The Beach

∨ The Beach ∧

102

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.