I think of the first day of my apprenticeship and almost stumble over my own feet. What a shock it was when Runner led me to an aircraft the size of…of…heck, I don’t even have a comparison. The thing was at least fifty metres long and produced so much noise that my ears screeched for minutes after I climbed into its belly. When it took off, I thought I would die from terror. And all Runner did was to calmly place his rifle on the floor and show me how to aim, how to hold the stock steady, and how to exhale and pull the trigger.
I’ll have to shoot people soon. I know it’s going to be members of the BSA — a bunch of sickos with the goal of eradicating all humans. They believe that God (or whoever wants us all gone) sent the Great Pandemic to get rid of us, because apparently he believes his latest job — the creation of humans — has turned out to be sort of unsatisfactory. Since the course of the Great Pandemic was unsatisfactory as well, considering three million of us survived the disease and the ensuing wars, the BSA feels compelled to help God bring an end to all human life. I don’t know what they think God will do after that. Start from scratch and have another unsatisfactory result?
So…to save lives I’ll have to take lives, and that’s what Runner teaches me. I don’t want to think of my first time. I really don’t. But I can’t help it. He’s told me that his custom-built suppressed .50 calibre rifle doesn’t just plop holes into people — it rips them apart at a maximum range of two-thousand five-hundred metres and a muzzle velocity of one thousand metres per second.
My own rifle is a suppressed .357 calibre highly accurized rifle with a maximum range of one-thousand five hundred metres. The thing can punch voids into folks. A shot to the head would tear half the skull off. I don’t know how I’ll keep my eyes open when a man is in my finder and I squeeze the trigger.
Although my rifle is much lighter than Runner’s, the thing weighs heavy in my hand now. My pack carries fifteen kilograms, and half of that is a bag of the rice Yi-Ting packed with a grin. No, I’m not attempting to suffocate my enemies with grass seeds. I’m exercising. Endurance, Runner calls it. Fuck it. I can endure a lot of shit. I’ve starved every third or fourth winter. I’ve seen people die from bloody coughs and infected wounds no matter how much I helped our physician with infusions, cold wraps, and broth. I’ve had my hands in blood up to my elbows when I saved Runner’s life. And I saw my brother die.
I wipe the last thought away and focus on running. He wants me to run a certain distance in a certain time. No idea which numbers he mentioned precisely and I don’t really care. I give my best and that’s all there is. He knows that, anyway.
I’m not complaining. I had a whole night’s sleep and the sweetest girl on the island is with me. She thinks Runner is treating me too harshly. He can treat me much harsher if it makes Yi-Ting run with me.
Her bare feet tread lightly in the sand. I stare at the swing of her narrow hips and her long black hair that is so shiny one would think it’s bathed in oil. Maybe she can guess I’m watching.
As long as the ground isn’t freezing, I prefer to be barefooted. Here in the subtropics, there’s no reason for me to squeeze into footwear. Boots make my toes useless for balancing and my footfalls get loud and clunky. But in moments such as this, I’m reminded of how much more vulnerable naked feet are — I have to watch out to not break my ankles. The dark-grey rocks are round and slippery. The sea washes over them, allowing algae to grow on the surface and mussels in the cracks between. I’m pretty slow and can’t focus on anything but my feet and where to place them. Once I reach soft sand, I increase my speed and let my mind wander.
So here I am, at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, chasing a beautiful girl while carrying combat paraphernalia on my back, a sniper rifle in my hand, a .40 calibre pistol strapped to my thigh, and a large knife at my hip. Yi-Ting wears her loose cotton pants and shirt, she’s unarmed, smiles a lot, and is as fast as a deer. The two of us must make for a curious sight.
‘Are you okay climbing this?’ I huff when we reach the cliffs.
‘Are you kidding me?’ She rolls her eyes.
I love the lilt of her voice and how her words taste. Sometimes, I beg her to speak her wild mix of languages for me, and when she does, it makes my tongue prickle. The dominant Min dialect tastes of a handful of berries tumbling through a wooden bowl — round, soft, and quick, with a tardy sweetness and a slight rasping across my palate. The Japanese fragments mixed into it are softer, strewn with grating dshee sounds that spread flavours of unripe plums in my mouth. When she speaks English, her linguistic flavour seeps through and I find myself adopting her speaking patterns just to taste her from a distance.
I dig my fingers into the rock and begin pulling myself up. I’m not allowed to sling my rifle over my shoulder, Runner said. If not for the weapon and the weight on my back, I’d be up there in a flash. But one-handed and with a shitty centre of gravity, the wind could probably blow me off the cliffs.
I climb and kick very inelegantly, scraping a chunk of skin off the side of my right hand, until finally I scramble over the edge.
Yi-Ting stands with her hand on her hip, her pants showing a pale gap between waistband and shirt. My heart pounds a double beat. I long to see more of her smooth skin but right now I’m dirty, sweaty, and ridiculously red-faced. She’s too pretty, anyway. She’ll never let me kiss her, even if I polish myself.
I inhale a deep breath and tackle the final stretch of the run. Only two kilometres on flat terrain left: stupid muscle-producing exercise. After that, sharp shooting. Runner wants me to be exhausted, trembling, and hypoglycaemic to see how my aim is under simulated battle conditions. I’ll probably plop my bullets into some poor gull high up in the sky instead of the targets on the ground.
After half of the final distance, my legs and lungs burn, but I don’t slow down; I’m probably too slow anyway. Yi-Ting runs like a dancer. She doesn’t appear the slightest bit tired.
‘Yi-Ting?’ I manage through elaborate breathing. ‘Tell me about your flights. I need a distraction.’
She chuckles and slows until we run next to each other. ‘I’m both Ben’s and Kat’s apprentice and in my third year.’
She always begins her stories like this. You can tell she’s proud having two mentors; she keeps them both busy and happy with her performance.
‘I switch back and forth between the two, but this is the first time the three of us are working together. Kat teaches me everything about communication and intelligence. It’s exciting but too much sitting on my bum for my taste. With Ben it’s much much more fun.’ She grins. ‘I love flying.’ Then, the corners of her mouth pull down. ‘Only…the bombs.’
The bombs. I still can’t wrap my head around this gentle girl throwing huge packs of explosives down at BSA camps. Or Ben! Compared to the serious Kat, he’s a fun guy. I’ve never seen him angry or sad, and the mop of tight blonde curls make him look like a small boy, harmless and funny.
Ben and Yi-Ting pull off all kinds of dangerous things with his small solar aircraft. The machine is so quiet you hear it only when it’s about to slam right into you. I once saw her fly a loop while Ben cheered from the ground. My stomach was about to blow lunch just from watching.
‘What about the cooking?’ I grunt. I need a break and probably shouldn’t spend the little air I’ve got left on chatting.
‘My dad is a cook. I was raised in his kitchen and soaked up all his secret recipes.’ She shows me her white teeth. ‘Cooking is second best to flying. Besides, someone has to feed you crazy people.’
On my first day, I mistook her for kitchen help until she smacked the towel at Ben’s butt and made him do the dishes. Then I thought there was something going on between the two, but soon Ben started flirting with me for some bizarre reason, and Yi-Ting didn’t seem affronted. We are only three women on the island, me, Yi-Ting, and Kat. I’m guessing Ben tried his luck with his apprentice and she told him off. And no one in his right mind is going to mess with Kat. So that leaves only me and the ants
and bees.
The wind is whipping salty air into my face. I can see Runner far ahead. He stands unmoving and watches my progress. Maybe I should be faster? I pump my legs and spend the last bit of energy I didn’t know I had. Puffing and grunting, I run up to him, and drop my ruck next to his rifle.
‘No, you’ll be fifty metres to my left. Put your earbud in. Move.’
‘See you later,’ Yi-Ting calls and I’m not sure if she means only Runner, or both of us. I pick up my stuff and make my legs run a bit farther. Then I drop my ruck, take the earbud from my pocket, plug it in, and make myself comfortable on the ground.
‘We’ll practice synchronised sniping,’ sounds in my left ear.
Okay, so we’ll be aiming at the same target, alternating shots, calling out corrections, and acting as each other’s spotter to make sure the target is very very dead.
‘We begin on the far left,’ Runner says. ‘Total of four shots per target. I get the first shot.’
I gaze through my scope, blink in confusion, and check the set angle. ‘Runner? Did you fiddle with my scope?’
‘I might have bumped against it.’
‘Asshole,’ I growl.
‘It’s your responsibility to never let your rifle out of your sight and to check its functionality before you even think of walking into battle,’ he reminds me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I mutter.
‘Distance and windage?’ he demands.
I assess the distance to the first target. The grass bends sharply to the right. ‘Eight hundred and fifty metres, stiff west wind. No cross winds.’
Runner fires and I see a spray coming off the wooden target’s left shoulder. ‘Favour right,’ he tells me and I aim and shoot. Spray flares up at the target’s centre.
‘Favour right,’ I say and he fires, hitting the target’s left shoulder.
‘Wind is settling. Hold left,’ I hear in my earpiece. I aim and shoot, the bullet hits the left side, a little too low, but if that had been a man, he’d now have both shoulders taken off, a huge hole in his chest and his guts flying every which way.
We work our way through the other three targets, each one hundred to one hundred and fifty metres farther away than the previous one, pushing my rifle’s range to its limit. I’m good at this, out of breath or rested. But what makes me itch all over is when people are shooting at me when I’m trying to aim. Runner had me crawling across our range every day for a whole week. I had to hit the targets’ centre mass while he fired right over my head. On the first day, half of my bullets didn’t even make it to their targets. Although I knew he wouldn’t shoot me, I was shaking with terror when the bullets zipped past my ears. When we were done a few hours later, it felt as if I’d let Runner down. He tried to hide his disappointment, but it was painted all over his face and posture.
‘Grab lunch and meet me for camouflage at thirteen hundred,’ he speaks through my earbud.
‘Where?’
‘Find me here, if you can.’
Yeah, shit. I’ll most likely be in his crosshairs for half an hour before I even see a trace of him. Humping my pack and my rifle, I make for my tent.
———
I take a large sip of whatever Ben has brewed. It burns nicely down my throat. As I roll my tongue around in my mouth the pearl clicks against my teeth. It irritates Runner when I do this, but I don’t give a damn. He wanted me to have it, so he can deal with my clicking.
I’m the one who has to learn to deal with it. The pearl evokes images of violence, even in my sleep. Blinking, I focus on the aromas of fruits and flowers and the sea — the air is thick with them.
Itbayat is a tiny splotch in the South China Sea. We are the only humans here. Everybody else, some three thousand people, were overrun by fleeing Chinese, who then found themselves facing a bunch of desperate Japanese. The battle was short, if one can believe the reports of the few survivors who left the blood-soaked island to itself. The torn remains of villages and small cities with their houses built of neat round stones still bear witness to the violence that swept the island clean of the human species.
Sometimes I wonder what the people planted in their gardens, what livestock they kept in their meadows and in which trees they carved their short messages to loved ones. They must have kept many goats, because their progeny are populating the island in great numbers. Their meat is deliciously mild, yet dark like game. I’ve yet to find birches and lime trees, but maybe there aren’t any in this region. There are short cycas, tall tree ferns, wild pear trees with sweet round fruit that are less gritty than our mountain pears at home, and the countless old trees with trunks so thick one needs three people or more holding on to each other’s hands to span their girth. This island is saturated with noises and life, the clicking of cicadas or crickets, buzzing of beetles, soft hooting and screeching and singing of birds of the strangest colours and shapes — all of them changing with the appearance and disappearance of the sun, with the gusts of wind and rain.
I peer up at the canopy of red cypresses, follow their wind-battered trunks with my gaze, and close my eyes.
‘Want another one?’ Ben asks me. His voice pulls me back to our small unit sitting among a group of trees. I open my eyes and look down at the sea. The sun is cut in half by the ocean, bleeding dark orange across the rippling dark blue.
Ben steps in my view. ‘Earth to Micka.’ He waves a hand in front of my nose.
‘You are not earth, not yet, Ben.’
He snorts. He’s as pale as the sand down at the beach. His short curly hair is the colour of straw, his eyes are light blue. He’s a nice guy and I like him, but he’s flirting with too much desperation for my taste. Everything about him screams, I need sex.
‘If I have another one, I might do things I’ll regret tomorrow morning,’ I answer.
‘Such as?’
‘Puke.’
Kat clears her throat (she never laughs) and rocks her chair far back, so far, I’m afraid she’ll tip and bonk her head. But she doesn’t drink, so she’s probably in complete control of chair and gravity and all.
‘I thought you might mean something…different,’ Ben says. Okay, here he goes again. I sit up straight deciding to amuse him a little.
‘You should be careful with alcohol,’ Kat tells me. ‘Last time you passed out after your second drink. I don’t think your system tolerates it.’
‘It will have to adapt,’ I retort just as Yi-Ting arrives. I never hear her approach. She treads so softly her bare feet don’t make a noise. She places a large bowl with rice and strips of vegetables on the table, takes the offered glass from Ben’s hand, and sits down on a fallen tree next to Runner.
Shit. I should have put my behind there instead, and she’d be sitting next to me and not him.
I notice my own irritation and let some of it leak out. ‘Such as?’ I dare Ben.
He puffs up his cheeks, wiggles his eyebrows, and smiles some kind of can’t you guess smile at me.
‘What?’ I huff, faking naiveté. ‘What do you mean?’
The corners of Runner’s mouth pull up a little. The sunset reflects in his black eyes. He doesn’t buy it; he knows me well enough.
Ben clears his throat. He’s about to say something, but I’m faster. ‘Okay, Ben. Give me another one of…whatever that stuff is.’
‘It’s a cocktail,’ Kat informs me coolly.
This woman is a machine. There’s not one smile inside her soul. She says weird things and the corners of her mouth don’t even twitch a fraction.
‘Doesn’t look like a cock’s tail at all. Looks like juice to me.’ And down goes the first half of the stuff. I feel much better already. I decide it’s time to flirt with Yi-Ting, but a hand sneaks into mine. It’s attached to Ben’s arm. He’s sitting next to me.
‘Um…Ben?’
‘Yes?’ he says and moves his chair closer. His arm is touching mine. I can feel the soft fuzz of blonde hair tickling my wrist.
‘I’m…’
‘Overwhelmed?’ he whispers into my ear. His breath runs down my neck when his lips touch my earlobe.
I burst out laughing. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. ‘Oh, oh…No, I’m…Shit, I can’t even remember the word for it. There’s a word for it, dammit. Gimme a second.’ And I’m still laughing and holding my stomach and I know it’s cruel, but how can he believe he’s overwhelming in any way?
I can’t remember the word that’s used for women like me, so I splutter, ‘Ben, I fuck girls.’ The hand disappears and a squeaky ‘Oh,’ comes out of his mouth.
‘Sorry, should have warned you earlier.’ I don’t dare look at Yi-Ting now that she knows I’m into girls. Would she feel repelled? Shocked? Or relieved? Enticed, even?
The word “overwhelmed” plays back in my head, over and over again.
‘So…girls, huh? Exclusively?’ That’s Ben. He’s pathologically over-convinced of himself and nothing really shocks him much.
‘Never thought about it,’ I say truthfully and without thinking. The only person I had sex with was Sandra, and it was lovely until she spilled her guts about Runner. ‘I could have sex with a lot of men and women as long as they don’t talk much.’
Did I just say this? I clap my hand to my mouth. I feel very sick all of a sudden. ‘I need to…’ I manage to stand and stumble to a nearby shrub. Ben’s cock’s tail or whatever it’s called is expelled from my stomach and hits the ground.
‘Get your ass into the comm tent.’
‘Morning, Kat,’ I grumble, pick up my breakfast, and follow her. Runner is already there, nursing a cup of tea, his straight black hair resting on broad shoulders. ‘How’s the head?’ he asks without taking his eyes off the screen.
‘Attached,’ I reply. And ringing, but he doesn’t need to know that. I settle in a chair and gingerly shovel rice and fruit into my mouth; I don’t want to upset my stomach any further.
Fog: The Climate Fiction Saga Page 2
