The Killing Sea (5 page)

Ruslan sprinted down
to the seawall. In those few strides, he noticed that the body in the gray overalls had a thick neck and a bald head. It wasn't his father.

Still, that didn't mean his father hadn't been trapped within the ship.

Another sailor stood on the seawall.

“My father?” Ruslan asked him. “Where's my father? Yusuf the mechanic. He was working on the tanker.”

“They're all dead. All of them, dead.” The sailor strode away, chanting “Dead. Dead. Dead.”

Ruslan squatted and wrapped his arms around his head as though that would stop his heart from ripping in half.

His elbow rubbed against a lump in his shirt pocket. Something about that lump penetrated to his stricken mind. It was the note from his father. He opened it as carefully as he could with his trembling fingers.

The scribbled writing was still legible.

Any other day except this one, Ruslan would have indeed worried, despite his father's underlining. The hill village of Ie Mameh was considered rebel territory, where rebels were fighting for an independent Aceh state. In fact, Ruslan had heard rumors that his mother's relatives were themselves rebels. Over the years, military intelligence officers had periodically summoned Ruslan's father for questioning. So, sure, any
other day except this one, he would have been terribly worried.

But on
this
day, with dead sailors floating around the oil tanker, the note filled him with such overwhelming relief that he cried. He blubbered like a baby. When he finally dried his tears, he had only one thing in mind: He had to get to Ie Mameh.

The shortest way was via Calang, a sleepy harbor town fifty miles north of Meulaboh, and then a road into the hills.

He made his way across the ruins of Ujung Karang to the main road heading north to Calang. Thick sand covered the road. A battered minibus lay toppled on its side. Ruslan started to climb onto the bus for a better look, but then noticed the crush of bodies within. He climbed instead a remnant of wall.

The bridge spanning the northern estuary had been ripped off its concrete base, its metal span flung to the side.

There was a back way, an old logging trail. It began somewhere around the farming village of Bergang, ten miles inland.

First things first, then. He had to get to Bergang, and the surest way to do that was to start walking.

The sea had flooded nearly all the way to the hospital. This inland part of town was untouched by water, but bubbled with chaos. People ran
around in distress, dodging vehicles that seemed to be doing nothing but turning around in circles, their drivers uncertain where to go.

In an alley, Ruslan spotted a trail bike lying on its side, keys still dangling in the ignition. It would be perfect for the logging road. He'd borrow it and return it later to its owner with apologies. There wasn't a helmet for him to wear, but sometimes in an emergency one had to take chances. Nobody stopped him as he righted the bike and checked the fuel. Empty. Just down the block was an unattended kiosk that sold gasoline in glass bottles. He filled up the bike's tank and took two spare bottles, putting them in a canvas knapsack that had been resting on the counter. He'd pay the kiosk owner later.

Ten minutes later he was blasting down a smooth road winding through rice paddies. Their green serenity seemed to Ruslan to be another world.

On the outskirts of Bergang a farmer on the way to his fields gave directions to the logging road turnoff. “Be careful,” he said. “Rebels are in that area.”

Ruslan found the turnoff, an unpaved slash of orange dirt leading into a rubber plantation. Two privates from the military's Raider division were seated in a wooden guard hut at the foot of a small, shrub-covered hill. On the top of the hill stood a sandbagged command post. As soon as
the privates saw Ruslan, they lowered a bamboo gate across the trail.

What was he going to say?

He said the first thing that came to mind. “Meulaboh's been flooded out by the sea. People are dead everywhere.”

One of the privates blew cigarette smoke. “What are you talking about?”

“The town's destroyed. So many dead people.” His voice quavered. The soldiers stared at him.

“You're crazy,” said the second private.

“I'm not crazy. I tell you, the town's gone. Bodies everywhere, drowned, smashed up.”

“Let's see your ID card.”

Ruslan took out the laminated identity card from his damp wallet. The soldier studied it, compared Ruslan's face to the small photo, and said, “I think you'd better talk to our commander.”

Ruslan parked the bike in a small lot behind the hill, hanging his backpack off the handlebars. He palmed the ignition key. One of the soldiers escorted him up the hill and into a room with two bunk beds, a desk, and a radio set. An officer sat at the desk with a cell phone in his hand, punching buttons in irritation. Ruslan could hear the squeal of disrupted service. The officer cursed.

The private handed the officer Ruslan's ID card.

“There's been a flood in Meulaboh,” Ruslan said. “Most of Meulaboh's gone, I tell you. Smashed to pieces by a giant ocean wave. So many dead.”

The officer was just as skeptical as the private. “Is that so?”

“Look at me. My shoes are wet, my jeans are wet, I nearly drowned.”

The officer grunted. His leathery face held the natural suspicion that all field officers had. “You rebels should learn to tell a better story.”

The officer's skepticism made Ruslan wonder if in fact he was somehow imagining it all. Yet specks of that awful black muck still dotted his forearms.

“I'm not a rebel,” Ruslan said. “I'm a good citizen. You can ask anybody.”

“Don't worry, we will.” The officer put Ruslan's ID card in his pocket. He got up and left the room, his last words a command to the private to keep an eye on Ruslan. The private ordered Ruslan to squat in the corner.

Ruslan thought quickly. Once they found out he was the son of Yusuf the mechanic, who had possible rebel connections, military intelligence would interrogate him. They had ways to make one speak. And if they then found out from him that Yusuf the mechanic was in rebel country, then who
knew what trouble would come to Ruslan and his father?

It was crazy to be thinking about such things when Meulaboh had been flattened and thousands had drowned.

Still, there it was.

Ruslan made a wincing face. “I have to go to the bathroom. Diarrhea.”

“Out there,” the private said, gesturing through the open door to the latrine within the sandbagged perimeter.

As Ruslan had hoped, the tin sheet wall of the latrine wasn't securely fixed to the wooden frame. He worked one side open and squeezed through. After putting the ignition key in his mouth for quick access, he climbed over the sandbag embankment and skidded on his rear down the hill's steep slope to the trail bike.

Above him, he heard the private's cry of alarm.

Ruslan felt surprisingly calm as he put on his backpack and swung onto the bike. He inserted the ignition key and thumbed the engine switch. The bike roared to life. He goosed it around in a tight circle, but he'd forgotten about the kickstand, which caught in the dirt. The bike wobbled, nearly throwing him. He wrestled the handlebars, losing precious seconds, but managed to get the bike
under control. He flicked up the kickstand with his right heel as he opened the throttle, speeding out onto the trail. Behind him, he heard shouts and the loud cracks of rifles. The ground to the side and front of him exploded in a shower of dirt. They weren't shooting to warn him. Bending low to the handlebars, he raced into the rubber grove.

Within a minute he was lost in the unending ranks of trees. He braked to a stop to orient himself.

Shouts in the distance. He sped off in the opposite direction.

The ditch came up unseen, camouflaged by thick weeds. He flew off the handlebars and lay stunned on hard ground. Gasoline trickled down his neck, the scent of it making him woozier. A bottle in his pack had broken, but as he took dazed inventory of his body parts, he himself seemed intact.

He sat up and found himself looking down the length of a ragged, unpaved road, the hardpan dirt crevassed by the rain runoff. Here the rubber plantation gave way to the dense scrub trees that marked a logged forest, the scraggly trees bending over the road, almost making a tunnel.

He'd found the old logging trail.

The bike's electric thumb start was smashed. He cranked the kick start. No luck. The faint growling of a Jeep filtered through the trees.
Another crank. Nothing. He bent over to the side and looked. The cap to the spark plug was loose. He crammed it on tight. This time the bike started just as the hood of a Jeep smashed through some weeds. Jamming the bike into gear, he roared off, zigzagging around crevasses. He came to a washout too steep for any four-wheel vehicle to traverse. Almost too much for the bike as well, but he managed to tug and wrench it down and then back up the eroded contours. Another washout followed, and then a third.

An hour later his arms felt as though they were going to come off. His thigh muscles ached. His stomach hurt. Who would have thought riding a bike could be such hard work? He'd never done anything so physical in his life and so demanding of relentless concentration. His brain was about as wrung out as his muscles. Only to cover five miles.

But he was five miles closer to Ie Mameh.

When dusk came, he'd been hours riding through boggy lowland. He drove the bike onto a spit of higher ground and got off. His arms and hands continued to vibrate. Squatting by a pool of stagnant water, he washed dirt off his face. That done, he lay down close to the bike, using his knapsack as a pillow. He'd forgotten about the broken bottle, though, and fished out the pieces. He also
found two tangerines. After washing and peeling them, he squatted by the trail bike and sucked the sections one by one. He chewed the pulp, spitting out the seeds, idly aiming for a lump of submerged moss the size of his head in the water.

As he spat out the last seed, he noticed that the lump was making the slightest of ripples in the water. In fact, the lump was attached to what he'd taken for a twisted, mossy log, which was itself rippling ever so gently.

He noticed then the python's eyes, focused intently on him.

In the moonlight,
Sarah could see only a few steep yards of the jungle path before her. She had no idea how long she and Peter had been hiking. They had already crested several hills, and each time she thought that they'd be descending to the village on the other side of the island. But there was always another hill waiting.

This particular climb seemed endless. Each step required complete concentration. She had to calculate where to place her feet to avoid ankle-twisting ruts or slippery clay. Which branch or rock to hang on to for balance. There was Peter to help, as well.

A big tree root had grown across the path. She took Peter's hand and helped him over it. No sooner
had he stepped down on the other side than the bush beside them rustled with a shaking of leaves. She halted, holding her panting breath, and fired the stove lighter. The blue flame reflected off two eyes glowing in the foliage. She screamed.

Several piglets bolted from the bush and scurried across the path. An adult boar emerged and stopped in the path, facing Sarah with a menacing stance, its sharp tusks gleaming in the moonlight. Sarah jabbed the flame at the boar. She could feel her heart hammering, but the only sound in the night was the flame's little hiss. The boar didn't budge, its eyes jerking from Sarah to Peter and back to Sarah again.

When the last of the piglets was safely hidden on the other side of the path, the boar sprinted into the jungle.

“Phew,” Sarah said. She sat down on the tree root. She was drenched with sweat. Peter slumped beside her. Surf Cat bounded over the root and meowed impatiently, as if chiding them for stopping.

“Darn cat's worse than Dad,” Sarah muttered.

Peter put his forehead on his crossed arms.

Sarah had been rationing the bottle of water. There was a quarter left. She swallowed half and handed the bottle to Peter.

When he'd finished, she took the empty bottle from him. “Come on, let's go.”

“I'm so tired. Can't we have a little break?”

“You know what Dad would say,” she said with fake sternness.

“Yeah. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a nap.”

Sarah chuckled. “True. But he was talking about Mom. Whenever there's something to do, Dad does it until it's done. So come on.”

Peter took a deep, wheezy breath and stood.

Just that little bit of water helped. They made it to the top of the ridge, and Sarah could at last see the ocean's pale glitter. The moon was halfway to the western horizon. They'd been hiking almost all night. The path led along the ridge for a few hundred yards and then turned downhill to the village.

An hour later, halfway down to the seashore, the fiery red sun rose full above the eastern horizon even before the pale round moon had touched the western one. Sarah had never seen the sun and moon in the sky at the same time. The sight was unnerving, almost alien.

One more knoll stood below them, blocking the view of the shore and the village. Tops of coconut palms poked above the knoll. This sight soothed Sarah's uneasiness. They'd soon have food and
water. A village doctor who could treat Peter. A search party for their dad.

On a plateau before the knoll, the path narrowed through a field of tall grass. A shack stood on the edge of the field. One portion of the grass had been harvested, probably for roofing thatch.

By the time they reached the field, the moon had sunk into the sea and the sun had risen above it. She pushed her way through the grass. When she exited, she noted several small black leaves plastered to the backs of her knees. She reached down to idly brush one off. It remained stuck to her skin. She pinched it to remove it, but what her fingers squeezed was something soft. Rubbery. She took a closer look. Not a leaf. A leech, plumping up by the second with her blood. As were the other ones.

Her skin crawled. She yelped, slapping at the leeches with her fingers but not wanting to touch them either.

Peter bent over to examine his legs. “Hey, I got 'em too. They don't hurt you. Mr. Tuttle says so.” Mr. Tuttle was his science teacher. “They'll drink up and fall off. They use 'em in medicine, you know.”

“They're gross!” Sarah cried. She clicked the gas lighter and carefully brought the tip of the blue flame to each leech. “Die, you suckers.” They
writhed and fell off. She turned the gas lighter to Peter.

“No, no, let 'em be,” he said.

“God, Peter, I don't want to be around somebody who's got leeches all over him. Hold still. I don't want to burn you.”

The leeches' bites continued to bleed as they started walking up the knoll's gentle incline. “They got this chemical that stops your blood from cagulating,” Peter said.

“Coagulating,” Sarah said automatically, and shuddered again. “Disgusting.” As they approached the top of the knoll, she started imagining the villagers' response to two white kids with blood on their legs appearing out of nowhere. Would anyone know English? But it'd be easy enough to mime for a drink of water. And “doctor” was a universal word. So was “papa.”

The first thing that came into view was the sea, the distant blue giving way to mottled brown water ringing the island. And then the shoreline, curving several hundred yards between two ridges of tumbling rock. The narrow shore was empty, scoured up to the edge of the jungle and several coconut groves. Brown mud glistened, lapped by murky waves.

The village was gone.