Some Fine Day (9 page)

“The truth? I hit him from behind with a club,” I say. “Twice. And that only worked for about a minute.”

He stops and turns to me. “What’s your name? Your first name, I mean.”

This catches me off guard. “Jansin,” I say.

“You don’t have to do this, Jansin,” he says, and my name sounds strange in that clipped, flat accent, like it belongs to someone else, although it also sounds like maybe that’s how you’re
supposed
to pronounce it. I’m half northern stock myself, after all.

I try for a withering look. “Unfortunately, I do.”

Will’s eyes go flat. “You don’t get it. Listen to what I’m telling you, for God’s sake. I’ve seen him tear people apart. I don’t know where you come from, what you think you know, but trust me on this one. You’re not even remotely a match for Bob. And don’t think he’ll hold back, because he won’t.”

This irritates me. When you’re short, and a girl, nobody takes you seriously. Until you convince them otherwise. “You're right. You don't know me. You don't the first thing about me,” I say haughtily. “And they were about to toss me into the sea, in case you’ve forgotten. The captain made it clear that us pikas are pretty well despised around here. Unless we have something to offer, something you need.”

“And what do you have?” he asks in a sarcastic tone that irritates me further. “Besides excessive optimism.”

“You’ll see,” I say, stepping out to the deck.

It’s cool up here and not too bright, which gives my eyes a chance to adjust to the outside world again. The cavern is immense, extending back about a hundred yards, where the water disappears into a wide fissure. We climb down a ladder to a waiting rowboat and Will takes the oars, facing me. His eyes are a stormy blue-grey and his nose is slightly crooked, like it’s been broken a few times.

“Do you have family on board?” I ask.

“They’re dead,” he says, eyes fixed on a distant point over my left shoulder.

“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago,” he replies, in a tone that discourages any more questions on the topic.

I chew on my bottom lip. Long silences are not my strong suit. They make me prone to babble, especially when I’m already nervous. I try to size him up without being too obvious about it. His dirty-blonde hair is twisted into a topknot, and he’s wearing the same jean shorts, this time with a frayed T-shirt that might have been black once but is now just a colorless grey.

As a matter of habit, my first instinct on meeting a new person is to try to figure out if I could beat them in a fight. At the Academy, this is not idle speculation. Will’s a lot taller. Not bulky like Jake, but with hard, lean muscle on his chest and arms. I’d say he has about sixty pounds on me. I bet I’m faster though. So probably an even match, if he’s had any training.

“Where’d you learn medicine?” I ask after a while.

“Books. I know a lot about plants, so I make natural remedies when we run out of drugs.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“All the time.”

“You mean, like paper books?”

He looks at me oddly. “Yes, paper books.”

This amazes me. “Hardly anyonet uses those anymore. They cost a fortune. Where do you get them?”

“Here and there.”

Thick forest slides by on our right. Many of the trees are missing their canopies. It looks like a giant hand came down and snapped off the trunks halfway up. My fear of the storms, which until now has taken a back seat to my fear of Bob, comes surging back.

“Are there animals on these islands?” I say, trying to distract the panicking, lizard part of my brain that just wants to dig a deep hole and hide there.

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Just curious. If there are people, maybe there are animals too.”

Will turns the rowboat toward the sandy shoreline of the lagoon. “Some small game, but anything too big to hide got wiped out. The ones that could, moved on a long time ago, mainly toward the poles. Birds do the best. Most species are programmed to migrate anyway, and they sense when the storms are coming, days or even weeks ahead.”

More boats are pulled up on the shore ahead of us, mostly rubber Zodiacs with electric outboards, and I see several dozen people unloading crates and carrying them into the jungle. There are kids too, which surprises me a little. The older guy, the one who voted against drowning me, is supervising the assembly of the LIDAR and other equipment, which they’re partially camouflaging under a pile of palm fronds. Everyone on the beach knows their assigned task, and the whole operation is smooth and efficient.

Will pulls hard on the oars and we coast the last few yards into the shallows. Everyone stops working and stares as we cross the sand. It’s weird to walk on something that doesn’t move, like reverse seasickness. I keep my head high and meet their eyes until they look away, uncomfortable. Most do. Not all. The ones that don’t are the younger ones who think they’re tough.

I wonder how many would even survive my last eight years of training.

We follow a footpath through the forest until we reach a small clearing. The main camp must be someplace else, or else they just spread out in small groups. There’s a few people setting up a mess tent and digging pit latrines off to the side, but they don’t pay us much attention. On the way, I think hard about running. What stops me is the fact that we’re on an island. They’d hunt me down eventually. And I know nothing about surviving on the surface, where to find food or water.

Will leads me to one of a group of plastic tarp structures. There’s a rusty cot with a blanket, and a table with a cracked water jug. There’s also a woman inside. She’s very tall and thin, and her skin is a blue-black color that almost glows. She’s wearing shorts and a tank top. Her head is shaved to the scalp. Nose straight and wide, with high cheekbones.

She’s holding a tray of surgical instruments, which she sets down on the table.

“This is my assistant, Lisa Gueye,” Will says. “Do you mind if she observes the procedure?”

“Fine by me,” I say.

Lisa smiles in a neutral way. Her teeth are crooked but clean.

“Good,” Will says. “OK, I need you to get those clothes off.”

I stare at him until he turns around, then lower the top half of my pajamas and lie face down on the cot.

“This may hurt a little,” he murmurs. I hear the clank of stainless steel on metal. “Gauze, please.”

Something wet and cold presses down between my shoulder blades.

“Healing nicely. No redness or swelling. There’ll be a scar, but it’s not in a very visible location.”

“Does it matter which one you start with?” Lisa asks.

“Not really. We’ll go top down.”

There’s a tug on my back, but it’s not particularly painful. More of a tickling sensation. The whole thing lasts about fifteen minutes.

“All set,” Will says finally. “You’ll feel a bumpy ridge there, but it should flatten out in two to three months.”

Unspoken is whether I’ll be around in two to three months. Or two to three hours.

“Thanks,” I say. “It feels better.”

“Just try not to rip it open,” Will says, not looking at me as he bags the dirty gauze. “We’re already running low on everything again.”

“I’ll do my best,” I say, more lightly than I feel.

Lisa leaves and Will moves to follow her, then stops and turns back. “I still think you’re a fool. But since I can’t talk you out of it, I’d advise you to kick him in the. . . you know. It’s your best chance. I’m really not in the mood to patch you up again. We’re out of painkillers entirely.”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” I say. “But I don’t plan on needing your help. Bob might though.”

I mumble the word “quack” under my breath and disguise it as a cough.

Will seems on the verge of saying something else, and then two guys are outside the tent. I get up before they can tell me to and we walk back down the path to the beach. The children are gone but all the adults are there, at least a hundred people. I spot Bob right away. He’s squatting on the sand at the edge of the crowd, which has formed a rough semicircle. He’s staring into space and when we get closer, I realize he’s humming to himself. God knows what he’s thinking. Probably what he’s going to eat for lunch after he breaks every bone in my body.

The murmur of the crowd grows silent as we approach. I take slow, deep breaths. I’ve fought plenty of guys before, I remind myself. And won, too.

Not this big, though. Not even close.

The thing is, Bob’s an unknown. If he’s been trained in any kind of formal fighting system, I’m in trouble. If he’s a lot faster than he looks, I’m in trouble. One plus is that Bob will almost certainly underestimate me. How could he not? I’m wearing my pajamas, and two of me probably still wouldn’t equal one of him.

“Right!” Banerjee says loudly, stepping to the center of the circle. “Let’s recap. The prisoner issued a challenge. Bob accepted. If she wins. . .” Banerjee looks at me in a way that implies the probability of such an outcome is vanishingly small. “If she wins, she earns the right to food and shelter for the duration of our stay here. She will also teach anyone combat who wants to learn.”

I notice she doesn’t say, “stay with us, period,” but I’ll take what I can get.

“And if she loses?” calls out the older guy from the boat.

“Well, Charlie,” Banerjee says calmly, “there’s an atoll six degrees northwest of here that’s suitable. If you’ll recall, we left a rapist there two years ago.” She turns to me. “Don’t worry, a storm came through not long after. He won’t be there anymore. You’ll have the place all to yourself.”

Curiously enough, this doesn’t make me feel any better.

The sand is hot under my feet as I walk up to the ring of spectators. They move back as I pass, clearing a path to Bob, who’s waiting just above the high tide line. There are no taunts or jeers. The crowd is restrained, solemn even. Blood pounds in my ears, the sound mingling with the crashing of the surf until all I hear is a dull roar.

“There will be no weapons,” Banerjee pronounces. “And I’d prefer it if no one is killed. This is not blood sport. It’s a demonstration of skill.” She steps back. “Proceed.”

As I hoped, Bob immediately charges, head lowered like a bull. If he were experienced, he’d wait to see how I move, what I know. And he wouldn’t open with something so obvious, and so easy to counter. I wait until the last moment, then pivot to the side and let him blow by. He comes at me twice more, and both times I sidestep the attack. He’s getting winded, and frustrated too, so on the next rush, he pulls one giant fist back for a haymaker. With Bob’s raw power, if he lands a single punch like that, the damage will be major. I lean back and his fist whistles past my face, but he’s off-balance now, his weight too far forward, so I step onto his bent right leg and spring back to give myself room for a round kick to the face. My shin connects squarely with Bob’s cheekbone, and he staggers. His bell’s been rung, but not for long. I need to break something. Put him in shock. It’s the only way to stop him.

Bones can be set. I figure an arm or leg would be perfectly in line with Banerjee’s directive.

Bob recovers and kicks sand at my face, but it’s dry and powdery and all I have to do is turn my back for an instant to let it pass harmlessly by. Then I drop onto my hands as he rushes again and donkey-kick him in the stomach. There’s a whoosh of stale breath, he hunches over, and I spin clockwise and grab his right wrist, intending to pull him down into an armbar, but he suddenly stands up. His face is bright pink, rage and consternation twisting his childlike features. I pull harder but Bob’s got to be upward of two fifty, two sixty pounds and I just don’t have the power to bring him down. So I switch tactics and let my upward momentum take me to where I can wrap my left leg around his neck and squeeze.

My entire body weight is hanging on Bob’s right arm and shoulder, he’s starting to arch backwards, but I’m out of leverage. In another few seconds, he’ll shake me off like a dog drying itself after a bath. So I push my right knee into his lower back and pull back with my left. That does it, and Bob goes down.

Someone in the crowd lets out a hoot. We’re locked together on the ground. I’ve got him half in the armbar, one foot propped on his ribcage and the other still hooked around his neck. I strain as hard as I can to fully extend the joint lock on his elbow and bring it to the edge of snapping. Pain and compliance. But Bob is crazy strong. He flexes his bicep, which is the size of a grapefruit, and I feel myself rising. So I sit up, hug his wrist tight against my chest, and lie straight back down again. Bob’s arm stretches out a bit more but his elbow’s still crooked just enough to thwart the armbar. Then he grunts with effort and begins to turn toward me, and I can feel his arm, the fine blonde hairs slick with sweat, start to slide through my hands and down my body.

I can’t let him break free. He’d be on top of me in a second. I raise my bent right leg and smash it down into his solar plexus. His mouth opens and shuts, but no sound comes out because his diaphragm is frozen. Before he can recover, I straddle his hips and start whaling on his face with everything I’ve got, fists and elbows, at the same time using an open palm to whip his head from side to side. I’ve had this done to me before, much less hard than I’m doing to Bob right now, and it’s almost impossible to regroup because besides the pain of getting hit, your point of focus is constantly shifting. It’s like being inside a nightmarish gyroscope.

This goes on for ten or twenty seconds – I’m not really sure, time slows to a crawl when you’re fighting flesh-on-bone – and then Bob pulls it together somehow. Instead of using his hands to try to block the flurry of blows raining down on his face, he grabs me around the waist and bucks upward with tremendous force. It’s like being launched from a cannon. I fly through the air a good fifteen feet to the edge of the waves. The half-healed scar on my back breaks open; warm liquid spills down my ribs. I push up to hands and knees, disoriented and plastered with sand. I tried to tuck and roll into the landing, but it was still jarring. The faces of the crowd are all blurry, like they’re drifting under a foot of water.