I turned to look at my companions. Apart from Étienne and Françoise, I doubt any of them had seen the VC before and I was interested to see their reaction. It was suitably awed. A couple had dropped to their knees, Moshe and one of the gardeners, and the others were frozen in a perfect tableau of fright. Slack jaws, tensed jaws, arms bunched up to chests. I almost envied them. For a first encounter, it took some beating.
Apocalypse
I had realized that escape was not an option and we were all about to get killed, and accepted the realization without bitterness. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop it happening, and I felt I’d be dying with a clear conscience. Although I’d known that Vietnam might end this way, I hadn’t run. I’d selflessly stuck around until I was sure that my friends would be able to run with me. For once, I’d done the right thing.
And this is why I was furious that the VC weren’t doing the right thing. They weren’t doing the right thing at all, and I was outraged.
As I’d turned back from looking at my companions, I saw the dope-guard boss jab a finger at me. The next moment, one of his men dragged me out of the marquee and forced me to the ground. Appalled, it dawned on me I was going to get shot first.
First! If I had to get shot, then tenth, eleventh, twelfth – fine. But first. I couldn’t believe it. I’d miss out on everything.
The guard rested the muzzle of his AK against my forehead. ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ I said angrily. ‘You’re really screwing up.’ I tilted my head at Moshe. ‘Why don’t you do him instead? What difference does it make to you? Do him.’
His sleek face gazed down at me indifferently.
‘Him, for Christ’s sake! That ape!’
‘… Aape.’
‘Ape, you fucking slope! You dink mother-fucker! That gorilla! Him over there!’
I pointed at Moshe, who moaned feebly. Then the guard behind kicked me in the back.
‘Oh shit,’ I gasped as red pain burned into my kidneys.
Unable to stop myself I rolled over on to my side, and saw my friends. The tableau didn’t seem to have shifted, apart from Étienne, who had covered his eyes.
‘OK.’ With an effort, I got back on to my knees. ‘At least let me choose who does it.’
I didn’t make the mistake of pointing again. Instead I swivelled around so that it was the kick-boxer’s gun that was aiming at my head.
‘I want this guy. Fair enough, right? Get him to do it.’
Kick-boxer frowned, then glanced over at the boss. The boss shrugged.
‘Yes you. You with the dragon tattoo.’ I paused, then had a look at his mouth. It was closed, pouting slightly with his puzzled expression. ‘Guess what? I know you don’t have any front teeth!’ I showed him mine and gave them a tap. ‘Missing, huh?’
He lifted a wary finger and touched between his lips.
‘That’s right!’ I yelled. ‘You don’t have any front teeth! And I already knew that!’
The kick-boxer kept his finger in his mouth a few moments, exploring his gums. Then he said something to the boss in Thai.
‘Ah.’ The boss nodded. ‘You the boy always come to see us… Every day, ha? You li’ to come see us.’
I glared at him. Then, to my surprise, he squatted beside me and ruffled my hair.
‘Funny boy in trees, every day. We li’ you too. Take some Mary-Jane, ha? OK Mary-Jane. Some Mary-Jane, for you frien’s.’
‘Hurry up and kill me,’ I said bravely.
‘Kill you? Ah, funny boy… I no’ kill you now.’ He ruffled my hair again and rose. ‘I no’ kill anyone now,’ he said to the huddled figures under the marquee. ‘I give you warning. You people here, tha’ OK for me. One year, two year, three year, no problem, ha?’
If he was waiting for a reply, none came. This seemed to piss him off. He took a slow lungful of air, then flew into a hysteria of rage. ‘Bu’ now, you makin’ problem! You makin’ bad fuckin’ problem!’
There was complete silence as he reached into his pockets and pulled out a piece of paper. Even the cicadas seemed to have got the message. ‘You makin’ maps!’ he screamed. Half the next sentence was lost on me, drowned out by a pounding in my ears. ‘…Bu’ why you wan’ do tha’? Maps bring new people! New people here! New people are danger for me! Tha’ is bad fuckin’ danger for you!’
He hesitated, and with the same bewildering abruptness, became calm again. ‘Okey-dokey,’ he muttered. Then he dropped the map on the dirt, unholstered his pistol, and fired a shot into it. The shot missed but was close enough to send the paper fluttering into the air. For the second time I was deafened. The muzzle had only been a foot away from my head.
When my hearing began to return, the boss was chatting away in an eerily conversational tone of voice. ‘So, my frien’s. I li’ you all ve’y much. Ve’y good. One year, two years, no problem. So you lis’en to my warning. Nex’ time I will kill you all.’
This final remark didn’t have time to sink in, because for a third time my senses were put out of action. The boss punctuated his sentence by whipping his gun on the top of my head. Out of shock, I tried to stand up, and he hit me again. I dropped straight back down to my knees. The next thing I knew he was holding on to the back of my T-shirt, keeping me steady.
‘Wait,’ I said thickly. My bravado was entirely gone. I was afraid. Having had a little taste of what it might be like, I was absolutely certain I didn’t want to be beaten to death. ‘Wait a moment please.’
No use. The boss hit me incredibly hard. For a few seconds I was conscious, staring at his shoes. Reeboks, like the Ko Samui spiv. Then I blacked out.
I didn’t know what was going on. A few things registered – footsteps, rustling, some hushed Thai voices, a couple of kicks that rolled me over. But none of these things felt connected to any of the others. They were arbitrary and baffling.
When I was finally able to get up and stay up, which must have been at least ten minutes later, the VC had gone. I began crawling back to the marquee, where I could still see the blurred shapes of my companions, and while I crawled I abstractedly wondered why I’d been chosen as the punch-bag. In fact, why have a punch-bag at all? If they hadn’t been planning on shooting us, it seemed unfair to have put me through all that pain.
Now
There was another question that I should have been asking myself, but wasn’t. In my now considerable experience, it’s part of the strange way the brain works when reeling from a severe knock. You get hung up on the inconsequential mysteries and not the important ones.
The question I should have been asking was, why wasn’t anyone coming to help me? If I’d been out for ten minutes, as I suspected I had, then they’d had plenty of time to get their act together. But there they were, cowering behind the circle of candles, as much use as a bunch of waxworks.
‘Help me,’ I slurred. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
I tried to scowl at them, which was extremely difficult. Apart from being out of focus, I was seeing double so I wasn’t sure where the scowl should be directed.
‘Keaty… help.’
Hearing his name seemed to spur him into life. He took a few steps towards me, but even through my fucked-up eyes I could tell there was something weird about the way he was moving. It was as if he was scared of something over my shoulder.
My elbows gave way and my chin hit the ground. I dribbled to get the dust off my mouth. ‘Hurry, Keaty.’
Then he was next to me, with someone else. Françoise, by the smell. They picked me up and pulled me back to the marquee, only strong enough to raise my arms and shoulders. When I passed over the candles, they were extinguished by my stomach. It was an extra bit of pain I really didn’t need, but at least it startled me into thinking a bit more clearly. And a gulp of coconut beer was a boost too. It goes to vinegar pretty fast, and the stuff I gulped down was already on the turn. Sharp enough to make me wince and shut my eyes, and when I re-opened them, my sight was back to normal.
At last I w
as able to see why everyone had turned into statues. Using Étienne and one of the bamboo poles that supported the canopy of sheets, I hauled myself up to a standing position. The VC hadn’t felt that beating me up was a severe enough warning. They’d left us with a reminder, just to ram the point home.
Bullets had done nasty things to the rafters. Big holes, smashed skulls. All the bodies were naked, suggesting they’d been stripped before they were killed. Rigor mortis had given them strange positions. Sammy was lying on his back, but he must have been on his front when the stiffness set in, so he looked as if he were pushing upwards against the weight of the sky. The German girl with the pretty laugh and long hair was on her side. She looked as if she was asking for a hug.
I don’t see any need to describe them further. I’ve only described them as far as I have because it’s relevant to what happened next.
To have been confronted with such a sight would have been bad at the best of times. Directly following the scene with the dope guards would have made it worse. But to have been through all that while you were tripping – it would drive anyone crazy.
‘Right,’ Sal said, coming out of her trance, and began to walk towards the heap of bodies. ‘I think we should get this cleaned up. It won’t take long if we all…’
She paused. Her shoulders twitched as if she were slipping off a jacket, and she sat down with a thump.
‘It won’t take long. Come on everyone. Let’s get this mess cleaned up.’
She stood up again.
‘This mess. Such a mess.’
The German guy was trapped beneath Zeph’s chest, and his rigid arms were hooking the two of them together. Sal couldn’t make him budge. We all watched in silence as she yanked uselessly at the German’s legs.
‘What a mess,’ Sal panted, and gave another hard tug.
Her grip slipped.
She fell backwards, twisting as she fell, and landed on Sammy’s corpse.
‘Clumsy,’ she exclaimed brightly.
Then she started screaming and clawing at her cheeks. Sal and Sammy’s faces had made contact as she rolled off him, and Sammy had no lower jaw.
She screamed the way some people cry. The people who never normally cry, so you know that the tears are coming from somewhere unthinkably deep inside. It was a sound that made my skin crawl, but for Bugs, it seemed to blow his mind.
I’ve thought a lot about what he did, and I’ve got two explanations. One is that he was angry with Sammy for having kissed Sal. The other is that he saw Sammy as the cause of Sal’s misery, and he wanted to make the misery stop. Both explanations rely on Bugs being insane, but that’s OK. He was.
He called Sal’s name. Then he sobbed, only once, not loudly. Then he went over to the seating area and picked up one of Unhygienix’s stubby cooking knives. Then he went over to Sammy and attacked him.
It began with kicking, which quickly became stabbing. In the chest, the groin, the arms, anything. Next he straddled the corpse and began tugging at the neck. Or that’s what I thought he was doing. It wasn’t completely clear through the shadows, and most of the view was blocked by Bugs’ broad back. I only saw when he rose up. He’d cut Sammy’s head off. Cut it off, and was swinging it by the hair.
And suddenly Jean had a knife and was cutting at the thin German girl, slicing into her belly and pulling out her insides. Then Cassie joined them, hunched over Zeph, working on his thighs. Étienne vomited, and within seconds the corpses were swarmed.
*
Looking back, I know that we could have left at that moment. There were still people under the marquee – all the cooks, Jesse, Gregorio, and a few of the gardeners – but they wouldn’t have tried to stop us. And I was physically able to leave. The scene in front of me had sent so much adrenalin pumping through my system that my battering was forgotten. I could have run a marathon if necessary, let alone crept into the darkness.
But we stayed put. We were transfixed by the dissection of the rafters. Every severed limb seemed to root me further to the spot.
Friendly Fire
I don’t know how long the frenzy lasted. It could have been as long as half an hour. The cutters had to fret and struggle with some of the joints, twisting arms around until tendons gave way. But at some point, I noticed that the crowd had dispersed, sitting exhausted beside their handiwork or milling in the darkness. Only Moshe remained. He was concentrating on something small, a finger perhaps, and he didn’t seem to feel it was small enough. It was while I was watching Moshe that I heard Sal’s voice.
‘Wait on Chaweng for three days,’ she read with numbing coldness. ‘If we haven’t come back by then it means we made it. See you there? Richard.’
The words took time for me to comprehend. Several seconds passed in which they meant nothing beyond random noises. But then, with a flash of understanding so tangible I almost saw it, their relevance became clear.
I turned. Sal was standing beside me, holding the piece of paper the VC boss had left behind. It had passed me by, that piece of paper. Deafened, pistol-whipped, its importance had been missed.
‘… See you there,’ she repeated flatly. ‘… Richard.’
Outside the marquee, the surgeons stirred. Some came close by, nudging past Keaty, who was staring at me with a peculiarly blank expression.
‘Richard?’ one of them whispered. ‘Richard brought the people here?’ It was a girl, but she was so stained with red and black that I couldn’t place her.
More arrived, quietly surrounding me, shutting off Keaty and Françoise. Desperately, I began to search for a face I knew. I felt I could appeal to someone if I found a face I knew. I could plead a case. But the more cutters that arrived, the more anonymous they became. Under their shifting feet, candles were kicked over. Darkness grew, features melted. When Étienne vanished, I was alone with strangers.
‘Jean!’ I shouted.
The strangers laughed.
‘Moshe! Cassie! I know you’re here!… Sal! Sal!’
But she had gone too. Where she’d been, a squat creature hissed at me. ‘After Tet, life will be back to normal.’
‘Sal, please,’ I said, and a needle jabbed into my leg. I looked down. I’d been stabbed. Not deeply, but somehow that scared me more. I cried out and was stabbed again. The same pressure. Half an inch into the skin, this time my arm, the next time my chest.
For a moment I was too shocked to do anything but stupidly wipe at the blood running down my stomach. Then terror bubbled up in me, and when it reached my throat I started screaming. I also tried to fight. I threw a punch at the nearest face but it landed poorly and glanced harmlessly off the person’s cheek-bone. The next punch I threw was blocked, and my wrists were held.
I pleaded, ‘Don’t,’ and began spinning. Fear gave me strength and I managed to wrench myself free of the hold. But every time I span away from the knives, I was cut from behind. I could feel from the impact of the blows that the stabs were getting worse. No longer piercing but slicing. A different pain, less acute. Infinitely more alien and alarming.
‘Not like that,’ I sobbed.
Something slippery was wrapped around my neck. Intestines. Mine, I thought, my brain convulsing with fright, and tore them off. The strangers laughed and more objects were thrust at me. A hand that pawed my chest. An ear, clamped to the side of my head.
Feeling my knees about to buckle, I bunched up my arms. A last time, I looked up at howling figures and their knives. I called for Sal again. I asked her to make them stop. I told her that I was very sorry for whatever I’d done, but I didn’t know what it was any more. I only knew that I’d never wanted to do anything bad.
Finally I called out for Daffy Duck.
Suddenly, in the whirling faces, I saw one I recognized.
But Nothing
The stabbing continued, but it no longer hurt. The faces continued whirling, but the face I knew remained constant. I could talk to it calmly, and it could talk back.
‘Daffy,’ I said. ‘This is fucked
.’
‘Yeah, GI.’ He smiled. ‘Beaucoup bad shit.’
‘Fragged by my own side.’
‘Happens all the time.’
A blade punctured my top lip. ‘It doesn’t mean anything, right?’
‘Doesn’t mean much.’
‘Never should have been here. That’s all.’ I sighed as my legs collapsed and I fell down to the palm-leaf carpet. ‘Jesus, this is a nasty way to die. At least it’s ending.’
‘Ending?’ Daffy shook his head. ‘It can’t end now.’
‘Can’t?’
‘Come on, Rich. Think. Think how it ought to end.’
‘Ought to…’
‘A flat roof, a panicking crowd, not enough room on the…’
‘…Last chopper out.’
‘That’s the boy.’
‘Evacuation.’
‘Every time.’
Daffy was gone. The knives had stopped. One of the cutters had started twisting, fumbling at her belly, and another was toppling sideways, flailing out with his arms.
I looked around and saw Jed standing beside me. And beside him, Keaty, Étienne and Françoise. The four of them carried fishing spears, points fanning outwards. On the ground, Bugs sat with his arms crossed, fresh blood spilling into his lap. Moshe leant against one of the bamboo posts, sucking air through clenched teeth, clutching his ribs.
‘You all keep back!’ Jed yelled. He reached down, lifted my arm over his shoulders, and dragged me up. ‘Keep back!’
Bugs slumped forwards. ‘But,’ said Sal. ‘But…’ She took a step in our direction, and Jed pushed his spear deep into the folds of her shirt. Immediately he pulled it back. Sal remained standing, swaying as the point exited.
‘Back!’ Jed yelled again. ‘All of you keep back!’
And amazingly, they all did. Though we were outnumbered and they could have easily prevented us if they’d wanted to, they let us go. I don’t think it was because of Sal, who had closed her eyes and couldn’t seem to catch her breath. It was because they were tired. Their slack arms and glazed eyes told me as much. Tired of everything. Beaucoup bad shit, too beaucoup.