Chapter 6
Bangkok, Thailand: one week later
In his hotel room, Ikaros sits on the side of the bed rubbing his eyes mercilessly after just waking up with, again, fewer hours’ sleep than he's able to sustain. He leans over to the chair and grabs his shorts and begins to slip them on, then peaks out the gap in the curtain at the morning sun rising over the capital — yet another highly humid and almost-intolerable summer's day awaits him outside.
Three minutes later
He exits the main entrance to the hotel, walks down the steps, and stands on the pavement for a moment under the shade of a tree while he cleans his sunglasses and adjusts his military-styled cap. He doesn't see a European girl in her early twenties come up, stand next to him, and notice his calm disposition after glancing at him a couple of times.
"Hey, can you speak Thai?" she enquires.
Ikaros looks up at her. "Huh? Oh, nah … I just got here a week ago and didn't have much time to learn anything much beforehand. Um, I didn't decide to buy a ticket till the last minute, you know?"
She shakes her head. "No, I don't," she says with a grin.
"Oh," he says, realising that it's slightly unusual. "I've been learning this week, but I still … well, it's just a week and I don't really have intentions of staying and becoming fluent, you know?"
"Yeah, I do. Anyway, the reason I asked is … I wanted to know if you know how to give directions to a taxi driver? I just arrived yest—"
"Ah, no, that's still beyond me, but I've caught a lot of taxis this week, and they could all speak English well enough, so …"
"Really? The one I had yesterday couldn't; that's why I asked. I was just a bit worried it was common."
"Oh, right. It shouldn't be."
She looks at him silently for a brief moment. "I'm about to have breakfast. Have you had anything yet?"
"No … I just got up. You don't have to catch a taxi for that: there're some good places left of the main intersection down there," he says while indicating the general direction with a slight shift of his head. "It'll just take us five minutes. Is that okay?"
"Yeah, sure." She notices how causally and seamlessly he assumed and accepted the invitation.
They start walking and take the opportunity to introduce themselves. "You're from Germany, right?" Ikaros asks redundantly, already having pegged her accent.
"Yeah, Dresden, originally. I'm living in Berlin now, though. My name's Sascha. What's yours?"
"Ikaros."
"Ikaros?" she echoes softly with inflection. "Your parents must have been interesting."
"I don't know. I think they just wanted to see what would happen."
"Well, there are definitely good things about your name, not just cautionary ones. It must be like being born in the year of the tiger or something."
"Yeah, I suppose … something like that." He smiles to himself about the way she handled it, having suffered a range of offensive comments and rib-stabbing portents since he was a kid.
Twenty minutes later
Sitting at a small table eating Thai curry dishes, they continue to talk quietly to each other.
"How long are you staying in Thailand?" asks Sascha.
"I don't know — a few more weeks, perhaps. It depends. What about you?"
"It depends on what?"
"What I decide to do."
"You don’t have a plan?"
"I have options; nothing concrete yet. I’m just entertaining a few things."
"Entertaining?" she repeats softly.
Ikaros stays silent.
"Well, I have to get back to Berlin soon 'cause the summer holiday is nearly over."
"You’re studying, then?"
"Yeah, economics and politics … postgrad."
"Really? What's the topic?"
"The economics of political action and the politics of economic systems … something along those lines, anyway."
"I get that. I do." He nods seriously with a grin and without getting a chance to add anything else.
"What about you? What do you do … or something like that?"
"Um, I'm … I was a journalist of sorts, but …"
"Cool. But what?"
"But … I guess it’s not like it used to be. Well, what I mean is … I don't really believe there were ever any 'glory days' of journalism or anything, but the way things have headed this century in particular, from what I've seen and found out, anyway, as far as reporting what’s really going on and providing adequate context, etcetera … well, it's scary and ugly, and, ah …"
"And you don’t want to be associated with it anymore, right?"
"More or less … yeah. I didn’t want to be associated with something that supports that lack of veracious connection and transparency … all that covering up. Then there’s the complicity entailed in the lifestyle just for the pay check and the furtherance of a career and the false sense of safety and all that. It just goes on and on, you know?"
"How bad is it really out there, anyway?" she asks, glancing out the window as if referring to the outside world and everything in it.
"Worse than you think; worse than you've been led to believe it is … or rather been allowed to believe it is. What you think you know, you may not; what's unknown may really need to be known but may never be." He stops and stares vacantly out into the street. "There are things going on that are important, that tell us about who and what we are, where we're headed, and where we could, should and need to be headed, but I … we generally can't find out anything substantive about these things and often don't even know where to begin or how to frame the search, just because they're unknowns, and there are so many of them. What's more, even though I'm essentially ignorant just like everyone else, I'm still essentially an educated member of society … well, was a member, that is."
"Great! It kind of puts words to the way I've been feeling lately."
"Mm, most people know it at some level but suppress it the best they can; barely anyone does anything productive with it. But that's just the thing: it's difficult to know what to do with such a feeling. I mean, where's the way in? And what's the cost if you try to find one?"
"It's a lot more than it used to be."
"It is."
"So why isn't the price too high for you?"
"Because I've already paid it."
"You sure?"
"For now, yeah. Anyway, my growing feeling is that there's too much at stake not to give it a go."
"You haven't given up, then?"
"No, no … not at all. It may look like I've given up to a conservative, but it's just a chance at real engagement for someone else … someone like me, like I'm becoming. I suppose we could put it like that."
"You're a radical, then?"
"Not yet," he replies softly with a grin.
"Let me know how it works out — I may join you."
"You either have the feeling for it, which can be cultivated, or you don't."
Sascha nods quietly, and they stare at each other for a couple of seconds. She then breaks out of it and changes the subject. "I wanna go to the countryside for a few days and climb a mountain and so forth. I've got the addresses of a few travel agencies and …"
"Sounds good. I'd like to climb a mountain while I'm here. It's been a long time … a very long time."
"It might put things into perspective for you, then."
"Mm, it'll hopefully put things into perspective for us both.”
Chapter 7
Two days later
On a small bus, over two and a half hours out of Bangkok, Sascha and Ikaros sit near the back. Sascha reads a book while Ikaros looks intently at a map of the region trying to work out the time it will take until they reach their destination. "I reckon it'll only be another thirty minutes or so," he says without looking up.
Just then the bus turns onto a narrow dirt track and slows down dramatically as it begins navigating its way along it. Sascha and Ikaros look up together with surprise.
"What's he doing?" Sascha asks.
"I don't know. I'm sure we're supposed to keep to the main road for a while yet. Maybe we should …"
"… ask the guide."
Without replying, Ikaros gets up and heads towards the front of the bus. He bends down next to the guide just behind the driver. "Ah, excuse me, why did we just make that turn? Aren't we supposed to …?"
"Please take a seat, sir. This is the shorter way. We'll arrive in ten or fifteen minutes, okay?"
Ikaros looks out the front of the bus and down the track ahead, and nods slowly. "Okay, then." He returns to his seat, noticing the majority of the passengers are Thai and are paying little to no attention to the odd change in route: only five other passengers are foreigners from what he can tell — three Europeans and what he thinks is a Korean couple. After counting off all twenty-four passengers in his head while returning to his seat, he sits down next to Sascha. "She reckons it's shorter."
"Do you?"
He shakes his head. "Ah, no … not by the map, anyway."
Thirteen minutes later
The bus comes to a stop in the middle of the track and its doors fling open. Out of the forest, four men jump on board brandishing machine guns. They begin yelling in Thai and pointing the guns menacingly at the passengers. Another four men encircle the bus and fire off rounds randomly into the air. A few of the passengers start screaming and crying while the armed men on board shout orders at everyone.
Reactively compliant, the first of the passengers stand up and walk hurriedly to the exit. Soon, one of the 'hijackers' is at the back of the bus, where he notices Sascha and Ikaros; he hesitates for a moment, then steps just behind them, whacks them on the side of their heads with the barrel of his gun in quick succession, and yells aggressively, "Get off the bus, now, you Western dogs!"
Ikaros grabs Sascha's hand and squeezes it as he stands up. They shuffle their way towards the front entrance, scanning the scene and counting guns and machetes.
Two minutes later
Outside, the passengers stand nervously in a line as their captors encircle them intimidatingly. Several of those at one end begin walking into the surrounding forest after being yelled at and prodded repeatedly to do so; near the end of the line, Sascha and Ikaros watch on with fearful speculation as several of the passengers in front of them disappear one by one into the dense undergrowth before either even get a chance to begin following.
Moments later, with the voices of the group fading in the distance, the bus driver and the 'tour guide' begin the drive back to the main road in reverse, unable to turn around in such narrow confines. The drop zone is left deserted until the next date on their schedule.
Early the next morning
After napping lightly for perhaps twenty minutes or less in his small bamboo cage, Ikaros wakes up, still exhausted, to the sound of a prolonged and shrill scream; intermittent periods of this resumed just before dawn after a disquieting stretch of inactivity in the early hours. He checks Sascha's cage ten feet away and finds to his relief that she's still sitting hugging her legs tightly and hiding her face from view. He hears the whimpering of several of the ten remaining passengers and notices that the two other Europeans were taken away while he was sleeping, realising that it could well have been their screams that had penetrated his disturbing dream. He shakes his head and, from under his legs, picks up the sliver of bamboo that he pulled off part of the cage around midnight after examining the whole thing thoroughly, desperately trying to find a weakness. He quickly positions himself so as not to arouse suspicion from the roaming guards and resumes cutting at the leather bonds around his wrists that are so tight his hands have become bloodlessly pale. He cuts frantically for around forty minutes without rest, trying not to get too anxious about the series of unlikely gambles involved in this last hope.
After finally breaking free, he rearranges the leather so that it appears secure at first glance, holding the ends tightly in his fingers, allowing him to release it and make use of his hands on demand: he practices this twice, then waits, hoping that he is the next to be taken, almost fooling himself that he can make it happen if he desires it strongly enough: it isn't and he can't. He watches as one of the other passengers is dragged out of her cage and taken kicking and screaming into the nearby shed by four of the men. Moments later, wild and desperate screams come exploding out of the entrance lasting in various forms for only thirty seconds or so before fading to fatigued and helpless whimpering; then, an abrupt silence cuts through the air.
The disturbing nature of the pattern being basically the same in the given context, all those still caged need no visual confirmation about the content of the proceedings. Forty tense minutes pass before the four men exit again to collect another. By this time, Ikaros is calm, poised and determined that whatever he is able to come up with will be enough. The men head for one of the cages near Ikaros; he takes his only chance and yells, "Hey! If you want someone to kill, come and kill me!"
The men react by laughing and point at him mockingly.
"You think that's funny, do you, you fools?! TAKE ME!" Ikaros yells with even greater fervour. He then violently throws himself against the cage, falls on his back, and starts kicking at the bars aggressively, careful not to let the bindings unravel. He rolls over and spits in their direction as he watches them head towards his cage; they start abusing him in Thai and laugh heartily, thinking the whole scene is quite amusing and believing they've broken him.
"You want your turn, huh?" asks one as he leans down, unlocks the padlock and opens the door while two of the others point their machine guns into the cage, poking Ikaros painfully in the ribs. Ikaros starts to exit, "I never told you not to screw with me. Do you have any idea why?" Ignoring him, one man without a gun grabs Ikaros's left arm, but, as he begins to stand upright, Ikaros releases his grip on the leather bonds, slips his left hand out and both hands race towards the barrels of the two guns, clasping them firmly and raising them into the air; the barrels are already above his head when they start to fire. Sascha watches with surprise as Ikaros swings the ends of the barrels down towards the other two men who then fall to the ground dead before the guns stop firing. In the struggle that follows, Ikaros commandeers a gun, pokes the barrel in an eye and smashes a butt into some teeth, finally shooting the remaining two with a few short spurts while they suffer their injuries for a brief but agonising moment. Surprised by the result, but satisfied that they've been dealt with, he turns and races towards the shed only twenty paces away. He leans up against the wall and waits with his gun pointing at the entrance.
The four remaining guards, alerted by the unexpected commotion outside, run out of the shed to investigate with their guns at the ready yet to little effect as they don't spot Ikaros before he opens fire. Three of them are wounded and drop clumsily to the dirt; the remaining man spins instinctively towards Ikaros, spraying bullets in an arc along the shed wall as he does so, which quickly encroaches on his position. Having the advantage, though, Ikaros takes careful aim and fires just a few well-placed rounds that result in blood and other debris spitting out the back of his target's head.
Ikaros walks towards the entrance firing at the other three on the ground until they stop wriggling. At the entrance, he peers into the shed with his rifle at the ready and sees an operating table with the bloody body of the young woman on it and two blood-drenched 'surgeons' desperately racing for the back door in a futile attempt to abandon the scene. With only a slight hesitation, he opens fire and shoots both several times in the back. Dismissing them before they hit the floor, he walks through the entrance a few steps and looks around the room spotting several refrigerators and a collection of lumpy body bags lined up on the floor, evidently containing the harvested corpses of the already-perished passengers. Shaking his head in disgust, he turns and runs towards the strewn bodies near his cage and picks up a set of keys lying in the dirt; he strides across to Sascha's cage, leans down next to it and looks at the lock then the keys, trying
to work out what the system is, if there is one, but doesn't find anything obvious like numbers or colours, only a series of characters that, as far as he can tell, don't seem to have any discernable pattern to them.
Sascha looks at him with mixed surprise. "Did you just do that?" she whispers, still not quite believing it.
"Yeah, I did. It's gonna be okay now; we're gonna make it out." He impatiently tries a number of keys — the fifth one clicks the lock open effortlessly. He opens the door and begins to untie her.
NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) Page 6
