Dark Sky Falling

by Richard Ryker

“He’s sending her to Dagestan tomorrow.”

  “Dagestan? For what?”

  He paused and his face filled with anxiety. “I don’t know…”

  “Anwar, this is Kamila you are talking to. Remember when we used to climb the cliffs together? When you used to hold my hand? You are as afraid of my father now as you were then.” She pulled him closer again and he smelled nice and surprisingly, clean; was that a hint of cologne he was wearing? She imagined a life with him, a life that might have been had she given in to his pursuit.

  Anwar, unlike her boyfriend back in America, would have married her. Protected her.

  The sharp tone he used when he spoke quickly dried up the tears forming in her eyes. “For good reason,” he said. “Besides, you only held my hand once—when you wanted me to lie to your father for you.”

  “It was more than once,” she replied, not really remembering if it was true or not.

  “No, Kamila, because I remember every hour and every moment we spent together. I remember day after day of listening to you talk, going along with your schemes. Being jealous when you talked to other boys, and believing you when you said you would save yourself for me—”

  “I had no choice what I saved…just, forget it.” Who was he that she would explain any of that to him? He was one boy out of many that she had liked for a short time. He was the most shy, and therefore the easiest to impress, and to manipulate. She ran her hand across his cheek. His beard was full now and he looked like the rest of the rebels that lived in the Chechen mountains. He reached out and pulled her toward him, kissing her with vigor that both terrified and aroused her at once.

  Anwar wasn’t so innocent as she remembered.

  He pulled back with such force that she had to balance herself. “I’m not that easy to control anymore,” he said, then gripped Kamila’s forearm and pulled her toward his truck. “Ok,” she said, tucking her onyx necklace into her shirt. Whatever he was planning on…take her, kill her…it didn’t matter. When the time came she would decide what would happen, and she wasn’t leaving until he told her all about her father’s plans for Alyssa.

  He drove away from the village and took her to a small patch of grass in an opening in the forest, the same place she had teased him so many years earlier. Kamila let him do what he wanted, only giving enough resistance to let him think he was making her pay, to make him feel he owed her something. Kamila knew he would feel remorseful when he was done, because he was that type of boy. She probably knew him better than he knew himself.

  He was rough with her from the start and all the way through. He finished and she could see shame take the place of the rage he had wasted on her. He told her everything he knew, answered every question, the whole time without looking at her. By the time they left, Kamila knew all of her father’s plans for Alyssa.

  When they returned to the market, she felt sorry for him, so she kissed him, as if to say what you did wasn’t that bad, and I would have given it to you willingly. She returned to the jeep and he entered the market. Kamila watched him go in, and once he was out of view, she exited the jeep and went over to his truck. She felt under the seats, then behind, where she found a pistol. In the glove compartment, a handful of bullets. She left the glove compartment open, a reminder to Anwar that she, Kamila, no matter what he thought about his new, more aggressive self, was still in control.

  More important, she had a gun and, thanks to Anwar’s willingness to talk, a plan for how to get Alyssa back.

  Chapter 46

  Marcus awoke to the sound of creaking floorboards. Footsteps, then silence. He listened for voices. Either they were whispering or not talking at all. The wood above them bent again under the weight of whoever was in the living room above them. A ruffling sound. They were moving the carpet back.

  Two quick knocks on the cellar door sent Stormy upright.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  Marcus swallowed hard against his thumping chest.

  Something else entered his consciousness. The faint smell of bread and…stew?

  Arslan’s voice called through the door in the ceiling. “Come, it is safe now.”

  Marcus unlatched the door. It swung open and they were gazing up at the doctor’s smiling face.

  It was evening, and the living room was lit with a single oil lamp. They followed Arlsan into the kitchen where there were two plates of food. As they ate the stew and flatbread the doctor explained what had occurred while they slept. The Russians had come, and had caused trouble. But he had got rid of them at last.

  When they finished eating, the doctor invited them into the living room where there was a fire in the hearth. He retrieved three glasses from the kitchen and a bottle of wine.

  Arslan placed two pills on the table. “You may take two of these. For your leg.”

  Marcus hesitated. Their plan was to leave at sunrise, one way or another. Marcus needed to be alert and focused when dealing with Kamila and her father, not under the influence of pain meds, or whatever it was Arslan was offering him.

  Marcus slid the pills closer. “Will they make me tired?”

  “No, nothing like that. But I’m assuming you would not mind a drink?”

  Stormy said, “I thought Muslims didn’t drink alcohol…”

  “Many do not. But not everyone is as strict as the Arabs. We may be Muslim in our country, but we are Chechen too.” He poured them each a glass. “Let this be my little rebellion against the extremists who have invaded our country.”

  Arlan’s glass was only half-empty but he tipped the bottle sideways, letting the wine flow lazily until the glass was full. “I support freedom from Russia. I also support life, and sometimes that means waiting, finding another way to freedom. I have seen too many young men like Salman get worked up by those who only want to breed terrorists.”

  “Do you think Salman will end up a terrorist?”

  Arslan lifted the bottle of wine, considering the label, then poured another half glass for himself. “If he lives, this event today will only increase the chances. The Russians are fools. Their heavy hand with the people only creates more hatred. And the rebels, those who are terrorists, when they do things like kill school children they only give the Russians another reason to bomb.’

  “Then what’s the answer?” Stormy asked.

  He nodded at her, as if he’d been waiting for her to ask just that question. “Each of us can do one or two small things that are good. And if enough of us do these small things, they are like drops of water in a barrel. And after many times, over many years, that barrel fills and you have something that changes everything.”

  “And you helping us is a drop?”

  “And you letting me help, that is another.” He nodded at Marcus. “Sometimes it takes a thing worse than you could ever imagine for you to appreciate the little you have.” Arslan said this looking hard at Marcus, and Marcus knew he was speaking from experience. Of course,

  Arslan was right, but how could losing his daughter, having her life at risk day after day at the hands of Kamila make him appreciate life more? Up until now the only reaction he had was that of frustration and anger. Perhaps a little resentment for good measure.

  Stormy, seeming to sense the tension in the air, broke the silence. “So you were a surgeon in the war.”

  “I was trained in surgery, so I was more accustomed to dealing with blood and the insides of humans than the other doctors they forced into service. We had physicians who had gone to medical school in Moscow for family medicine or some other specialty, and when we were desperate, veterinarians were used for putting soldiers back together. The Russians bombed the hospital, so we had to work in the dark. Then the rebels blamed us if we didn’t save the life of one of their relatives.”

  “My wife went to school in Moscow,” Marcus said. “She was an oncologist.”

  “It is a fine school, some say the finest, in Russia. What year did she graduate?”

 
“1994. I ‘m the reason she left,” Marcus said. He explained his history with the Embassy, and their prejudice against him dating and eventually planning to marry a Chechen.

  “I see she had a good life, good husband, and little girl. It worked out very well for her.”

  “Except the part where she gets cancer,” Marcus said, draining the wine from his cup. He was tired of the conversation. He wanted to move, to do something, to stop talking about Anna. He wished they could leave now, despite the dark and the Russian curfew.

  “Cancer would have happened no matter where she lived,” Arslan said. “She could have returned home to Grozny, and been killed in the bombings, or worse. Maybe she would have survived. Then the rebels would have forced her to spend her days doing something she did not have the skills to do, like operate on wounded soldiers. And if she failed, which even a good surgeon does sometimes, they would have shot her—after using her for whatever purposes they had. So, my friend, I would not have remorse for the path your wife took, but I hope that instead someday you can see the blessing she received from you. You don’t have to understanding this for it to be true.”

  Marcus stared down into his empty cup, the fire reflecting unevenly within the curved glass. He was tired, and there was nothing left to say. Argument was meaningless, just as everything else in the world seemed without purpose. Failure to reach his goals…a happy marriage, a peaceful home…had meant the destruction of every hint of meaning left in his life.

  Now he looked outside the small sphere of his own mind and there were other purposes, other people striving, often against each other, but even if he did not understand the reason for their striving, he understood at least that they had a purpose. You don’t have to understand this for it to be true. Arslan’s words echoed in the cavern of his thoughts.

  I’m losing focus. I can’t let that happen. Not here. Not now while Alyssa is out there. Every moment I lose is a moment something horrible might happen. Now was no time to be thinking about Anna, about her death, about how he missed her. All that would do is make him weaker, pull him away the only thing that mattered—saving Alyssa.

  His chest tightened and he gasped, but as he did, air poisoned with grief filled his lungs, and entered his blood and his heart pumped that grief to every part of him. He set the cup down and covered his eyes. It was raw feeling, unadulterated by thoughts. Only a vision of Anna, beautiful and wonderful, smiling but half-faded and unreal. Then a picture of Alyssa, and she was fading, sad and crying, begging Marcus to find her.

  He was aware that Stormy had put her arm around him, but she was less alive, less real than Anna.

  ***

  Anna lay dying on their bed just seven months from the day she told Marcus about her cancer. She had suspected breast cancer weeks earlier but didn’t want to worry Marcus. When the biopsy results came back she had no choice but to tell him. The cancer had spread beyond those gateways of life and death, the lymph nodes.

  Anna had hope, and that was supposed to make a difference according to the experts. As an oncologist, she had successfully treated hundreds of women for breast cancer while working with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, the finest cancer treatment facility in the Northwestern United States. She would have the best doctors, outside of herself, she had joked, and the newest treatments.

  Time passed and Marcus’s hope wavered when the treatments seemed to fail, only to rebound when tests were encouraging. This lasted until the next round of results that indicated that the cancer had spread. Surgery failed, as did radiation and chemo. She lost her hair, dropped to below 100 pounds, and somehow kept her dignity.

  Marcus had started out the consummate cheerleader. He took Anna to each appointment, even when she insisted he wasn’t needed. He gave her a pep talk before each treatment, each biopsy, and each appointment where results were given. But nothing worked. She faded, and in the end, all they had left to offer was hospice. It didn’t make sense to Marcus. She was one of them, a doctor, an oncologist for God’s sake. They were supposed to help her. His anger turned from the doctors to God, before settling on himself. There should have been something he could have done to save Anna. This shouldn’t be happening to Anna. She was too good of a person. Why not someone else. Why not him?

  He wondered if he was being selfish in wishing he were the one who was dying. Knowing the pain that their daughter, only six then, was going to live with…and it was going to be up to him, and only him, to explain all of this. Anna had done as much as she could to help Alyssa prepare for her mother’s departure. But when it was just the two of them, Marcus and Alyssa, something that happened with increasing frequency, Alyssa asked questions. Questions Marcus didn’t have the answer to…questions that had no answers, as far as he could tell. But Alyssa was relentless. Why her mother? Why now. It wasn’t fair, she said. She was right.

  Throughout all of this, Anna was the calm one, the accepting one, the one who despite the cancer that was destroying her seemed to be in complete control. That serenity, that accepting of the heartless truth of death, was a mystery whose depths Marcus could not penetrate. Even when all traces of her former physique were gone, it was her smile that brought a touch of joy to his heart.

  Anna’s final days were in their bed, the place she had chosen to make her last stand.

  Marcus ran his hand across the short, downy hair that had grown in the weeks since the doctors had abandoned the chemo. He laid his head against her shoulder and Anna rested her hand in his. Even now, in the end, it was her comforting him. His task was to keep her hydrated while she refused to drink, often settling their feud with a few drops in her mouth.

  “Read me that poem, love.”

  Soon after coming to America she fell in love with English literature, and in recent days she requested the same sonnet each day. Marcus lifted the collection from the nightstand and sat on the bed next to her. Her eyes were closed, her breathing very slow. When the steady pattern of inhale and exhale lost its way and there were seconds of breathless silence, only to return in a stutter of gasps, Marcus’s heart kept pace, stopping, waiting, then in an eruption of beats catching up.

  “Marcus,” she whispered, the words sticking on her dry tongue. “I love you.” She took in a slow, deliberate breath. “I will always…always…love you.”

  Tears rolled down his cheeks and he squeezed her hand. “I love you Anna. I’m so sorry…I miss you.”

  “Take care of our baby,” she said.

  Not knowing what else to do, what else to say, he did what she asked and read.

  When he finished he wiped the tears from his face and looking at her, he knew she was gone, and he knew that her last request was for his ears, not hers.

  ***

  Outside, the moon had made its arc across the Chechen sky and had begun its descent.

  “I think it is best for him to be alone for a while,” Arslan said. “Sometimes you need to be with yourself and fight it out.”

  Arslan showed Stormy to the spare bedroom and Marcus sat motionless on the couch.

  Marcus stared into the darkness for a long time, until a realization cut through the fatigue. A thought so lucid he knew it would not fade in the night. It was time. Time to move past Anna, past guilt. He had survived for a reason. To protect Alyssa. And in order to do that he needed help. Stormy, Arslan, Salman. They were all here for a reason.

  A minute later, Marcus leaned sideways from exhaustion, and slept.

  Chapter 47

  The sunrise was a brilliant orange hue that faded into blue as they made their way up the mountains. Although they had not noticed it upon their arrival, the dirt road that led to Arslan’s home continued back into the forest. This eventually split into another road and they pursued it to the left. The path wound its way through the forest, broken occasionally by fields of yellow grass, the only sign of civilization an abandoned barn half overgrown with brambles. They grew used to the tossing of the truck, but as the grade steepened, it seem
ed as though the engine was on its deathbed.

  Reaching Kamila’s—and Anna’s—father had been their goal since they left the aunt’s home. That was only two days ago, though it seemed like weeks.

  When Marcus and Anna had left Russia so many years ago, he never imagined he’d meet her father, the rebel leader. Over the years, Marcus had only felt contempt for the old man, knowing how he had rejected Anna, pushed her away just because she chose to live in America instead of her war-ravaged homeland.

  Despite his feelings about her father, Marcus needed his help finding Kamila. She might even be there now with Alyssa. The truth was, Marcus didn’t know what to expect from Anna’s father, which was why he didn’t know what he was going to say or do until he got there. One way or another, the old man was going to help Marcus get Alyssa back.

  They reached pavement. Arslan drove cautiously up to the edge of the highway. “It’s only a while more.” He put the old truck into gear again and continued slowly up the mountain. A few miles later, he pulled over.

  “We’ve got to be quick.” Arslan put the truck in park but left it running. He gathered two knapsacks from the bed of the truck. “I figure you might need these,” he said, handing one to each of them. There’s the clothes you had from those suitcases. Carrying around a bunch of luggage would make the both of you stick out more than you already do, so I transferred everything.”

  “You’ve been a life saver,” Marcus said, shaking his hand.

  “Don’t go getting yourselves killed and make all my help a waste. I don’t have too many good deeds left in me.”

  “We won’t.”

  “Just don’t make him too mad—Anna’s father. There’s no reason for him to like you. Walk up the road about half a kilometer. On the left there is an entrance. It’s harder to spot than my road, but trust me, they’ll see you before you see them.”

  “Got it,” Marcus said. “And thank you again.”