by D. J. Molles
Virgil knelt down at Kuai’s side. He put the bottle to his lips and upended it again. “Drink.”
Kuai tried shaking his head again. Water dribbled down his cheeks.
Walt fidgeted, uncomfortably. The woman with the doe-eyes glanced up at him, a quick evaluation, as though curious why Walt would feel his bones getting itchy with the desire to not be in this room at this moment. Walt avoided her gaze. Watched Kuai’s face. That was his job, after all.
“I got a whole case of water,” Virgil said. “If we run out, we’ll just refill them and continue. Just drink the water. That’s all I want right now.”
Kuai was trying to resist, but he was running out of air.
He had to open his mouth eventually.
And he did. The water went in.
Kuai coughed.
Rat-face released his grip on the nose.
Kuai sucked a breath in through his nostrils and it sounded wet and ragged.
Rat-face let him get about half of a lung-full, and then clamped the nose again.
Kuai growled, but started drinking.
The water bottle in Virgil’s hand crackled and collapsed in on itself. “Good,” he said. “Very good.” He held out a hand. The woman quickly grabbed another bottle of water and put it in Virgil’s hand. “One more, okay? One more, and then you can be done.”
Kaui stared at the bottle, almost afraid of it.
Virgil took the empty bottle from his lips.
“Stop!” Kuai demanded.
“Ssh.” Virgil frowned at him. Uncapped the bottle. Pressed it to Kuai’s lips. “Drink.”
Same process. Kuai holding out. Needing air. Opening the mouth. Water goes in, Rat-face released the nose, a bit of a breath, then clamping down again, and Kuai drank. He drank the bottle empty. Coughed halfway through, stifled it, and kept drinking, and when it was empty, Virgil pulled the bottle away and Kuai gasped for breath. A mist of water and spit erupted from his mouth.
Virgil stood. Pitched the crumpled bottle into the pile with the others. “Good job.”
Then he knelt and helped Rat-face haul the chair upright again.
Walt thought he could actually hear the sloshing of water in Captain Kuai Luo’s stomach. He looked off to the pile and counted them again. Six bottles now. And he knew what Virgil was doing.
He’d seen it before. It wouldn’t work on a Russian, and in Walter’s Western-thinking mind, it seemed a bit absurd. But on a Chicom who came from a deeply-entrenched shame-honor culture, it had proven to be effective more than once.
Virgil walked around and stood in front of the captain, looking down at him again.
Captain Luo’s dark eyes remained heavy-lidded, almost drowsy. Calm, one might think. A pretty good veneer. But like any veneer, if you looked close enough…
Virgil backhanded him across the face. It was an almost casual motion.
Walt stifled his urge to wince. He focused on the man’s face.
Captain Luo’s skin reddened, but not just where he’d been slapped. He blushed across his entire face. His jaw muscles bunched rapidly. For the briefest of moments, his eyes shot open wider and looked up murderously at Virgil, and then they were calm and half-lidded again.
Virgil smirked. He put his hands on his hips. Nonchalantly pressing his crotch forward. Then he relaxed and leaned over the man in the chair. “Should I be recording this?”
The man didn’t meet Virgil’s gaze.
A tiny tremor across the right side of his mouth.
“Maybe we record it,” Virgil said. Lazily. “Beam that shit back to China. Let your family watch me whip out my cock and piss on you. Be the talk of the town. You’d be a goddamn celebrity.”
A few blinks. Stillness.
“Isn’t that how it works?” Virgil asked. “You get body-modded into a super-hero for the People’s Republic, they throw you a ticker-tape parade, and you get shipped out here to earn glory for China and your family?” Virgil shook his head. “Mm-mm-mm. What if they could see their glory boy now? All those other generations of soldiers in your family would be disgusted.”
Still no response from Captain Luo, but Walter wasn’t buying that.
His gut was telling him, no matter the stillness in the other man’s face—and perhaps because of it—that the picture Virgil was painting was now lodged firmly in Kuai Luo’s brain.
Virgil bent down a little further, trying to force his face into the path of Captain Luo’s gaze. But the captain just moved his eyes away again. Virgil snapped his finger. “Hey. Hey. Look at me.”
The man did not want to look at him. He stared off to the side now, at some point that was not in this room. Maybe trying to think of something else. Trying to imagine another place.
Virgil slapped him again. Not hard. An upwards slap across his face, like a harried mother might do to the back of her disobedient son’s head. Just an insult. Nothing more. The subtle message was that Captain Kuai Luo didn’t warrant much harsher abuse than that. He was little more than a child.
“Look at me.”
Captain Luo wouldn’t.
Two quick slaps. Back and forth.
The captain’s nostrils flared. His breathing quickened. Lips tightened.
“Look at me, or I turn on the cameras.”
A small request. Such a simple thing. Just to make eye-contact. Why would you make that your stance? Why would you draw the line there?
Captain Luo looked at him.
Looked away.
Then back. Held the gaze.
Virgil smiled without humor. “Good boy. What’s your name?”
The man in the chair swallowed. Chewed on that for a moment. Then said his name: “Captain Kuai Luo.”
“Kywo?” Virgil squinted and sneered, like the name sounded gross to him.
“Kuai…Luo.”
“Okay. Kuai, then,” Virgil waved it off. There was no way in hell he was going to call the man by his rank. Walt already knew that. He’d seen enough of these to know how the game was played. “Kuai. What happened?”
Kuai’s eyes stayed fixed on Virgil’s. Now it was a challenge not to look away. Virgil held the gaze unflinchingly. If he had any fear about the tiger-in-the-cage, he didn’t show it. Not to an average person, anyways. But even while Walter was not paying attention to him, he could tell that Virgil was nervous.
Virgil waved a finger in the air, conjuring clarity to his question. “The thing? The big thing that nobody is talking about?”
Kuai remained still. Quiet. Like a statue. Walt thought maybe he was holding his breath.
“DTI break,” Virgil said, matter of factly. “Yeah, we know. It’s fine. I want you to tell me about it.”
“I don’t know about that,” Kuai said without much inflection.
“Sure you do,” Virgil replied. “Rumors spread around. There’s been talk. You’ve heard something about it. That’s all I’m asking for. Just what you’ve heard. The word on the street, as we say.”
Kuai swallowed. His lips drew tighter. “You think they tell us everything they know?”
“What have you heard?” Virgil repeated, his voice less conversational now.
“I haven’t heard anything.”
Virgil grunted, then walked around the back of the bound man, so he stood out of view. Without Virgil there to resist, Kuai slumped slightly. But then he tensed, knowing the man was behind him.
Virgil looked at Walt.
Walt swallowed hard, felt his gummy wad of spit barely making it down his throat. His hands were in his lap, clutched together, fingers cold, the lightest little shake in them that he was trying to hide.
Walt looked at Virgil, just a quick glance, subtle, so as to not draw Kuai’s attention. Walt gave him a slight shake of the head.
Kuai was being deceptive.
That was all you could really say.
You could never say that someone was lying for sure. All you could do was observe their behaviors. You accumulated the behaviors in your mind, and you began to see c
lusters of oddities around certain topics. And the topic of the alleged DTI break was throwing up some red flags for Captain Kuai Luo.
Maybe he didn’t know everything, but he knew more than he was telling them.
Virgil continued on, all the way around, circling Kuai, and then back to standing in front of him. He looked down. “Who’s taking you guys?”
Kuai looked briefly confused.
The expression was a sham.
“Someone has been kidnapping New Breed soldiers,” Virgil stated.
Kuai’s head faced the wall, but his eyes were off to the side, watching Virgil. He knew a thing or two about this topic. He was a well-informed captain.
“Who is it?” Virgil asked.
“Not you?” Kuai asked, but the tone said he already knew it wasn’t them.
Walt kept quiet, but his head swam violently with these things. These new revelations. God, but Virgil kept him in the dark. He felt like a voyeur, like he wasn’t supposed to be seeing or hearing all of this.
A break out of DTI? That was unheard of.
And New Breed soldiers being kidnapped?
What was going on out there?
What the hell was happening in the resistance that was causing all these fault lines to suddenly appear? What had been going on under Walt’s nose while he minded his own damn business and got busy planting the spring crop? What forces were maneuvering just out of sight, in the shadows?
“The kidnappings of your New Breed soldiers and the DTI break. Are they related?”
Kuai clenched his jaw. Looked away again. “I don’t know.”
“Hm.” Virgil walked around to the back of Kuai again.
He looked to Walt.
Walt shook his head again.
Virgil pointed to the woman. “Get the camera.”
Walt watched Kuai’s face. A few rapid pulsations of his jaw. His head rocking back a bit, then forward, almost sternly. The summoning of will-power.
Where was all that water sitting in his guts, now? Those last two bottles were probably mostly still in his stomach. But the other four? They were probably further along now.
The woman produced a small, handheld recorder. She stepped in front of Kuai, where Virgil had been standing, and held the recorder up. She tapped the side of it with her other hand and a projection monitor sprang into the air. She reversed the image so Kuai could see it.
Virgil was standing over Kuai. “There. Now you can see what everybody back home will see.” He nodded to the woman holding the recorder. “Start recording.”
Virgil knelt down behind Kuai.
On the monitor, you couldn’t see Virgil behind Kuai’s bulk.
Walt could, though. He could see Virgil pull out a staple in every line-knocker’s toolbox: a set of pipe-cutters. He opened them, the cold steel blade moving aside, and then he grabbed hold of Kuai’s hand and slid his index finger into the little space where a hydroponics line would usually go.
Walt’s mouth was dry. He tried to work some spit up. Forced his eyes to Kuai, who was still staring at himself in the monitor, trying to look brave for the folks back home. Trying to save face.
“Kuai,” Virgil called. “Who was broken out of DTI?”
Kuai stared straight ahead. Surely he felt the metal on his fingers. Surely he knew what was about to happen. Did he think they were bluffing?
In the privacy of his own mind, Walt was urging the man, Just tell them!
A moment of silence passed.
Snip.
Chapter 5
Walt stood on the far side of the living room, fists clenched, guts knotted.
There had to be a better way to earn cash.
He closed his eyes.
He breathed out slowly.
His back was to the kitchen, to the hallway, to the master bedroom door that lay in the darkness. And the quick-moving, nauseating sounds of plastic bagging, like a man was so much trash to be thrown away.
“Hey.”
Walt opened his eyes. He glanced to his left, where the snatcher in the deputy’s uniform stood. He didn’t look much like a cop. He had wild, unsteady eyes. Or maybe Walt just knew he wasn’t a cop and so the uniform hung on him like a cheap costume-store fake.
The man was holding out a pack of cigarettes. He already had one in his lips.
Walt stared at the cigarettes for a moment. Then shrugged and took one.
“You know,” the guy said, mumbling slightly around his cigarette as he sparked a lighter and lit it. “How many times you done this for us?” He passed the lighter to Walt.
Walt took it and lit his own. The smoke was nice. Acrid at first. But then…mellow. It burned in his throat and lungs, just slightly. It’d been a while since he’d had one. He looked at the cherry which glowed brightly in the dim interior of the trailer. “Seven times.”
“Shit.” The man smiled. “Seven times. You got a helluva conscience if this still bothers you so much.” He dragged. Blew out. Still looking at Walt. “Good for you, man.”
Walt flicked ash. Didn’t quite know how to respond to that.
In the back bedroom, the sound of quiet voices now. The thump of a limb.
“My brother,” the man said, conversationally. “He’s a loyalist. You know…doesn’t know what I do. But knows my opinion. Gadamighty, but we argued about that shit for a long time. Now it’s just a given. Doesn’t bother me. I do what I do. He does what he does.”
What are you even talking about?
Walt drew smoke. Felt a little lightheaded. But it was nice.
“You mind me askin’ you why it bothers you so much?” The man looked genuinely curious. Shifted positions, pointed his cigarette at Walt. “And why, if it does bother you, do you keep doing it?”
Walt cleared his throat. Glanced in the direction of the bedroom door. “I got no love for the CoAx,” he said, slowly. It wasn’t an answer. It was the beginning of a list of facts. That moment that you don’t know the answer, so you start saying the things you do know, and hope an answer somehow germinates from that. “I don’t want them here. I’ve had members of my family disappeared. My brother. My grandpa. My Pops is dying of cancer from the chemicals in the lines. That’s how my Mom died. How most of the people I know died that didn’t die of violence during the war. Probably how I’ll die.” Walt sucked on his cigarette and thought, well, this is funny, huh? “I’ve got no reason to pity that man. No reason to want him to live.”
The man in the deputy’s uniform nodded along, familiar with the story.
He waited for Walt to continue.
Walt wasn’t sure he had anything else to say.
So he just shrugged.
The man smiled again. Shrugged himself. “Well. Maybe you don’t really mind it that much,” he said. “Maybe you just think you should mind it, and you don’t, and maybe that’s really what scares you. Huh?”
Walt looked at him sharply. Irritated. He threw his cigarette onto the floor of the trailer. Squished it with the toe of his boot. “It’s not a scared thing.”
The man gave one, slow, exaggerated nod, as if to say, Sure, buddy. Whatever you say. “Good for you again,” he said, amused. “Rock solid conscience and fearlessness. That must be awesome.”
Walt turned away from the man. Faced the bedroom door, as if to prove to himself that he wasn’t scared, he didn’t need to hide from the truth. It was what it was. And had any other time been different?
Well. Maybe a little.
This time had been…extreme.
The first finger had been a surprise to Captain Kuai Luo. Maybe it took a moment for the pain to hit him, or maybe he just couldn’t believe it. But he didn’t seem to understand what had happened until Virgil tossed the man’s index finger on the floor.
Then there was a lot of heavy breathing and some low sounds in the back of his throat—screams that were trying to get out, but the Chicom captain wouldn’t let them. He just kept looking up at the camera. And Walter knew that he wasn’t seeing a camera, but his family.
The people he knew. All of them watching him, judging him, judging his worth.
He lasted through another two fingers before breaking.
Though it wasn’t the fingers that broke him.
It was when he peed on himself. It was when the urine started to dribble onto the floor, slow at first, and then steadily, as his bladder released. And who could really blame him? Force-fed six bottles of water and having your fingers snipped off…the body had certain reactions to things that you just couldn’t overcome.
And it was when the doe-eyed woman with the camera started to point and jeer at him, that he broke, and Walt watched it with a sort of lurid fascination, the way you first felt when you saw something die, maybe an animal squirming in the road after catching a bumper.
The woman’s sing-song, schoolyard voice: He pissed his pants! Look at this pants-pisser! How’d you even make it past selection, pants pisser? You see how much he’s pissing? Jesus, stop pissing! You can’t stop! He can’t stop pissing! He’s so scared!
After that Captain Kuai Luo answered the questions. Some of them he didn’t know the answers to, but he told the truth the entire time, and Walter never had to shake his head at Virgil to tell him that the captain was lying again.
After that, it was cleanup.
Virgil made it clear that Walt should excuse himself.
The last thing Walter saw and heard before closing the bedroom door behind him was Virgil standing over the weeping giant with his hand on the man’s shoulder, speaking softly to him and saying, “We’ll delete those files. Your family will never see them. They will believe you died with honor.”
And now Walt stood in the dim living room with a man he didn’t know, who apparently, despite not knowing each other, wished to have some sort of heart-to-heart, and he stared at the door to that master bedroom, and he listened to the sounds of a man’s body being wrapped in plastic for disposal.
The door opened, and Virgil stepped out. He didn’t make an effort to close the door. Didn’t make an effort to hide what was beyond it, but still, in the dimness, Walt could only just see some pale plastic sheeting in a roll, and a pair of boots sticking out of it.
Virgil walked briskly down the hallway to Walt. He had a cloudy look on his face. It had settled over him the second that Kuai had started talking. He’d been asking the questions, and Walt had been assuring him the answers were legitimate, but he hadn’t liked anything he’d heard.
