After the First Death (24 page)

Miro pushed the girl down the steps of the bus to the outside. Sooner or later, they would invade the bus and he had to get out. Just as Artkin had left the van. Each had his hostage: their tickets to freedom. Let them have the children. He had Kate, and Kate would die before he did.

The chemical fog rolled in heavy again, the patches of cotton dancing madly now in the winds caused by the helicopter blades. Miro’s eyes darted toward both ends of the bridge and saw nothing. Where were the attackers? He looked to Artkin, and Artkin, too, looked puzzled. The noise of the rotors increased. Miro looked up and and saw the ski-like foot of a helicopter stabbing through the swirling fog. Were they going to land here on the bridge? On the top of the bus, crazy as that would be? Or would they come from below? His eyes darted to the tracks, but his feet were shrouded in fog. He clutched the girl with one hand, continued to prod her with the gun. But she did not struggle. She might have been sobbing; he could not hear above the noise. He looked to Artkin, needing answers. What now? Where is the enemy? When is he coming? And as he looked, he saw them at last, at the far end of the bridge, five or six of them, advancing with rifles ready, clad in camouflaged uniforms, beyond Artkin, beyond the van. Miro opened his mouth to shout a warning to Artkin but knew his voice could not be heard. Artkin was studying the helicopter that was emerging from the fog above them. Miro withdrew the gun from the girl’s ribs, intending to catch Artkin’s attention by waving frantically or moving toward him. But the girl, at the release of the gun’s pressure from her body, burst forward. Miro grabbed at her; he could not risk losing her and
thus lose his chance to get out of here. He pulled her back to him, close, their bodies crushed together. He turned again to Artkin and saw Artkin stiffen, saw his arms grow rigid, saw the cords in his neck bulge as if small worms crept beneath his flesh. Miro knew Artkin was shot but he saw no blood, saw only the familiar body suddenly become the body of a stranger. Artkin’s grip on the boy loosened, and the boy spun away from him, gathering his arms across his chest as if to protect himself. Artkin’s body swiveled, still stiff, his head turning with his body as though he were standing on a turntable, a turntable slowly revolving. Artkin’s hand, holding the gun, extended itself. His arm jerked backward as the gun fired. Miro saw the bullet penetrate the boy’s flesh, saw the crimson badge appear on the boy’s chest. The boy fell, eyes glazed, body rigid, mouth frozen. Artkin, too, fell, dropping the gun. As he fell, he faced Miro and his eyes were already sightless. His mouth was a hole through which blood gushed, but blood like Miro had never seen before, thick and dark, as if Artkin’s tongue had swollen a thousand times and then exploded in shreds from his mouth. Miro was held: Artkin dead. He had never counted on Artkin dying, only himself and the others.

It was at that moment that the helicopter crashed into the roof of the van in a blast of flame and smoke, the shock of the explosion sending both Miro and the girl reeling from the doorway of the bus, flinging them onto the tracks, five or six feet away. Miro clung to the girl, knowing instinctively that he could not let her go, could not lose her in the smoke and the rubble and the chaos that surrounded them. Miro’s eyes hurt and his lungs burned. As he and the girl tumbled together in the rubble and the debris, dust mingling with the fog close to the ground, he was aware of soldiers everywhere
around them but moving past them as if he and the girl were invisible. Shouts penetrated the noise now:
Christ, the chopper hit the van.… Get that guy out of there.… Check the kids.
Miro scrambled to his feet. He helped Kate to her feet, but she resisted, trying to pull away from him, defiance in her eyes. He looked toward the end of the bridge and realized, astonishingly, that it was unguarded: it was a clear means of escape to the woods, out of this hell of fire and smoke and fog. The helicopter crash had distracted the soldiers; their concern for the children had also caused them to ignore Miro and the girl. All the activity was centered on the scene of the crash.

“Come,” Miro said, brandishing the gun, waving it toward the woods. He pushed her and she staggered forward. As Miro started after her, a searing pain shot through the calf of his left leg. He looked down to see blood staining his pants. A bullet? A piece of shrapnel? A cut sustained when he was thrown by the explosion? He clenched his teeth against the pain and thrust himself after Kate, the gun in her ribs and his other hand on her shoulder, not so much to prevent her from escaping now but for support. The pain was excruciating; he wanted to cry out. But he could not let the girl see him that way. She would take advantage, break free.

Stumbling, struggling, they reached the end of the bridge. The fog lay heavy here, undisturbed by the helicopter blades. The fog stung their eyes again. Miro looked back, squinting through the fog. Both the helicopter and the van were enveloped in flame and smoke, the blades of the helicopter jutting into the sky like the broken wings of a wounded bird. The bus was untouched. Soldiers were piling into the bus. The children were safe. But not Artkin. Artkin was dead, Artkin who was worth more than all the children.

“Move, move,” Miro whispered furiously to Kate. “Into the woods.”

Miro’s voice was odd in his ears, like the voice of a stranger.

They were huddled so closely together that their breaths mingled as if in some weird kind of artificial respiration: Kate could not tell where her breath left off and Miro’s began. Her thighs were soaked with urine—her bladder had given way completely during the attack—and perspiration bathed the rest of her body. Not perspiration—sweat. Sweat that came from deep inside her, heavy and musky. Or was it Miro’s sweat? She knew it was Miro’s blood that had splashed on her jeans, blood from the gash in his leg. He had torn his pants and exposed the wound: torn tissue quietly pulsing blood. She knew he felt the pain. She could see it in his eyes. His breathing had an extra dimension, an extra depth. Her breath came in exhausted gasps, from running and struggling with Miro as they’d made their way through the woods. But Miro’s breathing had more than exhaustion in it. He was gulping air and his breaths came fast, faster than Kate’s. She looked down at the pulsing blood and thought: Maybe I can get away at last, maybe the wound will spill his blood away.

They
were in a small nestlike enclosure Miro had spotted in the woods, a haven of bushes and fallen branches, probably some child’s abandoned fort. Kate
remembered how she liked to sneak into small places when she was a kid and hide from the world. She and Miro were hiding now. The place did not accommodate two people, barely one. They were joined together in a ferocious embrace. Miro had shoved her into the enclosure first, and she thought he was leaving her there because there was room only for herself. Then he had climbed in as well, pushing and squirming, keeping the revolver always aimed at her somehow. She had to bend and twist her body to allow him entry. Now they were locked together, legs entwined, faces only inches apart, mouths almost exhaling into each other and the gun still wedged between them, below her left breast, hurting her, bruising her ribcage. Her fear was that the gun would go off accidentally. Her heart beat in heavy thuds. Or was it Miro’s? In the distance she could hear the sound of shouting, faint sounds, like a radio playing with the volume turned to low.

She sighed, weary, dispirited. But knew she had to begin somewhere, sometime.

“You can’t get away,” she said. “We’re surrounded.” Speaking was an effort and her voice emerged as if she were talking in a huge cavern.

“Be quiet,” Miro said, his voice a rasp, hoarse, strangled.

At least the children were safe, Kate thought. At least? No, not least. The children had been the important ones from the beginning. And now they were safe, rescued, probably being handed over to their mothers and fathers at this moment. How about my mother and father? How about me? Yeah, how about me?

She had to avoid panic. She had to concentrate on the positive side of things. She couldn’t give up now. When the smoke cleared on the bridge and everything calmed down, they’d search the woods. Miro would never be
able to escape. Not alone. Not in these woods that were unknown to him.

“My ankle hurts,” Kate said. “I twisted it just before we stopped running. A bad twist. Maybe it’s sprained. I’ll be a drag on you. Why don’t you leave me here? You can make it faster alone.”

She was amazed at her ability to lie, to improvise, to plot and scheme. Yet there was no one to see how cunning she could be. If Miro could see, then it would come to no good. She thought of the bus and all those hours she’d tried to hang on. Had she done well? Had she been brave enough? She’d botched up the escape attempt. She wished she could talk to somebody about it, maybe her mother and father, and they’d say, the way they always said when she’d attempted something and failed: Well, at least you tried, Kate. That was something, wasn’t it? Maybe she hadn’t been brave, but at least she’d tried, hadn’t she? She wished there were somebody here to tell her yes. She had never felt so lonely in all her life, a desperate kind of loneliness with a sadness in it.

“You will stay with me, Kate. Without you, they would shoot me like a dog,” Miro said. His breathing was more regular now, his voice almost normal. He pushed the gun deeper into her ribs. “I will shoot you if I have to, Kate. My orders from the beginning were to shoot you. Kill you. I would not hesitate now.”

She regarded him with horror. But she couldn’t let him see the horror. “Why didn’t you shoot me, then?”

“We needed you. To take care of the children. But Artkin said I would have my chance before we left the bridge.” He was breathing hard again and grimacing against the pain.

She had been right. She had seen her doom in their eyes. She raised her eyes to Miro now, knowing her
doom was still there. He looked down at his leg. “The blood, it’s stopping,” he said.

“Even if it stops, what good will it do?” Kate said, summoning all that was left in her to play the role, keep him talking, reach him again as she had reached him once or twice on the bus. But, God, she was tired.

“No more words, Kate, no more games.”

“I’m not playing games. Look at the facts. You’re hurt. The woods are full of soldiers. You’re in a strange country. There’s no way out.”

He didn’t respond. She pressed on. “Look, maybe if you give yourself up, they’ll go easy on you. After all, you didn’t do anything. You didn’t kill Raymond. The kids are safe. Even the first one who died, little Kevin McMann, that was an accident. I’ll testify in your behalf. I’ll tell them you were kind to the children. To me. You didn’t hurt us. You didn’t do anything.”

His lips arranged themselves in a smile. But a smile without mirth, without depth, just an arrangement of flesh. “Ah, Kate. You have missed the entire point. All of it. All the times we talked on the bus and you still do not understand.”

“Understand what?”

“That it does not matter whether or not I get away. Whether or not I live or die. Whether anyone else lives or dies. I have served my purpose.”

His voice was strong and determined now, and she had to fight that strength and that determination.

“What purpose? What the hell has purpose got to do with living or dying?” How could she get through, pierce his defenses, penetrate this propaganda he’d been fed all these years? She remembered how he had looked at her that time on the bus when she’d taken off her jeans. And she felt ashamed at what she must attempt again. Christ, did it always have to come down
to that between a boy and a girl, a man and a woman?

She tried to make her voice tender. “How about all the things you could do in this world? Don’t you want love? Get married? Have children? What’s wrong with a little love? Instead of death and fighting, and that war you’re always talking about.”

He stared at her, eyes blank. Her body sagged. What she was talking about—love, children, family—was beyond his comprehension. Even sex, maybe. She realized again how innocent he was in the most terrible sense of innocence: the innocence of a monster. But she had to persist.

“All right, then, what have you got? What good would it do you to escape? You’re alone. Alone in the world out there. Those two men who were with you are dead, the one you called Antibbe and the black guy. And Artkin. Who’s left? Nobody. Your brother’s dead. And now your father.”

He looked at her, startled. His breath, stale and rancid, entered her mouth, her nostrils. “My father—what do you mean?
Now
my father?”

When she had spoken the words, she didn’t realize the knowledge they contained, knowledge she had somehow absorbed earlier, knowledge she didn’t even know she had until it emerged, like having an answer to a hard test at school after having forgotten how or when you learned it. Now, the possibility of Artkin being Miro’s father blossomed fully and also the awareness that Miro didn’t know, had never suspected. Actually, even Kate doubted it. Could it be true? And could she use the knowledge to her advantage?

“Artkin. He
was
your father, wasn’t he?” she said, watching him closely, gauging his reaction.

“What makes you say that? You know nothing of us.”

“You look like father and son,” Kate said, improvising,
thoughts scurrying. And then she saw the truth: “When I saw you in the masks, that first time, I knew. Your lips, your eyes—both the same. I wondered why you didn’t call him father.”

“It’s not possible,” Miro cried out, trying to turn away from her. But there was no place to go, no way he could escape her or her words.

“Why not?” Kate said, telling herself to keep talking, keep on going. She had drawn blood again, gained time, caught him off guard, off balance again. “Didn’t you say he found you in the camps and brought you to that school? Would a stranger do that? Maybe he’d been looking for you and your brother all those years. Why did he take you to a place where you’d be safe, taken care of? And why did he come back for you later? Would he have done all that if he wasn’t your father? If he was just a stranger?”