Escape (8 page)

When they made camp just before dark, Kosos got out a bar of soap and a razor. “You've never shaved a day in your life, have you kid?”

Luka's face went hot.

“I guess you don't know how to use this, eh?” Kosos held up the straight razor.

“Why? Don't you?”

Luka regretted being smart, but Kosos just grinned. “No mirror.”

“I'm probably better with that thing than you are.”

The soldier's grin widened and he raked his fingers through his dark beard. “Let's find out.”

Was this guy really going to hand him a razor and let him put the blade to his face? To his throat? “You think I'm a coward?”

Kosos laughed. “No. I don't think you're a coward. But I don't think you want to hurt me.”

Why was Luka's face burning again? Why be ashamed of not wanting to slice through that soldier's jugular and watch him bleed to death?

“Come on. Before it's too dark.” Kosos handed him the razor, got the soap wet, and lathered up his face and neck.

Maybe he was a coward. Luka stared at that throbbing vein in the soldier's neck, vulnerable, extended, offered up with inexplicable trust, and all he could think about was handling the razor carefully so he wouldn't cut him accidentally. It was a chore, sheering away that beard, but he got it done, and without a single nick. Without the beard, Kosos didn't look like a serial killer anymore.

Kosos ran his hand over his face. “Damn. Good job, kid.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“I don't know. Sixteen?”

Fuck. Well, that's what he got for asking.

“Well? Am I close?”

“Nineteen.”

“My apologies, Sir. I had no idea I was addressing someone of your venerable age.” Without the beard, Kosos looked ten years younger. Not that much older than Luka, actually. Maybe twenty-three. Twenty-five, tops.

“My name's Luka. Not kid.”

“Great. My name's Tarik. Not asshole, or whatever you've been calling me in your head.” Tarik washed the remnants of soap from his face, then started preparing their meal. “So, were you tempted?”

“To do what?”

“Cut my throat while you had my razor in your hand.”

Luka dodged his gaze. Hunched away, he waited for his face to stop burning. What was so embarrassing about not wanting to kill? There was no reason to feel ashamed. But he did.

CHAPTER FOUR: The Irremediable

APRIL—The front of the Bokana/Ersba regional conflict, Xukrasna

The supreme art of war is to

subdue the enemy without fighting.

Sun Tzu

Thirteen nights in the cave, where there were no days. Tarik had crawled into that dark, wet womb, helpless and needy, nourished for thirteen twenty-four-hour-long nights on the safe silence and the umbilical sustenance of fresh water. In his fetal memory, there'd lingered a murky understanding of why he was there, rather than hunkered in some soft wound cut into the earth with the other men stuffed into the same Eršban uniform sticking to his sweaty skin.

After the birth, everything was bright, the sun dusting the leaves and trunks with a gleaming silver that from certain angles almost glinted, almost blinded. Had two weeks in the dark of that cave made his eyes so sensitive? The birth was premature, induced by the quiet, watchful alien. Gestated in different worlds, they emerged into the brilliance together, alien brothers. Wide-eyed and watchful, the little brother was dangerous. And defenseless. Dependent. Awed and furtive. A liability. A debility that made Tarik feel stronger, either by comparison, or because the Bokan soldier needed him. His food, his guidance, his protection.

A delicate, luminous being, alienated even from his own, branded with the marks of a hasty crucifixion. The ultimate provocation was irrelevant. Tarik only had to look, to see. The Bokan soldier was different. Not different from Tarik, not different from other Eršbans. He was a painted bird. Unrecognizable, unfathomable as kindred. Probably he'd been hunted long before the pack who'd left him to die bound to that tree had set on him like dogs.

The Bokan soldier. Wide eyes watchful. Focused and following. Faceted and changeable, nervous anticipation yielding now and then to doubt, or fear, sometimes even a shadowed hint of dread, of terror. The eyes of a supplicant gazing on a capricious and dangerous god who might decide on a whim to test, to torment, to destroy. Those first hours, Tarik had left the Bokan bound to his fear, wondering now and then if he was savoring the flavor of his timid glances, his breathless, waiting suspension when Tarik suddenly mirrored his gaze, or moved in close, or caught his arm to startle him toward a brisker pace, or if, rather than pleasure, that pleasant state was just the absence of his own fear. Because the other's fear made him feel safe, made him feel strong, made him feel powerful and dangerous.

His hunger, too. The less he ate, the sharper he got, until he was the smooth, deadly point of a newly whetted knife. Every sense turned on full throttle, each subtle sound, each shift of shadow, each faint scent wafting on a wayward breeze tethered to a synapse in his brain and mapped into the order of the limestone plain, baobabs standing sentinel at lonely intervals.

Twice, he heard the rhythmic, seductive, menacing thrum of a thousand boots beating the bone-white runnels flowering over the plain, a vast, arid coral, its crenelations torturous to ankles and hungry for boots. Tarik made a slow succession of turns, ten degrees, ten degrees more, ten degrees more, leading the Bokan soldier into a forest of dolomite spikes and columns where they had as much cover as that barren landscape could offer, and away from those five hundred rifles before that boy who looked at him like a god gave any sign of realizing he might be a sudden sprint away from rescue, or imaging Tarik was dragging the luminous alien, the painted bird to his death.

Tarik was no painted bird. His strangeness was all inside. But his hidden difference resonated with the other's, and from those vibrations, invisible to human eyes, beyond the capacity of human ears, their alien fraternity emerged. Almost before he was sure the boy hadn't come into that cave to flush him out for a hundred rifles trained on the mouth of the womb, he felt the urge to protect the foundling who'd found him, and in the wake of the waning of his adrenaline-fueled tachycardia, when he was nearly sure the two of them had a radius of solitude cushioning their escape, his worst fear was that the luminous alien brother, the flighty but flightless painted bird would sing out for his flock if he sensed them near, and Tarik would have to crush his skull with a rock.

Testing himself, he put the razor in the other's hand, amused that the shaking of those slender fingers evoked more empathy than vigilance for his own safety. The test was still hard to pass. Not because he expected the other to slash his throat, but because he doubted he could bear to be touched. Not after months of training to kill, of watching the men beside him turned to mince, each with their own moment of fanfare—the whoop and scream and thudding thrum of bombardment and a fountain of disemboweled earth and soldier. After eating and drinking and shitting and showering with thousands of men whose total energy and purpose was directed toward tearing other men to bloody pieces with bullets and shrapnel. But the other's touch, tentative and trembling, at first, then perfunctory but gentle, didn't sear through the gossamer web encasing Tarik's sanity against the insanity of the world. If anything, it tethered him via a fragile thread to some ephemeral sense that even in the midst of their senseless war on each other, two men—even two men pitched against each other as enemies—could be human with one another.

But later, when he beckoned the boy back and had him mirror him, straddling the log, Luka paled and flinched away when he saw the knife in Tarik's hand. The words didn't calm him. Pallid, panting, rigid with the terror bright at the center of his dusky eyes, Luka let Tarik saw through the stitching until the tag with his name and identity number came away from the breast of his uniform and flopped into the dirt. When Tarik tossed Luka's ID tag into the fire, where he'd already incinerated the badge with his own name and service number, the sharpness of Luka's fear seemed to dull a little, but he was still taut and trembling. What was the point of wondering why? The war was enough. His own Eršban uniform was enough. That he'd held that same knife to that pale, slender throat before they'd emerged from the cave was enough. The boy's bruised ribs and the raw wounds on his wrists were enough. He expected to be hurt. He expected Tarik to hurt him.

*

Day 17.

Twenty kilometers farther from the front.

Twenty kilometers closer to the safe house.

Twenty kilometers closer to Daris.

*

Strange, walking on soft, spongy earth, now that the karst plains were behind them, stone underfoot yielding with startling suddenness to thickets of spindly trees clinging to thin, stingy soil. With every kilometer, the ground softened, soil thickening, tender spring foliage carpeting their path as the trees grew taller, clustered close together unlike their solitary baobab cousins of the karst plains, until he and the alien were swallowed up in shadow. Good cover for an Eršban and a Bokan who'd strayed from their murderous flocks. Good cover for a platoon. He'd hoped he was being cautious for nothing, but with every careful planting of his boot on the soft earth he grew more anxious that the warning he'd been given about this forest was true.

Tarik glanced over his shoulder to make sure Luka was doing as he'd told him. Eyes fixed on the ground, his silent companion, his mute prisoner was aiming each footfall for the impression left behind by Tarik's boot. Strange how, despite his gnawing hunger for life, for more lush days—sun on his face, the sharp scent of fresh ink tamed by the woody fragrance of recently milled paper when he opened a new book, or the musty aroma of the old tomes from the antiquarian book shops and the Jagiellona University library, yellowed pages tinged almost brown at their edges, their soft roughness under his fingertips—the dreadful tingling along his spine, nape to tailbone, was leaking from his anxiety, reborn with every step, that he'd hear a cold, dull click, be knocked to the ground, and a moment later he'd open his eyes and see raw, bloody pieces of the Bokan kid scattered over the forest floor.

Fucking land mines. Fucking war. Fucking humanity.

If literature had taught him anything, it was that people were easily persuaded to kill each other. All any emperor, king or president had to do was tell the masses their neighbors weren't like them, and that they'd be richer in money, jobs, or self-worth without them, and the slurs started echoing everywhere, swords started falling, bullets flying, bombs laying waste.

A faint rustling, ahead and to the right. Tarik froze, then moved just his arm to signal Luka to halt. Eyes hunted the source of the sound until Tarik spotted a big brown rabbit fifteen meters off, half hidden in shadow under the fronds of a fern as it nibbled at the broad, round leaves of a plant. Hoping Luka would keep still and quiet, Tarik slowly brought his hand to his waist, silently thumbed up the strap from the hilt of his knife and took the blade between his fingers. The rabbit twitched one ear as Tarik took aim, then it burst into movement when a pair of birds plunged from the canopy, down into a clump of shrubbery a meter beyond the sheltering fern. For a second, the rabbit hurtled toward Luka, then jerked sharply in Tarik's direction.

Behind him, Luka made a sudden noise. A sharp gasp. “Tarik!”

The dark hummed.

Tarik was down in the dirt. Had he thrown himself down? No.

Fear bit into him, gnawing through his ribs. Mind stunned numb. Ears ringing. Somewhere just out of reach, the urge to know if he was injured, but much closer, wrapped all around him, the need not to look. Not to inventory his body for the pain that would tell him how much of his body was missing.

“Tarik!” Luka's hushed terror. Or horror. Fuck, what was he seeing?

Tarik made himself look. Not at his own body, but at Luka, kneeling beside him. Through his daze, reality slowly resolved into focus. Strange taste in his mouth. Not blood. Dirt. When he tried to shift to get up, a weight pressed down on his shoulder.

“Wait.”

“How bad?”

“You're okay.”

That didn't mean anything. People said that to dying people all the time. Soldiers said that to men bleeding out next to their own severed legs.

“Don't bullshit me. Just tell me.”

“You're bleeding. There's something back here.”

“Where?”

“Under your pack.”

If something had hit his spine, he was fucked, regardless. Not like the kid was going to perform surgery on him there in the middle of the woods. Not like he would, even if he could.

Tarik flexed his hands, flexed his feet, then pushed himself up from the soft carpet of detritus. Hissing, he turned on Luka, accusation clenched between his teeth, retaliation grasped in his knotted fist, but the kid hadn't stabbed him. Shrapnel, probably.

“Take off your pack. Let me see.” All the watchful trepidation that had hovered bright at the center of the Bokan's eyes was gone, drowned in a sea of worry. Unless Tarik was seeing what he hoped was there. What he needed.

What had happened to his knife?

Tarik let Luka lift the pack's weight from his shoulders, then bit down on his pain as he lowered his arms and they slipped free of the straps.

“I'll just lift your clothes, so I can see. Okay?”

Tarik sucked a chestful of air through his teeth as the rough fabric of his uniform brushed over his ripped up flesh.

“I see metal. Two... three pieces.”

“See any other wounds? Or just three?”

“There's one other gash.”

Tarik rotated his right shoulder a little, pain slicing through him and radiating up the back of his neck and plunging down into his gut. But he could move his arm. He could stand. He could walk.

Keep going. You'll make it.

“I'll live. Let's go.”

The watchful alien laughed. Laughter had never sounded surreal, before. “You have three chunks of metal stuck in your ribs.”

“Better my ribs than my lungs. Or my spine. We'll deal with it when we make camp.” The kid was probably fine, but better to keep the details of their itinerary secret as long as possible.

“I know you don't trust me. But I won't hurt you.” The kid blushed. “I mean, it'll hurt, taking it out, but I won't, you know, attack you.”

Pain and shock pumping him full of adrenaline and fuck knew what other chemicals, Tarik hardened himself against the rush of laughter or weeping the quiet alien's reassurance provoked.

“Do you have a med kit?”

Tarik nodded. He'd swiped one and hidden it in his pack as soon as he'd gotten his orders to do the recon mission.

Luka dragged the pack between his splayed knees and released the drawstring. When Tarik caught his wrist, Luka startled and met his eyes.

“I'll get it.”

“Okay.”

He could feel Luka hoisting the bulk of the weight of the bag, helping him as Tarik pulled it around in front of him. Paranoia or caution—whatever it was, it had kept him alive since he'd been drafted. He trusted it a hell of a lot more than the Bokan alien, no matter how much concern he imagined was welling in those huge, strange eyes of his (he'd thought they were blue, that first morning, but sometimes they were a dusky gray, and now his irises were a silvery green, like the leaves of an olive tree). He tilted the bag and kept the mouth of it half closed, careful not to let Luka catch sight of the gun he already knew he had, anyway. Why tempt the kid, or fate? He fished out the med kit and handed it over.