The Refugee Sentinel

by Hayes, Harrison

  “An outrage.” Saretto tumbled out of the prowler in a bundle of rediscovered energy. “I hope you realize the severity of your actions, Officer Gurloskey. I’m a US Territory citizen and a performer at the world-famous Seattle Symphony.” Li-Mei folded her arms as Saretto fished a phone from his pocket and started dialing a number. “Not only do I refuse to spend a minute in curfew jail, but I will sue you for this travesty. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

  “No need for a call, sir,” Li-Mei said. “It’s past curfew and the cell towers have switched off their civilian traffic if you haven’t signed-in. How about I drive you to any destination you –”

  “The King5 TV headquarters,” Saretto said. “My story will anchor the seven o’clock news tomorrow.”

  “I can do that. Please, take a seat in my vehicle.”

  Saretto looked at Li-Mei’s green Mustang. “I want to call a cab.”

  “Curfew docks all cabs by law, sir. King5 wouldn’t dispatch a car to pick you at this hour. And you couldn’t walk there either because you’d be arrested in minutes. Your safest bet is to let me to drive you.”

  Saretto shivered. “Fine, but he can’t come with us.” He pointed a finger at Natt.

  “Of course not. Officer Gurloskey has no authority over you anymore.”

  Saretto glowered at the cop while squeezing into the Mustang’s passenger seat. He buckled and tugged on the belt to ensure it worked. Once comfortable, he blinked several times, looking straight ahead and broadcasting relief at having survived the night without even a citation.

  While following the green Mustang, Natt couldn’t shake the sense of dread. He thanked providence he wasn’t the one riding shotgun next to Li-Mei, on route to God-knew-where. Both cars crept through the suspension bridges of the curfewed city, the prowler’s flashing lights granting them a safe passage.

  The Mustang came to a halt in a walled-off alleyway behind the Seattle Public Library. The massive edifice – once, one of the finest buildings in North America – didn’t have a single light turned on and wore the same taint as the rest of downtown. Li-Mei stepped out of the car and Saretto followed.

  “I said King5 TV, not the library.” His protests filled the night, as Natt walked up to the pair.

  “Isn’t the library is as much of a bastion of free speech as the TV?”

  “But I asked –”

  “Unless you do as I say, I will … kill you.” Li-Mei paused before the last two words and Saretto winced, as if they were needles thrust in his flesh. She led the cellist to a shaft protruding from a septic tank at the back of the library. Natt recognized the tank - a product of the Sanitation Revival Program he had proposed with the Mayor to condemn Seattle’s flooded sewers and install individual septic tanks at all large public buildings.

  “You have a nice suit, Mr. Saretto,” Li-Mei said. “Do you like it?”

  Saretto’s voice was small, “It’s my favorite.”

  “I love it too… but you’ll have to soil it some tonight.”

  Li-Mei jumped on top of the tank and smashed the padlock on the circular entry shaft. As soon as her back turned, Saretto dashed for Fourth Avenue, large and bright at the library’s main entrance. Gurloskey cut the fleeing man off with unusual agility for the cop’s two-hundred-plus-pound frame. Then following a scuffle with a predetermined end, Saretto lay face down on the pavement with Natt on his back.

  “I apologize if our company has bored you, Mr. Saretto.” Li Mei approached the two heaped men. “Or are you that fond of your suit? I would be, too, if I had a suit like yours. Stripes are always in style, aren’t they?” She produced an oxygen mask and handed it to the Chief of Police. “Put this on and bring our guest back to the tank.” She put a second mask on her head and pulled the septic hatch open, hinges creaking in rusted protest. A column of steel steps descended into the tank’s gut, the top few rungs gleaming in the pale moonlight.

  “God. The smell…” Saretto wept as Natt shoved him forward.

  “Rotten eggs, if you’re wondering,” Li-Mei said. “Fear not, it shall pass. You may enter the tank via this ladder, otherwise, Mr. Gurloskey will have to deposit you inside.” Saretto’s watery eyes scanned the two oxygen masks staring at him.

  “And by the way, don’t forget to tie yourself to the steps inside. You wouldn’t want to fall.” Li-Mei handed Saretto a nylon rope, which he took with both hands like a precious offering.

  “Please, don’t do this,” he said.

  “We need you in that tank, dear. Go down but do continue to believe in miracles. The sinking of the Titanic must have been a miracle to the lobsters in the kitchen.”

  Victor Saretto stared at Li-Mei’s amber face for another moment, turned away from the pit and inhaled a last gasp of semi-unpolluted air. He held his breath and climbed down one slow step at a time, the septic tank hiding his body from sight. “Oh, I almost forgot...” Li-Mei’s mask covered the patch of sky, cut off by the hatch opening.

  Victor’s head reemerged from the darkness. He was still holding his breath.

  “Don’t speak,” she said, “nod, instead. The crestfallen Mrs. Dubois divorced you when she found out you were gay four years ago, correct?” Victor nodded, his face wet with tears. “If the two of you loved each other as much as I’m told you did, you should look at tonight as doing her a favor. The first female President of the ULE Patent Bureau makes a great catch for a second marriage, don’t you think? Four years is long enough to mourn someone who isn’t even dead. Us women could get too sentimental for our own good sometimes. And in your case, you never know… death might bring her closure. Of course, I’m not saying you’re going to die tonight.”

  Saretto nodded again.

  “What a good boy, Mr. Saretto. Don’t forget to strap yourself to the steps.” Li-Mei sounded maternal. “We’ll come get you in a few. We can even get food on our way to King5. You shouldn’t go on national TV on an empty stomach, no?” Saretto kept nodding. “I’ll close this now to give you some privacy.”

  The hatch creaked shut over the cellist’s face.

  “We’ll come get you…” Natt said on the fresh-air side of the tank and slow-clapped.

  “Check on him in twenty,” Li-Mei said. “With a little luck, he will have tied himself to the steps before the hydrogen sulfide kills him. Leave his body by the open tank somewhere. The story will write itself.”

  “Our septic tanks claim another innocent victim.” Natt imitated the booming voice of a news anchor. “But why would Saretto break into a padlocked septic tank in the middle of the night? At the Seattle Library, no less?”

  “You’re the cop, you figure out a motive before people find his corpse while returning their books tomorrow morning. If there are any readers left in this goddamn city, that is.”

  Li-Mei opened the Mustang’s door. “And Gurloskey – don’t forget to put your oxygen mask back on when you go in. Even a monkey could take care of business from here.”

  Natt laughed, agreeable and sweaty.

  “Parker’s the last one left. Get him to me and I’ll let you live.” The Mustang’s window shot up. The night was getting colder.

  eight days till defiance day (44

  The black coffee scalded the top row of Natt’s taste buds into numb white dots but he was too groggy to notice. Light, born at five-am, seeped into Macrina Bakery. He sat alone, at the same table where Li-Mei had locked him in his own handcuffs last week. She had texted him earlier, demanding a morning meeting. More like a middle-of-the-night one, it felt to Natt.

  She marched into the bakery, her appearance affected by the early morning no more than a late afternoon. Her hair was lush and shiny and her movements deliberate. She pulled out a chair and sat across from Natt.

  “Parker’s status with eight days left?” Only she could fit so much in so few words without a single verb.

  Natt’s palms encircled the ceramic “For Here” mug, eking out warmth, and maybe shelter from what was to follow. He took another sw
allow of the steaming coffee and spoke with the servile tone he had developed in Li-Mei’s presence. “I’ve flooded the ULE Most Wanted wires with his info. We have enough for a criminal charge: he has severed his passport. That’s at least ten years for desertion.”

  “He cut off his own hand?”

  “At the wrist. The curfew database confirmed his vitals stopped refreshing four days ago… your classic case of Defiance Day desertion. The bad news is, without a digital passport, our systems can’t track the guy.”

  She sighed. “You’re on my list and, if you can’t find him, you’ve seen what I do to people on my list.”

  His voice was thick with insomnia. “But I took care of the cellist last night. The Seattle PD found his body this morning… no issues.”

  She pushed her plastic chair and stood up. “Find Parker.”

  Natt stepped in front of her while avoiding her eyes. “I should also mention,” he stammered, “to convince you of my intentions –”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “— that I voted last night.”

  “Sacrificing yourself for your son does not solve my Parker problem.”

  “I earmarked someone else.”

  She shot him a tilted look. “You voted for someone else?”

  “Laura - our babysitter who looks after Eaton.” Natt’s palms kept hugging the cup, white knuckles on blue ceramic. “I wanted to show you I can’t Sacrifice for him and I’m not a threat anymore and you shouldn’t… Meaning, if you continue with what you want to do to me. You know… it will be tragic for Eaton to lose his Dad…” Natt breathed in and out. “Also…I wanted to prove to you I’m not a threat.”

  “Eaton can’t be earmarked. Ever.” Li-Mei scanned the Police Chief from head to toe.

  “But even if they did earmark him,” Natt followed her outside, “I can’t undo it anymore. Not after I voted last night. This is convincing you right? What I did?”

  Li-Mei stopped on the bridge-walk, her back to him. “Chloe, your wife, will be earmarked a few hours before the deadline. And you are right, you wouldn’t be able to undo it – one way or another.” She disappeared within the swirl of the waking city as morning delivery trucks and salary men rushed to early meetings. Natt Gurloskey did not attempt to follow.

  eight days till defiance day (45

  Moving to this other Washington had made Yana feel like a scattered picture puzzle. She wasn’t supposed to like change at eight years old, least of all when forced to leave home. The smell was her very first introduction to Seattle, right after she had jumped on the yellow helipad of the ULE Seattle embassy the previous morning and ran up to her mother. “This place smells bad, Mom,” she had said.

  “We’ll stay here no longer than we have to. I promise,” had been her Mom’s reply, but unconvinced Yana had clung to the hand. Her Mom had called Yana’s father over the chopper’s blades whirring through the air, “We’ve arrived and will see you in the embassy when you get there.” Then her Mom had hung up.

  They had reached Seattle the hard way. With SeaTac Airport decommissioned because of the floods, Mom had convinced a ULE Coast Guard General to give them a lift to Cheyenne on a ULE topography mission. Afterward, they had made the final leg to Seattle on a food-supply chopper run.

  That’s when Yana had taken her first breath after disembarking and had cringed. The morning breeze had lost to the rotting smell and, like a waking person who wanted to stay in bed, despite a burning bladder, Seattle had woken one block at a time, dark windows turning into lighted ones.

  To be fair, the ULE embassy’s yard here was covered with grass, which she penciled as the only plus of moving to Seattle. But the rest were mammoth-sized minuses like rain, rot and pedestrians roaming the suspension bridge-walks without a purpose or umbrellas. She had seen a woman in hair-curls, a man wearing shaving cream on his face then another man, starting a gas grill at a corner.

  She felt strapped to a rollercoaster ride she was afraid to finish because of what waited at the end of the tracks: a first-time meeting with her father. She used to have nightmares about him growing up and she wetted her bed. Her Mom insisted such accidents were normal then rocked her, until Yana would fall back asleep. Yana never told her Mom or the special doctor her Mom had hired, that dreaming of her father was what caused the nightmares. She stayed mum because she wanted to get rid of him on her own. At times, she succeeded and woke dry in her jammies the following day. These mornings meant absolute happiness and, in time, started outnumbering the wet ones. Until her Mom told her they had to go see him.

  “I owe you an explanation,” her Mom had said on their first night in Seattle.

  Yana didn’t want explanations, she wanted to wake in her dry DC bed without feeling guilty her father had left or being afraid that nobody but her Mom would ever love her again.

  “I know he’s been on your mind a lot.” Her Mom kept beating the topic like a woodpecker. “And I also know the thought of seeing him upsets you.”

  Yana was chasing a fugitive pea with the tip of her fork and, despite her Mom’s long stare, wouldn’t look back. “A mother’s job, you’ll find one day, is to protect her child without regard to the cost. A good mother, it may seem to you now, would do the opposite of what I’m asking. She wouldn’t uproot you from your home or force a piano competition on you. She wouldn’t bring back the days when you wet your bed.”

  “Mom… You’re embarrassing me,” Yana said, her fork disemboweling the pea. The Pacific Northwest rain was pounding against the windows like a drumroll that would sound cozy in in inland city. In Seattle, the sound of rain spelled doom.

  “If I could wave a wand to take your worries away and store them inside me, I would,” her Mom said snapping her fingers, “like that.”

  “You don’t have to explain, Mom.”

  “There’s something good about your father you don’t know yet, but you will find out one day. Until then…” Her Mom stammered, “You should know he regrets his mistake and wants to convince you of it, too. That’s why he asked to see you and I agreed. Does any of this help you, Sweetie?”

  The word “sweetie” caught her unprepared. Other mothers used pet words to call their daughters, not her mother. It gave Yana a glimpse of her mother’s true burden. Her Mom would absorb her fears and wetting of beds, if she could. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t… wanting to was more important than the act.

  Yana reached out and held her Mom’s hand. “You’re doing great, Mom. I’ll meet my father. It’s OK.” She pushed her chair back and jumped on the tiled floor, her bare feet making a suction noise against the cold marble. “And thank you for dinner.” She turned around and headed upstairs to check her room in their new embassy home, for the first time.

  eight days till defiance day (46

  Li-Mei watched as the merry-go-round turned, slow and creaky. Yana stood next to the churning axis, the backbone of the whole steely operation. Someone had shut off the music and the customers had disappeared too, but the carousel moved on: bright electric bulbs illuminating the wooden horses from multiple angles. Some of the horses’ manes floated like frozen waves, some horses pulled on invisible loads with necks turned sideways. All animals, without exception, had open mouths and bared teeth, and sported fresh coats of paint on top of chips and scratches that excited little customers had inflicted, without meaning to in the slightest.

  Yana stood in the middle, where a machinist would. Nine times out of ten, the machinists were high school dropouts with the job of pressing a green button then ten minutes later, pressing a red one. Today, Yana did the honors.

  Li-Mei got closer. As the carousel turned, a bucking bronco hid her from the girl’s sight then Li-Mei was visible for a moment before disappearing again behind a royal carriage with a tall steel spike.

  “Who are you?” Yana said, squinting around the moving figures.

  “I can’t tell you, but I’m glad I found you.”

  “Are you Chinese?” Yana said.

&nb
sp; “Most Caucasians can’t tell the difference. But that doesn’t apply to you, I see.” Li-Mei smiled. “How did you get in the middle of these spinning horses with open, painted mouths? And do you need help getting out?”

  “I’m good. If I press here,” Yana pointed to a red button with the word “Stop” etched on top, “the wheel will stop and let me get out.”

  “Why don’t you do it, then?”

  Yana thumbtacked a smile on her face and pressed the button. In another half rotation, the merry-go-round ground to a halt. She took a step forward then another. Her shoes rattled against the carousel’s metallic floor. As soon as she came within reaching distance, Li-Mei’s fingers bit into Yana’s hand and Li-Mei’s smile melted into a leer.

  “You’re hurting me,” Yana said.

  “That’s my intent, little one.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  Li-Mei’s low whisper rippled through the air, “Drama is anticipation, mingled with uncertainty, but you’re a smart little girl, aren’t you? You knew why I had come the moment you saw me.”

  “I guessed… Now I know.”

  “Killing you will save the lives of many others.”

  “In what way?”

  “My role coming here, to this…” Li-Mei paused while her free hand swept around, in a gesture showing what words couldn’t, “Territory… was to take the lives of those who may Sacrifice themselves for you. Then earmark you and make sure you to sleep after Defiance Day.”

  “Why would you do this to me?”

  “To make your Mom sad. So sad she wouldn’t want to work after your death. And that would give a chance to other scientists in a different Territory, our Territory, to catch up with her inventions.”