Escape (5 page)

CHAPTER THREE: Moving Into Oblivion

March – The Ingusheta Refugee Camp, Bokana Region, Xukrasna

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed,

no matter which side he's on.

Joseph Heller

With the first tentative glance caught and mirrored back by green eyes, Luka was unmoored, adrift in the turbulent jostle of unfamiliar faces and routines, in a labyrinth of identical temporary structures, and a chaos of testosterone-fuelled voices. Then the screech and boom of bombs, the staccato stutter of machine guns ruptured their fragile, hungry peace; the blue and white tent village collapsed, buses swallowed up the old, the sick, the injured, while Luka and the rest slung their packs over their shoulders to trudge the thirty kilometers further north to the new refugee camp site, where everyone was forced to surrender their clothes to the pyre, and accept shirts and pants that looked like pajamas and felt almost like paper, because there'd been an outbreak of lice in one of the wards.

A smile Luka chased again and again, through memory and fantasy, plunging into unfamiliar depths of hope and trepidation. A few casual words, “Are you surviving? If the rations don't get better, maybe we should surrender to the enemy and see if the accommodations in the prison camps are better. What do you say?” Words heavy as ten bars of gold, because they were spoken with that impish smile while those green eyes were fixed on him. The terrible weight of Josip's presence each mealtime, an almost overwhelming burden, which Luka never wanted relief from.

Alarm, half fear, half hope, minutes before curfew, Josip coming close and whispering, “Come on.” Sneaking away from the sleeping tents, past the supply tents, into a corridor between stacked supply crates. Josip's mischievous grin as he unveiled one pristine, machine-rolled cigarette and confessed to snatching it from a guard's pack while his back was turned.

The bliss of seeing Josip's soft, full lips part, then pucker slightly around the filter, the subtle flex of his mouth as he inhaled to light it, the pungent scent of tobacco suddenly seductive. Reluctantly refusing when Josip held the cigarette out to him, between long, slender fingers, because the pleasure of watching Josip enjoy drawing the smoke into his mouth, down his throat, then blowing the curling tendrils of diaphanous white up into the hard cast of the camp light was bigger than his fear of seeming too straight-laced.

“Don't like to smoke?”

Luka shrugged. “I've never done it.”

“Never?”

Luka shook his head.

“You should at least see how it tastes, before you decide.” Josip held the cigarette between them, and when Luka leaned in to take it between his lips, Josip took his hand away, and leaned in, too, so their lips were barely a centimeter apart.

The delicious terror of breathing in the scent of Josip's skin, his breath laced with tobacco.

Tasting it on his lips.

The wild, transcendent thrill of Josip's touch.

Then the sudden, cold terror of the encircling net of other voices, other hands. Somewhere, out of sight behind a wall of other bodies, Josip's fear-cracked voice feigning anger. “I just wanted to sneak a smoke. I didn't know he was going to pull that shit.”

Blind, drowning in panic under the hood or shirt they'd fastened over his head, Luka flinched against the anticipation of a barrage of kicks and punches, but the swarm of hands tugged and tore at his clothes. Flailing, screaming until someone hit him hard in the face, panic ripped at Luka's heart until they started roughly maneuvering his limbs, dressing him again. Bewildered, sure he was about to die, Luka thrashed as a dozen hands hoisted him up and bundled him into the cold hard bed of a truck.

Plastic cable ties cutting into the flesh of his wrists.

Metal ridges in the truck bed banging and bruising his hip, his shoulder.

Suffocating in the damp dark of whatever they'd pulled down over his head.

God, oh God, they're going to kill me.

The kicking and punching came after an hour of jostling over the unpaved road. Then they tied him to a tree, wrote the word
traitor
across the uniform jacket they'd stuffed him into, told him they'd kill him if he came back to the camp, and left him alone in the dark.

Why did they dress me in the uniform of a Bokan soldier?
Hard to breathe. At first he thought it was how they'd tied him, but then he realized it was because of how they'd beaten him. Maybe he had a broken rib. He wondered if this was what a punctured lung felt like. He hoped they'd only bruised him. Maybe the metallic taste was only because his lip was cut, and not because he was coughing up blood. Maybe it didn't matter; his life and death were out of his control, because no matter how hard he twisted his wrists and hands, he couldn't work himself free.

With a strange sense of detachment, Luka knew he should have been scared. He should have been terrified. Because he was fucked. Pero had hurt him worse for less, but this, leaving him tied to a tree a few kilometers from the front in a Bokan Army uniform with the word
traitor
across his chest, was attempted murder, given that if Eršban troops found him, they'd kill him for the uniform, and if Bokan troops found him, they'd kill him for betraying it.

Weird. Under the anger bleeding into the pain in his chest, under his worry and frustration and sorrow, he felt light and calm. For the first time since he'd hurriedly packed his bag and fled his apartment, and Pero and the Sovići Vega with their carmine uniforms and machine guns, he wasn't filled top to bottom with the unbearable weight of dread.

He woke up, which meant he must have passed out. The sky was a rich, pre-dawn lapis. Gunfire in the distance; probably the sound had woken him. He had no idea how far away the fighting was.

Luka waited for the fear to creep over him, but all that came on was a foggy anxiety that nobody would come, and he'd die slowly, thirsty and starving. The plastic cuffs they'd used to bind his wrists cut deeper through his skin when he started struggling again to get loose.

He gave up. Went still. Listened to the lonely silence. Looked.

Lapis yielded to sapphire, then palatinate; the horizon caught fire, singeing the edges of a thin trail of clouds and setting them in sudden relief against the brightening sky. As the world above him bloomed and burned in aureolin and jonquil, in amber and amaranth, the terrain before Luka pierced the darkness, spilling the molten sunrise over its stark, brutal face.

Spread wide before him, a vast plane of grayish stone stretched and undulated toward the horizon in an uneven sheet like badly poured cement, sporadically spiked with a solitary tree, the trunk a massive column rising up into the incendiary firmament. Gnarled, twisted branches held up a nearly flat umbrella of foliage, blackish with the fire of sunrise behind, then lightening to artichoke and olive as the sky brightened and cooled. To his left, towers of whitish stone stained in lemon and tangerine jabbed at the clouds, tattered silk falling to shreds in the wind.

It was his first time so far north. He'd always heard it was cruel, beautiful terrain. Startling, that the whole landscape could alter so drastically with an hour's slow drive over unpaved road. Or maybe the shock of the attack had muddled his sense of time while he'd been hooded and hyperventilating in the back of the truck.

He didn't cry until it was getting dark again, and the pressure in his bladder had turned into pain, and he wet himself. Maybe that made him cry, because he was ashamed, even though it wasn't his fault. More than shame, though, it was grief wearing down his fragile stoicism. It was obscenely selfish, considering the country had split in two, each side armed and ready to slaughter the others' population, but he felt so fucking sad to realize that was all. Some joyful childhood moments, then adolescence and the sudden erosion of everything safe and warm and good in life.

The kiss, though. The tickle of Josip's breath against his lips, just before the warm press of Josip's mouth. Mischievous green eyes. Playful grin. Even as he leaned in and started the kiss, Josip had been smiling. Maybe Luka could wrap himself up in that memory, forget Josip's cowardice and betrayal, and die happy.

When he woke, it was pitch dark again. Maybe sleeping so much meant he was already fading away. He wanted to fall asleep again, because the dreams about being thirsty and hungry weren't as bad as being awake and feeling it and knowing it was going to get worse and worse and he wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

When he heard the sound, it was too dark to see. One horse. The clip-clop, clip-clop of a steady, leisurely gait.

Luka laughed at the idea the rider might have already passed by, and was gradually disappearing into a future in which Luka would no longer exist. The funniest thing about it was how slowly the horse was carrying its rider away, because at that rate, there'd been a good ten minutes when he could have called out, but he'd slept through his chance at freedom or at least a quick death, depending on the rider's temperament.

And then he laughed again because the horse was getting closer, not farther. Maybe whoever was on the horse would be kind, and quickly put a bullet in his head. Except the horse was just a dream. He was sleeping, and dreaming there was a horse clopping slowly away, then toward him, or maybe moving around him in a wide circle, like an enormous merry-go-round with only one horse and no children in the middle of nowhere, and he was in the center, invisible, maybe behind the column of mirrors that hid the machinery.

Such a good dream. The old man dismounting, wrinkled eyes squinting against the rising sun. Stubby fingers, liver spots. Water. Warm. Delicious. That's how he knew it was a dream, because every time he slept he dreamed he'd found something to drink, and he swallowed and swallowed, and still felt thirsty.

“I can't take you with me. You're a death sentence, and you're just one person. I've got five of my own. Can't risk their safety.” The old man pointed with the wide blade of a knife toward the ash-colored towers of stone in the distance. “There are caves. Gotta watch out for sink holes, but you can sometimes find water. Runs underground, under this whole plain. You might be safe there, if you need to rest a day or two.” The old man mounted his horse and rode off, the slow clip-clop, clip-clop of hoof beats mysteriously comforting.

His wrists were free, and there was a sack of food and a jug of water by his feet. And he was awake. Luka drank most of the water, ate two apples and half a loaf of bread, and headed toward the caves.

Eating had awakened his hunger, and as he trudged along the stony crust, wishing there were more trees or at least shrubs so he could try to hide if he heard vehicles approaching, all he could think about was the rest of the food, and whether to ration it, or it eat now because if someone came along they might take it all from him. Or he could have a bite of cheese, and one of the eggs. He had no idea where he was, or how far from anywhere he might find more food. If he found a village, would it be full of Eršban soldiers?

It was hard to judge the distance. After two hours, Luka hoped he was at least half way to the caves. He sat down, drank some water, and peered into the bag of food, stomach growling. He saved the bread and cheese, but ate two hard-boiled eggs, then forced himself to his feet and started walking again.

By the time he got to the caves, there was only a little daylight left. He hurried to climb up and find one shallow enough he could be sure there was no one and nothing else hiding in some hidden depth, and settled himself in one that wasn't much more than a superficial hollow in the face of the wall of rock. At least there he was off the open plain and out of sight, though it was easy to stand up and see for kilometers from the elevated vantage point. If he saw a platoon from the Bokan army, he could ditch his jacket with the epithet written across it, and say someone had taken it while he was unconscious. While he ate the last of the food, he tried to invent a believable story to explain the wounds the plastic cuffs had left on his wrists, but fell asleep before he came up with anything.

Luka woke up, mouth dry, lips chapped, throat burning. He put the bottle to his lips and drank greedily, but the few gulps of water he'd forced himself to save did almost nothing to quench his desperate thirst. Sore and stiff, he got to his feet, listened to the morning silence, then peered out. A strange peace filled him, gazing down at the valley and seeing no one. No troops, no herds of refugees escaping the shifting front. Maybe he could stay up there, in one of those caves, and never see another person again. The thought made him smile, and he winced as the cut in his lip pulled and split open again.

The dirt path was dark and everything looked clean and bright, and Luka realized it had rained. Idiot. He should have put something out to catch water. Now he'd die of thirst while thousands of gallons of rain soaked into the ground. He snatched the bag and left the cave. He'd climb down and walk until he found a creek. A pond. Or maybe another lone traveler, hopefully as merciful as the old man who'd cut him loose.

As he picked his way over the slick stone hillside, slipping and almost falling twice, he heard the musical trickle of water echoing from the depths of another hollow as he passed the aperture. Peering in, he could only see the glistening surface of the first few feet, before the rest dropped away in invisibility.