by E. J. Swift
‘What place?’
The handler doesn’t answer. This time, she gets up and puts her boot into the handler’s stomach. The woman folds over, groaning. It’s a miserable sight. Ramona reminds herself: this woman has her mother captive.
‘What place?’ she repeats.
‘How should I know? It’s in the middle of the fucking desert.’
‘The desert?’
‘Yes, the desert.’
‘In Alaska?’
The handler sneers.
‘If you’d ever been north you’d know the answer to that.’
‘I haven’t been north. You have. You’re going to tell me what’s there.’
‘I don’t know what’s fucking there. It’s the North American desert. It’s outside the border. There’s nothing there. Just sand.’
Ramona’s mind works quickly. The desert. Outside the border. This is something illegal. Something outside of Boreal jurisdiction.
‘You’re not going through all this trouble to dump a bunch of southerners in a different desert,’ she says slowly.
The handler licks her bloody teeth.
‘I need water.’
Ramona gives her a small sip. The handler spits blood.
‘More.’
‘Later. Tell me how the process works. Tell me exactly how it works and maybe I’ll let you live. Did you kidnap these people, in the highlands?’
‘No. That’s not my end. The batch is delivered to me at Panama. At the Exchange. And then I tell them the new quota, and they go back to where they get them from.’
‘The batch?’
Ramona is trembling. The handler’s eyes dart away, perhaps in self-preservation, alert to the emotions she is inducing.
‘That’s what they call it.’
‘And then?’
‘And then I bring them on board. It’s always the same ship. This ship. I guard them. I feed them and keep them alive through the journey. There’s a halfway house where the ship makes a stop and someone comes to pick us up. The crew are all paid off. They pretend they don’t see anything.’
‘Where’s the drop point? How far from here?’
‘I’m not telling you any more.’
‘If you don’t tell me what I want to hear, I’ll fucking kill you.’
The handler’s lip curls. ‘You’re no killer. I can always tell.’
‘Do you want to test that? Do you know who you’ve got in there? In your batch?’
The handler says nothing. Her tongue flicks out, seeking moisture, but finding none. Ramona leans closer and speaks softly.
‘My ma. That’s who you’ve got. My ma.’
She places the bottle of water on the floor in front of the handler, just out of reach. Then she places a second bottle next to it.
‘One of these is drinking water. The other is saltwater. Which of these I leave with you depends on your answers to the next question. I said I’d kill you. I didn’t say how. Now. How far is the drop point from here?’
The handler’s eyes dart from bottle to bottle. Ramona can see the conflict in her face. She moves the drinking water backwards.
‘Six days,’ says the handler quickly. ‘Maybe five, without storms. Depends on the weather, doesn’t it?’
‘How do you know you’ve arrived?’
‘A crew member comes for us.’
‘And what happens when they drop you off? You stay with these people?’
‘There’s an aeroplane, sea and land, it can land on both. It takes us inland. If there’s no sandstorms, that is. Sometimes we’re waiting for fucking days. It’s a joke.’
‘So you do go all the way. Where do they take them? Look at me. Look – at – me. Remember what I said to you. Where do they take them?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a compound. Some secret place, mostly underground. Camouflaged. I’ve never been inside. I only take them as far as the door. Maybe I get a meal and a shower. Then I go back to the halfway house with the plane, and when the ship comes back down the coast they pick me up.’
Ramona sits back on her heels. The handler dips her chin towards her shoulder, trying to wipe away the blood at her mouth. Ramona doesn’t help her.
‘This compound. What are they doing there? What do they need people for?’
‘Are you listening? How should I know?’
‘How long have you been running this rig?’
‘Couple of years.’
‘And in all that time, you’ve never wondered? Never asked? Never thought about where you’re taking these people?’
Just for a moment, she sees something close to fear creep into the handler’s expression. But it quickly returns to defiance.
‘They’re northerners, aren’t they? You think I want to know what the fuck they’re doing? Nazca keep us.’
Only now does the realization hit Ramona. A horrible, nauseating realization that trebles her rage.
‘You’re not even Boreal. You’re fucking Patagonian!’
The handler shrugs.
‘What the fuck do you care?’
‘You’re Patagonian and you’re trafficking these people.’ She squeezes the gun. ‘I should kill you right now.’
‘Everyone’s got to make a living.’ A gob of saliva and blood dribbles down the handler’s chin. ‘I know your type. Righteous. Deluded. The world’s full of fools like you. So judge all you like but you don’t know shit about me.’
Ramona gazes at her with cold anger.
‘No. But I can leave you here to rot.’
Taking her time, she deliberately pulls on the handler’s trousers, then takes up her knife. The handler watches her uneasily.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What do you care?’
Ramona takes a handful of her own hair and lifts the knife. Gently she saws back and forth until the hair comes away in her fingers.
‘Almost like yours. Don’t you think?’
She moves both of the bottles out of reach, and rises. The handler wriggles in her bonds.
‘Hey, you can’t leave me here. I’ve told you what you want. I’ve told you everything! What are you doing?’
Ramona stuffs the gag back into the handler’s mouth. She can see the woman’s lips working around the gag. You can’t leave me here!
‘Oh, I can leave you here,’ says Ramona. ‘Or, I can take your place. Don’t think I haven’t been watching you. You said it yourself – the crew pretend you’re not here. No one on this ship acknowledges you. They don’t look you in the face. I doubt a single one of them could describe you. So all I need to do is borrow your clothes and… when the time comes, you can take the place of one of your victims.’
She watches the handler’s eyes widen under the torchlight, a genuine fear now visible, a fear that in any other circumstances, Ramona would be compelled to try and eradicate. The look sickens her. Her own actions sicken her. She tells herself: this is necessary. Then she switches off the torch, plunging the handler into darkness, and walks away. She can hear the woman’s muffled voice, trying to shout or plead. She ignores it. This is necessary. Now’s the time to let her simmer. Let her think that all is lost. When the handler is nearing the level of despair of her prisoners, then, and only then, Ramona will introduce the next phase of her plan.
At the hatch she hesitates, then berates herself for her own fear. She wheels open the lock. It’s heavy, and takes some effort. She steps inside and pulls the door to, but wedges it ajar as a precaution.
The compartment is thick with the stench of human waste and sour sweat. There is a single, dim light set into the ceiling. The prisoners are sat around the room. Each is cuffed and they are roped together. Their faces are dirty and soporific and they barely react to Ramona’s entrance.
Ramona’s mother is sat to one side of the room.
Inés stares at her, eyelids blinking ever so slowly, perhaps trying to decide which cycle of her unconscious mind has just delivered up this vision.
‘Ramona?’
The uncertainty in her mother’s voice breaks Ramona.
‘Ma, it’s me. It’s really me.’
She stumbles forwards, sinking to her knees and pulling her mother into an embrace. She can feel the terrible thinness of Inés’s body under her clothes, how much weight she has lost, the ribs protruding like sticks against her own chest, the shoulder blades sharp beneath her hands. She sees the scalp through the thin grey hair, smells the pungent oils that have accumulated through lack of washing facilities but can’t quite eradicate the smell that is Inés and Inés alone, a smell that reminds her of stones on a terrace and clean pots and light streaming through the shutters of the shack. She clasps her mother to her as though if Ramona were to let go, even for a second, Inés might dissolve in her arms. Ramona can’t bear it.
‘It’s not really you,’ says her mother, a note of suspicion now creeping into her voice. ‘It can’t be. Not my girl, not here.’
‘Ma, it’s me. I promise you. I’m real. Hold on to me. Hold my hand. It’s me. I’m here. I’m going to get you out.’
She releases her embrace and takes her mother’s face in her hands. Inés gazes at her, still mistrustful.
‘Ramona?’
‘It’s me, Ma. I swear, you’re not dreaming.’
Tentatively, Inés raises her own hand, her fingers curling around Ramona’s.
‘A vision would say that. I should know.’
‘Ma—’
‘My lucky one.’ She says it with a kind of pride. Ramona can imagine the internal monologue running through her head, her mother struggling to reconcile her own eyesight. She must have dreamed of rescue, or that she was never on this ship, and is now unable to trust the reality before her, afraid she will wake, to find herself alone again, lost again.
‘I’m here. I’m here.’ She repeats it, over and over, gently squeezing the bony fingers. ‘I’m here. I’m real.’
Slowly, Ramona becomes aware of the others in the room, stirring from their stupor, watching her. Their faces frightened, uncertain. Hopeful. The sight of those faces is like a knife twisting in Ramona’s stomach. She came here for one purpose, but how can she leave these people behind?
When she speaks to her mother again she speaks to them as well.
‘I’m going to get you out. I promise.’
There are six in total. Three women, one man, a teenage girl and an adolescent boy. She recognizes two of the names. They were taken from the village raided in the highlands, where Ramona landed in the midst of the storm, when she first suspected something was wrong. She doesn’t tell them she was there. They crowd around her, offering their stories.
‘I was putting out the washing—’
‘I was going to visit my uncle in the next village—’
‘They came in the night, in the middle of a storm. They set our house on fire—’
‘They fired a dart into my belly.’ Inés’s voice, weak and tired. She begins to chuckle softly. ‘Didn’t know they’d picked themselves a dead one, did they?’
‘What are you going to do? How are we going to get out?’
‘I have a plan,’ says Ramona. It’s half true. She has half of a plan. But she can’t tell these people that. She has to give them some semblance of hope, however slim. However unlikely the outcome.
When she’s replenished the food and water, Ramona speaks to her mother aside.
‘Carla told me what happened. Her niece saw the kidnappers take you. And Carla told me about the jinn. Ma, I thought I’d be too late. I thought you’d be dead before I could find you.’
A flicker of amusement enters her mother’s face.
‘I might as well be dead, my lucky one.’
‘Oh shush, Ma. You’re alive. And I’m going to help you.’
‘Not for long. This jinn is a malevolent one. I can tell.’ Inés slaps the loose folds of her stomach. ‘It’s been squashed inside here wishing me ill for a very long time, yes, and now it’s got its wish. This jinn is happy, I can tell you. Happy and fat.’
‘Ma, you’re not listening. Listen to me. I’ve got medicine. It won’t be happy and fat for long. We’re going to get rid of it.’
Inés tuts impatiently.
‘I don’t want medicine. It’s northern anyway, don’t tell me it isn’t. Why would I put that poison inside me?’
‘Because it will save your life. Simple, isn’t it?’
‘How do you know it will save my life, eh?’
‘Because – I know.’ Her hesitation is only momentary, but it is long enough for Inés to pounce.
‘Ha! You don’t know at all. Someone told you a thing and you believed it. Let me guess, this medicine makes me worse before it makes me better.’
‘How do you know that—’
‘Because I’ve been in the world, Ramona. Maybe you forget this. You think of your ma all weak and frail, like a used-up yam you think of me. You forget where I’ve been. I’ve been to some places. I’ve been about. Did I tell you the story about the jaguar? I saw that cat with my own eyes, did I tell you this?’
It is the closest Inés has ever come to alluding to her fugue years, even if it is a barefaced lie. All those days lived far from home, disappeared for months at a time, a lost, wandering soul, her past a blank, no future except the day ahead, the road, her last remaining child forgotten. Or so Ramona imagines; only Inés can know the truth. It makes her at once terribly sad and terribly angry. Why does her mother have to leave everything to the last minute? Why now, when they have less time than they have ever had, and maybe no time at all?
‘You never told me where you went, Ma. How am I supposed to remember if I’ve never been told? I don’t know where you went or what you saw or what you were told or if you saw a jaguar or if you’re making up some story to pacify me now.’
‘Eh, don’t get cross on me. What’s the need to know everything? I went places. I saw people. These medicines, they’ve been around longer than you think. Rare, yes, very rare, but that doesn’t mean it’s a secret.’
Ramona sighs. ‘If you know they exist, then you know they could save your life. I went through a lot of trouble to get this. To find you. Félix as well. I’m indebted to him.’
‘Oh, that boy adores you. Always has. He’d do anything for you. Don’t you love him too?’
‘I’m not with him, am I? I’m here. Look. It’s a patch a day for thirty days. We’ll start today.’
Inés pats her hand.
‘Ramona look at me. No, look at me. I can’t take this medicine now. Not here, not on this ship. It will kill me. And why waste it if I die anyway? You tell me that, eh?’
Ramona looks at her mother and knows, inescapably, that she is right. If she takes it now, in this state, she won’t make it. Ramona puts her hands on her mother’s shoulders. She’s wearing an old blouse that might have been red once but now is a dirty faded pink. She’s had that blouse for thirty years. The sight of it here in this hellish place breaks Ramona’s heart. She squeezes Inés’s shoulders gently.
‘Ma, you have to promise me something. Promise me if I get you out of here, you get back home, you will take this. I’ll help you through the course. Me and Carla will, together. You can get better. You have to make this promise. You can tell me all the stories then, Ma. About the jaguar. All of that.’
Inés doesn’t say anything.
‘Ma!’
‘All right, all right. Won’t give me a moment’s peace, will she, even when I’m all but in the ground.’
‘I need to hear you say it.’
‘I promise.’
‘That’s something.’
‘But, Ramona. How are you going to get us out of here? Look at this place. So you get rid of that other one, that bitch. That is only one. You say you have a plan but I know you, my girl. You left your luck behind, didn’t you? There’s no luck in this place.’ Inés glances around the cabin, at the huddled bodies, the other prisoners pretending not to listen to their whispered conversation. ‘This is a place for the already de
ad. It’s a coffin, my girl. And I don’t want you in it.’
She leans close to Ramona and drops her voice.
‘You should go. Leave us. Get off. Where’s that flying machine of yours? Fly away while you still can.’
‘It crashed, Ma. You’re right. My luck did run out.’
Inés sighs.
‘It happens to us all.’
‘Doesn’t mean I’m giving up, though.’
‘Well, you always were a stubborn one. What was I to do with a one like that? Eh?’
‘Help me to figure this out.’
Inés looks at her shrewdly.
‘I thought you had a plan.’
‘I mean after – after we get off this damn ship.’
‘What are you plotting, Ramona? What are you trying to fix this time?’
‘Nothing. I’m just thinking out loud. Will you help me tidy up my hair?’
‘It’s a mess,’ says Inés critically. ‘What’s this great hole here? You lost a chunk.’
‘I don’t have scissors. You’ll have to use the knife. I need it short. Make me look like her.’
‘Yes, I see. All right.’
Inés’s fingers curl gently around the knife handle, then grip it tightly. She begins to shear the remaining sections of hair, tutting to herself. Such a shame, all this good hair, it won’t suit you so short, still it’s greasy as butter, maybe for the best after all. Shanks of hair fall to the floor around her. There’s something soothing in the muttered litany, the light but firm touch of her mother’s fingers against her scalp. If she closes her eyes she can almost imagine herself back in the shack above the sliding city, with the sun streaming through the shutters and the earthy scent of peas steaming in a pan.
‘There,’ says Inés, squinting. ‘The worst haircut I ever give you.’
She goes through the handler’s possessions. There is a Boreal rifle, and an untouched stash of paralysis darts with a dartgun. She counts them: twelve in total. She sets some of them aside to give to the prisoners. Then she finds the peculiar headset which was entertaining the handler on that first night. Boreal. She tosses it aside in disgust, then changes her mind. What if it’s important?
Cautiously, she pulls on the headset.
It’s like falling backwards into quicksand. The ship disappears and a three-dimensional world springs into life around her. She’s in a forest, but like no forest she’s ever seen – the trees sprout colossal black and purple leaves in the shape of tongues, leaves which are dripping with some thick, poisonous-looking unguent. She can hear the noise of animal life, unearthly screechings, terrifyingly close. There are figures spread out in a line to left and right. They are all masked and helmeted and armed to the teeth. One of them is carrying a mauled head – a human head – fingers interlaced in its hair. The figure closest to Ramona turns its head and looks straight at Ramona and through a slit in the mask says, ‘Are you ready, soldier?’
