If you missed earlier chapters, here: https://wyattwerne.substack.com/s/blackbird
POTOU, ZHANJIANG, GUANGDONG PROVINCE, CHINA
“Mom.” Jing tugged at her arm. “Mom, we have to go, now.”
Eddies of the acrid blue-gray fog of spent rifle cartridges stung Shi’s eyes. She turned away from Jing to hide the welling moisture. Chunks of wallboard and white dust covered her kitchen counter. Assault rifle bullets punched sooty donut holes in cabinets, glass spiderwebs on her microwave, and funnel-shaped aluminum dents in her oven.
Until this moment, the idea of being on the run was something other people did. Dissenters. Not her; her husband was a decorated PLA Navy Captain. Even when the MSS agent, now dead on her kitchen floor, poked his pistol through the door of her condo, running had been a distant, unreal choice.
“Mom.” Another arm tug.
“Give me a minute, Jing.”
“We don’t have time to argue. We need to go before someone comes and discovers the body.”
The world was upside down. Her teenage daughter was the calm one, telling her what to do. The PLA toppled everything she’d worked for and tried to crush her family. “What happened to the guard outside?”
There was silence for a beat, and then a young male voice answered, “I tranqed him.”
Li Heng, the son of Ding Heng, her husband’s Executive Officer.
“That was horse tranquilizer in those darts, did you know that? You’ve probably killed the guard too,” she said to the blue cloud drifting through her kitchen.
Silence.
His mother was a veterinarian, and he helped in her clinic. Surely he knew the dosage.
Killing the guard bought them more time. The idea had probably occurred to him as he pulled the trigger of the dart pistol. But Li was smart, well-mannered, and so wouldn’t admit to intentionally killing the guard or the agent.
Red and white liquids dripped from bullet holes in the refrigerator in slow motion and pooled around the MSS agent’s body. She struggled to breathe and think. They couldn’t leave the guard outside.
Her daughter should be the one paralyzed and crying, not her. She wanted to scream, “Why did they do this to her?” She swallowed the scream, not wanting to alert the neighbors or scare her daughter. Then she laughed through her tears. If she screamed, the neighbors would think the MSS agent was torturing her. They had heard the automatic gunfire, but a lifetime of fear had turned people into minimally compliant sheep. She’d been foolish. Her family was nothing more than mutton to PLA party officials. Her neighbors weren’t coming out, lest they be slaughtered too.
She felt as though she was waking from a nightmare. “Go take his rifle, his phone, everything, and drag him in here—quietly”.
“Mom.”
“Don’t Mom me. Go do it. We can’t have the neighbors stepping over the guard outside. It will buy us more time.”
“Come, Jing,” Li said, and then she heard footfalls. The front door creaked open.
Her mind was as foggy as her kitchen, as if the horse tranquilizer dart that killed the MSS agent on the floor had struck her instead. She wanted to lie down and sleep. Her ears still rang. The rifle fire had pummeled the energy out of her.
On her hip, the agent’s black pistol, with QSZ-92, stamped on the slide like millions of others made in factories around China, except this one distinguished by smears of the pink ooze flowing across the bamboo floor. Her left hand held a cell phone with a smudged thumbprint on the screen.
It was the dead MSS agent’s. She’d unlocked it, but she wasn’t sure what to do with it. She should ditch it. It could be tracked.
Scrolling through the phone, she found her husband’s number, as she expected. The MSS agent came here to negotiate a trade. Instead, his soul was being led through the underworld. Let him negotiate his harsh punishment for his life with the Ten Courts of Hell. She wanted to spit on him, but her mouth was dry and tasted of bitter, burned gunpowder.
They faced a long, treacherous journey through their own earthly underworld now. Maybe she could use the phone as a decoy, leading the MSS away from them as she escaped.
She scrolled and dialed. Her husband picked up, which meant he was not far offshore, or still in port. He said, “I told you, when you deliver our families—”
“Xia, it’s me.”
During the beat of silence, she heard machine noises and electronic blips. He was on Fuzhou’s bridge.
“Have they hurt you?” He asked.
Almost, she wanted to say, but there was no point. “No. I am at home with Jing and Li. The MSS agent they sent is—unalive.” She said it indirectly, superstitiously, as if there were gods listening who she might offend, or censors. As she said it, she felt foolish.
“I see. Is Jing ok? May I speak with her?”
“Jing is—she is cleaning up. Where are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. I will come to you.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. The agent knew we were to meet at the beach. I think they will be waiting for us. One other thing, Li’s mother is missing.”
Shi heard muffled voices, and then her husband said, “Lieutenant Commander Heng says today is Monday, so Li’s mother will be at the medical library.”
Shi squinted. “Why the library?”
“Just tell him that. Go to the bedroom, into the closet. Under the rug you will find what you need.”
Her husband was talking in riddles. Then, it occurred to her that the MSS may have bugged her house, or was recording the phone conversation. “Xia—”
“Go now. This is very dangerous.”
“How will I—” Shi was listening to silence on the phone, and Li and Jing tussling with a body in the hall.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and moistened her mouth, trying to wash away the stinging particulates of gunpowder stuck to her lips. Inhaling one ragged breath and then a second, she gathered herself and wobbled to the bedroom, past the bathroom door hanging off its hinges. The soldier who’d kicked through her house to search it had removed every drawer from her bedroom dressers, dumped them on the bed, and then swept nicknacks onto the floor. Cheap theatrical intimidation tactics, like shooting up her kitchen, but it gave her an idea that might buy her more time.
Her closet was in the corner. She climbed over the mess and dug through the clothes that the soldier ripped off the hangars, clearing her closet floor. She felt along the baseboard and around the edges of the beige pile carpet until she found a loose corner of rug and jerked.
The rug came up along with a square section of padding. Underneath, a rectangle of plywood had been cut, like a trapdoor.
“Mom? Mom where are you?” Jing was in the hall.
“I’m in the closet.”
“We need to go.”
Shi shook her head and wiped her face. Jing should be in school, studying to prepare for university. A fingernail broke as she tried to pry the wood floorboard open. “Drag the bodies in here.”
“They are heavy, Mom.”
“Do you need me to help?”
“No.” Li’s voice, standing at the bedroom threshold.
“Drag the bodies into the bedrooms and hide them under the beds,” she said, as she found two wood screws slightly raised, like handles.
She wedged her fingernails under the screws and pulled. A thick, rectangular section of plywood subfloor lifted. “Bury them in this mess. It will buy us more time.”
She should be telling her daughter to finish her calculus, or yelling at her for spending too much time on her social app, not teaching her how to hide two dead bodies. Or, she should be helping her write a political science essay about the hypocrisy and failure of the Party.
Shi screamed and battered the wall and floor of her closet with the plywood floorboard. Splinters flew.
“Mom?” Jing said meekly.
“Do as I say. Drag the bodies and hide them under the bed. Li, help her.”
Li said, “Come, Jing.”
They disappeared. She propped the cracked plywood against the closet wall and exhaled a ragged breath.
Underneath the floor, her husband had hidden a black backpack.
As she opened the backpack, she heard Jing and Li wrestling the guard’s body to the bedroom door. Li entered, pushing the drawers and clutter to the side of the bed. He lifted the mattress and propped it against the wall.
The backpack held wads of cash, a zippered black pouch, a gun identical to the one on her hip, and framed pictures of her parents and his. She rubbed her thumb over the pictures. Was it synchronicity? Xia’s mother had been a Hong Kong dissident before party officials sent her to be re-educated. People died, but ideas could never be censored or murdered or erased. They could go dormant for a period, underground, like seeds after a great forest fire. The Party could burn the country to the ground in its crusade for control, burn her family to the ground, but ideas were bigger and would always sprout from the ashes.
In the hall, she heard groaning and scuffling. She put the pictures aside and riffled the cash wads. Renminbi. Euros. US Dollars. New Zealand Dollars. Rupees. Her husband had hidden a lot of money.
Inside the black pouch, three forged Vietnamese passports, one for her, one for Jing, and one for Xia. Nothing for Li or his mother. A problem to be solved, but later.
The mattress crashed onto the bed frame behind her.
Under the bundles of money, two cellphones inside signal-blocking black suede faraday bags. The government had AI that monitored for burner phones, or those with unapproved software. But the faraday bags blocked signals. So as long as the phones were in the bags, they were invisible.
She retrieved the MSS agent’s phone from her pocket, turned it off, and stuffed it into one of the faraday pouches.
Hurriedly, Shi crammed the money and other items back into the backpack, then replaced the plywood and rug.
She stood, kicking clothes and shoes into the closet. As she turned around, Li and Jing were doing the same, dumping jewelry and clothes onto the bed and then tossing the drawers after.
Jing grinned. “Like reverse-cleaning my room.”
Shi shook her head and frowned. “Where is the second body?”
Jing paused, eyes wide, hands over her head, holding a drawer in mid-toss, as if the gravity of what she’d been doing only then crashed on her.
Setting the drawer on the bed, Jing said, “Under my bed. They both wouldn’t fit under this one.”
Shi surveyed the floor. The place looked like a typhoon hit. Clothes and shoes were on the bed and floor, tangled with jewelry. Who was going to come in and look under the bed with this mess?
It would take a few days for the bodies to smell. Maybe they had a chance.
“Let’s go,” Shi said, swinging the black backpack over her shoulder and marching from the room.
“Where are we going?” Li asked.
A good question.
She halted in the hall, eyeing the streak of pink liquid on the floor. Not blood. Milk from the fridge mixed with—something, she wasn’t sure what. She grabbed a towel from the bathroom and dropped it under her feet, dragging it through the hall to wipe the streak away.
Passing by the washing machine, she opened it to see Jing had not finished her laundry. The one and only time she was glad to see this. She tossed the towel in the washer and pressed start.
In the kitchen, she opened her stove door and microwave as if the soldier had searched there too, and then overturned her dining room table and chairs.
“Mom?”
She waved at the sofa. “Pull out the cushions. Toss everything. Li, my husband said, today is Monday, so Li’s mother will be at the medical library.” She guessed it was a code in case someone eavesdropped on the conversation. “Do you know what that means?”
Li thought for a moment, and then nodded. “I do—”
Shi put her hands to her lips. “We will go there first.”
Jing and Li snatched the couch cushions and tossed them across the room. Jing looked irritatingly pleased as she trashed the house, smirking and smiling at Shi. When they were finished, Jing stood at the door and turned out all the lights. Shi waved at Li and pointed at the curtains. He hurried to the window, tugged and hung on the curtains for a moment, and then the curtain rod snapped from the wall and collapsed on him.
Jing giggled. Shi shushed her. Nothing about this was funny.
Jing and Li exited first. As Shi closed the door, she thought about all the roadblocks, the checkpoints, the patrols, and the border guards between here and Vietnam. Her husband told her often of dissidents caught escaping through the mountains. Was he warning her, or preparing her? He said that getting over the border was relatively easy. Immigration used minimal effort to stop people and often overlooked obviously flawed passports. Complacency was the enemy. In Vietnam and Laos, the police in border cities were corrupt and paid to report illegal Chinese immigration. They would not be safe simply because they crossed the border. In China, it was illegal to leave. In America, it was illegal to enter. An irony she never considered until now.
In the hallway, Li and Jing stared at her expectantly as she closed the door. Li was dressed in an army uniform, with a rifle slung across his chest. He looked the same age as the soldier who came in, destroyed her house, and shot up her kitchen. Jing, also in an army uniform, held the tranquilizer dart pistol.
“How many darts do we have left?” She asked Jing.
“We have two.”
Shi put her hand out. “Give me that. My daughter is not killing anyone.”
The look on Jing’s face said it was too late, that she’d fired the dart gun. Jing withdrew the dart gun, hugging it to her chest.
Shi shook her head and led them down the hall and down the stairs.
They exited the front door. On the right, under a lamp, the soldier she’d watched from her window stood by a jeep, his QBZ-95 bullpup rifle slung over his chest, and his hand to his face as he inhaled the red flame from his cigarette.
Smoking again. He shouldn’t be smoking on duty. What would her husband say? Nothing kind.
But he wasn’t looking at them. Instead, his eyes were fixed on a point three hundred meters down the street. Shi saw torches, and people dressed in head-to-toe black and waving placards. A protest. She would praise her luck, except almost every night there was a protest happening somewhere now.
The jeep was green, like every other 4-door 4x4 jeep in Chinese military inventory, with a soft top canvas roof. There were thousands like it, in highway convoys, traveling to snuff out protests. It was nothing special, except that it was empty, the soldier was alone, and they needed transportation.
“Wait here, in the shadow,” she told Li and Jing. She handed Jing the backpack.
Walking towards the smoking soldier, she shouted at him, mustering words she thought her husband might use to scold him.
As she hollered and admonished the soldier for smoking, he quickly threw the cigarette butt on the ground, stamped it, and then stood at attention.
“You are a disgrace!” The soldier was a head taller and kept his gaze fixed beyond her. She snatched the pack of cigarettes from his arm sleeve and trampled them under her boots. Then she released the quick snaps on his rifle sling. It clangored to the ground.
“Go! Run down there and help!”
The soldier hesitated, squinting.
“Now, soldier!”
“My rifle.”
She unholstered her pistol. “I should shoot you where you stand. You have dishonored the Party and that uniform. Prove to me you deserve to wear it.”
Her heart trembled in her throat. Did he recognize her? Would she have to shoot him?
The soldier blinked and darted down the street. She watched him until he was a hundred meters away and then reholstered her pistol and picked up the rifle.
She got in the jeep and put the rifle beside her seat. Chinese military vehicles were simple. No keys, because it made no sense to require soldiers to look for keys during a firefight. And no GPS, because the vehicles were usually in a convoy, and the soldiers themselves carried electronics.
The soldier was now a running shadow two hundred meters down the road.
She smiled and started the jeep, allowing herself a moment of optimism as the diesel engine growled to life. It was about eight hours to the North Vietnamese border. But first, she needed to pick up Li’s mother and get them passports. She exhaled. One problem at a time. She removed the parking brake and tamped the accelerator, rolling the steering wheel towards Jing and Li, who were obscuring themselves at the corner of the building in the dark. Maybe they’d escape after all.