."

"Screaming won't kill you-won't make you crazy. Try it." In the cell's perpetual dusk, where mere moments protracted into forever, it didn't take long for the idea to rule her completely. Screaming won't kill you.

* 187 *

What the f.u.c.k. Jamie threw her head back and screamed as loud as she could, deep and throaty at first, then high-pitched and piercing.

After she emptied her lungs, she filled them with the cell's foul air and did it again. Then again and again and again until she exhausted herself.

v For once she hadn't dreamed at all. No Shoo Juh supervising a beating. No little girls getting their heads blown off. No Marty Rhys baring exquisite b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Jamie opened her eyes to the sight of a small bundle just inside the door hatch. For a while, she stayed curled up and stared at it, waiting for it to evaporate. When it didn't, she poked it with her foot, cautiously.

OmiG.o.d, omiG.o.d-it's real. She crawled to it-and found a hammock. A hammock!

Was this a new kind of relief? The latest mindf.u.c.k by Shoo Juh?

Jamie didn't care. Defying the limits of her clumsy hands, she suspended this treasure from the tie-downs, stretching it diagonally across the cell.

At just the right angle, keeping her feet together, she could fully extend herself in it. Soon she slipped into another deep, restorative sleep.

Sometime later, she heard scratching, tapping near the air vent.

Morse code? Hoping it, too, was real, she ransacked her memory to translate it. First came three dashes. That's an o! The scratches and taps continued.

"Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever G.o.ds may be for my unconquerable soul"

The first verse of Invictus-every letter, even the commas, scratched and tapped in full. Then, "d04 m04." A pause was followed by "h09".

Who had risked s.h.i.+ng to send her hope and tell her she'd made it to 0900 on the fourth of April? And should she signal back?

h.e.l.l yes. " - - - - " -thku.

" - - - - - - - - " -oohrah.

Jamie cried first, then she giggled, then she pumped out a hundred pushups.

* 188 *

Chapter tWenty-one.

Breath on the Wind A sultry whiff of the coming habagat at last reached Jamie's cell and strengthened into meaning. Could be May by now.

What seemed like soon after, the door to the cell creaked open to a ferocious glare.

"Suh!" ordered a pair of intensely backlit legs. Whenever had arrived. Jamie sheltered her eyes and crawled toward the cell door, trying to stave off The Fear with the hope that all those pushups and crunches would somehow help her.

Before she could attempt to stand, her hands were manacled behind her back, but for once the Zhong soldiers left her ankles unfettered. They had to lead her, and slowly. She was blind and nauseous; the insides of her head clamored to escape her skull, her legs faltered. Eyes squeezed shut against the blazing light, she tried to count the steps she walked.

Perhaps a hundred, perhaps more. And then people she couldn't see sat her on a stool beneath a dazzling spotlight and hosed her down with deliciously cold water.

"Now that you have a better understanding of your options, are you ready to continue our conversation in a civil manner?" The special chief interrogator's words triggered too many memories. Shoo Juh always began with that same chilly veneer of civility.

Oh G.o.d, I can't do this again. Jamie kept her head bowed, unwilling this time to look into the woman's always-animated eyes and suffer the inevitable punishment for such insolence-a merciless slap across her face.

"You're not quite done yet..." The familiar voice was barely more than breath on the wind. Jamie knew better than to seek its source or doubt its sagacity, but she begged for reprieve. No, please...

* 189 *

"She prefers to believe you. But he's here again to get you to recant and then find a way to kill you so you don't say anything else that's inconvenient."

What? I don't get it. Panic gnarled Jamie's belly. Please. I don't get it! What am I supposed to-? Then Jamie heard a voice-her own voice, steady and calm-saying, "You don't care what I know or what I say."

The special chief interrogator's shadow loomed. "Oh, but I do care."

Jamie couldn't see the spa.r.s.e, cruel smile teasing the interrogator's delicate lips, but memory told her it was there. She shook her head.

"You care about having an excuse to hurt me, about watching me try to jump out of my own skin." Squinting now, Jamie looked up into that icy gaze and finally understood what she'd seen there all along: Shoo Juh was turned on.

Eyes sparking wildly, the interrogator slapped Jamie so hard she fell to the floor. "You are punished because you do not respect your superiors, hong mao."

This deeply derogatory term for non-Asians meant "red fur," to denote they were less than human. It was the interrogator's favorite insult, and it worked. After the soldiers picked her up and returned her to the stool, Jamie bowed her head and didn't look up again.

"Tell me about Banggi, hong mao."

Ignoring the taste of her own blood seeping from her lacerated lower lip, Jamie risked an attempt to stall. "Please, may I have some water?"

After a minute, one of the four soldiers guarding her put a canteen to her lips and she swallowed as much as she could as fast as she could, leaning forward to get the last of it as the guard withdrew the canteen.

And that's when she realized someone else was there, too. Jamie tried to sneak a look, but saw only a civilian's hiking boots and blue jeans. A wave of acidic terror shuddered through her. This is him. The one who wants to kill me.

"Gwun mo garn," he said then, oozing contempt. "'The soldier in endless h.e.l.l.'"

Jamie couldn't identify his accent. Certainly it wasn't any sort of Chinese, but it paralyzed her. She'd heard that accent, that voice before.

* 190 *

"Cantonese is so useful," he said, "for exposing darker truths like yours, c.u.n.t. Gwun mo garn, the sniper who shoots innocent children and-"

"Zhu zhuay!" Shoo Juh barked. "You've had more than your share, lee-eh huaw."

She just told him to shut up, didn't she? And I think she called him a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

The interrogator turned to Jamie. "Tell me about Banggi, hong mao."

But Jamie could find no words. This b.a.s.t.a.r.d who knew too much about her had robbed her of words.

"I will not wait much longer." Shoo Juh came close enough for Jamie to glimpse her eyes churning with impatience.

The threat in those eyes stutter-started Jamie's brain. Banggi...

Banggi... Oh s.h.i.+t! Borneo! She stared at the floor. Invasion of Borneo.

And heard a tremulous echo. There was only... only...

Jamie imitated the echo as it faded. "There was only one briefing b-before, before I was...I-I can't remember-"