When Totems Fall (6 page)

A young woman with flaming red hair
gripped the steering wheel while working stick shift, accelerator, and brakes in a vain attempt at freeing the forlorn vehicle. Rear tires spun wildly, painting the young man pushing from behind in liquid brown. Even under all that mud, it was obvious he was a foreigner as well.

En route to school one rainy fall day, Junjie happened upon them before anyone else. The boy
chuckled at the odd situation playing out before him. Though he couldn't help himself, his reaction produced both joy and discomfort. His stomach hurt, as an empty, distended abdomen doesn't allow for much of a real belly-laugh.

The man caught Junjie peering around the back of the car. As the young waif stifled another snicker the stranger flashed back an enormous smile, laughing along with the skin-and-bones local boy at the sight of his own mud-soaked clothes. The sound of his good humor told Junjie all was safe. These two were simply another helpless couple in a small town overflowing with people needing help.

Who were they? Where were they from? Why come all the way out here? Did they intend to stay?

Gansu had known outsiders before, arriving mostly to pillage their region's meager resources. Through the years many had come to take what they wanted, leaving behind the longer-lasting effects of depletion and short-term gains, forcefully removed and added to the riches of others. Understandably, many thought these two arrived in the same vein. But this was not the case. Not at all. These two—the man covered in muck and the woman with bright red hair, were different.

More disposed to learn and give than to take and abuse, they told strange yet captivating parables, often about someone named
Yasu
and his unruly band of friends. These tales delighted young and old alike, fitting right in with the oral tradition of the villagers, serving both to entertain and share wisdom between generations. And along with their stories, the couple displayed a generous, kind spirit. Intriguing, yes, but these strangers would be kept at a distance. To be accepted they would need to earn their place.

And so they did.

Able and willing to supplement the village's rations, their employers—an Australian development organization—helped them all survive those first, harsh months. This single act of kindness made all the difference. Resolved to weeping and mourning in the bleakness of winter, they welcomed instead a handful of newborns along with the fresh winds of late springtime. And this young couple's hospitality appeared boundless, even for those who know anything about the welcoming character of those from
down under
. They encouraged Junjie's curiosity and budding skill with electronics and computers, letting him "repair" their satellite phone a hundred times or more. Often, and usually unannounced, he walked into the always-open front door of their home.

"Junjie? Is that you, my boy?"

The foreigner's accent made him smile, especially when struggling with certain words and phrases in their dialect. It was completely disarming.

"Yes," Junjie replied, inching ever closer to the table holding all the communications gear for the couple.

"Well, well. Let's see," the man said. "No. I don't think we'll need you to work on the sat phone today, little one."

Disappointment clouded over Junjie's face and eyes.

The man continued.

"But... how about
this
instead...?"

The man stepped aside, revealing the opened casing of the desktop computer in front of him.

Cables. Hard drives. Circuit board. A veritable playground begged exploration, bidding the junior engineer to pull, connect, and reset the many objects making up the whole.

Would they trust him with this most important tool?

The broad, open smile on the man's face gave him his answer and the next four hours were absolutely wonderful, discovering and learning alongside of one of his most trusted childhood friends.

Eventually the couple became as much a part of Gansu as the families who'd been working this land for the last three centuries. It took time and effort but it happened.

They belonged.

One warm, quiet evening
a sense of joyous anticipation filled the air.

The man and woman were expecting their first child
.

In Gansu births are public affairs where communal matriarchs offer their skills and experience, ensuring as best they can a joyful entrance into the world. Many such moments had taken place here. This time though, something felt different, unique, as the entire populace held its collective breath, anticipating that first, infantile cry of life.

Waiting, they fussed.

They waited longer and fussed some more.

It never came.

That expected sound, one calling out the deepest of human hopes, was displaced instead with deep, inconsolable cries. The young mother-to-be grieving her still-born child, desperately trying to reconcile this tragedy with images she'd projected in her mind of a full and good life for her family. The sadness and loss seemed palpable throughout every home, on every street.

Heartbreaking.

The couple stayed on in Gansu for a few more harvests, eventually returning to family and nation. Though their residence among Junjie's people had been brief, its impact turned out to be significant, so profound.
The years following brought both good and bad growing seasons, just like before.

The change wasn't in their fortunes. It was on their faces.

Decades later, Junjie understood what had happened. The unexpected visitation had altered everything for him and his people. Somehow, wonderfully, fear gave way to hope, and not just any hope but one that could survive the harshest things rural life in China might send their way.

This same hope lived in the young businessman.

And it began to revive him now, as well.

Still bent forward
in his chair, Junjie lifted his head from his hands and stood. Reminders of where he came from and how he'd gotten here were a healing tonic, giving him purpose, making him thankful.

The young man looked out into the smog beyond the windowpanes.

Still, nothing. Yet he knew without a doubt what was there, behind the graying veil.

What was that saying?
he thought to himself.

Faith is the substance of things not seen...

NINE

Zeb's ears rang mercilessly.

Head slouching downward
and to the side, his chin tucked limply against his collarbone. A thin, wet, red line flowed outward from his ear canal and down along the ridge of his left shoulder. Though feeling the sticky procession, Dalton could catch only an unfocused glimpse of it out the corner of his eye.

On the ground. Flat, hard asphalt beneath his body. Dalton's cerebral cortex told him little more than this. At the moment his mind was nothing more than a mess of jumbled, disfigured sensory data points; an unsettling, uncontrollable dance of nerve fibers and chemicals. All he had to work with were vague messages of danger and harm, hazy biological dispatches that spoke with neither clarity nor urgency.

Zeb tried moving but his stomach and mind weren't in agreement enough yet to keep him from retching onto the warm, gray pavement.

Though reeling, Dalton's body would not give up. It was still fighting to do its job, desperately trying to alert him of the perils at hand. It could only do so much, leaving Zeb with an impressionistic image of his surroundings and the real state of vulnerability he was in. Struggle as he might, everything that mattered stayed at a distance, just beyond his grasp. Though he could do nothing about it, he realized his overall state of situational awareness—so very crucial for a soldier—had degraded way beyond acceptable norms.

Something was wrong, very wrong.

Zeb tried to move again. The epic fight gained him only an awkward, semi-upright position. Slumping backward, he thankfully found a wall to halt his collapse. The retired soldier's tenuous grip on consciousness faded and a calming blackness advanced at the edges of his blurred vision.

He stopped fighting and welcomed it.

With eyelids closed the memory came back, cruelly distorted by the rush of chemicals in Zeb's head and as present as if it were happening again for the first time.

"Unless ye drink my blood
and eat my body, ye have no part in me..."

The unseen voice resonated—deep, haunting.

Only four or five years of age, Zeb had snuck in without permission and found himself now enveloped in something terrible. Hidden under a table at the back of the small church, his father's voluminous baritone voice filled the air with the mysterious phrase. Such horrible imagery and the fact it proceeded from his father's mouth frightened him beyond belief, both literally and figuratively.

Again, and more insistent this time:

"Unless ye drink my blood and eat my body, ye have no part in me!"

Young Zeb couldn't have moved any further back and underneath the table. Still, he tried. The voice, both closer and bigger now, posed too much for his little ears to handle, more than his impressionable heart and mind could keep in.

Zeb's chest pounded unnaturally beneath the thinning fabric of his simple, white t-shirt. The scratchy surface of old drywall poked at his young skin. With spindly legs fully retracted and hands clasped over his ears Zeb tried to stop the onslaught of terror.

For the last time—booming, seeming to explode.

"Unless ye drink my blood and eat my body, y
e have no part in me!!!
"

Zeb whimpered.

Silence, followed by footsteps. First haltingly and then, much quicker.

Without warning, the minimalist veil of safety provided by the plain black tablecloth tore back. A man's hand, large and authoritative, reached into his fortress, his protection.

This time little Zeb screamed.

On the pavement,
grown-up Dalton came to, his senses coming back online, albeit slowly. Unfortunately the ability to smell arrived first. His initial re-connection with reality?

The acrid tang of aviation fuel and burning plastic.

In short order came the sense of touch and along with it pain, finally and definitively announcing its presence. The first adrenal rush had faded. No more sensory confusion. Zeb's nerve endings were doing their job. His bodily warning systems all fired simultaneously, clearly and insistently.

What happened? What in the world had happened?

Years of military training kicked into gear. Macabre—yes, but necessary.

Hands, arms, torso.

Legs, feet, head.

Best he could tell at the moment the blood trickling from his left ear was his most pressing physical concern. Even this had slowed, almost stopped now. Though stiffness began its ascent in major muscle groups, Zeb could tell he still had a reasonable range of motion. This was a good sign. He needed to be careful yet all indicators said he would recover. The ringing in Dalton's ears had cleared almost completely now. What he heard close by was odd but not unexpected.

Moans hung eerily half-muted in the strangely still air. Screams of pain were yet to come, as the utter horror accompanying such destruction would eventually surface and exact its penance. For now, a momentary biological blessing of sorts, there was an odd calm before the proverbial storm.

"God, no. God, please—
no
," Zeb muttered.

It seemed impossible to reconcile, to accept at face value, but the scene unfolding before him was all too real.

The Public Market at Pike Place
stood for the better part of ten decades as an iconic Seattle destination. Only moments ago Zeb had settled up with the cabbie and stepped out onto the sidewalk at his client's office, a short block and a half away from where fish-throwing merchants, small-scale entrepreneurs, and local artisans regularly populated its shops and stalls.
As a uniquely traditional element of the city's business and civic scene, Pike Place hosted both commerce and connection, relationships and trade. With its eclectic aura and colorful history it was a space valued and touted as very
Seattle
.

All this had changed in one bloody instant as the normally happy portrait now laid horribly defaced; a cacophony of sights, smells, and sounds that didn't fit together, except in somebody's nightmare. Though its wild commotion and destructive energy had largely ceased, the true gravity of the event was just waiting to be felt.

Colossal Pratt and Whitney turbines whined down slowly, experiencing their death-throes yet still signaling danger to any within earshot. Mounds of tangled steel and fabric engulfed in flame spotted the deathly landscape. Unbelievably, the massive, disembodied forward cabin area of a jumbo jet now lay where the famous market sign had stood.

Dalton scanned the debris field from there uptown. In his mind's eye he captured every last detail, instantly and completely. During this brief moment he was able to assess a crash and loss scenario that would take the NTSB's very best men and women a full six months to untangle. What he intuited was beyond horrific.