Keep walking.
At least it wasn’t raining today, though the sun was having a devil of a time cutting through the clouds hanging over the hills and forests. Fog clung to the higher trees and hills, and the buds of spring were just starting to emerge from the bare trees. It would’ve been pretty, almost, under other circumstances. Then again, any kind of sign of life, of the world at large, of hope… any of it would’ve seemed pretty.
A Chinese jeep honked behind them — jeep, truck, whatever they called ’em here — and Cal moved to the side of the road as quickly as possible. The traffic today was getting more frequent, and all heading in the same direction they were marching. At this point, that seemed like a good thing, since there might actually be a destination in store.
Back on the road, he found himself next to Padilla and Yamato. “How’s he doing?” Cal whispered. Speaking out loud wasn’t in the cards, not unless they all wanted a good, solid beating.
“No good,” Padilla replied. “They beat him bad last night.”
Cal frowned, nodded, and went back to walking. If he could just get some juice, he could fix up Yamato and, at that point, they could easily head for the hills. Cal had healed far worse than what the kid had suffered, even to the point of brain damage. But there was nothing for it — the opportunities were just too scarce, and nobody really wanted to touch the prisoners, all caked with mud, soiled from the lack of bathroom breaks, cold and probably sick with the flu or whatever the hell was gonna get ’em.
Sally and Winston occupied a lot of Cal’s thoughts. He had little whispered conversations with them, telling them all the things he wanted them to know. He prayed to Jesus that they’d somehow hear him, and dared to hope that his prayers would be answered, because faith was all he really had left going for him at this point. He thought of Frank and Danny, that poor girl Maggie, and whispered some thoughts to them, too. Just in case.
Cal wasn’t planning on dying, of course. He was still looking for the escape route. But nobody gets to choose when they’re called home, so best to make peace when you can.
Finally, around the next bend, Cal saw some better odds.
They had arrived.
The camp was large — much larger than the little cluster of buildings he’d stayed at back at Area 51, but not so large as, say, Mountain Home. He figured it was maybe half a square mile, surrounded by a pair of barbed wire fences. There were wooden watch towers set up here and there, seemingly at random, and Cal immediately wondered if there was a blind spot in the sightlines. Something to check out later, if given the opportunity.
The POWs were marched through the gates and into a courtyard surrounded by tents, huts, and sheet metal buildings cobbled together from scrap. The nicer tents had Chinese and Korean labels on them — Cal was getting better at telling the two languages apart, if not actually understanding any of the characters — while the sheet metal buildings seemed to be for the actual prisoners. A few groups of POWs were being marched to and from some of the buildings, no more than four or five at a time.
And God, they looked horrible.
Most of them were skinny to the point of emaciated, practically rattling around inside the uniforms hanging off their bony bodies. Scraggly beards, sunken eyes, unkempt hair… Cal was aghast at the treatment, and couldn’t help thinking it was likely a preview of what might be in store for him soon. He thought back to the American camps where they questioned the Korean and Chinese prisoners — was that just last week? — and seeing the difference in treatment was a real punch in the gut.
“Wha….what….?”
Cal turned and saw Yamato looking up, half-dazed but trying to figure out where he was, what was going on. Stepping over to him, Cal whispered, “Hey, buddy. Keep your head down. We’re at a camp. We gotta try to stick together. Remember our capture plans from the briefing, okay? We’re gonna be okay.”
Anything further was cut off as something hard smashed into the back of Cal’s head, sending him to the muddy ground, dazed. Looking up, his vision blurred, Cal saw a soldier standing over him, with something… yeah, a rifle… carrying a rifle. Probably had taken the butt to the head.
Without really thinking about it, Cal reached out and touched the man’s ankle. Just a little. Just enough.
It was more than a little.
The man cried out as he aged suddenly, the scream piercing through Cal’s haze just as surely as the life flowed out of the soldier and into him. Stronger and surer, Cal flipped onto his back, still grasping the Korean man, and grabbed Yamato’s leg with his other hand.
“Give ’em hell, son,” Cal muttered.
Rick Yamato needed no encouragement.
Cal’s eyes were blinded by white-hot lightning, which seemed to erupt from all around Yamato’s body. There were screams and shouts, quickly joined by the sound of gunfire. Cal rolled onto his stomach and saw lightning arc toward four soldiers, all with rifles pointed at them. They spasmed and fell immediately.
“Get your ass down, Rick!”
Yamato looked down at Cal and just smiled. “No.”
More shots popped off, and Cal watched helplessly as Yamato took a hit to the shoulder. The Variant staggered, but turned and let rip a half dozen bolts of lightning, one of which caught a jeep and turned it into a fireball that sent everyone ducking for cover.
“Okay! We go! We go now!” Padilla shouted, hauling Cal up by the arm. “Come on!”
But the gates were closed now, and it seemed like every goddamn Chinese and Korean Red was running toward them with guns aimed, shouting. But Yamato’s lightning was getting less impressive with each arc. The kid was nearly spent.
“Aw, no,” Cal said, shrugging off Padilla. “No, we ain’t going nowhere. Rick, let it go. Bad idea.”
By this point, Yamato was on his knees, still trying to pull the lightning out of him, but getting weaker by the second. There were dozens of Reds on the ground, but the ones most recently hit were shaking off the shock and getting back up. Cal put his hands up, and Padilla followed suit. Finally, Yamato fell over on his side, spent, and the Chinese and Koreans approached slowly, still shouting, weapons raised.
This beating’s gonna hurt, Cal thought. This is what I get for getting angry, for not planning. Stupid. So stupid.
“Tíngzh
!”
With a single shouted word from somewhere behind Cal, all the soldiers stopped shouting and advancing, holding their positions. They were still aiming their guns at the three Variants, but it was an awful lot of improvement for just one word. Cal turned to see who it was.
The first face he recognized was Kim, their translator, looking none the worse for wear. Did he turn? Was he a spy to begin with? He didn’t look happy, but he wasn’t doing a comic book villain smile, either. And he was standing next to — a step behind and to the left, really — a rather short, skinny Chinese fellow in a Red Army uniform with sergeant’s stripes. And even though that fellow, who looked to be maybe twenty, was thoroughly outranked by half a dozen officers in the mix, they all immediately seemed to defer to him.
“Black Wind,” Padilla whispered. “Is that him?”
Cal shrugged. “We’re gonna find out, I guess.”
The Chinese sergeant approached and started speaking in rapid-fire Chinese, which Kim began to translate. “The sergeant wishes to apologize for the inconvenience of the past several days. There was an error in sorting through the captives from the battle, and the sergeant was called away to attend to other matters before he could return to you. You will be treated with respect and comfort now and in the future.”