Allie's War Early Years

by JC Andrijeski

  Fucker had the Nazi scar cut into his face... what the Germans had done to mark the seers who passed through to meet the ovens and the labs. He’d been in the camps during World War II.

  He should know what it meant to be abused.

  Hell, he clearly did know. Maybe that was what made him such a callous bastard now.

  Without giving the other male another look, Dehgoies walked directly into the pen, staring around at the number of them, trying to force his mind into some semblance of objectivity. Maybe thirty, in total. Most of them looked sick. All of them looked underfed. He counted around twenty-two females out of the total and frowned.

  “Where are the rest of the males?” he said. He didn’t trust himself to look back at the Asian seer, so he continued to stare, unseeing, at the merchandise instead. “I thought you’d have more. Galaith specifically requested more males to work in North America... sight rank five or above. He was pretty fucking specific...”

  The man gave him another of those indifferent shrugs. “Some of them might have gotten away.”

  “Gotten away?” Dehgoies swiveled his hips, turning his head to stare at the man in spite of himself. “What do you mean... ’gotten away’?”

  “We had a problem in the fields.” The man in the VC outfit shrugged, scratching a bright red bug bite on his neck and swatting away more flies. At Dehgoies’ continued stare the man sighed, but the feeling in his light never changed from that base indifference. “...We ran into some Americans. We gave them a turn on the females, but there was some trouble...”

  “Trouble.” Dehgoies felt his jaw harden more. “You mean mates watching their wives get violated, while a brother seer collected money on the sidelines?” He glared at the man harder. “Or do you mean parents watching their pre-adolescent daughters get sodomized by worms, also under their brother’s watch? That kind of trouble? Is that what you mean, brother?”

  “Dags,” Raven warned, from the other side of the pen.

  Dehgoies glared at her, too, only angrier when he saw the harder meaning in her eyes.

  We need this rat-fuck, she reminded him from her mind, shielding her thoughts from the fake Viet Cong seer. Cool down, for the gods’ sake...

  You’re okay with this? Dehgoies sent back. Really, Elan?

  I didn’t say that–– she began angrily, but he cut her off.

  You know he killed them, right? he sent, barely restraining his anger. That they didn’t just ‘run away’... ? That’s probably the same dugra a’ kitre smell we walked up on in the road. He didn’t even bother to bury them, much less conduct the rites...

  Raven’s turquoise eyes grew incredulous as she stared across the dirt between them.

  It doesn’t matter what I think, she sent shortly, her thoughts a harder warning. Galaith wants this asshole to run the trade in this area. He picked him. Not us. So cool your shit down, Dags. Now... At his angry clicking, she smacked Dehgoies harder with her light, forcing his eyes back to her face. Jesus, is it the coke, or what? What is your fucking problem?

  What is my problem? he sent coldly. D’ gaos, Elan... only you could ask that. I guess if you had to deal with it ‘back in the day,’ the rest of them can just suck it up, too, right?

  That’s not what I meant––

  The hell it isn’t, he cut in angrily. You’re a heartless fucking bitch, Ray. You always were... don’t think I don’t remember you back then, too...

  Raven blinked at him in surprise, her turquoise eyes widening and her eyebrows rising in a kind of stunned surprise. Dehgoies continued to stare at her, unapologetic, as that surprised look on her face turned into a more predatory anger.

  What is your goddamned problem? she said, folding her arms over the armored vest.

  You really need to ask me that? he shot back. Really?

  Yeah, she retorted. I really do. And I’m not the only one. Just ask your pal, Terry... you’re acting really weird, Dags...

  Dehgoies glanced over at the other male seer.

  He caught Terian watching them surreptitiously, his amber eyes and strong-featured face expressionless as he pretended to be inspecting the group of seers tied together in the make-shift corral. Noticing Dehgoies’ stare, Terian gave him a wan smile, shoving his hands into the pockets of his army slacks before averting his gaze. Letting his smile widen, he whistled softly as he aimed reassuring looks at a few of the younger seers who watched him look at them.

  “It’s all right, loves,” he murmured to them. “Almost home now...”

  Averting his gaze from the scrutiny he still felt there, Dehgoies felt his jaw harden more as he stared back at Raven.

  What are you asking me, Raven? he sent.

  Asking you? she sent incredulously. Seriously, Dags. You’re acting completely bizarre. Your light is all over the place... and it’s not just the drugs. You’ve been off ever since that kneeler cunt first started to follow you... Seeing something in his face, Raven seemed to think better of what she’d been about to say, letting the thought trail. Get your head in the game, all right? We’re here to do a job. So stop moralizing and pay the man, so we can get the hell out of this stinking pit. We’ll clean them up at the ship, okay? Hell, if you want, dock him for the damage... that’ll teach him to think twice about pulling this crap in the future. Okay?

  Dehgoies felt his anger worsen. He gave her a harder stare, right before the man in the Viet Cong outfit spoke aloud, forcing Dehgoies’ eyes back to his scarred face.

  “Is there a problem?” the seer asked in Prexci.

  The man’s small, dark eyes darted between the three of them, wary. The look Dehgoies saw there shone more calculating as he seemed to be trying to read their light, but also held a tinge of anger that Dehgoies felt in the man’s own aleimi. The combination made him look and feel even more vermin-like than before. Glancing around at the palm trees and sweating jungle, Dehgoies made his own face as cold and blank as Raven’s.

  “A problem?” Dehgoies said. He let his voice turn openly sarcastic. “No, brother. Why would there be any problem? My colleagues and I were simply trying to decide how much to charge you, for abusing our new recruits...”

  “Charge me?” The man’s dark eyes grew openly angry. His voice blurted out in a hard rush, louder than before. “Charge me? You can’t be serious! What for?”

  “Well, we should get our cut, right?” Dehgoies said.

  Letting his words linger in the air, he took a deliberately threatening step towards the much shorter male. The man stepped back, looking up at him even more warily, his face still a mask of anger. Dehgoies couldn’t help but hear the bitterness in his own voice.

  “...After all, you rented them out,” he added. “You made double your money on them, right, brother? Shouldn’t we get our share?”

  “There is no share,” the man spat angrily, still staring up at Dehgoies.

  “But there is, brother,” Dehgoies said coldly. “We’d paid you half up front for this shipment. Half for fifty, as a matter of fact... not thirty. Money had already changed hands.”

  “I brought you what I could,” the man said, still angry.

  Fear touched his light, though, enough that Dehgoies suspected the man knew who he was, regardless of the aliases they’d used. The seer’s dark eyes watched Dehgoies nervously now, as if he were a dangerous animal.

  “...I told you. There was trouble. I contacted Galaith. He said he understood,” the man blurted.

  “Sure he did,” Dehgoies said. “He understands. But these seers were ours, brother. Including their virginity. Such a thing has value... even apart from as a bribe for rapist worms.”

  “I didn’t make any money off those cunts!” the seer snapped, his dark eyes abruptly furious. “The worms take what they want! It is tax to pass through these lands! You want to charge someone... you go find those American ridvak who fucked them. Charge them, if you want more money, brother... do not take it out on one of your own people!”

  Dehgoies felt his jaw harden to granite. />
  “One of my own people?” Dehgoies said coldly. “You really think you deserve to call yourself that... brother?”

  “Do not pretend you are better than me!” the man spat. “You are no better than me! You buy and sell them, the same as me! You are slave-trader, just like me! People like me would not even exist, if brothers like you did not buy what I take! You are me, brother...”

  Before he’d let himself think about whether it was a good idea, Dehgoies’ gun was already out of its holster and smoking in his hand.

  He didn’t even hear the shot.

  He stood there, trembling after he’d done it, staring at gun in his hand. It looked foreign almost, and for a moment, he couldn’t think how it had gotten there.

  In slow motion, everyone around him started to react.

  Raven let out a startled cry, stepping away from him in alarm.

  After a stunned silence, the seers in the corral cried out too, shouting in fear and crushing themselves backwards in a group on the dirt, dragging one another off balance and backwards with the rope that tied them all together. They continued to cry out and gasp as they fought to get away from him as a group, to hide in the shadows under the grass hut that stood in the middle of the jungle clearing under a muggy sky.

  Terian only stood where he was, his expression frozen in a kind of blank shock.

  Revik stared down at the seer he’d just killed.

  He focused on the bullet hole in the man’s head, the scorch marks from firing at such close range. The blood had already stopped flowing, assuming it had ever started. Now Revik could only stand there, numb, watching the aleimi evaporate from around the other male’s body.

  He’d just murdered another seer.

  When he glanced at the seers in the corral, he found them staring at him with wide eyes, the look on their faces holding an open terror.

  He could see what they saw in that brief instant. He could see it reflected in their faces, as he stood over the Vietnamese-looking seer.

  They looked at him as if he were an animal, some kind of unchained beast.

  They looked at him, and saw a murderer.

  FIVE

  KALI WASN’T SURE, exactly, when she realized he was following her.

  She didn’t know the moment that knowledge reached her awareness, although she was fairly certain, by the time she admitted it to herself fully, that he had been there for some time.

  At one point, she let herself feel him there, however.

  She also realized she had been feeling him for a number of days, off and on, perhaps since that day they first spoke beside the pool of the Grand Hotel. Kali had felt eyes on her, too, more than once since the day before. That had been the day when she’d finally left her hotel long enough to truly stretch her legs and explore more of the city’s dusty streets.

  She’d changed hotels.

  She’d done it to put some distance between herself and Dehgoies Revik’s friends, particularly the female with the possessive streak and the impulse-control issues, at least regarding Dehgoies himself. Kali now stayed further from the river, in the Caravelle Hotel itself, another of the large and more expensive accommodations crammed with foreigners and war correspondents... only one far enough from the river to allow her to disappear more easily into the city proper. Even next to the Grand, Kali felt more inconspicuous at the Caravelle, which had been a relief, and not only because of Dehgoies’ friends. Most of the eyes that watched her here appeared to be human, unlike those that had noticed her on those smaller streets near the Majestic and the Grand.

  Even so, she tried to be more cautious than before.

  Kali had not forgotten how easily Dehgoies managed to track her, even when Kali thought he had not yet noticed her following him. She had been living under the radar for so long with Uye, she had forgotten what it meant to be noticed by others of her own kind.

  Her skills at concealment had grown dangerously soft in the past one hundred years.

  Kali walked by her old hotel for the first time since that talk with Dehgoies by the pool. She did not head that way first, but only after a few hours of wandering, following her leaving her suite at the Caravelle in the early hours of the morning.

  Even in the dim and flickering streetlights, she could see that they had cleaned up most of the mess from the car bomb in the intervening days. The debris had been taken away, and even the glass replaced in the front doors and the long glass windows on either side of the hotel’s entrance, now guarded, even at night, by what looked like local security. Even so, the elaborate planters that had stood on either side of the doors remained scorched and cracked. Additional scorch marks darkened the white paint up the Grand Hotel’s face and formed a starfish-like pattern in the cobblestone walk that led down to the river’s shore.

  It was a good reminder that she should return indoors before the sun got too high in the sky.

  Kali found herself walking to the river itself, eventually.

  She enjoyed looking at the city in the pre-dawn hours, stepping quietly past shut churches and Buddhist temples and French cafés with their lights off and their windows shuttered. She liked walking at night, especially in the hours leading up to dawn, but unlike in California, it never got fully cool here, even in those early morning hours. Instead the air remained humid and vaguely stifling, although less so in the pre-dawn hours, when cool breezes moved the air around her body and brought out the bats and other night creatures to diminish the insect population.

  Regardless, her silk dress, cut in the style of the locals––again in the hopes of minimizing stares if she happened to be noticed at this early hour––was already damp with sweat and darker with dust by the time she made it back to the vicinity of the river.

  By then, it was nearly dawn.

  Kali felt better somehow, maybe just from stretching her legs, working muscles that weren’t accustomed to long periods of disuse from her life in California. There, it seemed like she and Uye were always busy doing something, whether gardening or hunting or walking to town... or simply going for long strolls in the near-silent woods that teemed with birds and plant life even right where they lived. She had been fixing the roof with him, preparing for winter, right before she left.

  Kali sighed a little, thinking he had long completed that job by now.

  She stood by the river for what felt like a long time, enjoying the early morning quiet.

  She watched the sun rise over the mountains past the Saigon River, and smiled, observing the fishing boats start to grow visible over the gold-splashed water. She lingered right at the muddy banks, looking out over the water, her arms hugging her chest. She spent the next hour or so watching the swiftly-moving current in the growing light, and the boats, including the military ships on the south side of the city and the local steamers that ferried passengers from one side of the river to the other. She’d listened to the calls of the birds and the boat people back and forth, even as she’d shivered under the first rays of the sun.

  Kali’s eyes followed the occasional barge that went by, too, surrounded by wooden fishing boats with their cylindrical shades like minnows swarming after deep-sea tuna. The scene had been strangely peaceful, yet not, the harder, jagged light of the military overhanging everything, even as the fishermen called to one another, making jokes and sharing steaming drinks.

  When she finally let herself feel her silent shadow, she turned, swiftly.

  She saw Dehgoies standing there, and froze.

  She wondered how long he had been standing there. Then, looking him over, she wondered how long he had been following her, too. From the dust on his pant legs, and the light sweat dampening of his shirt’s off-white collar, she assumed for some time. Noting his stillness and the quiet of his gaze, should could not help feeling as if she’d been caught in a predator’s sights.

  She forced herself to relax as she continued to look at him.

  For his part, Dehgoies didn’t attempt to step out of her view. He didn’t hide his presenc
e from her in any way, in fact... or even his light. He didn’t seem to mind her knowing he had been following her, and he didn’t shield from her when she scanned him cautiously for intent.

  He also didn’t come any closer.

  When he caught her returning stare, he averted his, but that was all.

  He must have followed her from the hotel. He must know she had changed residence, and where she had moved herself in the time since the bombing.

  Either that, or he liked walking in the early morning light, too, and had seen her.

  Maybe he also preferred to avoid the heat.

  Kali glanced back at him a few times as he stood, lingering by a cluster of trees growing closer to the street, watching her almost brazenly.

  She felt shyness on him too, however.

  Most of the riverside park had been allowed to go to seed and ruin since the war started, and now it kicked up as much dust as any part of the city, and most of the trees and grass had disappeared. Even so, in the areas beside the largest of the hotels, including the Majestic and the Riverside, planted trees remained, as well as flower beds and small lawns, park benches and lamp posts. She even saw what looked like pleasure ferries out over the river itself, perhaps to view the war with a cocktail in one’s hand, or simply glimpse the Mekong without fear of being dropped into a combat zone or being shot at by the local Viet Cong.

  Kali glanced back at Dehgoies yet again.

  He was smoking now, probably hiri, the preferred smoke of most seers. Again, he made no attempt to hide that fact from her, nor to hide himself... nor to approach her. He simply watched her, his face as blank as it had been in that meeting hall that day, before Kali had known that he knew she was following him. She wasn’t entirely fooled by that lack of expression on his face this time, nor did she believe the indifference it attempted to project.