Perfect Justice

25.

NHUNG VU SET THE three boxes down and searched his pockets for the keys to the broken-down ’68 Oldsmobile communally owned by Coi Than Tien. The car was a relic, an embarrassment, but it was all that was available to him today. They only had two cars, and Elder Dang had taken the other for the day. Come to that, the ’74 Ford Pinto might be worse than the Oldsmobile.

Nhung slid the first box of supplies into the front seat, careful not to break or spill anything. He didn’t want Pham to be angry with him. Many of Pham’s followers still did not want Nhung included in their group, even after he proved himself during the midnight raid. He was too young, they said. Too green.

For the time being, Pham had restricted Nhung to supply runs and similar unimportant tasks. Nhung didn’t care. He would do whatever he could for Pham. And when the time came for Pham to give him a more important duty to perform, he would be ready.

Nhung shoved the second box into the car. He had to hurry. The supply run had taken far longer than he anticipated. Pham was meeting with his key followers at six. Nhung didn’t want to miss it. They would surely discuss the midnight raid, as well as their plans for the future.

Nhung had hoped the firebomb would scorch ASP off the face of the earth, but it hadn’t. At the very least, though, maybe now they would leave Coi Than Tien alone. Maybe now the violence would end. Maybe now—

“All by yourself, gook?”

Nhung dropped the third box onto the concrete. Bottles shattered, spilling their liquid contents.

“Clumsy little nigger, ain’tcha?”

There were four of them, and they had him surrounded. They weren’t wearing their ASP uniforms, but he knew who they were, just the same.

One of them peered down at Nhung, leering. It was the guard. The one Nhung and the others had fought during the midnight raid.

“Please, sirs,” Nhung said. To his embarrassment, his voice broke. “I must take these supplies back to my family. They are hungry and my sister is very ill.”

The ASP guard appeared to be the group leader. He dipped his finger in the spillage. “Your family eats combustible chemicals, I see. Don’t you dumb gooks know that’s dangerous? Probably not very tasty, either.”

The other three ASP men laughed. Nhung tried to bolt through their ranks, but they grabbed him and shoved him back against the car. His chin bashed against the hood.

The leader ripped the car keys out of Nhung’s hands. He opened the back door and shoved Nhung inside. The ASPers sat on either side of him while the leader drove. They pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward Maple.

Nhung looked desperately all around him. What would these men do? How much did they know? Through the car window, he saw a man he recognized from town, the editor of the newspaper, walking down the street. Nhung flung himself against the car window and shouted at the top of his lungs.

The driver floored the accelerator, and the man sitting next to Nhung yanked him back into his seat. Before Nhung could speak again, the man slapped him brutally across the face. Nhung cried out, this time in pain. Apparently his ASP host didn’t know the difference. He hit Nhung again, with a clenched fist. Nhung’s head thudded back against the car seat.

Nhung didn’t remember much else about the drive. The sun set and it soon became dark. He couldn’t tell where he was or where he was going. He was dazed; his mind seemed to flicker in and out of consciousness. His mouth and jaw ached, and two of his teeth felt as if they had been knocked loose. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. He wanted to cry, but he knew it would only make matters worse.

The car stopped finally and they hauled Nhung out. Many more ASPers were assembled in a clearing in full regalia, including hoods. They hauled Nhung past a blazing campfire toward a wooden post in the center of the assemblage.

No—it wasn’t a post, Nhung realized. It was a cross.

They wrapped a thin cord around his hands and feet, then tied him to the cross. The ASP men moved closer, encircling him, none of them speaking. The field of green hoods filled Nhung with terror.

One of them approached. He was shorter and larger than the man who had beaten him in the car. This man stared at Nhung for a long moment, then walked behind him. A moment later, Nhung felt his shirt being ripped off his back.

Another man in green advanced. He was cracking a bullwhip over his head.

Nhung wanted to be brave, but it was too hard, too impossible. He clenched his eyelids shut and cried. “Please don’t,” he whispered. “Please don’t—”

The tail of the whip smacked his exposed back. Nhung screamed, a loud high-pitched wail. He felt as if his back had been split open, as if the skin had been ripped off and the soft wet underflesh left exposed.

The whip cracked again. The nerve-shattering pain pierced his back like a dagger. He was certain he could not bear it any longer. And then they hit him again.

His knees weakened. If he had not been tied to the cross, he would have collapsed. The man wielding the whip was quite skilled; each blow landed in almost exactly the same place as the previous one, deepening the wound, intensifying the agony.

The whip sounded again and again and again. Nhung’s vision began to blur. He felt his consciousness fading.

And then, as abruptly as it had begun, the whipping stopped. The wind whistled through the trees, stinging Nhung’s back, licking at the open wound. But the whip did not crack.

The ASP men were moving away from him, huddling around the campfire. They worked busily at some task, but Nhung couldn’t tell what it was. He heard a few chuckles, then some malevolent laughter.

He became very scared.

The ASP huddle parted, and through wet and blurry eyes Nhung saw what they were doing. The short man, the one who had torn his shirt, was in the center, stoking the fire. No, that wasn’t it. He was holding something in the flames. Something long and thin, like a poker.

The man raised the iron object high above his head. Now Nhung could see it clearly. It wasn’t a poker.

It was a branding iron.

The hooded men on all sides began to chant. “Blood, blood, blood,” they cried. “Death, death, death.”

“We will strike back against the enemy,” the man with the iron cried out. “We will fight and fight until the land is pure once more!”

“Please don’t do this,” Nhung begged them. “Oh, God! Please no. Please no!”

“Death, death, death,” they chanted, even louder than before. “Kill, kill, kill!”

The short man held the glowing iron an inch from Nhung’s face. The heat emanating from it stung Nhung’s eyes. The brand was in the shape of a cross.

The short man ripped the drooping tatters of Nhung’s shirt off his chest.

“No,” Nhung whimpered, over and over. “I’ll do anything. Please. Please—”

He heard a hideous hissing noise, followed by the most searing pain he had ever felt, had ever imagined. It burned through his chest and ignited every nerve in his body. His agonized shout reverberated through the twilight. And to his horror, he found that when the iron was removed, his suffering was even greater.

The only mercy was that he fell into deep unconsciousness and, as a result, wasn’t aware of what they did to him next.