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by Cawdron, Peter

  Jason laughed.

  Chapter 05: Sunny

  Night had fallen in North Korea.

  Lee staggered in the rain.

  Blisters had formed on the sides of his feet where his boots had rubbed the skin raw. The pain caused him to hobble, but he had to push on.

  Rocks and pebbles crunched under his stiff rubber soles.

  Torrential rain blurred his vision, running down over his forehead, across his eyes and down his cheeks. Blinking and squinting, he raised his hand to shelter his eyes from the rain. The rain sounded like a jet engine warming up, thrashing the leaves, splashing in puddles, and slapping at his shoulders.

  The young North Korean woman slipped on the muddy track so Lee braced her against himself, catching her before she fell. Although her arm was draped over his shoulder, her body felt limp.

  “I can’t do this,” Sun-Hee said as Lee struggled to keep her from slipping to her knees. “I can’t go on.”

  She was shivering. Her clothes were soaked. Rain ran down her face like tears. Her straggly black hair was as wild as the darkened tangle of trees and vines around them.

  A stream ran down one side of the track, cutting its way into the trail, curling around rocks and over boulders, washing away sections of the track. The rain pounded the leaves of the trees hanging over the path.

  In the darkness, Lee couldn't see more than a couple of meters. The trail seemed as though it would never end.

  “Please,” she whimpered. “It is too much. I must rest. Let me rest.”

  If they stopped, she would die from hypothermia, Lee was sure of it. He had to get her to the village, but the look in her eyes pleaded for mercy.

  A thicket of bushes provided some relief from the rain.

  Lee helped Sun-Hee sit on a gnarled root beneath an old tree holding the embankment together. He tried to get her out of the worst of the weather, but the rain dripped relentlessly upon them, washing over his eyes and cheeks, running down his neck.

  He stepped back, arching his head toward the sky and allowing the rain to wash over his closed eyes and fall into his mouth. After a few seconds, he cupped his hands, catching what rain he could and drinking, trying to quench his thirst.

  “You should leave me,” she said.

  Lee put his hands gently on either side of her head as he crouched before her, looking deep with her dark eyes as he spoke.

  “Hey, it’s going to be OK. You’ll get through this. In the weeks and months ahead, all this will seem like a bad dream. A year from now, you’ll laugh as you tell this story to your friends and family, relaxing around the warmth of a fire.”

  Sun-Hee smiled, but her smile was forced. Lee couldn’t be sure, but he thought she was crying. Her tears mingled with the rain. Her blank stare told him she had given up. She couldn't go on.

  It wasn’t until he pulled his hands away from the side of her hair that he realized she was bleeding from a head wound. She must have taken a knock to the back of the head when she’d fallen from the track. In the darkness, he hadn’t noticed before now. Gently, Lee reached around, his fingers touching gingerly at her matted hair. Sun-Hee winced in pain.

  “I feel ... I feel sick.”

  The muscles in her neck felt weak. Her shoulders sagged.

  “Hey,” Lee said. “Stay with me. Think of your grandfather. Think about seeing him again. Think about the sunshine. Think about a warm summer’s day. We’re going to make it.”

  Lee pulled her to her feet, determined to continue on, but it was as though he was dragging a sack of coal. She had no strength with which to stand. Even with a broken leg, she seemed barely aware of the world around her.

  Sun-Hee collapsed in his arms, her legs dragging on the ground behind her.

  Lee crouched, placing both arms under her frail body. He lifted her up, holding her in a cradle before him.

  “This night will end,” he said softly. “There is always a dawn. There is always a new day ahead.”

  Somehow, their fates seemed entwined, and he felt as though he were destined to save her. Lee had never been fatalistic, had never been into horoscopes or fortune tellers, and would have ordinarily dismissed such a notion as bogus, but on that dark, cold night he felt vulnerable. Perhaps it was his own impending demise he felt so acutely. Having watched one of the SEALs being murdered on the beach, he knew his own prospects of survival were next to nil.

  Lee had been through evade and escape scenarios and one thing they made very clear was that the chances of escape were like winning the lottery. In the exercises, everyone got caught. It didn't matter how fit you were, how smart you thought you were or how cunning you could be, nobody escaped.

  Perhaps saving Sun-Hee would make up for his loss. Perhaps that's why he felt so drawn to help her. If he couldn't survive, maybe she could and in that he'd find some hollow victory.

  “My grandfather,” she mumbled. “Not my brother ... Don’t let my brother see you.”

  She was deteriorating quickly, becoming delirious. Lee had seen this before on too many occasions, the cumulative effect of shock and the onset of hypothermia. The solution was always the same: get the patient warm and dry. He had to get her to that village.

  Her head rolled to one side as he staggered back onto the track and continued down the hill, focusing on one step at a time. His ankles felt as though they had lead weights strapped around them. His boots scuffed at the loose stones as he stumbled along.

  “Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me, how I will know your grandfather? Where does he live in the village?”

  It didn't really matter, and he knew that. He could leave her with any of the villagers and they'd care for her and find the old man, but he wanted to keep her talking, to keep her conscious.

  Sun-Hee rested one hand at the nape of his neck, touching him gently. Her fingers were cold, but that she could touch him filled him with hope. Such tenderness was overwhelming to a man on the run, fighting for his life. With all he’d gone through, surviving both the crash and the raging sea, seeing his fellow man brutally murdered, running for his life and the physical exhaustion of a forced march over the best part of thirty kilometers, enduring the cold and wet, after all this, her touch was incongruous, disarming. Feeling her soft touch spoke to him of compassion, a reminder that beyond the calloused enmity of two nations on the verge of war, humanity was only ever one isolated soul reaching out to another.

  “Look for the diesel tank ... He lives by the tank.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “And you, tell me about yourself.”

  “I ...” But that was all she could manage.

  Lee had to keep talking. Already, the muscles in his arms were burning under her weight. It wasn’t that she was overly heavy, but that he had her in front of him, forcing him to lean backwards slightly to distribute the weight and maintain his center of gravity. If he favored one side and then another, he found he could alternate the stress on his arms, giving them a brief sense of relief.

  Talking helped Lee to shuffle on down the mountain, pushing through his own exhaustion.

  “What do you do in the hinterland? Do you trade seafood with the farmers?”

  Sun-Hee didn’t reply. Her head lolled to one side, falling limp. The rain eased, softly tapping at her bare neck, running beneath her wet clothes.

  “Oh, stay with me,” he said, tears running down his cheeks. Normally, Lee kept himself distant from any emotional attachments with strangers in distress. His ingrained professionalism allowed him to be detached, almost as though he were interacting with a video game rather than a real person in real life. Yet when it came to Sun-Hee, he couldn’t help but feel as though their fates were somehow intertwined, as though it was his life hanging in the balance, not hers.

  Pebbles crunched beneath his boots. The sound of the rain faded, signaling that the heart of the storm had passed.

  “I was raised in the city,” he said, knowing she couldn’t hear him, but needing to talk. “We rarely ever went into the country
side. Why would we? We had everything we needed. Malls, movies, nightclubs. And the food, oh, you’d love the food: cold soup noodles and kim bap, almost like sushi, spicy rice cakes, oxtail soup and pig's feet, oh, but it's the deep fried chicken that is the best.”

  Those words and the memories they brought carried him to another place, another time. Physically, he was exhausted, trudging through the mud, dragging one foot after the other. Mentally, Lee was at home in Seoul, going out for a bite to eat with friends. He could picture the bench in the kitchen beside the back door of his apartment.

  In his thoughts, Lee grabbed his wallet and keys, slipping them into his jacket as he opened the door, making sure he thumbed the lock as he stepped through the doorway, listening as the lock clicked in place behind him. Garbage bags lined the alleyway, but neither the sight nor the smell bothered him. His eyes saw beyond the shadows, seeing the flickering neon lights in the distance. A truck roared past the end of the alley. There was the sound of a siren in the distance. A woman’s voice laughed from somewhere upstairs, while a feral cat skittered away as his shoes splashed in a puddle.

  Lee’s boot caught on a loose rock, causing him to stumble and twist his ankle. He avoided a sprain, but the stabbing pain dragged him back to the present. His legs faltered. With each step, he fought not to slip and fall.

  Slowly, the ground leveled out. The trail no longer wound back and forth, opening out onto a crooked path. Mud gave way to coarse gravel. The forest surrendered to freshly plowed fields surrounding the village. In the darkness, they looked lifeless and inhospitable, as though they were a source of death rather than life.

  Lee felt his thighs cramping, but he pushed on. He desperately wanted to be back in Seoul. In a strange way, the darkened village represented those glittering lights in his mind. He wondered if he’d ever see those bright lights again.

  “I’ll take you to Seoul one day and show you where I was raised. The air is not as crisp. The city is dirty, and the noise can be overwhelming, but for me, it’s home.

  “Oh, the lights. You’ll love the lights. Everyone does, the first time they see them. Sure, you’ve got the beauty of the stars out here in the country, but our neon constellations are a sight to behold; a galaxy of man-made stars. They’re like rainbows, dazzling the eye.”

  In his delirious state, he imagined a conversation with her. He felt as though he were replying to her as she questioned if anything could be as beautiful as the North Korean sky on a clear night or a field of wildflowers in the spring.

  “Flowers?” he mumbled. “Flowers may look pretty for a day, but their beauty fades. City lights have no season. And the surge of the people. Ha, you’ll probably find it all a bit too much at first, but I love the bustle, I love the noise, the sense of purpose everyone has, whether they’re going to or from work, heading out to the mall or off to the theatre. There’s a symphony of humanity. Seoul never sleeps.”

  Thin strands of light broke through from the shutters of the huts in the village.

  A dog barked, but no one seemed to care.

  Oxen stood in the fields, silently enduring the drizzling rain.

  Lee fought to change his hold on Sun-Hee, wanting to give his arms some relief. She was completely limp. Her arm swung down as he shifted his hands and he almost dropped her as her weight shifted. Clutching at her frail body, he pushed on.

  The diesel tank was easy to spot as it was mounted on a raised platform visible above the rooftops. The village must have used gravity feed instead of a pump when refueling tractors and fishing boats. The tank was next to the pier and he saw that boats could be refueled with ease. Yet the fishing boats at rest by the dock all had masts with wrapped sails tightly bound against the storm. Lee wondered if the tank had held any diesel in years.

  Flecks of paint peeled off the aging tank. Spots of rust marred its legs. Steel rungs ran up one of the legs to a hatch on top. A wooden hut sagged beside the tank, its roof bowed with age. Smoke rose from the chimney. Light glinted out around the cabin's window shutters.

  Stumbling, Lee stepped up onto the porch of the hut. The wind blew the rain into his back. There was no handle on the door, no lock, just a rough wooden bolt set into the vertical wooden planks. Lifting the bolt and shifting it to one side would be easy. From there, the wind would probably blow the door open, but then reality struck him.

  Up until this point, no one knew he was this far north. All the searches he’d seen by North Korean troops had been to the south. He was about to expose himself to the villagers, and that thought struck him like a bolt of lightning, sobering him.

  This was one of the amateur mistakes they talked about in his evade and escape training: never trust the locals, their loyalty will always be with the defenders. He was risking detection by walking through the village, as any boot prints not washed away by the rain would reveal the presence of a stranger.

  He should leave her.

  Perhaps, he thought, he could lie her on the porch, knock on the door and run. No, just put her down and run. He needed to get out of the village before being spotted. Someone would find her in the morning. Would she last till morning?

  Lee wondered what the grandfather would do. Would he betray him to the authorities? Perhaps he would help him? It was wishful thinking, but Lee wasn't thinking straight. He was tired, hungry. Would the old man turn a blind eye? Lee needed food. He needed shelter. He needed to rest. Stealing a boat sounded like a good idea until he was down beside the dock, looking at the fishing boats with their rigging and their old-fashioned sails. Could he sail single-handed? What if they removed the rudder or locked the wheel at the helm overnight? Lee felt his mind struggling with the unknowns. What had seemed like a clear idea on the ridge, now felt like a disaster.

  Standing there, he couldn't think clearly. He was bitterly cold. His body ached. He could smell the distinct aroma of a stew wafting through the air. Temptation was the enemy.

  There were voices inside the hut. Compassion must prevail, he thought. He’d saved Sun-Hee's life. That had to count.

  Lee fumbled with the wooden bolt, reaching blindly for it as he held Sun-Hee in his arms.

  The door swung open and he was met with a rush of warm air. The dim glow of a fire flickered within the cabin. Lee staggered in, unsure what to say. An old man sat at one end of a rough hewn wooden table next to a young man facing the door. A gas lantern rested on the table, casting long shadows around the hut. A series of bunks had been built onto one wall, maximizing the space in the one room hut. Ragged curtains hung to one side, sectioning off part of the cabin.

  At first, Lee didn’t realize that the young man sitting next to Sun-Hee’s grandfather was dressed in a uniform, but his eyes picked out the old bolt action rifle leaning against the wall by the rear door, barely a couple of feet from the soldier.

  Silence descended on the hut.

  The drab olive green lapels, red shoulder boards made from coarse wool, and polished brass buttons looked out of place inside the rundown cottage.

  Lee froze.

  He locked eyes with the young soldier, not sure what would happen next. He stood there with Sun-Hee in his arms. Water dripped onto the floor. The old man pushed away from the table and the legs of his chair scraped on the rough wooden floor.

  “Sunny,” the aging man said softly, using a term of endearment for his granddaughter, or perhaps it was that Lee mistook his accent and this was how he pronounced Sun-Hee.

  The grandfather hobbled to the door, his frame bent from arthritis. Although he was balding, with thin wisps of grey hair clinging to the side of his head, his eyebrows were dark and bushy. The leathery skin on his arms and hands looked cracked and worn. He reached out for Sun-Hee, saying, “My poor Sunny. What happened to you?”

  Lee stepped forward, turning toward the bunks. He tried to crouch, but fell awkwardly to one knee as he placed her on the lumpy cotton mattress. There were no sheets, no pillows. The mattress stank of piss and sweat, but it was dry. Sun-Hee moaned. As gently
as he could, Lee pulled his arms away, laying her on her side so her broken leg lay on top of her good leg. His crude splint had held, but the swelling and bruising on her lower leg looked severe.

  Her eyes flickered.

  The old man rested his hand gently on her forehead.

  “Oh, my dear Sunny.”

  Lee held onto the side of the bunk as he got to his shaky feet. Spasms rippled through his lower back muscles, causing him to grimace.

  The soldier hadn’t moved. He had to be the brother. Lee could see the young man’s hands trembling but he kept them in sight on the table. There must have been some significance in keeping his hands in sight, Lee considered, as it seemed to take all his will power to maintain that posture. Lee didn’t understand why. Perhaps the soldier had a sidearm and would have grabbed it given the chance. Perhaps all he had was a knife and he mistook the flare gun strapped to Lee's thigh as a pistol and didn't want to force a mismatched confrontation.

  The young man clenched his fists. His lips quivered as though he wanted to say something but was holding himself back to keep from saying the wrong thing.

  Lee tried to understand how this looked from the perspective of a young North Korean soldier hellbent on destroying the southern devils. He had to know Lee meant Sun-Hee no harm, but his mind must have been running through a myriad of possibilities as to how she had been injured and whether Lee was involved.

  Lee had to say something, to explain what had happened.

  “The wagon fell into a gully and her leg was broken. I found her like that.”

  The old man lifted the lantern from the table, and the shadows seemed to come alive. He ignored the soldier sitting there and brought the lantern over to get a better look at Sun-Hee’s leg. She was mumbling something, but Lee couldn’t make out the words.

  “I,” Lee continued, stuttering. “I had to help.”

  The young soldier turned his head slowly to one side, eyeing the rifle out of the corner of his eye. Lee wondered who would get there first. The soldier was closer, but Lee could have got to him before he brought the weapon to bear.