Shivers 7 (22 page)

As he sprawled like a rag doll, stars dancing in his vision, in that one moment, he saw her. He could never forget that face, peering at him from behind her hair.

“Ngao?”

Her glistening eyes widened.

Then narrowed.

Vehement Vietnamese spewed like acid from her lips. She lunged toward Sean, eyes blazing, but her bonds held her in place. She strained against them, shouting and sobbing.

“My, my, my, isn’t this interesting,” another voice said. The Frenchman stepped into the pool of light. The orange cherry of his cigarette gleamed in his cold eye. He looked toward the furious girl and spoke in Vietnamese.

She answered with a torrent of invective.

“She says she knows you. Is this true?”

Sean did not have the strength to lie. “Yeah. I met her in a bar last night. Me and my friend, we were just playing pool.”

The girl flew into another stream of speech.

“She says you took her to a hotel. She was supposed to have sex with you. It was to be her first time.”

“I didn’t know she was a hooker!”

“Come now, don’t be such a prude. Of course, you did.” The Frenchman knelt beside him. “Language is such a curious thing, yes? You call her a ‘hooker,’ an unabashedly derogatory American term, but the sex industry in this part of the world is so much more… complicated than that, yes? Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, girls here often have sex for money, with foreigners, with rich men. They are simply helping their families with money. Some of them even do it for fun.”

“She said she wanted to come with me. She was so sweet. And she said she liked me.”

Ngao was still talking, her fury subsiding into sobs, trying to get the words out.

“Of course, she did. Humph, she says she really did like you. You’re so ‘handsome and nice.’” The Frenchman clucked his tongue. “But you wouldn’t pay her.”

“If I paid her, it wouldn’t be real…”

“My young friend, you’re looking for
love?”
The Frenchman’s laugh was harsh and sharp. “You are in the
wrong
part of the world for such nonsense!”

“She said she liked me! She
wanted
to go with me!”

Ngao’s shoulders slumped, and her beautiful breasts with such delicate pink nipples disappeared behind the curtain of dark hair.

“She was waiting for someone she liked to be her first. She was waiting for
you.
And then when you refused to pay her, she left.”

Sean’s voice grew feeble. “She said—”

“You stupid twit! For women like her, men like you are their ticket out of this godforsaken fucking country.”

Ngao’s voice had fallen to a whisper.

The Frenchman continued to interpret. “So when she went back to the bar, empty-handed, the madam beat her. A young woman with beauty like this is a valuable commodity, eh? The madam called me, you see. She’d been waiting for months for this girl to start bringing in money. So when the girl finally tried, and then failed, the madam sold her to me. Everything must have its due, you know, eh? Everything must have its due.”

A wash of fresh bile bubbled into Sean’s throat with his guilt. He turned toward her. “Ngao! Ngao, I’m so sorry.”

The Frenchman leaned forward. “So how much was this girl’s life worth, eh? How much did she ask for? Thirty American dollars? I can tell you she’ll bring me far more than that.”

She glanced at Sean, sniffling, then looked away. A single tear dropped from her chin like a falling diamond, glistening in the moonlight.

The Frenchman said, “If you had only paid her, she would not be here like this. You would, but she wouldn’t.”

Sean sat up. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Go back to your bed. Forget about this.”

“What are you going to do with them?”

“That is none of your business.”

“There’s nothing I can do to stop you.”

“I suppose you’re right about that, eh.” His cigarette flared as he took a drag. “Some of them are coming with me to Phnom Penh. I’ll look for buyers there. Some of them… will not.”

Sean looked closer at the two women lying motionless in the darkness. “What happened to them?” He staggered to his feet.

“Easy, my young friend. You are not well.”

“I’m not your friend. What happened to them?” Sean took a step closer. Then he saw the dark glistening pools surrounding their bodies, the dark, congealing stains, on their lips, on their legs, around their eyes, around every orifice, strands of their dark hair mired in sticky, congealing pools, their deathly pale flesh like alabaster in the moonlight. “What did you do?” A surge of anger rose in his throat, and his hands clenched into fists.

The warrior loomed closer.

“I did nothing to them. Go back to your bed.”

Somewhere far ahead of them, the train’s whistle cried its long, lonesome wail.

The Frenchman said, “You should go now. Go back to your friend. Enjoy what time you have left.”

“What the fuck does that mean!” Sean’s voice cracked.

An iron hand clamped over his shoulder and threw him down the aisle toward the door.

“Do not come back here.”

Sean scrambled toward the door, toward the light. He tumbled across the space between the cars, falling to his hands and knees in the flickering white glow of the hallway.

His arms could barely support his weight, but he fought to his feet and flung himself down the hallway.

In their compartment, he reached up and shook his friend. “Phil, get up!”

Phil rolled over and squinted at him. “What the fuck, man!”

“Trust me, you need to get up. We need to get the hell off this train.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Something’s wrong with me. I’m going to die if I don’t get off this train
now!”

“Man, you’re not going to die, it’s just some food poisoning—”

“No, it’s worse than that. I don’t care if we have to ride a water buffalo back to Saigon.” He pulled his pack down, grabbed his sandals and began to strap them on. “Just trust me! Let’s go!”

“All right, fine. Whatever.” Phil sat up, rubbed his eyes, and began to gather his things.

“Don’t you smell that?”

“Yeah, man, I thought it was your sandwich.”

Just then, Sean noticed that their heated exchange had not disturbed the two inhabitants of the lower bunks. Ragged breathing gurgled from the dark enclosure under his bunk. The other bed was deathly silent. The light from the door fell across a whitish-yellow foot and a thick dark stain soaking the mattress. “No, it’s coming from them! And
me!”

Phil stared at the dying Vietnamese man.

“Believe me now?”

Moments later, they were in the hallway. Phil shouldered his duffel bag. “What are we going to do, jump?”

Ngao’s face flashed in Sean’s mind, and he stopped. He couldn’t just leave her with the Frenchman. But the warrior could kill him and Phil both, effortlessly, and not give it a second thought. She was tied up, naked, and under guard. And Sean was not James Bond or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“What is it?” Phil asked.

“You remember the girl from the bar, Ngao?”

“You remember her name?” Phil’s eyes widened. “Yeah, I remember her.”

“She’s on the train. The Frenchman has her tied up naked in the baggage car.”

“Jesus Christ, man. What the fuck are we into?”

“I think it’s even worse than that, but I don’t know how yet.”

“If those guys have a girl chained up naked on this train, they
will
kill us if we fuck with them. If they can get a naked girl—”

“Seven naked girls.”

Phil rolled his eyes. “Ok, seven naked girls—onto a train, they’re probably carrying guns.”

“But we can’t just leave them.”

“We get off this train, we can contact the police. This guy is probably wanted. They can stop him before he gets over the border.”

Sean sighed. A sledgehammer was pounding on the back of his skull, and his bag felt like it weighed more than him. “OK.”

They hurried down the hallway to the end of the car, and stopped.

Phil said, “Where’s the exit door?”

A cold silent hand clamped around Sean’s heart, and his vision swam.

Phil threw his bag against the blank steel wall. “Where’s the fucking door!”

The exit door was gone, as if it had never been.

Sean grabbed Phil by the shoulder and pulled him toward the door into the next car. “Come on.”

In the next sleeper car, they found the same absence of exits. The places that had once been passenger doors were now blank empty walls. The sleeping compartment doors were all tightly closed. As they passed one, Sean spotted a spreading pool of dark blood oozing from underneath, staining the carpet.

Through three, four, five, six more sleeper cars (Had the train always been this long?) all similar, until they reached the car with the seated passengers. They stood on the threshold of a charnel house.

Decomposing corpses filled the seats with rotting flesh and spreading pools of liquefaction. Clothing and skin sloughed away in great oozing swaths, mouths hanging, tongues lolling.

Except for one man.

His face was still raised to the ceiling, teeth clenched, eyes squeezed shut, one hand pounding his cock like a jackhammer. But now his flesh was splotched and pale. Tears streamed down his face, and his hand and member were drenched in blood. The ferocity of his effort spattered droplets of blood in all directions. His head leaned against the dark window that reflected his pale tortured face back against him.

Sean leaned closer. The dark window. Outside, absolutely black. The tracks rumbled under the train’s steel wheels, but there was no countryside moving past now, no sky, no jungle. Only empty, inky blackness.

Phil grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him away.

As they opened the door to the dining car, that same rockabilly Elvis song echoed from the darkness.

“Train I ride, sixteen coaches long

Well that long black train got my baby and gone…”

The lights in the dining car were out, except for a single spare bulb gleaming behind the counter, casting solid black shadows high on the steel walls.

The drunken policeman still sat on his stool against the wall, and he would never move again. Nor would any of the former partiers. They all now lay in haphazard heaps of decaying flesh and bone, sprawling across tables and chairs and each other. The two lovers lay together against the far door, their bodily fluids melding in ways they would never have imagined.

To reach the far door, they would have to wade through the bodies, and then clear them away from the door.

The train whistle shrilled again, and the vibration of the rumble increased, as if it was picking up speed.

Sean grabbed Phil. “Back this way.”

They went back through three more cars with passenger seating before they once again came upon the masturbating man. The cords stood out of the side of his neck, the veins on his forehead, as he strained, yearned, frenzied for release that would never come.

Back through the cars, nine, ten, eleven, twelve coaches. Until they reached the closed black door that led into the baggage car.

Sean stopped before the door, his breathing wet and ragged, warm rivulets of blood dripping from his ears and nose. A single wracking cough sprayed blood from his lips to splatter against the center door.

He pulled open the door, stepped into the space between coaches, and the train lurched, staggering him for a moment. He glanced around at the diaphragm enclosing the empty space, keeping the outer darkness at bay. Sean could feel that darkness outside, rubbing against the train’s glossy black carapace. The dark, membranous diaphragm flexed and shifted like bat’s wings. Black veins trailed across the lighter inner surface, pulsing with… What?

He threw open the second door and stumbled inside. There was no moonlight now to light the way, only utter darkness. No sound but the CLACK CLACK CLACK of the train. He struggled to keep his massively heavy bag from dragging on the floor as he crept toward where he thought the women had been tied. He tried to visualize the layout of the car, armed only with his fuzzy memory.

He heard breathing, the slither of hair, the catch of breath. His hand searched the black until it brushed against soft, velvety strands. She flinched away. He leaned forward and buried his nose in her hair. How could he ever forget that scent?

“Ngao,” he whispered, “Shhh.” She didn’t speak a word of English. He just prayed that she didn’t make any noise. He knelt beside her and felt his way behind her, looking for her bonds. His touch stopped at the strands around her wrists. They felt like exactly the same material as the cargo netting. Warm and pulsing, growing out of the steel floor like ropy tentacles. He tried his strength against them but there was no way.

A metallic snick.

“Here,” said the Frenchman, “Try this.”

Something clattered across the floor and slid against Sean’s leg. A switchblade knife. He snatched up the knife and began to saw at the girl’s bonds. The blade was sharp and sliced deep through the strange sinew. In seconds, he had freed her hands; he went to work on her ankles.

“Just what do you hope to accomplish, my young friend?” the Frenchman said. A match flared, splashing orange across the Frenchman’s craggy face.

“Getting out of here,” Sean mumbled, sawing.

“You will not survive long enough to get out of here. You have already been claimed. You can hardly stand.”

“Why aren’t you sick?” Sean spat at him.

“I ride in the belly of this beast. We have a deal, you see. I help feed it, and it gives me safe passage, away from the eyes of the authorities.”

Sean stopped sawing, his mind reeling. “How…?”

“Once upon a time, after the Americans left, this rail line shipped countless South Vietnamese north for ‘re-education.’ I’ve lived in this part of the world for thirty years, and I can tell you that Vietnamese are some of the most cruel and ingenious little fucks to ever walk this planet. For years the Communists consolidated their control. That kind of suffering, that much pain, it has power, you see. It festers. It
does
things. It begets
more.
This train has… brothers, I suspect. In Germany, Russia, China.”