CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

May Ling had not seen the light of the sun for days. Her pupils had dilated to the extent that they all but obscured the deep amber of her irises.

At the beginning, there had been only seven or eight of them packed into the truck’s nearly airless cargo compartment, but the group had grown to more than a dozen, as they had augmented their numbers at various stops along their route.

The vehicle traveled only by night, bouncing across narrow rutted passes and dirt roads that did not exist on any map: these roads were known only to the smugglers and racketeers who owned her now. The only thing that distinguished day from night was that the truck remained still during daylight hours, though to its occupants it made little difference. They remained imprisoned inside that putrid metal box without regard for the time—or the oppressive heat—of the day, dipping handfuls of rice from a covered communal pot that had been strapped to D-rings embedded in the floor, or relieving themselves into a receptacle just a few feet from the source of their food.

She often went days now without dreaming of her brother Tai Man Duk, or her parents, or the time she had spent working for the produce vendor. Each of their faces had grown hazy and indistinct over time, until they had all but disappeared from her memory. But on those occasions when she did dream, they came to her like a soft cloud or a filial kiss, so lifelike, authentic enough to make the waking reality of her life all the more difficult to bear once her eyes came open again.

She attempted to peer through the darkness at the others. She had seen them only briefly as they were passed through the half-open doors and into their places in the cargo hold. She had judged in those short moments that most of them were refugees who had paid for the privilege of illicit transport, but it was impossible to know, especially since the guards had forbidden them to speak to one another. Only the day before, an old man of seventy or more had been severely beaten when he’d spoken to May Ling. After that, the group had maintained an unremitting and anxious silence.

She turned her head in the direction she knew the old man to be. He was still suffering the effects of his injuries, huddled into a damp corner. She listened helplessly as his musculature periodically seized and shuddered—spasms that were punctuated by the phlegmy rattle of his breathing. He could no longer lift his chin from his chest, his head lolling in unison with the motion of the van, emitting an occasional groan as the road grew particularly rough.

Most of them wore the telltale uniform of the exile: two, sometimes three or four layers of clothing on their backs, and nothing more; no baggage or personal effects, no belongings of any kind apart from what they had enfolded about their bodies. When they reached the final destination, wherever that was to be, each would shed that filthy outer layer like dead reptilian skin, leaving them something, at least, that might be presentable enough to wear while seeking some sort of employment.

May Ling tried to discern the shapes of the young couple who had brought along the little boy aged no more than five or six. Though it was impossible to distinguish individual faces, her eyes had adjusted enough to identify shapes inside varying degrees of darkness. It had been some time since she had found herself in the presence of young children, and she’d never considered herself very good with them. The boy had soiled himself some hours earlier, but the reek of sweat and urine and bodily functions already hung in the compartment like a visible fog, so his contribution mattered very little, really.

She had no idea of their destination, only that she had been swiftly and suddenly removed from the cell she had occupied under the supervision of Joey Soong, and packed shoulder-to-shoulder into the cargo compartment of a transport truck whose outward insignia suggested its contents to be farm produce. She had etched nearly three thousand marks into the wall of her cell by the time she had been sent here. More than eight years as the property of the White Orchids. The one thing for which she remained grateful was that in all that time she had never been subjected to the needle. There had been days early on when she might have welcomed it, but she had witnessed the damage it had done to the others. May Ling could scarcely imagine the added horror that she would be suffering at this moment if she had been forced into addiction. She had learned to find gratitude for the things that she could.

No one had mustered the courage to ask if any among them knew where they might be going, though May Ling reminded herself that their destination was of little consequence to her. By now, each had been subjugated to the extent that their vacant, submissive expressions resembled one another as closely as did their crusty layers of soiled garments.

So May Ling slept. Or attempted to.

And she prayed that she would not dream.

She was awakened by an odor.

It was a damp and musty scent, the kind she had long associated with Hong Kong harbor during slack tides. In that other life, on special days, her brother, Duk, and May Ling would take the bus to the floating city at Aberdeen to browse the fish market. Brightly colored canopies flapped in the limpid breeze that wafted between the merchant stalls, canvas tents held aloft by lengths of rusted metal pipe that sheltered broad tables from the sun. Tables were laden with whole fish, some with bulky tubs in which live creatures still crawled on spindled legs or swam in listless patterns, or rolled onto their sides and seemed to watch her with their lidless silver eyes. Sometimes, when they had set aside enough money, Duk would bargain with a fishmonger and they would carry one home, wrapped inside a parcel made of soggy newsprint and held together with rough twine. Most times they would merely browse, and savor a day spent inside the ebb and flow of commerce at the market as others might treat a trip to an amusement park.

The odor she encountered now was distinctly, impossibly similar. But that memory seemed so distant it might just be a tale she’d once been told, a story she had heard but involved someone else altogether.

The screech and hiss of the air brakes echoed inside the cramped compartment, and anyone fortunate enough to have found sleep was jarred awake at once. The wounded old man groaned from his place in the corner, and the little boy began to speak. The boy’s mother moved swiftly to cover his mouth with her hand. The rumble of the truck motor coughed and went silent, and seconds later the metal doors swung open.

A small cadre of men dressed as soldiers stood outside, and the quality of the light outside told May Ling that it was morning. Wet fog rolled across a field of broken tarmac strewn with gravel and broken glass and clots of dying weeds, the atmosphere cast in pale blue.

The leader of the men spoke to them in words May Ling could not make out, but his orders had left the unloading of the truck to two of his charges. The remainder of the troop followed when he stalked away.

The two he left behind bore no resemblance to the White Orchid men she had known in Hong Kong, so distant from the mold that she doubted they could be affiliated with the Tong at all. Though they were dressed as the others in the unit, in military style, clearly none of them were official army personnel, either. They possessed only the barest semblance of military bearing, but even from a distance May Ling could see that these men had been broken from the inside, as if they had once been trained as proper soldiers, but their minds and souls had gone rogue.

“Up and out, all of you,” the taller of the guards ordered.

The darkness inside had been so complete for so long, that even the diffuse morning light had them blinking back the pain that stabbed behind their stuttering eyelids.

“By God,” the short one said. “They smell like the latrine in a Korean whorehouse.”

Both guards shook their heads and backed away from the stale putridity that roiled out of the truck.

“Get out. Now,” the tall one said. “Your trip is over.”

“Climb down,” the short one echoed. “Move along.”

Without taking his eyes off the people who remained cowering and blinking against the light, the tall guard moved his rifle to his shoulder, passed his arm through the olive-green web sling that held it in place, and tugged the elbow of the woman nearest the door. He pulled her sharply outward, off the elevated bed of the transport truck and onto the ground. She landed awkwardly on her hipbone and cried out as she struck the pavement. The guard paid no attention, except to shove her away with the sole of his boot as he made a grab for the person seated in the space beside where the woman had been only a moment before. Almost as one, the rest unfolded themselves from their positions and began to leap from the vehicle before the guards could yank them down. In the end, only the old man remained.

“Don’t make me climb in there,” the short guard said.

After a moment of hesitation, he leaped into the hold and went to gather the old man. He touched him with his boot, not so roughly at first, but with growing aggravation. Rolling the old man onto his back, he called out to his comrade.

“This one is nearly gone.”

“Then toss him in the river.”

May Ling looked on in silent dread as a frail woman approached the taller guard. She was nearly the age of the old man, and moved with the mincing and uncertain steps of the elderly. Her eyes remained focused submissively upon the ground. May Ling wished she had the courage to reach out to her, or at least, the ability to look away. Instead, she stood as transfixed and helpless as all the others.

“Please,” the old woman begged, never lifting her downward gaze. “He is my husband. Let me help him.”

The guard turned to her, his expression one of contempt.

“This is your husband?”

Her eyes remained as they had been, her attitude one of utter entreaty.

“Please,” she pleaded again.

The guards eyed one another, then the old woman. The short one spoke again.

“I understand,” he said.

The tall one leapt inside the container, pulled a face at the foul odor and moved toward the far corner, nearly enveloped by shadow. He secured his rifle with one hand as he used his other to drag the semiconscious body to the opening. As he emerged from the shadows, May Ling could see that both of the old man’s eyes had swollen shut. A deep gash on his temple had scabbed over during the long drive, but had begun to bleed freely again, coursing over the line of his brow and down the side of his face.

“I will make you a deal, grandmother,” the guard said. He looked down from the truck bed and into the eyes of the old woman. “If you can get him down by yourself, he lives.”

She was small and far too weak to move her husband from the raised platform, and she looked to the guard again, her eyes seeking something, anything that might resemble compassion.

“If not,” he said, “he goes into the river.”

The old man’s head lolled near the edge, and a sound emanated from him that was more animal than human as she tried to work her hands beneath his shoulders, to grasp onto his clothing, but she failed to get a grip, couldn’t budge him from where he lay.

“Pull harder,” the guard said, and watched the old woman struggle as they all looked on. May Ling felt ill, but could not move, as immobilized by revulsion as by dread.

What happened next happened quickly.

The shorter guard leaped down from the truck and, without warning, took hold of the old man’s collar and lifted, dragged, and pitched the inert body at her. The force of contact threw the old woman off balance, her bony fingers still threaded inside a knot of her husband’s clothing.

His skull struck the ground with a hollow thud and his body fell across hers, pinning her to the tarmac. There was an elongated vacuum of utter silence that preceded the piercing shrieks that were either the product of pain from the bone that protruded through the parchment skin of her femur, or the realization that the viscous ruby pool that was rapidly spreading beneath her husband’s skull marked the moment of his death.

The old woman’s cries glanced off the walls, and shattered May Ling’s eardrums as well as her heart. It was the tragic and mournful sound of a great wounded bird, and the image refused to fade from May Ling’s mind: the likeness of an ancient, gray heron, elongated neck and skeletal legs, vainly flailing its wings in its powerlessness to rise from the earth. Her wails grew louder and louder, until there was no woman at all, only a helpless, frightened bird.

From the corner of her eye, May Ling saw the little boy’s father lunge for the guard, a belated act of courage or compassion, but he was momentarily hampered by his wife’s clutching grip. The guard rewarded him with the administration of a swift stroke to his face from the butt of his rifle, and sent an arcing spray of blood across the boy, his mother, and May Ling. The father flew backward and landed on his back, semiconscious. The wife crawled to a place beside her husband while the little boy held fast to May Ling’s leg.

The old woman was screaming uncontrollably now, and the guards, agitated and disturbed by their sudden loss of control, vented their rage on her. The first blow crushed her orbital bone and silenced her, but they were acting with unchecked animal aggression, and their vicious assault did not cease until the two aged bodies had become little more than a heap of raw meat and soiled clothing.

The great gray heron had fallen silent, just blood and feather and bone, and the final spastic clutches of dulled claws in the empty air.

May Ling felt the little boy’s fingers dig deeply into her flesh as he worked to bury his face against her, attempting to disappear. She wrapped a protective arm around his narrow shoulders and watched as the boy’s mother cradled her husband’s shattered head in her lap. The remaining refugees stood with their backs pressed against the wall, stunned into silence as the guards backed away, their chests heaving from exertion. The empty echo of savage cruelty hung in the damp, pale light of the rising sun, the first of many mornings they would spend as captives of an unknown militia, housed inside a decaying metal warehouse on the banks of the Yangtze River.