Escape (14 page)

Armin jumped, tripped against the table and fell over backward, and a hulking dark mass blurred past Luka and pounced on the fallen man. A scream like a roar swelled through the room, a bloody blade flashed in the air and plunged into a different, terrible scream that went on and on and Luka's scream rose into it.

Everything went still. The only sound was the wood hissing and cracking as the fire ate away at it, and a steady plop, plop, plop behind Luka's back. He turned to look. Begović was slumped over the back of the couch, throat sliced wide open, blood running in a gooey rivulet down the cushion, and dripping from his chin.

Plop. Plop. Plop.

The dark mass beyond the coffee table rose and turned and looked at Luka with horror-struck, hazel eyes. Tarik dropped the gory knife on the coffee table with a clatter and splatter of blood flecking the wood. Luka whimpered when Tarik pulled the wig from his head, because he didn't understand what was happening, and thought it was starting again, that Tarik was doing it to him this time, but that was only for a second. Tarik stared at him a few seconds, then went away, then came back and cleaned Luka's face with a wet towel. The towel had blood on it when Tarik tossed it down next to the knife, and Luka wondered if he was bleeding, until he realized the blood had come from Tarik's hand.

Luka flinched when Tarik reached for his throat. Tarik stilled. “The belt.” When Luka didn't move, Tarik slowly reached forward again, and gently loosened the noose, then took the belt from around Luka's throat and tossed it to the floor. “Come on. Stand up.” Tarik grasped Luka's arm and hoisted him to his feet.

Beyond the coffee table was a vast pond of blood with a pile of meat in the middle. It took Luka a few seconds to understand the pile of meat was Armin with his torso split open and his guts spilling out. Luka almost collapsed onto the sofa, but Tarik caught him and held him up, suspended above the blood-soaked cushion, until he stopped feeling faint.

“Get your things. We have to go.” Tarik zigzagged through the house, getting his rucksack, gathering the water jugs, ransacking the fridge and cupboards. He snatched a coat off the rack by the door and handed it to Luka. Begović's coat.

“I lost your knife.”

Tarik looked at him, red flecks dotting his face, hazel eyes wild and bloodshot.

The knife was the only thing Luka cared about taking with him. Not Begović's coat, not the jugs of water. While Tarik went upstairs, Luka went the long way around the coffee table, avoiding the puddle of blood still advancing across the rug, and felt around the cushion of the armchair where he'd been curled up after dinner. There was the knife, like lost change. He held it tight in his hand, and without letting go of it, went back into the little girl's bedroom and got his bag.

When he came back downstairs, Tarik was carrying a sleeping bag and another rucksack. He took the bag the old man with the horse had given Luka, and shoved it into the rucksack, along with the sleeping bag and Begović's coat. Looking at the knife clutched in Luka's hand, Tarik unclipped the sheath from his own belt, and put it on Luka's. “Here. This way, it won't fall out, but it's always there when you need it.” He coaxed the knife from Luka's grip, and snapped the strap into place over the hilt. “Let's go.”

CHAPTER SIX: Nachtwache (Vigil)

Freedom is what you do

with what's been done to you.

Jean-Paul Sartre

In darkness, they crept to the woods, then hiked north for three hours, and made camp. Not hungry, Luka crawled into the sleeping bag that had been Begović's or Armin's or maybe had belonged to the father of the little girl. Off and on, he slept. Every time he woke, the fire was still going, and Tarik was still sitting there, staring into it. When Luka woke to the wan light of early morning, he got up and rolled up his bag. Tarik's was still in a roll, tied to his rucksack.

They traveled until midday, and this time when they stopped, Tarik made Luka eat. The smell of the chicken made his stomach turn, but after he forced down a couple bites, his hunger swelled up, and he managed to get down the meat and the quarter loaf of bread Tarik had portioned out to him. The tentative spring warmth had been swallowed up in clouds and a brisk wind, and he wished he'd thought to hunt up a pair of gloves before they'd left.

Tarik went off to relieve himself while Luka finished eating cold chicken with numb fingers. When he'd eaten and packed up and filled the jugs from the stream, Tarik was still gone. Luka was just about to go look for him when he emerged from the woodland shadows, face red, eyes bloodshot. A twinge of guilt cramped Luka's belly. Maybe Tarik had never killed anyone before.

What would it feel like? Luka touched the handle of the knife at his hip, wrapped his fingers around it, gripped it tight without pulling it free of the sheath. Would the blade sink easily into a man's body? He let go of the hilt and he wiped his palm on his pants, a little queasy at the thought of blood warm and thick and sticky on his hand.

While they walked, Luka focused on the creak of the trees in the wind, on how the air chilled his cheeks and burrowed down his collar and up his sleeves. He concentrated on the soreness of his feet, on how the heavy rucksack made his shoulders ache. Anything to push away the image of thick, dark blood cascading from Begović's split-open throat, from that incomprehensible mass of gore that had been Armin a minute before Tarik's knife turned him into meat and offal. He concentrated on the crunch of countless seasons' brittle leaves under his feet. Some were still desiccated, curled in on themselves, a uniform brown, the shade of a crust of a well-done loaf of bread. Others were decomposed mush. Overhead, still-naked branches stabbed at the sky, but the sky didn't bleed. The sky didn't spill its guts in a gory pile on the ground.

“Luka.” Tarik was standing still, ten meters behind. Luka hadn't realized he'd stopped.

It was early. There were at least another two hours of light. But he was exhausted and glad to stop. “You want to make camp here?”

Tarik didn't answer. Not sure what Tarik wanted, Luka walked back to him. Looking at Tarik's pallid face, his frenetic eyes, Luka's veins filled with cold dread and he thought maybe Tarik was standing on another mine. Finally Tarik spoke, his voice uneven. “You don't have to keep going with me.”

Inexplicable panic spilled through Luka's insides.

“I have to keep heading north. But to the west, maybe twenty kilometers from here, there's a village. Maybe you can find an empty house, or a family that would give you room and board for work.”

“Is this because I dropped the knife?” Luka hated himself for being so weak. So pathetic and needy. Useless, helpless, a burden, everywhere he went. Because of him Tarik had done that horrible thing. All day, Tarik had been pale and quiet. Hazel eyes bloodshot and haunted. “I won't lose it. I promise. But you can have it back if you don't trust me with it.”

“God, Luka. I don't care about the knife. Keep it. It's yours.” Tarik looked like he might be about to cry, and Luka's shame kept getting heavier and heavier in his chest.

“Is it because I'm too slow?” Luka couldn't understand the weird fear swelling in his chest, getting heavier and heavier, tangled in a net of sadness that had nothing to do with dread of being lost and hungry in the woods. “I can go faster. My ribs barely hurt anymore, and I was hungry before. I'm stronger now, though. Go as fast as you want. I'll keep up.”

“I don't know what to say.” Tarik turned away, and a moment later he perched on the trunk of a felled tree. After a couple minutes, he looked at Luka and patted the spot to the left of him on the log. When Luka sat down beside him, Tarik turned away again, and kept staring at the ground. “I had no right to force you to go with me. I should have given you the choice, and let you stay at the caves if you wanted to. You would have had water. I could have left you some of my food.” Luka tried to meet Tarik's eyes, but Tarik kept his head down, his face turned away. “And that last night before... you tried to run. You wanted to get away and I chased you down and tied you up and dragged you to that fucking house. I made you go there when you didn't want to. And then I left you alone with them. It's my fault, what they did to you.”

The weight in Luka's chest got heavier, like it was going to sink through him, tearing him apart, and his face and throat burned. He kept hoping Tarik hadn't really seen, that he didn't know what they'd actually done, that it had just looked like they'd humiliated him and were going to strangle him. But of course he knew. Luka tried to push away the image of Armin's unzipped pants down at his thighs, his stiff dick streaked with blood under a loop of intestine.

“They could have done something even worse.” Tarik's voice rasped and made a little billow of steam in the cold air.

Luka's face burned even hotter, thinking about what Tarik meant by “something worse.”

“I told you I'd keep you safe. I told you I'd keep you safe, and they...”

Before his shame made him retch, Luka looked away, down into the dirt.

“They could have killed you. And it would have been my fault.”

“I'm not dead.”

“Thank God.”

Guilt. Not resentment. Not because Luka was a burden. Tarik was releasing him, not casting him out, like his parents. Like Pero. Like the guards at
Ingushetia.

“I didn't want to come with you, because I was afraid of you.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“If you'd left me behind, I would have died. Maybe even if you'd let me run away the other night. But I'm alive. Because of you. You saved me from starving. You've kept me from getting captured. And you saved me from those men. I owe you. And now you need me. Don't you? For the border?”

“You don't owe me. And that's not why I made you come with me.” Tarik finally met Luka's gaze. He looked so sad it made Luka's chest ache. “I swear to you, it didn't occur to me until the second day. But in the caves, I made you come with me because...”

“Because I was lost and weak and you thought I'd die.”

Tarik turned away again. “You don't owe me anything. From here on, you should choose for yourself. I won't make your decisions for you. You should only come with me if it's what you want.”

“I don't want to be a burden.”

Tarik met his eyes. “You're not a burden.”

“You'll have a better chance at the border if I'm with you?”

“I honestly don't know. But if we make it, you won't have to fight. Or get court marshaled for desertion. But I know you probably have family, so if you don't want to leave them—”

If he survived crossing back into the Bokana region, if he showed up at their door, would they even let him in? “I don't have any family.”

Choosing. A strange feeling. He'd been born. He'd been sent to school. He'd swept and cleaned his father's barber shop after school and weekends from the time he was seven. Then he'd been sent away. The one choice he'd made for himself had been squashed by the Eršban government when he'd been kicked out of his art program. Luka calculated he was zero for one. And just because Tarik was dropping the reins, didn't mean he could run free.

Luka got up and hoisted the rucksack onto his back. “Come on. Soon we'll lose the light.”

They kept a brisk pace for another two hours, then made camp. Good thing Luka had Begović's coat and the sleeping bag, because as they climbed, it was getting miserably cold. As soon as they were done eating they got in their sleeping bags just to keep warm.

“So, you're married?” Tarik had hardly said a word since their conversation after lunch, and Luka wanted to put words and thoughts between them and what had happened back at that house.

“No. I've never been married.”

“Oh.” Luka wanted to ask about his son's mother, but didn't want to be rude.

“You asked, because I have a kid?”

“I didn't mean—”

“I was with Senka, Daris's mother for a while, but we were never serious. I mean, we were friends, but not really a couple.”

“Oh.”

“When the country started going berserk, she went with her family to Alkbana. A month later, I got an email, telling me she was pregnant. I tried to go join her, but by the time I got the money together, I'd gotten my draft notice, which meant leaving would be desertion. Then, while I was in basic training, I got an email from Senka's brother, telling me she'd given birth to Daris. But she didn't make it.” Tarik jabbed at the fire with a stick, making the coals flare hotter. “When I got drafted, I tried to get out, too, but it didn't work out.” Tarik was so quiet, his bag not even rustling with any movement, Luka wondered if he'd fallen asleep. But after a while Tarik said, “I'm sorry you lost your family.”

“They're not dead. But I haven't seen them in a long time.”

“Why not?”

Luka regretted saying anything, but he'd had lots of practice telling the story in half-truths. “We were poor.” Not really. There was always enough to eat. Hell, there was always dessert. And birthday presents. “I was the oldest. It worked out better, letting one of the younger ones help out at my father's shop when I was old enough to go out to work. So when I was thirteen, I left.”

“They sent you away? At thirteen?”

Luka shrugged. Afterward he realized Tarik couldn't see him shrug in the dark, but he didn't know what else to say. “What about your family?”

“My mom died when I was twelve. A car accident. And my father died last winter.”

“I'm sorry.”

“He'd been sick a long time. In some ways, it was a blessing. I'm glad he didn't see what the country is doing to itself. It would have broken his heart.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“No. Only child. Lots of cousins, though. Luckily we're from the north, far enough from the front, they're hopefully out of harm's way.”

For a long time, they were both quiet. The heavy, murky silence filled Luka with dread, and he startled when Tarik spoke again. “Can I ask you something, Luka?”

“Okay.”

“When I grabbed you in the cave, and put my knife against your throat, did you think I was going to kill you?”

The memory fluttered through Luka, weightless and cold. “Yes.”

“But you didn't seem scared. Were you?”

Luka still didn't understand that strange moment when the feel of Tarik's knife blade had filled him with a calm he'd never felt before. “No.”

“Did you...” So much time went by, Luka didn't think Tarik was going to finish his question. “Did you want me to?”

He'd asked himself that question a hundred times in the days since Tarik had captured him in that cave, and he still didn't know the answer.

“It's okay. You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to.”

“Maybe.”

Another long silence. Then a rustling sound; maybe Tarik changing positions in his sleeping bag, but Luka couldn't see him in the dark. “You scared me to death when you wandered into that cave, wearing your Bokan uniform. I put the blade of my knife to your throat to scare you into submission, so you wouldn't fight me and make me really hurt you. But the look you got on your face when you thought you were about to die...”

“What look?”

“You looked happy.”

Luka didn't know what to say.

“Was it because of what the guys from your camp did to you?” The question was barely a whisper, and Luka had to strain to understand the words over the hiss and pop of the fire.

“I don't know.” As soon as he'd said it, it occurred to Luka that Tarik might be imagining they'd done something uglier than beat him up and abandon him in that parched wasteland. Maybe Tarik thought they'd done something like what Skinny and Calvin had done. “I think I was just tired. Tired of being hungry. Tired of being scared. Tired of everyone...”

Tarik was quiet for a long time. His sleeping bag didn't even rustle. Finally, he said, “I'm listening, Luka.”

“You know how Armin and Begović treated me? I don't mean... the thing they did. Just, how they talked to me, how they talked about me.”

“Yeah.”

“I think mostly I was tired of people treating me like that.”

“You mean, the men from your camp? The ones who beat you?”

“Yes. But not just them.”

“Your family?”