The Killing Sea (10 page)

The groans of
the wounded and the coughs of the sick filled the clinic tent. A mother stood by a cot, using a piece of cardboard to fan her small daughter's face. The girl's chest rose and fell with her struggling breaths. She was half-conscious and hadn't been able to eat the rice gruel her mother had tried to feed her.

A male nurse had just made the rounds with the food. Peter refused his bowl as well, turning his head away.

“You
have
to eat, okay?” Sarah kept bugging him until he'd swallowed a third. The rest she finished. Tasteless, but at least it quieted her growling stomach.

The female nurse made rounds after the meal, handing out a cup of water and medicine from a bottle.

When she got to Sarah, she carefully broke a white round pill, handing Sarah half. Sarah peered at the label on the bottle.

“Aspirin?” she said. “Half an aspirin? That's all my brother's getting? He needs antibiotics, for God's sake!”

The nurse shrugged. Not a callous shrug, just a very tired one, but Sarah jumped to her feet and thrust her face at the nurse. “Where's the doctor? I want to see the doctor.”

“
Nanti
,” the nurse said, and pushed by her.

“And you don't give aspirin to children!” Sarah shouted after her. “Everybody knows that!”

She slumped down by Peter's side. Surf Cat lifted his head and sniffed the half pill in her hand. “What do you think, Surf Cat?” she asked. “Is it okay to give Peter half an aspirin?”

Surf Cat stretched luxuriously before slipping through a broken seam in the tent.

Nanti
, the nurse had said. Another local word that Sarah happened to know. Her father, studying an Indonesian phrase book, had made a comment about it. “
Nanti
means ‘later,'” he had said. “In the Indonesian culture it has the same meaning as the
Spanish
mañana
, but without quite the same sense of urgency.”

Sarah sniffed the cup of water. Smelled like wood smoke. Boiled. What harm could half an aspirin do to Peter? He wasn't a baby. It would help his temperature, at least. Might have a problem swallowing it, though. Sarah crushed the pill into powder, which she dissolved in the water before waking him, holding him up with an arm around his shoulder. He groggily took a sip and then said, “I was dreaming about Mom.”

“That's nice,” Sarah said. “Another sip, please. It's your medicine.”

“Remember when she had Mr. Chouri over for dinner and a lot of the neighbors didn't come and he played that weird music of his and he taught Mom how to dance it?”

“Peter, finish drinking this, will you?”

He swallowed the rest of it and lay back down. “I dreamed she was dancing and dancing.”

Sarah remembered that night. She knew more of the story than Peter. Mr. Chouri was an immigrant. There were ugly rumors about him that had made her parents angry. Her mother threw a party for him and invited all the people who were talking about him behind his back. Only a few came. But her mother and father had had a great old time,
dancing to that strange music. Her mother had insisted that Sarah have a try, but she'd refused.

Another, more recent memory came to her, one she had tried her best never to think about. Early last summer, as she'd looked in the master bedroom closet for her mother's new black pumps to try on, she had found a box full of old diaries. She'd picked one out at random, the journal her mother kept the year she was born, and opened it.

Her mother's curly handwriting was branded into her memory.

My resentment of this child within me borders on hate. I don't want to have it. I don't love it and won't love it when it's born.

She had slammed the diary shut and shoved it back in its place, but it had been too late.

Maybe this was why she couldn't feel a thing for her own dead mother. Maybe the poison of what she wasn't supposed to know was turning her into an unfeeling monster.

“Hello.”

She startled at the voice. A man, wearing glasses that magnified his weary, drooping eyes. He peered at the nurse's notepad.

Sarah stood with expectant hope. “You're the doctor?”

He nodded. “Dr. Azril.” He crouched by Peter's
side and felt his forehead, then took his pulse and tapped his scrawny chest. Pressing one end of a cardboard tube to Peter's chest, he cocked his head and listened at the other end.

“Um, shouldn't you use a stethoscope?” Sarah asked uncertainly.

“No stethoscope. Hospital gone. Much destroyed.” He gave her a tired but still friendly smile. “We use emergency technology.”

He asked Sarah what had happened, and Sarah explained about the tsunami and how Peter had swallowed water.

“Yes, it is common,” Dr. Azril said, gesturing to several of the other coughing patients.

“But you have medicine for him, right? Antibiotics and stuff to make him better?”

Dr. Azril sighed and stood. “No medicine. All gone. But we can pray, yes?”

Before Sarah could think of words to say, the woman tending to her daughter began a crescendo of wailing.

The girl lay still and quiet, no longer struggling to breathe.

Ruslan gaped at
the Ford, feeling as though his stomach had been sucker punched again.

What was his father's car doing here at Calang?

The intelligence officer's sly voice spoke into his ear.
I've had talks with your father,
he said.
Make sure you look inside the smashed-up cars for bodies,
he said.

Ruslan ran to the car and then halted several feet away. He didn't want to look. He couldn't look. He called to the merchant. “Can you see if anybody's inside?”

“What's the matter, son?”

“Please look.”

The merchant peered through one of the
shattered windows. “Nobody.” He frowned curiously at Ruslan. “You know this car?”

“My father's. It shouldn't be here. It should be in—” A memory sharp as a blade cut off Ruslan's voice. This morning, the first awful truckload of bodies being dumped into the mass grave. That body in the gray overalls…maybe those marks on the arms hadn't been tattoos but bruises. Perhaps the body had looked fatter than his father because dead bodies bloated.

The dump truck stood a hundred yards down the road, loaded up for another run. The driver was just getting into the cab. Ruslan sprinted and jumped up in the back as the driver started the engine. Ruslan crouched down by the awful cargo as the driver eased the clutch, the truck shaking and rattling in first gear. A gunshot rang out through the air, followed by the private's shouting. The truck halted, and the driver stuck his head out the window to yell, “What now?”

Ruslan yanked off his distinctive yellow shirt and stuffed it underneath a corpse. Then, with a queasy twist of his stomach, he wormed his way into the bodies on the truck bed, arranging the blue-eyed woman's arm so it lay across his head.

Revulsion and claustrophobia swamped him. He pressed his face to the bed's hard metal and
hyperventilated with short little gasps. He was about to abandon this insane ploy and bolt out of the truck when something curious happened. The woman's arm, instead of being a dead weight, became a mother's encouraging embrace.
His
mother. He heard her voice:
Calm down, my love, calm down.

His revulsion passed, a breeze swept away his claustrophobia, and his tumult quieted.

“Well, he isn't here,” he could hear the driver saying in annoyance to the private, who was still breathing hard from his run. “I got a job to do, let me do it.”

The truck bumped down the road and after a while slowed to a stop. The cab door opened. What was going on? This wasn't the grave site.

Above him the driver's breath rasped heavily. Ruslan tilted his chin and cracked his eyes. The truck had halted behind a screen of fallen trees, and the driver was kneeling by the woman's side. He reached for her hand to tug off the gold wedding ring. “You won't need that,” he muttered.

An incandescent fury shot through Ruslan. He bolted upright and grabbed the man's throat. The driver screeched, his eyes bulging with terror. He yanked away from Ruslan's grip and fell backward off the truck, his head hitting the ground with a solid thud. He lay still in a limp heap.

Ruslan's anger was still with him.
Serves him right, the corpse robber.
Nonetheless, he checked the man's breathing and pulse. Satisfied the man would live, he tugged him into a patch of shade and then climbed up into the cab behind the driver's wheel. After some grinding of clutch and gears, he got the truck going and barreled down the road, swinging into the turnoff with a squeal of tires.

The excavator looked like a busy one-armed creature, hard at work making a second burial trench. The first hadn't yet been covered. A man was shoveling lime over the bodies.

Ruslan jumped out of the cab and ran to the edge of the grave, ignoring the lime shoveler's astonished stare. He walked around the lip of the hole, peering down at the horrible puzzle of dead bodies piled at random, their congealed mass lightly coated with lime, like sugar frosting. The corpse of the man in gray overalls was to the side of the pile, where it had rolled to a stop facedown at the bottom of the trench's steep slope. Ruslan slid down the side and turned the corpse's shoulders. A pockmarked face, the old acne scars clearly visible despite the skin's greenish bloat. Not his father.

“What the hell are you doing?” The guard stood at the edge of the grave, his rifle unslung, ready to use.

Not his father. Ruslan climbed back up in a daze. It was the most curious sensation, relief that wasn't relief. Just because this dead man in the gray overalls wasn't his father didn't mean that his father wasn't dead.

“The driver got sick,” he told the guard. “I was assigned to replace him.” He jumped into the back of the truck and picked up the young, blue-eyed woman. She felt light as air in his arms, even when he jumped off. He gently placed her on the ground and waved his arms at the excavator operator, who stopped the gears and leaned out the side of his cab. “Dig her a grave,” he told the operator. “A private grave, away from the others, so we can mark it with something.”

The guard slung his rifle over his shoulder. “A relative?” he asked sympathetically.

“Yes,” Ruslan said. In his heart he added,
my mother
. His mother, who had died as young as this unknown woman. The mother he'd never known, except for one sweet second just minutes ago, when she had come to him to calm his terror.

He removed the woman's wedding ring, its inner circle inscribed with a date. He was sure that somebody would recognize the ring and have at least the mercy of knowing where a loved one was buried.

There had been no ritual washing of the body,
and there was no shroud, but in the truck's cab were several white T-shirts still in their plastic packages that the driver had no doubt looted. Ruslan put one on and tucked another around the woman as a symbol for all that was lacking. He said the prayer for the dead, the guard and excavator operator and lime sprinkler respectfully standing behind him.

When he was finished, he turned around. Two men in civilian clothes had appeared out of nowhere to join the impromptu mourning. One had a scarred arm, the other a dead white eye.

Sarah pressed her
hands against her ears to block out the mother's anguished crying.

Please, would somebody come take that woman away? Peter needs his peace and quiet.

No medicine for her sick brother.

After all she'd been through, pushing on and on and on to get Peter to a doctor.

Well, they'd found a doctor.

And the doctor couldn't do anything. Except tell her to pray.

Pray? Who was she going to pray to? A God who'd allowed thousands and thousands of people to die in the first place? That made no sense at all.

The doctor checked the girl and shook his head.
The nurse expertly wrapped the girl in a white sheet. She was probably real good at doing that by now. The mother, whose keening had muted to quiet sobbing, picked up the bundle and left the tent.

Sarah stood still for a moment and then ran out of the tent into the rich light of a golden afternoon. “Excuse me,” she called out to the woman, who turned to her, the white bundle cradled in her arms. “I'm so sorry.”

The woman stared blankly at Sarah for a moment with reddened eyes. She turned away without a word and walked stiffly on.

When Sarah returned to the hot shadows of the tent and Peter's side, Surf Cat was just slipping through the tent's ripped seam. The seam tugged wider. In wriggled Aisyah.

Sarah hugged the woman, overjoyed to see her. “Where's Ruslan?” She needed to talk to him. Needed his advice on what to do now. “Ruslan?” she repeated.

Aisyah shrugged with spread hands to tell Sarah she didn't know.

He'd probably left for that village to find his father. Well, of course he would. He had every right to. He'd already gone out of his way to help her. Still, she wished he were here right now. Between the two of them they'd figure out something.

“Surf Cat's back,” she said to Peter as she knelt back down beside him. “He brought Aisyah with him. Maybe the darn cat really is a genie.”

Peter's eyes fluttered open, and he grinned at her and then at Aisyah. A feeble grin, but a grin. God, that made her feel good. She vowed to herself that if—
when
he got better, she would never ever tease him again. About anything. He could be as annoying as he wanted to. She wouldn't say a word. Well, maybe that was asking too much. But she'd be polite. She wouldn't yell
shut up
, she'd say
please be quiet
.

Aisyah had a small paper packet with her, which she ripped open and poured into the remaining water in the wash basin. The yellow powder made a paste, which she smeared on Peter's chest. The paste had a sharp, medicinal odor.

“
Jamu
,” Aisyah said.

Traditional medicine. Better than nothing. Might even be better than aspirin.

But what Peter really needed was proper medicine and hospital care.

Dad, Dad, what am I supposed to do now?

Surf Cat licked his paws, offering no clues. But wait—he looked like he was praying. Sort of praying, anyhow. Was that a sign she was to pray? She didn't want to. What good was prayer? Just wish
ful thinking. When people were helpless and had no more options, that's when they prayed. A last resort for the desperate. That wasn't her. She'd get Peter help somehow.

Peter stroked Surf Cat's fur. Boy, his fingernails needed trimming. Cleaning. She looked down at hers. She hadn't thought about them once in days. Bitten down to nubs. An awful old habit, back again.

Aisyah rubbed the paste on Peter's face. “Hey,” he said, trying to push her hand away.

“It's medicine,” Sarah said. Her brother relaxed. When Aisyah was done, Peter caught Sarah's smile. “What?” he asked suspiciously.

“Remember how you always made fun of Mom's facials? You look just like that now. Wish I had a camera.”

“Sheesh.” He lifted a hand to rub off the drying paste. Sarah caught his hand, folded his fingers into her own. “It's medicine, honest.”

“You won't tell anybody? You won't tell Ben and Charlie?” They were his two best friends.

“No, just Amanda.”

“Not her! She's the world's biggest blabbermouth!”

“Just kidding. I won't tell a soul. Promise. Except Dad.”

Peter scowled. “Okay. You can tell him. Nobody else, though.” He closed his eyes and drowsed off again. The paste seemed to be helping, as his breathing seemed to come easier, his constant coughing and chuffing tapering off.

Still, worry was a rat loose in Sarah's stomach, gnawing away with its big, sharp teeth.

A distant wailing drifted on the dusk. Aisyah tugged at Sarah's arm, asking her to come.
Not for long
, she gestured. Peter seemed to be sleeping okay. Sarah squeezed out of the tent and hurried after Aisyah to the other hill.

A man stood at the front of a dusty clearing, facing the sunset as he chanted in that long wail. People gathered from the ramshackle huts, the men lining up in rows in front and the smaller group of women lining up in the back. The mute girl joined Aisyah in the last row. The girl caught Sarah's eye and gave her a smile, and then grew solemn as she raised her hands in prayer.

A sharp yearning seized Sarah. How wonderful it would be to have such faith.

She knelt down beside the girl. Prayer was to her a foreign language, and so her words were hesitant and awkward.

God, please help Peter get better. And help my dad and keep him safe.
A hesitant pause.
And bless
Mom in heaven.
Weird to be praying for her dead mother and still not feel a thing. Next to her the girl stirred, and it was then that a fierce emotion rose in her.
And this girl, she has nobody, keep her safe too.

Was God listening? She had no idea. He did not seem any closer or more real to her, but saying her prayer had calmed the gnawing rat in her stomach.