“SEVENTEEN PIECES.” DAGR DID THE COUNT, AND THEN THREW UP in the corner.
Seventeen pieces and a body still alive, hooked into a fairly newish Japanese life support unit. A head lolled on the cot, earless, tongueless, noseless, something barely human, a lone eye. An inventory of parts, lined up neatly in jars, five fingers of the left hand, the square palm, the left forearm; the left foot, the left shin, up to the knee; the right foot; a single eye; a nose; a shriveled tongue. Ears floating like petals in the brine. A scattering of teeth. A mind long fled.
“It is incredible that he is still alive,” Hamid said. He was being careful. “The man is expert.”
Kinza was white faced, drawn tight. He seemed incapable of speech.
“Shall I shut it down?” Hamid asked.
“He’s still alive.” Dagr looked at the wretch and doubted the veracity of his words. Yet the chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. The animal still struggled feebly in the rib cage.
“The mind cannot survive this kind of thing,” Hamid said quietly. “He will die from the trauma soon, perhaps two or three days. The pain is constant. It is cruel to revive him.”
They stood for several moments, looking to Kinza for direction. He stood hunched over the body, shaking. Tears coursed down his cheeks, fell on the misshapen half face beneath him; the single roving eye stirred beneath the lid, a restless sentinel. Dagr stared at his friend and felt an absurd urge to shoot him in the back of the head now, while he was vulnerable. It seemed to him they would perhaps never get another chance, that Kinza was minutes from becoming enraged, not the irrational simmering anger he had for humanity in general, but a far worse, specific rage, which would unleash some kind of holocaust. He marveled that if he had the courage, he could end this stupidity right now, sink them all into oblivion.
Where do these thoughts come from? Am I prescient now? Near death, were these unhallowed gifts coming from God? I should have died long ago. I could have taken my own life. Was it cowardice that stayed me? Is there a difference between suicide and murder?
Dagr, coward at heart, could only stare dumbly, stutter stop the old numb hesitation that dogged his life. The bed swam before him, the slow drip poisoning Xervish with life. They’re keeping this boy alive. Would it be a sin to end him? One of them would, soon. And they would take the body and the parts and bury him perhaps if they fought loose. The huddled body on the white sheets, the travesty of medical care, he looked so small, like a child. Dark memories froze him in time, his daughter in her school uniform, skipping ahead of him, curls flying, her book bag in his hand, unreasonably heavy, the cramp in his shoulder, a twinge in his knee, the signs of age, and he remarked the peculiar contentment he had felt then, that almost-wisdom of becoming old in his mind.
One-two-three-four
Get that finger off the floor
Five-six-seven-eight
Get that thumb off the gate
Fire and heat and blinding light. It was darkness that brought peace. There was nothing good about fire, heat, and blinding light. Whose bomb was it, who knew, who cared? Something inside him gibbered I wasn’t there I wasn’t there I wasn’t there.
The car lifted like a matchbox in a whoosh of sound. Books flew from his hand, the strap torn, charred, his hand miraculously unmarked. He saw her head snap back, the body arcing up, hair flailing, pastel blue sky. He felt the sound of blood drumming in his ears, and too much light in his eyes.
And then the hospital, the sheets red and then brown and then white again. Of course they took her to the hospital, and the doctor spoke to him like a human because he was a professor, an educated man, and his wife staring into space was pretty, with her wild eyes and knotted fingers. They changed the sheets to take away the blood, and there was the acrid cut of disinfectant and the pan with some parts of her gathered, the shoe, the leg—no point attaching it back, although the doctor murmured in his ear that he could do something to tidy up, so he could take the body back with dignity. Family, they said, call your family. This is my family. This is it. It’s over.
White sheets and disinfectant, it lingered in the cesspit of his mind, crowding his nights. The sibilant breath of Xervish drew him back. He saw the stark lines of Kinza’s face, the desolation contained within. Cut off. Unmoored. We are all the same now. Unconnected links, adrift in time. Ghosts, lurking. God has taken back whatever grace he gave us. We have been removed from the tribes of humanity and now flounder purposeless.
He thought that he knew why Hamid followed now, why he himself continued to march. Kinza drew them with the strength of his purpose, with that loose promise that there was a cause hidden somewhere, some reason for their existence. And now Dagr thought with sinking heart that perhaps it was all a myth, that Kinza perhaps was as lost as the rest of them, his fury empty, a dashing of tides against the sand.
Heavy footfalls drummed above, the rough shouts of warriors trying to impose order.
“They come,” Hamid said, finally. “We’re trapped.”
“We are where we need to be,” Kinza said after a moment. He pulled out grenades from his bag, two, three of them.
“What are you going to do?” Hamid asked. “Kill us all?”
“Tell me, Hamid, what kind of questioning occasions the removal of seventeen body parts?”
“None,” Hamid said. “This is…something else.”
“How long did it take?” Kinza asked. “In your professional opinion?”
“Two to three days,” Hamid said. “Kinza, I was an interrogator. We extracted information using threats and pain. Most of the time fear was enough. This is far beyond anything I have ever seen or heard of.”
“He had to send a message I suppose,” Kinza said. “Why do people always want to send me a message?”
Dagr was wondering the very same thing, and the rising nausea told him there was a reason they were stuck in this perpetual cycle of escalation. “Can we get out of here now?”
“We will.” Kinza was calm now.
“You want to send a message back, I suppose?”
“Hamid, how are you at scalping?”
“What?”
“Peeling heads.”
“Not bad. We practiced a bit during med school.”
“You went to med school?” Dagr looked skeptical.
“Of sorts,” Hamid said. “Not the kind you’re thinking of, not really.”
“Good doctor,” Kinza said. He was dry eyed now. “Turn off the life support. It’s time.”