Escape (4 page)

Shame scorched Luka's face. But why? He'd made sure he had enough in his account. If something had gone wrong with his payment, it was the bank's fault. Or maybe the Academy had made a mistake. “I don't understand how that could have happened.”

“Well, until the matter is resolved, you're suspended from your courses.”

Something about the tension in the woman's mouth, in the taut tone of her voice put him on guard. Or maybe he was imagining things. Maybe all the craziness going on had him paranoid. “I'll go to the bank first thing tomorrow,” he said, carefully keeping his voice smooth and polite. “Can I go back to class for tonight, since there's nothing I can do until morning?”

“As I said, Mr. Mirsad, you're no longer a student at the Academy, until payment is received.”

Later, he regretted giving up so easily. The Academy'd had his check for weeks. Wouldn't they have known much sooner if there'd been a problem with his check clearing? But he was already on the bus before he thought of that, and even if he'd returned to argue, even if he convinced the icy young woman to relent and gave him written permission to return to class, it would be over by the time he got there.

Even though he was half expecting something terrible, when Luka went to the bank the next day and the teller told him he no longer had an account there, and that he would have to make an appeal to the office of the Minister of Finance regarding any claim to missing funds, Luka barely had the self-control to stop himself bursting into tears.

*

His world was shrinking. No more classes, which hardly mattered anyway since the curfew kept him inside after dark. The few friends he had were disappearing, one by one. Some had fled with their parents and siblings, going over the border, or just drifting north or west to the refugee camps being set up to save those fleeing persecution from starvation and exposure. At first, he thought they were overreacting to the stupidity of the armband and the bureaucratic hurdles, since it turned out he wasn't alone in having all the money in his bank account mysteriously evaporate. But then a few others disappeared suddenly without saying good-bye. Since he wasn't really all that close to anyone, he figured he hadn't rated a formal farewell, but then he heard others talking, and realized that nobody knew what had become of the disappeared.

Then there were the accounts on the free-territory radio station. Not just along the border between the Bokana and Eršban regions, anymore, but all across Xukrasna, Bokans were being snatched off the street, pulled into vans, and taken to concentration camps. Now and then, mutilated corpses would turn up a few days or a few weeks later, bearing incontrovertible signs of torture. When they knew they were alone with no Eršbans around, small clusters of Bokans whispered that Vorskla Stadium had been turned into a camp, and that Bokans were being tortured and raped there.

For the hundredth time, Luka hoped his family, his sisters were safe. Maybe he should run, too, flat broke or not. He'd never been political, or religious, but it didn't seem to matter anymore. In the beginning, it seemed like a few extremist Eršban paramilitary groups were targeting people who had the wrong flag hung out their windows, or who'd voted for the wrong party in the last election, but now it seemed like they were shooting and rounding up Bokans for committing no other crime than having the wrong name, the wrong faith, the wrong heritage. And it wasn't just a volunteer army of extremists in crimson Vega uniforms, anymore. Now, squads of regular Eršban soldiers went through the streets in their khaki uniforms, carrying AK47s. But since his savings were gone, he decided to wait another week, until he got his next paycheck, maybe two weeks, until he'd saved enough to be sure he'd be able to pay bus and train fare and feed himself.

He should have gone.

CHAPTER TWO: The Encounter

MARCH – Sovići, Bokana Region, Xukrasna

Natural is to die
without having walked hand in hand
through the portals of an unknown city
nor to have felt the perfume

of the white jasmines in bloom.

Christina Perri Rossi

The sudden pounding on his door yanked Luka's heart out of his chest and left it in his throat. No one ever just dropped by. Not even before half the people he knew had fled, or been swept into some dark corner of the city. Flustered, he dropped the fine sable brush, barely noticing he'd inadvertently stained the green field of grass with a dab of yellow in his rush to turn off the radio.

More insistent banging against the door. He got to his feet as quietly as he could. Maybe whoever it was would go away. Standing still, hoping the floor wouldn't creak under him, he leaned over the table again and turned the tuner knob away from the free territory station. If it was a policeman or a soldier, Luka didn't want to give them any excuse to accuse him of collaborating against the Eršban army.

“Open the door, or we'll kick it in.”

Fear ran down his back in an icy cascade. Was the man with that deep voice going to come in and shoot him? Were they going to drag him down the stairs and throw him into a van? Make him disappear like Harun and Ferid and their families had disappeared? His legs felt weak and stiff as he forced himself toward the door, still trying to be silent, hoping some clever plan of escape would occur to him before they started knocking his door down.

When he opened the door, a weird little noise leaked out of his throat. Flanked by two other soldiers, Pero stood there, so tall and broad in his red Vega uniform he almost filled the doorway. The AK47 he'd had slung from a strap over his shoulder when Luka had seen him by the bus stop, Pero now held in both hands, the long barrel angled across his chest, his index finger resting just behind the trigger.

Without a word, the three soldiers surged into the room, driving Luka back. One of them flung or kicked the door closed. The sharp crack of the door hitting home made Luka's heart seize, as if it had been a gunshot.

“What are you still doing in Sovići, Bokan?”

Pero hadn't opened his mouth, so Luka looked at the man to his left. Not as tall or wide as Pero, but still a lumbering, muscled giant, with just as much hate in his brown eyes, even though Luka was pretty sure they'd never met.

“Sovići is an Eršban city. Even a stupid Bokan like you must know you don't belong here.”

Why
was
he still there? Why hadn't he gotten out of there as soon as he heard about the first shooting? The first disappearance?

“You should go back to Kyurta.”

“What do you mean,
back
to Kyurta? I've never even been there. I was born in Xukrasma, in Bijeljina. Like my parents. I've only ever lived there, and here. Except for a few family trips to Javaser Capital, I've never been anywhere else.
This
is my home.”

“Not anymore.”

“There is one place your people are allowed to go in the city. Do you want us to take you there?” Now it was the other soldier, the slim blond to Pero's right.

“Where?” Luka felt so choked and suffocated by fear, he was surprised he'd managed to voice the word.

The slim blond's face cracked open in a huge smile. “The Ketačari cemetery. We can have you there in ten minutes. Happy to oblige.”

What should he say to keep them from killing him? The only thing Luka could think of was,
It's just me. Luka. Obrad's old friend. The kid you used to coach on the weekends, the kid who used to watch you play football every evening when your brother finished class
. But that would only remind Pero of the reason he'd hated him even before all this crazy ethnic strife.

“I know this kid.” Pero's pale gray eyes were locked on Luka's. The corner of his mouth bent in a hint of a smile. “Wait for me downstairs, eh guys?”

The brawny brunette sighed, like he was disappointed Pero seemed to be robbing him of the chance to spatter the walls with Luka's blood, but the blond swatted his shoulder and said, “Come on. Let's go have a smoke and see if that hot girl is still working at the cafe next door.” That seemed to appease his friend, and they shuffled out, looking half deflated compared to the pumped up bravado of their entry a few moments earlier.

While they clambered down the stairs in their heavy combat boots, Pero closed the door. He closed it gently, the way Luka always did, and this time it didn't sound like a gunshot. But Luka's whole body was numb, and his brain and face were humming and tingling like his head had been stuffed full of bees.

“Looks like you're still into your drawings.” Pero stared at the unfinished painting on the table with its misplaced blotch of yellow, then swung his gaze back to Luka. Before, when Luka had watched him playing football after work, Pero had been twenty or twenty-one, his silky blond hair always breezing in a soft fringe around his sculpted features before the game, then hanging in sweat-darkened strands after. Now it was combed back off his smooth forehead, so sleek it almost looked like it had been molded from plastic. Three years earlier, he'd looked like an American Superhero. Now, in his red Vega uniform, he looked like Rocky's nemesis Ivan Drago, like Protocide, a supersoldier.

“How long did it take, after I broke your hand, before you could draw again?”

The doctor had taken the splints off after four weeks, but the stiffness in his joints had lasted months. He'd tried to draw using his left hand, while he waited to heal, but he'd never managed to draw anything he'd been satisfied with. Luka shrugged.

“Guess you like being a sick pervert more than you like being able to use your hands. This time, I better break them both. And not just the fingers. Fingers heal too easily.”

As if the pain and terror of Pero snapping his fingers one by one, of the doctor manipulating and bracing them was hitting him again, a sudden surge of nausea erupted from the pit of Luka's gut. “Pero, please. None of my art is like that, anymore.”

“Like what?”

“It was a dumb, childish phase.”

Luka felt the tears blurring his vision spill onto his cheeks. Pero grinned. Then his shoulders shifted, and Pero pointed his AK47 at Luka's face. “Get on your knees.”

Tears rolling down his cheeks, fighting desperately not to crumple into a fit of sobbing, Luka forced himself to meet Pero's cold stare. “I'm sorry about before. About the picture. It was stupid of me.”

“Down. On your knees or I'll shoot you right now.”

Luka dropped to his knees. Searching, desperate, he couldn't see any trace of the hurt or doubt or shame that had clashed with Pero's anger the night he'd inflicted his punishment on Luka behind the pet store. He didn't even see anger. It was like everything was locked away inside a cold, beautiful shell that used to be a boy playing football, hair tugged back by the force of his body slicing through the air as he ran, chest and back bared to the sun, body and soul dynamic and free.

Maybe Pero would just shoot him, without torturing him first. Was it so terrible to die? Luka tried to soothe himself; maybe the nothingness of death was better than the fear and pain and solitude of life. But he couldn't stop shaking, couldn't stop crying.

Pero circled the room, his massive bulk making Luka's little nest look like a kid's playhouse. When he came to the three milk crates Luka had stacked and secured together as a makeshift bookcase, he snatched a sketchbook from the top cubby, flipped through it for a second, then plunged his hand back in, extracting the other five sketchbooks in one handful, and tossed the lot onto the floor in front of Luka.

“You shouldn't keep trash around in the house for so long. Spreads disease.”

Pero grabbed the folding chair Luka used when he was working or eating, and sat in front of Luka, towering over him. Watching the tears course down Luka's cheeks, Pero fished a pack of Prima cigarettes from the breast pocket of his uniform and lit one, drawing deeply, the cherry flaring and chewing away a quarter of the cigarette in one inhale. When he stood and brought the metal trash can over and set it at his feet as he seated himself again, Luka felt almost grateful to him for being polite enough to flick his ash into the can instead of onto the floor.

“Hand me that one.” Pero pointed at the pile of sketchbooks scattered at his feet. “The blue one.”

It took a second for Luka to obey his order, or for his body to obey his own brain. He leaned forward, picked up the book and handed it over. Pero flipped the cover back, and he stared for a few seconds at the first sketch. Luka couldn't see it from where he was, kneeling on the floor, but he knew it so well by memory, he could have recreated every line, every shadow of the fantastical landscape, the impossible joining of
Mount Erciyes
and the Akhurian river—in reality, on opposite sides of the country—a clutch of cottages with thatched roofs huddled in the protective embrace of that lovingly corrupted landscape, the shadow of a vast cloud chewing at the edge of the golden glow of the sunny valley. At first glance, the cloud heralded nothing more sinister than a lasting downpour; peering closely, though, the viewer might discern that the nimbus was no raincloud, but a swarm of tiny, grotesque creatures, all gaping jaws, sharp teeth and clawed wings descending on the sleepy village to devour their happiness. The symbolism had meant one thing to Luka when he'd drawn it two years earlier. Now, it seemed like it was about something else, as if he'd divined a future when he'd be on his knees before Pero and his rifle.

A dry, rasping shriek. Pero ripped the page from the book and handed it to Luka. Then he handed him his lighter.

“Burn it. Careful to keep it over the can. Don't want the whole place burning down. It would be a hardship for Željko.”

Luka heard. He understood. But he asked, “What?” It was the only sound he could make. Making that sound was the only thing he could make his body do.

“Hurry up. I don't have all night, and there's a lot of garbage here to dispose of.” He shoved at the pile of sketchbooks with the dirty sole of his combat boot, and Luka noticed a rusty red crust along the toe and side of the right one. Was that dried blood?

The cigarette had burned up all the oxygen in the room. No air in his lungs. A dark iridescent veil materialized in front of his eyes, dimming Pero and the rest of the room, making all the molecules dance around him.

Pero shifted in the chair, and now Luka was looking into the black, empty eye of his gun. With the pad of his index finger, Pero slowly stroked the trigger. “Burn it, pervert.”

His body was an automaton enslaved to the voice of the platinum Übermensch who'd once been the heroic boy of the football field; the perfection of beauty, equal parts grace and force. Trapped somewhere inside that kneeling body, Luka watched those trembling fingers, broken and mostly healed and about to be shattered again, as they ignited the lighter and brought the flame, quivering in the gale of his rapid, shallow breaths, to the corner of the drawing he'd labored over for hours, night after night, going to bed too late and feeling wretched when he rose at six the next morning for work. When the flame singed his fingers, pinching the very corner, holding on until the last possible second, the burning page drifted down into the can, fire swallowing the last centimeters of sunlit roofs.

When his cigarette burned out, Pero plucked another from his pack, and leaned forward. Luka lit it for him. For the next half hour, one by one, Pero ripped Luka's sketches and laboriously rendered drawings from the blue sketch book, then the brown sketch book, then the red one, and finally the two black ones, and one by one, the broken hand that had lovingly made each image set them alight and dropped them into the smoldering trash can.

When there was nothing left but the stiff, worn covers, dangling alone and futile from their spiraled wire spines, Pero stood and grinned. Suddenly Luka was back in his trembling body, a sledge hammer battering his chest. An echo of the agony of his snapping bones shot up his arm. Once Pero had broken both his hands, would he still be afraid of the gun? Or would he want that sudden end to his pain and terror?

“Leave Sovići. Leave tonight. We'll be back in the morning, and if you're here, you're dead.”